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offtorivendell · 3 years

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The Significance of Elain and a Cup of Tea 🍵

Do not screenshot this post.

Disclaimer: these are my own interpretations, and obviously not canon - though I do think that the text supports Elain and Azriel ending up together. I'm sure I'm not the first to see this connection, but I had fun writing it, so... here you go.

It's another long one, sorry. Again, maybe go and make yourself a cuppa first.

In stories that involve Seers, they often read tea leaves, using the patterns they leave at the bottom of a tea cup to predict the future.

Elain, a Seer Made by the Cauldron, seems to have an interesting relationship with tea - it symbolises her/her life, and her reactions to her surroundings while she's written with a cup of tea appear to predict her own future.

The tea predicted Elain being Made

Elain lifted her teacup. “Whatever the reason, Feyre, we are happy to see you. Alive. We thought you were—” I pulled my hood back before she could go on. Elain’s teacup rattled in its saucer as she noticed my ears. My longer, slender hands—the face that was undeniably Fae. “I was dead,” I said roughly. “I was dead, and then I was reborn—remade.” Elain set her shivering teacup onto the low-lying table between us. Amber liquid splashed over the side, pooling in the saucer.

- Feyre, ACOMAF, chapter 23

When Feyre, together with Rhys, Azriel and Cassian, visited her family's estate in the human lands, Elain (and Nesta) discovered that Feyre had been Made into a high fae after she died at Amarantha's hands. They are grateful that she's alive - they'd understandably thought otherwise, but rattled by her transformation.

More water than seemed possible dumped out in a cascade. Black, smoke-coated water. And Elain, as if she’d been thrown by a wave, washed onto the stones facedown.

Alive, she had to be alive, had to have wanted to live— Elain sucked in a breath...

Elain’s ears were now pointed beneath her sodden hair.

Elain was still shivering on the wet stones...

From however Elain had been Made… Nesta was different.

- Feyre, ACOMAF, chapter 65

Later on in ACOMAF, after it is revealed that Elain and Nesta were kidnapped by the King of Hybern, Elain is lifted into the Cauldron by the Hybern soldiers, then washed over the edge a Made being, left shivering on the stone floor; in her relief that Elain was alive, Feyre noticed her newly pointed ears - a direct call back to Elain's reaction to seeing Feyre for the first time since she was Made. Feyre was shocked, this time around, and Elain was shivering on the stone ground, as opposed to her tea cup on the low-lying table.

The tea predicted Elain's failed engagement to Graysen

Nesta looked to Elain, still silent and wide-eyed. The tea she’d prepared—the finest, most exotic tea money could buy—sat undisturbed on the table. Elain thumbed the iron ring on her finger. “It is your choice,” Nesta said with unusual gentleness. For her, Nesta would go to Prythian. Elain swallowed, a doe caught in a snare. “I—I can’t. I …”

- Feyre, ACOMAF, chapter 57

Elain, raised to be a fine lady, the prettiest (most exotic) of the Archeron sisters, will eventually lose the life for which she was "prepared," and is left "undisturbed on the table," i.e. Graysen, represented here by the iron engagement ring that he gave to Elain, refused to marry her after she was Made against her will. The ring is also important in that Elain spends a lot of her time in ACOWAR touching it, while she mourned what she lost with Graysen.

Her too-thin shoulders seemed to curve inward. “No one ever does. No one ever looked—not really.” A bramble of words. Her voice strained to a whisper. “He did. He saw me. He will not now.”

- Lucien, ACOWAR, chapter 24

Here Elain predicted, heartbreakingly, that Graysen would refuse to See her again - that her being Made fae would prevent him from not just loving her, but identifying with her. There are a couple of great analyses out there that discuss whether and why Elain truly loved Graysen, but what we cannot deny is that they shared a goal, and that goal gave her purpose.

All of that aside, I think we can all agree - his loss!

The tea predicted that there was nothing wrong with Elain

Nesta, sharp-eyed in the corner, had kept quiet. After a long minute, Madja asked us to join her in fetching Elain a cup of tea—with a pointed glance to the door. We both took the invitation and left our sister in her sunlit room.

“What do you mean, nothing is wrong with her?” Nesta hissed under her breath as the ancient female braced a hand on the stair railing to help herself down. I kept beside the healer, a hand in easy reach of her elbow, should she need it.

“What I mean,” Madja said at last, sizing up Nesta, then me, “is that I can find nothing wrong with her. Her body is fine—too thin and in need of more food and fresh air, but nothing amiss. And as for her mind … I cannot enter it.”

- Feyre, ACOWAR, chapter 28

Madja, the Night Court's chief healer, informed Feyre and Nesta that there is nothing she can find wrong with Elain, other than a lack of food, which she is still refusing at this time. Nesta's words, to me, symbolised the concern that the IC and Lucien have for Elain - they're not 100% sure that she came out of the Cauldron with a sound mind - but Madja reiterated her point: there is nothing medically wrong with Elain, and she cannot enter her mind.

Is it because Madja is not a daemati, or something else entirely?

The tea appears to predict a failed relationship - and potentially a false bond - with Lucien

She’d [Jesminda] seen him not as a High Lord’s seventh son, but as a male. Had loved him without question, without hesitation. She had chosen him. Elain had been… thrown at him. He glanced toward the tea service spread on a low-lying table nearby.

Forced his hands to be steady while he poured himself a cup of tea and sat in the chair opposite Nesta’s vacated one.

For a long moment, Elain’s face did not shift, but those eyes seemed to focus a bit more. “Lucien,” she said at last, and he clenched his teacup to keep from shuddering at the sound of his name on her mouth.

But Elain blinked slowly. “You were in Hybern.” “Yes.” It was all he could say. “You betrayed us.”

She did not love him, want him, need him. Another male’s bride. A mortal man’s wife. Or she would have been.

- Lucien, ACOWAR, chapter 24

The only time we've had Lucien’s POV (so far) in this series is significant, in that he almost immediately compared Elain to Jesminda, his late first love, and he mused that, while Jesminda had chosen him, had loved him without hesitation, Elain had been thrown at him - very romantic - and she certainly goes on to hesitate in any interactions she has with him. It follows, then, that Elain might not choose Lucien.

Additionally, Lucien forcing his hands to remain steady while pouring the tea, then clenching the tea cup (read: dealing with Elain), could be read as symbolic of the bond between them restricting them both. Lucien then went on to call Elain "another male's bride," which is (potentially, of course) Very Important.

Who might that other male be? We have our suspicions. 🦇

When discussing Elain's health, Madja said the following:

The ancient healer jerked her chin toward Lucien. “See what he can do. If anyone can sense if something is amiss, it’s a mate.” “How.” The word was barely more than a barked command. I braced myself to warn Nesta to be polite, but Madja said to my sister, as if she were a small child, “The mating bond. It is a bridge between souls.”

- Feyre, ACOWAR, chapter 28

The beginning of chapter 29 in ACOWAR had Feyre experiencing "the most uncomfortable thirty minutes" that she could recall; Elain and Lucien were having tea, so that he could attempt to sense if "anything was amiss" - as Madja had instructed.

Lucien and Elain sat in stilted silence by the dim fireplace, an untouched tea service between them. I didn’t dare ask if he was trying to get into her head, or if he was feeling a bond similar to that black adamant bridge between Rhys’s mind and my own. If a normal mating bond felt wholly different.

A teacup rattled and rasped against a saucer, and Mor and I glanced over. Elain had picked up the teacup, and now sipped from it without so much as looking toward him. In the dining room across the hall, I knew Nesta was craning her neck to look.

The sound [Amren in the other room] seemed to startle Elain, who swiftly set down her teacup. She rose to her feet, and Lucien shot to his. “I’m sorry,” he blurted. “What—what was that?” Mor put a hand on my knee to keep me from rising, too. “It—it was a tug. On the bond.”

Elain sidled toward Nesta, who seemed to be at a near-simmer. “It felt… strange,” Elain breathed. “Like you pulled on a thread tied to a rib.”

“There’s a bond—it’s a real thread,” he said, more to himself than us.

- Feyre, ACOWAR, chapter 29

The words that signify what is between Lucien and Elain here seem quite telling - stilted, dim, untouched - a call back to the "undisturbed" tea service that Elain laid out for their meeting with the queens, which foreshadowed the end of her relationship with Graysen.

The stilted silence and dim fireplace suggest that there is no communication down their "bond," and that they lack the fire of other truly mated couples. More specifically, they could be referring to Feyre/Rhys (bond communication) and Nesta/Cassian (fire between them). Will touch play an important role in Elain's eventual romance?

Elain sipped her tea - read: will live her life - without looking to Lucien at all, while Nesta, Feyre and Mor all watched her/them. Feyre took a moment to wonder if a "normal mating bond" felt different to what she shares with Rhys, not knowing that what Elain and Lucien have may not be normal at all.

Not long after this, Lucien attemped to reach Elain down the "thread" (singular) of their bond and startled her; Elain quickly stood up, then shared that her bond felt strange - almost as if she was answering Feyre's thought. A "normal" mating bond should not feel "strange." What is wrong with the bond between Lucien and Elain? He was unable to sense anything, as Madja said a true mate would, and a little later on, Azriel figured out that Elain was a Seer.

I found my sister in the kitchen, watching the kettle scream. “He’s not staying for tea,” I said. No sign of Nuala or Cerridwen. Elain simply removed the kettle from the heat.

I knew I wasn’t truly angry with her, not angry with anyone but myself, but I said, “You couldn’t say a single word to him? A pleasant greeting?”

Elain only stared at the steaming kettle as she set it on the stone counter.

“He brought you a present.”

Those doe-brown eyes turned toward me. Sharper than I’d ever seen them. “And that entitles him to my time, my affections?”

“No.” I blinked. “But he is a good male.” Despite our harsh words. Despite this Band of Exiles bullshit. “He cares for you.”

“He doesn’t know me.”

“You don’t give him the chance to even try to do so.”

Her mouth tightened, the only sign of anger in her graceful countenance. “I don’t want a mate. I don’t want a male.” She wanted a human man.

- Feyre, ACOFAS, chapter 18

I felt like this passage is partly prediction, and partly a way for SJM to let us into Elain's head; for Elain to speak her truths. A couple of lines did stand out to me, though:

I read Elain "watching the kettle scream" as synonymous with what must have been going on in her head at the time. Scream is an odd choice of word, as most would describe a kettle as whistling. As an aside, there is an interesting parallel that exists with Azriel, in his bonus chapter of ACOSF, where being with Elain makes the noise in his head quiet down.

Elain staring at the steaming kettle seemed to indicate that she might be evaluating her life - could the steam be a metaphor for the mist she will have to See through to find the fourth Dread Trove item? Lucien "not staying for tea" (read: Elain's life) sounded like confirmation (to me, of course) that they will not pursue a romantic relationship together.

Elain’s declaration that Lucien doesn't know her, and that he cannot buy her time or affection with gifts is *chef's kiss* good, though please don't read this as anti Lucien - it's more anti Feyre's poor choice of words.

I have discussed '"I don't want a mate. I don’t want a male.” She wanted a human man.' here, in depth, but a quick summary is that I think Elain wants someone to See all of her, including her humanity, and that her humanity will probably be helpful with her future love interest.

The tea appears to predict Elain's eventual relationship with Azriel, and maybe even a mating bond

She looked away [from Lucien]—toward the windows. “I can hear your heart,” she said quietly. He wasn’t sure how to respond, so he said nothing, and drained his tea, even as it burned his mouth. “When I sleep,” she murmured, “I can hear your heart beating through the stone.” She angled her head, as if the city view held some answer. “Can you hear mine?” He wasn’t sure if she truly meant to address him, but he said, “No, lady. I cannot.” Her too-thin shoulders seemed to curve inward. “No one ever does. No one ever looked—not really.” A bramble of words. Her voice strained to a whisper. “He did. He saw me. He will not now.”

- Lucien, ACOWAR, chapter 24

Firstly, and so significantly, Elain looked away from Lucien, and towards the windows, instead. We know that, earlier in that scene, Elain was talking to Feyre about being able to see the sea from where she sat, but I think that when Elain is mentioned as being around tea, her words tend to take on a deeper meaning - I interpreted this as Elain removing herself from the conversation she'd been having with Lucien. The next words out of her mouth, then - that "In my sleep, I hear your heart beating through the stone," appear to be spoken not to Lucien, but someone else.

Who do we know who always seems to be looking out windows to the garden, in search of Elain? Who could potentially be flying over Velaris, to or from the House of Wind? It looks like our flower grower might have started the trend!

Who sleeps at the House of Wind, where Elain and Nesta also stay? Aside from Lucien as a guest, there are two longterm residents. One of them is mated to Nesta, while the other one displays some strikingly familiar behaviour towards the middle Archeron sister.

Secondly, the tea burnt Lucien's mouth, then he thought to himself that there's a good chance Elain might not have been addressing him, may have intended to say that to someone else.

Lucien himself told us what was happening, which brings us to:

Elain sat silently at one of the wrought-iron tables, a cup of tea before her. Azriel was sprawled on the chaise longue across the gray stones, sunning his wings and reading what looked to be a stack of reports—likely information on the Autumn Court that he planned to present to Rhys once he’d sorted through it all. Already dressed for the Hewn City—the brutal, beautiful armor so at odds with the lovely garden. And my sister sitting within it. “Why not make them mates?” I mused. “Why Lucien?” “I’d keep that question from Lucien.”

- Feyre and Rhys, ACOWAR, chapter 24

In direct contrast to the tea that Elain and Lucien shared - stilted silence, dim fireplace, untouched tea service (i.e. their bond) - Elain and Azriel sit comfortably - we can assume, due to the lack of negative adjectives - in the sun, a cup of tea (read, once more: her life) "before her." The wrought iron table could potentially be symbolic; that Elain will be hammered into shape by the events of her life, ultimately becoming strong.

Elain is, however, "silent," which may have been indicating that she will spend some time not voicing her own wishes/being passive in her life - we have seen this throughout ACOWAR and ACOFAS, until ACOSF, where she finally started to speak up. It might also mean something else, which I mention further down.

Azriel is even sunning his wings. If you haven't seen it, this is how birds sun their wings - and they look hilariously comfy as they do.

Image source. Can someone please draw the Rhys/Cass/Az version of this?!). 😅

The pose makes them vulnerable; we know exactly how sensitive and possessive Illyrians are about their wings, and how private Azriel is in general, but he trusted Elain enough to expose himself (figuratively - and also, sort of literally) right from the start, just as Elain trusted his reactions at the first "family dinner," back in ACOMAF.

I discussed the relevance of how Elain, the sun, lays bare Azriel's shadows in this post, but the mutual trust and comfort here is, in my opinion, more evidence that Elain and Az share some sort of bond, be that mate or other, that makes him feel innately secure around her. Outside the Night Court, Rhys only ever showed his wings to Feyre, and while Azriel's wings can't be summoned at will like Rhys' can, the same principle stands - protect at all costs, so the parallel is there.

I also think Az may have been showing off his wings - just a wee bit. This is when Feyre uttered her iconic - and maybe prophetic - line, "Why not make them mates?" Feyre, who had thought from the start that Elain and Azriel would make a handsome pair. This is yet another parallel to a canonically mated pair, as we saw Cassian (not so) subtly showing off his wings to Nesta in chapter 29 of ACOWAR.

Oh, and Azriel knew Feyre was watching. So did Cassian. Perhaps they didn't care?

I know Elain x Azriel is not the most popular ship for either of them, but the evidence, to me, has been here all along - not just for a chosen relationship, but also a potential bond. Of course, this shouldn't stop people from shipping who they want. 🖤

The tea predicts that Feyre will become too overprotective of Elain

Rhys smiled at me over his shoulder. Enjoy your tea, you overbearing chaperone.

- Feyre, ACOWAR, chapter 29

" You think I stifle her?"

- Feyre (in response to Rhys), ACOSF, Feyre's bonus chapter

No matter who you ship, the one thing that almost everyone can agree on is that ACOSF demonstrated that Elain is frustrated with being coddled, protected, and not seen; she wants to grow, to come into her own and to have her help be both welcomed and valued.

