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#anti ninon
kuningannasansa · 4 years
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A musketeers rewatch (that nobody asked for) 1x07
Here we go, my least favorite episode of the whole show excluding season three which I didn’t watch! If you have even a passing fondness for Ninon, I suggest you look away :)
We start with a royal procession through the crowd and there are quite a lot of waving people there. If they can fill the streets with extras for scenes like that, why can those same extras not be used for the court scenes?
Priest whose name I have forgotten is being robbed. The musketeers rush in to help. 
Meanwhile, a crazy girl tries to get close to the queen and ends up being ran over by her carriage. If this is meant to be some Emily Davison analogy, it sucks!
The dead lunatic’s name is Therese and she wanted to give the Queen a note. Constance takes it and says “Fleur, what does this mean?” Am I supposed to take from that that she cannot read for herself? Cause a merchant’s wife definitely, definitely would know how to do that. 
Fleur is nowhere to be seen, however.
“This is an age of glorious discovery!” says Ninon. “Galileo observes the moons of Jupiter... But what is the role of women in this age of wonder?” - well, gee, i don’t know Ninon. Maybe you could have mentioned some female scientists of the era in addition to Galileo? Catherine de Parthenay, anyone? Or Marie Fouquet? Hell, Ninon de l'Enclos, my atheist queen, for whom this Ninon is doubtless named, was a notable woman in her own right! But no, we have to make women look more oppressed than they actually were to make this waste of space look more awesome. 
“My women of Paris, seek your own enlightenment!” - wrong era!
Therese, an orphan from a humble background, wanted to hand a petition to the queen about women’s education.  
“If she was an illiterate orphan she could not have written this. It is misguided but not unintelligent.” - says Richelieu. And indeed he turns out to be right. She didn’t write it. Which is fucking bizarre. 
Anne asks him if he doesn’t favor women’s education and he replies: “I admire learning wherever it is to be found, but this amounts to an attack on the authority of church and state.” Any French history buff know what the actual Richelieu’s thought of women’s education? @tatzelwyrm​? I’m gonna start a biography on him soon, but not until I’m done with this rewatch.
Ninon barges in past the guards and yells “stay out of my way, I will address the King!”. I’m sure this is meant to make her look badass, but she just comes across like a complete idiot who doesn’t understand that she would do better to follow court protocol, no matter how much she might dislike it, if she wants to achieve her goals.    
Luckily for her she’s pretty, so the king doesn’t mind.
“I want to know why this tragedy happened. If your guards are to blame I want them punished.” And then she gives Treville a dirty look! How dare you, you waste of skin and oxygen! Don’t you dare blame Treville for this mess! 
“You knew this lunatic?” - lmao, Richelieu!
Therese was the daughter of Ninon’s servant whom Ninon decided to educate. So she was educated, she COULD have written the petition herself. But she did not. Because when Richelieu says “she wrote this and was killed trying to give it to the Queen” Ninon screeches: “Don’t be ridiculous! She didn’t write it, I did!” And I mean, who exactly is looking down on servant girls here and saying it’s ridiculous to expect them to write something intelligent. It’s not Richelieu. 
But more importantly, WHY?? If Ninon wrote it, why couldn’t she hand it to the Queen? Why did this poor girl have to die? This is so, so stupid! I mean, okay, maybe Therese heard Ninon speak well of the queen and got the idea to hand her the petition on her own, without being told by Ninon to do so. But why did she have it in the first place, if it’s Ninon’s petition?
“Apparently the Comtesse de Laroque believes herself above the normal laws and conventions of society.” ´- well that’s an understatement.  
“The treasury is bankrupt and the country needs a new navy. Ninon has the wealth to provide it.” And that is why Richelieu sends Milady into the salon to find something to use against her. These two are so good in this, I love their scenes together! Pity about the rest of the episode. 
Richelieu is now freaking out about lesbians and Milady is just like “really, dude? really?”. I love her!
“Ninon must pay up or face destruction, I want every last penny from her!” - so it was not his intention to kill her, just to get the money. Interesting.
Fleur’s father is Bonacieux’s cousin. I love that, the commoners having family connections and support circles of their own.
The robbed priest is called Luca! Richelieu is “delighted to see him”, apparently, cause they’re old friends. And Louis isn’t, because he wrote a pamphlet arguing that Kings should bow down to the Pope’s authority. 
