#it's like. oh has anyone read price of salt? It's like carol. she's in a mess trying to figure things out

[vv-ispy]

on one hand I totally understand tropes are popular but on the other hand I think Amos is a lot more compelling as a middle aged woman trying to figure out her life after a loveless relationship than a mother figure ya know

[without-ambition]

So um, I'm usually really nervous about answering anons, so here's a vague, but long list of my favorites, and pm me if you need more

((also I'm so glad more people are getting into femslash, and I'm glad you feel comfortable asking me!!))

So!

Rosemary from Homestuck

My favorite ship ever I would die for them

Ridiculous fashion author wives who could kill a man with a look but do it with Chainsaws and Needles anyway

Also deals with themes of addiction and overcoming and I just really really love them

Korrasami from Legend of Korra

Wicked cool bisexual wives who can probably take over the world but instead are working to make it a better place

Swanqueen from Once Upon a Time

Soft wives who are also mothers, and a pure lovely redemption arc for the Ages and Also for anyone who ever thought the wicked witch was hot as a kid

Sansa Stark/Margaery Tyrell from Game of Thrones

Because They're Cool and honestly isn't that reason enough

Their characters tend to vary a lot from fic to fic, but I always love them

Supercorp from Supergirl

Cute!! Soft!!! Lesbians who deserve the best and I would die for them both okay

Plus Lena Luthor is played by the lesbian icon Katie McGrath so what more could you want

Blackhill from Marvel

The ultimate spy ship okay, Cool people who don't believe they can be loved but they're beautiful and oh my god end me

Blackpepper from Marvel

A woman with her life together and a woman who has never really had her own life and Boom I'm dead

Peggy Carter/Angie Martinelli from Marvel

Spy Wives 2: World War II AU

Carol Aird/Therese Belivet from The Price of Salt (or the movie Carol)

They deserve happiness okay, and I'm going to go to fanfiction for it

Literally all the f/f pairings in any of the Dragon Age games they are literally all great just search

"f/f" -"m/m" -"f/m"

In AO3 and Boom just read all of those

Éposette from Les Misérables

Soft and sweet a woman with a hard life who deserves happiness that she never gets in Canon and a woman who is the personification of sunlight who has so much love to give

Root/Sameen Shaw from Person of Interest

Nerds who pretend to be Cool but also know that that they aren't cool but love each other anyway, with an addition of Computers!!

Once again literally all the f/f fics in the Harry Potter fandoms, just search

"f/f" -"m/m" -"f/m"

I especially like Luna and Ginny despite it not being super popular (also Hermione and Pansy can be cute if you like the sort of Drarryish dynamic already)

Honorable Mentions

Starfire and Raven

Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn

Jinx and Raven

Morgana and Gwen

Natasha/f!Tony/Pepper (specifically this fic by ThaliaClio, which everyone in the entire world should read because it's brilliant)

Alex Danvers and Maggie Sawyer

Uhura and literally anyone, but especially T'Pring

Jessica Jones and Trish Walker

Sakura and Ino (this ship I love and think is so cute, but it's very tiny, but the fics that do exist are pretty good)

Also there are some other really popular femslash pairings that I am not personally into like Clexa from The 100, Waverly and Nicole from Wynonna Earp, Laura and Carmilla from Carmilla, Widowtracer from Overwatch, Pharmercy from Overwatch, Chloe and Bella from Pitch Perfect, and Nyssa and Sara from Arrow.

I hope you enjoy??? And also welcome!!! I'm sure you'll find something you love

Best of luck

[kkintle]

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith (a.k.a. Carol)

Or to live against one’s grain, that is degeneration by definition.

Bu the most important point I did not mention and was not thought of by anyone - that is rapport between two men and two women can be absolute and perfect, as it can never be between man and woman, and perhaps some people want just this, as others want that more shifting and uncertain things that happens between men and women. 

The music lived, but the world was dead. And the song would die one day, she thought, but how would the world come back to life? How would its salt come back?

Carol raised her hand slowly and brushed her hair back, once on either side, and Therese smiled because the gesture was Carol, and it was Carol she loved and would always love. Oh, in a different way now, because she was a different person, and it was like meeting Carol all over again, but it was Carol and no one else. It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell.

“I wonder if I’ll ever want to create anything again,” she said. “What brought this on?” “I mean - what was I ever trying to do but this? I’m happy.”

“What’s going to happen when we get back to New York? It can’t be the same, can it?” “Yes,” Carol said. “Till you get tired of me.”

“Is it? You can just start and stop?” “When you haven’t got a chance,” Carol answered.

