Intense Lesbian Fanfiction is Autostraddle’s first original fiction, in three parts. It’s also the best thing that’s ever happened.
Chapter 1
The night was deep and dark over Ellen DeGeneres’ Burbank mansion. Inside her mahogany themed living room, Ellen sat in a velvet high back chair and quietly sipped whiskey out of a crystal glass. In front of her a fire roared in the fireplace. Portia was sleeping quietly at her feet. This was a typical night for Ellen, sitting there, with her wife, in her velvet chair, wearing her velvet smoking jacket, her velvet slippers, and her favorite velvet vest (most things Ellen owns are velvet). She was in the middle of sipping her whiskey when she suddenly felt a great pressure in the back of her head. The sudden pain startled her so, that she clamped her hands into fists, subsequently shattering the crystalline glass and spilling whiskey all over her velvet everything. Ellen shook the bits of crystal off her hand, which was not bleeding due to the calluses from many years of comedy, and touched the back of her head. The pressure had faded as quickly as it had come on. Ellen knew exactly what it meant though.
Illustration by Rory Midhani
“She’s here,” Ellen said.
Portia, at her feet, looked up with scared eyes.
“Shhhh, shhhhh,” Ellen said and pet Portia’s cute short haircut. “It’s okay girl, go back to sleep.”
Portia dutifully put her head back down.
Suddenly, the velvet phone on the table next to the chair began to ring. Ellen picked it up.
“It’s Jodie,” said Jodie Foster on the other line. “did you feel it? Is it happening?”
“Yes,” replied Ellen. “It’s finally happening.”
“Oh my God,” Jodie breathed. “Should we tell the others?”
“I’m sure they felt it, too,” Ellen said. “All we have to do now is wait.”
“Okay. So how is everything going? How’s the house-”
“Not now Jodie, this is too intense.”
Ellen hung up the phone. Portia looked up again.
“I SAID GO TO SLEEP.”
She was not where you’d expect her to be. She was not on her bike in San Francisco, or wearing a beanie in Brooklyn. She was not in her dorm at Smith, or tending a bar in Northampton. She was not in Whole Foods, or even Trader Joe’s. But she was on Tumblr; her URL was Dyke.D.Eisenhower.tumblr.com.
The girl was Katie Landsman, and she was no big-time lesbian; she was a tiny-time lesbian. Twenty one years old, she had been living at home since she had attended a two-year college to become a computer programmer. While she wasn’t at her day job, she was home fiddling with her laptop or guitar. In her hometown, (Mexico, Missouri) she was one of two lesbians. The other was a freshman at the local high school who one day declared, “I’M A LESBIAN. DEAL WITH IT,” then dyed her hair blue and also commanded people to “deal with it.” Tiny-time Katie had only one real girlfriend; a girl named Jess she met on Tumblr who, after she drove three hours to meet up with, Katie realized she had nothing in common with and they sheepishly broke up after three dates. Katie, however, was done being a joke. She knew she had potential to be a big-time lesbian and it was just a matter of finding out how.
Hunched over her computer on her bed, Katie Landsman had a realization: she should go by her middle name. Katie’s middle name was her mother’s maiden name, and Katie’s mother had come from a long line of arson investigators. One of Katie’s greater grandpas had the brilliant idea of changing the family name from Mattison to Blaze; he said it would make for some great puns. And so when Katie’s mom, formerly Miss Mildred Blaze, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, she gave her the name Kathryn Blaze Landsman.
Katie slipped off her bed and walked over to her full-length mirror. She looked at herself and whispered “Call me Blaze.”
Almost immediately, the new name had filled her with a new sense of power. She could feel it swirling under her feet, and emanating from her chest. She looked at her hands, balled them into fists, and with a mighty roar shouted, “MOM CALL ME BLAZE FROM NOW ON, OKAY?”
From downstairs a faint, “‘Kay, sweetie,” could be heard. It was official. Blaze was here.
Illustration by Rory Midhani
Next: Chapter 2
Pages: 1 2 3 4See entire article on one page
” Portia was sleeping quietly at her feet.”
That’s all I needed. Excellent.
This is everything I ever wanted and so much more.
this is excellent, keep them coming!
I laughed through the whole thing, but “Thank you, it’s easier when you put it all in scientific notation.” really took my little engineer heart away. Hilarious
My dreams are coming true. Jodie Foster and Silence of the Lamb references.. aww yessss! The queer powah is strong in this one!
