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kwistowee · 1 month

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TOM ELLIS as THOMAS MILLIGAN ➥ DOCTOR WHO 3.13 | Last of the Time Lords

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believerindaydreams · 7 years

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Ecstasy in Cosmogone Glossary

Some borrowed, some stolen, some invented, but I have enough odd words now that I need a list. (A warning: some of these don’t adhere to Failbetter canon.)

Aich’s alloy: copper, zinc and iron, useful for underwater work.

Apotheosis: Something, someday, will happen to London.

associative trails: Neath hypertext.

Beloved blubber: when refined, the source of zee-butter, though zailors generally prefer it straight. Can be eaten either hot or cold, very popular condiment aboard the Clipper.

Blemmigan nectar: gods alone know, but it tastes awful.

blood-letting: the mechanism which lowers your stats for incautious activities in SS. Also applicable for the consumption of Bottled Oblivion.

bolegus-timber: mushroom wood.

Calgary Flames: the Innocent Spy’s favourite hockey team. Not that he has any reason to mention this in 1895.

cavern-tuna: what you feed mogs.

Celestial Welshman: Arthur Machen. Bohemian author.

change war: 1. One of SF’s first really good time wars, as recounted in various Fritz Leiber books. 2. the conflict between cats and snakes.

chiropterochronometry: er, bats and timekeeping?

collop: slice of meat.

comci: one of those artistic movements only defined by academics long after its flowering. Generally agreed to have been kickstarted by the Sickly Scotsman’s “The New Arabian Nights”, the definition brushes up against magical realism on one side, Chestertonian paradox on the other, and some kind of five-dimensional Lovecraftian horror on both.

déjà vu: the subject of much vigorous wrangling at the University, where there’s a department attempting to ascertain whether it’s some sort of psychic occurrence, a temporary displacement with one’s reflection, or something else entirely.

DDD terms: (permanent) death, dismemberment, drownification. Grounds upon which a Neath contract might reasonably be voided.

(this is getting a bit long, more beneath the jump.)

driftweed: the Underzee’s most common variety of edible seaweed, eaten by vegetarians and very, very desperate zailors.

duck tape: a dreadful anachronism. Made from zee-glue and Parabola linen duck.

DXS: Department of External Services, the Innocent Spy's former employers. Seem to take on both internal and international missions without batting an eye.

First City coin stamp: a joke.

flectere: the art of mirrors.

flexion: what reflections call us.

fungal mint cake: highly calorific foodstuff, in much demand for Neath adventurers. Sufficiently hearty to ward off the effects of UP, for a day or so.

freightage: the poor chumps indentured to private companies such as Iron and Misery, who transport the most boring of cargoes. Zee-coal from the Iron Republic, crates of mushrooms to branches of Harbour Provisioners, etc. So pathetic they travel in convoys, and no decent zailor will shame the profession by admitting they even exist.

Grand Sanction: that which has enabled the Innocent Spy to live through a twentieth century with no space bats or immortality in it. The Phoenix Foundation is responsible for it, though the Spy doesn’t actually know that part.

geas: a bit like an oath, but with more punch and narrative interest to it.

INCURSION: an unpleasant but not lethal random encounter in the Iron Republic.

Innocent Spy: current work-name for one MacGyver. Accidental time-traveller, brilliant engineer, and oh yes, also a spy.

jati: borrowed from the Hindi word for caste, appropriated by Londoners to mean something more like untouchable. That which happens in London entirely outside of the Bazaar’s remit, and officially does not exist. Examples of jati would include driftweed sellers, anybody living in a terraced house, the chap who’s next-door neighbours with The Most Boring Man in London.

knitting: something the Innocent Spy does to make a jumper. Something the Herald does to upconvert Whispering Hints and Cryptic Clues.

Kabulstan: a country in central Asia. Location of the Ammukash valley and the Mountain of Youth, better known to Neath inhabitants as Stone.

Last Night’s pudding: the flaming pudding traditionally eaten twelve days after the first lacre-fall. Society folk rather look down at this; Dockers love it.

late-reign: 1. anything that’s happened in the Neath since the Innocent Spy arrived, more or less. 2. for later historians, the fin de siecle period of the Traitor Empress’ reign. What precisely this entails is a matter of hot debate amongst the handful of academics permitted to study the matter.

Lillywhite’s: the bible of cricket.

