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verushka70 posting in

Joanne Currie and Regina Keim posted a new due South Convivial Pursuit quiz to the private Facebook Due South Duet: Fraser/Kowalski Slash group. The new Convivial Pursuit quiz is based on the Christmas episodes Gift of the Wheelman and Good For The Soul. (Episode links courtesy of Anna's due South episode transcripts site, https://nicede.se/dstranscripts/.)

luzula

Becoming a Supple Leopard: the ultimate guide to resolving pain, preventing injury and optimizing athletic performance by Kelly Starrett (2015)
This book has changed my life. I know I sound like I'm doing a paid promotion or like someone who's joined some weird cult, and I know the book has kind of a silly title, but it's true. My mind is blown.

The thing is, I've had problems with stiffness and muscle ache for years. I've been trying to deal with it by exercise and stretching, but while exercise is obviously good for a whole host of reasons, it doesn't solve the problem of stiffness/muscle ache. And stretching doesn't do much, either. I've also gone to a massage therapist, which does partly help, but it's temporary and also costs a lot of money. And while the guy is much better in the practical application of massage than others I've gone to, and I like him, still I'm reluctant to keep going to him because he does do some things with a large application of force and I doubt his medical judgment (to say the least). In the last few years he has begun to spout conspiracy theories about vaccines and only drinks warm water because, as a man, he needs the yang energy.

Anyway, I figured the stiffness and muscle ache was just middle age and at bottom I just had to suck it up. Turns out THERE ARE EFFECTIVE TOOLS TO ADDRESS THIS THAT I NEVER KNEW ABOUT! Also they're cheap and I can apply them myself! I honestly feel like someone prone to headaches who has just, at the age of 46, discovered the existence of painkillers. But better, because this isn't a drug.

( Read more... )

garryowen

Fandom: Brilliant Minds
Pairings/Characters: Josh/Oliver
Rating: G
Length: 2500
Content notes: none
ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76709626

Summary: Five times Josh hired an outside consultant, and one time he didn’t have to. This is slight AU silliness. (I have never, in all my years in fandom, written a five things fic. So I decided to write one!)

( The Consulting Neurologist )

beccaelizabeth

I just listened to three different Torchwood audios because after each I had a thought about the next
The Crown
Five People You Kill
Lincolnshire Poacher
and I realised that they don't fit together, for instance in how The Crown works, but, that doesn't cause messes with canon, because all three are unreliable narrator messes where someone is lying to someone with the full connivance of the soundtrack.

Which is interesting because audios that lie to the listener feel rare? Like that isn't the rule with Doctor Who audios, you're just listening to The Doctor doing things, it's not playing with truth value, so you can trust him.

But a lot of these Torchwood ones layer it up with stories about stories.

( Read more... )

Torchwood audios are unrestricted, by internal truth value. The people in them are often telling stories and those can be lies that we get a sountrack to. It's interesting.

But it's just one possibility out of many, other stories do seem to be just the audience listening in on the Whoniverse.

But add it to the layer after layer of lies, not all of them cover ups, the imitations of loved ones, the occasional spot of possession, the memory alteration with both retcon and Adam, and how many times people find out their own brains are lying to them... Torchwood audios really cram a lot of unreliable into a tiny slice of story.

Interesting sort of horror.

siria

( My fic year in review: Biosphere, Doctor Who, ER, Fire Country, Interview with the Vampire, The Newsreader, A Nice Indian Boy, The Old Guard, The Pitt, Stargate Atlantis, Superman )

Added up, that gives me:

Word Count: 163,779
Fandoms: 11
Stories: 56

This is one of my all-time most prolific writing years, both in terms of total word count and in the fact that I averaged just over a fic a week. I guess vampires + doctors = inspiration. Who knew?

( My most average fics on AO3: word count, hits, kudos, bookmarks )

beccaelizabeth

Yesterday I played Wrath of the Righteous for... probably over twelve hours, before deciding that on those difficulty settings it doesn't even feel like a game. It happens in front of my eyes is all. I can let it play itself on the not-turn-based version, and fights will generally be over in one hit, so why bother? But that sums up my feelings for the automagic fighting in general. Turn based is playing, the other way is getting it over with to get to the next interesting bit.

Exceptions for when the characters decide spinning in place is the optimal strategy or simply don't move at all for several turns. That's just frustrating. It's a fail that only happens because it is a game, so it is boring and like the computer is cheating.

I tried it on a really low difficulty so I could see how Last Azlanti Mode plays. It makes me anxious, because half the load screens tell you If In Doubt Save, and now you have to rely on the machine actually saving and not very often. But it seems achieveable so far.

