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bibliocratic · 4 years

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TMA jonmartin fics

Organising these, mostly so I can keep track to be honest. All some flavour of jonmartin, predominantly fluff or angst. cws in original tags.

Updated as of June 2020

If you'd like to send any prompts, feel free! All of these are also bundled together on A03.

Martin tries to rescue Jon from Elias, post-160

JONAH MAGNUS Oh, but, look. Look at him, Martin. Isn’t my Archive magnificent?

MARTIN [whispered, almost fearful] Yes.

Martin feels the pull of the Lonely. Jon draws a bath.

“Come on,” Jon says, enfolding their hands together. His voice is kind, and that’s never died, no matter how the world bricked it up and starved it of sunlight. Jon’s kind to his bones, and it wells up from the deep down of him.

Jon pulls the way, and Martin follows behind.

Even after Jon stops being the Archivist, they aren’t safe. (parent!AU)

“I would like to propose an idea,” Martin says. Softer now. More tired. “and I-I want you to hear me out.”

“OK.”

“Whatever it is.”

“You’re not exactly inspiring confidence.”

Martin gives him a Look.

“OK,” Jon says, rubbing his thumb over Martin’s knuckles. “OK, I promise. Whatever it is, I-I’ll at least listen.”

Martin's nightmares never quite leave him

Martin feels the question form there, at the centre, the tentative journey it traverses before he hears 'Can I…. I mean, do you want to…?’

The question isn’t fully born before he’s heaving great waves of sobs into the chest he’s pillowed on. Like clockwork, the arms come round, always an inch too tight a grip, and somehow that makes this easier to bear.

Things were always going to catch up with them eventually

He’s a light sleeper, and they knew he would be. Didn’t want him to wake too soon, to be denied a proper welcome. Jon shifts and stretches and burrows as he slips dazedly into consciousness, nestling tighter against the body next to him still fast-asleep before the thick weight of sleep is dropped and he jolt up, a punched out breath of shock escaping them.

And finally they are witnessed. They watch his expressions free-fall from understanding to despair.

Local Man cheats at card games, Local Avatar is smitten

Martin likes playing, not necessarily competitively, but where he does excel is in cheating. Jon catches him swapping out a three for a queen out of the corner of his eye – well, Martin wants him to catch him – and his smile is wide and shocked and gleeful in his own way –you cheat! How could you?!

soulmate-identifying marks, or: fuck yeah tattoos

“The Archivist?” Peter Lukas asks. His voice isn’t mocking. Martin isn’t sure what it it.

He hates the tone of it.

“Do you want something?” Martin responds curtly. Frosty. Tugging his sleeves back down pointedly. Peter’s expression is ever so proud.

Something is wrong. Martin just can't put his finger on it.

“Sorry,” Jon says, without sounding sorry in the slightest, almost cheeky. He bestows another kiss that is not a kiss to Martin’s neck, scraping a little with his teeth.

“Sleep,” Martin repeats, groggy but firm, and traps the soft, unblemished skin of Jon’s hands in his own.

Martin has certain standards

Jon feels a wide smile begin on his face (still so rare, still hard-won, but Martin teases them out of him with the smallest things these days).

“You hipster!” he says with delight, secretly pleased he’s found something he can tease Martin about. “Have you thrown out my teabags just to make a point?”

Jon wakes up and finds Martin gone

– Something is absent from us. –

Jon opens his blinking, feeble human eyes. Feels around with his finger tips, feels the cool sheet next to him, the unoccupied imprint on the pillow.

Martin is not next to him.

Jon strikes a bargain to save Martin

Martin is blinking away the sediment build-up of unshed tears and they roll down his face, shrivelling in the strict grip of the cold.

“I thought,” he says thinly, “I thought I was going to die alone.”

“You aren’t going to die,” Jon bites out, and it only has the ghost of a furious intensity but the sentiment soaks in it. He feels the Loneliness recede, with a slowness that’s impartially mocking. “You aren’t going to die. I won’t let you.”

Martin showing normal, genuine human anger, feat. Blackwood Snr.

“Right,” comes the short response. “I am – you know I am trying here.”

Martin’s voice goes low and flat and judgemental.

“And how long until you lose interest this time?”

MLM solidarity front, or: Tim and Martin go drinking

“I mean – I – I’d like to. If you – if you still want.”

Tim grins, and his cocksure manner is on display like a theatre curtain lifted. He stands up, doing a stupid little bow like he’s trying to make Martin laugh.

“t'would be my honour to lead you astray, Master Blackwood.”

Back-and-forth early morning teasing

“It’s a bit late to tell me you’re a dog person,” Jon chides instead. “I’m afraid I might have to call this whole thing off, if that’s the case.”

Martin looks up at him with his face squashed into his ‘you are not, and have never been funny, Jonathan’ face.

Martin hides an injury. Jon is freaking out in his own way.

He can taste grit and dirt in his mouth and there’s a stinging dampness on his upper lip. He blinks, coming to terms slowly, and it’s then that he realises, just from a brief glance, that Jon is absolutely fuming.

Jon is getting better at expressing what he wants

Jon reaches out, and like setting fingers to the board of a violin, delicately fits his hand against Martin’s. Like he’s memorised exactly the places where they go, the coves and shorelines where their islands can align.

Martin’s grip has never been as careful. His fingers engulf Jon’s smaller size, cushioning them in a sturdy grip.

How to proposal to your boyfriend during an apocalypse, and definitely how not to.

Jon tries to write vows.

Domesticity and going on holiday, post Watcher's Crown

“Jon!” Martin is shouting with his head shoved in the under-stairs closet. “You got your raincoat?”

“I won’t need it,” comes the low response from the kitchen.

“The weather said it might rain.”

“It’ll be fine,” Jon replies, only half listening really, with a willfully misplaced confidence in the weather.

“I’ll pack it anyway,” Martin calls back, kicking something else with his foot that sounds like the hoover. “In case.”

Jon does not react well to ending the world. Martin puts together the pieces.

Under the watch of that terrible sky, Jon crumples like something demolished.

Martin catches him. He always will, he remembers thinking.

In the Lonely, Jon hugs Martin (set mid-159)

Jon’s arms go around him, and there is nothing tentative, soft-shoed, there is no awkward displacement holding him slightly at a distance. Jon’s arms go around him, and he – his body unfolds against Martin’s. There is much too much of him, a surge of all-at-once motion and Martin feels like splintering.

Martin's not the only one susceptible to the Lonely

He hears the wash of mile-distant waves, as though behind the shelves to the front of the shop, and thinks not here, not here.

He tries to shake his head loose of the fog beginning to bind it like cobwebbing wisps. But the world has such terrors in it, and the Archive keeps record of them all. And that’s what Jon is, in the end.

The day-to-day ramifications of being a record of ceaseless terror

In the dark, under the covers, the sound is the shift of grave soil, of pressing earth, but it is also Martin, ensconced in warm empty dreams, Jon trying to breath through his nose and not wake him up, and it can be all of these things at once.

Supportive Martin and the Eye-based horror his boyfriend sometimes turns into.

“Stop.”

The rats stop. So does Martin. The scream bubbles un-made and unvoiced in his chest and he can’t blink the blood out of his eyes. He can’t see Jon, but he doesn’t expect to. It’s not Jon that’s here with them any more.

'I'll stay right here, ok?”

“The ambulance will be here s – ” Martin starts, trying to be gentle, but Jon tightens his grip ever so kindly, shakes his head.

“I don’t think I’ll be waiting around for that,” he says, and it’s almost light-hearted in the face of what they both know is now inevitable.

Patron swap, Lonely!Jon, Beholding!Martin

It is a surprise to no one that upon taking over the Institute, Peter Lukas turns his hand at trying to steer Jonathan Sims to the Lonely.

In the days after the end of the world, Jon finds Martin a gift

“Woss, what’s wrong?” Martin starts, but Jon’s pressing something into his hands firmly, so self-satisfied, joyous and smug with a mysterious success, and he feels his own grin start to blossom in kind, wanting to take part in the same delight. “What is it?”

sleep doesn't look pleasant, spoilers for 161

Martin won’t wake up. Eyes clenched closed, breathing laboured, and for a long while, Jon’s world gets quieter as his own immediate louder fear rises like gall in his throat. He tries compelling him even.

Jon doesn’t know that this will happen every time Martin dreams.

Jon is admitted to hospital. Martin frets.

Jon nearly died today, his brain keeps reminding him. You nearly lost him, you nearly weren’t fast enough.

Trans!Jon, Trans!Martin, intimate rituals

Jon’s hair is getting long.

Morning rituals, Jon admiring the view.

But he much prefers this slow and lazy unwinding of a day because he gets to study Martin. He puts his elbows on the wooden table off to the side of their pokey kitchen, and enjoys watching an artless, intimate one-man performance just for him, as he acclimatises to the day.

Scottish honeymoon, soft get-together

Martin wonders why Jon didn’t go upstairs. Take the bed. The cottage is an old crofter’s place, two small and utilitarian bedrooms where they discarded their meagre belongings on arrival.

Martin looks at the tea. Feels the scarf under his head, the heavy coats weighing him down.

Thinks he might know why.

Monster!Jon, AU S5

“What the fuck are you?” she says. She does not lower her weapon. The guard to her left has raised her own.

All of its eyes blink out of rhythm as its unseen mouth moves with that croaking, piteous whisper. “He’s, he’s human, he’s hurt and he needs – he’ll die, please.” The man it is carrying looks human. Painted with dirt and filth, the slick of insects broken over his skin. His breathing is starting to rattle.

Tim is mildly cursed, S1 shenanigans

Whoever is closest, but usually Sasha, will give a sarcastic cheer. To which Tim – cradling his injury, glowering with a fire-starter expression at whatever file or paper or fragment dealt the blow – will reply: “Piss off, right, it’s not funny, I’m cursed. This is a curse.”

OG Archive crew sad hours

There could have been a day, when they’d all just talked.

Martin struggles to readjust to the world, post 159

Some days though, when the tempest around has dropped from squalling, Martin feels brave enough to look over at Jon.

Jon and Martin’s post-s5 wish list

“Martin?”

“Hmm?”

“After all this, after we’ve – what do you want to do? If we manage to – ”

“When we manage to.”

“Fine, when all this goes back to the way it was, what do you want to do?”

Safehouse drabble

Jon doesn’t sleep but this rest is as close to peace as this world allows him.

AU S3, Breekon and Hope take Martin, not Jon.

Tim always thought Martin was reliable. Unshakeable.

That he was always going to be there.

Martin’s daemon is a spider. People have mixed feelings about this.

“Aron,” Martin says slowly. He keeps his hands folded on his lap but his fingers twitch to reach out. “This is – we’ve settled, haven’t we?”

Aron can’t nod. His form can’t allow for such an expression. But he brings his legs in closer, pebbles up and won’t look at Martin, and that’s answer enough.

Aspec Martin Week - Daemon!AU

Martin has always liked watching Emer. The flash of gossamer-white wings circling Jon’s head or sat on his wrist like an overly-extravagant watch while he read statements.

“Stop looking,” he used to hiss at the moving lump under his shirt, poking many orb-like eyes over his collar to stare even when Martin stopped. “It’s rude.”

Aspec Martin Week - Martin’s first Pride

Restored from their dramatic hangovers, Monday comes. Martin arrives huffing and delayed from the Tube to see Tim’s stuck his flag so it stands battered and proud over the lid of his laptop. Sasha’s made her small desk teddy bear hold hers. And it’s the memory of the day, the sun and the heat and the wild dizzying lack of expectations of it all, that gives him the courage to bring the flags he carefully preserved in on Tuesday, to put them jutting out of the mug on his desk that holds his stationery.

Honestly, he doesn’t expect anyone to comment on them. It’s not like anyone else comes down to their offices anyway.

Aspec Martin Week - Martin comes out (with help)

You surge against his lips again so he can’t see your nerves, you stupid, unfounded, calcifying anxieties, the barriers you keep putting up yourself because you are so terrified of being happy.

“Maybe… not tonight?” you mumble into your shared air. If he pushed, if he asked again, you would. He dragged you from the shoreline, out of the fog, this is the least you can give him. You’d lie on your back, or you’d cover him with your shape, and you’d try so hard to make him happy so he wouldn’t notice you not sharing the same. “’m a bit tired.”

Tricky, is what you are. Perjurious. Prevaricating. Two-faced.

Martin is a massive fan of Jon’s multitude of eyes

“I just want to see,” Martin mimics petulance and Jon huffs a smirk.

“They are my eyeballs,” he responds primly, putting down a dry mug and picking up a plate to towel off.

“What’s the point of having horror-bestowed physical improvements if you don’t show them off?”

Martin worries about being a father

That’s not – ” Martin says, stops. Pulls his hands away from his face, his eyes puffy.

He takes Jon’s hand, still perched on his knee, laces their fingers together. Over the baby monitor, Jon can hear the soft untroubled in-and-out of their son breathing.

“I sounded like my dad,” Martin confesses finally. Fat tears well up and stagger down his tear-prickled cheeks. “I sounded exactly like him.”

Martin and Jon get wine drunk

Jon sticks out his tongue. Martin tries to poke it with his finger, and Jon reels back with another one of those wine-laden expressions, earnest and open as a window.

“I want to know everything about you,” he says, struggling with finding the opening at the top of the pack, before he pauses, dutifully following up with a no-less sincere and concessionary: “But not if you don’t want to.”

There’s nothing sexier than open and honest communication (post-166)

“I fucking hate the Buried,” Jon says into Martin’s shoulder.

“It sucks,” Martin agrees. “You er – you have any more poetry this time?”

Martin feels Jon’s ‘no’ like an earth tremor over his breastbone.

“Worms,” comes the reply muffled shapeless into his coat.

“Like…normal worms?”

“People worms.”

“Rrright. Less fun then.”

Martin has some thoughts about the Web

Martin does not think about spiders.

(Except he does.)

Did you feel, Jon had proposed delicately, like she was influencing your mind at all?

Jon’s world has no certainties. No maps, boundaries, no promises that can remain unquestioned.

Martin has the edges of his world now. He has to be able to trust in them.

Jon gets hurt and doesn’t tell Martin

Jon burns when Martin puts a hand to his forehead, and he won’t wake, not for Martin’s calls and shakes, not for anything. When Martin goes to check, the wound on his leg has rooted from ankle to thigh, festering rot-black branches of something sludgy and swollen and varicose tracing the same lines as his veins.

The Corruption wars with Beholding upon the battleground of its Archive, and there is nothing Martin can do.

Martin still struggles with his mental health

It was easier, Martin thinks sometimes, when he could blame it on the Lonely.

Episode 170 could have gone so many different ways

This is your house, we whisper to him.

You have always been here alone, we promise.

We recite to our beloved that he has never been loved, and our winds, our walls, our winding mists tell him so often that eventually he believes us.

#tma #long post #jonmartin #the magnus archives #fic #prompt fills #jonathan sims #martin blackwood

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kennyisscrewy · 4 years

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Playing Hard to Want II Webgott

Thank you to @speirtons aka Lily for organizing this #bobtogether fic writing event, and kicking a healthy dose of inspiration into me! You’re seriously a GIFT to this community

W/C: 5076

Prompt: There was only one bed

David was already not looking forward to seeing Joe again once he was finally let out of the hospital. Every day that he spent lying on that bed felt like a new nail added to his coffin, yet another tiny spike in Liebgott’s hatred of him. And truthfully Joe had hated David before he’d even done anything wrong, so now that he had… He shuddered at the thought. The street sign boasting Haganeu blared in his peripheral like a neon warning sign. Bitterly, he mulled over the unfairness that his one motivator as he was healing up (returning back to the 101st) was now something of a cold dread in his stomach. His friendship with Joe, too, had been shot in the dirt before he’d even gotten the chance to try.

The icy ball continued to roll around in David’s stomach as he called out to George Luz, so very relieved to see a friendly face that wasn’t frowning and somber and pitying, only to have the usually animated man respond tiredly. And it just got worse, and worse, and worse. He couldn’t seem to stop his big, fat mouth from opening; asking where’s Hoobler? How’s about Toye or Wild Bill? Where’d that cheeky little Julien kid get off to now? Nobody said a word, and it spoke miles. Finally Foley and Martin ground out something about how thin 2nd platoon had become, and David was shooed away like a buzzing gnat.

He swore under his breath as he walked up to the next Jeep and was instantly pinned in place by mean, dark eyes. The second Joe recognized him as more than just “anonymous annoyance”, he was rolling those glittering eyes, and David resented him for looking so pretty while doing it. It felt surreal to finally take in those near-black eyes that shone in the foggy french sunlight like pebbles in person once more, rather than just using his best memory to muse over them in his hospital bed.

David has had a long time to mull over those eyes that narrowed into repulsed little slits as some unfamiliar face finally yanked David up into the remaining empty space. Four months, according to that red sneering mouth, which was news to him. In the first month, he’d kept count, anxious to get back to his platoon and his friends (and Lieb, of course). But around the second time that the nurses had none-too gently told him that if he left, the infection would kill him before he got another chance to play hero, David had become disheartened enough that he just let the days and weeks roll by sluggishly. Joe’s pissy remark: “Must’ve like that hospital.” almost made him collapse into hysterical laughter.

That hospital room was never ending purgatory; solitary confinement. He lay there in his soaked through clothes and waited to die a meaningless, empty death. Dozens of times he’d pictured his father's reaction upon receiving the letter. Dull, bloodshot eyes would scan over the words: “died of his wounds”, and “taken off the frontline due to his own lack of awareness” and his father would chuckle meanly. Mutter how he’d been right to tell David he’d never make it out there, and “oh I hate to speak ill of the dead and say I told ya so!” The peeling off-white wallpaper and fleshy toned curtains plagued his nightmares still; Normandy felt like a tropical getaway in comparison. He opened his mouth to tell Joe that, and see that shit eating smirk slide off his pale face with satisfaction, but looking at him gave David pause.

Beneath those pretty, glinting eyes were heavy bags so purple they could’ve been mistaken for bruises at first glance. His O.D.s and face were dirty-which was nothing new- but seeing Joe’s hair a stringy, careless mess sent something of a shock through David. Kind of like Perconte’s dental fixation, David has always been able to spot Liebgott from a mile away simply because it was clear that, even as his bloody bandages soaked through, the man took a few moments each day to make sure his thick, dark hair was still soft and touchable looking.

...Alright, so maybe David was just projecting there.

Regardless, he looked like HELL. Which felt oh, so wrong. David has always admired how unaffected he’d seemed by the war, both physically and mentally, and his guts twisted as he watched those long, oddly dainty fingers bring a cigarette to his lips. They were shaking . And it’s not like it was exactly cold out.

Feeling nauseous, his gaze moved unabidden to Heffron. Unkept, ruddy stubble dotted the usually chipper replacement’s thin face, and the shine appeared to have left his bright eyes. Dirty bandaged fingertips poked out of olive gloves that looked like the kid had torn the fingers off of himself. And he was quiet; so fucking quiet.If there was one thing David knew about Philly boys, it was that you could never get them to stop yapping even if krauts were peppering them in an empty field. He was unsettled by not hearing Babe’s squeaking, weird little giggles or Bill’s cartoonish cackling carrying on the wind. Honest to God, it didn’t even feel much like Easy anymore. No Luz attempting what had to be the worst British accent he’d ever heard or Toye bitching about whatever new thing had popped into his head. None of Muck trying out an hour's worth of garish standup while Penkala and Malarkey giggled like prepubescent hyenas. Just empty uniforms and the stench of stale cigarette smoke remained.

Tracking down Lipton was a welcome distraction, as were the multiple near-death experiences on his way to the abandoned house he was posted up in. Something downright neurotic in him took comfort in the return of the bone rattling violence. Even as he was forced to dive away from a near-direct hit, which sent stabbing hot pains through his thigh, his heart soared with a sick kind of glee at the taste of dirt in his mouth. This solidified that he was really, truly back in the fight; it was as terrifying as it was liberating.

Lt. Speirs previously from Dog Company and Lipton signed David’s execution by reconfirming that, yes, he was being reassigned to 2nd platoon. And, as a bonus, he’d acquired a squeaky clean West Pointer to babysit! Oh joy. Well, at least by comparison, David no longer felt so much like a replacement. The moment he’d laid eyes on that fancy graduation ring, he was filled with a perverse sense of relief. Oh, the toccoa boys are sure gonna have a field day with you, Lieutenant Jones. David felt like a little kid who’d desperately joined in on hazing the new kid, all in the vain hopes that the other boys might pick on him a little less.

