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voulezvous-rpg · 6 years

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DANCER: THE LOVER

artemy “tocka” amelin 25 years old dancer & courtesan played by em. 21+. she/her. est.

love was unyielding. artemy learned this first. it served no one, as any feral thing wouldn’t, only yielding to instinct and will.

he had loved his mother in the only way a young child could, wholly and without rhyme, and she him. he could only remember she was a woman of frost, silken ink hair whipping in the winds as they traveled from wagon to train, crossing mountains and dirt and fields with nothing but a handful of clothes to their name. she was an earthen goddess paving paths where there were none, a sprite shining a light through dense snow-covered forests with only an oil lantern. she was only comfortable when the cold froze her tears before they could fall, so she took them past mongolia, to lands of old lifting up byzantine cathedrals and umber palaces.

when she became ill, betrayed by her beloved chill, she left him in st petersburg. he’d wailed and wailed, but her figure only kept fading in the snow, into the forest; she was intent on dying alone. now, he understood.

he was taken in by a brothel of blood mothers, warm and unapologetic and cutting with their tongues, lithe, older women who swept by in silk robes but ate stew at the same table, elbows resting on knees, taking bites straight from the bread loaf and talking loudly and crudely. they’d all learned to survive long ago, orphans in some shape or another, be it countries or mothers who had abandoned them to the cold.

they all raised him in fractions, forming something of a whole. one mother would bring home an apple for him for dinner. another brought home a couple of dumplings. another brought home a cup of cabbage soup. it was all the effort they could put in individually, but together it was enough.

he was tasked with changing and washing the sheets each night and sweeping the leaves around the building. ‘you would be useless here otherwise. the men who come want something in between a mother and a fuck. they want you to drain them and then sing them a lullaby.”

officials, they meant. men with badges and ribbons, men with wives and children who demanded as much as their duties did. men who slinked in like shadows, their illegalities written like scars on their faces. they eyed artemy strangely as they brushed past, pale boy sweeping leaves to the light of a cheshire moon. he listened to their noises, guttural first, and then childish - asking for a nursery song, for a kiss, for ‘i love you’. the mothers always obliged, their voices the softest he’d ever heard when they were muffled by thin wood. but after the men were gone, they emerged, cigarette smoke filling the cobalt night, cackling about what their patron asked them to do, relaying stories over the last bit of vodka in chipped glasses as he gathered their sheets together. he learned love smelled like cigarettes and used blankets. he learned love was humiliating.

even as he grew, as he became tall and lithe like his new mothers but windswept and lovely like his true mother, lovely like a crane floating in winter winds, he did not desire to follow them in their line of work. not that he looked down upon their work at all, but he found he hardly had the stomach to even imagine it, being underneath a ruddy old man. even as the patrons’ gazes lingered for too long, even when he began to see himself beautiful, as they did, with doe eyes and sweet lips and a faraway look, he wanted none of it. what he did want were the lullabies and the nursery rhymes - the power in that moment, singing to ministers and diplomats as if they were children with their thumb in their mouth, looking into their eyes and knowing they’d give anything to you if asked.

he first realized this when an ambassador’s wife came by asking for her husband, suspecting him of having grown restless. artemy had been instructed to protect each patron’s confidentiality (‘we would not survive if we could not keep secrets’), and he told her he did not know. rather than leave, the woman took a seat beside him in the courtyard, her face sinking with exhaustion, her pearls and diamonds weighing down her thin shoulders. ‘can’t say I’d blame him if he wanted to,’ she sighed. ‘this city is too somber, too cold. what else can you do but find warmth when one is not enough?’

she was speaking freely, perhaps assumed a slight orphan in a brothel was the very same as speaking to the wind. artemy tucked his legs under himself, brushed a strand of hair behind his ear, his smile inviting. he held himself like a muse. made himself a blank slate, invited her to pour herself onto him, her worn and weary ash violets and greys. ‘do you find yourself cold often?’ he asked, slender fingers toying with the tassels of his newly gifted silk robe. a hand me down. it slid along his skin with every movement, like fire licking snow. ‘sometimes I think we’re too much for ourselves. one body isn’t enough, so we try to try and split ourselves, parcel bits of us into our lovers and children.’

she sighed, looking guilty. ‘i try not to. but one of his colleagues, he understands. his wife is always late coming home. he has no children, doesn’t know how to cope. he’s kind to me.’

‘it would be wrong of us to neglect the good that is offered.’ he spoke sagely, mimicking the softness of his mothers when they sang their lullabies. he allowed her to stare, her gaze curious and shy. ‘the world is already cruel enough.’

she left not long after, stopping to kiss him long on the lips and to tuck a pearl earring into his hand. ‘for listening.’

his first treasure. he did not tell his mothers, they would want him to split the cut. he sold it and bought pastila, the first dessert he’d ever had.

his second treasure was given by a minister, forced to wait by his favorite being otherwise occupied by a particularly vigorous patron. he had no illusions of his own exclusivity, and artemy liked him for it. he waited in the courtyard where artemy arranged dried leaves and wilted petals into pictures and shapes, skin fair and soft against cracked pavement. the minister watched for a while, artemy could feel his eyes on every part of him he chose to expose.

‘what’re you making?’

‘a picture. my mother was murdered by her country, pistol to the back - i’m trying to remember what it looked like. the leaves aren’t red enough.’ he liked to lie. next time he would say he was abandoned by a traveling theater troupe, that he’d once been an aerialist before he sprained his ankle. but this minister looked like he’d watched many families suffer at the hands of their country, all lined face and hands scarred from war and tobacco scented even in his mid-forties, and artemy chose his lies and stories accordingly. ‘i think it will be a blue twilight tonight.’

(his mothers had unknowingly taught him how to glean people like art. ‘look at the red of his cheeks. he indulges in sirloin and whiskey a little too often, no?’ ‘a foreign watch, tailored pants, alligator wallet, walking around these parts? an heir turned oligarch, sheltered, soft as a baby. hope he doesn’t get mugged.’ the world was a gallery, each person a moving exhibit.)

perhaps it was guilt. perhaps it was sympathy. the minister knelt down beside artemy on the ground, rough fingers arranging the leaves like oils on a canvas. ‘blood turns dark, brown and black. battlefields look like oil had been spilled. i hated the smell. my best friend died and i didn’t have the heart to tell his wife he’d begged for his mother in his last moments. the minister of internal affairs’s son.’

artemy shuddered a little, as if the sight was too much for his delicacy, his robe shrugging off a shoulder, exposing a long expanse, and the minister continued, voice faltering.

‘his father is already mad enough, his aides just hide it well. i couldn’t bear to make it worse. i’m not usually known for being merciful’

the minister was only with his mother for five minutes, but there were no noises. couldn’t get it up, artemy realized with a faint smile. when the minister left, he pressed a worn and tattered medal into artemy’s hand. artemy kissed his cheek goodbye, left traces of moondust on his skin.

he never hung on to his treasures for long, he knew they were liable to be stolen, forgotten, and he sold them quickly for desserts, bought himself english books to teach himself the language and discarded them before he got home. the real prize, he would realize, was the intangible. it was learning a noble ambassador frequented brothels, it was learning his wife was having an affair. that the minister of internal affairs was more vulnerable than the public imagined.

then came the day a traveler arrived, english and french spilling from his lips in an attempt to communicate. the mothers made artemy greet him - they knew how adept at conversation he’d become. english speakers rarely found their way to the brothel, and they treated it as an omen.

artemy draped himself over his stone bench, tassels spilling over the side. years of spoiling himself in secret had made him a stark image of rosy health and luxurious beauty amid a landscape of gritty survival. his accent colored his voice - he liked sounding far away to someone. ‘can i get you a drink, mr. suit?’

