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smolbeandrabbles · 4 years

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How Did You Love - George VI & Reader (Darkest Hour)

100 Sentence Prompt Request

Here’s a concept. I’m gonna use an “&” now to denote something more platonic 😁

@mandy23b @wltz-bby @happyskywhale #MendoTagSquad

George VI + 5, 18 & 31 - “I’m not here to make friends.” / “What’s the matter, sweetie?” / “I haven’t slept in ages.” Requested by @purebloodwitch

Author’s Note: This makes it 30 Mendos with readers anyway. Is that crazy-!? It feels crazy! The girl who started this way on back with Danny in January 2019 had no idea she’d end up here... no idea what she was in for! 😁 And now she has all of you, too! Reasons it’s not “x” reader? Simple, I feel kinda uncomfortable doing that because he was a real person - and Y’know, being from the UK myself he’s the father of the Queen - it wouldn’t have felt right. But I did want to write this one, so here’s some platonic George! 😊 How Did You Love - Shinedown

Disclaimer: ...Uh. Well I guess I didn’t make up History / Darkest Hour has nothing to do with me / Lyrics not mine / gifs not mine - the usual stuff! For fact, I did some research about Royal Assistants, and some of them have been female...

Premise: It’s getting late in the evening, and the King is still working. You have just been given the unenviable task of trying to get him to retire to bed.

Words: 2099

Warnings: N/A

____ You can have a sound of the thousand voices calling your name You can have the light of the world blind you, bath you in grace But I don't see so easily what you hold in your hands 'Cause castles crumble, kingdoms fall and turn into sand You can be an angel of mercy or give in to hate You can try to buy it just like it every other careless mistake How do you justify I'm mystified by the ways of your heart With a million lies the truth will rise to tear you apart This ain't no cross to bury We are the judge and jury, we are the judge and jury No one gets out alive, every day is do or die The one thing you leave behind Is how did you love, how did you love? It's not what you believe those prayers will make you bleed But while you're on your knees How did you love, how did you love?

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It was getting pretty late when Elizabeth sent you to him. You had just about finished up your own work for the day, but you were more than happy to oblige her request; she couldn’t have seen so much of her husband these days. Especially not these days. You made your way through the Palace swiftly to find the King sitting at his desk tapping his pen against paper, deep in thought. You knocked politely on the door, rousing him, and when his eyes locked on you he narrowed them; “Yes?” “Sir, I have been sent by your wife to remind you that it’s getting late, and perhaps you aught to think about getting some rest.” He sighed, “Of course you have.” Then looked around himself wearily; “Would that I could, I have much to attend to.” You crossed the room, “Well, I don’t have to go home quite yet, is there anything I can help with?” Anything to do what you’d actually been asked to (You were slightly more scared of Elizabeth than you were him, too). You were the assistant secretary to the Sovereign, and you had never loved a job more than this one – it was just never a job you’d expected to have. For obvious reasons. George was never meant to be King. He pushed out his chair, and rifled through his desk before handing you a stack of papers; “I’m going to have to send a lot of notices out first thing tomorrow. Would you make sure these are all sorted and filed correctly.” “Yes Sir.” He glanced to the window, “I suppose we should be closing all the curtains at this late hour also… It shouldn’t be long before we’re issued a black out warning, I would think.” George motioned to stand, “No, it’s okay, I can do it… I shall need to collect envelopes from my office for these anyway…” You stacked the paper on a second table and turned back to him, “…Would you like anything else, Sir?” “I’m sure I can find more for you to do if need be.” He gave a nod, to dismiss you for now, and you backed out of the room. Making your way quickly to your usual office, you realised you wouldn’t be leaving any time soon – gathering a collection of envelopes you made your way back to him, checking your watch. You could write quick and still be neat, so you could have all of this done before midnight. Placing them down you drew the curtains, lingering for a second to stare at the moon. You would never get tired of the view from here either… Crossing back, he held out another paper to you. “Addresses…” he explained “You’ll need them.” You took it gently from him, “…Thank you.” You were about half way through before George made another sound; “Y/N?” “Yes Sir?” “Just how long have you been in my service?” You looked across to your King, head tipped – he was still concentrating hard on the paper in front of him. “Uh…” You only gave the illusion of having to think hard about it, “Eight years?” “Eight years.” He blew out a breath, “Fancy still having to address all my letters after eight years.” “I do enjoy my job, Sir.” You smiled gently, glad to see that he did also, before turning to you, eyebrow raised, “Is that so?” “Yes Sir. But, I’m not here to make friends.” He couldn’t help but laugh, “Friends? I’m simply passing the time of day.” “Evening.” You reminded him, “Late evening. Elizabeth is possibly not best pleased with me helping you and not forcing you to bed.” “You needn’t worry about her; I shall certainly take the blame.” Although you were only half joking about being friends with him – there was a certainly level of friendship to be gained from being in someone’s service for the best part of eight years. “I certainly must worry about her!” You possibly did more for the Queen than you did him these days, and reminding yourself that she did keep him in check meant a lot could be said about what you would face should you fail here. Still, you knew how much Elizabeth worried for him, and you worried for him too. The King would run himself into the ground if he kept going the way he had been – and his health wasn’t the best as it was. You didn’t want to fail here. He continued to watch you fold and seal letters, and you thought that getting distracted may well have been half the problem; “I suppose really you should like to return home.” “Not necessarily, Sir. If I have work to do – that is certainly paramount.” “You have someone to return to, yes?” You bit your lips together, raising your gaze to him again and blinked a few times, shaking your head; “No, Sir.” “Oh?” “He, uh…” Although even in the low lighting, George could see the tears smarting your eyes; “Oh. I see, I’m… I’m sorry.” “It’s not your fault.” You rubbed your eyes, “I’m sorry, Sir.” “You needn’t apologise to me. I have upset you.” He sighed gently, “May I ask, your opinion on our Prime Minister?” You thought it was a strange jump, but logical. The thread of war ran through most conversations now. “You didn’t…” you hummed before answering his question, “I believe, perhaps if anyone will get us through this he will.” George nodded thoughtfully, “Do you believe that is the opinion of the country?” “I do, Sir. I certainly do.” “Thank you.” He gave a firm nod of agreement, and turned back to his paper – conversation over. But suddenly his deep thought became frantic scribbling – and it left you wondering exactly what you might have said, but you were grateful for it. Once you had finished your task, you thought he might let you go and accompany you out of the room. No such luck. “Ah, one more thing before you go – would you distribute the letters accordingly, make sure they are all ready for the morning?” “Of course.” You nodded, and then kicked yourself for not being stronger but wondered what exactly you were supposed to do. You may be able to gently coax him, but you couldn’t force the King to stop working and go to bed. After you’d placed them in all the correct pigeon holes for mail distribution, you were making your way back to him to say goodnight and froze. Coming down the stairs, wondering exactly where her husband was, was the Queen herself. “Elizabeth-!” Your voice was at least a little timid and you bowed your head, “My apologies – I tried but, he just won’t…” But she smiled gently, “I thought as much. I’ve come to collect him, thank you for trying. Oh dear, I hope he hasn’t had you working?” “Oh. I... enjoy it!” She tsked you, “Must I apologise on behalf of my husband now-!?” “No, he- I was happy to help – I thought it might get him to you sooner.” “Nonsense, you should be on the way home.” She touched your cheek gently, “Look what he’s doing to you! Don’t you worry, darling, I’ll handle this.” You couldn’t help but grimace a little as you watched her stalk towards his drawing room; you were going to get him in trouble, you could already tell. You followed close behind, ready to come to his aid if needs must. Elizabeth didn’t even need to knock, and as soon as she entered the room she sighed deeply; “What’s the matter, sweetie?” “Oh. Nothing more than usual.” He blustered, as she made her way to him, sitting on his desk. “Darling, come to bed. You cannot rule a Kingdom on as little sleep as you’ve been getting…” “Sleep? I haven’t slept in ages.” She ran a hand through his hair, “Well, shouldn’t that say it all? Come along. Come to bed.” “But I just need to-” She stopped him, taking his pen from his hand, “You don’t need to just anything… Besides, you’re running our staff into the ground as much as you are yourself. And you need them at their best, as much as the country need you at your best.” She smiled, “You need to set an example, my darling.” You felt embarrassed, and although you wanted to cover your face, you couldn’t look away from this. Watching the Queen be sweet but stern with George was a sight that was possibly a rarity to get to witness. And all of a sudden you found yourself overcome with a range of emotion; you placed your hand to your heart for a moment with a smile, and realised how much you were yearning - All I can wish for now is a love like this… George stood, and let her take his arm, “I suppose you are right.” “I am right.” She laughed gently, and leant up to kiss his cheek. And even your King couldn’t help but beam at that. You backed from the room again as they walked through and stood politely to one side as they continued their conversation. The way that they looked at each other like they couldn’t possibly have been more in love. From how she was holding his arm, to the way that he was smiling at her… You loved this family so much – eight years’ service may have been a long time, but it wouldn’t be enough. You hoped you got to be here for the rest of his reign. And you hoped to witness many more moments like this. Elizabeth paused their chatter, and turned to you with a brilliant smile and a slight bow of her head, making you bow yours politely in turn. “Thank you, Y/N. For attempting to get this stubborn man to bed. And for helping him, when he needs it the most.” “It’s my pleasure. Any time…” George was smiling too, though, “Extremely good work, Ms.L/N... but I want you here bright and early to finish up!” He was joking, of course and you could tell that by his amusement, but the Queen swatted his arm; “Leave the poor girl alone and let’s get to bed-!!! It’ll be tomorrow before you let her get home!” “In fact,” the King glanced at the first clock he could find, “She’s probably missed the last train. Y/N, perhaps you would like to stay in a guest room tonight?” Your heart caught in your chest for a moment, you were certainly honoured to even be asked such a thing “Oh, I-” “Yes.” Elizabeth agreed, “Stay. But don’t let him have you up too early now! I’ll keep an eye on him!” George chuckled, and you blushed again at their kindness, “I… I would like to accept your offer, that’s extremely generous of you.” “Ah, nonsense.” He smiled, “You’ve stayed with us before, no?” “Yes, but not here.” Elizabeth turned to him, “Don’t get any ideas that she will stay and work ridiculous hours for you now!” “Perish the thought!” The King smiled and then nodded to you, “Goodnight, Ms.Y/N. I shall see you tomorrow.” “Goodnight, Sir. Goodnight, Elizabeth.” She let go of his arm and embraced you, “Thank you. I know you’ll look after him well.” “Oh, you did the work…” You hugged her back, “…It is me who should be thanking you for letting me stay.” She shook her head to let you know you didn’t have to thank her, “Please, it’s our pleasure, and quite honestly-” Elizabeth looked back to her husband, “-my relief!” George coughed but didn’t offer retaliation, “You know you way to the guest wing?” You nodded, “I do, Sir.” “Good, see yourself to bed. And make sure you are well rested.” “I will, I promise!” You bowed before waving them off and watched them ascend the stairs together, the way she was quite clearly still chiding him for being up so late – but his gentle responses, and the way that they laughed together. You couldn’t help but stare after them and yearn once more for a relationship just like that, and eventually a marriage like they had. It was clear how much love and respect they had for each other – and right then, now more so than ever you were happy that they were the heads of your Monarchy. You watched them until they were out of sight, and couldn’t help but beam as you turned up the corridor to the guest rooms. They were both right of course – it was about time you got some sleep, after all, it sounded like you had another busy day in store. But it wasn’t something you would miss for the world.

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3/16

Thank you for reading! 🥰

#Listening to Henry's playlist to write this is... /interesting/#But it did get me through so I won't complain #Linzi Writes Requests #Linzi Writes #Smol Bean Drabbles #Darkest Hour #RIGHT! Now we have our official 30 Reader inserts!#31 Mendos!#WOOOO!#We got there-!#153 #Not sure if actually Elizabeth would be referred to as M'am?#I suppose so #Ahh well - we're going first name basis---!!#This is where the disconnect in my research comes-!#This is a Nolan song too... But I actually really like it for him and this fic.

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smartguyreviewed · 4 years

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2x2 - Working Guy

Originial air date: September 17, 1997

Did anyone have an actual job when they were teens? I remember how embarassing it was for me, a high schooler in the mid-aughts, to tote around resumes in my little manila folder and then be told to either apply online or have some snooty white asshole at Eddie Bauer all but dismiss me because he was clearly racist. The only jobs I really “held” included being an election judge twice, once during that totally insignificant 2008 presidential race and the other being a summer camp counselor at the church I went to.

Those little jobs sucked but I chose them. The students of Piedemont High were not that lucky.

The setting for this episode is the work experience program that shows students what it’s like to have a job. I have a lot of questions. I’m sure some of these students fared better than me back then and already have jobs, so wouldn’t this make no sense? Would they have two jobs? Are all of these jobs suitable for minors? Why does Piedmont fund such strange things?

Mo, as usual, (or depending on the plot of the episode) only cares about the perks of whatever he’s doing. With the band, it’s the girls. With this program, it’s being able to leave school after lunch. Wait, what? They’re having the students skip multiple classes for this? Is this part of a class or an elective? I wonder because this seems like it takes up a lot of time.

TJ is more excited about working in the industry of his choice, but if that was the case, he’d already have a job assigned to him as opposed to having to pick what’s on the board, making it first come, first serve. This is dumb and I can’t believe I have this many questions about a fictional high school. Anyways, TJ is short so he can only grab what he can reach and it’s not what he wants at all because he has a menial blue collar job.

Meanwhile, at the crib, Floyd is pissed because his basketball buddy who is a doctor apparently has cancelled their game because he has to do surgery. Floyd is only petty every once in a while so I’ll let him have this one. Then Marcus comes in wearing a suit and even though we’ve definitely seen him dressed up before, the audience goes wild. I hate canned audience reactions! He says not to hate him because he’s wearing Armani.

I first thought Marcus was joking because it looks like a Sears original to me, but apparently he took Floyd’s credit card and had a ball buying clothes for his fancy schmancy job. Okay, I have more questions. Marcus had to buy a whole suit and shoes to enter his predominately white workspace. Is Piedmont paying for things the students need to even work at their job? What if you’re a natural black woman and you have to get your hair straightened if you have Marcus’s job? This is all for a part time job during school hours, so will these hours count towards credit since you’re not in class? I am so confused.

Floyd is surprisingly okay with Marcus running up his card because his next question is asking if he can help Floyd get ready for his game. Marcus jokes that he’s going to be drinking with the guys after work. Floyd doesn’t press further and says he’ll practice alone until Yvette offers. Marcus and Floyd have a nice kii at this because duh, Yvette’s a girl and girls don’t play basketball. I love how all the Henderson men (including Mo) are sexist in their own ways. This isn’t the first time Floyd disregards his daughter when it comes to doing “manly” things and Marcus and TJ bond over their hatred of Yvette when her feminine ways don’t align with their default male ways.

