Beyond the Roundels

Fic: Jack in the Box (S&S)

Sat, 01 Apr 2023 20:36:43 GMT

This is a random fic I wrote sort of for the Genremixer meme back in December, but not, because it was actually just from a prompt that I generated from it in conversation with sovay about Iron: "Iron / Mercury / Emerald - hiding an injury & trust issues." I had trouble with editing it after and then couldn't give it the last pass because of being so ill for three and half months, which was ridiculous. /o\

Anyway, here it is, also for hc_bingo square "locked in a box" and allbingo square "Borage - bluntness."

Jack in the Box (2066 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Emerald & Iron & Mercury (Sapphire and Steel)
Characters: Emerald (S&S), Iron (S&S), Mercury (S&S)
Additional Tags: Community: hc_bingo, Community: allbingo, Genremixer, Trapped, Locked In, Jack in the Box, Blood and Injury, Trust Issues
Summary: Put three 'elements' in a box and what do you get?

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Fic: Why Don't You... (S&S)

Sun, 27 Nov 2022 20:32:43 GMT

I did a writing meme using the Genremixer a couple of weeks ago on tumblr and have now done the first prompt - from persiflage_1 for "Silver/Antimony/Osmium – the little things" and also for genprompt_bingo square "Watching helplessly."

Why Don't You... (1539 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Silver (S&S), Osmium (Sapphire and Steel), Antimony (Sapphire and Steel)
Additional Tags: Genremixer prompt, Community: genprompt_bingo, Elemental Weirdness, original elements, 1980s, Television
Summary: ... switch off your television set and go and do something less boring instead?

Three Elements on an assignment seems like overkill, but maybe there's a reason.

(And I apologise for the title. I just couldn't quite stop myself.)

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Fic!

Sun, 30 Oct 2022 15:00:26 GMT

sovay also wrote me some original Elemental case fic this week and it is very beautiful and layered and amazing and weird in the right ways:

The Debt of Centuries (2412 words) by sovay
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Arsenic (S&S), Zinc (S&S)
Additional Tags: Original Character(s), Ghosts, Fieldscapes, Metaphorical Uses of Chemistry
Summary: Arsenic had never minded waiting.

*\o/*

Plus, on a fanficcy note: Yuletide requests in fandom order ready for perusal for anyone wishing to dish out treats!

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Fic: Lavender's Green (S&S)

Sat, 15 Oct 2022 13:04:22 GMT

Written, if belatedly, for sovay (who suggested I write Iron fic), for their birthday, and also for Whumptober Day 22 (Pick Your Poison), hc_bingo square "drugged" and genprompt_bingo square "Case / Mission Fic."

Lavender's Green (5313 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Iron (S&S), Emerald (S&S), Silver (S&S), Original Characters
Additional Tags: Whumptober, Poison, Murder, Implied/Referenced Suicide, 1980s, Terrible mid century decor, Elemental Weirdness, Community: hc_bingo, Community: genprompt_bingo, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nursery Rhyme References
Summary: There's something lurking in the garden, under the lavender...

(My casting for Iron and Emerald turned up in the same scene as David Collings in Breakaway for a bit. I giffed this right at the end of writing, and look at them; my casting is spot on, thank you. *bows* points smugly to gifset. ;-p I didn't actually exactly write this for this reason: I generated some prompts and of the two that bit hardest, this one included that line up.)

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Nice things

Fri, 22 Jul 2022 09:24:26 GMT

I was already being overtired and blah blah blah summer, you all know the drill by now, and then as we also all know it was so hot things were on fire, and that was even less fun, but at least that has stopped for now and it is like normal outside even if inside is only more slowly winding itself down from the peak.

Anyway, in the meantime, here are some good things (for me, anyway):

* I woke up this morning to find someone I don't know at all (poweredbuttercup10) has made fanart of my story Red Skies, which I wrote ages ago for calliopes_pen, a little John/Jonathan/Mina Dracula 1968 fic, where the Harkers vamp one fainty doctor. Anyway, I did old-school squeeing, because look: https://thisbluespirit.tumblr.com/post/690462693065474048/based-on-thisbluespirit-s-ao3-work-red-skies

Amazing. <3 (I am laughing at myself a bit though: such a cute little murder scene!!! omg, darlings. <3)

* also i made another element moodboard (about a week or two ago? idk, it now seems like a lifetime or something) for Manganese: https://thisbluespirit.tumblr.com/post/689391684465967104/original-other-elements-28-manganese-he-opens

(I chose Manganese for theseatheseatheopensea's gift fic: The Sky Outside)

* Marie-Clare has now reacted to Blake's 7 ep2 now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fynx_-yEnCE (Go quickly, because the BBC will probably take it down soon. I won't link every week, sorry, but it was another great reaction, so XD.)

* also lurking_latinist happened to write Like Sunshine Through Rain, making Six/Charley fic just that tiny bit less rare (also it was excellent, yes). <3

Plus, bunn7cula is promising to send me a thing!

