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Apologies to friends here at DW. I've been so obsessed with HR everything I'd gotten very behind in reading my flist here. I am now caught up! Will try to do better.

I remember this state from when I first fell into fandom in about 2008/2009, and the key word is salience. The object of your desire becomes virtually the only salient (important) thing. Everything else pales in comparison and seems less important and interesting. It's no accident that salience is a technical term in addiction medicine. It's for sure linked with dopamine receptors and my brain is now very trained to give me dopamine hits for things related to HR, especially, at this stage, fic.

I'm not complaining, but I realise that we loons (an in-joke name suggested for the HR fandom) must be tiresome for those not in the fandom. (There's a solution to that...)

Anyway, it's also midsummer here and very nice, too. The garden (will do a few pics soon) is getting blowsy and a bit beset by fungal annoyances as we've continued to have intermittent rain and high humidity, but most days have highs of 27^C which is lovely and not too hot. Perfect for lying around reading and rewatching! I finally finished and mailed my second tranche of seasonal cards for NZ friends and family, the earlier lot having been sent overseas. They're later than usual due to the aforementioned salience of other distractions.

The bloody ducks managed to force their way back into my water garden through the duck dome, so the dome is now a basket weave with weft as well as warp, and tied more firmly to the barrel. The waterlilies are slowly recovering for a second time. The giant Mexican sunflower (Tithonia) is once more as tall as the house, having regrown from a 2 foot stub after cutting back. I'm not sure there's anything in the earth under my flat except Tithonia roots, these days. My peppers aren't thriving - not enough direct sun, as my potted plants got away from me and I didn't have the peppers in the front row. Lesson learned. Scarlet runner beans are doing well, but a lot of veggies and annuals haven't been great, probably as the very hot early summer exhausted and confused them. I'll plant some things earlier, in winter next year (sweet peas, tomatoes, peppers.)

Okay, that's my update - hugs for everyone and hope you're all coping with 2026 so far!

(Downs periscope and prepares to dive back into excellent HR fic).

mific

Ok, so I have committed my first HR fic! A short, fluffy, h/c fic about Ilya and the white fleece jacket from the Sochi Olympics. So Fluffy.

Also a larger artwork combining a photoshoot pic, Ember and Ice and Heated Rivalry. I had a better ref for Shane, and am especially happy with how he came out. It's rated mature, NSFW. Diplomatic Relations.

It's an interesting fandom to be posting works in. In my older, quieter fandoms there's much more community engagement and more comments, with everyone aware the fandom's relatively small, these days, so more loyalty. In HR there's this frenzy of creation (nearly 7000 works so far), and fans hungrily soak up what's created with almost instant hits in the thousands, masses of kudos and bookmarks, and very few comments. Both types of fandom have their pros and cons. I'm just happy to be energised into writing more, and that energy rubs off (heh) onto my other main fandoms as well. What a time to be alive! (I realize seriously shitty things continue to happen elsewhere, but honestly, HR saved 2005 for me and many others, so I'm going to enjoy it.)

jamethiel

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thedarkcanuck

[VID] Don't Let Go - Fraser/Kowalski (12 words) by TheDarkCanuck
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: due South
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski
Characters: Benton Fraser, Ray Kowalski

sineala

What I Just Finished Reading

Nothing. Once again, it is migraines. I am getting some fic edited, though, so there's that.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

( Nova Centurion #3, Ultimate Wolverine #13, Ultimate X-Men #23 )

What I'm Reading Next

IDK. I'm trying to find something short. I mean, clearly I'm being challenged by picture books here, lol.

Current Mood: nauseated

sage

books
We The People: a history of the US Constitution by Jill Lepore. Very nearly a 5 star book. It's about amendments and the history of constitutional conventions, failed or otherwise. Fascinating stuff.

yarning
I went to yarn group Sunday and had a fairly good time while working on a new kickbunny. A man who knits came and joined us and plans to be in for the long term. He changed the energy a lot. I packed up the two kickbunnies I sold on Saturday for Monday pickup and finished the commissioned older Daniel Molloy doll. I finished the second kickbunny to restock the shop and have been working on donation hats on and off.

healthcrap
Weaning off one of my meds is amping the anxiety quite a lot. DNW. But I want to be off of it, so I'm doing it.

#resist
#50501 January 20: Free America Walk-out. 2pm local time.

I hope all of y'all are doing well! <333

green

(I am still working on #3)

for

snowflake_challenge

Challenge #4: Rec Your Last Page

Any website that you like, be it fanfiction, art, social media, or something a bit more eccentric!

