Beyond the Roundels

So, tardis_library is doing it's annual Reccer's Bingo challenge until September, so it really is Bingo Season, as now I have a card for the purposes of reccing Whoniverse works:

Crime & punishment	Companion	Mind games	Stories	Gallifrey
Outsider POV	Rare Pairing	Sharing a bed	Fashion	Epistolary
Romance	Children	WILD CARD	War & peace	Hopes & fears
Quest	Locked in/trapped	First time/last time	Missing Moment	Runaways
Spies/secret agents	Mystery	Master	Rift	Noodle incident

I've been really bad at reccing lately, but hopefully I can pull myself together enough to manage five over 3 months! (I think it's just mainly been that "The Timeless Children" whatever else it was, was rather a deathblow to DW fandom on Dreamwidth, and that makes reccing seem unfairly pointless, plus the mod is me, so that always feels like it's all fake. That and the 6-8 months I spent not being able to look at any DW things at all, of course, even if that has now passed and I DO have things to rec again, so I should. :-/)

I may not be around so much, but everyone else suddenly seems really busy...

* intoabar has finally reappeared... in summer when it's no use at all! But it's fun, and I can recommend signing up if you like a fun crossover challenge.

* remixrevival has opened for sign-ups! Remix is my one summer thing I do, as it usually works out, and I love Remix too much not to try. I'll wait till nearer the 20th to do it, though, just in case the weather is awkward, and see how I am. (There's such a fascination with trying to pull out something from the bones of someone else's fic to play with, and seeing someone else give your own fic that same attention and pull unexpected things out of it. Sort of terribly navel-gazey, I suppose, but great fun and there's usually some amazing fic.)

* There's a mid-year equivalent of the Snowflake Challenge going on - the sunshine_challenge, with a challenge every other day (starting yesterday).

* trope_bingo has opened for its latest round, too.

* Plus, tardis_library is having a reccing bingo.

I posted my Seventh Doctor era manifesto, such as it is, over at tardis_library!


Now, excuse me, I have an hc_bingo fic I might still have a reasonable chance of finishing tomorrow if I go and do some typing now...

Still catching up!

Day 5

In your own space, promote three communities, challenges, blogs, pages, Twitters, Tumblrs or platforms and explain why you love them. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Some comms of my own:

tardis_library - a Doctor Who reccing comm, made as a successor (but different from) the lovely calufrax (now inactive, but with an amazing backlist that is still one of the best ways to get at gems from the Teaspoon Archive) - recs from all corners of the Whoniverse, posted anywhere, and in any media format. I'm so pleased with how this has taken off - more people & more recs are always welcome!


historium which I have just set up as a central hub for all history fandoms, whether RPF or fictional to meet, post stuff, or use as a launching pad to set up more specific comms. It's had a great beginning & I need to get back to it once I am a little more recovered.


tic_tac_woe or Apocabingo - a panfandom mini bingo challenge (using a tic tac toe 3x3 card) with all apocalyptic prompts! No deadlines, just sign up for a card & then end worlds/countries etc. or save them as you wish. (Fictionally, obviously.)


who_allsorts - as an extra, because I meant to only include three, but I've a soft spot for this one. It's another Doctor Who community - an old-school prompt table with claiming, but with bite-sized tables. You can sign up for up to two at once and claims are very flexible (anyone can make the same claim, pairings/characters/eras/themes are all accepted, so you can choose how wide or narrow to make it). I created it with the object of enabling more DW content of all kinds, and I still think the prompt tables are very pretty!


Not-by-me communities:

hc_bingo - still my favourite bingo, despite frequently being terrified by the prompts! It's very flexible about interpretation of prompts, and fills can be comfort, or hurt, or hurt/comfort as you please, and any fanworks are eligible. It runs once a year, but there are fun amnesty challenges and you only need to create one fanwork a year to stay eligible for the next round. It's been the perfect excuse to write a lot of things, and I've really enjoyed the Amnesty challenges when I've taken part. (Which are open to anyone if that works for you better than a bingo.)


fic_rush - we need to sort ourselves out for another round soon, but this 48 hour actual ficathon (i.e. writing marathon) has been a wonderful supportive & social ingredient of my journalling life ever since I first plucked up the courage to join. There are ninja penguins, alien fish, glowsticks, and writerly pasta and attempts at galactic domination, but you don't have to worry about that. I mean, until and unless the penguins get you...


