verushka70 | Recent Entries

It was Paul Gross' birthday on April 30th, which I would've totally missed had it not been for Grey's post about it, which I didn't catch up on until this weekend.

In the spirit of "older not dead", and for silver foxes everywhere, have some pictures of PG as he is now: still hot and still great at playing those angsty characters.

Paul Gross in Caught TV miniseries

I'm very sad to report that Beau Starr, who played Lieutenant Welsh on due South (and Henry Hill's dad in Goodfellas, among many, many other roles), has died - reportedly of natural causes, at age 81.

I didn't know he'd played for the NFL or CFL until reading about his death. I can totally see that, though. Prior to that, all I knew was his IMDb filmography.

I always loved Lt. Welsh as played by Starr. He stood by his detectives. I liked him much better than the actor who played Vecchio's lieutenant in the pilot. Beau really added something to the ensemble cast. I'm glad that, in later seasons of dS, he got to shine more. The world-weary, cynical mask with which Beau imbued him was allowed to slip and reveal a history and depth to the character that were only barely glimpsed in the early seasons. PG may have made some head-scratching choices (about which fen have debated for decades now) in the episodes he helmed... but expanding Lt. Welsh's role was not one of them.

I'm in the middle of a slow burn, angst with a happy ending, explicit Scott/Kip fic. I'm 13K+ words in and about halfway through. It's basically S1E03 (and their parts in S1E05 and S1E06) but entirely from Scott's fucked up perspective.

( why fic the series canon from Scott's POV? well, because he's my tragic, angsty hero, that's why, among other major reasons, here, including that you don't get Scott's depths in the Game Changer novel )
There just wasn't the depth or exploration of character and backstory in the novel, that seeing the series and the excellent acting had led me to expect and hope for.

So I decided to write it myself.

I tried the Scott/Kip Discord, briefly, to ask if anyone was interested in beta-ing. But I don't know anyone on it and I don't think anyone saw my request in the midst of the ongoing conversations flying by between people who clearly all knew each other.

So I thought I'd ask here.

If anyone would be interested in beta-ing, I can be reached at verushka70(at)Gmail(dot)com.

*Yes I know Demian doesn't explicitly posit a homoerotic relationship and that Herman Hesse was not gay and the different characters were largely projections of the main characters and psychoanalysis and Freud informed it all - I know. But his male characters and their relationships read as gay/slashy to me. And if Reddit and Tumblr are anything to go by, I am hardly the only one who thought that.

Back when Blind Spot premiered (sheesh, 10 years ago?? iz old), I had seen all the previews and thought it looked like a potentially cool show. Then I watched the first episode. I turned it off and switched to something else after the first 20-30 minutes. I simply could not suspend disbelief for the premise of the show.

It was like a bad rip-off of La Femme Nikita (the first one) but with amnesia and cardboard characters. The shaky camera work, pseudo 'cinema verite', was annoying as fuck, and the high overhead drone shots were already overdone back then. I have no beef with the actors; they're all decent and doing their best with what they've been given, which isn't much. Marianne Jean-Baptiste's role is especially thankless.

Why am I writing this? ( This is Francois Arnaud's fault, really: reasons not to watch this show even if you have Netflix and love Francois Arnaud )

I sincerely hope the other actors went on to bigger and better things, but I'm not sure this on their resume helped them do that. The only good things I can say about Blind Spot are the EDM that often shows up in the soundtrack is pretty good sometimes, and some of the actors have good chemistry. Neither of those is enough to redeem the show. The budget for it was clearly insane, which is sad - because so many better series could've used budgets like this, and used them way better than this dreck.

In short, do not watch Blind Spot. I mean, unless it's a drinking game or a "how bad could it be" dare.

I simply can't stop smiling at the fact that Turner Classic Movies aired the film Gaslight during Trump's State of the Union address last night. Click yesterday at the TCM Schedule online; you'll see it.

Seriously: every time I thought of this today, it made me smile. Peak trolling, indeed - I'd call it epic trolling! Makes me want to hug the programmers at TCM!

Plus it is such a great noir film, one of Ingrid Bergman's best roles, for which she won her first Oscar (though my favorite role of hers will always be Casablanca). Charles Boyer and Joseph Cotton are great in it as well. A young Angela Lansbury is in it, too.

Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, and Joseph Cotton in Gaslight 1944

Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, and Joseph Cotton in Gaslight 1944

A friend sent me this. He took it today in the UP.

This is what you get after US Fish and Wildlife Service de-listed wolves from federal protection and threw it back to the States in 2020.

Warning: graphic image of dead wildlife killed by hunters below the cut
( it's like the fucking 19th century and most of the 20th century, all over again )
I can't. I just... Can't.

