auroracloud | Entries tagged with gail carriger

Yuletide fics have been revealed a couple of days ago, and I got this delightful story in one of my teeny tiny fandoms, Gail Carriger's Finishing School series. Which series, by the way, I much recommend for anyone who might enjoy reading about young ladies in the 19th century at a boarding school where, under the guise of becoming fine society ladies, they actually become fine highly-trained intelligencers and spies for Her Majesty. And in between, drink lots of tea, and mess around with entertaining steampunk gadgets. But anyway, I got an incredibly fun story about Sophronia and her friends having to help out Sophronia's nemesis, Monique. The characters are their delightful selves, and the story most definitely doesn't lack in entertaining steampunk gadgets or references to tea.

The Christmas Pudding Caper (2926 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Finishing School - Gail Carriger
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Sophronia Temminnick, Monique de Pelouse, Genevieve Lefoux, Agatha Woosmoss, Mademoiselle Geraldine, Lady Linette, Dimity Plumleigh-Teignmott
Additional Tags: Boarding School, Holidays, christmas pudding, experiments gone wrong, Enemies to Friends
Summary:

Monique has her last chance to Finish at the Headmistress' Christmas tea. If she doesn't, the school itself might be Finished. But she needs a little help from an unexpected source.

There are many other fine stories in the Yuletide 2017 collection, though I haven't yet got around to reading nearly all that I wish to read.

Crossposts: https://auroracloud.livejournal.com/50352.html

Sorry for the delay in posting the letter, but here it is. I may still do little tweaks and edits during the weekend if I realize something could be worded better etc. but you're safe going on based on what I've got here.

Fic likes: I love gen, femslash, slash, het; I love hurt/comfort, adventures, daily life moments and domesticity, angst (but hopefully with a happy/comforting ending), fluff, porn (though preferably so that the sex tells something about the characters), first times, established relationships, kisses, space, history, worldbuilding, character-centric fic, intelligent/geeky women, relationships between women, loyalty, friendship, found family, teamfic where applicable, characters coming to accept some previously neglected/repressed part of themselves, canon divergence AUs (various ”what if”s changing some event or element of the canon but still keeping the world basically the same), epistolary fics, crossovers with fandoms you know I like, etc. etc. Really a lot of things, so feel free to let your imagination roam as long as you respect my Do Not Wants / dislikes.

If you write a romantic/sexual relationship, there can be no sex or a little sex or lots of sex, however you like. Anything from handholding or sweet words to hot steamy sex is find by me, though I prefer no complete PWP.

Do Not Wants/Dislikes: graphic violence, gore and torture, rape/non-con, sexual abuse, incest, underage sex (by this I mean under 16, which is the age of consent in my country), character bashing, mpreg, wildly different AUs of the coffee shop / high school / werewolf etc. variety. It depends a bit on the canon how much violence/torture/abuse I can deal with, but generally, please not higher level than the canon. Please stay away from sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and other such things. Please no 2nd person POV, it hardly ever works for me. In fic 1st person rarely works for me unless it’s in diary/epistolary format; the exception here would be Skuggserien, where the original canon is written in first person, so if you want to write the fic that way as well, it’s fine.

( Le Comte de Monte Cristo | Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas )

( Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers )

( Skuggserien (Shadow Series) — Maria Gripe )

( Finishing School - Gail Carriger )

Crossposts: https://auroracloud.livejournal.com/48396.html

Because I'm supposed to be editing Fandom_Stocking fic, here, have instead a fandom meme via various people. Though it's for 2016, most of the stuff I mention isn't something that actually came out in 2016, since much of my fannish existence was watching Doctor Who and Torchwood DVDs from years and years ago. And also when book-reading, I only occasionally read stuff from the current year.

Your main fandom of the year?

Doctor Who / Torchwood. There were a few months in the early half of the year when I was more occupied with something else, but most of the time, my obsession with the Whoniverse was what kept me sane (well, for a given definition of sane).

Your favourite film watched this year?

I didn't watch many, so I guess I'll go with Ghostbusters. It was fun and feel-good, there were women being awesome and being friends and hunting ghosts together, and for once men were totally secondary, and there was Holtzmann. I'm not pretending it was an unprecedented cinematic artwork, but I had lots of fun.