TJ comes in and doesn’t want to talk because he’s embarassed to have this job that was forced on him. Marcus adds insult to injury by informing him that he’s working at Marcus’s job.

Speaking of Marcus, this dude just doesn’t quit. He begins sexually harassing one of the women who works there, inquiring about what she does. She has to explain to him what a DVD is, immediately dating this show. Luckily, she has sense and shoots down his attempts. Sis can’t even do her job without some horny little high school boy bothering her. This program is stupid, by the way.

TJ enters, wearing his blue collar work uniform and ringing a bell. After fending off the usual “aww he’s so cute” remarks, he’s led into the office that needs the grub. The buffoons working there can’t seem to figure out whatever physics equation makes the DVDs run and of course, TJ is effortlessly able to offer a suggestion. He gets poached from this stupid temp position to help them out.

Floyd and Yvette are practicing in the garage when Marcus and Mo show up to gloat about their temporary yet important positions. Marcus has his own office. I would hate to be the person who worked there for years, sacrificed weekends, holidays and their sanity to get a promotion and their name on a door, only to watch a punk ass intern from high school get it instead. Mo is somehow working for a judge but I’m not sure for how long because this briefcase that was foolishly given to him contains a document that should have already been mailed off to William Renquist. Mo quickly dashes from that scene to deliver the mailpiece. Marcus makes an extremely dark joke that i didn’t even catch at first about someone getting the electric chair due to Mo’s carelessness. I’m sorry but I bellowed at that. However, I question how many lawsuits will be filed against Piedmont after this program is over.

TJ comes home and announces that he quit his blue collar job and is now working as a special consultant for research and development at DVD Electronic. That’s the name of the company? It’s so bland and generic that i sounds like an Amazon seller of used books and shit. Floyd is confused but TJ gets hired by a large company every other week so it’s whatever.

At work, we see TJ has his own office. Remember that person I would hate to be? They have to watch a fucking 10 year old get it instead. Maybe they did a mass firing or something because they seem to have plenty of rooms to just give to people. Of course, TJ likes the new digs. After his friendly secretary introduces him to his space, the resident hater shows up. I guess the person I was describing earlier is this white man, because man is he salty about having to share a cubicle when he started. White man is now attempting to get into TJ’s head and asks that he pitch all ideas to him first. How TJ, who is probably a psycho or sociopath didn’t see through this as a ruse for him to profit off his black ass ideas is beyond me. Or maybe TJ is faking dumb so that when he does reveal white man’s treachery, it’s more believeable?

Marcus barges in and the white man is two seconds away from calling the cops before Marcus lets him know they’re related. But white man thinks him calling TJ his brother is a “black” thing until TJ says they are related albeit with similar genetic coding. I assume this is an obvious reference to Marcus being darker than him? Funny because I just wonder if Floyd’s wife was dark or if they both have a dark skinned parents and it just so happened to manifest in Marcus and no one else? Or maybe Marcus is actually his half-son? Let me stop.

After the white man leaves, Marcus correctly assumes he is a piece of shit but TJ disagrees. He then gets a call to join a meeting. The head boss who is stationed in Zurich makes it a point to consider that TJ’s work study day ends at 5--wait, so they’re away from school for that long?--but quickly ignores that tidbit when some meeting gets pushed to 6. Of course, TJ shouldn’t be here unsupervised and out this late but we’re gonna ignore that even if the logistics of the Piedmont Work Study Program still boggle my mind.

So yeah, TJ is stuck at work and being asked about one of his ideas, the big boss says that the white man told him to filter all ideas through him. The white man is clearly displeased with TJ snitching but the boss man ends up making TJ the new head of the project. That’s how you use your privilege, even if it is child endangerment! The hating white man (whose name is Dick Ferrett by the way) comments to another coworker that TJ is toast. How dare this little black bastard be better than him?

Meanwhile, at home, Floyd is nursing an Yvette inflicted wound from when they were practicing basketball. TJ comes home acting like a middle aged adult, complaining about work and how bad traffic was. When Floyd notices how TJ is being affected by this job, he suggests that he quit. TJ whines for a little bit and Floyd relents. What the fuck Floyd, drag him by his collar and make him sit down! TJ promises to make Floyd’s game which means he won’t be able to make it because of work.

The next day, TJ is at work and discussing things with his secretary. The hating white man is just itching to fuck up TJ’s day and it shows. You might not be wondering who replaced TJ as the chow wagon boy but it turns out that it was Mo. Yes, instead of being fired from this program that he had no business being in to begin with, he was demoted to TJ’s job.

TJ is about to leave for the day when hating ass white man comes and dumps a bunch of work on TJ’s desk. See? Told you he wouldn’t be able to make Floyd’s game! Luckily, his secretary is going to film it for him.

Back at work, TJ is falling asleep trying to carry these stooges to a victory and the hating ass white man is actually calling TJ names. They even go back and forth for a moment. Floyd finally decides that enough is enough and he’s bogarted his way through security to get TJ because I’m sure it’s midnight at this point. TJ tells Floyd he must be mad that the game was missed. Floyd says he isn’t mad although the other guys’ kids showed up. Aww Flody. Parents have feelings, too.

The head white boss offers Floyd to hire TJ permanently but Floyd declines. TJ is able to get the hating ass white man fired before he leaves, in a move that is definitely petty but deserved. Fuck that guy, exploiting a gifted black child like that.

TJ is mad at Floyd according to a conversation between Yvette and himself. He thinks TJ is going to be mad at him forever but he comes downstairs and asks to play dominos with him. Aww. This is quickly ruined as per the usual. We all know TJ only abruptly forgives and forgets when he has an ulterior motive. This time, he’s going behind Floyd’s back to keep working with DVD Electronics. Floyd comes in during a session. I’m assuming he got his ass whooped after this but we just fade to black before an arms-folded Floyd can dole out any punishment. Eh, guess we’ll find out in the next episode. Ha. No we won’t.

Stuff I noticed:

- DVD Electronics video chat has a pretty stellar, crisp quality for 90s internet.

- Mo rewore this shirt from a prior episode. I really like when characters rewear clothes. It’s much more realistic than characters who seem to always have money for new outfits no matter how broke they claim to be.

- When TJ is bringing in the food, there’s an audience member who yells “You go, girl!” I have heard this woman in the audience of a Boy Meets World episode and another show that I can’t recall, but further proves that canned laughter is creepy and needs to be banned everywhere.

#tahj mowry #smart guy #marcus henderson #tj henderson #mo tibbs #omar gooding #90s #nineties #john marshall jones #floyd henderson #essence atkins #yvette henderson

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roleplcyheaux · 4 years

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Your name and pronouns:

asha! she/her pronouns!

Your favorite movie / tv show at the moment:

i did recently binge I May Destroy You and it was *chef’s kiss*. i’ve also been re-watching Girlfriends on Netflix too because Tracee Ellis Ross is truly worth it! if you haven’t watched it before i def recommend it though....yanno it’s an late 90′s-early aughts show so some of the jokes haven't aged well. last but not least i’ve been watching this K-Drama called Flower of Evil too and oh my gooooosh i couldn’t rec it more!!!! the plot basically centers around this couple where wife is a successful detective and the husband???? well he is the “missing” son of a serial killer ( daddy dearest killed like 10 people i think??) whose accused of not falling far from the tree himself ( when he was senior in hs he disappeared from his small town right after the sheriff was mysteriously murdered hmmmm ). but of course the wife doesn’t know that and now there is a copy-cat killer running around risking the husband’s new life AND IT’S WILD AND SO GOOD!!! also they have a daughter who is literally too pure and too cute for this earth!

Why are you interested in joining the roleplay?

i’m a sucker for the horror / mystery genre!!!!! which....if you know me you’d know is odd cause i’m highkey a scardy cat but like horror movies are completely different than books and rps okay?!?! okay! this place also seems so thoroughly thought out and i can tell how much love and thought went into this and i would love nothing more than to help frankie bring it to life!!! i’m not in any rps right now ( well one discord based one ) and i’d love to hop back in now that life has mellowed out!

Tell us a little about the character you’re thinking of applying for:

much like many of the fine people below me, i’m kinda stuck between two muses?!?! but i’m sure i’ll make my decision soon or idk maybe i can cop out and you guys can tell me who you’d prefer to see??

abigail ‘abby’ alby, twenty-six, aspiring novelist / manager @ spotlight cinema. the youngest of george alby’s grandchildren, abigail came into the world with a silver spoon hanging from her infant lips. she’s never needed for anything and essentially grew up coddled and protected from the world around her. very gullible & naive. glides through life in rose-tinted glasses. can and probably will cry at the drop of hat. is still waiting for harry styles to accept her marriage proposal tbh. known as a cursed hopeless romantic around town. leave a guy at the alter once and suddenly no one wants to date you :( :( :( [ definitely inspired by the only lovers left alive open plot! ]

isobel ‘issy’ bishop, twenty-five, dispatcher at pleasance fd. issy was left on the sidewalk in front of the fire station at three days old. no one knows where she came from or who her parents could possibly be. rather than following protocol and calling child services, the fire chief at the time allowed one of his firefighters to take the bundle of joy home. growing up with the bishops was chaotic to say the least but in the best way possible? issy grew up with seven siblings in total and four family pets. you could say her adoptive parents had a hard time NOT taking in those in need. most of her siblings have gotten out of pleasance but isobel’s curiosity keeps her within town limits. [ mayhaps issy could be involved in the mystery gang! but also i wouldn’t put it past her to work solo either so! ]

Do you have any potential wanted connections?

um um um if i decide to bring in abby i’d love some more albys lurking around for her to bug?? mayhaps her ex-fiancee that she left at the alter ( she definitely ghosted after the fact and still hasn’t really given him an explanation)??? i’d love her to have childhood friends who she’s remained close to!! or people who hate her family, i mean family feuds are fun! if i bring in isobel i’d definitely love to see her eccentric parents! and a couple of her siblings too! most of them left but i’m sure there are still a couple around for one reason or another! the bishops are a very mismatch family of misfits who dance to the beat of their own drum so and issy loves them all dearly even if they embarrass her/give her headaches sometimes!

Any self-promos?:

idk i don’t have anything to promo really?!?!!? but if you’re reading this ily and i hope you’re having a good day!

#phqtalk

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jgroffdaily · 4 years

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Jonathan Groff decides we should take advantage of what might be New York’s last suitable night for al fresco dining in 2019. He sits down at one of a dozen empty tables outside the otherwise packed Hell’s Kitchen bistro and announces, in a tone suggesting more mischief than regret, that he must first make a call.

"Hello," he says, iPhone now at his ear. "Joel Grey?"

Groff is starring in a limited revival of Little Shop of Horrors, and it is a very hot ticket. The Broadway legend on the other end of the line has apparently thrown a Hail Mary in hopes of scoring seats to the night’s sold-out performance. Hamming up this exchange for my amusement, Groff is game to play broker for the Tony and Oscar winner who originated the role of Cabaret’s tuxedoed emcee — and, maybe, anybody else who has his number.

"This is basically my part-time job," says Groff of fielding requests, jotting down credit card information and negotiating pickup times and locations for friends both famous and civilian. "It was the same thing when I was doing Hamilton," he adds of his year playing King George III in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop history lesson. "But I was really only onstage for nine minutes during that show, so the tickets were probably full-time."

The 34-year-old actor seems eager to please, not unlike current alter ego Seymour. Little Shop’s nebbish, sweet and ultimately doomed florist nurtures a manipulative plant even as the pet’s homicidal tendencies grow more and more apparent. Those familiar with the campy musical comedy know that it suffers no shortage of blood, but it’s a nursery rhyme compared with Groff’s recent work on truecrime thriller Mindhunter. Playing a curious FBI agent in David Fincher’s Netflix series has perhaps done more for his ascendant profile than anything yet. But two seasons on the drama have meant two nine-month stints in Pittsburgh, filming interrogation scenes with character actors who bear uncanny resemblances to famous serial killers.

So even on a two-show day like this late- October Saturday, the rigors of theater are easy work for Groff. Over a couple of hot toddies, in between humoring three smitten waiters at the restaurant at which he’s been a regular since Little Shop went into previews down the block, the actor appears to be in his element. "Theater is such a communal, familial medium and interactive experience," notes Groff, who says he recognizes faces in the crowd during most performances. "Mindhunter, for me at least, is a very private experience."

Groff plays against type on Mindhunter. Wide-eyed with an almost perpetual grin, his is a mug you wouldn’t be surprised to find in an illustrated Merriam-Webster — cozied up to the entry for "baby face." Much of his previous acting career leaned into this, starting with his breakout. The Pennsylvania native came to New York at 19 and landed the lead in the musical Spring Awakening by the time he was 21. "I was just auditioning for the ensemble of Broadway shows," says Groff. "I hadn’t really developed the taste to appreciate something like Spring Awakening until I was in it."

New York’s "It" Broadway show of the aughts, the rock opera about sexual discovery among 19th century German teenagers earned Groff his first Tony nomination. He spent two years in the production before leaving in 2008, at the same time as friend and co-star Lea Michele, to pursue film and television. The work that immediately followed — Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, a recurring spin on Michele’s Fox hit Glee, a supporting role in the second season of Kelsey Grammer’s cult drama Boss, voicework in Disney $1.3 billion smash Frozen (he’ll reprise his role as Kristoff in Frozen 2, out Nov. 22) — got him on the radar for vehicles of his own. When HBO began casting Looking, its 2014 dramedy about a group of gay friends navigating an evolving San Francisco, Groff was soon tapped to front the series.

"He will search for the best version of every scene and will work until everyone drops," says Looking executive producer Andrew Haigh, who cast him as Patrick — boy-nextdoor- ish, like the actor, but privileged and problematically fickle. "He is also wholly unafraid to be vulnerable onscreen."

Looking lasted for only two seasons and a wrap-up movie, and its premature demise allowed Groff to do Hamilton, which he joined while the show was off-Broadway in early 2015, and then made the jump to Broadway. His supporting part as the aforementioned royal — with interstitial lamentations for the seceding Colonies, sung like a lovelorn (and supremely pissed) Davy Jones — earned Groff his second Tony nomination. But Groff wasn’t long for Hamilton, either. He was circling his next TV project, a moody prestige procedural about the early days of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, based on the 1995 memoir Mindhunter by criminal profiler John E. Douglas.

"I’m not naturally a true-crime person. So reading the book, I was like … 'oh, fuck,' "says Groff of John E. Douglas’ memoir 'Mindhunter.'

Mindhunter, the book and the series, delves into the morbid minutiae of notorious murder cases with an emphasis on interviews between law enforcement and criminals in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Groff was in contention for the role of FBI agent Holden Ford, based loosely on Douglas. First, he had to prove to director and executive producer Fincher — a filmmaker long admired by Groff, who says he has "a boner for his brain" — that a jovial Broadway star most widely known for singing with a reindeer in a Disney cartoon could have the upper hand with serial killers.

