"And why would we have come running in at the first yelp?" "....because we care about each other." "Oh, f***ing sh**, we do? Amazing, does that apply to you as well?" "...I don't know..." "Oh, I think it does."

I absolutely love Fjord and Beau's friendship and bromance

RINSE N’ REPEAT • JEAN KIRSTEIN

jean kirstein x f!reader

w/c: 700

warnings: minors and ageless blogs DNI, no smut but its suggestive as hell

a/n: happy trails my beloved <3 yes this is the crack fic i promised, i have no damn regrets. and yes, jean’s middle name is a reference to my old blog, what about it?

“Why did you buy these?” Jean asked, fishing through the bags you had brought home from your shopping trip.

“They were on sale!” 

“So travel sized bottles of shampoo and conditioner were on sale…..and you bought 15 of them. Each,” he states, looking at the myriad of silver bottles in front of him.

“Yep!” You reply, popping the p as you put away the rest of the groceries.

“Babe.” The voice is louder now, and you turn around to run smack into his chest. He’s frowning down at you, one of the bottles looking even more minuscule in his large fingers.

“This is OUAI. That never goes on sale. I would know, I —”

“You spent a whole year saving up your allowance to buy the shampoo at 16, yes, I know, Jean.” You interrupt, finishing the story he’s told you about only a million times before.

“Are we going on vacation then? Because this is the weirdest way to break that surprise.”

“No! I just —,” you pause, reaching over to grab his free hand before batting your lashes to butter him up. “Promise you won’t get mad, please?”

“Baby,” he coos, “I’d never be mad at you.”

“Aww,” you smile, reaching up to peck him on the cheek before you deliver the final blow.

“Your happy trail is kinda rough, so I bought these as the solution.”

Jean blinks slowly, and you can practically see the steam coming out of his ears as he processes how you spent over $500 on shampoo for his body hair, and how you look entirely nonplussed with this decision.

“What.”

“You heard me! You, Jean Beau Kirstein,” you emphasize, poking a finger into the dip of his pecs, “Can be one prickly bastard. And that's not about your personality.”

“So all of this,” Jean sputters out, gesturing wildly behind him to the plastic bag on the table, “Was the solution?”

“Yep!”

“Why do we need this much?”

“Don’t ask me that question as thought we don’t fuck nearly every other day. Because of you, I might add! It’s a miracle I don’t have rug burn by now.”

Jean’s brows knot, eyes widening in disbelief as he watches you defend this, and you can sense the wound of his ego pouring into the atmosphere.

So naturally, you rub salt in it.

“Look,” you remark, snatching the bottle from him. “This would be like, one wash per bottle? So it's perfect. We don’t have to worry about overshampooing, it's almost like it comes in a dose.”

“Overshampooing?” The last syllable comes out cracked. “I don’t even use that much shampoo to wash my hair. The one on my head, mind you!”

“Oh really? Maybe that’s why it’s been looking duller lately.”

Jean sighs, running his hands down his face before he looks back at you. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what again?”

“Pushing my buttons on purpose again, why do you like doing this to me?”

“Because I love you, silly.” You giggle, lifting the hem of his shirt to expose his abdomen. You rake your nails across his abs, eliciting a small whimper as your fingers run through the tawny hair. 

“And this too, despite the way it pokes my nose feels like when I go down on you.”

“Is it — really that much of a problem?” He asks, softer this time as he hears you out.

“Sometimes. I don’t see how this solution could hurt.”

“I could shave,” he proposes.

“I will fill a restraining order on you if you even think of that.”

“Alright!” He acquiesces, throwing his hands up in surrender. “We’ll try it out. But do we need all of these to do that? I have the large bottle, I could just —” 

The sentence falters when he moves to cup your face, thumb rubbing on your cheek softly, the move he pulls when he tries to get his way. But when you smile deviously into his palm, he knows he’s fallen for another one of your traps.

“I knew you would buy that story!” you laugh, “You should have seen your face!”

