Saffic timeline
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[edit] 1970s
- During the 1970s, saffic started to appear in the scene. While the community interested in this material was small, it began to have a signifigant fan base. ( http://www.annezo.net/archives/cat_opc.html )
[edit] 1977
- According to Katherine Langley, one of the earliest pieces of femslash to appear in a fanzine was "Kismet," by Dani Morin. This story appeared in Obsc'Zine #2, published in August of that year. This story’s plot included Uhura discussing with Chapel the nature of Captain Kirk and Spock’s relationship. This is a way for Chapel to cover her own feelings for Uhura. The appearance of this story proceeded the publication and stir over the Kirk/Spock material by three years; Diane Marchant’s Kirk/Spock “A Fragment Out of Time” was published in Grup 3 in September of 1974.
[edit] 1985
- “Changing” by Jane Carnell was published. This was a Blake’s 7 Jenna/Original Female Character story, published in the fanzine Touched #4 in the United Kingdom.
- By this time, there was f/f in the Doctor Who fan fiction community. The material that floated around primarily featured an original female doctor.
[edit] 1986
- According to Verba, one of the first pieces of f/f was published this year. It appeared in the Women’s List 2. The story was a Star Trek story where Saavik went into pon far and started a relationship with a female Romulan physican. The story was written by Ouida Crozier. Langley has refuted this, providing evidence that this story published was almost ten years after the first f/f appeared in the Star Trek fan fiction community.
[edit] 1988
- In the United Kingdom, “Customs” by Barbara Tennison was published in The Unique Touch 2. It featured the Jenna/Cally pairing.
[edit] 1993
- By 1993, zines with saffic content were available at MediaWest
[edit] 1994
- The Blake’s 7 fanzine, Southern seven 9, was published. Among the stories in this zine was "Cruelty Has a Human Heart" by Jane Carnell. While not explicitly f/f, there is, according to Sarah Thompson (http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7/Fanzines/Knights1/Southern9.html ), a non-sisterly type f/f relationship depicted between Soolin and Dayna.
[edit] 1997
- On October 10, 1997, the Pink Rabbit Consortium (http://www.altfic.com/ ) was founded. This site was home to some of the best f/f on the Internet for a variety of fandoms including Alien, All My Children, Babylon 5, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, ER, Law & Order, NYPD Blue, Star Trek: Voyager and Xena.
- In 1997, the term Uber was coined by Kym Taborn of [Whoosh.org]. She noted on Whoosh that the sudden emergence of Ubers started in [1997], after the [Xena] episode "The [Xena] Scrolls" aired.
[edit] 1998
- In 1998, the For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature mailing list located on the University of Illinois, Chicago's list serve discussed fan fiction. One of the vein's of discussion was that there are some quality fan fiction and slash fan fiction writers who are as good at writing as Stephen King. They just do not know how to get published or write for reasons like feedback and community.
- The Sailor Moon fandom, around the mid 1990s, was one where the primary pairing type involved f/f slash fic. This material was being posted to Usenet and several fan fiction archives on-line. Prior to Xena making it big, this was the first big f/f slash fic community.
- By this time, Liz Griffin was penning her Janeway/Torres fan fiction. Her works would be described by others as the zenith of this romantic pairing. (http://babealicious.net/fanfic/linkspage.html )
[edit] 1999
- The Buffy: The Vampire Slayer f/f community began to take off. Some of the early works in this community were characterized as being fluffy and romantic. (http://www.libraryofmoria.com/jsr/finalpart6.html )
- The Paradoxical F/F Archive was founded. This fan fiction archive hosted over 820 stories from a number of fandoms including Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Sailor Moon, Star Trek, Stargate, The X-Files and Xena.
- By this time, Gina Dart had started writing her classic Star Trek Voyager Janeway/Seven series, Just Between. (http://www.northco.net/%7Ejaneway/ ) This series would become almost required reading for fans of that pairing. Gina Dart would also become one of the leading members of the Bad Girls f/f community. Another classic writer of Janeway/Seven material also started writing by this time. The author was Tenderware. She wrote such notable classics as “Sustenance,” “Adaptations” and “The Four Pips Club.”
- In May of this year, at Fedcon , Jeri Ryan categorically denied that Janeway and Seven would ever be involved in a relationship with each other. (http://members.aol.com/Tenderware/ )
- By this time, according to Judith Gran ( http://www.alternateuniverses.com/judygran/interview.html ), there were more writers who were involved in writing different types of pairings. The same writer in the Star Trek fandom may write f/f, m/f and m/m. Judith Gran also noted that by this time, fandom was being dominated less by heterosexual women.
- On June 20, 1999 of this year, Stacy Peters opened The Infinity Complex. This would be an important archive of Star Trek: Voyager f/f slash material. Among the authors archived here were Bodicea, August, Robin Lawrie, Jane St. Clair, LZClotho, Kelly and AgainCourt.
