Beyond the Roundels

As I said, I sort of stopped updating properly for a bit. Just the usual low patch, but I navigated last month's better in terms of posting than this month's.

1. I did manage to do three Fannish ficlets for no_true_pair and still have some rainbowfic ones I'll post for their amnesty, so that is quite good. Although I was quite blurry, I'm not sure how they turned out, really.


2. unconventionalcourtship is back! Time to pick a terrible romance novel and kill it with fanfiction or whatever your preferred approach is. As ever, you can ask the brilliant Unconventional Courtship Generator for ideas if you don't want to personally wade through Mills & Boon's back catalogue.


3. genprompt_bingo is open for a new round!


4. I don't know what is happening with this year, but I received a NYR gift from edwardianspinsteraunt for The Winslow Boy! It is amazing! I need to go comment properly, and will soon, but spent all day finishing off doing the 100 list thingies going around (see point 5.)

At the Threshold (5149 words) by edwardianspinsteraunt
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Winslow Boy (1999)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Robert Morton/Catherine Winslow
Characters: Robert Morton (Winslow Boy), Catherine Winslow, Desmond Curry
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Kissing, Vulnerability, questionable decisions, Confessions (of various sorts), semi-resolved sexual tension, Angst with a Happy Ending, past Catherine Winslow/John Watherstone
Summary: Catherine learns earlier of Sir Robert's sacrifice - a discovery that has surprising results.


5. I've been doing the tumblr-moved-to-Dreamwidth top 100 personal favourite/foundational movies list, plus, because I picked it up from lirazel (who I think was the one that added the other two categories), also 100 TV series, which took the longest. In the meantime, while it moved round my flist, it became solely a book list meme instead, because I suppose that is tumblr vs Dreamwidth for you, lol.

I'm not entirely surely fiddling with things for a week has made my lists any less weird. (You have to bear in mind that my most influential/favourite things, like everyone, tend to be from when I was growing up/younger but then also I have spent the last 15 years having appalling trouble trying to just read or watch anything and at least 5 or so years of that time solving that problem by watching slow-paced Brit TV, some of which was genuinely awesome and then the loss of DVDs for the past 3-5 years has completely scotched any means I had of watching anything not on terrestrial UK TV or the iPlayer. But it does make my list look like it was made by someone whose next words will be muttering about isn't modern stuff too Ruined By The Woke, which is very distressing to me, but that's why. I might mutter that people should write TV episodes like they're one act plays again instead of a soap opera installment and that it honestly doesn't have to cost THAT much to be good, but that's as far as it goes re. the worst effects of all the beige tv on my brain, I promise. It was excellent beige TV! And the bits that weren't, I was looking at James Maxwell's nose or Alfie's face or Suzanne Neve's awesome anyway. And the reading has been even worse, except the few books that worked could at least be from any era, because so far they haven't changed how that works. BUt, still, they had to be old enough to be chanced upon in charity shops so...)

If you want distractions of clicking things and telling me that you also watched/read about 10 of these, here is the film list, the TV List (much beige TV included some of which I had to add manually) and the books list.

No doubt I have forgotten obvious things and would probably make different lists again next week, but I had fun. It had some of the most obscure books and films on it, it just had issues with the TV sometimes.

What better than a quick and daft AO3 meme for a small distraction? I swiped this one from astrogirl.

Rules: give us the links to your fics with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fic with the fewest words.

Most hits: Not Bad For A First Attempt (G, 200 words, The Convenient Marriage) with 4,143 hits.

I'm never absolutely sure if this hit count is genuine or if it's one of the tiny handful of works that got hit by that weird hit-count bug ages ago (the actual top on my stats definitely is, so I always have to ignore it), but this one has similar kudos numbers to its nearest neighbours in the stats, so I think it's genuine. Anyway, I wrote this double drabble very hastily because one time early on in my AO3 wrangling days, back when you could do this, I accidentally canonised Heyer's The Convenient Marriage and then realised it had no works. So I wrote a quick post-canon double drabble and voila! It's continued to get a silly amount of hits ever since.