We're literally going backwards. This could be a photo from the 1800s. It's the twenty-first fucking century now. But you'd never know it in some parts of the US.

In my ongoing effort to vote with my wallet, I found Resist and Unsubscribe.

If what this administration is doing and the murderous actions of ICE thugs disgust you as much as they do me, vote with your $$ and unsubscribe from the ICE-enablers over at https://www.resistandunsubscribe.com/.

I'm not actually subscribed to most of the listed services, but I canceled my Amazon Prime membership last summer, and haven't bought anything through Amazon for almost a year now. I can get what I need from chewy.com, Swanson Vitamins, and local stores' shop online/local delivery/free pickup in store options.

Because fuck Jeff Bezos. Fuck all the billionaires who've funded these fascists and continue to bribe the Republicans to push for federal override of state and local regulations and protections, in order to mine copper near Minnesota's Boundary Waters and build hyperscale data and cryptocurrency centers that pollute our air and water. Remember: Trump's cryptocurrency = untraceable bribes. I'm sure that Chilean mining company went that route. More importantly, how would we even know? First comes the mine, then the data center.

Next up: canceling Google One. I'm going to go with Proton Drive. Proton is in Switzerland - so unlike Google, Meta, Reddit, etc, they don't VOLUNTEER your data to fascists, let alone have to comply with ANY American subpoenas - and they won't. European digital sovereignty is real. And Proton Drive won't let AIs train by crawling your cloud documents and data, either - unlike their American counterparts.

So prior to seeing the TV series, I hadn't read any of the Game Changer novels on which the Heated Rivalry series is based. I began to read them after I watched S1. And I have a question:

Am I the only person who finds all the screaming orgasms, toe-curling, and eyes rolling back in people's heads during sex to be, well, just kind of ridiculously over the top?

Not to mention the weird metaphors. At one point in Common Goal (the book I'm finished with now, book #4 in the series), the author describes Eric (Bennett) pursuing Kyle's cock with Eric "naked and stretching forward for Kyle’s cock like a baby bird."

( what is the deal with the hyperbole and bizarre metaphors in some of the Game Changers' novels' sex scenes - and why that really bugs me )

I guess, after all the hype, I'm underwhelmed by the Game Changers novels. I'll probably finish them all, but at this point it's just to complete them for completeness' sake and to follow the Scott/Kip story, since they're the focus of book one and in the circle of teammates and friends of the characters in books two through six/seven in the series. But I'm not eagerly awaiting the next novel. Not because it's Shane/Ilya (although that's part of it; I prefer the Scott/Kip pairing), but because the books just... aren't that great, and are not as good (imo) as Jacob Tierney's TV adaptation.

On the plus side, the TV series elevates the source. So there is that.

Sorry not sorry: I'm just a cranky old fan who grew up reading sci-fi and fantasy by Bradbury, Leguin, etc. My standards for published books are higher than other people's, I guess. And I was never a romance novel reader - unless Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind counts, which I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

For a while, my fic Ground Rules was the only English language fic on AO3 for Heat, Michael Mann's excellent 1995 action film about the relationship between a career heister, Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro), and the LAPD detective pursuing him, Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino). Love that movie - it's got a great ensemble cast, it moves so you never notice the run time (kind of like Scorsese's films), and the pairing is to die for.

At the time I wrote that fic, I was shocked to find that there was no other fic for Neil/Vincent - they had so much obvious heat and chemistry together! Over the years, it's gotten many comments from like-minded people who saw what I saw and came looking for Heat slash fic. Those comments always delighted me.

But last night, someone left a comment on that fic, saying that someone else recced my fic in their comment to the "absolutely incredible "chris fleming explains heat" YouTube video (and it is incredible, and hilarious!).

After I watched the vid (and had to keep rewinding bits where I'd laughed too loud to hear what he said), I managed to find the comment on the vid that recced my fic. Both comments kinda made my day, ngl!

Here's a screen shot of the fic rec comment on the video.

I posted this pic (or a gif just like it) on Tumblr, but thought I'd also post it here. And between then and now, I think I figured something out about myself, which should've been obvious (duh).* Minor spoilers for Heated Rivalry S1E03!

Here's Scott Hunter's thousand yard stare of despair, after he's lost Kip:

[Image]

I love the angst of this character and the Scott/Kip relationship (and the way that François Arnaud plays Scott). There's no right/wrong/good/bad person, no hero/villain here. They both do what is right for them as individuals - it just doesn't jive together within their relationship because they are at such different stages of 'out'.

