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permian-tropos · 4 years

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“Seismic” -- Daniil Dankovsky/Artemy Burakh fic that I just spat out

CW: angst, suicidality

I will post this on AO3 maybe like a normal person but it’s late and I’m lazy

Edit: the AO3 link if you want it there

...

Two dogs barked in warning — they knew, as they so often did, of the oncoming quake.

The plague itself was growling in the air, unyielding in its final hours, and the black soot flakes soared on suddenly stirred air currents, all aflutter with anticipation.

On the eastern side of the Guzzle crossing came running the man who could always smell blood before it was spilled, because it was by rights his to harvest.

On the south side of town the cannons on the railroad were turning and aiming, ready to belch fire.

The yargachin stood on the bridge looking into the Stone Yard, where the spear would finally be ripped from the heart of the world. There it was; that glittering silhouette in the hazy air, that crystalized twister touching down by the bend in the river.

The Polyhedron’s manic angles had never seemed so alive. She was baring herself to the world, a witch upon the pyre screaming her last wild curse, and in that moment she and the Earth were not enemies but one being, united in defiance against their coming death.

As the ground beneath his boot soles shivered, the Haruspex at last knew what the odonghs meant when they said they could sense the weight of every pair of feet on the streets of the town.

Because he felt footsteps that should not be there, crossing the Bridge Square.

Walking west, to where the sun set, the steps spoke their own rhythmic language, tolling like a warning bell: I am going to see this to the end.

The butcher’s heart gasped like it too had been pierced through. Artemy heaved in a lungful of acrid infected air and sprinted through the Atrium, past the befuddled soldiers. His bad leg hobbled and nearly sent him down to one knee, but he turned a corner and beheld:

The fog in the square cut by the silhouette of a long leather coat — and he’d even brought his trademark bag; it swung at his side.

The Bachelor looked like a man upon the lip of a train platform, impatiently clasping his luggage, awaiting his chance to travel far away —truly far — the next time an engine thundered through the station.

His upturned head spelled out plainly that his eyes were only on the tower. Transfixed upon his beloved.

Artemy staggered across the paved stones, past the row of bodies left behind by the Inquisition, and caught Daniil Dankovsky by his arm.

And swung him around with one sharp pull. The man’s eyes were wide and red-rimmed, and out from them cracked all those furrows of stress that had been pressed into the man’s face over two weeks of squinting, straining, grimacing, scowling, and perhaps, by the looks of it, weeping.

“No,” was all Artemy could gasp with the last air in his lungs, and then he had to pant and recover.

“Don’t you dare stop me!” Dankovsky cried out, thrashing and fighting the grip on his arm.

Artemy clung to the snakeskin on his sleeve with all the strength he had left. He shook the man just as vigorously as the man was struggling, until his efforts stilled. “You’re not going up there.”

“You should have killed me in the Shelter. But you didn’t, so I’m going inside one last time. Maybe, just maybe, there’ll be one more dream left, and it won’t die alone.”

“The cannons!” Artemy choked out. “I delivered the orders! They’re taking aim!”

“I know,” said the Bachelor, tongue heavy, like he wanted the words carved on his grave. His lips shuddered, and then he twisted his arm, wildness flashing in his eyes.

Artemy grabbed his shoulders before he could wrench himself free. And stared at him, trying to vivisect him with a glare. By the way the man was trembling, the Haruspex was indeed cutting deep, through his medrel, his nerves.

Dankovsky was lost to his grief, seduced at his lowest moment by the Pied Piper herself, the temptress who had spirited away the children of the Town.

And now it wanted him to lie down with it in its grave, as its eternal lover. It had called him here with the siren song, there is nothing else but me, without me you are nothing, and I need you.

“What does a man do without a dream? What does mankind do?” Dankovsky dropped his bag and clutched the front of Artemy’s smock, and from the way his fingers clawed and twitched, he was coming close to reaching up and trying to squeeze his throat. But he did not do that. He just clung.

Artemy struggled for words. “We don’t do. We just are. And that’s enough.”

Dankovsky's breath caught on a wet clog in his throat. “I can’t live like this,” he rasped. “I’ll never be free again. I never was. Now let me go. I didn’t think you’d have to see this—”

“I’d see it when they found your body in the wreck. Is that how you want to be remembered, mangled and broken?” His jaw was tight as a bear trap, ready to snap. “Is that what you want to leave behind for someone you called a friend?”

The Bachelor’s cheeks were turning ashen. “Someone I called an idiot. Get out of here, Burakh, before you’re crushed by a chunk of debris. Any moment now, they’ll fire.”

“Then move, you bastard!” Artemy yanked on his arm to pull him away, yet still he fought.

A razor-sharp Line was wound all around Dankovsky’s body, biting through his clothes into his flesh like a garrote, and it was screeching the same discordant tune as the wicked metal frame balanced precariously in the Earth’s flesh.

“It’s alive,” Dankovsky croaked. “In a way unlike anything in the universe. It’s so alive it makes the noon sun look like a shadow on the wall of a cave.”

Artemy wanted to sob, the way he had when a being shaped like his favorite childhood toy had tottered up to him on tiny hooves and plaintively asked, could it not live too? Was there not a world where it, strange form of life that it was, could be loved?

“I understand,” he said, and he did. “... I refuse to make another sacrifice. Especially not one as meaningless as this.”

“Not everything is about sacrifice!” the Bachelor spat. “My story is, quite simply, over.”

“You love that that tower so much you’d die with it? After two weeks? Barely any time!”

“Enough time to destroy a town and end thousands of lives.” A cruel grimace briefly flashed Dankovsky’s teeth, though it was covering up a flush of mortification. “You’ve known me for those same two weeks, but you’re out here in the open, waiting to be skewered on shrapnel, all over this poor waste of skin. Could it be that you’re—” he clutched a mocking hand to his breast, over his heart — “oh! just as suicidally devoted, my dearest Haruspex—!”

His words had such venom that he must have thought they would shame Artemy into letting go. A blow to his masculinity, or some such stupidity like that.

Artemy’s blood boiled, and then surged without thought. He seized Dankovsky in his arms and bent him over backwards and kissed him.

He tasted the pulse of both of their hearts as a tickle against his lips. Dankovsky flailed and helplessly threw his arms around Artemy’s shoulders, to catch his balance.

And as he did, his body shivered and his back arched into a yearning, yielding shape in Artemy’s tight grasp. Artemy’s own spine tingled from tip to tail, more urgently with every moment that Dankovsky did not pull away.

Artemy’s emboldened hand found the man’s free leg and clutched his thigh, while Dankovsky gasped through his nose and wriggled in embarrassment at the touch, but kept his mouth firmly sealed against Artemy’s.

The Cathedral bore witness; Artemy could feel it rapturously exhale a great gust of seconds into the world. The Crucible’s stately wings shivered and held their breath, scandalized. And the Polyhedron’s needle, jammed into the agonized Earth, vibrated with outrage.

He is mine, the edifice howled.

Not anymore, rumbled the Haruspex’s decree, and he planted his feet and refused to budge. His sympathy for the tower, miracle that it was, had dried up. For this eternal moment, he was the wedge forcing its way down upon those sharp threads tightly binding Daniil Dankovsky to the Polyhedron.

A great crack of gunfire split the sky and rocked the earth.

The scents of metal and blood were indistinguishable from one another, as both exploded into the air as a ruddy mist.

