WIP Meme (nth edition)

[thisbluespirit]

Memed from astrogirl2: Post a line or a snippet from each of your WIPs, and invite people to ask questions about them.

(It's always slightly different, this one, so I may have freely adapated it for my own purposes. A meme, after all, is a living, evolving thing, right? *hides from those meme police once again*)


These are mostly odd things inspired by ancient telly, efforts for trope_bingo that didn't get done, and the remaining half-done fic for hc_bingo. None of them are my Yuletide fic, because... I should get on that instead of obsessing about said ancient telly. *sheepish*)

1. So, next I went up to Totter’s Lane. Nothing to see there, which wasn’t surprising. Just the junkyard, which was about as enthralling as most junkyards. Sounded to me, from what the secretary had said, that the police were right about the old boy’s removal of his granddaughter being a red herring. There are plenty of people who’ve got something to hide from. Sounds like he was another.

*

2. “For another thing,” Silver said, as he perched on the bedstead, “this bed isn’t real, and I daresay the room isn’t either. Oh – and I am sorry if I woke you while I was, ah, investigating.”

*

3. And that is true, Richter acknowledges, but he thinks again of men he’s known, men who are generals now in Whitehall, men who are capable of thoughtlessly barking “Let them starve!” just to show the blasted enemy. They already threaten to accuse them of war crimes for not feeding the populace, though it is the British who blockade them. Or maybe it is to show their people, who didn’t put up enough of a fight to please them. A month or so ago, Richter still had hope, but now it evades him; he cannot see why they delay if they mean to send help.

(I should probably bury this somewhere: nobody needs horribly morbid, kind of AU, totally obscure fic from me. At least, not any more of it, anyway. But-but-but- If writing 3/5s of it really killed my brain, I should make that worth the while, shouldn't I? Or possibly delete it so as to avoid the risk of repeating the brain-killing part... *sigh*)

*

4. Vampires could not enter uninvited, of course, but many of them already had been allowed into Sherriff Hutton. She had encountered one unexpectedly only yesterday and had only narrowly managed to destroy him. Happily, she had been able to trick him into following her into the chapel, after which his end was inevitable. She wondered why none of the vampires seemed to have understood that yet, although it was a fortunate circumstance for the rest of them.

(I would love to write this up, but I don't know if I really can. Or should. Or if I'd get eaten alive if I did.)

*

5. The other woman, who’s still standing there, raises her eyebrows and asks, as [redacted], “So how many brothers and sisters do you have?”

“Fourteen,” says Con.

The woman stares. “My dear!”

She sounds as if she thinks it a fate worse than death, which maddens Con, but she’s been brought up to be polite, and only says, feeling suddenly defensive, “Oh, it isn’t as bad as that sounds. You see –”

“Oh, my dear,” says the woman, being infuriatingly pitying, “I should think it must be!”

(This is a thing I tried to do but didn't work out, but I do keep wondering about finishing it sometime. I don't know.)

*

6. “Now that you mention it,” Silver said, with a dismissive gesture. “I was testing the relative ages, the origins of the paper, the ink. The words… well, they seemed to be all in order.”

Lydia bit her lip. “So you weren’t thinking about the story itself, or the narrative tone, the author’s prose style?”

“It isn’t usually relevant,” said Silver.


*

I think I need help. /o\ But you can ask me questions instead, if you feel so kind. :-)

Comments

[john_amend_all]

2. Liz?

4. Why would you get eaten alive? Is it to do with the fandom this story is set in?

6. When Silver says the words are all in order, I take it he doesn't mean alphabetical order? :-)

[thisbluespirit]

2. Not Liz - I'll say no more, because all being well, I should finish and post this one at least fairly soon.

4. Ahhh, yes. Well. So. For trope_bingo, I wanted to do this for the AU: other square, and it's Elizabeth of York the Vampire Slayer - in which Richard III is a vampire (it explains everything, honest), and Elizabeth's only help is Henry VII who doesn't believe in vampires, anyway. So, I might get eaten alive by Ricardians, or at least, those who don't stop to see how non-serious the whole thing is and that Jasper Tudor was going to get to be Merlin. /o\ (I had Reasons!)

6. Nope, not alphabetical order! :-)

[john_amend_all]

4. Write it!

6. I think I had in mind the evil empire in The Player of Games, which deliberately destroyed a galaxy-famous library by sorting the letters in each book.

[thisbluespirit]

I would like to, but I don't think it's something i can quite pull off at the moment. I do like the idea, though, so hopefully at some point! :-)

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

OK, I desperately want to read #1!

[thisbluespirit]

1 & 2 stand the best chance of getting written, so hopefully you will. The thing is, I may get obsessed by passing 1960s/70s TV, but I am always a DW fan and one of my first thoughts about 1960s Public Eye was, wow, this could make a really fun Outsider POV for DW as a crossover. Hopefully, I can hide the crossover part in the end notes and people might even agree... :-)

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

How soon can I read #2 and #6?

That is my only question! :D

[thisbluespirit]

:-)

You can hopefully read 2 fairly soon, but I just don't know about 6. Maybe after Yuletide, I'll type up the rest, because I do like it, I just kept stopping and wondering if I was being too self-indulgent with it. It's hard to tell.