What was it to love someone, what was love exactly, and why did it end or not end? Those were real questions, and who could answer them?

“Lines,” Carol said. “I can’t compete. People talk of classics. These lines are classic. A hundred different people will say the same words. There are lines for the mother, lines for the daughter, for the husband and the lover. I’d rather see you dead at my feet. It’s the same play repeated with different casts. What do they say makes a play a classic, Therese?”

“A classic is something with a basic human situation.”

“Yes,” she said, smiling. (...) Her answer sounded rather flat, but what other answer was there?

She never saw here, but it was pleasant to have someone to look for in the store. It made all the difference in the world.

Therese struggled against the chair, knowing she was going to succumb to it, and even aware that she was attracted to it for that reason.

Therese dressed herself and went silently out the door. It was easy, after all, simply to open the door and escape. It was easy, she thought, because she was not really escaping at all.

She started to ask him (...), but he didn’t, because what would matter if he did or didn’t?

The name, the address, the town appeared beneath the pencil point like a secret Therese would never forget, like something stamping itself in her memory forever.

She took with the pen poised over the card, thinking of what she might have written - “You are magnificent” or even “I love you” - finally writing quickly the excruciating dull and impersonal: “Special salutations from Frankenberg’s.”

“(...) Do you think you have time?”  “Yes, certainly.” It was twelve-fifteen already. Therese knew she would be terribly late, and it didn’t matter at all.

“I think you are magnificent,” Therese said with the courage of the second drink, not caring how it might sound, because she knew the woman knew anyway. She laughed, putting her head back. It was a sound more beautiful than music.

Therese glanced at her face that was somewhat turned away, and again she knew that instant of half-recognition. And knew, too, that it was not to be believed. She had never seen the woman before. If she had, could she have forgotten?

In the silence, Therese felt they both waited for the other to speak, yet the silence was not an awkward one.

“How is it you live alone?” the woman asked, and before Therese knew it, she had told the woman her life story.  But not in tedious detail. In six sentences, as if it all mattered less to her than a story she had read somewhere. And what did the facts matter after all, whether her mother was French or English or Hungarian, or if her father had been an Irish painter, or a Czechoslovakian lawyer, whether he had been successful or not, or whether her mother had presented her to the Order of St. Margaret as a troublesome, bawling infant, or as a troublesome, melancholy eight-year-old? Or whether she had been happy there. Because she was happy now, starting today. She had no need of parents or background.

“What could be duller than past history!” Therese said, smiling. “Maybe futures that won’t have any history.”

She was still smiling, as if she had just learned how to smile and did not know how to stop. The woman smiled with her, amusedly, and perhaps she was laughing at her, Therese thought.

“What a strange girl you are.” “Why?” “Flung out of space,” Carol said.

As if they were lovers, Therese thought. It would be almost like love, what she felt for Carol, except that Carol was a woman. It was not quite insanity, but it was certainly blissful. A silly word, but how could she possibly be happier than she was now, and had been since Thursday?

The wind was like ice against her teeth. Carol was a quarter of an hour late. If she didn’t come, she would probably keep on waiting, all day and into the night.

Therese looked up at her, unable to bear her eyes now but bearing them nevertheless, not caring if she died that instant, if Carol strangled her, prostrate and vulnerable in her bed, the intruder.

A world was born around her, like a bright forest with a million shimmering leaves.

She remembered reading - even Richard once saying - that love usually dies after two years of marriage. That was a cruel thing, a trick. She tried to imagine Carol’s face, the smell of her perfume, becoming meaningless. But in the first place could she say she was in love with Carol? She had come to a question she could not answer. 

“ (...) The first adventures are usually nothing but a satisfying of curiosity, and after the one keeps repeating the same actions, trying to find - what?  (...) Is there a word? A friend, a companion, or maybe just a sharer. What good are words? I mean, I think people often try to find through sex things that are much easier to find in other ways.”

At any rate, Therese thought, she was happier than she had ever been before. And why worry about defining everything?

“Do people always fall in love with things they can’t have?” “Always,” Carol said, smiling too.

“Are you a painter, too?” “No,” Carol said with another smile. “I’m nothing.” “The hardest thing to be.” “Is it?” 

The wine in her head promised music or poetry or truth, but she was stranded on the brink. Therese could not think of a single question that would be proper to ask, because all her questions were so enormous.

“Everything’s not as simple as a lot of combinations,” Therese added.  “Some things don’t react. But everything’s alive.”