“God damn it! Then what are they —”

“Bachelorette party favors. For Historia,” you explain. “Don’t worry, Ebenzer, we are splitting the cost of all of this on Venmo.”

“But, one bottle is for us though.”

thx for reading! plz don’t recc this on tiktok.

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alright so i was talking about this the other day in the groupchat and i cannot get over how good for each other caleb and beau are?? like there’s something...i don’t know there is something absolutely next level about empire siblings. like. okay. (under a cut bc this got so FUCKING long, what the fuck. also i talk about essek for a bit and how i think he will change their relationship.)

i’ve said it a million times but i think beau had the best possible reaction to caleb’s backstory reveal. she didn’t discount it; she didn’t treat it like nothing. she basically went “that’s fucked up, man, but you can and will do better” which i think is exactly what he needed to hear. caleb has this tendency to wallow in guilt and when you wallow in guilt it’s very easy to fall into a trap of inaction or only wanting to focus on things that will make that guilt quiet down (i.e., working on the very dangerous and perhaps impossible task of going back in time to save his parents. it’s kind of like people who are intent on doing relief work in far off countries where “real” poverty exists but who don’t wanna help the homeless people living in their own city.) beau pushes him to take his focus off the guilt quieting plans and put his focus on things that will actually be doing good for the sake of doing good. i think that’s sometimes a very difficult distinction to make and tbh beau has a very good grasp on it.

i also think this plays into part of the reason caleb still hasn’t told jester (or cad?) like okay number one, he’s scared. number two, i literally don’t think he can handle the easy forgiveness he would get from them (especially jester) and i think it would send him into a spiral of “no you don’t get it i did a bad bad thing i’m a terrible person” that might be hard to pull out of. and beau is extremely critical in general. she sees a thing she doesn’t like, you don’t have to wonder about it. “well that’s fucked up” are going to be the first words out of her mouth. caleb doesn’t have to worry about her misunderstanding the heaviness of what he’s done the way i suspect he does with the others. beau is never going to diminish how bad he feels about doing a thing; all she’s going to do is say “okay, and what are you gonna do about it?” which is THE BEST. THING. action is the best thing for depressed people oh my god. anyway.

honestly like. ok my favorite thing about beau is that despite the social awkwardness/prickliness she is genuinely *really good at people*. she understands people. i literally still cannot get over how good she is at handling caleb’s panic attacks. i think a lot of people’s first instinct w handling panic attacks is to smother, or, worse, to get just as worked up as the person panicking trying to calm them down. beau is very detached, calm, and levelheaded. she provides physical comfort/stimulus, water, and someone to talk to, and she waits. ( @thedarklordsnicklefritz pointed out recently that she’d be a very good nurse.)

now, caleb to beau: he so clearly, so obviously values her opinions and what she has to say. for all that he is “the smart one”--for all that the wheels in his head are constantly turning and for all that he has a plan for everything--he sits quietly and listens to her whenever she has something to say. he asks her about herself. he wants to know her plans and her goals. not only does he treat her like an adult with agency and ambition and ideas worth hearing, he treats her as a colleage. as a fellow scholar. and i think that beau was sorely lacking that kind of respect, especially under zeenoth. i think it’s something that she craves. even when they are at each other’s throats, he doesn’t interrupt her arguments. he listens till she’s done, and then he speaks. even if he’s growling at her through clenched teeth. he still gives her that respect.

another thing about caleb is that he mirrors the kind of love that beau shows him right back at her. leaving molly’s grave? the shit in kamordah? hand on her shoulder. here is frumpkin. here is frumpkin again. and again. and again--here is some quiet show of support, some small comfort. nothing to embarrass her or cause undue awkwardness. just, there, always. they are each other’s constants and i will literally never be over this oh my god--

okay another thing is, and this is going to be a bit touchy and i might word wrong so please be patient with me and ask questions if you have them, there is something to be said about the friendship of two people who are fundamentally romantically and sexually incompatible. like there’s a reason why “gay best friend” is a trope and there is some not great stuff surrounding it. but i also think that there is a kind of value in a friendship where you never have to worry about romantic or sexual shit coming up. there’s a certain security there, a kind of...safety. there is a safety in "i have no interest in your sex life." there is a safety in beau being a lesbian. both of them have some real baggage/struggles surrounding relationships, and this is not to say that they will never have a meaningful or secure or safe romantic/sexual relationship again. it’s just that there are unique problems that both of those will bring to them--unique problems that i think may bring them each a unique beauty and growth in working through--but nevertheless, unique problems that neither of them have to worry about with each other. their friendship is safe from that.

