#Britpick

[rabbit-in-blue]

"The Truth About Taking Guns Away From Cops"

#gun control #cracked #youtube #as a side note #John Watson keeping his gun from the army and using it as a civilian is nunsen but we go along with it #British #oh #britpick

[destinationtoast]

#fanfic #beta reading #polls #yes i am using polls to procrastinate on my wip #which is nearing completion and could use a beta reader and/or britpicker #but i'd like to post it before the start of my work trip on Monday #(and also before it gets jossed) #so I'm likely to skip it #but anyway i think i hold myself to higher standards here than others #whether or not something is beta read doesn't affect whether i read #generally #lest you worry btw #i don't take tumblr polls as strong evidence of anything #but they're entertaining and sometimes interesting #op

[momo-t-daye]

Revising Their Stars (8306 words) by Momo_T_Day Chapters: 2/2 Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Sirius Black & Severus Snape, Sirius Black/Severus Snape, Sirius Black & Peter Pettigrew & James Potter Characters: Sirius Black, Severus Snape, James Potter, Peter Pettigrew Summary: Sirius is horribly terribly dreadfully bored now that dear cousin Narcissa has prohibited him from tormenting Severus Snape (despite every tantalizing opportunity Snape goes out of his way to provide!). Maybe helping Snape prepare for the upcoming Astronomy O.W.L. will be more fun than Sirius could have expected, Snape certainly seems to be learning something interesting during their tour of the stars. Or Sirius Black is not impressed with Severus Snape’s “#genius lifehacks” for a “#frugal life”

Or

This is the longest fic I've written and I probably spent too much time looking up old star charts and moon phases and comet visibility records but I love stargazing so the research stays in!

Follows "A most wretched raccoon" and takes place before "Bad taste in men"

Should I post the text here as well as on Ao3? I find reading easier on Ao3 for myself, but I do know I'm not very tech savvy...

#Severus Snape #Sirius Black #Snirius #snape fic #This took more than a year to write because writing is hard #Writers are amazing and talented! #This is mostly very silly and I had fun with words but it wasn't beta read or britpicked #Severus' POV/internal monologue would've been mostly screaming with the occasional panicked bit of profanity so it's more Sirius POV #Sirius' train of thought is like a turbocharged pinball machine and Severus has no idea what is happening #I had fun with the worldbuilding hints and certain mental images

[berlynn-wohl]

way back when i was writing bbc sherlock fic i used to britpick everything. now i write good omens and i britpick for some vocabulary but not spelling because i'm lazy. what are your thoughts on this issue?

#britpicking #linguistics #fan fiction

[thetarttfuldickhead]

”I talked to Southgate yesterday.”

The sun is not yet up; Jamie is dutifully stretching his legs in the cold yellow of a streetlight when Roy suddenly speaks. It’s the first thing he’s said all morning, except for gruff commands of run and ten more and fucking higher, Tartt. 

“Yeah?” Switching legs to work on his other calf, Jamie tries for a casual tone, fails, and doesn’t much care. “What about?” 

Roy gives him a look: the fuck do you think? There’s no heat in it, though. Rarely is these days, and that thought is a glowing ember in Jamie’s chest, equal parts joy and amazement.  

For a moment, Roy doesn’t say anything else. Jamie completes his stretches and straightens. Waits, with heart hammering hard, hard beneath his hoodie. 

“He got in touch two years ago,” Roy finally offers, seemingly adressing the streetlight. “Before the Euros. Asked about you, what sort of player you were.” He glances at Jamie then, face carefully blank. “I told him the truth.” 

That… hurts, unexpectedly. Not because Jamie is surprised, really, or because it is unfair, because he isn’t and it’s not, but still. It stings, though not as bad as it had back then, and for different reasons. 

He wants to make a joke, say something glib to chase the taste of resigned dismay and shame away: he opens his mouth; closes it again. Looks away from Roy and is grateful that the other man seems content to leave it at that rather than going into the details of just what he’d told Southgate. Fair or not, Jamie thinks he can do without hearing it. He can imagine it well enough. 

