Beyond the Roundels

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.)

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.)

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.

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.

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.)

In which I have S&S fannish thoughts and speculation on the Periodic Table, via, Wikipedia, sorry. (How can you not love S&S for this sort of thing?) Please note that my science is bad, my chemistry virtually non-existent, though I do know some reasonably basic GCSE Physics. (For instance, I vaguely remember enough to nod a bit when Steel takes himself to ridiculously low temperatures. And that steel is used in construction because it expands and contracts at the same rate as concrete. Well, I think. I don't know why I remember that, even if it's true. I do not think anyone has yet explored Steel's affinity with concrete, shock, horror. Although he does seem to be pretty good at the age of buildings, I suppose.)

1. As even I had (with my tiny bit of actual science) thought, Sapphire and Steel are not elements at all, the big fakes.

2. If there are actually 118 elements, including Transuranics, and even if there are 127 Operatives (including 12 Transuranics), does that mean that some real elements aren't being used in favour of gemstones and alloys? If so, which ones? (My thoughts: Is it just random ones who turned bad and have been replaced? Or there are some [about 10?] that are labelled as Transient. So, are those the Transient beings, and therefore Bad Elements stuck in the past, do not use? Also, maybe gases are excluded as impractical? It is quite hard to imagine the adventures of Oxygen and Helium. Obviously the powers of making people speak in high voices could be entertaining, though... Heh.)

3. [1 ] had kind of made me assume that actual characteristics of real elements wouldn't be much guide to the fictional ones, but actually Silver makes a lot more sense if you know the uses it has - it not only makes the bit with the light bulb explicable (well, for S&S.) but it is no wonder Silver is pleased with himself. If you have to be made out of one basic element of the fabric of the universe, silver is a very cool one to be. (You can even see from the info why Copper might easily have a problem with him. Other than him just being, well, Silver.) So, I need to look at Lead, too, now...

4. (I had this idea and was looking for a suitable Element to use, and then I was attacked by these other fannish thoughts, which is actually kind of encouraging).

5. Just think what the series could have been: Iodine and Praseodymium? Dysprosium and Terbium? :-D

6. Not really anything to do with the facts, but given what little I do know about steel, is there a really cranky, craggy Iron out there who regards Steel as a too-shiny upstart? (Actually, I think, this being S&S, Iron would be much, much more interesting than that. But it is an amusing thought.)

***

(And, yes, I'm sorry to my flist who don't do S&S, but anyway, you should go and watch it, and then you too can be fannish about the Periodic Table. And probably Joanna Lumley and David McCallum, but also the periodic table.) This is not under a cut, because it's not spoilery. And only serious in patches. Also I posted this in the past and am hoping for some Elements to come and sort me out for such triggery stuff.