#and it was when the frenchman and the female (those are their names) are playing reverse strip poker

[shsl-heck]

So because I've seen it compared to Worm, I started reading The Boys by Garth Ennis. It's bad! Like really bad! It feels like what would happen if you let an edgy anti-feminist atheist youtuber from 2015 write a comic book. I finished the first volume of the omnibus in large part because it was a train wreck I couldn't look away from, and am debating starting the second since I hate myself. The most interesting parts are actually the little forewords. Through them I learned both that it was supposed to be a comedy, and also a critique of the military industrial complex/police (or at least that people read it as one). This was surprising to me since it is neither funny nor incisive. Anyway, now I want to ramble incoherently about my problems with it because this goddamn comic broke my brain.

Okay, so one of the most common ways it shows you which characters you aren't supposed to like is by having them do comically "gross" sex stuff. Notable examples include cocaine fueled orgies, mentions of shitting during sex, bestiality, masturbating in public to the sight of disabled people, and a little person using sex toys. One that shows up repeatedly in this context is characters being bisexual or gay. Now, I don't wanna get controversial, but I think any claims that your work is a critique of capitalism, police, the military, or whatever are rendered moot when your villains are a group of secret hedonistic sex-freaks. Like we can't pretend that doesn't sound a lot like regressives and their obsession with "degeneracy". Sexual assaults, misogyny, and slurs also appear pretty often, mostly as the punch line for jokes. Victims are rendered down into objects and denied any sense of interiority so we can instead focus on what really matters (gore porn, and middle school 4chan posters' sense of humor). Never once does Ennis deign to explore the actual impact and trauma of these things, or ask why he views these things as material for jokes.

That incuriosity is I think the real problem with The Boys. There is no actual coherent thought about why things are bad. Superheroes hurt people and are wrong because of their personal moral failings as selfish perverts, not because their whole job is to violently enforce the will of the state. It's like if someone agreed that all cops are bastards, but only because all cops just so happened to be "bad apples". The main characters literally work for the fucking CIA, and yes, I know the titular Boys are at best meant to be anti-heroes a la the Punisher. My issue here isn't that they're hypocrites who are frequently also horrible. It's that this premise for is absolute nonsense if you think for half a second. Superheroes do not function without the legitimacy granted to them by the state and it's monopoly on violence, so why would the CIA need these 5 randos with zero oversight working to take out the supers? Is the force Homelander and the others can bring to bear so great that even the apparatus of that state can't deal with them? If so, why does this group of assholes change that? Normally I'd be willing to give the story a lot more of a pass when it comes to questions like this, except I'm being told that this story has things to say about systemic problems involving the government and corporations! So I have to ask, where? Where is the commentary? What does it actually have to say about the state of the world circa 2006-2012? The only answer I can come up with is "not a whole lot". It's a story which dares to ask the tough questions like "what if the world was made of pudding" and then ignore answering those questions so it can instead recite Ellis' favorite slurs in alphabetical order while showing you a woman's tits.

On a lighter note, it's also just not very good. The plot (as mentioned) falls apart under any amount of scrutiny, pacing is bizarre in a bad way, the characters aren't compelling, themes remains stubbornly unexplored, and Ellis is allergic to doing anything interesting or creative with the premise he's decided to base a whole comic around. I genuinely do not know what people enjoy(ed) about this comic.

#It's a thoroughly unpleasant experience on about every level #There was actually one moment I liked #and it was when the frenchman and the female (those are their names) are playing reverse strip poker #where they have to put on more and more layers of heavy clothing #that was a cute bit and made me do a neutral nose exhale #also people who compare it to Worm please show your work #because the math isn't mathing #is it just that they're darker superhero stories? #worm #worm wildbow #worm web serial #the boys #the boys comics #my meds are acting up so apologies for any incoherence #but also reading the boys just does that to your brain I think

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: “The Boys: Omnibus Vol. 1″ by Garth Ennis, illustrated by Darick Robertson

16. A book you’ve seen adapted: The Boys: Omnibus Vol. 1 by Garth Ennis, illustrated by Darick Robertson

List Progress: 29/30

The television show The Boys is an occasionally-flawed but nuanced, complex and engaging meditation on fame, power, and fascism, told through the device of superheroes as the literal ubermensch. It is not perfect, but the show was clearly made with care and attention, and it has something to say.

The comic The Boys, as compiled in this Omnibus Vol. 1, written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Darick Robertson, is trash. It is a collection of sexist, racist, and astonishingly homophobic gore and splatter, seemingly written by a thirteen-year-old boy stringing together his first slur about how Superman is kind of faggy.

The very, very basics of the premise, shared between comic and show, are that there is a group called The Boys, who have made it their mission to monitor and punish superheroes who cause casual destruction while going about “saving the world”. Newcomer Hughie joins their ranks when his girlfriend is killed as collateral damage by a speedster right in front of him, and he is recruited by Billy Butcher, the macho leader of The Boys. The comic feels the need to illustrate how cool Butcher is at all times, introducing him having graphic power-play sex with the female head of the CIA. He is a manly man who has manly sex, unlike all of those perverted superheroes. The main tool of The Boys is to dig up dirt on “supes” and blackmail them with it, and most of that “dirt” is the fact that they are gay. The comic tries to awkwardly save face, saying they’re not evil because they’re gay, they just are evil and therefore their gayness can and should be weaponized against them. But when Ennis tries to steer out of a skid and claim that his characters aren’t homophobic, they’re just jerks to everyone, it becomes downright embarrassing, like the aforementioned thirteen-year-old having to give a book report on tolerance. This is a comic that mollifies Hughie for accidentally killing a young man by showing that he was a sexual deviant with a live hamster shoved up his ass. There is no good way to come back from that.

Robertson and Ennis parade a line of paper-thin racial and sexual stereotypes across the pages, and seem to get particular glee out of having women maimed and killed through sex. Prostitutes who service superheroes are mangled, and in one of the later, more-serialized issues, a female mob boss is taken down when Butcher plants a bomb in her comically huge vibrator. The only recurring female character is a small, silent, insane Japanese woman who is literally named “The Female of the Species”, and acts as The Boys’ rabid dog, along with fellow muscle The Frenchman. Minor characters from the comic, like up-and-coming superhero Starlight, had to wait until they got into a TV writer’s hands to get any dignity or basic respect.

Lest one think that the only criticisms of the comic are for “woke” reasons, it should also be clear that the plot itself is drivel. The main gang stumble from plot to plot with little-to-no intelligent opposition or challenge, lest they seem less than cool in a moment of defeat. Any criticisms they and Ennis have to make about superheroes are muddled by the fact that all of The Boys also take the chemical Compound V and have super powers; they are not against superheroes, they are just government-sponsored superheroes. Characters and plot points are introduced and dropped at random, and long detours are taken to follow complete nobodies to the depths of their depravities, just for a “laugh”. 

Garth Ennis has nothing to say other than that he hates superheroes (and that gay people are gross and women are fuck toys). The far and away best thing that can be said about the show version of The Boys is that it takes an intriguing central premise out of this child’s hands and does something worthwhile with it. As for the comic, you should not read this with your worst enemy’s eyes.

Would I Recommend It: A giant, bloody, gore-dripping NO.

#straydog's reading resolution #the boys #garth ennis #i stopped reading half-way through and then gritted my teeth to spite-finish it

[lu-undy]

Un-alone, Chapter 18

Here it is!

“Corpus Christi in Texas?”

“Yup, seems your boy’s mobile.” Fred was playing with a toothpick while sitting on the Frenchman’s couch, in his suite. 

Lucien sighed from his bedroom.

“Do we know if he intends to settle there or is his US tour going to last any longer?” He asked. 

“Apparently he had to meet with some folks in New Mexico but intends to settle for real in Texas. Some of his henchmen were spotted there already, but the man himself still has to join his goons.”

“Very well.”

Lucien walked to the telephone and composed a number. 

“Allô? Oui, please let the driver of Agent J know that his stop should not be in New Mexico but at Corpus Christi, in Texas… Many thanks.” Lucien hung up the phone and went back to his room, leaving the door open.

“So you’re goin’ there too or it’s too easy for the great L to take care of, huh?” Fred asked with enough disdain for Lucien to frown from his bedroom. He had laid a suitcase open on his bed and was packing his essentials.

“I am joining him. He is still in training and has no idea how to even dress. How could one expect him to capture an everything-trafficker?” Lucien's voice said from the bedroom. 

"Well, he's still technically in trainin' but you just called him 'Agent J', as if he was official…" Fred took a chocolate from the bowl on the coffee table. Lucien came out of his bedroom with a briefcase in his hand. “Think he has potential?”

"Thank you for letting me know where Mordankovich is." The Frenchman coldly answered and Fred raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t wanna answer?”

“Non.”

“Fair enough…” Fred took another chocolate from the bowl on the table and tossed the wrapping on it. Perle jumped on the table and started playing with the shiny bit of plastic.

“Perle, non.” Lucien came and took the wrapping away from her. “Chocolate is no food for you.”

“Meow!”

“C’est malpoli de répondre.” The Frenchman gently answered.

[It is impolite to talk back.]

Lucien threw the wrappings in the bin and Perle followed him around. 

“What are you gonna do with it?” Fred asked.

“With what?” Lucien answered.

“With the cat? You gonna go to Texas with it? Also, I didn’t know you had a kitty… C’mere…” Fred extended a few fingers to Perle who came to sniff them. “Ouch! She slapped me with her claws!”

Lucien couldn’t help but smirk.

“Perle, ne lui fais pas de mal, s’il te plaît.”

[Perle, don’t harm him, please.]

The American sucked on his bruised finger and frowned. 

"To answer you, Perle is coming along." Lucien said and crouched down next to the cat's travel box. He put a little soft blanket inside and dropped a few treats on it. "Viens, ma belle." 

[Come, my beauty.]

Before obeying, Perle brushed herself on the Frenchman. 

"Oui, tu viens avec moi. Je ne vais pas te laisser toute seule, non?" 

[Yes, you are coming with me. I will not leave you on your own, will I?]

He gently scratched her head and Perle purred. She appreciated the scratches for a while before she decided that she had enough and the smell of those tuna treats inside the travel box was divine…! 

"Never thought you were the pet ownin' type." Fred helped himself to more chocolates. "Hell, you couldn't even bear with people who wanted to work with you…! And now you got a kid and a fuckin' cat!"

"Well, if we are done, Fred…" Lucien walked to the front door. He put his coat on and wrapped a scarf around his neck. "If you don't mind, I need to leave." 

"Oh, sure." Fred took an extra handful of chocolates and left. “Oh, before I forget…” Fred turned from halfway through the hotel corridor. “We’ve got a guy in Texas, E, he’s good with machines and stuff. G'luck!"

A few hours later, Lucien was aboard a plane. He stretched his legs in front of him and sighed as he looked through the window. He was thousands of miles above the ground and as late as it was, he couldn't even see the clouds beneath him. It gave him the impression that he was floating in space, far from the Earth and its problems, in a business class bubble, far from targets, ministries and intelligence agencies.

The lights dimmed out in the plane and most passengers slowly fell in Morpheus' arms. Lucien looked through the infinite darkness.

"Meow?" 

"Dors, ma chérie. Je suis là." 

[Sleep, sweetheart. I am here.] 

Lucien had put Perle in the seat next to him, still in the box. 

"Meow…" She complained. 

"Je sais, c'est moins confortable que dans mon lit, sur le coussin à côté de moi. Mais on est dans un avion." 

[I know, it is less comfortable than my bed, on the pillow next to mine. But we are on a plane."

"Meeeoooow?" She begged and Lucien sighed. He opened the box's door. 

"Tu restes près de moi, d'accord?"

[You stay next to me, understood?]

Perle curled in a ball of fur on her master's lap. He scratched her and she gently purred, blinking slower and slower. 

"Meow." 

"Qu'est-ce que tu veux?" Lucien smiled. He could barely admit it, but he grew fond of Perle in a way he never thought he could. 

[What do you want?]

When he left his suite in his hotel, he had taken a last glance at the living-room, and smiled. That cat had transformed his days as much as it had his environment. Now he had to commit to a routine to feed her, to change the water from her bowl, even though she preferred to drink from a tap, to take care of her. And he had to invest money in toys, scratching posts and even in a soft satin bed that she decided wasn't good enough for her. She preferred to sleep with him and wake him up in the morning, sweet headbutts and rolling purrs. 

"Meow?" She asked. 

"Fine, Fine." Lucien smiled and Perle rolled on her back, looking up at her master with her deep blue eyes. Lucien cleared his throat. 

"Ne m’oublie pas,

[Don’t forget me.]

Je vais devoir m’en aller.

[I have to go.]

Ne m’oublie pas

[Don’t forget me.]

Tu ne dois pas pleurer.

[You must not cry.]

Même quand je suis très loin de toi,

[Even when I am very far from you,]

Tu restes dans mon coeur

[You remain in my heart.]

Je chante en secret chaque soir

[I sing in secret every night]

Pour que tu n’aies plus peur.

[So that you don’t feel scared]

Ne m’oublie pas,

[Don’t forget me,]

C’est à regret que je pars.

[It is with regret that I leave.]

Ne m’oublie pas, 

[Don’t forget me,]

Quand je chante, tu es dans mes bras.”

[When I sing, you are in my arms.]

Lucien smiled. Perle had fallen asleep, just as Jérémy used to when Lucien used to sing this to him, in bed. 

"Sir?" 

Lucien's head swooshed to the feminine voice. It was an air hostess. 

"He is adorable." She said. 

"She is a female, but thank you."

"Oh, I'm sorry. What's her name?"

"Perle, or in English, Pearl."

"Beautiful name you gave her…" 

They exchanged a smile. 

"I'm sorry but uh, you're not supposed to let her out of her box for the duration of the flight." 

"I apologise, Mademoiselle. Although, I suppose it doesn't cause too much of an issue if she is asleep?" 

[Miss]

"Ah, I'm sorry, Sir, but…"

"Tell me, Mademoiselle," Lucien cut her. "Most people are asleep now, non?" 

[Miss]

"Oh, uh…" The air hostess looked around them. "In business class, yes, I guess you're the only one awake." 

"Non, I am not, for you are too." He gave her a smile and a twinkle of his eyes that only women could understand.

“Yeah, I’m on night shift duty.” She answered. 

Lucien removed the cat box from the seat next to his. "Please do take a seat." 

"But, Sir, I-"

"Please." Lucien insisted and the woman eventually yielded. 

"Right…"

"It must be poetic." The Frenchman started, still lazily brushing Perle, asleep on his lap. 

"What is, sorry?" 

"Your position. Air hostess… Ah, you travel high in the skies, borders mean nothing to you."

"Well, that's a way to put it. And uhm… What do you do, I mean, apart from singin' lullabies to your kitty?"

"Ah, so you did hear me?" Lucien lowered his eyes to Perle who was sleeping soundly. 

"I did, yeah." The hostess blushed. "You got a great voice, I mean, it's soothin'." 

"Thank you."

"I can understand how she falls asleep that fast with ya."

Lucien raised his eyes to the woman sitting on the seat beside him. Through the dim lights, he saw her hat, assorted to her uniform, the twinkle of her brown eyes, the bright red lipstick and white and red foulard around her neck. Her jacket dived along her shy cleavage and as she crossed one leg over the other, the edge of her tight skirt grazed her skin, revealing her porcelain thighs. 

“Why would that be?” He asked, half whispering, both to not wake the passengers around, even though the Frenchman had a booth for himself, but also for the thrill of it. He stared in her eyes gently, his front lock of ashen hair falling poetically between his eyes. 

“You… You’ve got a beautiful voice.” She answered and looked away. As she swooshed her head, a lock of her hair fell from under her hat. 

The Frenchman put Perle back in her box and put it opposite him. 

“Mademoiselle?” He then asked. 

[Miss?]

The young woman turned to face him, her eyes still lowered. Lucien guessed that her cheeks had turned pink even though, in the dimness of the low lights, he could not see it. He pushed the lock of hair behind her ear and she raised her head, slowly. She looked around, quickly. Everyone was sleeping soundly.

“Sir, I…”

“Oui?” Lucien answered with a dreamy smile. He knew where this was going, he could see it in the woman’s nervous breath as if he had been the one pushing her. In all fairness, he had been exactly that. He was one of these men that could whisper in people’s souls straight through his eyes. And he loved it. He felt nothing for the woman, even though she was far from repulsive. But it wasn’t his heart that wanted to see her breath hitch and her eyes flutter, it was his ego.

As impulsive as a blink, the air hostess bent on her side and pushed her lips on the Frenchman, who made all the efforts in the world not to smirk, not now, it would make her stop. Instead, and to encourage her, he gently slid his hands on her waist and pulled her closer to himself. Her hands found Lucien’s face and she kept on touching, her eyes closed. Soon, she removed her hat and Lucien started touching the collar of her jacket. She unbuttoned it herself before hungrily opening Lucien’s shirt. That was when the Frenchman looked deep in her eyes. Ha, she looked like a deer flashed by the lights of a passing car, thoughts racing but not fully hitting her head.

The hostess moved from her seat to sit on Lucien’s lap and that’s when he knew he had won. Not against her, he would never fight or compete with a woman, but against himself, against his old age, against all those years of remaining faithful to one woman despite her dancing on her own vows, trampling them with her stolen stilettos. 