Roy is studying him, like he’s expecting Jamie to protest or complain. It feels a little bit like a test, maybe. Jamie remains quiet. Fiddles with his sleeves for something to do with his hands as the silence grows longer and the morning colder around him.   

And perhaps it is a test after all, because after a moment Roy nods slowly before starting to talk again. “Anyway, yesterday I called him up to let him know that those things I said two years ago weren’t true anymore, and that I didn’t want any of that to be held against you now.” 

Jamie’s eyes snap to Roy’s face and he opens his mouth to speak, but Roy holds his hand up, forestalling him. “Now, I have no idea what’s going to happen so I don’t want you getting your hopes up, but I’m telling you this because if he calls I want you to be prepared, because he’ll be asking about that stupid shit you pulled, what the fuck you thought you were doing, and I need you to be on your best fucking behaviour, okay? Don’t grovel, but none of that fucking cocky bravado or defensive bullshit either. You were a prick, you understand that now, and you’ve worked fucking hard at being better. Got it?” 

Jamie nods, quickly, eagerly, because yeah, yeah, he can do that. Would probably be up for a bit of grovelling too, if it increased his chances of being called up. Fuck, he’ll say whatever he has to say, spill his whole fucking heart if need be to prove that he can be the best fucking— 

Suddenly, he frowns. Roy notices and raises his eyebrows. “What?”

“Should I… “ Jamie pauses, uncertain. “Should I tell him, you know, about me dad? I mean, if he asks why I left City to do a TV show, what do I say?” 

Roy considers that for a bit. It occurs to Jamie that Roy probably doesn’t actually know why Jamie ran out on City the way he did; Jamie certainly never told him, and he doubts Ted did either. But he can probably guess the rough shape of it anyway.

“Gareth’s a good man,” Roy offers at long last. “You want to tell him the truth, you tell him the truth, he won’t say a word. Don’t try to use it as an excuse though.” 

“I won’t,” Jamie says with a small scowl and a flash of annoyance, because when has he ever? 

Maybe Roy realizes as much, because his face softens into something almost apologetic. “I’m just saying, because I don’t want any of that old stuff getting in the way of you being called up now.“ He pauses, like he’s hesitating over whether to keep on talking or not. Settles for keep on talking, apparently, because he adds, without looking at Jamie, “You deserve it.”

Three words, and enough for the ember in his chest to roar into open flame. Jamie can feel the heat of it reach his face; gentle warmth in the February chill. “Thanks, Coach.”

--- 

The call comes two days later. Taking it has Jamie running late for training and when he finally rushes into the dressing room Roy lays into him with enough venom to make the other players carefully back away from them. Still, Jamie can’t do a thing to quell the grin on his face.

“What the fuck are you smiling at?” Roy snaps. 

“Southgate called.” He’s a little surprised to hear how dazed he sounds. Feels like he could fucking fly, but the words come out almost hushed. 

Roy immediately stills. “And?”

He should savour it, perhaps, the triumph of this moment. Take a second to marvel at the sight of Roy – Roy fucking Kent – holding his breath as he waits for an answer, but he can’t, he can’t, it’s too big, to happy, too fucking good, and he can’t hold it in. “He’s calling me up.”

#was trying to rewrite my old ficlet locker room conversation II to better fit with what we got in canon #that didn't work and this happened instead #apparently i’m stupidly obsessed with how this whole thing went down #and what part roy played in both then and now #i want ALL THE VERSIONS #what little i know of this process i know from #The (in)Complete Guide to Britpicking and Finer Football Details #by scoatneyhall and belmottetower #whatever i mucked up i mucked up on my own obviously #jamie tartt #roy kent #pre 3x10 #roy & jamie #ficlet #my stuff

[greenerteacups]

