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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: The Master of the Mississippi! or “How Much Satisfaction Can There Be?”

Hello everybody. I’m back to the life of scrooge mcduck.. it’s been an eternity hasn’t it and that’s for a simple reason: I had other reviews to do, especially comissions, I kept pushing this back further and further as while I love this series i put my paid work ahead of any other projects, until Kev, i.e. the guy paying for most comissions out and out asked that this be done before I got to the rest of The Ride of the Three Caballeros. It’s also why I finally put a loose schedule in place, to keep projects from slipping so the MANY retrosectives and what not I have going can move along at a steady pace and I can slot in comissions easier, 5 bucks an issue or episode if your curious. So now things are a bit tider, i’ll try to have an installment of scrooge’s storied past up a week from now on, so keep an eye out for that, minus christmas week as I have something else planned Duck Comics wise. So with all that out of the way and any exposition able to be baked into the plot proper, we can FINALLY get back to the life and times of scrooge mcduck

PREVIOUSLY ON THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SCROOGE MCDUCK:

A Young Scrooge got his inspiration, his start and also scared the crap out of some asshole scooby do style. Also his sister Hortense was adorable. SO there’s that. But eventually with some inspriation from what he didn’t realize was a ghost, Scrooge decided to head to america to find his Uncle Pothole. So that’s where we left off, with Scrooge heading to

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Since then as the scrapbook page explains, Scrooge has worked his way up the Missippi to Louieville, Kentucky... which is where Rosa lives, and it is not a concidence it’s set here as a result. But much like how the Marvel staff being in new york in the 60′s lead to that universe having it’s unique and vibrant New York setting that’s lasted to this day, sometimes a creator using where they live as the basis can lead to really great and intresting stuff and here he had a valid reason as Louieville was one of the main hubs on the Mississippi river and thus a massive boomtown.

Not the kind of boom town I meant but I can never say no to boomtown. But yeah it’s not only a bustling hub usually anyway, but things are extra amped up given it’s Derby time. I mean the Kentucky Derby’s no steel ball run but what could be? So naturally the crowds are booming and scroogie is impressed. I mean he’s a 13 year old boy from a poor community in Scotland. This is huge to him. But he has no time to dawdle and asks the closest random gentleman where he could find his Uncle Angus, who was mentioned last time and is the one needed for this. The guy is genuinely helpful and points him to his uncle... but as I only noticed on this read through also uses a knife to swipe his bag by cutting the handle off. It’s part of why I admire this series so much: rosa snuck so many small background gags into the margins you can always find something new reading it or always get something fresh out of it. We also meet Gyro’s grandpa Ratchet.

I mean there’s no might about it. David Byrne is rich and he’s the delightful weirdo we all deserve and the autistic icon I needed.

I have no context for this, I just figured searching David Byrne in Tumblr’s Gif Search would find something delightfully batshit in that way only hec an do and I was right.

So as the tweenager enters the gambling establishment, we find Uncle Pothole, whose playing poker with local asshole and tophat enthusiast Porker Hogg...whose name keeps tripping me up as I write this as he’s not the only pig named porker I know of but is far less memorable than this one

He and Pothole are playing cards, and while Porker can go on for days he can’t go on for eight weeks.. or even two days really and prepares to finish it. He puts up his boat the Dilly Dollar, which Angus takes offence to since Porker sank his. Angus offers up the location of the Dreenan White, a legendary, and real legend at that, riverboat that sank. Since Angus was a Cabin Boy on the boat, he knows where it is. So the final hand is dealt and Angus wins with five aces, mostly because Porker’s ace ejector jammed. When Scrooge questions if this is dishonest, Angus explains their under riverboat captain rules which basically means you can cheat your ass off and it’s not only expected it’s an insult NOT to. So Angus takes Scrooge with him, seeing the boy as a good luck charm and finding out to his shock Scrooge is his nephew, but gladly takes his newly found relation under his wing as he relates to his coming to america to find his fortune, having done the same.

Angus is the first of Scrooge’s many mentors and easily the best part of this chapter. He’s lively, intresting but a contrast to scrooge, someone whose not AFRAID to work but wouldn’t mind an easy victory or giving up the adventure game, as he ends up doing. He’s a lively, clever guy and very charming. I”ll get back to the mentor part of it in a bit, but needless to say in a chapter that i’ll admit, and get more into the why as we go, is not one of life and time’s better chapters, he’s a highlight. So the two get to the Dilly Dollar while Hogg decides to follow to find where the Dreeynan Whyte is. As for why he hasn’t drudged it up Angus simply can’t as the Mighty Missisippi’ s too muddy for that, making another mark twain quoted joke about it. But Scrooge mentions the clarity pills from Ratchet, meaning he has a way to do so, and Angus is now elated and decides to head there to get his fortune, specifically near Monkey’s Elbow kentucky, which while relocated slightly to fit the story, is a very real town and an objectively great name for a town, much like Forty Fort, which is also a very real town name. Hogg overhears and after being literally booted out of the boat, as we’ll see literal asskicking is a McDuck family staple, goes to recruit some hired goons.

Yes hired goons, as every good villian needs some hired goons. And these specific goons.. are a bit.. familiar. And you’ll find out who they are under the cut!

Yup it’s the Secret Origin of the Beagle Boys. And if your wondering “Wait are they immortal too?” well. their not these are their grandpas. Also Hogg’s whole complaint about “wearing them if there yellow” just.. bugs me. They .. they aren’t cowards.. Grandpappy’s just being smart and knows his sons are excessively dumb, as is family tradition. They have no issue with committing crimes, they just don’t want to be arrested by the first Navy boat that finds them. That’s just.. common logic. This is one of Life and Time’s weaker atrributes: Due to being built around barks stories, that means most of his foes here are the random greedy asshats of the week Scrooge faced who had some loophole to his fortune or the grandparents of said assholes. With the exception of hte Beagles, who show up a few times, Glomgold and Soapy Slick who wihle a minor vilian is at the center of one of the best chapters of the story, most of these guys are just forgettable hooligans. Not terrible, and the stories around them are good enough to make it enjoyable but nothing really distinct from what Scrooge normally faced outside of his origin story. Really Barks was simply stronger at STORIES than he was at creating villians: As Magica, The Beagle Boys, Gladstone, Rockerduck and Glomgold all show he wasn’t untalented at it, it’s just more often than not he fell back on some random asshole.

Instead of using a dedicated Rogue’s Gallery of intresting baddies, most writers of most comics just used villians of the week and maybe ONE OR TWO designated hitters. Batman’s Rogue’s gallery wasn’t big enough to form their own country at this point is what i’m saying, it just meant Rosa had to build more vilians of teh week. It dosen’t drag the story down entirely, as the story is about SCROOGE and his growth: sometimes the villians are just a secondary ingrident in a good story. But it’s still something very noticable and one of the weaker parts of the story, it’s just like I said, with the story being more on Scrooge and where a lot of his personality came from, it’s something I really didn’t notice before and really dosen’t bother me now I have. The villians are weak btu the hero is so intresting and grows so much it just dosen’t matter. Their there to provide Scrooge with opportunites to evolve, and the really good ones are saved for the best moments of that and for when a villian IS needed to change scooge as a person. So it all evens out.

So naturally the next day when the McDucks head to get the pills, Hogg’s beat them to it, and when Ratchet refused to cut cards for his stock had them beat Ratchet while they were at it. Though oddly Angus assumes he’s just passed out while Scrooge is the one to recognize someone knocked him out. You’d think a well experienced guy like Angus would know that eh whatever. Point is Hogg is ahead and Angus dosen’t have a crew... though Scrooge and Ratchet naturally volunteer since both have skin in the game: Scrooge wanted a job with Pothole anyway and Ratchet is out a job and out his pills. Angus gladly takes them on.. but accidently sets the Dominos in place for one of Comics!Scrooge’s worst behaviors down the line.

Yeahhh.... Pothole is partially responsible for Scrooge criminally underpaying his staff and family. That gag.. is easily one of , if not my least faviorite part about Rosa’s work. It’s a holdover from Carl Barks work naturally, and one that makes some sense: Rosa set his work shortly after barks, so some time in the 1950s, having barks works take place around when they were written. There isn’t a strict timeline of what happened which year outside of life and times, but Rosa’s works are delieberate period pieces. That’s not a bad thing and if he’s going to base most of his stuff around stuff Barks did, then it’s a good call to make. The issue is the execution: While with Barks it was in part because there was less income inequality, it was also clearly a bit of satire, as Donald was the every man and companies could be unfair, cheap douchebags then as they are now. IT feels more like a joke on Scrooge. Donald still puts up with a lot of stuff, but he’s more liable to complain. In the Rosa stories.. it feels more like he just makes Donald the butt monkey and it dosen’t play well as.. Donald dosen’t want to be there. He has every RIGHT not to want to be there as he’s not being paid a decent wage, not being compensated in any other ways, and could be searching for a boss who actually pays him a living wage. Donald is more the victim in Rosa’s stories but he simply doesn’t realize this, or the fact it’s even worse since Donald is you know RAISING THREE CHILDREN AND SCROOGE KNOWS THIS BUT DOES NOT PITCH IN ONE EXTRA CENT. So already without even adding the decades on, it hasn’t aged well.. but add in the modern day business where it’s a STRUGGLE to get states to raise minimum wages, the job market was hit horribly even BEFORE Corona came and made things worse, and companies horribly abuse their employees to ludcirous extremes such as time crunch in the video game industry, black friday in retail and of course the house of nightmares that is the amazon warehouse, and I say that being a frequent use of amazon.. just because I rely on a company dosen’t mean I have to LIKE doing so in any way shape or form.

What i’m saying is Scrooge’s actions were already bad, making this joke fall flat, but it comes off as downright unfunny after all of that. Even given the times Scrooge was raised in it’s just not a funny gag that “oh ha ha a 70+ year old man ever learned right from wrong when it came to paying his family or workers”. It just paints scrooge in the worst light possible as man who never grew, in at least one aspect, from being a goddamn tweenager and is easily one of the weaker moments of an otherwise epic and well crafted saga, and as i’ve said of Rosa’s exemplary work as a whole.

Anyways the race is on and with the DIlly Dollar gaining on Hogg’s Cotton reiver witch, Hogg has them ram into the boat and flip it over. And no i’m not descrbing a sex act. In a show of competence while Blackheart Beagle’s actions send them close to the falls too he just uses the dilly dollar as a ramp. We also get a really cool flipped over panel as our heroes are waterlogged. A snag boat shows up, I assume it removes snags and dangerous objects and complains about rescuing them. .even though CLEARLY they had some kind of accident. It’s.. never a good look to complain about having to save someone’s life or livelyhood unless that someone is Tucker Carlson. Then it’s ABSOLUTLEY okay to grumble a bit about having to do the right thing.

So after a quick gag we’re introduced to a chekovs gun as a massive tree sprouts out of the river and spooks Scroogey.. and Angus who explains it’s a “sawyer”, something that happens when a dead tree falls in a river.. sinks in.. and then can rise right back up suddenly, violently and boat destroyingly.

So our heroes head on and find the location and Angus dumbly assumes that Hogg, who had a clear start is just lost.. and not you know lurking in the bushes watiting to strike. And strike he does as he once again rams hard and long into the Dilly Dollar, leaving it on a sandy shore. Schwing. Our heroes are landlocked but Hogg, just to earn himself a dare to be stupid award, gives the Beagles their deed, and tells them theirs diving equipment. You can take a wild guess what happenes next.

Angus understandably laughs at his misfortune because it’s funny.. and Hogg responds by dropping him down a well. Before Scrooge can raise a benefit concert to send his love down a well, Angus asks Scrooge to join him instead.. and soon we find out why as the Beagles only find a wrecked town. Turns out thats where Monkey’s Elbow WAS, and they build the new town near it.. with the farm Angus ended up at being where the wreck is now.

Our heroes explore the wreck which honestly, looks really damn impressive, a muddy destroyed riverboat hauntingly beautifully lit by candle light, which Scrooge is holding naturally. I may of had my criticisms for Rosa this chapter, and I will again, but it’s moments like this that reinforce that the man is still one of the best comic book artists i’ve ever seen and knows how to beautifully meld his art with storytelling.

Speaking of which our heroes find the safe with the money. Angus is ritch but Scrooge.. dosen’t get how he can be happy. Scroogie questions “How much satisfaction can there be in having your life’s fortune handed to you? “ It’s easily the best moment of the chapter.. while it’s only two panels before we get to Angus moving things right along... it really speaks to Scrooge’s character. Even as still a naive boy from Glasgow... his whole life has been hard work, effort working your way up. To just.. LUCK into fortune like this baffles him. To be satisfied with that and not seem to have any amibation to use it to go further, to make more of yourself. To be more. While he hasn’t quite got his love for adventure yet, we’ll get there next time, even now there’s a hunger inside him, a desire to not just get rich, that’s all fine and good.. btu to have EARNED IT. To truly feel like he made his way.

And it perfeclty makes sense with his background: Scrooge was raised with nothing, and found out at the start of the story his family had lost everything, a once glorious clan reduced to a poor starving family on the edge of Glasgow. To him it can’t just be about getting Money.. he wants to bring his clan back. To make his family happy and proud. To make sure his father’s faith as the last of their line wasn’t misplaced. He has a lot of expectation on him and that’s bred his character. Angus.. just sorta left at a young age and has been incommuincado. He dosen’t really care about family or legacy.. not that I don’t think he would’ve sent some money back to buy the castle, I just think he was never that concerned with his family’s legacy like Scrooge despite coming from a similar cloth. He wanted the money, but Scrooge cares about the money.. and his family. It’s what anchors him. What keeps him from his worst impulses and keeps him grounded.. for now anyways but that’s a ways off. Point is it really speaks to Scrooge’s character.

But soon the beagles find our heroes, and a fight breaks out.. and naturally even without years of experince yet, Scrooge is still a McDuck and while previously his fighting was based on ingunity.. this time the little runt’s just out for blood and suprises the beagles with a clump of mud and then beating the shit out of them. When one of them tries to respond by wacking him with a piece of wood... he instead breaks a collumn and with the dreenan unable to handle the mud without it... the place starts to collapse. However our heroes don’t make it out unschathed as the Beagles capture them and the gold... for some reason. Seriously Scrooge dosen’t fight back or anything nor does angus they just.. let hte beagles overpower them. WHen Scrooge fully fought the grown ass men just a few mintues ago. What the actual hell.

But we do get another Badass Scrooge Moment, as once hteir on the ship, Scrooge mentions another treasure.. which baffles Angus despite you know.. the boy clearly playing at something. Yeah whlie I do like Angus.. he can be grating in parts and here he just comes off REALLY stupid. But after being tortured by running on a boat, with the beagles mistaking Angus’ genuine confusion for being a bastard man, which naturally their impressed by, Scrooge fessses up.. and you can see exactly’s coming.. the sawyer raises the boat into the air and harpoons it. The beagles try to play off the port authority but scrooge unmaks those “infamous beagle boys”.. and thus names one of his greatest threats. Blackheart vows revenge while our heroes go for a sasparillia..though Scrooge keeps the money.. as he says the memory of that adventure is worth more than anything. As for the Gold, the goverment took it back, but did give them a reward, and Angus only dosen’t give Scrooge a share because he’d have to refloat it, but offers him a job and the dollar in two years at a bargin price. Alls well that ends well. A truly poetic way to end the chapter and prepare scrogoe for the next... TO BE CONTINUED...

FINAL TH...

Yeah.. as you probably know this is NOT the end of the chapter. Instead we go on for a bit more. And a few more pages would’ve been fine, to help bridge the gap.. we see scrooge get the Dollar at a bargin price as his uncle promised, though the deal turns out to be a bit of a lemon as the riverboat industry has dried up. But then.. we get a couple page adventure with the beagle boys, where the beagles try to steal the goverment gold scrooge is transporting, Ratchet helps him escape, and we DO get the utterly badass image of scrooge driving the boat onto land and it exploding and causing a massive flood> While that is awesome.. the pacing just takes a huge hit and it’s easily why this chapter is one of my least faviorite. It probably would’ve been better if they just had a passage of time montage of events at the start of the next chapter and ended on that bit before.. but instead it just goes on a bit and really tries my patience every time as instead of moving on to a bold new adventure.. we just get some filler to help pad things out so Rosa can get it to the right page length. I don’t blame him, sometimes shit happens, but it dosen’t make it any more fun to read. So the Dollar is scrapped and Scrooge is back at the bottom with barely a cent to his name. But he’s resolute: since the river boating days were winding down anyway he’s going west to become a cowboy, and heads off on the Wabash Cannonball as a fireman, i.e. the guy who stokes the engines, to make his way there. So we end our story for now and again.. this would’ve been much better condensed but whatever. We’re finally done.

Final Thougts

As you could probably tell but I saved for here, and I outright even said this is one of my least faviorite chapters and one of the weakest if not the weakest. Part of it is the structure issue I mentioned, but the other part is it just.. isn’t as intresting at least to me personally. The rest of life and times have pretty unique stories that while not removed from genres Scrooge stories have covered, use the story of his rise to make them really pop as we slowly see how the iconic Scrooge we know became the legend and what shaped him that way. Here while we get bits of that, it’s mostly just a standard uncle scrooge story but with him as a kid. It’s not a BAD one, it dosen’t drag the whole of life and times down and it’s servicable but it just feels a bit more standard for Rosa’s work. Still enjoyable, but nothing really spectacular like the next two chapters. On it’s own or as one of the side stories it would’ve been fine but as part of this huge sprawling masterpiece, it’s just a bit underwhelming and just makes me eager to get to the next part every time rather than really suck me in as much as the others. Again the pacing dosen’t help with that and only makes it drag further. It just dosen’t have the weight the other ones do character wise and as such just makes me want to get to part 3 already, which naturally that story within a story dosen’t help with. Overall while not a bad comic, I don’t think any part of life and times is truly bad, it’s still not a GREAT comic like what’s to come or what came just before.

NEXT TIME ON LIFE AND TIMES: Scrooge heads out to the wild wild west.. though instead of a giant mechanical spider he fights some cattle rustlers and meets Teddy Roosevelt HELL. YES.

Until then, happy holidays and later days!