The seismic shudder sent Artemy down to his knees, but he didn’t let Dankovsky go; they sank together, dropping to the flagstones and unsticking their lips as their ears rang from the cacophony.

Artemy unclenched his eyelids. His heart jumped; they were both still alive, and Dankovsky had his gloved — and still very bloodstained — hand clutched over his mouth. But aside from that old gore, there was a faint spray of pink mist on the side of him that faced the river.

Fingers shaking, realizing he was staring at the cure for the Sand Pest splattered against the Bachelor’s pale skin, Artemy traced the droplets across the man’s temple. Magnificent, miraculous, chimeric blood.

“Don’t look so shocked,” he gruffly forced out, as his own mortification got the better of him. “Like I just took your innocence.” The Bachelor slowly lowered his hand from his mouth, and his dark brows dropped low and miserable, as he turned his head towards the river of blood and the jagged bones of the specular tower. “That’s exactly what you’ve done,” he whispered.

Artemy let go of Dankovsky slowly; his joints felt stuck. “Then I will bear the weight of that evil, and you will live to hold it against me.” He rose on trembling feet and pointed. “It’s over. That’s our cure, doctor.”

Dankovsky remained half-sprawled on the ground, lips forming silent words that could have been numb denials.

“It’s,” he finally said. “It’s… over.”

Artemy swallowed and took a rotten, sin-soaked step towards that beautiful red pool. He understood the hollow tones in Dankovsky’s voice. What even were they now, without the frantic running through the streets, without the smoke from signal fires stinging their eyes, without creeping to avoid the pools of light from streetlamps with a half-shattered blade in hand, without obsessive hoards of trinkets and trash filling their pockets?

The Earth’s thrashing and bellowing in pain underneath him was growing stiller, colder, fainter.

“No more of your self-pity,” Artemy finally forced out. “We have work to do. One more task. I need you, oynon.”

Behind him, by the sound of it, Dankovsky was picking himself up off the smooth stones. “You don’t need me,” he said dully. “I barely helped.”

“Spare me that bullshit. What’s left of the town is alive because of you.”

“Then. Everyone who died.”

“Stop it,” said Artemy. He didn’t turn around. “Don’t goad me right now. I won’t kiss you again, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

For an aching moment, the words caused a ripple, like a stone thrown in a pond.

“Then let’s work,” said Dankovsky, and he was quiet and bitter and resigned, but he was still there. To live in the throes of despair took courage, warm courage borne from warm blood, that still assiduously pumped inside his chest. His unthinking blood cherished the brain that struggled to love itself, and that would do for now.

#pathologic #daniil dankovsky #artemy burakh #burakhovsky #my fic #I just haven't written like an impulse fic in a while you know I just kinda had to

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gfriendunited · 4 years

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GFRIEND: Reinterpreting Myth With “回” Series

GFRIEND have been borrowing women from literature and myth to be the subjects of their “回” series: Ariadne and the Labyrinth from the myth of Theseus; the mythical Siren and Biblical good and evil; Faust’s Walpurgis Night and medieval witches. The first scene of “回” depicts a clock turning backwards against a galactic backdrop, and the final scene closes with a backwards moving train, both of which reveal a desire to return to a time filled with friends and fun. This serves to symbolize a feeling that combines looking back on the past while contemplating choices for the future, and at the same time reversing motifs borrowed from myths and novels.

“回:Labyrinth” recalls the story of Ariadne who, although she plays a decisive role in Theseus’s safe escape from the Labyrinth by handing him the ball of yarn he unravels just outside the entrance, is remembered only as his forgotten lover. Unlike the established myth that focuses on Theseus’s courage, however, the focal points of the album are Ariadne’s thread and the Labyrinth. In “Twisted”, the concept photo for “回:Labyrinth”, Ariadne’s thread is there for her, not for Theseus, bundling herself up or interweaving with the others’ threads to enfold their surroundings. Seeing the members with thread in hand gives the impression they’ve each become Ariadne, wandering the Labyrinth. Unlike a maze with its crossroads leading through various possible routes, the Labyrinth has one path which is complexly tangled and difficult to navigate, but escape is possible by going back the way you came in. Therefore, in the B-side “Labyrinth”, GFRIEND are conflicted between whether to stay in a beautiful maze world or to escape from it, and, in case of “Crossroads”, the title song, they wrestle with which way to turn when two sides of the self clash. When GFRIEND sing in “Labyrinth”, “If you want to do it for me, I’m going to the end”, they focus on the inner lives of women, like Ariadne, whose story plays an important role in Theseus’s heroic tale but is often disregarded as a mere afterthought, and instead grant her a narrative. In the GFRIEND version, Ariadne unravels the thread for herself, not for her lover, and wanders through the Labyrinth, placing women who play crucial roles, but had been left anonymous, at the forefront.

Following Labyrinth, the theme of temptation is explored in Song of the Sirens and its title track, “Apple”. Original sin started when, deceived by the words of the serpent, Eve eats the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and offers some to Adam. Unlike the Biblical portrayal of women as merely suffering as a result of temptation, the Siren myth connects women and temptation by portraying them as the temptresses themselves. The Sirens lure passing sailors with their physical beauty and pure song, and the sailors, possessed by song, steer their boat toward the Sirens’ island, only to die in the shipwreck, or else jump into the water to take their own lives. But as GFRIEND member Umji says, “Apple” is a song that “shows a girl standing before unexpected temptation, wavering. I don’t think the word ‘temptation’ carries an exclusively negative meaning.” And so the dictionary definition of enticing another onto a bad path through innocuous words or actions, and the usual image of temptation in fables, are turned on their head in “Apple” with lyrics like, “Why does that icy decision / Hurt me so? Was it a mistake?” The allusion to a “translucent glass bead glowing red” also connects the current incarnation of GFRIEND to the group’s earliest days and their debut song “Glass Bead”. Even if they can’t be sure the path they’ve chosen is the right one, they know what they want because they ate the forbidden fruit. In the “Tilted” concept photo, significant items from previous music videos, such as a diary, teddy bear, and flowers are placed on one side facing an arrangement of jewelry, money, shoes, etc. These latter items are regarded as negative, materialistic symbols of vanity and extravagance, but the group bravely weighs these two competing desires. Having followed the Siren’s song and finding the forbidden fruit, GFRIEND know what they want, and have themselves become Sirens, captivating audiences with their beauty and their elegant voices. They reject the preexisting symbolism behind temptation and flip it into a positive image.

Walpurgis Night’s title track, “Mago”, summons forth witches and their festival. As portrayed in Goethe’s Faust, Walpurgis Night is an ominous and profane day of overindulgence. When celebrated today, firewood is burned in the place of witches. But unlike in the past, when women accused of being witches were distrusted, GFRIEND’s reinterpretation presents the “modern witch”, through which they reveal women’s ambitions more realistically and in greater detail. In “My Room”, one of the album’s concept photos, the members portray these girls of the past wandering to the end of the Labyrinth to express, unwaveringly, the various themes of self-reliance emphasized throughout the “回” series: women’s material desires (Sowon), aspirations of beauty (Yerin), and the need for self-expression (SinB). This kind of subject matter connects with lyrics from the final track, “Wheel of the Year”, on the “回” series’ latest album: “It felt like I was trapped in a gigantic maze / The me who kept stopping at crossroads / Wandering around”, and, “What’s the answer? Don’t be afraid.” Like this song, with its ending not yet decided and racing toward “the place my heart responds”, awakening the image of a woman who does as she pleases, GFRIEND summons to the present not a wicked woman but the reinterpreted image of independent femininity revealing itself.