What do you think as Hermione's career would be post battle of Hogwarts? To me her being minister for magic really doesn't make sense. She does not have patience or tact to wade through murky waters of politics 😭😭

So hard to say! The Trio are so, so young when we leave them, I find it almost impossible to project their futures farther than a few years out. The job that suited me at 17 would be radically unsuited to me now. That's why of all the Trio, Ron's ending strikes me as the most realistic — he jumps straight into the save-the-world business again, burns out, realizes he's actually Done The Fuck Enough, Thanks, and pivots into a low-stress career where he gets to see his family a lot. Feels accurate! The others are weirder to me because they do seem to just... pick a lane and stay there.

With Hermione, you could spin her a couple ways. You could say that she leans into her bookish side and does research or teaching, which is not my preference for a couple reasons (namely, I don't think Hermione would like academia as a profession; she finds her classwork interesting and enjoys intellectual validation, but she'd be stifled and wasted in a DPhil program, and she'd be infuriated by the administrative politicking of your average higher-ed faculty). You could say that she gets disaffected with politics and ends up as a barrister or a lobbyist of some kind, but if anything that requires more political finesse, because you don't actually have institutional power, you're just handling the people who make decisions and trying to persuade them of your goals. This is not Hermione's preferred method of influence. She's not even particularly good at persuasion, she just happens to be smart enough (and right often enough) that people take her ideas seriously.

Or you could say her brashness fades with the years into a softened flavor of tell-you-like-it-is honesty, which some politicians actually do successfully trade on; as we see in British politics today, you don't have to be all that charming or clever to get ahead, you just need to be really driven and well-connected (which Hermione completely is; she fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the first postwar Minister and her bestie, the Literal Messiah, runs the Auror Office.) But I don't know if Hermione especially wants to be Minister, after the war. She's just watched years of horrendous bureaucratic incompetence plunge the country into a violent civil conflict. She's had not one, but two Ministers of Magic try to bully or shame her friends into complicity with fascism. Her view of government is... likely extremely dark.

But Hermione also isn't the kind of person who sees her life as a quest for happiness. Babygirl has a savior complex that makes Harry look selfish. (She basically kills her parents — yeah, obliviating is a form of murder, #changemymind — "for their own good," and justifies every batshit, vindictive, mean-spirited move she ever pulls on the grounds that it "helps" one of her friends.) She is a mean, lean, dragon-slaying machine, and she needs a dragon. After Voldemort, the Ministry is the no. 1 threat to muggle-borns and non-wizarding Beings. As a war heroine with basically infinite political capital, I'd be surprised if she didn't try to do something there. That said, Hermione is so vivacious and dynamic that she could potentially grow in a hundred different directions; it's possible that all of this, while true of her at 18, becomes completely inaccurate by 22. That's why I'm not too fussed about any particular fanon interpretation.

#greenteacup asks #sidebar: I know Minister “of” Magic is an Americanism but mea culpa #Someday I might actually bite it and pay someone to britpick Lionheart but I can't do it now #because I have a ban on editing published fic unless it's finished. Otherwise I'll never get around to writing the actual ending #I have a Process #is it the best process? likely not! but it makes the words go. so here we are. #I also think the fact that JKR is Gen X makes a difference here. careers worked differently in the 80s and 90s than they do now #i.e. we have the gig economy and a lot more mobility and EXPECTATION of mobility in your early life #that means career changes & professional pivots through your 20s and 30s are increasingly normal #and in fact have always been normal — but the image of the 'true' or 'ideal' career has changed #so we look at those careers and go hm. really? none of them changed? #none of them even went to uni? do wizards... just not? #but again. I believe the epilogue was written almost completely without consideration as to what happened between the BOH and then #I really believe that JKR did not know what happened to Harry except a wedding and 3 kids. because that was the whole point #I don't think she even knew what his career was when she wrote that scene #It existed to marry everyone off and do a quick munchkin headcount #because of the understandable temptation as an author to keep your hand on the wheel. but it didn't even matter! #the epilogue changed NOTHING! it was the most useless chapter in the series! I just — GOD #you can absolutely accuse me of being sour grapes about my ships getting nixed. I AM sour grapes. I AM a hater. #AND I have plot/theme/craft reasons for disliking it. #I'm not objective. I just want credit for being a sophisticated hater. my grapes may be sour but they're still artisinal.

