Professor of Loon Ecology - specializing in Sherlockology & Snape Studies

Classes began on Monday and I had therapy that day. I wasn't sure what to talk about, but I ended up doing a lot of crying and felt so drained afterward. Stress always brings out the worst in me. I have a tenure review application due on Sept 15, the same day as a Fulbright application and will be in Ireland/N. Ireland Sept 6-14, so I am just worried I won't get that shit done. Mentally, I have to make it through the 15th and then the 28th and on to the next big deadline. That is life - I will get it done. But I always, always doubt my ability to do so.

The Fulbright is for a research project at the University of Calgary in Canada that I would really like to do as part of my sabbatical next fall. I had started making plans with my U of C colleagues for this back in January, which was BEFORE I got into Heated Rivalry, but being in HR has only sweetened my desire to spend 4-5 months in the country of my birth. I'm getting too excited thinking about this and need to get the application done first - me getting this is no guarantee!

Speaking of HR, reports from set and photos (there is no equivalent #setlock tag for the HR fandom) revealed that Connor Storrie had his hair cut really short. This means that his curls are gone. I was initially laughing about the fandom reaction to this, but then felt sad on Monday the more I thought about it.

One of my favorite tropes in HR fic is Shane grabbing Ilya's curls. There's a lot of that in season 1 of the show too - it's kind of adorable. However, I can see how haircuts can be used to show the passage of time in the visual storytelling of a television show - Shane's hair is going to be longer than it was in S1, so Ilya's shorn locks may also be used to signify greater maturity. Of course, shorn hair can also be used to depict a character's state of mind and that's what was getting me down. Season 2 is going to deal with all or portions of The Long Game and the mental health themes that are prominent there. It's possible the haircut is about that - Ilya's mental health. Therapy made me think too hard about this on Monday, and so I too found myself saddened about the loss of Ilya's beautiful curls.

Sometimes I get so excited about spoilers and casting announcements for season 2 of HR, and other times I get worried about the state of mind I will be in when it airs and afterward. In 2014, when S3 of Sherlock aired, I was a complete and utter mess after the conclusion of The Sign of Three because I was viewing it through the lens of heartbreak and my Johnlock glasses. I think I sobbed for a week. It was too much, and I never want to feel that way after watching a television show again. The good news is that Shane and Ilya's story is a romance (whereas Sherlock WAS NOT) , so there is an eventual HEA and any heartbreak along the way is a plot point meant to deepen their commitment to each other. I have read ALL the books and I will read the next one to come out next year, and can always turn to them for solace no matter what the TV show throws at us or where the TV show ends each episode or season.

I am a grown ass woman and I will regulate my emotions and take steps not to let myself get carried away by the fictional relationship of fictional characters.

I think some of my emotionality is just stress and worry about the start of the year and return to the many different deadlines, obligations and responsibilities that I could take a break from for a little while.

I have received the proofs of my book manuscript and have until 10 August to check things, answer final queries and submit my index. It's wild to have my book in hand (metaphorically) like this. It's currently 174 pages without the index, but since I've decided to index only terms instead of authors, it won't be too much longer. Unfortunately, this is also the stage where I am reading (sort of) carefully for mistakes and I've found a few. Unfortunately, I am not someone who is good at noticing mistakes like this and I dread going through the whole book because I will fall asleep a lot because I will be so bored.

However, finding these mistakes has made me feel anxious about being wrong and getting harshly criticized. In essence, I don't think anyone is going to criticize me for the idea of my book, but I am sure that there will be people out there who will find my explanation of a certain theory or pedagogical approach to be wrong, out-of-date, unsophisticated or lacking in nuance. There are people who take their theory very seriously, far more seriously than I take it.

I am also anxious because I have been asked to prepare short videos to help promote the conference for the international association of applied linguistics in Vancouver next year, where I will be a keynote speaker and will be talking about fanfiction! Some of the questions are hard to answer honestly (e.g. what does the theme of the conference mean to me?) but because the conference is being held in Canada, which has two official national languages, we have been asked to respond to some of the questions in more than one language. This is causing so much anxiety in me because I am not bilingual - I am a pretty average language learner with low to intermediate levels of ability in a couple of languages, none of which are French, despite being originally from Montreal, Canada. I scripted some things to say in a mixture of English, German (my strongest second language) and Swedish, but I'm starting to stress about mispronouncing things in Swedish using German pronunciation. In my field, we talk about cross-linguistic influence where one language you speak influences your knowledge and use of another language you speak or are learning. This happens a lot for me with Swedish and German which are both Germanic languages and share a lot of similar spelling but which don't really sound a lot alike. I've been putting this off for a few weeks, but I need to get it done. I just don't want to make a fool of myself in a way that everyone who comes to this conference will see.

