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prongsiepotter · 7 months ago

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sunbathing by the black lake | j. potter

summary: your childhood best friend james is being a little shit but in an endearing sort of way while showing his little acts of love

pairing: james potter x childhood bsf!reader

a/n: my first time writing on this blog!! i have a childhood friends to lovers playlist on spotify if anyone wants to listen to it bc i have a feeling it’s all i’ll write abt lol would really appreciate some feedback! enjoy x

──────── 𑁍︎ ‧₊°

There's no way to explain how the energy shifts when James is around. It simply does. Just like how you can feel the sun beating down on you right now. Hence, you can sense his approach without as much as a glance at him, your gaze continuing to drift across the notes Remus left for you in the margins of your essay.

James knows that, of course, as he strides across the grass towards you. You have never really talked about it, but seeing how he can also just tell when you're about to enter a room he's in, you both have made it a habit to not announce your presence. There's just no need.

So when he plops down next to you and rests his chin on your shoulder like it's his birthright, neither of you is surprised. In fact, it’s just right. Like puzzles slotting in perfectly.

For a few minutes, the world consists of birds chirping, a warm breeze, and the distant laughter of a group of Hufflepuff girls sitting a few paces away. You flip the page and let out a huff of laughter. James chuckles, his voice low and right next to your ear as he says, "Wouldn't be Moony if everything he touches didn't have a chocolate stain on it."

"It's like he's marking his territory." You try to rub it off with your sleeve, but the smudge only gets bigger. You squint and hold the paper in front of you, trying to discern if it's that noticeable (it is) but with a shrug you decide you couldn't care less. The movement makes James' glasses slide down to the tip of his nose, and he leans forward to make a dramatic face at you as if you had done him deeply wrong. With a playful eye-roll, you push them back for him and get a signature James Potter smile in return.

"Cheers, love." He beams at you and retrieves a balled-up napkin from the inside of his robe before taking it off. You watch him roll up the sleeves of his white Oxford shirt to his elbows, placing the mystery napkin on your lap. You glance at it curiously. "Unwrap it," he says. "It's for you."

Doing as you're told, you perk up with excitement when the content reveals itself. "Effie sent them?" You hold up the mangled piece of apple crumble like it's the most sacred thing you have ever gotten to hold, which it is. James nods, smiling at your happy dance. "I love her apple crumbles. Thank you!"

"You love everything my mum bakes," he says while lying down on his side, right in front of you with his head propped up on his palm. There's a glimmer in his amber eyes.

You give him a pointed look.

"Because everything that lovely woman bakes is the most scrumptious and amazing thing to exist." You take a big bite from the apple crumble to prove your point and your eyes flutter close as you hum. "This is why we're friends, Potter," you say with a mouthful. "No other reason. This is it."

"Oh yeah?" You hear the amusement in the drawl of his voice. Then he cups the side of your face and you look down at him as he distractedly brushes off some crumbs from the corner of your mouth. He looks up at the sky. "That's a shame because this is the last time you will get anything my mum has baked."

James' gaze is still turned upward, giving the sky his utmost interest as if to check if it's still blue. You stare at him in bewilderment. "Are you insane? Why would you deprive me of Effie's food?"

"I wonder how the weather will be tomorrow," he responds flippantly, and you swear your eye twitches.

"Oh, I'm sorry," you say, narrowing your eyes at him. "I forgot you were satan's spawn."

James does not react. You don’t think he will even reply with the way how he’s squinting and examining the very much non-existent clouds in the clear sky. But then he looks at you like you had asked him to solemnly share his meteorology findings with you, and with undeserved earnestness he tells you, "I think tomorrow will be just as sunny as today."

You blink at him. Then give a long-suffering sigh. "I thought you cared about me."

"I do," James says, rolling over to lay on his back with his eyes closed. "Which is why I can't have you lose your mind over some flour and sugar. I'm doing us a favour. Preserving our friendship." He cracks an eye open to look at you. "We've been friends since diapers, not because of my mum’s food, but because I'm brilliant and extremely lovable. Get your facts straight, woman."

You toss the napkin at his face.

He laughs.

Glancing at the last piece of the apple crumble in your hand, you ask, "Do you want it?"

James shakes his head, looking fond. "You assault me and then offer me the last bite?"

"Force of habit," you say flatly. "I can take it back."

He chuckles and takes off his glasses, resting his arm over his eyes. "You can have it, love. Cheers."

You don't have to be told twice and pop it happily in your mouth. With his other arm, he sweeps the scattered pages aside and pats the spot next to him. "Sleep with me?"

You quirk a brow. "Trying to get into my knickers, Potter?"

A breathy laughter escapes his lips. "Are you offering?"

"You wish."

"Merlin, yes." He sighs dramatically as if all James Potter has known in this lifetime was the pain of longing. He grabs blindly for you and pulls lightly at the hem of your skirt. "A man can dream. But for now just nap with me, yea?"

You bat at his wrist but let him pull you towards him nonetheless. There was never any other option, really.

In the blink of a moment, you're nestled into James’ side. His arm is cushioning your head, fingers absentmindedly playing with your hair as he tells you his thoughts on a book he recently read because he knew you liked it. You listen intensely, enjoying the easy conversation and the sunlight warming your skin. The world feels peaceful, and it doesn't take long before sleep pulls you both into a cosy slumber.

#james potter #james potter x reader #james potter x y/n #james potter fluff #james potter imagine #james potter oneshot #james potter fanfiction #james potter fic #james potter x you #marauders fanfiction #marauders fic #marauders #marauders imagine #the marauders

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getinthefuckingjaeger · 8 months ago

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the problem with Scamanders

for @jakes3resin (you did a lot, my turn for presents now)

“You could have written, you know.”

Bucky’s legs stopped as though glued to the cobbled street of the little village he found himself wandering that night. His shoulders fell back along with his head, neck tilted almost painfully to the night sky as he heaved a great sigh. Christ and Merlin, here we fucking go.

He stayed stubbornly still, ignoring the crick in his neck the longer he tilted his head like that. It's not a bad view - an explosion of stars in the night sky fills his eyes in the absence of a German air raid. The shops in the highstreet of this unassuming village in Ipswich are all asleep around him. Thin fog that isn't really a fog flows languidly between his military-shine boots before climbing his legs like vines to a tree. The magic is warm like sunshine and soft as a caress when it touches Bucky’s hands. He flexed his fingers to disperse the white wisps and tuck them into his trousers pockets.

He still absolutely refuses to budge. No, sir.

“Merlin, you’re still as stubborn as a Hippogriff, aren’t you Johnny?” A low chuckle cuts through the otherwise quiet night and Bucky can hear the sounds of expensive Oxfords getting closer to where he stands, until there is a wall of flesh and magic by his side, a firm shoulder pressing against his. “Come on, then. Give us a smile.”

Bucky grimaces at the sky. Looks down at his feet with another sigh. Then looks to his side, and into a face so much like his own.

With wizards' lifespan as long as it is, the face Bucky sees had barely aged from the last time he saw it. The same gold skin tanned by Quidditch, the same dark mahogany curls falling from its coiffed hairstyle and hanging over the same dark blue eyes - almost navy in the darkness.

But where there’s an absence in signs of age, there is stark evidence of war on that familiar face. Bucky notes the discolored scars peppering the left side of the man’s face like something exploded too close for comfort, the way his nose sits a little crooked like it was set-wrong and far too late to rectify, and - Bucky paused a moment to stare - a thin, barely visible line that runs from under his left ear to his adam’s apple.

