Beyond the Roundels

1. Still open to more 500 Prompts!

(I realise as well that I was talking about fanfic on that post for obvious reasons, but origfic prompts are welcome for the list, too. They would count as pastels at rainbowfic. And it's a big list.)

I expect it would help if I named fandoms I don't have but anyway if there's a fandom I like that I don't have on the list I want it, I want an excuse to write it. Except if I don't, of course, lol. ;-p

♥


2. I was going to add more to this post but then I couldn't think of anything to add. Well, people have been making nice additions to my Jenkins gifset on tumblr, that is a thing that made me smile.


3. Would anyone like prompts? I forget the correct meme phrasing, but if you give me some characters you want to write for, I can shake them up in the genremixer for you and then you will have Shiny Prompts, too.


(also i must be tired, this post is going waffly)

I continued to feel a bit rubbish generally, but today I feel a bit better. It's probably only just because yesterday was so bad today seems better than it is, or temporary for whatever reason, like eating too many Bournville buttons earlier, always cheering, but anyway, it's nice while it lasts, and you never know. I might not feel flat for a day or so at a time. I have heard it happens.

I am at least at the editing stage of the latest assignment and can maybe write meme flashfic now, who knows? XD (Still hunting a willing victim Ameripicking beta yet again if anyone feels particularly brave/kind.)

1. swordzsorcery linked to the amazing blog post The Chairs of Blake's 7. It's great. (I don't know why it's so great, either, but it really really is.)


2. New exchange relevant to some people's interests round here, even if obv. too scary for the likes of me (although the fact that you can specify Gothic as a tag is almost tempting. almost): multifandomhorrorexchange


3. I posted the two random meme ficlets I did from a little while to AO3 and thanks to their new hits count policies, for a moment there one of them had 2 kudos and 0 hits, which surely has to be an exceptional hits:kudos ratio. XD

1. I managed to sign up for chocolateboxcomm and my assignment should be fun, so I hope I will not fail again this time.


2. I had to Do The Thing and upgrade to Windows 10, which I was very scared about. (I had meant to do it in December, but LOL.) Anyway, while I foresee many years of trying to fend off Microsoft's efforts to take over my entire life, I followed the free workaround and not only did it work but I didn't lose anything, not even my most ancient of freebie software. And I think some of my fonts that weren't working before are working now, so overall, I'm relieved and amused. And possibly have more fonts. But backing everything up while overtired kept me away from almost everything here again for a bit.


3. I did some friending tidying, so if anything weird happened yesterday, I was just subscribing to people I seem not to have subscribed to and given access to and meant to, and removing random people who subscribed to me without introducing themselves or interacting with me (that just weirds me out and makes me scared of posting because strange people I don't know are reading this and probably judging me for my James Maxwell obsession.) If I did anybody the wrong way round, I am sorry, and just let me know.

Also I finally tried to friend about three or so people from st_aurafina's friending meme without doing my own blurb for it (because I just don't want more Silent Ghost People friending me right now), so:

Hello! I am thisbluespirit. I used to be lost_spook until about this time last year. I also used to run the Obscure & British Commentfest, and I run several comms including tardis_library, historium, tic_tac_woe and others I should pay more attention to. I am, by fandom standards, very old, although not actually old enough to have seen most of my current fandoms of my heart the first time round. I write fic, sometimes make icons, basic gifs, even more occasionally rec sets and other things. Once upon a time I experimented with vidding.

I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and therefore a lack of spoons for being too serious or negative about fannish things and sometimes for anything at all, but I do what I can. It does mean I'm more often around than not and usually comment.

I am first and foremost a Doctor Who fan, especially Classic, early Big Finish and the Moffat era, but I really do like all of it one way or another.