Before embarking on the “回” series, GFRIEND hinted at their growth through their shifting views on love: “Protect me always, so I won’t break”, they sang on “Glass Bead”; the reason they wanted to “run through time and become an adult” was for you (“Rough”), since “I [was] still just a shy girl” (“Navillera”). They sound serious as they sing “[I’ll] control your heart” in “Fingertip”, and, “Looking at you / Even in an uncertain future / It’s getting a little closer” in “Sunrise”, as if to say “you are my everything” to their love. The growth and change in GFRIEND’s lyrics were once centered around loved ones—friends, lovers, etc.—but their focus shifts little by little to the self as the “回” series unfolds. While “Crossroads” moves its focus slightly to the “I” who struggles to make a decision at one such intersection, there remains a feeling of being lost because “everything is still filled with you”; whereas in “Labyrinth”, the point of view pivots to the self: “If you want to do it for me, I’m going to the end.” Even more striking is the change in lyrics from the first half of “From Me” to the end: “from me to you” becomes “from I to me”. Five years after their debut, GFRIEND, seemingly destined to evolve, choose not to “go back” (the meaning of “回”) and instead grow by changing their theme from “love you” to “love yourself”, delivering a message of self-reliance to women by asking them to redirect their love inward. This can be seen as well in “My Girls”, the concept photo for Walpurgis Night. Picture frames bearing words like “adorable”, “tomboy”, and “emotional”, chosen by the group members themselves, are all words that have been used to contain women and GFRIEND, but are here their own personally selected evaluations and not the judgment of others. Now GFRIEND, after having faced uncertain decisions (“Labyrinth”), and spent time wandering about and wavering from temptation (“Song of the Sirens”), have finally reached the Walpurgis Night festival, sure of what it is they want to do.

Through themes of jealousy and conflict, uncertainty, and women’s desires and self-reliance, the “回” series escapes the confines of “woman as lover” and paints an image of women as multifaceted and three-dimensional. In “Tarot Cards”, they wish someone else would make decisions for them but finally “find [their] own answer”, and the lyrics to “Three of Cups” form with it a pair, to “Share trivial jokes / And serious worries / And it suddenly spills out / Our brightest ever, light this night.”.

Twisting the classics, GFRIEND establishes affirmation through double negation by denying negative words. It recalls the line spoken by the character Ko Moonyoung (portrayed by Seo Yeji) on the tvN series It’s Okay to Not Be Okay: “I want to be a beautiful witch.” Today, phrases like “playful witch” and “modern witch,” with words that could not have coexisted before, have started to appear. With the “回” series, women throughout history are brought back by GFRIEND through a mythical motif and reinterpreted in a way only GFRIEND can: A nameless woman disappears, only to become a modern witch and find her own way, accepts her desires without guilt, and, despite facing a negative world, puts on a festival. Now that the fireworks are here and the witches’ festival is back, let’s dance for ourselves. Your GFRIEND will be there right next to you.

#gfriend #text: article #era: walpurgis night #201117

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moonraezz · 3 years

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OC Quick Introduction.

Just a small little intro to a few of my most developed oc’s. Their names change all the time and a good portion are more or less everlasting so they’ll be going by epithets until their names are set in stone. Otherwise I thought it would be good to introduce them in case I babble about them offhandedly and y’all need context.

The Experiment

He/Him

Human/Animal Experiment, Ex-Hitman, Currently in prison

Part of wip’s called Mutant Overdrive & Bound to Sin

Falling Star

He/She/They

One of the Eight Princes of Hell, Ironically bullied amongst his own kind, Centuries old

Part of a wip called The Arcane Chronicles

Daywalker

He/They

Vampire, Currently a Witch Hunter, Halfling target by his own kind

Part of a wip called the Arcane Chronicles

Eve

She/Her

Water Witch who works with art, Has a severely complex past, Currently dealing with her past lives

Part of the wip called The Arcane Chronicles

Cerberus

She/Her

Dire wolf, Descendant of Hell Hound of Tartarus, Reincarnation of the Bastard Queen

Part of the wip called The Arcane Chronicles

Bonekeeper

She/Her

Necromancer/Blood & Bone Witch, Nephlim Child, Dealing with Fallen Angels & the Wrath of Gods

Part of the wip called The Arcane Chronicles

Court Prince

He/Him

Dryad, Ruler of the Spring Court, Nearly as old as the Falling Star

Part of the wip called The Arcane Chronicles

Temptress

She/Her

Great Demoness possessing a body, Currently building an empire for herself, Dealing with Bluebird & their friends

Part of the wip called Mutant Overdrive & an unnamed wip

Little Knight

He/Him

Lower demon, Acutely aware of all his past lives, searching for someone

Part of the wip called The Arcane Chronicles

Seer

She/They

Divination witch, Gifted clairvoyant who is troubled with visions, Trying to look out for coven

Part of the wip called The Arcane Chronicles

Eldritch

He/They

Eldritch Sea Creature, Currently contained in the vessel of a young man, Taking a vacation on land

Part of the wip called The Arcane Chronicles

Martyr

She/Her

Eclectic witch raised in the craft, Founder of the local city coven, Currently at odds with her responsibilities

Part of the wip called The Arcane Chronicles

The Widow

He/Him

Faerie folk, Consort of the Spring Court, The prince’s loyal assassin on the side

Part of the wip called The Arcane Chronicles

The Guardian

He/Him

Prodigy Student, Currently working under the most secure prison on Earth, Dealing with The Experiment

Part of wip’s called Mutant Overdrive & Bound to Sin

Planewalker

She/Her

Witch who works with Faerie folk, One of the few that can travel to different realms, Also a Glamour witch

Part of the wip called The Arcane Chronicles

Atlantis

He/Him

Siren, Prince of Atlantis & it’s inhabitants, On vacation with Eldritch

Part of the wip called The Arcane Chronicles

Bluebird

She/He/They

Winged folk, College student who has no declared major, The normal child in their family

Part of the wip called Mutant Overdrive & an unnamed wip

Solarflare

He/They

Superhero with powers of the sun, lovable jock who has no career path, trying to keep everyone safe

Part of an unnamed wip

Lapine

She/Her

Antihero with powers of the shadows, quiet academic student, head hunting corrupt officials

Part of an unnamed wip

#ocs #my ocs #oc intro #my characters #I’m sending this out and reblogging a bunch of ask my muse if anyone wants to get to know these lads more!#trying to get things out there before i do work #like i promised i’d do at one point adjfkdsf

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charlastor-hoe-6 · 5 years

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Hellfire {Charlastor}

{Okay so I have been wanting to write a fanfic that deals with Hellfire and Charlastor for so long, like you seriously have no idea and hearing the beautiful project from Rainbott, where I heard Alastor sing Hellfire instantly gave me the inspiration back.

