Beyond the Roundels

I started this on 27th Feb 2021 for 100fandomicons and have finally completed it, after taking longer than anybody else ever has, which I suppose is one claim to fame. (You can see the fandoms if you hover over the icons.)

( 100fandoms table under here )

1. yuletide is upon us! I'm still not entirely sure whether it'll be a good idea to sign up or not, but it looks likelier. I nominated Craddock & Co, Indigo Saga, The Winslow Boy and Wish Me Luck. I'm going back and forth on whether or not I'm actually going to request TWB (there's another request for it already anyway, so it will be in Yuletide regardless), but I will with the rest. I might also possibly go for WtOVPIC and/or Sister Boniface, but I'm undecided as yet.

I was also excited/intrigued/so stunned you could have knocked me down with a feather to see Heyer's No Wind of Blame, Louise Cooper's The Time Master series, but with characters for the second trilogy, with Karuth, which is my favourite bit, The Year of the Unicorn, Love's Labours Lost (2000), and I feel so vindicated that someone nommed The Net (1995) requesting Jack/Angela, because the foe!yay clearly needed to exist.

Also, someone who was absolutely not me nommed The Shadow of the Tower! I had a very nice fic for it for last year, and I'm giving it a rest (I will be back), and I did a double take for a minute and had to check with myself that I hadn't done it without noticing. idk if they will actually request, though. Oh, and plenty of other nice things as usual!

Who else is thinking of signing up, and what have you got your eye on?


2. Talking of Jeremy Northam, I got another BNA sub for a month, and I've snagged some of the articles I mentioned ages ago that I'd spotted in a search on his name, so I am currently well informed on his theatrical engagements pre-1989, which is cool. He was in some school/amateur dramatics before that, and it even coughed up pictorial evidence that he existed prior to the late 1980s, which I wasn't expecting. I am in the process of posting the articles to tumblr - these are what I've done so far:

1979/1980 School/AmDram productions in Bristol here, with two pictures, although the earliest one is so dark that you'll just have to take their word for it that the white blob to the left in the darkness is probably Jeremy Northam's face, but the second one has a nice article about him learning to roller skate in order to be in a Ben Jonson play, as one does.

No pics, but review of him as Benedick in Much Ado as a finale to his time at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

Brief, but did give another couple of pics with it - first professional gig in Salad Days at the Nottingham Playhouse in 1986. (The cast got a free salad for lunch at Debenhams, so there's glamour for you, lol.)

Then I skipped ahead to 1988 get a couple of Wish Me Luck interviews up - a nice one with Suzanna Hamilton (who played Matty), which came up as she mentions him in it, plus two versions of what presumably was the a longer interview or press release from elsewhere wth Jeremy Northam here, on playing Colin.


3. Since this now means that I actually know what he was in prior to appearing to the world in WML, I looked some of them up and one (that I haven't yet posted to tumblr) was French Without Tears in 1987. This turned out to be an early Rattigan, and as I want to see more Rattigan, I looked for adaptations, and there was a film and also a 1976 BBC Play of the Month version, with a cast that included Anthony Andrews, Nicola Paget, Michael Gambon & Nigel Havers, so I looked for that on YT, but with no luck.

And, then, just after I'd been talking to lirazel about The Winslow Boy and reminding myself that I really need to try some more Rattigan, it magically appeared on an old TV channel I subscribe to, and I was in the mood to manage watching online, so I did. I enjoyed it a lot. It was, as wiki had said, an early fairly light-weight comedy about a bunch of young Brits studying French so they can pass the exam for the Diplomatic service & having romantic shenanigans, but it still had a lot of Rattigan touches and didn't tie up half as neatly as it might have done as written by someone else. ( It was also pretty easy to see why they'd cast a young Jeremy Northam as Kit Neilan a decade later, so that was good fun all round.)

(The 1986 theatre version was directed by Sue Wilson, whose 1991 BBC radio Christmas at the Wells plays I liked so much; she seems also to have been involved with the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School - she directed that Much Ado, so she'd obviously worked with Jeremy Northam a few times before she got him onto the radio. I'm sure her version of FWT would have been very good and interesting, as her radio plays certainly were.)

