a hobbyist purveyor of casual filth

We watched Heated Rivalry week by week as it released; Perry was like "I'll sit with you while you watch it," but ended up getting very invested. Especially in the Scott Hunter storyline, what a weirdo (I really liked the Scott episode, which I gather is not a popular opinion, but I'm not here for him and his smoothie twink, and the pacing is a little out of whack). We tend to put things on over and over again with varying degrees of focus, so we've watched all of it a lot. General spoilers for the season.

I had read the books but ages ago and they didn't really stick with me. I'm sure they're fine (I've heard the quality is kind of uneven and goes down with later books; I only ever read the first two and preferred the second one), but the show was phenomenal. Just getting gay hockey softcore on tv in 2025 feels important and hopeful. The fact that it was also really good and even the straight hockey bro podcasts (which...are now videos? But we still call them podcasts? I don't understand) are obsessed with it is just a bonus. Both What Chaos and Empty Netters are getting a lot of attention for their reactions; I haven't watched any of them all the way through but have seen cute clips on tumblr. It's charming to watch them slowly come to realize the vast diversity of experiences in the world. Like seeing kindergartners on a fieldtrip to an interactive museum. 

It's also been delightful to watch Connor and Hudson (...mostly Hudson) just go completely off the rails in all the media appearances they've been making since the show took off. Like, just the most unhinged freaks who were completely made for each other and also this show. I adore them. I am pleased to report that the RPF develops apace. 

Also Cesare Borgia was there? It's frankly a hate crime to make François Arnaud play an American hockey player, but he does it very well and is very handsome indeed. Samantha was like "he looks like a young Shea Weber." He looks like a Shea Weber who hasn't spent the last 25 years in a meat grinder, is what he looks like, because those men are the same age. I enjoyed his response to the guy (not sure who he is or why his opinion mattered) who was like "this is not what gay sex looks like" by being like "what the fuck does gay sex look like?" and then doubling down when Vulture interviewed him about it like "okay but they don't act gay though" and he was like "why are you watching a show about closeted hockey players if you don't think there's room for that diversity of experience." He and Jacob Tierney have both also been on point in response to any bullshit about whether Connor or Hudson are gay and why won't they come out, etc. They were both waiting tables up until like the week before filming started! Give them some space! Mind your business! Also it's illegal in Canada to ask people that during a job interview (thank u, Jacob).

I enjoy the memes about how this is Canadian government funded hockey yaoi (due to the tax incentives in Ontario and Québec and the Canadian Media fund) as long as they don't go so hard they tip over into "tee hee! what a quaint and charming country with none of the problems experienced by real countries!" which tumblr loves to do. Mostly it's been okay; they got it out of their systems after the pilot I guess. 

The show itself, IDK, you should go watch it. It's lit so you can see what happens! There's lots of kissing and face touching and tit grabbing and suggestive angles and artfully raised thighs doing a lot of penis-hiding work. The intimacy is scorching, and in all the interviews they talk about how much that's down to the intimacy coordinator and everything being tightly choreographed, which I think is super cool. There's loadbearing buttsex and some light BDSM. The acting is good, don't listen to what people say about Hudson's acting, he watched Sidney Crosby do media and he made his choices on purpose. The haters simply don't understand the depth of his art. 

Like the source material, sometimes it tips over into cringe a little bit ("I kind of prefer being the hole," my man did not say that, he can't even say that he's gay out loud yet) and obviously nothing where they have a Texas boy being a Russian is going to be perfect, but overall, I think it sticks the landing. Apparently the Texas boy loves linguistics and did do a good job learning Russian vowels. At one point he has like a five minute monologue in Russian, which is more than I personally could do in French which I speak like every day, so good for him. 

The last episode really pulls out all the stops. Like, you've had this really compelling and (relatively) well paced love story paying out and they find the space to have some really compelling parent-child dynamics and exploration amidst the love story concluding. they do such a good job showing how this relationship has blossomed and what it can look like outside the confines of a hotel room, and how it's new but still comfortable. ALSO! It is beautifully lit! I love being able to see shit! I like that the ending isn't perfect--they aren't coming out, the best they can do is hopefully play for teams that are two hours apart, there's all the agonizing Explaining to the parents who don't know exactly what to say--and that it just ends with them driving down the road. Very apt visual metaphor. Based on what I've heard about subsequent books, I kind of hope JT goes rogue in season two, but we'll see. 