Any sort of relief David was feeling vanished as he faced down his former friend’s critical gazes, bitterness radiating off them in thick, rolling waves. Wordlessly, he tossed his bag unto an empty upper bunk, and took a deep breath before turning back to the men.

“This seat taken?”

For some reason, that had Ramirez chuckling and had Chuck swearing and rolling his eyes. Everyone in the little huddle swung their gazes over to Liebgott, who seemingly always had something to say, especially for Webster. He fidgeted anxiously as Joe took his sweet time sucking on his Lucky Strike like a popsicle, blowing a stream of smoke out of pursed, cherry lips so slowly that David dug his nails into his uninjured thigh.

“They’re all fuckin taken, Web. This look like a fuckin presidential fuckin suite to you? I know you’re so used to yer cushy hospital digs what with big canned nurses shaking their tits in your face-“

He walked away before he’d even heard the end of Joe’s rant, dripping with acidic hatred that made the blood in David’s ears ring. He knew if he stood around any longer that he’d punch Joe right in his handsome, artfully carved goddamned face. And as badly as Joe wanted it, he wasn’t the enemy right now.

Far fucking from it actually.

****

David could feel drying blood underneath his fingernails as he stumbled back into the dilapidated house, wondering if it were Kraut blood or Jackson’s. His head leant against the side of his/not his bunk with a dull thud that didn’t even register. Mentally, he was still kneeling by Jackson’s side, framing the sides of the boy’s head with his fingers as he pleaded for the kid to calm down. He’d told Jackson it was gonna be okay, that everything would be fine once Doc showed up. But jokes on them; Doc had shown up and Jackson was dead, dead, dead.

He repeated it aloud when they were quietly asked about the mission’s “success”. The mission’s fucking SUCCESS; god David had to laugh. Two German prisoners captured sure, but it felt like a monumental fucking loss from where he was standing. 20 fucking years old…

“Yeah we heard.”

Came Joe’s voice, breaking through the haze of blood and shouting and gunpowder. It was surprisingly gentle, softer than he could ever recall hearing him speak before. And for some reason that is what nearly made David crumple. Not watching a kid begging to live, not listening to McClung tearfully screaming and pointing a shaking sidearm at the German’s heads, just Joe Fucking Liebgott not treating him like a smear on the treads of his government issued boots for once. Quietly, David excuses himself, walked casually to the ransacked bathroom, and violently puked up bile until he couldn’t even feel the muscles in his throat.

A few hours of shaking and vomiting later, and he shuffled in the pitch black room towards the bunk beds. Blindly, he made sure to step as lightly as possible (which was quite a feat for the heavy-footed man), and reached out with searching fingers for his bed. The moment fingertips made contact with scratchy, piling sheets, David hauled his weary body on to the mattress, only to be met by the sensation of something sharp digging into his side. For one crazed moment, he thought he’d stabbed himself with a bayonet that wasn’t on his person, and his hand trembled as he flickered his lighter on expecting to see crimson staining through his jacket. Honestly, he’d have preferred the sight of him slowly bleeding out to what he did see bathed in the orangey dim light.

Half moon eyelashes so dark and thick they looked like ink blots curved against moonbeam cheekbones. Thin, dark eyebrows not scrunched down in irritation for once, and a smooth forehead oddly absent of worry lines. And of course, chapped but also sinfully flushed-looking lips, thin but shapely, barely parted and emitting sweet sighs. Liebgott, with his ridiculously bony elbows jabbing into his ribs he was so close, looking like a goddamned Rembrandt. Too stunned to speak (or even breathe), he gently grasped Joe’s elbow (“ Christ, so fragile; felt like it might snap if he wasn’t careful”) with the intention of putting some space between them. Cherubic, slumbering Lieb had other ideas, apparently, because the second David started to apply pressure, skinny little fingers were suddenly clutching his bicep and hauling David closer. Mary, Mother of Jesus , it took everything in him not to scream as the unconscious bane of his existence wrapped himself around David with all four of his sinewy limbs.

He whipped his head to the side fearfully as sleeping Joe wedged his thigh between David’s with such a kittenish little sigh it made David’s face flush neon. Small mercies, all of the other men were slumbering, albeit restlessly. Upon second glance, actually, David was relieved to see he wasn’t the only one sharing a bunk. Heffron lay curled up small and sad on Chuck’s big, barrel chest, but there was something distinctly platonic about the pair somehow. Unlike the little wriggling motions that Joe was using to systematically ensure David’s early grave.

He double, then triple checked that the slighter man was actually asleep and not fucking with David’s head in the most goddamned insane fashion imaginable as bony, calloused fingers knot themselves into his dog tags with a white-knuckled grip. This had to be a joke, or a hallucination. Maybe he’d been hit by some wayward shrapnel and he was actually bleeding out on the bank like that kraut.

David couldn’t have imagined this even in his four-month stockpile of wet dreams, which Joe had increasingly intruded upon (read: starred in). In those, it was never this based in reality. Usually it was just snapshots: a long, arcing throat with rather specific scarring; the sharpest and deepest Cupid’s bow lips he’d ever seen wrapping themselves around an insult (amongst other things). Dark, bottomless eyes half lidded and digging all the way to David’s core. A scratchy, hissing drawl: “And whattaya gonna do about it, Web?”

Actually feeling the faint press of those lips through the fabric of his t-shirt and those gorgeous, dark waves tickling the side of his throat made his head spin in a feverish haze. Not to mention the thin, surprisingly-muscular thigh that was occasionally flexing right up against David’s crotch. For the first time, he was thankful for the sharp stinging of his still-tender wound, as he was sure it was the only thing keeping his body from betraying him. Though, again, the downright coquettish way Liebgott was sighing in his ear was trying awful hard to overcome that hurdle. Blue eyes stared their own makeshift skylights into the slatted roof above their heads as David tried to freeze every muscle in his body completely. After the disaster of a patrol, he’d been pretty certain he wouldn’t be sleeping that night. But this little unconscious stunt of Joe’s had absolutely guaranteed that.

David woke up the next morning half expecting rust coating the back of his throat as Joe shoved his bayonet down it, or perhaps to the sight of the tendons in those skinny arms flexing as he strung David up from the nearest tree. Instead, David woke up shivering in an empty bed feeling oddly lonely. For 24 years, he had woken up in a bed by himself, but this is the first time it had felt wrong.

Carefully, he shifted himself into a sitting position and tried to shake the feeling of phantom knuckles brushing against his chest, and warm, moist air wetting his throat from lips that were no longer there. Christ, what was happening to him? Still feeling half asleep, he turned his head and was pinned in place by a bewildering sight:

"C'est bon, mon garçon, ça va. C'était un accident ... juste un accident."

Had he not had such a distinctive, thick accent, David would’ve found it hard to believe that was Doc pressed so close to Heffron. Sleep-hazy eyes watched, transfixed, as cracked, pale lips pressed sweet french notions into the crown of Babe’s trembling, red-brown hair. Babe’s gangly, long-limbed body was curled up impressively small, with what appeared like all of his weight pressing down on Gene’s chest. The medic, for all of his scrawny stature, hardly seemed to mind having his back flattened to the mattress by his fellow paratrooper. Dark blue eyes shone with so much love, it rattled David to his core. Did the two of them not know David was still in here with them? Weren’t they terrified of being court marshalled, or worse? His skin tingled, feeling starved for the ghost of Liebgott’s skin on his, as his gaze tracked Roe’s fingers carding through Babe’s thin locks. The two men were so tightly pressed together from chest to toes that they melded into one being. And just when David felt like his reality couldn’t resemble more of a fever dream, something impossible happened.

“Regarde-moi, ange.” Doc rumbled in a low, sleep-scratchy voice before slowly moving one palm up to cup Babe’s chin. And then, as though it were nothing, suddenly they were kissing. And the way the duo kissed, searching and deep….that didn’t look like the first time they’d done that before. His cheeks flushed when a soft, sweet little moan slid out of those pressing lips-he wasn’t sure which. Okay, so now David was almost positive Doc hadn’t spotted his sleeping form across from Babe’s bunk. He decided to take pity on the guys; this was obviously a very private moment that David had no business seeing. Shifting his weight and clearing his throat, he sat up very gingerly so as not to startle the men too badly. In spite of his best efforts, he felt like a real bastard as he watched all the muscles in Babe’s back stiffen, the redhead ducking his face fearfully into the side of Gene’s neck. “For a grown man, Heffron was weirdly adorable.” David thought to himself absently, unable to connect the small, fragile boy with the sharpshooting killer on the battlefield.

Gene slowly turned to regard David with a calm, unaffected aire that confused and frightened the groggy young man. The stony faced medic shushed Babe’s faint fretting while those strong, capable hands rubbed paths through fluffy, auburn hair and down the other man’s back. Those dark-washed denim eyes continued to pierce David’s gaze all the while, as though threatening David to open his big, stupid mouth. Of course, David intended to do no such thing (his nighttime activities from last night really gave him no grounds to) and he tried his best to silently convey that in his face. His mother had always told him “his face said everything for him”, so hopefully he’d be able to recall that skillset. Something must’ve clicked, because he watched the icy stare thaw and soften ever so slightly. And then, then: the smug bastard had the gall to wink at him. Well, that certainly went to show David just how threatening Doc Roe found him!

Once he’d scrambled out of the house with still-wrinkled ODs and a truly wild look in his blue eyes, David had been kind of counting on Joe not being anywhere near him. In his mind’s eye, he imagined the slighter man brooding in some distant alleyway all by his lonesome, smoking like a coal train with that patented scowl on his face. ‘ Probably brainstorming how best to kill me slowly and painfully…’ He thought stormily, feeling his stomach twisting yet again. He wasn’t sure why the thought bothered him so much; it’s not like that would be out-of-character or even unlikely that Joe had not been doing that from the minute they’d met. But somehow...after what they’d shared last night… the thought stung something fierce. This was what was swirling through David’s head as he clomped through Haganeu, startled out of his thoughts by bumping roughly into Martin.

“Webster, you gotta be pullin’ my leg. After that shit you pulled the other day?” The shorter man looked-okay, well, he always looked pissed, but this was a special brand of vinegar that made him itch to immediately cry uncle.

“Aw, Christ, sir. I’m terribly sorry, honestly, sir. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going…”

“Clearly,” Johnny scoffed, but to David’s surprise, his tone softened as he mumbled, “Well, I’m guessing you probably didn’t get much sleep last night. I...I didn’t sleep a wink.”

He blinked dumbly at Martin’s abrupt change of heart. Sympathetic words from virtually anybody (but especially Srg. Martin) were so unfamiliar to him that they almost didn’t register to him. Tears threatened to prickle ludicrously at what might’ve been the only show of kindness David had yet to receive since he’d been cleared to go back, and he shook them off so he could offer Martin a respectful nod.

“I mean, if I said yes, that’d mean I was disobeying Major Winter’s direct orders.” He smiled cheekily, also feeling a bit of a rush addressing Dick by his new title. Inside, he wriggled and preened like a puppy when Martin replied with a faint grin of his own. With a faux-exasperated huff, Johnny reached up and rustled David’s mop of wavy, bed-messy hair before moving past him with a shake of his head.

The brief interaction made David feel a bit lighter, no longer feeling so weighed down by what he knew was coming: a complete and utter shitstorm. Just then, a nasally, california drawl spiked his eardrums; as if his thoughts had summoned the bastard!

“No, no, see, Bobby COULD get with any chick ‘e wanted to, but he’s a lil bitch!”

Oh goodie; Joe appeared to be in yet another scintillating conversation. David couldn’t quite make out Chuck’s reply, but he most definitely heard Joe’s:

“You daydrinkin’ or somethin’, Chuckie?! Iceman’s like, the most badass one! Cyclops is just posturing! He’s a goddamned nerd!”

Okay, so maybe David was struck slightly that Liebgott even knew what the word ‘posturing’ meant. And that surprise must’ve registered in his face as he did his best to inch past the cluster of 2nd platoon boys, because Ramirez suddenly called out:

“Somethin’ wrong, Webster?” with a mean, little smirk that had Grant rolling his eyes. David had always appreciated how little Srg. Grant tolerated the rest of his platoon’s relentless pestering of David. Not enough to speak up on his behalf, of course. After all, David was pretty sure that Joe was his best friend aside from maybe Talbert.

Liebgott’s eyes slowly swung over to acknowledge his presence, and David flinched in preparation for the barrage of insults he was sure were heading his way. Both parties had stopped walking, everyone apart from David and Joe shifting in slight discomfort as the staredown continued.

“You look like shit, Harvard.” Joe offered finally before bodily knocking his shoulder with David’s. And this one was purposeful.

The group marched on, gravel crunching beneath their feet in the silence while David stood frozen in the same spot. W-what? That was it? Joe wasn’t even going to-to acknowledge what they’d done?? No, fuck that, what JOE had done to HIM! It wasn’t exactly like David had crawled into Joe’s bunk and-and….

Oh.

Well, it was kind of like that. But, still! He’d been more than willing to leave and sleep on the frigid basement flooring, but then Joe had started rubbing and sighing and had latched onto David’s arm! Yeah...held him captive...with his slumber-sweet breath and surprisingly petal-soft skin. Jesus Christ, what was he kidding himself? Truth was, they were both at fault here, but only one of them had done so consciously. Did Liebgott think he was some sort of perverted creep now? God, he really wished that Joe had at least made some mention as to his feelings on the situation. Perhaps if he could manage to get the stubborn guy alone.

David saw his chances and took it after Dick had informed them that they wouldn’t have to do a second patrol that night, snagging Joe by that sharp, little elbow on his way out the door. He ignored the look of unfiltered disgust on Joe’s face for the time being, swallowing his nerve before he had a fucking heart attack.

“Joe, can we talk? Please?

He pleaded softly, ignoring how Babe was openly staring at them both as he brushed past them. The tips of his ears and high planes of his cheeks flushed at the sudden reminder that Babe knew . What made it worse was Joe’s gaze tracking the color as it spread across David’s face; he seemed unaware that he was even doing it.

“Why should I listen to anything you have to say, Web?” The question came out choked up, and obviously not as vicious as intended.

Rather than replying, he simply tugged on Joe’s arm and ushered him away from where Nixon and Winters were still idly watching the interaction. The pair shuffled into a nearby alleyway, and David bit his lip, struggling not to comment on how easily he was able to move Joe around. That undoubtedly would set him off, and cause Joe to storm off before they’d even had a chance to talk.

Instead, he let go of Joe’s arm hastily, and shifted so that his weight was pressing along the brick wall opposite him. Something on Joe’s face shuttered for a half-second, but his expression smoothed over into what he probably thought looked like apathy. Again, David fought off a smile; Joe’s face was always like an open book, and the older man never seemed to not be smouldering over some little thing. Maybe he was going insane, but David had always found it weirdly cute. If he wanted to really ensure his death, he might’ve even gone ahead and referred to it as a pout. That’s what it was really; Liebgott was never not pouting .

“The fuck ‘r you smilin’ for?”

Oops, guess he’d failed. He wiped the grin off bodily with his palm and tried affecting an air of seriousness. Clearing his throat, his sky blue eyes rolled heavenwards as he searched for the right phrasing:

“I wanted to...apologize, for my actions the other night. It was inappropriate of me-”

Joe prickled instantly: “Jesus- don’t you talk to me like I’m some skirt, Webster! I-you, it’s not like you took my innocence or-”

He seemed to register the words he was saying and his mouth shut with an audible clack. And David watched in fascination as Joe Liebgott blushed like an embarrassed little boy, shuffling his feet and looking away from him. He’d always thought a healthy flush looked particularly fetching on pale skin, the rosy color bloomed oh so beautifully, in his opinion at least. He continued to watch in baffled silence as Joe began to babble to fill the quiet:

“Not that- I’m not- and you, you didn’t… we didn’t- Look, nothing happened! Okay?”

His ears got much redder than the rest of his face, and David let himself think it freely now. Cute . It was fucking endearing, the way Joe continued to huff and puff, brown eyes fluttering around the dirty alley. He felt a surge of warmth in his chest, feeling perhaps a little gluttonous as he soaked in the way dark brown locks shone in the dimming sunlight. With Joe refusing to acknowledge David’s existence, he was free to admire the man to his heart's content, appreciative that he was here in the flesh.

A sharp, defined collarbone peeked out of Joe’s jacket where the hem had gone askew, and long, pretty fingers toyed with his dog tags subconsciously. His memory recalled how those fingers felt: not rough, like he’d expect of a man so used to heavy artillery, but soft as silk. David recognized, obviously, that Joe was plenty manly. He acted with far too much aggression and seemed to compulsively throw his weight around (not that he had much to speak of). But physically, there seemed to be a disconnect. Joseph Liebgott had been sculpted into a thin, delicate form that clashed harshly with his mean attitude and meaner words. Call a spade a spade, but Joe was pretty . Handsome, sure, but pretty was more accurate. Pretty evoked images of sculptures and artwork to David; something finely crafted and meant to be….

To be appreciated.

“Do you have any memory…? Of anything you did last night?” Anger quickly bled into concern across Liebgott’s delicate features, much to David’s confusion:

“Do? Shit, David, I...I didn’t do somethin’ stupid, did I? ‘S that what’s got you all upset?”

Wait, what? Now Joe thought he’d-ugh- taken David’s innocence?!? Any fondness he had for the shorter faded into irritation. God, he could be thick sometimes! He fought the urge to shake Joe, less inclined to fall through with this now that he knew how easily he could push Joe around. Hypothetically, of course. Although…

“Wha- I’m not upset, Joe!”

“The fuck you’re not!”

“But, really, I’m not-”

“You’re shoutin’ in my face, Webster! Clearly, something’s got yer panties in a bunch!”

He could feel his face heating up as his anger built, ticking upwards the more they shouted at one another:

“My p- You know what? Fine, yes, I am upset! Because you refuse to talk to me about what happened!”

“NOTHIN’-”

“WE SHARED A FUCKING BED, JOE!”

Joe surged forward anxiously and covered David’s mouth with his palm, and oh, touching was so much worse. In his haste, Joe’s body was pressing into his own from chest to thigh, and David tasted the acrid nicotine tang and salt of his fingers. As Joe hissed in a tense, barely-audible voice, their noses nearly brushed.

“Are you trying to get us both shot?? Shut the fuck up with that shit!”

He waited patiently until Joe finally removed his hand before saying: “So, you do acknowledge that something happened.”

He practically felt Joe holding himself back from smacking him, but David didn’t back down. Once more leaning his head back against the bricks, he stuck out his chin pointedly and kept his lips pressed together. Quick, clever eyes took in the picture of defiance he made, and something shifted in Joe. They landed on his lips heavily, blatantly, and David felt the backs of his knees starting to sweat. A sly, wide smirk stretched across Joe’s full mouth that made David feel small somehow, but he couldn’t tell if he hated that as much as he ought to. They were already so close, but Joe shifted his weight so that both sides were pressing him back into the rough, dirty wall rather than just the one. He could only follow along helplessly as he watched Joe’s hand come up to cage him in on the sides of his head, and what the holy hell was going on??

“So, what if we did? Hm, David? Would that upset you, if I did remember?”

He scoffed but it sounded weak even to his own ears, “Yeah right, Lieb. You were asleep.”

Joe hummed, pressing impossibly closer, until he could feel just the barest scrape of chapped lips up against his own, near-black eyes boring holes into David that shone with a delicious mischievousness that had him shivering:

“Guess you’ll never know!” He said brightly, pulling away like he hadn’t pasted himself to David’s whole body with ease, and with a wink, he was gone.

#bobtogether #bobfic2020 #webgott #band of brothers fanfic #...can yall tell just how badly I simp for Lieb istg #also COUNT how my frickin times i refer to him as DELICATE i hate meself #emma writes

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The Best French TV Shows on Netflix

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When acclaimed supernatural series Les Revenants/The Returned aired on Canal+ in 2012, it emerged into a fairly barren landscape for French-language scripted TV drama. The story of a remote mountain town whose dead are mysteriously revived, its stylish, cinematic look and philosophical, grown-up approach to genre television had little precedent. While the French ‘polar’ or detective series had long been a television staple, France had almost no tradition of sci-fi, horror and fantasy TV shows – or at least, none taken seriously by its understandably cinephile-and-proud cultural gatekeepers.

