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words-writ-in-starlight · 5 years

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hellboy or venom for the headcanon meme?

Hey listen I haven’t really been up to writing the longer John Constantine/Hellboy fic I’ve been meaning to write, on account of how my brain doesn’t like me at the moment, but I still care a lot about that pairing, so some of it showed up here. For this headcanon meme!

(Note: this got long because I LOVE MY BEST BOY, so things are under the cut.)

HeadcanonHellboy is right-handed--he’s one of those people who’s so intensely right-handed that even years of practice doesn’t do much for his manual dexterity on the left. This is, to put it lightly, A Problem, seeing as his dominant hand is also virtually useless for daily tasks. His handwriting is awful, inevitably smudged and crooked, even worse than Abe’s and Abe has webbed fingers. When Hellboy was a kid, just learning to write his own reports, they were completely illegible. He’s had decades to improve, but at the end of the day, he’s just not left-handed. All the hours of practice he’s put in on the shooting range don’t change the fact that handguns just aren’t designed for his right hand, and his left hand just isn’t sure enough to guarantee his aim. This is why he likes guns that do enough damage to mostly absolve him of needing to hit a target. The Samaritan doesn’t give a good goddamn about his aim--as long as he’s sort of close to center mass, the caliber will take care of the rest.

HeartcanonHellboy, when he was a kid growing up on an army base at double-speed, inhaled urban legends and modern myths like they were pancakes. Everything from the Jersey Devil to UFO’s was interesting to him, and more than a few of the soldiers who kept an eye on him--a trouble-oriented creature even when he was two years old and too short to reach the upper cabinets--shamelessly exploited this in order to keep him in line. Sure, Hellboy was a perpetual motion machine from day one, but a good story about some unexplained shit would keep him enthralled for as long as you could make it last.

His favorite story is one that he gets from a secretary, of all people, a young woman who thinks he’s just the cutest and who writes home to tell her auntie about her boss’ curious (and totally human, don’t even worry about it Auntie Etta) son. When Hellboy’s been told to take care of himself while everyone else is at a meeting, he drifts into her office and Janet Candy has him help her with her filing while she tells him stories about her auntie’s boss, and her auntie’s best friend, and a city in Germany called Veld.

Hellboy’s seventeen and already something of a legend himself when he finally meets his favorite story, a goddess walking who comes across the BPRD’s latest mission by accident and helps them polish off a wayward drake with the kind of crisp efficiency that only comes from a lot of practice. Hellboy takes a moment to thank God, Jesus, and anyone else who might be listening that no one has ever once noticed him blushing when she clasps his forearm and calls him a gifted warrior.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Hellboy mutters gruffly, because he’s a polite guy when he puts his mind to it.

“Just Diana is fine,” the goddess says, the Saint of the Trenches, the Wonder Woman of Veld, and she smiles at him.

GutcanonThe army base where Hellboy grows up did not have a full-time chaplain prior to his arrival. However, he and the professor are accompanied by fully two dozen soldiers equipped with identical rosaries and a brand new respect for higher powers, so the administration holds up for under a week before they go looking for a candidate.

They end up with a Jesuit priest who was recommended to them as the most unflappable soul in the business, a thirty-something convert fresh out of seminary and looking for his first parish, an ex-soldier himself. Father Laurence signs enough NDA’s to fill Lake Erie, packs his bags, and ships out to Fuck You Nowhere with the expectation that he’s going to live on an army base and never actually have anything to do because it’s not like soldiers are known for being die-hards about going to Mass. At least he’ll be able to catch up on his reading.

On his very first day, while he’s still unpacking his office, Laurence gets a nervous knock on the door and opens it to find an orderly file of soldiers looking to attend confession and check up on when, exactly, he’s planning to hold his first service.

“Sun...day?” he says warily. “But I could hold a Wednesday night Mass if you’d like.”

“Would you mind, Father? Only, most of us haven’t been in a long time,” the lead soldier says awkwardly--apparently the elected spokesman. “So we were kind of hoping to get started soon. Some of the boys are looking to be catechized, too.”

“Well,” Laurence says, feeling blank with shock. “Come on, then, my son, let’s go schedule confessional times.”

He just about thinks he’s gotten a handle on the most bizarrely devout army base in the world when a year-old demon with a stone hand as big as his torso wanders into his office and asks, in a tone of serious concern, “Do you think I have a soul, Father?”

Laurence blinks at him for a moment, considers the situation, and gestures to the couch. “Do you think you have a soul, my son?”

Laurence doesn’t know it at the time, but he’s just made a friend for life.

JunkcanonHellboy meets John Constantine in Atlanta, when Constantine is twenty-five and fueled by an interestingly volatile cocktail of rage, recklessness, and actual concern for human life. Their first meeting ends with Constantine dumping holy water over Hellboy’s head and Hellboy immediately deciding that he likes this guy very much. Over the course of the next week, while they hunt themselves some necromancers, Hellboy teases his new friend, calls him Johnny and laughs when Constantine threatens to shoot him, drags him kicking and screaming into conversations and poker games and, one time, an underworld nightclub where a seven-foot demon isn’t the strangest thing at the bar. On the one hand, don’t get him wrong, John Constantine is gorgeous in a pale-scruffy-and-consumptive sort of way, but also, any of Hellboy’s team could have warned the kid that, once Hellboy decides he’s going to make a friend, very little short of murder will stop him.

On the last day, before they go home, Constantine sighs and gives up and grabs Hellboy’s coat in both hands to drag him down into a kiss.

“If you make a single Devil Went Down to Georgia joke, I’ll kick your ass out so fast it’ll make your head spin,” Constantine threatens against Hellboy’s mouth.

“Sure thing, Johnny,” Hellboy says, transparently delighted, and pins Constantine against the wall of the motel room. Turns out that there are advantages to fucking a seven-foot demon with superhuman strength and several decades of experience. Constantine would die before he admitted it, though.

SpleencanonI’m actually not sure I’m sufficiently familiar with the Hellboy comics to have any real resentment? Regardless, don’t have any major complaints, so instead:

High fantasy AU where King Bruttenholm the Wise is known for ruling a kingdom that serves as a safe haven for magic users and creatures that might be hunted to death in other lands. He used to ride out with his knights to keep his lands safe when he was crown prince, until they hunted down a circle of demon-worshipers, which ended with the crown prince gaining a limp for life and a new son. Instead of being tapped as the heir to the throne (Hellboy does not particularly want to be king, thank you, his father’s work seems like The Worst), Hellboy becomes responsible for defending the kingdom--from magical threats and witchhunters alike.

Enter Constantine, who personally claims to be a dabbler and a sword for hire, and who everyone who’s anyone knows is the finest witchhunter and exorcist in seven kingdoms.

Things are...tense.

#hellboy #john constantine #wonder woman #diana prince #hellboy x constantine #headcanon meme #ask meme #i still care A WHOLE BUNCH about that ship and i really do intend to write...i mean basically that junkcanon as a whole fic #ft. constantine dumping holy water on hellboy and hellboy immediately going 'we're gonna be friends'#and constantine having no choice but to agree because hellboy's goodwill is like a bazooka: hard to avoid and even harder to stop #it might take him a minute to warm up to you but once he does that's it it's over he's your friend now #there's nothing you can do about it #also i am so married to that thing about the priest it's absolutely ridiculous #i'm Extremely Serious about it #everything about it #and i'm kinda weirdly charmed by the idea of that high fantasy au now that i've mentioned it?#like #hellboy's the captain of the king's guard or something and he wears armor and shit #aaaaaaand he arrests constantine probably #queue deeper than the sea of stars #Anonymous #asked and answered

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baoshan-sanren · 3 years

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Hi...how are you? If you don't mind me asking what is your top 5 fav danmei novels (until now)? And why? Sorry if you've answered this question before.....

jfhdkhgfdjhdjks I JUST finished Peerless so that’s going first on my list bc I am weak and I WANT MORE

Peerless (无双) by Meng Xi Shi - (jjwxc link) (chapters 1-187) (extras 1-4) (not explicit) I am fckn IN LOVE with this novel. Feng Xiao and Cui Buqu are the most brilliant fucking morons I’ve ever met in my life. This is a slow build of all the slow builds, murder, intrigue, so much stupidity, court dramas, martial arts fights, levels of arrogance that would make even Yan Wushi shake his head (who does show up in a tiny little cameo in one of the chapters). The book is split up in five arcs that allow for a pause in between, if you find 190+ chapters to be too much for a continuous read through, but I would have flown through them in a space of a few days, if life hadn’t turned upside down on me. Now that I’m finally done, I miss these morons more than I’ve ever missed two fictional characters. This novel will def end up in my top five for a long time.

The Wife is First (妻为上) by Lu Ye Qian He - (jjwxc link) (chapters 1-5) (chapters 6-85 ongoing) (explicit) This is still, by far, the most feel-good danmei I’ve ever read. Jing Shao dies, then gets to relive his life all over again from the night of his wedding to Jun Qing. The beginning may be rough for some readers bc Jing Shao, despite getting another chance at life, has nonetheless arrived too late to prevent his first offense against the man he married (can you hear me screaming about hurt/comfort!). But from that point on, he is determined to do things differently, so the story that had been one of misery in his previous life, turns into one of love and devotion (and some very satisfying court scheming) in this one. It is an extremely satisfying read, and the relationship between the two mains, despite its rough start, is so goddamn lovely, I can’t recommend it enough.

The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System (人渣反派自救系统) by Mò Xiāng Tóngxiù - (physical novel purchase link) (chapters 1-80) (extras 80-98) (chapters 1-53 ongoing) (explicit) Yeah, this is my baby. I’ll admit off the bat I’ve read svsss at least ten times, which is five times more than either tgcf or mdzs. It’s hilarious, frustrating, insightful, feral, infuriating, and pretty fucking amazing, all at once, and all of it overlapping. I’ve written essays upon essays about mxtx’s creative choices in this novel, most of which will never see the light of day. This damn thing is so ridiculously rough on the surface, but svsss, for me, is like a damn onion, and every time I read it, I peel more layers off and find something else new underneath. I fucking love this damn novel, and you will only pry it from my cold dead hands.

Lord Seventh (七爷) by Priest - (jjwxc link) (chapters 1-5) (chapters 6-7) (chapters 8-32) (chapters 33-76) (extras 1-3) (semi-explicit?) It’s kind of a crime that this is the only Priest novel on this list, but if I can only list five, I’m gonna try and not double up on authors. Highly, highly, recommend this, especially to people who plan to read Faraway Wanderers. Zhou ZiShu’s background doesn’t take up a large part of the story, but the environment in which he thrived at court tells you much more about him as a person than the first fifty chapters of tyk do (and in much more stark terms). Jing Beiyuan is an absolute fucking delight, a man who had reincarnated multiple times, but managed to keep all of his memories of his previous (pretty terrible) lives. His sense of humor is therefore honed to the nth degree, and he is simultaneously a giant gremlin who takes nothing and no one seriously, but is also utterly done with everyone’s shit. Basically a story about being destined to forever be entangled with another person, and then deliberately choosing not to be. I love this goddamn novel to pieces.

The Husky and His White Cat Shizun (二哈和他的白猫师尊) by Meatbun Doesn't Eat Meat - (jjwxc link) (chapters 1-4) (chapters 5-149 ongoing) (heavily explicit) This fucking novel haunts me. It’s been over a year since I’ve read it, and I still sometimes lie awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering about the nature of life, love, forgiveness, and redemption (and then I curse Meatbun to high heaven). I once described reading 2ha as being stuffed feet-first into a wood-chipper for 200 out of 300+ chapters, and I still hold to that description. But this is, hands down, one of the most hauntingly beautiful novels I’ve ever read. To anyone who intends to read it, I highly recommend checking out a detailed list of content warnings first, buying three boxes of tissues, and being ready to have your life ruined for good.

Once again, I ask those who are willing and able, to buy the original novels and support the authors. (jjwxc buying guide for english-speakers here)

#danmei #novel recs #THANK YOU LOVE!#this was fun!#thanad-zid #ask for ts

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onebizarrekai · 3 years

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I think that lucia di lammermoor is one of my new favorite operas not just because of the mad scene but because the opera makes no sense whatsoever

there are literally so many plot holes in the libretto. there are so many unexplained facets of the narrative, unresolved arcs, dialogues that mandate copious creative liberties, things that only happen off-stage, and some unsolvable problems that can only be fixed by cutting things or directing things a certain way. there’s so much nonsense it’s actually hilarious. if you read the source story of the bride of lammermoor the opera diverts quite a bit, but the bride of lammermoor is actually even worse, so let’s put that to the side.

let’s just start from the beginning of the opera, paraphrasing as much as possible. lucia’s evil brother, enrico, is the first lead to greet the stage, minutes after his goony normano. normano tells enrico the tale of how enrico’s archenemy, edgardo, saved the life of lucia, and he reluctantly admits that they are now in love with each other and are secretly meeting up all the time. enrico flips his shit and sings about how he’s going to kill edgardo or whatever. bide the bent (aka raimondo, but schirmir really said bide the bent, whatever the hell that means) exists and does priest stuff because he’s a priest. by the way, there’s this whole thing about how the ashton family (aka lucia and enrico) are protestant and edgardo is catholic and that’s why they hate each other and that’s why there’s a priest.

anyway they all leave, and then lucia and alice enter. lucia is, naturally, waiting for her illegal boyfriend: edgardo. she is very scared because enrico is a piece of shit and wants to kill her boyfriend. alice is like “yo man this is a bad idea” and lucia is like “where’s edgardo” but lucia is also perturbed by something else. she has a ghost story to tell about this nondescript fountain and tells alice about the girl who was killed by her lover at this fountain, and then suddenly goes like “by the way the ghost of the dead woman appeared to me” and like wow ok lucia. after singing about all of the water turning to blood in her hallucination, she proceeds to completely change moods and sing about how much she loves edgardo because she is crazy. after all of this, edgardo finally arrives and tells lucia about how he actually has to go to france to do ambassador stuff and disappear for an indefinite period of time. he says that they should finally tell enrico about their relationship. lucia completely shuts him down, and then edgardo cries about how enrico has killed his family and how she’s the only light of his life. they end up deciding to keep their relationship a secret anyway and then vow to marry each other.

act 2, enrico has ordered normano to forge a break-up letter from edgardo to send it to lucia. normano shows up to give it to enrico, enrico summons lucia into wherever he is to tell her that he needs to marry her off to some other guy in order to save their family. lucia is like “but I’m marrying someone else” and enrico is like “oh yeah? read this” and gives her the letter, and lucia naturally breaks down because it’s a big lie about how edgardo has found someone else in france. she cries about it until this big fanfare plays to welcome her new husband, arturo. at this point lucia is singing about nothing except how much death would benefit her right now. enrico leaves after being an asshole for a few more minutes, and then in comes bide the bent to lecture lucia about the invalidity of her previous marital vows. she leaves to change into a wedding gown.

enter arturo, this random loser that enrico wants lucia to marry. his lines are so cliché that he’s probably reading them off a sheet of paper (which is exactly how we staged the production I am currently doing). somehow arturo knows about lucia’s affair with edgardo because those two were actually horrible at being secretive, but also he doesn’t care because he gets to marry a hottie. enrico tells arturo about how lucia’s mother died and that’s why she’s crying about the wedding. lo and behold, lucia enters and she is crying. they hold the wedding right then and there under the Authority™ of bide the bent, enrico forces lucia to sign the wedding documents, and then everyone is like “wait who’s at the door?” and then EDGARDO BREAKS IN and he’s like “EDGAAAAAARDO” and they sing a whole sextet that borders a confusion ensemble except it’s a bel canto tragedy.

edgardo is like “yeah man! it’s my right to be here since I’m engaged to lucia!” and enrico is like “PSH” and bide the bent comes up like “sorry she just signed this Other Marriage Contract” and shows it to edgardo and edgardo is like WHAT and he comes up to lucia like BRUH YOU DONE THIS?? and lucia doesn’t even know what’s happening at this point, she’s just like “yes?? but” and then edgardo takes off his ring and hers and then throws a temper tantrum before he gets kicked out.

behold the wolf’s craig duet, the most stupid and pointless thing in this opera considering what happens later. enrico barges into edgardo’s house and they sing about how they’re going to kill each other and duel at the graveyard. that’s it. there’s probably sexual tension.

after that, there’s a wedding party, except with a Horrifying Twist. lucia goes upstairs with arturo and fucking kills him. having lost her mind, she comes out covered in blood and sings for like twenty minutes in a very impressive manor. she collapses on the floor at the very end.

there’s a random recit right afterwards where enrico, bide the bent and normano briefly talk about lucia losing her mind. while enrico is crying about lucia, bide the bent literally blames normano of all people, who did exactly nothing, for every bad thing that happened to lucia.

the final scene begins at the graveyard. now, I know what you’re thinking. edgardo and enrico promised to duel each other here, right? right! so where the hell is enrico? I dunno, not here. edgardo is here, and he’s crying and stuff about his dead father. he’s very sad and probably wants to perish. a chorus shows up mourning something. edgardo asks about it and no one wants to tell him. bide the bent appears in all his priestliness and tells edgardo that lucia is now in heaven. how did she die? beats me. she died of insanity or something. edgardo has lost the final thing in his life that matters to him, so he decides to “go see her” and stabs himself.

the opera ends.

welcome to lucia di lammermoor. now, some of these plot holes are resolvable through directing. for example, lucia’s insanity is inexplicable in the libretto. nobody is just sad about their boyfriend and commits murder–granted, her first aria had her singing about a ghost and a fountain of blood. why’s she like this, though? she’s probably not ok. so like, some people explain this by making enrico way way worse than just a big liar. in the production that I’m doing, enrico is being depicted as sexually abusive towards lucia, and like, yeah that helps do some explaining. but you know what it doesn’t help? the parts of the opera that normally get cut, like the stupidass wolf’s craig duet that exists for no reason and usually gets cut because it makes no sense. also, the scene right after the mad scene where bide the bent comically blames normano for everything even though it is clearly enrico’s fault and enrico is randomly mourning lucia even though he was horrible to her for the whole opera. unfortunately, when you have companies like the met, which do full operas with no cuts, you get the whole, nonsensical story in its full glory, not to mention the met tends to shy away from taking creative liberties with the directing.

so like, why do I say this opera is a new favorite? well, aside from it being fun to sing, since I’m doing it for the first time, it’s absolutely hilarious to consider who the real mastermind here is, since for some reason, the librettist seems to think that it’s normano. you have to make up so much subtext in this story in order to even make it begin to make sense, so how far can you take it? how much nonsense can you create?

easy mode is assuming the mastermind is enrico. he’s a horrible person. obviously bide the bent accuses normano because he’s trying to divert the blame from enrico, who may or may not kill him if he says the truth. however, enrico does not go to the graveyard to kill edgardo and tie off loose ends (which I personally think he should have). enrico just kind of disappears, honestly, in spite of being the main bad guy.

bide the bent is another viable option. he blames normano to divert attention from himself. he plays the role of the peacemaker between edgardo and enrico during the sextet, but it’s all a sham. the reason bide the bent appears in the final graveyard scene is because he’s the true villain here. he simply took advantage of everyone around him in order to make sure everything went according to plan. enrico’s bs towards lucia, lucia’s insanity, edgardo’s depression, normano loyalty, the whole deal. he wishes to rise in power… perhaps the reason enrico does not show up in the final scene is because bide the bent has already disposed of him.

what if it was edgardo? what if he and lucia devised a plan to create an opening that would allow them to run away? what if arturo was in on it? lucia pretends to murder arturo, pretends to go insane, and the plan was to finally flee with edgardo… but then they were INTERCEPTED. their plan was ruined. lucia was disposed of by the enemy off-stage and it was too late. they claim she died of insanity, but she was killed by normano under enrico’s orders, or whoever else is the designated evil one here.

in the met, for some reason, they decide to have lucia’s ghost come in during the final scene and silently “coerce” edgardo into ending his life, which sounds cool, but it was ridiculous. I just remember the blood bag being in the wrong place so he had to stab himself in the kidney and lucia actually pushed the prop knife in like she wasn’t literally a ghost. there was also a ghost during lucia’s first aria that totally upstaged her. this opens up many stupid doors for directing such as arturo’s ghost returning as well if need be. anyone’s ghost could be there. ghosts canonically exist at the met. arturo could be fortnite dancing during the mad scene.

behold, a terrible take. edgardo is having a secret affair after all, but he’s having an affair with enrico. enrico is enraged when he discovers edgardo’s relationship with his sister because he thought that THEY had a thing. he vengefully tries to break them up by marrying lucia off to arturo. enrico and edgardo sing the wolf’s craig duet as a not-tragic breakup song.

honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone in this goddamn cast was sleeping with each other. the possibilities are endless

during the staging period of the show, we all came up with so many stupid and hilarious ideas that we could stage an entire comedy version of this opera. maybe one day it could happen. maybe…

anyway it’s like midnight and I’m doing my cast’s performance of this opera in two days, and I just drove home a while ago from performance 1 today talking with my family about all of these stupid possibilities, so it’s all on my mind. at least the mad scene is fun to sing

#random stuff #me? going on a comical tangent about opera? more likely than you think #there's a lot of content warnings for stuff here but that's to be expected of opera #honestly I'll lose my mind for real if I have to do this show at face value #enrico isn't evil enough in just the libretto alone #see operas usually have pretty simple stories #and plot holes #but LUCIA #lucia is something else

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scxrlettwxtches · 4 years

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a marriage story | lee minho

Genre: fluff, angst, best friends to lovers

Warnings: none, except it get a little spicy at the end ;)

Word Count: ~6.0k

Description: Your incredibly rich best friend, Lee Minho, barges into your apartment asking you to marry him. You say yes, of course, because what could go wrong?