The hostess bit her lip to contain her heavy breathing and her moans as Lucien felt her hips grind against his crotch. He spent more time nibbling her neck, filling his lungs with the scent of his trophy, of his victory, he let his hands run on her golden sides, such a pretty cup… She wrapped her arms around his head, slightly ruffling his hair while he kissed her chest, chaste pecks just to push her to show her eagerness; because at the end of the day, Lucien was not particularly in the mood for more, nor was he against it. He was just proving a point to himself. 

Oui, Marie, you thought only you could have anyone at your mercy with a blink of your eyes, hm? Well, I can too, and maybe I played with you too? Maybe I sometimes faked a few things with you too, huh? Who told you that I was that head over heels for you? Look at me now, my head in this woman’s chest. Mind you, I have barely met her and don’t even know her name yet, but here she is, begging for more of me. Do you see this, Marie? Do you? Do you see how I am playing now? Do you see this? Watch carefully, I will make her scream my name, as you used to, I will make her scratch my skin until she draws blood, as you used to, and who knows, maybe I will feel content and satisfied with her more than I ever was with you, you insolent, lying-

The air hostess had unbuckled Lucien’s belt and her hand was exploring the Frenchman’s lower stomach. As it slid down, more and more, wet kisses pressed to whatever corner of skin both could reach-

“MEEEEOW!”

Lucien and the hostess both froze on the spot, the woman pulled the panes of her open shirt back together. 

“I-I should go back…” She said, as Perle jumped on the seat that the woman previously occupied, and showed her fangs.

Perle’s hissing screech left Lucien confused. The hostess left his lap and the Frenchman remained in a state of blank and utter confusion for minutes. The kitty hopped on her master’s lap and started to knead his bare chest. Lucien still had his shirt and his trousers’ fly open. His hair was a mess and on his lips, the taste of the hostess’s lipstick lingered.

“Comment es-tu sortie de ta cage?”  He lowered his eyes to meet Perle’s.

[How did you come out of your box?]

“Meow.” She ignored him and brushed herself on him repeatedly.

Lucien sighed. He had got used to Perle’s presence, he had accepted her and adapted to her, but if she was going to “intervene” whenever he least needed it, well, that was something else!

“Meow?” She asked, tilting her head. 

“J’étais occupé, Perle, et j’aurais apprécié que tu sois restée sagement dans ta cage. Pourquoi es-tu sortie? Et pour crier en plus?”

[I was busy, Perle, and I would have appreciated it if you had stayed put in your box. Why did you come out? And yelling, at that?]

Lucien looked away from her, visibly annoyed, even angry at her. He buttoned his shirt again and looked down to zip up his trousers when he noticed something that pushed him even deeper in frustration. 

The Frenchman had spent so much of his energy being furious at Mary, releasing all kinds of anger against her ghost, that he did not even notice that his body did not show any signs of wanting to proceed with the air hostess. 

Or was it just his advanced age and he needed a bit more… help for his body to show some eagerness?

The rest of the flight was spent inconsequentially. He landed, took a taxi and was driven to his hotel where he settled. A few phone calls later and Perle found a litter box, a few toys and a cat tree had appeared. That, and of course a piano.

Lucien had taken a shower and went to sit on the black, velvet seat, wearing his pyjamas and a gown. A cigarette was slowly fuming from his lips.

“Meow?” Perle jumped on the keys and then on top of the grand piano. 

“Quoi?” He asked, the tiredness and annoyance taking away his usual politeness.

[What?]

She looked at him pleadingly with her round, deep blue eyes, as she slowly made her way to stand in front of him, before offering her head. The Frenchman sighed and bent his head forward to meet her with a soft headbutt. 

“Non, je ne t’en veux pas. C’est juste… Bah.”

[No, I am not mad at you. It’s just that… Bah.]

He brushed his head against hers for a while and ended up closing his eyes, running his fingers through her long fur. When she backed off and he opened his eyes again, he felt like a different man, as if that incident in the plane had happened decades ago, or to a different man altogether.

“Merci.” He smiled at the cat who reciprocated by blinking slowly. Perle lay down on the varnished black piano in front of him and Lucien started playing.

As his fingers drummed the keys, his brain dwelled on the events a bit longer. The truth was that he had been completely indifferent to that air hostess. She was pleasant to the eye, oui, but… But Lucien was proving a point, not making love to her! There! He said it! His ego wanted to make love to her, not his mind, not his heart and not even his body.

He didn't realise it but his fingers were playing the same piece on loop, The Bard, by Brad Mehldau. 

Even his body didn’t want to make love to that woman. 

“Mon Dieu.” 

His eyes snapped wide open and his fingers hung in the air as the realisation hit him. 

His body had not been remotely interested in anyone or anything since… Well, not since he had left Marie and Jéramy all those years ago, non. God knows he had had to sleep with this or that, and he did, and his body happily played along. Non, his body had fallen disinterested in anything since he had learnt the truth about Marie.

“Mon Dieu…”

Lucien repeated as the last note he played still hung in the air.

#tf2 spy #tf2 sniper #sniperspy #unalone

[stories-me]

Potential Character for Mrs. Kelsey and Tumblr 1/19/2022: 

 Phileas Fogg, Main Protagonist of “Around the World in 80 Days”: 

 Appearance: (See above). 

What he’s from: “Around the World in 80 Days”. 

Played by: David Tennant. 

Premise: Phileas Fogg, a Victorian English gentleman who has spent the last 20 years in a comfortable armchair at the Reform Club and is inwardly stifled by it. 

Background: 

Fogg chose not to go on an adventure once before because he was scared. In that moment he also wrote off his chance for romance and happiness. These things all come together as something that Fogg will now try and conquer. 

Update: 

Passepartout, Fogg’s valet, was paid by a fellow named Needling to poison Fogg. Unfortunately, he accidentally overdosed, and nearly killed Fogg. Further, he stole a rare pendant to try and get money for the trip, resulting in Fogg getting whipped. 

Ultimately, when Fogg, Passepartout, and Ms. Fix (a female reporter who was accompanying the pair) were stranded on an island, Fogg and Ms. Fix found out about Passepartout’s actions, and Fogg was quite upset, feeling Passepartout had betrayed him, to the point where he refused to be near the black Frenchman. 

Passepartout was, himself, a little upset about Fogg, who seemed mostly interested in winning his wager, to the point that Passepartout had been forced to leave Paris after his brother had died, leaving him unable to mourn. 

Passepartout kept trying to apologize to Fogg, and ultimately, Fogg forgave him (especially after Passepartout had worked through the night on a possible raft to get them off the island, resulting in Passepartout going into a fever). 

How he is like me: 

We both can be a little nervous at taking chances, at times. We also have been taking chances, a little. For example, I have been trying a new form of coffee yogurt. 

Update: 

We both get angry over certain things, and can act somewhat badly to those we blame for them, but learn and grow, so we don’t have to repeat them. 

For example, I have, in the past, yelled at Emily and threatened her, possibly because I realized it would get me attention from my parents. 

I am now trying to repair my relationship with her. Also, I am trying to get in the habit of not threatening others. 

#I Have Autism #Autism Blog #I #Have #Autism #Blog #Stories-Me #Stories #Me #Fan Fictions #Fan #Fictions #Fiction #Fan Fiction #Story #Phileas Fogg #Phileas #Fogg #Around the World in 80 Days #Around #The #World #In #Eighty #Days #80 #Masterpiece #Jean Passepartout #Jean #Passepartout

[fortune-fool02]

Dancing

Jean Pierre Polnareff x female reader

Requested by: anonymous 

hey,I'm the anon who sent the ask w/ waltzing and dueting with polnareff- can i request an imagine with that scenario? Like,Polnareff is invited by his crush to sing and dance w/ them and he gets kinda shy and flustered abt it?? ty

I am so sorry it took so long! Please enjoy. 

Chatter filled the air, mixing with the sound of the music that played from the speakers set up around the large room, lights flashing in a rhythm that almost flowed in beat with the music, adding to the scenery around them. People stood on the dance floor, moving their bodies in a carefree manner to the music, simply enjoying the music and the company they had. 

Sat at one of the tables, enjoying the music from there, was [Name]. A bright smile on her lips as she swayed a little in her seat to the music, enjoying it despite not getting up to dance. From the side of the crowd, she caught a glimpse of the approaching Frenchman who seemed very focused on getting their drinks from the bar to the table without spilling any which wasn’t easy with the dancing, music and flashing lights. She couldn’t help but chuckle at the sight before Polnareff finally reached the table without spilling anything. 

“Tada! A drink for mademoiselle.” He smiled, handing her her drink which she took. 

“Thank you, Polnareff.” The Frenchman sighed before plopping down beside the [Hair colour] woman, relaxing into the soft cushions and taking a mouthful of his own drink. It was nice to have some time with just him and her without the others here, don’t get him wrong, he loved being around the others but he didn’t get much time to be alone with [Name]. Something he had found himself desiring for some time now but the thought of picking the phone up and calling or texting her always rushed nerves through his body that would halt his movements entirely, much to his dismay. 

Polnareff always believed he was swoon with ladies and he was, and yet when it came to [Name] he would freeze up, his heart pounding in his chest as his entire body went into a panic of what to do. But none of it in a bad way. He wanted to look amazing in her [Eye colour] orbs that glimmered with life and light, he wanted to impress her and yet whenever he tried to he felt his nerves get the better of him and he would end up a red-face mess of babbling words. That was what he cursed himself for; but when she called him and asked if he wanted to go to a club with her, how could he refuse? 

“You know, this place isn’t half bad.” The Frenchman spoke over the music so she could hear him, which it wasn’t. The music wasn’t too loud nor even bad, the people were nice and kind, it was a good place. 

She smiled at him, sending a warmth through him, and sipped her drink, “I’m glad you like it, I didn’t know if this was your type of thing.” He laughed a little at that, 

“I love coming to places like this! The music, the people, it’s all so much fun!” He did enjoy places as such, the lively atmosphere was something to burn off energy and enjoy. “And I especially loving the dancing!” 

That peeked her attention a bit, “Oh really?” He nodded at her question. As the music began to change to a different song and beat, [Name] smiled and set her drink down, “Come on then.” Confusion painted his face at this as she grabbed his hand and tried to get him up, 

“What?” 

“Dance with me.” That shot a warmth flowing through his body along with sparks in his nerves. She wanted to dance with him? Him? A redness rose in his cheeks as his mind scrambled for a response. His mind and heart clashing for but a moment before they were stopped when he looked into her eyes. Hope filled those [Eye colour] orbs, she wanted him to dance with her, she wanted to be with him in some way. Who was he to refuse this? 

Excitement rushed through his veins at the idea and he smiled, getting up as quickly as he could and allowed himself to be dragged to the dance floor. As the music played, the two of them just got lost in the rhythm and lights. 

His pale blue eyes watched her as she danced, watching how fluent she moved with a grace that no other woman could have. He simply couldn’t stop looking at her, how her [Hair colour] locks swayed as she moved. She was stunning. Gorgeous. There were so many words he could use and yet not enough. Right now, all that mattered to him was her, not the club nor the music nor the people around them, only her. And she has always been there in his heart. 

#polnareff #jean pierre polnareff #jojo bizarre adventure #polnareff x reader #jean pierre polnareff x reader #jojo bizzare adventure x reader #jojo #jojo x reader #polnareff stardust crusaders #stardust crusaders x reader #stardust crusaders #jojo part 3 #sdc

[msjr0119]

Cordonian Wags

Part 27

In a world full of Professional footballers and their demanding wives- can their football team nicknamed the ‘Cordonian Apples’ succeed? An American female physiotherapist joins the club. Will this cause issues with the footballers wives?

*This series is based on The Royal Romance characters who belong to Pixelberry - AU Plot switch. Other characters belong to me.*

Please do not read if you are under the age of 18. If you do you are consenting that you are over this age. If any of the below warnings affect you, please don’t continue to read.

Warnings: Mention of; sex scandal, drug scandal, prostitution, adultery, death, adultery, murder (past tense). Swearing 🤬

A/N: The first part of this chapter follows on from the previous chapter. Then there is a flash forward (six months). The chapters following on from this one will show certain characters POV’s from the last six months.

Previously: The team all try to piece together the events in Paphos from all those years ago. Drake believes that he has fathered a child after a one night stand after viewing the DNA results- but it’s not as everything seems. Catch up here.

Tags- if you want to be removed/added please let me know 😊: @drakexwillow @plumeriavibes @annekebbphotography @burnsoslow @ladyangel70 @kingliam2019 @bascmve01 @texaskitten30 @nikkis1983 @kimmiedoo5 @walker7519 @lodberg @cmestrella @hopefulmoonobject @axwalker @yukinagato2012 @indiacater @rafasgirl23415 @seriouslybadchoices @rainbowsinthestorm @choices97 @shanzay44 @lovablegranny @gkittylove99

The morning after, everybody arrived at the stadium to prepare for the days match. All feeling the need to cover up the slight hangovers that they had occurred was proving to a difficult task. Adding to their headaches, was the scandal that Drake Walker had caused. A situation that as a group- they was determined to fix. Quickly.

Drake arrived onto the pitch first, needing any excuse to escape his own house. Having another woman stay there made him feel like he was cheating on Riley. Even if she had made it pretty clear that they couldn’t be together. There was an internal battle going off in his mind. How was he was going to inform her about the news that he had received the previous night? Of course he didn’t want the press to find out prior to her, she didn’t deserve that. But then he was wondering how she would react once she knew. Would she completely ghost him? Who knows.

****

The previous night once she had arrived back at Bastien’s, Riley stayed up the majority of the night researching the Paphos break on google. As a previous WAG herself she knew that events such as these would have been published by the paparazzi. There was no escaping or hiding from them. Her research showed photos of the men arriving at the clubs, hiding their identities as best as they could. But the last article that she stumbled across was based back in Cordonia- or so she believed. The majority of it involved what the Wags were up to whilst their men were away on the ‘lads holiday’ celebrating. Olivia had been for brunch with; Hana, Penelope and Savannah one of the day’s. However, what really caught Riley’s attention was a mystery woman in a nightclub with Madeleine- in Paphos. The two woman were snapped for the majority of the night and seemed pretty close- who was this woman, Riley wondered? If she was a close friend, why wasn’t Madeleine with her the majority of the time now? Zooming into the photo her eyes widened. Amy Amaranth. The name rang a bell for some reason but she couldn’t pin point as to why. It had rattled through her mind all night. Upon her arrival - she noticed Olivier and suddenly a lightbulb struck. Memories flooding back in an instant.

“Hey....” Sounding panic stricken, Olivier looked at her concerned.

“Bonjour belle. Que se passe-t-il?” Hello beautiful. What is the matter? Luckily Riley knew French, not fluently but enough to hold a basic conversation out.

“Amy Amaranth....” Riley didn’t need to elaborate, the look of horror was now painted across the Frenchman’s face.

“That’s a blast from the past...” Olivier hated the woman with a passion - as did most of the footballers. Those that had the sense to not become bewitched by her beauty.

“Sneak away with me for a bit? I need you to help refresh my memory, Olivier.” Nodding, he dropped the ball immediately before making their way off of the pitch. Swiftly.

****

It was half time. The Apples were beating their opponents- currently they were on a winning streak. Which made Bertrand especially proud. Riley made a beeline for Drake knowing that they only had a short amount of time before the second half kicked off.

“Congratulations, Walker.” Riley had noticed after the two goals that he had scored, he would look in her direction- smile. Then have the need to continue playing with a limited celebration.

“Thanks, Brooks..” Unable to make eye contact with her, he concentrated on wiping his boots.

“How are you?”

“As good as I can be. What about you?”

“Listen, Drake.... there’s something I need to tell you...” Ignoring his prior question, she felt the need to just get to the point.

“Don’t bother, I have an inkling about what it is...” Drake put his boots back on, avoiding looking at his ex girlfriend- he stood up and made his way towards the door. Not really wanting this conversation to continue.

“You do?” Riley questioned, hoping that they were both on the same wavelength. If Drake already knew what she needed to inform him about, it would make the whole situation a lot simpler.

“You’ve begun to see, Berger. Hence why you didn’t want to fight for us.”

“I’m not a slut, Drake!”

“Really? You slept with me when I had a girlfriend. You snuck off with him before. What was it? A quick fuck in the changing rooms? Wishing him good luck?”

“No! About us.... How dare you! It takes two to tango!”

“I don’t want to hear it, Ri. I wanted to marry you. Then you ditch me at the first sign of trouble..”

“Myself and Olivier are friends. We have been for many years. Nothing more, nothing less. You know what? It’s a good job that you never got down on one knee because if I’m so much of a ‘slut’ you’d have regretted it. Don’t bother even talking to me until you can say sorry. I can apologise for apparently ditching you- I wanted for you to have the opportunity to get to know your potential child. You wanted kids. I couldn’t give you that. Why am I even arguing with you? I needed to tell you something important, but you know what- fuck you. When it all ends in tears don’t come crawling back to me.” Barging past him, she decided to not look back. If Drake Walker didn’t want to acknowledge anything that she needed to tell him- there would be no way back for the two of them.

“Ri, wait!”