[thatlittleegyptologist]

Reading fic that's supposed to feature an English guy teaching at a UK university, and I see the terms 'midterms' and 'finals' just 4 sentences into it. The temptation to shut the fic is high even though I should probably let it slip.

#please sometimes you do need someone to britpick your fic for stuff like this #I'll glaze over stuff like 'sidewalk' but this is jarring lmao #'reciting Marlowe's plays in Middle English' babe Middle English stopped being used 64 years before Marlowe was born

[trans-cuchulainn]

lmfao at the non-brit author of the uk-set book i'm currently reading having a (british) character say their parents are "cottaging" in cornwall rn

#oh boy #that is not the mental image they were aiming for at all #canadians get a britpicker challenge #you're not immune just bc you're not american

[thecottageinthedark]

Writing pet peeve because i saw this for the nth time today;

Americans, please do not talk about locations in British cities/towns in terms of 'x number of blocks away'. We do not have city blocks.

Here's a street map of part of London so you can see what I mean.

Do you see what I mean? It's not divided up into even little rectangular chunks. You can't navigate in London by saying a certain place is a certain amount of blocks away. And that holds true for ALL cities in Britain.

I have an inkling that most cities in the world are like this in point of fact, especially the old ones. (People from other parts of the non-American world please feel free to confirm/deny). This kind of messiness is the sort of street plan you get when a city grows organically, without anyone trying to make the whole thing Orderly all at once.

Also because of this British people don't think in terms of blocks, or use them to describe distance and direction, any more than we would calculate the value of some item in US dollars. We'll say stuff like 'half a mile down the road' or 'the first turning on your left' or whatever instead.

#writing #americanisms #britpicking

[scoatneyhall]

Okay, Ted Lasso pals. I really just need to put this one out into the universe. This is in the Britpick primer @belmottetower made already, but I certainly don't assume everyone reads that. I need people to know that "flat" is not British slang for someone's "home" or "place." It is SPECIFICALLY slang for "apartment," as in, a "block of flats."

I am saying this because I seen a lot - like a LOT - of use of the word "flat" recently in fic. At first I wondered whether it was people just for some reason imagining that the characters, generally Roy and Jamie, are actually living in flats, as in, misinterpreting what kind of homes they would be living in as very wealthy footballers, despite having seen Jamie's house several times on the show and knowing what Roy's must be like due to his wealth and neighbourhood. But then sometimes when describing the layout of the home or the action, of stairs being involved, of people coming and going from the door or whatever, it really still seemed to be a house, and it made me wonder if in fact some non-British writers are just getting the slang wrong? That they think "flat" is slang for someone's home, like "pad" or the very British term "gaff," as opposed to a specific type of building?

So this is a judgement-free PSA to let you know that this is not the case. Flat means apartment and ONLY apartment, and characters like Roy and Jamie are not living in apartments in the canon of the show.

(Footballers sometimes do live in apartments. A few of the Man City players are buying huge penthouse flats in some of the inner city high security Manchester high rises, and it's possible that Jamie owns a fancy flat like that in Manchester. But Richmond is not an area of London filled with luxury high rises.)

In the show, Nate lives in a flat within a block of flats. Ted lives in a flat above a shop. Jamie and Keeley live in houses. We have seen their exteriors (Jamie's season 3 house is the same one he had in season 1.) Colin lives in a house. Phoebe and Roy's sister live in a house. Rebecca lives in a large terrace house opposite Richmond Green. Given that we see Roy's street in the Christmas episode, we can be very sure that his place is also a large terrace house of a similar style to the ones they knock on doors of. Roy grew up in a block of council flats - he points to it in 2.05 - whereas Jamie grew up in a council terrace house.

