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aanotheruniverse · 3 years

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Something close to my heart I wrote a few years ago

THE SUICIDE CLINIC

CIARAN HARDIE

The Waiting Room Nobody made eye contact at the Suicide Clinic. Everybody knew why you were there. If you are about to kill yourself, small talk is not really a high priority. As George craned his neck to take in the high ceiling, he was reminded of the similarly high ceilings in airports, and the Suicide Clinic is a sort of an airport - a temporary drop-off point between life and death. The Clinics all looked the same inside: spacious, fashionably modern, with wide white corridors, littered with suicide prevention signs and pretentiously artistic glass panels. They were the type of place where the floor squeaks as you drag your feet across it. To George's left side was a black man, in his fifties, whose short hair had started to turn white. Chancing a glance at him, George couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to him, and how his life had brought him to this moment. On his left, was an elderly woman clutching a kitsch pink handbag. A man sat in the corner of the room, dressed like a rocker, had his head firmly in his hands. Amidst the waiting room, George felt his individuality and personality slip away; he was just another face in the crowd. He felt, and not just in this moment alone, merely an observant to the world, and not a participant. He was simply being. Nothing happens after death, it’s all just biology and chemistry. Life, George thought, my life, maybe life itself is wholly insignificant objectively, so he had stopped bothering to try to add any subjective meaning to his life either. Although everything is, eventually it will not be, so why bother? Before Emma had taken her own life, George had never really given suicide and the means of suicide much thought, which can be cited as a good thing. Carbon monoxide poisoning is pretty painless, and you could even sleep through it, but there’s a bit of a tedious wait. Best to get it over with as quick as possible with something like hanging, but that’s a tad dark and unpleasant. Suicide bombing would be quick, but George didn’t know the first thing about improvising an explosive. Lethal injection lacks the sex appeal of exploding, or setting yourself on fire, or whatever, and a pill overdose would be too painful. At the Clinics, they provide you with the most sought-after method of suicide - although a difficult commodity to come by in England - a handgun. You would think the handgun would be the ultimate solution to a quick and easy suicide, but all sorts can go wrong. People attempt to shoot themselves from funny angles and often, they shoot only their ears off, or their nose, or part of their chin, and some even miss entirely. If a non-fatal shot were to be fired, there are medics waiting on site at the Clinic, but there would only be one bullet per gun at a time, so you only had one chance to get it right. If you were to miss, you would have to get a new ticket and wait all over again. Once you were dead, the Body Disposers would come and take care of your remains. Afterwards, the room is tidied spotless for the next person. As the unattractive glare from the overly-polished floor caught George’s eye, he was stuck by the institution’s obsession with cleanliness; would people really care if the room they were coming to die in were a little dirty? When George had collected his ticket (Number #227) from the annoyingly pretty receptionist, she had explained the procedure and he had to fill out a form, savouring the Clinic from any responsibility over your imminent death. They also let you choose what you hear before you die. George had known this in advance and had brought with him a CD of himself and Emma talking. One night, a couple of years ago now, Emma had interrupted one of his recording sessions, and he had accidentally left the tape running for hours, and recorded their conversation. They laughed about it and listened to the tape back after realising. Now that she was dead, and things had changed so severely, it felt like a tape from another universe, a relic of a time that now it is over, felt like it had never really existed in the first place. You also got to choose what image was projected in front of you as you die too, and he had brought a photograph of Emma from when he first met her. First there were designer handbags, then designer babies, and now, you could even design your own death. They didn’t want people to kill themselves, but local authorities couldn’t deal with the amount of blood and carcass painting their streets. Washing out the high street every morning, before the foggy-eyed, grey-faced consumers came to... consume, became somewhat of a chore. First there was the Super Hose, which lived up to its name only in its size, and not in efficiency. A team of Body Disposers would hose down the streets and it would all be drained down the newly introduced sewer system - the Bloodstream. The larger pieces, too big to be collanderised, would be put in the back of a lorry and driven off to an infirmary. Naturally, people revolted. They didn’t like the Super Hose, they didn’t like the strewn organs down their high street, and they especially didn’t like the Body Disposers, with their threatening red jumpsuits. George, who was fairly up to date with current affairs, remembered how it all had started: a research team in Europe had been controversially investigating if suicide-prone individuals would be more likely to commit suicide if the process was facilitated for them. George could no longer recall the results of the experiment, and it had become irrelevant now anyway, as the English government had leapt onto the idea, and implemented Suicide Clinics in every major town to cope with the epidemic. A place you could go to kill yourself, and not make so much of a mess for everybody left here still existing once you were gone. 24/7, 365, a place to die. Everywhere had a McDonald’s and a Suicide Clinic. It was supply and demand. People still threw themselves off buildings, however. Some people just refuse to conform to committing in the way they are “supposed” to commit. Drowning maintained a popular alternative too, and it handily came without the dreaded stigma of pavement bombing. There was one case, George remembered, in the news, where one lake was deemed such a spot of idyllic beauty that it had to be dredged due to the sheer number of bodies in it. Of course, the biggest concern to the authorities was simply why were so many people suddenly killing themselves? What had happened in order to make suicide rates increase tenfold? Even now, nobody really knows. As George’s mind wandered the history of the Clinics, he ran in to the question that had driven him in to one of them. Why, like all the other hundreds of thousands of people, had Emma killed herself? She was the one who had handled the break-up; she was the one who’d carried on with her life and her degree and seemed unchanged by things. George was the one who had been made redundant; the one who begged for her back; the one whose life had shrivelled up to being no more than an exercise of misery. Yet two weeks ago to the day, George had received the news: Emma, like all the others, had walked in to a Suicide Clinic, collected her ticket, waited her turn, and ended her life. 14 days of looking for answers had driven George to do the same. Still, in this waiting room, as he anticipated his death, George couldn’t help but wonder why? TPs (Technological People) - “Robots” had been deemed a derogatory term - had certainly had something to do with the other suicides. If there was a TP that could do your job, within a few weeks, you would be out of work. That’s what had happened to George, who was once a recruitment consultant for the IT industry, but now there was a computer that could do his job better, and for free. Conglomerates totally replaced the working human race with TPs. As you would conduct your life; shopping, eating, working, living, you were no longer greeted by human faces, but by metallic, dead-eyed, machines. Technology had sucked all the life out of the world, and days and weeks could go by without seeing another human face. Human social interaction all but died out, and friendship can no longer exist in these conditions, unless it is virtual. George wondered all the time, what is everybody doing? The human race has never been so unproductive. After millennia of rapid evolution in the right direction, we have just ceased. We slowed down, and then we stopped altogether. Nobody is doing anything, they are just existing. Observants, and not participants. That’s the fundamental problem, George thought, people’s lives aren’t worth living anymore, and the people are realising it. Shit, he was realising it after all, and now had come to do the same as all the others. A collective air of nihilism is present at every turning. We are opting out of the game; we just don’t want to play any more. Every day, another lieu of faces at the Clinic, another batch of people who won’t play, if they don’t see the point in playing. The cliches about finding yourself, determining your own happiness, and bringing meaning in to your own life don’t stick anymore, and the futility overwhelms. What’s the fucking point? They want an objective answer to that question. George became aware that he had started breathing heavily, and tried to decelerate his thinking, and calm himself down. He realised he had been clutching his right thigh very hard, and let go. He looked around the room once more; everybody shared the same expression of utter resignation. In the 54th minute since George had collected his ticket (#227), the silence in the room reached a no longer bearable decibel, and his fidgeting could no longer oppress his discomfort. Desperately, George wanted to engage the rest of the room in conversation. He had no idea what he wanted to say to all of these strangers, but the urge was definitely there. Feeling an excruciating sensation rise up in to his chest, George found himself on his feet and then over at the annoyingly pretty ticket- giver’s desk. “Hi”, George spoke, with no idea what he was doing. “Hi”, the ticket-giver looked up at him with an ill-disguised look of animosity. “Er, do you reckon I could, like, wait somewhere else? Is there like a private waiting room?” “Does there seem to be a problem with this waiting room?” “No, it’s not that, it’s just, I feel, uncomfortable waiting around with all these strangers”. “Sir, I can assure you that everybody feels the same. Please take your seat”. “Okay, well that doesn’t make anybody feel any better”. “Sir, please take your seat and wait for your number to be called”. George opened his mouth to respond, but found himself heading back to his seat. Across the room, sitting with her legs crossed, was Emma. George blinked in incredulity, but she was still there. She gave him a flirtatious wave. George got to his feet and tentatively walked across the room. “Yes?”, said the girl, and after a beat, “Can I help you?” “No. Sorry. I just thought you were someone else.” Back in his seat, George mentally kicked himself for being so stupid. She’s dead, he told himself, she’s dead. “Seeing me everywhere are you, George?”, Emma’s voice hit his ears, “Can’t get me out of your head?” The black man was no longer sitting to the left of George. Instead, Emma was there, with her perfect legs and tangled brown mane of hair. Laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of it all, George replied, “Can’t get you out of my head? Well that’s why I’m here isn’t it?” “What if it doesn’t work though?”, said Emma, as if the idea gave her great pleasure, “What if after you kill yourself there’s some sort of afterlife based on your living psychology? What if your eternity is me?” “Then I’ll have to find a a way to kill myself again”. “You can only kill yourself once, silly”. “Oh I know, it’s a grand shame, I would have done it loads by now, if I could. I’d wake up every morning any kill myself” “So dramatic”. Even a hallucinatory image of Emma could still get right under George’s skin. “You always call me dramatic, when you’re the one that’s dramatic” “You’re the one who’s speaking to a dead girl”. Anger swelled in George but before he could release a venomous retort, Emma was gone, and the black man was back in her place. “Okay, number 227, you’re up next”, the ticket-giver’s announcement brought George back to reality. “If you’d like to follow me”. Checking his ticket, George got to his feet yet again and followed her out of the waiting room and down a narrow, white corridor. The gravity of the situation hit George at once, and he felt the need to gag. When they reached the menacing black door, George stifled his queasiness. George resented himself for not wanting to embarrass himself in front of the ticket-giver. “Everything in the room will be exactly as you’ve been told”, she said, “The sound will already be playing, and when you enter the room, the image you’ve chosen will be projected in front of you. The gun is on a platform right in the centre of the room, you can’t miss it”. She held the black door open for him, and George entered the last room he would ever enter. The door closed behind him, and he was left alone. The CD of George and Emma was already playing over the sound system, and his stomach continued to churn unpleasantly. But, there was no image being projected. Rather, Emma herself was standing in front of George, looking as she had in the photo George had chosen. Her school uniform brought out her immaturity, and George felt a twinge as this is how she had looked when he had first fallen in love with her. “Of course you chose to have an image of me where I’m in my school uniform. You’re such a perv”, she said, purposefully emphasising her disdain. “This is how you looked when I first met you”. “Yeah, before you knew me. Before you knew you couldn’t control me, and I wasn’t really just a little girl. You put me in this uniform because you want to keep up the charade of me loving you and you controlling me”. How could she still be torturing me, George thought. Even now, after she’s gone, she’s still hellbent on torturing me. “It wasn’t a charade”, George replied, flatly. “I didn’t love you, George. I never did. I was young, I didn’t know”. “That doesn’t mean anything. You still loved me”. He was yelling already; George was always quick to yell at her, as she had liked to point out when she was still alive. “No I didn’t, George”. At times like these, George didn’t know if he loved her or hated her. Clearly, the more obvious feeling was hate, and every single word she said was like a personal calculated insult to him. And yet, he was so willing to get her to submit to him and admit that she loved him. “I wish I could still kill you. I wish you weren’t dead, purely for that reason. I want to bring you back to life just to choke you with my bare fucking hands”. “Well, I’m here. And hey, you don’t even need to use your hands. There’s a gun”. George was totally disoriented, and things had stopped making sense altogether... maybe he was already dead. He didn’t know, but with immense satisfaction, he picked up with gun and pulled the trigger. It was a perfect shot, hitting her square in the temple, and blood that was so dark it was more black than red, began to gush from the wound. She stayed standing. “What the fuck?” George looked around and hit himself in the face, trying to put a stop to the insanity, “Why aren’t you dead?” “George, silly, you think that’s going to kill me. This isn’t what it looks like; you’re still in the waiting room”. The walls around George warped and blurred until he realised he was in fact, still sitting in his chair in the waiting room. Emma was now sitting in the ticket-giver’s chair behind the desk, and she teased George from across the room, “Think you’re going crazy, George? Think you’re losing it yet?” “I have nothing to lose”, he muttered. “Seriously! All the fucking drama all the fucking time!” She seemed to be completely unaware of the fact that she was provoking him. “Shut the fuck up”. He had to end it, and a force comparable to nothing he had felt before flung him to his feet and he made his way over to the desk. He was going to hit her... he was going to hit her so fucking hard... And she vanished again, out of thin air, leaving George trembling on his feet in the middle of the waiting room. Knowing her next move, he turned around and as he expected, saw her sitting in his chair, looking very casual, and very, very happy. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and lit one. “You can’t smoke in here”. Now, standing outside of the Clinic, each puffing on a cigarette, George racked his brain once more for answers. “You didn’t get this done, I don’t believe you. I know there’s something else going on here; this type of shit wouldn’t make sense to you”. “Because you know me so well?” God, why can’t she just turn it off for one second, George thought to himself. “Okay, maybe you’re right, maybe I don’t know you at all. I think that sometimes, that I just had it wrong the whole time. That we were so close and yet at the same time, we really didn’t know each other at all. But we spent 4 years together, Emma, I know for a fact that you did not kill yourself. You wouldn’t go to once of these places”. He was certain of it. “But you would, I know that. You have, after all”. “Only because you did”. “But you just said I didn’t do it!” “Okay, only because you allegedly did it!” “That’s not fun. You’re just gunna give up? You’re not gunna figure it out?” “I can’t figure you out”. “Draaaaaaamaaaaa”. A sigh escaped George. “Come on, George, if I killed myself, I wouldn’t have used this place. I would have just done it, you know, jumped off a bridge or slit my fucking wrists or something. I wouldn’t have come and sat in a queue and all this shit. Come on, you know I wouldn’t have done that”. “I don’t know why I’m here”. This was the truest thing George had said in recent memory. “You would’ve ended up at this place, whether you thought I had or not. This is so George; it’s got your name written all over it. You were always gonna kill yourself.” “I dunno. I guess, although everything is, eventually it will not be... So why bother?” “Come on, George, think. What happened to me?” George furrowed his brow, and concentrated. He visualised Emma, and his memories of Emma, trying to remember every moment they had shared together, in the hope of something somewhere igniting an epiphany. He remembered walking down his old suburban street with her, hand in hand. She would always instinctively take his hand, and not taking her hand would always cue an argument. He remembered how when she had so suddenly fallen out of love with him, how she had flinched when he had tried to touch her. He longed for the days when she would take his hand, without him having to take hers. Deeper memories... he remembered hugging her late one night down the high street after a comment from a tramp had made her cry. How something so stupid like a comment from a tramp could have shattered her, and made her need him. How truly fragile she had been underneath her tough demeanour. He remembered the smell of her hair, the smooth of her legs, and then, he remembered the sensation of her legs pressed against his head, and his tongue inside her vagina. He remembered how she would wither and moan, and clutch at the bedsheets. Was any of it real? Everything is so brief. Everything feels like it wasn’t true, like it was just a delusion, George thought. To him, everything just felt like some fucked up chemical imbalance in his brain. Too many drugs. Too much TV. But her, such a pretty, perfect thing. She had to have been real, the only real thing in a sea of distortion. Although everything is, eventually it will not be... George jolted in his chair in the waiting room. Emma was gone. The elderly woman sitting to George’s right turned to him, and said, “Were you thinking about eating out my pussy?” “What?!” George said, flabbergasted. It took a moment for Emma to take the place of the elderly woman. “I said were you thinking about eating my pussy? You were, weren’t you? Your lip quivers when you think about cunnilingus, George. I’m dead, you know, isn’t that a bit necrophilic?” “You’re not fucking dead!”, George yelled at the top of his lungs, and as he did, all the lights in the Clinic abruptly turned off, and all the people around George and Emma became immobile. Emma erupted in to tears and teared towards the door to the corridor. He couldn’t let her get away, she had to answer for this, so he pelted after her down the long, white corridor, calling after her. “Emma, wait! Emma! Emma! Come back!” She was impossibly quick, quicker than Emma had really been, quicker than anyone had ever been. George reached another door which had no handle, and began banging on it. “Emma, let me in! Emma, let me in, let me in now!” Emma called back from the other side of the door, her voice thick with authentic terror, “Leave me alone! I’m scared.” “I’m nothing to be fucking scared of Emma!” She had always said she was scared. Knowing she wouldn’t submit to persuasion alone at the time being, George kicked down the door which came off with surprising ease. George found himself in his flat kitchen, just as he had left it this morning before heading out. Emma was darting across the flat towards the front door, but he managed to catch up and grab her arm as she tried to negotiate her way around the furniture. “LET GO OF ME!” she squealed, still crying. “Emma, wait!”, there was tremendous force in George’s voice, “Listen to me”. “You’re fucking hurting me, George”. “How could you do that to me?!”, he screamed square in to her face, “How could you fuck those other guys! You’re fucking evil!” “Then let me go! Let me go, George, now!” Without thinking, he punched her and she fell to the floor. She was still fighting back, and with all his strength, he restrained her and, still without thinking, began to strangle her. She gasped and clawed at his face with her nails, but he wasn’t to be stopped. She pressed her thumbs in to his eye sockets, momentarily blinding him, and when he regained his vision, he was back in the waiting room. The lights were still off, the people around were still all in a dead sleep, and Emma was still in the place of the elderly woman. “Oooh, maybe that’s what happened!”, she said with tantalising excitement, “Maybe you killed me! What if you’re crazy? Like, like actually crazy. What if you killed me and you don’t even remember killing me?” “Emma, shut up. This is serious”. “What? Is it not dramatic enough for you?” The anger George had felt had climaxed with the sensation of asphyxiating her, and now he felt nothing but sad. “Were you scared of me, Emma?”, he asked. “Yes”. “Why?” “You’re obsessive, George. It’s too much. It’s scary”. The words instantly drew tears out of George’s eyes, and he wept. “Don’t you care that you hurt me?” Emma exhaled, and sounded more serious than she was normally capable of being. “You stole my childhood, George. You scandalised me”. “What fucking good is a childhood anyway! Hey! Who wants one!”, the notion of a spoilt childhood brought back George’s anger as if it hadn’t gone anywhere. She looked back at him with the same repulse that he recalled vividly from their last ever encounter. She spoke the same words, “I’m gonna go now”. George clutched her shoulder and searched her eyes for the person he once knew. “No, please, please don’t go Emma, not again. Don’t make me do this, please, please don’t leave me”. “See you on the other side, George” “NOOOO!” She had evaporated. The lights to the Clinic turned back on, and the people around came back to life. But George was really screaming this time, and the people around him jumped back in their seats. He wasn’t able to get out any words, he was just wailing at the top of his lungs. The ticket-giver instantly dashed out of her seat and over to George. “Sir, please, calm down, sir, sir, please, if you’d like to come with me”. “Fuck off!”, George mustered and threw his shoulder away from her as she tried to touch it. Two especially muscly Body Disposers with vacant faces barged in to the waiting area and each grabbed one of George’s arms. George was taken aback by their strength, and started flailing his legs around. The people in the waiting room looked in horror as George shouted, “No! This is wrong! This is all wrong!” The Body Disposers dragged George out of the waiting room, down the white corridor, and through yet another door. This time they had entered a much smaller room than any of the others, and the walls all matched the red of the Disposer’s ghastly jumpsuits. Before George could react, one of the Body Disposers was injecting him with a foul-smelling blue liquid. “What the fuck is that?!” George exclaimed. Nobody responded. After he had been injected, the Body Disposers softened their grip on him and he was able to break free, push the ticketgiver out of the way, and he flung open the door and began sprinting for the waiting room. The Disposers and the ticket-giver gave chase, and his feet slipped on the squeaky corridor floor. George felt as though his legs were filling up with concrete, and movement became an increasing struggle. His back hunched and he felt as though something invisible was pulling him down to the floor. Still, he pushed on and reached the waiting room door, and without a second of conscious-decision making, flung himself at the black man’s feet. “Don’t kill yourself. Please. Please, don’t kill yourself”. A few people jumped to their feet, and even the rocker with his head in his hands looked up at the commotion. The man looked back at him as if George had just asked for his hand in marriage. The concrete sensation as now filling his entire body, and he felt like an anchor was forcing him through the ground. “DON’T KILL YOURSELVES”, George screamed at the rest of the waiting room, and before the Body Disposers grabbed him again, he fell to the floor, unconscious.