‘i suppose. and another to pour on the street.’ the stranger’s smile was friendly, melancholy. ‘i’m here to mourn.’

‘and what headstones do you see here, mr. suit? listen closely and you’ll hear the sounds of the living, inflamed and guttural.’ he poured the stranger and himself a glass of vodka. ‘or are you here to pour someone’s ashes into our vases?’

‘my friend, he was in love with one of the women here. or maybe you, he didn’t say.’ he lifted his eyes, perhaps expecting artemy to be flattered. artemy smiled, sipped his glass as nonchalantly as he would if the man had said the weather was pleasant. ‘he died not even a month ago, in a fire in paris. in his favorite cabaret. his love was here, though, even if they didn’t love him back.’

‘a cabaret? how glamorous.’ it was in artemy’s nature to skip over tragedy in his mind, to ignore sentiment. grief, mourning, love, they all served to make one soft and slow for the wolves. he leaned in closer, tried to imagine jewels and velvet and lights and costumes, tried to place himself in a distant painting resplendent with reds and golds. ‘was it beautiful?’

‘it was the center of the universe. it will be again soon, i’m sure - they’re reopening it after they’ve cleaned up all the ashes. you should go see it, write your name on their walls.’

‘how sweet.’ he tilted his head, dark hair falling in front of dark eyes. ‘but it’s a cruel world out there, mr. suit. we are happy being impartial, the moirai. we have our treasure, our drink, and our men and women would do anything for us. their secrets. i’m afraid if i leave i’ll never come back and this place will forget me.’

the stranger almost looked impressed, taking out a cigarette and lighting it. ‘you are happy simply using your charm to collect trinkets and secrets? what do you even do with what you know? you tuck them away to rot?’ he leaned forward, placed a course hand over artemy’s. ‘what a waste.’

‘there’s nothing wrong with rot.’ he could not help his intrigue, how he leaned closer, the elegant curve of his smile. ‘you may tell me more about this club, mr. suit. but get your hand off me. i will be the one to seduce.’

the wild thing was lured back into civilization with the promise of better food, something succulent to sink his teeth into, and it offended his pride far less than he thought it would. he was less like his blood mothers, who were staunchly in one spot until the sand wore them down, and more like his true mother - moving, swaying, leaving one land for another when opportunity presented itself before her roots could take hold. she had known complacency was the most dangerous thing of all, that to depend on one thing was worse. it was why she wanted to die alone rather than watch her child grieve, to remember her as immobile and pale and decrepit.

‘what if it happens again? the fire?’ his mothers. ‘say you rub someone the wrong way? say they drop another match?’

he hears the whispers, can feel the apprehension at his decision, but there was not even a shadow of a doubt. new life was born from the ashes, and so he sprinkled cinder into his hair, planted what treasures he had left in soot, a gold button, a cufflink, an ancient coin, a hair clip, and prayed to his dead mother that from the ashes wealth and wonder would sprout.

he wanted to find his lullabies and nursery rhymes here, in this viper’s nest teeming with glitter and venom. he wanted to leave his signature with a neat flourish and move on as soon as he was bored again, before the past caught up with him again. the stranger had been right. he was wasted with his mothers, keeping secrets with him until he died, spending all his treasures on desserts because he was afraid anything with more permanence would be stolen.

now, he spoke in half truths and spun tales like silk through a loom. there was no use in dwelling in his past, no matter how unusual it was - told more than once, it would become boring to him. one night he was the bastard of royalty, cast aside like a mutt. another night he was born of sea foam, wandering, and had stumbled upon the moulin rouge during a storm. ‘i would be swept away with the rain, you see,’ he’d said once to a crowd of mr. suits. ‘ it’s why i bathe in rosewater. nothing bad can happen to you in the bath.’

he was a fine dancer, not as skillful as those who had been classically trained, but he was more method than skill, more sensuality than precision. but a lover he was, and potential customers had a taste when they caught him alone by the bar in a generous mood, generous enough to sit by them, to conversate and ruminate, perhaps a kiss if he was especially merciful. anything more was as good as myth, and he made it a point to paint his exclusivity in mist and shrouds, made what few who had taken him to bed speak nothing of their night to anyone else with a promise that it would be even better the next time.

mystery. intrigue. it built value, made him expensive, made him beyond mortal.

could anyone blame him for enjoying it?

FC: Kim Jinwoo

#t #d #td #the lover

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voulezvous-rpg · 6 years

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DANCER: THE SPY

simone “mona” carvalho 22 years old dancer played by vex. 26. she/her. gmt-4.

The sound of loud music and clapping playing from another room, that’s how Simone spent most of her infancy. Lorena Carvalho, or Lulu as people knew her on stage, was a star. She was the fast rising diamond of the Moulin Rouge; attracting every gaze whenever she would dance, sway those voluptuous hips with a rhythm both unknown and fascinating to the French audience. She wasn’t supposed to get pregnant, let alone at the age of 21. The father? A Spanish Lord that had claimed to love her once, that paid for her ministrations almost every single night. Lorena knew better, though. The man had a family back in his motherland, he had a title, he was never going to accept the child of a prostitute. So she did what the desperation in her mind told her to do, and kept it a secret. People at the Moulin Rouge are family, no matter how much they hate each other sometimes, it’s that kind of fraternal love that makes you sacrifice everything when it’s necessary, and they did. They helped her during her pregnancy, coming up with excuses for her morning sickness, for the times she wasn’t able to perform - both dancing and otherwise. When the time came, they also kept the little daughter hidden. Simone, her name was, tiny girl with almond shaped brown eyes.

She wasn’t allowed to leave, that was pretty much the only boundary her mother imposed. In the mornings, someone would always come and teach her how to read, how to think. She was raised by the Moulin Rouge, pampered by every single dancer and member of the crew. During the day, when the place was closed and no one could see her, she would convince one of the musicians to sit on the piano while she sang and danced, wearing her mother’s old shoes and a floral arrangement way too big for her head. But a jail - not matter how beautiful - is a jail nonetheless, and it wasn’t long before Simone started to feel trapped. That was when the shenanigans started. She made a playground out of the place, she explored every room, every stage, every secret alcove. She knew she couldn’t be seen, by any means, but she enjoyed the thrill of coming close to it. She’s starting to rebel, the other dancers would say when her mother would come back to the room she was supposed to stay in and reprimand her. She took those remarks as compliments. A rebel, that’s what she was going to be. But how could she possibly do that in a place like the Moulin Rouge? Everyone there was against the norm. Those enticing dances, the lights, the drinks, the flashes, the appearance of fame, the sex - that was the French underworld mocking the rich in a twisted way. And the rich fell for it, every single night.

Simone didn’t.

She was going to leave one day. To turn herself into a real actress, into a respectable one. She didn’t want to eat a patron up with her eyes while dancing on stage, like a predator would a prey, just to take them upstairs when the show ended and find a bundle of money on her bed in the morning. She had seen it happen one too many times, it was what her mother did.

Her time to run away, however, came way sooner than she had hoped for. Pneumonia was an evil mistress, one Lulu Carvalho couldn’t win over, no matter how good her bedroom eyes were. Simone was thirteen years old when her mother succumbed to the illness, and suddenly she was an orphan. Only she wasn’t. Where there was a mother, there was a father as well; and even though Lulu wouldn’t talk about hers, that didn’t mean he didn’t exist. All the proof she needed was inside one of her mother’s trucks, in the form of a stack of love letters. They weren’t hard to find, hidden under a couple of very complex, marvellous dresses. The man in question wasn’t hard to spot either, still attending the show most nights. Simone was never shy, she was never someone to back down from a confrontation, and she went for him that very same night.