“Leave her. Drake, what the fuck is up with you?” Liam snapped towards his teammate after overhearing the raised voices. As Riley left, she shook her head and provided a deflated expression. Olivier had explained to Liam about Amy just before the match had officially begun. He was determined to help his friends out- but now was unsure as to how to do that.

“Would you leave Liv if you was in my situation? No, I didn’t think so. The blonde bimbo arrived yesterday with her bags packed. I’m stuck with her. I’ve lost Riley for good even without that outburst.”

“Drake, nobody knows about my true relationship with Olivia. We seem like the ‘Posh and Becks’ of Cordonia. But we have an open relationship. You and Riley are different -that is true love, fate. People are fucking with you both for revenge. Next time she tries to explain something to you, listen to her. Trust me. Trust her.”

****

Later on that evening, it was like mission impossible avoiding the paparazzi for Liam and Riley. Meeting in secret, Olivier then joined them in a secluded location. Out of the way of prying eyes. Using a rental car, there would be no reason for anybody to follow them. They had one aim- to warn Drake about Amy. The objective, go to the cabin to do this. Debating whether or not to just blurt the information out? Talk in a civil manner? Would Amy still be there too? Whatever was to happen, it needed to be done.

“So you two, did you both prefer it in the UK or here?” Liam asked breaking the silence surrounding the car journey.

“Neither, by the sounds of it Cordonia is as bad as Manchester for the drama. I’m glad I wasn’t here when Xavier was, I’d have killed him for all of what he put you through, Ri. But enough about us, Liam what about you? Would you ever move clubs?”

“Never say never. But at the moment I’m content where I am.”

Shortly after the brief drive, they arrived at Drake’s cabin- but remained in the car for a bit. Rehearsing what exactly they was going to say, creating different scenarios. After a while, they agreed to just be spontaneous. Riley and Olivier walked to the front door, or rather dragged themselves there. Both feeling slightly nervous about seeing the devil again after all of these years. Knocking quietly, they waited.

Drake, please can we talk?... I’m sorry about before, but there’s something you need to know....Drake, I know her. We know her. She’s not what she seems.....Amy can be sweet but she’s a psycho.

Shit. I’ve forgotten what to say.

Hearing the door creak open, Riley’s thoughts were cut short. Initial shock to begin with made her body stiffen and her brain turn to mush- not having the ability to function. That was until she witnessed the woman’s cocky smirk.

“Oh it seems we have the wrong address, Olivier. I must have amnesia- I believed that this home belonged to Drake Walker...”

“Have we been transported back to Manchester in the tardis, Riley? Bonjour, Amy - long time no see. How is your bit on the side, Aleksandr Chernyshevsky? Last I heard from him, he was playing for Arsenal. So why are you here? How is little Jenson?”

“Aleksandr must be missing his son. His son who you accused so many of the premier league players for fathering, Jenson. Including Xavier. My Xavier.”

“How nice to see you both. Again. If I was you, I’d leave now. You think that the last few months or in your case Riley- years, have been a nightmare. If you both carry on interfering it will go from bad to worse...” There was a slight distance between Riley and Olivier- but as Amy threatened this he could sense that his friend was about to do something that she could regret.

“You bit-“ Preventing Riley from continuing

“Leave her. Don’t be silly. You know how her mind works. She’s poison.”

“Oh, Olivier - you do make me laugh. Anyone would think with your words that I’m a snake.” Standing infront of Riley- the footballer had wished that it was Drake who had answered the door.

“Riley, it’s not nice to swear or shout. So...Shhh, Drake is putting his son to bed remember. Goodnight to you both.” Slamming the door behind her, she hoped that Drake hadn’t been earwigging. Sitting comfortable on the sofa, Drake finally came downstairs- pouring himself a drink before joining her.

“He’s fast asleep. This is the last night though, Amy. If that’s your real name.”

“Of course it is. I mean, people call me Amz for short. Why would you even suggest that? You saw the paperwork with both of our details on it.” Drake thought long and hard about the paperwork- to begin with the only information he was interested in was viewing the fathers details. After the initial shock, he had studied it as if it was part of some crime evidence. Something just wasn’t ‘adding up’ - especially with what the young boy had mentioned to him during the bedtime story whilst in a daze.

Mommy is lying about the name. I want to go home.

“I did indeed see the paperwork. Some things just don’t add up- that’s all. Maybe I’m just paranoid?”

“Well, don’t be. I know that you are still heartbroken over, Rachel....” Purposely mentioning the wrong name, she had hoped that this little ‘mistake’ would help with her plan succeeding.

“It’s, Riley! And I don’t want to talk about her with you when you don’t know her...” That’s what you think.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you....” Providing him with an ‘over the top’ hug, she hoped that being affectionate could be the key to his heart. “But I’m always here if you need to talk. We have a son together. Nothing more. Unless you wanted more that is. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Amy... wait!” Pausing for a moment, he knew to trust his own mind. “Do you want a drink with me?” A drunk mind always speaks the truth.

****

After leaving Drakes, Riley felt like a failure - the men could sense that in the morbidly silent car ride home. Both trying to begin any conversation to get her to respond, with no luck. Olivier had even brought up a story that had always made her laugh. It included how she had tortured him when wasn’t completing his physio correctly. Listening to Spice Girls on a loop.

“Ri, just leave it. Drake isn’t that stupid. He will soon find out the truth. We will bring this bitch down.” Liam said in a determined tone of voice, Olivier agreeing as they arrived at the Rys’s mansion.

“How long will it take us to do that though, Liam?” In all honesty he didn’t know the answer- but felt the need to remain positive for everyone that was involved.

“We’ve all managed between us all to cover up two murders. I promise you, once the truth is out regarding this child - the club will not have anymore scandals. We will remain the best team in Cordonia- and redeem any past mistakes. We’re all in this together.”

“As much as I like Leo...you’d make the better captain, Liam. Thank you for all your help.” Gently kissing him on the cheek, Liam held her tight for a while.

****

Six months later...

Prison time for Apples player? Can his year become any worse than it’s already been? I’m surprised he is still being chosen to play.

Sex scandal- one of the brunette beauties is apparently pregnant? Who is she pregnant with? She seems to be making her way through the team.

Divorce rumours for one of the Apples ‘golden couples’!

Drug scandal and prostitutes!

Match fixing?

Secret relationship uncovered!

Apples player disappears! Where is he? Why has he gone? What are the Apples going to do now?

Ex WAG dies mysteriously. The third person linked to the team. Who’s next on the ‘hit list’?

What does all of this mean for the Apples? They’ve had a rough six months between them all ever since the love child scandal with Walker. A few of the players are playing in the World Cup friendly between Cordonia and France tonight- I wouldn’t place any money on Cordonia winning which has the majority of the Apples players. It would go down the gutter like the club is.

Bertrand slammed the laptop screen down. Almost smashing it. It was bad enough having the commentators criticism during matches. But now every social media platform was joining in at any opportunity. His team wasn’t the only team to have scandals. In his mind he described it all as ‘tragic’ and ‘unlucky’. For some reason the paparazzi were just attracted to them. Like a bad smell. Focusing his gaze onto his young son, he hoped that Bartie would avoid the footballer lifestyle in the future.

No more scandals. No more shit. Think positive, Bertrand! We’ve had enough of that. No wonder I’m prematurely turning grey. Tonight is going to be a good night.

“Bertrand, are you okay?”

“I’m dandy, Sav. Is the babysitter here?”

“Yes.” Studying her husbands tense body, she really wished that he would and could retire early. The stress that he had was causing issues not only with the team but with his marriage. “You need to calm down, my love. Riley is the same. You’re both panicking but neither of you are involved with the national team. It’s a day off for the two of you.”

“No, but my reputation is. My players who have all caused scandals are playing- minus one because he’s gone awol. Your brother should have done a disappearing act instead! All of this shit happened after his love child scandal. He’s a lia-“ Hearing the familiar voice call for his wife- Bertrand prevented his vicious tongue from continuing. Taking a deep breath- he lead his wife downstairs, where they were greeted by a smiley face. An expression that was cleverly hiding/masking a fusion of mixed feelings.

“Hello, Riley. Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“I was just going to wait in the car, but I’m desperate for the toilet. May I use it, please?”

“Well I’m not going to allow you to ruin my floor am I? I can order a taxi so you don’t have to drive.”

“Bertrand, I’m fine driving. I’m not drinking and you both know why. So I may as well do it. I’ll be two minutes.” Bertrand began pacing the room, Riley’s ‘two minutes’ seemed to last a lifetime. Eventually she joined the Beaumont’s before making their way towards her car. Riley completely oblivious to the tension between the married couple during the drive spoke positively about the upcoming match. All Bertrand could think about was which person would cause the next possible scandal.

****

Euphoria echoed around the stadium in central Cordonia. Even with all of the scandals, there was still that slight support from ‘die hard fans’.

In the tunnel, players from both sides were psyching themselves up- it was only a friendly but the French side apart from Olivier were providing snide remarks to their opponents.

“Bonne Chance! Just ignore my brothers. Ce sont des trous.” Olivier said to Drake - hoping that the match would end a draw and finish in a civil manner. Tonight he was playing piggy in the middle- wanting to stay loyal to his national team as well as his current team.

“Whatever, Berger!”

“What he means, is good luck to you too - Olivier. Isn’t that right, Drake?”

“Merci, Captain! I’ll catch up with you after the match...” Watching the French team make their way towards the pitch, Drake turned to his friend as soon as Olivier was out of view.

“Rys! I can speak for myself. I can say what I want. I’d have thought that out of everybody I could trust you to defend me. Not belittle me. These last few months you’ve been practically non existent to me.”

“I’m sorry about that. I’ve been busy dealing with my own shit. Your issues have been self inflicted. Now grow some balls and don’t fuck this match up. Be civil with everyone- including Olivier. He’s done nothing wrong to you. I’m relying on you tonight and so is Bradshaw. You need to redeem yourself. You’ve been given this opportunity to play tonight by our manager- unlike Bertrand who���s kept you benched all of these months.”

“Don’t you think that I feel shit about myself as it is without that wanker punishing me? He may be my brother in law but I hate him. I’ve lost everything. Everyone. I needed you L-“ Before Drake could continue, Maxwell came bounding over. Hyper as always.

“Guys... quick question before we go on to the pitch... Why is Olivier wearing blue and out there with the French team? He’s one of us.”

“Because he’s fucking French you absolute dipstick!” Drake snapped towards a confused Maxwell. Eventually he laughed at himself. At his own stupidity. As Drake was still scowling, and rolling his eyes - Maxwell decided to defend himself. Which was something that he rarely did. “Hey! Don’t take your shit out on me. I forgot. Jesus, Drake. You know I’m not the brightest person. It’s not my fault that you’ve messed your life up. No wonder, Riley doesn’t talk to you anymore. I’m beginning to think about doing the same if you continue to talk to me like I’m a piece of shit!”

“For your information, Beaumont.... Ri has spoken to me. A lot more than any of you have!”

“Oh, really?” Drake gulped as Maxwell asked this in a sarcastic manner. Knowing full well that he was lying with his previous statement regarding Riley- he wished that it was true. That she would talk to him more often. At this moment in time, receiving the odd text from her was better than nothing. Baby steps, he kept reminding himself.

“Yes, she came to visit me in the cell. I didn’t ask her to- but she did. She still loves me, I know deep down that she does.” The two men looked at each other not knowing what to say. Not needing a reason to cause Drake to possibly ‘rage’ again. Maxwell knew that he was already a target for Drake’s mouth to sprout abuse towards- so decided to inform his friend about some home truths.

“When you was arrested... well... she may have come to visit you. To talk to you. But that’s all it was, Drake. Since then, Riley has dealt with a lot. She’s having a good life now- actually dating again. We only know because Savannah let it slip when she was drunk.” Remaining silent, not knowing how to respond- many questions were now floating throughout Drake’s mind. Forcing himself onto the pitch, he looked up into the crowd and immediately spotted Savannah and Riley whispering in each other’s ears. Laughing. Smiling. He couldn’t remember the last time that he had witnessed Riley looking so cheerful. Thinking back to the last words that she had physically spoken to him - he now knew that he needed to get his act together. If not only for his sake, but for everybody.

Forget about the past. Bertrand has tried to sort your shit out. I don’t know if he has succeeded or not. But for now, you need to publicly apologise to the fans as well as the man that you could have potentially killed.

#choices trr #theroyalromance #the royal romance fanfic #trr au cordonian wags #drake x Riley #drake x oc #Riley x Liam friendship #Riley x oc #tw swearing #tw mention of death #tw mention of drugs #tw mention of prostitution #tw mention of adultery #tw mention of murder (past tense) #tw mention of sex scandal

[ldpwriter]

~*~Pirate Roleplay Character~*~

Name: Katarina “Kat” (She really only responds to Kat) Bloodrose

Nickname: Katy, Katia, Rina (which she hates), Fire-Kat or Wild-Kat, or Red (which she also hates)

Age: If you wanna live don't ask. But she's really about 25, but appears younger.

Gender: The fairer sex; female

Race: Caucasian - British decent

Rank: Pirate also known as an assassin

Family: Father - Jonathon Bloodrose (Pirate Captain)

Mother - Rosemary Bloodrose/Darling (High Class Lady)

Has other family members still alive on her mother's side but doesn't know who they are just that they're family name is, Darling.

Appearance: Lean, curvaceous figure. Appears fragile, but is stronger than most think. Deep green eyes that often show her emotions, with deep red fiery hair, down to the small of her back. Her skin is always tanned because she's on the open ocean and in the sun so much. Both Kat's ears are pierced with small silver hoops. And her right ear has several other piercings which also have either small hoops or jeweled studs. Several scars litter her body, mostly her back and arms. She has a lovely scar from naval to collar bone that almost took her life when she was 21.  Her usual dress is anything black. Normally, however, she wears skin tight pants, a low cut shirt that comes to just above her naval, a black waistcoat, and boots that rise to mid calf. Occasionally though, she'll be found wearing a loose tunic with a corset around her waist. However, when she's hiding her femininity, Kat wears slightly baggier black pants, a loose V cut shirt, with her breasts securely tied, and her black waistcoat and boots. Also, to hide her long fire-red hair, she ties her hair up and wraps it in a bandanna and tops it off with a tri tip black hat. A black belt is almost always secured around her waist to hold her "effects".

The waistcoat, Kat wears mostly.

Face Claim: Katherine McNamara.

Weapons: Her father's cutlass, a pistol, and several knives in her belt, boots, and several other hidden places on her body. She can dual wield swords, or have a cutlass in one hand and a knife in the other.

Captain Bloodrose's cutlass, that Kat now owns and holds dear as one of the last things she has from her father.

Skills: Kat learned how to wield a sword when she was but a child barely learning to walk. She is adept with a cutlass in one hand or both hands. When she has a weapon in both hands she can be a whirlwind, able to defend herself against even the most skillful foe.  She can throw knives with deadly accuracy and can shoot a gun, but prefers it as a last resort. It's too loud in her opinion. Adept at subterfuge, Kat can sneak into many a locked room. Her lockpicking skills are masterful. She is also a skilled assassin, killing foes before anyone knows she's even there.

Talents/Hobbies: Kat can actually sing quite well, but never will do so in public. The attention embarrasses her. She enjoys dancing as well having learned a bit from the old couple, but never has a reason to dance. Kat can read and write to most people's surprise, but her father had made sure she had the knowledge. Kat also collects knives. It was started with her father buying (or stealing) some of the prettiest knives she's ever seen and ever since, she's had a fascination with the quaint bladed weapons.

Weakness: Her temper and sharp tongue often get her into more trouble than what is good. She also has a well placed fear of enclosed spaces. She hates them with a passion and always tries to get out of being sent into small tunnels or entries because she often freezes while in them. Cages, wether behind bars in a prison or in the brig make her panicky. Oddly enough, wearing a dress terrifies her as well. It's like its own bondage and she hates being bound in any form. She fears love as well as dying alone. She is a wild card and hard to handle.

Likes: Pretty things, even though she doesn't really wear much jewelry. Even prettier knives. Children, dogs, singing, dancing, searching for treasure, killing evil people or those she feels deserves it, sailing on the ocean, sweets.

Dislikes: Men, women... okay most men and women. She doesn't get along with people well. Black Jack, the mutinous crew that killed her father, enclosed spaces, dresses, fancy things like balls and people.

Personality: Kat has a fiery temper, a sarcastic tongue, and a suspicious nature, which many would say matches her hair. The woman does not trust people easily. She has a particular hatred for the men who killed her father. She toys with men's hearts every now and then if it helps her get what she wants, but she never lets it go 'too' far. In truth, she really doesn't trust men, since most she had ever run into were liars, deceivers, and backstabbers. She is a loyal friend, however, and a good confidant. Kat also is not one to lay out her problems and when she is hurt or wounded she will not ask for help. She does not want people to find her weak. Which normally means she'll be dying before anyone finds out she's injured, which attests to her very stubborn attitude.

History: The only parent Kat ever knew was her father, who was a pirate. Her mother died giving birth to her in London. Kat's father raised her, on his ship the 'Grim Reaper'. As Kat grew older, her father taught her how to fight in hand to hand combat, sword play, and also fight with daggers/knives. She lived on her fathers ship becoming a pirate herself and grew to know the crew, although she didn't like most of them. The few she did befriend were like family to her and they treated her like a pirate unlike the others who belittled, teased, or flirted with her for being a woman.