Familiar aftershave fills his lungs, reminding him of a childhood on a vast estate and the summer sun warming his back, as he paddles through cool sparkling waters of the massive fountain on the cul de sac of their mansion’s driveway. He can almost hear his aunt’s exasperated complaints and boisterous laughter of his cousin and uncles, the sounds of struggle as his father tried to push Newt off his perch on the edges of the marble fountain.

That was another life, then.

“Auror Scamander, sir.” Bucky lets the mask of Major Egan take over as he steps away from his cousin. “Hope you’ve been well, sir.”

Only years with Buck could ever prepare him to withstand the quiet, appraising look that Theseus is giving him. The stare weighs heavy on his chest as he looks just over Theseus’ shoulder as he would to any senior officer in the USAAF. Theseus, damn the man, tilts his head just so and catches Bucky’s eyes - his smile is tired, resigned.

“I’ve been better - the ah, hunt keeps me on my toes, so to speak.” Bucky watches as Theseus tugs lightly at his coat and white silk scarf. “Newt sends his regards, as does Tina - he also sends his thanks, for looking after Frank the... Thunderbird?”

Bucky and Theseus share a commiserating look, the first one in almost a decade since Bucky was sent back. It wasn’t a chore to disapparate from Texas to the deserts of Arizona after lights out a few times a month. Certainly one of the most rewarding things he’s ever voluntarily done, to be able to run his hands over the beak of such a majestic creature. It’s through Frank that Bucky realizes the calm that one can find sitting in the middle of a literal storm as the massive avian flies over his head.

I fell in love with the big birds, Buck told him once. Bucky had agreed, but couldn’t explain that his big bird is a little more literal than Gale’s. And that it creates thunderstorms when it flies.

The glint of Theseus’ cufflinks pulls Bucky away from desert storms and back into the cold English night air. The Scamander crest twinkles under the starlight like a taunt. Bucky didn’t even realize Theseus had put out all the street lights. Goddamn aurors.

He moves to a parade rest to remind himself of who and where he is now - that he’s no longer just John Egan, cousin of Newton and Theseus Scamander, the three remaining Scamander.

“Why haven’t you written, Johnny?” Theseus remains a respectable distance from him, but Bucky can tell how much he’s probably itching to shake him by the shoulders in frustration. “Years of silence from you and your mother’s family in Wisconsin. Newt tried to look for you when he’s stateside, but you’re always never there. It's like you vanished - if Frank hadn’t hinted at it, or if your likeness weren't still moving on the family tapestry we’d have thought you dead.”

Bucky tenses just as Theseus rocks back on his heels like the weight of his anger was a physical thing.

“What was it all for then, if we thought you died, too?”

It plays out like a picture reel in Bucky’s head - him, at eight years old with his right hand in Theseus’ left as they walk down the carpeted floor of the Scamander ancient mansion. 27, a war hero, as tall as the suit of armors that used to dot the hallways and the greatest wizard he’s ever known. Then there was Newt, only a year younger than Theseus, his figure painted in hues of red, purple, and green from the large stained glass windows - Bucky can still recall Newt’s excited chatter about all the wonderful creatures on the estate and the Hippogriffs that Aunt Artemis has in her enclosure.

Then Bucky, at thirteen years old and shaking with barely suppressed excitement as he clutched his shiny new broomstick that Theseus gave him for Christmas. The grand bubble of joy that buoyed him through the entire afternoon of flying lessons with Theseus, half the family sitting on picnic blankets spread over snow covered grounds, the fabric charmed to be warm and dry. The lightness he felt as he shot himself across the estate grounds despite Theseus’ yelling is something he has tried time and time again to recreate as his fort lifts-off.

And finally at eighteen, once again walking down the carpeted floor of the Scamander mansion. Alone, at night, confused and hurting. Aunt Artemis had gone to town that autumn morning with his parents but none returned. Newt has disappeared - likely on another errand for Dumbledore - and he has never seen Theseus so angry as he threw Aurors, his own colleagues, out of their parlor.

The subsequent argument he had with Theseus - just the memory of it brings him shame of how it inevitably ended.

“You need to go, Johnny - Grindelwald is hunting us down.”

“I can fight, T - I’m of age!”

“I know, I know, you can. I just can’t allow you - think of the family, Johnny. Grindelwald will try to kill you and Newt to get to me, and I can’t protect both of you at once.”

“Fine, I get it. Can’t trust the half-blood to take care of himself, huh?”

“You said I needed to go and I did what you told me to.”

Bucky drops the parade rest and shoves his hands in his pockets where Theseus cant see how they shake. Un-fucking-believeable that he’s flown multiple missions, have survived so many things he shouldn’t up there where hell resides above the clouds, but his hands have never shaken like this. Not once. “I had a lot of time to think and I realized - as much as I fucking hated it- you couldn’t afford distractions.”

“It’s not like that-”

Bucky shakes his head and shuffles in his boots. He itches for a cigarette. “I ain’t saying that to be an ass, T. I understand that now more than ever - this war I’m fighting… it puts things in perspective.”

“I see.”

And Theseus does see - Bucky holds his gaze for as long as he can stand. He kicks a loose stone and it skids neatly over to Theseus’ toes. His cousin nudged the stone back to Bucky. They share a grin. “How bad is it, your end?” He falls back into parade rest, puts away John Egan who was once Mr. Scamander to his peers in Hogwarts, and brings Major Egan to the forefront once again.

“As well as it is going for yours, I’d imagine Major.” Theseus, always the best one out of the three Scamander scions at reading people, adjusts his posture from soft and imploring, to hard and imposing. Demanding respect, like the Head of the British Auror Office. He pursed his lips in thought. “You may want to properly practice your wandless magic, Major Egan. I’ll take care of MACUSA and the Ministry.”

Bucky splutters. He thinks of an alder wand that used to be an extension of himself and how the yoke of his B-17 can never replace that kind of power.

“How do you expect me to do that, sir?” He grits out. Easy, John, easy now the Buck in his head soothes his ire. “Between the suicide missions and trying to keep everyone’s head on straight - how the fuck do you expect me to do that, sir?”

“You’ll figure it out, Major.” It came out like an order. Theseus’s lips quirked. “You apparrated from one state to another back in your Muggle flight school, didn’t you? Apparating from London tonight must have been a breeze. Power like that needs tending to. Particularly when you have talent for wandless casting.”

“With all due respect, sir, but last I checked you’re not my CO - you ain’t even an American, so you can kindly shove-”

“Do it for Major Cleven and your boys, then.”

The ensuing silence rings through Bucky’s head as the streetlights come back up one by one. Theseus’ hard look softens just a touch as he walks backwards and away from Bucky.

“I heard your boys are flying a mission tomorrow morning - Bremen again, I think - arresto momentum and subtle shielding charms will do.” Theseus winks, then apropos of nothing, said “I’ll come round’ for tea.”

That broke through Bucky’s bewildered suspension, but not fast enough to stop Theseus from disapparating with a soft pop.

“Goddamn wizards.”

Bucky spun and disapparate just as the last streetlight returned.

#john egan #theseus scamander #bucky egan #masters of the air #mota #jaeger writes #john scamander au

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marigold-hills · 4 months ago

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Dunes & Waters, part 26

PART 1 • PREVIOUS PART • NEXT PART

“We need to go to Lycopolis,” Sirius says, “maybe the British left something there. The Box must have a key, there’s always one somewhere.”

