Why does everyone say that they played someone ‘like a fiddle’? Fiddles are actually pretty difficult to play? Why not say ‘I played him like a recorder’? ‘Like a xylophone’? ‘Like a triangle’?
I think it’s got to do with detail and subtlety. If you play someone like a fiddle, that’s like, Iago or some shit. If you play someone like a triangle, you just told them there was free food somewhere when there wasn’t.
I’ve once read the following exchange:
“You played me!”
“Like the cheap kazoo you are.”
Which in my books is a pretty epic burn if we’re going to be making musical comparisons.
There’s a space of two inches on Bitty’s neck that is the most sensitive part of his body. Jack has catalogued the second most sensitive (earlobe) and third (the inside of his wrist), but pressing mouth to neck pulls Bitty’s bones right out of him, turns him all melted in Jack’s arms. Bitty is–surprisingly–quiet when they’re alone and together like this, his hands and body eager but his throat filled with little whimpers and sighs instead of what Jack expected, which was…words.
It makes him wonder why Bitty is so quiet in this when he’s never quiet in anything. What’s made him so silent in intimate moments like this, the few minutes they have in his room while pretending to wash up for dinner? Through the half-open window in Bitty’s room, Jack can smell the barbecue Coach has on the grill, and he thinks, Oh. That’s probably why.
“You feel good,” Jack tries, his hand on Bitty’s hip, fingers slipped just under his tank to find his sweat-damp skin. Georgia is hot, but Bitty’s skin is even hotter.
Bitty makes another soft noise at that, and when Jack pulls back just enough to look at him, his eyes are glazed, his mouth pink and slack. Jack kisses him. How can he not.
Suzanne Bittle’s voice carries sweetly up the stairs, calling them boys and asking them down for dinner. Bitty goes still in Jack’s arms. Jack can tell by the way Bitty’s chest heaves that his heart is fluttering behind his ribcage.
These stolen moments aren’t enough, and Jack wants nothing more than to explore the summer stretch of Bitty’s body where he can take his time and learn and appreciate. He doesn’t want to be rushed. Doesn’t want to stop.
“Come with me to Providence,” he says, mouth falling into those two inches of his neck. Bitty clutches at him. Jack exhales.
"When?“
“When I leave. Let me get your ticket. Come with me.”
“Jack…"
"Come with me."
Bitty’s fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck feels like he’s had them there for a long time, the movement so easy and practiced. Bitty shakes out a breath. "Yes. Okay. I will.”
Yes this is perfect – I really love imaging how Chowder’s first few weeks went with the Sharks. Like, right now the Sharks are a very good team (and have been for a while) but let’s say that the reason they are recruiting directly from college is because they have been really struggling at the goalie position and coming so close to the Cup but then always falling short before the finals has had a toll on morale and to the players, it seems that bringing in such a n00b goalie is a sign that management is looking to shake it up. Or giving up on this team and planning to do a rebuild, get some younger players and try with a different group of guys.
So, essentially, when Chowder bursts into the Sharks locker room full of happiness and enthusiasm and without even the faintest attempt at being cool at all, this does not exactly help matters. This kid is young in every sense of the word (like, yes, he has his braces off by this point, but he is not ashamed to say he wore them up until 2 years ago and dear god he actually won’t stop talking) and bringing in young, untested guys means a rebuild year and people are not that happy.
Chowder does not seem to notice.
He just keeps babbling on about how excited he is to be here and how much he looks up to all these guys and “omg it has been so swawesome to watch you guys like i have grown up watching you and-!!!” (okay, we get it, you’re young, ugh).
So the first few days of practice, they don’t scrimmage, just do some conditioning stuff, practice a few passes. And Chowder is fine. He’s not a bad player and his conditioning seems good but still… a team isn’t going to get far without a really good goalie and this one… well, they just aren’t sure he has what it takes. No one says it aloud but there are shared glances and sighs and the vibe for the first few days is not exactly what it should be.
Then, then finally on Friday of that first week, they scrimmage. Full 5 on 5 with Chowder in one goal, second string goalie in the other (privately people have been saying he should be moved to the first string because at least he seems to take the game seriously and not act like a fan) and, sure, people notice that Chowder goes a bit quiet the minutes leading up to the game but they figure he is probably nervous and his mask covers most of his face so they can’t see him all that well and-
Well, and then they play and Chowder is the goalie.
And Chowder is… well, it’s not that the boys are going easy on him at the beginning but it wouldn’t exactly be good form to demolish your goalie’s self-esteem during your first scrimmage when it’s his rookie year so they aren’t whipping pucks at his head at a full 100%. They are being polite about it.
Until none of their polite shots go in. Not one.
And at this point, the other team has scored twice and, look, the boys playing against Chowder are not trying to lose against their teammates so they start trying harder. And then harder. And, nope, those shots are not being polite anymore. Not even a little bit.
They don’t tell the team right away. Not because they’re trying to hide anything, but because they figure it’s so obvious that they don’t need to.
