quip fast, die young

VIVIENNE CHANG: a moodboard. 002. — ft. @lilyii              ( holocene ! )

lucy: jk i believe you

lucy: how do we know that there are not tiny ecosystems in our soup?! how do we know we're not just tiny particles IN a bowl of soup?! oh no, i've gone too far......

lucy: i know i started this conversation, but i wish it had never begun because i'm becoming more and more troubled.

lucy: that sounds like a plan tbh

lucy: i eat dry ramen a lot :/ it's yummy. you crush the dry noodles and put in the little packet that you're supposed to put in the water and it's delicious. a bit too salty for my health, but.

viv: wow your lack of faith is insulting

viv: better

viv: okay, take a deep breath and remind yourself that this is literally soup and it's not that deep

viv: you're the only person i know who could get into this state over the identity of soup

viv: yes good we're going with this plan for your own sake

June knelt down besides Viv, peering between beautiful little glass creatures for the miniature dragon Viv had spotted before. Lily would love a miniature glass dragon, and June always believed one couldn’t give too many gifts. She carefully reached to push a tiny glass cat to the side. She laughed at Viv’s teasing, nudging her gently with her shoulder as she responded. “You know me, a loyal and earnest servant to the law. I might have to hand cuff you and take you over for trial right now.”  She wrapped her hand around the tiny glass dragon and handed it to Viv with a bright grin. “I can already see the headlines. Local Quidditch Star Breaks Law, Taken Into Custody by Beautiful, Talented Witch.”

Viv rolled her eyes, but she was grinning. “I’m going to make Roxanne be my lawyer,” she said. “Though I guess she wants to work for Wizengamot and I would be breaking the law, so... maybe not.” She mused for a second, then said, in a dramatic tone that only ever seemed to come out with a few people (and June was the only person Viv knew who both encouraged that faux-dramatic tone and her own naturally exasperated tone), “If only I had a beautiful and legally-informed best friend to defend me on trial, but alas, the only one who matches that description decided to throw me to the wolves.” She smirked at her friend, before her eyes lit up at the sight of the dragon, taking it carefully from June. “Thanks to said Beautiful, Talented Witch, we’ve got ourselves a dragon,” Viv murmured, before adding airily, “also, they’d totally let me off. It’s not like you or Roxanne are on the Wizengamot yet, I bet I could out-argue most of them and the rest would just be either amused or exhausted. Besides, you can always rely on national pride and a love for sports to ensure they’re not going to actually get any sports player in trouble when they’re representing their country. Muggles have decades worth of news reports dedicated to that very phenomena.” 

who: vivienne chang ( @vivchang ). where: the quidditch pitch the under-18 uk quidditch team uses for training. when: august 9th, 2023. 07:45. 

evgenia had learned from her father, and from her time playing quidditch, that team spirit was one of the most important things one needed if they wanted to win. therefore, though her teammates for the summer were some she usually competed against, she felt the need to bond with all of them. as captain, it was her responsibility to make things run smoothly for everyone in the team, and she took said responsibility very seriously. it was why she had invited viv to come along with her for her usual morning run, thinking it’d be good for both of them to spend some time together. evgenia respected the younger girl, and had learnt to get along with her quite well that summer. which might explain why she had decided to hang out with her today rather than, say, aries. finally, lacing up her shoes, evgenia saw viv walking over, and grinned as she got in front of her. “ready? i know you don’t really need it — you’re fast enough — but i find that running really helps me, so.”

evgenia occupied an odd space for viv. chronologically speaking, first and foremost, she was sofia’s sibling. secondly, she was june’s ex. and third —- she was viv’s captain. well, currently. other times, she was one of the beaters aiming at viv, one of the beaters whom james protected her from whilst she was rocketing across the sky to get the quaffle to lily —- she wondered, absently, what it was like for them to work together cohesively after staring each other down for so long. but that was no matter, not really. outside of those three things and their messy timeline, truth was, viv got on with evgenia. she thought the captain was absolutely the right fit for the job, and she respected her immensely. besides, evgenia had taken to looking out for her on the pitch with the same dedication she took to everything, and with james and evgenia at her back, viv was never afraid to pull off the risky plays. it was sort of bizarre, discovering how to be such a good team with people you were used to facing off against, but viv thought it was a useful skill and that they’d done an excellent job. “you bet,” viv said, arriving in front of evgenia. “ha, thanks, but nah, i’m keen —- running’s always seemed to me to be about control and pace as much as speed, so.” she shrugged. “you can never over-practice that, right?”

