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#although i only have so many books that a middle aged woman would be interested in :
bobemajses · 1 year
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My ancestry is primarily Alsatian -- not exactly Eastern Europe, but still Ashkenazi. They were rural, as far as I can tell, never spending more than one generation at a time in an urban community.
They moved to the US gradually through the 18th and 19th centuries, and now I have no connection to the Old Country. I've been trying to learn more about (rural and urban) Jews of the Rhinelands, so if you turn up any photos or stories of these communities my heart would leap to see them!
Thank you for sharing your story! One theory regarding the Ashkenazim is that they are originally Italian Jews who migrated north to the Rhineland cities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz almost 2000 years ago. Many of them went to Slavic countries in the Middle Ages, seeking refuge from persecution. Most of those who stayed in the Rhineland settled in the small villages of the rural surroundings, where they continued to live almost exclusively until around 1800. They were materially poor but committed to their faith, practising a rural form of Judaism that left few material traces, with the exception of superb tombstones in some cemeteries. Their folk traditions gradually took shape as well, creating an identity that has been maintained to this day. Their influence is also noticeable in the popular culture of non-Jewish neighbours in many areas (vocabulary, sayings, cooking, etc). Jews in Alsace acquired full French citizenship from 1791, although their counterparts on the German side did so only after 1860.
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This is a Jewish prayer book from the 13th century Rhineland.
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And this is what a Jewish family from the region in the 19th century looked like.
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This drawing from 1886 was made by the French-Jewish artist Alphonse Levy, known for his depictions of Jewish life in Alsace. It depicts a woman and her child preparing food for Shabbat. The title of the picture is "Les Vermicelles," meaning noodles. These words are in French and Judeo-Alsatian (Yédisch-Daïtsch), a language that was spoken by the Jews of Alsace. It is possible that she is preparing Spatzle, a typical egg noodle dish common to the Alsace region at the time.
It's such an interesting topic! I will definitely get to it another time.
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the-rewatch-rewind · 9 months
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I have...many thoughts about this tale as old as time
Script below the break
Hello and welcome back to The Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies in a 20-year period. Today I will be discussing number 17 on my list: Disney’s 1991 animated musical Beauty and the Beast, directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, written by Linda Woolverton, and featuring the voice talents of Paige O’Hara, Robby Benson, Richard White, Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers, and Angela Lansbury.
I assume that most people have at least some familiarity with this movie, but in case you don’t remember the premise, allow me to set the stage with some words that are not my own which I have had memorized for most of my life: Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a young prince lived in a shining castle. Although he had everything his heart desired, the prince was spoiled, selfish, and unkind. But then, one winter’s night, an old beggar woman came to the castle, and offered him a single rose in return for shelter from the bitter cold. Repulsed by her haggard appearance, the prince sneered at the gift, and turned the old woman away, but she warned him not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within. And when he dismissed her again, the old woman’s ugliness melted away, to reveal a beautiful enchantress. The prince tried to apologize but it was too late, for she had seen that there was no love in his heart, and as punishment, she transformed him into a hideous Beast, and placed a powerful spell on the castle, and all who lived there. Ashamed of his monstrous form, the Beast concealed himself inside his castle, with a magic mirror as his only window to the outside world. The rose she had offered was truly an enchanted rose, which would bloom until his 21st year. If he could learn to love another and earn their love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time. As the years passed, he fell into despair and lost all hope, for who could ever learn to love a beast? Spoiler alert: a beauty but a funny girl named Belle, once he finds the way to her heart through his library.
I can’t remember a time when I hadn’t seen this movie. My grandparents had it on VHS, so I watched it a lot at their house when I was young. As a child, I didn’t love Beauty and the Beast quite as much as The Lion King, but I always enjoyed it, and if anyone asked me who my favorite Disney Princess was, the answer was always Belle, I think mostly because we had a similar hair color and we both loved books. But as I got a little bit older, maybe around middle school, I started relating to Belle on a much deeper level. Because while I always did have a few close friends, I never really felt like I fit in with my peers. My schoolmates generally thought I was weird, and not that I think most of them cared much about me one way or the other, but sometimes I felt a lot like I was in that opening number, when Belle is walking through town reading and everybody’s singing about how strange she is. Through all of that, Belle is too absorbed in her book to really hear what any of them are saying. And that was a lot like me. I knew I didn’t fit in, but I also didn’t want to if that meant I had to change my interests or who I was. And as I was entering the age when most kids start really caring what other kids think of them, Belle told me it was okay to keep doing my own thing. And that’s around when Beauty and the Beast surpassed The Lion King as my favorite Disney movie. I cannot even begin to guess how many times I had seen it before I started keeping track, but I watched it five times in 2003, three times in 2004, once in each year from 2005 through 2007, twice in 2008, once in 2009, twice in 2010, once in each year from 2011 through 2013, once in 2018, once in 2020, and once in 2022. I think the break between 2013 and 2018 reflects the fact that I only owned it on VHS, and the main VCR I had access to broke around then. My most recent views were on Disney+ as part of my ranking Disney movies project with my brother. We ended up putting Beauty and the Beast at number 2, which I think is a little higher than he would have put it, but we put The Little Mermaid, his favorite, at number 3, which is a little higher than I would have put it, and I like that our ranking reflects our combined taste. I know I was biased, but rewatching it then reminded me of how much I still love this movie. I basically have the whole thing memorized, but every rewatch still feels magical. I recognize that it’s not perfect, but the things I love about it far outweigh the things that bug me about it.
Aside from the protagonist being a more adventurous version of me, the thing I’ve always loved most about this movie is its music. Every note of the score is gorgeous and contributes greatly to the film’s magical tone. The opening notes in particular are beautifully haunting and still give me chills. Every single song is an absolute banger, full of stellar lyrics and delightfully catchy melodies. Belle and its reprise, Gaston and its reprise, Be Our Guest, Something There, The Mob Song, and the Oscar-winning title song are all among the studio’s best numbers. No team of composers can top the magic of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. They had just triumphed with The Little Mermaid, and they proved that that wasn’t a fluke with these equally impressive jams. Devastatingly, Ashman passed away before Beauty and the Beast was even released, so although he had started working on Aladdin, this would be the final Disney soundtrack written entirely by the two of them. Obviously I still enjoy songs from other Disney movies, but I don’t feel like they quite reach the same level as the Howard Ashman ones. Ashman was also the executive producer of Beauty and the Beast, and he apparently significantly influenced the story, particularly when it came to fleshing out the character of the Beast, so this movie owes a lot to him. Although I don’t want to diminish the work of the screenwriter, Linda Woolverton, who became the first woman to write a Disney animated feature film script.
Knowing that the screenplay was written by a woman and the song lyrics were written by a gay man dying of AIDS in the late 80s to early 90s, it’s not incredibly surprising that the story’s main antagonists are toxic masculinity and mob mentality. Gaston is an unusual Disney villain because he doesn’t have magical powers or political ambitions; he’s just some guy with a giant ego who thinks he is entitled to the prettiest girl in town. He cannot comprehend her rejection (which is an amazing scene), and so he concocts a nefarious scheme to get her father committed to an asylum unless she agrees to marry him. Then when he sees the Beast as a romantic rival, he stirs up the townsfolk into an angry mob to storm the castle that they apparently didn’t even know existed until now, which means if they’d stopped to think for a moment they would have realized the Beast was not actually a threat to their safety, but mob mentality defies logic. The Mob Song is probably the least acclaimed number on the soundtrack, but I think it’s absolutely perfect, particularly the lyric, “We don’t like what we don’t understand, in fact it scares us.” I know there’s been some debate about whether Howard Ashman intended for this movie to make a statement about the AIDS crisis, but you can’t tell me that line doesn’t perfectly apply to anti-LGBT+ attitudes, both then and now. And of course, Gaston is another perfect villain song, in that it’s almost a parody of a hero song. It’s a sort of Mame/Hello Dolly style number, sung by drunken buffoons who are praising the strangest qualities with delightfully tongue-in-cheek lyrics. Gaston eats sixty eggs?! Every morning?!?! I still don’t even really know how to process that, but I appreciate the way that line, as well as the entire song and character of Gaston, perfectly demonstrate the ridiculous standards society places on men to achieve an acceptable level of masculinity, as well as the way society teaches men (particularly straight cis white men) that they are entitled to whatever they want.
The Beast is an interesting contrast to Gaston. (Side note: I know a lot of people consider the Beast’s real name to be Adam, but that came from a video game that was released later, and as far as I can tell it’s not actually canon in the movie, so I’m going to keep referring to him as the Beast.) Anyway, at first, he too suffers from an extreme sense of entitlement. Gaston’s whole planning their wedding and getting it all set up outside her house and then informing her that they were getting married must have seemed almost reasonable to Belle in hindsight after the Beast imprisons her in his castle in the hopes that that will make her learn to love him. But, unlike Gaston, the Beast is willing to learn. He’s been living as a monster for so long that it takes time for him to find his humanity again, but once he does, he releases Belle, and it’s only after that when she grows to love him. I do feel like there is a way to watch this movie and take away the message that you should stay with an abusive partner in the hopes that you can change them, and I want to acknowledge that that has probably caused harm. But I feel like, as I previously said about Cinderella, the general perception of this movie doesn’t actually line up with what it’s really about. This seems to happen to a lot of Disney princesses. No, Cinderella is not just doing chores and waiting around for a man, and no, Ariel did not give up her voice for a man, and no, Belle does not stay in a toxic relationship in order to change a man. Also, it’s 2023, can we all please agree to stop talking about Stockholm syndrome? It was invented by police in the 1970s to discredit a female hostage who had criticized the way they handled the situation she was in, it’s not a real thing. And even if it was, Belle does not love the Beast while she’s his prisoner, nor does she actively seek to change him into the person she wants him to be. He does the work to become a better version of himself, and then she loves him and wants to be around him. I’m not saying that anyone should try to model real life relationships after theirs, but it’s still very important to me for everyone to understand that Belle canonically does not fall in love with her jailor. If she had, the spell would have broken the moment the Beast told her to leave, since that’s when he started truly loving her. She doesn’t love him in return until he has demonstrated that he cares about her happiness and respects her ability to make her own decisions. And it’s totally fair if you don’t think that’s enough for him to earn her forgiveness for the way he treated her at first. But personally I love stories about forgiving people who may or may not deserve it, which is a big part of why I enjoy this movie so much.
I realize that, given how much I’ve complained in previous episodes about how there’s too much romance in movies, it may seem strange how emphatically I’m defending the central romance of Beauty and the Beast, but here’s the thing. It took me a very long time to understand this, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen Belle and the Beast’s relationship the same way that alloromantic, allosexual people do. My first glimpse of this was seeing people analyzing their relationship online and saying, among other things, that since Belle fell in love with the Beast before he transformed back into a human, she must be into bestiality. I do think this is mainly said by people who delight in “ruining childhoods” by inserting mature themes into children’s media, which is just…a very weird hobby to have, but it made me realize that I had never seen their relationship as sexual even after the Beast became human. Which, again, I don’t think you’re supposed to because it’s an animated kids’ movie, but what I’m trying to say is that the whole “love implies romance implies sex” mindset had never occurred to me, in general, but also specifically regarding this movie. Because the thing is, the prologue doesn’t say, “if he could learn to fall in romantic and sexual love with another, and earn romantic and sexual love in return, then the spell would be broken”; what it says is “learn to love another.” (Side note: the soundtrack says “and earn their love in return” but the actual movie changes the pronoun to “her” which I find a bit irritating but oh well.) I didn’t have the language for this until recently, but I can say now that I have never seen Belle and the Beast’s relationship as romantic either, at least in the traditional definition of romantic. And I think that’s another part of the reason I was so drawn to this movie in my adolescence. At the age when allo people start developing crushes, the only kind of partnership I was even remotely interested in was what Belle and the Beast had: someone to hang out with and feed birds or have a snowball fight or dance or read or whatever, with big enough living quarters that you could go off and do your own thing when you didn’t want the other person around.
And I don’t know, maybe all of that sounds romantic to some people, and before I knew aromanticism was a thing I probably would have called it romantic too. A lot of people with significant others say that those kinds of things are the best parts of their relationship, but there always seems to be an understanding that romance and sex are necessary aspects of a partnership like that, even if they’re not the most important aspects. Certainly the servants see the development of the Beast and Belle’s relationship as romantic, especially Mrs. Potts, who doesn’t think her son Chip is old enough to hear about it. The song “Something There” is clearly meant to imply that the “something” is romantic love. And yet. Somehow it doesn’t feel the same to me as other romantic love stories, particularly other Disney romantic love stories. Usually the protagonist and the love interest see each other and BAM! Sparks. But Belle and the Beast seem more like people who were forced to be roommates and eventually grew to respect and care about each other. A sort of Elphaba/Galinda dynamic, if you will, although I know a lot of people see their relationship as romantic as well. We are so steeped in the message that the highest and deepest form of love is romantic and sexual, that trying to argue that two people aren’t in romantic love with each other is often seen as trying to lessen their feelings for each other. But there are other very strong forms of love, and Belle and the Beast’s relationship feels to me like it falls outside of the normative romantic standards of our society. I mean, yes, they do kiss, but besides that I feel like most of their positive interactions are things friends could do together. And long before I knew about being aromantic, I knew that if I ever were to get married, I would want it to basically be just like hanging out with a good friend every day. And that’s how I imagine Belle and the Beast’s relationship continues after the events of the movie. Both of them really needed a friend before they met, so I feel like they would both be happy with a close platonic relationship. I’m not trying to claim that this is what the movie meant to imply; I’m just saying that realizing that I didn’t see their relationship as romantic helped reinforce my understanding of my romantic orientation. Also, the VHS tape that I have is the special edition, which includes a deleted scene, part of which involves Belle helping the Beast re-learn how to read, which is very sweet, and which again I think a lot of people could interpret as romantic, but which could also be interpreted as one friend sharing their hobby with another.
The other part of that deleted scene is the song Human Again. This was also added back in when the movie was adapted into a Broadway show, and while I don’t think it’s strictly necessary, I do greatly enjoy the way it further develops the sidekick characters. Even without that number, I find them extremely fascinating. Lots of Disney heroes have sidekicks, but most of them are focused on helping the protagonist and/or love interest purely out of friendship and loyalty. For example, Sebastian, Flounder, and Scuttle try to get Eric to kiss Ariel because they know how much she wants to be human permanently. Lumiere, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts, Chip, and the rest of the household objects similarly try to get the Beast and Belle together, but they have their own motivations for doing so. They’re tired of being household objects; they want their human bodies back. And that’s what leads them to give the Beast dating tips and to defend him to Belle, even though he clearly hasn’t been treating them very well. And on top of that, they’re just very fun characters, and their design is so aesthetically appealing. When I was a kid, Lumiere was my favorite, I think mostly because I liked the color yellow and I enjoyed his French accent. Now I’m not sure why if they’re all French only like two characters have French accents, especially since Jerry Orbach normally had an American accent, but whatever, I still love it. As I got older, I realized I was more of a Cogsworth, as a constantly anxious rules-oriented nerd. Cogsworth is also, if not aromantic, at least cynical about romance, as evidenced by his amazing line, “There’s the usual things: flowers, chocolates, promises you don’t intend to keep…” which was improvised by David Ogden Stiers, who was gay, so I’m claiming Cogsworth as a queer character. And then of course there’s Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Potts, who didn’t think her voice was strong enough for the title song but then nailed it in one take. She seems a little old to be the mother of a young child, although maybe she adopted Chip? And all the other teacups, whom she refers to as his brothers and sisters? Or maybe the curse made children stop aging, but not adults?
I have so many questions about the timeline of this story. Like, how long is Belle in the castle? In some ways it feels like a few days, and in others, several years. The prologue states that the rose would bloom until the Beast’s 21st year, and Be Our Guest establishes that they’ve been cursed for 10 years – most of which I have to assume they spent choreographing and rehearsing that astonishingly epic number. Holy moly I never get tired of watching that scene, shout out to the forks doing the can-can on the chandelier, but I digress. This 10-year gap between the beginning of the curse and the rose wilting implies that the entire castle was cursed because an 11-year-old child wouldn’t let a stranger into his house, which feels like an incredibly unreasonable response from the enchantress. I suppose the prologue could have meant his 21st year as a beast, so it could have been 10 years between the curse and when Belle first arrived, and then Belle could have been there for 11 years before the last petal fell, but then I don’t understand why it would have taken Belle’s father Maurice that long to go after her, considering the castle could not be more than a few hours by horse away from their village, or why Gaston wouldn’t have given up pursuing her after all that time. Not to mention that nobody seems to have aged. The only explanation that somewhat satisfies me is that perhaps the rose bloomed fully until the Beast turned 21, and then the petals slowly began falling over several years after that, but that still doesn’t really make a ton of sense. Not that it really matters at all, I just like to over-analyze things like this. Anyway, the stage show got around at least some of my questions by changing the prologue to say that the rose would bloom “for many years.” The stage show also changed it so the objects were becoming less animate over time, and when the last petal fell they would be forever frozen, and I like the way that heightens their stakes even more.
While I’m talking about the stage show, I’d like to mention that Beauty and the Beast was the first Disney animated movie to be adapted for Broadway, which I think makes perfect sense because the movie already feels a lot like a Broadway show, especially in terms of the musical numbers. I believe the first national tour was the first live musical I ever saw, when I was around six or seven years old, and it definitely fueled my love of musical theater. I saw it for the second time at the same theatre just last year. It was the first public performance there since the pandemic shutdown, and it was so beautiful and energetic and moving that I sobbed into my mask through most of it. What a wonderful way to be welcomed back to the world of live theater.
Anyway, I know that this story is weird and kind of disturbing and doesn’t make complete sense when you think about it too hard, but it’s told so beautifully that none of that really matters. At its heart, it’s about overcoming prejudices and seeing the humanity in everyone. The Beast was cursed because he was repulsed by the old beggar woman’s appearance. Belle is initially repulsed by his appearance, while he initially sees her as just a means to break the spell. Once they get to know each other as people, they are able to form a deep and powerful connection. Belle has also been very judged for her appearance. The entire opening number is about how the villagers are annoyed that she doesn’t act the way a beautiful girl is supposed to act. And of course Gaston thinks she will be thrilled to marry him, since they are the two most beautiful people in town, apparently. This is an attitude that a lot of asexual people encounter. There seems to be a widespread misconception that asexuality isn’t really a thing, and that people only identify as asexual because they’re not attractive enough to find a partner. So when people like that encounter someone they find attractive who identifies as asexual, they feel the need to “reassure” the asexual person that they’re “too good-looking to be asexual.” It’s kind of similar to the stereotype that only ugly girls are bookish, and that Belle is therefore “funny” for reading while pretty. Because the human brain is so good at finding patterns and categorizing things, even people who don’t try treat others based on stereotypes are unconsciously biased in some way. We always have more to learn about other people. And while it is bittersweet and strange to find that you can change and learn that you were wrong, it’s also incredibly worth it. I love that this movie taught me that at a young age.
Thank you for listening to me discuss – or, more accurately, ramble on about – another of my most frequently rewatched movies. I love this one so much that I find it difficult to articulate my thoughts about it, but hopefully at least some of what I’ve said made a little bit of sense. Beauty and the Beast is my most-rewatched animated film, and therefore the last one I will talk about on this podcast, but I hope you will stay tuned as I struggle to articulate my love for the remaining 16 live-action films on my list. As always, I will leave you with a quote from the next movie: “To do then now would be retro. To do then then was very now-tro, if you will.”
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esta-elavaris · 2 years
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omg i just finished a series of assessments for the new term. it’s barely the start yet i’m already eager to graduate. anyways, why am i talking about me — aaa! i was washing the dishes earlier and i suddenly wondered if you’ll open a q&a portion as a “commercial break” for catch the winds, because i’m so curious like when did you think of the plot? how long did it take? how did you come up with theodora? i have so many questions! your book has stuck to me a lot that i still can’t get over it, and it’s been what? almost a week since i finished it? i’m a mess!
by the way, how are you doing? i hope you’re fine and practicing self-care! <3
Talk about you! I don't mind at all! I know what you mean, though - I graduated uni like four years ago but I still remember just being so ready for it to be over by the time I got to my final year. I feel like the first year is a novelty, the second year you're used to it all and have a good rhythm, and by third year you're just ready to move on. Or that was my case, anyway! It'll go slow, and then the second the final thing is handed in it feels like it all flew by, it's strange.
ANYWAY - aaaa! Thank you! I'm thrilled to hear it stayed with you for so long. Honestly, I never considered doing a Q&A thing because I just never thought anybody would be interested in something like that! I don't want to bore people who just want the next chapter haha. That being said, I'm more than happy to answer any questions you have on here! Any time, just shoot me an ask or a message, whichever works for you. I do apologise for the insanely long essay I ended up writing you here, I got carried away.
I kind of had the plot in mind for a while but in two different ways. I wanted to write a Norrington fic, and I wanted to write a "modern girl in X" fic for a long time. With the modern girl trope, my first thought was to do a Dragon Age fic, but it's been done so many times in that fandom (I know I'm not the first to do it in POTC either, but it seems to be really prolific in Dragon Age fandoms, whereas I haven't read many POTC fics because I avoid reading in fandoms I write in), so I tried to think where else it could work and Norrington was the answer.
It took a looong time between getting the idea and actually writing it, like at least a year, because I nearly didn't write it at all - and when I did, I wasn't even going to post it. I figured the idea was too far-fetched for me to be able to pull it off, and even if I did that not many people would be interested in reading it because OC fics tend to get a bad rap and "modern girl in X" fics double down on that bad rap. I was also terrified of writing in this fandom because it's so complex with so many difficult characters and so easy to get wrong, so that kept me away for a long time, but my original novel has pirates and a similar fantasy vibe so I figured it would be good practise.
I gave in and finally wrote the first chapter in the middle of the night when we were going through a heat wave that made it impossible to sleep (boo for no AC in Britain) just to get it out of my system, and then I liked the prologue enough to post it, same for the following chapter, and so on, until before I knew it we were at the start of the first movie. It was only ever for my own enjoyment at that point and I was amazed when more than ten people ended up reading it haha, I'm still stunned by how lovely people are about it. It hasn't left me alone since, although I did have a looot of doubt in the early chapters as to whether I could pull it off, because James was a tricky character to get the hang of.
Aaaand where Theodora is concerned, looks wise she's inspired by a mix of Anne Bonny from Black Sails and Sansa Stark (in the later seasons ofc) from GOT, but those aren't exactly who I picture, just a bit of a resemblance. A lot of creating her was trying to think of what sort of woman James would fall in love with, and we already have that with Elizabeth, but I didn't want to just write a second Elizabeth and put her in the story. Although where Elizabeth is concerned, I knew it was important that she and Theodora had to get along and be friends because I really didn't want to go the route of writing a female OC who immediately fought and didn't get along with the one other main prominent woman in the movies, it just felt icky, and it'd take a lot of the nuance out of the difficult situation as far as the three of them are concerned.
The good thing is, a lot of what I imagine James loves about Elizabeth are a lot of the more modern aspects of her (we stan a progressive king), so I felt like he'd be a good fit for a modern OC as long as she tried to understand where he was coming from and the parts of him that still would be rooted in the time he's from. Even the most feminist views by 18th century standards would probably still be a bit backwards by modern standards, so I knew they'd have to love each other enough to put their mutual stubbornness on hold to understand one another rather than just fighting over every little thing, because that would be exhausting.
