[fic] pitch perfect | You're from Adelaide, I'm from Hobart
Title | You're from Adelaide, I'm from Hobart
Fandom | Pitch Perfect
Character | Amy
Word Count | 1500
Rating | M
Summary | And so heralded the auspicious arrival of she who was to become: Fat Amy.
Author’s Note | This has been a barely pulled together WIP since, well, three yuletides ago! It was started (and now finished) for catteo.
HOBART MERCURY
Birth Announcements
Anderson, Carol and David are proud to announce the safe arrival of
PATRICIA JOAN
A little sister for Kyle and Susannah.
Many thanks to doctors and nursing staff at Calvary Hospital.
And so heralded the auspicious arrival of she who was to become: Fat Amy.
This is her story so far.
(Well
This is but one version of it anyway…)
Patricia-Joan-Not-Quite-Yet-Fat-Amy1 grows up living in a three bedroom weatherboard on a quarter acre block in Lutana, a smallish suburb just north of Hobart city2 proper. Lutana, she’ll tell you, is famous3 for its zinc works, with its perpetual smoke stacks, and its bogans, with their perpetual smoke stacks, aaaaaand… not a whole lot else if she’s honest with herself. Which she makes it a point to be most of the time.
Being honest with everyone else is usually optional4.
[1. The official name change won’t occur until the second day of grade nine when she'll overhear the words ‘Fat Patricia’ and ‘cankles’ being used in the same sentence and decide to show them all who’s boss. She’ll stand up during assembly and make an announcement to the whole school. This will also be the speech for which the term Twig BitchesTM is coined, for future reference.
2. Referring to Hobart as a ‘city’ is maybe somewhat over-stating things. Just, FYI should you ever plan a visit…
3. Lutana is not actually famous at all. Anywhere. For anything.
4. See: future use of the name ‘Amy’.]
So yeah, she grows up sharing a square bedroom with her not-so-square big sister and goes to a square school just down the road from her square house and, for the most part anyway, life is pretty freaking uneventful.
But then:
High School comes along, and it is the actual worst.
For starters, her parents choose an establishment that has this many girls: one thousand two hundred and eighteen. And this many boys: zero.
Zilch.
Nada.
Zip.
So, basically, it’s a women’s prison.
Only you have to bring your own lunch. And you do get to go home in the afternoons. And you obviously don’t have to turn up at all on the weekends.
Unless you play netball.
(Patricia Joan played about as much netball then as Fat Amy runs marathons now. Which is to say: none.)
So maybe it’s not really a women’s prison.
But you do remember the part about there being zero boys, right?
Her favourite class is science, which may surprise some of you. But there’s only so many times a person can clumsily finger a recorder in Music (which… let's just say that again, Clumsily finger a recorder! Finger a… Ahem, moving on), or break down into a fit of Oscar winning sobs in Speech and Drama before it all becomes somewhat ho-hum.
But dropping strips of magnesium into hydrochloric acid? Chopping open cow eyeballs and rolling the lenses around on newspaper like they’re magnifying glasses? Watching Mr. Hammond’s shirt ride up juuuuuust enough to show skin when he’s writing on the board?
Right.
So her favourite class is science.
And when, half-way through her second last year, she tells her parents she thinks she might like to become a biomedical engineer, they request local authorities to investigate whether she might not have been switched at birth.
Which, she thinks, would actually explain SO. VERY. MUCH.
If you ask her now, Fat Amy will say she was ‘discovered’ as a singer following a midnight attempt to climb back through her bedroom window after a party went pear-shaped, and ended with some preeeeetty heavy duty painkillers and a definite reduction in her inhibition levels whilst laid out in Accident and Emergency.
The old dude5 behind the curtain next to hers had been some kind of Johnny Young6 wannabe, she’ll tell you, and he’d signed her on the spot with a promise that she’d soon be the next Kylie Minogue7.
Again, it’s important to remember here that Fat Amy has a fairly loose relationship with telling other people the truth. And endeavours never to let it stand in the way of a good story.