Unresolved/potential predictions

The following are just bits of text that jumped out at me, that could hint at future events (or could end up being nothing, of course).

Elain thumbed the iron ring on her finger. “It is your choice,” Nesta said with unusual gentleness.

- Feyre, ACOMAF, chapter 57

A hint that Elain's story will be revolve around her making her own choices, both in terms of her love interest and role within the Night Court.

"And as for her mind… I cannot enter it.”

- Feyre, ACOWAR, chapter 28

Elain apparently has an impenetrable mind - will this be important when she deals with Koschei, the queens and other future enemies? Is she an anti-daemati?

But Elain blinked slowly. “You were in Hybern.” “Yes.” It was all he could say. “You betrayed us.”

- Lucien, ACOWAR, chapter 24

Future foreshadowing?! I really, really hope not.

Slow blinkers tend to have quick reflexes, let's hope that this is suggesting Elain will be quick on her feet.

- Feyre, ACOWAR, chapter 24

Will Elain become involved with Azriel's spy service, or work with him in some capacity? Spies must be able to stay silent, to keep secrets - and we know from ACOSF that Elain is adept at secret keeping.

#elain archeron #seer #elriel #pro elriel #anti elucien #feyre archeron #azriel #azriel shadowsinger #acotar #acomaf #acowar #acofas #lucien vanserra #divination #acosf #tea #tea leaves #spy elain #anti gwynriel

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zillennial97 · 3 years

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Enemies to Lovers | Larry Fanfic Recs

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once bitten and twice shy by pinkcords | 19k | Mature

This time as his stomach rolls, there’s no doubt about it. He’s going to vomit. And if he does, it’ll be on Louis’ shoes, a nice little parting gift to go with the embarrassment he’s caused the both of them. “I’m gonna throw up,” he says just as Louis turns to look at him, blue eyes swimming with shock and confusion, and asks, “Is that true?”

Or, in a rush of bravery only senior year can bring, Harry confesses his feelings in a letter to his neighbor and best friend, Louis, only for the entire school to hear it and laugh him out of their small town in Wisconsin. Ten years later, Harry's a successful lawyer at Columbia Records, coming home for Christmas for the first time since he departed for college. He plans to work his way through the trip, eat his mom's cooking, and avoid everyone from his past for as long as possible. The only problem is best laid plans hardly ever go as intended.

That's How I Know by allwaswell16 | 19k | Explicit

Louis Tomlinson has just landed his dream job, coaching soccer at Augustus University. When he moves into a new house near campus, he meets his very fit new neighbor, English professor Harry Styles. Although their first meeting leads to an instant mutual dislike, the more Harry gets to know Louis, the more he likes what he sees.

Or the one where Harry’s African grey parrot spills his dirty secrets to his very hot neighbor.

Get Off of My Cloud by Marora_Daris | 9k | Explicit

Harry is the most annoying neighbour that sexually frustrated Louis could have. Niall decides it's a good idea to handcuff them together.

Featuring guinea pigs, animal print leggings and inappropriate boners.

Erase My History, (Expo)se Me by BayouSexual, pacificrimjob for Edandcurly | 6k | Teen And Up Audiences

“My hair does not smell like strawberries.”

Louis blinks up at Mr. Styles. “I never said your hair smells like strawberries. How would I even know that?” Harry’s hair does smell like strawberries, Harry himself smells like strawberries, everyone who’s been within three feet of him knows this. ~~~~~~~~ Or the one where Harry and Louis both teacher history, their students think they should date, and one pink dry-erase marker is trying to ruin their lives (with a little help of course).

#larry fanfiction recommendations #larry fanfic rec #larry fic #larry fanfiction #larry stylinson #louis tomlinson #harry styles #one direction fanfiction #one direction fanfic recs #larry fanfiction masterpost #enemies to lovers #enemies to friends to lovers #hate to love #enemies with benefits

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gameofdrarry · 3 years

Text

Wizards Hearts Recs: Alpha/Beta/Omega

Wizards Hearts was a four-month-long Drarry reading fest. Players were given a playing deck of 52 tropes, and were asked to find 52 different fics to read and comment on to fill their decks. To prevent the same few fics from being read, fics were restricted to only being used for the game three times before being considered ineligible for further points. The tropes and submissions list can be found here.

Check out the masterlist of fics for this trope below the cut!

📜 The Songbirds of Avebury Manor by Tessa Crowley (tessacrowley) Rated: Explicit Words: 18237 Tags: Omega Verse, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Omega Draco Malfoy, Alpha Harry Potter, Class Differences, Soulmates, Sexual Tension, Mating Cycles/In Heat, First Time, Knotting, Implied Mpreg, Victorian Attitudes, Well sort of Victorian attitudes, Like Victorian attitudes except A/B/O, It makes sense in context I swear Summary: Harry Potter presents as alpha at fifteen, and it is supposed to change his life for the better. Instead, it leads him to a beautiful noble omega he cannot have, a political plot he cannot escape, and a threat on his life. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Dissident by Constance1 Rated: Explicit Words: 182162 Tags: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Creature Fic, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, nundu, Angst, Romance, Dubious Consent, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Violence, Knotting, dark at times, but not really, Some fluffy moments too, Mpreg, Falling In Love, Omega Harry, Alpha Draco Malfoy, Drama, Claustrophobia, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Protective Draco Malfoy, Animagus, Christmas Summary: In a world of Alphas and Omegas, Harry is surprised to discover that he is a rare male Omega. He assumes his pull towards Draco Malfoy is because the Slytherin is an Alpha, but there is more at play here than even Harry knows. My own twist on the Alpha/Omega-verse. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Work to be done by PollyWeasley Rated: General Words: 1145 Tags: 2 years later, Slice of Life, alpha council Summary: Harry has to be away from his family to help other family, but his heart is still with his loved ones. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Embers by shiftylinguini Rated: Explicit Words: 41216 Tags: Post-Hogwarts, First Time, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha Draco Malfoy, Omega Harry Potter, Werewolves, Heat Companion Harry Potter, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Masturbation, Knotting, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Scent Marking, Scent Kink, Come Marking, Dirty Talk, sexual negotiation, H/D Career Fair 2017 Summary: Werewolf Alphas aren't meant to be alone, or to suppress their ruts indefinitely like Draco has been since he was bitten eight years ago. He needs company, companionship, to knot ― he needs an Omega Heat Companion. At least, that’s what the Healers say, and even Draco can admit contacting the person they’ve referred him to might be nice. Of course it turns out to be bloody Potter. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 The Broken Heart (It Kens Nae Second Spring) by grahamhannah53 Rated: Explicit Words: 18220 Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, omega!Draco, alpha!Harry, Auror Harry Potter, Undercover Missions, Smut, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Anal Sex, Rimming, Knotting, abnormal rut behavior, we hate the dursleys, Angst with a Happy Ending, except the happy ending is in the next part of the series Summary: Harry Potter is an Auror, just like he'd always wanted to be... except no one will give him a mission. When he finally gets one (with Draco Malfoy's name on it), he almost wishes he hadn't. Malfoy is everything Harry hadn't expected him to be, and out of the shambles of Harry's common sense arises a friendship that threatens to be more. Can Harry keep his mission secret from Malfoy? And even if he can do that, is it even possible for him to keep his hands off of Malfoy when he offers to help Harry through a rut after learning that Harry is exceptionally aggressive and violent during them? +++++ I have already completed this fic, I will be posting once, maybe twice weekly, depending on how well-received it is! I am also working on the second part, and have it half-way written. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Second Spring by grahamhannah53 Rated: Explicit Words: 19629 Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, alpha!Harry, omega!Draco, Mates, Getting Back Together, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anal Sex, Rimming, Light Bondage, BAMF Draco Malfoy, BAMF Harry Potter, Implied Mpreg, Making Up, Unspeakable Draco Malfoy, Head Auror Harry Potter Summary: Years after their disastrous breakup, Draco Malfoy comes back from France with a much sought-after skill set and a brilliant resume-- one that even Harry Potter could envy. Harry resolutely decides that staying away from Draco is the best option, forcing himself to resist the almost magnetic pull to his mate in favor of carrying on with life as normal... but when Draco ends up in his interrigation room in the middle of his heat, things get... dicey. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Puppy Breath and Money by GeorgeOaks Rated: Explicit Words: 18802 Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha Harry Potter, Omega Draco Malfoy, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Please Don't Hate Me, Abused Draco Malfoy, nothing graphic happens, Healing, A healing fic, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comfort, Omega Hurt, Tags May Change, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Draco Maloy is conditioned, Allusions to rape and being controlled, Protective Harry Potter, Respectful Harry Potter, going into heat, It's not as dark as it sounds?, he gets better and starts calling people names again, Dobby (Harry Potter) Lives, Fred Weasley Lives Summary: Harry Potter had spent the last three years terrified for Draco Malfoy. Everyone knew what it meant when Malfoy didn't return to Hogwarts for his fifth year. Harry had done a spectacular job at denying it at first, of course. Tried convincing himself that it was just because Voldemort was back. That the Malfoys probably just ran off with their Dark Lord, or, what he had hoped most, had run away from him. It wasn't until Hermione gave him that look that said that if he didn't pull his head out of his arse soon, he was going to be absolutely hit upside the head, that he had to accept it. Malfoy hadn't returned to school because Draco Malfoy had presented Omega. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 A Late Presentation by SouthronWildling Rated: Explicit Words: 10661 Tags: AU Canon Divergence, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Severus Snape Lives, PWP, First Times, light dub-con due to a/b/o dynamics Summary: Draco Malfoy presents as an omega during his Hogwarts Eighth Year. Shameless PWP, with a little humor, a little fluff, and a little of Draco being bitchy. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Malfoy's Bitch by dragontara Rated: Explicit Words: 6668 Tags: Creature Fic, dub-con, Graphic Sex, Knotting, Alpha/Omega, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Top Draco, translation in Chinese available Summary: Bitten by a werewolf doesn't always mean that you'll transform into a werewolf but it definitely increases your animalistic instincts and behaviour. Harry will learn that at first hand. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Heat of the Heart by carpemermaid Rated: Explicit Words: 6433 Tags: Mildly Dubious Consent, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Draco Malfoy, Alpha Harry Potter, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Auror Partners, Auror Harry Potter, Auror Draco Malfoy, Werewolf Draco Malfoy, Light Dom/sub, Bottom Draco, Top Harry Potter, Seduction, Voyeurism, Exhibitionism, Masturbation, Fingerfucking, Blow Jobs, Rough Sex, Marathon Sex, Stubble Burn, Accidental Marriage, Accidental Bonding, Love Bites, Cuddling & Snuggling, Romance, Dirty Talk, Scenting, hung harry Summary: Draco was recently bitten by a werewolf in the line of duty as an Auror. He'd been dealing with it as best he could, but then his first heat came on hot and fast in the middle of filling out reports with his Auror partner, Harry Potter. Luckily for him, Potter has a knack for saving his arse. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Tuxedo Angel by ryslora Rated: Explicit Words: 25497 Tags: Mildly Dubious Consent, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Dark Magic, Mpreg, Crossdressing, Genderbending, HP: EWE, Case Fic, Community: hd_holidays, Torch Singer, Singing, Harry Thinks Malfoy Is Up To Something, Bonding, Cursed Bond, Old Magic, Living Together Summary: Harry and Neville are looking for the infamous Dragon Lily, a Dark witch active throughout Europe and Asia. Instead, they find the Tuxedo Angel, a beautiful witch performing in Rome. Harry quickly discovers that the Angel is not what she seems, and fights his attraction to her, while both he and the Angel are drawn into a web created by ancient magic that pulls them together, whether they are ready for it or not. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Rise Above the Moon by Queenie_Mab Rated: Explicit Words: 15930 Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Verse, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Pack Feels, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Knotting, Explicit Sexual Content, Illustrated, Bottom Draco, Bottom Harry, Topping from the Bottom, Switching Summary: It's not easy to make a living when your past misdeeds colour your life, but when the saviour of the wizarding world offers a possible way out, Draco Malfoy isn't stupid enough to let the opportunity pass. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Turn, Drop, Fall by Tessa Crowley (tessacrowley) Rated: Explicit Words: 29056 Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Omega Draco Malfoy, Alpha Harry Potter, Mildly Dubious Consent, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Arranged Marriage, Infidelity?, Brief scenes of heterosexuality, (sorry) Summary: In his father's world of staunch traditions and strict gender dynamics, presenting as an omega is the worst thing that could happen to Draco, although accidentally bonding to Harry Potter and being forced into a marriage with Antonin Dolohov both come in close second. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Mine To Own, Ours To Keep by bumble_Bree Rated: Explicit Words: 69033 Tags: Alternate Universe, Alpha Harry, Omega Draco, Bottom Draco, Anal Sex, Anal Fingering, Rimming, Licking, beastiality, Wolves, alpha/beta/omega, Smut, Porn, Rough Sex, Mpreg, Knotting, Fluff, Romance, Heat Cycles, Miscarriage, Younger Draco, Delicate Draco, Powerful Harry, Self-Lubrication, facesitting, Love, Felching, Child Birth (non-graphic), Lactation, Male Lactation, Dry Orgasming, Oral Sex, Lactation Kink, Fisting, Size Difference, Smaller Draco, Larger Harry Summary: When Draco is bought at a slave market, he fully expects a difficult road ahead of him. What he does NOT expect is to find himself in a world unlike any he could have expected - a world where the feared and respected Harry Potter is his Alpha, his one true soulmate. Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J.K.Rowling and Bloomsbury and I seek no profit from this work. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 What Happened to Draco Malfoy by ghostlynimbus Rated: Explicit Words: 43053 Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alpha Harry, Omega Draco Malfoy, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Healing, Auror Ron Weasley, Sex Trafficked Draco Malfoy, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Unreliable Narrator, POV Alternating, Mpreg, Pregnancy, Pregnant Draco Malfoy, gratuitous use of wandless magic, medical/hospital scenes, Knotting, Overstimulation, Hung Harry Potter, Praise Kink, maybe? a little, Dubious Consent, kind of, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Hurt/Comfort, Happy Ending, Angst, Rimming Summary: Draco Malfoy has been missing since the end of the war. Harry has moved on, mostly. But when, years later, Draco is found in an auror raid of an illegal omega trafficking ring both their lives are changed. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 in heat by M0stlyVoid Rated: Explicit Words: 4196 Tags: Past Rape/Non-con, Minor Character Death, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Draco Malfoy, Alpha Harry Potter, Masturbation, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Hung Harry Potter, Knotting Summary: Draco’s been getting by just fine despite his unfortunate little genetic gift. Until Potter decides to barge in and muck everything up, that is. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Let Out the Beast by acupforslytherin Rated: Explicit Words: 9649 Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Anal Sex, Knotting, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Scent Kink, Explicit Consent, Self-Lubrication, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Professor Harry Potter, Professor Draco Malfoy, Alpha Draco Malfoy, Omega Harry Potter, Top Draco Malfoy, Bottom Harry Potter, Redeemed Draco Malfoy, H/D Sex Fair 2020 Summary: In the wizarding world where alphas are looked down upon for their lack of control and unseemly aggression, it is generally accepted that they are not allowed to work in places like schools and hospitals where their nature could risk the people there. When Draco Malfoy suddenly shows up at Hogwarts smelling strongly like an alpha, Harry is beyond baffled. The fact that no one else seems to catch his scent only adds to his confusion. But, of course, the most puzzling part is how Harry’s body reacts to that scent. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 This Is How by bixgirl1 Rated: Explicit Words: 6508 Tags: Friends to Lovers, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha Harry Potter, Omega Draco Malfoy, Scenting, Claim Biting, switch POV, Partial Second Person POV, Falling In Love, Anal Sex, Anal Fingering, Rimming, Oral Sex, Knotting Summary: Omegas are long gone, or so everyone thinks. This is not how things were supposed to go. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Silver Moon by JBankai89 Rated: Explicit Words: 58199 Tags: Werewolves, Werewolf Harry, Alpha Harry, Top Harry, Bottom Draco, Slightly Dark Harry, questionable morals, Slow Burn, Enemies to Lovers, dubcon, Fluffy Ending, Violence, Mild Blood and Gore, Drama, Soulmate elements, Harry raises Teddy Summary: Five years after the war, peace has fallen upon the wizarding world. Draco Malfoy has begun to find peace in the strangest of places, and now as a junior Potions Master after a mere four years, he finds his mind quieted from the horrors that scar his world in the deep and dark of the forests, where he goes to collect ingredients his master requires. Unfortunately, one trek into the woods brings him close to werewolf territory, too close, in fact, and he finds himself captured. He expected to be devoured by these brigands, but the truth of his fate turns out to be far more confusing and terrifying than he ever imagined. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 you killed me on the moon by epsilonargus Rated: Explicit Words: 4906 Tags: Alpha Draco Malfoy, Omega Harry Potter, King Harry Potter, Top Draco Malfoy, Identity Reveal, True Mates, Attraction, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Alternate Universe - Captive Prince Fusion, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, H/D Sex Fair 2020 Summary: ‘You barely know me. We do not know each other.’ ‘Beyond this overwhelming need to submit to you, completely and utterly?’ Potter raises his eyebrows, stretching his scar. ‘Beyond this bone-deep awareness that you are made for me, and I for you? That our destiny was written in the stars, in the very foundation of our known world?’ An A/B/O Royalty!AU wherein a desperate Slytherin prince faces a proposal from the conquering Gryffindor king. ❤️ Read on AO3

#game of drarry #drarry #drarry recs #wizards hearts #wh masterlist

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josy72 · 4 years

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Rich Juzwiak

12/06/19

Filed to:PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE

Image: Neon

It’s almost shocking to see Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel in a modern setting and contemporary fashion. They disappear so much into the characters they play in Portrait of a Lady on Fire and the world they inhabit—a brief but idyllic love affair in 18th century France—that reality is jarring in contrast. (It’s kind of like when you started seeing Downton Abbey’s actors in other roles.) This is not to erase their past acting accomplishments, just to note how indelible their work in Céline Sciamma’s polemic romance is.

