Polymorphous Perversity

I started it from a tumblr rec and didn't notice it was a WIP at first but it's so good I just don't care.

doesn’t mean that i was never afraid by yhronez, first work under this username on AO3.

It's Omegaverse and the worldbuilding is exceptional - darker than some Omegaverse fics in that omegas were severely discriminated against even in Canada until the 1800s, and still are in some nations (like Russia). Shane is a pro hockey player as usual, but not a typical alpha, in that he doesn't have a typical alpha smell, Alpha Voice, can't form a knot, etc. Ilya is an extremely traumatised omega who's been sex trafficked for five years until being rescued in a police sweep, in Montreal. He's placed with Shane by a charity due to Shane's particular characteristics, and as Shane is still an alpha, so able to provide security.

The trauma is extreme but in the past and off-screen, however Ilya does refer to it at least in passing, quite often - sometimes as he's not aware that what he describes isn't routine in Shane's world. The strength of the fic is the really slow development of their relationship in a very realistic and believable way. Like, the fic's at over 80,000 words and Ilya's only lived with Shane for two days! Yet it's absolutely gripping and unputdownable. Unlike canon there's no real homophobia with it being Omegaverse, so the similar-to-canon barrier to their relationship is a) Ilya's trauma which Shane's intensely aware of, and b) An initial 3 month contract with the charity with very strict 'no sex of any kind' rules.

They're both very in-character, and although Ilya was initially a bit cowed we're seeing more and more of his true, snarky self emerging. They're also of course already falling hard for each other (Shane being totally oblivious to that and Ilya too terrified of dependency/abuse to acknowledge it). It's very much "buckle up, this is gonna be a long one." (god I hope so!) The writing is excellent and the author's understanding of the effects of trauma is spot on. It's updating regularly but with no overall chapter count known yet. I spent most of today reading it!

I fell over this fic accidentally by clicking on the podfic to entertain myself while prepping dinner. I was then glued to it for 8 hours until after 1.30 am, so be warned, this story's an all-nighter!

At over 90,000 words, it's a full novel, and it's both one of the best post-Vegas penthouse "we didn't even kiss" AUs I've read and a fucking zombie apocalypse AU. It diverges from canon at that point but is otherwise firmly tethered in canon, and it's without doubt both one of the best explorations of Shane and Ilya's characters and relationship, and hands down the best zombie apocalypse AU I've ever read in any fandom, or even in profic.

It has aspects of the "forced proximity" trope, as they escape to Boston then get trapped in Ilya's apartment for 2-3 months when Boston goes to shit. But it's also a brilliant "crack treated seriously" story, as once you've handwaved the zombie situation, the author unfolds an extremely likely, indeed sensible series of events. They don't do anything rash or idiotic! Their competencies complement each other, and Shane's ability to hyperfocus and plan are an asset. They're still in moderate to severe danger at times because it's the zombie apocalypse so there's lots going on, but because they're in safe places for the vast bulk of the fic the reader isn't constantly stressed.

Then there's the character development and emotional aspect, which is incredibly well done. Shane goes from sub-drop spaciness to having to get it together and escape zombies as Yuna can't reach him and eventually gets to him in Vegas by calling Ilya. Throughout the fic they go through much of what the characters do in canon in terms of repressed feelings, believing their feelings are unrequited, some miscommunication (but no more than in canon), and eventual romance, all in the context of the zombie apocalypse and the collapse of the world as they knew it. That forces them together and (sadly for much of the world) speedruns their relationship and makes it possible, but the apocalypse doesn't stop Shane from struggling with internalised homophobia and denial, and it sure as hell doesn't stop Ilya from feeling depressed and nihilistic.

Both the fic and the podfic (really well read, and all in one sitting jfc) are wonderful. Can't recommend them highly enough. OMG THIS FIC!!! THIS PODFIC!!!

oh well, I guess we're gonna find out! By angel_deux
podfic read by DiabolicalWordreader

Content notes:
- zombie apocalypse so mass death mostly offscreen. A few gory scenes of zombies being killed but not many, and most of the horror isn't described, just learned from them listening to the news.
- Ilya is passively suicidal, esp. at the start, from the self-hatred that caused him to treat Shane badly in Vegas and from the weight of the apocalypse.
- They're both somewhat depressed and grieving at times later in the story, after the immediate battle to survive isn't as pressing. No one makes any actual attempts.