In the last five years, coinciding with the global growth of scripted TV drama, that’s all changed. Crime thrillers still wear the crown, but alongside them, France and Belgium are producing and exporting more continuing television dramas and miniseries than ever. From Black Mirror-ish future-set Osmosis and consciousness-swapping Transfers, to cool Parisian teen Vampires and creepy horror Marianne, scripted French-language genre television is exploding. It’s early days and the market has been testing its breadth, which explains the profusion of shows below that haven’t lasted beyond a single series. When it works though, as in excellent comedy-drama Call My Agent, it really works, in France and around the world.

Political thrillers, comedies, psychological drama, rom-com… there’s never been such scripted variety on French television, and thanks to streaming services, it’s never been so accessible around the world. Here’s a guide to what’s currently available on Netflix.

SCI-FI & FANTASY

Osmosis (2019)

In near future Paris, a dating app matches singles with their soulmates by mining their brain data, but decoding true love comes at a price.

‘If science could guarantee true love, would you say yes?’ asks this atmospheric Parisian-set sci-fi series. If your answer is ‘oui’, then this thoughtful examination of relationships, technology, fate and free may give you pause.

Eight-episode series Osmosis was created by Audrey Fouché, a writer on hit French supernatural series Les Revenants / The Returned. It’s about 12 participants in an experimental scientific study designed to match people with their perfect partner using an AI named Martin (pronounced Mart-an in French, therefore much less funny). It attracted excellent reviews on release, including many favourable comparisons to Black Mirror, though Netflix frustratingly said ‘non’ to a second season.

Into the Night (2020)

When a mysterious cosmic disaster strikes Earth, survivors on an overnight flight from Brussels race to find refuge and escape the sun’s rays.

Inspired in part by Polish sci-fi novel The Old Axolotl (what is there not to enjoy about that combination of words?) written by Jacek Dukaj, Into the Night is Netflix’s first Belgian original series. The sci-fi thriller was created by Jason George, a producer on Narcos and The Blacklist, and its first season consists of six 40-minute episodes.

It’s the story of a planeful of passengers mid-flight when an environmental catastrophe causes the sun’s rays to start destroying all organic life. If the plane can outrun the sunrise by flying through different time zones, they might survive to fight its disastrous effects. A lot of them will, in fact, because a second season was ordered by Netflix in July 2020. Don’t go looking for depth necessarily with this one, it’s a twisty action sci-fi designed for bingeing and not for the ‘but would that really happen?’ brigade.

Transfers / Transferts (2017)

After a boating accident, woodworker and family man, Florian, wakes up in the body of an officer who leads a task force against illegal body transfers.

This six-episode sci-fi imagines a world where the technology has developed to transplant human consciousness from one body to another. Due to moral objections from the Church, the process is ruled illegal but continues underground, leading to the creation of a police task force which specialises in capturing unlawful ‘Transfers’. When a carpenter dies in an accident and awakens in the body of the man leading that task force, he’s thrown into the middle of a tense conspiracy.

This pacey thriller blending crime drama and sci-fi won a couple of awards on release, including a plaudit for the performance of Belgian lead Arieh Worthalter. Its co-creator Claude Scasso is part of the team on France’s hugely successful detective show Cain. Sadly despite all that, there’s no sniff of a second season.

Mortel (2019)

Determined to find his missing brother, high school troublemaker Sofiane ropes timid classmate Victor into a pact with a mysterious figure.

A rare excursion for France into the kind of teen supernatural TV more commonly found on America’s The CW, Mortel (a pun on French slang for cool, or whatever word means ‘cool’ these days – slammin’?) is the story of two high schoolers gifted with magical abilities. Teen Sofiane seeks an ancient power to help find his missing brother, and receives it courtesy of a Voodoo god. The catch is that this new-found power may only be used in conjunction with his oddball classmate, Victor.

Sofiane and Victor are thus thrown together by their magical pact, and the six-episode show sees the pair navigate teen life and supernatural danger at the same time. It was created by Frédéric Garcia, who made his name as a teen drama writer on Skam France. There won’t be a second season, and in all honesty, that’s not an enormous shame but genre fans looking for a change of scenery should get a kick from it.

Marianne (2019)

Emma, a famous and successful French horror writer, is forced to return to her hometown after the woman who haunted her dreams fifteen years ago begins to re-appear. The work she writes is apparently a work of fiction, but how much is fact?

This eight-episode series about a successful writer who, having bled her teenage nightmares for book material, now faces its real-life return was warmly received by horror fans on its arrival in 2019. The eight-episode first season (sadly, it wasn’t renewed for a second) is packed with classic scares which, though familiar, were handled extremely well. The French setting added a new element for UK and US viewers more used to seeing such hauntings play out in English.

Created by Quoc Dang Tran and Samuel Bodin, the undeniably scary Marianne stars Call Me By Your Name’s Victoire Du Bois as hit novelist Emma Larsimon, but it’s undeniably the face of Mireille Herbstmeyer as Madame Daugeron you’ll be seeing in your own nightmares.

Vampires (2020)

A Parisian teenager who is half human, half vampire grapples with her emerging powers, and family turmoil as she is pursued by a secret vampire community.

The vampire mythos gets another go-around in this six-part coming-of-age drama about a Parisian teenager torn between two identities. Doina (Oulaya Amamra) is half-vampire, half-human. Her vamp mother has kept her on drugs to suppress her vampiric urges, but curiosity and teen rebellion lead Doina to explore her supernatural heritage.

The result is a stylish, blood-soaked, neo-noir teen show filled with sex and gore against the backdrop of the French capital. Yes, you’ve seen most of it all before, but as metaphors for adolescence go, vampirism’s one of the richest. The music-video aesthetic and developing mythology – who are The Community, the mysterious vampiric cult who want Doina to join them? What happened to her human father? – combined with the family drama make this very watchable, if not a total must-see.

Black Spot / Zone Blanche (2017)

A police chief and an eccentric new prosecutor investigate a string of grisly crimes and eerie phenomena in an isolated town at the edge of a forest.

A creepy town, a haunted forest and beaucoup de killings are the ingredients of this Belgian supernatural series. It’s the story of a local police chief in a fictional town surrounded by a vast forest filled with creepy secrets that makes the local murder stats six times the national average, attracting the attention of an out-of-town investigator.

Black Spot was created by Mathieu Missoffe, a writer on crime drama Spiral and the French portions of Netflix original Criminal. It’s extremely bingeable, and while the Twin Peaks comparisons are overstating the matter, its combination of folk horror and dark humour makes it memorable. There are currently two eight-episode seasons (the original title Zone Blanche translates more closely to Dead Zone, but we’re not the ones making the decisions around here). As yet, there’s no word on a third season, but neither has it officially been cancelled.

Twice Upon a Time / Il était une seconde fois (2019)

While still reeling from a breakup, Vincent receives a cube with extraordinary powers and seizes a change to reconnect with his ex – in the past.

This mournful sci-fi romance about a man who receives an object in the post that enables him to travel back in time to nine months earlier, when he attempts to resurrect a failed relationship with his ex (Skins and The White Queen‘s Freya Mavor) wasn’t exactly warmly received by fans of either genre. With only four half-hour episodes though, it does have brevity in its favour, as well as its own violin-laden, intense atmosphere. If you’re a fan of meditative science-fiction that poses moral questions and doesn’t provide all (or indeed some) of the answers, Twice Upon a Time could be for you. Make sure you watch it with subtitles though, because the US dubbed accents are a bridge too far.

CRIME THRILLER

The Forest / La Forêt (2017)

When a teen girl disappears from a village near the Ardennes Forest, local police and a concerned teacher begin to uncover a web of unsettling secrets.

Comparisons to Zone Blanche (see above) abound for The Forest, but this is a much more straightforward Broadchurch-style crime thriller. Set in the Ardennes in a small town where everybody knows everybody and they’re all hiding sordid secrets (you know the drill by now), it’s about the search for a missing teenage girl and years of strange disappearances and goings-on in the titular forest.

Reviews were generally good, with plenty of praise for the scenery and soundtrack, but the key thing about this one-series thriller is that the ending offers definitive answers to the many questions posed in the series. A bit clichéd, perhaps, but crime mystery fans should find plenty to enjoy in the twists and turns.

The Chalet / Le Chalet (2017)

Friends gathered at a remote chalet in the French Alps for a summer getaway are caught in a deadly trap as a dark secret from the past comes to light.

The backdrop of Chamonix in the French Alps is what makes this serviceable thriller worth a look. Its somewhat predictable ‘nasty things happen in a remote chalet’ story plays out against a stunning mountain setting, over two timelines. The six hour-long episodes are split between 2017, when a group of friends visits the titular chalet, and 1997, when a family moved there for a fresh start. Neither goes… well.

By no means a must-watch, it’s nevertheless a compact, eventful series for Francophile TV fans, from the makers of crime thriller Les Dames and popular long-running French detective series Julie Lescaut.

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By Gem Wheeler

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By Aliya Whiteley

The Mantis / La Mante (2017)

A serial killer, nicknamed ‘La Mante’ decides to collaborate with the police when a string of murders that copycat her style suddenly appear.

Try to ignore the fact that the main character is called Damien Carrot and this six-part crime thriller will feel all the more gruesome. It’s already very, very gruesome and merits its many comparisons to The Sinner and Luther’s heightened world of psychopathic murderers and nasty death scenes. Apparently Stephen King’s a fan.

It’s a kind of Silence of the Lambs set-up about an incarcerated serial killer helping a cop to solve a series of copycat murders in Paris, with the twist that said cop is said serial killer’s son (!). Without giving anything away, the controversial ending definitely merits a wider discussion about the responsibilities of TV drama, which you’ll find elsewhere online, so be prepared for crassness. The trailer above is French-language only.

The Frozen Dead / Glacé (2017)

A grisly find atop a mountain in the French Pyrenees leads investigator Martin Servas into a twisted dance with a serial killer in this icy thriller.

Did we say the last one was Silence of the Lambs-y? This one is very much that aussi. In The Frozen Dead, a serial killer plays a sick game with the cops investigating some gruesome murders in the French Pyrenees. There’s also some wrongdoing involving a horse that doesn’t involve it ending up in a pot-au-feu.

This suspense thriller consists of six 50-minute episodes, which makes it a choice weekend binge, from creators with credits including Spiral and French political series Spin / Les Hommes de l’Ombre.

Unit 42 / Unité 42 (2017)

A widowed cop tapped to lead a special cybercrimes unit teams up with a former hacker to hunt down tech-savvy criminals who are terrorizing Belgium

For fans of The Tunnel and The Bridge, this is a Belgian odd-couple crime thriller about Sam – a resolutely analogue detective in his 50s – and Billie – a troubled hacker in her 20s. They team up in a newly created Brussels digital policing unit to track down a network of cyber terrorists responsible for a series of killings.

If that sounds generic and familiar, it is, but the chemistry of the two leads Patrick Ridremont and Constance Gay sells the premise. This police procedural has two 10-part series so far, comprising 50-minute episodes but only the first is currently available to stream on Netflix.

The Break / La Trêve (2016)

A police detective mourning a painful loss moves back to his peaceful hometown, only to be drawn into a murder case that dredges up dark secrets.

Nicknamed the Belgian Broadchurch (we really need to find new ways to describe crime TV), this whodunit earned high praise across both seasons for its darkly comic and twisted story of dark small town secrets. Filmed in The Ardennes, the two 10-episode seasons weave together numerous family drama subplots and lay bare sick secrets about the residents of Heiderfeld, Belgium.

The premise sees a police detective moves with his teenage daughter from Brussels back to his home town, where the body of a young football player has been pulled from the river. Against a backdrop of local corruption surrounding the construction of a dam, was it suicide or murder?

DRAMA

Inhuman Resources / Dérapages (2020)

Alain Delambre, unemployed and 57, is lured by an attractive job opening. But things get ugly when he realises he’s a pawn in a cruel corporate game.

Eric Cantona (yes, him) stars in this six-episode action-packed thriller satirising corporate greed. It’s based on a 2010 novel by Pierre Lemaitre titled Cadres Noirs, which itself was inspired by a true story about a company that staged a fake hostage situation as part of a round of high-level job interviews.

It’s a slick, gritty morality drama about a down-on-his-luck man (Cantona) forced into an extreme role when he’s tasked with simulating a hostage attack for a slimy boss seeking to decimate his workforce. Reviews have been very positive, with particular praise for Cantona in the lead role.

Mythomaniac / Mytho (2019)

Burned out and taken for granted, a working mother suspects her partner is cheating, so to win back his attentions, she feigns a medical diagnosis.

Directed by Fabrice Gobert, who headed up Les Revenants / The Returned and written by Anne Berest, this domestic drama-comedy is about Elvira, a disenchanted mother of three ignored by her family, cheated on by her husband and kicked around by suburban life. When she lies about a cancer diagnosis, things start to change for the better at home, but the lie brings its own complications. It won the audience award and best actress for lead Marina Hands (Black Spot, Taboo) at Series Mania, winning praise for her delicate, compassionate performance.

This is a solid family drama with a strong lead performance. It’s already been renewed for a second season, which was, pre-Covid-19, due to arrive in France in late 2020. See the French-language trailer above.

COMEDY & ROM-COM

Family Business (2019)

After learning France is about to legalize pot, a down-on-his-luck entrepreneur and his family race to turn their butcher shop into a marijuana cafe.

Starring, among others, French legend Liliane Rovère (also seen in Call My Agent, see below), this is part stoner comedy, part dysfunctional family sitcom. It’s about a struggling son (creator Jonathan Cohen) who comes up with the bright idea to pivot his Parisian Jewish family butcher shop into a cannabis cafe, and the trouble that lands them in on both sides of the law.

It’s lightweight with a bit of edge, and if you take a shine to its larger-than-life characters fear not, it was renewed for a second season very quickly after its initial release. The new episodes are scheduled to arrive in September 2020.

The Hook-up Plan / Plan Coeur (2018)

Elsa, on the verge of turning thirty and stuck in an uninspiring job, finds herself still hung up on her ex-boyfriend two years after their breakup. Her friends, hoping to help her break out of her rut and find some confidence, decide to hire a male escort to take her on a few dates.

This rom-com is the second French-language Netflix original after Gerard Depardieu-starring Marseille, and given the choice between the two, this is the one to watch. Three friends, Elsa, Emilie and Charlotte navigate relationships and imminent motherhood in contemporary Paris over two series.

It’s a light, pacey modern dating comedy filled with bright shots of Paris and city life. The English-targeted trailer riffed on its similarity to Love Actually, if you want to use that as a barometer for whether you’d enjoy it. (Though if it’s French comedy-drama you’re after though, run, don’t walk to Call My Agent, see below).

A Very Secret Service / Au Service de la France (2015)

1960: the French intelligence service hires the 23-year-old Andre Merlaux. Handsome, well-raised, intelligent but impressionable, Merlaux has much to learn to serve and defend the interests of France.

This light-weight Archer-ish satire goes back to the 1960s to a time when France’s position in the world stage was changing due to ongoing bloody colonial battles for independence, and French society was changing thanks to the rise of feminism and the civil rights movement. Set in a French intelligence training service, it follows a hapless new recruit’s attempts to follow orders and do his compatriots proud. There are two 12-episode seasons of this comedy drama, which was received warmly back in 2015 and pokes fun at the old ways and the new through the eyes of a fish out of water.

Call My Agent / Dix Pour Cent (2015)

At a top Paris talent firm, agents scramble to keep their star clients happy – and their business afloat – after an unexpected crisis.

Unless you are in fact watching it (in which case, carry on), this is surely The Best French TV Series You’re Not Watching. Set in a Parisian talent agency struggling to survive after the loss of its patron, it’s a workplace comedy-drama with heart and satirical bite. The forthcoming season four will sadly be its last, but at least it’s going to end on its own terms.

Dix Pour Cent (10 Per Cent in English, in reference to the agent’s cut of a star’s pay packet) is a funny, fast, whip-smart satire of, and love letter to the French film industry, filled with characters to love. Created by Fanny Herrero, it has a terrific comedy ensemble cast (including Camille Cottin, who played Fleabag in the French-language remake) but the real joy for fans of French cinema are the guest stars. So many legends pop up, from Juliette Binoche to Monica Bellucci, Jean Dujardin, Isabelle Huppert and Beatrice Dalle… all playing exaggerated versions of themselves. N’hesitez plus, vas-y!

The post The Best French TV Shows on Netflix appeared first on Den of Geek.

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snowbellewells · 4 years

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The Lawman, the Thief, and the Outlaw

by: @snowbellewells

(Here we are, at long last!! I am so excited to present the Rio Bravo AU I have been thinking about and wanting to write for so long. As we are now just a little under three weeks away from Netflix’s “Heartstrings” and seeing Colin as a cowboy, I had to get going on this and channel that excitement. If you have ever seen the old John Wayne/Dean Martin/Ricky Nelson/Walter Brennan Western “Rio Bravo”, then this will follow a lot of the basic plot points, though I will take some of my own twists and turns as well. I definitely have to give it some inspirational credit, as well as @theonceoverthinker for her help with a few plot issues I was trying to wrangle, and for the lovely ladies on the Discord chat: @kmomof4 @profdanglaisstuff @ultraluckycatnd @darkcolinodonorgasm @teamhook @wellhellotragic for helping me with title suggestions.

Please enjoy, and I’d love to hear what you think of this opening!!)

Summary: Sheriff Killian Jones has done his best to leave behind a troubled past and bring law and order to the town of Blanchard Ridge. However, when he upholds his duty in the face of the most feared and dangerous outlaw gang in the area, allies are few and he dreads trapping them in the same situation he finds himself. The small Western town is about to become a powder keg, and one lawman, his deputies, and a resourceful woman too stubborn for her own good are all that stand in the way of bloodshed and lawlessness...

Chapter One

Sun beat down brutal and unyielding from the hot August afternoon sky onto the packed dirt of Main Street in Blanchard Ridge while the town was sleepy and still; not even the bark of a dog or the clop of hooves from a passing rider disturbed the dusty hours before the evening meal. The stage was due in at four, but as far as Killian Jones’ sharp gaze could reach from where he sat, chair tilted back on the wooden slats of the porch, appearing relaxed and lazy, nothing moved in the time of the ‘siesta’ as their neighbors just a few hours south in Pioche would call it.

Though all appeared normal - more still than normal, even - in the sleepy little town he was meant to watch after, Jones was not about to drop his guard; he had learned long ago that calm could turn to chaos on a dime, and he aimed to be ready when the storm came. Idly, he flicked his pocket knife along the grain of the whittling stick he worked as he sat surveying the nearly deserted street, hoping to convey boredom despite every sense being keenly attuned, nerves jangling in a way that warned him something was coming - even if he didn’t yet know what it might be. He hadn’t survived as long as he had, nor gained the reputation he possessed, by growing careless, and he trusted his instincts. He slowly let his hand slide down casually, almost without notice, making certain his favorite Colt Single Action was in its holster, before going back to the soft humming and carving he’d employed since he took up his seat just past the noonday meal, upon his return from lunch at the Nolans’, and since his deputy, Scarlet, had taken off for the afternoon.

Reflecting for a moment as he watched heat shimmer in waves before his eyes, Jones knew that he was far from the typical lawman, even in these rough territories, and the irony of his ending up here wasn’t lost on him. He didn’t give himself leave to think much on the twists and turns his life had taken, and he tried not to waste much time debating whether or not he deserved the opportunity and trust he had been granted, seeing as how neither did anyone a lick of good. But on long, lonesome afternoons such as this one, when the parched brown earth and flat, monotonous chaparral stretched before him as far as the eye could see - such a contrast from the verdant rolling hills and cool breezes of Ireland, from whence he’d immigrated with his father and brother more years ago than he could rightly count - he did sometimes wonder how he had wound up here in the desert. He was a haunted man, and he didn’t like to leave the gate open to thoughts of the past any longer than he could help it, so he slammed it closed before they could go much further. Suffice to say, he’d been offered a second chance on the right side of the law, to be part of something that wouldn’t lead to jail, lynching, or death in some back alley from a knife in the back, and he had taken it.

