FF Friday: The Cage by A.M. Dellamonica

[sholio]

F/F Friday is a project recently started by rachelmanija, described thusly: "Every Friday, review, recommend, or discuss an FF book, short story, or other work." There is also a community on Dreamwidth, fffriday.

So I'm going to rec a really delightful lesbian werewolf novelette that is available for free online: The Cage by A.M. Dellamonica! 

(This review is also cross-posted over on my Mar Delaney blog, to give me something to put there.)

Jude, the narrator, is a contractor (in the carpentry sense) with a broken-woman problem and a string of fix-upper ex-girlfriends. So of course she falls for another one, Paige, a single mom who is raising an adorable baby. A perfectly normal baby. Nothing weird about this baby, no-ma'am. Oh, by the way, she needs to hire Jude to help her soundproof her basement and put cage bars on the windows. For ... a band. That is recording in her basement. And trashed the place last full moon. Yep, that's totally it.

So basically this is a story about how the Vancouver lesbian community comes together to help raise a baby werewolf, and two slightly broken people start to fix each other up. It's cute and sweet and funny, with a great sense of place and interesting worldbuilding -- the story is set shortly after werewolves were revealed to humanity for the first time, and the antagonist is a self-proclaimed Buffy-type werewolf hunter who is a serial killer from the point of view of the werewolves. The characters were a lot of fun (Paige is a bit flatter, but I absolutely loved Jude's narrative voice) and I loved the sense of community in the story. Sometimes it takes a village (of lesbians and other social misfits in the queer community) to raise a baby werewolf!

Comments

[muccamukk]

This is basically one of my favourite pieces of short fiction ever. My wife and I still go "Arooo" at each other.

Lesbian networking saves the day should be a way more popular trope.

[sholio]

It's just THE MOST ADORABLE THING. :D I first read it ages ago, and every so often I want to reread it and end up doing a bunch of googling for various keywords like "lesbian werewolf baby" (you can imagine the kind of results I get) because the title and author are apparently impossible for me to remember. At least now I have the link somewhere so I can find it again!

[slashmarks]

Here via fffriday. Thanks for the rec, I just finished this and I really liked it.

[sholio]

Always happy to point people at that story; it's lovely! :)

[cathexys]

OMG that was lovely!

Though the comments made me go WTF. Like it's there in the first lines. How could anyone NOT get gender here???

Lesbian networking ftw!!!

[sholio]

Though the comments made me go WTF. Like it's there in the first lines. How could anyone NOT get gender here???

Haha, I know right?? I boggled at that one too. Let's have Missing the Obvious for $200, Alex!

But yeah, it's a lovely story; I'm delighted to point more people at it! :D

[genarti]

I remember reading and thoroughly enjoying this back when it was first published, so thanks for the impetus to go back and reread! :D

[sholio]

So glad to provide it! :D

[monanotlisa]

:P

Okay, I am usually not a bio-family fan...but a werewolf baby raised by Canadian lesbians in droves sounds excellent.

<3

[sholio]

I think this one actually works really well for someone who's not into babyfic normally, because while there is certainly a babyficcy element, it's mostly just about found family and community, and droves of Canadian lesbians raising their baby werewolf. <3

[lunabee34]

Oooh. Goes to read. Thanks for the link.

[sholio]

Anytime! I hope you like. :)

[lunabee34]

I did, I did!

I love the scene where all her friends come over to help her keep the baby safe. Fantastic!

[schneefink]

Aww, this was lovely :) I cheered at the full moon party.

[sholio]

Hee, always happy to point people at that story, it's so adorable. :D

[rachelmanija]

This was adorable. It was everything I wanted Humanity for Beginners to be.

[sholio]

Ha, when I read your post about Humanity for Beginners all I could think of was this story. :D So thanks for giving me an excuse to talk about it!