Not being away, I recovered enough to start rifling through the collection a couple of days ago and have been having fun, so here are the resulting recs of my first glance through its delights:

( 17 recs in The Avengers, Chalet School, Detectorists, Doctor Who, Falco, Fire & Hemlock, The Good Place, New Tricks, Our Town's Libraries, Sapphire and Steel, The Shadow of the Tower, We Are A Picturesque Small Town & Yes Minister )

Thank you for writing for me! This letter is bound to be long, so tl;dr: I love all kinds of different things at different times, I love these fandoms and characters, and I'm sure to enjoy whatever you come up with.

Any prompts are intended purely for inspiration, not to restrict your choices. Take what's useful and leave what isn't. I hope you have a lovely Yuletide.


That said, here is the long version...

( Fandoms: Craddock and Co, The Lady Vanishes, The Shadow of the Tower, Sister Boniface Mysteries & Welcome to Our Village Please Invade Carefully )

* First off, no_true_pair is now open for sign-ups! \0/ (I'm still trying to decide who to put on my lists. Only 4 characters in a set!! *runs around in circles*)


* Secondly, Marie-Clare has just started watching sapphire and Steel over on her YouTube channel ("Is this going to be scary?" she asked about halfway through. XD) Anyway, if anyone else would like to see her reaction, there it is!

---

And now for a meme! I picked this up via lirazel - List 8 television shows that you would show someone to get to know you.

Which sounded like fun, although with the necessary caveat that I don't think anybody who isn't me should watch ALL of these, which probably tells you all you really need to know about me anyway. This list is 100% true and I would rec all of the things on it to at least somebody round here, but I don't think it'd make the best watchlist! XD


1. Doctor Who - tl;dr - just watch DW. Bits from all of it. Whatever you like. DW has been just about every kind of show in turn. It's been my first and foremost and sometimes only fannish love since I was 11 and I watched the last ten minutes of The Happiness Patrol and found out that sometimes one show can embrace at the same moment killing Bertie Bassett and reflecting that happiness and sadness are two sides of the same coin. (You can't have true happiness without sadness, because you can have neither without love.) And that blue is a great colour.

I learned that the most extraordinary things begin in the most mundane places, that we're all bigger on the inside really. It's about true friendship (found in unlikely people) across space and time, about imagination and stories - all kinds - and facing your fears and the monsters they shape themselves into; the importance of free will (it's not an illusion after all, do i have the right?), that evil must and can be fought; that change is hard but everything must evolve in the end. There's always good in it, too (even if nobody likes it when you redecorate). No matter how serious you are about what you do, you don't necessarily have to be serious about how you do it. There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. It's better to travel hopefully than arrive. Take the long way round. All of time and space, where do you want to start?

And there's at least one episode or serial or audio or comic or book or Doctor or era to please everyone; and nobody is pleased by all of it.

My most formative bits are probably (inevitably) Seven & Ace, and the first season in 1963, and Robots of Death and Vengeance on Varos and the Fifth Doctor's era, but then there's season 7 (old who), and episodes like Hide and Listen and The Day of the Doctor, and The War Games (which I watched rented out from Aberystwyth Library - 3 day loan - in installments in two days, gripped), and honestly, the point is, you should watch whatever till you find your bits, because randomness and choice and freewill and sometimes being quite silly is the order of the day.


2. Enemy at the Door - it represents history like I studied it, it is TV that is shaped around characters, and it shows you what a librarian actually does, when Miss Brown risks her life for a professional code of conduct that I shared, too, and it was a series that gets how it feels to be trapped through circumstances outside your control. I felt like someone had made this specially for me, weirdly, given that I didn't even want to watch it because I didn't think it'd be my thing.


