#jude & miles.

[iguessweallcrazyithinktho]

It was the kim curse

[denimbex1986]

'Is Tom Ripley gay? For nearly 70 years, the answer has bedeviled readers of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley, the story of a diffident but ambitious young man who slides into and then brutally ends the life of a wealthy American expatriate, as well as the four sequels she produced fitfully over the following 36 years. It has challenged the directors — French, British, German, Italian, Canadian, American — who have tried to bring Ripley to the screen, including in the latest adaptation by Steven Zaillian, now on Netflix. And it appears even to have flummoxed Ripley’s creator, a lesbian with a complicated relationship to queer sexuality. In a 1988 interview, shortly before she undertook writing the final installment of the series, Ripley Under Water, Highsmith seemed determined to dismiss the possibility. “I don’t think Ripley is gay,” she said — “adamantly,” in the characterization of her interviewer. “He appreciates good looks in other men, that’s true. But he’s married in later books. I’m not saying he’s very strong in the sex department. But he makes it in bed with his wife.”

The question isn’t a minor one. Ripley’s killing of Dickie Greenleaf — the most complicated, and because it’s so murkily motivated, the most deeply rattling of the many murders the character eventually commits — has always felt intertwined with his sexuality. Does Tom kill Dickie because he wants to be Dickie, because he wants what Dickie has, because he loves Dickie, because he knows what Dickie thinks of him, or because he can’t bear the fact that Dickie doesn’t love him? Ordinarily, I’m not a big fan of completely ignoring authorial intent, and I’m inclined to let novelists have the last word on factual information about their own creations. But Highsmith, a cantankerous alcoholic misanthrope who was long past her best days when she made that statement, may have forgotten, or wanted to disown, her own initial portrait of Tom Ripley, which is — especially considering the time in which it was written — perfumed with unmistakable implication.

Consider the case that Highsmith puts forward in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Tom, a single man, lives a hand-to-mouth existence in New York with a male roommate who is, ahem, a window dresser. Before that, he lived with an older man with some money and a controlling streak, a sugar daddy he contemptuously describes as “an old maid”; Tom still has the key to his apartment. Most of his social circle — the names he tosses around when introducing himself to Dickie — are gay men. The aunt who raised him, he bitterly recalls, once said of him, “Sissy! He’s a sissy from the ground up. Just like his father!” Tom, who compulsively rehearses his public interactions and just as compulsively relives his public humiliations, recalls a particularly stinging moment when he was shamed by a friend for a practiced line he liked to use repeatedly at parties: “I can’t make up my mind whether I like men or women, so I’m thinking of giving them both up.” It has “always been good for a laugh, the way he delivered it,” he thinks, while admitting to himself that “there was a lot of truth in it.” Fortunately, Tom has another go-to party trick. Still nurturing vague fantasies of becoming an actor, he knows how to delight a small room with a set of monologues he’s contrived. All of his signature characters are, by the way, women.

This was an extremely specific set of ornamentations for a male character in 1955, a time when homosexuality was beginning to show up with some frequency in novels but almost always as a central problem, menace, or tragedy rather than an incidental characteristic. And it culminates in a gruesome scene that Zaillian’s Ripley replicates to the last detail in the second of its eight episodes: The moment when Dickie, the louche playboy whose luxe permanent-vacation life in the Italian coastal town of Atrani with his girlfriend, Marge, has been infiltrated by Tom, discovers Tom alone in his bedroom, imitating him while dressed in his clothes. It is, in both Highsmith’s and Zaillian’s tellings, as mortifying for Tom as being caught in drag, because essentially it is drag but drag without exaggeration or wit, drag that is simply suffused with a desire either to become or to possess the object of one’s envy and adoration. It repulses Dickie, who takes it as a sexual threat and warns Tom, “I’m not queer,” then adds, lashingly, “Marge thinks you are.” In the novel, Tom reacts by going pale. He hotly denies it but not before feeling faint. “Nobody had ever said it outright to him,” Highsmith writes, “not in this way.” Not a single gay reader in the mid-1950s would have failed to recognize this as the dread of being found out, quickly disguised as the indignity of being misunderstood.

And it seemed to frighten Highsmith herself. In the second novel, Ripley Under Ground, published 15 years later, she backed away from her conception of Tom, leaping several years forward and turning him into a soigné country gentleman living a placid, idyllic life in France with an oblivious wife. None of the sequels approach the cold, challenging terror of the first novel — a challenge that has been met in different ways, each appropriate to their era, by the three filmmakers who have taken on The Talented Mr. Ripley. Zaillian’s ice-cold, diamond-hard Ripley just happens to be the first to deliver a full and uncompromising depiction of one of the most unnerving characters in American crime fiction.

