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gryphis-eyes · 2 years ago

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Hi! I just read one ask you posted and I am curious about one thing. I never, ever, even remotely truly understood what people mean by "twin flame" when I read about it in new age stuff.

Also they are still using twin flame related stuff while we all know where it come from etc but "no I don't mean any harm while talking about it, I'm not talking about the evil twin flame" no no there is only one twin flame concept and if you want an other term there is simply "soulmate" even if this term got lost in a lot of false belief.

Could you please elaborate on what you mean by this original twin flame concept or tell me to what it is affiliated so I can research about it? I would really like to understand this whole thing, I don't know where it comes from. Thank you!

Hello, I love your blog aesthetic

You say you have trouble to understand that concept and it's fully normal, first if you try to do research you'll only fall on article from new age blogs etc and the funniest is if you search "twin flame origin" because those mad guys litterary take the origin and definition of soulmate. I haven't done this research since my begining and damn it was hard to find links to put here.

Before I explain what it is and where the wrong stuff is I'd like to remind something. Sadly spirituality is "a place" full of scammer we know this since the dawn of time. People often turn to spirituality in their last resort (not always of course I'm talking about majority) of course scammer got specific target : desperate people and the ones who don't know that much, people who are easy to trap. What are the bait ? Two simple subject ; Money and Love. I feel like back in time money was the main source of scam but now oh boy Love, love is now the biggest bait

What is a soulmate ?

Actually the term ”soulmate” comes from an author but it’s the most knew term based on the greek story of human’s origin, it is said that back in time humans had 4 legs, 4 arms, 2 heads and 2 heart (im not sure for the heart) but one day the gods separated humans into 2 beings. ” αδελφή ψυχ” mean other half it isn’t to define an actual person, it’s like an expression, it is used when you found someone who you love deeply it is like saying ”you are mine and I am yours”. So in the end ”finding your soulmate” = meeting someone you truly bound with, that you deeply love and trust. Soulmate ≠ someone over here is meant for you. Some people say soulmate can be about platonic love but the greek ”other half” is purely about romantic love. So to be clear in order to explain to you the twin flame stuff i’ll use the term ”soulmate” as romantic love like it’s origin

OK so now imagine you’re someone who’s very lonely and you really want to meet love,you’re almost desesperate then someone come to you and tell you ”hey, did you know that there is something stronger than a soulmate ? It’s called a twin flame it’s your other half and you have to go through a whole journey in order to find them !” (im using neutral pronounce but this concept is deep into cis heterosexuality) who is your twin flame ? It’s someone from the opposite sex who is meant to complete you, once you’ll find them you’ll find yourself !

How do you know someone is your twin flame ?

You don’t know it you feel it, you feel deep love toward someone so what to do ? It’s time to tell the- they say no ? Oh don’t worry love it’s normal ! Remember twin flame are stronger than soulmates they are a challenging relationship!! (Congratulation you’re now a chaser)

You’re in a relationship and it’s very difficult and challenging but you love them ? Keep going it’s your other half ! They horrible to you ? They are wounded and you need to heal them remember you are nothing without them ! Are they still toxic ? You might not put enough effort in this relationship. You broke up ? Don’t worry twin flames always need to separate each other in some way it is a big sign that this person is your twin flame have faith ! Oh you're sad it’s normal you just lose your twin flame, your soul miss its other part. They won’t come back but you found someone else ? Don’t worry it’s how twin flame works the first one was a test from the univers now you found the true one !

Here I gave an exagerate scenario that (sadly) probably was the reality of a lot of people. Twin flames originate from Shaleia and Jeff Ayan your classic white couplé who build up a ”spiritual/therapeutic” way for people to find true love, how cute two healer full of good intention (no). You got it twin flame is made for people to keep call upon spiritual scammer people to ask help again and again, to pay 40$ (or more or less) to get a love reading about their twin flame thousand of time. Here I gave the exemple of a chaser but this concept is made to create stalker, for people to be stuck into very toxic relationship there are many story online about people’s ”crazy ex who said I was their twin flame” or how people stayed with a narcissic dude just because ”it was their twin flame”. This concept is made to make you feel miserable and not complete in order to play with your insecurities. No matter how and when you use this term, it is giving those crazy scammer and their victimes stronger.

Here are some link to check, be careful when searching online because there are a majority of ”self care” website who drowned article who talk about the truth. Sadly back in time I saw a post on tumblr explaining everything from a to z but can’t find it so I hope those one will be enough for you

Everywhere I Went, They Went With Me, Because They Were on My Phone”: Inside the Always Online, All-Consuming World of Twin Flames Universe

@windvexer’s take on that

Inside the Toxic World of 'Twin Flames' Spirituality

I’d like to say one last thing, remember cults and cult movement aren’t vilain from movies, you won’t see them come in the horizon with big evil music they won’t have an evil laugh with thunder in the background. They are sneaky shit, scammer, they got strategies, they get under your skin, they search your weak spot and use them to end up calling that coincidence, they will act like your friend, like someone who just want you to be happy, only if you follow their words.

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4dtk · 3 years ago

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NCT127 falling in love with a s/o with a time-consuming job like a lawyer or a doctor

NCT 127 with an s/o who has a time-consuming job

this is so cute, thanks for requesting! i made this in a format in the ways that the boys might show their care when you’re so busy with your job :) long as hell LOL enjoy!!

brief spoilers for shang-chi if you haven’t watched! i just watched it this week lol it was really good

→ TAEIL would direct conversations to a more neutral stance. it’s not that he wants to talk about himself, but sometimes if you don’t want to talk about your case or patients, he easily slips into conversation about theories or his favourite tv show or your rundown of what groceries to take for the next time you head to the supermarket. just really normal small things that take your mind off the stress, especially at night when you’re laying in bed and just before you’re drifting off to sleep, the two of you would engage in a topic that you both know fairly well about and then you’re usually the first to succumb to sleep. taeil purposely picks out topic he knows will excite you (and bc he knows you’re passionate about it, he reads up on it which allows a well-balanced convo). if you’re rambling on about a topic, then he’ll occasionally play the guitar while laying down, just simple melodies that bring a lot of peace to the room.

“wait- how d’you like this melody?” taeil softly says, changing it instantly when you commented on the previous, discordant one. your nod encourages him to carry on with the plucking of his fingers while you yourself continue with your rambles. “so i’m saying right, it seems totally unfair for him, and you’d think that, right? but all he ever does is whine and moan about his misfortunes, plus his character is so terribly written i kinda feel sorry for-“

the halted melody prompts a sharp turn of your turn to the guitar, which you almost collide with, “what?” taeil only shrugs. “nothin’. just like how passionate you get about the show, it’s cute.” your boyfriend smiles after, ignoring how his words affect you and how your cheeks heat up at it.

→ JOHNNY is one to take you out after your work. it’s not to a super intense, high-energy place like a club or anything, but small little dates that won’t take up much time. eating dinner at a restaurant, walk in the park, small cafe trip, strolling through supermarket to make fun of brand names. if you’re too tired that day, he always finds a way to make your time at home fun. from setting up a small karaoke session, to maybe making a pillow fort, to trying out new cuddling positions, he has everything on his mind. always showing you things to cheer you up if you happen, from memes to funny videos. is low-key down for you to review crime/doctor shows too, just to see how accurate they nail it. your time at home is consuming endless pieces of media until your tummies hurt or you’re sniffling at a movie together.

“hold on- lemme show you this video,” johnny’s hand is outstretched to you once he finds the video and your spoon full of food is left near your mouth. you proceed to watch the low quality video which your boyfriend claims to be the funniest video on earth.

W-HOR? WAH? the girl’s finger in the video traces over the word “who” as she struggles to pronounce it, with presumably her sister in the background prompting her. the repeated pronunciation of the word makes you snort, while the wheezing and the loud NO in the background causes you to fully erupt into laughter. johnny simply smiles at another successful attempt to make you smile.

→ YUTA always has a hand on you when you return home. he brings you into a hug, he guides you by your back, you have to eat with one hand bc he can’t keep his hand off of you. he hopes his little touches will ease your tiredness even by a bit and if you don’t want it, he’ll stop, but it’s yuta’s way of showing he cares without words. busy days with yuta usually involve just sitting in silence as you catch up on a show or a series, or even listening to a song in silence and enjoying each other’s company. he will talk if you want to, but if not that’s fine too, preferring more to stroke your hair in silence and think about how much he loves you. becomes very sappy when you’re in the quiet of your room and generally is very fond of the small pockets of time you get to spend before you two fall asleep. likes that you’re so resolute in your job but can be soft around him behind closed doors.

“you comfortable?” yuta calls out, barely above a whisper as he wraps an arm tighter around you. there’s comfortable ministrations that his does with his fingers, massaging the skin under your pajamas while you snuggle deeper into his chest. humming, you tighten your hold around his top.

“i am, yeah,” you can’t care much for the tv show on the screen now, with empty takeout boxes and tissues littering the coffee table. you feel the gentle kiss of yuta on your head before you’re drifting off to dreamland to a scratchy, 60s jazz song playing through the speakers.

→ TAEYONG would always welcome you back with a table set and food ready, always. he knows that food is the way to someone’s heart and you eating his food always makes him happy and offers to clean-up. lets you shower first if you come back together, puts you before himself very often that sometimes you have to tell him to tone it down because you don’t want him ending up more tired than he already is. following up on this, taeyong would show his love by cooking your lunches for you. when he has the time he makes the effort to put it in a nice bento or box for you to eat. he also does the general chores around the house (assuming the two of you live together) so the bed will be a little less messy when you come back, the floor’s cleaner, the countertops aren’t so cluttered with stuff. even if there’s nothing to clean up, he always these small little things before you come back, and even if you don’t notice it, he sees the way you’re able to navigate the space or when you’re more at ease and it makes him smile.

“do you want to shower first?” taeyong calls out softly, admiring the clean house he’s managed to do up before he went to meet you, “i’ll just hang around until you’re done.”

“you need to prioritise yourself too, yong,” you pout, rubbing a hand up and down his forehead as you toe off your shoes, “how ‘bout we shower together? you did clean the house up pretty nicely.” that earns a grin and a kiss from taeyong, who goes straight the prepare the bath. you chuckle, “he’s already forgotten what i’ve told him.”

→ DOYOUNG supports you silently and listens to your day when you return home and talk about your patient or a case you’re working on. he gives you his own input when he sees fit but other than that he wants you to explain the details. being a doctor and lawyer is crazy and hectic and just wants you to know that you’re appreciated in the workforce. the way he might show his love when caring for a busy s/o like you is when he brings you stuff that you might’ve forgotten like an umbrella or your lunch since you were rushing out of the house earlier. he doesn’t mind going the extra mile to you literally bc it’s a win-win! you get your food, he gets to see you, etc. if not he’ll send someone over to pass it to the receptionist, or he’ll make up for it by meeting you outside the office to apologise and then ask you what you wanna do so he can make it up to you.

“did you manage to get the bento i bought you?” doyoung asks worriedly through the phone, holding up a hand to the staff member who was beckoning him to his photoshoot. “you bought so much!” you exclaim, with a shoulder to your ear, phone perched in between, “thank you doyoung.”

“’m sorry i couldn’t come over to give you your lunch today, angel. i’ll see you after you’re done with work, okay?” you smile at that, shooting a quick reply before you delved into your food.

→ JAEHYUN would honestly serve you once you come back from a busy day tbh. where taeyong does the chores around the house, jaehyun helps by doing the chores on YOU and only you. giving you massages, bringing you dinner on a tray, other unsaid things… and maybe even carrying you from room to room lol he’s relentless and just goes you need to rest, lemme help. big gentleman even when you reject him, doing smaller things like constantly checking up on you, pulling the blanket higher onto your body, cuddling you closer to his body when it’s cold. on top of that jaehyun also one that would meet you at your workplace and take you out like johnny, but those dates are extremely chill. he lets you choose, and when you’re not sure, he takes you on a night picnic at the field or a rooftop, just dinner, but outside bc the view is really nice and he likes the way you look even after a long day of working.

“where should we park our mats?” your head moves from left to right, looking for a suitable spot while you tug on jaehyun’s hand. he hums at it, searching for a spot just like you are. the wind’s blowing gently when you settle near a tree, mat occasionally flying up which you counter with your heavy laptop bag.

“any idea where we can get desserts later?” you call out as a half-joke, not expecting jaehyun to pull up his phone to instantly search for a baskin robbins. “there’s one close-by, wait here for a minute and i’ll go get one for you-“ you laugh before pulling him back down, “don’t worry! we’ll go together, plus i don’t want to be left alone.” jaehyun softly smiles, nodding along as he takes out the food he packed.

→ JUNGWOO has similar intentions like johnny, except he would just wanna stay home. where johnny’s goal is to make you laugh, jungwoo just likes doing things together at home. playing board games, folding the clothes together, making dinner together. it’s not that he doesn’t want to do it, but when he’s given free time he sometimes just likes to laze at home and rest from schedules. he sometimes takes himself out of bed to help before you come back but he’s lazy lolol. loves it when you’re both equally tired and living off 5h of sleep. it’s not romanticising the lack of sleep but your schedules just don’t allow you to sleep equal amounts of hours of sleep. through that, you’re at least able to connect over sleepy talk and droopy smiles while you make the bed or assemble a lego piece or playing video games. if jungwoo’s energetic enough he doesn’t mind doing the crazier activities but he generally prefers those activities done in semi-silence while you exchange jokes and funny videos.

“noooo- no! you only need to move three times, you’re cheating-“ jungwoo pouts and moves back your playing avatar back three spaces on the board game. you purse your lips, not expecting him to see it since he was particularly invested in the movie playing on the screen. knowing it was a shitty film, you tried to talk him out of it, but he insisted. with eyes glued to the screen a few seconds earlier, you took your chance to move down one more space in order to get the benefit on the game board.

“you’ll get to buy a house soon, honey,” jungwoo grins cheekily, laughing even more when he’s able to move four steps, landing on the square that you wanted. now it was your turn to pout as he flips the card for property purchases, happily placing it next to his five other houses. “you’re so annoying!” you say as you fall back on the bean bag, but jungwoo doesn’t believe it when he sees a smile poking out from behind the hands shielding your face..

→ MARK sends you a looooot of texts. your convos with him are just him spamming questions or sending you memes. on every platform LMAO he has tweets sent, ig dm’s are blowing up from the weirdass nct memes that some of the fans make, he uses the official nct tiktok account to send you viral trending videos and he’s like we should try this!!!! and it’s a couple doing acrobatics or some shit. he’s crazy. anyway, he just likes to share things with you, from songs, to playlists, to youtube videos or interesting topics like crime psychology or movie theories etc. he knows that you’re hardly going to see it in your job but he sees the way you react across the room when he sends you stuff so he’s sure that you’ll like it after you get off work. sometimes likes to rickroll you, he knows it’s an old trend/troll thing but the thrill of seeing your frustrated replies always make him laugh out loud. when you’re back home, the both of you review whatever you send each other and then laugh together at them.

“hey, babe, check out this video,” mark says in a text, pasting a twitter link to a video. the video starts out interesting enough, mentioning something about a fun fact with stunning visuals has you wanting to learn more. when the guy in the video starts on his first word, the video immediately changes to rick astley with never gonna give you up. you mutter a small fuck under your breath, gaining a bit of attention from your colleagues during lunch break.

under the table, you flip him off in a picture, which he responds with a big smile of his that’s obviously teasing you for falling for it. you’re going to get it when i get back home!!!!! on a new high, you text the message and set your phone down, already excited for the evening where’d you be able to spend your time with him.

→ HAECHAN is a mix of everything kinda. he’d bring you out after work sometimes and other times likes to stay at home, mainly takes you out to eat after work, but that’s the extent of his after-work-escapades, he doesn’t want to tire you out too much. i think one prominent things he likes to do to is vlog to you, send you videos of what he’s doing on set or at home and just treats your convo like a bank for endless videos. y’know how there’s this video feature in telegram? he sends sooo many of those that you have the time of your life watching those on the ride back home. if you have time, you HAVE to facetime him during your lunch break and tell him how you’re doing and how’s your work coming along. do i have to kick someone’s ass for making you feel uncomfortable? is that patient being creepy again? and you have to explain that haechan, no, that patient is an elderly you cannot beat his ass. he’s like i don’t care, creepy dudes are not excused!!! and you can’t help but smile at that. always wants to be talking to you, close to you. if one day, you’re able to bring him to your job, this man follows you around like a lost puppy and just admires what you do, it’s endearing.