It’s a week until the full moon. Remus already feels it pulling at the edges of him. Wants to cocoon himself in bed with a nest of blankets and warmth, to tell Sirius next week, please, but he can’t. Sirius is already gracious enough not running away screaming. Remus won’t put the setbacks of his conditions on him as well.

Not when he’s already keeping him from his family.

Remus didn’t really consider that, before. Should have, probably, because most people have someone that waits for them. A parent or a brother or a best friend – and Sirius has them all, of course he does, the person he is. (Wonderful, caring, charming.) and he’d told Remus, at the very beginning, he said I miss my family but somehow the meaning of it didn’t really hit.

It is a fear, a violation, to be found out through the Registry like he was, but can he begrudge the Potters? No. One of their own was off in a foreign country, being kept in that foreign country, even once they got him free. Of course they’d want to know who it was, doing the keeping.

There’s a young bell boy at the hotel they trust not to say anything about Ziggy (because he hasn’t, the many times he’s seen him). Remus gives him payment – or a bribe – to feed the cat the two days they’ll be gone. They pack lightly.

Segin al-Kom is three Apparition jumps north from where they were in Aswan. The very heart of the Nile Delta, it’s surrounded by a shock of green fields cultivated at the sites of the annual flood. It’s a living connection to history – the same land and the same water, cyclically allowing for life to grow, since before Osiris was worshipped here.

They find a small hotel. They arrive early, so the room won’t be ready for a few hours, but the concierge lets them leave their bags there ahead of time so they can travel unburdened.

Sirius takes a look at Remus, and insist they go to eat first. He buys a book of crosswords from the hotel shop (“I need my routine, Remus!”). Seems to be into them more than Remus is by now, and getting better too.

It’s more joy watching him solve them than Remus ever felt doing them alone. (It’s better to smell tea when Sirius drinks it, to see sunlight change shapes with passing time if it falls on his hair, to eat sticky-sweet pastries when Sirius eats them, too.)

The Museum is small, as they tend to be in places the British had stripped of all their historical artefacts. It’s run by muggles, without a Wizarding counterpart. Remus is a bit worried about that – had they had an in, Kingsley could always get them into the back rooms, the storage, the hidden things not presented to the general public. He hopes his Oxford university credentials are enough to get them some leeway.

NEXT PART

@tealeavesandtrash

@moon-girl88

@hoje--aqui

@cocoabutterandbooks

@onion-sliced-apples

@prancingpony42

@digital-kam

@remoonysiriusly

@sweetstarryskies

@a-sunset-outside-my-window

@procrastinatingstuff

@annaliza999

(let me know if you do/don’t want to be tagged!)

#wolfstar #remus lupin #sirius black #marauders #fanfic #dead gay wizards #remus x sirius #marauders era #dunes and waters

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bobfloydsbabe · 8 months ago

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I know you’ve definitely mentioned Bob taking care of Imogen when she’s had a bad day. Running her a bath, reading to her, rubbing her back. I can totally picture her snuggled up against his chest in bed, wearing one of his T-shirts, while he brushes her hair and presses soft kisses to her neck after a particularly stressful day 🥺

- @bradshawsbaby 💕

My darling Sarah, you really understand these two so well! I love writing these sweet and tender moments between them, so I couldn't stop myself from writing a short ~450 word blurb. Thank you for indulging me and for loving them. Enjoy 💕

SHARE YOUR THOTS, GET A BLURB open for: eccentric professor bob

Imogen comes into the bedroom looking bleary-eyed and exhausted. Bob puts the book down in his lap and watches as she strips out of her clothes, then rummages through one of his dresser drawers.

“You okay?” he asks, pushing his glasses back up his nose.

“Just tired,” she mutters, unclasping her bra and slipping a tattered grey cotton t-shirt over her head. He would recognize it anywhere, and he’s not surprised she picked it out. She once mentioned that wearing it makes her feel smart because it has Oxford University written across the chest. That it smells like him is just an added bonus.

She crosses the room to his bed as he watches, loving the way his old t-shirt is too big on her and makes her look even cuter than normal. Now, like so many times before, he wonders what he did to deserve her. She pulls the covers back and climbs in, pulling them back up and crawls to him.

He lifts his arm and lets her settle into his side. She sighs against his bare chest, her breath tickling the skin, and he presses a kiss to the top of her head. “Long day?”

“Yeah,” she tells him, not quite managing to stifle a yawn. “I’ve been trying to decipher a letter all day, but the writer switches language in the middle of sentences, and his handwriting is barely legible. My brain hurts.”

He runs his hand through her hair, feeling the wavy locks weave through his fingers. She hums in satisfaction, and he can tell the tension is leaving her body. “What languages?”

Imogen tightens her grip around his torso. “Ottoman Turkish mostly, but there’s also Greek and even some Latin,” she says and yawns again. “It’s a mess.”

“You’ll figure it out,” he assures her and uses his unoccupied hand to close the book and set it back on his bedside table. He slides the glasses off his nose and put them on top of the book, then reaches over and turns off the lamp.

Darkness engulfs the bedroom, and he shuffles until he’s flat on his back, and Imogen’s cheek rests against his shoulder. Her arm drapes across his chest, fingertips absentmindedly tracing freckles on his pec.

Imogen’s breathing slowly evens out and gets heavy as she doses off. Her fingers still against his skin. He buries his nose in her hair, letting the familiar scent of crisp green apples from her shampoo fill his nostrils. He presses his lips against the smooth skin of her forehead, still unsure if letting her this close was a mistake, but unable to regret it either way.

#mail #answered #bradshawsbaby #bob floyd #bob floyd x oc #bob floyd blurb #bob floyd fic #robert bob floyd #robert floyd #otp: bob x imogen #oc: imogen van doren #THEY'RE SO CUTE I LOVE THEM #lewis pullman

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iloveb1ur · 4 months ago

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I THINK ABOUT MAXTON HALL EVERY SINGLE DAY

CONFESSION TIME

i watched maxton hall 2 months ago and i still cannot stop thinking about that scene in the final episode where theyre at oxford on the stairs and yelling at each other and its so passionate.

the whole like YOU DRIVE ME CRAZY, DO YOU KNOW HOW DIFFICULT IT IS TO BE AROUND YOU TO HEAR YOUR VOICE is absolutely criminal and has set my standards even higher than they were before in fact i think theyre higher than mount everest now.

James Beaufont the man you are.

if you also are obsessed with Maxton Hall you may like my podcast as I did an episode covering Maxton Hall aka giggling about James Beaufont for a whole hour. You can find it on the link above on spotify as well as Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts.

hope you enjoy!

#maxton hall #maxton hall podcast #james beaufort #james x ruby #james beaufont x reader #james beaufont x yn #romance #podcast #primevideo #Spotify

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gorbalsvampire · 11 months ago

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Tag Nine People You'd Like To Get To Know Better

FAVOURITE COLOUR(s): Dark, rich purples and reds. Greens: British racing, chartreuse. Bottle greens and browns. Black and white contrasts. Glasz eyes are the most beautiful on Earth. Love a check or tartan pattern. I paint all my miniatures in cold blue/bronze or warm purple/brass contrast unless physically prevented from doing so.

FAVOURITE FLAVOUR(s): Rock salt and woodsmoke and paprika in a thin batter. Rich thick curry sauce - warm and textured, not hot-like-burning. Whole milk and sour cream. Fresh carrots and tomatoes - just chomp those fuckers down. Sourdough and soft cheese. Tea with an undertone of citrus or an abundance of honey. Mulled apples. Dirty chai. And above all, peppermint.