#writing #prose #suicide #depression #heartbreak #literature #publishers

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annecoulmanross · 4 years

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A Re(sponse)-Re-Re-Review, Re: The Terror (2018)

I’ve recently read through all of the gorgeous review posts of The Terror (2018) from @rhavewellyarnbag and I just want to say that I think they’re incredibly beautiful and thoughtful responses to this show – all three amazing rounds of them.

I started out simply collecting quotes that were amusing to me, but my notes document very quickly became full of my own responses and confessions. Basically, I ended up making my own response/review of the whole thing, which is what you’ll find in this post.

So, thank you @rhavewellyarnbag for your many insightful thoughts about this show and my responses are below the cut! (Also, your repeated efforts to drive Goodsir to the hospital are a truly noble service, and bring me comfort in these dark times.)

01x01 – “Go For Broke” (One, Two, and Three)

“Ciaran Hinds looks like a grand old walrus.”

This was the line that made me realize I needed to start keeping track of quotes that made me laugh like a seal barking.

“‘You should cherish that man.’ I cherish that fucking line of dialog. I don’t even mean it in a filthy way. That line is so goddamn sweet, I could punch myself in the face.”

Amongst all the beautiful content produced about this show, almost nothing will ever surpass, for me, this description of this line of dialogue paired with that post about “Idiot Boat Caesar, who knows a slow-burn when he sees one.” Sir John has an astonishing capacity to be truly warm on rare occasions, and this is one of the few scenes in which we really get to see James experience that warmth, both genuinely and, here, in the form of a truly gentle, well-meant rebuke that probably cuts James far more than we see.

“This is an interesting scene with the diving suit. This could potentially go very badly. The man in the suit may be dispatched by the mysterious horror following them, or, in order not to give it away, and to show a scientific curiosity, he may die of decompression of the suit.”

Fun fact: one of my great-grandfathers apparently died of decompression from using an early-model diving suit. I learned this when I was word-vomiting to my mother about The Terror. I am now even more terrified of historical diving suits. All diving suits, really.

“If James’ characterization plays around with gender, it does so in this sense: James is constantly acted upon, by the bullet that wounded him, by the disease that fells him, by others’ opinions of him.”

Watch me attempt to cite your reviews of the The Terror in a dissertation, because everything about this description is exactly the gender framework around which I’ve draped the two historical men with whom I’ve fallen in love, one being my actual subject of research, the other being James Fitzjames.

“I’ve previously compared James’ bravery, his very person, to a woman’s beauty: bestowed upon her, not earned; understood to be temporary; dependent upon others’ admiring, desiring of it. Does James exist when no one is around to observe him?”

I adore everything about this description and also it makes me cry.

“There are a great deal of unfortunate classical references in this episode.”

This is my entire mood about The Terror, always. The nods to Philoctetes and Medea as components of the Argonaut myth that Sir John invokes are also distinctly worth exploring in this context, though I’m not going to do so here because the Argonautica (broadly speaking) is not my speciality.

01x02 – “Gore” (One, Two, and Three)

“James and Sir John are about the same height. They look not dissimilar, which James probably liked.”

Oh James.

“Strangely, [Sir John] doesn’t seem particularly pleased with James, who adores him.”

It’s true, and it’s quite painful. I don’t think Sir John is a good role model for James, but it doesn’t lessen the fact that I know James is perceptive enough to know that he’s not being adored in return, and that’s a brutal thing to know.

“You don’t have to be a drunk redheaded sea captain to see that James is empty, hollow, aching, desperate to be the things he tells you he is, desperate to see himself reflected back at himself. Desperate to be loved.”

I have a type, and this is it, apparently.

“Goodsir is a character from another sort of work, entirely. That’s its own kind of tragedy, the tragic juxtaposition. Goodsir is a sweet, gentle, utterly ordinary little pudding, an incidental character plucked from a more innocent narrative, and he’s no-doubt going to die horribly.”

This is the early impression of Goodsir, before any of us see what’s beneath Goodsir’s surface, but it’s also not wrong at all. In another sort of work (perhaps, as noted, a work by Jane Austen), Goodsir is (uniquely, among these men, perhaps) capable of living a sweet, gentle, utterly ordinary little life, with a more innocent narrative.

“It’s strongly implied that Irving’s imagination is so open that he has to work to close it.”

That’s certainly true of the historical Irving, as I read it. I have many more complex thoughts and feelings about Irving now than I did after just watching the series through the first time, but I’m not sure whether that’s because his story-line is actually rich, or because I’ve come to like him separately. (Unlike, for instance, Fitzjames, whom I have come to adore separately, but I can safely say does also have a rich story-line in these ten episodes.) The real Irving is more elusive than I think I at least gave him credit for originally.

“Oh, James Fitzjames, you overly-familiar little strumpet, you.”

I’m sobbing.

“Scurvy doesn’t care what kind of person you are.”

In many ways this is true, because we do see scurvy acting indiscriminately on different men, here, without a care for age or station or morality. But also scurvy, in this narrative, attacks most vividly those with some sort of previous wound that the scurvy can reopen. Notably James, but also Morfin, whose flogging-scars we never see but can assume from his conversation (also, for that matter, Jopson, who, historically, had a major scar on his leg, of unknown origin). Scurvy may not truly care what kind of person you are, but if you’ve led a dangerous life, scurvy has one more way to hurt you.

“Who among us has not been desperate to discuss our interests, to the point where there is almost a flirtatious edge to the broaching of the topic? One must be careful, so as not to give away too much, both for the gentle handling that one’s interests require, and for the sake of not alienating some poor rando who made the mistake of asking a bland, vague question simply to be polite.”

Ah, so I see you understand, then. I’ve taken to apologizing in advance of discussing the gorier elements of the Franklin expedition, as though I’ve exposed myself in public. (But seriously, this is the most excellent description of the discomforting feeling of very more obsessed with something than is socially acceptable.)