“ah, wait- you know how the sister, xia ling was sent to shut down the ten rings army? well… i just reviewed some of the articles and-“ the video cuts into the next one, haechan’s face zoomed in as he looks straight into the camera, “y’know, she might become a villain one day, i don’t know. maybe i should review some of the comics too?”

“anyway! come look at our set for the music video! it’s sexy, outfits are fire, sets are so good, the choreo this time isn’t too hard, either.” haechan asks the other members to wave as he passes them by, no doubt going his own make-up and hair after the others were already done, “okay, gotta go- love you bye!” you smile at that, texting a quick reply before you open up a video of your own, whispering through the speaker with a promise that you’d see him tonight.

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ash-soka · 2 years ago

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31, 38, 42 for the oc ask meme?

31. Pick one OC of yours and explain what their tumblr blog would be like (what they reblog, layout, anything really)

this question made my go and make a whole fake blog for my first ever dnd oc, Myrah (pronounced meer-uh). this is her:

(picrew by nudekay)

her blog would look like this:

she'd mostly blog about fashion, interact with her handful of friends, and advertise her youtube channel. she's an elf bard in canon, so she would put a lot of violin content on youtube, and maybe the occasional harp piece.

if you want to see the kind of posts she'd reblog/her aesthetic, you can check out her blog here!

warning though, it only looks good in desktop, and i will also probably never post to it again

38. Which one of your OCs would be the best dancer?

Oh, Orpheus by far! He's spent 10 years as a professional dancer in his canon setting, and he always still dances in any au I put him in. And that was always the plan for him, right back to his earliest design concept—

^I almost never post my art so most of you have never seen this but here's my first ever drawing of one of my favourite boys! excuse how lq it is, this is just a screenshot, the original is on my old laptop, it was that long ago. He's evolved somewhat from this original concept, but he's very much still a dancer!

Orpheus is my water genasi bard OC from @literalpotatx's dnd campaign. Ash very graciously let me make him a dancer instead of a more traditional type of bard.

Orpheus joined a dance troupe when he was around 17 or 18, and within the next year or two they were invited to perform for the royalty of his home kingdom. He spent the next 10 years, basically the entirety of his 20s, as a dancer for the royal court of Pythos, so he's pretty good. I do have some unfinished art of him when he was first invited to the palace with the other dancers:

which i also posted here!

I flip flop on what styles of dance he'd like in a modern setting, I think he'd like the control that ballet requires you to have, but i could easily see him liking other styles as well. I keep coming back to these two videos (one, two) as possible dance inspiration for him in his canon setting! i think he'd strive to master a few different styles over time. sorry this got so long— my dancer oc is one of my favourites!

42. Which one of your OCs would be the most interested in Greek gods?

okay i really love this question, i can answer it in a few different ways,

1) if taken completely literally then, it's him again, my beloved Orpheus:

(picrew by baydews, colours slightly edited by me)

so. funny coincidence. my Orpheus is not the Orpheus of greek myth, I just personally love the myth of orpheus and eurydice and thought it would make a good name for a bard, even though my bard is a dancer. I named him that, and had him ready to go as a character the next chance I got to play someone new— so when I got invited to play in a new campaign, I decided to use Orpheus, and later found out this campaign would be incorporating Greek gods.

really funny to me how that happened. and the funniest part is that it happened AGAIN, another player in the same campaign decided to recycle her oc from years ago, named atlas, the next chance she got, and had decided to play as them before finding out this was a Greek gods campaign [doofenshmirtz "two nickels but weird that it happened twice" meme]

so, if i take "which oc would be most interested in greek gods" completely literally for their canon settings, the answer is Orpheus because those are the gods in charge of the world he lives in. funnily, if you'd asked this a few weeks ago i don't know if i could have said as much dkhgbdfkhb. yes, the Greek gods are real in the world he lives in, but. Orph didn't really care about them in more than a vague sense until Thanatos did him a favour last session dkghbdk. Thanatos isn't even the first god he's met, he's met Hermes and been in the vicinity of Artemis, he just wasn't that impressed before now i guess kdhfgbdk. to be fair, idk if he fully realised hermes was a god, and he didn't properly meet artemis. He's also met some? demi-gods I guess? it's complicated to explain, but I think one of them kind of did also put the fear of the gods into him a little bit so. he does care more now because of all that's happened. and i think that counts as being "most interested" out of all my ocs in their canon settings.

2) if taken in a. kind of literal but kind of meta way? it's complicated hold on.

if I had a nickel for every time a friend told me about their idea for a modern greek gods au, and let me come up with a concept for how my personal favourite god would fit into that setting, i'd have two nickels. which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

but anyway, my favourite of the Greek gods is Thanatos, the god of death. i just really like psychopomps, and although he's nearly always present in some way or another, he's rarely actually mentioned, which basically makes him free real estate for this kind of thing.

(was I smug that orph had a really positive interaction with my favourite god so i could let my favouritism bleed into him? yes, thank you for asking!)

and i always say the same thing for him in a modern setting as a human, he'd be the hard working employee of a funeral home that Hades owns. his twin Hypnos works there too, mostly on reception but he helps his brother out when he's not sleeping on the job instead. back in like, 2018, a friend asked what i'd do with him and this is what i came up with, and i've stuck with it. (also a good excuse to bring up any knowledge i've retained from watching askamortician over the years).

also the part of my brain that wants me to go "i liked it before it was cool" is forcing me to say: i've never played that hades game. this is just from my own interpretation

i've been thinking about it recently because a different friend asked a few weeks ago, which prompted me to actually do designs for Thanatos (left) and Hypnos (right) in this setting.

(picrew by cosmitasia)

so in a weird way i think this version of Thanatos who's basically an oc would count as "most interested in the greek gods" because basically every other character we worked into this setting that he'd be interacting with is another greek god, lmao.

3) but, if i take this the way i think the question actually intended, as in, in a modern setting, which of your OCs would be the most interested in Greek Mythology, then the answer changes again!

In that case the answer is probably my mc for the exile, Dimitra "Mimi" Vamirel, she really loves reading and I think she'd take a real interest in mythology in general in a modern setting! i'll add a picrew of her here too:

(picrew by djarn)

thank you so much for sending this!!!!! 💖💘💝💞 i appreciate the chance to talk about my brain blorbos

link to the oc questions, in case anyone else wants to send them!

i have 1, 2, 24, 33, and 44 sitting in my inbox though! i will get to them asap <3

#if this shows up in any tags i'm so SO sorry #long post #thank you so much for letting me talk about orpheus' dancing i love him so much #anonymous #ask #my ocs

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lifewithdavefarts · 3 years ago

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DaveFarts - Episode 4 “Post Gym Gas” [Episode List] The showers at Dave’s gym are once again out of order so he shows up at Tim’s house to take a shower. This time, however, he’s not in a rush, so he can spend a bit more quality time with his best friend… With some help from the gassy effects of his fiber bars…

Unlike the other stories, this one is told from Dave’s POV.

Post-Gym Gas

“Man… thanks again, Tim.” I said, showing up in his bedroom wearing only a pair of boxers.

Yes, only a pair of underwear. Tim’s gay? He finds this attractive?

Who cares. That’s how I act when I’m around our other straight friends and I’m not going to treat Tim “unnaturally”, or like he’s some kind of of sick person, just because he thinks he’s making me uncomfortable. Heck: he probably got a boner right now. Big. Fucking. Deal. I’ll just take that as a compliment.

“Those idiots at the gym again messed everything up. Maybe I should go to a different one.”

I grabbed the towel that Tim gave me earlier and pressed it on the rest of my body as I still felt a bit too wet. I then checked my phone, answering a couple of texts from my girlfriend Dana and put on my pair of black gym shorts (they’re not really ‘shorts’ actually as they almost go below my knees when I get up). I remain bare-chested as it’s not really a cold evening and I don’t want to sweat again: I just took a shower!

As usual, I felt my stomach rumble a bit. “Fucking fiber bars again!” I thought. I ripped like eight long farts under the shower, but I still feel bloated. Is the gym working? I’m eating tons of those bars and I just can’t see the point. Well, at least they sure make Tim happy.

Yeah… Tim, my great, disgusting best friend. Can’t believe he likes this stuff.

Look at him, trying to read his books, in silence. He’s already as red as a tomato. I wonder when he’ll understand that he doesn’t have to feel so embarrassed about this stuff, not around me at least.

Speaking of which, I think I got one ready…

I couldn’t hide my smirk as I slowly got up and walked towards my friend sitting behind his desk. I was literally towering him. Tiny, short Tim: must defend at all costs!

I don’t know how this stuff works, but I hope he’s enjoying it.

And, honestly, I think it’s hilarious, and I’m always glad to share a few good laughs with him.

“Dude. I think I got a big one for ya.” I simply said.

I turned around, chuckling a bit, pointing his butt at his face. I leaned a bit and I felt his defenseless head brushing against the fabric of my gym shorts. I already started to laugh. I’m a worthless immature, but I thought that was hilarious. I pushed a bit and the fart came out naturally, as big as my usual blasts. I made sure that my ass was still brushing against my friend’s face: I need to make clear that I’m perfectly comfortable with his fetish.

The fart vibrated violently through my shorts right in his face.

Eight seconds. Man! I’m so talented. Fucking fibers though.

I turned around to check whether my friend survived to that, and his hilarious smile confirmed that he was alive and well (and probably aroused too, but that’s a problem I can’t take care of). I bursted into a laugh, I couldn’t’ help it.

“Told ya it was big!”

He nodded at me and smiled.

As long he’s comfortable around me it’s great.

We still spend an incredible amount of time together and, to be honest, nothing really changed.

But sometimes Tim acts a bit too awkward, so I just make him understand (every. single. time.) that there’s no reason to act all weird around me. Dude, I’m like your brother, you can trust me! I trust you, that’s for sure!

Man, I’m pretty sure he wishes more face-farts right now.

I wonder if he will ever have the guts to ask me directly. He knows I’m a proud farter, I’ve always been.

Gotta admit that the funniest part about all of this is how much of a dork Tim is, seriously.

If he wasn’t gay, pretty sure some girl out there would have considered him adorable.

To me, however, it was a mixture of annoying and hilarious.

I felt my belly hurt a bit; fiber bars were still messing up with my stomach. I finally put on a black undershirt and sat again on my friend’s bed. I’ll leave in a couple of minutes though, gotta a lot of stuff to work on back at home.

“Dave…”

Apparently, Tim just grew a pair.

I saw him turning red, into a stuttering pile of awkwardness.

I pretended to have no idea of what he was going to tell me and I tried not to laugh at him.

“I’d hate to make you uncomfortable but…”

I checked my phone, not even looking at him, if that made him more comfortable.

“But since you seem so open-minded about it I was wondering… nah never mind!”

I chuckled a bit. “What?” I asked, knowing exactly what he was going to say.

“It’s just that I don’t want you to think that I want to be your friend because of…”

“…because of my farts?” I simply said, cutting him off.

He almost fell from his chair and quickly stood up, nervous as usual.

“Tim, I know you’re not an asshole. If you were, I wouldn’t be here.” I stated.

Let me tell you the truth: I knew that Tim loved my farts and most of all loved the fact that I didn’t care at all about his fetish. And that’s it. He was my friend before realizing his fetish, since middle school.

Tim always says “Oh Dave! He’s so great. Always looking out for me!”, but that’s because he’s an insecure little shit.

The truth is that Tim has always been the one looking out for me. He’s always been there, for reasons that I don’t really want to explain, but let’s just say that sometimes it was pretty serious family stuff.

He’s not an asshole: he’s the opposite of that.

I know he considers me “the” best of the friends.

Let me tell you that I consider myself lucky to have a friend like him.

It’s hard to believe, I know, since he’s so weak and awkward, while I’m stronger and all this bullshit, but trust me.

This “best friend” thing goes both ways. He’s my bro.

“Were you going to ask me for a fart?” I asked, with a smirk.

His reaction was priceless.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. It’s just too… gay I guess.” he tried to say, faking a chuckle, trying to *not* sound embarrassed, completely terrified.

It’s not like this came out of nowhere though.

I did “help” somehow, not only with my continuous face-farting.

I even send him random fart videos on WhatsApp. That must be painful for him.

“That’s not what friends are for. You’re already doing so much for me. You’re being so supportive, more than I could have ever hoped, and I’m not only talking about… well… this” he said, too embarrassed to pronounce the word 'fart’ apparently. “I’m not in the position to ask for this stuff. Sorry.”

That was too easy.

I nodded and then, with a deft movement, gently kicked his ankle, making him trip on his own bed. His head landed right next to my sagging (in shorts) butt and I didn’t even need to move.

“There. Now you’re in the position to ask.” I chuckled.

He was, quite literally, in the *right* position: I could sit on his face in a moment.

I laughed so much at him, but I wanted to laugh with him.

I simply stared at my gay friend and smiled, finding his teary, embarrassed eyes a bit too hilarious maybe. I finally lifted my butt, and put it above his defenseless face. I didn’t sit directly on him: my ass was hovering above him, only inches away from his nose. I then started to fart, as I usually do.

Fiber bars were an incredible fuel. The blast almost ripped my pants. Even I could feel the wind being fired right in my friend’s face. Disgusting. Disgustingly hilarious. I bursted again into a laugh and I sat directly on his head as the fart kept going. One of my best of that day, that’s for sure. I think it lasted around 9 seconds.

Pretty sure he loved it.

“Smells great, does it?” and I lost it, laughing again like an immature jerk, despite being in my 20s.

Tim was dazed, startled and sat next to me.

I patted his shoulder in a friendly manner and he turned to me, finally laughing too.

“Gotta go now, bro.” I said, it was getting too late. “See ya tomorrow. I’m expecting you to join us this weekend. We’re having a surprise party for Lucy.”

“Of course! I already texted Greg. He’s got a new car and can pick both of us, so we can drink as much as we want!” he replied, with a rare smirk.

You smooth little fucker.

You act all awkward around me, but you’re still a party-animal.

So proud of you, bro.

“Finally! That’s the Tim I want to hear!” I said, heading downstairs. “See ya tomorrow then…”

Outside of the house, in his front yard, I then ripped one last, long, rumbling fart.

Fucking fibers!

I guess this one is literally on the house, Tim.

End of Episode 4

#fart story #eproctophilia #fartkink #davefarts2 #gayfart #malefarts

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americanculttour · 2 years ago

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Google translator would have been useful. Four car names that do not sound good in Hungary.

You wouldn't think it, but car brands do name their models consciously. Usually serious "scientific" work precedes the birth of the model name. It doesn't matter where in the world the car is made, every car needs an appropriate model name to be successful in the market.

The choice of name is also important because the success or failure of the expensively developed novelty may depend on it. It is important that the final version selected from hundreds of options is short and pleasant-sounding, does not have any obscene meaning in any language, matches the character of the car, and the owner can proudly tell his friends about the car he has chosen. Despite their best efforts, car manufacturers sometimes make mistakes. Let's look at four car models whose names are not very favourable on the Hungarian market.

Chevrolet Tahoe (written in Hungarian as: Tahó)

It is pronounced almost the same in Hungary as in America. But it means something completely different. Although the name seems completely innocent in America, in Hungary this term sounds particularly rude. In Hungarian, it roughly means hick. So it refers to a person who is rude, uneducated and impolite. So, in summary, it's not a very nice expression. The only excuse is that it is not distributed in Europe. Which is not necessarily a problem, because if you tried to drive in Hungary with a car of this size, you could easily be seen as a tahó.

Toyota Prius (written in Hungarian as: Priusz)

This is one of the funniest examples on this list. The word means: criminal record. Very poor choice of name. Perhaps I don't even need to emphasize that they are typically bought by people who don't even know a person with a criminal record, so they couldn't be further from the gang life style. What is really surprising is that even with this name it is one of the most popular cars on the Hungarian market.

SEAT Ronda (It is written the same way in Hungarian)

There's really nothing to explain here. Ronda means ugly. And that's really the case. The model would certainly not have been successful in Hungary if the brand had started to be distributed in its infancy. Fortunately, it only entered the Hungarian market as a used car later. Although this was obviously not a conscious decision in this form, we can at least see it as honest marketing communication.