2nd most kudosed: it's the rain that will strengthen your soul (Teen, 10,926 words. Star Wars, Obi-Wan/Padme, post- RotS Padme Lives AU, for Space Swap 2020.) - Fast catching up on Miss Marple (yes, don't worry, she's still top for now), is this one, which I would agree, is probably the best of that whole epic SW Prequels patch I went through in 2020. It was the best fic to write in Lockdown, a lovely gift to be able to give, and obv I can see faults, but still. I'm happy with this.


3rd most comment threads: By the Book (Original, Teen, 5863 words, Demon/Librarian, for Het Swap 2018.) (Top most is still Miss Marple here too.)

Aww, so delighted that people still like this one. It is one of the things I remain the most pleased with, and it's such a compliment when it's Original fic with no particular reason to pull people in outside of the original exchange. I suppose people might be reading through the Libraries tag? Anyway, every so often people still find it. <3


4th most bookmarks: i love the rose both red and white (Teen, 8070 words, Shadow of the Tower, Henry VII/Elizabeth of York, 5 times canon divergence, for Yuletide 2018.) (Miss Marple is no longer top here.) I'm also pretty happy with this one, barring the fact that unfortunately I don't think the recip liked it, which does make me feel guilty about still otherwise being pleased with it. At least it was only a treat!


Most words: UNIT: Strange Weapons ( Teen, 34,661 words. DW, Winifred Bambera, Colonel Crichton, Sarah Jane Smith, OCs.)

Leaving out collections, this is the longest single work, although as it's one of only 2 of the 1980s UNIT stories I've actually transferred over to AO3, it feels fake here as the longest - there were two of that series that were twice as long again, and more. Of 'real' works - i.e. written since I actually had an AO3 account, it's really The Poison Tree (27,259 words for Dracula 1968 for Yuletide 2016.)


Shortest: I have a whole bunch of drabbles, which were all 100 words exactly in Word back in the day, so I reject the notion that any of them are actually shorter, but there are two AO3 puts (wrongly) at 98 - Reprise (DW, Jo Grant/Benton, which was part of a joke series of random AU marriages - i.e. just as random as the characters' actual marriages, so...) and Get to the Point (Four & Leela, for dw100 back in the day.)

I actually managed to do this meme this year! I haven't got more than partway through it since about 2021, which I do regret, but here we are, I've been chipping away at this for a week or so:

Your main fandom of the year?:

Doctor Who, as ever. Not that I don't run off to flail at least briefly about many other deeply obscure things every other day, communicating my enthusiasms to the distant and patient sympathy of the flist by means of semaphore or something, but that only feels fannish if someone responds, and that can't be expected very often.


( Cut for length of me wittering about TV, film, audio & books under here )

I'm a bit too tired to do what I wanted to do this evening (although I have done what I needed to do, so there's that). Anyway, I remembered I made a DW companion-swap generator that one time!

Obv I have to share some results, which either amused me or I would absolutely read, or both:


The Twelfth Doctor and Bernice in an adventure with a stolen vehicle, armed only with their wits and art.


The Sixth Doctor and Clara in an adventure with a double bluff that backfires, armed only with their wits and cue cards.


The Thirteenth Doctor and Wilf in an adventure with the Sea Devils, armed only with their wits and one telephone call.


The Seventh Doctor and Tegan and Turlough in an adventure inside a lighthouse, armed only with their wits and a secret escape route.


The Eleventh Doctor and Jackie in an adventure overthrowing the government, armed only with their wits and some cheating.


The Ninth Doctor and Yaz and Dan in an adventure with a stuck button, armed only with their wits and a candle.


The Sixth Doctor and Anji in an adventure with vampires, armed only with their wits and Bessie.

And, of course, since it is the funniest, also some Unconventional Courtship Generator summaries ( under here )

From everyone, but specifically from trobodora in this case (although, lol, someone has unearthed an ancient meme here, haven't they? Look at the list! Look at the instructions! Even I don't still have anything on VHS.)