This post is not aimed at you if you've intentionally written something like Jamie moving into a security building for safety reasons or something. I have this situation coming up in a fic myself. This is not about splitting hairs of whether it would or wouldn't be possible or in character for them to live in a flat. It is solely and literally only for the purpose of flagging the fact that "flat" is not generic slang for "home," for the people that may have thought it was and used the word flat when they were picturing and intending the characters to be in a house. This is probably a very annoying post but if this helps even one person it's worth it.

#jamie tartt #roy kent #keeley jones #ted lasso #colin hughes #britpicking

[st-clements-steps]

Yeah, yeah, there’s a character called Wolfboy Wolfish but also there’s a character called Honourable Son Crucifix

And his dad sacrifices him and then he kills his dad.

Also, there’s that time he introduces all the unforgivable curses, including Crucio from the Latin to torture or to crucify.

Oh and it’s a kids book.

And at the end, his soul gets sucked into non existence.

But it’s still a kids book.

#barty crouch jr #honourable son crucifix the younger #marauders #marauders meta #harry potter #harry potter meta #baby deatheaters #baby deatheaters meta #kinda maybe #I tagged jr but if we’re britpicking a wizard born in early 60s Britain then Junior can fuck off

[paper-beats-writers-block]

okay brits help a bestie out.

not to be an american on main but do y'all have porch swings? I want to add it to a fic that they have a porch swing on their house because it would be so cute and google did not give me a good answer. halp.

#carry on #baz pitch #simon snow #snowbaz #simon snow series #wayward son #awtwb #tyrannus basilton grimm pitch #britpicking #help me please

[benicebefunny]

Looking for Beta

I am in need of a beta for my @wipbigbang fic.

About the fic

The fandom is Ted Lasso.

It centers Nathan Shelley and his relationship with Bex.

It's a dark comedy with elements of satire and silliness.

The current draft is over 90k words.

I'm looking for a beta who can read through and flag moments where

The plot is difficult to follow.

The British characters sound American.

If you're interested or have questions, please message me.

Signal boosts are appreciated.

#ted lasso #nathan shelley #nate shelley #bex mannion #beta request #britpicking

[destinationtoast]

britpicking? (Ted Lasso)

So, I seem to be continuing to write lots of Ted Lasso Roy/Jamie/Keeley fic. :D Is anyone interested in britpicking? I'd be especially interested in someone who can help with the essentials of a Northern/Mancunian dialect (e.g., when it's appropriate to say something like, "she were sending a text" vs. "she was sending a text") and also with "innit" (which I know is linguistically more complex than just replacing "isn't it" and has been evolving). I'm happy to beta/ameripick in return, if desired.

I currently have a couple WIPs that are a few thousand words each.

#ted lasso #jamie tartt #roy x jamie x keeley #britpicking #questions for the tumblmind #most of my british friends don't watch the show or dislike my ship #so before I force any of them to suffer I figured I should ask around ;) #I'm probably overly cautious #but i don't like to try to imitate a dialect i don't know without help #as i know it could end up reading like a bad parody if i get it really wrong #but the result is that i mostly end up not including any dialect markers at all #not even common things like 'innit' #which is differently inauthentic

[antitheticallyargumentative]

Jamie character study snippets- con’t

(set around/slightly before 3x11 “Mom City”)

(if anyone wants to give me an ao3 invite link so I can make an account… I’m considering starting posting there)