I've read a little fic and I've got the kink meme open in a tab, but I'm not super duper compelled by it although I've read one or two good ones. I think a lot of it is probably just life stuff; my focus isn't great, I'm preoccupied by pregnancy stuff, it's liminal spacemas so I'm on screens too much anyway. Go support the kinkmeme because there's fuck all spaces where we can be like "this is a place to be horny however we want, manage your own feelings about it" these days. 

Anyway, delighted to see such good CanCon on my screen during an otherwise gloomy media landscape, recommend everybody to watch it. 

I finished Kitchen Confidential after getting derailed by life and a few other things. Highly recommend. I've been listening to/reading Medium Raw off and on since my trip to Toronto and I don't like it nearly as much, alas. It seems meaner and grimmer? It's not as fun somehow. And the fat phobia did me a real jump scare last night at bedtime, yikes, Tony. I watched a bit of No Reservation and Parts Unknown over the years and really enjoyed what I saw; I should add them to my list to rewatch. I've got A Cook's Tour, but three library books came in at once and one is in French (Un Océan de Rouille) so I gotta buckle down on those.

Currently reading one of those library books, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife. Because, you know, a book about a plague that kills babies and pregnant people is just the thing for the current moment. I am very well adjusted! I've only just started it, but the tone bugs me a bit. We'll see if it's worth persisting with.

EDIT: it was so ceaselessly grim and awful, like Cormack McCarthy's The Road meets The Handmaid's Tale. My friends on bsky were like "u can just stop" so I read the Wikipedia plot summary (detailed to a fault, thank u random Wiki editor who didn't care about getting the "too long and detailed" banner of shame), realized it wasn't gonna get better, and just skimmed the rest of it. It might well be a good book, it's won awards and people like it, but it was not for me at this time. Rec if you like gnarly dystopian fiction, I suppose. END EDIT

The third library book is We Are Legion (We Are Bob) which sounds deeply stupid but is highly recommended on various post-Murderbot book lists.

Perry and I started watching the seasons of Bake Off on Gem that they never aired stateside and just...kept going even though we've seen these seasons before. We just kind of had it on as background noise during the move and are usually editing podfic or crafting to it now, so we never know who's going to win or go home. Might have to skip the Matt Lucas seasons though, truly unbearable. ANYWAY this is of note because during the 2017 season, Paul Hollywood and Stephen Carter-Bailey have undeniable sexual tension that I wish I could unsee. Even worse, they almost definitely fucked following the 2019 festive special. Cursed knowledge. Debasing the sanctity of the tent.

I signed up for Yuletide in a last minute fit of madness before work at the deadline. I was GOING to offer How To Train Your Dragon before realizing it was the cursèd 2025 live action remake, which has been so insipid that I haven't seen a single gif set and indeed had to look it up when Coinin asked if it had even been released. Getcher free money, John Powell, for doing the soundtrack to the exact same movie but worse that you already composed for in the 00s, I reckon. Shmaylor suspects that it was nominated as a way to shoehorn the fandom in since the original movie has too many works, but I didn't realize that til too late, so I had to cheat a bit with my offers to make four. They're separate fandoms for eligibility though so nobody can criticize me.

I don't feel particularly compelled or excited about participating but Perry thinks it will be good for me. I requested Murderbot, Aubrey-Maturin, and Eot9--realized after it was too late to edit my sign up that on autopilot I treated the OT3 as Eot9 as canon and made it sound like I expected that from my author. Maybe they will see this and accept my apologies.

While looking at the fandoms, we discovered the Mechanisms' High Noon Over Camelot and I put it on out of curiosity, because what a title. I didn't like it very much (although the idea is very good and I think I'd probably enjoy it as a book) but Perry immediately became obsessed and added it to zir requests and offers and has afaik been listening to it on repeat on zir commute.

IDK why I felt the need to post a detailed update on tumblr, but I did, so. That's here:
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Kind of leaning toward cancelling my therapy appointment, but maybe I should keep it? Maybe she can help me figure out what the fuck I want. And there's always the possibility that third time's the charm (there's the statistic that floats around about like 80-90% of success happening in the first 3-4, but like. People stop after that?)