Volkswagen Polo (written in Hungarian as: Póló)

In its category, this car was one of the most popular and best-selling cars in Hungary. What could be wrong with its name? Well, that's almost exactly how we pronounce t-shirt in Hungarian. At least this name is not offensive, but it is also not a really attractive name. When the car was released, the jokes that "I don't drive the polo, I wear it" were inevitable. Despite the lame name, the car had a good career in Hungary.

#hungary #car industry #transition #mistranslation #funny tumblr #educateyourself #differences #cars #culture #fun facts #good to know #car model #language

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whoiwanttoday · 3 years ago

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Hey guys, here is Aisling Bea who is either sort of famous or quite famous in the UK as a stand up comedian, I am never sure, fame is hard to measure from afar. It's important to note that while she is famous in the UK, she is not British, but rather Irish, which is not only not the same thing but the sort of thing that could get you into a whole lot of trouble for implying is a thing. Which is one of two reasons I bring it up, the other being that I think foreign born comedians who work in the UK but are not British might be a thing I am into. I've kept it secret until now but there is another one who almost got posted about a week ago cause I am watching Taskmaster, a very British show in that it is a panel show that is very dumb in the smartest way and results in just being hilarious when it should not be. It's the sort of thing the British do exceptionally well and we'd find a way to just absolutely fuck up here in the US. We do this a few ways, one is by never trusting anything so someone would see the show and decide they need to make it "exciting," which is completely missing the point. The point is that telling 5 comedians to eat a watermelon is not exciting or inherently funny, what makes it funny is watching 5 comedians go about a task and then talk about it because they are all entertaining and funny people. We'd add fire or lasers or something which sounds like a good thing but it never turns out to be. You just end up with stupid nonsense that is not entertaining. Second, we never bring our best talent. I don't know what the difference is, maybe it's that there isn't a major movie industry to steal people away but Britain always seems to just stack these shows with their funniest people. We'd get Z list comedians who are often funny but not draws, so no one would watch and by the second episode someone would go, "The ratings suck, we need to add fire and lasers". So I am jealous of the UK in that sense. Aisling Bea is a very pretty and very funny Irish woman and if you need proof she's Irish try to say her name out loud. Now the way you said it, absolutely not how it's pronounced because that's not how they do names in Ireland. There's no SH but boy is there an SH sound. Anyway, as I said, I have been loving this show but British shows are so short we are on to a new set of comics very quickly, so she is the first to make it here. I will say, the show does explain why Brexit happened, though. At least through my understanding it was because British men hate foreigners, and that seems unfair but perhaps it's quite feminist, cause guys, I know an English Woman and she is really funny. But somehow in 4 seasons of this show, two years the only woman on the show isn't English. She's Canadian or Irish. That means either British women are not funny, a thing that I know not to be true, or it means foreign women are coming in and stealing jobs from funny English women. I am still against Brexit but I feel more comfortable with it knowing ti was motivated by a deep seceded desire among certain Brits to make sure their women get a fair shot (though I would argue there is not actual limit for the number of women you can have on the show if you want but baby steps). Anyway, I have seen clips of Aisling Bea before and she is very funny and I am liking her on the show and loving the show, I really do recommend it. Today I want to fuck Aisling Bea.

#Aisling Bea #brunette #Comedian #whoiwanttofucktoday

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infinitebells · 4 years ago

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Moran as your starbuck barista 👀

I CANT EXPLAIN WHY THIS MAKES ME SO HAPPY OMG-

it’s a mini fic now so enjoy.

you don’t recognize the man behind the counter at your usual starbucks. it doesn’t throw you off too much, but the perpetual smirk on his face sparks curiosity within you. by the time it's your turn, his eyes are trained on you and his smirk has morphed into something more playful. you can’t help but notice the way his black short sleeve t-shirt clings to his upper body, and how absurdly tall he is too.

“well well, what can i get for such a pretty lady such as yourself?” he says, tapping a few buttons on the screen in front of him before looking back up at you. you can feel your cheeks get warm at his heavy gaze.

“i’ll just take an iced coffee with cream and sugar please,” you say, and his smirk transforms into a smile. it’s illegally gorgeous.

“a classic drink, i like that! anything else i can get for ya?” he’s full on grinning now, and you speak on impulse at the sight.

“i mean your number would be nice,” you say, eyes widening as you clamp your lips shut. his eyes widen too, a faint blush painting his cheeks. his mouth forms a small ‘o’ before it splits in a wide smile. he bends down, grabbing a scrap of an old receipt and a pen next to him before scribbling numbers onto the paper before sliding it across the counter to you.

“can i get a name for your order and for whenever you decide to text me?” he asks, and for the first time in this exchange he looks breathless. when you tell him, his eyes light up.

“why the face?” your voice is quieter than you anticipated.

“because your name is more beautiful than i thought it would be,” he says before pressing a few more buttons on the machine. you hand him your card and he finishes ringing you up.

“thank you,” you say, smiling widely to him. he smiles back before you step back and let the next person order. by the time you’re picking up your coffee, the smile still hasn’t left your face. it grows wider when you see the name ‘pretty lady <3’ written messily on the paper label.

———

by the time you’ve finally reached your apartment after a long day of interning at the orthopedics office your best friend recommended to you. you flop down onto the couch, sighing as you shrug your purse off of your shoulder. you fish through the contents of your bag before finding the small strip of paper you were looking for. you stare at the numbers before steeling enough courage to send a quick “hey :)” to the boy from the coffee shop.

you

hey :)

unknown

is this the pretty lady from starbucks? because if not we’re gonna have some problems

you can’t help but giggle a bit before responding.

you

this is she

i just realized i never got your name though

unknown

it’s sebastian :)

———

after a week of non-stop texting, he finally stayed serious for long enough to ask you out on a proper date. which was why you were now walking along the lamp lit streets of the city, laughing at another one of sebastian’s crazy stories that he had about his friends, a cup of ice cream in each of your guys’ hands.

“i swear to god he had no idea we were all home, so imagine the look on albert’s face when he’s bringing home his date and he sees the four of us drunk as shit in the living room and giggling about how will couldn’t properly pronounce croissant,” he’s laughing, barely able to get out the words as he speaks. you’re right there with him, mouth spread wide as you two laugh together.

“well how does he normally pronounce croissant?” you manage to get out, and this only sends sebastian into another fit of laughter.

“he...he says it like ‘quack-sant’ and it’s the funniest thing in the world,” he says, his head thrown back in laughter. you take a moment to admire how his eyes crinkle in the low street light, how his smile is filled with pure and unfiltered joy, and how his cheeks glow with a beautiful blush. he’s absolutely stunning. he stops laughing, looking down to see you staring at him.

“what’s up sweetheart? am i too distracting?” he grins boyishly, and you can’t help but reciprocate the smile.

“yeah, i guess you are pretty distracting seb,” you say, looking down bashfully. you don’t realize you two have reached the door of your apartment, where he had first picked you up for the date. you feel his hand under your chin, guiding your face up to his.

“seb?” his grin is much wider than before, and your eyes widen at the unintentional nickname you gave him.

“i- well- i didn’t mean to,” you trail off, and his smile softens a bit.

“don’t worry, i like it,” he says, and you smile softly. he leans down until his face is level with yours. your eyes are still wide, and you’re praying that he can’t hear how fast your heart is beating. “is it okay if i kiss you goodnight?” his voice is quiet, and you feel yourself nod unconsciously. when his lips meet yours it isn’t like the fireworks that everyone tells you about. it’s warm, comforting, and it builds until there’s warmth spreading from your chest to every single one of your cells. his lips are gentle against yours, and he has a hand on your cheek to keep your face close to his. when he pulls away, your face is unnaturally warm and his is painted in a deep red.

“do you want to come in for a drink?” you’re breathless, and it’s worse when he speaks again.

“i don’t usually sleep with people on the first date yknow,” he says cheekily, and laughs when you smack his arm lightly.

“we’re not sleeping together asshole, i’m serious! just drinks and talking, no sex,” you explain. he looks down at you for a moment before nodding.

“i’d love to come in for drinks and talking, no sex.”

———

“babe! i can’t find my shirt! do you know where it is?” you hear sebastian call from your shared bedroom, and you giggle silently to yourself as he walks out shirtless to see you in his shirt and panties in the kitchen.

“nope! i have no idea where it is,” you say, twirling on one foot and shooting him a sly grin. he matches it, and you take note of his low hanging sweatpants as he makes his way over to you, slinging his arms over your waist.

“such a little klepto i have on my hands,” he says fondly before leaning down to quickly peck you.

“you still love me though,” you say, and he smiles against your lips.

“that i do sweetheart. that i do.”

#moriarty the patriot #yuukoku no moriarty #moriarty the patriot x reader #yuukoku no moriarty x reader #sebastian moran #sebastian moran x reader #colonel sebastian moran

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maribatshipper · 4 years ago

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Miraculous Damienette Reader Insert

A girl with H/C, H/L, H/S hair walks into College Françoise Dupont, looking for a certain bluenette, her E/C eyes glimmering as she sees the bluebell-eyed teen in one of the classes. The bell rings & she walks into the classroom & runs straight for the other girl.

"NETTIEEEEE!" She exclaims, surprising the bluenette.

The redheaded teacher asks, "Who are you? This-"

The girl laughs, "Oh, I am Marinette's cousin Y/N who just came back from Australia!"

Suddenly, a girl who's hair reminds Y/N of a horse's butt smiles, "Oh, I remember Australia. I went there last year & had some of that deliciously sweet stuff they called Vigimite."

Y/N laughs her butt off. The girl looks offended.

"That is the funniest thing I've heard in weeks! You can't even pronounce it!" Y/N laughs.

"Hey, Why are you laughing at Lila? She was just trying to connect with you!" A brunette with glasses frowns at Y/N.

"Because, this Lila girl obviously has never been to Australia. Vegemite is certainly not sweet. It is a savoury spread the locals put on bread. Next thing she's gonna be telling me is that they ride Kangaroos to school & the Koala Bear is actually a bear & they throw a shrimp on the Barbie! It's not a shrimp, it's a prawn! Kangaroos are wild animals & it's only called a Koala BEAR because it looks like a living Teddy Bear!" Y/N exclaims.

"N/N, calm down." Marinette sighs.

Y/N nods, "Sorry. Oh, you said something really important on the phone, Nettie!"

Marinette blushes, "It's nothing, really."

"We'll talk about it on the way to my apartment!" Y/N smiles.

Lila starts crying, catching Y/N's attention.

"Why are you so mean?" Lila cries.

Y/N goes full savage mode.

"Oh, forgive me. I didn't realise saying hello to my Cousin makes you blush!" She sasses.

The brunette girl glares at Y/N, "How dare you hurt Lila's feelings!"

Marinette sighs, "Alya..."

Y/N cuts her cousin off & laughs, "Seriously? If she's all upset because I love my cousin, then her family hates her, which I'm not surprised with the outfit she's wearing, & don't get me started on her hair! Are you trying to look like a dog's hind leg? You'd think that a girl who's on the magazines would at least model good clothes, & know how to MODEL! Honestly, you'd think Agreste would pick a good muse. I've seen 27 different kids here with much better fashion sense than you!"

Everyone gasps at Y/N's statements about Lila. Lila ends up crying her eyes out, but Y/N keeps smirking.

"I think you've caused enough trouble, Y/N." Alya sneers.

Y/N glares, "Like all of you have caused trouble for Marinette?" in a deathly serious voice.

Marinette hides under the table. If there is anything she has learned from the family reunions, it's that you do NOT get Y/N mad.

"You know, Marinette can sue the lot of you with what you've done. I've done my research on the lot of you. You, Alya! Your blog is crap! All it's used for is spreading Miss Rossi's lies. You call yourself a truth-seeker but you only see what you want to see." Y/N hisses.

Alya goes to object when Y/n gives her a look that can shut up politicians.

"You, Max! You believed a serviette-"

Marinette interrupts, "We call them napkins here."

Y/N continues, "A napkin could gouge out your eye! Dude, you're wearing glasses! Unless the paper had acid on it, the only thing it could've hurt is your cheek, glasses, or forehead! Use that brain you were given!" She turns to the Teacher, "Bustier, you make Marinette do all the work keeping your pupils in place, when that is your job! She's been doing everything except teaching the class. My cousin is spread as thin as Vegemite should be, & you all expect her to do more than her fair share! & don't even get me started on the texts I've seen!"

Marinette's eyes widen in shock.

"Did you say texts?" Marinette whispers.

Suddenly, a purple butterfly flies into the room & lands on Y/N's belt, absorbing it as a neon butterfly symbol appearing over her face.

"Des-"

"I'mma stop you right there, Moth-butt. YOU are one of the reasons I'm mad, so I suggest you remove this little insect before I crush YOU like one. NOW!"

The class stares in shock for a while before Y/N falls against one of the desks, the butterfly symbol disappearing & the butterfly forms again to fly away when Y/N grabs it, holds it by both wings with both hands & rips it apart, killing it.

"May that be a lesson to that man." Y/N smirks, "Now, I'm taking Marinette to my place & you can bet that your life is about to become so much harder! Somewhere out there is a tree that's working tirelessly to supply you all with oxygen. Go find it & apologise! Let's go Nettie."

Y/N grabs Marinette's hand & walks away.

***

"Now that that's out of the way, What's this about a boyfriend, Nettie?"

Marinette's a blushing mess.

"You don't have to answer my questions right now, but be careful in Paris, Ladybug." Y/N smirks.

Marinette exclaims, "What!? No! I'm- I'm not-"

Y/N laughs, "Whatever you have that fools all of Paris, even the world, doesn't work on your cousin who designed supersuits. There is also E's influence."

Marinette sighs, "How?"

Y/N ignores her question.

"Speaking of which, What Do You Think You're Doing?!"

The slightly older teenager instantly switches to lecture mode, whacking Marinette with newspaper.

"You taught me everything you know, which helped me with E, & I watched you with pride as you impress Agreste with your hat & created the album cover of Jagged Stone that hits the top of the charts like a high note, & you go running around Paris rooftops in a Polk-a-dot spandex ONESIE?! I'd think you'd at least get a decent supersuit! No more! We're going to design you a REAL suit in my office! No cousin of mine is going to be running around Paris in PJS!"

Thoroughly intimidated, Marinette stares at Y/N in shock. She barely sees this woman, & out of everyone in Paris, the family that she rarely sees figures out her identity! She just keeps staring shocked while Y/N drags her to a tall office with many supersuits lined on the walls, then takes her measurements.

"I... I don't know how you found out-" Marinette starts.

Y/N cuts her off, "I'm not going to tell anyone, Nettie. I've seen your fights against the Akumas. You're in a defensive battle, & need to keep your identity secret, even from your parents. Believe me, I can keep secrets, & I can't even tell you why."

That would be telling. Marinette knows Y/N used to be a superhero fan when she was younger, & it seems to have carried into her adolescence.

"That's not it N/N, I don't think my suit can change. I didn't design it, it's magic." Marinette frowns.

Y/N pulls out pieces of paper, "That would explain your powers, including why it took my 10 tries to recognise you. You & your partners must have Perception filters. You & Cat Noir's powers do seem to be in line with luck. Clearly you have some influence over your powers, so maybe that could extend to your suit? I mean, I did see that Pharaoh report. It's obvious your powers are older than you. Maybe even inheritable, & I doubt your predecessors wore spandex PJs."

Suddenly, there's a doorbell ring.

"Who's visiting?" Y/N asks.

She walks towards the door to see a young man with green eyes and dark hair.

"Damian Wayne? What do you want this time, Demon?" Y/N scoffs.

Marinette gapes. Her cousin knew him?

"Wondering why my girlfriend wasn't at home but was here." Damian scoffs.

Y/N turns to Marinette, who's smiling sheepishly.

"He's your boyfriend?! Now I feel kinda feel bad for putting a prank in his room. Oh, uh... Don't go in your room for the next 2 weeks, Demon. Does he know?"

Damian glares at Y/N while Marinette nods.

"Good, I can talk about it with him in the room. We'll design anyway, & you start practicing manipulating the suit’s design in private. In 2 months from now, I want to invite Ladybug to E's latest collection first hand, as some of the pieces have been inspired by her & her partners, & I do not want my cousin showing up looking like she put on an oversized toddler onesie, embarrassing herself, E, & I. If you can't change it, we'll make an oversuit with some of your boyfriend's tech. Maybe a jacket or armour. You'll look amazing!" Y/N natters.

