Beyond the Roundels

One day I will start posting properly again, but goodness knows when that will be. In the meantime, I have now completed the gifset request meme I did over on tumblr, and here is the list, (as requested by various people on tumblr) if anyone should be interested:

Shadow of the Tower + 4 most attractive character

Spooks + 1 favourite character

Sapphire & Steel + any category you feel like (opening titles)

Adam Adamant Lives! + 17 favourite costume(s)

Doctor Who + 9 favourite location

Spooks + 5 favourite romantic relationship

Public Eye + 3 favourite minor character

The Brothers + 7 favourite familial relationship

Sapphire & Steel + 13 most heartbreaking scene

Sapphire & Steel + 16 favourite scene

Spooks + 12 favourite [Ruth] look

"the smallest fandom you can gif" (The Power Game) + 10 favourite episode

Shadow of the Tower + 17 favourite costume

Anyway, it was fun.

Skipping about a bit - I've been so tired over the last week or so and where I've had any energy I've tried to put it into my chocolateboxcomm assignment.

Challenge #10: In your own space, talk About A Creator/Someone Who Inspired You.

I rarely know what to say for this one - because it's fannish I think of fanwork creators, and that always seems too difficult. We are many and so many different interactions have inspired me over the years. But auroracloud talked about some of the pro SFF authors who have meant so much to her in being ill. And I thought, there is one creator who's helped me through my illness and inspired me to write quite a few things in the way I have, when I've been able to, but he's an invisible person I know very little about. (I might not like him at all, who knows? Maybe it's better this way.)

Anyway, as plenty of you will know, I have ME/CFS and am home chronically ill and wound up watching a lot of very old TV and among it, the work of writer, script-editor and producer Michael Chapman. I first came across him in Special Branch (1968). (His episode wasn't a standout, but he had written a housewife character with an unexpected side-stepping of stereotyping and sexism in context, and so, I took note of his name, but I didn't know it'd ever be of any more significance.)

However, he also created and script-edited Enemy at the Door, was responsible for the last three seasons of Public Eye, and Mr Palfrey of Westminster. The things that he produced rather than script-edited also show his influence - the importance of small things, quiet continuity and character growth, a sense of compassion and the complexity of humanity in a very understated way, plus impressive historical accuracy in EatD. I've loved a lot of things, but those three touched me probably more than all the rest, and the common link is Michael Chapman. Sometimes you find the right story or creator for the right time, and that was mine.

His individual episodes aren't always my favourites (although some are, especially his S1-2 bridging episodes in EatD, and in Mr Palfrey, where two in particular are just really beautiful), some are a bit dull, even, but while there are lots of things I'd like to see released or found from old TV, Michael Chapman's other TV series that he produced and/or scripted-edited are at the top of my list. I can't imagine I'd be disappointed, because he hasn't let me down yet, from 1960s The Protectors and Undermind to Mr Palfrey. I suppose I'll have to watch his work on The Bill eventually instead (look, there's a lot of The Bill, not much of it edited by him, and I'm dangerously completist, so...), as I'm assured it's also good and he won a much-deserved BAFTA for it.

He's probably therefore entirely to blame for weird origfic canon I use for Runaway Tales & now rainbowfic, because it started out as a Fake 1970s TV show (that was totally script-edited by Michael Chapman in my head). (The Edward/Julia AUs aren't his fault, though. Those are definitely mine. ;-p)

Some quotes, although, as I've said, it's often his overarching influence that's his main strength.

From Mr Palfrey:

On spying: "Our country right or wrong. We leave small matters such as crises of conscience, fastidiousness over the truth to traitors." And: "Who will remember us in a hundred years' time?"

"... a man who restores violins is arguably of more use to mankind than an Air Vice Marshall."


From Public Eye:

Frank: "You can't erase someone on a technicality."
Lawyer: "You're a humanist, Mr Marker."


From Enemy at the Door:

Major Richter: "Would you be happier with a more conventional attitude of hostility, then?"
Olive Martel: "In a way, yes. It would be less confusing. Small kindnesses tend to cloud the issue."
Richter: "Which is what?"
Olive: "That we are at war, and you and I are enemies."
Richter: "And ordinary humanity has no place in it?"
Olive: "As I say, it confuses."

"War must be fought, even if it's only in the mind. You cannot win if you do not fight... but you cannot fight if you do not survive."


