Beyond the Roundels

And now for today's (not that I'm caught up yet, but nearly):

Day 8
In your own space, post self-recs for at least three fanworks that you created. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

This took some thought, since I wanted to rec at least two of the three I recced last time. And last year I did two memes that involved self-recs, and I recced those same works then, plus a handful of others. So, I thought hard and came up with something that wasn't Salt of the Earth (but if you don't know me, hi, I think Salt of the Earth is pretty accessible without canon knowledge, being about a minor character, and I still like it, and it's about as me as you get, really).


So, first off, talking of Sapphire & Steel...

Assigned (100 Element Prompts) (37901 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 38/38
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sapphire/Steel, Sapphire/Silver, Silver/Steel, Sapphire/Silver/Steel, Copper & Silver
Characters: Copper (Sapphire and Steel), Cerium (Sapphire and Steel), Steel (Sapphire and Steel), Silver (Sapphire and Steel), Diamond, Sapphire (Sapphire and Steel), Gold (Sapphire and Steel), Jet (Sapphire and Steel), Ruby (Sapphire and Steel), Lead (Sapphire and Steel)
Additional Tags: Ficlet Collection, being fannish about the periodic table, Tropes, Trope Subversion/Inversion, Telepathy, Elemental Weirdness
Summary: A collection of various Sapphire & Steel ficlets/short fics written for a table of 100 fanfic cliche prompts.

I love S&S, and I love Elements (or whatever they are) and their relationships (or whatever they are), and I also love the generator that provided these prompts (its near doppelganger is here), I loved writing them all. So... read any one of them you please - there is an index here. (I'm not reccing a 37,000 word fic, don't worry. The individual pieces vary from perfect drabbles to ~1500.)

They vary, but, yes, very me, and if you can go with 'it's just weirdness and time and inhuman beings who put stuff right and we don't really know anything and then there's flirting' it's probably as accessible with or without canon. Possibly?


Also, I love Doctor Who, Once Upon a Time, libraries, Clara, Belle, crossovers and [x] times type fic.

Shelved (or The Whistle Stop Library Tour of the Universe) (1712 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who (2005), Once Upon a Time (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Belle (Once Upon a Time)/Clara Oswin Oswald, Belle (Once Upon a Time)/Eleventh Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Characters: Belle (Once Upon a Time), Clara Oswin Oswald, Eleventh Doctor
Additional Tags: Crossover, Humor, Libraries, Books, Alternate Universe, Fluff, Crossover Pairings
Summary: The Doctor and Clara show Belle the universe, one library at a time.

(I don't know how accessible it is, but there are no spoilers for anything at least.)


I wrote an origfic canon for the LJ Runaway Tales comm for quite a while, and loved doing it. I have a few AUs involving my favourite pairing on AO3, written for other challenges, so they are basically standalone romance fic. This one I wrote in response to oonaseckar who said I couldn't write the two of them having a fake relationship in the 21st Century and so obviously I had to prove that there is no century Edward and Julia couldn't have an awkward fake relationship in. But I still like it, I think it's fairly light and fun, and has fairy tale undertones that please me.

Substitute (13695 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Characters: Julia Graves (OC), Edward Iveson (OC)
Additional Tags: Community: hc_bingo, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Romance, Grief/Mourning, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Brief mention of car accident, Community: runaway_tales, Fluff, Humor, Angst, Community: genprompt_bingo
Summary: Julia Graves has perfectly reasonable motives for fake-dating a customer – it’s all about interior decorating, honestly…


(It's really weird seeing familiar old fic like this with the wrong name on!)

The commentfest continues! And talking of obscure and British things...

As threatened, a 'trailer' of sorts for ITV's 1978-80 WWII drama, Enemy at the Door. I made this as an experiment, because I thought I'd solved my issues with sound-editing on my vidding software. Guess what? I haven't, so this is not entirely a success - there are some sound issues, especially at the start, and it was getting worse with every edit. You may take it as read that I'm not doing anything else like this in a hurry. Still, that's what experiments are for, yes?

However, that said, it is still better than anything Network or Acorn have bothered to do for it and maybe it will explain something of why I like it so much. Or just bore everybody, I'm not sure at this point. Inevitably, there are some spoilers (especially for 1.13), but hopefully not too bad out of context (& not beyond 2.1 because Network wouldn't let me rip 2.2-2.13).

( Enemy at the Door Trailer )

I should say since I moaned enough about it, that I have now found an online source for OUaT S3 (might even be legal - looks as if it is), hence me being quiet of late, because my pc time has been eaten up by watching it, and in between trying to sort out recs because it's my stint on calufrax at the moment.

Anyway, here's the last of the OUaT fics I came out with the other week. (So it's not S3 related, just a thought I had for a long while, about Belle and the library.)

(Also, writing four OUaT fics has proved that the hits come with the ship, or in short, write Emma/Regina and you get attention, write gen about other characters and it's business as usual, but at least nobody wants to kill you.)

Worlds of Her Own (1557 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Mentions of Belle/Rumplestiltskin
Characters: Belle (Once Upon a Time), Red Riding Hood | Ruby
Additional Tags: Libraries, Bibliophilia, Books, Fluff
Summary:

If each book is a gateway to another world, then Belle’s just been given a galaxy to play with.

I said I'd made a post about Enemy at the Door, and here it is. (I'm thinking of doing some more fandom manifesto type posts for old TV I've watched, because they're fun and possibly even useful, if only to inform people of things to avoid. :-D)

So, what is it? Enemy at the Door is a 1978-80 UK drama series about the German Occupation of the (British) Channel Islands in WWII, focusing on Guernsey (and the fictional Martel family). It stars Alfred Burke, Bernard Horsfall and Simon Cadell with Antonia Pemberton, Emily Richard, Simon Lack, John Malcolm, Richard Heffer, Helen Shingler and David Waller. It was created and script-edited by Michael Chapman, produced by Tony Wharmby and written by Michael Chapman, James Doran, NJ Crisp, Kenneth Clark and John Kershaw. There are 2 series of 13x 50 min episodes (26 in all). It is out on DVD (definitely in Regions 1 &2); it is not on YouTube at the moment, though. (It was repeated on Yesterday, a freeview channel here in the UK last year, so it may get another turn.)

If you're not keen on old UK TV, then this obviously isn't for you. If, however, you are, and you are interested in well-written, well-played, low-key drama, WWII generally, or what happened to the Channel Islands in particular, then it may well be. Sadly, it was cancelled before they reached the end of the War, but what there is of it is well worth watching. Also, while it was shown pre-Watershed over 30 years ago (so there's very little they can actually show in terms of blood, violence etc.), it does deal with a lot of difficult subjects (very well generally): execution, imprisonment, depression, multiple suicide attempts, shooting, murder, possible rape, and beatings/interrogations.

Why, you may ask, especially after that cheery list of warnings? Well, it depends. If you want a lot of action and battles and other such fast-moving set-pieces, again, it's not going to deliver. But it explores its historical subject pretty accurately and also takes advantage of that situation to explore the ethical dilemmas of occupation from both sides with subtlety and intelligence and three-dimensional characters, and that's what's so great about it.

( You chaps have commandeered my kitchen! )