Note: Fat Amy also has an excellent imagination.
[5. The ‘old dude’ had reeked of booze and was sporting a sluggishly leaking split through his left eyebrow at the time.
6. Nobody really wants to be Johnny Young anymore.
7. Or Kylie Minogue for that matter…]
In reality, there was no point of discovery. That she could sing, and sing really well, was just… her thing. Like some people can burp the alphabet, or fit their whole fist into their mouth, or touch the tip of their tongue to their nose.
And while she’s endlessly disappointed that she can’t actually do any of those other things, she is eternally grateful that she can sing.
(And so, for that matter, was Nicky Phillips on that one occasion she went down on him in the boy’s loos at the movies. Singers, like swimmers, can hold their breaths for a really, really long time.
Apparently.)
So, by now you’re probably wondering how a mostly average Tassie teenager with a talent for singing, giving blow jobs, and doing complex chemical equations in her head8 ends up at college in the great United States of America.
Well, if she were to tell you that the tale involved the untimely death of a Tasmanian tiger during a crocodile wrestling incident gone awry, and the subsequent need to seek refuge in a far off land, would you believe her?
(You probably would because that’s how all good Australian Abroad stories begin, but, and as previously warned…
You definitely shouldn’t.)
The truth is, Fat Amy really was going to be a biomedical engineer. And Barden had been just one of thirteen9 international Universities actively seeking to offer her a full ride.
She had only been in the country for three and a half days when she’d stumbled across the sign-ups for the Barden Bellas. At the time she’d actually been on the look-out for their highly regarded chemistry club, but fortune, as they say, favours the brave. And her decision to bring out the mermaid dance so early in the piece had obviously been an inspired move.
[8. Mg(OH)2 + 2 HCl ➔ MgCl2 + 2 H2O after all…
9. Other Universities considered and, ultimately, rejected included: Krantiguru Shyamji Krishna Verma Kachchh University on the grounds that she’d never be able to pronounce the place, Wellesley College on the grounds of it being yet another women’s prison like set-up and, the University of Tasmania on the grounds of it being, you know, in Tasmania.]
She spends her first week as a Bella deliberately tapping out text messages to her sister, she, the Queen of All Things Twig BitchyTM, at odd hours, and claiming she can’t quite work out the time difference10.
Whoops! Sorry11, sis! she types, again and again, sly grin in place.
[10 & 11. Neither of those things were even close to the truth.]
She then spends her second week as a Bella not-quite-so-deliberately tapping out text messages to Bumper.
(His arrival into her life had been most unexpected…)
And her third showing him what she once showed Nicky Phillips during the midnight premiere of New Moon. She reassures Bumper, several times in fact, that he’s showing her things too 12.
[12. He hadn’t, but she has never been above a little ego stroking. Under the right circumstances.]
And so, she swiftly comes to discover, college life in the grand old US of A is remarkably like high school life back home had been. She whiles away interminable hours attending classes she could ace in her sleep, completing assignments the night before they are due13, perving unashamedly on her professors, and singing.
There has been a lot14 of singing.
Upsides though? Boys.
(so many boys, hohmyfucking god.)
And the Twig BitchesTM are kind of her friends now. Some of them. Even the ones that remind her, sorta, if she squints really hard, of Susannah15. The Original Twig BitchTM.
[13. Mostly because she always seems to spend the lead up days and weeks writing epic Zombie apocalypse AU Twilight fanfic and cross-posting it in 1000 word increments to all the archives google can find.
14. There has also been a lot of finger sex, but she tends to leave those details out when she tells this part, thank you very much.
15. If Susannah were the type of chick to say, “y’all”, and wear nude lipstick to school. Which she never was. Though she did tend to say, “scrag” a lot, and use a permanent marker and white-out to colour her nails alternately black and white. Like it was cool. Or something.]
And that’s it really, you know? Her story. Up ‘til yesterday afternoon at about twenty past four, anyway.
(Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time.)
Patricia Joan to Amy. Slowbart to The Capital of the Actual Universe. And all in less than twenty years.
