For this year's fkficfest, my original intention was to write the story I had failed to complete the last year—the more so since one of the three prompts was "déjà vu"; and I could clearly see a way to work it in. So I got out the newspaper clippings again, sorted them even more finely, and began to read. Sadly, just as last year, I found it extremely difficult to come to grips with my memories. In the end, therefore, I decided to write on a very different topic, i.e. Nick's relationship with his master, LaCroix; and I slanted my story to reflect instead the prompt "do over".

"Knight of the Rose" draws particularly on the flashbacks to the first-season episode "Dance by the Light of the Moon", in which LaCroix brings Nick across in 1228, and the second-season episode "Be My Valentine", in which LaCroix falls in love with Nick's sister, Fleur. In the latter, LaCroix agrees to give up the idea of bringing Fleur across, but only for a price: some day, Nick will give his own lover up as recompense. This ties in very nicely with events in the present day story. However, when one thinks about the actual terms of the bargain, they make very little sense. Why would LaCroix give up the love of his life for Nick's sake—the more so since, in "Dance by the Light of the Moon", he only brought him across because Janette asked him to?

From my first viewing of "Be My Valentine", I felt highly suspcious about the motives of TPTB. I'm sure other fans felt the same. If you got outside the secondary world to look at the primary-world motives of producers and writers, it does seem very much as though Fleur was created to be a "safe" (i.e., heterosexual) romantic substitute for Nick himself. And that was before I knew that, while Season One was in production, Nigel Bennett apparently thought LaCroix's obsession with Nick was sexually based. So do a lot of fans. In fact, there's a whole factionsworth who think that Nick reciprocates, if only in an on-again off-again manner.

With no disrespect to Fleur, who is a charming character in her own right, there is just something awfully convenient in having LaCroix fall in love with Nick's sister!

So "Knight of the Rose" was written to throw some light on all of this.

The association of Fleur with white roses in "Be My Valentine" not only gave me the title of the story, but also the theme for the webpage. The rose background comes from Silvia Hartmann Nature. Granted, the flowers are actually blush and ivory; but the hint of colour adds depth. It also meant that I slightly retinted the roses I used to decorate the page. These come from Flamin's Florals; but are old graphics that can be found elsewhere as well.

I decided that the border around the central panel should be contrastive; and, since flowers go with leaves, green tones seemed appropriate. The broad shimmery band is a variant of gold-refraction.jpg, a graphic that I got from Heather's Animations. The twists are one of many variants of 321Clipart's bg64.jpg. I usually use them with a mere one-pixel cellpadding as a substitute for the border feature on the nested tables; and, if you look closely, you can see that a light green variant has been used in this way to edge the shimmery green band. However, a dark green variant (reduced to half-size and used with thicker cellpadding) creates the appearance of a rope edging on both the inside and outside of the border.

Although originally a gift exchange, in 2019, FK Fic Fest wa run as a prompt challenge. In honour of its tenth anniversary, the prompt was "ten years".

My original intention was to use the freedom of not having a specific recipient to write a story that I have had in mind since 2010. While it did not directly involve "ten years", I was sure I could work the words in somewhere. So I spent quite a bit of time hunting out and sorting a large number of newspaper clippings that I had kept. However, as in the previous year, I had trouble getting down to actual writing. This time, it was because the events I wished to work into the story had been hard to live through, for I had been contiguous to them, even though they had not impacted me personally. In the end, I simply ran out of time to complete a story of the length I envisaged. Instead, at the last minute, I brainstormed a different plot while walking home from my weekly singing lesson, whipped straight into writing it, and posted just before the deadline.