“I remember being sure that nothing would happen to me then, but some other time, yes, eventually. And it made me very happy. I thought of all the people who are afraid and hoard things, and themselves, and I thought, when everybody in the world comes to realise what I felt going up the hill, then there’ll be a kind of right economy of living and of using and using up. Do you know what I mean? (...) Did you ever wear out a sweater you particularly liked, and throw it away finally?”

I feel I am in love with you, she had written, and it should be spring. I want the sun throbbing on my head like chords of music. I think of a sun like Beethoven, a wind like Debussy and birdcalls like Stravinsky. But the tempo is all mine. 

An inarticulate anxiety, a desire to know, know anything, for certain, had jammed itself in her throat so for a moment she felt she could hardly breathe. Do you think, do you think, it began. Do you think both of us will die violently someday, be suddenly shut of? But even that question wasn’t definite enough. Perhaps it was a statement after all: I don’t want to die yet without knowing you. 

“It just seems vague,” Therese said. “What does?” “The whole lunch.” Carol gave her a glass. “Some things are always vague, darling.” It was the first time Carol has called her darling. “What things?” Therese asked. She wanted an answer, a definite answer. Carol signed. “A lot of things. The most important things. Taste your drink.”

I feel I stand in a desert with my hands outstretched, and you are raining down upon me. 

“It’s an acquired taste. Acquired tastes are always more pleasant - and hard to get rid if.”

Therese waited by the table while Carol was gone, while time passed indefinitely or maybe not at all, until the door opened and Carol came in again.

She saw Carol’s pale hair across her eyes, and now Carol’s head was close against hers. And she did not have to ask if this was right, no one had to tell her, because this could not have been more right or perfect. 

“Are you just a habit?” she asked, smiling, but she heard the resentment in her voice. “You mean it’s nothing but that?”

“I mean responsibilities in the world that other people live in and that might not be yours. Just that now it isn’t, and that’s why in New York I was exactly the wrong person for you to know - because I indulge you and keep you from growing up.” “Why don’t you stop? “I’ll try. The trouble is, I like to indulge you.” “You’re exactly the right person for me to know,” Therese said.” “Am I?”

Nothing about Richard mattered so much to her as the way Carol blotted her face with a towel.

Carol wanted her with her, and whatever happened they would meet it without running. How was it possible to be afraid and in love, Therese thought. The two things did not go together. How was it possible to be afraid, when he two of them grew stronger together every day? And every night. Every night was different, and every morning. Together they possessed a miracle. 

[employee645-a]

Last week I received a very long comment with a set of some seventeen questions or so on Built for Two posted over on AO3. To answer all the questions and do the original writer/poster justice on that, I am writing the response here with a link back so the questions can be answered in-line.

The poster’s questions are in italics.

Hopefully you are amenable to having this comment placed here, if not, I apologize. Nevertheless, here goes. So far I have not come across an author who has penned a tale where, when Therese says "No, I don't think so" sticks to it and what ensues afterwards.

This is a perfect and valid discussion, and certainly one in which I am very pleased to engage! I will also do my best to answer your questions in-line with your comment in italics. So here goes!

Therese responding with “No, I don’t think so” and sticking to it… That does present a very intriguing prospect of what might have happened. I don’t think anyone really wants to write about that topic or the thought of Therese getting back together with Carol at the end, but only to have the relationship fizzle out after a few months, years, or whatnot. We are such an optimistic fandom, and I think some of that optimism of the fanbase is in respect of the author’s intentions to have a tale of two women, in love with one another, who have a happy ending.

What might happen to both Therese and Carol if Therese have not gone to the Oak Room? I am not saying I seek an unhappy ending, just saying what would these two have done if that had been so? Would Abby intervene as she had in the book? Would Carol have gone on with her life, seeking other female companionship, even if only for a one night stand? Would she have relented to society's demands and become involved with men again? At least on a dating basis or sexually? Would she have pined away only coming to life when Rindy was allowed around her? One can safely assume her social circle would have been broadly circumscribed now that she was a divorcee. 

The relationship between Book!Carol and Book!Abby happens the winter before Book!Carol and Book!Therese meet, so it’s not quite as removed as it was in the film and I’d think it’d be more plausible for Book!Carol to have perhaps fallen back on Book!Abby. The pointed comment from Movie!Abby about having her eye on a redhead is similar to the bit in the film about Dannie having girlfriend (see the comments below) in that it established a “no going back” situation for both Movie!Carol and Movie!Therese with both of these people of their pasts no longer (perhaps?) being available to them.