Martha shared this link to an interview where the Weitz bros talk about how Stephen Maturin was an influence on how they decided to write Gurathin. WEIRD LITTLE FREAKS EVERYWHERE. As someone noted when I shared this on the discord, the two characters are not very much alike in the end, but you can see the notes. Very cool. 

Here is a fic rec about when Iris is a baby and Perihelion is in a lab. 

And here is an art that is very adorable of baby Iris and Peri together. 

I joined the New Tideland discord server, which is very big and busy and has a million channels, but I'm starting to settle in, mostly lurking or emoji reacting. It's a refreshing change from Star Wars fandom, I have to say. People are able to just...disagree and move on? Politely request that things go in different channels? Incredible. Still the occasional piss-on-the-poor whackjob out in the wild, but I think I've blocked most of them.

I can't wait for the finale but also I'm distressed that there's only one episode left. This has been an emotionally load bearing 25 minutes a week for me.

Did we really used to live on 22 minutes of our shows week to week? It's rough out there, man. I'm glad they're spreading out the run but I do sort of wish the episodes were a little longer (but Sea, you said you didn't know how they were possibly going to turn the novella into ten episodes. And I still don't but that's their problem, I'm having a good time)

Very keen for next week's episode. I've watched all of three of them three times through, which I usually don't do so that's one pro of them being short as well as I think a comment on the overall quality.

I realized that not only had I been watching media, I have also been listening to audiobooks on the longcommute.

First, I listened to Monstrous Regiment (the old edition read by Stephen Briggs, not the new one) which was very fun and charming. PTerry holds up, and the reading handled all the footnotes and parentheticals and choppy dialogue adeptly.

Then I listened to Master and Commander, read by Robert Hardy, which was DELIGHTFUL. I haven't read a Patrick O'Brian in probably...fifteen years, at least, and the audiobook really highlighted his sense of humour. I could only find Spanish editions of the rest of the series or I would have gone on listening to them all the way through.

I took a break for some podcasts, the usual Star War (A More Civilized Age, which I adore, but which many of my friends have beef with for their bad opinions) and This Podcast Will Kill You (highlights: Viagra, Retinoids, Allergies), Science Vs (mixed feelings on this, they cite their sources but sometimes I suspect cherrypicking), Sawbones (everybody loves a McElroy), and Gastropod (highlights, the World Seed Bank, Dishwashing, and the guest episode on dentists). Also occasionally Lingthusiasm (what it says on the tin) or Queer as Fact (solidly Fine, increasingly pissing me off with bad takes or methodology).

Then I started in on Becky Chambers Wayfarers series. I had already ready A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet but I started with that, and it took me a second to adjust to how fucking PEPPY and WHOLESOME everything was. I listened on 1.15 speed because you only get 2 weeks with library loans vs Hoopla so that might have contributed?

The other books in the series are stand alone so I listened to the last one, The Galaxy and the Ground Within, next and it was about the same as the first one, maybe a little more interesting in some of the themes it explored around politics, but it didn't really stick with me (possibly due to the format more than the content).

Record of a Spaceborn Few has definitely been my favourite of them, I think. I really liked the characters and the setting of the Exodus Fleet that has just been recycling and recycling since humans had to leave earth, and the idea that you can have both tradition and change, and cozy space utopia still has political problems. Also, she straight up killed a guy midbook in a freak accident that was just because of a series of unfortunate circumstances, and I love shit like that and didn't expect it from her.

A Closed and Common Orbit I'm about 1/4 of the way through, and it's pretty good as well. I like that the cast of characters is smaller and the stories are asynchronous, and I find them both interesting, the flashbacks a little more so. Chambers is really good at looking at things in another perspective, so she writes a good "high powered robot intelligence has to get used to limited humanoid body" experience.

I only have 2 (maybe 3, if I do get to stay with my employer) more longcommutes and 4 medium ones, so after this I'll probably go back to listening to podcasts on the commute, unless somebody has an audiobook they'd highly recommend? I listen to Murderbot at sleep time.

CRA heard that I was thinking about maybe not killing myself for a minute and was like I GOT THIS and slapped me with a 1700$ tax bill because apparently I didn't qualify for some kind of tax cut because I left Canada and they didn't know (nobody told me I had to tell them, til I came back) even though I MAINTAINED RESIDENTIAL TIES. Assholes.

