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lostinfictoo · 11 days
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In the early 1930s, scholarly studies were done on the impact of screen stars on teenagers, because of fears that the movies were sexualizing them. These studies found that teenage girls learned sex techniques through watching Garbo’s sex scenes, especially those in Flesh and the Devil; they then practiced her techniques at home with their girlfriends. Raymond Daum described Garbo’s many young female fans as having “schoolgirl crushes on her” that “defined a national idolatry.” And knowledge of Garbo’s non-heteronormative sexuality was spread through lesbian networks “from coast to coast.” Moreover, the 1920s was an era of commercial expansion in which the ranks of saleswomen and typists, careers dominated by young women, increased. These women made enough money to see a movie more than once. They identified with female stars and liked to see them in powerful roles. Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil (1926)
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lostinfictoo · 2 months
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lostinfictoo · 2 months
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It's my 13 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳
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lostinfictoo · 2 months
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I bring you… my silly little comics. Saw a tik tok this morning about British Museum recognizing emperor Elagabalus as a trans woman 🏳️‍⚧️, and I just had to draw this.
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lostinfictoo · 2 months
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Written in 1921, "Das Lila Lied" or "The Lavender Song" was one of the first gay anthems ever recorded. It was an immensely popular cabaret song in Weimar Berlin.
Largely forgotten for many decades, it has seen a major resurgence in recent years thanks to a modern re-recording in both English and German by artist Ute Lemper.
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lostinfictoo · 3 months
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Dark Light Tales: Ocean of Memories by Jan Erik Waider
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lostinfictoo · 3 months
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has this one been done yet
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lostinfictoo · 4 months
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Winter in the lighthouse
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lostinfictoo · 4 months
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Fic: Winter happens, like a secret
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Cesare x Lucrezia | Rated E | 3k words
Summary: Cesare has been gone for many weeks, fighting in the Romagna after the Sforza’s downfall, but one snowy Christmas Eve, he returns home to Lucrezia. Has she forgiven him for killing Alfonso?
The box was wrapped in a handkerchief, tied together with a velvet ribbon. Rather than look inside the box, she unravelled the red ribbon and slipped it around her brother’s neck. He chuckled. “What are you doing?” “You are my present this year,” she said. She pulled on the ribbon lightly, coaxing him closer though he could easily resist it if he so wished. He didn’t resist.
Loosely based on the infamous Folgers commercial, but set in Renaissance-era Italy.
Read on Ao3 or under the cut ↓
Lucrezia woke up in the middle of the night, her light slumber disturbed by a change in the luminosity beyond her eyelids. The night sky seemed aglow behind the curtains. The fire had faded down to embers, and warmth had seeped out of the room. She slipped on a red, fur-lined robe and went to the window. Outside, snowflakes drifted down from the sky, draping the garden in white. It was so bright, moonlight seemed to emanate from the ground itself.  
She laughed, delighted by the snow, though the feeling in her heart was closer to melancholy than joy. 
Tiptoeing down the stairs, she made her way to the kitchen. The cook and servants had been hard at work preparing food for tomorrow’s Vigila di Natale feast. Lucrezia filled a pot with water, added mint, honey, orange peels, ginger and tea leaves to it, then hung it above the fire in the hearth. Djem had introduced her to tea, and she was pleased to find some Asian ships, trading in the port of Naples, carried the leaves even though few locals drank it. She stirred the simmering water with a wooden spoon, and delicious aromas rose from the pot. She could have woken up a maid to make it, but she wanted to be alone. Admiring the falling snow through the frosted window, she warmed her hands on the earthenware cup and sipped her tea. 
Inevitably, her thoughts turned to Cesare.
Lucrezia had spent the Novena— the nine days before Christmas— reflecting on the Bible, singing carols and praying in St. Peter’s. The Pope had commissioned a splendid Nativity scene, and boughs of evergreen perfumed the space with their scent so deeply associated with Christmas. The populace filled the basilica with joyous hymns and brightly coloured attires, unlike Lucrezia who wore her widow’s blacks and whose heart was too heavy to be lifted by music. Six months had passed since Alfonso’s death, regrets rather than grief filled her heart now. Soon, her father would seek to marry her off again. Though who would take her, when rumours of Cesare’s hand in murdering Alfonso circulated around Rome which in turn reignited the gossip of an incestuous relationship. Had anyone heard the prayers she whispered in her mind, it would only have added fuel to the fire: she prayed to rid herself of this sinful desire for her brother, prayed to hate him, but in the same second, she prayed for his safety, his return and his eternal love. She promised God a life of holy devotion yet longed for her brother’s presence and dreamt of his lips at her neck. 
