Mavericks Like Us

Fandom: Stranger Things
Pairings/Characters: Will Byers/Mike Wheeler
Rating: Explicit
Length: 59,047 words
Content Notes: Bullying and homophobia.
Creator Link: harriet_vane
Theme: Inept in Love, Pretend Couple, Friends to Lovers, Canon LGBTQ+ Characters

Summary: Will needs a date to his mom's wedding. Mike volunteers.


"I have an idea," says Mike.

Ice cubes form in Will's stomach. "How dangerous is it? Like, should I call Dustin to talk you down, or should I call Nancy to be ready to drive us to the hospital?"

"No," says Mike, "you can't tell anyone or it won't work."

"Or what won't work?" Will asks. It's like picking up a rock you know a spider will be under.

Mike gets up and closes Will's door. Hopper doesn't make them keep it open but sometimes Will does anyway, because every now and then lying around alone with Mike on his bed just makes his chest ache too much. If the door is open he can tell himself You can't do anything right now, someone will see.

Mike leans back against the door. His eyes are lit up with that special maniacal gleam that the Wheelers get right before they do something insane, like when Nancy says, "Then we have to go kill Vecna ourselves," or whatever. "Take me to the wedding," says Mike.

"Yeah," says Will slowly, "you'll be at the wedding. Obviously."

"As your date."

Reccer's Notes: They've fixed Hawkins' Upside Down problem (though this predates the final season), and it's the kids' senior year, and Will is worried his mom is worried about him, so Mike hatches a plan to be Will's (fake) date to Joyce and Hopper's wedding because of course he does. That means we've got Will pretending to pretend he's into Mike and Mike playing gay chicken against himself and...losing? winning? both?? Neither of them is doing a great job (or any job) communicating, but their fake relationship thrives and does what all the best fake relationships do, becomes real. A sweet friends-to-lovers romance with just the right amount of agonizing feelings.

Fanwork Link: Roll To Charm Person

Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Characters/Pairings: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Rose Landry, numerous Reddit OCs.
Rating: Teen
Length: 20,175
Content Notes: No AO3 warnings apply. Some of the Reddit comments contain terrible advice!
Creator Links: OpalApparition on AO3
Themes: Inept in love, Canon LGBTQ+ characters, Humor, Unusual format & style, Epistolary, Outsider POV, Angst with a happy ending

Summary: I (26M) want to invite man I sleep with (26M) to my house to spend the weekend. Help me not ruin it.

Or: Ilya Rozanov goes to the internet for dating advice

Reccer's Notes: This is a long (9 chapters) social media epistolary fic based on Reddit, where Ilya asks the internet for advice before the tuna melt hookup. It's funny, very cleverly done, and the responses from Reddit users are often hilarious. We start with Ilya's post (he's orangespyder617 - his sports car name & Boston area code), and later, Shane (gingerale_MTL) also separately posts after he's bolted in panic and is dating Rose, and has realized he's really messed things up. There's some fun for the Reddit users in speculating about who these two rich, inept in love guys might be, and also later after Shane posts as Ilya has wiped his former thread by then but some users remember it and join the dots. Rose herself (kidnapped4times) also posts wanting advice about how to tactfully tell her boyfriend he's gay, and finally Ilya posts again. It reads exactly like Reddit, although I suspect with way fewer trolls, and the users often post memes and links to vids which work, and add to the realism. Throughout, Ilya and Shane amply demonstrate their ineptitude in love, starting with POSTING TO REDDIT ABOUT IT AT ALL! I grinned a lot.

Fanwork Links: Tuna Melts and Longitudinal Studies

The BuckTommy Bang is looking at maybe switching from Discord (which is evil and getting more so) to DW, so I visited my reading page for the first time in years and realized it's been almost 6 years since I posted!

In that time I have:

-bought a house
-gotten my EdD in educational sustainability (dissertation topic: community college biology students' emotional responses to a video about healthcare waste)
-taken a new job teaching health sciences instead of nursing (at my same CC)
-turned 60 (soon to turn 61)
-presented at a couple of conferences
-bought a new car (just 2 months ago--it's a 2026 Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid and I love it)
-lost one cat and gained another (Hazel died a year ago, and I've had Piper for, jeez, almost as long as it's been since I posted)
-gotten involved in the 911 fandom, specifically Buck/Tommy

I'm back on Tumblr these days too.