In fangirling news, I have been forcing myself to skip videos my algorithm keeps showing me of Hudson and Connor being real people and not their characters. I am not always successful because sometimes they are themselves talking about Heated Rivalry in promotional videos and I'm here for all the Heated Rivalry stuff. Other times I just get sucked in because they are being interesting and I am curious. Yesterday I attempted to swap out social media time and decided to spend more time on Reddit and away from Instagram. Unfortunately, this meant I was reading more political stuff about the state of the US, which I now recognize as being written from an alarmist position and not one that is helpful. An example of this is some former Republican staffer enumerating all the ways that Trump is going to be even worse after the midterms if the Republicans lose both the House and the Senate. I don't need this doomsday take on politics in my head - there is absolutely nothing I can do about it and it is also entirely possible that Trump could die at any time.

Nevertheless, I came away from Reddit feeling anxious and hopeless, which is how I spent too much of last year. I realized that in trying to avoid getting too parasocial about Hudson and Connor, I was sinking back into a damaging mental state. I think I am being a bit dumb about trying to avoid getting too fannish

I am back from 6 weeks in Europe. That was a loooooooong time to be away and during that time I received and missed a jury summons for July 6th. The good news is that when I called the county office about it to schedule a makeup and mea culpa (I don't want to get fined!) because my number wasn't called, there was nothing for me to do and it's fine.

In other news, I have a lot of thoughts about aging and dementia brought about by spending two weeks straight with MIL.

I have also jumped headfirst into fangirling and have absolutely been devouring fanfic. I calculated that I have read 1.5 million words of HR fanfic since May. I can probably make this 3 million by the start of the semester.

I also started drawing - baby steps. I have a little notebook for sketches and I am practicing drawing images of Shane and Ilya based on stills from the show. As with any skill one has not practiced for 12 years, my drawings are not good. I can't really control the pencil and I have mostly forgotten whatever tricks I used to know. But if I had not run in 12 years, I wouldn't expect myself to up and race a 10k. So I am just going to practice in private and then maybe one of these days I might even draw something original. Or maybe not.

I also have plans to practice my Cyrillic again. I used to know it back when I took a semester of Russian in the 90s. It will be useful for fic when writers actually write in Cyrillic.

My heavy fangirling means I am following a lot of fan accounts on Instagram and also coming across lots of clips of Hudson and Connor. I have been trying to avoid them but am not always successful. They are very beautiful - possibly even more beautiful than in the show, especially Hudson. And they are so young and so early in their careers. I feel protective but also creepy and old to admire and enjoy their beauty. This is partially internalized misogyny but this is also partially just dealing with aging and perimenopause and how it is forcing me to confront death. Hudson and Connor have so much of their life ahead of them. I have lived most of mine. The time spent with my MIL has me thinking a lot about our gradual decline and how much of our basic abilities we lose over time.

I kind of need to talk with my therapist about this perhaps, but I don't know where to begin.

I want to continue to fangirl hard. It feels like maybe it could be a last gasp and I want to enjoy this one more time.

I just read through some recs on the reddit sub r/heatedrivalryfic which is where I am finding a lot of good recs (also on Instagram). I bookmarked a handful I would like to add to my To Read list before heading out on my short run and I started thinking about the tropes that are in HR fic that I didn't see in Sherlock fic. Some of this is a reflection of the story - Sherlock included more casefic than I've come across in HR. There's also a lot more high school or university AU in Sherlock. It's not that this does not exist in HR, but the characters start off as teenagers, so it's not as much of a stretch.

HR also does a lot of canon divergence at certain focal points as a way to explore the characters breaking up and working their way back together under different conditions. This makes sense in light of the fact that HR is a romance and Sherlock was NOT. For instance, a trope I've come across multiple times now involves a time loop where the characters relive a specific day (just like in Groundhog Day) until they get it right. I've read two really good examples that booth introduce a time loop right after the tuna melt scenario. Another trope involves a plane crash - this also reflects the fact that there is a plane situation in one of the later books in the series that I think is inspiring fic writers. I don't think I've come across a plane crash story in either Harry Potter or Sherlock fanfiction.

One really fun well-done HR canon divergence was an AU that basically had a zombie apocalypse beginning after one pivotal scene in Las Vegas. I really loved this fic because it was deeply psychological but light on the zombies and gore. At heart, one of the major plot points concerned Shane's fear of coming out and the repercussions this would have - basically it took the fall of civilization for him to come out of the closet. While this sounds funny to write down, it is so deeply sad. The fanfic makes a point that a society so toxic and damaging needed to make way for a better one, and a zombie apocalypse offered a do-over to build back better and more accepting.