"Know Why I Cry" is a postscript to the Season One episode, "Only the Lonely", very popular with fans since its flashback describes how Nick and Natalie first meet. The main plot involves a serial killer who finally targets Natalie; and, as so often happens in TV shows, the climax is her rescue. In real life, of course, things could never simply end at that point. Natalie would be a witness—indeed, the key witness—in the subsequent prosecution. However, the show was old-fashioned even for its day: there was little continuity; so each episode was independent, meaning there was no follow-up. "Know Why I Cry" picks up, therefore, some months later on the eve of the trial, and deals with the lingering effect on Natalie, who is obviously suffering some measure of PTSD,

To reflect her depression, I decided to use dark neutral tones in the webpage. The main background tile is one of the many variants that I have made from GRSites' brown128.jpg, this time in shades of charcoal/brown/tan feathered with a dull cool grey. The border arround the central panel picks up these shades, with bands of warm brown marble and dark teal, edged with lines of copper. One of the teal graphics comes from Absolute Cross; and there is a decorative button from Ambographics Art.

Over the past eighteen months, I've participated in fkficfest three times. I wrote "Gone Where the Goblins Go" in 2018, "Know Why I Cry" in 2019, and "Knight of the Rose" in 2020.

FK Fic Fest was originally created as a gift exchange; and "Gone Where the Goblins Go" was written for purselover2 to the prompt, "Gen Request, Natalie and Nick, celebrating something". I decided to write about Natalie's relationship with her grandmother, Nana Tash, whose ghost appeared to her in the third season episode, "Dead of Night", in which we learn that Natalie refused to visit her in hospital. Although by the time of the episode, Natalie has had time to regret this, it takes quite a lot of rancour to refuse to visit someone who is dying. So I thought that, however perverse it might seem to an outsider, she might actually have felt that her Nana's death was worth celebrating.

This proved to be a difficult story to write: hard enough, in fact, that I had to ask for a brief extension. I framed "Gone Where the Goblins Go" around Natalie's visiting Nana Tash's lawyer and the reading of the will; and used her inheritance to explain her change of apartments between Season One and Season Two. However, my own mother died in late 2015; and, as the family member still living in the same city, I perforce was the one who had to deal with much of the wind-up of the estate—sorting personal and household things, in particular. As I wrote, some scenes (such as the one in the lawyer's office) brought this all back too keenly; and I kept having to stop for a bit.

I had no particular theme in mind for the webpage, save that the colour scheme should be fairly neutral. For the main background, I therefore chose a tile from Ambographics Art that is in light beige and grey shades with a complex geometric pattern; and used a compatible square button from the same source for decoration. The border around the story panel picks up similar tones, with a slight added glitz from a narrow band featuring an abalone shell tile from Heather's Animations.

Given that my last discussion of Renault-based fan fiction was back at the beginning of 2018 for my newly posted Yulefic, one might be forgiven for thinking I'd have a plethora of new pages to describe. However, the demise of maryrenaultfics, with its frequent little challenges, means that I've only written Charioteer fic for Yuletide. Specifically, two stories in 2018 ("Deckle-Edged" and "Quandary") and one in 2019 ("Let Me Fend for Myself").

Sadly, it's not a fandom often requested in other gift exchanges; and, in the last few years, I've had a lot of trouble getting myself stuck into stories unless I've a recipient to feel guilty about.

( Read more... )

Was it really February when I last posted? I know I've been doing so less and less (and never as often as some), but still! I've certainly done quite a bit of writing since then. Just not here.

That post was a round up of last year's fic. I said then:

I honestly feel that in some ways my biggest accomplishment has been finally putting Filezilla on the old laptop I've been using. I have thus been able to upload to my website. As I suspect pretty well everyone who reads my fic does so on AO3, this probably seems trivial. However, I do like designing pages for the stories I write; and it has been frustrating having them waiting around on the computer with no way to put them up.

Now, I used to regularly write here about the new pages I'd made for my website. It's well over eighteen months since my old PC broke and I started using my mother's laptop; and—despite the delay in getting Filezilla on it—it has, at this point, been quite a few months since I started to upload new pages again. Looking back, I see that my 2017 Yuletide stories were the last fic whose webpages I wrote about here. It's long past high time that I got caught up!

When I take a look at my 2018 year-in-review, the list is headed by my first Legends of Tomorrow ficlet. Given that I watched and loved most of the CW Arrowverse shows from the first episode of Arrow, it's surprising that it took me so long to get the urge to write fic for them. The commonality of themes and textures I've used in their webpages makes it sensible to deal with them all together.