Also, his description, in an interview, of The Protectors* as being "about three level-headed people who try to prevent crime from happening." (♥)


* Not that Protectors. Or the other one. The one I'm the only one who's heard of, except liadt because I lent her the disc with John Carson and his hat. Because it's about three level-headed people trying to prevent crime.

* It's a fic_rush weekend! If you want company, accountability or whatever to cheer you on in your attempts to write fic/letters/essays/do laundry/wrangle penguins, you can drop in at any point until midnight Sunday (GMT), even if only for an hour.


* I have been trying to reconstruct my tumblr here: https://thisbluespirit.tumblr.com/

I've been trying to find reblogs of my stuff and it's so hard to search, because reblogs don't appear in searches, so you have to find someone who may have reblogged it and search their tumblr, and they may or may not have an accessible archive/tags or whatever. And, of course, some stuff was never reblogged and is gone. The worst thing about this is that I have lost half of my Favourite Episodes of Old Telly posts, which would have been the first thing I'd have saved if I'd been deliberately deleting it.

(Also Mariocki found my Favourite Episodes post for "My Life's My Own" for Public Eye and tumblr immediately marked it as blocked adult material, so I had to remake it and repost and then appeal to get it unblocked. Stuff them and their idiot bots! There are some hands in it; they really don't like hands at all, do they? Evil hands!

And, yes, it damn well is adult material! It's a wonderful, grown-up episode of 1960s TV that's progressive, complex and messy and human, well played, well written, and one of the best episodes of any television series I've ever seen. So now they made me angry, even if a bit irrationally.)

1. Peter Sallis has died. He was 96, of course, so he'd had a very good innings, but still. *salutes* Obviously, he was ubiquitous as Clegg and as Wallace, but since I started delving into old telly, he will also forever be The Man Who Didn't Eat Sweets in a Public Eye episode I have watched more than most.


2. fic_corner is running again! It's an exchange for children's & YA lit and is usually good fun. There's a brainstorming post open and nominations will begin soon. (I don't know if I'll be able to do it, because summer, but I think it's relevant to some people's interests.)


3. While I'm talking about comms, I'm not sure I ever gave hidden_passages a quick pimp - it's a general comm for all things Gothic fiction related, run by calliopes_pen. (I think I was pimping my own comms such a lot once I moved them over that I got too exhausted. I meant to mention a few other good Dreamwidth comms, whether new, old, or recently moved, but I forgot.)


4. I have ordered the 1970s TV series Thriller with my b'day voucher. I don't know whether that was the best choice or not, but I will at least now have a proper screencap-able copy of my very own of the episode where James Maxwell and Julian Glover move into together and bury girls in the back garden and that is the important thing. (I think Suzanne Neve and Gemma Jones may be in other episodes, too.) ( Gif )

1. verdande_mi is running an Open Rec Post where you can rec all sorts of things to people.


2. A while back I got excited because someone had put up all of Public Eye on YT, but they took it down again. I don't suppose anyone was actually watching, but someone's put S5, 6 & 7 up here and the surviving 60s eps and S4, I still have up here. Because you know you want to watch the most mundane but brilliant old telly show ever, obv. (All right, I know people don't really. But just in case!)


3. I thought this official trailer for 100 eps of Once Upon a Time was rather nice:

( Cut for embed )

A bunch of resulting ficlets from the previous meme. I was going to start posting them as replies in the comments and then realised that'd slowly be giving the list away.

So, consider the previous post closed now, and here goes!

(I didn't stick to the word limit at all, I'm afraid. I was going to do demi-drabbles again, and then, a couple of hundred words later, decided I wasn't. Still, those meme police never have turned up yet.)

( 4 x Strange meetings )

More to come... sometime. ;-)

A random meme stolen from a_phoenixdragon:

Choose 5 OTP’s without looking at the questions behind the cut first, then tag friends to do the same.

My Five OTPS
1) Silver/Sapphire/Steel (S&S)
2) Emma Swan/Regina Mills (OUaT)
3) Fifth Doctor/Tegan Jovanka (DW)
4) Ruth Evershed/Harry Pearce (Spooks)
5) Frank Marker/Helen Mortimer (Public Eye) (I know, I know, Frank never goes well in memes, but let's be honest about stuff...)