#the life and times of scrooge mcduck #scrooge mcduck #life and times #ratchet gearloose #angus mcduck #the beagle boys #the master of the missippi #don rosa #duck comics

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artificialqueens · 5 years ago

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Not Nineteen Forever (17) (Branjie/Scyvie/Ninex) - Ortega

a/n: hey angels! thank u for ur patience, here is yet another chapter of the hellscape that is n19f. as i said on my blog, u will either love this chapter or hate it. either way let me know what u think!! this is a big chunky one at 13k (ik i’m treating u during this quarantine) so grab ur snacks and settle in. lots of love, byeee!

trigger warning: a little light drinking xo

please note: this fic contains young adults often behaving in irresponsible/unadvisable ways with regards to alcohol, drugs and sex. if you are someone who feels as if they could be heavily influenced by fic and incorporate what happens in the plot into ur own life, pls steer clear!

summary: Brooke, Yvie and Nina are three flatmates who forged a friendship in their first year of university and picked up some other waifs and strays along the way. Now in their final year, there are feelings that need to be unravelled and confessions to be made whilst navigating drunk nights, hungover mornings, takeaways, group chats, library meetups, cafe gossiping, and the small matter of getting a degree.

last chapter: Scarlet celebrated her birthday by helping Nina win back Monet, a surprise party organised by her girlfriend, and a suspiciously civil Brooke and Vanjie.

this chapter: from one birthday to another, the gang heads out to the country to celebrate Brooke and Akeria’s 22nd. everyone seems back on good terms, but will the combination of hide and seek, truth or dare, a hot tub and of course a lil bit of alcohol change anything?

***

“Holiday!...da-da-da-dum-dum-daaa, Celebrate!”

Brooke rolled her eyes, unable to help herself laughing as Nina rolled her suitcase towards Monet’s car. “It’s hardly a holiday, is it, girl? Overnighter in an airbnb in the middle of buttfuck nowhere?”

“Listen, I’ll take what I can get, thank you very much,” Nina raised her eyebrows, as Monet lifted the door of the boot up and Nina heaved her case inside.

“Oh, what a compliment,” Monet quipped from beside her, Brooke making a sick noise as Nina slid her arms around her girlfriend’s waist and gave her a squeeze.

“Not with girlfriends, obviously. You’re a Tesco Finest girlfriend. Not a smartprice girlfriend,” Nina explained, Monet smiling proudly and nuzzling their noses together. Brooke already wanted to vomit and she wasn’t even car sick yet.

“Pack it in, bitches, or Monet’s uninvited,” she deadpanned, pushing herself off the wall she was currently leaning against and looking up at her bedroom window, ignoring the girls’ shouts of indignation. “Right, have you got everything, yeah?”

“Have you seen the size of this bitch’s suitcase? I think she has literally managed to pack your kitchen sink,” Monet cocked an eyebrow at Nina, who elbowed her in the ribs. Nina produced her phone from the pocket of her dungaree dress.

“Hey Google, can you divorce your girlfriend?” she asked into the speaker, Monet howling a laugh and shoving her.

“Seriously, guys, I haven’t packed enough anti-sickness tablets for this,” Brooke said dryly, making her way to the passenger door.

“Oh, are you planning on recreating the great rail replacement bus fiasco of ‘18?” came a voice, Brooke turning round and narrowing her eyes at her smug flatmate, emerging through the door with her girlfriend and a small holdall bag.

“I was sat hungover opposite the toilet on a three hour coach journey, what the hell else was I expected to do?” Brooke defended herself. Yvie sat down on the wall outside their building, Scarlet joining her.

“Hmm, all I’ll say, Monet, is that I hope you have at least three empty plastic bags in the back seat with her,” she advised smugly, Brooke wishing she was still leaning against the wall so she could shove her off it.

“When is Plastique coming for you guys? Can I arrange for you to be sitting in the middle of the road when she drives up it?”

“Hey, what the fuck did I say?!” Scarlet yelped, outraged.

“You’re a bystander, Scarlet, and a bystander is worse than a bully,” Nina remarked sagely, Monet nodding along in support.

“Besides, I’m allowed to bully Brooke. It’s part of the lease,” Yvie shrugged, fixing the huge round sunglasses that had been on the top of her head and positioning them so they were right at the bridge of her nose. The March sunshine was welcome; it made Brooke feel happy, optimistic of things to come. Even the small scrub of grass out the front of their stairwell had bright purple, yellow and white bulbs poking through it, bringing a defiant sense of beauty to their surroundings. Brooke had been so pleased with the weather when she’d opened her curtains that morning that she’d packed a bunch of clothes she usually reserved for the summer. It felt odd wearing her denim skirt without the black tights she’d clad herself in for the past three months, but it was a welcome feeling. Yvie hadn’t really seemed to get the Summery memo other than her sunglasses- a huge knitted jumper covered in holes hung off her skinny frame and a pair of thick exercise leggings kept her legs warm.

“You couldn’t spruce yourself up a bit for my birthday, bitch? I feel like any minute now you’re going to start dancing around the street moulting straw singing about how you desperately want a brain,” Brooke smirked, Yvie simpering a fake smile and giving her the finger in response.

“It’s only fifteen degrees, Brooke, it’s hardly time to crack out the Kopparberg and blast T Shirt Weather yet,” Scarlet laughed. It was a bit hypocritical, Brooke thought as she looked Scarlet’s outfit up and down- a floaty, lacey dress and a pair of white Adidas- but of course she would defend her girlfriend. It wasn’t actually fair, contemplated Brooke. Scarlet and Yvie would always team up, so would Monet and Nina. Brooke had to fight all her battles herself.

“Besides, your birthday is over! Move on, hoe,” Yvie smiled, running forward and shaking Brooke’s shoulders relentlessly as the other girls laughed uproariously in the background. Brooke laughed and batted her away, knowing she was just joking. As she shoved her friend off of her, a familiar grey Audi drove up their street and pulled in behind Monet’s car. Plastique gave her horn a little beep, waving and rolling down her window.

“Let’s ride, bitches! I’m so ready for this weekend,” she squealed, as Yvie and Scarlet rushed to shove their bags in the boot of her car.

“I think I’ve been ready since we booked it,” Nina sighed, stretching. “Right, let’s go, girls! Dun-duun-da-na-na-dun dun.”

As Nina continued singing Shania Twain and hopped in the passenger seat of Monet’s car, Brooke passed by Plastique’s window and gave her hand a squeeze. “You know how to get there, yeah?”

“Up the motorway then off at junction 4 and then just follow all the signs for the B road. We good,” she nodded, then gave a laugh. “Kiki’ll probably end up in France somehow, you know what her sense of direction is like.”

“Yeah, but she’s got Silky and Vanj to direct her. She’ll be fine,” Brooke shrugged, thumping on Plastique’s door and making for the other car. “Right, see you ladies at the airbnb!”

Monet blasted her horn once, twice, three times as Brooke dashed into the back seat and buckled up. As Nina connected her phone to the aux cord and started blasting typically Nina-ish cheesy music, Brooke felt an excited little smile creep up on her face, slapping her hands against her thighs to the beat. The past almost-a-month had gone by quickly, and Brooke and Akeria’s shared birthday trip away had arrived before Brooke had known it. It had been booked on a whim, an excited message from Akeria on the group chat about a potential birthday night out had grown arms and legs until suddenly the girls were all transferring her money for a night in the country to jointly celebrate her and Brooke’s birthdays. They had turned 22 within ten days of each other, and the girls had all decided that the amount of money they would have spent on two big nights out- Ubers, big bottles of vodka for pres, club entry, club drinks and cheesy chips at the end of the night- probably equated to the same, if not more, than the amount they would drop on a boujie house in the country. The house they had booked was huge- five big bedrooms with floor to ceiling windows, a lounge straight out of a murder mystery drama with plush sofas, towering bookshelves and a massive roaring fire, a kitchen with a table big enough to fit them all round and an aga with what seemed to be a thousand burners- though whether anyone would know how to work the damn thing was anyone’s guess, Brooke thought with a snort. The icing on the cake of the whole place, though, was a huge section of outdoor decking with a hot tub set in the middle of it. To most of the girls it would be like living somebody else’s life for the weekend, but, Brooke thought mischievously, to Plastique it would probably seem the same as a weekend at home.

Brooke was glad they could all do something like this, go away together after what had happened. She didn’t really know what had happened to Vanessa to make her warm up to her so unexpectedly. It had all started when they were preparing for Scarlet’s birthday surprise; Brooke remembered how hard her heart had been beating that morning as she’d known it was the first time she’d be properly seeing Vanessa since they broke up, having to wipe her sweaty palms on her jeans as the door to the kitchen had opened and Vanessa, Akeria and Silky had walked in. Akeria and Silky, to their credit, had been fine and normal with Brooke, despite the amount of dragging through the mud they had probably done to her name when they’d heard the news of her and Vanessa’s breakup. Vanessa, (understandably, thought Brooke) had hugged Yvie, Plastique and Nina, but not Brooke, the obviousness of the action lost in the frenetic melee of the girls seeing each other all at once. Brooke had preferred that, though. She wouldn’t have wanted the awkwardness of reminding herself how perfectly her arms seemed to fit around Vanessa, the brief scent of the Aussie shampoo she used in her hair, her head against her chest even for just the tiniest second.

After that, Vanessa had started with the digs. Brooke had thought she’d had malicious intent at first, until she got bored and decided to fire back.

(Yvie’s voice had yelled from the hallway. “Who’s made the cupcakes yet? Anyone?”

“Well if it’s Brooke, we all dyin’ tonight.”

“At least I can make something! How much do you drop on Deliveroo in a month, like, half your student loan?”)

With each verbal sparring match, Brooke had watched as the small, sardonic snorts Vanessa had given evolved into a full-blown beaming smile, the kind she always used to shoot Brooke’s way with the perfect white teeth and the tiny dimple and the little blush that hit her cheeks. It was almost painful knowing that Brooke had given up that smile. And that had been the moment. The moment that Brooke had finally admitted to herself what she’d been wanting to deny all this time- she deeply wished she hadn’t ended things with Vanessa, that she’d fought through the ick and given it at least more of a shot than she had. Now Vanessa had moved on and she was seeing someone else and she was happy. Happy without Brooke. Why had Brooke broken up with her so quickly?

She was an idiot.

“She was an idiot.”

Brooke snapped out of her trance, blinking and trying to figure out how Monet had managed to get inside her head. “What?”

“That woman. Blue car. Completely cut me off,” Monet rolled her eyes, frowning as she inched forward in the traffic until she was almost bumper to bumper with the car in question.

“Oh M'net, don’t start a fight,” Nina sighed, resting her knees against the glovebox.

“I’m not! I’m just letting a bitch know that her misconduct was noted,” Monet growled.

“Her misconduct was noted? God, you’re such a teacher,” Nina laughed, a big chuckle with loads of heart that made Brooke smile.

“Hey, so are you!”

“Stop fucking bickering or I will take your vocal cords and strangle you with them!” Brooke cried, tiring quickly. She watched Monet smirk in the rear view mirror.

“It’s alright, Neens. Just because Brooke’s jealous of happy couples and regrets breaking it off with Vanjie-”

“Wait what? I don’t…oh, Nina, for fuck’s sake! I told you not to tell anyone!” Brooke snapped, training accusatory eyes on her friend. After Scarlet’s birthday, she’d told Nina what she’d told Yvie, just in a little more detail, and she’d been more sympathetic than her other flatmate, making her tea and nodding understandingly as Brooke vented at her. Nina was usually good with secrets, a reliable and trustworthy friend. Brooke couldn’t understand why she would-

“Ahahaha!!! BITCH! You just totally exposed yourself! Oh my God!!” Monet screeched in time with her tyres, thumping her hand against the steering wheel. Brooke was confused, her heart still thudding. “Nina ain’t told me shit but I got eyes and ears, an’ I saw you two flirting at Scarlet’s. All damn day and night. You don’t act like that with someone you just broke up with.”

“Yeah I’m afraid you just spilled your own secret, Brooke,” Nina deadpanned from the passenger seat, giving a little laugh.

“Shit,” Brooke sighed, putting her head in her hands. “Great. Well, you probably think I’m a total asshole, Monet.”

“Hey, I’m a very chill person! You do you, girl. You wanna get with Vanessa for 3 months, break up with her for one and then get back with her again, that’s no business of mine,” Monet shrugged, a twinkle in her eye.

“Yeah, I know I made a mistake, thanks,” Brooke sighed, biting her lip as she let her thoughts wash over her. Monet had a unique angle on the whole situation. She lived with Monique, of course, and that whole thing was still going on between her and Vanessa, if a message Vanessa had accidentally sent to the group chat last week was anything to go by. Brooke had wondered for days on end whether it had actually been an accident or not, the content of the message sending her crazy with jealousy as it was essentially just Vanessa begging Monique to come round and fuck her into the mattress. She’d considered whether or not it could have been deliberate, but the absolute roasting Vanessa had received afterwards from the other girls couldn’t have been worth it if it had. Brooke considered asking Monet for some inside knowledge, decided against it, and then did a U-turn as she concluded that her pride and dignity were already bruised so she might as well go the whole hog and shatter them.

“So, uh…Vanessa’s still seeing Monique.”

Monet ran her tongue over her teeth. “She’s certainly round at the flat a lot.”

“So is that, uh…I mean, do you think that’s going to turn into anything more, or…?”

“I don’t know, girl, I don’t know if it’s my place to say.”

This is like pulling teeth. “Do you think they-”

“They’re having a lot of sex.”

“Monet!” Nina burst out in a shocked laugh.

“What?! They are!”

“Excellent!” Brooke exclaimed sarcastically, staring out the window as the city around them turned into fields and the houses turned into service stations.

“C’mon, Brooke, you have to admit you do kinda deserve this a lil’ bit,” Monet laughed, Brooke rolling her eyes from the back seat.

“Right, both of you shut up. I’m officially banning any conversations about pining or relationships until we get to the house. We sing, we eat snacks, occasionally we play I Spy. That’s it,” Nina scolded them, turning around in her seat and staring Brooke down. Brooke had never felt more like a disgraced teenager in her life.

“Ughhhh, fine, Mom,” Monet groaned, changing up into fifth as they hit the motorway, the weekend becoming more real and making Brooke tingle with excitement despite the news she hadn’t wanted to hear.

Just as Nina had ordered them, the three girls spent the rest of the journey singing at the top of their lungs to Vengaboys, B*Witched and Cascada, Brooke on crisp duty as she passed the cavernous bag of barbecue rib McCoys forward every five minutes or so, Monet making hurried grabs at crinkle cut crisps in between changing gears. Brooke managed to avoid the dreaded travel-sickness that had plagued her since she was about six years old, much to Monet and Nina’s delight. The sun didn’t let up, and it still hung proudly in the sky as the girls pulled up the leafy, tree-lined driveway to the house they’d booked, the branches hanging low and curling around each other signalling they hadn’t been cut in a while. Spying Akeria’s Corsa and Plastique’s Audi already parked, Monet pulled up alongside the huge white house, the little set of three stone chimneys on the roof puffing out smoke and letting the girls know that at least one room wouldn’t be too cold inside. As Monet neatened up her parking, the sound of Silky’s screeching cut through the crunching of wheels against gravel, and the rest of the girls spilled out of the front door shortly afterwards. As soon as the car had stopped, Brooke excitedly hopped out of the passenger seat, hugging any girl she could reach. Before she knew it, she’d found herself pulling out of a quick hug with Vanessa, and the two were in front of each other.

“Hey,” Brooke decided quickly to speak first, setting the tone so there wouldn’t be any awkward pauses.

“Hey! How was your ride? Get here okay?” Vanessa asked politely, tucking a strand of her caramel hair behind one ear. She was dressed in a tiny little cropped black jumper and some faded grey jeans, Brooke trying to ignore her mind reminding her of how right it felt to wrap her arms around Vanessa again, how tiny her waist was and how much she wished she could go back for another hug- for fuck’s sake, cut that shit out.

“Uh, yeah! It was fine. Traffic wasn’t too bad. How about you?”

Vanessa let out a laugh. “Shit was like Wacky Races. Akeria nearly rammed some old cunt off the road. I’ve never seen road rage like it, we genuinely feared for our lives. Or her license. Oh my God, this house is insane. C’mon, you need to see it!”

There was a split-second where Brooke felt Vanessa tug at her hand, which was quickly dropped as if the action had never happened. It was almost as if Vanessa had been on automatic pilot; the ease with which she used to slip her hand into Brooke’s hadn’t been forgotten by either of them. And then Brooke felt Plastique leap onto her back like a monkey, and the girl was excitedly chattering away to her, and the moment had passed.

Brooke barely had time to take in the huge cream-painted hall with the varnished cream stairs stretching practically up to the ceiling when Plastique steered her down two steps and into the kitchen, grey stone tiles making Brooke’s feet feel cold even through her trainers and the huge wooden table overflowing with assorted snacks. Akeria and Scarlet clung to the rail of the AGA, the two girls clearly feeling the cold in the chilly kitchen.

“Did any of us actually bring a meal between us or are we just going to live off of Twirl Bites and Classic Dip Selections?” Yvie wondered, picking up a four-pack of various dips. Brooke laughed.

“Hey, there’s pizzas in the fridge! Do y’all really think I would let you starve?” Silky piped up, opening the huge fridge to reveal at least ten pizzas, more than they would eat in one night.

“Nobody goes hungry in the presence of Silky Nutmeg Ganache,” Plastique smiled proudly, holding her fist out for Silky to punch. As the girls’ fists connected, Brooke watched as Vanessa scraped a wooden chair out against the stone floor.

“You girls wanna have a munch and then get wrecked?”

“Hmm, if we get drunk too early then there’s no way we’ll be able to work this oven,” Scarlet shrugged, biting her lip and frowning.

“Yeah, we’re gonna struggle to operate this sober,” Monet considered, opening up one of the oven doors and investigating.

“Well how about we snack and then play a game? I wanna play hide and seek in here,” Nina bounced on the balls of her feet excitedly. Akeria snorted.

“Hide and seek, you’re such a child. But to be fair, that could be fun. Or sardines.”

“What’s that?” asked Brooke. “I don’t know if we had that but called it something else.”

“That one where one person hides and everyone else seeks,” Yvie explained. “It’s way better. Way more chaotic.”

“Sweet. I’m down,” Brooke shrugged. She was glad that all of the girls she was friends with were happy to dick about and play kids’ games for an afternoon, and it was the kind of thing she’d miss when she graduated and would have to find a job.

The girls were all feeling peckish after their long drive, though, so they all grabbed the nearest snacks they could and headed upstairs to the living room, where Akeria had managed to start the fire which was crackling warmly in the huge marble fireplace. They all dumped their food on the huge glass-topped coffee table and had a little explore around the house before they relaxed. There was a surplus of bedrooms, and it had been agreed that since they were celebrating Brooke and Akeria’s birthdays, the two girls should have a bedroom to themselves each. Brooke’s bedroom had a huge bay window out to the rear of the house where the fields stretched for miles, and an actual four-poster bed.

“I can’t help but feel like you guys should take this room and I should take yours,” Brooke said with a pang of guilt for Yvie and Scarlet, who had dumped their things in the room they were sharing and had come to investigate Brooke’s.

Scarlet made a noise of discouragement. “No, it’s fine! This’ll get cold anyway, it’s so big. Our room’s cosier.”

Brooke watched Scarlet share a smile with her girlfriend and wrap both of her arms around Yvie’s. “Yeah, honestly, Brooke, it’s fine. Scarlet would manage to bump her head and toe and Christ knows what else on all four of the posts anyway.”

