quillori

The following pinch hits are due at 11:59pm EDT, Friday 20 March or your best offer. To claim, please reply with your AO3 name, and let me know which recipient/PH number you want. You're also welcome to claim by emailing mod.modzilla@gmail.com.

If you have a current pinch hit, I'm happy to discuss extensions. However, your deadline is not automatically extended. Please contact me if you'd like more time.

Minimum requirements: An art gift must be a completed comic at least 10 pages or 40 panels long; a fic gift must be a story at least 10,000 words long. You can also fulfil a pinch hit by giving two complete half-length works, if your recipient has opted into that for the fandom(s) you are creating in. Any work must be for a fandom your recipient has requested and one character/relationship/worldbuilding tag requested in that fandom, and must avoid their DNWs.

Pinch hits can be claimed in 5k or 20-panel increments if the recipient has opted into receiving half-length works. Please say in your claim if you're claiming a pinch hit for 5k (fic) or 20 panels (comic), and for what fandom.

( Pinch hit #32 - fic - Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (TV), Murder She Wrote, Jem and the Holograms (Cartoon), G.I. Joe (Cartoon), Voltron: Lion Force (1984) )

This pinch hit can be part-claimed as one story of 5,000+ words

( PARTLY CLAIMED - Pinch hit #62 - art, fic - 少年歌行 | The Blood of Youth (Live Action TV), 莲花楼 | Mysterious Lotus Casebook (TV), 琅琊榜 | Nirvana in Fire (TV), 伪装者 | The Disguiser (TV), 少年白马醉春风 | Dashing Youth (Live Action TV), 杀破狼 | Sha Po Lang - priest, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) x2 )

This pinch hit can be fulfilled with one story of 5,000+ words or one comic of 20+ panels. Please also see newly-added requests!

( Pinch hit #56 - art, fic - 9-1-1 (TV), 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga), Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types )

This pinch hit can be part-claimed as one story of 5,000+ words or one comic of 20+ panels.

See below cut for CLAIMED pinch hits!

Tags:

pinch hits

The Life You Build (18285 words) by Hannah
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Top Gun (Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Tom "Iceman" Kazansky/Pete "Maverick" Mitchell
Characters: Ron "Slider" Kerner, Tom "Iceman" Kazansky, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Ron "Slider" Kerner is a Good Friend, Jewish Tom "Iceman" Kazansky, Catholic Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, Don't Ask Don't Tell, dishonorable discharge, Los Angeles, Gay Pride, Gay Wrath
Summary:

§ 925. Art. 125. Sodomy

(a) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense.

(b) Any person found guilty of sodomy shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

-

I officially have a new record for walking in late to a fandom with Starbucks. It's how I've come to describe joining an established fandom, looking around at what's been written, trying to find a story that seems like it ought to have arrived by now, struggling to believe I have to do it myself, and having to do it myself. The last times I've done this for specific fandoms, it was about 21 years since their debuts, both for Deep Space Nine - Julian Bashir never getting the genetic modifications, with DS9 coming out in 1993 and the fic getting published in 2014 - and for Buffy - an all-human AU where it's still Sunnydale, Buffy living on into retirement and enjoying her life, achieving status as public figure, her and Spike simply making a wish to have a baby, with Buffy coming out in 1997 and the first of several fics getting published in 2018.

There's been a handful of times it's been for tropes and general ideas that could go to just about any fandom, like that one I wrote for mpreg where the technology to get men pregnant was developed to achieve maternity leave reform in the United States and the character exploration simply happened to be for the show Scrubs when it could just as easily have been for any number of reasonably grounded fandoms that take place in what's more or less the real world. In fact, I'm certain there's a few fandoms where having that level of medical technology in the background would have the canon make somewhat more sense given what we see them do. And it wasn't a take on mpreg I'd ever seen before. I just happened to wander in after several decades of fandom and do it myself.

I've made a habit of doing this, and like I said, I have a new record for it.