This is what I've been looking at today:

Massachusetts "Name a Snowplow" Contest Winners!
School children came up with these wonderful (and punny!) snowplow names, which will be used this winter (2025/2026)
My favorites: Master Snowda and Thaw Patrol

How to Create a Powerful Character Arc by Jerry Jenkins.
I was looking at this as a quick reference for a post I was writing of my own about plotting while pantsing. Hopefully a future post for

getyourwordsout. It's a pretty clear guide for getting started with writing character arcs, as it says on the tin.

(by the way, pledging for 2026 ends January 15, so you don't have much more time if you want to join in a wonderful writing community with GYWO!)

Also, right now I have a tab open with my

5soulmates prompt table! I haven't started writing yet, but I've got some ideas percolating.

Another tab I have open is the

deterweek themes list. I'm going to be writing one story with

whimsicalmeerkat and one solo. At least that's the plan!

Current Mood: accomplished

luzula

Joke stolen from

the_siobhan, because it was too good not to.

( Read more... )

mific

Oh noes! Toomuchplor just posted a new HR fic but there's no fic! Must have taken it down after posting so as to fix something. *whimpers and waits impatiently*

The 3rd and final chapter of "Ember and Ice" dropped yesterday. Hilariously, fangirls on tumblr are getting stuck into the political situation in the story, which does leave a lot to be desired although the defeat of the Lunare by the Solari results in a slightly "captive fairy prince" situation which is always fun. I enjoyed this extra offering by the boys, but audio erotica as a medium does nothing for me, as opposed to the fanfic (and podfic) now being produced by the ton for Heated Rivalry, much of which is excellent and extremely hot. I find it more hilarious than hot to actually hear our heroes giving a blow job - all those wet sucking and smacking sounds - and I kept imagining the poor foley person having to slap their wet thigh, or something, when they were getting into serious fucking. Imagination works way better than surround-sound for me! Although, if "My Moon My Man" is the standout song of HR, "my moan my man" is definitely Hudson's theme song in Ember and Ice!

I've signed up for the Hollanov Big Bang as a writer, artist, and beta (not that I'm going overboard with this or anything). If you're interested, sign ups are here. Info and the schedule are here.

Excellent recs by lotstradamus, here. Almost all are explicit, with some great ideas and interesting writing.

If you're looking for another gay romance with a happy ending, try the movie "Bros". Where I live it can be rented from Apple+. It's more typical of gay culture than HR and the protagonists are a lot older (pushing forty), but it's very charming in its own way. Commitment-challenged bros to lovers in this case, not "enemies". I thoroughly enjoyed it.

jadelennox

finally watching season 2 of the live action Ronia the Robber's Daughter from 2024 and my kingdom for someone who will talk about the cinematography with me the way people are breaking down the Heated Rivalry longing gazes.

Also Ronia singing the wolf song and me being surprised about pronunciation of "Du varg, du varg" and then me realizing it's the exact same way anglos always mispronounce Greta Thunberg's name.

seleneheart

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh

Blurb:

Deadly storms have ravaged Mina’s homeland for generations. Floods sweep away entire villages, while bloody wars are waged over the few remaining resources. Her people believe the Sea God, once their protector, now curses them with death and despair. In an attempt to appease him, each year a beautiful maiden is thrown into the sea to serve as the Sea God’s bride, in the hopes that one day the “true bride” will be chosen and end the suffering.

Many believe that Shim Cheong, the most beautiful girl in the village—and the beloved of Mina’s older brother Joon—may be the legendary true bride. But on the night Cheong is to be sacrificed, Joon follows Cheong out to sea, even knowing that to interfere is a death sentence. To save her brother, Mina throws herself into the water in Cheong’s stead.

Swept away to the Spirit Realm, a magical city of lesser gods and mythical beasts, Mina seeks out the Sea God, only to find him caught in an enchanted sleep. With the help of a mysterious young man named Shin—as well as a motley crew of demons, gods and spirits—Mina sets out to wake the Sea God and bring an end to the killer storms once and for all.

But she doesn’t have much time: A human cannot live long in the land of the spirits. And there are those who would do anything to keep the Sea God from waking…

I discovered that this book is a re-working of the Korean legend/myth of Shim Cheong, who placated a dragon god and married the emperor. I love stories that expose me to mythology from other cultures beside the Euro-centric one I was raised with.