I enjoy recs and reccing comms, the main two of which I follow here are fancake (though I never can get myself together to post for a theme) and gensplosion for gen recs (which I have recced for, but am bad at doing), both of which have led me to some excellent fic, and both of which are panfandom.


There are so many comms I like! Here are, quickly, some more:

who_at_50 (general DW comm, despite the name)

Bingos - ladiesbingo, trope_bingo, allbingo and genprompt_bingo. (Of these I particularly like genprompt_bingo (which takes any kind of fills, despite the name, it's just that the prompts are gen prompts) but they're all good in their different ways.)

Icons - iconthat, icontalking, icon_library, icons10in20, icons & fandom_icons. (A mix of challenge and general posting comms.)


Which is probably enough from me, but I still like comms. And that's even before we get to all the exchanges or my other comms I run or co-mod...

1. Thank you for all being v nice when I was all hopeless the other day! It helped, and now I at least just feel rotten in the usual way again, so that is okay. :-)


2. swordznsorcery wrote one of my Obscure & British prompts (Blake's 7/Star Wars, Jenna Stannis & Han Solo, so who's the fastest smuggler/pilot this side of the galaxy?) - Never A Dull Minute and it's great!


3. A thing I meant to mention before and forgot, but it has been one of the best things about the last few months: tardis_library is (as most of the DW side here know anyway) up and running and working! It has been a lot of fun to have something nice to mod, discover new vids/art/fic via recs and share things and see other people like them. (It is also, btw, by no means too late to sign up for a reccing bingo card, especially if, like me, you often need a push to actually rec things. Or just enjoy the idea, of course.) I hope people will continue to do so. The bingo and monthly themes do seem to help, I think.

Anyway, it exists and people who are not me rec on it. (Btw, eve11, you were in the reccing lead, but I have now beaten you. *waggles eyebrows in deliberate challenge*) So, yay. And thanks very much to everyone who helped promote it originally!

1. tardis_library seems to be starting off well, so I am pleased! I've nearly finished all my pimping now, you'll be relieved to know (sorry!) - but if anyone who hasn't already and is into Doctor Who or knows a few people who are could still pimp it on their journal or anywhere else that seems appropriate, I'll be very grateful! c+p banner coding here for LJ/Dreamwidth:

<center><a href=https://tardis-library.dreamwidth.org/><img src=https://i.imgur.com/Eq0otJw.png></a></center>

With even more thanks to anyone who is kind enough to reblog this tumblr post for it. (The couple of people who have - thank you, it made a big difference. It's just there's no way for me to do the rounds myself there and I am entirely reliant on other people reblogging, so any help there is marvellous. thank you thank you.)


2. I don't know if it's a new Freeview channel, or just one that my TV Guide has deigned to cover now or what, but there's a channel full of very old films called Talking Pictures, which has just provided me with some more Margaret Lockwood in the shape of Hungry Hill (1947), an adaptation of a Daphne du Maurier book (from the days when Daphne du Maurier was still around to help with the scripting). I'm now nearly through it, and some more Margaret Lockwood being headstrong in big frocks has been very welcome!

Tomorrow, I see that it will be showing The Wicked Lady (and no doubt some other days this week), so, if you are also in the UK and want to see Margaret Lockwood and James Mason galloping about being highwaymen you should watch. It is not quite as fab as The Lady Vanishes obv. but it is excellent OTT melodrama with cross-dressing and villainy and shenanigans and also the lovely Patricia Roc. (Plus it's clearly the inspiration for a lot of the DW ep "The Woman Who Lived" too. Watching them close together is quite the experience.)

Via tumblr, some pics of Margaret Lockwood in Hungry Hill, big frocks v much included.

(And Drama are also starting showing Juliet Bravo from tomorrow (an early 1980s series about a female police officer policing Up North (but not pretty like All Creatures)). I like having my terrible elderly-TV/film watching habits enabled like this. I don't remember the early series(es) so well as the later ones with Anna Carteret, but I think Chris Boucher was script editor for 1 or 2 or the early ones, so naturally, I'm interested, especially in any eps he wrote for it. (I'll check IMBD).)