verushka70

Title: Luxuriously Slowly
Author: verushka70
Fandom: due South
Characters: Benton Fraser, (Choose Your Own) Ray
Pairing: Benton Fraser/(Choose Your Own) Ray
Rating: Explicit
Length: 139 words
Summary: Ray shivers with restraint, feeling Fraser shake beneath him.
Challenge Prompts: The RCW 139 snippets Challenge: Write a snippet of 139 words, in three paragraphs, starting with letters R, C and W.
AN: For dsc6dsnippets' RCW 139 Challenge.

Luxuriously Slowly on AO3

How did I get into due South? well, it has a lot to do with Forever Knight - my first fandom.

( for reasons that need exploring at this juncture, Forever Knight and the early Internet led me to due South )

A bunch of Forever Knight fen were also into due South, or got into it because some dS actors guest starred on FK (Catherine Bruhier and Christina Cox). I would surf someone's FK fic/pic web page and see pictures of a Mountie. I thought, Wellllll, he's handsome. But I didn't pay it much attention, because I was there strictly for the Forever Knight vampires Nick and LaCroix - and the slashy pics and fics of them on people's early web pages.

Then CBS broadcast the S3 Forever Knight episode "Outside the Lines" - in which CKR guest starred. When I saw that episode, I thought, Christ, this guy [CKR] is unbelievably charismatic; the camera loves him. He just had this crazy charisma, and I couldn't take my eyes off him. I had no idea who he was, other than a guest star on Forever Knight.

( it honestly started with CKR even though I had no idea who he was at that time, other than a guest on Forever Knight )
Anyhoo, coming from Forever Knight's Nick/LaCroix heavily angsty father/son vampire m/m relationship -- and the Nick/Janette/LaCroix angsty m/f/m OT3 canon backstory -- plus the potential Nick/Nat/LaCroix from the episode "Valentine's Day" -- plus the general darkness and angst of Forever Knight, you really can't blame me for thinking due South looked like a boring, non-slashy prime time G-rated family-oriented show.
( other reasons I didn't initially vibe with dS, such as being a sucker for Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles )

I was bored and I wanted another show to get into. While consoling myself with the FK Nick/LC slashfic, I saw the promo photos started coming out for S3 due South. And although they weren't fantastic, I was like, Oooooohh, there's a nice slashy vibe here in these pics. (They were being posted on the web pages of people into both FK and dS -- usually with some cranky or bitchy comment about "the new guy.") Well, I didn't know anything about the show, really.

( I read due South slash before I actually got into the show, while I waited for the S3 premiere )
At the time I read it, I was like, Oh, damn, MORE slashfic, YAY!! Except a lot of stories described a balding Italian detective, and I got very confused, because I honestly hadn't really noticed him in the two eps I had seen. Hey, man - "something red moving fast always draws the eye." What can I say.

( finally the S3 premiere airs, and though they fucked up CKR's hair in BDTH, those HANDS got me )
So then the next ep was Eclipse and I was like HOLY FUCK THE SLASH OMFG WTF a;sldkjfal;skdjfal;sdjfasdlfjk (except of course omfg and wtf didn't exist as abbreviations back then). Ray "'do you find me attractive?' he asked the Mountie" Kowalski was so slashy and angsty - and, although lacking the dark edge and the vampires - I thought OK, I can really work with this slashy vibe!
( The third and fourth episodes of S3 due South cemented my love )

And I was like, OK, stick a fork in me, I'm DONE... I was already doing the online fandom thing for ForKni, so I just kind of slid over into dS fandom. Huzzah!