“We can’t have a comtesse abducting young women and spiriting them away to her boudoir!” - Oh, Richelieu! Do calm down.
It’s odd watching Richelieu try to use homosexuality to take Ninon down while shipping Trevilieu thou. 
Athos barges into Ninon’s salon, demanding to know where Fleur is and Milady very discreetly hides behind a pillar. Lol! 
And Ninon starts hitting on Athos immediately. She tells him that she’s often thought he’s handsome but the “melancholy aspect” to his looks is “probably only mental vacancy”. Who taught you how to flirt? Why must you be so abrasive and confrontational all the time? Like really, I get she’s meant to be a Strong Woman Who Don’t Take No Shit TM, but she just comes across like a loudmouth. 
Athos likes it thou!
“Forgive our intrusion-” “I will not forgive it!” - Jesus Ninon, it’s just a figure of speech, a polite gesture. People use these in conversation sometimes. She’s so unnecessarily rude smh.
Aramis says he “gladly acknowledges the superiority of the female sex” and I throw up in my mouth a little. That’s not feminism, that’s slimy!
D’artagnan: “If that wasn’t flirting, I don’t know what is.”  Porthos: “Rubbish! She can’t stand him.”  Aramis: “One day I’ll sit down and explain women to you.” - cause we’re all the same and no means yes, right writers?
Luca: “His holiness is concerned about the direction of French foreign policy.” Richelieu: “Well the pope is Spain’s performing monkey.” - he really is so funny! I know I keep saying that, but he is!
Also, YAY politics! Intelligent dialogue! I love this scene so much!
“In matters of religion I defer to Rome, in all else I am my country’s servant” - lol, Richelieu inventing the separation of church and state
Luca: “Is this your final word on the subject?” Richelieu: “It is.” - and that right there is where Luca decides to kill him. The actor plays it really well, knowing it’s coming I can see the briefest moment of regret in his eyes, but without hindsight I wouldn’t notice anything. And he gives Richelieu the poisoned gift. 
Also, isn't it the same guy who plays Margaret’s new man in Harlots? 
Athos says that Therese and Fleur were so far below Ninon in status that they were not in a position to make choices of their own free will. Which is fuckign stupid. But Ninon saying that she views all women as equal regardless of their birth is equally moronic. I mean, sure, they should be, but in reality they’re not and ignoring that doesn’t help anyone. And Athos does point out that Ninon’s money and position gives her certain privileges, but it sits wrong coming from him and not from Porthos or Milady or Constance, who are from poor/less wealthy backgrounds. That said, this is still one of the few semi intelligent scenes in this whole episode, so whatever. At least someone said it. 
Now she kisses him and invites him to dine! And he just looks sad.
Luca tells Richelieu to “deal with” Ninon “firmly”, cause the Pope is dying and Richelieu could be the next Pope if he shows himself a strong defender of the church against “heresy”. What heresy thou? Women learning to read? Lol, that’s so cartoonishly evil and ahistorical, but whatever. This at least explains where Richelieu’s desire to have her burned came from.
Richelieu: “I wouldn’t go so far as to call her a heretic.” Luca: “A woman who openly defies God's laws, what other word is there?” - what laws thou? what has she done, other than hold some salon meetings, as every other noblewoman was doing at the time?
Richelieu promises to consider his options and Luca tells him to pray to the poisoned bone for guidance, lol.
This right here is Richelieu letting personal feelings cloud his judgement, thou! Which he said he has learned no to do. But he allows himself to be carried away with visions of becoming Pope and honestly I don’t see how he can possibly believe that could happen with his foreign policy and how hated he is by the Vatican, as stated in this very scene.  
Milady and Ninon! I love that scene! Ninon clearly thinks she’s super special because she “takes the initiative” by kissing men instead of waiting to be kissed. She’s so damn smug about it! And Milady is just like “oh I could never be so bold” and I swear I can hear her laughing internally! 
And she very cleverly charms Fleur’s location out of Ninon!
Athos’s idea of a first date is the morgue. Charming.
