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forasecondtherewedwon · 3 years

Text

If You’re a Robot and You Know It, Clap Your Hands

Fandom: Loki Characters: Sylvie, Ravonna, B-15, Mobius Rating: G Word Count: 1774

Summary: Sylvie faces off against Ravonna while Mobius hangs out in post-prune purgatory with... himself?

“You’re more stoic than he was,” Ravonna noted, nodding at the empty air between them where Loki had lately stood.

Why the taunting, Sylvie wondered. Who was there left for Ravonna to impress? Her subordinates were all dead or unconscious, Loki was gone, the animatronic lizards who were not in fact ruling rigidly over time sat slumped in their seats. There was only Sylvie. Even when she had been a child, thin arm in the grip of a stone-faced woman in black armour like the shell of a beetle, Sylvie had not felt so alone with Ravonna as she did in this moment. It made her very angry. She would much rather have been alone with herself.

“How do you know how stoic Loki looked?” Sylvie spat. “You pruned him in the back!”

Ravonna tilted her head, glowing baton still raised.

“I don’t mean in the face of his own erasure from existence, I mean watching someone he cared about disappear.”

Sylvie’s expression had been hard—more than once, to get by, she’d imagined herself protected by that beetle armour from her childhood, closing her vulnerable parts away behind a scowl—but it slackened slightly in confusion.

“Agent Mobius,” Ravonna explained impatiently. There was a twitch of her eyelid that Sylvie caught and homed in on.

“They were friends,” she said slowly. Then, she stared hard into the Judge’s eyes. “You were friends. You and Mobius. You killed him?”

“I didn’t! I—”

“You had someone else do it?” Sylvie narrowed her eyes scornfully.

With an irritated groan, Ravonna lunged for her, but Sylvie hopped backwards over the head of the fake Time Keeper. She looked down and Ravonna followed her gaze, distracted from her attack by the sight of rubbery faux-flesh and protruding, crackling wires.

“And this?” Sylvie asked quietly, trying not to spook the woman with the weapon. “Did you have a hand in this deception? I never sensed it in you.”

Ravonna scoffed and looked away from the head on the floor.

“You were a child.”

“I was a Loki,” Sylvie snapped back.

Saying that name—the name she’d rejected but never forgotten, the name that had also been his—jolted her into action once more. She wedged the toe of her boot beneath the Time Keeper’s decapitated head and flipped it up, striking Ravonna in the stomach. The Judge folded forward and defensively swept the baton in a wide arc. Sylvie stepped out of the weapon’s path, not anticipating the way Ravonna swung her arm quickly back to hit her with the non-pruning end of the rod; she hadn’t been a Hunter in who knew how long, but she clearly hadn’t lost her skill with the tools of the trade.

The blunt end thudded into Sylvie’s ribs.

She was knocked back, but when Ravonna advanced, Sylvie’s hand shot up to grab the baton, hauling the Judge forward. Unbalanced, Ravonna was no challenge to send sprawling at the foot of the stairs leading up to the Time Keepers’ dais. She landed awkwardly. Sylvie breathed hard as she wrenched the baton completely free of Ravonna’s hold and went to retrieve her sword as well.

As she then moved to assess B-15, who was rising shakily to her knees, Sylvie never put her back to Ravonna. Pruned in the back. What a Loki death.

“You alright?” she asked B-15 softly.

The Hunter grunted and allowed Sylvie to support her into standing.

“Better if I knew where to go from here.”

“Let me worry about that,” Sylvie said.

Ravonna struggled to her own feet and Sylvie held the baton at arm’s length between them, keeping the Judge at a distance while B-15 opened the door behind them.

“Ah ah ah,” Sylvie warned archly, chin and eyebrows raised in impish caution. “You stay here and play with your robots.”

“This is temporary,” Ravonna said as Sylvie edged back through the open door.

Sylvie performed her signature cocked head and smirk.

“Isn’t everything?”

The second they were out of the Time Keepers’ chamber, B-15 slammed the doors and leaned into them, as if Ravonna would imminently begin trying to break them down from the inside. Which Sylvie supposed she might. She really almost admired Ravonna—or would have if the Judge hadn’t ruined her entire life.

She stared at the door handles, then at each of the weapons she held in her hands. Sword or baton, sword or baton? With a deep breath, Sylvie jammed the blade of her sword through the handles to bar the door, electing to keep the baton close. Though it was a less familiar weapon, she was nothing if not highly adaptable. Besides, touching the glowing end of the rod to a person was certainly more efficient than dispatching them with a blade. She wasn’t sure how many TVA workers they would encounter before they were out of here. This place and this time. Keeping the baton was the right choice.

She stole a last glance at the sword. Another little piece of herself left behind.

At the sound of reinforcements headed towards them, she and B-15 hurried away from the chamber.

“She used to be a Hunter,” B-15 said, shaking her head as they strode down the corridor, “like me.”

“I suppose she might have been like you at some point,” Sylvie said. She was interpreting the words a little differently. “I wonder when she stopped.”

“Do you?”

“Not really. I can trust you but not her.” Sylvie shrugged as she walked. “That’s about all I need to know.”

“Do you trust me?”

“I have to.”

“Same for me. Though I can’t say my faith in allies hasn’t been shaken recently,” B-15 said sarcastically. “The Time Keepers aren’t real, Ravonna’s been helping to cover up the truth, and I wasn’t even created here! I probably had to go through that degrading process of having my clothes zapped off!”

“Probably. I didn’t think you’d want to see that as a prioritized memory,” Sylvie said, half-apologetic. While they’d stood in the torrential rain outside Roxxcart, she’d allowed a highlight reel of memories to flash through the Hunter’s mind.

“You know, I always found it kind of strange that one of the few tests we run in this department is to judge whether or not someone is secretly a robot. I guess whoever designed the Time Keepers got paranoid.”

“Whoever that person is, paranoia is the least of their worries.”

“True,” B-15 agreed as she produced a TemPad. “Now, they’re going to have to deal with us.”

“If they’re still out there somewhere and not dead like Loki and Mobius,” Sylvie said bitterly. She flipped the TemPad open and programmed their destination.

“Maybe they aren’t dead. We’ve been misled about everything else. Maybe everyone who’s ever been pruned just ends up someplace… else.”

“It’s no place I’ve ever been.”

“Yet,” B-15 said.

The Time Door appeared before them. Pounding footsteps raced against Sylvie’s accelerating heartbeat as she prepared to step through and leave this place behind. They had to go now, her and her one ally. She couldn’t get above one ally these days. It was better than none.

“Yet,” Sylvie agreed.

—

Meanwhile in Jet Ski Land…

“That’s why I always felt such an affinity for that Earth actor,” Mobius said. “I am Owen Wilson. Or was.”

He dug his bare toes deeper into the slightly rocky beach and watched the slow wash of trash along the shore. It was almost nice here, but not quite. Not a place to stay. Everything inside him had already been screaming that. A lifelong (in this life, anyway) bureaucrat, he’d never felt such restlessness.

“Am… was… what does it matter?” the man next to him asked rhetorically.

He was also Mobius. No, Mobius was him. No, that wasn’t right, they were both Owen Wilson. Variants of him. But this man had shaggy blond hair where Mobius had been grey for as long as he could remember. Also, he appeared to be the only Owen Wilson in sight who had a mustache and he was a little proud of that. Probably stupidly, but it was helping him hold on to his sense of identity in the presence of so many hims.

They were on the beach around him, sitting in the dunes behind him, swimming in the water in front of him. One of the Owens was freaking parasailing through the air up above while another Owen drove the boat that towed him.

“How long have you guys been here?” Mobius asked in awe.

“You know, it’s hard to say,” Owen said, folding his arms thoughtfully. “It’s tough to figure out exactly how time flows here. A little like what you were describing, with your experience at the TVA.”

“Have you gotten to know everybody?”

“Oh yeah, they’re good guys. And all of us Owens are naturally social.”

“What about that one?” Mobius asked, pointing. He could hear the raw admiration in his own voice as the geriatric Owen he’d indicated revved his jet ski, bouncing over the low swells of the turquoise water.

“One of our actors. He was in the middle of filming a movie in Indonesia before he ended up here. Played an international, jet ski-riding spy in sort of a buddy comedy. Eighty-three years old and still a star.”

“What? That sounds incredible! What the heck happened?”

“Well,” Owen told him with a grimace, “the tsunami of 2051.”

“Right,” Mobius said, recalling the list of 21st-century apocalyptic events he and Loki had so recently sifted through together.

“He wasn’t supposed to survive the wave. The film crew had tethered him to the jet ski for safety while they were shooting and, as far as Owen can guess, that should’ve been enough to kill him. That’s what the TVA was counting on. They had to bring him in when he didn’t drown.”

“What a story though! That old Owen is one tough nut!”

“I know!” Owen gushed proudly.

Mobius shook his head in amazement, scanning the water. His gaze landed on something he couldn’t immediately understand.

“And what’s that?” he asked.

“That’s jet-ski Owen.”

“I thought the old guy was jet-ski Owen.”

“Nah, that one’s Owen on a jet ski. This one’s Owen as a jet ski.”

The riderless craft surged across the water until the speed had its front end lifting high off the surface. With a glorious final burst, it escaped the water entirely, executing a barrel roll in midair before touching down once more.

Mobius felt the praise leave his own lips and heard it echoed up and down the beach by all other versions of Owen Wilson in attendance: “Wow.”

#my writing #Loki #Loki spoilers #Ravonna Lexus Renslayer #Ravonna Renslayer #Sylvie #Hunter B-15 #Agent Mobius #Mobius M. Mobius

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quinntessentiallyglee · 3 years

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Hailee Steinfeld FC?

from here

send me a FC and i’ll make up a character on the spot.

Okay, so two things before I get into this:

First, in looking up an image to include with this post, I was reminded that Hailee stared in a movie with Dove Cameron (who those of you familiar with this account will know is one of my favs) in which her character was part of a clandestine organization centred around training teenagers-as-spies/assassins(? It's been a while since I saw the film, and they may have also trained up younger children as well) and as a result I am sorely tempted to throw any Hailee FC into my D.E.B.S. verse. But I won't because a) that's derivative of a character that is a canon Hailee FC, and b) even if my D.E.B.S. verse muses are all OC, the D.E.B.S. verse itself is not, and this is for original characters (or at least that's my interpretation of the challenge, and it's too late to change things up now).

Second: Despite the fact that most of the images I came across in my search highlight Hailee as Strikingly Beautiful and/or Bad-ass, she is stuck in my head as 'Adorable Fluff-ball' for reasons I cannot put my finger on. That's right folks; I see this:

And think, "Look at this fluff-ball! Isn't she Adorable!". Yes, I know, this is just one of the many things wrong with me. Regardless, now that I've gotten those points off my chest, we can proceed with introducing you to: Cordelia Harper

FC: Hailee Steinfeld

FANDOM: None (Would add her to my FAE Verse)

AGE: 18-30 (30 might seem like a bit of a stretch, but read on and you'll see why that may not be the case)

ORIENTATION: Pan

Appearance

HAIR COLOUR: Dark Brown

EYE COLOUR: Hazel

TATTOO: TBD (I'm 90%+ sure she has at least one, and almost as certain that there's more than one, and I'm pretty sure the style/purpose/meaning of them, but not sure on the specific shape of them... if that makes sense.)

General

FULL NAME: Cordelia Ivy Harper

NICKNAME: 'Delia, Delilah, Cor, Cordy

BIRTHDAY: Sept 30th (even though has been sitting in my inbox for a while)

PRONOUNS: She/Her/Hers

GENDER: Cis-Female

HOMETOWN: Hershey, Pennsylvania (I really, really wanted to say Salem or some other significantly 'Occult' place... Instead I put her in Pennsylvania [which is at least half way to Transylvania... or 75% if you do the math]. And what better place for an [spoiler warning] Adorable Fluff-ball of a Witch than Hershey, Pennsylvania: The Chocolate Capitol of the US)

CURRENT LOCATION: TBD (I feel like this would be very verse/thread dependant, but I feel like she'd default more towards the eastern seaboard than elsewhere.)

OCCUPATION: Witch (Though really that's more of a calling than an occupation. What pays the bills are her chemistry skills... which I feel get used most often in a teaching capacity rather than a 'practical' [for lack of a better word] capacity. I could also see her as either a Veterinarian or running her own Landscaping/Gardening company)

RELIGION: TBD (Wiccan would be an obvious choice, but my own ignorance of the particulars of that faith make me wary of trying to portray someone who follows it. I also get the feeling that she's more of a Granny Weatherwax type Witch in that she'll leave the Gods to go about their business and would like them to do the same for her.)

SOCIAL CLASS: Middle Class (Default), Verse Dependant

LANGUAGES: English, Probably some Latin, (and a smattering of one or two Fae languages)

Family

MOTHER: Tabitha Harper

FATHER: Unknown

SIBLINGS: None

CHILDREN: (I'm 50/50[/50] on this. Part of me sees her as a mom, part of sees her as just wanting to be one, and part of me sees her as seeing the world at large as her 'child')

Personality

TRAITS: Friendly (Like, extremely friendly. The sort of friendly where being mean to them feels like you've kicked a lost puppy), Protective, Happy (Her cup isn't just half full, it's an extra large, self filling cup)

FLAWS: Believes a little too much in the goodness of others, Has a very strong sense of right vs wrong, and will act accordingly (including this in the Flaws section because anyone caught on the other end of this would not consider it a positive. Especially when combined with the last point), Not as aware of her surroundings as she probably should be (so many memory erasing spells... that's a joke... mostly.)

ALLERGIES: None (though I really want to say 'Chocolate' for the irony alone)

SIGN: Libra

HOGWARTS HOUSE: Hufflepuff/Ravenclaw (I'd say it's damn near a perfect split, but if I had to give one side an advantage, it would be Hufflepuff))

LIKES: Rain, Rainbows, Sunshine, Cool Breezes, Warm Earth, A Properly Brewed Potion, People Being Kind/Helpful, Fresh Vegetable Soup, Fresh Bread, Chocolate (Semi-sweet in particular, though salted bitter-sweet also works in a pinch)

DISLIKES: People Being Rude/Hurtful, People/Animals In Pain

#anon #ask: scenario #asked and answered #ooc: muse #FC: Hailee Steinfeld #Face Claim

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bopbopstyles · 4 years

Text

Temptation (pt. 1)

RATING: M/smut

WORD COUNT: 9.4k

CATEGORIES: fratboy!harry

“Can I ask you something?”

She turned back and looked at him. “Sure.”

“Why haven’t I seen you before?”

She shrugged at his question. “Dunno. I’ve never been to parties here before. We’ve got different majors. It’s a big school.”

“Not that big.”

“Big enough.”

“Too big if I missed out on meeting you until now.”

Her breath caught. The words fell from his mouth with such ease, such nonchalance, as if his words didn’t shake the ground she stood on.

Harry’s a fratboy and Nora (might) be in love with him. (part 1)

PART TWO | PART THREE

After a semester abroad, the last thing Nora felt like doing was going to an American frat party.

She had spent the semester in Germany going to clubs and house parties, weird bars and day drinking at festivals. All she wanted was a pint of good beer, a cute boy to flirt with in her horrifically bad German, and go home and curl up in her double bed. Now she was back home going to a beginning of semester frat party where there would be shit beer, she wouldn’t be “the cute American girl,” and she was back to the Twin-XL life. It was the weekend before school started, so she knew it would be crazy—no one had work to do, no one was stressed, and everyone was desperate to be back at school and away from their families.

But Maddy wanted her to go, and so she was going.

“You’re going to drink these boys under the table!” Maddy called to her from their bathroom where she was curling her hair. “We’re going to play rage cage, I’ve already decided.”

“I hate rage cage,” Nora lied. She loved it and she knew it. “Abroad changed me!”

A bootie came flying in her direction, and Nora caught it before tossing it back to Maddy. “You’re a shit liar.”

She took another sip of the drink she had mixed, some decent vodka and Fresca, her secret weapon of a mixer. “Who are you going after tonight again?”

Since Nora had left Maddy had decided she was in love with the boys of Delta Sigma. They were mostly the international boys who didn’t seem like they’d be the frat type and were so hot you couldn’t tear your eyes away from them. Also, apparently their parties were insane. “His name’s Liam,” she said, “and he was quite possibly the most gorgeous boy on earth.”

“What’s his instagram again?”

She read out a handle from memory, and Nora typed the handle into her phone as she took another sip. She scrolled through the photos, most of which appeared to be from frat parties, with the occasional more artsy photo of him and friends. They appeared to be on actual film, which was interesting for frat boy. “Is he a photographer?”

“No, why?”

“These photos looked like they’re on actual film," she replied. Nora clicked on one and it’s a photo of him, but she noticed he had tagged someone. Someone with the handle @harry_styles. She clicked on the name and was immediately entranced. Based on his bio, he was their year at school, but she had never heard of the kid before. He also appeared to be British. She scrolled through his photos, all taken on film, and gorgeous. Some were of landscapes, but most were portraits of people doing simple and mundane things. He was incredibly talented. “Some kid named Harry takes them,” Nora told her.

“Oh, I think he was friends with Liam. I’ve seen them before.” Maddy strutted out of the bathroom and striked a pose, perfectly curled hair bouncing behind her head as she shook it. “Like?”

“Love.” Maddy was wearing a snakeskin bodysuit, ripped black jeans, and heeled booties, and she looked incredible as usual. “Now what the fuck am I going to wear?”

“Good lord, you will be the death of me someday, Nora Tate.”

The party was in full swing when they arrive. They weaved their way through the crowds on the front lawn, Maddy jabbering in her ear about how hot this Liam kid is. Nora simply nodded along, thankful for the vodka coursing through her veins, because the amount she did not want to be there was pretty high.

