Mr Kapusta - February to April 2021 Update

[fiorenza_a]

So what do you make of it so far?

Life:

Work - don't talk to me about work - brain the size of a planet...

Neither have I migrated all of my stuff onto my new computer, not that it's that new anymore...

Fic:

Reading and Other Fanwork:

So, as usual, trying to find time to explore and enjoy mfu_shortstorie, the crack_van, and - the more Pros focussed - noblesentiments - and talking of Pros focussed, I never really give The Circuit Archive or discoveredinalj a plug, and I should, because both have stories worth reading archived on them.

Anyway, here are some of the things I have found wandering through the above mentioned sites, AO3 and FF.Net:

ST:TOS:

• Division Colors - a drabble by QuailFence (AO3) - salient observation, which just narrowly fails to ignite at the punchline for me.

Man From U.N.C.L.E.:

• Food for Thought by girlintheglen (AO3) - short one-shot about food and friendship - bit too short for me to get my teeth into really (no pun intended). Did wonder if pasta and meat balls was a bit heavy for lunch - but then I'm not a hungry U.N.C.L.E. agent (or Illya!).

The Professionals:

• Martin Shaw - 70 by Brune (AO3) - an ambitious retrospective of Mr S's career through the medium of art. I was impressed by the breadth of performance captured; and the attention to detail evident in every line.

• Sanctuary by Wilsden (FF.Net) - the Lads have some platonic downtime. Told in the first person, so not my fav POV - at least I didn't think it was until I spoke to tinturtle, apparently I'm mad for it in what I choose to call my 'verse'... but enough of that, it works for the story. Not sure Doyle's voice, or 70s idiom, is quite captured for me, it still sounds 'authorial' to my mind, but the scenario is believably 'Lads'.

• Hard To Get by SilverTheo (FF.Net) - at the time of reading, this had garnered three complimentary reviews, a fav and a follow - and I did read it to the 'end' (it's unfinished), so it must have something going for it - but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what.
  
  It is done a huge disservice by the formatting - (and I have been pulled up about the off-putting nature of my own experimental punctuation - I was trying something new for internet publishing, which hasn't gathered many plaudits - so I am open to authorial experimentation) - but this isn't even consistent across the story, so you can't even get into the rhythm of it. To be fair, FF.Net is not the most accommodating of sites - so it may not have been within the author's control.
  
  The premise is a good idea - and here I believe I part company with lee_the_t, who I think it was said they hadn't run across the phenomenon, and join forces with macklingirl, who has subsequently posted about the disappointment of a story failing to live up to its promise. Bodie meets the one woman he can't have. But sexist! Very much predicated on the idea that 'nice girls don't'. Fine, if that's a personal philosophy - but don't slut shame - men or women.
  
  Despite my criticisms, I don't want to be too harsh because the level of emotional maturity displayed by the characters is '50s teen flick', so I may be being overly judgemental about a young writer. In which case, my bad, and may you write and grow SilverTheo.

• Feeling Blue by Airelle (AO3) - I came across this before I disabled my feeds, it was put up by tinturtle to fill the ci5hq prosfic bingo 'something fanon' square.
  
  Personally, as I said in my AO3 comment, I've always believed Doyle to have blue eyes, which granted do look green in certain lighting. I've always thought it's kinda fab that all three of our Lads have varying shades of blue eyes. (According to a 2014 YouGov poll, despite being the most common UK eye colour, blue is still considered the most attractive - although scientific thinking disputes this and says people are attracted to colours less commonly found in their populations - so brown for the UK.)
  
  Allegedly, UK eye colour breaks down something like this: 48% blue, 30% green and 22% brown - who knows where you're supposed to fit in if, as is extremely common, your eyes have a mix of colours, hazel, for example... But as ILWB alludes to in her own AO3 comment, Mr S, the actor, may have blue eyes, but there's more than one fan wedded to the idea that Doyle, the character, has green eyes - à la Harry Potter.
  
  As for Bodie, due to the degraded nature of the video tapes available to the author, some early fanfic gives him brown eyes (I ran across one on the CI5 Circuit Archive, and if I ever remember its title I'll link to it ! 😇. However, even in the older DVDs you can see in eps like Mixed Doubles and Need to Know, a Bodie with more Ceylon-sapphire peepers. To be fair, all eyes change colour depending on the light source, particularly if they happen to have some form of mix or heterochromia - but brown to blue is probably pushing it! So back to Feeling Blue, where I think Airelle's impish side is well on display 😍.

• And, before I move on to Lewis, Robbie, that is, not Mr C, last but not least, I remembered to jot down a vid I watched, This Is Not A Love Song by JinkyO (AO3) - a punky song with punky editing which captures the Lads' abrasive mutual admiration society:

Click to view

Lewis:

• Hit and Run by Guinevere81 (AO3) - I hadn't thought of this before, but how would Lewis feel about seeing a hit and run - especially if the victim was Hathaway? Again formatting - came away a bit luke warm because I couldn't really 'see' it in my head - the logistics seemed off.