A follow-up to our interview with the film’s writer-director, Jezebel talked to its stars, both French, about finding their characters’ love on screen. We met in person in late September while they were in town to present their movie at the New York Film Festival. Merlant was, like her painter character Marianne, somewhat reserved, while Haenel, who plays Héloïse, the unbeknown subject of Marianne, was intense. “Sex scenes are violent for actresses, and this time it was not,” Haenel told me. She explains why in the interview below, which is edited and condensed.

JEZEBEL: What do you make of the rapturous response this movie has received?

NOÉMIE HAENEL: We did the movie we wanted to do, first. We did it very sincerely and with a lot of imagination—everything that creates a piece of art.

ADÈLE MERLANT: We were so excited to do this because it’s a love story, but there are so many things in it that we wanted to share, that Céline wanted to share that I think are really important. To see that people connect with us, with the film, it’s so warm.

Haenel: It’s a new proposal of love that is usually not portrayed, a proposition with a lot of equality in it. It shows the sexiness of equality, the sexiness of consent. I think we need it. As artists, we have the responsibility to offer new stories for people to live. The major story about a successful life is about possession. It’s about having your wife, your dog, your house. I think it’s not enough. We need different stories. We need for people to think about their life in a different way, having other expectations. I think this is why the response to the movie is very strong: We offered a new possibility. Love, which is not only about the possession of somebody or sadness. You can create with somebody and love this person and the fact that it has an end doesn’t mean the feeling itself is dead. The journey of the feeling continues in you. You will become somebody more alive; you will have higher expectations in life.

It shows the sexiness of equality, the sexiness of consent.

Merlant: It’s another vision, another angle. The woman’s vision. We don’t have enough of that.

Is that one of the things you referred to as wanting to share with the world?

Merlant: This. I was happy to read [the script]. I love love stories.

Haenel: Me too.

Merlant: And how it was written, it took the time to build. We are in a society where we don’t take time. In movies, everything is frontal. Everything is here. You don’t use your imagination. I think that’s less erotic. I feel more intelligent when I watch this kind of movie, more part of it. There is this, that was, for me, new or not shown enough, and also this vision of women. It’s a movie where the women fill the frame and take their freedom in a world where there is restrictions everywhere. They find their way to love. They don’t talk about men because it’s a vision of a woman writing this movie. We see something that we’re not used to seeing in movies and that is us. Women. It’s another vision, but it’s a big vision because it’s more than half of society. Just this thing of, “Let the women express themselves,” and how are they when we let them do that. They live their desires.

Haenel: It’s very important to create new stories that people can identify themselves in because the common story I talked about—about success—is in a way naturalized in society, but most of the people feel uncomfortable with that because they just cannot fit in.

Adele, I assume you were aware that this was being written given your [past] relationship with Céline.

Haenel: Mmmhmm.

How much did you know? Was it at all collaborative at the conception phase?

Haenel: No.

So she presented you with the script one day and said…

Haenel: “Voilà.” It took her a long time to write it, I think three or four years. I was aware that she was planning on working with me again, but I didn’t really know what she had in mind. It’s okay because I trust her. She gave me the script, it took me three days to dare to read it. I was like, “I hope it’s going to be good,” because I had high expectations. I read it, and I… as you know, she won Best Script in Cannes, so it’s a great script. I was touched, I was moved, and I was excited. I said, “Okay, yeah, we are going to try to create something that has never been done before, in a very naked way and in a very sharp way.” I feel like we are a team, Céline and I. Noémie came later and she is totally part of the team. When she arrived on the movie, it was, “Okay, this is what it’s about. It’s not just about the relationship between Céline and I—it’s about sharing this. It’s about welcoming a new person that comes with new ideas.”

Is the chemistry you have on screen natural? Did you do anything to foster it?

Haenel: The chemistry comes from the fact that we didn’t really rehearse together. I was just there when Noémie went through the casting process, so I met her at that point and we played a bit. To me, it’s a great way to meet somebody, to do it while acting. I think the chemistry comes from the fact that we were listening to one another, just trying to really catch the reaction. It’s like the beginning of the wave, trying to understand where Noémie is. Before the emotion comes to the surface, I try to see where she is. I think this kind of game we had while acting, this is what creates intimacy. We don’t pretend we know each other but we are really meeting each other. We built the characters in an intricate way with the process of the movie.

It sounds like the process you went through is much like that which your characters went through, learning about each other slowly and intuitively via silent cues.

Merlant: It completely is. We hadn’t rehearsed before, and Adele and I were building a collaboration as Marianne and Héloïse. You know when you start to work and meet someone, first you look at the other, you don’t talk much, you hesitate, you’re confused sometimes? We were using the reality and putting it in the story. Adele is someone who is really intense in the sharing process. She likes to play; she likes to make jokes. Everything is written, even the looks. But how you feel the look, how you put life in the look, because you can look in someone in many different ways. But it’s her look, her gaze. I like to play, too, and I like to open the borders. Every time she was giving me a proposition, I was surprised, and so I reacted and she reacted to that. It was always like that: We were building it in the instant.

Haenel: It’s also about being light while playing, like a boxer. You just move in every direction, whatever your partner does. It’s like that to me, to meet on the set.

What made the love scenes easier is not the fact that there are no men. It’s the fact that there is an idea.

The cast was almost entirely women, from what I understand the crew was very female-heavy as well. Is there a practical advantage to that?

Haenel: Yes. It changes [things]. I’m used to being on set with a lot of men. It doesn’t mean I didn’t have great experiences working with some men, but for sure, at this point it is an experience that is very rare.

Merlant: There were men in the crew, but in the acting yes it was only girls. I don’t want to make a comparison, but there are a lot of movies with only men, and we don’t really notice it. It’s normal. It was interesting because we don’t act and live in life in the same way when we are only with girls, like when men are with men. It was interesting to show this. It was interesting to live this during the shooting. It’s something else. There is no domination of the body. Society builds something between men and women.

Did it make the love scenes easier in any way?

Haenel: No, what made the love scenes easier is not the fact that there are no men. It’s the fact that there is an idea. There’s a point of view on love. That makes it easier. When there is no point of view on what sex is, you are the one stolen. This time was different, we didn’t fake anything, we just had this idea of the armpit. Celine had it, and then it’s not about you not giving something you don’t want to give. It’s about you collaborating on an idea. For me, it could have been like the entire crew on the set and it would have been the same. It was just another thing. There’s nothing different in this scene. The only difference is normally, sex scenes are violent for actresses and this time it was not.

Merlant: Even if it’s between girls. This was made with a lot of respect and collaboration.

Haenel: And fun.

168 notes · View notes

dansedan · 3 years

Text

I threatened on the Disco Writer’s Nook server to share my notes from this latest fic, but since they’re wildly incomprehensible and kind of silly I thought maybe I’ll just... chuck ‘em on here instead, under a readmore where they can pass by easier so uhhh xX WeLcOmE To My TwIsTeD mInDXx !!!1!!

(warning for LONG LONG post- I write full sections and asides from the universe that aren’t even in the damn fic within the same notes document a lot... I’m also insufferably pretentious on notes I KNOW and I cull it on the final as much as I can, as well as mild possible spoilers for a fic I haven’t written in the same au-timeline-thing I suppose and NSFT stuff)

(also a lot of this gets discarded because it’s so stupid and I write it at terrible brain moments)

"Por la mañana me di a la estúpida tarea de esconder mis cigarros por los rincones de la casa. Los encuentro, claro, pero fumo poco, fumo menos, hago esfuerzos por mejorarme de una vez."

meditative cigarettes and quitting fic.

Harry smokes less than he drinks, because he smokes to keep sharp and he usually wants to be numb, down to zero, space-based. but after going tee-total and opening up on his quest to actual-human-persondom he finds himself chainsmoking constantly. A concern in his volition is raised, a thought project ruminated on, and strategems laid out.

Harry grasps at the first half at a low point in his attempts to get better without anyone knowing or helping. He wonders about Kim's life, Kim's control. The electrochemistry in him fantasizes about a free-wheeling party-boy sort of Kim, still cool, still quiet, but free and soft and in control of his lack of control- the aviator, the flying ace, at the mercy of the elements and gliding by by choice- lands on the question of the one-per day, the Kim he knows, who takes what he needs with trepidation and preparation.

The truth is that last one- Kim was a social smoker, an after-dinner-if-the-date-is-pleasant smoker, an after-sex smoker, a bumming-cigarettes-to-gague-his-interest smoker (it all started with a boyfriend) but police work and his neverending stint in Juvie drove him to once-per-day, a creature of obsession. He used to heavily resent it- until Harry came along and joined the ritual.

"bebiendo mate con el ademán gracioso de los novatos. Es lo que hago ahora cuando siento ganas de fumar, dijo, con una sonrisa."

Kim and Harry not so close together- the idea of Kim and Harry not knowing everything about each other, because that's just not how you survive, but somehow Kim aching to be up-to-date on Harry all the time.

Harry and his funny little excursions around town. Kim visits and finds cigarettes hidden around the house, smells them in fear of finding drugs, or Harry has to awkwardly shuffle around for one when Kim invites him to smoke. Harry tries to join a book club, starts cooking lofty meals for his yoga class, tries being vegan for a week, checks out a bunch of books on the history of the Coupris Corp (SUZERAINTY ERA MARK OF AUTHENTICITY BABEY) as a way to help him wean off substances but also off Kim. They want each other but they know they need to stand on their own </3

Harry starts going to this novelty/gourmet supermarket and buying one new thing every paycheck like furikake that says it has lead on it and mate and all that. He spends his ex-drinking, smoking money on it.

Harry makes Kim huevos rotos :'-)

You're barely holding it together- how the hell did you get to this newsstand? Is it a newsstand? This structure- round, metal, iron-wrought frame and squat stature- was once a newsstand. How do you know it isn't? What is it now? You feel yourself point someplace on a menu you can't see past the dew of heavy crying- the clerk does not react, he's seen you like this- slam your wallet on the counter. You receive a paper parcel slightly larger than your fist, long. It's warm through the paper, and you can feel the dryness of a light dusting of flour passing through it. Food.

Your legs and arms are moving on their own again, wallet shoved this way, steps stumbled past the other, clumsily bringing whatever it is to your mouth and feeling crumbs fall into your beard- like a shark. That's one of the first things you remember, the beautiful old ultraliberal woman, like a shark, on her boat. The joy of your first- no, second- idiom. The first was up on Marvel Hill where you can't live. Kim said that. Kim's gonna be there, when you do it like a shark and don't stop any of this on your way to work and you stop crying so nobody thinks you did what you're avoiding doing. Is there anyway you can forget the frittte? There's so many locations in your mind, what kind of man are you, remembering the placement of a store that's meant to vanish and appear out of convenience like it's a fucking pitstop (would a flask not be enough? A single habit to get rid of, easy- but you're never easy).

You feel dark-dark-light-darkness and then light again, and smoother flooring and your coat being too warm. You're at the precinct- fuck, you're at the precinct- and it's late, real late, but you are here and there's too many people to fuck up here and at least you aren't crying. Your red face and eyes blend perfectly into too many years and days of red and puffy eyes to call attention. Perfect, perfect- god bless the innocence (or is innocence god? You can't forget- Remember- something.)

"You're late, shitkid." At some point Jean appears beside you. He's walked the other way and stopped- he's grimacing- but more importantly you see his left arm raise and still and clench itself, like a restricted movement, natural instinct. "You smell like shit- is that fish?" You do not know if that is fish because your throat hurts so bad already that you cannot know if you've been swallowing bones for this past hour (minute? Minutes? The walk feels like forever and never enough. You're swearing like a pig now that you're standing, how adequate.)

You want to say it's agony, the end of days, the end of you- you want to say reprise, and sorry, and oh god I didn't want to see you please I don't deserve it Jean please leave and go away from me and also please oh god please hold me up I don't know what I'm doing but I'm trying to be better but I ate this thing that might as well be sawdust and I do not know what time it's been for several days.

Instead you say "it's my GOD-GIVEN RIGHT, VIC" and you move along like a fucking idiot.

"An image arises in your mind's eye-- a baby, dirty, hideous, its skin mottled and raw and red, peeling, stretching almost impossibly. The baby cries from pain- in it's brief stay on this earth it has already suffered more than some men do in their entire lives. He is built for it- thick skin, quite literally. He is being held by a slight, pale, ugly nurse- a nun in bloodied white rags with a terrible smell of herbs permanently attached to her. The scene is a caricature of mother and child- the hideous thing, held up to her chest, is drinking from an amber bottle, clouded over. In ten years, the contents of this bottle he will be legally too young for-- is this the reason you became the way you are? Are you just born-and-bred this way, surviving off of alcohol where most people had blood and human kindness?

-- It's not. The little pastiche you've thought up for yourself is half propaganda and half racist idiocy. Despite what the supposed "race-realists" may say, not everyone from the Insulindian is thrown on the bottle the moment they're weaned from the tit. In truth, you were barely even medicated, and those bitter, herbaceous spirits are not the cause of your current addiction. It's still on you harry, it's always still on you.

"Wake up- time to listen to the radio.

You love the radio. You really, really love the radio. You think the radio was the greatest purchase you have ever made- drunk you was horrible, and traumatizing, and entirely undebatably subhuman, but he did buy this radio, and by god fuck if that isn't his saving grace (a story comes to mind- a Dolorean allegory from your childhood- about a selfish rich woman and a lazy cheating bum both ferried up to heaven by a single onion that she'd given him during their lives as charity. You choose to ignore the part where they fight and fall back into hellfire). It's the thing that broke you off from your mazovian monk-like refusal to buy anything for yourself other than flour for a week after THE HANGED MAN, it's what got you into cycling and hanging out with the neon eyebleed catsuits crew, it's what reminded you that public libraries exist and nobody will ask you why you're in there reading about suzerainty-era motor carriage manufacturing and the homo-sexual underground. It's the greatest thing since communism, since disco, since-- since-- since cigarettes and kebabs and- and--

... And idolizing someone to the point of crucifixion. Which you aren't supposed to be doing.

Good thing the radio cranks up real loud!

