Aurora's Sundry Notes

Now that Chocolate Box authors have been revealed, I can share the fic I wrote. My recipient happened to be elstaplador, with whom I share more than one fandom and ship, so I had options. I ended up writing a Zoe Heriot/Isobel Watkins story, from Classic Who. I've started several Zoe/Isobel fics before, but now I finally had to finish one, so I'm pleased.

I didn't manage to write any treats in this exchange, though I thought about many intriguing prompts. Perhaps later!

(Ratings are so hard, though, I'm not sure if this warrants Teen or Mature rating! Decided to go for the higher rating to be safe, but I've seen more descriptive Mature rated fics around than this one is.)

(Tags are hard, too, it seems that these days I go for more rather than fewer, just in case.)

Present Perfect (2642 words) by AuroraCloud
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who (1963)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Zoe Heriot/Isobel Watkins
Characters: Zoe Heriot, Isobel Watkins
Additional Tags: Femslash, Female Relationships, Serial: s046 The Invasion, Missing Scene, Photography, Kissing, Girls Kissing, Sexual Content, not very graphic
Summary: This might be the past, as far as Zoe's own time was concerned, but Isobel Watkins made her feel present like nothing else.

Yuletide reveals were yesterday, so here are the fics I wrote. Yes, fics in plural - this year I succeeded at writing two short treats for Yuletide Madness as well.

For my assignment, I had The Wayfarers again, but this time with a request that finally allowed me to write a Rosemary/Sissix sex scene that takes joy in the interspecies aspect of it. Also I had a really chocoholic phase when I wrote it, in case you can't tell. Luckily it seems to have worked, based on the comments.

Excellent Dessert (2767 words) by AuroraCloud
(for Mosca)
Fandom: Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Rosemary Harper/Sissix Seshkethet
Characters: Rosemary Harper, Sissix Seshkethet, Dr. Chef (Wayfarers Series)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Food, Alien/Human Relationships, Chocolate, Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, Frottage, Hands, Tails, Female Characters, Alien Character(s), Alien Biology, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Touching
Summary: The Wayfarer is in space again. Sissix needs touching. Dr. Chef has made a new dessert based on an old Human recipe. Rosemary is happy to test its supposedly aphrodisiac effects with Sissix afterwards.



Yes, I like putting in lots of tags. (Also, let's not speak of the fact that I altered the title several times and accidentally typo'ed this title as "Excellent Desert" without noticing it until several hours after the reveals. *facepalm* Luckily I did notice it and fixed it. There is quite a difference between the words dessert and desert.)

Both of the Madness fics I wrote were entries into new fandoms for me, hurray! Which is very understandable in both cases as they're very new fandoms. In one I even wrote the first fic for the fandom, which is rather exciting.

An Evening in the Garden (698 words) by AuroraCloud (for st_aurafina / st_aurafina)
Fandom: Moonbase Theta Out (Podcast)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Roger Bragado-Fischer/Alexandre Bragado-Fischer
Characters: Roger Bragado-Fischer, Alexandre Bragado-Fischer
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Fluff, Established Relationship, Gardens & Gardening, Dogs
Summary: Alexandre has been working on his garden. Roger brings him hot chocolate.


Yes, this is the first fic in the fandom! It's thanks to st_aurafina's enthusiastic recommendation of Moonbase Theta, Out, that I discovered this lovely queer sci-fi podcast drama, and when I read her request I really wanted to write something. Several of the prompts were enticing and I would have loved to write for any of them, but I ended up choosing the one where I could include dogs. And also make Roger and Alex happy because they deserve it. (I did my best to not make it obvious that I know little about gardening and have trouble keeping plants alive. I love the idea of gardening very much, however!)

And I wrote my first fic for This Is How You Lose the Time War! It was bound to happen sooner or later, I am so in love with this book. This story pretty much wrote itself when I just gave myself some time at the keyboard, and I've had lovely feedback for it, especially considering how small the fandom. I've even seen it recced twice! (Also, I got to write a dog again!)

A Letter in her Smile (750 words) by AuroraCloud (for jibrailis)
Fandom: This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Blue/Red (This is How You Lose the Time War)
Characters: Red (This is How You Lose the Time War), Blue (This is How You Lose the Time War)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Touching, Tea, Dogs, Kissing
Summary: After so many letters, how to speak?



Finally, thanks to all my lovely betas who were available at such a short notice because I'm always ridiculously late finishing my stories and their edits - I shall add beta credits in the story notes tomorrow!

Yuletide has been live for a few days now, and I'm very pleased with my Yuletide. I got not one but two fabulous gift fics this year! I'm ever so pleased with them. I feel so privileged. Here, let me share both of them with you. There are also lots of other brilliant fics in the archive, most of which I haven't had time to read yet (especially since I'm suddenly reading Penumbra Podcast post-S1 fics, help me) but I'll try to write rec posts soon!

The main gift I received is for the Imperial Radch books, post-canon, a lovely Seivarden-centric fic where Seivarden has angst and Ship takes care of her and helps Breq take care of her, and there are lots of cameos from other crew members, and it's so true and emotional and good.

