Meanwhile the Young Prince sat outside his black pavilion, drinking from his silver goblet and rising from time to time to mount his horse and vanquish yet another undistinguished foe. He had won nine victories, but it seemed to Dunk that every one was hollow. He is beating old men and upjumped squires, and a few lords of high birth and low skill. The truly dangerous men are riding past his shield as if they do not see it.
My favorite part about writing is that first spark of an idea. It can happen at any time, for any reason. The idea for the Opalite music video crash landed into my imagination when I was doing promo for The Life of a Showgirl. I was a guest on one of my favorite shows, The Graham Norton Show. For those of you who arenât familiar, itâs a UK late night show where Graham Norton (the insanely charismatic and lovable host) invites a random group of actors, entertainers, musicians, etc to be on his show and we all sit there and chat like itâs a dinner party. They even serve wine. Anyway. I remember thinking I got ridiculously lucky with the group I was paired with. Cillian Murphy, Domhnall Gleeson, Greta Lee, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Lewis Capaldi. All people whose work Iâve admired from afar. When we were all talking during the broadcast, Domhnall made a light hearted joke about wanting to be in one of my music videos. Heâs Irish! He was joking! Except that in that moment during the interview, I was instantly struck with an *idea*. And so a week later he received an email script Iâd written for the Opalite video, where he was playing the starring role. I had this thought that it would be wild if all of our fellow guests on the Graham Norton show that night, including Graham himself, could be a part of it too. Like a school group project but for adults and it isnât mandatory. To my delight, everyone from the show made the effort to time travel back to the 90âs with us and help with this video. You might even recognize some friendly faces from The Eras Tour. I got to work with one of my favorite people in the world, Rodrigo Prieto, again! I had more fun than I ever imagined - Made new friends, metaphors, and fashion choices. It was an absolute thrill to create this story and these characters. Shot on film. The Opalite video is out now on Spotify & Apple Music.Â
wuthering heights the book: we know basically nothing about heathcliff's background except he is absolutely not white. he is adopted into a white family to be a servant and will never, ever be seen as equal to them, even by those who claim to love him. this is a major factor in his isolation from the other main characters and society as a whole, which in turn drives the rest of the plot.
wuthering heights the movie, every single time: starring The Whitest Man Alive as heathcliff
i mean he is supposed to be racially ambiguous, if he was actually a black man he wouldnt be able to marry isabella or to own the house. i think the cast of jacob elordi kinda fits since he is basque
pairing: Creature/reader ; Victor Frankenstein/Reader
chapter summary: An accident leaves you unwell, your uncle, with your best interest at heart contacts Dr. Victor Frankenstein
summary: He sees her, covered in bandages, awake, confused... Has victor finally built him a companion?
tags: i'm not sure what direction i'm going, victor is morbid about you and your surgeries, the creature is trying to figure who you are, word count: 2.1k
READ ON AO3
The accident had been queer.Â
Thatâs what the paper would say, they also would speak about the sad story of a young woman who lost everything when the train rails failed. Youâd tell the police, with what little voice you had left, that you couldnât recall what happened or if you saw or heard anything out of the ordinary and that everything was a blur.Â
You would not dare confess the truth: how the bodies of your family lay strewn across the mangled remains of the fifth wagon while you were found in the tenth, limbs shattered at unnatural angles. You would not admit that your sisterâs sharp tongue had driven you storming down the length of the train in search of a momentâs peace; nor would you tell them how you felt every splintering crack as the metal skeleton of the carriage folded into the snow. Yes, it had been a blur, because what truly veiled your sight was the blood pouring from the great gash that carved your face, warm and viscous, sliding over your cheek with a heat that mocked the cold. You did not know how deep it ran; you only knew the sting, the burn, your own blood against the freezing press of the snow beneath your torn dress. Your arms refused to obey you, and your legs throbbed with that bright, electric agony reserved for bones broken beyond repair.
There was cold, and hands. Rough hands lifting you, softer ones trying to settle your trembling limbs, and then the sharp, violating clarity of light as they carried you through the doors. You didnât know where you were, only that every sound felt as if someone were striking your bones directlyâmetal basins, hurried footsteps, a medic barking orders you couldnât decipher.
Then the morphine came.
 A needle sliding into your arm, a voice asking you to breathe and then that molten warmth blooming, flooding, eroding the edges of pain until it turned into something distant and shimmering. You felt your consciousness slipping sideways, not falling asleep exactly, but dissolving, becoming light enough to be carried by the air.
