trying to explain due South to people is weird because they’re always like “hmm, haven’t heard of it, must be a niche little fandom” and like. Yes but also Very Much No.
all I know about the canon of Due South is that it expected me to believe that a series of red and white purebred huskies were a) the same dog and b) an actual, legitimate, no-fucking-around Canadian wolf living in Chicago, and also there were two guys who were both named Ray for some reason and one of them was pretending to be the other one for a while??
but like… yeah, between this and The Sentinel, these are just pure fossilized 90s megafandom.
(It’s especially interesting reading the back archives because the takes on sexuality and sex and how it works and how affection works and how characters respond to homophobia and what people expect characters to encounter and familiarity with queer culture is just–
in some ways it’s like peering back in time in a way I find really, really interesting, with a very different lens than you’ll find in traditionally published mainstream fiction outside of the queer presses. Like, don’t get me wrong, there’s stuff in there that’s just a damn Mess, but imagine the perspectives of the best writing you can find in modern fandom, from writers who are using slash fic to tell stories that incorporate a queer experience and point of view…
…and now think about the best of that, and pull it back twenty years in the past, and think about how you can use that to learn things about how people thought and acted and expected other people to think and act thirty or forty years ago.
The past is another country. They do things differently there. And you can get a surprisingly good sense for that from old Due South and Sentinel fics.
y’all if we’re fossils then I call dibs on being stegosaurus
I call dibs on the Caudipteryx!
I’m a Kowalskisaurus.
*unfossilizes long enough to point out that Diefenbaker is a half-wolf at best*
*refossilizes, laughing about the DS Anon Troll being added to the second graphic*
I call Loch Ness Monster, somehow still surviving as a dinosaur even now!
This amazingly bright blue rock is apatite, and yes, that’s its natural color! That texture is neat too, like little cracks in stained glass. This one’s been carved into an egg, because I’ve been collecting eggs and spheres recently.
Speaking of spheres, here’s some agate. Check out that cool banding! This one has a little cap of quartz on top. Quartz and agate like to grow together, because agate is actually a type of quartz.
Look at this really sparkly rock! Astrophyllite forms these thin, tiny crystals that look like tinsel. They’re so fragile that they break off in my hands when I touch them! Sorry, buddy. It’s just for the photo, and then I’ll put you down.
This green kyanite has little streaks of blue kyanite hiding inside it!
Picasso marble is a COOL ROCK. It started its life as limestone, and slowly metamorphosed into pale marble streaked with colorful iron oxide. That name is all wrong, though. Clearly, that’s a Jackson Pollock.
This is alligator quartz! That scaly pattern of overlapping crystals looks like the skin of an alligator, doesn’t it? These shapes form when the quartz’s microscopic crystal lattice is damaged, but it keeps growing anyway.
This little guy is a Herkimer diamond. It’s not a diamond at all, but a type of quartz that gets its name from its diamond shape. It’s neither cut nor polished; Herkimer diamond comes out of the ground looking just like this! I like all the little air bubbles trapped inside of this one.
Obsidian is an igneous rock, meaning it came from a volcano!!!
Serpentine! It’s Very Green! It’s got blotches and patterns and streaks! Do you see all those dark, metallic little spots? Those are pyrite inclusions! All the pyrite in this sphere makes it super heavy.
Sticking out of this chunk of quartz is some colorful watermelon tourmaline! The way tourmaline can change color as it grows is so cool. (And also looks a little bit like candy.)
These are my Blobs of ocean jasper, which might just be one of my favorite rocks in the entire world. Just look at it!
Aaaah, those patterns!! Ocean jasper is an orbicular jasper, meaning it grows in little orbs. When they’re cut and polished, their cross-sections make these characteristic fisheyes.
There tend to be big gaps between the orbs. Usually they fill in with quartz or agate, but sometimes they stay empty, and you get these tiny geode pockets lined with sparkly quartz druzy!
When the orbs are suspended in transparent agate, it’s called jelly ocean jasper! My white blob has a huge patch of clear jelly. My green blob has a little window of teal jelly. Every time you look at ocean jasper, you see something new. What a beautiful rock!!
So, we’ve all seen the posts about how alcohol, caffeine and spicy food is viewed as horrifying poison across the galaxy, and how aliens are all suitably horrified when they see us consume it.
Tell you what I haven’t seen mentioned, but which is also varying levels of toxic to most not human animals? Theobromine. Normally found in chocolate.
Like, can you imagine being captured by aliens who are planning to poison you to send a message to your crew. They spend some time describing this poison, including the risk of internal bleeding, vomiting, seizures and heart palpatations as you get steadily more and more afraid.
Then the executioner brings out a mug of steaming hot chocolate.
I don’t know about you, but if i’d been in space for an indefinite amount of time on what are presumably carefully calculated rations, I would be kicking aliens out of the way for that cup.
Just drink down the whole thing without breaking eye contact and watch them lose it.