There was only one inmate in the jail behind him, but it was one more than usual in the peaceful settlement where folks generally got along and abided by the few simple laws there were. It had him on edge, this Felix Nightshade in their cells, and it was why he had sent Will out for a few hours when he had, so they would both be around once night fell. They’d bunk in the jail, just to be cautious. Nightshade himself might only be a bank and stagecoach robber, interchangeable with any other, but word had it that he was the lieutenant to Pan Malcolm himself, the feared and bloodthirsty outlaw who had lead the notorious Lost Boys gang terrorizing the state for some years. Killian expected a rescue attempt to come before the Federal Marshals came to fetch Nightshade and take him into custody, and if so, he reckoned they would strike under cover of darkness. It was what he would do himself.

He was standing to stretch his long legs and lean frame from the stiffness of sitting in one position for too long when the ground beneath his feet began to tremble and there was a rumbling sound like distant thunder suddenly drawing near. A cloud of dust kicked up on the horizon and drew ever closer, until Killian began to think that he had been wrong to surmise his adversary would wait for nightfall, when he recognized what was coming. His stance eased and his hand once more slid away from his six shooter as ‘yips’ and ‘haws’ rang out with the sound of hooves and the lowing of cattle. A train was driving their herd into town.

From under the awning, the sheriff waited to see if he knew any of the riders, but it was the distinctive brand on the cows themselves as they jostled into view taking up the whole street in a lumbering river, that let him know whose livestock had arrived. The ornate “O” interlocked with a “Q” told him the whole lot of them were a former compadre of his, Robin Sherwood’s, and coming from his ranch out on the Rio Bravo river, a prime bit of real estate that had been in his second wife’s family for generations. Another former immigrant, and once ne’er-do-well like Killian himself, Rob had found love, married a powerful heiress and become one of the most prominent cattle ranchers around, going respectable with impressive style and giving his spread the name Outlaw’s Queen. Jones didn’t know Rob’s wife all that well, didn’t even see his friend that often, as the ride out to their land was long and he didn’t often give himself days off, but she was rumored to be quite the lady. Robin truly did treat her as royalty… and was happy to do so.

Chuckling, Killian moved forward as the herd cleared through, driven into the holding pens down by the livery kept for such wagon trains passing through, then came down the steps to meet Sherwood as he swung from the saddle, smiling widely and already calling out a greeting. The rest of his riders, including the young orphan he had taken under his wing upon hiring him as a ranch hand back in the spring, moved the cattle on, slowing them as they neared the large corral and began to guide them through the gate.

Killian had started down the weathered plank steps of the boardwalk to the packed dirt of the street, and already had his hand out to shake Rob’s, even as his old friend moved forward in a similar fashion, when the loud crack of a gunshot ran clearly in the afternoon air. Even over the lowing and stamping of the herd, the sound was unmistakable, ricocheting off the buildings and startling everyone nearby, who ducked instinctively. Unfortunately, the bullet had already found a target. Whether its intended one or not, the damage was the same, and Robin Sherwood listed to the side horribly, crashing to his knees at the foot of the steps, his hand going almost dazedly to where blood was already seeping through his shirts at the ribs.

“Rob!” Killian called out an alarmed warning too late to do the other man any good. Even as Killian hurried the last few steps to where his friend was slumped in the street, still breathing, though painfully labored, but unable to right himself from his knees where he had crumpled. “Mate, hang on,” Jones added fervently, as he knelt to survey the damage. Where the bullet had entered, if it had exited cleanly or was still inside, played a huge part in what could be done for the rancher. And even as he looked, Killian was also remaining in a crouch himself, hoping to make as small a target as possible for the unseen gunman, and keep an eye on their surroundings in case more shots were yet to come.

Chaos had erupted around them at the crack of the gunshot; the straggling cows not yet in the corral threatened to stampede in fright, and the rest of Sherwood’s riders darted here and there, whooping and hollering to keep their animals in line. All except one of them -

Killian swallowed back an unwanted lump of emotion trying to burn its way up his throat at the sound of young Henry’s cracked voice crying out an anguished “No!” over the melee, his horse thundering up to the hitching post near them and his gangly legs swinging into Killian’s view as he dismounted and slid to his knees beside them, looking to the sheriff for some sort of reassurance. Killian honestly didn’t know if it was the living hope still alight in the youth’s wide brown eyes - not yet having lived long enough in the crooked old world to have lost faith in things turning out alright - or if it was the vivid flash of horrific memory, bringing his brother’s pained face, as he last remembered seeing it, swimming with ghastly clarity before his eyes too quickly for him to fully shutter it away. Jones didn’t have time for sentiment; the shooter needed to be found. He also needed to be certain no other citizens were hurt, and see to Rob’s wounds once the dust settled. It looked as though the injury had been a clean through-and-through shot, and if he could get Sherwood to Nolan’s without his losing too much blood, he thought David’s pretty, fresh-faced wife: cook, seamstress, and pretty much anything else a person could call for, could stitch him up while they got Doc Hopper to make sure no infection set in.

The melee around them seemed to be settling down; the riders herding the rest of the cattle into the pen safely and no further shots coming from wherever the assailant’s hiding place had been. The thought that the bullet in Rob’s side had quite probably had his own name on it, was another thing Killian Jones had no time to ruminate on. Clearly the shooter had turned tail when they’d botched the job of taking the Sheriff out of commission, and ridden back for further instructions rather than risking discovery. From what Jones had heard of Malcolm and the precision with which he expected his orders to be followed, the law man reckoned that bloke had every bit as unpleasant a few hours in front of him as Robin did with people poking and prodding at his side.

Pushing all his numerous worries and concerns back for the moment, Killian met the eyes of the lanky young man before him, “Henry, isn’t it?”

The boy nodded, not saying anything, but acknowledging the sheriff’s words with a determined furrow of his brow, trying manfully to hold in his obvious fear and worry for his adopted father. Killian was grateful for the youth’s gumption, even if he hated asking more yet. He knew well how much Sherwood must mean to the lad. When Henry had arrived in town back in the spring, by far the oldest child on the Orphan Train that had driven through seeking homes to take their charges in, it had been clear that a boy of nearly fourteen was not the age most childless families were hoping to start out with. Robin, however, having lost a first wife and young son who would have been about Henry’s age to the influenza years prior, hadn’t hesitated for a second when Killian had mentioned the boy’s plight to him. It did some good to even Jones’ toughened and grizzled outlook on the world to see that the arrangement had worked out better than he could have hoped. Aiming to put some semblance of encouragement in his tone he added, “I think he’ll recover if we can stop the bleeding and get him sewn up,” he offered.

Moving to brace Robin on one side, and gesturing Henry to do the same under his arm on the right, between the two of them they got Sherwood to his feet, thought unsteadily and leaning on their combined strength. In a shuffling walk they had soon guided him across the way to the inn and restaurant, finding its proprietor, David Nolan, already at the door and coming to help usher them in to safety, his petite, dark-headed wife Mary right behind.

In a better moment, Killian might have shaken his head and laughed at the pair of them, never far from one another and both with hearts as wide as the Rio Grande itself, always trying to do what they could for anyone in need who came to their door. He’d had Mary’s cool, soft hands fluttering over him more than once after some on-the-job injury in the line of duty, and so he knew the woman must already be itching to get her hands on Rob and do what she could to ease his pain.

To speak his mind plainly, Killian would have been forced to admit that he’d often wondered how two people as fine as the Nolans, whose very nature and bearing spoke of class and manners unheard of this far West, had ended up in this rugged New Mexican outpost. They both were too kind, too open and trusting for their own good, and Killian spent more time than he would admit to hoping they weren’t robbed or taken advantage of by whatever rough characters might come riding through. Yet beneath the surface, where he sensed there may once have been a sheltered, easy life that would never have been enough for either one of them, he had long since decided the pair must have a wealth of strength he hadn’t at first been able to see. They’d come to Blanchard Ridge and opened the inn not long after Killian had pinned on the Sheriff’s badge, and neither one seemed to have a thought in their heads towards leaving.

Once they got Rob laid out on a bed in the closest possible empty room, Mary began preparing hot water, clean washcloths, and other materials she needed, while her husband set out with the young ranchhand to fetch the Doctor. Sherwood had clung to his senses as long as possible, but he seemed to be drifting away from awareness, now that he was settled and had reached relative safety. Killian made sure the lady had no need of his assistance, to which she shooed him away to go watch for the others’ return.

Striding out in the main dining area, Jones set up watch at the door, not as much for the doctor, Nolan, and Henry as to see what was happening in the main street. Gunfire was as unusual as he could possibly make it in the center of their small outpost, and so after the ruckus of the last hour the dirt thoroughfare was deserted, people having no wish to be caught in the crossfire - whatever was going on.

His first instinct, the gunfighter’s fire within that had pushed him along until settling there and seeking out a modicum of peace, even if he had to keep it himself, had him edgy, chomping at the bit to get out after the culprit firing on himself or his townspeople in broad daylight. But the lawman he had become had to allow his temper to subside; he couldn’t lash out with the need for vengeance and retaliation. And, if the shot hadn’t been meant to kill him outright, then it had no doubt been meant to send him chasing after shadows rather than staying on guard with his prisoner awaiting the Federal Marshall.

The only thing that was stirring as he continued to stare out at the street before him was the cloud of dust drawing closer and signalling the arrival of the four o’clock stagecoach. They pulled up down the way by the post office, before heading on to the livery, for those horses to be watered, brushed down, and a new team hitched up before the stage headed on to the next settlement. One rider jumped down from up top to run the mail pouch in to the postmaster. The whole routine carried on exactly as usual, until a dainty booted foot stepped out onto the wooden boardwalk from inside the stage. A deep green traveling dress, accented in places with an overlay of black lace, drew his eye up to a stunning, pale feminine face, a strong chin and pert little nose, though the rest of the unknown woman’s visage was hidden by an artfully tilted hat with wide brim to shade her face. Now that was unusual; visitors to the Ridge were exceedingly rare.

He tried to move on from the arrestingly lovely sight, as the woman surveyed her surroundings and then began walking in his direction towards the inn, an enticing sway in her step. No call to be gawping at her like some untried greenhorn, no matter how long it had been since -- No, no time for those thoughts either. He was standing lookout over the main way in and out of town, the jail, and his friend; that was more than enough to focus on.

However, as the lady neared the entrance, Killian did open the door for her, touching the brim of his hat slightly, with an easy dip of his chin and a simple, “Afternoon, Ma’am.”

She raised her head enough for beguiling green eyes to be seen from beneath her own chapeau. They twinkled with some bit of mischief and humor, as she replied, “Why thank you, Sheriff,” with a pointed glance to his badge. “Good afternoon to you.” She then brushed by him so closely that he felt her warmth, making the small hairs on his arm stand on end, and caught the inviting scent of apple blossom, and the cold mix of leather and cinnamon along with it.

Was it only an hour or so ago that the town had appeared sleepily uneventful? Sheriff Killian Jones sensed now that his trouble was just starting, and in more ways than one.

Tagging some who may enjoy: @resident-of-storybrooke @hollyethecurious @let-it-raines @revanmeetra87 @linda8084 @jennjenn615 @searchingwardrobes @laschatzi @effulgentcolors @thisonesatellite @whimsicallyenchantedrose @snidgetsafan @shireness-says @spartanguard @winterbaby89

#cs au mc #cs western au #rio bravo au #chapter one #sheriff!Killian

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johannesviii · 4 years

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Top 12 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2013

The best year in a trio of awesome years for hits. So awesome, in fact, I had to leave several excellent songs out of the list, even with two additional slots, and limit the list to songs I actually put on my mp3 player at one point or another.

What’s that? People usually call it a bad year? Well screw them.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

The year I stopped working in Paris, found a job closer to home that finally made me feel helpful in the grand scheme of things, and I finally had more free time. Goodbye daily trains. I also went to some concerts! This never happened before.

2013: also the year when just about every band and artist I liked decided to make a good album. Except Depeche Mode. Depeche Mode made Delta Machine. It wasn’t great. But, uh, let’s see, Placebo made Loud Like Love (with the fantastic A Million Little Pieces), VNV Nation made Transnational, Daft Punk made Random Access Memories... Nine Inch Nails came back with Hesitation Marks, which is pretty great with a couple of fantastic songs. Lady Gaga made the vastly underrated ArtPop! Even Eminem made a pretty decent album! Eminem! In the year of our lord 2013! And The 1975 made their debut album. They would eventually become one of my favorite bands of the 2010s, but not yet, though. And Indochine redeemed themselves by releasing Black City Parade, their absolute best album of the decade.

However, despite Indochine’s excellent effort and the return of Nine Inch Nails, the album of the year, at least to me, was Kveikur by Sigur Rós. At that point, I had been following their stuff for ten years, and this album still blew my goddamn mind. It’s so heavy and dark and so different from what they had been doing since Agaetis Byrjun. It’s loud and textured and industrial and yet, there’s so much light above the dark. They out-NIN’ed Nine Inch Nails. There isn’t a single track I don’t love on this album. It’s their best one in my humble opinion.

As far as unelligible songs go, boy, where do I start. Uh. Copy of A and Came Back Haunted (Nine Inch Nails), certainly, A Million Little Pieces (Placebo) as I already mentioned, Memoria and College Boy (Indochine - I’m actually shocked they aren’t on the French top 100), Chocolate by The 1975, and most infuriating of all, Castle of Glass by Linkin Park, which is imho their best song of the 2010s. Oh well.

But there’s still a shit ton of stuff which was elligible but didn’t make the list. Here’s a lot of honorable mentions. There were like ten more of them initially, mind you.

Sirens Call (Cats On Trees) - You know how in just about every top ten post I’ve made so far, there’s a song where I’m like “if I had better taste this would be higher”? This is this song for 2013.

Don’t You Worry Child (Swedish House Mafia) - Catchy but borderline annoying. Still very good.

Counting Stars (One Republic) - This is so happy and catchy. More songs like this nowadays, please.

I Cry (Flo Rida) - Still elligible. Still great. Still not on the list.

Ho Hey (The Lumineers) - Same thing here, sadly.

Animals (Martin Garrix) - I called Bangarang from the previous list a perfect stim song, and this is in the same ballpark. Not as good, but great shapes and colors all around.

Berserk (Eminem) - That song has a lot of really bad lines, but also a lot of much needed energy, it’s a ton of fun, and I love the “say f█ck it before you kick the bucket” part of the chorus. I was so glad to hear Eminem having fun again. Would certainly have made the list in a more mediocre year. Not the most infuriating thing I had to leave out of the list, though.

Radioactive (Imagine Dragons) - THIS IS IT THE APOCALYPSE OH WOHO no I don’t have anything intelligent to say, it’s just great.

Best Song Ever (One Direction) - This is my favorite song from that band. It might be because it sounds suspiciously like Baba O’Riley. If you think I’m gonna complain about people ripping off good songs, please check my entry about I Gotta Feeling by The Black Eyed Peas a few top 10s before this one.

Wait. Waiiit. What if the “best song ever” they can’t remember in the lyrics WAS Baba O’Riley?? Wouldn’t that be the best meta song ever? What do you think? I mean, that one could indeed claim the title of best song ever.

Get Lucky (Daft Punk) - I know. I know. But I couldn’t put it on the list. It’s not my favorite song from the album, it was overplayed, and even if it’s extremely good it stays roughly at the same level for the entirety of the song. I love it, but I had to draw the line somewhere and cut the list. I didn’t want to make another top 15.

Carry On (fun.) - This was the last cut from the list. It was a really painful one. Not my favorite song from them, but still very, very good.

There’s been lists where I had to put filler. If I had to put actual grades to them, some songs I put on some lists would get a 6/10 or even a 5/10 for really bad years (looking at you 1990). Sometimes, I had to put stuff I’d grade 7/10 as high as #3.

If I had to grade this 2013 list according to my personal taste in music, #12 would get an 8/10, #11 would get a 9/10, and everything in the top ten would either be a 9,5 or a 10. No joke. That’s how good that year was for hits.

Let’s go.

12 - My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light’Em Up) (Fall Out Boy)

US: #40 / FR: Not on the list

There you have it. Three songs from a band I consider pretentious asshats ended on my lists. Including this one, in a year where I decided to severely limit my options for songs. And at the time? I thought it was just an okay song, way too slow but okay. Not great. At all.

It took it about three whole years to grow on me, and it also took me a while to actually know what it was about, and as I said previously, framing is everything ; knowing this song basically said “we’re back, and we’ve changed, and you’re not gonna like it so you’re gonna feel betrayed and you’re gonna burn your old posters, and in the end you’re also gonna betray us” makes it a lot, lot better. I especially love the “Burn everything you love then burn the. ashes” line with the weird pause for emphasis.

It just goes stomp, stomp, stomp. It’s heavy. You can’t dance to it. You can’t even have fun while listening to it. But you can certainly stomp along, and feel angry, and, yes, betrayed, and three years after 2013, I certainly needed that kind of song. A lot. You know exactly why.

11 - Burn (Ellie Goulding)

US: Not on the list / FR: #54

I discovered Doctor Who at the very, very end of 2013, and for some reason I associate this song with Martha’s journey during the year that never was at the end of S3, trying to convince the entire Earth to fight back against the Master. That’s all I have to say about this song. It’s great.

10 - Instant Crush (Daft Punk ft Julian Casablancas)

US: Not on the list / FR: #26

So yep, Get Lucky isn’t my favorite song on Random Access Memories, and thank you French charts for allowing me to put this one on the list instead.

Like a ton of people, I couldn’t figure out what the chorus was, apart from a couple of isolated words, and that felt exactly like being 10 and trying to decipher songs with my limited English. And then I checked the lyrics, and they were mostly variations on “I don’t want to be alone” and they rhyme “go” with “go”, so, uh, nothing of value was lost that day. And it still sounds fantastic.

9 - Applause (Lady Gaga)

US: #37 / FR: #66

Yes, there’s some really stupid shit in the lyrics and the theme of the song itself isn’t particularly inspiring, but that chorus is a happy burst of fuzzy bright angular shapes, and it’s so energetic it feels like you could phase through walls by sheer force of will while listening to it. It would be even higher if the lyrics were better, I swear.

8 - Papaoutai (Stromae)

US: Not on the list / FR: #4

And the boss of cleverly written hit songs strikes again. Pretty sure that one, like Alors On Danse, is well known even if you don’t speak French. As I understand it, apparently French teachers like to use it in class. But yeah, just in case: it’s a song about his absent father. My favorite part:

Un jour ou l'autre on sera tous papas (One day or another we’ll be dads) Et d'un jour à l'autre, on aura disparu (And one day or the next, we’ll be gone) Serons-nous détestables? (Will we be despicable?) Serons-nous admirables? (Will we be admirable?) Des géniteurs ou des génies (Parents or geniuses) Dites-nous qui donne naissance aux irresponsables? (Tell us who birthes irresponsible people?) Ah, dites-nous qui, tiens (Ah, tell us who ; weird) Tout le monde sait comment on fait des bébés (Everybody knows how to make babies) Mais personne ne sait comment on fait des papas (But nobody knows how to make dads)

And it’s also horribly catchy. And it was kind of a meme here. It was everywhere. I’m surprised it wasn’t even higher than that on the French year end top 100.

7 - Underwater (Mika)

US: Not on the list / FR: #70

Why do I love this song so much even though I usually hate songs like that. This is the kind of romantic bullshit Robbie Williams does, and for the record I absolutely hate Angels, and Underwater even sounds a bit like Angels, and it also has the same kind of corny central metaphor. So. Why do I love Underwater again? How can I justify this? I’ve got no clue.

We don’t deserve Mika.

6 - I Need Your Love (Calvin Harris ft Ellie Goulding)

US: #56 / FR: #51

By now you must all be extremely tired of reading me describing songs in visual ways but this song is the sound equivalent of some sort of light show mixed with Dance Dance Revolution patterns. It’s incredibly kinetic and full of joyful, glittering energy, and I love it so goddamn much.

As a 90s kid who loved eurodance, I’m incredibly grateful this kind of music still exists and is still charting.

5 - Treasure (Bruno Mars)

US: #30 / FR: #23

Speaking of nostalgia. Well, not really, since I wasn’t born in the era this is trying to mimic, but still. I don’t have anything to say about this, apart maybe from the fact this is the song that finally made me like Bruno Mars.