“I’m your daughter. Here’s the proof. And if that isn’t enough, I will stain your reputation anyway. You don’t want me, I don’t want you, but your Lulu as you call her just died, and I want to leave this place. You’ll never hear from me again.”

It would be a lie to say she wasn’t expecting the man to put some resistance, but strangely that seemed to be enough. Perhaps he did care for her mother, or maybe she was just a nuisance he could take care of with a little bit of money. Whatever the answer was, Simone didn’t really care. A couple days later she was leaving, a paid apartment in Paris, a governess, and acting and singing lessons - all provided for her.

So she left, leaving everything behind. The lights, the music, the people, her family at the Moulin Rouge. It was home, she couldn’t deny it, but it was a home she had learned to despise, it was a home that acted like a cage, and she wanted to be set free. The real world, however, wasn’t as easy as it seemed. She was talented, there was no doubt about that, but more often than not talent wasn’t enough to make it as a real actress. She struggled for some years, being rejected form one place and the other, going back home to cry alone. It wasn’t until she turned nineteen that she had her big break. After months of trying, she heard that the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt was interested in her. She started playing a small part in La Dame aux Camélias, but her skills, her sex appeal and her singing preparation quickly helped her ascend. Around two years later, however, things changed again, but this time for the worse.

It was all about love, really, because apparently love was the motor that moved most things in her life. She couldn’t have anticipated how hard she was going to fall for her co-protagonist during that run of Dalila, how dangerous it was to begin an affair with a man so much older than her, how vertiginous his way of loving was, how deeply she was getting involved, how he always seemed to have a glass of whiskey in his hands, how intense he got every time someone complimented her and he got jealous. The first time he dared to raise his hand at her, they were at a fancy restaurant, the whole company having dinner after one of the shows. Simone ducked, avoiding the blow, took her glass of champagne and hit him on the head with it, the flute shattering completely. It hadn’t been her fault, how could anyone think it had been? Police didn’t seem to feel the same way. That night, as she waited at the prefecture, she realised there was no hope for her now. Her reputation was covered in scandal, and she doubted the director of the theater was going to come to her aid. That’s when she met Inspector Leon Bachelet.

The deal he offered was simple enough. He knew who her mother had been, he was aware to her ties to the Moulin Rouge. She could go to jail, or she could help the police. She wouldn’t have to do much, just become a dancer, get close to the people she was instructed to get close, gather the necessary information and meet with him once a week to tell him everything. Inspector Bachelet seemed to suspect the Mafia was hiding inside the club, and that they might have been involved in the fire, and in the drug business that ran free inside the brothel. Those were her options. A new prison, or going back to the old one. Better the devil you know, right? So she auditioned, and she was immediately welcomed back, like a child who has long left their hometown and is now returning. Everything was the same, but everything was new after the fire as well. It gave her mixed feelings, and for the first couple of days she thought she could even get to enjoy it. Until her first meeting with the inspector. It was obvious she wasn’t going to get a lot of information out of people by being just a dancer.

“But I’m an actress, I’m not a whore.” “Listen to me doll, if you’re an actress, then do just that. Don’t be a whore. Act like a whore.”

There was no turning back now. She had gotten herself into this. That night Simone returned to the Moulin Rouge crying, without fully knowing who she really was. An actress, a dancer, a courtesan, an informant? Perhaps she was all of them, or nothing. It was up to her to find out.

FC: Camila Queiroz

#t #d #td #the spy

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voulezvous-rpg · 6 years

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DANCER: THE SWEETHEART

elodie celestine 23 years old dancer played by katie. 22. she/her. est.

cw abuse, drug use

As a child of the stars it was only appropriate that Elodie be raised with her head in the clouds. Born to a pair of artists, a painter and a musician, from the moment she entered the world she has been taught the importance of beauty. It is in everything, her parents would tell her, in the swirls of silver in a cloud of smoke or the kelly green of a bruise left on her mother’s cheek. She was raised to believe that there was always something to appreciate, there was always hope, always beauty.

Her father was a drinker, for as long as she could remember. He always had been and always would be. She remembers the scent of absinthe and vodka heavy in his breath, filling his studio as he sang to her. His best work was created when his thoughts were muddied with green fairies and sweet wine. It was raw and real in a way that is only apparent to someone who had seen things both beautiful and terrible all at once. Viewers could see whatever they wanted in his work, and it sold as quickly as he could produce it. To someone who knew not the Celestine family’s lives behind closed doors, they were lucky.

The alcohol made him an artist but it also made him angry. He would come home with eyes as red as the paint that stained his shirt, as red as the blood that would fall from his knuckles as they collided against the feeble bone structure of her mother. Elodie remembers being seven years old the first time he hit her mother. She would turn to opium for the pain, and it would all be okay the next day. She remembers her mother letting Elodie practice covering her bruises with careful makeup application before giving up, reminding her daughter that these purples, yellows, greens that adorned her skin were beautiful in their way. It gave her mother something to write songs about. In this way, Elodie learned that beauty will bloom where it is planted.

It was easier this way. Foolish, maybe, but it was better to believe that for everything there was a reason. The holes her fathers hands left in the walls were opportunities to hang new paintings. The hours that turned to days of her mother being incapacitated and belligerent from the drugs were just longer spells for Elodie to play unattended. When your head resides in the clouds, everything is heavenly, and such is the way she has always lived her life.

In even the most tragic of circumstance, something beautiful could grow. Her father’s anger made the most beautiful paintings. Her mother’s pain wrote the most haunting music. These were the lessons that taught her to turn even the most hideous things into something hopeful, beautiful. As her parents ran themselves and their love into the ground, Elodie reminded herself that perhaps they were only planting seeds of something new.

The glittering lights of the Moulin Rouge caught her eye one evening, walking home from her mother’s performance in a local vaudeville show. She stole peeks through the doors, opening and closing as visitors entered and left, stricken by the glamour and beauty of it all. Tulle skirts, jewels catching the stage lights, music that sounded different from anything she had ever heard; the Moulin Rouge was the most wonderful place she had ever seen, and she simply had to find a way in.

She had learned enough playing with her mother’s makeup to earn herself a job as an assistant to the stylist. How fitting it was, though, how she was able to turn something plain into something beautiful with just a little bit of work. It was a lovely job, one that she enjoyed, but she always wanted to be like the starlets that took the stage. She saw how confident and beautiful they were underneath the bright lights, roses from adoring fans falling at their heel-clad feet. It took lots of hard work and practice, but eventually she earned a position as a dancer.

However, she is not satisfied. (Is she ever?) There is always opportunity to grow. The courtesans are so happy-go-lucky, always the most gorgeous people in the room. All eyes fell on them when they entered any space. Elodie wants to feel the same way, she wants to be as beautiful and confident as the other girls. Through her rose colored glasses, the extravagant life of the courtesans is one that she can see herself fitting into: being the object of attention, something people will pay to love. Isn’t that the most beautiful thing she could be?

FC: Caitlin Stasey

#t #d #td #the sweetheart

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voulezvous-rpg · 6 years

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Half the characters you're making graphics for have left the roleplay...

I understand I’ve been gone a little bit, but I’ve yet to receive any messages that would indicate that any of these characters have left. An activity check will be coming once I’ve finished making updates, and a few of those characters will be on it, but beyond that, as far as I’m aware, they’re still a part of the group.

If there’s anything I’m not aware of, I’d very much appreciate being filled in off of anon.

