Creloise University AU
this is a excerpt from God, I'm Actually Invested (how did that happen?) which I have posted over on AO3!
Eloise shoved her silenced phone into the deep recesses of her tote bag; in the few days that had passed since her concussion and the failed Bridgerton sibling dinner, Penelope Featherington had been relentless in trying to contact her. She had emailed, texted, rang, messaged and even went so far as creating new social media accounts (which were promptly blocked) and she had also enlisted Eloise's siblings for help. Francesca had remained steadfastly loyal but both Daphne and Benedict had messaged her in an effort to convince her to talk to Penelope. It had been a nightmare trying to avoid her, the other day she even spotted the redhead waiting outside her lecture. Luckily she had been able to spot her in time and leave out of the back door but it had made traversing campus increasingly hard. So this morning, Eloise was taking a much needed break. She had no classes on Wednesdays, so she had gone for a morning walk upon which she had discovered a busy little coffee shop in a part of town she’d yet to explore. Here she had ordered an oat chai latte and pain au chocolat, food and drink secured, she managed to snag a corner table from a couple who were just leaving- no mean feat it seemed, for the shop was full to the rafters- and pulled out her book.
It had been barely a few minutes before she was interrupted.
“Bridgerton, who knew you had such taste?”
She looked up and was greeted with the sight of Cressida Cowper, standing over her table and gesturing to the book she was holding. Eloise placed it down in front of her, eyebrows raised in disbelief, partially because it seemed like Cressida Cowper was deliberately speaking to her and also because- “You’ve read it?”
“Is that so hard to believe? I read.” Cressida’s eyes narrowed over her takeaway paper cup.
“Well- I guess I didn't know you liked reading.” How could she know? Cressida didn’t like her. Usually she went out of her way to avoid Eloise and now for some unknown reason here she was striking up pleasant- or at least something adjacent to pleasant- conversation.
“Did you know she went here?” Cressida ploughed on, “To Cambridge?”
“I did, and if I wasn't reading this for the third time I might be mad at you for spoiling it.” Eloise couldn’t help but jab, her bafflement growing when Cressida boldly took the empty seat across from her. What is happening right now?
“It’s a wonderful book, isn't it? I rather believe every woman should read it-”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Eloise, who was now briefly entertaining the idea she had somehow wandered into a parallel universe, cut in, “But do you want something?”
Cressida glanced quickly over her shoulder, before leaning forward and hissing, “Can you at least pretend to be interested in my conversation?”
Eloise leaned in and hissed back, “Cressida, I really have no idea what's going on, so unless you wish to enlighten me-”
“The man by the counter in the purple jacket was hitting on me the whole time I waited for my tea, so I told him you were here for me.” The words tumbled from Cressida’s mouth almost as if she were embarrassed by them, “Please just let me sit here until he leaves, then I’ll be out of your hair.”
Eloise glanced over towards the counter and sure enough, a man in a purple jacket was just picking up his coffee. He had an unpleasant, greasy look about him and Eloise took an immediate dislike to the man- though to be fair that wasn’t unusual for Eloise when encountering men.
“Why didn’t you just tell him to bugger off?” She asked, looking back at Cressida, “Or hit him with your-” Eloise made a face and brought her fingers up by her eyes to mime tiny little laser beams coming from them,”-laser vision.” Eloise had watched grown men wither under Cressida’s glare more than once at many of the weird, stuffy, old fashioned events their parents insisted on dragging them along to. It was perhaps the single faucet of Cressida she actually held a teeny little bit of admiration for.
Cressida rolled her eyes, “Because I kind of know him. He’s the son of a business associate of my father’s.”
“Right.” Eloise conceded, perhaps a teeny bit disappointed she wouldn't have the pleasure of witnessing Cressida’s glare causing Mr Purple Jacket’s balls to back crawl up inside him.
Mr Purple Jacket took that exact opportunity to grace them with his highly unwanted presence, “Ladies,” He arrived in front of their table and nodded in what he probably thought was a gentlemanly manner, though it came off quite smarmy in Eloise’s opinion. “Cressida, I know you are meeting with a friend,” He nodded at Eloise, who thought he was doing a rather swell impression of those little bobble headed dolls truckers often stuck to their dashboards. “But I was hoping, before I go that I might get-”
“I’m sorry but who are you?” Eloise (who sensed where this was going) cut him off abruptly.