+ Bold all of the following TV shows of which you've seen 3 or more episodes.
+ Italicize a show if you're positive you've seen every episode.
+ Asterisk if you have at least one full season on tape or DVD
+ Exclamation mark if it's an all-time fave.
+ If you want, add up to 3 additional shows (keep the list in alphabetical order).*

*Some of the 'the's had got under 'T' even if most of them were in the right place so, like a true librarian, I put them in proper alphabetical order. Also shifted MI-5 to Spooks | MI-5 so people know what it is. ;-p

(I added The Librarians, OUaT, and Sapphire & Steel.)

( Cut for long list )

The second part of the meme!

1. Uljabaan (WtOVPIC)
2. Katrina Lyons (WtoVPIC)
3. Servalan (B7)
4. Silver (S&S)
5. Twelfth Doctor (DW)
6. Ezekiel Jones (The Librarians)
7. Hercule Poirot
8. Robin (BBC Ghosts)
9. The Cat (Red Dwarf)
10. G'kar (B5)
11. Death (Discworld)
12. Lucy Greenwood (Craddock & Co)
13. Orac (B7)
14. John Seward (Drac 1968)
15. Zari (Legends of Tomorrow)

( Cut for more memeish nonsense )

astrogirl did this and, as ever, how can I possibly resist being a meme sheep?

1) Make a list of fifteen characters first, and keep it to yourself for the moment.

2) Ask your f-list to post questions in the comments. For example: "One, nine, and fifteen are chosen by a prophecy to save the world from four. Do they succeed?", "Under what circumstances might five and fourteen fall in love?", "Which character on the list would you most want on your side in a zombie invasion?"

3) After your f-list has stopped asking questions, round them up and answer them using the fifteen characters you selected beforehand, then post them.

Thanks everyone for all the questions! Here's the first round of answers:

1. Regina Mills (OUaT)
2. Jenkins (The Librarians)
3. Rumplestiltskin (OUaT)
4. Silver (S&S)
5. Twelfth Doctor (DW)
6. John Seward (1968 Dracula)
7. Death (Discworld)
8. Holly (Red Dwarf)
9. Uljabaan (WtOVPIC)
10. Padme Amidala (SW)
11. Charley Pollard (DW)
12. Jenna Stannis (B7)
13. Lynda Day (PG)
14. Michael (Good Place)
15. Carolyn Knapp-Shappey (Cabin Pressure)

( The results under here )

A trope meme, from tumblr, which does not involve actual writing, except it is clearly a dangerous sort of thing that could easily lead to doing so.

Rules: Send me two (2) tropes from this list + a ship or fandom and I’ll describe how I’d combine them in the same story.