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voulezvous-rpg · 6 years

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DANCER: THE FLICKERING CANDLE

lilou song 24 years old dancer & courtesan played by v. 22. she/her. est.

.i.

You are in a room, your reflection in the mirror across from you. The lips part, and something vile drips from its mouth. Your hands tighten to a fist, and you strain yourself not to break the glass. It would be nice, though, to sense pierced skin, and blood dripping over knuckles, to know the illusion shattered (because it is an illusion, not reality, it cannot be r e a l i t y )

The reflection closes its eyes, no longer you, and yet all of you. A breeze sweeps between the both of you, and you squint against the bite of cold. Lips part again, and suddenly, you are facing your mother. And when you reach for him, she is cold to the touch.

Do you love yourself? she asks.

You awake, and tears stream down your face.

( you never have an answer, do you? )

.ii.

Your father stumbles through the door again, the stench of alcohol stumbling in with him, and you with narrowed eyes how he makes a fool of himself when he wobbles into his room. Your mother is in the corner sewing another hole in your smock closed, and her eyes are quickly close shut at the sound of your father disposing of the evening meal you all shared hours before.

“To bed,” she tells you, as if you have your own room, as if you all live in an actual house that doesn’t shake in the wind, as if it’s a place to shield you from the cold, as if this is a home and not hell.

It’s not her fault, though, because she tries and tries and tries; she is the strongest person in the household to shoulder the weight of your father and what you need. So you stand and softly make your way to her, grabbing her hand and asking, “What can I do?”

Your mother deserves more than this country can offer her, and the least you can do is lift her burden ever so slightly.

.iii.

( she sings you a lullaby and you find yourself drifting on a river, and your heart no longer feel as if it will burst from your chest. she digs her hand into your mind, asks you to release your anger to be a light in the world, to shine for others, and oh, oh you want to tell her you will always keep your light burning. )

((( but you know. oh, you know. )))

.iv.

Your father’s haegeum has been untouched for so long that when you first open the case, the hinges creak in the most awful of noises. When you pluck the strings, the sickening feeling of hearing something unnatural fills your veins.

You shut the case, and try to forget the moment.

But you come back, in the quiet moments when your mother has fallen asleep in her chair, and unveil the violin to the sunlight. You never play it; you don’t know how, and your father is never around to ask. But you trace your fingers along its shape, and the silent music rests in your heart.

It is a comfort, admiring something you one day hope to play yourself.

And then, one day, it disappears, and when your father returns with more food than normal (and more alcohol, always, always more alcohol), your face contorts into something ugly. You refuse to eat, and turn your face to the wall when you meet your mother’s worried gaze in the darkness.

Everything is fleeting. And it’s a lesson you cannot swallow.

.v.

First, it’s your father. Chills, a hacking cough, and the acknowledgment of death presses against your chest. It is quick, the moment of his first shaky breath to his harrowing last.

Your mother isn’t granted the same decency.

It is long hours of sitting beside her, your hand in hers, willing and praying that she will last another night. You cannot bear to leave the house, but you must to scrounge what little money you can gather. It’s not enough, never enough, and you are desperate as you witness your mother withering away.

And there are thoughts of what else you could do, wretched ones that you refuse to stoop yourself to. She asked you to keep your light shining, and selling yourself, no, no you cannot and will not.

But when your mother needs medication and food the most, there is no money left, and you run through the streets, tears brimming at your eyes because why was it her, why your mother, why wasn’t it you?

And suddenly, there, in the lights, the sound of laughter and coins being exchanged. Before you unravels a space you’ve always heard of, always avoided at your mother’s frown, and you launch yourself toward the Moulin Rouge.

Please, you beg, please.

.vi.

The lights expose your mistakes, and the choreographer chides you for yet another night. Minette is suddenly there, though, planting a kiss on your cheek, telling you to smile for it’s like the moon in the black sky, the candle in the windowsill offering distant comfort. And you do smile, because your mother would have wanted you to — and you want to smile. You do.

She survived another four months because of this place., because of what you committed yourself to. And that’s something — that’s everything.

I do hope you stay, darling, Minette throws over her shoulder as she turns away.

I will, you respond. I will.

.vii.

( it is poison, this place, what you do because there is nothing left for you. you would be insane to leave when you are able to feed yourself, take care of yourself, live for yourself because of this place.

but you are losing yourself all the same, feeling the flame within you D I E. you are tempted by everything your mother would have wept over. and you don’t want to stay, you don’t want to smile, you don’t want this.

how can you be a light for others, if you can’t even be a light for yourself? )

FC: Im Jinah

#t #d #td #the flickering candle

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voulezvous-rpg · 6 years

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STAFF: THE SET DESIGNER

nirav mehta 28 years old set designer & inventor played by v. 22. she/her. est.

There are days Nirav wishes he could remember the sun and the fields and the openness of his birthplace. He and his family left at an age he should remember it all; and yet, when he looks back, there is little to choose on the path of memories. A short explosion of music here, a splash of color there. But the first seven years of his life is blurred, and the muddy streets of France is shoved into his face, and he has to close his eyes to it all.

France, for the most part, is too much for him.

Between the noise and the people, between expectation and failures, his years after the move have him exposed in the worst possible ways. His family struggles to learn the language amidst ensuring they aren’t manipulated by the worst that show at their door, and he slinks to the background, focusing on learning letters or folding clothes or anything that keeps him away from interacting with anyone outside his family.

But he must do what he can for his family, and that means wandering the streets alone running errands for his mother, whose hands can only carry so much, and his father, whose shoulders can’t bear any more weight. And it isn’t until he passes by a painter in the street, one too well-dressed for the part of town he lived, and watches her gaze ahead as she flicks her brush against a canvas that he finds the color he didn’t realize he longed for.

He never saw the woman again, no matter how many times he traveled through the street, but as another year passes, he sketches whatever and whenever he can; with a stick and dirt, with charcoal on the walls, with stone etched into wood. He works odd jobs and hoard what you don’t willingly give your parents for all the materials you can afford, and color roars through the noise of the town and a world he never found yourself fitting neatly into.

His pieces rarely sell, but he’s okay with that. Talent thrives within him, and it’s merely skill he needs to tweak and grow. He observes for long hours when he can afford the time, staring at the rising sun or the stars that speckle the night sky, and tacks another warm-up sketch on the wall.

When a piece of his does sell, the first in months, it is to an older woman who doesn’t belong to the town, almost like he doesn’t. But it is more because of the wealth that drips from her fingertips than because he finds himself awkward in the space he fills. She meets his gaze, though, offers a smile, and then she whispers about how she cannot dare leave talent hidden in the dark.

His parents are uncomfortable with the thought of him living alone so far from them, and just for attending lessons they cannot afford, but after the woman visits throughout the following month, his parents hug him tight in a farewell.

I’ll come back, he says. I’ll come back.

But the color —- the color grasps him tight.

He resides as a student within the woman’s home, along with three other students, and they paint and sketch, and he thinks this is what he was born for, these moments and accomplishment. The woman allows him to expand his skillset, watches him design little trinkets for her and the other students, and points him in the correct direction for his designs to come to life through his hands.

He dreams, he paints, he designs —- and then the woman tells him it has to end.

She gently tells him he is to leave, that she will not demand his profits for his pieces but that he must, he must depart from her residence. And in the depths of his mind, the darker places he rarely touches because why should he believe the worst in people, he understands why he must go and no other student has to. Talent and skill are never enough; they will always be dependent on who possesses them.

Nirav sends the majority of his funds to his parents, because he cannot return home, not yet. Not when the color still roars within him, begging to be released. And perhaps it is by fate, or maybe by coincidence, that he finds himself within the walls of the Moulin Rouge. And perhaps it was by luck, or maybe by chance, that he found his voice pushing through the noise to say he had the skills to produce something new for the place.

