Beyond the Roundels

My great and appropriately eerie Yuletide Madness treat, for a fandom I did not, in the end, request, which is worryingly S&S really, isn't it? XD Anyway, I'm a lucky so-and-so:


The March (1803 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Silver (S&S)
Additional Tags: Reminiscing, Post-War, Sad and Happy, Mission Fic, Yuletide Treat
Summary: Time was winning; Silver had to do something, but what exactly? How to stop it?

I just put four more of the Kiss Prompt Meme ficlets over on AO3:

Turn Back the Clock (189 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sapphire/Silver (S&S)
Characters: Sapphire (S&S), Silver (S&S)
Additional Tags: Ficlet, Tumblr Prompt, Flash Fic, Elemental Weirdness, Kissing, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Time Runs Out
Summary: Silver/Sapphire, kiss because's time's run out.


Made of Secrets (272 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Spooks | MI-5
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ruth Evershed/Harry Pearce
Characters: Ruth Evershed, Harry Pearce
Additional Tags: Tumblr Prompt, Flash Fic, Ficlet, Spies & Secret Agents, Secret Relationship, Kissing, Vignette
Summary: Ruth/Harry, kiss in secrecy.


False Is True (294 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sixth Doctor/Charley Pollard
Characters: Charley Pollard, Sixth Doctor (Doctor Who)
Additional Tags: Flash Fic, Ficlet, Tumblr Prompt, Kissing, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Humor
Summary: Six/Charley, kiss as a lie.


Tears, Ghosts, and Hope (111 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who (2005)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Twelfth Doctor/River Song
Characters: Twelfth Doctor, Data Ghost River Song
Additional Tags: Ficlet, Flash Fic, Prompt Fill, Missing Scene, Episode: s10e12 The Doctor Falls, Regeneration (Doctor Who), Death, Ghosts, Kissing, Vignette
Summary: River Song/Twelfth Doctor, kiss on a falling tear.

I did a writing meme using the Genremixer a couple of weeks ago on tumblr and have now done the first prompt - from persiflage_1 for "Silver/Antimony/Osmium – the little things" and also for genprompt_bingo square "Watching helplessly."

Why Don't You... (1539 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Silver (S&S), Osmium (Sapphire and Steel), Antimony (Sapphire and Steel)
Additional Tags: Genremixer prompt, Community: genprompt_bingo, Elemental Weirdness, original elements, 1980s, Television
Summary: ... switch off your television set and go and do something less boring instead?

Three Elements on an assignment seems like overkill, but maybe there's a reason.

(And I apologise for the title. I just couldn't quite stop myself.)

I had a lovely day yesterday (am v tired now!) - and also had two amazing stories when yuletide went live:

Bestride the Narrow World (2502 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Welcome to Our Village Please Invade Carefully (BBC Radio)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Katrina Lyons & Lucy Alexander
Characters: Katrina Lyons, Lucy Alexander, Uljabaan, Richard Lyons, Margaret Lyons
Additional Tags: book clubs, References to Shakespeare, alien invasions
Summary: Roped into leading a book club for the Geosin minions, Katrina finds her literary choices intersecting with life in the Cresdon Green Resistance.

Somebody wrote me WtOVPIC! I grinned a lot throughout. It's absolutely pitch perfect in every way and therefore delightful - what more could I ask for?

Oh, and except for also this:

Don't Get Attached (10172 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Silver & Ruby (S&S), Sapphire/Silver/Steel (background)
Characters: Silver (S&S), Ruby (S&S), Sapphire (S&S), Steel (S&S), Original Character
Additional Tags: Yuletide 2021, Illnesses, Implied/Referenced Child Death, Elemental Weirdness, Domesticity, Existential Dread, Ambiguous/Open Ending
Summary: Really, when it comes down to it, isn't an accurate enough simulation just as good as the real thing?

In which Ruby steals a human – and Silver watches, and waits, and worries.

Basically, take one usually heart-warming and fluffy trope, apply elements to it, and come out with a thing of slowly creeping dread and wrongness leading to inevitable horror/bleakness, plus the lightness of an engaging Silver-voice and a little redeeming coda with the three of them. Amazing, in short.


I think I may have been double assigned, or just possibly it was the same person, as they both say they were very happy to get this fandom/assignment! (If double-assigned, I want the same again next year, please, this was amazing, lol.)


I hope everyone else Yuletiding also had good fortune, and that everyone celebrating had a lovely day (and if not celebrating, well, it is at least nearly all over now). ♥

This was actually the first thing I wrote on listening to Welcome to Our Village Please Invade Carefully, because obv. 5 + 1 times multi-crossover fic is how I show my love, even if by default nobody else will want to know! (No spoilers, though, for anything, really, if anyone's curious.)