The first Ripley adaptation, René Clément’s French-language drama Purple Noon, is much beloved for its sun-saturated atmosphere of endless indolence and for the tone of alienated ennui that anticipated much of the decade to come; the movie was also a showcase for its Ripley, the preposterously sexy, maddeningly aloof Alain Delon. And therein lies the problem: A Ripley who is preposterously sexy is not a Ripley who has ever had to deal with soul-deep humiliation, and a Ripley who is maddeningly aloof is not going to be able to worm his way into anyone’s life. Purple Noon is not especially willing (or able — it was released in 1960) to explore Ripley’s possible homosexuality. Though the movie itself suggests that no man or woman could fail to find him alluring, what we get with Delon is, in a way, a less complex character type, a gorgeous and magnetic smooth criminal who, as if even France had to succumb to the hoariest dictates of the Hollywood Production Code, gets the punishment due to him by the closing credits. It’s delectable daylit noir, but nothing unsettling lingers.

Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, released in 1999, is far better; it couldn’t be more different from the current Ripley, but it’s a legitimate reading that proves that Highsmith’s novel is complex and elastic enough to accommodate wildly varying interpretations. A committed Matt Damon makes a startlingly fine Tom Ripley, ingratiating and appealing but always just slightly inept or needy or wrong; Jude Law — peak Jude Law — is such an effortless golden boy that he manages the necessary task of making Damon’s Tom seem a bit dim and dull; and acting-era Gwyneth Paltrow is a spirited and touchingly vulnerable Marge.

Minghella grapples with Tom’s sexual orientation in an intelligently progressive-circa-1999 way; he assumes that Highsmith would have made Tom overtly gay if the culture of 1955 had allowed it, and he runs all the way with the idea. He gives us a Tom Ripley who is clearly, if not in love with Dickie, wildly destabilized by his attraction to him. And in a giant departure from the novel, he elevates a character Highsmith had barely developed, Peter Smith-Kingsley (played by Jack Davenport) into a major one, a man with whom we’re given to understand that Ripley, with two murders behind him and now embarking on a comfortable and well-funded European life, has fallen in love. It doesn’t end well for either of them. A heartsick Tom eventually kills Peter, too, rather than risk discovery — it’s his third murder, one more than in the novel — and we’re meant to take this as the tragedy of his life: That, having come into the one identity that could have made him truly happy (gay man), he will always have to subsume it to the identity he chose in order to get there (murderer). This is nowhere that Highsmith ever would have gone — and that’s fine, since all of these movies are not transcriptions but interpretations. It’s as if Minghella, wandering around inside the palace of the novel, decided to open doors Highsmith had left closed to see what might be behind them. The result is the most touching and sympathetic of Ripleys — and, as a result, far from the most frightening.

Zaillian is not especially interested in courting our sympathy. Working with the magnificent cinematographer Robert Elswit, who makes every black-and-white shot a stunning, tense, precise duel between light and shadow, he turns coastal Italy not into an azure utopia but into a daunting vertical maze, alternately paradise, purgatory, and inferno, in which Tom Ripley is forever struggling; no matter where he turns, he always seems to be at the bottom of yet another flight of stairs.

It’s part of the genius of this Ripley — and a measure of how deeply Zaillian has absorbed the book — that the biggest departures he makes from Highsmith somehow manage to bring his work closer to her scariest implications. There are a number of minor changes, but I want to talk about the big ones, the most striking of which is the aging of both Tom and Dickie. In the novel, they’re both clearly in their 20s — Tom is a young striver patching together an existence as a minor scam artist who steals mail and impersonates a collection agent, bilking guileless suckers out of just enough odd sums for him to get by, and Dickie is a rich man’s son whose father worries that he has extended his post-college jaunt to Europe well past its sowing-wild-oats expiration date. Those plot points all remain in place in the miniseries, but Andrew Scott, who plays Ripley, is 47, and Johnny Flynn, who plays Dickie, is 41; onscreen, they register, respectively, as about 40 and 35.

This changes everything we think we know about the characters from the first moments of episode one. As we watch Ripley in New York, dourly plying his miserable, penny-ante con from a tiny, barren shoe-box apartment that barely has room for a bed as wide as a prison cot (this is not a place to which Ripley has ever brought guests), we learn a lot: This Ripley is not a struggler but a loser. He’s been at this a very long time, and this is as far as he’s gotten. We can see, in an early scene set in a bank, that he’s wearily familiar with almost getting caught. If he ever had dreams, he probably buried them years earlier. And Dickie, as a golden boy, is pretty tarnished himself — he isn’t a wild young man but an already-past-his-prime disappointment, a dilettante living off of Daddy’s money while dabbling in painting (he’s not good at it) and stringing along a girlfriend who’s stuck on him but probably, in her heart, knows he isn’t likely to amount to much.