FAVOURITE MUSIC: Tradgoth and post punk (basslines you can slink to), trip hop (take me somewhere far away), post rock soundscapes (the more elegiac the better), prog (but more the Pink Floyd pomp rock than wildly experimental stuff), anything Jim Jarmusch or Polly Jean Harvey ever touch, sad country and sleazy swamp rocks. Music for people who want to crawl into a swamp, cop off, and drown each other.

FAVOURITE MOVIE(s): Franklyn. Withnail & I. Only Lovers Left Alive. I detest busy plotting and spectacle and run on vibes. But also, because sometimes I'm From The Nineties And Also British, Guy Ritchie's entire oeuvre. Sin City has a nice vibe even though it's a nasty piece of work. Possession (1981) and Nosferatu (1979) - I'll watch Isabelle Adjani in anything. Or Eva Green. Give me pale, deathless, insane women.

FAVOURITE BOOK(s): UGH! Anything by Terry Pratchett. S T Gibson's vampire stories. Anything by Susanna Clarke. Earthsea. The first four books of Anno Dracula. Anything by Laura Shepherd-Robinson. Alis Hawkins' Oxford novels. Seth Dickenson's Masquerade and Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb. The Wolf Hall trilogy. Sherlock Holmes and weird post-Holmes stuff from Obverse. T. S. Eliot, William Blake, Edgar Allen Poe, Sylvia Plath, and a raft of contemporary Welsh poets - Cath Drake, Katherine Stansfield, Christopher Meredith. If I had a guilty pleasure, Black Library novels (John French, Matt Farrer and Aaron Dembksi-Bowden) would be it.

FAVOURITE SERIES(es): Doctor Who, Lock, Stock..., The Biederbeck Trilogy, What We Do In The Shadows, LA By Night, The Thick of It and... Taskmaster. Taskmaster is my religion. I like seeing the Bit all comics do get tested to destruction. And podcasts: Poorhammer, the 40K Badcast. I get my hobby chat fix from those.

LAST SONG: :Of The Wand And The Moon:, 'Hold My Hand'

LAST SERIES: The Thick of It (rewatch).

LAST MOVIE: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (comfort rewatch, I've been poorly)

CURRENTLY READING: Viriconium by M. John Harrison.

CURRENTLY WATCHING: nothing

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: ideating a festive V5 one-off and new chronicles for next year, but otherwise taking it easy (I've been really poorly)

TAGGED BY: @silkenred

TAGGING: @heywizards @biomechanicaltomato @gwenynen-bach @gingerbeer-queer @robotslenderman

#this isn't vampires #but it was fun and someone asked #behind the masquerade

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repairmyphonetodayoxford · 1 year ago

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Apple Watch Update: What's New at Repair My Phone Today

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victorluvsalice · 2 years ago

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Valicer Polyship Week, Day Four: Soulmates (Soulmate AU)

Day Four of Valicer Polyship Week, courtesy of @polyshipweek, and we’re up to the “Soulmates” prompt -- which, of course, inspired me to bust out my Soulmate AU idea! The idea behind this world is that it’s one where you can have a) platonic as well as romantic soulmates and b) multiple soulmates, and Victor, Alice, and Smiler are all each other’s soulmates. Victor and Smiler met first, fell in love, discovered they had a THIRD soulmate when they realized neither of them tried to slit their wrists before they met (extreme emotions and injuries can be transferred between soulmates even before meeting -- meaning Alice’s attempt to gouge herself with the spoon in Rutledge got them too), and ended up running away to London together when Victor’s parents tried to force him into an arranged marriage he didn’t want and Smiler’s father tried to send them away to rural Lithuania to keep them away from Victor. We pick up here with Victor at the Whitechapel Market, about to meet his other soulmate in a very Victorish way. . .

---

All right – just a few things to pick up, and then I can finally go home and tell Smiler all about how boring my day was. Let’s see. . .carrots. . .potatoes. . .do I want some apples? Do I want these apples specifically. . .hmm. Maybe I’ll wait and come back on a, um, fresher day. . .but oh, I should definitely get some – “Oh!”

Victor jolted as he turned toward the butcher, only to collide with someone coming the other way. He stumbled backward a handful of steps as his unfortunate victim – a young, dark-haired lady in black-and-white, almost but not quite as colorless as all the people he’d left behind in Burtonsville – hit the cobbles. “I-I-I am so s-sorry,” Victor babbled, reaching automatically for his tie before recalling his manners and instead using his free hand to offer a lift up to the woman. “I w-wasn’t looking where I-I was going, and – I’m – I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” the woman said, shaking her head slightly. “I wasn’t really looking where I was going either, if I’m honest.” She reached back for him, accepting the hand up. “I’m glad you at least have the manners to apologize–”

Said Alice.

Victor gasped softly as, just for a moment, the world was suffused in a golden glow. Oh my God – it’s her! It’s her, she’s the one, she’s – she’s Alice Pleasance Liddell, born May 4th, 1855 – the same age as Smiler and me! That makes things easier. . .and she loves cats and rabbits, and her favorite food is strawberry cake, though she’ll eat any cake that’s presented to her – ha, same – but she doesn’t actually like candy all that much, and she likes to draw but she’s currently not very good – currently? – and she’s got a whole fictional realm called Wonderland that she made up when she was seven, and –

And she lost her entire family to a house fire about ten years ago, and she spent the latter half of her childhood in Rutledge Asylum. . .which would explain –

And that was when Alice, who’d been gawking at him with the prettiest green eyes he’d seen since meeting Smiler, yanked her hand out of his and bolted down the street.

“Wha – wait!” Victor took a step after her, arm raised, but she ignored him, instead darting down a side alley. He watched her disappear from sight, emotions all aswirl. Alice Liddell – the only survivor of the Liddell fire! That’s who we’re – who would have guessed that I would have just literally run into her in this part of London! Shouldn’t she be in Oxford? Then again, she can’t have been expecting to meet me here. . .what did she get from me, I wonder? What made her react like that? Did – did she not like what she saw? No, that can’t be it, she hasn’t rejected the bond, she’s just. . .she’s scared, that’s what it is, she’s scared to actually face me, to know I’m real. . .

A wave of puzzled concern washed over him then, as if from an invisible bucket – though, frankly, Victor was surprised it had taken Smiler this long to notice the chaos within him. He sent back a complicated mix of feelings that he hoped indicated “I’ll be home in a moment,” threw some money at the potato lady, then shot down the street, back to the two-up he shared with his beloved. Smiler met him at the door, steering him inside with a hand on his shoulder. “What happened?” they asked, no preamble, worry clear in their gaze.

“I found her,” Victor replied, dropping the bag of groceries on their little kitchen table.

“Her?”

“You know – her.” Victor pulled back his right sleeve, revealing the faint scar across his wrist. The scar mirrored on Smiler’s left – and which neither of them had cut into their skin. “Our third. Our – our other soulmate.”

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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This day in history

I’m at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival in HAY-ON-WYE with my novel Red Team Blues. Today (May 29) at 12PM, I’m on a panel called Danger and Desire at the Frontier.

Tonight (May 29) at 7:30PM I’m at OXFORD’s Blackwell’s on with Tim Harford.

Tomorrow night (May 30) at 6:30PM, I’m at the NOTTINGHAM Waterstones with Christian Reilly.

Then it’s Manchester, London, Edinburgh, and Berlin!

