thisbluespirit: (eatd - clare)
I keep forgetting to get around to reposting my icons from tinypic and photobucket, but [personal profile] kateoftheangels was asking after this Clare one, which reminded me, so this is the first of two old icon reposts, one for Enemy at the Door and a giant one for Public Eye to follow. There are a lot, so forgive me if I don't number them or order them as logically as I would usually try to. Please note: fairly obviously, contains images of WWII German uniforms.

Teaser:


Why are you so afraid of ideas? )
thisbluespirit: (reading)
I realised that I never did any [community profile] yuletide recs this year, because I felt too unwell and also I never went back for a proper second go-round. So, I thought I would get on and at least rec the handful I collected, instead of moaning at the internet.

12 recs in The Box of Delights, Cadfael, The Dean's Watch, Georgette Heyer, Jonathan Creek, Matilda, Sapphire & Steel & UK Cities )
thisbluespirit: (b7 - jenna)
I'm not done yet! I just had to get my [community profile] space_swap story finished and edited and off to be beta-ed, and it was going epic again. /o\ But that's done and if I can just write a more reasonably-sized [community profile] hurtcomfortex story over the next month, things should be better on that front. *bangs head on desk and weeps*

Where were we?

[personal profile] executrix asked for Top 5 B7 episodes and/or fics about Jenna and since [personal profile] hamsterwoman beat them to the former, here are 5 top pieces of fanfic about Jenna, with the rider that I really need to bookmark B7 stuff more thoroughly and have another go through of all the stuff that's been added onto AO3 since my last adventures in the tag, so I'm probably missing some great things I've read (like I'm sure there should be something by [personal profile] aralias here), let alone that I haven't. Also I'm pretty sure that whenever it was I last read B7 fic I was too ill to read longfic, because these are all very short.

Nevertheless, out of what I have bookmarked, these are all good:

1. The Light by babel (G, 1097 words. Jenna/Blake.) He always surprised her. (Spoilers for the entire series.) Nice explanation for certain things in "Blake."

2. Vocation by kindkit (G, 360 words. Jenna.) Jenna and the mystery of piloting. My favourite type of Jenna-fic is probably things about her piloting and relationship with Zen & Liberator (so much so that I nearly picked a fic by Clocket about Zen missing Jenna because Tarrant is Not The Same, but it is technically a Tarrant fic so that would be rubbish of me). But anyway, this is excellent pilot-Jenna.

3. Drink to Remember by icarus_chained (Teen, 704 words. Jenna Stannis & Vila Restal.) Gauda Prime. Two survivors, older and scarred, and things it's good to be wrong about. An unexpected but great PGP comination.

4. Unexpected by Tels (G, 281 words. Jenna/Avon.) Avon hates Jenna and vice versa. Or do they? Fun.

5. Jenna Stannis PI by vilakins (G, 1253 words. Jenna, Avon, Vila. AU.) Written for the Blake's 7 crackathon, the prompt being Jenna Stannis, Private Investigator. What it says! XD


[personal profile] auroracloud asked - Top 5 favourite Doctor Who companions

1. Ace
2. Clara
3. Charley
4. Tegan
5. Leela or Barbara or Evelyn

- Top 5 favourite Doctor-Companion teams (can be more than one companion)

1. Seven & Ace
2. Four-Sarah-Harry
3. Two-Jamie-Zoe
4. One-Ian-Barbara-Vicki
5. Twelve-Bill-Nardole or Twelve & Clara, or Eight & Charley or Six & Evelyn.


- Top 5 favourite historical eras/events

1. The Battle of Hastings (wee me was a bit obsessed; it's never entirely gone away)
2. Early Tudor period. Thanks to Shadow of the Tower I have somehow got sucked into being very into Henry VII's reign and also Lancastrians in the WotR, like Margaret Beaufort and Jasper Tudor.
3. 18th C generally
4. English Civil War period but also the Battle of Monmouth, which is not entirely unrelated despite the time difference (I'm from Sedgemoor. Well, Bridgwater, but it was in Sedgemoor Registration District when I was born.) When I was a small thing of eight my Devonshire teacher told us all about the wrongs done to us West Country people by that evil Hanging Judge Jeffries. Folk memories die hard. ;-p
5. WWI, I suppose. Or 19th C.

(To be honest, I'm mostly just interested in specific people or bits of fiction or whatever and then it spills on outward.)

- Top 5 favourite fanfic tropes!

