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d1ana-m0nd · 2 years

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╭─► ❝The Servant: Umbrella Academy's Servant❞

Five Hargreeves × Female! Reader || Written by Diana (d1ana-m0nd)

➢ Description : It's a well known fact that Sir. Reginald Hargreeves adopted 7 children to save the world from it's impending doom. Though, the number of children will change from 7 to 8 once a close friend of his, Rita Rossweisse was on her death bed and requested him to take in her child, who fortunately was born on October 1st 1989.

➢ Word Count : 794

➢ Links : Masterlist && Character Profile

Prologue: An Old Friend's Death Wish

"Glad to see you look the same as ever Master Hargreeves." The British maid greeted the eccentric billionaire who wore his signature grouch; Said grouch only deepened as he saw the British maiden's actions, most likely annoyed by it.

"Drop the formalities Rita, You called me over while you are sick. I presume you want something from me." He huffed as he held back his usual harshness. He would have urged the woman to discuss the issue over the phone, but she insisted it was an important matter and it had to be done face to face.

"So, I suggest being on with it. Time is gold, especially when it has something to do with the entire world's future." The Monocle added, as he glanced over his watch as though he was going to miss his plane back home any moment. This action almost fooled Rita into thinking he was thinking about his children, though she doubts he was worried for their wellbeing.

"You wound me Mr. Reginald," Rita, the former Valkyrie of Schicksal, who is quite known for her sadistic nature, instead attempted to lighten the mood.

"It's only common manners for a maid to greet their guests and, I wouldn't say I'm calling you over, because of my sickness. It's more of a favor. A death wish from an old friend as others would say." The maid smiled at him, but the expression made Mister Hargreeves perplexed. He genuinely didn't know where this conversation was leading towards.

"An old friend's death wish?" The Monocle repeated, a brow raised a little high than usual.

"I was not aware we had that kind of relationship." He admitted, his aged brows deepening its position from its usual creases, along with his stern gaze directed towards the Brit trying to read her.

"I believe you are familiar with the old saying 'A friend of my friend is my friend', no?" the maid asked with a smile. Reginald Hargreeves shook his head yes, his eyes narrowing at the lady before him. He could not help but suspect her, especially knowing how sly of a woman she is.

"You have not only assisted Master Apocalypse with his discoveries but, you have helped us save the world numerous times. Sadly, we, the valkyries, rather, the Schicksal as a whole is dying. We can't keep fighting for the world's safety."

"I ask you to look after what me and Durandal deem precious the most."

"Our child." Out of nowhere, the maid brought out a child wrapped in a blanket and acted as though it was her most prized possession.

Based on the child's appearance alone, the eccentric billionaire could tell why the child's mother deemed it as her prized possession. It mirrored its mother’s facial features, some features even mirroring the child’s other mother, Durandal. Whilst observing the child, Reginald felt an unspeakable force that tugged him towards the baby. A force that told him the baby was as special as her parents. In spite of knowing little about the baby, he knew one thing: it was extraordinary.

"Are you alluding that you will die soon?" The old man asked.

"Bingo." The British maiden replied with a grin on her face. Despite how heavy the atmosphere was, she smiled, though Reginald knew it was just another lie. Being optimistic was their only way of surviving danger in their everyday lives.

"Does this have anything to do with the end of the world?" He questioned.

"No, it has something to do with my health and my job."

"The stigmata is draining my life away at a fast pace. I can't keep fighting because of it. Durandal even forced me to stay at home whilst she handled all the work at Schicksal. In the end, she died on a mission. With the state I am in, I don't think I can take care of this child properly." Rita ended with a sad smile adorning her once gleeful face.

For a moment, it was silent. Watching a mother look at the mini version of herself with her eyes glazed both with pure happiness and sadness, two conflicting emotions that clearly bothered her. Despite the clear hesitance, she pushed through to let her child live the best of her life.

"If I heard from the news correctly," the former valkyrie coughed, then faced the billionaire. "I heard you bought seven children and took them under your care. I'll be offering my child to you, but you don't have to pay me. Just promise me that you will raise her, give her a house and a purpose."

"Deal." The eccentric billionaire agreed without a second thought. As the maid handed over the baby to him, he could tell that he would not regret his decision.

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schmem14 · 1 year

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Kinkuary 2023 Masterlist

This collection is now COMPLETE. Read the whole thing HERE on AO3

Day 1: Accidental stimulation/Arousal

Summary: Ginny cuts wood to keep in shape. Hermione watches, only to find she's unexpectedly aroused.

Pairing: Hermione Granger/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley

CW: Infidelity

Day 2: Gloryhole/ Anonymous

Summary: Harry and Ron have an unspoken arrangement. What will it take for them to break free?

Pairing: Harry Potter/Ron Weasley

CW: None

Day 3: Medical Play

Summary: As captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, Minerva has many excuses to visit the hospital wing…

Pairing: Minerva McGonagall/Poppy Pomfrey

CW: Student/Staff relationship (everyone is of age)

Day 4: Genderbend

Summary: Severine Snape hates her face, her job, and her hideous body. Most of all, she hates the way bimbo dream boat Professor Lockhart makes her weak at the knees.

Pairing: Severus Snape/Gilderoy Lockhart (Fem Severine/Gilda)

CW: see end notes

Day 5: Consensual non-consent

Summary: Minerva wakes to find an unwelcome visitor in her room…

Pairing: Minerva McGonagall/Dolores Umbridge

CW: triggering non-con role-play, unethical behavior

Day 6: Begging

Summary: Neville is as pleasant a man as people assume… until he demands more than Pansy can give in the bedroom.

Pairing: Pansy/Neville

CW: Mild Dom/Sub vibes

Day 7: Somnophilia

Summary: Rita Skeeter has her revenge

Pairing: Hermione Granger/Rita Skeeter

CW:DD/DNE, Non-con/Rape, underage

Day 8: Intercrural

Summary: Lucius has a half-giant to save—The only problem is, he's already sold his soul.

Pairing: Lucius Malfoy/Rubeus Hagrid

CW: Student/Staff relationship, Age gap romance, ethically questionable, UHEA

Day 9: Hair/Hair-Pulling

Summary: A hair growth chew, a maiden atop a tall tower, and a Prince Charming who is willing to make the climb… Et voila, a Rapunzel tale to curl your toes (and hair!)

Pairing: Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley

CW: None

Day 10: Fisting

Summary: Hermione has a secret… will discovering it spur Ron into action, or make him wish he’d never found out?

Pairing: Hermione Granger/Lavender Brown, (Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley)

CW: Accidental Voyeurism

Day 11: Roleplay

Summary: Remus sees the ghost of the man he used to love, and he’s so far gone that he would do anything for another night of passion…

Pairing: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black

CW: Dubcon, Brief suicidal thoughts, Manipulation, HBP compliant, Knotting

Day 12: First Time

Summary: On the eve of her wedding, Narcissa has a few things left to learn…

Pairing: Bellatrix Lestrange/Narcissa Black, (Narcissa Black/Lucius Malfoy)

CW: Incest, Infidelity, references past sexual assault

Day 13: Dacryphilia

Summary: Cho cries all the time. Luna doesn’t mind in the least…

Pairing: Luna Lovegood/Cho Chang

CW: Brief mention of canon-compliant minor character death

Day 14: Fabric Play

Summary: Princess Pansy decides to pamper her lady’s maid Hermione for the day… (Royalty AU)

Pairing: Pansy Parkinson/Hermione Granger

CW: None

Day 15: Possessiveness

Summary: Pansy stays out late for drinks even though she knows how jealous her girlfriend will be…

Pairing: Pansy Parkinson/Millicent Bulstrode

CW: Rough Play/Discipline, Dom/Sub vibes, Vampire, biting/blood

Day 16: Size kink

Summary: Harry and Draco are on the hunt for the perfect tiny snack…

Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter/Dennis Creevy, Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter

CW: Anal DP

Day 17: Wax Play

Summary: Werewolf Lavender has long ago given up hopes of being with the one she loves, but might be willing to let the spirits decide…

Pairing: Lavender Brown/Parvati Patil

CW: Previous reference of war trauma, brief mention of werewolf savagery

Day 18: Exhibitionism

Summary: Hermione and Fleur go on a picnic… they hope they’ll have an audience.

Pairing: Hermione Granger/Fleur Delacour and a secret watcher from the house...