The lights were low and the music was loud when they opened the door, the smell of sweat and cheap beer hitting her immediately. Ah yes, this was why she left America.

“Rage cage," she reminded Maddy, and Maddy squeezed her hand before pulling her deep into the crowd. They weaved their way through the throngs of people to the kitchen, where they poured themselves drinks, and then Maddy dragged her to the basement.

There were four pong tables set up, three of which currently had games going—all simple games of pong, and a bunch of people loitering around the tables waiting for a turn. “We’re going to have to start the game,” Maddy told her quietly.

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why?”

“I’m scared!”

Good lord. “Who do I talk to about starting a game of rage cage?” Nora yelled into the loud room.

Everyone stopped talking and looked in one direction.

Harry was leaning against a table in the back where a computer is set up, most likely controlling the music. “Me,” he yelled in reply, standing up. “Let’s play.”

“You’re fucking insane,” Maddy told her, laughing, “and I love you.”

Harry was fucking gorgeous in person. Like, he was gorgeous on social media, but in person he was effortlessly beautiful. Cropped hair with a wave to it, high cheekbones, and the swagger of someone who truly didn’t give a fuck about what people think of him. She suddenly decided that Maddy was not alone in her love of this fraternity.

A bunch of boys, freshman pledges from the looked of it, finished filling cups with beer and setting up the table. Nora grabbed Maddy’s hand and led her over to the table. She set them up right in the middle, the best place to be, and placed their cups in a safe zone of the table. “Remember, controlled bounces," she reminded Maddy, who was notoriously horrible at this game, “and I’ll help you drink if you need it.”

“My savior,” she replied, and Nora snorts in response.

“Want to start?” She looked up and Harry was standing next to her, holding a ping pong ball out to her. His accent was like butter and she honestly wanted nothing more than to hear it constantly on a loop.

“Sure.”

Some pledge had the other ball and positioned himself across the table from her, and everyone scrunched together around the table. Bodies pressed closer and she tried to ignore the feeling of Harry’s arm flush against hers.

“Good at this game?” Harry asked her, leaning his head over so she could hear him.

“Actually, yes,” she replied.

“Let’s see,” he said, and she thought she caught a wink before she bounced the ball and made her first cup.

Maddy was drunk, despite the fact that Nora had been avoiding giving her a cup the whole game. The problem wasn’t Maddy though, it was the other people at the table. Upon discovering Maddy was a) still quite sober and b) horrible at the game, they took it upon themselves to single her out, sending all their cups her way. Meanwhile, Nora was in her happy drunk phase, one that could be sustained by sipping a drink every hour, but became messy if she went too hard.

Next to her, Harry was flushed and laughing, the alcohol and the game having loosened him up. They kept bumping into each other, their fingers brushing when he passed her the pong ball, and it messed up her breathing every time.

There’s only three cups yet, and she was just praying that Maddy didn’t end up with the bitch cup. But as the ball and the cups worked their way around the table, some pledge drinking one and a girl drinking the other, there was only one left. And the ball was coming straight for them.

“Fuck,” Nora said under her breath.

Harry looked down at her, somehow having heard her. “You good?”

“I just don’t want my friend to have the bitch cup.”

Harry glanced over at Maddy. “looked like it would do her in.” “Harry, pay attention mate!” His head whipped back and the tall stack of cups was right in front of him. He took the ball and Nora watched him, knowing he was going to make a perfect shot in, just like he had all night.

Except he didn’t. He missed.

And he missed again.

“C’mon Harry!” Someone yelled, and her eyes focused on the boy standing before Harry, who was desperately trying to make it into the single cup he has in front of him, but the slick beer-covered surface of the table meant the cup was sliding around and he kept missing.

Harry missed another shot.

And the boy before him made his.

“HARRYYY!!!!!” The table screamed, and everyone started chanting his name as he reached for the bitch cup.

He caught Nora’s eye right before he started chugging the beer, some of it spilling down the front of his barely buttoned shirt.

And it hit her—he missed on purpose.

He was trying to make sure Maddy didn’t have to drink it and instead made sure he drank it.

Harry slammed the empty solo cup down on the table and cheers erupted, a grinning Harry the triumphant loser.

“Another game?” Some kid asked, and everyone agrees, but Nora just shook her head.

“We’re good,” she said, taking her and Maddy’s drinks from earlier.

Harry stepped away from the table. “Same,” he said, and no one questioned that.

“I wanna find Liam,” Maddy said to her as they stepped away from the table.

“Okie doke, Tiger,” she told her, and Maddy giggled in response.

She looked up at Harry who was standing right in front of her, blocking their exit. “Thanks for that," she told him, their eyes catching.

“Anytime,” he replied. “I’m Harry, by the way.”

As if she didn’t already know his name. “Nora.”

“I’m Maddy!” Maddy piped up from behind her. “Now we’re on the hunt for more alcohol and some dancing, so could you scooch out of our way?”

Harry chuckled, and Nora just rolled her eyes. “Have fun,” he said, and she tugged Maddy away from the table.

“he was soooo hot,” Maddy said as they climbed the stairs. “Like literally, could-melt-polar-ice-caps hot.”

“You’re so fucking weird.”

“And you love me for it!” She said, throwing her arm around Nora’s shoulders. “Now let’s find us some dancing.”

Maddy hadn’t been able to capture Liam’s attention despite all of her efforts, but she had captured the attention of another DSig boy, who she was now dancing with in the middle of the dance floor. Nora made her promise to tell her if she was going to leave without her, and with that Nora left her to her own devices.

She wandered outside, seeking fresh air, and sat down on the edge of the deck that extended into the backyard. It was quieter out here, the thud of the bass faint and the cold air welcome on her sweaty skin.

“Fancy seeing you here,” a smooth British accent said to her.

She turned and saw Harry sitting a few feet away from her, leaning back on his hands, a beer next to him. His thin white button-down was unbuttoned low, exposing tattoos littering his torso, and thanks to the porch lights and soft glow of the moon she could see the many rings adorning the fingers of hands and the pendant necklace lying on a butterfly tattoo just on his abdomen. She caught sight of a trace of stubble on his chin and perhaps an earring in his ear.

Nora had never been this entranced by another human being. “Tired of your party?”

“Bloody hate these things after a while.” He took a swig of his beer and sighed. “You said it was Nora, right?”

She nodded. “Without an H.”

He cracked a smile. “Harry, with an H.”

“What would it be, sans an H?”

“Arry.”

“That isn’t a name.”

“Most people call me something that,” he said.

“‘Arry?”

“Yeah.”

“Most people call me Nor," she replied.

“But your name is already so short, why do you need a nickname?” She shrugged in response. Just what people did. “You’re taking the thunder of everyone with names that aren’t nickname-able.”

She leaned back on her hands, copying his pose. “Your name is nickname-able.”

“Try.”

Names rolled over in her head. “I’d probably just said ‘H’.”

He was quiet for a beat. “Never heard that one before.”

“Well, I’m happy that I could introduce it to you.”

They were both quiet for a second, and then she heard the scrape of fabric. Harry had scooted closer to her, his position changed so he was facing her, one leg still dangling off of the porch, the other bent in front of him. “What do you study, Nora without an H?”

“History," she replied without a beat. “Mainly German history.”

“Why?” His tone was genuinely inquisitive, as if this was a completely intriguing fact that he simply must know more about.

“I guess…I’ve always liked stories," she told him, finding her words as they come. “And history is really just a bunch of stories that they can learn from and use to make sense of the world around us.”

He considered her answer. “I like that.”

“And you? What do you study, Harry with an H?”

“Comparative literature,” he replied. “Focusing on Italian.”

“Why?”

He grinned. “I’ve always loved languages and reading, and it just seemed like the right fit. You have a better answers than me for this question.”

“You like comp lit?”

“Love it,” he said immediately.

It was rare to find a fratboy who genuinely enjoys what he studies, so Harry was an outlier. “And you speak Italian, I assume?”

“Sì.”

She knew no Italian, but she gathered that that’s a yes. “How long?”

“Most of my life.” He took another sip of his beer, and someone opened the sliding door behind them, music and voices swirling around them. “My grandparents bought a house in Italy before they had my mum and it’s stayed in the family. I’ve spent all my summers and holidays there.”

“You were there for Christmas, then, I assume?” He nodded. “I’m jealous.”

“Best place on earth.”

“Where in Italy?”

“Lucca. It’s not too far from Florence.” He scooted a hair closer to her as he swung his other leg onto the porch, winding his long legs into a comfortable position. “You ever been?”

“To Italy?” He nodded. “Nope. Didn’t make it there while I was abroad.”

“Shame. Where’d you go?”

“Berlin for the fall semester," she replied, and he perked up. “Traveled a bunch, but stuck to central and northern Europe mainly. Copenhagen, Prague, Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Warsaw, and then around Germany. Spent a week in London during Thanksgiving and my mom met me there.”

He ran a hand through his hair absentmindedly, and she watched his bicep flex with the movement. “That sounds incredible. My parents told me being here was my study abroad, so I’m missing out.”

“That’s a shame," she told him. “I needed the break from all this," she waved her hand around them, attempting to capture the absurdity of college and the pressure and the exhaustion in a single motion. “Felt nice to be given the opportunity to slow down a bit.”

“I can imagine.”

Their conversation slowed a bit. The sliding door opened again and a group of girls started talking loudly near them, their discussion circling around some boy they’re all in love with, but they thankfully made their way to the fire pit on the other side of the yard.

“Can I ask you something?”

She turned back and looked at him. “Sure.”

“Why haven’t I seen you before?”

She shrugged at his question. “Dunno. I’ve never been to parties here before. We’ve got different majors. It’s a big school.”

“Not that big.”

“Big enough.”

“Too big if I missed out on meeting you until now.”

Her breath caught. The words fell from his mouth with such ease, such nonchalance, as if his words didn’t shake the ground she stood on.

“Nor!”

She looked up and Maddy was standing in the doorway and she was thankful for the distraction. “You okay?”

“I wanna go homeeee,” Maddy said, her words slightly slurred. “I’m tired.”

“Let’s go home then, babes.” She downed the rest of her beer and then turned to Harry. “See you around, H.”

Before he had the chance to reply, Nora walked inside, the door shutting behind her.

Maddy and Nora spent the rest of the weekend decorating their apartment and analyzing Harry’s sentence to her. Maddy was convinced that he had a crush on her, but Nora begged to differ. Nora thought he was just a poetic guy who had a bit too much to drink. Maddy rolled her eyes at her but let it drop finally and began describing Niall, the adorable Irish boy who she had been dancing with. He was sweet and funny and a good kisser, and didn’t try to get her to come home with him. Just got her number and told her to find Nora so she could go home since she was drunk and tired. (Sometimes, Nora thinks, it’s a bit sad how low the bar was set.) She seemed to have forgotten all about Liam, who she said was just too unattainable that it wasn’t worth trying.

By Monday, Nora was anxious to get into the classroom. After a semester of operating at half intelligence because all her classes were in German, she was excited to be able to actually communicate her full thoughts on a topic. She wanted to write papers and read things that intrigued her.

She'd put a lot of thought into crafting her schedule, leaving time for her shifts at the coffeeshop on campus, while also balancing her schedule between History, German, and Gen Ed requirements. She'd chosen to takes an Urban Studies class for her technology requirements, since it required use of something classed GIS. Maddy was an Urban Studies major, so Nora decided that it was safe to assume she’d help her pass if she needed it.

She chose a safe seat—middle of the room, middle of the row, able to see the screen but not too close that she looked too eager. She unpacked her notebook, already labelled for the class and her pencil bag with her favorite pens. She was ready to be back at school.

She was not ready for Harry Styles to slide into the seat next to her.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he said, and she just about jumped out of her skin.

“Fucking hell.” The words fell from her mouth without pause. “You scared me.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re not," she said, catching her breath. “What are you doing here?”

“Fulfilling a Gen Ed,” he replied. “This seemed interesting and easy enough. You?”

Embarrassingly, the same reason. “Me too.”

He smiled. “Was nice to see a familiar face when I walked in.”

Before she could reply, the lecture started, and her mind tuned out everything else in the room. Their professor went over the syllabus, which seemed decent, and then started in on the first lecture. Nora was quickly engrossed, scribbling notes about different city planning techniques and histories, making notes of things she wanted to look up more on. The professor had a good lecture style—succinct, engaging, and a bit funny. He had some memes throughout his presentation that got the class laughing, and she tried to ignore how Harry’s soft chuckle made her stomach flip.

In fact, she spent the whole class trying to ignore Harry.

She tried to ignore the way he bit his lip while he wrote notes, the wrinkle in his eyebrows when he was trying to understand something, the way he pulled on his lip when he was reading intently. How his handwriting was messy but clear, how he said “fuck” lightly under his breath when he smudged ink, how his leg bounced up and down when he was trying to focus.

But most of all she tried to ignore the fact that he kept glancing over at her.

Because the thing was, Nora was not in the market to have feelings for someone. She didn’t want to have a crush. She wants to have aimless sex with cute boys and go about her life as she wanted. After the fall, she'd decided that boys were confusing and a waste of time.

Jonas. She'd met him at a house party and it had been a fling—they’d hooked up a couple of times, he’d make her tea and breakfast in the morning, they’d drunk text each other, and he’d act like her boyfriend if they were out together. Sometimes the things he’d say and the way he’d look at her would make her wonder if it was more for him. If he cared. But then, before she knew it the semester was over and it was time to go and their didn’t even have a proper goodbye. It was weird and confusing and when she left she didn’t know what to make of it, because if they’d had more time she probably would’ve dated him. And now, sometimes she'd remember the way he’d back her up against a wall and wonder if she'd find someone who would kiss her the way Jonas did.

So when Nora looked at Harry, she couldn’t help but wonder how he would kiss. And that was when she knew that even though she had only known him for two days, she was developing a crush.

And that was the opposite of how she wanted to start her semester.

When class ended, Harry turned to her and said, “Want to go pick up their course books?”

She didn’t have a class next, so she had no excuse. So she just said yes.

“What did you think?” He asked, adjusting his backpack on his shoulder as they exited the lecture hall.

“The professor was great," she replied. “Really engaging and seems like he was not going to be harsh of a grader since it’s an intro class.”

“Yeah definitely. And I liked how he explained all of the different city plans with such detail but also clarity. He seems to know what he was doing.”

They turned to exit onto the campus green, and she pulled her coat a little tighter around her. It was January and she had forgotten how cold it could get in Massachusetts. “Which section do you think you’re going to do?” The professor had mentioned at the end of class that they would have weekly discussion sections with their TAs to go over material and readings, and had listed out the different time options. She was leaning towards Wednesdays at 11, just after their class was over.

“Probably Wednesday at 11,” he replied. “Fits best into my schedule.”

Fuck. “I was thinking of doing the same one," she told him. This was not good. More time around Harry was not going to be good for her.

“Really?” Nora couldn’t help but take joy in the smile that spread across his face. “Thank god. I hate going into those sections and not knowing where to sit.”

They turned into the building with the campus bookstore, and Nora unwound her scarf from around her neck. “Well, you won’t have to worry about that.”

“Do you have other books you need to pick up?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. I’m going to hold off and go after my other classes so I can figure out what I can get at the library first.”

“Good idea.” He pulled out the syllabus from his backpack and studied the instructions their professor had written down for the books their need. “I think they’re over this way,” he said, leading the way to the back corner.

“Spend a lot of time here?” She asked, shocked he knew where to find the books without even asking for help.

“I worked here during freshman and sophomore year,” he replied. “They never change up the organization of this place.” He scanned the shelves with his finger, mumbling the names of the authors they were looking for under his breath. Nora stood behind him and couldn’t help but smile. “Here,” he said, pulling two copies of one out. “Hold them?”

“‘Course.” She took the books and held them in her arms while he continued his search for the second and third titles they need. He quickly tracked them down, snatching them off the shelf and adding them to the pile in her arms. “That it?”

“Yes.” They weaved their way to the front register and she followed Harry, watching how his long brown coat whips around his ankles when he walked.

After they paid, they walked back out to the campus green and stood on the edge of the sidewalk facing each other. “Do you have another class?” He asked her.

She nodded. “Later. Think I’m going to go home and drop these off first, though.” She lifted the stack of books in her arms and he smiled.

“Bit too heavy for you?”

“Shove off," she said, and a smile sneaked onto her face when he chuckled.

“Well, I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

She took a step back and shouldered her bag. “Bye, H.”

“Bye, Nora.”

She tried to ignore the beauty of the way he said her name. But she failed.

Maddy and Nora had been in the library for most of Saturday doing their readings for the next week, and by seven o’clock Nora wanted to bash her head into a wall. She kept re-reading the same sentence about the layout of Vienna’s old city and couldn’t process any of the words.

“Maddy," she whispered, poking her in the arm with the cap of her highlighter. “I want to go.”

“Stop poking me, you ass.” Maddy looked up from her readings. “Let’s get out of here—I feel like I smell like library at this point.”

We packed up their stuff quietly, ignoring the death stares from a girl with a problem set spread out on the table in front of her. “It’s like they don’t realize that people naturally make noise when they move," she said, and Maddy snorted, earning them more glares. “Come on, we should go before we’re killed in here.”

She followed Maddy out of the room they were in and made their way down the hall, the sound of Nora’s sneakers squeaking on the tile floor earning us yet more glares from people. It was literally the first week back at school, Nora thought, how are people already so stressed about work?

Maddy suddenly slowed her walk and matched her pace with Nora’s, leaning in close to her. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that Harry walking towards us?”

