Beyond the Roundels

Not being away, I recovered enough to start rifling through the collection a couple of days ago and have been having fun, so here are the resulting recs of my first glance through its delights:

( 17 recs in The Avengers, Chalet School, Detectorists, Doctor Who, Falco, Fire & Hemlock, The Good Place, New Tricks, Our Town's Libraries, Sapphire and Steel, The Shadow of the Tower, We Are A Picturesque Small Town & Yes Minister )

Forgive yet another post today, but I had collected enough Yule-recs so far to make a post before reveals tomorrow.

( 14 recs in Chalet School, Dungeons & Dragons, Enemy at the Door, Georgette Heyer, Ghosts, The Good Place, Pushing Daisies, Sapphire & Steel, and A Traveller in Time )

Time for the answers! \o/ (Between this and more family history, I must await more spoons before catching up & commenting again, but I will. In the meantime, wacky crossover nonsense awaits...)

( 15 Characters Reveal )

I'm back! I'm very tired, so comments and posts will wait/be erratic until I'm not. In the meantime, I'm trying to get some Yuletide recs up before Reveal. I carefully bookmarked on AO3 as I read while away, so hopefully this should be a quiet, simple thing to do?

It's a fairly random first pass of the archive. I tend to read shorter fics, and also have a terrible habit (faced with the chocolate box that is Yuletide) of reading only one or two fics out of a fandom with several in it before skipping to the next shiny thing, but still, an overview of some things I've particularly enjoyed so far, in the hopes that others might enjoy them too:

( 19 Recs in Archer's Goon, The Avengers, Chalet School, Georgette Heyer (Devil's Cub, False Colours, Frederica), Dracula, Fionavar Tapestry, Forsyte Saga, The Highwayman, Honeysuckle Cottage, I Capture the Castle, Ngaio Marsh, Indiana Jones, Jane Eyre, Jane the Virgin, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and Maid Marian )

More to come later today! (Hopefully! But definitely including my shiny Madness Treat when it does. \o/)

I'll attempt to find some brain not occupied by Public Eye, and tell you about how lucky I was for Yuletide (again).

I had a marvellous gift fic in the main collection, from someone who dealt with my incoherent Chalet School request and wrote me a wonderful fic (involving Hijinks & Shenanigans no less) that took so many parts of it and used them to great effect. And Mary-Lou faces down a ghost - and tells it (not unkindly) that it needs to buck up its ideas and stop feeling sorry for itself. Anyway, it's great, and I love it. If you also like Chalet School stories, I'm sure you'd enjoy it too:

The avenues of time (4343 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Chalet School - Elinor M. Brent-Dyer
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Mary-Lou Trelawney, Original Male Character(s), Verity-Anne Carey
Additional Tags: Sister-Sister Relationship, Female Friendship, Ghosts, Murder, Indiana Jones Style Archaeology, Post-Canon, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Roman Britain
Summary: In which Mary-Lou Trelawney visits a town in the north of England; makes a surprising new acquaintance; and reminisces about her childhood.


I was also lucky enough to have three treats in the Yuletide Madness collection. Two of them were for the Ten Stupidest Things I've Heard Since Richard III's Remains blog post - which has taken off and had some marvellous and hilarious fic written for it. Dear flist, it's a thing! We made it a thing! (Especially akashasheiress who linked me to it and justice_turtle who did the important bit of actually nominating it, of course!) They are both excellent, one a great drabble, one a short, brilliantly biting satirical ficlet. I'll try to do a recs post, but you should definitely check out the rest of the fic for it!

The King of Tallstoria (429 words) and Delayed Interment (100 words).

Also, also - somebody wrote me Inspector Neele and Mary Dove from the Miss Marple story A Pocketful of Rye!

One Good Turn (966 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Miss Marple - Agatha Christie
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Mary Dove, Inspector Neele
Additional Tags: Flirting, Banter, Cordial Adversaries, Ambiguous/Open Ending
Summary: They are getting some practice in saving each other. They just aren't either of them sure what the practice is for.

It's exactly what I wanted when I read the book! *dances a bit* It's a delight and I'm thrilled to bits.


Also, happily, my recipient seemed to like my story, thankfully, and my two treats (one in the main collection), one in Madness also. (There are no points whatsoever for anyone guessing which Yuletide Madness fic I wrote. I have never in my life been less anonymous in a gift exchange, but it had to be done.)

I did manage to do some reading while home and there are some glorious things in the collection and in Madness - I'll see if I can manage a recs post before reveal. In the meantime, my brain apparently belongs to Frank Marker. He doesn't deserve it at all, but what can you do?

Nothing to see here, except my annual ridiculously epic Yuletide Letter:

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Firstly, thank you! You are ready to attempt to write something for me - and you share a tiny fandom with me. ♥

I am a great believer in the story that you want to tell being the one that's going to be the most compelling to read, so please, write that. In fact, for several of these requests, what I want most of all is just to see what you would write in these worlds. So, if you are the sort of person who likes a concise letter and a free hand, please, just go for what you have in mind. All the extra details are for souls like me who want them. Do not attempt to give me everything below in one fic; you'd do yourself an injury. If anything seems contradictory, it's mostly because I like all sorts of different things at different times in different fandoms. So, if you've got that burning idea, go write it. I'm sure I will love it.

( More details here )

( Fandoms - Ten Stupidest Things I've Heard Since Richard III's Remains Were Identified, Enemy at the Door, Miss Marple, Indigo Series, Jago & Litefoot and Chalet School )

hhertzof is planning a children's/YA lit fic exchange, and you can find out more and vote in the name poll here. I think it's probably of interest to quite a few of you - every and any child/YA lit is probably going to be eligible.