Because in the forty years this fandom's been around, nobody's written anything where Iceman and Maverick are dishonorably discharged from the Navy. Nothing. There's been fics that tackle the culture of secrecy, or Don't Ask Don't Tell, or the legalization of gay marriage in the US. There's been fics that take place in a much kinder world where it's not an issue. There's been fics that skip past it because it doesn't work with the kind of story the author's trying to write. But there hasn't been anything about receiving a dishonorable discharge and living with what comes after.

Lawrence versus Texas happened when I was in high school. I saw Don't Ask Don't Tell come and go. I remember the pictures from the San Francisco courthouse and the wave of joy from Obergefell. I like to say that fandoms like Top Gun deliver a particular type of yearning you can't get anywhere else, especially not contemporary ones, and a lot of that's from the world those fandoms take place in. It's not a world most people want to visit, and it's the world I grew up in. I didn't mind going back there for a while.

Sometimes I feel like people forget how recent all of this is. Forty years is a long time for a movie to be around, and for people to be writing fic about that movie. For the idea to have taken this long to arrive speaks to what the fandom wants to write about. I can understand that people would rather avoid this kind of thing. Just as much, I can't grasp why nobody else thought to give it a try. I'll admit to being a little proud for being the first one to do it, and a little grateful that this is a reflection of the world that was, not the world that is.

Forty years is a good long time.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Kindergarten - Voxtrot

Went to a memorial Thing, for

minoanmiss. (Speaking of, apparently her parents are getting told soon, so we're cleared to go posting in the clear.) Meant to get there early enough to help with cooking for the Watertown Free Fridge, but I didn't, or rather, I got there late because I hadn't had coffee and got some, and then discovered I had forgotten my seltzer I'd gotten as an event thing, so I waffled and came down on the "bringing something is important in a symbolic way" and stopped at Trader Joe's to get lemonade.

I did get there theoretically in time to cook (which we were doing as a memorial thing because Ny did buttloads of cooking for the Fridge), but I kept getting happily lodged in conversations and/or hugs instead, so, well, it was what it was, and it was good.

(I will donate to and/or volunteer at my local Food Pantry in her honor, methinks.)

Stickers, fans, poetry, food, pictures, recipes, music, people, laughter, sadness, occasional sudden memories popping up for people. Because of someone else's story, Eggplant Caponara will now be associated with Ny for me. And when I was outside taking a people break,

katarik sang what turned out to be an Episcopal mourning hymn but which to me (before I asked) was someone with a very nice voice singing something that works very well for her voice, which was steeped in sadness yet joy and beauty. It spoke to and of the afternoon.

I took enough fans that I can use some of them as Kid Prizes at work. (And buy some more later. The stickers aren't quite my thing; Ny gave them to small people she met in the subway and doctor's offices and so on, but I think I'll leave that as a thing to smile about about Ny, not as a Thing To Adopt.)

Saw someone from High School I literally have not seen in what, 30 years? (I mean, we read each other's journals, but it's different.) Honestly, haven't seen most of these folks in at least 15 years, because school eats my brain and then my work schedule is peculiar and family stuff is what it is, but the point is: was good. Even though I felt like I was hyper and a little off balance.

(Thanks to the Cambridge Commons co-housing folks for hosting. And thanks to the snowdrops there, too. First of the season for me!)

The Virtual Memorial, I have just learned, will be on April 12 at 1 pm Eastern, via Zoom. I assume the link will be shared on the Google announce list. (If you're not on there yet, just follow the link and explain how you know Ny to the nice friendly info-boxes.)

Also, more info on Things Ny Related, including vague but pertinent info on who her organs went to, here.

LOL I am all up in everything HR so much so that it's not even funny. :o)

So the last time I posted I was 5 days in, had watched it once, bought the books and was just about to start a second rewatch - that was last Saturday.

I read all 6 books in 2.5 days, completed a second rewatch, randomly watched eps 3-6 across 4 nights (because why not?) and then decided it would be fun to match reading the relevant chapters of HR and then watch the relevant episodes. I got as far as ep 3 and then got distracted by more cast interviews and HR insta and threads.