Nora looked up and realize that it was Harry. He was wearing an oversized black sweatshirt and a pair of houndstooth pants that he somehow makes looked both comfortable and stylish, along with a pair of glasses. She simply does not understand this boy’s ability to looked so good constantly. “I cannot talk to him right now," she told Maddy. “I looked like complete shit and he looked like…a Greek god.”

“Shut up. You’re going to talk to him because he was basically beelining over here.”

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck," she said under her breath.

“Nora.” Harry’s voice was soft because of the library, and she loved the way it sounded. “Maddy, right? I’m Harry.”

Maddy nodded. “Nice to meet you.”

Harry’s gaze turned back to her, and she decided then and there that she loves him in glasses. He was not just a Greek god, he was a studious Greek god. Tortoise shell, peak book nerd. “How are you?”

“Good," she replied. “Was just doing the reading for their class.”

He groaned. “I haven’t even started it. How bad is it?”

She shrugged. “A bit dry, but not horrible.”

“Great,” he said. “I have that to look forward to doing. What are you two up to tonight?”

She looked at Maddy, who shrugged. “Unsure at this point.”

“We’re having another party if you want to come.”

“We’ll be there,” Maddy said before Nora had the chance to reply. She shot Maddy a death stare, which Maddy just ignored.

Harry grinned and it was utterly adorable. “I’ve got to keep working, but I’ll see you guys later.”

“Bye H.” The nickname fell from her mouth with ease, and he smiled in response.

“Bye Nora.”

He walked away and she turned to Maddy, who was grinning ear to ear. “What?”

Maddy shook her head and gave her a knowing smile. “You’re fucked.”

She looked back to Harry’s receding figure. Maddy was right. Nora was completely fucked.

They had been at the party for an hour and Nora had yet to see Harry. She didn’t know if he was hiding or something, but no matter which room she went into or how hard she looked, she still couldn’t manage to spot him in the crowd. The party was bigger than last weekend as everyone was now on campus, and Maddy and Nora kept running into people they knew, so now they’ve developed a little crew to hang out with. Their friends Taylor and Lauren arrived shortly after Maddy and Nora did, and they brought with them a girl who was in the same sorority as Lauren and was dating a DSig. As a result, they all end up trashed and dancing without much time passing.

Nora threw her arms around Maddy and screamed the lyrics to a Post Malone song, and Nora felt utterly, blissfully happy. She had forgotten about this side of frat parties while she was gone—how happy she was when she was dancing and there was alcohol coursing through her veins. Some girl must have gotten hold of the music, because the song changed to an old Taylor Swift song and the girls lost it, jumping up and down in the crowd and screaming the lyrics at the top of their lungs.

“I need a drink!” Nora said when the song was over, her throat hoarse and her hair sticking to the back of her neck. The song switches, and the Maddy screamed—it was her favorite song and she had to be on the dance floor for it. Nora could see the torn look in her best friend’s eyes, and she shook her head. “I’m good—I’ll be back in a second.”

She pushed through the crowd, apologizing as she dug her elbows into people to make a path to the kitchen. She grabbed a beer, needing something cold and not too strong, and leaned against the countertop, letting the cooler air wash over her skin.

“Hello.”

The words tingled down her spine, and she turned her head to see Harry standing in the door jamb. The kitchen had mostly cleared out, so it was just the two of them and a set of girls who looked like freshman trying to decide which mixer was less disgusting with their bad vodka. “Hi, H.”

“Having fun?” He was wearing a black t-shirt and it was tight in all the right places and Nora had to force herself to not consider what it would be like to take it off of him.

She nodded. “Couldn’t find you, though.” The words tumbled from her mouth before she could stop them and Nora wanted to shrink into the counter. She sounded desperate and psychotic—she had barely known this boy and now she was complaining about now being able to find him?

But Harry just smiled. “I was upstairs,” he explained. “Was trying to finish a bit of work before I started drinking.”

If he was doing work here, Nora assumed he lived in the house. “You live here?”

“Unfortunately.” He moved towards her, grabbing a beer from the fridge next to her, and Nora caught a flash of light blue on his fingers. Harry painted his nails, she realized.

This fraternity boy painted his goddamned nails light blue.

Who was this boy?

What planet was he from?

And more importantly, where had he been all of her life?

“I like your nails,” she said. “What color is that?”

He glanced down at them. “Dunno. Stole it from my sister over winter break. I can check and text it to you later, though.”

“I’d like that.” Nora took another sip of her beer, the cold drink feeling good in her body. “Where are all your friends?”

Harry shrugged. Nora got the sense that he didn’t really care about all the fraternity stuff and she liked that. Frat boys had always annoyed with their “bro energy” as Maddy called it and she’d met some real assholes during her time in college. Harry seemed like an outlier though. “You want to dance?” He asked her, breaking her out of her trance.

She straightened up. “Sure.” She tried not to think about the fact that she cannot, for the life of her, dance sexily. Maddy had made fun of her for it since freshman year, and despite her efforts Nora had not been able to master the art of looking hot and dancing. She was more of a whip-your-arms-around-and-scream dancer.

When they reached the crowded living room, Harry grabbed her hand and Nora loved his callused hand in her hers, the way he held it tightly so he didn’t lose her in the crowd. He didn’t go too deep into the crowd, wanting to make sure they had space to breathe and it was not too hot. When he stopped moving he tried to create space for them, wanting to make sure they could actually move, not just stand there like idiots and battle for oxygen on the dance floor. Nora took a long swig of her beer, and then she started to sway her hips, deciding to throw caution to the wind.

She liked this boy. She had a massive crush on Harry and his soft words and the way he called her by her full name and smiled at her. She had a crush on the way he was dancing—awkwardly and with a goofy grin on his face, screaming the lyrics to the Top 40s hit along with her. She liked that he didn’t seem to care what people thought of him, that he painted his nails baby blue and knew how to dress himself. She even liked his tattoos, which she usually secretly judged people for, but on Harry they fit him. She wanted to trace the outlines of them and ask him about the stories behind them, to know everything about him. She liked that he took the hit during rage cage for Maddy. She liked that when they were dancing he gives her a thumbs up to check in and make sure she was doing okay.

She really liked him, she realized as she dances with him. She wanted to impress him, but not in a way that’s uncomfortable—more in a way where she just wanted him to see the best parts of her. But she also wanted him to know her, she realized. She wanted him to know things about her and like being around her as much as she did. Because he put her on edge, but not because he made her uncomfortable, but because of how much she liked him. She wanted to know him, even if it was just to be friends, because he seemed interesting. She felt like he has layers to him, and every time she snatches another piece of information she only has more questions.

Even if they were just friends, Nora wanted to know him, she decided.

So she decided, fuck it all, and danced like she didn’t have a care in the world, because she wanted him to see the real her. She wanted him to see her awkward dancing and to accidentally hit him in the face with her hair so that he knew her and could bail if he didn’t like her. She wanted to give him and out and see if he took it.

And he didn’t.

They dance for what feels like forever, their beers long gone. He grabbed her hand at one point when people were becoming pushy and pulled her closer to him, their sweaty bodies touching each other practically every time they move. They sang their favorite songs, and he leaned down to whisper in her ear, “I fucking love this song,” when Mamma Mia came on, and Nora decided that it’s the cutest thing she had ever found out about someone. She told him about her obsession with Drake when In My Feelings comes on, and he admitted that he listened to this song on repeat for three hours one time. They had these snippets of conversation on the dance floor, their faces close and voices loud enough to be heard over the music.

SexyBack came on and they both devolve into seventh graders, obsessed with this song and not really caring about the meaning. Nora danced, throwing her hands up and dropping her hips lower than she had before.

And then someone slammed into her back, throwing her straight into Harry’s chest.

The feeling of him close to her set her skin on fire.

She had kept just enough distance during the evening to make sure they weren’t this close, but it had not taken much for them to be fully flush against each other. And now they were and Nora could feel everything. One of her hands was on his pecs and she could feel the smooth muscle across his chest, and the other hand landed on his side, the palm of her hand on his abs and she felt the outline of abs there. Her fingers dug into his skin, grappling for balance as she tried to find her footing.

Harry’s hands immediately found her waist, holding her steady. His fingers felt like they were searing on her lower back, the contact sending Nora into outer space. And she didn’t know if it was from the alcohol or from him, but either way her head was spinning a bit.

“You okay?” He asked, his accent smooth as butter in her ear. His lips were close enough that they brush softly against her hair and the edge of her ear. Nora was trying not to hyperventilate, but also maintain her footing, and not press all of her weight onto Harry.

She was about to answer that yes, she was fine, so sorry, when someone bumped into her again, pushing her back into Harry. He stumbles this time and wrapped his arms around Nora fully to try and keep them both upright. He was essentially hugging her at this point and Nora thought her heart might have stopped the second she felt him tug her close to him.

“Someone’s really trying to push you over, aren’t they?” He said with a chuckle into your ear.

“I’m so sorry,” Nora apologized, finding her footing and straightening. She didn’t push away from Harry though, and he didn’t let go of her. “I didn’t mean to fall onto you—or into you, I guess?”

He shook his head. “No matter. You okay, love?”

Love. The word reverberated through Nora’s head and she tried to keep her wits about her. She knew she was feeling mushy tonight—all these thoughts of Harry and how adorable he was and sweet and kind had got her melting for him, but maybe that was the alcohol? She couldn’t keep it straight. And when he called her love, all of the efforts to keep it together just fall apart.

“I’m okay,” she answered softly. “Are you?” She looked up and into his eyes, and even though the room was dark, she could still make out his eyes in the strobing lights, the flashes of his beautiful hair and his high cheekbones. She could see his eyes meet hers and Nora felt this pull in her chest to kiss him. He didn’t break eye contact with her and Nora was just searching his eyes, begging for an answer, an explanation, some hint to tell her what to do and what he bloody wanted.

Because she knew what she wanted. She wanted to kiss him.

“‘M fine.” His voice was like sandpaper and she wondered if his mouth was as dry as hers was. He hadn’t moved his hands from her back, only loosened them slightly so he was not holding her quite so close.

She inched her fingers upwards, one landing on his shoulder, the other on his elbow. Nora wondered if she was imagining the way his breathing had quickened. Did she kiss him? She wanted to. She wanted to kiss him so bad. She wanted to know what his lips feel like on hers, if they were as soft as they felt when they bushed her ear. She wanted to know what he tasted like and how he would kiss her. Did she just do it? She searched his eyes one last time, the seconds stretching into what feels like hours. “Can I kiss you?”

He blinked.

Nora held her breath.

Then, his lips were on hers and suddenly Nora knew exactly what his lips feel like on hers. They were soft like velvet and he smelled like heaven.

He kissed her like it was his last breath, desperate to know if she breathed the same air as him. Deep and wanting, the intensity building with every press of his lips to hers. It was urgent, yet soft—he didn’t lick into her mouth, just stays on her lips. And man, can the boy kiss.

Her hand moved from his shoulder to his neck and wound through the hair there, a breathless moan leaving his mouth, and she wondered if he liked it when she pulled his hair.

So when he finally did lick his tongue against the seam of her lips and she widened them, she pulled, ever so softly.

And he moaned deeply, his grip on her waist tightening.

Nora wanted to kiss him for the rest of time.

Her other hand moved from his elbow to his back, fingers finding the material of his shirt and pulling him closer to her. Her fingers curled into the cotton, the sweat from them dancing on her palm but she didn’t care because she wanted him closer. She could feel every inch of his body flush with hers and she loved it—the way he felt against her, the way her skin was lit on fire, the way she wanted to drink purely Harry until the end of time.

“Nora,” he said, pulling back, allowing both of them to catch their breath, “do you want to come upstairs?”

She hesitated. It’s not that she didn’t want to—she’d love to fuck this boy until the dawn of time—but she had no idea where her friends were, and she would rather not let them think she’d been kidnapped. And if she thought about it, she knew she probably shouldn’t. She barely knew Harry and she had class twice a week with him, and most likely a discussion section on top of it. If it didn’t work out, she had to see him constantly for the rest of the semester, which was not ideal.

His finger raised her chin slightly so she had to look into his eyes. “I’m not trying to get you to sleep with me, by the way. I just want to get out of this fuckin’ sweaty crowd so I can kiss you properly and not worry if I’m going to be kicked in the back. And if you don’t want to, that’s totally fine too. I’ll stay here if you’d rather that. Or we don’t have to kiss at all—I don’t want you to do anything you have to.” He was rambling, unsure of his standing. Her hesitation had thrown him for a loop and Harry wasn’t sure if she even wanted to kiss him at all anymore. Was she into it? He thought she was from the way she pulled him towards her, but from the hesitation he wasn’t sure and he wanted to be sure.

“No, it’s not that,” she said, and his fears were immediately pushed aside. “I just want to let my friends know where I am first.”

“Oh,” Harry said. “Where are they?”

Nora looked around the crowd, but couldn’t catch sight of them anywhere. “When I left they were here. Lemme try texting them.” She pulled out her phone and found a string of texts from the group chat with Maddy, Taylor and Lauren discussing the fact that she was making out with Harry Styles and that they were fine and to do whatever she wanted, that they’d find her when they were going to go and check in. Truly the best friends of all time. She quickly texted them that she was going upstairs to Harry’s room and then she looked back up at him, his lips quirked in a smile. Nora wondered if he saw the texts, but then decided there’s no reason to freak out—he was making out with her, after all. “Upstairs?”

“Upstairs.” His fingers wound through hers and he led the way out of the crowd, dodging groups of frantic dancers and couples making out just as they had been. He navigated the crowd with ease, his tall frame putting him a head above most other people, and Nora just held onto his hand and let him lead her out of the crowd and up the stairs.

It was quieter on the second floor, a row of doors to bedrooms shut and soft music drifting out of some, the loud thud of the bass from the main floor less intense. Nora stayed close to Harry, her body magnetic to his. He led her down the hall, telling her who lives in all the other rooms, pointing to the bathroom as they passed it, just in case she needed it. Then, they were standing outside a room with his name on the door and he turned to her.

“You sure you’re okay with this?” He asked her, searching for confirmation, which he found when Nora nodded.

He pushed open the door, a soft light from his bedside table lamp illuminating bits of the room. Nora saw posters of bands, a minimalist map of Milan, and stacks upon stacks of books lining the walls. She stepped inside and he shut the door behind her, and she continued to investigate the room, taking stock of the various pieces of information she could collect from its decoration. A guitar leaned against the wall, sheets of paper next to it with scribblings on them—he was a musician—and a basket of cleanly folded laundry lies in the corner so she knew he was clean and tidy. He had photos of his family on his dresser, which warmed her heart, and a stereo in the corner with a stack of records next to it.

“What do you think?”

She turned to him. He was leaning against his door, a look of curiosity and a hint of fear on his face. They were still learning about each other, and he had exposed a huge part of who he is to her by letting her in here. “I think you like music and books.”

Harry just laughed. “Well, you’re right about that.”

He didn’t move from the door, so Nora decided to take the lead. She wanted to kiss this boy again, not have a conversation about his favorite book he read or the musician that transformed his understanding of music. She sat on the edge of his bed, leaned back on her hands, and gave Harry a look that screamed, “Come.”

And he does, a quirk in his brow. He stood between her widened legs, brushed a thumb across her jawline, and then leand down to reconnect their lips. Nora softened immediately, her hands begging for purchase on his skin, and pulled him towards her. Harry kicked off his boots and then gently pushed Nora up on the bed, following her, the desire written all over his face. He was about to lean down to kiss her again when Nora said, “Wait. Shirt?”

He pulled it over his head without a second thought, and Nora relished in the sight of his tattoos. The butterfly on his abdomen she’d seen before, the swallows on his pecs, the ship on his arm that she hadn’t. The small musings up and down his arms that she would look closer at later, she decided. In the mean time, she pulled him in by his neck and he collapsed into her, his weight a welcome feeling against her body. Nora widened her knees and hooked her ankles around him, resting them on his lower back. The pressure pushed him closer to her core and she gasped at the feeling—she couldn’t help it. He was big. Bigger than she expected.

Harry stopped his assault on her neck and looked up at her. “This okay?”

“God yes,” she replied. “Keep going.”

He smiled, and returned his lips to her neck, pulling and prodding at her skin with his lips and his teeth, sucking what would be a hickey later onto the juncture of her neck and shoulder. Usually Nora despised hickeys, but she couldn’t find the reason to care right now. Her hands scrabbled at his skin, trying to find purchase, the feeling of him grinding slowly into her and his lips on her neck almost too much.

“Harry,” she said, gasping for air as he tugged at the neck of her shirt to gain more access, “roll over.”

She unhooked her ankles and he rolled, pliant to her words. She straddled him immediately, loving the view of Harry Styles spread out beneath her. His hair was tousled from her fingers, lips swollen from her kisses, chest rising fast from her. She felt him beneath where she sat on his abdomen and it made her smile. Then, she pulled her shirt off and she watched him look at her.

Nora hadn’t always loved her body. She remembered the first time she ever took off her shirt, the boy looking at her didn’t know what to say or do with her breasts, and she hated it. She wondered if they were too big—girls in films have breasts, but never ones that were like hers. The size that hurt when she ran and gave her back aches. The size her friends didn’t really understand—the size Nora hated as a teenager. But in the past two years she decided to stop giving a fuck. She thought she was beautiful and she was done letting what other people think of her change that. And when she let Harry look at her, she was wondering what he was thinking. Did he think she was as beautiful as she does?

And then he told her. “Good lord,” he said, voice hoarse, “you’re gorgeous.” He leaned up and kissed her cleavage that’s exposed, Nora’s fingers finding a home in his curls.

“Fuck, H,” she whined at the feeling of his lips on her tender skin. She bent down and captures his lips with her own, pressing him back onto his back, loving their bare skin on one another. They were battling for both air and dominance, and when Nora’s lips started traveling down his neck and onto his chest, Harry thought he stopped breathing for a second. She sucks a hickey on his pec, right above the swallow, and then blew on it and he practically shivered from the sensitivity.