• Those Who Cannot Teach (Become Critics) by gishmi1ish (AO3) - PWP - I'm not a huge devourer of PWP - this one was okay and was mainly devoted to a fully-clothed first kiss in a compromising position. But I lost the logistics if it and it didn't convince me as erotic - a bit of a drawback in a PWP.

• To Sir, With Love by richmahogany (AO3) - the title drew me because I enjoyed the book, the film and the single. But this is not about that. It's Lewis' retirement party and Hathaway gets drunk, in typical Hathaway fashion he then lectures a disconcerted Lewis on the nature of platonic love.
  
  Lewis does retire in canon and, although not tagged - or probably intended - as such, this is convincing enough to read like an episode coda. Hathaway's bookshelf gives Ray Doyle's a run for its money, with far less pretension. The comments also provided the inspiration for yet another (my third so far) random Lewis fic...

Scribbling:

2019 Pros BB WIP - so I've struggled with this a mite because it's a story that's a bit outside my comfort zone, TLDR, so I had a sit, and I had a thunk, and lo, verily - Pros BB 2021. This then promptly stalled - but worry not, hearts-of-oak - I am now experimenting with writing the chapters out of order, a process I have dubbed 'swiss cheese', due to the holes...

This has led to some interesting issues I don't normally run in to, continuity wrangling, for example, but has also led to some momentum (insert Corbyn pun here). I was worried that my presence wouldn't be welcome at the BB going forward, now that I have retreated from Lj Pros - but apparently not - so that's absolutely fabulousa 🤪

As for the rest: not much progress, but to keep me focussed:

• Complete 'Stonehenge' (MFU) - stalled
• Complete 'Park/Hotel' (MFU) - nope
• Complete 'MIA' (MFU) - actually worrying away at this now - so some hope it will be posted this year !
• Complete 'Once Upon a Time Affair' serial (MFU) - nope
• Complete 'Old Corpses' (Pros) - I swear I will go to my grave rambling on about this one...
• Complete 'Action Squad' (Pros) - nope (again, really annoying because I was nearly there - and it fills a bingo square - no, I *hadn't forgotten about that!
• Complete 'WNGWJLEO' (Pros) - nope
• Optional - A sequel for 'The Long Trick' (Pros) - nope, but I thought it might be nice to see the story from Bodie's perspective, so that's at least a plan
• Complete 'Virtue' (Pros) - nope
• Optional - Complete 'On A High and Windy Hill' (Pros) - nope
• Optional - Complete 'Crosshairs' (Pros) - nope
• Optional - Complete one Star Trek WIP (ST:TOS) - nope (but I have started reading other people's fic!)
• Optional - Complete Bingo squares (MFU & Pros) - nope (*see)

Find out if pros_wip is still a thing - not really...
picowrimo a bit of a washout - again 🙁
Respond to any hanging comments, no matter how old - getting there a bit with this one, so that's good 😊

Admin:

Sort out fic folders and other transfers from old computer - working on this...
Sort out back up - nope
Sort out spreadsheets (don't ask) - nope
Archive non-archived stories - still making slow progress with this - hopefully more fic archived soon.
Sort out a place to store piccies on-line - nope
Optional - finish indexing WTF - nope, but I did have a thought about this, I could read it, review it as I go, and thus create an index by default. I even thought I could turn the whole thing into a readily downloadable pdf.
Optional - Proslib CD - nope (and I really should...)

Zines:

Read the ones you have! - haven't read very much more. Wish I knew how to get hold of Gentle on my Mind 4 & 5, still - all good things...
Zinedom Volunteers zine per weekend - nope, they must presume I'm dead...

Lj, debates and other stuff:

I retreated from the Lj Pros community in February - still lurk a bit here and there - but mostly I'm a ghost in the machine now...
Find more time for Lj and try to comment on everyone's posts. Had some interesting chats - and learned quite a bit. Enjoy dropping by uncle_du_jour when I can...
Post more questions to Lj - not really doing much of this anymore, casualty of the retreat...

picowrimo - been and gone...

Catch up with kelpercomehome's South American adventures - never did, and now all sorts of other adventures have happened - quite a bit of them in wool...
Write a proper Letter of Comment for A Balcony and a View of the Sea by (helenraven) Helen Raven - defo going to read this again and The Cook and the Warehouseman. And as we're in the territory, I see they've got a zine for Heat-Trace up on eBay at the moment...

Post another 30/31 days of fanwork (and update Lj tags accordingly) - will get round to this at some point.

And, according to a 2018 interview with Den of Geek, Brian Henson - one of its creatives - had still not given up on more Farscape at the time of the The Happytime Murders - now, I liked The Happytime Murders - but who wouldn't want a little more Farscape... ? (Or as it has been described, pretty much by the cast, bewildered all-American astronaut gets lost in Oz BDSM scene...)