Beyond the Roundels

I am now ill/tired from having visitors, although not too bad, really, and we had a very nice time (there were even brownies as well as ice cream before Mum and Dad left, amazing.) In the meantime, have three very random things indeed.

1. I watched S2 of The Crown in time to give it back to Mum. It was v good, but there was one deeply weird moment where I realised a minor character was Jacqui Chan, who was one of the regulars in The Hidden Truth with James Maxwell. Idk why that is weirder than all the other real people, but I suppose you don't expect random old telly people to get played by other people in 21st tv unless they're much better known.


2. I looked up an actor to see who they were the other day because I recognised them but not their name. (Richard Lintern, and they were Daniel in House of Eliott, aka the least bad of Evangeline Eliott's terrible no-good love interests.)

But that led to me discovering the existence of Jupiter Moon, and I was deeply amused and bemused. You probably need to be a UK person of a certain vintage to appreciate just how unlikely every single sentence of that wiki entry is, but it's like an April Fool's entry, except it's totally real. BSB, in its short-lived existance did somehow make 150 episodes of a thrice-weekly soap opera featuring a university IN SPACE in 1990, as created by some guy who usually wrote The Archers. There is pretty much no sentence in the wiki page that's not making me boggle or laugh, or both. It has Anna Chancellor in it, and seems to be what Lucy Benjamin was doing between s1 and 4 of Press Gang.

I had to go look on YT and found the whole thing here so I watched some while I was a bit brainless the last few days. It is exactly what you would expect from the description. (Fake looking video-bound soap opera stuff with variable young actors, love drama, and can Timmy give up chocolate, oh and SWIRLY THINGS IN SPACE.)


3. I found another B7 reactor I occasionally look at when I'm tired etc, and recently watched their reaction to "Weapon" and had to link here, because their reaction when Servalan turns up in that costume was great. XD


I hope to be more sensible around here soon, you never know. It could happen. ♥

Made for iconcolors, icontalking and iconthat, plus alternates. I was having a bit of an uninspired dip, icon-making-wise, so decided to inspire myself with Blake's 7 (with the help of its Image Library). (I always have B7 feels.) One set of these is also based on the Avon-Jenna-Blake fanvid One Last Breath by Zukalis (spoilery, as usual) & most of the text in that set is from the lyrics.

Teaser:



( And I'm thinking, maybe six feet ain't so far down )

Credits: Images from the B7 Image Library; textures by shiruji, whitebamboo, tigertyger & more. The usual rules apply - want, take, have, credit. Comments = ♥ and hotlinkers will be left to explain their misguided ways to Servalan.

Another 500 Prompts ficlet, also for 100fandoms prompt #29 "mask."

Painted Smiles (829 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Blake's 7
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Servalan (Blake's 7)
Additional Tags: 500 prompts, community: 100fandoms, Ficlet, 5 Times, Villains
Summary: Five times Servalan smiled and someone died.

Jacqueline Pearce has died, who was in her most famous role as Servalan in Blake's 7 also probably my most favourite villain in this or any other galaxy. (I may have mentioned this from time to time.)

People who have been lucky enough to meet her at cons (when she was not being a lethal yet fabulously dressed evil ruler of the galaxy) say that she was also pretty great in rl.

jekesta helpfully linked to a most she made about how awesome Servalan is, which has many pictures demonstrating her unique fantabulosity so there is no need for me to get any more incoherent at this point.


Also you can have some vids of her and her amazing costumes. (It's not that it's only her costumes that were amazing. It's just that you can't talk about Servalan and not talk about how Jacqueline Pearce could walk out into a BBC quarry wearing evening dresses made out of feathers/chicken wire/lizards/whatever and make the quarry look like the thing that had embarrassingly turned up in the wrong outfit because obviously the universe should just bend itself around Supreme Commander Servalan (and often did).)

Vids:
Servalan is a Sharp Dressed Man

Servalan Music Video

Supreme Queen


Among her other roles, I also saw her as Mariana in the BBC Shakespeare version of Measure for Measure. As I watched this after B7, it was nice to feel reassured that after the credits rolled, Mariana would clearly lose no time in stabbing Angelo in the back.

So, I wrote things for Yuletide. Somewhat more than I expected...

Firstly, and most importantly, my assignment, which was for paranoidangel42. I had, when signing up initially, looked at my list of fandoms I was willing to write and said to myself I might as well have just said I'd write for Paranoidangel. And then laughed, shook my head at myself, reminded myself that Yuletide is a big exchange and added in a bunch of other fandoms... and then got assigned to Paranoidangel! (So, erm, sorry about that - you just got yet more of me instead of somebody new! I had fun writing for you, though! ♥)

Backstitch in Gold (3948 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The House of Eliott
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Beatrice Eliott & Evangeline Eliott, Beatrice Eliott/Jack Maddox
Characters: Beatrice Eliott, Evangeline Eliott, Jack Maddox
Additional Tags: Yuletide, 1920s, Fashion & Couture, Sister-Sister Relationship, Misses Clause Challenge, Women Being Awesome
Summary:

What has been well-stitched together doesn’t easily fray at the seams.