( but dS fandom then was not without its bumps in the road - the Ray Wars )

( love of Kowalski became love of CKR and c6d was born, though we didn't initially call it that, and HCL was the first c6d thing I watched )
Because remember, both FK and dS were the two little Canadian shows that could... and then couldn't. Both kept getting canceled at the end of each season, and then somehow revived. But each only managed to get revived after 2 cancellations. After the 3rd season of each, the networks involved (CBS on the American side) chose not to revive them, despite massive fan efforts, letter writing campaigns -- hell, for Forever Knight, we fen donated $$ to take out *billboards* in LA that could be seen by people driving in for work. All for nothing; it was never revived. And there was no Netflix to take it on, as has happened in recent years of great shows canceled by networks.
( my first forays into fanfic, and how I got to see the rest of due South before it was put in syndication on TBS after it was finally canceled )

Man, I remember discovering all the slashfic for Forever Knight online and being like, ohmygod, I have hit the *jackpot* here... it's all mine... and all these people walking around have no idea people are freely trading explicit erotic m/m stories about fictional vampires online for fun - how cool is this?!

( As a veteran of the Ray Wars... eventually I got past it and even wrote Ray/Ray and Ray/Fraser/Ray )
And after a bunch of Asylum dS fen moved to LJ, all this Ray/Ray and Ray/Fraser/Ray fic started being written... and then DW came into being and people moved to DW and continued the Ray/Ray... and since I never hated Ray Vecchio (unlike the Kowalski-haters), of course I read some... and then I wrote some myself, both way back when, as well as more recently here and here. That helped me get over it.

And, like many veterans, that's about as much as I want to talk about it. I'm glad it's long past and it's not okay to character or actor bash anymore. (Although it still happens, but at least it is frowned upon now.)

Now, there were two other things that were really frowned upon when I first found dS fandom: RPF/RPS, and bad!Ben AUs. To the point that people shared these things secretly and you would only learn of these fics if you knew someone or they knew you would probably like it and wouldn't 'out' them. Back then, making "OFM" (Our Favorite Mountie, a common nickname for Fraser) into a bad guy was very, very frowned upon and a rather fringe-y thing to do. And there was no AO3 at the time.

( before AO3, the bad!Ben fic web page was all you had if you wanted a little AU walk on the wild side of Fraser - and how to get the text to come up, and find the link to the RPS/RPF page by the same fen )

I've even traveled because of my fandoms: my first trip to Toronto, alone, not even a dog - my dog had died, and I hadn't yet gotten another one - in the rally 90s was because of Forever Knight and an online "FK points of interest" list that I printed a hard copy of, and drove around and found all the points of interest SBD filming locations on my own. Wish I still had that, but it's lost to the sands and winds of time.

My last trip to Toronto was for due South RCW139, and that trip and another one were for fancons (although I am not a huge con-goer, I do occasionally go to cons... very occasionally). In between, there were a couple trips where I visited both FK and dS filming locations. I've made fandom friends - some who live very close to me, geographically; some who I met long ago and lost touch with countless computers and email accounts so - and I've just generally had so much fun and derived so much enjoyment from fannishness. And I have some bucket list items that I probably wouldn't have if it weren't for Forever Knight and due South. Yay!

So thank you, ds30below, for prompting this trip down memory lane. 💜😊

I posted a dS photo-collage fanart to create a work using a brand new dS AO3 tag (Francesca Vecchio & Diefenbaker):

Wait...What? Now? Hmmm... by verushka70
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Francesca Vecchio & Diefenbaker, Francesca Vecchio & Other
Additional Tags: Fanart
Summary: Francesca is on the case. Or on the spot... Dief's going to help!


Also posted a Ray Vecchio fic for Ray Vecchio Day(/Week; it was thankfully extended!):

Not Happening (Again) (9225 words) by verushka70
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ray Kowalski/Ray Vecchio
Additional Tags: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Undercover - Past
Summary: Vecchio shook his head, stifling a groan, squeezing his eyes shut. Stopped at a red light in his latest Riviera, he swiped a hand over his face and gritted his teeth. It was not happening – not happening again. He took the long way home.
Halfway there, he turned around and headed for Kowalski’s place.