I really enjoyed this book - it read like a Ghibli movie with a similar atmosphere and surreality. And indeed had much in common with Spirited Away to the point where I was not slightly surprised by the twist. Okay, I didn't anticipate part of it.

Anyway, highly recommend.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Tori Amos - Merman

jamethiel

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green

This is my prompt table for

5soulmates

Table #0 - Custom
01. soulmates "live" each other's lives in their minds when they bond	02. empathic connection	03. first words	04. only one of the reincarnated soulmates remembers their past life	05. accidental soulbond

Current Mood: optimistic

luzula

Placeholder.

jamethiel

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riverlight

I'm at my best friends' house for the week, staying with them and being Auntie Riverlight for the next few days. And, man, this reminds me of childhood! Winters in Connecticut then were like what winters in Maine are now—bitter cold. And my dad kept the house cold (55°) as my friends do (60°). And there's the constant battle with the woodstove.

…And, alas, there's the tip-toeing around a man's volatile temper. ( Cut for details of poor parenting/men behaving badly )

I survived my childhood, and even thrived, and I love the person I am today. But that doesn't change the fact that I shouldn't have had to experience what I did, and neither should any other kiddo.

sineala

As I think I have mentioned, I usually attempt to finish games before posting about them, but I suspend this rule when the game is clearly designed to be an unholy timesink. I'm not actually sure this game has an end. Or a plot.

I bought BALL x PIT during the Steam winter sale, which I mention because it is theoretically still the Steam sale for a few more hours and I don't want to deprive anyone else of the sale opportunity, although the game is reasonably cheap anyway. It is the new hotness of "roguelite games that have combined roguelite meta-progression with some other genre of popular game," most recently exemplified by Balatro (roguelite poker), Vampire Survivors (roguelite bullet-heaven, which is of course a variant of bullet-hell shooters) and my beloved Slay the Spire (roguelite deckbuilder, and, yes, I am counting down the months until the sequel hits Early Access; I would count down the days if they had said anything more specific than "a Thursday in March").

So BALL x PIT is a roguelite version of Breakout. Or Pong, I guess, if you prefer. You shoot bouncy balls at enemies. The balls have powers like poison and lightning and whatnot. You level them up and then combine them to make different balls with more powers. In between levels you retreat to your base, which is full of buildings and resources and so on that you arrange in order to have balls bounce around them with maximum efficiency like if SimCity were pinball, and then you build buildings that buff your characters. They have this gameplay loop down solid. It's fun.

Anyway, I am posting because I wanted to mention the accessibility options, since I watched a bunch of streamers and read a bunch of reviews, could not figure out if I could play this, bought it anyway, and then discovered I could.

So you can play this game either with keyboard/mouse or with a controller. If you're playing with keyboard/mouse, it's WASD to move and mouse to aim/fire, my least favorite control scheme. If you're playing with a controller, it's left stick to move, right stick to aim, right trigger to fire. (There's an option to aim in the direction of movement, but sadly only if you're using a mouse.) I will say that you can play this while not being especially great at aiming, because the balls will eventually bounce approximately where you want -- it's not like playing an actual shoot-'em-up.

You can remap the controls if you need to (Settings > General, then scroll down) but for me the most useful general thing is the ability to turn autofire on, which you can do while playing. Your character slows down a bit if you turn this on, but there are buffs during the game to bring your movement speed up, so it's not so bad. Then you just need to aim and move (and not fire), and I can do left and right stick with one hand if I have my 8bitdo Lite SE controller.

However, there are points where this game becomes an actual bullet-hell shooter. You can shoot down some projectiles, but not all of them, and the boss of the first stage -- for example -- shoots a bunch of intricate projectiles that you do in fact have to just dodge. Now, I bought this game anyway and figured I was just gonna die a lot, because I can't dodge worth a damn, but it turns out the devs thought of that! Under Settings > General, turn on "Allow slower movement speed."

The regular game has three movement speeds you can cycle through while playing, which I knew, and I nearly didn't select this option in the settings because I figured this was how you opted into that, but it turns out the three regular speeds are there anyway. What this option does is turn on super-slow "1/4" and "1/2" speeds so you have five speeds to choose from. Yay!

(As far as I can tell, this does not lock you out of achievements; you can get an achievement for completing a level even if you have fought the boss at half-speed. I don't know if there are any locked achievements for completing a level at a specific speed, in which case those are probably still locked.)