Yeserday I disappeared down the YouTube rabbit hole of fan vids - so now I have 193 open tabs across 2 browser windows, there's music playing, I have no idea where it's coming from and I'm in the middle of curating playlists on my YouTube. I need to remember how to DL from YouTube because I want a good chunk of those vids accessible to me at all times and never worry about them being pulled.

I may be curating playlists on Spotify for my gym workouts because HR bvidders use great music for their vids. And...um...I have a bunch of meta posts bookmarked to go back and read properly after the current rewatch.

Still noticing new things - all the subtle little whispered remarks that weren't obvious on first or second viewing. I need to see the whole series on a screen bigger than my tablet.

I'm catching up on the cast interviews which I'm finding delightful and astonishing. I mean the 3 minute social media sound bites, wild humour and meeting fans where they live was an absolute gift - but the long form interviews with their openness, vulnerability and in depth discussions are just blowing my mind.

Still steering clear of fanfic - because there are only 24 hours in a day - and I'm not sure I have time for an "Inception" level fandom event in my life - though I suspect I'm fighting a failed rearguard action there. Inception inhabited my brain for 2.5 years and with S2 of Heated Rivalry not airing until '27 and (please god) a potential further season - it's quite possible I'll be fully consumed by this until 2028.

Around all of that it's been super busy at work and I've been making a bunch of appointments/ running errands which come under the heading of "Get Your Shit Together" but for the first time in months I feel like I'm fully firing on all cylinders.

Not sure how much of that is down to the Little Canadian Hockey Romance That Could or whether it's due to the fact that we've had more than a few days of sunshine, warmth and blue skies (and not the dreary grey, wet and miserable days we've had since before Christmas) - whatever! I'm running with it.

Tags:

heated rivalry

The YouTube algorithm has seen my interest in figure skating and started offering me classical ballet (I think, always difficult to tell how one gets where one ends up).

So I've been watching bits and pieces of that, as well as all of The Royal Ballet's Cinderella. I therefore offer you some fully random observations, from someone who never got into any kind of dance as a kid, and therefore knows baaaaaasically nothing about the topic. (I have been to several ballets in person, The Nutcracker of course, and the Winnipeg Ballet's Svengali..)

I like classical ballet (I'm not really watching modern) because it's quite ridiculous, and unconnected to anything that has ever happened on the face of the Earth.

I have learned that there's dialogue! Classical ballet has a kind of sign language, done through gestures, so that the dancers can explain plot points such as "We make evil men dance until they die!" and "This lake is made of my mother's tears!"

There does not seem to be much point to the male principal dancers. They have thighs like birch trees, which allows them to leap impressively high in the air, but they don't spin around on nothing but their big toe, which makes them less interesting to watch. Their main purposes seems to be to move the plot along, and act as a "Ballerina holder upper."

Maybe it's just because I'm not good enough at reading the mime, but the romantic dances are... not very romantic. They mostly seem to be the ballerina holder upper holding up the ballerina while she spins around on her big toe.

I don't know if there's non-transphobic/misogynistic way to do the comedy roles where male dancers play female characters, but Cinderella sure didn't manage it.

The plot of Giselle is really interesting (boy meets girl, girl dies when she finds out that boy has, girl joins chorus of vengeful ghosts, vengeful ghosts attempt to kill boy, girl saves boy), and I wonder if there have been modern retellings like there have of other old fairytales.

I'm pretty sure the human body is not designed to do any of that.

Which is all I have for now.

Tags:

fandom: other plays

Posted by Rae Deng

https://www.snopes.com/tracker/save-america-act-women-vote/

Trump said on March 8 that he would not sign any other legislation into law until the SAVE America Act is passed.

https://www.snopes.com/tracker/save-america-act-women-vote/

Thursday was dentist day. An absolutely routine cleaning.
Friday was go to Fort Bragg and see Richard day. He fixed both Donald and my backs. As usual I went in with pain and emerged an hour later pain free. Nice drive, easy and almost traffic free.
Garden. ( Cut for pics )

Reading. I continue to work my way through the She's A Beast archives, to a degree that is not necessarily ... uh ... optimal, in terms of all the other things I want to do...