Also READ THE TAGS because they're hilarious!

Black Swan Hudson and Connie From Accounts, at the end of the party.

Couldn't resist using one of my favourite pics of them as a reference. Hard to figure out the fandom, though. I initially called it Actor RPF but it's not fiction, in that it's not invented, or a written work. So I've just called the fandom "Hudson Williams & Connor Storrie". The "Connie from Accounts" reference is from a tumblr bit because it's honestly what Connor looks like in that outfit, if Connie from Accounts bench pressed 150 lb on the regular, anyway!

On AO3 here.

We're in the last of the nice autumn weather here, maybe already through it as it was cooler and rained a little today. Nice enough for garden pottering, though, and I've been tidying and storing lily and dahlia pots in the garage/potting shed, planting out my peas and rebuilding the structures for them to climb. Also picked up some potted colour at Mitre 10, a local hardware/gardening big box store - primroses and pansies.

I had a great germination rate with the flour peas and kale, and have also planted perpetual spinach seedlings. Forced to use slugbait for a brief time as there are a lot of snails lurking in the dead leaves between my containers, especially now it's a bit damper. My huge Mexican sunflower (Tithonia) is in full flower again, having grown back from a stump to be just as huge as last year. Will see how many years it manages to repeat that feat. Pics below, click through for full size.

Garden table under the eaves - primroses and pansies	Garden table - florist kalanchoes grown from cuttings, about to flower
Two pots of spinach seedlings, peas right rear, water garden left rear. The big stems in the water garden are black taro. Waterlilies are dying back .	Mexican sunflower going bananas, taller than my flat, as usual. I can just fit the car in!

Primroses, couple of pansies	Primroses, succulents
Aloe flowering, Meyer lemon fruiting, reliable red pelargonium	Pea seedlings (now all planted), and on the right, kale
Side garden down the length of my flat - coleus, impatiens, ligularia, vireya	Aloe (I broke several baby plants off a giant aloe in a local park 2 years ago, now have 4 plants in pots)
Lush side garden - acanthus getting big	Side garden - impatiens, ferns, spider plant

1. Ilya's eyes being described as blue or (worse) "sparkling blue". In the books they're definitely hazel and by the kind of spooky luck that accompanied Connor and Hudson's casting, Connor's eyes are also hazel, or sometimes gray-green. They're not fucking blue. And he's not blond, either! Evidence below. (why is he so gorgeous jfc dies)



2. Why do some authors of fics name Jackie and Hayden Pike's second twin Emma, rather than Jade as she is in the books? It's not just one author, either. Fannish contamination as they haven't read canon? Is Jade named in the show - maybe she isn't?

3. Having done some minimal research of my own, this one's more a question for anyone who's learned Russian. "I love you" in Russian is in several fics (and also, I just learned, in the books!) as Ya lyublyu tebya - unlike in the show (which had a Russian language expert advisor), or in google translate, where it's always Ya tebya lyublyu (literally: I you love). I assume that the second version is correct in terms of Russian grammar, and that fanwriters are copying RR, not realising that she got it wrong?

This was a prompt in the ICE OUT donation challenge that caught my eye, and suddenly I was with bunny. I can only write crack in omegaverse, so it's extremely cracky.

To the Victor, the Spoils on AO3 (Shane/Ilya, M, no warnings).
Summary: Montreal secedes, installs Metros captain and noted omega Shane Hollander as their constitutional monarch, and organizes a skills contest for his hand in marriage.

How did my life turn into this circus? Learning the intricacies of the skills competition at the NHL All Stars weekend so as to write omegaverse crack? OMG, what are my monkeys doing now! (hockey and fucking)

I'm feeling too tired to write properly about this, but here goes. I'm subscribed to NZ National Geographic online magazine, which is a reasonably trustworthy source, and last Friday I learned that NZ only has 18 days of onshore diesel stored. By now I guess it's down to 15 days. No idea if the article is accessible if you don't have a sub, but here's the link.