It depends because Whatever Seems Like A Good Idea At The Time is my general writing rule and for reading I'll try a lot of different things if it seems promising in some way. But:

1. Hurt/comfort (done how I like it, of course. Fairly mild and in character, with tiny meaningful things! or whatever. There may be hand holding. I know it when I see it.)
2. Accidental marriage (I keep forgetting how much accidental marriage fic I've written but it is apparently a thing. Although most of it is either a) the Doctor accidentally marrying people or b) the Doctor accidentally marrying other people to other people, and if you took away the Doctor I might not have accidentally married anyone at all.
3. Time Travel
4. Supernatural/Magic AU - essentially make my mundane heroes have to deal with fantastical things and I will be very, very happy indeed. (I have a couple of times had people who did this for me in gift fic and it is awesome. ♥)
5. Trope subversion
thisbluespirit: (Northanger reading)
So, I have been doing some little bits of family history in between Summer, mostly trying to find the baptisms of some of the women on one particular branch, where I've found the marriages so I have the names, but haven't been able to pin them down. I thought, with all of Ancestry's Somerset registers, all the transcriptions for that area and so on I've got, I should finally be able to make some headway with one or two of them, but all I have done so far is not find them more thoroughly. Which is progress of a sort, but it never feels much like it.

Anyway, in the midst of the Bridgwater burial register for the 1720s, which was one of those ones where the vicar has not deigned to do anything more than list names and dates, I came across this entry:

1725 Oct 30 Edw: Raymond a bitter Persecutor of the Vicar and a proud Attorney.

To which someone else has later added in a different, and much smaller hand beside it: But not half as proud, spiteful and ignorant as the then pretended Vicar Laurence Payne was.
thisbluespirit: (hugs)
[community profile] historium is having a bingo run by the lovely [personal profile] dimity_blue, with personalised cards and everything. Fills need to be for fandoms that are in some way historical, but is otherwise very laid back. Obv as a fellow mod, I could not fail to sign up and anyway the rule with bingo cards is that you always need another bingo card even if you have 3 other unfilled ones around. (I don't know if that Fannish Rule has a number yet, but it is definitely A Rule.)

(I am planning maybe to do some icon sets and things for this, though, perhaps.)

Cut for image )

Strangely, it has both "Facial Hair" and "Handholding" on it. *looks at [personal profile] dimity_blue

If you want to find out more or sign up, please go here! (Previous membership of the comm not necessary, although you will need to be one to post your eventual fills.)
thisbluespirit: (avengers)
What I've Finished Reading

I managed to read the rest of Trudi Canavan's The Black Magician Trilogy. The books kept getting longer but overall I enjoyed them - the characters were all very likeable, and it was fairly easy for me to read, and it's really nice to be able to cope with visiting a fantasy world.

Then I read Katherine by Anya Seton and loved it, which was a surprise because when I was worse, a few years ago, I read Devil Water which turned out to be a randomly easy to read book for me at the time, so that was good, but it also seemed quite weird in some ways. Now I'm wishing I'd kept it in case it was just me. (Although my vague memories suggest maybe not? I don't know.) Anyway, Katherine is about Katherine Swynford and I liked it a lot, as I said.

After that, I read The Knife Man by Wendy Moore, about the 18th C surgeon John Hunter, which was very interesting - certainly not a boring subject - even if it was occasionally a bit (inevitably) gruesome!


What I'm Reading Now

I'm still going through Wartime Britain 1939-1945 for my family history note-taking purposes, but I have done a lot less of that than usual.

Currently I'm reading Bess of Hardwick by Mary S. Lovell, and enjoying it.


What I'm Reading Next

Who knows? There may be birthday goodies, after all. Probably it ought to be something shorter and not a biography next up, though. And I ought to resume my note-taking a bit more regularly, too.
thisbluespirit: (hugs)
Another [community profile] genprompt_bingo fic. (I've now made a bingo if I want it, but I still have my eye on that border bingo, though...)

his wonders to perform (3000 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 15th Century CE RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Elizabeth of York Queen of England/Henry VII of England, Margaret Beaufort & Henry VII of England
Characters: Henry VII of England, Elizabeth of York Queen of England, Margaret Beaufort, Jasper Tudor, John de la Pole Earl of Lincoln, Richard III of England
Additional Tags: Community: genprompt_bingo, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Female Henry VII
Summary: As a woman, Lady Margaret Tudor’s fate is in the hands of others – and in the hands of God, of course. And God, as everyone knows, moves in the strangest of ways.
thisbluespirit: (reading)
I decided on getting my bingo card last year that I would make a rec set for the square "Genderswap". And finally, after discovering some great fanworks I'd never have otherwise seen, here it is.

The works on this list are mainly Rule 63/Always Another Gender AUs with some male-to-female regeneration works for Doctor Who and bodyswap fic where the bodyswapped characters are male and female.