Their friendship transitions so surprisingly easily into something more that it probably looks impossible from the outside. Strange, to say the least. Miraculous, maybe, but only if one really hadn’t been paying attention.
Dex now does homework with Nursey’s hand resting on the back of his neck, palm warm against the skin there and fingertips absently scratching up against the grain of Dex’s short hair and then softly back down.
Dex carries an extra beanie with him on cold days, and pulls it down over Nursey’s ears for him as they walk to class, despite Nursey’s token protests.
He forgets to eat breakfast on busy days, always has, but now finds black coffee and overpriced Annie’s banana nut muffins on his open textbook when he stops at his dorm room between his morning classes.
He smiles a little quicker, a little easier.
He still argues just as much as he ever did.
It’s… effortless. It’s good.
And okay, so maybe Dex has been waiting for the other shoe to drop this whole time–that’s just how his life tends to work–but he didn’t really expect said shoe to manifest in a stunned group silence at team breakfast in the wake of Nursey pressing a quick kiss to his temple as he sits down to join them.
It feels like the entire cafeteria freezes, even if it’s really just the chaos that is the Samwell Men’s Hockey Team during a mealtime suddenly stopping short in collective wonder.
That’s what it looks like. That’s really what it looks like
Being out in the ocean is actually so scary because when you look really far out you can kind of see how the Earth is rounded out. It looks like a few miles ahead you’re just gonna fall off or something.
Also fun trick: if ur on mobile, double tap zoom in and slide the picture side to side. It looks like you’re actually there looking left to right
there are so many important elements to this. the slow-mo. the sliding on snow in trainers?? the string classical music. the knowing glance towards the camera. the slight raise of the mug in salutation. the book. the red dressing gown. the snowflakes falling past. the hair? the blink as they turn away. who are they
I was just thinking it had been a while since I’d seen this on my dash. It’s so hypnotic. I wish we had a source link and knew more about where it came from.
@cupidsbower – it’s a Norwegian guy called Trym Nordgaard. The video was shot near his house, in Gjøvik. I think he’s a professional snowboarder?
Thank you so much! That’s awesome. The mystery solved!
so if there’s one single trope i’m always down to fight it’s the animal bride (folklore motif 402??) which a lot of you are probably familiar with as the selkie – the fisherman either falls in love, steals her skin to trap her on land/gain power over her, or they fall in love and THEN he steals her skin to keep her from leaving, and either way she spends a lot of time gazing sadly out to sea and then she or her child finds the skin and never returns again. and that’s awful on a whole lot of levels – it’s not love, it’s control.
BUT. but the thing is. you how selkies/seal women was a pretty common variation of this? another really popular one was swans.
i just want you to think about that for a moment. swans. like…I get it, they’re pretty, graceful birds, certainly it’s easy to imagine them magically becoming pretty graceful ladies? but have you ever fought a swan. swans are awful. swans are the devil’s geese. imagine seeing a pretty magic lady and being absolutely enchanted by her, and stealing her magic feather cloak, and then you go up and say ‘hey i’m in love with you, let me make you my queen, it will be great, we’ll be so happy’ and she just looks at you for a moment and…
you know i was going to say maybe she just shouts for her sisters and suddenly you’rerealizing you’ve made a terrible terrible mistake bc you’re surrounded by big fucking birds who are all hissing. but honestly if this swan lady is as aggressively down to brawl as any other generally unhappy swan, then she’d straight up fuck you up on her own. she’d just deck you roundhouse, honestly. you don’t fuck with swans. why does this trope exist
okay but consider this: a woman walks to the park every day and feeds the swans and watches them paddle gracefully around the lake, sighing to see how beautifully they swim.
finally one day, a swan comes up to her and says ‘why don’t you come and swim with us? you always sigh so wistfully to see us on the water, and you would be most welcome to join our company, for you have always been a true friend to our kind’
and the woman says, ‘i can’t swim’
and the swan says, ‘we’ll teach you’
and the woman says, ‘literally i can’t swim, my husband stole my sealskin and should i venture into deep water i would surely drown’
and the swan says ‘your husband fucking WHAT’
the next morning the woman’s front yard looks like this.
and neither the woman nor her husband are ever heard from again, though for very different reasons.
It may also interest someone to know that swans can projectile poop.
I know a real-world mama swan who got shot in the wing and walked four miles overland to get back to her babies and dad swan, with her broken wing bleeding and dragging the whole way. She just kept going. Don’t mess with lady swans.
Also? Swans don’t have a lot of obvious physical markings that divide the males from females. So some idiot might be like, “damn, that’s a sexy bird, I wanna marry her” and then like. It’s a dude swan. You just transformed thirty pounds of angry aggressive bird into 200+ pounds of angry aggressive adult man, who will totally kick your butt. (Also I’m pretty sure that if you turned a lady swan into a human, you would not get a willowy little 5′0″ girl. You’d probably have a 6-foot amazon with biceps the size of your head. Swans are heavy birds and it takes a LOT of muscle to get them into the air. They are among the baddest bitches in the bird kingdom)
And when a swan decides to beat you up, it is not with fancy martial arts. Swans are brawlers. They have bone clubs built into their wing joints specifically for beating people up. A human swan is gonna come at you screaming and spitting and just keep punching you in the face until you regret every decision you have made ever in your life and also some of the ones your parents made too.