He could feel her traveling southward and even though he wanted her to suck him off—good lord did he want her too—he stopped her. He tugged her up, reattaching their lips, a “C’mere,” whispered between them. He wanted to kiss her for longer, he wanted to drag this out as long as possible. And also, quite honestly, if she kept occasionally rolling her hips like she was doing he might come from that alone. She was gorgeous, yes in the way she looked, but also the confidence she exuded and the way she told him what she wantd and the way she was tracing up and down his arms and sides with her fingers leaving goosebumps in their wake.

He was fucked, because this girl had managed to turn him into putty after knowing him for just one week.

And then she started really moving her hips back and forth. Nora knew what it wa doing to him and she loved it—loved the knowledge that she was the one making him feel this way and she wanted to see how far it would go, how far she could take it. So as she kissed him, their lips moving in sync, she rolled her hips on his, grinding down every once and a while, drinking up every breathless moan leaving Harry’s lips, savoring each grunt, and when he let out a low, “Nora, please, fuck,” she knew she had him in her hand.

She smiled against his mouth and turned her head, leaning down to his ear, and whispered, “Tell me what you want, H.” He grunted and she rolled her hips again, the seam of his jeans rubbing against her clit in a way that sent shivers down her spine. “What do you want?” She asked, her voice low and dripping with desire.

“You,” he said finally. “Fuck, Nora, I want you.”

Nora kisses his cheek and then makes her way down his chest, making a path right to his dick. Harry had given up any contemplation of waiting, he couldn’t wait anymore. He wanted her so bad it genuinely physically hurt. He needed to come and he needed to come now. Nora popped the button on his jeans and Harry lifted his hips to let her pull them down.

Then, a series of knocks came from the door.

Nora’s head whipped up and so did Harry’s. No one knocked on his door usually. They knew he was private, that he didn’t like people in his space unless he invited them.

“Nora?” Maddy’s voice could be heard over the dull throbbing of the bass from downstairs, and Nora let out a sigh. “We’re heading out babes.”

Nora looked between Harry and the door. “Give me one second,” she called back to Maddy, her eyes not leaving Harry. “I’m going to go,” she told him. She had shit to do tomorrow. But also, she wanted to make sure she was not making a mistake by hooking up with Harry, since she was going to be seeing him all the time for the rest of the semester. She wanted to think about this, because she wasn’t expecting this to happen and needed to take a moment to consider the repercussions of her actions. She barely knew Harry—what would he do if they fuck? Would he ignore her for the rest of the semester? He might be nice, but he was still a fratboy, and Nora had enough experience in that department to know the norm wasn’t to bring a girl flowers after.

“Everything okay?” He asked, sitting up as she snatched her shirt from the other side of the bed where had she discarded it.

She nodded. “I just need a second to…think.”

Harry considered this. He wondered if she was thinking the same thing he is—that they have class together for the rest of the semester and it was probably not the best idea to fuck your classmate the first weekend of the semester. “Okay,” he replied. “No worries. I’ll, uh, see you in class, I guess?”

Nora was tugging on her booties and she looked at him with a small smile on her face. “Bright and early Monday morning.”

Harry got up, rebuttoning his pants. As Nora was about to open the door, he grabbed her wrist, acting on pure instinct, and pressed a kiss against her lips. It was softer than the ones before, a simple kiss that was a goodbye, but also a question. A question begging, “What’s next?” Nora broke the kiss, and with a touch to the hickey left behind above the swallow, she was out the door and gone.

Harry stumbled to his bed, his body hitting the mattress with a sigh.

He was so, so royally fucked.

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i hope you guys enjoyed this! this is my first fic and i’m super excited about her. :) let me know what you think of my lil frat boy harry. there is more coming soon. xoxo

ask me about fratboy!harry here | masterlist here

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shiishki · 3 years

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okay wait, i changed my mind. you should answer all of these questions as well, if that's what you want from me >:)

oof there's a lot of it, that's what i get for wanting to be ✨aesthetic✨

1: 6 of the songs you listen to most?

vowels (and the importance of being me) - hunny

honeypie - jawny

pretty young thing - michael jackson

mirrors - justin timberlake

sunflower - red orange county

paradise - rude-a

2: If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?

a therapist.

ok someone else.. uhh,, my grand grandma because i only have scratches of memories but i dunno if that counts since she passed away...

*rummages through ancient scripts* uhh ok someone who isn't dead.. uhm,, tommie? yeah I'd like to meet them if i could meet anyone on earth

3: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17.

ok, the closest german, english or polish book? nvm i have english

"suddenly was. So I just said thank you a few times too, and Mum" ironically this is one of the normal lines in this book

4: What do you think about most?

the fact that I'll have to do something after school. and I don't know if i want to go to college or get a job bc i have no legitimate idea on what to do with my life. it gets overwhelming, just the lack of knowledge about the actual experience.

5: What does your latest text message from someone else say?

6: Do you sleep with or without clothes on?

with, tho i sleep with just shorts in summer

7: What’s your strangest talent?

not sure if it's a talent, but i can fall asleep anywhere

8: Girls… (finish the sentence); Boys… (finish the sentence)

girls are pretty. boys are pretty

9: Ever had a poem or song written about you?

by me, yes. no one else has written a poem about me specifically. nvm, tommie wrote one and it shall rest on my wall, or desk, i need to find a place for it

10: When is the last time you played the air guitar?

uhh i think last month?

11: Do you have any strange phobias?

i don't think so, but i am hella afraid of the possibly gigantic, terrifying things in the ocean depths that humans haven't discovered yet

12: Ever stuck a foreign object up your nose?

yep, beloved legos as a lil child

13: What’s your religion?

i can't ever remember the name, but i believe gods (from all religions) exist in some way or form. so i believe in different pantheons and etc.

14: If you are outside, what are you most likely doing?

walking my doggo, skateboarding, thinking about how to make the lives of my characters worse

15: Do you prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it?

behind it.

16: Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band?

uhmm the arctic monkeys? or the strokes

17: What was the last lie you told?

i know what i want

18: Do you believe in karma?

yes, the rule of three specifically

19: What does your URL mean?

i don't know. it's something me and my sis came up with and that's just my whole identity now.

20: What is your greatest weakness; your greatest strength?

uhh greatest weakness.. i can't finish things. strength is that I'm very stubborn so maybe I'll finish that thing out of spite

21: Who is your celebrity crush?

i grew up thinking crushes were like unicorns. my ex was odd enough to argue with that i didn't love her if i didn't have a crush on her. but I think if i had to guess.. selena gomez, especially in the role of alex russo in wizard of weverly street

22: Have you ever gone skinny dipping?

nope

23: How do you vent your anger?

i write angry letters. sometimes they're sad letters. i write a lot of letters. except i never send them out and no one made a movie about them :}

24: Do you have a collection of anything?

jars and witchy bottles, books? scented candles

25: Do you prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online?

phone calls are stressful enough as is, i don't need you to see my reading off what i frantically wrote to not stumble over my words

26: Are you happy with the person you’ve become?

i think so, yes, but that won't stop me from becoming better

27: What’s a sound you hate; sound you love?

hate flies buzzing right by my ear, love cat purring

28: What’s your biggest “what if”?

what if I'd been born in a place where it was illegal for me (nonbinary) to live, in a time when others thought of me as a curse?

29: Do you believe in ghosts? How about aliens?

they be chilling.

30: Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm.

right arm, doggo, left arm, pillow

31: Smell the air. What do you smell?

fresh air and doggo, because doggo is with me and I can't live without open windows

32: What’s the worst place you have ever been to?

i dunno tbh

33: Choose: East Coast or West Coast?

which one is less homophobic?

34: Most attractive singer of your opposite gender?

every gender is my opposite gender. selena gomez and justin timberlake

35: To you, what is the meaning of life?

to make it easier for people down the line

36: Define Art.

make thing, thing goes woo

37: Do you believe in luck?

yis

38: What’s the weather like right now?

it's nice actually, very sunny, slight breeze

39: What time is it?

12.59 am

40: Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed?

i don't, but i once crashed into a fire department vehicle with my bike. bike ded.

41: What was the last book you read?

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

42: Do you like the smell of gasoline?

i legit ass don't know what gasoline smells like.

43: Do you have any nicknames?

many variations of my name, aka. Luce

44: What was the last film you saw?

i think it was Robin Hood: King of Thieves, but it might have been that half of spider-man homecoming i managed to watch with my poor internet

45: What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?

oh man i dunno... it's not an injury, but i was very sickly as a lil kid and almost died :)

46: Have you ever caught a butterfly?

once, years ago

47: Do you have any obsessions right now?

hmmm horizon zero dawn i think

48: What’s your sexual orientation?

proud pansexual ^^

49: Ever had a rumour spread about you?

not really, i don't think they're big enough to be actual rumors,, meh

50: Do you believe in magic?

yis

51: Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong?

meh. they suck, i know they suck, that's it.

52: What is your astrological sign?

cancer ♋

53: Do you save money or spend it?

i attempt saving. attempt

54: What’s the last thing you purchased?

for my own money, sweets. i bought lizards for my cats so they can brush their teeth from my dad's amazon acc

55: Love or lust?

luv

56: In a relationship?

nope, i buy my own cookies

57: How many relationships have you had?

1, kinda toxic toward the end, very stressful, don't recommend

58: Can you touch your nose with your tongue?

nu ><

59: Where were you yesterday?

on the fields walking my doggo

60: Is there anything pink within 10 feet of you?

yep, a pastel pink hoodie in my closet uwu

61: Are you wearing socks right now?

yis, thicc warm socks

62: What’s your favourite animal?

cats

63: What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you?

cuddles and food.

64: Where is your best friend?

bold of you to assume i have a best friend.

65: Give me your top 5 favourite blogs on Tumblr.

tommie-hildebrandt, kageyuji, nekomas-kuroo, joyful-soul-collector

66: What is your heritage?

I'm a demon boi from Poland tho that's not a thing to be proud of, i mean, look at the economy. awful.

67: What were you doing last night at 12AM?

sleeping, trying to sleep.

68: What do you think is Satan’s last name?

Pinkton. or Satan.

69: Be honest. Ever gotten yourself off?

this is such an odd combination of words i had to look it up. yea.

70: Are you the kind of friend you would want to have as a friend?

a friend who won't laugh at me when i ask them to order smth for me because I'm too anxious to.

71: You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do?

excuse me? i am saving the doggo wtf. f u boss, I'm gonna sell my tragic story to the news.

a) i tell my parents. b) live the hell out of them uwu c) nope uwu.

73: You can only have one of these things; trust or love.

trust.

74: What’s a song that always makes you happy when you hear it?

history maker - dean fujioka :]

75: What are the last four digits in your cell phone number?

3332

76: In your opinion, what makes a great relationship?

communication, trust, some more communication.

77: How can I win your heart?

let's not pretend to be something else to please each other, and bring some bitter chocolate.

78: Can insanity bring on more creativity?

maybe. it could. i don't have a say in it since my sanity is held by tape.

79: What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far?

eat the pizza. stop caring about others not liking me/parts of me. just living for myself uwu.

80: What size shoes do you wear?

uh i dunno how the american sizes work and i don't wanna look it up so, 39, 40 fits too.

81: What would you want to be written on your tombstone?

demon boi

82: What is your favourite word?

socks.

83: Give me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word; heart.

the bloody organ that sits in your chest and pumps blood into your body so you don't die.

84: What is a saying you say a lot?

uhm im not sure if that counts as a saying, but fake it till you make it

85: What’s the last song you listened to?

blinding lights - the weeknd

86: Basic question; what’s your favourite colour/colours?

oh a normal question people use for ice breaking, sea blue and pastel variations of it.

87: What is your current desktop picture?

like my wallpaper? or the actual picture that sits on my desk? or how my desk looks like atm? it's ugly, a lot of papers and pens and schoolbooks.

88: If you could press a button and make anyone in the world instantaneously explode, who would it be?

donald trump. or the next asshole who'll try to take the rights of the lgbt and poc away

89: What would be a question you’d be afraid to tell the truth on?

this. this is the question.

90: One night you wake up because you heard a noise. You turn on the light to find that you are surrounded by MUMMIES. The mummies aren’t really doing anything, they’re just standing around your bed. What do you do?

yo there's a pizza somewhere in the refrigerator, want me to heat it up? we can have a sleep over and talk about our feelings :3

91: You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What is that power?

telekinesis! or shapeshifting! i could do such fun things with telekinesis ^^ yeah I'd totally eat some radioactive veggies

92: You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again?

that time my "friends" got me into shoplifting, half-hour is more than enough to punch some sense into my brain and develop good music taste

93: You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?

can i save this one? i don't think i have an experience horrible enough to be erased haha

94: You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be?

sleep as in.. uh no thank u. but I'm down for a sleep over with sam smith ^^

95: You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go?

just me? what about my pets? my fam? it's lowkey illegal for me to go just anywhere without them owO

uhhmm, greece. imma become part of the greek pantheon out of pure spite. and maybe toronto canada.

96: Do you have any relatives in jail?

not any that i know of o.o

97: Have you ever thrown up in the car?

i think i may have but i honestly don't remember

98: Ever been on a plane?

nope, i dunno if i like planes, but I'd probably sleep if i were on one.

99: If the whole world were listening to you right now, what would you say?

yeet.

#that was long #probably because my stubborn ass wanted to make pretty formatting #shiishki.rambles #shiishki.interacts with tommie

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honestlyjustanidiot · 3 years

Note

1, 3, 7, 12, 16, 19, 21, 23, 24, 27, 30, 32, 35, 36, 39, 42, 44, 47, 48, 51, 53, 55, 59, 63, 64, 67, 70, 72, 73, 77, 79, 81, 84, 88, 90, 91, 94, 96, 99 hope you’re bored !

1: 6 of the songs you listen to most? - according to receiptify some of my top songs currently are: Slow Burn by Kacey Musgraves, Sweater Weather by The Neighbourhood, Rainbow by Kacey Musgraves, Whiskey Nose by The Silver Bars, Love On The Line (Call Now) by Her's, Tonight Belongs To You from The Prom (film version)

3: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17. - Many girls were medically certified as "hysterical" or "of unsound mind" or even "morally degenerate", and the baby would be forcibly removed and brought up in the workhouse.

7: What’s your strangest talent? - genuinely don't know, don't even think I have any talents apart from being good at a couple of sports

12: Ever stuck a foreign object up your nose? - yeah no

16: Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band? - it's a tie between Marian Hill or Her's. It always used to be Marian Hill but recently I fell in love with Her's music just from my sister playing her friend's music in the house. I highly recommend both bands and both have very different vibes.

19: What does your URL mean? - that am just a bit on an idiot tbh

21: Who is your celebrity crush? - Lauren Jauregui, Alycia Debmam-Carey, Amalia Holm. Too many to choose from.

23: How do you vent your anger? - sometimes I journal and get out everything I want to say, sometimes I work out and work through the anger physically which always makes me feel better even if it's just a quick jog or something. I used to have a specific set of 3 songs I would listen to in a certain order to calm me down and then make me happy.

24: Do you have a collection of anything? - I don't but my housemates joke that I collect medical tape (microporous, zinc oxide, kt etc) because I'm always getting small injuries that can be treated and prevented at home lol

27: What’s a sound you hate; sound you love? - Hate the sound of people eating or making noises from their mouth. Love the sound of a crowd at a match or the general sound of Roses (our inter-uni varsity competition)

30: Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm. - a wall to might right and a textbook from first year to my left

32: What’s the worst place you have ever been to? - York uni lol

35: To you, what is the meaning of life? - to increase the entropy of the universe. To me I think it's just to love in whatever form that is, with hobbies, careers, people, animals, natire, literal anything

36: Define Art. - to me art is the beauty you find in something. Anything can be art. A painting, sure, but also the way a flower blooms, or the way heart works in intricate detail, or the view of the earth from space. Anything you think beautiful I think is art to you

39: What time is it? - quarter past 11 at night

42: Do you like the smell of gasoline? - oddly yeah and I shouldn't because it might be carcinogenic

44: What was the last film you saw? - actually think it was The Prom on netflix lol

47: Do you have any obsessions right now? - not that I can recall?

48: What’s your sexual orientation? - bi

51: Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong? - I have been known to but I'm trying to get better at moving on for myself

53: Do you save money or spend it? - save it

55: Love or lust? - love

59: Where were you yesterday? - my parents house

63: What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you? - idk?

64: Where is your best friend? - in their parents house in a different town

67: What were you doing last night at 12AM? - sleeping lol

70: Are you the kind of friend you would want to have as a friend? - absolutely

72: You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid? - a) I'd tell the people I love the most so they have time to plan and adjust. B) have as much fun as I can. C) probably yeah

73: You can only have one of these things; trust or love. - trust

77: How can I win your heart? - make me laugh, show me you want me, and show me you're a good person and you'll have me falling at your knees

79: What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far? - to stick it out with my best friend despite other people have too many opinions about us

81: What would you want to be written on your tombstone? - couldn't pay, got taken away

84: What is a saying you say a lot? - don't threaten me with a good time

88: If you could press a button and make anyone in the world instantaneously explode, who would it be? - there's a few people but see the grudge question for why I won't be answering that

91: You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What is that power? - super healing maybe

94: You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be? - Lauren jauregui

96: Do you have any relatives in jail? - not anymore lol

99: If the whole world were listening to you right now, what would you say? - I would say I would like to date a certain person and also tell them to vote for a certain person in the SU elections lol

#Asks #Ask #Anon #ask me any question #ask me anything #Ama #ask me questions

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rachelkaser · 4 years

Text

Stay Golden Sunday: On Golden Girls

Blanche’s rebellious grandson visits, and the Girls help straighten him out. Also, we get more information about St. Olaf.

