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letzan

High-level stats for week of 2025-06-17 - 2025-06-23

Total works categorized F/F on AO3: 10272 (+319 from last week)

Works I classified F/F: 5775 (+93 from last week) (2537 new, 3238 continued)

0.64% of all 900898 AO3 works I've classified F/F were updated this week

A few callouts this week:

Hololive, Murder Drones, and She-Ra are all back. They replace Alien Stage, Cookie Run, and Honkai: Star Rail.
Once Upon a Time reaches 10 consecutive weeks in its latest chart run, out of 665 total weeks. (I think the latest chart run is just luck, rather than some new content or event somewhere; the fandom remains popular and has never fallen out of the top 20 for more than a month at a time. But let me know if you know otherwise!) Wicked reaches 30 consecutive weeks.
Exchange activity of interest: Hidden Gems: Bring On The Heat 2025, a Boku no Hero Academia rare pairs exchange, revealed works recently, and has 8 F/F works.

( Full top-20 table and description of methodology after the jump )

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femslash week in review

alierak posting in

dw_maintenance

We're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.

Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.

aurumcalendula posting in

girlgay

Title: To Hell & Back
Fandom: 双镜 | Couple of Mirrors (2021)
Music: To Hell & Back by Maren Morris
Summary: 'lucky for me, your kind of heaven's been to hell and back'
Notes: Premiered at Escapade 35.5.
Warnings: quick cuts and flashing lights, violence

AO3 | bsky | DW | tumblr | YouTube

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letzan

I want to shine an occasional spotlight on fandoms that are in flux. There are two kinds of fandoms here:

Fandoms that are growing rapidly, which are typically not in the top 20 now, and may never get there, but might be interesting for F/F readers to check out and encourage.
Fandoms that are losing ground on the top 20, and seem to be "post-peak." They may well peak again in the future, but it's a good moment to look back at the impressive amount of F/F which has been written so far.

This post comes with homework! I want readers to help me signal-boost some recs for these fandoms. If you've read and enjoyed F/F fic in any of the fandoms listed in this post (either the new ones or the old standards), please send me some works you liked! In a couple of weeks, I'll share the recs I got. Feel free to send recs on Tumblr as reposts, inbox messages, or DMs, and on Dreamwidth as comments or messages. Please tell me if you don't want to be credited for your rec.

Fandoms that are growing rapidly

Each of these fandoms has at least twice as many total F/F works now as it did 12 weeks ago.

The Pitt (TV): medical procedural drama that premiered in early 2025. It's not primarily F/F, but is growing overall, and adding about 10 F/F works per week. The biggest ship is Yolanda Garcia/Trinity Santos (Yolanda is a surgeon, Trinity is a resident).
Split Fiction (Hazelight Studios Video Game): a cooperative multiplayer video game which was released this year. The fandom is exclusively F/F, and the ship is the two protagonists, Mio Hudson/Zoe Foster, who are authors who become trapped in their own stories. It's adding about 10 F/F works per week.
Death Becomes Her (1992): a terrific dark comedy film which was adapted into a Broadway musical last year. The fandom is mostly F/F, and the ship is the two leads, Madeline Ashton/Helen Sharp, women who drink a potion of eternal youth and get more than they bargained for. It's adding about 10 F/F works per week.
ENA - Joel G (Web Series): a Peruvian avant-garde animated comedy series with various female characters, including the title character Ena, Coral Glasses, and Moony. Fic for the series is about half F/F, and it's adding maybe 7 F/F works per week, probably as a result of some new episodes which were posted recently.
Severance (TV): a popular science fiction TV show about a technology that lets employers isolate their employees' memories of work. It's not primarily F/F, and the primary F/F ships involve Helena Eagan. The fandom is growing because the second season was released earlier this year, and it's adding about 6 F/F works per week.
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage (Video Game): a game focused on four teenage girls who go on an adventure together in the 90s, and then reunite a quarter century later. It's an exclusively F/F fandom, and it's only adding about 6 F/F works per week right now, but it's from the same team that did Life Is Strange, and the plot structure sounds like it has some shades of Yellowjackets. Those are both giant F/F fandoms, so this may be one to watch.

Fandoms that are losing ground

Each of these fandoms dropped on the chart by at least two places, comparing the average in the past twelve weeks to the twelve weeks before that.

