Beyond the Roundels

Another icon batch! A lot of the first sets here were duplicates/ones I decided not to use for my 100fandomicons table, then a random iconcolors set, some text sets I started & haven't finished, and finally a bunch for perioddrama_ic (for the dark lighting challenge, which is why they look like that) and retro_icontest (for the nostalgia theme).

Teaser:

( Icons under here )

Part the Second! Yuletide truly is a bottomless marvel. I have never yet read through everything I wanted to in any year, or caught up on past years. (I should also note that I've been rather arbitrary in what I read for fandoms with several works, so these recs are not to say that the other works are not worth checking out!)


( 16 recs in 12th Century RPF, Anne of Green Gables, Bletchley Circle, The Goblin Emperor, Howl's Moving Castle, I Capture the Castle, Jeeves & Wooster, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Last Tango in Halifax, Lion in Winter, The Mummy, Sarah Jane Adventures )

(My friends came, had a nice time, liked each other, and went. I am now vv tired and also have not yet watched DW, because vv tired so catching up must wait, but in the meantime, one of two posts I made earlier; in this case my final Yuletide recs post. <3)



Somewhat belated, but better late than never, as they say.

( 19 recs in Discworld, Georgette Heyer, Howl's Moving Castle, Hundred & One Dalmatians, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, King Lear, The Librarians, North & South, Northanger Abbey, Owl Service, Poldark, Timeless & Victoria )

My currently regular Thursday feature...

OUaT: Browned Butter by awanderingbard (G, 1956 words. Emma Swan/Killian Jones, Snow White, Regina Mills, Henry Mills.) It's Storybrooke's first Thanksgiving, and Emma is finding trying to be a domestic goddess more difficult than she anticipated. Sweet and funny, with Emma battling to do something impressive on the domestic front.


Miss Marple: Advice From Aunt Jane by DesertVixen (Teen, 1212 words. Miss Marple, Dolly Bantry, Jane Helier.) Jane Helier needs some advice from Miss Marple and Dolly Bantry Pitch perfect conversation between the three, picking up on threads from The Thirteen Problems.


Doctor Who: At Last a Dragon by paranoidangel (All ages, 985 words. John Chesterton, Tenth Doctor.) John Chesterton doesn't believe in Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy or the Doctor. John Chesterton finally realises that all the stories his parents told him were real. Lovely.


Heroes: Drive My Car by Andraste (Hiro & Ando, Hiro/Ando.) "Our life of legend begins!" Great, fun vid for S1 Hiro & Ando.


Diana Wynne Jones: World Enough, and Time by jamjar (PG, 5408 words. Erskine, Hathaway, Torquil, Awful, Howard, Catriona.) The journey of a thousand miles (starts with sending your siblings to Alpha Centauri). Perfect capturing of the novel's tone, with the remaining siblings starting to both mend their ways and move about more freely.

The second half of the recs post!

( 17 recs in Historical RPF, The Hour, Howl, Miss Marple, The Mummy, North and South, Oxford Comma Sentence Examples, Pushing Daisies, Red Dwarf, Ripper Street, Sapphire and Steel, Sarah Jane Adventures, Ten Stupidest Things I've Heard/Shadow of the Tower, Stay, and Thursday Next )

Still attempting to make it through this year's collection! Have my next installment of recs:

( 17 recs in HIGNFY/HIst RPF, Adam Adamant Lives, Cadfael, Shakespeare, Diana Wynne Jones, The Hour, Libraries, Life, Malory Towers, Miss Marple, The Mummy, Northanger Abbey, and Sapphire & Steel )

Still tired, but I have another post-I-made-earlier. (I really should stop making posts and hiding them, but never mind.) Also, I am posting my fandom_stocking fics about places finally. If I post any to AO3, then anyone suddenly getting a "gift", it'll probably just be that. Sorry.


In your own space, share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul.

I saw other people saying that they had no such show/book etc. Perhaps I'm too impressionable, then, but I have several. (Although, maybe it's partly my tendency to rewatch things, and most of them were from when I was a teenager - which is probably true for most of us - and I was ill and stuck home a lot. And to a certain extent, some from when I've been ill again. I suppose if you've got hours and hours to lie there and think about odd bits of the few books and TV episodes you can manage to read or watch, (and re-watch) and so on, it's bound to creep into your thinking in ways things don't when you're running about in your normal life.)

Anyway, some I can't (or won't) explain here, but the main one is Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, which is a very good book, but also very complicated, dark and twisted up, in a way that I didn't really get as a teenager but I do now. However, I read it and read it and I still so often do my thinking through it, and snatches of it still run through my head. It's hard to explain what I mean exactly, but part of it is the idea of how heroism might work in the real world (Now Here) as opposed to the dramatic way it does in stories, fairy tales and so on (Nowhere) - "Being a hero means learning to ignore how embarrassed you feel." And giving a means of expressing the way real life and imagination intersect. (The "Now Here/Nowhere" thing, just one letter, one turn away, the same and opposites). It made me think, and still does. And to try to look properly at things, instead of see what you expect to see.