01x03 – “The Ladder” (One, Two, and Three)

“John Ross is the Jacob Marley figure, I take it.”

The beginning of many intriguing resonances between this show and Dickens’s Christmas Carol, and I think, one of the most elegant. The actor who plays John Ross would be an excellent Jacob Marley.

“Jopson would not talk about Francis’ drinking! You take that back, Gibson.”

This is what I adore about Thomas “Mr. Hears Everything” Jopson – he’ll only ever tell things about others to Francis; he’d never tell things about Francis to others. That’s a moral compass upon which we can unerringly rely, and one that is in no way affected by the magnetic changes at either pole.

“The spyglass sticks to the skin above Francis’ eye, as though it wished to force him not to look away.”

This is an amazing take, especially re: the way spyglasses are used to show foresight and the future in this show. Francis is forced to know look at what is coming for them, the future that waits ahead, hungrily salivating for his men.

“James is completely shattered, but he looks luminously beautiful.”

He does, doesn’t he?

01x04 – “Punished As A Boy” (One, Two, and Three)

“Lady Jane’s response is: ‘Fuck you. I know Charles Dickens.’”

Much as I detest Dickens, and much as I have my own problems with Lady Jane, she is never anything less than badass, particularly here.

“Lady Jane, clad in burgundy, ‘the wine-dark sea,’ stands between Francis and Sophia.”

Oh good god that’s it, though? It was through Lady Jane that I first found the Franklin Expedition, oh, four years ago (it feels like four hundred), and the first thing I ever said about the matter was “I’m confident that she knew Greek.” I’ve never been able to prove it, but she writes, in her letters, like someone who reads Greek. Lady Jane is well and truly our Homeric Hera. Brilliant and vengeful and matronly and brutal. I do adore her.

“Of course Goodsir’s never been lashed. He’s a nice man. He’s probably had the opposite of a flogging. People probably throw roses at him when he walks down the street. I know I would.”

I’d be happy to attend this rose-throwing Goodsir-parade. I already have a bad habit of bringing roses to the pseudo-graves of historical men whom I love; we can add Goodsir to the list without too much hassle.

01x05 – “First Shot’s A Winner, Lads” (One, Two, and Three)

“[Re: James and “Your nails are a terror, Mr. Wentzall]…the checking of collars and fingernails is a very maternal duty.”

I love spotting feminine traits in James, but what I’m getting out of this is actually imagining James’s adoptive mother Louisa Coningham examining the fingernails of a very young James. It’s an adorable, if slightly tragic, image.

“Irving doesn’t seem like a hard man, but like a man trying desperately to be hard, and often failing. He should have forgotten about the navy, stayed on land, gone to France and become an early Impressionist painter.”

This fantastic description of Irving makes it even more tragic that he DID try to forget about the navy and stay on land, and it didn’t work. Canon divergence AU where Irving moved to France instead of Australia?

“We’re told, repeatedly, including by Goodsir, himself, that Goodsir isn’t a doctor. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding: people think they know who Goodsir is, or who he wishes to be, but Goodsir has no desire to be anything but what he is. Perhaps appropriately, it’s Hickey who recognizes and names Goodsir (“You’re an anatomist.”) One may say that Hickey ‘reads’ Goodsir. Though, Hickey’s understanding is, as it often is, flawed. He may know what Goodsir is, but he doesn’t know who Goodsir is.”

I very genuinely wonder – did Goodsir want to be thought of as a doctor, by any of them? What were Goodsir’s thoughts and preferences on the matter?

01x06 – “A Mercy” (One, Two, and Three)

“What Sir John left them was a means of dissembling, a facade. Cheer in a cheerless time, which holds the dangerous allure of forgetting.”

This is perfect, because Carnevale, at its center, is “the dangerous allure of forgetting,” in no small part because, structurally, Carnevale fills the role of the Homeric island of the lotus-eaters. (It is also a labyrinth, though, and that’s an interesting doubling.)

“The half masks in the trunk have the semblance of the faces of dead men we’ve seen. The creature has the habit or practice of biting a man’s head in two, or biting off part of the cranium.”

I had never noticed this but it’s entirely true.

“Francis is bracketed by Thomas’, neither one of them a doubter.”

I will SCREAM

“‘I don’t like to hear a woman laughing now.’ I suppose it’s fortunate that Jopson’s professional life allows him to be around men, exclusively. What would Jopson have done later in life? Marriage is obviously out of the question if women’s mirth causes him such distress. Would he have stayed on boats? Francis promotes him to lieutenant, but would that have made him happy? He has a love of, an instinct for caring for others that obviously can’t be transposed onto a marriage, both because of Jopson’s limits and because of Victorian gender roles. The best possible course for Jopson would have been valet, a gentleman’s gentleman. His rank and background would have made him an asset, and no more devoted valet would there have been.”

The fanfic writes itself. (I have nothing to say yet, I just adore this speculation; more below, though.)

“The drop of blood falling from James’ hairline onto the mask’s cheek to make a kind of morbid beauty spot is a gorgeous image, like a piece of decadent poetry.”

I personally find James unbearably beautiful, and the whole extended sequence with the dress and the drinking and the blood dripping is so subtle and lovely and I think, like with poetry, what we get out of it is never simple.

“James is dressed as Britannia. Which makes James mother to them all.”

Though I, selfishly, would have loved to see James in something more scandalous than his Britannia costume, I think it’s symbolically the best possible choice for him. This is an outfit that is technically crossdressing, but it’s very subtle thanks to the choices James makes – we don’t see any dramatic woman’s wig or other feminine elements. This is an outfit that reminds the men of home; reminds James of home, and of his adoptive mother, whose poetry was full to the brim and spilling with Britannia.

“Blanky looks great. I wonder if the visual reference to the Ghost of Christmas Present is intentional.”

I’ve always assumed he was meant to be Bacchus, but of course the Ghost of Christmas Present has more than a little Bacchus in him also. All of these Christmas Carol overlaps are exceedingly interesting – John Ross’s Marley warning Franklin’s Scrooge, and now the Ghost of Blanky Present reminding Crozier that others are – for good or ill – having fun without him.

“One may imagine that Edward has disguised himself as someone who enjoys parties.”

OH GOD.

01x07 – “Horrible From Supper” (One, Two, and Three)

“Hickey can’t move on from humiliation, because he would see that as more humiliation. Keeping the humiliation alive in his mind is the only way to gain some mastery over it. He holds the wound open, so that no one can deny that it’s a wound, that it happened, that it mattered, that he matters, but it means that he can never heal, never be whole. Scurvy.”

The Hickey/Fitzjames parallels are STRONG here. Also, this resonates really well with a conversation I had with a friend about Eleanor Guthrie from Black Sails – she’s unable to move past being hurt and I just can’t fault her for it, even as her stubbornness just hurts her more. And I feel that sympathy for James, too – he’s bottled up so much hurt inside, and it has kept hurting him his entire life. If Hickey didn’t “hold the would open” by, you know, making wounds in other people, literally, I’d probably even feel bad for him.

“There is an emotional and psychological toll, which Francis tries desperately to reduce by keeping the men together, reinforcing the bonds between them, persistently humanizing them.”

The Jopson’s promotion scene warms me on cold nights. That’s all.

“Jopson’s role is the opposite of Lady Silence’s: the fact of her gender alters nothing about it; Jopson’s informs it. Make Jopson female, and he clearly functions as Francis’ wife. If Jopson is male, though, what is he? A paid servant, in the literal sense, but his obvious pleasure at caring for Francis long ago eroded the patina of duty. I think we can safely say that Jopson loves Francis, loves and cares deeply for him. Is invested in Francis’ safety, well-being, happiness. Enjoys the details of his service to Francis, beyond the enjoyment of a job well-done. Add a sexual component, and it becomes a marriage. Leave it out, and the relationship is something else. Drop Jopson into a marriage with a woman, and he becomes a husband. Leave him with Francis, and he remains Francis’ wife.”

This is what I find so fascinating about Jopson – everything about his identity has the potential to be contingent, to change, but as the expedition’s tragedy unfolds, we see all of the possible threads of Jopson’s future cut off, one by one. From the beginning, Jopson can’t be female, and thus can’t serve a wifely role in British society, even though he’s clearly fit for it. We learn that Jopson has some very specific PTSD triggers related to women that might prevent him from ever being married to one, even if he wanted to be. Jopson seems to wish to continue serving Francis in perpetuity, to continue being as close to a wife as Francis will ever have, but Francis, sober, no longer needs the same kind of care that Jopson used to provide, and, eventually, Jopson becomes unable to care for Francis at all, so that Francis has to care for him. Jopson is all change, all tragedy.

“I would like to thank the director, cinematographer, anybody else who may be responsible for that stunning shot of James in profile. James really is beautiful, even, maybe particularly, at this stage of his infirmity. I’ve said it at other times, but there’s something, well, I suppose, romantic about his illness, because he is young, and beautiful, and heroic, so desperate to be loved, and so loved, in the end.”

*sighs* I’m not okay about James.

01x08 – “Terror Camp Clear” (One, Two, and Three)

“I don’t know how I didn’t notice before, but James is a leggy creature.”

I will still treasure the term “a leggy creature” when I am in my grave.

“Sir John was not a top, and I know that for a fact, because I just got Lady Jane on the Ouija board, and she told me.”

I WILL SCREAM.

“[Francis] doesn’t look on James as a sick person in need of careful handling. There’s no sense of the separation necessary for pity between Francis and James. He is this way toward James because he cares about James.”

I know we all joke about the quote “it’s rotten work” / “not to me, not if it’s you,” but this is what that quote has always meant to me (the Anne Carson of it, that is, not the original Greek). Caring for someone via pity, via distance, takes effort, is painful, is rotten, even though it is sometimes worth it. Caring for someone via care, via love may still take effort, and may still even be painful, but there is no separation, no alienation, from the service of providing care. That’s where Francis’s tenderness comes from, I think. That closeness.

“James, you big, beautiful racehorse. Even chapped and cracked, he’s radiantly beautiful. He has such a warm quality.”

In the confessional spirit of this review, I will admit: I find James more attractive than I am capable of expressing. The interesting thing, to me, is that I don’t have the same response at all to Tobias Menzies or to any other character I’ve seen him play. He’s a great actor, certainly, but he doesn’t do it for me. But James does. I’m still puzzling this out.

“James’ bravery is treated somewhat like a woman’s beauty, in that he believes it to be conditional, temporary. It’s dependent on others’ appreciation of it; when he’s alone, James doesn’t feel brave.”

I will say, admitting that it’s probably James’ femininity that is attractive to me gets you a long way toward understanding why I do find him so terribly appealing.

“Oh, please, baby Jesus, don’t let Jopson flip. Jopson’s one of the few things I have left to hang onto, here.”

Jopson will never flip, such that Jopson’s death really is the point of no return, here. He’ll die before he flips. (Notably, it’s important to be clear that by “flip,” I mean turn his loyalties away from Crozier. I have reconciled myself to the idea that, though Jopson is upright and innocent in a way even my James isn’t, he is capable of violence and even unjustified, offensive violence. But only ever in the service of his captain.) And again here, Jopson very well might not be immune to the seduction Hickey’s definitely attempting, but bending to Hickey’s wiles means betraying Crozier, and that’s an impossibility for Jopson.

“Bridgens, who’s a cozy old piece of furniture…”

….and Henry Peglar would like to sit on him. (I get it Henry, I do.)

01x09 – “The C, the C, the Open C” (One, Two, and Three)

“Oh, Bridgens. Where’s Henry? Where did Henry go?”

I think a real triumph of this show is getting you to know, by this point, that when you see Bridgens, you should ALWAYS ask yourself, “Where’s Henry?” Because yeah, “They are each other’s loved one,” and there can’t be either one of them without the other. Bridgens knows this, and makes himself into a memorial for Henry. The only kind of monument Henry Peglar can ever have: Bridgens, with his own body, preserves Peglar’s words for the future, for us. I’m just going to cry for Bridgens and for Peglar for a minute, that’s all. Please excuse me.

“Hartnell watches Bridgens pick up Peglar, Peglar’s arm around Bridgens like, ‘… Wait a minute…’ Hartnell also misses Hickey’s innuendo about Armitage. Tom Hartnell tragically has no gay-dar.”

Oh precious Hartnell. This lack of gay-dar is part of why Hartnell had to get written out of what I’m currently writing (I’m sorry Hartnell! It’s not you it’s me.)

“There’s something of a horrible wooing about it: Goodsir, like an unwilling bride, forcibly taken from his own people by unscrupulous men, installed in as luxurious surroundings as can be had, with his trousseau, for the purpose of catering to an unspeakable hunger. His innocence is taken from him, and he’s turned against himself. His body is stripped naked and consumed.”

(a) What a horrible and horribly accurate description. (b) This is another one of those places where this show is unafraid to place male characters into narrative metaphors of womanhood. For me, the most vivid is always Jopson, but Goodsir is also often made to face this sort of feminine role, and for Goodsir it’s so much more often about violence and shame.

