Hrm.   I started watching Midsomer Murders again after a long break.  Caught up to the current DS (Winter).  Plumbed the fan fiction depths, and I am wondering whether the main Midsomer Murders fan fic community was on LiveJournal or one of the lost geocities/angelfire/yahoo communities.  There not even 200 fics on FF.net, and under 500 on AO3.  For a show that’s been running since the late 1990s, that seems thin.  And there’s not been an embargo like there was on Anne Rice fic for fear of being sued. 

I don’t buy the excuse that the target demo back in 1997 was ‘too old’ to make fan fic -- people in their 40s have been slashing Kirk/Spock since the 1960s. 

there's that post about sherlock holmes actually being a supernatural entity compelled to solve crimes, but i think it could apply to dozens of fictional detectives - columbo is the obvious one, but inspector goole from an inspector calls actively embraces his eldritch identity, and there's that theory about jessica fletcher being an unwitting avatar of death, and i swear i remember a midsomer murders fan making a post about midsomer as a sentient, murderous county that requires a barnaby to stop it from eating itself alive.

and then there's the fact that a lot of detectives (not necessarily the ones on my list) end up with typically autistic mannerisms as a way to set them apart from the suspects, and what with the idea that autistic children were often mistaken for changelings...

basically i would like to see a fantasy mystery series where 'detective' is an actual magical species

week 6 - w/c march 1st

march 6th 2021

Fictional characters are free game. Once it exists and it perceived and consumed, people can take what they want from it, or change it to fit their wants and needs, or let if be if that’s how they prefer. This is why things like fanart and fanfiction are so prominent, because we, as fans and creators, can take what we want and what we like, and discard what we don’t, or what doesn’t resonate with us.

All characters are free game, but some get played with a lot more, and I want to look at three cases, characters in which I believe/have taken to believing this without necessarily explicit canon information.

Arnold Rimmer (Red Dwarf) So I’ve talked about him a lot, in many, many posts, so I won’t go into much here, but yes, I think he is queer to some or multiple degrees. I don’t think he’s straight I know that. There is hinted at evidence, and when I say evidence I mean bits of media that very likely were not intended to point in this direction, but when viewed all together, it’s hard to see anything else.

Jamie Winter (Midsomer Murders) It’s hard to believe I never talk about this show because I love it dearly - and my main blog takes it’s name from this character - but I want to talk on Jamie a little. He’s my favourite Sergeant, the fifth and most recent of them, and I care for him dearly. I can say, without doubt or hesitation, that he is bisexual. There is no evidence for that, not at all really, but it just feels right. But, what about it feels right? Why does he feel bisexual?

I also imagine he had a pretty terrible childhood, with passive neglectful and abusive parents, and who never really felt love and acceptance until he left that environment.

Quite different things, but with the case of Jamie there is this: we basically know nothing about him. With other sergeants, we’ve known bits and pieces, but Jamie’s past has been left untouched on, so why do we - and by “we,” I mean a fair portion of the Midsomer Murders/Jamie Winter stans - believe he had a bad childhood? Little looks he gives and the odd sentence, but that’s it really, isn’t it?

Julian Bashir (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) Now I can talk on this a bit more because I wrote an essay about this character and his identity, through allegory, as a transgender man. It’s definitely an unintentional allegory - his trans identity shown through his identity as a genetic augment - but it’s definitely there. It was a joyous essay to write, especially as a trans person myself, and I felt very grateful to have a professor who was so supportive of this idea.

-

I focus on these because these opinions - that Rimmer is queer, Jamie is bisexual and Bashir is trans - are not just headcanons held by me, but by other people too, and it was wonderful seeing that. Looping back to what I said at the start about all characters being free game, yes, but Rimmer is consistently queer, multiple people have talked or written with Bashir as trans, nearly everyone I know that I talk ot Jamie about will agree he’s bisexual. So, what are we reading? What are we seeing that the others don’t? Why is Bashir the DS9 character headcanoned to be trans and not Jake or Kira or Rom? Why is Jamie explicitly bisexual to us and not just more broadly queer?

This post doesn’t really have a point or answer unfortunately. I imagine some of it, things regarding gender and sexuality, come from a history of being invisible or supressed with media, and so we naturally look into these character to find ourselves when we’re not explicitly impressed.

Mention Star Trek here for an example, but In ST: Discovery, everyone who has been seen as straight - as in straight-passing relationship with no explicitly queer identity - I don’t really headcanon anything about, and I assume they are straight - and the same in regard to gender. And in Discovery, we have gay and queer character, and trans and non-binary characters too. Now looking at Deep Space Nine, there are no directly explicit queer or trans character - yes there is Dax in terms of gender, but that’s a different topic, and Dax is only ever a woman on-screen so forgive - and so I headcanon half the characters to be queer, in gender or sexuality, purely because I can sometimes.

So yes, I’m sure some of this headcanon stuff comes from that, but it doesn’t, at least in my personal case, explain why I see Jamie having an abusive childhood. Mine hasn’t been, at least not in the same way I imagine Jamie’s being, so it’s not self-projection like it might be with Bashir being trans, so I don’t know. Maybe somebody else does, and I’d love to talk about this sort of stuff with someone (so if you want to, hmu on my main @jxmieswxnter)

PEOPLE I’D LIKE TO GET TO KNOW BETTER!

(  alias / name  ) : Rae. It’s mostly what I’ve picked to go by in the RPC, though not many of my offline friends call me this.

(  birthday  ) : August 22nd.

(  zodiac sign  ) :  I’m a Leo/Virgo cusp and I live up to it in most aspects (fortunately or unfortunately). I can be a little dramatic and I have to look good if I’m leaving the house (and most of the time, at home as well!). I’m also terribly impatient. Furthermore, I tend to be rather loyal, a perfectionist, and single-minded with tasks.

(  height  ) : 5′8″. Average to tall, I suppose? I was -just- tall enough to do some plus-size modeling for a year post-university when the job market had tanked. But otherwise too short for most work. I did personal training and makeup artistry for awhile instead before getting into my current field.

(  hobbies  ) : Writing (RP, blogs, occasionally fiction), reading (mostly fiction), cosplay, fashion, beauty and skincare, weightlifting, binge watching TV and movies, and on occasion, baking.

(  favourite colour  ) :  Sapphire blue has been my favorite for years. I also love pastels of all types (pink, blue, purple, green especially), navy blue, emerald green, and blue-based reds. I tend to avoid orange, yellow, and brown, at least in terms of clothes and makeup.

(  favourite books  ) : This is a cruel question to ask someone who majored in English Lit, honestly. My favorites range from classics often read in English class to Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians. 

(  last film or show watched  ) : Midsomer Murders and Inspector Lewis, back-to-back. Mystery Mondays! I’m also on my fourth rewatch of Bridgerton and my 12th rewatch of Downton Abbey. I need to catch up on Men in Kilts, too. For movies, I just rewatched Diaboliques after like 6 years or so and it still holds up (If you’re a fan of thrillers and Alfred Hitchcock, don’t miss this French film!). Bless HBO Max for having a curated section of choices from Turner Classic Movies (when I’ve got a moment, I’m going to rewatch And God Created Woman again. I’m weak for Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot, and Catherine Deneuve).

(  inspiration for muse  ) :  I go into this a lot on most Mundays, but I do pull a lot from TV, books, and films. I don’t talk about the book side of this as much, so I’d give shoutouts to The Royal We, Katherine McGee’s American Royals series, and The Royal Runaway for giving me plenty of plot ideas for this blog.

(  story behind url  ) : Very simple: it’s how Sonia wishes to be seen.

Tagged by: stolen affectionately from @electricea​ !

Tagging: You, if you’d like to do this.

You take my breath away - Part I

As soon as this idea popped in my mind I couldn’t resist not to write it down. The title of course is inspired by a Queen song — which I suggest you listen if you still haven’t done it — but I need to clear some things out. 

While reading this fic you need to pretend that Dominique was given much more space on the storyline, just like to the other love interests of the boys. Of course it is just fiction, even though I tried to make it as realistic as possible. The dates are pretty accurate, too, but I know it might seem a bit confusing so if you have any questions or if you’d like to let me know what you think of it just know that my DMs and Inbox are always open :) 

This is a slowburn fic and I believe it’s really important to chronologically follow all the events of their story before diving into the present day drama. ;)

Summary: reader has always dreamt of being an actress and she gets the chance of a lifetime when she’s cast as Dominique Beyrand in the infamous biopic about the legend himself, Freddie Mercury. But what will happen when she gets to know better the man who plays his love interest in the movie, Roger Taylor? Will Ben and Y/N’s story be as lucky as the one of characters they portray or will they be starcrossed lovers? Because it happens that things might get complicated because of Ellie, Ben’s long-term girlfriend.

New York City - present day 

“Y/N, over here!”

“Is it true? Is there going to be a Bohemian Rhapsody sequel?”

“Y/N! Hey, Y/N! Just a few questions!”

“Are you and Ben Hardy dating?”

All those flashing lights blinded you for a couple of seconds, forcing you to blink a frenetically. Your manager, a redhead named Callie, grabbed you firmly by your arm, leading you towards the entrance of the TV-studio. The fans were screaming your name and you couldn’t help but wave at them, causing them to cheer even louder. You hated the fact that they were forced to remain behind the fascinators, but it was for your own security. You apologetically smiled at them before following Callie inside the building. You let out a sigh as soon as the doors closed behind you, finally being able to breathe again and relax.

“You okay?” Callie gave you a quick look from above her shoulder but you noticed she was worried, so you nodded to reassure her.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” From where you were standing you could still hear the fans screaming your name and you turned towards the door to give a better look at the crowd. You’d never get used to it.

“The boys are already here. Look, over there.” Callie tapped on your shoulder and you turned around, looking at the spot she was pointing at. Her red hair caught the attention of those presents but she didn’t seem to care. “I’ll go take a look at the schedule. Please don’t disappear.”

As you watched her walking away you decided to join the boys, but not without taking a deep breath first. Joining the boys would’ve meant to meet Ben again, a concern which had kept you awake all night.

When you got the role of a lifetime in one of the most eagerly awaited movie of the year, you didn’t count the fact that you’d constantly be on the spotlight.

When you were young you dreamt of being an actress. Needless to say you annoyed your mother to death by performing movie dialogues and God knows how many soliloquies she was forced to hear.

You considered yourself lucky for succeeding in achieve your dream — your annoying monologues had led you to something greater. The day your manager called you to announce you’d been cast in a Hollywood movie you cried your eyes out. And the proud look in your mother’s eyes — oh man, you’d remember it ‘till the day you died.

The infamous movie which had been your springboard to Hollywood was a biopic about Freddie Mercury called Bohemian Rhapsody. Of course you knew who Freddie Mercury was: you’d grown up blasting Bohemian Rhapsody in your bedroom, annoying the neighbours by doing so — who didn’t miss the chance to complain about it with your mom almost every day.

The idea of being cast as Dominique Beyrand, Roger Taylor’s first wife, made you feel ecstatic at first.

But then you realised the greatness of the situation and you freaked out.

What if you screwed it up?

What if you didn’t get along with your cast mates?

What if Dominique wouldn’t like your portrayal of her?

The idea of playing a living person terrified you, but all your fears slowly disappeared during the first week of filming.