Who’s to know what might happen in the next twenty...
Fandom | Pitch Perfect
Character | Amy
Word Count | 1500
Rating | M
Summary | And so heralded the auspicious arrival of she who was to become: Fat Amy.
Author’s Note | This has been a barely pulled together WIP since, well, three yuletides ago! It was started (and now finished) for catteo.
HOBART MERCURY
Birth Announcements
Anderson, Carol and David are proud to announce the safe arrival of
PATRICIA JOAN
A little sister for Kyle and Susannah.
Many thanks to doctors and nursing staff at Calvary Hospital.
And so heralded the auspicious arrival of she who was to become: Fat Amy.
This is her story so far.
(Well
This is but one version of it anyway…)
Patricia-Joan-Not-Quite-Yet-Fat-Amy1 grows up living in a three bedroom weatherboard on a quarter acre block in Lutana, a smallish suburb just north of Hobart city2 proper. Lutana, she’ll tell you, is famous3 for its zinc works, with its perpetual smoke stacks, and its bogans, with their perpetual smoke stacks, aaaaaand… not a whole lot else if she’s honest with herself. Which she makes it a point to be most of the time.
Being honest with everyone else is usually optional4.
[1. The official name change won’t occur until the second day of grade nine when she'll overhear the words ‘Fat Patricia’ and ‘cankles’ being used in the same sentence and decide to show them all who’s boss. She’ll stand up during assembly and make an announcement to the whole school. This will also be the speech for which the term Twig BitchesTM is coined, for future reference.
2. Referring to Hobart as a ‘city’ is maybe somewhat over-stating things. Just, FYI should you ever plan a visit…
3. Lutana is not actually famous at all. Anywhere. For anything.
4. See: future use of the name ‘Amy’.]
So yeah, she grows up sharing a square bedroom with her not-so-square big sister and goes to a square school just down the road from her square house and, for the most part anyway, life is pretty freaking uneventful.
But then:
High School comes along, and it is the actual worst.
For starters, her parents choose an establishment that has this many girls: one thousand two hundred and eighteen. And this many boys: zero.
Zilch.
Nada.
Zip.
So, basically, it’s a women’s prison.
Only you have to bring your own lunch. And you do get to go home in the afternoons. And you obviously don’t have to turn up at all on the weekends.
Unless you play netball.
(Patricia Joan played about as much netball then as Fat Amy runs marathons now. Which is to say: none.)
So maybe it’s not really a women’s prison.
But you do remember the part about there being zero boys, right?
Her favourite class is science, which may surprise some of you. But there’s only so many times a person can clumsily finger a recorder in Music (which… let's just say that again, Clumsily finger a recorder! Finger a… Ahem, moving on), or break down into a fit of Oscar winning sobs in Speech and Drama before it all becomes somewhat ho-hum.
But dropping strips of magnesium into hydrochloric acid? Chopping open cow eyeballs and rolling the lenses around on newspaper like they’re magnifying glasses? Watching Mr. Hammond’s shirt ride up juuuuuust enough to show skin when he’s writing on the board?
Right.
So her favourite class is science.
And when, half-way through her second last year, she tells her parents she thinks she might like to become a biomedical engineer, they request local authorities to investigate whether she might not have been switched at birth.
Which, she thinks, would actually explain SO. VERY. MUCH.
If you ask her now, Fat Amy will say she was ‘discovered’ as a singer following a midnight attempt to climb back through her bedroom window after a party went pear-shaped, and ended with some preeeeetty heavy duty painkillers and a definite reduction in her inhibition levels whilst laid out in Accident and Emergency.
The old dude5 behind the curtain next to hers had been some kind of Johnny Young6 wannabe, she’ll tell you, and he’d signed her on the spot with a promise that she’d soon be the next Kylie Minogue7.
Again, it’s important to remember here that Fat Amy has a fairly loose relationship with telling other people the truth. And endeavours never to let it stand in the way of a good story.
Note: Fat Amy also has an excellent imagination.