Other fandoms of my heart include: Sapphire & Steel, Blake's 7, Spooks (or MI5), Press Gang, Adam Adamant Lives!, Once Upon a Time but I am very multifannish and like trying to create in new fandoms. I am not good at OTPing and my shipping frequently comes out like other people's gen, but I'm working on it. I also like The Librarians, Star Wars in a non-fannish way, The Flash, ST: Voyager, Discworld, New Tricks, Lucifer, and lots of little Yuletide-type fandoms. I go in and out of most fandoms, but I rarely put them down entirely.

When I was first ill, I watched a lot of old theatrical British TV because modern TV was too fast and noisy for me to cope with. The side-effect of this was that I got intensely fannish about cardboard problematic telly that isn't on Netflix that nobody else wants to watch and have a gallery of favourite 60s & 70s actors. I especially like James Maxwell. (He's a ghost and has a nice obit; apparently this is what I look for in a man these days. He falls over in fake moustaches a lot. It may be the weight of the moustaches.) Also David Collings. (He dies a lot in everything and has great hair.) And Margaret Lockwood, Barbara Murray, Alfred Burke, and Suzanne Neve. But on the upside, sometimes I picspam Thriller (ask me about the one where Patrick Troughton battles Satan who is Diana Dors dressed up as Mary Poppins) or films where people tried to colorize it without bothering to do anybody's hair, so I like to think I'm at least being entertaining about it sometimes.

Of my ancient telly voyages, I really loved (in different ways) Enemy at the Door, Shadow of the Tower, The Power Game, Public Eye, Doomwatch, Department S, Dracula (1968), Elizabeth R, Survivors, Manhunt and no doubt other things I have forgotten right now, but I am always happy to talk about them.

What else? I'm in the UK, in the North East, was a children's librarian when I was an anything, she/her/they is fine, like family history, and originally am from the south west. (I am not a proper Northerner at all.) Sometimes I write origfic for rainbowfic here, too.

I like random generators and writing memes and hope this year will allow for a bit more of the latter, because last year was not so good on that front. If you want to unfriend me again, that's fine, but I hope not. ♥

(I suppose I've accidentally now also achieved Day 1 of snowflake_challenge too. I don't know how I feel about that.)

I am, I think, finally beginning to feel a tad better, but I won't swear to it. Hopefully brain will be more forthcoming, but I won't hold my breath for that either.

In the meantime, some things:

1. the Yuletide tagset has been revealed and is full of interesting/promising things. I am now eager to see letters and requests. Which reminds me, I must work on my own...


2. A tumblr post about the Blake's 7 team and the fact that Star Wars came out while they were in the middle of making S1: Fuck this, David, I'm going home. (Liberator is still the best space ship anyway. ;-p)


3. An OUaT-ladies vid I liked, from a few years ago now, but good: Blown Away.

You won't be surprised to hear that I have a few books on family history and how to and all that. I have two that I like on how to write a family history. One is a UK work, the other US. I picked them up and glanced at them recently, and got rather amused by their respective opening paragraphs once I had them out side-by-side:

( Cut for some quotes )


They are both helpful books, (and I think both authors are starting off slightly tongue-in-cheek,), but I couldn't help sniggering at how much they conformed to cultural type once I looked at them so close together...

I am very tired from the hospital visit (plus parents) yesterday, as it was in the afternoon. Afternoons are resting time, not doing excessively tiring things time. So I will catch up sometime soon when I am able. In the meantime, I am getting by through rewatching The Shadow of the Tower again. This inevitably led to me having a go a giffing the cute but very probably anachronistic monkey, so I am sharing that with you now, because the internet can obviously never have enough cute animals:

( In which the budget should always be spent on cute animals or cso )

Some random icons and mini-sets I've made recently or found lurking on my hard drive. Margaret Lockwood, quotes, some random old TV peoples, and Once Upon A Time.

Taster:



( Icons under here )

...this time about things the BBC have in their archive and I wish would share with me. Well, everyone, obviously, but especially me. (Partly made because last time I did this, I discovered that against all the odds what I wanted was on YouTube.... This is not the same, however, as Things the BBC Once Had in Their Archive and have Since Wiped/Burninated/Carelessly Lost, because you know about that already. Power of the Daleks! The Naked Sun!)