A/N: i actually had a lot of fun writing this! hope everyone is safe amidst all this coronavirus chaos! <3 love y’all, and as always, my ask box is always open if you ever want to be friends!

“I need you to marry me.”

Your best friend, Lee Minho, has walked into your crappy apartment spewing random shit before, but this was by far the dumbest, most crackhead sentence to ever come out of his mouth. With his Louis Vuitton coat, a thin 100% pure cashmere sweater, the very inconspicuous Gucci belt and his hand-embroidered pants, he looked almost as if he’d fallen into the wrong dimension when he stepped into your living quarters, the walls fading and all the furniture looking one push away from falling apart.

You glanced up at him tiredly, “Don’t questions like these come with a fancy dinner? I’m feeling a little cheated.”

Minho rolled his eyes, plopping himself down across from you at your coffee table without so much as asking. Damn him. After four years of knowing each other, he walked around your apartment like he owned it.

“Is that a ‘yes,’ then?” he asked, reaching for your coffee mug to take a sip.

“It’s a ‘please tell me more ‘cause I’m confused,’” you snatched away your cup suspiciously, “And you’re not getting any of this coffee until you explain yourself.”

Minho rubbed his eyes tiredly, letting out a sigh as he began, “So, I’m getting old.”

You snorted, “Well, we all know that. Jisung’s signing you up for a senior citizen discount already.”

“Don’t be fucking rude, your elder is speaking,” he snapped as he rolled his eyes, “My parents have been trying to pair me up with these potential partners, and I’m just sick of it.”

“So, you think the solution to your problem is to marry me?” you raised an eyebrow, quietly trying to gauge whether your friend was just playing a dumb prank on you, which he was prone to doing.

Minho nodded enthusiastically, “I’ve already thought everything through, and I think it’s a brilliant idea.”

“Your parents were about to flip tables when they found out you were friends with someone like me. Do you honestly think they’ll let you marry me, too?”

“Who says they’ll have any control over it?” Minho scoffed with apparent disdain, “We’ll get all the paperwork done before they even have any idea what’s going on. Besides,” he added with a troublesome gleam in his eyes, “it’s going to be absolutely hilarious to see them lose their shit over this.”

You ran through multiple scenarios in your head, and the image of Minho’s ridiculously conservative parents reacting to their top-of-the-academy, sole-inheritor-of-the-company son marrying a high school dropout that made a living by doing odd jobs was admittedly pretty funny.

“Okay,” you said, leaning towards him like you meant business, “say I actually think this is a pretty fucking wild idea and I’m down for it, what’s in it for me?”

Minho shrugged, “You’d have access to all the funds in my bank account, along with all the inheritance I’d get from my parents.”

“You really think your parents are going to keep you as the sole heir to all that cash they’ve got after the stunt you’re gonna pull?” you asked doubtfully, taking a slow sip of your coffee.

“Doesn’t matter at this point. I already hold more than half the shares of their company, which--” he added with a proud smirk, “will eventually be my company, whether they like it or not.”

You made a noise of delight, “Lee Minho, that is—without a doubt—the sexiest thing you’ve ever said.”

Minho rolled his eyes, “You’re such a gold digger.”

“Say it louder for the people in the back,” you grinned, and not even your best friend could hide the amused smirk on his face.

“So, are you in?”

“You mean, am I going to marry my best friend to piss off his parents and share his money?” you fluttered your eyelashes prettily, placing your coffee mug on the table with a finality as you smiled.

“Shall we sign the papers today?”

The real wedding was a quiet, secretive affair, done discreetly under the noses of Minho’s disturbingly watchful parents. You would think that a man who’s earned his degree in business at twenty-two and practically ran the family company by twenty-five would have some freedom, but that wasn’t the case for your best friend--or, should you say, fiancé.

Only a handful of people were in attendance. On Minho’s side, he had his best friends from the Academy, Hwang Hyunjin and Lee Felix, both of whom were incredibly supportive of your whole arrangement. Although they were initially against the idea of Minho getting married at all (they still held on to that high school bachelor mentality), their minds changed the moment they found out the bride-to-be was actually you.

(“Oh, then everything’s fine,” Hyunjin had laughed when Minho explained the situation, “Y/N can keep him under control.”

“She’s already been doing that since the day they met,” Felix snickered, raising a half empty glass of beer at you and Minho as he spoke sarcastically, “To the happy couple!”)

On your side, you had your most trusted sidekick, Han Jisung, who you’ve known for almost the better half of your life. Since both of you had grown up together trying to wade through incredibly trying financial situations, he was more than a little upset when you managed to snag yourself a rich husband before he did.

(“You bitch,” Jisung had spit in mock anger when you showed him your glittering diamond ring, and pointing his mug of beer at an unimpressed Minho, he wailed, “Not only did you have to get a rich husband, you had to get the hottest one, too?”)

The other person present was your lovely roommate, Bae Joohyun, who watched the ceremony with unprecedented glee. She was more than happy to keep the whole apartment to herself, kicking you out especially quickly when she found out you were in for an upgrade, not a downgrade.

(“Where are you moving? Downtown? The mansion suburbs?” she had a smile that could send anyone on their knees groveling at her feet, “Let me know when you ever need a friend over, babe!”

“You just want to see the house, don’t you.”

“Honey,” she eyed you critically, “with the amount of money you’re going to have soon, I might just ask you to buy me the house next to yours!”)

As you stood at the altar, wearing in a short, white dress you had grabbed from a local thrift store, Minho looked fiendishly handsome in his black pants and his expensive jacket, holding both of your hands as the ceremony went on.

The priest sped through his vows, obviously coming to the understanding that this was not your conventional wedding, “Do you, Y/N, take Lee Minho to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“I do,” you shared a quick, knowing smile with your best friend.

“And do you, Lee Minho, take Y/N to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

“Forever and always,” he swore solemnly. Snickers erupted from the small audience, and you rolled your eyes, tired of Minho’s disgustingly cheesy one liners.

Not even the priest could hide a smile as he stepped back, “You may now kiss the bride.”

Minho raised an eyebrow and tilted his head, a gesture that implied that the ball was in your court. Up to you, he spoke wordlessly, waiting for your reply. You knew that Minho never had any qualms about being overly touching with people he didn’t have feelings with, which meant a lot of one night stands and a lot of suffering on your part when you’d try to find him at parties.

To be totally honest with yourself, you didn’t not want to kiss Minho. As Jisung has said, he was the hottest wealthy bachelor on the market, and as of five seconds ago, he was also now your lawfully wedded husband. And you’d be an idiot if you didn’t reap all the benefits to the fullest.

But at the same time, this was Lee Minho. Your baddest bitch. Your #1 on speed dial. The person you’d call if you were stranded at 3 a.m. The only person you’d trust with your top secret ice cream stash.

Would you ruin things? Would things become better than they already were?

There was no way you could know at the time, so you did what your heart told you to do, and gave Minho a small smile of consent. You saw surprise flash across his face for a split second, as if he’d expected you to refuse, but it was gone before you could even blink.

With a gentleness you never knew he possessed, Minho moved his hand to the back of your neck pulled you towards him, his lips brushing yours in a delicate, chaste kiss. Joohyun squealed like a kid in a candy store, taking a billion pictures on her phone. Jisung let out a scandalous gasp. Hyunjin and Felix fake gagged, slipping of the pews dramatically. When Minho pulled away, he let out an awkward chuckle as he asked.

“Disappointing?”

“Yes, I want to file for a divorce immediately,” you joked, but in all honesty, your lips felt like they burned after that split second of contact, and your heart felt tight as your brain reeled.

You didn’t even know Minho could kiss like that. Not like those passionate, drunken makeouts that you’d always find him engaging in at least twice a week.

But like he wanted it to mean something.

As expected, Minho’s parents flipped over heaven and hell when they recieved a beautiful handwritten invitation to your wedding, written by their dearest son. As expected, they pulled every string and every connection they had to stop the wedding, to quietly remove you from the picture. And as expected, Minho and you had already ensured that this would be practically impossible.

The wedding was lavish, extravagant, and everything that you had not expected to be married with. Your husband booked the most beautiful cathedral in the city, hired celebrity chefs for the banquet (“Do you want Gordon Ramsay? I could get Gordon Ramsay.” “Minho, please don’t.”), ordered a custom-made cake by an award-winning baker, and to top it all off, he refused to get you anything less than the most expensive wedding dress that was available.

It felt like the whole city had attended the big ceremony, all the church pews filled to the brim to get a glimpse of who in world managed to tie the knot with the richest, most handsome bachelor in the public eye. Minho’s parents sat in the front, obviously fuming but slapping on saccharine smiles for all the press and cameras that were present. As much as they hated their son’s decisions, any negative rumors could impact the integrity of their company, and if there was anything they cared about more than reputation, it was money.

The ceremony was as dramatic as the two of you could make it, Minho flashing his most dazzling, show-business smile and you doing your best to look absolutely enamored by his charm. When the vows were through and it was time for the big spectacle, Minho wasted no time in sliding a firm arm around your waist, pulling you in for a passionate kiss. The cameras flashed and clicked furiously, and as you responded with just as much intensity, you knew you would be on the front cover of every newspaper for the next week. Maybe even the next month.

As the two of you stood facing the audience, trying to blink out your watery eyes from all the bright flashes and loud noises, Minho’s hand around your waist loosened and turned into something more comforting than passionate. Sparing a glance at you, he broke his character for a moment to whisper worriedly.

“Is this okay?”

You were strangely touched, because you had already agreed to everything that was going to happen from then on, and Minho wasn’t obligated to show his vulnerable, gently side to the rest of the world, even if only for a split second. But he was, just for you.

“I’m okay,” you smiled with confidence, tugging at his tie to give the crowd another spectacle to coo at as you pressed a loving kiss on his cheek. Minho looked a little startled, since you really weren’t a touchy person, but when his smile returned, it looked more relaxed, more genuine than it was before.

Then, his smile grew mischievous, and he pulled you snug to him once again as his lips brushed against your ear, sending shivers down your spine.

“Let’s give them a little more to talk about, then.”

“Babe, do you have a honeymoon destination that you’ve always dreamed of going to?” Minho called from the couch, making you stop in your drawing. You were working on a fanart commission from a follower on your Twitter, and you sat criss-crossed at your desk, having scribbled furiously for last couple hours.

“What honeymoon?” you frowned, putting down your digital pen and spinning around to look at your husband.

Minho blinked, “Ours, of course. Do you really think I’d let us get married without going on a honeymoon?”

“Well, I mean,” Shrugging your shoulders helplessly, you floundered over your words, “we’ve convinced the whole world that we’re in love already, right? You don’t have to waste your money on this.”

“I’m not wasting my money,” Minho said, looking vaguely offended, “I have money to spare, and I’m going to spend it on the person I care about. That’s not called wasting.”

Glaring at you pointedly before looking back down at his laptop, he continued, “I always said that I was going to take you on a long-ass vacation one day, because God knows you haven’t had one of those since you were born.”

“Didn’t need to come for my neck like that, but okay,” you muttered, under your breath.

Minho definitely heard you, but decidedly elected to ignore you as he grinned, “Since I’m now your lawfully wedded husband, I’m bonded by our vows to treat you to a honeymoon that you’ll never forget.”

You scoffed, “Where was this treatment when you’d come and eat all my cereal at 3 fucking a.m.?”

“Hey. It’s ‘happy wife, happy life’, not ‘happy best friend, happy life.’”

“Whatever, dork,” Rolling your eyes, you got up from your chair and plopped down on the couch beside him. He threw a casual arm over your shoulders and you leaned towards him to glance at the laptop. This type of touching had become natural ever since the two of you moved in together. You would say it was all just to keep up an act, but both you and Minho knew that wasn’t true.

On the screen, you saw pictures of tropical beaches, private island resorts, anything and everything that screamed luxury was there. After scrolling for a while, they all started to blend together, and you began to realize that you were a little out of your depth.

“Why don’t you just pick, Minho?” you suggested, doing your best to shirk the responsibility.

“You don’t wanna?”

You gestured helplessly, “I mean--I don’t mind---but I’m just,” you swallowed, “This isn’t really my forte. It’s yours.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know how to live this life, Minho! I could’ve never afforded any of this until two months ago, and I still don’t know the in and outs, what’s good and what’s bad,” you rambled, catching your husband off guard as he listened to you in silence, “So, I’m sorry if I’m being a little indecisive. I just don't know where to even start.”

Understanding flashed in Minho’s eyes, and to his credit, he didn’t rise up to your sudden frustrations, taking it all in without complaint. You knew he was doing his best, you knew he was trying to give you things that you couldn’t have before, you knew he was trying to make you comfortable. And suddenly, guilt flooded through your veins.

Stammering, you looked down at your legs, “Shit, Minho, that was--”

“Don’t be sorry,” he replied briskly, grabbing your hands to get you to look at him, “You tell me whenever I’m being insensitive, and I’ll do the same for you. Is that fair?”

You stared at him incredulously as you said, “You’re surprisingly mature about this.”

“Well,” he flashed the gold band on his fourth finger, something that you still couldn’t quite believe he was wearing, “we’re together for the long run, so there’s no reason for us not to set some ground rules.”

“Unless, of course,” he added hastily, risking a tentative smile, “you end up divorcing me even before our six month anniversary. I really hope you don’t, if only just to save me some face.”

Punching his chest halfheartedly, you spoke warmly, “Idiot,” you chastised, “I wouldn’t agree to something like this just to walk out on you.” Minho hummed in acknowledgement, and the two of you sat together in a warm, comfortable silence.

“Do you have any requests, at least?” Minho finally asked, uncharacteristically gentle.

You thought for a moment, looking back to find the one crucial thing you’ve lacked throughout your life, something you’ve always wanted but could never have. A long moment passed, and as you pressed closer to Minho, you answered.

“Somewhere where I could just breathe and be away from the real world.”

Minho chuckled, his breath tickling the hairs on your face, “I’ll see what I can do.”

As you soon found out, Minho “seeing what he could do” basically meant a two-week vacation on a private resort island owned by one of Minho’s company partners. He lived up to his promise as well, and the travel was more seamless and relaxed than you could’ve imagined it to be.

Following your request to be more secluded from regular life, Minho booked one of the more remote villas on the island, one that stood above the shallow ocean water, jutting out from the beaches. It was connected to the land by a short wooden bridge, and it provided you with all the privacy you needed.

Minho seemed to enjoy the vacation as much as you did, and the laptop he’d brought with him for work purposes was left abandoned in the bedroom safe. The two of you spent time out on the porch watching the tide, on the couch watching movies, or even in the crystal clear water below, splashing each other with the ferocity of two aggressive cats.

In some moments, in some fleeting moments, when the two of you are sprawled over each other, doubling over in laughter, or when he grabbed your waist to lift you out of the water, stopping your flurry of attacks, that you genuinely felt as if the two of you were a married couple. Not a pair of best friends trying to make the best of a situation, but a real married couple.

Of course, as antisocial as the two of you were, you were eventually dragged by your whining husband to leave the comfort of your villa and venture out to the small, tourist town near the center of the resort. Apparently, he had a meeting with the owner of this particular resort to discuss further trade deals, and because Minho was secretly a big baby, he didn’t want to go to the town without you.

You didn’t want anything to do with the meeting; all the politics and passive aggressive forms of speech always put you on edge, so you decided to explore the town while you waited for him to finish. It was an incredibly quaint little set of buildings, mostly boutique shops and small restaurants, and you found that you actually quite liked its atmosphere. Whipping out your phone, you snapped a couple quick pictures of the town’s buildings for some artistic inspiration.

A half hour had gone by, and the island’s tropical heat had begun to get to you. Rubbing your throat absentmindedly, your eyes fell upon a bar at the corner of the road, with a quirky, lopsided sign that read, “Christopher’s Laboratory.”

Smiling at the rather original name, you made your way inside, the door ringing a bell as you walked in. There were only one or two guests sitting at random tables, which didn’t surprise you. After all, who would be at a bar in the middle of a sunny afternoon?

Deciding to sit at the bar, your eyes darted to a man that made his way from the back of the restaurant to behind the bar table, a charming smile framing his face. Being the only new customer and the only one sitting there, he stopped in front of you, leaning over the table slightly.

“Hey! I’m Chris,” he introduced himself, and you couldn’t help but be a little enamored by his strong Australian accent.

“I’m Y/N,” you answered, looking around with a smile, “This is a cute little place.”

Chris’ smile was infectious, “Right? I built a lot of it myself, and I do have to say I’m quite proud of this baby,” Reaching for a towel beside him, he began wiping a glass absentmindedly, no doubt prepping for whatever drink you were about to order.

“Have you been on this island long?” he asked, “I don’t think I’ve seen you around before.”

“Ah, actually,” you blushed rather self consciously, “I’ve been here for a week or so, but we didn’t leave our villa until today.”

“We?” Chris caught the word with a knowing smirk, “Here with a lover?”

Lifting your left hand off the table, you flashed your diamond ring Beyonce style, “Married, actually.”

If Chris was surprised, he barely batted an eye, placing the glass down with a finality, “Congratulations, then. Have you decided on what you want to drink?”

“I’ll have a mint julep,” you answered, merely going to your typical drink. Not too strong or heavy, especially since you weren’t the drink-till-you’re-wasted type. That was more Jisung’s style.

“Coming right up,” your bartender got to work straight away, moving around to get all the necessary components for your order. Although you don’t frequent the bar, you could immediately tell that this man was good at his craft. Chris moved with any ounce of hesitation in his body, as if he knew exactly what to do and how to do it without any mistakes.

Already having warmed up to Chris’ personality, you decided to get to know him a little better, “So, how does one end up permanently living on a resort island?”

The man laughed as he poured a small amount of bourbon into the glass, “Good question. I’m honestly not quite sure myself, but it all started with wanting to get away from home, I guess.”

“And why did you do that?”

Chris shrugged, “Too many expectations. Too many standards. I got sick of it, so I left and just ended up here.”

“You just ended up here?” you repeated doubtfully before pointing out, “This isn’t exactly cheap real estate, just so you know.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” he laughed, “I have a mini aneurysm every time any of the neighbors mention how high their down payment was,” With practiced ease, he slid your drink onto the table front of you, placing a dainty umbrella in it for good measure, “I actually won this property in a stupid bet with a good friend of mine.”

“You moved your entire life because of a bet you made with your friend?” you couldn’t believe it. This was the sort of light-footed, go-with-the-wind lifestyle that you’d always admired, always yearned for.

Chris shrugged, “It was a nice change of scenery, and I found that I liked it more than I had originally assumed, so I stayed.”

Sipping your cocktail, took a long look at the man in front of you. He was undoubtedly handsome, but it was different from the untouchable beauty your husband held. With Chris, there was a sort of ruggedness, a sort of battle-hardened look in his eyes, like he’d done everything in the world and survived.

“Since I told you a little about myself, tell me about you,” Chris grinned, popping a beer for himself as he glanced at you intently, “I assume you just got married?”

“Yup,” you replied, rubbing your wedding ring absentmindedly, “We’re actually on our honeymoon right now.”

“You’re staying at that nearby resort? Dang, you guys must have some serious money.”

“He does,” you clarified, trying not to sound a little bitter, “He’s got the money.”

Chris seemed to understand, becuase his brow furrowed slightly, “But if you guys are married, then it’s technically your money, too.”

“I know, I know,” you said hastily, waving your hands in denial as you looked down in shame, “He’s never showed off his money or made me feel poor or anything like that. It’s just, sometimes I can’t help but feel--”

“Like you don’t belong,” Chris finished softly, his voice gentle, “Like you don’t deserve him even if he chose you.”

Looking up in surprise, you realized that the man had grown rather quiet, his eyes faraway as if thinking back to a sad memory. Something must’ve happened to him, too, something that had to do with money, love, and disappointment. Feeling bad, you put your hand over his, trying to give him some form of comfort.