4 - Hey Brother (Avicii)

US: Not on the list / FR: #18

I already mentioned how much I loved Avicii’s music when I briefly talked about Levels, and Hey Brother is even better. As you might know I have a little brother and as it is often the case with siblings we fought a bit but we also shared a lot of things, and games, and weird private jokes, and yeah that song can occasionally make me cry a fair bit if I’m being honest.

Also, it’s kind of my main theme song for Charley and C’rizz, so, yeah, it’s just another layer of Feelings(tm).

3 - I Will Wait (Mumford & Sons)

US: #52 / FR: Not on the list

As you might have noticed, there’s one genre that is conspicuously absent from my lists as far as the US hit songs are concerned, and that’s country. I’ve got nothing against country music, I just rarely find it visually interesting. Now I do like folk rock on the other hand, but its big era is long gone, and it’s quite rare to hear anything from it in the charts nowadays. I liked Ho Hey by the Lumineers, but I always thought it was a little bit too slow.

And then I found Babel by Mumford & Sons at the library, gave it a try, loved it, felt like discovering a modern band version of Bob Dylan with simpler lyrics, and this isn’t my favorite song on the album and it’s still at #3 on this list. Quality, man, just quality.

My favorite song from the album is Lover of the Light, by the way.

2 - Can’t Hold Us (Macklemore & Ryan Lewis)

US: #5 / FR: #8

Sometimes you need angry fight songs, sometimes you need energetic fight songs, and sometimes you need happy fight songs. And when something combines the last two, it’s like you caught a star in a Mario game and you’re f█cking unstoppable.

If Macklemore doesn’t get more hit songs at some point in the near future I’m gonna punch a wall.

1 - Roadgame (Kavinsky)

US: Not on the list / FR: #44

This song has no music video. It was still an enormous hit.

As you may recall, I already said once or twice that I liked to hang out at the disc store after class while I was in highschool and uni, and it still happened regularly after I started to work. Even nowadays, if I had a really, really bad day, there’s a good chance I’ll go there and spend at least an hour there just listening to stuff.

So here I was, one fine (actually bad) day, and this song was playing, and I was mesmerised, and for the first time ever, I felt the need to find a vendor and ask what was playing. I found one and the guy instantly beamed and went “oooooh I picked that album to play it in the store today! :D That’s Kavinsky, he’s great, here, have a listen” but it was already getting late so... I trusted him and basically bought the album blind.

Best decision ever. On top of being one of the best albums of the 2010s, OutRun is a concept album presented as if it was the soundtrack of a movie that never existed, about a young guy getting killed in a car crash in 1986 and somehow fusing with his car mentally and reappearing as some sort of technological zombie in 2006. And Roadgame is one of the best songs on the album if not the best. Well, my favorite song on it is actually Testarossa Autodrive, but you get my point.

I was like “there’s no way this is going to be big”, and I was dead wrong, thankfully. As a big fan of electronic music full of lights and flashes and colors but with dark overtones, I couldn’t be happier about this being one of the sounds of the year. Just fantastic stuff.

It’s 2020, man. Please drop that second album. We’re ready to have our minds blown all over again. Just do it.

Also, thank you random vendor from the disc store.

Next up: I have no idea why some people call 2014 a really bad year for hit songs tbh

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music #long post #eye contact tw

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bryonysimcox · 4 years

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You've Got to Look for the Good Stuff: Week 14, Spain

Like light is to darkness, this week has been an antidote to the last. My mood has lifted and the days have flown by, as lockdown continues and we do too.

Sunshine is a simple remedy. Each day this week has been warm and dry, if not bright and sunny too. It’s allowed us to live more inside-outside, which not only makes life easier but lifts my mood. It’s been a stark contrast to the constant rain and cold which dominated last week’s blog post.

I’ve also loved seeing pictures of children out in the streets and parks again, as Spain slowly lifts its coronavirus measures. It’s almost incomprehensible to imagine what it must be like for all these youngsters, many of whom have been cooped up in city-centre apartments with their siblings and parents for weeks and weeks. Even with the generous garden we have here and our weekly walks to the supermarket I’ve been going borderline insane, so I shudder to think how isolation has affected kids and their mental health.

Gaba Podcast live streams continue to punctuate my week. Adam Martin, whose podcast I mentioned in Week 10’s post, shares breathwork and meditative practices that have really helped me ease my busy mind. One of the things Adam talked about this week was what we consider to be ‘exercise’, in light of zealous Brits moaning that people sitting in the park, standing still in public and seemingly staring into space are breaking government-imposed controls around exercise. Adam argues that we consider sport and movement in open space an essential part to looking after our physical health, whilst ignoring the ‘exercise’ or psychological nurturing that our mental health deserves.

While this pandemic takes lives, we need to keep in mind the impact that social distancing is having on our psyches.

I titled this week’s digital diary entry ‘You’ve Got To Look Out For The Good Stuff’ because I’ve realised that there’s plenty of good stuff around, but quite simply, you’ve got to look for it. That might sound pretty obvious, but in comparing this week to the last, I can see that the main thing that’s changed isn’t my situation, but more so my mindset. Admittedly, the sunshine has made a huge difference, but apart from that, we’re still stuck in lockdown in Spain in the same physical, geographical and financial situation that we were in last week.

What’s caused this shift in mindset? Honestly, I don’t know. I think life in lockdown is making us act in all kinds of strange ways, cycling through an emotional spectrum so extreme we’ve rarely experienced it before and yet now feels like the norm. Tears, laughter, smiles and frowns easily paint my face in a matter of hours. So maybe my mood this week has just been luck. But as my shifted mindset has worked its magic, somehow I’ve seen and experienced little nuggets of ‘good stuff’. I hope that some of you have seen and enjoyed those nuggets too, wherever you are.

After rain left the road to the supermarket blocked, we finally made it to the shops this week, when the water subsided.

Perhaps fearful of another rainfall, this time we piled the trolley high in the local Aldi and returned home to stock up the cupboards. A plentiful fridge has resulted in some more cooking adventures - this week including George’s new specialty, Spanish omelette, and a new fave of mine too, veggie paella.

We picked and podded the final batch of broad beans this week, and helped to dig up the patch where they were growing to make way for the vegetables of the coming season: tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers and peppers. One of the inadvertent blessings of being ‘marooned’ here in Catalunya has been to see and enjoy the changing of the seasons, and my interest in food growing and land management increases with them. George and I have always said we’d like to live in Spain in a self-built tiny house with a bit of land, and somehow we’ve landed in a situation right now that’s not far off! In addition to the vegetables we can get from the garden, I’ve been buying fresh eggs from the neighbour (often still warm from the coop!) which is a real treat.

(images, left to right) ‘Why simple changes [like growing food] are really profound’ a lovely illustration I discovered from Brenna Quinlan, George prepping the soil for tomatoes, and my new favourite thing to cook, veggie paella.

Food isn’t the only ‘good stuff’ to be grateful for. Since I mentioned Simon Mair’s article in my post from Week 11, I’ve been researching ‘Ecological Economics’ and its potential to lead us towards more just and sustainable ways of living. That research finally came to a head this week, when I had the pleasure of interviewing not only Simon himself but also friend and futures thinker from Mumbai, Mansi Parikh.

Making a video about alternative economic futures which address some of the challenges posed by Covid-19 is turning out to be a bit of a challenge in itself!

The interviews with Simon and Mansi were utterly fascinating, and I was so grateful to be able to talk to two super knowledgeable folk, who like me, are passionate about the future and how we can make it better. They shared their time and their insights, and now I’m left with over 150 minutes of recorded zoom calls to make sense of!

I want to use these interviews to make a video which engages people who perhaps wouldn’t usually be interested in economics, without ‘watering down’ the message or intent of the film. It’s such a hard balance to strike, to create something which is at once accessible and engaging but also rich with ideas. As the week progresses, I’ll start editing the footage and hopefully the narrative of the video will reveal itself.

One of the best things about making a new video is the chance to do loads of research! There have been so many articles which have got my brain buzzing, from ‘no-growth’ economics to deliberative democracies, and I’ve also just started reading ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism’ which is a manifesto for a post-Capitalist future. Even if this research doesn’t directly inform the video I’m working on, it serves to inspire me. I’ve actually found myself a few times this week almost overwhelmed by how much interesting media there is out there to consume, and often just resort to adding thing to my ‘read later’ list, or quoting my favourite gems on Twitter.

(images, left to right) Recording interviews with Mansi and Simon, and my latest reading project...

The realisation of a project we began in January, ‘Place Portraits: Episode 1’ was finally released this week.

George had the idea a while ago to create a video series exploring cities and places through analogue photography. Whilst it was a super simple idea, we thought these short, laid-back videos would contrast with some of the longer-format stuff or more informative films we’re hoping to upload on the Broaden YouTube channel.

Back at the start of our trip we shot on a roll of Kodak Portra 400 and Fujifilm C200, using the trusty Pentax that was once George’s dad’s camera. We’d had the photos back from the processing lab for a while, but have only just completed the edit and got the film online, which is such a nice feeling. We’ve had some lovely responses to the resulting four-minute video, and I’ve especially valued constructive feedback so we can start to think critically about what Episode 2 might look like.

youtube

(video) Place Portraits: Episode 1 - Paris

Since ‘The Hundred Miler’ hit 90K views this week (which in and of itself is pretty nuts), I knew I had to temper my expectations about how many views we’d get with Place Portraits. Even though it’s not far past 200 views, each and every one of those views counts and I’m chuffed to see it finally online. Watching Broaden’s audience slowly grow has also served as great motivation to submit The Hundred Miler into film festivals, a process which we started this week.

There’s probably plenty more good stuff which deserves to be celebrated, but the one which can’t go unmentioned is of course the company of others.

Embracing what has become a routine activity for many of us these days, I’ve spent some cheerful hours on phonecalls and videochats to others across the globe.

This week included a three-way call between Ireland, Australia and Spain with dear friends that George and I used to live with catching up on career plans, cats and newfound hobbies. I also enjoyed a game of movie charades (which involved some impressive commitment from some people!) and even attended an evening of ‘drag queen bingo’. These digital hangouts leave me asking ‘Would I be connecting with friends and family this much if the world wasn’t in a global pandemic?’ and I think the answer would be no.

(images) Just some of the beautiful humans that feed my soul.

I’m grateful that these human connections are now much more of a priority. In being restricted to a simpler and more isolated way of living, we’re certainly reassigning value to the things that matter. That’s something which I’ve found from making the economics video and learning about the idea of value, but also something I’ve felt in a visceral way when a phone call with my parents or a friend leaves me beaming.

There’s so much good stuff out there, you’ve just got to be open to it.

#hiacevan #digitalnomads #COVID19 #coronavirus #lifeinlockdown #quarantinegratitude #goodstuff #BryonyandGeorge #Broaden #PlacePortraits

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dansnaturepictures · 4 years

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Species appreciation post: The blue butterflies I have ever seen: Holly, Common, Adonis, Small, Brown Argus, Northern Brown Argus, Silver-studded and Chalkhill

After I did my last two species appreciation posts for Peregrine and Sparrowhawk earlier in the year I found they were my 17th and 18th of these posts since I began them as content to fill some gaps on my social media in 2015. I then had the idea for my 20th of them to be on Hen Harrier posting on Hen Harrier Day in August 2020. All being well I shall still do that but due to Covid-19 there may not be a Hen Harrier Day as such as I know its often gatherings of people coming out in support of the bird that mark it so it may just have to be one about it around when Hen Harrier Day would have been. But to do that I needed to do a 19th species appreciation post and I decided it would be of a dragonfly or butterfly. These days having so much more time on my hands in the week and at weekends due to the pandemic is a perfect time to do one, albeit this one will post on a day I have produced photos still and quite a few actually. I thought to add to the daytime tweet theme I’m in the middle of where I post one of my past butterfly pictures each day I’d do a mega butterfly species appreciation post about the eight species I have seen from what is probably my favourite family of butterflies. As part of this I did an album on Facebook with one picture I’d taken of all 46 butterfly species I’ve ever seen on Tuesday so this post (whilst it can be enjoyed by Twitter friends too) serves to bring my series of butterfly reflection inspired by the early season ones emerging on mass over these weird and at times difficult days lately to my three main nature/photography social media accounts.

So the blues are a family of butterflies like no other for me. Three of them sit on my list of favourite butterflies, and one more on my B list of favourite butterflies. You could argue most of my very best butterfly pictures have been of these species. And whilst generally blue isn’t my favourite colour I always adore seeing insects of these divine and varied shades of this colour. I’ve had a relationship with this family of butterflies like no other. Below I go through each of the eight blues I’ve seen in my life, roughly in order of when they might emerge in a season, saying as always in these posts why I like them, a brief bit about my journey with them and say which of my past pictures in this photoset are of the species.

Holly Blue

Very often one of the first few butterflies you see in a year and certainly they should be the first blue butterfly in a year the Holly Blue is one I find a delightful early or mid-spring treat of a sight. Their often closed wing appearance makes them very distinctive and I find them charming. They’re not one of my favourite butterflies but I’ve perhaps had a more intimate relationship with them than other blues given that I have seen them in our garden and during working days often so they’re very graspable to see. I hope that might prove the case this year where the lockdown is going to put me seeing most other blues at risk. I took the first picture in this photoset of one at St. Catherine’s Hill on Easter Sunday 2019.

Common Blue

Another that, rarely for me given I have lots of families on my list of favourite animals where I like one of the most common and then some rarer, is not one of my favourite butterflies. I still look forward to seeing them each year though. The name and status of the species always to me makes me think it should be one of the early/all season butterflies like Holly Blue is. However seeing your first Common Blue in a year is always exciting as you know spring is well and truly rooted and you’re approaching the late spring butterflies. It steps up your butterfly season to a stage where summer is near which I look forward to every year. The second picture in this photoset shows one I was happy to see at Martin Down last year. Since I’ve had blues on my list of favourite butterflies and indulged in some rarer ones I’ve made an effort to try and notice and enjoy Common Blues more both locally over Lakeside the country park near our house and further afield and last year my best ever butterfly season shows that a lot.

Adonis Blue

Onto the first of the blues that is on my list of 11 favourite butterflies added to that in summer 2015 and the Adonis Blue is a star of a species. I think they’re in a different league entirely looks wise to Common Blue as the Adonis sports an exotic and sparkling glow. Its rich colour that as I always say makes it seem like something you would see in a tropical rainforest is one of my main drawing points to it as well its distinctive and striking markings. I adore this species. It came into my life in 2013 and since I have grown fonder of it by the season, its risen to the top as one of the butterflies I aspire to see most every year. Martin Down has been one of a few strongholds for them for me and I took the third picture in this photoset of one there last year.

Small Blue

A very cute little butterfly to find I always think, I also love the way they are marked and how distinctive they are. It’s a key spring one for me to see ever since I saw my first at Afton Down on the Isle of Wight in 2013 and a gem of a butterfly I always look forward to in years. Martin Down one of my butterfly paradises is again a big place for them. Last year I missed it there on an initial May visit but did see it on a trip there the late May bank holiday Saturday where I took the fourth picture in this photoset of it and as the main butterfly species seen that day as the year tick I really focused on it nicely.

Brown Argus

Not the most obvious of blues but still part of the family all the same Brown Argus is one I’ve had an interesting journey with. Seeing my first few from 2014 onwards I rather had my Mum showing me them and never really learned how to ID them. But one night in 2018 changed that all when I spotted one during a Big Butterfly Count in July over Lakeside after work. I needed to see it and one or two other species to level my then previous highest ever butterfly year list total in 2014 (I went on to do that and beat it in 2018 and I surpassed the figure I reached then again last year of course). I first of all thought it was a Small Blue the only thing comparable to it for size in my opinion blue butterfly wise but when I noticed the closed wing marking resembled that of the Common Blue not holly in the case of the small I had to rethink. Brown Argus sprang to mind but I had to be absolutely sure it was going to me a big moment and butterfly to notch up that year for me and I determined my instinct was right for that amazing moment for me. It was quite a big butterfly to see at my local site I never knew they were there, I did see one in 2019 during the butterfly count there twice though. Since that night in a hot summer in 2018 I became so used to them and what they looked like and my relationship with them got stronger and stronger. I took maybe my best photo of butterflies last year of this beautiful and quaint little species. I just found myself having a real desire for them and finding them so attractive from how they look to where you find them in nice grassy habitats and I added the species to my B list of favourite butterflies in March. I took the fifth picture in this photoset of one at Old Winchester Hill later on in 2018.

Northern Brown Argus

I’d scarcely heard of a Northern Brown Argus until we headed to Northumberland for our June holiday to go to the Farne Islands last year. I sort of took mentions of it from my Mum with a pinch of salt as we went around Northumberland not really covering the right habitat for it, but seeing lots of butterflies such as the beginning of the mass Painted Lady invasion last year and Wall Brown. But as we pondered what to do with a free day, our last day away, we thought it was rude to be so close and not to visit Scotland. So my Mum found St. Abb’s Head on the internet and as soon as I googled it that night and read it was a site that had Northern Brown Argus something flashed and flickered in hope in my mind. It took us a while when at St. Abb’s Head as we passed the area marked that they are in with the sun in and out, on the way back it was warmed up and we’d seen Small Copper and other butterflies. We went to the same spot in this big beauty spot and our luck was in as two people were bent over looking at something. They showed us the butterfly, it was the tiny Northern Brown Argus and this was one of my greatest butterfly and general moments last year and of all time. What an honour to see a rare and exceptional species as beautiful, fascinating and charming as its cousin to the south. I took the sixth picture in this photoset of it that day in June 2019.

Silver-studded Blue

Unlike chalkhill, adonis, small and Brown Argus which I first ever saw during the rapid expansion of our butterfly life list and list of places to see them in 2013 and 2014 silver-studded it part of an older breed of my butterflies having first seen them in the New Forest in 2011 and enjoying them the next summer too. Since Silver-studded has become one of my favourite butterflies being added to that list also in 2015. They have become not just something to look for on New Forest heaths on hot summer’s days but the very symbol of the feeling of wilderness and connection with nature that can be attained on both. I love their delicate markings and shade, their dinky size and they make me so proud to live near and regularly visit the New Forest. I have seen some in Wales too. I have taken some of my best photos of them over the years, the seventh and eighth of my pictures in this photoset of one at Deadman Hill in the New Forest in 2015 and nearby Turf Hill in 2016. The former was one of the winners for me in the 2015 New Forest National Park authority seasonal snaps competition a proud moment representing one of the forest’s best species.

Chalkhill Blue

If seeing the silver-studded has made me so proud of Hampshire’s New Forest then this species has made me proud of its chalky grassland in and around the South Downs area. It’s one that favours brilliant and distinct habitat. The chalkhill is also an absolute gem of a butterfly. It’s silky and milky shade of blue is a dream to watch, and I love its strong markings too. Definitely a butterfly I always look forward to trying to see most in a year. As I said I saw for my first ever at Stockbridge Down in 2013 and whilst it joined my list of favourite butterflies a year later than the other two blues in 2016 I took it to my heart more and more each year I was lucky enough to see one. I took the ninth picture in this photoset of one of my first at Stockbridge Down in 2013 and tenth of one of many I saw last summer at a few similar locations at Old Winchester Hill.

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superchartisland · 5 years

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Lemmings (Psygnosis, Amiga, 1991)

Gallup all formats individual formats chart, Computer & Video Games Issue 114, May 1991

[Elements of this post are based on sections of a previous piece I wrote on Oh No! More Lemmings.]

AAA of the 1980s has been a story of computer games as a source of surging creativity in the UK, but also a story of a local audience in splendid isolation. The compromised remakes of Japanese games that made it to #1 in the UK were pretty much a one-way trade. By the end of the 1990s, British developers would be responsible for two of the world's most famous and successful games. Those games would be made to a much bigger scale. In 1991, as mainstream games got more complex, for them to be the effort of one or two individual programmers was already increasingly rare. It was a time when having the right conditions for teamwork paid off.