Game of Thrones (TV): a long-running blockbuster set of television series based on the George R.R. Martin novels. It's not currently on the chart, and its average chart rank fell from 13.2 to 17.5, the largest drop this quarter. The drop is presumably because it's been almost a year since the latest season of the currently-airing series, House of the Dragon, finished. The fandom is not primarily F/F, but it's a big ensemble cast show, and there have been several popular F/F ships. The all-time top ship is Sansa Stark/Margaery Tyrell. The top recent ship is Alicent Hightower/Rhaenyra Targaryen.
The Wicked Years Series - Gregory Maguire: a series of books which became a musical which became an extremely popular movie. It's an alternate take on Oz told primarily from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West. Its current chart run is 30 weeks, which is the number of weeks since the movie was released. Its average chart rank fell from 4.5 to 7.1, so it's not in much danger yet, and may well stay on the chart until the sequel movie is released late this year. The fandom is predominantly F/F, and the top and almost only F/F ship is the two protagonists, Elphaba Thropp/Galinda Upland.
Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon): an animated TV show about some residents of hell who are trying to improve their circumstances. Its current chart run is 72 weeks, and its average chart rank fell from 6.2 to 8.8. The drop is because the first season of the show finished airing in early 2024, and I'm not aware of an air date for the second season. The show is on the chart primarily because the protagonist is in a canonical lesbian relationship. The fandom isn't primarily F/F, with about 15% of all works tagged F/F, almost all of them with that main ship (Charlie Magne | Morningstar/Vaggie).
Supergirl (TV 2015): the all-time example of how to create an enduring F/F fandom. The show aired from 2015-2021, and has charted continuously for the past 496 weeks, 231 of those at rank 1. Nothing lasts forever, and this quarter, its average rank fell from 9.1 to 11.5. That's an average, keep in mind, which is why I've been eyeing that upcoming 500-week milestone nervously. Fic in this giant fandom is overwhelmingly F/F. The second-biggest ship is the canonical Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer relationship, and the biggest ship is Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor. It's a big ensemble cast, and there are lots of other ships.
The Owl House (Cartoon): a portal fantasy cartoon series that aired from 2020-2023, and has charted every week since mid-2020, 255 weeks in total. Its average rank fell from 9.6 to 11.7 this quarter, so it's probably nearing the end of that streak. Fic is predominantly F/F, with a good helping of Gen. The series protagonist is in a canonical F/F relationship, and in this case that ship (Amity Blight/Luz Noceda) actually is the top ship by far. It's followed by Eda Clawthorne/Raine Whispers (my longtime ruling is that canonically nonbinary characters are "F/F-eligible", meaning that if the fic author tags the work "F/F", I'll count a ship containing nonbinary characters as an eligible F/F ship), and, again, it's an ensemble cast, and there are numerous other ships.

As I said at the top, I'm excited to try doing a recs post for these fandoms, so if you have favorite F/F fics in any of them (or want to do research and get some), please send me your recs in the next week or so!

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femslash week in review

rocky41_7 posting in

fffriday

The day after finishing The Traitor Baru Cormorant I had to rush over to the library to pick up book 2, The Monster Baru Cormorant, which I finished earlier today.

Spoilers for The Traitor Baru Cormorant below!

The second book of a fantasy series of any kind often bears a very difficult burden. It is most often the place where the scope of the story grows significantly. A conflict which before was local to the protagonist's home and surrounding area may expand, often to the extent of the known world. New players are often added to the cast, bigger and scarier problems and challenges arise. The protagonist may have gone up in the world, wielding new power and influence, with new responsibilities. As a result, this is where many series lose their footing; a tightly-woven book or season 1 may give way to a muddled, watered down part 2 as the writers struggle to juggle this expanded focus.

The Monster suffers from none of those things. It is the place where Baru's story expands—in The Traitor, her focus was almost entirely on Aurdwynn; it was the full field of play and outside players mattered only as they influenced events on Aurdwynn. In The Monster, Baru has become a true agent of the Imperial Throne of Falcrest, and with these new powers, the entire field of the empire is opened up for her play, and it is fascinating to watch.