I think in the book, it’s vaguely and somewhat implied that Book!Therese was Book!Carol’s second female love interest, but I don’t know. Carol, either book or film, was a very filled in woman who knew exactly what she wanted. In the film, I’ve always found Movie!Harge’s comment, “I put nothing past women like you” to which Movie!Carol replied, “You married a woman like me” something of a puzzle in that, I read and hear that thinking Movie!Harge knew his wife liked women and knew of her “pattern of behavior.” You can read more of what I have written on that topic here and, I suppose, there is also the incredibly long, 117k and growing, explanation of that past here.

In Carol’s case, particularly in Movie!Carol’s case, I don’t think she would have then gone with men. I’m reluctant to say “back to men” because, in some ways, was she ever really “with men” to begin with? She had established her own apartment, her own employment, and was finally on her own and as free as Abby essentially was with her modest house and who-knows-what kind of job. In a lot of ways, Harge was more or less a sperm donor.

Another good question is: what was Book!Carol’s relationship to that “old friend” named Stanley McVeigh? He was older, tall, attractive, had a moustache, and a Boxer. She commented that they were able to see more of each other once she and Harge split up, but my inner gay strongly wants to say that he was homosexual and Carol loved going out with Stanley because they were either able to have a stitch ‘n’ bitch or simply spend hours drinking and complaining about men. You know every conversation with him would have ended with, “Oh, Carol, please… you’re fooling no one” then reached down to pet his dog’s head, staring her down while Carol tried not to blush and roll her eyes. I lament the fact I neglected to include him in A String of Pearls because that would have made an excellent snippet of backstory as well.

Carol ��coming to life” only in the presence of Rindy is another tough one. I’ve always had the impression that Book!Carol could really take or leave Book!Rindy who she complained is conservative and kind of a pill at about eight years of age or so. Yes, she’s distraught about her daughter and not having regular visits, but it didn’t come across as much of a hardship to me as it did in the film. Movie!Carol was willing to everything and anything for her daughter (who is four years old in the film as opposed to the book) as evident in the deposition scene. What we get there is also a sign from Movie!Harge how he was softening to the things Carol said and I feel as though there was definitely room for his own growth at that last glimpse of him. He sort of had this panicked look of, “Oh, shit, I have taken this way way way way too far.” Movie!Carol would have probably gotten visitation whereas Book!Carol mentioned that the conversation with Book!Harge and his family had become particularly ugly.

Therese...would she have invested all her energies in her photography? Climbing up the ladder, as far as a woman could go at that time. Would she have found herself in another's arms? Female? Male? Perhaps she would move away since little would hold here there and often moving helps one move up the ladder swiftly as opportunities present themselves.

Earlier you brought up the book, so I will vaguely bring this up in my response as well. Book!Therese could have easily gotten lost in the theater world, and possible the burgeoning TV world that was beginning to take shape around that time. New York was the center of the television industry until the late 1950s when it then shifted to Los Angeles. Book!Therese could have easily made a name for herself with theater and television in New York, especially as she seemed to surround herself with the right sort of people. Depending on her ties to New York, it might have been a reasonable decision to pack up and go. Could it have been painful to be there? Would she have someone (male or female) keeping her there, or would they be willing to pack up and move cross country? She definitely could have made her way to California and begun working on production sets there. There are aspects of Book!Therese’s personality that seem to me much more worldly than the vision of Therese presented in the film.

Movie!Therese with her interest in photography is a bit easier. She would probably stay in the city, relishing her job at the Times and the growing responsibilities over time. On the side, Movie!Therese would have been doing what Vivian Maier did, taking lots of street shots of everyday people and things. Would she have shared them with the world? Definitely. At the insistence of those closest to her, she’d eventually have a gallery or exhibition of her work. She would probably stay in New York as that is probably all she really knows. Movie!Therese was younger when she went to St. Margaret’s and spends far less time on the road with Movie!Carol than the book’s counterparts. Her exposure to anything other than New York City is probably fairly limited, so she may have wanted to remain somewhere familiar.

With Book!Therese, I feel like there was always the possibility of Book!Dannie if she so wanted to try again with men, especially given he is not attached at the end of the story unlike Movie!Dannie. Having him paired by the end of Carol was an interesting addition because it really firmed up how Movie!Therese did not have anyone else before the final scene of the film. In regards to the content of the book, us readers know more of her inner thoughts and that those few times Book!Therese was intimate with Book!Richard, she really didn’t like it.

We know from The Price of Salt that Book!Therese is a thirsty, thirsty girl and that someone needs to fill her water bottle after such a sodium overload. She loves Carol and loves being with her. Now, is it specifically her or would any female do? She also had a possibility with Genevieve (book or movie) and could have gone that route as well, and Book!Therese did have that “fascination” with Sister Alicia. I think it can be comfortably said that she would find her way to another woman at some point in her life.