17 recs in 15th & 16th C Hist RPF, Angel, Arthurian Myths, Babylon 5, Blake's 7, Doctor Who, The Flash, Jane Eyre, Lord of the Rings, Pride & Prejudice, Red Dwarf, Shakespeare, The West Wing, The White Queen )
thisbluespirit: (reading)
On a Wednesday and only 3 weeks after the last! \o/

What I've Been Reading

I found Amy Snow by Tracy Rees on the Tesco's bookstall, which looked intriguing and easy to read, and the cover was pretty, so I snaffled it. It was easy to read and quite sweet and fun. Victorian foundling Amy Snow's foster sister and sole friend in the world dies, but leaves her a treasure hunt to solve.

My Mum lent me The Librarian by Salley Vickers, which was good, although it could have been more about the actual librarianing, but probably I am the only person who would complain about that. (I see in my reading diary that I gave it two stars which is quite high, as three is the most I run to; only now I am baffled because obviously I liked it a lot more when I had just finished it than I think I did now. I cannot explain myself sometimes.)

I also read Tracing Your Merchant Navy Ancestors by Simon Wills, which was helpful. Not that I can actually do any further tracing of anything of that sort until I can visit an archive again one day, but it's good to know where to go, and the bibliography threw up a couple more possible merchant navy titles to look into.


What I'm Reading Now

Currently I'm just at the end of The Magician's Guild by Trudi Canavan, which has been fairly engaging and readable so far (although - and not that I was bored or anything, because I wasn't - technically we've had nearly 400 pages and very little has actually happened when I stop and think about it). Anyway, I've had this trilogy and some of the next on my TBR pile of hope for ages, so it was very satisfactory just to be able to take it down and read it fairly easily. Take that, brain!

For family history purposes, I am going through Wartime Britain 1939-1945 by Juliet Gardiner, which is very interesting, readable, and useful social history. If you write anything in that period, it seems like a good book to have to fall back on for background detail and info, so far at least.


What I'm Reading Next

Well, The Novice by Trudi Canavan, the next book, but probably first An Echo of Murder by Anne Perry, which I got from the library.
thisbluespirit: (reading)
My last Reading Weds was in November last year, and before that in June, and, as I said, I got a bit weird about not wanting to talk about the books I was reading in case I stopped being able to read them, or I wasn't being fair to them anyway because of not taking things in, but if I don't write these entries I forget everything about almost everything I read, and it is nice to chat, and I think I should at least try again.

What I've Finished Reading

Of note (one way or another) since November, I got Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold for Christmas from a friend and enjoyed that very much (as I mentioned to [personal profile] hamsterwoman. I'm not actually sure which of the two Chalion books I enjoyed the most, in the end. Maybe a little more the first, because of all the world building, but it was good to follow Ista's story as well.

I got around to reading The Dragon and the Rose by Roberta Gellis, which I think I must have found in the magic free book shop when it was still here - it is famous in tumblr Henry VII/Elizabeth of York fandom as it is a 1970s historical novel that is only just shy of a Henry/Elizabeth romance novel. It was enjoyably bad; I could not part with it afterwards. I mean, it's not the sort of thing you find every day in a charity shop.

Another from the TBR pile was Black is the Colour of My True Love's Heart, one of Ellis Peters's contemporary murder titles. It wasn't as memorable as a good Cadfael installment (it was a later one, but there was very little to illuminate the main detective and his family), but it was really lovely as ever & a good read, and the guest characters were vivid. I'm not sure why I'd always avoided her modern ones before being ill, but clearly I shall make amends on that score now if I can.

In other murder mysteries, I read the last two Adelia Aguilar books, Relics of the Dead and The Assassin's Prayer (but the series was new to me), which were 12th C historical murder books. The first was set in Glastonbury, Somerset, so I enjoyed that one more than the second. Somerset settings are surprisingly rare, so I treasure them when they come along. They both edged a little more to the thriller than the detective story in places for my taste, but they were lively and I enjoyed them. (Adelia was a little too much Not Like the Other 12th Century People, but at least she had decent reasons for it.) I enjoyed the second slightly less because it wasn't set in Somerset and had a murderer POV (although to be fair it was helpfully marked out in italics so I could skip all of it very easily), but, as I said, I enjoyed both of them and could read them pretty easily, which is the most important thing these days.

Also from the TBR pile, I had picked up Greenmantle by John Buchan, one of his Dick Hannay books, which was also surprisingly lively and readable with a nifty turn of phrase, although it was written in 1916 with a particular voice and seemed to be trying for an offensiveness bingo (it succeeded) that made Golden Age detective writers suddenly look like paragons of restraint in that department, especially in the first third. But overall, it was interesting, and I'm glad to have read at least one his oeuvre. It was not anywhere near as good as the 1936 film of The 39 Steps, though. No handcuffed-together shenanigans here!