When I think about what I am reading right now, I realized that a common theme across all the novel-length fanfic is the pain and damage of homophobia on Shane and/or Ilya. That is really the central conflict of Heated Rivalry and The Long Game (the two books that follow Shane and Ilya) and it is present in some way in so much of the HR fic. It leaves me feeling bittersweet and a bit melancholy

I still haven't viewed the Heated Rivalry television series but I have seen LOTS of fan edits and I have read every book in the Game Changers series, including the ones I didn't like as much just so I would have the full backstory. Heated Rivalry and Role Model have become comfort reads - I think I've read each about 4-5 times. The Long Game is a little more bittersweet so I haven't read that as much, but I cherish it. I have also been reading more fic - I particularly like the hilarious stuff where Ilya is being a charming asshole via text.

The other day I found myself imagining what Ilya and Shane would look like as little boys in their hockey gear and I wanted to draw them. I have not, but I have developed a sudden interest in learning facts about hockey. It's Stanley Cup time too...

I'm officially fangirling and I like it.

Today's the big day for the moon flyby. On the one hand, I had how much the Assclown in chief's dramatics overshadow everything else. On the other hand, I love that there is this cool other stuff the US (and Canada) is also doing to focus on instead. I also love that every single crew member is Gen X (1970s babies), my generation. I am looking forward to following them the rest of the way and that they make it back safely.

I started reading the Heated Rivalry a few weeks back and wasn't feeling it. But I started watching short videos from the television series as I got further into the story and it's started to sink in. The novel itself is reminding me of really good Johnlock fanfic and I mean that as the highest compliment. I know there are a bunch of other books in the series but I have started hunting down fanfic. I am more invested in the revisiting the romance of Hollander and Rosanov than I have been in any romance, including any of the Bridgerton Stories.

I need to post some more about Bridgerton because the series 5 couple just dropped. I knew this was going to be the one. 

Also just dropping is the first trailer for the Harry Potter TV series, and even if JKR wasn't a huge goddamn bigot, I still would not have liked the trailer. First and foremost - not enough Snape. Second - the lighting is rubbish which also makes it harder to see Snape! Third, this is a MUCH darker introduction to Harry's story. The whole series is deals with dark themes and war eventually, but it the first several books foreground a lot of Harry's wonder and discovery and that is played down in this trailer which is going for some Game of Thrones level of lighting here. Fourth, it feels like a lesser imitation of the movies. This is partially my own bias because I am familiar with Dan, Rupert and Emma as the trio and this new set of kids look wrong. But also, it's not that unique. The guy playing Hagrid is wearing Hagrid's clothes but his voice and dialect are not nearly as gruff and distinct as Robbie Coltrane's. 

I still struggle a lot with this at times, but I am getting better. There have been several administrative situation where someone has asked something - sometimes it is reasonable and sometimes it is ridiculous - and I have been able to say no without getting mad or frustrated. I am used to feeling overwhelmed by requests for my time and attention and the fear that people will not accept my no and try to negotiate. But I have said no several times now and each time feels better than the last.

There is a thing about academia where we are constantly socialized into bending over backwards, giving others the benefit of the doubt, meeting others where they are at, lifting others up, mentoring the younger and new, giving of ourselves and giving back to the community or we are not being a good citizen and not doing our jobs. While there is place for this - it does lead to a culture of expectation that you must not say no to others. This attitude has been paralyzing. This attitude leads to a lot of extra work and often means that other parts of your job that you are supposed to do (like publish your own research) or other parts of your life that you are supposed to look after (getting enough sleep, eating well, looking at things other than a computer screen) get pushed aside to fulfill someone else's needs or to fill in for someone else who is not doing their job.

Being able to say no is a wonderful thing and I am going to do it more.

This is going to be a positive post to offer distraction to myself and others. 

I met with my therapist last week and despite EVERYTHING going on domestically and internationally, the general doldrums of January, and dealing with the memorial session for my colleague who passed away shortly before Christmas, we discussed how much I am feeling okay. I mean I feel emotions, but I am not overwhelmed by my feelings to the point that I can't do anything all day. I think this is the birth control pill (what I am taking for hormone replacement during perimenopause) doing its work at stabilizing my estrogen so I can regulate my emotions. 

My husband has also observed that I don't need to keep adjusting the temperature to be colder, so this is a sign of better temperature regulation. I didn't have a lot of hot flashes, but I was generally much more sensitive to heat and really needed to adjust the temperature down so I could sleep. I am not doing this at all and sometimes even crank up the heat a little if I am cold.

Speaking of sleep, I am not waking in the middle of the night. And I am not waking up to sour-smelling, sweaty pajamas and t-shirts so the nigh sweats have disappeared. That is huge and important because disrupted sleep is terrible for dealing with fascism and life in general. 

I also don't smell as bad when I sweat when I work out. After my runs, I had noticed my crotch giving off a really sour/foul smell that is just gone now. 