Making Tom older also allows Zaillian to mount a persuasive argument about his sexuality that hews closely to Highsmith’s vision (if not to her subsequent denial). If the Ripley of 1999 was gay, the Ripley of 2024 is something else: queer, in both the newest and the oldest senses of the word. Scott’s impeccable performance finds a thousand shades of moon-faced blankness in Ripley’s sociopathy, and Elswit’s endlessly inventive lighting of his minimal expressions, his small, ambivalent mouth and high, smooth forehead, often makes him look slightly uncanny, like a Daniel Clowes or Charles Burns drawing. Scott’s Ripley is a man who has to practice every vocal intonation, every smile or quizzical look, every interaction. If he ever had any sexual desire, he seems to have doused it long ago. “Is he queer? I don’t know,” Marge writes in a letter to Dickie (actually to Tom, now impersonating his murder victim). “I don’t think he’s normal enough to have any kind of sex life.” This, too, is from the novel, almost word for word, and Zaillian uses it as a north star. The Ripley he and Scott give us is indeed queer — he’s off, amiss, not quite right, and Marge knows it. (In the novel, she adds, “All right, he may not be queer [meaning gay]. He’s just a nothing, which is worse.”) Ripley’s possible asexuality — or more accurately, his revulsion at any kind of expressed sexuality — makes his killing of Dickie even more horrific because it robs us of lust as a possible explanation. This is the first adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley I’ve seen in which even Ripley may not know why he murders Dickie.

When I heard that Zaillian (who both wrote and directed all of the episodes) was working on a Ripley adaptation, I wondered if he might replace sexual identity, the great unequalizer of 1999, with economic inequity, a more of-the-moment choice. Minghella’s version played with the idea; every person and object and room and vista Damon’s Ripley encountered was so lush and beautiful and gleaming that it became, in some scenes, the story of a man driven mad by having his nose pressed up against the glass that separated him from a world of privilege (and from the people in that world who were openly contemptuous of his gaucheries). Zaillian doesn’t do that — a lucky thing, since the heavily Ripley-influenced film Saltburn played with those very tropes recently and effectively. Whether intentional or not, one side effect of his decision to shoot Ripley in black and white is that it slightly tamps down any temptation to turn Italy into an occasion for wealth porn and in turn to make Tom an eat-the-rich surrogate. This Italy looks gorgeous in its own way, but it’s also a world in which even the most beautiful treasures appear threatened by encroaching dampness or decay or rot. Zaillian gives us a Ripley who wants Dickie’s life of money and nice things and art (though what he’s thinking when he stares at all those Caravaggios is anybody’s guess). But he resists the temptation to make Dickie and Marge disdainful about Tom’s poverty, or mean to the servants, or anything that might make his killing more palatable. This Tom is not a class warrior any more than he’s a victim of the closet or anything else that would make him more explicable in contemporary terms. He’s his own thing — a universe of one.

Anyway, sexuality gives any Ripley adapter more to toy with than money does, and the way Zaillian uses it also plays effectively into another of his intuitive leaps — his decision to present Dickie’s friend and Tom’s instant nemesis Freddie Miles not as an obnoxious loudmouth pest (in Minghella’s movie, he was played superbly by a loutish Philip Seymour Hoffman) but as a frosty, sexually ambiguous, gender-fluid-before-it-was-a-term threat to Tom’s stability, excellently portrayed by Eliot Sumner (Sting’s kid), a nonbinary actor who brings perceptive to-the-manor-born disdain to Freddie’s interactions with Tom. They loathe each other on sight: Freddie instantly clocks Tom as a pathetic poser and possible closet case, and Tom, seeing in Freddie a man who seems to wear androgyny with entitlement and no self-consciousness, registers him as a danger, someone who can see too much, too clearly. This leads, of course, to murder and to a grisly flourish in the scene in which Tom, attempting to get rid of Freddie’s body, walks his upright corpse, his bloodied head hidden under a hat, along a street at night, pretending he’s holding up a drunken friend. When someone approaches, Tom, needing to make his possible alibi work, turns away, slamming his own body into Freddie’s up against a wall and kissing him passionately on the lips. That’s not in Highsmith’s novel, but I imagine it would have gotten at least a dry smile out of her; in Ripley’s eight hours, this necrophiliac interlude is Tom’s sole sexual interaction.

No adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley would work without a couple of macabre jokes like that, and Zaillian serves up some zesty ones, including an appearance by John Malkovich, the reigning king/queen of sexual ambiguity (and himself a past Ripley, in 2002’s Ripley’s Game), nodding to Tom’s future by playing a character who doesn’t show up until book two. He also gives us a witty final twist that suggests that Ripley may not even make it to that sequel, one that reminds us how fragile and easily upended his whole scheme has been. Because Ripley, in this conception, is no mastermind; Zaillian’s most daring and thoughtful move may have been the excision of the word “talented” from the title. In the course of the show, we see him toy with being an editor, a writer (all those letters!), a painter, an art appreciator, and a wealthy man, often convincingly — but always as an impersonation. He gives us a Tom who is fiercely determined but so drained of human affect when he’s not being watched that we come to realize that his only real skill is a knack for concentrating on one thing to the exclusion of everything else. What we watch him get away with may be the first thing in his life he’s really good at (and the last moment of the show suggests that really good may not be good enough). This is not a Tom with a brilliant plan but a Tom who just barely gets away with it, a Tom who can never relax.

