sailing the fingers of the dragon

When you see this, post excerpts from three of your works in progress, says the meme. Well, it's not quite 'when I see it,' because I had to fetch my notebook in from the car and type up a chunk of my most recent, but nevertheless. 'In progress' might be stretching it a bit too, but 'on my mind,' at least?

None of the excerpts are spoilery for their respective shows. In rough order from first started:

( Scott & Bailey )

( Scott & Bailey )

( Last Tango in Halifax )

I still owe soupytwist a ficlet, but I haven't started it yet. *looks cute*

A brief addendum to my Dear Yuletide Writer letter, which is spoilery for the s4 finale of Scott & Bailey, ( under the cut )

My plans for the evening got cancelled on me, thank goodness, which meant I had time to eat dinner and wade through most of my inbox and, oh yeah, rewatch last week's Scott & Bailey ep. :P How is there only one left? I am not okay with this!

( 4x07 )

My strategy this week was to finish the last of my Thanksgiving leftovers before Scott & Bailey, thus anaesthetizing myself with tryptophan so I could get through the ep unscathed. It kind of worked?

This is not a full ep review, but just a brief digression off the first line of the ep, ( or at least what I think that line is )

GOD THIS SHOW.

ahem.

( She's also... voluptuous. )

Aaaaand I'm gonna be late for work.

I thought, oh, I'll have a beer, that'll make it much easier to watch this week's Scott & Bailey

WRONG

(good beer though)


( I'm a fetish! )

Also if you took the brother in this, Anthony, and added about a hundred pounds or so to his weight, you'd have one of my DPhil supervisors. It's a bit eerie.

If you don't follow me on Tumblr, you may have missed my precipitous and complete descent into the Scott & Bailey fandom. If you do follow me on Tumblr... I'd say I'm sorry about the massive pic- and gifspams, but really, we all know I'd be lying.

Scott & Bailey is a Sunday-night-drama buddy-cop show off ITV; I've seen it described as a more realistic, Mancunian Cagney and Lacey, which given what I know about some of the original feminist undertones of C&L seems fairly apt. It'd been on my radar for a while, but then sophiagratia started writing fic for it, and that so often spells my downfall. :P What really did it for me, though, was that I put on the first ep, watched the opening credits, and noticed that all the names (save a few actors) were female: creators, producer, director, writer. Not to mention the characters! By s3 (s4 starts airing... soon... ish), we have: two main characters, detective constables (DC), female; one main character, detective chief inspector (DCI), female; one regular character, detective superintendent (DSI), female; one recurring character, forensic pathologist, female; one minor recurring character, assistant chief constable (ACC), female; several recurring characters, male, who pretty much never get the POV position.

...they do whole long, important scenes in the women's toilets. !!! <333

It's also very well made and beautifully shot (I didn't know Manchester could look so pretty... kidding, kidding, I love Manchester *g*). The direction is fabulous, especially in some of the most recent episodes, and while occasionally some of the stories are a bit heavy-handed, the dialogue and the character interactions are always just golden. They're extremely good at building up narrative arcs that sweep through not only multiple episodes, but multiple seasons, often surprising me by bringing back something that I hadn't realised was going to be important.

The Scott and Bailey of the title are Janet Scott and Rachel Bailey, our two detective constables - best friends, brilliant coworkers, competent and capable and occasionally really fucked up (and who occasionally really fuck up, which is different). The marketing sells them as the competent mum (Janet) and the wild child (Rachel), but that's far too simplistic and superficial. Their DCI is Gill Murray, who is this tiny ambitious force of nature and who I kind of want to grow up to be. This holy trinity is occasionally expanded by Gill's bestie, Julie Dodson, also a DCI, five foot ten and still wears fuck-off-high heels to work but is horribly afraid of the ACC. :P I want to squish them all.

I'm particularly amazed just how much I adore Janet, because that sort of... steady... character is rarely my forte. Like so many of the rest of the characters, though, Janet is much more than what we originally see, and the way she (and everyone) develops is realistic and brilliant. I feel a lot of occasionally uncomfortable, occasionally pleasant sympathy with Rachel, and want to smack her about equally often. And like I said, I want to be Gill in a lot of ways; despite being nominally the third-billed character, I just love her arc, from what we learn of her background through the second season to how we see her excelling - and failing - in the DCI job.

The full trailer for the fourth season just came out and I am slightly worried about some of what it shows, but I am trying to trust that the showrunners who gave us such an incredible show so far, with almost no emotional slips, will be able to keep that up. (I'm also considering suggesting it for teevee club, because I would like to a) share it and b) be forced to watch it in a more measured way).

It's interesting - I'd been thinking lately that I haven't been reading nearly as much crime/mystery fiction as I used to, and then I read the S&B tie-in novels and now I'm full-on back into yessss, mysteries, yessss. Recs appreciated! The nice thing about this hiatus, though, is that loads of the series I used to read have published multiple books in the interim. :P

Here's a thought I just can't get rid of: Scott & Bailey zombie apocalypse fic.

...so that might be a Yuletide request then.

(I mean, specifically the apocalypse part. S&B is definitely going to be a Yuletide request.)

(I keep trying to stop consuming texts set in England, because they just make me homesick.* I keep failing. Worth it.)



*the sentiment is apt even if the terminology is lacking.