“James says “I’m not Christ,” before he tells Francis to feed the men his body. It seems like something of a non sequitur, until one imagines James’ train of thought. As the impulse to give his body to the men occurred to him, so may have also come a last flicker of self-mockery: “What, James, do you think you’re Christ, now?” So that his announcement that he’s not Christ comes in response to this: he knows who he is, and who he isn’t. Finally, he knows this.”

I think that’s exactly what went through James’s head. And more than that, I think back on that beautiful gif-set that placed James’s “I’m not Christ” beside Francis’s “Like Christ, but with more nails.” Francis, whose self-hatred is clear and undisguised, begins to heal by recognizing what is Christ-like in himself: his suffering, and the compassion that is borne from the suffering. James, whose self-hatred is buried under masks and lies and stories and gilded dresses, begins to heal by admitting what is not Christ-like about him: his mortality, his humanity; and that doesn’t make James any lesser, and James finally, finally begins to see so.

“Can’t Jopson’s story end differently, this time?”

That’s what hurts. In no version of this story that happens with Hickey AND the Tuunbaq AND the inevitable deaths of 129 men, should James die any different, or Goodsir, or Bridgens. If they were going to die, they should do so showing bravery and brotherhood; agency and defiance; commitment and love. There are other men who deserved so much better than the ignoble deaths they got (Irving comes to mind) but Jopson is the warmest light and receives the coldest death. There’s no reason for his story NOT to end differently, except for the sheer narrative cruelty of it all. The Terror is brilliant because it knows to reserve this sort of agony for the worst possible gut-punch. Any more than one, or maybe two, utterly, pointlessly cruel deaths, and we would be immunized. But we have no immunity to prepare us for the dizzying nausea of Jopson’s death.

“The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death. Death, ultimately, isn’t mysterious. Whatever might happen to one afterwards is immaterial to the living, still bound to this plane of existence. One may fear it, but once it happens, it’s over. Love is a way of life, though. It changes over time. It changes the person who feels it, and the person they feel it for. Both Francis and Jopson were changed by their love for each other. Jopson goes to one mystery still in the grip of the other: it’s Francis he sees, reaches for, cannot touch.”

Jopson’s death is still haunting me. It’s like Tantalus, all that food that would save Jopson’s life, if only he could eat it, and yet he crawls right past, toward Crozier. What does that say about Jopson? The way the world tortures him is to hold Crozier just outside of his reach – what on earth is Jopson being punished for? (These aren’t intelligible thoughts anymore; I’m just broken-hearted for my boy.)

“In a narrative that encourages empathy for everyone and everything from a colonial expedition to a monkey to an eldritch monstrosity that rips men’s heads off, why should Hickey be exempt?”

A beautiful way of putting it. I’m still working through my initial disgust at Hickey, but intellectually, I can’t help but agree.

01x10 – “We Are Gone” (One, Two, and Three)

“…the experience of being through so much with these characters that I care about so much has been like living several lifetimes.”

My mother, who has not yet watched this show, told me recently that she thinks these characters have become my family. In part, this is due to the historical research I’ve been doing on the real men of the Franklin expedition, but the show played its own large role in making me fall in love with these men, making me desperate to live as many lifetimes with them as possible.

“Why does Goodsir do it, though? He seems to have made up his mind before Francis appears, and with Francis comes the hope that Edward will rescue them. If anything, Francis’ presence makes Goodsir more resolute.”

As another dear friend said, Goodsir definitely had the plan in mind before Francis showed up, but the plan needed a trigger: it needed Francis, a good man worth dying for. Someone for Goodsir to look at and say, “Maybe my actions will help this man.”

“I think I just confessed to being in love with a man who doesn’t exist.”

Ahh, this lovely club. Even the men I’m in love with who actually lived two thousand years ago don’t really exist, at least not in the way I love them.

“The Terror is like a play put on by a theater company that has no female actors, so all of the men must play female roles…without any women to place in certain contexts – caretaker; lover; victim; object of desire – those dramas necessarily play out on the bodies of the men.”

Watch this space. The Terror is a classical Greek tragedy, and I can prove it.

The description of Goodsir’s preparation for death is richer and more complete than anything I will ever write. GO READ IT.

I also think it’s fascinating to see this scene through the eyes of a reviewer who readily admits “This is an unusual case. I like Goodsir. I don’t usually like the men I’m looking at. I care for Goodsir.” I confess that, though I also like and care for Goodsir, when I am looking at “eroticized male bodies” in media, I only really “feel at home in a text” when I also like and care for those men. If a male character is too morally objectionable to me, I find no erotic appeal to viewing him, because I am so distracted by my own sense of his evils. I simply cannot find anything to pull me, aesthetically or sexually, to someone like Hickey. (I can never find anything sensually appealing about Hickey/Tozer, for instance.) I am pulled to James, in contrast, because he is beautiful to me visually, and because his life (as far as I can see) shows me a person who cared, who tried, who loved. Who is worthy of my care and trust. And though I don’t think I’m in love with Goodsir in the same way than I am with James, I care deeply for Goodsir and thus can find the appeal in watching him, visually.

“‘There is wonder here.’/ ‘Then, there will be the angels.’ The first thing angels ever tell any human being who beholds them is not to be afraid. Wonder isn’t always delightful, isn’t always something that humans can understand, or possibly, even, survive.”

Fear is something I don’t often enough examine closely with this show, though it is so terribly central. “Be not afraid” and “We have too much fear.” How can one dispel fear? Wonder obviously isn’t enough; wonder might even make it worse. Being told not to fear rarely works out so well for those visited by angels. I think, sometimes, that all we can do is – as Peglar does – admit to those we love that we have too much fear, and hope that they can help us carry it.

I can’t NOT give you the end of the first round of these reviews, because, like the description of Goodsir’s preparations, it’s literature:

“The Terror, a show taking place one hundred, sixty years ago, manages to be timely without even trying. Lead poisoning. Environmental catastrophe. The baggage of colonialism. The treatment of indigenous people by white people. Information and misinformation. What it means to be a leader. What it means to be in a marriage. The role of women in society. Gay marriage. Income inequality. Ethical consumption. Consumerism. Members of the armed forces working far from home. Mental health. Addiction. All of these fit neatly into what can also be taken at face value, a well-constructed and -acted tale of adventure and loss set in a faraway place and time. The Terror never tries to force meaning on the viewer, never struggles under the weight of its lofty aspirations- because it has no aspirations. It’s an utterly guileless production, seeking nothing but to present its characters and situations honestly. In doing such a simple thing, it has created the world.”

And, finally, I leave you with: “I’m not looking for a way out. I just want more time with the characters. I don’t want to leave them.” To me, this gives an answer to David Solway’s question “Do you have a tolerance for ongoing narratives which generally turn out to be the same narrative?” And that answer is “yes.” I think there’s a tolerance – or, even, a hunger – for ongoing narratives that turn out to be the same narrative, in this fandom, because why would anyone want a way out anymore, if it means the end of our time with these characters?

I know I don’t.

“The end of The Terror isn’t a sad end, nor is it a hopeful one. It’s not even properly an end, because we know what comes next. What comes next? Well, we do.”

#thank you op for the reviews #everyone else go read them if you haven't #what an unending gift this show is #a ship is its captain's confessor #long post #the terror #the terror amc #terrorposting

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willowelijah · 2 years

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The Fool, Upright - Teddy Lupin/Victorie Weasley

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Summary: Victorie Weasley finds herself friendless, but the new and popular student decides to help her improve her social status.

Whenever Teddy Lupin used to visit the Weasley’s he would listen to Victorie’s midnight chats with her cousin from the room next door, and he developed feelings for her. When his band got famous he stopped coming around for visits, and the two didn’t see each other for years. When he finally starts Hogwarts alongside her after years of being on tour, everyone fawns over him but her. He just wants past that thin wall he used to know her through, but the wall seems to have grown thicker over the years.

Content warnings: Swearing

Chapter 18: The Practise Date

Darkness had already fallen around the castle on the late November evening. This didn't stop Hagrid from dragging little pine trees into the castle to be decorated and dotted around the halls.

The more Victorie looked, the more she began to notice other inklings that Christmas was approaching. Wreaths hung on doors and garland coiled around handrails. It was enough to make the smell of pine lavish the halls.

As she made her way down the castle, she admired the embellishments in silence while the ghost of Sir Nicholas blathered on beside her. She mostly made little hums in agreement, and every now and again she would answer his questions. On this night he had a lot of them.

"How come you haven't dressed up?" He asked.

She looked down at her outfit. The matter of what attire she would adore for the evening had been a significant weight on her mind throughout the day. In the end she had decided to play it safe and remain in her school uniform.

Despite her prior anguish regarding the subject however, she decided to uphold a level of discretion when addressing it. "Why would I dress up?" She replied innocently.

Sir Nicholas took a moment to reflect. "Young women like yourself like to put a little emphasis on their appearance when being courted." He replied.

She gave him an amused smile. "It's not a courtship. It's just a dramatisation of one. For practice."

"You picked a good boy to practice with." Nick remarked elegantly. "Many girls your age seem to find him quite dashing." He sent a knowing look her way.

Victorie looked down at her shoes. A picture of Teddy popped into her head, smiling in that usual playful way he did. She pushed back a smile that threatened to reveal how giddy the person that the smile belonged to had begun to make her feel.

They turned a corner and reached the final staircase. The same one she'd met Ciaran at for their date. She spotted Teddy waiting for her at the bottom of it.

On seeing the very boy Nick was discussing, Victorie reacted by putting her hand through the ghost in an attempt to push him away before Teddy could spot the two of them. She shuddered violently from the chill of putting her hand through a ghost and shushed Nick. She didn't want him to barge in on their date, even if it was only an enactment of one.

Nick looked offended and floated up above her. "What was that for?" He asked while peering down at the girl.

"Thanks for keeping me company, but it's time for you to go!" She whispered heatedly while eyeing Teddy, who was looking around him but thankfully not at them.

Sir Nicholas gave her a reproachful look and clicked his tongue a few times, but ultimately turned in his spot and sailed into the wall. He muttered as he disappeared, but Victorie ignored it and turned doe eyed to the boy waiting for her at the bottom of the staircase.

As she began making her way down, and Teddy heard the footsteps on the staircase, he finally looked up to see her. He watched her descent, surrounded on each side by a decorated Christmas tree at the bottom of each rail.

The first thing she noticed about him was his hair. It was in its usual light blue colour, but he'd done something to it. It was kind of slicked back and had this voluminous quality to it. Even though he was in his usual clothes, he looked more put together than usual. When he embraced her in a greeting, she felt how good he smelled too.

They parted the hug and Victoire decided that it was pointless to fight the gleeful expression she wore.

"Have you seen the Christmas trees?" She redundantly asked and walked up to one of them. The beautiful pine scent hit her and she lightly touched a red bauble hung from one of its twigs. She noticed Teddy reflected in the bauble. He was rubbing his hands against his black jeans nervously.

"Should we get going?" He asked.

"I'm just admiring the tree." Victorie defended with furrowed brows. Teddy's eyes darted down every corridor surrounding them. She wondered if he was ashamed to be seen with her. The thought made her stomach sink.

"It's just that I have this whole thing planned out but I just managed to shake off..."

Victorie let go of the bauble and interjected excitedly, "You have a thing planned?"

But Teddy hadn't heard her. "Oh shit, here he comes." He murmured.

She turned to look down the same corridor as he. Her eyes widened when she saw Peeves the Poltergeist barging along the ceiling toward them.

"Why now of all times?" Teddy grumbled. "Do you think he'll target us while you're here? He likes you."

Victorie looked at the rapidly approaching poltergeist. He had a spark in his eye tonight that made her apprehensive.

She turned to Teddy's deflated expression. "I'm sure it'll be fine." She assured him, despite better judgement.

When Peeves caught up with them he stopped in the air above with a devilish grin. Victorie met his gaze amicably, hoping for the best. But despite previous notions of their relationship, Peeves' thirst for blood didn't discriminate on that particular night.

He raised his hand slowly. She noticed he was holding something in it, raising it, aiming it. First at Teddy, who reacted by grabbing Victorie's hand, preparing them to run for their lives.

Peeves took note of the meeting of the hands and with a sadistic pleasure turned, ever so slightly, the mysterious object to be aimed at Victorie instead.

With the realisation that Peeves was not planning to spare either one of them, Teddy pulled Victorie along with his hand, and they both made a run for it.

But before they'd made it very far something collided with Victorie from above. She felt water drench her whole body. Spilling down onto her hair, and subsequently onto her clothes. But they had to keep running (one of them now with wet clothes) down the hall.

They leapt for the corridor opposite of where Peeves had come from with steps thudding heavily against the stone floors, creating a loud echo. They panted as they turned corner after corner until finding a set of armour on display to hide behind.

Teddy peered down the corridor, but Peeves was currently nowhere in sight.

"Come back here before he sees you!" Victorie urged him. She pulled him back with their still conjoined hands, and Teddy let himself be guided back into the dark nook they were hiding in.

He looked down at their hands with slightly raised brows, and for the first time Victorie fully registered what was happening. She instinctively recoiled her hand and brought it as a fist to her chest. Their eyes met.

Teddy chuckled and leaned against the wall, careful not to make contact with the armour next to him in the process. "Is that how you would have reacted if this was a real date?" He looked her straight in the eye, as if challenging her.

"I think getting chased by Peeves concludes the date." Victorie stated while using her hands to wrench water out of the tips of her hair.