Damian gives Marinette a deadpan look.

"What is she talking about?"

Marinette sighs, "She knows I'm Ladybug."

Damian sighs in annoyance.

"Oh please! Like it was that difficult to find out who the Batfamily was, Robin. The entire world is full of idiots. The only ones that figure it out & go public about the info end up dead. Also, I'm your family, Nettie. I'm supposed to protect you. But if your out there saving Paris, I can't do that. Just be careful, Nettie."

Marinette's eyes widen with an idea. Damian notices.

"No, Angel."

Y/N giggles at the nickname given to Marinette, remembering Damian's nickname.

"Opposites really do attract."

***

Ladybug is now seen swinging from rooftop to rooftop with a jacket with a hood that goes over her ears, with the design "La Mode" printed on the back, a new Fox hero, Kitsune, beside her, E/C eyes shining.

(Not my picture, I just googled it. Add a bit more armour on it.)

"You ready, Kitsune?" Ladybug asks.

Kitsune nods, "Ready as I'll ever be, Buginette!"

#Miraculous salt #Lila salt #Alya salt #Reader insert #Damienette #Maribat #Marinette's cousin Y/N!#Miraculous DC crossover

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iamthenightcolormeblack · 3 years ago

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My Thoughts on Pride and Prejudice 1980: The Ladies Take Center Stage

It's easy to forget that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of other Pride and Prejudice adaptations because the discussion is generally limited to "1995 versus 2005." The subject of this review is the 1980 BBC miniseries adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which stars Elizabeth Garvie as Elizabeth Bennet and David Rintoul as Mr. Darcy and consists of five 1 hour long episodes. Some Pride and Prejudice fans consider this show as the definitive version of the book, since it was one of the first adaptations that attempted to be faithful to the story by incorporating much more of Austen's dialogue compared to previous adaptations.

1. THE PRODUCTION

The video quality is blurry (typical with 1970s/1980s BBC TV shows), so this adaptation is hard to watch compared with the 1995 and 2005 adaptations. While I like the historic houses used in the miniseries, boring, stuffy studio interiors are used for the interior scenes (except for Pemberley). I would only recommend this adaptation for extreme Pride and Prejudice fans/completionists.

Each episode's opening credits are accompanied by illustrations of what happens in the episodes, reminding the viewer that they are watching a filmed version of the book. The caricatured figures are not appealing to the eye and look dated. It doesn't help that they all are accompanied by "ye olde timey" music.

The costumes are for the most part very historically accurate for the early 19th century Regency Era, possibly even more so than the 1995 version with open chests, since the women's day dresses cover their necks as well. The costume designer mastered the famous Regency era white dress; I liked Elizabeth's white day dress and Jane's white evening gown. However, not all the costumes are flattering; some of the ugly floral patterns and garishly bright colors come straight from the 1970s, while a lot of decent evening dresses are ruined by fake lace or clunky 1970s bibs.

The hair is mostly accurate, with the exception of Mary's straight bangs and pixie cut. Unfortunately, the makeup is of the 1970s, especially with the penciled eyeliner/eyebrows on Jane and Caroline Bingley. Poor Mr. Bingley meanwhile has the most unflattering 1970s "helmet bowl" hairstyle.

2. PLOT AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

The adaptation focuses heavily on the female relationships within the book, much more so than other adaptations. Throughout the episodes, there are many slice-of-life scenes in which the Bennet sisters are gathered together in conversation while occupying themselves with typical activities for women of the Regency era (sewing, flower arranging, trying on clothing).

Charlotte Lucas has a larger role here than in the book. In this adaptation, she frequently visits the Bennet sisters at Longbourn, and the screenwriter uses her dialogue as a representation of the Regency perception of marriage as an economic proposition.

Mary Bennet also receives more screen time, and like Charlotte, she voices Regency attitudes towards women in general through her didactic remonstrances.

The many scenes in Elizabeth and Jane's bedroom are a means for Elizabeth to express the feelings and attitudes that she keeps hidden from society.

Elizabeth's favoring of Mr. Wickham is more obvious; she even pronounces him to be "above everyone, in person, countenance, [and] air" and is delighted that Wickham's trash-talking of Darcy confirms her hatred of him.

Inner monologues highlight Elizabeth's mental transformation as she grapples with the consequences of her prejudice against Mr. Darcy and considers the consequences of her family's social gaffes.

I dislike that the show chose to end with Mrs. Bennet's joy over the advantageous marriages of her elder daughters. It reinforces the perception that these marriages are ultimately for money rather than love.

The cast consists of largely unknown (to a mainstream audience) British actors whose portrayals of the characters are solid and replicate the book exactly. The rest of the supporting cast portray the characters just as they are in the book, but do not otherwise stand out. Here are my comments on the lead actors and other supporting cast:

Elizabeth Garvie: Garvie effectively portrays Elizabeth's wit, intelligence, and poise. She also looks right for the part, as she is believably youthful and has captivating eyes. Her pride is not so obvious because Garvie acts like a proper Regency girl, but it is brought out by the way Elizabeth looks people straight in the eye and addresses them directly while confidently stating her opinions, however flawed. My only minor nitpick is that Elizabeth is less vulnerable here; most of the time she is confidently in control of every situation she faces and has a smile for everyone.

David Rintoul: Rintoul looks the part, as he is tall, handsome, proud, and carries himself gracefully. However, he is too stiff and boring like a robot. In many scenes, even private ones with his close friends, he is always standing at attention like a soldier. With the exception of the Pemberley visit and the second proposal, he never smiles, and his voice is very monotone, even in the key romantic scenes where he is supposed to lose himself to his great passion for Elizabeth. Though he tries to appear amused at times, and shows some intelligence, his stiff body language never changes, undercutting the meaning behind his words.

While fans of this show have praised Rintoul for being stiff, like book Darcy, this stiff portrayal hinders Darcy's character development, since he must change his cold manners in order to be worthy of Elizabeth's love. There are MANY instances in the book where Darcy shows some emotion; he smiles as he teases Elizabeth at Rosings, becomes angry when Elizabeth rejects his first proposal, and blushes when he sees Elizabeth at Pemberley. This Mr. Darcy is "all politeness" and we don't get to see Elizabeth peeling back his cold exterior to reveal the good man underneath, unlike in the book.

Malcolm Rennie as Mr. Collins: His portrayal of Mr. Collins is very similar to 1995's Mr. Collins, as both are fat and simpering (maybe 1995's portrayal of Mr. Collins is a copy of this one, except even grosser). I also like how he is super moralizing and preachy in this version. He even walks like a penguin too!

Casting I disliked:

Moray Watson as Mr. Bennet: His Mr. Bennet is thoroughly unsympathetic; he does nothing but scold the family, slam doors, and drink tea. While Mr. Bennet is a neglectful parent, he expresses his dislike of the family in far more subtle ways and does not get into fits of anger easily.

Judy Parfitt as Lady Catherine de Bourgh: While the adaptation makes clear that Lady Catherine likes getting her way, this Lady Catherine isn’t intimidating enough to frighten anyone into submission. What doesn't help is that the scene where she interrogates Elizabeth about her family situation is cut; this scene is important in establishing Lady Catherine's tyrannical personality.

The actresses hired to play Kitty and Lydia Bennet are far too old for the parts; they do not look like teenagers!

Scenes I liked:

The opening scene -- the adaptation gives Charlotte a larger role, as she visits Elizabeth at Longbourn right after the news of Bingley's arrival. She also reveals her practical view on marriage as a necessity for securing comfort, which is at odds with Elizabeth's view of marriage as an equal partnership between people who love each other.

"First Impressions" -- Elizabeth shares her bad opinion of Darcy with Jane and reveals that the Bingleys earned their wealth in trade, making them "new money" as opposed to the Darcy family, which has many generations of nobility. This detail about the origins of Bingley's wealth could explain Caroline's extreme arrogance and make Jane's separation from Bingley on the basis of her poor connections more cruel.

Elizabeth at Mr. Lucas' party: This adaptation includes a scene from the book which isn't in many other adaptations, not even the 1995 miniseries. Elizabeth, acting impertinently to catch the attention of Darcy's "very satirical eye," addresses him sarcastically. Charlotte then gets Elizabeth to play the piano and she takes another opportunity to show off her wit:

"There is a fine old saying, which every body here is of course familiar with - 'Keep your breath to cool your porridge', and I shall keep mine to swell my song."

Jane and Elizabeth at Netherfield. In a series of scenes, Elizabeth confides in Jane her true thoughts and feelings about Darcy, the Bingleys, and the Hursts. For instance, she theorizes about why Darcy stares at her and rants about how disagreeable and annoying the Netherfield party are. It's really entertaining to see Elizabeth driven to frustration by the arrogant rich people.

Any scene with Mr. Collins in it, but here are the funniest ones:

Mr. Collins eating with the Bennet family: I laughed at how he examines the food with a critical eye before shoving it in his mouth quickly. It perfectly captures Mr. Collins' arrogance combined with bad manners.

Mr. Collins at the Netherfield Ball: he cannot dance and embarrasses Elizabeth (definitely a parallel with the 1995 version, where he bumps into the other dancers and apologizes profusely).

Mr. Collins' first proposal to Elizabeth: I laughed at the added flourish (not in the novel), where he bends down on one knee, but instead of professing love for the intended, states proudly to Elizabeth that the main benefit of the marriage is the patronage of Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Collins' proposal to Charlotte Lucas: this is not in the original book, as it is (mostly) limited to Elizabeth's point of view, where she only finds out about the proposal after it happens. This comical scene begins with pleasant music and blooming flowers to establish romantic connotations, before it cuts to an awkward Mr. Collins following Charlotte Lucas. When Charlotte accepts Mr. Collins, they are sitting together by a rosebush, and his pure joy at the unromantic, arranged marriage, combined with the floral imagery from earlier, elevate the situational irony and make for a good laugh. The flower imagery also ties into Charlotte's earlier comparison of marriage to growing a plant; Elizabeth challenges Charlotte's assertion by asking her what would happen if the soil was poor (metaphor for the respect Elizabeth feels is a foundation for a loving relationship).

Aunt Gardiner's advice to Elizabeth: This scene isn't included in other adaptations, not even the 1995 miniseries. Here Aunt Gardiner warns Elizabeth against falling in love with Wickham, telling her that she needs to keep her common sense intact; Elizabeth dismisses this, fully confident in her powers of judgment. It's great that this exchange is included because it foreshadows the discovery of Wickham's true character, and hints that Elizabeth's perceptions of others may be wrong.

Scenes I disliked:

The romantic scenes. This adaptation unfortunately fails in the romance department; there is zero chemistry between the actors; even the otherwise wonderful Elizabeth Garvie is not exempt. (more about this later).

The first country ball. The interior is dark, small, cramped and stagey. Also, the dancing and overall manner of the guests is very sedate and orderly; it’s so quiet you can hear the dancers feet scrape the floor in spite of the music. This isn't very realistic compared with the other adaptations, where we are presented with much more boisterous country dances.

The activation of Stalker Darcy: While Elizabeth plays the pianoforte, Darcy, while shrouded in darkness, moves like a ghost among the crowd until he all of a sudden appears very close to the pianoforte and golf-clapping. perhaps Darcy is a blood sucking vampire? Though this scene is entertaining for all the wrong reasons, it doesn't make sense that Darcy's love for Elizabeth makes him even more robotic and creepy.

Lady Catherine confronting Elizabeth: While the dialogue for this scene is lifted straight from the book, there isn't quite enough fury and anger on the part of either person.

3. THE SCRIPT

What makes this adaptation stand out is the script by Fay Weldon. While the majority of the script is taken directly from the book, many have commented that her interpretation of Pride and Prejudice is much more feminist because of the greater emphasis on Elizabeth's point of view, as well as her relationships with other women. Many of the creative changes made emphasize the ridiculousness of the patriarchy and Elizabeth's outspokenness. In addition, Austen's narration slips into the dialogue of the female characters; for instance, Mary proclaims the village's judgment of Darcy as "the proudest most disagreeable man in the world."

Creative Changes/Great Quotes from the Script:

Darcy adding further insult to injury: after proclaiming Elizabeth to be unattractive to him, he adds: "She has too many sisters."

Mrs. Bennet criticizing poor Mary: “You read too much! No wonder you’re shortsighted.”

Elizabeth has had enough with Darcy, the Hursts, and the Bingleys: “Jane, they are monsters! They like nothing and dislike everything!"

Elizabeth has no patience: "This is unendurable! Mr. Darcy has scarcely spoken more than 10 words to me during the whole of today!"

Mary Bennet praises Mr. Collins' writing skills: "But he is intelligent. In point of composition the letter he wrote Father was not deficient and it was very long."

Mr. Collins scrutinizes Longbourn (his future inheritance) Part 1: "The hall. The hall should be imposing. This one is spacious enough but a little dark..."

Mr. Collins scrutinizes Longbourn Part 2: "Truly a gracious dining room. Lady Catherine de Bourgh would not be ashamed to dine here...The table, though a trifle rustic, is solid and a good match."

Mr. Collins provides much needed moral lessons to Kitty and Lydia: "I have often observed how many young ladies are very little interested in books of a serious stamp, though written solely for their benefit. Certainly there can be nothing so advantageous to them as instruction."

Mr. Collins on Anne de Bourgh: "She is agreeably fragile, and she is to marry Mr. Darcy."

Lady Catherine de Bourgh supporting the patriarchy: "If I were to have more children, they should all be sons."

Mr. Collins' Aquatic Hat: In one of many examples where Lady Catherine micromanages everyone's life, she orders Mr. Collins to plant bulrushes by the lake and per her instructions he orders an ugly top hat with a shower cap inside it to prevent himself from drowning. Charlotte and Elizabeth laugh about it when Mr. Collins isn't looking.

Darcy is a dog person, how sweet! Before the first proposal and before he meets Elizabeth again at Pemberley, Darcy is accompanied by a dog. Perhaps if he brought his dog to the first proposal it would have succeeded?

Elizabeth's internal monologue after she reads the letter: I normally dislike internal monologues because they detract from the action or become redundant, but I like how this adaptation utilizes the internal monologue to show Elizabeth actively confronting her prejudice against Mr. Darcy and acknowledging that she has acted wrongly in judging him harshly. Some adaptations reduce or even leave out this fundamental part of Elizabeth's personal growth. My only quibble with this scene is that Elizabeth lets go of her prejudice too soon and in too calm a manner. In the book, she is initially angry at Darcy and needs to reread the letter multiple times before she starts to form a grudging respect for Mr. Darcy. For Elizabeth, letting go of her prejudice is a slow, exhausting, and emotionally taxing process, unlike in this adaptation, where her logical reasoning allows her to quickly overcome her unreasonable hatred of Darcy.

4. THE ROMANCE (or, to be more accurate, lack of)

Many of the key romantic scenes between Elizabeth and Darcy are shortened, which surprised me because the length of a miniseries in general allows for more character development. I was hoping to see a fuller picture of Darcy and Elizabeth's relationship than could be provided in a movie.

While the female characters of the adaptation are fully rounded and have many opportunities to express their perspectives, the male characters remain one-dimensional and do not get the same treatment as the women. In other words, the male characters are reduced to mere objects of affection.

Some critics have argued that Darcy is irresistible to women in part because he is mysterious. Even his appearance is left to the reader's imagination, as Austen only notes that Darcy has a "fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien...[and] ten thousand a year." Thus, the reader gets to craft their ideal version of Mr. Darcy; he could look like any handsome man. When the "historically accurate Mr. Darcy" image was released several years ago (where he looks like George Washington); many, including me, were disappointed because we all have different images of Mr. Darcy in our heads (or more likely, we pick between Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen). This adaptation capitalizes into the mystique of the character by leaving the viewers to guess Darcy's intentions. Since we do not have access to his internal thoughts or motivations, we are limited to what we see before our eyes, much like the Meryton villagers. We do not get to see how Darcy develops feelings for Elizabeth; nor do we see how he is like in private occasions (even when alone with his friends, he says little and reveals little).

Other critics/Austen scholars/fans have argued that the one-dimensional treatment of male characters is in keeping with the unique writing style of Pride and Prejudice. Typically, female characters were the ones reduced to objects of affection for the male characters. Austen reverses this norm by focusing more on Elizabeth's viewpoint while Darcy remains mysterious.