So it turns out that I can definitely mostly dodge projectiles in the boss fight in a bullet-hell game at half-speed and that there's still quarter-speed available if I need it. I hadn't seen any of the reviews mention this setting, so I thought I would bring it up. You too can play BALL x PIT even if your reflexes are not usually up to par for bullet-hell shooters!

ride_4ever

For those who are wondering why the Multifandom Multimedia Microbang is called "Be A Goldfish," here's the explanation from the comm's Admin

devinwolfi:

When we started this event earlier this year, it was a Ted Lasso fandom exclusive event. We always had every intention to go multifandom later, this just gave us the opportunity to beta test it on a smaller group. In that series, a recurring line is to "be a goldfish," (based on the now disproved idea that goldfish have 3-10 second memories), meaning to let go of past hurts, move on, brave the new day, and try new things, all of which we hope to embody and encourage throughout this event. We've found that smaller works and folks who leave comments tend to get less attention, but those small works and comments are by no means less important to the fandom ecosystem so we wanted to give them, and the fans who share them, the support and attention they deserve. We also know that it's very easy to get bogged down by expectation, past experiences, and the pressure of trying to be "successful" in fandom and be paralyzed by it all to the point of inaction. We want to give people the space to try new things and develop new fannish skills without feeling like they have to commit to big projects.

Current Mood: fishy
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

seleneheart

Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree

Blurb:

Fern has weathered the stillness and storms of a bookseller’s life for decades, but now, in the face of crippling ennui, transplants herself to the city of Thune to hang out her shingle beside a long-absent friend’s coffee shop. What could be a better pairing? Surely a charming renovation montage will cure what ails her!

If only things were so simple…

It turns out that fixing your life isn’t a one-time prospect, nor as easy as a change of scenery and a lick of paint.

A drunken and desperate night sees the rattkin waking far from home in the company of a legendary warrior surviving on inertia, an imprisoned chaos-goblin with a fondness for silverware, and an absolutely thumping hangover.

As together they fend off a rogue’s gallery of ne’er-do-wells trying to claim the bounty the goblin represents, Fern may finally reconnect with the person she actually is when there isn’t a job to get in the way.

The final (?) of the Legends & Lattes trilogy and by far my favorite of the three. While it could still be considered a cozy fantasy, because the consequences weren't earth shaking, there where more elements of what I enjoy in a fantasy novel - an actual journey through different lands, some character growth and change. A tiny bit of lore and an understanding of the wider world of the Territories. A very small body count. Also, Fern is probably my favorite character from the trilogy and having a whole book focused on her was my catnip.

This book goes with this bingo square because Fern repeatedly tells people, "I'm forty-seven!"

My icon totally applies to Fern. Just saying.

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: The Trials of Cato - Gawain

verushka70

1) Deb Salisbury posted photos of Paul Gross that she took in 1997, while in the studio audience of Dini Petty's talk show, to the Due South! Facebook group.

ETA: Apparently the photos are private to the FB group, so I screenshot and uploaded them here with screenshot of the original post. The quality you see is the original quality as posted - as she explains, flash photos weren't allowed, so the only lighting was studio lighting. That said, they're pretty good for being no flash.

He's so young, handsome, and clean cut in them. Yowza. 💜

B. Paul Gross-Addict posted a 1994 CBS bumper featuring Fraser and Vecchio wishing viewers Happy Holidays and New Year's on the due South By South East FB group; the vid clip, which is in SD VHS quality, came from YouTube.

Enjoy!

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Page Summary

mific - This is your life on drugs
mific - Fic! Art! Thoughts about being in a juggernaut fandom
jamethiel - Books I have read Recently
thedarkcanuck - [VID] Don't Let Go - Fraser/Kowalski
sineala - Wednesday Reading Meme
sage - What I'm Doing Wednesday
green - #4
luzula - Have some unsolicited duck pics!
mific - Back on my bullshit again
jadelennox - it's summer now
seleneheart - Book Bingo: I5 | First Person POV | The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea
jamethiel - This made me laugh
green - 5soulmates table
luzula - Letter for Candy Hearts Exchange
jamethiel - Heads up
riverlight - Returning to childhood! Alas.
sineala - BALL x PIT
ride_4ever - Fannish Fifty Challenge 2026: Post # 1: Goldfish Explanation for Be A Goldfish Multifandom Microbang
seleneheart - Book Bingo: I1 | Main Character Over Age 30 | Brigands & Breadknives
verushka70 - '97 PG photos; '94 CBS dS F&V vid clip (Fannish Fifty #2)

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