Anyway, I'm not sure how often I'll be posting here nowadays, but I wanted to at least give an update and see how y'all are doing.

When we lived on the outskirts of Turku, going into downtown to run errands was already a bit of an Expedition, because it entailed a pleasant or idyllic walk to and from the bus stop of about 6-8 minutes, plus about 20-25 minutes on the bus, and then walking around the city center - possibly overcrowded, but full of beautiful buildings and trees.

Now that we live in the country, I'm still closer to the Turku city center than many people are who live in a North American metro area. I can walk to the bus stop (5 minutes, unpleasant scenery) and take a bus that puts me down near the center in about 50 minutes. But that trip feels excessive for a shopping expedition.

There's a big shopping center called Skanssi between us and Turku that is more convenient, about 35 minutes by bus, but the bus doesn't actually stop that close to it so you have to walk like ten minutes (it is very much designed to be visited by car, unlike the city center). And the mall itself just has RANCID VIBES. I hate being there! It's something about the interior architecture and the lighting maybe? The actual finishes are nice, the decor is fine, the lighting isn't UGLY. It is pretty dim inside, which has to be on purpose, but it's more like they were trying for a cozy or intimate or restful light instead of glaring? But instead it's oppressive in there. I always just want to get out. The K-Citymarket hypermarket attached to it is our closest Citymarket*, and it's much more brightly lit but still feels looming, oppressive, suffocating, sullen, and unwell. And I honestly do not know why! Maybe it's not actually the light, maybe it's sounds outside the regular hearing range or something?

So I've been thinking for a week whether it's preferable to go to this rancid-vibed mall, 35m by bus + 10-15m walk, or all the way to Turku, 50m by bus + 5-10m walk. The former SHOULD make me feel better because of the walking and fresh air, and I usually prefer less time on the bus because it's less chance to get trapped near someone's perfume; but would the rancid vibes counteract that?



*The other stores vary in vibes, but none of the ones near us are even close to this bad. Citymarkets Kupittaa and Länsikeskus are both reasonably Ok, and Prisma (Citymarket's competitor, the other Finnish grocery chain) Tampereentie is a little worse, while our closest Prisma at Itäharju is mostly nice, with some bad vibes in one end of the supermarket side. The nicest hypermarket near us is Citymarket Ravattula, Littoinen. I like this one so much more that I ALMOST would go to it instead (it's nearly 40 minutes by car, instead of 15 or so to Itäharju).

I just finished Basingstoke's gorgeous HR fic and it rocked my socks so much. And made me laugh. And occasionally made me teary. But mostly it just brought me joy.

Lovers, or, English is a damn funny language (77847 words) by Basingstoke
Chapters: 24/24
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Svetlana Vetrova
Additional Tags: no beta we die like Shane's attempts at heterosexuality, Post-Episode: s01e06 The Cottage (Heated Rivalry), Coming Out, Disordered Eating, Dirty Talk, Depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - CPTSD, Suicidal Ideation, Past Domestic Violence, Toxic Family Dynamics, Outing, Found Family, Pittsburgh, look I just think Ilya would really vibe with pittsburgh, Soft Dom Ilya Rozanov, do not take legal advice from this fic, Handwaving, English is this authors's first language and I'm mad about it, threesome teasing but no threesomes, Original Character(s)
Summary:

Ilya asked Shane’s father while Shane and his mother were talking outside: “Is boyfriends correct? Lovers is incorrect, but I am not sure what is correct.”

“Well,” Mr. Hollander said. “‘Lovers’ is usually used for, hm, a mistress or an affair. Something kind of sordid. Though--you would say Romeo and Juliet is a play about two lovers,” he said. He paused his knife on the chopping board. “Somehow that’s right and using it for real people isn’t right. English is a damn funny language, Ilya."

“Yes,” Ilya said from the bottom of his heart.