I slowed down on LIFTOFF, on account of resuming reading from the start with A, and then this evening I tripped and fell and am. More. of the way through it. again.

Finished What Is Queer Food? by John Birdsall. Ultimately the argument is that the queerness is a function of community -- the role that food plays in eating together -- though he also tries at various points for "enjoying food is queer" (among other things), which I do not think I am the target audience for. (Having said which I am now wondering what it would take to convince me of that line of reasoning, and Ideas Are Stirring. Hmm.) Overall a mixture of anecdotes from culinary history and fiction to fill in events that went unrecorded; he does hold space for people to be complex and flawed, and I appreciated the history that was actually history, but -- alas, this did not really work for me.

Writing. Words. Continue. To be. Eked out.

Watching. The 2026 Migraine World Summit is ongoing and eating a lot of my time and brain; thus far nothing has made me actually vibrate with fury and I've had a couple of useful joining-the-dots moments, so mustn't grumble there, really. And I have finally watched the talks from last year's Day 2 that I missed due to time changes, and have started transferring my digital notes from last year into my notebook...

Playing. Inkulinati: we continue Not Dead Yet in the Exploders run on Master difficulty.

The Ridiculous Colours Game.

Sudoku... appears to have let go of my brain for now?

Cooking. This evening I have been attempting to remember how to make Spätzle, and got there eventually (part of the difficulty being that this is the first time I've made them since acquiring a dedicated Spätzlebrett, and I needed to reestablish correct consistency of the dough...)

Eating. This morning we engaged in a Weekend Morning Ritual of going down to the local fancy bakery and getting brunch from them. We also got Treats for Afternoon Tea; I am delighted that they'll supply me with cardamom buns that I don't have to actually make myself.

I have also been Craving Brownies, but not enough to actually make them myself (and also The Oven Is Broken), and consequently have eaten them courtesy of both Wagamama (ritual Thursday night takeaway) and London Zoo (Saturday afternoon tea).

Exploring. London Zoo! Saw creatures! Maybe I will even go back and edit in more details about the creatures! Creatures: good.

Several bimbles around local front gardens (etc) to enjoy Spring Flowers.

Growing. Harvested (and consumed!) more salad. Transplanted some garlic. Wrangled some more weeding. Have yet to sow any more things but really want to have Actual Plants this growing season so, uh, maybe that can be a priority for Breaks From Migraine World Summit, not that that's worked so far...

Observing. THE BAT.

And then for brunch this morning we took our breakfast slightly further than usual to a different park bench, this one surrounded by daffodils, and then additionally wandered a little way down the New River (neither new, nor a river) to see if the coots were doing things yet (which I have also been checking every time I go to the pharmacy to pick up meds). The coots aren't, BUT there were TEN EGYPTIAN GOSLINGS peeping about the place!!! At least one of whom was Extremely keen on coming All the way down the bank and plapping along the edge of the bricks, presumably because they were warm and felt nice on feet? Certainly two very gentle attempts to chase it back towards its parents got them contemplating hissing at me, and only persuaded it to maybe do the thing for about thirty seconds at most, so I gave up on that and just stood back and watched them for a bit, and then was very relieved that the foolhardy baby did upon parents Alarm Calling (as best we can tell about A Passing Dog) go FWEEP FWEEP FWEEP all the way back up and into the bundle of its siblings. An unexpected and very welcome delight.

Tags:

vital functions

Got up yesterday morning baked 4 loaves of soda bread (here's a picture of 2 of them), ate some myself (I kept the 4th loaf) then schlepped out ot the island to deliver them to my brother, sister, and niece.

We went out for a fun dinner - the onion rings at this place are so good! even if the service was a little haphazard - and then I went home with my brother's family. It was early enough that I could have come back here, but my middle niece was like, "aren't you going to hang out with us?!" so of course I stayed, and ended up watching KPop Demon Hunters with middle and youngest niece (youngest was like I don't wanna! but at the end she was like, that was really good!). I should note that they are 27 and 24, but they still like hanging out with me! <333 And now we want the prequel about Rumi's mother and her demon affair.

