juliana-ravenclaw
you have me. that's not going to change.
i mostly post b99, parks and rec, one day at a time, shadowhunters, and random crap. please don't have high expectations of this blog i dont know what im doing. i, like the bees, do not care what society thinks is impossible for me
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Five years ago, one of my best friends invited me to come on a summer holiday with her family, in a little beach town a few hours drive from where went to high school together. Freshly 17, with just enough newfound confidence and independence to go on a holiday by myself, I agreed.
Her older sister drives us there, and we quickly get lost somewhere around the halfway point trying to look for an elephant shaped hill. “It really does look like an elephant,” I comment, after an hour’s detour. I remember my friend lamenting about the long drive and apologising to me profusely. I didn’t mind it. Being a child of divorced parents that live in different countries, I was used to long travel times. “This is about how much time it takes me to get home from the airport in Malaysia. And that’s after an 8 hour plane ride.”
I realise that line makes me sound a bit pretentious, but that’s probably an accurate representation of my personality at that age.
When we get to the campsite, her parents are sitting outside the caravan. They’re on their way out, leaving the caravan to my friend’s older sister and the tent set up on other half of the campground to the two of us. I’m nervous at the thought of looking after ourselves, mostly because I’m a shit cook. But my friend, newly vegetarian, has become fairly self sufficient in cooking separate meals for herself. I’m happy to be vegetarian for a week, and she’s happy to have someone to share her meals with, so it wasn’t the disaster I thought it was going to be. I soon come to find that the worst part of not having parents around is not having someone to drive you everywhere.
“The shops are only down the road. It doesn’t take long, we’ll be fine to walk there.” I didn’t mind the long drive up. I hate walking. But I put up with it, (minus some minor grumbling) because she’s my friend, who took me on this lovely holiday, who wears pretty sundresses and holds my hand as we walk down the street.
She takes me to the bakery that make her favourite apple strudels. We buy one each for breakfast because no one’s around to tell us not to, and then quickly discover why the sickeningly sweet dessert is not considered a breakfast food. She takes me to the ice cream place when it gets hot later in the day. We share a cup with two scoops because it’s cheaper than getting two cups with one scoop. She takes me to the op shop, where we try on the only clothes in this town two seventeen-year-olds could possibly afford.
Then she leads me around the corner of the main street, down a residential road to a bookshop with a rainbow flag flying out the front of it. She tells me that she used to come here all the time as a kid, but less so in recent years. “It’s a secondhand bookshop,” she says.
We step inside and I quickly realise it is so much more than that. Stepping into Blarney is magical. The first section of the building is an art gallery. Works inspired by Australian literature are set out in a gorgeous display for their annual Biblio Art Exhibition. If you can make it through the gallery without being trapped in awe, you walk through to a hall with bright orange walls, multicoloured bookshelves lined with new and used books, and rainbows everywhere you turn. In the corner sits a small stage, used in the daytime as a kids corner, draped in rainbow curtains and fairy lights. Plastered around the shop, on the sides of bookcases and on glass cabinets filled with more art, were various ‘Vote Yes!’ signs, all with some form or pride flag on them.
‘Vote Yes’ was a reference to Australia’s national referendum held the previous year on the legalisation of same-sex marriage. My friend and I, having recently come out to each other, had gone to two rallies together in support of the bill. The (public) afterparty in the park was some of the most fun I’d ever had, and we both came home with bits of rainbow glitter stuck to us.
At 22, out and proud, the occasional pride flag in a shop window makes me smile, but sometimes I remember how excited I used to be at seeing a tiny pride flag, and I get a little embarrassed. I’ve grown cynical in my grand old age. You have to remember that at 17, still closeted (aside from a few close friends), those small reminders that you were accepted, loved, and even celebrated, meant the world to you.
So you can imagine my delight as I walked through a bookshop that had borrowed leftover decorations from a pride parade. We walked through in silent awe, occasionally giving each other a nudge and nod in the direction of another poster. “You belong here.” “You are loved.” “Everyone is welcome here.” “Love is love.”
Eventually we pick out a children’s story book about a transgender teddy bear and shyly bring it up to the counter. My friend compliments the bookshop owner on her gorgeous store with all its rainbows and the owner goes on a tangent about how much she supports LGBTQ+ rights and how important it is to show that support. My friend bursts into tears and has to step aside to take a minute to get herself together. We go back to the counter and thank the owner for the book and the kind words.
That night, I had found a new show on Netflix with a queer character in it that I wanted to show my friend, so we pushed out mattresses together so we could lie closer to each other. To see the screen on my phone, of course. We found that the mattress kept shifting and we kept sliding down the middle of them onto the cold hard campsite ground. So we decided to lie sideways across the two mattresses instead. To watch the show, of course. I’m fairly sure we fell asleep in that position holding hands.
We stayed four nights in that tent, by ourselves. We went to the beach, went to the shops, cooked ourselves cheap pasta and read books. Her older sister occasionally checked that we were alive. But we were mostly wrapped up in each others company. And at the end of the trip, I still hadn’t gotten the courage to tell her how I felt.
Maybe I myself wasn’t sure how I felt. I think I liked her. She was one of my best friends. And I sure stared at her a lot wondering whether I liked her. The age old question: Do I think she’s pretty, or is she just the only other queer girl I know? The answer to both those questions was yes.
Five years on, my girlfriend and I still go back every year to visit that same little beach town. We go back to the same bakery, and share and Apple strudel between us now. We go back to the ice cream place, where we don’t mind paying anymore to get separate cups. We go back to the op shop; isn’t thrifting more environmentally conscious anyway?
We go back to Blarney Books and Art. We explore the new pieces in the art gallery. We browse the ‘Rainbow Reads’ section of the books. We chat for hours on end to our dear friend, the owner, invite her and the family out to brunch, and buy more books than we can fit on the bookcase in our soon to be home library. We go to the beach, spend ages putting sunscreen on only to get burnt anyway, wuss out of going in the freezing cold water. We sit on the sand and talk about our future. She’s going to be a teacher next year. I’m so proud of her. Tomorrow we will go home to our little ginger cat, wash the sand out of our clothes and curl up on the couch together to watch another show with LGBTQ+ representation. That at least hasn’t changed much.
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Screencaps that made me laugh x OFMD (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) 8
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good morning darling, i love you (he’s up early to prepare their date)
[ID: This is a four-panels digital illustration of Edward and Stede from Our Flag Means Death. The scene takes place during a bright early morning, some time after they have reunited and made up. In this, Edward is asleep on their bed, sporting a short beard and shirtless, body turned towards the viewer. In the first 2 panels, only Stede’s hand is in the frame, gently brushing away a stray lock of hair from Ed’s face and caressing his cheek. In the third panel, Stede appears in the frame, dressed in his nightgown, yellow robe, and sporting a moustache. He leans over to kiss Ed on the cheek. Ed doesn’t wake, instead in the fourth panel he smiles dreamily in his sleep. Stede watches him with his own smile, completely besotted. /. End ID]
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ofmd as text posts i saved to my phone way before ofmd came out
part 3/?
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(visibly shaking and covered in blood) yeah its just been kind of a long week haha
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there is no justice in this world for girls who don’t want to get up but have to
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“charlie’s a really special friend, isn’t he?”
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aliceoseman: That's a wrap on Heartstopper season 2! It's been an incredibly intense few months on set with many new challenges for the cast and crew, but everyone rose to those challenges with such passion and skill and determination. Huge thanks to every single member of the cast and crew - everyone has worked ridiculously hard and given it their all, and for that I am eternally grateful. This season is going to be so magical and I can't wait to get started on post-production! 🍂🌈
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