#10yrsago DIY turd-transplants https://web.archive.org/web/20130608030455/http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013/05/29/why-diy-fecal-transplants-are-a-thing-and-the-fda-is-only-part-of-the-reason/

#10yrsago I Love New York people censor I Coffee Cup New York logo, want to send them a bill https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/nyregion/new-york-challenges-a-coffee-shop-logo.html

#10yrsago Schools and the cloud: will schools allow students to be profiled and advertised to in the course of their school-day? https://web.archive.org/web/20130603053407/http://www.safegov.org/media/48269/safegov_ponemon_uk_school_survey.pdf

#10yrsago Danish “Gangnam Style” mayors threatened with copyright lawsuit by Universal https://torrentfreak.com/universal-music-tells-gangnam-parody-mayors-pay-42000-by-tomorrow-or-else-130530/

#10yrsago RIP, Henry Morgentaler, Canadian abortion pioneer https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/dr-henry-morgentaler-s-death-highlights-abortion-divide-1.1344197

#10yrsago Science fiction story in the form of a Twitter bug-report https://web.archive.org/web/20130527235924/https://twitter.bug.quietbabylon.com/

#5yrsago Design fiction, speculative design, and “creepiness” https://www.wired.com/story/the-creepy-rise-of-real-companies-spawning-fictional-design/

#5yrsago The TSA has a secret enemies list of people who’ve complained about screeners https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/us/politics/new-watch-list-tsa-screeners-.html

#5yrsago Spectacular read: a profile of Anna Sorokin, a con-artist who convinced New York that she was a high-rolling socialite trust-funder https://www.thecut.com/article/how-anna-delvey-tricked-new-york.html

#5yrsago Puerto Rico’s Hurricane Maria death toll is 70 times higher than the official count https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1803972

#5yrsago An analysis of all those Internet of Things manifestos sparked by the slow-motion IoT catastrophe https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3173574.3173876

#5yrsago Quantifying the massive premium paid to people who work in “bullshit jobs” https://popularresistance.org/the-more-valuable-your-work-is-to-society-the-less-youll-be-paid-for-it/

#5yrsago White Americans abandoned democracy and embraced authoritarianism when they realized brown people would soon outvote them https://web.archive.org/web/20180528185731/http://svmiller.com/research/white-outgroup-intolerance-democratic-support/

#5yrsago Ad brokers are selling the fact that you visited an emergency room to ambulance-chasing lawyers https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/25/613127311/digital-ambulance-chasers-law-firms-send-ads-to-patients-phones-inside-ers

#5yrsago Efail: instructions for using PGP again as safely as is possible for now https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/how-turn-pgp-back-safely-possible

#5yrsago EFF on Cockygate: trademark trolls vs romance literature https://www.eff.org/takedowns/author-trademarks-cocky-earns-ire-romance-writers-everywhere

#1yrago Apple’s Cement Overshoes https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/30/80-lbs/#malicious-compliance

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Hay-on-Wye, Oxford, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

#pluralistic

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turtlethon · 2 years ago

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"Elementary, My Dear Turtle"

Season 7, Episode 13 First US Airdate: October 30, 1993

The Turtles head back in time and team up with Sherlock Holmes to stop his nemesis Moriarty from stealing the future.

"Elementary, My Dear Turtle" is the last episode in the “Vacation in Europe” side season of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This is the final story in the series written by Dennis O’Flaherty.

April and the Turtles have returned to England today and join a group of tourists in listening to a historical lecture from a Beefeater, in what I assume is intended to be the Tower of London. Michaelangelo dozes off while standing, and after being scolded wanders away, expressing his disinterest in the subject. While the Beefeater returns to his spiel, Mikey manages to draw further attention to himself by launching into the air using a historical catapult.

Later, the Turtles regroup in the sewer beneath the Duke of Earl Hotel. Donatello takes receipt of a stack of pizzas from a bellboy whose design seems to stray from the show’s standard house style, the first of a few visual aberrations in this outing. As the team chows down, April reveals she’s off to Oxford to interview a noted historian. Raphael quips that they’ll see her again “at the end of the show”. Splinter then pops in to encourage the team to take a greater interest in historical events, telling them “The seeds of tomorrow are contained in the apple core of yesterday”.

Turning their attention to the TV, the team watch as newsreader “John Nose” informs viewers that Greenwich University is now host to the world’s most advanced atomic clock. Donatello is keen to see this for himself, and his team-mates agree to join him. The group sneak into the University’s observatory after hours, bypassing and disabling a laser beam security system. A whirlwind appears from within the atomic clock after Donatello picks it up; moments later, the Turtles find themselves in the same building, but the modern conveniences have all vanished, the surroundings looking more like something from a history exhibit. Before our heroes have a chance to make sense of this a bearded man in a top hat snatches the atomic clock from Donatello.

Michaelangelo attempts to stop the robber by hurling a turtle shell-shaped object at him that I assume was supposed to be his grappling hook. The man counters by lobbing a smoke bomb (drawn as a grenade), providing him with an opportunity to escape.

If the bellboy had an unconventional look, the guy who appears next is something else entirely: a 19th century night watchman who would be more at home in a Tintin book than he is here in Fred Wolf Turtles. The team inadvertently manage to scare the man away with their appearance before exiting the building.

The Turtles exit the building and pursue the thief, with Donatello colliding with a man with the weirdest head shape of any normal human to ever appear in the show. The stranger briefly gets into a fight with Donnie on the steps of the observatory before taking a tumble and injuring his ankle. Meanwhile the clock thief escapes in a horse-drawn carriage, giving his best regards to “Mr. Holmes” before making his exit. It’s at this point that the Turtles realise the man Donnie just clashed with is Sherlock Holmes, now being tended to by his friend Watson. After chewing out the Turtles for their antics, Watson reveals to the Turtles that they’re now in 1890; act one ends with the team realising they’ve been transported back in time, and have no means of getting back.

Act two opens with the Turtles, Holmes and Watson realising they’re all on the same side, and have a shared enemy in Professor Moriarty, the mystery man who snatched the atomic clock. Holmes invites the Turtles back to his residence at 221B Baker Street, and upon their arrival a shady man is seen spying on the group nearby.

Once inside, the Turtles watch as Watson tilts a bust of Sherlock’s head placed inside the window. Holmes explains that several attempts have been made on his life, and the bust is a decoy intended to fool any onlookers who might try to take a shot at him. The group are joined by Inspector Lestrade, who Mikey recognises from his appearance in the movie “Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman”. Lestrade explains to the Turtles that it’s believed Moriarty is stealing scientific equipment with a view to taking over the 20th Century. In the same evening that the Turtles arrived in the past, Moriarty used the power of a lightning storm to travel into the future, a time in which he determined the atomic clock would exist; As the Turtles agree to help Holmes in stopping Moriarty, an assailant takes a shot at the bust, as predicted.

The Turtles don disguises and take a train to Oxford, determining that as Moriarty was once a professor there, his hideout is likely nearby. In a staggeringly quick scene (literally four seconds), the team arrive at the station and spot some thugs, tracking them with a view to finding the criminal mastermind. It seems that the mystery men were supposed to have been on the roof of the train – something that was almost impossible to determine from the footage that made it to air unless you were paying exceptionally close attention. Leonardo spots their footprints, noting the soot present due to them being on top of the locomotive. Despite being warned off by a shot from an air gun, the Turtles continue to give chase, dropping into the sewers in search of Moriarty’s hideout.

Scrape marks on the ground point the Turtles in the direction of a wall that acts as a hidden door. Making their way inside, our heroes confront Moriarty, who explains that the atomic clock is the final component of his time machine: when his plan is complete, Sherlock Holmes will have been erased from history, leaving him free to rule the world. He pulls a lever, shutting off the lights; moments later, the Turtles find themselves standing above ground, in what appears to be their own time.