alright, now onto essek: i am really worried/intrigued for what he will mean for their friendship when they get back to xhorhas and have to deal with him. i think they both see him very differently, and i can’t see them getting through...*waves hand* “punishment” and whatever that means, without another blowup fight and serious hurt feelings.

i think caleb quite clearly sees himself in essek; i don’t think i need to lay that comparison out for anyone, honestly the whole 97 speech sums it up pretty well. what i would like to say is i think caleb has found hope in essek, for essek, in a way that i don’t quite think he’s managed to do for himself yet. like he’s gotten a lot better, but i think a symptom of getting better is that you see your flaws more clearly, and i think that’s very much happening to him right now. i think he sees himself as the same (or possibly even worse), regardless of how far he’s come. (see “i am ruined” to fjord.) i think essek is a mirror for him in which he sees himself more clearly without even realizing that that’s what he’s doing. he sees a selfish person who has done selfish things and hurt people in the process. and he also sees someone with a conscience and empathy who is extremely capable of doing real good. he sees someone with potential. someone with kindness in his soul. someone who could take his guilt and turn it into action, maybe to soothe some of that guilt the way caleb started, and maybe to eventually leave that behind, and do good for the sake of doing good. he sees someone in pain who is in need of support and a friend like beau to nudge him in the right direction.

and beau sees someone who has done selfish things for selfish reasons and does not show nearly enough remorse for it. she sees someone who has caused death and pain out of carelessness and pride and misplaced judgement. she sees someone who values his own gains over the lives of others and justifies that to make himself feel better, and i think that’s exactly the kind of authority figure that beau hates most. she sees someone who better fucking prove that this remorse is real or so help me god i’ll show you what remorse is.

and i think caleb (unfortunately like so much of this fandom with various characters) has latched onto essek as this mirror of himself, and i think at this point any judgement that beau passes on essek will reflect unfortunately on caleb. and the worst part is, beau isn’t going to see that. she wasn’t there for the razor speech. i think to her it’s obvious what she thinks of caleb: he’s a person who’s done some fucked up shit, sure, but he is someone who cares deeply about getting better and has proven himself to be a kind, unwavering person over and over again. he’s more than alright in her book. whereas essek hasn’t really done anything to win him anywhere near the same kind of rapport with her. clearly, in her mind, they are different. why should they be otherwise?

but caleb is going to hear any criticism and, i think, just apply it straight on to himself. i think he thinks that he and essek are so similar that any cut towards essek is a cut towards him. i think he is going to be deeply hurt, i think it’s going to feel like a betrayal--like a revocation of the trust that beau has in him--and i think beau is going to have no idea.

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E1-46 (Jan 8, 2019)

Happy New Year! Welcome to Talks for tonight, a looooong time coming. @eponymous-rose is off doing very cool science, so I’m stepping in tonight. Also Brian’s wearing a guitar-string bracelet that was once upon a time played by Meatloaf.

Announcements: Tuesday, Jan 15 at 4pm PST is the debut of Mame Drop, their new show ft. the Mame Cabinet. Wednesday, Jan 23 at 5pm PST, they’ll be doing Pub Drop, ft. art lessons with Babb Star; the next season of Between the Sheets airs Jan 28 at 7pm PST. Ashley will definitely be in Season 2.

