Of Fire and Stars’s Princess Romance Is Good, but Not Great

(via Goodreads)

Fandom has recently come to celebrate the month of February as Femslash February—an open call to all ficcers, vidders, and other creative participants to make fanworks that feature women who love women. Usually this is the month when I try to find a good femslash fic or two to read and rec, but I’m kind of in between fandoms right now, and I didn’t know where to start. Fortunately, though I didn’t find a fanwork, I did stumble across Of Fire and Stars, a YA novel by Audrey Coulthurst that was surprisingly about two princesses who fall in love with each other. Although I didn’t love all of it, the queer romance at the heart of this book was incredible and definitely deserves a rec.

Minor spoilers after the jump!

Fanfiction Fridays: The Good Shepard by Wifeofbath

I’ve been feeling a little nostalgic lately, perhaps in part because I’ve been trying to remember a time where the world wasn’t covered in snow. Oh, those were the good old days. What’s better for these cold parts of winter, though, than curling up and re-playing a good RPG? So, riding on the coat-tails of this North Eastern bullshit blizzard and the not-bullshit-at-all Femslash February, I managed to discover a fic that delivered on the warm feelings from Mass Effect, a series near and dear to my heart, while not ignoring the consequences of a galaxy-wide threat that almost destroyed civilization.

Maybe I’m stretching a little bit: I know Mass Effect (2007) isn’t exactly old enough to be considered “nostalgic”, and this fic stems from the last game in the series, which came out in 2012, which makes it even less so. Still, The Good Shepard by Wifeofbath invokes these feelings of nostalgia by the sense of home it has in its tone. However, home isn’t always free of conflicts.

Fanfiction Fridays: The Sad Orphan Kissing Society by Solshine

“I know Marius was gonna try to ask you out. He totally didn’t do it, did he?” says Éponine.

Cosette sighs. “No,” she admits.

“Okay, then I’d like to take his missed opportunity.” Cosette looks blank. “Uh. Would you like to. Get coffee? Sometime?”

Cosette blinks. “Oh. Oh! I’m, um. I—”

“You’re straight, right, yeah. Worth a shot.”

“No, I— I mean, I’ve just never—”

“It’s fine, it’s okay, forget it. I’m gonna go back to work, it was great catching up.”

“No, wait,” Cosette insists, and Éponine stops in spite of herself. “Um, can I…?” She gestures to the pen behind Éponine’s ear. Éponine hands it to her hesitantly. Cosette takes her whole hand instead of just the pen, and it feels like an electric shock up Éponine’s arm. Which is nothing compared to when Cosette uncaps the pen with her teeth and holds out Éponine’s arm to write something on it. Something that’s a phone number.

“Call me,” Cosette adds needlessly, and smiles, and this is definitely the best smile yet. Éponine feels a little dizzy.

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, totally, I will.”

–from The Sad Orphan Kissing Society by Solshine

One of the only non-miserable things about Les Misérables is Marius and Cosette’s relationship, but even that, obviously, grew out of some pretty miserable stuff. Cosette used to be in the care of Éponine’s abusive parents, the Thénardiers, and Éponine had a massively unrequited crush on Marius which eventually led to her death. Aside from all that depressing stuff, though, I never really liked Marius and Cosette’s relationship. It’s not that I don’t believe in love at first sight, it’s just that the way Marius goes about it is so silly. Honestly, he sees a girl across a square, decides he’s in love with her, and then, upon finally being introduced to her, he tells her “I do not even know your name”? And in the book he even obsesses over a handkerchief that ends up being Valjean’s, not Cosette’s. I just. Marius Pontmercy, everyone.

Marius’s face as he stares blankly at Cosette is one of my favorite things, though.

That’s why The Sad Orphan Kissing Society, by Solshine, is so awesome. Not only does it have a kickass title, but it also includes a Marius Pontmercy who’s just as hopeless (and kind, and fair) as he is in the canon versions of the story, and that’s not easy, considering that this fic is a modern day AU of Les Misérables. In fact, everyone is fantastically in character for having been brought a couple centuries forward. Éponine is a little rough around the edges, a little unsure of herself, and Cosette is as innocent and as forgiving as she’s ever been.  When the two girls meet, they instantly hit it off—and Solshine even gets into the sticky issue of the Thénardiers’ abuse without detracting from the fun, teenage feel of the fic.