It was not Groff’s first audition for Fincher. Seven years earlier, he was in the running to play Napster co-founder Sean Parker in The Social Network. "My agents said, 'You have an audition in L.A. with David and Aaron Sorkin,' " Groff recalls. "If you get it, you start rehearsal the next day, so pack your suitcase for two months. They really like your tape, but they’re also considering Justin Timberlake." The part went to Timberlake.

"I did not feel then — and still don’t — that he had the inherent venality for that role," Fincher says of Groff. "He is as decent and sensitive as anyone I’ve ever met."

If venality is off the table for Groff, darkness is not. And though casting the song-anddance man was a source of curiosity for some in Hollywood before Mindhunter’s 2017 debut, the finished product didn’t elicit any skepticism from critics. Over the first season, Groff’s character goes from eager, milkdrinking company boy to a shell of the man introduced in the first episode. He alarms colleagues with the way he mirrors serial killers, until he has a panic attack after getting a bear hug from a necrophile. The second run, equally well reviewed after its August debut, saw a somewhat recovered Holden sit down with Charles Manson and, for the dramatic fulcrum of the season, investigate the Atlanta child murders of 1979-81.

"It is so impossibly bleak that I don’t think about it while I’m doing it," says Groff, who confesses he finds watching the show more affecting than making it. "All due respect to people who feel like the character is inside of them or whatever, but I don’t have that. I would leave set, listen to Beyoncé, and that was it."

After an hour and a half in his company, Groff reveals himself as a Lucille Ball historian, an avid bike rider, a devout New Yorker and someone who doesn’t seem easily bummed out — except when the conversation turns to success. His excitement over landing Mindhunter, he says, was immediately diluted by a pang of sadness. "Whenever something really great happens, it makes me feel a little bit depressed," he says. "It’s like, this is never going to get better than this moment right now. I’m sitting in David Fincher’s office and he’s giving me this role."

Talk of a third season of Mindhunter is on hold while Fincher focuses on his next feature. But the director did take a recent break from Mank, a biopic on Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, to attend Groff’s first Little Shop matinee with wife and fellow Mindhunter executive producer Céan Chaffin. It was a surprise appearance, but only because Groff hadn’t been checking his text messages. "I’m not good at my phone," he admits.

Groff has not looked at his phone since that one call — which, while polite, now has him in danger of running late for curtain. He breaks the bad news of his immediate departure to one particularly adoring waiter, and we walk to the stand where his bike is locked. There, he pulls from his bag a cobalt helmet that could double as Tron cosplay. Bars of blinding LED lights on both its front and back, his headgear tells cabs to get the hell out of the way and signals to everybody else that this is a man who values safety over subtlety.

"Yeah, I do really love riding my bike in the city … I’m just not that hard-core," Groff says of the helmet before encasing his tousle of sandy chestnut hair for the one-block ride to the theater and an expectant Joel Grey. "My mom bought this for me."

#jonathan groff #interview

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efrmellifer · 4 years

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Anniversaire

Etien hadn’t been praying to Llymlaen much lately—how could she, in the land of Halone or across the rift in a land where the only divinities of any concern, it seemed, were Hydaelyn and Zodiark?—but today, she did.

Sinking to her knees at the window, she began to mouth her words as the dawning light fell into her eyes.

“O Navigator, in this thy month, I come to offer my thanks. You’ve led me so far in safety, your winds ever gentle at my back to spur me on, and your steering true. I thank thee, O Llymlaen. But also do I thank you today for the greatest gift given to me, on this his nameday.” Etien laughed a little, turning to look at him. “Right in the middle of your month, came a gift for me instead of you.” She finished her daily prayers for protection and the like, and then rose.

She got back into bed for a brief moment only, lying on her side just to steal another look at Aymeric.

He looked so peaceful when he was asleep. In the land of dreams, he had no reason to worry about the temple knights, about the Houses of Lords and Commons, about matters of the household. Not even about her.

Etien worried sometimes that while she dashed off to do anything asked of her in Eorzea or on the First, he was here fretting about her.

It wasn’t that she was ungrateful—the idea of him caring enough to even think of her in passing warmed her heart. But there were so many other things he had to worry about that she felt guilty if it was even possible that she had distracted him from those.

She didn’t like the guilt. It invaded a lot of her thoughts in moments like these. She tried to let him rest, because he deserved to rest and have a moment of relief and respite for himself, and she felt as though she were robbing Ishgard of… something. Was it selfish to want him to spend more time with her? She knew he needed to do his job—his jobs, plural—but they had been married perhaps a few complete moons and she had been gone for most of them. She ran home for Starlight, and Valentione’s, and a few times since then, ricocheting back and forth to lap up spare moments at his side to keep herself sane and focused when she went back to the First, but… she felt like a bad wife. Was it too much to want to be a better one when she could? If they never saw each other, she couldn’t be a good wife.

It didn’t matter now, she figured. She was just going to be the best thing she could be for him, and make sure he knew she loved him.

She laid a hand on Aymeric’s cheek, wincing at the feel of how warm it was, because it meant her hand was cold, and then kissed his forehead, followed by sliding from bed to get his breakfast together.

With Etien gone, Aymeric found it easier to wake, though less pleasant, and easier still to get out of bed. After all, she wasn’t there with her warmth and beckoning arms, telling him to stay in bed, stay with her, stay where nothing could break through the bliss of holding her and being held.

He wanted to stay under the covers anyway, considering the day and all, but with no excuse...

Still, the kettle was going off, so someone had to take care of it. But the sound cut off before he’d gotten even to the door.

At least Etien was still in the house, then—none of the staff would have put water on where he could hear it, at least not without asking. So he dressed, sighing into the cool air as he removed the warm pajamas and slid himself into the day’s clothing, knowing it would warm up eventually.

But it wasn’t yet. A small indignity.

He made his way to the kitchen still rubbing his eyes, and smiled when he found Etien.

“Don’t make yourself tea,” she told him, tucking herself into his side and curling her arms tight around him. “I handled it already.”

He patted her head, then smoothed her hair. “You’re not even dressed. Did you come right out of bed to do that?”

She shrugged. “I guess you could say that.”

“Well, then it must be getting cold. Where is it?” he asked, tone merely curious.

“It’s in the dining room with your breakfast.”

“You know, you do spoil me,” Aymeric said, still running his fingers through her hair.

“You’re worth spoiling.” She let him go and began to lead him from the kitchen, padding along before she turned. “Oh, before I forget to say it… Happy nameday, darling.”

He kissed Etien briefly, before passing her to go through the doorway. “Thank you. It has been made all the happier by having you here to celebrate with me.”

She stifled a squeal and hurried up to follow him into the dining room.

“Oh,” he murmured, seeing the plate of fruit and what he could only assume was an apple turnover. “It really is a special occasion, then.”

Behind him, Etien giggled. “Of course it is.”

Aymeric sat, nibbling at the pastry and sipping his tea, almost embarrassed.

Etien sat down, too, leaning on the table to get closer to him. “Something the matter?”

“It’s silly.”

“I love silly,” she cooed, leaning in a little more.

Aymeric laughed at the position she was in, then sighed. “This feels like more than I did for you.”

“Which is fine,” she assured him. “I never really got a whole lot of fanfare. I just wanted you to have a nice morning before you got going. I have a few plans for tonight, too.”

He shook his head gently. “We’re all so lucky to have you,” he said, scooping up what was left of the turnover and downing the end of his tea. “I have to leave now, but I look forward to whatever it is you have planned for tonight. See you then?”

“Absolutely,” she replied, standing up and giving him another kiss. “Try to have a good day.”

“For you, I can try,” he said before heading out.

When Aymeric arrived at the Congregation, it was to find Lucia waiting in his office.

“Is aught amiss?” He asked her, hardly putting anything down. “Are we needed on the front again? I had thought the knights we had holding the lines with the rest of the Alliance should have been sufficient.”

“Nothing like that,” Lucia assured him, almost laughing. “The thing is, we all happen to be aware what today is, and thought you might like to spend it… not at your desk?”

Aymeric blinked as he thought about where exactly they (and who “they” were) wanted him to be, until he said, almost too slowly, “So, you want me to go…?”

“Home,” Lucia said with a shrug, as though it were obvious. “Spend it with Etien.”

“What about my other responsibilities?”

“We’ve taken care of it, my lord,” she laid with a laugh. “Do you not want to go home?”

“I don’t know what I would do with an entire day,” he said softly.

“I’m sure she has ideas. Or sleep it all away. Why have a plan? Simply see where the day takes you.”

Slowly, Aymeric nodded. “All right. Then, until tomorrow.”

“Until tomorrow. Happy nameday, Aymeric.”

He laughed, just a little dryly in embarrassment, as he headed back out into the cool air.

Aymeric came home to find Etien poring over a recipe book.

“And what are you perusing a book of recipes for?” he asked, leaning in just close enough that her ears would hit the top of his head if she flicked them.

She jumped back almost a full fulm, gasping. “What are you doing here? Gods, you’re not sick, are you? Oh, darling, what a day to be sick.”

“I am not. Lucia sent me home to enjoy today with you, instead of trapped behind a desk.” He leaned in and kissed her briefly. “And I saw no reason to argue with that.”

“Oh, don’t lie,” Etien warbled. “You almost certainly hemmed and hawed about the front line and other things you’d have to handle.”

Aymeric sighed. “You really do know me too well.”

“I only pay attention. Because I love you. I want to know everything about you.”

He flushed, but only said, “well, I want to know what recipe you’re looking for, so I can help you find it.”

“A cake,” she mumbled, ears flattening, almost in embarrassment.

“A what, dearest?”

“A cake. I was going to bake you a cake.”

Gently, Aymeric took the book from Etien’s hands, and flipped through about half its pages. “Are you willing to make this?” he asked, pointing to a recipe on the right-hand side. “It’s… one of my favorites, but I know you’re not as fond of lemon…”

Etien took the book, chewing her lip as she browsed the list of ingredients. “Can I get all this in the Crozier?”

“You might have to go somewhere else for the cream, or the lemons. It can be hard to tell when they get those in stock.”

“I’m using Mun-tuy, so I can have some too,” Etien replied, heading down the hall and sliding her feet into boots. “Because anything for you,” she added, pulling him down to her level for a kiss before throwing on a coat and heading out the door.

When she came back, a little later than she had anticipated, she went right back to the kitchen, zesting the lemon, sifting flour, and getting down to the task of following the cake recipe.

She didn’t even notice that Aymeric wasn’t in any of the rooms she’d passed on her way through the house. To be fair, she hadn’t been looking, focused almost entirely on the series of steps she had waiting for her—measuring, mixing, pouring, baking.

It went off more or less without a hitch, Etien sliding the pan into the oven and setting a timer before she let herself wander the home in a search for the man of the hour.

Well, at least she found out why she couldn’t find Aymeric by listening for him.

There he lay on their bed, only half-stripped and fast asleep.

He really must have been tired, then. Etien certainly wasn’t going to stop him from indulging in a little laziness; she wouldn’t dream of waking him.

But…

She had to wait for the cake to be ready before she could do anything with it, and the drizzle over the top didn’t require the cake itself to be warm, so she’d decided, just now, that she’d wait for the cake to finish baking, take it out, and then join Aymeric.

Plus, someone had to get him out of the rest of his clothes.

She perused the recipe book a little more, making note of the more stained and well-loved pages as she flipped through. She wondered, were these Aymeric’s favorites or his mother’s? Someone else’s?

When the timer went off, she snapped from her research and reverie, pulling the pan out and setting it down to cool.

Satisfied with the fruits of her labor so far, she took off her apron and headed for the bedroom.

Etien was careful as she removed some of the remaining articles of Aymeric’s clothing, in an attempt to keep them nice and possibly make him a bit more comfortable. When she’d gotten everything—both what he’d shed before lying down and the pieces she’d taken off him—folded and placed to the side, she kicked off her slippers and settled onto the bed next to him.

Yes, it was the second time today that she was lying here, observing him in his sleep, but he was so wonderful to look at. Moreover, she had to wring everything she could out of this moment; how often were they allowed to be nothing but a young couple, madly in love and still new to married life? How many more chances would they get in the near future?

So she lay there, her other thoughts of tasks still to be completed and things she could have done instead of this smoothed over and drowned in the love welling up when she looked at him.

She would have reached out to touch him, but didn’t want to wake him, so instead she traced his features with her eyes.

Eventually, Etien closed her eyes, settling into a drowsiness of her own. It was understandable, when she had woken earlier than she intended this morning, and now she was so soothed by the sound of Aymeric breathing next to her.

Before long, she was asleep.

Aymeric woke to late afternoon sunshine and the scent of lemon cake. Etien really had meant it when she said anything for him.

Speaking of, he smelled lavender soap even more strongly than the lemon, and turned on his side to see Etien loosely curled beside him, seemingly having joined him in a nap.

He played with a loose curl of her hair, waiting to see if she would wake up, and then, he made the decision to do something he had long wanted to.

He thought back to that book of faerie tales she had been reading when she recovered from her injuries, such a long time ago, just after the end of the war, and how he’d seen the illustration of the prince waking the princess with true love’s kiss.

He’d wanted to do that with Etien ever since that day. He did a more subtle version most mornings he had to wake her, instead of the other way around, but now was his chance. Aymeric sat up, just enough that he could lean down rather than across, then shut his eyes, pressing his lips to Etien’s.

It took a second, and he backed up, giving Etien room to breathe, but her eyes did flutter open, a smile coming to her face as soon as she was fully conscious.

“And why am I being spoiled on a day about you?” she asked, grin growing slightly mischievous.

She slid from the bed and went back to the kitchen, starting to work on the drizzle for the cake, and Aymeric followed, staying out of her way but watching her as she went about her task.

“I’ve added a little something to this, I hope you don’t mind,” Etien murmured without looking up.

“I trust your judgment and your knowledge of my palate,” Aymeric replied, folding his hands. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“You shouldn’t have to, but if you’re really itching to do something, you could get the cake out of the pan.”

He nodded, taking a knife and sliding it between the cake and the pan, coaxing it out and into his hand. “It smells divine, excellent work,” he praised Etien, taking a step to the side and kissing her cheek.

She smiled, turning with the drizzle and pouring it over the surface, the both of them watching it spread over the top and drip down the sides.

“Thank you. So I was thinking something somewhat simple for dinner. What would you like—salmon? Pipira? I think we have cod…”

“Well, you like salmon,” Aymeric replied, “so why not that?”

Etien laughed lightly. “I only buy fish I’d eat, darling. We can have whichever of those you want.”

“I truly do want salmon,” he told her.