The restaurant bell chimed, breaking your moment with Chris as you whipped around to see Minho standing at the door with a dark expression. He looked tense, like a cable ready to snap, and you wondered whether the meeting had gone poorly.

“Lee Minho, is that you?” Chris called out, and your head spinned. Chris knew Minho?

The irritated expression on Minho’s face fell for a moment, as he spluttered in equal surprise, “Bang Chan?” He moved forward, as if coming to talk to the man, but then he stopped short, his expression freezing like someone had just slapped him.

Confused, you followed his line of sight, and with a feeling of utter horror pooling in your gut, you realized he was staring at your hand, the one still placed over Chris’ on the table. You know exactly what went through his head, and you couldn’t berate yourself enough for doing what you did. Now, Minho didn’t look just irritated anymore.

He looked furious.

Giving you one last icy glare, one that chilled your heart and almost sent you to tears, he spun around, flinging the door open with hatred as you scrambled to get out of your seat.

“Wait, Minho--”

Without so much as a glance back, he slammed the door shut behind him, leaving you to stand in the middle of the bar in utter shock. The thoughts in your brain were a jumbled disaster, but one thought stood out above the rest.

You had to fix this.

Turning around to look at Chris--or Bang Chan--you began to speak quickly, “Chris, I’m sorry, but--”

“Yes, yes, go,” he replied just as urgently, looking at you intensely, “Don’t worry. You didn’t do anything wrong. If I know anything about Minho, he’s just a little jealous.”

You nodded, grateful for his understanding. As your hand fell on the doorknob, you couldn’t help but look back and ask one more question

“How do you guys even know each other?”

An amused smile crept at the corner of the man’s lips as he answered, “You haven’t guessed yet? I won this property from Minho, all those years ago. We went to the same academy when we were young.”

The idea that Minho actually gave away expensive property on a whim felt like the most Minho thing to do, and you couldn’t help but chuckle despite the anxiety still racking your brain. With one final look, you ran out of the bar, setting off after your husband.

By the time you had returned to your villa, sweaty and exhausted from running around the town trying to find Minho, it was already sundown, the sky a beautiful plethora of reds, blues, and purples. Despite your best efforts, you couldn’t find Minho anywhere, but you had a feeling that Minho would be in the room.

The villa was dark, much of the rooms pitch black as you searched for your husband. Then, as you made it to the master bedroom, your heart sank as you caught sight of a lumpy figure curled up in the white sheets, head turned away from you.

You knew Minho wasn’t asleep. A classic businessman, you often stayed up with him into the waning hours of the morning, and you knew Minho couldn’t physically fall asleep anytime before 1 a.m. Still, he didn’t move a muscle when you walked into the room, even though you were sure he heard you.

The bedsheets crinkled as you sat on the bed beside him, silently mulling over what to say, how you could fix this situation. As gently as you could, you brushed your hand over his shoulder as you murmured, “Minho.”

No response came for a long torturous moment, and then a voice croaked, hoarse and tired, “You finally came back.”

“Of course I came back,” you frowned, “I was looking for you.”

“Oh, really?” The poison in Minho’s tone grated against your ears, “You sure you weren’t hanging out with your lover?”

You grew annoyed, retorting snappishly, “Okay, you need to grow up. I know you saw me holding hands with Chris, and I’m sorry about that, but--”

“So, it’s Chris to you now?” Minho spat bitterly, suddenly sitting up to glare at you, “If I didn’t find you at the bar, were you ever going to tell me anything after? Or were you just going to keep this going for my money as you run off with him?”

“Minho, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I don’t and won’t ever have any intentions of having lovers,” you said, utterly appalled by the idea, “We’re married, aren’t we?”

“Are we?” he muttered, looking down at the bed and away from your face, “You don’t need to pretend. This isn’t even a real marriage.”

It felt like a slap in the face. Flinching, you forced the unsteadiness out of your voice as you asked, “Then, why do you still wear that ring?”

Minho looked up, surprise flashing across his face as you continued, “We’ve been staying in this villa for a week now. Nobody’s here but us, and you still wear that ring every day. Why?”

“I-”

“No. Don’t you dare say you’re pretending, because you’re not,” you seethed, all your frustrations pouring out like a waterfall, “You wouldn’t invest in my art, you wouldn’t take me to fancy restaurants or buy me pretty things on a whim, you wouldn’t have been jealous if you didn’t care, so why are you so determined to act like this marriage doesn’t mean anything to you?”

“It does!” Minho finally said loudly, and then looking ashamed that he’d raised his voice.

“Of course it means something to me,” he murmured, “But I know it doesn’t mean as much to you, and I can’t bear the thought of knowing that we’re in this for different reasons.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re in this for the money, we both knew it from the start,” Minho said, looking at you tiredly, “And I have nothing against you for it. That’s how I convinced you in the first place, and it’s a perfectly reasonable reason to marry me.”

“But,” he continued, “at the same time, I’ve always known this can’t be permanent. You’ll find someone you actually love, someone you’d actually want to marry because of them and not their money, and when that happens, I don’t want to tie you down.”

Minho laughed without humor, “I’m sorry about earlier. I really did get jealous, even though I’m in no position to. I just saw you with Chan, and you two looked so perfect together, and I just knew that I was going to lose you. I knew it would happen eventually, but I’d always hoped it wouldn’t be so soon.”

“How could you say something like that?” you stammered, tears pricking at the corner of your eyes, “How could you think that I just married you for the money?”

Minho blinked, “But, we’d said--”

“Fuck that,” you said furiously, causing Minho’s jaw to grow slack, “You know, for someone with two degrees from Harvard, you can be so naive.”

“Alright, there’s no need to be snippy--”

“It wasn’t just about the money,” you interupted loudly, shutting Minho up, “Yes, I was dirt poor and yes, your money was part of it, but I’d never agree to marry someone who I didn’t like as a person.”

Minho looked frustrated, running a hand through his soft, brown hair as he said, “I know you like me, Y/N. I mean, we’re best friends for fucks sake, but you’re going to find someone else, someone you care about more--”

“I care about you more than anyone else in the world,” you spoke firmly, without an ounce of doubt, “And that’s never going to change.”

For once in his life, Minho was at a loss for words. He stared at you with a mixture of awe and surprise, and then, without a moment of hesitation, he crashed his lips into yours, desperately and lovingly.

You responded, tilting your head to a more comfortable position as you crawled towards him. Minho understood your intentions immediately, and his hands pulled you onto his lap until you were practically straddling him, your body close to his.

Neither of you could stop, his hands now roaming around your back and yours nestled in his hair. He coaxed your mouth open gently, pulling back to nibble at your bottom lip, and when you gave him access, he kissed you twice as furiously, with so much passion that one would’ve thought that this was his last day on Earth.

As his lips slowly trailed to your neck, drawing out your light gasps, you found that you wanted more. There was an unsatiable hunger that Minho had pulled out of you, and you found your hands roaming up and down his chest, now frantically trying to unbutton his loose black shirt.

It was at this moment that Minho pulled back, his lips stopping their trail of kisses down your neck as he panted, “Y/N, wait.”

You froze, immediately stopping in your task as you looked up at him, “What’s wrong?” your heart was still pounding in your ribcage, but now you were scared, slowly trying to distance yourself from Minho as you asked, “Do you want to stop? If you want, I could forget this ever--”

“Fuck, don’t you dare,” Minho said with an undercurrent of a growl as he kept you on his lap, his hands tightening as they gripped the back of your shirt, “I’ve wanted this for far too long to stop or forget.”

“Then, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he explained, now stroking your back gently to ease your visible anxiety, “I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing.”

“Well, I was trying to take your shirt off,” you retorted, your face still hot and your lips swollen, “but I was rudely interrupted.”

Minho giggled, nuzzling his head into your shoulder, “Idiot, you know what I mean,” he lifted his head up to look at you again, and behind the clear desire in his eyes you could see the worry, “Please don’t do this and tell me next morning that it didn’t mean anything to you.”

You sighed. Your hands gently cupping his face, you placed a light, feathery kiss on his nose as you answered.

“Never.”

a/n: maybe a pt. 2? :)

#stray kids reactions #stray kids imagines #stray kids scenarios #stray kids drabbles #lee minho imagines #my fics

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theloneliestshipper · 4 years

Text

Would anyone like a tiny little distraction today? @pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome got me thinking about Leia as Darcy in a Pride & Prejudice AU and so I wrote this shmoopy little take on the proposal scene and I’ll probably add it to the Random AUs collection. Enjoy!

Leia couldn’t recall ever feeling so at ease. Between the responsibility of caring for the Organa estate and her duties at court there wasn’t time in her life for a great deal of relaxation. As much as she treasured her time out of doors she seldom took the time to recline in the shade of a great birch tree as she was now.

A gentle breeze stirred through the leaves above her head as she stretched out her limbs before letting them fall back into repose. If she inhaled deeply enough she could fill her senses with both the earthy scent of the woods and the traces of sweat and leather clinging to the rough woolen greatcoat beneath her.

Her gaze dropped to the person partially responsible for her state of rest as he idly tucked his clothing back in place. This was how it always ended. She would return to her duties and Boba Fett would saunter back down the hill to his father’s house of trade and the two of them would resume a distant public acquaintance save for the occasional assembly.

People said she was a modern idealist for attending such lowbrow country dances, but the truth was that Leia found all dances nearly intolerable and the village assemblies were full of dull conversation shouted loudly over stomping feet. There was but one reason for her attendance, and it was for the opportunity it gave her to trifle with Boba Fett under the noses of their clueless acquaintances.

He looked back at her now, a smile pulling at his usually sober mouth, and his self-congratulation over her state made her want to pull him down by his shirt collar. His smug manner was not so involitile when he lay beside her.

But this could not continue. She had made up her mind to tell him so this morning, and then upon seeing him was distracted by their amorous activities. She sighed and drew herself up to sit. “Boba, I have something to say.”

He turned to face her, his head tilted to one side inquisitively.

“I beg you to let me say it without interruption.”

At once his stance shifted, as if he were readying for a fight. Not an uncommon occurrence in his world. But even more than that, he withdrew all expression, as if anticipating some dreadful news.

“Don’t look at me like that.” She patted the space beside her in invitation.

“You have something to say,” he said without moving. “Say it.”

“Very well.” She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. “I have tried in vain to deny it, but it cannot be avoided now. I must tell you that I love you, and I think we should be wed.” This was clearly not the news he was expecting to receive, and yet he appeared more confused than elated.

Leia forged onward, trusting that his nimble mind would catch up. “I fully recognize the ridiculousness of the notion. I have reasoned with myself as I would reason with any friend about to make such a disastrous choice. I have reminded myself that your family’s profession, your father’s traitorous past and your complete lack of social connections make this match undesirable in every way...and yet my desire will not be quieted.” Rising up on her knees she extended her hand. “If you would care to make your proposal now I am prepared to accept it.”

Still, he didn’t move. He looked down at her hand, and then away. “So that I may continue satisfying your desire in a more convenient manner?”

Leia’s hand dropped to her side. “I said nothing so crass.”

“No.” His jaw was tight, dark eyes simmering with an emotion she couldn’t give name to. “You merely stated that there was no other reason to marry me.”

Her brows lifted at that. “If you heard me say that your ardor is your only charm, let me relieve you of the burden of belief. You have many admirable qualities, but I must be rational. If we are betrothed my family and friends will not hold back their opinions.”

“I’ve never sought their opinions,” he said, bending towards her. “And I have never cared about yours. This was a pleasant diversion and now it seems to be at an end.” He grasped the edge of his coat as he spoke and yanked it out from beneath her knees, brushing the grass and dirt from it with unnecessary vigor.

“You expect me to believe that you never saw our trysts as an advantage? That you never saw my companionship as the means to redeem the reputation of your father?”

“I can assure you that I was not thinking of my father while between your legs.”

“You might think of yourself. As my husband you would manage my estate. You would never have to labor for anyone else.”

“I might otherwise have the misfortune of working for someone who thinks I am inferior.”

“I have never said so!”

“Not to my face. And not until now.”

Leia drew back, indignant. “I am not prone to flights of fancy about how we are judged in this world. But I see now that I should have flattered you and appealed to your masculinity.” She straightened her arms and pulled her shoulders back, fully aware of the effect on her bosom. “You would not care to come to my bed every night?”

“I have nothing more to say to you,” he said without so much as a look in her direction. “If you can compose yourself, I will walk you back to the village.”

It would not do to traipse back alone like a milkmaid. Leia furiously set about straightening her long skirt and feeling about her neckline for any undesirable displacement of her chemise and stays. She retrieved her gloves and hat last and set off, her chin held high. The absolute nerve of Boba Fett, to imply that she was the one who was somehow deficient in character, with everything she was prepared to offer him. With everything she was prepared to sacrifice on his behalf!

She was hardly two paces down the slope when she heard her own thoughts with different ears, perhaps ones more similar to the man who walked silently a half step ahead. He was right, of course, there was nothing inferior about working in trade. His father might have once been branded a traitor but he also was granted a full pardon and gave every indication of being reformed. Leia was a firm believer in the equality of all, even though the society she was born into held different opinions.

Perhaps she cared more for their opinions than she thought.

When they reached the alley between the stable and the leather shop, Boba surveyed the exit into the street, just as he always did. “I see none of our acquaintances,” he said shortly when he returned to her side. “Good day.”

“Boba, wait-” she put a hand on his arm, and he raised an eyebrow.

“Someone might see.”

“Let them.” She dropped her hand, however. She couldn’t bear to touch him and see such coldness in his eyes. “I am in the wrong, and I am ashamed of myself. I can only hope that you’ll forgive me in time, when I’ve shown myself to be corrected.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“No, I beg yours. It was ungracious of me to assume that you would propose on command. If you never sought my affection then I have no right to expect yours but...I spoke truthfully, if badly.” It was even harder to look into his eyes now, knowing that she might well be rejected. “I would marry you, if you asked. Without condition or expectation. Simply for your good company and in the hopes that I might one day have your love.”

He looked down at her, his mouth parted just a little. His eyes were not cold but held the motion of a thousand thoughts flying through them.

“If that is not your wish, then I hope-”

“You have it.” He said abruptly. He took her hand and held it both of his. “You have my love, Leia. You spoke truthfully, and I did not. So we are both at fault.”

Her heart lept as the warmth returned to his gaze. “I am far more at fault.”

“But also more likely to admit it.” He raised her hand and kissed it, and she could feel the achingly familiar press of his lips through her glove.

“Mr. Fett. Were you not just concerned about what people might see?”

“There is nothing to see apart from a man kissing his betrothed.”

Until that moment she never thought it was possible to feel the peace of the trees and the breeze inside herself. “Is that truly what you want?”

“If it were up to me we would go to the priest at once and then to bed for the rest of the afternoon.” He lowered her hand but didn’t release it. “But that would only lead to speculation, so we have to do things properly, I suppose.”

“Yes. With all the announcements and all the arrangements.” Her fingers squeezed his. “But we shall at least have more excuses to be in one another’s company. And after the wedding...there will be nothing to keep us apart.”

#boba fett/princess leia #austen au #pride & prejudice #I'm so sorry Jane #my fic #for the sake of keeping this brief Leia came around quicker than Darcy #also had to cut the subplot where she saves one of Boba's younger brothers from being kidnapped into the navy #fluff #secret lovers #classism

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picsofsannyas · 3 years

Text

Osho says. Hein Steff, there is nothing wrong in being homosexual.

BELOVED MASTER, I AM HOMOSEXUAL. I FEEL TERRIBLY OPPRESSED AND STRICKEN BY THE STIGMA OF HOMOSEXUALITY. IT SEEMS FALSE TO ME TO COME HERE TO FIND A WAY TO COME CLOSER TO MYSELF AND AT THE SAME TIME NOT TO HAVE THE COURAGE TO SHOW MYSELF THE WAY I AM. THEN I WANT TO RESIGN AND RETURN HOME SO THAT I DON'T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT ANY LONGER. WHAT CAN I DO?

Hein Steff, there is nothing wrong in being homosexual. You need not feel guilty about it. One certainly has to go beyond sex, but that is as much applicable to heterosexuality as it is applicable to homosexuality. Heterosexuality or homosexuality are just styles of the same stupidity! You need not feel guilty.

In fact, looking at the population of the world, homosexuality should be supported. At least you will not be increasing the population of the world, you will not be loading the earth more. It is already loaded too much. Homosexuality should be valued, respected -- it is pure fun! Heterosexuality is dangerous. And what is wrong? If two persons are enjoying each other's bodies, nothing is wrong. It should be their concern; nobody else's business to interfere.

But the society is continuously interfering in everything; it does not leave anybody any privacy. It enters in your bedroom too. Your society is not a free society. It talks of freedom and democracy and all that rot, but it is pure slavery. It is a big prison. And your priests and your so-called God are all Peeping Toms. They are all looking into your private lives, what you are doing. It should be nobody's business.

What is wrong in loving a man or a woman? Two men can love each other, two women can love each other. Love is a value in itself. And fun should not be condemned. Life is already such a burden, such a drag, such a boredom. Leave at least something in life so people can feel a little less bored.

Here you need not feel afraid to show yourself the way you are. My whole approach is to help you to be the way you are because that is the only way to help you transcend it. Feel guilty and you will remain the same. Guilt never transforms anybody.

And homosexuality is such an innocent phenomenon. Why is it so much condemned? The reason is that if it is not condemned, the fear is that almost everybody will turn homosexual because every child has the tendency. Every child passes through the stage when he is homosexual. Every boy, every girl, passes through a time when boys like boys and girls like girls. The fear is that if many people turn homosexual -- and particularly in the past when the population was not big and every society wanted more numbers because numbers meant power.... To allow homosexuality was dangerous; it had to be condemned, absolutely condemned, so much so that in a few countries it is the greatest crime.

For example, in Ayatollah Khomeiniac's country, Iran, it is one of the greatest crimes. You can be imprisoned for your whole life or you can even be sentenced to death, just for being homosexual. It seems absolutely absurd, ridiculous, but in the past there was some reason in it. Every society wanted to be more powerful. It was a constant struggle -- a struggle between groups, struggle between tribes, struggle between clans -- the deciding factor was your number, how many you are. If people become homosexual, then the population will decrease; hence it has to be condemned as the greatest sin.

It may have some meaning if you think of the past, but in the present it is absolutely meaningless. In fact, the whole situation has become just the opposite: now heterosexuality is the danger; less numbers are needed. If humanity goes on growing this way, then we cannot support humanity, we cannot live any longer. By the end of this century the population will be so much, the poverty will be so much, that there seems to be no way out except a third world war which will kill almost everybody -- so that a few people can start the whole story again.

I have heard a story, a twenty-first century story: The third world war has happened, and a monkey is sitting on a rock taking a sunbath. A female monkey comes with an apple and gives the apple to the monkey. And the monkey says, "My God, are we going to start it all over again?"

Homosexuality is condemned because there is every possibility that if it is not condemned many more people will turn towards it. The inner tendency is there in every person. In fact, the person who is against it... the more he is against it, the more he has the tendency. Deep down, unconsciously, he knows it is there. To repress it he has to be very much against it; he feels disgusted by the very idea.

But nobody is telling HIM to become homosexual. If others feel attracted, then it is not your business to interfere or to condemn them. It is their freedom, and they are not doing any harm to anybody. It is a harmless game -- stupid, certainly, but not a sin. But as far as stupidity is concerned all sex is stupid, for the simple reason that it is a biological urge and you are not the master of it, you are just a victim.

And you need not be so much worried about it, Hein, because homosexuality has a very beautiful origin: it originated in the monasteries. It is something religious! The first homosexuals were monks and nuns -- Christians, Buddhists, Jainas; all great religions have contributed their share to it. It was bound to be so because there are monasteries even now in existence where no woman has ever entered.

In a Catholic monastery in Europe, Mount Athos, for one thousand years no woman has entered; not even a six-month-old girl has been allowed to enter in. What kind of people are living there? A six-month-old girl and they are afraid even of that! What can they do? But repressing sex creates fear, so the whole monastery is full of men; and homosexuality is a natural by-product if only boys are together or only girls are together.

Religious people have contributed greatly. Educationists have contributed greatly, because boys have to be educated separately. They have to reside in different hostels specially for them and girls have to stay aloof in separate hostels, in separate schools. If you put too many girls together they are bound to become lesbians, because when the sexual urge takes possession of them and they cannot find a boy, then anything is better than nothing.

In zoos even animals turn homosexual -- only in zoos, remember. In their wild state they don't become homosexual. There is no need -- females are available. But in a zoo, if females are not available, they become homosexual. A zoo is worth studying. I used to study zoos because the zoo gives you many indications about human society. The human society is a big zoo because everything has become so unnatural.

Go to a zoo and watch the animals and you will be able to see many things. They become homosexuals; they never become homosexuals in their wild stage. They are FORCED to become homosexuals. They go crazy, they become insane, mad. In wild states they never become insane. No animal ever becomes mad in his wild state; he remains sane. But his sanity needs a little freedom.