Scarlet burst out into offended laughter, letting the girls know that she secretly agreed a little bit.

“How’re the others?” Brooke asked, peering down the little corridor with the exposed wooden beams and hearing chatter and Monet’s deep laughter coming from the other rooms.

“Plastique, Silk and Vanj are all in together. I think V drew the short straw so she’s on the sofa bed,” Scarlet gave a shrug.

“That’s unfortunate,” Yvie commented, raising her eyebrows at Brooke slightly.

“Behave,” Brooke smacked her, not appreciating the implication. Vanessa had only just become friends with her again. They were hardly going to spend the entire night going at it like rabbits just because Vanessa wasn’t looking at her like she wanted to kill her anymore. “Come on, lovebirds. I feel like I haven’t shovelled enough crisps down my throat today.”

The three girls made their way to the living room again, where Nina and Monet were draped over the sofa and snacking on some sort of jelly sweets. Gradually the other girls joined them in drips and drabs and they spent the time chatting and gossiping in their usual way- about anything and everything under the sun. Brooke kept finding her eyes being drawn to Vanessa. It wasn’t entirely her fault- she was sitting opposite her, and often Brooke would find her already looking her way. Although that could have just been Brooke’s imagination. God, she didn’t even know anymore.

“Right!” Nina cried, as everyone looked dangerously close to slipping into a snack-induced coma. “Sardines time!”

“Kiki should hide first, it’s her birthday!” Silky argued immediately, Brooke only the tiniest bit affronted.

“Hey, hey, it’s Brooke’s birthday too. Also, I feel like y’all are way more enthusiastic than me about this, so I really don’t mind.”

“Brooke hides first!” Nina shouted unnecessarily. Brooke stood up from the sofa and rolled her eyes.

“Wait, so everyone is after me? Christ. This is like that nightmare I had about being on Hunted.”

“Good luck tryna squeeze that Jolly Green Giant-ass body into any of these cupboards, bitch!” Vanessa yelled across the room to uproarious laughter, Brooke turning round in time to see Vanessa stick her tongue out at her.

“Oh, like you can talk! Are you not the same size as an actual Subway sandwich?” Brooke bit back, sticking her tongue out right back and feeling an excited fizz in her stomach as she caught Vanessa blushing slightly as she laughed. As the other girls joined in with the mocking and all piled on each other, Brooke spotted two girls who weren’t laughing- Akeria and Silky were looking at each other knowingly, a look that seemed to convey disapproval. What the hell was their problem? If Vanessa was fine with her, then that meant there was no reason for the two of them to hold a grudge either, right?

Brooke frowned, trying not to read too much into it. She turned around and headed out the door. “Okay, count to 100 then, bitches!”

As she heard the others all start chanting descending numbers like a terrifying cult of mathematicians, Brooke began dashing around the house for a place to hide. She ran past the bedrooms, assuming that the others would check there straight away. Brooke considered going behind the porch door, but then thought that might end up being too obvious. She found herself in the kitchen, and to her delight she noticed a huge wooden door set into the wall that had to be a cupboard. Opening it, she saw what looked to be a pantry- shelves and shelves with only a couple of tins left by other guests at the house. It was good, but Brooke didn’t think it was a particularly great place to hide until she spotted another door at the very end of the pantry- slightly smaller with a little circular handle. As Brooke turned it, she was confronted with a tiny dark room, with only the blinking lights of the boiler that sat inside to illuminate it.

Perfect.

As Brooke hopped in, she could hear the blood roaring in her ears and her heart thumping. She wanted to giggle. This was exactly how it had felt to play hide and seek when she was little, and she couldn’t believe she was a grown-ass twenty-two year old still feeling the same way. Hell, she couldn’t believe she was a grown-ass twenty-two year old playing hide and seek. Gradually, she began to hear the sound of footsteps thundering above her, the old ceiling creaking and letting Brooke know the girls were on their way. Then, it all went silent for a while. Brooke breathed out heavily. Just then, she heard the door to the pantry open and one set of footsteps shuffle through it. They dashed to the end of the room and then seemed to be satisfied that there was nothing more to investigate- until Brooke heard them do what seemed to be a double-take. Keeping her breathing silent, Brooke stood frozen to the spot as she saw the door gradually open with a long, murder-mystery style creaaak…

Shit.

Vanessa stood at the doorframe to the cupboard, a shit-eating grin on her face. “I’ve been tellin’ Yvie I’m the best at hide and seek, but she ain’t believe me. What’d that take me, two minutes?”

“Yeah, good job, Poirot,” Brooke smirked, although it was hiding a multitude of nerves. Her and Vanessa, stuck in a tight, dark space together until the other girls found them. This was fine. This would be fine. “Right come on then, girl, you need to get in.”

“Fuck no, I ain’t goin’ in there! That’s a straight-up spiders’ nest, fuck that.”

“Just get in!” Brooke grabbed her gently but firmly by the wrist and dragged her inside, closing the door behind them. It was entirely dark except for the small strip of light where the door met the doorframe, which illuminated Vanessa’s hair and collarbones. There was a small beat of silence in which Brooke’s eyes adjusted to the darkness again, and when her vision had settled she could see Vanessa smiling at her cheekily. “What?”

“There’s a spider in your hair.”

Brooke rolled her eyes. “No there’s not.”

“There is! A big one. It’s some Harry Potter type shit, I swear.”

“Shut up, Vanessa, I’m not falling for that shit,” Brooke snorted a laugh, squashing the unease that began to creep up on her.

“It’s got, like, a billion eyes.”

“Has it.”

“An’ forty legs,” Vanessa bit her lip, trying not to laugh.

“What the fuck kind of biology classes did you go to? A spider with forty leg- JESUS!” Brooke all at once cut herself off, feeling a movement at her shoulder, her hair flicking against her neck slightly. She gave herself such a jolt that it felt like whiplash, and she watched as Vanessa laughed at her brushing wildly against her shoulder. Brooke was confused when her hand connected with another hand. Vanessa’s hand. How the hell she’d managed to reach up there without Brooke’s notice was anyone’s guess, but she’d certainly done what she’d set out to do. Brooke launched herself forward and squeezed a hand at Vanessa’s waist, laughing as the other girl screeched in response. The two girls descended into giggles, Brooke having to fend off Vanessa’s playful swipes as she berated her.

“Shut up, bitch! You’re going to get us caught!” Brooke laughed, grabbing one of Vanessa’s wrists in each hand. Suddenly, both girls paused, the compromising position they were in dawning on both of them. The memory of when she used to pin Vanessa to the bed with both her wrists and kiss her neck shot through Brooke’s mind like a hot iron, unwanted and welcome all at once. In the darkness, she could see Vanessa’s single raised eyebrow.

“You telling me you don’t wanna get caught?” she murmured, her voice low and making the atmosphere charged and thick with something that hadn’t been there before. Brooke squeezed her thighs together. This couldn’t turn into something else. She couldn’t let it.

“Well, that is the whole point of the game,” Brooke said, trying to inject as much level-headedness into her tone as she was able. To her dismay she watched as Vanessa’s eyes took on a dark twinkle.

“Oh, right, uh-huh. The game. Sure,” she smirked, Brooke only able to laugh in response because that way she wasn’t saying anything. This situation was fucked. It was so weird. Vanessa was flirting with her, unprompted. So what did this mean? That she still liked Brooke? That she wanted to be friends and was just playing? What did this mean for her and Monique? They couldn’t be that serious, then, if Vanessa was doing all this? Or maybe they’d fallen out and Vanessa wanted her to be jealous? But what was the point of making somebody jealous who wasn’t here? What if her and Monique were together and Vanessa was cheating? What if-

“AYYYYYY FUCKIN’ HOES! Yes! I’m shit-hot at this game, Jesus!” Silky threw the door open, screeching her head off and sending every thought that Brooke was overthinking into the stratosphere.

“Stop yellin’ bitch, and get in!” Vanessa laughed. As Silky squeezed into the ever-decreasing-in-space cupboard, Brooke felt her throat almost close up as Vanessa shuffled up against her to make more room, tilting her head up, locking eyes with Brooke and sending her a look that she couldn’t decipher before looking away and whispering to Silky.

They were eventually found by the other girls- namely because there was no space at all once Scarlet arrived so Plastique found half of the girls with one toe in the cupboard and the rest of their bodies outside of it. The game carried on, but Brooke’s head wasn’t properly in it. She would deliberately put in the bare minimum effort when she was looking for the girls because, really, she wouldn’t know what to do if she was stuck in another confined space with Vanessa. Why had it turned so weird before? All flirty and edged with something she couldn’t work out. It wasn’t right- Vanessa was meant to be mad at her, meant to hate her and never want to speak to her again and somehow they’d gone from civil, to nearly-friends, to eye-fucking each other in a boiler cupboard in the space of a month?

The encounter was still playing on Brooke’s mind as she got ready for dinner. The girls had all decided that they would “do a Love Island” (in the words of Akeria) and all get glammed up to sit in the living room and play games after they’d eaten. It felt funny to be putting on a dress, heels and fake lashes without the possibility of going out anywhere, but the methodical process of putting on her makeup was a welcome distraction from the swirling thoughts in Brooke’s head.

“Ayo,” came an unexpected voice, causing Brooke to flinch a little and drop the lipgloss she’d been applying moments before. Looking behind her in the mirror she saw it was just Yvie and Nina. Usually she’d have been happy to see them, but right now she was doing too much overthinking and couldn’t let on what had happened earlier between her and Vanessa. So Brooke just stuck on her best fake smile as she turned around to face them.

“Hey! You guys look so good,” she complimented them, Nina smiling and Yvie giving a little snort.

“Well I didn’t want to be accused of not making an effort for your birthday again,” she poked her tongue out at Brooke and tugged a little at the beads on the hem of her short gold dress.

“If you trip in those heels I hope you know that’s, like, instant paralysis,” Brooke commented, looking at the spikes of Yvie’s six inch stilettos. When the girl did glam, she did glam, Brooke had to give it to her.

“As if Yvie needs to be any taller than she already is,” Nina laughed playfully.

“Awh, she needs to be tall so she can look down on her smol bean uwu girlfriend,” Brooke teased, Nina continuing to giggle and Yvie giving an amused roll of her eyes.

“What’s up with you anyway, bitch? You’ve been, like, extra bitter around all the couples today. It’s supposed to be your birthday, cheer the fuck up,” Yvie gave her a little nudge with her foot. Brooke frowned. She didn’t think she had been being bitter, but maybe Yvie was right. Fuck, what had she even said today? Brooke hoped that Vanessa hadn’t noticed anything.

“No, that’s not true. I’m fine! Just…” Brooke sighed, the bingo-hall-style tombola spinning rapidly in her head to generate an excuse. “…exams are soon, you know, and I’ve not started revising yet-”

“Oh my God, bitch, they’re in May! This is March! Chill the hell out,” Yvie laughed, pulling Brooke up from her position on the floor by the long mirror in the corner of her room. “Let’s go eat pizza. If Monet and Plastique have worked out how to cook them in that 1920s horror oven.”

As Yvie excitedly strutted out of the room and Brooke made to join her, Nina reached out to squeeze her hand.

“You’re a crap liar, Brooke Lynn Hytes,” she hissed quietly, Brooke rolling her eyes and making to protest when Nina spoke again. “But I won’t push it. I just wish you’d open the fuck up more.”

Brooke felt guilty. “I just don’t…it’s something I don’t want to overthink, Nina. So the best way you can help is helping me stuff myself full of carbs then pouring a 24 pack of San Miguel down my throat.”

Nina nodded understandingly as they reached the top of the stairs, Brooke holding back a snort as she watched Yvie cling to the bannister for dear life as she descended. Nina gave her hand another squeeze, then dropped it. “I can do that. You look beautiful, by the way.”

Brooke shyly looked down at her short, black one-shoulder dress and smoothed it down. “Thanks, babe.”

Nina’s smile suddenly turned scheming. “And so does Vanessa.”

Before Brooke could protest, Nina was bounding down the stairs in her bright white Filas that she’d paired with her blue and white checked dress. It wasn’t as formal as Brooke’s or Yvie’s, but that was the beauty of having a glam night in a big house where it was just them- nobody could judge you for being over or underdressed.

As Brooke followed her flatmates into the kitchen, she was met with the sight of her friends all happy, chatting, and in their best outfits. Annoyed at herself, she found her eyes darting around to find Vanessa. She wanted to know why Nina had said what she’d said, wanted to know if she was just winding her up.

And then her eyes came to rest on the most gorgeous version of Vanessa she’d ever seen, and her anxiety dipped, did a loop, then spiked. They were both in black- some dumb coincidence that the earth had sent her way, no doubt- but Vanessa’s was shiny, a vinyl dress that clung to her as if it was made of latex and painfully highlighted every curve of her body. She’d paired it with red heels, which had straps that snaked their way up her calves and showcased her perfect skin. Her dark hair had been blow-dried out (probably by Akeria, Brooke guessed) and fell in perfect waves down her back and over her shoulders (had she fucking highlighted her collarbones?). Her makeup was, as usual, perfect, a dark shock of eyeshadow and an indecent red on her lips causing Brooke’s heart to race. The worst part, though, about the whole outfit, was the silver zip that ran from the top of the dress to the bottom, right in the middle at the front, and either Vanessa (or someone mucking about with her…probably Silky) had unzipped it just the tiniest amount. For about the hundredth time that month, Brooke cursed herself for breaking things off with Vanessa. It wasn’t just about her looks though, or her body, or how much she missed the sex. Their interaction in the cupboard made Brooke remember how funny Vanessa was, how much of an endearing goofball, how she was just a cheerful person whose only real wish in life was to be properly happy. And Brooke had hurt her, made her the exact opposite of that. Vanessa loved everything and everyone so deeply, was the most open of books, and was so unafraid of feeling. Meanwhile there was Brooke not even able to tell her own flatmates, the two girls that knew her best in the world, about her own feelings.

As she watched Vanessa’s eyes drift from Scarlet and Monet, who she’d been talking to, across the room to rest on her, Brooke felt her heart stop. Not giving a single thing away, Vanessa smiled, gave a little wave, and crossed the room to where Brooke stood.

“Hey!” she began, so confident and self-assured and making Brooke feel more like a trashbag than she already did. “Nice dress.”

“Thanks!” Brooke smiled, uncharacteristically flustered at the tiny compliment. “You look so beaud!”

Fuck. Brooke kicked herself for getting tongue tied, badly hoping Vanessa wouldn’t have noticed. As she watched a confused smile appear on her face, Brooke realised she’d have to explain herself. “I was going to say beautiful, then I changed it to good and they just sort of…mushed together.”

Brooke felt her face grow hot as Vanessa simply raised an eyebrow in a smirk. “I’ll take both. Beautiful and good.”

Just as Brooke was about to defend herself, Silky announced to the girls in her own Silky-esque way that the pizzas were ready, and, giving a cry of delight, Vanessa had dashed across the room and left Brooke forgotten about.

As they all ate, Brooke fought an internal battle. She had absolutely no right to feel sorry for herself, this mess was entirely of her own making. Besides, she had to put everything out of her head now; she had made her decision, Vanessa had moved on, and she had to let the whole thing drop. But despite all this, it didn’t stop her brain constantly pestering her with what-ifs.

It was still pestering her once they’d all finished their dinner and moved upstairs into the huge living room for drinks and games, so she was glad when Nina popped herself down beside her with two ice cold bottles of beer from the fridge.

“One for each hand,” she explained. Brooke burst out laughing. She fucking loved Nina so much.

“Where’s yours?”

“Monet’s making mojitos for me and her. I love having a girlfriend, it’s like a sexy butler that you get to have sex with and cuddle any time you want,” Nina mused wistfully, giving Brooke her second belly-laugh in the space of two minutes. As she composed herself, Monet came into the room with two huge tall glasses overflowing with crushed ice and garnished with lime and mint.

“Where the fuck did you get mint and limes?” Brooke asked, screwing her face up in confusion then scrambling to pull a slightly more attractive one as Vanessa came in flanked by Silky and Akeria.

“I brought them, bitch! Anyway what did I miss?”

“Nina called you a sexy butler,” Brooke said casually, sipping one of her two beers and smiling as she watched Nina grow flustered.

“Jesus Christ, I’m getting all the compliments today! First I was a Tesco Finest girlfriend, now I’m a sexy butler. You know how to treat a lady, Neens,” Monet teased, pulling her girlfriend in and smothering her with kisses on the cheek.

“Ugh, get that couple shit outta here,” Vanessa yelled from the other sofa, throwing a leftover crisp at them. Monet instantly snapped back.

“Uh, like you can talk, Vanj.”

“What the shit hell is that meant to mean?” Vanessa laughed, amused.

Akeria grew outraged as she turned around to face Vanessa, her long, straight hair swinging wildly as she flipped it over her shoulder. “NEED we remind you what you sent to the group chat last week?!”

Silky began yelling, mirroring the cries of woe and dismay that were circling through Brooke’s brain at being reminded that Monique was still very much in the picture. “NO we do NOT need reminded! I can’t go through that again, dear Jesus God…”

“Fuck babygirl, I need that mouth on me-” Akeria began reading dramatically from her screen, the girls cringing and laughing and every word feeling like a kick to Brooke’s gut as Vanessa, face bright red, wrestled with Akeria to get the phone out of her hands. “-I’m touching myself but you know it’s not the same- aw, V! Give it back!”

“I’m gonna eat this fuckin’ phone, Akeria Chanel Davenport, I swear,” Vanessa chided her furiously, holding the phone out of her reach then relenting, giving it back to her. Silky fanned herself dramatically, making the others laugh. As Brooke did her best fake laugh and joined in, she tried not to make eye contact with Vanessa’s embarrassed face.

“Aw, are we talking about the unfortunate dirty text incident?” Plastique’s voice came from the hall, everyone laughing again as she sat down in the armchair beside the fire. “Seriously, V, you should be a songwriter. I swear that whole thing could’ve been from a Kamille song or some shit-”

“Well, all sexts are a little bit cringey, aren’t they?” Nina offered kindly, attempting to cheer Vanjie up. In doing this, she only succeeded in earning herself an exasperated cry from Monet.

“V, do you wanna go out? I can’t stand this bitch any more, she just keeps insulting me.”

As everyone howled with laughter and Nina frantically smothered her girlfriend in kisses trying to get her back onside, Brooke sneaked a look at Vanessa. She was laughing, but her face was still a little red. Christ, she looked so cute. Idiot, idiot, idiot.

“Speaking of sex, I’m assuming Yvie and Scarlet went off to bang?” Plastique shrugged, everyone finally realising who was missing.

“Oh, fuck this! Save that shit for later!” Silky protested, Akeria laughing and whacking her.

