Aurora's Sundry Notes

I didn't get around to doing any Chocolate Box exchange squee or recs when the collection went live, but here, shortly before reveals, let me at least get in a quick post to share my two lovely gift fics!

Exploding Kittens and Other Shuos Shenanigans (496 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Vauhan Mikodez & Zehun
Characters: Zehun (Machineries of Empire), Vauhan Mikodez
Additional Tags: Cats
Summary: A working relationship in five snapshots, with kittens.


Mikodez and Zehun! Cats! Zehun managing Mikodez and managing cats! It's utterly delightful. (Also, don't worry, no kittens were harmed. That we know of.)


The Temporary Delay (1447 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: We Fix Space Junk
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Samantha Trapp/Kilner
Characters: Samantha Trapp, Kilner (WFSJ)
Additional Tags: Huddling For Warmth, Pining
Summary: When an unexpected snowfall traps Samantha and Kilner planet-side after a job, Samantha deals poorly with the lack of proper heating. Kilner tries to help.


OMG, look, there is We Fix Space Junk fic! I don't remember if I've squeed about this podcast properly, but basically it's a sci-fi humour podcast of two female repairers under evil space capitalism and very delightful. Anyway, not only is this a lovely fic with a canon-appropriate weird deadly planet, but it also gives us some Kilner/Samantha feels (Samantha's POV) and huddling for warmth. Am very happy. This makes me all the more determined to write some fics for the podcast myself, because it deserves to be ficced.


And here are a couple of other recs from the collection:

squishable (0 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Rosemary Harper/Sissix Seshkethet
Additional Tags: Fanart, Interspecies Romance
Summary: For all the potential pitfalls, mammals make for marvelously cuddly girlfriends!


An utterly adorable piece of Rosemary/Sissix fan art with cuddles! I love the way the artist draws both characters, and also the way the piece gets in the feel of both space and The Wayfarer while focusing on the characters.

Winding Down (453 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Moonbase Theta Out (Podcast)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Nessa Cheong & Wilder (Moonbase Theta Out)
Characters: Wilder (Moonbase Theta Out), Nessa Cheong
Summary: Wilder visits Nessa in the garden in the waning days of base shutdown.


There's more fic in this fandom! Yaaay! It's a lovely little vignette with Wilder and Nessa being very much themselves, there's gardening and tardigrades, and a bittersweet note to end with.

There are still fanworks I haven't viewed in fandoms that I like, but thought I'd get in the recs I wanted to make at this point, since the author reveals will probably happen today and it's always nice to get some sharing in during the anon period.

femslashexchange reveals happened a few days ago, and I'm starting to get caught up with my comment replies (though not reading all that I mean to read from the collection). I may at some point do a general recs post, because there were some lovely fics written for this challenge. But as I haven't yet pointed out my lovely gift fics, I shall do that and then also share my own fic. I was fortunate enough to be gifted two lovely fics in the Original Work category, both by the talented shewhostaples.

By the author of "Laura's Dilemma" (2901 words) by El Staplador
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Regency Debutante/Her Sister's Governess
Characters: Original Female Character(s)
Additional Tags: Regency, Books, Gossip, Class Differences, Age Difference, Secret Identity, Reference to illness suffered by child
Summary: There was always a fire in the schoolroom grate, even when she came home long after midnight. And Miss Cole was always there. Sometimes she would be turning over the pages of a novel (Maria was almost sure it was a novel); sometimes writing a letter; sometimes she would be dozing in the high-backed chair that had been Mamma's favourite when they lived in the country; but she would always be there when Maria looked in.

And Maria always looked in.

Regency romance between two women, a debutante and her sister's governess! Using and subverting tropes and expectations! Novels and reader girls and secret authors! Written in a perfect regency romance style while telling not quite your standard regency romance! What's not to love? It's beautiful, do go and read it if you haven't already and have the slightest reason to believe you might enjoy such a story.



faites-lui mes aveux (8357 words) by El Staplador
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Original Character/Original Character, Mezzo in Pants/Soprano
Characters: Original Characters
Additional Tags: University, opera - Freeform, Femslash, Theatre
Summary: Leah Beecham is cast as Marguerite, and that's only the first surprise that the university Operatic Society production of Faust brings with it. And Ellie Everett should probably have kept out of OpSoc altogether if she wanted to avoid Music Department drama, but it's a bit late now, because she's got the part of Siebel...


Opera story from a modern student production with a lovely, gradually developing f/f story and lots of behind-the-scenes drama! And it's written with enough detail that you can follow it quite well even if you don't know the opera they're performing. Trust me on this - I haven't had the opportunity to see Faust in any format, so my knowledge of it is scattered, though I am familiar with the more famous songs and know the basic story. I rarely can follow operas based on recordings alone and I find DVDs and such unsatisfying, so I have a lot of gaps despite the fact that I love opera. For the longest time I didn't live anywhere where I could go to opera, so I have a lot of catching up to do, even if the Met Live / ROH Live screenings help somewhat (which reminds me, should get some tickets for this season).


Finally, here's my fic, which imagine_peace was kind enough to beta-read for me:

Shades of Fair and Dark (4758 words) by AuroraCloud
Fandom: Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Mary Crawford/Fanny Price
Characters: Mary Crawford, Fanny Price, Julia Bertram
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Female Characters, Female Relationships, Female Friendship, Music, Femslash, Femslash Exchange 2018, Kissing, Touching, Mentions of Edmund Bertram but no appearance by him
Summary: Years later, Fanny Bertram (née Price) meets Mary Crawford again. Much has changed, and things go differently than Fanny would have expected.


My first Austen fic ever! I've been reading and rereading all the Jane Austen novels since my late teens, but I've never written fic for one before - partly because I guess it took me a while to realize that writing femslash on Austen works was a perfectly legitimate and much-needed thing to do. I confess I felt slight "OMG what did I do?" at the first sight of the assignment, because when volunteering the fandom I had only considered the fact that I would love to write this pairing and not the fact that the last time I had read Mansfield Park was over four years ago, and I would have to reread it, and it is the slowest Austen work to read, being rather dense in style. But I'm really happy in the end that I got to work on this, because the reread itself was very rewarding, and so was the writing of the story.

Since Mansfield Park does have it issues (such as *coughEdmundcough*), rereading it from the point of view of "how will I use this to write Fanny/Mary" made some difficult parts of it easier to get through, and it made me focus particularly much attention on those characters and probably gave me viewpoints I hadn't had on my previous rereads. Not that I wouldn't always focus mostly on Fanny and Mary because they're easily the most developed characters in the story, and the ones I find the most interesting (especially as Mary's character kind of needs to be excavated from under the huge bias Fanny has). The request itself had lovely prompts to select from, but my muse was pretty clear from early on which one it most wanted to write. Writing the story was fascinating and I really enjoyed it, though it certainly wasn't one of the easiest fics to write. I'd love to go on and explore the story even further after the ending I wrote here, so maybe I'll return to it some day.

Now that I've gotten started on my Austen reread, I think it's time to go to reread all the other books. And femslash as many of them as I can!