(So, yes, Diana Wynne Jones, Chalet School, Enid Blyton, picture books, modern YA epics, time-honoured classics, anything).

1. violetcreme made lovely cover art for my House of Eliott Bea/Jack ficlet, which I don't think anyone's done before!

2. A very entertaining post I found in my meanderings about why Miss Marple is awesome. (Because obviously, she is. I just watched an old ITV Dracula in which Van Helsing was patronising to Joan Hickson as a fluttery old lady. It was awful and wrong.)

3. A Ficathon Walked Into A Bar has returned from the dead! Sign-ups can be found at intoabar or intoabar. I've been wanting to do it ever since I found out about it, but it was deceased by that time. And since the rules are pretty much "random crossover meeting in 500 words or more" I think even I can cope, since that's the kind of thing I write anyway.

( further waffling )

4. ... and so then I wrote a Miss Marple meets Dracula ficlet for fan_flashworks in revenge for the 1960s TV. Just to prove the point. :lol:

5. Anyway, it's open, and it should be fun. And just looking at the LJ version brought up a Chalet School fic I didn't know existed! I'm having a sort of craving for new Chalet School fic, which is because I am really bad still at reading anything offline that isn't a CS book, but I've read the whole lot (very slowly) twice in two years now and I can't do it again. I hope. Also because I'm miffed that lots of the fill-in books cost £80 on Amazon, which would be the ideal solution. *sigh* (What if I went to freudesheim and said "Let's have a ficathon!"? Do you think there is anybody left there? *sigh again*)

6. Also, thanks, LJ, I suddenly seem to have 6 extra loyalty icons appear in the last few days for reasons beyond my understanding, so now I need to re-upload my CS and HoE icons. I have already instantly used it to have at least one more sallymn masterpiece and G'Kar. (I don't know how fannish I will be about Babylon 5 yet, though I enjoyed it v much, but obviously my life would be incomplete without a G'Kar icon.) (I'm pretty sure I'm not imagining things! I know I had only one icon space left and was deliberating over what to use it for and whether to delete other things and then suddenly I had 7 spaces left. Or maybe this is an alternate universe with only very slight changes...)

7. I am reasonably sure I had something else to say, possibly something more sensible. Oh, yes. I am, for the time being, feeling a bit better again, at last. :-)

paranoidangel42 asked: How about Chalet School icons? Have you ever done any of those?

I have had two tries and I'm sure I've still got the cover scans somewhere & I'll have another go. In the meantime, I tried to salvage a handful:




( A few more under here )

ETA: Or I could do text ones... are there some typical CS things that would work? Like maybe not knowing whether it's German/French/whatever day... or... I don't know?

The remaining answers:

( Answers to sallymn, belantana, curuchamion, dweomeroflight and primsong )

I flipped through Yuletide Madness, and A-L of Yuletide2010.

Because they're rare fandoms, I don't know who will might be interested, but my picks so far:

One that should interest the flist, first:
The Curse of Fatal Death (DW comic relief sketch)
Sometime, Later in the TARDIS
2201 words, Teen (esp. at end). What the Lumley Doctor and Pryce Master got up to, post sketch. It's so funny and just like the actual thing. The Daleks' idea of being good, the Doctor infuriating the Master by... being the Doctor. *snort*
“Who would have thought that just as I was returning to Earth, the Daleks would try to invade for the thirty-seventh time?” the Doctor said.

( More shiny treats under the cut - Fairy Tales, Spooks, Downton Abbey etc )

Also, my gifts:
Firstly, my Yuletide writer wrote me two lovely Chrestomanci fics centring on Janet and what she will do now she's been trapped in Chrestomanci's world as Cat's sort-of sister. (You need to read Charmed Life to understand, a book I recommend to anyone.) The first is probably reasonably accessible to newbies, but not the second. However, I am very pleased - they're both so well-done and there's sharp characterisation of Cat (despite his not appearing in it) in the second, and the first, aside from everything else, features a splendid new dressing gown for Chrestomanci, which is obviously the most important thing. (It's all in the books, okay?) Both are short, gen, and safe for all ages:
their fine incisions
best, Janet

And, also, lucky thing that I am, had two Yuletide Madness treats, too:
Changing Directions
Hee - someone saw my prompt and love of crossovers, obviously, and wrote me a great, unexpected AU cross for my Janet Chant request.

and, I also got a Blake's 7 (yay!) double-drabble, in which a Federation guard is unfortunate enough to encounter our heroes. (I love all those random guards with backstories, who usually end up dead in two minutes, even so...)
Rumours

A great little inspirational writing meme doing the rounds, courtesy of primsong and curuchamion.

1: Pick five fandoms. List them in alphabetical order.

1. Blake's 7
2. Chalet School
3. Doctor Who
4. Press Gang
5. Spooks

2: Visit this site to find your first RANDOM POEM OF POWER. Write down the 5th line (yes, even if it's an E.E. Cummings poem and you wind up with an apostrophe). Repeat five times and - you guessed it - list 'em in alphabetical order! (No cheating, mind! This is a challenge and it's always been about creativity.)

3: I think you can see where this is going. Write a very quick 50-word half-drabble for each fandom (try to do it all in one sitting - make your brain explode!), using the line from the poem as a prompt. You don't have to include it in the half-drabble - it's just inspiration.

4: Bravo! Have a cookie.

( My resulting demi-drabbles under here )