Though a more reserved Darcy may work in the book, it does not serve the development of the romance well. Darcy's falling in love with Elizabeth is characterized by a gradual loss of control over himself; in his words he was "in the middle before I knew that I had begun [falling in love]." After all, he cannot stop staring at Elizabeth and frequently tries to keep talking to her at Netherfield before he begins to feel "the danger of paying Elizabeth too much attention." During his first proposal, he is agitated, and when Elizabeth rejects him, becomes angry. It is obvious, in the book and in the 1995 and 2005 adaptations as well, that the man is clearly an emotional train wreck.

The conflict between Darcy's outer shell and inner self is a key part of his falling in love with Elizabeth, and the adaptation misses out on this with a stiff, wooden Darcy who always carries himself properly and never smiles. In general, the most entertaining romances have this tension between self-control and passion, with lapses in manners usually the only sign of the passion beneath the surface; after all, in Elizabeth's words, “Is not general incivility the very essence of love?”

Back to the idea of the one-dimensional Darcy being an inversion of gender norms in writing: I have to disagree with this because (this is obvious I'm sure) Darcy is still a fully rounded character and does undergo his own journey, since he has to change his manners to earn Elizabeth's love. This quote shows what Darcy has learned about himself:

"I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was...given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son, (for many years an only child) I was spoilt by my parents [who] almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing, to care for none beyond my own family circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own."

Though some fans of this adaptation like how the other relationships are treated with equal importance as the well-known love story, the romance is important as a source of personal growth for Elizabeth as well as Darcy. After all, they do have to overcome the "pride and prejudice" that separates them.

The marriage of Darcy and Elizabeth is a feminist triumph for Elizabeth Bennet; in my review of the 2005 movie, I noted that Elizabeth Bennet is revolutionary because of her unwillingness to compromise on her belief that marriage should based on love and respect, contrary to the prevailing social view of marriage as an economic proposition. While it seems counter-intuitive for a repressive institution like marriage to be a feminist triumph, Austen's heroines use marriage as a means of gaining not just material comforts, but ultimately the self-respect they desire by uniting themselves with partners whom they are equals with. The marriages Austen's heroines make are testaments to their independence, as they are choices made by the women themselves. Even Charlotte Lucas' otherwise unhappy arranged marriage works for her, since she enjoys the freedom that running her own household gives her. Not focusing on the romance of Elizabeth and Darcy leaves out Austen's complex perspective on marriage as a social necessity but also an unlikely route to freedom.

Here's my breakdown of the Elizabeth and Darcy scenes in this adaptation and why the romance fails:

"She is tolerable:" Elizabeth reacts rather too sedately to the insult Darcy gives her (and he also makes an added comment about her having too many sisters); unlike in other versions where she attempts to suppress a laugh or even taunts Darcy outright. The adaptation diverges from the book by having Elizabeth tell her mother instead of her friends about Darcy's insult; it does not make sense why Elizabeth would confide this in her mother, given that she knows her mother is a fool.

Netherfield dance: Darcy attempts to flirt with Elizabeth during this dance (which only lasts one minute!), but doesn't succeed because of his poor social skills and her prejudice. It's also an amazing battle of wits, as Darcy counters Elizabeth's accusations while admonishing her not to trust Wickham.

Unfortunately, the adaptation cuts out essential dialogue revealing the extent of Elizabeth's prejudice and foreshadowing the discovery of Wickham's true character. For example, what isn't included is Elizabeth's accusations that Darcy is to blame for ruining Wickham's life, to which he replies that Wickham is capable of charming others but not necessarily of retaining good friends.

More significantly, the adaptation cuts Elizabeth's admission that she cannot figure Darcy out:

"'May I ask to what these questions tend?' 'Merely to the illustration of your character,' said she...

'And what is your success?' She shook her head. 'I do not get on at all. I her such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.'

'...I could wish, Miss Bennet, that you were not to sketch my character at the present moment, as there is reason to fear that the performance would reflect no credit on either.'"

The development of the romance is harmed due to the omission of the portrait metaphor. Here, Darcy shrewdly observes to Elizabeth that her judgment of character may be flawed and foreshadows the discovery of her prejudice against him. After his many observations of Elizabeth, Darcy knows her so well that he can read her like an open book (though he underestimates the extent of Elizabeth's prejudice against him). The metaphor of the picture as a representation of character also becomes literal through Darcy's portrait at Pemberley; Elizabeth only falls in love with Darcy after examining his character through the portrait.

Ultimately, the Netherfield Ball dance between Elizabeth and Darcy is essential in demonstrating the fallacy of first impressions, and reducing the dialogue only to the beginning part where Elizabeth teases Darcy on his inability to make small talk undermines the richness of the story.

Darcy's first proposal: This scene is definitely the worst one in this miniseries because it fails on so many levels. First, this Darcy remains stiff throughout the entire proposal, like he was at a public ball rather than declaring love. This is a total contrast to book Darcy; who, though formal, is "agitated" and "pale with anger" at times. Those famous opening lines ("In vain I have struggled...") are delivered so quickly and without any sort of overwhelming passion. What should be the climax of Darcy finally letting the volcano of his repressed emotions erupt (with bad consequences for him) instead becomes a cold recitation of the script. Elizabeth also becomes robotic as well, repeating her lines back with a detached tone of voice as if reading a teleprompter. I'm warning you: be prepared for the worst 5 minutes of your life.

Visiting Pemberley: The adaptation utilizes Elizabeth's inner monologue as she praises Pemberley; it's interesting to people who have read and re-read the book, but I don't think it's necessary to "copy and paste" large portions of the book and read them to the audience.

I do like that this adaptation clearly indicates that Elizabeth still stands by her decision to reject Darcy's first proposal, even though she really likes his great big house:

"'And of this place,' thought she, 'I might have been mistress! 'I might have rejoiced in [these rooms] as my own, and welcomed to them as visitors my uncle and aunt. - 'But no'... 'I should not have been allowed to invite them.'"

Most adaptations include the "Pemberley could have been mine" part, but don't include Elizabeth's realization that Darcy's class prejudice would have estranged her from the Gardiners (unfortunately that includes the 1995 miniseries). Including Elizabeth's thoughts about her aunt and uncle dispels the perception that she is a gold-digger who marries Darcy only after realizing how rich he is.

The portrait: why, why, why does Darcy not smile in his portrait?! The book LITERALLY EMPHASIZES that DARCY SMILES in his portrait, revealing a more sensitive side to him than his cold and formal appearance would otherwise suggest. Big mistake.

Lydia's elopement: the adaptation messes up this scene so badly, which is unfortunate because the scene is important in showing how much Elizabeth trusts Darcy and how much he still loves her, as shown through his concern for her. First, it diverges from the book by having Elizabeth run several miles to Pemberley (while fully outfitted in a spencer, bonnet, and long dress) and somehow she doesn't sweat or faint from the exertion. Running to Darcy to tell him the news doesn't make any sense, since the book makes clear that she did not want anyone outside her family to know about Lydia's elopement, or else her marriage prospects would certainly be ruined; the news devastated her because she feared losing Darcy's respect due to his social prejudice. Darcy learning of the news was purely a coincidence because he happened to be waiting for her at the inn where she was staying (aw how romantic!). As for Darcy, he remains cold and doesn't seem concerned enough for Elizabeth, in contrast with the book, where he immediately springs into action. The adaptation also omits Darcy's kindness by cutting out the part of the scene where he consoles Elizabeth, gets her to sit down, and brings her some wine.

Second proposal: Darcy breaks the rules of social etiquette by going out alone with Elizabeth before proposing to her, unlike in the book where they are with Jane and Bingley, but this scene is still thoroughly unromantic because the two actors have zero chemistry.

5. CONCLUSION

Although this adaptation has some good moments, the dated production design, underdeveloped romance, and wooden acting means that I will only recommend this version to Pride and Prejudice nerds/extreme book purists. The adaptation is boring to watch unless you know the book by heart.

This script highlights Austen's wit and sarcasm, but the performances don’t always do it justice. The feminist approach to the novel makes the adaptation stand out, but comes at the cost of Darcy's character development and the central love story.

Purists and casual book fans are better served by the 1995 BBC miniseries, which has the right balance of entertainment, historical accuracy, and faithfulness to the novel.

Thanks to JASNA (Jane Austen Society of North America) for all the wonderful online articles that I pull many of my ideas from. I spent many hours entertaining myself by reading their scholarly analyses of Jane's other works as well as those related to Pride and Prejudice, and they have really helped me as I write these reviews.

@princesssarisa @austengivesmeserotonin @dahlia-coccinea @obscurelittlebird @appleinducedsleep @colonelfitzwilliams

#book adaptation #pride and predjudice #pride and prejudice #elizabeth bennet #mr darcy #mr bingley #long post #tv show review

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topazy · 4 years ago

Text

What we found

Pairings: John Murphy/OC

Warnings:none

Chapter:one

Bellamy

How I’d managed to convince Pike to let me go to speak with Clarke myself I’d never know. I didn’t like her being there alone, the grounders who wanted to kill our kind surrounded her. Hell, Clarke and Lexa were the only ones holding our people together, but that wasn’t enough. Lexa had almost died twice by the hands of grounders who wanted to destroy the alliance we had built.

The only reason I knew Lexa was still alive after being pronounced dead was because Titus risked his life to tell me. He knew this war would grow even more out of control if things didn’t change soon. More innocent lives would be lost on both sides. Regardless of his reasons for finding me, something seemed off. My gut was telling me there was more to the story than he was letting on.

Titus had arranged a room for me to stay in, and I was to stay quiet and out of sight until further notice. Apparently Clarke and Lexa were close by, but he didn’t trust me enough to tell me their exact location. A fair point. After all the things I had done with Pike I didn’t blame him. I was so blinded by my own fear, and guilt over what happened Mount Weather I didn’t see what was happening.

Pacing back and forth my mind began to wonder about the worst case scenarios that could unfold. What if Lexa was actually dead? And Clarke along with her? This could have been a trap.

The doors to my ‘chamber’ swung open suddenly, startling me slightly as I was surprised to see a woman standing glaring at me. She didn’t look very tall, and with most of her face covered by a black leather hood it was hard to see who was standing in front of me.

“Are you on the welcome committee?”

The women scoffed, “aren’t you the funniest Bellamy of Skaikru.”

I cocked my head to the side, trying to get a better look at her. “Who are you? The heda is expecting…”

She cut me off by raising her hand. “So many words. Your people should learn to hold their tongues more.”

She finally pulled her hood back revealing her face that was covered in black kohl. The women looked to be around the same age as most of the delinquents, but sounded older. Her voice was heavy and full of anger. I watched as she studied me, eyeing me up for size. Apart from the makeup, and the dreads in her hair the person in front of me didn’t look savage. She just looked like a normal girl.

“The famous Bellamy Blake from Skaikru. It’s a pleasure to finally meet the man who slaughtered grounders while they slept.” She looked me up and down, before slamming a sharp knife onto the table in front of me. “Don’t think of trying anything.”

I raised my hands slightly to show I wasn’t hiding anything in my hands.

“Titus invited me, but I don’t know why. I’m not here to harm you.” I explained. I had no weapons on me after being stripped of them at the door. The last thing I wanted was to be seen as a threat.

“Your words mean absolutely nothing to me, Skaikru” she smirked. “I am only here to watch you until the heda arrives.”

“Which one? From what I heard, you have more than one.” My remark made her face scrunch up, she seemed physically disgusted by my comment.

“Lexa is the only heda we have,” she snapped.

“What's your name?” I asked, trying to ease the tension.

“You may call me Cora. Lexa should be here soon.” She said hesitantly before walking towards the window.

The view from it was magnificent. Being so high up you could watch all the people in Polis from a great view, it was almost hypnotizing. The room itself was unreal, they had painted the walls and floors a mixture between gold and dark purple.

“Is Clarke okay?” I asked again in a low voice.

A stupid smirk spread across Cora face. “Yes, the blonde one is fine. You should be more worried about yourself.”

I wanted to question her further but thought better of it. She kept an intense glare on me while we waited.

“Bellamy!” A voice boomed behind me.

I turned to see Clarke running towards me, she practically leapt into my arms. Lexa was standing behind her talking quietly to Cora who seemed to be getting angrier by the minute. Her face looked even redder in front of the boldly colored walls.

I was surprised at how well Lexa looked considering she had been shot, and I was relieved to see Clarke didn’t seem harmed. We may have had our differences, but I’d never wish any harm on her..not now anyway.

“Until we meet again, Blake.” Cora said before leaving the room I was currently staying in.

“What’s going on?” I asked, concerned. I knew something was going on, and not just by the look on Clarke’s face. She looked more nervous than usual.

Lexa stepped closer to me. “We have a new threat, one that could be used as a mass weapon of war,” she explained before glancing at Clarke. “Since my ‘death’ another enemy has risen.”

“Cora is on her way now to deal with the situation.” The other voice in the room chimed in.

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at her comment, ‘deal with the situation’ was typical Clarke talk for killing someone without saying the actual words out loud.

“What’s the situation’s name?” I asked curious.

“Ontari.” Lexa answered in a serious tone.

“Ontari…” I’d never heard the name before but it still didn’t explain what was going on. “So Cora kills her then what? That’s everything safe?”

“Not exactly. The other thing Bellamy… Persephone is the new weapon.” Clarke paused when she saw my confused face. “Cora is Persephone, she has abilities that could save us all but if the wrong people found out..we would all pay the price.” Clarke gave me her wide-eyed help me look while talking.

Persephone.

“Abilities? What kind of abilities?” I was not convinced. I knew the grounders had their own way of doing things but nobody had abilities more than any other human. I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to tell me she was a witch at this point.

“He doesn’t believe you.” Lexa said, giving me a knowing look.

“Bellamy,” Clarke said, stepping forward. “I know it’s hard to believe but it’s true. I don’t even know how to describe it but Perephone can do things nobody else can, that’s why we need your help to get her out of here. Ontari doesn’t know it’s Cora yet but has people out looking…and…”

“Pike will take advantage of her.” I said, finishing the sentence for her. “What else is going on?” I asked, frowning.

I could tell by the way the two women kept glancing at each other there was something else. A third issue.

Lexa cleared her throat. “It’s Octavia. She has killed Ontari second in command, and now Ontari wants revenge. She has already put a plan into action.”

I could practically feel my body heating up as rage and fear took over my body, pulsing through my veins. Octavia was off limits. I did not understand who this ‘new’ heda thought she was, but she was going to find out who I was in the worst way. Even though my sister hated me, I would kill anyone before letting her harm Octavia.

“So what’s the plan, princess? You’ve dragged me all the way out here so you better have one.”

Please tell me you have one.

Notes: This is going to be a slow burn/slow romance that is mainly John Murphy/OC, but will have minor Bellamy Blake/OC moments

#The 100 #Bellamy Blake #bellamy blake pov #clarke griffin #heda lexa #the 100 x oc #the 100 fanfiction #slow romance #slow burn #bellamy blake/oc #what we found

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fiftyshadesof-h · 4 years ago

Text

Truth or Dare (spencer x reader)

Masterlist

Summary: When a power outage causes the BAU team to get stuck inside a room, they decide to play a game of truth or dare. y/n’s feelings for Spencer Reid come out into the open after a harmless dare.

"You've got to be kidding me, we need to get out of here". Derek said as he walked around the perimeter of the room a third time, trying to escape.

“Oh, is Derek Morgan scared of the dark?” Emily said as she laughed at Derek, who seemed frantic in the dark.

There was currently a blackout going on across the city, that unfortunately got the BAU team stuck in the briefing room.

Of course the new and “improved” security measures inside the building added electrical key card swipers on every door, and because of the power outage no one was getting in or out of this room.

“Did you guys know 36.7 million people are affected by power outages, and”. JJ cut off Spencer's rambling. He must have been a bit anxious too, spitting out statistics normally helped calm him down.

You kind of wish JJ never stopped him, I mean you could listen to Spence talk all day, in fact you did most of the time when he explained something you would zone out only focusing on the way his mouth moved when he pronounced certain words.

You joined the BAU about 7 months ago, and immediately made friends with everyone on the team, but Spencer was the one person that really made a lasting impression on you.

You wouldn’t say that you had feelings for Spencer. Well maybe you did who knows, you always thought it would never happen anyways.