You had the chance to meet your cast mates during the first table read, where you recognised some familiar faces. Even if that had been two years ago, you remembered that day as if it was yesterday.

London - September 7th, 2017

The room was filled with strangers, who were all chatting to each other. The table read was a perfect occasion to know better those who were going to be your cast mates and you were more than happy to recognise some of them.

You were thrilled by the fact that Rami Malek was going to play the legend himself, Freddie Mercury. You’d seen some of his works and you were a huge fan of Mr. Robot, the TV show in which he played the main character. You couldn’t wait to see him in action and for sure you just couldn’t ignore all the looks he was throwing to a blondie standing close to the window, chatting with another girl who you didn’t recognise. You could swear you’d seen the blondie somewhere but you really couldn’t recall.

You also recognised the man who played the Sgt Charlie Nelson in Midsomer Murders, Gwilym Lee. And it was a challenge for you not to fangirl over him — you and your mother were crazy about that show. You never missed an episode.

Among the other unknown face you spotted the guy who played one of the main characters in Downtown Abbey: Allen-something.

He was sitting right next to a man who had a familiar face to you, but given all the anxiety and enthusiasm of the moment you couldn’t really recognise him. His shirt read: “Dinosaurs are dino-mite!” And you couldn’t help but chuckle, but you couldn’t understand why he was wearing a hat.

As you gave a quick look at the rest of those presents your eye was been caught by a blonde, handsome guy. He was chatting with the dino-guy, who you later found out was going to play the bassist, John Deacon, but God, even his left side made you feel things.

You weren’t sure you’d seen any of his works but you were definitely willing to know him better, given that according to the sign placed right in front of him, he was the one who was going to play Roger Taylor, your love interest in the movie.

You were more than aware that to know better those people you had to actually have a conversation with them, but you were too nervous to do that so you were just leaning against the wall, casually sipping your cappuccino while giving a better look to the script. You were involved in reading your lines when you noticed someone approaching you.

The blonde Adonis slash the fake Roger Taylor was standing right in front of you, holding a bottle of water in one hand. Being this close to him gave you the chance to give him a better look. His features were delicate but his body... oh, his body. He was hot, a perfect representation of the greek god Apollo. You didn’t get the exact color of his eyes at first, it was a shade of green so clear that you found difficult just to look away.

“You must be Y/N.” His voice was deep and hoarse, very much different from what you expected and for sure very much different from Roger’s, too.

You shook his hand with a smile, managing to hold both the cup and the script with one hand only. His touch was nice and gentle and not sweaty and unpleasant at all. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“I’m Ben.”

Ben. Short and concise. He definitely had a ‘Ben’ kind of face.

“So, it seems that we’re gonna be a couple.” Probably it hadn’t been the best way to break the ice but he smiled anyways. He stuck his tongue out while doing it and you thought it was the hottest thing ever.

“It looks like that, yeah.” He lowered his gaze to the script before looking back at you. “Could I have seen you somewhere before? Your face looks familiar.”

“Unlikely. Uhm— that’s my first movie ever, actually. I’ve been doing theatre most of my life.” And you cleared your throat, trying to relax in his company. He wasn’t intimidating or anything, you just had to know him better. You had the feeling that you’d spend an incredible amount of time with him on set.

“Theatre?” He asked in an amazed tone. “Wait, is there any chance you were involved in the adaptation of Les Misérables?”

Was there any chance for him to be interested in theatre? You didn’t know anything about him so never say never. “If you’re talking about the one of the South London theatre then yes, I played Éponine.”

As his smile grew wider his green eyes seemed to light up. Aaand there it was again, that goddamn tongue. “That’s where I remember you from.”

His excitement was captivating and because of that you couldn’t help but smile back at him. “I don’t remember you in the company, though.”

“Oh no, no”, He hurried to say. “I haven’t done theatre since ages, but my girlfriend played the role of Cos... Cosette? Is that right?”

His girlfriend.

Of course he had a girlfriend, you shouldn’t even be surprised. You tried not to seem too caught off guard by hearing his words and you took a sip of your drink to temporise. “I vaguely remember her, yeah. Y’know, we didn’t have any scenes together”, You lied. You remembered her perfectly, to be honest. And she was very talented. And very lucky too, now that you knew she was dating Ben.

He nodded in understanding and you both turned towards the door as soon as you heard the voice of the director, who was calling the attention of those present. He genuinely smiled at you before going back to his seat.

You took yours too, which happened to be between the blondie — who grinned at you and introduced herself as Lucy Boynton — and Gwilym Lee. Ben’s seat was right in front of yours and you gave him a thankful smile when he grinned at you in sign of support.

You remember that the exact same day Dr. Brian May himself posted a picture on Instagram of the full cast taken right after the ending of the table read. You were standing between Priya, the girl who played Kashmira Bulsara — Freddie’s sister — and Gwilym, whose arm surrounded your shoulders. You were all smiling at the camera and it was one of your favorite memories. 

The caption read: “We’re making a movie !! It’s finally official. These great guys are already living and breathing their roles as us in our youthful prime. The Bo Rhap ship is now sailing under her own steam. Bon Voyage to all who sail in her ! So proud to see this fabulous team go forward. Honoured! Bri.” It was a very special picture and now, almost two years later, you had it framed.

After the table read it took the crew only two days to list the shooting schedule but you started filming only two weeks later, when the director had finally taken all the shots needed to recreate the infamous Live Aid.

And that’s how you met Ben Hardy.

London - September 27th, 2017

It was the fourth time Rachael politely asked you to stay still but doing it while having a conversation with Joe — also known as Dino-boy — was a difficult challenge. Maybe pissing off the hair stylist during your very first week on set wasn’t the best was to start that journey.

You heard a loud ‘chop’ as another strand of your hair fell on the ground. Moreover, that day you finally understood why Joe was wearing a hat during the table read: he had a bloody perm, which made him look like a mushroom. A very big one.

“So what is it about?” He was really interested in understanding the dynamics of ‘Love Island’ and you couldn’t believe he’d never watched a single episode of it.

“I already told you, Joe!” Rachael gave you a death stare through the mirror when you turned towards him, clearly amused by his words. You murmured an apology to her before focusing back on Joe. “A group of people—”

“Singles?” You were about to nod at his question but you knew that would’ve pissed Rachael off, so you replied “Yeah. They live in this beautiful villa in Mallorca, constantly under video surveillance.”

You heard another ‘chop’ and then one more. You tried not to think about your hair, focusing on Rachael’s gentle hands stroking what was left of it. Joe took a sip of his Coca-Cola, his eyes narrowed as he was thinking. “Basically it’s another version of the Big Brother.”

He was really involved in your explanation and you could see it by the look on his face. His brows were narrowed as he tried to understand, but you couldn’t take him seriously with that perm of his. “Nope, ‘cause they’re coupled up with someone and at the end the only couple left wins lots of money. I can’t believe you never heard of it!”

And the following hour was spent explaining the dynamics of the show to Joe under the amused but focused look of Rachael. When she was finally done with your hair you slipped your fingers through it. It was way much shorter than before but Dominique had it like that back in those days. You could’ve definitely grown used to it.

“You’re lucky, y’know?” Joe looked at you with the corner of his eye while you were heading to the set. You raised your gaze from the script just to give him a questioning look. “Huh?”

It was weird seeing him in the typical 80s clothes but that was exactly what you were wearing, too. The delicate fabric of your dress caressed your legs as you walked on the grass. “At least Dominique didn’t have a perm.”

His exasperated look made you chuckle while he threw his arms in the air. You moved a strand of hair off your face as he opened the door of the building for you. “Oh, c’mon. Don’t be such a drama queen. You’ll cut it sooner or later.”

As soon as you stepped in heard loud noises of hammering and shouted commands — they were still building the set, which happened to be the Taylor’s house. 

“Oh, yeah. But I’m afraid to know what’ll come next.”

“Nothing can be worse than that perm.” You giggled at the sight of his funny face and in that moment you spotted Ben in one of the corners, accompanied by a blonde. “I had forgotten Ellie was coming to set today.”

Joe gave you a questioning look before keep checking the shooting schedule. You nodded towards the pair, who was standing not so far away from you, and Joe followed your indication. “Ben’s girlfriend”, You clarified.

You lowered your gaze to the script you were holding, giving a last look to your lines as Joe asked you “D’ya know her?”

“Barely”, You lied, but luckily Joe didn’t know that. The two of you approached them and you genuinely smiled.

“Hey man” Joe said in a cheerful tone and Ben gave him the biggest smile while Ellie, who was giving her back to you, turned around.

“Hey buddy, Y/N. That’s Ellie.” He placed a hand on her back as she extended her hand towards Joe first, murmuring “Nice to meet you”, and then at you. Her face lit up when she finally recognised you. “Y/N, what a surprise!”

You shook her hand and smiled at her but then your gaze fell on Ben. He was wearing a wig, a very short one, but it looked good on him. The shirt he was wearing was a blue one with a tartan pattern, matched with a pair of very tight blue jeans and Adidas shoes. The perfect 80s style.

“Ellie, hey. It’s nice to see you again.” She wrinkled her nose as she smiled at you and Ben seemed really happy about the two of you meeting again. When you met his green eyes his smile widened and you felt his gaze studying your face.

“Your hair’s shorter.” You were flattered by the fact he noticed the change and you shyly smiled at him, voluntarily ignoring Ellie’s look.

You murmured a soft “Yeah” but Joe came in rescue, surrounding your shoulders with his arm and playfully squeezing your arm. “She wants to catch the essence of Dominique.”

“I can’t wait to see you in action”, Ellie said and you thanked her with a smile.

The truth was, you were nervous as hell. You were about to shoot your first scene ever and you were terrified you’d screw it up.

Ben, Ellie and Joe started a conversation about the building of the set when your phone rang, announcing a new message. It was from your best friend Laura, so you immediately unlocked the phone to read it.

‘Today is the day! Kick their asses, girl. Break a leg and please, not Ellie’s. Luv ya :) X’

You genuinely smiled at her words and you shook your head, amused by her insinuations. She knew all the story behind Ben and Ellie and to be honest you barely knew him, so there was nothing to be jealous of. So Ellie’s legs were just fine.

You put away your phone and tried to follow their conversation when the director called you and Ben to reach him. It was showtime.

Ben placed a kiss on Ellie’s lips before reaching you and starting to walk by your side. “I love this new hairstyle, it looks good on you.” You were caught off guard and you didn’t even had the chance to thank him because you were now in front of the director. You noticed, however, that he seemed pleased by the effect his words had on you.

“Okay, guys. I know this is your first scene together and you still need to get along, but try your best. I wanna feel all the frustration and despair of the situation. Y/N, if needed, don’t hesitate to improv. Give me goosebumps, ‘right?” And when you nodded in agreement you turned towards Ben, just to find out that he was already staring at you.

“If you’re gonna improv please don’t punch me.” His playful tone made you giggle as you both placed in your predefined spots. You were just a few inches away from him and by the way the was tapping his hand on his thigh you knew he was nervous, too. Despite that he didn’t miss the chance to reassure you. “You’ve got this.”

Ellie was standing right next to the director’s chair, her eyes fixed on Ben as the crew got ready to shoot the scene. Joe was standing on her side and he showed his thumbs up in sign of support.