“Then salmon it shall be.” She smiled, gathering more cookware and retrieving the fish from the icebox.

He watched her cook, still feeling like he ought to be helping, but not wanting to distract her (and knowing that she would tell him not to help her, especially on today of all days).

So he just observed.

Everything was plated, and Etien was carrying the plates to the dining room, in what felt like no time at all.

Aymeric grabbed goblets and a bottle of wine and followed her.

They settled into their seats and Aymeric started pouring his own drink first, only so he could ask Etien, “Will you be having some tonight?”

She shrugged, a good-natured smile coming to her lips. “Why not? It is a special occasion, after all.”

So he poured her a drink, too, hers markedly less full than his own.

“Here’s to you, darling,” she said once she had it, lifting it just a little, “that all good things be yours this year and forever.”

“With you at my side, I already have all good things.” Aymeric lifted his drink as well.

Etien giggled, then leaned in to tap her goblet against his, sipping as daintily as she could. “Anyroad, eat up before it gets cold,” she encouraged him. “I want you to enjoy it, after all. And cold fish is no good.”

“Oh it wouldn’t be so bad,” he mumbled around a mouthful.

They ate in a comfortable silence; there was little to talk about when they’d been together most of the day and asleep for a good portion of that time. Etien talked a little about how crowded the markets had been, both in Ishgard and in Gridania (where she’d gone for the Mun-tuy and the lemon), but there wasn’t much more to say about the matter.

So when their mouths were free, they descended into light chatter—things they’d heard around town, what little Etien might have heard from the Scions, things edging on gossip (even they indulged just a little).

After some time, Etien brought out the cake, cutting Aymeric a generous slice, and then one for herself.

Even with Etien’s recipe changes, it was delectable, and she was made quite aware of the fact.

When they’d finished, Aymeric pushed back from the table, extending a hand to Etien to lead her from her chair as well.

“Where are you taking me?” She asked, settling her hand in his and following his gentle shepherding to the sitting room.

“We never dance,” he replied. “Or at least, it feels like we never do.”

“Oh. Yes, I think so, too.” She settled against him, feeling his arm wrap around her back as their hands slid together. They had their moments where they could stand the ‘correct’ way, spines straight, angled limbs sharp, and form proper, but when it was just the two of them? It was nicer to sway like two tangled trees in a stiff wind.

They went back to chatting about everything and nothing like that, Aymeric talking about the evergreens cracking when the temperature had dipped especially low one night during the time Etien had been gone.

“I may have joked that half the pines surrounding Ishgard are simply me pining over you, but the trees truly were like my heart that night. Breaking, they were so frozen. I was bundled under possibly three blankets—the one you knitted for me closest to my body, of course—but I still felt frigid without you. Though I think I might be glad you were not here that night. I had the opportunity to get used to this weather when it first beset this land. You, however, have scarce had a chance to get used to it, having grown up in more temperate regions and being run off your feet to warmer climes on this world and the next.”

Etien laughed softly. “It is cold here. But you keep me warm. Followers of Llymlaen have a part of the wedding vows like that, it goes something like ‘no cold shall reach you, for now you are each other’s warmth.’ I always thought it was pretty.”

“It is lovely. But I know the cold reaches you, Etien. At least your skin. You shiver sometimes, when we go on walks. If I can ever get you to hold still long enough, I should have you measured and start having more clothes made for you. Thicker dresses, more flannel petticoats.”

“But I never wear petticoats!”

“Maybe you could pick up the habit. For me, dearest? I feel terrible seeing you shiver. And I know, I doubt Ishgard is the idyll you imagined yourself settling down in, but—”

“Aymeric, don’t be silly. Anywhere with you is more than good enough for me.” She sighed a little. “I should wear petticoats. I would be warmer, and then Estinien couldn’t tease me.”

“He teases you?”

“Well, it was once or twice. Not exactly torturous, but—”

“Did he say something about the lack of garters, too?”

Now she huffed. “Yes.”

Aymeric chuckled. “I had no hand in that; I think it was a rumor that got out of hand… and turned out to be true.”

“Oh? That’s not one of the things you told him?”

“There are quite a few things I kept secret, you know.” He slid his hand from her back so he could take both her hands. “Some things that are just between us. And I like them that way.” He ran his thumb over her knuckles, then inspected her wedding ring. “Do you not normally wear this on a chain?”

Etien shrugged. “Usually, but I’ve been home for a while, so I figured it would be safe to have it on the regular way.”

Aymeric looked at it a little more, the rich blue of the sapphire against the well-kept silver and Etien’s pale skin. “It really does look good on you. It must just suit every Borel woman who wears it. When—if, I suppose—we have a daughter, do you think it will look good on her?”

“I’m sure it will look even better on her,” Etien assured him. “But tonight we don’t need to worry about the uncertain future.” She blinked up at him, a slow squint packed with affection. Knowing what she was about to ask for, Aymeric leaned down and pressed his lips to hers.

After a moment, he guided the two of them to the loveseat, sitting so that Etien was perched in his lap. She took it as an invitation to more (and truly, he had been inviting her to do more, now that the height difference was mostly negated), lips finding their way off his and trailing down his neck, toward his collar.

Her hand was rising up his chest to join her lips at their destination, so she could pull aside his collar and lavish attention there, leaving behind light pink marks that would be gone by the morning, but for now showed her fervor and her claim on him.

He pulled her closer, grabbing her other hand and lacing his fingers with hers, until she squeezed and then let go, to cup his cheek between her hands and kiss him full on the mouth again.

“Have I told you today that I love you?” she asked, voice soft and slightly breathless.

“Not with your words,” he responded immediately, “but I’ve been made very much aware.”

“I love you, Aymeric,” she said anyway, kissing down the column of his throat.

He nearly blushed as her lips pressed just above the dip in his collarbone, where she could feel his heart pounding under her lips, under her attentions. “A-and I you, Etien.”

She sat back, her weight nearer his knees, and gave him a grin with glittering eyeteeth. “Thank the gods,” she breathed. She came close again, peppering kisses along his skin, anywhere she could reach and felt like, until she got to right below his ear. She paused.

Before she could render him speechless, Aymeric quipped, “I see the celebrating hasn’t ended.”

“Oh, not even close,” she purred, closing her lips around the cartilage of his ear and giggling at his quiet gasp.

Happy nameday, indeed.

#Aytien #fic #I'm not going to tag the slight suggestiveness because it's SO slight #also the two occasions: his nameday of course and that it was around the 15th that I started seriously looking into playing FFXIV #I wasn't ready to commit monetarily or timewise at that point (it was May 12 that I told my friend I was planning to do it soon)#...but I did start looking through his tag #cut added!

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punkrockpolitix · 4 years

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Strap in for an Ugly Ride

by Mitch Maley — This week, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden did the most Joe Biden thing left to do in announcing that centrist NeoLiberal Senator Kamala Harris would be his running mate. The establishment left swooned and suburban liberals rejoiced, while the lunatic right clutched their collective pearls at such a “radical” choice. Meanwhile, the rest of us yawned as the stage was set for an absurd, bizarro world, alternative-reality election that will take place in the midst of the most unstable American society in modern history.

The chaos created by the 45th President of the United States has a way of wearing the reasonable mind rather thin. After all, who aside from the angry mobs of nativists does not long for a return to the normalcy of the early aughts when all we had to worry about was forever wars in the Middle East, an infinitely-expanding wealth gap, 50 million Americans without healthcare, and trade policies that had hollowed out the middle class. Sure, the children of white collar elites would continue to thrive (so long as they could avoid pill mills and heroin needles). Meanwhile, the offspring of former factory workers who couldn't afford an increasingly cost-prohibitive college education would toil in Amazon warehouses with few benefits and no shot at the kind of modest defined-benefit pensions that had allowed their parents to enjoy some modicum of prosperity in their twilight years and increasingly gloomier chances of even enjoying the social security payments that have kept millions more from abject poverty once their working days were behind them, but that was certainly a little easier to swallow than 2020 has thus far been.

Sure, automation had already begun eating away at more jobs than even offshoring had, we'd done nothing to address the climate crisis beyond symbolic, feel-good policies that avoided pissing off the wrong special interests, and the only amber waves of economic growth in the past 30 years had been driven by engineered bubbles. So what? Wall Street was happy (the stock market tripled under Obama) even if the big party was being floated by artificially-cheap credit, and besides, we could all go to sleep each night relatively certain that we wouldn't face a zombie apocalypse type situation on any given morning which is more than you can say about our current situation.

But let's not forget where things had gotten by 2016 when populist spasms on both sides of the ideological spectrum saw our traditional two party-driven political process totally upended. Harnessing the power of the internet had been largely responsible for President Obama successfully splintering the Democratic establishment in 2008, but let's not over-romanticize the grass or the roots. Obama was the product of an inter-party schism that saw a large number of career Dems break from the Clinton dynasty and its requirement for complete fealty to the party's grudge-bearing first family.

Obama was not an anomaly. He was Wall Street approved, Bilderberg-blessed and mainstream media anointed because, regardless of what others projected upon him, he was a typical center-right Dem who wouldn't rock any of those boats. Yes, the right labeled him a dangerously-radical liberal, but those who paid attention in the 2008 primary will recall that the actual semi-progressive candidate, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, had to be actively cropped out of the debates in order for that narrative to take hold. After all, it wouldn't do to have Kucinich onstage talking about Medicare for All and explaining how to get out of Iraq tomorrow any more than it would do for Ron Paul to be onstage in Republican debates calling out the NeoCon likes of Mitt Romney and John McCain.

Under Obama, the war machine kept rolling, taxes remained at historic lows, deportations skyrocketed and we expanded warrantless surveillance and other Big Brother police state tactics, including sending "surplus" tanks and other military armament to your local police forces. In other words, most of the things liberals hated most about the Bush era continued only they didn't hate them as much anymore. That said, institutional norms remained in place, our allies were quite happy and Americans, or at least those who weren't driven mad by the thought of someone with brown skin holding the highest public office, could hold their heads high knowing that they had an intelligent and articulate statesman at the helm who wouldn't embarrass them with Bush's tangled English or Clinton's infidelities. He was a family man who loved his wife and children and treated even his most vile-mouthed opponents with the courtesies of polite society. Yes, it's easy to grow nostalgic for such normalcy in the age of Trump.

However, years of bailing out Wall Street banksters who'd crashed the economy, allowing hedge fund managers to pay lower tax rates than teachers and failed companies to hand out huge bonuses often paid for by the taxpayers themselves took its toll. Millions of Americans who'd seen their homes foreclosed upon were scolded for buying into the worthless products being pushed by those same banksters—reverse mortgages, sub-prime interest-only loans, etc.—and lectured about "personal responsibility" and the "moral hazard" of bailing them out, even as those same fat cats who'd been rescued themselves swooped in to buy up all of those empty houses for cheaply-borrowed pennies on the dollars in order to make money hand over fist renting them back to the creditless schmoes who'd been kicked to the curb. It turns out a lot of people were fed up.

Enter Bernie Sanders and Donald J. Trump, two men, as different as can be, who nonetheless each managed to harness enough of the sometimes dangerous power of populist anger to finally upset the apple cart that had been two-party politics. While their platforms were radically different, the essential nature of their messaging was the same: you're getting screwed and have been for a long time. Their message was particularly well-received by working-class whites in formerly industrial states who'd been ignored by both parties for decades, beyond rhetoric from the right about it being the fault of illegal immigrants and rhetoric from the left about educational programs that would retrain the working class for the jobs of tomorrow. Regardless of whether they believed in or even understood the solutions either candidate was offering didn't matter so much as someone at last acknowledging that the reality they'd been experiencing actually existed.

The Clinton machine, with the DNC's foot on the scale and the MSM distorting perception, was able to (barely) keep Sanders at bay. Meanwhile, the GOP may have been able to do the same had it not been for the sheer giddiness of legacy media outlets like WAPO, the New York Times, MSNBC and CNN for what they saw as the death of the modern Republican party should it actually nominate a crass, foul-mouthed blowhard of a third-rate reality TV star (who'd until recently been a Democrat) for President. Make no mistake, Clinton's people desperately wanted to take on Trump, believing it amounted to not only an easy win, but a path toward retaking Congress, despite having been gerrymandered out of contention (for those of you who came to politics late, the GOP's electoral success in 2010, saw them take over a majority of state legislatures just ahead of the once-every-decade reapportionment that follows a census, allowing the party to gerrymander Congressional districts to such a degree that Democrats could not gain ground, despite regularly receiving millions more total Congressional votes than Republicans each cycle).

Everyone inside the beltway was caught sleeping in 2016. The Republican establishment never saw Trump coming and didn't know what to do with him when he arrived. Remember how sad Jeb Bush seemed in the debates? Remember how ineffective Marco Rubio was when he tried to sink to Trump's name calling? By the same token, the Democrats were so tone-deaf as to who Bernie was appealing to (far more aging New Dealers and working-class labor Democrats than the teen radicals they imagined) that they actually thought making trans-bathroom laws a wedge issue would drive turnout for their side. Imagine living in Michigan and working the counter at a Dollar General because the stamping factory you used to work at moved to Mexico, wondering whether your kid's rehab from Oxycodone would finally stick this time while being told that the real fight to be won was about where the gender fluid would take a leak.

That's not to say that trans rights aren't a worthy issue, so much as to point out how out of touch you would have had to have been to think it was a winning one in that moment of time. And if you think there was something more altruistic behind it, ask yourself how much energy has been expanded by the party on the same subject since. Like abortion-related ballot referendums used by Republicans to drive evangelicals to the polls, out-of-touch Beltway Dems thought that identity politics was the path to uniting the left-wing of their party and getting the Bernie crowd to turnout for Hillary, even after the DNC got caught smoothing her path to victory. After all, the donor class Dems never mind looking woke, especially if it prevents them from having to get behind things like a living minimum wage that might actually mean less coins falling into their coffers. And that my friends is what created the relatively small yet curious "I voted for Bernie in the primary and Trump in the general" demographic, not sexism, spite or misogyny.

Fast-forward to 2020 and Bernie is finally poised to emerge as the resistance candidate. Despite the MSM again selling alternative facts that kept explaining away his success, his path to the nomination looked inevitable until the Democratic establishment again intervened, this time with Obama in the role of Clintonesque king maker, convincing moderate establishment favorites Pete Buttiegeg and Amy Klobuchar to take one for the team ahead of Super Tuesday so that a path could be cleared for a sputtering Biden campaign to claim the nomination. For his part, Biden's 40-year record is as right of center as a Democrat can be without going full Joe Lieberman, so the remaining question was how not to repeat 2016 in alienating so much of the left-wing as to ensure Trump another four years.