Anyway, that's as good a place as any to start.

( Read more... )

This Yuletide looked at first as though it was going to be rather frustrating—not because of my assignment in itself (for it was fine), but because I had writer's block. My story ground itself out slowly, even though I had it planned out well ahead of the deadline. Then, when I was finally raring to write treats in the last days before Christmas, there was so much shopping to do that I never seemed to have time to write.

Still, all's well that ends well. I did manage to squeeze out writing time, especially on Christmas Eve. At least in part this was because much of the tree-decorating was done by Flo. So much thanks to her!

( Read more... )

Besides my assignment, I wrote three treats. (Well, given the distinction made in this particular gift exchange, they were a mix of "treats" and "tricks".)


"The Children of Closti the Clam" was written for betony, who wanted a story based on Diana Wynne Jones's Dalemark Quartet.

Betony asked for something about the "fascinating internal mythology" of the series; and, among the suggestions, were "whatever becomes of Robin" and "dealing with the consequences of immortality". It is canon that only some of Tanaqui's family turn out to be Undying like their mother; so I wrote futurefic about the next few decades after The Spell-Coats, seen from Tanaqui's perspective as she slowly realizes that some of her siblings are aging while she is not.

I had already written one Dalemark story, though it was not purely in that fandom, being a Time Team fusion. I decided, therefore, to use a variant of that webpage design for "The Children of Closti the Clam". The background is a rather complicated basket weave in a muted tone; and the same graphic was used to make a decorative button. The panel for the story has a border that layers multiple textures in various shades of brown and beige.


"Command the Signs" was written for blueteak, who wanted Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series.

I have always thought that Cooper could have done more with the incongruity of Will Stanton's position as an Old One who is eleven years old and the youngest of a large family, particularly when he is new come to his power. Blueteak's prompt began "I've always loved the way magic creeps into the ordinary in this series, or has lurked in it all along, i.e. the Christmas ornaments." It was, in fact, those Christmas ornaments that sparked the idea—what if Will's family got a good look at the Signs? They did see the first few, albeit only briefly; but, at that time, they were threaded on his belt. Later, though, they were linked together on a gold chain.

I spent quite a long time going through my collection of background tiles trying to find something that would pick up the main motif of the story, i.e. the Six Signs, which are shaped like crosses set in circles. I eventually found one among the graphics I collected from Ambographics Art: it is purple, picked out in gold, and twines these shapes together. The colour scheme is copied in the frame around the story; but, as the fancy background has a rather "flat" look, it was necessary to use graphics with a similar "flat" effect when putting it together.

I did not add any decorative buttons; but, as the story falls naturally into a main section and a coda, I needed some sort of divider. I therefore decided to make one with the Six Signs. Since they have to be capable of fitting on Will's belt, the crosses needed to be fairly slender, affording plenty of space for the leather to slide through. I have to say, the result isn't quite how I'd always envisaged them; but I don't see how else they'd look in practice, given the description in the story. Their order is more or less that described by Cooper in the scene where John Smith links them on the chain.


"Back in the Saddle" was written for serenade, who wanted a story based on Dick Francis's 10^lb Penalty. This was distinctly the last story written, since it was not only finished after the collection opened but was uploaded just before author reveals a week later.

Although the prompt mentioned both "tricks" and "treats", Serenade's suggestions were more along spooky lines; so I wrote a sort of ghost story. It picks up both on the fact that Ben's father, once leader of his party (and hence prime minister), would be expected to call a general election to confirm his position; and on the injury that Ben receives at the end of the book, severe enough to prevent him continuing as an amateur jockey. "Back in the Saddle" sees him out of hospital, once again helping with his father's election campaign.

For the webpage, I picked yet another variant of a graphic that I've used several times before, this time in brown tones. For the frame, I also used brown, with touches of grey. I wanted something suggestive of old stables and riding; so the textures in the frame are mostly leather and stone. Then, rather than use a decorative button, I went trolling the net for clip-art of horses to top and tail the story.