Tom’s sexuality is ultimately an enigma that Zaillian chooses to leave unsolved — as it remains at the end of the novel. Highsmith’s decision to turn Tom into a roguish heterosexual with a taste for art fraud before the start of the second novel has never felt entirely persuasive, and it’s clearly a resolution in which Zaillian couldn’t be less interested. Toward the end of Ripley, Tom is asked by a detective to describe the kind of man Dickie was. He transforms Dickie’s suspicion about his queerness into a new narrative, telling the private investigator that Dickie was in love with him: “I told him I found him pathetic and that I wanted nothing more to do with him.” But it’s the crushing verdict he delivers just before that line that will stay with me, a moment in which Tom, almost in a reverie, might well be describing himself: “Everything about him was an act. He knew he was supremely untalented.” In the end, Scott and Zaillian give us a Ripley for an era in which evil is so often meted out by human automatons with even tempers and bland self-justification: He is methodical, ordinary, mild, and terrifying.'

[lovebytesss]

blk men 🔛🔝

[urfavnegronerd]

smb pls write a a fluffy comfort thingy w miles 42 x reader or spencer reid x reader or derek morgan x reader or jude bellingham x reader (OR ALL THREE) who's hyper independent as shit but always feels bad after being hyper independent but reader feels bad asking for literally anything and never wants to inconvenience anybody so she tries to keep requests to a minimum

please u guys i'm struggling so bad i had prom yesterday and im feeling a lot of feelings but im meeting w my guidance counselor tmrw so don't worry but pls guys i'll love u forever

[decladams]

swam more than 2000 yards for the first time in like three weeks today and god it felt good

[duranduratulsa]

Up next on my Halloween 🎃 movie marathon...Halloween (2018) on amazing blu-ray! #movie #movies #horror #Halloween #halloween11 #johncarpenter #michaelmyers #theshape #lauriestrode #jamieleecurtis #andimatichak #jamesjudecourtney #dylanarnold #nickcastle #JudyGreer #WillPatton #halukbilginer #pjsoles #OmarJDorsey #jibrailnantambu #DIVATYLER #drewscheid #MichaelSmallwood #CarmelaMcNeal #milesrobbins #VirginiaGardner #rhianrees #JeffersonHall #meenopeluce #TobyHuss #vincemattis #2010s #bluray

[html-nae]

I’m dying here y’all… PLEASE message me and request something please I’m literally begging.

Who I write for:

Miles Morales (1610 & 42)

Hobie Brown (this is new territory for me 🤭)

TASM!Spiderman

Jude Bellingham

Blaise Zabini

Idk maybe some others but that’s all I can think of rn. I can’t think of anything I don’t write for so yk just have at it and request some stuff 🤭 <3

[moonchildcaffeine]

I wouldn't explain even if I could-

[denimbex1986]

'There is a scene towards the beginning of Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film, The Talented Mr Ripley, when Jude Law’s character, Dickie Greenleaf, asks Matt Damon’s Tom Ripley what his talent is – to which literature’s most famous fraud replies with: “Forging signatures, telling lies, impersonating practically anybody”. Yet there is another talent of Tom’s that is essential in his ability to deceive those around him into thinking that he is one of them – and that’s his sartorial savoir-faire.

Fashion is of vital importance to Tom, in both the novel by Patricia Highsmith and subsequent adaptations, including that 1999 film, but also 1960’s French New Wave retelling, Purple Noon, and the upcoming black-and-white Netflix version, Ripley, starring Andrew Scott in the titular role. The style of the 1999 movie – Jude Law’s polo shirts, white trousers and boat shoes, Gwyneth Paltrow’s high-waist bikinis, broderie anglaise tops and peasant skirts – is still referenced by designers today (it won costume designer Ann Roth an Oscar at the time).

And while Matt Damon’s character is certainly au fait with fashion, he’s without the means to access it in the same way that the other characters are: he has one shirt he washes out nightly, a threadbare cord jacket Dickie offers to replace, and one pair of dress shoes that he has to wear to the beach. In many ways, the film is at pains to emphasise that, though Tom is good at what he does, he’s not quite good enough – after all, Dickie, Marge (Paltrow) and Freddie Miles (Philip Seymour Hoffman) all figure him out. Yet it is with fashion that he manages to move in these circles. In fact, it’s how he accesses them in the first place, having borrowed a Princeton jacket for a piano recital when he first encounters Dickie’s father, who mistakes him for a student and pleads with him to fetch home his wayward son.

In the novel, Tom is obsessed with clothing, spending hours touching Dickie’s shirts and jackets or fingering the jewellery on his dressing table, saying that doing so “reminded him he existed”. His spectacles serve as a way to switch between characters – like a villainous Clark Kent and Superman – while his decision to wear Dickie’s monogrammed velvet slippers and signet rings after he has (spoiler alert) murdered him, alerts Marge and Freddie to the fact something isn’t right.

Fashion is often used by literature’s anti-heroes as a significant tool in their arsenal to deceive...