“Hey, let them be happy! It’s my birthday so I’m sayin’ if they want to fuck, let ‘em. In the meantime I have an empty wine bottle and a room full of girls with secrets that need spilled,” Akeria announced. Plastique clapped excitedly, Silky cheered and Vanessa rolled her eyes.

“For Christ’s sake, Kiki, do we not already know all there is to know about each other?” she complained. Interesting. So Vanessa didn’t want to play truth or dare, a game she was usually always down for.

“Excuse the fuck outta me, we played that stupid tuna game earlier!”

“Sardines,” Brooke deadpanned, earning herself a laugh from the room.

“It was some type of fish, I got that much right.”

“How are you through a whole bottle of wine already?” Silky asked, impressed.

“Can I live? It’s my birthday! Now will you hoes stop pissing in my cereal and let’s play!” Akeria implored, setting the wine bottle down against the red carpet and spinning it so violently Brooke worried that it would smash on the marble grate. It slowed, turning round and round and finally resting right back at where Akeria leant down from the sofa. She let out a giggle. “Oops. Guess it’s me.”

“Keeks, truth or dare!” Plastique asked excitedly. Akeria tilted her head, deep in thought.

“Hmm. I ain’t drunk enough for dares yet, so let’s go truth.”

There was a beat of silence as everyone racked their brains to think of something. Monet was first with an idea.

“Fuck, marry, kill: Silk, Vanj or…uh…”

“Asia,” Vanessa said simply, sipping some coke and spirit concoction through a straw as Silky let out a screech. Brooke was confused. She met her eyes with Nina’s, who looked equally baffled.

“Wait, who’s Asia?” Nina asked. Akeria, to her credit, looked composed. To be fair, Brooke had hardly ever seen her look anything but.

“She’s a friend from my course. We did a paired project together an’ she came over to the flat to work on it the other week,” Vanessa shrugged. “Her an’ Kiki seemed to hit it off.”

“I don’t have a fuckin’ crush on the girl, Jesus. Don’t make it weird,” Akeria rolled her eyes, blinking slowly. If Brooke squinted she might’ve spotted a flush to Akeria’s face, but perhaps that came from the glow of the fire.

Monet muttered under her breath to Brooke and Nina as the three flatmates bickered away. “Is Akeria gay?”

Brooke blew out a bunch of air. “Fuck, I don’t even know who’s what anymore.”

“She’s never classed herself as straight,” Nina elaborated cautiously. “She talks about getting dicked down by guys a lot. Then again, it’s really only Silky that does that and Keeks just joins in.”

“Silk and Vanj know something we don’t,” Brooke reasoned, watching as the two girls laughed and Akeria sat, poised and smirking at them indulgently as if they were kids.

“Right, enough! ‘Keria, fuck marry kill: Vanjie, Silk or Asia, then,” Monet shrugged, sipping her mojito.

Akeria flipped some hair over her shoulder and tilted her head to the sky thoughtfully. “I honestly can’t decide who I’d rather kill, Silk or Vanj.”

“Oh, so you’re gonna fuck or marry Asia, correct?” Vanessa quipped, a little fire igniting in Brooke’s heart as she watched a wicked smile spread across her scheming face.

“No, I don’t know her well enough to have any strong feelings towards her either way. You and Silk, however…” Akeria raised her eyebrows long-sufferingly, coaxing a laugh out of the other girls. “Uhh, right, marry Asia, or whatever. Kill Silky.”

“Bitch! I’ll kill you for real,” Silky objected, pummeling Akeria’s arm with a cushion.

“Fuck Vanj because she likes girls anyway and if she’s going down on me it means she’s not talking with that fuckin’ gritter-truck voice of hers,” Akeria shrugged as she concluded, the room cheering and Vanessa doing a little celebratory bow. As she flipped her head up she caught Brooke’s eye, giving her a little wink. Brooke crossed her legs and tried not to think about Vanessa going down on anyone. Least of all her.

“Aight!” Akeria said, indicating to everyone that her turn was well and truly over. “We move.”

The bottle was spun once more, Brooke taking a long drink out of her bottle and draining it. She needed to be tipsier than this. Everyone else seemed a little more drunk than she was, apart from Vanessa who she noted was sipping her drink sparingly. Brooke shook her head a little, trying to stop bringing her focus to Vanessa every five minutes. She’d taken her heels off and tucked her legs up underneath her on the sofa, and her thighs looked good for it.

“Plastique, truth or dare!”

Plastique tucked her hair behind her ears. “Uhh, dare.”

Brooke knew what to do for this one. Plastique had taken Ariel on a couple of dates, but the girls were emotionally stunted and neither of them had properly articulated their feelings to the other yet. “Call Ariel and tell her how you feel about her. Properly.”

As the other girls “oooh"ed in appreciation, Plastique fixed Brooke with an unimpressed glare. "I’m not doing that.”

“Pussy,” Brooke shrugged, sipping her other beer. Vanessa let out a laugh from the other side of the room.

“Brooke Lynn’s telling someone else they’re a pussy for not being open about their feelings? Are we in the correct universe?"

As the other girls gave a laugh that was only the slightest bit uncomfortable, Brooke rolled her eyes. "Okay, well at the very least send her a heartfelt text.”

“Why are you pushing this so much, ma?” Plastique pouted as she relented and reached for her phone.

“Because I’m bored of sitting in lectures hearing you moan about how you can’t tell her how you feel because it would make it weird or how you don’t want to come across too intense!"

"We all had to listen to you pine after Vanjie for two and a half years but we never forced you into admitting anything,” Plastique shrugged, the room erupting into shrieks. Brooke gave a choke of a laugh, wanting the ground to open up and swallow her. She knew her face was bright red without having to look in a mirror and, as much as her brain was imploring her not to, she found her eyes darting quickly to Vanessa to catch a glimpse of her face.

Calm, smiling tight-lipped and smug. As if she’d won something.

“No, but you did start a sweepstake about us so get off the high horse, thanks!” Brooke sing-songed back, the slight hint of irritation to her voice letting Plastique know she was to drop it. Us. The word felt weird in Brooke’s mouth, it hadn’t been used in so long. Two and a half years. Had she really liked Vanessa for that long before everything had happened between them? Brooke had actually thrown away two and a half years of feelings for the sake of one feeling of indecision, a feeling that maybe they shouldn’t have been a they any more?

For Christ’s sake don’t look at Vanessa.

“Fine. I’ve put tonight’s really fun but I miss you, I always miss you when you’re not with me, hope you know how much I care about you. That heartfelt enough for you bitches?” Plastique muttered, embarrassed. Nina let out an “aaw”, Akeria made a sick noise.

“Acceptable,” Brooke shrugged, sipping on her beer again. Suddenly, a cheer went up from Akeria, Vanessa and Silky who could see who was coming through the living room door first. Yvie and Scarlet were walking close, holding a glass of red wine each and wearing matching poker faces.

“Oh, here they are! Nice of you to finally join us!” Nina cheered, Scarlet giving a small smile and smoothing her dress down, sitting beside Yvie on the last remaining couch.

“All the best people are fashionably late!” she shrugged. Yvie gave a snort and swept some hair over her shoulder to cover her neck. Brooke saw the action and jumped on it.

“Nice neckwear.”

Yvie turned only slightly red. “Thanks. Gucci.”

“Hear that? Yvie’s girlfriend is Gucci. Not Tesco Finest. Gucci,” Monet nudged Nina, setting another laugh off amongst the girls.

“We’re playing truth or dare,” Brooke explained to the two girls, as Plastique gave the glass bottle a bit of a pathetic spin.

“Vanjie!”

Vanessa shook her head. “Nah that spin was shit, it don’t count.”

“Like hell it don’t! Truth or dare, bitch?” Silky all but interrogated her. Vanessa thought about it for a moment, then decided.

“Truth.”

Brooke’ heart hammered in her chest. She hoped to God they wouldn’t ask Vanessa anything about her, anything about them.

“What’s going on with you and Monique, Vanjie?” Monet asked dramatically, Akeria giving a cry of delight and thumping her hands against her thighs.

Great.

As the room broke out into eager laughter, Vanessa just smiled.

“Well, Monique and I are good friends, and…we get on well. We both been, y'know, unlucky in love a lil’, so…” Vanessa trailed off, the room giving little chokes of anticipation and Brooke’s stomach twisting. “…if it’s one in the morning and one of us is maybe still up…y'know…”

Monet gave a tiny squeal through her teeth. Brooke wanted to wedge herself in between the sofa cushions and not emerge again til May of next year.

“Y'know, Monique’s very confident, very sure of herself, an’ that's…y'know, it’s attractive…” Vanessa trailed off, running her tongue over her teeth. Brooke knew that face, remembered the time when that face used to get directed at her before they’d fall into bed together, frantic kisses planted along collarbones and clothes discarded over the uneven floorboards of Vanessa’s room.

“But what’s actually going on? You’ve said so much but not actually said anything,” Yvie let out an unimpressed laugh. Vanessa composed herself and sat up straight, taking a rare sip of her drink.

“Well, we get on well. She’s a good person. And we’re friends,” Vanessa smiled coyly, causing the girls to laugh uproariously.

“Okay, okay, we all see it! We all get it!” Monet laughed, the knife twisting in Brooke’s stomach. Could it have been more obvious that they were obviously having each other in every type of position imaginable with any chance they got, or was it just Brooke being paranoid? She thought back to what Monet had said in the car earlier and concluded that, occasional hits of the bong aside, she was not being paranoid by any stretch of the imagination.

The game rolled along. Nina was made to do something vague and embarrassing with Monet that Brooke forgot quickly (or perhaps blocked out), Scarlet was forced to admit (rather proudly, Brooke thought) that her and Yvie had quickly fucked upstairs in the time they’d been away, and a few other of the girls did a couple of bland truths. As much as the bottle spun and spun, it never seemed to point Brooke’s way. Brooke was glad. She didn’t want to admit or say anything, and she also didn’t want to do anything remotely risky. However, when the bottle landed on Vanessa a second time, Brooke began to reconsider her thought process.

“Dare,” Vanessa smiled, a glint of danger in her eye flashing quickly as she darted her eyes quickly to Brooke.

Brooke tried not to look at Nina as she spoke. “Vanjie. Kiss the hottest girl in the room.”

“Oh, that’s a good one,” Plastique whispered quietly. It seemed as if the whole room held its breath. Brooke didn’t know if she was grateful to Nina for the setup or whether she wanted to descend into the earth’s core. She knew Vanessa had answered this question before with this group of girls, she knew that Vanessa thought the answer was her. But that was before everything had changed. Brooke felt her pulse race as Vanessa looked to the ceiling, deep in thought.

Slowly, she turned her gaze to Yvie and Scarlet.

“Yvie,” she began, a small sinking feeling lodging itself in Brooke’s chest. “Can I kiss your girlfriend?”

Yvie smiled at Scarlet proudly, happy for the compliment. “Dare’s a dare. Bring her back.”

“Scarlet, can I get a lil’ smooch?” Vanessa laughed, Scarlet laughing back and motioning for her to sit beside them on the sofa.

“C'mere, friend,” she laughed easily, Vanessa crossing the room and joining them. Brooke remembered when Vanessa had kissed Scarlet before- in the nightclub, before they were together and before Yvie and Scarlet were together. She remembered how it made her feel- a little irritated and sad all in one. Looking back, she realised it was plain and simple jealousy, and she knew her feelings weren’t going to change this time.

Quickly, Vanessa leaned in and met Scarlet’s lips, kissing her gently but slowly, her hand resting on Scarlet’s hip easily. It could only have been about three seconds long, but each one seemed to tick by agonisingly slowly, and Brooke hoped she wasn’t showing any of her fucked-up emotions on her face. As the two girls pulled away and the others whooped and whistled, Scarlet made a face.

“Bitch, all I tasted there was pepperoni. That was the least sexy kiss I’ve ever had.”

“You loved it, hoe!” Vanessa laughed, retreating back to her seat. Desperate to look at anything but Vanessa’s face, Brooke watched Yvie and Scarlet. Yvie had the satisfied grin of a mafia mob boss as Scarlet whispered something in her ear, then smiled seductively, kissing her once, twice, three times, red lipstick meeting purple.

“Well if I wasn’t bi before, I sure as hell am now,” Plastique fanned herself.

“We are the cornerstone of Plastique’s sexual identity. That’s a fucking compliment!” Scarlet cheered, Yvie laughing and wrapping her arms around her.

“Nah, you and Yvie are my parents. The Mums of the group,” Plastique explained.

“Fuck off, we’re not the Mums!” Yvie laughed, outraged. “Nina and Monet are literally right there!”

“Hey! That’s not fair!” Nina cried, outraged at the perceived injustice.

“Yeah, don’t lump me in with this dork!” Monet yelled, laughing with the other girls as Nina swatted her on the arm.

“Right! Spin, Vanj,” Yvie ordered, the girl spinning the bottle round obediently. Brooke watched as the top of the bottle whizzed by her once, twice, three times, past Yvie, Scarlet, the Antigua Road girls, slowed down as it reached Plastique, edged past Monet and Nina and then came to rest on Brooke.

“All RIGHT! About time this bitch spilt some tea,” Silky clapped in delight.

“Brooke,” Akeria said with the threat level of an MI5 employee. “Truth or dare?”

Brooke paused. Her go-to was usually a truth, however there was no way she was going for that this time, not while she was still a concrete mixer of feelings for Vanessa and not while there was a room full of people wanting to know exactly what was going on with them. She shrugged. “Dare.”

“Okay-” Akeria tailed off, making to stop and think. A practically evil smile spread across her face as realisation dawned on her. “Same dare. Kiss the hottest person in the room. Ten seconds.”

Silky let out a scream, growing so excitable on the sofa that Vanessa was almost sent through the ceiling. Scarlet whispered something to Yvie on the sofa, both of the girls looking at Brooke intently. Plastique shouted over something to Akeria that Brooke couldn’t hear. All she could focus on was how Vanessa had grabbed Silky and was laughing, but somewhat nervously. Her face had gone bright red. Brooke bit her lip. She thought back to their flirting in the cupboard earlier, how they were almost back to square one again, the weird bid Vanessa had made to make Brooke jealous. She could always kiss Yvie or Nina, take the easy way out. But the more she looked at Vanessa, the more drawn she became to her until before she knew what she was doing, Brooke had stood up from her place on the carpet and taken one, two, three steps to sit on the couch and look Vanessa in the eyes.

Brooke could hear everyone in the room screaming, and she knew Silky had run out of the room shouting incoherently, but all she seemed to hear was her blood roaring in her ears as Vanessa leaned in. Before she knew it, Brooke’s hand was resting on Vanessa’s bare thigh and they were kissing each other, slow and deep and lazy and in a way that Brooke never wanted to end. She felt Vanessa’s tongue licking at hers gently and immediately felt a throb of heat between her legs as she remembered 3ams spent between her sheets and Vanessa’s head buried between her thighs.

Christ, this was a bad idea, this was a bad idea-

“ZERO! And y’all can officially cut that shit out,” Brooke suddenly felt herself being wrenched away from Vanessa, Akeria’s voice cutting through her hazy thoughts and bringing her back down to earth with a bump.

“Well, I feel like on that note,” Monet clapped her hands together decisively. “I’m away out to drink in the hot tub. Anyone else?”

One by one the girls agreed, dashing out of the room excitedly, and it was obvious to Brooke that everyone would be talking about what had just happened. Vanessa had run off quickly, her hand in Silky’s as the two dashed upstairs to get their swimwear on. The only girl that was left in the room as Brooke made to do the same was Akeria. She frowned at Brooke as they both left the room, a warning in her eyes which sent a chill down Brooke’s spine. Trying to ignore it, Brooke dashed upstairs, changed into her pink bikini and then ran outside to join the others. They wouldn’t talk about her and Vanessa’s kiss if she was there, so the less time she was away the better. Brooke grabbed a third beer from the fridge on her way out to the garden, and as she stepped outside she noticed how the moon already hung huge and bright in the sky, how the grass already had a shine of cold wet on it, and how everything looked almost a little bit magic. Joining the others and sitting between Yvie and Plastique, she tried to ignore Vanessa sitting opposite her in a black bikini that looked equally sinful as the outfit she’d been wearing before. Luckily the rest of the girls had no further desire to play drinking games, and talk instead turned to movies. Brooke didn’t join in. She couldn’t- too much was swirling around her mind, namely how good the kiss had felt. Scarlet had probably lied to make Yvie laugh- Vanessa had tasted like sugary coke, and the all too familiar scent of her perfume was still inexplicably clinging to Brooke. It had been weird to kiss after months of no contact at all. It had been a bad decision. Brooke had done yet another wrong thing.

So why did it feel somehow correct?

“Right!” Akeria said after a while, almost toppling over as she stood up. “I think I’m gettin’ a touch of the hypothermias. Who’s comin’ inside to watch Sister Act?”

“Bitch! That’s like, my favourite movie. Hell yes,” Monet sprang up, knocking Nina off her lap and into the middle of the hot tub. The girls erupted in a laugh, Brooke almost dropping her beer into the water. One by one, they all filed out of the water. Brooke was the last one left. Admittedly she didn’t want to leave- she was now tipsy enough to not feel the cold, and she could have lain back and stared at the white light of the full moon in the inky sky forever. Just as she was about to follow the others, she noticed that the second-to-last girl out of the hot tub was Vanessa. Brooke swallowed thickly, trying her best not to stare at how the small droplets of water clung to her thick thighs or how her tiny bikini barely covered her firm ass, or how her slick, wet hair cascaded down her back. Almost as if she could read Brooke’s mind, Vanessa slowly, tortuously turned around. She had a little wicked smile on her face, the kind she always used to wear when she flirted with Brooke. It made Brooke cross her legs and squeeze her thighs together.

“You got a good enough view from there?” she asked, playfulness coating her words as she spread both her arms out to lean against the back of the hot tub.

This was bad. This was not good. Brooke couldn’t flirt back. It would only lead to another really horrendous, catastrophic decision. Her mind was hot-wiring, and to her dismay she couldn’t come up with any form of quick-witted comeback. Noticing how long it was taking her to reply, Vanessa gave a throaty laugh.

“Hmm. I’ll take that as a yes, then,” she purred, crossing the water and sitting down close next to Brooke. Brooke tried her best not to choke as she took a sip from the bottle in her hand.

“Thought you were going to watch Sister Act?” she asked, trying to sound casual but cringing at how nervous she sounded as the words left her mouth. Her blood pressure dialled up a notch as Vanessa laced her fingers together, placed her hands on Brooke’s bare shoulder, then rested her head against her fingers.

“I don’t know. Think I’d rather see what’s so special about this view you love so much,” Vanessa murmured softly, Brooke not missing the way she rushed out the word ‘love’ as if to distil any awkwardness. She didn’t need to worry, though, because right now all Brooke could focus on was how good Vanessa looked in that black bikini, and how her red lipstick still clung to her plump lips as if it had just been applied, and her beautiful dark gaze from under her fake lashes.

