verushka70

Saw this otpin-arts fanart on Tumblr (original link) - just delightful! - with the following text referring to Fraser's brown uniform: "Ray gets distracted by the brown uniform.

So far I only saw it once in S3. And me and some folks over on discord really appreciate the brown uniform so this popped into my mind."

I reblogged it there, but wanted to share it here too!

Today (Feb. 11) is Leslie Nielsen's birthday. Among his many dramatic and comedic film and TV roles, he played Sgt. Frobisher in multiple due South episodes. Sadly, he passed away in 2010.





Photos courtesy of screen shots from due South HD on YouTube (episode Call Of The Wild 2)

WAOVW pic

Reccing this "Barrett's Privateers" epistolary Yuletide fic:

"God Damned Them All"? Documenting the Loss of the Privateer Antelope (1674 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Barrett's Privateers (Song)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Elcid Barrett, Narrator (Barrett's Privateers)
Summary:

A grim narrative of fraud, deception, false advertising, murders, robberies, puttings in fear and operating without a Board of Trade Certificate.

I saw the song "Barrett's Privateers" listed as a fandom during Yuletide signups - but you never know until the Yuletide collection opens, if a particular fandom was matched on...

So when I went through the Yuletide collection after it opened, and found this fic, I thought I should share it with dS fen!

More GIFs to illustrate my fascination and headcanon!


( more GIFs under the cut )
This is why the perfect, polite, well-mannered Thank-you-kindly canon Fraser of dS feels… a bit “off,” to me. There is anger in Fraser. He has the clear potential to do bad things to bad people (who, let’s face it, completely deserve it, plus more).

I love this Fraser. This is my head-canon Fraser. He has suffered loss after loss (shall we talk about his ACE score? it would be kind of high, don’t you think?), starting very young. He appears fine on the surface, but let’s not forget that (absurd) psychological test with the Rorschach images in S3 episode Strange Bedfellows. He is not okay. He’s not fine. His psychological state is eventually deemed “acceptable” in that ep - but, c'mon: “acceptable” is not exactly well-adjusted or healthy. “Acceptable” is like getting a C on a paper when you should have gotten an A or at least a B.

And ftr, of course he is not okay! That’s completely understandable given his history: an adult man who lost his mother at age 6, was subsequently abandoned by his grief-stricken father (a child does not understand why a parent leaves/is gone - only that they left), whose entire life is uprooted to move to live with his grandparents (and let’s just point out that his grandmother’s ghost slaps Fraser, Sr - who is himself a ghost - in Letting Go! if you presume that, like most grandparents, she mellowed with age, and that is the mellower version of her - what was she like with child!Fraser??)… the constant moving/losing friends/having to make new friends/being the new kid because they were mobile librarians…

That is all canon. But there is never any canonical mention of therapy or counseling, which a kid with such a background (or his adult self) would surely need to process the many traumatic changes he experienced at such a young age, and develop some healthy coping mechanisms (because the ones you sort of fall into as a child - I certainly wouldn’t call it “choosing” when as a kid, all you’re trying to do is find a way to cope that WORKS - aren’t usually the healthiest in a set of circumstances this bad.

Then, in his early adulthood and RCMP career… the Victoria thing happens. Of course Fraser is not okay. (And that is okay.) How on earth could he be?

from yesterday's Tumblr posts - It's all part of her plan...
verushka70tumblr-feed.dreamwidth.org/3835.html

So I posted on Tumblr about Frannie for ds30below week 2 - characters:

I love Francesca. I love how Ramona Milano plays her. All the many changing facial expressions. The way she wears her heart on her sleeve. You would never not know where you stand with Frannie.

verushkak70.tumblr.com/post/745861676536037376

Those screen caps are from the Pilot.

I snippet-ficced again. It seems to be all my brain can handle lately.

Title: Serge Surge
Fandom and Pairing: due South, Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski
Rating: Teen
Length: 300 words
Prompt: Challenge 41

So FRTDNEATJ my output hasn't been great fic-wise the last year, and for the same 2023 reasons, I never did my 2022 fic roundup in 2023 (and I also didn't post any of it to the ds-noticeboard DW, sigh). I thought I'd better get that outta the way (& kill a Fannish Fifty while I'm at it, since it's about fanfic).