Then, like a gift from the political gods, Trump began shooting himself in the foot so frequently in his responses to the pandemic and civil unrest that his approval rating—which has never even hit 50 percent even once during his presidency (not surprising considering he won the White House with a smaller share of the vote than either Romney or John Kerry managed in losing)—sunk to a pathetic 35 percent, convincing the NeoLiberal bosses that it was no longer necessary to kiss any rings on the far left. Bernie, Elizabeth Warren and even Tulsi Gabbard and AOC had already bent a knee to Uncle Joe, imploring their supporters to vote blue no matter who, so why not instead go after the moderate Republicans and Bush-era Never Trumpers whose ideology make the Democratic donor class feel much more comfortable than the progressive left’s anyway?

Enter Kamala Harris, who, to the Democratic donor class at least, signals nothing less than a female Barack Obama. And they’re not exactly wrong in that she’s a highly-articulate, ideologically-flexible politician capable of putting a friendly, progressive veneer on the modern NeoLiberal platform. That’s probably why the left-leaning corporate media outlets tried so hard to give her a push in the primary, even though voters simply didn’t find her to be a compelling candidate. Despite a healthy fundraising machine and the focused attention of MSNBC and CNN, Harris didn’t even make it to Iowa, dropping out ahead of what surely would have been a bottom tier finish in her home state of California. In that sense, it’s hard to see what she brings to the ticket in terms of electoral success. Fortunately, she won’t have to deliver her home state, but while much has been made of the fact that she’s the first woman of color to be on a major party ticket, it’s worth noting that there’s little to suggest she’ll help turn out the African American vote as most polls had her fourth of fifth even among black voters, who preferred Biden, Warren and even Sanders over the Senator from California.

As long as we’re on the subject of Harris’s race, however, it’s worth noting that the we're-not-racist right immediately went down the rabbit hole with birther conspiracies disgustingly-similar to those used against Obama that, within moments of the announcement, were used to question her eligibility to ascend to the presidency and fear monger that it was all a plan to install Nancy Pelosi when an aging Biden stepped down soon after being elected. Harris was born in the United States and, furthermore, born to two U.S. citizens. Her eligibility shouldn’t be in question to anyone who’s taken a junior high civics class, yet from what we’ve seen already, I’m sure it won’t be long until someone asks to see her birth certificate.

That said, despite the RNC's painting Harris as the most radical choice possible, her politics are no more progressive than Biden's, as evidenced by the two articles in the Wall Street Journal about Wall Street “breathing a sigh of relief” at her selection. In fact, one of the audition rounds for the veepstakes included hosting a Biden fundraiser and insiders have suggested that it was deep-pocketed Obama donors and not Uncle Joe himself who put her over the top. In Harris, the NeoLiberal establishment has all but cordoned off the progressive wing of the party, perhaps for a decade to come. Like Obama, she allows them to market a progressive package to make affluent suburban liberals feel good without making Wall Street, Big Pharma, Big Tech, or the military industrial complex the least bit nervous. In fact, in a communication to investors, Goldman Sachs essentially said that even if it means the Trump tax cuts go away, the stability and predictability of a Biden administration would be at least as good for the 1 percent's bottom line.

To hear the Trump campaign tell it, however, Biden's selection of Harris is nothing less than a signal that, in his cognitive decline, Sleepy Joe has acquiesced to becoming nothing more than a puppet for far left radicals like Bernie, AOC and the rest of The Squad. In their narrative, if elected, he’d be doing the bidding of Antifa, while doing away with everything from God and religion to guns and even the suburbs, and the dangerously radical Harris is only further proof of that. In one of their weirdest turns yet, the Trump campaign is literally showing clips of what America has become under Trump himself and warning that this is what will happen if Biden is elected and only by reelecting the man that brought it to you in the first place and has failed to end it by uniting the country (or even trying) can you stop our present from becoming our future. When taken literally, it is a message that says the world I brought you is the world my opponent will bring you and the only way you can stop that from happening is by keeping the guy who brought it to you! If that doesn't make sense, congratulations, you're not an imbecile.

However, if you buy the narrative that the radical left has taken over the Democratic Party then I'm sorry to report that such may not be the case. Biden-Harris is literally the most Law & Order ticket I can imagine either party fielding. It’s the guy who brought us the Crime Bill, supported the private prison industrial complex and paved a smooth road for Clarence Thomas paired with the AG who wanted to jail young single mothers whose kids missed too much school, blocked access to DNA evidence of the wrongfully convicted, supported marijuana criminalization and pretty much accumulated the least progressive record any prosecutor could ever hope for.

So no, Harris's pick wasn't to appease the progressive left. It was a middle finger to them, just like the initial convention lineup which didn't even feature AOC or Andrew Yang, the two stars of that set. Meanwhile, NeoCon warmonger John “life starts at the first heartbeat” Kasich is in primetime, along with Jeb Bush acolyte Anna Navarro. AOC finally got space for a 60-second pre-recorded (read vetted) afternoon spot, and the Yang Gang was able to kick and scream until their candidate was given a low-billing slot as well. In other words, if you don’t see that the progressive left is not only not running the show at the DNC but is all but powerless in the party’s politics, you’re simply not paying attention.

Why are NeoLiberals more interested in Bush-era Republicans than the media rock stars on the left who seemingly hold the future votes of the party in their hands? Simple, there's less of a difference in platforms, which means unlike working with the left, they don't really have to give anything up to court NeoCons. That’s because the age of Trump has seen those Republicans give up on social issues they never actually cared that much about from gay marriage to abortion in exchange for a seat at the table on the issues they do—things like energy policy, deregulation, aggressive foreign policy and, above all, jockeying their snoots into the trough of money that the winning team gets to eat from.

Excited because a Black Lives Matter protester is going to Congress? Slow down, Ace, as the hallowed halls are also about to get their first QAnon member. We've reached peak lunacy under Trump, this much is true, but the wheel has spun back to same old song and dance, remixed for 2020. The American empire is falling apart and one side is offering four more years of the lunatic king, while the other is betting that such a thought will scare voters enough to accept the same brand of politics that brought us that President in the first place. All that remains to be seen in whether Dems finally got the calculus correct. Are progressives so infuriated by life under Trump that they'll vote blue no matter who, or have they picked off enough white suburban Republican women for it not to even matter? We'll find out, though likely not until weeks after November 2, assuming we aren't fighting each other in the streets by then.

Dennis “Mitch” Maley has been a journalist for more than two decades. A former Army Captain, he has a degree in government from Shippensburg University and is the author of several books, which can be found here.

#biden2020 #kamala harris #bernie or bust #aoc #nevertrump

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whumpqhs · 4 years

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Shrouded Shield, 1

Because I totally needed another story to work on...

If you sent an ask or tag, I do have a list for responding! I’ve been swamped lately with work and such. Sorry!

Yes, I still plan to continue my other writing, promise! I just wanted to get this down first.

Credit to @redwingedwhump for the setting this is in. Thanks!

TW: I’m not exactly sure how to tag this, because it’s not exactly dubcon or noncon, but this story contains parts where someone has to act like they’re okay with being touched when the writing is clear about how uncomfortable it makes them. So take that as you will, and please be safe.

“Gana?”

“Hm?”

“How’d you get that?”

Riva was pointing at the binding mark on the inside of her forearm. After today, she’d always remember to wrap both arms--for warmth, if you asked her. Right now, all she could do was silently curse herself for not thinking to cover it.

“You know what it is?”

“Yeah. It’s from the… the thing you bound yourself to.” This was, they’d established earlier that evening, Riva’s first encounter with a warlock. She was still talking to Marigana, and she’d been trying to act like nothing had changed, but her expressions were tight and her body was tense. Like she was afraid of being sacrificed on some altar somewhere.

“Yeah. Um… it’s a long story.” Marigana rubbed her fingertips over the mark, flat to her skin like a tattoo, or a birthmark. She wanted to give her (former?) friend one last chance to decide that, actually, she was better off not knowing.

“That’s okay.” Although it clearly made her nervous, Riva scooted closer. “I mean… If you’re okay with telling me.”

“...yeah. I’m okay. Do you… know whose mark it is?”

Riva shook her head. Her short dark hair flew back and forth with each twist. Marigana, against her better judgement, shifted over and stretched out her arm. Now both of them were tense.

“Alxaka. She’s… a demoness… according to some people. To others she’s an evil goddess. Some say she’s neither; instead, they think she's a powerful fae, strong enough to grant powers just like if she were a god.”

"...oh."

She looked up briefly at Riva’s fearful, fascinated eyes, then said quietly, “You, um, can touch it if you want, it won’t hurt you.” She didn’t want anyone touching her, anywhere, much less her mark. It was the offering that was important; the willingness. She had to look safe. Nonthreatening. “And it won't make you turn evil, or anything.”

She’d been expecting a refusal, a murmur of Oh no, that’s alright, so she could feel justified in putting her arm back. Instead, Riva stretched out a careful, quivering hand. She brushed over the mark with her own fingertips, and Marigana kept her face and body perfectly still.

“It doesn’t feel any different than the rest of your skin.”

“Nope. It’s just like a birthmark.”

“Your skin, it’s really hot. Are you too close to the fire, do you want to move?”

“Oh, um, no. I just… am like that, heh.” She gave Riva a sheepish grin as if to say, Sorry for my body temperature! And drew her arm back.

“...Alsaka?”

“Al-tsa-ka.”

“What do you think she is?”

“Me? I think she’s fae. Legend says she walked the fires of Hell itself to rescue one of her faithful, to take back what was hers. I don’t think a goddess would upset the rest of the pantheon that way. But a fae wouldn’t care.”

Riva nodded, solemnly. Marigana hoped she was satisfied, but she piped up again, “So--how did you get… how…”

“How did I bind myself to her?”

Silent nodding, at first, and then she added, “If you don’t want to tell me, it’s okay.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” She smiled, making the expression relaxed. “It’s alright.” She couldn’t have secrets. Secrets made them afraid of you. Everything had to be offered, and okay to investigate. She had to make sure they felt safe. “Um, I was… I’d just turned eighteen. I had a really bad fight, with my parents.” Not completely untrue. And Riva started nodding, even relaxing a bit. This, she understood.

“Ohh. Over a boy?”

“Uh--yes. Mhm.” She nodded back, managing a sheepish little laugh. Now, that part was an outright lie. There had been no boy, no boy in her village wanted aught to do with her. There had been men, certainly, strange men with heavy chains who showed up at the door. Who’d heard from a reliable informant that there was a changeling lurking about. Who intended, as all good Iron Priests intended, to cleanse the land of evil… which, in this case, meant her.

Her father, the reliable informant, had opened the door to let them in. By now the panic of the memory had faded, but the hurt and betrayal still twisted in her chest when she thought about it.

“So--you left home?”

“Huh? Oh. Uh, yes.”

“That must have been hard.”

Riva was looking at her, but she didn’t seem quite so afraid. Her eyes were soft, and her body wasn’t so tense.

“It… it was. Yes.” She absently chewed at her lip as she remembered the crowded house full of running feet, the shouting, the chaos. And, before that, the thick frozen shock that was almost worse. How her father’s mouth formed a hard line when he looked at her. How it was one of the priests who broke the spell, turning to him, confused.

“You said there was a changeling. I don’t see one.”

“It’s her--I told you, she looks human. With that sigil. Mari, show him.”

She remembered the desperation, how she’d thought maybe if she complied things would go better. It felt dangerous to let go of her control, but she did it, cutting the power to the sigil that made her look human like everyone else. Letting them see her claws, and deep violet skin, and glowing eyes. Her long ears and the broken bits of tissue that had once been horns.

“That’s not a changeling--” one of the priests started.

Another cut in, “But we’ll take her.”

“No!”

The voice came from behind her, she remembered hearing it and knowing it was her mother but being unable to understand why. She thought of them as her father and mother, but that wasn’t true, was it? She’d taken the place of their real daughter. Her mother had told her so. Many times. They would never see their real daughter ever again, thanks to her; all they had was this… cheap imitation. This misplaced bit of fae.

“No? Why not?” Another one of the priests. He lifted those heavy chains and they clanked together, discordant, harsh. “Surely you want rid of that thing--”

“You can’t take my daughter!” Her mother’s voice had been thick with emotion. It had barely registered over the shock that rushed through her, stinging like icy water. She’d never been called anyone’s daughter before. Her mother had always been very clear that she was not their child.

“You can't have her! I won’t let you!”

“...your daughter? I thought she was a changeling?”

"She is. It's…" Her father shook his head. “She’s--um, my wife, you know, she’s easily upset. She gets confused.” But his expression hadn't matched. She remembered later how it was testy, tense. As if he was discovering something he didn’t like one bit. “It’s alright, I’ll help you get her into custody. Come here, Mari. Now.”

“--listening to me?”

“Huh?”

Riva patted her shoulder. Lots of practice kept her still and relaxed, as if she didn’t mind being touched.

“You were lost for a minute there. I said… what happened after you left?”

“Oh. Um… well, it was winter. I ran into the woods… didn’t really have a plan, I was just so upset.” Panicked was more like it. Terrified. Upset would come later.

Riva nodded as if wanting her to go on. She couldn’t explain to the girl--her friend, still?--that she was tired, that remembering this made her ache. That it drove her sleep into a fractured mess, reliving that night, that she’d be dreaming about it… because she couldn’t say no. Everything had to be offered up. Including her most painful memories.

“Um, it was cold. I come from up north, it was freezing… snowy…” And oh how she hated the cold. She just wasn’t built for it. She remembered how it felt, running out of the house without her coat or scarf; like jumping into a frozen lake. The cold had stabbed into her like thousands of needles. “It was… I didn’t have time to get anything warm for myself, I just left. It was so cold it hurt, the air hurt… it was painful to breathe. I ran for as long as I could.”

“You poor thing.”

Marigana blinked and looked up at her, watching her face. She seemed sincere enough. Of course, Riva thought she was talking to another human like herself, not a changeling with a convenient illusion spell. Most assuredly, that would have changed her reaction.

“I… I’m okay. Um…” she tried to focus, to get through the telling so she could be done. “...they didn't come looking for me…”

“Oh,” said Riva, as if this were another tragedy. She remembered the wash of relief she’d felt, staring out into the shadows and seeing no spark of firelight, no torches coming after her in the cold. But if you’d had loving parents, them not caring if you froze to death would be sad, of course. She just shrugged.

“It’s, it’s okay. Um, so--it was cold, I… didn’t have anything warm on.” This part of the memory was different. It didn’t hurt all that much, but it was heavy. Raw. “...I was freezing to death… um, I heard a voice. A woman. She said… it looked like I was one of hers. Said she could save me, so I could serve her cause.”

“And you said yes?”