CW: pseudo-incest, infidelity, voyeurism, age-difference romance if you squint

Day 19: Hate Sex

Summary: Draco and Harry are getting married… but Ginny and Pansy are not happy about it.

Pairing: Ginny Weasley/Pansy Parkinson, Background Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter

CW: Rough Play, Profanity

Day 20: Overstimulation

Summary: Luna will stop at nothing to get Hermione to see things her way.

Pairing: Luna Lovegood/Hermione Granger

CW: DD:DNE, sex as torture, non-con/rape, drugging, Horror

Day 21: Chastity

Summary: Father Harry must take all the confessionals upon himself—even the ones that threaten his resolve

Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy

CW: Priest AU, hints of homophobia and racism/colorism

Day 22: Piercings

Summary: Pansy can’t stop staring at what Hermione’s wearing… or rather, what she isn’t wearing…

Pairing: Pansy Parkinson/Hermione Granger

CW: public indecency

Day 23: Praise Kink

Summary: Pansy has been starved for love her whole life. All she needs is someone who will give her the approval she craves.

Pairing: Pansy Parkinson/Narcissa Black Malfoy

CW: referenced violence/emotional abuse, child neglect, age-gap romance

Day 24: Feet

Summary: After years of writing off Eloise Midgen as unremarkable, Ron finds something of hers to love. Too bad she’s not making it easy…

Pairing: Ron Weasley/Eloise Midgen, background Draco/Harry

CW: None

Day 25: Comeplay

Summary: Cormac won’t leave Hermione alone. She and Ron hatch a devious plan…

Pairing: Ron Weasley/Hermione Granger/Cormac McLaggen

CW: dubcon, workplace harassment, workplace sexism, revenge

Day 26: Humiliation

Summary: Oliver Wood loses a bet with Marcus Flint and now he has to pay up.

Pairing: Oliver Wood/Marcus Flint

CW: Semi-public, rough sex/spanking

Day 27: Cockwarming

Summary: Molly is determined to get Arthur something different for Christmas this year... she hopes he'll like what she came up with

Pairing: Molly Weasley/Arthur Weasley

CW: None

Day 28: Wildcard- Cunnilingus

Summary: Andromeda might be ready to fall in love again.

Pairing: Andromeda Black Tonks/Ronald Weasley

CW: Age-gap romance, death/grief

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mofffun · 8 months

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to be a victorian maiden, Rita-sama's HANDS

#got much better thing to swoon at this ep but BIG 'Should I look away in courtesy' moment #ko33 #mon mon #kingohger spoilers

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ineffable-endearments · 1 month

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No Woman No Cry by Rita Marley with Hettie Jones

What could a memoir by Rita Marley, widow of Bob Marley, one of the most internationally renowned musicians of all time, possibly have to do with Good Omens? This is what I was wondering when I saw it on the "book club" list in Amazon's X-Ray feature, and what I was determined to find out by requesting it from the library.

[ID: A screen capture from Good Omens Season 2 Episode 2: several books on Aziraphale's bookshop shelf. From left to right, the legible titles are: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith; No Woman, No Cry by Rita Marley; The Crow Road by Iain Banks; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon; Catch-22 by Joseph Heller; Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez; Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell; The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler; The Bible; The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger; A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket; Herzog by Saul Bellow. There are a few other books, but their titles can't be seen in the screen capture. At the bottom of the frame are Gabriel's blurred fingers as he removes another book from the shelf. End ID]

Screen capture is from cap-that.com.

As a nonfiction narrative about real people, some of whom are still alive, No Woman No Cry is different from all the other books on the list. It's got intimate details about real people's lives and major historical events, and that is why I'm not going to make one-to-one comparisons to my favorite fictional story.

But I will write a summary and a reflection on it.

Warning for the summary and essay below about racism, colonialism, rape, and spousal abuse. Do feel free to chat or ask me about more specifics, if you're concerned about reading those subjects. Also, though it's a memoir rather than fiction, there are, of course, many spoilers.

So, first of all: I am in so very far over my head when it comes to discussing the deeper themes of this book. I grew up a middle-class white girl in Connecticut, USA in the 1990s and 2000s and experienced neither abuse nor fame in early adulthood; this memoir is written by a woman who grew up a dark-skinned black girl in deep poverty in Jamaica in the middle of the twentieth century, then experienced a dizzying combination of fame and abuse almost all at once. I can empathize with Rita's story as she tells it, but to analyze and extrapolate in any sort of insightful way? No, I don't think I can do that. No Woman No Cry deserves reflection, though. Please kindly bear with a little clumsiness.

I can see from online discussion that a lot of people come out of this book feeling shocked and dismayed to discover that Bob Marley did, indeed, abuse his wife, including an instance she described as "almost rape" when he simply would not accept a sexual rejection. After writing about all this and more, though, Rita Marley continues to miss, love, and admire Bob; per the online comments, many readers seem to have decided that she is misguided, afflicted, or outright delusional for feeling this way. Although I could not forgive Bob's abuses, I also cannot dismiss the positive meanings that Rita has taken from her time with Bob. It's her story, not mine, and she already has her own way of synthesizing the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Summary

No Woman No Cry starts with Rita Marley recalling Bob Marley's death.

But then I started to cry and said, "Bob, please, don't leave me." And he looked up and said, "Leave you, go where? What are you crying for? Forget crying, Rita. Just keep singing. Sing! Sing!" So I kept singing, and then I realized, wow, that's exactly what the song was saying: "I will never leave you, wherever you are I will be..."

Rita Marley's full maiden name was Alfarita Constantia Anderson, but she went by Rita her whole life. Her parents separated, as was common, and she lived with her beloved Aunty Viola for much of her youth. Rita was bullied by her classmates for her dark skin; though most Jamaicans are people of color, eurocentric beauty standards brought in by colonialism still led to a strong bias toward lighter skin.

Rita met Bob Marley in Trench Town when they were both getting into music; Rita was in a group called The Soulettes, and Bob was in a group called The Wailers with his friends Peter and Bunny. They bonded over music. They also bonded over Bob's generosity with Aunty and taking care of Rita's child, as Rita was a single mother at the time and Bob was nurturing toward her baby daughter, Sharon. Interestingly, Rita stated she initially got involved in Bob's personal life because she felt she wanted to take care of him, as he didn't have anywhere comfortable to live.

Bob got Rita interested in Rastafari, which connected with her spiritually and helped her gain confidence in her beauty and worth as a black woman. Rita gives Bob a great deal of credit throughout the narrative for helping her discover herself.

Rita and Bob had very little income for the early part of their marriage. They had to stay in a single room at Aunty's house, and although they loved Aunty, it was just too crowded, especially since Aunty and Rita's brother did not approve of all of their decisions. They were judgmental of Rastafari, for example, which had no respect in Jamaica. (Although there is still bias against Rastafarians today, things are a bit better.)

Over the next several years, Rita and Bob moved a few times while continuing to work on Bob's music; they had homes in Nine Mile and then again in Kingston. Rita describes the two of them getting into "love fights" and then making up; they would fight "like children," as she put it, although she was left with physical injuries at times. Aunty warned Rita against staying with a spouse who would hit her. Rita, however, didn't want to leave, partly out of love and partly because she felt that maintaining the marriage was a duty. She also believed she and Bob would always actively choose to be friends, no matter what happened. Bob made up with both Rita and Aunty.

Rita considered different career paths, which included some music, but also the possibility of nursing. On the other hand, Bob devoted himself entirely to music, except for a short time working in the United States. Both Bob and Rita worked in the United States at different times. Neither of them liked it. During Rita's stay in the US, she hated being away from home and felt like she was growing apart from Bob. When Rita got back to Jamaica, she discovered that two other women were pregnant with Bob's children. Though she was angry, Rita decided that because of her spirituality and her continued love, she would remain married to Bob, but would focus on taking care of herself and the children. By now, the family had three children: Shannon (who Rita had before meeting Bob and who Bob formally adopted), Cedella, and David Nesta (better known as Ziggy).

This whole time, Bob had been working on music, with Rita helping when she wasn't away in the US. They had been establishing relationships with studios and selling records, and were seeing some success.

Bob and the Wailers' new producer gave them a house as a space to work and make music. That house was at 56 Hope Road in Kingston, and it's still a famous site today. By the time they got that house, Bob was entirely the one performing with the Wailers, while Rita was mostly taking care of the children. Because of the constant activity from strangers, business dealings, and womanizing that went on at Hope Road, Rita did not want to raise her children there, and she decided to get a government-sponsored house in Bull Bay, another city.

