#angling puns

[stephensmithuk]

Shoscombe Old Place

The final Holmes story published by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1927, this forms part of Case-Book. Doyle would write a number of other works, including two Professor Challenger stories, before his death in July 1930.

This was originally trailed as "The Adventure of the Black Spaniel".

Newmarket Heath is the sight of Newmarket Racecourse, one of the most prominent horse racing venues in the UK. Therefore, this was a rather public horsewhipping. I am pretty sure that the Jockey Club, which regulated the sport until 2006, would have a thing or two to say about actual bodily harm.

The Grand National takes place at Aintree every year and is the most famous steeplechase race in Europe; even those don't normally bet will take part, either directly or via a sweepstake.

The race has become controversial due to many horses being fatally injured when falling, frequently at the steep drop of Becher's Brook, and then euthanised over the years; various changes have been made to try to make things safer. There have been five horse deaths since the 2012 changes from 595 runners; you are fully entitled to think five is five too many. 2023 saw Animal Rising protestors attempt to stop the race and cause a delay; Hill Sixteen ended up dying, with his trainer blaming the protestors for spooking the horses.

"The Derby" refers to the Epsom Derby, held every year on the first Saturday of June. It is the flat race with the highest prize in British horse racing, with a first prize of £885,781.84 in 2023, when Ryan Moore won it riding Auguste Rodin.

"The Jews" refers to moneylenders, the stereotypical profession that Jewish people practiced. Most Jews by 1902 did not of course.

"Halt-on-demand" stations are those where passengers have to request the train stops there either via informing the guard in advance if getting off, or by other methods if getting on, like holding your arm out for a bus, although electronic methods are in increasing use. Great Britain has around 135 of them.

Historically fishing was a major source of food for poorer rural families. From 1865, you needed a licence for salmon and trout fishing, although not for other fish. The rod licence's provisions were expanded over time to prevent overfishing and you now need a licence, as well as permission of the property owner, for most fishing in England and Wales. Not in most of Scotland and Northern Ireland though. There will also be restrictions on what you can keep (which has caused issues with foreign anglers who generally don't operate on the 'put it back' principle) and the whole angling business is now pretty heavily regulated. Fish without a licence and you can be on the hook for a fine of up to £2,500.

It is a legal requirement to register a death within five days in England and Wales. There is also a separate offence of preventing a lawful and decent burial, which has a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, but it is fairly rare for someone to be charged with it unless as part of a homicide case.

[andy-clutterbuck]

7x09 | Rock in the Road

[offonaherosjourney]

Just watched Last Night in Soho and I adored it and do recommend watching it but the main character was so lesbian coded that to me the biggest plot twist in that movie was that none of those sapphic Chekhov's guns (Sappho's buns, if you will) paid off?

Was I really supposed to read a country girl that just moved to a big city and on her first night out stops to stare in awe at the door of a striptease with GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS written in neon pink letters as straight? A girl that dreams of becoming a fashion designer but when she goes to sleep gets to witness the life of another girl in the 60s, and becomes so enchanted with her beauty and charisma she not only makes her her muse (it was Anya Taylor-Joy so who can blame her) but also dyes her hair and starts dressing like her as straight?? A girl who flees a party in the verge of a nervous breakdown, looks in distress at the several straight couples making out near her and then proceeds to scream at the friendly boy that's been coded throughout the movie as her potential love interest how she wishes she could be like everyone else, just before she kisses him in what reads as a desperate hail mary, as fucking straight???

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

@intertexts peeled him

[fruitsyrups]

sooo like. hey guys. why is drawing eyes and mouths the hardest thing in the world

[coquelicoq]

if underboob has a million fans, i am one of them. if underboob has ten fans, i am one of them. if underboob has one fan, that one is me. if underboob has no fans, i am no longer of this earth. if the world is against underboob, then i am against the world.

[fumblingmusings]

Imagining a young Arthur thinking the Normans are irredeemable doomed for hell monsters from the moment they killed King Harold, made the heir Edgar and his sisters flee, wrecked Arthur's language and broke his legal systems, made 10% of his country a wasteland, killed over 100,000 of his people by starving them to death and leaving them freeze... All that horror from William I and II...

But then Henry I becomes King. He was born in Selby, not Normandy. He was a fourth son (like Arthur), set to inherit nothing and isn't trusted by any of his older brothers. He just maybe happens to be there with one of the said brothers is killed in a hunting accident (oh no....) and becomes King. He marries Edith, the daughter of Arthur's last Anglo-Saxon princess, ensuring that Alfred the Great's bloodline lives on. He uses the Anglo-Saxon justice and taxation system because it's still better than anything Norman. He puts Englishmen back in positions of government and the Church. Henry and Edith called their daughter Matilda aethelic when in private and gave their son William an Anglo-Saxon title of aethling... Those imported Norman aristocrats mocked them for it calling them 'Godric and Godifu' - that foolish King and Queen pretending to be lesser than. Playing at being English and not Norman.

But it works. Arthur and England are at peace for the first time in... a long, long long time. Yes northern France is a nightmare but what does Arthur care for that. These guys are stamping out slavery and serfdom... That's pretty stupendous. Plus, his way of life is winning out long term, not the Norman. At least, that's what he tells himself.