CR Stats: “9,″ or “nein,“ has been said at least 733 times so far. Matt has facepalmed 80 times in 46 episodes. By this point in C1, he’d facepalmed 77 times. Beau has cast the highest level spell so far (conjuring the elemental). Caduceus has prevented 38 damage from critical hits with Sentinel at Death’s Door. Caleb’s smell has been commented on 49 times. Fjord -- and BWF segues to discuss Travis in Liam’s oneshot, which was a whooooole ‘nother thing, and you should definitely check it out if you haven’t seen it yet! We never come back to his fact, sadly. Jester has performed 35 pranks so far. Molly has been gone for 85 days in game. “Long may he reign,” says the cast, and they all toast him. Nott has cast Message 50 times. Sam: “Wow, I got a lot to say!”

The biggest challenge for them so far in terms of the culture shift between C1 and C2 has been the war. They do think about it a lot while they’re “chasing magic ocean orbs,” but they know the clock is still running while they’re doing other things. Nott would care if her homeland was gone, but she wouldn’t mind overmuch if the goblins were killed but the land was okay.

Jester is perfectly content with Nott’s motherly advice, even though it’s vastly different from what her mother suggested. Laura: “It’s weird that I can look at Matt and go, ‘Mom,’ and it feels...” Matt: “It’s okay, don’t worry,” but in the Ruby’s voice, and we’re all delighted.

Matt has had to reconsider some aspects of his preparation now that he has two PCs that can see everything and/or remember everything. He doesn’t believe in artificially upping the difficulty of his worldbuilding/checks just because people took certain feats, he just has to be prepared to answer their questions more than before.

Sam feels the alcoholism has added a bit of randomness to Nott’s character. It’s actually weirdly led Nott to be able to do more, since Sam had envisioned her as a very skittish, nervous character, but the alcoholism allows her to be brave in a way she is not otherwise.

Travis wanted to explore Fjord’s origins, but didn’t have any specific plans. “Growth? Yes. I think he’s taken a dive into a lot of things that he’d never experienced before, and had outcomes that he didn’t anticipate. I also think that he’s reeling from all these choices--it’s just one coin flip after the next, and that’s put him where he is now.” Both BWF and Matt express interest in the twists neither of them anticipated. Marisha, plaintively: “Please don’t kill us all.”

Caleb doesn’t think there was a specific turning point that made him trust the Nein as well as Nott; it was a series of small steps. The first time he shared his backstory with Beau was a screw loose. Liam enjoys the conflict between the group goals and Caleb’s goals.

Everyone has missed being their characters over the break.

Travis agrees with Liam that there’s a new possible viewpoint every 30 minutes--he has no ulterior motives, just is always trying to do what feels right in the moment. He’s seen some things online suggesting he has a bigger plan, but he doesn’t think that far ahead.

Beau was the first one to say “I love you” out of the M9. Marisha was most surprised by Beau’s opening up. Beau was a “deliberate asshole” to Molly, Fjord, and Caleb at certain points because she knew they’d leave her eventually; this way, she controlled the relationship and was the one doing the pushing away.

Taliesin had no plan for Cad’s future during the breakdown on the boat. He was dealing with the realities of Cad’s creation and trying to find an anchor for his “track,” and the two conversations with Nott and Jester were crucial for helping him find his path, and Tal’s plan for his future arcs.

Did Molly’s death affect how the cast relate to their characters? Sam: “I’ve been thinking of backup characters way more than last campaign.” It doesn’t affect how he plays Nott, though. Travis feels very guilty that we’re spending so much time in his backstory and still know hardly anything about so many others--he’d feel terrible if someone else died and we still knew nothing about them. Laura feels like if she makes a backup character it’s bad luck. Liam has a vague idea, but he’d rather use it for a future campaign. Laura and Travis have no backups planned.

Caleb has no regrets avoiding the legionnaire contracts back in Zadash. Molly (says Tal) would have also been happy they avoided it.

The Fjord/Nott prickliness started off as a goof, but Sam thinks it might be a touch of a real thing. Travis is all, “naaaaaaah, not a thing.” Fjord likes poking her. Fjord actually loves Nott--he’s messing with Sam more than anything, especially with the buttons, but everything has a shelf life. Sam suggests Fjord fundamentally does not understand Nott’s nature--is she a person? A thing? It has a touch of genuine suggestion by Sam, but Travis waves it away. He truly does love Nott, he says.