A small team called DMA Design made Lemmings, which is not quite one of those giant British games but did sell millions and get ported to a large proportion of the world's game formats. Lemmings’ hook is inspired by the Disney-constructed idea that the rodents of the title deal with over-population by rushing off cliffs en masse. The game’s ‘lemmings’ are more human, tiny people with white skin, blue clothes and green hair who drop into each level from an undisclosed location and walk steadily forward until instructed otherwise, even if it's to their own doom. Each level has an exit back out of its world, and your task in Lemmings is to use a set of limited abilities to work out a route to get your team of charges from A to B, where sometimes B is across the C, or A and B are both in L. You can get lemmings to knock through walls, block others from moving forwards, build bridges, blow shit up, and so on, with each level giving you both a different map and a different number of each of the abilities.

Once Lemmings has got through teaching you how its abilities work, it moves on fast to both using them in increasingly complicated combinations and making you think laterally about ways to use each one. The form of the appeal of this is highlighted in a mock warning on the game’s cover and title screen text scroll disclaiming responsibility for “loss of sanity, loss of hair, loss of sleep”. The suggestion is that the appeal to the player lies in their own frustration, or at least in building that frustration to the point where the relief of release from it is ecstatic. The ideal Lemmings level, perhaps, should appear initially impossible until a sudden mental breakthrough that reveals it’s really easy, followed by the realisation of a complication that renders it impossible again. And so on, perception swinging wildly but settling in on a mid-point final realisation that yes, everything is accounted for and it’s just about doable. Here is where the decision to make each level goal a percentage of lemmings safely to the exit, and often a percentage below the optimum outcome, is a particularly smart one. The slack sometimes allows a sudden realisation that you are losing lemmings to lead to an improvised solution on the fly and resultant success, and that’s another exhilarating feeling of its own.

As a logic puzzle loving, computer game playing child, when I got a brief chance to play Lemmings on a family friend’s Amiga it immediately became one of my favourite things ever. It was an unusual type of game, but it’s easy for me to see how its developers’ policy of getting as many demos of it as they could out there worked so successfully, and how Lemmings had such an impact across the UK and beyond.

There is still a statue of lemmings in Dundee, the game’s hometown. A port city on the East coast of Scotland, Dundee is something like the 50th biggest urban area in the UK and has a totally outsized place in the UK video games story. You could put it down to random happenstance that the handful of people led by Dave Jones who made up DMA Design were from Dundee. But a game like Lemmings coming from Dundee is no more complete coincidence than the procedural space exploration of Elite being the work of Cambridge maths and science students was.

Dundee was once the centre of the jute industry, making fibre for bags and ropes. As the economic viability of that dried up, many skilled (and mostly female) workers transferred to working in a new form of production at the Timex watch factory. Later on, watch sales not being what they had been, that factory diversified into making other technology. It was perfect for our old friend the ZX Spectrum. For Dundee, that meant lots of Spectrum computers available on the cheap, a low-risk chance to experiment, and other opportunities besides. And with that availability, there was an increased chance for connections and community. The Kingsway Amateur Computer Club, where many of the makers of Lemmings met, for instance. For Dave Jones in particular, the Timex connection was more direct as he worked there as a Spectrum tester. When he was made redundant, he used the money to support him and his friends in Dundee to form DMA Design and a few years later they developed Lemmings.

With their own experience with home computers and with British audiences in mind, they made Lemmings for the Amiga first. DMA also drew on a recent British lineage of games led by resource management and clicking on menu options, like Supremacy and Populous (almost as crucial to Lemmings’ form as the lemming was that other rodent-derived computer item, the mouse). Lemmings was a collaboration right from the start, even the most basic animation of the tiny characters being the work of two people. Lemmings wouldn’t be the same without all of those contributions. To take one obvious example, it wouldn’t have the same warmth without Brain Johnston and Tim Wright’s familiar but copyright-avoiding soundtrack, taking “Ten Green Bottles”, “London Bridge is Falling Down” et al on a toytown funk trip. Beyond even a list of credits though, as the series of particular circumstances which brought DMA together in Dundee show, every game is the result of a whole community, providing skills and resources in the right place and right time along the way.

Even above its problem-solving, what stands out about playing Lemmings is that the same message of collaboration is integral to the game itself. So many games that I’ve played for AAA have been about the lone wolf, the highly able individual prevailing against the odds. In the Britain of the late ‘80s, perhaps it’s no surprise that messages of individualism resonated with the prevailing culture. For alternatives, we have seen sports games where you take collective charge of a group of people, and there were precedents for successful games that had you overseeing large populations, even if Populous and SimCity didn’t make it to my UK #1s list. But sports games are limited to a different kind of competitive narrative, Populous had the player as a God and SimCity as combination planner-architect-builder. You were still the one responsible for taking all of the actions. In the more radical Lemmings, you can’t create earthquakes or new electricity supply lines or do anything at the macro level. All actions must be carried out via an individual lemming. The player is but an advisor, or as Martin called the player’s role in the Lemmings post for his original AAA, “an avatar of community spirit”.

It’s not long into Lemmings before you reach situations where you need different lemmings to support each other. Two lemmings might need to be send ahead so one can turn the other around to dig their way back to the group. One lemming might need to build a staircase to put another in place to remove another obstacle. Individual lemmings take actions but afterwards they get subsumed back into the herd. You can only succeed by getting lemmings organised to work together, and they succeed or fail as a group. Each lemming that reaches the end of a level has depended on the resources of the level and the skills of other lemmings being in place along the way. Text on the title screen tells players to remember that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

The lack of narrative ego is striking. While as the player you are in a head-to-head battle of minds with the level designers, within the narrative world of Lemmings the player is taken out altogether. Even outside of the game itself, Lemmings welcomes further collaboration. There are tests of physical precision and speed in some levels, but with so much of test the game provides being mental, it lends itself to sharing thoughts and ideas. My best memories of playing Lemmings aren’t of playing it by myself, but of sitting with my mum and my brother and working as a team to come up with different possible solutions. Fittingly, it turns out that this was similar to the process by which DMA themselves designed the levels.

There are signs of something darker in Lemmings too, particularly in hindsight. It's in the choice it offers you each time you play a level, a more dramatic version of the deal in Dizzy that if you lose, at least the game will entertain you in the process. If you decide that you can’t complete a level, or you just get bored, you can double click the mushroom cloud icon and watch all of your lemmings explode to maximum dramatic effect, a choreographed carnival of cute violence. The lemmings’ tiny stature and outsized physical expressions, wonders done with a few pixels like the way they shrug when they finish building a staircase, encourage the player to care for them, but the player can blow them all up too.

That’s only a discordant note if you don't look too closely. The game is filled with grizzly traps that kill lemmings in inventive ways, squashing or incinerating them out of nowhere. It turns out, in fact, that those animations were the origin of the whole game, the point in another project at which it became clear that the tiny animated people had the personality to stand alone. There's an irreverence and black humour very recognisable from other British culture in going on to make the cute save-the-lemmings game but still leaving the horror in there. Lurking within Lemmings is the power of a particular kind of anarchic freedom and its possibilities. DMA would go on to take the idea of just letting the player blow everything up and make Grand Theft Auto, after all.

Wherever it started from as a game, though, the strongest message that comes through from Lemmings is the generous one about the importance of people working together. Without everything that community and collaboration provided along the way, Lemmings wouldn’t have been possible, just as its lemmings can only reach their goal by building on the work of many.

#every number one #Lemmings #Amiga #retrogaming

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starforged · 5 years

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a magnus archives fic post-s3

“Oh, Jon.”

Georgie hadn’t realized that she was still his emergency contact, although it made sense. His grandmother was dead, and his parents had been gone for a long time. All he had was her and that job of his. He hadn’t told her a lot about the Magnus Institute, but what she did know now coupled with her own experiences, she didn’t figure he was going to put any of them down as “emergency contact”.

She grabbed his hand, glad to feel that it was still warm. There was something about a prone body that made her afraid that he’d be cold. Dead. She knows what dead and still and cold looks like, doesn’t she?

No part of Georgina Barker wished to see Jonathan like that.

But there was that absence inside of her that told her to be afraid of losing a man that she used to love deeply. Still did, she supposed. Love is an interesting form, twisting and reshaping itself.

She cupped both her hands around his. The machines said he was alive, so he was alive. If he died, then he died. She would be sad, heartbroken.

In the cinema, he would have squeezed her hand back. His eyelids would flutter and he would look at her, her name on his lips. Perhaps that was a bit more romantic than their current relationship required, but it would have been a nice feeling to have. It would have been nice to go back to what they once were. It was a thought that had crossed her mind a time or two when he was hiding out in her place. It had pulsed through her when he had opened up to her, and in return, she had finally let it be known that a piece of her had been claimed by Death.

“Oh! Oh, sorry!”

Spell broken, Georgie blinked and looked up at the doorway to Jon’s hospital room. A young man stood there, a vase of flowers in his hands. He was tall and a little round about the middle and looked incredibly nervous. Her gaze slid to the flowers. Yellow roses. She wasn’t sure if Jon would appreciate roses, yellow at that. Those words almost tipped out of her mouth, but she figured she would make this well-wisher cried.

Georgie wasn’t comfortable with tears.

“Oh hello,” she said instead.

“I didn’t think anyone would. Be here?” He gave her a large, owlish blink.

Her mouth slid into a grin. “Jon doesn’t really strike anyone as the type to inspire people in his hospital room, does he?”

The man gave her an awkward curly smile in return as if he shouldn’t be laughing about this situation or not. “You’re here.”

“A fair point. Well, are you going to come in or just stand there with your flowers?”

He looked down at the vase in his hands as if he had completely forgotten that he had brought it with him to begin with. His face turned a bright, flaming red. She tried to not laugh at him, but he was a bit adorable.

“Er, yes, of course. Unless you want a moment alone?” He was staring at where Georgie’s hands did their best to envelop Jon’s.

“No. I’ve had plenty of time alone with him, I think.”

A coma’d man was a boring man.

He put the vase down on the table; it was the only bit of flowers that decorated the room. Then he stood by them, uncertain of his next move. She could see it cross over his face. Should he leave? Should he stay?

“You can sit,” Georgie told him.

He sat in the other chair so hard that it scraped the floor, and she thought that it might break. Her eyebrows raised high on her forehead, and he blushed an even deeper shade of red. He coughed into his hand.

“I’m… Martin,” he introduced. “Martin Blackwood. Jon is - Jonathan’s my boss?”

“Oh, are you an archival assistant, then?”

Martin nodded. “Yes. Are you - He never talks about his, erm, personal life.”

“I’m Georgie. We used to date.”

It was a good thing that they were in a hospital, she figured, because he looked as though he might have a heart attack on the spot. She flashed him another grin.

“You’re thinking how he scored a babe like me?” she asked.

Martin inhaled like he had never taken a breath in his life. “He seemed like a loner.”

Georgie looked at Jon’s face, lined and drawn in a way that a man in a coma shouldn’t have been. His grey was greyer. He was ashen.

“We both were,” she said. “It was a long time ago, though.”

“Oh.”

One word could say so much. Georgie liked to think that she was a smart girl. Martin seemed like a nice man with a nice crush. He kept looking at Jonathan, at their hands. She wondered if he knew what she knew. Did Martin know about what Jon was going through? Prior to this, that was.

She sighed. “What happened? Was it the Unknowing?”

He couldn’t have jumped further if she had shocked him with paddles. “He told you that?”

“When he was jobless, I suppose you’d call it, I had a lot of questions. And he had a lot of his own to explore.”

His answer, a question for a question, confirmed her suspicions. Jon had gone off and played the big hero and had gotten hurt over it.

“They were going to set a bomb,” Martin began. “They were going to disrupt the Stranger, but something happened.”

“You don’t know?”

He shook his head. “Four went in, and two came out. Basira, she said she wasn’t sure what happened in there. Just that they weren’t as prepared as they should have been.”

“Doctor says that physically, Jon’s alright.”

“A coma doesn’t say alright to me.”

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t.”

Martin hesitated before he laid his hand over Jon’s free one. “I wanted to be more helpful than I was, but he didn’t want me there.”

“He’s never been very good at team playing. Which is funny to me, since he’s always asking for help. Poor boy.” Georgie frowned a bit.

“Do you think that he’ll come back?”

His voice was so small and hopeful. If Jon did, she hoped that he’d be more aware of the people around him that cared. She doubted that, of course, but hope was a lovely feeling to hold inside of yourself.

She watched Martin carefully. “Honestly? I don’t know. If he does, I don’t believe he’ll be the same as he was.”

“Broody, snappish, bossing people around without saying thank you?” Martin laughed, dry and just a little bit broken.

“Broody is a good way to describe him, but I think it’s just he is so much in his own head and his own needs.”

Martin laughed, a huffing sort of sound that made it seem like he might have been choking on his air rather than laughing. He patted Jon’s hand, as if he didn’t know what else to do. She slid her hands away from Jon’s, hoping it would make this poor fool just a little more comfortable. Maybe she had imagined it, but it seemed like he breathed out a sigh of relief when she did.

“So he’ll be less selfish, you think?” Martin asked her.

“I would not get your hopes up about that, Martin. Some things are just ingrained. He doesn’t mean to be.” Georgie just hoped that when Jon woke, he would still be that little sliver of human he had been with her.

She wondered if Martin knew.

“Just as well,” Martin said with a sigh. “I wouldn’t know what to do with a Jonathan Sims that was more helpful.”

#the magnus archives #tma #tma spoilers #s3 finale spoilers #georgie barker #martin blackwood #the not corpse of jonathan sims #I JUST WANTED THEM TO MEET #AND FOR MARTIN TO BE LIKE WTF HE HAS FRIENDS?????#tma fic

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uglypastels · 6 years

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When You Say Nothing At All - Tom Holland movie AU (1/3)

(a/n) First story on the new blog!! I’m scared.

This story is a Notting Hill AU. I have always loved this movie and when I recently rewatched it, I really realized how cheezy and pretty fanfic-y the plot it...so I decided to actually write a fanfic. The story is in a movie-turned-into-book format, so it is literally inspired by the movie. So, I do not own, nor claim any of this story as my own. Already putting it out there.

Alrighty then, here is part 1. I am not sure if I will actually post the other parts, because I’m not so sure if this is really that good. I also haven’t exactly finished the rest and it takes a loooooong time to do so. Tell me if you want to read the rest.

This is a re-post, because I am an idiot with anxiety and deleted the first one accidentally

word count: 10,281

warning: swearing, sexual themes, SPOILERS for NOTTING HILL

part 2

Tom’s POV - 1999 - London - Characters are in their late 20′s

Of course, I have seen her films and always thought she was, well, gorgeous, but, you know, a million and million miles from the world I live in.

The world he lives in, which was here, Notting Hill. His favorite part of London.

Just as he did every day before going to work, Tom took a morning walk to enjoy the bizarre atmosphere that this region had. Like any other weekday, the market was spinning with people, where every fruit and vegetable known to man was sold and men were yelling: “Rock hard bananas, five for a pound!” To his right was the tattoo parlor, where a man stepped through the door, looking rather confused at the new addition to his body. He looked as if he had just woken up on the couch that was inside and Tom wondered if he remembered why he had gotten “I love Ken” tattooed on his arm. He also wondered who Ken was and if he knew that his name was now permanently written on this blokes’ arm. Opposite the tattoo shop was the radical hairdressers, where everyone came out looking like the Cookie Monster, whether they wanted to or not. Just like the poor girl in the purple denim jacket.

Even though it was early in the morning, there were people everywhere. Tom was glad it wasn’t the weekend where from the break of day hundreds of stalls appear out of nowhere, filling Portobello Road, right up to Notting Hill Gate and wherever you look thousands of people are buying millions of antiques, some genuine, and some not quite so genuine.

Lots of friends have ended up in this part of London. For example Tony, who Tom could see talking to some delivery men, a bundle of fish in his hands. Tony looked rather happy with his new buy. Tom waved at him, hello, but his friend didn’t see it. The architect turned chef had been busy for months with his new restaurant, which he invested in with all the money he ever earned.

That was pretty much all of Notting Hill, where Tom spend his days and years. In the small village in the middle of the city, in a house with a blue door that he had bought together with his wife who had left him after four years for a man who looked exactly like Harrison Ford. Which was ironic, because this was where he now lead a strange half-life with a lodger called:

“Harrison!” he yelled as he opened the blue door and almost immediately fell over a bike. Harrison ran down the stairs into the kitchen which was at the end of the corridor in which Tom stood right now. As usual, he wasn’t wearing anything but some khaki colored underwear. He didn’t want to think about if that was the original color.

“You couldn’t help me with an incredibly important decision, could you?” he said in his thick accent.

“Is this important in comparison to, let’s say…” Tom started thinking as he walked to the kitchen to put down the loaf of bread that he had bought earlier. “Whether they should cancel Third World debt?”

“That’s right. I’m at last going out on a date with the great Janine and I just wanna be sure I’ve picked the right T-shirt.” He started explaining. Tom was turned with his back to him and couldn’t help but smile at the difference in their priorities.

“What are the choices?”

“Well, wait for it,” he said and ran back upstairs to his room. Tom waited as he put the bread in the toaster, taking his time. By the time he was done and in front of the stairs, Harrison was already running back down, pulling down the shirt. It was a slightly too big white t-shirt. It would have been fine if it wasn’t for the huge text that said: “I LOVE BLOOD” and the actual sticking out fish head in the middle of his torso in the pool of red.

“First, there’s this one,” He flicked the fish head, making it bounce back and forth, and made a little growl, “Cool, huh?” Tom stared at the shirt for a little bit, trying to figure out the right words to say to his flatmate. “Yeah, it might make it hard to strike a really romantic note,” he suggested.

“Point taken. Don’t despair.” Harrison ran back up the stairs, still talking: “if it’s romance we’re looking for, I believe I have just the thing.” Tom highly doubted it. He looked for some yogurt in the fridge while waiting for Harrison to get back.

He came back, with a now much tighter fitted shirt. The message was very simple: “GET IT HERE” together with a big black arrow pointed at his crotch.

“Yeah, well, there again, she might not think you had true love on your mind.”

“Right.” He seemed to understand but clearly didn’t have the same feeling about it as Tom did. “Just one more.” He ran away once again. Tom smiled to himself and walked back to the kitchen, grabbed something extra for his yogurt and then heard it was time again to take those three steps back to the stairs: “True love, here I come.” Harrison sang happily. Tom watched him run down those stairs for the tenth time and pulling down, another, white shirt over his upper body. Tom put a hand over his mouth at the sight of it. It was better than the last two options. Still not good, but better. The words “You’re the most beautiful woman in the WORLD” were surrounded by big red hearts. Harrison looked at him, awaiting an answer.

“Well, yeah. Yeah. that’s, that’s perfect.” he managed to say without laughing.

“Great. Thanks. Wish me luck.” Haz still looked at him waiting.

“Good luck.” He walked back upstairs with big steps of pride. When he had turned around Tom could see the message written on his back. “FANCY A FUCK?” He wanted to say something but thought better of it. He had to get to work.

It was just another hopeless Wednesday, as he walked a thousand yards through the market to work. Work, by the way, was the little travel bookshop “The Travel Book Co.” which, well, sold travel books and to be frank, didn’t always sell many of those.

The store, just like the door of his house, was blue. The big window displayed a number of books that were for sale and two globes, in case it wasn’t clear to anyone that it was travel books that they could find here. In front of the window, outside, stood a small table on which more books were displayed.

“Morning, Martin” the small bell above the door rang as he pushed it open. The smell of old books was immediately present.

“Morning, Monseigneur,” said Martin as he was looking through some papers. He handed Tom the post and bills of the day. He knew what awaited them next. It was time to count up the sales. He walked up to the desk and pulled out the rest of the papers and a calculator. He dreaded this part of the day, that is why he had early on decided with Martin to do it in the morning. This way it would be over quickly, at least.

“Classic,” he sighed as the last numbers popped up on the small screen. “Profit from major sales push, minus £347.” He shared a look of disappointment with Martin and then wrote the sad number down in the notebook in front of him.

“Shall I go and get you a cappuccino?” Martin suggested. “You know, ease the pain a bit.”

“Yeah, yeah. Better make it a half. All I can afford.” his friend and employee laughed awkwardly. He just smiled, both of them were trying to ease the pain currently with some horrible humor.

“Get your logic. Demi-cappu coming right up.” He glanced at Tom and then walked to the door. The bell rang again as he pulled the door towards him. His green cardigan disappearing behind the corner as he walked to the small coffee house a few doors away. Tom wondered what he had done to deserve him in his life. Such a good person. Martin could easily find another job, a better job, but he didn’t want to leave his friend.