What I'm Reading Now

I found another Daisy Dalrymple on the charity bookstand at Tesco! (The bookstand keeps moving about alarmingly, worrying me that Tesco have taken it away, but, no, just moved it again. Happily they've at least realised that maybe outside the loos was not in fact ideal, after a fancy noticeboard displaced it from where it had been for three years.) Anyway, this one is a later one, The Bloody Tower (set in the Tower of London, as you may imagine) and obviously Daisy has immediately fallen over the dead body of a beefeater, much to her Scotland Yard DCI husband Alec's embarrassment. (He is, though, resigned to it by now. It is just Fate that wherever Daisy goes corpses crop up in her wake.)

I haven't got much further, but it's nice to have a familiar friend in my hands again, as it were.

What I'm Reading Next

One never knows, meme! I am, though, having the curious pleasure of actually being able to read almost anything I pull off the TBR pile, though, so maybe something off that. I feel highly wary of this lasting, though. Maybe I'll find something else at Tesco, or re-read something, so you never can tell.
thisbluespirit: (james maxwell)
(Not an obvious combination of TV series, lol, but linked by a common factor & what that is you can probably guess.)

Anyway, I have been watching the BBC's 1980s biopic Oppenheimer lately, starring Sam Waterston. It also features in the 7th and final episode some guy called James Maxwell as Lloyd Garrison.

I did enjoy it, but it was also slightly distressing as this is my last bit of James Maxwell available on DVD that is new to me. (There are, though, two things available by online methods that I need to get to, I just keep hoping that either they'll release a DVD or Talking Pictures will oblige me by showing them, as I'm not great at watching stuff online.) But still. I get through the bad stuff by reminding myself that if things get to their worst, I might be able to purchase some James Maxwell! What's a person to do when there is NO MORE?*

Anyway, it was very good, although in that taking-it-very-seriously-practically-a-docudrama way that I thought even the BBC had done with by 1980. It even still had a narrator (John Carson, [personal profile] liadt). I think it could easily have lost an episode, too (half of episode 1 could have gone, for a start). As I knew only the vaguest things about the Manhattan Project prior to this, I can't comment on accuracy, although old time BBC usually at least try quite hard.

It was, though, aside from the two or three Genuine Americans who had been enticed over by the prospect, a field day for people who can do dodgy foreign accents, plus all the regular Americans and Canadians based in the UK. I ticked them off as they popped up, and my only question was, when would Ed Bishop arrive?

The answer was, as it turned out, episode 4. *g*

But Sam Waterston was very good, and it also had David Suchet as Edward Teller, coming into his own with his first major TV role, and, the dodgy-accent brigade included Milton Johns! In an actual proper serious role! Amazing. Bless him.**


I have also, hence the unlikely title, finally got round to screencapping the Bognor installment in which James Maxwell and Patrick Troughton are both monks in a honey-making religious community that is rocked by MURDER and espionage. I have brought pics. You can thank me later. :-D

I don't even know what to label half of this )



* Rewatch previous purchases, obviously. *happily disappears into Girl on Approval for a bit*

** He had to try and sell the scene in The Android Invasion in classic Who where he discovered that he was not missing an eye, he just hadn't ever thought to look under his eyepatch! So obv. he deserves all the good things, even if he hadn't already earned a lot of audience fondness for somehow being ridiculously likeable while playing all the slimy creeps in 70s & 80s children's TV. His accent was the dodgiest, but he was otherwise very good indeed in it.

A thing!

23 Feb 2019 06:15 pm
thisbluespirit: (history)


For all historical fandoms, fictional & RPF, original historical works, and any fandoms provided the prompt is historical (e.g. historical AUs). Open now for prompts and fills! Click on the banner for link.


If you want to promote it, please c+p the banner code below:



Also I made a rebloggable tumblr post. (Please do reblog, since I deleted mine my accident, I have about 14 followers in total, so my tumblr reach is even more minimal than before!)


(I will do these things... /o\)
thisbluespirit: (s&s)
So, as I said, [community profile] fandom_stocking went live and I had a lot of lovely things in mine!

I had some gifs, recs, puzzles, and best wishes, but also fab Brig/Liz fanart from [profile] paynesgray, and a glorious Bayeux Tapestry style illustration for We'll Burn That Barn When We Come To It by [personal profile] liadt. (If you enjoyed the fic, you really want to see the art!!)

Plus, lovely Jonathan Creek icons from [personal profile] tarlanx.


And in terms of fic, I was underservedly lucky - just look at all these, and they were all great in very different ways! *flails about*

more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, PG by [personal profile] rain_sleet_snow (The Quiet Gentleman/The Grand Sophy, five times fic, with Drusilla, Sophy and supernatural goings on.)

The rest were all on AO3 so I will share the links for your convenience. I recommend them all very much indeed! I am still all overcome.

