Beyond the Roundels

I'd finished this before going to the doctor's, but it needed another round of editing first. This is a belated birthday fic for john_amend_all, which I hope will be acceptable!

I was looking back at my Unconventional Courtship tag when I was going to do my usual ficlets, and found a Lucie/Clara summary John had left me once, and it turned into this. (It also hits a few bingo squares and things, but that's incidental.)

Snowbound (2404 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Lucie Miller/Clara Oswald
Characters: Lucie Miller, Clara Oswin Oswald
Additional Tags: 500 prompts, community: 100ships, Only One Bed, Non-Linear Narrative, Fix-It of Sorts, character death for clara splinter death (minor), and mentions of canon character deaths, Community: trope_bingo, Community: genprompt_bingo, Huddling For Warmth, Post-Audio 04.10: To The Death, Post-Episode: s09e11 Heaven Sent, Snow, Regency, Blackpool - Freeform
Summary: Lucie and Clara keep running into each other, but it's only the right time when it's too late.

(I should also thank persiflage_1 for doing a beta for me, but I wound up altering it quite a lot after that, so must also note that all subsequent errors are entirely my own fault!)

So, since bingos and prompt tables seem to have been the way to go for me lately, I thought I'd give trope_bingo another go, and got a pretty good card, actually. (I've amended the capslock to lower case, because I'm weird like that and it makes me feel happier somehow.)

Telepathy/ Mind meld	Everyone thinks we're a couple	First time/last time	Secret relationship	Team Spirit
Fluff	AU: Magic	AU: Historical	All fun and games	AU: Royalty/Aristocracy/Feudal
Never say never	Forbidden fruit	FREE SPACE	Bets/Wagers	Unexpected friendship
AU: Space	AU: Demon/ghost/monster hunters	Presumed dead	Huddle for Warmth	AU: Alternate Professions
Sharing a bed	Transformations	Secret twin/Doppelganger	AU: Celebrities	Road trip

(The AU ones can be AU, or just the thing itself, so that's also helpful.)

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...

One last trope_bingo fic! Yes, it's dodgy AAL! sex pollen fic, because somebody had to do it. Even if it probably should have been someone other than me. Although, I do love the fact that the sex pollen plot is in no way any less ridiculous or improbable than most of the actual plots. (<3)

Make Love, Not War (3764 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Adam Adamant Lives!
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Adam Adamant/Georgina Jones
Characters: Georgina Jones, Adam Adamant, William E. Simms
Additional Tags: Sex Pollen, 1960s, Dubious Consent, Community: trope_bingo
Summary: It was the decade of free love, after all. This sort of thing was practically inevitable at some point . . .

And another now-edited trope_bingo fic, this time one that was also written from an idea given me in a meme by calliopes_pen:


Spiritual Awakening (3474 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dracula (TV 1968)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Abraham Van Helsing & John Seward
Characters: Abraham Van Helsing, John Seward
Additional Tags: Community: trope_bingo, Demonic Possession, Hypnotism, Victorian, Pre-Canon
Summary: Van Helsing’s experiments with hypnotism take an expected turn from the scientific to the supernatural…

The return of that meme where you post random lines from any WIPs you have at the moment, because I felt like it.

(I see that I last did it in Jan 2016, which reminds me, I never did post that AAL! snippet as it stands. I should do that.)


( More bondage, vampires, and fatal disasters under here )


That's four out of eight which are still the same old WIPs (and three from the previous post which I did complete in the meantime), but, to be fair, I keep writing and finishing other things in the meantime. I mean, I have trope_bingo to finish and then I can destroy worlds for tic_tac_woe! (I won't say nothing in the world can stop me, because some days it seems that just about anything in the world can stop me, especially in summer.)

So, after I started feeling a little better a couple of weeks ago, I gradually picked up some things I'd already finished/nearly finished and started poking at them & as a result have posted most of them in the appropriate places, but not linked here.

1. A Ruth Evershed Character Manifesto (Spooks) for het_reccers (containing 13 recs, much blathering about the greatness of Ruth and ships and possible ships, plus some pics and gifs). (I've been chipping away at this for at least a year now.)


2. I looked at my dw_guestfest WIP and found it was much more complete and okay than I'd thought and tidied it up. It's here:

Self-Made Man (956 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who (1963)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: The Kandyman & Gilbert M
Characters: Gilbert M (Doctor Who), The Kandyman (Doctor Who)
Additional Tags: Serial: s149 The Happiness Patrol, Backstory, Canonical Character Death, Community: dw_guestfest, Community: trope_bingo
Summary: "Close to the Kandyman, were you?" / "I made him." Gilbert M and the Kandyman.


3. Someone reminded me that I once wrote a crossover fic for intoabar, which at the time I defaulted on due to being too ill to cope with the editing from my beta. I poked around my memory stick full of fic and found it and the beta-notes (which weren't actually difficult; I was just that ill back then) and posted that too:

Bar-Room Brawl (2512 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Downton Abbey, Doctor Who (1963)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Tegan Jovanka, Tom Branson, Fifth Doctor, Vislor Turlough
Additional Tags: Crossover, Community: intoabar, Walk Into A Bar, Aliens, Fights, 1920s
Summary: Tegan Jovanka walks into a bar… and meets Tom Branson!