The moment he left, someone walked in. Tom barely glanced. The only thing he saw was a blur of black and white. The person carefully closed the door behind them. He looked again, feeling something familiar about them as he looked more properly. He couldn’t exactly place it, but it felt like he had seen the stranger before. Maybe she had visited the store earlier this week? Or the week before?

She was wearing a black, leather jacket over a plain white shirt. On her head, a black hat, with brown hair under it, and her eyes were covered by dark glasses. She walked over to the first bookcase and started to look around, every now and then pulling out a book and paging through it. From the position Tom was in, he could only see her shoulder properly, moving as she placed a book back in its original place.

“Uhm, can I help you at all?” he asked. The woman peaked out her head from behind the shelves, looking a bit startled. At least he assumed so, as her eyes weren’t visible through the glasses.

“No, thanks, I’ll just look around.” Her voice was soft, almost a whisper. The American accent clear. He knew that this was a bookstore and people often tried to be quiet. But there was literally nobody else there except for them.

“Fine,” he said a bit dazed off. He still couldn’t place that face or that voice for that matter. He was sure he had at least heard her before but much louder. Not in the bookstore, then. She walked to the other side of the shelf, facing away from him. Now he could have a little more proper look at her… or at least her back. Her shoulders were small, in a cute way. Her jacket oversized. From the way the top of her head reached a certain height of the shelves, he could assume that she wasn’t much shorter than him. He could also see a bag hanging off of her other shoulder. As she was looking through the books, she momentarily put her shopping bags on the ground.

She pulled out a book from the shelf, Tom could read the title, the Turkish Delights, from where he was standing behind the desk. He had a great urge to say something to her, only he didn’t know what. As he looked at her go through the book, he blurted out: “That book’s really not great.” She turned her head in his direction. “Er - just in case browsing turned to buying, you’d be wasting your money.” he laughed nervously as he was clearly rambling on. She just smiled weakly. Letting him dig himself deeper into embarrassment. “But if it’s Turkey you’re interested in, this one,” Tom picked up a copy of a book that lay next to him on the desk, “on the other hand, is very good. Uhm...” he had no idea what to say, but she kept looking at him and he felt the need to keep talking. Her stare was getting a bit too much for him so he looked down at the book. “I think the man who wrote it has actually been to Turkey, which helps. Uhm, there’s also a very amusing incident with a kebab… which is one of many amusing incidents.”

The beautiful stranger (because she was definitely beautiful, there was no denying that) smiled and said: “Thanks, I’ll think about it.” She already looked away, putting her attention back to the book she was holding, but his tongue slipped up again and the rambling continued.

“Or, in the bigger hard-back variety, there’s…” He looked at the bookcase behind him. While he did, his eyes slipped down to the small tv screen next to it, where he could see a man putting a book down his trousers. “I’m sorry, can you just give me a second?” He put the book down and walked to the back corner of the store, that was separated by a wall and slightly bigger shelves.

“Excuse me,” he said. The man popped up from behind the books. His eyes were wide, his hair all over the place and the shirt untucked messily. “Yes?” he asked.

“Bad news.” Tom crossed his arms and looked at him.

“What?” The man looked very confused and startled. Tom pointed at the corner of the ceiling. “Er -We’ve got uhm, a security camera in this bit of the shop.” The man still didn’t seem to understand as he asked: “So?”

“So, I saw you put that book down your trousers.”

“What book?” He was changing his weight from one leg to the other, making it even more obvious that he was anxious. Tom sighed, pointing at his crotch and saying: “The one down your trousers.”

“I don’t have a book down my trousers.” His words were slightly slurred, making Tom worried that he could be drunk or high. He looked away from him in frustration.

“Right, I tell you what, uhm, I’ll call the police and uhm, what can I say, if I’m wrong about the whole book-down-the-trousers scenario, I really apologize.” Tom was not sure if it had been possible, but the stranger’ eyes widened even more.

“Okay. What if I did have a book down my trousers?” Tom couldn’t believe this guy. Was he so drunk, or actually just that big of a moron?

“Well, ideally, when I went back to the desk you’d remove the Cadogan Guide to Bali from your trousers and either wipe it and put it back, or buy it.” He smiled at the drunk idiot. “I’ll see you in a sec.” he left him back there and walked back to the desk. The girl in the leather jacket was now standing there too. Tom had heard footsteps so he already expected it. “I’m sorry about that.” he walked behind the small piece of furniture. She was looking down at her book.

“No, it’s fine. I was gonna steal one but now I’ve changed my mind.” She smiled and Tom couldn’t help but laugh slightly. He glanced back at the tv screen to check up on the weirdo.

“Oh, signed by the author, I see.” she glanced at the front pages of the book. It made him look up from the screen.

“Uhmm, yeah, couldn’t stop him. If you can find an unsigned one, it’s worth an absolute fortune.” She puffed out a laugh. Right then the man from the back of the shop walked up. Tom was about to send him off when he approached his other customer. “Excuse me.”

“Yes?” she looked a bit uncomfortable at him.

“Can I have your autograph?” he handed her a piece of paper. The girl looked unsure at him and then around for something to write with. Tom gave her the pen he had in your hand: “Here.”

“What’s your name?” She asked. Her tone was very monotone and he knew that, really, she didn’t want to do it.

“Rufus.” He rolled on the back of his feet like a child, scratching his patchy beard. Tom watched the girl in the leather jacket scribble down a few words on the paper. It took him some time to figure out the words as he had been looking at it from upside down, but once he had it, he let out a little snort. She handed the paper back to Rufus. He, apparently, still couldn’t read it because he asked: “What does it say?”

“That’s my signature, and above it,” she pointed at the top of the old paper, “it says, Dear Rufus, you belong in jail.” Rufus clearly didn’t seem to get it because he smiled and said: “Good one.” The girl gave him a smile that was the equivalent of an eye roll and turned to you. Rufus asked again: “Do you want my phone number?”

“Tempting, but no.” there was a silence. Rufus started walking away. Tom just stood there, trying to comprehend what had just happened. This girl was famous, he knew that. He had seen her before somewhere, but where?

“I will take this one.” she pushed the book a bit towards him and that got Tom out of his frozen state.

“Oh, right, right.” He opened the book to check the price, “So, well, on second thoughts maybe it’s not that bad after all.” He ticked in the numbers into the machine, the paper started printing. “Actually, it’s sort of a classic, really. None of those childish kebab stories you find in so many books these days.” He tried to joke. It didn’t work as she handed him a banknote without a reaction except for a polite smile. It was more than the prize, so he started to look for the correct coins to give as change.

“You know what, I’ll throw in one of these for free.” He showed her a book that just happened to lay nearby. He wished he could sink underground, or at least that she would say something back. Still, he couldn’t manage to close his own mouth: “Useful for, you know, lighting fires, wrapping fish, that sort of thing.” She finally managed to break out a smile. He packed the two books in the basic orange-brown bag and handed it back to her.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Pleasure,” he replied. Both of them smiled politely and she started to walk away. Soon that bell rang again and she was gone. Tom was alone in the store. The confusion now spread over his features. Who was she? Why did she feel so familiar? Should he have asked her for a signature too?

His legs moved him towards the table in the big space at the front of the shop. He wasn’t sure why he walked there. Maybe to get another glimpse of her? But by the time he got to the window, she was already gone. There was another movement on the street, though. The green cardigan and brown tie flopped around Martin as he walked back. Two cups of coffee balanced on top of each other in one hand as he tried to open the door with the other.

“Here we are. Cappuccino, as ordered.” he put one cup in front of Tom, who still looked out the window in a daydreaming kind of way. Only he wasn’t daydreaming. He knew that the girl was actually real. Only, who was she?

“Thanks,” Tom said as he watched the other man sip from his hot drink. Still, the thought of the girl was in his mind. Was it her? But what would she be doing in Notting Hill? Still, it couldn’t be... “I don’t think you’ll believe who was just in here.” Martin looked up from his cup, eyes full of excitement, but the excitement that could also be anxiety.

“Who?” His head shot towards the window and then back. “Was it someone famous?” Now that Martin had said it out loud, the idea seemed too crazy to be real.

“No, no, no,” Tom changed his mind.

“Would be exciting though, wouldn’t it, if someone famous came into the shop?” He was about to put the cup back up to his lips when another sentence formed: “Do you know, this is - this is pretty amazing, but I once saw Ringo Starr.”

“Where was that?” Tom asked curiously.

“Kensington High Street.” there was a scratch in his excitement. ‘At least I think it was Ringo. It might have been that man from Fiddler On The Roof. You know, Toppy.” He scratched his nose.

“Top-ol,” Tom corrected his friend. The story seemed more and more unlikely to have happened, but it was still rather enjoyable to listen.

“Yes, that’s right. Topol.” Martin drank some more of his coffee. The small amount of it was already mostly gone as he had to work for it to get into his mouth, Tom started thinking.

“Actually, Ringo Starr doesn’t look at all like Topol.”

“Yeah, but he was quite a long way away from me.”

“So actually it could’ve been neither of them,” Tom suggested. There was a silence.

“Yes, I suppose so, yes.” Another silence between the two men.

“It’s not a classical anecdote, is it?”

“Not a classic, no. No.” They both agreed on it and once again, another silence fell as they both sipped from their incredibly small coffees. It was gone in less than two sips.

“Another one?” Tom asked once they were both finished. Martin sighed deeply, looking down at his paper cup. Then, a spark lit up in him as he changed his mind: “No! Let’s go crazy. I’ll have an orange juice.”

As Martin was the one who had gotten the coffee the first time, it was only right if Tom bought the juice now. He stepped outside and started walking right. Behind him, there were two men trying to lift up a big painting that would be sold in the new Panton Gallery that would open soon opposite of the bookshop.

Once in the small coffee shop, which was really a sandwich shop, Tom ordered the orange juice and a something more for a second breakfast. He hadn’t gotten to eat as much as he had liked since Harrison kept on nagging about his upcoming date with Janine. While he waited for his order, he looked around at the already well-known to him purple walls and the new advertisements that were stuck to the notice board. There didn’t seem to be anything interesting.

“Okay, thanks. Bye-bye.” The clerk gave him his drink and sandwich.

“See you later,” Tom said and made his way back outside. It was crowded in the sandwich shop, with people sitting at all the tables, of which a few barely fit in the space by itself already. Outside, there were also some people sitting and enjoying their food and drinks.

The sun hit Tom in the eyes as he got out. He followed the collection of small trees that stood in front of the unused garages all the way to the corner of the street. The sun was even brighter, making Tom look away.

Suddenly he felt something solid against him, scaring him a bit and spilling the orange juice in his hand everywhere, including on himself and the girl he had just bumped into. They both exclaimed in shock. The girl, unfortunately, had caught most of the blow of the cold beverage. Her white shirt now mostly bright orange.

“Shit! Bugger!” Tom threw the cup and his forgotten sandwich on the floor.

“Oh my god!” The girl from the bookshop was still in shock from the sudden cold that hit her in the chest.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” He repeated himself. He had a tissue in his pocket and took it out to wipe off the possible. “Here let me…”

“Get your hands off!’ She shrieked. There was a little laugh hidden in there. Tom understood that the move wasn’t very appropriate. He could see a few people around them give him a few strange looks.

“I’m really sorry. I… live just over the street.” He pointed out front of himself, in the general direction of his house. The girl was trying to get any juice she could, off of herself and her bags. “I uhm, have water and soap. You can get cleaned up.” She didn’t seem to be very enthusiastic about the idea.

“No thank you. I just need to get my car back.” She shook off some last drops from her hands and started to walk away, looking around for (probably) her car. Annoyance was very clear in her tone.

“I also have a phone. I’m confident that in five minutes we can have you spick and span and back on the street again.” He realized quickly how that sounded. The girl had turned around to look at him. “In the non-prostitute sense, obviously.” She was still mad and didn’t want to laugh, but when she had turned her head away, he could see the corner of her lips go up just a little. She brushed off some hair that had stuck to her cheek.

“All right,” She gave in, but not completely yet, “Well, what do you mean “just over the street”? Give it to me in yards.” Tom wasn’t sure how many yards exactly it would be to his blue door, but he gave it a shot: “Uhm, eighteen yards. That’s my house there with the blue front door.” He pointed again to his door The girl turned around to look for herself. She looked very hesitant but agreed to it in the end. Probably because the now sticky shirt was getting uncomfortable.

They walked in silence to his house. Tom prayed that Harrison had cleaned up at least a bit before he left to go see Janine. That was not the case.

“Come on in. I’ll just, I’ll just…” he ran in front of her into the corridor to clean up as much as he could before she could see the mess that the house actually was. There were old pizza boxes everywhere, shoes lying around in the middle of the floor. On the table lay plates from yesterday's breakfast. He didn’t know where to put them as the sink had been full for over four days already.

“Uhm, right. Right.” The girl was still at the door. “Come in. It’s not quite as tidy as it normally is, I fear.” He hoped she would believe him. “But the bathroom’s on the top floor. And the telephone’s just up here.” he showed her up the stairs and behind the wall. Even with a gigantic orange stain on her shirt, she still looked very well put together. She looked down at her bags, not sure what to do with them.

“Here, let me…” he took them from her and put them next to the stairs. She slowly walked up, not sure where to go next.

“Round the corner, straight on - straight on up.” She disappeared on the second part of the staircase. The time she was gone, Tom took to tidy up a bit more. He cursed Harrison for leaving it such a mess. He had clearly left him a message to clean up this morning. He started to gather around plates and cups and threw them next to the sink. There stood an old pan of baked beans too, he tried to throw it out, but the beans had gotten cold and hard and wouldn’t budge from their container.

He was about done swiping clean the table when he heard footsteps upstairs. He looked up. The girl looked stunning. She had exchanged her simple black pants - white shirt combo with a two-piece black sparkling ensemble… was he using that word correctly, he didn’t know for sure. The crop top and knee-length skirt showed her midriff perfectly. She was still wearing her oversized leather jacket and her beret and glasses were now gone. Tom could finally see her face properly. He couldn’t believe it. It was actually her!

They shared an awkward smile and Tom felt again the need to say something: “Er -” She let out a small sigh, looking a bit annoyed. It threw him off a bit. “Would you like a cup of tea before you go?”

“No.” She shook her head.

“Coffee?”

“No.”

“Orange juice?” She gave him one of those are-you-kidding-me looks. “Probably not.” He felt like he owed her something. “Uhm, something else cold?” He went over to the fridge to look inside. She was looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Coke? Water?” He looked around some more. There wasn’t much else in the fridge that he could give her. “Some disgusting sugary drink pretending to have something to do with fruits of the forest?”

“No,” her voice came out as a whisper.

“Would you like something to eat? Something to nibble?” What was wrong with him? Those were not words you should say to strangers. “Apricots soaked in honey? Quite why, no one knows, because it stops them tasting of apricots and makes them taste like honey, and if you wanted honey you’d just buy honey instead of apricots.” He pulled the glass jar out of the fridge. He needed to have something in his hands or at least something else to look at except for her.

“But nevertheless, there we go, they’re yours if you want them.” He showed her the jar full of honey covered apricots.

“No.” It was the millionth time he heard her say it.

“Do you always say “no” to everything?” He was thinking out loud. She looked around, thinking about her answer and then said, with half a smile: “No.” Tom closed the fridge. “I’d better be going. Thanks for your, uh,” She was looking for a word, “help.”

Tom leaned against the fridge. “You’re welcome. And may I also say, um, heavenly. I’ll just take my one chance to say it. After you’ve read that terrible book you’re certainly not gonna be coming back to the shop.” He looked down at the ground.

“Thank you.” She actually smiled.

“Yeah, well, my pleasure.” He smiled back. The girl now turned around and made her way through the tight corridor towards the door. Tom followed her.

“So… “ They stood next to the door now. “It was nice to meet you.” Looking at her, he had no idea what he was doing. He could feel his hand run through his hair as he said: “Surreal, but nice.” She just smiled, glancing at the door. Tom pulled at the lock and opened the door for her, saying a quick “sorry” for making her wait. She walked out without saying a word and he closed the door behind her.

“Surreal, but nice? What was I thinking?” he whispered to himself, in case she could still hear him through the heavy door. He was already walking back to the kitchen when the doorbell rang. He didn’t want the person to wait, so he jogged back to the door and opened it. There she was again. Her sunglasses back on her face. She smiled widely and said: “Hi.”

“Hi,” Tom replied, not expecting to see her again.

“I forgot my other bag,” she explained.

“Oh, right. Right.” A part of Tom was happy that he could see her again, but another was disappointed that she only rang the doorbell to get her bag. He let her back in. He walked to the chair he had put the bag on before and could hear the sound of the door closing. When he got back to her, she stood next to Harrison’s old bike. He handed her the bag and she mumbled “thanks”.

Now they stood in silence again. She smiled and Tom could see her eyes glance down at his lips. So, he did too. Her lips were getting bigger, no closer. He wasn’t sure how that was possible. And then, he could feel them on his own. She put an arm around his neck to be even closer to him.

Tom couldn't move. His arms were on his side. It was a very simple kiss, but it lasted ages. Only when they needed to breathe, did she pull away. Very slowly. She took a step back. Tom didn’t know what to do. He had never been in a situation like this before. To be kissed by a girl he had just met? It was surreal! Surreal.

“I’m very sorry about the surreal, but nice comment. Disaster.” She kept looking back between his lips and his eyes.

“That’s okay.” She focused on his eyes. “I thought the apricot and honey thing was the real low point.” Tom laughed. They looked into each other's eyes in silence until the clattering of the doorknob broke the moment apart. She turned to look what it was, and so did he. Tom knew what was next to come.

“Oh, my god! My flatmate. I’m sorry. There is no excuse for him.” he quickly apologized for Harrison’s sake before the blond opened the door. The two watched the door open and Harrison walked in. Half a smoked cigarette still in his mouth. He was wearing a brown shirt, probably from the female section, that was two sizes too small and blue jogging pants, which were so low that half his ass was falling out. He walked past them, not even acknowledging their company. Even though they exchanged “hi”s.

“I’m just going into the kitchen to get some food.” He shouted through the house as he walked. “Then I’m gonna tell you a story that will make your balls shrink to the size of raisins.” He heard the fridge door open.

“Probably best not to tell anyone about this.” She raised her eyebrows, implicating what they had just done.

“Right. Right, no one… I mean, I’ll tell myself sometimes, but, don’t worry, I won’t believe it.” She smiled and the two of them walked to the door. He opened it for her one more time and she walked through.

“Goodbye,” she smiled. Tom could only make out a small “Bye.” before the door was closed. He leaned his arm against the lock and, just, stood there for a moment. Trying to comprehend what just happened. He had kissed (Y/F/N)! The (Y/F/N). The biggest up-and-coming actress Hollywood had to offer. How? What had he done to be able to say he kissed… no, she kissed him.

“There’s something wrong with this yogurt.” Harrison shook Tom out of his own thoughts. Tom looked at the small container. “It’s not yogurt. It’s mayonnaise.”

“Oh, right. There we are, then.” and he took another full spoon of the condiment into his mouth. “On for a video fest tonight?” he suggested with his mouth full. Tom was barely listening. The kiss still fresh in his memory. “I got some absolute classics.”

Tom wasn’t sure if Harrison was joking him, because the first movie he picked was one of hers. Gramercy Park, it was called. Her face was on the cover of the movie, together with some bloke named Matthew Modine. It didn’t look great, but Tom didn’t have anything else to do, so he agreed on watching it.

“Smile,” Modine’s character begged hers in an art gallery. For some artistic decisions, the movie was black and white. Tom couldn’t understand why. The two characters walked around, looking at the paintings in the room. He couldn’t remember why they were there, he wasn’t really paying attention to the movie itself, honestly. Just her. He still couldn’t believe it that he had met the beautiful girl on the screen. Of course, her hair was different, but for the rest, it was definitely her!

“No.,” she said.

“Smile,” Modine repeated himself. He had done it already four times. Each time as annoying to watch.

“I’ve got nothing to smile about.” the two sat down on a bench that just happened to be in the otherwise, furniture free, gallery.

“Okay, in about seven seconds, I’m going to ask you to marry me.” the two characters shared a look. Then, (Y/N) started smiling.

