MOVIE: Songcatcher (2000)
PAIRING: Eleanor "Elna" Penleric/Harriet Tolliver

THE PITCH: Anyone besides me into period lesbians?  1907 lesbians?  Somebody else out there has to be into period lesbians!  Particularly these ones, because they are nerdy activists who moved to Appalachia to found a school together and they write essays protesting child labor and most certainly do many other wonderful things that are not shown on-screen because they are, tragically, a subplot in this movie.  But they deserve their own story and a happy ending and fic can supply those things!  Seriously, for the amount of time they get in the movie (which is not tiny, but also not major; it's a prominent subplot) I think they are so beautifully characterized, with little details that suggest so much, and are ripe for deepening and expanding in fic. I love them. (I don't have a lot of high-quality stills of them but they are in my icon.)

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW: Songcatcher is generally well-reviewed (74% on RottenTomatoes) but is certainly angsty and a little heavy-handed in places. But the beauty of the setting and the music, and the strength of the characterization, are terrific, and I find it very very easy to get lost in.  And, for real, Elna/Harriet will always be my OTP. 

1. Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LAaHZsEG1s

2. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songcatcher (NOTE: Major spoilers in the summary; if you're spoiler-averse you probably don't want to read the summary past the second paragraph)

3. IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210299/

It's available for rental on Amazon Prime, Vudu, iTunes, and Google Play, for about $3 at the moment.


Edited 2018-07-25 09:31 pm (UTC)

FANDOM: the_comfortable_courtesan
PAIRINGS: Oh so many, you guys.

PITCH: The Comfortable Courtesan is the memoirs of a very selective English courtesan of the early 19th century, with lovely setpieces, tangled intrigues, a wide range of realistically complicated characters, and a beautiful and perfectly fitted narrative voice. It also contains Utilitarian philosophers, historically accurate diversity, polyamory, Sapphistry (and sodomy), useful precepts for novices, and a wombatt. It has been making me consistently happy for over three years now and I love it so much.

And when I say Sapphistry, I mean it. Madame C- has a wide acquaintance, of varying personalities and predilections, and included among them are so many women who love women. Women getting together, women breaking up with each other and finding someone new, women who live happily together with almost no drama for the entire 12 volume series, women who are two thirds of a happy equal polyamorous relationship, women who have lots of wild crushes on other women that may or may not be followed through with, so many queer women, seriously.

AVAILABILITY: You can read the original posts at the Dreamwidth blog above (starting here), or you can order the edited volumes 1-7 (and soon 8, and more forthcoming) as ebooks or paperbacks at this website.

It is, perhaps, not the best fandom to pick up quickly in a couple weeks, but honestly in my experience once you start you end up devouring the narrative surprisingly fast.

Do you like girls? Do you like swords? What about girls with swords? If so, then this is the series for you! Young girls known as Toji wield swords to battle the monstrous aradama, and what starts off as a routine tournament turns into a fugitive action-thriller as the protagonists attempt to discover the truth behind the supposed leader of the Toji and the aradama that possess her. Katana Maidens ~ Toji no Miko is loaded with action and strong female characters, and there's plenty of femslashy subtext to be had, with a variety of pairings to choose from.

The series is twenty-four episodes, and the sub can be watched on Crunchyroll and the dub on Funimation.

Witches, princesses, and a whole lot of loyalty kink - what's not to love? Izetta: The Last Witch follows the titular witch through an alternate history version of the second World War, devoting herself to Finé, the princess of the small country Eylstadt as they fight against powerful invaders. The strong bond between Izetta and Finé is the focus of the series, with Izetta displaying her loyalty to her beloved princess over and over, no matter the danger.

The series is twelve episodes, and the sub can be watched on Crunchyroll and the dub on Funimation.

Lovestruck (https://www.lovestruckgame.com/) is a mobile app that contains 10 different dating sims, all of which have at least one if not more f/f options. As you can imagine, this is more than enough shipping options for nominations, especially when you start shipping outside the MCs. There are even a lot of crossover nods between the different games that suggest some of the lady LIs are fans of each other.

All of the f/f routes are written and produced by wlw, which makes them authentic and honestly a joy for me to explore. The routes hit a nice balance of heartwarming, funny, and tense situations, all with automatic happy endings. The games are all different genres and frequently updated, so there's something here for most f/f shippers.

There are also a couple of nonbinary LIs. The female and nonbinary love interests are even all listed under one heading for people who want to bypass the men entirely. This has been super useful for me personally since there are so many routes in the app.

It's downloadable for free in various mobile app stores (in-app purchases net some additional scenes and faster playing, but I've found there to be plenty of content without them).

Space Battle Lunchtime is a middle-grade-appropriate sci-fi comic about Peony, the first human contestant on a reality cooking show in space. Reads like if Douglas Adams wrote a shoujo manga with xeno f/f and a subplot about cannibalism. I'm absolutely obsessed with this series and I wish I'd had a book like this when I was a kid.

Here's Peony and her love interest, cool badass alien chef Neptunia:



They are the cutest and I love them and you should too.

I'm back with a new rec, and this one's got canon f/f! Stray Little Devil is a portal fantasy manga series about a normal middle school girl named Pam who, while trying to summon the kindhearted devil her grandmother always told her about, gets sucked into a world where devils and angels have an uneasy truce. But more than that, she finds herself transformed into a devil and encounters a snobbish angel named Linfa, who looks just like her best friend Rinka! So Pam resolves to learn about her new devil powers in hopes of finding a way home, and gradually grows closer to Linfa.