“The way we dress does, to an extent, affect how people see us, but it’s context dependent,” explains Dr Dion Terrelonge, a fashion psychologist. “It’s about alignment and how we fit in with people’s expectations. We like to think we don’t judge others based on what they are wearing, but we do. It’s not a negative judgement, necessarily; it’s about interpreting and categorising. It helps us navigate the world.”

Whether or not you wield that power for good or for evil is the differentiator. “When you wear an item of clothing that you associate with a certain person, lifestyle or behaviour, then you’re far more likely to take on those things,” explains Dr Terrelonge. “When people copy other people’s style, they’re trying to align themselves with them and their lifestyle. It’s walking 100 miles in their shoes. It’s shorthand for, ‘this is the kind of person I am’ – you look the part.”

For conners, it’s “fake it til you make it” or “dress for the job you want” writ large. As Tom famously says in his final speech in the film, “I thought it was better to be a fake somebody, than a real nobody.”'

[yutopia-eleftheria]

Inazuma Eleven Future : Manchester City

Here is a new concept/project that I wanted to start for quite a while already. The concept is called "Inazuma Eleven Future". This concept consists of creating new teams with the Inazuma Eleven characters, but in existing clubs. In other words, in which club would said player play at.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

At first I wanted to do Paris Saint-Germain since I am French, but I changed my mind and did Manchester City because it is one of my favorite clubs of all time.

Inazuma Manchester City :

Coach : Ray Dark

Manager : Miles Ryan

Formation : 3-4-3

Players :

Terry Archibald ; Goalkeeper (Air)

Nathan Swift ; Left-Back (Air)

Frank Foreman ; Centre-Back (Fire)

Lucy "Icer" Hailstone ; Right-Back (Air)

-----

Valentin Eisner ; Centre Midfielder (Air)

Flora ; Striker (Air)

Jude Sharp ; Centre Midfielder (Air) {Captain}

-----

Jordan "Janus" Greenway ; Right Wing (Wood)

Philip Owen ; Striker

Alan Master ; Defender (Air) (Sub)

Ben "Beluga" North ; Goalkeeper (Earth) (Sub)

Dakkar Nemo ; Left Wing (Air)

Ethan "Heat" Whitering ; Midfielder (Wood) (Sub)

-----

-----

Dilshod Sokurov ; Centre Forward (Earth)

-----

Sail Bluesea ; Forward (Fire) (Sub)

-----

Nenel ; Defender (Fire) (Sub)

Note that I create a uniform different from the classic ones we see in real life so it can be a little more unique. But it is still inspired by real life jerseys.

Manchester City Players and Goalkeeper Kit (Captain's Armband is yellow)

If you want to do fanarts of this team/club, I will be happy to see it ! ♥

[nxpood]

just came home from watching spiderman across the spider verse..... i cant stop thinking of spiderman!jude 🤭🤭🤭🤭

[spynorth]

hey, my mates - remember that may is national cancer research month here in the usa. there are lots of fundraisers being hosted by research hospitals - so join a fundraiser (even if its just the activity to bring awareness to others! no donations needed) in honor of your friends, family or that random tumblr roleplayer who writes lucas north that you've seen cross your dash once or twice. <3

[graftisms]

JOSH & MILES & JUDE & JENNY — DAY FORTY

location :   party boat / bar area

featuring :   @heatwayve & @gotatext & @blondcs

MILES

"so, odds are, if there are aliens out there, they already walk among us," miles explains, sitting down to slide josh another beer. "and if that's the case, then statistically, someone here is a bona fide extraterrestrial. or maybe even someones." 

JOSHUA

"based on what statistic?" he huffs out a laugh, immediately taking a swig of the beer. "you think one in..." he looks around the boat, trying to see if he can count heads, "—like, twenty people could be an alien? if i was gonna bet on anyone, it'd be frankie." but then again, she is just from florida.

MILES

"science. the vast, unending possibilities of space, perhaps?" miles jokes, following josh's line of sight around the villa. "aw, don't say that," he groans, "already fancy the pants off her, i don't need you putting these fantasies in my head."

JOSHUA

"that's not statistics," he points out, a smile on his lips. it doesn't disappear at the mention of miles fancying frankie, though it does make his eyes roll good-naturedly. "oh please. you'd let her probe you any day."

MILES

"math and science are best buds, they go hand in hand. like beer 'n pizza," he argues. josh's eyeroll just makes his smile press into his cheeks harder. "realistically, alien medical tech is probably more legit than that," realistically, he says. "but that's not a mental image i'm hating, feel free to keep going. she looks fit tonight, huh?" it's barely a question, but now his eyes are wandering the room.

JOSHUA

"still not hearing any numbers," he points out, leaning back in his seat. "oh, i'm sorry, i didn't realize you were an expert on alien medical tech." josh takes a swig of his beer, used to conversations like this with miles. "she looks... fine. why's she wearing that giant ass jacket?" she'd look better with less clothes on, josh thinks. platonically. "you still have her in the doghouse?"