I've been ruminating in a confused way about that, since Friday. Will it be the start of supply line collapse here, as we're at the far end of that chain, in worldwide terms? Or just a period of restrictions, annoyances and a degree of belt tightening? It'll affect two things massively - transport, and farming. Like, the trucks that bring food and essentials to supermarkets, and deliver groceries to us, and in the longer term, it'll affect the farms growing the food.

Bring an old bastard who's profoundly unfit and who doesn't get out much, there's not a lot I can do for others, except maybe to help my immediate neighbours in some way. And I vacillate between vague prepping notions, nihilism, and thinking it'll turn out to be nothing after all. But I read apocafics, so I wonder. I mean, my car's petrol tank is fairly full and I use it only occasionally, but if it runs out will there still be buses? Which doubtless run on diesel. And if petrol gets harder to come by will people start stealing it, like, siphoning it off from cars parked outside like mine is, close to the road?

The fuel crisis expert guy in the article, Nathan Surendran, recommends talking to neighbours to prepare, but I'd definitely feel weird if I did that. At this point, anyway, when things alternate between feeling totally normal or like we're all fiddling while Rome burns. Or doesn't burn, due to the lack of diesel.

Guess I'll get an extra grocery delivery in, and make sure I have seeds in case I need to clear my garden beds of flowers and plant veggies more seriously. And I did unearth my camping gas stove and lamp in the last "cyclone", but I think we'll have power, as most of our grid runs on hydroelectricity (with the parts to repair the power stations probably delivered by diesel-powered trucks).

Well, we'll see if this is anything. Covid was fast. A week or three of worrying reports then (for us, here) whammo, lockdown. It felt surreal at the time. This is like that pre-Covid prodromal period with some signs and warnings cropping up but no one here taking it seriously, mostly. And our government now is largely shits and idiots, not a decent crisis leader like Jacinta, who actually listened to experts.

I'll keep fiddling, and let you know how it goes.

Ok I lied about going to bed.

Hilarious vid “To Be A Princess” -
set to some musical song, possibly Disney? By theburialofstrawberries.

https://www.tumblr.com/mific/813728132898177024/shane-as-princess

Minor update to yesterday's post.

One of those scary buzzy alerts on my phone just now, for the cyclone later today and tomorrow. No change from yesterday, just grumbling that I hate how those alerts startle me and raise my anxiety. Which is the point, I know! The eerie calm has broken - a light wind now and I just looked up and saw sun on the garden, but a sky becoming dark and lowering beyond. Peak cyclone time is the small hours of Sunday morning. Guess I'd better go outside and see what needs tidying away, then find the camping gas box in the garage. I'm very lucky that's all I need to do.

Some mildy porny, romantic fun, in which Shane gets tattooed for Ilya. There's even an Easter mention!

Words To Live By (Explicit, ~3600 words)

I should of course be writing my Hollanov Big Bang fic, but no, this one happened.

Happy hot cross buns to everyone.

I've been protected from HR fandom wank by only being active on DW and tumblr, but it's affecting AO3 as well now. As a megafandom doing a speedrun, I gather Heated Rivalry has attracted a fair number of idiots and trolls, and maybe just new fans ignorant of fandom etiquette, over on crap sites like twitter and instagram. I think hanging out in those places and on facebook can also turn you to the dark side teach you bad habits, maybe. Celestial_abyss who's podficcing OpalApparition's WIP Wolfbird, wrote an etiquette post about it.

So, a few BNF HR writers (OpalApparition being one) have I gather been trolled and harassed in those places (but honestly, why be on instagram or twitter at all!) and have reacted in a hurt/angry way by going on hiatus or, now, with Evilharlowe, a writer I enjoy, by deleting their entire AO3 profile and all works. Crap! I mean, their main WIP was a bit worrying as the projected chapter count kept climbing from 50 to 100 to 200 (they made it to just over 100), which seemed either unrealistic or not great for the writer's wellbeing, but still. They wrote a lot of other excellent stuff but are presumably too pissed off or unhappy to keep posting. The works haven't been made anon or orphaned, either, which feels like an angry reaction. Jesus, all that work, all those excellent fics, just gone from AO3. Fuck.