Fanart of the Week: @quortknee with a stunning portrait of Yasha surrounded by flowers.

Dani mentions to Matt that Jamedi was the first NPC in either campaign that was a critical part of a path--journeying through the woods as a guide--but did not participate in combat at all. Matt says he’s essentially a scout, amazing at tracking, but would never jump into combat with a hydra. Matt created the character’s personality first, then explored that in his actions later.

Tal’s super interested in more about Jamedi. Laura loves how cool he was. 

Travis compares Fjord’s journey to a kid getting dropped into a high school party: “There’s going to be beer and alcohol and you’re going to be tempted--no I’m not! I love Dr Pepper!” Travis laughs: “Fjord is the kid at the high school party” who suddenly succumbs to every temptation despite being sure he’d resist wholesale.

Laura teases Caleb for being a Debbie Downer. Liam, deadpan: “Life expectancy in Wildemount is not that great.”

Matt and Laura both are super excited to see how the relationship with the Traveler develops. Laura initially envisioned a very much big-brother relationship, but she’s found that she genuinely is struck with awe and a bit of fear every time the Traveler shows up. “I thought they were going to be way more familiar!”

Liam talks about how the idea of meeting Astrid and the rest makes his palms sweat every time.

Caleb was originally an Evocation Wizard--still level 2 or 3--in his backstory, but all the years of doing nothing meant he had to start over later.

Beau has latched onto the first mate position because she’s always wanted to prove herself, both to her parents and herself. BWF: “Flex. I gotchu.”

Nott does consider herself the mother of the group. She’s not great at it, but she does view herself as surrounded by a bunch of people who aren’t fully mature in any way, and she’s trying to “get ‘em to college.”

Everyone agrees Beau has changed the most out of everyone throughout the campaign. Caleb has begin to make small different choices in his behavior. Laura: “Fjord has changed a lot. Now he’s going to kill us all.” Matt’s enjoyed his shift from “I don’t know what’s happening” to “I want to know what’s happening.” Everyone comments on Fjord’s wild-westiness over the last few episodes.

Everyone misses Ashley and talks about her bravery in exposing Yasha’s heart in the last episode. Matt points out Ashley always reviews the VODs for this campaign and explores Yasha’s emotional journey offscreen, so that this episode was basically her check-in, showing how Yasha’s journeyed and grown over the last dozens of episodes.

BWF struggles mightily parsing “palenewmoon” as a username, and it’s hilarious.

Caduceus is not scared of his current situation; it’s a thing that happens and it’s gone, his moment of fear now behind him. He does feel far from home--not a wanderer. “A bit of a hobbit vibe.” Fjord doesn’t scare him at all. Travis: “He shouldn’t.” Travis says Cad is the one he’s the most interested in exploring right now.

Matt found Laura & Travis’s baby arrival one of the most unexpected events in terms of having to scramble for a plan. The docks of Nicodranas are a close second, especially since he was dangling all these other hints about the Menagerie Coast and the war only for the M9 to completely ignore them. Liam: “War sounds hard.”

The Darktow escapades also surprised him, since he’d imagined it would be more of a race with Avantika to the next orb. “You stayed one night and got kicked the fuck out. I had planned the next few days; there was a whole thing with Allison that could have gone on... All the pirates are distinctly like, ‘Don’t do shit to other pirates or we’ll kill you,’ and you were like, ‘Hey guys, let’s do shit to other pirates!’” Sam: “We’re terrible at this game!”

Travis didn’t anticipate the visions, especially the dream of water that destroyed the fleet of ships. Fjord wants to get as close to the goal line of releasing Uk’otoa without crossing the line. That sounds dangerous, kiddo.

Caleb thinks Nott is a much better being than he is since she has a good heart. He also feels like he’s letting his guard down around the Nein and allowing himself to have a circle of friends. However, the last couple of episodes have made him want to withdraw back to the Nott-and-Caleb against the world vibe. Sam thinks they’ve drawn closer together--they know they have each other’s backs, so now they can explore other relationships.