‘Sir,’ intoned Dr. Fell, drawing the napkin from his collar and sitting up in dignity, ‘let me assure you I have been listening with far closer attention than my admittedly cross-eyed and half-witted appearance would seem to indicate.'

—John Dickson Carr, The Dead Man's Knock (1958)

(I rate this book 2/5, however.)

Thank you to everyone who sent me birthday messages yesterday. It's always lovely to be remembered and I appreciate everyone who took the time to get in touch.

I had a nice day. I asked for some wax melts and bath stuff from James, and that's exactly what he got. turlough sent me the most beautiful, sparkly scarf which I really love a lot. We went to MetroCentre where we had dinner at Wagamamas -- this time we had the cut price lunch special menu, which meant I wasn't tempted by the firecracker option again. Then went off to watch Wuthering Heights, which was actually quite entertaining and visually, lovely to watch. Well, I say watch, I saw it all, James fell asleep about 30 minutes in.

Corey phoned when I was eating, so it was a quick talk, especially as he was getting ready for work, but it was lovely to hear from him.

I also had a look into Lush and with apologies to everyone I've already mentioned this to elsewhere, I couldn't believe how much the prices have shot up again. I got a Paddington Marmalade sandwich bubble bar, which smells delicious and I'll enjoy using it, but it was £9.50. No wonder I stick to just getting Lush in the half price sale now.

Left Metro and went to Kayleigh's where I got the most adorable card from Bodhi, and my brother turned up too with a beautiful bouquet of flowers, which was very unexpected of him. But mainly, I enjoyed hanging with my sibs, Bodhi and James, as it's not often we all get together like that.

Then when I got home, much later than I expected, I had a caterpillar birthday cake to eat. And very delicious it was, too. I posted some photos here if anyone wants to see.

One of the downsides of working from home (also not having a car but that's more about convenience in this particular case) is that getting to church for Ash Wednesday is more of a struggle for me.  When I still went into my office, I could take a longer lunch and go up to the church closest to me for the noontime service.  Last year, I was able to go since it was on the way home from a training and figured at the very least I could get ashes on the corner if I didn't make the service over at St. Paul's.  As luck would have it, I made the service.  I don't go to church regularly much anymore but St. Paul's is a good place to go when I do.

This year, my time is stacked because I've to to leave work early for something else and I didn't necessarily want to take the whole day off. I did do the readings for the day, which conveniently come in email (yay, technology).  Also, I have chosen a saint for Lent Madness - this is new for me but hey, having saints duking it out in a March Madness style bracket cracks me up. I am pulling for Marina the Monk, who wanted to join a monastary rather than get married (her dad was going to marry her off and join a monastary himself and she said nope, let's be monks together) and dressed as a a young man to join up.I was previously unfamiliar with her story but the Episcopal Church added her to the liturgical calendar in 2022. She's been long venerated in Easter Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox Churches. 

I love saint stories.  They start out pretty tame but then you run into something like, "Oh, by the way, there was that thing with the snakes and it was pretty amazing."

I need to hand wash a bunch of wool things. Three sweaters with soot on the cuffs can be washed in the bathroom sink, but there are two big wool blankets which won't fit in that sink. And we don't have a laundry tub! I remember when I was four or five we were living in an apartment that only had a shower, not a tub, and I was afraid of the shower, so my mom had a laundry tub for me to bathe in and at that age I fit in it comfortably. It was one of those round zinc ones. I've never even seen those for sale as an adult, and I love hardware stores.

I have seen sturdy black plastic tubs that are about that size and larger at hardware stores - they're used in construction, to mix concrete and thinset and mud and stuff in. Not sure that would be a sensible purchase though (it's so big!). My current idea is that I could wash blankets in one of our biggest size of plastic storage bins. The problem is all of them are full of stuff being stored and I'm not sure which one would make the most sense to temporarily borrow.

Another consideration: drying. Drying takes AGES when it's cold. Wool absorbs a lot of water and therefore takes a long time to dry, and sweaters have to dry flat. I suppose we can put the things in front of the stove and light a fire, but we can't keep it going until they're dry. I suppose I have to do this one wool object at a time.

ETA: I should just wait until it's spring and I can dry the blankets outside. The sweaters are more urgent than that, but they are also smaller. I'll just have to try to dry them by the fire.