Literary Postman: Anthony Trollope, Society author and postal worker. His last public act before a graceful retirement to Nuncio was pressing forward the decimalisation of Echoes, making London’s currency minimally less terrifying.

Norton: those who would take a Liberty. The umbrella term for a loose association of anti-Fall ideologies, ranging from those who insist that London never left the Surface, to those who insist it’s fated to return. Originally referred to a number of activists from Spite who tried to bring the Empress to court, on the grounds that she lacked the legal authority to bring their street to the Neath. You can usually find one at the Square of Lofty Words.

obscurity: 1. to posies and potential posies [every single PC], the most horrifying fate imaginable in London society, only undertaken by the maddest of Seekers. 2. to everyone else in London (of whom there’s rather a lot), an exchange in which one trades away a never-gonna-happen future of Making Waves in exchange for the safety of being Closest To a particular faction. This is how random zailors are closest to Dockers and so forth.

The Penniless Archeologist: loosely based on Eduard Glaser, the Archeologist is a late-19th century Surface scholar attempting to find the location of the Garden of Eden. His map, a hundred years later, leads the Unimaginative Assassin to start investigating a mountain in Kubulstan...

posy: a more amusing and period-appropriate bit of slang for Persons of Some Importance than POSI.

Phoenix Foundation: the Innocent Spy’s employers. Partly a do-gooding charity, partly an agency for plausibly deniable intelligence work.

Pinksaw's Guide to Edible Fungi: exactly what it sounds like.

quirks: the measure of a man.

rat extract: Neath Bovril.

red-handled knife: the Innocent Spy’s tool of choice.

reflection: that which you see in a mirror. May occasionally be sentient.

reppeljack: newly Fallen. Mildly offensive.

ritual: the Herald’s all-purpose term for anything quasi-magical, esp. for her ship-keeping prayers to Stone, Salt and Storm. (She usually refrains from telling the Innocent Spy the proper names, both for safety and to head off arguments about how silly the proper names are.)

“The Sapphire”: Fallen London’s equivalent of “The Gem”.

scintillack: that blue stuff that helps you shoot things.

secret sharing: a ritual to improve one’s stats, by offering up a secret to another party. Usually undertaken as a matched set, unless a Captain is involved (it is the duty of Captains to give, not to take).

Sickly Scotsman: Robert Louis Stevenson. Author, affiliation indeterminate (he notoriously cycled through Closest To on a regular basis.)

Slug and Mushroom: a terrible chain of pubs owned by Murgatroyd’s, found across the Underzee.

solacefruit extract: sweet substance akin to stevia, usually used to flavour Darkdrop coffee.

speaking tubes: a piece of historical accuracy! How people at opposite ends of a steamship can talk to each other.

Sporting Times: The name the Pink ‘Un is forced to trade under, in Fallen London.

suchenroman: literature dealing with Seekers. Only became popular in late-reign London, and even then only as penny-dreadful tosh, more illegal than red honey. Ironically, due to their confiscation on sight, one of the few forms of popular Neath literature available for Surface historians after the Grand Sanction.

Surfacer: 1. Someone who lives on the Surface and has never seen the Neath. 2. A Londoner stupid or optimistic enough to keep insisting they’re going to return to the Surface, one of these days...

“Tasted on the wind”: depending who’s talking, either foretold or made a lucky guess.

telesthetic: what the Student calls telepathy, cos it sounds cooler.

Tireless Mechanic: the Innocent Spy’s later work-name, after a number of as-yet undescribed events.

travel slate: the thing the Herald chalks courses on for her shipmates to follow.

trionfi: the Herald’s predictive tarot games, in which she studies the Hours.

tree-effigy: Guy Fawkes Day not being on anyone’s mind these days, there’s now a Neathmas tradition among the lower classes to make a flammable effigy of the Consort. Other popular candidates for the effigy are the Traitor Empress, especially hated zee-captains, and, if you’re feeling especially daring, one of the Masters.

tynged: Welsh version of a geas.

Unimaginative Assassin: Surface name Murdoc, the Innocent Spy’s nemesis.

Venderbight: that Tomb Colony I can never remember how to spell.

zee-code: something the Captain is constantly blathering about, and which may or may not exist.

...huh, that was more than I expected.