Bob ultimately bought the house in Bull Bay at Rita's request. Rita worked hard on developing her independence while she was raising the children there; she learned to drive and garden, and the garden yielded many fruits and vegetables. Aunty and other friends helped out, too.

Bob financially supported Rita and the children. He divided his time between the house in Bull Bay, the house at 56 Hope Road in Kingston, and tours. Rita and Bob's relationship seemed to be somewhat fluid here; on one hand, Rita describes herself as a "friend" or "sister," and she strongly contemplated divorce. But she also describes how she got a basement studio at the Bull Bay home, and how she and Bob would go down there to make out sometimes, or, more often, to make music. Sometimes, they'd even have little family "events" in that basement studio wherein the children, who were now a bit older and had strong interests in music themselves, could put on imaginary little shows for fun.

Although Bob constantly had girlfriends, he got inordinately jealous of Rita's friend and neighbor, Owen Stewart, known as Tacky. Tacky was not initially a romantic interest. However, Bob assumed he was. One night, Rita informed Bob that she didn't want to have sex anymore because of his constant philandering; she wanted to take a stand. But he was absolutely insistent, arguing that he should be able to have sex with her because she was his wife, until she finally went along with him. Rita comments, "I was almost raped that night."

It sounds like it was rape to me. And Rita got pregnant from it. She and Bob now had another son, Stephen.

Rita and Tacky had by then started having a sexual relationship, which Bob tried to confront Tacky about. One of Bob's girlfriends just happened to appear right while he was talking to Tacky, which was a massive embarrassment and which Tacky correctly used to point out Bob's hypocrisy. Bob stopped arguing, and Rita continued her relationship with Tacky. Rita also had a child with Tacky, a daughter named Stephanie, who Bob adopted.

Life, incredibly, moved on, and Rita suggested to Bob that she should start a juice bar with some of her produce at his Hope Road studio location. Bob agreed, and Rita started the stand that eventually became the Queen of Sheba restaurant. Everyone loved her organic food; Rita comments that Bob was her best customer and PR man.

While running the Queen of Sheba restaurant, Rita reconnected with some friends: Minnie, Judy, and Marcia. Minnie helped a great deal with the restaurant. Rita, Minnie, and Judy wanted to start a Rastafarian women's organization and school for Rastafarian children, while Rita, Judy, and Marcia agreed to sing together at a club. It was Rita's first public performance in a long time.

Right after this, The Wailers broke up. Specifically, Bob signed on again with the same record label and would still work with new singers as "Bob Marley and the Wailers," but the other Wailers, Peter and Bunny, left. They weren't happy with the way the label was headlining Bob. Bob felt deeply hurt by the group's dissolution, but he asked Rita, Marcia, and Judy to come sing backup with him in the studio and on tour.

Bob was paying Rita, as well as Marcia and Judy. But at the same time, Rita got to make music with Bob again, and she loved that. She was very happy to go on tour with him, partly out of a desire to spend time together again - through all the horrible things that had happened, they still loved each other and wanted to spend time together. Rita was also happy to be working on her own musical career. Rita, Marcia, and Judy had named their trio the I-Three, and this would be solid work for all of them.

Rita insisted on getting to be her own separate person on tour, a member of the I-Three instead of Mrs. Marley. She writes about wanting to continue looking after Bob on the road - ensuring his laundry was done and meals were eaten, for example. But otherwise, she stated, she was free to do whatever she wanted on the road in a way she couldn't be at home and wouldn't have been if she were expected to be acting as Mrs. Marley the whole entire time. She also, however, writes about missing her children and her home dearly.

Again, Bob and Rita's relationship continued to seem very fluid. Bob would get jealous if he thought other men were involved with Rita; there was even an incident when he came into her hotel room, started shouting when he saw a male friend in there, lifted Rita up off the bed, and dropped her back on the bed. But he also continued to have affairs and children with other women. Rita writes that she wasn't threatened by many of these women because there were so many of them and they didn't represent serious relationships. Rita also felt it was easier to just take Bob's children by other women into her home, and she often had friendships with their mothers. There were a few women who seemed serious enough for Rita to be hurt by their presence, but over and over again, she chose not to worry about it, because she viewed her role as more important.

Despite the difficulties of dealing with Bob's womanizing and being away from home, Rita chose to stay on tour for all those years because she was instrumental in holding together "such a good thing" - Bob's musical tours with the I-Three - and she sensed it was important to people all over the world. She also loved the sense of individual development she got from that time. Rita comments:

Take your troubles to the Lord and not to the people, I'd tell myself. So I did just that---I prayed. And I gave my part, I gave it honestly. I gave my part, from the heart, and I was paid for it. Paid every week, just like everybody else. So I could maintain myself, not just physically, but with a lot of spirit. And on good days, even though I wasn't altogether happy, I felt so independent, thinking, well, now I can do whatever I want, now I can buy clothes and shoes that I like, I can be---whew---just what I wanna be!

During the seven years they were touring (interspersed with time at home in Jamaica), Bob and Rita did have their arguments and fights, but they overall got along well and were still in love, so they solidified their relationship "as man and wife" again.

However, Rita still didn't feel individuated in the way she wanted to, so she signed with a record company named Hansa Music. Bob did not like this because he wanted to be the one to give Rita her big break; he wanted to keep the music in the family. He felt like white people (Hansa Music was a French company) were taking Rita away. But Rita and the record company were persistent, and he finally agreed to cooperate. Rita started working on her own individual music.

Bob had a political presence - people had come to think of him as "the voice of the people," and youth from the ghetto tended to look to him for help. People would come to Hope Road looking for favors and financial help, with which Bob was generous. But a lot of the people looking for help were mixed up with crime. He became anxious, even paranoid, as people sought help with matters that could endanger Bob and the family - people asking to stay at Hope Road to avoid gang violence, for example.

Eventually, the government asked Bob to do a peace concert called "Smile Jamaica" to encourage peace in the population before an election. Bob agreed, because he believed in peace.

Just after a rehearsal shortly before the concert, Bob and Rita were shot in an assassination attempt; Rita was shot in the head but the bullet didn't cause a fatal wound because of her thick dreadlocks, and Bob was grazed across the chest and shot in the elbow, where the bullet remained for the rest of his life.

Bob insisted on doing the concert anyway, with the bullet in his arm. Rita was up there with him, even though they hadn't been able to remove the bullet from her head yet, either.

After the assassination attempt, the shaken family spent some time in the Bahamas, in Nassau. Bob then went "into exile" in England, where he reconnected with one of his girlfriends. Rita and the children went back to Jamaica for school, but no longer felt safe in their Bull Bay home, so Bob bought a three-sister (three-family) house for them in Kingston. Rita and Bob continued to talk almost every day by telephone.

The political situation didn't lighten up - Bob's influence was being tracked in the United States, and this included intelligence agencies monitoring his mail - but he decided to return to Jamaica after about half a year because he missed his home. However, Bob returned to increased political activity, including more people asking for dangerous favors; again, gang members asked to stay in his home and wanted to act as his personal security.

Before what would be their last tour, Rita wanted to get a different house for the children. She and Bob disagreed on the house; Rita wanted a smaller but beautiful house on a hill overlooking Kingston, while Bob had plans to build a mansion he could settle into with all of his children and work on his music. Rita realized Bob was planning much more for himself and the children than for her, even though he also made a bunch of promises about being a better father, friend, and husband after this tour. He was planning to settle down. Rita told him that was nice, but still decided to put her advance from the tour toward the house on the hill.

During this next tour, Bob injured one of his big toes twice, first in 1975 - after which point it never fully healed because Bob would not give it a rest - and then again in 1977, after which the nail fell out and he developed malignant melanoma. He was advised to have the toe amputated. However, he refused, believing he couldn't perform without his big toe, that audiences wouldn't want to see that, and he was told the doctors were lying. He believed the doctors were lying.

They proceeded with the tour. Bob was extremely famous at this point, and Rita felt she was losing him; other people controlled all his time and influenced his every decision, and Bob felt obligated to keep up with all the demands, even at the expense of his own health. Eventually, Bob collapsed and was taken to the hospital, at which point he discovered his cancer had spread to his brain and he had only months to live. Because the diagnosis was terminal, Bob's managers were planning to keep him touring until he died, but Rita was outraged about this and called everyone she knew to insist on bringing the tour to a stop.