I have a lot of their fics saved as I usually read longer stuff as ebooks and EH almost never wrote short, but I don't have the latest updates on their two main WIPs. However, if you want a copy of any their completed works, hit me up in a message as I should have most of them, and can convert to any format you like.

But yeah, bummer.

(final)ETA: thanks to trillingstar pointing out that fichub had all of EH's fics saved with the latest updates, these are now all present/updated in this gdrive folder. 20 fics, with Step-Sibling Rivalry to ch107 and Heated Designation to ch15. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14Gh16_GJ7eN31XrkIzLKB0t4GaHIyBXC?usp=sharing

I've been quiet in terms of general journaling, mostly as I've been busy with projects. I've almost finished my SGA podfic for the podfic big bang, should be posting it in 2-3 days. Am now starting my first HR podfic, which will be interesting as I'm not going to be able to do Ilya's accent. But podficcers mostly don't attempt accents in podfics - except in HR, for Ilya, perhaps encouraged by Connor Storrie's virtuoso performance. A high bar.

I'm still reading lots of HR fanfic and not really interested in anything else, including profic. And writing. Have started my Hollanov big bang fic and have an AU WIP going as well. I can see that I'm going to lean pretty heavily towards writing AUs and fics that require bugger all knowledge of hockey, because I don't have any! But I'm writing, which feels really good.

It's early autumn here, a dry March until rain started yesterday, and now a much-needed soak. I should be tidying and mulching my garden beds, but my energy's mostly been directed to indoors creative stuff. Caught up with friends yesterday for a yummy Thai dinner, and it's hot cross bun time of year, so things have been excellent on the food front.

Not excellent at all elsewhere in the world, of course. I hope you're all okay and, for the northerners, enjoying spring. Hugs to you all.

The hunter gets captured by the game by castxt

The song's a light, jazzy Blondie number about a hunter being captured by the game or prey they're stalking - the hunter being Ilya, pursuing Shane. Beautiful, tight editing, uses the whole song, and the ending is just gorgeous.

Apogee by OpalApparition - where Commander Shane Hollander and Flight Engineer Ilya Rozanov are stranded on the International Space Station and have to survive a solar storm. It's an amazing mix of hard science, detailed knowledge of the ISS, space program history, intense action/adventure, gripping drama, an incredibly repressed Shane, pining, jealous Ilya, incendiary sex in microgravity, and romance. The writing is extremely good - gripping, fluent, with great descriptive detail. It's the best complete AU in the fandom I've read so far. (50,348 words)

I'm very into everything by OpalApparition, especially Wolfbird - a regularly updating WIP featuring professional dom Ilya and extremely uptight hockey star Shane. Although the way they meet is a BDSM club, in fact the fic's largely not about that (although there are several extremely hot scenes). It's more about the two characters, as despite his in-control dom role at the club, Ilya's actually a complex mess, an illegal overstayer with a ruined knee after a disaster very early in his NHL career, and Shane is the profoundly repressed hockey-robot star he'd be if he'd never met Ilya as a teen. It's addictive, and, as above, beautifully written. (currently 170,925 words)

princessofgeeks posted about Rachel Reid having said that Shane has "the Hero's Journey", in the Heated Rivalry books.
And raven commented, agreeing and saying that Shane grows and changes more, internally.

I've been thinking about this, and I started to write a comment but it got so long I decided to post here about it.

I re-read the start of Heated Rivalry—it's a flash-forward prologue to the hookups era and focuses on an after-game hookup, with the overall theme being Shane's dilemma where he's desperate for the hookups (with hints at his feelings for Ilya that he's massively suppressing), his denial about being gay (seeing it as an aberration he's too "weak" not to give into), and his rationalizations about just not having found the right woman yet. He's conflicted and miserable despite the scene being hot.

Then by the end of the book, Shane and Ilya are opening the Irina Foundation, and Shane has fully accepted being gay and loving Ilya. So the external barriers (the NHL's and hockey culture's homophobia, being closeted, not living together) are still there for them both, but Shane has made the internal Hero's Journey of battling against being gay (his internalized homophobia) then overcoming that and accepting it, and accepting his love for Ilya. Ilya battles against acknowledging that he's falling in love (a lost cause from early on), but he's clear about his sexuality from the start, and he's accepted his feelings for Shane by the tuna melts scene, whereas Shane's not there yet.