Athos saying that Ninon is responsible for what happened to Therese because she gave a lowborn girl an education doesn’t sit well with me. Classist ass! But she is responsible for not thinking of Therese beyond how daring and adventurous and fun and positively scandalous it would be to educate a servant girl and then not bothering to care for her when she got bored. Cause if she had done, Therese could have come to her with her plan and she could have prevented her death. Because yes, regardless of her education, her background predisposed Therese to be naive about the King and Queen and how petitions work. Where was Ninon in all this, when a girl under her charge decided to do this foolish thing that cost her her life? Because if you want to be someone’s teacher you do have a duty of care. In short, Ninon is a classist ass as well! They’re perfect for each other!
So Luca’s stolen bag is in the morgue with the body of the thief who stole it. And Athos promises to send for it in the morning. I know it’s CSI: Musketeers and all, but why was it not delivered to Luca the moment it was found, lol? He’s a pretty important guest at the palace and it’s his property. 
Athos agrees with Ninon that marriage is a curse. LOL!
Ninon’s reason for not marrying is that she does not want a husband to own her wealth and body. Makes sense and that’s why many independently wealthy women chose to stay unmarried. Just pointing out the few things that make sense.
“You are a rebellious woman” - oh good, we managed to squeeze the title of the episode into the dialogue! 
Aramis just tossed a red guard out of Ninon’s house. Can’t tell if he’s dead or not, but certainly unconscious. 
There’s fighting. The red guards have swords, the musketeers have books. Athos screams “where is your authority for this!?!” - well, the Cardinal, I’d assume, since they are his guards. Oh bear of very little brain!
Fleur and some other runaway girls are found sleeping in a secret chamber and Ninon is arrested for abducting them.
Athos is all like “you said she wasn’t here” and Ninon tries to explain that Fleur did not want to be found and begs “make them stop” to which Athos replies “sorry, I can’t”, his voice and face making it very clear that he doesn’t want to. Because a woman lied to him! This is the worst crime! Really Ninon is lucky she’s being arrested right now, otherwise she’d end up swinging from a tree.
“Four young women! In their nightwear! I can only speculate as to the horrors they have endured!” - Richelieu really has a bee in his bonnet about lesbians. The days before p*rnhub must have been hard for a catholic cardinal. 
Luca is even worse thou! “Your majesty is joking but Satan is real! And his female familiars are everywhere amongst us.” Jesus christ guys, calm down! Have a wank or something!
“She had the girls, she lied, she brought her fate on herself.” - Oh shut up Athos! Not everything is about you and your relationship issues! As Aramis points out. Thank you, Aramis! And I never believed I’d ever say that.
Ninon/Aramis  > > > > > > > > > > Ninon/Athos
Aramis gives Ninon the cross Anne gave him. This is quite sweet!
“It’s not so easy when you don’t have money” Constance says and she is right. But it’s like the show is saying that the only way women can be independant is if they are independently wealthy like Ninon. But that’s not really true, Fleur could get a job such as a seamstress or pharmacist or grain merchant or actress or even as a secretary now that she knows latin and greek thanks to Ninon. Women did have jobs in 17th century France and even belonged to guilds etc. Not saying that Fleur would not be more financially secure still with a husband, but if she really doesn’t want that she has options and I don’t like how this supposed “feminist” episode constantly erases women’s actual history. 
Fleur’s father rages “what does she need an education for? She’ll be a seamstress until she’s married and then she’ll be a dutiful wife and mother.” But if he is Bonacieux’s cousin then they are in the same social class, that is to say, the merchant class. And merchant women had to keep their husbands’ shops when their husbands were away. They needed to know how to read and write and do sums. They needed this to be an attractive marriage prospect to a husband of their own social class! 
And the father wants to hit Fleur and D’artagnan all heroically threatens him. How boring!
Richelieu: “Many of our young women are educated. It’s not something we’re ashamed of.” Fleur: “Not just embroidery and sewing.”  Me: “WELL OF COURSE NOT!!!”
Then Fleur says Ninon taught them the “secrets of our bodies” and Richelieu is a hound on the scent!
“Be quiet or you’ll be gagged!” - Again Armand, this is neither the time nor the place to indulge your kinks. 
ENTER MILADY! 
She does such a brilliant job of her testimony! This is again her lying about rape and I talked about before why that is bad, but in this case I don’t mind cause it’s for state reasons and doesn’t in any way invalidate her own story the way the thing with D’artagnan does.
Athos completely LOSES HIS SHIT!! Not doing the defence any good there, buddy!