( Questions & answers under the cut )

I didn't do this last year, because I'd written so many short ficlets and it'd be annoying, but this year, even though I've still written mostly very short things (and therefore quite a lot), I decided I would, anyway. Maybe I should do one for 2013 anyway, as well... Thanks to aralias for the handy template.

( Long post under cut )

Request: Favourite plot twists - jaxomsride (It turns out I'm not doing these in order. Also I see no reason to wait for December, either.)


It's hard to think about favourite plot twists, maybe because it's not the first thing I think of in what I like about something (though don't get me wrong, I love a really great plot twist), but also because I have a tendency to rewatch and re-read things I like a lot, so then it becomes hard to remember the time when the plot twist was surprising instead of inevitable and admired plot work.

Or, in short, I can't guarantee these are my actual favourite plot twists, but they were the ones I came up with this week. I shall try to talk about them without spoilers. If this involves sign language at any point, bear with me.


1. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. Her books are so well known, that I think I was spoiled for quite a few of them by the time I read them, or, being the sort of lazy reader who hardly ever tries to work out the murder, maybe I wasn't struck by the others. At any rate, once it became clear what the plot twist was in this one, I was delighted by it, and remain so. I've read at least one other book that used the same twist as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd but I don't think I've ever come across anything with the same solution as Orient Express. (It is something that should be hard to pull off without being ridiculous, which is perhaps why. Or because I haven't read the other books in question, of course.) It's not my favourite Christie, but it is by far my favourite solution to a murder mystery.


2. Listen (Doctor Who). I hesitate to mention this, because I don't want to get into DW discussions, but I thought this was shaped around such a wonderful twist, not just for an episode but because it subverted the expectations of the whole show, especially in terms of New Who and did so beautifully. I know some people are watching this other awful show at the moment, but for me, this was one of the most perfect episodes in a long, long while & largely because of the twist, so I have to include it here.


3. My Life's My Own (Public Eye). It's probably not so much a proper plot twist, in the same way as the two above (but then Public Eye doesn't really work like that), but over halfway through there's a reveal that I completely didn't see coming which not only impressed me in terms of the episode but revised my entire opinion of the series I was watching and what it was capable of. And it was already being a particularly good episode. In addition, there's a twist of viewer expectation in which it looks as though the story is winding down to its close in a particular way - and then it suddenly does so much more with its last five minutes.

Title: No Bones Broken, No Harm Done
Author: lost_spook
Rating: All ages
Word Count: 1395
Characters/Pairings: Frank Marker/Helen Mortimer
Notes/Warnings: None.
Summary: The last thing Frank wants is tea and sympathy; it only complicates things.

For the hc_bingo square “assault”. Hopefully, there won't be any more Public Eye for this, but I had ideas for 4 out of 5 squares and then... well, what fictional character do I write who's most likely to get beaten up? (And he spent at least 18 months in Brighton. It must have happened at some point during that time.)

( No Bones Broken )

Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there:

The last few! Probably less exciting, because they mostly turned out quite sensible and I, er, might have sneakily ducked a low-flying prompt or two, but here goes...

( More fic I would never write except I did )

For hc_bingo square "Learning to be loved".

I made a Frank Marker/Helen Mortimer fanvid, Helen POV. I didn't even think that was actually possible, but apparently it is if you're me and you don't have much in the way of standards when it comes to vidding. In the middle of looking for some thoughtful, quiet old 50s song or an instrumental piece that would do, I somehow wound up with this. (I worried for a bit about whether or not it still met the prompt, but I've decided it does. I hope.)

They Don't Know About Us
Public Eye: Nobody else understands what Mrs Mortimer sees in Frank. (Frank Marker/Helen Mortimer, S4 fanvid.)

Music: They Don't Know by Kirsty MacColl

Or, in short, this is what happens in S4 according to Mrs Mortimer. Not particularly spoilery as such. Bookended with a little S6. Whether it's ironic, or horribly shippy, or just that Mrs Mortimer is right in fundamentals (and the long-term) if not the immediate outcome, I don't know.

( Embed & Links under cut )

Anyway, as you'll have noticed, I've been trying to explain Public Eye since last November and failing. Now I've made a vid and that's the best explanation I have, and I'm happy at last:

All These Things
A Public Eye tribute.
(Length: 4.59 minutes)
"You've lived to be old... It's not a question of years, it's a question of seeing." Frank Marker and a life full of other people's problems.

( All These Things )