The Long Game might be seen as a bit more Ilya's Hero's Journey as he starts with many problems—loneliness as he's just moved to Ottawa, having to be on a poorly-playing losing team, still not seeing enough of Shane—and he gets depressed, which he has to battle against. Like (eventually), therapy, medication, being honest with Shane about how much he's struggling, finding friends in the Centaurs and a family in the Hollanders. But the terrible "wait until we retire to come out" plan is still hanging over him (over both of them), largely due to Shane's fear of exposure and change, and as Ilya is still afraid to be honest with Shane about how much the terrible plan makes him suffer.

So then there are two external deus ex machina events that force the "wait until we retire" plan to collapse—the Tampa plane near-tragedy, and the fanmail outing. Both of them energize Ilya to fight back (the near crash makes him rally his team and win games, and to move things along with Shane as he'd finally been honest about his pain in the cathartic row beforehand), and then the fanmail outing is actually what Ilya needs to move their relationship into the light. All this doesn't solve Ilya's tendency to depression, but he gets a lot better at handling it. He learns to manage the dragon, rather than killing it.

There's still a Hero's Journey for Shane in The Long Game though, which I missed initially as the book seems so Ilya-focused. This time it's Shane's fear of coming out of the closet and being exposed, which he's way more afraid of than Ilya is—again, Ilya has real issues to battle with (even his depression can be seen as an external antagonist as it's partly biologically driven and recurs despite psychotherapy and meds), but Shane's big challenge is once more internal. He's terrified of being outed and of losing hockey and being shamed and reviled by the world. It's his intense need for privacy and his internalized homophobia that he has to combat—and in initially not doing so he hurts Ilya (but Ilya conceals that hurt from him until their big fight). The fight and the Tampa plane near-crash wake Shane up and move him along a bit, but he's still delaying their coming out as he's so afraid of it.

Then the fanmail outing is the final blow that means he can't hide anymore (to Shane's horror, but to Ilya's secret relief). So that's his big hero's test in this book (where realizing he was gay and choosing Ilya over 'performing straightness' was his big battle in HR). And the scene where Shane stands up to Roger Crowell is his "battling the dragon" moment, where he fights for Ilya and for himself, defies Crowell who represents homophobia and the potential loss of hockey, and finally, finally, Shane fully chooses Ilya rather than prioritizing hockey and maintaining his straight public persona.

He's afraid that being exposed will mean his reputation will be destroyed, that he won't be seen as "good"—and that happens to some degree, but he finds it's survivable. It's shown in the way he doesn't arrange any extra chairs at his wedding to Ilya at the end of TLG after they've been outed. He doesn't think many guests will come now that he's not "good" anymore in a black & white, all or nothing public image sense. But his friends do come, and Shane finds there's a place he can exist in between being perfect and being reviled. It's a more adult, integrated sense of self.

I suspect Shane will once again have a Hero's Journey in the pending 3rd book in the HR trilogy (Unrivaled). What will that be? I wonder if it might be Shane's retirement from playing hockey in the NHL and what comes after? He was terrified of coming out because he thought it would mean losing NHL-level hockey, but he survived that in TLG after battling Crowell, emerging still playing NHL hockey with Ilya on the Centaurs. Inevitably, he and Ilya will age out of playing NHL hockey and it will definitely be more of a challenge for Shane than for Ilya. Ilya already prioritized Shane over hockey when he moved to the Centaurs—I wouldn't be surprised if he retired first, in Unrivaled, with both of them having to deal with that as a precursor. There's an excellent fanfic about that (can't recall the title!) which I imagine Rachel hasn't read, as most authors don't read fanfic of their books especially with an a ongoing series, to avoid accusations of copying.

But for Shane, hockey is still a huge part of his sense of self. He's going to have to figure out who he is when he's not an NHL player anymore. I suspect Rachel might bring in external factors again to move him along in his battle against retiring (as otherwise I suspect he'd put it off for way too long)—like a major injury or an accumulation of smaller injuries. There might also need to be another big goal for him to switch focus to as well, something to give his life meaning after retirement, to answer the question: "who am I if I'm not playing pro hockey?" A dad? A coach? It'll be interesting to see.