The author reveals for the Trick or Treat Exchange came today, a week after the archive was opened. I thus know officially that it was my sister who wrote my gifts.

Well, I already knew that she'd been assigned to write for me. I could see from the sign-up that there was only one possible match; so, unless I went out immediately as a pinch hit (which didn't happen), then my author had to be Flo. On the other hand, I couldn't be certain that it was she who wrote my treat, though I suspected as much. In fact, she wrote four stories altogether, the others being for two of Rosemary Sutcliff's historical novels.

I was assigned to write for her. This was not so certain: there were other people offering the fandoms she had requested (as, indeed, there were other fandoms that I had offered). At least this absurdity won't happen again: she has suggested, quite sensibly, that in future we make sure that we request and offer different things. Of course, it may still be that we choose to write for one another—as she, for example, has twice written me New Year's Resolutions timed to coincide with my birthday (and doing double duty, of course, as birthday presents) in very rare fandoms that I had asked for more than once in Yuletide without receiving them. As, for that matter, I have written her fan fiction based on Janet Sandison's Jean Robertson series.

At any rate, the first ToT story that I completed was a ficlet for Flo, "Star of the Waning Summer". I based it on The Mask of Apollo, though I did actually have a choice of fandoms, for our interests overlap a lot. Given the theme, I selected a background of stylized masks for the webpage, tweaking the colour to a bronze shade. All the other graphics I used were already on my website, though not in this combination. The ones I selected not only coordinated with one another and the background but made a fine frame around the story, glittering with golden shades.

Once "Star of the Waning Summer" was complete, I went on to write three treats. All of these also have webpages, and have been uploaded.

For the myoldfandom gift exchange, I wrote my sister "Jean at the Witching Hour", my third story based on Janet Sandison's series about a Scottish girl at the beginning of the twentieth century. It's a great favourite of Flo's, one that she requested more than once at Yuletide before she concluded that no one else would ever offer it.

This time, I thought I'd write about Doris, a tart with a heart of gold who appears prominently in the first book but recurs in later ones as well. However, when I reread the books (yet again!) in preparation, I found that the dates did not add up. Oh, the main portion of what I had planned still held up: i.e. her seduction when she was a fifteen-year-old scullery-maid at the Castle, leading to her father disowning her. However, in the fourth book it is strongly implied that her seducer is "Old Pillans", the villain of the series. As I scribbled down dates and did sums to work out people's ages, I realized that can't be true. I suppose it may be that readers are inferring something that the author didn't intend; but I suspect that it's more likely that Sandison was hit with belated inspiration, added the hint, and never really did her own sums.

So, in the end, I wrote Old Pillans' story.

This presents its own problems. Old Pillans is a pretty one-dimensional villain in the series—a boogey-man to young Jean in the first book, and an off-scene diabolus ex machina in the rest of the series. What little we are told of his past comes from brief snatches of Lochfoot history told to Jean by the elderly; and not only does the reader have to assemble the puzzle but also fill in a lot of missing pieces.

So I worked out how the history of the town seems to have gone during the last half of the nineteenth century, from its evolution as a farming community overlooked by the Duke's Castle to its growth as a commuter suburb of Glasgow with grungy tenements housing underpaid railway workers. In the latter era, Pillans is primarily known as the mysterious, loathsome owner of a secondhand/pawn shop, though he is actually the secret landlord of much of Lochfoot, with additional property in Glasgow. On the other hand, the scraps we know of his early days indicate that he was originally an incomer who worked as ploughman on a local farm, was the local milkman, and had a reputation as a seducer. "Jean at the Witching Hour" is, then, the story of how events turned Pillans-the-ploughman into The Loathsome Villain.

This is a long story: slightly longer than any I've written, in fact, barring the novel that I wrote for my first fkficfest. I had Part One written by the upload deadline; and it could have ended there. However, rather than complete the story in sequels, I wrote two more chapters over the next week. Each chapter now has its own webpage, linked off a title page. However, as Flo was staying with me for a fortnight, I didn't manage to finish them until this week.