And having the thought that maybe his people and culture won't be as wiped out by this King playing politics in order to carve out his own space distinct from his brothers... little Arthur sees a little bit too much of himself in this guy. Only for Henry's only son to drown on a crossing from France back to England (trying to save his sister oh my God) and then it just sets the stage for the Anarchy upon Henry's death because god forbid Matilda is Queen like...

Point is I can see Arthur just going full on fuck it once Henry II becomes King (like what was the point of it all if Matilda's son was going to be King anyway). I like to think of it as the turning point from where he's a somewhat put upon forgotten about rainy droopy island that Vikings keep plundering to a nightmare himself. That desperation to prove himself, to be worth something, to take all that grief and pain and make it someone else's problem. It takes him 100 years after the invasion, but that's the point when the Arthur who used to hide in the woods from Denmark and Scotland disappears, and instead you get the Arthur who's... a bit of a giant hypocrite. And looks the other way.

The forcing a language on a population, the replacing the ruling class with loyal people, the leaving just enough of the old systems of government in place for purely pragmatic purposes, the use of scorched earth tactics if need be. Sometimes it feels like nothing changes.

What happened to him was wrong and yet what does England do to others for so long? I like the idea of an Arthur who learnt the wrong lessons from that invasion and thinks he was weak when it happened. Because to think otherwise would be to realise he'd done nothing wrong, and to realise that he was a victim.

And that's something Arthur just cannot be.

[knight-in-sour-armor]

[just-an-enby-lemon]

Wich one?

There are five types of angles on the most basic classification logic.

A reflex angle makes no sense in this context.

A right angle is quite the subjective discussion, isn't it? I'm sure if you ask humans they'll choose Aziraphale but ask hell and heaven and that won't be their choice. Do you really want a whole moral and philosophical argument? For a single angle?

We've been out of straight angles since the beginning of time. Go back in a thousand years and try again, it's unlikely but hell it would be so absurd one could even call miraculous if a new angle just hoped up to heaven and was super gendered and straight af and doing miracles is the whole angle thing.

So we have acute angle and an obtuse angle. We have both on the bookshop but you need to state wich you want. Crowley is not going to let you take his cute angle easily and Aziraphale will both oppose to be taken away and to give the obtuse angle away 'cause even if Gabriel is really impressivily obtuse he is still a living thing and Azi believes living things deserve care and second chances

[annyoingkid]

*it implies that Hawke is alive, if Hawke died in the Fade, Anders's cameo would be likely as a standalone character who only might mention his deceased partner? At least that is how I see it.

I am talking strictly about a cameo, not a mention from Hawke/someone else from Dragon Age II because that is too likely.

[the-punforgiven]

Desk broke 😔

[marshmellowtea]

i could be misremembering this so forgive me if i am but i feel like i vaguely remember a period of time where mark was desperately trying to stop people from viewing dark as a sad boy romantic figure and see him for the manipulator he is or whatever and the thing is, respectfully, if that really was the plan, he went about it in the absolute dumbest way possible that only made it easier for people to sand down his more manipulative edges and view him as a misunderstood hero. what he really should've done was have dark do something so genuinely vile and universally heinous that only the most strong stomached, "i love fucked up bastards who do horrible shit" crowds would be able to still love him but he didn't and now look where we are

[thirtysixsavefiles]

the true tragedy of me wanting to run a “what should I work on next poll” is that I already ran one like a month ago and my options haven’t changed oops

[bunnybabyteef]

.

[tortoisesshells]

For the WIP ask game: 6, 10, 22, and 24! :D

6. Do you usually listen to music while you work?

Usually! If I'm scraping time in the morning, sometimes it's just the news in the background, but I have listened to this playlist A LOT while writing Customs, and while I was drafting the first few chapters, I had "Familiar" and "Katie Cruel" on repeat, which is a break for my preference for putting instrumentals on while writing.

10. How do you usually keep yourself motivated?

GOOD QUESTION. I feel a little bit like I'm too far in to have any energy left in the tank, but too far away from the ending to get a boost from thinking I'm nearly there, and I've been more than a little grumpy about it of late (shoutout to @shoshiwrites and @theonlyredcar for giving me pep talks and putting up with me threatening to quit!) -

I have been listening to the two playlists I made for the fic, and, when I really can't scrape together the enthusiasm to work on the main continuity, I've been dabbling in the AUs of the AU* - the Roaring 20s continuity and the only-appeals-to-me-and-maybe-three-other-people Fallout 4 AU. for the Commonwealth!

*going through my notes app, I’ve uncovered the most half-baked Warm Bodies AU I’ve ever seen. Less than a quarter baked, really. Brace yourselves, Halloween is coming?

22. What is a spoiler you can give us for something incredibly insignificant in your WIP?

Nellie and Norrington inadvertently go stargazing in an upcoming chapter (and again, chapters later) - brace yourselves for some pretty annoying and possibly ahistorical musings about Libra - and Orion, later in the year.

24. What have you had to rewatch or look up from the show itself for this WIP so far?

[spoilers redacted!]

But in all seriousness, I've definitely rewatched the trilogy several times to get a better handle on the timeline of the movies (and the whole mythos), which I have pretty much decided to politely ignore - I guess there's not been too much time between CotBP and DMC (a year? probably less than two?) except that there is now! I suppose Jack just bargained for 15 years instead of 13, for some of the events of DMC to be happening in the background.

WIP Ask Game!