Picture it...

Blanche is upset and a wreck -- and not, as Dorothy initially assumes, because she has cellulite. Her daughter Janet is attempting to fix her ailing marriage with a second honeymoon to Hawaii, and Blanche will have to look after 14-year-old grandson, David, for two weeks. Dorothy initially grouses about having a teenager in the house while she’s studying for a French exam, but they all agree to help Blanche look after David, including taking him to see Rambo.

SOPHIA: I sat through it twice, you’ll love it. He sweats like a pig and doesn’t put his shirt on.

The next day, the girls prepare for David’s arrival, while Sophia complains about having to put up with Dorothy snoring. Blanche comes home in a panic, saying David never got off the plane. A police officer arrives with David moments later and says he stowed away on the plane while it went onto the Bahamas. David talks to the girls for a grand total of two minutes before skipping out to go hang out a burger joint, despite Blanche’s pleas for him to stay. Sophia says Blanche should have smacked him for his disrespect, but Dorothy thinks the St. Olaf story Rose was about to tell would be punishment enough.

At night, Dorothy is trying to study while Sophia goes about her very noisy toilette (which for some reason involves patting Nivea onto the backs of her hands and immediately scrubbing it off with tissues). Dorothy can’t study with the noise, so both of them turn in for the night. They argue over the amount of topical ointments Sophia’s wearing, and the hacking sounds she makes as she’s sleeping. Dorothy reminisces about how she would crawl into bed with Sophia when she was a kid and had a nightmare. They bid a fond goodnight and finally settle down.

Suddenly, loud music booms through the house, waking everyone up. They run to the living room, where David and a few other teenagers are listening to rock music on a stereo. Dorothy sends the strangers on their way and tells David to clean up. David starts to throw what can best be described as a hissy fit over not being able to have his new friends over, and starts to mouth off to all of the girls. As soon as he gets into Sophia’s face, she lands his with a resounding slap. This quickly shuts him up and sends him running from the room.

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Blanche goes to check on David, who’s still reeling from Sophia’s smack. He says he wants to go home, and when Blanche tells them he can’t because his parents aren’t there, David says it’s no different from when his parents are there. He breaks down and tells Blanche how his parents neglect him because they’re always fighting, and angrily rebuffs Blanche’s attempts to comfort him.

The next day, the girls give Blanche a collected list of chores David can start doing. Blanche isn’t sure how it’ll help, but Rose and Dorothy talk about how the chores they did growing up gave them a sense of responsibility. Blanche realizes the way she raised Janet -- not having to do anything, just as she was raised -- may have contributed to David’s current behavior, and decides she’s going to make up for these mistakes by doing what’s best for him.

ROSE: Did they have chores in Sicily? SOPHIA: Are you kidding? They invented chores in Sicily. Crossing the street without getting pregnant was a chore in Sicily. DOROTHY: Rose, never mention Sicily.

One night, Dorothy catches David trying to sneak out and asks him where he intends to go and what he’s going to do. David doesn’t have an answer, but protests all the work he has to do. Dorothy accuses him of wimping out and says life is going to get a lot tougher than some chores at his grandmother’s house. David finally opens up and talks about how upset he is. Dorothy reminds him that he’s surrounded by people who care about him and he’ll always be welcome, good-naturedly negotiating a chore exchange and cheering him up.

Some time later, the girls are having dinner with David, celebrating Dorothy passing her French exam. They also toast David’s improved attitude. He says that it “hasn’t been half-bad” and earnestly asks the girls to let him live with them permanently. Sophia hustles him out for ice cream and tells Blanche to call his mother. Blanche gets Janet on the phone and says David’s so happy at her home that she’s going to keep him. While we can’t hear Janet, she naturally protests. Blanche acknowledges she can’t keep him against his parents’ will, but gives Janet a stern warning about the consequences of neglecting him further.

BLANCHE: If you and Michael don’t straighten up and given that boy the love and attention he deserves, I will kick your uppity butt ‘til Hell won’t have it again!

The girls say goodbye to David, who’s going to join his parents in Hawaii. Blanche tells him to give his parents a chance, and Dorothy reassures him that he’ll always have a place with them. After he’s gone, the girls hope he’ll be okay. Sophia, meanwhile, will be happy not having to live with Dorothy’s infamous snores anymore.

“What are you trying to do, pickle yourself so you’ll live to be 100?”

I’m swiftly going to run out of ways to say “this is the first time the girls do X” but it’s the first season, so there are a lot of first times. While this isn’t the first time we’ve seen the girls with one of their offspring, this is the first time we’ve seen them do some parenting and discuss parenting.

ROSE: I just fixed a special treat for David. It’s the same little afterschool snack I used to make for my own son: A triple-decker BLT, a hearty helping of homemade potato salad, and a great, big slice of double chocolate fudge cake. DOROTHY: Oh, where was he going after school? The electric chair?

It’s actually kind of heartbreaking that it’s in a case of child abuse that we get to see them show off their parenting skills -- but I do appreciate that they cut David some slack and get to the root of his issues. I think a lesser show would just have the rebellious teenager “learn something” from his grandma and her friends and shape up, but Blanche instead gets him to open up about the real problem, which is that his parents are too wrapped up in their own problems to take care of him -- not to mention, as Blanche keeps mentioning, his father’s a Yankee.

I mean, this poor kid is so emotionally starved he thinks his parents would be thrilled to get rid of him -- and that’s unambiguously shown to be their fault, not his. Dorothy’s little speech challenging him not to give up on the people who’re actually making an effort to help him is a believable exchange between a teenager and a teacher. Fun fact: Billy Jacoby, the actor who plays David, was 16 when this episode aired.)

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While I know it couldn’t happen within the confines of the show, part of me wishes he really could live with Blanche and the girls. I’m not sure if it was not as common for kids to be raised by their grandparents in the late 80s, but it certainly wouldn’t be unusual today. Still, if anything, this is the first time we get an idea of how hands-off a parent Blanche was, and how much she’d like to make up for that -- that’s definitely something that’ll come up again later in the show.

For what it’s worth, she strikes me as one of those people who’s a better grandparent than parent, but she does do some parenting in this episode: namely, her harsh correction of Janet, who’s too wrapped up in her own problems to take care of David. Blanche may not approve of Sophia’s more brutal forms of correction, but her going off on her daughter was no less impressive than that slap.

Now I’m gonna go on record to say I disapprove of hitting children. While I don’t have any of my own yet, I don’t believe children should be hit on the face or anywhere else as a punishment or preventative measure -- nor should anyone, if I’m being honest. However, I will say that I don’t think that’s what Sophia was doing. Her smack was more akin to when you slap someone who’s hysterical -- David was clearly whipping himself into a froth and any attempts to talk him down or intimidate him weren’t working, so Sophia administered a little… percussive intervention to bring him back down to earth.

Like Dorothy says later, it comes from a place of caring, and I think Sophia of all characters knows when something like that will help rather than hurt... melon baller notwithstanding. I do appreciate that Dorothy and Sophia’s interactions, both when they’re arguing and when they’re sharing fond memories, shows a healthy dynamic between parent and child to contrast what poor David is going through. There’s not much of a B-plot to this episode aside from Dorothy’s French exam, and much of it centers around the single scene of the two arguing in bed, but it’s by far the funniest scene in the whole episode.

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Having watched all of the episodes up to this point -- and spending roughly a week over-analyzing each episode -- I think this is the first time we’ve ever gotten some true St. Olaf stories. Given that Blanche, Dorothy, and Sophia have their assigned “tasks” in the episode, the writers decided to give Rose the job of adding a little color and humor to the episode.

They do this by having Rose describe some stories from her home life on the farm, including Alice, the cow you had to milk while sitting on a stool -- as in, she sits on the stool. It’s our first indication that something isn’t quite right about the place where Rose comes from, though we only have her responsibilities as a child to go by. It’s not going to be the last time we hear about it, by a longshot, but it’s a great teaser of the sort of bizarro logic that St. Olaf runs on. And I really want to hear now what the heck happened to Alice that she had to sit on a stool.

By the way, the title is a reference to On Golden Pond, a film which also features a teenage boy bonding with grandparents -- and part of me wonders if this whole plot happened because they just couldn’t resist the reference to another well-known “Golden” thing.

Episode rating: 🍰🍰🍰 (three cheesecake slices out of five)

Best part of the episode:

BLANCHE: Is that all you Italians know how to do -- scream and hit? SOPHIA: No, we also know how to make love and sing opera.

#golden girls #stay golden #stay golden sunday #blanche devereaux #on golden girls #sophia petrillo #dorothy zbornak #rose nylund #s01e06

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tripsonflatground · 4 years

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Is it just me, or is it kinda capitalist that in order to get new superheroes, people kill off or age up the old ones and then put the new heroes in the same role/identity? Like, they killed Peter Parker to have Miles Morales. Bucky Barnes and Falcon/Sam Wilson both became Captain America after the death or age & retirement of Steve Rogers, depending on whether you’re looking at the comics or the MCU. Batman goes through Robins and Batgirls like it’s going out of style (and seriously, why does Dick Grayson let other people be Robin? That was a personal nickname from his birth family, right? Why would he give something so intimate away?). Replacing someone else and living up to their legacy rather than making your own path was a whole plot point/theme in Spider-man: Far From Home!

There are exceptions to this, like X-23 and Wolverine, who have managed to have some form of a father-daughter relationship in the comics (although, if memory serves, I believe he’s been killed in recent comics and she replaced him as Wolverine - though I haven’t read anything recent, so I might be wrong, and in the film Logan they killed him off). And things like Conner/Superboy from Young Justice being created with the idea to replace Superman doesn’t count in the same way because it was a villainous plot and Con didn’t end up following through. And there’s a new Ms. Marvel now that Carol Danvers is Captain Marvel, which is a much better alternative considering that Carol wasn’t using that identity anymore.

The idea I’m trying to get at, if it isn’t clear, is that the costume identity, AKA Spider-man, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. seems to me the thing that’s given value while the person behind the mask is more recently being treated as expendable/dispensable. Which doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, because the person created the mask, and so much of themselves and who they are and what their goals are drove the reasons behind the creation of the identity and the way they behave in that identity. It’s like being a kid and trying on your parents’ clothes or getting hand-me-downs, even if it fits, you didn’t exactly choose it, and you look different wearing it. And I’m calling this capitalist because it feels like capitalism. If we equate being a superhero to a job, which in many ways it really is, especially if you are employed by an organization to do it like SHIELD, then the value is being placed on the role/job, and not with the labor. Capitalism doesn’t give a shit who’s doing the job and how they’re being treated as long as it’s getting done. Employees in the service/retail industry get treated like shit and don’t get paid enough but that will never change unless people have other options and aren’t desperate enough to accept those conditions and get something better. Recently, with the deaths and/or replacements of superheroes in order to have someone else fill the identity in comics and films, the individuals behind the mask, who are the real source of emotional connection and relatability, not the mask, seem to have become dispensable in the eyes of the creators.

And I do get that it’s a shortcut and an attempt to bring in new audiences by putting more modern characters into recognizable roles. But why does the original character have to *die*?

Yeah, superhero-ism is a dangerous occupation, sure, but doesn’t death seem like the most extreme option? It’s not as if there aren’t other possibilities:

1.Having characters be located somewhere else other than New York City or its fictional equivalent (Metropolis, Gotham, etc). There are other major cities in the US where crime happens, let alone other cities in the world. Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, Dallas, Detroit, Atlanta, Seattle, Philadelphia. Who doesn’t want to imagine a Spider-man or a Batman with a Boston accent? Wouldn’t it be a cool storyline if other Kryptonians not related to Superman escaped Krypton and eventually made it to Earth and moved to different cities and took up mantles and eventually the Kryptonian race could start rebuilding on Earth? Talk about a really interesting and positive way to show a diasporic community. And also, it doesn’t make any sense statistically that the majority of the world’s superheroes are in the US. Put some in Toronto, Paris, London, Cairo, Sydney, Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, Rome, Athens, Rio, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Seoul, Istanbul, etc. If the Olympics happen there, then there’s probably a lot of people that need saving and crime happening. It’s especially dumb with the alien invasion stories where they show the audience aliens popping up in places other than NYC and suddenly the heroes have to get other there, like unless you got super-speed or teleportation, it’s going to take a while, and how are you even going to communicate with the civilians if there’s a language barrier?

2.Having characters be from other dimensions. Marvel and DC have a history of playing with alternate timelines and multi-verse theory. Into The Spiderverse was a super-popular movie that inspired tons of people to make their own Spidersonas, and the lesson that can be taken from it is that you can take a character and make it still feel unique or individualistic even if you’re using similar themes. Maybe instead of the dimensions having evil versions they have to fight or being fucked up in some other way, make the new version of Wonder Woman or Iron Man or whatever be from an alternate dimension and end up in the main because of science/magic, or a dimension-hopping villain they’re fighting, or an accident, or to get help from other versions of themselves, or even escaping from an apocalypse/doomsday from their own universe. It’s so easy to either send them back to their own universe when you decide you’re done playing with them or keep them around if you want them permanently. Wouldn’t it be fascinating if the Captain America we’re familiar with met a Captain America from an alternate universe where he fought in the American Revolution or for the Union in the Civil War or even in WW1 or Vietnam?

3.Having female characters take on feminine versions of the identity, or vice versa, or non-binary characters find a way to have a gender-neutral version. This has been done with Hulk and She-Hulk, Superman and Supergirl, Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel back when Captain Marvel was a dude, Spider-man’s daughter May was Spider-girl at one point, Batman’s cousin or something is Batwoman. There’s also been some adjacents, such as AntMan and Wasp or Wolverine and X-23. There are definitely ways that you can use a familiar identity to put more female and non-binary superheroes out there. I mean, military titles (the Captains) or even names like Black Panther, Green Lantern, and Flash aren’t even gendered. You can feminize names if you want to, but I’m pretty sure the female Hawkeye is just straight-up Hawkeye. People like Thor I feel differently about because Thor’s an actual mythological character, not something Marvel came up with, but you could just use a different Norse god/goddess? And yeah, Dr. Strange is the man’s actual name so that’s also a little different, but if he had a daughter or a non-binary child who also got their doctorate, they are in fact entitled to call themselves Dr. Strange rather than something lesser. Not to mention, that whole alternate universe versions point I just made? Yeah, these can be characters from gender-bent alternate universes or a universe where humans are androgynous or something.

4.Have multiple characters use the same secret identity. This would be the perfect concept for twins or friends with the same build. The bank’s been robbed but A is on a date? B can totally show up at the scene! B got really hurt in their last fight? A’s got them covered. There’s a bit of risk to it, like if people recognize they have different voices or someone notices them at two different crises happening at the same time, but that’s just what makes the challenge of pretending to be the same person interesting. And it could get even more complex if you had triplets doing it, or four college roommates, or whatever. It’s also a great excuse to be able to write deep interpersonal relationships and identity struggles. Hell, can you imagine how much scarier multiple Batmans would be? They could play even more on the “you never know where he’s going to be next or what shadow he could be hiding in” thing, like, just when the crook thinks he’s lost Batman, another comes out out of nowhere.

And if superhero writers don’t want to do any of this, there’s also the C-List and D-List heroes that maybe got introduced in like the 70′s or 80′s or whatever but didn’t take or ended up being a blip in another character’s backstory. If you want more modern superheros connected to the major ones so you can use them in the same stories, it is totally valid IMO to try revitalizing these obscure concepts. I have a vested interest in seeing if Monica Rambeau shows up as her hero identity Photon in the Captain Marvel sequel. This idea is still using what you have, but it doesn’t capitalize the lives of the characters you have or make them expendable in any way. In fact, it’s also kind of like recycling, or the opposite of capitalism, because you’re trying to use alternative resources or all of your resources instead of very specific ones to the point of over-saturation.

Look, I’m just very tired of superheroes getting killed off to be replaced by someone else using the same identity or because it’s edgy or dark or whatever. Even a debilitating injury that leaves them in a wheelchair or blind or deaf is a hell of a lot more interesting. Once a character’s dead, they’re dead, there’s nowhere else you can take them unless you bring them back to life (which admittedly happens a lot in superhero universe) or have them hang around as a ghost or something. It’s boring, it doesn’t give the audience any closure and just messes with their emotions for shock value, and it promotes toxic capitalism.

#superheroes #marvel #dc #capitalism #killing characters #alternatives to killing characters

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darkestwolfx · 4 years

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Colony - Re-Review #31

Note: due to CITV changing the time of their reruns (hooray - not), the Re-Review series will be moving from 6:30pm to 6:45pm for uploads.

Wow... it’s difficult to find screenshots for this episode online, that’s for sure!

“You’re a hard man to find, Captain Taylor. I wish you’d find less dangerous ways to spend your retirement.”

“Just trying to keep busy now that I’m back on Earth. Taking it easy’s never been my style.”

“Then this may interest you. Can retirement wait a little bit longer, Captain?”

The answer is yes, of course it’s a yes! It makes complete sense since Lee used to help Jeff with IR.

“The Helios is a transport ship, designed to reach Mars, and send landing pods to the life support systems on the surface. Dozens of families are on board, and would be the first to actually live on the planet.”

“Unless you count all the aliens!”

“Ignore him.”

Let’s remember Alan did see alien life only two episodes ago... I get the feeling he’s been going on about it in those scenes we don’t see. A lot. I want to say that John is talking to EOS in this scene (where has she gone again, writers? I will eternally ask this question), because there is no other imaginary figure in the room.

Anyone else getting ‘The Martian’ (2015) vibes?