They must have all laughed behind closed doors, but the Moulin Rouge was made by the talented outcasts. And so he found himself in a new place willing to hand him the power for his designs to return to life — and if he couldn’t do it himself, they would find someone for him who could.

No, Nirav cannot remember the joy of his first home as much as he wishes he could. But when he looks forward at what the Moulin Rouge is — well, it can never be too much for him.

FC: Dev Patel

#t #s #ts #the set designer

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voulezvous-rpg · 6 years

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PATRON: THE ACTRESS

amelie lapierre 28 years old actress played by clara. 25+. she/her. cst.

She’s the scandal of Paris, and she likes it that way.

Amelie LaPierre was born on a farm outside of the small village of Kaysersberg, the youngest of the nine children of the dairy farmers who lived there. She was often praised by the people of the town for her looks – the piercing eyes, the fair skin, and the shock of dark hair – but she was often the subject of disdain and gossip in the shops and on the streets. She was often caught stealing from storefronts, playing pranks on other children, or seen sneaking off with boys unattended to later be found in some hayloft or behind a woodshed. The hills would encho with her fearless laugher, and she jumped into the local pond without a stitch of clothing as often as she could.

‘Finally, this village will know some peace,’ old ladies tutted to each other over afternoon tea when the word spread around town – how she had ran away from her farm in the night with the butcher’s son (a sweet boy who she had no doubt wooed into the nonsense), leaving only a note behind that said they would be lovers in Paris, where no one would find them. The butcher’s son returned with her head hung low and his tail between his legs only a mere two months later, telling them the story of their journey as men bought him sympathetic pints in the local tavern. It was a long tale of many bends that ended in this: Amelie had run away from him to be a dancer at the Moulin Rouge.

And oh, that she was. While her skills in dancing had been unrefined (to put it kindly), her spirit and joi de vive filled the audition hall, dimming everyone out with her shine. She’s accepted (they put her in the very back of her first few numbers), and the butcher’s son disappears immediately from her mind as the pretty farm girl is offered a whole new world of glittering possibilities in Paris. Amelie easily becomes one of the Moulin’s most popular personalities in her two years as a dancer; she’s young, full of mischievous energy, and she knows the exact way to leave men desperate for more.

When The Proprietor announces her promotion to courtesan, it’s unlike any event the club has ever seen. Men come to blows in the dance hall, each racing to place a bid to be the first to have a night alone with Le Saphir in the Red Room. Up and up the price goes, men shouting over and over each other until one is left standing — To this day, it’s the most a man has ever paid for a jewel at the Moulin Rouge. (A record that she happily brags about – no matter what company she’s keeping.)

It was three whirlwind years ago that The Agent offered their services to her – the opportunity to be an actress on the stage, to be professionally represented. To be not only loved by the men in Paris, but by everyone across the world. Flattered by their interest in her and always one curious to try new things, Amelie accepted. The first play she did – a comedy, of course – is a raucous hit in the theatres of Paris and she’s its instant star.

The company takes a tour throughout all of Europe, and the postcards Amelie sends back to the girls of the Moulin with details of her escapades (both sexual and educational) are pinned across the dressing rooms. It is there, at an afterparty in London, that she meets a director that begs her to be the star of his film – a movie star. An affair with the married man naturally follows all the time spent together “going over lines”; before she knows it, she a fully kept mistress. He pays the rent on her glamourous Paris flat as well as a healthy allowance for whatever her little heart desires every week. It’s even more delightful that it isn’t even a secret; she’s the hot topic of every one of Paris’ chatbooks, and she’s only accepted at the most scandalous parties (no one with any good name will accept her, for fear that disdain will fall on their names for being seen with that shameless actress).

Those same chatbooks report that Amelie is a constant fixture at the Moulin Rouge – It’s true that there’s nowhere else that she would rather spend a night of music, absinthe, and happy laughter that always has the possibilities to turn into naughty stories. (Rumors say that she’s paid for the services of both women and men – sometimes in tandem.) She’s famous, beautiful, and rich enough to just not give a damn – who better for the dancers and courtesans of the Moulin Rouge to aspire to?

FC: Rooney Mara

#t #p #tp #the actress

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voulezvous-rpg · 6 years

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PATRON: THE MELANCHOLIC

guillaume rousset 45 years old shoe shop owner & shoemaker played by jazz. 24. she/her. gmt.

Almost.

Guillaume Rousset has had a lifetime of almosts.

As a boy he had potential. He was a precocious young man, his teachers praised him and lauded him as something of a prodigy in the creatives. He had played the most beautiful sounds from a violin. His fingertips were lauded, he could have become a great artist. The new Paganini. In secret, his music teacher took him to an audition for music school when he was ten years old. He had shone and he had more than potential, he had raw talent. They wanted him immediately.

It was a shame, then, that he was forced to remain home and help his father with his business. He had to leave school early to become his apprentice once he had been schooled “enough”. His father had bought him his own violin to keep his hopes up, but every time he picked it up it was a sore reminder that he had almost made it.

As a young man he had love. Mademoiselle Emilienne Clement, the baker’s daughter was the apple of his eye. He had worked hard to create the prettiest shoes for her, gifting them to her in exchange for her sweet smile, thank yous and what seemed like an endless supply of bread. He had never wanted anything from her but her company though. Every moment he managed to share with her seemed to last a lifetime and yet the moments were all too fleeting.

It was a shame, then, that before he could say a single word of the confession locked in his heart she contracted influenza. The baker did not allow the young shoemaker to see the girl. He had never cried so much in his life as when he heard of her passing. The passing of someone he almost had.

As a grown man he had a wife. She was a good person. A loyal person. An asset to the company his father had handed to him. They had wed because it was what was expected of him. With the exchange of rings he had made a promise to love her, even if deep in his heart he knew he could never love her as much as she deserved. She had bore him two children. He had named one Emilienne.

It was a shame, then, that both little Emilienne and little Leon did not see their first birthdays. They never found out what it was that did it. The doctors blamed his wife. She blamed herself too. Blamed herself into the loop of a rope tied on the branch of the old oak tree in their garden. There haunting him in that house were the ghosts of a family he almost had.

As an older man his father had passed and he was the sole owner of Rousset Shoes, carrying on his father’s legacy. He and his mother lived on but for her, not much longer as she grew weary with age. He stayed with her until her last days. And with her last breaths she made her final admittance. That she was not his real mother. That he came into the world between the legs of a prostitute his father had bedded in Montmartre. That the woman had begged them to take the baby. To give him a better life.

It was a shame, then, that he never found out anymore from her before her breath rattled for the very last time. And with another ghost came the accompanied apparition of someone he did not know. He had almost come to terms with the person he had become and suddenly it had all come crashing around him.

As a different man he found his way onto the streets of Montmartre. To a new building, risen from the ashes. He had wandered in after a long day of futile questions and was distracted by its wonder, its magic. Somehow the red tinted world of the Moulin Rouge became his solace. If he found himself in Montmartre he would find himself in the Moulin Rouge. It had become the only place he could find some semblance of almost happiness once more.

FC: Jon Hamm

#t #p #tp #the melancholic #suicide tw

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voulezvous-rpg · 6 years

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PATRON: THE KINGPIN

lysander seo 29 years old drug lord played by rhine. 20. she/her. est.

tw mention of drugs, killing, death, blood

perhaps it is not fitting for the boy to wear a cross around his neck.