One day when Kat was in her mid teens her father docked his ship in a seedy town. Her father figured that his crew as well as himself could use a rest after the pillaging they had just done. Kat and her father frequented the tavern to enjoy some ale and rum, while the crew came up with an evil plan. The evening after they docked, there was a mutiny. The crew killed her father, as well as any loyal to the former captain and took over the ship. The next thing she knew the crew tried to grab her, but fortunately she managed to escape with the help of her father's first mate, the only one left alive from the slaughter. Managing to sneak on land, though the mutinous crew was looking for her, she hid until there was a ship leaving port. Once she managed to stow passage on the ship, dressed like a man, Kat swore revenge on the mutinous crew.

Marcus, her father's former first mate and oldest friend took her away from the crazed, mutinous pirate crew. However, he was gravely wounded. The man took her to a pair of old friends and left her with them. The brother and sister duo were an odd pair. The woman considered herself a witch and knew many odd concoctions. The brother was a former assassin for the French empire. Both taught her how to fight in all new ways, to poison a blade, to blend into the shadows, and murder without being caught. Kat stayed with them for years until the nearby townsfolk got word of the witch in their midst and set forth to burn her. Francois, the brother took her to the nearby port afraid they would think she too was a witch. They disguised her by cutting her hair short and getting her baggy clothes. The Frenchman talked an old pirate captain friend of his to take her under his wing and that she would serve him well as an assassin. With that, the man left and Kat never saw him or his sister again. She never did learn if the two had made it.

For years, Kat kept her identity concealed until the old pirate captain grew sick and died. It was then time for the young woman to find her own way in the world. She let her hair start to grow once more and came across another brother and sister duo. They invited her to be a part of their crew, wishing to utilize Kat's skills for their gain. It wasn't until the brother, in a drunk stupor, tried to take advantage of her. Kat killed him in defense. The sister became enraged and attacked Kat. To the fiery haired woman's surprise, the ebony haired sister was far deadlier. The other woman managed to cut Kat from naval to collar bone. With such a dire wound, Kat threw herself off the ship grateful they had been near a French owned island. Somehow she managed to make it to shore, but passed out after. A kind elderly couple and their children found her washed up on shore and took her in. They nurtured her back to health.

When she was better, in the dead of the night, Kat snuck out. Leaving only a note and a few gold coins for their kindness, the fiery haired woman disappeared into the night. After that, Kat kept to the shadows mostly. Joining few crews and disappearing after a heist. Many referred to her as the Ghost of Shadows. Occasionally she would seek out higher paid quarries, using her assassin's skills to kill. It paid remarkably better than plundering as a pirate. As time slid by, Kat wandered from town to town, port to port listening for word of Black Jack and the Grim Reaper. But the ship had all but vanished, few going as far to say the vessel had sunk beneath the ocean's waves. It was disappointing and damn near heartbreaking for her.

One evening, Kat sat in a tavern in Tortuga. Alone in the back when someone approached her. The man said he would pay her in gold and information on the Grim Reaper's whereabouts if she did a job for him. It was the first news of her father's ship she had heard about in quite some time. Katarina readily agreed, not even caring who she was to assassinate. With that, Kat gathered her things and found the first passage she could and headed straight for her prey.

Her father's ship, the Grim Reaper

[chiseler]

Mitchell Leisen: How’s About It?

Mitchell Leisen was a major American film director. He belongs in the first rank, not the second tier, where he has often been placed by those who value the scripts he was given by Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett more than what he actually did with those scripts. Leisen’s name was usually written in sloping cursive in his opening credits, and that set the mood for what he had to offer. His was a gentle style, a deliberately unobtrusive style, smooth and gliding, attentive to nuances, visual and emotional.

Leisen made a point of nearly always moving the camera only when it is following a character who is moving right along with it, and the edits in his movies are as invisible as possible. He made three films that are undisputed classics: Easy Living (1937), written by Sturges, Midnight (1939), written by Wilder and Brackett, and Remember the Night (1939), written by Sturges. All three of these classic Leisen movies are partly about pretending to be something you’re not in order to move up or over into another social atmosphere or class and take on a new identity, and this theme is something that always interested Leisen particularly.

He got his start making costumes and dressing sets for Cecil B. DeMille, and he also made costumes for Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. That training shows through in his later work, that sense of fantasy and beauty for its own sake. Leisen had a fetish for absolute authenticity when he did period pictures, and he took this fetish to nearly Erich Von Stroheim lengths if he had the money to spend. Remember the peacock headdress that he designed for Gloria Swanson in DeMille’s Male and Female (1919), or the sexy harem pants he put on Fairbanks for The Thief of Bagdad (1924), or the barely-there garments he designed for Claudette Colbert in The Sign of the Cross (1932) and you can get a first sense of Leisen’s aesthetic: hopeful, fantastical, erotic. And he was a pretender himself on some of these early movies because he was very skillful at making sets and crowd scenes look more opulent than they actually were given some of the budgets he had to work with.

He took the reins from nominal director Stuart Walker for two films that proved his range: Tonight Is Ours (1933), a high comedy that begins with a sexy masked ball, and The Eagle and the Hawk (1933), as grim and concentrated an anti-war film as you will find from this era. Leisen next graduated to prestige pictures like Cradle Song (1933) and Death Takes a Holiday (1934), with its high-flown Maxwell Anderson script. Leisen was fond of Death Takes a Holiday all his life, and he even wanted to re-make it in the late 1940s, but it has not held up as well as some of his lesser-known pictures from the 1930s.

After Murder at the Vanities (1934), a backstage movie with some odd musical numbers, Leisen took flight with three pictures that demonstrated the full scope of his talent. What makes a really great director, a major director? The ability to take a poor script, like the one Leisen was given for Behold My Wife! (1934), and make it into something that moves like a dream and seems inevitable. While you watch Behold My Wife!, there is a double consciousness of how outlandish and slapdash the plot and dialogue are and how Leisen transcends this through pacing, framing, and staging, so that there is always something to delight the eye. Leisen movies generally have a difficult-to-describe kind of creamy look, as if every person and table and chair were covered in the same sort of protective satin sheen.

He used a similarly fast, super-controlled pace for Four Hours to Kill! (1935), another backstage movie where Leisen himself plays the orchestra leader but you never see the numbers on stage. A kind of musical proto-noir, this movie depends on Richard Barthelmess, who is playing a criminal waiting to be taken to jail, and Leisen is alert to Barthelmess’s needs and sensitive to his big scene, where his character talks about his unhappy past. And then Leisen was given a script (by Norman Krasna) and two stars, Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray, that were particularly congenial to his style, and the result was his first classic, Hands Across the Table (1935), a rather anguished comedy about love and the urge for security. Leisen had mastered form, and now he mastered the content that interested him, good-bad people navigating their own wants and desires and what they will do for them. For Leisen, mixed emotions are really the only emotions possible.

In all of his most characteristic films, Leisen’s characters are at a crisis point and need to decide to take a chance and see what they can get away with to become another version of themselves. There is lots of comedy in a situation like this, of course, but Leisen always hints at the dark underside of pretending. There is an American urge in these pictures that says, “What I say I am is what I am,” and that urge is usually naïve (think of early Joan Crawford heroines). Leisen looks at this urge from a height of sophistication, almost always warmly and tenderly, but sometimes he lets a really grim insight slip through. Think of Carole Lombard’s anti-social asides in Hands Across the Table, or that harrowing scene where Barbara Stanwyck goes home to her grudge-holding and cruelly puritanical mother in Remember the Night and you will feel the hurt that animates Leisen’s search for a created world of his own.

In many ways, the 1930s were Leisen’s best creative period, where he turned out beautifully balanced and finished entertainments like 13 Hours by Air (1936). He was a romantic who had a special way of visually enfolding the lovers in his movies that is almost Frank Borzage-like, and he glorifies very different women in what must be the best close-ups of their careers: look at some of the close-ups of the melancholy Sylvia Sidney in Behold My Wife! and then look at the close-ups of the wised-up Joan Bennett in 13 Hours by Air and see how Leisen gives them the same glamorizing treatment without ever losing what makes them so individual. Even pure assignments like Artists and Models Abroad (1938) glow with a kind of dreamlike assurance, as if to say, “Why shouldn’t a comedy look beautiful?”

And when Leisen had a meatier script, like Swing High, Swing Low (1937), which also starred Lombard and MacMurray, he was capable of virtuoso work that blended comedy and drama so seamlessly that it’s difficult to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. He did some Sturges-like slapstick for Easy Living, including the famous automat scene where the windows fly open and everybody grabs at the food, which was his idea. But for Remember the Night, Leisen pared down the Sturges script, cutting unnecessary scenes and verbose dialogue until he had what he wanted, a portrait of a hard-boiled woman who starts to long for the warmth of a “why not?” idealized mid-West home. Remember the Night is probably Leisen’s finest film, and a peak in his career, a comedy-drama or a dramatic comedy all whipped together until the consistency is exquisite and just right.

After the very sensitive Hold Back the Dawn (1941), a Wilder-Brackett script about a hard-boiled male gigolo (Charles Boyer) pretending to love a sheltered, repressed girl (Olivia de Havilland) until his feelings actually become genuine, Leisen’s career settled in for a few years to minor comedies, as if wartime austerity had affected his budgets, his scripts, and his imagination. In 1944, he did two movies in color, Lady in the Dark and Frenchman’s Creek, one anti-feminist and one feminist, and both rather nightmarishly disconnected and self-indulgent.

Leisen was going through a crisis in his personal life by the mid-1940s, and it showed in his work. He was mainly gay, but he didn’t want to be, and so he had married a fledgling opera singer (“a horror” according to the sharp-tongued Ray Milland) and he was carrying on a tortured affair with costumer Natalie Visart while also pursuing men. Leisen’s loyal secretary Eleanor Broder told David Chierichetti, the author of the definitive Leisen book, Mitchell Leisen: Hollywood Director, that her boss tried taking hormone shots at one point because he thought they might eradicate his homosexuality, but of course that didn’t work. Leisen lived with the pilot Eddie Anderson in the late 1930s, and Anderson left him for Shirley Ross, the actress who talk-sings “Thanks for the Memory” with Bob Hope in The Big Broadcast of 1938, an unusually sentimental scene within his work that Leisen insisted on. When that picture finished, he had a heart attack, and his health was never quite the same afterwards.

In the 1940s, after Visart had gotten pregnant with his child and lost it, Leisen took up with the dancer Billy Daniels, and his unhappiness grew. Daniels dances in what has to be Leisen’s worst feature, Masquerade in Mexico (1945), a semi-remake of Midnight that is so distracted and poorly timed that it would seem to give credence to Billy Wilder’s many complaints about Leisen over the years in interviews; if you were to watch Masquerade in Mexico right after Midnight, it would seem like a mark against Leisen as an artist in his own right rather than a servant of superior scripts where he could get them. Daniels is actually the only thing this movie has going for it: he’s an exciting dancer, and an intriguing screen presence, sexy, petulant, a little dangerous. Many in Leisen’s inner circle disliked Daniels, but maybe Masquerade in Mexico might work if it could just be Daniels dancing as Leisen watches.

The blandness of the décor in something like Suddenly It’s Spring (1947) is a real comedown from his Art Deco 1930s pictures, but Leisen rallied in this period with some of his best and most personal films, starting with Kitty (1945), a sumptuous Gainsborough period piece with all the trimmings and a Pygmalion subject that activates all of Leisen’s interest in pretending and “passing” as something you are not. Best of all from this time is Song of Surrender (1949), an uncommonly severe movie about a New England girl named Abigail (Wanda Hendrix) who finds a way out of her repressive environment by listening to music. What Abigail feels in Song of Surrender is surely what Leisen himself must have often felt as a young man growing up in the mid-West at the turn of the last century, and so this picture, which he said he didn’t much like, is his secret movie, his confession movie. It’s a great film, daringly stark and stripped-down, and it is as unerringly paced and controlled as all of his best 1930s work; there are moments when it feels like a precursor to Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993) in its insistence on the will power needed for a woman to find aesthetic and sexual fulfillment.

Leisen did an intriguing noir with Stanwyck called No Man of Her Own (1950) and an overlooked, charming adaptation of J. M. Barrie called Darling, How Could You! (1951), which is filled with longing for family life that Leisen certainly knows is a fantasy like any of his others. (How poignant it is when Joan Fontaine says in that movie that if her children are going to love her they mustn’t “think me over first.”) He spent twenty years working at Paramount Studios, and he was a creature of the studio system; when the studio system went, so did he, but not before one more diverting small musical, The Girl Most Likely (1958), which was the last feature made at RKO. “When the studio decided we no longer needed a certain department, it was shut down and if we needed something after that, we had to make do ourselves,” Leisen said. “It was really eerie.”

Ill-health and an unwarranted reputation for spending too much money kept Leisen mainly working for TV in his last years, so that he was back to low budgets and bringing in his own furniture to dress his sets. He had been fired from Bedevilled (1955) for hitting on one of the straight actors he was working with (the actor complained to MGM), and this put another shadow over his reputation. He had made Fred MacMurray’s career, but when he tried to get work as a director on MacMurray’s hit TV show My Three Sons, it was no go. “He sent me a telegram asking for the job,” MacMurray said. “He was, well, you know, a homosexual and he had gotten into some trouble on a picture he was making in Europe. With the three young boys we had working on the show, I just didn’t think it was right. So I never answered the telegram.”

It was his women who stayed loyal to Leisen in his final years, both his secretary Broder (who was a lesbian), and his old lover Natalie Visart, who had never really gotten over her love for him and came to stay with him toward the end (Visart’s son Peter was killed in a gay-bashing in the 1970s). Leisen’s responses to David Chierichetti’s questions in their interview book are unfailingly candid, insightful, and juicy, but his standing has never ascended to the level of that of Preston Sturges or Billy Wilder, even though his visual style was far more developed than theirs, and his point of view arguably more sophisticated and certainly more kind-hearted. He was a romantic with an edge of disquiet, and this made for matchlessly rich pictures, pulsing with hope and with pain.

Leisen knew about all aspects of picture making, and he has the requisite number of classics for entrance to the pantheon, plus a whole slew of other pictures of interest. He made Remember the Night and Song of Surrender. He made Midnight and Kitty. And he made Easy Living and Darling, How Could You! Those are all heights, and from different periods, and they prove the consistency of his inventiveness and the distinctiveness of his talent. His creativity came out of personal unhappiness on the one hand and unprecedented creative license and support under the old Hollywood studio system on the other. We will not see that particular combination again.

by Dan Callahan

[pandemonshq]

Welcome, Destinee, please grab your stake on your way to your tumblr to play Daphne Greengrass here at Pandemons. We were thrilled to see how you created a brilliant family history and dynamic for Daphne—the divorce, her family connections, and how her history feeds into her choices. And her job as a translator? Inevitably going to get her (and you) broiled in more trouble than expected here.

Your request for michaela conlin. // jessica henwick FCs have been accepted.

OOC

Name: destinee.

Preferred Pronouns: she/her, they/them

Age: twenty-four.

Timezone: est.

Activity Level: if you to ask me for one of those out of ten scores i’d probably give myself about a six. i really enjoy roleplaying but i have some chronic problems that occasionally put me out of commission. i’m typically online in the late afternoon and at night.

IN CHARACTER INFORMATION

Character’s Name: daphne greengrass.

Bloodstatus: pureblood.

Birthday: october 4th, 1979.

Gender and Sexuality: cis female, bi-romantic, demisexual.

Former Hogwarts House: slytherin.

Infection: no.

Faceclaim: michaela conlin. // jessica henwick.

SHORT HEADCANON TOPICS

Occupation:

translator.

daphne has always been a bright girl, though she was never the type to flaunt it. she was never the type to draw unnecessary attention to herself, preferring to slip by in the shadows - she was perfectly content to let others take the spotlight, and the blame.

still, she did love to know things. she was quite fond of history, and loved to know the stories behind mysterious artifacts and lost treasures. on sleepless nights, she has always been found curled up in the corner of a library, reading whatever happened to catch her eye.

it was her desire to read books and inscriptions that lead to the discovery of her talent for languages. she taught herself what she could for awhile, and then she turned to her parents, begging for lessons in any language that could be taught. her parents shrugged their shoulders, and let their daughter do as she pleased. unsatisfied with simply learning french and german and russian and latin, she threw herself into the study of ancient and beast languages, and found herself among one of the few with an affinity for such things.

daphne dreamed of putting her talent to good use - of traveling the world writing journals, or translating ancient inscriptions for cursebreakers. but then her parents announced that they’d found her a husband, and daphne put her dreams on the shelf to be the lovely, loyal housewife she was expected to be.

one of the first things she did after her divorce was finalized was dust off those dreams of hers. daphne has translated ancient texts and read the inscriptions of golden sarcophagi. she has translated for ministry officials as they delicately negotiated peace with magical beings, and been the helping hand to reunite frightened tourists with their lost children. she’s quite proud of her skill and of her work.