As with the previous two Jean stories, I selected a background to represent the setting: in this case, a stone wall suggestive of an old farmhouse. On the title page, I also inset a small panel with a grassy background and a picture of dairy cattle. This represents the most important business of Castleside Farm, where Pillans canonically worked when he came to Lochfoot and which he inherited in mysterious circumstances after the suicide of the owner's daughter.

The reveal for the Renault Exchange was this weekend; and I received two gifts. That I had been assigned to write for my sister (and vice versa) was no secret. She always does guess—I say "always" since it has happened before, twice in rarewomen and again in fic_corner. She is rather better at lying to me than I am to her. However, I've been posting our ITOWverse stories to AO3, which means using her log-in for her stories; and there it was in black-and-white: her sign-up and recipient.

So I wrote a story for her. And she wrote two for me.

My official gift—one can tell from the posting date—is "Bicycle": a series of vignettes, of varying lengths, involving sundry characters from The Charioteer with bicycles, in one fashion or another. Of course, petrol-rationing being in full force, it was a common mode of transportation during the war. This is not a formal "Five Things" story; but it's a similar format.

My treat is "Coach", a charming short story focusing on Hugh Treviss—a minor character from The Charioteer whose fanon existence depends on putting together the "Treviss" who coached Laurie in fencing for the school play and the "Hugh" who was Ralph's best friend at school: canon, certainly; but the references in the book are minimal, though much can be developed from them, in the way fans so adore. Here we get Hugh's impression of Ralph, with intimations of what he may or may not guess.

Flo had prompts for several of Renault's modern novels; but, as I only offered one of them, I naturally wrote to that prompt. She therefore got "A Letter from Abroad", in which Alec writes Sandy about a letter that Ralph has received from Bim, who (uncanonically, but reasonably plausibly, I hope) survived being shot down and was sent to a P.O.W. camp in Germany.

This now also has a page on my website. In a vague sort of way, the background was picked to give an impression of the sea—or the English Channel, I suppose, to be more accurate. For this, unlike the AO3 edition, I was able to separate the two pages of the letter and actually leave a space at the bottom of the first, as Alec says he did. For all its good points (not least of which is that fact that so many exchanges are run through it), AO3 has its disadvantages, too; and formatting can sometimes be a nuisance. Still, your basic prose can usually be cross-posted in a reasonably straightforward way.

It's been a while since I posted a seasonal ficlet to FKFIC-L. However, I had an idea; so "Heat in the Kitchen" was posted in the wee hours, just before I went to bed. A good deal of the day was spent making it a page on my website; and I've just finished posting it to AO3 (so those whose ISP, for some reason, bars access to the webhost can read it there).

I decided to go with a thematic background for the webpage, and worked for a while with the tile I cropped from a screen capture of Natalie's office, doing it in different colours, before selecting a beige version (representing a backsplash). The frame around the story is done in wood tones (cupboards) and a sort of glossy white (formica countertop). I found a suitable wood-coloured divider to use under the title.

The picture after the story was, as usual, cropped from a photo on Wikimedia Commons. It looks delicious; and I'm sure Natalie's own baking was, too.

I began Yuletide eagerly last fall, with my usual list of potential treats and (seemingly) time to write several of them. Life decided otherwise. I did get my assignment started; but, as my mother's health worsened, I eventually had to admit that there would never be time to finish it, and defaulted.

However, when my mother died a week before Christmas, there was suddenly time to write. Or perhaps that's more accurately time to distract myself with writing. After the holidays were over, though, Real Life had to take precedence. It is only in the last couple of weeks, therefore, that I have finally found time to make webpages for them.


Trumpet St Peter's Angels

My assignment, "Trumpet St Peter's Angels", is a Last Knight story. (Yes: my third in the same year. Chance is odd that way.) My recipient had only one request, for LK fix-it fic.