And I do at least have a draft of the Just Married fic, but also maybe defaulting would be easier than editing in summer? idk. It is a thing that will definitely be a thing now. Hopefully on time, but eventually, even if I have to wait for a better season, and I am totally being in love with this combination of characters all over again, but I can't talk about that for a month.

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Some elemental things

Sat, 18 Apr 2020 20:12:39 GMT

So, I was feeling really flat and tired again yesterday and today, so yesterday I made a historical gifset with Copper and Silver (which I'd been talking about wanting to do to theseatheseatheopensea) here on tumblr.

( Cut for giffage )

And today I thought I would do another OC Element, and finally found the perfect one for Dennis Alaba Peters (who was in Department S and I've been wanting to use him, partly because he was actually an opera singer and has a splendid voice, which always helps) - here's Carbon, or a potential Carbon anyway:

( Cut for largish elemental graphic )

Anyway, maybe it's a bit too Sir Curtis-like, but imagining him as sort of senior element who wanders in and out vaguely and casually sorts things while being surprised other Elements found it difficult. ("Ah, Steel. Not still having trouble regulating your temperature, are you? I thought you fixed that half a century ago!")

The tumblr post is somewhere in the queue, but it'll turn up here in time.

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Fic: Cameo (S&S)

Fri, 22 Feb 2019 21:42:16 GMT

I haven't been feeling that well the last couple of days, which it took me a little while to realise was some extra virus and not just a bad day, but it happily seems to be improving already, and I tidied up this fic, inspired by my 100 Elements prompts and me making graphics for these particular new OC Elements last week. (I blame Tin's casting on swordznsorcery! ;-p)

Also for 100fandoms and genprompt_bingo.

Cameo (2094 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Characters: Jasper (S&S), Tin (S&S), Jet (S&S), Original Characters, Original Elements - Character
Additional Tags: community: 100fandoms, Community: genprompt_bingo, Time Loop, Time slip, Murder, 1920s, 1940s, 1980s, Blood, Ghosts
Summary: “Goodness,” she says, turning around to find a stranger on the other side of the counter. “I didn’t see you come in.”

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Fandom Stocking Fic + 1 last stray AU ficlet

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 21:07:57 GMT

So fandom_stocking went live and I will need to share with you presently the contents of mine, because it was glorious!

But I also managed to write four things, as well as making some icon sets for various people, and here are my efforts in the meantime, plus at long last, my belated AU Meme fill for Servalan:

One Night Stand (3759 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sapphire/Silver/Steel (S&S), Silver (S&S)/Everyone, Copper & Silver (S&S)
Characters: Silver (S&S), Steel (S&S), Ruby (S&S), Lead (S&S), Cerium (S&S), Jet (S&S), Copper (S&S), Mercury (S&S), Emerald (S&S), Sapphire (S&S)
Additional Tags: Community: fandom_stocking, Elemental Weirdness, 20th Century, Pre-Canon
Summary: There’s an odd little break-to-be that means a yearly appointment to keep. As far as Silver’s concerned, it’s a date.

A Cold Day in Autumn (1050 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who (1963)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Third Doctor/Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart/Liz Shaw
Characters: Third Doctor, Liz Shaw (Doctor Who), Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
Additional Tags: 4 Things, Dubious Consent, one particular alien told them to do it, Crack, Humor, For Science!
Summary: Funnily enough, there's always only this one way of saving the world...

another spark for the fire (790 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Flash (TV 2014)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Barry Allen/Caitlin Snow
Characters: Barry Allen, Caitlin Snow, Killer Frost
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Multiverse, 4 Things, Vignette
Summary: Whether or not they’re together here, there’s a multiverse of possibilities out there.

Confectionary Crimes (904 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Adam Adamant Lives!
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Adam Adamant & Georgina Jones & William E. Simms
Characters: Adam Adamant, Georgina Jones, William E. Simms
Additional Tags: Ficlet, Humor, Cake
Summary: One of these cakes is primed and ready to blow...

AU Meme: Servalan (988 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Blake's 7
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kerr Avon/Servalan
Characters: Servalan (Blake's 7), Travis (Blake's 7), Kerr Avon, Roj Blake, Kasabi (Blake's 7)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Memes, Ficlet, Dark, Villains, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Harm to Daemons
Summary: 9 AU scenarios for Servalan written for a Dreamwidth meme.

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3 Commentfest Fills

Thu, 07 Jun 2018 11:54:32 GMT

I managed to write three mostly slight fills for the Commentfest, and here they are :

Predictable (605 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Zodiac (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: David Gradley/Esther Jones
Characters: Esther Jones (Zodiac TV), David Gradley
Additional Tags: Obscure and British Commentfest, Ficlet, Horoscopes
Summary: Grad finally asks Esther to draw up a horoscope for him...

Not So Much Awry (1736 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Mercury (Sapphire & Steel), Iron (S&S), Emerald (Sapphire & Steel)
Additional Tags: Obscure and British Commentfest, original elements, Original Character(s), Haunted Houses
Summary: There are ghosts in the basement.