You cleared your throat and you raised your chin to meet Ben’s blue eyes. The director was shouting commands through his megaphone and you narrowed your brows in a hurt expression just before he shouted “Action!”

And with the most dramatic tone you knew, you exclaimed “Roger, how could you?”

London - October 10th, 2017

As far as you could remember, Ellie was always around when it came for you and Ben to shoot scenes together. Not to mention all the embarrassment when you had to shoot a love scene, under Ellie’s observatory gaze.

“You nervous?” Ben must’ve noticed the way you were nervously tapping your feet on the floor. You bit your lower lip and slowly nodded, turning towards him. The wig he was wearing was a bit longer than the previous ones, perfectly nailing Roger’s look in the late 70s. He was wearing a half-unbuttoned black shirt and a grey jacket, which you remembered seeing in some old pictures of those days. You wondered if it was the original one, courtesy of Roger himself, or if it was an exact reproduction of it.

The dress you were wearing, on the other hand, came directly from Dominique’s wardrobe. It was a nice sensation feeling the silk against your skin.

“A bit”, You replied. There was no point in lying. It was your very first love scene for the cameras and having not only Ellie but also Roger and Dominique to witness it made you incredibly nervous. The warmth of Ben’s green eyes hit you like a running train when you met his gaze.

“Don’t mind them.” His words were nothing but a whisper now that he had come closer to you. “Pretend it’s just you and me.”

“It doesn’t help at all.” You grinned at him and immediately relaxed when he placed his hands on your shoulders, gently squeezing them.

“Guys?” The two of you turned towards Roger who, with the phone in hand, was standing right next to Dominique. You couldn’t even imagine how they’d be feeling at the moment, given that they were seeing someone portray a younger version of themselves. We were their alter-ego’s.

“Yeah?” Ben let go of your shoulders and you both turned towards them. Dominique’s friendly smile helped you not to overthink about the scene you were about to film, so you tried to avoid Ellie’s burning gaze and focus on her only.

“D’ya mind smiling at the camera?” Dominique asked pointing at Roger, who was smiling behind his phone.

“‘f course”, You replied with a smile and you moved closer to Ben. You remembered seeing a picture of a young Roger and Dominique wearing those exact same clothes hung in the costume fitting trailer, so shortly before Roger took the pic, you pretended to put a finger on Ben’s nose who, immediately understanding your intentions, parted his lips in a surprised look. Dominique bursted into laughter and you could be wrong but you noticed her eyes becoming glossy.

Not long after it was time to start filming and by taking a deep breath you reached your spot. Ben was standing not so far away from you and you noticed him grinning at Ellie before turning towards you. His smile grew wider and you tried to focus only on him when the director started to shout orders.

“Just relax”, He mouthed and Fletcher finally said “Action!”

It was like you were leaving your skin just to empathise with Dominique — and to be honest, that was the best part of being an actress.

You threw your arms in the air in sign of frustration as you thought about your next line. “I can’t believe I had to know it from John!”

Ben — or rather, Roger — took a step towards you, his green eyes so different from Roger’s yet so mesmerising were fixed on yours. “I was gonna tell you, love. I was just waiting for the right moment.”

You could feel Ellie’s gaze on you as you took a step towards him, your eyes narrowing in — fake — anger. “The right moment? There may not have been the right moment, Roger! For God’s—”

And Ben’s lips crushed on yours. They were incredibly soft and... kissable, of course. His touch made you feel things you didn’t want to feel, firstly because he was dating someone and his girlfriend was right there, watching the two of you kissing, and secondly, you barely knew him. But you’d be a liar if you denied the fact that you were attracted by him.

His hands cupped your cheeks as he started to gently move his lips on yours and you threw your arms around his neck, pulling him closer to you. You heard the director murmuring orders from his chair behind the screen while you kissed Ben back.

“Lift her up”, you heard him say and Ben’s hands moved from your face to your body, gently caressing the curves of your body. You were still kissing him back, almost breathless, when he lifted you up by grabbing the back of your thighs.

You surrounded his hips with your bare legs and he placed a hand on your back to hold you. Your body was so pressed against his that you could easily feel his muscles under the shirt.

“Y/N, the jacket.” You followed Fletcher’s order and you backed away from his lips just the time to slip your hands under his jacket and quickly taking it off. It fell on the ground and Ben avoided it while recoiling towards the bed, just as Fletcher ordered.

His hands gently caressed your bare thighs and his touch gave you goosebumps. You could feel the corns in his hands due to the constant practicing on the drums so that he could properly prepare for the role.

Your hands gently caressed his neck while his hands moved to the zip of your dress, which easily opened before leaning you on the mattress.

“Look at her in the eyes”, Fletcher said, but there was no need because his eyes were already fixed on yours. And you hoped he was a terrific actor, even more than you thought, because if it wasn’t so Ellie wouldn’t have liked the look on his face while he was looking at you.

As you opened further your legs so that he could be comfy between them, his clothed hips pressed against yours. It took you all the strength you had in your body not to blush hard at the feeling of his crotch pressed against your right thigh.

Ben noticed the look in your eyes and he gave you an amused grin when the director shouted through his megaphone “And... cut!”

“Sorry”, He murmured while moving off you, sitting on the mattress right next to you. He offered you a hand which you gratefully accepted and you sat down. Fletcher stood up from his chair and while he walked towards you, you vaguely gestures towards your back and asked Ben “Could you gimme a hand?”

“‘f course.” You turned your back to him and his touch sent shivers down your spine while he lifted the zip of the dress.

“Amazing. Simply amazing.” The director started gesturing as he took off his headphones, his face lit up by a big, excited smile. “There’s no need to do a second shot. It’s perfect. Love your chemistry, by the way.”

If a look could kill, you’d be already dead by the hand of Ellie.

Later that night you were finally taking some rest in your trailer when you heard your phone buzzing. By unlocking it with a groan you found out that Roger had posted a picture on Instagram in which you were tagged. The pic in question was the one he had taken that afternoon on set — you were looking at the camera with the biggest smile while pretending to put a finger on Ben’s nose, but his gaze was on you. He was looking at you with the brightest smile you’d ever seen, his lips parted in a fake shocked reaction.

You genuinely smiled while reading the caption: “The talented @benhardy and @y/n doing me and Dom on the forthcoming Bio-Epic — Bohemian Rhapsody the Movie. Now this is cool!”

You immediately reposted it, not knowing that the web would’ve freaked out for days for that photo.

And the situation has stayed the same for another month or so, in which you’d grown closer to almost every cast member. Lucy was now like a sister to you and she was for sure one of the people who knew you better in the world.

But everything suddenly changed in November.

London - November 3rd, 2017

“Bloody weather”, You heard Lucy murmur as the two of you hurried to get back to your trailers before it started to rain. You went shopping for the upcoming Queen gig you’d been invited to that night and saying you were excited was nowhere near the truth. You were bloody ecstatic.

“Are you coming home for Christmas, auntie?” You looked at Lucy with the corner of your eye as the voice of your little nephew through the phone made your heart sank.

“Hopefully yes, lovie. D’you miss me?” Lucy gave you a nod when you finally got to her trailer and you waved her goodbye before rushing to reach yours before it started to pour.

“Yeah, so much. What’s my Christmas gift?” You let out a laugh as you closed the door behind you, sighing in relief for succeeding in avoiding the rain.

“What’d you like to get, Fra?” Your nephew — Francis — seemed to think about your question and you smiled just at the thought of him. You missed your family more than anything but thankfully you’d be seeing them in a month thanks to the Christmas break.

“Do I really have to choose?” His words made you giggle as you laid on your bed, eyes to the ceiling. “Would you like for it to be a surprise?”

“Yes, auntie.” But you were barely listening to him, given that someone was knocking on the door.

“I’ll call you later, love. I gotta go. Say hi to mommy for me.” After saying him goodbye you hung off the phone, placing it on the desk near the bed as you got up to get the door. The knocking was now louder and more persistent, a change which made you worry,

But you weren’t expecting what you saw after opening it. Ben was standing under the pouring rain, wet from head to toe. “Can I... Can I come in?” His voice was shaky and at first you thought it was because of the rain but as you moved aside to let him in, murmuring a soft “Yeah, ‘f course”, you noticed that he looked devastated.

You closed the door behind him and by doing so you moved closer to him, which allowed you to give a better look at his face.

His features were tensed and his brows had never been so narrowed. Wet strands of hair had fallen on his forehead but despite that you could easily see his green eyes. But their typical light had faded: they were incredibly red, full of sadness, and the look he gave you made you fear the worst.

“What happened?”, You asked in a whisper while placing a hand on his harm, trying to reassure him.

“I...” He rubbed his eyes while taking a deep breath and you raised a hand to drive the blond strands off his face. When his gaze met yours again you felt a sudden knot in your throat. “We’ve broken up, Y/N. Ellie and I just broke up.”

There will be a part 2 so if you wanna be added in the taglist just tell me :)

