Beyond the Roundels

I made this post mostly in February and prefaced it with: "Belated, and I'm still not through reading the collection yet, but a bunch so far. It's only, what, February? /o\" I must report, I am still not through reading the collection and likely never will be, but I should post this so other people can read the gems I have enjoyed (so far?) anyway:

( Recs in Adventure Series, A Civil Contract, Craddock & Co, Death in Paradise, The Detectorists, The Devil's Cub, Drop the Dead Donkey, Emma, Enemy at the Door, Ghosts (US), The Good Place, The Holiday, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, The Mabinogion, McDonald & Dodds, No Wind of Blame, North and South, The Winslow Boy, Welcome to Our Village Please Invade Carefully )

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.

More things, updating from the last report of things!

1. yuletide assignments have gone out! I have an excellent one, but obv no more can be said. Good luck to everyone else also starting the writing in secret portion of the Yuletide experience.


2. (a) Re. my resolution to Watch More Rattigan, which is progressing, or at least half progressing. I realised after making my last post about it, that such an animal as the BBC Rattigan Collection existed on DVD and was currently going too cheap not to snag, so I used lingering b'day/Christmas money.

Now it has arrived and it is mine, all mine! I have my mitts on not only ones I haven't seen but also the lovely 1976 BBC French Without Tears that YT provided the other week, and the Ian Holm and Judi Dench Browning Version that I haven't seen more than brief clips of since about 1993. \o/


(b) However, in the meantime, I looked at my Royal Exchange Theatre book to see if James Maxwell had directed or performed in a Rattigan play, and resolved that, if so, I would start with that one. It turned out that he did, directing While The Sun Shines (1943), a wartime comedy. I had a feeling this wasn't included in the BBC set, and I was right, so what I am doing currently is listening to a BBC 1969 Radio production via RadioEchoes of While the Sun Shines (also on YT). (Even the absence of the Internet Archive could not hinder my Rattiganisation.)

I think of the Rattigan productions I've experienced so far this is my least favourite, but given how stellar those have been, that is not really much criticism. I'm enjoying it, but I haven't got to the end, so I won't make any final judgments on the play itself yet, although it is more like French Without Tears than the later two. I am curious to know how it will wrap up, and it's not hard to see some of the aspects that might have interested James Maxwell as a director.

So far, though, Rattigan keeps making the hero sleep with other servicemen, for Reasons, and also the French Lt, talking about talking to people on trains, said that usually, When in Rome... so on English trains "I act as if I had died in my seat" which. Amazing. Accurate to this date. (Exceptions only in events on things going terribly wrong on the train, which was what happened to him.)


(c) YouTube noticed my interest, and threw me this little Part One of introduction to Rattigan by the National Theatre, which helpfully covered exactly the three plays I had seen. It's very short, but I really thought the director (directors?) talking about The Browning Version at the end (and calling it a perfect play ♥) absolutely got it. (And incidentally the photos they showed along with it suggested that the NT have done a version that had Anna Chancellor as Millie! With what looked like Nicholas Farrell, to me. Which made me go !!!!)


(d) And then also Talking Pictures turned out to be showing the film of Cause Celebre with Helen Mirren last night, which is another play not included on the BBC Boxset, so I recorded it. I feel like the world at large has just gone: at last! And is queuing up to shove three decades of long overdue Rattigan at me.

I will go slowly though and just watch one every so often as a treat. (WHICH PLAY NEXT THO???! XD)


(e) re. French Without Tears and my (now lapsed again) BNA subscription, I realised I'd claimed the 1987 one I had snagged a review of was directed by Sue Wilson, but actually I misremembered: she directed the next play Jeremy Northam did at Salisbury that year, and this one was by Lynn Wyfe. But The Stage did pause to vindicate my feeling that a v young JN would have been an ideal Kit Neilan, as the review singled him out for first praise: "Jeremy Northam produced all sorts of little tricks to make his portrayal of Kit Neilan touchingly appealing..." (although everyone else was good, too, they said.) Ha.


3. Talking my BNA sub, and finally escaping Rattigan's clutches for a moment, I did a quick search for my granddad's cousins, George & Bill Partleton, who were make-up artists on films, and retrieved this very random pic that should also please liadt, so I had to share it:

( Under here for pictorial evidence )

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.)

yuletide reveals have now happened, and I can admit that I wrote this five times fic for The Lady Vanishes (1938) for heartofwinterfell.

I did say when I signed up and swapped out S&S for TLV, that with two of us, surely one of us would get fic! I just overlooked the part where I might have to be the one to write it, which was the only drawback of this experience. I still didn't get TLV fic to read! lol

It was a particularly fun assignment, not only because TLV is a delight, but because while my recip and I apparently coincide fannishly on nothing else whatsoever, we share a love of TLV, a whole list of tropes/fic types and our DNWs were so near to being an exact match I laughed aloud when I saw them.