I am going to have to start it again on a higher difficulty if I want to feel like I am playing the game though.

Also I might be wearing this one game a bit thin. I would happily play other adventure paths, if available. But they aren't, so I am doing and redoing the same one.

But I played it on super easy because playing on Hard is in fact Hard. I can go back to that one and feel like every fight is an accomplishment.

I think my ideal difficulty is sort of Daring plus bonus behaviours. A very custom difficulty. But playing that way doesn't get you any achievements and the difficulty achievements are very nearly the only ones left to do.

Or the DLC midnight isles ones. But again, that doesn't feel like a game, just endless fights.

eh, shall think of something else to do.

luzula

Day 28: Busy with family; alibi sentence. How about you?

Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 28:

luzula,

china_shop,

badly_knitted,

trobadora,

brithistorian,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

chestnut_pod,

cornerofmadness,

garonne,

brithistorian,

Day 29:

luzula,

china_shop,

garonne,

brithistorian,

verushka70 posting in

dsvirtualbar

Regina Keim sent the Facebook Due South Trading Post group a link to this fabulous "Super Mountie" art on the German Etsy site.

I thought people might like to see it. Not sure if it's available outside Europe - haven't checked yet.

a Mountie, face obscured by downturned Stetson, tearing off the Serge to reveal Superman's suit with big S

a Mountie, face obscured by downturned Stetson, tearing off the Serge to reveal Superman's suit with big S

ETA: I fixed the Etsy-Germany link!

siria

I'm home for Christmas and the New Year, hurrah. I've drunk a lot of tea, there have been mince pies, I've spent nice time with the nieces. I also had the peak "Irish village at the holidays" experience of having to make small talk for a few minutes with a man whose wife is—known to even far-flung diaspora members like myself, but unknown to him—having an open affair with the parish priest. This is the kind of wholesome experience that you just don't get in other places.

( Generation Kill )

( Heated Rivalry )

luzula

Day 28: Alibi sentence. Still lots of family time, now at my parents' place, so no farm news. How about you?

Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 27:

the_siobhan,

badly_knitted,

goddess47,

trobadora,

sylvanwitch,

sanguinity,

china_shop,

chestnut_pod

Day 28:

luzula,

china_shop

seascribble

We watched Heated Rivalry week by week as it released; Perry was like "I'll sit with you while you watch it," but ended up getting very invested. Especially in the Scott Hunter storyline, what a weirdo (I really liked the Scott episode, which I gather is not a popular opinion, but I'm not here for him and his smoothie twink, and the pacing is a little out of whack). We tend to put things on over and over again with varying degrees of focus, so we've watched all of it a lot. General spoilers for the season.

I had read the books but ages ago and they didn't really stick with me. I'm sure they're fine (I've heard the quality is kind of uneven and goes down with later books; I only ever read the first two and preferred the second one), but the show was phenomenal. Just getting gay hockey softcore on tv in 2025 feels important and hopeful. The fact that it was also really good and even the straight hockey bro podcasts (which...are now videos? But we still call them podcasts? I don't understand) are obsessed with it is just a bonus. Both What Chaos and Empty Netters are getting a lot of attention for their reactions; I haven't watched any of them all the way through but have seen cute clips on tumblr. It's charming to watch them slowly come to realize the vast diversity of experiences in the world. Like seeing kindergartners on a fieldtrip to an interactive museum.

It's also been delightful to watch Connor and Hudson (...mostly Hudson) just go completely off the rails in all the media appearances they've been making since the show took off. Like, just the most unhinged freaks who were completely made for each other and also this show. I adore them. I am pleased to report that the RPF develops apace.

Also Cesare Borgia was there? It's frankly a hate crime to make François Arnaud play an American hockey player, but he does it very well and is very handsome indeed. Samantha was like "he looks like a young Shea Weber." He looks like a Shea Weber who hasn't spent the last 25 years in a meat grinder, is what he looks like, because those men are the same age. I enjoyed his response to the guy (not sure who he is or why his opinion mattered) who was like "this is not what gay sex looks like" by being like "what the fuck does gay sex look like?" and then doubling down when Vulture interviewed him about it like "okay but they don't act gay though" and he was like "why are you watching a show about closeted hockey players if you don't think there's room for that diversity of experience." He and Jacob Tierney have both also been on point in response to any bullshit about whether Connor or Hudson are gay and why won't they come out, etc. They were both waiting tables up until like the week before filming started! Give them some space! Mind your business! Also it's illegal in Canada to ask people that during a job interview (thank u, Jacob).