When you next resurfaced, you were alone in a room that smelled of antiseptic and damp stone. A lantern hissed quietly from its hook, casting long, warped shadows across the walls. Your face throbbed with a deep, pulsing acheâeach heartbeat felt like a hammer striking bone. Your limbs were immobilized beneath thick bandages and restraints meant to keep you from tearing open anything vital in your delirium.
You closed your eyes again, and the darkness spun.
Days passedâor perhaps hours; morphine stole your sense of time and fed you visions made of fever and sorrow. Sometimes you woke to a nurse, her voice shallow and sympathetic, wiping your brow or checking the swelling along your stitched cheek. Other times you woke to your own gasping, convinced you were back under the wreckage with snow melting beneath your spine.
Then came him.
Your uncle moved like a shadow entering a forbidden roomâslow, deliberate, with the careful steps of someone approaching a wounded animal. His face looked older than you remembered, its lines etched deeper by grief or responsibility, you couldnât tell which. He paused at the foot of your bed, as if unsure whether you were entirely conscious.
The silence that followed was heavy, filled with all the things he could not say aloud. About the bodies recovered. About how cold the countryside had been that morning. About the way all your familyâs names had been confirmed, one by one, on a list you would never be permitted to read. He sat beside you, folding his gloves in his lap. For a long moment he said nothing, the weight of his presence both comforting and unbearable. You could sense he wanted to reach out, to place a hand on your arm, but he didnât. Perhaps he feared that touch would unravel him. Or you.
âYou must focus on healing,â he said at last, voice steady but eyes skirting yours. âYour futureâŠyour inheritance, your homeâŠall of it is in careful hands, I promise you that.â
Something in you recoiled at the word inheritance. You tasted metal on your tongue again.
The morphine was rising; you felt it like a tide, pulling your eyelids down, dimming the room around him. You blinked slowly, the lantern above him smearing into a halo. He seemed to notice, leaning forward with a controlled urgency.Â
The days that followed became a fever of half-formed images, drifting in and out of your mind like ghosts who did not realize you were not dead.
You remembered the nurse first. Or rather, you remembered the way she would enter the room with her eyes turned toward the floor, her footsteps soft out of pity or fearâyou could never tell which. She spoke in a voice that was barely a whisper, as though sound itself might injure you. Whenever she approached the bed, she avoided looking directly at your face, glancing instead at your bandages, your hands, the tray at your bedsideâanywhere but your eyes.
You had tried to speak to her once, to ask for water, or answers, or simply to prove you still existed. But only a dry rasp clawed up your throat. It burnedâGod, it burnedâas though shards of ice had lodged themselves behind your tongue. Your voice had abandoned you entirely, leaving you mute, helpless, like an animal not meant for human language.
Your vision was no better. The bandage wrapped around your head covered half your sight entirely, an oppressive weight pressing down on your left eye. The world came to you through a single blurred lens, every shape doubled or smeared into shadow. Lanterns became halos, hands became specters, walls breathed with distorted patterns that crawled when you blinked. Even when you were awake, everything felt submerged, as though you were peering at life from beneath a frozen lake.
Pain pulsed through you in waves on your right sideâdull, rhythmic, merciless. It throbbed in your legs, your ribs, your cheek, each heartbeat like a drum struck too close. But your left side felt terrifyingly void. You could not decide whether that absence frightened you more than the pain.
Sometimes you drifted in a darkness so thick you forgot you had a body at all.
Then, one dayâor night, you could never tell whichâyour uncle returned.
He sat beside your bed as if summoned by your suffering, his face a stone mask. When he spoke, it sounded as though he were delivering terrible news to someone else entirely.
âWe have been waiting,â he said quietly, âfor you to grow stronger. Strong enough for⊠for the funeral.â
Your breath stopped. You did not need to ask whose funeralâthose words had only one meaning now.
He hesitated, choosing his next phrases with the delicacy of a surgeon handling a blade.
âThe cold countryside preserved them longer than expected,â he went on, voice tight. âLonger than any of us dared hope. But we could not wait any more. The ground⊠it had to be closed.â
You tried to reach toward him, some desperate instinct commanding you to hold onto the last living thread of your family, but your arm refused to lift. It trembled uselessly at your side. He noticed. He almost touched youâbut stopped himself.
âThey were buried yesterday,â he said softly. âAll of them.â
The lantern above you flickered, and for a moment the shadows stretched across the walls like mourning veils.
Laterâhow much later, you couldnât tellâa man arrived. A stranger.
