Utter one more syllable and I'll have you killed

It's true and everyone should say it.

Presenting Miss Moneypenny, for the @mi6-cafe "All the Ladies Autumn" week 3 prompt.

Tulips

Pedestrian traffic lights

Starting off with the difference between formerly Eastern German traffic lights (upper images) and formerly Western German traffic lights (lower images):

The city of Erfurt had some additions, like an umbrella or a heart:

Same sex love in Marburg (upper image) and Frankfurt (lower image):

Traffic light lady in Bremen:

Karl Marx light in Trier:

Face of Friedrich Engels in Wuppertal:

Elvis in Friedberg (Hessen):

A sparrow (for the Golden Sparrow film awards) in Gera:

Winemaker in Bad Dürkenheim:

Mainzelmännchen (mascot of the public broadcasting service ZDF) in Mainz:

Otto Waalkes (German Comedian) in Emden:

Town musicians of Bremen in Bremen:

A miner in Pirmasens, Rheinland-Pfalz:

Bishop in Fulda:

Source: Saarbrücker Zeitung

I haven't done a WIP Wednesday in *forever*, and so today I want to share an excerpt from a 5+1 fic I've been fiddling with for a while. It focuses on a moment from Skyfall that lives rent-free in my head: the bit where Moneypenny says that Q is afraid of flying, and Bond says, "Of course he is."

I have...a lot of thoughts...about this moment, more of which I may share later on. I've also seen lots of fics tackle this piece of canon well, from leaning into reasons Q may be afraid of air travel, to explaining why this was all a pretext in the first place. So for now, suffice it to say that I was ready to dive in with a fic of my own, featuring five times Q lied to Bond about why he didn't fly to Macau--and one time he told him the truth.

This is one of my favorite flavors of fic to write: two parts crack fic to one part deep emotion that comes at you once your guard is down. 😁 Teaser below the cut!

@mi6-cafe

It's been practically a geological age since I've had a WIP Wednesday snippet to share, but I'm almost done with something I'm working on for fest!

For now, consider this 'the one where Bond discovers that Q is going gray'.

“Do you know,” Bond said, cheerfully, “that you’ve got a gray hair?”

Q paused.

For a hideous moment, he was painfully conscious of every millimeter of his skin and every angle of his body. He was certainly aware of the awkward proximity of his body and Bond’s: the latter, sprawled out for a scan of his sub-dermal trackers. The former, awkwardly bent over the exam chair, ultrasound wand in hand.

Q resisted the urge to shut his eyes or clear his throat.

Bond didn’t deserve to witness such obvious signs of discomfort, though he was undoubtedly fishing for that sort of reaction.

Wretched man. Of course he’d choose now to start picking at Q’s appearance.

Q adjusted his grip on the wand and tried to square his shoulders.

“Yes. I’m aware.”

He focused his attention on the monitor at his side.

“I wonder,” he added tartly, “who might be responsible for that.”

31 Days of Bond Fashion

DAY 15: THE FISHTAIL PARKA as seen in Skyfall (2015).

Consider being a costume designer facing this direction in a script: “'A slender young man in his twenties, dressed in an elegant suit, moves in next to Bond.” That was the situation Jany Temime found herself in when she came to re-creating one of the franchise’s most beloved characters. Ben Whishaw’s Q was a bold departure from the Q of old, and yet the costume direction for his opening scene in the National Gallery with Bond gave no hint as to his character. It would be up to Jany Temime to figure that out because for Ben Whishaw, costuming was a vital part of his process: “I love how wearing someone else’s clothes can make you feel different, move differently, even think differently. I’m always clear in my head that the character I’m playing is very distinct from me and at the same time so much of you ends up leaking into the character.”

“In that first moment they are together, I had very little time to establish a character,” Temime explained. “It's not like meeting someone and having a drink…I wanted Bond to think he's just a nerd or a student.” She chose a coffee-coloured fishtail parka for the job, with the detachable fur-lined hood removed. Fishtail parkas were originally designed for the US Army in the 1950s. The split and cords in the back made it so that a soldier could tie the sides of the coat around their legs to keep out the weather. It soon became popular with Mods in the UK. Q’s was sourced from Pretty Green, Liam Gallagher’s brand inspired by subcultures “from Mods to ravers.” In short, it positioned Q as a hipster. In 2011, the jacket would have set you back £255. Intentional or not, the brand history proved a nice bit of foreshadowing to Q’s homemade modular synth in No Time To Die – a man who’s built his own electronic music equipment has probably seen a rave or two. 

Underneath the coat was a pricy moleskin Margiela jacket, a Reiss shirt, plum-coloured Hentsch Man checked trousers and a snazzy purple tie to match. “They were modish, nerdy, expensive clothes that nobody else would recognise,” said Temime, “except for another computer wizard like Q.” All in all, it was a wardrobe built to emphasise his youth and cockiness, and to position him as part of the new world as opposed to Bond’s old one. Still, for as different as they were, Bond and Q at least shared expensive taste in menswear. Maybe that was step one in them coming to understand each other.