MILES

"at least one-in-fifteen chance someone's an alien on this boat. that's the drake equation, bitch," that's definitely not the drake equation. but close enough. "not an expert. just a...scholar," miles delineates. or a guy that's seen too many episodes of star trek. "'cause she's got that tiny skirt on. it's called balance," miles nods, as if he's also a scholar of fashion. frankie's legs are just about his favorite part anyway, plus he thinks she looks cool, like a fast and furious character or something. "nah, it's not like that. we're just not, like, all in committed or anything. has she been talking to anyone else?"

JOSHUA

"did drake make that up, seriously?" he actually has no idea what miles is saying, but he'll go along with it anyway. "i don't know, she looks like she took a wrong turn to go to a formula 1 race. but yeah, she's hot." because duh, frankie's a hot girl. "bro, who else would she be talking to?" josh asks, with a laugh. "c'mon, we both know that's not what's going on here. you're exploring your options, which you're well in your right to do, and she's waiting for you to make up your mind. am i wrong?"

MILES

"yeah, right after he wrote marvin's room," miles jokes, because he's sure josh was also kidding. "well, she can wave my flag any time," he says, far too confidently for an innuendo that makes no fucking sense. "shit, i don't know. at least half the villa's into her. but yeah, i kind of...am just curious to know if she meant it, when she said she felt sure about me," he explains. "so, yeah. i'm still 'exploring my options'," he adds, drawing air quotes around the words with a wide grin.

JOSHUA

he laughs because he probably understands a drake reference, even though his writer clearly does not. josh almost makes a reference about frankie being the one in the driver's seat, but he realizes that for once she's actually not. he'd be lying if he said he didn't get some entertainment out of their relationship, finding couple drama so much more interesting when it's not his. "half the villa is into her?" josh laughs loudly. "what villa are you in? who is into her? victoria? that girl wouldn't be caught dead dating someone from florida." she actually seems more uppity than naomi, but maybe he's biased. "how's exploring your options going, anyway? i saw you and eden yesterday."

MILES

"well, i thought eden was more into frankie than me up until yesterday, to be honest," miles admits. "our date was all friend vibes, and she asked frankie if she was open without asking me anything like that. so, i figured..." he shrugs, though his grin turns slightly sly, "but i guess i was wrong. and i'm not mad about it, she's really cool. knows all these weird facts about animals and shit. and she's proper fit...i'll probably pull her in a moment."

JOSHUA

"and you guys aren't friend vibes now, are you?" he asks, though it's mostly just egging —because again, he'd seen them kiss by the pool. "look at you and all these blondes," he laughs, bumping his shoulders. "you gonna go for jenny next? if so, i wish you luck."

MILES

"obviously not," miles grin widens at that, can't help himself. "what, you think i'd have a shot?" also obviously not.

JOSHUA

"yeah, totally," he lies. "i mean, as long as jude isn't around, because he'll try to kick your ass. actually, better yet... give it a go, why not?"

MILES

"if you think jude could kick my ass, i'm not listening to any of your advice ever again. that's way off," miles shakes his head, though he's grinning. granted, jude seems like the kind of guy to have a knife in his shoe or something.

JOSHUA

"i didn't say that," he laughs, "i said try. we all know you could take him." well, maybe not jude. or jenny, if the dick's that good to be delusional.

MILES

"okay, well...i could do try. about time someone besides you got in a brawl, right? gotta keep it interesting." miles sits up a little straighter, shouting across the deck, "oi, jude! got a question!" 

JUDE

jude's on the dancefloor, shamelessly body popping, when he hears his name, suddenly high alert, ears pricking like a doberman. turning, he focuses his attention on miles, "you what, mate?" asked as he ambles over towards him and josh. "sorry, lad. couldn't hear you over the fuckin' cure." he's not big into that rock shit, really. would prefer some edm or deep house he can two-step to, but he'll take what he's fucking given and be grateful for it.

MILES

"that's okay, we were just discussing," miles interjects. "if i hit on jenny, would you bust my dial right here?"

JUDE

jude's eyes narrow, crease appearing between his eyebrows as he scans from miles to josh and back again, trying to work out if this is a bit. "'bust your dial'?" what does that even mean? "mate, am not tommy fookin' shelby." (he does the brummy accent, anyway.) "do what you want, pal." jude says, shrugging despite a face like thunder — he's so not bothered! /j. "if you're gonna graft her, then all i'll say's good luck to ya." because honestly, he doesn't think miles has a chance. "but don't expect me to be mates wiv' ya no more, alright?"

MILES

he cracks up laughing at how pinched-up jude's face immediately gets. "i'm only joking, 'm not about to nick your bird," he laughs. though it's sort of disappointing to him that jude wouldn't want to have a brawl over it. "don't worry, judey, i'd rather be your mate," miles' grin is wide and cheesy. yeah, right, dude.

JUDE

jude's expression doesn't soften at the insinuation miles is only joking. like jokes don't hold some truth. a drunk mind, sober thoughts, or whatever. "you better be," is all he says, grabbing him in a one-armed headlock and rubbing his knuckles against his skull as he drops down into the seat beside him. "you're not her type, anyway. you're too soft in the head. she likes someone who's a bit of a dick an' that." why the fuck's he giving miles pointers? "haven't you got your hands full, anyway?" in other words, back off, pal.

