Enemy at the Door & Yuletide (again)

[thisbluespirit]

1. Here's an offer!! (It's very exciting...) Since I now have my very own copy of Enemy at the Door, this means I have the TV-recorded set that Liadt gave me going spare! I am willing to post anywhere, if you think you can watch them. (I'm not sure how these things work with recorded DVDs, but at least they shouldn't be region-coded...)

It was made 1978-80 by ITV, so dull, slow-paced TV of the time (though with more location filming than was average). It focuses on small, mundane incidents, mostly and there is much angst/death/people committing suicide/having their lives ruined every episode, so you don't want to ask for it lightly.

However, it is also very well-written, thought-provoking and covers the German Occupation of the Channel and has a really good cast (Bernard Horsfall, Simon Cadell, Alfred Burke & John Malcolm are some of the leads). With an equally starry (for 1978-80 UK, obv.) guest cast each week. There is a young Anthony Head (in eps 4&5, in his first TV appearance), John Nettles*, Peter Woodward, John Normington, Martin Jarvis, Gary Waldhorn, Joss Ackland, James Maxwell and more. And there are many, many more women in it than I just made that sound. (The world is sexist and they are less famous to me, that's all. Also there are a lot of soldiers.) I would be very happy to post it to the first person on this post who would like to have it. (It also has an awesome and brave Librarian in episode 2, though I realise that's a thing that probably impresses me more than other people.)

It is very good, though. Honest.

* John Nettles is a Channel Island policeman from Hampshire called Sergeant Lewis. You can have fun working out what relation he must be to Bergerac or Barnaby. Or maybe he's a Time Lord who's got into the habit of being in the British police force, or some other Immortal Police being.)


2. I went to leave a comment on the proper Yuletide post about why Blake's 7 was eligible, went back to the Hermit Library and confirmed to myself that it was in fact ineligible. I have now fired myself from the task. (The theoretical overlap from looking at authors on both sites was 200-400 fics, but I managed to find the alphabetical title list on it this time and in practice, while they're many of the same authors, the fics are different, so we're over on two counts and the age of the fandom isn't relevant any more.) So, no Blake's 7 in Yuletide! Tragic. I can't decide whether to wistfully leave my nomination in just in case or change it. I might go change it now. Or possibly blow up the Hermit Library, of course... The moral of this being, don't ever ask me to argue in favour of anything.

Comments

[justice_turtle]

Aw. *sadface at no B7*

[thisbluespirit]

Well, nothing's certain. It's 30 years old and it's borderline, so it's not impossible the mods might okay it this year, but I can't really give it any special pleading, because the numbers are straight-forwardly ineligible.

It might have made me badly behaved in my spare nomination, though. *cough* But if B7 isn't around, what's a Spook to do, dammit?

[justice_turtle]

Oh, what's your spare nomination? :-)

(I am such a bad person. When it comes to Yuletide nominations, I just like to sit back and watch while AS MANY OBSCURE FANDOMS AS POSSIBLE get added to the list. ;P)

[thisbluespirit]

Well, first I nominated Press Gang, which I like writing nearly as much as B7, but don't want to request but - because I'm not that evil - I am 99.9% sure (especially with 6 requests allowed this year) that it will be requested, because it's that sort of fandom. If not, I'm a tag bloater. Unless I change it.

And then I altered B7 to House of Eliott, because there was interest in that and last time I nominated it, two other people requested it, but nobody got fic. So I may request it if I don't do Chalet School, but hopefully other people will as well.

*guilty*

I suppose I should put my changes on the list, but I'm a bit tired and no one had done either of those last time I looked.

[justice_turtle]

I should really be going to bed (there was this epic incident with the microwave filling the kitchen with smoke due to the "reheat frozen entree" button not being as smart as it sounds), but I'm amused by how much worse "I'm a tag bloater" sounds than "contributing to the tag bloat problem". Also how much more it sounds like you're wearing a lab coat and secretively puffing up the tags with little syringes in order to distort test data or something.

...okay, I should DEFINITELY go to bed right now before I actually insult you or somebody else. O_O *hugs goodnight/morning/whatever*

[thisbluespirit]

It's all right, though - I bloat the tags, but then I wrangle them. :-)

*hugs back*

[aralias]

i'm not doing yuletide anyway (as i already said), so if b7 doesn't get in - i will try and write you a fic about jenna and zen (or whatever it is that you wanted)! if you want that.

i also think that b7 shouldn't be in really, as regarding their rules. but - we shall see.