Cesare had been gone for months now, on some mission for the Holy Father— punishment for killing Alfonso and ruining their shaky alliance with Naples. Since capturing Caterina Sforza and killing her son and both her cousins, he had made many enemies. Yet he still pursued control over the Romagna. She and her parents hadn’t heard of him in a long time. And it seemed to Lucrezia that half her mind and heart were with him, somewhere beyond Rome. She willed each of her breaths to fill his lungs and each beat of her heart to push blood through his veins. In her darkest moments, she worried he had died, or worse, travelled back to France, to spend the holidays with his new family.  
Still, she had made garlands of dried citrus slices to hang around the house and infuse her gloomy mood with merriment, for Giovanni’s sake. The scent of lemon and firewood filled their home. Cousin Adriana would arrive soon with her family, as well as cousins from Spain, seeking some favour from the Pope, no doubt. Would she be able to keep a smile on until Epiphany? 
Lucrezia sighed. She’d drank half her tea without savouring it. Snow fell in big, fluffy clumps now. 
A man on horseback came through the gates. The horse’s clip-clopping disturbed the silent night, and hoofprints marred the pristine snow. Fear clutched her guts— at this hour, he could only bring bad news. Sweat beaded down her spine as she imagined he would tell her Cesare had died. 
The man appeared in no hurry to deliver the news. He stopped in the middle of the courtyard and waited for the stable boy to stumble out. She recognized the familiar grace with which he jumped off his horse, but she dared not hope. At last, the man lowered his hood and looked up in the direction of her bedroom window. Moonlight highlighted dark curls, stubbled cheeks and green eyes. Her heart leapt in her chest. 
Lucrezia rushed towards the kitchen door and yanked it open just as he was reaching it. 
“Cesare!” his name came out with a cloud on her breath. 
She jumped in his arms, and he caught her as he had so many times before. His cold nose tip pressed against her neck and sent a shiver through her. The snowflakes dusting his hair melted against her flushed cheeks. Her other half was back, and her whole body sang with relief. 
Holding her up, he carried her in, kicking the door close behind them with his foot. He murmured her name and sagged against her, tension released from his shoulders. 
“Why are you slipping in during the night like a phantom?”  
She kept her voice down. She should have woken up her mother who worried about Cesare too, but she wanted a moment alone with her dear brother. 
“I could not wait any longer,” he said. 
He slipped his hands under her dressing gown. However, the minute his frozen fingertips met her waist, she squirmed away with a squeal. He laughed at her reaction.  
She loved his laughter, she had missed it. The way it came out of his throat in a burst of giggles, more high-pitched than expected, and how he would try to contain it, pressing his lips together but a smile always remained, like a mischievous kid.  
Lucrezia took his large hands and rubbed them between her small palms, blowing warm breath on his fingers.  
“I have missed those hands,” she said. 
“And I have missed that face.” 
They took comfort in repeating those words they had said years ago, as if they could have their innocence back. In that moment, they could pretend their relationship had not changed, that despite sharing a bed and killing Juan and Alfonso, they were the same boy and girl who had once reunited in a deserted Apolostic palace. 
He kissed her hands, though with some restraint. His hasty departure, not long after Alfonso’s death, had left some things unresolved between them.   
“I’m starving,” he announced. 
Lucrezia lit a candle as he surveyed the food laid out in the kitchen.  
“Ah, good food, at last,” he said, picking candied fruits and chestnuts from a silver plate. 
She pushed his hand away. “It’s for the feast tonight.” 
With a cheeky grin, he popped a few honey-coated pistachios in his mouth. She offered him some tea which he sipped gratefully. The stone floor was cold under her feet, so she hopped up on the wooden counter, pushing aside a bouquet of dried rosemary. As he drank and warmed himself, he kept stealing glances at her, studying her reaction to his return. 