Most of all with Theo, I wanted her to be able to hold her own in her environment without being a Mary Sue who just magically had these abilities and was good at everything. My thoughts then went to her being a soldier, but I'm sure I've read some LOTR modern girl stories (I considered writing one of those, too, because Boromir is the love of my life but I don't have the balls to touch Tolkien) where that was the case and I didn't want to run the risk of subconsciously copying them. I also don't know enough about the military to be able to portray a modern day soldier convincingly or accurately and I was worried about being disrespectful in that regard, so having her be a soldier's daughter felt like a great middle ground.
It also gives her and James common ground because she understands the mind-set, thanks to her father's influence, and the lifestyle to some extent, even in the different time period. Her father himself is majorly inspired by Ant Middleton (he did a lot of Channel 4 shows over here, I don't know if they're available to stream overseas but they're very good), and a lot of the mental toughness things he teaches her translates well to her being able to hold her own and not having breakdowns over minor problems every other chapter, but doesn't quite put her at a level where she's infallible and doesn't struggle, because that's just not human. She could climb a mountain, she couldn't go to war, y'know? At least at the start of the story. She doesn't have a choice by this arc.
It was also important to me that she felt a bit lost in the modern world and is more suited to a place where day to day life is more difficult because she thrives on that, so it's not a case of she's giving up a place where she was totally happy for the sake of James. I don't doubt that she still would, but it would feel a bit iffy. Having her be Irish also left the opportunity for a good excuse for her weird modern behaviours, a source of conflict early on in Port Royal with the other residents, and I knew I'd be able to write it decently because I'm Scottish and our history with the English/how we were (and still are, in a lot of cases) viewed by them is quite similar, even if it's not completely the same.
As far as how she and James click, I wish I could explain that but they take on a life of their own when I write them and I just let it happen. There's logic to it, I swear, but I couldn't describe what that logic is lolol. Plus this answer is embarrassingly long already so B) I think mostly it's a willingness to abandon their stubbornness to an extent where the other in concerned, and the fact that they're both fiercely loyal. I think her silliness at times also gives him the freedom to loosen up, which he'd appreciate, whereas how good and reliable he is would provide a major source of comfort and a sense of safeness for her.
All of that being SAID - I went into this story with only a few solid ideas. The Tortuga scene from the prologue, the bit where she watches Elizabeth accept the proposal, the end of the first movie, and a few parts that are going to happen between now and the end, so I'm very excited to get to those parts because it feels like it's what all of this writing has been for ahah.
And I'm doing okay, thank you for asking! Just a bit run down, but it's fine, it'll pass, and I had a lot of fun answering these questions, so thank you for that :)
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tattoobailee · 2 years
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*  ──  (  yang hyeji  ,  twenty  four  ,  cis woman  ,  she / her  )  welcome  to  hilton  hills  ,  bailee  seong  weiss  !  after  living  here  for  twenty  one  years  ,  we  are  so  glad  you  have  decided  to  stay  here  this  summer  and  work  as  a  tattoo  artist  .  a  lot  of  the  other  locals  have  said  you  can  come  across  as  -  loquacious  and  -  obsessive  ,  but  are  also  known  to  be  +  artistic  and  +  genuine  when  you  want  to  be  .  if  we  were  to  compare  you  to  anything  ,  it  would  be  the  buzz  of  a  tattoo  gun  ,  ripped  skinny  jeans  ,  &  a  hidden  stash  of  colorful  canvases  .  make  sure  not  to  be  late  for  your  first  shift  and  clock  out  in  time  to  make  it  to  the  bonfire  tonight  !  i  hear  they  are  going to  play  pma  by  all  time  low  just  for  you  !
( hi cuties ! i’m jade & i’m super stoked to be here ! feel free to give this a like if you wanna plot with my bailee girl and i’ll slide into those dms ! )
GENERAL .
birth name : seong miyoung
american name : bailee weiss
dob : february 14 , 1998
age : 24
gender : cis woman
pronouns : she / her
sexuality : pansexual
BACKGROUND .
parents : two moms tbd
siblings : n / a
pets : a bearded dragon named jonas 
birthplace : seoul , south korea
hometown : hilton hills , ny
languages : english ( primary ) , korean ( conversational )
PHYSICAL .
fc : yang hyeji
height : 5 ′ 6 ″
weight : 119 lbs
eye color : brown
hair color : brunette & blonde or red ( changes quite often )
MISCELLANEOUS .
positive traits : artistic & genuine
negative traits : loquacious & obsessive  
aesthetics :  the buzz of a tattoo gun , ripped skinny jeans , & a hidden stash of colorful canvases
favorite song : pma ( ft. pale waves ) by all time low 
BIOGRAPHY .
       born to teenagers in south korea who decided they weren’t ready to be parents , seong miyoung became a child of the system and eventually adopted by a wonderful lgbtq+ couple from new york at the age of three . upon arriving at her new home , she was blessed with her new american name : bailee weiss . growing up , bailee obviously knew that she was adopted , but it was something she didn’t willingly go around sharing with people , because to her the family she had was the only family she had ever had and / or needed .
       bailee started to show an interest in art from a very young age , coloring a wide range of pictures for her moms starting at the age of five . her artistic expression only grew more when she reached middle school and was allowed to choose an art class as her elective . by the time she was in high school , art had become a part of bailee’s personality . she would often find herself creating paintings for her friends just because she wanted to and even a couple teachers had some of her pieces hanging in their classrooms .
       college was never in the books for bailee . after high school , she chose to become an apprentice at the local tattoo shop instead . she worked underneath some of the best artists she had ever met for a number of years before she was promoted and allowed to do tattoos of her own . although tattooing is her main focus , bailee still finds herself taking time to create art on canvases as well .
       although she grew up a couple hours outside of the area , new york city is bailee’s absolute favorite place to go . her moms would take her to times square every new years eve when she was younger to watch the ball drop ( a tradition they still do as a family to this day ) and they would occasionally take her to see a broadway production now and then ( yes , she is a total broadway baby ) .
       although art is her life , bailee has a number of other hobbies that she enjoys : watching scary movies , cooking , and attending concerts ( mostly pop - punk ones ) being just some of the many things she likes to do . bailee’s personality is seemingly well rounded given that she is an upbeat , carefree , happy girl who also happens to be very in tune with her emotions and enjoys wearing black year round . oh , and she has a bearded dragon named jonas ( yes , after the jonas brothers ) who is the light of her life !
TLDR.
       bailee was originally born in south korea as seong miyoung , but was adopted by an american couple who gave her the name bailee weiss . she is aware that she is adopted , but doesn’t go around sharing that info with people . her biggest passion in life is art ; something that she started to show an interest in when she was just five . instead of going to college , she got a job at a tattoo shop as an apprentice before eventually becoming a tattoo artist herself . new york city is her favorite place to go , especially if it’s for the new year’s eve ball drop or a broadway show . overall , she’s just a goofy emo girl with a pet beardie named jonas who’s obsessed with art and loves to watch scary movies , cook a yummy meal , or attend a concert now and then .
WANTED CONNECTIONS.
OTHER LOCALS : her entire life in the united states has been spent here , so anyone who also has lived here for a while is bound to know her !
TATTOO CLIENTS : she’s been doing tattoos for a few years now , so odds are she’s done some on the locals / people who frequent here ! 
FELLOW EMO KIDS : this one’s pretty self - explanatory ; they gotta stick together !
( more connections tbd ! )
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zealoussy · 9 months
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OLIVIA - DOROTHY STRACHEY REVIEW
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General Book Information
Title : Olivia
Author : Dorothy Strachey
Genre : Classics, Queer Lit, Fiction
Released : 1949
Book Summary
Olivia may seem like any other teenage girl from middle class in London, but her upbringing is not so common. Having been raised by agnostic parents, Olivia finally finds relief when her parents decide to take her abroad. Thus freeing her from the suffocating conformity in her previous religiously-oriented school. In her new school, not only does she have to adapt to the beauty of France, she also has to adapt to her newfound discovery about herself.
Likes/Dislikes
What I like the most while reading this book is the beautiful writing style. It’s lyrical, it’s majestic. it knows the depth of a woman’s heart.
“But there was no need of wine to intoxicate me. Everything in her proximity was intoxicating.”
At first I found it a little bit difficult to grasp her writing style, but it gets you used to it very quickly. Even hooked on it. For a character like Olivia, who still has her naivety on her sleeve, that kind of monologue is very fitting. The character of Olivia is not a complicated one, but because it’s not, it’s harder to make the reader's attention on her- yet Olivia managed.
She’s young and madly in love. In a place where her target desire is near, she loves with every inch of her being. She's courageous, maybe because she's naive like that. Even then, in her world where human desire is only allowed if it's legalized, she's struggling with the inability to express her affection openly. Well, that struggle being an age-gap amongst many others… It's not hard to imagine that Olivia doesn't get it easy. I get that the center of the story is Olivia’s experience with same-sex love towards her headmistress, but it is unclear what the actual conflict the love interest has. I only noted that there are hints of the love interest’s past, but it never actually gets revealed. Although mentioning this and that without actually diving deep into the love interest’s backstory made her a mysterious person, it threw me off of the pace. It feels incomplete. I need to know the motif behind the headmistress’s pull-push attitude to Olivia. But alas, the story ended too quickly before I had discovered the explanation. Don’t get me wrong, attempts were made. But just that they’re not good enough for me. Maybe I expected big since I got attached to the lyrical writing style, still, it sort of fell short in my experience.
Would you recommend this book?
Honestly? No. But if you want some quotable words to read, feel free to do so. I’m finicky when it comes to rating, and I think you’ll find yourself enjoying a better fleshed out queer classic story than this.
Favorite Quotes
“I understand at last. Life, life, life, this is life, full of overflowing with every ecstasy and every agony. It is mine, mine to hug, to exhaust, to drain.”
“If it depended on altering the feelings in my heart, I was no more capable of doing that than of plucking the heart out of my breast-and I didn't want to.”
“How hard it is to kill hope! Time after time, one thinks one has trodden it down, stamped it to death. Time after time, like a noxious insect, it begins to stir again, it shivers back again into a faint tremulous life. Once more it worms its way into one's heart, to instill its poison, to gnaw away the solid hard foundations of life and leave in their place the hollow phantom of illusion.”
“‘It has been a struggle all my life—but I have always been victorious-I was proud of my victory.’ And then her voice changed, broke, deepened, softened, became a murmur: ‘I wonder now whether defeat wouldn't have been better for us all-as well as sweeter.’"
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trulylino · 2 years
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=> Girls In The Books - L.K
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Pairing: Lee Minho x fem!reader
Genre: Historical au, enemies to lovers
Summary: You hate Minho, but when your parents, the rulers of two allied kingdoms get together for a feast something changes.
Warnings: Implied smut, making out.
Word count: 4k
Masterlist
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"Princess its time to go," you looked up from your spot near the fire where you were curled up in a chair, warm fur helping to protect you from the cool air which loomed over the castle at this time of year. There you saw Hyunjin, your most trusted advisor. Not that he had much to advise you on, given that you weren't actually allowed to make decisions for yourself. The things you would do for just an ounce of freedom.
"I'm coming, let me just finish this page." Your eyes scanned from side to side, trying to finish the chapter before Hyunjin started to get cranky. You loved him, you really did, but God he was impatient.
"We have a meeting with the Lee and Han family in an hour, your highness, you must hurry to get ready." He urged you to speed up, taking note of how you slammed the book shut and tucked it under your arm to return it to its proper place on your bedroom shelf. He noticed how you rolled your eyes at the thought of having to be in the presence of Minho and Jisung, although he was unsure of who it was you had the problem with.
You made no comment about either of the men, however, opting to scold Hyunjin instead.
"How many times have I told you not to call me that, Jinnie?"
Hyunjin mimicked being deep in thought foe a couple seconds, before replying, "I don't seem to remember calling you 'that', princess." You nearly ran over to him to slap his arm.
"You know what I mean you idiot. And don't call me Princess in private either, you know that only my parents care about stuff like that."
"Dually noted," he smiled, "now hurry up, your mother probably has a truly interesting dress picked out for you." You groaned at his words. Trust your mother to dress you in the most cringe worthy garments that she could pay a seamstress to whip up. You liked wearing dresses, enjoying the way that the skirts would flow around your legs and the way that they looked when you span around, but the ones your mother liked to commisions were usually, if not always, ugly.
The fabric, although expensive no doubt, was stiff and uncomfortable and had to be heat pressed every five minutes to ensure not a single wrinkle was shown to the public. God forbid they knew you ever sat down and creased your clothes. The corsets, too, were so different to the ones you liked to wear. Your choice was pretty, dainty, and actually did something for your figure, whereas the ones your fashionably challenged mother preferred had an awful structure and the stays in them always dug uncomfortably into your skin. When you took them off you could probably paint a landscape connecting all the indent marks on your skin.
You miserably thought about your fate as you dragged your feet along the stone paved corridor to your chambers where your maids were waiting for your.
"A Princess doesn't drag her feet." Hyunjin piped up from your side, making you laugh as his pitch almost perfectly matched your tutor's.
"That was the spitting image of Ms Seo," you giggled, remembering the hours you had spent with the middle aged woman walking around with books on your head, damaging several as they fell to the floor.
"You know I was the one who got yelled at by her because you didn't seem to be able to speak eloquently enough. I'll never forgive you for that." He grunted, glaring at you. You returned his side eye with a pout.
"You're acting like I didn't get yelled at just as much as you."
"Yeah but I didn't even do anything wrong! That was all your!" He protested, sensing that his fight may be pointless.
You reached your door and Hyunjin bid you goodbye, going to talk to your brother about... something. You were actually sure considering the fact that you weren't actually privy to most things that happened in your family. Typical men. You would try and weasle it out of Hyunjin later.
Your maids greeted you at the door, rushing you over to your dresser to attempt to make you look more presentable. Even now, before they had made you up you still looked pretty, but not in the right way. You looked a bit messy, your hair tangled and your eyes droopy from tiredness and a lack of mascara. Your silk night gown cut off just below your knee, and beyond there your legs were slightly bruised and the skin was dry. You were probably going to be forced to apply mountains of moisturiser there in the evening. You couldn't wait.
"We need to be fast, we only have just over 45 minutes!" You heard one of your maids, Lia, mutter to another. Lia had been your head maid for a long time and you had grown close to each other over the years, she had been the first one to help you shave your legs and the first one to learn about any crushes you had on random guards.
"Why didn't you come faster y/n?!" She scolded you, tapping you on the forehead.
"Ah!" You complained at the slight pain, "It's not my fault, Hyunjin only just came and told me."
"That man is useless, I told him to get you two hours before!"
You shrugged, letting her take control of your face, applying all sorts of powders and liquids to your cheeks. Soon, your skin glowed and your lips shone and you were being rushed over to your wardrobe where a dress hung.
You did a double take when you saw it. It wasn't... ugly. You were in shock, if you were being honest. Hyunjin's tone had implied that you were doomed to yet another disgustingly frilly and stuffy *frock* but this was, actually... nice. Pretty even. Your brief moment of glee dissipated very suddenly. It made you suspicious. Who was your mother trying to impress?
Still, it was hard to complain when you were stepping into one of the most gorgeous gowns you had ever had the luxury of wearing in public. The cream dress had pale gold detailing which was just the right amount of delicate and rich looking. The bodice fit snugly around your waist and chest, not feeling tight or constricting and the long sleeved had a belled effect which made your arms feel long and dainty, like you should be dancing.
"Oh my god, its beautiful." You gushed at you reflection in the gilded gold mirror.
"Isn't it just? I heard the Queen hired a new designer for you. I must say, it suits you so much more than what you used to be forced to wear."
You couldn't agree more. Although you were taught modest like it was your middle name you had to admit, you truly looked divine. You couldn't wait to rub this in Hyunjin's face. He got you all anxious over absolutely nothing.
You smile disappeared as you remembered the occasion for which you were all dolled up. How could you have forgotten? The Hans and the Lees. They weren't so bad if you didn't take into account their two sons who were around your age. But Jisung and Minho. God they were nightmares. Well, Jisung wasn't. Maybe it was just Minho who you despised then.
He was a year older than you, and ever since you were young you had been subject to his taunting and tricks whenever your parents, who were allies, had gotten together for any event. Often, you had not been allowed to attend formal gatherings since you had been 'too young' and had been forced to play and interact with the two boys, along with Felix, who was Minho's cousin. Oh, dear sweet Felix, god he had been your saviour in those times.
Still, even at the prospect of Felix being at this 'gathering', you weren't exactly looking forward to it. You parents would no doubt turn the whole ordeal into a big feast after the initial meeting and you would be expected to dance and socialise into the late hours of the evening. Typical. How nice of them to give you warning.
"Ok, you're all ready ma'am," One of your newer maids, Jihye, that was her name, called out to you, bowing before guiding you towards the door.
Somehow you were actually right on time and had around ten minutes to make your way to the formal dining room where your mother and father would no doubt be waiting (im)patiently.
You were surprised to find Hyunjin on the other side of the door, ready to lead the way. At this point he might as well just take over the roll of body guard, since he seemed to do a more effective job anyway. You paused before starting to walk down the corridor, eyeing his raised eyebrows and slightly open mouth which formed an O shape.
"What."
"You just look different, that's all."
"That sounds like an insult."
"It's not, I promise. You look nice. Just makes me wonder what on earth your mother is planning."
"Oh my God, me too. Only the Lord knows what's going on in that brain of hers."
You walked in comfortable silence to the lunch room, passing guards and maids and ladies in waiting on the way, all of them looking in awe at you before bowing politely. You smiled graciously, used to the attention but becoming slightly uncomfortable at quite how much their eyes lingered.
"Do I have something on my face?" You whispered to the man beside you, covering your mouth with your hand, trying to hide any stray food stains which may have made their way onto your face. Hyunjin studied your face for a second before shaking his head and looking forward again. You wiped your mouth anyway, just in case.
You reached the doors at last and they swung open to reveal just your mother, father and brother at the table. You smiled and made your way over to your chair, which you noted was on the opposite side of the table from your family. You resisted the urge to complain about it. Miraculously.
"They'll be here soon," your father informed you as you got settled in your seat, remembering the lessons that Ms Seo had taught you about sitting. No crossing your legs, feet pointed and your hands in your lap. That's what she always said.  You nodded to a acknowledge his statement, preferring to shut up in the presence of your family.
It didn't take long for the small ensemble of guests to start arriving, the Hans arriving first. You stood up, mirroring the rest of your family, welcoming them into your home. You smiled softly at Jisung when he walked in last, as it was customary for the youngest to do. Then the Lees came. Much to your disappointment Felix was not among them, although it made sense, as he was not part of the main family he usually only attended the larger events, such as balls or feasts.
Then in sauntered Minho. It had been a year or so since you had seen him, and you were disappointed that he hadn't been in some sort of tragic accident involving a very sharp piece of metal. No, his limbs were all still in tact, and annoyingly he had grown more handsome since the last time you saw him. You swore it was out of spite at this point, like a competition. Who can out-beauty the other. You definitely were still winning, however, even Minho's glow up wouldn't change that.
You dropped your smile for a split second to shoot him a dagger like glare, eyes cutting into his already sneering ones. You couldn't stay like this for long though and you quickly smiled again, your poise perfect once more.
It was only fair that you hated Minho. Your parents had always compared you to him, despite him being a year older than you. On top of that he had always been an irritating little prick. You weren't exactly innocent either, you had purposefully annoyed him right back, quickly learning just how to push his buttons to get a reaction, all while looking like the perfect daughter and princess to everyone else present.
The servants ushered them all to their seats and you watched in horror as Minho got closer and closer to you. Just your luck that you would be stuck right next to him. Whoever made this seating plan had a death wish.
You scowled when he sat down in his seat, spreading his knees. You hated when men. How come he was allowed to do that when you were stuck sitting with a straight back and your knees together at the perfect angle.
"Hey, Princess." He smirked at you, revealing his irritatingly perfect teeth. It was clearly him trying to show off that he hadn't needed braces, unlike you, who had suffered with the torture device for two years when you were a teenager. It wasn't even like they had done much, considered your 'braces' had consisted of a clamp which you had to wear before bed every night. You remembered the pure pain you felt as your teeth were pushed around your mouth. Asshole.
"Minho." You gritted your teeth and turned away from him. You didn't see the way his eyes glanced down at your dress, stopping at your chest, waist and hands.
You tried to ignore him the rest of the afternoon, instead focusing on your families talking and the drink in front of you. It was hard, however when you felt his foot under the table, kicking your own, not quite hard enough for it hurt. You turned to give him a glare when you caught your mother's eyes on you and you realised you had better compose yourself.
You tuned in the conversation your parents were having and did your best not to groan at what you heard.
"And of course we'll have a feast tonight, you don't have to hurry away, do you? In fact you must stay the night." Your father's words were like a dagger in your lungs, and you exhaled sharply, becoming deflated like a balloon.
"Something wrong y/n?" Your mother asked sharply, giving you the look. The one that definitely meant 'shut up right now or you're in deep trouble'.
"No, sorry mother." You reached forward to take a drink of your tea to calm yourself down. An entire evening you were going to have to spend in the company of Minho. You wished someone would come at kidnap you at this point. Hold you ransom. Anything would be better. Maybe then you could even fall in love like the girls in the books you read. You did always find that strange, how people fell in love with their kidnappers. You thought it was about as likely as you falling in love with Minho. Now that would be a sight to see.
・・・・・・
"Go and dance, y/n!" A lady in waiting named Yuna urged you. The band which your family had living in the castle was playing a beautiful piece and your dress was perfect for twirling in. The pianoforte was playing a beautiful twinkly solo and the cello's long slow notes accompanied it perfectly.
"I want to. I don't have anyone to dance with." It was true, everyone seemed to already have a partner, even Jisung was contentedly waltzing with one of your mother's younger lady in waitings.
"Look, there's someone over there, go dance with them!" Before you had a chance to argue you were being shoved in their direction. One final slightly over the top push sent you into their back and before you had time to apologise, they turned round, revealing Minho. Dismayed, you went to leave but a hand around your back stopped you.
"You wanna dance? Let's dance then, y/n." He pulled you into him and began to lead you. You had been this close to him before when fighting, why was your heart racing not in the 'you make me want to jump out of a window' kind of way? You felt his hot breath at your neck and the music filled your ears and heard, swirling around, clouding all common sense. What was going on? You were nearly tripping over your own feet and it wasn't even like you were bad at dancing.
"You're really bad at this." Minho commented, continuing perfectly. Of course he was doing perfectly. He was always like that. So annoyingly brilliant at literally everything he ever did. No wonder you parents had compared you to him, he was better at you in everything.
"Shut up." You tried harder to pick up your feet properly, desperately trying to remember what you had been taught by Ms Seo, but ultimately failed.
"Let me teach you," he murmured, rolling his eyes, "put your feet on mine." He instructed, and you stopped to look at him.
"I'm not five."
"Well you dance like a five year old. Put your feet on mine." You did as you were told, albeit begrudgingly, and let him guide you around the dance floor. You sucked in a breath when he pulled you closer so you didn't fall, suddenly even more hyperaware of his hand on your lower back, so close to touching something else. You focused on his hair which fell over his eyes as he looked down at you slightly, the brown of his eyes which warmed his whole face up beautifully. Why were you thinking like this? You needed to get some serious help. A serious psychological evaluation was definitely a necessity after this.
"Ok, I got it now," you whispered as you stepped down from his feet, continuing to move slowly. He didn't let you any further away from him, however. You could still feel the rise and fall of his chest against yours and the way that your breathing was matching, like in harmony.
