Bird thou never wert

I've just finished rewriting and posted the Knightmare fic.

When I wrote this in 1990 it was a chapter in a general fantasy universe with a female POV protagonist. In rewriting I decided to have a gender-neutral POV character because (a) it relates to a show where the majority of the viewers and the players were perceived as boys and I didn't want to exclude those who are still the majority fandom and (b) it would be an interesting writing exercise.

And a tricky one. The easy option would have been to write in first person, so I could use 'I' and 'Me', along with a neutral name to obscure the characters sex. I like writing first person (well, I do write a lot of Holmes stories) so it wouldn't have been particularly challenging, or needed much rewriting. But it would, again, not have been in the spirit of the programme. And I certainly wasn't going to use the gamers trick of 'YN' and 'you', even if it is a game.

So I went for third person narrative, and a gender neutral name (OK the character is a bit of a cipher, so I make no apologies for using the name Cypher). That still meant using a lot of circumlocution to obscure things, and more epithets than I would normally be comfortable with (The Warrior, The Traveller, The Magic User ('Witch' may technically be male or female, but not in the Knightmare universe). And thankfully I could avoid 'The Blond(e)' in this case (the only really gender neutral hair colour is red, and there are far too many redheads in fantasy fiction.

I am not entirely happy with the result, but it has given me some ideas for more traditionally written Knightmare fic.

And now I am humming Jethro Tull...

When I smashed up my arm I was in the middle of posting a fun magic realism fanfic based on the British Villains Jaguar car advert. I put up chapter 4 - and then not being able to type for a month, the muse departed. I have a couple of ideas for Wimsey stories that I'm working on (at least to the extent of having done cover art for one. Then someone on the Facebook AO3 forum mentioned working on a V(1983) fanfic and it occurred to me that I wrote two of these at the back end of the 1980s and it would be a nicely mechanical exercise to type them up and archive on AO3.

So that is what I have been doing. I found the second of the zines, and the last chapter goes up tomorrow, together with an author's note which is probably more important from the archive point of view, than the story (it notes that it was typed mostly on an Amstrad 1512 and printed on our Gestetner duplicator).

If I ever find the other zine I will explore the OCR option (my old computer had an OCR program which worked well with our Epson printer/scanner, but both are now defunct).

Meanwhile I have found my old 1991 notebooks and an untyped Knightmare story. I've been meaning to put something on Knightmare onto AO3, so Wimsey may go into storage for a bit longer.

I hadn't intended to write anything for Halloween, especially as the Holmestice fic is taking priority, but after yesterday's Archers I couldn't resist adding to my Alternative Ambridge drabble series.

Pointless fluff.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27304852

There is a fashion among pro TV critics to accuse 1960s-80s TV drama of being slow and dull. Anyone who has ever watched drama of the period - of which there is still a lot on current channels - knows that this is untrue, but the remake of All Creatures Great and Small moves at such a glacial pace that I wonder whether the makers believed that in doing so they were emulating the much loved original.

The cast is excellent, and the sets and costumes right - but the script is slow and, in many cases, panders to 21C sensibilities to the detriment of the story. Despite being set in 1937 there is a post-war feel; comments about the introduction of Friesian cattle to displace native shorthorns I seem to remember come from a much later book; and I find it hard to believe that a Scotsman, and a former student at that, can be floored by two pints of beer - even Yorkshire home brewed - in 1937 (Five years later, maybe!). Gates were being left open all over the place (I cannot be the only one yelling at the TV screen on this subject), and surely even the doziest person wouldn't get off of a bus in the middle of nowhere when he was travelling to a market town? I am assuming that it was filmed in Yorkshire - though it didn't look like it. Not enough dry stone walls for the Dales, or heather for the Moors, and a distinct lack of signposts or sheep.

And speaking of sheep - it is the animals that are most jarring. That shorthorn was on its own. The cats were amazingly biddable. The bull which threatens James on the farm is clearly a sweetie (what sort of vet runs from an animal that is not only wearing a halter, but also has a nose ring?). And any vet who spent five hours trying to deliver a calf from a cow that had already been several hours in labour wouldn't be getting out the calf-ropes to hook round its lower jaw (!!!), he would be explaining to the farmer that there was nothing else to do at that stage to save the cow but to cut the probably dead calf out of her (and getting out pretty much the equipment that was actually shown.)

Verdict - slow and unconvincing. I feel sorry for a good cast let down by script and production.