My car this morning came 90 minutes early, so I rolled out of bed expecting to be able to have a bagel and a cup of coffee before I had to leave, but there he was, blocking the driveway, so I got home before I was even scheduled to leave.

The amount of benadryl and Zyrtec I have to take at their house because of the cat is ridiculous, and I ended up coming home and sleeping for most of the day. I'm glad I didn't cancel my PTO day tomorrow though - I scheduled it when this dinner was originally planned for tonight. I did tell my boss she could ping me if she needed me ahead of their meeting with the board chair tomorrow afternoon, but I so hope she doesn't.

*

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Music: What It Sounds Like - Huntrix

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The wall-to-wall crowd of the memorial from which I have just returned testifies to the love poured out and returned by the guest of honor, but I would still rather have been in the worldline where they were present to be celebrated in more than memory.

Current Music: Jack Johnson, "Better Together"

Swan Lake is, after the Nutcracker, perhaps the most basic ballet there is. It's considered the peak of classical ballet (note: in ballet, the romantic era comes before the classic, so that while Tchaikovsky is a romantic composer, he is a composer of classic ballets), but I think the part of the reason for its longevity is that it has multiple ending variants, broadly divided into "villain wins" and "lovers prevail".

Short synopsis:

including the prologue!

[Prologue] Princess Odette gets kidnapped by an evil sorcerer, Rothbart, and cursed to become a swan who can only turn human by night. (He has a collection of women he's done this to.) Her mom turns up and cries so much her tears form the titular Swan Lake. Basically no-one performs this part anymore.

The Curse: a prince must publicly proclaim to love Odette and only Odette; if she is betrayed in love, she and all the other swan maidens are condemned to stay swans forever. Allegedly this will also happen if Rothbart dies before the curse is broken.

[Act 1 Scene 1] The production will probably start here, in a palace courtyard. Lots of partying and jolly dancing. Prince Siegfried gets gifted a crossbow. His mom tells him that tomorrow, at his 18th birthday party, he will have to pick a girl to marry.

[Act 1 Scene 2] Siegfried goes hunting! He sees a beautiful swan, who then turns into a beautiful woman. He is awed and they then fall in love. Corps de ballet is the other swan maidens, with divertissements of the four little swans and three large swans.

[Act 2 Scene 1] The birthday party. Lots of dancing in the form of divertissements. Siegfried turns down all the women his mother has thoughfully assembled, to everyone's shock. But then! The party is gatecrashed by a dude and his swan-y daughter, Odile – the black swan. The dude is none other than Rothbart, and Siegfried enspelled to see Odette when he looks at Odile. (In basically every production over, it's the same ballerina; all that changes is the color of the tutu.) Odette tries to fly in the window but is stopped. Siegfried proclaims his undying love to Odile, at which point Rothbart goes lol and draws back the curtains to reveal Odette behind the window, watching all this. Much drama ensues, Siegfried runs off, his mom faints, etc.

[Act 2 Scene 2] Back at the lake, Siegfried searches out Odette amidst the other swan maidens who have now all been condemned to an eternity as swans due to him. They meet and dance together. Then Rothbart shows up, and this is where things get interesting wrt potential ending variants. In a bunch of them, Rothbart takes Odette and she becomes a swan forever, and Siegfried tragically beseeches the audience etc (unless he's danced by Nureyev, in which case he drowns). In others, Rothbart gets defeated either by Siegfried killing him somehow, or simply by the True Love (TM) being so powerful it outpowers the curse; cue happy ending.

The Paris Ballet Theatre put on the happy ending which I believe is most popular in Russia: Siegfried steals one of Rothbart's wings (he is owl-coded), thus depriving him of his powers and defeating him. As usual, I bought the program, and this time they even had DVDs, so I bought one! Next up, buying an external DVD drive so I can rip it...