"I need to go get some air." You blurted out, needing to get away from him. He finally let you go and you rushed out the room. You had a fluttery feeling in your stomach, and you were sure that your heart was going to burst right out of your chest at this rate. Why was Minho, probably the person you hated most in this world for years, making you feel this way?
"Where are you going my lady?" You heard Hyunjin ask as you practically ran through the doors.
"Just need some air." You explained quickly, before running to the small library in the private part of the castle. You took a moment to catch a much needed breath. You had spent the entire evening up until this point listening to ladies in waiting gossip and you and Jisung's mother discuss how you and Minho would make a 'perfect couple' and it was starting to get to you.
Why on earth had Minho held you so close? And why had you liked it? No, you did not like it. This was Minho. You were just lonely. There was no way that you actually found him even the slightest bit attractive. You were pacing at this point, the heels of your shoes lightly tapping the floor at every step you took.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Those weren't your shoes though. You looked up to see Minho standing in the doorway, out of breath, one arm holding the door frame for support. There were small beads of sweat on his forehead which glistened in the dim candle-light of the library.
"Minho, what are you-"
"Y/n," he cut you off before running over to you, "just shut up for once and kiss me."
You opened your mouth in shock before meeting his, full of passion and lust. He pulled away from you to gauge your reaction. You showed no signs of disgust or displeasure and he decided that you would've slapped him in the face by now if it was unwanted. He pushed his mouth back against your own, softer and more gentle than befire. His hands made their way to cup your face and your own arms snaked around his neck.
He began to guide you towards one of the many desks in the room, his pretty lips still attached to yours, as if he would die if they parted. You pulled away when your legs hit the table and he picked you up to sit you on it.
Breathlessly you murmured, "The door, Minho, the door." He took a moment to rest his forehead on your own before leaving you to run over and shut the door with a click. You were apart for long, as his lips were on your neck before you could properly register their absence.
"Wanted to do this for so long y/n, you have no idea." You nearly moaned at his words, the idea that he had been attracted to you just *did* something to you and you didn't know why.
"Just kiss me, Minho."
"Bet you wanted this too. I couldn't keep my eyes off you today. This dress..." His hands wandered down to your waist and circled round it, eventually finding your ass and picking you up, letting your legs wrap round his own waist.
You continued kissing, once more full of passion and years of pent up anger.
"You never really hated me, did you y/n?"
"I could never hate you. You're too perfect-"
You were interupted by the sound of a door slamming open. Hyunjin entered your line of vision, Jisung not far behind him. You nearly fell out of Minho's arms with the urgency you jumped down.
"Well I did not expect to see that." Hyunjin started before Jisung burst out laughing.
"I thought you locked the door." You hissed at Minho.
"You didn't tell me to lock it!" He whisper yelled back at you.
"Obviously I meant to lock it you idiot!"
"How was I meant to know that y/n?!"
"Common sense," you huffed, pushing him with your shoulder.
"You'll pay for that." He wanted you, turning his head to look at you.
"I hope I do."
Ahem.
Oh god. Yeah. Jisung and Hyunjin.
"I'll just... leave you two too it... be safe y/n." Hyunjin stated before closing the door, red in the face.
"Where were we?" Minho started before you slapped his arm.
"Arsehole."
"You know you love me."
Maybe the girls in the books you read weren't so crazy after all.
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Taglist: @dreamescapeswriting @bang-me-chan @sparkyprotectionsquad
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478 notes · View notes
butterflies-dragons · 3 years
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GRRM has projected his love for medieval tourneys, heraldry, pageantry, knights and chivalry on Sansa Stark
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Art credit: Heinrich von Breslau (Codex Manesse, 14. Jahrhundert)
GRRM:
“That whole story (The Hedge Knight) is built around a tournament. I love medieval tournaments, reading about them, writing about them. There's of course some of them in the main books, but this was an opportunity in a time of peace, not war, to look at a medieval tournament with all its pageantry and the jousting and the combat and reveal a little of Westerosi History”.
—In conversation: George R.R. Martin with Dan Jones FULL EVENT- August 2019
SANSA:
"The talk in the yard is we shall have a tourney, my lord," Jory said as he resumed his seat. "They say that knights will come from all over the realm to joust and feast in honor of your appointment as Hand of the King."
Arya could see that her father was not very happy about that. "Do they also say this is the last thing in the world I would have wished?"
Sansa's eyes had grown wide as the plates. "A tourney," she breathed. She was seated between Septa Mordane and Jeyne Poole, as far from Arya as she could get without drawing a reproach from Father. "Will we be permitted to go, Father?"
"You know my feelings, Sansa. It seems I must arrange Robert's games and pretend to be honored for his sake. That does not mean I must subject my daughters to this folly."
"Oh, please," Sansa said. "I want to see."
Septa Mordane spoke up. "Princess Myrcella will be there, my lord, and her younger than Lady Sansa. All the ladies of the court will be expected at a grand event like this, and as the tourney is in your honor, it would look queer if your family did not attend."
Father looked pained. "I suppose so. Very well, I shall arrange a place for you, Sansa." He saw Arya. "For both of you."
"I don't care about their stupid tourney," Arya said. She knew Prince Joffrey would be there, and she hated Prince Joffrey.
Sansa lifted her head. "It will be a splendid event. You shan't be wanted."
—A Game of Thrones - Arya II
Sansa rode to the Hand's tourney with Septa Mordane and Jeyne Poole, in a litter with curtains of yellow silk so fine she could see right through them. They turned the whole world gold. Beyond the city walls, a hundred pavilions had been raised beside the river, and the common folk came out in the thousands to watch the games. The splendor of it all took Sansa’s breath away; the shining armor, the great chargers caparisoned in silver and gold, the shouts of the crowd, the banners snapping in the wind…and the knights themselves, the knights most of all.
“It is better than the songs,” she whispered when they found the places that her father had promised her, among the high lords and ladies. Sansa was dressed beautifully that day, in a green gown that brought out the auburn of her hair, and she knew they were looking at her and smiling.
They watched the heroes of a hundred songs ride forth, each more fabulous than the last.
—A Game of Thrones - Sansa II
GRRM:
“Tolkien imitators who came after him, a lot of them created a sort of Disneyland Middle Ages, you know, a sort of Middle Ages like you might see at a Renaissance Faire, but you don't have the dysentery, or the torture, or the leprosy, or the innate sexism, or classism, or racism that was so built into so much of that world for so many centuries, you really have to take, you know, I like the knights in shinning armor, the heraldry and pageantry as much as anyone, but you also have to include the fleas."
— Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival - NIFFF 2014
The novelist is midway through something of a European tour. After his trip to Switzerland, he is due in Scotland for the Edinburgh book festival. It has often been suggested that Ivanhoe (by the Scottish 19th-century novelist Walter Scott) was, alongside the War of the Roses, a major influence on A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones.
Martin was first turned on to Ivanhoe by the 1952 MGM movie starring Robert Taylor, George Sanders and a young Elizabeth Taylor. "I think it was Elizabeth Taylor at the peak of her...," his voice tails off before he clarifies. "She was the most beautiful woman in the world. I think I was nine years old when I saw that movie. How could you not fall in love with her? But the jousting and the pageantry of it made me love that story. Later, in high school, I did read that book. For a modern reader, it's a little tough to get through. The prose is very Victorian and thick but if you fight your way through it, the story is there. It has everything the movie has and more – the heraldry and jousting and the insight into the times. It was an influence in that sense."
—GRRM - Independent - 2014
SANSA:
The green knight laughed again. "Barristan the Old, you mean. Don't flatter him too sweetly, child, he thinks overmuch of himself already." He smiled at her. "Now, wolf girl, if you can put a name to me as well, then I must concede that you are truly our Hand's daughter."
Joffrey stiffened beside her. "Have a care how you address my betrothed."
"I can answer," Sansa said quickly, to quell her prince's anger. She smiled at the green knight. "Your helmet bears golden antlers, my lord. The stag is the sigil of the royal House. King Robert has two brothers. By your extreme youth, you can only be Renly Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End and councillor to the king, and so I name you."
—A Game of Thrones - Sansa I
No one ransomed the northmen, though. One fat lordling haunted the kitchens, Hot Pie told her, always looking for a morsel. His mustache was so bushy that it covered his mouth, and the clasp that held his cloak was a silver-and-sapphire trident. He belonged to Lord Tywin, but the fierce, bearded young man who liked to walk the battlements alone in a black cloak patterned with white suns had been taken by some hedge knight who meant to get rich off him. Sansa would have known who he was, and the fat one too, but Arya had never taken much interest in titles and sigils. Whenever Septa Mordane had gone on about the history of this house and that house, she was inclined to drift and dream and wonder when the lesson would be done.
—A Clash of Kings - Arya VII
Petyr had given her a roll of arms to study, so she knew their heraldry if not their faces. The red castle was Redfort, plainly; a short man with a neat grey beard and mild eyes. Lady Anya was the only woman amongst the Lords Declarant, and wore a deep green mantle with the broken wheel of Waynwood picked out in beads of jet. Six silver bells on purple, that was Belmore, pear-bellied and round of shoulder. His beard was a ginger-grey horror sprouting from a multiplicity of chins. Symond Templeton's, by contrast, was black and sharply pointed. A beak of a nose and icy blue eyes made the Knight of Ninestars look like some elegant bird of prey. His doublet displayed nine black stars within a golden saltire. Young Lord Hunter's ermine cloak confused her till she spied the brooch that pinned it, five silver arrows fanned. Alayne would have put his age closer to fifty than to forty. His father had ruled at Longbow Hall for nigh on sixty years, only to die so abruptly that some whispered the new lord had hastened his inheritance. Hunter's cheeks and nose were red as apples, which bespoke a certain fondness for the grape. She made certain to fill his cup as often as he emptied it.
—A Feast for Crows - Alayne I
Harry was staring at her. He knows who I am, she realized, and he does not seem pleased to see me. It was only then that she took note of his heraldry. Though his surcoat and horse trappings were patterned in the red-and-white diamonds of House Hardyng, his shield was quartered. The arms of Hardyng and Waynwood were displayed in the first and third quarters, respectively, but in the second and fourth quarters he bore the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn, sky blue and cream. Sweetrobin will not like that.
—The Winds of Winter - Alayne I
GRRM:
Firstly, thanks for that very thorough response on the tournaments and knighthood. Fascinating. In particular given the notes about _Ivanhoe_ and its influence -- I've only witnessed the A&E production of it, although maybe about time I read it. Seems it might be ripe for ideas.
IVANHOE is well worth a read, although the style is very old fashioned, of course. Still it has some fabulous characters and scenes, and so far as I know the definitive portrayal of a medieval tournament, both melee and joust.
It has been filmed three times that I know of. The recent A&E production had some good moments, as did the older Sam Neill version... the CLASSIC version, however, is still MGM's 50s version, starring Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, and George Sanders. The jousts are wonderful, Liz is radiant, and George Sanders steals the film as Bois-Gilbert. You should definitely rent that one and have a look.
—GRRM - 1999
SANSA:
She loved King's Landing; the pageantry of the court, the high lords and ladies in their velvets and silks and gemstones, the great city with all its people. The tournament had been the most magical time of her whole life, and there was so much she had not seen yet, harvest feasts and masked balls and mummer shows. She could not bear the thought of losing it all.
—A Game of Thrones - Sansa III
She closed the window, gathered up the fallen papers, and stacked them on the table. One was a list of the competitors. Four-and-sixty knights had been invited to vie for places amongst Lord Robert Arryn's new Brotherhood of Winged Knights, and four and-sixty knights had come to tilt for the right to wear falcon's wings upon their warhelms and guard their lord.
The competitors came from all over the Vale, from the mountain valleys and the coast, from Gulltown and the Bloody Gate, even the Three Sisters. Though a few were promised, only three were wed; the eight victors would be expected to spend the next three years at Lord Robert's side, as his own personal guard (Alayne had suggested seven, like the Kingsguard, but Sweetrobin had insisted that he must have more knights than King Tommen), so older men with wives and children had not been invited.
And they came, Alayne thought proudly. They all came.
It had fallen out just as Petyr said it would, the day the ravens flew. "They're young, eager, hungry for adventure and renown. Lysa would not let them go to war. This is the next best thing. A chance to serve their lord and prove their prowess. They will come. Even Harry the Heir." He had smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead. "What a clever daughter you are."
It was clever. The tourney, the prizes, the winged knights, it had all been her own notion. Lord Robert's mother had filled him full of fears, but he always took courage from the tales she read him of Ser Artys Arryn, the Winged Knight of legend, founder of his line. Why not surround him with Winged Knights? She had thought one night, after Sweetrobin had finally drifted off to sleep. His own Kingsguard, to keep him safe and make him brave. And no sooner did she tell Petyr her idea than he went out and made it happen.
—The Winds of Winter - Alayne I
GRRM:
Amon Shin in Maine asks, “If you lived in Westeros, which house would you like to be part of, or in which area would you like to live?”
Well, you know, there’s something to be said for being an honorable Stark, but you’re kinda cold all the time and poor and so forth. And you have a lot of land, but there’s not a lot of stuff on it, you know? On the other hand, if you’re a Lannister, you have a nice house and all the gold you want and all of that stuff.  So, there’s a lot to be said for being a Lannister.  I don’t know.  Maybe I could probably see me being a Lannister.  And I would always pay my debts.
—A Dance with Dragons | George R.R. Martin | Talks at Google - July 2011
SANSA:
They were going to take it all away; the tournaments and the court and her prince, everything, they were going to send her back to the bleak grey walls of Winterfell and lock her up forever. Her life was over before it had begun.
—A Game of Thrones - Sansa III
* * *
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Art credit: Loras Tyrell gives Sansa Stark a rose at the Hand’s Tournament by Jonathan Burton.
As you can see, Sansa loves tourneys because GRRM loves tourneys.
During the events that take place in the ASOIAF Books, we find 5 tourneys and Sansa Stark is directly or indirectly linked with all of them:
The Hand's tourney, a tourney in honor of Sansa’s father, Eddard Stark. Sansa was unofficially crowned the Queen of Love and Beauty by the Knight of Flowers, Loras Tyrell. GRRM wrote this passage as a resemblance to the Great tourney at Harrenhal, hiding hints and reversing colors. 
Tourney on King Joffrey's name day, a tourney in honor of Sansa’s betrothed. Sansa defended and saved Dontos Hollard’s life.
Melee at Bitterbridge, Brienne won the melee and earned a place in Renly’s Kingsguard. Later she swore his allegiance to Sansa’s mother, Catelyn Stark, and made an oath to find Sansa Stark. Brienne also wields Oathkeeper, a sword made of Ice (House Stark ancestral sword).  
Melee at Runestone, this event was organized with the sole intention of knighting Harrold Hardyng, Alayne Stone’s betrothed.
Tourney at the Gates of the Moon to select the members of the Brotherhood of Winged Knights, created and organized by Alayne Stone.
Sansa is also linked with other important tourneys that happened previously to the events of the ASOIAF Books:
Tourney at Ashford Meadows (The Hedge Knight), GRRM wrote the Hedge Knight when he was in the middle of writing A Clash of Kings, and he made sure of link the five initial champions of the Tourney at Ashford Meadows (Baratheon, Lannister, Tyrell, Hardyng & Targaryen) with Sansa’s suitors and betrothed. So Willas Tyrell and Harrold Hardyng are not a coincidence in Sansa’s arc, GRRM had already planned for this since he was writing A Clash of Kings.    
Great tourney at Harrenhal, this tourney was won by Rhaegar Targaryen and as the champion he crowned Lyanna Stark (Sansa’s aunt & Jon Snow’s mother) as his Queen of Love and Beauty. And take note at this very interesting detail: Rhaegar Targaryen wearing an armor adorned with rubies (red) gave Lyanna Stark a crown of winter roses (blue), while Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers, wearing an armor adorned with sapphires (blue) gave Sansa a (red) rose.
Sansa loves knights because GRRM loves knights. Remember that George’s Catholic high school (Marist) football team is called the Royal Knights: 
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Sansa loves pageantry because GRRM loves pageantry. Just look at his collection of knights and ladies figurines:
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Sansa loves heraldry because GRRM loves heraldry. Take note that GRRM took inspiration from the antagonist of Ivanhoe, Brian de Bois-Guilbert’s sigil, to created House Corbray’s sigil:
Bois-Guilbert’s new shield bore a raven in full flight, holding in its claws a skull, and bearing the motto, Gare le Corbeau.
—IVANHOE: A Romance
The youngest man in the party had three ravens on his chest, each clutching a blood-red heart in its talons. His brown hair was shoulder length; one stray lock curled down across his forehead. Ser Lyn Corbray, Alayne thought, with a wary glance at his hard mouth and restless eyes.
—A Feast for Crows - Alayne I
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(Not to mention that Sansa loves books because George loves books...)
There you have it, GRRM self inserts in a few of his ASOIAF characters, and Sansa Stark is one of them.
343 notes · View notes
shepherds-of-haven · 3 years
Note
So I follow MANY interactive fiction blogs and I just have to say that you're my favorite by a long shot because I just love answers that you give in response to hypothetical scenarios and AU's for your characters. Like you actually put in effort and give well-thought out answers, so I thank you for that. As for AU's I have one of my own if you don't mind please. What would be the RO's for a murder mystery a la Cluedo? Bonus points that they can't leave the mansion for extra chaos. Thank you!
Ah, thank you so much for your kind words! 💖 I'm lucky to be a part of such a great community of talented creatives and kind, genuinely awesome people! Interacting with readers is such a pleasure, even if I do fall behind on messages and such I'm so sorry
I'm in North America, so I was genuinely like "what on Earth is Cluedo" gkljglfdjgd only because it's called Clue where I'm from! But I, uh, never played it, so I'm just going to go off of my knowledge from Knives Out 😂
SETTING: a Southern Gothic mansion in an undisclosed location, owned by a woman only referred to in jest as The Autarch by her adopted children. It is a stately manor, richly furnished and glittering with wealth, though imposing and dark-windowed during storms.
CONTEXT: a powerful and wealthy tycoon referred to only as "The Autarch" or "The Iron Lady" was once feared across the country for her ruthless business dealings and formidable empire. In her middle age, a mysterious experience and the sudden death of her husband caused her to have a change of heart, abruptly abandoning her empire to her only son and devoting her life to adopting six orphan children. However, stopping her business dealings did not completely change her personality: she was a hard, unforgiving woman, and her relationships to her children (now all grown) can be described as "strained" at best.
In her declining age, the lonely Autarch in her high mansion somehow came to befriend a psychic by the name of Mimir of the Silver Eye. Only the servants were witness to what was said between them, and even then, they never had the full story. The most that anyone knew was that the Autarch began to express more interest in resuming her business activities again, to the disconcertion of her only biological son, Enik, who had helmed the empire on his own for the last twenty years. Meanwhile, Mimir moved into the mansion to keep her older friend company, and to help advise her on matters both business and personal.
One stormy night, the Autarch calls all 7 of her children back home in order to discuss matters of great importance, including her decisions about her will. Some came eagerly, and others with great reluctance--there were arguments had that were years in coming, and there were private talks between siblings who hadn't interacted in years. But the matter that the Autarch was keen to discuss was postponed: the storm knocked out the power in the mansion, and all turned into bed, sleeping fitfully in rooms they'd abandoned decades earlier.
They never discovered why the Autarch had called them to their old haunting grounds, either, for in the morning, she was found with a knife buried in her heart.
CHARACTERS:
- Riel Syndran. A world-famous private detective and consultant famed across the world for his ability to solve any mystery, no matter how old or tangled. He is known for being comfortable with ruthlessly manipulating interrogation subjects and suspects in order to extract the truth and solve his case no matter what; this obsession and willingness to massage the rules--although he claims the truth is his only goal, above all other things--is what makes him unsuitable for conventional police work, but his results speak for themselves. He arrives on the mansion's doorstep mere minutes after the Autarch is found murdered and is claimed to have been hired by an anonymous party, casting suspicion on his timing and the pre-planned nature of the death. His signature move is being recognized by various people as "the detective who solved the Apple Killer case" (or some other famous case of his) and replying in irritable tones that it was actually "the Orange Killer case, but you were close". He abhors smoking and has doctorates in body language analysis and psychology, as well as a law degree, and is gifted with a photographic memory. He picks invisible lint off of his sleeves while he thinks.
- Blade Bronwyn. An FBI agent (think Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks) who has been in the town of Old Haven investigating a string of serial killings across the country. He hears about the murder of the Autarch from the local police and arrives at the manor a mere hour after they were alerted, keen to investigate the murder as part of his ongoing case. He plays the straight man to Riel's more eccentric detection methods, and is seen more as a serious, by-the-books rule-follower determined to get answers. The suspects in the manor find him to be emotionally-insensitive, blunt, and grim-faced. He has a better sense of smell and sight than Riel does, as well as more combat experience, and is the only person in the manor acknowledged to be carrying a weapon. He takes his coffee black and very strong.
- Enik Goldenson. The Autarch's only biological child and the oldest. He was granted full control of her holdings and business empire when she retired in order to focus on raising her new family. He has made his disdain of his adopted siblings very clear, not least because he resents having to share his future inheritance with them. He has historically been a bully and cruel towards his mother. Rumor had it that he was once studying to become a priest. He has avoided returning to the mansion ever since Trouble knocked his lights out at fourteen years of age. He was once briefly engaged to fellow heiress Lavinet Naveen, who eventually spurned him, finding him "repulsive." He has the most bad blood among anyone in the family and is considered one of the prime suspects in the Autarch's murder, as it was possible that she may planned to cut him out of the will. Blade places his suspect status as RED while Riel believes he is at an ORANGE: Enik may be far too clever to kill his own mother under such suspicious and bloody circumstances.
- Trouble Alder. The first of the Autarch's adopted children, he was once an urchin running a street-fighting racket on the streets of New Haven. He was nicknamed Trouble for his surly temper and quick ability to get into fights and settle things with his fists, necessitating being sent off to a military boarding school in an effort to curb his violent tendencies as a teenager. He is extremely protective of his other adopted siblings, and while he resented the Autarch in his youth, he has begrudgingly come to respect her more for taking him in as an adult. He now works as a decorated sniper in the military and is working to earn his pilot's wings. The revelation that he kept military weapons in his room casts suspicion on him as a murder suspect, though Riel quickly dismisses him as not being a good enough liar to get away with it.
- Tallys Ironwood. The second of the Autarch's adopted children, she made her hatred of the old woman very well known, and had an even poorer relationship with her than Enik did. Tallys's parents were victims in an accident caused by one of the Autarch's manufacturing plants, and she has always felt that her subsequent adoption was mere lip service to atonement for the Autarch, while she would have rather stayed with her more impoverished aunts and uncles. She ran away multiple times in her youth and has not spoken to the Autarch since she was 18. Her overt hatred and reluctance in coming back to the mansion casts suspicion on her as a murder suspect. She has a degree in plant science and works as an environmental activist, particularly targeting products and campaigns by Enik's company, creating unspeakable friction between them.
- Ayla Aescar. The third of the Autarch's adopted children, nothing is known about her biological parents. She was adopted from a neighboring country and has since returned to it as an adult, making an effort to reconnect with her origins and culture. Her relationship with "the old woman," as she calls her, was more neutral, though it comes out that the Autarch frequently bailed her out in secret whenever Ayla ran into trouble, such as trespassing on Jalis government grounds. Nominally, she works as a photographer for a travel magazine, but secretly, she is an investigative photojournalist looking into various covert practices by the Jalis government. This brings up a question of whether the Autarch's killing was political, and whether it was actually meant for Ayla.
