Beyond the Roundels

It's unconventionalcourtship time again!



I asked what I'd forgotten last post and liadt quite rightly said, unconventionalcourtship! And I thought, great, that's two things for the next post! (Who knows what the other thing was? Not me.)

Anyway, it's a laid back old school writing fest where you pick a romance novel summary, choose characters/OT-whatever to inflict it onto, sign up to post on a chosen day and that's it, really. Whether the resulting fic is at all romantic or not is up to you.

Check out the comm for more details, selections of banners to use to promote it (and indeed, the template to make your own). They have lists of summaries if you don't want to go hunting for them in the wild.

There's even the Unconventional Courtship Generator so you can choose one by randomness and hilarity: http://www.seasip.info/Misc/ucrpg.html

(You can customise it and put your own characters in, as well as the preset ones.)

I mean, what more can you ask of a fest?

ETA: ( Because obviously I couldn't say that and not play with the generator )

So, I continue to feel rotten, even though the weather is giving me a break but hey. ANYWAY, to turn to something more cheerful than weather, illness, and certainly than current news, liadt is running the unconventionalcourtship fest again this summer! Sign-ups open now!

unconventionalcourtship is the ficathon where you take a Mills & Book/Harlequin/Avon type book blurb and then kill it with fanfic use it as inspiration for a fic, as shippy or not, or cracky or serious or not as you please.

It's an old school fest, so you just choose a prompt and sign up for a posting day some time in August and there you are. \o/

Anyway, I doubt I can do it (see above), but in addition to pointing you to it, I have generated some random summaries from the Unconventional Courtship Generator in case anyone is short of ideas. I'm sure these would make great crack fic. XD (On more sensible note, you can also customise it for your own fandoms, too, if you want help with inspiration.)

( a whole bevy of unholy pairings under here )

1. intoabar is open for sign-ups!

This is a fun old school ficathon (no exchange troubles here) where you choose a character you like and then choose 1-4 other fandoms you can write and the mods will randomly generate a character from those for your other character to meet (in a bar, hence the name). I wasn't sure which character to choose - I was going to have Obi-Wan Kenobi, and then I thought maybe Clara or even Jenkins, but then I decided that this was clearly the year to have Silver, so that's what I did (and chose SW Prequels, DW (12th Doctor Era), OUaT and Ripper Street as the fandoms. (I might regret Ripper Street, but I suddenly thought it could be really cool in this context.)


2. justmarriedexchange is now open for nominations! (Cracky marriage tropes for all! Or possibly if you're not me, romantic shippy marriage tropes for everyone but people who evilly contemplate nomming S&S!)


3. as is littleblackdressex which is for characters you ship with everyone/anyone. (The fandom bicycles, basically.) It's running at the same time as Just Married, so I won't be able to do it, but that does seem like a fun idea. (I definitely have some characters like that, though - Silver, Ruth Evershed, Clara Oswald, Obi-Wan Kenobi...)


4. hc_bingo have got the last of their Amnesty challenges running (with no obligation to take part in any other aspect of the bingo) - the May Small Fandoms challenge, where you get a bingo 'stamp' of four prompts and you create something in a small fandom using 1-4 of those prompts.

I got one with "mind control/possession," "orphans," "deadline/time bomb," and "sensory deprivation" and thought, hmm, this is that Copper fic I wrote for hc_bingo proper a while back, minus the orphans. At the moment, I'm thinking of using Dracula (TV 1968) as I have an idea and that should be under the 400 limit (which S&S probably isn't any more).


5. And, on top of all that, unconventionalcourtship is deciding when to have its next round. (UC is a lot of fun - you take a Mills & Boon type romance novel summary and turn it into fic, either straight or with a lot of ridiculous and subverting and as gen or shippy as you wish. With bonus fandom book covers.) It's in summer, so I suspect that'll be out, but I do love it, so we'll see. (I have a perfect summary for Obi-Wan/Padme and an idea, but OTOH I have now written that a lot since January and it was tiring so someone should just write 10k of that for me.)

space_swap is open for sign-ups! (Fic, Art, Vids, Podfic)

And now I can talk again, I can show my ridiculous but awesome crossover tag that I nominated: "Sheev Palpatine (SW Prequels) & Servalan (Blake's 7).

(I may have done several like it, but I feel that one was clearly the best/most terrifying.)


*g*


waybackexchange is still open for sign-ups, too, till March 1st while hurtcomfortex is still in nominations till Feb 28th.

* waybackexchange, an exchange for fandoms over 10 years old (for fic, podfic, art and vids) is now taking nominations! (I'm in two minds about signing up, because I like a bit of a gap between things, but OTOH, I do have rather a lot of elderly fandoms, and it's great to see vids as an option in a general exchange.)


* halfamoon - coming up soon! The annual celebration of female characters running 1st-15th Feb, with a prompt list here for advance warning, and there are usually some other fun bits too.


* plus a Sci-Fi/Fantasy prompt meme (actually a commentfest). Looks like fun!

I've not been keeping up again, largely due to trying to make the most of my British Newspaper Archive subscription before it runs out (this afternoon) and trying to collect some recs for the hc_bingo challenge (due tomorrow) - so in a little while I'll be less erratic! (I hope.) Sorry!!

In the meantime, good things going on:

genprompt_bingo is open for Round 14 - good fun, and the fills can be all sorts of things (the prompts are gen, the fills don't have to be) and all kinds of fanworks. There are no deadlines (hence me being still in Round 11) and lots of options via cards, with interesting prompts.