Bob did get cancer treatment, first in the US and then with a specialist in Germany. The German doctor, Dr. Josef Issels, managed to keep Bob alive six months longer than the other doctors believed was possible; however, he soon died very young, at the age of 36.

Rita was devastated. As they were both young, Bob's death was the first major loss Rita had experienced.

Moreover, Rita was immediately thrown into managing a ton of issues that had never been planned for. Rita was betrayed and taken advantage of by people who had been involved in managing Bob's finances, and she even ended up on trial because they accused her of misusing Bob's money after his death. However, everything Rita had used the estate's money for was legitimate. She acted according to the financial advice of his manager, and took care of the children, and paid for his funeral, and paid legal fees. Bob also simply was not as wealthy as people believed; his legacy has generated a lot of money over decades, indeed, but at the time of his death, he wasn't inordinately wealthy, or he wouldn't have felt so much pressure to do all that touring.

Summing up their relationship after Bob's death, Rita writes:

I thought Bob did the greatest thing by leading me to find myself. ... 'You are what you are, you are black and you are beautiful.' And I know there are many, many others who learned that same lesson from him.

Rita went on to carry Bob's legacy forward, keeping his music alive. In 2000, Time magazine awarded the "Song of the Century" title to Bob's song "One Love" and the "Album of the Century" title to Bob's album "Exodus." Bob's children now have musical careers, which Rita has nurtured.

Rita was able to set Aunty up, eventually, with everything she wanted, and Rita's father came home to spend time with his many grandchildren. Eventually they both passed away, and as keenly as she felt the losses, Rita was able to lean on her friends. Rita also had one more daughter named Serita with Tacky.

Over the past few decades, Rita has continued to pursue her dreams and live an incredibly active life. She has continued to promote Bob's music, but also moved to Ghana and started a nonprofit called The Rita Marley Foundation, caring for infants and the elderly. She has done a great deal of humanitarian work.

Worth noting that Rita structured this book so it ended with the same idea with which it started:

So I started to sing, as he told me to do, and just as he said it would be, everything was all right. Rastafari!

The Big Picture

The way I see it, a big part of No Woman No Cry is about identity and individual will. The concept of identity is in the ways we're defined by our connections, from intimate connections to large-scale social contexts, and in the ways we're defined by our own choices. It hit me with almost every chapter how strong Rita's individual will was while at the same time being interconnected and interdependent with so many other people in her life, and, of course, being shaped by her race and Jamaica's status as a colonized nation until 1962.

This book is also a study in the complexity of human connections - particularly, in how it is possible to meld hopes and dreams with another person's, and to unreservedly lean on other people, without losing one's sense of self. Rita and Bob chose to marry because they had mutual dreams; Rita chose to stay with Bob, though, because of the way she personally wanted to live. And she simultaneously pushed for her independence, which in the end was the thing that allowed her to do so much of her own humanitarian work and carry on Bob's legacy, too.

This pattern, wherein individual will and relationship connections mutually strengthened each other, carried out with all of Rita's close friends and loved ones. I'm thinking especially of Aunty - Rita and Aunty clashed a great deal in Rita's youth, and yet, each valued their family connection as much as their own individual will. They stuck together despite the friction; Aunty helped raise the children, and later, Rita was able to provide Aunty with a comfortable life. That in turn was possible only because of Rita's insistence on making her own choices while Aunty insisted on continuing to provide support.

Hand-in-hand with the concept of identity is memory. This is, after all, a memoir. Its very purpose is to solidify memories, to put them in the form of a book and to help other people understand Rita's life with Bob. When Rita explains her motivations in writing, she's giving her individual will, her choices, a material presence in the world. Although I don't believe Rita comments on this in the book, I'm imagining that the act of putting her memoir in writing helps solidify her power over the narrative of her life; by writing out our stories and the thoughts that inform them, we can illuminate the power our own choices have.

Another theme running strong throughout No Woman No Cry is faith. In high contrast to the themes of The Crow Road, Rita Marley's faith doesn't hold her back; it gives her strength and connects her to others. "Faith" for Rita means Rastafari. It helped her connect with her inherent worth as a black woman, and it helped her see her own success as part of a better world overall. Rita shores up her faith against the oppressive, authoritarian nature of colonialism. For Rita, faith isn't something that subdues her with dreams of another world; it's something that moves her to act in this one.

The book opens and closes with assurances that Rita should just keep moving forward (singing, in her case) and everything will be all right. That's also faith - the belief that she will succeed if she just presses forward, even if she's not sure how that can happen. Her spirituality allows her to tap into this, but it isn't specific to a particular belief system. It's just about being willing to believe, time and time again, that one foot in front of the other will ultimately lead somewhere good.

Altogether, I believe No Woman No Cry was on the Good Omens book club list because No Woman No Cry centers the depth of the human experience: the things that make us who we are, the ways we connect with other people, and how we can figure out where we belong.

#good omens book club #no woman no cry #rita marley

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spot-of-tea · 1 month

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So writing has been going well. I'm a little ways into chapter 3 right now, I plan to start posting it when I finish chapter 5 or 6. I'm hoping that will give me enough of a buffer to keep up with a schedule and hopefully post a chapter once a week, or at least every other week. I'll be able to do more writing during the holidays when my workload lessens but it's still a few weeks till then. My current timescales are that the first chapter will be out before the holidays start but we'll have to see.

Now I've been excited to talk about this next family...

The Dreyar-Strauss Family

Not long after Levy and Gajeel had their first child the media was alight with baby fever and speculation about who would be the next to settle down. As a public favourite, Fairytail was caught in the cross-hairs of many a tabloid. They often reported on scandals and took any form of affection between it's members as confirmation that the two involved were dating. Mira and Laxus were often forced together at every turn, both by their own guildmates and by the media circus that constantly surrounded them. It came to a point when the two felt obligated to date just to keep everyone happy.

Eventually one thing lead to another and they ended up marrying believing that it was just the next logical step. Unfortunately life caught up to the pair and after having children of their own they finally came to the decision that they weren't happy together and were damaging their friendship by trying to force things. While every celebrity news outlet reported that things were far more dramatic than they were. They parted quietly and amicably, deciding to co-parent their daughters together and remain friends.

Mary Dreyar

If you asked her sister, Mary was the oldest and the golden child, even if she was only 4 mins older. In reality Mary is quiet, studious, and strives to live up to her parents legacies. Mary takes great pride in being able to trace her families roots to the founding of the guild. However underneath the surface Mary is deeply insecure that she doesn't measure up to everyone's expectations. As a result she continually pushes herself to achieve seeing it as a personal failure whenever someone expresses disappointment in her. Even her own friends put her on a pedestal and she struggles to tell them when something is wrong, worrying that they'll no longer see her as the strong and capable leader she should be. One of Mary's biggest failures is her inability to master transformation magic, a sore point between her and her mother. Instead she has become extremely skilled at using illusion magic and lightning magic. While Mary and Rita are identical twins, the two have entirely different styles. Mary prefers to keep her platinum blond hair long and loose, very rarely tying it up.

Rita Strauss

The moment Rita was able to change her name she did. Hoping that taking her mothers maiden name would upset her father. Rita has admitted to many people that the only reason she hasn't left the guild yet is because she wants to force her mother to expel her by causing as many problems as possible. Something Mira just doesn't have the heart to do. In recent years Rita has somewhat curbed her misplaced aggression after finding her own team and discovering companionship with both Luna Dragneel and Lillian Redfox. Rita's frustrations stem from the constant pressure's placed on her and her sister from a very early age. Mary rose to it and suffered in silence, whereas Rita fought back and caused a scene. Due to this Rita has come to see her sister as the golden child, not seeing the constant struggles she's faced. Since cooling off somewhat Rita has blended into the background sticking with her own team and friends and leaving her sister to do her own thing. Rita prefers to keep her short and tied hair up, often shaving the sides of her head. While Rita can use transformation magic, she doesn't as a point of pride and prefers to use her own magic that she taught herself, crystalline magic.