(for all the bodies fallen to the ground, for all the widowed women and fatherless children, all the life sunken out of cheeks and tears from eyes, how he barely bats an eye on bad days and smiles on worse; son of god, he’ll say, cold metal hanging around necks, returning angels to heaven dusted with powder like snow)

(for all the prayers he has kneeled in respect towards, for all the sunday masses and weekly liturgies, all the remnants of holy water on fingertips from a childhood of repentance for things that have not yet been done, how he bows his head in confession but does so in silence. forgive me father, he’ll say, communion still under his tongue, for I will sin again tonight)

(and priests can say nothing about the packages hidden in donation boxes, about guns between the pews and boy-devils who wear silver crosses around necks, as if mocking, eyes unblinking and smile as sharp as a knife when he genuflects towards the cross behind the altar, when he leaves with a promise to be back again next sunday)

he never misses a mass. somewhere there is a priest still behind the grates of the confessional, trembling.

when we are unsure of where the boy hails from, it is easy to give the answer of hell.

perhaps he was born from the underworld itself, he likes to joke. says that’s why he came back to rule it. to take it as his own.

but that comes later, of course. in the beginning, there was just a baby in the snow, cheeks red and silent despite the cold, features built from cities far, far away from paris – another land he does not know, no one has to say, for the boy has never fit in with the other blue-eyed blonde-haired little boys at the orphanage. skin like snow and hair like ink and far-travelling merchants would say the boy was carried from the silk road itself. doting nuns will say god has carried him over seas for reasons not yet known. one day, the spirit, the light, will show you a purpose for being here with us, mon lis. god will help you understand.

shaking priests will say the devil carried their demons here, for another city already lies in ruins. god save our souls.

but you must know that if we trace history to the only origins we know, the boy is perhaps not born, but raised in a church. it is as close as we can get when his blood does not hail from the parisian soil.

a quiet, bright thing, nuns and caretakers would say. a handful of trouble with his skinned knees and crooked smile, twigs in hair and dirt on cheeks at the age of eight, smoke on tongue and smile that even god could forgive by eighteen.

devious, they have said since the beginning. how could we not see this coming?

he is a quick-fingered, straight-spine thing that never misses mass, that always comes in with his best sunday wear perfectly ironed, never a minute late. the boy carries trouble like a middle name, fond nuns tut after morning prayers. but he is a good son, still.

(here is where people will say only one of those things is true. here is where we must emphasize that both statements still hold, near eighteen years later)

(for all his sins, the boy is still devout, even if it is mocking)

the lines between good son and troubled thing are blurred still, and we won’t know exactly how it began, only that it did.

that there is a boy whose long fingers and easy grin make it easy to pass small packages between quick brushes of gloved hands in dark alleyways, that there is a boy who grows into a tall man whose calloused palms makes it easy to press skulls up to brick walls when payments aren’t made. that there is a boy who has no problem dipping his fingers into holy water as he leaves the church before coating them in blood when uncooperative customers hiss filthy orphan on blood-cut lips.

(we are not sure, we are not sure. perhaps they saw him in the corner of the streets one midnight, boy of fifteen and beat for merely being a tossed-out thing from countries away, eyes red and knees knocking. perhaps they pitied him, or perhaps they saw how he fights back, all teeth and elbow, all howled rage on bruised mouths, taking hits to break bones afterwards)

(likely the latter, one can guess. either way, there are men who offer him ice and teach him how to pull thread and needle through skin, who tell him that they’re looking for boys who can take hits but throw punches better, boys who know back-alley shadows and daylight-patrols equally well. boys like him, street things the closest we’ll get to the wild in the city. street things with nothing to lose)

they offer him a job. he takes it.

(it is a mistake, it’s too late to say. the boy will end up killing these men in a few year’s time, rip them open so that their needles and threads can’t hold spilling guts in – )

(but that comes later. for now, they clap him on the back and cheer as he nods in agreement, not knowing they let the devil in)

we will skip past this for your sake.

we do not remember the days of when the boy was nothing but a runner, a dealer, a guard, growing lean and scarred from fists thrown and bloodstained money collected. we do not remember the day he left the church and had a place of his own in the heart of the underworld, where he could feel the city bleed itself dry every night only to revive itself again in the morning.

(we do not remember the day he returned to the church and claimed it as his own, some five years later, guns and sealed bags in tow, asking for a place of mercy, looking into horrified eyes and saying how he remembers the house of god is not to deny anyone of shelter should they come seeking it)

(you monster, holy men half-sob, half-scream. you dare defile a place of worship like this?)

(you foolish man, devil-born boys smile back. you dare go against the word of a god like this?)

we do not speak of how there are multiple hells in this city, that there is not only one king, that he is not the only man who plays judge, jury, and executioner with a single word.

but there is only one who controls no nightclubs, no bars, no back alleys. there is only one who has ownership of the docks the day he gutted a man like a fish and left him hanging after a late shipment from the lands and the seas that the boy supposedly came from. there is only one who has claimed churches as his holy ground, as his base, threading packages through a system of donation boxes and confessional grates.

(mon lis, nuns weep. what happened to you?)

(I understand now, boy-turned-king whispers behind stained glass windows. god’s call for me. is that not what you wanted?)

we skip past the days where the boy learns the power of addiction and turns it into worship. how ports start to turn their favour from old bosses when new bosses appear with an allegiance that is forged from days of running; how he runs no more. how blood is just as adequate as handshakes when signing contract deals.

(boy rises, dethrones old kings with their severed heads in his hands. they had called him a traitor, a bastard boy for betraying a system that has took him in, taught him all he knew since he was a scrawny teen. do you forget that we own this city, own you just because a boat or two has turned to your favour?)

(boy dressed in red from the men he called fathers and brothers, exhales smoke and smiles to terrified new runners, tells them to spread the news that old kings have fallen, that a bastard boy now sits on the throne. tell them to get used to it)

and so, we skip to this:

orphan boy turned troubled thing turned street-wild runner turned suit-wearing monster in between pews.

boy turned king. turned god, even.

(there is enough of a blood sacrifice on his hands to consider it so)

we wait for gods to fall, cheer when they stumble three times with their crosses.

we forget that some are born below the ground. that in such cases, there is only space for them to rise.

FC: Lee Jong Suk

#t #p #tp #the kingpin

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voulezvous-rpg · 6 years

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PATRON: THE OCCULTIST

ulysse chapelain 28 years old patron played by em. 21+. she/her. est.

he’s an enigma, a shroud of mist on the horizon, all the questions and none of the answers. where his life has been prior to paris is a hot controversy, his answer changing every time someone asks. some speculate he came from old money, had inherited a business, a name, and sold it all to live very comfortably in the city chasing spirits and summoning angels and talking occultism with courtesans and dancers. some whisper that he’s a foreigner who possessed a genie in a bottle - how else did someone so young earn such devoted acolytes, wealth, credibility if not by the influence of a djinn? all of it was ridiculous, all of it it was true by the very nature of rumors, but here was the truest truth: he was born knowing the taste of dirt. how it felt on his hands and between his toes when he dug at the ground for scraps and roots to eat and bones to suck on, what it was like to sleep like a dog. he was a boy forsaken, a boy who learned how to run before he could walk. ulysse’s family was no better, they’d all been born neglected, forced to become scavengers to survive, and they were some of the many invisible undesirables of the forgotten shantytowns in the countryside. while other children spent their days in the sun, ulysse and his siblings traveled from street corner to street corner, pickpocketing slim pickings and selling their meager bounty to buy their meal for the day, teaching themselves to make it last just short of a week. it was a miserable existence, being born to die in the gutter, and so dismal that he could not even imagine a better future to hope for. with ulysse, and all nameless street urchins, there were no false suppositions, no daydreams, no ambition, no sights beyond what was in front of him - only resigned acceptance.