The result is a story that I can only recommend to those who are trufen. It depends for its effect on your devoted knowledge of Forever Knight (in general) and the finale (in particular). Essentially, it deconstructs the events that lead to the denouement, and "fixes" them as requested. As such, the story is not an overwritten, underplotted melodrama an action-packed tragedy. Rather, it is a character piece with touches of humour.

Basically, if the last line resonates, you'll probably like the story.

The title, of course, comes from Lacroix's speech in the loft. To match it, I picked a ripply, vaguely feathery, gold variant of a background that I got from GRSites, matched with a bronze and silver border around the story. Those who can't access my website can find the story on AO3 in the Yuletide collection, along with comments.


Long is the way and hard

The first treat I wrote was "Long is the way and hard" (on AO3, with comments). This is actually the third in a series of divergent AU stories based on Mary Renault's novel, The Charioteer.

( a bit of background )
As it is part of a series, its webpage has the same design that I used on the earlier two stories.


Hobbiton Farm

The last treat, "Hobbiton Farm" (here on AO3, with comments), was written in a flash. Whereby hangs a tale.

Over the last decade or so, the BBC has made a series of series in which a group of historians and archaeologists re-enact life on a farm in an historical period: Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm, Wartime Farm, and so on. One of halotolerant's requests was for a story based on this "Historical Farm series". What particularly caught my eye was the conclusion of the prompt:

“Feel free, also, to set a story in ‘AU History’ - if you want them to be farm workers in a pre-industrial setting, it doesn't have to be ‘literally historically accurate 1650’ or whatever, some counter-factual history or setting in a fantasy world like Westeros or Middle Earth or Pern could also be cool!”

A crack idea? Undoubtedly: but best done straight.

Because I'd had the idea early in the fall, back when people had been posting links to their Dear Author Letters, it had been germinating on some level for quite a while. So, when I sat down to write it on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, the words just poured out with hardly any revision required. I uploaded the story shortly before reveals.

For the webpage, I decided that "Hobbiton Farm" needed something subdued and very respectable looking. The rich tapestry-like background graphic comes from 321Clipart.com; and the border to the panel with the story combines stone and parchment textures. I also made the story a fancy title in a font that looked suitable, and added (at the end) a clip from a Wikimedia Commons photo of the New Zealand "Hobbiton" set.

For some time now, I have been thinking of adding my assorted fan art to my website. Oh, the Forever Knight icons already had a page, if only to make some sense of the huge number of them by sorting out the entire collection into sections by faction. However, I've done quite a few things on maryrenaultfics over the past few years, one or two here, a handful more there. Not to mention the icons I just did for the CBC of The Mask of Apollo on renaultx.

Then, at the last minute, I remembered the pictures I did for the Church Mice story I wrote for Yuletide a year ago!

Well, those at least are "real" art, i.e. watercolours that I photographed and uploaded. The other things are mostly created by compositing and manipulating screencaps and other pictures that I've taken from here and there, with logos and textures to finish it all off. However, that's art, too, in its own way.

So there's now a section for it all. Assuming I haven't forgotten something....

Continuing with discussing the webpages for my Yuletide stories....

Oddly, the first one I wrote was not something that I had ever imagined writing. It was certainly inspired by the Yuletide tag set; but it never had a rightful recipient. In the end, in order that it might go in the main collection, I gave it to my sister. Well, she likes the books, though she'd never thought of asking for them. Another treat went to toujours_nigel in the same way. Very obliging people both of them: neither complained at getting the odd extra story.

I had known for about a year that Alan Garner had written a third volume in his Alderley Edge series; and last summer I finally succeeded in purchasing a copy. What with one thing and another (not least being a certain reluctance, for his style has radically altered over the years and I knew perfectly well the book would be very different from the first two), I had not got round to reading it until early October. At that point, I knew immediately that I had found the subject for my next paper for the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. So I wrote a proposal and submitted it. In due course, it was accepted; and I'll be giving it next month.

