Archive of Our Own

Why is it also lower quality?

Well it does certainly depend on the fandom we are talking about.

But an overall explaination could be that, according to centreoftheselights's Top 100 Femslash pairings of 2021 , you will notice a majority of them are from children or teen fandoms/medias. Now again, this is not to say adults can't enjoy or write for ships in children's fandoms or that every fanfic written by a child/teen is bad, but it would help explain the lower quality. Like it or not, a lot of those fandoms do have a lot of kids in them who are writing fanfic who often simply do not have the life experience or education to make high quality fanfics.

Another reason could be part of your first question. Less of something can sometimes mean less of a chance to find a good quality of that something.

Sorry for bad formatting on this part...reddit text formatting sucks ass…

Why is there less F/F fanfiction than M/M?

Now this is a much more complicated question. Once again this does come down to the fandom we are talking about but overall...

In 2013, centreoftheselights did a survey to analyze the types of fics that were being written and who they were being written by. In response to seeing that most M/M writers who took the survery at that time were queer women, they decided to open up the conversation to why they were writing M/M and the lack of F/F .

Here are the reasons they came up with:

1. Lack of female characters (or rather lack of female characters in leading roles)

2. Lack of female relationships (a lot of media can't pass the bechdel test and most that do are between women that are related or a mentor/student relationship with a large age gap)

3. Lacks favored dynamics (a lot of the dynamics in shipping at the time were enemies to lovers or friends to lovers, which was lacking in fandoms at the time)

4. Compulsory heterosexuality (a lot of female characters in these fandoms at the time already had a romantic relationship with a man, had a character trait where they were known for dating, hooking up with or pursued men or their character arc focused on getting with a man)

5. Straight women want hot guys (straight women like hot guys they can make do cute and sexy things in fanfic. Why would they care about attractive women that don't attract them?)

6. Internalized Misogyny (women in fandom judge female characters far more harshly out of internalized sexist beliefs, while male characters are placed on pedestals.

7. Too close to home (most fanfic authors are women, and writing fanfics about female characters forces them to confront issues such as body image, everyday sexism, etc. which they find painful. Writing about male characters is a form of escapism, and allows these issues to be handled in a less personal way)

8. No pre-existing audience (there’s already an established group of M/M fans who are on the lookout for potential new ships, and provide an established audience even in the early days of a fandom. F/F ships have smaller fanbases and are slower to be picked up upon, causing F/F writers to feel alone and like they have to )

9. Less writer support (there are fewer writing resources for starting out femslash writers; it’s harder for writers to seek advice, do the relevant research and develop their style)

10. Harsher criticism (going back to number six, people tend to be meaner to F/F writers in fandom, especially if one or both of the women are hated or controversial in or outside the fandom)

11. Harder to find fic (referring to Ao3 but can apply to other sites)

12. A new movement (depending on who you ask, F/F didn’t get popular until the 90’s)

13. Movement lost momentum (Back in the heydays of Xena and Buffy, there was plenty of femslash to go around, but after those shows ended, there was nowhere for the fans to go. If you want F/F fic, you need to find an older archive)

14. AO3 is biased (there’s plenty of F/F fic out there, but AO3 isn’t the place to find it. t’s still in its early days, and the initial pattern of adoption has led to the archive disproportionately favoring M/M shipping more than fandom in general.)

15. Hyper-popular fandom bias (bigger fandoms with M/M mean there will be more M/M overall…take Supernatural for instance)

16. Less text-focussed (Fic writers don’t count other forms of fanmade media in shipping numbers, such as videos, artwork, etc. and there may be more of that than fics…plus back to number 14 but with bias for text)

17. Western media is biased (F/F shipping is under-represented in the popular Western TV and film fandoms. There is much more in non-Western or non-English speaking fandom, but these tend to have much smaller fanbases on AO3.)