I love it! I hope that this will become more absurdist and hilarious. I’m looking forward to the next instalment of fear fuelled action! ;)
“Inside the car, Jodie Foster nervously ate a Subway sandwich.”
How I Met Your Mother gives this sentence a whole new meaning.
oh my god. so good.
Ooh
Um.
Oh my god.
This is incredible. This can’t be real. This is amazing.
So… are you gonna keep slagging on every femme presenting women character in your story and writing every non-femme presenting women character as super empowered? Or is that just a magical coincidence?
I can’t believe this exists :D
THIS IS AMAZING. Also pro tip: do not read in the library if you are uncomfortable receiving strange looks in response to your uncontrollable chuckling.
I feel that way about at least half of the things I read here. And I love it!
I love this so much!
That is so so great! I’m looking forward to the next chapter! So cool!
Dyke D. Eisenhower – totally gonna steal this.
DO US PROUD MELANIE
:)
Oh my god, how much do I wish that there were actually a giant lesbian celebrity phone tree and that they call each other every time someone new comes out!? I seriously need that to be a real thing.
Nice …
Uh…ok…
“Portia was sleeping quietly at her feet”
“Portia, at her feet, looked up with scared eyes.
“Shhhh, shhhhh,” Ellen said and pet Portia’s cute short haircut. “It’s okay girl, go back to sleep.”
Portia dutifully put her head back down.”
Portia as a pet? This gives me a sick feeling in my stomach. I know it’s fiction but how is it ok to turn her into that?
This made me really uncomfortable too.
I logged in for the sole purpose of writing what you just did. This made me incredibly sick to my stomach, fiction or not this is misogynistic AS FUCK!
I do think this piece has some problems with femme-presenting women, but I just want to give my perspective on the pet thing since I interpreted it a different way. I have no idea how much the author(s) or readers & commenters know about BDSM, but in the BDSM community there is a thing called pet play (aka pony play, kitten play, puppy play, etc.) and it basically means both partners consensually agree that one partner (the submissive) will act/be treated as a pet of some sort (i.e. they may sleep at their dominant’s feet, their dom may pet them, etc.). This is all on the sub’s terms and not meant as a sign of disrespect at all. So anyway, maybe because I’ve got one foot in the BDSM world, that was how I pictured the Ellen/Portia thing, which made it seem cute. I understand, however, that the author probably didn’t intend that/most of you didn’t read it that way.
And I would be perfectly okay with this being D/s thing (far be it from me to yuck anyone’s yum and all), but if that’s the case, it needs to clearly stated and labeled that way. Especially given the misogyny that femme presenting people experience in queer communities. That is what, in my mind, makes the difference between degradation and domination in mainstream porn and erotica and porn and erotica that is explicit and aware of the dynamics they’re presenting.
Yeah I totally get that. It would have been more responsible to like make that evident if that was the point because, like you said, there is so much misogyny both inside and outside of the LGBT community.
what amanda said is how i felt when i read it. fanfic is often sexual fantasy, and it plays with a lot of different styles of sex and play and usually dom/sub stuff. (the author references EL james in her bio.) to me personally, this whole piece felt hyperbolic and overblown and goofy but also consensual? sex in fiction is rarely politically correct or ethical. sex itself isn’t, either. obviously this story isn’t for everybody, and that’s okay, but maybe that doesn’t also mean there’s anything wrong with it. maybe it does need a warning at the top, like leigh said, i don’t know. but some femmes (myself included) do enjoy sexual fantasies like that and these reactions, not the story, is what makes my stomach hurt.
I really like bdsm and kink (in fiction and in life) and I don’t know how the author intended it, but for me there was no sense at all that the Portia as a pet was consensual play.
I felt like there was some kind of point being made about the nature of celebrity and maybe I’m wrong but it was really uncomfortable for me to read and I found it dehumanising to Portia.
I never intended to imply that there was anything wrong with pet play or femmes who enjoy pet play. However, I can totally see how my comment came across that way and I’m sorry for that.
Not to “yuck anyone’s yum” here, but if it’s a matter of D/s relationships, it REALLY needs to be explicitly communicated. You wouldn’t enter a D/s relationship without communicating it with your partner, right? The author has that obligation to their readers just as well.
Firefly, I didn’t interpret your comment as anti-BDSM at all (although others might have). I was just offering another perspective because something felt off to me about this piece, but I didn’t realize that I had interpreted the Portia/Ellen thing in such a specific way/breezed past that scene until reading the comments. Thanks for being so gracious though. I appreciate hearing other people’s thoughts about the dynamic and the piece as a whole.