In The Traitor, Baru was narrowly focused on managing the situation in Aurdwynn; everything she did was to that end. In The Monster, Baru can do whatever she wants, and we get to see her finally on the open field. Even where she flounders and flails, it's delightful to watch the machinations of her mind constantly at work. Her cleverness rows against her bursts of sentimentality to produce some impressively chaotic effects, but she is as slippery as an eel to pin down, even when her rivals think they've gotten the best of her.

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letzan

High-level stats for week of 2025-06-10 - 2025-06-16

Total works categorized F/F on AO3: 9953 (+91 from last week)

Works I classified F/F: 5682 (+52 from last week) (2562 new, 3120 continued)

0.63% of all 898361 AO3 works I've classified F/F were updated this week

A few callouts this week:

Honkai: Star Rail is back after a few weeks away. It replaces Game of Thrones.
MCU celebrates 60 consecutive weeks on the chart (out of 578 total appearances). The top ship is still Agatha/Rio.

( Full top-20 table and description of methodology after the jump )

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femslash week in review

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rocky41_7 posting in

fffriday

On Saturday afternoon, on the bus ride home, I finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant, because I couldn't wait until I got home to reach the end, despite a long history of reading-induced car sickness. It was totally worth it.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant is all fantasy politics. There's no magic or fairies or prophecies, just Seth Dickinson's invented world and the titanic machinations of Empire. And it is electric. Tentatively, I'd make a comparison to The Goblin Emperor, except that where TGE is about how Maia, completely unprepared for his role, is thrust into a viper's nest of politics, Baru Cormorant is about how Baru has painstakingly taught herself the ways of the empire and enters into the game fully prepared to rewrite the rules to her liking.

Dickinson creates a wonderfully believable world. The Empire of Masks—popularly known as the Masquerade—is sickeningly plausible, with their soft conquests of money and ideas backed by a highly-trained and well-equipped military. The Masquerade is not content to conquer land—it must conquer minds, people. It is relentless in its push to force its colonies and territories to adopt its ways of thinking, to the point of dictating who may and may not marry based on their bloodlines. With this comes a heaping dose of homophobia, frequently enforced on cultures who had formerly been relaxed or even accepting of queer identities and relationships. This presents a specific problem for Baru, who is the daughter of a mother and two fathers, and who is herself a deeply closeted lesbian.

The story makes use of incredibly mundane tools in its schemes, something that also rings realistic. It's not all backstabbing, murder, and blackmail—at one point, a serious political threat is nullified through currency inflation. Baru, who becomes an imperial accountant, is in a prime position to use these seemingly dull tools to marvelous effect. Many schemes are strangled in the cradle, such that only the plotter and the defeater are even aware that they existed. But the game goes on.

( Read more... )

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rocky41_7 posting in

fffriday

On Monday's outbound commute I finished the audiobook for Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk. This is a supernatural/fantasy noir romance and it does pack a lot of all three of those things into its brief 4-hour runtime.

This book relies heavily on stock film noir tropes—the veteran down-and-out private (paranormal) investigator (here a lesbian, Helen, our protagonist) who drinks too much and is haunted by past mistakes, a mysterious and sexy female client with a unique case, and "just one last" job before the PI plans to quit and retire with a beloved romantic partner. I didn't find them overused—and seeing them reworked to queer and female characters was fun—but other readers may find them too worn out even here.

Because the book is so short, it moves along at a very rapid pace. The whole thing takes place over the course of two days—the final two days before Helen's soul debt is called due and she finally has to pay the price of her warlock bargain. In this way, any rush felt appropriate, since it fit both the size of the novel and the context of Helen's urgency to get this last job done before she has to pay up.

The characters weren't super developed, but again—4-hour runtime. They're a little stock character-y, but not total cardboard cut-outs. It was disappointing for me to see Helen make the same mistake at the end of the book that she did prior to the start, as if she hadn't really learned anything, but since the novel ends promptly after that, the story never has to reckon much with it.

I was relieved that Edith, Helen's girlfriend, wasn't just the damsel in distress/goal object for Helen, which I was a bit worried about in the beginning. Edith has secrets and goals of her own.

Overall, the book was fine, and it entertained me well enough for a few days. Nothing extraordinary here, but nothing objectionable either. I will say I think keeping it short worked best for this book—I think drawing it out might have only weakened it. A fun little twist on a typical noir novel.

Crossposted to

books and my main

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