“Hmm. It’s a pretty good view. Pretty beautiful,” Brooke found herself whispering, eliciting a sparkle from Vanessa’s eyes. Fuck. Shit. She shouldn’t have said that, it just seemed to have happened, but with Vanessa sitting pressed up so close to her how else could she have possibly reacted? There was a small silence in which Vanessa gave a small giggle, looking down at the constantly popping bubbles. The jet stream pummeled Brooke’s back to bits.

“What’s funny?” she smiled cautiously. Vanessa looked at her, something nostalgic on her face.

“Your pickup lines are still cringey as fuck,” she smirked, Brooke rolling her eyes a little. She had to steer this conversation back to normality. Whatever the fuck normality was as far as her and Vanessa were concerned.

“That wasn’t a pickup line. If I was trying to pick you up, you’d know about it.”

“Oh, I know about it, baby. Don’ worry,” Vanessa hit back instantly, Brooke taking the pet name like a fatal shot. Brooke knew that Vanessa knew what that word did to her in the right context with the right tone. Fuck. Bad idea, bad idea. She was determined not to lose whatever game this was. She would not do anything stupid. She would not ruin the tiny, small beginnings of this foundation of their friendship that they were gradually re-building. She would stand up and go inside and watch Whoopi fucking Goldberg dance about in a fucking habit and all would be right with the world again.

“Two and a half years, huh? You had it bad, bitch, I never knew I had that kind of effect on you,” Vanessa laughed suddenly, Brooke trying not to blush as she remembered Plastique’s words from earlier.

“Not that you’re letting it go to your head,” Brooke shrugged, taking a sip.

Vanessa giggled again. Brooke wished she wouldn’t. “Never.”

“Good compliment for you, I guess.”

“Better than beaud,” Vanessa smirked, snorting a laugh as Brooke tipped her head back and cringed. As she quietly stopped laughing, Vanessa shrugged lightly. “An’ I mean, nice to know I’m the hottest girl in the room too.”

Brooke let out a small sigh at having to confront her decision. “I mean just because we’re not dating any more doesn’t mean it’s not objectively true. By Western beauty standards you probably are the hottest girl in the room.”

Vanessa laughed again. “Western beauty standards, my God. I’m not even white, you dumb bitch.”

“Yeah, but…you’ve got this gorgeous skin, and all your shiny hair. And your eyes that go all twinkly when you’re happy,” Brooke explained. Where was all this coming from? “And you have perfect white teeth, and the best smile. I feel like you light up the whole room when you laugh.”

Brooke’s heart gave a twinge as Vanessa’s face broke out into a smile, tilting her face to the side a little inquisitively. Brooke gave a little cough, aware of all the compliments she’d given her. “And you have a really good figure as well, so, yeah.”

“Oh, obviously. Well, we all know how much you like that,” Vanessa smirked cheekily, Brooke suddenly snapping her neck round to face her properly.

“What?”

“Liked that. Like, liked. Whatever. We’re friends now, we can laugh about it,” Vanessa shrugged, the words coming out of her mouth confirming their status at once relieving Brooke and putting her on edge. They were back to being friends. This was what Brooke wanted, right? Vanessa still had the little cheeky grin on her face as she spoke again. “Friends who still kiss each other, apparently.”

“Well, you kissed Scarlet,” Brooke said, trying to make it as nonchalant as possible. Judging by Vanessa’s smug reaction, she hadn’t succeeded.

“You seem pressed.”

“Not pressed! Just saying,” Brooke tried to protest gently but felt she came on way too heavy.

“Mhm. There’s just one problem about all this, though…” Vanessa murmured, her tone charged with something that immediately made the hairs on Brooke’s arm stand on end, giving her goosebumps.

And then, with one fluid movement, Vanessa moved to straddle her.

Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit.

Brooke’s heart almost flatlined as Vanessa spoke, her face still wearing the tiniest cocky smile that Brooke so badly wanted to kiss off of her. “It’s kinda hard to try an’ be friends with you when I know what you look like with no clothes on.”

Brooke tried her best to keep her voice level. “Well, it’s also kind of hard to try and be friends with you when you’re flirting with me.”

“It’s also hard to be friends with you when I know what your kinks are…” Vanessa brought her arms around Brooke’s neck and barely concealed a smile as she bucked her hips ever so slightly. “…Mami.”

Brooke felt the tiniest hiss escape her lips, glad it wasn’t the fuck that had immediately popped into her head.

“It’s kind of hard to be friends with you when you’re riding my thigh…or when you’re coming on to me like this,” Brooke replied, keeping one hand firmly on the side of the hot tub and the other wrapped around the glass bottle in her hand so tight she thought it would smash.

“Coming on to you?” Vanessa suddenly tipped her head back and laughed, Brooke immediately realising what she’d said. “That can be arranged, you want face, tongue or fingers?”

“Fuck’s sake, Vanessa,” Brooke laughed softly, letting one of her hands drop down under the water and rest against Vanessa’s thigh. As Brooke’s thumb rubbed at her skin softly, she tried to reason with herself. Just because she was stroking Vanessa’s skin, and had her on top of her, and was basically talking dirty to her, didn’t mean that anything was actually going to happen.

“I know you miss me, Brooke,” Vanessa said, her tone matter-of-fact as she straightened up a little in Brooke’s lap, Brooke eyeing the way her breasts were pushed up.

Brooke had to think carefully about her response. She knew she’d hurt Vanessa, so she had to keep things light. “I mean, it kind of looks like you miss me, baby.”

Oh fuck, that pet name was a mistake. Vanessa’s smile was sultry as she pushed one of her hands into Brooke’s hair. “Me? Nah, I’m just doin’ this because it’s fun. Monique’s treatin’ me very well.”

Jesus fucking Christ, Vanessa knew how to hit Brooke where it hurt. Brooke pursed her lips. She wanted to fight dirty, she would give as good as she got. “And that’s why you’re cheating on her?”

Vanessa burst out laughing. “Oh, bitch, please! Me and her aren’t exclusive! We ain’t even a thing! She vents to me about her ex, I vent to her about you, and then we fuck away our frustrations!”

A part of Brooke’s heart soared up into the black sky like a helium balloon. She didn’t think she’d shown her relief on her face until Vanessa gave a laugh. “So. You ain’t denied it.”

“Denied what?”

“That you miss me,” she shrugged, giving a little look down at Brooke’s hands on her thighs. Brooke couldn’t pinpoint when she’d brought the other one down under the water but apparently she had done. Her throat was dry as she considered her response. Before she could get there, Vanessa threw her mind into chaos as she brought her hands back behind her head, fidgeted for a moment, then suddenly threw her bikini top across the decking. As Brooke’s gaze flicked down to Vanessa’s full breasts, the other girl brought one finger up and tilted her chin up to face her. The heat between Brooke’s legs was unbearable, and she felt her paper-thin resolve rapidly melting away. Vanessa smirked. “You wanna kiss me so bad right now, don’t you? Like you kissed me earlier. You can’t even stay away.“

Vanessa seemed to edge closer to Brooke, although they were already so close that seemed an impossible feat. Brooke raised an eyebrow. “See, I feel like if Monique fucked you as good as you say she does, you wouldn’t be in my lap right now.”

Vanessa blinked slowly, mockingly. “Oh, baby. You don’t want to know the things I let her do to me.”

Brooke bristled. The tension between them and Vanessa’s teasing was getting her riled. “You’re right, I don’t.”

“Aww. You jealous, baby?” Vanessa pouted. This was going to drive Brooke insane. Her mind constantly swung between this being a bad idea and a good idea, and she had no idea which it would settle on.

Brooke locked eyes with Vanessa, the other girl’s gaze a challenge. “No.”

“You sure? You seemed jealous when I kissed Scarlet earlier, I saw your face.”

“I don’t get jealous,” Brooke repeated, holding her gaze with Vanessa. Their faces weren’t too close but their bodies were, and Brooke felt as if she was a ticking time bomb.

“So you ain’t jealous of Monique?” Vanessa murmured inquisitively. Brooke shook her head, now unable to tear her gaze away from her lips which had felt so perfect against her own earlier. “You ain’t jealous of the fact she gets to ride my face and get my pretty lil’ tongue working her clit? You ain’t jealous of the fact that it’s her name I’m crying out when I cum on her fingers? You ain’t-”

Frustrated, tense, and out of willpower, Brooke let out a low growl as she finally brought her hands up to Vanessa’s jaw and crashed their lips together, kissing her wildly and deeply and running her hands over every inch of Vanessa’s skin she was able to touch. She didn’t even care that she’d proven Vanessa right, because she had missed this, missed her, missed the way they just seemed to fit together like two pieces of a puzzle and dear sweet fucking Jesus she’d been an idiot to give up this sex. Brooke whined needily as she felt Vanessa pull away, the other girl laughing against her lips.

“You don’t kiss like a girl who ain’t jealous,” Vanessa tutted, a satisfied smirk on her face. "Or one that don’t miss me.”

Brooke ran her hands up and down her back and pouted. “Shut up.”

“Hmm. That ain’t no way to talk to me if you’re planning on getting what you want, lil’ brat,” Vanessa raised her eyebrows, bringing one of her hands down to rub at Brooke’s hipbone. Brooke let out a whimper and bucked her hips. She needed Vanessa so badly, and her words were only making things worse. Or better.

“Fuck, please, Vanessa, shit,” Brooke hissed, not caring about how pathetic and needy she looked now as she brought one of her hands up and rubbed a thumb over one of Vanessa’s nipples. Brooke felt her clit throb as Vanessa gave a little hum of delight at the contact. Her fingers had only been there for a second before Vanessa grabbed her wrist and held it down under the water, the sudden force causing Brooke’s eyes to grow wide.

“You broke my fuckin’ heart an’ now you really think I’m gonna make it that easy for you?” she barked a laugh, a guilty twinge tugging at Brooke’s rapid heart. “Fuck that. I want to hear you beg me to fuck you. You’re gonna have to work for me, baby. Shit’s on my terms.”

“Fuck, Vanessa, I really don’t give a shit how desperate I sound,” Brooke sighed, the shock of the prospect of Vanessa changing her mind about all this lighting a fire in Brooke. “Please, please, please, please, baby, I’m sorry, I’ll do anything you want, just fucking touch me, please-”

Brooke cut herself off with her own moan as Vanessa ran a hand down her body and lightly pressed two fingers against her, rubbing gently and making Brooke want to sob.

“Good girl,” Vanessa purred, Brooke writhing underneath her and completely past the point of thinking about any of the consequences of any of this. “You miss me, don’t you?”

“Fuck, so much.”

“You been missin’ this?”

“Shit yes, so much.”

Vanessa’s eyes were dark as Brooke looked up at her. “Nobody’s gonna fuck you like me, are they?”

Brooke’s eyes nearly rolled into the back of her head, thinking that at this point if Vanessa asked her to get married she probably would’ve booked the damn venue. “No, only you, baby, fuck.”

“Mm, such a good girl,” Vanessa smirked, Brooke’s clit giving a spasm as she thought now was really not the time to realise she had a praise kink. “I don’t know, though. You seemed pretty sure you wouldn’t miss me when you ended things.”

“I do miss you, 'Ness, I promise, I’m sorry, I’ll beg on my knees if you want me to, I don’t give a fuck, you’ve been driving me crazy all night…so fucking perfect, shit…"

"Mm…you would look so pretty on your knees,” Vanessa leaned in and murmured into Brooke’s ear, pressing the lightest little kiss to her neck and almost sending Brooke over the edge before anything had even happened yet.

“I’ll do whatever you want, baby, fuck, I want you to feel like you’re the most gorgeous fucking goddess in the world,” Brooke gasped as Vanessa brought her other hand down to touch herself, the sight of her working Brooke and herself into a frenzy the hottest thing she’d seen in months. Her mind short-circuited, and she struggled to know if anything she said made any sense. “Jesus Christ, Vanessa, please fuck me, I can’t take much more-"

Pride glinted in Vanessa’s eyes before she leaned in and kissed Brooke, hot and wet with her fingers still rubbing and teasing her through the material. Pulling away, she motioned to the decking around the hot tub. “Lie back then, baby.”

As Brooke almost drove her face into the decking in her haste to scramble out of the hot tub she ignored the little voice in the back of her head that told her everything about this was a bad idea, and instead focused on the one that screamed it was the best decision she’d made in months.s

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theliterateape · 4 years ago

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The Subjectivity of Historical Revisionism

by Don Hall

The game was simple but difficult.

My first wife was an orchestra clarinetist. I had played in countless orchestras with my trumpet. I never really fit in with the academically inclined orchestra crowd but she did so she would have small gatherings to eat and drink at our home.

I could only handle sitting and chatting with them for a short time before I either started throwing verbal bombs in the mix to keep things interesting (which inevitably set the stage for a fight with my wife after all had gone home) or checked out completely (a different but similar sounding fight later). I finally came up with a game that they could play so I could go into my office and write or drink or drink and write.

I was a middle school music teacher and my curriculum for eighth grade included some college music history.

“OK. I teach a class on the Romantic Period of music for my kids. I get forty minutes to cover composers from 1770 to 1850. This includes Brahms, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Verdi, Wagner, Sibelius, Schubert, and scores more as well as over 5,000 known pieces of music of all genres. Forty minutes. I have to boil the whole period down to roughly six pieces of music at three minutes apiece to encapsulate all of that.

Here’s the game. You have forty minutes to teach a class on the music of the Twentieth Century. You get ten pieces and composers. Go!”

After around thirty minutes, I'd come back in, get another drink, and they'd inevitably have their ten. I'd look at it and comment, "So. You guys don't think jazz should be included?" They'd all growl and go back in to it.

Keep in mind, this game was about determining what specific art would be included for a limited attention span and, in the most subjective way, indicate what art you value first and foremost.

Were I to play that game today with someone my nephew's age, an additional criteria would be added. It would not be enough that the music was important or influential or even good. The addition to the type of person the artist was (or is) has become a part of the game.

It's all revision by exclusion.

Assessing the merit of art or historical significance is more than a popularity test. There have been plenty of popular artists, scientists, statesmen, and entrepreneurs in our history who have become unpopular and even unknown over time and who have been weeded out of curation.

Why are we exposed to the art we are exposed to? We certainly aren’t the kind of creatures who, when seeking out information, go to a library index file and pour through thousands of entries to find the hidden treasures any more. No, we now have a screen which we type in “What were the best novels of the 20th Century?” and are fed a result.

According to Goodreads.com, there are 164 books listed under the heading The ACTUAL 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century.

As soon as you start to apply the Woke Metrics (you know, the yardstick that dismisses the accomplishments of Winston Churchill because he was a bigot) these lists start to narrow significantly. Using that criteria (which in the newspeak of that progressive cultmind must come before merit, quality, or theme) the only list that exists is The 100 Best Novels No One Has Ever Heard Of by People No one Has Ever Read.

As I wrote, this sort of assessment can't simply be a popularity test. If it were, Fifty Shades of Grey and The Harry Potter books would top the list.

When I play the game, I’m looking for a few things to merit inclusion in the tiny lists:

How influential was the work on those that followed?

How indicative of the time and place is the work?

Is the work limited in scope or more universal in theme?

There is a scene at the beginning of the Amy Poehler film Moxie where the new student challenges the teacher on the assignment of reading The Great Gatsby.

The scene is fun and pointed. Ike is a hoot as the teacher. Had I been her teacher I would have responded by asking what she thought was a better choice. She might have a novel written by a black woman that encapsulates the American response to the 1918 pandemic in excess and mystery. She might have an example of a novel written that explores the notions of class and the very essence of the American Dream following the horrors of WWI. If she has a suggestion of a novel written by someone not white and not male that deals so eloquently about justice, power, wealth, betrayal, and several classes of Americans who have assumed skewed worldviews, mistakenly believing their survival lies in stratification and reinforcing social boundaries, let's read that!

The issue at hand with much of the faddish push to classify certain artists and historical figures as unassailably evil and worthy of complete erasure is that the most strident either have nothing with which to substitute for the thing they deem canceled or they have replacement art that is not up to the challenge. It isn't that they don't have every right to express their grievance. History (and not merely American history) is littered with people passed over for reasons beyond merit or time as well as people lauded and magnified for rationale limited to race, sex, and religion.

Anger and grievance is not a replacement for a solution.

✶

For much of the past year I've been incredibly frustrated with this push for revision in our history. San Francisco schools voting to replace Lincoln with someone more influential historically on the rights of African Americans? That's fucking nuts, man.

An English teacher in Massachusetts successfully convinced her school's administrators to remove Homer's The Odyssey from its curriculum because of its alleged sexism. Another English teacher in Seattle said he would "rather die" than teach The Scarlet Letter in class. Mark Twain is suspect because of his portrayal of black people in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

To Kill a Mockingbird, once the City of Chicago book of the month, is now considered a no-go because it glorifies "white saviorhood" through the character of Atticus Finch. The novels featuring Sherlock Holmes should be tossed because author Arthur Conan Doyle included racist language. The author of the Little House on the Prairie books, Laura Ingalls Wilder, was stripped of a literary honor because of the "anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments in her work."

Throwing the shade of accountability on someone like J.K. Rowling seems excessive but more legit because she is still alive and reaping benefits from the sales of her writing. I may disagree with the rationale behind the call-out but it is only slightly different from Major League Baseball boycotting Georgia for re-enacting Jim Crow voting law.

Homer? Lincoln? Twain? All dead. No accountability to exact and all we have is the work left to speak for them.

For much of the past year, this stridency has driven me a little crazy but I realized recently that, especially in the digital age where so much art has been transposed into bytes, no one can prevent me from reading To Kill a Mockingbird or watching the Gregory Peck film. No one can prevent me from enjoying a Woody Allen film or a Harry Potter novel or celebrating the heroism of Churchill and Lincoln.

I love the music of David Bowie because it's great music. Does the fact that he had routine amounts of sex with underage girls dampen my enjoyment? Nope. Will it trigger someone else? Maybe. And it is their choice to avoid his music if they choose. It is not within their power to limit my choice as it should not be within my power to force it upon them.

History, as is art, trends toward subjectivity. History, after all, is just a series of stories we tell each other and stories are always told from a lens of the teller. History is less fact than it is an interpretation of existing facts and illusions. Do I believe, as the authors of the 1619 Project suppose, that America was founded in slavery? No. Do I believe that this means I can learn nothing from the stories they tell? Again, no.

Placing things into a larger perspective is as easy as acknowledging the horrors of the Civil War and still being able to comfortably have an Honest Abe Burger at the now closed Lincoln Restaurant in Chicago.

Now I'm going to go curl up and watch The Purple Rose of Cairo, then read The Great Gatsby while listening to Michael Jackson.