I did struggle on deciding with the setting for this. My original plan was to have it take place in hell with them both being demons. But then I changed my mind. While Alastor isn't a complete priest in this story then he is still a very godly man. He meets Charlie at a party that was hosted by her family. When he saw her something in him changed. Also, yes I know Alastor is asexual but he is still capable of those feelings and desires which is why I thought that it would be even more interesting that nobody has ever made him so sinful before and he just grows obsessed with her through hatred and love (even if what he's feeling can't really be called love xD) but yeah I hope this explains it and I really hope you'll enjoy!}

Beata Maria

You know I am a righteous man,

Of my virtue I am justly proud,

Alastor sighed quietly to himself as he looked at the fireplace in his huge room. It was rare of him to show an expression besides his smile. In fact he had never ever showed nothing but his smile in front of those other imbeciles but something wasn't right and he hated that. There was a deep pain and desire eating him from the inside. Something that made him feel crazy. As of late someone had taken over his mind, more precisely, a woman, yet that woman was on his mind and just wouldn't leave him alone. No, he was the one who was always supposed to be in control. Things weren't supposed to be this way! He turned around, his back facing the fireplace, and he started pacing around in his room.

Beata Maria,

You know I`m so much purer than,

The common, vulgar, weak, licentious crowd,

He stared back at the fire after a few moments. The feeling being way too tempting to refuse. Those burning flames reminded him of his sins for falling for that beautiful, yet wretched temptress. The day he first saw that golden haired woman, something changed inside of him. He was an all powerful man. He was always higher and better then anybody else. But when he saw that bright smile. He was caught off guard

It wasn't a facade, that smile and joy were completely real. Seeing her dance and laugh so joyously made his heart clench in his chest. When he asked her to dance with him then her smaller hand in his felt so right and seeing those brown eyes stare into his own made him feel so weird and ever since after that dance he wasn't able to get her out of his head.

Then tell me, Maria,

Why I see her dancing there,

Why her smoldering eyes still scorch my soul,

Alastor felt as if he was truly losing every ounce of his sanity, going more and more insane with this feeling deep inside of him. He didn't want to experience these feelings. His entire life he had been better to feel so pathetic. Like any other commoner would. But here he was. It made him sick with need, sick with the feeling of wanting to have the girl close to him. He hated it. He absolutely despised it. God knows he wanted to get rid of this sickening feeling inside of him. This was, oh so wrong. He couldn`t have these stupid feelings towards her. This stupid girl who had made a great man such as himself, weak at his knees.

I feel her,

I see her,

The sun caught in her golden blonde hair,

Is blazing in me out of all control,

The more he stared into those flames, then the more he saw the girl's smiling face. This girl was tainting him, teasing him, tearing him apart. He felt as if he was burning from inside and out. It was unfair! He shouldn't feel like this. No, he couldn`t feel like this! Though he hated himself even more for feeling such a need towards that girl. He needed her more than anything as of now, yet he wanted nothing more than to get rid of her as well for doing this to him! Though even death sounded as too blissful of a punishment for that temptress.

Like fire,

Hellfire,

This fire in my skin,

This burning desire

Is turning me to sin,

Ever since that fateful day she had haunted him day and night. He couldn't pull himself free from that witch's clutches. That girl was to blame for all of this, not him. None of this was his fault nor would it ever be. Everything had gone wrong ever since he first met her. How Now he was so needy, obsessed and lustful. It was only because of that one witch. He didn`t understand why and Alastor hated things he didn't understand and had no control over.

It`s not my fault,

I`m not to blame,

It is that cursed girl,

The witch that set this flame,

Alastor had never felt a need like this before. He felt no attraction towards anyone. These lustful feelings were completely new to him and he didn't understand them. Why did she have to come his way and ruin him in such a way? She was disgusting. She was a demon in his eyes. This need. This indescribable feeling of lust was unexplainable to him. He wanted the girl under him, screaming his name, looking up at him with such love in those gorgeous brown orbs. The girl showing her that she needed him just as much as he wanted and needed her. Even though those thoughts only managed to anger him more, This was wrong wrong wrong. This was all wrong!

It`s not my fault,

If in God`s plan,

He made the devil so much,

Stronger than a man,

Yet there was one thing that he was sure of. He wasn't to blame for these feelings, this damn desire clawing at his soul. It was the girl's fault and only hers. Everything had gone wrong since their first encounter. If she wouldn't have tempted him that much on that fateful day, then wouldn`t be in such situation right now because of her. He was strong and all powerful and he would end up winning in the end.

Protect me, Maria,

Don`t let this siren cast her spell,

Don`t let her fire sear my flesh and bone,

Of course, he just had to see the girl smiling and laughing in his mind. Those visions plagued him non stop and drove him insane. He could see her do those sedutive moves, skipping and dancing around, all of that had made him feel so filthy. He wanted this teasing to stop. More then anything! He wanted this temptress as far away from him as possible. He truly counted himself to be far above over such disgusting, sinful desires. Every single other woman he had met left him feeling indifferent, why couldn't she have been the same way? He hated how much he wanted nothing more than to have the girl wrap her arms around him, look up at him with those beautiful orbs. He would do anything to feel those soft lips against his, but he couldn`t give in. No he just couldn't. He had to make god see that he was indeed worthy of him and he was, he really was. Until that girl came along and ruined absolutely everything.

Destroy Charlie!

And let her taste the fires of hell,

Or else let her be mine and mine alone,

A quiet growl left past Alastor's lips. No matter where he looked he was haunted by that damned girl, but especially in those mesmerising flames.Everything reminded him of the girl. He would get the girl and own her. Oh yes he would. He would take her all for himself, since the girl made him feel so dirty then he had every right to return that feeling. But he would make it so much worse. He would destroy her. He would make the girl feel the same way as he did. That gorgeous, yet damned girl would love him too. He was planning for her to feel pain and insanity that he was forced to feel because of her. Most importantly he would make the girl love him. Because he loved her. He really did, even though it felt like such a sin.

Hellfire,

Dark fire,

Now, my darling,

It`s your turn,

It would be Charlie's turn to feel this agony Now it was her time to feel the pain she made him feel for all this time. Alastor would make the girl pay for everything she had caused him with pain and torture. But eventually that pain and anger would be turned into love and adoration. Yes, the girl would look at him with hearts in her gorgeous eyes by the end of it.

Choose me or,

Your pyre,

Be mine or you will burn!

He looked down at his shaking hands that held the napkin. The only object of her's that he had in his possession. He glared and gripped it tightly in his hand, before throwing it into the fireplace in anger. It burned quickly, just like his darling would if she didn`t choose him, as her one and only. Oh but her suffering would be so much more slower and painful. So much more enjoyable for him. God would get rid of those not worthy. He felt a bang of pain in his heart as he grabbed onto his chest. The need to have the girl was enormous. He just wanted the girl right now, hugging onto him with her slender arms.

God have mercy on her,

God have mercy on me,

But she will be mine,

Or she will,

Burn!

The man fell onto his knees. This weakness made him feel more sick then anything but he would be the one to laugh by the end of it. He would take that temptress and make her all his. Yes, he would give the girl two choices, either she would be his and only his, or she would be suffer a fate worse then death itself. Either way the girl would only be his forever. No matter what she would choose. He would get all of her love, all of it and the girl would yearn for him. Go insane for him and his very presence to be near her. They'd be one in body and soul. They would be together, before he completely lost his mind. A deep sigh left past his lips as he forced himself to stand up and sat down at his bed. Soon, so soon he would let his plans unfold. If he were to fall into darkness, then he would make sure to drag her down with him, so they would be together forever.

It was her who had made him feel this sick desire so she would be the one who would have to deal with the consequences.

After all, love really made a man do crazy things.