\o/

I posted some mostly low wordage fics to AO3 in March. Though completed/posted in March, they were not necessarily written this month; some were in the works for a while. I'm indebted to Tarlan for beta-ing the Moonlight fics and to Ride_4ever for both beta-ing the Longmire fics and coming up with the ficlet series title.

We also dedicated the Longmire ficlets to Zen because Zen turned Ride on to Longmire, and Ride turned me onto Longmire -- so my Longmire fics truly would not exist without Zen, and I would've missed all the wonderful older_not_dead slash on Longmire.

I chose not to use archive warnings on the Longmire teen slash. Stories are tagged/rated appropriately. ( here be ficlets )

I'm going to gush now, so please forgive me. ( let me apologize now for the lack of cut text here. it's really difficult to do with speech to text, which I'm using because of my ongoing horrible flare up of tendonitis.)

I never used to watch telenovelas even though I was with a Mexican American man for 10 years, mostly because he hated telenovelas and I never was much into primetime soap operas, so I never watched them on my own.

That's why I was utterly unaware of the scruffy beauty of Demian Bichir until I started watching The Bridge from FX. (which I used to illegally download.) (I also didn't know that he was in Weeds, because I didn't have Showtime and I haven't had cable for years except for HBO which I've only had for the last two years as part of my internet service provider's high speed internet -- but only the HBO channels, nothing else). Now that Weeds is available streaming, I'm catching up.

(The Bridge is a gritty, cynical consistently very watchable cop show based on a Swedish original series, set on the border of Texas and Mexico, with Diane Kruger and Demian Bichir, and exploring all the corruption and interdependence that you would expect by the border. Sadly, it was cancelled after 2 seasons. I still highly recommend it.)

I still haven't seen most of the stuff that Demian Bichir has been in because most of it is telenovelas and most of it seems to be unavailable via Netflix or Amazon Prime.

But last night I had the chance to watch a movie called Death In Buenos Aires through HBO On Demand, in which Demian Bichir stars with a beautiful new young man, Chino Darin.

OMG, so slow build, slow burn slashy. And intentionally slashy -- it's part of the A plot because the murder they're trying to solve is of a known gay man.

NEVER thought that I would see Demian Bichir in something *intentionally* slashy, but I'm so glad! it's like a Demian Bichir dream come true.

Also, the director (Natalia Meta), and both producers are all women. So they're slashficcers, like us!

If you have the chance to see this movie, you really really should. yes, it has subtitles, and yes, it is in Spanish. but it is so worth it.

It's set in Argentina in the 1980s, when it was really corrupt (not really sure that's changed, but it was definitely really really corrupt then).

It's really suspenseful at building the slash, it's really suspenseful in solving the murder mystery, and it's really well done. It is by no means earth-shattering in terms of its philosophical import, but it consistently holds your attention.

And while elements of it are utterly cynical, there is a lyrical beauty to it and almost a surrealism of symbolism that makes it dreamy and beautiful in multiple parts. Where you know your instincts are telling you something important for your self preservation but you don't know exactly what, and you're torn between giving in to your paranoia and cynicism, and not only not wanting to believe in your worst fears, but also wanting to believe in the possibility of hidden dreams you've barely allowed yourself to sense.

WARNING: It does not have a happy ending -- in terms of fanfiction warnings, it would be a canonical character death, but that's the canon. Which just begs for fix it fic. Just sayin.

Oh my god, I want slash fic for Death in Buenos Aires so badly and there isn't any that I have found anywhere! not a single creative Google search has turned up any.

I think I'm just going to have to write it... after I get over this miserable bout of tendinitis. and of course after I finish my due south Secret Santa, and finish the other teen wolf story that I'm currently working on, and finish the unfinished work in progress for due south that I've had going for like over a year...

By the way, this is being posted courtesy of email posting and speech to text. So any errors are unintentional but I do not have the hand, wrist, and forearm strength or endurance to go back and fix them at this time.

