Beyond the Roundels

What better than a quick and daft AO3 meme for a small distraction? I swiped this one from astrogirl.

Rules: give us the links to your fics with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fic with the fewest words.

Most hits: Not Bad For A First Attempt (G, 200 words, The Convenient Marriage) with 4,143 hits.

I'm never absolutely sure if this hit count is genuine or if it's one of the tiny handful of works that got hit by that weird hit-count bug ages ago (the actual top on my stats definitely is, so I always have to ignore it), but this one has similar kudos numbers to its nearest neighbours in the stats, so I think it's genuine. Anyway, I wrote this double drabble very hastily because one time early on in my AO3 wrangling days, back when you could do this, I accidentally canonised Heyer's The Convenient Marriage and then realised it had no works. So I wrote a quick post-canon double drabble and voila! It's continued to get a silly amount of hits ever since.


2nd most kudosed: it's the rain that will strengthen your soul (Teen, 10,926 words. Star Wars, Obi-Wan/Padme, post- RotS Padme Lives AU, for Space Swap 2020.) - Fast catching up on Miss Marple (yes, don't worry, she's still top for now), is this one, which I would agree, is probably the best of that whole epic SW Prequels patch I went through in 2020. It was the best fic to write in Lockdown, a lovely gift to be able to give, and obv I can see faults, but still. I'm happy with this.


3rd most comment threads: By the Book (Original, Teen, 5863 words, Demon/Librarian, for Het Swap 2018.) (Top most is still Miss Marple here too.)

Aww, so delighted that people still like this one. It is one of the things I remain the most pleased with, and it's such a compliment when it's Original fic with no particular reason to pull people in outside of the original exchange. I suppose people might be reading through the Libraries tag? Anyway, every so often people still find it. <3


4th most bookmarks: i love the rose both red and white (Teen, 8070 words, Shadow of the Tower, Henry VII/Elizabeth of York, 5 times canon divergence, for Yuletide 2018.) (Miss Marple is no longer top here.) I'm also pretty happy with this one, barring the fact that unfortunately I don't think the recip liked it, which does make me feel guilty about still otherwise being pleased with it. At least it was only a treat!


Most words: UNIT: Strange Weapons ( Teen, 34,661 words. DW, Winifred Bambera, Colonel Crichton, Sarah Jane Smith, OCs.)

Leaving out collections, this is the longest single work, although as it's one of only 2 of the 1980s UNIT stories I've actually transferred over to AO3, it feels fake here as the longest - there were two of that series that were twice as long again, and more. Of 'real' works - i.e. written since I actually had an AO3 account, it's really The Poison Tree (27,259 words for Dracula 1968 for Yuletide 2016.)


Shortest: I have a whole bunch of drabbles, which were all 100 words exactly in Word back in the day, so I reject the notion that any of them are actually shorter, but there are two AO3 puts (wrongly) at 98 - Reprise (DW, Jo Grant/Benton, which was part of a joke series of random AU marriages - i.e. just as random as the characters' actual marriages, so...) and Get to the Point (Four & Leela, for dw100 back in the day.)

Thank you again to both edwardianspinsteraunt and WyvernQuill, who between them wrote my three amazing gifts! \o/ (I have read them now, and they were indeed just as wonderful as they looked.)

I haven't read more than halfway through the collection on mere first pickings, though, because while I have two things in the collection, I very nearly made it to three but failed on Christmas Eve, and spent the little energy of that kind I had trying to fix the third all week. It was at that sort of stage to drive me wild not to be able to do so. Anyway, for better or for worse, it is posted now, and I'll link to it here separately later, but it was for The Winslow Boy, for edwardianspinsteraunt.


I was assigned The Shadow of the Tower (!!) for misura, who had once written me a Madness treat for this canon and the same characters (Henry VII & John de la Pole Earl of Lincoln) which I have treasured ever since, so I was pretty delighted to be able to return the favour. I had this idea pretty much straight away, although it took a while to work out and be well enough to type up. I worried a bit over the ending (involving a slightly different take on a canonical death) and kept checking their DNWs (and each time, no, they still had not DNWed death, heh) and am so relieved that not only did they leave me a lovely comment before I even got to the collection on the 25th, but they absolutely got what I was going for in that section.

And thanks to persiflage_1 for the beta, as ever!

that strange unmerciful tyrant (2256 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Shadow of the Tower
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Henry VII of England & John de la Pole Earl of Lincoln, Henry VII of England/John de la Pole Earl of Lincoln
Characters: Henry VII of England, John de la Pole Earl of Lincoln
Additional Tags: Battle of Stoke, 15th Century, Loyalty, Rebellion, Trust Issues, Dreams, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, (that goes slightly differently), Episode: e04 The Crowning of Apes
Summary: John of Lincoln knows what he wants - the throne of England. His heart might have other ideas.