( I unofficially and officially started the Fannish Fifty )

Looking back over these fics, I realize I didn't write a lot of fic, but I wrote a lot more words than I realized. ( long story short, more than 66,500 words across 10 fics in 5 fandoms in 2 years, which really, REALLY surprised me )

7 of the 10 fics are dSc6d; 6 of those 7 are due South.💜 I have so many WIPs of different fandoms though, that I want to get into (or get back into). Sigh! So many fandoms, so little time.

I guess I'll list the fic roundup in reverse chronological order.

( My 2023 fic output )

* * *
( My 2022 fanfic roundup )

I'm hoping this year to just maintain some level of fic output. My word count the last two years is small potatoes (which is also the title of one of my favorite X-Files episodes!) - it's really NOTHING compared to really prolific writers (or even to my more prolific past ficcing). But it was a lot more than I realized - and a lot more than in the preceding few years (including 2019, when being an exhausted pandemic RN was not yet a thing)... So, for me, especially under the shitty circumstances of this past year? I'm calling it a win.

Well, I meant to post this like at least a week ago, but RL. Sucks. Still. Even more.( the many, or rather main, reason why ) But hey, I got a dog and two cats, a FT job, and some pretty awesome friends. That's more than many people - and I am grateful for all of it. My friends are my chosen family. Seriously, I routinely enter "my friends" in my daily gratitude app entries.

But the suckitude of RL was why writing for Yuletide was so important for me. ( this crappy past year etc )

So here are my Yuletide recs. This merely scratches the surface (1700+ fics in Yuletide 2023, yikes!) - but these are really great.
( 22 recs in 19 fandoms - Heat (1995) (x2!), fairy tales/Boots of Buffalo Leather, Dracula - Bram Stoker (x3), The Fugitive, Fandom Exchange anthropomorphic (hysterical!!), Galaxyquest, The Good Place, The Huntsman, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum | Ecclesiastical History of the English People - Bede, It's A Wonderful Life, iZombie, Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte, The Lion in Winter (1968), Monty Python's Flying Circus: Archaeology Today, Much Ado About Nothing (2011) | Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare, True Detective S1, The Usual Suspects, The Waste Land - T. S. Eliot, and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) )

Here endeth the recs portion of this post! Following is standard update post stuff. As if I do that regularly... (I don't...)

~ ~ ~

Anyway. Due to my desperate need for escapism, I really enjoyed researching for, and writing, my two fic contributions to this holiday season - my first Yuletide fic evah(!), and a last-minute pinch-hit for due South Seekrit Santa:

The Sentimentalists
Fandoms: Casablanca (1942)
Words: 9,558
(it looks incomplete because it says "Chapter 1/2," but chapter 2 is a draft consisting ONLY of author's notes - the fic is complete!)
Teen And Up Audiences
No Archive Warnings Apply
Victor Laszlo/Ilsa Lund, Rick Blaine/Ilsa Lund, Rick Blaine/Victor Laszlo/Ilsa Lund, Post-Canon
Summary:
Ilsa threw her arms around him. Rick tried awkwardly to simultaneously return the hug, and gently disengage from it – Laszlo was right there – as Laszlo beamed at him, apparently uncaring.

Beamed.

Or: Rick winds up in Lisbon after Brazzaville, and is shocked to find Victor and Ilsa still there (for totally legit historical reasons, my research found).

~ and ~

In Your Philosophy
Fandoms: due South
Words: 9,211
Teen And Up Audiences
No Archive Warnings Apply
Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski, Canon Compliant, Alternate Universe
Summary:
“Drink up. We may need our strength.”

“For mutual auditory hallucinations?” Ray asked.

The rare jewel of a casually confident Kowalski verbal construction delighted Fraser.

“No, for whatever's on the other side of that door.”

Or: from the day they first meet, Ray and Fraser go from disaster to disaster in ways neither could have imagined.

I haven't even gotten around to reading dSSS fics yet, despite my pinch-hit - there is so much I've bookmarked for Yuletide (and I signed up for it first, way before the dSSS pinch hit)! When I get to those, I'll deffo post dSSS recs too.

~ ~ ~

Here's hoping 2024 doesn't suck as bad as 2023. Although considering how it's started, that's probably putting the cart before the horse, as my Omi (grandmother) used to say.