A lion has a big territory in his wild state, miles of territory, and he is the king of the whole territory. In a zoo he is in a small cage. If you go to the zoo you will see the lion walking up and down the cage, up and down, up and down, the whole day. It can drive anybody mad. He needs freedom, he needs a certain territory. In such a small space he is overcrowded. He becomes angry, enraged, violent.

Many diseases never happen in the wild. For example, no animal suffers from tuberculosis or cancer, but in a zoo animals suffer from tuberculosis and cancer. Strange! In the wild there are no medical facilities for them and in the zoo every kind of medical facility is available. Doctors are there to look after them, great doctors, doing something great! What they cannot take care of on their own -- cancer, tuberculosis -- doctors help them with. Animals become victims of illnesses which they have never known before.

Human society has been so much forced to live in unnatural circumstances -- and the monastery is one of the most unnatural circumstances. It is a zoo, a religious zoo! Homosexuality was born there, so you need not feel very bad about it. You are a religious person! And you have a great lineage of homosexuals....

If you look for homosexuals you will be surprised. Many poets, many authors, many painters, many musicians, many dancers, many great people, many creative people, were homosexuals. Many Nobel Prize winners have been homosexuals.

And don't be worried about enlightenment either, because at least one homosexual I know has become enlightened -- Socrates; he was a homosexual. And there are suspicions about Jesus. I cannot prove it, they are only suspicions -- because he always moved with the boys. Those twelve apostles... who knows? But if he was, nothing is wrong in it. Socrates was certainly a homosexual. Plato was, Aristotle was. Greeks are great people!

One American girl was going to marry a Greek. The mother was very much worried. She said, "Wait! If you can avoid this marriage...." The girl was mad. She said, "No. He looks so beautiful, just like a Greek god!" The mother said, "I know, but after only a few days you will know he is nothing but a goddamned Greek! And one thing more," the mother said, "if you marry this man then remember one thing: never turn your back towards him, never! Whatsoever happens sleep on your back the whole night!" The girl got married. She insisted, and soon she found the mother was right: the Greek god was nothing but a goddamned Greek! And she was also puzzled because he was always trying to tell her, "Why don't you turn over?" -- but she wouldn't turn over; she was also stubborn! After six months all efforts failed. The Greek said, "Listen. If you don't turn over you are not going to have children ever." Then the girl had to turn because she wanted children. The Greek played a logical trick.

Greeks have been homosexuals for centuries. All their great people have been homosexuals. So you need not worry -- you have a great history behind you! Walt Whitman was a homosexual -- one of the greatest poets of all the ages. There seems to be something in homosexuality that makes people creative, or creative people homosexuals. There is something in it and I can see the point. When you stop creating children, your creativity takes new turns, new dimensions. You create poetry, you create painting.

And the people who have been condemning homosexuality for ages are also condemning it for one more reason. As far as the man/woman relationship is concerned it is always on the rocks, because man cannot understand the mind of the woman, the woman cannot understand the mind of the man. They are poles apart. That is their attraction, but that is also their conflict, constant conflict. If homosexuality is allowed, accepted, the fear is that many people will settle into it because a man can understand another man more easily -- they have the same mind. And women can understand each other more easily -- they have the same mind.

That's why homosexuals are called "gay" people. They are really gay! The heterosexuals look so sad. Whenever you see a couple you can immediately know whether they are married or not: if they are sad they are married, if they are looking dull and dead they are married. Marriage kills all joy for the simple reason that it creates so many conflicts. Hence all societies have condemned homosexuality, for the simple reason that if it is not condemned, what will happen to reproduction? In the past it had some meaning, but now it has no meaning.

Now the day has come when homosexuality CAN be accepted, should be accepted as a natural outlet of your sexual energies. I am not against it, I am not for it either. I am simply saying that if you have to live your sex you can choose your style, you are free to choose your style. If you decide to be stupid, at least you should be given the freedom to choose what kind of stupid you want to be! I give you total freedom.

My effort here is to help you to go beyond it, so if you are homosexual you have to go beyond homosexuality, if you are heterosexual you have to go beyond heterosexuality. And there are other people also who are neither, who are autoerotic, autosexual. They have to go beyond their autoeroticism. Man has to transcend sex, whatsoever kind of sex it is, because unless you go beyond your biology you will never know your soul. But meanwhile -- before you go beyond -- it is your freedom to be whatsoever you want to be.

You say, "I am homosexual. I feel terribly oppressed and stricken by the stigma of homosexuality."

There is no need to be "terribly oppressed." You must be accepting people's condemnation. Deep down somewhere you are also against it; otherwise, why feel oppressed? If people are against, let them be against! You need not declare to everybody that you are a homosexual. You need not move with a flag that you are a homosexual! You can remain a homosexual. Of course, you cannot hide it because your sex style changes your body language. The way the homosexual walks is totally different from the heterosexual; the way he talks is totally different. And he looks so gay, so happy!

So you will have to remain a little less happy, that's all. Don't look so happy, and walk a little more consciously, that's all. Don't feel oppressed and don't feel stricken by the stigma of homosexuality. That is all nonsense! And you say, "It seems false to me to come here to find a way to come closer to myself and at the same time not to have the courage to show myself the way I am."

What courage are you talking about? Here there is no question of courage. If you are homosexual you are homosexual! Here it does not need courage to declare it. Here you can write on your shirt, "I am homosexual." Nobody will take any notice of it. People will say, "So what?"

This is a totally different world. Here we accept all kinds of people: sane, insane, crazy -- we have no objection. Unless you start harming others we have no objection. And homosexuality is a harmless game, absolutely harmless. But you think that this is courageous that you are declaring that you are a homosexual. Here it is not; anywhere else it will be. And I will not suggest that you declare it anywhere else; there is no need. Why brag about it? Accept it silently, relax into it.

But you wanted to say it because it is boiling within you. Don't be worried what others say. Just look within yourself, what you are saying to your own homosexuality. You are not at ease with it. The society has corrupted you, contaminated you. The society has given you ideas. It has created a certain conscience in you and that conscience is pricking, continuously feeling hurt. Now you say, "Then I want to resign and return home so that I don't have to think about it any longer."

Just by going back home you will not be getting rid of it. Neither you will get rid of homosexuality nor will you get rid of the stigma or the feeling of being oppressed. You will have to drop your conscience that has been created by the society in you. You will have to understand yourself and clean yourself of all ideas imposed by others; only then will you be able to relax.

You ask me, "What can I do?"

Hein, don't make a problem out of it. Nothing has to be done about it. I don't tackle individual problems. My whole approach is that there are millions of diseases, but there is only one cure, and that cure is meditation.

You meditate -- homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual.... You meditate. You become more still and more silent. You create inner emptiness. You become more transparent, and then things will start changing. You will be able to see what you are doing to yourself. If it is right you will go on doing it with more joy, with more totality, with more intensity, with more passion. If it is wrong it will simply drop, just like dead leaves falling from a tree.

So I cannot suggest any specific method because to me all the problems are arising because we have become minds and we have forgotten that deep down there is a space within us which can be called no-mind. Entering that space, no-mind, will give you perspective, vision, clarity.

Meditate. Sit silently watching your thoughts -- homosexual, heterosexual, whatsoever they are, it doesn't matter. You watch, you become the witness. Slowly slowly, a distance will be created between you and your thoughts. And one day suddenly, the realization that you are not your mind. And that day a revolution has happened within you. After that day you will never be the same again. A transcendence has happened. After that, whatsoever you do is right; you can't do wrong then. And before that, whatsoever you do is wrong. So when I say I have nothing against homosexuality I am not supporting it, remember. I am not saying, "Be homosexual." I don't have anything against heterosexuality either, but I am not supporting heterosexuality. I am not supporting anything. These are all mind games -- and you have to go beyond all the games.

Your mind is created by the society.

Fifteen-year-old Bobby was running out of a theater where he had just seen a porno movie. The manager stopped him. "Why are you in such a hurry?" "My mother told me," said Bobby, "that if I ever looked at anything bad I would turn to stone -- and I have started!"

Two members of London's exclusive Explorers Club were discussing a mutual friend over large brandies and soda. "Well, I'll be damned," said the first old boy. "You say Parkhurst has gone to Africa and married an ape?" "Quite so, old man." There was a pause and the first clubman asked in a discreet tone, "A female ape, naturally?" "Of course," came the reply. "There is nothing queer about old Parkhurst."

The mind functions as an agent of the society within you. To go beyond mind is to go beyond society. To go beyond mind is to go beyond the whole history. To go beyond mind is to go beyond past. To go beyond mind is to enter into God. And then whatsoever happens is good, is virtue.

Osho.

The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 10

Ch. 12. Question 3.

#Osho #meditation #sannyas #spirituality #homosexuality

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virtual-lara · 4 years

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FHM - Rhona Mitra Interview

Interview appeared in the November 1997 issue of FHM magazine. Article was written up on fansite 'The Tomb Raider Archive'. VL Note: This interview is long and it is full of awful non-gaming questions with some cringey answers, but it was conducted in 1997 for a mens magazine.

Sex and videogames don't usually mix too well. Indeed, the popular view is that men who play them have such poor complexions and social skills that they've been forced to replace the pleasures of the flesh with bashing the hell out of pixellated monsters. In short, successful users of the chat-up line "I've top scored on Story Of Thor 2" are few and far between.

However, there is one exception to the rule. In November 1996, Tomb Raider appeared, featuring the adventures of Lara Croft. The premise of the game was that Lara, the daughter of an English aristocrat, had decided to forego her inheritance in favour of travelling around the world in search of ancient artefacts. As with most adventure games, this involved plenty of running, jumping, swimming and shooting. But unlike other games, its central character became the computer world's first sex symbol, and Lara Croft quickly catapulted Tomb Raider to the top of the games charts. With her ample chest and powerful thighs, Lara was created as the gamer's ultimate fantasy figure and the strategy worked.

Now, for the imminent release of the sequel, Tomb Raider 2, Lara is made flesh. And fortunately for us, it's in the form of 22-year-old actress Rhona Mitra, a woman sexy enough to equal the charms of the video character. As well as appearing in the press campaign for Tomb Raider 2, Rhona has recorded an album as Lara (produced by ex-Eurythmics guitarist Dave Stewart), from which the single, Getting Naked, is to be released next month. There is even talk of a Tomb Raider movie, for which Rhona ought to be a shoe-in for the lead role - a heady jump from her last big part, playing a teenage seductress in Jilly Cooper's The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous.

So, to celebrate the arrival of the new sexiest woman in Britain, what did we do? Take lots of fantastic pictures of her? Of course. Ask her a shed-load of questions about what it's like to play a character invented to satisfy the libido if a twenty-something programmer? Certainly. But first we took her to London's Trocadero centre to see if she could cut the mustard in the original gaming arena - an amusement arcade.

The truth is, she's pretty adept. She powers past three (male) opponents on an arm wrestling machine, gives a credible display at dynamo-hockey and is equally at ease bombing about on the virtual skate-boards. Her strongest suit, though, is the bowling range. After a slow start, three spares in a row see her powering into the lead as FHM skew another ball into the gutter.Only two consecutive(and highly suspicious) zero scores in the last two rounds barred the way to victory. And perhaps not surprising for a woman who's beaten stiff competition to play the most lusted after computer game character of all time, she doesn't accept second place for long. "I let you win, you know," she smiles triumphantly.

FHM:

Games fans are notoriously obsessive. Are you ready to be pursued by blokes thinking that you really are Lara Croft?

Rhona Mitra:

After The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous I had a lot of bizarre fan mail. I remember receiving a beautifully-typed letter from twelve boys in Exeter asking if I'd marry them all. Apparently I was supposed to be shared on some kind of weekly rota system. I was thinking, "Hmm, two a day. How am I supposed to manage that?" And I've already had people post notes on the Lara Croft website thanking me for improving their sex-lives.

FHM:

And how exactly have they done that?

Rhona Mitra:

They get their girlfriends to dress up as Lara, like I do. Apparently, it works wonders for them - maybe it's the rubber outfit.

FHM:

Do you think it's scary that there are men out there fantasising over a computer-generated character?

Rhona Mitra:

No, because men will fantasise about anything. Compared to a sheep or whatever, I think Lara's quite a healthy fantasy. What's wrong with wanting to sleep with a computer-generated character? She's got a perfect figure after all.

FHM:

Talking of perfect figures, there was a story in the tabloids about you having a breast enlargement operation performed by your dad...

Rhona Mitra:

That was rubbish. My dad is a surgeon and he does do cosmetic surgery, but he doesn't perform breast operations. I don't think he was too bothered about it, though - apparently a load of people phoned up the hospital where he works, the next day asking for tits like Rhona Mitra.

FHM:

But you have had your breasts enlarged.

Rhona Mitra:

Yes, but my dad had nothing to do with it.

FHM:

Where does the name Mitra come from?

Rhona Mitra:

It's Indian - my dad is from Calcutta. But I'm also part Irish. It's a confusing heritage. I never know if want to be running across fields with no clothes on or sitting in the pub drinking Guinness.

FHM:

The Lara Croft single is called Getting Naked. When was the last time you were naked in a public place?

Rhona Mitra:

I don't think going starkers in a public place is especially commendable. You can go to Stringfellow's for that. Although they don't get it all off there, do they? The song is really about one night stands and a woman saying that she'll go so far but not the whole hog. Why does all frolicking have to end in penetration?

FHM:

Does Lara have sex, then?

Rhona Mitra:

I should bloody well hope so. I'm sure she wouldn't be the woman she is unless she did.

FHM:

You recorded half the album sailing down the Amazon in Dave Stewert's boat. If the boat had run aground, would you have been prepared to eat him in order to survive?

Rhona Mitra:

Hmm, he hasn't really got enough fat on him...

FHM:

That beard might have been a bit tough to chew as well. Maybe you could have stuck it on your face when you'd finished eating the rest of him.

Rhona Mitra:

I would have worn the beard proudly. It's a fine feature.

FHM:

You were expelled from two boarding schools. Naughty girl, were you?

Rhona Mitra:

No, I just had a problem with complying with the rules. I went to convent school and it was totally ridiculous. We weren't even allowed to go into town at the weekend. So we used to nick holy wine from the church and drink it in the potato patch at the back of the school. I remember one time me and a few girls ended up dancing in the garden at four in the morning, wearing nothing but wellington boots.

FHM:

Is that why they kicked you out?

Rhona Mitra:

No, that was for taking a sixth former's car and driving it down to the local boys' school. I was only about fourteen. I'd left stuffing under my bedsheets but one of my friends told on me and the headmistress tracked me down. They put me in this room with bars on the windows to punish me. I was stuck in there for a whole week with just a rosary for comfort, having my dinner brought in on trays. The only time I got out was to say confession to the school priest. After that, they booted me out. Then at the next school the other girls used to blame me whenever they got caught for something, so all the parents wrote in and said they didn't want me at the school. I crammed my exams in London and did fine.

FHM:

You recently said that Lara represents the woman of the future. So what is the woman of the future going to be like?

Rhona Mitra:

She'll be more robust. In order to be strong in the mind, women are going to have to build up their bodies. Having a big arse will be alright, having a big pair of breasts will be alright, as long as they exercise as well.

FHM:

We had a discussion in the office about men of the future, and we reckon that evolution will make their heads and penises bigger.

Rhona Mitra:

Sounds good to me.

FHM:

Okay. Let's test your credentials for playing Lara Croft. To start with, when was the last time you raided a tomb?

Rhona Mitra:

Er, I haven't. I only raid my friends' wardrobes. And my dad's drinks cabinet when I was a kid.

FHM:

Would you take on a bear unarmed?

Rhona Mitra:

I'd probably try and cuddle and sweet-talk it. I've charmed men worse than bears.

FHM:

Can you handle yourself in a fight?

Rhona Mitra:

Absolutely. I had the whole Swiss army after me once. I was skiing with friends and we were getting hassled by some guys who wanted us to dance. They ended up calling us dykes and then turned nasty. I kicked one in the ribcage. It turned out that he was with a load of Swiss army guys and they chased us up the road. We ran faster than them, though.

FHM:

Some Tomb Raider websites feature a nude Lara Croft. Would you ever emulate them and do Playboy?

Rhona Mitra:

I'd never say never. But not right now. It's not even negotiable.

FHM:

What about the orgasmic noises Lara makes when she bumps into walls? Have you been perfecting those?

Rhona Mitra:

Oh yes, of course. Listen. [Makes weird orgasmic noise not unlike "Uuh!"]

FHM:

Lara spends most of her time in caves full of gun-wielding nutters. What's the most dangerous situation you've been in?

Rhona Mitra:

I got buried under sand in Tunisia. I've just shot a film there called A Kid In The Arabian Knights. We were supposed to be mocking up this sandstorm and I was buried right up past my head, but I couldn't breathe because the sand was so heavy. I had to breath through a bamboo straw for about twenty minutes. The crew were getting their cameras up and I was screaming "Hurry the fuck up, I'm dying under here."

FHM:

Did you used to play computer games when you were growing up? I remember getting hooked Jet Set Willy on the ZX Spectrum.

Rhona Mitra:

I had an Atari. I used to play that tennis game where you had two bats at either end of the screen and had to try and keep the ball in play.

FHM:

You mean Pong!

Rhona Mitra:

That's the one. But I used to do a lot of things to entertain myself. Do you remember those portable tape recorders that had flat speakers on the top? I used to put a piece of cellophane on top of the speaker and crumble biscuits on top of it. I'd then play Super Trooper by Abba at full volume and watch the crumbs jump up and down with the vibrations.

FHM:

Blimey. You were easily pleased.

Rhona Mitra:

That's not all. I loved pouring yoghurt all over my dog and watching him lick it off himself. And when my parents had dinner parties I'd chop up his dog food into chunks, put cocktail sticks in it and then walk around the living room in a sari asking if anyone wanted hors d'oeuvres.

FHM:

The guests must have loved you. Have you carried any bizarre habits or phobias into adulthood?

Rhona Mitra:

I can't sit still. That's why I'm very difficult in a relationship. Men get jealous of me travelling - they don't understand that just because I disappear on my own doesn't mean I'm going to shag someone else.

FHM:

Have you always been faithful?

Rhona Mitra:

Always. But I can appreciate why people wouldn't be. It's like ice-cream - you can really love vanilla, but you still want to try some other flavours just to make sure that you really do love vanilla best. I haven;t actually been out with that many men. I've been in two relationships which have taken up five years of my life. The second one of those recently ended and since then I've concentrated on my work.

FHM:

What kind of man do you go for?

Rhona Mitra:

I like healthy-looking guys with good, clean skin. And I like men who have brains but are still very childish. Immature guys.

FHM:

Are you actually any good at Tomb Raider?

Rhona Mitra:

Yeah. I finished it in about two weeks.

FHM:

I heard that Bruce Willis has bought the rights to the Tomb Raider movie and that Demi Moore is pencilled in to play Lara. Could you have her?

Rhona Mitra:

Oh yeah, of course.

FHM:

Be careful. After filming GI Jane, she's quite buff these days.

Rhona Mitra:

So am I. And I'm younger than her. The idea of her playing Lara is sacrilege. She has to be a posh English girl with a stiff upper lip.

FHM:

Finally, elsewhere in this issue we discuss the phenomenon of lesbianism. Have you ever been tempted by the charms of another girl?

Rhona Mitra:

Any woman who says she hasn't isn't truly a woman. Even if you don't go as far as doing something physical, you should be able to appreciate the female form. Men are beautiful too, though.

All rights belong to FHM and/or their affiliated companies. I only intend to introduce people to old articles and preserve them before they are lost.

#Tomb Raider 2 #TR2 Interviews #All Interviews #VL Posts

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lokismercedes · 5 years

Text

A History Lesson and a Date

A Loki x reader one-shot based on the Valentines Day prompts from loki-the-fox:

44: “Yeah nothing says ‘I love you’ more than bouquet that’ll die in two days time.”

46: “My mom gave a rose because she felt sorry for me”

Author: Lokismercedes

Summary: After you and your husband split, your uncle Tony Stark moves you and your 16 year old twin daughters into the compound. A certain raven haired god takes a keen interest in you three and in turn you give him a history lesson about Valentine’s Day.

You had gotten pregnant in high school when you were 16. Even though it was incredibly hard you still managed to finish school and graduate. Your uncle Tony was disappointed to say the least, but he always supported every decision you ever made. Telling him that you wanted to keep the baby (Even after you found out it was twins) was no different. Your mom had kicked you out when you told her, and immediately uncle Tony demanded you move in with him. When you were 20 you met your husband. After a whirlwind of a romance that lasted 6 months he proposed and you said yes, a month later you two were married in a small ceremony that only a few friends and family members attended. Now eleven years later, here you were, living with Uncle Tony again after being kicked out. He truly was a God send and the only family member that didn’t shun you for getting pregnant at sixteen. Today not only marked your humiliation after finding ‘the love of your life’ cheating on you with someone who was ten years younger than you but it also happened to be Valentine’s Day. Now you were never one to really care about this holiday, but you desperately longed for the simplicity your life used to be. You missed living in Tennessee so much, the way everyone in your small town always smiled and waved at each other, and always made small talk whether they knew you or not. That was your favorite part of living in the south: The Southern Hospitality! Living in New York was VASTLY different.