#fairytail #fairy tail #mirajane strauss #laxus dreyar #miraxus #laxus x mirajane #fairytail fanfiction #fairy tail fanfiction #tea speaks #tea writes #tswwid au

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flowers-shouldnt-die · 3 months

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When I'm down on my knees, you're how I pray

Rating: Explicit

Relationships: Vilgefortz of Roggeveen/Tissaia de Vries, Vilgefortz of Roggeveen & Tissaia de Vries

Characters: Tissaia de Vries, Vilgefortz of Roggeveen

Additional Tags: Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, no canon no nothing its just pure smut, Tissaia is very satisfied, Vilg is hot and a tease, i have this headcanon that Tissaia likes to get spanked, Orgasm Edging, Blink and you'll miss it, Fingerfucking, Cunnilingus, cowgirl at Aretuza, Tissaia likes riding, Creampie, banged into oblivion, i was like "wow thats some hardcore porn lets calm down now", so the end is like aww:3, Established Relationship, mommy and daddy having some fun, also dont judge me but i had this headcanon since forever that he calls her Kitten, because her eyes and face reminds him of a kitten, is it ooc, maybe? - Freeform, i don't care, it's just smut and nothing else, Sub Tissaia de Vries, maybe? a little

Summary: As the tags said, no plot, just porn.

TLDR: He teases her all day, then some spanking happens, fingers the living shit out of her, eats her out like his life depended on it and then she rides him on the couch.

It started out as a bit of fun. After realizing the effect of touching her buttocks had on her, Vilgefortz wasted no time to use this to his advantage. Especially in this case. Their activities last night left their marks on them, with one particularly red spot on her neck. They both enjoyed seeing the proof of their love they left on the other’s body, but Tissaia obviously couldn’t leave this one visible to everyone in Aretuza. So with a flick of her hand, she made the darkening hickey disappear. He understood, of course, and only teased her about it. He didn’t really mind, but jokingly warned her that she would get more in return for this one.

Throughout the day, every time their paths crossed he gently brushed his hand over her butt. Or acted like he was about to hold her waist, but his hands accidentally touched a bit lower. Having centuries of self-control, she wasn’t about to blush like a young maiden but after a while, when he even grabbed her backside, she felt the heat rising from her chest to her neck. Thank the Gods, she was Tissaia de Vries and easily got rid of the pesky feeling that was about to spread through her. She loved him and loved his carefree and somewhat wild nature, but sometimes he could get really under her skin with his antics. She was well aware of her body’s natural reactions; it wasn’t anything new to her at her age, but goddamn it , he was so good at pushing her buttons. Even if she could prevent the rosy hues from reaching her face, she could do nothing about the growing sensation of wetness between her legs. He got even bolder as the day went by, and there was even a moment when her mind was in a fierce battle against her body.

It was sometime after noon, and they met near the courtyard. No one was around, not yet, so they had a moment for themselves. He pulled her in, by her waist this time, and shared a slow kiss. She was just about to pull away when his hands started to tenderly roam up and down her sides, and she let out a shaky breath. Tissaia had no idea what he was planning, and she had no chance of finding out. They heard people nearby getting closer so she stepped back from Vilgefortz. On one hand, she preferred their private life to remain private, on the other, this kind of behavior was the opposite of professional and she wouldn’t have that.

Rita saw her and called out from the opposite side of the yard. She stepped up to the balcony overlooking the yard and suggested that her friend come over if she wanted to talk. And then she froze for a heartbeat. Vilgefortz was still hidden behind a pillar. She wasn’t even paying attention to him. His hands moved to her butt and grabbed it, squeezed it even, and kept on doing it. Her body reacted instantly; even a dull ache began to form in her belly, but she was still facing her friend, talking with her, so she couldn’t let herself to even flinch. She quickly moved away, gave him a dirty look, which in retrospect was the wrong thing to do - he smirked back at her - and stepped into the garden where she met with the younger sorceress. He left the other way with a satisfied smile.

“Are you completely out of your mind?” she asked as she stepped into their room.

“Good evening to you too.” With his usual teasing smile, he stepped closer to her. She was about to tell him that he really couldn’t keep doing this, but he pressed her against the wall, grabbed her butt again, and kissed her with an intensity that knocked the breath out of her. With his mouth still against hers, she breathed deeply through her nose, and her own body betrayed her once again as one of her hands grabbed his shoulder and the other went through his hair. He was still firmly holding her buttocks and squeezing them harder, and she let out an unintentional sigh, breaking the kiss. His hands moved to the front, to her breasts, slightly rubbing them before he swiftly started to work on unbuttoning her dress. She had to bite down on her lips and took a deep breath. While his hands worked on undressing her, his lips found her favorite spot on her neck and bit down hard. She couldn’t hold back the moan that left her mouth. He kept his promise and sucked at her flesh; she could already see with her mind's eyes the deepening red spot. He was wearing his night dress already, so she easily slid the robe off him. He wrapped his arms around her again and kissed her hotly. With their bodies pressed together, she could feel him getting harder by the minute. She pulled at his pants, but he took her hands in his and held them against the wall next to her head. He leaned closer to her ear and quietly said:

“You haven’t been a good girl today; now have you, Kitten?” His breath on her skin and the tone of his voice would have been enough to make her melt, but when he talked like that, she knew she had no chance of winning. She swallowed hard and couldn’t say anything just yet. “Answer me, Kitten. You’ve been a bad girl today, haven’t you?” She nodded and felt her arousal spreading through her folds. He bit down on her neck again.

“Y-“ she had to clear her throat, “Yes, yes.”

He took a deep breath as the intoxicating sensation started to burn in his stomach, let go of her, and stepped back. “Take off your clothes,” and she did so. The fireplace was burning, but it had nothing to do with the heat spreading through her. She stepped away from the wall, now only in her chemise, and put her hands on his chest.

“Can I have some help, please?” He looked into her eyes, and she saw the same fire burning in his too. They kissed, and she moaned into his mouth as he grabbed her butt - again - and in a swift move, he picked her up. She wrapped her legs around him, and he stepped to the couch and sat down. She was on his lap, but this wasn’t what he planned. Not yet. He pushed her back gently.

“Lay on my lap and put your head on the couch.” He told her as he turned sideways a little. She knew exactly where this was going, and she could feel herself getting more and more aroused. He could have taken her right now; she was ready for him already. But she did as she was told and shuddered a little when she felt him raise her dress over her butt and the night air touch her naked backside. His hands moved to tenderly massage her exposed body, and her breath got caught in her throat when his fingers gently grazed over her wet folds. He moaned in appreciation.

“You are a naughty little girl.” He said as he did it again, and she moved against his hands as a reflex. He smiled, “Not yet, my love. You have been a bad girl today. You know what we have to do with bad little girls, don’t you?”

She needed to close her eyes; she wanted him so much, and she felt his fully erect manhood against her body, but they both liked this game, so she remained patient. Taking yet another deep and shaky breath, she finally answered him.

“We have to punish them,” she whispered. He caressed her butt and teasingly slid the tip of his finger through the wetness between her legs. She whimpered in pleasure and braced herself for what was about to come.

Their room was silent; only the crackling of the fire could be heard, and so the sound of his hand coming down on her buttocks felt louder than it was. He did it again. And again and again. He knew what she liked, so he added more force to his blows a minute or two later. She was moaning and crying out in pleasure. He picked up the pace and spanked her even harder. It usually took much more time to get her to be this loud, but he had been teasing her all day, so she was more than ready for him. He stopped abruptly, and she looked back at him.

“I’m starting to think you enjoy your punishment, Kitten. Is that so?” He had a devious smile. Her heart was racing, and her mind was clouded by the need for him to be inside her. “Maybe I should stop if you like it this much.”

“N-no. Please, don’t stop.” He hasn’t even touched her core yet and she already couldn’t speak. “Punish me harder. Please don’t stop.” She felt his erection against her and wanted it so much but she knew he was nowhere near done with their games. Her begging for more always did wonders on him; now too, with her lying on his lap, he could smell her arousal, and that combined with her words almost made him lose control. He had half a mind to just get up and take her but he had plans for them and it needed to wait a little. With one final, hard slap, he took a deep breath and started to massage the abused flesh. He did it for a while before suddenly, without warning, he roughly pushed two fingers inside her. Her surprised moan was loud and wanton, and she reveled in the sensation of something finally being inside her.

The pace he set was quick and hard. He pushed his fingers deeper and deeper into her with every move, and she could not stop the moans she made at the same time with his thrusts. She was waiting for this all day, and with their long foreplay, she felt herself getting closer to the edge rather quickly. Just as the ache in her stomach was about to turn into an overwhelming sensation, he slowed down, almost pulling his fingers out completely. She whimpered in frustration and pushed her back closer to his touch, but he pulled his hand away and slapped her hard. She cried out again.