Marital Status/Ships:

daphne remembers clearly how it felt, to sit in the common room surrounded by happy, giggling girls and not understand. whenever her friends would gossip about boys, or gush over an attractive stranger, daphne would sit in silence. she learned fairly quickly that her friends found it odd that she didn’t seem to like boys, so she learned to smile and pretend to get it, but most of the time she just didn’t. when one of her friends had confided in her that she liked girls, daphne wondered if that was perhaps why she didn’t get it … but then, she found she didn’t really understand when her friends gossiped about girls, either.

pansy would talk about draco more often than anyone wanted to hear, and for long time, it went in one ear and out the other for daphne. but then she met him, and an offhand remark became the odd conversation became a friendship. and daphne finally started to get it. because she liked draco. more than she liked anyone - or, more accurately, differently than she liked anyone else. the trouble was that pansy liked draco, and pansy was the leader of their little clique. daphne had always been taught the importance of social circles, and so she never said a word.

daphne met a girl in the library in her fifth year; a ravenclaw with a thirst for knowledge that rivaled her own and a delightfully snarky attitude. they started dating in sixth year, and their relationship held strong through the turmoil and tragedy of the war and it’s aftermath. but then her parents reminded her that she wasn’t a child anymore, and it was time she started looking for an appropriate match. daphne crushed her own heart in her hands and ended the relationship, and she quietly fears that she’ll never recover.

daphne is still raw and aching when she finds out about astoria and draco. it brings a flash of old feelings to the surface, but once more, she stomps it down. she puts on a smile, and she supports her sister at every turn. it isn’t too long after that her parents nudge her in the direction of the wizard they’ve deemed her proper match - a frenchman with a handsome face and a flawless pedigree. daphne hopes something will spark between them, but it never really does. she marries him anyway, because it’s what her parents want.

the marriage is a disaster. they have nothing in common, except for regrets. they argue over what restaurants to visit, how daphne should do her hair, whether daphne should be allowed to work. he sleeps around, but truthfully, she couldn’t care less. the moment she finds out she’s pregnant, she’s more than happy to kick him out of her bed entirely. she’s only obligated to supply him one heir, after all.

their daughter is born, and daphne falls in love. cynthia instantly becomes the center of her whole world. her husband is not so impressed. he insists he wants a son, but daphne isn’t having any of it. the relationship devolves even further, and daphne sees less and less of her husband as the months roll by. cynthia is three years old when things hit a boiling point. her husband strikes her during an argument, and daphne is enraged. she draws her wand and forcibly hurls him out of the house, and sends his things flying after him. daphne will put up with a lot of things for the sake of her family’s reputation, but not this. he returns to france, and daphne at last feels free.

romance is the last thing on daphne’s mind these days. a single mother with a career doesn’t have much time to fuss about those things, especially when they’ve never been particularly fussed in the first place. now that her sister has fallen ill, she has even less time to think about it. she has to be there for her daughter, her sister, her nephew, and for draco. just because she isn’t thinking about it, though, doesn’t mean it might not surprise her. old flames and new could be hiding around any corner.

MULTIPARAGRAPH OR MULTI-POINT TOPICS

Family

Father | Nestor Greengrass. the greengrass family is one of the truest, purest bloodlines around, and sure, that’s something to be proud of - but more importantly, that’s something to take advantage of. nestor is as crafty as a salesman can be, and he knows how to market himself and the shop. he’s carefully crafted and maintained the ideal reputation; the perfect balance of shady and trustworthy. money is truly his main motivation for nearly everything he does. he’s always encouraged his children to be intelligent, sly, and greedy. he’s certainly a selfish man, but one that does care for his family. whether or not he cares about them more than he cares for himself, though, is rather hard to tell.

Mother | Meilin Greengrass. meilin has certain expectations. there are ways that people should and should not behave. there are obligations that people must fulfill, and duties they must complete. of course people are not perfect. little mistakes may be made from time to time. the young will stray from the path every now and again, but they simply need to be guided back into their place. she has always fully expected her daughters to fall perfectly in line - and the fact that things are so imperfect? that their perfect perfect reputation has been blemished? it infuriates her.

Sister | Astoria Malfoy. daphne’s relationship with her family is a bit … complicated, but she has always loved her little sister with all of her heart. from the time they were small, daphne has always tried to look after astoria, to be the best big sister she can be. she’s always wanted to be someone astoria could look up to, and it’s motivated her a lot in her life. when she found out her sister had fallen ill, she was devastated.

Daughter | Cynthia Greengrass. daphne never really thought much about being a mother. she supposes she’s always been a bit mother; she can recall the many times her sister would roll her eyes and say, “okay, mom” or the way pansy would sometimes groan and snap “you aren’t my mother.” she’s always known that she would have kids one day. it was one of her responsibilities, after all. continue the family line. but she still didn’t really think about it. even throughout her pregnancy, daphne didn’t really think of herself as a mother. she felt more like a bloated bus than anything else. but then she held her daughter in her arms for the first time, and it felt like the world shifted. her daughter is her sun and her sky and all of the stars. she would do anything to keep cynthia safe, and to make her happy. and if anyone were to threaten her sweet, wonderful little girl … she wouldn’t rest until they paid for it.

Childhood/Hogwarts

most people would say knockturn alley is no place for children, but to daphne, it’s simply home. she had spent her early years young and fearless, running down cobblestone streets, dodging the hags that often lurked in the crowds, admiring the dark artifacts her father sold, spying on the illicit clinic her mother ran. perhaps it warped her perspective a bit; perhaps she doesn’t always fear things that she should; but no one can deny that it’s blessed her with nerves of steel.

daphne is a little surprised to be sorted into slytherin. she had thought herself a bit more like her ravenclaw mother than her slytherin father, but she fits easily into the ranks. daphne attaches herself to pansy parkinson within the first few weeks of their first year. pansy is a bigot and a bully and a pureblood, and daphne knows immediately she wants to behind her and not in her way.

daphne makes friends and she gets good grades, but she’s never the center of attention, and that’s the way she likes it. it’s much easier to get away with breaking rules when people are paying more attention to the troublemakers; and people are much more forgiving when they have a worse example to compare you to.

hogwarts becomes a home away from home for her. she finds a sense of peace and simple joy there that she just doesn’t have at home. she loves her parents, she truly does, but that doesn’t mean they were truly good parents. her mother’s presence feels almost crushing sometimes; like her expectations have a physical weight and they’ve perched themselves right on daphne’s lungs and when she fails it feels like she can’t breathe. no one looks at her like they’re waiting for her to fail at hogwarts.

that peace is shattered by voldemort’s return. she watches the people around her change; sees the way the pressure warps and twists them, the way some of them just crack and chip away. suddenly it feels like everyone is watching everyone all the time; constantly on a knife’s edge. she knows what side she’s supposed to be on, but she can’t help but just want it all to end, no matter who wins.

daphne tries to be the sturdy one. she tries to be there for people, do whatever little thing she can for them. sit with them, talk with them, bring them tea, steal sweets from the kitchens. she knows how the rest of the school has started to feel about slytherins - even the ones who don’t deserve it. if no one else will be here for them, she’ll do it all herself.

Post Hogwarts

daphne is exhausted and the world around her is in shambles. she tries to be there for her family and for her friends - for the ones that are left, as they try to put the pieces back together. it doesn’t feel like enough. she doesn’t feel the same anymore. she can’t imagine how the others must feel. the ones who were truly in the middle of it.

she finds happiness in the brief moments she can spend alone with her girlfriend, just the two of them, peaceful and quiet. her mother tells her it’s about time she end her little fling, and daphne’s heart sinks to the floor. her mother reminds her that she must have known this relationship wouldn’t last long. her girlfriend was a half-blood, after all, and not fit for marriage. daphne does as she’s told. her girlfriend doesn’t understand, and daphne can’t blame her.

she sinks into a deep depression after the messy end of her relationship, and finds that she can’t stand to be alone with her thoughts - or with her mother. she starts making anonymous donations to charities and to projects to help rebuild. she throws herself back into learning languages and reading books. she avoids the world.

it’s astoria’s announcement of her engagement to draco that shakes daphne out of her daze. she has a few mixed emotions. it feels a little odd to see her sister engaged to her old crush; it feels a bit painful to see her sister engaged at all, after the end of her relationship. but more than anything … astoria didn’t tell her. all of their lives they had trusted each other with everything, and yet her baby sister hadn’t told her she was going to be engaged? for a moment, she’s angry. and then she realizes that it’s her fault. she’d been pushing her sister away without even realizing it.

daphne puts all of her energy into working through her depression after that. she’s determined to be there for her sister, come hell or high water. she reappears in the social scene, starts to go out with friends again, and ignores her mother a little less.

she’s introduced to her future husband not too long after her sister’s engagement, and they attend the wedding together. astoria doesn’t like him much, but daphne thinks he’s tolerable, and their mother seems very keen that they date. daphne regrets not taking her sister’s doubts more seriously, looking back on it.

daphne is a reluctant and miserable housewife for the course of their marriage. the birth of their daughter brightens her life; she loves being a mother. but she only hates her husband more.

the day her divorce was finalized she used her wand to send up fireworks in the street and laughed like she hadn’t laughed in years. she was free, and goddamnit, she was going to be happy.

she loves her work, and she loves her daughter. being a single working mother suits her far better than being a married housewife ever did. she’s happier than she’s ever been in her life … and then her sister falls ill, and daphne wonders if the sky will ever stop crashing down on her.

Current

daphne only really has one priority these days, and that priority is her family’s well-being.

daphne tries not to worry cynthia. she’s only a child, after all. she should be enjoying her time at hogwarts, not weighed down by tragedy. she knows she can’t keep cynthia completely in the dark; she’s a smart kid, and she’s very close to her cousin. still, daphne can ease her mind with sugar coated words and gentle promises … even if they so often taste like bitter lies.

whenever daphne has the time to read, she spends it pouring over anything and everything that might possibly help her sister. her reputation and skill set gives her access to a lot of unusual material, and she hopes one day it will help her dear sister.

she spends a lot of time with her daughter and with scorpius, always happy to look after her nephew or offer a helping hand to her sister and her husband. she loves scorpius as much as she loves her own daughter, and she’s promised her sister she would look after him.

she’s also promised to look after draco, and that’s proving much more of a challenge. she worries about him getting into trouble, crossing the wrong line, catching the wrong person’s attention. she wants to protect him, like she promised she would, but at the same time - how could she ever ask him to take a step back? she’s as desperate to cure her sister as he is; but she doesn’t want to lose him in the process, either.

Plots

i would love for daphne’s talents as a translator to come in handy for a plot, or plots. it’s an interesting passion of hers, and i love the idea of people coming to her to translate old writing, or ancient inscriptions, or people or magical beings.

daphne was the absolute mom of slytherin, but she also dropped off the map for awhile after the war. i would love to have her reconnect with old friends, or at least try to. bonus points if daphne still gets to mother them.

give me messy, complicated relationships please. romantic and platonic. i’m here for that shit.

potentially interested in the absolute panic of daphne being temporarily infected but we’ll see how things go.

daphne’s got a lot of money to throw around and i like the idea of someone approaching her to invest in something - some kind of charity, big event, business. they would need to win her over, of course, but it’d be interesting to have daphne really show her social/business/money skills.

daphne’s wanted to have more kids ever since she had cynthia, so that might come up at some point. whether she goes through with it, and how she goes about it, would depend entirely on how things end up happening in the roleplay.

Other

usually i have a pinterest board read before hand but it’s 2 am right now and i need to crash, so here is where the pinterest board will be. hopefully i put some stuff in it before y'all see it but if not … i’ll link it again later or something.

#urinfected

[austenmarriage]

New Post has been published on Austen Marriage

New Post has been published on http://austenmarriage.com/fanny-burney-writer-of-her-time/

Fanny Burney: Writer of Her Time

Fanny Burney was the female writer before and during Jane Austen’s life. Both in popularity and literary regard, she stood astride the Regency era as the Colossus stood astride the harbor of Rhodes. She published her first novel, Evelina, when Jane Austen was three years old, hit her publishing peak as Jane was beginning her serious writing, and continued to live and work for another two decades after Austen’s death.

To ensure the proper level of respect, some editors insist that we call her “Frances” rather than “Fanny,” the name she used all her life. Evidently, no one will take her seriously as Fanny but Frances will garner immediate intellectual respect. You’d think her complex writing style, modeled on Dr. Johnson, would be enough for anyone to take Burney seriously. But, here, we digress. …

Austen called Burney, who married a French officer to become Madame D’Arblay, “the very best of the English novelists.” In tracking Jane’s surviving correspondence, we can see her tracking Burney’s career. At the age of twenty, Jane subscribed to the purchase of Burney’s third novel, Camilla.

Two months after its publication in July 1796, Austen references Camilla in three successive letters, including the comment that an acquaintance named Miss Fletcher had two positive traits, “she likes Camilla & drinks no cream in her Tea.” Camilla is mentioned in the discussion of novels in Northanger Abbey. Jane’s annotated copy of Camilla is now in the Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

More interesting is a possible indirect but personal connection between the Austens and the D’Arblays. A relative, who likely encouraged the Austens to subscribe to Burney’s novel, was Mrs. Cassandra Cooke. She was first cousin to, and a contemporary of, Jane’s mother. The Cookes lived across the road from Burney and her husband for four years and nearby for several more.

Though the two authors never met, Jocelyn Harris writes in an article that Mrs. Cooke was probably a “direct source of information” about Burney to Austen. In her book Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen, Harris also finds a number of connections between scenes and characters in Austen’s fiction and Burney’s novels and life. Harris proposes that Mrs. Cooke may have been the source for the biographical anecdotes about Burney.

In addition to her novels, Burney wrote plays, most of which went unproduced, and was active at court. From 1786 to 1791 she was “Second Keeper of the Robes” to Queen Charlotte, and she dedicated Camilla to her. During the Napoleonic wars she was trapped for a decade in France. Though her husband was a military man and patriotic Frenchman, the couple detested the violence of the French Revolution and the dictator that followed. She was able to slip out of France when her son was a teenager to keep him from being conscripted into Napoleon’s army.

When Napoleon returned from exile in Elba to reclaim his throne, this time her husband fought against him on the side of the allies and was wounded in battle, before Waterloo ended Napoleon’s career a final time. After the war, the D’Arblays settled in Bath near relatives. Many French emigres had settled there during the war.

Two hundred years later, Burney’s position as Literary Superstar and that of Jane the Obscure has reversed. Burney is still read, and The Burney Society exists to promote her life and works. Yet most of the interest today relates to her diaries and journals, which show us the private thoughts of a sensitive, articulate woman about her long and eventful life. They record what it was like for an intelligent, vivacious, politically aware woman of the age. The also record her personal travails, including her description of undergoing a mastectomy in France—without anesthesia.

Burney began her diaries as a teenager. In an early entry, she tells of an earnest but not very pleasant fellow who fell for her on their first meeting. She asks her family how to get him to leave her alone. They instead encourage another visit. Burney writes in her diary something right out of (write out of?) Austen: that she “had rather a thousand Times die an old maid, than be married, except from affection.”

Today, few would put Burney in the same class as Austen as a novelist. Many Burney characters are extreme, her plots at times involve wild coincidences, and her language is enormously complex. What follows is a simple but representative example in the difference of style. The first is Austen’s dedication to the Prince Regent at the beginning of Emma. The next is Burney’s dedication to Queen Charlotte at the beginning of Camilla.

Austen’s, printed in capital letters and in large type to fill the page:

“To his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, this work is, by his Royal Highness’s permission, most respectfully dedicated, by his Royal Highness’s dutiful and obedient humble servant.”

Burney’s, set in type a little larger than normal, addresses the queen directly:

“THAT Goodness inspires a confidence, which, by divesting respect of terror, excites attachment to Greatness, the presentation of this little Work, to Your Majesty must truly, however humbly, evince; and though a public manifestation of duty and regard from an obscure Individual may betray a proud ambition, it is, I trust, but a venial—I am sure it is a natural one. In those to whom Your Majesty is known but by exaltation of Rank, it may raise, perhaps, some surprise, that scenes, characters, and incidents, which have reference only to common life, should be brought into so august a presence; but the inhabitant of a retired cottage, who there receives the benign permission which at Your Majesty’s feet casts this humble offering, bears in mind recollections which must live there while ‘memory holds its seat,’ of a benevolence withheld from no condition, and delighting in all ways to speed the progress of Morality, through whatever channel it could flow, to whatever port it might steer. I blush at the inference I seem here to leave open of annexing undue importance to a production of apparently so light a kind yet if my hope, my view—however fallacious they may eventually prove, extended not beyond whiling away an idle hour, should I dare seek such patronage?”

Austen was no fan of the Prince Regent, and her publisher probably prodded her into a sufficiently proper flourish. Yet even doubled, her dedication would barely run 50 words. Burney’s dedication runs 216 words—and the excerpt does not include all of it.

This gushing pipe of words is not just an instance of royal flattery. The entire 900-page novel strains under the load of such verbiage. Burney’s first and most successful novel, Evelina, written in the epistolary style, was a contrast. The letters by Evelina are as sharp and funny as anything Elizabeth Bennet ever said. Everyone else, however, writes in a ponderous style that came to dominate Burney’s third-person novels. Wanting to be taken seriously, Burney followed the “serious” style that “real literature” of the eighteenth century required. She was a writer of her time.

—

The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen, which traces love from a charming courtship through the richness and complexity of marriage and concludes with a test of the heroine’s courage and moral convictions, is now complete and available from Amazon and Jane Austen Books.