Overall I managed to write despite feeling dreadful all November yet again, not default, and even feel happy with the result, which is definitely an improvement on my last few Yuletides (for entirely me-related reasons). This feels a bit light, perhaps, but it isn't really, not underneath. I think it's partly because it was the no. 1 request I might have written as a treat because of the shared likes, so it felt sort of as if I'd only written a treat and not an assignment, but, of course, that is silly. The recip left a lovely comment and I even got a couple of others and a rec, so *\o/*

I did miss writing at least 1 treat, which I usually try to do, but I just could not. I'll take this one as a win anyhow.

you asked me how i knew (my true love was true) (2657 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Iris Henderson/Gilbert Redman
Characters: Iris Henderson, Gilbert Redman
Additional Tags: Yuletide, 1930s, Banter, 5 Times, Spies & Secret Agents, Hurt/Comfort, Humor, Fluff, Not entirely linear
Summary: Iris and Gilbert navigate a whirlwind romance (with musical accompaniment); or Five Tunes That Brought Them Together & One That Didn't.


I would also have loved to write the Modern AU or a Time Loop thing, because it is such fun and v freeing to find your recip has asked for those kinds of things, but I also adore five times, which is also a good way to write a decent fic when you're not feeling decent, and this happened. The only remaining element of some of the more random ideas I had is the pre-canon near-miss at the end.

Research was done, disappointing amounts of it did not end up in the fic, lol, but all the songs and lyrics quoted or referenced are real songs from around at the time or slightly earlier in the century.

With thanks, as ever, to persiflage_1 for being my trusty beta! (♥)

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?

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 )

1. The Yuletide tagset is live! Time to see which favourite tiny fandoms unexpectedly made it in...


2. The BBC are putting Classic Who on iPlayer, or some of it certainly, from Nov 1st to celebrate the 60th. If you're in the UK and want an easy way to check out old Doctors, now you have one!


3. S5 of BBC's Ghosts dropped last Friday. I meant to watch one a day, but as I finished it yesterday and started on Saturday, you can tell that that resolution held out. (It's only six eps! It was very sweet and funny as ever and then they made me cry again, damn their eyes! <3<3<3 I must remember to unblock the tag on tumblr again now I can no longer be spoiled.)

I wasn't very well for most of the week, although I'm beginning to feel a bit better again now, so my Yuletide reading got severely curtailed. However, reveals have happened and I can see who wrote my gifts, and ha. XD (I did have my suspicions...) Thanks lurking_latinist! The S&S one was by TheBigCat so you can see that I did indeed get very lucky all round (and do seem to have been, quite incestuously, double-assigned. *\o/*)

Anyway, as I said, I did manage to complete my assignment and to write a last minute treat - thanks to luthien for providing a fandom beta for the former and to persiflage_1 for helping me out speedily on Christmas Eve with the other!

My assignment:

Chance Is A Fine Thing (4254 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Snowdrift and Other Stories - Georgette Heyer, Hazard - Georgette Heyer
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Granville Carlington Marquis of Carlington/Helen Morland
Characters: Helen Morland, Granville Carlington Marquis of Carlington, Original Characters, Ralph Morland, Lionel Winter, Marmaduke Shapley
Additional Tags: Yuletide, Pre-Canon, Post-Canon, Regency, Pining, Weddings
Summary: Helen's luck was also in that night.

Last time I was assigned to write Heyer, it happened with an unfortunate combination of events that forced me to default, so I was especially pleased to complete this one. It's for one of Heyer's short stories, Hazard, which has always been my favourite out of those (and a lot of other people's, I think). mardia's request was great, and easy to put something together for (in my head, anyway). I went from feeling very smug about the first draft to realising Part 3 was extremely lacking in... uh, everything... and then spent a week, much later than should have been the case fixing it (Part 3 is everybody's favourite part, so far, it seems, so it was worth it! Originally NOTHING HAPPENED in that bit; I can't tell you why I thought that was a good idea.) Anyway, luthien said it was okay and the recip liked it, so I think it must have turned out all right! (I got NO other comments on it for days so I did start to wonder if they just hadn't liked to tell me the awful truth, but then another arrived, and it was okay.)


I also wrote Sapphire & Steel. I'm sure anyone who read this anon and knows me will know it was me already! (I have to say, I got comments the first day from sovay and lurking_latinist and panicked for a minute that I was, in fact, not anon and my flist had somehow seen me. lol.)

Started as a Whisper (3026 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sapphire/Steel (S&S), Sapphire & Silver & Steel (S&S), Lead & Steel (S&S)
Characters: Steel (S&S), Sapphire (S&S), Lead (S&S), Silver (S&S), Other(s)
Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat, Pre-Canon, Post-Canon, Assignment One, Serial: s03 Assignment Three, Serial: s06 Assignment Six, numbers stations, Gossip
Summary: There’s a saying – careless talk costs lives. But that’s not how it always goes…

Anyway, I love Sapphire & Steel and it was lovely to write this. It wasn't the fandom I was sure I was going to try and treat, so that bit was surprising to me at least. But aaahhhh I miss S&S when I don't write it for ages. No other fandom is like it. I just tried to make this not quite so obviously me and went for it, incorporating as much of Emmzzi's request as possible. I wish I'd started it not actually with less than 40 hours to go and had a bit more time for adding in more elements-are-their-element stuff, that I managed with Jet. But I wasn't feeling well that week, either, so I was v chuffed to have written this. And spent most of it just thinking I love S&S, I love S&S... XD

I do feel that I haven't really updated properly for ages! I've just really spent all of October recovering from my parents' visit, which was a lot to do with unfortunate timing, and when I've been a little steadier in between, i've just done some family history and completely left the writing alone. I feel a bit stronger again now, although I won't make any rash statements about not getting so low again, because whenever I do, I just get immediately worse!