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tanzeelanadeem · 4 years ago

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Colourism: Effects and Precautions

“Being a dark-skinned girl is a curse.” I am not saying this. Six years ago, a 13-year-old beautiful dark girl said this to her dad. She told him how she dreams of a beautiful fair skin like her mom and silky straight hair like the other girls at school. She would always feel bad in her own skin. As a kid, she saw fair barbies and grew up playing with them. She would always think how she can never look like a barbie because she was dark. Growing up, she saw fairer models, influencers, just to name a few. She admired them and wanted to look like them. As days passed, she started hating her skin more and more. Her dad kept trying to make his daughter realize the worth of her skin. He just never gave up. She started using fairness creams to look more like those “beautiful” barbies, models and influencers all her life. Those creams sure worked and made her lighter, a tone or two for a specific time span. As soon as she stops using them her skin would start getting dark again. That wasn’t it. Her immediate family, cousins and colleagues would intentionally or unintentionally hurt her and add on the hatred she has for her skin. Her grandmother would tell her desi totkas to make her skin bright. They would even tell her not to wear bright colours because they made her look darker. She would never wear yellow. Her cousins would match everyone’s fists to see who’s the fairest of them all because the fairest one would ultimately be the most beautiful of them. Her colleagues would call her weird names. And what not. She has always been a quiet kid, in school and in college who had almost no friends. She grew up being a loner. She was way more strong than she thought. She was soon to start her university and her dad realized she’s improving and trying to accept her natural colour. He did everything he could to make her feel beautiful and love herself. With the passage of time, she finally learned to embrace her dark skin and feel confident in it. After a lot of years being crucial on herself, she realized that the amount of melanin produced in your body has literally nothing to do with your beauty. But the question is, who keeps this obsession with gora rang (fair complexion) alive in our society? Males or females? I'm of the opinion that it's mostly women. The women who would only settle for a fair daughter-in-law, the theory being that a fair bahu will produce fair grandchildren, since, for us being fair is directly proportional to being beautiful.

“Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare.”

— Mark Twain

You know what compliments to the dark-skinned people go like. Oh, you look so nice today. Are you fairer? Ask this to yourself. Is that even a compliment? Would that ever contribute in making them feel comfortable in their own skin? Is telling someone that they look a little fair, a compliment? How can we normalize such statements as compliments or something nice to say someone with the skin of colour. It is completely unacceptable. We need to join hands to eradicate, if not eradicate at-least minimize the forever existing “gora complex” in our society. The least you could do is to stop making people uncomfortable and humiliating them on the basis of their colour. Not promoting fairness creams and all the norms in the society related to fair complexions. Most of the times we do not even realize that our actions or speech can make someone feel so insecure and bad about themselves. That could be unintentional too. Please watch your words since they’re strong enough to break a heart and be empathetic.

You see, how long it took her to just accept her colour and wear it with pride. Everything that she went through made her stronger than ever and taught her how to be kind and compassionate towards other people and at-least she knows how to compliment people. Well, that’s not it, you read this for a purpose, there are a lot of young girls, if you pay close attention some of them could be around you too, who are still not-so-confident in their own skin. The concept is to take care of your actions and speech around them. It can take a lot of years to overcome one hateful/unkind comment. Never promote the idea of fair being beautiful through any of your speech or actions and be a little more empathetic because being beautiful is more about your character and soul rather than your colour and physical features.

“I am not my hair. I am not this skin. I am the soul that lives within.”

–India.Arie

So, here’s to all the dark-skinned people especially girls, don’t be so hard on yourself, embrace yourself and your flaws and most importantly hold your head up high and keep moving forward. It took this girl all these years to learn to love and accept her skin of colour. Colourism is a global issue. It can leave life-long impacts on one’s personality. It is real and we need to address it and stop it, by every possible means. I did not write this for you to just feel pity for her and forget as usual. I wrote this for you to understand how it feels being discriminated, how it feels growing up and thinking you’re worthless, how it feels being bullied, how it feels hating your own skin. I wrote this for you to know it is not right to make someone’s skin colour a part of your (trashy) humor. It is for you to be empathetic, to take responsibility of your speech and actions, be the change, and make this world a better place to live.

#colourism #dark skin #melanin #melanin girls #discrimination #awareness #blog #story blog #brown skin #dark and beautiful #dark and lovely #brown girls #writersofig #writers on tumblr #storytelling

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calenheniel · 5 years ago

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Queen of the Ashes, a frozen fanfic | Part VI

Frozen | Alternate Universe | Hans x Elsa | Romance, Drama | T+

They meet as children, each with a secret. Plagued by tragedy, their paths cross again many years later, and their secrets are unraveled.

Author’s Note: I realize that everyone already knows what the “twist” is going to be in this fic from the title and the many unsubtle clues I have left along the way. So I am just going to try to keep you all in suspense anyway with how exactly I’m going to get there. Coincides with Day 7 of (makeup) Helsa Week 2020. @helsa-week

Read it on: AO3 | FF.Net | Wattpad | or read below

Follow updates: #QueenoftheAshesFrozen

»»————-　❈　————-««

VI.

Breakfast was a considerably more pleasant affair the next morning, the queen demonstrating little of the animosity which had come to dominate her interactions with the prince over the previous week.

“Last night was rather interesting,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone try to recite Shakespearean sonnets and play the violin at the same time. Sort of impressive, in its own way.”

She laughed mid-chew, placing her fork down as she fought to swallow her bread. “Yes. Can’t blame them for trying, anyway.”

“And what about that flautist?” he added with a grin. “I’m all for contemporary, original compositions, but…”

“It sounded like a dying bird,” she finished. “A very loud, dying bird.”

The princess, perplexed by their easy rapport, was quiet as she picked at her food in-between glances at them.

The queen eyed her with a smile. “Anna? You’ve hardly touched your toast. That’s unlike you.”

The younger woman’s nose wrinkled. “I’m just surprised,” she said with a sniff, staring at her sister suspiciously. “You’re not usually so chatty in the morning.”

When the queen looked down in embarrassment, the princess quickly added: “Not that that’s a bad thing. Actually, I like the change. It’s good for us. Plus, who wants to hear me yammer on all the time? We all need a break from that, including me.”

“You don’t ‘yammer,’ Anna,” the prince protested through a half-smirk. “I like how you talk. It’s genuine and… frank.”

“He’s right,” the queen agreed, and admitted: “I can hardly hold a conversation by comparison.”

The princess waved away the comments. “I can tell when you’re lying, Elsa. And Hans—you’re a better liar than she is, but your smooth talk gives you away.”

He leveled a lopsided smile at her. “Is that right?”

“It is,” she replied, her chin raising with confidence. After a beat, she noted with a sly look: “But don’t let that stop you from giving me compliments. Even if they’re fake, I’ll take ‘em.”

The prince and the queen chuckled, and as their gazes met, their faces pinked, and they promptly directed their eyes back down at their plates, resuming their meals in silence.

The princess picked up the conversation again a few moments later, relating some anecdotes from her lessons and recent meetings with ambassadors and various nobles. Her sister and the prince nodded along, adding comments occasionally, until the clock struck nine.

The queen blinked. “I lost track of time,” she excused herself as she dabbed her lips with a napkin and rose from the table. “I have to be off, now. I’ll see you both later.”

“Elsa, wait!” her sister called, rising and rushing to her side. A small, furtive smile played on her lips. “Can we talk for a minute?”

The queen glanced at her pocket watch. “Fine. But only for a minute,” she agreed, and turned to the prince. “If you’ll excuse us, Hans.”

He bowed. “Of course.”

The princess led her older sister away to a secluded corner of a narrow hallway some distance from the dining room, her eyes bright and curious. “So? Did you two kiss and make up?” She grinned. “I saw you leave together last night at the end of the concert.”

The queen’s face flushed. “We… came to an understanding of sorts, yes,” she replied, and frowned. “But no kissing was involved.”

“An ‘understanding,’ huh?” the princess repeated, her grin growing. “What exactly does that mean, Elsa?”

“Not what you think it does, apparently,” her sister said, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms. “We just talked, that’s all.”

The princess raised her hands in surrender. “If you say so. I’m just happy you’re talking to him again.” Her eyebrows waggled with interest. “Did my little speech to you help, after all?”

The queen sighed, her expression relaxing. “Maybe a little bit,” she conceded. When the princess gave her a pointed look, she clarified: “Okay—maybe a lot. Anyway, it’s resolved now.”

“Good,” the princess nodded, smiling. “I’m glad.” She curtsied to the queen, who responded in turn, and then began to walk away. After a brief pause, she looked back at her sister over her shoulder, her smile becoming devious again. “So you won’t be mad if I tell you that I told Hans to meet you this afternoon in the rose garden, right?”

The queen stood stock-still, her skin the color of a ripe strawberry. “Anna, you…” Her hands fell to her sides, and she stuttered, flustered. “That’s the middle of the day, and you know I have—”

“Meetings and paperwork and other business, yes, I know,” her sister finished, her smile unrelenting. “Don’t worry—this won’t interfere with any of that. I checked your schedule with Kai last night while you were gone, and told him that we were going to take a walk together today for a break from all of the guests.” Her expression grew softer. “Don’t be upset with him, though; he seemed really happy about us spending time together. Otherwise, I don’t think he would’ve told me a thing.”

The queen opened her mouth to protest, but no words came out.

The princess smirked. “Anyway, he’ll be expecting you around two. Don’t keep him waiting.”

And with that, the younger woman skipped out into the hallway, humming the strange, cacophonous flautist's tune from the night before.

»» —— ««

Against her better instincts, the queen found herself walking toward the rose garden at the appointed time—though she deliberately walked very slowly so as not to be too punctual, or seem too eager.

She cursed the meeting under her breath as she traveled, as the thought of seeing him in such a place – and of her sister’s maneuvers in arranging it – had distracted her the entire morning, making her appear inattentive and careless at some of her meetings. Recalling the strange warmth of his hand, she had even smudged the ink of her signatures on various papers, and had had to send them back to be re-written.

She had sworn at various points that she would not go to meet him after all, and by noon she had convinced herself that she was going to disappoint him and the princess in order to keep her own sanity intact.

When the old steward had noticed her distraction and asked if she was feeling unwell, she had said yes; this half-truth had given her an excuse to leave her last engagement early, so that she could collect her bearings alone. In solitude, however, the temptation to go grew ever larger in her mind, to the point that when the clock struck quarter past one, she rose from her bed as if possessed, and left.

Initially passing many servants and courtiers on the way to the garden put her in a nervous state, and so the queen took a more circuitous path through discreet hallways until she reached a small side door by the servants’ quarters, exiting onto the kitchen gardens. By that time in the afternoon they were quiet, and she was able to slip relatively unnoticed around them, finding a well-trodden dirt path towards the meeting place.

A tall hedge and locked iron gate separated her from it, and she groaned a little at realizing that she had forgotten her keyring in her bedroom. She jiggled the lock on the door as she peered through the bars on it, and her surprise at seeing no one in the gardens within caused ice to spark from her fingertips, breaking the lock in twain.

The queen jumped back, startled by the sound of the iron as it clattered to the ground below, and then pressed her offending hand to her chest with a red face, exhaling deeply.

“There’s another unlocked gate further down the hedge, you know,” the familiar voice of the prince said from the other side of the hedge, and her head shot up at the intrusion. “No need to inflict more property damage.”

She sighed through her nose. “I didn’t mean to, I just—never mind,” she said, frowning. “Which way is it?”

“To your left,” he replied. “Just follow my voice.”

She continued along the hedge and onto softer grass shadowed by tall trees, keeping her hands close by her sides. Her face was still red. “I don’t know this path,” she said.

“I’m surprised to hear that,” he remarked. “I would’ve thought, being confined for so long, that you’d know every inch of this place by now.”

Her forehead wrinkled. “I was confined indoors, mostly. I’m not as familiar with the gardens, because…”

She paused when she came to the very edge of the natural wall, and she turned to face the hedge, her eyes widening as they met his. The only thing between them was a short wooden gate secured with a latch, which the prince lifted easily.

As she stepped through it and looked up, a soft gasp left her lips.

Tall arches wreathed with red roses in full bloom surrounded a dirt path just a few feet from the gate, and from the state of the vines and leaves encircling the arches, she could tell that they had not been properly pruned for some time. The shine and heat from the afternoon sun was lessened in the wildness of that space, its disuse casting an odd, green light upon the ground where sunlight filtered through the leaves.

“Your parents didn’t allow you here?” the prince resumed their conversation, standing behind her.

She glanced at him over her shoulder, then approached the side of an arch, reaching out to graze the edge of a rose before withdrawing it. “It wasn’t like that. They wanted me to come out more, actually. But… I was afraid to. I didn’t want to spoil things.”

“Spoil? You mean—”

“Well, freeze them, yes,” the queen clarified, irritated. “My mother was very fond of these gardens, though I can’t remember ever coming to this part of them.” Her gaze tightened at the rose she could not bring herself to touch. “I guess the staff haven’t kept it up since she died.”

He was quiet for a while before coming to stand at her side, regarding the same flower. “You haven’t spoken much about them.” At her warning look, he continued: “I know that their passing was unexpected and tragic. But I imagine, before then, that you must have been quite close to them.”

“I was, and I wasn’t,” she said, her lips pressing into a thin line. “They did their best to keep me safe, and love me in their own way, despite the circumstances. But I pushed them away.”

His brow lifted. “‘Loved you in their own way’?”

Her cheeks flushed. “I wasn’t an easy child to care for; I gave them many hardships. It’s a wonder that I haven’t hurt more people, and I have them to thank for that.”

He was silent at her reply, and then his hand reached out to the rose, his fingers drifting over its petals.

“You know, Elsa,” he began, “roses are actually rather difficult to grow. The conditions have to be just right, with plenty of sunshine, well-drained soil, and in areas free from pests, since they’re so susceptible to disease. Without regular attention, it’s unlikely they’d survive.” He eyed her pointedly as he added: “So it’s a wonder that these are still here, and blooming as beautifully as they are.”

The queen did not miss the look, her eyes darkening. “I’m not a rose, Hans. I don’t require sunlight, or pruning, or ‘regular attention’ to endure.” She stood taller, her chin raised, and directed a withering stare at him. “You’re prying by means of flattery, but I already told you that won’t work.”

His hands came up, yielding to her. “You’re right,” he conceded, “it was a bad comparison. Forgive me.”

She crossed her arms. “What were you trying to say, before?” she said. “It’s not like you to drop a line of questioning, once you’ve started.”

He smiled a little at the observation. “Yes, that’s true,” he agreed. The smile faded as his brows knitted together. “It’s just… you speak so poorly about yourself and your powers. Calling yourself a ‘hardship’ to your parents, saying that you pushed them away—all because of one incident from your childhood, which your sister obviously recovered from.”

“It wasn’t just that one incident,” she countered, her hands curling around her biceps. “That was the worst of them, yes, but there were many others after that which created cause for concern. You’ve seen it yourself—what happens when I get worked up, when I feel out of control.”

She pressed a hand to her forehead, cooling the skin there. “This curse is my burden to bear, alone.”

“Curse?” the prince asked. “Is that how you see it?”

She glowered at him. “What else could it be?”

He was quiet for a time, studying her irate features, and then stepped into the shadow of an archway. The green light flickered against his skin, dappled by the roses’ red. “I used to wish that I had your powers, when I was a boy,” he said, staring up at the sunbeams obscured by vines. “When my brothers would torment me, each act of cruelty more petty and vicious than the last, I fantasized about suffocating them with snowdrifts, or turning them into one of your spectacular ice statues—anything that would make them stop.”

His eyes closed tightly, lines of pain visible at the edges. “Even realizing that doing so would make me the same as them, I couldn’t help but imagine it, and it brought me some comfort during the hardest years of my childhood.”

When the prince opened his eyes again, there was a dark honesty in them that the queen had never noticed before. “I know what it’s like to feel cursed, Elsa—to feel like a burden. To feel as if I should never have been born. But I couldn’t have lived this long if I kept feeling that way about myself. And I don’t think you could’ve, either.”

Her face reddened, and her hands throbbed as they fell to her sides.

“Conceal,” she told herself, swallowing. “Don’t feel.”

“What was that?”

She blinked and stared at him, her lips parting but unable to form a reply.

“Don’t let it show.”

“Elsa?”

Snow fell lightly at first, and then all around them as if in a waking dream, and she gripped the sides of her dress tight enough to cause tears in the fabric.

Conceal, she heard the mantra again, don’t feel.

“What are you saying?”

Don’t let it show, she finished, silently mouthing the words.

Through the snow, the prince’s hand reached out to the side of the arch, forcing itself into the barbed stems.

Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let it show.

He plucked a single rose from the bush.

“Elsa.”

His voice was, at first, intermingled with her father’s, and she found it hard to focus on him through the snowdrifts, her vision obscured.

“Come back, Elsa.”

The second time she heard her name it was clearer, and as she squinted, the drifts began to dissipate.

“I’m here.”

All at once, the snow was suspended in the air, and she could clearly hear – and see – the prince in front of her, holding a single red rose. At his side, his right hand hung loosely, blood trickling from the fingers down into the earth.

She gasped at the sight, instinctively seizing the injured hand and tearing one of her gloves off, wrapping it around his pricked fingers and palm, pressing there. The snow that was suspended, as well as the drifts that covered the earth, disappeared. His skin was hot to touch.

“What were you thinking?” she exclaimed, her face still pale from shock. “You know they have thorns.”

He stood in stunned silence watching her tend to him, her thumbs pressing upon the uncovered skin of his wrist.

“Elsa, you…” he managed before growing quiet again, allowing her to focus.

She glanced up at his red face. “What? Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

He gaped at her, fish-like, before closing his mouth, suppressing a larger smile.

“No,” he replied softly. “I suppose I was trying to prove something, but… clearly, I just ended up making a fool out of myself.”

Some color returned to her face, and her grip on him relaxed a little. “Yes, you did,” she agreed, not looking at him.

He nodded, looking down at his hand still in hers. “I see that now,” he said, and her blush deepened. “But what about your glove?”

The queen realized what she had done, and almost recoiled from him in surprise. “I—I’ll just have it washed when I get back. I’ll tell Gerda I tripped.”

“Thank you, Elsa,” the prince said, bowing his head. “I really am grateful.”

She nodded in return, a hot tremor coursing through her hand as it finally let go of his. She caught sight of the rose still in his right hand, and pursed her lips. “You’d better let go of that, before you hurt your other hand.”

He followed her look and examined the flower in question before carefully inserting it into the chest pocket of his jacket. “There, that’s better.”

Her brow rose. “Really?”

He shrugged. “It’s a waste to throw away such a beautiful thing, even if it can hurt me.”

She blushed at the long look from the prince that accompanied his remark, and crossed her arms.

“You’re incredibly unsubtle,” she told him, frowning. “It’s very irritating.”

