due South realization (BdtH; Eclipse)

Now, these episodes have to occur closely together because the IRS starts looking at the station in BdtH and they're still doing it in Eclipse. In Eclipse, it's Ray Vecchio's birthday.

Fraser timed his vacation to end in time for him to be there for Ray's birthday. Ouch.

Also, a recent rewatching of Manhunt made me go all, "aww" over Fraser's watch, which is his dad's watch and... aww. He wears that in every episode.

I adore Benton Fraser so very much. I just did a quick overview of some vital S1-2 episodes (I'm dubbing) and... Benton Fraser is so strong-willed, morally-centered, and funny as hell. But so essentially lonely. He doesn't have anyone who'll... well, do exactly what Ray Kowalski does. Ray adapts to him, not only accepting his quirks but embracing them whole-heartedly. Ray trusts him and more than that, demands his trust in return. Ray Kowalski is a smart ass. So is Ben, but he hides it a lot better.

Also, I love that time is running out, the funeral is over, but Fraser now understands how important this is to Ray and completely changes his attitude, tells Ray that they have time to wait.

Stella note: Ray mentions in his Eclipse flashback that she went to private school. I thought I'd pulled that from somewhere.

There are various things that I want to keep track of when I rewatch the series -- Fraser's hat, his relationships with Dief and his father, Welsh's growing fondness toward Fraser, the growth of Frannie to Francesca to Miss Vecchio. Things like that. Fraser's moments of snark. All the little reveals of his deep inner emotional nature (the few times that he's used incomplete sentences, which seem to be a sign of him being very deeply emotionally disturbed). With due South, everything that I want to track is an emotional thing. It's about relationships and people. Mostly in relation to Fraser, because I adore him, but the world of dS is very rich.

And they start the homesick storyline as early as I Coulda Been a Defendant.
Benton: "You don't want to stay in Chicago?"
Bruce: "No. No, I don't think so."
Benton: "I understand."
Which is much more personal than his more common 'understood'. There's a depth of feeling in those words. He understands the desire not stay in Chicago.

(no subject)

My mom got me the cutest little pop-up map for Chicago. Eee. I have my tickets, my reservations, my VividCon registration. Everything's all set into place. Very, very exciting. August is too far away!

I've actually been in Chicago -- for about an hour. Stop-over for another flight (my flight to New York, I think). But my dad was born there.

Chicago! VividCon! August!

edit: Minor note of annoyance in the day -- a recently recommended story is on a password protected site. But not just any site, one where if you don't already know the password, you cannot get it. Because the password is no longer given out. At all. If you don't know it (or have known one in the past), you can't get it. The whole point of story recs is to point people to fic that they haven't read, yes? In other words, people who likely do not (as I do not) have the password, because if they'd known about the site when the password was still being given out, they would have bloody well read the story. I totally respect the right of people to protect themselves, but it'd be nice if the whole thing weren't waved in front of me.

It's a huge, annoying tease. "Here's a description of a great story that you can't read. Enjoy the frustration." I mean, there's no need to go around taunting people with fic that they can't read.