- Chase Trinaeste. The fourth of the Autarch's adopted children, it's joked that he was intended to replace Trouble when he was sent off to boarding school due to having a more charming personality and sweeter face. However, he ended up being the most troublesome one of the bunch, having multiple run-ins with the law from a young age and displaying various tendencies towards larceny, grand theft auto, and more. He had no shame about stealing and pawning off valuables from the mansion and was a well-known skirt-chaser, leading to constant stress in their household about what he was getting up to when he snuck out of the house at night. At eighteen, he disappeared from the mansion, and no one has heard from him in the intervening years since. He completely ducks any questions from Riel or Blade about what he does for a living, leading most to conclude that he has gotten himself deeper entrenched in the criminal underworld. This has cast obvious suspicion on him and his involvement in the murder, as he was known to steal from the Autarch herself. He seems to feel some measure of loyalty and possibly remorse towards his adopted siblings, but hides it well under a polished veneer of charm and casual swagger.
- Briony Stormbreaker. The fifth of the Autarch's adopted children In a dramatic fashion, she was discovered as a young child swept away in a huge flood caused by a storm, with no ability to communicate (or seemingly remember) anything about where she could have lived or who her family was. She was subsequently adopted by the Autarch and is one of the few who had a fairly good relationship with her, always expressing gratitude for giving her a home and family (though this brought her into conflict with siblings like Tallys, as she usually tried to defend the Autarch when she wasn't there to speak for herself). She was the sibling who always tried to unite the others, and their constant arguments and conflicts constantly broke her heart. She was an easily-upset child who tended to be babied by Trouble and Chase, but after constantly bullying from Croelle and Enik, she toughened up and began taking martial arts classes, abruptly displaying her own ferocious temper and violent streak as well as unusually powerful physical strength. She currently works as a passionate public prosecutor. She was heard conversing with the Autarch privately with raised voices, on the night of the murder, and is known to sleepwalk during violent storms. She even had a phase with an imaginary, sword-shaped friend as a child, as well as repeatedly claimed that she's seen ghosts in the manor. This perceived paranoia has led some to wonder whether she could have harmed the Autarch in her sleep. As Riel says, "It's always the nice ones." Blade: "Not in my experience." Riel: "Not in mine, either, but in some continuity, it must be true."
- Croelle. The last of the Autarch's adopted children. He was by far the most anti-social and troubled part of the family, refusing to speak to those he deemed beneath him and breaking Trouble's arm in a disturbing display of dominance as youths. Unlike Enik, his cruelty is more ruthless and matter-of-fact, the way an animal might treat another animal, rather than pointed and manipulative. Regardless, he was a terror to all of the other siblings, and he was eventually thrown in juvenile detention (and later prison) for killing members of a gang, seemingly in self-defense. However, he never cared to divulge the full details of the story, and has been serving his sentence ever since. No one besides the Autarch knew that he was coming until they arrived at the manor. Croelle claims that he and the Autarch had been exchanging letters for the last few years, and that he has begrudgingly allowed her back into his life, which was why she decided to invite him to this gathering upon his release from prison. However, there is currently no evidence that any such letters exist. As an adult, he is currently quieter and more mellow and has shown no particular proclivity towards violence, but there is always a sense of danger lurking in his eye regardless. His social skills have not improved by much. He is considered one of the absolute top suspects for the old woman's murder. His feelings on his adopted siblings or really anything are extremely unknown. He keeps asking everyone about free will, which annoys everyone except Riel.
- Shery Acquell. A longtime maid for the Autarch and one of her closest friends and confidantes. She alone has been caring for the Autarch in her declining health, ensuring that she has been receiving the proper medical care and dietary attentions, and even reading her books in the evenings. Their closeness has led some to speculate that the Autarch may have bequeathed a part of her inheritance to the maid, or that perhaps Shery was motivated to ingratiate herself to the Autarch to attain said inheritance. She was the last person to see the Autarch before her death, knows something about what transpired between her and Mimir, and ultimately reluctantly admits that she believes in the ghosts that Briony has seen, too.
- Halek Prince. The manor's live-in chef. He is one of the few non-family members staying in the mansion the night of the murder, and suspicion is cast on him when his cooking seemingly gives Ayla, Briony, and Red an allergy attack, leading some to posit attempts at poisoning. Mimir claims to have seen him in places where he shouldn't be or even couldn't be, and he is generally someone viewed as a good suspect for the murder. Riel thinks something else is going on here.
- Red Antiqua. Ayla's journalist partner who accompanied her to the mansion, partly to serve as a buffer for the family awkwardness and partly because he was curious to learn more about the reclusive Autarch. Nominally, he is a travel writer, but secretly, he is working as the same kind of investigative journalist that she is. His secret photographs of the manor prove to be a key piece of evidence in uncovering the murder suspect. He is forced to be confined to the manor, the same as everyone else, to prevent information leaks or runaways. He uncovers a secret doorway in his room and is too curious not to duck into it...
- Caine Tavadon. The son of the manor's groundskeeper, he is often seen with his dog, peeping into the windows of the manor because he's incorrigibly nosy. His witness statements lead Blade and Riel to key footprints on the grounds. He claims to have seen a strange figure staring down at him from the windows of the mansion before.
- Prihine Naveen. Enik's current fiancee, she accompanied him on this odious visit to his mother's manor and is a witness in the proceedings. Although they can barely tolerate each other, their shared ambitions for wealth and power keep them together as a polite though distant couple. A file in the Autarch's study reveals that she has been watching Prihine for some time and discovered that she was having a secret affair. The file indicates that she planned to tell Enik face-to-face, leading others to speculate that Prihine may have murdered the old woman in order to preserve her engagement. Enik remarks that there was a period of time where Prihine was not in bed.
- Lavinet Naveen. Prihine's older cousin, and Enik's ex-fiancee. They've technically known each other since they were children and were schoolmates at the same prestigious institution. The Autarch and Lavinet's father initially had designs to marry the two to forge a powerful alliance between their business empires. However, Lavinet quickly backed out of the engagement, finally admitting that she couldn't stand Enik and would never marry him. Although this has generally caused relations between the two families to become frosty, she has strangely remained on good terms with the Autarch herself, who always admired Lavinet's chutzpah and steely will. (This was just another reason for Enik to hate his own mother.) Lavinet was free to come and go to the manor as she pleased, and dropped in on the Autarch once every few months, as her family's manor is nearby. She only recently discovered that her own cousin, Prihine, is now engaged to her ex, and rushed over on the night of the murder in order to dissuade Prihine from the marriage or convince the Autarch to put a stop to it. This led to a four-way argument (between Lavinet, Prihine, Enik, and his mother) of epic proportions, meaning that Lavinet is not clear on suspicions of murder, either.
- Mimir. The psychic who somehow came into contact with the Autarch and began to convert her to the ways of the supernatural. She has been the Autarch's closest friend and confidant for months, even going so far as to move into the mansion. Many point out the obvious designs on the Autarch's inheritance and possible sinister intentions for taking advantage of the older woman, especially since no one but Shery knows what Mimir has actually advised the Autarch to do. However, Riel points out that there has been no traceable financial irregularities when it comes to Mimir; the Autarch doesn't seem to have paid her for her services, only providing Mimir with food and a roof over her head. The psychic speaks in extremely cryptic tones and lapses into trance-like states. Riel in particular scorns her for her supposedly psychic abilities, insisting that she is a fraud, until she comments on aspects of his past that no one could possibly know, shaking him. She is a prime suspect for the murder until it's discovered that Mimir insists on being locked into a windowless room, only being released by Shery in the morning, to protect herself from the ghosts that haunt the grounds...
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cheri-translates · 3 years
Text
[CN] Victor’s Exhibition Date (Eng Translation)
🍒 Warning: This post contains detailed spoilers for a date which has not been released in English servers! 🍒
NOTE: @redqueen-hypothesis​​ did the translation for this! All I did was proofread and format! It’s on my blog because Red says so and I have to comply :<
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[ This date was released in CN on 7 December 2020 ]
MC: According to the map, it should be… right ahead!
Victor: ...you don’t need to look at the map. Just watch where you’re going.
Victor: Turn at this corner and we’ll be there. There’s no need to keep looking at your phone.
A few days ago, when I was agonising over what television program to produce for the theme ‘Heart’s Whisper While Going into the New Year’, a notification about an exhibition popped up on my phone.
The exhibition hall next to New Light Mall was going to hold a ‘Speak Up’ exhibition. I saw a few recommendations for the exhibit, and thought that it was meaningful, and also felt that it was in line with the New Year atmosphere.
Since the opportunity presented itself, I quickly booked Victor’s Sunday afternoon.
MC: CEO Victor’s rare time off has been taken over by me to do overtime - do you have any complaints?
After hearing what I’ve said, Victor raises an eyebrow, a slight laugh escaping him.
Victor: What if I do?
MC: If that’s the case…
MC: Since I don’t think I could afford your overtime wages, how about I treat you to a cup of coffee later? I’ll look for the nearest cafe in the area…
When I lower my head to look at my phone, searching for a list of cafes in the vicinity, Victor lets out a sigh and grabs my hand, pulling me to turn a right at the corner.
MC: Ahh, the nearest cafe is located right outside the exhibition hall!
MC: Online reviews say that their croissants taste good. From the pictures they’ve posted… it seems to be true.
Victor: And here I was, thinking that you’d really come with the intention of figuring out the plan for your television program.
MC: I do intend to! But right now, I’m missing the… spark of inspiration.
MC: If the afternoon turns out to be fruitless, I’ll simply treat it as a day out! It’s not too bad.
MC: Besides, don’t you think the two of us have very few opportunities to look at these sorts of exhibitions together?
Victor: … yes, it’s my fault for being too busy.
MC: That’s not true. You already take out so much time to accompany me, and I always drag you to all sorts of noisy places.
MC: It’s time to let art nurture my soul, and help me attain a gentler disposition.
Victor’s hand, which had been holding mine earlier, slides down my palm, warm fingertips stroking the back of my hand gently, before lacing his fingers with mine.
Victor: Then, let’s go.
-
Cafe owner: So the both of you haven’t planned the overall route to view the exhibition?
The cafe is located right at the entrance. After securing the tickets to the exhibition, I pull Victor to the cafe first.
However, today’s exhibition hall seems a little deserted, and the cafe has very few customers.
The bespectacled middle-aged owner seems refined and gentle and is a good host. Before long, he’s already started a conversation with the two of us.
MC: Is the exhibition very big?
Cafe owner: There are three floors in total. If you browse every exhibit once, it should take quite a while.
Cafe owner: This is why many visitors choose a single floor to focus their attention on, and give less time to the other two.
When Victor takes his coffee, he nods politely at the cafe owner.
Victor: Do you have any recommendations?
Cafe owner: Haha, if you’re talking about recommendations, I’d suggest the second floor. It’s most popular with visitors, since the main theme of the floor is ‘Love’.
As the cafe owner says this, he places both hands on the bar counter and chuckles at the two of us.
Cafe owner: Stories on the second floor and those related to the exhibits are real. So instead of saying that you’re looking at the exhibits, it’s more of you looking at authentic stories.
I steal a glance at Victor.
Victor: It’s your choice.
MC: Then let’s go to the second floor first!
MC: Coincidentally, most of the exhibits I’m interested in happen to be on the second floor as well.
Happily, I pick up my latte and tuck the exhibition brochure into my bag, determined to explore the second floor.
Victor is one step ahead of me and pushes open the door of the cafe for both of us, giving the cafe owner a slight nod before we leave.
When I turn back to look behind me, he has already taken my hand, pulling me towards the second floor.
After stepping up the last flight of stairs, the large exhibition hall appears before my eyes.
It’s not at all like what I had expected. There aren’t any mundane objects put on display here such as handwritten letters or small gifts. Instead, these are real pieces of artwork.
All sorts of beautiful sculptures, paintings, and musical instruments have been set up. Even the lighting is so beautiful that if I were to use exquisite words to praise it, it would still sound modest.
MC: It really is an art exhibition…
Victor: There are a few works from some of the best artists of their time. You should be careful not to miss any of them.
Even though the silence in this large exhibition hall is only broken by the sound of our footsteps, one lighter and one heavier, the interior decor of the exhibit is very cozy, lacking the coldness that keeps one at bay.
Pure white stone pillars, warm yellow lights, the lack of the usual glass coverings separating exhibits, and every placard for each exhibit seems as though it’s been handwritten by the person who contributed it.
Walking between the exhibits, the feeling I get is one of warmth, and the volume that I had been suppressing since I walked into the exhibition hall steadily grows.
MC: Victor, look at this!
I take out my phone and snap a picture of the oil painting hanging on a wall.
MC: The placard says that the artist’s girlfriend is known as ‘Mouse’. So in every piece of artwork, there’s an adorable mouse subtly hidden somewhere.
After pressing down on the shutter, I look up once again to search the artwork for a little mouse.
MC: Wow, he’s really creative! The mouse in every piece looks completely different!
MC: This chubby little one looks really cute, this one seems really sharp and intelligent… they all suit the theme of each artwork. If you don’t look very carefully, it’s difficult to notice them, and they don’t ruin the art at all.
With a hand stuffed into his pocket, Victor lifts his eyes to stare at these paintings, a look of contemplation surfacing on his face.
Victor: This exhibit is called “Marks”.
MC: Yeah… it’s a title which lets others easily understand what it’s about.
Victor turns around to give me a low chuckle.
Victor: If that’s the case, tell me what you understand from it.
MC: Are you testing me again?
I think about this for a moment, then rush to stop him before he can tell me the answer, shaking my head.
MC: I’ll tell you my answer later! But first, come with me to see another exhibit!
I pull Victor along with me to the walkway, deeper into the exhibition, following my memory of the exhibition brochure I had looked at earlier, and come to a stop in front of several thick diaries.
MC: This exhibit is called ‘Today’s Weather’. It’s the exhibit I wanted to center my program around.
MC: These are the diaries of a woman who wrote down everything about her life for a full ten years. In these diaries, she often mentions “Mr A”, the person she likes very much.
Victor nods, flipping open one of the books silently.
Victor: From what I can see of her personality from her writings, she seems to be quite similar to you.
MC: Do you know what’s written on the last page of her diary? ...‘Congratulations on your marriage’.
MC: The “Mr A” she liked so much rejected her confessions several times, and he later moved overseas, causing them to lose contact with each other. The next time she heard of him, it was an announcement of his marriage, and that’s where her diary stopped.
Victor’s hand pauses in flipping a page, his expression slightly dumbfounded.
Victor: So what was the point of her writing this diary?
I look at the yellowing pages of the diary, and think back to what the brochure had mentioned about it.
MC: There was no reason.
MC: She later said that this was her true life story - a simple and calm one. During these ten years, she studied hard and moved to the city, becoming a person in charge, a manager, and then a director… and never once gave up on herself.
MC: Although the entrance test she took back then was exceptionally difficult, she persevered with the thought that the school was rather close to the high school Mr A had once studied at.
MC: She felt that by attending a school near to his, she could bring their lives closer together.
MC: There were no waves of joy or anguish - only trivial sentiments.
Even though there were some incidents which made her feel sad, from the cute and excitable way she described everything in her diary, she lived rather well despite feeling some regret.
However, after saying so much, Victor doesn’t respond. I walk to his side and tug on his sleeve.
MC: We’ve finished looking at this exhibit. Do you want to leave?
Victor: Since this is the exhibit you wanted to use for your program, shouldn’t you take a few more photos before leaving?
MC: I planned to, but I thought you might find it pointless.
Under his questioning gaze, I answer honestly.
MC: I’m sure in CEO Victor’s mind, there are many more important things going on every day… you wouldn’t be interested in trivial things such as romantic sentiments. And even then, you’d be able to understand them easily.
Victor gives a small laugh.
Victor: If I weren’t interested in such things, why would I be accompanying you here over the weekend?
He glances back at the diaries, his expression one of deep contemplation.
Victor: In truth, the same emotions can be felt by different people. I can understand her feelings.
I never thought Victor would answer in such a manner.
MC: Do you think that it was a waste of her time to write these diaries?
Victor: No.
Victor’s gaze rests on a page.
Victor: The writer wrote it down herself - “The time I spent loving someone, not a single second of it was wasted.”
I rarely hear such words leave Victor’s mouth, and it makes me feel a little surreal. In my memory, we very rarely talk about the topic of ‘love’. Maybe it’s because he rarely says what’s in his heart. Maybe it’s because I’m used to being thick-skinned. We never have the opportunity to seriously understand the meaning in these words.
When he looks at these exhibits, do we feel the same emotions?
I contemplate this for a moment, before looking at him once more.
Victor: What do you want to say?
MC: I was thinking about what you asked me earlier.
I take two steps towards him. Even though the distance between us is small, he doesn’t step backwards. Instead, he simply turns towards me.
MC: I think a love like this is very interesting. You meet a person and feel such emotions.
MC: From that day onwards, you’re never the same person again, and are completely changed. Like some sort of… mark.
MC: It’s a sort of mark that can be left in literature or in a photograph… and I can feel it.
Victor’s eyes are lowered. In his clear and tranquil eyes, there are ripples of light and shadows.
Victor: Such as?
The smile tugging at the corner of his mouth is clear, and I ponder this seriously.
MC: For example, the way I write proposals has changed.
MC: The format of my proposals has changed. The indent of the first line, font size 15, 1.5 spacing between lines... it’s the format you find most pleasing to the eye!
Victor’s eyebrow quirks.
Victor: That’s all?
MC: There’s more! I’ve become so much more picky with food. I never used to complain that food tastes bad, but eating at Souvenir has cultivated my palate. Now, when I eat even Michelin meals, I feel as if something’s lacking…
Victor smiles slightly and shakes his head, taking my hand.
Victor: Come with me.
In the innermost room of the exhibition floor on the second floor is a display board. On it depicts the entire process of how the exhibition first began and how it expanded.
Above all the pictures of the people who’ve helped to plan this exhibition…
MC: It’s the cafe owner from earlier!
Victor: You made preparations before coming here, yet couldn’t recognise him?
MC: I was saying that he seemed very familiar!
MC: If that’s the case… the story of this exhibition - it should be his, isn’t it?
He fell in love with a girl’s literature and art secretly in his youth, yet didn’t know how to confess, and much time passed without progress. When he finally mustered up his courage to confess, the girl passed away from cancer.
Those are all the words written on a whiteboard, and they seem a little simple and stereotypical. But when I think about how a person experienced this, my heart can’t help but feel sad for him.
Victor: That’s why the name of this exhibition is ‘Speak Up’. The existence of these marks is how these feelings are being conveyed.
MC: No matter whether it’s from a tiny mouse hidden in each artwork, the longing written down in a diary, or a sculpture carved in the image of their lover - all of them bear their own longing in some way. Even this exhibition is a voice for the cafe owner to speak up about his past regrets.
All these fragments come together in my mind, moving my heart.
MC: Victor, even though this is a little old-fashioned… if I want to make a program about entering the New Year and about this ‘Speak Up’ exhibition, will you reject my proposal?
Victor’s gaze sweeps over me, his brows smoothening.
Victor: I’ll decide after I see the quality of the proposal.
After we finish viewing the exhibition, cold rain and freezing wind come the moment we step out of the exhibition hall. It was so sunny earlier… Why is it raining all of a sudden?
Victor: I’ll get Goldman to pick us up.
MC: Huh? That’s not needed-
I pull out the tickets for the exhibition in my bag.
MC: I remember that the complimentary gift with this exhibition is an umbrella! All we need to do is exchange the tickets at the counter.
Victor casually takes the tickets from my hand.
Victor: Wait here for me.
MC: Alright.
While waiting, I glance over at the cafe and happen to see the cafe owner closing up his cafe for the day. He turns the sign from OPEN to CLOSE, before locking the door and dropping the key into his pocket.
This seems to be his usual, everyday life.
He notices my gaze on him and gives me a quick wave in greeting, before heading into the exhibition hall.
This world has many people who can’t say what is most important to them… but I’m different.
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When I snap out of my thoughts, Victor is already heading back to me, umbrella in hand. In the dark and gloomy night, the lights of the street lamps flicker, silhouetting him in light and shadow as he walks slowly towards me.
I see tiny droplets of water clinging to his hair, the hazy light shining in his eyes.
The marks that I have must be conveyed in the most direct way.
MC: Victor, do you hear the music being played in the exhibition hall?
Victor doesn’t catch the underlying meaning in my tone, and instead begins to explain it to me.
Victor: It’s to alert the people in the exhibition hall that it’s about to close.
I can’t help but give him another hint.
MC: That’s all you thought about? You don’t find the music somewhat familiar?
Victor falls silent, his brow furrowed, as if he’s really thinking hard about this.
Not giving him a second more to think, I run ahead of him with small steps, wearing a smile as I turn back to extend my hand to him.
MC: Would this gentleman honour me with a dance?
Victor’s eyes widen slightly.
MC: The first time you taught me dancing was to this song.
The world around us is silent, and all I can hear is the wild beating of my own heart, pounding with anticipation.
MC: This is how you’ve given me marks of my own… and changed me.
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Warm fingers brush my palm. Before I can register what’s happening, he’s already pulled me into his embrace. Along with the violin’s melody, I move my feet to dance with Victor, and the two of us turn in a circle fluidly. Even though night is quickly falling, everything before me is filled with shining light.
Joy blooms in my heart with a thump, like a resplendent firework soaring into the night sky, exchanging greetings with the sky full of starlight.
There are no words to describe the happiness I feel in this moment.
MC: What about you?
Victor: Me?
MC: Don’t you have anything to say to me? After this afternoon of visiting the exhibition, I thought it would have left some sort of impression on you.
Victor pauses in his footsteps, holding me a little tighter. The light and hurried rain droplets are blown over by the gentle wind. He tilts the umbrella, blocking the drizzle completely.
Victor: Dummy.
Raindrops patter down on the umbrella, paired with the sound of his low voice; it’s as if all surrounding noises have faded away to nothing, and he’s the only one who exists in the world.
Victor: Because a certain greedy cat always says she wants to eat something sweet after dinner, I made pudding before leaving the house.
Victor: Do you think this is a mark of how I’ve been changed?
221 notes · View notes
charliemotha · 3 years
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behold! i didn't see any otgw icebergs, so i made my own :)
if you think i should add something, lmk!!
Explanations under cut :)
First layer:
▪︎Beast!Wirt au - very popular au in which Wirt stays in the Unknown, possessed by the Beast to some extent.
▪︎Bad End Friends - Crossover AU of Beast!Wirt teaming up with Ice Finn from Adventure Time and Bipper from Gravity Falls; sometimes other 'bad end' au characters are thrown in such as a glitched Gumball from TAWOG
▪︎Irl Copies of the For Sara tape - Limited copies of the For Sara tape were sold at two points. They have yet to sell for a third time. (🤞🤞🤞)
▪︎Tome of the Unknown (pilot) - The Pilot of the series. Can be watched on YouTube.
▪︎Wirt Staying in the Unknown - In a scrapped ending, Wirt was to stay in the Unknown, saying that facing your real problems was scarier than staying there.
▪︎Mystery Kids - Crossover AU with other child-late teens aged characters from sources based on mysterious and supernatural themes such as Gravity Falls and Psychonauts.
▪︎Quincy Endicott's grave - Quincy's grave can be seen in the graveyard that Sara and the others are hanging out in.
▪︎Original Beatrice Voice Actress - Beatrice had a different VA in the pilot, Natasha Leggero. Melanie Lynskey voices her in the actual series.
▪︎The Woodsman's Daughter is Named Anna - The comics have several issues focused on his daughter, in which her name is revealed to be Anna.