supposedly.

but resilience was an unspoken virtue - no one cared for an urchin with an iron will until he was already rich - then it was a story to be retold over cocktails and hors d'oeuvres; nothing like a tale of poverty to whet one’s appetite. but he’d never give them the satisfaction of knowing how desperately his grubby little heart hoped to possess something all his own, not to sell for food, but a single trinket of sentiment, to reaffirm his humanity, that he wasn’t just born to die. it was this pride that spurred him to abandon the only family he’s ever known, hitchhiking his way to the city - dirty wealth was easier to come by in the thick of neon lights and velveteen pleasure rather than pastoral destitution. the work he did could not be spoken about in polite company, but he built up his own income, had the self restraint not to blow it on something short-term or shallow - he hated the work. made his skin crawl with the acid he imagined pouring on himself, and he was sure to to put it behind him as quickly as he could - he left abruptly, as good as a shapeshifting nomad - his image of himself didn’t suit him, and so he adopted another one. a spiritual one - a man on a pilgrimage, a spiritualist, a diviner who knew the workings of heaven and hell and everything in between. but prophets were ignored in the big city - there were dozens of them on every street corner panhandling for coin, and if ulysse wanted to make his mark, it would be in the countryside, the rural towns and sleepy villages that time forgot that he’d have to supplant himself as a miracle. he went first to his home village and met with his family once more, telling them and his neighbors within the village that he’d left to go on a pilgrimage of sorts to a monastery where he’d experienced a miracle and epiphany. he touted himself as a psychic and occultist. gifted with the eye of god.

they were skeptical - but when he levitated tables and chairs, cured their ailments, made rooms echo with voices from beyond the grave, they began to believe in miracles - they began to believe in him. their belief in him gave him power, gave him clout, and he traveled the countryside like this, performing miracles and parting veils, gathering acolytes and believers - it’s a strange power, grabbing a throng by their hearts and feel them twist between his fingers - but it suits him.

still not enough.

soon, his seances and showings attract the company of those in the upper echelons - editors, professors, authors and artists. admiring men and women who offered him lodging and gifts and donations when he refused to charge for his demonstrations, who are drawn to the beauty in him, in everything he promises. they’re starry-eyed at his seances, eyes bright like twin moons in the dim candlelight - they cling to him, to his deep dark grin, they’d give him the world if they could.

(the fact of the matter was, he was a fraud, but he was a real fraud - he believed in the occult and supernatural and spiritual, he only knew he was gifted at making it seem as if he was predisposed to them. the levitation was simply ingenuity and dimly lit rooms hiding his machinations, the spirits’ voices the very same. even if he wasn’t a psychic, he was certainly resourceful, he was knowledgeable - and was that not enough? those born lucky waited for their path to be shown to them - great men simply carved it themselves.)

rumors sang of his influence. one claimed harry houdini had tipped his hat at ulysse. another claimed a supreme court judge traveled all the way to paris to watch him perform a seance. there was even one that claimed he’d married once, to a russian noblewoman, and that alexandre dumas was his best man, but that they’d gone their separate ways when it was realized she snored too loudly for his health. he liked the prestige, how his reputation preceded him by miles, but he wanted his name on print, he was not so easily appeased by luxury.

“the moulin rouge? why on earth there?” shadows clung to his companions in the dim lighting of the restaurant, and they stared, trying to understand. their confusion made them look clownish in the dark.

“history, my darling.” he pointed his cigar. “energy. you take all these people with boundless virility, their passion for art and women, you expect it all to go away, snuffed with a fire? a fire that has killed? no, cheri. what you have are souls waiting in the queue in your periphery, longing to rejoin the glitz and the fray. restless energy awaiting a vessel.”

“you intend to provide a vessel?” the girl, in her pearls and tassels, was his favorite fleeting night. “can I watch?”

“if they would let me. perhaps i’ll summon minette’s ghost, steal the limelight. or perhaps i’ll write my own grimoire.” he smiled faintly, blowing smoke into the air, and it curved, winded, like a ghost. “we’ll see what kind of mood i’m in.”

Potential Plot Points: chAOs!!! ulysse is something of a shit stirrer, living by his own agenda, and entirely self-serving - mix that with ambition, and you got a live wire. i see him mingling with all the dancers and courtesans, trying to get info out about the fire, perhaps encouraging sensationalization, getting closer to them than he means to to milk anything he can get. maybe his persistence and agenda might make someone uncomfortable, it can come off as intrusive - but then, he’d also be bringing his own little entourage through every time he visits. he’s also a hedonist, so i can see him getting involved with the shadier patrons/staff, as well as getting distracted with the dancers themselves.

FC: Willy Cartier

#t #p #tp #the occultist

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voulezvous-rpg · 6 years

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PATRON: THE BON VIVANT

jacqueline hadley 34 years old ceo & owner of le bon marché played by em. 23. she/her. est.

You’re an afterthought, an accident; it’s really quite that simple. Daughter to parents who already had the son they wanted, you’re the aftermath of a careless encounter and it does little to make you beloved by your parents, though they don’t hate you either. You’re simply benignly neglected, garnering temporary indulgent attention for pretty mannerisms but handed off to staff early and often so that your parents might focus their attention on their world such as it was, or your older brother; you don’t remember ever not knowing how important he was to them, to the family. Your earliest memories of him have him as a distant figure, untouchable, well beyond and above anything you could possibly reach and you grow to resent him that, resent his status with your parents and the way he monopolizes their attention.

You act out when you’re somewhere betwixt child and adult, looking for the attention no one seems to want to give you, and it’s then Raoul becomes more real, because he becomes kind, in that he makes the time to notice you, the little sister no one had particularly intended to provide him. Your outbursts don’t earn you positive attention from anyone, they only garner negative attention and correction after correction as they seek to make you fit a socially acceptable mold, but between outbursts and the negatives, Raoul finds time for you, in little ways. He’s busy, he’s always so busy, following after your father, learning the business, but he offers you quick smiles and pretty things; a piece of lace, a small bit of sparkle, stolen sweets you aren’t meant to have secreted with a wink, you come to love your brother for the things he gives you, but nothing makes you love him more than when he manages to gift you longer moments of attention, particularly so when his attention manages to secure that of your parents.

However, it all changes at sixteen. In a night that changes the course of your life forever, Raoul goes out for a wild night of indulgence and dies somewhere along the way, in what’s found to be nothing more than a tragic accident and carelessness born of impaired reflexes. Your parents are devastated, and for perhaps the first time ever, you match them in something because you feel the same way. However, even as they mourn, they’re imminently practical. In mere days, seeing no other option, they turn to you and tell you that you’ll have to become what Raoul was. Part of you thinks the sentiment’s in poor taste, poorer still because they’ve all but ignored you until now when you suddenly have use to them, which you have half a mind to make them pay for, but you figure it’s pointless to make a fuss about it. While the cost was high, it’s essentially what you want: attention, even if that means it comes with expectations.

Your world becomes wide, wider than Raoul’s ever was, because you find yourself, uncomfortably, straddling two different ones; there’s the world you had before, the one that all women live in, to one degree or another, and there’s a new world, that requires so much more of you, a world that despite it’s demands you love more. After all, it’s a chance to be more than an empty object, existing for the sake to suit a man’s taste, it’s a chance to engage with mathematics, finances, literature, things you had never allowed yourself to even dream of accessing. Of course, loving it doesn’t make it easy; you haven’t been taught things you ought to know and you spend so much time simply playing catch up with basic skills and that’s a misery, but there’s a cleverness to you that, once tapped, pushes you forward no matter how hard it might be, and in the process, you change, stepping more and more from the world you were once allowed into the world you’ve been gifted.