"You've read everything in this section- theory, history, photography, even, notably, the single romance novel, comically bad, about a middle-aged Vespertine businessman travelling north to the harbour where he had experienced his first teenaged love-- and the young, strapping man he gets to know there. (There are boats involved- it's very biblical). All in all, you read it twice, meticulously rewrote its horrifyingly vague and unsafe sex scenes (in pen, inside. Not like the librarian's gonna check it) and masturbated at your efforts, winning you a very sore wrist and about 30 minutes of crying because you remembered being in a bookshop with Kim in Martinaise while you were remembering what books were, and then remembered Jean's apartment having a secret stack of equally terrible heterosexual novels bequeathed to him by an ex that you made fun of him for (rabidly, for years).

"Harry's apartment is no longer clean, but not as dirty as before, and its stalwart light-green walls seem, in the summer light, less queasy and foreboding than what they are now, almost dainty in the contrast of the sparse few frames and piles of knickknacks on the floor.

Believe it or not, this is good-- sometimes, life with Harry makes you feel like a zoologist, intricately analysing an animal's pile of leaves and refuse and knowing, despite all human standards, what these habits mean for the foreign species. And for Harry, mess like this is good. It means he's kept busy by any one of his million little projects, picked up and put down at a dizzying speed and constancy, each one increasingly out of left field in

Kim and harry talk about the radio, kim thinks about it "radio, what's new? Radio- some-one still loves you"

Harry talking abt agenda + library bc you can't smoke + planning for dinner with Kim :-)

Gotta go to the library so you don't chainsmoke

Gotta shower to go to the library

Don't wanna shower bc executive dysfunction

Grab a smoke before you shower

Oh wait you've been chain-smoking fuck (insert meditation on sharp vs smooth)

Hide all your cigarettes around the house feeling pathetic about it

You still don't feel like showering

But you just chainsmoked and you know you'll do it again because you JUST hid your smokes and the hiding spots are fresh in your mind

Birdbath (why are you so fucking dysfunctional that you can't shower like a normal adult)

Introspective rubber ducky selfhate momence

Rubber ducky encourages you through the power of nihilism and Kim

Thought project gain

Go to library and need comfort so you're going thru all your usual shelves (insert le funny homo shelf joke here)

What does he read about? Smoking? Idk

Kiiiiiim. Kimmy kim kim. Think about Kim

Maybe he reads recipe books to woo kim

INSERT EXISTENTIAL BROTH EPISODE HERE to talk about how you've never actually seen Kim cook (he told you it was good soup, clearly lying, you told him it was broth, and that you could teach him how to make soup out of it if he wanted...)

(broth episode was another note, inserted here:

ANOTHER harry coping fic. Miserable housebound weekend nights because he can't party but the house is horrible to be in and he keeps dunking his hands into more and more ice water and taking like half-body cold showers and he's like "maybe this is bad for my skin!!! I gotta get out holy shit" and he's like uhhhh fucking. Can't go to work. Let's go to the supermarket. And then he's almost there and he's like OH FUCK NO THERES ALCOHOL AT THE SUPERMARKET and he straight up bolts out of there and muscle memory gets him to a shady ass butcher shop in some random immigrant neighborhood and he buys so much fish because of a failed check and he goes home and basically he makes so much fish stock. He makes just so fucking much fish stock and Kim comes to pick him up the next day and panics because it genuinely smells like the dead in there but it's just harry making fucking. fish broth or something. Just harry coming up to the door in his work clothes with way too much cologne on and a thermos of fish soup like "uh... Do you want some Broth kim?" And Kim can't fucking cook but he takes some Broth anyway and he's trying to figure out why harry would do that but harry is being a little edgy about it and Kim is like oh god I need to help him a little and they have a sit down about it and he's like wanting to say "hey if you need somewhere to go I'm here for you" but it's hard and I don't even know if he ends up actually saying it. Okay bye)

Talking about the sexiness of supermarkets and how they make reptile brain go brrr

Think about alcohol vs smoking. Think about kimmy kim kim (insert european drinking joke here)

Have that get stuck in his head. Kim kimmy kim kimmy kimmy kim kim. Kimster. Kimbo. Kitsy. Kitty. Cutie. Oh god no fuck oh god I need to stop.

He goes home and still rlly wants to smonk

You hide the cigarettes around the house. It feels stupid, and you know you’ll be embarrassed having to pull the Jamrock Shuffle in your own apartment, that you’re a grown adult who could just *buy another box of cigarettes* whenever you wanted to, but you feel like it helps. Drag the killing thing away from the crappy little animal even for a couple moments more, let yourself get tired out like the old man you are below all the disco scaffolding. You can’t really bring yourself to shower, but you drag the radio into the bathroom with you and wash yourself in the sink. You try to be good about it- stay away from the mirror, really lather up and clear away the sweat that’s caked to you throughout the night and morning, feel the warm graze of the water on your skin. You brush shampoo through your hair and work it in in cycles, focus on the humming feeling of the bristles on your scalp, trying not to think of much of anything, just the smell of the cheap powdery soap and of what clothes you’ll wear today, try to settle into a better memory of this instead of picking at the shame you feel about how hard it is for you. ducking your head into the stream of the water in the sink and forgetting everything except the whishing, scratching sounds of cleaning.

Being clean feels good, and being dressed again feels maybe even better (knit sweaters are a revelation- who could’ve known polyester satin wasn’t made for seaside winters), so by the time you walk your way into the Jamrock public library the morning’s incidents are nigh-forgotten. The dry warmth of the old library is a reliable balm- the yellowed fluorescent lighting washing out the rows and rows of slate-grey plastic bookshelves lined up like soldiers over prerevolutionary tile, with its woven edges and dark, jeweled pinwheels of color, stretching out endlessly full of books, reels, and the rare intricate portrait hanging overhead. Before them, long wooden tables dotted with mismatched lamps, flickering in and out of use, occupied by antsy juveniles and sleeping hobos. It feels effortlessly like home, like a shared worldly past that welcomes everybody- and maybe that just means that it's generic and a little overdue for renovations, but you love it as it is.

Shuffling through the tall shelves of books, you weave through mindlessly to find your favorite sections- the history (both common and infra-cultural, with a surprisingly competent collection of industrial works and a predictably miserablly little shelf of homo-sexual underground interest), the art, and the meager offerings of political literature. You can hear your off-tune humming echo back to you somewhat feebly off the high, painted ceiling, done up in some lame facsimile of early Dolorian excess (therriers, noblewomen, forget-me-nots crowding the edges of each filligreed panel, dead-eyed faces in doleful expressions, pale and empty smiling). You've got all of daylight ahead of you, which is more than enough time to browse around as usual before you have to get yourself home and start cooking.

You turn the corner smoothly into the very back of the library, into a wider set of dusty and anachronistic wooden bookshelves-- history trends unpopular, considering the fact that all the books within are horrifyngly outdated due to a miserable municipal budget, maybe that's for the best. There are better places for students to get this information now, like the private library a couple blocks away at the Cycle Universitee, or from library dial-stations tuned in from the south, where the Bibliotheque Nacionelle Des Travailleures is run by Coalition-approved volunteers. The first thing to catch your eye is the pillar of works of infra-cultural expression and documentstion- essays and short stories from New authors, studies and zines on Disco, and of course, the particular political darling of the 20s, the homo-sexual underground.

You've read everything in this section- theory, history, photography- even, notably, the single commercial romance novel, comically bad, about a middle-aged Vespertine businessman travelling north to the harbour where he had experienced his first teenaged love-- and the young, strapping man he gets to know there. (There are boats involved- it's very biblical). All in all, you read it twice, meticulously rewrote its horrifyingly vague and unsafe sex scenes (in pen, inside. Not like the librarian's gonna check it) and masturbated at your efforts, winning you a very sore wrist and about 30 minutes of crying because you remembered being in a bookshop with Kim in Martinaise while you were remembering what the world was, and then remembered Jean's apartment having a secret stack of equally terrible heterosexual novels bequeathed to him by an ex that you made fun of him for (rabidly, for years). You shudder, now, at the sight of its cracked spine looking you from the middle sill. Its gaze feels hefty and judgemental, and you do not like it.

There are

KIM CHAPTAAAA

"you'd like him to take care of himself. You'd like to be there to do it for him when he can't"

"He opens the door, and immediately there are a million little things that test you (hell, with that thick-knit sweater he's wearing, any weakness in you would have him writhing on the floor in seconds). The half-up style of his now-so soft looking auburn hair, split across to reveal the pale white of his nape between the raised collar of his sweater, the kind wrinkling of his open smile upon seeing you walk in, the light, jazzy music of the radio backing his belly-deep laugh and the heady smell of incense in the room are all exhilaratingly Harry to you.

What to do with jean:Standalone fic for him?

Starts when he sees Harry with the eyebleed crew and he's the one who goes up to him like "WHAT IN THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING SHIT KID" and harry is like. Oh god oh fuck jean uh let's be... Cordial! Optimistic! (What jean sees is one of his signature pauses but like. Yeah it's the skills talking) and he's just like "oh it helps me stay sober and make friends, I found out about it on the radio🙂" and Jean is like holy fucking shit this is absolutely insane.

1) bc Harry used to be so repressed he was basically homophobic with his macho act

2)bc Jean originally didn't believe the amnesia thing but then when Harry genuinely did shit like this and never told him (which, if it was a cruel joke he would've tried to make it very public and obvious and drag jean into it to embarrass him)

3) because JEAN was his friend and why the fuck does he just. Run off with random people with a radio ad instead

4) because he's doing so well. He's like, fully at the sort of "this-side-of-pudgy" bear level that's hot enough to get him positive attention over the damage of the alcohol and he's wearing the sort of clothes that show it and he's got all these crew buddies where Jean is stuck with his hellish depression workouts where he sometimes works until he pukes and then feels like shit about self-harming like that. (what he doesn't know is that Harry is basically doing that same exact shit just he's using his swag alcoholic skills to lieeeeee about it. rip)

Maybe harry apologizes in their conversation about the romance novels. Like it blurts out.

eventually add in the previous consideration fic you were thinking of &quot

starting with bitter porno kimbo/viccy catfight bullshit

"no that's pathetic and he'd never go there." dynamic where kim cares quietly and jean is bitchy about Harry

then "no, he's dealt with harry so much already, I can't imagine." so it's all concern for him

and then that backslides into "how could I comfort him? how could he understand my need for comfort? "

we stan a mildly nonaccepted himself Jean so he's like "WAIT UH GAY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS GUY TOO? FUCK FUCK FUCK"

gotta make it panic horny. it's a Dan Gat fic. how would kim look.... yknow......

since the only other guy who's been like that with him has been harry -> third wheel dynamic going to ->

horny ot3 dynamic. old men doting on him because it's his fantasy and he gets to be the pampered one goddamnit

end somehow

THIS IS THE EXACT DYNAMIC WE'RE GOING FOR Jean liked Harry premart and Harry was unbearably machismo repressed homophobic bullshitero man (I need to decide if he was stupid enough to be like AS LONG AS IM ON TOP IT ISNT GAYYYY or smth sex/intimacy related like that maybe he just kinda. ""comically"" hit on Jean or said suggestive shit to him but never fully acted on it) and then he comes back from Martinaise all loyal puppy dog or whatever for Kim and Jean is like "??? OKAY SO I GO THROUGH ALL THIS BULLSHIT AND HE TALKS SO BIG ABOUT LOVING MUSCLE DUDES AND NOW HES GONNA FUCK THIS GRANDPA?" but then he's like self-aware enough to know that's stupid.(Jean's problem is that he looks for wounds on Kim and not Harry, so he's all like "damn this bitch stole my mans when he's actually good...." meanwhile Harry is like Very Obviously Self Harming All The Time and not even really with Kim so often rip)

Harry wants to reach out and ask him about his thing with Kim because he has memories of Jean either being gay or being less homophobic or just having Gay Energy that he was an asshole about or whatever plus it just feels natural to work through shit with Jean but he stops himself because he's like "well DRINKING also felt natural that doesn't mean we should do it..."

maybe they get into it because Jean makes an offhand comment about "stop ogling kim" and harry is like (computer warmup noises) and jean just kinda forces him to spit it out RE: meme description

Harry's whole deal with avoiding Jean is "some things are unforgivable and I'm fairly sure I've done things bordering on that to you for so, so long, and now I don't even know what they were or who I was when I did them, to me that person is dead, and I know then that I can't apologize to you thoroughly, genuinely, and I don't want to insult you by presuming that I ever could, at this point. I don't want to insult you by assuming I can just go back to what we were before, to each other, without an apology or an actual understanding of what went wrong. I can't speak for certain about his mind-my mind- but at least in some part that guy killed himself because of what he did to you, and to everyone around him, sure, but mostly to you. And now I'm here, and it feels horrible to try and go against that and push myself into your life. It feels horrible to see I've done something to you worth killing myself over and then still insist on coming back to bother you beyond the grave"

And Jean's response is "you thought everything was bad enough to kill yourself over! And you're still alive, you're still him, and fuck, yes it'll take a long ass fucking time for me to ever really forgive you, but you were my best friend and you're still fucking alive- I see you every single day, Harry, do you know what that's like? To see your best fucking friend every single day and watch him flinch and try to act like he doesn't exist every single time he sees you? Fuck you and fuck what you wanted before, *I* never wanted you dead, and your little stunt here with pretending you're finally fine and then keeping everyone at an arm's distance is just another, slower grave you're digging" etc etc "if this is the upswing at last, I’d better be there for it.**”

Jean is a frat boy that you do not expect to be a frat boy. He unironically gets along with mack and chester. He's only just started to grow out of it through dealing with Harry's horrible downfall

sequel to geste drole des debutantes but it's just a 3 chapter PWP masturbation fic..... of Kim and Harry after the dinner and then SHOOKETH SURPRISE IT'S JEANGST YEARNING TIME!

Kim trans.... Good for him...

Stroker shit

He wants to fuck Harry basically

...slow tease? Or fast and desperate?

Dry kissing

Hair pulling...

Youre hard, and you're wet, and you can't help but think of that smile on his face as you left and you want him to taste it, to get on his knees for what he's done to you and swallow it all down, feels the soft brush of his beard on your thighs.

Harry also trans... Good for them good for them...

Handkink shit

Wants kim to absolutely wreck his shit

... He's new at this

Slow....

Jean

Jeangst

Want to wreck harry's shit... Mouthfuck stuff maybe

Power bottoming?? Idk

Whoops my hardcore dom revenge fantasy has slipped into a getting bossed around by the guy I thought I disliked for taking away my partner UHH.... LETS NOT UNPACK THAT....

Some idiot makes like a homophobic stupid "ah the fucking lieutants off scissoring or something" comment and then jean is like "oh god what if that but sexual instead"

Gym shower...

Jean has a big dick too bad bitch

When harry du bois ruined his life, thinks satelitte-officer Jean Vicquemare- he might at least have had the decency not to also curse his dick. This shit was weekly and only getting worse, now that the shitkid didn't constantly smell like despair and carrion had scored a threesome with a bartender's manual.

#my writing #in a way!#my fic #long post

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royalcordelia · 5 years

Text

If the Sea Should Part (4/5)

Summary: Anne finds herself caught up in whirl of romance and adventure after rescuing Dr. Gilbert Blythe from the sea during a storm. She should let him go, but when she finds out Billy Andrews is plotting to take Gilbert’s life and estate, she realizes there’s nothing that can keep her from protecting him.

AN - I changed the cover image to the beautiful painting that inspired a very beloved scene in this chapter. The painting is called “The Edge of the Woods” by the artist Charles Courtney Curran. Very Anne, isn’t it?

• Rated G • 8k words • Read on ao3 • Read on ff.net •

It had happened sometime during her stay at the estate that Anne came to love the absence of silence. The heavy soundlessness only descended upon the house in the evening hours after all the servants and schoolboys were asleep. As soon as the sun shone its first hints of light on the east facing harbor, there came to be voices and laughter and singing and gossiping.

How she adored these Sunday afternoons, where she could delve into her favorite novel on the settee beside her window and let the gentle crashing of waves near the house hone her focus. In the foyer beneath her, one of the boys practiced a bumpy rendition of a Mozart work, but the melody drifted up to her like a song on the wind.

Above all the soft noise, Anne was broken out of her reading by a knock at the door.