#charlastor #charlie x alastor #alastor x charlie #hazbin hotel #hellfire #hazbin hotel fanfic #hazbin hotel alastor #hazbin hotel charlie #fanfic #alastor is a crazy boi #charlastor fic #yandere #yandere alastor #yandere male

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puella-peanut · 6 years

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on davy jones and calypso; the sailor and his sea

will and elizabeth may have been the face of the potc series—but it’s davy jones and calypso who remain its heart. they were not only the best romance in run of the movies, but also one of the best fictional love stories i've ever come across. ever.

they're like some sort of mythical love story, some legendary lore that the water gave us: passed down from generation to generation, sea unto sailor, sailor unto ship, ship unto sea again. playing out like some sort of siren's fairytale beckoning to a watery grave, a whispered legend that shifts like sand spilled from a sailor's coarse tongue; lingering like the storm of cursed myth, lurking just below the harsh surface of salt and water, those unforgiving seas that at once birthed a legend and wrecked a man. (perhaps, even, simultaneously.)

time indeed brings forth variations of this tale, and of themselves; the details rise and sink over centuries, the words shift and change as they are blown across the eras. we know that rumor becomes story, becomes myth, becomes legend. that love turns curse, turns suffering, turns storm. (but the story remains, buried under the flotsam. different versions, yes. but all are true. always.) there is, as in thousands of beginnings, a man and a woman. the man turns sailor, turns pirate, turns monster—the woman turns temptress, turns goddess, turns sea.

he is sometimes a fisherman, a captain, a pirate—but always davy jones.

(regardless).

he falls madly in love with a woman, a witch, a goddess—sometimes calypso, sometimes tia dalma, but always a storm underneath sea, or skin, or both.

(perhaps at once.)

however it happens, davy jones falls in love with the water, and the water loves him back—so much so that she gives him a task ten years to fulfill, and a promise that is hers to keep at the end of that decade.

she doesn't of course, because she is the sea, and it is in her nature to be tempestuous, and changeable, and cruel—and when she breaks his heart, he breaks her spirit, because he is a man with a scorned love, and as such, it is in his nature to be tempestuous, and changeable, and cruel as well. she curses him to the waters—he curses her to its shores. (in time, he becomes the sea. in time, she returns to it.) meanwhile, the monster collects his souls, the witch brews her charms; the storms rock the ocean, the legend is born. it all goes on and ever on: the seas, the sailors, the sirens; the ships, the souls, the storms—goddess and demon, water and flesh, love and pain.

tia dalma and davy jones. (because after all, every sailor falls in love with the sea. but it is only with one that the sea falls back.) . . . and we get one scene of this starcrossed love affair, just one, tiny little moment of them together in five films—the rest has to be found and pieced together like some broken string of pearls unearthed from treasure hunts. but that single shot with them both in the third movie is, in my opinion, far more powerful than anything elizabeth and will shared with each other over the span of all the films. calypso and davy jones, the story of them—it's moving, enchanting, subtle storytelling, that slowly trickles in little by little, and springs a leak until it drowns out everything else, and it works. god, it works.

even though in the end, after all is said and done, we are not truly given resolution to this tale, and are left only to ponder—

what is a man without his woman? what is a pirate without his treasure? what is a sailor without his sea?

#tia dalma #davy jones #calypso #pirates of the caribbean #at world's end #honestly - will and elizabeth were a snoozefest #i want a movie with davy jones and calypso #PLZ #i need more pain and misery in my life #let me suffer #all this because i rewatched the trilogy #we do not SPEAK of the other two #in which peanut chases paper cuts

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sadgaywerewolf · 6 years

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Live from the Full Moon Café

Here are my urban fantasy OCs! They all hang out at the full moon cafe, a motel/diner for anyone a bit less than normal!

Theo - Physically? 25. Mentally? Spiritually? 97. Werewolf barista/manager/hostx/cook/best friend. Knows everything about everyone but never has any idea what’s going on. That’s why their hair is so big, it’s full of secrets.

Lee - Realistically around 80, but you can’t prove that. Siren, plays shitty folk music on acoustic guitar. He’s not actually good but has a really high cha score so no one notices. Absolutely crashing on Theo’s couch.

Claude - 150 years old, died at 25 in a tragic falling piano incident. Jazz musician of the 1900s who used to play to the old silent movies. Haunts the very piano that killed him, right here in this cafe. Will not stop playing ragtime at inappropriate moments.

Jaime - Psychic twink, 28, starving performance artist, they’re not waiting to be discovered, they know there work won’t be appreciated until long after their own demise. Orders a lot of mochas.

Morese - Uber driver. Lyft driver. Jaime’s driver, usually. Insomniac. Vampire? Ghoul? Ancient god??? Jury's still out on this guy.

Azalea - Displaced tree nymph, knitter, cat tolerator, tea drinker. Student of...something, but it’s different every time you ask her.

Thalia - Of the fae, but one of the nicer ones (supposedly). Cute accent and natural hair. The Cat Lady. She works in insurance (“making deals”).

Nic - Witch, stops by when he’s in town for business. Drives a crossover.

Tythis - Dragon. Thousands of years old. Hoards facts and PhDs. They’re theoretically a professor somewhere but probably don’t have any students. They do have their own podcast though.

Cortanzia Amelia - Vampire, seductress of the night and temptress of men. Don’t ask her age, because she will lie egregiously. Fan of the finer things and the finest company. Hosts great parties.

Haley - Ghoul, food truck owner of dubious legality, wears a suspicious amount of leather, owns a dog.

Jericho - Charming, friendly neighborhood dog walker/pet sitter! Wears cargo shorts and sun visors. Your #1 care provider for hell hounds to hydras and even Pomeranians. May be an elder god of dogs. Always has a peanut butter treat in his pocket.

#ocs

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tiffanyink · 3 years

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“Do not fear us, earthly maid! We will lead you hand in hand By the willows in the glade, By the gorse on the high land, By the pasture where the lambs Shall awake with lonely bleat, Shivering closer to their dams From the rustling of our feet. You will with the banshee chat, And will find her good at heart, Sitting on a warm smooth mat In the green hill's inmost part. We will bring a crown of gold Bending humbly every knee, Now thy great white doll to hold -- Oh, so happy would we be! Ah it is so very big, And we are so very small! So we dance a fairy jig To the fiddle's rise and fall. Yonder see the fairy girls All their jealousy display, Lift their chins and toss their curls, Lift their chins and turn away. See you, brother, Cranberry Fruit -- He! ho! ho! the merry blade! -- Hugs and pets and pats yon newt, Teasing every wilful maid…” A Lover's Quarrel among the Fairies by William Butler Yeats WITCH, SIREN, LOVER The banshee has been seen as the conduit of evil, the siren of doom, the temptress lover, but the real story is far more complex, far more intriguing than the simple lady in white… Click on the link in my bio to take a deeper look into this complex figure. ……………………….. #mythical #atx #roundrocktx #tiffanyrankinatx @tiffanyrankin_art @apothecary_lore #becauseofreading #bibliophile #bookaddict #booklover #booknerd #bookwormlife #readersofinstagram #readingismagic #bloggerbabe #blogginggals #bloggersofinstagram #bookblogger #folklore #booknerd #reading #bookaholic #bookish #ilovebooks #ilovereading #readersofinstagram #magical #writersofinstagram #writersofig #writing #bookie #tiffanyrankinatx #banshee (at Round Rock, Texas) https://www.instagram.com/p/CRiFvnylOnF/?utm_medium=tumblr

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jkottke · 6 years

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Translating Homer in public

I can't claim to have finished Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey by Homer -- epic poems are, well, epic -- but I'm a huge fan of everything I've read, and especially Wilson's Twitter feed, which is often devoted to explicating some small bit of Homeric text and comparing her approach to that of other translators.