“Be patient, Kitten,” he warned before pushing inside her again. This time he moved at a slow pace, and with every thrust, he pushed his fingers as deep inside her as he could. He touched that special spot in her every time, and she instinctively started to move her hips. She bit down on her lips, but it was futile; her deep moans escaped her with every one of their moves. She felt it again, the tension rising in her belly, and he was aware of it too. “Do you want to come, love?”

“Yes, please,” she whispered breathlessly. She knew what she had to do and what he loved, and she was more than happy to indulge. ”Make me come, please. Please, ahh, please .” The end was barely audible; it was more of a desperate whimper. She felt herself near her climax, and his fingers were still moving in the torturous, slow motion he set. “Please, Vil...” And that was it. He couldn’t deny her any longer. He moved his hands a little quicker but still as deeply as before, and she cried out loudly. Her walls tightened around his fingers, and her hips moved in delicious waves. He still didn’t stop and picked up the quick pace like before, and fucked her through her climax. She moaned even louder as her body pulsated, and she grabbed at her own hair as the pleasure washed over her. When she finally came down from her high, he pulled his fingers out and caressed her buttocks. She still whimpered a little when he reached down to her hair, and with a magic touch, he undid her already ruined updo, her hair falling down her shoulders next to her face.

He helped her up, and she sat next to him on the couch. He lifted her chemise off of her; the air felt cold against her heated body. His hands wandered around her naked skin as if he were trying to capture every single detail of her. They shared a kiss, long and sweet and hungry, and before their lips parted, he pushed her down onto the couch. He was hovering over her and kissed her neck and shoulders while she gently scratched his back. She wrapped her legs around him, but he pulled back.

“I’ve told you to be patient, haven’t I?” He smirked before kissing her with an urgency that left her breathless. He made his way down on her, biting her breasts and licking and sucking on her nipples. She moaned in appreciation and caressed his shoulders. When he was about to kiss her where she wanted him the most, he put her leg on the back of the sofa and kissed her knees softly. He slowly made his way lower and lower, kissing, biting and sucking on her flesh.

He finally reached close enough, and smelling her arousal made him abandon his games. With a hungry mouth, he kissed her core, and she threw her head back as a breathy cry escaped her, her hair cascading down over the sofa’s edge. He pressed his tongue against her swollen bud and licked it long. He did it again and again until she grabbed a hold of his hair, pulling him closer. Vilgefortz, however, pushed back a little and moved his tongue lower and into the center of her wetness. Then he took a long, slow lick through her slick folds, and her head was spinning again. She wanted to pull him as close to her as possible, but she knew he liked a challenge and it would have the opposite result, so she let him work his wonders. The tip of his tongue found her opening again, and he pushed it as deep into her as he could. Tissaia was sure the tightness of her grip on him must hurt him a little, but even if it did, he made no complaints. Instead, he licked through her again before finding her bud and sucking on it. The sound she made was almost a scream. He did it a few more times, the flat of his tongue against her and then sucking, and he kept repeating it with a primal hunger. He pulled back only once and looked up at her. Their eyes met, and she saw his dark pupils burning, and she had to close her eyes.

“You taste so fucking good,” he said in a husky voice before burying his face between her legs again. He licked and teased, and sucked on her until she couldn’t think anymore, and the burning inside her spread through her, and she was almost screaming as her body shook with the intensity of her orgasm.

He didn’t stop after her body calmed down. He continued to eat her out while sliding two of his fingers inside her again. The sound of her moans and the wet noises her body made for him filled the room, and Tissaia felt like her whole body was on fire. The sensations continued to cloud her mind; the rising tension in her belly was the only thing she could focus on. She had no idea how much time passed between her previous orgasm and the one she felt was coming; time lost its meaning, and her lover was the only thing existing in the world right now. Her body tensed, and she forgot how to breathe while she squeezed his fingers that were still moving inside her, curled upwards, and touching that special spot inside her with every stroke. Her juices spread in his mouth, and he teased her core even while she rode out her climax. There were tears in her eyes, her body was covered in sweat and her face was red when he decided to stop at last. Her legs were shaking; she didn’t even remember when she put her thighs over his shoulders. He gently kissed his way back to her lips and their foreheads touched for a second before he moved to kiss her neck and gently bite her ear.

He felt her magic collide with his and their sensations became almost inseparable. He helped her get up, quickly stood, got rid of his pants, and guided her onto his lap as he sat back down. It was her turn to control the situation and she kissed him deeply while sliding her wet center along his erection. His grip on her tightened as pleasure spread through him. She dragged her nails down his chest until she reached his penis and slowly started pulling and tugging on it. His breathing became heavier, but he let her set the pace now, so he just cupped her buttocks and bit down on her shoulder. She made a soft sound and decided that he had waited enough. She lifted herself a little, positioned herself above him, and slowly descended onto him. She was only halfway down when she had to stop, and let out a throaty moan as her body adjusted to his size. He always filled her up so perfectly; maybe it was because of their difference in body size or she was tighter than most women. She knew for a fact he was bigger than most men, at least bigger than her previous male lovers. Nonetheless, he felt exquisite, completely and deliciously stretching her from the inside.

With a sudden and quick move, she lowered herself all the way, and he bit down hard on her neck while groaning a little.

“You’re perfect,” he whispered against her ear, and she pulled his head back by his hair and kissed him hard. She moved her hips up and down, and when he pulled her waist a little closer, the perfect friction against her bud made her throw her head back, exposing her neck to him. He bit down on her throat, not too hard, but made sure he would leave a mark as he sucked on her flesh. The ache in her started to get stronger, and she quickened her movements, back and forth, up and down, until she was scratching his shoulders and repeated his name over and over again. As she neared her climax, her body refused to move the way she wanted to, and he told her between kisses:

“Don’t stop moving.” He was out of breath too, but nowhere near close to reaching his peak. She had to bury her face in his neck and return his favor. She bit down hard on him, even teasing his jawline with her mouth. The tension exploded, and her walls pulsated around him once again, and she cried his name into his neck. He firmly held her waist and waited until she could breathe again. He gave her buttocks a swift spank, nudging her to continue. She was out of breath; her body was exhausted, but he was still hard inside her, and she wanted to chase after the height of her pleasure again.

“Yes, love, keep going,” he breathed into her mouth. “Fuck, you feel so good.” She moaned, and it got even louder when his hand slid between their bodies, down to her core, and massaged her there. Their chaos melted into one another completely, and she was practically screaming.

“Vil… oh Vil , yes …” She wasn’t fully aware she had started to speak; her mind was overthrown by the sensations from within and out. Soon her body was shaking again, her nails digging into his shoulders and she tightened around him in the most delicious way. He gripped her waist harder; he was holding himself back. He wanted her to ride out the waves of her climax before he joined her. When her body calmed just a little, he started to thrust upward, hard and fast. She screamed again, the unexpected sensation sending shockwaves through her body, and she tightened around him one last time.

Sometimes, they enjoyed a little teasing before they reached the end, asking if she wanted him to come inside her or she begged him to let her climax. This time, they were so lost in the haze of their pleasures that no words left them. He held her firmly as his thrusts became irregular and rough. He spilled himself inside her, and he groaned as his climax reached its peak.

They stayed like this on the couch for a long time, sharing sensual kisses until their bodies calmed down enough.

“I love you,” he whispered against her lips, and she smiled.

“And I love you.” She still couldn’t speak properly, she could only tell him this between deep breaths. She stood up, and her legs were shaking under her. He had to help her a little, but had a better thought. He picked her up and carried her to the bed. She was completely exhausted. He was only a little better off, but at least he could still walk.

He made them a bath; they were both covered in sweat, and his seed was slowly pouring from her, down to her thighs. Sometimes this sight alone was enough to make him hard again. The room got filled with the scent of relaxing oils as they sat in the hot water, her back against his chest. He realized after a while that she had fallen asleep. Vilgefortz smiled and kissed the top of her head. He didn’t want to wake her up, but there was no other way of getting out of the bath.

They put on their night dresses and finally laid down to sleep. Tissaia was completely worn out; she just curled up to him, placing her hand on his chest as he embraced her. He kissed her forehead, and while caressing her back under the covers, he gently whispered:

“Good night, Kitten.”