3. Spooks - my first grown up fannish love, with snarky pretty tragic spies and also RUTH EVERSHED. If you're going to understand me, you need to watch Ruth. Also I love tragedy and characters dying when I'm in the right mood. It helps if it's snarky and ironic tragedy because you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Plus, it's important to know how to kill people with forks and disarm a bomb in your microwave, and the key is in the things that are never said.


4. Shadow of the Tower - because wordy, theatrical historical old time drama that wants to be shakespeare is my thing. also it is the only way anyone can understand my James Maxwell thing. Not that you necessarily will. But SotT does at least make it more explicable than anything else if you can sit through it. Which, tbf, you might not be able to, but. I have. At least ten whole times and probably more. It's awesome really. ;-p


5. Sapphire and Steel. I'm weird, how weird am I? Also you will need to meet Silver and that I think the most perfect relationship is between three mysterious non-human beings who pretty certainly will be doing something that isn't sex when they're together, whatever it might be. I think that's wonderful.


6. Once Upon a Time - for fantasy, my absolute love of fandom crossovers - this whole show is a giant crossover - my ridiculous sense of humour (this show frequently shares it), for a female-led show that also has sword-fighting and dragons and pirates and curses and magic, and for Regina (covering my love of evil ladies who know how to dress + my evident love of grudgingly reformed evil ladies) and also, from s7, Alice, whose story I think resonates with quite a few people, but she's another rare character who genuinely knows what it is to be isolated and trapped.


7. Hinterland (Y Gwyll, but since I watched Hinterland, it has to be that version). Because of Aber. To understand me, Aberystwyth, where I went to uni is important. Hinterland does not necessarily reflect Aber properly because it never goes up Penglais Hill, but it does show a lot of the reasons why I'll always love it. Plus, Wales and Welsh and Mared, and I should have at least one detective show to be representative. (Even if my general taste is more Golden Age/Cosy than this.)


8. Dracula (1968). I couldn't decide at this point, so I went for this because it was the shortest of those vying for the last spot! This has a lot of my favourite old telly people in at once, it is very iddy for me and it taught me where the line lies between the creepy things I do like (often very much) and most horror (which I don't), which is basically that I like a bit of old fashioned (usually historically set) Gothic horror, and Dracula-esque vampires, too. Plus, fainting men, always a plus. You can also experience my sadness at tragic fake hair, which clearly is important.


It is very weird to me that I didn't include B7 and Press Gang in particular, but DW + Spooks = B7 (as I was told when someone who also liked both of those recced it to me) and DW also has Steven Moffat. Even if probably not quite as good as in PG and a list without Lynda Day is probably not quite right.) I did very nearly go for Survivors in the last spot, because even if it also made me wild at times, it was great, and I really really appreciate that it went full steam on asking all the hard questions. EatD doubled for Public Eye and Mr Palfrey. But mainly DW has everything, really. Nothing more is truly needed in this context.

So someone tagged me in this meme on tumblr and I'm reposting it here, because it seemed like the sort of meme people round these parts would also enjoy!

Go to the following website https://www.random.org/lists/ and type in 15 different characters from any Fandom (they can be in the same fandom). Then it will give you an order, after shuffling the characters. You must answer the following in the order they give you!

Fandoms: Dracula (1968), OUaT, Sapphire & Steel, Blake’s 7, Doctor Who, Press Gang, Adam Adamant Lives!, Spooks, The Shadow of the Tower.

( The answers/categories under here )

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.

Day 4 was to set goals and since I have decided that it is very important for me to have a goal of not having goals for the moment, that's a wash. I suppose I could vow to re-upload some more icons that PhotoBucket ate in one of its tantrums. That would be good.





In your own space, promote a canon/talk about a part of canon that you love. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I was determined this time to do something less obscure but canons I have been thinking about and having feelings for especially at the moment are The Power Game, The Shadow of the Tower and Department S, so no hope of that.

( Cut for some blathering but mainly 1960s gifs of the gorgeous Barbara Murray and colour ITC adventurers )

Concluding my Incomplete Gifology of the career of James Maxwell with the 1970s, because I'm sure you were all thinking that your flists had been devoid of random grainy JM gifs lately. Luckily I can fix that!