[5. The ‘old dude’ had reeked of booze and was sporting a sluggishly leaking split through his left eyebrow at the time.
6. Nobody really wants to be Johnny Young anymore.
7. Or Kylie Minogue for that matter…]
In reality, there was no point of discovery. That she could sing, and sing really well, was just… her thing. Like some people can burp the alphabet, or fit their whole fist into their mouth, or touch the tip of their tongue to their nose.
And while she’s endlessly disappointed that she can’t actually do any of those other things, she is eternally grateful that she can sing.
(And so, for that matter, was Nicky Phillips on that one occasion she went down on him in the boy’s loos at the movies. Singers, like swimmers, can hold their breaths for a really, really long time.
Apparently.)
So, by now you’re probably wondering how a mostly average Tassie teenager with a talent for singing, giving blow jobs, and doing complex chemical equations in her head8 ends up at college in the great United States of America.
Well, if she were to tell you that the tale involved the untimely death of a Tasmanian tiger during a crocodile wrestling incident gone awry, and the subsequent need to seek refuge in a far off land, would you believe her?
(You probably would because that’s how all good Australian Abroad stories begin, but, and as previously warned…
You definitely shouldn’t.)
The truth is, Fat Amy really was going to be a biomedical engineer. And Barden had been just one of thirteen9 international Universities actively seeking to offer her a full ride.
She had only been in the country for three and a half days when she’d stumbled across the sign-ups for the Barden Bellas. At the time she’d actually been on the look-out for their highly regarded chemistry club, but fortune, as they say, favours the brave. And her decision to bring out the mermaid dance so early in the piece had obviously been an inspired move.
[8. Mg(OH)2 + 2 HCl ➔ MgCl2 + 2 H2O after all…
9. Other Universities considered and, ultimately, rejected included: Krantiguru Shyamji Krishna Verma Kachchh University on the grounds that she’d never be able to pronounce the place, Wellesley College on the grounds of it being yet another women’s prison like set-up and, the University of Tasmania on the grounds of it being, you know, in Tasmania.]
She spends her first week as a Bella deliberately tapping out text messages to her sister, she, the Queen of All Things Twig BitchyTM, at odd hours, and claiming she can’t quite work out the time difference10.
Whoops! Sorry11, sis! she types, again and again, sly grin in place.
[10 & 11. Neither of those things were even close to the truth.]
She then spends her second week as a Bella not-quite-so-deliberately tapping out text messages to Bumper.
(His arrival into her life had been most unexpected…)
And her third showing him what she once showed Nicky Phillips during the midnight premiere of New Moon. She reassures Bumper, several times in fact, that he’s showing her things too 12.
[12. He hadn’t, but she has never been above a little ego stroking. Under the right circumstances.]
And so, she swiftly comes to discover, college life in the grand old US of A is remarkably like high school life back home had been. She whiles away interminable hours attending classes she could ace in her sleep, completing assignments the night before they are due13, perving unashamedly on her professors, and singing.
There has been a lot14 of singing.
Upsides though? Boys.
(so many boys, hohmyfucking god.)
And the Twig BitchesTM are kind of her friends now. Some of them. Even the ones that remind her, sorta, if she squints really hard, of Susannah15. The Original Twig BitchTM.
[13. Mostly because she always seems to spend the lead up days and weeks writing epic Zombie apocalypse AU Twilight fanfic and cross-posting it in 1000 word increments to all the archives google can find.
14. There has also been a lot of finger sex, but she tends to leave those details out when she tells this part, thank you very much.
15. If Susannah were the type of chick to say, “y’all”, and wear nude lipstick to school. Which she never was. Though she did tend to say, “scrag” a lot, and use a permanent marker and white-out to colour her nails alternately black and white. Like it was cool. Or something.]
And that’s it really, you know? Her story. Up ‘til yesterday afternoon at about twenty past four, anyway.
(Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time.)
Patricia Joan to Amy. Slowbart to The Capital of the Actual Universe. And all in less than twenty years.
Who’s to know what might happen in the next twenty...