I commend Autostraddle for courageously publishing this exposé of the celesbian kyriarchy.
The piece balances hard-hitting journalism with nuanced portrayals of those involved, so that while we may never forget the dangers posed by the shadowy sapphic cabal that runs our lives, we might, at last, begin to understand them.
I look forward to further instalments, which I hope are written with the same level of integrity.
When I saw this I was like, “what the fuck?” but in a good way
Best thing ever! Can’t wait for part 2.
This is amazing. OMG. I can’t wait for the next installment!!!
Indeed, this is the best thing.
This is hands down the most disgusting thing I’ve read on AS. The dehumanization of Portia, the constant pussy slander, “actual boy” (like seriously, wtf is that supposed to mean??)
Also, whisky and whiskey are two separate things.
I’m not sure if the amateur writing-style was purposeful, orrrrr… But, umm, yeah, I don’t think I’ll be waiting for Part Two. I couldn’t get past Chapter Three or something =\
^ Echoing comments above in feeling uncomfortable with Portia being treated as a dog, and having the word “PUSSY” used in a demeaning way.
Yes, amateur is a good word for it. The amount of typos/spelling errors was a little too high for me and the lack of social awareness was also upsetting. I really didn’t like the “pussy” thing either.
Yeah, I think overall, that was the biggest turn-off with this piece – the shoddy quality of writing. I mean, I have literally shed tears reading some exquisite fanfiction, and you’d think a website with such a talented staff of writers would have something better as their ‘ground-breaking’ fiction series.
This makes me curious as to how this writer in particular was selected. I don’t recall seeing a call for fiction writers to submit.
“When I did a reading at Carnegie Mellon, he was there. He was in the business school. He’s pretty chatty. He was telling me about his internship in Hell the summer before.”
CMU alum here, crying from laughter. This sounds like all the business school students I knew.
autostraddle, i’m a long term reader and usually i’m of the opinion that you can do no wrong… but what’s going on with the whole portia as a dog thing here? is it supposed to be some kind of comment about how femmes are inherently subservient?
i don’t want to be oversensitive but this whole post made me feel sick. there’s absurd and then there’s gross. honestly what were you guys thinking?
There is nothing “oversensitive” about your feelings regarding this post! Many of us agree with you and our reactions to this fanfic shitshow are valid <3
No, I’m incredibly disappointed with the quality of writing and the misogyny in this piece. I’d expect this level of trash on virtually any other website except this one.
I may be reading this wrongly, but I think they’re taking the piss of the subservient femme stereotype that sometimes does exist in lesbian fiction/fanfiction by playing it up to such an absurd extent. I seriously doubt that they actually think femmes should sleep on rugs at their girlfriends feet, ya know?
“IT’S NOT ABOUT OUR MOMS”
perfs…I am nervously and quietly awaiting Part Two with masterly baited breath
This is simply the thing I’ve been waiting for that I didn’t know I was waiting for.
I really like the idea of original fiction on AS. This one isn’t really my jam, in part because of the femme=hyperweak issue pointed out by DJ and others above, and the whole celebrity fanfic thing feels uncomfortable to me. I’m always very excited to see more of Rory’s illustrations, though! They seem to be uncredited here.
parts of this are very funny, but yeah, what’s with slamming femmes?
and isn’t pussy, like, why we get up in the morning/not an insult?
exactly my sentiment as well
“and isn’t pussy, like, why we get up in the morning/not an insult?”
for reals though.
I love that AS is posting fiction, and I can’t wait for more. As others said above this particular story has a lot of problematic thing going on.
Am I the only one crushing on Blaze?
Also, my name is Katie so we’re like same-sames
Ha! This is fairly brilliant, more please!
I’ve read tons of fanfiction for reasons… *
When I first saw this story, I was like, “Yes! Lesbian fanfiction endorsed by Autostraddle.”
I have searched high and very low for lesbian fanfiction.
Once I realized I hadn’t found the holy grail of lesbian fanfiction, but a satire, I embraced this story. I’m looking forward to the next part.
*I will never read E.L. James
*slow claps*
this has everything i love in a fanfic. a fall out boy reference if there is no fall out boy, art, ellen degeneres and cute dykes! :D
also “I SAID GO TO SLEEP” made me laugh forever.
i’m so happy about this and want lots and lots more