II.

There’s a cost to moving worlds in the form of un-belonging, for female ambition belongs in neither; it makes the women you were once friends with seem like frivolous things and leaves you with nothing to talk about, but it makes men uncomfortable because you refuse to sit demurely and hide your opinions. You have opinions and you damn well will be heard, no matter the cost. Only your parents despair about the cost, because as months turn into years, they’d like to see you marry, but you make it difficult. In finding ambition you develop a will to do as you like in all things. Though you’re aware there’s benefit to be had from the right match and the promise of a child to take what’s been maintained and built upon to build further still, you have little desire to simply agree and take what is arranged just for that. And so, with a temper you’re unafraid to unleash and a willful disregard for the norms that say you ought not be difficult, you refuse everyone on the grounds you won’t make yourself smaller to suit them, or rather, you refuse until Elias.

Elias starts like every other match, with a careful conversation, made interesting in the fact that to meet him, you have to go to America. They frame it as an adventure, as a chance at something different, but you know it for what it really is: a last resort, because you’ve said no too many times and exhausted their options here. Still, even for knowing the truth, it is an adventure, and it’s that which convinces you to go, nothing about the man whom you’re supposed to meet. In fact, you barely pay your parents any mind when they take your assent to mean you’re interested in hearing anything about Elias; you daydream about what America might be like and ignore them altogether.

You meet him perfectly prepared to say no, but as one meeting becomes several, you find yourself eventually saying yes, because of the little things that matter deeply to you. It’s the way he meets your open scrutiny frankly and goes so far as to match and return it, when you refuse to play into what propriety demands. It’s the way he talks over your parents, tells them he doesn’t care what they think, asks for your opinion and actually engages when you disagree. It’s the way he teases you but ultimately obliges when you confess you know absolutely nothing about him because you never bothered to listen and demand he fix that despite it being your flaw, your fault. It’s the fact that romantics talk about a moment, the moment, the one where you just know, and though you used to laugh at the idea of it, you leave him the evening you kiss him for the first time certain that you had yours and it belongs to Elias.

You marry him and you make a world with him, one that eventually comes to include children. You know there are those who think you do it for the world he has at his fingertips, for the way meshing the worlds you two run makes sense and has mutual benefit, but that’s only a secondary consideration to you. You marry him because he treats you like an equal, and you love him for the fact that in all things it’s equitable; if you are his possession, he is just as much yours, there is equal ownership in the titles of husband and wife. It breeds a comfortable trust between you, it gives you room to develop your brand of casual cruelty to match his and most of all, it gives you everything the world has to offer, including decadently indulgent nights at the Moulin Rouge. Who says you can’t have it all?

FC: Eva Green

#t #p #tp #the bon vivant

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voulezvous-rpg · 6 years

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PATRON: THE ADEVIST

elias hadley 35 years old transportation mogul played by bee. 20. she/her. pst.

You are not a religious man – nor was your father, nor his before him. The family, of course, has always laid claim to that title of Christian, because no matter the generation, you are always people of appearances, and “good” is an important mask to wear. But the masks you wear are not to be confused with self, and that is an important distinction to make, and one that many forget to. You have always lived in constant denial about gods, if there exist any other than yourself: you fundamentally disagree that there is any higher power other than yourself in your life. You are your own master: this is what your family has impressed upon you from a young age, growing up in as godless a place as the imperial west. You have the good fortune of being born into it, but before the Hadleys were anything, they were nothings. Your family makes their fortune in gold in the 1850’s, as many people in the west do in that day, but they refuse to slink away even after they gorge their weight in gold; no, they stay and they begin paving the way to connect their fortune all over the continent. First, they own the trains, snaking through plains and mountains, conquering the states – and then it is the ships, starting the slow web around the globe. Your father tells you: never forget that we came from nothing, but never let anyone else remember it. It is something you take to heart. So you continue through your life, eyes and hands raised to the heavens, reaching, ready to grab them and swallow them whole given half the chance – you are as desperately ambitious as a starved man, even as you dress in your tailored suits, and eat the finest foods. This sort of inborn tenacity makes you a difficult man to stomach, and makes it more difficult to achieve your ends, so you add a slick sort of charm to your repertoire, adopting whatever gambit best suits your needs; soon, people cease being people, and become games, become things that you can win at depending on the sort of strategy you approach them with. You have scarcely had a need or want that wasn’t fulfilled, so you’re not entirely sure where the satisfaction in owning things comes from. You know where your deadly pride comes from; it is a family heirloom, carefully passed from generation to generation, Lucifer’s descendants perpetually beholden to themselves. But you suppose possession is another form of pride, and simply accept that people will ascribe it to greed. You do not mind being misunderstood; it is simply fact that you are too much to grasp, sometimes. Eventually, it comes time for you to take a highborn wife to add to your family’s fortune. It will be a marriage of mutual benefits, a mere obligation – the very idea of it bores you, as do most of the potential women you are to wed with. There is nothing wrong with them, per se, and it is not disrespect and disinterest on a personal level; you simply bore of just about everyone and everything. There is a parade of women through your family’s salon, each one different from the last, but no less transparent. You give up on the idea that anyone will ever understand you. But then you hear your parents discussing a new choice quietly in a salon: this change interests you. Words are passed around: French, beautiful, difficult. Each of these things piques your interest: despite the family business of transportation, your father does not like to risk his heir and saddle you anywhere, and the idea of someone from anywhere outside of California is mildly interesting, at the very least. Beautiful, of course, because beauty is of worth to you, but most of all: difficult. This is what ultimately catches your attention, because the well-behaved, docile types that have graced your salon can’t hold a candle to difficult. She is different from the rest, and for that, you think she may be worth a second of your time. When you meet her, it quickly becomes apparent that you were wrong about her, and yet, you have never been so happy about being wholly wrong. Jacqueline is not just worth a second of your time; she is worth all of the seconds you have ever had, and all of the rest to come. She is of a rare sort, and you fancy yourself a collector – this is not to say you are her owner; no, you would hate that. You’re an owner of many things, and to lower her to that sort of banality is an offense to her and an offense to you: she is a rare equal, and thereby, you enjoy having the bits of herself that she allows you to possess. Wife. It is a fine word indeed. And she owns a portion of you in return: husband. You had long since resigned yourself to the word, but she breathes new life into it – it is no longer an empty new moniker for you to add to your list, it is a title you bear with pride, to represent the fact that now an integral part of you is her. Your wedding ring never leaves your finger – you never want the world to forget the woman by your side. Cherchez la femme. Look for the woman. You are sure you love her; there is little you can say to express the appropriate amount of love you bear for her. You have never once believed in a higher power than yourself, and yet, with the introduction of Jacqueline into your life, you see yourself slowly become a religious man, worshipping at the altar of her: she alone lays claim to your zealous devotion, she becomes the religion you grew up without. She challenges you, and she irritates you terribly sometimes, but it never fails to make you love her more than ever – each day is a lesson in how much more you could possibly appreciate her. She introduces you to the Moulin Rouge one day, and it is a whole new component to your marriage, a new facet though it is already multifaceted and unendingly interesting to you. You soon realize it doesn’t matter who you or your wife toys with in the Moulin Rouge, and it becomes a playground, a hunting ground. You still never take your ring off, and it glints with your depravity. Your wife won’t mind? Someone asks. Mind? You laugh. She’d sooner join us than mind. This is a truth for both you and her: it matters little who occupies your time in there, as long as you return to each other, and you always will.

FC: Ben Barnes

#p #t #tp #the adevist

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