Pandemic Life
Just had my Covid booster.

Previous poll review
In the Oxford comma poll, 44.4% of respondents have firm opinions, 34.9% have moderate preferences, and 6.3% are officially neutral. (I worded the poll badly, because actually what I have is a firm preference, which is to weed out unnecessary commas for cleaner prose. Yes, I realise I used an Oxford comma above. ;-p) The "always use it!" contingent makes up 39.7% of respondents, while 15.9% said "only use it when necessary!"

In ticky-boxes, 39.7% of respondents selected "buying a random bargain bin product, imprinting on it, and spending the rest of your life trying to track down replacements", and I'm very glad it's not just me. I recently bought 18 toothbrushes online, which should theoretically keep me going until I'm 60. Naturally, hugs won the ticky-boxes, with 69.8%. Thank you for your votes!! ♥

Reading
I can't remember what prompted me to, but I listened to the audiobook of The Duke Who Didn't by Courtney Milan, read by Mary Jane Wells, and loved it all over again. (Last time I read it in ebook.) It's a British historical het romance with leads of Chinese descent, and they and their supporting cast are delightful.

I've now started the next in the series, The Marquis Who Mustn't, in ebook. (It's the first ebook I've bought in ages. I'm proud to say that, after some technical hitches, I managed to load a Kobo book onto my Kindle, so that'll be my plan from now on.)

While waiting to see if my Covid jab would importune me, I was allowed to go hang out in the library for the 15 minutes. I not only picked up my reserve, but also two random contemporary romance novels and a Japanese coffee shop book with cats. Given my recent rate of (not) reading hard-copy books, I should clearly not be allowed to browse.

Kdramas
Still going on One Spring Night. It's finally picking up. The cast is amazing, and they have excellent chemistry, which is what's been keeping me watching. The plot is, in essence, woman dumps her long-term high-status boyfriend for someone nicer of lower status; everyone has a hard time accepting this, especially the long-term boyfriend. Personally, I'm like, "The new guy is Jung Hae-in! Look at his smile!! How could you not??" Anyway, it felt like they were all having the same conversations over and over for seven episodes, which got a bit wearying, but hopefully the latest developments will stay developed. (FTR, this drama feels like an obvious descendant of Something in the Rain, with many of the same cast but (thankfully) no subplot about workplace sexual harassment. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this one will stick the landing better!)

Other TV
Watching our way through the extended edition of Lord of the Rings, plus many of the extras. What a blast from the past! Frodo actually made me tear up at the end of Fellowship. We're on the second disk of Fellowship extras.

Also, still, The Pitt and SurrealEstate, and my sister and I started season 4 of Fringe. (I would totally watch this show if it were always Olivia and Lincoln as partners. Who even needs Peter? ;-p)

Audio entertainment
Letters from an American, The Shit They Don't Tell You About Writing, Runaway Country with Alex Wagner (part of Crooked Media), and a whole bunch of episodes of Better Offline, including "Openclaw with David Gerard" (as recced by sabotabby), four short, angry episodes titled "AI Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble", and a fantastic rant with Cal Newport about AI reporting (spoiler: the vast majority of it is hype), which also, towards the end, explained (in words small enough for me to understand) how AIs are made/trained. Highly rec. I'm now working my way through Better Offline's series "The Enshittifinancial Crisis" and greatly appreciating his invective.

Online life
The Guardian slo-mo rewatch is still my happy place.

Writing/making things
I've been working on the same Yuletide New Year's Resolutions treat for, like, forever. It's only a couple of thousand words, it's just taking a while to come together. That's okay. I've also been noodling at a post about adverbs in speech tags for fan_writers, but there's too much to say; I need to rein it in.

Still intermittently practising drawing. Telling myself that one day I'll be able to do expressions and poses. That would be nice.

Life/health/mental state things
( Grumbling, feat. local politics )

Cats
Halle keeps bringing cicadas into the house and crunching them, nom nom nom.

Goals
I wrote a list of goals for the year and have not looked at it since. La la la.