Meanwhile, Yuletide nominations had proceeded in their usual fashion; and, for the first time (as far as I know), the "Weirdstone of Brisingamen series" was on the list. Both The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath have been favourites of mine for decades, and are eminently fanworthy. Nevertheless, as far as I know, no one has ever written for them. I was surprised, therefore, when I saw that the characters nominated were Cadellin Silverbrow, Grimnir, Nastrond, and Gowther Mossock. The wizard, certainly. But not the children, who are the protagonists? Nor Selina Place, who is the only villain common to both of the books? I could only assume that the nominator had in mind a very specific request: backstory for Cadellin and his brother in terms of the latter's turn to the dark side. (Where Gowther would come in such a story is a whole other question.) I duly put the fandom down as an offer; but I was careful to list only Cadellin and Gowther as characters.

Then I started to wonder what sort of story one would write that had the two of them in it. ( Read more... )

Yes, yes: a bit late to be talking about my Yuletide stories, I know; however, there's been quite a bit going on in my tiny corner of fandom in the past few weeks. Despite this, I have finally managed to squeeze out time to put up webpages for the four stories that I wrote. In due course, one by one, I shall describe these in my usual (no doubt desperately boring) style. First, though, I'm going to ramble a bit about my assignment. ( Read more... )

How to procrastinate profitably: write a ficlet instead of the Yuletide story one is supposed to be working on. (Though, in some faint defence, I have got it started. Nowhere near finished; but at least started.)

"Contemplations on a Portrait of a Lady" came to me over breakfast, loud and clear with the words forming themselves in my mind. I stopped, went straight to the computer, and wrote it down. Oh, I did go through and tweak it a bit before posting; but it came that quickly.

So it's gone to FKFIC-L.

I then got down to the seriously procrastinatory business of making it a webpage. Since Leonardo's portrait of Janette features in the story, I used that to illustrate the top of the page. (I had already clipped it from the screencap; I still needed to trim over her hands. You see how one passes the time?) The background and frame around the story have been done in shades of gold, picking out the tones of the picture frame.

All up and done.

No excuses left: it's nose to the grindstone. Or fingers to keyboard, which right now feels much the same.

The final section of my Applefic has now been completed. It has been a long time coming.

At this point, it's almost hard to remember the puzzled despair of the summer of 2012, when—for the second year in a row—the moderators of maryrenaultfics were mysteriously nowhere, there were sadly few posts to the community, and the usual time for the Summer Prompt came and went. The previous year, a few sharp nudges had brought them back to their duties, and the prompt had been posted, albeit belatedly. In 2012, they were nowhere to be found. As in the previous year, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek ITOWverse ficlet to try to draw them out; but to no avail.

Finally, on the 1st of September, I took it upon myself to post an Autumn prompt, "apple". It was well received by those members still round. (Indeed, it even flushed the mods from cover!) Yet, although I immediately told people that I myself had an idea, it was not until the 8th of October that I actually posted anything.

In the meantime (to prod myself on, as much as anything), I referred more than once to my "applefic"—at the time, no more than a cute shorthand for "the fic I do—honestly!—intend to write for the 'apple' prompt". By the time anything was actually ready to post, though, I had called it that so many times that, when I cast around for a title, I could come up with nothing else. In my mind, it had become "my applefic" so certainly that "Applefic" was the only possible title.
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In honour of the 70th anniversary of D-Day (6 June 1944), I have written a Forever Knight ficlet, "D is to Dine". I posted it to FKFIC-L early this morning (and then went to bed very late, while everyone else was commuting to work). This afternoon, I made its webpage; and those who aren't on list can find it there.

I fancied topping the page with a picture of the D-Day landings, and found quite an attractive one in Wikimedia Commons. (Attractive, that is, from the artistic perspective of someone wanting to illustrate a story. It is still, after all, a picture of war.)

This, of course, dictated the colour scheme. After much searching, I found a background graphic that seemed not inappropriate. It's actually a "marble" (i.e. stone) tile; but the colours combine khaki green with the blue tones of the photo. After that, I simply looked for suitable textures to make the frame that surrounds the central panel.

