Femslash fan fiction’s expansive erotic imaginary

Abstract

As a genre largely unregulated by market trends and commercial interests, fan fiction can explore forms of bodily pleasure that might not otherwise be viewed as viable in mainstream pornography or romance. Fics from three significant but understudied femslash fandoms—Once Upon a Time (2011), Supergirl (2015), and The Devil Wears Prada (2006)—serve as case studies for analyzing the queer theoretical work fic writers do in interrogating dominant sexual scripts. These authors present an expansive queer erotic imaginary that untethers pleasure, desire, and intimacy from mainstream spaces and practices. In the fan works I examine, sexual connections are often routed through external objects like ink, fabric, and water. The canonical presence of magic, futuristic technology, and nonhuman characters also allows for the imagination of bodily morphologies and sexual practices untethered from both hetero- and homosexual norms, creating polymorphous pleasures that need not be tied to genital sexuality at all.