Most impactful moments so far: Molly for everyone, for sure. Fjord: hooking up with Avantica. Cad: staying on the boat. (Matt likes that this showed good commitment to both story and each other’s characters to have Jester check in on him.) Caleb: telling Beau and Nott everything, like letting off a steam valve. Beau: the plan with the Plank King, validating her strengths. (Everyone oohs and aahs over the “I...wait.” moment again.) Jester: the dragon fight, staring down death and wondering if Mom had been right after all.

Talks Machina: After Dog

In discussion of chicken noises made to amuse Ronin, Tal reveals he keeps feral chickens. Somehow I’m not surprised. 

Favorite activities over the break: Matt slept. BWF suggests karaoke, and Laura realizes everyone went to kigerumi karaoke without them because they had family in town. Laura & Travis and BWF (and Ashley?) went to Sam’s Christmas party.

Tal thinks the Gentleman will be dead by the time they all get back to him. Matt reminds them of the sequence that led to Port Dimali--just the name of a contact. Nicodranas is the only hanging thread at the moment, suggests Matt.

Funniest thing so far? BWF suggests Ashly Burch’s face while Molly was dying, because of the terror that was originally character terror becoming meta terror. Ashly told BWF later that she wanted to bawl her eyes out. Tal: “I’ve never felt so alive.” Other contenders: fluffernutter failing, the bug carrying the piece of bread. Laura says she had nothing in her brain at the moment and that was the first thing that came out. Sam loved seeing Travis being asked a simple boat question and realizing that his whole backstory was predicated on knowledge that he does not have. “I don’t know the answer to this test. I didn’t study!” Liam loved Travis’s face journey during the live show when Matt started his backstory. Somehow, the transcription of Liam’s statement got picked up by Travis’s Apple watch and sent to Postmates. It’s totally hilarious.

M9 character you’d never want to play as? Travis: Caleb, because he’s a wizard and squishy. BWF: Jester, because of the accent. Tal: Nott, because he’s not funny enough to pull her off. “You have a portal in your heart and I don’t know where it goes.” Sam: Orly, because of the accent.

BWF feels this campaign will go to 169 episodes. If he’s right, Sam offers to 69 him. “Denim on face.”

Everyone comments on Matt’s li’l scruffy beard. Liam’s the only beardless one now. Matt laments the next time they want facial capture they’ll make him shave his beard; Laura insists technology has advanced beyond it. Oh, voice actors.

BWF doesn’t know if he’ll be married by 2020. “It depends on if coughcancelBlindspotcough happens.” Sam looks forward to all the cool new shows on the Critical Role channel. Marisha’s excited to learn how to draw. Taliesin’s excited about things he can’t talk about. Liam’s excited for the live show and art gallery next week. Some of the fanartists will even be able to make it.

Travis very convincingly knows who he will be playing in the oneshot next week. Laura, in stark realization: “Oh, no.” Marisha points out that this oneshot will take place 24 hours after Vax’s death, and everyone’s a little nervous. Tal suggests scrapping the whole thing and having a shopping episode.

And that’s all for the night. We fade out on Laura being indignant about karaoke, which is probably the best way to start the year. Is it Thursday yet?

 I’m Easter-drunk and I wanna talk about medieval marriage conventions.