A Falcon at Stoke Field (926 words) by kaffyrutsky
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Shadow of the Tower
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Henry VII of England, Lambert Simnel
Additional Tags: Missing Scene
Summary: One name had been left behind, the next was never his to begin with. In the aftermath of Stoke Field, Lambert Simnel chooses a new identity.


Twelve and a half Times Silver didn't meet the Doctor and One and half Times he did (2253 words) by Annariel
Chapters: 15/15
Fandom: Doctor Who, Sapphire and Steel
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Silver (S&S), Steel (S&S), Sapphire (S&S), Celestial Toymaker (Doctor Who), Liz Shaw (Doctor Who), Ander Poul, D84 (Doctor Who), Sixth Doctor, Peri Brown, Eighth Doctor, Thirteenth Doctor (Fatal Death), The Moment (Doctor Who), Rose Tyler, Rory Williams, Ashildr | Lady Me, Thirteenth Doctor
Summary: From the Celestial Toymaker, through the Time War, to the Pandorica. Silver is often on the fringes of the Doctor's adventures.


Dress the Part (718 words) by AuroraCloud
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who (1963)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Second Doctor & Zoe Heriot & Jamie McCrimmon
Characters: Second Doctor, Jamie McCrimmon, Zoe Heriot
Additional Tags: Historical Dress, Silly, Humor, Historical References, Clothing, 18th Century
Summary: When you time-travel to other eras, you have to dress the part.

Right now, however, the Doctor is having some trouble convincing his companions of that.


Booming and Blazing (636 words) by AuroraCloud
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bill Potts/Ace McShane
Characters: Bill Potts, Ace McShane
Additional Tags: First Dates, Kissing, Rocket launch, Ficlet
Summary: Ace and Bill, on a date, at a rocket launch.


One Cold Knight (5888 words) by swordznsorcery
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Department S, Doctor Who (1963)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Annabelle Hurst, Liz Shaw (Doctor Who), Stewart Sullivan (Department S), Jason King, Curtis Seretse, Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
Additional Tags: Crossover
Summary: For Fandom Stocking. The Department S gang team up with UNIT.


Voyager and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Ship Inspection (3291 words) by phantomlistener
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Trek: Voyager
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway, Tom Paris/B'Elanna Torres
Characters: Chakotay (Star Trek), Kathryn Janeway, Seven of Nine, Tom Paris, B'Elanna Torres, Naomi Wildman, Tuvok (Star Trek), Icheb (Star Trek), Neelix (Star Trek)
Additional Tags: Epistolary, PADD Messages, Crack
Summary:From: Lieutenant Torres
To: Engineering
Subject: Those bloody inspections
Time: 21:02
Engineering is a TIP. If the Captain wants inspections, she has to be able to get through the door. Someone get the doors working properly, everyone else, CLEAR UP. Understood?

In which it's time for the annual inspection of the ship, tensions are running high, and Tom Paris is in exceptionally good spirits. Things go rapidly downhill from there.


Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It (1175 words) by JohnAmendAll
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio), Doctor Who (2005)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Karen Coltraine/Lucie Miller
Characters: Karen Coltraine, Lucie Miller, Missy (Doctor Who), Seb (Doctor Who)
Summary: You'd think that being dead, you could lie back and enjoy it. Where the Mistress is concerned, you'd be wrong.


I haven't even had a chance to look at other fic in the collection!

thisbluespirit: (Default)
Still catching up!

Day 5

In your own space, promote three communities, challenges, blogs, pages, Twitters, Tumblrs or platforms and explain why you love them. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.


Some comms of my own:

[community profile] tardis_library - a Doctor Who reccing comm, made as a successor (but different from) the lovely [community profile] calufrax (now inactive, but with an amazing backlist that is still one of the best ways to get at gems from the Teaspoon Archive) - recs from all corners of the Whoniverse, posted anywhere, and in any media format. I'm so pleased with how this has taken off - more people & more recs are always welcome!


[community profile] historium which I have just set up as a central hub for all history fandoms, whether RPF or fictional to meet, post stuff, or use as a launching pad to set up more specific comms. It's had a great beginning & I need to get back to it once I am a little more recovered.


[community profile] tic_tac_woe or Apocabingo - a panfandom mini bingo challenge (using a tic tac toe 3x3 card) with all apocalyptic prompts! No deadlines, just sign up for a card & then end worlds/countries etc. or save them as you wish. (Fictionally, obviously.)


[community profile] who_allsorts - as an extra, because I meant to only include three, but I've a soft spot for this one. It's another Doctor Who community - an old-school prompt table with claiming, but with bite-sized tables. You can sign up for up to two at once and claims are very flexible (anyone can make the same claim, pairings/characters/eras/themes are all accepted, so you can choose how wide or narrow to make it). I created it with the object of enabling more DW content of all kinds, and I still think the prompt tables are very pretty!


