#edward's exploit

[thesteamw0rks]

exploitations

if that's the word? dunno. don't care. have an Edward.

Rbs appreciated!

[endoard1]

Edward's Exploit faces. (repost from twitter)

[busting-buffers]

edward's exploit is such a good episode, and i wish they werent limited during the model season. like, the illustration when his crank pin snaps?

its brutal. edward's boiler nearly gets ripped open from his side rod being shot into his running board and splashers, which we can't see in the tv series. to do so, they would've had to make a new edward model, which couldve been done, but it probably couldve cut into production time or something idk. but the rws one is so, so good. edwards visibly in pain, hes upset. its such a good illustration

[avaford2009]

Oh, it's Edward's Exploit! I loved that episode!

"One of your crankpins broke, Edward. We've taken your side rods off. Now you're like an old-fashioned engine. Can you get these people home? They must start back tonight." "I'll try.."

He might have been drenched and in pain from his injuries, but most importantly he was proud. (And so tired the only thing he could think about was a warm bed and a snuggle with one of the cats)

[theflyingkipper]

A redo of my Edwards Exploit drawing from ages ago, now in traditional mixed media!

I felt like I didn't capture the mood I wanted last time when I looked it over again (to the horror of everyone who got to see this early. Thank you for gassing up the old one, and keeping me motivated through the making of this)

this version is much more directly studied off the Peter and Gunvor Edwards' illustration, because I've grown into the opinion that the model adaptation of exploit was really weak (technical limitations!!! what a shame) and i want to get back into studying these illustrations, there's a lot to pick apart in them.

Here's a bunch of perspective lines i drew over it when I was sketching. (I don't normally do that when I redraw, but that's usually because I'm drawing from model era screencaps and I can rely on those being proportional, most of the time) Edwards face breaks perspective here just a bit to add more drama to the scene, everything else is proportional.

some in-progress pictures, during which I absolutely HATED how it looked and wanted to switch to digital because I feared I'd messed it up irreconcilably 😭 good thing I was able to look at it with fresh eyes after staring at it for like four hours, the first session of drawing ended at 1am. Believe me, if you hate how your drawing is turning out, put it down and come back to it later!!

Edward is also more referenced off a real K2 here because I really like how they look. Unfortunately they have painful geometry.

something frustrating about my traditional drawings is how they can't be viewed from multiple angles online. I use silver gel pen to highlight some parts (here it's Edward's handrails and the damage) but it doesn't show up well when I photograph it head on. I hope this picture shows a little bit of how it shows up in real life!

(if you can't see, look at the bottom of Edward's boiler bands)

Hopefully you enjoyed reading under the cut :] I like explaining my process and I appreciate it immensely when someone shares my enthusiasm for it.

[konnosaurus]

great western chess master gets destroyed by fella who has never played in his life!!!! (dialogue by professional genius @edwards-exploit, who also gave me the template below!!)

based on this silliness:

[bruhstation]

man who enjoys every single second he's dedicated to hating to the point it pisses everyone except him off

[whumpster-fire]

#I really wish someone had told me about the whump-blog to thomas-the-tank-engine-fanfiction pipeline

lmao I've never heard it described like that but you're right

insert joke about Henry getting bricked in a tunnel being someone's whump awakening here but unironically man there are moments in the series...

(unironically though if I were asked to pick a children's series with the best chance of causing someone to grow up to enjoy whump, Railway Series has to be in consideration because, it doesn't happen often but sometimes it hurts characters, with visible "injury," and takes it somewhat seriously in the story, in a way nothing else I can think of with the same target age range does. Probably because the main characters almost all being machines makes it much easier to get away with)

(nobody better @ me about Watership Down. Listen, my parents read it to me way younger than the age range half the internet recommends and I stand by their decision, but still it's a book for mid elementary school kids or older and the movie only got a G rating because the rating committee fucked up. Ditto for series like Redwall or Warrior Cats. My point is that RWS is in contention for whumpiest series that is legitimately appropriate for preschool or kindergarten aged kids)

Having Diesel 10 Thoughts

Certain recent incidents have made me reconsider and think actually given how Diesel 10 basically has basically an excavator arm I can see why everyone's intimidated by him.

Also I looked up his class and, holy shit I didn't realize that he was a fucking diesel-hydraulic. And also:

Added to this were practical problems modernising the D800s: because of the scaled-down bodyshell there was very little room inside for extra equipment. It was, for example, physically impossible to accommodate a compressor as well as an exhauster, so the locomotives were unable to haul newer designs of air-braked coaching stock. It also proved impractical to equip them with electric train heating (ETH) equipment for similar reasons, so they retained unreliable steam heat boilers to the end of their lives.

They couldn't even fit an air compressor in this class. What the hell did they do to fit this gigantic fucking hydraulic arm into him?