“Come in, please!” she said, straightening up from her reclined position to one suitable for guests. She hoped it might be Gilbert, but couldn’t be disappointed when Mary poked in her friendly face.

“Hey there, Anne. Got free moment?” she said. Anne crossed the room to her radiant new friend, noticing the letter she was carrying.

“I was just doing a little light reading,” Anne assured. “Besides, I’ve always got time for you. Is something the matter?”

Mary’s smile faltered then, and Anne could see in her eyes about a thousand things the woman wished to say. Some were good, she supposed, but there was a caution in Mary’s expression, as well. Certainly she wasn’t afraid to speak to Anne. Why, Anne had been under the impression that the two of them were kindred from the first!

“What do you know about the Stuart family?” Mary said carefully. The name wasn’t familiar at all to Anne. There wasn’t anyone in Avonlea with the name, and as far as she knew, none of the boys belong to the Stuarts.

“Nothing, I suppose. Why?” Mary hummed, seemingly displeased with this answer.

“No reason. Just curious,” she lied, but Anne wasn’t brave enough to question further. “This came for you in the mail today.”

Mary thrusted Anne the ivory colored envelope as if the diversion of it would be enough to distract her from the few seconds of conversation. Anne took the letter, nonetheless, noticing how light in her hands it was compared to the other correspondences she’d received before. She flipped it over so that she might see the return address, and gasped.

“M. Cuthbert,” she muttered. “It’s from my mother.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Anne wasn’t quick to respond, but if Mary noticed the change in her tone, she didn’t say it. Running a finger over the smooth parchment, Anne swallowed back a rock forming in her throat.

“I hope so. Thank you, Mary. I think I’ll go out by the trees and read for a while.”

She could feel Mary’s eyes on her as she left, a heavy apprehensive look that mothers give their daughters the first time she walks herself to school. Still, she said nothing as she slipped out of the house, the laughter and noise she’d reveled in just moments ago suddenly an unbearable cacophony.

Gilbert came to her sometime later, after she’d read the letter over and over and over until she had each heartbreaking word memorized and dry fingertips from grasping the paper. When he found her though, she was leaning completely still against the sturdy trunk of a tree, looking out as the late afternoon sun prepared to take its first descending steps. He wasn’t sure if she had heard him approach, and decided to simply settle down beside her to gaze off at the same lovely horizon. Anne didn’t turn to him. Instead, she handed him an open envelope and crossed her arms on her knees.

Gilbert saw the return address, understanding almost immediately the cause of her sudden quiet.

“May I read it?” he asked quietly. Anne nodded, leaning her chin on her arms. Clearing his throat, he began to read in a low tone.

“Dear Anne, I would like to ask you to restrict your correspondence with Green Gables to matters of urgency or absolute importance. Rachel and I are very busy with the Ladies Aid and with church volunteer work, and thus are short on time to write letters. I know you will understand. Sincerely, Marilla?” Gilbert finished incredulously. “Anne, I...I cannot fathom she was in her right mind when she wrote that.”

“Marilla is always in her right mind, Gil. It was me. I hurt her more than I’ve ever hurt her before and now she certainly despises me.” He turned to face her, expression kind.

“I don’t think she could. You’re her daughter.”

“Only by choice. Certainly now I am merely an obligation because of prior commitment.”

“Anne, that’s not true and you know it.”

She wished she could believe it, but the scarred insecurities that she’d known as a child were beginning to show their nasty heads again and she feared if she opened her mouth, he’d hate what she’d say. Still, if the ease in their friendship had taught her anything in the past weeks, it was that being honest with Gilbert felt easy and beautiful. To feel his presence beside her was like reading a sonnet over and over and over, dwelling in the same warm sensations of the language every time. Maybe that was why she confessed,

“If Matthew were still alive, he would’ve known this was what I had to do. He would’ve seen how important this is to me. How important you are to me.”

Gilbert’s cheeks lifted into a red-hued smile, and he reached out and grabbed her hand.

“I know the feeling,” he replied quietly. “Anne, I’m sorry Marilla’s letter wasn’t what you hoped it would be, but she’ll come around. I know she will.”

Anne ran her hand through the strands of grass at her side, pausing as longer strands got tangled against her fingers.

“You’re right,” she said, looking up at the horizon with its first hints of pink and orange. Far below them, the ocean churned, content to be made beautiful by the dusk and the gentle breeze. “Thank you, Gilbert. For what it’s worth, I don’t regret the decision I made the night I left Green Gables. I’d choose it all over again if I had to.”

Gilbert sucked his lip under his teeth to bite back his grin, but it blossomed in his eyes before he could hide the full extent of its splendor from Anne.

“I have some things I’d like to discuss with you tonight after supper. Suppose you come by my study whenever is convenient for you?” he suggested carefully.

“Wouldn’t you rather discuss them now?” she laughed. It wasn’t often they got a moment like this alone together without any servants listening, schoolboys interrupting, or Bash teasing. In fact, the last time they’d been this close and breathing the same air was that night in Gilbert’s room when they’d bled out their truths together.

The memory of it brought Anne back to the present, but to a different reality than she’d been in moments ago. This was a reality where she ached to lean forward and press herself to him. She’d taste the hardened lines of his jaw, run her fingertips along the firmness of his chest, allow him to kiss all the sensitive parts of her throat.

Unaware of the onslaught of longing that had begun to drive Anne mad with yearning and fear, Gilbert wrapped an arm about her waist and pulled her so that she might lean her head upon his shoulder.

“It can wait. I think I am quite content to stay here for a while longer, here with you.”

* # * # *

Anne had never been to Gilbert’s study before. It was a space that was protected by the unspoken rule that no one should bother the doctor when he was in his office, and no one should enter when he wasn’t.

“I keep confidential documents on file in my study,” he had explained to her one day. “In a town this small, disclosed medical records have the power to devastate a person’s reputation or pride.”

But rarely did someone have an invitation from the doctor himself like she did.

“It’s because I trust you, Anne.”

A few servants sent her wary glances as they passed her in the hallway, peering over their shoulders as she shifted from foot to foot before his door. Her palms had developed a thin layer of sweat, and she wiped them across her dress. It was just Gilbert, she told herself. She spoken with him dozens of times before. Why should her heart beat nearly out of her chest at the prospect of seeing him now? Fortifying herself, Anne squared her shoulders and knocked on the door.

“Just a moment,” came Gilbert’s muffled voice from inside the office. Anne folded her hands behind her back and balanced her features. When the door drifted open, she was smiling up at him the same way she always did, but the sight of candlelit contours made her fight the instinct to melt to the floor. He had put back on his brown doctor’s jacket after dinner, but the solitude of his own thoughts had sent him rustling his hand through his hair, tossing his brown curls every which way.

“Hello, Anne,” he greeted warmly. “Come in, won’t you?”

Gilbert’s study look just like every other room in the house, with its walls lined with bookshelves and ornate, coffered ceiling. He kept his large desk off to the left of the room near the marble fireplace, with a leather padded examination chair near the window looking over the sea. The only shelf in the room that was free of some sort of bound text was one which held several locked boxes and wooden cases which Anne could only assume contained medical utensils. Perhaps the highlight of the room was the view from the window of glistening moon hovering just over the horizon. The light shone onto the calm waves, oscillating with the sea like a heartbeat.

“You’re quiet,” he said.

“You told me not many people are permitted in here. I was just looking around to see how accurate the image I conjured up was.”

“Is it everything you imagined?” Gilbert asked, amused.

“No, it seems I am constantly and pleasantly surprised by the splendor of your home.”

“It’s your home too, Anne. You know you’re welcome here as long as you like. Forever if you wish it.”

There was something heavier in the question that Anne couldn’t quite name. Forever was certainly a long time. Would she be overstaying her welcome if she continued to live here after Gilbert found a wife and had children of his own? Unless, of course, by forever he meant…

Anne cleared her throat, stopping her derailing thoughts in their tracks.

“You said there something you wanted to discuss?” she asked politely. Gilbert led her to sit in the chair in front of his desk, pulling the upholstered seat for her before going round the other side of the table and taking his own place.

“It’s more something I wanted to ask your opinion on,” he stated, leaning back in his chair a little. Anne quirked a brow, urging him to continue. “It recently occurred to me that I am the only individual in my...circle that has taken an interest in investing in social matters.”

“The orphan asylum?”

“Yes. I’ve found it incredibly rewarding to watch these boys grow up and know that they’ve been re-enfranchised their right to a quality life and education. But I’m the only one making an effort and I know for certain that the rest of the harbor investors have the funds to make such impacts themselves. And -” He paused. “You don’t look nearly as surprised as I thought you might.”

“Gilbert, I lived in those asylums. I know how I was treated. We were certainly never the object of monetary pity, just unmitigated disgust.”

The doctor looked down at his desk and tightened his jaw.

“I hope you know I’m not helping those boys out of pity,” he swore solemnly.

Anne did know. She’d seen the way he was with the boys, the way he loved them as truly and mentored them as dedicated as he might if all forty-three of them were his own. What she doubted, in the truest depths of her heart, was whether or not Gilbert was helping her out of pity, out of obligation. She would’ve saved his life that day in the storm, whether he was the poorest man in Canada or the richest. But she’d leave right that instant if she was given any evidence that her position was given to her out of pity for her unmarried and unemployed poor situation.

“Anne?” Gilbert asked, a little uneasy. “You know I mean what I say.”

“Yes! Yes, sorry,” Anne sputtered out. “Thinking about such things has always been somewhat unpleasant for me and I get pulled into my own mind. But I think I may have an idea of how you may encourage your peers to find empathy in their hearts without making open judgments on how they spend their money.”

“I’m all ears,” Gilbert replied, leaning forward.

“Host a charity ball. They’re likely antiquated these days, but I’m willing to bet that crowd would do anything to dress to the nines and flaunt their own accomplishments. Request a small donation upon entry and forward the proceeds to the asylum directly.”

Folding his fingers underneath his chin, a mischievous glint flickered in his eye.

“That’s positively genius!” he agreed. “I’ve been to similar events in the past. People boast about their donations to such an extent that others have raised their own out of spite! It’s a dirty tactic, but I think it just might work.”

“It doesn’t have to be all dirty,” Anne supplied. “Gilbert, your appeal as a doctor and a businessman is how personable and genuine you are. If you confide in your wealthier friends about the fulfilling feeling of improving another human’s life, perhaps they will find themselves urged to become more involved themselves. You can appeal to their empathy and sensibility. Use me as an example. I’d gladly talk about my upbringing if it meant I could help the boys at the asylum.”

Gilbert’s eyes became soft as starlight.

“You’d do that?”

“For you, and for them, I would.”

“I’ll discuss the idea with Bash, but if he agrees, I imagine we could host the event before the end of autumn.” The excited sparkle in his eye dimmed as another thought crossed through his mind, his mouth parted as he searched for the right way to begin. “There is something else,” he said, breaking the pause.

Anne worried for a moment that she might have done something to displease him, but a new fear came over her entirely when he said,

“I’ve been in correspondence with William Andrews.”

Anne’s stomach fell the floor and she sucked in a sharp breath to keep from gasping.

“Are you angry?” he asked, fists clenched with his own nervousness.

“No! Gilbert, no, not even a little. I’m…” Her fingers found the folds of her skirts, tugging to release her building dread. At last she settled on, “Frightened. Your tone suggests it hasn’t been going well.”

“He wrote to ask about a potential arrangement to be made in the fulfillment of my father’s will.”

“Certainly your father’s will has already been fulfilled,” Anne replied.

“That was my initial response to him. Aside from the inheritance set aside for my children, or Bash’s children should I not have any myself, all the money has been distributed. I believe Billy meant to renegotiate the terms of the will.”

“You can’t renegotiate a will!” Anne cried, suddenly disgusted at the prospect. Of course Billy didn’t care a single thing about John Blythe or his dying wishes! All he cared about was his own gain.

“Not to mention my father already honored his friendship with Harmon. Billy received some inheritance five years ago, as per the will’s instructions, but Billy believes it wasn’t adequate.”

“That’s ridiculous! Who is he to say that an inheritance isn’t adequate?”

“I refused all of his requests to meet in person. My hands are full enough managing the Harbor with Bash and running out on medical calls to deal with a petulant man’s greedy intentions. Especially with my late father’s money.”

Anne crossed her arms, leaning back in her chair with an impressed chuckle.

“Why, Dr. Blythe, you have some gumption to speak of, after all.”

“You knew it was there,” he retorted, face flushing.

“I knew it was there when you called me a siren,” Anne agreed. “But why are you telling me this now? Did you want me to...talk to Billy?”

“No!” Gilbert rushed. “I want you to stay as far from him as you can. I don’t say that to try and control you, Anne, I’m just convinced now more than ever that Billy has ill intentions with my life in order to get what he wants. I’m telling you because even though I believed you before, I had my doubts, and for that I am sorry. I believe you completely, wholeheartedly now. I want you to know what I intend to do about it - starting with something I believe you may be able to help you with.”

“You want my help?”

“Of course! You know what Billy looks like. I’ve never met the man. I’d like you to describe him as best you can, like one of your book characters if you have to, so that I can inform the staff to be on the look. I fear it’s not just my own safety at stake, but Bash’s, yours, and the boys. I need to keep my family safe.”

So she did. Anne waited for Gilbert to open one of his leather notebooks, then began to describe the yellow undertone of his pale face, the almost triangular roundness of his head, and the straight gold hair he always kept slicked to the right. She told Gilbert things she had never noticed about Billy until she was forced to think about him, but just the image in her mind was enough to set her stomach churning.

“His eyes are slanted down just a little,” she explained. “And he walks with such an entitled air that you’d like to just kick his legs out from underneath him!”

“Is that all?” Gilbert said with a hint of playfulness.

“That’s all I ever cared to notice,” she said stately.

“If that’s all you ever cared to notice about someone you don’t like, I’d love to hear how you describe someone you do like.”

Then, perhaps because she was a bit impulsive and eager as Marilla always said she was, she responded in an even tone, “Then ask me about you sometime.”

Gilbert’s lips lifted in a crooked smile and his eyes lifted from his journal to stare at her straight on.

“I like you too,” he said quietly with that smile that Anne could have lived a happy, torment-free life without seeing. Feeling a swell in her chest that, if bubbled out, would have resulted in her flinging herself across the desk and kissing him square on his soft mouth, Anne stood up. Gilbert jumped at her abruptness, but rose to his feet.

“Yes, well, I’d best be off to prepare for bed. Class meets in the morning and it wouldn’t be fair to the boys if their schoolteacher is dead on her feet! I’ll see you tomorrow, I’m sure!”

Gilbert was not to be thus sidetracked.

“Anne,” he called out - not desperately, not quickly, but calmly as if he knew what he was doing.

“Yes?” She felt exposed in front of him, like his gaze was seeing through her skin and into most honest corners of herself that she never dared touch.

“Would you like to spend some time with me tomorrow? Just the two of us?”

A thousand questions were reeling in her head all at once, some curious ( Where will you take me?), some wary ( Won’t we be interrupted by your patients? Surely they are more important?), some positively alarmed ( Do you mean on a romantic tryst?) All she needed to do was look up at the hopeful smile and the matching adorative smile to for all her questions to be answered.

Gilbert Blythe cared about her, and it terrified her.

Suddenly, Anne realized that if she had given into the irrational urge to kiss him like she’d longed to only moments ago, he probably would have let her. Maybe he would have taken her up in his arms and pressed as close as could be allowed with the separation of the desk. She finally get to touch his soft hair the way she yearned to, and be treated with reverence in return.

She cared about him, too, and more than that, she trusted him. She’d never trusted anyone before, not like this.

But she had to give him an answer because she if she waited any longer, he might just turn completely white and take it all back.

“Of course,” she said in a sure tone. “I think I’d like that.”

A grin erupted on Gilbert’s face, the kind Anne knew he wouldn’t be able to bite back with all his strength. He reached out like he might take her hands in his and press each of her smooth fingertips to his lips one by one. Just the thought of it made heat erupt beneath her neck and blaze up to the apples of her cheeks, but he caught himself and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“Excellent, I’ll come collect you after your class dismisses tomorrow.”