The series is five volumes and completely released in English, and used copies aren't too hard to find, and public libraries may have copies too. It's a cute, fun series, and there's even official art of Pam and Linfa getting married!

When Dot’s granddaughter tries to put her in a nursing home against her will, her partner Stella breaks her out and they drive north to Canada to get legally married. Sad ending, but along the way i’ve never laughed so hard in my life. I love these foul-mouthed octogenarian lesbians and so should you.

In our taglist for this year, we've got a healthy amount of nominations for pairings from Dragon Age, Mass Effect, even Knights of the Old Republic, the true pillars of Bioware. How about, then, some love for the game that started it all: Baldur's Gate. Released in 1998, followed by its sequel in the year 2000, it was the first experiment Bioware had with romance options, complete with the utterly charming characters you've come to expect from a Bioware game, but before they could experiment with same-sex options. This in spite the fact that several of the characters are clearly wlw-coded.

Not only are some of the character interactions steeped with affectionate chemistry, including Aerie and Nalia, and Imoen and Neera, but so many of these characters have designs and appearances that clearly have wlw influences, especially Imoen.

This year, why not do what Beamdog couldn't with their Enhanced Editions due to weird copyrights, and bring out the shine of lady love buried in Baldur's Gate?
The base games are available for cheap at Good Old Games, but NPC dialogue is searchable on youtube (moreso Baldur's Gate 2, where NPC interaction went further than voice barks)

Also known as simply "Revue Starlight," this series is a multimedia project from Bushiroad with a musical (possibly with more on the way), a currently airing anime (this is basically what the entire small Western fanbase is currently focusing on, since it's all we've got so far), and a mobile game in the future.

Wikipedia's Plot Summary: At the Seisho Music Academy, the 99th Graduating Class is rehearsing for the annual production of the theatrical play, Starlight. Behind the scenes, however, an underground "Revue Starlight" audition, orchestrated by a talking giraffe, pits the students against each other in stage battles in order to shine as the top star. Karen Aijō, upon being reunited by her childhood friend Hikari Kagura, comes across these auditions and battles to become the top star alongside Hikari.

So: this series focuses on a group of girls who attend an academy that's very clearly based on the real academy associated with the famous all-female Takarazuka Revue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takarazuka_Revue. This is mostly clearly shown in what has swiftly become the biggest draw of the series: the strange, surreal, beautifully-directed "auditions" that symbolize the girl's ambitions to become the biggest star of the stage, complete with solo ballads that shift to duets as the tides of the fights shift. And yes, it's all apparently machinated by a talking giraffe.

Besides all of THIS, there's a lot of complicated and fun relationships happening here. There's the reunited childhood friends Hikari and Karen, shadowed by the pining country mouse Mahiru. There's Maya and Claudine, the seemingly perfect duo who are in truth torn apart by their competing ambitions. There's Futaba and Kaoruko, the other childhood friends who are always joined at the hip, meaning tragedy is almost certainly in their future. And of course, there's Junna, the girl who's always felt she was in the background and her friend Nana (aka Banana-chan), the warm motherly girl who looks after the other girls... whose sweet exterior seems to be hiding something more complicated.

Revue Starlight offers a unique setting where conflicts and passions often clash without stakes that are too high. There's a light-ish tone about the whole thing, which is fun to watch while allowing for the possibility of darker and more mature fanwork. I think a lot of people would enjoy this unique and ambitious series, especially if you're the sort of person who would sign up for Femslash Exchange.

You can watch Revue Starlight legally on HiDIVE. https://www.hidive.com/tv/revue-starlight

Edited 2018-08-15 03:09 am (UTC)

Also known as Sora Yorimo Tōi Basho, often shortened to "Yorimoi."

Wikipedia summary: "Mari Tamaki is a second-year high school student who wants to make the most out of her youth but is usually too afraid to do so. One day, she meets Shirase Kobuchizawa, a girl who has been saving up to travel to Antarctica, where her mother disappeared three years ago. Joined by two other girls, Hinata Miyake and Yuzuki Shiraishi, they join an expedition headed towards the Antarctic.

This summary doesn't do the series justice! Yorimoi was by far the best anime of the Winter 2018 season, one of the best anime this year, and currently one of my favorite anime of all time.

The series rests almost entirely on female relationships, specifically: very, very well written female friendships. As someone once said, there's many anime that are about friendship, but Yorimoi is really about what MAKES friendship, all the very real ups and downs and all that. There's many potential relationships to explore between the main four girls, as well as a fifth girl whose arc in the show is staggeringly amazing in ratio to the amount of time devoted to it. (being vague in case people who are on the fence of the series are reading this)

Besides the main four girls, this series also features a cast of 20-30ish year old women, and there's also some very cute relationship potential there- as well as one very, very tragic yet beautiful relationship potential between two characters (one of whom is dead by the time the series starts, so you can imagine how that all goes)

Anyways, not even coming from a fic-writing point of view, Yorimoi is a beautiful, fun, emotional series that i reccomend to everyone, even people who don't watch a lot of anime! You can watch the whole thing on Crunchyroll! http://www.crunchyroll.com/a-place-further-than-the-universe/episode-1-one-mwillion-yen-for-youth-757769