TW- referenced/implied depression

Jamie isn’t stupid. Contrary to popular belief. He knows it's a pattern. He’s good, and then he’s bad, and then he’s good again, and then he’s really bad, and he knows that’s probably the type ‘a shit he was supposed to talk about with somebody like Dr. Sharon, but he was so busy then trying to figure out how to not be a prick that he didn’t really tell her things like how sometimes he doesn’t really wanna get out of bed in the mornings, or that sometimes he’s so tired he doesn’t condition his hair, or only does three steps of his ten step skincare routine, or that even though he’s so tired he can never fall asleep properly like that, and even when he does it doesn’t really help and food, which he usually fucking loves, all tastes like ash in his mouth. Jamie isn’t stupid. He knows that when he stops loving football it's a bad sign. Because he knows, rationally, that he does love football. If he woke up one day and someone told him you can never play football again, he’d be fucking devastated. He needs football. Needs it like water, like air, like a heartbeat. Most of the time, it’s the only thing keeping him going. But when his alarm goes off at 4am and all he wants to do is tell Roy to fuck right off and curl up in bed for the rest of the day, when the best part of the day is the few short hours where he’s finally, blissfully asleep and he doesn’t have to feel that odd heaviness that has made home in his chest, curled around his ribcage and leeched out into his limbs, when he’s there, on the pitch, in his body but not, moving the ball but not really playing, Jamie knows he’s in freefall.

#have gone from never posting my writing to being unable to stop posting idk #ted lasso #still not british #jamie tartt #still know nothing about football #ted lasso apple tv #ted lasso series #afc richmond #character study #fanfic #ted lasso tv #not britpicked #jaime tartt

[sarahg221b]

Having recently read a fanfic in which Sherlock and John catch trains to various parts of southern England exclusively from London’s Waterloo station, even when this is not the usual/logical route, I’d like to share this for writers who might not be familiar with the whole business of trains in/to/from London.

Let’s start with the history of how and when rail services came to London. This article explains how and why we have so many terminal stations (short version: because when they were built, the railway companies were privately owned and all needed their own terminus in London).

The main terminal stations are Waterloo (south), Paddington (west), Euston (north-west), King’s Cross (north-east), St Pancras (East Midlands and Eurostar), Liverpool Street (east), Fenchurch Street (south-east) and Victoria (south). There are others (see the article linked above and my husband’s comment below).

As we know, within London and the suburbs, these termini are linked by the London Underground (aka The Tube) network. There is also the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) - a driverless system - and other overground rail services. Here is a map of it all from Transport of London (TfL). Baker Street is served by five tube lines: Bakerloo (brown), Metropolitan (maroon), Jubilee (silver), Circle (yellow), and Hammersmith & City (pink). It’s also only a five-minute walk from Marylebone (the nearest terminal) which itself is just behind the Landmark hotel, which we know as the exterior for The Restaurant Scene.

Aside: I think Sherlock is unlikely to catch a bus unless directly related to a case - they’re just too slow for him. But you can find bus maps and all kinds of other TfL mappy delights here.

If you have characters using public transport in the UK, your best bets for accurate research are:

Google Maps (in public transport mode)

National Rail (see the page footer for all the useful stuff)

Transport for London

All these also have apps available.

I’m happy to do Sherlockian Britpicking (my day job is copy-editing) if that’s helpful for you. (Email to [my username]@gmail.com is the best way to reach me.)

If you want to go the full Howard Shilcott, I still very much enjoy reading the rail enthusiasts’ forums posts about the myriad tube-related continuity errors in TEH. I’ll let you Google those for yourself. 😉

———

Ran this past my husband (who is totally the full Howard Shilcott) and he made a few corrections (and a lot of faces!) before I posted: he wishes it to be known that he ‘remains unhappy about [my summary of] Fenchurch Street’ and thinks I should add Charing Cross to the list so people know how to get to Kent. So that’s all clear then. 😂

#London #London travel #London transport #London Underground #London stations #trains #help for fanfic writers #fanfic #trains in England #railways #Railway Britpicking #Britpicking #Britpicker #Why yes I am autistic thank you #Howard Shilcott #info post #infodump #sherlock #British Rail #British trains #English trains #fanfic writing #fanfic Britpick #important details #Sherlock fanfic #Sherlock fanfiction #Sherlock locations