I'd been rewatching HoE recently and was determined to write fic for it, because there's so little of it, and knew what I wanted to do - a sort of big Bea and Evie across-the-years, culminating in a fixit for the ending. But then it seemed to fall flat in various places, and the ending wasn't quite how I remembered it, thus scuppering my planned final section and I floundered for a while. (I had in my head that Bea and Evie had a big row and, actually, they don't. Evie is angry at everyone, but Bea is muted, almost defeated.) However, eventually, I beat it into shape & hopefully it wasn't too bad! (I've learned by now, though, that I pretty much always feel my assignments are terrible - until the next year, when suddenly I realise that last year's was quite good... but this year's is terrible.)

Anyway, it was fun to write Bea & Evie, and I am still very fond of the series. (Which follows the fortunes of a pair of sisters who set up a London fashion house in the 1920s and is good fun & all up on YT if anyone is interested). I did want to work in more characters, though, and more social history... and, yes, well, possibly being unrealistic? I think in my head I wanted to write a big HofE novel, that's all. At least I finally came up with a title I liked. I had the summary before the fic, but it was in danger of being posted as "Untitled House of Eliott fic" as the deadline approached. (Backstitch is the strongest stitch commonly used for sewing & in gold, obviously, but also because that's how Jack refers to Bea early on. Hmm, I'm not sure now why I changed it from "Backstitch in Gold Thread" because that makes more sense! I shall go change it back.)

( And more under the cut! )


Also I now know that it was Clocketpatch who risked complete obscurity by writing me that last minute Public Eye/Sapphire & Steel treat. (Thanks so much, Clocket! You're amazing!) My other wonderful gift was by DesertScribe, who's new to me, but whom I hope hasn't written their last S&S fic, because that one was excellent. ♥

The first four bits of resulting nonsense from the meme. As predicted, there was very little shippiness. I mean, have you got time for that sort of thing when you're doing the housework? ;-)


1. Doctor Who - Five/Tegan: mowing the lawn From eve11 (170 words)

( Lawn-mowing ficlet )

4. B7 - Avon/Servalan: changing the light-bulb From lolmac (112 words)

( How many enemies does it take to change a light-bulb? )

13. The West Wing - Sam Seaborn/Ainsley Hayes: washing the car - From astrogirl2 (213 words)

( In which there may possibly be doughnuts )

Sapphire & Steel - Silver/Steel: alphabetising their CD collection From pitry (515 words).

Just imagining Steel and Silver having a shared CD collection to sort amused me muchly, because they really, really wouldn’t. And if they did, Steel’s would be tiny to non-existent, consisting of select instrumental pieces that he felt were not a potential threat to reality (taking a moment of time, physically recording it, and playing it over and over? That’s just asking for the end of the world, people). Silver would have by far the larger part of the collection, and it would be almost entirely made up of music he bought to annoy Steel (and a few things he thought were pretty). And in any case, he’d probably get bored with them and turn all the discs into something else.

So I wrote this:
( Alphabetical order is vitally important )

(I've only used 9 out of 20 pairings, if anyone wants to assign any more tasks to the remaining people - the original post is here.)

justice_turtle gave me "And if that mockingbird won't sing, Papa's gonna buy you a diamond ring", from The Weavers' version of the traditional song.

And the one thing it seemed to suggest to me was this drabble portrait of Servalan. (It's funny, but any 'any fandom' prompt always seems to mean B7 for me.)
( Mockingbird )

If anyone wants a prompt from me, the post is here. (And if you want a prompt but you'd rather not offer your own music up, well, it's not as if I'm going to tell the LJ meme police. And I am very bored and would love to give a prompt to anyone who doesn't object. Also it means possible tiny fic by my flist!)

The full set of icons made for naarmamo (minus only the icons that were made as specific requests, and the Big Finish ones, which will follow shortly). It does include some extras and alternates not posted elsewhere. (Gosh. I know. Heh.) A fairly random mix of sources, as follows:

1-5 The Way We Live Now
6-9 Northanger Abbey (BBC 1986)
10-12 Seaside penguins
13-16 North & South) (BBC)
17-26 Text icons from Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyce
28-30 Dungeons & Dragons (Cartoon)
31-33 Elizabeth R
34-37 Life
38 Inkheart
39-40 I Capture the Castle
41-46 Doctor Who (Classic)
47-48 Buffy the Vampire Slayer
49-53 Spooks/MI-5
54-57 Sapphire & Steel
58-59 Red Dwarf
60-66 Blake's 7
67-72 The West Wing
73-74 Press Gang
75-76 Jenna Russell
77-86 The House of Eliott
87-88 The Four Musketeers
89-91 Midnight Is A Place (1977/78 ITV)

Teasers:



( Icons here )

Following on from the last post, I mentioned I'd put Avon and Servalan in the generator and laughed myself silly. Because there is nothing so weird that seems unlikely for that pairing, anyway, so I just had to keep refreshing the page with the same input... And ravenskyewalker wanted to see the results.

Luckily, I'd saved them. (They were too ridiculous not to.)

ETA: persiflage_1 says this post should come with a no drinking (and probably no eating) warning. She is usually right, and I had trouble myself with the results and a glass of water...

( Avon and Servalan do the ficlet generator thing )

You can tell I'm procrastinating on my Yuletide fic by my amazing productivity on random ficlets over the last few days. Just wrote this, instead of what I was supposed to be doing. (And remember I'm still a B7 newbie - I'm sure this has been done in fic before, because it must have been, but I haven't read it.)

Post Gauda Prime, so SPOILERS. Or AU. Or whatever. (c.f. Things B7 Has In Common With Press Gang)
(PG, Drabble, Kerr Avon, Servalan. The final meeting.)

( Read more... )