verushka70

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

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.

I'm a first time participant in Lupercalia (a wonderful "cross the psychic wolves of A Companion to Wolves with any fandom for all kinds of psychic-bond-compelled dubcon-y/noncon-y smexin'" challenge) and trying to finish a fic that I began for last year's Lupercalia but didn't finish then.

In this due South Lupercalia fic I'm working on, the compulsory canid-bonded-humans' sex is as it is in the source, A Companion to Wolves -- except in my crossover world, any human, man or woman, can bond to any gender canid, male or female (and wolf or dog). I describe the canids' primal urges,as passed through the psychic bond, in pseudo-French. (Hey, if they can make up pseudo-Germanic/Scandinavian terms in that book series, I can make up pseudo-French.)

I call the meat-puppet-y hijacking of the bonded-human's sex/sexuality during the canids' mating chaleur brûlant: burning heat. Also, for a change of pace, the term 'bitch' for a female dog or wolf is replaced with 'queen,' as in cat breeding -- instead of queen and toms, it's queens and dogs/wolves.

It's a psychic canids AU history of Fraser's love/sex life as bonded to Diefenbaker -- an incorrigible flirt with many matings across years and borders.

Fraser comes to his psychic bond with Dief as a late bloomer. It didn't happen during his adolescence/coming of age -- he bonded with Dief when they met in Prince Rupert sound.

Dief's amorousness pulls (puts?) Fraser through sexual encounters with a bunch of canonical characters with whom he may or may not have had canon intimate relationships. There is explict Fraser/m and Fraser/f sex. There is Fraser/Thatcher. Fraser/Victoria, of course. Fraser/Francesca. Fraser/"Steve". If I have time, there will also be Fraser/Mark Smithbauer and Fraser/Eric.

Endgame is happy Fraser/Kowalski.

Fraser also comes to realize that Diefenbaker's physical deafness = psychic deafness. He responds to the other canids hormonally, but he can't communicate with them psychically as the wolves and their bonded-humans could in the source.

So he and Dief are off in a psychically bonded world of their own. They have no pack and no pack feels and This Is Sad. There is a twist planned. Don't want to give it away, but, as I said, endgame is happy Fraser/Kowalski.

So... if anyone would like to beta or cheerlead such a fic, I would be incredibly grateful. I have an alpha/beta reader (shout out to Ride_Forever!) but now she is focused on her own Lupercalia fic (and I think a Flower Crown contribution!).

verushka70ATgmailDOTcom is the best way to reach me.

Thank you kindly in advance for reading this far.