FF Friday

Happy Femslash February, folks! Long time no post. I haven't been through the entire CHEx collection, but I can feel my energy plummeting due to life/work reasons, so I figured better to post recs from what I've seen even if it's not comprehensive! All of these are rated T or below; there are others that I enjoyed but these were my favorite four out of all of them. (I suppose favorite five would have also worked for alliterative purposes, but four is more symmetrical.)


Two original work recs:
moth and flame have a sweetheart deal (fantasy, guard/princess, ~1.9k)
Pining is a way to put it, but not just in the saccharine way of crushes and romantic longings -- pining for freedom, clarity, leverage. It lets the characters be jagged and brutal and sympathetic, which makes them matter.

Space Aliens! On an Adventure with Pirates (contemporary, actor/stunt person, ~1.8k)
A fluffy little kinda-meet-cute with really excellent dialogue between charmingly nerdy craftspeople.


And two fanwork recs:
Who Could Ask For Anything More? (Dimension 20: The Unsleeping City, Josefina/Misty, ~3.4k)
An achingly beautiful sequence that brings life to (a sliver of) Rowan's past as well as the tragedy of her firework-glittering affair with Josefina.

As the Ocean Courts the Strand (Fallen London, Hephaesta/Pirate Poet, ~300)
A short, resonantly poetic snippet that perfectly captures the tone of the source material; it wouldn't be out of place in a Sunless game.

On the heels of finding out that "Winter Sojourn", the Muna/Henrietta fic I recced, was in fact essentially a postcanon bonus story from the original author herself, I 1) was filled with awe and glee and 2) thought it was a good opportunity to reread some other recentish short fiction of hers.

"If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again", about an imugi trying to become a dragon, took the Hugo for Best Novelette and made quite a bit of a splash (at least among my circles), but did you know she also wrote a sequel short story? "Head of a Snake, Tail of a Dragon" (2,369 words) is a wry, sweet follow-up about love, loneliness, and second chances of all kinds; less a coda and more a new adventure, and tropey in the best of ways. It can be read on its own, but I think having read the novelette made it funnier. ( Very minor spoiler )