“My apologies, I am Roland Burbank, an acquaintance of Cressida’s.” He offered his hand to Eloise, who left it to hang in the air until he gave up and lowered it to wipe his palm nervously on his jeans. “I was hoping to-”
Eloise cut him off again, “I’m sure you were, but you see I was rather hoping you wouldn’t.”
“Oh?” Mr Purple Jacket looked rather taken aback and Eloise continued before he could try to embarrass himself further.
“As you can see, Cressida is otherwise occupied-”
“Eloise!” Cressida’s quiet reprimand held undertones of shock but lacked any true vexation. Eloise took Cressida’s hand from where it was resting on the table and squeezed it gently in an effort to communicate to the other girl she needn't worry.
“-so I think it’s probably best you give up now, don’t you?” She finished.
“My apologies, I didn't realise-” Mr Purple Jacket stumbled over his words as he nodded yet again. Perhaps he could take up a career as one of those dolls, Eloise thought as she watched him hastily begin his retreat. At the very least he could earn a fortune doing impressions at birthday parties.
“Lovely to meet you, Ronald!” Eloise called after him as he hurried out of the coffee shop. They managed to contain their laughter until the door swung shut on his purple back. “Honestly the audacity men have,” Eloise shook her head when they were able to catch their breath again.
They sat for a moment, each nursing their drink, before Cressida gestured to the book, “It really is a favourite of mine,” she said, “right at the end, when her aunt tells her her grandfather cancelled his plans in case she came by, and then that she's counting the hours until Tara arrives- it makes me cry every time.”
Eloise was taken aback by the admission, “Me too.” She admitted.
“Thank you, for getting rid of Roland.” Cressida had pulled the cardboard sleeve off her tea and was slowly pulling apart the layers, “I was afraid if I was frank with him he might go crying to his father and that it could affect my fathers business. Though, I suppose he still could.”
Eloise waved her concern away, “If he does, just blame me.”
“Well I don’t think I’ll have to worry about him again, I think my father told his I was ‘available’.” She shuddered slightly and began shredding the cardboard.
“And you’re not?” Eloise asked, picking up her mug.
“Certainly not for him.”
“A tragedy, really, you could have had the most beautiful maroon babies.”
Cressida threw a wadded up piece of cardboard at her head and Eloise ducked out of the way, laughing.
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WIP: Circ du Scenes
sorry for jojo crimes. it's also furry crimes but that's another matter. basically a circus au with identity porn.
Mista shakes his head. “Nah. Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t court you. You don’t want it? Sure, I’d take that. You’re uncomfortable, don’t like me, scared of predators? Sure. But ‘can’t’ is not gonna work on me.”
“Because I hate you. Good enough?”
"You say that all the t--"
Rigatoni is upon him in a flash, in his face, and Mista wished he could see his eyes again. See them dark and flashing and full of violence. “I fucking hate every inch of you. Everything you do and say infuriates me.”
It says horrible things about him that it makes Mista weak in the fucking knees, even as his heart hurts. The words do sting, he kinda likes the guy. He’s been trying to play it smooth. “Kinda rude, I’m gonna be real with you.”
“I wish you’d shut the fuck up.”
“This is the bit where I tell you to make me.”
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my own personal interpretation of the spawn killing rule was, it was made to prevent spam killings and point farming. no more elquackity killing jaiden so many times in rapid succession even consensually, no more pierre standing at the door waiting for his turn to farm off jaiden. the kills were so close together that i think it's close enough to be considered either against the rule or not, meaning it's wholly up to the admin's discretion and their own interpretation of the rule
i also wasn't watching it happen (listening to the stream) but checking the vod i can confirm, forever ended up killing bad four times. [in the span of 17 seconds; 9:33:00-9:33:17 in bad's vod]. twice could be let slide due to quest requirements (which i have an issue with; if they're going to require two kills it should be one player from each opposing team and def not the same person twice), four is a lot more dicey. again, in my opinion, even consensual spawnkilling is still spawn killing and therefore against that rule, especially considering that when quackity was consensually killing jaiden over and over, he still said "there should be a rule against this".