I have an appointment Monday with our hand surgeon / hand specialist, so we'll see what he says. I'm lucky that I work with doctors and surgeons, because I explain my problem today, he examined my arms, and he wrote me a prescription for Celebrex to tide me over until my appointment.

with my insurance, which costs me $217 and change per month out of my own pocket (because I don't get coverage at my job because I'm a registry (float) RN who gets paid a higher wage with no benefits, no pension, no 401k), 15 pills of celebrex were $28. So, basically, nearly $2 a pill or $2/day (1 pill/day).

but I've been taking ibuprofen, 800 milligrams 3 times a day, and then I switch to naproxen, and they are barely making a dent, and the pain always comes back before I can take more pain medicine. Plus god only knows what both of those are doing to the lining of my stomach.

I can only imagine how much the Celebrex would have cost without insurance. and that was the generic price!

if I were keyboarding, I'd be key mashing about that.
:-(

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I meant to get these in on time for the ds_snippets amnesty challenge, but for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, that didn't happen. So... bummer. So... they're here instead. Made possible by akamine_chan, who graciously beta-ed.

( they stood together--DS, G, gen, 265 words )




( a huntress--DS, G, gen, 257 words )




( return the favor/bitter reward--HCL/FTWHTWD, Joe/Jerry, NC-17, 277 words )

Conversation I had with my bf yesterday while driving:

Bf: I was watching Starsky & Hutch on that MeTV station that shows all those old shows yesterday.

Me: Yeah?

Bf: While I was watching it, I thought, I never realized... [trails off]

Me: [finishing his sentence] . . .how gay it was?

Bf: Yeah! I mean, how did we miss that? It's totally homoerotic!

Me: They slipped it by, under the radar. Like mainstream America not realizing the Village People were gay.

Bf: God, it is really unbelievable. It was so gay. I never realized it back then.

Me: [incoherent chortle]

This from my very straight (but not narrow) boyfriend. tee hee!


Also, last week I sent my oldest sister the link to a smashing Kirk/Spock slash vid at Youtube with the following message (note that she is not an active slasher, nor a member of any fandoms, but expressed great enjoyment of the "hot cowboy manlove" of Brokeback Mountain).

my email to her:
This is... such a wonderful mix of homoeroticism, hilariousness, heat, and high camp, I don't EVEN know where to begin. Showcasing the young William Shatner's over-emotive style of acting, as well as the not infrequent appearances of bondage & domination imagery in the original Star Trek, and combined with Nine Inch Nails' "Closer," (an industrial paean to self-erasure via animalistic copulation that manages to have a demented calliope sound to it in the middle chorus of the song), this video is just... **beyond.** The volume on your PC speakers should be LOUD.

her email reply:
Well, thanks for putting me in the appropriate mood to confront another Monday as a wage slave. Clearly my response confirms what I have suspected for years -- that I am a gay man trapped in a woman's body. Fear me, hets.

[helpless chortles on my part]

Slash doesn't even need slash evangelism anymore! I think Brokeback broke through to many, many women (and even my boyfriend, who can see the world through slash-tinted lenses now!) And the Internet shall feed them slash! And it is good!
\o/

Well, I was looking for something else and stumbled on Esperanza's posts (http://www.livejournal.com/~cesperanza/2005/12/21/) about Brokeback Mountain, which I have seen. So you might want to read her stuff a bit before you read my response.

I felt the need to comment on her posts, because there was such cogent thought -- and outrage -- behind them. But it turned into much more than a comment, and it focused on a lot of things Esperanza never said, just things that have irritated me about the promotion of Brokeback, and the entertainment buzz about it, so here it is...

Trying to make this brief (after 2am...ha! Going for broke!).

I understand the outrage of "is this still where we're at?" -- I actually do. Because, on the brink of 2006, and in Chicago, I'm going, "No, we're not there -- not us in Chicago."

But at the same time, I think that, unfortunately, YES, in many parts of this country, that IS where we're still at: "Hey, should we go beat those two queer cowboys to death with firewood, or should we just go get some beers?" "Nah, let's get some beers first." (spit)
( Read more... )