18. No side pairings (people often overtag things, even if the M/M or F/M ship isn’t the main focus, making the ship seem to have more works than it actually does) 

1. Fandom’s Race Problem (as the first commenter on this link says,fandom sadly has a tendency to dismiss or rewrite scenes where Black women are shown to have good chemistry or in a relationship with a white man. You’re more likely to hear things like “Oh well he wasn’t really attracted to her” or “he was just faking that he likes her in that scene” when it comes to Black women, especially those with darker skin) 
2. Fandom’s TERF Problem (trans writers and characters,especially those that are MTF, get judged much harsher for the types of characters they relate to and if a trans character has been labeled “bad” or “problematic”, trans creators who write about them are labeled trans-trenders or pick me trans) 
3. Fandom’s SWERF problem (SWIF [Sex Worker In Fandom] have almost entirely pulled away from popular fanfic websites, often stating they have experienced extreme harassment and their voices are drowned out when discussing how a sex worker is protrayed…sadly this has affected the number of F/F fics some of the worst) 
4. Absolutism (if one person with power states a female, minority or LGBT character is “bad” and “offensive” and “problematic”…then that’s it…they are “bad” and “offensive” and “problematic” so you can just forget about trying to make fics with them unless you like a large helping of passive aggressive shunning with a side of occasional …how do you think the affects F/F writers?) 
5. Queer Female Erasure (women are often not believed when they are in a lesbian relationship…unfortunatly this mentally does not escape the world of fiction. Too often canon F/F relationships have to go out of their way to prove they are “real” or “canon” even if the characters kiss, say “I love you” or have sex on screen...whereas canon M/M relationships don’t even have to get past the hand holding stage to be praised and popular. When a M/M ship with queer-coding doesn’t become canon in the way fans want, it’s queer baiting. When a F/F ship with queer-coding doesn’t become canon in the way fans want, “you’re just looking too deeply into things”) 
6. People are less likely to give media starring a woman in the leading role a chance (can’t have F/F pairings if fanfic writers aren’t consuming media with them in it) 
7. Less material to work with (More female characters have less backstory and unique qualities to work with in canon, thus putting pressure on writers to fill in the gaps, whereas they wouldn’t have to do it with an M/M pairing) 
8. Bias against certain female-dominated genres (such as romance, realistic drama, children’s shows and dystopian novels) 
9. Bias against anything that isn’t a live action show (fandom for a long time, was just considered something for a running live action show on network tv and how many of these pass the bechdel test or even have female relationships at all) 
10. Punch Up-Punch Down Dilemma (a lot of creators have no issue writing a M/M fic in a popular whump or sex/kink categories as it feels like they are punching up, while writing whump or sex/kink with a F/F fic can feel like punching down) 
11. Bias Against OCs and Reader-Inserts (a lot of F/F fics involve OCs and Reader Inserts which readers tend to not want to give a chance, creating less demand for them) 
12. The Hivemind (a lot of F/F writers feel as though they have to include a popular M/M pairing in their fic, even if it is not the main focus, to draw in readers and to not feel isolated from the rest of the fandom) 
13. Straight-Washing and Removal of female friendships in adaptations (for instance, the cartoon Invincible adaptation removed War Woman’s girlfriend and her queerness entirely and in the Mafia Definative Edition, Sarah and Michelle’s [and all of Michelle’s backstory] was removed. Sadly, many BNFs praised these changes and belittled fans who wished these relationships had stayed) 
14. Older Fansites Purging Adult Content Without Fair Warning (thousands of F/F fanfic on sites like LiveJournal and Fanfiction.net have been lost due to this and were not re-uploaded or preserved to sites like Ao3, unlike a lot of active M/M fandoms) 
15. Discouraged Curiosity (making headcanons for cute white male characters that don’t have a lot of screen time is encouraged and praised, while doing the same for female characters will get a lesser reaction)
16. Complaining is Harassing (if a F/F author complains about their fics not receiving hits or people not giving their fics a chance or a lack of F/F content in fandom, they are seen as being bitchy, entitled and selfish which makes other fandom members not want to interact with them)

Things To Take Into Consideration When Discussing This:

1. Ao3 is not the standard. It can make it seem like M/M fanfic is more popular than it actually is. If you count other fanfic sites, it seems F/M dominates both M/M and F/F. Plus the category system on Ao3 is pretty unique to Ao3.
2. This conversation often removes the fact that fanfiction tends to favor romantic relationships as opposed to all other forms of relationships. There are other categories on Ao3 outside of F/F, F/M and M/M that get overlooked. For example if a fanfic is written about a canon queer woman but it is gen, should that be included in this conversation?
3. Not every fandom has M/M as the top category. Here's a list of 100 on Ao3 that don't.
4. If you want more F/F fanfiction, try to support authors who write it, especially in fandoms that are hostile to F/F like the ones I described above.

I think that's everything...let me know if I missed something.