Soft and cute AUs

tender by bysine. Shane is an Ottawa bureaucrat (procurement officer) and Ilya a retired hockey player coaching teens for a charity and grappling with the procurement system. Funny, sweet, great characterisation.

Unlikely Animal Friends by Distractivate - Zookeepers AU! Ilya works with apes and Shane's a coral expert. Great writing, funny, touching. (no animal harm or death)

No Friction, Just Chemistry by Vee - Farmer’s Market AU. Ilya makes pickles, Shane makes artisanal lube! Lovely details, romantic and funny.


And for something completely different, coffeeinallcaps an author I like very much who writes very hot, shortish, character-driven fics with excellent dialogue and characterisation. Four fics so far, all excellent. "i was born out in the cold" (Ilya-centric) is especially good.


In other news, I wrote another HR fic Just My Bloody Luck (Shane/Ilya) - magical realism (magical pussy acquisition) and crack treated seriously.
I'm somewhat hammered by various deadlines, but also keen to finally start a fic I've outlined (working title "Soft Dads") which I imagine will have an audience of 2 people and a dog (or less), as it'll be gen, about a developing friendship between David Hollander and George Grady (Kip's dad). I feel Kip's dad got shortchanged in the show when Scott called Kip down onto the ice for THE KISS. But that's just a small part of the fic. Now I just need to carve some time out from reading everyone else's excellent fics!

Today, on July 4, I celebrate the greatest American virtue -- stubbornness.

(While writing this, I had to put a great deal of effort into NOT making all the examples come from media, like the images of the new Slayers standing up to threats, like Captain America ... well, you know. All of them. There's one movie named in the column that is definitely about someone standing up against overwhelming odds and winning -- and she's standing up again.)

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!

For no actual reason, I'm rereading something that has turned out to be far more timely and relevant to current day life than I'd expected.

Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Ignore the dates of when things happen (it was written in the late 50s). Ignore the transliterated Russian words and the pidgin language. It's about how to run a revolution.

Of course, once I was in it, I remembered why I'd picked it up.

Professor Bernardo de la Paz, the political brains of the story, was based on a professor teaching political science and strategy at Cal Tech at the time. And 30+ years later I listened to a lecture in grad school in a class on strategy in politics, and recognized it as a slightly reworded chunk of the story -- and when I went to talk to the prof afterward, he more or less admitted that he'd been the model for Bernardo. His name was Dr. William Riker. The Star Trek character was named after him. He was brilliant and funny and amazing, easily the best part of my grad school courses was sitting in his classrooms. (Far, far better than intermediate statistics and mathematical modeling.). I can look around in what's going on in Congress and pick out which Congresspeople are using tactics he taught us 40 years ago.

He's long gone. I miss him. Seeing his ghost in Bernardo de la Paz helps with that. And reading this particular Heinlein book at this point in time is useful for thinking, also, if only to realize what various people in power are stirring up that they don't realize, and what is and isn't happening because of it. I think if more people in some places were reading this now, it would be a lot rockier in a few places than it is.

I am definitely ticked at the NYTimes obituary writer -- I will not call this person a reporter -- who quoted only from people who dissed the music of Blood, Sweat and Tears in David Clayton-Thomas's obituary; he has died at age 84. Aside from the obituaryist's dislike for the music, and his apparent disdain for Mr. Clayton-Thomas, he includes this bit of idiocy:

"...Yonge Street, a rowdy, club-filled strip in Toronto."

Excuuuuuuse me?

The longest street in Canada, which starts at Lake Ontario and ends somewhere near Hudson's Bay, is a "rowdy, club-filled strip"? Shall we talk about journalistic accuracy and integrity? Or even about doing your homework and looking it up? I know Yonge St. I have walked a good few miles of it over the years and it changes every two blocks or so, but it is not a "rowdy, club-filled strip".

I did look up the writer -- Stefano Montali -- who is no longer at the NY Times. This was, apparently, one of those pre-written obits that is filed away just in case someone notable dies. I doubt he ever listened to BS&T's music. And I have to doubt if any of the editorial staff actually read it before it was published and noticed the bias in it.

David Clayton-Thomas had a hard, hard life, and he does not deserve this disdain and scorn in his obituary. This is a man whose band's first album, which he helped to write and on which he sang lead, was awarded a Grammy that was given to him by Louis Armstrong. He bloody deserves better.