On top of moving to New York with the twins you had recently started going back to school to get your Registered Nursing License. While you were desperately trying to cram a study session in this morning you noticed the girls weren’t in their room, cursing you texted them asking where they were. They both told you they were with the Asguardians in the common room kitchen eating breakfast. You blew out a sigh of relief knowing they were already eating breakfast, and knowing that Happy - Uncle Tony’s assistant - was going to drive them to school so you could worry about studying for your nursing boards. You grabbed your books and notes and grabbed the girls backpacks (They conveniently forgot in your living room of the suit you lived in) and started reading over your notes walking to the elevator to meet up with the girls.

Your boards were coming up in a couple of weeks and you knew the material easily enough, what was worrying you was the fact you also had to do a clinical exam on top of the written exam. You knew there was some things that you really needed to brush up on but the girls were way to wirey and wiggley to use them, you know you could always ask Uncle Tony or Aunt Pepper, but you feel like you have already imposed on them enough, and didn’t want to ask them unless absolutely necessary. As you stepped out of the elevator and into the kitchen of the common room you immediately heard Thors’ booming laugh, and the girls came running at you.

“Thank god we don’t have to run back upstairs to grab them.” Savanna sighed in relief.

“Is Happy here yet?” You ask them.

“Not yet, but we panicked when we couldn’t find our bags.” Dakota piped up. “Oh mom, there’s a bouquet of roses in the kitchen that has your name on the card.” She said as an afterthought.

“WHAT?!” You nearly shouted. “Please tell me they are from you two?” You say.Both girls shook their heads

“Nope, looks like you might have a secret admirer.” Savanna smirked.

“God I hope not.” You mumbled walking into the kitchen. “Morning Odinsonbros” You gave the gods in greeting.

“And what a glorious morning it is Lady Y/N.” Thor said pulling you into a hug a lung popping hug. Loki nodded in your direction and flashed you a dazzling smile.

“Girls, why didn’t you wake me up, instead of the boys?” You asked.

“Well, mom, we really didn’t want to bother you with today being Valentine’s Day and all.” Savanna spoke up. You rolled your eyes and gave them both a hug and a kiss.

“Beside, Lady Y/N, we were up anyway.” Thor smiled at you. Loki grumbled something into his breakfast indicating Thor was lying, but trying to be polite.

“Guys, I’m fine, makes me feel like you like the boys more than me, you know today really doesn’t mean much to me, never has.” You responded.

“Mom, read the card, I wanna know who sent you flowers.” Savanna urged handing you the card.

“I really don’t.” You grumbled taking the card, worried they may have come from your Soon-to-be-ex-husband. The look of worry must have been on your face because Thor asked what was wrong.

“Nothing really, hoping to hell its not from my ex.” You shrugged.

“Well if they are, can we burn them?” Dakota asked hopeful

“ABSOLUTELY! That’s the best idea I’ve heard this morning!” You beamed at the girls, earning a chuckle from Loki. You placed your notes that you were studying down on the counter and sat next to Loki. You could see him trying to read the card over your shoulder and you smirked.

“Jealous?” You nudged him with your shoulder.

“Hm hardly, just merely curious as to who’s attention you hold” Loki waved his hand nonchalantly.

“HE SPEAKS!” You winked at him, and you swore he blushed a little.You looked down at the card and read it:

Y/N,

Honey, I heard about what happened between you and H/N, and I’m terribly sorry. Here’s a little something to, hopefully, brighten your day a little. Call me when you’re free.

-XOXO Mom

You rolled your eyes, handed the card to Loki so he could read it, grabbed the roses and threw them in the trash can. All four of the people in the kitchen gave you a quizzical look.

“Why did you throw them out? I think its an endearing gesture.” Loki asked

“Too little, too late” You told him.

“Who are they from, mom?” One of the girls asked.

“Nobody important.” You shrugged. Right then Happy walked in to take the girls to school. You noticed Thor give Loki’s shoulder a squeeze and he too made an excuse to leave.

“Now why would you say your mother isn’t important?” Loki moved to take his plate to the sink, then casually leaned againsed the counter and folded his arms across his chest.

“Long story short, she kicked me out when I got pregnant at sixteen, then her and all of her side of the family disowned me.” You shrugged.

“Maybe shes trying to mend her relationship with you. Possibly for the sake of your daughters.” He pondered.

“Hm nice try Mischief, but my mom gave me a rose because she felt sorry for me, since the separation.” You tried to sound indifferent. “She really wasn’t a hands on mother to be honest, we have always had a rocky relationship.” You really wanted this conversation to end. This was actually a very touchy subject to you and you know Loki’s just trying to make you feel better.

“Or, she really does love you, and is trying to finally reach out.” He walked over to you, and you noticed he was picking at his hands

“Riiight, Nothing says ‘I love you’ like a bouquet that will die in two days time.” You quipped back smirking.

“Always the optimistic I see. Stark did tell me a little bit about this midguardian holiday. Can’t say I’m a fan of lovesick couples groping each other in public, whispering childish sentiments, and spending ridiculous amounts of money on stuff thats obviously just going to get tossed in the bin at the end of the day.” He gestured towards where you threw the roses out.

“Actually it only turned romantic around 1375, when the medieval English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote a poem called “Parliament of Foules.” where he linked the dreaded V-Day with Love. It used to be a pagan celebration called Lupercalia. Celebrated at the ides of February, it was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman God of Agriculture. Around A.D. 270 the christian church decided to place St. Valentine’s feast to Christianize the pagan belief.” You told him matter- of- factly. Loki stared at you in shock. “What? I like history and being catholic I specifically like the history of different saints.” You smirked at Loki’s absolutely stunned look.

“What else do you know about this holiday?” He asked genuinely sitting back down motioning for you to join him. “Please enlighten me more about this tediously mundane holiday.”

You sat next to him and faced him. “Um, well, lets see, nobody really knows who St. Valentine really was, there could actually be up words to 15 different people. The one that Roman Catholics seem to really focus on was a Roman Priest in the third century.” Loki was just staring at you while you talked occasionally smirking at the passion for which you spoke. “Technically in my opinion, were celebrating a temple priest that was arrested, beaten, sentenced to death, and eventually beheaded on the 14th of February.”

“What exactly was his crime?” Loki wondered

“He was helping couples wed, you see, when emperor Claudius the second made marriage illegal because he wanted unwed men for his army.” You smiled at the look of disgust on Loki’s face.

“Barbaric!” He exclaimed

“It really is, he was only canonized in 1988, by pope John Paul the second.” You were becoming more and more aware of the way Loki was staring at you, almost like he could see into your soul.

“Lady Y/N, I would love to hear more about this, lets say, over some dinner and maybe wine?” He asked almost shyly, picking at his hands again. You furrowed your brows in confusion.

“Like a date? Loki are you asking me out?” You were sure you heard wrong.

“I suppose I am.” He looked up to finally meet your eyes, he had so much riding on you saying yes. It all clicked into place now, the constant figiting, Thor squeezing his shoulder earlier, he’s always been so good with the twins, that’s why the girls never woke you up this morning! He’s been planning this and they have been helping him! Your heart was racing.

“Tell you what, Mischief, if you convince your brother to check in every now and then with the twins, maybe stay overnight with them, not only will I have dinner with you, but you can help me play nurse-” You started but was interrupted by your Uncle Tony walking in right at that moment and spitting his coffee out. Both you and Loki burst out laughing.

End

#loki-the-fox #riversdayoflove #loki x reader #twin daughters #valentinesday #thor odinson #tony stark #two ocs #Lokismercedes

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wellntruly · 6 years

Text

THE YOUNG POPE - 1x01

[*laughter*] WELL I am having a tremendous time. While on the one hand I’ve never seen anything like this before, on the other hand yes I have: this is Vatican Peaky Blinders, and no one told me. Stylized to saturation, riotous music choices, accents, people making big gloriously ridiculous monologues where you’re choking out something between laughing groaning and cheering, movie actors, slow motion, IS this just a music video?, generalized and localized high absurdity. Just all of that, plus Tommy and Lenny are both male HFICs: Hard Femmes In Charge. The one thing you can count on in this drama world is that they WILL pull the power-est of plays under a good angle. And like, tell me “It’s death to settle for things in life” isn’t the new “My suits are on the house or the house burns down.” You can’t! And now the house is God’s house.

Anyway, like, stay tuned, but is this show about jokes? The show itself is a joke, deftly telegraphed by how it’s called THE YOUNG POPE, a title so ideally hilarious that the internet fell into paroxysms of memes at the name alone. But then in the show called The Young Pope, people are just really often talking about jokes?? All the time they are talking about jokes! I need more data, but like, my eyes are open. And my mouth, in a biigg wonky grin.

Young Pope Live-Bloggin’ No. 1:

well right off the bean: Diane Keaton is also in this?? hahaha Young Pope!

it’s not Episode 1 it’s “First Episode”, I love that, holy cats

so I just invented a drink before I hit play here, I call it the San Ginencello and it’s 1.5 oz gin, 0.5+ oz limoncello, 2 oz lemon San Pellegrino. don’t break out the delicate floral Hendricks for this, go spicier (and cheaper). I used this really piney gin I’m trying to use up and actually lemon + pine makes me think “cypress”, for some reason, and that’s kinda nice and Mediterranean...for some reason, idk.

OKAY POPE TIME

delighted that HBO is apparently going to fit nudity into a show about the papacy. HBO: Where There’s A Will, There’s A Way!

oh my god is this the nudity???! are these dead babies?????!!!!! HBO YOU ARE SO MUCH MORE HBO THAN I EVER EXPECT

oh the babies are alive, and creepy CGI to boot, wait

anyway to catch up: the Young Pope has crawled out of a pyramid of babies outside the Vatican

lit choked on my San Ginencello as a basic bitch cell phone ring tone started playing over this upside down crucified Jesus statue

FLIPPY FLOPPIES

I wonder if it’s impossible for this show to not continually delight me from its mere premise

frosted pope ass. HBO…

oh, sorry, now he just Gandalf-dropped his robe to reveal unfiltered pope ass, while the camera coyly & also flagrantly pulls back and the fancy doors just close of their own volition

the staticy atonal song, the slo-mo, this is unreal arty

UNREAL ARTY!

is this just how they stand!! in real life??

I’m losing my mind.

the problem with letting someone grow up with absolutely zero religious influence save weird culture is I see black priest robes and I just think “nice” and not in a sinless way

it is really incredible the amount of naked HBO shows are, just casually, just as normal course. we’re less than five minutes in.

I can’t breathe, this stagey European art film is ALL I WANT

he just BASKS, a prima donna reverse bow, in their adoration

every shot of this looks like an Alex Prager photograph, that’s it!! god I love Alex Prager

he’s a lot better at being a speaker than I would have guessed. perhaps I thought he was coasting on his looking-like-Jude-Law-ness?

his speech is about playing! straight up playfulness! oh this young pope

hooLLLYY SHIT!!!! THIS YOUNG POPE *AIN’T* PLAYIN!!! aaahhhahahahaaha, yeeesss preach sexual liberty and access to birth control and priests getting gay married this is glorious and everyone is so shocked, cardinals are fainting, fathers are running through the marble halls, I am Living

oh, of course it was a dream. anyway still loved it.

“Who are you Lenny?” “I am a contradiction.” you are a pope named Lenny I am now Dying

beardy here is in contention for hottest priest so far. I’ll keep track don’t worry.

“I don’t eat much. Hardly anything in fact. All I have in the morning is a Cherry Coke Zero.” this is not a paraphrase, this is life & nourishment for me your humble Weird Art TV Viewer

Jude Law isn’t even American, shit son

his papal butler just offered him a regular Diet Coke in the meantime and he went “Ohhhh let’s not utter heresies, Domen. It’s death to settle for things in life.” fuck me up, these are GOOD TEACHINGS.

this speech on friendly vs formal relationships, wow! wow. really what he means is that he’s above everyone, because he is totally casual and expects everyone to remain formal. that is in fact a form of formal relationship, just a hierarchical one.

this cardinal, while on his smartphone: “Tommasino, don’t waste my time. My sins have to do with high finance and diplomacy. Even if I were to confess them, you wouldn’t understand a thing.” !! lol

lovin’ Cardinal Chat in the gardens. also apparently Voiello, previously known as Finance Bro Cardinal, is everyone’s bête noir.

is Spencer James Cromwell? does anyone else look at James Cromwell and their brain just goes “If I had woords---”

super interesting that they gave us helicopter sounds for the aerial shot of the city. I mean those were 100% added in later, so they *chose* to put the helicopter sounds in.

this moment with the man who hears confessions and “Here’s what I want you to do” with a zoom in on a statue has the feel of a HIEST and I’ve paused to enjoy it for a moment because surely I’m not watching Pope’s Eleven

I’m losing it @ this guy

this guy is hilaaaarious

what what what, did Lenny’s mom have him in secret and then become/was a nun?!

she’s Diane Keaton!!

is he wearing a hat indoors. Pope!

I am loving Sister Diane Keatons’ hokey speech with the wind blowing the white curtains this is a hoot

“Holy Father, first of all a small piece of information of a practical and picturesque nature.” shut up, omg, the dialogue in this show is off the chain.

excuse me

wow yeah whenever Lenny thinks someone is getting too uppity he just shuts them DOWN

Father Chuckles is like “guuurrrrll” at Sister Mary oh he’s a treat

the math is: one third music video, one third scathing takedowns, one third memes. that is this show.

“There’s a new pope now.” shut uuUPPP, how is this show so catty, how is it real

I’ve realized that I’ve never actually watched a Borgias, Tudors sort of court drama, all power plays and rites and riches. uNTIL NOW.

Lenny: “Was it hard, to close off the Basilica to tourists?” this nice man, mildly: “No. All we had to do was hang up a sign, saying ‘Closed’.” me: [my most helpless giggling laugh yet]

I super love this guy, Father Gutierrez, because he has an energy that this show needed. he’s a balance to a lot of what’s going on, he makes a harmony. he speaks like a gentle intelligent Aesop.

I feel like Lenny IS kind of assembling a team?? anyway this is still definitely not a Papal Caper because someone would have informed me, but that just means I’m going to need to make that myself some day

I am trying real hard to learn names here, so my silly priest who loves drama is called Federico

did Lenny just *decide* that God’s house is by the Big Dipper? the audacity of this man!

“You’re so wise, Holy Father.” “Mm. Not only that, I’m also intransigent.” NO ONE HAS EVER SAID THAT ALOUD ABOUT THEMSELVES IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, who the hell ARE YOU!!

I’m so over antiheroes and yet— I am totally enjoying the antihero Pope. THE ANTIPOPE. ahhhahahaaha

#The Young Pope #Young Pope spoilers #Pope Notes

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forestwater87 · 7 years

Note

dude dude. dude. can you do kevdan?

CAN I?! (No gifs for this one because it’s the crackiest of ships.)

(I wish there was an “I hate how much I love it” option for that question.)

and i’ll also tell you who:

proposes

Listen, the only way these garbage boys are getting married is if Daniel decides it’s necessary to be good with his religion and/or Kevin needs money. (Or a green card; he might be one of those shifty illegal Canadians.) It would be framed as a practical, unromantic decision, the Flower Scouts would go absolutely nuts over it, and it would be the most extravagant wedding ever.

Both of them would pretend it means less to them than it does, but Kevin remembers wanting a flowery wedding before his life went horribly wrong and Daniel, starting to think maybe his religion wasn’t always as right about everything as he’d always thought, begins to feel like he’s snagged onto the corner of something that had almost completely passed him by. One tiny shred of normal.

More than he deserves, for sure. More probably than either of them do. But he’ll hold onto it, if only so he feels a little bit less more grounded on this impure plane he’s stuck in.

shops for groceries

Well, assuming Daniel can’t set foot outside because he’s wanted by the police (don’t ask how a wedding would happen in that case. Facts are not important right now), Kevin has to do the shopping. Besides, Daniel doesn’t know thing one about living on his own in normal company; he can’t tell what kind of detergent’s the best.

(Neither can Kevin, but he can fake it much better. Less likely to start waving his knife around demanding to know why everything in this stupid horrible world has to be so complicated.)

kills the spiders

Kevin’s a surprisingly gentle soul; he doesn’t have the heart to kill them. That doesn’t mean he won’t let Daniel kill them, but he does draw the line at Danny playing with/examining their corpses. (Listen, Dan can’t go outside. He’s fucking bored, okay? At some point eviscerating spiders becomes less disgusting and more just a Thing to Do.)

comes home drunk at 3am

Kevin, but he’s probably a pretty functional alcoholic so it doesn’t look much different than him sober. On the odd occasions Daniel drinks, of course, he’s absolutely smashed (thank you, @directium, for this idea).

makes breakfast

Daniel’s tried to cook, once or twice; Kevin suggested it as a way to keep busy. The results were pretty disastrous, but for some weird reason Daniel got really into canning and pickling things. In addition to drugs, Kevin now sells jams/jellies/preservatives, olives, and many types of pickled vegetables. (Daniel’s thinking of moving on to drying things, like fruit. Kevin’s apprehensive, but it keeps the murderer happy so he’s just sorta letting it happen.)

This … doesn’t answer the question, at all. Do these two look like they eat normal breakfast? Let alone cook for each other?

remembers to feed the fish

They don’t keep fish. Kevin would probably forget about them, and Daniel … no one wants to think about what a bored Daniel might do alone in an apartment with fish.

decorates the apartment

Daniel’s really bored, okay? There’s not much you can do with the junk in Kevin’s apartment, but he’s watching lots of upcycling videos on Youtube and has an unhealthy obsession with Pinterest and he’s doing his best. The result is creepy, but oddly homey.

initiates duets

Daniel didn’t realize how much he missed singing until that battle with David. He doesn’t sing much, but sometimes he’ll play the violin to himself when he’s lonely. Kevin sings in the shower, but not very well and very quietly so no one can hear. He likes pop-country songs.

falls asleep first

Daniel doesn’t really sleep. Neither does Kevin. Or at least, neither of them make the decision to sleep. They spend a lot of nights watching the Food Network until they pass out on the couch/floor around 4 am and wake up at noonish.

sends the most selfies

They both have reasons to have as few photographs of themselves as possible, so … no.

makes the first move

Daniel, probably.

He doesn’t understand these feelings and he doesn’t know what to do about them and the only people he has to talk to are his roommates’ strange little children friends, who are full of ridiculous romantic notions about love and soulmates and none of it makes sense but it’s – it’s compelling, okay? Riding on hormones he’s not actively suppressing that make him feel like he’s going through a second puberty – not sure if I’m saying his cult gave him meds to control things like lust and feelings and stuff or if he just mentally shoved that stuff away but doesn’t give as much of a shit now, but either way he’s opening his mind up to things he doesn’t understand and doesn’t like but they’re very overwhelming and he’s mad at Kevin and mad at the Ancient Ones and his priest and his family and himself and so one day Kevin comes home from work and Daniel just kisses him because that’s what they do on TV, and it’s sloppy and awkward and Kevin doesn’t taste very good but it sparks something all the way down to Daniel’s toes.

When they break away Daniel rests his head on Kevin’s shoulder and groans that this non-ascended realm is exhausting.

Kevin says he’s the one that’s difficult, not the rest of the world.

Kevin might be right about that, but damned if Daniel will ever admit it.

plans spontaneous trips

Unless the trip we’re talking about is “surprise fleeing to Cuba to escape the authorities,” I don’t see these trash babies going out much.

#campcamp #kevdan #cc daniel #cc dirty kevin #cc kevin #ask forest #ship meme #this was way too fun #i'm much too invested in it now #i kinda went up a couple ratings #at first it was just kinda cute but now i'd die for it #doritofalls

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wristic · 7 years

Text

To Forsake All Love (Part 3)

Pairing: Sigurd x Reader

Word Count: 3400

Warnings: None I think, give me a heads up if there is one!

-Part 1- -Part 2- -Part 3- -Part 4- -Part 5-

@amazinggraceling @the-irish-princess @littlesnorlaxx @letsbedragonstogether @hornyorca @ivarinleatherpants

The night had been a torturous one. It wasn't the first time the sin of lust hit you like a sickness. You rolled around, too hot and then too cold for covers, legs moving this way and that for the desperation of relief, any semblance of ease the ache your parents were so adamant you resisted. You were a mess in the sheets, half driven to madness, thinking you might weep to Sigurd so he might forgive your rejection and satisfy you. He clearly had a mind he knew how.