I really loved having this man back! It’s been a while since we last saw him and I was so pleased that they had him return. 1. because he is a great character, but 2. because he is one of the last surviving links to Jeff, and so you can be sure hints are going to drop when he’s around. It’s nice that Alan gets to spend more time with him in this ep as well, considering it’s Alan who always has the gap in memories on his father which his brother’s don’t.

This seems like the perfect way to fill that gap to me.

“Plus you were second person in history to ever set foot on Mars.”

“Just behind the great Jeff Tray himself, those were the days.”

Look at that - I told you, didn’t I tell you? - and it only took three and half minutes! And that’s only the first reference, there’s bound to be more.

“Like you boys say - Thunderbirds are off! Wait, that’s not it. Thunderbirds have left the building! Thunderbirds are...”

“Go?”

“That’s the one.”

Mars. There’s a Mars launch mission. Now, we’ve seen a story a little like this before in ‘Thunderbirds Are Go’ (1966 film) with the crew of the Zero-X (who okay, made it to Mars), but with a few problems on the way. Similar story here. Sort of.

I love how Scott was relegated to the backseat for the launch as well!

“Captain, there’s even a handy chart that lists all our names and vehicles. Just in case”

“Thanks Brian.”

“It’s Brains.”

Yeah.. no “just in case” about it. Let’s pull up the chart.

“Are we there yet?”

Um, did anyone else kinda feel like Scott sounded a little like someone else in that moment? I’ll even give you a hint.

“You and Dad were the first team to ever land there.”

“Nearly didn’t. Dust storm almost made us call off the descent, but we took the risk and went anyway. Jeff said ‘humanity never got anywhere taking it easy’. I’ve always remembered that. Gordon here should take it to heart every time he pilots Thunderbird Three.”

“Um... I’m Alan, Sir.”

Let’s pull the chart back up... At least he got a name correct, if not the right brother.

“Will do, Virgil!”

“It’s Scott, Sir! Nevermind.”

I spoke too soon. My apologies everyone.

“Captain Taylor, do you read me?”

“FAD, uh B. Whatever that means.”

You were there with Jeff when he set IR up! We were relying on you to know Lee! Right, we’re all doomed to never know the full truth.

“She may still be trying to fix the engines.”

Yeah, she probably could have done with Lee there sooner.

“Why are you reconnecting the power feed coils? That could take the systems offline.”

“Exactly! The proton storm didn’t damage your systems, it put them on hold. We need to manually re-jump each connection to get things running again.”

Captain Taylor really is the expert in fixing things, isn’t he? Can he come and fix my WI-FI? Seriously, I still need to choose who I’m swapping to after all this is over.

“Remind me to thank Brains for this.”

“Ok. Hey, Scott, remember to thank Brains.”

“Very funny, Thunderbird Three.”

Look at Alan thinking on the spot and doing his little commentaries.

“Impressive Thunderbird Three. Remind me to thank you later.”

“Ok, Scott-”

“Later, Thunderbird Three.”

“We got a big rocky problem ahead.”

Yeah you do, Scott...

“We just lost the landing pods.”

“I can’t keep this up Captain.”

Breathe, everyone. They all survive.

“Glad to have you back Pod Explorer. Remind me to thank you sometime.”

“Ok, Alan?”

“Later, Scott.”

I’m liking these little thrown-in bits of humour.

“It’s never too late to start again.”

Very true Captain Taylor.

“The chances of the Helius landing without breaking apart are very slim.”

“But it’s the only option we have.”

And so that translates to Scott as ‘let’s get on board the floating ship of possible death, even though Alan’s idea might get me killed’. Yeah... I wouldn’t have done that personally but hey, there we go.

That landing still makes me nervous, don’t know about annyone else.

“Alan! You’re back!”

“Sorry, Scott, couldn’t let you have all the fun.”

Meaning ‘couldn’t let you get yourself killed on my watch’.

“Scott? Captain Taylor? Does anyone read me?”

“Loud and clear, Alan.”

“Captain! You’re alive! And you got my name right!”

And because I’ve only just realised I forgot all about keeping count, here is the updated rescue score.

Rescue count: 38

Are we nearing anyone’s bet for the whole series yet? I still need to work out a suitable prize for the person who guesses the closest...

This was a moment I loved to the death - the amount of times I must have watched just this scene alone when this episode first came out... I’ve lost count.

“This is the same site your dad and I landed on all these years ago. Actually, Scott, if it’s all the same to you I think I’ll stay a while. It’s never too late to start again. I can’t think of a better place than Mars to spend my Golden Years.”

“Should we get back to you in a month?”

“Better make it two.”

Yeah... we’ll get around to that at some point.

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justforbooks · 4 years

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Terry Jones obituary

One morning Brian Cohen, completely naked, flung open the shutters at his bedroom window to find a mob below hailing him as the Messiah. Mrs Cohen, played by Terry Jones, who has died aged 77, had something to say about that. “He’s not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy,” she told the disappointed crowd. It became a classic cinema moment.

The 1979 film Monty Python’s Life of Brian, a satire about an ordinary Jewish boy mistaken for the Messiah, which Jones directed and co-wrote with his fellow Pythons Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle and Michael Palin, was banned by 39 British local authorities, and by Ireland and Norway. Jones and his chums were unrepentant: they even launched a Swedish poster campaign with the slogan: “So funny it was banned in Norway.”

As for Jones’s performance as Mandy Cohen, it united two leading facets of the funnyman’s repertoire: his fondness for female impersonation, and his passion for historical revisionism. The latter was evident not just in his work for Monty Python – in which his historian’s sensibility proved essential to the satire of Arthurian England in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), which he co-directed and co-wrote – but also in several documentaries and books in which he stood up for what he took to be the misrepresented Middle Ages.

“We think of medieval England as being a place of unbelievable cruelty and darkness and superstition,” he said. “We think of it as all being about fair maidens in castles, and witch-burning, and a belief that the world was flat. Yet all these things are wrong.”

Arguably, without Jones, Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969-74) would not have revolutionised British TV comedy. He was key in developing the show’s distinctively trippy, stream-of-consciousness format, where each surreal set-up (the Lumberjack Song, the upper-class twit of the year show, the dead parrot, or the fish-slapping dance) flowed into the next, unpunctuated by punchlines.

For all his directorial flair, though, Jones may well be best remembered for creating such characters as Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson, Cardinal Biggles of the Spanish Inquisition, the Scottish poet Ewan McTeagle and the monstrous musician rodent beater in the mouse organ sketch who hits specially tuned mice with mallets.

Thanks to the show’s success, Jones was able to diversify into working as a writer, poet, librettist, film director, comedian, actor and historian. “I’ve been very lucky to have been able to act, write and direct and not have to choose just the one thing,” he said.

Jones was a second world war baby, born in Colwyn Bay, north Wales, and brought up by his mother, Dilys (nee Newnes), and grandmother, while his father, Alick Jones, was stationed with the RAF in India. He recalled meeting his father for the first time when he returned from war service: “Through plumes of steam at the end of the platform, he appeared – this lone figure in a forage cap and holding a kit bag. He ran over and kissed my mum, then my brother, then bent down and picked me up and planted one right on me. I’d only ever been kissed by the smooth lips of a lady up until that point, so his bristly moustache was quite disturbing.”

When he was four, the family moved to Surrey so his father could take up an appointment as a bank clerk. Terry attended primary school in Esher and the Royal Grammar school in Guildford. He studied English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and developed a lifelong interest in medieval history as a result of reading Chaucer.

At Oxford, he started the Experimental Theatre Company with his friend and contemporary Michael Rudman, performing everything from Brecht to cabaret. He also met Palin and the historian Robert Hewson, and collaborated with them on a satire on the death penalty called Hang Down Your Head and Die. It was set in a circus ring, with Jones playing the condemned man. He and Palin then worked together on the Oxford Revue, a satirical sketch show they performed at the 1964 Edinburgh festival, where he met David Frost as well as Chapman, Idle and Cleese.

After graduation, he was hired as a copywriter for Anglia Television and then taken on as a script editor at the BBC, where he worked as joke writer for BBC2’s Late Night Line-Up (1964-72). Jones and Palin became fixtures on the booming TV satire scene, writing for, among other BBC shows, The Frost Report (1966-67) and The Kathy Kirby Show (1964), as well as the ITV comedy sketch series Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967-69).

In 1967, he and Palin were invited to write and perform for Twice a Fortnight, a BBC sketch show that provided a training ground not only for a third of the Pythons (Jones and Palin), but two-thirds of the Goodies (Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie) and the co-creator of the 1980s political sitcom Yes Minister, Jonathan Lynn.

Jones and Palin wrote and starred in The Complete and Utter History of Britain (1969) for LWT. Its conceit was to relate historical incidents as if TV had existed at the time. In one sketch, Samuel Pepys was a chat show host; in another, a young couple of ancient Britons looking for their first home were shown around the brand-new Stonehenge. “It’s got character, charm – and a slab in the middle,” said the estate agent.

In the same year, he became one of the six founders of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. They expected the show to be quickly decommissioned by BBC bosses. “Every episode we’d be there biting our nails hoping someone might find it funny. Right up until the middle of the second series John Cleese’s mum was still sending him job adverts for supermarket managers cut out from her local newspaper,” Jones recalled. “It was only when they started receiving sackfuls of correspondence from school kids saying they loved it that we knew we were saved.”

After Python finished its run on TV, Jones went on to direct several films with the troupe. The first, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, was, he recalled, “a disaster when we first showed it. The audiences would laugh for the first five minutes and then silence, nothing. So we re-cut it. Then we’d show it in different cities, saying, ‘We’re worried about our film, would you come and look at it?’ And as a result people would come and they’d all be terribly worried about it too, so it was a nightmare.”

He had more fun co-writing and directing two series for the BBC called Ripping Yarns (1976-79) in which Palin starred as a series of heroic characters in mock-adventure stories, among them Across the Andes by Frog, and Roger of the Raj, sending up interwar literature aimed at schoolboys.

Jones directed and starred in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, which some religious groups denounced for supposedly mocking Christianity. Jones defended the film: “It wasn’t about what Christ was saying, but about the people who followed him – the ones who for the next 2,000 years would torture and kill each other because they couldn’t agree on what he was saying about peace and love.”

In 1983 he directed Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, in which he made, perhaps, his most disgusting appearance, as Mr Creosote, a ludicrously obese diner, who is served dishes while vomiting repeatedly.

During this decade Jones diversified, proving there was life after Python. In 1980, he published Chaucer’s Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary, arguing that the supposed paragon of Christian virtue could be demonstrated to be, if one studied the battles Chaucer claimed he was involved in, a typical, perhaps even vicious, mercenary. He also set out to overturn the idea of Richard II presented in the work of Shakespeare “who paints him more like sort of a weak … unmanly character”. Jones portrayed the king as a victim of spin: “There’s a possibility that Richard was actually a popular king,” he said.

He wrote children’s books, starting with The Saga of Erik the Viking (1983), which he composed originally for his son, Bill. A book of rhymes, The Curse of the Vampire’s Socks (1989), featured such characters as the Sewer Kangaroo and Moby Duck.

In 1987, he directed Personal Services, a film about the madam of a suburban brothel catering for older men, starring Julie Walters. The story was inspired by the experiences of the Streatham brothel-keeper Cynthia Payne. Jones proudly related that three of four films banned in Ireland were directed by him – The Life of Brian, The Meaning of Life and Personal Services.

Two years later, he directed Erik the Viking, a film adaptation of his book, with Tim Robbins in the title role of a young Norseman who declines to go into the family line of raping and pillaging. In 1996, he adapted Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows for the big screen, giving himself the role of Mr Toad, with Ratty and Mole played by Idle and Steve Coogan. But it was rarely screened in cinemas. “It was ruined by studio politicking between Disney and Columbia Tristar,” he said. “We made a really nice film but no one saw it. It didn’t make any money, even though it was well reviewed.”

Jones was also unfortunate with his next film project. Absolutely Anything, based on a script he wrote with the screenwriter Gavin Scott, concerned aliens coming to Earth and giving one person absolute power. Plans were scuppered when a movie with a similar premise, Bruce Almighty, starring Jim Carrey, was released in 2003. Only in 2015 did Jones manage to film Absolutely Anything, in which Simon Pegg, playing a mild-mannered schoolteacher, is given miraculous powers by a council of CGI aliens voiced by Jones and his former Monty Python colleagues. Robin Williams, in one of his last roles, voiced Pegg’s dog.

Jones made well-received history documentaries, including in 2002 The Hidden History of Egypt, The Hidden History of Rome and The Hidden History of Sex & Love, in which he examined the diets, hygiene, careers, sex lives and domestic arrangements of the ancient world, often appearing in the films as an ancient character, sometimes dressed as a woman.

In his book Who Murdered Chaucer? (2003), he wondered if the poet had been killed on behalf of King Henry IV for being politically troublesome.

He wrote for the Guardian, about the poll tax, nuclear power and the ozone layer. He became a vocal opponent of the Iraq war, and his articles on the subject were collected under the title Terry Jones’s War on the War on Terror (2004).

In his 2006 BBC series Barbarians, Jones sought to show that supposedly primitive Celts and savage Goths were nothing of the kind and that the ancient Greeks and Persians were neither as ineffectual nor as effete as the ancient Romans supposed. Best of all, he sought to demonstrate that it was not the Vandals and other north European tribes who destroyed Rome but Rome itself, thanks to the loss of its African tax base.

When Jones was asked what he would like on his tombstone, he did not want to be remembered as a Python, perhaps surprisingly, but for his writing and historical work. “Maybe a description of me as a writer of children’s books or maybe as the man who restored Richard II’s reputation. I think those are my best bits.”

In 2016, it was announced that Jones had been diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia, a form of dementia that impairs the ability to communicate. He and his family and friends spoke about his experiences to help others living with the condition.

Jones is survived by his second wife, Anna (nee Söderström), whom he married in 2012, and their daughter, Siri; and by Bill and Sally, the children of his first marriage, to Alison Telfer, which ended in divorce.

• Terence Graham Parry Jones, writer, actor and director, born 1 February 1942; died 21 January 2020

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS

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atruththatyoudeny · 5 years

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Monthly Reads | May 2019

Happy 28th! If you want to promote your fic or your artwork head on over to @kingsofeverything and send Lauren a message! She’s doing self recs - fics and art - today. Thank you to all of you amazing authors who brighten my world with your words ♥ Here are all the fics I read and loved this month:

Let Our Hearts Collide || crinkle-eyed-boo (KimmieRocks) || While You Were Sleeping AU - 90s - mistaken identity - fake/pretend relationship - coma - amnesia - pining - grief - 76k When Harry, a lonely transit worker, saves the life of the handsome commuter he's been secretly pining for, an innocent mistake results in Liam Payne's family believing that Harry is engaged to their son. In the Paynes, Harry finds the big family he's always longed for...and a love he never saw coming.

Can't Help Falling || Anonymous || open ending - 15k The one where Harry's a workaholic, until best mates Liam and Niall drag him away for a holiday to Ibiza.

24K Magic || Justalittlelouislove || famous/not famous - drug use - 32k A fic based on 24k Magic by Bruno Mars, in which Harry's a mess and famous, Louis is a mess and not, Liam and Zayn are probably hiding something, and Niall is a horrible flatmate.

For You I'd Bleed Myself Dry || amomentoflove || vampires - past abuse - slow burn - angst - depression - anxiety - 50k Harry is cold. His bones ache. Every movement draws a whimper from his cracked lips. The stone underneath him is practically like ice. He’s numb, but can clearly feel the sharp pains on his neck every timeHe visits him. Below the icy cold, the achy bones, and the pain on his neck, Harry Styles is pissed. There’s a fire burning in his mind and the anger for the man who keeps him imprisoned is the fuel. He despises him, the man who feeds from him and is a daily reminder that Harry’s suffering won’t end. The man who keeps Harry so weak that he can barely move most days. Harry’s waiting for the day when his owner will go too far and finally kill him. Death must be better than this cold hell he is in. It won’t happen, though. He has a way of keeping Harry’s heart beating. So for now, all Harry can do is wait for death to come. He’s been waiting for years.

Consequences || allwaswell16 || amnesia - exes to lovers - getting back together - injury recovery - angst - 74k Two years ago Harry let his powerful family come between him and the love of his life, something he deeply regrets. Louis has tried to move on from their devastating break up. Sometimes, he even thinks he has. It only takes one moment to freeze them back in time.

The Fire and the Fate || dimpled_halo || A Star Is Born AU - depression - alcohol abuse/alcoholism - addiction - drug abuse - famous/not famous - angst - hurt/comfort - break up - post-break up - getting back together - 56k An A Star is born au with a happy ending. Harry is a troubled musician about to reach the end of his rope when he finds Louis singing in a club one night. He’s instantly mesmerised by the man with blue eyes and breathtaking voice.

And That's The Tea || 2tiedships2 || a/b/o - soulmates - strangers to lovers - friends to lovers - 27k The one where Louis loses his soulmate before even getting the chance to meet them, and he is in no way prepared for the kind of distraction his new friend Harry proves to be.

I Must Confess (I Still Believe) || objectlesson || High School - Catholic School - Girl Direction - coming of age - self-discovery - self-doubt - self-acceptance - angst - pining - slow burn - internalized homophobia - 44k Harry is the new girl at an all girl Catholic Girl's School, and Louis is the unattainable, dashing senior who changes her forever.

