Now or Thereabouts (short story)

Now or Thereabouts

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*Faction Paradox*
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Now or Thereabouts was a 2011 short story written by Blair Bidmead and released in the Faction Paradox series anthology A Romance in Twelve Parts.

Summary[[edit] | [edit source]]

Competing in a tense game-show-style "media ritual", Little Sister Ceol seeks to become the chosen candidate initiated into the Faction and avoid the terrible fate that awaits those who fail, all the while being haunted by the Priest with the exploding glass face.

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Blair Bidmead, as well as all the other contributors to the anthology, penned one of the hundred drabbles which made up the final story A Hundred Words from a Civil War. His story reused the characters of Ceol, now Lady President of the City of the Saved, and Dominic.
The characters of Ceol and Maria were intended to be Kelsey Hooper and Maria Jackson respectively, however, due to copyright Bidmead couldn't outright state this. Ceol's full name Sojourner Hooper-Agogô referenced Kelsey's surname.
Ceol had previously debuted in Bidmead's 2009 The Panda Book of Horror anthology story Party Kill Accelerator!. The character would go on to make small appearances in the earlier mentioned A Hundred Words from a Civil War and the short story Sojourner & Ellie, with a much larger role in the novel Weapons Grade Snake Oil.
The tenants that Ceol and Dominic evict from the Eleven-Day Empire previously appeared in Bidmead's unlicensed story With All Awry from Myth Makers: The Golden Years, later republished on his blog. In that story, each of the tenants were explicitly stated to be different versions of the Doctor's ninth incarnation: the seated war veteran was the Eighth Doctor; the drunk man was Richard E Grant's "Shalka" Doctor; and the singing man in the bathtub was the Ninth Doctor.

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