A Doctor Who Reccing Community

Title: Matters of Tea
Creator: (e.g. one or more of: shopfront (shopfront
Rating: General Audiences
Word Count/Length/Size: 1780 words
Creator's Summary: When Clara needs someone to talk to, she turns to the smartest person she knows. Other than the Doctor, of course. Not that he’d be much help for matters of the heart, anyway.
Characters/Pairings: Clara Oswald, Jane Austen; pairings:
Jane Austen/Clara Oswin Oswald, pre-Ashildr | Lady Me/Clara Oswin Oswald
Notes: Post-S9 for Clara's timeline

Reasons for reccing: Another new story for the monthly theme, via Femslash Exchange, and it's utterly adorable. It has cheerfulness reminiscent of many Austen novels which is well suited for how you could imagine these two to interact. There's also some time travel shenanigans, a TARDIS with a working Chameleon Circuit, and a delightful feel of background madcap adventures while Clara and Jane Austen are civilly (more or less) discussing matters of the heart and tea. Clara and Jane's relationship is described in a mischievously coy manner which implies a great deal without directly showing much, and fits them entirely. The contrast between Jane's, well, Austenian manner of speaking and Clara's modern, Clara-esque speech is lovely and appropriate.

I had the pleasure of reading this one early ie. beta-reading it, but I would find it delightful even without this connection. I don't even normally read a lot of Clara fic, because it varied a great deal how well canon Clara worked for me and so the same goes for fic, but this story captures those sides of Clara that I loved, and it makes me think I should maybe look for more fic after all. Especially if it involves Jane Austen.


Link: Matters of Tea