#18th century literature #Bath #Burney's journals #Fanny Burney #Frances Burney #Jane Austen #Napoleonic war #Regency era

[theangrypokemaniac]

Fav pomemon?

Hello!

I'm sorry if expect you expect a one-word answer, but I don't seem to be capable of those. I'm ashamed of how long it is, as I realised I had a lot I really liked, and I don't know if I feel strongly enough about any of them specifically to warrant promotion to favourite.

Prepare yourself:

Such a question to ask, and so many to choose!

Being wholly indecisive, I have several answers to give:

1. It'll seem strange but I don't remember ever having a favourite Pokémon. It was the people that interested me the most, their quirks and personalities. There being Pokémon was a means to an end.

2. At the same time, I had a soft spot for Pokémon that, once evolved, just looked like fatter versions of their previous selves:

• Pikachu and Raichu

• Clefairy and Clefable

• Jigglypuff and Wigglytuff

• Chansey and Blissey

• Marill and Azumarill

3. Out of love for the anime, all the Pokémon Ash, Misty, Brock, Jessie and James had from Kanto to Johto, but especially Pikachu, Meowth, Butterfree, Psyduck, Vulpix, Togepi, Lickitung, Victreebel, Horsea, Lapras and Snorlax.

4. My mom's favourite's still remain Vulpix, Ninetales, Gastly, Haunter, Gengar, Ponyta, Rapidash, Horsea, Seadra, Staryu, Starmie, Eevee, Vaporeon, Jolteon and Flareon, so them too.

5. Vileplume, not only it belongs to my main girl Jessibelle, and is capable of holding a cup of tea at last, but because it sounds like a Cockney flower girl, like Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.

Vyyyyyulploooooom!!!

6. My favourite film is The Power of One, so Lugia, Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres. I always preferred Pokémon Silver to get Lugia at the earliest.

7. Mewtwo and Mew for giving us the only film based on the games' plot.

8. I'm still stuck on Johto being 'new', because no following generation has ever made me that excited. These days fans expect another generation every three or four years, but then it was genuinely surprising for there to be a sequel.

What, you mean there are more of them?!

All of that set. Particularly Mareep, Flaaffy, Ampharos, Wooper and Quagsire. Never once played a game without them on my team.

9. Groudon. Can't remember why. I just know I played Ruby a lot more than Sapphire.

10. I quite like Xerneas's delicacy, but they gave it a female voice in the Diancie film.

It's a stag!

11. Shaymin when a hedgehog, and not the mouthy film one that slags off Ash.

12. Eeveelutions, although it still niggles there wasn't a Grass type in the First Generation that needed a Leaf Stone.

13. Houndoom, the dog of Satan!

We have a lot of folklore about demonic, fire-breathing dogs in England, so it makes me feel at home.

14. Sabrina is my favourite Gym Leader as she has a backstory, so Abra, Kadabra, and Alakazam.

Everyone had Alakazam! He laid waste to enemies!

15. Jigglypuff! There ain't no party without Jigglypuff. I never knew why the posters had her dark pink with green eyes whereas the anime version was light pink with blue eyes, but I preferred that.

16. Snubbull for being adorably gruff and grumpy looking yet still being a girl in the series. I liked the set up of Jessie and James having a cat and a dog. Her owner looked just like my nan too.

That's where she went!

17. The sort of bizarre freaks there were in the First Generation that you don't get anymore, where you'd just stare at them in disbelief.

Mr. Mime, the slave of Dame Ketchum.

A mime artist!

There are female ones!

It was called 'Marcel' in Red and Blue, after Marcel Marceau, so was probably a Frenchman.

Jynx, the slave and possible wife of Santa.

An opera singer!

It's got armour-plated bosoms!

It's from The Ring Cycle!

To this day I wonder where that man in Cerulean City got his.

If from Johto, why is it a Kanto Pokémon?

18. Slowpoke and Slowbro, for their Psyduck-esque bossed-out expression.

19. Litwick, Lampent and Chandelure. Interesting idea.

20. Bulbasaur was my first ever Pokémon, so it will always be special, even more so because it was erased by an Xploder cheat cartridge! As was the Mew I had, and you had to attend the download then!

Rest in peace.

21. Babies, so Pichu, Cleffa, Igglybuff and Azurill, but not Mime Jr. or Smoochum.

I can't believe they try and make Mime Jr. 'cute'.

It's a clown! It's evil!

Smoochum is alright, but it's a duck.

Isn't it?

A duck with the haircut of a mediæval page.

22. Gible. Not just Ash's, which brightened up the series and always came across as far more knowing than it let on, but the one Lyra and that fella she was with had, because it honked when it fell over!

23. Cofagrigus for being Tutankhamun's sarcophagus. It's surprising James didn't have one. Every time it came out, it could've stuffed him inside, but I suppose that doesn't fit with such a humourless era.

24. The Pikachu character, though I went right off Emolga when it was caught by Iris.

Togedemaru is the anarchic one, does what it wants and doesn't care.

25. Cats, especially Espurr because of the noise it makes, and being all alone in that old woman's house.

26. I like Empoleon's design. It looks to be wearing a doily for a waistcoat, but Barry is a dickhead!

27. Hoppip, Skiploom and Jumpluff. Useless in battle, but they're so sweet!

28. Shinx, Luxio and Luxray: thunder cats!

29. Raikou, Entei and Suicune, but especially Raikou for it's colours. I still remember the first time I ran into one in the grass of Johto, and being frightened as to what it was coming at me.

30. Magmar for the classic volcano war with Charizard, though slightly spoiled by speculating that it too is a duck.

31. Tough Pokémon like Gyarados, Dragonite and Tyranitar that are difficult to obtain, worth it, and have to be given double weakness to make it fair for everyone else.

Why is Gyarados a Flying type?

32. I do like Type:Null and Silvally as they remind me of Final Fantasy foes, but 'Type:Null' is one of the worst names there's ever been.

33. Zeraora, even if it does looks more like a Digimon having gone through Golden Armour Energise.

34. Cubone wears the skull of its dead mother! Marowak is her avenger!

Brings out the emo in me.

35. I realise how strange this is, but Tangela. I think because the only one you see in the Indigo League is Erika's, so it had mystery. Not to mention not being able to see its face.

It wears shiny red shoes!

Another Grass Pokémon who can't have a cup of tea with no arms!

#Pokémon #GIFS #Inbox

[domiandsascha]

Roland Garros diary - Day 4 - Thursday the 31st of May 2018

Those events happened five days ago, but my memories are crystal clear so this review should be pretty accurate.

For our last day in Roland Garros, we decided to try another gate, where we were first in line, again, obviously. We met a really sweet old couple and watched the ballet of official cars driving players inside the resort (playing "who do you think that is?" when the tinted windows were closed). Once in, as usual, we ran to an information desk and ask about practices. Domi being scheduled to play second on court 18, I was 95% certain he would practice on site. I was a bit too certain of it, so when we couldn't find his name anywhere on the schedule, my heart broke slightly. But it didn't make any sense (after four days, we knew exactly how things were being organized), so we tried another desk and realized the first scheduled we had been shown was partially cropped. Domi was, indeed, going to practice on site, on the same court I had seen him on Monday. So the pieces of my heart gathered, but started shaking big time. We went there straight away to grab a spot at the front, behind the bench I was hoping Domi would choose. Fognini was practicing, but because this man is the personification of everything I despise in a human being, I couldn't have cared less. He left earlier than he was supposed to, without a single look to the dozens of fans who had made their way to the court for him. A great person, truly… The court remained empty for ten minutes, but because Domi was going to practice with Gasquet, a lot of people sat on the bleachers behind us. Günter arrived on the other side and leaned on the barrier. The second our eyes met, he gave me a slow and respectful nod to say "hi" and I'm not going to lie : that made me feel pretty special haha. Because luck was our best friend, a player (whose identity is still a mystery) came on this court by mistake and chose the other bench. Therefore, when Domi arrived, the only bench free was the one right underneath my nose. I really need to play the lottery soon. Thank you unknown player. So yeah, Domi was right there, once again. Stretching my arm would have been enough to touch him (spoiler alert : I didn't). And he was looking down, sorting his stuff out, all focused. And we knew better than to disturb him before his practice. But… I'm a really polite person and he was so close, it just came out of my mouth "Good morning Domi". For a couple of very long seconds, nothing happened, but then his eyes shifted, straight into mine, and with the shyest of smiles, he replied "Morning…". And some officials from the tournament are still trying, five days later, to scratch my melted heart from the floor over there. His practice was as mesmerizing and painful to watch as the first one. I think it would take at least ten to get used to it. Or ten thousands. I'm not sure. Once he was done, he came back to the bench just to grab his spare racket and said "Sorry guys…" before leaving the court. I guess it was too many of us at this point. Or he was in a rush to go prepare for his match. Or he wasn't in the mood. I don't really care, I didn't mind. He acknowledged us and apologized, like a decent person (take the hint Fognini…). And as I've been telling a lot of people over the past few days (coz some people are getting really rude when they don't get what they want from players) : they're athletes, under pressure, in the middle of a freaking important competition and hell no, they absolutely don't owe us to stop whenever we're on their way. After Domi was gone, his fitness coach gave the practice balls away and Jue and I got one each. Then we rushed to court 18, where Domi was going to play a couple of hours later, and on our way there, we crossed path with Rafa, "walking" to practice, surrounded by security and followed by a hundred of fans. But still, we saw Rafa haha. I must admit : I wasn't expecting to find court 18 that packed that early (considering the previous day), but that's because I had forgotten how people are fascinated by Fabio Piece of Crap Fognini. Because yeah, I was about to watch Fognini's match to secure my seat for Domi's… Oh Thiem, the things I do for you… We managed to get in and walked all the way around. After watching 3 sets of Domi from the most perfect spot (view wise) the day before, I had been hoping to seat behind his bench for the second part of the match. But for now, his bench was Fognini's and the bleachers were full. We only found two separate tiny spots on the last row. But when Jue and I decide we want a certain spot, we get that certain spot. As I said before, that's what we do best in life. So we basically spent Fognini's match working our way down the bleachers (and cheering for his opponent who we had never heard of before). It wasn't that hard, really. During most of the changes over, some people were leaving. We just had to keep our eyes open and be faster than the people walking in. And we were fast. When Fognini left the court, we were second row, right behind Domi's bench. Epic win. (I'm not going to waste time on Fognini's disgusting behavior towards the female umpire, his opponent, the crowd and his own fans, but gosh, do I hate him even more now…). On the first row, there was an Austrian couple with a massive flag that was kind of putting my tiny paper one to shame, but I still held it proudly the entire time. Domi and TsitsipASS walked in and the match resumed quite quickly. (Again, I'm not going to waste time on negativity, but Tsitsipas gave me the ultimate proof that my gut feeling about him was the right one : he's nasty). It went really fast, because Domi was flying. He was flawless, in total control and I was dying from adoration and admiration. He won. I saw him win a match. I'll carry that with me as a feel good thought for a very very very long time. When everyone stood after match point, I managed to jump at the very front. The previous night, I had dreamt (like for real, at night, while sleeping) I would get Domi's towel, but he chose to give it to an Austrian boy and became quite bossy when someone else tried to grab it (that was really hot). He started to sign balls and take pictures, walking closer and closer to where I was, but catching his attention seemed really hard. I was handing a second copy of my present (not to give it to him again, but to get him to sign it for Cla, my epic friend who got us all the tickets for Roland Garros and is also the co creator of this silly but brilliant idea of a present). The sweet lady next to me helped to put it right underneath Domi's nose and he looked up. I asked "Did you get it, Domi ?" and he replied "Yes I did !" with a little smile. Then I asked if he could sign a copy. He had let go of the first marker pen he had been using, but turned around and another super sweet person gave him one. He signed the present, I thanked him, asked for a picture and got a quick selfie before he started to chat with the Austrian couple. After that, it all went a bit blurry in my overwhelmed brain, I don't really remember him walking away and leaving the court, I was a bit too busy freaking out. Especially coz Jue, who had stayed behind me, had filmed my interaction with him and like, omg, she's the absolute best !! After all this, we were in urgent need of shadow, quiet and food, so we sat on a bench in an alley to eat our lunch. Then we entered the Lenglen, our official court for the day, and we watched the end of Malek VS Gasquet (and I do like Malek but it's always really nice to watch a Frenchman win in front of a French crowd). And then it was Borna time, on court 3. He had already started when we got there, but the bleachers were half empty and making our way to the row behind his bench was so easy, it was almost boring. But Borna's match was great ! He lost his first set, just to give us some more of him, and then played masterful tennis. We cheered for him as loud as we could. The only moment we went silent was when he undressed and remained shirtless for an entire minute. Speechless. I called him a piece of art on day 2, well… little did I know then… After the match, he came to us and the family next to us who had been supporting him too. We congratulated him and when Jue asked him for a picture, I did a hell of a job at photobombing their selfie and we now have an epic picture of the three of us hahaha. On our way back to the Lenglen, we passed by the court where Angie Kerber had just won her match. Perfect timing being perfect, we stopped there a few seconds before she walked out. Despite the mess of fans and security guys, I managed to get a couple of super nice shots of her. She's such a princess. On the Lenglen, we watched Caro's match, which was a bit more of a fight than the one we had seen on Tuesday so that was a great way to end our stay in Roland Garros. And also, after that, we watched on a big screen part of the crazy battle going on between PH and Jeremy Chardy on court 1. Before leaving the resort, we stopped in the different shops but didn't buy anything, because it was crazy expensive and nothing was really appealing. I mean, in the Adidas shop, I starred at and stroke Domi's current shirt for a few minutes (and Sascha's and Lucas'), but no. That would have been a crazy expensive pajama top considering I don't wear man shirts. And… that was it. We had to say goodbye… But there was no way we could feel sad. Those four days were just perfection. We got everything we had dreamed of and everything we had been too scared to dream of. We were too happy and grateful to be sad. Also… our adventures in Tennisland were not quite over yet ! But I'll tell you all about it in another review coming… as soon as possible.

#dominic thiem #borna coric #roland garros

[lu-undy]

What about if Perle met a nice, slim black cat? A male that perhaps is the father of her kittens, and Mundy and Lu are seeing him for the first time as he courts Perle outside the base? Spy could compare the wild, outdoorsy cat to his lover, Mundy.

Excellent suggestion! I did write it a bit in one of my longer stories but here it is, in a bit more detail.

“Meow.”

"You were right, Mundy, the kittens are not running away."

"Told ya, she's raisin' them right, aren't you, pretty cat?" 

Mundy and Lucien were outside in the desert. They had spread some cloth on the floor and were enjoying a snack with Perle and her young kittens. She had had a litter of four a few months before. All were black and white, some with longer hair than others, like their mother. 

"Mundy?" 

"Hm?" Mundy turned and saw his lover hold a grape for him in front of his mouth. He ate it and pushed his lips on Lucien's cheek. "Love ya." 

"So do I." 

The kittens were playing with each other, mewling happily, while Perle was lying between her masters, being spoilt like a queen. One was scratching her head, and the other, her back. She purred and purred until she rose to her feet and stretched. Mundy and Lucien didn't pay much attention to it as they dived back in their conversation while playing with the kittens. 

"D'you want to keep them?" Mundy asked. 

"Whom?"

"The kittens." 

"I do not know. What do you think? Should we keep them?"

"No idea. But if we do, they're gonna need names, eh." 

"Ah, oui, you are right…"

They looked at the kittens. All were white with black patches or the other way around. 

"There are two ladies and two gentlemen, oui?" 

"Yeah." 

"So we need two masculine names and two feminine ones. And please, if you accept, they have to work in French too."

"Okay, let's have a think… This one, it's a female and she's black with a white patch on her head… Why not Star?" 

"Étoile." Lucien translated. "That is a beautiful name."

"Yeah, and it suits her cause the patch on her head looks like a star a bit." 

"Ah oui, you are right, mon amour. What about this one?"

[My love.]

"Your turn, you choose for him." Mundy said. 

"Fine. It's a young gentleman… Why not Diamant?"

"What's that in English? Diamond?"

"Oui. The patch on his back is roughly shaped like a diamond, non?" 

"Yeah, that works… Ok, my turn for this baby boy, hm…" Mundy pondered. "He's black with only white paws so… uh… Glove?"

"Glove?" Lucien repeated. 

"Yeah, he looks like he's wearing white gloves." 

"It would sound a bit strange in French but it suits him, he shall be Glove then."

"And that last one?" Mundy asked. 

Lucien took her in his hand and scratched her head. The little kitten opened wide eyes and mewled. 

"You, you are a lady, mostly white, but with a black tail… Hm…" He left a gentle kiss in her fur. "What about Encre? It means 'ink' in French. She looks like she dipped her tail in some black ink."

Mundy smiled. 

"Go for Inky then! So in the end we have Star, Diamond, Glovy and Inky, right?"

"Or," Lucien translated, "Étoile, Diamant, Gant et Encre. Oui, that works." 

They exchanged a smile and a peck on the lips and when they parted, Perle was meowing at them. 

"Meow."

"Oh, hello there pretty cat, who's that you brought with you, eh? Is that a friend?" 

Perle had returned with a black, short haired, adult cat. His eyes were green and he looked quite slimmer than her because of his shorter fur. 

"Bonjour, toi."

[Hello, you.]