Here, for example, she takes on the depiction of the Sirens. I'm going to pick and choose a few tweets, but you should read as much of the thread as you can.

Everyone knows the story of the Sirens from the Odyssey. They're the singers who tempt all those who sail past to listen to them forever, forgetful of their families. Odysseus, instructed by Circe, has himself bound to the mast so he can listen to their song.

— Emily Wilson (@EmilyRCWilson) March 4, 2018

But the Homeric Sirens passage, in Book 12, is surprising in at least two ways. One is how short it is; the episode has become a much bigger part of the Odyssey in modern retellings than it is in the Homeric poem.

— Emily Wilson (@EmilyRCWilson) March 4, 2018

Secondly, the Sirens in Homer aren't sexy. e.g. we learn nothing even about their hair -- in contrast to other divine temptresses. The seduction they offer is cognitive: they claim to know everything about the war in Troy, and everything on earth. They tell the names of pain.

— Emily Wilson (@EmilyRCWilson) March 4, 2018

This last observation prompted a haunting distillation by Lev Mirov of Odysseus's journey and his encounter with the Sirens:

This whole thread is amazing but, I think of this: the forbidden knowledge Odysseus cannot pass up? Essentially: tell me the name of the hole in my heart tell me what this war meant and what is wrong with me. (nothing, nothing, nothing, the name of pain is sung.) https://t.co/LlFFxOqVaX

— Lev Mirov (@thelionmachine) March 5, 2018

Back to Wilson, who translates the brutally short passage of the sirens this way:

Wilson: "Now stop your ship and listen to our voices. All those who pass this way hear honeyed song poured from our mouths. The music brings them joy, and they go on their way with greater knowledge". I don't change my regular iambic pentameter.

— Emily Wilson (@EmilyRCWilson) March 4, 2018

She explains:

I wanted the Sirens to sound seductive, but in aural and cognitive ways. I tried to echo some of the alliterating sibilants in the original -- a bit like Kaa in Jungle Book, "Trust in Me". NB: it's the mouth, not the lips, that matters in most of Odysseus' troubles at sea.

— Emily Wilson (@EmilyRCWilson) March 4, 2018

Mouths (of giants, whirlpools, cyclopses and men) keep eating the wrong things, and mouths (of goddesses, men, witches, singers and shades) speak and sing to enable or thwart the onward journey. Not lips, which can be pretty and kissable. Mouths are powerful and dangerous.

— Emily Wilson (@EmilyRCWilson) March 4, 2018

Translation is hard, but translation in public is harder and better. There's a richness in the commentary, and also a reckoning with the accretion of meanings that have come down through past readings, that you don't often get without diving into scholarly apparatus. It's not just peeling back the plaster; it's trying to understand the work that plaster did in holding the whole structure together. Just remarkable.

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the-reason-to-sail-home · 7 years

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✨CS Fairy Tale Prompts✨

As promised, here is a collected list of (50+) fairy tale, fantasy, and mythology prompts. I’ve also included a handful of smutty prompts and hearty helping of dark fantasy prompts for CS Halloweek. Feel free to use any of these for anything, and if you do, I’d appreciate it if you link back to this list! Happy writing!

General Fairy Tale Prompts

Killian is an apothecary, Emma is the woman who tracks down the rare and dangerous ingredients for him.

Character A has vowed to kill a dragon, unbeknownst to them that their lover, Character B, is really the beast they’re hunting.

Pirate Killian follows his map to where treasure is sure to lie. Instead, he only finds the humble cottage of a poor woman living by herself.

The fictional character that person A has fallen in love with steps out of the pages of a book, running away from something disastrous happening in their own world.

Write about the forbidden love between two very different mythological creatures (ie; fairies, nymphs, humans, mermaids, etc).

Character A is an unhappy siren who has fallen for their latest prey, Character B, the only person who is unaffected by A’s charms.

Emma is a messenger that continually runs into sailor Killian as they travel across the world, her by land, and he by sea.

Emma is a Robin Hood type character protecting her village from the Pirate Jones who wishes to plunder it.

Alternatively, Emma is tired of her stifling life in her small village and stows herself away on a pirate ship in hopes of finding adventure.

An evil witch has princess Emma locked in a tower, but little does Emma know, the witch has a pirate locked just the room below her. During one of the pirate’s escape plans, he and Emma meet. (Possible Rapunzel AU?)

Character A is a fortune teller who sees themselves in Character B’s future.

Emma disguises herself as a princess to steal from the prince’s treasury during his ball. Everything goes according to plan, except, you know, the part where she falls in love with him.

Character A is immortal and character B reincarnates over and over and over again. Sometimes they fall in love, sometimes they don’t.

The village leaves character A behind as a sacrifice to the god/dess of the forest, character B is the god who finds character A, beaten and neglected.

Character A is a chess master who is enlisted to teach the royal character B how to play. Character A soon surpasses their teacher.

This also works with music, swordsmanship, and other things where mastery can be taught!

Killian is a map creator who needs an escort to give him as he marks down uncharted lands. Emma just happens to be the best in the land.

Killian and Emma are the demon of evil and the angel of good. They have a fierce rivalry with each other, trying to bring lowly mortals to their respective side.

Princess Emma discovers a secret library within the depths of her castle run by a strange librarian, Killian Jones.

Character A falls in love with the palace gardener, Character B.

Write about a masquerade ball. Emma and Killian could be royalty, spies, castle servants, thieves, guests, military officers, knights. The dynamics could be neat on this one.

Spooky Fairy tales

Emma is the youngest and most powerful of three witches. One day, Killian stumbles upon their home as an overnight guest. He teaches her that she can use her witch powers for good. (Based off of Barbara Picard’s story, “The Third Witch”)

The Spirit of Death, Emma, taunts and follows Killian Jones as he escapes her grasp countless times, up until the day he doesn’t.

Emma is a witch living on an enchanted island by herself, Killian is the sole sailor who washes up on her shores.

Killian finds himself wandering into an abandoned castle, haunted by the princess who died there.

Emma is the necromancer that Killian hires to bring his deceased brother back from the grave.

Killian finds twelve ghost princesses dancing in the forest, and somehow, has caught the attention of one of them.

In the middle of the night, Emma finds that stone statue in her palace has come to life: the likeness of Killian Jones, a deceased naval captain.

During one of this sea voyages, Killian meets and falls in love with a woman he finds floating in the water. It’s only after they part that one of his crew tells him that Emma Swan has been dead for over a hundred years.

Character A is a plague doctor, Character B is on their deathbed.

Hook is lost in the Dark Woods of Neverland, and Emma is the queen that reigns over them. If he wants to make it back to his ship, he’ll have to go through the queen first.

Emma is spirit of death/temptress/etc who takes the lives of men by sleeping with them. The only men she doesn’t want to kill is the only man she really wants to sleep with.

Zombie Snow White!AU except the character in a sleeping curse has started to decay and when woken by TLK, never truly comes fully back to life.

Emma Swan is a fallen angel who takes out her rage on a spiteful pirate, but little does she know, there’s not she can do to him that he hasn’t lived through already.