Anyway, between that and fretting about how much the accountant is going to charge and how much we'll owe in the US, I am STRESSED. Perry is reminding me that we have 7K still in USD that is about 10K Canadian and it's unlikely that even worst case scenario we'll owe anybody more than that, but AUGH. Combined with the ongoing economic uncertainty and seeing how much worse and worse things are getting in the States (it took THREE MONTHS to slide from "deport all the illegals" to "revoke legal green cards" and "keep american citizens in gulags" jesus christ??), it's just. you know? AUGH.

Boss told me that the CHEO job in Ottawa IS First Words but likely won't start til end of June. My old coworker from NS, Callista, is applying for my job because her contract is ending, so maybe they'll have some flexibility? Start her a month later, let me keep working between the two sites? There's not really any REASON for them to be motivated to bend over backwards to keep me, but...maybe? EITHER WAY, IT WILL BE FINE. I will be making decent money close to home with benefits and HOOPP and that's all anybody can ask for right now. Maybe we'll move, who even knows (with what money *scream*).

The battery died in the Yaris so I freaked out on bsky and people convinced me that I should sign up for CAA rather than try to change it myself and they were extremely correct. I paid 100$ for the membership and then 250$ for the battery which was only like 50$ more than the battery at Costco and they installed it, checked all the other things connected to the starter, and disposed of the used one. Plus it had been in there since 2018 so I could definitely NOT have done it. Maybe having somebody that I can call if I run out of gas or blow a tire or whatever will help with the driving panic? MAYBE?

I'm so lucky to have Perry. Ze is so patient with my bullshit like talking about I want to kill myself while we're on a date at the mall and knows how to keep me calm when I stop breathing and somehow is such a wife guy despite zir wife being...me? Incredible.

Ze is bonding with the guy who is leaving the job and having a good time training under Eric at the good store. Eric was like, "So...not applying for other jobs now?" and Perry was like "well. not...actively." Eric really likes zir and if management can just keep their shit together...this could be something. Please.

warm from the memory of days to come (3753 words) by seascribble, cac0daemonia
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Clone Trooper Boil/Clone Trooper Waxer (Star Wars)
Characters: Clone Trooper Waxer (Star Wars), Clone Trooper Boil (Star Wars)
Additional Tags: Huddling For Warmth, Sharing a Bed, Platonic Cuddling, well pre-relationship cuddling, Nightmares, Hurt/Comfort, Wartime Romance, Serious Injuries, Waxer Lives (Star Wars), First Kiss, Hopeful Ending, Fanart
Summary:

[Art+Fic] Three times Waxer and Boil shared a sleeping bag platonically, and one time they didn't.

My friend Caco and I collaborated on this for the prompt "two sleeping bags make one sleeping bag."  Her absolutely stunning art is embedded in the fic. I'm obsessed with it.

Now that this is done, time to knock Plo Koon up using the Force.

Yoooooooo I wrote some canon Star Wars fic! Well, except for that it's a slight AU in which my favourite character doesn't die tragically. Working summary "eggs where eggs should not be." Tup gets traumatically oviposited on the tentacle plant planet, Kix and Rex and the rest of his brothers are there for him. It's gross. :D

In Extremis (7878 words) by seascribble
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Relationships: CT-5597 | Jesse/CT-6116 | Kix, CT-7567 | Rex & CT-5385 | Tup, Torrent Company Members (Star Wars: The Clone Wars) & CT-5385 | Tup

Characters: CT-5385 | Tup, CT-6116 | Kix, CT-7567 | Rex, CT-27-5555 | ARC-5555 | Fives, Clone Trooper Hardcase (Star Wars), CC-2237 | Davijaan | Odd Ball, Torrent Company Members (Star Wars: The Clone Wars), CT-5597 | Jesse

Additional Tags: Post-Umbara Arc (Star Wars), Aftermath of Violence, Trauma, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, by a non-sentient plant thing, Oviposition, Medical Procedures, Bacta (Star Wars), Hurt/Comfort, Cuddling & Snuggling, Sharing Body Heat, Clone Troopers Deserve Better (Star Wars), Clone Troopers as Brothers (Star Wars)

Summary:

"The men need you here," Rex says, when Kix puts his bucket on and grabs a freshly stocked medical kit.

"You need someone to watch your back," Kix retorts. "Fletch and Jesse have things under control, and you might need a medic out there."

 

Tup runs afoul of some of the Umbaran flora. Rex, Kix, and the rest of Torrent company get him through it.