Not-by-me communities:

[community profile] hc_bingo - still my favourite bingo, despite frequently being terrified by the prompts! It's very flexible about interpretation of prompts, and fills can be comfort, or hurt, or hurt/comfort as you please, and any fanworks are eligible. It runs once a year, but there are fun amnesty challenges and you only need to create one fanwork a year to stay eligible for the next round. It's been the perfect excuse to write a lot of things, and I've really enjoyed the Amnesty challenges when I've taken part. (Which are open to anyone if that works for you better than a bingo.)


[community profile] fic_rush - we need to sort ourselves out for another round soon, but this 48 hour actual ficathon (i.e. writing marathon) has been a wonderful supportive & social ingredient of my journalling life ever since I first plucked up the courage to join. There are ninja penguins, alien fish, glowsticks, and writerly pasta and attempts at galactic domination, but you don't have to worry about that. I mean, until and unless the penguins get you...


I enjoy recs and reccing comms, the main two of which I follow here are [community profile] fancake (though I never can get myself together to post for a theme) and [community profile] gensplosion for gen recs (which I have recced for, but am bad at doing), both of which have led me to some excellent fic, and both of which are panfandom.


There are so many comms I like! Here are, quickly, some more:

[community profile] who_at_50 (general DW comm, despite the name)

Bingos - [community profile] ladiesbingo, [community profile] trope_bingo, [community profile] allbingo and [community profile] genprompt_bingo. (Of these I particularly like [community profile] genprompt_bingo (which takes any kind of fills, despite the name, it's just that the prompts are gen prompts) but they're all good in their different ways.)

Icons - [community profile] iconthat, [community profile] icontalking, [community profile] icon_library, [community profile] icons10in20, [community profile] icons & [community profile] fandom_icons. (A mix of challenge and general posting comms.)


Which is probably enough from me, but I still like comms. And that's even before we get to all the exchanges or my other comms I run or co-mod...
thisbluespirit: (history)
I also wrote some treats. First off, I was determined to write a treat for [personal profile] allegoriesinmediasres for Shadow of the Tower,More writing stuff under here ) Pro-tip for Yuletide, though: don't ship Henry VII. Ship people who are in the History plays instead, that's just normal.


i love the rose both red and white (8072 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Shadow of the Tower, 15th Century CE RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Elizabeth of York Queen of England/Henry VII of England
Characters: Elizabeth of York Queen of England, Henry VII of England, Margaret Beaufort, John de Vere 13th Earl of Oxford, Catherine Gordon, Jasper Tudor, Cecily of York Viscountess Welles, Perkin Warbeck
Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat, 5 Times, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, The Wars of the Roses, Background Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Trust Issues, unfortunate people get sacrificed/locked in the Tower in each AU
Summary: I love the rose both red and white, Is that your pure, perfect appetite?

Five other ways it might have gone for Elizabeth of York and Henry Tudor.

***

Going through the letters, I loved [personal profile] halotolerant's Battle of Hastings request. They wanted crack and this instantly occurred to me and my main worry was that I would not have time or strength to eventually write it after my assignment and the giant treat above. (Well, until I wrote it, and then I worried in case they wanted crack, but not a Modern AU.) It went down well, luckily, and everyone was happy; the perfect Yule outcome, except for me thinking belatedly of Jokes I Should Have Made/forgot when typing in a hurry.

Do you want 1066 retold in a 21st epistolary Organic Farming AU? Possibly not, but I have 100% for real been told in the comments that it has a better ending than canon. So, my fic - totally better than an arrow to the eye! It's official.

We'll Burn That Barn When We Come To It (3511 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 11th Century CE RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Harold II of England/William the Conqueror
Characters: Harold II of England, William the Conqueror, Edith of Wessex (c. 1025-1075), Matilda of Flanders
Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat, Crack, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Epistolary, Humor, Angry exes, Swearing, Arson, Bees
Summary: from: h.godwinson@homespuntwaddle.com
to: brn@norman.org.fr

Hi Bill

Look, can we just talk this over like adults?

And the fact that I’m saying this despite the WIRE FENCE you’ve now erected round the perimeter of my farm ought to show you that I mean it. Please reply!

Harry.

***

Right at the last minute, I also managed to type up a hasty little Dracula (TV 1968) treat for [personal profile] calliopes_pen, a darkish little Jonathan-centric post canon piece, based on part of one of her prompts.

Road to Recovery (2056 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dracula (TV 1968)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jonathan Harker/Mina Harker
Characters: Jonathan Harker, John Seward, Mina Harker
Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat, Post-Canon, Vampires, Victorian, Hurt/Comfort, Dark
Summary: It will take time for Jonathan to become well again, but both Dr Seward and Mina are willing to do everything they can to help him – in very different ways...

