Spink and Forcible

Spink and Forcible is the femslash ship between April Spink and Miriam Forcible from the Coraline fandom.

Canon
The relationship between Miss Spink and Miss Forcible is mostly the same between book and movie. The only real difference is that in the book, Miss Spink meets Coraline outside of the house walking one of her many dogs. In the movie Coraline hesitantly visits the pair as a way of formally introducing herself to them. In both cases, Coraline has met Miss Spink before, but has to be introduced by her to Miss Forcible. The two ladies live in the basement of the house Coraline's parents had rented, as it used to be a proper mansion before it was rebuild for multiple occupancy.

After Coraline entered the world of button-eyed people, finding copies of her own parents waiting for her, Coraline's mother tells her that she should talk to Miss Spink about it. In the movie, this is depicted as her mother subtly calling Spink and Forcible (and Coraline by association) crazy, but this implication was not present in the book.

Coraline eventually goes to the basement to greet the two elderly ladies and get familiar with them. They are revealed to be retired performers, with posters of the many shows they had been performing used as decoration in their basement home. Most of which aren't very kid-friendly, not helped by their depictions in the posters showing they used to be incredibly beautiful in their youth.

Though the two women are very polite and kind to Coraline, she is somewhat unnerved by the interior of their home. Not even regarding the posters, Miss Spink keeps a shelf filled with taxidermied dogs. She explains that many of her dogs passed away, but she loved them too much to bury them, Coraline is even more unnerved by Miss Spink already working on an angel costume for her current dog, simply because he fell ill. The movie adds a scene of Spink reading Coraline's tea, with the two women getting into a scuffle about what it means, but they both agree to warn her that something terrible is coming for her. Miss Spink offers Coraline some hard candy before she goes, though Coraline gladly takes one, it is so old that it has glued to the other ones and trying to take just one leads to the whole bowl flying towards the ceiling and shattering on the floor. Coraline quickly leaves after apologizing for the mess.

That night, Coraline visits the other world again to find copies of Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, Other Spink and Other Forcible. She gladly enjoyed their show, even before they shed their skin and revealed their beautiful, youthful forms to her.

However, when Coraline is given an ultimatum to stay in the other world forever under the condition that she also has to have buttons sewed into her eyes, Coraline flees the other world only to find her real parents gone. With no other adults to talk to, Coraline turns to Spink and Forcible for advice. Depending on version, either Spink or Forcible takes the disappearance of Coraline's parents very seriously and gives Coraline a stone with a hole in the middle for protection. When Coraline asks what the stone is for, the two women get into a scuffle again about the stone being good against evil or the stone being good for finding what's lost. Coraline takes the stone with her the next time she visits the other world, this time, she's going to take her parents back one way or the other.

The stone proves itself useful as it can see through the Other Mother's illusions, which Coraline uses to find the souls of the monster's previous victims. One of which was guarded by the Other Spink and Other Forcible, who lost their form and were melted together into a two-headed, four-armed abomination. Coraline defeats the creature with some quick thinking.

In the end, Coraline loses the stone to the Other Mother, but manages to find her parents without it. After escaping her realm but before defeating the beast for good, Coraline plans a garden party with all of her neighbors to celebrate. The next day, Coraline is very glad to hear from Miss Spink that their dog is doing much better.

Fanon
Spink and Forcible is a rarepair, though it has support thanks to Neil Gaiman confirming that he wrote them as a lesbian couple.

Fandom

 * FAN FICTION