Like A Siren In The Night || whoknows || a/b/o - light dom/sub - 24k “There is an infestation in my home,” Louis hisses, righting himself quickly and pushing his way past Harry, heading directly for the kitchen. He’s rather haphazardly dressed himself, a coat thrown on over a loose flannel shirt and black pants, slippers on his feet. Harry resists the urge to sigh, closing the door and trailing behind him slowly. “What kind of infestation?” For all he knows, Louis is going to claim that there’s a ghost infestation. Harry has no idea what the end game is here – all he knows is that Louis has found at least three complaints a week to bring up since he’s been living on Harry’s property, and he’s been living here for six months. It’s way too many fucking complaints, is what Harry is saying. Especially when most of them are ridiculous to start with.

Let Me (Be Your Girl) || dimpled_halo || Girl Direction - cheating - pwp - 6k Louis hires Harry to help her find out things about her husband. What she doesn't expect is to discover some things about herself in the process.

Come together || bottomlinsons || college/university - One Night Stands - miscommunication - angst - pining - 11k Harry and Louis slept together three weeks ago, and haven't talked. Their coming group project is gonna change that.

Tonight's not over (come over and stay) || louistomlinsons || famous/not famous - fluff - 17k Harry is a famous singer and louis is a student who just wants to write his novel

Born Ready For You || taggiecb || Sequel to That's What I'm Here For - children - adoption - family drama - 2k Harry and Louis' life gets turned upside down once again with an unexpected visitor.

Getting high in mine || bottomlinsons || meet-cute - drug use - 4k Getting home from a festival is miserable by any method, but a three-hour train ride is truly the bottom of the barrel. This time, though, with the help of the cute guy sitting on the floor, it might not be so bad.

The Daddiest Place on Earth || lovelarry10 || Social Media - Disney World & Disneyland - strangers to lovers - 23k Louis. Harry. Instagram. A whole lot of confusion and a whole lot of laughs...

I Won't Give Up So Come And Get Me || runaway_train || strangers to lovers - Blind Date - 15k The one where Louis meets Harry and it all just seems too good to be true...

Picking Up The Pieces || Halos_Boat || strangers to friends to lovers - angst - slow burn - emotional hurt/comfort - 72k Harry just signed his second set of divorce papers. He felt like his life was over, like he had nothing left. Then he meets Louis.

Ready, baby? || jaerie || pain kink - rope bondage - earrings - 1k Harry gets an earring. Louis is the one to do it. Or a pain kink drabble.

Impress Me || lightswoodmagic (sarah_writes) || Chefs - homelessness - fluff - 5k Harry's a new chef who can't cook to save himself, but when he meets Louis, he learns more than he thought possible

Drunk in Love (last thing I remember) || MrsStylinson || fluff - pining - banter - 22k The one where Louis wakes up, naked, in a stranger's bed and has no idea how he got there. Maybe it's foul play. Maybe it's just the kindness of a handsome stranger amused by his drunken antics.

Take The Bitter With The Sweet || rainbowslovehl (Larrymateforlife) || Coffe Shops - fluff - pining - 7k Liam recruits Louis to spy on the 'rival cafe', which Louis is less than enthusiastic about but it does lead him Harry, the pretty barista who works there.

Harry Poppins || jacaranda_bloom || strangers to lovers - kid fic - hurt/comfort - past character death - fluff - 32k When Louis’ best friends pass away he finds himself with an instant family. Maddie and Thomas are wonderful children but take an immediate dislike to every nanny that sets foot inside their house. After nanny number six is summarily dismissed Louis is at his wit’s end, that is until an unusual man arrives on their doorstep. Harry Styles is like nothing any of them have ever encountered before, and perhaps, exactly what they’ve been looking for all along.

You Bring Me Home || reminiscingintherain || Saving Mr Banks AU - fluff - 22k The one where Louis wants to turn Harry's book into a film, and Harry's very picky about what happens.

Big, Bright World || || pining - jealousy - slow burn - cheating - miscommunication - 35k It really was just a little crush in the beginning, nothing to be worried about. Louis had never really liked anyone he'd worked with in the past, but he was sure he could control himself. Little did he know that over time his 'little crush' would develop into a blazing inferno of Hell-fire proportions. Every day, Louis' feelings became more intense, more immediate, each little smile and gesture and silly flirtation mounting up into something palpable, with a life of its own. Louis felt it every moment they were together. The only problem? Harry was engaged to someone else and had been from the moment Louis started working at Visionary.

Barren Souls || Snowy38 || Dystopian - mpreg - angst - emotional hurt/comfort - 37k It's 2907 and things are different. Organic men and women are no longer fertile and only genetically modified humans are permitted to procreate. The sexes have equalled, men are able to give birth in these dire times and roles have been created to both sire children ('Stud') and carry them ('Provider'). Public displays of affection are a criminal offence and the procreators cannot get emotionally attached without severe consequences. Harry has hit 19, the legal age to bear children. He's looking forward to producing babies for his host family and he's just had his placement confirmed. All that's left now is to meet the Stud who'll impregnate him. It might tug at his heartstrings thinking about the beautiful babies he'll be carrying who he'll have to let go but he's trained for this. He's spent his whole life preparing. Being a Provider is a special job and Harry's one of the chosen.

In a sky full of stars, be my Northern lights || Anonymous || strangers to lovers - fluff - travel - 13k It's one of those nights there's nothing on the telly that Louis absently scrolls through Tinder. After swiping left on a bunch of profiles he comes face to face with a picture that stops him in his tracks. The picture is..almost sweet. It’s a boy with brown curly hair, wearing a very low cut yellow blouse, paired with a black jacket. He’s got a smile on his face and his tongue sticking out, but it’s not in any way lewd or suggestive. He just looks like he’s having a good time, and something about the innocence of it has him swiping right rather than left. He’s barely checked the other pictures on the boy's profile before Tinder confirms that he’s got a match. The shots are so different from the pictures Louis is used to on Tinder - half naked boys who are smoldering at the camera - that he can’t help but smile. It quickly turns into a frown when he opens up the message he’s just received. Harry: Hello! Harry: Thank you for swiping right Harry: I have a proposition for you

#28th appreciation #1d fanworks appreciation day #fic rec #my reads #my fic rec #monthly reads #1d fanfiction #larry fics

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septembercfawkes · 5 years

Text

Story Structure Explained: Pinch Points, Midpoints, Plot Points, and Middles (Warrior Phase)

Some writers find the middle of a story very difficult to write. They know the beginning. They know the end. But they don't know what comes in between. After this article, you should have the information you need to finish filling in that middle! And filling it in, in interesting ways.

This post focuses on the second part of the middle, aka, the "active" or "warrior" phase of the story, and will take you from the midpoint up to the climax.

For the beginning part of story structure--the prologue, hooks, setup, and "orphan" phase--visit this page.

For the first part of the middle, between the inciting incident and the midpoint, or the "reactive" or "wanderer" phase, visit this page.

Midpoint

At the midpoint, new information enters the story that changes the context. It moves the protagonist from reaction to action. He stops being a wanderer and turns into a warrior, trying to fight back and attack, usually with a clearer goal or a more refined strategy. In other words, he is now more empowered than before.

Midpoints can be mind-blowing. Or they can be subtle. In the film Interstellar, the midpoint also serves as a twist. The context shifts and the audience and protagonists realize that there never ever really was a plan to save the humans on Earth. It was all a ruse to provide people hope. Once Cooper learns this, he changes into warrior mode, determined to do whatever it takes to return to Earth and/or save the people there.

Other midpoints aren't as drastic. It might be the protagonist sitting down to eat and suddenly having a profound realization that changes the perspective of everything she's been reacting to.

In Spider-verse

The midpoint in Spider-verse happens at the very end of the scene where Miles and Peter B. Parker steal the computer from Alchemax, and it goes into the very beginning of the next scene, the bus ride with Gwen Stacy.

Prior to this, even if Miles and Peter have a plan, they've largely been responding. And the only reason they need to go to Alchemax in the first place is because Miles himself broke the override key.

However, by the end of this scene, a few things have changed that steer us into the next phase:

1. Miles learns how to unstick intentionally 2. And how to use his web, intentionally 3. By this point, he's learned how to listen to his spider senses. 4. Peter and Miles begin working together as a team

In other words, things they were reacting to are starting to get under control. Sure, Miles still doesn't have control over all his powers, and maybe that's a variation, but it works because he has control over the iconic, main Spider-man powers.

On the bus ride afterward, Gwen Stacy reveals she knows where they can go to make another override key, promising they'll make sure the new one doesn't break, and thus giving Peter and Miles a clear plan and a clearer path to defeating the antagonist.

Warrior State (and Character Arc)

From the midpoint to the climax, the protagonist is in a stronger proactive or "warrior" state. Armed with what they've learned as a wanderer (which may include having mentors, friends, and helpers), the protagonist is ready to make more proactive efforts or actual attacks on the antagonistic force. According to Larry Brooks, they may literally fight back, hatch a plan, enlist assistance, demonstrate courage, or show initiative.

They may not always be successful (after all, the story isn't over), but they are brave and intentional. And not only will they be fighting the antagonistic force, but their inner demons as well (which relates to character arc and theme).

In Spider-verse

Now having learned how to stick and unstick, web sling, and listen to his spider senses, Miles is more equipped to carry out (the original) Peter Parker's plan to destroy the collider. He's accumulated a mentor and a friend (and some of the wanderer phase bleeds out just a bit, because he's about to accumulate a few more) to help him on his way--and they are now working together. They are ready and willing to address the antagonistic problem, more directly. And Miles in particular is going to be the one to save the other spider people and send them home (at least that's the plan and attempt at this point.)

Just as much, they are going to be confronting their inner demons too, which in this story, relates to quitting.

Miles, crumbling under everyone else's expectations of him, is going to want to quit progressing. ("I don't know if I can do it. I'm tired of letting everyone down.")

Peter B. Parker, haunted by his failure as a husband and fear of being a father, is going to have to confront that, and he'll have second thoughts about returning to his home dimension. ("You needed me, and I wasn't there. If all I'd given you was the . . . bread that you deserve. We could fill this whole room with bread.")

Gwen Stacy, stuck with having to work with five other people she relates to (not to mention a live version of her dead best friend), is going to be unsure about making friends with them. (Miles: "If you ever open up a slot, maybe we could be friends.")

Worth noting is how these arcs change at the midpoint. By the midpoint, Miles is now planning not to fail. He's trying to reach his potential by succeeding at something new, and he does succeed. (And he's not going to stand by and watch Spider-man die again.) Peter, who fears and is annoyed with kids in the first half of the middle, at the midpoint says, "I'm proud of you Miles! . . . Do I want kids?" And Gwen Stacy, who has isolated herself from friendship, considers maybe making friends.

Pinch Point 2

We have attack mode. We have skills. And friends. And we have a proactive plan.

Great! Just in time for things to get worse! Like the other pinch point, the second pinch point is the antagonistic force applying (painful) pressure on the protagonist. Because guess what? Now that the hero is stronger and better, we need to show again that the antagonistic force is still a formidable foe--even more of a formidable foe.

Stakes and costs will rise.

Conflicts will broaden and deepen.

Let's see this in action.

In Spider-verse

Pinch point two begins when Miles discovers that his uncle is actually the Prowler. Bam! That conflict just deepened (became more personal). And guess what? It broadens too! Because as Miles runs back to Aunt May's house, it turns out he was followed, which means now we have a big fight on our hands.

Pinch point two is bigger than pinch point one. Instead of having 2 - 3 villains to deal with, you'll notice we now have 4 - 5. Likewise, we have more heroes. And Prowler is trying to kill Miles.

At the end of the second pinch point, Uncle Aaron dies. That's a big personal cost to Miles.

Despite being armed as a warrior, this is not going to be an easy win.

Plot Point 2

Remember at the start of this series when I complained how a lot of terms in the industry are ambiguous? Like plot point one/the inciting incident? Well, the term plot point two can be a bit ambiguous too. But whatever you call it, make sure you understand the concept.

Plot point two (my hybrid version 😅) is made up of two parts: The all-is-lost lull and the last-piece-to-the-puzzle moment.

Most people I've found say plot point two is the second part. Others say it's the first part. Whichever it is, in most successful stories, these two things usually happen in some way, and they again pivot or propel the story in its final direction.

In some stories, they may seem to happen within the climax portion. In others, they occur just before. It all depends on the finer points of the story's structure and how you want to slice and dice and define it.

Part 1: "All is lost"/"Dark night of the soul"/"Darkest hour"

Whatever you call it, before the (typically) last piece of realization/information/context enters the story that allows the hero to win, there is a painful lull where everything feels lost and hopeless.

A mentor may die.

A big failure may take place.

The antagonistic force pulls out something unforeseen and seemingly unconquerable.

Friends and colleagues turn on one another.

Or any other number of devastating things.

It can be internal and personal. Or external and broad.

Not all stories have this moment, but I'd argue that it exists in most successful stories in some way, to some degree.

Part 2: "The last piece to the puzzle"

The last bit of information, realization, or context shift happens or fits into place that allows the hero to defeat the antagonistic force. It pivots the story to the "final chase." Often, it relates to the protagonist finally fully overcoming her inner demons (and therefore manifests the thematic statement by completing the character arc).

It is the moment where the hero moves from being a proactive warrior to becoming a martyr.

Like the orphan state, the martyr state may be more literal or more figurative. But it means the heroine is ready and willing to sacrifice herself. She might be literally willing to sacrifice her life. Or, it might be that she is willing to sacrifice a characteristic or quality of herself or lifestyle.

This is why it often relates to character arc.

Because the inner demon that the protagonist has been struggling with is overcome and "sacrificed" in order to save the "world." The old version of the protagonist is "sacrificed" to overcome the antagonist.

That's my opinion anyway.

So the dad that is working too much may now be willing to quit his job.

Hamilton is now willing to "throw away his shot" (literally and figuratively).

Or perhaps it is more literal.

Harry is willing to die in order to defeat Voldemort.

Whatever it is, after plot point two, the hero is more than a warrior, he's a martyr.

In Spider-verse

After the death of Prowler, everyone realizes that Miles isn't capable of playing his part in defeating the antagonistic forces, precisely because of his inner demon: He can't always get up after getting knocked down (thematic statement). As much as they would like to rely on him, they can't trust that he'll be dependable to save them and all of Brooklyn. Even Peter Parker ultimately deals the blow by "tying" Miles up so he can't be involved.

It's the worst of the worst. Miles has failed in the worst way.

To top it off, the fact that he can't meet their expectations and be who he needs to be means that one of the other characters must face death, because in carrying out the plan, they'll be stuck in this dimension and die in the process (escalating stakes and costs).

Miles asks when he'll know he'll be ready. Peter explains that you won't. It's a leap of faith (a secondary theme).

To make the lull even more lully, Miles's dad comes, and we're reminded that they have drifted even further apart since the beginning of the film. However, his dad explains a few key things. While Miles has been told (and has stated himself) throughout the movie that he "doesn't have a choice," his dad reveals that he believes Miles will be amazing at whatever he pursues (releasing the pressure of his dad's expectations (a secondary theme)), and whatever that is, is his choice (another secondary theme).

At this critical point, we see themes coalescing. For this story, the secondary themes are the final puzzle piece. Miles doesn't need to fear that he won't meet others' expectations; it's his choice what to do and become; and that choice is put into action by a leap of faith.

Empowered with these thematic statements, he's ready to be Spider-man, aka, the martyr. He immediately venom strikes his hold, turns invisible, and gets his own Spider-man suit. He has let go of his old self and inner demons and has become a true hero, willing to do whatever it takes to save others.

All of these changes and thematic statements will be tested, proven, and validated in the climax and denouement, which I'll cover next time in our final installment.

#writing tips #writing tip #writing tips and tricks #story structure #writeblr #camp nanowrimo #into the spider verse #spiderverse #into the spider-verse #miles molares #peter parker #author #editor #fiction writing #creative writing #writing a book #fanfic #fanfiction

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leta-the-strange · 5 years

Note

Hi! I hope you're doing well. My prompt for you is newt x leta x theseus summer at the scamanders :)

Thank you so much for sending this in and I’m sorry its taken so long. I’m still trying to work out the dynamic of this trio especially in their younger years. Also, I’m throwing Theseus’ canon age out the window because I find it too unbelievable from the films that he’s older than the rest of the characters let alone THAT much older than them so in this prompt he’s maybe a couple of years older.

Newt’s No Good, Very Bad Day…

Newt burst into the kitchen, slipping slightly as oneleg of his overlong pyjama pants slid under his foot causing him to bang intothe side of the door. He balanced himself with both hands on the doorframe ashis mind and body protested at the abrupt movement considering he had been fastasleep twenty seconds ago before falling out of his bed in a tangle ofblankets.

His sleepy, hazel eyes met Leta’s reproachful, amberones and he bit his lip with a tiny, apologetic smile that tended to acquit himof any wrongdoings. She rolled her eyes but the smile she was trying to biteback, and the small shake of her head, was evidence enough that he was forgivenas she drew her attention back to the stove where she was looking comically outof place holding the handle of a frying pan but with an awkward, unfamiliargrip as though she were holding a paintbrush.

Newt noticed she was still in the pyjama shirt andshorts she had been wearing when he had last bid her goodnight. As she had beensitting cross-legged on the spare bed when he had done so, he only now realisedhow nearly scandalously short they were, far shorter than the apron that hadmost likely been forcefully tied around her. Newt felt his cheeks redden and heswallowed and averted his gaze intently on the plates that were levitating fromthe cupboard to the kitchen table. These intrusive, discourteous thoughts hadseemingly come out of nowhere lately and were only becoming more frequent asthey became older.

Newt had been so fixated on the pattern of the tablecloth that he had tuned out completely and missed his mother’s re-entry intothe kitchen and subsequent ‘good morning, dear’.

“Earth to Newt!” his brother waved in amusement as hecame through the front door kicking off his muddy boots so they bounced andfell to the floor in a mess that made Mrs Scamander tut. He was also still inhis pyjamas, as he normally allowed himself to be on Sunday mornings, even ifthat for him only consisted of checkered pants, and a large Quidditch t-shirt.