The look she gives him as she walks out is priceless!
Queen Anne to the rescue, bringing clemency from Louis! Clever girl, must have manipulated it out of him! Season 1 Anne was intelligent.
And Ninon ruins it by saying: “I have never consorted with the devil until this moment. I am looking at him.” To which Richelieu replies: “Condemned from her own mouth.” As any person with half a brain would. Jesus christ Ninon, you should have been gagged! For your own safety! 
And then Richelieu stops breathing! And we get Treville’s reaction to it, thank you camera people! Thou Treville mostly just looks confused, like “what is that drama queen doing now?” 
Now he’s twitching! And I’m sorry but it looks hilarious.
Aramis carries him to bed on his back and puts a hand over his mouth. I’m not sure that helps with the breathing issues... 
Louis pushes Aramis out of the way and cries “please don’t die! please don’t die!” aawwwwwwwwwww!
Aramis really saves his life here, huh.
Anne is briefly jealous about the cross and asks Aramis if Ninon is his lover. Lol! She never expected him to stalk her for the rest of her life, she fully expected him to keep lovers.  
Luca: “Satan turned his blood to acid at her command!” Porthos: “We’ll add Satan to the list of suspects.”
Fleur: “You think I poisoned him?” Constance: “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard even by musketeer standards.” - THANK YOU CONSTANCE!
Fleur is to be married to a 40 year old butcher. Poor girl!
“Was it you?” - LOL!
“Half the doctors say you’re doomed, the other half claim you’ll make a full recovery. There’s a lot of professional pride at stake.” - Milady is very funny too! But I’ve always known that! 
“Whatever happens to me, I want you to extract this confession from Ninon.” - translation: it doesn’t matter if I die, the main thing is that France gets that navy. For France, always. I’m amazed by how much he trusts Milady here thou.
Milady thinks the kneebone of St. Anthony is gross and “as much use as the doctors”. Bless her!
Constance very sweetly talks Fleur’s father out of forcing her to marry. Go Constance!
Ninon: “There is nothing worse than a woman who betrays her own sex” Milady: “I can think of a few things, but let’s not argue.” - THIS!! This is my favorite part of this whole miserable episode, because yes, with her background she can think of things Ninon couldn’t possibly imagine. It’s also a fuck you to that “don’t encourage girl on girl hate” line terfs and white feminists always hide behind when they get called out on their bullshit, though this wasn’t the point here. I love how she doesn’t even explain, too. Let’s not argue, cause what’s the point. You’ll never get it.
I do want to stress that Ninon is not wrong for educating other women and she has been unjustly condemned (althou I would argue that she might not have drawn Richelieu’s ire if she went about it in a more subtle, less smug way, for the safety of the girls she teaches if not for her own). But Milady is employed by the First Minister of France and is doing her job here, a job which she depends upon for her own independence and safety. As she says, Ninon didn’t do anything to her, she’s just a victim of circumstance. 
“If you don’t confess, the women of your salon will burn in your place. Surely you wish to save the lives of your accomplices in Satan?” - Milady does a good job of selling it, but if you think about it, that makes no sense. These women have already been publicly proclaimed Ninon’s victims. And if they have legal trouble with burning her alone, how would they manage a whole bunch of them, most of whom are also high ranking noblewomen?
Ninon falls for it thou. Fail!
Richelieu orders Ninon burned and Milady says that the Queen and King won’t like it. Richelieu replies that: “she’s irrelevant and a new navy will soothe his dismay.” He’s really underestimating season 1 Anne here. But season 2 will prove him right, sadly.
“The kingdom of heaven is a dream. Our only life is here.” - Go Milady!
Richelieu says he won’t burn her for heresy but to be careful cause “one day someone else might” and idk, but it comes across like pretty friendly advice, considering what he’s currently doing with Ninon. 
Now he worries he might go to hell! And Milady says he’s already there, lmaoo! I LOVE THIS SCENE!!
They go to the morgue to retrieve Luca’s bag and discover that the thief was poisoned in the same manner as the Cardinal. Thus the plot is uncovered.
“Open his mouth!” “You open his mouth!”
Luca kills a red guard and is about to kill Richelieu (who fights him with a fork!) when the musketeers burst in. And Richelieu curses them for being late!
Richelieu had apparently worked out that it was Luca who was trying to kill him at some point during the night. No idea how. 