The Word Is Murder

I haven’t been conflicted on a book like this, in a while. The Word Is Murder is a murder-mystery novel written by Anthony Horowitz. It follows, Anthony Horowitz as he gets approached by a Detective named Hawthorne to write a book about a case he’s been called to consult on: the murder of a woman who just six hours prior, went to a funeral parlor and planned her own funeral. I read Anthony Horowitz’s previous book, The Magpie Murders, but before that I had been a massive fan of both his work for the Hercule Poirot and Midsomer Murders TV series. I had mixed feelings on The Magpie Murders; I thought the actual mystery was great, but there were many points in the book, where I felt like Horowitz used the characters as mouthpieces for his own opinions and frustrations with current politics, culture and the publishing industry, and I found I didn’t agree or like with a lot of what he said. So I’m having a real hard time discussing this book, because, unlike in Magpie Murders where you could make the argument that description is not endorsement, and that those are the opinions of the characters (even though one of the character seemed to be quite an obvious self-insert), here we are reading from the PoV of Anthony Horowitz. He has written himself into the story like John Byrne into The Trial of Galactus. It’s a literary device that creates interesting tension, because I was left wondering how much of the book was actual life, and how much was fiction. But it also created a massive problem, because it was very hard for me to distinguish between the opinions of the characters and the opinions of the author when they are literary telling me that I should view them as the same person. I am not in the habit of seeking out media that I know would piss me off. I am aware that homophobic, or racist, or xenophobic people exist, and I don’t think that authors should only be allowed to have them in their fiction as villains. But I’m just tired; tired of having to read about horrible men that I’m forced to sympathize with or excuse their behavior because they are ‘geniuses’; tired of uncritically presenting dangerous and violent ideas in fiction; tired of the unawareness of who your audience is, and alienating so many people because of callousness. Horowitz seems to really like layers in his book; there’s a lot of meta commentary in his work, not just on the genre of crime fiction, but also on the author as a person who is both responsible and part of the story. And unfortunately, to me this whole book read as one long meta on ‘problematic’ white men, and why we should just ignore their very obvious failings, and even sympathize with them because they are so good at their job. Before I go into that, let me talk about the actual plot of this book. This is a very classic, very Sherlock style murder mystery; there are many references to A Study in Scarlet, which at this point is probably the most overused and over-referenced Sherlock Holmes story. I will say that the references were relatively subtle, and the mystery was interesting enough to keep me engaged on its own level; I wanted to know who had killed Diana Cowper. I also appreciated that, like a good mystery writer, Horowitz had given us all of the clues to the case, and the misdirection came in how the characters interpreted the clues or what they considered important. I really liked the little argument between Hawthorne and Horowitz about what details are written into the book, and how mentioning or omitting the wrong thing can lead the audience into the wrong direction. The push and pull between writing something that is true and something that is compelling was very interesting, and I enjoyed the bickering between Hawthorne and Horowitz about that. Unfortunately, I have to say that I would have probably preferred this story, had Horowitz not written himself into the book. For starters, there’s a moment in the book, where he’s having a meeting with Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg, that’s such a shark jumping moment, I had to pause the book and skim it. It made me feel such a severe case of second hand embarrassment, not to mention how much I LOATHED that Horowitz allowed Hawthorne to bully him into doing what he wanted anyway, and said nothing about it. The older I get, the more I sincerely dislike when people try to modernize Sherlock and Watson’s dynamic. The early seasons of the BBC show got away with it, because early on, Sherlock wasn’t a complete prick to Watson, and what they were dealing with was on national security threat levels. Sherlock wasn’t just some random detective, he was solving an international conspiracy, and even still, I disliked how easily manipulated and spineless Watson was in a lot of scenarios. Here, it’s even worse, because this isn’t supposed to be fiction; it’s supposed to be real life, and having Horowitz blindly decide to go chase down a lead and then getting himself in mortal peril was ludicrous! Not to mention Hawthorne BLAMING Horowitz for interrupting him during an investigation and which leads to a character’s death because Hawthorne gets distracted (????) and then again blaming Horowitz, instead of just telling him not to go anywhere near the lead suspect or just simply letting him tag along to Canterbury! The other thing I really hated, were the actual characters themselves. We will get to Horowitz, but I want to talk about Hawthorne first. Hawthorne is supposed to be the Sherlock type character; I liked that he had a chameleon type personality where he would change his character based on who he was talking to; what I didn’t like was his casual xenophobia and violent homophobia. The xenophobia was quite subtle, but once you were looking for it, it was there. He treats the immigrant, queer and black characters supremely poorly, is a lot meaner to them and snappier, while being needlessly kind to the white, straight women. I also didn’t understand why Horowitz had grown to care for/like Hawthorne; Hawthorne was a dick to Horowitz the whole time, he hijacked his life, his free time, his house, ruined what was probably the most important meeting in Horowitz’s life, he almost got him killed because he refused to talk to him, and was needlessly and purposefully secretive about his life. I also hated all the little jabs he does at the expense of Horowitz’s writing; if you hate the way he writes so much, then why the fuck do you want him to write your book? Then we have the fact that Sherlock, the most famous asexual character in the literary canon, was turned into a divorced straight guy who is a raging homophobe, for no goddamn reason! Why was it necessary to give Hawthorne a wife and child? So he can act all indignant around the queer characters? So he has a justification for pushing a 60 year old man down the stairs with handcuffs? His homophobia is never properly addressed; it doesn’t influences the plot, he doesn’t grow and change, and I downright refuse to believe that Hawthorne is a real human being and any of this happened. He is entirely Horowitz’s creation, so why would you chose to write about a white homophobe, instead of someone, anyone else? What message are you sending to your readers, queer readers who like your work and stories? That we should gloss over Hawthorne foaming at the mouth because a rich man dares to be openly gay, and calling him a pervert and implying he’s a pedophile, because why… to humanize him? Implying that he must be closeted himself, because it’s 20 fucking 19, and the stereotype that all homophobes are closeted queers still won’t fucking die. Then we have Horowitz. I’m assuming making himself kind of dense and very overprotective of his writing was intentional, but even still this character just made no sense. I like that he was proactive, but why on Earth did he agree to write with Hawthorne? Why was it necessary that this was himself, and not a character? Because if I am supposed to believe that Horowitz the character, really is Horowitz the author, then I am left with the uncomfortable realization that he is someone who is willing to excuse and gloss over blatant homophobia, and xenophobia, just because Hawthorne is good at his job. Plenty of people are good at their jobs, and they don’t go around calling gay men perverts and pedophiles, or push cuffed suspects down the stairs! Even the limp anger Horowitz has when he realizes that Hawthorne is a homophobe, is not because he actually cares about those gay friends he has; how it would make them feel knowing that he’s glorifying a man who wants them dead or in a mental hospital. No, he’s worried writing about Hawthorne might ruin his career. Then he uses this as a way to lash out at the ‘media’ who supposedly took his statement that a landlord refusing to provide a service to a gay couple on religious basis, as what it actually is: homophobic. No, death threats are never called for, but you don’t get to pretend people are just sensitive, because you exposed either your ignorance or your bigotry for the press to see. Then we have the ending. Horowitz is just petty? I mean sure, he did almost die, though I wonder how he didn’t realize until that point that the woman at the signing was related to Hawthorne. The mystery was good. Horowitz’s writing is always good. But I can’t get behind any of the messages, and I do NOT want to support a series about a homophobe and his author friend. I will not be continuing the series and I don’t think I will read anything else from Horowitz again.

goodreads

Outlander: Getting to know you.

I was tagged by @suhailauniverse @gotham-ruaidh and @jules-fraser thanks guys <3 

1. How long have you been a fan of Outlander?  

Since the first series aired in August 2014, I watched after all 8 episodes had aired and then read all the books before the second half of the series aired. 

2. Have you read the books? If so, which ones?

Oh yes, all of them. Though I did get stuck on ‘The Fiery Cross’ for about FIVE MONTHS. I’ve read TSP too, but none of the other LJG books. 

3. Which is your favourite secondary character?

Definitely Murtagh - I’m the happiest that Series!Murtagh lived just because he’s such an important, soulful character. Aside from him, though, I love all the animals. Animals > people. Fact. 

4. What is your least favourite storyline?

Wentworth - the one thing I thought was really poignant, though, about that particular arc is how it brought male sexual assault to the fore. I also dislike most of Dragonfly and the 20 year separation. 

5. Favourite episode(s)?

Do you even have to ask?

6. The episode(s) you skip?

Although spectacularly done, I always miss S1E15/16 because they’re just incredibly hard to watch. S2, despite having some good wee moments, is one I tend to miss altogether in all honestly. I wasn’t much of a fan of Dragonfly as a book either. I’m also a fan of skipping Helwater - it doesn’t have nearly enough Claire in it. 

7. Be honest, how many times have you watched “The Wedding?”

...I’ll have to ask Amazon Prime to email me the details, but it’s definitely well into double figures. 

8. Finish the sentence: Frank Randall is _________.

...in an unfortunate position and is not the right human for Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp. 

9. What’s your Outlander watching ritual?

Usually I put it on when I need to write so the episode will depend on what I’m writing at the time. If it’s just for sheer enjoyment, I tend to curl up in bed with Nugget and watch until I fall asleep. 

10. Are you into shipping?

I’m not really invested in shipping real people, but Jamie and Claire? OBVS! The ultimate ship. 

11. Do you read Outlander fanfiction? If so, what’s your favourite?

When I had free time, I definitely did. Now I’m lucky if I get to see a sentence on here between work and trying to keep up with my own stories. But @suhailauniverse is an utter legend and I get to reads hers which lightens my life significantly. I also try and keep up with @gotham-ruaidh @missclairebelle

12. What Outlander merchandise do you own?

Ooft. Quite a lot. I have some swag from various Prime events - t-shirts, bags and shortbread packaging. I have the Pop figures, drawings by @thesketchingwitch (who is a gem) and a lovely Claire figure made by @dingbatland who is also immense. 

13. Which was your favourite: Rupert or Angus?

Rupert, absolutely. 

14. True or False: Lt. Jeremy Foster is a delicious cinnamon bun.

He has the greatest speaking voice and needed to be in more episodes. 

15. If you were to attend a “fucking bar-b-que” with Geillis Duncan what would you order?

Sausages, absolutely. Great on an open fire. 

16. What areas of interest has Outlander sparked for you?

History, for certain. We had WWI and WWII lessons at school as well as pre-tudor timelines. But I find the divide between England and Scotland to be incredibly interesting and it resonates today. Plus, Culloden was the last battle on British soil and I find it mad that not more people in this country know that! 

17. Biggest plot hole in the show?

That’s a hard one. I think the show is generally quite good at patching up the time errors in the novels - but the bitter side of me says the plot hole of Claire staying married to Frank even though it was clear they’d be way better apart. 

18. Bree and Roger: Yay or Nay?

It did take me a long time to warm to Bree - mainly because we’re introduced to her when she’s an adult and then she's cruel and sassy to Claire. As a reader, having little to no background to a character, you can’t immediately understand their motivations enough for that to be alright. But I loved Roger from the off. He’s sarcastic, funny and kind. And later, when we finally get to know Bree, I love her too. 

19. Which JAMMF habit do you find endearing?

His almost insatiable love for Claire. He exudes masculinity - he’s a role model, a saviour, a hero, a warrior, but those things aside, he’s just incredibly and totally devoted to Claire and it’s his softness towards her that drew me to him. He’s not your typical alpha male protagonist and it was refreshing to read. 

20. Finish the sentence: Claire Fraser is _______________.

...my fictional/literary heroine.

21. Marry/Fuck/Kill: Dougal, Black Jack, Geneva.

I could not sleep with any of them, legit. I think it would have to be kill for them all - no mercy. 

22. If you could change one thing about the show version of Outlander, what would it be?

This was never going to happen - but I’d remove the 20 year gap. Have Claire return to Lallybroch and Jenny and Ian instead of to Frank. 

23. Using one word for each, describe Season 1, Season 2 and Season 3:

Love. Skip. Renewal. 

24. What are some of your other favourite shows/movies?

Shows: Scrubs. Friends. Outnumbered. Cuckoo. The Mighty Boosh. The IT Crowd. Father Ted. Midsomer Murders. Red Dwarf. Taskmaster. Bake Off. Peaky Blinders. Taboo. Come Dine With Me. Unbreakable KImmy Schmidt. My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Pulling. Coupling. Catastrophe. 

Movies: SPY. Bridesmaids. In Bruges. Love; Rosie. What We Did On Our Holiday. Zoolander. Deadpool. Moulin Rouge. 

25. Where are you from?

Stoke, duck (or shug - whichever colloquial endearment you prefer).

Tagging game -30 Questions

Thank you very much @sicknessglory for tagging me.

Rules: first answer the questions and then tag 10 people you'd like to get to know better.

1. ) Nickname: Sam

2. ) Gender: Female (well, on this hell side I actually learned that gender is nothing but a social construct, but let's just go with that.)

3. ) Sign: Libra

4. )Height: quite smol XD. I don't know and I've got nothing here to measure my height, but let's just say, that I need to climb on a chair to get my cornflakes out of the cupboard.

5. ) What time: Show time! It's 11:27 in the morning.

6. )Fave Bands: Fall out boy, Our last night, Linkin Park, and also a bit of Panic! at the disco and muse.

7. )Fave solo artist(s): Laurence Fox and P!nk

8. ) Song stuck in my head: Look what you made me do, cover by our last night. I listen to it a lot, while writing my current fic (tcod). ;)

9. ) Last movie I saw: The Oxford murders. And I loved this movie so much! But don't get me started fangirling all over the place here.

