alwaysatrombonist:
eshusplayground:
eshusplayground:
About the Author: Eshusplayground is not her real name. She’s a gay, Black, and Jewish woman who’s older than she likes to admit and was born and raised somewhere below the Mason-Dixon line. She has been involved in femslash fandom since she started shipping Mirandy in The Devil Wears Prada. She is currently all about that OBFC (Original Black Female Character) life. She wrote this piece for I Am Femslash.
Why do you make the things you make?
In short, to make the invisible visible.
I get so tired of seeing myself excluded from stories and genres I love. In my own life, I’m not the punchline, the tragic victim of circumstance, the symbol of oppressed people, or the Sassy Black Friend. I’m a human being with my own ideals, goals, relationships, personality quirks, etc.
I want more gay Black women portrayed as deep, complex, desirable, vulnerable, whimsical, and all other sorts of things we rarely get to be in mainstream media. This extends beyond fic and into my real-life work as a playwright too.
Unfortunately, if I want to see Black women represented this way in the fandoms I’m in, I have to write it myself, usually by creating an OBFC (Original Black Female Character) or creating a space for centering Black women in femslash. I love carving out these spaces in narratives because it’s fun to me, but it can get disheartening when you feel like the only one, or when you work really hard at it and get few notes or kudos.
How do you want the community to grow and develop in the future?
The main one? More ships and meta that center Black women.
I know the excuse tends to be, “Well, the source material doesn’t have any good characters who are Black women,” to which I’ll say that fandom will literally invent a personality and backstory for a white dude who’s had three minutes of screen time so that they can ship him with some other white dude, so…no dice with that one.
It would be nice for femslash fandom to be more actively anti-racist. It’s usually Black women in femslash fandom doing the heavy lifting with this, and I’d like to see femslash fandom as a whole do more to alleviate that burden. It’s exhausting to constantly have to be the one to point out when something that happens in fandom is racist. I’ve said before that I want more white fans to take some initiative in talking about race and racism instead of simply waiting for fans of color to react when there is a racist incident in fandom.
Most importantly, though, is to respond to and signal boost femslash by and about Black women. If you’re looking for my femslash, I have tons of Swan Queen and Onyx Queen (Regina/OBFC), Gisetty (Gisele/Letty), some Wonder Storm (Storm/Wonder Woman), and even obscure ships from films like Triple 9 (Elena/OBFC). I even ship Tauriel with Jenny Mills.
For Holy Shit Eshu Writes A Lotta Femslash Tumblr
If you’re looking for some excellent femslash, I highly recommend eshusplayground’s work. My favourites have been Onyx Queen, Wonder Storm, and Swan Queen. Next on my list to read is the Triple 9 fic (I don’t even go there, but I will because I like eshusplayground’s work).
She also writes really awesome fic featuring some OBFC and the Lord of the Rings elves. I want to include that specifically because lots of fellow non-Black gay/bi/queer people will say “ew, het” and refuse to engage with media or fic which has Black women being loved and valued just because she is with a man.
She does great things in kind of the horror genre or in that sort of vein, and she does really cool things where she writes from the perspective of a side character so you can really feel those elements of fear.