Athos begs for Ninon’s life while the pire is already burning. And Richelieu agrees cause burning her is all very “dark ages”, like he said to begin with. He says he’s not a cruel man, just a practical one. But practicality sometimes requires cruelty. He’s not a sadist thou, that’s what he meant and that’s true. 
Athos drags Ninon off the burning pire. So the great feminist character got duped by Milady and then had to be rescued by her love interest. So good, much feminist. 
“As far as the world is concerned, Comtesse Ninon de Laroque died on that pire today.” Richelieu takes her lands, her property and her money and sends her into exile. Then he threatens to execute her if she ever tells anyone the truth of what happened.
“My voice will never be silenced, but I promise you will never hear it.” - the stupidest line of the whole episode and that’s saying something. Seriously, what does this mean? Your voice was silenced! Richelieu got your wealth which you could have used to educate more women. You were completely defeated. Like really, who is the idiot who wrote this? And what made them think this is in any way empowering or even just a satisfactory conclusion to Ninon’s acr?? Ughhhh!!
I do love Richelieu and Milady getting a rare victory thou! 
“Nothing, no person, no nation, no god will stand in my way.” - HOT!
Aramis gets his cross back lol. Otherwise it would have burned. 
Lmao, Richelieu sends Luca’s ashes to rome with a threat to the Pope.
And Capaldi pronounces “Richelieu” in a very strange way. 
Milady: “You do realise you’ll never be Pope?” Richelieu: “It’s an Italian club and largely a clerical position. I prefer something with a little more influence.” - L! O! L!
Ninon plans to open a school for poor girls and be a teacher. Well, idk, I hope she does a better job of it than she did with Therese.
Athos asks Ninon if “Madame de la Chapelle” ever told her anything about herself. And Ninon is like “so you did know her after all?” and he says “in another life” and she warns him to be careful because she has the cardinal’s protection so “a blow against her is a blow against him” and idk, does she realize that Milady was Athos’s wife here? Is that how I’m supposed to read it? He did tell her before that he used to be married.
Then she kisses him and tells him she could have loved a man like him. And she’s just way more into him than he is into her.
Lmaooo, Fleur is not forced to marry and can continue with her education and she’s “sure” that the woman who convinced her father was Ninon. And Constance doesn’t correct her and doesn’t even want the credit, but I’m mad lol, as if Ninon even remembers you exist Fleur!
D’artagnan gives Constance the credit, at least! And then comes his declaration of love, which is actually very sweet and I really liked them together in season 1! Constance is so beautiful in this scene too! It’s very well lit and she’s wearing that lovely dress!
Aaaaand we fade to black on some PG13 kissing and groping! Sorry, this was very long, but there was a lot to complain about.
In conclusion, awful! Like, the thing that bothers me the most is that this token girl power episode would not even have been radical in 1970, never mind today. The message is simply that women should have an education, which no sane person today would disagree with. It’s very safe and bland. And erases women’s real history in the process. It’s almost as if these male writers are congratulating themselves “weren’t things ever so bad Back Then, we are so much more progressive now”, instead of doing the truly radical thing and showing women’s real history, showing women in positions of power running their literary salons and not getting burned for it, showing women as independent businesswomen with an education! Why not give Bonacieux a female rival in the cloth business? Why not go deeper than “women are human beings” and give the episode a truly radical message that still resonates today. After all, we might be ever so educated now but it’s not like women have achieved equality. More on that in this old post: https://kuningannasansa.tumblr.com/post/126434697304/the-problem-of-ninon 
Anyway, I really hope the next episode will be better! 
Red Guards killed: 1 or 2, impossible to really tell
Ladies killed: Therese
Best Dressed: Ninon. She did have some pretty dresses. 
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vgriffindor · 3 years
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aMusketeer Fanfic Master Post
Calling all Musketeers! We’re all in need of a serious dose of our favourites, amirite? I’ve seen a few queries floating around lately asking for some great Muskie fanfic recommendations. I thought I’d do 20 weekly posts, each with a different theme, and ask for your help! There are a ton of great Muskie fics out there, let’s help each other discover them.
