#horatio lyle

[mechanicalinertia]

Hortatio Lyle is just British, non-comedy Gintama.

[lorientours]

Man just reread The Obsidian Dagger by Catherine Webb and I know it’s a children’s book with an online fandom of probably like 5 active ppl but the chemistry btw Lyle / Feng Darin? Absolutely insane. Can’t believe I forgot about 1 weird spy who follows Lyle n Co around for a while and feeds his dog ginger biscuits. He really was doing it all. The greater good moral compass vs Lyle’s more rigid morality *chefs kiss* .

[gameofthunder66]

'The New Guy' (2002) film

-watched 1/22/2024- 2 [1/2] stars- on DVD

This was a very silly movie; all about some students lives at a high school, but it did end well.

[fiction-quotes]

“I pity your kind,” said Dew softly. “Animals grown too intelligent for their own petty needs. I pity your death. It is trivial. Your kind will come and go like the tide. Nothing you do will ever change Earth. It will endure with or without you. You cannot make or create. You can only change what is there, and eventually, it will change back. What a futile life; what a futile death.”

  —  The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle (Catherine Webb)

[flo-nelja]

mind control

I get this one often, because people love me <3 also while it changes the two first are always the same.

Xavier/Magneto (X-men)

I have read fics with consensual mind control for them that were extremely formative. I also read fics with noncon mind control, though in general they were gen. The last one has happened in canon a few times, though it was often more complicated than that. It's never easy. But damn it works so well for well and there are so many possibilities

2. John/Scorpius (Farscape)

Nothing beat the horror of John realizing how the mental chip was influencing him, slowly, then too fast. And it was hot too.

3. Doctor/Master (Doctor Who)

With a Shalka image, because with the Master living in a robot body and unable to leave the TARDIS, there's at least an element of this, but there is potential in both directions and it would be so creepy and this show already has so many mind control plots. I think it might work.

4. Eden/Mohinder (Heroes)

I used to ship this really hard when I started watching Heroes, and the mind control was canon, and it had unrealized potential. So I spent quite a bit of time looking for fics. ^^

5. Christabel/Geraldine (Coleridge)

Discovered this ship in a Locked Tomb related accident, and damn, the canon mind control and creepy homoeroticism was everything.

6. Horatio/Lin (Horatio Lyle)

The fact that Horatio has trauma about Tseiqin mind control makes the possibility of this - for plot reasons of for sexy reasons - even more delightful.

7. Jon/Martin (The Magnus Archives)

The universe is good for this, and I've read so many good fics for this, from canon-typical use of compulsion to Web!Martin AU...

8. Sistah Spooky/Mindf**k (Empowered)

In canon Hannah is too much of a good person to brainwash anything but herself (and it's creepy enough), but she did some invasive-things-you-can-safeword-from in Theresa's mind anyway, and there would be so many possibilities, if the writer had not evilly made them fail to resurrect Hannah.

9. Knives/Legato (Trigun)

It happened once and of course the power dynamics totally go in the opposite direction, but still, it has fanfic potential.

10. The Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair/Stephen Black (Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell)

Yes, still here for the creepiest aspects of fairy magic!

[el-is-away]

Lyle, Rochelle, Jamie and Horatio for @anonymouslylovesyou! thank you for commissioning me <3

[california-112]

Hi! 2, 9 and 20 for the book asks, please... :)

I am so sorry that this has been mouldering in my inbox for almost a month! As much as I crave human interaction it also scares the sh*t out of me. Anyway! Onto the asks!

2 - Top 5 books of all time?

Upon seeing this I realised that I had never actually read a book ever. However, I have eventually drawn up this list. I reccommend all of them very highly!

The Extraordinary And Unusual Adventures Of Horatio Lyle by Catherine Webb

One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill

Sergeant Bigglesworth CID by W E Johns

First Light by Geoffrey Wellum

9 - When do you tend to read the most?

It used to be right before bed, as a way of going to sleep, but just recently I've found myself reading actually pretty obsessively, for some reason. On my commute, on breaks at work, literally whilst walking down the street...that's what a good book can do!

20 - What are things you look for in a book?

Action! Adventure! A side of something sciency and, for preference, at least a little bit of truth! In all seriousness, most of my reading recently has been factual, research for my writing project, but that doesn't make it any less interesting. True history is my favourite genre, particularly military history. I can't remember the last fiction book I read…

[mechanicalinertia]

According to my little sister, the Leviathan trilogy is actually badly written on reread, but god damn if I care: it had one of the coolest universes in YA fiction brought to life by one of the coolest illustrators out there (Keith Thompson).