And other things, in lesser ways, mostly, but yes. I was explaining something in Public Eye to myself the other day by means of Fire & Hemlock.

But Diana Wynne Jones, S25 and S26 of Doctor Who (especially The Happiness Patrol - yes, really!), Press Gang, CS Lewis's NF - these are the things that got into my head and shaped me and challenged me and gave me new ways of thinking. I didn't get out much as a teenager; I was ill for four years, so I needed something and those really weren't bad things all told. The weirdness of my brain, let me show it to you. But I like it this way.

And, yes, again now, things for helping my find my way through being ill, for being sort of channels of thought when I was in an incoherent fog, or for distracting me - Joan Aiken's Midnight Is A Place (by Joan Aiken), Enemy at the Door and Public Eye (all things that in some way involved working through bad times, setting a pattern for me to follow) and Sapphire and Steel, which certainly distracted me beautifully for about a whole two years.

After all, if there weren't some stories, in whatever format they may come in, that impacted us and touched our core, or soul, or whatever you prefer to call it, there wouldn't be all that much point in them, in the end. We use them to make sense of the world, supposedly. And so I just happen to make sense of the world through Fire & Hemlock, which I suppose is a little weird, but then again, I think the world's more than a little weird, too, so I have no regrets.

Here's the fic I wrote for fic_corner. I was waiting to post it because I started finally typing up the original treat I was going to write for someone, but it is still not quite working out. That's about two months of it not quite working out now, so I shall just have to bury it until one day it resurrects itself as something (as stories often do) - and get on and post my fics and some recs for very shiny fics from the collection:

I defaulted early on, but I wrote two treats, one in the short treat collection, one in the main:

( Two fics in Enid Blyton (Adventure Series) and Journey To The River Sea )

And now, recs! I have to say, from what I have seen, it looks as though there is a very high percentage of exceptional fic, so I'd recommend poking around to see what childhood favourites you might find in the 100+ fandoms. However, here is a selection from those I know and read (mostly in the first half of the alphabet, because I'm incurably alphabetical and don't have that much reading stamina).

( Recs at Fic Corner )

Some links and things that I found or meant to post a while back:

1. unconventionalcourtship has started! There is amazing fic already, which you can check out there, or in the AO3 collection. It's only just started so there are four fics, but good stuff already. Ace/Oswin, and an epic Blake's 7 (sort of) pirate AU, which is brilliant. Can't wait to see what other fics turn up as it goes along.

2. Someone has been blogging about their efforts to recreate Downton Abbey as Sims. It would be pretty amusing anyway, but the random werewolves and zombies are definitely a highlight.

3. aralias also made a why you should watch Blake's 7 post. You are probably already feeling more than oppressed enough, but hers benefits from not being a random collection of Tumblr posts and has more quotes. (B7 being what it is, this is always a good thing.)

4. Brilliant (old) Yuletide fic for DWJ's The Ogre Downstairs (one of her oldest, but I love it): Growing Together by kattahj. The tone is perfect. I mean, perfect. Which is all you need to know if you also know the book. Yuletide never ceases to be one of the most amazing fannish things ever.

So those are some things I found and hid, or have only just found. :-)

Here's another long overdue post: some things I have made but never posted here. (I'm like the opposite of one of those people who will only post to their own LJ. I scatter things about the place and get too tired to put them here as well. Or they're so obscure that few people would be interested. So, you know, you shouldn't get too excited at this point).

They weren't all recent, I should add. One of them I finished a year ago, and then buried and the rest are all somewhere in between.

( Sandcastles, S&S ficlet )

( DW/Fire & Hemlock Fic )

( Midnight is A Place fic )

( B7/S&S crossover fic )

( And a fanvid - various )

Apologies for the mass posting, but I think that really is it. \o/

27x Tough Guide text icons, and 30x Sapphire & Steel icons.

Teaser:



( Icons Here! )
Credits: textures by tiger_tyger @ tiger_tutorials

( Icons Here! )

The usual rules apply: want, take, have, credit; no hotlinking. And it really is more trouble than it's worth acquiring a sword.

Various textures by tiger_tyger and how_we_fade.

I'm so excited.  I just found a DWJ / Doctor Who (well, all right, Torchwood really) Crossover in the shape of this story by Tiger Kat. 
What Planet Are you From? (All Ages)


Made my day.

Here's the link:
http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=21053

Not by me.  If only...