▪︎Jason Funderburker's Ax Murderer Story - At the gathering in the graveyard, Funderburker is telling a story about a man with an ax; this story is believed to have influenced the existence of the Woodsman.
▪︎Full Versions of Songs in the OST - A handful of the songs are cut down for their appearances in the series and can only be heard in full on the OST. The most notable example is Old Black Train , which is actually 2 minutes and 15 seconds long, but is only in the series for about 15-20 seconds.
Second Layer:
▪︎Sara is named after the Fleetwood Mac song - Listen to it here :) it is notable that it includes lyrics about "drowning in a sea of love" and that Sara is "the poet of [the singer's] heart."
▪︎OTGW Reanimated - a reanimated project for the first episode. Got taken off of YouTube, but can be viewed on Dailymotion.
▪︎Baby Wirt Audio - In the For Sara cassette, there is a small section of audio that can be heard in about the middle of the recording of Wirt's father talking to him as a baby.
▪︎Funderburker/Funderberker - The two Jasons's surnames are spelled slightly differently to avoid confusion.
▪︎The Brothers Never Ate or Needed to Rest - Although Greg expressed being hungry, neither of the boys actually ate anything (outside of one spoonful of bland potatoes and inedible items such as dirt and leaves) and never laid down to rest, only sleeping when night came.
▪︎Book on Interior Design in Wirt's Room - In Wirt's from, a book on interior design can be seen laying on the floor, backing up the knowledge he displayed when analyzing the interconnected mansions.
▪︎Mad Love was Based on a Dream - The plot of Mad Love came from a dream that Pat McHale had about house hunting. In the dream, while exploring one of the houses being shown, he ended up wandering into someone else's home.
▪︎Beatriceoftheday - A blog dedicated to our lord and savior Beatrice, known for its strange shitposts and intense praise of the titular bird girl.
▪︎Wirt is Jealous of Greg's Popularity - Shown in the Circus Friends issue of the comics, Wirt is jealous of Greg's ability to make everyone laugh and have fun. This may factor into his dislike of his brother.
▪︎Greg was Feeding Fred at the Tavern - At first watching, one may be confused as to where all the food Greg was gathering went, why Fred was wearing lipstick and why he was refusing to talk to Beatrice. Shown in a deleted scene, this all explained, as Fred tells Beatrice that he didn't talk to her because Greg was feeding him.
▪︎Elijah Wood Voiced the Crazy Driver - Exactly what is says on the tin, the nutty driver was voiced by Wood.
▪︎Cloud City is Heaven - A popular theory that Cloud City actually represents Heaven.
▪︎Greg is Greg Universe - A headcanon/theory that has mostly died out that Greg is the same Greg in Steven Universe.
▪︎Bee Beatrice - Beatrice was originally cursed to become a bee, but was changed into a bluebird to match better with the seasonal autumn theme.
▪︎Pat McHale Voiced Wirt's Voice Crack - Wirt's voice crack when asking the Beast Are You? was actually done by McHale, not Wood.
▪︎The Other Actors Harassing Elijah Wood When Singing Wirt's Song - In order to make the performance as awkward as possible, the other actors were asked to yell and demand Wirt to sing. This can be heard in the episode.
▪︎Come Wayward Souls Has the Same Melody as O Holy Night - The song shares a cadence with "O Holy Night", and can be sung to its tune.
▪︎Black Turtles Origin/Purpose - No one knows why the black turtles exist, and McHale has said that they're just one of the unexplainable things of the Unknown.
▪︎Anna Never Left the House - In the aforementioned comics, it is shown that Anna had never left the house, living on her own until the Woodsman's return.
▪︎Sailor Suit Greg - Greg originally wore a sailor suit, but was changed later on to his current, Johnny Appleseed inspired outfit .
▪︎Beatrice Missing Being Able to Flip People Off - In the Art Book, Beatrice's introduction states that one of the reasons she hates being a bird is because she no longer has hands to flip people off with.
Third Layer
▪︎Jason Funderberker is Visually Based on a Teen Pat McHale - As seen here, Funderberker was designed after McHale.
▪︎Babes in the Wood is Based on an Old Alice in Wonderland Cartoon - You can view the original 1923 cartoon here! Starts at 4:25.
▪︎Wirt and Sara are Dipper and Mabel's Parents - A popular AU/hc where Dipper and Mabel of Gravity Falls are the future kids of Wirt and Sara.
▪︎The Tune of Wirt's Song is Improvised - In addition to the aforementioned harassment, in a further attempt to make the performance as awkward as possible, Elijah Wood was not given a tune to sing, only the lyrics.
▪︎Wirt's Costume Origin - As said in the art book and on his tumblr, Wirt's cone and cape come from an attempted rock and roll persona from McHale's teen years.
▪︎Greg is Based on Pat McHale's Son - It has been claimed that Greg is based on McHale's son, but Greg existed before him. The similarities are simply coincidental.
▪︎Old Scratch - The original name of the Beast.
▪︎The Beast Killed the Woodsman's Wife - Shown in the comics, The Woodsman's wife was mortally injured, with her attacker implied to be the Beast.
▪︎Wirt and Greg Staying in the Unknown Until Christmas - Another scrapped ending, in which the brothers stay in The Unknown until Christmas, with their absence unexplained.
▪︎Tome of the Unknown (original plot) - Early concepts had the Beast ( then known as Old Scratch as mentioned earlier ) scattering the pages of the titular book for the brothers to collect. Each page would come to life and the brothers would explore each story.
▪︎Dante's Inferno Comparisons - Check out these videos for full analysis!
▪︎Wirt Panty Shots - In the aforementioned Circus Friend comics, Wirt dons a dress as part of a disguise. Later on, he rips off the bottom half off, revealing that he is wearing bloomers.
▪︎The Beast's True Form was Inspired by Trypophobia - As stated in the art book, The Beast's hole-filled appearance was inspired by Trypophobia, the fear of many small holes.
▪︎The Fight is Over is About Drowning - Give the lyrics another read.
▪︎The Beast Last Minute Design Change - The Beast had a very different design, and it was changed into the current one at the last minute.
▪︎Gnome in Cloud City Representing Wirt - Many people believed that the Gnome with the lantern in cloud city was a parallel to Wirt, or a glimpse into his future. However, this was debunked.
▪︎Send Me a Peach - This song is included in the ost, but isn't in the actual series.
▪︎Fred and the Highwayman's Backstory - The comics expand upon the story of Fred the Horse and his involvement with the Highwayman.
Fourth Layer
▪︎Babes in the Wood Title Origin - The name of this episode comes from an old story of a pair of children getting lost in the woods, dying, and being buried in leaves by robins.
▪︎poorlydrawnotgw - This was a blog created during the poorly drawn series meme period. It consisted of poorly drawn and very strange shitposts and has since been deactivated. I was a part of it as mod Goopy Wirt and only have a handful of images saved from it.
▪︎Read and Listen Book Lost Audio - A read and listen book was created, with the book being read by Greg's Frog, who would stop every now and again to talk about being a frog. The pages can be found online, but the audio is currently lost.
▪︎Skinless Witch - A scrapped episode concept involved a skinless witch that kidnapped Greg and rode him like a horse.
▪︎Gentleman Burglar Wirt - A scrapped concept in which Wirt breaks into a woman's home, who is charmed by this young man who has come to visit her.
▪︎Animal Transformation - It was originally planned for Wirt and Greg to be turned into a bear/dog and a duck and remain that way for several episodes. This was later used in the comics.
▪︎The Unknown is influenced by Wirt's mind/interests - The Unknown is influenced by those who walk in it, in this case, Wirt. This includes the old timey mystical nature of it, as Wirt has been stated to have an interest in old folk tales.
▪︎Good Guy Beast/Black Train Scrapped Concept - In an earlier draft, the brothers were on a train, heading to what they assumed was death. They jump off, ending up in the Unknown. The Beast tries to get them back on the train, which turns out to be heading back to life.
▪︎Evil Woodsman - At one point, the Woodsman was intended to be under the influence of the Beast and tried to sabotage the brothers's attempts to return home.
▪︎Lorna Reading the Tome of the Unknown in the Epilogue - In the epilogue, Lorna can be seen reading the titular book from the aforementioned scrapped plot.
▪︎The Beast was Originally the Devil Himself - The Beast was first designed as a devil-like character, the aforementioned Old Scratch.
▪︎The Brothers Never Went Home/The Hospital is Part of The Unknown - a theory based on the fact that the edges of the screen are still blurred at the end of chapter 10, the rushed narration, and the lack of consequences of nearly drowning.
▪︎Beatrice Seeing Wirt Nude - In one of the comics, Beatrice accidentally sees Wirt while he is washing his clothes in the river.
▪︎Sara is a Descendant of Lorna - A theory that Sara is a distant relative of Lorna.
▪︎Exists in the Same Universe as Clarence and Home Movies - The most well known piece of evidence is the overhead shot of the town matching the town that Clarence is set in. Wirt and Greg also have a cameo in another episode, and one of the final episodes shows Brendon Small of Home Movies runs a movie rental store in the town, connecting all three series together.
Final Layer
▪︎Beast x Wirt - Also known as Poetree.
▪︎Candycone - Greg x Wirt.
273 notes · View notes
sopxhiea · 3 years
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Moirai
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Alfie Solomons X Reader
Summary: The mysterious niece runs into Alfie in her uncle’s office and she expertly plays it cool until she’s pulled away by his strong grip and the night has more in store than she’s bargained for.
Warnings: Age gap.
Part 1
“Fine. You win.”
“Are you blushing or cold?”
The deep colored oak desk is illuminated by the sunlight coming through the open window, the room is quiet as dust gathers on the many shelves that decorate the place. The space is mostly filled with books, torn out old covers with faded colors and it’s obvious that the furniture around is aged except the large table that resides in the corner.
It stands out, much like you do.
A low tune plays from the record player in the office, next to the assistant’s desk as she types the day away. The boss is away in Birmingham, brushing shoulders with dirty faced gangster even though he’s very much one of them. There’s no chatter inside the walls today, nor the voice of the golden haired lady’s heels clicking against the hard surface.
The boss isn’t supposed to come back for another two hours.
The weather is chilly, grey sky bestowed upon the citizens around as the large coat you have on hugs you tight. Your uncle’s office is empty for the day, as far you know which means you’re more than welcome to stop by to get some work done. As much as the men around London despise the idea of a woman getting education, your uncle is aware of your potential.
The boots on your feet are meant for men, heavy and dense as you stomp away. The days are shorter due to the weather and it will get dark in a couple hours as far as you’re aware, but that doesn’t stop you from making an unwanted visit to your uncle’s office.
He’s a criminal with gold wrapped around his fingers. Not many are content with the men and even though he tends to get the approval of the higher class in London, it’s not hard to recognise the distaste the working class have for him. He’s a gangster, a good one at that.
He’s your family.
It’s not by choice, that much you accept. Years of being alone on end make him seem like an angel sorts, someone to rescue you from the hellhole you’d been in for the first seven years of your life. It looks different from the outside, you know that it does which makes you realise just how easy it is to trick people around here.
From the outside, you look like a pearl wrapped in cotton with flowers carefully placed around you. Most people do not approach you unless you make the first move, perks of having a powerful man as your only family. It’s easy to point out that your features belong somewhere else on the map and not the dirty roads of London.
You spare one last glance to the dim colored sky before barging into the building that your uncle redeems as his. Its walls are made of brick, one on top of the other that make up a three story building that occupies most of the side of the street its on.
It’s easy to recognise, Alfie thinks.
The sound of your heavy boots against the hard floor are easy to recognise but it’s too late for you to lighten your steps when Martha, your uncle’s trusted assistant, calls your name. You sigh then, a grunt leaving your mouth and you curse at yourself for being so careless for once.
Walking through the large corridor, you face the old lady as she looks at you through her smudged glasses. That color of pink on her lips is far too vibrant on her lips, you think as she sizes you up. 
You’re not conventionally dressed but she’s used to your choice of clothing.
“Hello Y/N.” she speaks, her voice a little shushed when compared to normal but you’re too busy fixing your long dress to realise that there’s a reason for her quiet attitude.
You lift your head to look up at her again, no longer pulling at your dress as she gives you an uninterested look, the usual treatment. Your lips part, a playful smile on your lips but before you can let out a word, the door of the gathering space opens with a loud sound.
It’s him, you gather as you stare at his hat.
There’s gold on his fingers and a crown tattoo. It’s easy to recognise him, you think, his hat is peculiarly shaped and the rhythm of his steps is far too unusual for a normal person. There’s flour on his sleeves, the kind that looks like he’s been laying in it for a while.
His hat creates a shadow over his eyes so you miss the evident look of surprise in them but he’s quick to take it off. He’d been bothering Martha for a while, asking when the beloved boss would return since their deal was now ‘off’ due to a couple complications in the process.
When in fact, Alfie is directly betraying him.
He watches your eyes glisten as the sunset is bestowed upon the sky. Short strands of hair fall around your face from the braid, the braid that had your friend pulling at your hair for the entirety of breakfast. He finds himself to be too intrigued at the sight of you to actually speak but he’s fast to recover.
“’ello, lass.” he says, the words echo in your mind before you can answer. Martha isn’t daft, she catches onto the way you stare up at the man but before she can say anything, you speak with a plastered smile.
“Hello, Mr. Solomons.” your voice is soft against the air around as you look up at him. There’s mischief in your eyes mixed with a glint of innocence, the kind of thing that could easily mess a man of Alfie’s wrath.
You hadn’t gone the address he’d sent you.
It was easy to make up excuses: you were busy with school and simply swarmed with work. You ignored the heat rising to your cheeks and gave him your softest smile while Martha eyed the both fo you, it was obvious that whatever you and Alfie had was doomed from the start.
Your uncle was a sheltered man and had raised you the same way. No boyfriends until you wanted to marry someone, only talk to men your uncle had assigned you for protection and if you were to go out, you informed him a week before.
But he wasn’t as sharp as he liked to believe.
You did things that would simply torture the man, from sneaking out to man’s apartments to dancing intimately with strangers. The city was fun at night, when it was supposed to sleeping seemed to be the only time the groggy streets felt alive to you.
And through years of sneaking around and lying almost too expertly, no one knew what you did. You’d have a different fake name, a different set of friends and a whole new part of town each week so things didn’t get messed up. It was a perk of being closely related to a gangster of your uncle’s power.
Martha knew how intense your uncle was when it came to you making contact with men, let alone a known brutal man like Alfie so she stood up and smiled softly, threat evident in her eyes as she spoke to you under her breath.
“Why don’t you go to the office, dear?” she speaks through her teeth and Alfie couldn’t hear but your eyes don’t leave his, if anything this was highly amusing.
And you wanted to talk to the men.
“No, thank you. I think I’ll keep Mr. Solomons company while he waits for uncle.” you spoke, looking directly into Martha’s eyes while speaking in a tone that was loud enough for everyone to hear.
She doesn’t say anything, she just backs off.
As cautious as your uncle had been with you, there were two sides to the story. Behind closed doors, he would get mad at you and scold you as much as he could while remaining as gentle as possible but in front of those very doors, he’d have your back and protect you that made most people frightened. He was allowed to get mad at you since you were his niece, but that was a privilege only he had in his hands.
Much to Alfie’s surprise, you shoot him a smirk through the smile you had on and ignore the old assistant. He doesn’t flinch when your hand comes in contact with his arm but there is a wave of alarm in his eyes. He knows your uncle will have Alfie’s scalp in his hands if he doesn’t behave well around you, he’ll try anyway.
Soon, you both find yourself in the dusty room that your uncle so graciously gave you when you had asked for a place to do some work and reading. Standing in the middle of the room, you slowly take your coat off while Martha keeps the door open and mutters something under her breath about making some tea for you and the gentlemen you offered to entertain while he waits for business.
But you don’t ignore the elephant in the room since he’s already gawking at you. You stare back instead. The ghost of a smile pulls at the ends of your lips as his eyes reek over your body, he isn’t subtle to say the least. Glancing at Ollie through the open door, you watch him for a moment as he talks to Martha but your observations are cut short when you hear his voice.
“You ain’t visited me yet, aye?” he speaks, talking about the address he had sent you and you know you can take this two ways. You decide on the fun way. 
He sits in front of the desk and you take the opportunity to lean on the wooden material and have a look at his features. He still looks as handsome, but you don’t give in that easily. You shake your head and he watches the ends of your dress move with the small breeze that comes in from the open door. For all you know, Martha is listening.
“Is that why you’re here?” you speak, words filled with something other than curiosity. Lust, he thinks. He sees the familiar glint of insanity in your orbs and he’s aware of the little game you’re playing behind your uncle but much like you, he isn’t keen on giving in so easily.
“Nah, just business.” he says, voice heavy as it fills the walls. You nod, a few times more than you should before getting comfy on the desk. 
Your eyes glisten before you speak, so he has been waiting for you. Just no matter how interesting this rugged man seemed, there were certain lines you wouldn’t cross and going to an unknown address given by a stranger was one of the many lines you were taught to beware of.
Although it all worked out for the best.
The stranger that had invited you to the location was looking at you now, with hungry eyes for things he wasn’t able to have. You knew men like Alfie, ones who had a superiority complex or it seemed that way from the outside. The kind of men who got whatever they wanted since there was immense blood in their hands.
“So you waited then, hm?” you ask, eyes looking up and down his built figure as he stands before you, he had gotten up when you’d taken a minute to look out the door to see where Martha was since she was usually keen on listening.
“Seein’ as it’s my fuckin’ work place, yeah, can’t say I have, luv.” he speaks, talking about the peculiar address he’d given which you now realise was his work place. 
So he could be trusted after all.
You sigh, this game is highly amusing for you. It’s easy to make up the lines of how this is going to go but it could go so wrong all of a sudden. You want it to, this stranger seems to be a kind one you wouldn’t mind getting under. His eyes watch as you lick your lips, not aware that he’s watching while he observes you in all your wrath since your uncle isn’t around here. Alfie can tell you’re a wolf in mere sheep’s clothing.
“Fine. You win.” You shake your head as you speak. You need to know whether this man wants the things you do, even though you’re sure he does. He’s not to be toyed around with and you recognise the blood on his hands for that matter.
He walks a little closer, close enough for your chest to be almost brushing his figure but he’s entirely too tall. You don’t glance up while your next words fill the air, voice soft to lure him into the fantasy you want to live, no matter how short lived it will end up being.
“What you want?” you ask, eyes looking up to meet his handsome face as he looks down at you in an expression you can’t quite solve. The question hangs around the air while the breeze from the open door gets a little strong.
He sees no reason to ponder around, he knows the old assistant will be around the corner with her peering eyes in a second and this will be the scarce moment he’ll have with you. He doesn’t beat around the bush anyway.
“Ya’ know what.” he says, easy as that and you do, now you’ve learned what he wants.
But it’s not so easy to get it.
It’s the forbidden fruit situation all over again, you know it is. He’s a man with power, the kind of authority that’s able to shake a grown man to his very own core. He has blood on his hands even though his golden beard contradicts the very image that’s created by everything about him. He knows he’s dangerous and so is this situation but you’re no forbidden fruit.
Your uncle has taken all kinds of measures to make sure you’re the best you can be. It’s not like you’re a regular citizen, it’s obvious in your features that you belong somewhere else in the map but there’s the kind of elegance that comes with your bloodline, excluding your uncle who happens to be a gangster.
You take a large step back from his built form, clearing your throat when Martha comes in with a tray in her hands. You see the look he’s giving you and she does, too. You know she’ll rat this out to your uncle but you’ve always made sure he stays on your side so you see no problem with it.
Offering the assistant the widest fake smile you can muster up, you wait until she leaves to speak. It’s a thin line you’re dancing on but it’s a familiar one to you which is why there’s a faint smile on your lips as you speak.
“I’ll let you get on with your business, since that’s all you’re here for, Mr. Solomons.” you speak, watching the way something along the lines of frustration and arousal come over him. You know he thought you’d let him have you against the desk, it seems like the plausible answer from any logical lady whom he’s offered the pleasure but he failed to see the silver lining. You don’t happen to be a logical lady.
He sees the devil behind your eyes and it brings a smirk to his face. It seems as though you’ll be haunting him for a while.
You hear Martha talk about uncle’s car being parked outside to Ollie and you get up at a slower pace than he’d expect and wear your coat over the dress again. You know there are manners your uncle has tried to teach you and covering up in front of a stranger is one of them, or so you think.
He watches as you walk towards the door, waiting like a little kid for your uncle. There’s a flip side to your coin, he gathers. The innocent little jewel who’s been protected all her life also happens to be dancing with the devil for a while, he can see it in your eyes. 
You watch Alfie walk by, touching your waist gently when he has to pass by you to get through the door. You see the way his beard covers up his bothered face and since your uncle is about to arrive and have a meeting with him, why not rile him up further?
A childish smile finds your lips and you hold his arm as an attempt to make him look down at you so you see eye to eye, which works due to the unfamiliar sensation. He lifts his eyebrows, telling you to go ahead and speak and you do but you don’t realise your uncle has been watching your strange interaction with one of the most dangerous man you could find around here.
“Are you blushing or cold?” you speak, fighting giggles as you look up at the man. Alfie opens his mouth to say something but before he can greet your amused face with his playful words, you catch you uncle’s eyes. He clears his throat and you immediately let go of Alfie’s arm, smiling at the old man as he looks at you and Alfie.
Looking like a child caught red-handed, you offer your uncle a small hello but he’s dismissive of it. It’s unclear to you whether he’s in a mood or he saw something he shouldn’t have seen just now. Alfie seems unfazed as he looks down at your little, the devil behind your eyes long gone as you look at your uncle and then Alfie.
“Mr. Solomons..” your uncle speaks, not sparing a glance at you while his eyes size Alfie up. Your gaze moves to the large man next to you as he tips his hat at your uncle as a way of greeting him.
“Shall we start discussing the deal in my office?” your uncle asks but you know better than to assume it’s an invitation, it’s more of an order.
Alfie mutters something unintelligible and turns his gaze to you. You offer him a formal smile this time, everyone is watching so he figures it’s his time to make you blush.
He takes your hand in his and your eyes shoot up, you see your uncle watching hesitantly but Alfie is far too powerful for him to scold the man like he scolds you. Alfie’s plump lips come in contact with your hand as he kisses the back of it gently. A small smirk plays on his lips as you gather the game he’s playing.
“Always a pleasure, luv.” he says, finding his true self to be a gentlemen at the given moment as you stare at him with heavy eyes.
You smile then, the kind of smile that he’d remember when he went to bed at night. You know he’ll be waiting for you in the address he gave you the first time he met you from the way he’s behaving, he isn’t keen on giving up that easily this time.
The territory is familiar to you but it takes two to do this and the other player is foreign territory. A gangster, someone with blood on their hands as it grips the golden rings around his calloused fingers. It perks up your curiosity, the thrill of being with someone so powerful. 
He knows you’re protected. There are two guards with you wherever you go, your uncle’s gift to you on your birthday. He knows you live in a mansion of sorts with too many people around so sneaking in is not a choice. 
But he’s tempted to say the least.
He wants to dance with the devil you hide so well, to feel her touch against his skin under the moonlight. He knows you have your ways around the city and men, too. He also knows that your uncle will try to cut his balls off if he hears even the possibility of the things Alfie wants to do to you but you don��t find in yourself to care.
He knows you’ll come around this time.
Your soft voice plays at a tone only he can hear and he listens with his ears perked up before he goes into your uncle’s office and you go off on your own way. “Pleasure’s all mine.” 