“Then I shall strive to be cleverer with my innuendos,” he said, a half-smirk tugging at his lips. “Wouldn’t want you to get sick of me—not just yet, anyway.” His humorous expression dissolved as he regarded her for a minute, and then his gaze returned to the glove covering his left hand, the light between the arches casting striped patterns across the stained fabric.

“It seems as though the bleeding has stopped,” he said, and unfurled it from his fingers. “Are you sure you want it back? I’m happy to clean it for you, and return it in a more presentable condition.”

She snatched the glove from his hand. “No, thank you,” she snapped, and then added more gently: “It’s just something I need to take care of on my own.”

“You’ve been saying that a lot,” the prince observed. “Needing to handle things, alone.” He continued before she could interrupt him. “And I understand that, since I’ve often thought that I had to do the same. But…”

The queen swallowed. “But?”

He smiled. “Perhaps we can rely on each other.” He glanced down at his thorn-pricked hand, and then up at her again. “It certainly paid off for me, today.”

She clutched the bloodied glove. “You’re asking a lot of me.”

He nodded. “I know. But I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t believe you were capable of it.”

Her blush faded as she stared at the rose in his pocket. “I just… don’t understand why you do.”

He cradled his injured hand thoughtfully. “Because you don’t see what I see in you.”

“No, I don’t,” she admitted, and pressed the stained glove against her stomach, her grip relaxing. Her eyes met his in the next moment, and a deep, unbidden desire was spoken.

“But I want to.”

»» —— ««

She returned to her bedroom a little while later by the same winding route she had taken to go outdoors, her sullied glove balled up in her bare left hand and pressed to her side, out of sight. She exhaled with relief once inside her door, quickly changing out of her torn dress and laying the glove on a side table.

“Your Majesty?”

She held back a sigh at the sound of her trusted steward’s voice on the other side of the door.

“Yes, Kai?”

“May we speak for a minute? I know you still have a many meetings ahead of you today, so I won’t be long.”

She grabbed the dirtied glove from the table and hid it behind her back as she opened the door, waving him in. “Come in,” she said, and nodded at the guards outside to close the doors behind him.

Her brow furrowed a little upon observing his tense expression and bearing, unused to seeing him so concerned. “Is everything all right?”

His lip twitched. “Well, Your Majesty, I heard a slightly… worrying report just now, from one of the kitchen staff.”

The queen’s eyes snapped open. “Oh?” she asked, trying to appear nonplussed. “What did they say?”

The steward’s gaze grew more pointed. “That they saw you going out the back door to the rose garden. They said it looked as if you were meeting someone down the hidden lane to the wood gate—the one your mother and father used to use, when they walked there together.”

At her twitching features, he continued: “The maid who looks after the guestrooms also mentioned that she saw Prince Hans go out not long before then into the same garden, before she lost sight of him.” He paused. “I was surprised to hear this, since I thought you were going on a walk with Princess Anna this afternoon.”

She frowned. “Are you having me followed?”

The steward was mortified by the accusation. “No, of course not, Your Majesty; I wouldn’t dare. I assure you that these reports came in to me independently, completely of the staff’s volition. I gave no orders to them.”

Her stare was still suspicious. “Fine. But what is your purpose in coming to me with these reports? What business is it of theirs, or yours, where or with whom I choose to take an afternoon walk?”

The older man rose to meet her eyes again, and swallowed. “Well, Your Majesty, as you know, your father charged me with looking after your personal well-being before he passed, and so I feel that I must speak up when I observe something that may… endanger your health and happiness.”

Her nose wrinkled. “Endanger my health and happiness.”

“Yes,” he affirmed, his posture more assured. “In this case, endangered by getting too close to a certain southern prince.” At her annoyed look, he continued: “You remember the many months we spent discussing the fires in the Isles, and their curious origins—the research you sent me to do, and that you did in turn about the prince’s family, as well as him? And now suddenly he is here as a valued guest, at the princess’s side during many social events, at family meals, and with you on private walks of the rose garden.”

His lips curled. “You know, Your Majesty, that innocent or not, he is a man of ill repute in his own lands, and is seen as suspect here in your own court, as well. There are already some rumors around him and the princess, and should word reach our guests of your meeting with him today…”

He paused at seeing his queen’s face grow more and more twisted with anger, but went on to conclude: “I can see how his appearance and manners would be charming to you both, and can understand the temptation to overlook his dubious character. But, respectfully, I do not think it wise for you and the princess to associate yourselves further with this young man, Your Majesty.”

The room crackled with an invisible energy, the queen’s power barely contained as she remained silent, her fingernails digging into her palms.

Don’t feel.

She almost spat at the words as they filled the empty air, her seething breaths cold as she swallowed them down.

Don’t let it show.

Her gaze lifted to meet his. “Before my father left on his last journey, he told me to be strong—for myself, as well as for Anna. I told him I would try in order to please him, assuming that he and my mother would be back in a few weeks.” Her expression grew dark. “I thought I could go on as I was, keeping to myself, believing Anna was better off on her own.”

She stopped for a beat, feeling her fingernails draw blood from her palms. “But I was wrong, Kai; they never came back, and Anna was left without parents, and without a sister.” Her eyes were as hard as coals. “But now I am queen, and I must protect her. And I can tell the difference between good and ill intent well enough myself.”

He swallowed again. “Your Majesty, I’m not questioning your judgment. I know you’re—”

“Good,” she interrupted, smiling thinly. “Thank you, Kai. I appreciate your concern. You can go, now.”

He was taken aback by the abrupt cut off, and even shorter dismissal; nonetheless, he bowed, and made his way towards the door. “I’ll see you this evening, Your Majesty,” he said, and left.

Alone, the queen’s hands finally relaxed, and she exhaled through her mouth, sliding down the side of her bedpost to the carpet. Closing her eyes, she lifted her left glove until it was propped up atop bent knees, her heart still racing.

When she opened them again, she saw that the blood from her palms had become intermingled with the prince’s on the fabric.

#helsa #QueenoftheAshesFrozen #frozen #frozen fanfiction #helsaweek 2020

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artfortheages · 5 years ago

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Aim To Be A Traveller, Not A Tourist

By Dora Cheatham

Full disclosure. I’ve been lucky.

Born in England to Greek-Cypriot parents, I had a head start when it came to understanding different cultures, though straddling cultures definitely had its drawbacks. I was never truly “English” or “Greek”. My personality is most definitely English – my sense of humor, the way I think, my behavior towards other people, the way I do business are all so much more “British” rather than “Greek”.

At school in England I stood out not because of any intellectual or sporting prowess, but because I was that kid with the curly hair and long, unpronounceable surname. But my blood…ah my blood. Put on Zorba’s dance and I’m out there, arms out, head bowed, kicking my legs and shouting “opa”. There is no denying my bloodline or heritage and I am secretly proud of being able to associate myself in some little way with the likes of Aristotle, Plato, Euripides, Archimedes, the Spartans, and the heroes of OXI day.

When you grow up in Europe, going from country to country is relatively easy, and with family in Greece, Cyprus and England my parents made sure that we visited the “homeland” frequently. In the 1970s my parents decided to move to Cyprus permanently, only to return to England after Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974, leaving the country in tatters and many without husbands, without fathers and without homes. War is an experience that is part of my being but one that I would never want to relive.

Above: Greek Cypriot refugees fleeing to the south. Image (c) Getty Images.

As a student, whether as a result of my bilingual background or not, it turned out I had a knack for absorbing new languages. At school, I learned Spanish, German and French, along with the Classics, and went on to study French & Spanish language and literature at University. This meant that I also had the opportunity to spend extended periods of time in Spain and France either studying or working. When I met – and married – an American, the idea of relocating to the US did not present itself as an unsurmountable obstacle. After all, I had already lived and/or studied/worked in four different countries all before the age of 25.

That having been said, I recently realized that I am a “travel snob”. For the first time in my life, I went on a group tour – you know the type – 5 cities in 4 days, it’s Thursday, so you must be in Paris. That was when I realized that travelling is so much more than sightseeing and when I also appreciated – maybe more than ever – my multi-cultural background and education.

Even at the early age of 17, I realized that there is no “best country in the world”, because each and every country has its unique beauty, strength, and indeed flaws. Because I was able to see that no one nation is better than any other, because there are good – and bad – people in all countries. That people in different countries think differently, and what may be important, interesting and inspiring to someone in the US, does not carry the same value or relevance to someone in Spain, Singapore or the Seychelles.

While family, friends, food and a universal mistrust of politicians are common among all cultures, half an hour with many Americans and the conversation will eventually run to subjects like sports, tailgating, hobbies, shopping, business. Conversations with friends in France would end in where one could catch screenings of films by Jean Renoir, or a talk about the life, times and impact of Edith Piaf, Camus or Colette. In England, pub grub was often accompanied with the uniquely British sense of humor, the exchange of anecdotes, experiences, and more trivia than one brain can hold. Yes, somewhat of a generalization, but you get the point.

And that is where so many people stumble. Too many people visit countries and compare them and the people of that country to their own – usually to the detriment of the countries they are visiting. To those people I quote Clifton Fadiman:

“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.”

Above: Traditional Lefkara embroidery in Cyprus

When people ask me what I enjoy most about speaking several languages I usually give the same answer. It’s not about being able to successfully order a sandwich in a different country. It’s bigger than that.

Imagine you are in a huge room, surrounded by books, art, history, culture and the ability to observe and comprehend how the people in this room conduct business and live their everyday lives. This is your country and everything in that room is accessible to you – whether you choose to access it or not.

Now imagine that this room is also surrounded by a number of locked doors. Each time you learn a language and visit the country, speak with the people of that country, learn about what they believe in, what they love, what they hate and how they think, you unlock another door.

Read their literature in the original language. Understand their art. Learn how to cook their food. Talk to the people – preferably in their own language. You have just unlocked another huge room.

Above: Cypriot sweet cheese “fritters” coated in syrup.

It’s not just about visiting castles, cathedrals, or canyons. It’s about so much more. And it is not until people understand this in its essence, that they can open their minds to tolerance and understanding. This, my friends, is what it means to travel.

I’ll end as I began. I have been lucky. My family believed in the old adage of giving your children both roots and wings.

To close out, here are some of my favorite travel quotes that maybe, just maybe, serve to illustrate the idea. And remember, try to be a traveler, not a tourist!

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” - Miriam Beard

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page” - Augustine of Hippo

“Travel brings wisdom only to the wise. It renders the ignorant more ignorant than ever.” – Joe Abercrombie

“Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration and experiencing what you have not experienced before. How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else – above all, a travel bureau – arrange everything beforehand?” – Richard Aldington

“The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.” – G. K. Chesterton

“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James A. Michener

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” – Gustave Flaubert

“The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home – and the slow nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries.” – Rolf Potts

#travel #tourism #culture

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thepracticeco · 5 years ago

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You were made to stand on your own two feet. Sometimes it can seem like it would be easier to stand if our feet looked different, if our legs behaved differently if we could stand on something else, in something else, wearing different clothes, and well, being an entirely different person. 'I could stand on my own if (fill in the blank)...' is a place I think we've all been. Here's the thing: believing that you can't stand with what you've got and what you've been given will have you on your butt in no time. And the only way to get back up from this kind of fall is self-love and acceptance. Which is hard for a few reasons. Self-love and acceptance are challenging because we've all done things we are ashamed of, things we knew were wrong, things that have hurt others, things that we would not accept from another person. Self-love and acceptance are difficult because when life cracks us open, sometimes we don't like what we find. Whether it be hardness, bitterness, a personality trait, a reflex, a limiting belief we can't shake, or memories and experiences that have left us twisted and wounded... when confronted with ourselves, it's sometimes hard to love what we find. Self-love and acceptance are hard because we've been taught systematically by some factions of religion, consumerism, pop culture, politics and policies, and more, that we simply are not worthy of self-love and acceptance. And even worse, that to love and accept ourselves would leave us unhinged and abandoned to our own evil inclinations and devices. But dear one, is that working for you? A life disassociating your heart and body and mind from your own love and acceptance? If you can't stand yourself, then it's more than likely that you can't stand life itself. This kind of self-hatred and non-acceptance doesn't make you holy. It's a conduit of pain and makes you lonely and full of sorrow. Mark Twain said: "The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself." Rupi Kaur said: "How you love yourself is how you teach others to love you." Brené Brown said: "True belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance." EE Cummings said: "Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit." Richard Rohr said: "Love is not something you do; love is someone you are. It is your True Self. Love is where you came from and love is where you're going. It's not something you can buy. It's not something you can attain. It is the presence of God within you, called the Holy Spirit—or what some theologians name uncreated grace... We can't diminish God's love for us. What we can do, however, is learn how to believe it, receive it, trust it, allow it, and celebrate it, accepting Trinity's whirling invitation to join in the cosmic dance... [buckle in, because this could change your life] The very nature of God is to seek out the deepest possible communion and friendship with every last creature on this earth. That's the job description of God. That's what it's all about. And the only thing that can keep you out of this divine dance is fear and doubt, or any self-hatred. What would happen in your life—right now—if you accepted what God has created and even allowed? Suddenly, this is a very safe universe. You have nothing to be afraid of. God is for you. God is leaping toward you! God is on your side, honestly more than you are on your own." Love will get you back on your feet, but you don't have to wait to get it from someone else to get started. And you don't have to fear. You will not become overrun by evil if you let love well up inside of you for your own life. It's already in you, willing you to stand. Wanting to heal you. You just have to accept it, and allow it. All the love, always… Liz 💛 DOWNLOAD OUR DEVOTIONAL AND WALLPAPER APP → https://ift.tt/2F8LfDE

#devotional #bible #verse #inspirational #god #jesus #christian #worship

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robhorninginternalexile · 5 years ago

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From Adam Bede (1859), by George Eliot, as quoted in Raymond Williams’s The Country and the City.

Here Eliot contrasts what the narrator sees as a phony leisure created by media and technology and “old Leisure,” which was bound up with the isolated ways of the country life. All the increased access to more and current information only leads ordinary folks to confusion, as commentators continue to point out. If only each of us were “happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves.”

As Williams notes, this passage is an ironic skewering of a certain class of self-satisfied country gentlemen — Old Leisure is ”a class figure who can afford to saunter, who has leisure precisely in the sweat of other men’s work.” But he also points out the narrator’s analysis here is itself complacent to the point of being deceptive. It elides the exploitation, poverty, and suffering that Old Leisure is built on. “This foreshortening, this selection, this special indulgence are all characteristic of what has become a main form of the modern rural retrospect,” Williams writes.

I’m sympathetic to those current critiques of technology (epitomized by Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing) that champion a retreat from an overmediated, hyperaccelerated world into a more slow and “genuine” relationship with nature and society, earned through a patient engagement with what’s “really” there in a place where one makes a focused effort to be fully present. But I also feel like they turn me into Eliot’s narrator, a bit complacent in my point of view. I see the wrong victims of technology — I am preoccupied with the people more or less like me who are too addicted to the convenience or distractions of their phone, and not the inequality that makes that world of frantic inattention and fatuous nostalgia possible.

Pastoral fantasy is an old reaction to industrialization, and as Williams argues, it paints a false vision of there being some unmediated way to experience nature (usually one that can be learned through a nostalgic misinterpretation of the past). But the effects of pastoral fantasies aren’t limited to those who fall for them; they also distract skeptics and establish dubious parameters for their critique of technology, as if what is at stake is the appropriate kind of “leisure.”

Williams argues that this “way of seeing” tends to lead to a defeated individualism, typified by novels that end “with a single person going away on his own, having achieved his moral growth through distancing or extrication.” Twain’s Huck Finn is a 19th century American example of the dream of “lighting out for the territories” for a better society; it also reveals this inclination as fundamentally juvenile.

I worry that my attraction to strategies of personal refusal when it comes to technology and social media is also about this kind of individual extrication. What Williams describes as the “knowable community” — a social existence that is tolerable and explicable from the individual’s point of view — is relegated to the past, which for someone my age means the time before screens. The moral refusal of technology — on the terms I sometimes conceive it anyway, as a rejection of frivolity or of convenience — too often depends on and naturalizes a vision of society that tech companies also endorse, in which everyone is an atomized user who can afford a phone and can take advantage of all its conveniences.

Later in The Country and the City, Williams diagnoses the problem of seeking an abstract sense of universal community through the indulgence of an “intense subjectivity.”

Given the facts of isolation, of an apparently impassable subjectivity, a 'collective consciousness' reappears, but in an altered form. This is the 'collective consciousness' of the myth, the archetype; the 'collective unconscious' of Jung. In and through the intense subjectivities a metaphysical or psychological 'community' is assumed, and characteristically, if only in abstract structures, it is universal; the middle terms of actual societies are excluded as ephemeral, superficial, or at best contingent and secondary. Thus a loss of social recognition and consciousness is in a way made into a virtue: as a condition of understanding and insight. A direct connection is then forged between intense subjectivity and a timeless reality: one is a means to the other and alternative terms are no more than distractions. The historically variable problem of 'the individual and society' acquires a sharp and particular definition, in that 'society' becomes an abstraction, and the collective flows only through the most inward channels. Not only the ordinary experiences of apparent isolation, but a whole range of techniques of self-isolation, are then gathered to sustain the paradoxical experience of an ultimate collectivity which is beyond and above community.

This makes me wonder about my own “techniques of self-isolation” and what I have invested in them, and all the technologies on which they now depend.

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ovymedia · 5 years ago

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The best adventure quotes for traveling couples

Looking for some inspiration for your next couple’s adventure? Take a read through these adventurous quotes for your next romantic adventure for two.