Exploring the city, the Turtles find a parade being held, the assembled crowd cheering for a car containing a victorious Moriarty. Act three opens with Michaelangelo noting that the team have wound up in “the wrong 1991” moments before Moriarty sends his personal army after our heroes. The team battle Moriarty’s troopers, losing a group of them under a crumbling archway before dropping into a nearby river, leading the remaining officers to assume this marks their demise. It takes more than a little water to finish off the Turtles, however, who re-emerge and are greeted by a familiar face: April, who soon grants them refuge.

Though this incarnation of April has never met the Turtles, she explains her willingness to protect them, on the basis that “anyone running from Moriarty’s troopers has to be a friend”. A sliding bookcase leads to a hidden passage; inside are Burne and Vernon, dressed in regal attires, who are both initially hostile until April confirms the Turtles are on their side. The group inform the Turtles that Moriarty keeps the time machine at the Imperial Science Museum, and so the assembled freedom fighters hatch a plan to strike back.

April guides the Turtles to the Science Museum via a secret underground passage. In another one of those utterly nonsensical moments that have been so prevalent throughout this side season, April is shocked as Leonardo whips out a katana, asking “is it an attack?!” for no apparent reason. Michaelangelo explains the noise Leo heard was his own empty stomach, something that didn’t make it into the sound mix for the finished show, effectively removing the setup for the joke. April offers Mikey an apple, which he chows down on before passing the core back to her.

Donatello points out that if they’re successful, the reality they’re currently occupying and everyone in it will cease to exist. April takes this remarkably well, telling the Turtles that it’ll be worth it to stop Emperor Moriarty. Heading above ground, our heroes are confronted by a whip-wielding Moriarty and a group of his troopers. A battle unfolds, and in an indicator of how flaky this episode is, at least on my copy, even the familiar instrumental version of the Turtles theme sounds as if it’s malfunctioning as the video tracking also begins going off the rails. Donatello snatches the atomic clock from the time machine, another whirlwind sending the Turtles back to their own time. Moriarty has also made the journey, and makes another attempt to snatch the clock, being pinned down by the Turtles before he vanishes. A present-day version of the mutton-chopped night watchman from 1890 appears to confront the green teens, who toss him the atomic clock before leaving; notably his modern incarnation is slightly more fitting for the style of this show than the one from the past.

As predicted by Raphael, the Turtles meet up with April again in the concluding scene. After Leonardo makes a vague reference to their time-travelling journey, April is keen to cover a story she’s barely even been told transpired, reaching into her purse; instead of her tape recorder, she discovers an apple core. Splinter takes this as confirmation of his earlier remarks about the apple core of yesterday. As the Turtles inexplicably run away, Splinter suggests to April that perhaps they had too much time on their hands. A lousy joke to wrap up not only this episode, but this entire troubled story arc.

It’s one thing for the Turtles to encounter mythical figures like Merlin, but something else entirely for them to cross over with Sherlock Holmes, who having made his first appearance in 1887 is a relatively recent creation in the great scheme of things. This story perhaps doesn’t exploit such a crossover to its full potential, with Holmes and Watson only prominent in the second act, the Turtles handling the proceedings in the opening and closing thirds of the show. Leonardo becomes the de facto Holmes after the real one bows out, taking the lead in determining Moriarty’s plan. I’m sure keeping the Turtles the stars of the show helps in terms of maintaining the interests of the kids at home, but it does mean that we walk away with this story with a sense that the potential for a proper TMNT x Sherlock Holmes crossover remains untapped. Honestly, this entire side-season is running on fumes as we close things out and I doubt anyone was paying attention.

The most interesting aspect of this story from a continuity perspective is that it explicitly sets the Vacation in Europe season – or at least the end of it – in the year 1991. Keep in mind that this side season kicked off with the Turtles arriving in Paris on Bastille Day (in “Tower of Power”), but during their time in Austria we learned that it was winter, suggesting this vacation carried on for as long as six months or more. To the extent that all the stories in this arc could be considered canon, it seems entirely possible that the Turtles began their vacation in July 1990, sticking around into early 1991. Whatever the path is that the team took around the continent, it seems that it would need to be a convoluted one; no wonder they were away for so long. (Presumably while the Turtles were kicking back, the other assorted crime fighters of New York had to pick up the slack: Casey Jones, REX-1, Aunt Aggie, and perhaps Bugman, though technically these episodes take place prior to his introduction).

From all of this, a case could be made that if the events of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles take place in any specific frame of time, it’s 1989-91; though the show seemed to default to just being set in “year of initial broadcast”, remember that early adaptations of the cartoon episodes sometimes stated the series was set sometime in the near future, which could easily be a couple of years ahead of 1987. Going with this theory, seasons one through three would all take place over a year from June 1989 onwards (in line with April’s dialogue in “Hot Rodding Teenagers From Dimension X” establishing that the first season occurs in June), the Turtles taking their extended vacation in the summer of 1990 and returning at the beginning of 1991. Season four then unfolds through the early months of 1991. “Turtles And the Hare” and “Once Upon a Time Machine” must both take place in Easter ‘91, the year being explicitly referenced multiple times in the latter episode; the rest of seasons five and six would then take place throughout the remainder of the year, with “Super Irma” taking us up to Halloween 1991.

Or maybe nothing that happened in this whole European vacation endeavour, this strange, half-baked waste of time which seems to have limped its way on to our screens years after it was made, should be considered canon at all. Perhaps we should simply put all this mediocrity behind us and prepare for the real season seven, a further fourteen episodes that will conclude the classic era of the series, beginning with our next Turtlethon entry, “Night of the Dark Turtle”.

#Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #TMNT #TMNT 1987 #1992 #1993 #Elementary My Dear Turtle #Sherlock Holmes #Ninja Turtles #Turtlethon #Vacation in Europe #Famous British TV newsreader JOHN NOSE

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beauty-out-of-ash · 2 years ago

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Gift shops

European

Forests

Moss

Fog

Mist

Mountains

Yellow

Spring

Bloom

Floral

Authentic

Aesthete

Green

Navy blue

Oxford

Leather

Boots

Sandles

Dirt

Rocks

Pebbles

Creeks

Overalls

Cotton

Linen

Soft fabric

Coffee

Espresso

Ceramic mugs

Wooden porches

Wicker furniture

Rocking chairs

Comfy cushions

Chunky knitted blanket

Warm mug

Blueberry teas

Lemmon scones and treats

Berries

Small sugar spoons

Dainty

Tea trays

Back porch

Swings

Warm sunny days

Cool autumn evenings

Brisk dawns

Dawn

Piano

Light strums

Chirping

Crickets

Trickling creeks

Buzzing bees

Barefoot

Freshly done pedicures

Tanned feet

Warm beach

Striped bathing suits

Sun

Warmth

Lakes

Still waters

Ponds

Hues of gold

Rays of sun

Fingers on petals

Soft country grass

Cappuccinos

Warm wool

Slick boots

Pearls

Checkered print

Austria Vienna

Opera houses

Café

People watching

Slow pace

Irish

Green pastures

Curled waves

Breeze

Chilled seasons

Fallen leaves

Pumpkin spice

Chai

Tights

Leather boots

Knitted fabric

Sweater weather

Novembers

Apple cider

Carriage rides

Quaint towns

Coffee shops

Studious

Hands held

Twirling thumbs

Twiddling emotions

“I’m with you.”