Man. YA steampunk. That was always the good shit.

I gotta track down more Horatio Lyle fans, too…

Jumping onto the meme bandwagon a few weeks too late😂

[uovoc]

"Lin Zi drifted between worlds, enjoying every second of confusion she sowed in her wake" I've had Lin for 2 pages and I love her already this lady-shaped being is living the ideal life of human tourism

[beastlyanachronism]

Top 5 Ask Game

Top 5 Things you think are Criminally Underrated!

I was tagged by @wolfiejimi for this interesting theme, which really gave me pause for thought. I’ll list my Underrated Things here, and then stick the explanations under the cut.

1. PubCrawler (if you’re a scientist then trust me, you NEED this!)

2. The Horatio Lyle books by Catherine Webb

3. Litolff’s Scherzo

4. The Sheffield Banker, a.k.a. The Case of the Man who was Wanted, a Sherlock Holmes pastiche

5. And All is Said, a really short Star Trek TOS fic

1. PubCrawler is an online service that checks for new scientific publications every day. Basically, you give it your email address and tell it what combinations of keywords you’re interested in. If anything is published on PubMed or GenBank with those keywords, you get a notification by email. It’s extremely simple to use and to fine-tune, and it’s just so handy! Yet very few people seem to know about it. (Gmail tends to think the emails look dodgy, but that’s just because PubCrawler is a very simple not-for-profit automated service set up by a group of academics in Dublin.)

2. The Horatio Lyle books by Catherine Webb

I adored these when I was about 14. A series of four books aimed at young teenagers. 

Horatio Lyle is a Victorian scientist-inventor-detective who does NOT believe in magic, which is unfortunate because evil people with magic powers are trying to take over the world. He accidentally sort-of-adopts two children: a “reformed” (oh yeah?) pickpocket named Tess, and the refined and repressed son of an earl, Thomas. This trio has to save the day using science (mostly of the explosive sort). There are cameo appearances from real-life Victorians.

OK, they’re a bit madcap. The plots are unbelievable and sometimes a little hard to follow. BUT. The writing is astonishing. It’s very funny, but also amazingly poetic at times, especially in the second (and best) book, The Obsidian Dagger. The descriptive passages have a Dylan Thomas feel and they read like a love-letter to the London of 1864.

3. Litolff’s Scherzo

Now I’m not a connoisseur of classical music, but this piece belongs with those other famous pieces that everyone just knows, even if they don’t know the name of them. But hardly anybody knows of this one, and I’ve never even heard it in an ad!

It’s basically a one-hit wonder from the 19th century. It’s the most liquid and upbeat piano piece EVER. It’s as if you took a sunlit stream babbling through a sunny meadow, and distilled it into music. It’s how you feel when you’re inspired. Give it a listen. My favourite version is here.

4. The Sheffield Banker, a.k.a. The Case of the Man who was Wanted

This Sherlock Holmes story was found among Conan Doyle’s documents after his death and was at first thought to be an unpublished story by Doyle himself. It then turned out to be the work of a man called Arthur Whitaker, who had sent it to Doyle with the view of a collaboration.

I came across it in The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes [Penguin Books]. If you read up on it, everyone dismisses it as a mediocre pastiche that doesn’t live up to the canon.

Well, I consider it canon. It’s more enjoyable than several of ACD’s stories. In fact, it has the best Holmes-Lestrade interactions of any SH story I’ve read.

Lestrade starts off as self-assured as usual:

Lestrade gave me a wink for which I would dearly have liked to have knocked him down, for I could see that he disbelieved my friend.

but of course he winds up baffled. There is a delightful moment when he shows up at 221B and explains that the man he was supposed to capture seemed to have vanished into thin air.

Lestrade’s face [...] bore a look of the most hopeless bewilderment I ever saw, and I fancy my own must have pretty well matched it, but Holmes threw himself back in his easy chair, with his long thin legs stuck straight out in front of him, his whole frame literally shaking with silent laughter. "What conclusion have you come to?" he gasped at length. "What steps do you propose to take next?"

"I've no idea. Who could know what to do? The whole thing is impossible, perfectly impossible; it's an insoluble mystery. I came to you to see if you could, by any chance, suggest some entirely fresh line of inquiry upon which I might begin to work."

"Well," said Holmes, cocking his eye mischievously at the bewildered Lestrade, "I can give you Booth's present address, if it will be of any use to you?"