#tissaia #tissaia de vries #vilgefortz #vilgefortz of roggeveen #vilgefortz x tissaia #vilgefortz/tissaia #the witcher #the witcher netflix #ao3 #ao3 fanfic #ao3 witcher #witcher fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction #Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot

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hot-for-rock · 4 months

Note

Rita

R- Rest In Peace By Extreme

I- Invaders By Iron Maiden

T- The Unwritten Law by Deep Purple

A- Animal by Def Leppard

#the bitchs asks

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whileiamdying · 8 months

Text

“Kiss of the Spider Woman” ’s Voices in the Dark

The Argentinean writer Manuel Puig’s novel-in-dialogue forces the reader to be both director and detective, interpreting how the lines will be spoken and searching each sentence for clues as to what is going on.

By Isaac Butler December 11, 2022

icki Baum, the author of “Grand Hotel,” once wrote that “you can live down any number of failures, but you can’t live down a great success.” After witnessing the fall and rise of his novel “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” Manuel Puig likely would’ve agreed with her. Originally released to critical dismissal—Robert Coover called it “a rather frail little love story” in the Times—the book landed with a thud, managing to make Puig a celebrity in the gay enclave of New York City’s Christopher Street, but not much else. Yet “Kiss of the Spider Woman” had a remarkable afterlife. A play adaptation, co-authored by Puig, became an international success, and led to an Oscar-winning film starring William Hurt and Raul Julia as well as a hit musical written by John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Terrence McNally. Puig disliked the film, and, shortly after a disastrous workshop of the musical at suny Purchase, died from a heart attack, at the age of fifty-seven. Yet for all his frustration with the adaptations of his novel, they guaranteed its longevity. “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is the only book of Puig’s in English that remains steadily in print—his first novel, “Betrayed by Rita Hayworth” was recently issued for the second time this century by McNally Editions—and the cover of the Vintage International paperback boasts the same typeface and image as the playbill of the Broadway production.

The film and musical so overshadowed their source material that, when I first encountered the book, in a course called Subjectivity in Literature my freshman year of college, I thought that my eccentric professor had assigned a novelization to us as a way of challenging our assumptions about which books were worthy of study. Within a few pages, I realized my mistake. “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is a mysterious, formally inventive, beguiling work about two prisoners during the Dirty War in Argentina: a Marxist guerilla named Valentín and a gay window dresser named Molina, who develop a transformative relationship as the latter narrates the plots of his favorite movies to the former. When I was nineteen, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” struck me as a work about finding love and preserving one’s humanity in the most inhumane of places. It is in some ways the opposite of Ariel Dorfman’s “Death and the Maiden,” a play in which the psychic scars of the Pinochet regime in Chile prove a universal solvent, dissolving any attempt at decency, or humanity, or truth. Reading the novel in the period between the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act and the repeal of sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas, I believed it to be a work of protest art, one that defiantly asserts Molina’s personhood even amid the Dirty War’s depredations. Reading “Kiss of the Spider Woman” today, the prison seems less like a real place, and the novel seems far trickier, and far harder to nail down to any one meaning. “Kiss of the Spider Woman” slips between different interpretations, just as its late-night conversations wander from the most frivolous of trivialities to the deepest of truths.

Puig would likely have objected to the idea that frivolity was opposed to truth. His sensibility was rooted in cursi, a word that lacks a direct English translation but is key to the consciousness that underlies his work. Cursi is the Blanche DuBois to machismo’s Stanley Kowalski, passionately insisting “I don’t want realism, I want magic!” Its closest equivalent in the United States is camp, but the two are not exactly the same. There’s a yearning to cursi, and a nostalgic fabulousness. Puig was the great twentieth-century writer of the cursi sensibility. He disdained the self-seriousness of many of his contemporaries in the Latin American Boom, particularly Gabriel García Márquez, who he felt had been ruined by critical praise. “Every sentence pretends to be the maximum phrase of all of literature,” Puig griped, about the future Nobel Prize winner’s “The Autumn of the Patriarch,” “and each one ends by weighing a ton.” Puig’s novels are deliberately playful and provocatively effeminate. They often ride the line between satire and sincerity, producing a result that is somehow both sincerely felt and heavily ironized. As Puig himself put it once in a letter, “that’s the real me: Cursi and truthful.”

“Kiss of the Spider Woman” grew out of Puig’s frustrations with the politics of his era and his contemporaries. He eschewed explicit polemic in his work, which led to his being viewed with suspicion by both the left and the right. His first novel was panned by the center-right magazine La Nacíon for using colloquial Argentinean Spanish and accused of having Peronist sympathies. Living among fellow exiled Argentinean intellectuals in Mexico City, Puig found that he “was still a reactionary for not having joined the movement. Worst of all my book had been banned by the right wing and the Argentinian left didn’t care.” From this pain, he began taking notes on a novel in which two men—one straight and one gay, who “doesn’t have much education, but a great fantasy life”—would “meet through a mediator—movies.”

Puig, who wanted to be a screenwriter and only turned to writing novels after his thirtieth birthday, all but grew up in a movie theatre. According to “Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman,” a biography of Puig by his translator and friend Suzanne Jill Levine, his home town of General Villegas, in the Argentine Pampas, had one movie house, which showed a different film every day. Beginning in 1936, his mother, Malé, with whom he would remain extremely close throughout his life, took him to see “mostly American stuff” almost daily, at 6 p.m. Staring at the screen, he fell in love with the female stars of the thirties, constructing a pantheon out of Rita Hayworth, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, and others. “I understood . . . the moral world of movies, where goodness, patience, and sacrifice were rewarded,” he later said. “In real life, nothing like that happened. . . . I, at a certain moment, decided that reality was what was on the screen and that my fate—to live in that town—was a bad impromptu movie that was about to end.” Malé had initially only intended to stay in General Villegas for a year and passed her frustrated dreams of cosmopolitan life down to her son. “It was like living in exile,” he would later say, and, in his first two novels, he would create a thinly veiled version of his home town, called Colonel Vallejos, and treat it unkindly. As Clara, his fictionalized aunt in “Betrayed by Rita Hayworth,” puts it:

When I got off the train, my first impression was awful, there’s not a single tall building. They’re always having droughts there, so you don’t see many trees either. In the station there are no taxis, they still use the horse and buggy and the center of town is just two and a half blocks away. You can find a few trees that are hardly growing, but what you don’t see at all, anywhere, is real grass.

The Puigs left Villegas, moving to Buenos Aires by 1949, and it’s unclear whether Manuel ever returned to his home town, except in his imagination. Much of his life was lived in one form of exile or another, particularly after his novel “The Buenos Aires Affair” was suppressed in Argentina in 1974.

“Betrayed by Rita Hayworth” highlights again and again the contrast between the magic of cinema and the tawdry doldrums of everyday life. Puig preferred melodramas, which he called “the language in which the unconscious speaks,” along with screwball comedies and, once he got over the trauma of seeing “Bride of Frankenstein” at too young an age, cheap horror films. In his essay “Cinema and the Novel,” Puig wrote that the films of the thirties and forties had such lasting power because they “really were dreams displayed in images. . . . When I look at what survives in the history of cinema, I find increasing evidence of what little can be salvaged from all the attempts at realism.” He disliked much of Italian neorealism and the films of Martin Scorsese (“so much pretension and slowness”), and called Meryl Streep, Ellen Burstyn, Jill Clayburgh, and Glenn Close “the Four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse” for ushering in a more realistic femininity onscreen.

Escape into the dream world of cinema was an obsessive quest. Later in life, he would write his friend Guillermo Cabrera Infante a long list of the authors of the Latin American Boom as Hollywood starlets. Borges was Norma Shearer (”Oh so refined!”), García Márquez was Elizabeth Taylor (“Beautiful face but such short legs”), Mario Vargas Llosa was Esther Williams (“Oh so disciplined (and boring)”). Among the eighteen names was Puig’s own. He was to be played by Julie Christie, a “great actress, but since she has found the right man for her (Warren Beatty) she doesn’t act anymore.” Years later, after his writing had brought him money and international acclaim, Puig would buy television sets and VCRs for friends, and then cajole them into recording classic films for him, eventually amassing a library of more than three thousand movies on upward of twelve hundred video cassettes.

