Res ipsa loquitur

Me: Story, tell me what your title is.
Story [in the voice of a 2-year-old]: No.

Weeks later:
Me: Story, I'm very grateful for the seventeen pages of notes, snippets of dialog, and blanks marked "solution to this plot problem goes here." It would really help me if you'd tell me what your title is.
Story [in the voice of a 2-year-old who is well-rested enough to have a long attention span but not so well-rested that a tantrum is out of the question]: No.

Weeks later, while I'm focusing hard on something else:
Story: I want a song-lyrics title.
Me: Great! Just tell me what song.
Story: No.

Arguably this part is my fault, since I mostly listen to music in the car when I need to focus on, you know, driving. Montage covering several weeks:
Story: This is a great song.
Me: I will totally remember that song. [instantly forgets it]
Story: This is a great song.
Me: Yes! I love this song! [Looks up lyrics] Story, the message of this song is basically "I feel great."
Story: This is a great song.
Me: [with rising hope] I love this song. This is specifically a good RayK song. [looks up lyrics] Story, the message of this song is basically "I'm pissed off."
Story: This is a great song.
Me: I love this song. The theme fit is decent too. [looks up lyrics] These lyrics shrivel up and die if you take them out of context.
Story: This is a great song.
Me: This one? Really? Hm. [looks up lyrics] Wow, this has potential. [looks up commentary] Story, the internet says this is a suicide song.
Story: This one. This one. This one.
Me: Story, you're a sex pollen romp.
Story: [lower lip trembles ominously]
Me: Wouldn't be the first time I repurposed a song the writer thought was about suicide. Wouldn't even be the first time for this pairing. Hm, that may tell me something about this pairing. All right, Story, I'll give it a try.
Story: I want ice cream.

I've posted a new due South story:

Clockwise (10935 words) by Resonant
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: due South
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ray Kowalski/Ray Vecchio
Characters: Benton Fraser, Stella Kowalski (due South), Pop Vecchio | Ray Vecchio's Father, Francesca Vecchio
Additional Tags: Thanksgiving, Established Relationship, Post-Canon, post-Vegas, post-florida
Summary:

"We’ll be bringing your Mountie down to testify. And you two have got to keep him under control.”

This story is a sequel to two stories that are twenty years old: Left by me and Right by kormantic. It's Ray/Ray established relationship. I'm not in control of what the claw machine grabs.

I'm afraid that however much Fraser you like, whether a lot or a little, this story has the wrong amount of Fraser in it. There is a sequel in the works.

Beta thanks to terminally_underwhelmed, troyswann, and mific.

It's a completed draft in that every scene has been written rather than just gestured at. Unfortunately, the most significant final sex scene has considerably fewer words and considerably less tactile detail than the scene of Ray Vecchio winding a watch.

Privacy (4540 words) by Resonant
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: due South
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski
Characters: Benton Fraser, Ray Kowalski
Additional Tags: Romance, First Time, Post-Canon, Back to Chicago, fun with refractory periods
Summary:

“Guess it’s a while since you had a door with a lock on it?”

“I’ve never had a door with a lock on it."

Yeah, I can't believe it, either -- I haven't written an all-new story since 2014, and I'm incredibly relieved that I can still do it.

Thanks to fox for beta, and also for a couple of years of shared squee and general enabling.

duffy - Top 5 OTPs in television or movies. Could be romantic or friendship. (Canon is NOT a requirement!)

In no particular order except for #1:

To no one's surprise: Fraser and Kowalski (due South). The way Ray's ready to throw down at any moment and yet often his reaction to freakishness is: "Huh. OK, then." The way Fraser's initial reaction -- that scene in the station when he turns completely around with an astonished look on his face -- in a sense never changes.

Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane (Dorothy Sayers mysteries). Because she's difficult, and damaged, and discouraged, and sharp, and yet he collaborates with her and is transformed by her, and when he finally proposes to her successfully (in Latin), he addresses her as Magistra.

The romance between Willow and Xander (Buffy) was plausible to me in that it was clearly and obviously a terrible idea that was going to hurt everyone and thus an irresistible temptation, but what I liked about their relationship was that when it was necessary for them to have a deep connection, what connected them was not romance or attraction but the strength of their childhood friendship.

I would love to have gotten more of the friendship between Seven of Nine and Naomi Wildman (Star Trek: Voyager). It's so totally believable to me that a kid would say, "This is Seven. She was kidnapped and assimilated and a lot of people are scared of her and she doesn't really know how to be human, and now I'm going to teach her how to skip and how to gallop."


1. Book-canon Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, of course! Their differences, their oddities, their mutual admirations, never get less delightful.




Upcoming prompts below the cut.


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destina - Top five pairs of characters, cross-fandoms as needed, that need to sit down and have a conversation and share life experiences so that at least one of them can benefit from it.

This was so much fun.

5. Benton Fraser would really benefit from a few long conversations with Guinan in Ten Forward. Possibly he'd need Worf to spar with him for a bit to weaken him enough that he'd say anything that needed saying.

4. Actually I'd also like to see Fraser work with Sam Vimes for a bit. Fraser's stubborn, principled, and out of step with the values of the world around him, but he can distract you from it with a frictionless surface made of pleasantness and pedantry; Vimes is stubborn, principled, and out of step with the values of the world around you, and he'd spit in the eyes of the gods if they weren't too cowardly to take physical form and fight him. It would be fun to watch. (Also it would take Vimes a minute to figure out that he wasn't dealing with someone like Carrot -- that there was sarcasm under all that courtesy.)

3. Can you imagine Rodney McKay let loose with Q from Skyfall? Yeah, we made something blow up somewhere in the galaxy but it will probably be awhile before humanity discovers whatever it was, so we're fine.

2. I wish that instead of falling in with the Mayor, Faith Lehane had apprenticed with Granny Weatherwax.

1. Batman needs to sit John Winchester down and teach him a thing or two about being a father. Maybe he could have a talk with Bob Fraser, too.


Leave me a comment to add a prompt to the calendar. The current list is below the cut.


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If I were going to reboot due South, I'd take the small fish out of the U.S. and put the big pond in Canada.

Say you've got RayV and Stella's youngest daughter. She grows up in a bowling alley in Miami and then starts moving southward until she winds up being a wildlife researcher on one of the tiniest and most sparsely populated islands of the Florida Keys. She's a dark-sky enthusiast and a bit of a hippie with a Southern accent in both English and Spanish.

Then something terrible happens to the wildlife. Suddenly there she is in Canada. Partnering up with some straitlaced, city-bred freshwater lakes expert. Saying, "I first came to Montreal on the trail of the killer of my manatees."