"His what!" cried Lestrade.

And then of course Holmes solves the case, and there is a heart-warming moment:

Lestrade rose. "Mr. Holmes, you're a brick," he said, with more real feeling than I have ever seen him show before.

The whole story is Holmes at his sassiest and snarkiest. I mean what more could you want? It’s available online here.

5. And All is Said, by ivory_leigh

This is the most underrated Star Trek fic that I’m aware of. It only has a kudos of 83 on AO3, and yet it manages to summarise the whole mcspirk relationship... in just 434 words!

"Underrated things” is a great topic for this sort of ask game, so if anyone else would like to list their underrated things, consider yourself tagged! Maybe @educatedinyellow​ and @stormphoenix​, if you’re interested? Also @wolfiejimi​ maybe you’d like to do this one yourself too?

[blogmollylane]

Acquired: The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle by Catherine Webb

[tiger-moran]

Re-reading the Horatio Lyle books is making me bitter again about how much I hate the author’s newer works. 

[strange-little-ranger]

Horatio is my character from the role-playing game that my friend has been running for me via video call ✨

[rabbitcruiser]

Gettysburg National Military Park (No. 48)

There are three monuments to the 90th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment on the battlefield of Gettysburg.  The “Granite Tree Monument” is northwest of Gettysburg on Oak Ridge. The “Eagle monument” and “Boulder monument” are south of town along Hancock Avenue. In addition to the regimental monuments, a monument to the 90th Pennsylvania’s Chaplain Horatio Howell is on Chambersburg Street in Gettysburg. There is also a monument to the 90th Pennsylvania Infantry on the Antietam battlefield.

Colonel Peter Lyle commanded the 90th Pennsylvania Infantry at the beginning of the Battle of Gettysburg. He took over command of the brigade during the battle. Major Alfred J. Sellers then took command of the regiment.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania erected the “Granite Tree Monument” in 1888 northwest of Gettysburg on Oak Ridge along Doubleday Avenue.

The 90th Pennsylvania’s Granite Tree monument on Doubleday Avenue is filled with interesting details. The beautifully realistic bark of the tree trunk is stripped in areas and splintered on the side from a grazing shot. The trunk itself is shattered at the top, with the cannonball that caused it still embedded in the tree’s heart.

But after the ravages of war life goes on. Inches away a mother bird feeds two babies in her nest. Bronze vines grow around the trunk. And the tree still provides other useful services, holding a soldier’s rifle, bayonet, knapsack and cartridge case. The knapsack is lettered for the 90th Pennsylvania. Above the bronze shield telling the regiment’s story is a circle formed from the granite of the trunk, the symbol of the Union First Army Corps.

Source

[luninosity]

Opening scene of a story I haven’t written (yet?), if you would like it...

#

The envoys from all six neighboring countries had begun arriving for the Winter Banquet, so, of course, the youngest prince was dead again.

 Cinnabar Lyle glared at the royal messenger, grumbled, “I’m only a journeyman, let me call Master Horatio—” and tried to shut the door to the College of Necromancers in the young woman’s face. The messenger, being experienced at this, stuck her foot in the crack before he could.

 “Cinn,” Master Horatio observed, appearing in the corridor behind him, “you know you’re only a journeyman because you keep avoiding your final masterwork, now go and help the nice young person.” Dressed in casual black—trousers, shirt with rolled-up sleeves, silver master’s pin crooked as usual at his throat—he propped a shoulder on the wall, let it hold him up, spun a pencil in one hand, and lifted eyebrows, only lightly grey over cheerful brown eyes.

 “You go,” Cinn said. “I’m busy. Testing the first-years on Caelian funeral runes this afternoon.” Most of the first- and second-year apprentices remained in awe of the masters and their supposed power. Cinn, who’d grown up on the grounds and who’d deliberately remained a journeyman for three years, had once seen Master Horatio consume an entire Renewing Day fruitcake sculpture in one sitting, and had acquired a rather different form of awe in that direction, mostly regarding gustatory capacity.

 “No you’re not,” his Master said. “I’m taking your class, and you’re waking up our recalcitrant prince.”

 “Soon would be nice,” said the messenger, to Cinn. “The banquet’s in two hours.” Her expression suggested fast-eroding patience regarding collegiate bickering, balanced with the awareness that the necromancers were also suffering similar emotions regarding Prince Hyacinthe’s penchant for escape from uncomfortable social obligations.