“Hmm-what?” Newt looked up from the doorway he wasstill standing in, startled out of his daze.

Theseus shook his head with a laugh. “Well, you do abetter job as a door than you do of your chores.”

Leta had frowned at that, her awkward grip tighteningon the pan handle and shooting a scathing look at the older Scamander as shedid to anyone who dared to say anything less than complimentary about Newt inher presence.

“I just ended up repairing the fence myself thismorning. Honestly if they weren’t so attached to you, we’d be chasing escapedHippogriffs every second day.”

Leta smiled at that and looked at Newt warmly and fullof admiration and he tried to form a small laugh but whatever escaped wassomething between a squeak and a snort that he would replay mortifyingly overand over in his head when trying to fall asleep for the next few weeks.

“Sit down, Newton,” his mother urged from the sink andhe fell into the nearest chair before he could come up with any other ridiculousnoises.

“While you were sleeping in…” Mrs Scamander said toher youngest son as he stared at an old copy of Witch Weekly on the table. “…Loleta and I have been going through ‘Witch Weekly’s Twenty Housekeeping Hacks forYoung Witches to Impress Prospective Husbands’.”

Newt winced and cursed himself for sleeping in whileTheseus burst out in laughter and earned a contemptuous look from his motherwho snatched the magazine up and stuffed it into the pocket of her own apron.Newt knew his mother, who had longed for a daughter, would be overly enamoredby Leta and he had, up until this morning, done a fairly good job of steering herout of sight at the mere mention of a hairbrush or petticoat.

“She doesn’t know how to cook pancakes!” the woman said defensively to her sons as if this factalone was scandalous enough, they would understand immediately the importanceof this ordeal.

“Of course not,” Theseus joked, placing a jug ofpumpkin juice and cups on the table. “Elite purebloods don’t eat - they’resustained by pure human souls.”

Newt and Mrs. Scamander’s simultaneous horrifiedsplutters and admonishments were drowned out by each other while Leta suppresseda chuckle.

“I’ve always had house-elves and no one ever taught met-” she said to Mrs. Scamander who tutted.

“Well, that won’t do at all. No harm in a ladyacquiring some basic housekeeping skills. Hogwarts has always been neglectfulon that front.”

Leta didn’t have the heart to tell the kind woman thatthe only lady-like skills her family expected from her were little more thanlaying on her back and producing as many heirs as possible for a man of theirchoosing twice her age until she either died in childbirth or was sufficientlysapped of any youthful beauty and replaced with whichever poor girl was set tofollow her.

Newt immediately sensed her melancholy and stoppedspinning his empty cup to glance up at her in concern. She, in turn, could feelhis anxiety and smiled reassuringly before handing him his plate.

“The first for you, of course. My future husband isburning with jealously.”

“Thank you,” he smiled weakly, not finding it in hisheart to find her joke even the slightest bit amusing despite her playfulness.She stretched as high as her tiny stature would allow to reach the honey on theshelf and set it down beside Newt and squeezed his upper arm in a far morediscreet version of the hug that she’d usually throw herself into each morning.As a testament to how long she’d been in both the Scamander boy’s life, Letawas well versed on their preferences and had no difficulty selecting a lemonfrom the fruit bowl and throwing it perhaps a little too forcefully at Theseus’head. Though, he managed to catch it effortlessly but looked no less offended.“I hope your future husband is an aptKeeper, or a Seeker at the least, or the poor sod’s going to make do without aneye for the rest of his life.”

Mrs. Scamander looked pleased with her work as Leta titteredabout the table setting everything up trying to ignore the concealed laughterof Theseus, and occasionally Newt who couldn’t help himself. They knew this wasjust an overexaggerated show for Mrs. Scamander and there was nothing moreutterly hilarious and nonsensical than Leta Lestrange in a paisley patternedapron and furrowed eyebrows deciding where domestic etiquette dictated thesugar bowl should be placed.

As Leta leaned over him to fill his cup, swatting awayhis mortified attempts to do it himself, Newt poured all his attention intoshoveling pancake into his mouth as enthusiastically as possible in an attemptto absolutely not think about the dip of her neck to her shoulder and todisable his ability to talk so the urge to tell her she looked especiallypretty this morning blossomed into anything other than a pesky, internalthought.

Mrs. Scamander, happy with her morning’s efforts, wentoutside after spotting their neighbours across the road.

“What do you think?” Leta asked quietly and hopefullywhile setting his glass down and Newt was entirely aware of her hair brushinghis shoulder and ear which would normally make him shudder had it been anyoneelse so close but instead, he felt like he could melt into his chair and thatseemed a far scarier feeling.

He swallowed quickly and choked slightly.“Beautiful…b-beautiful pancakes. Really good,” he gave her a thumbs up beforehe could stop himself, but she smiled so bright he thought he might ascend.

She turned away quickly and went back to the stovewhere she seemed far more enthusiastic pouring the batter in, glowing from theencouragement of the only person whose opinion she valued. And then of coursethere was…

“Good god, Lestrange, that’s bloody awful!” Theseusgagged, spitting his first bite out into his napkin and Leta folded her armswith the spatula in her hand looking affronted.

“Newt likes it!”

Theseus chortled before standing up and taking hisglasses out his pyjama pants pocket and cleaning them on his shirt. “Newt wouldeat a bowl of ash if you wished it so.” It seemed he too had then noticedLeta’s nightclothes, or lack thereof, once the clarity of his vision wasrestored. “I think nearly every teenage boy would if you served it to themhalf-naked.”

“I’m in my pyjamas!” she snapped. “And you didn’t eat it!”

“I respect my stomach far too much for that. I mighthave managed it if it had been either burnt or raw…but you have somehow managedboth,” he said stepping over to assess the damaged and Leta frowned down at thefrypan.

Theseus reached from behind her, turning down theswitches. “Merlin, it’s up way too high.”

“Doesn’t that just mean it cooks faster?”

Newt wasn’t sure why but for some reason watching themmade something twist violently in the pit of his stomach and he nearly wincedat the suddenness of it. He didn’t hide it well, or Leta’s instincts were asgood as his were about her, because she noticed immediately, pushing Theseusout the way, with far too much dramatic force, and rushing over to him.

“Great, now I’ve made you sick!” she cried outsnatching the plate away with one hand and pushing his hair back from hisforehead with the other to feel his temperature like she had learned to do withthe baby murtlaps.

Mrs Scamander came back through the door lookingrather cheery and bright and interrupting the scene of Theseus lookingscandalized over being pushed over and Leta practically in Newt’s lap, in aworry, and completely mistaking why his cheeks were so warm under her palms.

“Newt, my darling,” she said to her son. “If you’regoing to vomit, do it quickly and before you get changed. Theseus please gofetch that nice shirt we got for your interview…”

Newt frowned. “Whatfor?”

“My funeral,” Theseus answered, swishing water in hismouth before spitting it out in the sink. “It’s too late for a beazor, littlebrother. Just put me in the ground before Lestrange can pin me up like one ofher beetles.”

“It was for a decomposition observation!” she snappedun-sashing her apron.

“It’s serial killer crafts,” Theseus said as he walkeddown the hall to his bedroom. “And it’s why the other students refused to sharea dormitory with you.”

Mrs Scamander ignored their argument and rinsed her handsbefore carding them through Newt’s hair much to his protest.

“The Prewett’s are back from their trip to Spain forthe rest of the holidays. We thought it might be a nice idea for you andPennilyn to take out the new hippogriff’s so they can stretch their wings…”

“With PennilynPrewett?” Newt scowled in a way that made Leta fail to suppress a snort andchoke on her juice.

Mrs Scamander glowered at the pair of them.

“Yes, Newton. And I will do well to remind you that wework alongside and get along very well with the Prewetts. I expect you to benothing but a perfect gentleman today.”

“He isn’t capable of anything else,” Leta smiledfondly, reaching to squeeze his hand on top of the table.

Newt stared at her for a moment too long.“I-bluh-we-but we-we were supposed to…yes!” he turned triumphantly to hismother. “Leta and I have plans to go and observe the mooncalves today.”

“Mooncalves only come out during a full moon,” Theseussaid walking back, dressed for the day now, and handing his mother a freshlypressed shirt.

“How do youknow that?” Leta took her hand off Newt’s and turned in her chair.

“Urh, it’s a mooncalf. You don’t have to froth at the mouth at the mention of anything fourlegged to understand preschool zoology.”

Leta frowned skeptically.

“…and you and Newt were talking about it through thewalls at 4am this morning,” he mumbled into his cup of tea still clearly annoyedat their interruption of his sleep.

“That’s that then, dear,” Mrs Scamander shoved theshirt at Newt. “Go put this on and then bring me that hair stuff your brotherbought when that muggle girl started working at the teashop down the streetlast year.”

“I think just saying ‘hair lotion’ would have helpedhim out enough,” Theseus muttered as Leta lit up like a Christmas tree and Newttrudged to his room in defeat.

“Poor thing,” Leta sighed after him, curling herfingers around the cup of tea she had barely noticed Theseus put down in frontof her.

“Well, if he had done a little better on his O.W.L’s,she probably wouldn’t be trying to pimp him out to our feed suppliers.”

“Excuse me,” Leta snapped defensively. “He received Acceptable in nearly all his subjectsand I personally don’t think his Astronomy essay was marked correctly. I’vealready sent a strongly worded letter to-”

“Lestrange, one of the few, simple joys in my life whenon break is not having the moral obligation to put out the fires you two start– figuratively and literally. I would be ecstatic to not hear about any plannedshenanigans until well past July. Honestly, some of the schemes I’ve had themisfortune of overhearing during the past week alone are enough to make my haircurl…”

“Figurately, I assume. I wager we would have to blowup the castle to decently contend with your muggle wooing hair gel.”

They both sipped their tea.

Newt came in, sleeves flopping hopelessly despite his half-heartedattempts to roll them up. He looked so deflated with the mornings turn ofevents and Leta tried to smile reassuringly as she stood to help.

She knitted her eyebrows together thoughtfully as shecast a charm that produced a length of thread from the tip of her wand thatdivided into sections and began stitching itself along the hems of the shirt tomake it fit Newt perfectly.

“Volume 10, issue 4 of Witch Weekly,” she answered wryly to his entranced look. “Not quiteyour mothers craftmanship I’m afraid but at least the shirt isn’t wearing youanymore.”

Newt glanced down and touched the delicate, nearlyinvisible stitching on one of the sleeves. It was true that it was a littleless even and straight then the usual tailoring he’d recognise from his schoolshirts and the stitches we’re looped like interlocking L’s.

“After taking out the new hippogriffs, what else doyou and your betrothed have planned for the day?” Leta asked teasingly as shestood on tip toes to fix his collar folded the wrong way.

“She is not my betrothed,”Newt scrunched his nose up and Leta chuckled before sighing endearingly.

“She is verybeautiful,” she mused with an encouraging and hopeful smile up at him. Newt’sshoulders fell and he sat back down in his chair staring at the tableclothglumly. Leta’s gentle encouragement, although good natured, made him feel asthough all the air had left his lungs in place of something far heavier and uncomfortable.

Leta sat beside him slowly, her eyes swimming withconcern but her smile was still bright. “But it’s just this one time and if itis truly awful, at least you trying will appease your mother and hopefully shewon’t be as cross when if she finds out we brou-” she stopped suddenly andglanced over at Theseus who was scraping the mud off his boots. He closed hiseyes and looked up to the ceiling, quietly muttering ‘not til well past July’ again.

Leta took the bottle of hair lotion from Newt’s handand lobbed it to Theseus who, again, caught it expertly but no less accusatory.

“He’ll need it,” Leta winked at Newt who didn’tunderstand the joke. “…and besides,” she messed up his hair from the neatattempt Mrs Scamander had made. “This looks much better.”

Newt couldn’t help but smile back a little. He knewthat Pennilyn had about as much interest in his company as he had hers and evenless interest in hippogriffs or any kind of creatures. Her aversion to gettingdirty and Newt’s aversion to…people in general had hampered any hope of themplaying together as children. They had exchanged polite greetings on the oddand painful occasion they crossed paths during school break and at school, sheavoided him like dragonpox and Leta even more so. He couldn’t help but feelperhaps their morning of forced chore-sharing would potentially be moreunpalatable for her than even himself but she was polite, at least, and thesooner he appeased his mother, the sooner he could get back to Leta and theirplans.

“Newt!” Mrs Scamander exclaimed exasperatedly as shewalked back in. “Now isn’t the time for a tea party! Hurry now, please. Don’tforget to put them back in their enclosure once you are both finished. Anddon’t feel the need to hurry back. I’ve put some sickles in your bag incase youboth go get some hot chocolate.”

Leta went back to her tea to hide her amused smile andNewt began to grow sour with his best friends surprising unhelpfulness.

“Maybe Leta should accompany us,” Newt piped up nottaking his annoyed look off Leta as he spoke and feeling less guilty aboutthrowing her under the best with him after her endless smirking. “Pennilynisn’t as confident with the hippogriffs and I could use the help.”

Mrs Scamander wiped her hands on her apron withoutlooking at him.

Even with her hesitation at such a strange andunlikely companionship early on, she had grown to foster and appreciate thevery close friendship Newt had with Leta Lestrange. She had also grown to loveand care for Leta herself and had witnessed the girl blossom from an ungainly,scabby-kneed child into a strikingly beautiful young woman. She was also notunaware of her son noticing this also.

She had hoped that the two could remain uncomplicatedand peaceful in the fascinating bubble in which they managed to coexist,somehow separate from their two impossibly different worlds. But a bubble is abubble after all, and Mrs Scamander knew such a place, heartbreakingly so,could not exist for the impossible pair once their education finished and they wouldreturn to their respective worlds. This was further complicated by the changeshe had noticed in her son’s heart and she felt it would be kindest, and safestin Leta’s case, to stomp out this budding potential before either child got hurt…orless tolerant relatives were to take notice.

“I was going to ask Loleta to accompany Theseusinto town today for some errands, actually.”

“Well, you could build a whole world from the thingsyou were going to do but, thankfully, we live in this world,” Theseussaid not looking up from his book. “The world in which that doesn’t happen, andTheseus maintains a decent blood pressure and an as good as to be expected underthe circumstances morning.”

Mrs Scamander looked warningly at her eldest son. “Ifyou want either of those things, Theseus, you’ll do what I ask and you’ll do itwith a smile.”

She felt quite safe with this arrangement. Despite thefact that Leta had been a part of Theseus’ life just as long as she had Newt’s,the pair had instead grown to a fond, comfortable dislike of each other. And eventhough she was often horrified by their squabbling, she knew Theseus was theonly person who from the very beginning had never been impressed, disgusted,mystified, or wary of who she was. Mrs Scamander thought Leta could professherself as the great Merlin himself in disguise and Theseus wouldn’t look upfrom his book.

“That’s no problem,” Leta said sweetly to MrsScamander. “Anything to help.”

“You look lovely,” Leta told Newt reassuringlysqueezing his palm hanging by his side. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

“As will I,” Theseus said before turning to his mother.“Hopefully not in several preservation jars in Lestrange’s trunk but if so bethe case know that you brought this upon us.”

Theseus and Leta watched from the kitchen window asNewt stood dejectedly fiddling with his sleeves next to his mother as she chattedanimatedly with another woman who was equally adorned with a quiet and unenthusiasticteenager by her side.

Leta sighed deeply, fiddling with her necklace.

“Good lord, Lestrange, he’s going on a date notheading off to war.”

He’s too good foreither. “There’s little difference to Newt.”

“In that he would fare just as well in either, then Ifear you’re right.”

“Theseus Scamander and admitting that I’m right. Isn’tthat one of the signs of the apocalypse?”

Theseus scoffed. “It couldn’t come fast enough. Getyour coat. Hopefully it hits before we arrive in the main street and thetownspeople can rest peacefully in the blissful unawareness of Leta Lestrange.”

She rolled her eyes, walking to the bedroom to getdressed and yelling loud enough for him to hear. “Apocalypse or not, I willdrag myself, bloody and battered, to glimpse the muggle teashop girl responsiblefor this county’s annual hair product sales.”

“I don’t think it’s your type of place, Lestrange. It’scosy and whimsical with soft music and a lovely assortment of tea. There’s nohopes, dreams, and animal bones on the menu, if you could believe it.”

“I can actually,” Leta said returning to the kitchendressed warmly in her coat, scarf, and boots. “I’m noticing the lack of elitepureblood-friendly cafes in this area. Nary a blood sacrifice Sunday in sight!”

“They favour poetry readings on Sunday nights, I’mafraid. It’s quite unaccommodating.”

“Well, your hometown is getting a grim one-star in myreview for the Sacred 28 Sentinal’s lifestyle section.”

“And right before our Sadistic Blood Purity SpringBig Bash Festival? Have you no heart?” he offered his arm to her as they steppedout on to the slippery pavement.

“For practical purposes yes,” Leta said linking her armswith his. “But you see it’s two sizes smaller than the average wizards.”

“Ah, it’s probably just a defect from the less thanancient incestuous genealogy. You’re not to blame, Lestrange.”

“I’ll remember to remind you of that the next time Isay something inflammatory,” Leta mused. “Surely it can’t be helped, you know, inmy unfortunate condition and all.”

“Well then, I imagine I’ll be reminded several timesbefore we reach the end of this path.”

#fantastic beasts #newt scamander #leta lestrange #theseus scamander #theseus is in a love triangle with peace and quiet tbh #newt/leta #theseus/leta #newleta #theta #theseleta #fantastic beasts the crimes of grindelwald #theseus x leta #newt x leta #pick your ship tbh platonic or romantic its vague #prompt

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