She knew what she'd been hit by — a water balloon. Not just a regular water balloon, but also a Weasley's product. Designed to fit a disproportionate amount of water to its size.

Somehow being part of the lineage that created the product she'd been targeted with made it so much worse. Shouldn't she be exempt from being pranked with the usage of their products?

While watching the water drip down from her hair onto the floor she realised that Teddy hadn't said anything for a bit. She looked up to see that he was giving her somewhat of a loaded look.

Knowing he finally had her attention he began, "Okay. Rule one: the date is only over when you want it to be." There was a determination in his eyes that wasn't completely unlike the one Peeves had worn when aiming the water balloon at them. "Do you want the date to be over?" He asked.

"No." She mumbled and let go of her hair.

Teddy nodded carefully and pushed himself off the wall he was leaned against. She watched him retrieve his wand and approach her.

Before she knew it, a warmth spread over her and she felt her clothing shift and tingle. He was holding the bottom hem of her Gryffindor pullover in his hand while angling his wand at it. Her eyes darted around his face as he stared at his wand pensively.

"What spell is this?" She asked.

"Just something I picked up in a book." He mumbled without taking his eyes off his wand.

Victorie felt the corners of her lips twitch and she shook her head. Just as Teddy had almost finished drying her clothes, they heard a loud crash and looked at each other in horror.

"Do you think that was--" But Teddy never got a chance to finish his sentence.

Their hands intertwined once again and Victorie pulled him along with her. They left the security of the suits of armour and ran further down the corridor with Peeves' giggles not far behind.

The twists and turns they made through different passageways might have seemed arbitrary to Teddy, but Victorie knew exactly where she was going. She had a plan. There was an old abandoned classroom she knew of nearby. Because it wasn't in use anymore people often forgot that it existed.

And forget she did. For when Victorie had dragged Teddy through about ten different corridors, she realised that they should have arrived by now. She stopped at a crossroad, and for lack of better options opened a wooden door to her right.

Through the door there was a short passage and a spiral staircase. They entered through the door cautiously. When it closed behind them a chill wind came down the staircase toward them, sweeping their clothes back with its might.

Once the wind had settled they saw no other options but to continue straight. Up the staircase they travelled and the moonlight soon hit them, making the stone around them appear blue.

It might have been the dark that misled her, but she couldn't quite figure out which tower this was. It was not featured on any Hogwarts map she'd ever seen.

After passing the first spiral, the wall opened and let them out onto a half-moon shaped balcony where they stopped.

The pair took in their surroundings — the view over the greenhouses, the ivy climbing the tower and the balcony rail, a rose bush falling over it on one side.

With nothing over their heads but the vast and starry sky they looked at each other. Teddy relaxed slightly, putting his hands on the rail and leaning back against it. His eyes traced the greenhouses that lined the Hogwarts façade.

"So what was your original plan for this date?" Victorie asked, dragging him away from his thoughts.

A mysterious smile spread across his face and he scoffed. "You would not have liked it."

Victorie's eyes went wide. "What? How come?" She asked while rubbing her arms in an attempt to heat up. While Teddy had mostly dried her clothes, they were still a bit damp, and in the chilly outside air was a constant reminder of that.

Hands still attached to the rail, Teddy leaned forward and with a playful smile said simply, "It's not your thing."

His attention floated briefly to the rubbing of her arms, then he leaned back and looked back across the greenhouses, smile not yet faded. He breathed out contently, as though he had all the time in the world to stare at the views. As though they were not in fact on the run from a vicious poltergeist.

Victorie stared blankly at him, baffled by his self-assurance. "But what did you plan?" She asked with an irksome curiosity.

"Oh you know... candlelit dinner, a walk in the moonlight where I offer you my coat..." There was derision in his voice which she couldn't quite understand why he would apply.

"You're not wearing a coat." She noted.

"If I was, would you take it?" His eyes trailed back to her arms once more.

"Well apparently that's not my thing." She impatiently retorted.

"Exactly." Teddy agreed with a cocky grin. His eyebrows were slightly raised and there was a twinkle in his eye. There was subtext here, and she needed to uncover it.

"What is my thing then?" She challenged.

But before Teddy could answer, the door slammed open and the wind draft roared through again...

"FOUND YOU!" Peeves shouted.

Victorie made a run for it up the rest of the stairs with Teddy at her heel. As they made for their escape, she deliberated whether she'd seen a small smile play at Teddy's lips at the arrival of Peeves. But she had no time to ponder, as behind them they began to hear a sizzling sound of something supposedly sinister unleashed upon them.

Teddy threw himself at the door when they reached the top of the staircase, which flew open. He let Victorie out and slammed the door on what they discovered was a Whizz-bang Peeves had let loose on them. They heard a small explosion and the door rattled behind them, but they kept running.

She recognised their location as the fourth floor. "Here, Teddy!" She called and had him stop with her by a tapestry of a Chinese Fireball dragon on the wall.

"Get in!" She demanded and pushed it aside for him to enter. He looked at her apprehensively, but stepped inside. Victorie followed shortly after and adjusted the tapestry behind her.

They came out on the other side of the wall and into another corridor. "Hopefully this should lead Peeves astray." She concluded.

But Teddy wasn't reachable. He was looking up around them. Victorie took in the scene with him.

They were now in one of the corridors that had stone pillars built into the walls, arching toward the ceiling.

It seemed Hagrid had already made it to this particular corridor with his decorations. The large pillars had strings of emerald coloured silk twisted around them and hundreds of big red beads threaded onto the silk, which had been charmed to omit a warm glow.

Victorie followed Teddy through. They stopped in the middle of it and looked up at the twinkling lights, the way they twined around the arches, capsuling the two within them.

The moment passed as quickly as it had begun and when he faced her again, he was back in his educational persona. "Alright, to test you, here comes a hypothetical dating scenario..."

From his pocket he brought out a red rose with a very short stem. "What do you do if your date offers you this?" He fixed his gaze on her, scrutinised her without the slightest reluctance.

Victorie blinked a few times in an attempt to adjust to recent developments. This night seemed to want to keep turning as soon as she thought she would have a chance to settle down.

She focused on his question, debated it in her head while biting her lip. After hesitating for more than a few seconds, she ultimately reached for the sad little rose crown. But before she could grab it, the rose began to wilt before her. Her hand retreated and Teddy let the rose fall to the floor.

He asked, "Are you doing what you think I want you to do, or what you want to do?"

Victorie cocked her head and raised her eyebrows at him, visibly vexed by his little spoof. "You advised me to accept offerings, you said it makes a good impression!"

"Not if it's some sleazebag trying to charm you on a date!" Teddy exclaimed, as if speaking to the whole room, voice heavy with contempt.

Victorie's eyes turned into little slits as she regarded him. Doesn't that make you the sleazebag? She wanted to retort, but didn't.

Instead she changed the subject. "You never answered my question." She accused.

Curiosity soon took over his previously snide demeanour. "What question?"

"You were going to tell me what my thing is." She reminded him in the same tone of voice one would use while asking for the last cookie.

Teddy shook his head at the floor, then looked up at her. "Shouldn't you be able to answer that question on your own?" He proposed and passed her, continuing to the other side. He stopped in front of one of the pillars and reached his hand up to fiddle with one of the beads.

"Perhaps." Victorie turned his way. "But you seemed to have a pretty good idea..." She trailed off and looked at him pointedly.

"I believe I do." He let go of the bead and looked at her.

Victorie motioned eagerly for him to go on, demanding she get her explanation.

"I think you need some adventure." He reasoned in a soft voice and with a small shrug, not quite meeting her eye.

"How do you know?" She pried.

Teddy's gaze travelled from her eyes to the floor. "When the walls are thin... I hear things." He said simply.

"What things?" She pressed.

The question made him twist uncomfortably, but eventually he replied with a sneer, "Musings of the night."

Victorie rolled her eyes at him. "My musings?" She asked with raised brows. She was beginning to understand what he was referring to.

"...And Roxanne's." He added as objectively as he could while also stifling a smile. He cleared his throat and was about to speak when Victorie pointed in horror above him where Peeves was materialising out of the wall.

"Watch out!" She shrieked. But it was too late. Peeves was ready, with a dung bomb this time, raised like a scythe.

And before Teddy could react, before he could even attempt to move out of the way, the dung bomb made contact with his head. As soon as it did, the orb dissolved and a thick slimy black liquid began seeping down his person.

He didn't need to look up to see who the perpetrator was. Instead he looked straight ahead. He let his shoulders fall as the dung poured down him and took his one clean hand to remove some from his mouth.

"Fucking Peeves." He let out between tight lips.

The Poltergeist giggled. "Got you!" He exulted. Then proceeded to swivel out of the wall completely and continue down the corridor.

While he did so, he gestured with his hands and the strings of silk all flew out of their place around the pillars. The beads went out and the corridor went dark. Silk fluttered in the air and landed callously on the floor as Peeves disappeared down the hallway.

Victorie found herself gaping dumbfounded at the spirit, but when she turned back to Teddy, she saw one who was not the least bit invested in the poltergeist's antics.

He stopped trying to wipe his face off and let his hands fall to his sides, dung splashing from the commotion. "Can the date be over now?" The boy whined.

Victorie held his gaze for a second, but it was difficult to navigate his eyes with all the dung clamming to his face and she burst out laughing.

"But Peeves finally left us alone!" She argued at first between chuckles.

But seeing dark slime seep down Teddy's clothing, she reasoned that he needed her help in ways besides being the person who pointed and laughed. So she made her way over to his helplessness.

"Come on." She held her hand up behind him, careful not to actually make contact, and sheep herded him in the direction of the nearest bathroom...

Victorie pressed her lips together in an effort not to let her amusement show as she waved Teddy into the bathroom, watching out for teachers on either side of the corridor as she did so.

He stumbled toward one of the white marble sinks while dragging his t-shirt off as quickly as he could. The shirt dropped to the floor as he turned on the faucet and splashed the water in his face frantically.

And just like that Victorie found herself in the fantasy of many of her peers (disregarding the dung). In an attempt to distract herself from the scene she looked down at the mud trail leading from the corridor into the bathroom. She didn't want to guess what the teachers were going to do when they found it tomorrow.

She pondered what the time was while she took a tour of the bathroom. It was one of the roomier ones with the sinks displayed in a circle in the middle.

She looked out of one of the dusty diamond gridded windows at the moonlit grounds below them. The moon itself hung high up in the sky, and she guessed they were approaching curfew.

Ignoring the passage of time for now, she turned and let herself walk through the rays of moonlight and through the dust that floated in the air, which it lit up so unashamedly.

She walked up to Teddy, but instead of taking him in she turned to her own reflection in the mirror and pulled her hair back behind her ears, revealing her face fully to herself. Her cheeks were flushed from all the running around, so she ran some cold water over her hands and pressed them against her face. She closed her eyes while enjoying the chill.

When she opened her eyes again Teddy was giving her a bleary eyed smile, happy to not have his face covered in dung any longer. After turning around and leaning against the sink, she looked at him properly. But was immediately reminded that he wasn't wearing a shirt. Her eyes darted to her own hands.

This seemed to give Teddy an odd sense of satisfaction, and he smirked. "You better get used to it if you're going to be dating." He suggested, but picked his t-shirt off the floor and rinsed it off under the faucet, then proceeded to start drying it with the same spell as before.

I'm not going to be dating Teddy Lupin though. She reasoned in her head. Ignoring the irony that she currently was. "I wouldn't count on that happening." She muttered.

"You dating, or getting used to seeing me shirtless?" He pressed his lips together, a laugh threatening to push past them and his shoulders tensed as if expecting retaliation.

Correctly assumed, once his words had sunk in Victorie's hand acted on its own accord, hitting his bare arm with one potent blow.

"Me dating, you idiot!" She burst, albeit with a small blush.

"Give Delilah some time." He joked. But after he'd said it his eyebrows contorted somewhat. Looking down at his t-shirt he finished the job drying it, and swung it over his head.

About two seconds passed where Teddy's t-shirt was separating them as he attempted to find the correct hole with his head, and Victorie had nothing to look at but his chest.

Just as Teddy's head appeared and the piece of clothing fell like a curtain over the rest of his torso, her eyes had successfully trailed up to meet his. Only she found his eyes to be an even more daunting thing to behold given what had just happened. She turned back to her own reflection once more.

"You have to tell me how you got Peeves to be nice to you." He pleaded.

This forced Victorie to remind herself they'd been conversing. "He hit me with a water balloon." She remarked. Feeling like the injustice she'd suffered had been undermined.

"And he hit me with a dung bomb!" Teddy countered while tugging at the remaining dung in his no longer slicked back hair. He let the streaks of hair fall in front of his face along with the rest of his unruly hairdo while he awaited a statement from her.

Be thankful it wasn't stinksap, she thought to herself. But she knew that that answer wouldn't cut it, so she pursed her lips in thought.

"It's because whenever I'm witness to a prank of his I never tell any of the teachers on him." She admitted and turned on the faucet to run her hands under it.

"Why don't you?" He asked curiously, not realising that his probing questions were the very thing that would set alight the same mischievous dwell inside her.

The second thing he failed to see was Victorie's hands inverting under the faucet, to begin cupping the unwitting water instead.