 “You just don’t want to go to the palace and deal with him,” Cinn said to his Master, accurately.

 “True, which is why I’m sending my favorite and most skilled journeyman,” Horatio agreed serenely. “Young person, would you like a roasted pumpkin seed? They’re delicious.”

 The messenger’s expression now contained quite a lot of doubt about the casual consumption of pumpkin seeds in a hallway that almost certainly led to dead bodies. Cinn felt this was rather unfair; they had excellent kitchens and brilliant cooks.

 He inquired, “What happened this time? Riding accident, doing a terrible job at fighting an ogre, impressive ability to drown in his own new shower-bath twice?”

 “Boar hunting, I think.” The messenger ran a hand through blonde curls, above royal livery. “Something about tripping over his own spear. Er…you are good at this, aren’t you?”

 “The best,” put in Master Horatio, encouragingly. “Naturally gifted. Quite rare, really, that level of innate talent.”

 Cinn sighed. Heavily.

 He knew perfectly well that he did not precisely fit traditional assumptions about necromancers; he’d never been tall or imposing, and he looked even younger and distressingly skinny in formal black robes, so he mostly didn’t bother. His hair, fortunately, tended to look good in messy pale waves over dark blue eyes, but it was the sort of good that attracted men in certain establishments rather than intimidating them in rooms of power; he did not mind the former, but occasionally, especially when faced with ingredients on tall shelves, he wondered what having actual height and breadth and shoulders would feel like. At least announcing his profession often helped as far as being taken seriously. Assuming the person listening believed him, of course.

 That morning he’d thrown on battered grey trousers and a knitted scarlet jumper he’d picked up in the market, and he still had chipped rose-pink nail varnish on because he’d never bothered properly removing the color after fellow journeyman Melody’s birthday celebrations and the pubs, plural, the week before; and then he’d been sticking his hands into various bodies and recuperative ingredients and magic and student ritual-language quizzes all week…

 He sighed again. “You owe me.”

[flo-nelja]

Mind control for the kink meme ?

Yeah! Some things have changed since last time. Lots of them haven't.

1 - Xavier/Magneto (X-men). All the versions. The AUs where Xavier is darker than in canon and uses mind control on Magneto (this is Ultimate X-men), the versions where Magneto brainwashes Xavier for a change (this is X-2) the version where one of them is brainwashed by another source, accidental or not, and the other deals with it, the consensual mind control kink with Magneto having a kink on mutant powers (there is such good fic out there), and some things that can be more off-topic like them joining their powers to deprogram a Sentinel (this is Excalibur 3) I'm here for it anyway.

2 - John/Scorpius (Farscape). Because the canon arc where John was fighting the conditioning was so hot. I always want more of it.

3 - Jon/Martin (The Magnus Archives). This one is not canon, and I love them healthy and fluffy in canon, but damn, all the options in alternates universes! Jon using compulsion on Martin, accidentally or on purpose. Or the alternate universes where Martin ends up filled with spiders and controlling Jon. I've read dozens of fics like this, and I'll do it again.

4 - Wanda/Agatha (Wandavision). We have canon brainwashing, and after what happened in the last Dr Strange, I absolutely don't feel guilty to squeeze it for maximal wrongness.

5 - Wei Wuxian/Wen Ning (Mo dao zu shi). It's a ship I love in general and it's not centered on this but the idea that they're trying to be normal while the necromancer/fierce corpse total control option is still here, and can come back even accidentally... it's my jam.

6 - Horatio/Lin (Horatio Lyle series). I will read anything about them, but it sure is darkly romantic to get to love and trust a woman with the same mind control powers that the bad guys who are your first supernatural trauma.

7 - Illyana/Kitty (X-men). Like Xavier/Magneto, mostly in dark AUS (looking at you, X-men Forever) or accidentally, but damn, the dark side of Illyana's powers has so much possibilities. I'll read most things for them, though, even if I'm very picky for fluff.

8 - Eden/Mohinder (Heroes). They're so hot and it's angsty and she had mind control powers and we didn't see her enough and I will never stop loving the potential of this ship.

9 - The Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair/Stephen (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell). I love subtle, or unsubtle, fairy mind manipulation too much for my on good.

10 - Anlise/Renge (Namesake). They were secondary characters and we haven't seen them for them, but OMG, it was the good kind of twisted to me.

Ha ha you have no idea how hard it was to choose only 10.

Meme: Give me a kink, and I’ll make a top 10 of the ships I like to read it for