(Because no one saw that drunk history reblog and decided to ask me, “Hey, Opal, what are your views on the weirder parts of medieval marriage?”  I’ll try not to misspell too many things---no promises. SO!  Medieval marriage.  Just how fucked up was it?? Very fucked up, of course.  But for the purposes of this....discussion, I’ll be focusing primarily on the conventions found in medieval England.  Why England?   Well, for starters, it has an incredible history of legal documentation.  Seriously, the legal courts (from local shire courts all the way up to the royal courts) recorded damn near everything, and for the longest time too!  I know that many medieval kingdoms saw themselves as the stewards of the Roman legal (and sometimes cultural) tradition, but in medieval England that anctually worked out okay (if you allow the inclusion of the Anglo-Saxon wittan, which eventually became the modern jury, but I’m getting ahead of myself).  Also, England was the only place where FEUDALISM ACTUALLY WORKED.  Seriously!  Everywhere else it was given plenty of lip-service but, well---in France you ended up with a few centuries of “local” counts that held more power than the fucking king; then there was the Holy Roman Empire (famously not holy, not Roman, and not and Empire, to paraphrase both Voltaire and one of my favorite university professors---it was also, generally speaking, a hot mess, even on a good day); and Spain (seven fucking centuries of Reconquista does not a stable feudal society make, so sorry); and Italy.....look, the city-states are awesome, but are also about as un-feudal as it gets, so they basically don’t count for anything outside of their economic, and occasionally Crusade-oriented, bubble. Alright, to be fair, most of that last bit had nothing to do with anything----I just really needed to get some of that off my chest. But the documentation thing is actually germane to this topic. First and foremost is the fact that the “terms” of marriage were pretty sketchy for a long, long, long time.  One particular complaint that crops up again and again in English shire court rolls has to do with just how married different parties in a couple saw themselves.  A lot of this had to do with the language of marriage vows, as well as how marriages were “performed” back before the.....oh, let’s say thirteenth century.   For a long while, marriages were considered legitimate if both parties spoke some church-approved vows to one another, and did so with full sincerity and fear of God, etc., etc.   The problem there was that which words were church-approved was not always clear.  Oh, sure, someone might have the general gist of them, but not the particulars---and since most of the peasantry during the Middle Ages was illiterate, it’s not like they could just write it down for later.  Also, the “approved” words tended to change when new popes, bishops, etc. were elected, and it often took a while for information about changes to vow templates (among other things) to trickle down.   There was also a more pragmatic element to all of this.  Namely, although churchmen certainly hoped that young lovers would seek out a church for the legitimization of their union, they were more than aware of the fact that some people either did not have that option (the nearest church being, perhaps, too far away) or would find themselves too swept up in passion to seek out the nearest house of God.  That’s part of why the church-approved vows existed in the first place---the idea was that, in the absence of either the clergy or community witnesses of good standing, a couple could still make a vow before God and therefore legitimize a marriage (though it always helped if they sought out a priest afterwards, to really legitimize it; but, especially in the early Middle Ages, that wasn’t strictly necessary). This is where is gets weird.  Also rape-y.  So...consider yourself warned, I guess. First of all: THOSE VOWS. There was a lot of confusion regarding vows (part of why the church started insisting that all marriages take place inside a church, with clergy present---less easy to fuck it all up that way).  It wasn’t unusual for a man to sort of half-vow to stay with a woman, then for them to consummate the relationship, then for the man to insist that they were not actually married while the woman (citing what she thought was a true vow) insisted they were.  Interestingly, this could be brought before the court as a case of rape, seeing as how complete, explicit consent in a sexual act was not necessarily given by both parties----and, believe it or not, the medieval church was DEEPLY concerned with consent; despite any and all social and economic disparities, a marriage was supposed to be (ideally) a union between two equal souls, and that equality meant that both parties had to agree to said union by their own free will, lest they commit the grave sin of bearing false witness before God Himself (not to say that the parties could not be cajoled, coerced, or threatened into “consent” beforehand, only that no one could actually be dragged to the altar, wailing and weeping, without any clergyman worth his salt immediately declaring the pending union void due to lack of consent---no matter what Hollywood might show you.) The point is that the woman (or, occasionally, the man, because that did happen too) could sue for marriage.  This was somewhat more of a concern for women, as it concerned their “virginity” or “virtue.”  