Finally (!) I have put a couple of my recent stories up on my website. Mind you, "recent" is a relative term: one of these is from Yuletide. And I have two more Yuletide stories still without webpages.  sigh

Both of these are based on Mary Renault's The Charioteer, though "The Road to Rio" is actually a crossover with Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series. It was written for Yuletide as a present for naraht. The other story, "Ain’t Misbehaving", is a ficlet that I wrote for the maryrenaultfics LJ community's Valentine's Day Challenge back in February.

For "The Road to Rio", I decided to use a webpage design that would evoke the setting: the Lake District in the summer. So the main background is water, and the border around the text is comprised of a series of frames in leafy green or beige rock patterns. That part was easy. However, I also wanted to divide the sections with a small sailboat; and this, of course, needed to resemble the simple dinghies used by Ransome's children. More easily said than done; but I got something passable in the end. By tweaking, I even gave it a brown(ish) sail.

"Ain't Misbehaving" could, I suppose, be considered my first songfic, in as much as the challenge involved working a line from a song somewhere into the story. As I chose to write from Hazell's perspective (on the start of his "romance" with Ralph) and I had used him before once or twice, I decided to use another variant on GRSites' "misc236.jpg". This is not the most productive background graphic I've ever played with. (That would be the one that I've used, in one variant form or another, throughout all the ITOWverse stories written by myself or my sister.) I have, however, managed to create quite a wide range of backgrounds from it, nevertheless. This time, given the romantic subject (ahem!) and the fact that the story was written for a Valentine's Day challenge, I picked a deep rosy pink variant, and used similar shades in the frame for the text.

For me the war is ... sort of over. Certainly, I've made all my posts. As in the previous two wars I've played in, I strove to write a reasonably coherent narrative. Now, I've now done webpages for them all. Since the premise this time (at least the one that I used) had people suddenly believing they belonged to a different faction from the one they signed up for, I've done graphics for each affiliation and crossover. Well, the ones in my stories, at least. (Let us not forget that there are over a hundred affiliations. There's no way I fitted them all in!)

So, for part of the war, I believed myself to be, not a Die-Hard, but a Feliksity; and later I got switched to the Blue Knighties. I've mentioned these factions before, particularly when signing up for FK Fic Fest. The Feliksity background has paisley and a flower, picking up on Feliks Twist's jacket and his penchant for gardening. The Blue Knightie graphics have the Toronto Police patch and badge, as used in the show.

However, I managed to work more factions in, and thus had more graphics to play with.

First, I wrote a small crossover with the Ravenettes, when Ron the Enforcer—Ronnie K's war persona—went off to the Raven for the evening. So that gave me the opportunity to make a Ravenette/Die-Hard background graphic.

Sadly, when I then tried to arrange another crossover using the "faction scramble" concept, I found that people had become even more fascinated with the premise used by Bonnies P. and R. (to time-travel into flashbacks from the series); and, being mid-story, they weren't in a position to liaise with me. However, the owner of the actual Caddy used in filming the show had written it a permission slip. So instead, I wrote a crossover involving it, the Vaqueras, and the one member of the DP/Perks who was playing.

Yes, only one Perk! How are the mighty fallen. (Indeed, even the Cousins were seriously shorted in this war, having only one Head and a Fang.)

Now, by rights, the schedule should have meant that, at that point, I headed off to the final party and goodbye posts. However, McLisa had told us that, this war, rules would be quite easy. In particular, although the dates for the war were set in advance, the actual writing deadline was open.

So I was able to go on to another story arc. I had several unused faction scramble ideas; and I'd noticed that there were two people who had signed up to play as independents yet not written any stories for themselves. I suppose either they got stymied by Real Life, or else were simply hoping that someone else would write them into a story. Now, McLisa had said that, for this war, the rules would permit anyone to be used who had a permission slip on record. So I worked off several of my faction scramble ideas using these two players (and an anonymous A.N. Other)—and, not incidentally, managed to mention quite a few obscure factions along the way.

More fun with graphics!

As I also made the war site, I've been happily busy.