The black cat approached and the kittens backed up in Lucien and Mundy's lap, mewling repeatedly. 

"Oh, they're scared, luv'." Mundy took two, one in each hand, and Lucien copied him. 

"This is the first time Perle brings a friend to me. Did you just happen to meet him or her?" Lucien asked his lady cat. 

"It's a he, luv'." Mundy corrected him. 

"Oh, my apologies, bonjour Monsieur."

[Hello, Sir.]

Lucien and Mundy watched as Perle and him brushed their fur against each other, the same way Perle brushed herself on their legs. Mundy looked at the kittens in his hands and back at the black cat, purring with Perle. 

"Oh, God…"

"What?" Lucien asked, oblivious. 

"That isn't her friend…" 

"What?" Lucien pulled the kittens to his chest defensively. He thought that Mundy had meant that cat was a threat. 

"No, love, he's… He's their dad, he's Perle's… mate."

Lucien's jaw dropped to the ground. 

"Look at the kittens, they're black and white and some have short hair, like him. The eyes match too, Star and Diamond have the same as he does." 

Perle purred as they both lied down one against the other, on the cloth. 

"This is the father of your children?" Lucien asked Perle. 

"Meow." She answered and both Lucien and Mundy watched as he spooned her and licked her clean.

"Grand Dieu…"

[Good Lord…]

"You can let go of the kids, he won't do anythin' to them."

"How can you be so sure?" Lucien asked.

"If he had wanted to harm them or scare them, he would have done it, regardless of us having them in our hands." Mundy said as he released the kittens. They trotted to their parents and laid down next to their mother. 

"He looks quite slim." 

"I guess he's a stray or something. We should feed him some."

"Wait-" Lucien interrupted him and put a hand on Mundy's. "Perle, I trust your judgement but I have to ask him a few questions."

"What?" Mundy chuckled. 

"This is extremely serious, Mundy, I won't let any stray approach Perle or her children, not on my watch."

Mundy rolled his eyes with a smile. Lucien's protective behaviour amused him. 

"She didn't exactly wait for you to give your blessing to go and do her business with him, eh?" 

"Oui, but still, I must insist. Perle has been my best friend for years now and it is the least I can do. So, Monsieur, what is your name? And what are your intentions with this family? I must warn you that if your answers are not satisfactory to me or Mundy, then we shall make sure you do not even lay a hair on Perle and her children. Now, some answers please." 

Mundy watched as the black cat answered by licking Perle's head, behind her ear. She turned and licked his head back. 

"A bit of decency please!" Lucien asked and Mundy chuckled again. "You may kiss the bride at the end if no one opposes this union, but for now, a name and an intention!" 

"My name's Soot and I intend to take care of Pearl and my kids if you don't mind." Mundy answered. 

"Soot?" Lucien repeated. 

"Yeah, cause I'm black, see?" 

"Oui, I can see very well, thanks. Now, do you promise to take care of Perle and her children until death do you apart?" Lucien went on, half dramatically. 

"Yeah, but which life are you talking about? I'm running on my third right now, eh." Mundy answered for the black cat. 

"Well, the third and all those who will come after!" Lucien replied. "Taking care of a family is the commitment of a lifetime and I will personally make sure that you treat Perle and her children in the best fashion."

"Love?" Mundy asked. 

"What?" 

"Look at them."

Perle and Soot rose to their feet. Perle trotted to her master and meowed, pushing her nose against the plastic bags with treats. Mundy opened it and laid a few on his palm. She took one and it crunched under her needle-like teeth. 

"Soot, c'mon boy, come and get yours." 

The black cat raised a paw but seemed hesitant. Perle looked at him and waved her tail gently. He took a step but not more so Mundy bent forward to meet him halfway. 

"Take it, I'm not the overprotective one, eh." 

Lucien raised an eyebrow. He was about to answer when Soot finally came closer and ate in Mundy's hand. 

"Good boy, that's it… Lu', give me your hand, and remove your gloves." 

Lucien obeyed and Mundy gave him a treat in his hand. 

"Give it to him."

"But-"

"Oi, c'mon, manners, this is Perle's hubby now." 

"Ah, oui, fine. My apologies, here you go Monsieur Soot." Lucien extended his arm and the cat took the treat. 

"Good boy." Mundy scratched his head before putting more treats on the ground. The whole family shared their snack under the sound of their teeth crushing them. 

Lucien leaned on Mundy's shoulder. 

"He reminds me of you." He said. 

"How? I don't have green eyes." Mundy joked. 

"Non, it is true, but you too were a bit of a wild stray up until we met, non?" 

Mundy wrapped an arm around Lucien and squeezed him. 

"Yeah, a bit. And then I met you, like Perle, awfully well-mannered and posh as all hell. And like Perle, you showed me there's more to life than the wild and lonely side of it."

"Hm, I think you are right. But this isn't the only common point." 

"Oh?" 

"Oui, Perle never had kittens when we were living in Paris. She likes her gentlemen exotic, so do I."

Mundy smiled. 

"I'm exotic now, am I?" 

"Oui, very much so. A delicacy from another hemisphere and another continent." 

"Ooh, I like the sound of that, eh…" Mundy bent down and they quickly kissed each other. 

"Meow?" 

They looked down. Perle had meowed. 

"Oui?" Lucien answered. 

Soot and her were sitting side by side and she leaned her head on him. 

"I think she's asking you if he can live with us, love."

Perle came forward and brushed herself on Mundy. 

"Yep, yeah she definitely is asking that." 

"Monsieur Soot," Lucien said, taking a treat in his hand. "Welcome home." He offered it to the cat who came closer and took it between his teeth. 

The cat sat between Lucien's crossed legs and rested his chin on the Frenchman's ankle. 

"C'mon, pet him, love, show him he's welcome here." 

Lucien obeyed and let his fingers approach Soot's head. It was shy at first but he quickly felt more comfortable as the male cat started purring. 

"Lu'?"

"Oui?" Lucien looked up at his lover who was petting Perle. 

"I think we're keepin' the kittens and Soot too." 

"I think so too, on one condition." 

Mundy raised an eyebrow. 

"You don't forget to take care of me too?" He asked with his fair blue eyes and that sight made Mundy's guts fuzzy and warm. 

"Don't worry, I won't." 

#tf2 sniper #tf2 spy #sniperspy

[chicagoindiecritics]

New from Every Movie Has a Lesson by Don Shanahan: MOVIE REVIEW: The Old Guard

THE OLD GUARD— 3 STARS

When it comes to the myth of immortality, the sweeping sentiments of Queen from the Highlander soundtrack say it best. Their song poses it as a pair of questions: the titular “who wants to live forever” and “who dares to live forever.” When Brian May’s lyrics continue, they wax “but touch my tears with your lips/touch my world with your fingertips.” Netflix’s new actioner The Old Guard, toplined by the age-defying Charlize Theron as the “who” pronoun compared to Queen, has its own heroic perpetuity and spits back “nothing that lives lives forever.” Her lips aren’t kissing a thing and nothing but murderous weapons are at her fingertips. 

Charlize would be the one to tell Queen to take their romantic sweetness and shove it with harshness. That tone and timbre works just fine for the Academy Award winner who has been cementing this attitudinal career niche for the better part of a decade. Based on Greg Rucka’s 2017 Image Comics graphic novel featuring the art of Leandro Fernandez, The Old Guard combines its own brew of created legends intersecting modern settings and compulsions. Like its lead, The Old Guard has a toughness completely devoid of anything trite. The narrative screws might not be the tightest, but its aim is deadly enough to draw you in.

Theron, with a vitae including the likes of Mad Max: Fury Road, Atomic Blonde, and Hancock, is no stranger to plots with unknown mythology. She is one of four warriors with unexplained immortality who have fought for centuries behind the frontlines of pivotal events on carefully selected missions. Her “Andy” is really the storied Andromache of Scythia. She is joined by the Napoleonic era Frenchman Booker/Sebastian (Rust and Bone’s Mathias Shoenaerts) and the Crusades opponents-turned-soulmates Nicky/Nicolo (emerging Italian star Luca Marianelli of Martin Eden) and Joe/Yusuf (Aladdin’s Marwen Kenzari). Here in a 21st century that is harder to hide in, the group are clandestine assets for hire who cannot be killed and wield a mix of venerable melee blades and silenced firearms. 

LESSON #1: WHAT TIME LEAVES BEHIND— Time has brought both skill and lamentation. Booker, speaking often as the poetic nougat center of the movie, describes Andy as a woman that “has forgotten more ways to kill than entire armies will ever learn.” Repeatedly torn and re-torn over centuries, their internal scars push against the pay-it-forward hope of multiplying their efforts. These stoic mercenaries thought the world would be a better place after centuries of struggles, even if the people they saved seemed to go on to future achievements in life.

LESSON #2: LOSING A SOLDIER— Booker bemoans further “just because we keep living doesn’t mean we stop hurting.” Immortal as they may be, they feel each death and the recovery takes time. They speak of previous immortals (prominently featuring Van Veronica Ngo recently seen in Da 5 Bloods) they have lost where the healing power mysteriously stopped and their time to die arrived. Those weary losses weigh on their vast memories and indomitability. 

A betrayal on a staged hostage situation in South Sudan from their most recent fence, the ex-government spook Copley played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, has put the team in the crosshairs of a London-based Big Pharma executive named Merrick (Harry Mellick, all grown up from his Dudley Dursley Harry Potter days). The millennial mogul feels “morally obliged” (*insert a fakely principled comic book plot laugh here*) to take their genetic code as a means for weaponized science and a windfall of potential health market profits.

LESSON #3: GAINING A SOLDIER— For the first time in over a century, a new individual has gained the enduring power and calling. God-fearing American Marine Nile Freeman, played by the second-billed KiKi Layne of If Beale Street Can Talk) survives a slit throat in Afghanistan and gains beacon mental connections with Andy and the others. The veteran ancients seek her out to assuage her fears, teach her their ways, and protect her newness from the pursuing Copley and Merrick. Nile becomes the exposition driver of the veiled “why” questions we’re all thinking.

Increasingly prolific director Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball, Beyond the Lights) brings her talents to a new genre. Drawn to Strong Female Characters in every sense of the term, The Old Guard graphic novel was ideal material for the filmmaker’s stylish ardor. With Charlize Theron and KiKi Layne as her instruments, the film has a posture of determination over effeminate weakness that is wholly appreciated. Like many comic book films before it, The Old Guard relies heavily on their mentor/mentee dynamic. Layne continues to be a future star in the making and kicking ass alongside Theron will do her wonders. The confidence growth shows already.

One keen choice from Gina was the electronic pop selections merged into the action sequences adding backbeat to the nondescript danger music from the Oscar-nominated Lion team of Volker Bertelmann and Dustin O’Halloran. That inertia bears Prince-Bythewood’s fingerprints. Shot by Bigelow and Greengrass vet Barry Ackroyd and GPB confidante Tami Reiker, the movie balances bloody guts with gritty gloss to make this a very showy thriller. Editor Terilyn A. Shropshire makes the actors and the massive stunt team led by Marvel-experienced stunt coordinator Brycen Counts, fight coordinator Daniel Hernandez, and department head Sarah Greensmith look  

It is a rare and welcome treat of compromise to see a graphic novel’s original creator granted the opportunity to pen his or her own film treatment. How many times have followers and fans seen works butchered by script doctors? Following Joe Russo’s recent fellow Netflix entry Extraction and Joe Kelly’s superior I Kill Giants from 2018 (a must-see gem available on Hulu and Hoopla), Greg Rucka received the chance he didn’t get with 2009’s forgettable bomb Whiteout. His improved craft on the written page since then is evident and it is given a fair chance on a larger stage.

The trappings and limitations of a graphic novel distilled and compressed for a single movie are still very much present. The Old Guard has a sky-high concept (think 2008’s miscue of Jumper with its attempt at applying a centuries-old saga) with a low energy for expanding ideas. Harry Melling’s sniveling Merrick villain is implausibly bad, even by comic book standards for a movie bending reality like this one. A swerving double cross in the climax is also feeble compared to the powerful and principled characters. Copley’s Mr. Glass/Pepe Silvia-level conspiracy wall and the tiny flashback snippets sending viewers back to ancient times tease rich and unharvested levels of referenced depth that could be far more interesting than the present. It feels like a heap of gravitas and world-building was left on the paneled page. 

As sudden and kinetic as The Old Guard may play for a quick entertainment ride on your couch, a Netflix miniseries might have done Rucka’s five-volume work more justice than merely one movie and a tease at a potential sequel. Root for a modest franchise with Netflix’s deep pockets securing commitments from the creative team and on-screen talent. We’ll follow Charlize Theron and KiKi Layne anywhere. If given the chance, The Old Guard could build admirably.

LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#894)

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[lucyreviewcy]

Game of Thrones - S02 E06

In this episode, Alfie Allen makes the ill-advised choice to invade Winterfell (I’m sure that won’t come back to bite him on the ass), Arya is nearly found out and asks Spooky Frenchman to do another killing for her, Sansa is nearly horribly attacked and I had to google how old Sophie Turner was when this scene was shot and no, I’m still not happy about it. 

Alfie Allen (noun) definition - Man whose actions almost always incur bloody vengeance.

I knew Tonks off of Harry Potter was going to have to be nude in this show because that’s one of the few Game of Thrones facts I was already familiar with. Something I do think is interesting is that female nudity occurs so frequently in the show that it starts to lose any kind of wow factor. “Oh, breasts, I have those - see them every day... not exciting, more beheadings please...” The same is true of the film Fifty Shades of Grey in which Dakota Johnson is naked so frequently that it becomes commonplace, if Dakota Johnson walked by me in the street naked I’d probably not notice anything out of the ordinary, so used am I to her nudity. Meanwhile, seeing a dude naked has occurred exactly twice in the show and both times (Hodor and Alfie Allen), it was deeply unsettling. Nobody likes a wang on screen, there I’ve said it. This tells you a lot, doesn’t it, about the female form and how it’s used as an essentially decorative addition to scenes, while the male nudity is, frankly, gross and disturbing. You can have Tonks off of Harry Potter offer herself to Alfie Allen in a sex way without her demonstrating her entire body, but when has this show ever turned down an excuse for nipples?

I’m really enjoying Spooky Frenchman (he might not be French but I love the phrase Spooky Frenchman - it’s a lot better than the two word phrase I came up with and repeated relentlessly in my last blog post), but the set they’re using for this castle/keep/ castle keep is really tiny and it feels like the training level of a video game called something like Urchin 3: Return to Castle Keep, where you play as Arya and you slowly pick off all the Lannisters OMG can I please have this game?

Finally, excuse me while I catch this bee and place it firmly in my bonnet.

I think it’s pretty clear from every post on this blog that I do not like child actors. The sound of children singing puts my teeth on edge, and it’s almost as bad when they’re delivering precocious witty dialogue. That said, one of the main gripes I have about the way Game of Thrones uses its child actors is that actually I’m worried that some of the scenes they’re shooting might be genuinely traumatising for them. In this episode, five men hold Sansa down and attempt to rape her. This is an unpleasant scene in any context, but when a 15-16 year old actress is at the centre of it, it’s all the more upsetting. Why should we expect teenage actors to be comfortable with taking part in these scenes, when adult women would likely find them extremely challenging? 

Emilia Clarke has already spoken out about how traumatic she found the experience of shooting nude scenes for the show:

“But I’d come fresh from drama school and I approached it as a job: if it’s in the script then it’s clearly needed. This is what this is and I’m going to make sense of it and that’s what I’m going to do and everything’s going to be cool.”

Sure sounds like this show pressured young, inexperienced actors into scenes that made them uncomfortable. Emilia Clarke was 23 when she was making the show, and didn’t feel comfortable asking for anything, or speaking up when she was unhappy - do we think that 16 year old Sophie Turner felt any different? Do you remember feeling confident to say what you were and were not happy with when you were 16? 

Anyway, shows where scenes regularly make you uncomfortable enough to have to google every other episode “how old is *actress name*” are clearly not my favourite genre.

#Game of Thrones #GameofThrones #GoT #blog #tv review

[changeling-fae]

Paper Melody

So this is the first chapter of my Phantom of the Opera fic which was basically written out of spite because of Love Never Dies.

I get really angry when I think of how PotO’s ending was broken into shards of glass in LND’s plot, namely with what ALW did to our three main characters (and Meg).

This is not a E/C (although I do ship them) and instead focuses on Erik’s ability to grow and find love elsewhere since his lesson in PotO was putting Christine’s happiness above his own. Christine and Raoul will play big parts in later chapters because they deserve happiness too dammit.

Really my biggest grievance with LND’s is that Erik wasn’t allowed to grow as a character or person when that sort of was the big deal of the finale of PotO. My other major grievance was that Christine and Raoul weren’t allowed happiness when that’s what they fought for (also screw ALW for fridging female characters for male characters man pain).

I’ll admit, I’m really nervous about publishing this because I’ve never written an OC for an already existing story and don’t know how it’ll be received. I’m totally open to comments or questions though! The PotO 25th are the trio I envision for this.

So here it is.

And Ao3 link here.

The Phantom had assumed he would fade from the world, a lost broken soul in the same vein of his title, an echo of something long since dead. Christine Daae had left with her lover, the Vicomte, and he let her go, her happiness more important than his loneliness and despair.