-----
Tagging: @clairecrive  @parkbearum @sourirez  @vetseras​ @mollybegger-blog @babylooneytoonz @peakascum a/n: This is a little too late :) but i just got done with some project deliveries and I truly do hope you enjoy this chapter! Let me know what you thought of the chapter and if you’d like to be tagged <3
(If i’m forgetting to tag you, please lemme know!)
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girlllthatsgrim · 3 years
Text
NSFW ALPHABET (Harry Potter Version)
Severus Snape
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A= Aftercare
I can see Severus clean up the room with magic while you bath and soak in bath salts; he doesn’t seem like the guy to make his lady do any type of work after sex. He wants you to feel even more relaxed after making love together.
B= Body Part
Severus doesn’t seem like the type of guy to care too much about his physically appearance so I don’t think he would have a body part that he’s personally proud of. As for a favorite body part on a woman, I think he would favor the eyes because eyes are windows to the soul.
C= Cum
He would religiously use a condom and even if he did ejaculate inside you, Severus would always ask you if you were on birth control. To be very honest, I don’t think he wanted children at all so, that’s another reason why he would use condoms.
D= Dirty Secret
Severus is a big time introvert so, I think he would have a ton of secrets. Even after the two of your start dating, he would be very reluctant to divulge these secrets. One secret that he would keep from you is that he is a masochist - he gets aroused from receiving pain. Now you know why he completely loses it when you scratch up his back or dig your nails into his cheeks as you kiss him roughly.
E= Experience
A stark contrast to the likes of James or Sirius, Severus would probably be more interested in the latest Dark Arts book than chasing after skirts every day. So, I don’t think Severus would have much experience if any.
F= Favorite Position
After the two of you have sex for the first time, I think Severus would favor the lap dance position where you sit on him; I think he would like this position because it allows for face-to-face intimacy so he can maintain eye contact.
G= Goofy
We all know Severus to be a no-nonsense person as a middle age man and I think that wouldn’t change as a young adult either; even as a teenage he was very mature for his age. In the bedroom, he would be especially serious. I think he sees sex for what it is: an adult act and not recreation for kids. So, don’t expect jokes throughout the whole romp.
H= Hair
Before he met you, his hair was quite greasy since he didn’t care much to wash it as frequently as he should. Now, Severus has seen the error in his ways and washes his hair, which unleashed the latent beauty of his thick, jet black hair. As for his pubic hair, I think he would shave it, but not routinely; there will be times where you two will have sex and the forest has gone untrimmed. If he doesn’t even keep up with his shaving, I doubt he will care much if his lady shaved either.
I= intimacy
Out of all the Harry Potter guys I’ve analyzed so far, I think Snape would be the most romantic in bed. Under the facade of coolness is someone who is capable of loving a woman unconditionally. It might be hard to imagine, but he would be one of those guys in their twilight years that is still married to the same woman and says ‘I love you’ every night before they sleep. In bed, eye contact is an absolute must; since that is the most attractive attribute on a woman, I don’t think he would ever look away from you.
J= Jack off
I don’t think Severus masturbated that much even before he met you. It’s not that he he doesn’t like girls either. He has an unbelievably high level of self-control for a young person his age, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t think about it at times. When he started dating you, he didn’t masturbate at all because he has you. It does not make much sense for him to masturbate when he has a lovely girlfriend whom he loves with every fiber in his being.
K= Kink
As mentioned before, Severus is a masochist. When he gets around to actually telling you this dirty secret, he has a major kink for scratching up his butt. There are times when he’ll make you drag your nails across it because it arouses him even more.
L= Location
Snape is not the adventurous type; he sticks to what he knows and very rarely ventures into the unknown (only if it has to do with potions or DADA). You two are either doing the deed in his bed or yours. You might be able to coax him to do it in the shower together since he would do anything for you, but it will take time.
M= Motivation
Why do I feel like Severus would have a thing with girls who wear glasses? Maybe it’s because he himself is quite studious, but I think seeing you wear your glasses would turn him on.
N= No
I think he would detest Anal sex; in his mind, people defecate from there for a reason and his penis doesn’t belong there. Don’t try to fight him on this one because it will be a losing battle every time.
O= Oral
Despite him being an even switch, I think Severus would really enjoy doing oral on you once he got the hang of it and learned what you liked. Again expect lots of eye contact.
P= Pace
I think Severus’ pace would generally be slow and sensual; he might go faster by watching your eyes and you scratching him, but I believe even then he would hold himself back from increasing speed because he doesn’t want to hurt you. At all.
Q= Quickie
If he’s not very adventurous, I can’t see Severus doing a quickie - even if he was desperate. That self-control would pour out the fire just long enough until the evening.
R= Risk
Similar to quickies, Severus isn’t very adventurous and I don’t think he’s keen on taking risks -especially when they involve you and your body. He’s more likely to take risks inventing a new potion than try a new sex position that might kill you. If you asked him to, then maybe he would comply, but he isn’t going to go out of his way to have sex in the Ravenclaw common room when everyone is watching a quidditch game.
S= Stamina
I’d say Severus’ stamina is pretty average; he could go on for about 4 or 5 rounds. Nothing too crazy.
T= Toy
Severus wouldn’t be into toys at all. If you already owned one, he wouldn’t mind it, however he wouldn’t be forthcoming about using it during sex. His penis is all that matters.
U= Unfair
Severus is quite sarcastic, but this is rarely seen by most people. I don’t think he would tease that much during sex unless something happened that was unforgettable like you farting or something. That’s when the sarcasm and teasing would come out in droves.
V= Volume
Save heavy breathing and couple of groans, Severus is pretty quite himself during the act unlike Sirius and James.
W= Wildcard
Severus is unique in his own way and let’s very few people into his world. Although he isn’t quite adventurous, that doesn’t mean he is not creative and the highly creative guys are the ones you should watch out for. I think Severus would find ways to change up the way you make love within the sphere of reason. Not many people can do this which is why, you as his girlfriend, should be very proud to know him.
X= X-ray
Flaccid: 5
Erect: 7 1/2
Y= Yearning
I think Severus’ sex drive would be low for a man his age and the reason being is because of his self-control as well as his priorities; there is a time and place for everything. The two of you wouldn’t have sex every day, but when you do, the experience was always memorable as Severus would always remind you that he loves you very much.
Z= ZZZ
I think the two of you would fall asleep around the same time. So, if you fell asleep first, he’s not too far behind you and vice versa.
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kellyvela · 3 years
Note
GRRM has said in interviews that he’s purposely played with the romantic tension between the hound and Sansa. What do you think the endgame purpose of the unkiss and that playing is meant to be for?
This is all what he said about the matter in question so far:
The Hound and Sansa, romantic or platonic? It could be very different things to each of those involved, mind you!
JUNE 24, 1999 THE HOUND AND SANSA
Moreta12: I understand, I’ve heard your opinion on that. In ACOK, it seems that the relationship between the Hound and Sansa had romantic undertones. Is that true?
GeoRR: Well, read the book and decide for yourself.
Moreta12: I’ve read the book and I’ve debated those particular scenes with a few others. Half say that it’s romantic and half say it’s platonic. I’ve taken the romantic stance.
GeoRR:  It could be very different things to each of those involved, mind you
Moreta12:Yes, but it seem like evidence points towards romantic undertones. Will the Hound appear later?
GeoRR: Yes, the Hound will be in STORM OF SWORDS. In fact, I just finished writing a big scene with him.
[Source]
When will Sansa be “legal”?  **ºª@”¡¿x<%$!&?
OCTOBER 05, 1999 AGE OF SEXUAL RELATIONS IN WESTEROS
The nature of the relationship between Sandor and Sansa has been a hot topic on Revanshe’s board. Sansa’s youth has been one focus of the discussion. What is the general Westerosi view as to romantic or sexual relationships involving a girl of Sansa’s age and level of physical maturity?
A boy is Westeros is considered to be a “man grown” at sixteen years. The same is true for girls. Sixteen is the age of legal majority, as twenty-one is for us.
However, for girls, the first flowering is also very significant… and in older traditions, a girl who has flowered is a woman, fit for both wedding and bedding.
A girl who has flowered, but not yet attained her sixteenth name day, is in a somewhat ambigious position: part child, part woman. A “maid,” in other words. Fertile but innocent, beloved of the singers.
In the “general Westerosi view,” well, girls may well be wed before their first flowerings, for political reasons, but it would considered perverse to bed them. And such early weddings, even without sex, remain rare. Generally weddings are postponed until the bride has passed from girlhood to maidenhood.
Maidens may be wedded and bedded… however, even there, many husbands will wait until the bride is fifteen or sixteen before sleeping with them. Very young mothers tend to have significantly higher rates of death in childbirth, which the maesters will have noted.
As in the real Middle Ages, highborn girls tend to flower significantly earlier than those of lower birth. Probably a matter of nutrition. As a result, they also tend to marry earlier, and to bear children earlier. There are plenty of exceptions.
[Source]
Unreliable Narrator
JUNE 26, 2001 SF, TARGARYENS, VALYRIA, SANSA, MARTELLS, AND MORE
[GRRM is asked about Sansa misremembering the name of Joffrey’s sword.]
The Lion’s Paw / Lion’s Tooth business (*), on the other hand, is intentional. A small touch of the unreliable narrator. I was trying to establish that the memories of my viewpoint characters are not infallible. Sansa is simply remembering it wrong. A very minor thing (you are the only one to catch it to date), but it was meant to set the stage for a much more important lapse in memory. You will see, in A STORM OF SWORDS and later volumes, that Sansa remembers the Hound kissing her the night he came to her bedroom… but if you look at the scene, he never does. That will eventually mean something, but just now it’s a subtle touch, something most of the readers may not even pick up on.
[Source]
(*) It was Arya who misremembered the name of Joffrey’s sword tho…
Unreliable Narrator 2.0
OCTOBER 05, 2002 SANSA’S MEMORY
[Note: This mail has been edited for brevity.]
… this is an inconsistency with ASoS more than an outright error. In ASoS, Sansa thinks that the Hound kissed her before leaving her room and King’s Landing. In ACoK, no kiss is mentioned in the scene, though Sansa did think that he was about to do so.
Well, not every inconsistency is a mistake, actually. Some are quite intentional. File this one under “unreliable narrator” and feel free to ponder its meaning
[Source]
Unreliable Narrator 3.0
NOVEMBER 27, 2007 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS
Here’s a really particular question (which I realize means it probably won’t get asked in a general interview): In A Storm of Swords, there is a chapter early on where Sansa is thinking back to the scene at the end of A Clash of Kings when The Hound came into her room during the battle. She thinks in the chapter about how he kissed her, but in the scene in A Clash of Kings, this actually didn’t happen. Was that a typo or something? —Valdora
GRRM: It’s not a typo. It is something! [Laughs] ”Unreliable narrator” is the key phrase there. The second scene is from Sansa’s thoughts. And what does that reveal about her psychologically? I try to be subtle about these things.
[Source]
Sansa may be dead but Alayne is alive
APRIL 15, 2008 FUTURE MEETINGS, POVS, ARYA’S ROLE, EASTERN LANDS, AND ASSASSINS
[Will Sandor and Sansa meet?]
Why, the Hound is dead, and Sansa may be dead as well. There’s only Alayne Stone.
[Source]
A lot more dangerous than romantic
AUGUST 2, 2009 AS SER JORAH MORMONT…
weltraummuell: The Hound Oh please don’t cast an old guy for the Hound, his scenes with Sansa are so romantic and erotic, I couldn’t bear if it’d feel creepy all of a sudden. Well, that’s me making demands. LOL
GRRM: Re: The Hound Old guy? No, but… the Hound is still a whole lot older than Sansa, and was never written as attractive… you know, those hideous burns and all that… he’s a lot more dangerous than he is romantic.
kestrana: The Hound Yeah its a “girl always wants the bad boy” kind of thing although Sansa seems to pull something else out of him. It feels so wrong sometimes but I want to see them together again tee hee.
weltraummuell: The Hound Hehe, George, maybe you didn’t intend it, but he turned out to be a very erotic character to female readers. Especially since he’s mutilated and dangerous. Makes him unpredictable and vulnerable which is the most explosive aphrodisiac for a girl’s fantasy. ;)
weltraummuell: The Hound And I know from discussions on other board other women feel just the same about Sandor. He’s an absolute favourite with the ladies!
halfbloodmalfoy: The Hound LOL, you’re such a man. To many of us women, dangerous *is* attractive.
GRRM: The Hound But no one has any love for poor old Sam Tarly, kind and smart and decent and devoted…
[Source]
I played with it but I didn’t get the answer I was waiting for
JUNE 22, 2012 SWORD & LASER VIDEO PODCAST
GRRM: I am sometimes surprised by the reactions, of women in particular, to some of the villains. The number of women over the years who have written to me that their favorite characters are Jaime Lannister or Sandor Clegane [the Hound] or Theon Greyjoy… All of these are deeply troubled individuals with some very dark sides, who have done some very dark things. Nonetheless, they do draw this response, and quite heavily, I think, in the case of some of them, from my female readers in particular.
Veronica Belmont: I’m a big fan of the Hound, myself, actually.
Tom Merritt: Of Sandor? Really?
Veronica Belmont: Yeah, the Hound… Maybe it’s not because I feel any compassion towards them, I’m not really sure what the attraction is. Ah, I’m not going to call it attraction, actually. Let’s just say it’s a fascination, perhaps.
GRRM: [Chuckles] Well, I mean, fascination is one thing, but some of these letters indicate that there really is like a romantic attraction going on there. And I do know there’s all these people out there who are, as they call themselves, the “San/San” fans, who want to see Sandor and Sansa get together at the end. So that’s interesting, too.
Tom Merritt: The TV show has sort of played with that a little, and probably stoked those fires.
GRRM: Oh, sure. And I’ve played with it in the books. There’s something there, but it’s still interesting to see how many people have responded to it.
[Source]
I played with it but I didn’t get the answer I was waiting for 2.0
JUNE 23, 2015 GRRM Q&A AT THE SCIENCE FICTION BOOKSTORE IN STOCKHOLM
Question: “Is there any fan reactions that you have been surprised by, like is there a character that’s more popular than you thought or have people been shocked by something you didn’t think we would be shocked at?”
GRRM: “I’m reasonably certain what people will be shocked by. I knew that the Red Wedding would provoke a big reaction and it did. I was pretty confident that, you know, throwing Bran out the window and then killing Ned in the first book would get reactions, and indeed they did. All of those worked exactly the way it did to the extent that things that have surprised me, they tend to be smaller things. I guess I… Maybe I should not have, I don’t know. How do I phrase this without getting myself in terrible trouble… I guess I don’t understand women, but I was definitely, you know, way back when, surprised by the number of women who reacted positively to characters like Theon and the Hound as dashing, romantic figures. The san/san kind of thing took me by surprise, I must admit, and even more so the women who, and there are some, who really like Theon. So that surprised me.”
[Source]
Unreliable Narrator 4.0
DECEMBER 2016 ASKING GEORGE R.R. MARTIN ABOUT S@N/S@N
My question is regarding Sansa Stark. Her sexuality has evolved through every book and yet the memory that seems to stick the more with her in this regard is the night of the Blackwater. So I was wondering if you can expand on your view on what this is, since as before that night her interactions with Sandor Clegane weren’t really physical.
The night of the Blackwater, yes. Ahhh… Well, I’m not going to give you a straight answer on that hahaha… Uhmmm, but I would say that ahhh… you know a television show and a book each has its own strengths and weaknesses; there a re tools that are available to me as a novelist, that are not available to people doing a television show. And of course there are tools available to them, that are not available to a novelist, I mean they can lay in a soundtrack, they can do special effects, they can do amazing things that I can’t do, I just have words on paper. What can I do, well I can use things like the internal narrative, I can take you inside of territories… thoughts, which you can’t do in a TV show… Ahhh… You just have the words they speak, you see them from outside because the camera is external, while prose is internal, and I have the device known as “unreliable narrator”… Ahhh… Which again, they don’t have. So, think about those two aspects when you consider that night of the Blackwater.
[Source]
Do with it what you will.
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Anti-blackness in 19th century England, why Queen Charlotte wasn’t black, and why it doesn’t matter in Bridgerton
I’d like to start by saying Bridgerton is a very amusing piece of absolute fiction. From the dresses to the music to the fanfic tropes it uses and the books it’s based on. It doesn’t even start to pretend it’s realistic. And being a piece of modern historical fantasy made by a woman born in this age, it is alright for the showrunners to give it a modern vibe. If you want, you can trace the lineage of every duke of Hastings there has ever been and know exactly who they were and what they looked like. Everyone knows there was never a black duke of Hastings, meaning there is no harm nor a deliberate attempt at “changing history” by the showrunners. They’re not pretending they’re portraying real events and real people of 1813. Therefore I accept that in this “alternative reality regency” it is fine for people of all ranks, including Queen Charlotte, to be black. I loved Golda Rosheuvel’s portrayal, I loved her looks, her acting and I tolerate her half-ishly accurate outdated wardrobe (for those interested in fashion history: look up “regency era court gowns”, old styles were worn but Charlotte would wear normal dresses day-to-day). I’m thrilled to watch her in the second season as well.
However,  I will screech if I see people claiming Charlotte was black in real life. There were black people in Europe during all periods of history. They could be very influential and wealthy, and yes, they could even be nobility in some rare cases. There is a growing field of research tracing the steps of black people in Europe throughout time, revealing the often overlooked presence of black people. However, Queen Charlotte isn’t one of them. And I say this because claiming her to be black, would mean the British Monarchy, way ahead of its time, was accepting of black people. it would also mean the British people, who were more than a bit racist, generally accepted a (partially) black woman. Rather than Charlotte being black leading to her being described as black, I believe the confusion about her being black stems from people back in the day using racially ambiguous terms to make clear Charlotte looked ugly (because in a racist colonial world the best way to insult someone is by saying they look like a slave).
Being a historian, I do believe I have to give evidence for my claim. I’ll be using her ancestry, written descriptions and paintings. However, buckle up because you’ll be getting a lot of side information on other POC in art and literature. So if you’re interested in learning a bit about the relationship between the concepts of race and beauty in the 18th and 19th century, here we go. (note: if I use any offensive terms without direct citing someone, do let me know I will change them as soon as possible)
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1.    When did these rumours start
During the Regency Era, when the world was still a very colonial one, Queen Charlotte was described by some as having a big nose, full lips and an ambiguous complexion. However, her race was never debated, until academic discussions picked up around the 1940s.
2.    Queen Charlotte’s family tree.
The Portuguese royal family definitely has Moorish blood in it. No one can contest that. Muslims and Europeans lived together on the Iberian Peninsula for 800 years. The question is whether that means that royals with a Portuguese ancestor can be called “people of colour”, and how far down the line people can still claim to be people of colour. Almost all royal households of Europe married into the Portuguese royal family at some point, yet of few royals it is said that because of that heritage, they are people of colour. That argument is only made for Queen Charlotte (imo that probably has a lot to do with the fact that the world is dominated by the Anglosaxon countries and that because of their worldwide tentacles and their language being the most universally spoken, the British Royal Family receives the most interest from everyone all over the world. Other royal families don’t get as much attention).
Note that I used the word people of colour, that is because the root of Charlotte’s supposed African heritage is not necessarily black. Let’s take a look at her family tree.
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According to historian Mario de Valdes y Cocom — who dug into the queen’s lineage for a 1996 Frontline documentary on PBS — Queen Charlotte could trace her lineage back to black members of the Portuguese royal family. Charlotte was related to Margarita de Castro y Sousa, a 15th-century Portuguese noblewoman nine (!) generations removed.
Margarita de Castro e Souza herself descended from King Alfonso III of Portugal and his concubine, Madragana, a Moor that Alfonso III took as his lover after conquering the town of Faro in southern Portugal.
This would make Queen Charlotte a whopping 15 generations removed from her closest black ancestor — if Madragana was even black, which historians don’t know. That’s a lot of generations back. de Valdes y Cocom argues that, due to centuries-long inbreeding, he could trace six lines between Queen Charlotte and Sousa, which would mean Madragana’s genes were a bit more influential, but still 15 generations ago. That’s her grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grandmother.
So, let’s pretend it is true and her ancestor was black, let me be very rude. An ancestor that appears once in a person's genealogy, fifteen generations removed, represents a 215-th fraction of its descendant's ancestry. Queen Charlotte’s black ancestry would be less than 1%. In fact it'd be 0.007% (rounded up) of Charlotte's ancestry, and that's IF Madragana could be proved to be Moorish. And if Moorish was only used to describe a black person. However, the use of “blackamoor” “moorish” and “mozaraab” are not an alternative word for black. Indeed, there is no definitive skin colour attached to these descriptors.
It is generally accepted that Spanish Moors were the Muslim Amazigh (formerly known as Berber) inhabitants of the Maghreb, a stretch of land in north-Africa including parts of the Sahara, but not Egypt. During the Middle Ages, they occupied the Iberian Peninsula and other parts of southern Europe, before being finally driven out in the 15th century. The greatest period of unity was probably during the period of the kingdom of Numidia. Over the centuries, the word came to acquire a plethora of other meanings, some of them derogatory. Importantly, it cannot be ascribed a single ethnicity. Moors are not always black, this is false. They remaining people in Africa can be anywhere from Arab, to black people. But I’m not delving into north-african migration patterns and population changes. In Europe, the moors could thus be Arab, black and often mixed ethnicity, the natural result of coexisting and intermarrying with white Europeans for centuries.
http://acaciatreebooks.com/blog/royalty-race-and-the-curious-case-of-queen-charlotte/
  3. Gender, Race and beauty standards
The world of the 19th century was riddled with Anti-blackness. Part of this continued from the medieval belief that white was good, and dark was bad (see white knight, fair lady, black knight, dark magic notions that still persist today). It also does not help that during the Regency Era, Greek and Roman antiquity were very trendy. Although the old roman empire was a culturally and ethnically diverse society, regency people focussed on fashion, hairstyles and looks from the classical art period of Greece. People aspired to look like the statues: elegant, slim and dainty and wanted “noble” features (straight slim nose, even face, cheekbones, etc). That’s why in the regency era people were complimented for having “alabaster skin” or a “Grecian profile” and so on.  These medieval notions of fairness and the grecian beauty ideal, were juxtaposed against the medieval notions of darkness combined with deeply colonial conceptions of womanhood and race. In a world in which white people controlled other ethnicities, race soon became a weapon, a tool to be used against someone. Just like… gender. And yes, you’ll soon see how these two go hand in hand.
Throughout the nineteenth century the domestic world and the public sphere became more and more separate, with women being given less space to move and work. All women had to be dainty housewives: refined, sensitive and docile, clever but not too well read. Of course, this was an unattainable standard for most women. Only women in the top layer of society were able to lounge around and do nothing all day. Many had to work. Many things of what women were supposed to be: pale, soft hands, were direct signs that they didn’t have to do manual labour (out in the sun, using their hands). Women who could not fit in that small domestic sphere were increasingly (especially later on in the Victorian era) seen as unfeminine and unworthy of husbands. Coarse, manly, unfeminine, unrefined they were often called. Welcome to 19th century “masculinity so fragile”. Just imagining a woman working or reading made men felt threatened. They hated the idea women weren’t just lounging around waiting to please them and provide for them. https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/gender-roles-in-the-19th-century# https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pit-brow-lasses-women-miners-victorian-britain-pants
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Now look at this sketch of a female mine worker, one of many.  Although the argument can be made she’s dark from the dirt, I want to point out that she’s also portrayed as scantily clad, wearing more manly clothes, being broader, wide of face and her hair appearing… quite curly.She’s the opposite of the beauty ideals, the opposite of what society wants a woman to be... and she’s suspiciously black-coded.