JOSHUA

he's snickering as he watches this, but making little notes to himself that jude is too fucking easy to rile up. "right, because you're so hardcore, dude." the sarcasm drips from his tone. he won't say it, but he's pretty sure men is just jenny's type. "c'mon, do you think you could actually take miles in a fight? look at the guy." now he's just egging this on.

JUDE

"i wouldn't need to fight him," jude counters, chewing off the bite that josh's offering him. "my skull's proper hard, man. one smack of my head against his and he'd be out like a light."

JOSHUA

"i would like to see that, personally." it's not a punch, it can't be against the rules, right?

MILES

he basically headbutts for a living, so this also makes him laugh. honestly, he's just been sat here giggling and he thinks jude must be messing around too at this point, hence the noogie. "no fuckin' way, instant KO?" miles asks. "you're so full of shit."

JUDE

honestly, the fact the miles is laughing kinda makes jude even more irritable, head shaking as he starts fiddling in his pocket for a cig. "why you sayin' this shit for? alloooooow that." jude kisses his teeth, pissed. "you guys are tapped in the head, bruv." and he knows the group chat are pissing themselves right now, because this is exactly what it's like with scotty and gaz. "fuck sake, man."

JOSHUA

they've reached the part of this programming where josh no longer knows what the fuck jude is saying. "then prove it, dude."

MILES

for a second there's a look at josh like ??? but then he shrugs. "okay, yeah," he hops off the stool and spreads his arms out, "come at me."

JUDE

eyes are rolling as he rolls his cig, sifting his baccy along the thin lip of paper. "nah, fuck this. i'm not biting. you guys do your dick measuring contest some place else, bro. i am over it." he's being so mature about this!!!! someone give him a prize!!! 

JOSHUA

"i told you," he laughs in miles' direction, giving him a nod.

MILES

tbh if jude went for it, he would've given him a hug. which probably would've riled him more, so it's for the best. he sits back down, laughing. "the court rules..." miles bangs on the table, "he's full of shit." he reaches for his pint, "honestly, good shout not to set the precedent or you'd have to have a go at that 6-foot adonis over there, too." santiago, he means.

JUDE

"jesus christ. i'm six foot fucking one, mate!" jude counters, standing now, his pint almost spilled as he slams it down against the table. he knows that's not the point. santiago's still like seven foot or something, but if anyone here's short, it's fucking miles. "what are you, like five six? shut up! i'm not gonna hit a little guy." he's not gonna hit anyone, if he can help it.

MILES

"i'm six feet tall?" clutches his chest. "this is discrimination. you won't smack me because i'm shorter than you?"

JENNY

she was hoping to overhear some juicy locker room talk, especially with the voices coming into focus, but no such luck. she hangs back a minute anyway, listening in with increasing annoyance before the lights glinting off her dress can signal her arrival, rounding the bend. “what are we talking about, gentlemen?” she greets loudly, all accusing brows and narrowed eyes.

JOSHUA

his smile widens at the sight of jenny. "oh, nothing. jude's out here defending your honor. miles is looking to graft you."

MILES

"just wondering if jude could kick my ass. said he wouldn't anyways 'cause i'm hobbit-sized compared to–" there's a narrow-eyed glance at josh's estimation, but then he shrugs, owning it playfully, "oh, yeah. was just about to start pulling some moves. you come here often, jen?"

JENNY

she glances between them, josh’s wolfish grin, the shared look between him and miles, jude’s balled up fists and his drink still sloshing where he slammed it down on the bar. the whole scene is shady as hell and with their expectant attention suddenly turned on her, she feels like she’s about to be sucked into one of their games next. she doesn’t like this josh. at all. her eyes linger on jude’s, trying to decipher if he’s donning his usual tough guy bravado or if they’re pushing him too far. “why?” she says off-handedly, finally tossing her stony glare toward miles. “frankie wake up and realize you’re actually a huge asshole?”

MILES

his brow furrows, unsure where this is coming from. he's been pretty bad at reading the room up until this point, but this evil glare jenny's wearing is kinda unmistakeable. "what?" he's confused, "do you...have a problem with me or something?" feels like they should talk about it if so.

JOSHUA

and here comes jenny, ruining the good time with her own drama, per usual. he doesn't bother to hide an offhand roll of his eyes, reaching for his drink. he glances at jude expectantly, waiting for him to do something.

JENNY

“yeah, you guys are being dicks.” she’s not in the business of mincing words, shrugging combatively. “you’re pushing him. like, for what? a reaction? to piss him off?” her eyes roll. “it was the same shit when we were all downstairs before. like, the two of you guys together are just really fucking annoying, whispering and giggling and shit. you feed off each other and now you’re turning this nasty high school jock villain bullshit on jude and it’s kinda gross. sorry.”