"So that he'll repay the favour..." She mumbled distractedly.

Teddy paused for a second. "You mean to say..." He met Victorie's eyes, but before he had a chance to continue his line of thought, she heaved the water at him without a single hesitation in mind.

The water splashed onto his recently dried t-shirt and he stumbled backward. He shielded himself with his hands as a few drops flew toward his scrunched up face.

When he opened his eyes there was a loaded moment where Victorie was staring wide-eyed at the boy, his arms held out in shock and with a wet patch trailing down the centre of his shirt.

His blinking eyes turned cold in a matter of seconds. "I just dried this shirt." He said, pushing every syllable.

She stood like a statue. The only movement she made was to let out a shaky breath.

They weren't close. Or maybe they were, but they hadn't been close long enough for her to gauge his level of sportsmanship when it came to pranks. They were in the early days of closeness, and Victorie had to push back any growing fear that she'd just made a grave mistake.

"Yes. Well your shirt seems to have quite a fickle relationship with dryness at the moment." She remarked. Then pressed her lips together and like a deer in the headlights awaited a reaction.

But not long after she had managed to push the sentence out, a daunting reaction awakened in her — a laugh. Bubbling from within. She covered her mouth, but it didn't prove successful in masking what was going on, and it made Teddy behold her with utter disbelief.

If it was the original transgression, the sarcastic comment or the evident harm-joy she was exhibiting, Victorie wasn't sure, but something pushed Teddy over the edge. His eyes went from looking at her, to singling in on her.

This told her it was time to make a break for it. But it was okay. She was prepared for this. Before Teddy had even come to that particular conclusion, Victorie had her hands grasping at the sink behind her back, preparing for that moment.

Just before he leaped at her, she'd already pushed herself away from the sink. Once he inevitably missed her she was already charging out of the door, careful not to slip on the dirt trail on the floor.

But Teddy wasn't far behind, currently also in the process of trying to figure out what in Merlin's name he was planning to do when he caught her.

Instead of debating it, he decided to wing it and focused on catching up to the shrieking girl.

"They'll hear you!" He called after her.

About two steps further than him down the corridor she ran with her ginger bob bouncing against her shoulders. "Then stop chasing me!" She insisted with a panicked tenor. But her wigged out attitude only egged him on.

They turned a corner and Victorie wailed as they did so. The loss of momentum from the course change lost her a step, and Teddy managed to graze her arm with his hand as he reached out for her.

She shrieked once more and he found himself laughing gingerly despite their current strife. Her shriek turned into a giggle too, and somewhere along the way, the chase turned somewhat flirtatious in nature.

The two kept giggling as they flung across the halls in a zigzag, one of them always millimetres away from the other until Victorie reached the grand staircase.

The large portraits on the wall caught sight of the girl and gasped as she flew by them and continued down the circled structure with the blue haired boy close behind her.

She quite impressively made it to the second floor without being caught. It was only as she had just managed to drum down the last few steps of the staircase that plateaued onto the first floor, and she took those first steps on flat ground, that Teddy managed to clasp his hands to her hips and swing her around to face him.

She tensed and looked at him tentatively. This was the moment when she'd also find out what he was planning to do, and she was growing curious.

"Have you been petrified?" He teased, without letting go of her hips.

The comment made Victorie try to twist away, and his loss of focus let her out of his grasp. She hurried toward the wall and let the small of her back collide with it. While letting a breath of amusement out she let him catch up to her.

He caged her in with an outstretched arm on either side of her. They took a moment to breathe and watch each other. Both their smiles disappeared, as if forgetting to communicate.

They were stood at the top of the last staircase, the one that led to the ground floor and the main entrance. Above them were hundreds of portraits continuing up the dark castle and its walls.

She took in his look of concentration directed at her face. His soaked shirt, stuck to his body, pressed against her.

"If he kisses you goodnight, what do you do?" He asked.

Great... Another pop quiz, she thought. "Uhh..."

"You reprimand him for not asking you first." Teddy filled in. "That's an important one!" He squinted at her carefully, making sure the words sunk in.

When he saw only a vacant expression he wearily went on, "Perhaps we should do a test run?" then nodded in wholehearted agreement with himself.

Victorie did an eye-roll. But before she could say anything he began, "So if you're on a date, and he asks: Victorie Weasley, can I --"

"Yes." She responded smugly before he could finish, only to put even more fear in him.

Teddy chuckled to himself. "You know... I'd feel more relaxed about sending you off to one of these things with a disposition that wasn't quite so adamant."

"You got my consent, isn't that good enough?" Victorie challenged, feigning ignorance to his concerns. She debated in her head if she should suggest practising the actual kiss once too, but had to remind herself that she'd already used that trick.

"I wouldn't say no to an apology on top of it." He suggested casually.

Victorie's gaze flicked briefly to the south of Teddy's neck and she groaned. "We're back on the wet shirt thing?"

"The very one I had just finished drying off..." he held up the collar of his t-shirt to her, "...when you decided to pay homage to Peeves the Poltergeist!" His eyes looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets.

Victorie shrugged. "Thought you liked pranks... Your father was big on them." She tried.

"My father's friends were big on pranks." Teddy corrected. "Whereas he was big on being head prefect." The last two words were followed by a huff. He averted his gaze and paused, falling into his own thoughts.

She detected a hint of contempt in his tone, but decided not to push it. "Very well..."

While Teddy was distracted she slipped her hand down to the side of her leg and under her skirt where she had her wand attached with a strap. Acting as quick as she could while still maintaining a level of stealth, she flicked her wand with one quick motion, conjuring a flurry of disembodied wings by Teddy's ear which began to flutter rigorously at once.

Teddy flinched away. "Shit!" He cried out and waved them away with his hand. The flutter was gone a second later, but while he had lost his focus Victorie had gotten away.

She rushed down the stairs with Teddy not far behind. When she reached the ground floor she dove behind the statue of The Architect of Hogwarts.

Teddy stopped in front of it and beheld her tensely for a second from the opposite side. The fluttering wings had disjointed his hair further.

Both of them, unsure which path to take, hovered instead, leaning toward each side of the large statue intermittently.

Eventually Victorie made an impulsive decision and ran away from the statue. She escaped behind the house-point hourglasses, but soon found it to be a mistake as the tight space behind the hourglasses and the wall slowed her down significantly.

Teddy slid through between two of the hourglasses and caught up with her.

She stopped in the corner when she realised that it was too late and awaited her repercussions. Teddy sealed her off with his arms once again.

"Which brilliant hex of the ones you've taught me should I use on you, eh?" He teased. Yet despite his obviously empty threat, his voice still shook with agitation.

Victorie instinctively tried to reach for her wand again.

"Oh no you won't!" Teddy grabbed her wrists and pulled them up against the wall with a puff. "You..." He began.

She refused to look at him, so with a lack of better options he put his nose next to hers and steered her face forward with it. Their eyes met.

"The girl who seems to know every hex in the world..." He continued. The action had earned him a glare from the girl and she puffed some hair away from her face. "...Are the most infuriating..." He murmured.

His voice was calm, but there was a scorching flame within him. It radiated through his arms and into his grip on her wrists. He couldn't help himself any longer. His eyes drifted to her lips. He was close enough that she could feel his hot breath against them. Then he leaned in even closer, testing the waters. "Can I kiss you...?"

Victorie approved the waters by closing the distance between them, a breathy "Yes." uttered when she was already halfway there.

As soon as she kissed him, Teddy didn't waste a second. He let go of her wrists and grabbed the sides of her face, pushed himself closer to her. With heavy breath he hungrily kissed her back. They pushed and pulled, almost climbing each other. His scent enveloped her. His perfume made her stomach tug excitingly. His intoxicating breath rewarded her senses.

After a few minutes they came apart only slightly. While still panting rigorously their actions dawned on them like a brick to the skull. Both of their eyes were wider than usual as they looked at each other.

He let go of her face and there was an awkward silence where the both of them debated ways to smooth things over in their heads.

Teddy was the first to give an attempt. "Okay so..." He began, voice breathy and expression slightly dazed still. "Now that I've demonstrated how the date could end..." He trailed off, put a hand on his hip and then dropped it immediately, well aware of how feeble his façade was.

"And remember that this is just one of many potential outcomes, many of which don't involve any physical contact at all." He shrugged, speaking as though it was a matter of fact and with a scrunched up nose.

Victorie nodded as though she was actually taking any of his nonsense on board.

Teddy turned solemn. "How long past curfew do you think it is?" he asked.

Victorie laughed at the question, feeling like they were so far past curfew that attempting to care served no purpose.

Teddy chuckled along with her. The laugh turned into a lingering smile at one another, and without voicing it they began the walk back to their common room side by side.

She couldn't help but feel like the date had been successful despite circumstances having been less than preferable. No matter what trials they'd faced they had both run with it.

Perhaps that was what had been missing from her first date — a mutual determination for it to work.

Once again Teddy had managed (while perhaps not in the most conventional of ways but still successfully) to show her the right way. Or at the very least proved to her that it was possible to have a good date.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlBafMRqsIQ

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thegempage · 5 months

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please elaborate on your Rose and Dave school thoughts :0c

omg yes absolutely (and yes it's 1:45 a.m. for me, i got home like two hours ago and got distracted lmao)

up front, a good chunk of these thoughts are 100% from a conversation with some folks in a particular discord (shout out 2 content house), so i don't take full credit for these or anything but i Am thinking about them

we'll start with dave, and my dave hc is there is no fucking way this boy has ever seen a school. i don't think the government even knows dave exists, i think bro has committed so much tax fraud (dave isn't the only thing he's not reporting but he Is one of the big ones bcus that's a whole child) and that being home schooled was one of those things that bro told him was to make him "better" and then bro proceeded to quarter-ass his way through lmao

dave has that line of thinking that i apply to a couple of things in his life where like, he probably saw schools and fridges and households on tv and through talking to his friends, but part of him either didn't believe they were real or bought into bro's excuses that this was just the Strider Way™. he knows how to read... for the most part, and he knows enough math to use his modus, but he's not Super great on pretty much any other topic. he's scraped together weird pieces of knowledge from the internet, though! (this is not much better)

i think rose's is... complicated. i think mom lalonde would have wanted to put rose through some kind of school, but i think she just... never could get around to it. and so she also tried to go the homeschooling route, except instead of quarter-assing it she tried her best and just did Not succeed, so rose ends up with a... fractured and heavily science biased home school curriculum. mom lalonde Knows science! she's really good at science! so rose kind of learns to read and do math beyond her age by the time she's like, 10 or 11, because that's the two biggest skills you need to get engaged with the kid of science mom lalonde is teaching.

eventually, when she's like 12, rose figures out that she is supposed to be in school, and decides to one-up her mom by putting herself in school! bcus that'll show her mom for being such a smart-ass, assuming she could educate a child!! and she like, manages to worm her way into getting enrolled in a middle school, but getting transport to school proves to be a little difficult and requires more taxi calls than she ever thought she'd need to make. she manages to go for a few months, but it ends up not sticking, because mom lalonde's alcoholism slowly starts to decline as sburb's release approaches and getting out of the house gets harder.

(plus, rose was 100% getting bullied, but she didn't quite realize and just thought that the folks in the "real world" were quite strange)

#little rock.txt #this was really fun thank you fjdksalfdsf #homestuck #ciaran attempts socializing #anons are cool

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graceful-renegade · 5 years

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So you're gonna come back here soon?

((that’s the plan! i’ve got some shit going on right now so it might not be for another week or two, but i’m around and watching threads and stuff more carefully. might go dig up some old memes i like to get threads started))

#;behind you #anons are chill #ciaran attempts socializing

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rainbow-of-gems · 6 years

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"Okay Poppy, so now that we've all settled on how to terraform and colonize the new planet, we need to figure out what to do with the organics. I want to keep them because they're adorable." (fireballs-and-hairballs- Diamond Tiger)

{ @fireballs-and-hairballs }

((whooooppss i forgot this was here i’m sorry ;~;))

“I was also in favor of keeping them alive,” Poppy said, flipping through a series of messages on her holopad. “But... I’m not sure where we can keep them until we set up habitable zones.”

#poppy #fireballs and hairballs #becoming a diamond #anons are chill #ciaran attempts socializing

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architectnews · 3 years

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HLM Architects: Architecture Office

HLM Architects, Buildings Image, UK Architecture Studio, Projects, Design Office Photos

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Contemporary British Architecture Practice: UK Design Office News

HLM Architects News

HLM News, chronological:

26 November 2020 HLM Architects Head of Design Philip Watson elected as RIBA Fellow

Philip Watson, Director and Head of Design at HLM Architects, has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

RIBA Fellow Membership is an honorary designation that recognises the achievements of Chartered Members who have made a significant contribution to architecture, the profession, and the community.

Philip Watson HLM Architects: photo courtesy of architects

Philip, who is responsible for driving design culture across HLM Architects’ five studios, leads the firm’s research and development programme which currently covers design for wellbeing, client engagement, modern methods of construction, special educational needs, and sustainability.

The RIBA panel noted that Philip led the team that designed two SEN schools in Barnsley as part of the Building Schools for the Future initiative. Notably, Springwell Academy for social, emotional and mental health issues (SEMH) was the subject of study visits by the British Council for School Environments (BCSE) and was highly commended in their 2013 Design Awards.