How this works: For each theme, please give me your TOP recommendation. It can be a one-shot or multiple chapters, complete or still a WIP, your own or some one else’s, just shout about that one fic that fits the theme and you want people to READ! Reblog to spread the word, with your recommendation and tag me @vgriffindor, or DM your recommendation so that I can post it! I’ll keep each theme as a pinned post up/keep adding to it for the entire week.
Week #2: AUs
It sure is fun to place these four in a different world, and see how they react! Whether it’s the quiet heaven of a bookstore, the flirty, caffeinated vibes of a coffee shop, the perfume of a flower shop, the hard-bitten reality of a detective bureau, or just about anything else you can think of, the boys seem to handle whatever universe we throw at them with their trademark personalities and humour intact.
Midsomer Musketeers by Suzie_Shooter: Exactly what you think and want this to be, when you combine the Musketeers and Midsomer Murders. 
Fraternité et Égalité by BazinMousqueton: Clever, funny, sexy and gorgeously written modern AU in an architectural firm’s office. Slash, but not explicit, almost everyone is bi, and the whole thing is perfection.
(Below is all due to the hard work and enthusiastic response from @animanightmate! Thank you, you are awesome!)
E: yeah, you got me by cherryfeather - modern au graduation party oone-shot with a game of spin the bottle that gets angsty with forthcoming farewells and then very fulfilling indeed.
T: Chapter 10 of the collection of unrelated shorts (very short) His Smile Me Draws, His Frown Drives Me Away by akathecentimetre is entitled  In Goodly Colors Gloriously Arrayed and is a modern au where the lads are working for the Sûreté in Paris (though it’s never confirmed precisely as what) and it’s basically a series of three (the original Inseparables) character studies as they get used to being Responsible Adults. No filth... well, apart from Aramis’s feet...
G: Fancy is a very short modern au short by AnathemaDevice about the cats owned by (or owning) the various season three characters. Includes one of the most beautiful word-sketches of Sylvie I’ve yet read.
E: Mis Adventures by Doom Canary is an utterly filthy, modern British police au short featuring a trans male character that blew my mind in the best ways. If there’s a plot, I blinked and missed it.
T: born like a vapor by mellyflori is - and I can’t believe I’m typing this - a modern au where two of the Four are genies (yep, you read that correctly). It is utterly, unforgettably gorgeous, and just works. Angsty and charming, and has one of the most elegant solutions I’ve seen for “what happens with Constance?” The world-building is done so well it’s almost seamless, and I’m weak for that kind of thing.
T: Brand New Start is a short modern office au by potentiality_26 from Constance’s perspective and is melancholy, sweet, and vivid. OT3 but nothing graphic.
E: One in Ten Thousand by breathtaken is a novel-length modern soul bonds au that, as usual with her, subverts the trope and delves deep into the psyche of an intensely depressed Athos who was in no way prepared to meet his soulmate. It’s hard going at times, but utterly beautiful and very hot.
M: my heart upon my sleeve by cherryfeather is a novel-length modern Shakespearean actors au and I avoided it for ages because the synopsis was written in a deliberately tabloid style and I assumed the whole thing was like that. It is not - it is the most elegant, eloquent, literally tear-tugging bit of angst and mutual pining I’ve ever encountered, and takes in: hurt/comfort, Only One Bed, and friends-to-lovers tropes along the way. Basically, if they were a character in the first two seasons of the original, she finds a place for them in this gorgeous work.
E: The Humbling River (author unknown) is the only A/B/O fic that I will ever recommend, ever. This short is canon era, but I guess it still counts as au? I fell into it accidentally, but it was written so well that I didn’t care about the premise.
E: Une histoire de bleu by ceeturnalia is long. A 100k word modern day au where the lads are security specialists for a private firm in Paris. It is vividly stark and lushly compassionate in one go, and also explores a developing D/s relationship in great detail, so if that’s not your bag, that’s the main core of the story. And it’s handled so well that I have zero hesitation in recommending it, even though that in itself is not really my thing. It’s just so very, very good and, even at that length, still manages to be very tightly written.
M: Death in Waiting by Suzie_shooter is your actual 1920s country house murder mystery with all our favs (seasons 1 and 2 anyway) in a short-novel-length interbellum piece of Upstairs-Downstairs only of course there’s lots of forbidden sex all over the place, and a genuinely gasp-inducing (at least in me) set of reveals.