The missing episode 5 scene in Ilya's hotel room at the All-Star weekend in Tampa.

Many others have had a go at this, and I wanted to try my hand at it.

If We Could

At 1361 words, it's short and probably a little over-optimistic, but obviously in writing it I already know what's coming in the rest of eps 5 & 6. 😊

You may already know this, but I found it worked today, when maybe not all of the site's down even though I still get the error message. Recently when the site was fully down, it didn't work. Worth a try, from time to time, especially if you've saved rec list links or are using a rec list site other than AO3. 😉

Paste this into your browser: https://download.archiveofourown.org/downloads/000000/fic.epub

And put the fic number in instead of the zeroes.

That's it! I read on kindle so epub works for me. If you want an html or pdf of the fic, just change that bit - it'll probably work.

ETA: also, time to visit the Audiofic Archive and enjoy your favourite fics as podfic!

Heated Rivalry is a difficult fandom to write in, as there's an intimidating amount of incredible fic!

I finished this a week ago, then vacillated about posting it after reading other stories by far more skilled writers, but I just finished the final edit and hit post, on the principle of "MORE CAKE!"

It's my attempt at writing something a bit like sex pollen in HR. Weird tropes are a lot easier in Stargate, where they're either already in canon, or can be explained away by alien tech and alien plants!

when you have to go there - about 13,000 words, Ilya/Shane, Ilya's POV.

So many WIPs - I never used to read the damn things, but HR has corrupted me! The advantage of having several WIPs on the go is that something updates every day, often more than one. The main downside is remembering which plot or AU storyline the WIP is about. I often reread the last chapter, esp. if it's a few days since the fic updated.

I know where to draw the line by magneticwave (wrote the great AU where Shane's a surgeon). It's a new WIP (10,000 word 1st chapter) and is really excellent, with a mature 26 y.o. Shane with a trick knee who's in the Metros with 22 y.o. hotshot Ilya. Lots of hockey detail, great writing & characterisations, a closeted oblivious Shane, and Ilya on the prowl.

My two other main fave WIPs are Basingstoke's Lovers, or English is a damn funny language which continues to be brilliant, and Glittercity's Never Been Bitten, the vampire AU with interesting power dynamics (rich obsessive club owner vampire Shane who's nervous of the ingenuity and aggression of humans and Ilya, the chaotic bartender who's trying to seduce him.)

I've also been charging through all CorvidCordelia's works.

I read Half Agony, Half Hope a while back - it's a longfic based on the premise that Ilya gets traded to Montreal about 3 years after Shane breaks it off after the tuna melts hookup, so they're now on the same team. A great mix of angst, drama, lust, and of course, the requisite happy ending!

Careful Fear and Dead Devotion is another longfic, a complete AU in which Shane and Ilya are young actors looking for a break who are cast as Finn and Dane in the TV series "Ember and Ice". It uses the Quinn audio-erotic story as the plot of the drama they're starring in, so if the mention of Ember and Ice as a "fandom" put you off, don't be - no knowledge is needed of E&I and the inherent ludicrousness of that work doesn't intrude. Scott and Kip are the showrunners! It's kind of analogous to Hudson and Connor in HR, without being in any way RPF. It's a great story, and I loved it.

And Walking Through Windows a fork in the road AU where Ilya fucks up the Tampa All Stars reconciliation (after Shane accepts he's gay), and they then only see each other on the ice when their teams play, for ten years. Which is inherently very sad, but the story starts then, when they're both recently retired and Ilya learns that Shane's about to marry a man. You can imagine what happens, and I was unsure if I'd like it as I dislike partner betrayal, but CorvidCordelia is a bloody good writer and absolutely sold it to me, with a wonderful story that I couldn't put down (gave myself eyestrain again, damn it!)

The usual sample of some of my seasonal cards. Hopefully they've all arrived by now, or will very soon. This year I decided to paint people freehand (which means they're all a bit wonky) and then name them after less well known minor deities - it's called the Small Gods series. I had fun, anyway - it's always good to get back into watercolours again (although I use them more like gouache), after mostly working in Procreate the rest of the year. Embellished with metallic paint in various colours, gold, and silver, for a festive touch. Hopefully you can see the sheen a little in the way I've photographed them.