Also also intoabar is back! It is the ficathon (though art and other things are allowed) where you sign up for a random crossover, min. 500 words. Sign-ups are open till April 15th and it's a lot of fun. (You choose one character to walk into a bar and meet a random character from 1-4 other fandoms of your choice, but see the comm for all the rules etc.) It had been dead, but lo it is back, although running Dreamwidth-only this time.


Now, excuse me, I still haven't got a single rec actually typed up and I have some more family history things to look up...

snowflake_challenge will be happening again, from tomorrow:




And chocolateboxcomm ("a low pressure, low commitment multifandom gift exchange run on AO3") has just finished taking nominations and is about to start sign-ups tomorrow.


iconthat (a low level, fun icon comm) has its latest challenge up.


And fandom_stocking is still full of stockings to stuff with small fannish gifts of all kinds, from icons to recs to fic to recipes!



(I'm going to try and remember to make more posts about what's going on, so here's a start to that, or a restart rather.)

fic_corner | fic_corner, the exchange for YA/children's lit fandoms is running again, and nominations are currently open for it on AO3!

I doubt I'll be able to play again, but it's a lovely exchange to take part in. ♥

I was, btw, definitely not signing up for unconventionalcourtship myself this time, oh no. I'd only try and write inappropriate Public Eye fanfic for it, if I could even manage anything.

I looked through the summaries (and mostly boggled, and thought WHY? and questioned characters' life choices) and then I wrote most of this in rough by early this afternoon:

78) Between Strangers – Linda Conrad
Rescuing a stranded mother and baby from a raging blizzard hasn’t been part of Frank Marker’s plans. Yet he couldn’t abandon Helen Mortimer. And ended up getting snowed in with her, tasting those fiery kisses. She was all wrong for him, so why did she feel so right in his arms?

Needless to say, there will not be any fiery kisses in my Public Eye fic, even if it is set 20 years pre-canon in the hard winter of 1947 when Our Heroes were 18 and 24 respectively (or thereabouts) and - if you follow Timeline #1 - Helen was, in canon, a single mother with a baby. (Denis Mortimer did marry her, but only four years later when it was convenient for him, of course.) (My working draft summary is something like this: Frank Marker’s trying to sell encyclopedias in the middle of the worst winter of the century, which probably wasn’t the best idea to start with. And now he’s wound up trying to rescue a single mother and her baby who’ve been abandoned at a bus stop, and all he’s got to hand is a car that won’t go, and a dozen copies of the A-Z of Everything... )

Please send help. Things the world does not need: Public Eye fanfiction. I mean, really. Even aside from nobody watching it but me, it works by showing, not telling, and cleverness, and Alfred Burke's face. I have none of those things; I have a Mills & Boon summary and a due date of May 2nd... /o\

Anyway. It's a fun ficathon - you get the prompt on a plate, full freedom to be as unromantic and trope subverting as you like or the reverse, for those who aren't me and will write fiery kisses for characters they ship. (Mind, I think this one might qualify as more romantic than last time when Silver and Steel got stuck in a romance novel, or, to put it more honestly, I cheated outrageously by use of the nature of S&S.)

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).

Well, no sooner was naarmamo over, than shipswap went live, just to save me getting withdrawal symptoms from interesting 'net activity.

And I have a story! \o/ It's a really lovely and fun Press Gang fic, set S2, with a full complement of Spike/Lynda arguing, Sam/Kenny flirting, Sarah's disastrous love-life, Tiddler - and Colin being more than usually random. What more could a person ask for? (And, yes, I was able to read it. :-D)

The Consequences of Saying No (2557 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Press Gang
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Lynda Day/Spike Thomson, Sam Black/Kenny Phillips
Characters: Lynda Day, Spike Thomson, Sam Black, Sarah Jackson, Kenny Phillips, "Tiddler" Tildesley, Colin Mathews
Summary: The Norbridge High Valentine's Ball has got everyone at the Junior Gazette thinking of other things than the paper.

It's an anonymous exchange, but I do suspect that this was written for me by paranoidangel42 - but I'll find that out come reveal. (Possibly I am amusingly wrong, who knows?) ETA: Looks as though I'm amusingly wrong, I see... Ha.

Also, obviously, anonymity means I can't post my fic here yet. I'm a little curious as to whether people will guess which one it is, so I think I'll do the guessing game for the first and possibly the only time and offer up a tiny ficlet or one or two icons to anyone who guesses correctly.)

(Mind, it is a tiny exchange. If everyone guesses, I might take that back.)

Anyway, check out the rest of the collection - it's tiny, but there are some great fics, including two Classic Who stories.

At last! My effort for the 2009 sixathon.

Title Field Trip
Author lost_spook
Rating All ages
Word Count 5269
Characters Sixth Doctor, Peri Brown, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright. And half of 1F.
Summary Ian and Barbara encounter an unexpected danger on the school trip. Luckily, the Doctor is there to come to their rescue. In a manner of speaking…

Written for infiniteviking who requested Ian and Barbara, chaperoning a dozen kids on a school trip, encounter an alien menace and are rescued by Six. Unfortunately, getting out of danger is easier than getting back to civilization. Cue thirty hours trapped on a TARDIS that refuses to go where it's told, during which the Doctor and his increasingly amused companions have to entertain a group of scared ten-year-olds. The sillier, the better! The youngest they could be was eleven and I haven’t counted out the hours, but hopefully this is silly enough to amuse. I know it was 3rd prompt, but once I’d seen it, how could I possibly write anything else?

Thanks to persiflage_1 for kindly doing the beta-reading. Any remaining errors are therefore All My Fault.

( Read more... )