All this is to say, using the birth control pill for the past 7 weeks is working for addressing my perimenopause symptoms. I note absolutely no negative side-effects. No weight gain, no digestive issues, no breast tenderness, no weird moods. 

This is a story about how getting married and having children does not guarantee you won't end up alone and lonely at the end of your life.

I spent the past few days with my mother in law in southern Sweden while my husband went to visit his father in central Sweden. I have not seen his father since fall 2022, when I learned he had beat my mother in law. She hasn't seen him since about the same time either when she finally decided to flee him and move to the region of Sweden where she grew up. As of summer 2025, she is now divorced from him - this was facilitated by the fact that divorcing in Sweden when there are no minor children or shared assets and people live apart for a while is really pro-forma. My husband and sister-in-law got her to sign the paperwork to divorce this summer, and at 76 years old, she is a free woman. Her life is not all sunshine and roses and in many ways, watching her age is encouraging me to make different life choices so I don't wind up like her. However, she is doing so MUCH better than my father in law.

He is a narcissist with a lot of mental health issues and an overwhelming fear and mistrust of medicine and doctors. Since the summer, he has been in decline and is clearly depressed. But he refuses all medication and any physical therapy. He lives in an assisted living facility and is deathly afraid of falling so he spends most of his day in bed and is too afraid to walk to the toilet so he pees in one of those pee bottles. He did have a stumble on his way to the bathroom earlier this year that exacerbated this fear. He also has his own personal wheelchair which my sister in law bought as a way to bring him from the US to Sweden in early 2023 when he was really ailing. He spends most of his days in bed in the dark - not even watching TV. He does text a sort of girlfriend (someone my age) on a daily basis with his grandiose ideas about escaping to France where he will live in a mansion and have servants waiting on him. His lying in bed and terrible diet means he is losing strength and cannot get up by himself to pee in the bottle and needs the homecare workers to come help him to his feet.

His mental illness means he is deluded into thinking he has a lot of money coming to him from the sale of his home in Connecticut and that he is a millionaire. In truth, the house was foreclosed upon a few years ago, and resold by the bank. All his items were thrown out with only a little that his children rescued and put in storage, that is now costing them $300 a month. I know this because I helped my husband downsize the storage unit just before Christmas where we threw away 12 trash bags of absolute garbage (old magazines, used napkins and cups, trade show schwag from 10-30 years ago) that my father in law had boxed up and kept in the house. He cannot accept this is true and continues to live in his own imagined reality that he is a rich man being thwarted by the system. He cannot understand why his wife left him and absolutely refuses to see that he did anything wrong by hitting her because, after all, she was annoying him and not doing what he wanted her to do. He entertains himself sometimes by making the healthcare workers move things around for them and telling bullshit stories about his life. He can be very charming when he wants to be, but his charm has faded along with his strength and he instead spends his days in a kind of sensory deprivation so he can avoid his reality. This thinking is a lifetime of untreated mental illness and the indulgence of his narcissism. 

When my husband visited, it took a while for my father in law to warm up, but he did eventually and they were able to reminisce about old times. I am glad for my husband for this - this man is his father and there is love. One thing my husband likes to do is to take his dad out to restaurants to eat since he cannot do this on his own in his wheelchair. But my father in law has become too weak to sit in a wheelchair. He has an arm that was affected by a stroke a few years ago that is tight and painful and has only gotten weaker and worse due to lack of movement and a refusal to do physical therapy. As a result, sitting in the wheelchair is painful for him, so instead of going out, my husband ordered food and had it delivered. Bad snow hitting parts of Sweden this weekend meant my husband's return train was cancelled, so he had to cut his trip short to return home.

I think my husband visiting may have been good for my father in law for a little while, but it will not change the state of things. The healthcare workers have said that he is making his own health worse, but under Swedish law, they cannot force medication or treatment on him. I really do wonder if my father in law will make it through this year. He is 75 and will be 76 in February. I have been thinking of how I will support my husband because I know this will devastate him. My deeper worry is that my mother in law will also pass soon. (I will deal with that when and if it happens, but I have started to prepare.)

The part of me that feels anger and injustice for my father in law's treatment of my mother in law and the many other things he has done to hurt people throughout his life is watching this man's decay with a sense of detachment and curiosity. Aside from the once or twice a year visit from his son who lives in another country, my father in law is dying alone. This is the manifestation of the threat I see being shouted at younger straight women on social media who are not married or who divorce - that they will regret their choice to not lower their standards and tether themself to a man and have children with him. Except here is a man who did marry and did have children, but  because of how he treated them and the choices he made through his entire life (and the choices he continues to make to reject all medical care and treatment), he is the one actively dying alone.

I want to reassure those women not to lower their standards and not to force themselves to endure a lifetime of mistreatment and injustice and disrespect and abuse from a partner just to avoid dying alone because there is no guarantee they won't also die alone anyway.