Anne doubted her feet touched the floor as she walked back to her room, feeling that there were clouds beneath her toes that carried her on the early autumn breeze.

* # * # *

Looking back, Anne wished she could report not falling prey to the temptation of vanity for the sake a man’s presence. To report so would be a lie, one that she didn’t feel too ashamed about. It had been one of the only times that she allowed herself to dedicate a few extra minutes in front of her ornate vanity to style her hair into a pretty style she’d seen Diana wear once. In fact, it had been Diana’s idea in the first place.

“ Oh, I know what Marilla says about vanity, but there’s no harm in wanting to feel pretty in your own skin,” she’d written in one of her letters. “ Darling, it sounds like you really care for this man. I know that probably frightens you, so spend a few extra and dote on yourself like you dote on me! Tuck your hair in that elegant style you admire, whisper some encouraging words to yourself, and show that man the absolute treasure that you are! You’re a rare gift, Anne Shirley, and if Dr. Blythe can’t see it for himself, I will march up to the Glen and tell him myself!”

Now she was alone in the empty classroom, the chattering of the boys echoing in the hallway outside the door. Standing at the window outlooking the estate garden where the boys tended to play amongst the shaped bushes and patches of lilies and daisies, Anne stared at her own reflection. In books, it seemed so easy for the heroine to gain the attention of the her affection’s object. But the heroines in her stories tended to be wealthy, beautiful, and demure. She was none of those things, but wouldn’t Gilbert like a girl who was imaginative and kind better? Brave in her own vulnerable strength? She chanced another glance at her reflection, and when her gaze focused, she thought she looked a tiny bit lovelier than she had a moment ago.

Ever more lovely, she could make out the silhouette of a beloved man leaning against the doorframe, waiting and watching with easy patience. Anne spun around, flush warming her cheeks.

“Just how long have you been standing there, Gil?”

He gave a playful shrug, nodding toward the door.

“Not long. Do you have time for a small rendezvous with adventure?” he asked in a sort of purr-like sound that made Anne bite her lip.

“Whenever I’m with you, it seems like I’m going on some life-altering adventure.” Nevertheless, she took some small steps forward, allowing the friendly doctor to take her hand in his calloused one.

“ That ,” Gilbert emphasized, “hardly sounds like a complaint, Miss Shirley.”

“I suppose that depends on what you have planned today,” she teased back.

“Oh, but what is life without a little bit of surprise?” He sent an impish glance her way, then took down the hallway, running with boyish delight toward the woods. Anne let out a surprised gasp, pausing just long enough to let Gilbert put some distance between them, before picking up her skirts and setting off after him.

“I think I’ve had quite enough surprise in my life! I seem to recall being quite surprised when I found a young sailor bobbing like an apple in a seastorm! And then I was even more surprised to find he was not a sailor at all!” she called after him, gaining on him as his stamina waned. “Gilbert, I don’t think it’s very dignified for a schoolteacher to chase after a doctor in -” she tripped over the last step of the boys’ living building “-in such a chaotic fashion!”

“Who’s going to scold us?” Gilbert laughed, spinning around to meet her eyes. “This is my home!”

Just as Anne’s lungs felt that they might give out, Gilbert himself skidded to a halt and bent over. The afternoon heat from the yellowish sun produced a thick drop of sweat on his brow, which he wiped away unceremoniously and flicked into the grass. Anne’s chest heaved as she watched Gilbert throw his head back and let out a carefree guffaw.

“You’re looking at me as if you’ve seen a ghost, Anne!” he said, laughing so hard his eyes had sprung tears in the corners. She couldn’t help but reciprocate the mirth.

“You try running in a corset, Dr. Blythe. I’m merely - stop laughing at me! - I’m merely wondering what has suddenly possessed you!”

Gilbert released a long Ahhh sound with a happy sigh.

“I think I’ve been spending too much time around those boys! Oh, what I’d give to take back my stolen youth!” he said dramatically. Anne’s smile faltered - stolen youth? - but Gilbert wasn’t about to let it fall completely off her face. “Come Queen Anne, I think I’m finally ready to show you your surprise.”

He extended a strong hand to her, which she accepted without question. As they moved beyond the border of the tended garden and into the thicket of the forest, Gilbert caressed her knuckles with his thumb.

“If there’s anything that these past weeks has taught me, it’s that you are indeed not a siren,” he murmured. The sunlight peeking through the trees turned the ground into a kaleidoscope of light and shadows.

“Oh, then what am I?” Anne said, half distracted by the first hints of burnt umber leaves trickling down onto the crisp soil and the age-old trees that stretched wise, old limbs up to the midday sky. Her gait had slowed as she took in the sights around her, and Gilbert leaned down beside her ear and whispered,

“A dryad.” Anne had enough bravery to turn part of the way toward Gilbert, finding their faces so close together she could smell the sweet smell of sea salt coming off of him. He chanced a single glance down at her lips, then continued walking, pulling Anne along with him.

“I suppose you’re right. I couldn’t live where there were no trees; something vital in me would starve,” she said leisurely, though her heart hadn’t stopped racing its marathon.

“I’m much the same way,” Gilbert agreed. “My family in Avonlea had this marvelous orchard that seemed to stretch on for miles and miles. Whenever I visited, I could occupy myself hours and hours, filling my lungs with air and my stomach with apples.”

“Oh, I know that orchard,” Anne said with a fond amount of wistfulness. The orchard in question always appeared to Anne like the Garden of Eden, though she was free to pluck as many apples as she was hungry for without fear of sin. She tightened her grip on his hand, feeling that being by his side was right, especially now that she’d known the little spot of paradise had been sacred for him too. But there was something else she wanted to know.

She didn’t have a chance to ask it, for they stumbled onto the first of Gilbert’s surprises.

“Are you taking me for boat ride?” she asked, cheeks lifting into a smile.

“Just down the stream and through the woods. There’s a spot that I’d like to show you. It’s easiest to get to by boat, but the view of the overhead trees on the way isn’t bad, either. Would you like to go?”

Anne’s eyes fell on the dory propped up against the tree, then shifted to the creek. It reminded her of the mythical river Acheron, the river that flowed to the gates of hades, but instead of death, Anne felt this river must flow into a mystical faery kingdom. Low hanging branches grazes their vines upon the surface of the water. The ambling stream flowed crisp and cool into an unknown she longed to see.

“Take me.”

“How did you find such a place?” Anne asked some minutes later to Gilbert, who rowed in slow, steady strokes. Her eyes hadn’t known which beauty to settle on - that of the magical garden all around them in its balsamy fragrance, or that of the man before her, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Gilbert’s eyes, however, hadn’t moved from the ethereal being before him, drinking in her radiant enjoyment and making it his own.

“When my father was ill, I needed somewhere to get away. Somewhere that didn’t smell like disease and medicine. Really, all I needed was some fresh air. Pretty quickly I found this place.”

“I did the same thing as a child,” Anne said in a light voice, as if the shared experience wasn’t sad, but instead made them even more kindred. “Many of the homes I stayed in weren’t welcoming to a strange girl with an imagination bigger than she was. But the trees!” She sighed and leaned her head back, pretending the ends of her hair were touching the water. “The trees loved me better than anyone ever did, that is, until I Matthew and Marilla took me in.”

“Was it hard to be an orphan?” he asked seriously. The question was one she had received dozens of times in her life, but for once she felt she didn’t need to answer. She peered up at him through golden lashes, grayish blue eyes bright against the green scenery, and said in a kind tone,

“You tell me, Gil.”

He stopped rowing for a moment and let the words sink in. Then, realizing they’d practically come to a halt, he gripped the oars again and carried on.

“You see, Gilbert, I think that no matter how many people you have around you, or how many things you have, loneliness is still loneliness.” She laughed. “But with trees like these ones, it’s a wonder anyone is lonely!”

“They’re lovely, but they’re a poor substitute for company like yours,” Gilbert replied. Anne’s cheeks turned a lovely sunset magenta, and he knew he was doing something right.

Dipping her hand in the water, Anne remembered what she’d wanted to ask him about, but waited until the chill had woven a tingling sensation into her fingertips.

“Your father being ill and you spending a lot of time alone out here...Is that what you meant earlier when you said your childhood had been stolen from you?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t just that. My father didn’t fall seriously ill until the end of my college years,” Gilbert replied simply, if not a bit melancholy. “He happened upon his wealth the same way I happened upon mine. A generous man honored him in his will for the kindness he’d done, and in many ways, it’s been the biggest blessing my family has ever had. To have every single one of our needs met, to be warm and happy, content that tomorrow there will be food on the table and friends at the door - it’s more than my father had when he was a boy. Not to mention, Bash and Mary have a beautiful home to raise their family in, and I can care for the boys.”

“But…?”

Gilbert sighed and shook his head, a vulnerable smile on his lips.

“But the Harbor was so much responsibility for my father to take on and the stress of it certainly didn’t aid his declining health. Sometimes I wonder if he’d still be alive if we’d just lived with his family in Alberta or my mother’s family in Avonlea. I could’ve met you sooner!”

“Which probably would have been a catastrophe.”

“ Or, it would’ve been a beautiful, fulfilling friendship.”

Anne had waltzed with what-ifs enough to know that if Gilbert continued like this, he’d run around himself in circles until he was too dizzy to be sure what was real and what was make-believe. She placed a comforting hand over his hand and gave it a tender squeeze.

“Isn’t that what we have now?” she said.

“Yes, and I am grateful for it. So, so grateful. But Anne, I won’t ever get back the things I’ve lost. I lost growing up with a mother, living in a humble home where everyone knows each other’s thoughts, and learning in a schoolroom with other children.”

Alongside them, the flowing stream trickled on.

“In a way, it’s another thing you have to mourn, Gil. Will you let yourself? Can you let the past go so that you can enjoy the blessings of the present?”

The doctor continued the steady rhythm of his rowing, turning his cheeks up to the patch of sunlight that had fallen over them. He thought back on the life he lived - the things he would do all over again and the things he’d write in granite to keep them the same. This woman, with her apricot hair and cheeks of constellations, was one thing that he’d write into the story of his life and hold there. Forever, he hoped to tell the story of the siren queen who dove into the tempest to save his life. He’d speak of her strength, her resolution, the compassion in her smile, and the stretch of eternity in her eyes.

“What’s done is done,” quoted Gilbert with a new sense of ease. “You’re here right now, and that’s all that matters to me.”

Anne knew exactly how he felt.

Eventually the dory had journeyed as far as it could in the humble stream, and Gilbert rowed it to the landing laced with grass and wild lilies. They helped each other step out, chuckling at the boats unsteadiness as it swayed them side to side, before their feet touched the mossy ground. Gilbert moved so that Anne could gaze upon the small haven that he had brought them to.

Gaze she did. All the beauties of the Glen she’d seen before did not compare to this hallowed spot, which was so much like Avonlea forests that her heart gave a tender squeeze. The reason the rowboat had stopped where it did was because the stream had opened into a crescent shaped pond with a crown of water lilies and fallen leaves. Gilbert, having known the spot, had left a cream colored basket in the clearing beside the pond, a blanket a cozy resting place amongst the tall grass. Flowers lined the clearing beside the pond, a wall of fragrant blossoms made of a dozen pinks and light blues.

Gilbert noticed the object of her adoring eyes and plucked a few blossoms, handing them to her without a single word. He moved to the blanket he’d laid out and stretched out it like a cat preparing for an afternoon rest. When he peered up at her, squinting through the sunlight, he saw her standing there - one hand on a paperwhite birch tree, the other holding her bouquet of rose-thrifts at her side. The ease of her grace took the breath from him, but he was content to breathe her in instead.

Anne was looking back at him with just as much barely contained rapture. There he was, her golden-hearted doctor, smiling upon her the way she never thought anyone would be able to.

“Come sit a while, Anne,” he offered, the sun turning his face into gold with its soft skin and thin layer of sweat. “I’ve got something for you.”

The skirts of her summer sky dress moved through the grass as she made her way to him, spreading like spilled ink when she sat beside him. Had she been alone, she’d have kicked off her shoes and spread out her legs to feel the tall grass between her toes.

But she was here with Gilbert. She could no less tear her gaze away from his than increase the short distance between them.

“Gilbert, you didn’t have to bring me anything. This sight is pleasure enough.”

“I believe you’ll like this small offering. You see, I wrote a letter and its recipient had it in her heart to send a response.” He pulled an envelope from his picnic basket, placing it in her outstretched hand as gentle as a feather hitting the ground. Anne bit her lip when she read the return address.

“It’s from Marilla,” she murmured. Closing her eyes, she placed the envelope back in his grasp, covering it with her other hand. “I can’t...I don’t want to ruin this moment with something that breaks my heart so.”

“Look at who it’s addressed to, you goose. I’ve already read it.”

Sure enough, the letter was addressed to a “Dr. Gilbert J. Blythe” and not “Prodigal, Redheaded harem scarem.”

“Oh,” Anne muttered, frightened at something she couldn’t name.

“Read it outloud, Anne, for the trees and the wind,” he said dramatically, laying back on the blanket and closing his eyes.

“Gilbert, are you su-”

“ Anne,” he drawled. “I’ve got the first few lines memorized if you won’t read it yourself. See? ‘Dear Dr. Blythe, I must say I was astonished to find your letter-”

“Okay, okay! I’ll read it, just leave the dramatic readings to me and Paul Irving.” Anne cried out, nudging him with her knee. Gilbert chuckled, sticking his elbow out and propping his head up so that he might watch her. Licking her lips, Anne began to read.

“Dear Dr. Blythe, I must say I was astonished to find your letter waiting for me when I returned home from Charlottetown just this afternoon. I cannot tell you how pleased I was to read your accounts of Anne, her successes as a teacher and how well she is fairing. As for your news on Billy Andrews, I fear I have made a dreadful mistake in not believing Anne when she needed my support most. I only wish that I could have seen that she was doing the right thing all along, even if cost her greatly. If you could, please tell Anne that I don’t intend to make her pay that cost anymore. If she can forgive me, I’d welcome a letter from her. As for your invitation to the charity ball you’re hosting in a fortnight, Rachel and I were humbled, but regret we must remain here to care for the farm. Please do write and tell us about its success. Thank you again. Send Anne our enduring love. Sincerely, Marilla Cuthbert.”

A tear had dropped on the page, and Anne brushed it aside before it run any of the ink. She sat quiet for a moment, rubbing the textured parchment in her fingers, almost as if she could feel the essence of Green Gables.

“You wrote her for me?” she whispered in a raspy voice. Gilbert’s eyes on her were tender, but he stayed where he was, allowing her the space to breathe and process.

“I know how much her last letter hurt you,” he said. “I saw the way you were together. You’re not meant to be apart like that. She’s your mother.”

Anne swallowed, biting back an onslaught of love. For Marilla, the rare mother she never expected but cared for with her whole soul. And for Gilbert, this gentle, compassionate man who seemed to speak the language of her soul.

“You did this for me?” she repeated - slower, quieter. Gilbert’s gaze was reverent and steady as he replied.

“Yes, my love. I did it for you.”

They had both ventured a step into each other’s world’s, vulnerable and bare. There was no going back now, but Anne was ready to leap forward. She placed her hand on his, willing him toward her. Gilbert gave into the gravitation, sighing in blissful surrender as she slid her arms around his waist and pressed her lips to his. His arms were about her, tugging her flush against his chest where their beating hearts were side by side. He kissed the breath from her, admiring how she tasted the way roses smelled and was the softest thing he’d ever held.

Anne all but evaporated into a euphoric autumn breeze, faintly wondering if she had ever felt this safe and loved. There was only the musky scent of this man - her lover, she realized- and his tender caress. She was ready to be consumed by its delight, and love him even more in return.

He pulled away, only to lean back in for a few more short kisses, but found it difficult to grin with the full extent of his happiness and kiss her at the same time. Anne pressed her forehead to his, running her thumb over his cheek.

“My love,” she tasted on her tongue. Her lips found his cheek, rough with the first hints of a beard. “ Gilbert .”

A joyous laugh left his lips, and he looked into her eyes, dark and glittering as the night. All noise faded away, leaving Gilbert with his heart thumping in his ear, yearning to just stay in his embrace for the rest of his existence.