He entered the room with the strange confidence of someone who belonged there, though you immediately knew he didnât. He carried a case the size of a book, metal-edged and humming faintly as he opened it. Without a word to you, he positioned some strange contraption on a tripod at the foot of your bed. A camera.Â
You recognized it vaguely through the drugged haze, but the details felt wrongâtoo sharp, too mechanical, like a device of dissection rather than memory.
He did not ask permission.
He did not speak.
He only adjusted the lens with clinical precision and took several photographs of your broken form, the flash burning white across your remaining vision.
When it ended, he packed the instrument away and slipped from the room as silently as he had come. That memory bothered you more than the others.Â
Your uncle returned once more. He delivered his words with a tone of reassurance, but you could sense a tremor beneath the surface.
âI have found you the best surgeon coin can secure,â he said. âA man whose skill is⊠extraordinary. You will be under his care soon.â
You blinked slowly, trying to focus, the edges of the room bending inward like a closing book.
âYou will go to him the moment you are strong enough to be moved. His methods are unconventional, but his resultsâremarkable.â His voice wavered.
You wanted to ask his name, but your throat still refused to form sound.
Your uncle leaned closer, lowering his voice to a reverent whisper, as if speaking a forbidden name.
âHis name is Dr. Victor Frankenstein.â
The room spun again.
â
The room spins and when it settles, it is no longer the same room.
You realize this only because cold air lashes your face. Hands are on you againâtoo many, too fastâunwrapping blankets, lifting you from the bed with the brutal efficiency of men who have done this before. Your vision blurs into streaks of lamplight and shadow, and someone mutters, âCareful with that side,â though you canât tell whose voice it is.
You try to speak. A grunt escapes instead. It vibrates in your throat like an animalâs cry.
They hurry you down a hallway that smells of winter and old stone, then out into the night. The cold is a blade. It cuts through your thin hospital shift and finds every seam in your broken body. You feel yourself pitching sideways, then caughtâyour head lolling against a shoulder you cannot see.
âEasy,â someone says. Nothing is easy.
The carriage waits with its lantern lit, a solitary eye glowing in the fog. The horses paw at the frozen ground, impatient, shadows steaming from their nostrils like smoke from a furnace. You are pushed insideânot gentlyâand the impact sends a sharp, electric shudder through your ribs. It feels as though your bones sing with pain.
The door slams. The horses lurch forward. And the world becomes motion.
Every step the beasts take reverberates through the floor, up your spine, into your skull. The carriage wheels grind over stones, and each jolt rattles the shattered scaffolding of your limbs. The agony is rhythmic, relentlessâlike being shaken apart piece by piece.
You clutch at nothing. Your bandaged hand slides against the wooden floorboards. You try again to speak, but your throat burns, raw and useless. Only a broken rasp emerges.
Shapes move in the corners of your vision.
For a momentâan instant so brief youâre not sure it happenedâyou see someone sitting across from you. A figure, tall and still, face swallowed by shadow. They do not breathe. They do not blink. They only watch you.
You blink once, twice, and the seat is empty.
Your stomach clenches. The carriage turns, wheels catching on a rut, and the jolt knocks your head sideways. Your single uncovered eye swims; every streetlamp the carriage passes bleeds into strange, warped forms. Some look like glowing skulls. Others like towering silhouettes that lean close as you pass, whispering without mouths.
You shut your eye to banish them. It doesnât help.
The pain on your right side pulses like a heartbeat you cannot escape. But your left side is worse in its own wayâan abyss, a hollow absence that feels inhuman. Like a limb that has forgotten it belongs to you.
Another bump in the road sends you sliding. Something cracksâmaybe outside, maybe inside you. You groan. The sound frightens you; it doesnât sound like you at all.
You drift.
Your head droops forward, and suddenly the lantern light seems too bright, too watchful. It flickers in a way lanterns shouldnât flicker, stretching long fingers of shadow across the walls.
For a moment you think the shadows are reaching for you.
You force your eyes open again only because the carriage hits another stone, and the shock bolts you awake with fresh pain. The horsesâ hooves echo like hammers striking coffins. The night outside is a blur of black trees and pale moonlight whipping past.
You are being taken somewhere.
You know only the direction, just the cold, inexorable pull toward a strangerâs hands.
The only clear thought that pierces the fog is this:
You are on your way to Victor Frankenstein.
chapter 2
fatima aamer bilal, excerpt from moony moonless skyâs âi am an observer, but not by choice.â
[text id: my fist has always been clenched around the handle of an invisible suitcase. / i am always ready to leave. / there is not a single room in this world where i belong.]
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