I also wanted to write some treats if I had time, maybe some ficlets for Madness, as there were a few requests I eyed up, especially The Winslow Boy (which along with the SotT request, was the other thing I'd have been most happy to get assigned to), and The Time Master trilogy maybe, or The Net (1995).


I did write TWB, but typed it up second - I knew if I didn't attempt The Net treat now I never would, while I was clearly going to write something for TWB sooner or later now. Anyway, so even though the very morning I typed it up I had decided that I simply couldn't do it, somehow nevertheless I wrote the first Jack/Angela fic for unhindered_dreams because the foe!yay needed to exist, and apparently I had to write it myself, dammit. ;-p

(Some of their other prompts were so funny, too, though. I think "Canon, but soulmates" made me laugh the hardest, because I'm not into soulmates as a rule, but "worst possible soulmate except yes actually in some ways they genuinely are" is amazing. As was "following your boyfriend's trail of dead bodies" even if canon is more "you can tell your boyfriend is following you because there's a trail of dead bodies behind you.")


it's the end of the world as we know it (4805 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Net (1995)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Angela Bennett/Jack Devlin (The Net 1995)
Characters: Angela Bennett (The Net 1995), Jack Devlin (The Net 1995)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies, Dubious Consent, Mild Gore, Foe Yay, Enemies, enemies with benefits maybe?, Apocalypse, Swearing
Summary: The end of days happens while Jack and Angela are out at sea. Things go differently.

With many thanks to sovay for the beta and US pick!

(The irony of me and Zombie Apocalypse fic is that I don't like really like zombie things, but somehow I like writing Zombie Apocalypse AUs a lot anyway, even if they usually feature more biscuits and team bonding than zombies, so this was comparatively zombie-heavy for me, but that's not saying much, lol.)


The one downside of my plans, other than not quite making it and exhausting myself at the same time (but what else is new) was that, due to foolishly writing treats that involved two different fictional Jeremy Northams, while waiting for Treat #1, I was, oh, maybe I could start on Treat #2 and then my brain for one moment tried to put Jack Devlin and Sir Robert Morton in the same place and broke into distressed pieces, so I took the wiser course of having a rest instead.

Pretty much the last thing I need right now is another bingo, but this idea from lyricaltitles was such a nice one I couldn't resist! There's no penalties, posting is from Sept-Dec, so maybe I can tie it into no_true_pair, and origfic is allowed, so I can always just use my rainbowfic entries. (You have to use a lyric from a song as specified in the prompt as the title for your fic. Min. 100 words.)

90's song	Nursery rhyme	Meme song	Angry song	Lyric with "love" or "hate"
Pre-1900 song	Romantic song	Last line of a song	Breakup song	00's song
War song	Song in a language other than English	FREE SPACE	Folk song	Lyric with "sleep" or "wake"
Pre-1950's song	Song with a title six or more words long	Chart-topper	80's song	Lyric with "red" "green" or "blue"
Fast song	First line of a song	Lyric with "remember" or "forget"	Song with a color in the title	Line from the chorus

It's been warm on and off for a few days, so that's made things difficult and cut down online time (still not about to electrocute myself to talk to you all) and I had several things I wanted to post and now they're lining up alarmingly. I don't want to put them all in one post, so here's a couple of fannish things to start off with:

1. When I linked to Sesskasays's reaction to Earthshock the other week, I mentioned that my main New Who reactor was getting close to Fish Fingers and Custard, and I just want to report that she enjoyed it! \o/ (JulesReacts; I like her reactions so far, and she's very unspoiled, so I'm really happy that she seems to be taking to Eleven so positively. I'm not surprised, but she was heartbroken over losing Ten and Donna, so I did worry. She also loved the little post-ep minisode.)


Talking of Sesska's reactions, she is now onto Arc of Infinity and her combo of New Who & some general show knowledge vs being very unspoiled for Classic Who delivered a pretty amusing reaction when she spotted Colin Baker straight away, but was still hoping Five and Nyssa would have a proper discussion about Tegan leaving. XD


2. no_true_pair's prompts are out! You can still sign up, though. You just need to do it before you look at the prompt post.