Books

Wisdom

Spirit

Love

Flannel shirt

Dark washed jeans

Gentlemen

Gentle kiss

Fingers touch

Lips to thumb

Idle twiddle

Deep in thought

Book in palm

Gentleness

Thinkings of you

Studying face

Number of freckles

Wrinkle of nose

Thankfulness

Stillness

Peace

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manket · 3 months ago

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Project Ideas

Product hunt but for newly launch cafes and restaurants in BLR

Oxford Union like debate platform only to discuss topics related to India

One app destination for marriage and events need starting from services offering like artist doing activities in their marriage

Educating more people about their fundamental rights to help them against corrupted officers whenever needed

An AI app that asks you few questions on daily basis and biased in input data from that and other resources like medical reports and apple watch it will bring a sense out of those to make a person's life healthier

How can we fix the costly schools and tution for children education?

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xtruss · 5 months ago

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The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Going To College

Benjamin B. Bolger Has Spent His Whole Life Amassing Academic Degrees. What Can We Learn From Him?

— By Joseph Bernstein | June 3, 2024 | The New York Times

Bolger Has Spent The Last 30-Odd Years Attending Top Universities.

Benjamin B. Bolger has been to Harvard and Stanford and Yale. He has been to Columbia and Dartmouth and Oxford, and Cambridge, Brandeis and Brown. Over all, Bolger has 14 Advanced Degrees, plus an Associate’s and a Bachelor’s. Some of Bolger’s degrees took many years to complete, such as a Doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Others have required rather less commitment: low-residency M.F.A.s from Ashland University and the University of Tampa, for example.

Some produced microscopically specific research, like Bolger’s Harvard dissertation, “Deliberative Democratic Design: Participants’ Perception of Strategy Used for Deliberative Public Participation and the Types of Participant Satisfaction Generated From Deliberative Public Participation in the Design Process.” Others have been more of a grab bag, such as a 2004 master’s from Dartmouth, for which Bolger studied Iranian sociology and the poetry of Robert Frost.

He has degrees in international development, creative nonfiction and education. He has studied “conflict and coexistence” under Mari Fitzduff, the Irish policymaker who mediated during the Troubles, and American architecture under the eminent historian Gwendolyn Wright. He is currently working, remotely, toward a master’s in writing for performance from Cambridge.

Bolger is a broad man, with lank, whitish, chin-length hair and a dignified profile, like a figure from an antique coin. One of his favorite places is Walden Pond — he met his wife there, on one of his early-morning constitutionals — and as he expounds upon learning and nature, it is easy to imagine him back in Thoreau’s time, with all the other polymathic gentlemen, perhaps by lamplight, stroking their old-timey facial hair, considering propositions about a wide range of topics, advancing theories of the life well lived.

And there’s something almost anachronistically earnest, even romantic, about the reason he gives for spending the past 30-odd years pursuing college degrees. “I love learning,” he told me over lunch last year, without even a touch of irony. I had been pestering him for the better part of two days, from every angle I could imagine, to offer some deeper explanation for his life as a perpetual student. Every time I tried, and failed, I felt irredeemably 21st-century, like an extra in a historical production who has forgotten to remove his Apple Watch.

At 16, Bolger enrolled at the University of Michigan. Majoring in Sociology, he graduated with a 4.0. He was 19. Credit...Scott Sady/The Ann Arbor News

“I believe that people are like trees,” he said. “I hope I am a sequoia. I want to grow for as long as possible and reach toward the highest level of the sky.”

Against a backdrop of pervasive cynicism about the nature of higher education, it is tempting to dismiss a figure like Bolger as the wacky byproduct of an empty system. Then again, Bolger has run himself through that system, over and over and over again; it continues to take him in, and he continues to return to it for more. In fact, there is reportedly only one person in the United States with more college degrees than Bolger, and the vast majority of those came from universities within the state of Michigan (no disrespect to the Broncos, Eagles or Lakers). Because Bolger is just 48, and Michael Nicholson, of Kalamazoo, is 83, Bolger could surpass him, according to back-of-envelope math, as soon as 2054. In other words, Bolger is on a plausible track to becoming the country’s single most credentialed individual — at which point, perhaps, he could rest.

A proposition: No one more fully embodies the nature of elite American higher education today, in all its contradictions, than a man who has spent so much time being molded by it, following its incentives and internalizing its values. But what are those values, exactly? Of course, there are the oft-cited, traditional virtues of spending several years set apart from the rest of the world, reading and thinking. You know: the chance to expand your mind, challenge your preconceptions and cultivate a passion for learning. In this vision, eager minds are called to great institutions to reach their intellectual potential, and we know these institutions can perform this function simply because they are called Harvard and Yale.

That may be the way a prestigious education works for some, but probably not most. A 2023 survey of Harvard seniors found that 41 percent — 41 percent! — were entering careers in consulting or finance. The same percentage were graduating to a starting salary of at least $110,000, more than double the national median. Last year, the most popular majors at Stanford were economics and computer science. The ultimate value of college for many is the credential, guaranteeing a starting spot many rungs up the ladder of worldly success: Nothing you learn at an elite university is as important as the line on your C.V. that you’ve paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to type. And if you were feeling cynical, you could argue that the time you spend applying to college will affect the rest of your life more than anything in particular that happens while you’re there.

“It is only when we forget our learning that we begin to know,” Thoreau observed, famously, after his experiment in simple living. (Though, rich of Thoreau: he went to Harvard.) In a much different, much opposed way — one involving central heat — Bolger has spent the past three decades conducting his own half-mad American experiment in education. He has drunk deeper at the well of the university than almost anyone else. What does he know?

In 1978, Bolger Was 2, riding in a Buick Riviera in Durand, Mich., when the car was hit by a drunken driver. He was basically fine, but his parents were seriously injured, and his mother, Loretta, spent months in the hospital, ending up with a metal plate in one of her legs. She had to leave her job as a schoolteacher. Bolger’s parents’ marriage disintegrated. His mother could be difficult, and his father, an engineer and patent lawyer who represented himself during the nasty divorce, was emotionally abusive. Bolger and his mother began splitting time between their comfortable home near Flint and his grandfather’s ramshackle farm in Grand Haven, which was so drafty they sometimes curled up by the wood-burning furnace.

Bolger’s mother spent much of her money in the ensuing custody battle, and her stress was worsened by her son’s severe dyslexia. In third grade, when Bolger still couldn’t read, his teachers said he wouldn’t graduate from high school. Recognizing that her boy was bright, just different, his mother resolved to home-school him — though “home” is perhaps not the right word: The two spent endless hours driving, to science museums, to the elite Cranbrook Academy of Art outside Detroit for drawing lessons, even to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington. At night she read to him: epic works of literature like “War and Peace” but also choose-your-own-adventure books and “Star Wars” novelizations.

The pair passed days in the library at Michigan State University, watched campus speakers in the evening and ate free at the receptions afterward. Sometimes, rather than drive the two hours back to Grand Haven, they would sleep in his mother’s pickup truck somewhere in East Lansing and do the same thing the next day.

Bolger and his mother, Loretta, at Yale Law School in 1996. Credit...Stuart Bauer/The Flint Journal

One thing Bolger has not seemed to learn over the years is to introspect. Why has he driven himself to this extent — to place himself over and over in the kinds of impractical programs young adults enter to wait out a bad economy or delay the onset of adulthood à la National Lampoon’s Van Wilder? Many of us love learning, too, but we don’t do what Bolger has done; we listen to history podcasts on our commutes or pick our way through long books in the minutes before sleep. Despite all his degrees, Bolger has never sought a tenure-track job — only a few of his degrees would even qualify him for such a position — and he has never really specialized.