Dancing: Their principal danseur is very good at projecting this sort of naïve and innocent vibe, which fits Siegfried well. Their prima ballerina worked great as Odette, though Odile could've had a bit of extra spice. The costuming was amazing, with 109887 sequins on everyone, and I appreciated the slightly softer tutus (vs hardcore platter tutus) of the swans.

Also this is basically the Ballets Russes reborn. They dance Vaganova/Russian style, the dancers got their training in places like Armenia and the Komi Republic (in Russia), were soloists in places like the Bolshoi Theater and the Ural Opera (both in Russia), and the maîtrisse de ballet is Belarusian. Also the live music, The Orchestra of Budapest, is basically an international company formed out of almost exclusively Eastern European musicians, with a Belarusian conductor.

Note to self: rows G-P probably the best for seeing stuff, since it's far enough up that you can see the back of the stage/some of what the corps de ballet is doing formation-wise and aren't upskirting everyone nonstop, but close enough you can see expressions.

Tags:

f: ballet

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* Last night went I went to go stretch my legs after watching hockey, a cop decided to do the whole 'slow down, stare at me, block the cross walk' shit on me. He didn't just do a slow roll, he actually stopped for about 10 seconds and blocked my path. JFC, I don't need that shit.

* Sports Bra finally posted the info for the bus to the Torrent Pride game. I was about to give up and book a bus trip/hotel. Now I need to figure out food since I don't think I can eat anything at CPA and don't know if I can get away with bringing in a protein bar.

Posted by Joey Esposito

https://www.snopes.com/collections/oscars-academy-awards-rumors/

From host gossip to the infamous Will Smith slap, we've put together an A-list collection of Academy Awards-related investigations.

https://www.snopes.com/collections/oscars-academy-awards-rumors/

Last week's bread held out admirably.

Friday night supper: ven pongal (South India khichchari).

Saturday breakfast rolls: eclectic vanilla, came out a bit more vanilla-y than usual.

Today's lunch: Norwegian halibut fillets panfried for slightly less long than suggested on packet, as I have found this in the past to be a bit of an over-estimate, served with samphire sauce, baby cauliflowers quartered and cooked thus (used lime and lemongrass vinegar for the acidulation) and La Ratte potatoes roasted in goosefat.

Tags:

cooking,
recipes

So, L and I went to see Hoppers at the movies on Thursday. The premise sounded very stupid to me when I first heard about it, but L had showed me the “lizard lizard lizard lizard” teaser some months ago, and the lizard looked cute, and L wanted to see it by RH was not interested in seeing it with her, so I said I would. I watched Dan Murrell’s review of it with some trepidation, but he said it was a good, though “lesser” Pixar, with a good message but not too preachy, which seemed relatively reassuring. And both L and I ended up enjoying it more than we expected and laughing A LOT, which was nice.

We saw it in 4DX, which was my first experience of that at feature length – ( more on this part )

In fact, the only time the chair-jolting part became really unpleasant was during ( the previews )

The movie itself was fun! ( More, with marked spoilers )

It’s not a movie that will stay with me in some, you know, profound way, like an Encanto or an Inside Out or a Spider-Verse, but it was cute and a time well spent! I even don’t terribly resent it for costing us $33/person XD (though, seriously, that is insane).

*

I also watched a couple of comedy specials:

Pierre Novellie Why Can't I Just Enjoy Things special – about his autism diagnosis via heckler. I liked Novellie when he appeared on How Do You Cope, talking about his autism, and enjoyed him as a guest on Elis & John, in more free-form conversation, and then

scytale recommended this special, so I watched it (because I couldn’t get into Netflix for some reason, and B, whose email it’s linked to, was asleep in Normandy, so I couldn’t watch the James Acaster specials I was planning to watch with my solo dinner at home). ( I liked it (some joke spoilers) )

And then I was watching his other special on YouTube, Quiet Ones, and there is a bit he reads from a paper (because he finds it too boring to remember) about Moore’s Law XD I mean, what are the odds XD XD This show was from 2021, so a lot of it is about the lockdown, and I generally thought it was less strong (which makes sense, you would expect an artist to get better at his art as he practices it more), but I did appreciate the “quiet ones” bit, among the differences between men and women, after which the show is (justly) named.