Would time, and distance, and the fact they both ran in different social circles, would that have dimmed their love for one another? (My own personal experience since time and distance do help love dissipate). 

“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue / Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch…”

Would those differences in their social classes have made any impact upon their relationship? Honestly, the argument could be made either way. Be it in the world of the book or the film, I think there would have had to have been some give and take in that regard. Therese was acquainted with artists, writers, actors, and more through friends who lived in Greenwich Village. Carol had been acquainted with country club, debutante, Harge’s friends, and a whole bunch of others who were probably dreary, superficial people. That had been her life, but perhaps when she and Therese got together, she simply cut those ties. It’s possible considering Harge’s family probably bad mouthed her to anybody who would listen. Then again, it wasn’t as though she took up an apartment in the Village when she struck out on her own: she went right to Madison Avenue. Sure, it was probably closer to her new job on Fourth Avenue, closer to Therese’s apartment over on 63rd Street, but it was in a zone of familiarity. While it might have been Carol’s comfort zone of urban life, I could still see her very easily shifting from social circle to social circle because part of her charm was falling in love with Therese, who she met at a sales counter.

See, what if Carol had not seen Therese that day when she was in the taxi driving to the lawyer's office. What if Carol had not sent the note?

The footnote to all of this, which had also been noted by Cate Blanchett in at least one interview, is that it was quite probable that Carol (either one, book or film) could have committed suicide. Unhappy with everyone knowing the details of her divorce, troubled over the lack of visitation with her daughter, or even had Therese said no to her, it’s possible she could have eventually taken her own life. This article from The New Yorker and this from the Los Angeles Times provide additional information on Virginia Kent Catherwood and Kathleen Wiggins Senn, both inspirations for Carol Aird. Patricia Highsmith been involved with Catherwood, a socialite, Main Line girl, alcoholic, etc. in the 1940s. After a very public romance with another married woman in the late 1950s, Catherwood saw her name dragged through the mud and died in 1966 after years of battling alcoholism. While working at Bloomingdale’s Highsmith used her interaction with Senn from Ridgewood as the basis of Carol coming into Frankenberg’s looking for a doll. Unbeknownst to Highsmith, Senn took her own life in the garage of her home in Ridgewood in October 1951.

What if Therese never showed? What if? (Isn't there a famous poem about IF?)

Had Therese never showed, she would have still gone on to do what she did because being with Carol gave her that boost of confidence and encouragement she had always needed and wanted. Most likely relationships with women and living a quiet existence in New York during the 1950s and 1960s; nothing outrageous of drawing attention to herself kind of thing.

There is a poem! “If” by Rudyard Kipling (1943).

I believe we can safely assume Therese would not have sent Carol a note thus it was Carol, who had nothing more to lose who screwed up the courage to do so, though it was Carol at her lowest, akin to a drowning woman, pleading with Therese to rescue her.

Yes, rescue her, from a life of...I want to say unrequited love but that's not it. From a life of utter sadness.

Carol might have rolled around in the sheets with someone long after Therese yet it would never be the same and, as lovers often do, she might have been imagining Therese at those times.

What if....

We seem to want a happy ending to these two and yet....always that yet...

What if....

Carol is oh so good at the play acting the superficial aspects of life and hiding her true self. Therese, on the other hand, is guileless.

She is as she is, her authentic self. 

Of course Abby is ever present in Carol's life so for Carol that is a boon. Frankly I like Abby more than I like Carol. Abby is the kind of friend who is loyal to the end, the kind of friend everyone wants in their live. Abby gives, and does, so much for Carol while Carol, from what I have read in the book, and viewed in the movie, does little for Carol. Would Carol then fall back into the ever present Abby's arms? Abby did ask Carol if they could get back together (They deleted that scene from the movie) and Carol nixed that. Abby handled it with aplomb. See, that's why I like Abby so much more than Carol.

This was mostly answered toward the top with another question on Abby. Hopefully that is what you’re looking for!

All of this is a tremendously valid question through and through, and imagining the two of them going their separate ways would make a great read. Yes, I said “a great read” because there are all sorts of outcomes to Carol and The Price of Salt that could have worked for both characters with the time period working both for and against then. I’ve not necessarily already written this, but let’s just say that there was the hint of what could have happened if Therese didn’t show for dinner and what Carol could have done and where she’d have gone in Chapter Fourteen and Chapter Seventeen of A String of Pearls. That’s also a lot of me not wanting Carol to be by herself because while Therese would have done just fine, I can’t say the same for Carol knowing the tragic fates of the two women who inspired such a beloved character.