the last two kills were purely for points and to put green team in the lead. those are where it gets dicey for me personally; the deal to complete the mission was a lot easier to rationalize bc the admins basically designed the quest that way. killing the same person twice on this island is nigh impossible, especially if they know you're after them and are hiding. good luck finding someone who spends their entire time on the server in various holes just mining.
but again idk, the admins are the ones who know what the spirit of the rule was and in the end make the final call. i'm gonna straddle the fence on this one personally. thought i'd clarify one place the "it was spawn killing" claims could be coming from
ETA: finally someone posted twitter screenshots on here. congratulations green gay ninjas!!!
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Ok one last dip into "the Izcourse" before I take my own advice and pivot to rewatching S1 in prep and posting about what I love!
We get a lot of trolls, and harassers, and staunch antis looking to pick a fight with the "bad fans" who either drop bait or jump on people's posts to be annoying. That's the flame war part of all this mess. But we also get a fair number of posts from "neutral" people that I want to gripe about for a moment because at least the antis are misrepresenting "what Izzy fans believe / discuss" because they are actively against my take on the show for whatever reason. But it's more annoying to me personally when it's just... a lack of effort.
(And I've mentioned this before)
Like... a "neutral" observer weighing in on "The Izcourse" is a member of the general fandom who doesn't care enough about Izzy to really be an anti. Their perspective on the matter is coming from directly or indirectly following people in the antis' main meta circle. We know this, because just about every neutral person who was not from this background got classified as an Izzy apologist / problematic Edward thoughtcrimer and they are counted as in "the Canyon" now. We watched it happen a lot over the past year and a half. So the observer is not neutral, not really, but they probably aren't heavily blocking / blocked if they don't care and don't talk about Izzy.
Which makes it so frustrating when they feel the need to bring up "concerning" trends among Izzy fans and their interpretations and then they don't know what those interpretations are.
Like - in the most patient tone I can possibly manage - scrolling a bit of the Izzy Hands tag and taking fans squeeing about their blorbo as evidence there is no nuance in meta and too much babygirlifying here is dumb as fuck. Hell, even isolating a recent meta post and going "well I don't agree with this because XYZ" is still very much a "so what?" situation because that one person is not representing all Izzy fans? And also you still have a huge blind spot.
Because meta is - at its core - a collaborative structure.
You can't experience a particular branch of meta primarily through people vaguing or screenshotting and dunking on whatever looks the worst, then skim a little bit of a tag and be able to confidently call out what the "problematic trends" are. You can't even understand where the random meta you singled out is coming from, because you don't know which posts they've been looking at for over a year. And this is all really highlighted by the fact when you go to dissect that post you disagree with, you'll do it by just saying things that you understand to be established, well-defended facts from your own circle of meta and not back them up at all. Because in your mind you don't need to! And yet the post you're disagreeing with won't make sense because they are just assuming things and talking about this fanon version of Izzy you don't recognize. 🤷♀️
(This is why my typical meta post is linking to three separate discussions, lol. I'm building off of things said before like basically every meta writer, but I want those things referenced.)
If you aren't going to actually put in the effort to identify which blogs are the "major players" and then go back through tags or their popular posts or whatever to get an actual idea of what the meta structure Izzy Canyon has spent over a year discussing contains, then at least don't disparagingly comment on those people and discussions while lumping them into one "problematic" hive mind??? You don't know what you're talking about because you didn't care, and that's whatever. Just please stop confidently conflating random blog #7's generally happy post about how "i can't wait for my fave little guy to have friends 💕" with a concerning lack of discussions on Izzy's relationship with the crew.
My "#ofmd meta" tag - among others - is full of almost exclusively Izzy Canyon blogs writing complex posts about all sorts of things from romcom genre conventions to POC fans' takes on Edward's cptsd, and it's beyond annoying to see them repeatedly insinuated to have the depth of a puddle because the antis prefer to pile on a headcanon about Izzy reading and turn it into an insult to Edward's intelligence, and all the "neutral" blogs take it as gospel.
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