10. ) Last show I watched: I watched some reruns of Inspector Banks and of New tricks quite lately.

11. ) When did I create my blog: I don't know how to look that up, so I have to make a wild guess: 2015. But I still remember, that I wanted to impress a girl from one of my courses.

Also look at my header- it's still my original one and I made it with Paint.

12. ) What I post: memes, cute animals, stuff that made me laugh, fan stuff and writing stuff.

13. ) Last thing I googled: Drachenbaum. But I have like thousands of tabs open, so I rarely really google anything.

14. ) Do I have any other blogs: Actually I had another blog here on tumblr (which I deleted later) where I posted exactly four pictures of food.

But I also got a blog on wordpress, Samanthabirdblog, but I don't use it very often.

15. ) Do I get asks: Yes. Exactly two.

16. ) Why did I choose my url: because I also use it everywhere else. ...I came up with abirdonalilactree while looking out of a window. Surprise.

17. )Following: 208

18. )Followed by: 28 (but all of them are humans!)

19. )Average hours of sleep: 5 or less.

20. )Lucky number: 13

21. )Instruments: Piano.... And is mayonaise an instrument?

22. )What am I wearing: a black shirt and a black jacket, unintentionally ripped jeans and a black scarf. And I'd also like to add, that I am currently wearing my favourite socks. They are white and yellow and have blueish birds on them.

23. ) Dream job: currently I just want to escape all of the troubles and be a Shepard in Ireland, maybe on the Shetland islands.

24. ) Dream trip: I wanted to visit Guadeloupe for a long time, but I always get sick on long flights.

25. )Nationality: German

26. )Fave song: Fly on the wall by thousand foot krutch

27. )Last book I read: Turtles all the way down by John Green.

28. )Currently reading: Wolkenschloss by Kerstin Gier. (Cloudcastle?) I have been reading it for a long time, because I often take breaks for reading fanfics instead. So I am also currently reading a first time for everything by Blood-sucker-1428 (Sherlock Fandom), for example.

29. Top three fictional universes I wanna join: that is a really good question. I read/watch a lot of things involving a lot of death, so...

But still I guess visiting Midsomer or Colin Dexters' Oxford or StMarie would be totally worth it.

Thanks again for tagging me. :)

I'm tagging 4 people, 'cause I'm shy af. @jameshathaways , @ange-face , @astargatelover and @monicahicksdeservedbetter

Do it if you like to, but no pressure. :)

Secrets about Gwyvian

Tagged by my awesome friend @differentrunawayengineer!

I pass on the tagging stick to @reignitedn7 and @kunoislayr (only if you want to of course), and I invite my fans to post, too, tag me if you do!

Name: Lucy/Luca (Hungarian version).

Nickname: Gwyvian/Gwyv, Widdershins/Widders/Widd (fairly old one, what I used to go by on the internet), Faewydd/Fae, crazy person (just kidding... not.) and some others.

Zodiac sign: Taurus.

Height: 163cm-ish? People keep telling me I’m wrong...

Language(s) spoken: English, Hungarian fluently (bilingual), passive conversational German, active basic Italian, started learning a gazillion other languages (Japanese, Gaelic, Polish, Finnish, French, Turkish, Spanish, Romanian, Turkish, Arabic, Norwegian, YES I’M A LANGUAGE NERD, OK)... etc. I study languages academically.

Fav fruit: can’t pick just one I love most fruits deeply! In no particular order: any and all citruses in massive quantities, blueberries, strawberries, watermelon, mango, etc.

Fav. season: spring. Love autumn, too.

Fav. scent(s): rain, lilacs, roses, cinnamon, coffee.

Fav. color(s): changes all the time, but purple and black are at the top most of the time.

Fav. animal(s): cheetahs, cats of all shapes and sizes, hummingbirds, owls, most other birds, camels, elephants, whales, geckos... I really like animals.

Fav. drink(s): water (believe it), coffee and tea (obsessed with both), orange juice.

Avg. hours of sleep: mostly 6-10 because I try to be normal and sometimes fail.

Fav. fictional character(s):  right now at the top of my list in no particular order would be Bayek (a littleextremely obsessed with Assassin’s Creed Origins right now), Evfra (of course), Akksul (of course), Jaal (shocking, I know), angarans in general (...), Iorveth, Javik, Garrus, Solas, Dorian, Abelas, Tali, Triss, Altair, Egwene (and most Wheel of Time characters), Spock, Data, Odo, Capt. Picard, Detective Joe Miller (and pretty much anyone and everyone in The Expanse), the entire Discovery crew past and present, Takeshi Kovacs, and I could go on and on and on and you’d never reach the end of this post!

Blankets: minimum one. That’s all I ask.

Dream trip: Egypt, Italy, Australia, Morocco, UK, Iceland, Turkey, I could probably list most countries in the world because I pretty much want to go everywhere and visit friends around the world, and if it were possible I totally would visit the Renaissance, Ancient Egypt, and so many other historically significant places/eras. Also if it were possible, so many fantasy/sc-fi lands I’d love to visit/inhabit because above all else I am a huge nerd.

Relationship status: wouldn’t you love to know! I’m kidding, I’m married. With benefits!

Ships: well anyone who can’t guess my top ships needs to acquaint themselves with my Tumblr, but apart from the obvious (Evfra/Akksul/angara/quarians) right now I’m (still) shipping: ShepardxJavik, CirixAvellac’h, LorcaxMichael, GeraltxIorveth, KovacsxOrtega, and so many more it would take an eternity to list. Probably my list of favorite characters is a good guide...

Last song: Sound and Vision, from the album Low by David Bowie.

Last movie: The Titan on Netflix. Honestly, I was a little disappointed; it had some truly good ideas I really liked on the surface of it, but I have issues with it.

Fav. show(s): The Expanse, Mr. Robot, Colony, Gotham, Stranger Things, all Star Trek and Stargate, The Magicians, The Good Place, Episodes, Altered Carbon, Ascension, Battlestar Galactica and Caprica, Once, Cosmos, Midsomer Murders, Death in Paradise, Vikings, Game of Thrones, Fringe, Dark Matter, The Indian Detective, I could keep going, but you get the idea.

Currently reading: A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.

@differentrunawayengineer CHALLENGE ACCEPTED - CHALLENGE DONE.

Case Notes: The Theft of the Great Green Jewel

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed a lot for all of us, but especially those who spend time in creative industries. For the time being, theatre work has dried up, and digital work has pivoted exclusively to the self-filmed and self-taped variety. So I made some more of that. Here’s a sorta... discussion?? of my process.

We went into lockdown on the 27th of March 2020, with at least four weeks, but potentially more, enforced. In total, proper lockdown lasted five weeks, with another two weeks at ‘level 3′ - with slightly looser rules, but the same focus on minimising crowd movement. I personally had been in lockdown since the 25th, as my places of work both closed on that day.

I also decided to write. I write a lot, I write an approximate ton of fanfiction every single week (no judgment, it’s a legitimate hobby), but I wanted to do something bigger.

It’s no secret that I like cozy mysteries. Generally, a cozy mystery is a mystery narrative that’s got very minimal stakes. It might be a murder plot, or it could just be a theft, but in general, the whole thing takes place in a quaint country town, there’s often a quiche competition, and there isn’t much in the way of peril. They’re mostly made for old people, so obviously I love them. Think Midsomer Murders, Rosemary and Thyme, Agatha Raisin...

I personally had just gotten into Agatha Raisin, which is a UK show set around a marking exec that moves to the country and starts solving murders - though a lot of the narrative is about the love triangle the titular character has with Sir Charles Fraith - a flirty dude who lives in an estate, and James Lacey - a more sarcastic, take-no-shit kinda guy, who’s Agatha’s neighbour. It’s a fun show, with very minimal stakes, and a lot of comedy. It’s also the first cozy mystery show I’ve seen that’s actually said the word ‘bisexual’, and meant it - which is significantly better than a lot of mainstream shows these days, but I digress.

(It does fall into its stereotypes, but it’s mostly harmless. Pictured, Roy Silver and Agatha Raisin from one episode of the show.)

I loved Knives Out last year, and I’m a big fan of mysteries. So, I decided to write one.

The Premise

First, a crime. I chose a theft, because honestly, murder is depressing, and during a global pandemic I wanted to steer away from the idea of ‘obvious death’. Plus, ‘be gay, steal jewels from monarchists’ is a fun premise, while ‘be gay, murder innocent people’ is not. 

Second, a location. A big country estate. They’re stereotypical, they’re self-contained, and most importantly, they allow for a multitude of rooms and backgrounds, which is what I was expecting for a self-filmed work.

Third, a time period. The 1920s is a fun time, full of intrigued and very specific costuming. I had just come out of Fringe, where I’d written a short noir sketch called Eat Your Heart Out Raymond Chandler - which was noir, but with mad libs cobbled together from the audience. That was set in the 50s, but it had some neat characterisation and ideas that I liked, as well as a detective named Fairleigh Goode...

The Characters

Detective fiction has a ton of trope characters. You can easily name them. There’s the detective, the blushing ingenue, an older ‘wise’ person, maybe a groundskeeper or member of staff... the list goes on. I wanted ten characters in total, because it’s a pleasing number, and it allowed for multiple threads of action and dialogue, alongside character interaction. I also didn’t want to rely too specifically on stereotypes from the genre, which are often very blatant, and often fairly sexist.

The Detective - Fairleigh Goode already existed as a character in my head, so I just gave him a little more of an existence to play with. In this script, he’s retired - after a Serious Incident at the age of 26. He’s a little fed up, a little exhausted, but stuck on a case that fascinates him. He’s also very into using overlarge metaphors and general wordplay nonsense. I took some inspiration from Benoit Blanc, from Knives Out, who’s an immensely Southern detective with a tinge of insanity, and I just... elevated that. Fairleigh’s a good detective, he just doesn’t quite get idioms, okay - and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The Victim/Lord - Lord Arnold Ruxley is a detective fiction cornerstone character. In cozy mysteries, there’s always a lord of some sort, whether they’re chaotic good or generally a bastard. Wealth brings another level to a mystery script, and thus, I wanted a jewel of his to be stolen. However, I wanted to create a character that was multi-layered. Generally a party animal, but with a touch of mystery to him, Ruxley’s life is one of spending large and spending wildly. Overexcess, one might say. Hubris. A metaphor for capitalists. Yknow. Inspiration - Jay Gatsby, Charles Fraith.

The Governess - I personally wanted to play a role that was a little quieter, a little less orchestral to the story. There’s always members of serving staff in these kinds of narratives - people tend to overlook their servants, which allows for secrets and gossip to run wild. Servants notice things that other people might not. Thus, Daisy was born. Good at her job, but cutthroat. A little cruel. Inspiration - just... people from Downton Abbey, yknow.

The Porter - As above. I wanted a little more of a foil to Daisy’s ruthlessness - someone who wasn’t afraid to call out the double standards of the time, but also had a heart and a kindness underneath. Observational, quick to anger. In hindsight, I really would have liked to have done more with this character. When an audience’s first impression of a character is them in anger, it’s often not a great look and can cast them in a negative light despite their motives. Only time will tell.