4. And then I did manage to finish typing up a thing for runaway_tales, which is also filling a square for trope_bingo (au: historical), and I think most things are now at least back to my usual sort of hit and miss abilities. \o/

Midnight Escapade (All ages, 1905 words. Edward Iveson/Julia Graves, Christy Graves, Amyas Harding.) It's a gratuitous Regency AU that I wrote at Christmas when I was reading too many terrible Regency romances.

I have a trope_bingo table! (I made it go lower case - so much better!)

( Table under here )

Apart from the fact I completely missed "bodyswap" on the lists (I would have put it on my opt outs otherwise), that is a pretty great card. There's a pointless fic I've been tempted to write lately that would fill one of those squares, so now I will just have to write it, obviously. And other things. Yes! It's a nice card. (Although, having just done a whole Hurt/Comfort bingo card & thinking I should do trope bingo for a change, I'm LOL-ing at my very first square being hurt/comfort.)

In the summer, when things were terrible, I wound up, mostly by way of wrangling, listening slowly to all five series of the BBC Radio comedy Bleak Expectations, which was one of the few things that cheered me up. Somewhere in the middle, my over-heated brain produced this, which I finally decided to type up for trope_bingo. It isn't spoilery, but probably defies explanation, so just ignore me... (And, no, it didn't have David Collings in it. It had Anthony Head and Celia Imrie, though, and it was very funny.)

Title: An Absolutely True And In No Way Fabricated Account of the Difficult, Dangerous and Entirely Improbable Invention of the Biscuit
Author: lost_spook
Rating: All ages
Word Count: 910 words
Characters/Pairings: Sir Philip Bin
Notes/Warnings: Pre-Series. If you haven’t ever heard BBC Radio’s Bleak Expectations, this is fandom appropriate ridiculousness, not merely out of my head. If you haven’t, no spoilers follow, merely a lot of nonsense.
Summary: A true and faithful tale of the invention of the biscuit by the father of Harry Biscuit, with some partial account of the effects of the controversial 1784 Landscaping Act, as set down by the famous novelist and inventor, Sir Philip Bin, in his own hand.

For trope_bingo square “against all odds”, though somehow, I don’t think this was quite how the trope was meant to go, but I claim fair use. ;-p (Sir Philip's opinions, as I hope you already know, are parodic and very much not my own.)

( A true and faithful tale... )

Title: Chance Encounter
Author: lost_spook
Rating: All ages/PG
Word Count: 2859
Characters/Pairings: Nat Webber, Tilly Holmes, Brigadier Winifred Bambera, Ancelyn (Nat/Tilly, Bambera/Ancelyn)
Notes/Warnings: A coda of sorts for 1980s UNIT. 1997
Summary: Why is it, when UNIT is involved, lunch always means something trying to eat you rather than the other way round?

For jjpor in the 500 Prompts Meme - Prompt 397: It was many and many a year ago – Nat/Tilly (1980s UNIT, DW). Also very belated (or just possibly very very early) birthday fic!

Plus, it fits the trope_bingo “Reunion” square.

( Chance Encounter )

For the crossover square at trope_bingo. I'm not sure where this came from, except I think somebody somewhere said something about Lix Storm and River Song, and then this happened. It was meant to be all 21st Century fandoms, for a change, but inevitably with me, it didn't end up that way.

Possibly Not In Chronological Order (or Five Times River Song Flirted With Danger) (2325 words) by lost_spook
Fandom: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (1963), Once Upon a Time (TV), The Hour, Spooks | MI-5, Sapphire and Steel
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Relationships: Regina Mills/River Song, Romana II/River Song, River Song/Lix Storm, Ros Myers/River Song, Sapphire (Sapphire and Steel)/River Song
Characters: River Song, Evil Queen | Regina Mills, Romana II, Ros Myers, Lix Storm, Sapphire (Sapphire and Steel)
Summary: River doesn’t know any ordinary people, either.

Also on Teaspoon. No spoilers for the crossover fandoms (to the very best of my knowledge). Whether they therefore all make sense is another matter.

Title: The Cat, the Mouse and the Wardrobe
Author: lost_spook
Rating: All ages
Word Count: 1929
Characters/Pairings: Sapphire, Silver, Lead
Notes/Warnings: Pre-series, 1760s.
Summary: Completing an assignment is far more complicated when you’ve been forced to change shape.

For trope_bingo Transformations square and 100 Element Prompts #4 sapphire & silver & lead - Crackfic & Physical transformation. (I should probably apologise for turning Silver into a mouse again, but if you’re going to turn Lead, Sapphire and Silver into different domestic animals, how else is that going to go?)

( The Cat, the Mouse, and the Wardrobe )