Popular culture at its most cursi undergirds Puig’s work. It’s there in his titles— “Betrayed by Rita Hayworth,” “Heartbreak Tango,” “The Buenos Aires Affair,” “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” “Pubis Angelical,” “Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages,” “Blood of Requited Love,” “Tropical Night Falling”—which feel as if they could be printed in the most lurid of fonts, accompanied by the most sensational of exclamation points. His frustrated attempts to work as a screenwriter gave birth to his signature style, in which dialogue, stream of consciousness, and fake secondary sources like diary entries, surveillance reports, and newspaper articles bump up against one another. This marriage of high modernist experimentation with low cultural reference points and subject matter frequently led to his dismissal by Argentinean literati. He struggled for years to publish “Betrayed by Rita Hayworth,” and the accusation that he was a lightweight shadowed him even after his death. Reviewing Levine’s biography in the Times, Vargas Llosa wrote that “of all the writers I have known, the one who seemed least interested in literature was Manuel Puig,” before sniffing that “Puig’s work may be the best representative of what has been called light literature . . . an undemanding, pleasing literature that has no other purpose than to entertain.” Vargas Llosa’s estimation couldn’t be further off the mark. While Puig’s novels are entertaining—often riotously so—his formal techniques aren’t mere games, and his experimentations with dialogue still seem radical and groundbreaking decades after his death.

The novel in dialogue form is not new—authors from Diderot to Woolf and Gaddis have experimented with it—but there is something eternally transgressive in its austerity. To work only in dialogue is to limit or altogether renounce such pleasurable tools as point of view, description, free indirect discourse, and narration. Playwrights know that their dialogue will be mediated through a production, through the choices and interpretations of a director and actors, and they can leave instructions in the form of stage directions and notes explaining their intent. But the novel in dialogue forgoes all this. It forces the reader to be at once director and detective, interpreting how the lines will be spoken, and searching each sentence for clues as to the basic facts of what is going on.

“Kiss of the Spider Woman” takes place in prison, yet it is six full pages of testy back-and-forth before the reader gets any glimpse of where the story is situated. Even these clues are related briefly:

The next movie Molina swoons over is “Destino,” a Nazi film about the evils of the French Resistance. The movie, a composite invented by Puig, is an inversion of the Hollywood film “Paris Underground,” its female protagonist rather unsubtly named Leni. Molina knows that it’s Nazi propaganda but loves it, “because it’s well made, and besides it’s a work of art.” The stage appears to be set for an extended dialogue about the relationship between art and truth, aesthetics and politics, naïveté and logic, and so on. Yet Puig shifts gears again, introducing footnotes written in parodic academese that trace a post-Freudian theory of homosexuality. The footnotes grow so extensive that they take over the book, drowning out the prisoners for pages on end. These give way to stream-of-consciousness asides that take us into Molina and Valentín’s thoughts, the former self-pitying and sentimental, the latter obsessive and fevered. The text becomes marked with ellipses to denote physical actions that would normally be described, culminating in a sex scene composed solely of the words spoken by the two men:

I can’t see at all, not at all. . . . it’s so dark. . . . Slowly now . . . . . . No, that way it hurts a lot. . . . Wait . . . no, it’s better like this, let me lift my legs. . . . A little slower . . . please . . . . . . That’s better. . . .

“Kiss of the Spider Woman” moves from an avalanche of verbiage to a space where language is inadequate, and out again, with the two characters, having physically joined their bodies, finding new selves beyond the limits of their roles. It’s not entirely clear whether, were the book written today, Molina would even be described as a man. He often identifies as a woman throughout “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and at one point says, “As for my friends and myself, we’re a hundred percent female. . . . We’re normal women; we sleep with men.” Here, Molina is contrasting his social circle with “the other kind [of gay men] who fall in love with one another.” The objects of Molina’s desires are straight men. “What we’re always waiting for,” he says—she says?—is “a friendship or something, with a more serious person . . . with a man, of course. And that can’t happen because a man . . . what he wants is a woman.” Molina is filled with self-loathing, and unable to form any kind of real community or engage in political action, because “you see yourself in the other ones like so many mirrors, and then you start running for your life.”

Molina and Valentín’s prison cell, a filthy space of isolation surrounded by the threat of torture and execution, becomes a nearly utopian arena where identity can be transcended. The two characters live, briefly, in a world beyond the self, beyond sexuality, beyond gender, beyond language. Molina describes this as feeling like “I’m someone else, who’s neither a man nor a woman” while Valentín describes the feeling as being “out of danger.” The novel that began as a series of oppositions—gay and straight, woman and man, naïve and political, dream and reality, cursi and honest—hasn’t resolved any of its conflicts so much as called into question whether these categories, and many of the others we use to organize our lives, aren’t arbitrary, as limited as they are limiting. Among the book’s many insoluble contradictions is how it demonstrates these categories being overcome but only in a prison cell and only through a near-total deconstruction of the self. “Kiss of the Spider Woman” refuses to neatly suit any kind of political program—Puig called gay readers offended by his portrait of Molina “Stalinist queens”—instead burrowing deeper and deeper into what its author called “the struggle for human dignity.”

As with Puig’s other novels, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” requires far more work on the reader’s part than we are accustomed to, but the result is a profound imaginative and emotional investment. We have, to an extent far greater than normal, created the world of the story we are reading. We are in that jail cell with Molina and Valentín, eavesdropping on their conversations, witnessing their slow transition from antagonistic cellmates to friends to lovers to something that cannot quite be put into language. Our struggle to piece together the action of their scenes together mirrors their struggle to understand each other and, perversely, the struggle of the secret police to determine what Valentín may know about the resistance unit he has until recently been leading.

“Kiss of the Spider Woman” further confounds as it goes along. Just when you think you have a handle on it, it wriggles away and changes shape. The book begins with voices in the dark, as Molina relates the real-life 1942 film “Cat People” from memory, waxing rhapsodic in his micro-detailed descriptions of clothes, lighting, faces. Soon we learn that the two men have agreed to an experiment. To help pass the time after lights out in their cell, Molina will recount films to Valentín. These movies—there are six of them in all—form the book’s backbone. As he narrates the story of “Cat People,” Molina is expansive, romantic, and charming. Valentín is the opposite: terse, controlling, and analytical. When Molina describes the protagonist as “not thinking about the cold, it’s as if she’s in some other world, all wrapped up in herself,” Valentín responds, “If she’s wrapped up inside herself, she’s not in some other world. That’s a contradiction.” (Later, Valentín establishes the rules of their talk, demanding that Molina’s stories contain “no food and no naked girls.”) Valentín only likes the movie once he is able to interpret it in Marxist and Freudian terms. The highest praise he can offer is “it’s all so logical, it’s fantastic.” Our sympathies are drawn toward Molina. He’s the dreamer, the romantic, the sincere one, and Valentín—who studies all day and cannot even tell his girlfriend that he loves her, because the resistance needs them both more than they need each other—feels almost inhuman in his discipline, incapable of recognizing that his dream of Marxist revolution is a romantic fantasy of its own.

It is no wonder, then, that the adaptations, which reduce the story to a romance between two seeming opposites amid a backdrop of degradation and fantasy, proved so much more successful. Ultimately, however, it is the book that will survive. The musical hasn’t been produced in New York since its hit Broadway run ended in 1995, and the film today feels painfully, at times hilariously, dated. William Hurt, an often wonderful actor, was miscast as Molina. Puig had objected to Hurt, responding to his signing on to the film with “in my bed maybe, but not as Molina!” And even though Hurt won an Oscar for his performance, Puig was right. Hurt, physically too large and obviously impersonating rather than inhabiting a fabulous gay character, somehow overacts and underplays at the same time. The director, Hector Babenco, primarily known for documentaries, lacks the sense of visual style the film demands, and the movie seems embarrassed by the two men’s sexual relationship. The screenplay reduces Molina and Valentín’s affair to a one-off favor that Valentín does for Molina, and the camera cannot even show us the titular kiss between the two characters, on which the ending hinges. The film is a work of compromise, between director and stars, between screenplay and Hollywood mores, and between Puig and his pocketbook—one that reinforces the very categories that the novel sought to break down.

Unlike the movie, which feels fixed in time, the novel of “Kiss of the Spider Woman” feels timeless, or perhaps newly relevant again and again. Its meaning has already shifted for me over the decades, from a moving insistence on gay personhood to a prescient and acutely felt dramatization of how the gender binary imprisons us all. Who knows what it will mean when I revisit it again in a decade—but it will be waiting, provocative, defiant, cursi, and ready to challenge whatever boundaries we put around ourselves. ♦

#The Kiss of the Spider Woman #Manuel Puig

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