* On the commentary for Revenge of the Cybermen, everyone was discussing Ian Marter at one point, and David Collings (yes, 2 out of 3 of these things will contain Mr Collings, I'm sorry, but there it is) said that he had worked with him again when they played the Brothers Grimm together for the BBC. (Me: !!!!?) After some Googling, I found this was a 1979 Omnibus episode, a documentary on the lives of the brothers Grimm, but they had dramatised sections, in which the two were played by Ian Marter and David Collings.

Can't see the BBC releasing old Omnibus episodes, somehow. Except maybe in the future if they put up EVERYTHING for download on the internet, or something. Still, it's a nice thought of the two together to have in my head.

* I am watching my way through the BBC Shakespeare as best I can (go away; I want to; I don't care who thinks they are dull or whatever) and I ended up looking at the (v interesting, actually) entry about the series on Wikipedia and noticed a throwaway fact that the first one they made was a version of Much Ado About Nothing in 1977 but for whatever reason (it seems to be suspected, because of use of regional accents by some characters) they decided the US financial backers wouldn't go for it & so didn't include that version in the series & filmed it again in 1984 with a different cast. And who, you may ask, was in this production that isn't part of the collection (and therefore not available on DVD)? Apparently, it was Michael York and Penelope Keith. I thought this might be an internet hoax, but it seems to be true. I can't even imagine them in the same room, but I WANT TO SEE IT. Penelope Keith and Michael York?

Even if it was awful and that was the real reason they kept it in the UK and out of the collection. When that entry says "available to hire on videocassette from the BBC" I suspect they don't mean for random passing individuals, especially those with a dodgy video player. I'm so curious, though. Penelope Keith and Michael York!!

* 1980 detective series Breakaway. (I started looking at this on David Collings's IMBD, because I always had a thing about there being a children's TV show I used to watch by that name, but this definitely isn't it, especially since there probably wasn't and I just amalgamated the chocolate bar and Playaway.) Anyway, it stars Martin Jarvis, who I also like a lot and this is the description of it on IMBD:

Detective inspector Sam Harvey, better known to the general public as the author of the latest best-seller for ages 3 and up, 'Breakfast at the Zoo,' would like nothing better than to retire so he can devote himself full-time to penning the riveting sequels 'Lunch at the Zoo' and 'Dinner at the Zoo.' However, he has to solve a couple of complicated murder cases first. Plot twists and red herrings abound in this intricate thriller series, and corpses turn up with distressing regularity before the culprits are finally collared.

And, apparently, it doesn't seem to have actually been a comedy, or a children's show. (I did some careful Googling). My mind, it is boggled. Plus, David Collings is playing Dr Tucker. You have no idea how much mileage I can get out of people who are or should be the Doctor being called "Doctor" for any reason. (The ITV Poirot ep Sad Cypress I enjoyed very much because Paul McGann was playing the doctor. Poirot/DW crossover with no effort! Mind, I think most DW fans do this. Er. We do, don't we??)

It was written by Francis Durbridge, who apparently did Paul Temple, so maybe that will lead the BBC to release it one day. After all, they've got to get to the end of the really obvious archive things someday. And with that concept, plus Martin Jarvis, detective, and David Collings (in S2), it wouldn't have to be all that marvellous for me to like it, anyway. (Srsly, those two = my two favourite voices ever. I might not be able to cope.)

ETA: Looking at this, I think the thing that strikes me most about that write-up is that it sounds worryingly like something I would write... If I wrote TV scripts back in the 1980s. Only mine would be a comedy.

Er. Was that post random enough? But, seriously, BBC: Penelope Keith and Michael York as Beatrice and Benedick. Soon. Please.

(I know, I know, but I just can't get quite well enough to watch normal TV when it's actually on, or cope with the iplayer. I suppose I should see about one of those Freeview recorder things and stop ogling the BBC archive, really, but... it is fun speculating about bygone stuff. And current TV has a shocking lack of David Collings, anyway.)