You had been flirting with the good doctor since day one. Even though, he never flirts back. You didn’t know if it’s because he's wasn’t interested or if he just wasn’t getting all of the hints.

You were spinning around in one of the many chairs around the table trying to cure your boredom when Spencer's foot got caught under their chair causing you both to topple over.

‘Just my luck’, You thought. You looked down to see you landed on top of Spencer, your legs on either side of him with an arm out to the side holding you up. You went to get off of him when he gently grabbed your wrist, Spencer started to speak while looking you directly in your eyes. “Hey y/n,” When he started to laugh you could feel his chest bobbing up and down. “Sorry about that i- um,”.

“Don’t worry about it Spence”. You said with a tight lipped smile.

“Wow there playa, so you and y/n a thing now?” Derek said with his eyes wide as he walked around the table seeing me on top of Spencer. Just like that you climbed off of Reid faster than Derek thought was physically possible for a person of your size.

“No no we uh-” “Y/N was in the chair and i-” “it’s not like that”. Spencer and you spoke over each other trying to explain away what Derek had just seen.

“Guys relax,” Derek opened his mouth to say something else but not before JJ cut him off and started talking over him.

She was standing at the head of the table waving the team to come sit together. “I think we should play a game,”. She said with a smirk.

“I vote poker”. Said Rossi from the chair he was sitting in. JJ laughed at that response “not that kind of game Dave, I was thinking more along the lines of truth or dare,”. Everyone traded worried looks with each other. “You know at least until the power comes on and we can get out of here”.

“Oooo Oooo this will be so much fun!” Garcia said with a goofy smile wiped over her face.

“Let’s do it.” Emily nodded.

“Alright, but nothing inappropriate.” Hotch said with the stern look he always had on his face.

“No promises Aaron.” Replied Derek laughing at his own joke like it was the funniest thing ever. The team was so close, it didn’t feel wrong to be informal with our Unit Chief.

“Truth or dare is said to have originated from the ancient Greeks,” Spencer started again.

“Alright I think everyone’s in, let's just get started.” Emily said patting Reid on the shoulder to shut him up.

“Let the games begin.” you said with a devilish smirk on my face.

The team had been playing this game for a while trying to stick to Hotch’s rule of keeping the game appropriate. Spencer and you had ended up sitting next to each other, trading glances throughout the game. You noticed the rest of the girls that happened to be sitting across from you and Spencer had been whispering for a few minutes now, You could only imagine what they were scheming.

Especially when it came to Emily’s turn and her eyes darted between Spencer and You then rested back on you. “Ok y/n, truth or dare?”.

You knew no matter what their answer was these girls had something devious planned for them, and there was no escaping it... “Maybe I could excuse myself to the bathroom” You thought, but decided that might look more suspicious than simply playing along with the game.

“Hmmm I'll go with, truth”. You laughed nervously when JJ and Emily started to simultaneously clap their hands together. Garcia leaned over her chair and whispered something into Emily’s ear which earned an aggressive nod in exchange.

“Is it true that you have feelings for Spencer ?” You sucked in a sharp breath of air between your teeth and looked to Spencer hoping he would say something, anything to get you out of this situation, he wasn’t much help though because all he did was clear his throat and fidget nervously. He turned his head the opposite direction almost like he was pretending he didn’t hear the question.

“I, uh why would you guys even think that?” You said looking in between the three girls. You had tears stinging the corners of your eyes because the three of them had embarrassed you so much, they clearly hadn’t realized as they continued to talk about it.

“Hey now, don’t answer her question with another question y/n, makes us think you’re hiding something.” Derek said side eyeing me trying to mock me with a joke.

“I uh- give me another question”. You could feel your cheeks warming up with embarrassment.

“I think the rules are if you can’t answer a truth, you have to take a dare.” Rossi said looking up from his cigar magazine with a small smile.

“Rossi you didn’t even wanna play, and now you’re helping them?” I said with a scoff. When you noticed no one was gonna budge you continued.

“Fine, give me the dare then.” You said snappier than you meant, You were starting to grow impatient with this game.

“Kiss him,” Emily said cocking her head forward towards Reid. “Reid kiss y/n, now.”

Both Yours and Spencer’s mouths hung open, gaping with the shock of what you were about to do.

Hotch grunted in disapproval, not bothering to take his nose out from the paperwork he was currently buried in.

You leaned forward, close enough to feel Spencer’s breath on your cheek. His breath hitched when You started to whisper in his ear, slowly, softly. “We don’t have to do this Spence, I’ll be okay if you don't want to.”

That wasn’t exactly true, You had wanted to kiss Reid since you saw him your first day at the BAU. You thought about it again, and again every time you saw his tongue quickly slide against his bottom lip each time he talked, and man every time he’d bite and suck his bottom lip into his mouth when he thought about something, I imagined myself biting on that very same-

You looked back up at Spencer getting pulled from your train of thought.

He leaned back You presumed so that he could back out of this kiss but what he did next caught you by surprise.

You could feel the warmth of his hand as he put one of them on your face pulling You in closer to him. You looked up to meet his eyes, just before you were engulfed in a kiss. Yours and Spencer’s lips, synchronized together. You almost forgot the rest of the team was sitting there watching until I heard someone's “Mhm” as they cleared their throat.

When Spencer and you finally pulled apart and met eyes, wide smiles wiped across your faces.

You bit your bottom lip trying to savor the feeling of spencers lips over your own.

And just like that the lights snapped back on, you jumped at the sound of the lock on the door.

“Freedom!” Garcia yelled, Derek chasing after her out of the room.

You were still so entranced by the kiss with Spencer that you didn’t notice the rest of the team had already left the room.

You let out a shaky breath as you said “wow”.

You reached up to Spencer’s face, your hand lingering just above his cheek before you touched him and pulled him in for another passionate embrace. Your hands went grabbing for his curly, brown hair, the two of you separated for only a moment looking at each other, Really looking at each other. It’s like he finally saw you, the way you saw him.

“y/n.” Spencer said as he lifted up your chin so that you would be looking directly at him. “I’ve wanted to do that for so long”. His breaths still heavy as he made the confession.

“Oh Doctor, it only took you 7 months to do it.” You said giggling. He smiled his goofy crooked smile at you before pulling you back in for another kiss.

“Oh come on guys, get a room.” Derek said sticking his head back in the room, then walking back out laughing.

I hope you guys enjoyed! Don’t forget to send requests you want <3

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fanfiction #spencerreid #criminalmminds #criminalmindsfanfic #y/n #oneshot #they/them #genderfluid x reader #requests #fanfic

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t7-01 · 4 years ago

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i have a stupid little personal story about one of the upcoming ocs in the clone dad jango au and want to talk about it, but i’m gonna put it under the cut just bc it’s that stupid and like. specific to me lakslsj

so basically, i made a single dad mando oc (a mandilf, if you will), who initially was just sort of in the story and then ended up having a compelling relationship with jango (to clarify, this is all in my head) so i was like huh...what if...they were boyfriends??? and so in my initial plotting process for the au he went from side character to close and trusted adult in the fett household. and then i developed a bunch of other close and trusted adults and now each of the boys have one (1) adult mentor, right?

the thing is, i named this guy piik sant. i didn’t think too hard about it. i just sat up at 2 in the morning sounding out funky little star wars names for my ocs and said oh yeah, this guy is a piik (pronounced like peek but, in a soft kind of way. i can’t explain it). like i cannot emphasize enough how little i thought about these names. i almost named his daughter after an infamous and widely-hated star wars villain bc i didn’t think hard enough, and fortunately caught it before i went and published something with her.

however!!! the funniest part is the there is a character, nik sant, already in star wars. i did not know this. i swear to you, i’d never heard this name in my life. i found out about this character when i mentioned piik sant in the tags of one of my posts talking about this au, and someone replied pointing it out. and i looked him up, and guess what??? guess fucking what???

he’s this guy

aka the old guy we all have sort of decided is actually rex. he is only mentioned by name in a singular star wars fact book from 2002. not only that, but you know how i mentioned the boys each get a their own adult mentor? well, i had landed on piik as a mentor for rex, long before finding this out.

i just. it’s so stupid and coincidental and funny, and i am absolutely going to have rex go by the pseudonym nik sant at some point in this au, just for this stupid winding little accident. anyway. idk how many people (if anyone) will care, but it gave me a laugh and i wanted to share

#this is so long-winded but i had to talk about it #and you guys are the only ones who would understand lmfao #clone dad jango au #candy talks

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ballerinaroy · 5 years ago

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roses on a breeze

Ron/Harry On Ao3. Inspired by Roses on a Breeze by Bear's Den.

It was a lot like when a bludger came out of nowhere, the realization. Too focused on the snitch to see the warning signs, all his effort concentrated on Voldemort instead of the passing thoughts that had been increasing in frequency. And he knew at once what he needed to do.

“I have to get away.”

For years he’d been an observer, present but not a part of his best friends falling for one another. Years spent waiting, anticipating, pushing down the lonely feelings that came whenever they crossed a new line, drifted closer together.

But it was no longer a possibility, not just a not so distant future. They had kissed, had hurled the final barrier and it was no longer a when but a now.

“Harry?” Ron asked, concern in his eyes.

“I have to get away,” he repeated, for the first time in his life immensely grateful for Voldemort. Able to use the excuse of his fame and their victory as a reason to flee. “From this all, I just need some time.”

And to his utter disappointment it was Hermione who uttered the words. “We’ll go with you.”

He wanted them but not them and there would be no going back.

“No,” he said, even though the thought of being apart was just as painful as the thought of staying.

And for the first time in his life Harry was thankful he was an orphan. Ron had a family. Harry was not burdened.

“I need some space.”

Harry anticipated more arguments, or perhaps they had expected this of him. For he to take the cowards way out rather than face what came next. But they merely rose, teary-eyed and embraced him, hands lingering even as they pulled apart to stare at each other, and then Hermione broke away to pull supplies out of that beaded bag of hers.

And Ron, who watched Hermione with the fondest expression. As if he hadn’t seen her fish around in the bag hundreds of times, as if giving Harry his things was an extraordinary act of kindness. A pain shot through Harry watching him look at her like that. An expression Harry would never know.

Love. In love. How could he have been so oblivious?

It took days for the news to spread. Voldemort dead, really dead. It was out of habit that Harry stuck with the wizarding community, but he’d left to get away, and even walking into a pub became a two-hour ordeal. Harry lost count of the number of people who’d shaken his hand and sobbed on his shoulder. His money was useless and he left dozens of drinks untouched for the generosity of his fellow wizards.

And inevitably he’d run across someone who knew him, actually recognized his face from school and the first question from their lips- “Where are Ron and Hermione?”

A unit, one he was never meant to be separated from. And yet he had willingly left them.

So he left behind the world he had saved in favor of anonymity. In favor of a world where he wasn’t known or adored or depended upon to comfort. A world he could be Harry— just Harry.

It took some getting used to life in the muggle world. He might have been raised without the aid of magic but the past seven years had been formative and even things like light switches were a routine he had to re-learn.

“I never hear the telly in your room,” the pleasant landlady he rented a room from commented one evening at dinner. “I don’t think I could cope in all that silence.”

“It’s nice,” Harry said truthfully enough. “That’s the reason I chose this place, the quiet.”

He’d tried a room in London but the noise of the city had been maddening and there’d been too many people. A red-head at every corner that caught his eye. A mean-looking man who reached for his mobile with too much speed for Harry’s comfort.

So he’d settled in the country. Jumping from town to two before settling on this one. A small town square, country fields with paths for him to wander down. Whispers behind his back about the strange man but not questions to his face. The exact sort of oblivion he’d been craving.

A fortnight into his stay, his routine dinner at the tiny pub was interrupted by a new face. Young, no more than a year older than he and although the man was greeted rather than eyed with suspicion like Harry, it was clear he didn’t belong in the village. His clothes too pressed, hair too stylish.

“Is this seat taken?”

His accent was hard to place. Foreign yet familiar. It didn’t feel quite polite to ask.

Harry shook his head as an invitation and the man sat, offering his hand.

“Theo Page.”

Harry hesitated, but it was clear that this was no ordinary encounter as the man’s eyes swept his forehead, searching for the scar just barely obscured by Harry’s bangs.

“Harry Potter,” he gave in and the man eyes widened though he had the tact not to say anything.

They sat quietly, side by side. Neither broaching the unspoken subject until Theo’s drink was before him, the barman out of earshot.

“You didn’t go to Hogwarts,” Harry told him, appraising the taller man.

“No, I didn’t,” he frowned. “Mother wouldn’t hear of it. She tolerated the country but the second she could she leveraged my education to move us back to France. It’s one way to give a kid a weird way of speaking.”

Theo took a sip in a manner that seemed strangely dignified. “I suppose it was for the best with the way everything went to shit in the last few years.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Harry said without thinking.

To his surprise Theo snorted and looked highly amused. “I should be thanking you shouldn’t I? Hero and all that? Or is it more customary to buy you dinner?”

Harry shook his head. “The most I’ll tolerate is a drink.”

“Shame,” he replied and something about the air seemed to shift. “Even if I were to take you someplace nice?”

Theo asked, but never directly. Treated Harry like a normal person, or, at least as normal as anyone could treat someone who they knew had done impossible things.

It came up when talking about quidditch—“I was captain my last year, or I would have been but halfway through the season I got put in detention for almost killing another student.”

Or when they were reading—“I don’t know about a cure but basilisk venom can be stopped by Phoenix tears.”

And of course when the dragon they’d let loose was found making a nest of a farmers wheat farm-“Yeah that was me.”

But Theo never looked frightened or pried Harry for more. He merely shook his head and said “I should have expected.” Before kissing Harry’s cheek and turning the page.

It was somehow easy being with him, gave him the same sort of serenity that being with Luna did. Or Ron…Ron.

Harry did his best to filter out the similarities between the two. From the color of their eyes blue, but with flecks of gold when the sun was rising to the way they pronounced armor. Or the way they grinned and stared when Harry made some witty comment. The way that grin would make Harry feel like the funniest person in the room. The way that grin made Harry’s heart swell. The way he’d give anything to make that grin occur again.

Close, but not close enough.

“You know, I was only supposed to stay in England for a month,” Theo mentioned to Harry three months into his stay. “My parents keep writing asking when I plan to continue my tour.”

Harry had avoided talking about it, the day Theo had to leave. His world tour the customary trip for graduating students. England was just supposed to be a stop and Harry knew he was too.

“I understand,” Harry accepted at once.

Theo looked at him, disappointed. “You could come you know.”

“What?”

“I’m headed to Brazil,” Theo explained. “Everything’s already sorted. You could come too.”

“To Brazil?” Harry repeated.

“And then a few stops in North America and Eastern Europe,” he went on, voice a strange sort of casual. “I suppose I should go down to Egypt too, that’s where I’m supposed to have been all this time you’ve been stealing from me.”

“I never asked you-“

“You’re not hearing me,” Theo said, for the first time frowning. “I know you didn’t ask, I wanted to stay.”

“And you’d want me to come?” he asked stupidly.

“Yes.”

And so he did.

Traveling with Theo was different from their life in the countryside. No longer did they have to sneak around, try and hide their relationship from prying eyes. At dinner and at clubs Theo would put his arm around Harry proudly, showing him off.

“Hero of the wizarding world,” he would announce to curious eyes. “Harry Potter.”

The war hadn’t left England but news of it had reached far. The fear had spread across boarded enough to make Harry a hero in a place it hadn’t even touched.

“You don’t have to tell everyone,” Harry said, irritated when night after night Theo had paraded him around like a show dog.

“You should celebrate,” Theo told him sincerely. “When I found you you were so miserable. You deserve happiness.”

“I’m happy with you,” Harry argued. “Not with everyone knowing who I am.”

“You’re uncomfortable.”

Harry didn’t answer.

“I’m sorry, I never realized.” Theo looked disappointed in himself. “I just wanted you to be happy and here I am-“

“Look you didn’t know,” Harry swooped in, taking pity on him.

“But I should have. You were hiding for a reason.”

“You didn’t know,” Harry assured him. He put his hands on either side of Theo’s face and forced him to look at him. “It’s not all the time it’s just…I like my privacy where I can get it. Just don’t go shouting my name, yeah?”