1. When traveling with someone, take large doses of patience and tolerance with your morning coffee. – Helen Hayes

2. A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. – John Steinbeck

3. I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them. — Mark Twain

4. In life, it’s not where you go, it’s who you travel with – Charles Schulz

5. Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, “I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.” – Lisa St. Aubin de Teran

6. Travel brings power and love back into your life – Rumi

7. People don’t take trips – trips take people. – John Steinbeck

8. Why should a relationship mean settling down? Wait for someone who won’t let life escape you, who’ll challenge you and drive you towards your dreams. Someone spontaneous who you can get lost in the world with. A relationship, with the right person, is a release not a restriction. – Beau Taplin

9. Never go on trips with anyone you do not love. – Ernest Hemingway

10. What we find in a soulmate is not something wild to tame, but something wild to run with. – Robert Brault

11. The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams. – Oprah Winfrey

12. Actually, the best gift you could have given her was a lifetime of adventures. – Lewis Carroll

13. Travel is like love, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end. — Pico Iyer

14. What I love most about this crazy life is the adventure of it. – Juliette Binoche

15. Life is an adventure, it’s not a package tour. – Eckhart Tolle

16. Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction. – Antoine Desaint-Exupery

17. You develop a sympathy for all human beings when you travel a lot. – Shakuntala Devi

18. Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire. – Jennifer Lee

19. The life you have led doesn’t need to be the only life you have. – Anna Quindlen

20. Sure, give me an adventure and I’ll ride it. – Melissa Auf der Maur

21. And then there is the most dangerous risk of all — the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later. – Randy Komisar

22. Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

23. Anytime I feel lost, I pull out a map and stare. I stare until I have reminded myself that life is a giant adventure, so much to do, to see. – Angelina Jolie

24. I love waking up in the morning not knowing what’s gonna happen or who I’m gonna meet, where I’m gonna wind up. – Jack Dawson

25. I’m in love with cities I have never been to and people I have never met –Melody Truong

26. As soon as I saw you, I knew you would be an adventure of a life time. – Winnie the Pooh

27. The universe just fucking knows when souls are wired to wreck the world together! – Erin Van Vuren

28. A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. – Oliver Wendell Holmes

29. The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends. – Shirley MacLaine

30. Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry. – Jack Kerouac

31. The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. – Eleanor Roosevelt

32. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. – Helen Keller

33. You’d be surprised who the love of your life turns out to be. After all, adventure fell in love with lost – Mary Oliver

34. Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God. – Kurt Vonnegut

35. It’s wonderful to travel with someone you love and we never travel without one another. – Roger Moore

36. You are never too old to set another goal or to dream another dream – CS Lewis

37. To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted. – Bill Bryson

38. Every man can transform the world from one of monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure. – Irving Wallace

For more great adventure content, check out www.ovymedia.com today.

#adventure #quotes #travel #couple #relationship #road trip #books #ebooks

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marissapugliese · 5 years ago

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Paper 2

“Cliques”

Looking back at my experience as a student I could first handedly say I have been a part of social group differentiation. Whether or not you know it or not, we are all likely to have been a part of some kind of group isolation or we can use the term “cliques”. The word clique usually carries a negative condensation. Cliques are known to exclude others. The idea of a clique has been a part of themes of many movies or shows. For example, the iconic clique movie Mean girls. In the movie there is a group of three girls that are seen to be popular. They are only friends with each other and bully people who are different from them. Movies and shows often portray cliques to act in this certain way. In reality cliques are forming whether we mean for it to happen or not. Cliques develop in schools by finding something in common between classmates. In my case, I can say that the clear sight of social group differentiation in my own experience took place in middle school. I attended Mark Twain Intermediate School which was considered only for “Gifted and Talented”; this meant that you had to audition for the school for a specific talent or gift. The talents and gifts included dance, drama, vocal, instrumental, athletics, math, creative writing, science, and tech. The school does not intentionally set up the students to form these cliques, although it is something that naturally happens.

Mark Twain is a middle school which means it contains the three grades from 6th-8th. Within each grade I would say there are close to 500 students or more. Each grade has four “clusters” which are basically sections.The clusters are divided by letters for example 6K, 6L, 6M, and 6S. Each talent or gift that you are accepted into has one class with about 30-40 students. Each cluster has about three talents per cluster. For example, 6K would include those students in dance, vocal, and creative writing talent. So this means for the whole year of 6th grade we are in class with these students and are shuffled into lets say three sections for each subject. In my case, I was in dance talent so the majority of people I built strong bonds with were also dancers. This was something that happened naturally because of the amount of time I spent with these individuals. It also helped that most of us had many things in common. At the time, we were all the same age, mostly the same gender besides two individuals, shared a love for dance, and had similar outside interests like justin bieber or competing in dance competitions. Another thing that Mark Twain does for organization purposes is instruct students to sit in their clusters for lunch as well. Lunch in middle school is basically the only time you are able to hangout and chat with your friends about things aside from school. Since that was really our only period of socializing we stayed with the people we had to stay with, and were most comfortable with. Cliques did form within the department itself but that is also a natural human thing to do. You process relationships and chemistry differently with certain people, sometimes a connection is not there with a certain individual just because you share one thing in common. The group of friends that I made in Mark Twain were not all dancers but most. Two close friends that I made were in different talents, one being in drama, and the other in vocals. The friend from drama was friends outside of school with some dance talent friends I had because she was on the same dance competitive team as them. We all hung out outside of school which created our bond to deepen. My friend who was in vocal talent shared a cluster with us in dance talent for two years, we got to eat lunch together and had some academic classes together as well. To add onto the friendships I made, I also have a twin brother whose name is Peter. He went to Mark Twain as well as an athletic major. The dance and athletic talents were never mixed together and I think it was because drama but we all were athletes and shared that in common. It also helped that Peter and I were twins because when we had friends over or birthday parties this helped mingle the two groups together. So I’d say I had maybe a handfuls or two handfuls of friends who were outside of my talent. But generally speaking, I do believe that each talents common interest along with the way the school had to organize classes and etc had allowed many cliques within a clique to form.

I would say that my experience in social group differentiation was triggered from middle school and on, still continuing in the present as I am a Long Island University Dance Major. I don’t believe that forming cliques could be prevented in ideally any middle school, but since I did go to performing arts schools it made it easier to do so. I went to a private small catholic school in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn for elementary school. Even though I was much younger and don't recall much I believe that since it was a smaller school mostly everyone was included in everything. Indeed I had closer friends than others but for example when it came down to someone's birthday party everyone was invited I interviewed my friend Nicole who attended the same school as I did for both elementary and middle school. I asked her “Do you believe cliques were formed?”. She responded “I would say so.. But they weren't real cliques.” To elaborate on her answer she explained…” More friendships and bonds were deeper than others. But since we all knew each other from about three years old it was different. But we did all have to mingle at one point or the other.”

The term “cliques” tends to have a negative condensation, but it is nothing more than a group of people who gravitate towards one another because of common interest. Yes, individuals have taken being in a clique to an extreme where they completely isolate themselves from socializing with others completely. But that itself is something more than a clique. We have all been a part of a clique whether we know it or not. Involvement in a clique opens your eyes to what exactly social group differentiation is. In my experience, my reasoning beneath being a clique had a lot to do with our common interest and talent. For others it can be culturally, race, ethnicity, music, or any differentiation possible. This is my story and what has brought me awareness.

Glossary Items:

Clique: a small group of people, with shared interests or other features in common.

Cluster: A close group or section.

Mean Girls: Movie directed by Mark Waters 2004

Mark Twain: Middle school for Gifted and Talented located in Coney Island.

Social Group Differentiation: distinction made between social groups and persons on the basis of biological, physiological, and sociocultural factors, as sex, age, or ethnicity, resulting in the assignment of roles and status within a society.

Words from The Benefits of Cliques written by Andrew Smiler,

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#soc3 #culturalvariation p2

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evangeline01posts · 5 years ago

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How Authentically Can I use Life Experiences to Create an Engaging Piece of Work?

When in early 2018, Anoushka Warden’s autobiographical play “My Mum’s A Twat” opened at the Royal Court, she was hailed ‘fearless’ by Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone. She went on to say of her first reading of the play that she was “Blown away by it – by the energy of the storytelling. I became breathless, struck by the writing’s musicality and by its title. I was amazed by the resilience of this young girl who was effectively abandoned.” However, Warden at that time was not and never had intended to be a writer: her one woman show came from a stream of conscious writing based and grounded completely in the reality of her own situation. As Mark Twain said, “Truth is stranger than fiction”, and Warden certainly proves that this is true. On a similar note, there are plenty of writers such as, Tennessee Williams, who express parts of their own life experiences in their work such as when Williams gives a nod to his own childhood in “A Glass Menagerie” or certain writers that seemingly ground their work in fiction as seen through the lens of “Fleabag” in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s one woman show. As such I wanted to investigate how I can use the life experiences of those around me to create an authentic piece of work examining where the boundary between complete honesty and dramatic license exists.

My first aim was to create a piece of work that was accessible to the community it was based upon whilst also being accessible to people on a universal level. I decided I wanted to create a piece of work based on my Nana, Heather, and the stories she’s told of being from a fishing town in the 60’s as these had gripped me throughout my upbringing. This would also give me a clear target audience. The Grimsby fishing industry was massive and involved a network of families that would have a relationship with the piece because they had their own understanding of the time. On presenting the idea, one piece of feedback I got was from my tutor Jayne Courtney. She was born close by to Grimsby, in Hull and commented that as Hull also had docks and a fishing community she too could relate ‘directly to the story and nostalgia of her own experience’s’. However here I was only fulfilling one part of my aim, I needed to make sure that the play would be received by people who had no concept of that time so as to create something with widespread appeal. Writer David Edgar once said, ‘The play text is both a blueprint and record, but also has an independent life’. This gave me the confidence to free the story up. Whilst I was documenting my Nana’s life, I could allow myself to use elements of dramatic license to help shape a story of its own. I started to think about the elements of the story that anyone could resonate with; her turbulent relationship with her rebellious husband, Keith– which taken out of context is really just a story about love and family, something that everyone has some understanding of and can connect to. I therefore wanted to draw on a particular story about the time my Mum found an article about Keith in the Bygones, a section of the modern-day newspaper that looks back on stories from the past. He was wanted for being involved in a shooting at a local pub. The reality was his friend had a starting gun that he pulled out- completely harmless. However, what if, for my story, the gun was real, and it had been used to harm someone and Heather was in some way recounting this. As tutor Karen Henthorn had taught me in my acting training to ‘always play the highest stakes’ I wanted to transfer this to my writing and play the ultimate scenario. This would make the story much more about a woman witnessing a betrayal from her husband and could arise many feelings of anger or confusion, of pain and protection: all of which every person must have experienced on some level in their life. Falling in love in the 60’s really is no different to falling in love today, illustrated extremely well in Baz Luhrmann’s interpretation of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, for example. So, in doing this, I hope I opened the piece up to a universal audience who could recognise Heather’s emotional journey and connect in some way to it.

The next step, now that I had a clear idea of what I wanted the piece to be and who I wanted it to be aimed at was to start the writing process and achieve a first draft. Taking inspiration from the likes of Warden, I began stream of conscious writing. However, the work quickly descended into a ramble and mesh of different stories my Nana had told me about her and my Grandad thus lacking clear direction. My second aim was to create a clear story arc, where a change occurred in the state and situation of the character from beginning to end. So, coming back to that, I decided to use a technique I had learnt from reading up on Waller- Bridge’s creative process in “Fleabag”. She talked of always having three things going on for the character in the scene at any one time, as seen in the first section of ‘Fleabag’ in which she is late for a job interview, sweaty and hot but really needing to impress. She went on to say when you achieve this “You instantly have reality”. By this I think she means as humans we are hardly ever focusing on one want, we always have multiple metaphorical plates to balance and are brains are aware of so many different things coming at us. Applying this to my work, if Heather was only having a conversation with the audience, there is nothing else going on and we are far removed from reality. I therefore decided to put someone else in the space, a Police Officer to rely the story too, someone who was looking for her husband Keith. He was kept imaginary to allow the focus to still be on Heather and her story but giving the character someone to speak directly to gave her a reason for speaking that developed into an objective. If the Officer was around enquiring after Keith, why wasn’t he there? Maybe Heather was protecting him? I quickly started to have my 3 things going on; Heather outwardly trying to placate and find out what the officer wanted whilst inwardly worrying about the disappearance of her partner. It gave a really interesting conflict between the show she was trying to put on against her own fear’s. I just needed a third. I came up with the concept that she was due to pick her daughter up from her mother’s, it provided a reason for her to want to see the Officer out and another thing weighing her down. This also meant I could start the piece with a really clear story and journey for it to go on. This was because all of these things Heather was battling put her right in the middle of the action with an active want. It wasn’t just a woman recounting some stories. Whilst this slightly altered the reality again, it would give me a clear set up to fill the imagined world with entirely real scenarios.

The next part was to then sustain this strong opening and continue the narrative arc and journey. The Officer had given me the means to do this. By the characters wanting something from each other it could allow them to move, affect and thus change one another. I wasn’t sure how exactly I wanted to do this but I took inspiration from Steve Waters who commented; “The idea of sitting down and working it all out and then fitting the dialogue in is a lot of nonsense because dialogue is about action, it is about the energy in the play… writer who has to get through it minute-by-minute, second-by-second, word-by-word to get to the next word.” Therefore, I thought the best way to do this was to just let the two characters live in the space. To find out what was going to happen and how they would push each other around. In order to do that I decided I had to write the dialogue of the Officer, so that his arc was as clear as Heather’s; even if I took him out again it was not enough to imagine him anymore, he had to be real. In doing this I could start to examine the status of the Officer, especially at that time and how that affected the normally outspoken Heather. At what points was she bold in her responses to him and at what points could he silence her to submission. I also found the writing reached a natural point in which, under the strain of the pretense, she dropped her guard to the Officer and revealed that she didn’t know where her partner was. This changed the dynamic and relationship between them, it felt natural that the Officer would have some sympathy for her, dropping his status to identify with her on an equal and human level. When I then looked at removing the Officer’s parts again I found the scene now had a clearer journey for Heather that was heavily influenced by her now clear relationship with the Officer.

Now I had written a very rough draft of my story I wanted to take my work to an audience and see what reaction it could ascertain. Duncan Macmillan says his biggest surprise about having his work performed by actors is that ‘however much I’ve worked on a play before rehearsal, I’ll still need to cut and rewrite almost everything’ and I think this is so, because different people will have their own artistic responses and thoughts on your piece of work that will naturally force the writing to change in order to accommodate and actually, I know from my own training, when collaboration occurs the results can be even more fruitful than what one person could achieve on their own.

I therefore wanted to read the work so far to my peers and see what response I would achieve. But in light of quarantine this proved tricky. Instead, I picked certain sections of my work to record and send to them and receive feedback on. A section of the work I performed for them can be found in Appendixes C. I wanted to highlight this particular section to talk about in my rationale for it received especially important feedback. From Reader A it was said that the work seemed especially ‘chunky’ and ‘far less conversational’ because of the absence of the Officer’s lines. Further to this, Reader B, said what was happening to Heather would make her ‘a bit more all over the place’. It was also felt that a lot of Heather’s responses were ‘engineered’ as they were having to ‘spell out’ the officer’s lines that were deleted. This was going against my third aim to create a ‘nuanced piece of dialogue’.

My first thought was to reinstate the lines and think about having the Officer live in the space however I then remembered Alice Birch’s ‘Blank’ that I had recently seen performed. There is a scene between a young girl and a police officer were his lines were deleted. The first thing I noticed about her work was that the policeman’s lines were very minimal, he let the girl reveal her information and only prompted her at times. For instance, the Officer says, ‘Your friend’ and rather than the girl simply answering ‘yes’ she goes on to say ‘He hadn’t decided to have a party. He had an empty house – his parents weren’t there’, so rather than the Officer driving the conversation and asking everything, the girl offers up the information herself. I therefore decided I needed to have longer periods of time were Heather was speaking and in control and not the Officer. This proved tricky at first in my story he is firmly in control and on the front foot asking Heather questions. However, as was said in my feedback ‘she’s all over the place’ so therefore her thoughts can be too. For example, she can protest Keith’s innocence and quickly switch to discovering the Officer’s motives for being there and quickly switch to asking him to leave and he definitely wouldn’t need to tell her how serious it was. The officer could tell her the initial information and then the rest of it could unfold for her without his interference, as if she is playing out the situation in her mind. It also helped to achieve the next part of my aim: ‘what is not said carries as much weight as what is’. Heather would be quick to get rid of the Officer because she knows full well of Keith’s involvement in the incident and so deflecting the blame onto the Officer’s need to ‘catch the proper criminals’ would make sense. By re drafting the piece with this feedback in mind I felt it really worked to keep the Officer as an imagined force and still created nuanced dialogue. In fact, my hope is in performance, this will only be heightened because you don’t know exactly what the Officer says so hopefully each individual audience member will take away different thoughts and feelings towards the relationship and what was going on.

In working on the story and dialogue of the piece I had started to come further away from the original truth of the story and whilst I wanted the piece to have elements of dramatic license it had to be mostly authentic. I decided I could channel this really effectively through the character of Heather herself. As the great Arthur Miller said, “everything we are at every moment is alive within us”. By this I believe he is saying that humans are complex, and we have many faces and moods and opinions that exist within us and can come out at any one time. It’s that detail that makes us real and Heather already had that level of detail before I even put pen to paper because she is real. She has years of life experience bundled into her words and at the age of 72 knows exactly who she is. I wanted to harness this and put it into the piece so her voice could shine through. Water’s also went on to say of dialogue “The dialogue is not just about, “I like the feel of that dialogue.” It is something to do with what is happening with the dialogue; the way that it shows you how people behave; the way it shows you about how life is.” This is exactly why I think Warden’s play had a ‘musicality’ and ‘energy’. She was using her own rhythms and speech patterns and opinions to be really frank about her life. I saw little reason as to why I couldn’t channel that in my piece. I therefore decided to go and speak to my Nana again and with her permission, record her talking to me about the stories I had chosen to include in my writing. Whilst the piece couldn’t be totally verbatim (which would leave little scope for dramatic license) I could pay special attention to the way she told these stories and how she used her words to create an accurate portrayal of her. A section of this recording can be found in the appendix. I wanted to make sure Heather’s tone came out in the text and so I started going through it listening to the recording and redrafting moments that opposed her manner. One thing I noticed and suppose had always known was how direct and forthright my Nana is and was. Highlighted by the frank tone she had when recounting stories, for example, when she talks of my Grandad ‘being thrown out’ of the Winter Garden’s she states it was a ‘rare occasion’ that he had done nothing wrong. And when she subtly implied that if he hadn’t asked her to marry him ‘the night was young’ and she may have left with someone else. I decided to pull these phrases out and use them in the text. By doing the character really started to gain detail and become the real person behind it, that I know and love.

During our conversation she started to show me pictures of both her and Grandad. Which can be found in the appendix also. Looking at what they were wearing and how they presented themselves revealed even more to me about who they were at that time. As the Oscar’s Costume Design Instructional guide puts it simply ‘In real life, clothes define our taste and are an expression of our personality’. So, this was another layer I had to consider. In all of her picture’s Heather appears extremely ‘on trend’, perhaps the most striking is her aged 15 in a beautiful white coat. Thus, suggesting her outlook and ideas were slightly modern for the time. However, there was an element of the well put together housewife also present in her look. Already the details of what makes her, her were unfolding. I decided one of the best ways to give an immediate nod to the reader, which would potentially be the actor portraying her, on how they could achieve this character was to give a little character bio in the stage directions. This would touch upon all of the key traits that had come to light from my interview with Heather and I gave special attention to her clothing as another way to elude to her personality. In doing this I had started to blend totally authentic experiences with the drama of the piece to create something steeped in truth.

In conclusion, I believe you can use life experiences to create an authentic piece of work. I think I have demonstrated this in my piece as the character, story, dialogue and detail of the work is all firmly grounded in the truth. However, in order to bring my version of the story to a new audience the concept and overall arc of the story contained elements of dramatic license. But I think overall both fact and fiction blended together seamlessly, to create this story.

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