To be honest, Lucrezia was ambivalent. Though she was beyond happy to see him safe and home, of that there was no doubt, she questioned what form their relationship would take now. She knew what her body craved, what her heart hoped, but her rational mind cautioned her against it.  
“I brought you something, sis, from far away.” 
He should have waited until the 25th, but he never could restrain himself when he had an opportunity to cheer her up. And this proof that he had been thinking about her while he was away could only bring a smile to her lips. 
The box was wrapped in a handkerchief, tied together with a length of velvet ribbon. Rather than look inside the box, she unravelled the red ribbon and slipped it around her brother’s neck. 
He chuckled. “What are you doing?” 
“You are my present this year,” she said. 
She pulled lightly on both ends of the ribbon, coaxing him closer, though he could easily resist if he so wished— he didn’t resist. He stepped closer, leaning on his hands, placed each side of her knees. Sitting up on the counter, she was almost the same height as him. Suddenly serious, they looked into each other’s eyes, and she knew all too well these moments of tense silence in which one of them had to do the right thing. Neither of them looked away. She held onto the ribbon, and he stared at her, steadfast, intense. Anticipation made warmth pool low in her stomach. 
She had tried taking a lover, but quickly grew bored of the affair. Cesare had ruined her for other men, it seemed— and wouldn’t he like to know that. 
“You were my present too,” he said, in a low voice. “The day Mother put you in my arms, I had never held anything so precious.” He touched the ends of her loose blond waves as if it were spun gold. “I knew, even as a boy, that I would do anything to protect you…” 
She realized then, this was about Alfonso. 
“Do you forgive me?” he asked. 
“We are Borgias, brother, we never forgive.”  
He squeezed his eyes shut, pained to hear those words as much as she was to have voiced them. 
“And so, I cannot forgive even myself,” she continued, finally saying aloud the thoughts that had plagued her but which she could not share with anyone, “for I also am to blame for my husband’s death.” 
Cesare rested his forehead against hers, shaking his head in disagreement. She ran her fingers through his hair and gripped a fistful of curls. 
“It is the truth,” she said. 
“It was my fault. I wielded the blade and I—” 
“Yes, you wielded the blade,” Lucrezia said, working open his leather doublet, stiff with cold, “but I wield your heart.” She slipped her hands inside, spreading them over his chest. “As you do mine.”  
Under her palms, his heart was beating so fast it threatened to escape his ribcage. He could not deny the truth of her words.  
“Peace, brother,” she murmured soothingly, caressing his chest. His skin was damp under the leather. 
He rubbed his nose against hers, slowly, eyes closed, with none of the usual playfulness. He didn’t try to kiss her but neither did he step away. She tasted his honey-sweet sigh across her mouth. 
“Lucrezia,” he whispered her name with such adoration, but tainted with pain and reluctance. 
Why try to resist the inevitable? Was there virtue in a half-hearted effort? 
“Make me yours again.” 
His chest rumbled with something like a growl.  
When she brushed her lips against his, he captured her mouth. He kissed her deeply, hands tightening in the heavy fabric of her robe.  
Though she had not forgiven him in words, it was a kiss of absolution. Ardent and tender and so full of love, tears gathered at the corners of his eyes. 
She loved him, always, in spite of everything. He had made her that way, with his gentleness and indulgence, with his jealousy and adoring gaze. She could not even hold it against him. She had blossomed in his light and always would seek it. Nothing else would do. No one else would do.  
They broke the kiss well before they’d had their fill. 
Cesare searched her face for a sign of reluctance or regret, but he found the opposite. There was still time for one of them to pull away— usually Cesare. Instead, his hand slid up her back, along her spine, to cup the nape of her neck. That touch always filled her with such a delicious haze. Even back when she was too innocent to understand what it kindled in her, she sought it, luxuriated in it. And just like that, God was sitting in the room with them again. Her chest swelled with elation and the top of her head tingled from a shower of invisible, yet tangible light which descended upon them, shielded them. And the silence, only broken by the crackling fire, became almost musical. 
She touched Cesare’s chin, and he smiled. 
“I’ve missed this,” he whispered before kissing her again. 
She parted her lips for him, welcomed his tongue, and spread her legs. 
