Wednesday. Y'know.

I read some more of Into the Wild at lunch today, and the book does explain a lot about Chris McCandless--or rather, rules out a lot of pithy explanations like "He was an idiot" and "He was crazy." He starts to look like somebody who was just really, really different, who went out there alone to live the way he needed to, and eventually died because... because that's what happens when you live without a safety net; sooner or later you fall. I still think it was a shitty way to die, though, and I'm feeling a lot of love right now for my own safety net - for all the people who would find me if I went missing or feed me if I was starving, and for all the people who would let me know if they were lost or hungry so I could come look after them.

And now for something completely different.

Dunno if I've mentioned this recently, but I like Due South AUs. In fact, I'm writing one right now. And there's one that I think is set up really well in canon, though I don't know if anyone's ever written it. It's been niggling at my brain in a vague way for a while, but I really started thinking (i.e. babbling at length to iuliamentis) about the idea last night. I need another AU like I need something I don't need at all, so I'm turning this one loose to roam the wilds of the internet. Possibly it will eat something unfortunate and die. Possibly some kind-hearted person will adopt it. Who knows?

In Call of the Wild, Frobisher and Thatcher have the following exchange over the phone:

Frobisher: Ahh I see and err, Constable Fraser how is he taking this?
Thatcher: With his usual keenness why?
Frobisher: Ahh then he doesn't know.
Thatcher: Know what?
Frobisher: About Muldoon and his mother.

Later, Thatcher asks him what the connection is between his mother and Muldoon, and Fraser protests that Muldoon was a friend of his father's. Of course we all know the canonical connection: it's revealed that Muldoon killed Caroline, and thus the DS fandom was saddled with the need to figure out how the hell young Benton managed to remain ignorant of the fact that his mother had been murdererd by a good friend of his father's.

Hence the AU: when Ben was six, his father told him his mother had died. All Ben really remembers, though, is that his father grew a long beard and stayed home, taking care of him. Eventually, Bob went back to work, and shipped Ben off to live with his grandparents. Fast forward thirty years, and Ben runs across the trail of a man named Holloway Muldoon, who had once been a friend of his father's. "Ahh," Frobisher says, "then he doesn't know about Muldoon and his mother."

Because Caroline Fraser isn't dead at all; when her son was six years old, she ran off with Muldoon.