1. Historical AU
2. Royal AU
3. Modern AU
4. Coffee Shop AU
5. Bar/Restaurant AU
6. Bookshop AU
7. Florist AU
8. Hospital AU
9. Dance AU
10. Airport/Travel AU
11. Neighbour AU
12. Roommate AU
13. Detective AU
14. Bodyguard AU
15. Criminal AU
16. Prison AU
17. War AU
18. Circus AU
19. Summer Camp AU
20. Teacher AU
21. Dystopian AU
22. Space AU
23. Performer AU
24. Soulmate AU
25. Fairy Tale AU
26. Massage Fic
27. Sick/Injured Fic
28. Proposal Fic
29. Wedding Fic
30. Holiday Fic
31. Birthday Fic
32. Pregnancy Fic
33. Baby Fic
34. Vacation Fic
35. Bathtub Fic
36. Text/Letter Fic
37. Coming Out Fic
38. Grief Fic
39. Survival/Wilderness Fic
40. Almost Kiss
41. First Kiss
42. The Big Damn Kiss
43. Dance of Romance
44. Flowers of Romance
45. Chocolate of Romance
46. Blind Date
47. Not a Date
48. Fake Dating
49. Fake Married
50. Arranged Marriage
51. Accidentally Married
52. Marriage of Convenience
53. Mutual Pining
54. Secret Relationship
55. Established Relationship
56. Awful First Meeting
57. Forgotten First Meeting
58. Accidental Eavesdropping
59. Interrupted Declaration of Love
60. Poorly Timed Confession
61. Love Confession
62. Love Confessor (Character A confessing their love for Character B to Character C)
63. Everybody Knows/Mistaken for Couple
64. Star Crossed Lovers
65. It’s Not You, It’s Me
66. It’s Not You, It’s My Enemies
67. Character in Peril
68. Heroic Sacrifice
69. Flirting Under Fire
70. Locked in a Room
71. Twenty-Four Hours to Live
72. Stranded on A Desert Island
73. Stranded Due to Inclement Weather
74. Huddling for Warmth
75. Bed Sharing
76. Did They or Didn’t They?
77. In Vino Veritas
78. Above the Influence
79. Anger Born of Worry
80. Green-Eyed Epiphany
81. The Missus and the Ex
82. Second Love
83. Intimate Artistry
84. Married to the Job
85. Innocent Physical Contact
86. I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On
87. Aroused By Her Voice
88. Erotic Dreams
89. First Time
90. Unexpected Virgin
91. PWP
92. Kink
93. Makeovers
94. Hair Brushing/Braiding
95. Sleep Intimacy
96. Scars
97. Time Travel
98. Curses
99. Magical Accidents
100. Accidentally Saving the Day

21. Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves. (Characters you’re neutral about are fair game, as are characters you dislike or even loathe.)

Ah, I stopped here because I was trying to think of characters I didn't like in my fandoms, although if I disliked them enough to think of them, I'm not sure I wanted to say nice things about them when I generally just don't talk about them and leave the people who like them in peace.

But if I like a fandom, then I will usually come to be okay with the characters I don't like - they'll grow on me on rewatches, they'll be interesting when I come to write them, and I'll feel bad if I'm mean about them, and get defensive if other people are. The ones I really resent are usually because other fans have gone on about them in objectionable ways, dialling up my annoyance, which doesn't make me feel like being nice about them for this meme.


22. Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend

Most fictional characters wouldn't make for good friends. Even if they're fine in themselves, they get into danger and excitement all the time! It'd never work out. If I must, though, Bill Potts seems like a lovely potential friend, if she'd be willing - post-TARDIS and puddle travels, of course.


23. Your rarest fandoms.

LOL. *waves hand vaguely at whole journal and AO3 account* Where would we start?


24. A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.

I mostly just rest fandoms rather than abandon them, if they're something I'm really into. Other things are barely around long enough to be a fandom, so can that count as abandoning them?


25. Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

Do you want my Reasons Why Silver/Sapphire/Steel Is Totally Canon Already (in whatever sense "elements" can be said to have or be ships, which maybe they can't, but clearly they are anyway) again?

Though, really, I don't think I'd die defending any personal fictional theories. That does seem like a particularly stupid way to die.

A variation of several AO3 memes I haven't seen before, ganked from various people on my flist. Not that I've actually finished the Frankenstein meme yet, but I'll get back to that presently:

( Cut for memeage )

I was just looking back at my old private posts here (which I tend to use as draft posts, except some never get finished. There are so many barely started manifestos & rec lists, and memes I will totally do one day hidden in there, amongst random posts I felt too ill to post and would be about six years out of date by now). And I found this, and had to share.

I think where this came from and why it remained hidden was because years ago honeynoir was going to write an Unconventional Courtship fic involving Eleven/Idris!TARDIS and triplet babies & we wound up discussing how the babies would be non-linear and I wrote this hasty crack in response, except of course, I couldn't post it because honeynoir was writing proper fic about time triplets.

Anyway, the point was, that non-linear time triplet babies pop up all over the timeline in the TARDIS obv, and clearly it would go like this:

( Cut for long post full of crack and not exactly proper care of time triplets )

Meme from half the flist at this point: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line.

( Cut for length )