Philip later co-authored a paper exploring how the kinaesthetic educational approach promoted at Springwell and its physical manifestation helped deliver a step-change in student outcomes. Leeds City Council subsequently adopted the Springwell model of delivery for all its SEMH provisions and have recently completed a further three schools.

After initiating a study with Imperial College London to measure the impact of high quality, sustainable environments on people and ‘their performance’, Philip was granted funding to explore the creation of a new digital tool for engagement with building users. The resulting piece of work, ‘WellBriefing’, won the AJ100 Best Use of Technology Award in 2017 with the judges recognising that the tool attempted to ‘make the invisible, visible’.

In 2018, he was awarded ‘Visiting Professor’ at University of Leeds in recognition of his impact on students in bringing industry insight into an academic setting.

Earlier this year, Philip led the team that created the digital ‘Thoughtful Design Toolkit’ that seeks to define and deliver building occupant needs to support health and wellbeing. This was shortlisted in the BCIA Digital Initiative of the Year 2020 and in the Building Awards Digital Innovation category, also in 2020.

The panel commended Philip on his contributions to architecture, in particular the SEN school projects and their subsequent impact. They also noted his influence on the industry regarding thought leadership, practice and academia.

Commenting on the award, Philip said: “Being elected as a RIBA Fellow is not just a great honour; it’s a testament to my lifelong belief that architecture and design has the power to improve people’s lives. I look forward to continuing to champion positive change across our industry and society in my new ambassadorial role. And it’s not bad for a lad from a Council estate in Birmingham.”

24 Nov 2020 Design principles at SEN schools under the microscope in webinar

Special event to also explore challenges generated by pandemic

Tuesday, November 24 : HLM Architects and The Royal Society of Ulster Architects (RSUA) will host a webinar this week exploring the principles of designing spaces for Special Education Needs (SEN) school projects.

Organised by HLM Architects in partnership with the RSUA, the ‘SEN Schools Today’ webinar will go live on Friday 27 November and will be chaired by RSUA Chairperson, Donal MacRandal. Key presenters will include Catherine Ward and Simon Bell (HLM Architects), Holly Passmore (Psychology + Spaces), and Conor Houston (Fleming Fulton Special School).

With this year demonstrating how critical the balance is between safe, nurturing yet stimulating environments, particularly in SEN Schools, the webinar will be a timely reminder of how thoughtful design has never been more important.

Recent statistics revealed that there are more than 67,000 children with special educational needs in Northern Ireland’s schools, with the Education Authority’s support for children with SEN across mainstream and special schools reaching £311m in 2019-20.* Figures last year also highlighted that there were 140 special schools catering for particular types of disability and special needs in the Republic of Ireland.

The webinar will also include a panel discussion after the presentations to generate further discussion on this important topic. Architects Arthur Sloan (Isherwood and Ellis) and Ciaran Mackel (ARdMackel Architects) will also take part in this expert Q&A panel discussion to dive deeper into the challenges that the current pandemic has generated in the context of designing learner spaces.

Commenting on the event, RSUA Chairperson Donal MacRandal said, “The pandemic has really brought into sharp focus the importance of providing education for our children, particularly in SEN schools, where stimulation and safety are crucial considerations. Investment in the quality of our educational environments is one which we know society recoups many times over.

“We are proud to partner with the organisers of this webinar which brings in a wide range of sector-specific expertise from both architects and clients who have delivered buildings which help ensure that every child can reach their full potential. I am confident the debate will help deliver even better spaces for our young people”.

Speaker Catherine Ward, an Associate Architect at HLM and the company’s SEN Lead has over twenty years’ experience in architectural practice, working predominantly on education projects throughout the UK including HE, FE, Schools and SEN. In her role at HLM, Catherine manages the development of HLM’s special education portfolio and profile nationally. Simon Bell, Director and Sustainability Sponsor at HLM, will also be joining Catherine to discuss how to approach SEN projects locally and the sustainability factors.

Commenting on the upcoming webinar, Catherine Ward (HLM Architects) said: “We are living in a time of flux, and more than ever we need to make the most out of essential spaces for learners. The focus now needs to be on what can be done with spaces to provide safety, while maintaining supportive and effective learning for young people. I look forward to debating how we can use these ideas to develop and further enhance future learning environments.”

Conor Houston is the Chairman of the Board of Governors of Fleming Fulton Special School and founder of civic initiative, Connected Citizens and works to promote active citizenship and is passionate about creating the space for citizens to co-design solutions for our society.

Holly Passmore, Researcher at Psychology + Spaces is particularly interested in exploring how Covid-19 will impact children and young people’s current and future health, well-being and opportunities.

The webinar is part of a series of online events being hosted by RSUA this autumn.

To register for the webinar please visit https://www.rsua.org.uk/events/continuous-professional-development/design-principles-at-sen-schools-under-the-microscope/

20 Nov 2020 Radisson Blu Hotel Sheffield, Heart of the City, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, UK image courtesy of architects Radisson Blu Hotel Sheffield Heart of the City Proposals to introduce sophisticated hotelier Radisson Blu to a key Sheffield city centre location have been approved by the Local Planning Authority. The project, designed by HLM Architects working with the Council’s Strategic Development Partner, Queensberry, is the latest to be approved as part of Sheffield’s transformational Heart of the City scheme.

24 Aug 2020 HLM named one of six in competition to find homes of the future

image courtesy of architects

24th of August 2020 – HLM Architects is delighted to announce that out of more than 200 entries it has been shortlisted to one of six for the second phase of the hotly contested RIBA Home of 2030 Design competition.

Announced yesterday (23 August 2020) by Housing Minister Christopher Pincher, the Home of 2030 competition has encouraged the best and brightest talents of the housing industry to design environmentally friendly homes that support people in leading independent, fulfilling lives as our society ages.

image courtesy of architects

The competition aims to attract the best and brightest talents of the housing industry to design the homes of the future. In the first phase of the competition, small businesses, designers and manufacturers were invited to come forward with ideas for new low carbon, age-friendly homes, meeting the highest standards of design whilst tackling the key challenges facing our society.

In developing its submission for the first phase of this competition, HLM Architects created the concept of a universal manufacturing platform that enables flexible, affordable, and sustainable ‘forever’ homes that are able to perpetuate a circular economy. These homes will be able to grow and shrink with their owners needs to create stable communities and a strong sense of place.

This concept was developed with support from the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) with the ambition to solve the issue of capacity and compatibility of offsite housing construction through development of a design standard that enables any offsite manufactured system to deliver the same high quality, sustainable design, with parts that are interchangeable.

In the second phase of the competition HLM Architects and AMRC will be joined by Mid Group, a contractor that will help develop a platform that provides interchangeability with a varied ecosystem of components and suppliers. Completing the team are Hydrock, who will bring engineering excellence and Greenbuild, HLM Architect’s sustainability consultant partners.

HLM Director and Head of Design, Philip Watson said, ‘Our ambition is to use the power of design and technology to create homes that are flexible, sustainable and affordable. These will be homes that adapt to people’s needs over their lifetime so that they can put down strong roots, thus nurturing supportive communities. At a macro level we are also seeking to create a design platform that enables the entire construction and manufacturing industry to unite to solve our housing crisis.’

The team will now go on to develop their design concepts and present to the Evaluation Panel. Winners will then be introduced to Homes England development framework partners to explore the possibility of developing bids for a series of homes on Homes England land.

Background Information: The Home of 2030 competition is a cross Government initiative that brings together MHCLG (the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government, responsible for housing supply, standards, planning and building safety), BEIS (Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, responsible for innovation and business strategy) and DHSC (Department of Health and Social Care, responsible for health, wellbeing and issues arising from an ageing population).

Each of the departments is seeking a benefit: increased housing supply through greater diversity in the market, improved quality and standards in homes through innovation and technology, and social, environmental and economic benefits arising from better health outcomes. Homes England, the Government’s housing accelerator, are engaged in the initiative and are now leading a subsequent development phase subject to successful development bids by Homes England Delivery Panel and Winner consortia.

26 Sep 2019 HLM Architects continued growth extends into the Dublin market

September 26, 2019: Leading design and architecture company, HLM Architects, has strengthened its offering to its growing portfolio of clients as it extends into the Dublin market.

The Dublin base, located at Fitzwilliam Place, facilitates HLM Architects continued growth and success. The workspace located in central Dublin will enable HLM to access wider opportunities and develop activities across Ireland.

With studios across the UK and internationally, the award-winning firm responds creatively to the unique circumstances of each project. HLM’s studio in Belfast has undertaken several projects across Ireland for over 20 years.

Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) at Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown: photo courtesy of architects

The firm recently marked a milestone with the completion of the urgent care centre for Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) at Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown, with work progressing on Children’s Health Ireland at Tallaght University Hospital.

HLM delivers thoughtful design, with spaces and places that improve lives central to its offering. The 180 strong team has completed projects across a range of sectors including education, healthcare, residential, hospitality and leisure, defence, workplace and culture.

HLM Architects Director Nick Beecroft: photo courtesy of architects

Commenting on the Dublin base, HLM Director Nick Beecroft, said “Through this expansion we have reinforced our commitment and offering to our ambitious clients in the Ireland market. The new HLM base ensures we are better suited than ever to create memorable places across Ireland, always understanding the needs of the people who use them.

“We are continually developing our already strong network in Dublin and are really excited to explore the opportunities across all our sectors.”

The firm has won multiple national and international awards for its expertise across many disciplines, such as Architecture, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, Environmental and Masterplanning.

10 Sep 2019 Swanley Square Shopping Centre in Kent, Ashford, Kent, South East England, UK

A major regeneration scheme designed by HLM Architects, aimed at revitalising Swanley Square Shopping Centre in Kent, with new retail, community and residential accommodation including Private Rented Sector homes, has been given the green light.

The U+I project, which was approved following a Public Inquiry held locally, comprises 340 residential homes, 46,780 sq ft of mixed-use development including retail, restaurants, shops, new community multi-purpose space, and a new multi-storey car park.

Kent Architecture News

6 Sep 2019 Whitehorn Hall student accommodation at The University of St Andrews, Scotland Design: HLM Architects photo © David Barbour Photography Whitehorn Hall student accommodation Beating off stiff competition in the Architecture: Residential category, HLM was rewarded for the thoughtful and innovative design of Whitehorn Hall student accommodation at The University of St Andrews.

11 May 2019 Sudbourne Primary School Building, Hayter Road, Brixton, London SW2 5AP, England, UK image courtesy of HLM Architects Sudbourne Primary School Building This new education building provides an additional 360 pupil places with the creation of a split site school, expanding from 1.5FE to 3FE.

11 Dec 2018 HLM and Kier VolkerFitzpatrick Appointed to £160 million project at RAF Lakenheath

Design and architecture company HLM has been awarded the £160million project at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, England, by the Defence Infrastructure Organisation.

The project includes building a F-35 flight simulator, maintenance unit, new hangars and storage facilities. HLM will be working alongside engineering and construction firm, Kier VolkerFitzpatrick, to design and deliver the new facilities. All HLM studios, including Glasgow, will be working closely together to ensure the successful delivery of the project.

photo courtesy of architects

The Suffolk airbase will be the first permanent international site for US Air Force F-35s in Europe. The flight simulator will have the capacity to link to other simulators used by pilots across the UK and beyond, allowing expertise to be shared and pilots from the UK and US to work together.

Mick Scherdel, Director at HLM, said: “At HLM, we are privileged to be awarded the RAF Lakenheath project. Since the Defence Academy 2000, HLM has been improving and enhancing training, living and learning across the UK Defence Estates. RAF Lakenheath will benefit further from our recent experience on Project Wellesley, DCLPA Worthy Down and Catterick Garrison.”

Managing Director of Aviation and Defence at Kier, James Hindes, said: “It builds on our extensive expertise in the defence sector, delivering first-class projects within secure environments including facilities at MoD Lyneham and RAF Shawbury.”

For more information on HLM visit: www.hlmarchitects.coms or follow @HLMArchitects on Twitter.

6 Jul 2018 Patrick Arends Appointed as Head of Hospitality, Leisure & Culture at HLM

Patrick Arends has joined HLM, a leading design and architecture practice with studios in the UK and internationally.

Patrick Arends HLM Architects: image courtesy of architects office

Patrick has been appointed as the Head of Hospitality, Leisure and Culture at the practice, bringing over 17 years of experience of delivering high quality and high value projects internationally. As sector lead, he will add to HLM’s acclaimed experience in the hospitality, leisure and culture sectors.

As winner of the RIBA West Midlands Emerging Architect of the Year award in 2014, Patrick possesses a strong skillset of innovation, quality and detail in his design work. He will bring this insight to the practice and to each design project.

Patrick has delivered numerous national and international projects across the UK and the Netherlands. These include libraries, sports halls, hotels, art centres, theatres and Grade II listed cultural heritage buildings.

Karen Mosley, HLM Managing Director, said, “We are pleased to welcome Patrick to the growing HLM team and to extend our scope further within the hospitality, leisure and culture sectors. We are looking forward to sharing his valuable knowledge and experience with both our clients and our 150-strong team across all HLM studios.”

Patrick commented, “I am delighted to join the highly-skilled, professional design and architecture team at HLM. As Head of Hospitality, Leisure and Culture, I am thrilled to begin delivering strong creative and visionary projects with a very talented team of colleagues.”