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, well, I was unsure about requesting (I wanted a fic about Zen and the Liberator maybe, possibly involving Jenna, but perhaps the mystery should stay a mystery?), so I mainly wanted to be able to offer to write it! Not that I would ever say no to Zen/Liberator-centric fic!! :-)

I am not sure, because it is a bit borderline still and very old, but yeah. I'm definitely thinking I should maybe get rid of the nomination and put in House of Eliott or something instead. Or Midnight Is A Place.

[aralias]

well - then i could REQUEST something ;)

i think i remember you saying something like you always write b7 so maybe this is the yuletide gods telling you that this year will be different and they will not just assign you to that fandom (it is a good fandom, though. let's face it).

if you did remove your nomination - there would still be /a/ nomination... but it's more likely that the fics requested/produced will be B/A if you take away your characters. either that or travis/carnell, which... i would read. i guess people could just request 'avon - doing a thing with jenna and vila, which would get round the character thing. since most fic is about avon and he is already nominated).

anyway - good luck!

[thisbluespirit]

I think you have!! :-) I'm sure I still have several 500 Prompts from you. I shall just have to pretend that I am a proper B7 fan and that I can write fics for it without being anonymous. Or do the space_swap thingy. *nods*

Well, someone else may also have nominated, not on the spreadsheet. They usually do. But if it is so likely to be ineligible, I am minded to use my nomination on something that will be okay.

Or I can just request Silver again, but I was trying not to do that. I wrote S&S last year and got fic for it the year before already. But I cannot have enough Silver and other Elements and S&S generally. :-)

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Yes please to Enemy!

I still have it on my Amazon wishlist, though admittedly not as a high priority (but that's only 'cos I want Judi things MORE!)

[thisbluespirit]

Okay!! :-) It'll take me a little while to get to the PO, though.

(You're sure, though? You didn't really go for B7 S1 and this is pretty slow, too? Although, admittedly, no quarries!! You get the sea.)

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Well if you think someone else will enjoy it more, by all means don't send it to me.

But it's WW2 related - that's why I was interested.

[thisbluespirit]

No, it's fine - I was just double checking and letting you know! You're more than welcome to it.

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

In that case, yes please. And don't worry about sending it speedily - I'm STILL not finished watching TWW S1 yet!

[thisbluespirit]

:-)

It'll either be a long time coming, or I'll post it on Monday. It all depends.

Where are you up to with TWW now?

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Heh, okay!

I think I'm up to episode 14...

My excuse for being so slow is that I've been devouring books like reading's going out of fashion!

[thisbluespirit]

Reading is the best excuse ever! ♥ Besides, 'tis yours. You can take years to watch it or whatever you want. :-D

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

*giggles* It is indeed the best excuse!

And that's true...

[swordznsorcery.livejournal.com]

This Yuletide business seems extraordinarily complicated! Do you all have to take a degree in the subject before you're allowed to take part?!

[thisbluespirit]

It isn't really that bad. It's just fandoms that are borderline, like Blake's 7, that take a bit of working out. Up until this year there was a rule that 10 year old+ fandoms were automatically okayed unless they were still mega-fandoms, so they simplified things by getting rid of that. It just means that it's less simple now if you had a borderline fandom that was protected by that rule. I was trying to find a reason to justify still including it, but defeated my own objective. :-)

Really, you don't have to nominate at all, but if you do, you get to nominate up to four rare fandoms with up to four characters each. And then when everybody signs up, the nominated fandoms are what we choose from, because otherwise it would be impossible to run as an exchange. And at that point, I choose from the list what to request (fic! for me!) and what I feel able to offer to write (why did I offer that?) and get and give fic and it is awesome. Last year was extra specially awesome as I had SEVEN gift-fics. Two of them were drabbles in the extra collection, but still SEVEN fic, FIVE whole Yuletide fics.

It is a bit complicated till you get used to it, though, because there are also hippos and bears and mandatory flanicking and stuff. But it's the best fannish thing going, it is really is. :-)

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

I don't think any of my little group could make it... and I have a suspicion that me, I may be partly to blame for B7 being out (my stories are small, but there's a surprising number of them...)

[thisbluespirit]

Well, it's not out until the mods say so - it is borderline and it is 30 years old, so they may decide in its favour anyway, but I can't really do any special pleading - it meets two of the excluding criteria and there's no 10 year rule protection any more.

And, yep, you are 1 of 4 authors who are responsible for 491 of the B7 works on AO3. I've been looking into numbers for this!! For which you are awesome, btw.

There is a thing coming up in the new year called space_swap which might be cool, and we could definitely have B7 in that, but I will miss it at Yuletide. Yuletide became rather all about B7 in some ways, for me. I liked writing anonymously for it!!

Oh, I dunno - there's Heyer, Chalet School, Time Team - all sorts of things I've seen nominated so far! :-)