Restless Spirits (1093 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dracula (TV 1968)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Mina Harker/Lucy Weston, John Seward/Lucy Weston, Mina Harker/John Seward, Jonathan Harker/Mina Harker
Characters: Mina Harker, John Seward, Abraham Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, Lucy Weston, Dracula
Additional Tags: Humor, seances, Post-Canon, Obscure and British Commentfest, Possession, Ghosts, For Science!, More of Van Helsing's Necromancy
Summary: Professor Van Helsing feels it is their duty to hold a séance, for science. Needless to say, it doesn't go well.

(It's not too late to make fills! Or, indeed, even to leave prompts, although their chances of being filled are inevitably smaller by this point.)

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Summer Talking Meme #6

Fri, 02 Oct 2015 17:08:48 GMT

From persiflage_1: Which Elements haven't you cast yet, and want to?

Something I hadn't thought about for a long while! When I first watched Sapphire and Steel and fell headlong in love with it and all its weirdness, I also became obsessed with other Elements.

I still don't see how you can not be - the four we know are all fascinating, inhuman, very different to each other and completely mysterious. They are even, we learn in Assignment Three, something of a mystery to each other. (While Steel speculates on Silver's unknown origins, Sapphire replies that she wonders much the same about him & we definitely get the impression that they were quite different.) So, how could I help but be intrigued by the others we hear about - the list in the opening credits, Copper (who is always having trouble with Silver, & in the audios, whom Silver nevertheless defends as being incapable of betraying them), Jet (who sends her love to Steel) and Mercury, who is a technician like Silver. There's always a sense of how important they are to each other, even if often accompanied by fear/mistrust of some kind. In addition, in the audios, we meet Gold and Ruby (even if I have still not yet met Ruby). And I forget what the exact number was stated to be, but there are well over 100 of them, and then there's the possibility of Elements who defected or who were lost/destroyed - and maybe Elements are still being 'made' (or found, or chosen, or whatever it is)? If, of course, 'Elements' is even the proper name for them, whatever they are.

So I obsessed and obsessed about it all, home alone and ill, and then generated a shiny list of 100 Element prompts for Sapphire, Steel, Silver and Lead and any other likely Elements and wrote lots of them. I made a post of my ideas about these other Elements once before, here (as I'd been asked) and included casting, because Elements are so - I don't know the best word - but visual? sensual? something? - anyway, it seemed to make sense to have a physical base for the character. (I notice that quite a lot of people who've also written original Elements seem to have done the same thing.)

I hunted up a further list of prompts I'd made and saved on my PC (what? 100's not many...) and according to that, it seems that these are the 'Elements' I was contemplating back in the day:

Zinc, Quartz, Tin, Emerald, Opal, Jasper, and Amber.

I assume that in my periodic table/alloy/jewel/whatever obsession I'd come across some interesting properties of these but it was so long ago now I have no idea, unfortunately, but that was generally where it began, if they weren't in the list from the intro - I browsed through Wiki looking for stuff that had interesting aspects for an Element. I hadn't got as far as casting yet, though! I hadn't even really written Mercury, who I'd had in mind for ages, let alone some new ones. I probably thought it was time to try and be sensible (and no doubt then got into something even more obscure, very likely Public Eye.)

But... fellow S&S fans (I know there are a few) how about you? I am seriously obsessed with Elements. Please tell me if you made any up and who they were and if you cast them and what your thinking was! I love how completely open the canon is and that I can write Copper and then read and enjoy someone else's totally different take on Copper - or Jet or Diamond or the Transuranics (they're unreliable and can't be counted, says Steel). What thoughts do other people have?

So, you see, I just love Elements. I made a masterlist of all the OC Element fic I could find. When I listened to the commentary for the last episode, PJ Hammond said that the thing he was sorriest about was that they didn't get to meet the others, Copper and Jet and the rest, and I was just: oh, me too, PJ Hammond, me too! (So, maybe I wouldn't hate a remake - if it was properly cool and weird and mysterious and had new Elements just every once in a while, the way they had Silver and Lead before.) I love Elements! I wanted more!! (Even if I really hadn't got around to any more casting.)

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Oh how I do like to be fannish about the periodic table...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 20:42:48 GMT

It's a side-effect of obsessing about Sapphire & Steel.

I made this post ~~a while~~ two months ago, partly for me, partly to share, but then again, it does feel weird going on about "my" Elements and mental casting sometimes seems a bit odd too. However, I have this post, I did cast actors (it's such a visual show; it seemed a logical step if I was going to make up Elements, and there was no chance I wasn't) and swordznsorcery asked me about it the other day. So here it is. If people are going to be patient enough to read the resulting 100 Element Prompt fics, I might as well share the pictures, after all. (Also with links to the relevant Wiki pages, mainly for my own convenience.)

( Medium atomic weights are available )

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