The Femme Fatale - obvious. A trope character. However, my femme fatale has a brain. She’s not just there to be looked at. She pays attention, she notices  and understands things, and she looks good while doing it. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying literature and also wearing makeup. Fuck your standards.

The Scholar - So, SO often in detective fiction is there an older scholar. Usually a white guy, usually quite poised and status quo - I wanted to turn that on its head. Athena is a scholar who will go above and beyond for what’s right, even if that leads to her being struck off. She’s alienating, a little, but will say what’s on her mind. Inspiration - Indiana Jones, but like... the opposite.

The Bastard - Just an absolute dick. No redeeming features. An absolute tool. In this case, someone comically over bad who didn’t commit the theft. He’s just a dick regardless. Plus, there’s something funny in his existence - he’s a bit of a red herring. It’s very easy to expect him to be bad, and he is. He’s just bad in a narratively-irrelevant sense.

The Romantic - A flirt. Obvious, really. Someone to break up the characterisation a little, allow for sneakiness and secrets and excitement and sex. There’s always one of these in detective fiction as well, a dapper young man who often has an eye on the femme fatale, or other such ingenues, but is generally harmless.

The Gossip - A character who notices things and doesn’t keep them to herself. She’s harmless, really, if you’ve got nothing to hide. Characters like this can be quite jarring, quite intruding into the text, but I think I managed to soften her to the point where she’s likeable, and fairly performative.

The Artist - We all know this person. We’re all artists, we’ve all been at shows or exhibitions where there’s one person who knows too much about the subject, who name-drops other creatives for the sake of doing so, who perhaps doesn’t know when to stop talking. For the most part, he’s not hurting anyone, he’s just a little bit grating sometimes.

One other note, about these characters - I was trying to create characters that were... chaotic, of a sort. People with real motives, real existences, who weren’t afraid to push towards their own goals. My initial thinking was, “What happens if I put nine mildly-terrible people in a room, and a detective has to sort their shit out?”

The World

I’m a bit of a surrealist. I write very few pieces complete ‘straight’ - that’s in all senses, for the record. There’s usually an element of the eldritch, or the bizarre, to my pieces. I think it’s funnier, I think it allows for expansion, and I just don’t like writing jokes about normal shit. There’s enough comics that write about the mundanities of life, I’d rather write about a lord who’s wife almost definitely came into contact with an eldritch being at the bottom of a sinkhole and fell in love with it. Why? It’s fun.

My world? 1920s Europe, but it’s not the Europe we know. It’s a Europe with a lot more scope, a lot more wide-ranging characters. Perhaps international travel began to happen a little earlier, perhaps the combustion engine was invented earlier than 1876, perhaps everything is powered by magic and nonsense, rather than reality. A world with a degree of the mystical to it, but a world where people just get on with living instead of actively trying to fight against that.

Prejudice. Obviously it’s a remnant of the time. When I was writing this piece I knew I wanted to queer it, knew that if I didn’t it’d feel insincere - and really rather status quo. Most of my mates are queer, most of the actors I was writing these roles in mind of are queer - I wanted a piece that reflects the world we live in and the people I know. However, I didn’t want homophobia.

Someone I quite appreciate as an academia has coined this term - “homo-utopia”. It’s not technically a ‘real’ word, but it serves its purpose as a binary opposition to the slightly more common ‘hetero-utopia’, which is used in this case as “a world where heterosexuality is normalised, is the status quo, effects policy and the fundamental makeup of the world. (So, essentially our real world, y’know). In said academic’s eyes, a ‘homo-utopia’ is one where the same is true for the reverse, in that - it’s not a world where queer relationships are the dominant, but they are recognised in policy, in worldbuilding, they’re factored in to the fundamental makeup of existence, rather than tacked on when straight policymakers want to curry favor.

In this work, the scandal isn’t that there’s two men in the 1920s gettin’ together, it’s that it’s slightly crossing class boundaries and one of the dudes is a lord. The characters don’t care about the queering, they care about the fact that the thing is happening. The same scandal would erupt between any of the characters that aren’t the status quo, really. I think there’s scandal in the Daisy/Tom relationship too, for the sake of - they’re two people that you wouldn’t expect to get together, but they do.

Also, I’m just tired as fuck of homophobia. So many narratives featuring queer characters go straight to homophobia for a crisis point, and there’s absolutely a reason for that. It’s pivotal in our worlds. However, it’s upsetting, it’s exhausting, it’s bigotry that we see constantly, and I’d rather not write about it. I don’t need to throw out slurs or write obvious bigotry to give queer characters a reason to exist. Queerness for queerness’ sake, you know?

Re: classism - yeah, I know I’m hypocritical. Classism is a pretty big problem, and it is especially so in this narrative. It still exists in this ‘utopia’. Look at it this way. Capitalism is a flawed system. If big capitalists exist, so do the underclass. Wealth is entrenched in a narrative set on an estate, featuring a theft. I couldn’t just remove it. (also capitalism SUCKS SO I WANTED TO WRITE ABOUT IT.)

Re: colonialism - I make mention of the Empire a few times in this work. If there’s Lords, there’s a monarchy. Colonialism SUCKS SO I WANTED TO WRITE ABOUT IT. Could it have been a smidge more subtle? Yes. Did I get to write about a scholar uncomfortable with the current system stealing artifacts and returning them to the people they were stolen from? Also yes.

The Script

This is a... hefty script. It’s thicc. There’s a lot of facets to it, because it’s interactive. I was considering giving it more angles, but honestly - two turning points was enough for me by the time I finished writing it.

I wrote the thing in about four days. It wouldn’t work as a stage play or anything, because the entire thing works to guide the audience towards a specific conclusion, and it’s also very heavy on the exposition.

It’s a story that has a very open ending, because of the interactivity. There’s technically three main culprits, but the story is written in a way to guide the audience towards picking a specific one. The question is, do they go for the moral choice, or the logical choice? Or, alternatively, the wildcard? Only time will tell. I definitely wrote one specific dominant pathway though.

In the first act, we’re introduced to our characters. Each of them attended the party at Lord Arnold Ruxley’s manner, though most were hardly at the table the entire night. Lucinda and Paul were there for the longest time, with Raphael the least. We learn that Ruxley’s definitely hiding something, Athena disappeared for many moments, and Daisy and Tom weren’t there at all.

Then, there’s what I like to call a ‘choke point’. A place where the audience must make a decision. In this case, it’s - which character couldn’t have done the crime? This choke point was to narrow the scope for the next act, to take some players off the court, to slim the investigation down a little.

Lucinda, as she was at the table almost all night, Paul as he was too, or Raphael, as he was thoroughly pissed on Ruxley’s wine by the end of the night?

I’m writing this just before I release episode 2 tonight, and it’s a pretty even tie between Lucinda and Paul for innocence. Raphael’s just a bitch of a character so I’m not surprised that very few people think he’s innocent, considering the choices given.

In act 2, we respond to the innocent party, whoever that may be, and delve into the bulk of the main case. On a whole, whoever was deemed ‘innocent’ by the audience doesn’t really matter, as the narrative essentially deems all three innocent and they’re discounted from the case.

During this act, we learn that Ruxley is in debt - too many lavish parties and spending, as such Daisy and Tom are about to be fired and need to do something drastic, and Athena has a sordid past as a thief, stealing to right wrongs.

This is the second choke point, where the narrative starts to draw the audiences to a conclusion. On a whole, Ruxley is the character who has done the worst. He’s an overspender, a bit of an egoist, and he stole the jewel in the first place. It is, genuinely, the most moral choice to convict him.

However, given the facts, it’s most likely that Daisy and Tom actually did it. They weren’t present at the party, they had the most time to steal it, and they have the motive.

Athena is a wildcard, a choice I threw in to give the audience something else to think about. I’m not sure how many will pick her, though she does have the opportunity.

Act three is a summing up of the case. All the characters get the opportunity to showcase their feelings towards the crime, and then Fairleigh talks a little more nonsense. It’s a conclusion to the piece.

In the end, it’s a bit of a moral decision. Do you convict the person who’s genuinely a bad guy, or do you convict those who fit the facts?

We will just have to see.

...

(Also now I really want to write this into a proper radio drama with actual fully fleshed characters and foley. Any takers?)

Midsomer Murders: The 5 Best & Worst Episodes (According To IMDb)

Midsomer Murders is a British detective drama that began in 1997. It’s based on Caroline Graham’s Chief Inspector Barnaby book series. It’s set in several villages within the fictional English county of Midsomer and is known for it’s occasional lightheaded jokes and moments of dark humor. Seasons 1-13 starred John Nettles as the eponymous DCI Tom Barnaby, and since season 14 it has starred Neil Dudgeon, who played Tom Barnaby’s nephew John. It has remained spectacularly popular, and even after 20 seasons, ratings have hardly dropped.

Season 21 will begin airing in 2020. Until then, here are the best and worst episodes according to IMDb.

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10 Worst: The Lions of Causton (6.9/10)

In this season 20 episode, DCI John Barnaby and DS Winter investigate the death of Mark Adler, a businessman and former rugby player. He is found dead in a cryotherapy center associated with his former rugby team, the Causton Lions. The mystery takes Barnaby and Winter through some serious club rivalry, old grudges, romance, and artisanal chocolates. After Mark Adler’s death, two more people die—one by suicide and the other by owning in hot chocolate. 

Fans who don’t like the episode thought the writing was convoluted and the characters too shallow. 

9 Best: Last Year’s Model (8.1/10)

DCI Tom Barnaby has a constable sit in on Annie Woodrow’s trial for bludgeoning someone to death. However, as the constable starts to report back to Tom Barnaby, he starts to worry that maybe he has arrested the wrong person. There had been seemingly watertight evidence—a reliable eye-witness, and Annie caught in a web of lies—but Tom thinks there’s more to the story. As the trial continues, he continues to investigate the case with his constable.

This season 9 episode is the last in the series to score above an 8.0. 

8 Worst: Written in the Stars (6.9/10)

During an eclipse, an amateur astronomer named Jeremy Harper is killed by a blow to the head with a meteorite while on Moonstone Ridge. The initial suspect is Laurence Janson, the head of the university observatory who wants to build on Moonstone Ridge and is having an affair with Harper’s wife. However more brutal (and astronomically-themed) deaths start to happen. A local clairvoyant has claimed that she predicted each death, and insists that Moonstone Ridge is cursed. It turns out the motive is actually written in the stars. 

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Fans didn’t love that this episode seemed to jump the shark. Not only is the mysticism out of character for the show, but the characters are pretty shallow.

7 Best: Ghosts of Christmas Past (8.2/10)

This season seven episode features a family that reunites for Christmas nine years after one of them, Ferdy Villiers, died by suicide. There’s clear tension in the family and then grandmother Lydia Villiers is killed. As DCI Tom Barnaby investigates, it becomes clear that there are many secrets in the house. Eventually, it’s uncovered that Ferdie’s fiancée’s died by suicide very soon after his death and suddenly there might be someone out for revenge.

People loved the atmospheric quality of this Christmas episode, and that the answer to the mystery is truly difficult to uncover. The script is considered smart and thought-provoking as well.