- On August 5, 1999, the SapphicSlayer mailing list was founded. (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SapphicSlayer/ ) This mailing list was for Buffy: The Vampire Slayer f/f fan fiction. The membership would top over 900 people.
[edit] 2000
- Yuricon and ALC Publishing were founded. (http://www.anilesbocon.com/ ) They have anime and manga that caters to women’s desire for f/f anime related materials.
- In September of this year, the Femme Fuh-Q Fest was started in the Star Trek (http://www.geocities.com/femme_fuhq_fest/ ) fan fiction community. It currently houses over 320 Star Trek f/f slash stories.
- By this time, Anik LaChev had started writing the Janeway/7 Uber classic, “Campus.” [1]
[edit] 2001
- Realms of the Shadows, an f/f slash archive was opened. Among the fandoms represented at this archive were All My Children, Bird of Prey, Bring it On, Coyote Ugly, Crossing Jordan, Facts of Life, Once & Again, Popular, Smallville and X-Men.
- On January 29, 2001, the LiveJournal community yuri was founded. [2] It was dedicated to f/f anime pairings. Fan fiction communities represented include but are not limited to: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Card Captor Sakura, Iono the Fanatics, Kashimashi, Neon Genesis Evangelion , Rule of Rose, Saigo no Seifuku, Sailor Moon, Simoun, Starship Operators, Strawberry Panic, Tetragrammaton Labyrinth, Yamaji Ebine.
- In November, Bascon was held. Among the panels that was hosted was on on f/f slash fandom. [3] Connexions also had a panel on f/f. WitchQueen said of the Connexions panel: “We've still got the same issues (small audience, no zines, slasher misogyny), but the panel was bigger than last year and more people were interested in writing f/f fic.” [4]
[edit] 2002
- Andromeda Uncovered (http://www.anzwers.org/free/andromeda/ ) was founded. While it did not host only f/f material, it was one of the major sources for finding f/f in the Andromeda fan fiction community.
- The Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Angel fanzine, A Shark with Feet, was published. This fanzine contained some f/f material.
- GeekTurnedVamp write about f/f slash in her journal. The following is a quote from her journal on that topic in order to give an idea of the attitudes towards f/f from that year: “Not only are a lot of female writers of m/m slash simply uninterested in f/f, many are actively uncomfortable with it (for reasons I won't even go into because that's another rant)--a few to the point of saying it shouldn't even be called slash at all. And again, while I must reiterate that none of this is limited to slash (because it's so not, even though okay, apparently maybe I am gonna pick on it a little), I find prejudice like that ridiculous. ” http://www.angelfire.com/geek/turnedvamp/blog.html ) Raie, unlike GeekTurnedVamp, writing that same year, did go into why she doesn’t like f/f. She said: “I don't like het smut or even much f/f slash because I don't like thinking of women in sexual situations, because women as sexual beings are almost invariably sexual objects, to me. A woman in sex is just such a negative thing. I have been taught to objectify women, see them as sexual objects, and I have learned that that is very wrong to do, and now I can't read a story with a woman in love or sex because in my eyes it reduces her. ” ( http://www.raie.blogspot.com/2002_04_01_raie_archive.html )
- THE LAW & ORDER: SVU FEMSLASH SITE INDEX - f/f (lesbian) fan fiction pairings (http://www.xenawp.org/svu/ )was founded.
[edit] 2003
- In 2003, GirlBitz, a saffic community, opened on the Internet.
- Some one estimated that for every piece of f/f Queen of the Swords slash posted in this year, there were fifty pieces of m/m posted.
- The Lady Comic Slash Site was founded. This site contains an index of f/f fan fiction, original art and image manipulations based on comics.
- The Girls’ Dormitory (http://girlsdormitory.slashcity.net/efiction/index.php ), a Harry Potter saffic site, was founded this year. The site archived over 450 stories and had over 350 members.
- Slash was defined by Jill Marsh on alt.fan.cecil-adams on October 28, 2003 as:
- Slash usually refers to fanfic concerning the romantic/sexual pairing of two male characters (the definitive slash couple being Kirk/Spock). I have seen female pairings called "femslash," "fem-slash," "f/f slash," "female slash," "girlslash," sometimes just "lesbian fanfiction," or "femmeslash" Heterosexual fanfic is usually called "het".
- However for all intents and purposes one can find all these combinations just searching for "slash", the term seems to be becoming more generic.
- And yes, the term "romantic" was used up there very intentionally, I have seen lots of slash, indeed the very first slash I ever saw, that was purely about romantic love rather than sexual behaviour.
[edit] 2004
- The Love of a Woman, Issue 2 was published in March by Devious Developments Press. This saffic fanzine was multifandom.
- By this time, the f/f Lord of the Rings community was beginning to take off. More authors were writing it. One of the authors was Laura Mason.
[edit] 2005
- By late 2005, m/m slash writers and readers were using f/f slash icons to be topical.
- On July 10, 2005, the LiveJournal community 24femmeslash was created. It was dedicated to 24 saffic. [5]