“Imagine,” Harrison spoke up. In his hand a piece of pizza that had been hanging there since three scenes ago. “Somewhere in the world, there’s a man who’s allowed to kiss her.”

“Yeah, she is…” Tom couldn’t look away from the small tv screen, “fairly fabulous.”

____________________

Tom stood in his bookshop. As usual, it was empty, except for one man. He had been standing around for a few minutes already. In the middle of the shop, just looking around himself. “Do you have any books by Dickens?” he finally asked. Tom looked up from his inventory.

“No. No, I’m afraid we’re a travel bookshop. We only sell travel books.” The man didn’t seem to understand. He didn’t look exactly to be well. A bit pale and dried up. His suit also looked slightly too big for him.

“Oh, right. How about the new John Grisham thriller?”

“Well, no, because that’s a novel, too, isn’t it?”

“Oh right.” His eyes looked a bit glassy as he continued to gaze around the room, nowhere in particular. The man sighed deeply. “Have you got Winnie-the-Pooh?” Tom was officially done with this individual. The knew that Martin should be there somewhere, so he called out: “Martin, your customer.” Martin, this time wearing a big red cardigan, purple shirt, and a blue tie, popped up from behind a wall. He definitely had not heard the conversation Tom had with the man because he pleasantly asked: “Can I help you?”

A ring of the bell above the entrance made Tom turn around. It was probably just the strong wind that had been roaming around the street the whole day because there was nobody there when he looked. What he did see, was a double-decker bus driving in front of them right then. On there, the advertisement for the movie HELIX. He knew it would be coming out in cinemas soon, but that was about it. As the bus moved along, he saw her face. Of course, she would be the star of it. There almost hasn’t been a movie without her for the last two years.

It had been two days since the orange juice incident, Tom felt like he couldn’t avoid (Y/N). Her perfect face was everywhere. It was sad because he knew that in reality, he would never see her again.

The next morning Tom was making his way up the stairs, to the bathroom, when Harrison came walking downstairs. For some unknown reason, he was wearing Tom’s red scuba gear. His flatmate walked past him with a nonchalant “Hey” and left Tom confused on the stairs.

“Just, incidentally, why are you wearing that?” Tom asked at the breakfast table. He was looking at Harrison who stood by the (still very full) sink eating a bowl of cereal, a cigarette between the same fingers in which he held the spoon...

“Combination of factors really,” he said as he ate. “Uhm, no clean clothes…”

“There never will be, you know, unless you actually clean your clothes.”

“Right,” he nodded, “Vicious circle.”

“Yeah.” Tom agreed.

“And I was, like, rooting round in your things and I found this and I thought: Cool.” Tom looked at Harrison properly. Cool, was not a word he would use. The scuba-suit was definitely one of the less extravagant pieces of wardrobe Harrison has ever worn, but it was still a scuba-suit.

“Kinda spacey,” he added.

It was a Saturday, so the two men decided to do what they usually did when they didn’t have plans. They went up to the roof. It was a very pleasant spot where you could look out on the city, without the city looking back at you.

Tom sat down on a chair, under a parasol, while Harrison lounged himself on a slightly higher bit of the roof, next to the flower pots of which the residents had died many moons ago. He lay down on his side.

“There’s something wrong with the goggles, though.” Harrison tried to adjust them to his face.

“No, they were prescription,” Tom explained, not looking up from whatever article he was reading.

“Groovy.” Harrison sat up.

“So I could see all the fishes properly.”

“You should do more of this stuff.” He adjusted the goggles again. Tom doubted if his friend over there could actually see anything through them whether or not he moved them around in some way.

“So, look, any messages today?” He put down his article on the small table next to him.

“Yeah, I wrote a couple down. Harrison got up and walked over to another piece of the roof, where his own set of table and garden chairs stood. It was fully in the sun and Harrison often, unfortunately, lay there naked. Hoping to get a tan someday.

“So, there were two, there were two messages? Right?” He watched as Harrison walked over to the other chairs and sat down, putting his feet up on another chair in front of him. He pulled down the goggles so they would hang around his neck. “You want me to write down all your messages?” He waved with his cigarette as he talked.

Tom didn’t understand how he managed to live with this idiot for this long. He also didn’t understand how he had not yet bought an answering machine. Massaging his temple, he asked: “Okay, Who are the ones that you didn’t write down from?” Harrison took a swing from his cigarette and thought for a moment.

“No, gone completely.” But immediately after that, he remembered again: “Oh, no, there was one from your mum. She said: don’t forget lunch, and her leg’s hurting again.”

“No one else?”

“Absolutely no one else.” Tom looked at Harrison for a moment, ready for him to add something to his sentence. But he only leaned back relaxed in his chair. After six seconds, Tom gave up and went back to the article he was reading. Of course, right at that moment, Harrison started talking again. “Though if we’re going for this obsessive writing-down-all-the-message thing, some American girl called (Y/N) called a few days ago.” Tom’s head shot back up. She called? How was that even possible? He wanted to play it a bit cool. “What did she say?” he asked.

“Well, it was genuinely bizarre. She said: Hi, it’s (Y/N). Then she said, Call me at The Ritz. And then gave herself a completely different name.”

“Which was?” Tom dragged him on.

“Absolutely no idea.” He took another breath of his cigarette. “Remembering one name’s hard enough.” Tom groaned in frustration and got up from his slightly uncomfortable chair. He made his way downstairs, to the living room-study where the phone was located. He had to look for the telephone book to find the number for the Ritz. Of course, it was hidden underneath a pile of Harrison’s dirty clothes.

Once he had the number for the hotel, he ticked it into the machine and waited for the other line to answer. It soon did. A man asked him who he wanted to speak to. Tom knew that it probably wouldn’t be (Y/F/N). It was probably the name that she had left with Harrison… which he forgot. He tried anyway. The man said that there was nobody staying here under this name.

“No, I know that. She said that. I know she’s using another name. The problem is she left the message with my flatmate,” Tom looked at Harrison who very calmly and casually sat down on the couch in front of him and opened up the newspaper. A new cigarette in his mouth. “Which was a very serious mistake. Uhm…” he didn’t know how to explain it to the man on the other line. “Imagine, if you will, the stupidest person you’ve ever met. Are you doing that?”

“Yes, sir, I have him in my mind.” he heard.

“And now double it. And that is the, what can I say, the git that I am living with. And he can’t remember this other…”

“Try Flintstone,” Harrison said. His voice sounded very nasally because he was wearing those goggles again. Tom looked up at him in complete disbelief.

“Sorry,” he said to the man from the hotel. “What?”

“I think she said her name was Flintstone.” Tom rolled his eyes. A cartoon character? Really? But he had no other options, so he took his shot in the dark: “I don’t suppose Flintstone rings any bells, does it?’ He was expecting the man to laugh at him, but instead, the man said: ‘Well, I’ll put you right through, sir.” He couldn’t believe it. While the line was being switched he tried to think of what he should say. That was cut short when her voice was heard. “Hello.” He put the phone back to his ear.

“Hi. Sorry. Uhm…It’s Tom, Holland.” He wasn’t sure she would know who he was.

“Yes?”

“We… I work in a bookshop.” He sat down, not sure his legs could hold him up during this conversation. He wasn’t very hopeful that she remembered who he was. But she did. “You played it pretty cool there, waiting for three days to call.”

“Oh, no, I promise you I’ve never played anything cool in my entire life. My flatmate, who I’ll stab to death later, never gave me the message.” he tried to explain himself. She didn’t say anything. This was his chance. “I don’t know, perhaps… uhm, I could drop round for tea later or something?” She didn’t say anything for a while.

‘Things are pretty busy here. I might be free at around 4:00.”

“Right. Right. Great.” They said their bye’s and he could hear the other line hang up. He held the phone in his hand for a second or nine before putting it down. He looked at Harrison, who had put down his paper and took a long swing from his cigarette. Before blowing out the smoke that had built up in his lungs, he put the goggles back over his eyes. Tom could suddenly see smoke coming out from underneath the goggles.

At around 3:30, Tom decided to leave the house. Not only have at least ten minutes to spare in case any traffic came up but also because he was starting to get tired of Harrison blowing smoke in his goggles and then yelling that his eyes burned.

He took the bus. Getting out as quickly as possible. He crossed the street and looked at the entrance of the Ritz. He had never even been close to the building. With his lower than low income, he didn’t exactly feel worthy to be around it.

Walking in, a whiff of richness could be felt. It wasn’t very pleasant. He had walked to the front desk and asked in which room “Miss Flintstone” was staying and then headed to the elevators. The man had said to go to the fortepiano and to the right. So that is what he did.

A man in a black suit walked in with him. In one hand he was holding a briefcase and in the other a cup of coffee.

“Which floor?” Tom asked.

“Three, please.” That just so happened to be the same as his. The doors closed and they were ascending. Not much later the elevator stopped and they got out. Tom glanced at the little navigation sign on which it stated which rooms were on each side of the corridor and made his way to the right. The man took a bit more time doing so but followed him in the same direction. He walked behind him until the very end of the corridor, all the way up to room number 38, the Trafalgar Suite. Before Tom knocked he turned around to the man. “Are you… sure?” Was he here too to see (Y/N).

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, Sure.” He smiled. Tom knocked on the door. They waited for the door to be opened. Even though the other man stood a good distance away from him, Tom still had the feeling he could feel his breath on his neck. He felt very uncomfortable. Who was he? What was he doing here?

The door suddenly opened, revealing a woman around his (and maybe also the other man’s) age. Tom had never seen her before. She was barely looking at them, too occupied by whatever it was in her hands.

“Hi. Hi. I’m Karen.” Karen handed him a booklet, on which a the same picture was that he had been seeing all over town recently. It was (Y/N), in her futuristic bob-cut, from her new movie HELIX. “I’m sorry, things are running a little bit late. Here’s the uhm, thing. Do you wanna come this way?” She went back inside.”Through here.” Not knowing what to do, Tom just followed and so did the ginger man. There were many other people in the room. All looking like they have been waiting for a while, all holding the same booklet that Karen had given to him. Tom finally understood what was going on. This was a press conference.

“So what did you think of the film?” Karen clicked her pen, ready to write down their words.

“Yeah, I thought it was fantastic. I thought it was Close Encounters meets Jean de Florette.” the ginger man said. Karen smiled satisfied. Then the two of them looked at Tom, expecting him to add to it. He did not know what he thought of the movie as he had not seen it, nor - honestly - was he actually planning on seeing it. Because he had to say something, he choked out: “I agree.” The man nodded approvingly and swung his coffee cup back to drink the last bit of his drink.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get down what magazines you’re from.”

“Time Out.” the man said.

“Great,” she noted the name, then looked up at Tom, “and you’re from?” Tom was very much freaking out. He was definitely not from any magazine. He can’t even remember the last time he read one. He tried to look around unnoticed for some inspiration. Thankfully, on a small table nearby, there was a whole pile of magazines. Hidden behind a vase of flowers. It was the only option he got.

“Er- Horse & Hound.” The man next to him smiled impressed. Tom smirked back. Karen wrote down the name too. As (Y/N) had said that they could meet up today, he assumed that she was expecting him.

He cleared his throat: “The name’s Tom Holland. Actually, she might be expecting me.”

“Oh, okay.” She didn’t sound very impressed but went along with it. “Take a seat and I’ll go check.” Karen smiled and walked away. The ginger man still stood by him. He pointed at a small couch and asked if they should sit down. They did so. As they walked over to it, the man started a conversation: “I see you’ve… I see you’ve brought her some flowers.” he pointed at the small bouquet. Tom had completely forgotten about them. It was rather pathetic now that he thought about it. He started laughing: “No. These are.. for my… grandmother. She’s in a hospital down the road. Thought I’d kill two birds with one stone, you know.” The man nodded.

“Sure, right. Absolutely, yeah.” Tom turned around slightly, hoping the conversation was now over. Unfortunately, for him, it was not. “Which hospitals that?” Tom wanted to tell the man to mind his own business but thought it would be quite rude to do so.

“Do you mind me not saying? It’s a rather distressing thing, isn’t it?” he was impressed by himself, really. “The name of the hospital kind of gives it away.”

“Absolutely. Sure.” the man agreed. Tom thanked him with a “Cheers.” There was a very awkward silence between them. Tom did not know if this was much better than the conversation.

“Right, Mr. Holland,” Karen popped up through the crowd of journalists from a different corridor than into which one she had disappeared, “If you come this way.”

“Right.” Tom got up. He walked over to Karen who showed him towards a room a bit away from where everyone was standing and waiting. “You’ve got five minutes.” She opened a door for him and walked away. The room was oval shaped. Very roomy and very classy. The beige color of the walls was repeated in the furniture, ceiling, drapes, and carpet. Parallel to the door was a big window looking out on the city. In front of it stood (Y/N). she had her back facing him but turned around the moment he walked in. Just like the last time he saw her, she was beautiful. Even with the light making her only a silhouette. She walked away from the window with a big smile. Tom could now see her more properly. Yes, she was beautiful. Dressed in a full suit, including a tie, she showed all the power in her that the world needed to see. Her hair was tied back in a slick ponytail.

“Hi.” He said. She responded with a simple “Hello.”

“Uhm, I brought these, but clearly…” he looked around the room, where gigantic bushes of flowers stood in every spot that fit.

“No, they’re great. They’re great.” She smiled and took them from him. Tom didn’t know what to do.

“I’m sorry about not ringing back.” he apologized when she put down the flowers on the table in front of them. “The whole two-names concept was totally too much for my flatmate’s pea-sized intellect.”

“No, it’s a stupid privacy thing. I always pick a cartoon character.” thankfully she didn’t seem to be very angry at him, technically, ignoring her for three days. “Last time I was Mrs. Bmbi.” she laughed at her own choice. The door of the room closed as a man stepped in, making them both look away from each other. The man was older, already at the point where his barely-there hair was completely white. He was wearing all black, so Tom assumed it was some type of security.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you.” (Y/N) smiled at the man, who brought his attention to Tom.

“And you’re from Horse & Hound?” Tom just nodded. “Good.” Then he turned around and started going through some papers.

“Is that so?” (Y/N) smiled, probably holding in a bigger one underneath it, and sat down on the big couch. Not wanting to be inappropriate, Tom sat down in a chair next to it. His eyes were still on the man. He couldn’t have the conversation he wanted to have, while he was there. They would have him kicked out before he actually asked anything.

“So..uhm, I’ll just fire away, then, shall I?” he looked unsure at (Y/N), who glanced at the man in the round corner of the room and smirked. She waited for his first question.

“Right...er- The film’s great.” Always a good way to start, he thought. “And I just was wondering whether you ever thought of having more, uh, horses in it?” The man cleared his throat. It was unsure if it was towards Tom and his ridiculously idiotic question, or it was actually needed. Especially, that he didn’t even seem to be paying attention, as he was checking her mail. (Y/N) answered as she glanced over at him: “Well, we would have like to, but it was difficult, obviously, being set in space.” Tom seemed to blank out for a minute. At this moment he felt like a bigger idiot than Harrison.

“Space, right, yeah. Yeah, obviously very difficult.” The door opened again and the man left. Tom didn’t even wait to make sure he couldn’t hear them. “I’m so sorry. I arrived outside, they thrust this into my hand.” he showed her the movie booklet that he had earlier on put down.

“No, it’s my fault. I thought this would all be over by now.” she sighed. “I just wanted to sort of apologizing for the kissing thing. I seriously don’t know what came over me.” Tom could feel the smile on his face slowly lower itself. He didn’t know what he had expected from this conversation, but this somehow was not it. “I just wanted to make sure that you were fine about it.”

Tom froze for a moment. Of course, he was fine about it. The kiss was amazing. He knew that he probably should say it out loud too. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely fine.” He had to play it cool, though. Once again, the heavy door opened and closed. The bold man came in again.

“Do remember that Miss (Y/L/N) is also keen to talk about her next project which she is shooting later in the summer.” He walked over to them to pour a glass of water for (Y/N). Tom was sure she could perfectly well do it herself and that there was no particular reason for the man to be there now.

“Yes, excellent. Excellent.” He did not want to talk about her next project, but since the man was still there, he had no other choice. “Any horses in that one?” She looked at him with a sad smile. He knew very well that this attempt at an interview was not going great at all. “Or hounds for that matter?” he added quickly. “Our readers are equally intrigued by both species.”

“It takes place on a submarine,” she explained disappointedly.

“Oh, well, bad luck.” he glanced over at the man, who did not seem to be very keen on leaving. “But if there were horses in it, would you be riding them, or would you be getting a stunt-horse-double-man-thing?” he could hear the man walk away with a sigh, opening the door, and closing it behind him.

“I’m a complete moron, I apologize.” he took a deep breath. “This is very weird. It’s the sort of thing that happens in dreams, not in real life. I mean, good dreams. It’s a dream, in fact, to see you again.” He looked away, not believing what he had just said. Her next words were soft, almost a whisper: “What happens next in the dream?”

Her smile took his breath away for a moment there. Once he managed to talk, he thought for a moment. “I suppose that in the uhm, dream, dream scenario, I just change my personality,” he wished he was more confident around her, less of a bumbling idiot. “Because you can do that in dreams and uhm... “ They were looking into each other's eyes. Tom was not sure if she was actually moving closer to him or he was just imagining it. “And walk over and kiss the girl. But…” they both started to lean in. This was happening. Now he was prepared. He could do it.

The only problem was, it was not happening. The old security man came in through the door, making Tom and (Y/N) sit up and look away from each other. Breaking any tension there was between them.

“Time’s up, I’m afraid. Did you get what you wanted?” Tom wanted to punch the stupid grin off of his face. Of course, he didn’t get what he wanted. But he had to keep calm.

“Nearly. Nearly,” he said, fidgeting in his chair a bit.

“Well, maybe just one last question,” he smirked towards (Y/N). It was very unnerving to look at. She smiled and said: “sure, sure.” The man left again. It was all very annoying.

“Are you busy tonight?” Tom asked when the door clicked in the lock.

“Yes.” She simply stated.

“Right. Right.” He understood. Of course, the biggest movie star in Hollywood would be busy. She doesn’t have time for him. What was he thinking? There was a silence between them. Very awkward.

“Come in,” The man walked in, This time followed by a Clark Kent looking type. (Y/N) got up, so Tom assumed it was really time to go for him. They politely shook hands and she said: “Well, it was nice to meet you.”

“Yes, and you.”

“Surreal, but nice.” She smirked. Tom laughed at the comment. It will haunt him for the rest of his life, probably.

“Thank you,” he said, “You are Horse & Hound’s favorite actress.” the comment made her laugh out loud a little. “You and Black Beauty tied.” He wished he could kiss her, but the men next to them made it impossible. So, he walked away. Not looking back. He was not exactly pleasantly surprised to see the ginger man standing outside. When he saw Tom, he told whoever he was talking to on the phone, to hang on.

“How was she?” He asked interestedly.

“Oh, um…” the question threw him off a bit. “Fabulous.”

“Excellent.” they were about to part, but the man stopped him again. “Wait a minute, she took your grandmother’s flowers?” he looked confused. So did Tom. Grandmother’s flowers? What was he on about? Then he remembered his poor excuse.

“Yeah, yeah. That’s right. Bitch.”

“Mr. Holland.” It was Karen, coming out of a corridor. What was it now? Couldn’t he just leave? He was fine, honestly. “If you’d like to come with me, we can just rush you through the others.”

“The others?” Karen walked away, but Tom stood still in his spot. What others? There weren’t any others for him. Just (Y/N). Karen didn’t stop or respond, so he had to follow her. The woman leads him into another room, where a gentleman was seated.

“Mr. Holland is from Horse & Hound,” she told him and walked away, but not before gesturing to Tom to sit down.

“How ’s it going?” the man asked. They shook hands.

“Very well. Thank you.” Tom was going to pass out. He couldn’t interview him! And Karen had talked about others. That was definitely plural. Was he expected to talk to the whole cast? He couldn’t.

“Have a seat.” They sat down. Tom was ready for the next hour of torture to begin.

-------

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 5 years

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How SparkNotes' social media accounts mastered the art of meme-ing literature

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SparkNotes' Twitter and Instagram accounts have carved a unique niche for themselves online by posting literary memes that find perfect parallels between classic works like Macbeth, The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, and Frankenstein, and present-day pop culture favorites like The Office, Parks and Rec, and more.

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