But you remained strong, and tired. So tired. The morning came and your heart was still hammering painfully, the cold chilling the wetness down your legs. As a distraction you had a plate delivered to the study and had your breakfast alone while you wrote up and wrote up papers for the upcoming wedding. Thinking about what kind of wedding to have was just as frustrating but dishearteningly so, bouncing back and forth between a Northmen wedding or a Christian one, or a mix of the two. You could also go more traditional, celebrating old gods may also be in a way like a mix of the two. You knew a lot of the common folk still enjoyed the sayings and games. But any attempt to find joy in planning your wedding was doused by the reminder in your heart, there was only one way to do this.

“Ingweald!” The young guard stumbled in. “Send for Sigurd will you.”

“Why?” It was a genuine and innocent curiosity, but still.

“Because I asked you to.” you irritably quipped.

He nodded quickly. “Right, sorry.” Once he left you rolled your eyes, sitting back and enjoying a vine of cherry tomatoes, mind fully occupied.

“Your guard said you wanted to see me?” A sporadic pulse shot down your stomach at the sound of his voice, the sudden thought of his lips on yours shoving everything to the side like you’d never thought of anything else. Keeping it hidden you swallowed your tomato hard and motioned for the seat across from yours. As he sat down an apologetic smile came to him. “He said you snapped at him.”

“I didn't snap-” you groaned and rolled your eyes again. “Ignore him, he’s new.”

Taking a steadying breath, braiding your fingers together, you put up every shield you could think of. “How would you feel...about doing a Christian wedding?”

Sigurd raised his chin slowly, speaking as definitive as he could. “That is not going to happen.”

“See, I thought you might say that. So I’d like to make it clear that I’m not asking you to become Christian. This is simply a show to the Saxon people that absolute change is not imminent-”

“But it will be.” You held your jaw tight in both frustration and lethargy. Fighting him was the last thing you wanted no matter how inevitable you knew it would be. Weeks had gone by with the only change being your people getting more and more restless, most were in denial of the marriage to come. “They will have a Viking king, they will learn to be Viking-”

“People don’t work that way.” It shook your heart to shoot him down, but he needed to see reason. “If a Christian King barged in and declared all Vikings from this day forth to be Christian how would that end?”

Sigurd shrugged pompously. “I am the one with the army-”

“I offered my hand to avoid the army.” You snapped. For him to try and use that as his backup for ruling, you couldn’t stop the bitter tone. “Are you saying you can not hold it back?”

“I am saying the people will do as I say-”

“Or die. Which they will. Which is what I am trying to avoid in marrying you.” Leaning forward on the desk, Sigurd tensed in defiance. “The people have lost half of their family, some their whole family at your hands already. They are desperate and alone and this makes a perfect storm for rebellion if we’re not careful. They will not bend for you nor I if we can not calm their aching hearts and prove to be the leaders they need.”

At that Sigurd eased only slightly, at least looking like he was thinking about it though he crossed his arms. Still you pressed.

“Please. If you wish to have any love in this marriage you will at least consider my advice as a very real option. One that will speak volumes-”

“Yes. For both sides.” Tapping your nail on the wood, you looked away and sat back. “My own people will watch me bend the knee before a different God and you think that will go over well? You think they will still trust me?” He rolled his eyes. “Ivar is already spreading rumors...”

You answered in sympathy. “I understand. And many of people will see it for the show it is, but it is the effort that I need, that our people need-”

“Your people, are not my people.”

The air went still, your blood heating. There was a danger to such an alliance you knew that, but like a mother bear, your anger was stroked and you spoke very plainly, a certain coldness in your subdued reaction. “They will be once you marry me.”

Sigurd’s eyes dodged, tsking as he couldn’t disagree.

You sighed in an effort to calm down, “I need this alliance, but the only reason I need it is to protect what is left of my country. That means protecting them from themselves as well.”

Sigurd scoffed at you, the surprise of it only offending you further, “They are not children.”

While your gaze shifted, the glower still steady, you looked down at the mess of hate letters all claiming you were unfit to rule because you were a woman, because you’d rather not send children to die in a fruitless battle, that you were mad for submitting the land rather than burn it. “You’d be surprised.” you murmured, that exhaustion creeping up on you again.

After a moment’s pause Sigurd stood, making his way around the table. You watched him carefully before he brushed your messy bed hair back over your shoulder. There was a sweet smile to him, one that gave you some hope you could yet change his mind. “You are very tired.”

A knot released in your chest to finally have someone acknowledge that, “I just need this to be over with. So we can move on to better things.” He nodded in agreement before you asked, “So you agree? We’ll have a Christian wedding?”

Everything about him tensed and dodged you, standing up straight while looking at the door. Like a cloud of guilt sudden parked over him, Sigurd hung his head, coming back down to meet you but didn’t stop until his lips were on yours. While you didn’t pull away or squeak, you did tense, melting the longer the warmth of it flooded down your stomach. All thought had floated away as he pulled back, Sigurd submissively whispering, “I need to think on it.”

Breathing in slow and deep to gather yourself and not look too disappointed, you nodded.

The demanding tack of a cane on stone interrupted you two and you felt sick your heart dropped so fast. “I didn’t call for him.” The tone you took was more hard than you realized. Sigurd looked down at you, as rigid as a fearful hound. Bishop Edmure took slow steps in, his nose turned up at what he’d seen, Ingweald hanging his head low.

“He said he wanted to see you.” He mumbled apologetically. You bit your tongue. No doubt Edmure had threatened young Ingweald with eternal damnation if he didn’t do as the Bishop ordered. Your heart raced from the scene of yesterday, the dark purple rings on your arm hidden away under your dress suddenly making themselves aware. You didn’t want to, but swallowing your fear, you nodded to Sigurd, “I need to speak with him alone.”

Sigurd was slow to leave, not taking his eyes of the Bishop as he near sauntered his way out, slowing by Edmure to scoff at his puffed chest. The little ridicule pulled a small grin from you, the only ease you would have in Edmure’s presence.

When the door gave a dooming shut, the smile dropped and you squared your shoulders. “I hope this is important.”

“Discussing wedding plans?”

You had to bite your cheek, thinking of how he would be the one performing the ceremony. Suddenly you thought of how he would also be the witness in the consummation and the bile rose in your throat. “We were.”

“The people will not accept him even if he bows before God. They will not accept an unbaptized King.”

Looking away, you nodded, because he was right. Worse still Sigurd sounded assured he wouldn’t feign another’s religion. “Steps will be slow to take, but this is in everyone’s best interest.”

Edmure snarled at you, “God would not accept a heathen on a holy throne.” You cocked your head at ‘holy throne’. “You may think you’re saving us by becoming one of them, but God will rain down his punishment for this atrocity.”

Your teeth clamped so hard they hurt. “I don’t think that’s for you to decide.” He opened his mouth and you stopped him, “If God truly disagrees with my actions, then I will see it, and our destruction is once again as assured as it was before. Die if we do, die if we don’t, I know my choose.”

Fast for a scrawny old man Edmure rushed you, causing you to sit back. But he stopped opposite your desk, baring his teeth and red down to his collar. “You would fight God!? Who are you, little girl, to dictate his word and his orders!?”

“And who are you to claim to know his design?”

He slammed his fist on the desk, making you flinch and grow agitated with not being stronger. You were a princess, soon to be Queen, he couldn’t harm you. Yet your thumb trailed along the wrist of your wounded arm. “You dare question my wisdom? I am a priest of the lord-”

“You’re a con-man.” It took you a moment to find courage and glare up at him, standing by the words that so thoughtlessly left you.

Shaking his head he stood up, suddenly serene and all-knowing. “The devil has gotten in you girl.”

“Is that what you’ll tell them? About me? About my mother… my sister… my guards… anyone who might oppose you? The Devil is in this house and only you are so pure to resist him?” Keeping your head up, refusing to wilt under his growing scowl, “My father never appointed you for a reason. You are weak for power. He said that, those exact words, weak for power as any good god fearing holy man shouldn’t be. I will say now and only once; if you take further actions which lead you to usurping the rightful heir of the throne, I will have no choice but to see it as treason and have you executed.”

For the first time since knowing him, Bishop Edmure took back, blinking wide that the most modest Princess of Aelle’s daughters would threaten him. “And yes, that includes manhandling me like I am your own stubborn pup to beat.”

Edmure chewed his jaw, looking off for a moment before muttering, “For a moment I could have mistaken you for your father.”

You didn’t know how you felt about that, though it was surely to make you feel fearful of the future. A cold stone rest low in your belly thinking back on your father laying on the ground, white skin turning grey and eyes devoid of life. Swallowing the unwelcome feeling you spoke as stern as possible. “You’re welcome to test my conviction. However while you do so, please bare in mind; You are not a holy man in my eyes, I am willing to do whatever is necessary to keep my people safe, and I. Do not. Like you.”

He stepped back, cold and disconnected from any fear or anger. “You threaten to turn yourself into a Tyrant.”

“Than a Tyrant I’ll be, if that’s what it takes to keep the peace.” You glanced at the door, “You are free to leave.”

An order not a request, and he knew it. With one last lingering contemplative stare, he turned. You watched every step, waiting for the door to close before releasing a huge breath and melting into the seat, hands and knees shaking uncontrollably. A Tyrant was the last thing you wanted and you couldn’t imagined yourself able to kill a man. But your Father had thought so of himself once. And your Uncle before him. And your Grandfather before them. Such terrible things done in this house to ensure festering wouldn’t infect the rest of the populous. For now you prayed Edmure didn’t catch wind of your doubts, prayed that would be the end of his little holy crusade against you.

The kitchens were practically empty, a nice lull between breakfast and lunch. You found a table in the center and rested your elbows on it, your head dropping into your hands as you waited for Head Cook Alfida to come out of the pantry. You were starting to drift asleep when the strong smell of mint and warm steam filled your lungs and suddenly you were breathing and wide awake. Snapping up, Alfida was smiling sympathetically, a cup of mint tea resting on the counter between you arms.

“It’s barely noon and you look like death!”

Taking the cup and blowing into it you sighed, “I’m starting to feel like death would be the better option at this point. Just let someone else take care of this mess.”

“Oh~... it’s not all bad.” Raising your brow, Alfida glanced to the open window, the sounds of grunts and fighting taking place beyond it. Taking the follow, you held the cup close and walked to the door.

The Northmen huddled in a circle in the square, chatting for the most part while a mentor taught a few of the younger men. Why half of them were shirtless was a little beyond you, though as the coy look on Alfida indicated along with the entire female staff huddled by a corner giggling and watching, it wasn’t exactly a bad sight to behold. Breathing in the still hot tea, you rested against the wall by the door, watching the lesson and eyeing the men at the rim, finding all the brothers save for one.

“Your father cried and begged while he died.” You snapped your head to the side, finding Ivar sitting on a wooden seat that was normally reserved for Alfida on her breaks. He sneered at you, breaking from chewing on a leather strap to smile wickedly, “He was weeping like a baby before we even tied him down.”

It was hard to not rile from the taunt. Your father was tortured, of course he screamed, you had never known a man not to. Spitefully you quipped, “Well, yours raved like a madman.”

“Probably thanked Odin for a glorious death.” Ivar sat back, proud at the thought. “Sung how he would be received into Valhalla with cheer and open arms.”

Sipping your tea you muttered while looking away, terribly uncomfortable by the way he was sounding like a madman himself. “Cried out all the same.”

You could feel the glare fall and intensify, you busying your fearful instinct by sipping more tea.

“So what wedding will you be having? Because if it is not Viking, we are tempted to think Sigurd has turned his back on his people as well as his Gods. Traitor, I think is the word.” You straightened, glaring at him more out of your stress than meaning to be intimidating. He was smiling wistfully, almost dazed with the thought, “We would have to return and conquer Northumbria all over again. Put a real Viking leader on the throne.”

“All that effort, for the offense of your brother dare having a Christian wedding for the Christian people he will be ruling?” Ivar shrugged, all so inconsequential. You scoffed, trying hard to not roll your eyes and contemplate the reasons Sigurd’s people were still so uncivilized. “This marriage isn’t for me and it isn’t for him. It is for the greater good of the people.”

Ivar however didn’t hold back rolling his eyes. “Greater good, what does that even mean?”

Starting to lose your patients you inched away from him, desperate to find an excuse to leave his company. “It means I concern myself with a world larger than myself. That innocent people shouldn’t have to die on my pride.”

He chuckled at that, like it was such a silly notion. As he opened his mouth, Sigurd barked from a distance, Ivar suddenly overcome with exhaustion. Sigurd made his way from the group and stopped by you, protectively grabbing at your arms. The two starting bickering back and forth in their language, the words sounding more and more vexed with each round before Ubbe snapped at them both, the names alone a call for them to stop.

Sigurd looked between you and Ivar, deciding to lead you away to round the corner out of earshot, Ivar smirking triumphantly like the whole purpose of the former conversation was to get under Sigurd’s skin, not yours. “Did he say something that made you uncomfortable?” Sigurd huffed at himself, petting you down like you were frantic and sobbing. “What am I saying of course he did. Ignore what he says, Ivar is just… Ivar.”

Breathing in the mint you nodded, “Yes, making people uncomfortable does seem to be his nature.” As you sipped, Sigurd watched before erupting in a laugh, you joining to see his relief so relished. “Really now, I can handle myself.”

You let a few beats go before readying to sore his mood. “How much power does he have in the army?”

Sigurd gave some vague sound, seemingly confident it was none until he let his thoughts wander, looking out in the courtyard before reassuring himself, “Not much.”

Shifting, you asked, “Do you think it would be enough to cause us trouble?”

“Ivar? No. He wouldn’t.”

Licking your lips you glanced at the men and women that filled the square. “But could he, if he wanted?”

There seemed to be something Sigurd didn’t want to admit, eyes roaming the people, not saying anything to agree or disagree. Backing down, you tilted yourself into his view and smiled. “Thought for another time perhaps. We should just focus on the wedding.”

“Yes.” Sigurd breathed, taking a step closer before asking, “That man you met with…”

“Appointed Bishop Edmure.” you grumbled. “My mother’s rash decision after the former was slain in the battle. He’s harmless.”

“Harmless-harmless, or harmless like my brother?” He nodded in the direction of Ivar, and the way Ivar had shamelessly mocked and threatened war did make you uneasy. Instead of admitting Edmure basically made the same threat, you gave the ground a face that said it for you.

Warm and calloused hands fell on your wrists, holding them gently while yours protected the soothing warm cup. “If the priest makes you uneasy, you never need to be alone with him. And if he lays a hand on you-”

“O-oh you don’t need to-”

“I will kill him.”

You knew he was going to finish his sentence with something like that, and while it gave you a bit of a fright at first, somehow the sincerity in his eyes, the assured but aware grip on your wrists, somehow it made you smile, it made you start giggling. He asked with a half smile.

“Why are you laughing?”

“I don’t know.” You chuckled, feeling your cheeks warm in a blush. “It’s such an absolute promise. You don’t think there would be context to determine otherwise?”

Sigurd’s brow knitted, shaking his head, “No.”

You shrugged, still smiling. “Okay then.” You let a last nervous laughter escape, “Thank you. I’ll remember that.”

When you brought your eyes back up you found his mouth agape, wanting to say something but seemingly unable to. Instead he dropped it, smiling with you before leaning in, you quickly turned your head away. “N-not here. Not in front of everyone.”

“What do they care?” He whispered.

“Mine will care. They would see it as inappropriate especially for someone of my status. Of our status.”

You could feel the disappointed breath that escaped him run down your neck, yet Sigurd obediently leaning back. “Than I suppose we have our duties to get back to.” Taking steps back toward the group he pointed to you, “I will say it again. I do not like this whole sin business.”

Your smile turned bashfully wide, because a large part didn’t like refusing his kisses either.

#Sigurd #sigurd snake in the eye #sigurd ragnarsson #sigurd x reader #sigurd imagine #vikings imagine #To Forsake All Love #my stuff #when you're gothic brother in law is creepy but you have to deal with it #why am I so tempted to have a love affair tho #like it's such a good set up that Sigurd is so terrified Ivar will hurt her he doesn't see the opposite coming a mile away #also Ingweald is a gangly 15 year old for reference

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balioc · 7 years

Text

So if my historical sources are telling me the truth...

...and I’m synthesizing the history properly...

...then, in fact, the entire edifice of Western civilization -- all the cultural, social, and philosophical structures that define the world in which we live today -- can be traced back to a stupid loophole in Roman inheritance law.

NOTE: Everything here is taken either from Francis Fukuyama’s The Origins of Political Order or from a Livejournal post by the Infamous Brad that I am currently unable to find. I get credit for absolutely nothing, except noticing the connection between Section II and Section III.

What do I mean by “the entire edifice of Western civilization?”

Here, I mean the vague-but-enormous memeplex that can be summed up in the word “individualism.” The thing where each person is understood to be a social unit unto himself, with his own destiny and with rights to his own person, capable of charting an independent path through life. The thing where you pick your own job and your own mate and your own friends and your own hobbies and your own ideals. The thing where “freedom” is even a meaningful concept because we conceive of humans as being potentially free of each other.

Obviously, this whole individualism thing has both a lot of sources and a lot of ramifications. But an absolutely central part of it, something without which it cannot survive or cohere, is economic individualism: the idea that an individual person can own property in his own right, with full and complete title to it, including the right to alienate (sell) it as he pleases. Without that, well, people can’t really act as free individual agents unless they’re prepared to give up all their resources, because all their resources are at least partly controlled by someone else.

[Within any kind of historical economy, anyway. Let’s leave complicated ideas about the post-scarcity future for another discussion.]

The main alternative to individualism is the tribe. Within a tribal system, an individual basically isn’t a meaningful social unit, he is a component of his kinship group. The tribe owns all the property, and you can’t sell it off, because everyone in the tribe (including all those yet to be born) have a claim on it. You have duties to the tribe, and those duties define your life, even if maybe you personally would rather do something else. You are bound to work, and marry, in a way that advances the tribe’s interests. If you have wealth or power, it is incumbent on you to use it in a way that advances the tribe’s interests. You get the idea.

This tribe thing is the default social setup for humans. It dominated most of the great premodern civilizations. In India, pretty much all of society was built around kinship groups (jatis). In the Arab world, tribal ties were always paramount -- so much so that basically every successful Arab empire had to use slaves to run the government and the military, just on the grounds that foreigners without families wouldn’t funnel all the empire’s resources to their tribes. The situation in China was a little different, since the kinship groups got kicked in the teeth early by Qin Shi Huangdi’s massive centralized bureaucratic state, but they were always there and always fighting to hang onto what power they could. Etc.

But not in Western Europe. Individualism took root in Western Europe really early. You had contracts, and common law, and alienable property, going back to at least the early Middle Ages. Same goes for the primacy of the nuclear family over the extended family, and cultural models of the non-family-defined free man. The Enlightenment was building on a very firm foundation.

When people talk about the importance of the Hajnal line, this is the thing that they’re trying to get at.

II.

Why Western Europe, and not anywhere else?

Because, right from its inception, the Roman Catholic Church -- and only the Roman Catholic Church, not (for example) any of its Eastern Orthodox counterparts -- engaged on a systematic campaign to destroy the family.

...I say that in in a funny way, but it’s true. There were a staggering number of major rulings issued by the early Church that amounted to “kinship groups aren’t allowed to do the things that make them function.” Most famously, cousin marriage was banned, which meant that it was extremely difficult for kinship groups to avoid diffusing into each other and that they couldn’t shore up the most important alliances across generations with family ties. Less famous but also very important was the banning of “Levirate marriage” (the marriage of a widow to her husband’s brother), which is a really useful technology if you want to keep all your tribe members within the tribe. The very fact that the Church pushed hard for the legitimacy of female-owned property was a big part of this, since it meant that kinship groups were risking losing some of their stuff whenever one of their members got married. And all sorts of rules about priestly behavior, including clerical celibacy, meant that priests couldn’t continue to serve as useful assets to their clans.

(Insofar as this stuff didn’t come from the Church directly, it mostly came from lawmaker monarchs like Charlemagne, whose agendas tended to be intertwined with the Church’s agenda.)

OK. So, uh, why was the RCC such an implacable enemy of the kinship-group system?

The short answer is “because it was closely allied with the social subclass of wealthy widows.” Widows tended to give lots and lots of money, and land, to the Church. This didn’t work so well if a widow’s stuff would all just get reappropriated by her husband’s clan. So the Church did everything it could to support a woman’s right to keep her dead husband’s property, and the women reciprocated by donating a hefty proportion of that property.

The question remains, though...why did this particular form of mutual back-scratching manifest only in Catholic territories? Why weren’t the Orthodox churches, or the various Hindu temples, doing exactly the same thing?

III.

It turns out that upper-class Roman men liked younger women. Much younger women. The average patrician wedding involved a man in his late twenties or thirties, or even forties, and a girl in her early teens.

