Aurora's Sundry Notes

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!

Time of various exchanges and fests is upon us! I've successfully finished my Yuletide fic in time, though it still needs some editing (when have I not edited up to the reveals?), and I've taken a bit of a look at requests to consider treats. Though there are also so many other options for fic-writing in the near future! Such as fandom_stocking, where the sign-ups ended last week. Here is my stocking if you want to take a look at it and maybe even drop something in there!

public_call fics are in the process of being revealed. I wrote a Jack/Ten story, which has been posted: find the post with the link here.



And I got this lovely Bill/Heather fic from the exchange!

Bubblegum, Fire, Salt Water (1141 words) by florencedrunk

Also, more on the femslash front, due to my general posting fail I haven't posted links to all of my previous exchange fics either, so here's my femslashex fic, a Thirteen/Missy fic I wrote for the dear trobadora and had ever so much fun writing.

Hope and Chocolate (2442 words) by AuroraCloud
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who (2005)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Missy
Characters: Thirteenth Doctor, Missy (Doctor Who)
Additional Tags: Fix-It of Sorts, Femslash, Femslash Exchange 2017, Crossing Timelines
Summary:

The Doctor goes back to find Missy during her time in the Vault. She has a plan. Also, there is a date.

I'm mostly caught up on Doctor Who now - I'm struggling in early S9 because I just don't like Clara enough and I don't like her and Twelve together (I love Twelve, but he works so much better with Bill!) and the writing has been getting steadily worse, and I don't think I'm finishing it before the Christmas special airs. But anyway, it means I've pretty much seen all the Missy episodes there are to see, and whatever I think of other things, Missy is freaking fantastic. I'm not even often fond of villains or quasi-villains or whatever she is, and I wasn't as into Simm!Master as much of the fandom seems to be, but Missy is my lady.

I really hope we will somehow get her and Thirteen together on the screen at some point.

What else? I basically binged through S1 of Broadchurch this weekend. Damn, it's so good. And the cast is fantastic, Olivia Colman and David Tennant are fantastic in the leads, I freaking love Jodie Whittaker's acting, and Arthur Darvill is at least as lovely in this as he was as Rory. And many others gave wonderful performances, too, and I just loved the writing, the way it focused so much on the characters and the community and the effect of the events on all that, not just solving the mystery.

I'll try to post more things some time soon. Like more thoughts about Doctor Who, and other things I've watched and read. I know I've been really quiet on the journalling side of things, but I'll be trying to fix that in the near future! I miss this.