(I went over and over it after typing, but it was unbetaed, so apologies for any errors - just let me know and I will fix them, as ever.)

There really were so many great prompts this year, had I only but world and brain enough, but it was a lovely Yuletide that even included a tiny SotT treat for me on top of my gift. I hope everybody else had an equally lovely time with it.

With many thanks to [personal profile] persiflage_1, who never even blinks at the random things I send her to beta, especially at Yuletide! <3 (You dodged a bullet, Pers - there were 1960s vampires in the end! ;-p)

Yuletide!

26 Dec 2018 09:58 am
thisbluespirit: (yuletide)
First off, thanks for all the Christmas good wishes etc! We have indeed been having a good one, even if I am inevitably overtired.

Yuletide went live yesterday, and I have a lovely gift in Dracula - I don't know who my pinch hitter was, but they have very successfully catered to my tastes in a way that I need to go off and comment properly to tell them as soon as I've posted this here. Anyway, I love it, it's very sweet (well, insofar as vampire-y things can be):

In the Hours Before Morning (1439 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dracula (TV 1968)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Mina Harker/Lucy Westenra, John Seward/Lucy Westenra
Characters: John Seward, Lucy Westenra, Mina Harker
Additional Tags: Ghosts, Vampires, Loss, Hope, Mental Coercion, Canonical Character Death, Post-Canon, Hurt/Comfort
Summary: Mina can hear Seward's heart beating before he enters the room.


Madness revealed just now and I had a bonus, completely delightful treat! Someone has seriously written me a pitch perfect missing scene from The Shadow of the Tower, only just shy of the Yule-minimum featuring SotT experimental dream sequences and a great vaguely Henry/John of Lincoln conversation, via one of my many throwaway prompts. I'm still smiling, and v touched by someone's kindness! (I have been vainly requesting this for years now, so my anon author is probably an actual good angel or something.)

Whose Bitter Tears (906 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Shadow of the Tower
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Henry VII of England, John de la Pole Earl of Lincoln
Additional Tags: Episode: The Crowning of Apes, Missing Scene
Summary: Lincoln receives an unexpected visitor in Dublin.


I have been tired and haven't read much else yet, but what I have has also been lovely - I hope everyone else who takes part in any way is enjoying Yuletide too!
thisbluespirit: (margaret lockwood)
As I said, there's suddenly a lot of activity round here, with new comms born every minute, it seems. Here are some things I've spotted that seem potentially cool and relevant to people's interests:


* [personal profile] snickfic's friending meme is huge, and still very much ongoing.

* [community profile] meta_warehouse - for sharing fannish meta.

* [community profile] 100prompts - prompt tables (no specific pairing/fandom/character claims needed) in tables of 30 and 50, plus daily word prompts, and Friday challenges.

* [community profile] historium - a general comm & hub for all history fandoms (RPF and fictional). I've yet to promote it, but I've finished all the initial tweaking now & will do so presently. (Your mods are me and [personal profile] auroracloud and I'd be very happy if anyone else wanted to join us.)

* [personal profile] clachnaben is hosting a Magical Realism Commentfest - You know the drill, multifandom, also rec posting welcome.

(Looking at this, I realise my definition of magical realism is way narrower than theirs; I always had it pegged as like David Almond (Skellig etc) and Frank Cottrell Boyce (Millions, Framed) where it either it's not quite magic or it isn't but the real world has a magical effect in itself. I was a children's librarian and they are the only magical realism people I've read. At least, according to my maybe weird definition. But it seems to be more just magic in the real world? Which is an easier definition than "like these two Brit YA authors and I'll know it when I see it...")


(If you're interested in knowing about these sorts of things then the places to follow are chiefly [community profile] fandomcalendar, [site community profile] dw_community_promo and [community profile] fandom_on_dw.)


(This still isn't an introductory post. ;-p)
thisbluespirit: (history)
The inevitable result of the tumblr purge is, of course, that I made a comm, even if it wasn't wise:



Please do take a look, tell me what I have missed/done wrong or anything else I should put in the intro/rules, and feel free to join! I'll pimp it about soon.

I would also be very glad of a co-mod, if anyone is interested. It's a general comm, so it hopefully shouldn't be too arduous. I need to work out a sensible tagging method as yet, but I think otherwise it's fairly straightforward.
thisbluespirit: (reading)
On a Wednesday and before it's been much more than a month since the last! I'm still rather weird about reading, but heigh-ho.

