Rectober Post No. 5!

[lauren3210]

banner by capitu





As I'm sure y'all have worked out by now, these Rectober posts are about my various OTPs (I have so many, ohmygod). This post is a little different, because instead of talking about a particular pairing, this time I'm going to talk about FEMSLASH!!

I think it's fair to say that, although I ship across all the genders and that my shipping tends to lean more towards characters and narratives than looks or amount of penises, the vast majority of my OTPs are m/m pairings. I think that is probably because you can't switch on the tv without falling over a het ship, and canon femslash ships are still much more prevalent than m/m relationships (because of the fetishisation of lesbianism, obviously, which is a rant for another day). So although I get more of my share of het ships, and the occasional delightful femslash ship, m/m is still such a taboo subject that I probably mainly ship that way just to make a point, to be honest.

BUT, that doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate femslash just as much as m/m, so below the cuts, I'm going to talk about a few canon and non-canon femslash ships that I love, and hand out a few recs!


Everyone has a formative tv show, something that defines how they view tv for years to come. For me, it was Buffy. She's the same age as me, so when the show started airing in 1997, I too was a 16 year old girl trying to navigate my way through high school and friends and boyfriends (and girlfriends). This show was everything to me, because Buffy helped me truly understand how to relate feminism to myself and Willow helped me understand that what I felt for girls wasn't wrong, and the core relationships helped define how I saw friendship. I'm not saying it was a perfect show, because there were many, many things wrong with it on a societal level, but I will forever maintain that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was one of the best tv shows ever made and I will fight you on that.

Of course, I had an OTP for this show, and I'm sure absolutely none of you will be surprised that I shipped Buffy/Spike with everything that I am. I shipped them from the moment Spike turned up in "School Hard" and Joyce Summers bashed him over the head with an axe and said "get the hell away from my daughter!" Oh boy, was I hooked from that moment on. I also had my very first femslash ship, in the form of Willow/Tara, before they even happened on screen. This was mainly because I was at uni by that point, and was researching the inherent connections between witchcraft and lesbianism, so when Willow started her magic journey in season 3, I was already queer coding her just from that. I also had a bit of a thing for Spike/Angel(us), because come on, that was a ship just waiting to happen! But the thing with this show is, I never had to actually go out searching for feels about my ships, because I already got them in the actual show. Spike and Buffy played out perfectly for me; I truly didn't wish anything else had happened for them. I cried forever when Tara died, but I still got my ship, and they were so amazing and wonderful, and I got to see Willow truly mourning her loss. I even got a nice little canon mention that Spike and Angel(us) did in fact get it on at some point in their past, so I was happy enough with that side ship. Basically, I couldn't have shipped better in this show, haha.

But, there is one ship that I liked, but never got to see on the show, and that was Buffy/Faith. I just really loved their dynamic, the way Buffy softened Faith's hard edges, and Faith helped Buffy come out of her shell a little and appreciate the good parts of being a Slayer. I loved how their core characters were reflected against everything that they did, from everything from their speech patterns down to the types of clothes they wore. I just really loved what they could have been for each other, and shall be forever sad that this was the one ship I didn't get in this wonderful, perfectly flawed, amazing show.

(look at my babies go!)


(god they're so gorgeous)


(*whimpers*)


(I sense sexual tension)


(see, told you)


(together at the end I REST MY CASE)

Vid Rec:
Catch You: Buffy/Faith
Vidder: dylanxtra
Song: Catch You, by Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Wahhhhhhh look at how hot they are together I can't, it's too much ohmygodddddddd!!!

I've talked about Teen Wolf and my issues with the show before, so I won't go into it again here. Suffice it to say that, it annoys me at how much the writers of the show tout themselves as 'queer positive', when the only 2 queer relationships on the show have been with a lesbian couple where one character died shortly after we learned her name (and the other one was then brought back as a bisexual so that they could meet their quota, probably) and a gay couple who were only ever side characters and were then practically written out of the show. Just a heads up, Teen Wolf; that's not representation, that's just reinforcing the idea that queer people are expendable and unnecessary, so fuck you if you think you're doing anybody any favours with that shit. /rant.

ANYWAY, I have a femslash ship for this show too! Allison and Lydia. I actually have a funny story about this, because I was having a somewhat... heated discussion with someone on Tumblr about this very ship. After posting a gifset and saying how much I shipped it, I got a message back, asking me why I always have to queer everyone up, and what's wrong with just a really close female friendship. This person asked me if I had never walked around school as a teenager holding hands with my female friends, because that's "just what girls do." "Of course I did," I answered. "But I was also snogging them behind the bike sheds during break time too." I'm fairly sure I won that argument. But I do ship them, because they're amazing together; how they just seemed to click straight away, how they looked after each other and protected each other, and basically if Allison hadn't been killed off and they'd decided to put them together, I would still be watching the show regardless of how I hate it now, just to see these two gorgeous girls together.

(so pretty)


(look how she touches her)


(so fucking hot i literally cannot)


(haaaaaaands)


(canon enough for me tbh)


(omg they're so cute kill me)

Vid Rec:
She Misses Her Best Friend: Allison/Lydia
Vidder: MakeStronger3
Song: Comes and Goes, by Grag Laswell

Wow, now I'm sobbing, this was a terrible idea, I blame everyone else for this.

So, only vid recs today, because these are ships that I love but rarely look for in fic. I really urge you to watch the vids though, especially the last one, because it will make you sob buckets. You know, unless your heart is made completely of stone! See you for the next post! <3