M: Still Waters by evilmaniclaugh is a modern office au with a twist. It’s porn with a plot (and a great deal of angst), and is startlingly hilarious in places (for good reasons, I promise).
M: Gentlemen of the Road by Suzie_shooter is a highwayman au set, from my vague enough understanding of the descriptions, about 100 years or so after the canon era. As usual for S_s, it’s Athos/Porthos pairing, from the perspective of Porthos, and I keep coming back to it, for the humour, the story, and the sex. Bonus points for Ninon and Rochefort showing up, and our brief glimpses of d’Artagnan being an utter little shit.
M: Mise en place by breathtaken is a short series featuring season 3 characters as chefs. And it’s stunningly beautiful, intimately told from a conflicted Constance’s perspective (something I’m utterly weak for) and I want there to be more because dammit - food and polyamory and found family and so many of my favourite things and I wish she was going to write more and aaaaah. Anyway, everyone is bi and kinky and I am so there for that...
I have so many of these, but I’m going to leave it here while I retain any shred of sanity or dignity, and finish by telling you about my own only (so far) modern au, entitled Summoned (rated M), set in modern-day Cambridge, UK, complete with references to Brexit and climate change, and a detailed depiction of the Fitzwilliam Museum. The MacGuffin is a museum anti-heist. Or is it reincarnation? Or music? Or synaesthesia? WHO KNOWS?! Anyway, it’s 75k+ words of conversations, misunderstandings, music, musings, museum architecture, poetry, stolen kisses, awkward flirting, and confusing flashbacks. There is one extended explicit sex scene and the rest is more along the lines of innuendo and a great deal of heated kissing. And I wrote it in about fives weeks and am rather proud of it, actually.
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I was doing a bit more research about Pythagoras because I was interested in this man’s vendetta against beans after this lovely little back and forth I had with @redhoodparker and I thought y’all might think this is as absolutely bonkers as I did.
To recap. In Pliny the Elder’s Natural History of Grains, he mentions this:
“The bean has been condemned by Pythagoras; though, according to some, the reason for this denunciation was the belief which he entertained that the souls of the dead are closed in the bean”
Now here’s the thing, Pythagoras is an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher who for some reason (might’ve, accounts on this contradict) Really hated beans and I mean Really Hated them. Now, you might actually recognize his name from math class, as he is, of course, the a^2+b^2=c^2 man himself.
There is a legend (which comes from the writer Neanthes who told it later about Phythagoreans and possibly not about Phythagoras and may be about later anti-Pythagorean rebellions??? but we don’t really know for sure) reported by Diogenes Laëritus, a biographer of Greek philosophers, and Iambilchus, a Syrian Neoplatonist philosopher, concerning Pythagoras’s death.
According to these accounts, followers of Chloe and Ninon attached Pythagoras and his followers, during one of their meetings. Pythagoras almost managed to escape, but he came to a bean field and refused to run through it, since doing so would supposedly violate his teachings, so he was stopped and killed.
This man supposedly hated beans so much that he was killed because of it. That’s gotta be one of the weirdest deaths I’ve heard of in a while. This man died because he wouldn’t cross a bean field. What a way to go.
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snow-and-resin · 5 years
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Pro bjd artists day by Nymrah Via Flickr: I am a few days late, due to stuff to cooperating, but here I am. I am very anti recast, I'm pretty sure anyone who follows me knows this. This year I chose my Lillycat dolls to be features, because I have amassed quite a few of them and most of them have a lil story of how I got them.
One of the things that makes people buy recasts is because they want instant gratification. I think we all do to some extent. But this is a hobby of patience. Sometimes you wait 7 months for a body (my purple Lyse) and sometimes you bide your time and wait til that certain one pops up on the secondhand market (my OOAK colored Ombre).
If you can't make enough money right away, there's things like layaway (my Kitty Jolie and Deavon were bought straight from Lillycat using layaway) and sometimes you just find a good deal (Ninon and Millie Choupie were secondhand for reasonable prices).
And last but not least, one of the arguments I see is that people want a doll in a color that doesn't exist. Well, I wanted a black Lyse after seeing MisMantis dye hers black and that's how I got a black Lyse. There are people in the hobby that can help you achieve your dream doll. We have so many creative spirits.
You should not cut corners at the expense of others. If you are opposed to spending money or opposed to waiting, this hobby isn't the right hobby for you.
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