I enjoy the memes about how this is Canadian government funded hockey yaoi (due to the tax incentives in Ontario and Québec and the Canadian Media fund) as long as they don't go so hard they tip over into "tee hee! what a quaint and charming country with none of the problems experienced by real countries!" which tumblr loves to do. Mostly it's been okay; they got it out of their systems after the pilot I guess.

The show itself, IDK, you should go watch it. It's lit so you can see what happens! There's lots of kissing and face touching and tit grabbing and suggestive angles and artfully raised thighs doing a lot of penis-hiding work. The intimacy is scorching, and in all the interviews they talk about how much that's down to the intimacy coordinator and everything being tightly choreographed, which I think is super cool. There's loadbearing buttsex and some light BDSM. The acting is good, don't listen to what people say about Hudson's acting, he watched Sidney Crosby do media and he made his choices on purpose. The haters simply don't understand the depth of his art.

Like the source material, sometimes it tips over into cringe a little bit ("I kind of prefer being the hole," my man did not say that, he can't even say that he's gay out loud yet) and obviously nothing where they have a Texas boy being a Russian is going to be perfect, but overall, I think it sticks the landing. Apparently the Texas boy loves linguistics and did do a good job learning Russian vowels. At one point he has like a five minute monologue in Russian, which is more than I personally could do in French which I speak like every day, so good for him.

The last episode really pulls out all the stops. Like, you've had this really compelling and (relatively) well paced love story paying out and they find the space to have some really compelling parent-child dynamics and exploration amidst the love story concluding. they do such a good job showing how this relationship has blossomed and what it can look like outside the confines of a hotel room, and how it's new but still comfortable. ALSO! It is beautifully lit! I love being able to see shit! I like that the ending isn't perfect--they aren't coming out, the best they can do is hopefully play for teams that are two hours apart, there's all the agonizing Explaining to the parents who don't know exactly what to say--and that it just ends with them driving down the road. Very apt visual metaphor. Based on what I've heard about subsequent books, I kind of hope JT goes rogue in season two, but we'll see.

I've read a little fic and I've got the kink meme open in a tab, but I'm not super duper compelled by it although I've read one or two good ones. I think a lot of it is probably just life stuff; my focus isn't great, I'm preoccupied by pregnancy stuff, it's liminal spacemas so I'm on screens too much anyway. Go support the kinkmeme because there's fuck all spaces where we can be like "this is a place to be horny however we want, manage your own feelings about it" these days.

Anyway, delighted to see such good CanCon on my screen during an otherwise gloomy media landscape, recommend everybody to watch it.

beccaelizabeth

I'm getting frustrated reading stuff where nothing happens except characters explaining the plot and backstory to each other.

Story needs to be thrifty. If you have to drop in explanations they also need to reveal who these people are and how they uniquely interact with the world. Also the scene needs to change something, and hopefully someone. If all that happens is all the characters speak enough to know what the reader knew two chapters ago we don't actually need to see it, they can just say 'x got me caught up' and move on to the next bit where something changes.

Also people need to do the yearning having cycle. They need to Want something, and Persuade someone else to let them have it. And just because it is perfectly reasonable if everyone knows what the readers know, that isn't enough reason to do it. Plus some characters just plain will not do gratitude. And they break their word, so keeping them on track is difficult, and they will expect others to do the same thing. You have to find a Motive that hooks into their core characterisation somehow, something they want or someone they want to be, and then you have to wrangle them into admitting everyone's needs could get met. It's herding cats at best.

... this story I am paused of reading basically has the cats marching in lines and having realised that I think I'll go skim read until something interesting happens or the story ends.

luzula

Please check in here! It is late and I had a little alcohol, so I am too tired to write a proper post. Did not write. Will edit in the tally later. As for my farm news, we drank my homemade cherry wine, which came out great.

Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 26:

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

badly_knitted,

sanguinity,

trobadora,

goddess47,

cornerofmadness,

the_siobhan,

Day 27:

the_siobhan

beccaelizabeth

I noticed how many days I did not post so *waves*
I got all tired out doing xmas even though that was like two movies with a meal in the middle
so the next day I slept like twelve hours

the tired sleepy is mostly winning this week

but it's cool, I already read one of my xmas present books, just in several installments due to the sleeping.

Yuletide isn't grabbing me. Don't know what I would have looked for but it isn't there.

I haven't been doing much fic reading this year until right at the end when I started to read All The Constantine fic and got sidetracked by apparently Justice League Dark canon.