( Cut for a lot of JM but grossly misleading lack of terrible facial hair )

swordznsorcery is a terrible (amazing) person and asked for this. Obviously it needed pictures:

( Cut for truly appalling 1970s bad wigs, fake eyebrows, goatees and moustaches. Don't say I didn't warn you )

Dear Chocolatier,

Thank you for making something for me! This letter is bound to be long, but tl;dr: I love all kinds of things, I love the fandoms and character combinations I've chosen, and as long as you don't write my few hard DNWs, I I'm bound to love whatever you come up with. Prompts are intended purely for inspiration, not to restrict your choices. Take what's useful and leave what isn't, and I hope you have fun.

That said, here is the long version...

( General Likes etc. )

---

( Requests: Arrowverse, Doctor Who (BFA), Doctor Who (1963), Once Upon A Time, Sapphire & Steel, Shadow of the Tower, Spooks, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, )

... both fannish and good!

1. liadt drew some lovely fanart for my fic Half an Angel for her trick or treat thingy, so I am a very lucky person.


2. persiflage_1 (who also knows me well) pointed me to the news that Big Finish are doing a new audio Kaldor series that will feature both Nicola Walker's Liv Chenka and David Collings's Ander Poul.

I mean, given that it can hardly equal the epic crack that was Kaldor City, I shall no doubt be having NOT CANON feels, but for combined David Collings and Nicola Walker on Kaldor, I think I'll be able to cope. At some point in the far flung future when I can get hold of the boxset, of course, but ONE DAY.

But: !!!!! This isn't the first time someone put David Collings and Nicola Walker in an audio together, but last time it was the BBC and she just waltzed in and killed him. (Which, to be fair, is what most people do with a David Collings sooner or later, but still. This is far more exciting.)

(I was totally going to write that fic one time. I'm not sure how I feel about Big Finish writing it for me. I bet they don't get my headcanon right at all.)

I am being bad at posting and I am actually really enjoying the Stuff I Love meme, both seeing other people's posts and self-indulgently going on about things I love. I am tired, though, so let me be obvious tonight.

Anyone who's been following me for more than about two minutes will have gathered that as well as obscure old telly I love obscure old actors who appear in it. It was an inevitable consequence, really. David Collings, Barbara Murray, Alfred Burke, Suzanne Neve, Gemma Jones and a bunch of others. David Collings is the person whose fault it was, and who dies improbably and entertainingly a lot. But my current favourite is James Maxwell. I would explain myself, and there is a sort of explanation in there somewhere that started with David Collings and BBC period drama but it passed through Sapphire and Steel fancasting and theatrical ghost stories and a nice obit, to "I just like your face, sir" and then what can you do?

Anyway, James Maxwell was a character actor who was one of the founding artistic directors of Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre, which he is now reputed to haunt. He was actually American, but came to the UK to study at the Old Vic Theatre School in 1950 and stayed here till he died in 1995.

Things I like about him:

1. He crossed an ocean because of Dame Edith Evans. (Literally: he went to see her in the theatre and no less than two days later he was on board a ship for the UK, arriving in Southampton with no forwarding address.)

2. The ghost story about him can basically be boiled down to "his colleagues wanted to have him still around." Bonus for the ghost story: he is said to have made an appearance on TV from beyond the grave on Most Haunted. Not something everyone can claim.

( And now I will just illustrate my point with gifs )


I was prompted to post this particular entry today because someone on tumblr had found a new source of theatrical pics for him, which I shall now share, watermarks notwithstanding.

( Ah, yes, the one in the short skirt holding someone's hand... )

I was going to write a sensible post about JM and do him justice (because actually he was a pretty interesting person and it has been fun trying to find out more about him and there is a lot to say) but I am tired. So you got the gifs that survived my tumblr-pocalypse.

But this list could have been a lot longer and had more gifs, so you can't complain too much. ;-p


ETA: oh, also THIS LIST. <3