#fic #macgyver #fallen london #glossary #failbetter

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shakeel786blog · 6 years

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Real Madrid land ‘Decimotercera’ with help from Liverpool’s Karius – media reaction

The local media reaction on the morning after Real Madrid’s Champions League final victory over Liverpool struggled to explain a night packed with unexpected drama and startling storylines, but with a very familiar ending: yet another European Cup for the Bernabeu outfit.

“The thirteenth!” said the front page of AS, along with “two huge bombs from Bale, and another from Cristiano — the first decided the game, and the second threatened to leave.”

Buenos días, aquí tenéis la portada de AS del 27 de mayo de 2018 https://t.co/LdXnRGxKyu pic.twitter.com/AjXPfUKXpD

— AS (@diarioas) May 27, 2018

“Eternal champion,” said the match report inside. “That has been Madrid, since they first set foot in Europe, 62 years ago. That pioneer which has changed the music, but kept the lyrics the same – a team which overcomes adversity, suffers in hard times (the first half an hour) but relentless when it matters. A team which keeps ice cool in difficult moments, having learned to win by winning. Their latest title, the 13th, came adorned by a bicycle kick for the ages from Bale. The Welshman ran from the bench to eternity at the speed of sound.”

Marca’s cover said ‘Unbeatable – Madrid are European champions for a 13th time’, while also adding ‘Cristiano sows doubt [by saying] it has been very nice playing for Madrid’.

#LaPortada ¡INVENC13BLES! #UCLFinal #RealMadrid pic.twitter.com/ILSszazgBg

— MARCA (@marca) May 26, 2018

“If football is only a sport, then music is just noise, and the heart is just an organ,” said Marca’s report. “But we all know that is not the case. Because football has soul, musical is a celestial mix of sounds, and the heart simply moves the world. If Real Madrid is just a football team, then the European Cup is just one more trophy for its cabinet. But we all know it is not like that. Because Real Madrid are not just one more team. Madrid won in its favourite competition, nothing new, but something old, eternal, everlasting. They did it suffering, resisting, holding on against Liverpool, but with the capacity to send a star up into the sky, in this case Bale, who wrote himself into the team who wins the Champions like with a bicycle kick.”

El Pais – “Madrid again, for life’

“Europe laid down once again before the victorious and unique Real Madrid. An infinite Madrid for whom time does not pass. A club which walks to pick up the European Cup in its slippers. An enchanted team who is just as capable in this tournament in good times as in bad. Who secured their 13th ‘Big Ears’ with a goal for posterity from Bale, along with two similar howlers from the rival goalkeeper. So in Kiev they won their third consecutive Cup, something only within reach of Di Stefano’s Madrid, Cruyff’s Ajax and Beckenbauer’s Bayern. It could have been Ronaldo’s Madrid, but the Portuguese tarnished the celebrations with an out of place tantrum. Blank in the final, CR decided to suggest he was leaving the club. His ego in the clouds yet again.”

El Mundo – ‘Madrid, the champion of the 13 heartbeats’

“To write match reports about Madrid is one of the best, and the worst, jobs. On one hand, it allows you to become a writer of the kings of football, leaders of an empire which denies the destiny of all empires – decline. On the other hand, it frustrates you as all arguments are reduced to nothing, and reason is laughed at. The conclusion is the same as Neruda on love – Madrid are not understood by looking, Madrid are understood by feeling, in Kiev just like in Cardiff, in Lisbon just as in Amsterdam, cities where they have left their mark, whether through their own artist’s touch, or the misfortune of others. The heart has reasons which the head cannot understand, and that is the only way to understand this Madrid of the 13 Champions Leagues, the champion of the 13 heartbeats.”

ABC – ‘Madrid lift the 13th, with some help from Karius’

“Madrid secured their 13th Champions League, with a hegemony unknown in Europe since the 1970s. They now have more European Cups than all of England. We could explain Cruyff’s Ajax, Beckenbauer’s Madrid, and Sacchi’s Milan. But this Madrid is impossible to explain. Madrid are a mix of the Harlem Globetrotters and Disney with a secret which seems more like the Coca Cola recipe than a philosophy of play. The game had two injuries, a bicycle kick, and two howlers. A renaissance and a sporting death. It was an extravagant final, as it could only be with a cocktail made of Klopp’s energy, Zidane’s fortune and Madrid’s leading men.”

Dermot Corrigan is a Madrid-based football writer who covers La Liga and the Spain national team for ESPN FC. Follow him on Twitter @dermotmcorrigan

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kwistowee · 2 years

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