MILES

there's a reason he's never actually been into jenny, and it's this – she makes him feel bad. his stomach twists, uncomfortable with this narrative that his intentions have been so horrible when he just considers jude a friend, and honestly, he thought he was friends with jenny, too. obviously he wouldn't have wanted to make jude feel shitty, and it stresses him out a bit to come across that way, especially when jenny puts it like that. miles has been the punching bag for 'high school jock villain' bullshit in some sinister ways, nearly career-ending. he'd never want anyone to feel the way he did back then. "what? no, i'm sorry, i thought...y'know, i called him over, asked what he thought since it came up, and he ragged on me that i wasn't your type and i'm all soft-headed and short," miles cracks a small smile at that, 'cause he thought it was funny at the time, though it fades quickly now. "so, i thought it was chill, y'know, banter." he glances over at jude sincerely, "but i'm sorry if it was fucking with you, i really didn't mean it like that." he doesn't think he's gonna be able to feel so relaxed around jude again, though.

JOSHUA

"we didn't even do anything downstairs with you, jesus. all we did was tell you to stick around. we were trying to be nice. none of this has anything to do with you, so why don't you just—" fuck off, he wants to say, but stops himself in the nick of time. josh shakes his head. "yeah, sorry. i didn't realize we were being bullies, and you needed your mommy to stick up for you," he tells jude, and he wants to walk away so bad but i'll let nora react since she's asleep before he does that.

JUDE

oh shit. jenny's here. on the one hand, it's cute as fuck to see her trying to stand up for him, a barking little chihuahua against a german shepherd and a newfoundland. (that probably makes jude like a whippet or some shit) but on the other hand, he can't help but feel like jenny's presence always makes shit escalate. the fact that she's even here sobers him somewhat, takes his pressure meter down a couple of pegs. "no, jen, it's... don't even worry about it, it's just messing," jude attempts, scratching at the back of his head. his hand moves to catch her wrist, thumb rubbing over her pulse point, a silent plea for her not to make a scene out of this. he doesn't want to lose the boys just when he's started feeling like he's one of them. "they didn't mean nowt by it, just lads being lads, innit." fuck sake. he should've just headbutted miles and this would all be done with by now. "you really don't need to apologise," he tells miles, alarmed and rendered sheepish by his sudden sincerity, embarrassed at his own reaction.  "i just got a bit het up is all, it's literally fine." or at least it is until josh has to comment, jude's eyes rolling as he kisses his teeth. "don't call her my mum, bro. that's proper grim, actually... she just... fuck. it doesn't matter. can we just leave our mums out of this?"

JENNY

there’s no part of her that wants to backpedal, even if it’s obvious she flung her insult at the wrong target. miles looks wholly sincere in his apology, enough that jenny thinks she might’ve read the entire situation wrong, though how wrong could she have been when jude was clearly riled and they were the ones pushing him? does intention really matter? but with josh looking at her like she just up and ruined all his fun, lashing out like a kid being sent to time out, she can’t help but feel like she read him, at least, exactly right. she’ll give miles the benefit of the doubt for now. meanwhile, jude is thrumming with embarrassment just beside her. she can feel it in the heat of his hands, see it in the slight flush of his cheeks, the bow of his head. she’s not gonna cause a scene… but… maybe she can get away with it if the argument doesn’t force him onto center stage. “why don’t i just what, josh?” she counters, pros and cons haphazardly weighed, then swiftly ignored. when he goes low, she’ll go lower. “there’s something seriously fucking wrong with you.”

JOSHUA

"something wrong with me?" he laughs. "you're the one making shit out of nothing. what, jude can't speak for himself, you need to grab him by the balls and pull at them like he's a puppet? grow up." the longer he stays here, the more he's sure he's dodged a bullet. he's got nothing against jude, but it seems doubtful the chance to ever have a friendship with him when jenny's in the mix. taking the rest of his drink, he rises to his feet, giving miles a nod. "i'm gonna go find naomi, if you wanna come. wouldn't wanna hurt anyone else's feelings."

JENNY

that shuts her up for a minute, a nervous glance over to jude. is that how he feels? emasculated? “no, i— what? no, josh.” a shake of her head to clear it. he’s wrong, not her. “no. people stand up for the people they care about. period. they show up. they sure as fuck don’t make plans to fuck someone else in the event the person they ‘care about’ and ‘trust’ screws up.” pretty bold statement from a cheater herself, but she’d always admired that when she was with josh they never really spoke about naomi, ill or otherwise. the idea that he was doing that with adela or that he could’ve been ragging on her with naomi this whole time is icky. “whatever, josh.” she’s tempted to say ‘run along to mommy,’ but she squeezes jude’s hand instead, mouth pinched in a hard line.

JOSHUA

"yeah, you'd all know about fucking someone else, huh?" he can't help himself.

MILES

he makes brief, sympathetic eye contact with jude, a nod of his head. he feels bad for the guy, watching jenny and josh have a go in front of him. there's a brief finger gun to say 'we're cool' as he quietly gets up out of his chair to sneak off.

JOSHUA

he leaves with miles. <3

[uglyseasonmp3]

shut up about step counts shut up about step counts sh

[2starsmoved]

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