Unless you consider putting together a killer college application a form of expertise, which both the market and Bolger do.

Over The Past 35 Years, acceptance rates to the United States’ most elite universities have shrunk to about 6 percent from nearly 30 percent. Students, frightened by those numbers, are applying to more colleges than ever and making these numbers more frightening in the process. At the same time, overtaxed counselors don’t have the time to help as much as applicants and parents want. The rise of so-called holistic admissions, which look beyond grades and test scores, has also contributed to a sense that there is a “secret sauce” to getting into exclusive colleges and turbocharged demand for people who can demystify it.

After he got his doctorate in 2007, Bolger became a full-time private college-admissions consultant. “No other consultant has Dr. Bolger’s record of success,” reads his website — a claim that is difficult to verify, yet one that many people seem to believe. Four years with Bolger runs at least $100,000. (In the world of elite college coaching, this isn’t exceptional: A five-year plan from the New York firm Ivy Coach costs as much as $1.5 million.) Over the past 15 years, he has developed a coaching style he compares with that of Bill Belichick, Mr. Miyagi and Yoda.

On a humid morning late last summer, Bolger saw clients in an upstairs room at the ‘Quin House, a modish Back Bay members’ club in an ornate Commonwealth Avenue limestone. He has a home office in Cambridge but prefers to work as much as he can out of the private clubs to which he belongs, including the staid Union Club, opposite Boston Common, and the Harvard Club, which feels loosey-goosey by comparison.

That day he was meeting with Anjali Anand, a sunny then-17-year-old who was in Boston for the summer to do research at Boston University; and Vivian Chen, also 17 at the time, also sunny, also in Boston to study on B.U.’s campus. Anjali and Vivian faced a brutal fact: For young strivers of the American upper middle class, credentials and a can-do attitude are no longer sufficient for entry into the top tiers of the U.S. News and World Report college rankings. These accomplishments must be arranged into stories so compelling that they stand out from the many other compelling stories of the teenagers clamoring for admission.

Columbia graduation, 2001. The reason Bolger gives for spending the past three decades pursuing college degrees: ‘‘I love learning.’’ Credit...From the Bolger family

And so Bolger devoted the meetings to teaching self-narrativization, particularly as it relates to the all-important essay component of the application. He encouraged the high-achieving Anjali to be vulnerable. “Someone who is 100 percent confident with no hesitations isn’t as compelling,” he said. “This is why there are more movies made about Batman than Superman.” With Vivian, he tried to connect her desire to become a dentist to a deeper narrative thread.

“Why the mouth and teeth?” Bolger asked.

Bolger said his business has enabled him to mix with “the 1 percent crowd.” In addition to his condo on Cambridge’s tony Memorial Drive, Bolger owns a house in Virginia and his family farm in Michigan. He has an Amex invite-only Centurion card. In 2016, he donated more than $50,000 to support Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, for which he received a special Jeff Koons print; more recently, he has donated more than $2,500 to the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He loves to attend celebrity talks: Bruce Springsteen, George Clooney, Joe Montana — anyone who, in his mind, defines a category.

Bolger carries about 25 clients at a time, but his most important pupil is his 9-year-old daughter, Benjamina, whom he home-schools and considers his best friend. Bolger models his daughter’s education after his own: hands-on, interactive, wide-ranging, lots of time in the car. (Bolger’s son, Blitze, is also being home-schooled, but he’s only 4, so there’s less to do.) His wife, Anil, who helps him recruit clients, is happy to let him oversee the liberal-arts component of their children’s education while she handles math and Chinese. Bolger is trying to be less intense than his mother, to emphasize the development of his daughter’s emotional intelligence. But one of his main pedagogical devices is still the field trip.

Left: Credit...David Hilliard for The New York Times. Right: Bolger’s children, Blitze, 4, and Benjamina, 9, are home-schooled. One of his main teaching devices is the field trip. Credit...David Hilliard for The New York Times

On another bright morning last summer, Bolger took Benjamina to Concord’s North Bridge, for a holistic lesson but also a lesson in holism. He was joined there by his friend Dan Sullivan, a fellow polymath, who has also collected a staggering number of credentials. (The 42 entries under the “Experience” section of his LinkedIn page include Ambassador at the Parliament of the World’s Religions and Colonel at the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels.) Bolger had planned a discussion around bridges and diplomacy. But he believes the world is “nonlinear,” and his habits of speech reflect this. There were digressions into history, comparative government, union organizing, car safety, Robert McNamara, the strength of triangles, the cryogenic preservation of corpses.

A composed, precocious and sweet girl, Benjamina followed her tutors across the bridge and to the bronze statue of a Minute Man, inscribed with Emerson’s “Concord Hymn.” There the three of them stood in contemplation, looking a little like a child star and her security detail.

“Was that shot actually heard around the world?” Bolger asked.

“I don’t think so,” Benjamina replied.

“Yes,” Bolger said. “So this is an example of a metaphor.”

After stopping in Concord for a bite, Bolger and Benjamina drove the two miles to Walden Pond. The pair sat on a wooden plank above the beach on the pond’s east side. Except for the sounds of teenagers flirting and retirees shifting in folding chairs, it was quiet. Bolger explained Thoreau, the woods, the essential facts.

“I don’t know if you find this inspirational or not,” Bolger said. “I have the ability to pretend no one is here.”

Benjamina made a skeptical noise.

“I guess I could do it for a week,” Bolger said. “A year just seems too long.”

Bolger with Loretta at the Brandeis University graduation in 2007. Credit...From the Bolger family

Thoreau’s experiment made him one of the most important men in American history. Bolger’s experiment has, well, not done that. Instead, it has done something even weirder. To spend any time around Bolger is to feel that you have been enrolled in a bespoke, man-shaped university, one capable of astonishing interdisciplinary leaps, and it basically all hangs together — the way that any mix of freshman electives at a top university might complement one another, might rhyme, produce its own sort of harmony. It is unclear what, exactly, is at the center. But there are gravitational forces at work nonetheless.

Also, Bolger’s experiment has made him a wildly compelling father to a daughter who, it must be said, is exceptional. She is fluent in two languages, she is nice, she is funny, and last summer she performed Fritz Kreisler’s thorny violin piece “Sicilienne and Rigaudon” at Carnegie Hall with grace, élan and even wit. At the very least, Benjamina has on her hands the material for one of the all-time great college-admissions essays.

Left: Credit...David Hilliard for The New York Times Right: Bolger models Benjamina’s education after his own: hands-on, interactive, wide-ranging and lots of time in the car.Credit...David Hilliard for The New York Times

The day after their colonial field trip, father and daughter had lunch at the Harvard Club. Surrounded by dark wood and wine refrigerators, they ordered off the Veritas menu: Bolger had a B.L.T., and Benjamina had a hamburger with fries. The meat arrived on a bun with an “H” grill mark, for Harvard.

“Do you think the burger looks better because it has an ‘H’ on it?” Bolger asked.

Benjamina didn’t hesitate. “Yes!”

— Read by Robert Petkoff. Narration produced by Anna Diamond and Krish Seenivasan Engineered by Devin Murphy. — Source for Illustration at the top: Photographs from the Bolger family; Arnold Gold/The New Haven Register, via Associated Press. — David Hilliard is an artist and educator from Boston. He creates narrative multipaneled photographs, often based on his life or the lives of people around him. — Joseph Bernstein is a Times reporter who writes feature stories for the Styles section.

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