I want a movie where the swan is either played by The Rock or Gwendoline Christie and the screaming brawls are the centerpiece.
The sorcerer’s eyes scan the lake greedily. He’s been coming here for months, dreaming. Waiting.
Choosing.
And now it’s time.
“That one,” he tells the two men he hired earlier this morning, pointing one long, ring-adorned finger at the most beautiful swan. “Bring her to me.”
The henchmen don’t ask questions. He paid them specifically so they wouldn’t ask questions.
Even so, henchmen A glances at henchman B from the corner of his eye.
“Dude,” he says when they’re far enough way from the cackling sorcerer that they won’t be overheard, “why the hell does he want a swan?”
Henchman B shrugs. “What do these sorcerer types ever want?”
They near the water’s edge. “Okay, but,” Henchman A says, “he’s not going to try and fuck it, right? Because I’m sort of uncomfortable with beastiality–”
“Oh my god,” henchman B groans. “Just grab the swan.”
It takes a bit of cursing, flailing, and begrudging team work to grab the swan. When they finally manage to tuck her wings against her sides and grab hold of her neck to prevent her from biting she goes limp, making the strangest, saddest sound that the henchmen have ever heard.
“It’s okay,” Henchman A tells her bracingly, feet squelching as they haul her from the muddy lake’s edge to the sorcerer. “He’s probably not into beastiality. Very few people are.”
Henchmen B coughs and averts his eyes. “Uh, yeah. Right. Hey, you don’t think this was too easy? I mean, the other swans are just…watching. Us.”
Henchman A glances over his shoulder. Sure enough, floating on the lake are about two dozen swans, all curving their elegant necks so they can watch the fate of the swan hanging in between them. Rather than seeming alarmed, they seem…amused?
Henchman A looks away. “Nah, I’m sure it’s fine.”
The sorcerer jumps from foot to foot when they approach, clapping his hands together. “Good, good! Now just hold her there, hold her!”
The henchmen watch as the sorcerer visibly reigns himself in, breathing deeply. He begins to mutter in tongues for a very long time, an awkwardly long time. The henchmen glance at each other with their eyebrows raised. Sorcerers, man.
Suddenly the sorcerer’s head snaps up, eyes glowing a blazing black. He points his bejeweled finger at the swan who has remained suspiciously limp between them and hisses a short, ominous phrase.
Henchman A fights not to scream as a bolt of blue lightning flies at them. Henchman B drops his side of the swan and Henchman A follows suit just in time. The bolt strikes the swan and there’s a blinding flash as the sorcerer begins to cackle again.
“Behold!” he screams to the sky. “My bride!”
The spots clear from the henchmen’s eyes and they gape at the swan. Or rather where the swan should be. Instead there’s a woman there, crumpled on the ground, in a white, soft dress that’s already muddy.
She slowly lifts her head, her face pointed towards Henchman A. Her eyes snap open to reveal a swan’s eyes, a deep unending black that looks… not right on a human.
“Oh what the fuck,” Henchman A says.
The swan woman levers herself up. And up. And up. And up until she towers over them. There are thick cords of muscle at eye level, thick arms and a broad chest that lead to a very strong neck . Most of her body is hidden by her dress, but it doesn’t take a genius to guess that she’s built like a fucking tank.
She is very, very swan-like, henchman A realizes.
“Oh what the fuck,” henchman B says.
The woman smiles, showing off white, small teeth. “Welcome to the thunderdome, gentleman.”
Her fist feels like steel when it connects with Henchman A’s face and he thinks he hears his cheek break. He falls to the ground hard and doesn’t even try to stay conscious after a hit like that. The last thing he hears is what sounds like laughter from the direction of the lake.
Henchman B tries to run, but the swan woman is fast. She grabs the back of his collar and slings him to the ground, hissing and spitting. She hikes up her dress, showing built calves, and brings her heel slicing down onto his stomach. He reaches and chokes at the same time, moving belatedly to cover his head.
He needn’t bother. The swan woman seems to be done with him.
The sorcerer’s still standing in the spot from which he cast the spell, mouth agape. “B-but, you– you’re a swan? Wha–”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the swan woman says. Her voice is scratchy and growls like she’s swallowed glass. It sounds a bit like the hissing merriment happening on the lake. “I’m not a swan. I’m your wife.” She cracks her knuckles. “And it’s time for our honeymoon.”
The sorcerer picks up his robes and flees into the forest. The swan woman is fine with that. The swan who’d had to deal with this last week said that its more fun when they run.
It’s finally, finally here *___* After months of work, Here’s my first comic ever, “Ozymandias”, based on the poem by Percy Shelley. If you want to support me, you can buy a hi-res PDF of the comic, along with some sketches, a very small 1 page tutorial, and the full-res PSD on gumroad for 2 dollars here:
just moving along like everyone else 