He thought about just ending it all, killing himself and letting his corpse rot on the cold cobblestone for the rats to eat. He came close several times, after all what did he have to live for? Christine was forever out of his life and his music was nothing but a hollow echo in his mind.

He wanted to end it and yet, instead he found himself in England, assuming the identity of a reclusive noble who happened to share the same first name. He was now Erik Fontaine, a wealthy Frenchman who lost his family in a fire and was the only survivor as a boy. The man was then not seen for nearly twenty years and had committed suicide recently unbeknownst to the rest of the world thanks to the few underground connections the Phantom took pains to keep.

It was then easy enough to forge signatures, pay the right undertakers, and with the money he had been saving from extorting the Opera House, was able to buy a modest estate outside of London. He should just end it all but instead he’ll let himself fade quietly into obscurity.

He hired only one servant, an old blind man who spoke very little named Oliver, and very rarely saw the man.

Erik caressed the keys of the piano in front of him but he could not bring himself to play anything. In all his years of loneliness he could conjure some form of music but now it was too painful, memories of Christine always at the forefront of his mind. Still, he persisted an attempt every day with little success or worse, he’d sometimes find himself singing Think of Me like some curse that he could not escape.

The mask concealing his face was black now and he only wore it on the rare times he stepped outside, despite his property being fairly isolated. There was one other estate across the way, separated by a long old graveyard that used to share two long dead families. Perhaps a walk through the silent stone garden would inspire something…

He adjusted his mask and grabbed his cloak, stepping foot into the dreary grey of day. He had lived so long under the Opera House that even the cold grey sky seemed too bright but he continued forward into the graveyard, death and solitude at least something familiar.

Stone angels with serene expressions stared down at him as he passed by, triggering memories he’d sooner like to forget. Lost in his own thoughts he was startled when he turned a corner and came upon a young woman sitting on the steps of a mausoleum.

Long, blonde, loose curls sat around her face in disarray, as if it had once been done up but instead had been torn from its confines to lay wildly without order. Her skin was fair and her cheeks rosy from the cold air as her hands nimbly worked on paper flowers, unaware of his presence.

He would almost mistake her for a servant girl or lower with how undone her appearance was, her sleeves were pushed high up and there were tears in her stockings, she wasn’t even wearing a corset, but the clothing’s quality was too high and her skin too fair to be anything but upper class.

As if finally sensing she was no longer alone, her eyes shot up directly into his, revealing a soft grey-ish green like a lunar moth’s wing, and she leapt to her feet, scattering her flowers to the ground. She looked like she was hesitating to leave them but still she darted away before he could say or do anything.

She ran in the direction of the other estate and after a few moments of waiting to see if she would return, he stepped to her scattered flowers. He picked them up, noting they were nothing but wormwoods and marigolds in design, a rather strange combination.

He gently placed them back on the grave in case she returned for them and headed back to his own home.

He ate supper in solitude as he had for decades, the only difference now being he had Oliver lurking there in the background but he hadn't really hired the man for his conversation. He then retired to his library hoping maybe something would draw his interest but every book he picked up was just filled with lines without meaning to him.

After hours of suffocating silence and hurtful memories, he went to sleep and once again had a fitful slumber as his nightmares haunted him, filled with Christine and that fateful night he let her go. He awoke in a cold sweat, gasping for breath, the side of his deformed features burning from memory of his rejection.

Erik glanced out the window, the soft rays of a cold morning seeping in, filling the room with little warmth.

He really should just end it.

But once again as the day progressed and no music formed from his hands, he found himself in the graveyard again.

When he approached the spot the girl had been in earlier, he noted the flowers were gone and instead a wooden figurine was in its place.

Curiosity had him step closer, the figurine appeared to be a beautifully handcrafted angel holding a bouquet of white clovers, sycamore, and spiderwort, each petal carved with great detail.

Once again it was a strange flower combination but he could not deny the craftsmanship, even the painting over the wood was done with gentle loving care.

The irony that it was in the shape of an angel did not escape him but he was standing in a grave so it was hardly out of place.

He set it back down, having a feeling it was the girl who placed it here and assumed she was leaving it for a deceased love one.

At least he thought that originally, until he found it at the entrance of the grave on his side, facing his estate the next day.

Curious. Why give this to him? She had seemed startled and frightened when he came upon her those two days ago. Perhaps she was merely a bored noble who thought it a fun game.

Well he was done with games and tricks and shadows, he would return this back to where she originally placed it.

He did not expect her to be there, once again sitting in her spot with her disheveled appearance and once again making flowers out of paper.

He stood there awkwardly with it in his hands before clearing his throat to gain her attention.

She did not acknowledge him and he now spoke, "Mademoiselle, is this yours?"

She stopped briefly and pushed a red paper carnation to him before resuming her work. Not once did she look up but her heel was now tapping against the stone ledge she was sitting on.

He frowned, " Mademoiselle, I'd rather not play games, will you take this back?"

Once again she stopped, only this time to push a yellow paper carnation in his direction.

Maybe she was simple?

Before he could decide what to do next with the strange girl she stood up and approached him, her eyes fluttering in various directions but never directly at his face, and she handed him a paper bouquet of garden daisies.

He took it in surprise and she quietly walked away back to her estate, a bit of a skip to her step leaving him confused and a little intrigued.

It was this strange exchange sparking his curiosity, that had him returning the next day and the following day after that; finding her a welcome distraction from his grief although he knew better now than to get attached. It was merely curiosity that brought him back each day where he would find her sitting with her false flowers.

Sometimes he would try and ask her questions but she never responded except to sometimes give him her flowers. Most of the time it was just him standing awkwardly in her presence while she worked but he got the strange sense that she liked him being there. He didn't even know her name.

The irony that he was no longer the mysterious figure did not escape him and after a week and a half of this exchange he decided to call upon her estate.

It was a horrible idea that could easily backfire on him if he was not careful but a fellow noble who was the victim of a tragedy was a story other nobles could tolerate, as opposed to the reality of a deformed man being born with a defect to a poor woman on the streets.

His mask was black and nondescript and he himself a master at charm and deflection, this just being another role for him to play. It was a bad idea but he could pull it off, he just wanted to know who she was.

He approached the servant at the door with a nod of his head and the lie on his tongue, "I am Erik Fontaine, I sent a note this morning, I live across the way and wanted to finally introduce myself. Is the Lord or Lady of the House here?"

The servant nodded and let him inside, "Yes, the Lady Charlotte Hyde is always welcoming of guests, I shall let her know of your arrival. One moment please."

Lady Charlotte Hyde? Was that her name?

He did not have to wait long and was soon led into a sitting room where an elderly woman sat. She was clearly a woman of great wealth and standing but obviously not the mysterious girl he hoped to see.

The aged woman smiled while her grey eyes darted to his mask a couple of times, and she stood to curtsy as he took her hand with a bow in greeting.

"Mr. Fontaine, is it? It is a pleasure to finally meet our new neighbor. I had sent a footman to call upon you when you first moved in but I believe your butler stated you were not one for company."

He had a vague recollection of that but he didn't show it, instead smiling with an apologetic bow.

"A crime of my nature that I'm trying to fix actually. I apologize if I caused any offense, my move from France has simply been a long one."

She sat down and gestured for him to do the same with a wave, "Oh I took no offense, I'm merely surprised and delighted that you decided to pay us a visit."

"Us, Madame?" He inquired.

"She means us, good sir." Two more men entered, a portly man with a red face and a younger man with chiseled features, easily considered handsome and uncomfortably reminded him too much of Raoul.

Lady Hyde motioned to them, "My late husband’s brother-in-law, Charles Moore and his nephew, Henry Whitman."

They all stood and bowed to each other before sitting.

Maybe the girl was a servant after all but before he could ask he felt the young man's uncomfortable stare at his mask. He turned to stare back, his features set in an amiable expression, his brown eyes fixed on the man’s blue.

Henry grinned with a swagger and tapped his own face, "Headed to a masquerade my friend? I know the French can be a bit theatrical but I can tell you that the English are a bit duller than that."

"Do not be rude Henry," Lady Hyde scolded.

Erik just simply smiled as if it didn't bother him, "While I'll not disagree with you on the assessment of my countrymen, I'm afraid this mask has tragedy attached to it, you see my house perished in a fire when I was a boy and I was the only survivor. This mask is to keep everyone's sensibilities in place I'm afraid, my friend."

Emphasis was put on the last words as the lie came easily and Henry merely quirked a brow.

Lady Hyde spoke up, "Oh you poor man, what an awful tragedy. Well you are most welcome here should you desire company or the latest news from the city. I hardly leave thanks to my health so I always welcome gossip from these two."

Henry scoffed, "It's not only your health that keeps you here."

Lady Hyde sighed but did not dispute it, "You know she cannot handle outside society, she is delicate."

This time Charles spoke with an unamused snort, "Delicate is not the word I would use for her."

Erik cleared his throat, "It is not my business but is there another in the house?" Was it her?

Lady Hyde looked like she just remembered he was still here and cleared her own throat, "Hm, yes. My granddaughter Lilian Walden, she has lived with me since my daughter and son-in-law died over a decade ago."

"And she's a bit of a loon." Henry joked, not at all deterred by Lady Hyde's scolding yet resigned expression.

She then turned to a maid, "Will you fetch Lilian and Mrs. Foster please."

A few moments passed until the girl was walked out with a middle-aged woman (who uncomfortably reminded him of Madame Giry), holding her in place by the shoulders.

It really was his mystery girl and yet he couldn't help but note how uncomfortable she appeared before them, she was actually wearing a corset for one thing and her hair was done up tightly but every time she reached to pick at it, the woman behind her forced her hands down.

Mrs. Foster forced her to curtsy when he stood to greet her and the girl, Lilian, made a small noise of protest, the first sound he’s ever heard from her.

Lilian didn't look at anyone in the room and her eyes darted everywhere like a dragonfly as she kept reaching up to mess with her hair or scratch at her corset, only to be thwarted by Mrs. Foster's hands. She looked like a trapped animal wanting to flee even if it meant chewing off her own foot.

Lady Hyde's voice was gentle, "Lily, this is our new neighbor Mr. Erik Fontaine, can you say hello to him?"

Lilian didn't say a word, just clenched and unclenched her hands in an attempt not to pick at herself. He noticed her hands were covered in splinters and paper cuts, some new and some old.

Still, he gave another small bow, "It is a pleasure, Mademoiselle."

Silence.

"Oh, come now, girl! Surely after all these years you can at least manage a hello?" Charles’ voice boomed out.

Lilian flinched at the sudden loud sound and Erik felt such a wave of pity for the nervous creature in front of him that he regretted coming here and putting her through this.

Lady Hyde sighed and gave Lilian a tired smile, "It is alright my dear, Mrs. Foster will take you back to your room now."

She immediately ran out the room, yanking herself from Mrs. Foster grasp who chased after her and once she was gone Charles shook his head, "You're wasting money with that tutor, she'll never be part of civilized society. You should just have her committed, the doctors will know what to do with her."

Erik had to bite his tongue, he knew exactly what doctors did to patients in asylums. Instead he asked a question, “It is not my business but what afflicts her?”

Lady Hyde suddenly looked even older than she did before as she sighed, “The doctors don’t quite know, although they have plenty of theories. She never speaks, not even as a child save maybe a few times when her parents were alive, even though her vocal cords are perfectly healthy…”

Charles spoke up, “Also she throws the largest fits if you touch her, she even bit me once when I touched her shoulder, right on the hand.” He gestured to said hand which has long since healed.

Henry chuckled, “And that’s only the start of it all, other children used to call her a hobgoblin when we were kids, that a witch or troll stole the real Lilian and put an imp in her place.”

“Come see the Devil’s Child,” Erik’s fist clenched on his knee.

Charles just snorted, “She’s just touched in the head is all there is to it.”

Erik kept his tone light to hide his discomfort, "Does she ever leave the house?"

Lady Hyde shook her head, "Oh heavens no, she occasionally will walk in our garden with Mrs. Foster chaperoning but being outside gives her the fits. She mostly stays in her room making her flowers and wood carvings, and other projects, that seems to keep her calm."

Well, clearly, she was sneaking out away from prying eyes, something he could relate to. It also meant she wasn't quite as simple as her family believed.

Henry grinned, "I already said, dear aunt Charlotte, that I'd marry her and take her off of your hands."

Erik didn't like that grin and Lady Hyde just shook her head, "I know you are concerned but she is fine here."

After a moment of silence Charles let out a noise of bemusement, "Such a shame a pretty girl like that was made so odd in the head."

The topics switched after that and after another hour passed he headed back home, now knowing her name but feeling uneasy about her situation, an eerie similarity to his own albeit different too.

He went to bed early that night, pretending to be sociable taxed him emotionally, and he drifted off thinking about her clenched fists and wild eyes, followed by more nightmares of him and Christine.

She was not there in their usual spot the next day or the following three days after and he wondered if she were somehow angry with him.

It actually bothered him even though he told himself he wouldn't get attached. Well, he always was bad at lying to himself but mulling over her situation meant he wasn’t thinking about Christine as much.

He stared at the carved angel which he kept in his library now and perhaps it was pure luck when his eyes darted over to the titles in his collection of books where one title stood out. He leapt up and pulled the book down, scanning it quickly, confirming his sudden suspicion. He let out a small laugh, she wasn't simple at all, she had been speaking to him in the language of flowers.

He flipped through the pages, searching for her messages that she had been giving him. Sycamores meant curiosity, she had been curious about him. The white clovers meant Think of Me and he realized she must have heard him play it at times. Spiderwort meant momentary happiness and he realized she liked his music.

The carnations were literally yes or no and the marigolds and wormwood he found when they first met was her personal message of isolation. The bouquet of garden daisies she had given him when he had tried to return the wooden angel literally meant “I share your sentiments”, she was telling him that she shared his feelings of isolation and sympathized with it.

He sat back in his seat at the revelation that she had been speaking to him this entire time, he wondered if her family knew this was how she spoke but quickly dismissed the notion when he remembered how they talked to her.

He spent that night absorbing and memorizing the book and was already formulating what to do for tomorrow. He just hoped she would appear this time.

When the time did come, he was pleased to see her once more on her perch although instead of working on her flowers, she was rocking back in forth in her seat, eyes closed as if to block out the world around her.

“Lilian?”

She opened her eyes to a single purple hyacinth that he held to her. She stared at it for a moment as all rocking ceased. There was a moment of deafening silence as he waited to see if she would accept his apology, before the largest smile broke out across her face, so bright it was almost blinding.

She took it from him and for a brief moment her eyes purposely met his before darting back down and he knew he just experienced something infinitely rare.

She got up, spinning and twirling with her flower as her joy could not be contained and he realized he might be the first person to understand her way of speaking. He stared in slight wonder, he couldn’t remember if he had ever made anyone smile like that before, Christine had sometimes smiled for his words but rarely for his actions.

After a moment more of this, she finally calmed down and quickly picked up blue paper sheets from the stack she always brought with her, sitting in her usual spot as she deftly created flowers from practically nothing.

He watched in rapt fascination as she thrummed from excitement and within minutes she had created a small bouquet of blue periwinkles and offered it to him.

He blinked and gently took them from her, she was offering him friendship. He… couldn’t say he ever had a friend before; Christine had been his protégé and object of his affection, not his friend.

He didn’t know how to respond, in all honesty he was baffled. All his life he had been treated as lesser, a freak of nature who should have been drowned at birth, leading to his decades of crippling isolation and desperation for companionship which of course lead to him killing his relationship with Christine from said desperation.

He didn’t know how to be someone’s friend.

He murders all that’s good.

He took a step back and her smile died a little.

He didn’t say anything and her smile turned sad with a quiet resignation, as if telling him she too was used to being friendless and was resigned to his refusal. He remembered her family’s actions toward her and how they spoke about her, a creature to be pitied.

He knew what that sense of isolation does to a person (really, he was a cautionary tale on the result of it) and perhaps it is with this common ground between them that he can learn how to be a friend.

His next words had her give him a curious look, “Do you play any music?”

She handed him her yellow carnation, the carnations being something she kept on her at all times, the yellow meaning ‘no’.

He smiled a bit mysteriously, like a child with a secret, “Would you like to learn?”

She looked surprised and her hand went to her throat, causing him to shake his head, “I was thinking the piano might be something you’d be suited for, your fingers are already dexterous and flexible. It’ll leave less splinters and papercuts too.” He said dryly.

She looked down at her fingers and flexed them, as if she didn’t even realize she had cuts.

Her language was soft and he had a sudden desire for everyone to hear her, if they wouldn’t listen to her flowers then he would lend her his music.

“Having no voice doesn’t mean you have to be voiceless.”

She made eye contact at that and for a moment he actually thought he saw tears form before he felt another carnation placed in his hands. This time he broke eye contact to look down to see that it was red, yes.

He smiled as he clutched it, “Excellent.” Now to convince Lady Hyde. “Tomorrow I will ask your grandmother if I can tutor you.”

And if she says no… well, he’ll find a way.

Lilian looked up at him (well his chin) and gave him a small smile, squeezing his hand with her carnation before pulling back to head back home. She turned to give him one last wave leaving him feeling a sense of excitement in a way he hadn’t felt since he first met Christine.

#Phantom of the Opera #poto #phanfic #god I'm nervous