Pervasive and passive stereotypes of black people have come into existence since colonialism. Cruel caricatures of black people were omnipresent. Going as far as to ascribe them animal-like features with big mouths, big ears, sloping foreheads and so on. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2712263?seq=4#metadata_info_tab_contents
I could write a million essays on how race and sex have been weaponized in the past. When the “exploration travels” first started, and even much later in art, faraway lands were portrayed as sultry lazy or untamed women, waiting to be conquered and domesticated. Transforming countries into women was done to make them “controllable”. Portraying them as lazy and wild was a way Europeans to give themselves license to colonize them. Just like women at home, these foreign lands needed the guiding hand of cultured civilized men showing them how to do things and ruling them. So either men could control women which was perceived as good, or they couldn’t in which case the woman was looked down upon and hated. I don’t have an exact reference for this one, but it was a very interesting topic in my class on “Global History” at University. But for now this one carries a good part of the load.
https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/jezebel/
It is then no surprise the female black body became a site of seduction there for the white male’s taking. They literally became their property as slaves, just like a man’s wife was considered his property. White men sexualized black people, particularly black women, a stereotype that perpetuates to this day and age. See the link above for that as well. Black women became temptresses.
White women, of course, didn’t like that. They wanted their men to be theirs. So these 19th century Karens started hating them as well. These wild temptresses were out to catch their men with their “foreign looks”. Meanwhile white men hated the idea of white women being seduced by black men. And this, combined with the resentment for working class women, gave way to a kind of language people used to describe each other. All stereotypes (medieval+ working class women looks+ black looks) were stacked atop each other: dark, tempting, coarse, black, plump, uncivilized, wild, broad-faced, thick of lip… Hair didn’t much come into play in the 18th century since most people of high society wore wigs (which in paintings can look like type 4 hair but cannot be used as an indicator of race) but afterwards “tight coils” was also added to the list of features that weren’t deemed desirable. This physical robustness not only lies in the idea that people who work are “hardened” but by describing them with strong robust adjectives, upper class white people once again fuel the idea that these people were physiologically designed for hard work, like slave labour or mine work instead of life as a wife. See also present day notions common even in doctors how black people and black women don’t feel pain as much. A devastating prejudice that leads to black death, black mothers dying, black people’s health complaints not being taken seriously and so on.
4. Black, racially ambiguous and “foreign” coding in physical descriptions
 So we all know the memes of “Historians say they were friends” and so on. It’s a fun meme, but this carefulness in naming things stems from the fact that A) sources are made by people and people are subjective as fuck B) it is deemed a big faux pas for a historian to look at history through a 21st century lens. The rabbit hole that is historical epistemology boils down to the claim that a thing cannot exist before there is a word for it. You need to be careful that you don’t apply a term to an event, person or society wherein that term didn’t exist, or the meaning of the term was different. We shouldn’t draw conclusions about the past with present day notions. When a person anno 2020 is described as dark, we know they’re probably south-east Asian or black. However, we may not believe that a person being described as dark in the 17th century means this person is black. I shall explain.
Back in a time when black equalled inferior, people found no better way than to ascribe black attributes to people they disliked. It is hard to find out whether these people were actually darkskinned, since portraits were commissioned and painted to the desires of the clients (they could ask to be painted with white skin). We have no photographs of the time period to verify whether people did really look the way people described. With few people able to move around the country by carriage, as this was expensive, most people relied on letters, books and papers to give them accounts of events and people, so if one person claimed a person looked like X, others oftentimes had no choice but to believe the account, as they lived too far away to verify. Thus I shall focus on the world of literature, where there were no real people we can compare descriptions to, to prove that the good guys were portrayed as fair, and bad guys were portrayed as… racially ambiguous without them having to be black, or any other ethnicity.
Fairytales: Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. There’s literally no argument to be made at all. But just take a look at fairytales from the Brothers Grimm. Nine times out of ten, the evil stepsisters and stepmothers are described as dark and ungainly while the heroine is fair. If there are transformations, the evil people get transformed into gross animals like toads, while the heroine is transformed into a fawn, a bird or a swan. I’m being unnuanced here, there are definitely heroines with dark hair (see snow white, but she’s still snow white of skin) and the reasons for ugly-animal-transformations has to do with the character traits that have been ascribed to those animals. These stories circuled orally since the middle ages, and most trace their roots back to even before that time. Though the world was not yet a colonnial one, it is a sign that darker looks were already linked to bad people. These notions of darkness have been absorbed into the notions about black people during colonialism. People already lived with  concepts of fairness for good people and darkness for bad people in their heads, it became easy to continue these concepts when faced with black people.
Jane Eyre: Jane is described as green eyed (a very rare colour, most prevalent in white people), fairy-like, skinny and pale. Although Brönte tells us she is ugly (she indeed doesn’t confirm to beauty ideals at the time) she appeals to Mr. Rochester and fits more into the stereotype of beauty than her romantic rival: Berta Mason Rochester. Bertha’s laugh is “hysterical” and “demonic”, she is dangerous and injures her own brother. “What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face.”
Dear reader, Mr. Rochester is described as being tempted into a marriage, to a wild foreign animal-like madwoman with dark grizzled hair and red eyes. Although there is no description of her skin colour (Bertha could very well be any ethnicity) there are clear parallels in the way she is described and the way POC were described. In the context of the 1840s readers would instantly attach this picture to their preconceptions about others with a similar look. Jane doesn’t even need to describe Bertha’s personality, the readers have already decided what she’s like because they understand that the author means dark looks= bad personality. Dark looks= foreign looks. Additionally: Blanche Ingram, Jane’s other rival was described as a fine beauty with a stereotypically beautiful body but had an olive complexion, dark hair and dark eyes. These were desirable traits in England at the time, but the darker beauty of Blanche comes with a bad personality and in the end, she too is rejected in favour of our pale heroine Jane.
Wuthering Heights: Heathcliff has long confused readers. It is most probable, in my opinion, given the context of the time, that Heathcliff was of roma origin as roma were strongly disliked in England at the time, and he fits best in the stereotypes associated with them. It’s also much more probable that an English gentleman would take in an orphaned European child than a black child, especially given he raised him as a son (british people weren’t that kind, they wouldn’t raise a black child as their son). However, the author, still clearly relies on a certain set of dark characteristics to describe him. “I had a peep at a dirty, ragged, black-haired child; big enough both to walk and talk: indeed, its face looked older than Catherine's; yet when it was set on its feet, it only stared round, and repeated over and over again some gibberish that nobody could understand.” “He seemed a sullen, patient child; hardened, perhaps, to ill-treatment: he would stand Hindley's blows without winking or shedding a tear, and my pinches moved him only to draw in a breath and open his eyes.” “You are younger [than Edgar], and yet, I'll be bound, you are taller and twice as broad across the shoulders; you could knock him down in a twinkling; don't you feel that you could?” “Do you mark those two lines between your eyes; and those thick brows, that, instead of rising arched, sink in the middle; and that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil's spies?” “he had by that time lost the benefit of his early education: continual hard work, begun soon and concluded late, had extinguished any curiosity he once possessed in pursuit of knowledge, and any love for books or learning. His childhood's sense of superiority, instilled into him by the favours of old Mr. Earnshaw, was faded away … Then personal appearance sympathised with mental deterioration: he acquired a slouching gait and ignoble look; his naturally reserved disposition was exaggerated into an almost idiotic excess of unsociable moroseness;” “His countenance was much older in expression and decision of feature than Mr. Linton's; it looked intelligent, and retained no marks of former degradation. A half-civilised ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and eyes full of black fire, but it was subdued; and his manner was even dignified: quite divested of roughness, though stern for grace.” “He is a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman”
Once again: black eyes, heavy brows, black hair. He is rough, can stand a lot of heavy burdens, seemingly indifferent to pain. He has something devilish and uncivilized about him, and is oftentimes believed dumb. Admittedly, this portrayal is more nuanced, he has a knack for studying and he does look like a gentleman. But the author is clear that it is only superficial and he is still mad within. It thus becomes very clear, already only from literature, that if you want someone to look bad, you make them look manly, workmanlike and ascribe to them black features.
For more examples of racial ambiguity, casual racism and explicit racism in English 19th century books: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/victorian-literature-and-culture/article/casual-racism-in-victorian-literature/1B4B3B0538F8B7C6B58E6D839DCFEC92.
This technique was adapted by EVERYONE. Wanted to make your enemy look bad? Then write a very uncharming picture of them attributing them with stereotypical black features. The most common remarks were: broad noses, big lips, frizzy hair, swarthy and/or dark complexians, coarse looking and unrefined. If you wanted to be really rude you could start comparing people to animals and call them wild and unhinged because “madness” was and is a very common insult. Had an issue with your wife in the 19th century? Lock her up for “hysteria” and “madness”. Got a political opponent in the 2016 presidential elections? Call her mad and hysterical. Got an opponent in the 2020 presidential elections? Challenge his mental capacities. Psychological issues and disorders have often been used to make people look bad and invalidate them. Basically everyone who isn’t reacting in a neurotypical and stereotypical male way (i.e. show no emotions and so on) was classified as “unreasonable”, thus taking away their voice. So many interesting articles and books on this.So we have an intersection between race, womanhood and mental health that are used to control and reject women.
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/chm/outreach/trade_in_lunacy/research/womenandmadness/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4286909?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
https://www.routledgehistoricalresources.com/feminism/sets/women-madness-and-spiritualism
https://www.amazon.com/Madness-Women-Myth-Experience-Psychology/dp/0415339286
TLDR: In literature bad characters were often described with physical attributes that were seen as ungainly. They were codified with animal-like, manly and mad. They also had black and dark attributes to signal to the reader that they were not the heroes of the story. Bonus: they often met a deathly or bad end. Writers did it, but so did real people when they wanted to accuse a rival (Karl Marx being one such asshole for example, http://hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1862/letters/62_07_30a.html ). This is why we can not always trust written accounts of contemporaries before the age of photography when a person is described with racially ambiguous looks.
5. Descriptions of Queen Charlotte:
 Just like Beethoven, Queen Charlotte’s main claim to blackness boils down to one ancestor at least two centuries before her birth, combined with contemporary descriptions of a certain hair type, wide nose and bad complexion. Descriptions of Charlotte during her lifetime describe a plain and small woman, with a wide and long nose, and lips that were not the rosebud ideal. As the court became accustomed to her, however, more people started complimenting her brown hair, pretty eyes and good teeth. Much of the imagery that has fuelled claims of Charlotte’s possible African ancestry is from the first few years of her time in England. Royal brides have been ripped to pieces by tabloids, and the public also performs a horrible hazing-like ritual(see: Kate Middleton was mocked for being a party girl, lazy and from working class background. Meghan Markle was described as an opportunist husband-snatcher. Diana was a “chubby child”. The ladies also got plenty of critiques on their looks). Once the bride gets through years of being bullied, critiqued for every little part of her being, she then suddenly comes out on the other end after a few years, becoming a darling and an attribute to the royal family. Could it be that royal brides are always, especially in a gossip heavy environment like a court, under deep scrutiny? This foreign princess hobbled off a boat, seasick, unknown by the English… And she didn’t speak a word of the language! Why would the English love her? I am not saying the accounts lie but I am saying beware of the person making the comments. Are they close to the monarch and his wife? Do they like Queen Charlotte? When where these comments made and why? And why did they choose precisely these words that had by now become commonplace to use as descriptors for unpleasant people? If we know people used racially ambiguous terms to describe people they disliked, it isn’t such a stretch to imagine they might insult a new queen with such terms.
Let’s look at what was actually said about her.
 Horace Walpole: “The date of my promise is now arrived, and I fulfill it — fulfill it with great satisfaction, for the Queen is come. In half an hour, one heard of nothing but proclamations of her beauty: everybody was content, everybody pleased.”
Baron Christian Friedrich Stockmar, the royal physician to her grandaughter: “small and crooked, with a true Mulatto face.”
Sir Walter Scott: “ill-colored.”
Colonel Disbrowe (her chamberlain): “I do think that the bloom of her ugliness is going off.”
Queen Charlotte herself in a diary: “The English people did not like me much, because I was not pretty; but the King was fond of driving a phaeton in those days, and once he overturned me in a turnip-field, and that fall broke my nose. I think I was not quite so ugly after dat [sic].”
What we can conclude from these remarks that Charlotte was not very pretty, she even admits to that herself. But what are her actual physical attributes? She has light brown hair (I didn’t include a description of this, but it was generally reported), she had pale eyes (as can be seen in all paintings), was small, and had good teeth.
Above I gave two accounts that reported on her skin tone. Ill-colored could be anything like bad skin, rosacea or perhaps tanned (which also wasn’t deemed becoming for ladies). There was only one person, Baron Christian himself, calling her face what he did. As mentioned above, there can be multiple reasons why anyone would ascribe her those features, she did not have to be a “mulatto” to be described as one.
Most importantly, in a society with slavery, in which black people were looked down upon, I’d say the absence of more people calling her things like: dark, swarthy, black, mixed, brown and any and all things associated with black looks, is more telling than a few accounts mildly referring to her colour.
If Charlotte were truly the first black queen, the first black person in such a powerful position, and one of the few black people in England (less than 30 000 at the time), would there not be more talk? More descriptions of her look? She was seen every day by many people. People would be shocked, enraged, surprised, fascinated and so on. In an era when many people kept diaries in which they wrote down all they witnessed, many people would have given descriptions of her black/brown skin colour. In an era with cartoons and press… Her being noticeably black would have been a very big thing and we would have seen journalists and cartoonists draw her as dark. Cartoonists and diary writers mostly write or draw their honest thoughts. They weren’t censured.
  6. Paintings of Queen Charlotte:
Queen Charlotte’s most striking likenesses, or so it is believed, were painted by Allan Ramsay, a prominent artist and staunch abolitionist. In 1761, Allan Ramsay (1713-1784) was appointed Principal Painter in Ordinary to the King (1761-84). As well as being Principal Painter, his portraits have been singled out by many as depicting Queen Charlotte with distinctly African features. It’s believed this was his way of displaying his abolitionist tendencies. He was an abolitionist, that much is true, and he was also friends with the legal guardian of the very famous black Dido. However why would the royal couple approve blatant African features, knowing those would not be well liked in an English queen? They would not have allowed these images. Clearly, they saw in these images only a likeness to Charlotte, and yes, that could mean she had fuller lips and a wider nose. Anyone can have those features. Personally, I find that a slightly larger nose and larger lips in some paintings are not sufficient proof to call her black. But let’s run over some of the paintings.
Most paintings portray her as a typical light-skinned royal with nothing bad about her complexion. 
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In these pictures she does not look black in the slightest, indeed I’d say her eyes and eyebrows look very light even, nor do her nose and lips, so often critiqued, look big, as was claimed.
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Here we can see her nose looks a bit wider, and her lips a bit bigger. But is that really a convincing argument? Although certain features are more common to a certain race, they are not monopolized by one. Black people can have light hair and light eyes. It is unlikely, but it is possible. It’s just as possible for white women to have bigger lips, a wider nose, a rounder face and even… though rarely, there are white people who have no black relative they know of, white 4a hair. I’ve met a few of them. What I also want to note is that Queen Charlotte’s natural hair could have been crimped and combed until it stood upright and was stiff with powder, as was the fashion back then. It would give her hair a more frizzy look. In the picture underneath it, you can see her hair in fashionable artificially made curls that wouldn’t work on natural type 3 or 4 hair.
 However as I said before, I’m not fond of using paintings as proof since they were made-by-demand. Painters would starve if they painted their patrons unflatteringly. There are black people, indeed, even black nobles, ex-slaves, diplomatic ambassadors who had themselves painted with a dark skin colour since the Middle Ages. You can even see the distinction between people of darker-skinned sub-Saharans and North African descent in these pictures. And painters certainly knew how to paint black people for centuries (see: "The Image of the Black in Western Art" by Harvard University Press and “Revealing the African presence in Renaissance Europe”). One such example a noble who did have black heritage was Alessandro de Medici who was nicknamed “the Moor”. Moors referred to black Islamic people. His mother was Simonetta da Collevecchio, a servant of African descent. In this case the argument that many Italians are dark of complexion and have dark hair cannot be used to explain his appearance. If other Italians thought he looked like them, they wouldn’t have paid such attention to his looks because they would have deemed it normal. I’m using 3 paintings of him by 3 different artists. The first picture really is ambiguous, it is only by combining all three that we can say that yes, his looks do fit the bill. If we only had the first picture, would we really be confident to claim him? This goes to show that you can’t say someone has a certain ethnicity based on one painting.
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This person was comfortable in his own skin but there were probably just as much, if not many more nobles and wealthy families with mixed blood that had themselves painted white when they were not. Who would disagree? Who would even know? Nine chances out of ten barely anyone who wasn’t from the direct neighbourhood didn’t know what they looked like, and never would. Once the POC died, all that would remain would be a very white looking painting, and no one would know the bloodline had become mixed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/29/tudor-english-black-not-slave-in-sight-miranda-kaufmann-history
 What is, then, a reliable source? An answer, for famous people, is cartoons. Just like we now attach more credibility to a paparazzi picture of Khloe Kardashian than to one of her heavily photoshopped pictures on Instagram, you can trust cartoonists to not try and make people look good. Note: cartoons are always over-exaggerations. Any physical attribute will be enlarged beyond belief for comedic purposes. King George and his wife were often pictured in cartoons. If there was anything very noticeably foreign about Charlotte’s looks, they would portray it. However, what we find is that these cartoons never portray Charlotte as darker than the other people. She wasn’t shown as being black.
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Conclusion:
Queen Charlotte cannot be called black on the basis of her portraits, cartoons or bloodline. If ever there was a trace of black blood in her veins, it was so light it had become undetectable and could not have influenced her appearance. Just ask yourself this question: would you call yourself a certain ethnicity, or claim certain roots, based on one ancestor 200 years in your past? If no, then you also shouldn’t say that Charlotte had black roots or was mixed.
The case of Queen Charlotte does, however, reveal the deeply racist British society of the Georgian Era, which deemed all black physical features ugly, and deliberately used all physical traits associated to the black race as an insult. Keep this in mind, as well as rampant anti-Semitism and hatred for Roma people, every time you read a novel from the time period, or read a tasteless description of a real person from the era. People were cruelly treated based on their heritage, and even if their heritage was purely white, they could be ascribed certain racial features, just because people were racist pricks.
While that’s the unfortunate reality of the time period, I do believe we are allowed to enjoy an alternate reality as an escape, where just for once, race isn’t an issue. So continue on, Bridgerton!
Meanwhile, I’ll be here keeping my fingers crossed for the stories of real black people living in Europe, or black kings and queens in Africa, to be told in a movie or series. The entire world has always existed, it makes no sense for all period movies to keep being focussed on white people in England, Rome and the US.
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freedom-of-writing · 3 years
Text
The Stable Girl
Chapter 2 – The night shift
That had felt like a never-ending day. After her encounter with Nicole, Waverly had joined her father to watch the first round of the tournament. Luckily, some of the oldest suitors were immediately eliminated, but it was not like the remaining contestants were much better. Everyone’s favorite, Lord Hardy, was a good-looking young man of about Waverly’s age, which made the princess root for him as well. But even though he was strong and really good at riding a horse, he was all but smart and educated. At least that was the impression he gave Waverly that evening as she listened to him having a conversation with the other men in the dining room. That almost made the princess wish sir Robinson would win the tournament and marry her. Said sir was a middle-aged man, but he had such polite manners and he was always so kind when he addressed her in conversation. Plus, she would never tire of listening to the stories of his many travels around the realm. He had seen pretty much everything there was to see, and could speak eight languages at best. He even owned a library that might have been bigger than the one they had there in Purgatory. He would have been the perfect match if only he were younger.
“What about the blonde one?” Waverly was brought back from her thoughts by Chrissy’s voice.
After a three-hour-long dinner, she and her handmaids had retired to her room. Obviously, Chrissy and Stephanie had wasted no time in getting into their usual blabbering. The two were now talking about their favorite contestants as Waverly was sitting by the window not really paying attention to the conversation.
“Wait, sir Thomas?”
“Ew, no! That man could be my grandpa. I was talking about Lord Reynard.”
“Oh, the one with hair for days and beautiful ocean eyes? I think I may have fallen in love with him…” Stephanie said in a dreaming tone.
“Don’t be ridiculous, you’ve only seen him one.”
“They call it love at first sight for a reason…”
“What are you, seven? Love at first sight only exists in fairytales, Steph.” Chrissy mocked her.
“That’s not true… it’s a real thing. Right, Waves?”
When in public, the two young women would use all the courtesies in need, but when it was just the three of them, they still addressed Waverly in informal terms like when they were kids.
“Oh c’mon, Waves, you gotta back me up on this one? You know I’m right.”
“Steph, I’m sorry, but… Chrissy’s right. Love at first sight only happens in the books.” Waverly agreed with Chrissy, although she was not so sure the girl was actually right.
The truth was, she had stopped believing in such things as love at first sight at a very young age. But after her encounter with a certain ginger girl… well, she might have been starting to reconsider her views on the matter. Maybe love at first sight did exist after all. Wait! Was she actually pondering the idea that she might have been… no, come on, that was ridiculous. She had only just met her.
Her trail of thoughts was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of a carrier pigeon who had landed right outside her window. Her friends watched her curiously as she opened the window and took the piece of paper from the bird’s claw. They got closer as she closed the window and proceeded to unroll the note, but Waverly made sure they couldn’t read the message on it. She had come to learn from experience that, sometimes, keeping secrets from them was for the best. Those girls were just too nosy.
I’m on night shift, wanna keep me company? I’ll be under the oak tree by the stables. Nicole.
Waverly couldn’t help but smile her brightest smile as she read the note. It was crazy. She had only known this woman for a few hours, and she already felt so drawn to her. She could almost feel butterflies in her stomach just at the idea of getting to spend more time with Nicole. But first, she needed an excuse to leave her room.
“What’s gotten you all smiling there?” Chrissy asked when she folded the note and put it down.
“OMG! Is it a special message from a special someone?” Stephanie exclaimed all excited.
“Did one of the lords send you a love note?”
“Was it lord Hardy?”
“He was totally eating you with his eyes this afternoon.”
“And he’s so dreamy.”
Oh boy… she needed to stop them before they took it too far.
“It’s actually just Wynonna. She wishes me a happy birthday and says she’ll try and be home soon.” Waverly lied.
“Oh.” Both Chrissy and Stephanie said in a rather disappointed tone.
Okay, so now that the explanation for the note was done, she still needed to find a way to get out of her room without getting caught by the guards, and especially without her nosy friends finding out about Nicole. Not much because she didn’t want anyone to know she was hanging out with the stable girl. Mostly, she needed space and time to understand how she really felt about this woman, which was all very new to her. And to be completely honest, a part of her was already extremely jealous of Nicole and did not like the idea of having to share her new friend with her old ones. She had to think fast. What could have been a good excuse to have the girls leave her room? Maybe that she felt sick and… no that wasn’t going to work. When a princess is sick her handmaids are expected to tend to her not leave her. Okay, c’mon Waves, think of something else! She looked down at the note in her hand, and suddenly she got an idea.
“You know what, I think I’m going to write Wynonna a letter. Tell her everything about the tournament and the handsome lords I got to meet these past few days...” Waverly told her friends. Chrissy and Stephanie knew that meant she wanted to be alone.
“Oh okay…” Stephanie said sounding disappointed once again.
“Yeah, it’s pretty late actually. We’d better go to bed.” Chrissy added. “See you tomorrow at seven?”