(Brief explanation: as a rule, everywhere, aristocratic men get married when their financial and political prospects have been firmly established. Why would a bride’s family choose to roll the dice? In Rome, for various reasons, this didn’t happen until fairly late. But Roman medicine was super shitty and nutrition was poor, so it was generally desirable to marry the youngest possible woman for fertility-maximizing reasons.)

This meant that, if an upper-class Roman wife managed to avoid dying in childbirth, she was almost certain to outlive her husband by quite a lot. Aristocratic Roman society was filled with youngish widows. There was at least one in basically every patrician family.

The result: as civilizations go, Rome was slightly more concerned than average about the plight of women who’d lost their husbands. Which is important, because traditional kinship-group-based inheritance law is ridiculously terrible for widows. All the husband’s stuff gets reclaimed by the tribe, the widow is left dependent on the mercy of a family that isn’t even her family (as such things are understood), and she is very likely to die or to be functionally enslaved.

So the Romans came up with a kludge. Widows were, technically, allowed to keep their husband’s property in their own name...but there were a ton of restrictions on what they could do with that property. The idea was to keep the great estates intact until the women in question either died conveniently or found a way to get married again.

One of the very few things that propertied widows could do with their money was donate it to temples. Unimpeachably respectable, right?

...except that Rome was infested by this up-and-coming, wildly expansionist cult that was desperate for cash and upper-class recognition.

A whole bunch of the early Roman bishops got their churches off the ground essentially by serving as money-laundering operations for rich widows. The patrician women in question would “donate” vast fortunes to the Christians, with the explicit understanding that they would continue to control most of the money. Even so, the churches were getting vastly more support from this system than they were going to get anywhere else. And some of the widows in question even came to decide that they were actually pious.

So the Church fathers arrived at the conclusion that wealthy widows were their best friends. And the rest is, as they say, history.

#history #speculation

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dawnsavant · 7 years

Note

★ Denastien~

From snowflakes drifting on a playful breeze, to all the cold fury of a blizzard obscuring in frigid white, to serenity in a crystalline world of ice…

Denastien.

Andreo breathed a quiet sigh to himself. He had a knee propped to a table in the manor’s library. Sitting in a chair leaned back on two legs, he teetered himself back and forth in small rocking moments. He thumbed a pen from side to side, its end catching the light with a gleam.

What could he even say of Denastien?

★ Lord Denastien Dalendal

I like you a whole lot and I might have to tell you that pretty much all the time.

I hate you / I dislike you

I love you, Snowstorm.

You are family, you are helping me feel like I even can reconnect with family, you are giving me a whole new family, and we are making ourselves into a family and how amazing is that. (Though I’m still not too terribly sorry for conspiring to murder one member of it in the past.)

I would take a bullet for you, with no questions or complaints, but please pamper me afterwards.

I would shoot you, but, uh, probably with one of those ridiculous training wands, or a water gun, or… I don’t know, if we needed to fake a death or something maybe.

I would lie to your face. I am not capable of lying to your face, or… in your general direction, oh, whatever. Also your face is pretty great, just so you know.

I would say something cruel to you on purpose, and I bet you’d like it, too.

I would say something cruel to you accidentally, because, you know, it’s an accident, and then I’d probably spend the next half an hour trying to make up for it.

I would cheat on you. No. I tell you my interests.

I would physically hurt you, and I bet you’d like it, too.

You annoy me

You amuse me, pretty much endlessly. Probably getting laugh lines because of you, uhg. All your fault.

I’d laugh at you, but you know I never mean anything callous by it. If it truly offends, I will absolutely make certain to not do so again at that situation.

I’d laugh with you, and sun, I hope we always can find things to laugh about.

I’d manipulate you, and I bet you’d like it, too.

You scare me. It’s pretty great. It’s by far and large the good kind of scary. Even the scares that are not so great are fascinating and learning experiences. I also get scared for your sake, which is an interesting experience unto itself.

You confuse me. I don’t think I’ve ever been too confused by you. Just a little miscommunication once in a while, but even then you are patient and have never balked at trying to find clarity.

I wish I knew you better, somehow?! I mean, I signed up for this. I am all in. I’m going to learn all of your weird secrets, man. Freckles in strange places? Childhood daydreams of wanting pets, or the name of that school instructor you hated growing up? I am THERE.

I trust you, implicitly.

I don’t trust you

You inspire me. You inspire me so much. Maybe not to frenetic periods of obsession and creation as I’ve suffered in the past, but on some level that I don’t know how to quantify or put into words properly. I know I tell you this every once in a while, but - light, you inspire me.

I consider you an equal in every regard, though our strengths, experience, and specializations may be different.

You are beneath me once in a while wink wink nudge nudge

You’re better than me. Strangely, I feel this deserves expanding upon in and of itself. I have idolized, grown limerent in regards to, and placed others upon pedestals in the past. After giving it some thought, I do not believe I fall into this pattern of behavior with you. Equal in every regard. I mean it, I am absolutely glad to have you beside me, rather than seeing one of us as better or worse than the other in some manner.

I would trust you with my life, and have plenty of times. Okay, there may be one exception to this. You know exactly what that situation is, and it so does not count, because even that thin line is very trusting and we’ve not made any major mistakes yet.

I think you’re mean, and I also think it’s equal parts hilarious - or prudent - in the situations where this is even applicable.

I think you’re pretty. Oh, light, and how. Delicate, eloquent, graceful, elegant. Ah, words. Singular descriptive words do no justice. A silken sash caught in a play of the breeze, shimmering as it catches the light. The bounce of shining curls as they fall just so after half a spin. The perfect jingle that bangles make as they slide down a slender forearm in a row. How it feels to watch a cat effortlessly leap from rooftop to wall with perfect precision and balance. Even these hardly feel evocative enough.

I think you’re petty, given the right circumstance and situation. But we had some pretty amazing conversations over some of the little things that we both get petty about, and I love it.

I think you’re childish. I think you go to some lengths to not have ‘childish moments’ as it were where most could see, but it’s absolutely wonderful when you let them slip through. There’s a… a… kind of enthusiasm and charm in these moments that is spectacular. I’m not going to forget playing in the snow, both real and imagined, nor some of the memories you’ve shared of your younger years.

I think you’re smart. In fact, I think you’re pretty damned smart. Smarter than anyone else, or even you, give yourself credit for sometimes. You’ve come up with some brilliant, creative spells and solutions, and I am absolutely convinced that you will do incredible things as time goes on and as inspirations come to you.

I think you’re stupid. Stupid hot maybe. Stupid smart. Stupid sexy. If I write this down where people can see it do I get a free kiss?

I think you’re a bad person.

I think you’re a good person. Maybe not always the nicest, nor the most altruistic, nor always patient with others. Maybe you have not always done so-called good things, even been outright cruel or destructive or harsh otherwise, and maybe we will continue to do some not so ‘good’ things, as it were. But you are a good person, and you are always trying to be better in some regard. That counts for so, so much. You’re good to me, too.

I’m not sure what kind of person you are

I wish you would listen to me. I mean, you do, but I want you to, too!

I want to make you proud. I hope I do, truly. I know I can be slow to act, and spend time overthinking or picking apart problems in excess, but… I hope I make you proud with what I do, how I have grown, how I handle myself, challenge and compliment you, and a host of other small details.

I want to impress you. With pretty much all of these things stated just previously, and, well. I want to surprise you, even when we’ve hardly any surprises left between us. I want to challenge you to new heights, inspire you, and frankly to be impressive alongside you.

I wish you would notice me. You do. But… I might do silly or sensuous things just to bask in stealing your attention.

I would hurt other people for you. Point me at the who and the when and I am THERE. Seriously. I’m a pretty healer priest: they’ll never see it coming.

I’m not sure how to make you happy. I think I have a pretty good handle on the kinds of things that bring you cheer, but if things need changing up over time, tell me!

I’m a bad influence on you, and I bet you like it, too. I readily confess to encouraging you on in manners and over matters which could be dangerous, under normal circumstances, for an average person.

You deserve better than me. Nah. I think you deserve better situations, and for your needs to be met whatever they may be, but I’m entirely intent to help you in any way I possibly can. If that includes other people who fit a niche or earn your adoration… we talk about it, yes? Yes.

We make a great team. Sun, I love working with you. Studying with you. Exploring with you. Figuring out how to move furniture with you. Fussing over flowerpots and lights. Working out little problems. Even the times where we see or want totally different things. You know, all that stuff.

I’d have a one night stand with you, and it’s like we might have had a whole year of them nigh-consecutively, or, you know, a whole lifetime of them. Is tomorrow good? And like all of next week? And–

I’d have a relationship with you. Fancy that. It sure would be nice. Be my friend, gorgeous?

I would marry you. Wait. Didn’t we… shit. Shit, this got real. I was even the one who proposed first. What the fuck. So much for my being absolutely, one hundred percent convinced I was ‘never doing that again’ right? Right. Now you’re stuck with me and my sense of humor.

I fantasize about our life together. It’s kind of corny to say it, but… true.

I would trust you with my most treasured belonging, and I have. Several of them in fact. I mean, an heirloom or two, some of those books are damned near priceless, and many of the things I’ve brought into the manor or placed in the vault have incredible amounts of sentimental value.

I would tell you my darkest secrets. If they come to mind, anyway. Pretty sure you know the lot, specific situations and bits and pieces of history that just haven’t come up in chatter aside. There’s nothing I am intentionally withholding anymore, that I can think of. I’ll always tell you about it if something comes to mind, though difficult memories may take a little coaxing.

You disgust me. With how good you make everything look.

You intimidate me, and I like it, too.

I hope I intimidate you. In the good way, anyway.

I’d hug you. I mean. This pretty much happens regardless. You’re getting hugged. You’ll never see it coming, I bet.

I’d let you hug me, I guess. If I have to. (Please hug me.)

I’m so very scared of losing you. It’s kind of existential crisis inducing.

I don’t think you like me

I want to be better for you. Frankly? I think I have been. You’ve helped foster an environment in which I feel as though I am thriving. And you’ve been growing. And we’ve both been doing… really well, all around, a few inescapable health and mental health issues aside for the both of us. Even those- we’ll be alright.

I respect you.

I don’t respect you

You’re my mentor. This is an interesting one. I think we both can learn a great deal from each other. Similar but different approaches to learning, casting, problem solving… I’ve already picked up some good tricks from you.

You’re my friend.

You’re my best friend.

I have a crush on you. Sorry to admit it to you like this. Could we, uh… you know, go out for tea or coffee sometime, maybe? Talk things out? I should probably ‘fess up about this to you face to face.

I could easily watch you die. Well. Certain circumstances and states of mind considered. And… precious previous experiences, um. Only if I did it to you, very carefully, which would immediately be followed by resuscitation and incredible amounts of pampering for you while re-evaluating myself. Anything else and I think I’d panic, and throw a fit, and shake the world to her core and tear the light from the skies above to bring you back.

I’d get drunk with you. I don’t exactly remember everything that happened the last couple times, but hot da-amn, Denastien.

I’d party with you.

I’d comfort you. I will always try my very best.

I’d prank you. A little bit, anyway. I do not enjoy elaborate or mean-spirited pranks, but silliness and fun is nice

I’d spike your drink? Maybe. If we outlined acceptable circumstances and courses of action beforehand.

I’d act behind your back only in situations of extreme and dire need. I would much rather have you watching mine, however. Possibly also to try to get you a gift without giving you forewarning as to what it might be.

I’d abandon you

I’d hurt you to get what I want, and I bet you’d like it, too. Only if this were an agreeable situation and we were open about it, honestly. Putting my self-interest above yours with no communication is no way to handle… anything. Balance is key

I would choose my happiness over yours / I would choose your happiness over mine / I despise how much I care for you

I need you.

I’m dependent on you. It… hm. This is rather true, but I think we operate well on our own. We can function apart without anxiety or shutting down. The context is more akin to ‘I do not want to be without you at any given time.’ The idea of co-dependence is a difficult thing to look at straight on, but… we are mutual, and we are equal, and should anything change this balance and how either of us feel, we can adjust and adapt as necessary. I do not think this is something unhealthy in how we currently interact.

I don’t know what I’d do without you. That is an unfortunate potential outcome of everything we face now, and… I’ve no answer, still. It is a daunting prospect.

I’m scared of you leaving me, in a manner of speaking. It is no fear that you will walk out.

I’d give my life for you. Maybe, if something dire and unexpected happened. I think we would both be far better served by ‘I would live for you’ rather than ‘I would die for you.’ Just as the thought of losing you mortifies me, I would not be so hypocritical as to think that you could any more easily suffer my loss.

You frustrate me, in the best of ways.

I’d call for you in a time of need. I want to put a booty call joke here to lighten the mood after some of those dour thoughts, butt a good one just isn’t coming to me.

I would will protect you, to the very best of my ability.

I’d visit you in hospital, I guess. I think I’d be more likely to doctor you in a less formal and much more comfortable setting if at all possible.

I’d carry you if you were hurt. Even if you’re not. It’s fun. In fact, maybe I’ll pick you up and walk off with you again sometime soon. Though, honestly, I would heal you, I would levitate you, I would do a great many things for you were you injured.

I’d feel guilty if I hurt you in some circumstances, at any rate. Unplanned, unexpected hurts. Emotional hurts. I do not want to do that to you.

I’d let you be near me when I am vulnerable, and I have. I am sorry if I’ve ever gotten snappish, or made you sad with my own sadness. I try to keep it under control because we resonate easily.

I’d ignore a phone call from you

I’d call you at 3am. I think I have, more or less.

I’d break you out of jail. Please don’t do anything to get yourself imprisoned anywhere.

I’d get angry at you. I think? Thus far, even in moments where we have disagreed or faltered in communication, I have never been anywhere near even remotely angry with you. I cannot imagine what would possibly set off such reaction, but I am capable. Perhaps… self-sacrificial or suicidal ideation, rude insults, or apathy and insultingly dismissive mannerisms. You have never shown such in my presence, however.

I would shout at you. / You’re too loud / You’re too quiet / You’re too sensitive / You can’t take a joke

You embarrass me … intentionally, privately, and with respect to not actually making me embarrass myself. I appreciate it. It’s fun. You are not, nor will you ever be, an embarrassment to me.

I feel nothing for you / You’re reckless

You’re bossy, sometimes. In the right moods. This is also something entirely amusing and enjoyable. It tends to work well with my moods more often than not.

You bore me. No. I do not get bored. I especially do not get bored with people. We are infinitely changing.

I would ask your advice. I appreciate the perspectives you bring me.

I would blame you for something I did, in entirely playful manners. In any serious regard, however? No.

I would cry in your arms. And all over the bed. And make absolutely certain I cry on your pillow and get it good and gross. Sorry not sorry. I’ll give you my pillow after, though.

You have the power to hurt me more than anyone else. This is true; we choose those who are capable of hurting us. I am open and honest with you. I share what I have with you. What you think of me and what you choose to do with this information can greatly impact my state of mind, if not my life. Though I would not word this as you have ‘power’ over me, so much as this is an integral part and parcel of sharing myself with you. Conversely, I will never use what I know of you to intentionally do you emotional harm. This seems a silly bit of wording.

Now, things I find sorely lacking from this list: You make me a better person. You make me WANT to be a better person. I enjoy your company. I appreciate the things you do for me, and the time you give me.

Thank you so much for everything thus far.

@denastien / @arhenadoesart

#prompts #long post #The Frozen Lord #The Dawn Priest #Mannerisms #in character writing

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ratherhavetheblues · 5 years

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INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT “If people only knew how unhealthy it is to pay attention to what people say, they wouldn’t bother to listen and they’d feel so much better…”

Like the Bergman film, Winter Light (1963), Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), threatens, at first blush, to be a pain in the ass. Instead of the former film’s protagonist’s death march through rootless theology, we have a veritable general assembly of gluttons for winning advantage over everyone else, so smug and fatuous in their ridiculous “sophistication” as to seem not only from several centuries past but obviously headed for embarrassment. However, just as we were rewarded by putting up with the first hour-plus in the first-mentioned film, there is, in the latter (our film today), after quite a long while, something delicious turning the tables—which is not to say, becoming dominant.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a high-profile Stockholm actress, Desiree, presses her mother—an elderly dowager—to stage a summer weekend for a number of her associates, in order to create a fracas that will wrest away from his very young wife a lawyer whom, as once before, she finds herself in love with. Whereas the jockeying amidst various cynical patricians is hectic and not particularly witty—one scene recalling the Three Stooges—(making for Bergman a much-needed state of solvency and continued career), it is the non-amorous octogenarian who makes the occasion truly sexy.

There is a prelude to this romp, where Desiree bursts into her mother’s bedroom (interrupting the latter’s game of Solitaire, at 7 a.m.) to have her write out the invitations. While the daughter drinks a lot of coffee and then skims over a novel, the owner of the estate has more to say about the state of the nation than the progressions of her flakey daughter. On Desiree’s describing her event as doing a “good deed,” the rather frail but very alert intruded-upon declares, “They [good deeds] cost far too much” (the recipient not likely to seriously respond, leaving the donor nonplussed). She goes on to elaborate upon her being fond of Solitaire. The social convener/ daughter asks, “Is anything really important to you?” Her mother, not needing to think it over, shoots back, “I am tired of people. But that doesn’t stop me loving them… I could have had them stuffed and hanging in long rows, any number of them [fine as a decorative possibility; disastrous as actuality]. One can never protect a human being from any kind of suffering [the level of grotesque perversity being like a self-satisfied plague]. That is what makes one so tremendously weary…”

The uniqueness of this inflected misanthrope really gets down to business during the opulent dinner on that “big” weekend for Desiree and for several others who might, sometime later, realize it was not as big as it appeared. (One other epigram in the old gal’s bag of tricks that early morning, involved her exclaiming that she had just won at the present game of Solitaire. Immediately, Desiree, being an archive of snotty put-downs, snipes, “One always does if you cheat a little.” In response, her mother digs a little deeper in face of an overrated artiste, about which the discerning dowager had , in the flow of tedium, mentioned, “Desiree, you worry me…” [she being one of those she is “tired of,” and yet “loving.”] Reading her child like a book, concerning the former beau, now back on the griddle, she [somewhat inconsistently] posits, “Your character is far too strong [for him]. You got that from you father.” But that father had, one day, thrown the mom out a window, an anecdote reestablishing the toughest of tough love.] Worrisome and superficially clever as Desiree clearly is in her mother’s eyes, the latter feels compelled, for the hell of it, to enact a pointless riposte about the depths of Solitaire. “You’re wrong, there. Solitaire is the only thing in life that calls for absolute honesty.”)

The lady of the house shows, in several ways, that her energies, though having very little to do with those of her guests, have been galvanized to confront here so much of what she not only endures but also transcends. She has placed all the visitors along one side of the long banquet table, the better to set in relief her own distinctiveness, being a constant endeavor, even when, as often, she is alone. We see her in close-up being embraced by many large, blazing and cave-like-emanations of wax. We see her, in fact, as she is, namely, an irregular oracle.

The night commences with a brief glimpse of dark clouds within which the moon darts in and out. Then there are swans in the property’s lake, their consummate gracefulness being some kind of condemnation of the invaders. As you would imagine, Desiree’s contacts, including a count and countess, would dwell upon displaying how much star-power they presume to emit. As seated at the table, their regular diet of concupiscence would be supplemented by the figure of someone seemingly off the lust-grid, and thereby of totally no account. The Countess promptly imagines that advanced conversation could be sustained by the gambit of betting Egerman, Desiree’s designated squeeze, she could seduce him within fifteen minutes. She entitles her thesis, “Can women never be the seducers?” The affluent lawyer in the cross hairs shows some slick lawyering, in terms of, “Men are always the ones seduced.” This brings from the Count, “Nonsense, I have never been seduced. A man is always on the offensive. He [Egerman] just wants to appear interesting.” The lawyer’s student-priest-son takes exception to the tone–“We were brought into the world to love one another…”–only to be met by Desiree, with, “In matters of love we need to be gymnastic,” players of startling range (hold that thought).

Perhaps to forestall the guests throwing buns at each other (she had, on that morning, insisted, “If there are actors [in the guest-list], they’ll have to eat in the stables…”), the adult interrupts, “My dear children and friends…According to legend, this wine is pressed from grapes whose juice gushes out like drops of blood against the pale grape skin. It’s also said that to each cask filled with the wine was added a drop of milk from a young mother’s breast and a drop from a seed from a young stallion. These lend to the wine secret seductive powers. Whoever drinks hereof does so at his own risk and must answer for himself.”