That conflict between their different stages - and Scott's understandable terror at being outed - drives the angst between them. And it is simply delicious like the finest wine. ( *the roots of my love of angst )

Posted this on Tumblr but posting here because no one has answered. Here's hoping the DW crowd might have ideas. I posted:

Sooo... The murder banter between Scott and Kip was kind of perplexing (I personally found it funny, but that's because - like Scott - I read a lot of murder books, so I know Scott was factually correct about everything he said)

I can't decide if
( my three guesses on what that was about, one a bit of a joke )
Genuinely curious about this, though. The murder banter is not in the Game Changer novel, so... what was the motivation for that?

Wish I could ask Jacob Tierney directly, somehow. If anyone has, in any interview(s), I'd love links if you got 'em!

I posted this on Tumblr but I figured I would post it here too. Because it bears repeating, especially in times like these.

EXACTLY. He gets it. Scott maybe wasn't clocking Shane/Ilya, but François Arnaud clocked the incestuous sibling relationship between homophobia and misogyny.

(From François Arnaud's interview in Out.)

So I posted this little fanon/canon analysis on Tumblr, and thought I'd post it here, too [SPOILERS for Heated Rivalry TV series/the novel Game Changer]:

"No, no, no, wait, wait, wait - hear me out. Fraser is Scott Hunter and Kowalski is Kip. I swear Fraser/Kowalski has the same, or some very similar, relationship dynamic(s) as Scott Hunter/Kip Grady:
( a list of bullet point similarities )
Scott Hunter/Kip Grady has captured my fannish heart, eclipsing the main Heated Rivalry pairing of Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov. I get that they're both angsty pairings due to the closeted nature of both relationships - but, imo, Scott/Kip is much angstier because of their very different levels of closeted-ness/fear of being outed (Kip is out, and has been for years, so he doesn't have that fear at all - whereas Scott is terrified), and the negative way it impacts their relationship: being with Scott effectively shoves Kip back into the closet, as Kip points out in the novel, and also isolates him from his friends and family (except bff Elena) because he's forced to lie to everyone in order to keep Scott's secret. So, so angsty.

And the Heated Rivalry soundtrack is fucking fantastic - it's all I've been listening to for fucking weeks, and I'm happy as a clam about it, Yay!
:-)

There's a cool (and angsty, yay) Impulse fanvid featuring CKR on YouTube over here.

Joanie Currie posted it to the private Fraser/Kowalski slash Facebook group, which is how I found it. Enjoy!

The official Saint-Pierre TV series Facebook group posted a couple photos of Paul Gross in his Saint-Pierre cameo role... And indicated he will be back!

Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to view Saint-Pierre in the US. It's on CBC and georestricted. Sigh.

So. Couple nights ago, my over-exuberant pitbull mix was enthusiastically trying to tell me something, which I - stupid hooman - wasn't sure about. As I bent down to ask him "Out? Wanna go out?", he jumped up at the first "out-" syllable, and bonked me right in the eye with his big ol' head. RIGHT in the eye. Big, BIG head.

My cat - who had a perfect view of this - smirked at us both from his cat tree, of course. (He is the boss of us both - but mostly the dog that's six times his size.)

I didn't think much of it at the time - just "you goofball!". It was only yesterday morning, getting ready for work, that I looked in the mirror and thought "huh, that's a really dark circle under my right eye." Took off my glasses and whoa. It wasn't a dark circle... It was the beginning of a black eye.

I can't be mad at my dog - he didn't mean it. Plus if I read him better, I'd have figured out what he wanted before we bonked heads.

The black eye has only gotten worse/darker/more black and blue over the last 24 hours, like they do. Sigh. I may look like a domestic violence victim, or like I was in a fight... But luckily the story behind my black eye is merely one of my dog's typical over-enthusiastic, bull-in-a-china shop-type behaviors. I told my coworkers, after I got a few double-takes from them. But I'm secretly just waiting for a stranger to mention it, so I can reply with something snarky, like "You should see the other guy/gal", heh.

It will get/look worse before it gets better. Sigh. Dogs. Like my oldest sister used to say: simply organized, but lovable. He's snuggled up next to me on the couch right now. Him and his massive head...

I was not pursuing watching Heated Rivalry. Truly, I wasn't. I read the HR book (but none of the other books in the series). It was nice. (Not typically what I look for in fanfic, but it's OK; sometimes it's downright lovely.) I found the novel to read like "angst with a happy ending," the end.

I did not find it earth shattering, but that might be because I did not actually read it; I listened to the audio book. So I suspect I missed a lot that I would've otherwise gotten if I read the book, because my eyes work better with my brain than my ears do (except when it comes to music enjoyment).

Just ask every parent - and teacher - even friends - who ever tried to give me verbal step by step instructions for doing anything. I was not good at that. Reading from A WRITTEN LIST of instructions, no prob. Listening and organizing verbal instructions? Yeah, I suck at that. (And then in my 4th decade, I was finally diagnosed with ADHD. Coincidence? I think not.)