Each locomotive was powered by two Maybach 1035 hp (D800–802) or 1135 hp (D803–829, D831–832 and D866–870) MD650 engines coupled to Mekydro hydraulic transmissions.

Oh, god. Okay now I want to see a "realistic" Diesel 10 design where (a) the arm retracts to fit within the loading gauge, and (b) his front engine and other equipment like the steam heat boiler has visibly been completely removed to make room for "Pinchy."

Also these were passenger engines? So it seems unlikely that the claw would've been installed for maintenance of way work or whatever like I originally suspected, which probably means that Diesel 10 was employed by British Rail to hunt down and catch runaways like Oliver, and might have been given that claw for the express purpose of quickly tearing down improvised barricades like the one Oliver's crew used to hide him in a quarry siding in 'Escape', and of course for directly attacking and damaging them before dragging them to the scrapyard.

So, uhh, this raises the possibility that someone at BR just yoinked an arrogant young passenger engine off the express service he was running and gutted him, totally destroying his ability to do what he was originally designed for to turn him into a weapon.

(Also, like, some of the diesels in the series seem to just have names and not numbers or have nicknames they've "earned" by being nuisances, e.g. Spamcan and D.0261, Bear before joining the NWR, but every single one of the Class 42s was named. Did they, like, take his original name away as, like, a ritual severing of his ties to his identity? Obviously his number's different unless he was D.00810 / Cockade)

And then, just a few years after steam was finally abolished on BR lines, they declared his class, and his entire type of transmission, non-standard and they met the same fate as the steam engines he helped catch. Holy shit like I saw stuff about the early-generation BR diesels not having very long service lives but I did not fully process that the 28s, 42s, and Hymeks were withdrawn after only like 10 years, jesus christ.

Uhh, I guess that'd explain why he ended up on Sodor then? Did they immediately start getting rid of engines like Diesel 10 once they outlived their usefulness, or did they start sending him after other diesels and he got wise to the fact that his days were numbered?

Okay I have a horrible dark AU idea for how this went down since Magic Railroad's basically a Shining Time Station movie and doesn't quite fit the rest of T&F canon. Diesel 10 got sent to Sodor once to retrieve a "stolen" steam engine - possibly Oliver - and managed to terrorize and intimidate the NWR's residents while searching for the fugitive for a while because the law was very nominally on his side, until he fucked up and did something that let TFC kick him off the island even though he was there on official British Rail business (as opposed to the other diesels who kept getting booted off because they were on lease to help the NWR and were there at TFC's pleasure). Possibly something like attacking and damaging an NWR engine acquired through completely legal means, or even threatening / hurting / almost killing one of the human employees.

And then a few years later, he came back and one of the following happened:

Idea 1: Diesel 10 went rogue and came to Sodor with a massive grudge against steam engines because now it wasn't just his job, it was personal because so many preservationists had fought so hard against him to save their 'precious steamies,' and in his warped mind he believed that nobody was even trying to save diesels. When he got word that his class were being withdrawn he went straight to the biggest 'heritage' railway in the country determined to take as many steam engines down with him as he could. And possibly got blocked in a siding / shoved into some trap points / derailers and left to think about his actions.

Idea 2: Diesel 10 had more or less the same mindset, but he didn't go rogue, he was sent to Sodor to collect Boco or Bear! Because whoever was giving him orders at BR had the same idea and thought that TFC had only accepted any diesels reluctantly and no one on the NWR was going to actually fight for some obsolete nonstandard diesels. And they were horribly wrong.

Idea 3: Some dumb motherfucker on British Rail didn't check their paperwork and tried to send Diesel 10 after a fellow Warship without knowing what class he was, and he lost his nerve after his would-be victim recognized him, and finally got that there were no "winners" in a world where engines were nothing more than expendable tools. Long story short he ends up a fugitive himself, and possibly dragging one of the other Warships to Sodor with him. Or failing to do so.

[shrimpchipsss]

ode to x_los’ gender swap, three styles

[ladychandraofthemoone]

Traintober Day 10: The Great/Flora

10/10

Have a Douggie with thistles, the national flower of Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿!!(also dunmeshi thistle got me in a chokehold rn-)

Bonus RWS/Caledonian Douglas:

[bitter69uk]

Ease into the Halloween festive season (or as we call it, “gay Christmas”) on Thursday 17 October with a FREE screening of an outrageous 1950s horror b-movie! Yes! Every October the monthly Lobotomy Room cinema club (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People) screens something “horror adjacent”. This time, we’re also commemorating the centenary of infamous filmmaker / twisted visionary Ed Wood Jr (10 October 1924 – 10 December 1978) with a presentation of his 1955 atrocity Bride of the Monster! THIS is the one starring ailing horror royalty Bela Lugosi (in his final speaking role in a feature film) as villainous scientist Dr Vornoff where he delivers the soliloquy “Home? I have no home. Hunted … despised … living like an animal! The jungle is my home. But I will show the world that I can be its master! I will perfect my own race of people. A race of atomic supermen which will conquer the world!” You won’t want to miss THIS compelling hot mess on the big screen! Contact the venue (glittering cocktail lounge Fontaine’s in Dalston) by email to reserve your seat now on bookings@fontaines.bar Full details here.