I have thoughts now about how characters can change so much by staying exactly the same that they become unrecogniseable. And how becoming iconic absolutely trashed the fundamentals of the trenchcoat brigade. You shouldn't be able to pick them out of a crowd, that's what the coat is *for*, what do you mean Legends' coat is designer enough you can tell from the collar, the original comics coat might be a demon in itself from being worn to hell and back, and Dark has the coat be inherited??? I mean, utterly changing the meaning of the symbol every time, much? Also! Being a punk when punk was the new thing signifies something entirely different than being a punk when you grew up a generation later. Every generation's music should generate its own trenchcoat Constantine and I feel strongly about that even when I am not enough of a music person to have a clue how to do it. And! There are trends and developments in occultism too! Like seriously, I haven't paid attention since the 90s but there's several waves of 20th century New Hot Thing I vaguely read about. Vertigo!John had a very specific relationship with them when I was reading. If you keep him standing still in some kind of post modern mashup that mostly references previous issues of *itself* now then you smush the meanings into a new kind of Tradition instead of the original Transformation, in music and magic both.

I have opinions and they're not very educated on this one, but still.

I have only the vaguest of ideas what a guy you couldn't pick out from the crowd who is still the explosive New Thing would look like even if he was my age exactly, it would change rapidly. I have no idea what a 21 year old rebel looks like right now.

So. Feelings about Iconic and iconoclasm. I has them but they're all vague and get off my lawn.

Oh, and I'm not complaining about how other people write, that's not the way up I mean. It's just the guy who acts the exact same way at 20 and 60 becomes a very different guy, even if a sliding timeline gets involved, and so do his cultural referents. And it's interesting even when annoying and makes me want to reinvent again.

And there's a character who when I google him the articles rather improbably say he's a way of bringing a multiverse John back into JLDark? Only then they are dating. And then he's evil. Which is a lot, and apparently in very few issues, which I haven't read. But. At this point a trenchcoat using the exact punk magic of the Vertigo sort could have a generation or two of *mentors*, and relationships within a community doing the same things. Not just lateral ones (like you get in BtVS xovers because Ripper and Conjob were interestingly similar). Long term community that existed before you got there. And that is a different guy! And it's fascinating even if they aren't magic married, but if they *are*... well none of the fic is doing the same as the other fic so I can only assume source is really skinny on this one but, concept.

I keep thinking I could do something fiction shaped with several concept, but the characters in my head don't even match the fic, let alone the sources, so I'd have to file serial numbers off or something.

Like I keep coming back to the question of who wants to be John Constantine when they already know about John Constantine, because you kind of need to to explain John, and it's a tricky one. He built the icon and now what?

Now a lot of canon I haven't read that sounds very dark.

And some TV show I have waiting for me to watch any time I want to get up and do that.

Mostly though I am probably going back to sleep.

Just like in general this week.

dorinda

I got a Nero Wolfe story for Yuletide this year, a Saul/Nero with a fitting hint of Saul/Archie!

Frozen Pipes and An Unassuming Smile (3319 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Nero Wolfe - Rex Stout
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Saul Panzer/Nero Wolfe
Characters: Nero Wolfe, Saul Panzer, Archie Goodwin, Fritz Brenner
Additional Tags: little sprinkle of Archie/Saul just because. i mean have we read the books
Summary: His Christmas plans ruined by an iced-over interstate, Archie comes home unexpectedly to find someone else in his chair. Now he has to figure out why Saul Panzer's in the brownstone and why Wolfe is being so damnably cagey about it before—Well, actually, he doesn't have to figure it out at all. But he's bored and he's curious, so...

The dynamic between Saul Panzer and Nero Wolfe in the books is extremely enjoyable, though of course never center stage. They have a lot in common and are personal friends, and Saul pops up in some very intimate places, including one book where Wolfe reveals that Saul is asleep up in Wolfe's own room (!) after an exhausting patch of casework.

So my signup included interest in Saul/Wolfe (as well as Saul/Archie and Archie/Wolfe), and my author ended up writing the first entry in the Saul/Wolfe tag! One of its delights is that it also gives us a good characterization of Archie, as he tries to solve this mystery propelled by his own affronted sense of territoriality re: Wolfe. It's a very cozy brownstone story, with delicious meals, and Fritz of course knowing everything. :D

garryowen

Fandom: Brilliant Minds
Pairings/Characters: Josh/Oliver
Rating: E
Length: 5k
Summary: It’s probably not smart to go to a gala with the person who broke your heart, but Josh has never been smart when it comes to Wolf.
Content Notes: a bit angsty
ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76526586

( One Foot in Front of the Other )

luzula

Day 24: No writing, also I didn't have time to reply to comments because my sister's family is here and it takes up all the time (in a very good way!)

Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 25:

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

goddess47,

china_shop,

Day 26:

china_shop

Bonus farm news: I love my sister. <3 Also, she gave me heirloom bean varieties for Christmas. She definitely knows me...

artificialsatellite

Work has been absolutely nuts, which is always the case at the end of the year (and beginning) in pharmacy, but I work in a slightly different part of pharmacy than I've worked in before, and as a result my end of the year is still very busy, but in a different and more frustrating way. We'll get through it, I just gotta hold on and weather the storm. It helps that what I do now is making a positive difference in people's lives, so it makes the stress a little (little!) bit easier to bear.

Did finish mom's cross stitch just in time for Christmas, though. Pics under the cut!

( What would JB Fletcher do? )

Aside from that I have been missing roleplay, like, a LOT. I miss fandom in general, but I kind of feel like I'm on the periphery now, and things have changed a lot. The atmosphere is different, people engage in fandom differently, and if I'm being brutally honest, being Jewish in fandom spaces over the last couple of years has been, uh... tough. But even if that weren't the case, I do think the ✨vibe✨, so to speak, is just different and that's partially a cultural change over all and partially a change in where and how fandom stuff takes place now - the format of places like Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter (if people still even use it?) doesn't lend itself to the kind of fandom participation that used to be common.

I don't know. I might just be drowning in nostalgia? Not to be all BACK IN MY DAY but I do really miss the sense of community and involvement that fandom used to have, and people will say "Well fandom was like this back then, too." and I won't deny we had assholes back then, but it's not about bad behavior (although that's a factor) so much as it is just... everything is very different now and I don't know where people go to do the things I used to love about fandom stuff, if they even do, which it is very possible they just don't anymore.

IIIIdk.

I haven't written in a while despite having multiple ongoing fics, but there's just been a lot of things demanding my attention for the last few months and I am looking forward to things eventually getting a little less demanding so I can get back to them. Just gotta make it through the first couple weeks of January.

gwyn

My house is redolent of anise and molasses and sugar and all the good spices from baking cookies all day. I have this ancient recipe from my mom's side of the family for these anise cookies that almost no one likes, and I used to make them with Dad all the time but I find it intimidating at the best of times, and these days aren't exactly the best. But I had to type it up a few years ago for someone on metafilter, and so I decided to try my hand at them on my own with a little help from mlyn, and while it didn't go great, it also wasn't a total disaster, so I figured I'd try again this year because I've missed them. There's just really nothing else out there like them, and much as I like pfefferneuse, it's not nearly close enough, though that's really the only thing in the spice/uncommon-in-America flavor profile cookie I know of. Also since I never really know if I'm going to be around in a year, I wanted to enjoy them while I could.

Back a few years ago when I made them, I asked

musesfool, baker extraordinaire, for some advice on the recipe, because baking is just a mystery to me and I'm quite bad at it. She had some really good advice, but did I go look at it to refresh my memory before I began starting on the dough? No, I did not. So I made a lot of mistakes. Dad and I found it was best to let the dough sit in the fridge overnight, and the baked cookies are better when they sit for a day or two before icing, so it's kind of like a three-day extravaganza, and with my fatigue issues, I also have to constantly sit down. I am just fucking exhausted now and I still have more to do!

It makes so many cookies (and that was after my dad cut the recipe down three times!) that you're just baking and baking and baking. I had to shut the oven off and go sit for a while, in between big batches. But now they are baked and I will try to ice them all tomorrow, or at least as many as I can handle, so I can share them with the only people who wouldn't hate them. They don't taste terrible for all that I fucked up, but I can really tell I messed up mixing the early ingredients, and wish I'd read the instructions and musesfool's advice before I started. What a dumbass. Also, it's really a lie that turbinado sugar or succanat can substitute for white sugar. I didn't want to go out just to get sugar, which I thought I had enough of, but it does not turn out the same without white sugar and they are liars.

I bought myself some stuff to make a little Christmas dinner for one, but my stomach was roiling today for most of the day, and ended up just eating a bagel and some of the cookies that caught and were too burned to give away to anyone.

Now that I am so exhausted and the house smells so good, I think I'm going to head to bed early--I stayed up too late last night anyway, because it's my tradition to always watch It's a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve and then I was poking around in the Yuletide archive for far too long. I was so shocked that it opened in the middle of the day yesterday! I didn't see a whole lot that looked intriguing, since I'm so out of the loop on fandoms these days, but there's definitely some stuff to read and I was really thrilled to see that Rose Lerner's book True Pretenses had a fic written for it this year! So I had to read that one immediately.

Anyway, I hope you had a great holiday if you celebrate, and a very nice Thursday if you don't, and I will respond to all your kind comments on my last post soon, I promise.