Killian is the necromancer in charge of bringing Princess Emma back to life, but for some reason, he can’t bring back her life, and instead, only relive her memories in his own mind.

Emma grows up alone on the streets selling matches with her imaginary friend, the ghost of a dead boy who died in slavery.

Prompts based off of specific fairy tales

Beauty and the Beast AU: Person A is the only person alive who doesn’t see person B’s cursed appearance. Person B has no idea that they don’t appear as a beast to person A.

Cinderella!AU where Killian and Emma are both commoners crashing the king’s party in hopes of finding true love. The one who gets left behind has a seriously harder time finding the one who got away.

Cinderella!AU where Pirate Killian steals a princess’ pair of glass slippers and gives them to his first mate, Emma. They’re a perfect fit.

Peter Pan AU where Emma has secretly been growing up and turns to Pan’s enemy to help get her off of the island. She much prefers her life as a pirate to her old one as a lost girl, anyhow.

Prince Killian of the Sea loses his favorite ring (or other beloved object) on shore and goes above land to find it. Emma, thief extraordinaire, helps him find it and steal it back. (Based off of Barabara Picard’s, “The Coral Comb.” )

Royal Killian finds Emma, a stranger without her memories. They fall in love, marry, but when Killian discovers that she’s actually a fairy, he has to choose between her happiness and their marriage. (Based off of Barbara Picard’s story, “Count Alaric’s Lady”).

In the actual fairy tale, the only way they can stay together is if their love for one another is true.

Killian is an artist who is thrown in the royal dungeons for not accurately painting the king. Princess Emma sees him and they begin a forbidden love affair. (Based off of Barbara Picard’s story “The Blackbird’s Song”).

Princess Emma must pick one of many suitors to marry. Prince Killian is on his way to be considered, when an evil witch turns him into a dog. Princess Emma finds the dog. (Based off of Picard’s “The White Hound”).

In the original fairy tale, the prince has 2 minutes at midnight on the night of the full moon to talk with his full voice. This is how the princess realizes he’s actually a man and not a dog.

Emma grows up playing in the forest, where she continually meets a mysterious woodland man, Killian (as a wood nymph/faun/fairy/elf/etc), but the second he leaves her side, she loses her memories of him. She returns to the forest, though, because her heart knows she has a reason to. They grow closer up until the day her step-mother/grandmother makes her marry someone else. (Based off of Picard’s “The Faun and the Woodcutter’s Daughter”).

Is the fairy tale, the faun comes to the daughter’s rescue on the day of her wedding, but ultimately she saves herself.

This story also works genderswapped. Perhaps Emma is the wood nymph/fairy and Killian is the Harbormaster’s brother.

Snow white!AU: Character A is a mercenary hired by the queen to kill character B. They stumble into each other and form an unlikely team. Ultimately character A just can’t kill character B.

Prompts based off of mythology

A fic based off of the story of Greek astronomer, Endymion, who has a love affair with the moon goddess, Selene.

A fic based off of Hades and Persephone, where with Emma or Killian is the ruler of the underworld.

A romance between the goddess of the sun and the god of the moon.

Alternatively, the goddess of the land and the god of the sea.

Character A declares to the heavens that they won’t ever fall in love. Aphrodite sees this as a challenge. They stumble into character B the next day.

A mortal falls in love with a god/dess and goes about the strangest ways in getting their attention and favor.

King Midas!AU: Everything character A touches turns to gold, everything except character B.

Emma is one of the huntresses of Artemis. After being scorned by love before, she swears off men. On one of her hunts, she meets a sailor who makes her change her mind.

The gods in olympus think Character A would be great for character B. The two mortals can’t figure out why they keep running into each other, but it’s really because of a plan that’s a bit more...divine.

Killian Jones has spent his entire life at sea fearing the storms, but he has never considered loving them, especially not the goddess who makes them.

Smutty Fairy Tale Prompts

Royal person A has taken notice to the way person B stares at them as they work about the castle.

Character A is a sculptor for the royal family and gets well acquainted with the body of the prince/princess.

A couple in a forbidden love affair escape to the enchanted woods to consummate their love.

A couple separated by distance can communicate with a magic mirror. Character A just doesn’t account for character B accidentally “stepping in” when they pleasure themselves, but they realize they can have some fun.

Who doesn’t love a good femme fatale?

Princess Emma has eyes for her protector and intends to have him.

This is a fairly general, common prompt, but I felt I should still give credit to a fic that has already done exactly this: Frustrated, Princess? by YouSaidWho on Ao3.

A pair of strangers share a passionate night together, only to find out character A is the royal and is actually in an arranged engagement to character B.

#captain swan #cs halloweek #cs prompt #cs ff #if these give you any ideas you'd like me to add to the list #by all means shoot me an ask or a message

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janeaustentextposts · 7 years

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Question! I noticed - maybe I'm wrong - that in all the adaptations, the casting for the main characters is similar: Darcy is dark haired, and so is Lizzie; Jane is blonde and (for some fascinating reason) Bingley is ginger-y. Is there a reason? something in the books that I missed? Some extra source? It seemed too much a coincidence (although I do love Ginger Bingley) thanks!!!

First off, I’m going to refer back to Mullan’s What Matters in Jane Austen? again, because he’s done a whole chapter on what her characters look like (and starts off with a basic examination of casting choices in adaptations and the admiration or outrage which always follows.) “How people look is often suggested rather than specified in Austen’s novels.” He then goes on to quote Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, “…paint her to your own mind–as like your mistress as you can–as unlike your wife as your conscience will let you.”

All we know of Jane is that she is considered very beautiful–as much is said by Bingley, her mother (who has no difficulty criticizing her children when they displease her,) and even Darcy must admit it as a fact. Looks are important in novels where often penniless girls must rely on other attractions in their manners and person–”…words used so frequently about characters when we first meet them: handsome, pretty, gentlemanlike, elegant…”. And yet she avoids specifics–perhaps as a reaction to other novels of her era, where a heroine’s precise points of beauty are totted up among her other virtues to make her a peerless wonder. Austen’s heroines are often described by other characters, rather than the narration, as it’s important to consider who is looking, and how, when looking at their judgements. Some people use a mention in Jane Austen’s letters about Jane wearing the colour green and Elizabeth preferring yellow to be some kind of marker of what their haircolours must have been in Austen’s mind’s eye, but that’s a tenuous argument at best, and if Austen had wanted the world in general to know imagined particulars about Jane and Elizabeth, she would have set them down in the text.

