Ishtar

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.

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)