1. Belatedly, but I think not too late yet, undeadrobins is running a fun ficathon - the second Kissathon!


2. Yuletide assignments went out and mine is a fun one! It was for a fandom I had regretted signing up for, but this was the letter that made me be so unwise & I have an idea and it doesn't seem too unrealistic/ambitious, so I'm cautiously excited. (Actual writing happened yet = 0, though so we shall see!)


3. Talking Pictures did indeed provide me with two not-quite-complete installments of The Hidden Truth on Monday and Thursday (and getting up from my afternoon rest to face the worst bit of the day (when I'm lowest) with the prospect of new-to-me old James Maxwell is a delightful way to fight misery). Monday's had less JM (but had plenty of non-evil Bernard Archard*) but then Thursday's was basically a Richard Harris-penned episode featuring James Maxwell and Zia Mohyeddin doing autopsies and getting annoyed by small-town prejudice and aside from the fact that what was missing from this even-more-almost-complete episode was the actual conclusion to whodunnit, I can't say what I enjoyed more. If I'm allowed to be frivolous, it might even have been the height difference between the two of them and the imaginative framing that the director resorted to was my personal highlight. But idk. I'm very happy to have such a thing brought out of the archives and onto my TV. Thanks Talking Pictures, now repeat the one I missed, pleeeeease!!! XD (Still one more to go, although I haven't checked the cast - might be no JM at all.)


4. I was going to try and do Whumptober but I wrote 1 fic in rough. It is still in rough. I hope to type it up soon, though, now! Ah well.


5. I am doing a trick or treat thing on tumblr where I will make one (singular) gif for everyone who leaves an ask saying "trick or treat!". I have quite a few, but not so many that I can't repeat the offer here. Obv this is better suited to tumblr, but if it would also give anyone pleasure here to have one random (middle-ability) gif, then well done on making it down to this part of a longish post and just say "Trick or treat!" in a comment and I will try to make one I think you will like. ♥


There may well have been other things, but this is a good amount of catching up to be going on with!

* Bernard Archard is not only usually invariably evil, he's frequently also undead.

As I said, my assignment this year was calliopes_pen. I planned to write the further supernatural adventures of Mina, Jonathan and Dr Seward and spent some time researching Yorkshire ghost stories and legends, which got me an unexpected £5 and knowledge of the existence of the Wold Newton Triangle and drafted up several pages of an accidental demon summoning in a hotel in Bridlington. (The Local Hellfire Club had been meeting there for years and nothing like this had ever happened before the Harkers checked in for the weekend!) And then I was ill and ill and ill. But I had thought of several ideas (with a vague idea of a possible 5 + 1 type thing of supernatural encounters), and one that stood out as possible, simpler but nicely emotive alternative, was this idea around a seance and other-worldly influences lingering.

Broken Vessels (4083 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dracula (TV 1968), Dracula & Related Fandoms
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jonathan Harker/Mina Harker, Jonathan Harker & Mina Harker & John Seward, Mina Harker/Lucy Weston, John Seward/Lucy Weston
Characters: Jonathan Harker, Mina Harker, Abraham Van Helsing, John Seward
Additional Tags: Victorian, seances, Ghosts, Aftermath, Possession, Dr Seward somehow does not faint, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, this was quite hard to tag for relationships, i could as easily have also tagged Jonathan/John as well
Summary: Jonathan keeps letting things in while Mina and John are having trouble letting go.


I think, in the end, this probably turned out the better Yuletide gift, but I think I'd still like to use the other. Since I actually swiped a couple of things from it for Broken Vessels, I probably can't make it another gift, but I probably could do a different version entirely for me. The world needs the Wold Newton Triangle...

Anyway, it was a good Yuletide! I even got some comments that weren't from my recips & a couple of recs on top, which I really didn't think I would this time, because of the obscurity of all three fandoms. I'm glad I made it - and then there's the whole rest of the collection still. I've barely scratched the surface.

Forgive yet another post today, but I had collected enough Yule-recs so far to make a post before reveals tomorrow.

( 14 recs in Chalet School, Dungeons & Dragons, Enemy at the Door, Georgette Heyer, Ghosts, The Good Place, Pushing Daisies, Sapphire & Steel, and A Traveller in Time )

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 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: Dracula (TV 1968), The Power Game, Sapphire & Steel, Shadow of the Tower & Sid Halley )