6 Worst: Breaking the Chain (6.6/10)

This season 18 episode had some convoluted relationships going on in it. Cyclist Greg Eddon  is murdered just after winning a national race. It turns out he had just barely beat out teammate Mitch McCordell. Meanwhile, Greg had been spotted kissing Aiden McCordell’s girlfriend, and has been receiving threatening texts over it. (The two McCordell’s are brothers.) The race was crucial to the success of Greg’s cycling stable, and the rival team is accusing Greg’s team of corruption. Before DCI Barnaby can figure out what’s happened, another person turns up dead.

Most fans disliked that the crucial information to solve the murder wasn’t revealed until the last ten minutes of the 90-minute episode. 

5 Best: Death’s Shadow (8.2/10)

In season 2, real estate developer Richard Bailey was hacked to death in his home. There are many suspects, as several people in the village were extremely opposed to his new plan to redevelop a historic property, Tye House, into a golf course and residential estate. To add interest, Bailey’s childhood friend Ian Eastman also wanted to develop the property but lost to Bailey. But then a second murder is discovered and DCI Barnaby must find the link between the two deaths, which may go back thirty years. 

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Fans love that the mystery is well developed, the story is sometimes humorous, and the answer is very surprising, but makes sense. 

4 Worst: The Night of the Stag (6.5/10)

A government revenue inspector, Peter Slim, is murdered while investigating illicit stills in advance fo the Midsomer Abbas May Festival. There is a major fight brewing in the village as temperance campaigners, led by parson Norman Grigor, clash with Anthony Devereux, a cider mill owner, and Samuel Quested, a pub landlord who wants to bring back an old fertility custom. DCI Barnaby discovers a secret that links Slim to a village girl, but as he tries to investigate it, someone who knows that secret is also murdered. 

Viewers were extremely bothered by the “courting” rituals that seem much more like sexual assault. The motive for the murder also makes very little sense to many fans.

3 Best: The Killings at Badger’s Drift (8.2/10)

The very first episode is also a fan favorite. Emily Simpson is found dead in her house—many think it was an accident but DCI Barnaby’s instincts lead him to believe that it was murder. There is the possibility that she saw something she shouldn’t have while biking through the woods, but her death may also be linked to another “accidental death” the previous year. When two other residents of Badger’s Drift are murdered, Barnaby discovers an illicit love affair, blackmail, and other creepy characters.

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As the premiere episode of the series, this was the one that got many viewers hooked. It’s still a fan favorite for the clear murder mystery with surprising twists and turns that still hold up 22 years later.

2 Worst: Blood on the Saddle (6.4/10)

This season 13 episode is the lowest rated in the series, which is saying a lot about how beloved Midsomer Murders is! 6.4 is still a solid positive rating. 

The episode centers on a Wild West show that rolls through town. Soon after it arrives, Faye Lennox is murdered, quickly followed by her lover Jack Fincher, who is lassoed and dragged to death. There are many suspects, but it takes a third death for DCI Tom Barnaby to figure out who the murderer is. Fans disliked the episode because of the tonal dissonance between Midsomer and the Wild West. Many also think it to the weakest storyline in the series.

1 Best: Judgement Day (8.3/10)

The village of Midsomer Mallow is competing for the “perfect village” title when a resident is killed with a pitchfork. Peter Drinkwater was a thief and womanizer, so there are a lot of initial suspects including a jealous husband, a spurned lover, and a robbery victim. Of course, several people in the village only care about how the death will impact the voting for the perfect village title, which draw them under suspicion too. Naturally, the answers lie in the past, and it is up to DCI Barnaby to figure out what happened in a murder 45 years earlier in order to get his answer to the murder today. 

People really love that this episode combines the quaint loveliness of the English countryside with a solid mystery that is full of surprises. Bonus: Peter Drinkwater is one of Orlando Bloom’s earliest roles, which brings new viewers to the show all the time.

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source https://screenrant.com/midsomer-murders-best-worst-episodes-imdb/

Script 1: The Interview Room

The intense and deafening sound of silence and chaos hung in the air.  The detective tapped her fingers lightly against her knee with what patience she had wearing thin.  It was warm in the interview room, but outside the early-spring rains sprinkled against the grey, cracked concrete. The morning frost was slowly being washed away. It was early, and shifts were just about to change. She could see the day-crew smoking just outside of the gates; their smoke and breath making the same puffs toward the sky. She cracked her knuckles.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that, Caroline, it put’s me on edge.” Her partner, a man in his early thirties and ex Spectre agent, leaned his chair against the wall and lit a cigarette.

“Pot. Kettle, Jarod,” She reached for his lighter and lit her own “Only one of these things will kill us prematurely.”

“That’s if the job doesn’t get us first.” He cracked the window open slightly, allowing the crisp breeze to cut through the smoke and musty-warm.

“Where is this fucker anyway?” Carol inhaled deeply.

“Probably taking a morning piss? Stalling.”

“He better fucking hurry up.”

The interview door swung open, a young, attractive Italian male was seated in front of the detectives. Despite being behind bars several weeks, the man remained clean-cut and well groomed. He even seemed to the orange-jumpsuit somewhat of a fashion-statement.

“Sorry to keep you waiting detectives, I overslept and then the officers forgot my breakfast.”

“Because you don’t have all day for the rest of your life to catch up on a meal?” Spat Carol.

“Breakfast…” he paused, meeting Jarod’s eyes “Is the most important meal of the day, it makes you mentally prepared for the day ahead. To not eat it, would put me at a disadvantage in this interview.”

“Cut to the chase Da Vinci, you called us remember, something about exchanging information for a lesser sentence?” Jarod stood up, butting his smoke onto the outside of the windowsill though the bars.

“No, I wanted to say that you have the wrong man, and that I couldn’t have possibly been in that place, at that time, with that gun, to kill that wom- ”

Carol interrupted with laughter “You expect me to believe that it wasn’t you? Even though you were clearly caught on camera and identified by many witnesses… it wasn’t you? That’s the funniest shit I’ve heard all week.”  

 Robin was cold and calculating, a small smirk reached across his face “It wasn’t me… you both were so sure that it was me, I never got to provide an alibi.”

“You don’t have an alibi, Robin, you were there, and we have evidence!” Carol stood “Thanks for wasting our time!”  She pushed her chair in and went to leave, the officer at the door handed her a manila folder “What the fuck is this?”

“It’s his evidence ma’am, you’re going to want to see it.”

Carol tore it open, pulling out a wad of photographs, she passed some to Jarod. 

“Here you will see that at 10am, August the 5th, I, my wife Honey, our son Anthony and daughter Riku, were at the family-fun-park in Midsomer. You will also find our time-stamped tickets, and receipts for the expenses. Now if you don’t mind, it’s my daughter’s 5th birthday, and I still have to pick up the cake and balloons by 11. So if we could…?” He raised his handcuffed wrists “Y’no?”

Carol looked annoyed, she had evidence to the contrary of her believed case. She nodded at the officer and Robin Da Vinci had his handcuffs removed. 

“Of course, your department detectives will be hearing from my lawyer for a settlement, good day…” He left the room with the officer.

“How the fuck did he do it Jarod? How THE FUCK!” She threw the photos across the room, a single still of Robin and his family sitting happily having a picnic, landed facing her. She spat on it.

~

5, 7, and 22 :)

5. Does your OC have a favorite film?Well, Atticus is more into television, especially mysteries like Lewis, Midsomer Murders, and Granada Holmes. He does like fantasy though so his favorites are The Lord of the Rings/Hobbit franchise and Willow. He likes stories with clear cut motives though, which is why, though he’s tried and tried and likes some of it, he can’t quite get into Game of Thrones.

7. Does your OC have any celebrity crushes?Being Autistic and Asexual makes romance a little tricky and often confusing for Atticus. He has little experience and usually has to know someone really well or admire something they’ve done/who they are before developing any feelings. Sometimes his crushes are more about fictional characters as well. For instance, his current crush is Eddie Redmayne because of Newt Scamander. (Atticus wasn’t a huge Harry Potter fan, but he absolutely adores Fantastic Beasts!)

22. Would your OC like you?Well, considering he’s about 90% me, I certainly hope so!

Anthony Horowitz: ‘I feel the need to do the unexpected’

Image copyright Jack Lawson

Creator Anthony Horowitz talks mercurial, very mercurial. Phrases sprint from his mouth in a straggle against an imaginary stopwatch.

Judging by his bibliography, it have to no longer be a shock. Ideas clearly come thick and fleet to Horowitz and force his world.

He is now no longer most attention-grabbing prolific, along with his works numbering extra than 50, nonetheless additionally varied.

He is written a pair of books for childhood and younger adults, including his Alex Rider tales (now being dramatised on Prime Video), alongside grownup fiction. And he is tackled correct about each genre.

Additionally on the CV is writing for cinema and TV, including episodes of Midsomer Murders and Poirot, and he is the creator of Foyle’s Battle, Collision, Injustice and New Blood.

This trade has earned Horowitz an OBE nonetheless arguably created something of a conundrum – correct where to attract him on book place or library cupboards?

“Maybe or now no longer it’s executed me no correct form in the sense that is or now no longer it’s more uncomplicated to categorise or pigeonhole a creator and know precisely where to gather them. You perceive, let’s yell, precisely what to predict from a Stephen King,” he acknowledges.

“Nonetheless I do not buy when ideas come into my head. And I really beget lots – all very various. I’ve had an belief for a literary new for 10 years and it correct might per chance per chance per chance also merely now no longer gallop away. I will likely fall flat on my face.

Image copyright Getty Photography

Image caption Anthony Horowitz has a legion of younger fans

“All I’m in a position to assemble is write the guidelines and assume in them and now no longer apprehension regarding the rest. I love each ingredient of writing. Or now no longer it’s totality. That is all there might per chance be. Upright me and the web page and nothing else.”

For his most trendy work he is in the realm of the abolish mystery, which he first entered in 2017 with Magpie Murders – a devilishly complicated whodunnit inner a whodunnit.

Sure, he’d written crime tales for TV and two Sherlock Holmes books commissioned by the Conan Doyle estate nonetheless Magpie Murders became once the predominant abolish new from his dangle creativeness.

It launched us to editor Susan Ryeland, her frightful, easiest-selling crime creator Alan Conway and his Poirotesque 1950s non-public detective Atticus Pund.

Image copyright Getty Photography

Image caption Anthony Horowitz got an OBE in 2014 for companies to literature

Many of the radical narrates essentially the most trendy Conway/Pund mystery, a double abolish case situation on the neatly-trodden floor of a sleepy village. Nonetheless when the memoir involves a tantalising unfinished halt, or now no longer it’s Susan who finds herself investigating a abolish – and narrowly swerving her dangle death.

It became once a easiest-vendor and opinions had been generally favourable.

Writing in the Guardian, Alison Flood acknowledged: “Horowitz peppers his pages with clues and purple herrings aplenty… the memoir takes a whereas to acquire going… Nonetheless once it does, here’s a fiendishly plotted crime new, with a unbelievable twist.”

The Washington Times’ Muriel Dobbin wrote: “Mr Horowitz is now no longer a straightforward creator and here is no longer any simple mystery, nonetheless it completely is most horny to be taught and its conclusions by no intention disappoint. Maybe the proper downside is attempting to care for with the discipline which is like investigating a spider web.”