I had some fun results - I signed up with a Doctor Who list, a crossover list and a Starfall (OC) list. I didn't really know who to put with the latter, so it's not as good, but there's still a little thread that's come of it that I think I can pull at, so that's hopeful. But I managed to come up with quite a fun crossover list & a nice DW one. Idk if I can actually post anything, but I think I can at least write some things in rough and see. It was a cheering thing that helped me get through yesterday anyway, and it was worth it for that alone.

(I'll probably post them, or some of them, but the downside of being greedy enough to sign up with multiple lists is that it takes a while to add all the names in to the list if I want to show you.)

1. We have another trailer!



(Still generally crossing my everything. I don't trust RTD any more but... it does look shiny still!)


2. In gifmaking, I did make some more s1 gifs of Wish Me Luck and actually did some Liz and Matty ones as well as a bit more Colin:

( Hugging gifs )


3. I did actually write stuff for no_true_pair, so that was good, but only original (rainbowfic). I had ideas for that for the first 3 days, and then hoped to write 1-2 ficlets for the fannish prompts for the last couple, but I just wasn't feeling up to writing this week so much, so it didn't happen. I think the best thing for me to do is to ask for some more 500 Prompts from people again soon maybe. <3 But I did write things! So that was fun. (I don't really think I've found a good fannish strategy for the mini-round; the more random things tend to work better in the larger round.)


4. Other stuff I have forgotten? Please insert topic of interest here. ;-p

The usual writing meme for the year. (Last year's post is here.)

( Cut for length )

[Another post I (mostly) made earlier!]

And, as ever, the writing meme for the year. (Last year's post is here.)

( Cut for length )

It's that time of the year again! Last year's post is here.

( Cut for the annual meme/self-fulfilling prophecy )

A variation of several AO3 memes I haven't seen before, ganked from various people on my flist. Not that I've actually finished the Frankenstein meme yet, but I'll get back to that presently:

( Cut for memeage )

And, as ever, the writing meme for the year. (Last year's post is here.)

( Cut for length )

It's that time of the year again, or past it even. Last year's post is here.

( Annual AO3 Stats, possibly in part a self-fulfilling prophecy )

romanajo123 asked for Lines of dialogue you've written.

Which is a great question - and really hard to do! But in the end I came up with - probably fairly randomly - these, although I left it at six at the end. (Maths has never been my strong point.)

1. “Spike,” says Lynda, reaching him. “I still think you’re a self-righteous, low-down, narcissistic rat who was, incidentally, completely wrong about that article earlier – and, by the way, you don’t spell hypocrite as if it involves an actual hippo – but since you’re here, will you do something for me?”

“That depends, boss. That nice officer down at the station said we’d be having words if I helped you bury another body in the Gazette grounds. He said it might start looking suspicious.” Always a Wolf Maybe including fairly standard for Spike and Lynda dialogue is just cheating, though? This is probably the one that shouldn't be counted.


2. “Oh, what an interesting thought,” said the Doctor. “Do my clothes own to a faith, or a philosophy? I must ask them next time I’m doing the laundry.” from All the Hounds of Hell


3. “What if a clown comes to murder me in the night?”

“Then at least he won’t bother me.” from Persistence in Porcelain


4. “I have every right,” snarled the Doctor, in his ear. “And you will have a jelly baby, because that’s what your sort do, isn’t it?” He pressed the sweet into his hand, the boy taking it in a daze. He resumed his more usual tones: “You take the soft, and the innocent, the weak, and the ones that are green-coloured and different and you bite their heads off, and swallow them whole. Go on. Show me. This is something you’ll want to remember.” from Full Fathom Five (I worried about that line a lot, but eve11 liked it, and I trust their judgement a lot more than mine! I think they're probably right.)


5. “You must stop this at once, reverend! You see, this man is already married. In fact, he’s had several wives and he’s previously served a sentence for bigamy, after he deceived my poor mother. Goodness knows how many others there may have been. Isn’t that right, Mr John Smith?”

The Doctor marched towards the interloper. “Curses, I believe I’ve been foiled again. Yes, it’s true, vicar: I’m nothing but a shameless wretch who goes round entrapping unfortunate females into marriage and then running off with their worldly goods, trampling their hearts into the ground as I go. And I’m not in the least bit sorry, either.” Charley & Eight in Ten Times the Doctor (Almost) Got Hitched (Although how well it works if you don't know Eight and Charley is probably debatable.)


and one more for luck:

“Ridiculous?” said Romana. “You walked out onto a space ship and got married to a Marilyn Monroe lookalike with two hearts. You can’t talk to me about being ridiculous. It is the one thing you’re better at than me, after all.” from I Do, I Do, I Do (The Month of Sundays Remix)