“I didn’t know! I certainly hoped , but I didn’t know,” he admitted with a choked up, little laugh. She heard the full admission - I didn’t know you cared. I didn’t know you loved me.

“I’ll tell you all you’d like now,” she replied, an ardent quality taking over her entire being.

“Right now?” he wished. A breeze swept past them, and Anne allowed it to sway it back to his face. She wasn’t afraid or overwhelmed. She was too full of bliss to feel anything but.

“I’m in love with you,” she confessed. “I love you, Gil.”

This time he kissed her, swept her back up into his arms so quickly that a gasp escaped her, and showed her what the words did to him. Somehow she’d wound up partly in his lap, arms wrapped around his shoulders, and hands anchored in his hair. He only pulled back enough to whisper his own reverent confession to her. The words danced across her mouth, sweet and soft.

“I love you too,” he replied. “I’ve loved you since you pulled me out of that ocean, and I’ve loved you every second since. Maddeningly, Anne, you drive me crazy.”

Anne pulled herself to him that she might hide her face-splitting smile in the crook of his neck. Is this ecstasy what it it was like to be Gilbert Blythe’s, for him to be hers?

“Well, doctor, have you any remedy for that sort of madness?”

“Oh certainly,” he breathed huskily. “More kisses.”

The rest of their rendezvous had a light, relieved air to it - secrets lifted from both of their shoulders, their pasts confronted and conquered. They ate without rush, content to sit side by side facing each other. How wonderful it was, they delighted together, that they could kiss and speak the way lovers do instead of simply daydreaming about it.

When the day had stretched to its limits, Gilbert offered Anne a hand back into the rowboat and brought them back to their palace of a home. He followed each of his father’s rules of courting - walk the girl to her door, offer a compliment so she remembers you, kiss her, and say goodnight. Mostly, he thought he did his father proud, even if he did press his sunset haired Persephone to her door to kiss her enough that she was liquid gold from head to toe.

In a carefree world, he’d have gone to his bedroom, sat near the bay window, and thought about the magic of the day until dawnbreak, but instead, he went to Bash’s office.

His brother knew something had happened the second he’d walked in the door.

“Oh, I’d know the expression of a lovesick moke anyday,” Bash teased, glancing up from his paperwork to the blushing man grinning in the doorway. “Did Anne smile at you pretty?”

“She did more than that,” Gilbert murmured, coming to sit on the arm of one of the office couches. “She kissed me and told me she loves me.”

He spoke almost soundlessly, but Bash had heard everything he needed to. The older man’s smile was tortured, realistic.

“You’ve been crazy about her since you met her, so I’m thrilled for you brother, I am.”

Gilbert fell back onto the couch in a dramatic heap, covering his face and sighing.

“You should’ve seen her, Bash, standing in the trees like she was mother nature herself. I thought I was going to perish. And the way she speaks! Have you ever heard anyone speak pure gold?”

“Blythe-”

“And you’ve seen her with the boys. They adore her! Crave her approval like they’ll starve without it.” Gilbert’s arms fell down beside him in surrender. “She’s it, Bash. You were right, I’m crazy about her. I’m sorry I ever said you were wrong.”

“Gilbert,” Bash said seriously. “Tell me you haven’t forgotten-”

“I haven’t!” Gilbert shot up on the couch, not wanting to hear the end of the sentence. “That’s what I came to talk to you about tonight. There’s got to be something you can do. You’ve always found a loophole before. What’s one more for your lovesick brother?”

Bash was a long time in answering.

“I can try, but your engagement to Christine was one of your father’s dying wishes. She’s wearing your ring. Mary told me Anne knows nothing about the Stuarts.”

“If Dad met Anne, he’d know why I can’t marry Christine. He made me promise to go through with the arranged engagement for business reasons, not because he wanted me to fall in love with her. And I won’t, I know I won’t.”

“The terms of your engagement are clear. If you break off with your engagement to Christine, the harbor will take a hit you know it won’t sustain.”

“That’s why I came to you,” Gilbert pleaded, coming up to the desk, pulling his chair up as far as it would go. “I’m asking you, as your brother and best friend, for your legal expertise to marry the woman I love, not the woman my father thought I should spend my life with. If anyone can help me, it’s you.”

What else could Bash say to the boy who befriended him, took him in, shared half his estate with, and loved him as if he were flesh and blood?

“I’ll do my best, but I’m telling you, Gil, you need to tell her.”

“I will, I will!” Gilbert swore. “Now, don’t you want to hear about it?”

Bash took off his readers, folded them onto the desk, and smiled wickedly.

“Tell me everything.”

#anne of green gables #anne with an e #shirbert #anne and gilbert #shirbert fic #shirbert ff #tessa writes

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crimsonrevolt · 6 years

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Congratulations Leah you’ve been accepted to Crimson Revolt as Xenophilius Lovegood!

↳ please refer to our character checklist

To get a Pandora and a Xeno all in one day...! I don’t think my heart can take it. Xeno is always a beloved character and you’ve written him so well in your application that we just cannot wait to see what you do with him. Also thank you Taylor for dragging her here! *your faceclaim change to Austin Butler has been accepted

application beneath the cut

OUT OF CHARACTER

INTRODUCTION

I’m Leah, 25, and I use female pronouns and live in EST

ACTIVITY

I’d say about a 7. I do have a full-time job, but I’m usually able to be around some evenings and weekends

HOW DID YOU FIND US?

Welllll…I happen to know Taylor and she may or may not have drug me here

WHAT HARRY POTTER CHARACTER DO YOU IDENTIFY WITH MOST?

Look, I know this is going to sound like a line given who I’m applying for, but honestly, it’s always been Luna. I’ve always been a Ravenclaw and always known that and was always really disappointed that really in the books (at the beginning) the only character we had was Cho. But then Luna was introduced and I was just so happy. She’s my little Ravenclaw baby and she’s so weird and bizarre and just owns that that’s who she is. The year she was introduced in the books, I made my parents buy me a Harry Potter robe, printed out a Ravenclaw emblem, hot glued it over he Gryffindor emblem, and dawned earrings of a crab grabbing onto a foot and went as Luna for Halloween. I just love how intelligent and eccentric, but also how good and loyal she is. It’s always been her above anyone else that I relate to.

ANYTHING ELSE?

Nothing I can think of :)

IN CHARACTER

DESIRED CHARACTER

Xenophilius Hezekiah Lovegood

Xenophilius knows their name is obnoxiously long. Nicknames are going to happen, it’s only natural with a name like Xenophilius, really. They don’t mind and they don’t really mind why you call them—Xeno, Xen, Philly, even Lovey if you wan to take something from their last name. But DO NOT, under any circumstances, ever call him Phil. Just. Don’t. Do it.

Additionally, being demi-male (see more later), he tends to use Xeno more when feeling masculine and Xen when feeling agendered.

FACE CLAIM

I’d really, really love Austin Butler (first choice) or Toby Regbo for Xen. I’m not against Jamie, but his tendency to play villains/assholes makes it a little harder for me to see him as Xeno

REASON FOR CHOSEN CHARACTER

As stated above, I really, really love Luna which makes Xen an obvious choice. I’m also a Ravenclaw, so I feel like I have that tie to him. I started looking through the characters and there were probably a half a dozen I started looking at, but Xen just started talking to me before I even read all the way through their bio. I love that he’s kind of wild and crazy and just free. They believe fully in being whoever you are and not letting anyone stop you, unless of course you’re hurting someone else. They’re incredibly intelligent and driven to always know more and investigate more. I also see him as horribly loyal. Few people take the time to get to know Xen or become friends with them. But those that do gain a fierce friend.

I think an important thing to know about the Xen we’ll see in game play is that they’re not the same Xeno we see in the books. In the books, he’s a lot more unhinged (for lack of a more fitting word), a lot more willing to throw anyone under the bus for the sake of his daughter. But I think a lot of that comes from losing Pandora. He’s been in the midst of a war for the better part of 20 years, his wife died at her own hands (even if by accident) and there was nothing he could do to stop it, the wizarding community as a whole believes him entirely delusional, really the only thing he has is his daughter who’s taken by death eaters. A lot of what is seen in the books comes from all that trauma. He’s eccentric in the current timeline becomes craziness. His protectiveness of his friends becomes a willingness to go against even is own principles to save his daughter. His laid back, open-minded demeanor has morphed into something that’s jarring to most people. At their roots, the personality of current Xen is still very much the same as Xeno in the books, but the way it manifests itself is much more dialed back. Xen is a little more in line with their daughter now, rather than the more extreme manifestation they become in their older years.

PREFERRED SHIPS // CHARACTER SEXUALITY // GENDER & PRONOUNS

End-game for Xen is definitely Pandora. With how much we see that they love her in the books, I can’t imagine it any other way. That being said, I’m more than open to exploring other relationships with other characters. Xen is also definitely pansexual. They’re a person who loves love and acceptance and openness and not closing yourself off to anything for any reason so I can’t imagine them being anything other than pan.

When it comes to romance and sex, well Xeno actually has far more experience in the latter. He’s had his fair share hook ups—with parties of both genders and have they explored outside human/wizard species…well maybe. But romance? Honestly, Xen considers themselves lucky to have friends. They aren’t going to push anything more. They rather like the idea of falling in love, having some little house somewhere surrounded by plants. But love and romance at this point are more ideas to Xen than they are reality. If it happens, it does, and he’ll be more than happy with it. If it doesn’t..then they’ll just adopt a house-full of creatures and live happily ever after with them.

Xen identifies as demi-male with a bit of genderfluidity behind it, using both male and agendered pronouns. Gender is just another construct and they suppose they align more with male than female if they have to choose. That being said, the never-ending comments about being feminine for their long hair and tendency to wear far too many accessories never bothered him either. Use what pronouns you will with them, none of them really matter. Xen has far more important things to worry themselves with.

CREATE ONE (OR MORE!) OF THE FOLLOWING FOR YOUR CHARACTER:

-AN AESTHETIC

Pinterest for Xeno can be found here

-A PLAYLIST

Playlist for Xeno can be found here

-A FEW HEADCANONS

Xen’s crowning achievement of their Hogwarts years is sabotaging the Slytherin Quidditch team. It wasn’t about winning a game or the house points—Xen couldn’t care less about Quidditch really and the house tournament always seemed rather trivial to them. No, the Slytherin team was being rather awful to a group of first year Hufflepuff girls and someone had to put an end to it. So right before the Slytherin/Gryffindor game, Xeno may have enchanted all their brooms to give them all a horrible case of jock itch.

When Xeno wasn’t trying to sneak into the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts Library or wondering off into the Forbidden Forest, you could usually find them at the lake. It was a nice relaxing place and a good place to get high without the professors catching you. There was, of course, also the giant squid. Xen named him Sqedward and tried desperately to train him. Much to Xen’s dismay, the squid never did listen, no matter what they tried, and their dreams of riding the great beast as Muggles do dolphins at Sea World were thwarted.

Xeno isn’t sure how to feel about all the violence Aversio has been using lately. They’re not much prone to violence themselves and tend to take less traditional approaches when push comes to shove (see above). They don’t necessarily support just how violent the group is being, but they know something needs to be done given the state of the wizarding world and their Muggle relations. Sure, it’s nice the Order exists, but just talking about making change isn’t enough. You have to do something for anything to happen. Maybe Aversio’s path isn’t the right one, but it’s the best path available at the current time, so he’s going to take it.

Xeno has an extremely deep love of New Scamander. They think he’s absolutely brilliant. Living a life searching out and findings and treating and fighting for and writing about magical creatures, it just sounds like an absolute dream. Xen’s copy of Fantastic Beasts long ago had to be enchanted so the pages wouldn’t fall apart from wear and there’s paragraphs of notes scribbled into the margins. If they cared less about trying to make a difference for humans, they would almost certainly become a magizoologist, but there’s far too much work to be done getting humans to care about each other before trying to get them to care for creatures. Not that that puts any damper on Xen’s love of all things animal, vegetable, and mineral and his extraordinary adoration of his hero. The day Luna brought home a Scamader was damn near the proudest day of his whole life.

(Note: I saw you guys have a profession list and picked on that feels the most fitting for a young Xeno. I’m more than open to adjusting to fit your views/group needs for job positions.) Xeno currently works at the Daily Prophet. Sure, it’s corrupt and what they’re printing is hardly the truth, but Xen is convinced they’ll be able to change it from the inside out if only they try hard enough. They thought if they joined the Prophet they’d be able to print articles to change minds and change the ideals of the paper’s staff. So far it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere though. Most of his articles wind up getting cut out of the paper and the editor is scolding him more than publishing him. It’s starting to get frustrating, but they’re still holding out hope to make a difference. (The Quibbler will still be founded at a later date when Xen can no longer deny that they aren’t making any impact at the Prophet. Or possibly the Quibbler is founded as an Aversio propaganda paper that either uses Xen’s eccentric interests as a way to send veiled/coded messages to members or it just simply morphs into something entirely different as the war winds down and after Pandora’s death becoming the zany brain child seen in the books.)

Xenophilius sends Howlers quite frequently to anyone in the select group they consider friends. They’re not angry, no, of course not, that’s just now who he is. But there’s just something about a talking/screaming message that simply conveys things written letters can’t. Hand written messages just aren’t…dramatic emphatic enough.

More often than not, when writing Xen tends to dictate out loud to an enchanted quill while pacing around the room and keeping their hands busy.

Xen is a lover of accessories and is rarely without at least half a dozen rings between their two hands.

Xeno is a babbler. Bring up any topic he’s half interested in with anyone willing to even half pretend to be half listening and he’ll babble on endlessly about most anything. Their speech patters tend to involve long drawn out sentences that can be a bit hard to follow.

A few quick facts about their family: Their dad is a wizard while their mum is a muggle. Their father isn’t entirely supportive of their (for the time) progressive gender and sexual identities—the older Lovegood doesn’t necessarily scorn it or treat their child poorly, but he just doesn’t get it. Xen is an only child.

He brought a toad with him for his years at Hogwarts named Wartly. He talks to him a lot and even created a miniature, functional piano for the little guy to enjoy, fully infuriating most all of the Ravenclaw house as the toad would “play” at all hours of the night and Xen did absolutely nothing to “restrict the creature’s right to freedom of expression.”

Two brief headcanons about Xen as an adult that likely won’t have an impact on game play but I can’t shake:

Xen often calls his wife Panda Bear and his daughter his Little Moon

Xen’s knowns about the Deathly Hallows for quite some time, but the reason he carries so much information about them in Harry’s time is because of Pandora. After her death, Xenophilus poured himself into a way to bring back the love of his life. He’s still certain the only thing that could bring her back. He never managed it and maybe that’s for the best, but his knowledge of the Hallows comes down to his longing to bring back Panda.

Connections: (These are a few ideas for connections, all pending approval of the characters’ respective players and naturally his connections aren’t limited to these, but it’s a jumping off point and a look into how he relates to others)

Marlene—Marlene and Xen easily go back to their early Hogwarts days. She’s one of his best friends and one of few that can fully stomach everything that is the complexity of Xenophilius Lovegood. She’s a pub buddy and his go to for someone to smoke with. No one makes them smile and laugh quite the way Marlene can—even if they both spend just as much time rolling their eyes at one another.

The Black Family—The Black Family as a whole is just…distasteful to Xeno. They’re the perfect portrait of everything wrong in the wizarding community. They can’t stand them. Even Sirius, who’s long been a member of the Order and Aversio, Xen can’t quite bring themselves to fully trust—can someone truly disconnect so completely from a family so deeply tainted? The Blacks are violent and bigoted power hungry. Despite his typically warm personality, he’s often notably cold to the Black family and their backwards ways.

Rita—A fellow wizarding journalist, Xen and Rita have always been in the same circles. It doesn’t make them friends though. They have very different world views. She’s the kind who is actually published by the Prophet—though really he can’t see why as so many of her article are full of half-truths and exaggerations. Xeno is always trying to get her to write something good. Something worth her time. Something valuable and positive. It hasn’t worked thus far, so for the time being they’re really just rivals at best.