when: 14th august 2023 where: yuri’s house, bedroom who: @vivchang

Yuri had awoken to Viv’s head in her fireplace urging Yuri to get her ass out of bed. Now, the other girl sat perched on her duvet, while Yuri stood in front of her dressing table, squinting at herself in the round mirror. The remnants of last night’s makeup were smeared across her face, and her lip was newly split. How the fuck did that happen? Poking at it, she winced and turned towards Viv. “Sorry, I went out with some muggle friends last night and…” Yuri gestured vaguely. “Well, things got a bit messy.” 

“I forget…Do we have plans?” She glanced down at her phone and hit the home button, but the screen stayed dark. Sighing, Yuri tossed it onto her pillow. “What time is it? What day is it, even?”

Having dormed with Yuri for four years now, this morning’s routine had not surprised Viv in the slightest. “You look like you lost a fight with a door,” Viv observed, scrutinising her friend as she examined herself in the mirror. She raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, a bit,” she said mildly, before adding, “what’d you do, bull-fighting in an underground in Peckham?” It occurred to Viv that she wouldn’t even be entirely surprised if Yuri said yes.

“D’you want me to heal it?” she asked, tilting her head. Lucky thing about being at one of their places was that the Trace didn’t matter, because it was a household with of-age wixen residing there anyway. The more important issue was that the pair of them hadn’t even sat their O.W.L.s yet, but Viv was fairly sure she had the spell down. She’d had it done to her enough. And discussed it at length with Lucy. “And yeah, well, sort of —- it’s Monday, around...” she checked her phone, “—10. And the new brooms arrived yesterday, the trial ones I mentioned that they want the team to endorse? I know we were going to just do lunch, but I don’t have practice until afternoon, and I figured if we went this morning, you could try my broom if you want.”

NAME: lach 🐔🦃👶🙈 🙉 🙊RINGTONE: day-o —- harry belafontePICTURE: see below.LAST TEXT RECEIVED: [9:21 pm] ofc they love me, who wouldn’tLAST TEXT SENT: [9:22 pm] people with sense

VIVIENNE CHANG: a moodboard. 001.              ( holocene ! )

     louis listened intently to her story, laughing along.  he’d tried tandem flying once — who hadn’t? — but not drunk.  not yet, at least.  maybe now that he was going to be sixteen, things would be different.  he wanted to take more risks, do more stupid stuff.  really let that weasley side of him shine.  “oh, come on.”  with a sigh, louis took a quick drink and suddenly felt the need to elaborate.  “okay, fine.  i was on a date a few weeks ago, we went to the beach.  thought it’d be romantic, but i just got water in my eye and it sucked.  alright?  let’s see …  never have i ever gone skinny dipping in the great lake.”

        viv grinned at louis as he sighed and drank, always delighted at bringing about a drink in this game. “all right,” viv crowed —- at least until she heard the story, at the end of which she started laughing. “it sounds terrible,” she observed, before adding, “but at least it was at the beach, right? no risk of kissing the giant squid. unlike with your ask, which...” she took a sip, sighed. “you know how gryffindor dares can be,” she said with a shrug, which was probably true, even if louis hadn’t engaged as much in the nonsense as the rest of them —- responsible, to be honest. “like, right after last exams? so it was fucking cold, or like, colder than usual.” she made a face. “i don’t rec —- but, i mean, it’s not the great lake, but there’s a lake right there,” she said, raising an eyebrow as she nodded her head towards the lake they were sitting beside. “and... never have i ever gone to madame puddifoot’s on a date, much as i love pen.”