They went on to Los Angeles and to the desert where old rituals were supposed to have been performed. Experimental magic, spiritual. And as he stared up at the cloudless night sky and was filled with wonder at the sight of hundreds, no, thousands of stars twinkling back at him, Harry couldn’t help but wish a different man was holding his hand.

They’d written, Ron, Hermione, Mrs. Weasley, Ginny even Luna, uneventful descriptions of her day which Harry cherished. But he’d found every excuse not to write back. To avoid the questions about where he’d been spotted. About who he’d been spotted with. But as the crisp fall air of the Americas turned frosty and holiday decorations took over towns, Harry re-read their letters with a lump in his throat.

“I think I’d like to go back,” he said casually after days of trying to work it into conversation. “To visit.”

Theo’s eyes had widened. “I thought you liked traveling.”

“I do,” Harry replied earnestly. “I just…I miss home.”

“I didn’t know that you had one.”

Harry didn’t have to ask Theo to come along with him. He merely took the lead, packing their things, arranging a portkey. Harry a passenger on a trip he should have been conducting. The ministry was bustling when they landed, disorientating, hearing familiar accents after months of foreign ones.

He’d wanted to get one to a less crowded destination, but Theo had insisted, seemed to revel in the attention Harry was receiving. His head raised high as Harry ducked his own, wanting not to be seen.

Harry? Harry Potter?

Voices he didn’t recognize all around him, whispering his name. But then, just as quiet, he heard his name from far away and turned at once.

There they were like he’d never left, sitting on a bench at the far end of the corridor. When he spotted them he broke into a run and they jumped up and met him, Ron first, nearly knocking Harry off his feet and Hermione hitting him like a bullet.

It was hard to remember what he’d feared returning to in that moment, arms wrapped around one another, oblivious to the onlookers and it was only when he heard a gentle clearing of a throat that Harry even remembered he’d left Theo behind.

Even so it was difficult to pull away, put his hand in Theo’s and introduce him to the two most important people in his life.

“Ron, Hermione, this is Theo.”

There’d been no ability to gauge their reactions via the post and Harry wasn’t quite sure how they’d receive him. News of their relationship hadn’t exactly been quiet but Harry had told them anyway.

Of course, Ron’s messy scroll had answered. We’d be happy to have him.

“How do you do?” Hermione asked, the first to offer her hand.

Rather than shake it Theo did the funny sort of bow that he did whenever he was trying to be charming to a lady and raised her hand to kiss it. Ron and Hermione shared a look that Harry did his best to ignore before Ron offered his own hand to shake and quickly abandoned Theo in favor of retrieving Harry’s bags that he’d thrown to the ground.

“So, America?” Ron asked, throwing his arm around Harry possessively. “Charlie says they have some wicked magic over there.”

Theo had wanted to go out but Ron and Hermione had planned a dinner in. An intimate night with wine and catching up on names.

“Dean and Luna?” Harry chocked out.

Ron snickered. “I don’t know who was more surprised, Dean or the rest of us.”

“They did spend a fair amount of time together at Shell Cottage,” Hermione defended, a small frown on her face.

“What’s that you were always calling, it?” Ron asked, “Trauma bonding?”

Hermione nodded and Harry turned to Theo. “Dean was in our year, spent the last year on the run and Luna…”

“She’s the one you’ve been writing to?”

Harry could feel Ron’s eyes shoot to him and he refused to meet his questioning look. “Yes, the one I’ve been writing to.”

For the first time since his return the air was strangely tense. Theo, oblivious, launched into another line of questioning which Hermione was eager to answer and only when Harry thought it safe did he dare glance at Ron. His hurt, confused look hadn’t faded. It made Harry’s heartache to know he’d been the cause.

It was only when dinner was finished and they’d been volunteered to clean up that Ron asked. Alone in the kitchen, Theo and Hermione at the bookshelf swapping recommendations.

“You’ve been writing to Luna?” Ron asked with forced casualness.

“Er—yeah, we exchanged a couple of letters.”

“Ah,” Ron said grumpily, turning his head and staring out the window. “Well, glad you had someone you felt safe writing to.”

“It wasn’t like that.” Harry defended.

“Like what?” Ron demanded. “What was it not like?”

“It was…” he paused, “Easy, writing to her. There weren’t any expectations.”

A pause, a shift in conversation, and Harry knew it wasn’t just Luna they were talking about.

“But my letters, they were asking too much of you?”

Harry shook his head but did not say anything. After a minute Ron sighed, turning around, leaning against the counter and putting their faces in very close proximity.

Harry hesitated. “There were just things…things I wasn’t ready to talk about.”

“With me?”

“With anyone.” He paused, fussing with the towel he’d been drying with.

Their eyes met and for a moment Harry was lost in the deep blue. Then Ron nodded towards Harry’s guest and he understood the question.

“He doesn’t ask,” Harry whispered. “Doesn’t care about what happened to me.”

“I don’t care,” Ron breathed, begging. “I won’t ask.”

Harry let out a long breath. His eyes were beginning to sting yet he dare not look away.

“But you have Hermione.”

Ron blinked, glanced into the other room, and when Harry dared look over his shoulder Theo and Hermione were both staring at them.

“Right,” Ron nodded, pushing himself away from the counter. “I have Hermione. Which means I’m not good enough for you.”

“No, Ron-“

“Is everything alright?” Hermione asked then, rising and walking towards them.

“We’d better be going,” Harry said suddenly. “Long day.”

“Harry?”

If it had been Ron, he might have stopped. But he didn’t speak another word. Merely watched as they put on their cloaks and shook Theo’s hand.

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

By morning news of his return had spread so far that when they left their accommodations in the morning a crowd was outside to greet them. And while Harry tried keeping his head down, tried ignoring the calls for autograph or explanation of where he’d been, Theo gave his dazzling smile and waved and looked to be thoroughly enjoying himself.

“Sorry,” Harry excused when they finally managed to break through the crowd a quarter of an hour later. “We got caught up.”

“You could have just stayed at ours,” Ron said, a trace of a scowl on his face. “It was like this for us too.”

“It’s no trouble,” Theo excused. “Wanting to welcome their hero home.”

Ron and Hermione exchanged a look that in light of Ron’s outburst made Harry want Ron to hurt too and he put his hand in Theo’s.

“I’m sure it will die down once they’re used to me,” Harry excused as if the attention didn’t bother him.

Ron’s eyes widened in disbelief and Hermione, oblivious or intentionally trying to avoid an argument said bossily, “Well, we’d better get a move on, otherwise we’ll miss out reservation.”

The tension carried them through the day, the week. Hermione chattering on as though nothing was wrong. Ron with his arm around her and offering compliments for the most mundane statements, Harry firing back with his own displays of affection.

A silent war, infecting their afternoons in London, dinners with the Weasleys. Harry hyperaware of wherever Ron was, who he was speaking to, what he was saying. He cataloged every time he put his arm around Hermione, every time his lips met her skin, every time his laughter rang out.

Theo was merely a distraction, an annoying insect always trying to rope Harry into whatever conversation he was having. As though he couldn’t recount their travels on his own. As though he were incapable of meeting someone without introduction. But Harry had traveled the world with him. He knew Theo’s capabilities and finding a way into someone else’s conversation was a natural-born talent.

“Drinks?” Ron prompted at the end of one night.

Their time back in England had flown by in the blink of an eye and tomorrow afternoon a portkey would take them on to France to celebrate the New Year with Theo’s family. A trip Harry dreaded more and more with each passing day.

“Oh, no I’m afraid we’ll have to decline,” Theo answered, trying to help Harry into his cloak.

“If you don’t mind I think I’ll go with them. Last night and all.”

Harry didn’t miss the way Ron’s shoulders relaxed, the relieved grin on his face. Theo turned expectantly to Harry, and he knew he wanted him to decline. But Harry wasn’t ready to let it go, let them go. Their time here hadn’t been enough and although they’d yet to resolve the underlying tension between them, Harry didn’t want to let him out of his sight.

“I’ll make sure you’re comfortable,” Harry told Theo, ignoring the way his eyes glinted with disappointment.

Another pause, Theo staring at him expectantly. But he didn’t dare say anything challenging in public.

“That’s alright,” he said, making a show of looping Harry’s scarf around his neck and using it as leverage to kiss him. Harry allowed their lips to brush, allowed Theo to tussle his hair. “Don’t stay out too late, I was hoping to pack.”

Harry knew it to be a lame excuse. He almost never did the packing. Theo didn’t like the way Harry was content with disorganization. Still Theo lingered, wanting no doubt for Harry to escort him home and when Harry declined to offer he made a show of walking out, flashing his smile at strangers while they followed meekly behind.

It was only when he was gone that Harry felt the tension leave his own brow. Snow was beginning to fall, making the streets of Hogsmeade picturesque. It made Harry’s heart swell, a feeling doubled when Ron threw his arm around his shoulders.

“Where to?”

“Theo mentioned he planned to stay in France,” said Hermione in an innocent tone. “After the holiday.”

Somehow they’d avoided mentioning him all night. It was until they were back in Ron and Hermione’s flat, cheeks still rosy from the bitter cold that he was mentioned.

“Er, yeah,” Harry said evasively. “I think that’s his plan.”

“And what’s your plan?” Hermione questioned.

The tone, which had been homely and jovial, was suddenly very serious.

“Because you could stay here,” Hermione went on, she looked to Ron for back up. “With us.”

But he couldn’t look at her, didn’t care for her reaction. Instead his eyes sought Ron’s.

“We wish you’d stay,” Hermione went on, begging. “It feels like you only just got here.”

“Do you really?” Harry questioned, unable to help the whine in his voice.

But he wasn’t asking her. Eyes still trained on Ron, begging for him to meet his look. Begging for a reason.

“Of course,” Ron answered gruffly, still refusing to meet Harry’s gaze.

He paused, waiting for Harry to—what? Argue with him? Their eyes met again, one of those long, tense stares that they had become experts in. What he needed was Ron to need him but that didn’t seem a possibility.

“But only if you want to.”

It was the same blow repeated again and again ever since his arrival in England. All Harry wanted was to be wanted by the one man who didn’t seem to care.

Suddenly he couldn’t stay quiet. His liquor lubed lips couldn’t hold it in.

“You don’t like him,” Harry accused.

Ron’s cheeks enflamed but his tone was meek. “Do you?”

Harry had expected a fight, had been itching for one to relieve the uncomfortable air between them, but this?

“Of course I do.” Harry snapped. “Why would I have traveled the world with him if I didn’t like him? Why would I bring him back here, to meet you no less, if I didn’t like him?”

Ron and Hermione exchanged one of these infuriating glances.

“What is it?” Harry asked, his temper rising. “Why don’t you like him?”

And still Ron refused to take the bait, letting out a long sigh and settling back in his chair.

“You’ve been my best mate for years,” Harry went on. “Don’t you think I can tell?”

“He’s using you,” Ron snapped at last. There was a moment where he looked as though he regretted the words leaving his mouth and then he doubled down. “You want me to be honest? Fine, I think he fancies you because he likes the attention and I don’t like the idea that he’s using you for your name.”

“He’s proud of me,” Harry defended.

“And!” Ron’s voice raised over his, “I think you came back because you knew we wouldn’t like him and wanted an excuse to kick him to the curb.”

“I didn’t-“

“Then what? Why’d you bring him here?”

“Because I thought you’d be happy for me!” Harry shouted.

They’d both risen to their feet and Harry wasn’t sure when it had happened. “And don’t you think you’re being a little hypocritical?”

“Hypocritical?” Ron asked, glancing back at Hermione who was now in the doorway to the kitchen, hanging back.

“Yeah, well, you and Hermione started shagging-“

“Oi! We’re dating Harry,” Ron said firmly. “Though I wouldn’t expect you to know you ran off before we even knew what it was.”

Harry felt his eyes roll and a second later felt himself blasted back and Hermione voice shrieking “RON!”

He pushed off the hands trying to help him up, searching for his own wand but Hermione was too quick for them both.

“Expelliarmus!”

Harry watched as both his and Ron’s wands shot from their hands and clattered to the ground beside Hermione.

“What’s gotten into the pair of you?” she shouted from just feet away. “What’s the matter with you?”

“You said you were okay with it!” Ron growled.

“And what would you have done if I had said I wasn’t?”

They stared at one another in confusion and as his mouth caught up to his brain, Harry could feel his whole face flushing.

“What?” Ron asked, stunned as Harry turned away, searching for his wand on the ground. “Why wouldn’t you’ve been okay with us dating?”

Harry shook his head, wiping at his face as if it would remove the heat from his cheeks.

“Harry.” His tone was different now, the fight was over just as quickly as it had begun.

There was a gasp and when Harry looked up it wasn’t Ron but Hermione, her face alight with realization. “But you never said.”

Harry hung his head in shame. He’d run away to avoid this conversation, had convinced himself that he’d be able to hide it and here, now, within days Hermione had figured it out.

“Never said what?” Ron asked, his confusion turning into anger once more. “Never said what?”

“There was never a good time,” Harry muttered, staring at his trainers as if they were the most interesting thing in the world. “I never…and then-“

Hermione bustled over, stepping between him and Ron and stared at him, her face just inches from his.

“It’s okay,” she whispered.

“No, it’s not,” Harry told her. His eyes were now stinging and just seconds away from leaking. “The two of you, you’re happy.”

She sighed, putting her hand on his face and stroking his cheek. Harry dared a glance at Ron and found his face red with fury.

“You said!” he began but Hermione merely raised one hand to silence him and at the same time leaned in to whisper in Harry’s ear. “It’s alright, tell him. We’ll be okay.”

And then she was gone, Harry sight of Ron unobscured.

“I don’t love Hermione,” Harry told him before Ron continued to get angry. “I mean, I do, just, not like that.”

“I don’t understand,” Ron said plainly, glancing between them. “Then what’s the issue? Why was seeing us together so terrible you had to run half a world away?”

Harry sighed and shook his head. “It wasn’t you, I want you to be happy together. I do, honest.”

“Then what?” Ron begged.

He paused, took a deep breath, and then said quietly. “It’s just, I want to be happy too.”

“I don’t understand,” Ron repeated. “If you’re not happy then-“ Harry took a step towards him. “Then why’d you leave?”

“Tell him,” Hermione urged.

“Harry?” Ron asked, begging.

“I swear, I didn’t know. I think I didn’t have time to process, what I was thinking,” he paused and revised, “feeling.”

And Ron, who he knew better than he knew anyone, took only a beat to process. His eyes widened and then flickered up and down Harry, waiting for him to laugh, to retract.

“So you?”

“Yes,” Harry whispered. “Yes, I do.”

“Bloody hell,” Ron breathed, looking suddenly very unsteady on his feet.

Without thinking, Harry rushed forward, offering him a steadying arm and Ron grasped him, staring desperately at Harry’s face. They were so close now Harry could feel his breath on his cheek, the jumping of his heart…or was that his own?

Then, just as sudden, there was no space between them.

Their faces inched together and then together they closed the gap, both to their lips crashing together, Ron’s hand clutching at his arm, his back, weaving into his hair and gripping possessively and Harry reciprocated, stepping into him, putting to good use all of the wasted kisses he and Theo had shared in open spaces.

Theo. The name drifted from Harry’s brain without guilt or consequence.

“When did you? How did you? When did you realize?”

Harry’s eyes drifted open and found Ron before him, staring desperately. But there was no horor on his face. No hint of shame or regret.

“You were always watching Hermione,” Harry replied and in sync their eyes drifted to their observer. “I was watching you.”

Ron’s hand tightened on his back but they didn’t look at each other still.

“I’m fine,” she declared despite the tears in her eyes. “Honest.”

Still clinging to him desperately, Ron begged, “I don’t want things to change.”

Hermione let out a little chuckle. “It doesn’t have to be a bad thing, change.”

“But I love you,” he told her, and then turned to Harry, panicked. “I love you.”

“And I love you.”

The words he had been so afraid to be discovered now passed between them casually. It made his heart swell, tears stinging his eyes.

“Don’t cry,” Ron said, panicked. “Bloody hell, I can’t deal with you crying.”

“Sorry,” Harry said, reaching up to wipe the tears from his eyes but Ron beat him to it, pushing up Harry’s glasses somewhat clumsily and smearing the tears with the pad of his thumb.

Harry couldn’t remember anyone being so tender and he had to double his effort not to sob.

“Is this why you left?”

Harry nodded, bowing his head.