God of Circuses	God of Ink	God of Extroverts
God of Dramatic Entrances	God of Jump Scares	God of Drizzle
God of Sweaters	God of Naps	God of Woad
God of Flirts	God of Sparrows	God of Nostalgia

It's run a bit differently to FTH. You donate in one of 3 tiers - $5, $10, or $20. For the lower tiers you don't get much, or any, choice, just an HR fanwork assigned to you as thanks for the donation. For the $20 tier you get a bit more choice and can specify the type of fanwork (art, fic, podfic, vid, etc.), and can give a brief prompt for the creator. But this isn't an auction - you can't put in bids for a specific creator's work. The mod assigns you, like a matchmaker.

Anyway, if you'd like to donate, here's the post: donations form here

To complete the form you'll need to have already donated. I did most of the form then jumped sideways to do the donation to one of their listed orgs, then I completed the form. Seemed to work okay.

Two hot off the press HR recs, and an older GC one.

cut to the feeling - by Charlotte_Stant, one of my fave authors in HR and HR RPF. For magical realism reasons, 18 y.o. Shane wakes up in the body and life of himself at age 35, married to Ilya. It's brilliant, very funny and just the best "crack taken seriously" imaginable. Also hot as hell. So good.

Torture Me (With All I've Wanted) - by Toomuchplor, also an absolute fave author. 17 y.o. Shane and Ilya end up on a long bus ride together. Under a blanket. Yes, it's super hot but all the details are so lovely, the writing so good. I love it.

And so it's gonna be forever has already been reccd by people and is still a WIP damn it, but it's completely addictive. I just loooove fix-it fics, and in this, Ilya dies in the Centaurs' plane crash but is magically transported back to his teens again, reliving his life with all his future memories intact, determined to get it righter this time - and boy, does he make some changes. I could do without a few of the mystical bits but the majority of this fic is like pure crack to me.

Okay, so this vid is wonderful (courtesy of a rec by dine). It's long, lushly romantic, and Jesus, why is the kissing montage in the middle so goddamn hot?

a thousand years by mybelovedismine

Thinking about why some vids work for me and others don't. First, I have to like the song. If I don't, no amount of clever editing will save it. Sometimes a really great song will carry me through average editing, but not vice versa. But a good song plus clever editing, so the vid's coherent and well-matched to the lyrics? That's the very best.

---

And here are some maybe controversial recs: not everyone likes RPF, so dl;dr. It's damn hard not to be delighted by Hudson and Connor, though, with their obviously close friendship and the way they cheerfully talk about loving each other at the drop of a hat.

I hate it when people read more into that and make shit up, causing drama in public spaces like social media - as Jacob said, Shane and Ilya are for the fans, Hudson and Connor are private. But creating RP fiction about them in a fanspace like AO3 doesn't bother me at all as long as no one brings it to their attention. Fanwriters have created RPF for years and although I've never been in any of the big RPF sports fandoms like hockey or baseball, I've enjoyed Joe/David RPF in Stargate Atlantis, in particular. Plus there's the whole Jared/Jensen pairing in Supernatural.

There's some incredibly good Hudcon RPF. There's also some very mediocre stuff, so here are a few of my specially selected recs. The writing is top tier in all of these, and they're all rated explicit.

Carterhaugh, Ontario by charlotte_stant. After filming, the boys go back to Connor's room to hang out, and end up fucking. Gorgeous banter, funny and nuanced, just great characterisation. Hudson's pov.