“I’m just imagining the state of that broom’s twigs after dragging him around on the back.” Scor winced through a laugh before taking another swig. He himself had done the same but not under quite such unfortunate circumstances, well, the end result was flying through a bramble bush and plucking thorns out of himself for the next few days but that was purely down to flier error. At the never have I ever he sheepishly took a drink, eyes keen to see if anyone else was drinking with him.

“Yeah, it was... a situation,” Viv allowed, a grimace fleeting across her face. “Glad it was his broom—-might have pushed him off if he’d tried to do that to my broom,” she muttered in an undertone. Viv’s eyes were still on Scorpius when he drank for her Never Have I Ever, and her lips curved into a smirk. “You did? When?” she asked, tilting her head to the side in curiosity, before wrinkling her nose. “Please tell me it wasn’t the Black Lake—-it’s so dark there sometimes, I bet you could kiss the Squid and not even notice.”

Sofia giggled through the story, although it wasn’t the first time she’d heard it, of course. She wasn’t playing the game but coming to sit with Viv had seemed more entertaining than watching the pictures or anything else, and she did like listening to the stories. Plus she’d found some popcorn earlier and she was very happy just eating it. “Kissing underwater seems like it would really hard,” she said, leaning a little closer to Viv.

Viv sent her friend a sidelong grin. “Doesn’t it just?” Viv mused. “Or at least complicated —- bet it’s doable, but I bet people have some horror stories about fucking it up and just swallowing water instead of tongues.” She wrinkled her nose, then snuck a piece of popcorn from Sofia’s stash, before adding, “Would you give it a go?” She was distantly aware of people drinking, but her focus was on Sofia as she asked.

“Okay, okay!” Viv laughed, taking a drink. “It was like, one time, and he was a bad flier as well as being twice my size so it worked about as well as you could think—-honestly, he’s lucky we didn’t crash into the fucking Whomping Willow, that’s how useless he was, and inconveniently big for me to get the broom to follow my movements. Anyway, yeah, I’ve done the drunk-tandem-broom-flying—-though, he was drunk, I was just... buzzed.” She drummed her fingers against her thigh, then said, “All right... never have I ever kissed someone underwater.”

“I definitely saw one in here,” Viv said, scanning the shelf she was kneeling in front of carefully. “I know we’ve already got her presents anyway, but it’s a miniature glass dragon, she’ll love it, and I’ve been fucking around with some spells and I’m pretty sure I can enchant it to fly properly —- and if we do it at my place, it’ll be fine, my parents are both legal so the Trace does jackshit—-” she was saying, before she paused, and adopted a mischievous expression. “Unless you’re going to pull me in front of the Wizengamot for it?” she teased. She actually thought it was dead cool, June being an intern there, especially so young —- Viv had no interest in it herself, professionally, but she was interested in system structures, and she was proud of June.

“Are you too tall to stand on a bus?” Viv asked, eyeing Al critically. They were on the Hunt™ for Lily’s birthday cake —- not for the big party, but for her actual birthday that Sunday —- and it was imperative they order it today. Or, probably not, but they had the best opening in their schedules today, and Viv figured that the earlier it was ordered, the more demands they could make if they so chose. “Because there’s one coming which Maps are telling me we should get on, but —-” she squinted, trying to stand on her tip toes to see inside the very-nearly-arrived-bus, before looking at Al. “Aight, you’re the size of a small mountain, can you see in it to tell whether there’s space?” Viv was quite certain they could walk —- they were both active people, it was hardly an issue —- but they would probably look less mismatched sitting on a bus. Or at least, he’d be closer to her height sitting down, so it would be easier to talk —- or bicker, she supposed.

“Cleo—-Cle—-fucking hell, Cleo, give me the remote,” Viv huffed, practically climbing on the taller girl in her attempt to get the remote. “There is enough—-” trying to duck under Cleo’s arms, “—-white nonsense in this world—-” prodding her friend in the ribs, “—-without watching—-aha!” Her moment of triumph upon her, Viv dived and seized the remote, switching the screen to show a Brooklyn Nine-Nine rerun. “Can you believe I, in all my kindness and glory, saved you from the demon cat and in return, this?” She gestured at the screen, as if to convey everything terrible Cleo had subjected her to in the last three minutes.