“Mhm.” She nodded, looking at the mark again. Alxaka’s symbol was a shield, wrapped in a cloak. It made sense for the deliverer of undeserved luck and mercy. Protection, but not for anyone righteous or good. “I said yes. Suddenly I wasn’t cold anymore.” It wasn’t just physical warmth, though, that flooded into her when she accepted the offer. It was soothing, calming, a sense that she’d come home. That someone would protect her. Her eyes almost closed, remembering, trying to call that feeling up again. Lately it was so difficult. She tried… focused…

But Riva was still watching her.

“...um, she led me to this little cave. More of an overhang, I guess. It went far enough back that it was warm, and she gave me a spark for a fire. The next morning, I was able to make it to another village… then from there, I worked my way to this company.” It had been a lot more complicated than that, of course, but Riva hadn’t asked, and she was already so tired. She’d have to find somewhere lonesome to sleep tonight, in case her control over the sigil wavered or failed. If she looked anything less than human, she’d have a lot more problems than a nosy friend.

“That’s so sad…” Riva nodded to her, and patted her shoulder again. Still intent on setting her at ease, and making her feel safe, Marigana kept still, smiling as if she enjoyed the gesture, the contact. As if it didn’t make her want to flinch away. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Oh, uh, of course. You know me, I’m an open book.” She smiled. “No secrets.”

“That’s good. Friends shouldn’t have secrets from each other.” Riva stood and stretched. “Ahh, well, it’s time for my watch. Get some sleep, hm?”

“Yeah. Sure.” She nodded back, waiting until Riva had wandered off to her post before she stood and walked off in the opposite direction, finding somewhere out of the way to tuck herself into the shadows.

To all appearances, she was a perfectly normal human girl, twenty-or-so summers, sleeping under a thin woolen cloak. As her exhausted mind began descending into a nightmare about the Iron Priests, her last thought was the hope that she’d keep up those appearances until morning.

#whump #emotional whump #past trauma #general tw #cold weather whump #uncomfortable contact #nonhuman whumpee #but we're not gonna tell you what KIND of nonhuman yet #it is #a SURPRISE

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n3rdybird · 6 years

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Inamorata

Writen for @bookcaseninja ‘s 300 Follower Challenge. If you love Karl Urban and all of his many forms, follow this blog. This one is written about the very broody, Commander Vaako from Chronicles of Riddick. Please enjoy!

Vaako x Reader

Prompt: soulmate AU where you can feel the emotions of your soulmate.

Rating: Teen (some making out, hinting at sex, nothing explicit)

Warnings: Mentions of an affair/technically reader is the "other woman". (For now ;) ) Some cursing. Slight mention of depression.

The Necropolis was darker than usual, the night cycle now well underway. You were still working, your eyes pouring tirelessly over holopads and papers.

When you converted, your talent for xenolinguistics and studies did not go unnoticed. If it there was one thing the Necro faith was adept at, was placing converts into appropriate roles. After your time as an initiate, you were put to work in analysis. You were charged with translation and filing of the conquered civilization’s breadth of history and culture. Necros weren’t complete barbarians and did not celebrate the loss of knowledge.

However, with the death of Lord Marshal Zhylaw, and the ascension of Lord Marshal Riddick, the conversion campaign was halted. Instead, your time was mostly spent on Riddick’s greatest desire, the rediscovery of his home world, Furya. Destroyed years ago by Zhylaw, most if not all of the information pertaining to the planet and race were destroyed. You were hoping to piece together snippets of information left behind. A word or phrase, anything that could help.

As you rubbed the bridge of your nose and leaned across to the table to grab an errant tablet, a zing of arousal zipped down your spine. You smiled as a body crowded yours from behind, a muscular arm plucking the wanted tablet from out of your reach.

“You are up late,” the ordinarily stiff voice murmured into your ear. He set the pad down and spun you around.

You were dwarfed by the tall Necromonger Commander, as he caged you between his arms. You leaned back on your hands so you didn't have to crane your neck to look at him. You raised a brow.

“As are you. Won’t Dame Vaako be missing her dear husband this night?”

You allowed your gaze to drift over the man in front of you. Siberius Vaako, Commander and somewhat reluctant right-hand of the Lord Marshal, husband to Dame Vaako. And your soulmate.

His emotion twinged with annoyance at the mention of his wife, and you reached out to tuck a lock of hair that had fallen loose from his hairstyle. You allowed your emotions to flow across your bond to soothe him. He leaned into your hand.

“My wife is asleep,” he said curtly, picking you up and setting you on the edge of the table.

“But my One is right in front of me.”

You bit your lip as he ripped your long skirt, allowing your legs to spread as he took his place between your thighs. As he trailed his hand up your leg, you hooked it around his waist pulling him closer.

Tangling your fingers in his nape, you guided his face closer to yours. He trailed his lips along the smooth column of your throat, placing soft bites and kisses. When he mouthed against your conversion scar, you shuddered, gripping his arm. You dipped your head back at the sensation, your bond going haywire from all the stimulation. Love. Lust. Affection. Urgency.

When your grip tightened on his hair, he growled and pulled you flush against him.

“Careful woman, you do not want to test me,” he grunted against your ear. It had been several cycles since you had a moment alone, and his body seemed wound tight. You could only imagine the stress he was under. Riddick was continually ruffling the feathers of the more traditional Necros, especially since he had halted the conversion campaign. And Vaako was doing his best to keep the peace. For some reason, Riddick trusted Vaako or at least knew he wouldn't try to kill him.

You drug your nails against his neck causing him to shudder. The pressure of his large hands against your hips would be painful if you were still a breeder, but instead, it made you feel powerful to bring the stoic man to the edge. And you wanted to fuck the tension out of him.

“I won’t break,” you said breathily. He swiped the data pads off the table, pushing you down, one hand on your shoulder, the other thumbing your knee. The irises of his eyes were blown as he stared at your body.

“Let us test that theory,” he said, hooking your leg around his waist.

You awoke sometime later, the lights still dim from the night cycle. You were curled into Vaako’s broad form. In sleep, he seemed less burdened, younger. Even his Necro skin seemed less pallid. You traced your finger across one of his many scars, careful not to wake him.

You had all but given up your search for your soul mate. Soul mates, were tricky, to say the least. With such vast space, it was almost unheard of for one to find their soulmate. You had gotten many sympathetic pats on the shoulder, as your friends and family told you to move on. The only clue you had was the emotions your soulmate passed through to your bond. Knowing he was out there, somewhere, even though light years might have separated you, kept you optimistic.

When your bond seemed to have severed, you cried for days, thinking the worst. Surely, your soul mate was dead. So when the Necromonger’s came to your planet, the Purifier’s words beckoned to your broken heart. You welcomed the idea of trading your pain for numbness, to embrace the idea of the Underverse.

And then, one morning as you were tending to your initiate duties, you felt it. The familiar ebb and flow of your soulmate’s emotions.

The conversion process weakened the bond over a long distance. So when Vaako converted, years before you, it was easily believed that he was dead. The phantom emotions teased at you, you were unsure of what trick the universe was playing on you. You confided in the Purifier, thinking maybe your conversion wasn’t complete. It was then you first saw the slightest smile on his face. Not the sad repentant expression he usually wore, but his eyes seemed to lighten a fraction. He cupped your hand in his and told you there was nothing to fear.

And then one day, you felt emotions as strongly as if they were yours. It was a combination of tension and irritation. You couldn’t keep the hope from bubbling up as you scanned the crowded atrium. Inadvertently you reached across the bond, hoping to pacify the brusque emotions.

When Commander Vaako’s eyes met yours, you knew. He was your soulmate. And then the slinky form of Dame Vaako tucked herself into her husband’s side. You felt your hope diminish, wishing that the conversion process had deaded your emotions and not just your nerves. And from his expression, he could feel it as well. Regret. Despair. To have gone through everything you had, losing all hope of finding your soulmate. And there he was. Married. Unattainable.

You tried to stay away, as did he. He may not have loved his wife, but he still had his honor. You could feel his gaze and his bond, hovering around you, but never coming close. Only when her more scheming side came out, twisting his thoughts, did he seek you out, needing the comfort only a soulmate could provide.

It started naturally enough, polite conversation and lingering glances. You had been hurrying through the cavernous halls, tripping when your heeled boot caught the long skirt all nonmilitary women wore. You clutched the datapads to your chest, not wanting them damaged. When you braced yourself for the hard marble floors, a pair of strong arms aught you easily.

As you stood, Vaako didn’t say a word, clutching the bare skin of your arms. The feeling of his hands almost felt warm, something you hadn’t felt since you had converted. This intimidating, cold man was your soulmate. And all you could feel was warmth.

Unsure of how to proceed, you met in secret. Late night trysts and stolen moments in abandoned hallways. You were always careful. Dame Vaako wasn’t known for her kindness. Her vindictive streak ran miles wide. And you cherished every moment you had alone with him.

You glanced back up to find Vaako watching you with this dark eyes. He tucked your hand in his, tracing your much smaller hands.

“It’s almost the morning cycle,” you said softly, not wanting to get up.

He didn’t respond but leaned down to capture your lips with his. Your brain fogged as you lost yourself in his affection. When he pulled back, he thumbed your cheek.

“Soon, my One. No more sneaking around.”

You nodded, leaning into his hand. You wished for that more than anything. But until then, you would relish the time you spent together. After all, you were soulmates. Til Underverse comes, and beyond.

You were straightening the mess you and Vaako had made of your workspace when you felt eyes on your back.

You spun around to see the Lord Marshal watching you with interest.

“Lord Marshal,” you gasped, dropping to your knees.

His brow quirked above his goggles as he shook his head.

“You know I don’t like that shit,” he said, his voice deep and flippant, pushing off the wall.

You stood hastily, gathering your papers and tablets.

“Of course, my apologies.” You always felt nervous around the Lord Marshal. You had seen how he had dispatched Zhylaw, and how easily he seemed to brush off any enemies. He was quiet, usually observing the Necropolis.

He stalked around the room, glancing at your work. He'd pick up a tablet and thumbed through it, before tossing it back down.

“I haven’t found anything of note since our last meeting,” you explained, watching as Riddick continued to circle the room. The silence in the room was deafening. He hadn't said why he was there, and you were afraid to ask. He tilted his head and sniffed the air. Riddick laughed, the low rumble confusing you.

“Lord Riddick?”

“No wonder Dame Vaako has been sniffing around. Seems like Commander Vaako has been getting his elsewhere.”

You froze, not sure what to say. Everyone said Riddick was part animal, and apparently, his sense of smell was keen.

“You know, you could always kill her. Then Vaako would be yours. Keep what you kill right?”

You let out a nervous bark of laughter but quickly pinched your mouth shut. Of course, you had thought of that. But you never voiced the idea out loud.

Riddick nodded at your workstation as you stood there shellshocked.

“Let me know if you find anything else,” he said with a smirk as he left the room as quietly as he entered.

Was that approval from the Lord Marshal?

You shakily pulled your chair out and sat down. Keep what you kill. It was a long-standing tradition in the Necro culture. Kill Dame Vaako, and be able to take your place next to your soul mate. There would be no formal repercussions, but the Dame's influence was long reaching. Not to mention the personal ramifications for Vaako. You were just a lowly worker. While on the surface, the Necropolis functioned on merit, it would be foolish not to underestimate the backroom deals and politics.

You shook your head and picked up your tablet. No point in worrying about it right that moment. Vaako seemed to have a plan. You tried to focus on your work, but Riddick's teasing voice kept repeating in your mind.

Keep what you kill.

#bookcaseninja's300followerchallenge #vaako #vaako x reader #chronicles of riddick fanfiction #soulmate au

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dawnfelagund · 6 years

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The Inequality Prototype: Gender, Inequality, and the Valar in Tolkien's Silmarillion

It's hard to make the case that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings exhibit anything remotely approximating gender equality, but as a feminist Tolkien fan and scholar, whenever I bring up the sexist leanings of Tolkien's writings, the first rebuttal I usually hear begins with, "But The Silmarillion …"

The Silmarillion is often held up by Tolkien fans as redemptive of the boys-only club he establishes in his better-known books and proof that he really wasn't that sexist. After all, it includes competent, kick-ass female characters like Haleth, Lúthien, and Morwen. And then there are the Valar. The women of the Valar—the Valier, as they are called in the Valaquenta—don't just watch the men do the work, bring them tea, and rub their shoulders at the end of a hard day. Varda and Yavanna are high achievers, creating the stars and the Two Trees, respectively, and of Varda we are told, "Of all the Great Ones who dwell in this world the Elves hold Varda most in reverence and love."1 Nienna, too, is counted among the Aratar, or most powerful of the Valar, and was a mentor to Olórin, who used her teachings to help the people of Middle-earth win the Ring War.2 Surely, these women serve as proof of gender equality in The Silmarillion and Middle-earth in general, don't they?

Yet only about 18% of named characters in The Silmarillion are women.3 The Valar are an interesting case study of the issue, however, since they occupy a prototypical and highly influential role over the other peoples of Arda and present a veneer of equality that becomes much more complex the deeper you dig.

On Prototypes and Cultural Influences: Or Why the Valar Matter So Much

The Valar present a unique case when looking at gender [in]equality in The Silmarillion. The Valar are the greatest of the Ainur, and we are told of Ilúvatar that "he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made."4 The Ainur are the only creations of Ilúvatar that we get to see that have been subject to no subcreative or cultural influences outside of Ilúvatar. (Elves and Mortals are likewise "Children of Ilúvatar" but are culturally influenced after their creation by the Ainur, as I will discuss below.) The Ainur, therefore, are the best example we have of Ilúvatar's pure, unadulterated vision.

Furthermore, the Ainur were participants in the Great Music as described in the Ainulindalë, receiving "themes of music" from Ilúvatar that express his creative vision for the universe. In addition to best exemplifying Ilúvatar's pure vision, therefore, they are also the beings with the most direct access to knowledge of his intentions.

This establishes the Ainur in a prototypical role. It is reasonable to assume that patterns in and observations of their natures and behaviors best represent the order of the universe imposed by Ilúvatar, uncorrupted by mediating subcreative and cultural influences. This makes the Ainur extremely interesting for any study of social and cultural phenomenon among the peoples of Arda.

The Ainur are also of great importance to any study of social and cultural phenomenon because of the breadth of their influence over the other peoples of Arda. There are few people of Arda who have no contact, direct or indirect, with the customs and beliefs of the Ainur. The Dwarves were a creation of Aulë, one of the Valar. The Elves, as soon as they were discovered by the Valar, were meddled with, and many chose to live alongside the Ainur. Mortals are the least directly influenced, but their contact with the Elves and the Elvish tradition nonetheless acquainted them with the Ainur. Furthermore, because the Ainur are usually regarded as exceptionally wise, their customs and beliefs are accorded extra status. Therefore, beliefs and behaviors among the peoples of Arda stand a good chance of having been influenced by the Ainur, i.e., sexist practices might be overtly taught to other peoples by the Ainur or unwittingly mimicked by peoples striving to emulate Ainurin wisdom.