What I've finished reading

Since last time, I've finished David Olusoga's Black & British: A Forgotten History, which was excellent. (Indeed, I meant to get it and save reading or consulting it for later, but once I'd opened the book, I was sucked in and there I was, reading another 500+ page history book, which I had very much intended not to be doing in order to try and unweird myself (save in daily bits for family history note-taking), but what can you do sometimes?)

Talking of which, I also came to the end of The Weaker Vessel by Antonia Fraser, which was overall very good and useful, although it has to be said, that it contained a lot more exciting women in the pre-Civil War and Civil War period, and the Restoration could not quite compete, but that's hardly the fault of the book.

In general, because of being weird, I've been trying to unweird myself with inconsequential Regencies, which have been variable as ever. But I did also read one of the British Library's Golden Age reprints, this time Quick Curtain by Alan Melville, which as the introduction points out, is almost more of a parody of a crime novel than a crime novel, and so it was. It was a theatrical setting by an author from the industry, and I'm always up for a parody and theatrical people sending themselves up, so it was entertaining and easy to read. I did wish the detective and his son would stop with the double act, though. I wanted to thwack them with a rolled up newspaper after the first chapter, although they were okay when they split up. But it was a very easy read and pretty enjoyable exercise in genre subversion.

(The introduction also mentioned Death at Broadcasting House, which reminded me that I recorded the 1934 film off Talking Pictures (how could I not with that title), but this is not much of a sidenote as I still haven't watched it.)

I also read Excellent Women by Barbara Pym, which I did enjoy a lot, even though I was a little too tired to cope to begin with. Thanks to the people who both recced her and warned me the Angela Thirkell comparison was a little off, because while I can see the connection, those two things are not the same indeed, no.


What I am Reading Now

Sixteenth-Century England by Joyce Youings, for family history purposes, plus another Regency for the fluff value. I am about four pages into the former and have made notes about farming, so there's not much more to say. It's an older title, but hasn't yet been supplanted, so is a good place to start.

Some occasional secret Yuletide-y stuff, but nothing that is not a re-read.


What I'm Reading Next

I don't know! But I did get Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym from the library when my friend took me last week, so hopefully I'll be able to muster up the strength to read it soon. I don't know, the unweirding myself is not really happening. I need a bit of a run of better days to regain stamina or a book that magically works and I'm not getting that yet. So, who knows?
thisbluespirit: (Dracula)
I am all behind with what I've been watching, as well as other things. In the summer, I watched Bill Brand (Thames TV 1976), starring Jack Shepherd in the title role, as a ex-college lecturer and idealistic new Labour MP for an industrial northern borough. It also featured Lynn Farleigh as his wife, Cherie Lunghi as his girlfriend (amusingly, called Alex Ferguson) & Alan Badel.

It was quite a high-profile series at the time and earned Jack Shepherd a BAFTA nomination, but I had very mixed feelings about it. Maybe it would have been better without Bill Brand? )


I have also watched two (and a bit) episodes of the psychological horror anthology Shadows of Fear, Mixed feelings, but also pretty pics and the Revenge of Isabel Archer on the wrong suitor (but it's easy to make a mistake when everyone's called Ed )


* I am still grudgy at Ed Bishop for pushing her down the stairs in UFO. I am delighted she got her revenge, even if she got confused about which Ed she should be sending down the stairs. These things are perfectly understandable, and they were both mean to her anyway.
thisbluespirit: (history)
I sid yesterday that I had finished two stories recently, and this is the second - a 500 Prompts fic for [tumblr.com profile] allegoriesinmediasres.

blue is the colour (1858 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Shadow of the Tower, 15th Century CE RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Elizabeth of York Queen of England/Henry VII of England, Margaret Beaufort & Elizabeth of York Queen of England, Margaret Beaufort & Elizabeth of York Queen of England & Henry VII of England
Characters: Elizabeth of York Queen of England, Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII of England
Additional Tags: 500 prompts, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Arranged Marriage, Trust Issues
Summary:

Elizabeth of York in shades of blue across the years.

Things

17 Oct 2018 06:17 pm
thisbluespirit: (s&s)
1. I went into town today so I am tired again (brain. what is that?) I made some gifs, though, so that was something. Also, of course, I went into town and now have a) pens that my Dad claimed weren't in Smiths (Dad, you don't look hard enough! /ungrateful daughter) and b) chocolate and c) books from a charity shop. (One from a crime series I hadn't heard of that looks fun, and another that is on the Norman Conquest to join my pile of books to be read on the Norman Conquest.)


2. Friending meme!
"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers."
A friending meme for Autumn 2018.

→ come and find new friends! ←

(I haven't done my entry yet, because tired, but hopefully I will. Still, friending meme! \o/)


3. Have a gif of Cherie Lunghi and Peter Egan as Princess Charlotte and the Prince Regent (from 1979) as proof that I made a thing, such as it is:

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