Hips cradled between her thighs, he assailed her neck with ravenous kisses. In his hunger, he nearly ripped open her shift. Her dressing gown slipped from her shoulders. Her short nails raked down his abdomen, towards his belt.  
The cold draught in the room was no match for the fever overtaking them. She made quick work of his codpiece, and he tugged her to the edge of the counter.  
He pushed her shift up her thighs and, for a moment, seemed lost in the softness of her skin and marvelled at how small she was next to him.  
Slipping her hand inside his pants, Lucrezia spurred him back into action. He bucked his hips into her palm with a ragged moan and found her wet and wanting under her bedclothes.  
Cesare sought her gaze then entered her in one long, luxurious thrust. Pleasure knocked the breath from their lungs as they clung to each other.  
She used to think time and longing had embellished her memory of their lovemaking. Surely, it could not have been as amazing as she made it out to be in her mind. But it was. A miracle. Rapture. She could not doubt they were two halves of the same whole, meant to be together lest they withered apart. 
Already pleasure made her toes curl and her core clench with each thrust. 
“Oh, God!” she moaned, throwing her head back. 
“I don’t think God wants anything to do with this,” he joked. 
“Then he should not have made you so well-endowed.” 
He grinned, and she kissed him, wanting to taste his joy, to take it inside herself. 
Laughter and sighs of pleasure mingled as they moved together. 
Anyone could have walked in on them, embracing passionately in the kitchen, but they were too far gone to care. 
-
Out of breath and utterly satisfied, Lucrezia slumped down on the counter, “Happy Christmas,” she said.  
He smiled, gazing down at her, admiring her body where her shift clung to her sweat-damp skin. The ribbon still hung around his neck, and she used it to pull him down to her for a kiss. 
“I think I’d better not let you get used to having me on a leash,” he said as if that had not already been the case for years. 
He removed the ribbon from his neck and tied it in a bow around hers. 
“Beautiful,” he said. 
He was still in her, half-hard, her legs locked around his hips. There was a risk, she knew, that she might become pregnant. Would the Pope believe it was another Immaculate Conception if she said so? The thought amused her rather than scare her. 
After gathering food and wine, they headed upstairs to her bedroom. 
Cesare put another log in the fireplace and stirred the embers. He spared a moment to check on his godson, sleeping in the adjoining room. 
“Giovanni asked for you yesterday,” she said. 
“Perhaps that’s why I was in such a hurry to come back and rode through the night.” 
“Or is there another reason, perhaps?” 
She tilted her head with an impish smile. 
He hooked a finger under the ribbon at her throat and brought her lips to his. His kiss warmed her to her toes. 
“Will La Befana bring your son sweets or coal?” he asked. 
“Sweets, of course. He’s a angel.” She smiled proudly. 
“And tell me, my love, what will she bring me?” 
“We shall make our own sweetness, Cesare.” 
She picked a sweet from a plate and fed it to him. He sucked the sugar from her fingertips and peppered kisses down her wrist. In one swoop, he picked her up and carried her to bed. 
They cuddled under the covers, and talked of nothing important until the room was warm enough they could undress completely. Skin to skin, bodies entwined, they reaffirmed their bond and commitment to each other. 
It was one of the longest nights of the year, but the sun seemed to dawdle beyond the horizon just for them. 
In the morning, he would pretend his room was too cold without a fire or that he’d lost his way in the dark palazzo after weeks away. Outside, snow still blanketed Rome, it would melt in the daylight, but for now, it protected them with its silence and purity. 
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lostinfictoo · 4 months
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27.07.23 // ruins by the seaside
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lostinfictoo · 4 months
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lostinfictoo · 5 months
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lostinfictoo · 6 months
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"I know a spot" by Karsten Winegear
🌎Iceland
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lostinfictoo · 6 months
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Autumn at the lighthouse
Jazz plays as the apples cook, the whole kitchen is fragrant with warm spices. You open a window despite the cold and wrap yourself in wool. Gilded waves crash against the rocks. The sea is growing restless, sensing the change in season, the brightest moon coming and the spirits rising.
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lostinfictoo · 6 months
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x - x / x - x / x - x
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lostinfictoo · 7 months
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Point Bonita lighthouse, oil on canvas. — Frederick Ferdinand Schafer (American/German, 1839-1927)
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lostinfictoo · 7 months
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