We know Elizabeth’s eyes are fine, and dark, but beyond that, we are given no details. On a genetic level, dark eyes are far more likely to occur in people with darker hair, but Austen wasn’t working with genetics–and dark eyes paired with lighter hair can sometimes be a rare sign of remarkable beauty, as in the descriptions of Irene in Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga books. (A description which was entirely ignored in the casting of my future wife Gina McKee, but then Irene’s beauty and her allure is such a pivotal force in the novels that to pin it down as necessarily belonging to certain shades of colouring is to make it more trite than it truly is. Irene’s beauty is something beyond what one sees at first glance–it is transcendent charm.) Dark could mean brown, or also a very dark blue or grey–it’s impossible to tell, exactly. Anne Elliott’s eyes are mild and dark, Fanny Price’s are soft and light, Harriet Smith’s are blue, Jane Fairfax’s a deep grey, (and her lashes and eyebrows called dark, giving us some notion of the likely shade of her hair,) Mary Crawford’s are sparkling and dark…eyes are often the only thing near to a solid description we are given of physical attributes, and even then half of the description is more to do with the expression of the personality or feeling of the character through their glances and gazes, rather than specifically the colour of their irises. (Only Emma Woodhouse’s exact eye-colour is known–they are “hazle” and no adaptation so far has given enough of a shit to make certain of casting.) Marianne Dashwood has very dark eyes, and there is a general comparative description of the figures of the two sisters–but casting directors rarely, if ever, I think, take specifics of figures into account beyond an ‘acceptable’ level of Hollywood slimness.Now, for the casting trends (exceptions to the pattern you laid out being the 1940 P&P’s Greer Garson being a dirty-blonde/light brown Elizabeth, while Maureen O’Sullivan’s Jane had very dark hair; and the 1980 miniseries with Elizabeth Garvie’s Eliza also having light brown hair while Sabina Franklyn’s Jane was several shades darker–but indeed, the two more recent and well-known adaptations of 1995 and 2005 have the colourings you mentioned,) it’s probably just down to Hollywood mechanics where you’re going to have to combine the tropes of a comparative Ugly Duckling sister as well as a Best Friend/Beta Couple plotline. Coding a blonde woman (or man) as ‘good’ and a darker-haired person as ‘less good’ has been a Thing since long before cinema showed up on the scene. There’s a reason Laura Ingalls spends so much time inwardly (and outwardly) bitching about her sister Mary’s luck in being blonde (and also better-behaved, though this is never explicitly tied to the fact that Mary is blonde, but just ties INTO the overall notion that Mary is The Better Daughter.) Dark-haired heroines throughout older literature have bemoaned their lack of golden locks (notably also in LM Montgomery’s works, with Anne Shirley’s famous sensitivity about her hair being red, but also briefly in Emily Starr’s contemplation of her own black hair and atypical looks, which gets a bit of verse thrown at it which I can’t find sourced anywhere else so must have been made up by Montgomery herself: “If the bards of old the truth have told the sirens had raven hair. But over the earth since art had birth, they paint the angels fair.“So culturally, in the west, there’s a pervasive notion (especially when it comes to women,) that dark-haired women are the ‘darker’ side of their humanity…the temptresses, the more-likely-to-be-bad. (Though any reasonable reader would be like “…well, they’re human, you see, not out-and-out evil.”) But of course anyone compared to the fair-haired saintly paragon of womanhood would look bad–and so equally is the angelic blonde woman a trope in literature, often but not always used in comparisons against her brunette foil.

In cinema, quite often it’s just to better differentiate between characters, and to use these assumptions which are deeply entrenched in our cultures to play upon our immediate and almost instinctive reactions to visual cues. Jane is super-good, so she’s blonde. Bingley is likewise a bright and easy-going character, with more elements of comedy about him, so he’s got lighter hair, too, either as a strawberry blonde or redhead–but he is definitely the sidekick. I, personally, would be all for a ginger Darcy. Or a ginger-everybody P&P. (But that’s not going to happen, because redheaded men are culturally de-sexed/made less masculine or attractive, whereas redheaded women are more inclined to be overly-sexualized. Humanity is weird.) Darcy is a brooding brunette, because darker hair in the case of a male character gives them gravitas and mystery. It’s that damn Byronic thing coming into play. Dark hair, dark secrets. It’s a visual construct we’ve trapped ourselves into, at this point. Also, when you’ve got two love-stories running more or less concurrently, an audience needs visual markers to help them quickly identify and individualize (and therefore emotionally-invest in) the characters. More morally-dubious and fascinating hero and heroine Elizabeth and Darcy are brunettes because we see them making mistakes and drawing our attention by being fuck-ups. Lizzie can’t be the Prettier Sister, so she’s more automatically made the Brunette Underdog. Darcy is brooding and mysterious–so it’s very easy to make him dark-haired. Their contrasts are in their secondary characters–Jane and Bingley. Jane is prettier, and good-hearted (moreso than Eliza, anyway,) so she ascends to Blonde. Bingley is the Good Friend, and seemingly with fewer social defects compared to Darcy, so as the Nice Man, he gets lighter hair to also differentiate him from Darcy and make him more matchy-matchy with Jane. Our brains are making these connections based on visuals even before we’ve gotten half a dozen words of dialogue from any of these people.

This happens often in films and TV shows–in Coppola’s Dracula, Sadie Frost (a natural brunette) was made a vibrant redhead as Lucy to contrast to Winona Ryder’s more sedate and mysterious Mina. (Though this also had the fun effect of tying in a possible reference to the historical link between redhaired people and vampires, and the whole mythos of redhaired women in particular and sexual allure/witchcraft/spiritual evil–particularly as THIS version of Lucy is much more heavily sexualized compared to her book counterpart. I don’t know how much of the hair-colour-change was on purpose from Coppola’s perspective, and largely it’s just handwaved as being so people could really tell apart the ONLY TWO MAJOR FEMALE CHARACTERS IN THE FILM, but personally I think it’s an interesting choice–particularly compared to Katie McGrath’s blonde Lucy.) Again, we see the contrasting of virtue coded in hair-colouring, as Lucy is a character known for her sweetness and purity…as well as being a secondary female character to the heroine, and hence her more-virtuous foil…with lighter hair. Mina’s place as an educated, working, and married woman, with a more active part in the narrative, particularly as her brushes with dark forces mark her as ‘unholy’, makes it easier to code her as ‘complicated’, i.e. a brunette. Interestingly, this is set on its head in Penny Dreadful, where Mina becomes the blonde, doomed damsel, and her friend/lover Vanessa is the raven-haired woman at the center of a maelstrom of fucked up shit full of vampires, witches, and devils. Essentially if you want your heroine to go ‘bad’ a little (or a lot), give her a better-by-comparison blonde friend and have at it.Of course, since these tropes are so pervasive, we do see stories where this is purposefully mirrored or mocked, where the icy blonde is the femme fatale or turncoat who uses her appeal to deceive others–but this relies just as heavily on the initial assumption that a fair-haired character is intrinsically ‘better’ on a moral level.To conclude, this is why I think we see that general trend with colouring when it comes to casting/styling these characters in cinematic adaptations, as we have really very little in the text to go on, but from the characters themselves there are long traditions to draw from for visual cues to quickly and adeptly condition audiences to draw certain assumptions about these characters which enable us to rapidly bond with and understand them to some degree. I want to specify “Western” audiences because the blonde/brunette thing is at its roots kind of a colourism thing which is grossly pervasive in a white supremacist society going back for centuries, and Caucasian beauty standards do not and should not apply globally; but as the media most of us are familiar with is dominated by this white heteronormative patriarchal history, these tropes and codings exist for ultimately gross reasons. Frankly we could all do without them from this day forward, but change can be slow and so these stereotypes continue to exist and blonde people on-screen for now often continue to be the tacit code for ‘these people are the purest bestest people’ while the darker-haired people are almost always more morally-grey, complicated–even troubling–and made more ‘fascinating’ by their more flawed natures. It’s a shitty way of doing things, but we’ve been culturally conditioned to respond to things like that, and so it works.Anyway, thanks for asking this one–my answer went to places I wasn’t fully expecting me to go, but I enjoyed blowing the dust off my film studies qualifications and I always love yelling about culture.

#Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent #AMAAA #eorlsdotter

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