Your favourite book read this year?

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. An instant favourite, and the first book in ages that I reread within the same month of reading it for the first time (that was partly because it was my Yuletide assignment, but I also adored reading it again). Also, its stand-alone, A Closed and Common Orbit, as well as Catherynne M. Valente's Radiance (a wonderfully weird, imaginative and gorgeously written steampunk AU space opera scifi mystery etc.). Radiance was probably objectively the best, most mind-blowing book I read in the year, and I need to reread it to appreciate it even more. But the Becky Chambers books were sanity-saving at a time when much needed, and ticked most of my fannish boxes and some I didn't yet know existed.

( Read more... )

Dear Yuletide Writer,

First, thanks for offering any of my tiny fandoms! I'll be delighted with a story from any of these. The letters may say more about some than others, but it's not a measure of what I care most about. I made sure I picked fandoms where I'd be equally happy to receive a story. Beyond the Do Not Wants, you can ignore any part of prompt or letter if it gets in your way.

Generally, things I Do Not Want: Incest, rape or non-con, graphic violence and goriness, major non-canonical character death, character bashing. Also no child abuse or animal abuse. And no drastic AU of the high school / college / werewolf / vampire sort, or changing historical to modern or fantasy/scifi to mundane world. Basically, I prefer playing in the world of the canon we know. Generally, I can enjoy the sort of AU where you change a canon event and see what comes out of it, but I have no particular interest in that in these fandoms right now. Also, I don't want the story to promote sexism, homophobia or racism, though in the world of some of the canons it makes sense some characters would have such attitudes.

I'd prefer matching the tone and darkness/lightness level of the canon, though in the case of Custard Protocol I would enjoy a more serious story as well, if that's what flows better for you.

I throw in some ideas both in the prompts and in the letter, but don't feel obliged to fulfill any of them. As long as you write about these characters in these worlds and avoid my Do Not Wants, I'll be glad.

A few things I particularly like:
- female characters who are strong, smart and capable in a variety of ways, not just the traditional-male-hero strong
- strong bonds between female characters
- strong bonds between family members, members of the same crew/team, or friends
- same-sex romance
- expressing feelings through sex
- in pairing stories, I'm equally happy with stories with or without sex. If there's sex, I prefer it not to be the entire story; I'd like to see at least some development of characters/relationship.
- wonder and amazement about the world
- in the worlds where it's appropriate, technobabble / science babble is fun if you can do it, but not required; I don't know much about technology, so you'll be able to fool me easily, though *g*

And, well, anything I listed in the specific prompts and specific parts of the letter.
On to the requests! And because my layout doesn't show LJ cut texts (need to change it as soon as I have the time), the requests are in the following fandoms: Custard Protocol - Gail Carriger, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage - Sydney Padua, Skuggserien - Maria Gripe, The Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers. The letter lists them in that order.

( Custard Protocol - Gail Carriger. Primrose Tunstell, Tasherit. )

( The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage - Sydney Padua )

( Skuggserien / The Shadow Series - Maria Gripe )

( Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers )

Finding it hard to post anything of content. Work started again and it exhausts my brain and leaves too little time. I took a week to have time to even watch The Girl in the Fireplace. Though damn, a good Doctor Who episode does have the power of making everything feel better!

Anyway, I started participating in Write Every Day, held at

fan_girlishness's journal this month. The point is to, well, try to write something every day and check in daily about it. I've just started a new original project and I thought this is just the thing that could help me keep going, even with work and all. Turns out I was right. Within about a week I've written 7000 words - the majority of it this weekend, so apparently getting those few hundred words written each night during the week really helped keep the channels open and get me into the story. I hope I don't depress anyone who struggles with getting anything written. For the record, I tend to write fast when I do first draft, at least if I have any idea of what I'm doing. I can spend a very long time in the editing phase afterwards. I'm curious to see how it'll continue with this story, because there'll be parts where I so far have no idea what I'm doing. I hope it'll clear up as I go on. Next week will be quite busy and it will be a lot harder to keep writing, but I'm going to try to get a little bit each day, even if it's just one sentence or so.

