Marginally Okay by Fembuck (Katniss/Johanna)

This week I thought I’d put the spotlight on a sexuality that is only just beginning to emerge in The Hunger Games fanfiction: lesbian pairings – or to use the fanfic term – femmeslash. There isn’t a lot around at the moment, but that’s understandable for a lot of reasons, including that the fandom is still growing and that people are still pretty much canon shippers. But that’s kind of good, in a way, because the majority of femmeslash that I’ve found has been actually really decent stuff!

It is my pleasure to recommend fembuck (aka, Janine)’s wonderfully sweet and realistic “Marginally Okay”.

Summary: If Johanna won't take a bath, Katniss will have to make her.


The summary sounds a little, well, dirty and PWP…but let me tell you that Marginally Okay is far from the sort. I picked this one because it genuinely shows femmeslash through the transformation of friends to something more. I think what you’ll realise by know that, with me, I enjoy it when certain canon aspects are employed in fanfiction and that everyone isn’t OOC. Marginally Okay portrays Katniss and Johanna in a number of scenes that could have feasibly happened in Mockingjay. Fembuck draws on canon elements to make her simple plot realistic; I believe that this fic being in first person, past tense from Katniss’s point of view also adds a sense of believability of the story world. (I’d like to also add that if you type in Katniss/Johanna, or femmeslash, in conjunction with Hunger Games fanfic, Fembuck’s stories come up straight away.)

Marginally Okay is a one-shot built of a simple yet touching premise that from start to finish is executed brilliantly. The pairing is implied, and more frienship-py than some of Fembuck’s other blatantly femmeslash works, but this one really stole my heart.

What drew me to Fembuck’s fic especially was the pairing: Katniss/Johanna. There is so much tension between Katniss and Johanna in the series that the romantic and sexual undertones are very natural to read. I feel as though the way these undertones are presented are also age appropriate; like, Katniss isn’t suddenly a sexy, sex-driven woman, but a girl, “pure”, as our favourite baker likes to put it. Johanna and Katniss’ romance is very believable.

I can't say how long we lay stiffly beside each other, but Johanna finally bit the bullet and moved to drape her arm over my waist. I resisted the overly familiar touch at first, but it felt good to feel another human body beside mine and eventually I couldn't deny the comfort the warmth of her body offered me. I sighed deeply, but my body relaxed and when it did she pulled me against her. A moment later, in a voice far gentler than I had ever heard from her before, she whispered, "Go to sleep," and despite myself and the reservations about our cozy new arrangement, that's exactly I did.

I love that the setting was to do with water: it prompts such lovely descriptions, imagery, and intertwines nicely with Johanna's fear in Mockingjay. Fembuck does a wonderful job of entrenching Katniss’ personality into the narration of Marginally Okay, as well as moving past the tropes of a typical romantic fic. There’s a great paragraph towards the end that really stands out to me because although she shuns the romantic conventions of silencing communicating with a paramour, she still conveys the deep, heady feelings between the two girls. Using juxtaposing language, Fembuck uses evocatively contrasting imagery to show Katniss’ observations about Johanna: she’s not waxing poetical, but admiring some one like here. This is shown in the following scene with word choice like “her skin was rosy” opposing to “strong, unruffled and abrasive.”

When her skin was rosy and pristine once more and her feet were creating dainty puddles on the stone floor, her hand released mine and the flow of words stopped as she took the regulation towel clasped in my hand from me and began to dry herself off. Out of the water, she was herself again, strong, unruffled and abrasive, and in this state I left her to her own devices and crossed the hall to our room.

She never said thank you when she returned to the room. We didn't stare into each other's eyes meaningfully, communicating without words. We simply settled onto our mattresses. Sometimes we talked about what we had learned in training until the lights were turned off, other times we just sat in silence, but once the dark came we always lay down on our beds and hoped to make it through the hours that followed without being woken by nightmares.

To conclude, Marginally Okay is femmeslash at its best: romantic, real, with undeniable tension between the protagonists. You won’t be disappointed.


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