(I have chosen to focus on the Valar specifically for the simple reason that we know relatively little about the Maiar, who constitute the majority of the Ainur. In contrast, we know at least a little something about all sixteen Valar. Please note also that, per the Valaquenta in The Silmarillion, Melkor is not counted among the Valar. Likewise, this essay will not consider Melkor except once, and I'll make it very clear that I'm including him in my analysis.)

On Equal Interest: Or a Promising Start for Equality

For a start, the Valar are evenly split in terms of biological sex: There are eight Valier and eight male Valar.5 This suggests that an even split in biological sex is normal among the Children of Ilúvatar, and this certainly makes sense, considering that Arda is equivalent to our own solar system, and we can observe a nearly even split in biological sex among humans. This observation becomes less simple, though, when considering that the sixteen Valar were merely part of a much larger group of Ainur, some (many? most?) of whom chose not to descend into Arda.6 We know nothing about these Ainur who chose to remain with Ilúvatar. We don't know how many there were and what they would have perceived as their biological sex.

What is interesting about these circumstances, though, is that they show that equal numbers of women and men chose to descend into Arda. This is a rather surprising deviation from traditional gender roles, which would posit that women prefer to stay home while the men roam about and have adventures. Assuming the Valar as illustrative of Ilúvatar's vision and occupying a prototypical role, this suggests that women and men have equal interest in subcreation, power, and governance. One could easily conclude from this that Ilúvatar, when proposing a difficult task, expected equal numbers of women and men to raise their hands and volunteer. This seems a promising start for equality in Arda.

On the Aratar: Or Equality Starts to Go Pear-Shaped

But we don't get to celebrate for long. After an equal number of women and men among the Valar choose to enter Arda and labor hard to see their music come to fruition, we get a classification of some of the Valar into the subgroup of Aratar, the most powerful of the Valar. The Valaquenta identifies them as "Manwë and Varda, Ulmo, Yavanna and Aulë, Mandos, Nienna, and Oromë."7

Equality among the Valar no longer looks so rosy. Three out of eight on that list are women, or 37.5%. And it actually gets worse. While Melkor was removed from the ranks of the Valar8 and so isn't under discussion here, before he was banished from amongst the Valar, he was considered one of the Aratar, making this the one time that I will bring him up in this essay. So among the original Aratar, only one-third (33.3%) were women. Ouch.

How to interpret this? It's nearly impossible—at least from my vantage point, although I will discuss narrative point of view in relation to this issue below—to see this as anything but sexist, a statement that, while both sexes may have equal enthusiasm for creativity and governance, men overwhelmingly possess more actual talent for it. Women, on the other hand, only dabble about in the margins, much as women throughout history have been permitted to take up art or music or even science to keep them occupied and out from underfoot but without the intention that they should employ those skills in any way that would advance achievement or understanding in those disciplines. This was commonplace among middle- and upper-class women in the late Victorian era in which Tolkien was born. We see a similar mindset in his letters, where his sons pursue academic and vocational opportunities while his wife and daughter stay home and where he wrote to his son Michael, "How quickly an intelligent woman can be taught, grasp [a male teacher’s] ideas, see his point – and how (with rare exceptions) they can go no further, when they leave his hand."9 This antiquated view appears to be at work in his writing of the Valar. Perhaps those "rare exceptions" are the few female Aratar he allowed.

On the Roles of the Valar in The Silmarillion: Or *Flush* Equality Officially Goes down the Drain

One could still argue, I suppose, that the imbalance between male and female Aratar is not as awful as it seems. After all, two of the female Aratar are Varda and Yavanna. As noted above, these two women are the high achievers among the Valar, responsible for perhaps the two greatest examples of subcreation in all of Arda: the stars and the Two Trees, respectively. (Tolkien calls the making of the stars by Varda the "greatest of all the woks of the Valar since their coming into Arda."10 He doesn't rank Yavanna's singing the Two Trees into being [with the help of Nienna, the third of the female Aratar] but says of the Trees that "[o]f all the things which Yavanna made they have the most renown."11 However, I can think of no other subcreation by anyone in The Silmarillion—with the exception of the stars—on the order of Yavanna's Two Trees.) Given the achievements by the three women who represent the Valier among the Aratar, perhaps it took five male Valar to manage achievements on the same order.

If it seems like I'm stretching on this one, that's because I am. There are not only more male Aratar, but the male Valar in general play a bigger role in The Silmarillion than the Valier do, even those among the Aratar.

While conducting research for another paper, I noticed that female characters from the family trees in The Silmarillion tend to receive fewer mentions in the text than the male characters from the family trees do, even when the women exist right alongside male characters and perform similar roles. For example, Beren is mentioned 146 times in The Silmarillion, but Lúthien is mentioned only 137, despite being the more operative of the two (and another favored character to trot out when purportedly disproving sexism in The Silmarillion ). I decided to repeat this procedure with the Valar—indeed, the results are what inspired this essay. The procedure was simple: I used my Kindle Silmarillion eBook to count the number of times each character was mentioned in the text. I did not count mentions in the appendix materials. When characters' names are equivalent with place names (Mandos and Lórien), I did not count mention of the places. I did, however, count when the character's name was used in the genitive—eagles of Manwë, for example, or Doom of Mandos—since those instances refer to an object, location, or concept as a possession of the character. Also, naming something after a character is itself indicative of that character's prominence. When characters had multiple names, I searched for all of their names and counted each mention, unless the two names were combined into one. For example, Námo Mandos, although containing both of the character's names, would count only once. The chart to the right shows the raw data, with the women in orange and the men in blue.

The graph below shows the same data, as well as the average (mean and median) number of mentions for male and female Valar in The Silmarillion. It further breaks down the Valar by whether or not they are considered one of the Aratar.

This is pretty bleak. Male Valar dominate The Silmarillion. Even the most-mentioned Valië—Yavanna—receives fewer mentions than the mean average for the men. While status as one of the Aratar strongly predicts the number of mentions a character receives in the text, being an Arata is no guarantee of attention. Varda—Varda!!—receives fewer mentions in the text than all of the male Aratar. Compared with the other Aratar, Nienna is barely mentioned at all, and Tulkas—not an Arata and best known for pummeling things and then laughing at them—is nonetheless mentioned 2.5 times more than she is. But of course Nienna only aided Yavanna in bringing forth the Two Trees and mentored the greatest of Istari. Nothing to see here, folks. Look, I think Tulkas just uploaded his latest fight video to YouTube.

The poor Valar who share the double misfortune of being women and not being Aratar are in a category all to themselves. You can see them there in orange at the far right of the graph, which I have dubbed The Bottom of the Barrel. These women are mentioned, assigned a domain, and given a relationship to a [male] character, and then we never see or hear from them again. They are presumably the women Tolkien mentioned in his letter to his son Michael who are not the "rare exceptions" of Varda, Yavanna, and Nienna but rather possess the "the servient, helpmeet instinct" normal to women and "can go no further, when they leave [their husbands'] hand."12 It is perhaps telling that, despite knowing almost nothing about some of these women in The Bottom of the Barrel, we know which male Vala they are married to.

The number of women who do almost nothing in the story begins to explain why the men dominate the story, but as the graph shows, it is not that simple. Even the female Aratar are neglected. Why? Given the ambitiousness of their accomplishments, one would think that Varda and Yavanna would receive a lot of attention in the texts.

The graphic below shows a rough timeline of the deeds of the Valar during the Years of the Lamps and Years of the Trees. The women are in red/orange and the men are in blue/aqua. Without even reading the graphic, just sit back and look at the [im]balance of colors, which show that the male Valar do a helluva lot more than the women do.

Some more granular observations of the graphic above: Part of the imbalance comes about because Tolkien seemed to have no trouble assigning great deeds to women—to exceptional women, anyway—but seems to have had difficulty imagining them playing a role in the more commonplace activities that might have been required of their role. Again, we see this manifest most strongly in the nonexceptional, non-Aratar bottom-of-the-barrel women. Only one of these women does anything at all: Estë, who prays for a period of darkness in the early, unsettled days of the Sun’s cycle. Notably, she does this in conjunction with her husband Irmo.13 However, we see it overall as well. The men go places and do things that often aren’t terribly noteworthy; they converse and interact with each other and other characters; they debate each other and hold forth on their opinions.

The Valier, on the other hand, are almost silent in

The Silmarillion

. The men speak at counsels and share opinions, but Yavanna is the only Valië who is given dialogue. While it is stated that Varda and Nienna sometimes speak, we never actually hear their voices. In contrast, all the male Valar are given dialogue except for Oromë and Irmo, and the male Valar are given more than four times the dialogue of the Valier … well, Yavanna really, since she is the only woman to actually speak. None of the other Valier are even suggested to have spoken.

The simple act of hearing a character's dialogue fleshes out that character in the story. Námo's voice sounds different from Tulkas's. Silenced, the women lack this element of characterization. Their characters feel flat as a result. Seeing the male Valar in debate or sharing their opinions on various matters also makes them appear more assertive and involved in the story. It is hard to connect to the women who are seemingly without opinion in the important matters debated by their brethren. We are told that Varda, Yavanna, and Nienna all care deeply for the occupants of Middle-earth, but the story does not show this because they remain completely uninvolved in the debates deciding their fates. Not a single woman among the Valar contributes to the debates of her people. (They do, however, ask permission: Yavanna—our Chatty Cathy among the Valier—asks for permission to makes the Ents and then to use Fëanor’s Silmarils. None of the men make requests: They advocate, declare, mentor, urge, and, in Aulë’s case especially, would rather ask for forgiveness than permission.)

The male Valar interact with the Elves, assisting them in coming to Valinor and mentoring them once they arrive. Again, the women are absent from these scenes. While Yavanna, Oromë, and Ulmo all journeyed to Middle-earth before the discovery of the Elves, Oromë and Ulmo are permitted to interact with them once they're found, but Yavanna never does. We receive very specific information about the activities of the men: Oromë riding around Middle-earth, Tulkas chasing things, and Aulë making stuff. Once the women have completed their grand designs, they drop back from the story. If there is something to be done after that, you can be sure a man will be doing it. These actions inflate the men's numbers, but they also give the men a presence in the story and fuller characterization that the women lack.

If we accept the Valar as a prototype of the correct order of the universe as created by Ilúvatar, these revelations are pretty dispiriting. They suggest that women and men have equal willingness to become involved in the world, but women lag significantly behind the men in terms of both skill and actual involvement. Even if we reject that Tolkien was deliberately attempting to represent the inferiority of women to be part of the natural order of his universe, when considering the influence the Valar wield over the other peoples of Arda, we can see how these views spread to other cultures who might otherwise achieve a more egalitarian society.

On Varda: Or a Case Study in Inequality

When I ran the initial data for this research, the character whose depiction struck me as the most unjust was Varda. The Valaquenta tells us that Varda is the Queen of the Valar and the Vala most beloved by the Elves; she and Manwë enjoy a synergistic relationship where they are most powerful in the other's company. We are told that Melkor "hated her, and feared her more than all others whom Eru made."14 As noted above, her creation of the stars is explicitly identified as the greatest act of subcreation by the Valar. Varda is a powerful, kickass woman character.

Varda is also almost wholly absent from the story. She is mentioned only thirty-four times in The Silmarillion; despite the fact that the Valaquenta says Manwë and Varda are almost never apart,15 Manwë receives four times as many mentions as she does. What is Varda doing in the scenes where Manwë is active or outspoken in some way? Why do we never see her in these scenes, even indirectly via her influence over him?

Varda never speaks in The Silmarillion. Not once. In the chapter "Of the Sun and Moon," we are told that she "changed her counsel" and "commanded the Moon," but we never actually hear her speak in those instances. In most of the councils where important decisions are being made, one wouldn't even know that Varda was present. Not only do we not hear her voice, we don't even learn what her opinion is. For a Queen of the Valar, her silence is not only odd but almost unbelievable.

Varda is named in the Valaquenta as the most beloved of the Elves, and we are told that "they call upon her name out of the shadows of Middle-earth, and uplift it in song at the rising of the stars." We are told also that she "hears more clearly than all other ears the sound of voices that cry from east to west, from the hills and the valleys, and from the dark places that Melkor has made upon Earth."16 Yet we don't know why the Elves revere her so—aside from her making of the stars—nor do we see her act in any way upon the cries made to her. Aside from being present at a few rituals, we never see her interact with the Elves. We never even see her advocate for them, even though she is given several chances to do so.

I presented some of this data and some initial thoughts on my blog, The Heretic Loremaster, on July 22, 2015. Lady Brooke took my analysis a step further by investigating how the Valar are discussed in The Lord of the Rings. The names Varda and Elbereth are mentioned twenty-five times in the story itself (again, I am not counting appendix materials). Brooke notes that the only other Vala to be mentioned in the story itself is Oromë, whom I found twice (once under the name Araw), although Aulë and Manwë also appear in appendix materials. Nonetheless, even these three men combined cannot touch Varda's numbers in The Lord of the Rings. Tumblr user Anghraine makes a similar observation, noting that Elbereth appears in three songs and functions as "the elvish expletive of choice" in The Lord of the Rings (the latter is noted in the tags on the post).

If you look at the references to Varda in The Lord of the Rings, they are precisely as Brooke and Anghraine note. They don't show Varda in an active role. Her name is taken in vain a lot and, at most, is invoked in a protective capacity, but we don't know why (or if) this works. Is she truly watching over Middle-earth and intervening when she is called upon? Does invoking her name enhance the speaker's courage and fortitude because she or he believes Varda is going to intervene? Does the name repel enemies, who fear the possibility of her intervention? (Sam specifically notes that Elbereth is a good password because Orcs would never speak her name.17 ) Is it just sheer superstition and actually has no effect at all? As noted above, we see no evidence to suggest that, aside from making the stars, Varda ever actually advocated for much less intervened on behalf of anyone in Middle-earth. The discrepancy between her identified role and what we actually see her doing brings to light another complicating factor in all of Tolkien's texts: how reading the books as historical texts, taking into account narrative point of view, affects the credibility of what we see in the books.

On the Lost Cult of Varda: Or How Historical Readings Muddle My Conclusions

Potentially rescuing Varda and the other Valier from silence and obscurity is the fact that the legendarium was intended by Tolkien to serve as a historical account told by chroniclers who lived through or received the tradition from others. The latter is especially salient in the case of the Valar, since few of the Children of Ilúvatar would have been privy to the conversations of the Valar reported in The Silmarillion. In short, The Silmarillion accounts of the Valar are largely hearsay and perhaps reflect the cultural and gender biases of the chroniclers and other keepers of the tradition.