I'm starting to really get into reading again, and one of the books I'm reading now is Gail Carriger's latest, Imprudence. If you don't know it, it's alternate history / steampunk / fantasy / historical romance / adventure kind of thing and lots of fun. It's the second part of her Custard Protocol series (the first part being Prudence) and that is a follow-up to her Parasol Protectorate series which is just as much fun. I'm very enamored of those books, fannish even. I'm probably going to post a squeeful post when I'm done reading. I heartily recommend it. It's the sort of book that's deceptively light and fun, easy to read and a bundle of entertainment, but has a brain and a subversive element entangled in there, too. Including strong, awesome, smart and capable female characters of many kinds, and romances also between characters of the same sex, and here and there some discussion of society, norms and breaking the said norms. I adore the characters and the alternate history of Victorian society she's built there. And there's an airship. Called The Spotted Custard and with a somewhat eccentric young lady for a captain.

Anyway, reading such things and thinking about Doctor Who keeps making me want to drink lots of tea and eat things that sound very British. Yesterday was a grey, windy, drizzly sort of day, perfect for staying in, writing like crazy and drinking tea. And then I'd have more tea and toast with jam, and feel like I'm on one of the endless tea times on board the Spotted Custard, only with my characters for company. I wonder if I can get them to call me Lady Captain? That would be neat.

I do think it's time for bed. Proper fandom posts, which I want to write, require more presence of mind than I have left today.

Was away for a couple of days, and yesterday was mainly spent geeking out and drinking copious amounts of tea. I recently got a bunch of science and steampunk things out of the library, and have been happily reading Mark Thompson's Down to Eart Guide to the Cosmos. Once the nights get a little bit darker here, I mean to start being a lot more active in stargazing like I've dreamed of being for some years, and gorging myself full of interesting information about the night sky is my way of preparing. I really want binoculars soon.

And once my brain decided I needed a break from all the fascinating information and the "a few degrees southwest of Star X, you will find the fascinating globular star cluster M-such-and-such, which by the way is not visible in Aurora's location because she's so far up north, but it's one of the most beautiful sights ever" I started to read Sydney Padua's The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage. It's an alternate history / steampunk comic where Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage develop a steam-powered computer in the 1800s and use it to fight crime or, at least, geek out. Apparently this is something I've waited all my life to discover, or something. The webcomic is here, should the hypothetical reader be interested, but I'm reading the book format. In addition to comics, it has a wonderful amount of footnotes and endnotes, containing entertainingly written information about the weirdness of history of science, feeling like it's custom-made for a history-and-science geek like me. Read about half of it in one go.

It was lovely to sink myself into reading, because while I'm normally quite a bookworm, I've had a terrible time making myself read anything in the past few weeks. Somehow I just can't focus on anything for more than 10-20 minutes; I've tried so many genres and styles, but nothing appeals to me enough. Except, apparently, interestingly written popular science, and alternate history comics. In the past weeks I did read a lot of fanfic (mainly Doctor/Jack), so maybe I just have trouble of focusing on longer fiction, or fiction with characters I don't know already. I did just get Gail Carriger's newest book, Imprudence, in the mail, so I'm going to give that a try. I already know the characters in that one, and Carriger writes entertainingly and easily enough, while still being quite clever and with awesome female characters, LGBT relationships and such goodness.

Didn't even turn on the computer until the evening, when I watched some Doctor Who. Started on rewatching Season 2, I now watched New Earth and Tooth and Claw. Which means that up next is School Reunion, which was one of my favourites of S2 the first time around. K9, Sarah Jane, Ten as a schoolteacher, Anthony Head's evil schoolmaster - how could I not adore it?

I am trying to be marginally more productive today, though. Seeing as it's almost midday and I haven't yet changed out of my nightgown, I'm not holding out much hope, though. But I do mean to make some pie.

I'm also trying to figure out how to go on about finding some actual friends on this LJ. It was much easier way back when - the first time I had one of these, I started out with a bunch of friends I already knew from elsewhere, and LJ being much more active than it is now, it was easy to get to know people through conversations in friends' journals and communities. How to start from the scratch at this point, I'm not sure. People still at least somewhat active in my fandoms and ships, do not be surprised if you find yourselves friended. Once I find the courage to do so, anyway.