Patrick is currently leading the Staybridge Suites Hotel project in Cardiff Bay. As the first long stay hotel in Wales, this will include 75 suites with fully equipped kitchens. Also in Cardiff Bay, Patrick and the HLM team have been appointed to create a 1000m2 extension to science centre Techniquest’s current exhibition facility. The immersive space will be dedicated to engaging audiences with innovative, contemporary science and will highlight new research and developments across Science Technology Engineering & Mathematics sectors.

HLM has ambitious growth plans for its service areas of architecture, interiors, landscape architecture and urban design. It has also recently appointed 6 new directors to its Board, including internal promotions and a new appointment. Creating the next generation of leadership within the practice, the new directors will make further positive contributions to the direction and performance at HLM.

As an international practice, it serves Ireland and the UK with studios in Belfast, London, Sheffield, Glasgow, Cardiff and Manchester. It also has studios in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

11 October 2017 HLM Glasgow Wins Prestigious People Development Award

10 Oct – HLM, a leading design and architecture company, has won the coveted People Development category at the prestigious Glasgow Business Awards 2017.

HLM‘s people development efforts are widely known, from the HLM Academy to the company’s strong values, lifestyle packages and family friendly initiatives. The HLM Academy is a professional excellence programme which helps ensure all employees have the opportunity and resources to reach their full potential.

The unique programme consists of a thorough induction, as well as modules, webinars, coaching, graduate programmes and on-the-job structured training. The academy ensures training and development is a company priority and enables its team to work to the best of their ability.

HLM recognises that people development is vital for ensuring employees are engaged, with Deloitte’s 2017 Global Human Capital Trends revealing that 84% of employees in the UK rate it important or very important . The leading design and architecture company also recently recruited and trained over five apprentices this summer in its Glasgow studio. The scheme is one of the few in the Glasgow area which gives young people the experience they need to stand out in Scotland’s increasingly competitive jobs market.

Lorraine Robertson, who heads up HLM Scotland said: “We are very proud to be recognised for our people development efforts, especially in such a competitive category at the Glasgow Business Awards. People development is at the heart of everything we do and we strive to give our team the best opportunity to continue to grow and develop their careers. “I would like to thank the whole Glasgow team as this wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work they put in everyday and the positive contribution they make to our learning and development culture.” The awards, organised by Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, recognise forward-thinking and innovative Glasgow-based organisations.

The People Development category aims to award businesses which successfully promote and implement a learning environment, which in turn ensures organisational and individual success. Successful nominees in this category had to demonstrate a strategic commitment to development throughout the organisation, recognising the importance of supporting the workforce in their careers and continually adding to their skills.

The HLM Glasgow team were presented with the award at the glittering Glasgow Business Awards 2017 ceremony on Thursday 5 October 2017 in the Hilton Glasgow. For more information on HLM or if you would like to get involved in the internship programme visit: www.hlmarchitects.coms or follow @HLMArchitects on Twitter.

HLM is an international practice, it serves the Ireland and the UK with offices Belfast, London, Sheffield, Glasgow, Cardiff, Manchester and Plymouth. It also has offices in Johannesburg and Abu Dhabi.

7 Apr 2017 Plymouth Science Park by HLM

The stunning new £7 million building at Plymouth Science Park has now been shortlisted for a record four prestigious building and planning awards for its forward-thinking space-age design.

Standing at the entrance way to the park at Derriford, behind the city’s hospital, the new building is the most technologically advanced in the south west.

images from HLM Architects

1 Research Way has already been nominated for awards from the city’s Evening Herald newspaper and also the RICS (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors) and to that clutch it has now added two more nominations from the prestigious Mitchelmores Awards.

They are finalists in the Commercial Project of the Year and Building of the Year categories.

Christian Jenkins, Director of Operations at Plymouth Science Park, said: “Plymouth Science Park is delighted to be shortlisted in two categories for these prestigious awards.

“We were absolutely clear from the outset on what the look and feel of 1 Research Way should be and we are more than satisfied with the results. As well as its visually striking looks and architectural features, its internal functionality and flexible working space was very attractive to businesses with the result that the building was 60% occupied within a week of opening.

“The units can accommodate 10-60 staff making it suitable to a wide range of businesses. Supported by the best ICT infrastructure in the region and a full range of on-site services, 1 Research Way has become the go-to place for aspiring tech and science businesses.”

Marketing technology company Intelligent Optimisations (IO) has already taken the top floor of the building and educational website business The Key has moved about 40 staff into a large open plan office taking up about 60 per cent of level one.

images from HLM Architects

One Research Way has 20,000sq ft of office space, and mixes open-plan offices with break-out areas to encourage more collaboration.

The building is fully serviced, with all bills, bar electricity and additional IT, included in the rent. It also has kitchens, toilets and showers and the front of the building features a huge glazed area, known as “the knuckle”, illuminated at night.

It was built by BAM Construction, from a design by Royal William Yard-based architects HLM. It is clad with zinc-coloured aluminium, features exterior wall glass “pop outs”, which have space for people to sit in, and inside there is a huge open atrium, capable of hosting seminars and conferences.

Winners of the Herald Awards will be announced at a glittering ceremony in the city on 20th April, the RICS Awards winners will be revealed at a ceremony in Bristol on 11th May and the Mitchelmores Awards will take place on 15th June in Exeter.

12 Sep 2016

HLM Architects BIM News

HLM associate joins panel of industry experts at BIM conference in Edinburgh

With the Scottish Government aiming to adopt a BIM Level 2 approach across public sector projects by April 2017, Paul Tunstall, associate at architectural practice HLM joins a panel of industry experts, architects and technology leaders at the BIM in Scotland conference in Edinburgh this month to illustrate how BIM theory can give competitive advantages to companies in Scotland.

Tunstall will discuss HLM’s broad experience of BIM and expertise in using it through the project lifecycle, starting from the initial decision on which platform to use through to challenges encountered in a large multinational implementation. As part of his presentation, Tunstall will also explore how he envisages the HLM practice and the wider architectural industry developing.

Providing architectural, landscape architecture, interior design and environmental design services, in recent years HLM has expanded operations to six offices in the UK and two others internationally.

HLM has a one-team culture which creates a platform for all its UK and overseas offices to share both workload and resources. This poses a challenging environment for its BIM activities to ensure consistency in quality and timely delivery.

“HLM was one of the first architectural practices in the UK to achieve certification through the Building Research Establishment’s (BRE) Business Certification Scheme, firmly establishing it as a leading BIM Level 2 compliant organisation,” said Tunstall.

“My presentation will explore the concept of ‘Wide Area BIM’ and demonstrate some of the systems and tools that help make it possible.”

Tunstall has been an employee of HLM for over 18 years, implementing CAD and BIM systems across the group and providing training and support for its team of over 200 employees. He leads a team of Information Managers having the technical skills to support HLM’s many software tools and systems, under a group-wide Technology Team.

The UK Government implemented a mandate for BIM on all of its public-sector projects in April of this year and Tunstall was instrumental in ensuring that HLM had the preparation and knowledge to undertake any project required to deliver BIM Level 2, well in advance of the deadline by guiding the practice through the BRE Business Certification Scheme.

As a member of the BuildingSMART organisation in the UK, he represents HLM in workshops and discussions to maintain HLM’s alignment with BIM and associated initiatives, both in the UK and internationally.

The BIM in Scotland conference is free to attend and takes place in Edinburgh on Wednesday 21 September 2016.

15 Apr 2016 MOD Training Base in Winchester image from architect The £250m Defence College of Logistics, Policing and Administration (DCPLA) at Worthy Down in Hampshire has received planning approval through delegated powers from Winchester City Council, marking the second and final application for the scheme known as Project Wellesley.

25 Sep 2013

HLM Group Completes Sidell Gibson Architects Deal With the Support of Irwin Mitchell

New Deal Follows Strategic Investment In Llewelyn Davies Brand

Law firm Irwin Mitchell has advised HLM on its acquisition of architecture, urban design and interiors practice, Sidell Gibson.

HLM is architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, masterplanning, interior design and sustainability practice. In addition to its office in Sheffield, it has a presence in London, Glasgow, Belfast, Cardiff and Plymouth in the UK, as well as Johannesburg and Abu Dhabi.

The newly acquired practice will trade as Sidell Gibson and be run independently of HLM, operating from new offices in central London. The team will continue to build on its expertise in high quality commercial buildings, housing and restoration projects.

HLM Architects – Key Projects

Major buildings / developments by HLM, alphabetical:

Altnagelvin Area Hospital – New South Wing, Derry, Northern Ireland 2004-08 images from HLM Architects Altnagelvin Area Hospital Derry The £45m New South Wing is the third phase of works, but the first phase of new build clinical accommodation in this significant hospital redevelopment. It will provide replacement facilities for key services, including maternity and neo-natal, oncology, cardiac care, adult acute inpatients and rehabilitation, as well as a new patient records department and staff changing facilities.

Arundel Great Court – offices, London –

The Business Academy, Yarnton Way, Bexley, southeast London –

Clackmannanshire Community Healthcare Facility, Scotland 2005-09 images from HLM Architects A new integrated Health Centre for the people of Clackmannanshire. The facility comprises of a Health Centre with pharmacy and community patient services, Inpatient and Day Hospital Building and Community Mental Health Resource Centre with consulting rooms and day hospital accommodation on the ground floor with non-patient staff office above. The purpose was to establish an integrated health facility that meets the needs of the residents of Alloa and the wider population of Clackmannanshire.

Cornwall Ecotown, St. Austell, Cornwall, south west England 2010- images from HLM Architects As one of the first four Eco-Towns to be selected out of 57 initial submissions by the government in 2009, we entered this competition in St. Austell, Cornwall following our success with Future Works Eco Home, winning entry in Wales and our winning scheme for Scotland Housing EXPO. Following our successful Stage 1 submission, we were shortlisted as 1 of 25 to submit our Stage 2 entry. The Stage 2 decision will be made in June 2010 where we hope to be selected as 1 of a number of architects to develop the initial pilot scheme sites in St. Austell with an opportunity to apply our scheme designs to the wider context.

Cowbridge Comprehensive School, Wales 2010 image from HLM Architects Cowbridge Comprehensive This building by HLM lies in a very rural location just outside the market town of Cowbridge. It is the first of three secondary schools to be developed by the Vale of Glamorgan Council with funding from the Welsh Assembly Government. The school will accommodate 1550 pupils including a large 6th form intake of 350 students. Construction began in January 2009 and was compled in time for the new academic year of 2010.

Ellesmere Nursing Home, Chelsea, London, UK 2007 image from HLM Architects Ellesmere Nursing Home This building by HLM is located on Fulham Road, Chelsea, London. It is adjacent the Chelsea Westminster Hospital, and replaces the derelict home that existing on the site up to 2003. The nursing home and day centre is a 3 level courtyard arrangement, and have a combined (approximate) gross internal area of 4950m2 – the rest of the development on the upper levels comprises private apartments for sale.

The New Victoria Hospital, Glasgow, Scotland 2004-09 images from HLM Architects The new Victoria Hospital treats around 400,000 patients annually by offering integrated diagnostic and treatment services including outpatient clinics, day surgery, rehabilitation, and specialised emergency services, thereby introducing an ambulatory model of one stop care in South Glasgow based on the following key principles:-

• Increased accessibility to ambulatory care for the local community • Prevention of emergency work adversely affecting the efficient delivery of elective care • Improved quality of patient focused care • Streamlining of the patient journey to provide a one stop service • Achieving compatibility between healthcare delivery and technology in a fit for purpose building

Sale Town Centre Redevelopment, Trafford, Greater Manchester (Cheshire), England –

Mid Argyll Community Hospital and Integrated Care Centre, Scotland – image from HLM Scottish Hospital building

New Victoria Hospital, Glasgow, Scotland – Scottish Building

Passive House – Scotland’s Housing Expo, near Inverness, Scotland, UK 2010 photo from HLM Scotland’s Housing Expo

Queen’s Centre for Oncology & Haematology, Hull, Humberside, eastern England 2003-08 images from HLM Architects New Regional Cancer Centre for Humberside and North Lincolnshire providing cancer and haematology services on one site at Castle Hill Hospital. The scheme encompasses 6 linear accelerators, together with Outpatients and a Day Hospital, 100 beds in 4 wards and Pathology, Pharmacy and Medical Physics facilities. The building is located in a rural setting on the edge of the main hospital site, set into the Northerly hillside maximising views out to the countryside from all patient areas.

Woodview Learning Community, Whitleigh, Plymouth, Cornwall, south west England 2006-08 images from HLM Architects The objective was to consolidate and improve the current provision of education and community facilities and extend the range by the introduction of the Woodlands Physical Disabilities School and Hostel combined with the relocation of the local Youth Centre and Community Education. The new facility combines teaching and support facilities into one ‘campus’, creating a fully inclusive, functionally operational, secure and protected learning environment. The pioneering new campus provides for the educational needs of children of all ages through the following facilities.

Woolwich Civic Offices, London 2007- £45m For London Borough of Greenwich Civic Headquarters Woolwich Civic Offices

More design projects by HLM Architects online soon

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The New Victoria Hospital, Glasgow: image from HLM Architects

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