The guests, given their reflexiveness toward packaged self-aggrandizement, convert the lady’s deep poetry to shallow prose (as she knew they would). During the gauche start-up in imagining what heights call for, she trips up the Count, the most besotted of the egotists, by pointing out that if male seduction needs no show of qualities, “your main ally is not your own assets” (but instead an agency you don’t effectively control–the married woman’s marital ennui). At this, the Count, showing some chivalry, calls out, “Bravo!” for her wit. Also at that commencement–of Desiree’s bringing together the virgin, trophy bride (to forestalling Egerman’s getting old) and the virgin moralist, a state which would open the door to the lawyer’s second coming into the actress’ mastery (a step putting randy and now violently boring Count Malcolm back to some semblance of being a husband to a wife who calls herself, “an honest little rattlesnake” and regards love as “a loathsome business”)–the actress advises the callow theologian, beginning to boil over, “Why don’t you try laughing at us?” Perhaps the highwater mark, very brief, of self-criticism, in her entire life.

Once the plonk-mavens hit their stride, on failing to do justice to the oracle’s serious vintages, we see no more of her and her wisdom. Whereas, in the later run-through of annoying folks capitulating, in Winter Light, there is a robust, late show of spirit that has a fascinating hope, we have to do without hope here—or at least, very faint hope. It appears that, at this stage of his reflection, Bergman, very intent on savaging those who settle for less, had come to ponder the fate of a dead planet and a special horror and power for those not dead.

How should we make the best of this compromised treasure of a film? As it happens, there’s another wise soul in this catchment of clowns, characteristically hard to find and appreciate. (Many viewers intuit that in Bergman we encounter a giant of modern cinematic mood. But how many realize that he’s a uniquely brilliant writer?) Egerman has brought along his young housemaid, Petra, a good-natured strumpet. She soon links up with, Frid, one of the dowager’s servants; and, with the feast segueing into a multifaceted skirmish, there they are, in the June night, alight with Nordic sunlight, and snuggled down against a windmill, with swans serenely drifting by, she seeming exhausted, and he enjoying another tankard of beer (he having been one of the bearers of that challenging wine). He remarks (almost as if he’d tasted the beverage of choice), “Do you see, Little One? The summer light is smiling.” Petra retorts, “So, you’re a poet, too?” Shaking that off, he continues, “The summer night has three smiles. This is the first, between midnight and dawn, when young lovers open their hearts and loins. Look, then, on the horizon’s smile so soft. You have to be very quiet and watchful to see it all.” Petra repeats, “Young lovers…” Frid teases, “Did that move you, my little pet?” She goes on, with, “Why have I never been a young lover? Can you tell me that?”/ “My dear little girl,” he gently replies, “console yourself. There are few young lovers in this world. You could almost count them. Love has smitten them, both as a gift and a punishment…”/ “And the rest of them?” she asks. “The rest of us? What becomes of us?” With a broad smile, he opines, “We invoke love, call out to it, beg for it and tell lies about it… But we don’t have it… No, my Sugar Pie. We are denied the love of loving. We don’t have the gift… Nor the punishment.”

We’ll never know if this very tenuous associate of the dowager’s could elaborate upon his riveting gambit, because their oracular dialogue is blown away by Egerman’s preachifying son needing their help to procure a horse and coach to effect the beginning of his and Egerman’s wife, Anne, being a constellation of elopement and fatuous denunciation and purity of intent. “Bless me!” Petra exclaims, so thrilled by the “adventuresome”, and yet where not long before, back home, she had been nonplussed by the prig’s reading to her a tract of Martin Luther, “You cannot stop the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair…” Although there was passion that night at the dowager’s, in the aftermath of the dogmatist’s failed attempt at suicide, there was also Anne’s troubling melodramatic approach to the getaway, skulking along the wall of the barn. Right after the precious lovers race beyond the range of inadequacy, there is a cut to a clock at the estate, announcing the hour by a procession of figures, one wracked with care, and another being a skull.

As if to confirm that some can handle excitement far better than others, the apparatus with moving parts, involving Petra and Frid, comprises a coursing windmill, seen in silhouette, perhaps a prelude to clear sailing, along with obscurity. Frid proposes following the second smile of the summer night, “for the jesters, the fools and the incorrigible.” Petra infers, “Then she [the smile] must be smiling at us.” Brushing off his proposal of another beer, she sticks to the gratifying, and unmistakably in play, mysticism. “Then she is smiling at us, I said!”/ “Correct,” is his return to depths he only seldomly tolerates. (That would be Frid’s figuring, in the cinematic reflections of Bergman, at a lesser pitch than and anticipatory of, Jof, the dreamer of acrobatics and impossible juggling, in The Seventh Seal. “Do you want to marry me?” is Petra’s response to something in the stars, spotlighting her affinities to Jof’s wife, Marie, the pragmatic but crazy enough wife of Jof). Frid laughs loudly and with ridicule, at Petra’s impetuousness. Not to be put off by the mixed signals, she argues, “An hour ago you said you wanted to.”/ “That was then,” he claims, being fond of messing around, stemming from a less than sound grasp of a logic of introducing opposites. To that, Petra, knowing that the cat is out of the bag and she wants to bring it home, declares, “You will marry me!”—slugging him a few times for emphasis. Frid tells her, “You’re a strong little sugar plum…” by way of acknowledging that she’s not like other girls. Pummeling him and shooting off that matrimonial threat again, over and over, carries the conflict to a strange thread of resolve. (Here a cut to ponderous Desiree, tucking into bed her child, obviously from Egerman, whom she persists, however, in lieu of mystery, in refusing to specify the roots, such as they were. Her favorite saying, within this “comedy” decidedly veering to farce, is, “Men need to be guided to their own best interests.”) When next we see the hardy servants—after a madcap display of the seduction addicts cementing their power interests and giving no thought to love—they have produced a hybrid of the joys of paradox and the joys of something less than that. “Do you promise to marry me?”/ “Just let go of my ears!” is Frid’s rejoinder. (This moment is shown from a long distance away. The stone-built mill is integral; they’re already dissipating into a rural void. Now in close-up, his own fatalism has bought into something far from unique. “I promise!”/ “Swear by everything you hold sacred!” the hitherto promiscuous loose cannon preaches. “I swear by my manhood”—the context being a mound of straw which he falls back into while shooting erect one of his legs. At this, Petra, triumphs, “Then we can consider ourselves engaged!” She falls back on the straw and her leg shoots skyward. “May Frid rest in peace,” is his take on this irony. “He’s on his way to hell now!” “Up you get, Fatty! Time to groom the horses,” are his marching papers. Having already assimilated a stiff dose of the mundane, while still in the hunt, regardless of the odds, Frid can call out, “There is no better life than this!” To which Petra adds, “And the summer night has smiled for the third time,” in a synthesis.

In this moment of advance and retreat, Frid feels compelled to accentuate the positive. “For the sad and dejected, for the sleepless and lost souls, for the frightened and the lonely…” [we persevere]. Petra adds, “But the clowns will have a cup of coffee in the kitchen!” Their leaving us in a distant shot, as they make their way through a fine grain field is far from the end of their activation. The ironic Hollywood upsweep here in the sound-track poses a threat having been surmounted.

Frid and Petra don’t expect much. But, by comparison with their “betters,” having totally missed the point of the oracle, they send forth the kind of ragged lucidity to be seen more pointedly, two years later, in Jof and Marie, in, The Seventh Seal (1957).

With the child-bride and the child-priest out of the way, there is Desiree, responding to Egerman’s, “Don’t leave me…”: “I make no promises. You’re a terribly boring, normal person, and I’m a great artist.” The Count and Countess have their kind of confluence: He mocks, “I shall be faithful for at least seven eternities of pleasure… eighteen false smiles and fifty-seven tender whisperings. Without meaning. I shall remain faithful until the great yawn do us part. In short, I shall remain faithful in my way… I can never be at ease. You know that.”

Before closing this saga and its trio of fascinating seers, there remains to be noticed explicitly how the work by such a consummate craftsman as Bergman sees fit to hatchet those who trade in facile artistry. Egerman’s being a successful attorney-at-law (acting for another in legal matters) has been exposed as lacking in initiative for the sake of primordial justice. His coquette doll of a new wife, Anne, knows very well about social climbing by way of her looks, and she ends up looking like a saccharin, tasteless. life-long bore. Frederick, the Second, whose discernment in women is on a par with his understanding of cosmic love—his father having kicked himself, about asking the outcome of a battery of his academic exams, with “silly question,” [that it could be anything but Straight-A’s]—would have derived, from his glittering answering at school, being a yes-man in an ivory tower meaning precious nothing. Desiree’s status as a theatre darling in a provincial outpost comes to a moment of pocketing Egerman’s set of photos of princess Anne. Count Malcolm, the dueling and killer croquet expert, shows us his hot wheels (capable of a dazzling 20 mph) while driving, along with the Countess and a servant, into the dowager’s moment of truth. Their get-up and the backfires therein, resemble flatulence, perfect for a Three Stooges accomplishment. In assenting to her husband’s incurable malignancy, the Countess Charlotte defines herself, being a confident of Anne, as another clever materialist. But, with Desiree, watching the Count playing croquet as if a crucial activity, she gets off the slimmest glimmer of contempt for his “unyielding virility,” his addiction to make every move a military gain. Notwithstanding, Desiree, from out of the patented cynicism of her coterie, seeks to smarten up the scholar with the wise proposition, “… sensible adults treat love as if it were a military campaign or a gymnastics exhibition.” Soon we shall treat of an even more incisive instance of this matter of fruitful interplay, in the perhaps greatest of Bergman’s films, The Magician (1958).

#ingmar bergman

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aninjaonavacation-blog · 7 years

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The Pleasure and Pressures of Being a Woman

“It is the fault of fatality!” (569) were the words of Charles Bovary to the lover of his wife, Emma. These words were filled with the sound of defeat when societal ideology triumphantly crushes an individual’s free will. Although through a quick reading, we may see Madame Bovary as just another story about adultery and greed like that of Homer’s tragedies,¹ a careful reading would give us an insight about an era wherein the “self” is battling with the societal pressures of its time. Gustave Flaubert successfully captured the ridiculousness of the pretentious provincial bourgeois² which forced his characters, Charles Bovary to blame fate and which forced Emma Bovary to take her life. Madame Bovary is a strong example of a piece created to expose the problems of the societal ideology of its time. Similar to Madame Bovary, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is also a piece that served as an eye opener about the societal pressures placed upon the different genders of its time. This story tells us about the farcical methods of the resting cure³ that brought a woman to the end of her wits. These two stories tells us about the situation of women victimized by the domestic sphere⁴ by being choked by the societal ideology of their time. The strong theme in these two stories revolves around the battle between fate and free will. The two women in the stories are seen trying to exercise their free will but was eventually defeated by their sealed fate due to the ever powerful societal ideology that governs the lives of every person living during their time until now.

The “societal ideology” is an important phrase to analyze the two stories. It is like a facade that covers the true horrid issues regarding gender and class during their time. The societal ideology that will be discussed in this paper will focus on Emma in the Madame Bovary and the unnamed girl in the Yellow Wallpaper. These two characters are struggling to fit within the norms of their society even though they know within themselves that doing so will hamper their free will as a person. These two characters were crafted carefully by their creators to use them as a tool to primarily capture the theme of free will versus fate through discussing the societal norms of their time when women were still the second sex. During the reign of the French petit bourgeois⁵ or the provincial bourgeois, women were voiceless, weaker, and were treated like ornaments of their husbands or fathers. Flaubert exposed this inequality properly by making Emma voiceless. Unlike other characters, Emma never had a dialogue. Her thoughts were part of the narration wherein our description of her was limited by the author’s power over her. It is totally different when a character has a dialogue wherein the reader can have different interpretations as to how a character could say something. Like Flaubert, Gilman expressed the invisibility of the married woman of the 19th century American society.⁶ During this time, a woman should be passive, obedient, and voiceless. These stipulations makes a woman invisible or unknown; thus, creating the unnamed woman of The Yellow Wallpaper. Furthermore, both the characters of the two stories are aware of the consequences brought about by their gender. Emma explained this well when she desperately hoped for a son. She explained,

“A man, at least, is free; he can explore all passions and all countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most distant pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. Being inert as well as pliable, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and the inequity of the law. Like the veil held to her hat by a ribbon, her will flutters in every breeze; she is always drawn by some desire, restrained by some rule of conduct.” (146)

Unfortunately for her, Berthe, a gentle little baby girl came out. She fainted due to her enormous disappointment.

Similarly, the unnamed woman in The Yellow Wallpaper knows the terrible situation of being a woman during her time. Through her tough time battling against insanity, she saw a woman’s head in the yellow wallpaper which helped her unconsciously explain that many women tried to fight against being silenced but were eventually defeated by the societal pressure and rules.

“Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. […] And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern--it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads.” (654)

Therefore, the story of The Yellow Wallpaper and Madame Bovary revolves around the injustices experienced by women during these oppressive eras which eventually snatched them of their freedom and sealed their fate.

The bourgeois ideals⁷ corrupted Emma. All her life she was strictly governed by the pretentious bourgeois that focusses more on outward appearance than the true character of an individual. During this time, a simple deviation could cause your social demise. The bourgeois lives in an illusion of grandiose and riches. Each gender has a role to fulfill. Men should join clubs, should have expertise, should be rich, and should be experts in quixotic romance. Women should be beautiful, should have beautiful homes, should be pale, should be silent in the public sphere, should live in the shadow of their husbands, should change their gowns at least eight times a day, and should be a passive ornament of their husbands.⁸ Emma became obsessed about her outward appearance and the outward appearance of her home. She lived a life of luxury and filled her home with expensive materials. She is always elegantly dressed to impress other people. As time passes, she became disgusted of Charles because he is nothing like a true bourgeois gentleman. He seemed to her as an inadequate, weak and insignificant man and yet she has no choice but to be his wife no matter what happens. Emma knows that she could do better in life and that she could escape her fate. She believes that her fate should be sealed by the dictates of the bourgeois society. “Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre hearts.”(64) Until finally, Emma commits adultery. For Emma, seeing other men is a ticket to escape her fate. However, these men only toyed with her emotions. Rodolphe only saw Emma as another mistress and manipulated her because he sees her like “she's gasping for love like a carp on a kitchen table gasping for water” (215). He knows Emma is desperate and then asks himself, how would I get rid of her later?" (215) Leon although has purer intentions for Emma decides to leave her because of her ideals and problems. At the end of the day, Emma prostituted herself and ended up being defeated.

Analyzing Emma’s life will bring us to the conclusion that even though Emma believed that she has control over her life, the dictates of men around her had more control over her. Furthermore, this control was not only exercised by the men who has direct access to her but also by other people who only see her from a certain angle. The priest for example was convinced that a perfumed concoction like the aromatic vinegar that Emma smelled was made “to stupefy the senses and to bring on ecstasies—a thing, moreover, very easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are more delicate than the other.” (340) The priest automatically considered the situation as gender problem and not as a medical problem. During the end of the novel, Emma was defeated and shamed because of her debts and the rejections she had suffered that she decided to kill herself. The situation she went through was not only the cause of her volitions but also by the pressures of her own surroundings. Her ideals focussed on her “if-onlys” like if only, she was richer, if only she had a boy, if only Charles was different etc. Nothing about the materialistic ideals brought about by her bourgeois upbringing could calm her down in order to feel contented. At the end of the day, she was trapped with no one to clearly stand up and serve as her wake-up call. Therefore, being a woman is like a curse for her. She is always hampered by outside stimulus beyond her control. She was always trapped to the social expectations of her as a woman, a mother, and a wife which consumed her sanity and caused her death.

Emma is not the only person trapped within the stipulations of a societal ideology. The unnamed girl in The Yellow Wallpaper is also a victim of a time where women were subjected to ridiculous standards. The unnamed girl was suffering from postpartum sickness⁹ and was required by the men in her life to be isolated. Similar to Emma, her decisions were affected by outside stimulus particularly by the men in her life. Her husband dictates how she lives her life. The resting cure is a common solution applied to her and to many “sick” women during this time. Although the woman felt that she will feel better if she was allowed to go outside, she decided to be contented and kept her thoughts to herself.

“If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do? . . .”

“So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again.

Personally, I disagree with their ideas . .” (648)

Although she kept on convincing her husband that it is better for her to talk to other people, her husband kept on refusing to give her this freedom because deviation from the rules would only make her condition worse. She battled against her forced confinement by writing a journal to keep her sanity but the enormous silence and isolation consumed her. The restrictions placed upon her resulted to an enormous mental breakdown.

Literature is an avenue to express the injustices in our society. Flaubert and Gilman captured the injustices against women as they feature the lives of two women who were considered as incapable of deciding their own destiny. Their fate was sealed because of their gender. They were controlled by the men surrounding their life regardless if they were their friends, family, or lovers. However, looking at the power of the texts to express injustices tell us not only about gender inequality but also translates as to how the society tries to manipulate the individuals living inside it. The theme of fate and free will, as Flaubert and Gilman tried to explain it, tackles not only the issue of female freedom but of human freedom. Is it really true that only women, the weaker sex, have sealed fates? Both in the public and private sphere¹⁰ both sexes are destined to assume specific roles that seals the faith of each and every person. Should John of the Yellow Wallpaper or Charles of Madame Bovary conform to the ways that the society dictates regarding the treatment of their selves and their wives? The theme of fate and freewill discusses a bigger issue that affects each individual in the story wherein the societal pressure of a societal ideology hides in the facade of fate.

Furthermore, the societal ideology is only “facade”---a tool to convince people that everything is going properly. It is a tool to force a perspective within societies that injustices never occur. It is a tool to place people strictly in certain positions or roles, thus it is an invisible prison. All the mockery that we throw at people who deviate in our societal norms is only a reflection of our frustration regarding the absurdity of a “freedomless” freedom. Until today, we are forced to believe that we are free to do everything we desire but those who deviate with the societal norms were mocked and ridiculed. We have to ask ourselves, did our society truly change? Does the minority have a better chance on exercising their free will now? Are we really free? The Yellow Wallpaper and Madame Bovary could be an eye opener about the existential dilemma of the battle between fate and freewill not only for a certain gender but for every thinking, living, and feeling human being.

Notes:

1.Homer’s tragedies, see The Iliad and Odyssey by Homer

2.Provincial bourgeois, see The Bourgeois Citizen in Nineteenth-Century France: Gender, Sociability, and Use of Emulation by Carol Harrison.

3.Resting cure, see Rest Cure in Science Museum Brought to Life: Exploring the History of Medicine

4.Domestic sphere, see Separate Spheres: Women's Place and Men's Place in Separate Spheres Ideology

5.Petit bourgeois, see The Bourgeois Citizen in Nineteenth-Century France: Gender, Sociability, and Use of Emulation by Carol Harrison.

6.19th century American society, time settings of The Yellow Wallpaper

7.Bourgeois ideals, see The Bourgeois Citizen in Nineteenth-Century France: Gender, Sociability, and Use of Emulation by Carol Harrison.

8.Women’s dress standards, see Women’s Dress Standards in the World of the Parisian Bourgeois

9.Postpartum sickness, see Mental Health America, Postpartum Disorders http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/conditions/postpartum-disorders

10.Public and private sphere, see Separate Spheres: Women's Place and Men's Place in Separate Spheres Ideology

Bibliography:

Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. 1st ed., Planet PDF, 2016, http://www.planetpublish.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Madame_Bovary_NT.pdf.

Harrison, Carol E. The Bourgeois Citizen In Nineteenth-Century France. 1st ed., Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999,. Accessed through Google Books https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=qofPNh-OL4AC&pg=PA89&lpg=PA89&dq=provincial+bourgeois&source=bl&ots=LKHDvXsHcF&sig=J7h12CqiUEUhQjNmcE9gBucg1RU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjRho3k0-HQAhWDlJQKHdawBaAQ6AEILjAD#v=onepage&q=provincial%20bourgeois&f=false

Homer,. "The Iliad And Odyssey Of Homer : Homer : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive". Internet Archive, 1791, https://archive.org/details/iliadodysseyofho01home.

Lewis, Jone. "Women's Place, Men's Place: How The Idea Of Separate Spheres Grew". About.Com Education, 2015, http://womenshistory.about.com/od/lives19th/a/Separate-Spheres.htm.

Perkins Gilman, Charlotte. The Yellow Wallpaper. 1st ed., New England Magazine, 1892, https://www.nlm.nih.gov/literatureofprescription/exhibitionAssets/digitalDocs/The-Yellow-Wall-Paper.pdf.

"Postpartum Disorders". Mental Health America, http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/conditions/postpartum-disorders.

"Rest Cure". Sciencemuseum.Org.Uk, 2016, http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/techniques/restcure.

"Women’s Dress Standards In The World Of The Parisian Bourgeois". France In The Age Of Les Misérables, 2016, https://rmschwartz.wordpress.com/paris/the-life-of-the-parisian-bourgeoisie/shopping-dress-and-consumerism/womens-dress-standards-in-the-world-of-the-parisian-bourgeois/.

#women #women's month #equality #beauty standards

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