Taking My Nightly Dose of Nicolandria
No vote formed against Love Island USA’s best couple shall prosper.
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This season of Love Island USA is going about as smoothly as this season of America, which is to say: Not great! Despite the best efforts of Ace Greene — a force more coordinated and mission-driven than the Democrats — the Love Island USA villa is always in a state of disarray. Yulissa and Cierra were dismissed for saying racist slurs online. Austin responded to allegations that he is racist by saying that he has a tattoo of a (mystery) black woman on his ribcage. Taylor. Taylor’s weird Lip Smacker kisses. Someone somewhere (maybe even reading this newsletter) is still a little too in their feelings about the departures of Hannah and Jeremiah.
It’s due to the grassroots organizing and coalition building of Ace, spiritual alignment, some of you woo woo girls charging your crystals in the moonlight, Taylor Swift’s “Reputation” album, every Ariana Grande song about cheating, and a beauty that can only be described as “90s girl group fine” that the villa has produced one honest to goodness real romance: Olandria and Nic. They have a friends-to-lovers romance, and does-he-really-could-she-maybe love. Through multiple couples (Nic was coupled up with Cierra for most of the season, Olandria was with Taylor) and multiple heartbreaks (Taylor dumped Olandria for Clarke; Nic’s heart was never broken but he seethed through multiple Huda heartbreaks), they continue to find each other sitting on the daybeds or by the pool gossiping and problem solving. It wasn’t until Olandria and Nic were both dumped by the Casa islanders — divine intervention and/or the work of a genuis producer who was placed there by God so that’s still divine intervention if you ask me! — that they had the chance to go on a proper date, and return to the main villa coupled up.
Cozied up in Soul Ties and trying to see if there was something beyond their chemistry during challenges, Nicolandria had the season’s best kiss. It was cutely awkward at first, Nic laying it on thick and Olandria playing dumb. It gave 10 Things I Hate About You or Mississippi Masala or even that final embrace in You’ve Got Mail when Meg Ryan prepares to meet her mystery dream man, and when he turns out to be the man she's loved all along, she murmurs sweetly, “I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly.”
But it’s the scene after that kiss that is the season’s best scene. There’s a divine tension to the way they’re not sure how much of that kiss was real and how much of it was just that they had to couple up to come back to the villa. They leave Soul Ties, Nic rubs Olandria’s makeup off his nose, and Olandria reapplies her lip combo. They go down to the kitchen and someone asks if they were in Soul Ties. “No, we were at the daybeds,” Olandria lies. She changes the subject, and says she’s cold. Nic, mid-bite of a cookie, slips of her shirt and gives it to her.
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Enter: Clarke and Taylor, two people who do everything in slow motion. “Where’s yall’s clothes go,” Clarke asks.
Nic shrugs. “Keeping Olandria warm.”
This is that dreamy teen-movie love, a line so genuinely charming that it seems scripted. Nicolandria is love meant for a fan cam, meant for a Babyface song, meant for flush cheeks and stumbling over your words and a montage where even the in-between moments are so romantic and thrilling. It’s almost too on-the-nose that right after Nic peels off his shirt because Olandria says she’s cold that Taylor, her previous connection, comes over to remind her how aint-shit he is. Olandria asks why she and Taylor have never had a handshake, why she doesn’t have one with any of the other Islanders. Maybe it’s because you’re not liked, Taylor offers. When he was sent home I danced around my apartment and FaceTimed my friend. See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya!
I take my nightly dose of Nicolandria like it’s an SSRI. I wake up thinking about Nicolandria, and I go to sleep thinking about Nicolandria, and in my dreams, their son Marcel LeBron is a first-round draft pick to the New York Knicks and leads them to an NBA Championship and concurrently writes a New York Times bestseller about why the ocean is more interesting than space. (Marcel went to private school and is a scholar-athlete.) I think more about Nicolandria than anything I’ve got going on right now, and honestly, rightly so.
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Even reading your retelling of the Nicolandria story gave me goosebumps like am I okay
Beautiful. William Shakespeare, pack your bags.