"Ya Blew It!" with Jay and Dan & Obvious - a 2-part series by falsescience (YankingAwry). This features complex relationships as the boys inveigle Jacob into a throuple – the first one's in Jacob's pov, with Hudson seducing him at the TSN SportsCentre set. Brilliant insights into actors & directing, funny, and super hot. The second part is Connor's pov - Hudson and Connor hanging out, fucking, and talking about what happened with Jacob, with Hudson setting Connor up for his own encounter. Amazing characterisation, and the Jacob aspect wasn't off-putting for me as the Hudson/Connor relationship is so resilient and lovely. (Also, have you seen JT's IMDB pic from younger years? He was hot!)

for the sake of auld lang syne by twnkwlf. This is Connor's pov, while he's staying with Hudson in Vancouver for New Years. It's mostly them hanging out lazily and talking, then fucking, and like the other recs here the characterisation is funny, subtle and feels bang on target. Excellent stuff.

that indescribable feeling by thermocline. Six encounters, real or imagined, in their developing, complex relationship. Beautifully written, balanced on an aching edge of ambiguity, and fundamentally hopeful. Alternating POVs.

I get quite a few mailorder things delivered and the couriers know to just leave packages by my door if I'm not immediately available, but this morning I was right there, door open and all. So I was baffled, then annoyed, when the NZ Post courier van just sat in my driveway and tooted at me. What the fuck? I finally located my crocs and went outside and made a WTF gesture, and the driver reluctantly got out of his cab and thrust a package at me then quickly scrambled back in and took off.

I turned around and whoa, there was a stray dog behind me standing up looking over into my neighbour's patio which is edged by a short bit of picket fence. Then I heard it start yelping in distress and pain and realised its front legs had slid down between the pickets and gotten stuck with its paws being too wide to pull back horizontally through the gaps. It was a largish dog, what we call a huntaway here, and it was really worked up so I didn't feel safe approaching it from behind to try and lift up its legs, right next to its mouth - seemed like a good way to get bitten. But luckily while I was dithering and trying to figure out what to do it accidentally freed itself - it had been sagging down on its haunches which only trapped it worse, but it must have stood up again. I shooed it away and could see it had a white muzzle so quite an old dog. I hope it's ok, but I wasn't able to check its collar for owner details.

Having had a chance to look up what to do in that sort of situation in future, there really isn't anything*. It was too minor for the police and not a dangerous dog per se, and not an animal being mistreated so not the SPCA's area, although if it had stayed stuck I'd have called them for advice.

Another unexpected start of the day story!

*having calmed down and thought it through I should have got my broom and lifted its feet up that way, but I was in a panic-brain state at the time.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms - a GoT prequel set some considerable time before GoT, and has a 9.2 rating on IMDB so far (which mostly seems based on fans having loved the book and feeling the show hasn't fucked it up so far in ep 1). Anyway, it was mostly fine, but nothing spectacular. Sir Dunc is a hedge knight's squire who's trying to pass himself off as a knight at a tournament. He's dirt poor so it's all very homespun and common folky so far. Presumably the show's world will get more complex and interesting as we go on.
My main gripe was the shitting scene, to which my reaction was you've gotta be shitting me! Dunc has a projectile shit from a standing position (slightly bent forward), like one of his horses but with way more rearward velocity. Was it supposed to be "gritty reality"? Because no one shits standing up like that ffs, and if they did it'd for sure go all over their legs. Presumably there's nothing wrong with his legs so why the fuck not squat like a normal, limber young person? Stupid nonsense, which I can only assume was supposed to be humorous. I was not amused.

The Pitt - I'm not liking it quite as much as season 1 so far but that's probably me finding anything not HR a bit lacklustre. Very happy Dana the charge nurse is back and in fighting form, and am enjoying all the usual suspects. One major plot point is that Dr Robbie's about to go on sabbatical and is being replaced by a new female consultant with whom there's a lot of friction as they do things very differently. She's a fan of generative AI for note-writing, for example. I can see they wanted the drama of the clash, but did they have to make her uptight, rulebound, female and with a Muslim name? Sigh. I really hope the drama's not going to play out in as stereotypical a way as it's currently threatening to, but the writing was good last time, so they get the benefit of the doubt.

Landman season 2 is on Prime, and is excellent as always. Superb writing, great acting and characters. It's about a Texas oil industry guy who is 2IC to the company CEO, and who does all the hands-on practical management and troubleshooting, including dealing with the local drug runners, wells blowing, and workers getting injured etc. His wife and daughter at first glance seem complete rich dumb blonde stereotypes, but underneath that facade both are interesting and funny, and cunning in the ways of their people (mostly at manipulating men). I enjoy it.