*

Some more Taskmaster-adjacent content:

- CoC 4 portrait fanart -- what a gloriously mad bunch! :D (cartoon!Andy is my favorite)

- Another Taskmaster Podcast popped up for the second live event in NYC (the last night of the tour). There was some repetition of stuff I heard Greg say on other stops or other interviews, but still some fun gleanings. ( Assorted tidbits )

Long Alex & Greg interview during the US tour (YouTube): Fun and thoughtful, with some unusual questions and good rapport. ( Assorted tidbits )

*

I think it's also time for an Elis & John catch-up. It’s been a bit over a month since my last post, but really, because it took me about a month to get through the previous catch-ups, over 3 separate posts, I’ve actually got over two months worth of listening I’m catching up on – i.e. 2 months of new shows and about 7 months of Radio X backlog.

First, a visual bit: John and a giant teddy (from ~10 years ago?)

Second, John was on Chris and Rosie Ramsey’s “Shagged, Married, Annoyed” podcast earlier this year, where the schtick with the guest is he reads a listener-submitted story, which of course I don’t have much interest in, but he also talked about some personal stuff in more detail than I’ve heard elsewhere. (The recording was from about 6 months earlier than the podcast, so, mid-2025-ish, because How Do You Cope was actively putting out episodes and John said he’d been sober for 2.5 years, when he passed three years in November 2025.) ( Personal tidbits: giving up meat, spooky bum procedure )

Catching up on the current shows, ( Jan - Mar 2026 )

(I do also have ~8 months of Radio X shows to post about, but that's going to be a separate post -- hopefully it all fits in one, LOL.)

*

And oh hey, it's mid-March somehow, so this is probably a good time to check in on my ( fannish goals )

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Fandom: due South

Pairings/Characters: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski, Maggie McKenzie

Rating: General Audiences

Length: 4,422 words

Creator Links:Ao3, Tumblr

Theme: Siblings, post-canon

Summary: "Maggie, moving on."

Reccer's Notes: This is a post-canon fic from the point of view of Maggie, Ben's sister. They didn't grow up together and she appears in exactly one episode of due South before disappearing back up to the Arctic Circle. In this post-canon fic they end up working together and get to know each other better. See also Sixthlight's short AU fic about Benton and Maggie from dS Ladies Fest!

Fanwork Links: Ao3

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Had several dreams, including one in which

sovay and I were watching an old movie titled, iirc, Coral Island, though it had nothing to do with the Edwardian boys’-adventure novel of the same name. I’m pretty sure Robert Newton was in it, though his character disappeared from the plot midway through.

sovay then learnt of some recently-discovered footage in which the camera had been kept running between takes, and the chatter of the actors was audible. In the manner of dreams, the footage was immersive, and we could walk into it. Apparently we were visible to them, though they took us for extras and mostly ignored us, except for somebody from Wardrobe who ran up and handed me some more-appropriate stockings and shoes.

Somehow this then segued into a different dream in which I was editing/writing speeches for the Democrats. I kept telling anybody who’d listen that I was Canadian and I wasn’t sure if I could legally work for them, but nobody paid any attention. Also the speech I was writing eventually turned into a script about the protagonist seeking advice from a magical cat.

Tags:

dream

Pinch hits #32, 62, 70

Title: The Life You Build

that was weird

Heated Rivalry update

and now for something completely different

What voting under SAVE America Act could look like for married women, other US voters

Fort Bragg, garden, burning

vital functions

nothing but the truth now

There's no combination of words I could put on the back of a postcard

Ballet Experience: Swan Lake

Bridgerton show vs novel

Art: Hiroshige 9

Six Sentence Sunday

(no subject)

15 rumors about the Oscars we've screened

Culinary

Watching + listening roundup (Hoppers, Britcom rabbit hole) + fannish goals checkin

due South: lay down your heavy load by Sixthlight

Dream Report

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