Sending Out An SOS to the World (3421 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Welcome to Our Village Please Invade Carefully (BBC Radio), Sapphire and Steel, Doctor Who (2005), Cabin Pressure, The Librarians (TV 2014), Good Omens (TV), Red Dwarf (UK TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Richard Lyons, Silver (S&S), Lucy Alexander, Dave Lister, Mrs Leeson (Welcome to Our Village), Ezekiel Jones, Jenkins | Galahad (The Librarians), Douglas Richardson, Patrick (Welcome to Our Village), Margaret Lyons, Crowley (Good Omens), Katrina Lyons, Uljabaan (Welcome to Our Village), Eleventh Doctor
Additional Tags: Crossover, Humor, 5 Times, 5+1 Things, No Spoilers, Micro alien invasions, References to Drugs
Summary: Force fields don’t keep everybody out. They attract some kinds of people, even...

First three bits of fluff and nonsense for the prompts meme:

Ties That Bind (541 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sapphire & Silver & Steel (S&S)
Characters: Sapphire (S&S), Silver (S&S), Steel (S&S)
Additional Tags: Ficlet, Prompt Fic
Summary: "I'm not leaving you."

Every Silver Lining Has Its Cloud (204 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who (2005)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Graham O'Brien
Characters: Thirteenth Doctor, Graham O'Brien
Additional Tags: Ficlet, Humor, Prompt Fic, Imprisonment
Summary: “It could be worse.”

Hedging Your Bets (416 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Department S & Jason King
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Annabelle Hurst & Jason King & Stewart Sullivan
Characters: Annabelle Hurst, Jason King, Stewart Sullivan (Department S)
Additional Tags: Ficlet, Humor, Fluff, Prompt Fic
Summary: "This is without doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had. Of course I’m in.”

I'm very tired (again) but I should mention fandomtrees, which went live all of 3 days ago. Under mine, I found:

* 3 Janeway icons from kingstoken

* liadt gave me some actual non-blurry pics of James Maxwell in the burninated Nigel Kneale TV play The Road here and also lovely fanart for the coffee shop bit of the AU Meme for Silver (& Liz Shaw).

* A lovely selection box of Blake's 7 icons from zephron1, so I need to decide which one(s) to use. I think I must find space for the Vila & Servalan one at the very least!

* and last but by no means least, hamsterwoman made me some great B7 quote icons in revenge repayment for me being the cause of them watching it earlier this year.

So, it was good fun. I did not manage to do much, but I did make zephron1 some Gan & Vila icons and recced some happy vids for, er, someone else. (I'm sorry, it was three days ago and I was randomly looking through the recs tag at the last minute for someone I could make a rec list for. I would know the entry again if I saw it!)

I finally managed to do my last bit of editing and send my intoabar fic to persiflage_1 to beta, and here it is. Also written for genprompt_bingo square "Imprisonment."

Locks and Keys (1903 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel, Once Upon a Time (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Silver (S&S), Evil Queen | Regina Mills
Additional Tags: Community: intoabar, Crossover, Vague references to assignment six, During Evil Queen | Regina Mills's First Dark Curse, Cursed Storybrooke (Once Upon a Time)
Summary: Silver travels from one unreal diner to another.

I was originally thinking of setting this pre-S7 (during the Hyperion Heights curse) but then it occurred to me that the original curse actually puts Storybrooke on Earth not very long after S&S finished, and then it all came together.

(I'm stupidly amused at "Cursed Storybrooke" as a tag, because obviously that is a useful fandom freeform, but also LOL.)

So, I was feeling really flat and tired again yesterday and today, so yesterday I made a historical gifset with Copper and Silver (which I'd been talking about wanting to do to theseatheseatheopensea) here on tumblr.

( Cut for giffage )

And today I thought I would do another OC Element, and finally found the perfect one for Dennis Alaba Peters (who was in Department S and I've been wanting to use him, partly because he was actually an opera singer and has a splendid voice, which always helps) - here's Carbon, or a potential Carbon anyway:

( Cut for largish elemental graphic )

Anyway, maybe it's a bit too Sir Curtis-like, but imagining him as sort of senior element who wanders in and out vaguely and casually sorts things while being surprised other Elements found it difficult. ("Ah, Steel. Not still having trouble regulating your temperature, are you? I thought you fixed that half a century ago!")

The tumblr post is somewhere in the queue, but it'll turn up here in time.

I managed ages ago to write two ficlets, courtesy of the Unconventional Courtship generator, for john_amend_all's birthday which was *mumble mumble* ago. I finally managed one more, so here goes. Crack is probably the only way to deal with rl right now anyway.

