#sid halley

[elodieunderglass]

i liked your odds abridged fic so much that i went and found a copy of odds against to read. i’m only a few pages in so far but i’m impressed and delighted both by how faithful your retelling is to the style, and the fact that i get to read a whole book that’s this funny. thank you so much for the recommendation 🫡

In reference to Odds Abridged, pastiche of Odds Against. That’s so kind of you thank you 🫡 we ought to @lurkeronmain really! They set me off with this ask . You guys are sending me too many good asks!!!! It will happen again

However I’ve made you some nutritious deep fried memes to support you through your journey and the desert of horselessness that is Odds Against (1965).

Sid’s mental landscape in Odds Against

Sid’s character development in Whip Hand

Everyone: Sid Halley is a legend, he’s unstoppable, his courage is phenomenal, his stamina is impossible, he doesn’t feel pain, he’s relentless, he’s ruthless, he’s a persistence predator

Sid, literally just standing there like this:

Every time we have to note a physical description of anyone:

Sid and Columbo are the same size 😔 (@columboscreens)

Normal Things To Think About Your Father-in-Law, an incomplete collection:

Sid: (eating a single peanut to nourish him all winter) I love Charles more than anyone, even Chico, and I’ll spit in Death’s face for love of Chico (/normal)

Guy who will NOT have a normal job ecause he ONLY does careers that there are clear emoji for, like

🏇

And

🕵️‍♂️

That you could explain to a three year old.

Guy of all time! Most normal narrator! Have fun.

[thisbluespirit]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Sid Halley - Dick Francis Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Characters: Sid Halley Additional Tags: Jockeys, Jockeyposting, Jockey related violence, the condition of horselessness, a comedy retelling of the book Summary:

It is not true that jockeys don't feel pain. We do. We just don't talk about it, even when our skeletons are torn out; we don't feel the pain until people say something hurtful like "why aren't there any horses," and then we have to take all of that toughness and try not to break down and sob, because we are bastards and bastards don't cry, because if bastards start crying even a little bit then they just end up laying on the floor drinking their full bodyweight in brandy, empty, pitied; not having any horses at all, the horseless men of the horseless world.

Instead I said, "because when I put the menaces on people it works strangely well, because I'm so much smaller than them, and it makes them go, oh, look, he's so little and menacing, Gladys, give him a biscuit."

Then I thought about it some more and added, "And then I keep the biscuit."

Or,

An abridged retelling of the 1965 Dick Francis novel “Odds Against.”

[cannondisabledcharacters]

Today’s disabled character of the day is Sid Halley from The Racing Game, who is an amputee

[elodieunderglass]

Thank you @sweetlyfez for tagging me!

rules: give us the links to your fics with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fic with the fewest words.

First Most Hits: Strange Pilgrims (Good Omens) / complete / 127k words. A large and ambitious fic about a lot of things and - alarmingly - having an actual plot, but it excuses that by also having jokes in it. 55,424 hits.

Second Most Kudos: His Delicious Materials (Dungeon Meshi / Delicious in Dungeon, daemon AU) / WIP / 59k words. Winnie the Pooh by way of Nona the Ninth, narrated by a large dog. 1500 kudos.

Third Most Comments: Weasel Heart in Defiance (Dungeon Meshi / Delicious in Dungeon, daemon AU) / WIP / The Hobbit by way of Night Watch, narrated by a guy who is NOT a protagonist. 610 comments (367 comment threads)

Fourth Most Bookmarks: The First Great Poem (even the furies would weep) (Mad Max: Fury Road) / terminally unfinished / a really pretty concept and strong voice, but I just didn’t have enough of a plan to pull it off! 39 bookmarks (30 public + 9 private.)

Fifth Most Words: Odds Abridged (Dick Francis, Sid Halley series / complete / content warning for horselessness. this is literally just a parody that I wrote this week in a fever dream hahaha. 4,816 words

Fic With Fewest Words: Sharpe’s Daemon (Sharpe, daemon AU) / complete / my precious and most stupid baby I love you so much. What is Richard Sharpe’s daemon and how would you win a fight with it? (2,265 words)

——————

Regarding public and private bookmarks - if people tick the “private” option when they bookmark, you won’t see the count on the fic page, but you can still see them on your Statistics page. Find your Statistics page on your ao3 main dashboard.

Here you can see on the fic’s public page that His Delicious Materials has 410 public bookmarks.

But if you look at your Statistics page - you’ll see that if you count a different way, it has 567 bookmarks - they just did so privately!

This tabs also separates comments into “comment threads.” So if you reply to all comments, or if people have wonderful conversations in the comments, you can see the different data patterns!

It’s also where subscriptions are, which can also be interesting. Subscribers are people who have signed up to get an email when you update, which is a different mechanism from bookmarking (and IIRC, doesn’t require an Ao3 account.)

Anyway!!

Tagging @girlmercury @andlightplay @skydaemon @kedreeva @gallusrostromegalus if you’d like to play!

[thisbluespirit]

James Maxwell and Mike Gwilym as Charles Roland and Sid Halley in The Racing Game, Yorkshire TV’s 1979 adaptation of Dick Francis’s Odds Against. 

[thisbluespirit]

James Maxwell as Charles Roland in The Racing Game (Yorkshire TV 1979).

[thisbluespirit]

Mike Gwilym as Sid Halley in The Racing Game (Yorkshire TV 1979).

[thisbluespirit]

Endless list of ships: Sid Halley & Charles Roland (Sid Halley Series - Dick Francis/The Racing Game Yorkshire TV 1979).

I pressed the buttons [on my phone] to reach the man I trusted most in the world, my ex-wife’s father, Rear Admiral Charles Roland...  An unemotional, undemonstrative man, not paternal towards me and very far from indulgent, he gave me nevertheless a consciousness that he cared considerably about what happened to me and would proffer rocklike support if I needed it.  Like I needed it at that moment... (Dick Francis, Come to Grief.)