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

In writing, there can never be any such thing as being too self-indulgent!

[thisbluespirit]

I suppose so, but I don't know - I always end up worrying about it, really. I don't know why; I just can't help it!

(I'm sure, though, there will be more fics involving Silver at some point. This is pretty much guaranteed, really.... :-D)

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Yay for more Silver!!!

[paranoidangel]

I want to know what no. 1 is all about.

[thisbluespirit]

Heh, 1, as I said above, is the result of my Public Eye obsession - because I never stop being a DW fan, and obviously it struck me that you could make a lovely Outsider POV fic for DW by doing a crossover with it. So I am having a stab at it...

[swordznsorcery.livejournal.com]

Vampires could not enter uninvited, of course, but many of them already had been allowed into Sherriff Hutton.

I was aware of course that vampires cannot enter uninvited, but I had never considered that sort of entry...!


I second the comments about #1 sounding interesting.

[pedanther]

Yes, it's normally buildings that vampires have to be invited into, not whole villages.

Oh, but I see from Wikipedia that Sheriff Hutton is the name of the castle as well as the village, so perhaps that explains it. It's a listed ruin these days, though, so apparently this is a historical vampire tale.

(That would explain the old-fashioned tone of the narrative voice, come to think. I had been wondering if it was a sequel to that story wherein Miss Marple outsmarted Dracula.)

[thisbluespirit]

Your analysis would be pretty much correct - yes, it is the castle and, as this isn't the first paragraph, that would be explained in the fic. And, yes, it is a historical vampire tale, although the tone is more me inevitably riffing Georgette Heyer because I'm attempting a romantic comedy rather than period-specific. :-)

In other words, that one where Richard III is a master-vampire, Elizabeth of York has to slay vampires and Henry VII is a modern lost heir who doesn't believe in vampires. (...this is why I've not tried explaining this idea to anyone until this post. /o\)

[dimity-blue.livejournal.com]

I do like your Silver fics. I hope you'll finish them soon...or sooner or later. :o)

[thisbluespirit]

Thank you! :-)

[clocketpatch]

Repeating all of the interest in #1, because yes, there had to have been some fall-out from two teachers and a student randomly going missing. Though... given how Ian&Barbara were... I wouldn't be surprised if half the staff at Coal Hill thought that they'd just eloped.

#4 and #5 both look very intriguing indeed.

[thisbluespirit]

I'm glad everybody likes the look of one - I just hope they don't all run away when they see it's technically a highly obscure crossover. It just struck me as also being a potentially cool outsider POV fic for DW. I typed up some more last night, anyway, so... fingers crossed.

And thanks! :-)

[oonaseckar.livejournal.com]

Only six? You're doing awfully well.

2: but the conversation is real, right?

[thisbluespirit]

:lol: Well, no, not really only 6 - but the others are mainly things I had to stop writing three years ago when I started being ill and there's only so many times you can keep putting those in a WIP meme. As for the rest, I write longhand first, especially for anything more than a brief ficlet, so by the time I get to typing things up, it's usually finished and it literally just is the typing - and, for reasons of necessaity, it's mostly short fic. :-)

2. Well, as far as they know. You can never be sure.

[liadt]

Ha, I guessed #1 was a PE cross. Do I win something?

I'd like to know what's happening in Press Gang. Did Lydia notice one of the staff is looking younger?

[thisbluespirit]

Yes! You will eventually win the chance to read the finished thing! ;-p

And, heh, no, the last one isn't Press Gang at all. (That would be Lynda, not Lydia, but nice try. The confusion is understandable, especially as Julia Sawalha has played Lynda Day and Lydia Bennet in her time.)

[liadt]

Hurrah, as long as there are graveyards in it!

Curses! I got the first two letters right. I'd quite like a S&S/Press Gang cross now.

[thisbluespirit]

Hurrah, as long as there are graveyards in it!

... junkyards, sorry. :-/

*passes Liadt the cup of tea she obviously badly needs*

I think I wrote a short S&S/PG fic once; I'm sure I did...

[liadt]

Roger Marshall invented the trend for hanging about in graveyards in the Avengers, therefore Frank can't go looking about in junkyards. Never mind tetchy timelords, Callan's boss could be in amongst the scrap:S

I'd quite like a S&S/S&S/Press Gang cross now!

Thanks, for the tea I'm passing it to the Tudors: they aren't stopping having meetings until tea & biscuits have been invented.

Cheers to john_elliot, made my day:)

[thisbluespirit]

Aha, I see! Well, there are a couple of churchyards at least in Public Eye. But then, thirty-six episodes are burninated. They probably had all the graveyards in them. :-(

[john_amend_all]

Given the Austen context, does S&S mean Sapphire and Steel... or Sense and Sensibility?

(Plotbunny: Lynda Day and Lydia Wickham wake up as each other. Lynda is faced with the Regency's attitude to women, a dissolute and criminally-inclined husband with an eye for 15-year-old girls, and a nagging worry about what chaos Lydia must be causing at the Junior Gazette).

I'd quite like a S&S/Press Gang cross now.

As lost_spook mentions above, she wrote the only one on AO3.