Do I think Tolkien deliberately orchestrated a gender-biased narrator and, in fact, imagined the Valier to have fuller roles equal to those of the men? No, I don’t. The equal number of female and male Valar, especially when compared to the gender disparities among other groups of characters, suggests that he may have aspired to equality and maybe would have even asserted, based on the numbers alone and the indispensable roles of the female Aratar, to have achieved it. In the male-dominated academic world of the early twentieth century, it is likely that he didn’t have a full picture of what gender equality looked like, in part because the historical and literary tradition of Western civilization was (and still is) heavily skewed toward men and did not present many options for imagining the role strong women characters might play in a narrative beyond their rare imposition into the roles of men. We can see this even in the present day, where traditional women’s work remains undercompensated (when it is noticed at all), and even in professions that have achieved gender parity, women are called upon less often than men to speak as experts. They are the Vardas: On paper, they are giants of intellect and creativity who nonetheless seem to do or say very little, less a comment on their actual achievements than how our culture perceives those achievements. In Tolkien’s work, it is perhaps telling that the women most often identified as "strong female characters"—Èowyn, Haleth, Galadriel, Lúthien—play a martial or questing role at least part of the time. It is as though Tolkien had a difficult time imagining how characters in a more traditionally feminine role—for example, Varda’s advocacy for the defenseless or Nienna’s emotional nurturance of the suffering—could equal the strength and dignity of male pursuits centered on conquest and power. These are biases Tolkien held—these are biases most of us hold—and likely his fictional chroniclers and narrators as well.

So while I do not believe that Tolkien intended his gender-biased in-universe narrators to deliver a wink and a nudge to readers, who would understand that the Valier only do and say far less than the men, and so appear less interesting and fully realized as characters than the men, because of those narrators’ biases, I do think that this framework upon which he built his story offers potential for redeeming even the Nessas and Vairës of his imagined world (to say nothing of the Vardas and Niennas). Their silence, their lack of achievement are not absolutes; they are only flawed perceptions. In what Tolkien scholar and fanfiction writer Una McCormick called "reparative reading,"18 readers and fanworks creators can look past the biases and imagine fuller roles for these characters without contradicting (and indeed paying a sort of homage to the structure of) the canon. It is not hard to imagine a story where Varda, for example, acts in a way that explains both Melkor’s terror of her and the adoration of her by the peoples of Third Age Middle-earth.

Conclusion: Or the Power of Prototypes

The Valar are not the only Children of Ilúvatar—far from it—but they are the only Children of Ilúvatar to receive guidance and instruction directly from Ilúvatar rather than an intermediary. As such, their society and behaviors can be inferred to most closely reflect Ilúvatar’s intentions in creating the universe. Even before we discuss their own roles lending guidance to other groups in Arda, this prototypical role marks them as important in delineating how Arda is intended to function. If we find sexism there—and I hope I have demonstrated that we do—then this is the way it’s supposed to be. A dispiriting thought, but one that is not strange to actual women, who have been told for millennia (and are still told today, in various ways subtle and overt) that they are not as capable as men.

If you want to start a flamewar in the Tolkien fan community, pose the question, "Was Tolkien sexist?" It doesn’t matter how you answer it, you will upset someone. The Valar, through their status as prototypes, provide compelling evidence that, yes, Tolkien was sexist. He imagined a world with a foundation where women were equally interested in participating in the world but far less capable of doing so in a meaningful way or where their accomplishments weren’t interesting enough to write about. His words to his son Michael that women were equally able to learn as men but far less adept at making something of that learning are worth revisiting. He is describing his prototype of the Valar.

Now is the point where some readers will be only half-listening to what I say because they will already be rehearsing how they will tell me that I am being unfair in holding J.R.R. Tolkien—who began work on The Silmarillion more than a century ago—to modern views on sexism. To these readers: I can feel your hands itching to type, and I ask you to wait for just a moment longer. Do not mistake my intentions in calling Tolkien sexist. He joins the rest of us—including me, although I try not to be—in his sexism. It is not to retroactively condemn his work or to advocate against its importance in twentieth-century literature. In fact, it’s justifiable place in the Western literary canon is precisely why I bring it up.

Because just as the Valar are important for their prototypical status, so is Tolkien. Tolkien’s work is, likewise, a prototype: the model that shaped modern epic fantasy, one of the twentieth century’s most important genres. Countless books, stories, films, and other popular culture media were patterned after Tolkien’s prototype, more often than not unwittingly echoing the same sexist patterns that formed a component of his imagined universe. This doesn’t compel blame and certainly not censorship, but it does encourage awareness, so that we can strive to do better, to break—and eventually, hopefully, remake—the prototype.

Works Cited

The Silmarillion, Valaquenta, "Of the Valar."

The Silmarillion, Valaquenta, "Of the Maiar."

This is equivalent to the legendarium as a whole; see Emil Johansson, "Population by Race and Sex," LotR Project, 2014, accessed July 8, 2018.

The Silmarillion, Ainulindalë.

The Silmarillion, Valaquenta, "Of the Valar."

The Silmarillion, Ainulindalë.

The Silmarillion, Valaquenta, "Of the Valar."

Ibid. "Melkor is no longer counted among the Valar, and his name is not spoken upon Earth."

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, "43 From a letter to Michael Tolkien."

The Silmarillion, "Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor."

The Silmarillion, "Of the Beginning of Days."

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, "43 From a letter to Michael Tolkien."

The Silmarillion, "Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor."

The Silmarillion, Valaquenta, "Of the Valar."

Ibid.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, "The Tower of Cirith Ungol."

Una McCormick, "Finding Ourselves in the (Un)Mapped Lands: Women’s Reparative Readings of The Lord of the Rings" in Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Janet Brennan Croft and Leslie A. Donovan (Altadena, CA: Mythopoeic Press, 2015), 310.

This essay was also crossposted on the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild and my blog The Heretic Loremaster. Comments and discussion are welcome and appreciated wherever is most convenient!

#silmarillion #tolkien #valar #varda #tolkien and women #women of the legendarium #yavanna #nienna #valier #tolkien meta

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patternsintraffic · 3 years

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My 100 Favorite Albums of the 2000s: #100-#91

Hi all. As you can tell from the title of this blog post, I am about to take you off on quite a tangent. Music is in the works (both the completion of Lights & Reflections and the first full-length Harsh Lights album), but currently I find myself sitting up into the early morning hours with a newborn while my wife tries to get some uninterrupted sleep. So I am taking the opportunity to finally post this ridiculously long-winded writing project that I embarked on last year. The actual list-making and blurb-penning has been done for many months now, but I never took the time to format and post it. So here I am with some free time, getting around to finishing this undertaking!

As you may have seen, I decided to join in the fun at the turn of the decade and make a list of my favorite albums from 2010-2019. I wrote about my top 20 albums of the decade, and had a blast revisiting those records and sharing a little bit about why they are special to me. However, the most surprising part of the process for me was that choosing 20 albums to represent that ten-year period was...pretty easy? I started my career in late 2009, so the entire past decade I've been working full-time, pursuing my own music in my spare time, and more or less adulting. I've definitely listened to a ton of great albums, but it's hard to find music that truly excites you as an adult the way that it did in your formative years. The whole time I was crafting my list, I was thinking about how much more difficult (and rewarding) a task it would have been to compile a list for the previous decade, spanning 2000-2009.

So of course, not long after posting my 2010-2019 list I got to work compiling my favorite albums of the aughts. That 10-year period starts when I was 12 years old and wraps up as I was starting my post-college career. Pretty much my entire journey of musical discovery and growth occurred during those years. I had little in the way of responsibilities, and for most of the decade I ravenously consumed an absolutely enormous amount of music. Multiple hours worth on an average day. I was still buying physical CDs all throughout those years, so I really focused on each album I purchased, giving them many repeat listens and learning them intimately. And so much of what I heard was new and fresh to my ears. At 12 years old, there were so many sounds and styles of music that I had yet to encounter, and all of those first experiences and coming of age moments left lasting impressions.

Suffice to say, putting together a top 20 list of albums to represent that 10-year period was nearly impossible. I knew I would have to make a larger list to feel like I was doing justice to even a fraction of the albums that impacted me in that decade. What I eventually arrived upon after making an initial list of albums and then cutting it down quite a bit...was 100. Yes, I'm going to write about my favorite 100 albums from 2000-2009. And I'm going to have a damn good time doing it. Most of my favorite albums ever will be contained in this list, and most of them are wildly underappreciated, in my opinion. For the sake of keeping each post to a manageable length, I will be posting 10 albums at a time, starting with numbers 100-91 below. Walk with me down memory lane in countdown form, and I hope you can enjoy me waxing poetic about 100 albums that were staples of my young life. Let's get nostalgic.

100. Paris Texas - Like You Like an Arsonist (2004)

There are hundreds of albums that I could have picked to round out my list here in the final spot, but I wanted to shine a light on this poppy punk rock record from 2004. It doesn't do anything particularly groundbreaking, but it's a really fun take on the genre and it didn't get the recognition that it deserved. "Bombs Away" and the title track are absolute barnburners. What a shame that the band broke up shortly after this album was released. I remember reading a review of Like You Like an Arsonist around the time of its release that criticized it for sounding like a collection of songs that could blend seamlessly into the soundtrack of a blockbuster action movie. Looking back, I agree with the reviewer's assessment, but I see it as high praise.

99. Greenwheel - Soma Holiday (2002)

In 2002, you could throw a shoe and hit a band that sounded much like Greenwheel, a radio-ready alternative rock outfit with some heavy riffs and a throaty lead singer. But these guys stood above many of their contemporaries on Soma Holiday, their only major label release. (Their independent EP Bridges for Burning and never-released second full-length Electric Blanket both hinted at a sustainable career that didn't come to fruition.) This album had enough muscle for the rock kids ("Shelter" and "Strong") and enough sweetness for the emo kids ("Dim Halo" and "Breathe," which was later recorded and popularized by Melissa Etheridge). What could have been.

98. Sleeping at Last - Ghosts (2003)

It's been almost 10 years since Sleeping at Last became a solo project for Ryan O'Neal, releasing themed singles that make up overarching concept albums and EPs. Though the output from the current incarnation of the band is beautiful and soothing, the minimalist and orchestral style is a far cry from Ghosts, Sleeping at Last's one major label album. At the time they were a three-piece featuring guitars, bass, and drums alongside O'Neal's piano and distinct vocals. Ghosts features an uncommon blend of cinematic, ethereal, and earnest indie rock that just seemed to go deeper than its peers in 2003.

97. Taking Back Sunday - Where You Want to Be (2004)

I've never been a huge fan of Taking Back Sunday, though of course I rocked the singles from Tell All Your Friends like any self-respecting high-schooler in 2002. It was the follow-up, 2004's Where You Want to Be, that really got its claws in me after I picked it up on release week. With a killer opening trio of "Set Phasers to Stun," "Bonus Mosh Pt. II," and "A Decade Under the Influence" giving way to ballads like "New American Classic" and "...Slowdance on the Inside," this is just a great rock record.

96. Sherwood - A Different Light (2007)

A Different Light is a bright, summery, buoyant pop album full of smooth vocal harmonies, glistening guitars, and shimmering synths. Sure, the lyrical content isn't all rainbows and butterflies, but if you could capture the sound of pure positivity and optimism, it would sound a lot like this record. Between the singalong melodies, handclaps, and "whoa-oh"s, if you don't have a good time listening to A Different Light then music might not be the right medium for you.

95. Young Love - Too Young to Fight It (2007)

I'm fairly certain that Young Love, the dance-rock side project of beloved post-hardcore band Recover's frontman Dan Keyes, was not at all well-received. But for someone with no preconceived notions or attachments to Keyes' previous work, I thought this album was a hell of a lot of fun. In a world where Young Love made a mainstream impact, alternate-universe Kyle can be seen storming the dancefloor to the title track or "Discotech." Too Young to Fight It also gives us the smooth R&B of "Tell Me," the indie rock of "Take It or Leave It," and the experimental and apocalyptic "Tragedy." This is so much more than a dance album, and if it hadn't been released by a musician with strong ties to the hardcore scene it would have had a fighting chance of being recognized as such.

94. Vendetta Red - Sisters of the Red Death (2005)

Vendetta Red frontman Zach Davidson has one of the most dynamic hard rock voices I've ever heard, and Sisters of the Red Death is one of the catchiest rock records I've ever heard. Despite those facts, I have a complicated relationship with this album because of its often-horrifying lyrical content, which details acts of sexual violence and gore. That's usually a dealbreaker for me, but I won't completely write off this record since it is a concept album set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world. Apparently female empowerment is at the core of the message, so it's not like Vendetta Red are condoning the acts that they're singing about. It's still a bit unnerving when you get the urge to sing along to one of the plethora of earworm melodies throughout this album and then realize exactly what you're singing. While I may not have the stomach for Sisters of the Red Death in 2021, I can still wholeheartedly recommend "Silhouette Serenade," which contains all of the awesomeness with none of the gross-out lyrics.

93. Ours - Distorted Lullabies (2001)

Now 20 years into his career, Ours frontman Jimmy Gnecco is surely tired of being compared to Jeff Buckley. But damn, he really does sound like Jeff Buckley. And when you're being compared to one of the all-time great voices in rock music, that's not such a bad thing. Distorted Lullabies is the first proper Ours album, and it's filled with melodic rock songs that highlight Gnecco's incredible range. As the saying goes, I could listen to Gnecco sing the phonebook (those were still around in 2001!), but put his powerful and emotive voice on dynamic rock songs like "Sometimes" and "Meet Me in the Tower"? Yes, please.

92. Armor for Sleep - What to Do When You Are Dead (2005)

This here is an emo concept album about a boy who commits suicide and his experience in the afterlife. Despite the overwrought subject matter, the songs on What to Do When You Are Dead are carefully crafted and interesting. "Car Underwater" is a scene classic, and my favorite track might be the keyboard-centric interlude "A Quick Little Flight." Armor for Sleep seemed a bit more thoughtful in their songwriting and arrangements than many of their contemporaries.

91. Cauterize - Paper Wings (2005)

The single "Something Beautiful" led me to Cauterize's 2003 major label debut So Far from Real, but upon purchasing the album I found that the rest of the tracks didn't live up to that song's high bar. Not so with the independently-released follow-up Paper Wings, which was just full of emo rock songs that I absolutely devoured in 2005. This was actually the first album that I had to order online because it wasn't sold in stores. I remember the surreal feeling of the CD showing up in the mailbox, and that first experience attached some additional meaning to Paper Wings. It doesn't hurt that it features propulsive songs like "Wake to the Sun," "Closer," and "Tremble." Cauterize later signed to another label and re-recorded most of these songs for Disguises, which rejiggered the tracklist and added a few new tunes. Even though the production might be a little better on Disguises, I always preferred the Paper Wings versions and the flow of the original tracklist. There's nothing like the first time.

#albums of the decade #best of the 2000s #top100 #countdown #nostalgia trip

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