[mariocki]

Death Weekend (The House by the Lake, 1976)

"They'll go away."

"They won't go away! Can't you see that? They're not gonna go away. For God's sake, can't you guess what they're gonna do next?"

[weirdlookindog]

School for Violence (High School Hellcats, 1958) - British Quad

[beekeeperspicnic]

What adaptations/pastiche/etc. (if any) have influenced or inspired your writing and development of the game?

Whoops sorry this got long.

Weirdly enough when I think about initial inspirations for the game my mind doesn't immediately go to Sherlock Holmes but to...

...Star Trek: Picard

[IMG, Screenshot from Star Trek Picard. Captain Picard standing in a beautiful vinyard with a stick and a doggie]

Not what Star Trek: Picard actually IS, but what I desperately wanted it to be. See, I really love utopian sci-fi where poverty and hunger and inequality are problems that have been solved, but characters still have to deal with problems of personal purpose and personhood. I love Becky Chambers and Ursula K Le Guin and Ada Palmer.

When Star Trek: Picard was announced I immediately longed to see Captain Picard on Earth in his vineyard, dealing with getting older in a solarpunk utopia. On the Enterprise he had a definite set role in his community - he was the captain. Now he's just a regular member of a post-scarcity agricultural community, being confronted with his own legacy, tackling philosophical conundrums, befriending former enemies, healing from trauma. And y'know... perhaps solving mysteries.

But of course Star Trek Picard wasn't ACTUALLY that.

But I think the desire for that lodged itself in my brain and when I had the idea to do a Sherlock Holmes game, it popped back up like "Hey Picard isn't public domain, but y'know who IS?"

The Granada Lost Beekeeping Footage

In terms of actual Sherlock Holmes media, the INFAMOUS Granada Holmes 'Lost Beekeeping Footage' gets a mention.

This post explains more details, but long story short for the 'Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' series starring Jeremy Brett, footage and photos of a retired Holmes and Watson were taken but never used.

Sadly Jeremy Brett's health declined and the series didn't get to end with that particular Holmes and Watson waltzing off to Sussex together, but it's nice imagining what might have been, and I hope this game can be a little tribute to him and both his Watsons.

I definitely partially pinched Watson's outfit and Holmes' colour scheme from these photos! But my Holmes is wearing his comfy jumper rather than simply... wrapping it around his shoulders?

[IMG Two photos of Jeremy Brett as Holmes and Edward Hardwicke as Watson, standing by a beehive. Holmes is in a cream suit and has a beekeeping hat and gloves, Watson wears a blue scarf and trenchcoat.

The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes

Last but not least, The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, written in part by Arthur Conan Doyle's son Adrian. In the official canon we leave Holmes and Watson on a bit of a sad note - they've drifted apart, both drawn along different paths and war looms on the horizon.

But I never think there's any reason to imagine they didn't both make it out the other side of that - and why shouldn't they get their happy ending?

I guess Adrian agreed because he ends his own dabble in his father's creations with Watson living with Holmes, and describes the Sussex home in more detail than is found in the original canon:

My task is done. My notebooks have been replaced in the black tin deedbox where they have been kept in recent years and, for the last time, I have dipped my pen in the inkwell.

Through the window that overlooks the modest lawn of our farmhouse, I can see Sherlock Holmes strolling among his beehives. His hair is quite white, but his long, thin form is as wiry and energetic as ever, and there is a touch of healthy color in his cheeks, placed there by Mother Nature and her clover-laden breezes that carry the scent of the sea amid these gentle Sussex Downs.

Our lives are drawing towards eventide and old faces and old scenes are gone forever. And yet, as I lean back in my chair and close my eyes, for a while the past rises up to obscure the present and I see before me the yellow fogs of Baker Street and I hear once more the voice of the best and wisest man whom I have ever known.

“Come, Watson, the game’s afoot!”

Extract from ‘Exploits of Sherlock Holmes’ by Adrian Conan Doyle, John Dickson Carr

That's the world I'm wanting to bring to life!

I think that's probably the main influences :D

[theflashjaygarrick]

Riddler backstory concept: tired video game designer who had to go through crunch one too many times

[konnosaurus]

soooo now that @edwards-exploit has revelealed the Railway Reincarnation AU here i shall post this little out-of-context snippet with part of rosie's Horrible Time in the au hehe