Waverly nodded in agreement and smiled sweetly at them.
“Goodnight, Waves.” They both said as they gave her a quick hug.
“Night, girls.”
Luckily, Stephanie and Chrissy had already helped her out of her silver dress and into a night gown, which she could easily take off on her own. She just needed to find a comfy dress to wear and then she was ready to go see Nicole.
--------------------------------------------------
Apparently finding the right dress to wear was easier said than done. Waverly had spent a good half an hour staring at the dresses in her closet without being able to choose which one was suited for the occasion. She didn’t want it to be too fancy, but she also wanted to look good, not casual. It’s crazy how you can have a closet full of clothes and still feel like you have got nothing to wear for a special occasion. At last, she settled for a lilac dress, consisting of a short-sleeved lace top and a long skirt, whose color perfectly matched the flowers still pinned to her hair. She didn’t put any make up on, and opted for a comfy pair of sandals which were better than heels for walking on the grass.  
When she was ready, she slipped out of her room, and got out of the castle using secret passages only she and Wynonna, and the servants, knew. When she was positive no one had seen her, she started walking towards the stables as quietly as possible. As written in the note, Waverly found Nicole sitting on a bench under the large oak tree by the stables. A big lantern was hanging from a low branch right over her head to lighten the pages of the book she was reading. The title said something about a knight, but Waverly couldn’t make it all out. Whatever it was, it must have been really interesting because Nicole was completely immersed into it and didn’t even notice her arrival. Clearing her throat, Waverly was finally able to catch the woman’s attention. Closing her book, Nicole looked up at her and greeted her with a sweet smile. Waverly returned the smile nervously, but said nothing. She didn’t really know what to do. Would it be okay if she just sat on the bench next to her? Nicole must have noticed her hesitation, because she quickly scooted over to leave more room on the bench for Waverly to sit.
“Thanks.” Waverly said in a shy tone as she sat down. “I didn’t know stable girls had night shifts.” She added after a moment.
“We do when the stables are filled with royal horses.” Nicole tried to explain, even though it was clearly just a lie. Everyone knew there was a camp by the village where all the horses and the servants of the king guests were to stay. But luckily Waverly made no remark about it, to which Nicole was extremely grateful. To be honest, she had spent all afternoon thinking about the princess trying to come up with an excuse to meet her again. Truth be told, she had seen Waverly around the castle before, and she definitely found her really attractive, but her interest in the princess grew even bigger after she finally got that chance to talk to her. What Waverly had said about feeling trapped in a life that was not hers to choose, she could really relate to that.
“May I see?” Waverly asked pointing to the book in Nicole’s hands. She didn’t really know how to start a conversation, so maybe talking about the book could help.
“Oh. It’s…”
“The Knight of Hearts.” Waverly read out loud when Nicole showed her the cover. “Oh, I’ve never heard of it. Is it good?”
“It’s actually my favorite book. I’ve read it like a million times.” Nicole said sounding a bit embarrassed.
“Well then, I’m gonna have to borrow it sometimes.”
Waverly’s words made Nicole regain all her confidence. “Ask and it shall be yours.” She stated in very which made Waverly chuckle in amusement.
The two of them looked at each other in silence for a moment. Nicole couldn’t help but stare at Waverly, who looked even more beautiful when she smiled. Her adoring gaze surely did not go unnoticed because Waverly started blushing and quickly averted her eyes from her.
“So how did the tournament go?” Nicole asked trying to end the awkwardness of the moment.
“It was…” Waverly trailed off as she searched for the right words to describe how she felt about it. Truth was, the tournament itself wasn’t so bad, and everyone seemed to be having a really great time, it just was…
“Not your thing?” Nicole concluded for her.
Wait what?! How… that’s exactly what she was going to say, how did she do that?
“Is it that obvious?” Waverly asked trying to hide her surprise.
“Well, from the way you were talking about it earlier, it definitely didn’t sound like your kinda afternoon.”
“Yeah well… I’m not even sure I know what my kinda afternoon looks like anymore...”
“Mmm…” Nicole hummed in thought. “Well… my kind of afternoon includes a trip to the lake, with a nice book to read seated under a tree… and maybe some animals to play around with. And a bucket of snacks, obviously. I could never go anywhere without snacks. Eating is kind of my passion.” Nicole concluded with a shrug.
Waverly chuckled lightly at that. It actually sounded like a great way to spend the afternoon. A little bit lonely though… She thought when she realized Nicole didn’t mention the presence of someone else with her. “Sounds like someone doesn’t like sharing her snacks with anybody.” She joked.
“Well, I wouldn’t mind sharing them with a pretty lady for sure.” Nicole said with a smirk, causing Waverly to blush again.
But this time she did not look away. Instead, she chose to play along. “Maybe we could do it sometimes. I haven’t been to the lake in forever.”
That made Nicole smile brightly. Was the princess really offering to spend an afternoon together, just the two of them? She couldn’t believe this was really happening. But before she could get too excited about it, she remembered Waverly would be married to a charming prince or lord real soon, and there was no way she could compete with that. All she had to offer was a bucket of snacks, and a book to read.
“I’m sure your prince will bring you to the lake any time you want once you’re married.”
“I’d rather go alone…”
“I’m sorry…” Nicole immediately regretted having said that when she heard the sad tone in Waverly’s voice. “I shouldn’t have brought that up, we were having a nice conversation, and…”
“It’s okay. Don’t even worry about it. Sooner or later, I’ll have to make peace with it.” Waverly sighed heavily.
Nicole couldn’t stand seeing her like that. She needed to do something to cheer her up. “But in the meantime… How would you like a midnight snack?” Nicole offered. And when Waverly looked at her confused, she continued to explain. “I know the perfect spot for a picnic under the stars. C’mon.”
Without giving Waverly time to answer or realize what was happening, Nicole grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. Then she started walking past the stables towards sir Nedley’s house. It was actually just a cottage built nearby, where the guardian of the stables lived. The old man had worked for the royal family ever since he was a teenager. At the beginning he was just a stable boy like the others, but with time he had gained the respect and trust of the king, Waverly’s father, who put him in charge of the stables as head and guardian.
“Wait. Are you sure we can get inside?” Waverly asked in a worried tone when Nicole moved to push the front door open.
“Of course we can. It’s my house too. Just… keep it quiet, we don’t wanna wake Nedley.”
“Hold on a sec, you live with sir Nedley?”
“Where else would I live?” Nicole sounded confused. What was so weird about her living here? She honestly couldn’t understand why the information surprised Waverly that much.
“I just thought you lived in Purgatory like all the other boys…”
Oh right. Nicole finally understood. “My family’s not from here. I had nowhere else to go. Since Chrissy has officially moved into the castle, he gave me her room.”
“Nicole, is that you?” A voice came from inside the cottage.
Shit! Nedley! What the hell was he doing awake so late? Nicole quickly motioned for Waverly to go hide around the corner before responding.
“Yeah, it’s me!” She said as she opened the front door. “I’m just here to get some sna-”
“Nicole, it’s almost midnight what the hell were you doing still out there?” Sir Nedley interjected in a very fatherlike tone.
“I’m… I…” Come on, Nicole, think! Just find a quick excuse. “Shine wasn’t feeling well so I thought I’d spend the night by his stall. Just to make sure it’s nothing serious. But don’t worry, I got it covered. You go back to sleep, and I will take care of the horse.” She reassured quickly as a worried wrinkle formed on the man’s forehead.
Sir Nedley didn’t seem very convinced, but he chose to believe her anyways. Stepping to the side, he let Nicole get in and grab the snacks she came looking for. She was back only a couple minutes later with a huge wooden bucket.
From her hiding spot, Waverly could see sir Nedley handing her a blanket as well. “Here, take this. It’s getting cold out there. We already have a sick horse, I don’t want a sick help as well.” He tried to make it sound like a professional worry, but it was clear he really cared.
“Thanks.”
“Just… call me if you need any help, okay?”
Nicole nodded and smiled gratefully at him. “Goodnight.”
“Night…” And with that the old man stepped back inside and closed the door.
With a sigh of relief, Nicole motioned for Waverly to come out of her hiding spot.
“Well, that was close…” Waverly said as she reached the redhead. “We gotta be careful. If someone sees me and tells my father…”
“Because I’m the stable girl.”
“No!” Waverly almost shouted, but then remembered Nedley could hear her. “Look, everything good that I’ve had in my life, my father’s ruined it. I just don’t wanna lose you.” She explained and her words made Nicole smile her brightest smile.
“Well, the place I told you about, it’s a secret spot. No one will find us there.” Nicole reassured her. “C’mon.” She said handing Waverly the blanket and taking her hand.
They walked hand in hand for a good twenty minutes, and for the first time, the silence did not feel awkward at all. Waverly let Nicole lead her across the garden and it felt like she was a little girl all over again, discovering new places and admiring nature’s beauty. There was something about the tall trees of the woods surrounding the garden that always terrified her. Especially in the night, when the trees cast long shadows on the grass as the moon shone bright upon them. The silence was just as terrifying as the dark because it left room for her thoughts to resonate, and sometimes they just got too loud. But not that night. Nicole’s warm hand firmly leading her through the woods made her feel safe and the redhead was the only thing on her mind.
When a sudden noise came from above them, Waverly jumped a little, but Nicole immediately reassured her with a light squeeze of her hand. “It’s probably just a squirrel.”
Waverly smiled at her, but it was quick and she didn’t look very convinced.
“C’mon. We’re almost there.” Nicole tried again, tugging at her arm lightly.
This time Waverly nodded and followed her. All of a sudden, the two of them found themselves in a beautiful opening amongst the trees. It was like a secret garden right in the middle of the woods. Nicole was right, the trees surrounding them created a sort of wall that made it impossible for people to see them there. It was the perfect hidden spot. And it was breathtaking.
“Wow…” Waverly looked around in awe.
“And you haven’t seen the best part yet. Look up.”
Waverly did as she said and found herself facing the most beautiful starry sky she had ever seen. The Milky Way ran right above their heads in thousands shades of yellow and white.
“It’s pretty magical, isn’t it?”
“It’s… wow.” That was all she managed to say. She was completely speechless in front of such beauty.
“It will look even better if you lay down.” Nicole said putting down the basket and taking the blanket from Waverly to set it onto the grass.
“M’lady.” Nicole bowed jokingly at her as invitation to sit down.
Waverly chuckled at lightly at that. “Why, thank you.” She played along as she let Nicole help her down onto the blanket.
“You like apple pie, right?” Nicole asked as she opened the basket and took out a plate with a huge slice of pie.
“Love it.”
Nicole smiled and handed her that plate and a small fork.
“Wait, what about you?”
“Oh, there was only one slice left. It’s okay, you have it. I’ll have a glass of juice.”
“What? No, no way! We can share it.”
“You sure?” Nicole sounded a bit surprised. She genuinely did not think the princess would ever be up for sharing food with a stable girl.
“Of course! It’s your midnight snack after all, right?”
Nicole smiled at her and took out another fork from the basket as well as two glasses and a bottle of orange juice.
“Mmm. It’s delicious.” Waverly stated as she tasted the pie.
“Nedley made it this morning.” she said as she filled the glasses. “But don’t tell anyone he’s a good cook. It’s kind of his secret passion.”
------------------------------------------
When they were done with the pie and the juice, they lay down side by side to star gaze. The air was cool, but the woolen blanket underneath them was enough to stay warm. As they looked up at the sky, they started talking about anything and everything. And so, Waverly learned that Nicole was 26, only a year younger than Wynonna, and she came from a small village in the south. She had left home at 18 and hadn’t spoken to her parents since. Apparently, her family did not take her wish to become a knight of the king’s guard very well.
“The king’s army is no place for a peasant. And even less so for a girl.” Her father had told her the day she left.
It hadn’t taken long for Nicole to find out that her father was probably right, and becoming a knight was easier said than done. But she was too proud and stubborn to go back. So for the first 5 years, she had kept on the move, heading north to pursue her dream. Working as a waitress in several taverns, she had managed to gain enough money to buy herself a wooden sword first, and then a real one. She didn’t really know how to use it properly, but owning one seemed like a great first step in the right direction. In Kork, a small city halfway up on the road to Purgatory, she had made friends with a bunch of boys, rookies in their lord’s army. She and the boys had come to an agreement: in exchange of a free drink every night, they would let Nicole come and spar with them in her free time. And so, soon enough, she had become a better swordsman than most. She had been in Kork for almost 6 months when the War of the Free Cities broke out. Seven armies battled each other for over a year, destroying every city, town and village that was on their way. Nicole’s friends and the lord’s army tried their best to defend Kork and its people, but they fell under the attack of the Storm, an army of ruthless mercenaries under the command of lord Clootie. As their name gave out, everything was torn apart on their passage.
“They slaughtered everyone…” Nicole sat up as a lump formed in her throat. “Men, women… even the children.” She continued, fighting back the tears.
“My God…” Waverly looked at her in shock as she sat up as well.
“I somehow got myself onto a horse and fled. I roamed around the woods for days, heading north and hoping the trees would hide me from those monsters.”
“Oh Nicole…” Waverly grabbed her hand and gave it a comforting squeeze.
“I don’t exactly know how I got to the next town. One night I was sleeping under a tree, and the next day I woke up into a warm stall next to my horse. Somebody must’ve saved me and brought me there, but the guardian of the stables swore he had seen nothing.”
For the past couple of years, she had worked as a stable girl for the Cullies, a rich family who ruled over the town of Tombstone. As creepy as its name was, the town was actually a very peaceful place to live. The whole town was surrounded by tall wall, and built on the top of a hill. Isolated as it was, it had never feared an attack from any near cities. And its lords had always been fair and peaceful rulers who had never engaged into a war. Nicole was happily welcomed into their home and was always treated with great respect by everybody. Peasant or noble, it didn’t matter at Tombstone, everyone was free. So servants weren’t really servants. Most of the time they were just orphans or poor people working for the Cullies in exchange of a place to stay. They were like a big family, and Nicole loved it there. Gregory, the guardian, was like a grandfather to all the stable boys and stable girls. Ha taught them how to take care of the horse and each other, and gave them life advice all the time. In his seventy-six years on this earth, he had seen all and done all, and everyone, from the lords to the servants, loved to hear his infinite stories. Unfortunately, last winter he got really sick. He still made it through, stubborn as always, but by the time the hot season came, his body was just too weak to recover. The old man passed on a warm summer night, but before he died, he gave each of his kids a letter and a gift. No one had secrets with him, which meant he knew exactly what each one of them really needed. And so, Nicole was given a young chestnut mare, strong and full of energy.
You got the sword, kiddo, but you can’t be a knight without a horse. Take good care of my Flicka, she’s yours now. And there’s one more thing: I got a nephew in Purgatory, his name is Randy. He’s waiting for you at the king’s castle. This is your chance to get where you wanted, kid, don’t let it go to waste. You’re an extraordinary woman, Nicole, and I know it in my heart that you’ll make a great knight. You just gotta believe it too. Remember: no dream is too big. May your name sound high in the infinity of the sky. Until we meet again.
That was the letter he had left her. Flicka was a young chestnut mare, beautiful and strong and full of energy. She was exactly the kind of horse a knight would want to ride onto. And so, about a month ago Nicole had arrived in Purgatory, where sir Nedley had welcomed her with open arms. Life at the king’s castle was very different from the one she had gotten used to in Tombstone. It didn’t take long for her to realize that the Earps were nothing like the Cullies, and that sir Nedley was going to be the only friend she had. At least until that day.
“I’m really glad I met you.” Nicole told Waverly when she was done with her story. She almost regretted saying that, but Waverly quickly gave her a reassuring smile and squeezed her hand lightly.
“And I’m really glad you found me.”
They remained like that, smiling and staring at each other for a moment, but when Nicole tried to lean in, Waverly turned and looked away. She wanted to kiss her, really, but she wasn’t ready. Not yet. They had just met; this was crazy. How could she have been so drawn to her already?
“Sorry…” Nicole apologized and cursed herself for pushing it too far too quick.
“We should probably head back now. The tournament starts at 9 tomorrow, I’d better try and get some sleep.” Waverly said trying to get out of this situation.
“Right, yeah, of course. I… I’d better get back to stables. Just in case Nedley comes to check on me.”
With that they both got up and started gathering everything up. Once they were packed and ready, Nicole walked Waverly back to the castle.
“So, hum…” Waverly stopped and turned to look at Nicole once they got in front of the side door she had used to sneak out.
“I’ll… I’ll see you tomorrow?” Nicole asked hesitantly. She was really hoping she hadn’t fuck everything up.
“Yeah.” Waverly nodded with a small smile, which was immediately returned by Nicole.
Waverly couldn’t help but notice a little worry wrinkle on Nicole’s forehead. She had to let her know it was okay. That what happened tonight didn’t ruin anything. After a moment of hesitation, she leaned forward and gave Nicole a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Goodnight.” She said sweetly when she leaned back.
“Night.” Nicole said beaming and blushing a little.
And with Waverly walked into the castle while Nicole turned to head back to the stables.
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Chapter 1 - Waverly’s birthday
25 notes · View notes
bloededhoine · 3 years
Text
world building cause twn doesn't pt. 2: nilfgaard!
pt. 1 on the northern realms here
okay i'm making this because 1 witcher netflix is the most convoluted and confusing thing i've ever seen and does literally no world building and 2 special interest make autism brain go brr.
about this series
this is gonna be a multi part series about the witcher universe but this is all about nilfgaard!
ciri's timeline in twn encompasses the entirety of the first northern war, beginning with the attack on cintra and ending with the battle at sodden
the show ended in 1264 when we saw geralt meet ciri
this is just covering the human portions of nilfgaard. i'll talk about elven allied groups like the scoiatael later.
colour code cause i fucking love colour codes - already happened/introduced, probably s2, important background info, stuff that might be in the prequel, extras
background
the witcher takes place on the continent, which is mainly divided between south and north
the north is a collection of many kingdoms while the south is basically just nilfgaard and its many territories, dependencies, provences, and vassal states.
some of these conquered areas include toussaint, vicovaro, nazair, and mettina
nilfgaard loves invading the north. a lot. like this is the driving force of most of the plot in the witcher.
basic info
nilfgaard an insanely powerful absolutist monarchy, ruled by an emperor who has a huge collection of talented mages, spies, commanders, and advisors
as of ciri's timeline in twn, the emperor is emhyr var emreis, or, to those on more intimate terms with him: the white flame dancing on the graves of his foes
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[ID: middle aged white man with slicked back shoulder length greying black hair. he is wearing a black dress with a red and black embroidered shirt underneath. he is wearing a gold medallion around his neck, has black leather boots, and is holding a silver goblet. end ID]
emhyr is crazy important, both as a character and to the politics of the witcher. he's also a member of the house of emreis, which i'll go into detail on in a bit.
he is also a major walking spoiler, so i won't talk about him in the context of twn or the books
nilfgaard is divided between the "heart" of the empire, also known as lower alba or simply nilfgaard, and the conquered territories, dependencies, provinces, etc
for all of nilfgaard's imperialism, it does allow these areas to retain a lot of their original cultural identity, to the point where someone from vicovaro would not really consider themself nilfgaardian
this works out because nilfgaard would not consider a vicovarian nilfgaardian either
lower alba
lower alba is the home of "real" nilfgaardians, and is also where the capital city is located
theres a bit of racism and racial purity here: lower albans consider themselves superior to the rest of humans due to their elven ancestry
this elven ancestry is also why nilfgaard is far more sympathetic to nonhumans than the north and uses a language similar to hen llinge (elder speech)
there are a LOT of notable albans, so i'll just keep it to the important ones and my favourites: carthia van canten aka cantarella, morvran voorhis, stefan skellen, the house of emreis, and vattier de rideaux
the capital, known as the city of golden towers or simply nilfgaard, is home to the imperial palace, where the emperor spends most of his time
i say most because there is also a summer residence at loc grim palace
now that we know the basics of the core empire, let's visit the other territories!
toussaint
the duchy of toussaint is one of the most important nilfgaardian states, and definitely the most beautiful. it's main economy is in wine
toussaint actually has no secret service or military, something quite rare on the continent. it does however, have a large system of knights errant that love chivalry
the capital is beauclaire, which is where the duke/duchess live
as of twn, its ruler is the duchess anna henrietta. i'll let you all make your own assumptions about the lovely annarietta
also for some reason in toussaint, people have 2 names that are smushed together. so anna henrietta becomes annarietta, sylvia anna becomes syanna, carolina roberta becomes caroberta etc
annarietta is also distantly related to emhyr, her great grandfather is the half brother of emhyr's father
the most notable toussaintois are the mages fringilla and artorius vigo
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here's fringilla in twn. [ID: young black woman in a long sleeve grey-blue cloak. her hair is pulled back and she is looking slightly up and to the right with a blank expression. end ID]
vicovaro
"THERE ONCE WAS A MAID FROM VICOVARO..."
okay vicovaro is vassal state near the southernmost part of the empire, but we know it more for the people from it than what it actually is
there is an actual ruler, but the state is largely controlled by two key houses: the var anahid family and the dyffryn family
the capital is vicovaro, but the houses have their own land. we don't really hear about the var anahids, but the dyffyn house controls dyffra
notable vicovarians include assire var anahid and cahir mawr dyffryn aep ceallach. cahir in twn is right there.
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[ID: young white man in black armour. he has an angular face and brown slicked back hair. he is scowling]
mettina
okay mettina is a bit confusing since it is the shared name for three different places. the first is the administrative unit mettina, which includes the provence mettina (2) and the provence maecht. in the provence there is also the capital city mettina (3).
tor lara aka the tower of the swallow is in mettina, and not much else tbh
maecht was the home of duny (that little man) for an unspecified number of years
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[ID: young white man with dark curly hair. his face is dirty and sweaty and he is frowning slightly]
"wait! i thought duny was the urcheon of erlenwald, and that's in cintra!" don't... don't think too hard about duny. he lived in mettina for a while and took a trip to cintra where he met pavetta.
ebbing
for all intents and purposes, ebbing is an autonomous state, although nilfgaardians do have a hand on the wheel
includes salm, a technically sovereign provence, but is de facto dependent on ebbing
ebbing is most notably home to stygga castle, the one time fortress for the school of the cat, and bounty hunter leo bonhart
also, roegner of ebbing, pavetta's father, is from here
nazair
nazair is kinda the least important of the more important nilfgaardian dependencies
it was independent for a while but was conquered by cintra under queen calanthe and then nilfgaard under emperor emhyr
its main industries are cinnabrite and silver, both luxury goods
the only mildly important nazairi is becca of nazair, ciri's 6 times great grandmother
other minor areas
alba, toussaint, ebbing, and vicovaro are really the only important nilfgaardian areas, although mettina and nazair are mentioned quite a bit. borders change a lot, especially with an imperialist power, but this is the general list of nilfgaardian areas as of the first northern war
regions - daerlan (notable for military), eiddon (owned and ruled by alban spy vattier de rideaux), liddertall, magne, rowan, ruach, slopes (home to haern caduch, the bear school fortress), tarnhann, winneburg, and ymlac
provences - angren provence (contains dol angra, a profitable trade route), cintra (1264-1268), etolia, gemmera, geso, mag turga, mettina (contains kingdoms mettina and maecht), and nazair
vassals - cintra (after 1268), ebbing, toussaint, and vicovaro
tl;dr: the most important part of nilfgaard is lower alba, which is surrounded by many dependencies including toussaint, vicovaro, nazair, and mettina.
thank you for reading! i'm definitely gonna make more parts and will link them here when i do!
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