And even though I dislike Marius, Éponine and Cosette clearly like him, so, just as a rising tide lifts all boats, an OT3 solves all problems—and make no mistake about it, it’s Éponine’s and Cosette’s joint decision to invite Marius into the fold. It takes Marius a hilarious scene to understand what’s going on, but when he finally figures it out, it goes very well for the three of them.

The Sad Orphan Kissing Society is a fairly short read at 10k words, and can be found here on AO3. Enjoy, and I hope you all found some good femslash fics during this Femslash February!

Fanfiction Fridays: stick with me baby by FreshBrains

It’s February, which means it’s time for femslash! In an attempt to read better and more diverse fanfiction, I began my quest by looking for some good femslash. I also looked for it in places where it may not be as common. For example, fandoms like the Xena: Warrior Princess will obviously have more femslash because its source show stars two strong women. So I began my search in popular fandoms that had noticeably less popular f/f ships. This time around I started with Teen Wolf, and this excellent Christmas fic that focuses on Lydia Martin and Laura Hale.

I might be late, but the season doesn’t detract from how good this fic is.

One of the things I love about stick with me baby is that it is very lady-heavy. The only male characters to really put in an appearance are Derek, Peter, and Scott. I think Stiles gets a mention, but he never actually shows up. Instead, the story relies heavily on our female characters, focusing primarily on Lydia and Laura, who are in a serious committed relationship when the story begins. The main conflict focuses on the fact that Laura never told her family about Lydia and that she may have accidentally mated (aka the Teen Wolf equivalent of werewolf marriage) with Lydia.

Fanfiction Fridays: Femslash and ‘Hetalia’

Hnnng, Look at That New Art

Earlier this month one of my favorite series, Hetalia, started a new run as it’s re-vamped self with entirely new art and a new appreciation for some of the characters that had been previously glossed over in its first five seasons (Turkey and Seychelles have already made an appearance!!). It is with this knowledge, and the fact that it’s still Femslash February, that I set off to find an amazing fic starring the overlooked ladies of Hetalia. Unfortunately, it seems that even in the world of fanfiction the ladies of Hetalia are still horrendously overlooked, authors instead favoring genderswapped versions of the male characters. In my opinion that really doesn’t count as femslash, especially when one ignores the females already present in canon. But hey, I’m not one to give up too easily. But after looking through the library of available pairings on AO3 and Fanfiction.net, I only found about three stories that I would personally consider reading again. (I also developed a strong loathing for people who tag their stories as F/F parings, but only list M/M or Het pairings in their tags. Why you gotta do that shit?)

One of the pairings that I didn’t even think about before this journey but have actually started to ship is Belarus x Liechtenstein. Although it’s essentially an out-of-nowhere pairing (I’m pretty sure they don’t interact in canon), the dynamics between them have the potential to be very compelling: Belarus in her yandere standoffishness and Liechtenstein being super sweet and quiet. I have a soft spot for couples that are different like that. Both of the stories I have for you readers today feature this paring.

Fanfiction Fridays: Femslash February Fairy Tales

The amount of male/male slash fiction floating around out in the aether of the internet grossly outnumbers the amount that features two ladies. We’ve grumped about this fact before, but recently, annoyed with this trend, people have decided to take action. This February has dubbed “Femslash February”, and writers and artists are using this month to focus their efforts on creating stories and artwork that focus on queer female relationships.

I knew that I wanted to write about femslash today, but I was having trouble finding any really great fics in my bookmarks. Part of the reason I think femslash is so rare comparatively is that it’s rare enough to see shows or movies that pass the Bechdel test, let alone have enough female-with-female interaction to base a pairing on. And although I love my Supernatural, my Marvel Cinematic Universe, my myriad action-packed anime, and even Les Mis and Tolkien, they’re all hella problematic when it comes to female representation and portrayal.

So I buckled down and subjected myself to the truly *ahem* laborious and unpleasant task of reading tons of femslash in order to bring you some Femslash February recommendations.

My current femslash OTP is Mulan and Aurora from Once Upon A Time. OUAT has a really diverse and interesting female cast, and so the show is a godsend to femslash shippers (and people who like cool pairing names—seriously, Swan Queen? Sleeping Warrior?) Both of these fanfics feature Mulan/Aurora as the main pairing; I couldn’t decide which one to rec, so instead of picking I’ve brought you one short and funny fic set in canon, and one long, dramatic, romantic AU.