If a woman had been married and was widowed, chances were that she inherited some property from her late husband, and so could levy that on Ye Olde Marriage Market.  The prospects for completely unmarried girls and women were more tenuous. Look.  For this next part, you need to STOP THINKING LIKE A MODERN PERSON.  It sucks, I know, but you must understand how medieval people thought. The short version is that: virginity was an economic commodity.   That’s how both men and women thought of it.  So, if a peasant girl with little in the way of a dowry, and who had never been married before (and therefore had no inheritance from a deceased husband) was looking to marry, her “virginity” was the best bargaining chip she had.   Therefore, if some strapping beau had made what SHE considered vows of marriage before fucking her into the heath, she’d likely feel quite justified in dragging him to the local shire court and suing for marriage----because he had unambiguously “compromised her virtue,” and done so under false pretenses: grounds for a rape accusation, if ever there was one. And, oh, sweet children, it gets worse. I have seen comments on this here Tumblr claiming that medieval women who were victims of rape would be forced to marry their rapists. This is.......not untrue.  I cannot and will not say that such things did not happen (especially if a child resulted of that forced coupling; depending on whose medical treatises you read, conception was sometimes viewed as occurring only if both parties involved had orgasms, the idea being that women released an “essence” at the moment of climax the same way men did----the upshot is that a few learned men, I hope, at least tried to make sex actually pleasurable for their wives; the downside is that pregnancy via rape could be cited as “evidence” that a female victim “””enjoyed,””” and was complicit in, her own assault.)  However.  Things get.....interesting, if not a little uncomfortable, when the situation is turned on its head. You see, women did marry their rapists.  But some of them did it willingly----hell, some of them did it forcefully.  This is where the “virginity” thing really comes into play.  Because if a girl or woman who had successfully “defended her chastity” for all her life suddenly found herself on the receiving end of a sexual assault-----well, it wasn’t unusual for her to drag her attacker before the court and sue for marriage.  But why the fuck would she want to?????  I get it, trust me.  Still, you must remember what I said about virginity earlier.   For a peasant girl, her “virginity” was her only bargaining chip in the marriage market; a rape meant that bargaining chip was gone; sometimes things could be smoothed over by a hefty payment of money and/or livestock to the girl’s father/male guardian to “make up” for the loss of virtue and (by extension) family honor, but this was of course not always possible; and so the only way to maintain honor (and, therefore, economic security, and even economic viability in the marriage market, should her husband pass away) was to marry the rapist.  Oh, and DON’T THINK for even a SECOND that there weren’t ladies literally hauling their assaulters into the courtroom and, basically, telling them to LIE IN THE BED THEY FUCKING MADE.   Look.  Just.  NEVER think that medieval women, even the poorest and least of the lot, didn’t have power.  It was a fucking shitty kind of power, but damn if they didn’t exploit it wherever they could. Case in point: when a rapist wasn’t really a rapist. Soooo, now you’ve heard of medieval women suing her rapist for marriage in order to preserve her social and economic standing!  Well, guess what? Sometimes both of them faked it~!! Yeah.....this is where it gets super fucked up. Because sometimes a girl loved a boy.  But her father didn’t like that boy, probably for economic reasons, and forbade her from consenting to marry him (because the father  was aware of those prickly couples-only church vows, etc, etc.)  So how’s a girl to get around this predicament?   Why, by being “carried off” ( “rape” coming from an older word meaning “forceful seizure”) by some man (the lover) and his cohorts (his friends, there to watch his back and basically make sure no one comes to kill him after witnessing his “abduction” of the maiden, if anyone witnessed it at all).  Then they spend a few days hanging out in the woods before the daughter comes home to her father and says something to the effect of: “Oh, wow, yeah, so this guy, he just grabs me right out of the fields and carries me off the the woods, while I’m kicking and screaming of course, and forces himself on me right there, totally against my will, but the good news is that he’s completely willing to marry me to like make amends or whatever, and oh by the way it just happens to be that guy I’m really into but that you totally hate, what’s a girl to do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ” BUT.  Because the woman could call it a rape, and even be backed up by witnesses (the lover’s friends----I know it seems weird, but in the Middle Ages witnesses (fuck, personal references) were basically the only currency outside of the gold florin that mattered worth a damn), she could “sue” for marriage, and end up marrying the man she’d wanted all along, no doubt to the consternation of her father. ................Yeah, the Middle Ages were pretty fucked up.