Yeah, I heard all the buzz about the series. But I am one of those "if it's 'trending', I'm the opposite of interested" cranks. I generally hate being told what to look at/watch/listen to/do by anyone/anything who isn't paying my hourly wage - especially any algorithms.

(To be fair, I don't much like being told what to do by those who pay me to do my job, either - especially when it's stupid, bad for patients, and/or violates the manager's/employer's/facility's existing policies. But then, they are paying me, so I tend to listen, even if it's stupid, because I have bills to pay until I die. Anything 'trending' anything is not paying me to pay attention to it. So. I tend to ignore "trending." *shrug*)

But as I was, uh, let's say "obtaining" Heated Rivalry for a friend over last weekend, I thought: well, since I have all six episodes of S1 now, I might as well watch it... So I did. Here's my review. No spoilers.

First, though, I'm going to say - very earnestly - something not said much in fandom anymore (not nearly as often as it was, say, 5-10 years ago):

omg - the feels!

Seriously. There are some very heart-clenching, angsty moments in certain HR episodes that broke me in the best possible way. Angst is my jam, so - guh. I could hardly take it, the angst was so achingly good.

( Other thoughts in no particular order, with no spoilers )
I really liked Heated Rivalry. A lot. They really did a great job with this series. I'm proud to have been enjoying similarly Canadian made little TV series gems for decades (Forever Knight... due South...) - and I'm so glad to see another one, this time apparently taking the world by storm.

Also, kudos to Jacob Tierney (Glen on Letterkenny) for helming such an incredible project.

The Stratford Festival posted a trailer of Waiting for Godot (with Paul Gross) on their Facebook (which is public, so you don't have to have a FB account). There is no dialog in the preview; it's extremely short, so it's perfect for IG, tiktok, other social media. If you like that sort of thing.

Waiting for Godot will run from May 30 to July 31, 2026. David Keeley (PG's old band mate) will also be in the production, but is not in the trailer. There's more info on the Stratford web site.

Over in the private Fraser/Kowalski Facebook group, Regina Keim posted a new due South word search with the tagline "New Year, New Word Search."
You can access it here, even if you can't see the group's posts because you're not a member.

For once, AI did a decent job: On the Facebook group Trip Hop Lovers, one OP posted this AI summary of the musical genre Trip Hop.

I've loooved trip hop since the 90s, when I first discovered it via very early Internet "radio stations" (which we would now call streaming music channels, but the term "streaming" had not yet been coined, or at least was not yet in common use). Other than rock n roll (and some classical and opera), trip hop is probably my favorite musical genre though I can't say the same for either rap or hip hop, as, for various reasons (like misogyny, glorification of violence, etc) neither is my jam (despite the Grandmaster Flash 12"s and Run DMC records I bought when they first came out, way, way back in the day).

( details and some suggested trip hop )

I highly recommend checking out the post and the trip hop artists I mentioned above. If you're not sure if you'd like it, you can dip your toe into trip hop - or "trip hop lite", anyway - by searching YouTube for "chill hop"/"chillhop" and listen to any of the compilations that come up. On YouTube, Lofi Girl, out of France, has multiple live-streaming channels that are also good trip-hop-esque.

But for the real deal, imo, nothing beats the full instrumental version of Morcheeba's album Charango. Pure trip hop bliss, is what that is.

( some video and audio streaming cheapskate tips and parting remarks )

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verushka70

Page Summary

Happy (belated) Birthday, Paul Gross (Fannish Fifty #19)
Beau Starr has died (Fannish Fifty #18)
seeking beta reader (Scott/Kip, Heated Rivalry)?
Blind Spot TV series (review) (Fannish Fifty #17)
TCM aired Gaslight during Trump's State of the Union address last night
Upper Peninsula, Michigan, February 23rd, 2026
Resist and Unsubscribe
squicky metaphors/hyperbole of the Game Changers books (Fannish Fifty #16)
A comment on a YT vid recced my Heat (1995) slashfic (Fannish Fifty #15)
Scott Hunter's thousand yard stare of despair (Fannish Fifty #14)
the serial/spree killer "banter" in Heated Rivalry S1E03 (Fannish Fifty #13)
François Arnaud quote on homophobia (Fannish Fifty #12)
Scott Hunter/Kip Grady = Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski, sorta (Fannish Fifty #11)
CKR Impulse fanvid (Fannish Fifty #10)
Paul Gross on Saint-Pierre series (Fannish Fifty #9)
Of enthusiastic pitbulls and black eyes
Heated Rivalry, finally saw it (Fannish Fifty #8)
Waiting for Godot (with Paul Gross) trailer from Stratford Festival (Fannish Fifty #7)
new dS Word Search (Fannish Fifty #6)
Trip hop: a summary by AI (Fannish Fifty #4); penny pinching

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