Still Left in Want of Mercy (3403 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Mercy of Kalr&Seivarden&Breq
Characters: Seivarden Vendaai, Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen | Breq, Mercy of Kalr (Imperial Radch)
Additional Tags: The rating is because Seivarden is Seivarden and has no filter, Lots of other crew members show up in small roles, Post-Canon, POV First Person, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Slice of Life, Tea, Artificial Intelligence, Helpful AI, Spaceship AI - Freeform
Summary: The Republic of Two Systems is about a month old. Seivarden is having yet another crisis - can Mercy of Kalr get her through it? Maybe, with the crew's and Fleet Captain's help.


I also got a treat, for Machineries of Empire, a Cheris & Jedao crackfic post-canon, where they go and try to have therapy, and it goes as well as you might imagine. It's a hilarious fic where the comedy comes from things that are mostly extremely plausible with regards to canon, and I loved it. Just the kind of thing I hoped for when I said I might enjoy crackfic in this fandom.

Therapy for Genocidal Generals (1753 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ajewen Cheris & Garach Jedao Shkan
Characters: Kel Cheris, Shuos Jedao
Additional Tags: Therapy, Crack, Telepathy, Yuletide Treat
Summary: "I'm Nirai Dia, and I specialize in couples with troubles. Why don't you start by telling me about yourselves and how long you've been together?"

"Two months," Jedao supplied immediately.

At the same time, Cheris said, "Eleven years."

The therapist's smile became even more polished. Cheris could practically see her filing them under avoidant man, codependent woman, check.

*

Thank you to UrsulaKohl and sigalit for beta reading this.

---

Btw, nothing to do with the above fic, but copying the information into the journal post reminds me again.... The AO3 character and relationship tags for this fandom are so weird. Why do they use everyone's birth names when it's clear in canon that when they join a faction, the faction name is their name (in place of family name)? And for the vast majority of characters, we get to know them by their faction names, and for most of them I wouldn't remember the birth names at all if they weren't in all the AO3 tags, because otherwise we see them maybe once. With Cheris a case can be made for her birth name, because that also ends up being used a lot, but otherwise... Don't really know who I should complain to, though. It's just so weird and it feels different from how things are usually done.

I mean, it's not like in the Anna Karenina tag, Anna Karenina gets called by whatever her birth name is just because we can discover it from somewhere in canon (it's been years since I read the book so I don't remember if her maiden name is explicitly mentioned, but her brother is a character in the book, so it's not exactly hard to figure it out). She's Anna Karenina. It should be the name the character is mostly known by / introduced to the readers as, shouldn't it? And for the Machineries characters, that's usually the faction name + personal name. Shuos Jedao, Kel Khiruev, etc. (And bizarrely, Kujen seems to be tagged only as Kujen even though we know his name is Nirai Kujen. It feels like whoever decides the canonical tags has decided the faction names are like titles, such as Mr. or Captain or something, but they're not, it's clear from the books that they occupy the same function as family names. Okay, end of digression.)

Oh, a recent little tiny thing I posted on AO3, written for the who_contest Drabble challenge. I didn't share it here earlier, because my laptop was running low on charge and my charger was Elsewhere. Posting it now that I remember! I am rather proud of actually managing to write something that only ran 100 words. I find it so much harder to write one hundred words than one thousand! Especially for anything complete. I actually wrote another drabble for the same prompt as well, but I chose this one because it managed to be more of a complete story (I'll post the other one on AO3 when I get around to it). Even if it means a continuation of only posting light-hearted stuff into that contest. Oh well, light-hearted is good, and I enjoy writing fun things.

Besides, I love this inordinately, because Victoria is a lot more awesome than people typically give her credit for.


Victoria's Strategy (100 words) by AuroraCloud
Fandom: Doctor Who (1963)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Victoria Waterfield, Jamie McCrimmon, Second Doctor
Additional Tags:Drabble, Women Being Awesome, Classic Who Companions Are Awesome, Alien Planet
Summary: The Doctor and Jamie need to rescue Victoria again... or not.

Look, I wrote and posted a fic! In a fandom that isn't Doctor Who, no less! Thanks to _profiterole_ for looking this over before I posted it, and any mistakes I've left in are entirely mine. This is for the Cottoncandy Bingo, though I'm very unlikely to get a bingo, seeing as this is the first fic I've completed and the challenge ends tonight. Oh well, I still got fic out of it!

On Feathers (990 words) by AuroraCloud
Fandom: Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Rosemary Harper/Sissix Seshkethet
Characters: Rosemary Harper, Sissix Seshkethet, Kizzy Shao
Additional Tags: Fluff, Domestic, Talking, Touching, Post-Canon, Alien Character(s), Alien Biology, Lesbians in Space, Sissix's feathers
Summary:

A restful evening on the Wayfarer, which for Rosemary and Sissix includes the caressing of feathers and discussion on evolution.