Belated happy birthday, John!

( Three unconventional ficlets under here + bonus summaries )

Various icons made for iconcolors (for the last 2 palettes) and iconthat (for the Bingo challenge), including Doctor Who, Dracula (TV 2006), Sapphire & Steel, Spooks, Once Upon a Time & Poldark (1975). (Minus one posted to iconthat which is also part of my ongoing plan to icon Doctor Who using the lyrics of What About Everything.)



( I like to think there's not an institution in the country that's safe from me )

Someone wrote me a lovely sapphire & Steel ficlet for the historium commentfest (with Silver in the 18th C):

The phantom bird (633 words) by 35391291
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Silver (S&S)
Additional Tags: 18th Century, Elemental Weirdness, Time Skips, Historium Commentfest 2019
Summary: The bird looks at him sharply, with unblinking eyes. Suddenly, the world seems to shake. The invisible cloud seems to cover everything in its path, and the air whispers wrong, wrong, wrong. The bird shrieks, calling up an old, evil feeling. Its phantom song seems to unhinge the quiet afternoon and the world and time itself.

Silver ends up in West Drayton on a Sunday. Or perhaps, a Friday. Cue time skips, a strange bird, and some very clever sleight of hand.


Also, unrelated, but I started looking at the Hallucinations tag on AO3 for my hc_bingo March challenge thing, and saw a work with around 390 tags... which was apparently a 600+ word poem. lol. Fandom. I mean, at least it wasn't just a 40 word prologue, I suppose.

This morning, I woke to find an excellent new Sapphire & Steel fic in the Past Imperfect collection, and then had cause to mention the series to a flister. This must mean today's thing I love is going to have to be Sapphire and Steel.

And since there's been no easily available fandom primer anyway since eponymous_rose tragically locked down their journal and with it the best ever S&S intro, I may as well go full on manifesto here. Because Sapphire & Steel is a very odd series that is not going to be to everyone's taste, but it is truly amazing and original and worth trying if you have any interest in TV SF and a reasonable amount of patience for old time TV.

(I used/adapted some text and pics from an old manifesto for het_reccers on LJ, which is why they have a Photobucket logo on. Sorry about that.)


“There is a corridor. And the corridor is time. It surrounds all things and it passes through all things. You cannot enter into time, but sometimes time can enter into the present… break in and take things. Take people…" (Sapphire, Assignment 1)

S&S starred Joanna Lumley and David McCallum and ran from 1979-1982 (on ITV, aka The Other Channel, not the BBC), and while there are only 34x 25min episodes, broken down into six serials, known as "Assignments," it's been highly influential in much SF that's been made since. It was created by PJ Hammond, who'd written for Ace of Wands (UK 1970s fantasy children's series) and would later write two episodes for Torchwood, but is still most famous for Sapphire & Steel. It has the slow pace and low budget values of much British TV of the time - but takes the clever approach of turning both into virtues in a way that can still unsettle modern viewers.



All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic, heavy elements may not be used where there is life. Medium atomic weights are available: Gold, Lead, Copper, Jet, Diamond, Radium, Sapphire, Silver and Steel. Sapphire and Steel have been assigned.

The first rule of S&S is mystery. We don't know who or what Sapphire and Steel are. We know that they're not human, that they have strange powers (including telepathy) and that they are sent by a higher authority to intervene on our behalf against Time, which in the S&S universe is a malevolent force using any means it can to break free and wreak havoc. And by any means, we here mean paintings, photographs, clocks, pillows, motorway service stations, flowers and nursery rhymes. Everything is a potential "trigger" or threat.

PJ Hammond has said in interviews that he has no idea what Sapphire and Steel are, or where they came from. “It’s part of the mystery, not to know… Not knowing has never bothered me.” And: “I don’t think that Sapphire & Steel were ever human in the basic sense. … I think they come closer to representing the spirit and the soul.”

The Guiness Book of TV once summed it up by saying something like "There are many ways to hold a TV audience. Complete lack of explanation is not supposed to be one of them..." And yet, with S&S, it works. And, as you can tell, I love it.

So, basically, that's it. You can already go read the fanfic or run off to YouTube/place you obtain DVDs to watch it. Congratulations!

The main caveat (apart from "it's old TV, it is very static and often beige") is that it originally started as a children's show, and the trappings of that are still apparent in "Assignment 1" so be patient with the two child guest stars etc., as it will only get better from here. (I could advise you to start elsewhere, but you'd miss Lead and the only kind of explanation of the series we ever get, so it's best to give it a go and only skip it if you really can't be doing with the child actors.)

( More pics and much continued lack of explanation and some flailing and fic recs under the cut )