Good things
Podcasts, kdramas, DVDs, audiobooks, media generally. Fandom and Guardian specifically. Sunshine again, yay! My roof did not blow off. Andrew and Halle and friends and biking out to meet someone for lunch.

On the BIIIIIIIIIIIIIG screen!

My local fabulous theatre is hosting this event: a showing of episode 6 followed by a panel discussion they describe as

– how the series is changing the game for independent Canadian producers with Heated Rivalry producer Lori Fischburg
– how the music featured in the series has launched emerging artists into the spotlight with CBC host Elamin Abdelmahmoud
– how modern fandom helped propel its rapid international ascent from beloved underground novels into the TV stratosphere with University of Toronto pop culture professor Angie Fazekas
– its influence on LGBTQ+ athletes and the game itself with sports professor Kyle Rich of Brock University.

and they're doing it on one of the few Sunday mornings this month when I haven't promised to do something at church and I'm going with my local friend who marathoned the whole thing with me on Boxing Day and I am excited!

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Rating: Teen
Length: 2492
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: dedkake on AO3
Themes: Inept in love, Pining, Five things, Friends to lovers

Summary: The thing is, he hadn’t really meant to say it. Not then. Not there. He hadn’t really ever even thought about it before, not in such specific terms. So, it’s as much of a shock to him as it is to anyone else.

or, Rodney's trying so hard and John just doesn't get it.

Reccer's Notes: This is a fun read that makes you want to hit them both upside the head just a little. Rodney keeps telling John how he feels (or trying to), and John keeps missing the point each time, so they're both inept in different ways. Until they aren't!

Fanwork Links: on purpose

Maura Healey on state agreements with ICE: “I support them” (via the_mass_dump_feed):

At her January press conference, Healey said she was “prohibiting state agencies from entering into any new 287(g) agreements unless there is a clear and imminent public safety need.” But that part of her executive order contains so many caveats as to be completely meaningless. By only prohibiting new agreements, Healey is keeping the existing one.

“I actually support that agreement,” she said. “When you’re incarcerated under … the custody of the Department of Correction, that means you’ve done something pretty bad.”

The whole post is worth reading. It's a complex situation for activists to respond to because the current situation is an improvement over the pre executive order status quo, and the activist groups need to encourage the governor to do more. And yet also, what an absolute trash human.

All my reactions to "when you’re incarcerated under the custody of the Department of Correction, that means you’ve done something pretty bad" (eg. "no it doesn't oh my god" and "as a society we've agree upon a term of incarceration for certain crimes and when that term of incarceration is over we consider the person to have paid their debt to society" and "the DOC operates multiple minimum security facilities where people work in town and there aren't even walls" and "this is what happens when your governor was the attorney general" and "I guess that's why you don't care about the deaths of Ayesha Johnson and Shacoby Kenny who were only in the county jail" and "ugh the worst east Arlington lesbian is the worst") but mostly my reaction is just flames on the side of my face and also I know you all can say it better than I can.

So, you know. If I were a good person I'd get involved in the fuckery of the Massachusetts Democratic Party but I ain't got the juice. (Tarik Samman is running against Katherine Clark, at least.)

Anyway, support BIJAN, Maura Healey sucks.

one of my more annoying traits is that if I wouldn't like something that I know other people enjoy, I find it very difficult to do for the person who'd enjoy it because it feels rude to me. I wouldn't like it, after all, so why should I do it to someone else?

I know is this is messed up, especially because I often dislike being asked about my day, or being thanked, or receiving presents, or receiving any but very specific forms of recognition. (The Mortifying Agony of Being Seen is a real bugger.)

---

Apropos of nothing, james makes absolutely gorgeous crafts.

Fandom: Good Omens
Pairings/Characters: Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: G
Length: 984 words
Creator Links: ghost_daddy
Theme: inept in love

Summary: Aziraphale knows that Crowley is in love with someone. He just doesn't know who.

When he asks him, it doesn't go quite as he planned.

Reccer's Notes: A cute little fic where Aziraphale asks Crowley who his sweetheart is, and Crowley is flabbergasted that Aziraphale doesn't know.  Its in character, I could have seen them having this discussion after season 1. 

Fanwork Links: Ao3