Horowitz is now revisiting Susan and Co in Moonflower Murders, one other riddle-encumbered abolish inner a abolish adventure. Nonetheless there is been lots of alternate.

Image copyright ITV/Shutterstock

Image caption Foyle’s Battle became once Anthony Horowitz’s creation

Susan is running a Cretan resort along with her fiancé and, with Conway needless, she believes he and Pund beget been banished from her life.

That is except two traffic beseech her to support gather their daughter and solve a abolish at their dangle Suffolk resort, believing the reply to each lies in a one amongst Conway’s early mysteries.

As with Magpie, readers are given the plump Pund memoir inner a memoir about Conway, each encased by the wider fable, so need their wits about them to withhold tabs on who’s who and what’s what.

Together with an additional, semi-metafictional, layer are the a pair of nods to real life – bright locations, americans and musings on literature and publishing.

Image copyright ITV/Shutterstock

Image caption Anthony Horowitz wrote several of the early episodes of Midsomer Murders

Or now no longer it’s an technique to storytelling that Horowitz himself chanced on checking out.

“It makes me drained correct remembering how complicated it became once to write. The fun of it’s a long way that it’s a long way like a Russian doll,” he says.

“I’ve been doing this [writing] for goodbye, I assemble really feel the necessity to experiment, downside myself to downside the reader, to assemble the sudden to alternate americans’s attitudes… I’m searching to give extra than a abolish mystery.”

What is familiar is the country village atmosphere for the crimes. Midsomer Murders has this correct down to a T, following the path forged by the legendary Agatha Christie.

“In a village everyone is conscious of everyone. So if one person has a secret, it in all fairness likely 5 various americans will tag it. Any person is murdered at breakfast everyone is conscious of by elevenses,” Horowitz says of the village’s charm for memoir-tellers.

“And villages beget an unchanging quality, which is extraordinarily priceless for crime writers, where knowledge takes time to come.”

In between the Susan Ryeland books, Horowitz wrote two various crime novels featuring the non-public investigator Daniel Hawthorne. But again, he twisted the genre by inserting himself into the predominant memoir, The Phrase is Assassinate, because the narrator.

Nonetheless quirky or dilapidated, crime thrillers remain constantly standard and topped essentially the easiest-selling class list in 2019, in step with the market tracker Nielsen.

A extra most trendy Nielsen survey showed two-thirds of these requested had turned extra to those tales all the intention by the pandemic.

Image copyright Getty Photography

Image caption Poirot celebrity David Suchet’s doctor father delivered the shrimp one Anthony

Horowitz says the genre “brings americans together in a in point of fact fleet and instantaneous intention”.

“Any person murders someone else so that you know from the starting put the stakes are very high and the sentiments are very serious… there is a without prolong enchantment.

“And in a droll intention, in a world where fact is laborious to pin down – false news, 24-hour news, politicians who’re frequently chanced on to beget been economical with the fact – a abolish mystery will provide you with absolute fact, a gratifying ending.

“They additionally begin a door into americans’s lives in a technique that no various fiction does. A detective and the reader growth by the e book shoulder-to-shoulder, they are united. You do no longer stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Mr Darcy or Dumbledore.”

Horowitz’s affiliation to abolish mystery started from his first breath as he became once brought into the realm by the renown gynaecologist Joseph Suchet – father of Poirot celebrity David.

“After I delivered my first Poirot script, I mentioned to David that his father had delivered me. It regarded a comely fit,” he says.

Image copyright Alamy

Image caption Anthony Horowitz in one amongst the interesting offices he is occupied over time

Alternatively, Horowitz says he is now no longer a abundant reader of Poirot’s creator Christie, describing her writing as “serviceable as antagonistic to inspirational”.

“Nonetheless I’m a abundant fan of her plotting and her genius for altering the system and she or he by no intention cheats on the reader.”

As for Conan Doyle, neatly then you’re talking, says Horowitz, who adds the offer to write his dangle Sherlock books became once too correct form to flip down.

“The Holmes-Watson relationship is so beguiling, how might per chance per chance per chance also I withstand sitting in the chair in the corner with these two men? Doyle is this kind of correct form creator that it became once additionally a possibility to gather my game, to write better and take a look at and write like him. He is had a abundant impact on my life and profession,” he explains.

Nonetheless, as an avid reader from childhood, Horowitz might per chance per chance per chance also yell the same about any preference of writers, and he reels off a checklist from Willard Designate to Anthony Trollope.

“I knew I needed to be a creator on the age of 10 when I wrote my first play. I’m in a position to aloof visualise my squidgy handwriting. I became once unhappy. I became once in a frightful college and books had been a lifeline,” he says.

“I aloof watch books as a lifeline in a world wherein I gather myself working out less, and that becomes evermore the case.

“They’re an straggle from actuality and without reference to how unhappy you might per chance per chance per chance also very neatly be, the 2nd you’re taking with a e book, all the pieces feels a shrimp better.”

Escaping from actuality has a bigger charm whenever you happen to retain in mind the holes wherein Horowitz has chanced on himself with some of his public feedback.

“In the last 10 years I’ve noticed that if I’m now no longer considerate in what I yell, I be taught issues that I desire I hadn’t acknowledged. Or now no longer it’s the realm we dwell in.”

As such, his books might per chance per chance per chance also merely now no longer be specializing in trendy complications, he says, adding, “I’m now no longer determined I really beget powerful to offer.

“I are searching to assemble something particular, to give americans pleasure and entertainment in a world wherein persons are, by and neatly-kept, moderately form – after they’re now no longer murdering each various.”

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz is on hand now.

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Dastardly deeds in Dulwich

CRIME WRITER ALICE CASTLE, KNOWN FOR HER CHILLING SERIES OF DULWICH WHODUNNITS, HAS JUST SIGNED A TWO-BOOK DEAL WITH HARPERCOLLINS

BY KATIE ALLEN

Miss Marple’s St Mary Mead. Agatha Raisin’s Cotswolds. Midsomer.

Now you can add Dulwich to the list of quaint, seemingly quiet locations which attract a lot of murderers – fictional ones that is.

Dulwich and the surrounding area is the unlikely setting for Alice Castle’s popular series of whodunnits, which began with Death in Dulwich in 2017. The sixth, Body in Belair Park, was published last month.

The books all follow Beth Haldane, a slightly chaotic single mum. She stumbles upon a terrible crime on her first day in her new job at Wyatt’s, a prestigious Dulwich school, and sets about trying to solve it.

While Alice remains tight-lipped on whether the school is based on any real educational establishments (“there have been questions asked at various PTA meetings…”) she wanted her amateur sleuth to be believable.

“When I decided to write whodunnits, I thought, ‘Who do I want to read [about], who would be a compelling person to follow through lots of adventures?’

“I wanted to have a woman – and who are the interesting women around? They’re always the ones who are super, super busy, juggling lots and lots of different things.

“Also, underdogs are always interesting and you find yourself sympathising and wanting them to do well. So I wanted Beth to have that quality.”

Beth is also “extremely dogged”, and from book one, sets about fitting sleuthing in alongside the school run.

“I wanted readers to feel a little bit every now and then as though they could solve the mystery much better than she could… I wanted the main character to be sympathetic but infuriating and recognisable,” Alice says. “I think the fact that she is from Dulwich yet not part of the yummy mummy culture is quite useful, because it means I can poke lots of fun at things that happen in Dulwich.”

Locals will recognise not only the parks and playgrounds, but the cafe culture and streets thronged with four-by-fours and buggies. “I can [poke fun] from an affectionate point of view, because I was a yummy mummy with children at these schools, and it’s a lovely way of life, but it is quite funny too.”

In the first book, Death in Dulwich, Alice sets the scene for the other titles, introducing handsome DI York, Beth’s friend Katie, who teaches yoga, and Beth’s young son, Ben. And while each book can be read as a standalone, she always intended them to be a series.

“I always thought that there would be six: I’m now writing a seventh! I really enjoyed writing the sixth one, Body in Belair Park, because it has brought together a lot of the strands I’ve left tantalisingly dangling. That’s a lovely feeling as a writer.

“Now with book seven [The Slayings in Sydenham] I’ve had to unravel a whole load of different clues to set them going, which is also quite a challenge.”

She describes her books as fitting within the cosy crime genre, and adds: “The thing about Dulwich is that it is slightly similar to St Mary Mead from the Miss Marple books, in that it’s a small, closed community and there is a little circuit of people who bump into each other several times a day on the high street, so it’s full of people who know each other’s business to a certain extent, which you need in a whodunnit.”

Alice always wanted to write, and began her career crafting speeches for MPs and MEPs. But it was while she was at university that she had a temp job at The Sunday Times, and convinced them to let her write a story about student drug culture, which became front-page news.

After that, “I pestered other newspapers to let me come in and work on their diaries. I ended up doing feature writing. [But] then we moved to Brussels and it was really hard to keep it all going with young children. So it was really nice to move into writing books.”

Her first novel, Hot Chocolate, was a romance, which was so popular that her publishers asked her to write a sequel – but it didn’t go quite as planned.

“I wrote 60,000 words – which is almost there – and I was so bored by the whole thing. [I thought] I can hardly put myself through it, I can’t ask any readers to drag themselves the same weary route [too]. I talked to the agent I had at the time, and she said, ‘Are you steeping yourself in the genre?’ and I thought, ‘No, I never pick up a romance, maybe this is giving me a bit of a clue.’”

Instead her bedside table was stacked with crime novels. “In the evening I’d be watching Scandi crime dramas, and I thought, ‘I’m just writing in the wrong genre, I should be writing whodunnits.’ And as soon as I had that mental switch, the whole thing really fell into place.”

She is a big fan of the crime genre, spanning from “the 1930s golden age writers like Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie”, to “Sue Grafton’s Alphabet series, Jo Nesbo and Peter James.”

She adds: “I also like contemporary cosy crime people like Simon Brett, who went to Alleyn’s. And hard-boiled noir like Raymond Chandler, who went to Dulwich College. So there’s loads of Dulwich inspiration.”

She is set to move in a slightly different direction this year as she has just signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins to write domestic suspense novels under the name AM Castle, to differentiate them from the Dulwich series. A “keep the lights on all night” kind of book, the first one, called The Perfect Widow, will be published in November.

Alice describes it as a “psychological thriller” and a “chilling did she, didn’t she novel, which I hope will keep people guessing”. She adds: “It’s quite a change from my cosy crimes but it does continue my theme that the nastiest secrets can lurk in the nicest places.”

So in these troubled times, what does she think people enjoy about reading crime? “Solving is great, but you don’t have to solve the mystery yourself – somebody [else] solves it, so you get this impression that the world makes sense, and there is a right and wrong… and there is revenge on evil-doers,” she says. “Things you can’t get in real life, so it’s nice that they exist somewhere.” She adds: “They are often real page-turners.”

With her own detective having returned to Dulwich with the publication of her sixth book, I wonder what local residents have made of her turning the area’s leafy streets into a crime hotspot.

“I’ve been invited to some Dulwich book groups to chat about the books,” she says. “People have been really supportive of it and have taken the jokes really well. It’s all written from a place of really loving Dulwich.”

 Photo by Lima Charlie

The 50 Finest Crime Motion Pictures Of The 21st Century Up Until Now

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