“You should have said something,” Ron repeated. “I would have-“

“We’ve always been pretty lousy with feelings,” Harry mumbled, allowing Ron to tug him close, taking refuge in his shoulder. “And after the Horcrux.”

Ron stiffened, but only for a moment. “Yeah, I suppose we have.”

From the safety of Ron’s neck, breathing in the scent he’d been so desperate to recreate Harry whispered. “You’ve always been the thing I’d miss the most.”

“Bloody hell,” Ron said in an awed sort of voice. His lips pressed against the crown of Harry’s head and warmth spread down his spine.

Harry looked up at him, amazed again at the tender look in his eyes. “What does this mean?”

As they’d always done when faced with something impossible, they looked to Hermione, tucked under Ron’s other arm and staring at them with happy tears in her eyes.

“Harry I’ve always been there for you,” Hermione said firmly. “Why would this change anything?”

Harry laughed, unable to help himself, putting his arm around her at last and she leaned up onto her tiptoes, kissing Ron’s cheek then Harry’s.

“Just promise you’ll stay,” she begged, “I can handle just about anything except you leaving us again.”

Harry nodded, looking to Ron for confirmation.

“You’ll have to end things with that pompous git,” Ron told him firmly.

“Ron!” Hermione shouted.

“What?” Ron asked, “I agreed not to say anything but I told you the moment we met him he reminded me of Malfoy.”

Harry paled and Ron, in the true fashion of a best mate, let out a barking laugh.

“Bloody hell,” Harry muttered, his face growing hot. “You should have said something.”

Ron took pity on him, lifting Harry’s chin with one finger. “Just wanted you to be happy.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, “I am.”

#Rarry #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter #Ron Weasley #Harry/Ron #rarry fan fiction #ot3-1 #roywrites

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sarasmallmanwrites · 4 years ago

Text

A-Level Playing Field

Nobody wanted my opinion on this, but it’s hard growing up poor.

1988. It’s that damp kind of evening outside, clouded by condensation on the single glazed windows, and the smoke from my Nan’s Benson and Hedges. We’ve just had tea – this is North, of course – and everything is accompanied by slices of springy bread heavily lacquered in ‘soft spread’. The gold foiled butter is, usually, saved for my grandad, who works at a fibreglass factory. It’s a very long way away (actually 3.7 miles) and he leaves on his bike every evening with three rounds of tinned ham sandwiches in his bag. Tonight, my mum is out until half nine, working in the care home in the next town, picking me up at ten-ish, depending on how fast she walks. My mum is 27. Five years out of a loveless marriage, living in a council house, she has no qualifications but is working for her City and Guilds and her English ‘O-Level’, GCSEs haven’t hit our vocabulary yet, and won’t until my second cousin Mark does his two years later.

Tonight is Thursday. Nan goes out on a Thursday, which means she will leave the house at half seven in a haze of Vitapoint, Elnett and Lily of the Valley, to play Bingo at the local club. I am being looked after by Alan, my mum’s younger brother, living at home, working in the Mill that overlooks the town below like a stern Victorian overseer. He’s always grumpy, stuck in a town that has no opportunities, and no visible exit. The eighties have been cruel to young, working-class men. The vehement cry of ‘get the fuck out’ hasn’t reached our town but will do in eight years time, on a wave of Britpop, New Labour, cigarettes, and alcohol.

My uncle looks to the television for nightly escape. Thursday is Blackadder, it’s Not The Nine O’Clock News, it’s Comic Strip, it’s A Bit of Fry and Laurie, it’s Red Dwarf, it’s shipwrecked and comatose, and me engrossed on the couch, not sipping mango juice, but milky tea (the North!), as my uncle laughs his head off in between cigarettes. My mum returns, smelling like TCP and the outside, with salty, vinegary chips, and we eat them as we walk the newly tarmacked paths under the orange street lights. I ask her what a goldfish shoal is. She tells me to shush.

I decided that weekend that I wanted to be funny. I mean I could make people laugh when I did my Cilla Black impression, so surely that was a start, and thank to Carry On films I was brilliant at ‘Infamy, Infamy!’, I knew this because my grandad (the cleverest man I knew) had told me so. Even though I was only in Junior One, I knew that you had to be taught how to be funny, that there was definitely some kind of class that you would have to take to learn it, because I had never really been a natural at anything; apart from whistling, which I did with gusto in shrill, high- pitched tones wherever I could.

I read a lot, especially the paper – particularly the Daily Mirror, which probably explains why I am always heavily weighted to the left, and not just because of my ineptitude in heels – and found out that Hugh Laurie, who is obviously the funniest man I have ever encountered, went to Cambridge and was in something called ‘The Footlights’. Then was it, I decided. I was going to go to Cambridge and join ‘The Footlights’ and be funny like Victoria Wood and Dawn French. I imagine ‘The Footlights’ to be a rag-tag theatrical group living on their wits, humour, and more importantly, Pot Noodles. I tell my Grandad that I want to go to Cambridge. He tells me not to be daft.

Now, when I think about it, wanting to go to Cambridge was not a preposterous idea for any child at the age of seven; you are at the start of your education journey. There is plenty of time to get better at things, to practice, to be coached, to improve yourself; but for a working-class girl, who would eventually be the first member of her family to go to university, I might as well have said that I wanted to fly to Mars on fairy wings. But, children who attend private schools are told from the age of four that Oxford or Cambridge are the end goals for their education, with any of the higher-performing Russell Group universities being something that they could settle for, at a push. I didn’t even know what a Russell Group University was until about three years ago, and why would I? For me, in my small artsy primary school with forty children across four year groups, a dismissive attitude towards formal English education, and a liberal fancy for devoting the whole of the summer term to the end of year show, this was not something that was even thought about. Oxford and Cambridge were places printed on the back of books, they weren’t places that you went to university. In fact, most of my primary school teachers hadn’t even been to university but received their qualifications at the local teacher training college; the only exception is a brown jumpered gentleman with a penchant for using cupboards as a disciplinary technique.

We’ll skip forward a few years later, and high school is a vigorous mixing bowl of talents, it takes until at least year nine before anyone even notices who I am amongst the squall of kids churning about in KS3. Dinner is pink sausage meat wrapped in a translucent puff pastry duvet, a treat even on the hottest days when the fat sticks to your lips; and the terms pass in a haze of cheap cider (the kind that tastes like sick), the floral pout of Cherry Lypsyl, and Chris Evans on the Radio One Breakfast Show; who is hastily snoozed every morning before I smell the lukewarm coffee my mum has left by my bed before she goes to work. At this point my mum is a newly qualified nurse at the hospice two towns over, her fingers raw from hand sanitiser, but with rolls of antiseptic scented micropore tape that I use for a cacophony of projects. She is on nights right now, spooning gravelly granules of instant coffee into a mug, blurry from sleep, I am cobbling together a mask out of old Cornflake packets, stuck together with nursing supplies and painted with nail varnish that went past its best around the same time as the Thompson Twins. It is 1995, and the country feels like it is on the cusp of something. I don’t know what, but I’m looking forward to the Year 2000 because I will be fully grown. Well, nineteen.

But what about Oxbridge? Well, for starters, if you attend a state school you have to be so immediately impressive to your teachers that they discuss you in the staffroom. It’s not enough to be good at one particular thing, you have to excel across the board. You have to be so amazingly shiny, that even the most jaded teacher in the school cannot fail to be dazzled by your brightness. For state school kids, Oxbridge is not something that they suggest to the average 10 A*-C kids, it’s not something that they even dangle in front of 10 A*-B kids who are pretty good. At state school, you have to be exceptional for your teachers to even consider you as a candidate, and then you have to achieve enough A*s in your GCSEs that you might as well open a Planetarium. Even then, all they can really do is say ‘I think you could go to Oxford or Cambridge, you know’, or flag you up to the local authority careers service as ‘potential Oxbridge’. There is no Oxford Fast Track programme in state schools, even for exceptional kids.

In a recent social media fracas, one lady proclaimed that if you gave kids a level playing field then poor kids would always triumph because they were more resilient - all those Crispy Pancakes, surely? But for children from a working-class background, we’re not even on the playing field yet; we have to borrow trainers with non-marking soles, scrape around for a quid for the bus. By the time we get to the playing field, we have already been running around for half the day trying to get there, we miss the warm-up because we were late and, honestly, by this point, we’re just knackered because we’ve had to work so much harder just to get there in the first place.

The warm-up is a given to those whose parents have been able to pay for their education – they even get complimentary orange slices for afterwards, just for extra pep and vigour. There are Oxbridge prep classes, extracurricular activities slanted towards the Oxbridge admissions interviews, and chances to take unpaid internships during the summer using family connections. It’s not just that though... it’s little things like knowing it’s pronounced ‘Barkshire’, not Berkshire, it’s when you use a napkin, it’s spending a week skiing at Courchevel. It’s olives.

In 1998, I don’t know any of these things and, even if I did, my accent with its flat vowels and its Lancashire intonation would give me away in a heartbeat, because I sound like I’ve fallen off a pit pony on my way back t’mill. Things change quickly though. My mum has a baby. A screaming, mewling little boy born during The Simpsons on a Friday evening in October. Now there is absolutely no money for luxuries, and when our TV gets nicked, we end up using the small portable from upstairs. My Nan lends me money here and there to get to college, but it only covers the bus fare, and the small endowment that I receive - supposedly to cover driving lessons - gets swallowed up with everyday things that seventeen-year olds shouldn’t have to pay for. I’m working for 4 hours a week in Woolies too, £3.10 p/h to stand around the toy department in a slippery polyester blouse the colour of synthetic mint ice cream, before skulking off to the bookshop to spend that money on things for college. Nothing fancy but, by this point, I am well on my way to being a ‘Funny Girl’, studying a raft of ‘arty-farty’ A-Levels and English thrown in for good measure. The Cambridge Footlights hardly crosses my mind anymore, because Oxford and Cambridge are reserved for the kids doing the hard sciences, maths, law, politics, things that you need a calculator for. You don’t get into Oxford with A-Levels in Theatre Studies, Media, and Performing Arts, despite what they tell you about diversity.

Oxford or Cambridge do not offer a typical British university experience, and how can teachers who have never passed through the rigorous and exhausting Oxbridge admissions procedure be expected to offer any kind of advantage to their gifted and talented students? If you are a working-class parent relying on underfunded, underpaid and overworked FE lecturers to help coach your child through this, then you are immediately on the backfoot compared to a child whose parents can afford private tutors, admissions booklets, and interview coaches. This is no reflection on sixth form teachers in FE establishments across the country, who do all they can to nurture the kids with Oxbridge potential, but when some classes haven’t received new textbooks for two years, where students are encouraged to photocopy their own materials to save costs, you can see where the class difference begins to draw attention to itself without the need for neon yellow highlighters.

My UCAS book arrived in September; an impressive, thinly papered tome with a glossy black and white cover, University Colleges and Admission Services stamped across it in orange. It smells like a cross between the Argos catalogue and a phone book, which I feel is rather apt given that it contains the codes of institutions and courses that will break me out of this godforsaken town: a cypher that I etch out on the application form in black biro.

London

Southampton

Buckinghamshire

Preston

Liverpool

Manchester.

I don’t want to go to any of the bottom three, of course, far too close to where I came from to be relevant. My second cousin Mark’s stint at Sheffield Hallam seemed to be an excuse for his mum to visit his ‘digs’ once a month with catering sized tins of Nescafe, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t quite looking forward to edging the lid off with a knife and stabbing through that ridged foil. My mum writes a cheque out in her secondary modern handwriting, crossing her fingers that they won’t cash it until after payday.

The discrepancies between low-income working-class families and those with a better income also show here too - this can be something as simple as slow internet connection, not having a working laptop and doing work on smartphones, access to transport, costs for travel to visit universities. Things like this are not included when factoring in costs for students from low income. How can you visit all the different university campuses, with all the travel costs and maybe even overnight accommodation, when your parents can barely afford to keep the lights on? There was only one institution that I wanted to go to. London Institute, a glamourous collection of art colleges that included the London College of Fashion, Central St Martins, and, more importantly for me, The London College of Printing. The competition was fierce, but I was shortlisted for an interview in the capital with a former editor of the Daily Mirror. My house was showered in happy expletives that day. Even in 1999, tickets from Wigan to London were over £50 for a pre-booked return. My mum cashed in all of her Clubcard points for the ticket. But, just for me, because she hadn’t bought enough milk to cover the cost of two tickets. However, I must have impressed Tony Delano in that office in Clerkenwell, because he gave me an amazingly lowball offer meaning that my A-level results became a terribly graded self-fulfilling prophecy.

Oxford is different from usual universities in that there are colleges, thirty-nine in total. You might have seen them on University Challenge – Balliol, Trinity, Emmanuel, Brasenose – or from reading the Wikipedia pages of any of our last three Prime Ministers, including the incumbent Boris Johnson, who graduated with a 2:1 in 1987. That’s the other thing – you don’t study something at Oxford, you read it – you don’t start your studies, you matriculate, for which you need a robe. Now, I have been told by helpful and obstinate alumni via social media that Matriculation Robes are £25, ex-hire. However, I have also been told by a current Oxford student that the robe cost is £50 minimum, and no-one would dare wear a secondhand robe as ‘everyone would know’. It’s immediately singling yourself out as a Weasley in a room filled with Malfoys.

The accommodation costs are comparable to London prices; however, this does not cover the Christmas break, which means everything needs to be packed up and stored. Not only do you pay for the storage, but you pay for the boxes too. Much to my disappointment, no-one nips out for a Pot Noodle either, students are expected to dine ‘in hall’ (again, more cost!) where you can choose between an informal and a formal sitting – where your gown is required. I imagine for a working-class kid attending Oxford or Cambridge is very much like cosplaying on a Harry Potter set, but without the magic of a bottomless purse. There are balls too at the end of each term, formal affairs with ticket prices over £50. Again, said the former alumni, you don’t have to go! It’s not obligatory!

But let me tell you a harsh reality. Nothing ostracises a poor kid more than not being able to join in because they can’t afford it. Nothing. And we might have great friends who would all chip in and pay for our ticket, or lend us the money, but there is something very working-class about not wanting people to know that we can’t afford it. Surely we should not be asking these young adults who have studied and worked against all odds, to have a second class university experience because they know their parents won’t be able to help. You can’t even get a job to supplement your income either; the majority of colleges stipulate this, and as someone who had to work two term-time jobs at a much less prestigious university to live (even with the glorious student overdrafts of pre-austerity Britain), this really hit home at how much I would have struggled financially if I had gone to either of these institutions.

Recently my daughter applied for university. We get in the car and visit a university each week, driving miles up and down and across the country. We fight over choices and analyse each course based on employability, and whether or not she would like it. The process is completed in clicks and feels much more clinical than twenty years earlier, but rather than heading into unchartered waters, I have a map. It might be old and tattered, but I have a much better idea of where we are going now. My daughter believes that the meritocracy is a lie, and she tells me this in sharp, pointed tones as we receive her A-level results on a rainy Thursday morning. She goes to University in September and spends the autumn sending me videos of the Minster, or tutorials on how to swear in Japanese. She is only the second person in our family to continue on to higher education. I don’t just mean in her generation. I mean in total. We are the exception, not the rule.

One of the first questions someone at Oxford was asked by a fellow student last year was ‘private or state’, she replied ‘private’ and was met with a smile. There was no need to ask who the state school entrant was, as she queried the partridge and asparagus served for dinner – ‘this chicken is tough. Is that grass?’- and arrived for the formal sitting with her gown covering a denim skirt and shimmery top underneath. Private school teaches these things, no desperate faux pas for Isobel or Jeremy, whereas state schools do not have the resources or the knowledge to run classes on etiquette for the small number of their students that make it through the intense application procedures. This is not saying that low-income children should be discouraged – not at all – instead, it is saying that there is something inherently wrong with the system. At private school, you are disappointed if you don’t get into Oxbridge, whereas the state school child who gets in is an extraordinary anomaly talked about for years in hushed tones of reverence by the faculty.

And this is the issue with saying that children are on a level playing field, that everyone is measured on their own merit; because it is not true. For children on very low incomes, the odds are unfairly stacked against them, and the issues such as 2020’s disastrous A-Level results just add more bricks to an already near-insurmountable wall.

#opinion #exams #growinguppoor #lowincome #councilestate #councilestatekids #alevels #nineties #Oxbridge

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