Arthur—Arthur Weasley is something of a treasure to Xen. They both have immense loves for things that no one else can quite fully appreciate. And sure, they don’t always have interest in the same sorts of things, but there is something nice about finding someone how loves loving things the way you do. The two can sit and babble on for hours, neither really saying anything relating to what the other’s just said and neither really minding because at least someone is finally listening to them.

Sybill—Sybill is so free and strange, just like himself and honestly, Xeno loves it. They always feel free to be unabashedly weird with her and it’s rather freeing. They’ve tried time and time again to get her to teach him divination. And she’s tried, she really has, but every time he fails to see anything of the future, he just tells her he’s failed to teach him properly rather than accept the fact that he’ll never have the affinity she does.

Lucius—Few people really truly get under Xenophilius’s skin quite the way Lucius does. He’s just so smug and so self-important and so sure he’s better than absolutely everyone when the reality is, he’s not. ‘Men’ who act like they are men, like they are more than what they are, when really, push comes to shove, they are nothing, are an utter frustration to Xeno. They’re very, very tempted to put him in his place and at some point, they just may. Someone needs to.

IN CHARACTER QUESTIONNAIRE

♔ If you were able to invent one spell, potion, or charm, what would it do, what would you use it for or how would you use it? Feel free to name it:

“One? Only one? Boiling down the entire universe worth of possibility into only one options?” Xen’s cheeks puff up as he lets out an exasperated and dramatic sigh. “Merlin’s beard, that’s a big question. Oi I suppose…something that would cause some kind of instant karmic retribution. Or perhaps a potion that allows you to know everything—absolutely everything, even if only for a while. Or what about the ability to see all creatures, even the invisible one or the ones that run away really fast. Or maybe-” They stop, suddenly realizing themselves and let out a small chuckle. “Well I suppose that’s more than one it’s it. It’s far too complex a question. You can’t honestly expect anyone to be able to give only one answer, it’s entirely unfair.”

♔ You have to venture deep into the Forbidden Forest one night. Pick one other character and one object (muggle or magical), besides your wand, that you’d want with you:

“Well it would certainly have to be Marlene to bring along with me, it’d be rather grate fun. We’d find some good trouble to get into. I mean not that we haven’t already found good trouble in the Forest. You know everyone is so against the centaurs and, no, they’re not the friendlies group, but they’re not all bad. Now what would I bring with me?” They pause for a moment contemplating. There were plenty of good things to bring, plenty of things they had dug up spending far too much time in parts of the library and personal tomes that they should have never laid their hands on. The Philosopher’s Stone came to mind. Or maybe the Hallows. But that wasn’t exactly information they thought best to share with anyone. “Hmm…perhaps a griffin. Or a phoenix. Maybe a Thestral—they just have bad reps you know. Oooo, or perhaps a Graphhorn. Sure they’re rather hard to find, but you didn’t specify the likelihood of being able to obtain said object before entering the forest with it.”

♔ What kinds of decisions are the most difficult for you to make?

“Decisions in general are rather difficult I find. Even the most mundane ones. The world, by design, is full of choices and you’ll never be able to choose all of them—never. Isn’t that a thought?” As their words die off, their face gets an uncharacteristically morose look to it. “Those with gray morality, I suppose. Where right and wrong blend together and white and black are not so clear. When you know more needs to be done, but you aren’t sure the best path forward. The choices where there is no right and no wrong and yet someone could wind up hurt regardless. Those are the hardest.”

♔ What is one thing you would never want said about you?

“Most anything that could be said about me has already been said. And frankly, I don’t much care about any of it. I suppose he one thing I’d never want said about is that I’m unkind or uncaring. There’s a great many things that can be said about a person, but I think that, by far is worst. That and unimaginative. Both terrible, terrible things.”

REACTION TO LAST EVENT DROP

Reading through the plot drop, there were two different places I really saw some place that Xeno would fit in. In the first portion of the plot drop where Aversio and the Order are working together, it mentions that some, including Sirius are frustrated with how long it’s taking. I think Xen would fall into that camp. To them it’s just obvious that something needs done and everyone should be willing to take action. Sure, it’d be nice if it were a little more peaceful than what Aversio is doing now, but it certainly needs to be more than what the Order has been doing. They just can’t quite understand why things aren’t moving more quickly and why the two factions of the same side can’t seem to get along and find a solution. They’re trying to get everyone to work together and find a better middle ground, but it can at times wear at him and become rather frustrating.

The second part is that he would most certainly help Hestia and Edgar making the posters. Xen, being Xen, making a paper as bright and vivid as we all know the Quibbler is, I can absolutely see him helping to write and format propaganda (for lack of a better word) for Aversio trying to recruit or spread their message. It’s something he would definitely have a heavy hand in given half the chance. It’s something that would let his imaginative and creative ways be put to work. There’s also a fair possibility that if given a chance, he would have help with creating the potions to help Aversio/Order members go undercover to the Death Eater events as well.

WRITING SAMPLE

“Lovegood! My office now!”

Xeno was more than familiar with that tone. It was more or less the only one they ever got from the editor of The Daily Prophet. Sure, it had been a bit disheartening at first—Xen was used to their fair amount of trouble, but being a disappointment, a let down…well not so much. They had gotten used to it now. Which was probably why they were more often tasked with the mundane articles—new students arriving at Hogwarts, the menu changes at the Leaky Caldron, a nasty flea outbreak at Eeylops. Not that that stopped Xen from writing the articles they really wanted to write. The ones that really mattered. They waived their hand at the enchanted pen scribbling away mid-air and it clattered down onto his desk with a rather defeated clunk as he made it way into the editor’s office.

“What in the bloody hell is this?” the editor asked, slamming down his most recent article. The big, bold headline of Death Eater Takes Minister Title and the sub-caption of Rodolphus Lestrange, a member of the terror organization known as the Death Eaters usurped power unjustly from former Minister Millicent Bagnold. Sure, it wasn’t big flashy words, and Xen has spent ages trying to come up with something better, but he figured cutting it straight to the chase might be best given the circumstances.

“Well it’s the truth.”

“The truth? The truth? We can’t go making claims like that about the LestrangesXenophilius.”

“They’re not claims, they’re the truth.”

“You’ve nothing to support that argument.”

“I have everything to support that argument,” they countered. They could feel their typically laxed personality starting to pull back as they got more and more frustrated. How on earth was he supposed to do anything, change anything when every decent article he wrote led to this kind of conversation? There was good to be done here, change to be made, but once again, they were just the crazy little wizard with an imagination too bright to understand the reality of the world. What no one ever seemed to notice was that it was that exact imagination that made them see things perhaps a bit too clearly.

“We won’t be publishing this sort of nonsense here.”

“It’s not nonsense! Sir, surely you have to know! You have to know the kind of things that man is wrapped up in. Him and the Black family, all of the Death Eaters, this never ending parade of hate that’s only leading to genocide. The wizarding community needs to know what’s happening! They have to be enlightened.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“We’re the leading paper in the English wizarding community. If we’re not going to talk about it, then who will? We have a duty as members of the press to publish the truth, regardless of backlash, to make readers informed and keep them up to date on the reality of the world around them, even when it’s a reality that is hard to stomach.”

“Enough.” With that one barked word, Xen knew. They knew that surely, same as Rita, the editor knew. He knew about all of this and was just going on complicity. Maybe he was even one of them. “I was warned when I hired you. That this kind of drivel is what I’d get from you, but some of your professors seemed to have good words to say about you. Last time I listen to them.”

Xeno’s face fell. His writing wasn’t drivel. It was good. It was the only good he had to offer the world right now. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t doing anything if no one ever read it. Their mind flashed back to all of Aversio’s talks of future plans. All the wrathful ideas they had that churned Xen’s stomach. But sitting here and being peaceful wasn’t working.

People would hear Xenophilius Lovegood’s messages one way or another. Maybe they’d have a turn of staff soon, an editor who would listen, who would be interested in the truth. Maybe Rita would quit and free up page space that could go to articles that really mattered. Maybe the world would finally just start seeing things as they were and cry for the truth themselves.

“Get out of here. Go write me something I can actually publish Lovegood. We won’t be having this conversation again.”

Xen turned to the door, shaking their head as their fingers played with the rings that adorned each one, already plotting out their next articles—both the ones they would turn in and the ones they would find other ways to distribute to those who would listen. They were just to the doorway when the editor spoke again.

“And nothing about Nargles this time Lovegood.”

#Accepted App #HP RP #skeleton rp #lsrpg #xenophilius lovegood

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flamintango · 3 years

Text

(True) Love in the Making: Erotic Writing in Fanfictions

[Translated from Liao Pei-Wen’s Chinese original from Pop Culture Academy. I don’t own the article.]

For a long time, discussions about fanfictions have most frequently centered on the lavish erotic writing in the genre. Fanfictions are often regarded as "female porn," as a result of the vastly female-dominant demographic in its creation and consumption. Undeniably, the fact maintains that sex scenes are a frequent appearance in fanfictions. Pay a visit to Archive of Our Own (AO3) and browse for a series, a certain character or a fictional pair, and one will be greeted by many results labeled as adult content. [1]

The inception of English-language erotic writing approximately dates back to late 1970s. Slash fictions gradually developed among fan communities of sci-fi films and televisions, in line with the popularity of Star Trek at the time, and the changes effected by the Second Wave feminist movements in the 1960s and 1970s. Henry Jenkins believes that the significance of slash fiction partially lies in the ways in which these fanfiction writers interpret and challenge the portrayal of masculine qualities and the positioning of the main male characters in the originals. Academic communities often interpret fan creations from erotic writing's perspective in their research on the subject. They believe that fanfictions are classifiable under erotic literature; moreover, they are erotic writing created "by the women for the women," as if fanfiftions are a medium through which to unveil feminine sexuality.

Jenkins also references Joanna Russ' views on slash fiction. She holds that slash fiction is the expression of female sexuality. These female writers project their own desires on the characters and write about the prospect of enjoying sex and emotional bond while preserving freedom, the prospect insatiable by the traditional pornography industry with predominantly male audience.

In the Star Trek fandom, the explicit sex scenes among slash fictions initially faced strong criticism within the circle. Some even described them as "rape" against the characters and offense toward the spirit of "canon." However, slash fiction writing in English was gradually prospering in the same fan community. The tropes that cannot be more familiar among the English-speaking fanfiction writers and readers nowadays began to take shape around that period, and evolved into the form that fanfiction readers recognize over time in discourses. Needless to say, erotic writing in fanfictions has also shifted with time; the one known to Jenkins was usually the type caught in romantic entanglements. Today, a casual roam on AO3 readily brings you a myriad of fanfictions tagged as "PWP" (porn without plot), and those featuring pornographic writing have greatly ballooned in ratio.

The Emotional Bond in the Creation of Fan Erotica

However, the continuous occurrences of PWP in large numbers does not indicate that erotic writing can paint the full picture of the fanfictional scene. Comparison between pornographic films and fanfictions suggest that the former focuses on corporeal stimulus, and the latter emphasizes emotional bonding. This indicates the stark contrast between the respective appeals to fanfiction writing/ reading and pornography viewing. For fanfiction writing, emotional tie plays an important role. No matter how intense the sexual portrayal, the emphasis remains on the ways in which the relationship between the two characters are reaffirmed through bed scenes. This tendency has its roots in the approaches through which fanfictions inherit the creative methods of the romance genre. Jenkins also believes that despite the blow-by-blow depictions of sex scenes, emotions are the mainstay of fan-generated creation, and corporeal pleasure ultimately stems from the emotional dynamics between characters.

Take the following extract from an Inception fanfiction for example. The whole story takes a turn under the tension-filled atmosphere to a unexpected display of oral sex:

“Arthur,” Eames says, “what are you,” and Arthur shakes his head and undoes Eames’ flies, reaches out a gloved hand to pull out his cock. “Shut up,” he says, “I don’t know how else to do it so shut up, okay, Eames, I can’t–”

“Jesus, you’ll catch your death, you don’t have to–”

“Yes,” Arthur says, helpless, “yes I do, you don’t get it, I really do,” and he pulls the whole thing into his mouth. Eames is barely even hard yet but he moans brokenly, twists his hands in Arthur’s hair and arches against him, and Arthur swallows and swallows and swallows, taking him in deeper than he even knew was possible. “Fuck,” Eames says, hardening in Arthur’s mouth, “oh, bloody fuck,” and Arthur grips Eames’ thighs and hums, dragging himself up and along the length of his dick, tonguing him mercilessly. He’s bitterly cold and Eames’ nails are digging into his scalp and Arthur has never been more wrong about someone in his life, not ever.

(“I get that you can just, fucking, fucking play at it all the time, but I’m not like that, I’m not like you, I’m not good at people like you are,” Arthur had said, and Eames’ eyes had been wide and honest and he’d said “Who says I’m playing at it?” and Arthur hadn’t known, he hadn’t know, how could he not have known–)

“Arthur,” Eames keens, jerking, pulling at Arthur’s hair, “Arthur, Arthur.” [2]

The author intervenes this (out-of-context and confused) oral sex scene materially with a lens to inner psyche, which is a common technique in fanfiction writing. Typically in fan creation of greater length, the continuous occurrence of sex scenes may contributes nothing to plot advancement. That said, it proves pivotal to reinforcing the connection between characters. Sex serves as a device to break through restrictions when verbal communications are rendered incapable. In fanfiction writing, sex and love do not stand in opposition, but build upon each other, and occur in a mutually dependent fashion. If sex fails to take place under emotional buildup, sex in action (or after) usually also lends itself to bonding between characters as the plot develops.

Sex as reaffirmation

This observation, it should be noted, should not translate to triviality of sex in fanfiction writing. On the contrary, sex in fanfictions functions as reaffirmation of the characters' setting, as they have already had their track record of development beyond fan-generated text. Fan creation is the product of community culture. Similar to romantic fiction, it develops the plot according to genre conventions. Sex scenes could be the checkpoint of the story (like "and they live happily ever after"), a turning point ("A realizes their feelings for B"), or a climactic point (pouncing on the love interest, clueless to how to respond to their confession). For instance:

The knob rattles a little in the frame and Derek can’t figure out how this night turned into such a fucking disaster. He’s about to lock up when the door flies open again. “Okay, I don’t get you,” Stiles says, walking back in, pulling the door shut behind him. Derek hasn’t moved though, so they’re barely inches apart. “You blow hot and cold at me, I mean one minute we’re fine, I’m flirting, I think you’re flirting back, you bought me this fucking sweater! This isn’t a ‘just platonic friends’ gift, it’s not, Derek, I can’t–”

Derek has Stiles up against the door in less than a second and he’s kissing Stiles before his back even hits the door. Stiles makes this noise, like he’s so surprised that he’s still talking for a moment, but then it just melts into something that’s almost a whine- high, needy. Derek has thought about kissing Stiles for months, memorized the shape of his mouth- smiling, laughing, frowning- but none of that means that he’s ready for the way it makes him feel. Stiles has both of his hands fisted in Derek’s shirt, like he has to keep Derek close, like Derek would- could- go anywhere when he finally has Stiles here, warm and promising, holding onto Derek like he’s drowning.

“Oh my god, you asshole,” Stiles gasps when Derek has to breathe. “You asshole, do you know how long I’ve wanted you to do that, and you just–”

Derek kisses him again. [3]

As aforementioned, fanfiction readers consume in a different way from typical pornography audiences: we have already learned about the characters before entering the plot. In general, the audience's understanding of characters in pornography is limited to their performed identity at the moment (such as teacher, nurse, flight attendant, student). On the other hand, the characters have already developed a complete track of "past, present, and future" beyond the text for fanfiction readers. Even in PWP, which is almost devoid of any plot, they still have a good grasp of the characters' setting, and grounds for their mutual attraction. In addition, slash fictions typically feature heterosexual man from the original franchise as the protagonist. Therefore, the homosocial relationship left partly unexplored in the original becomes especially substantial to the genre.

In the rise of diverse sexualities and genders, fanfiction authors also begin to write about pairings that do not involve heterosexual men. As an example, Agent Carter manages to carve open a path for fan-made contents of female pairs in Marvel's male-centric fanfiction landscape as a film starring a female protagonist. The slash fiction genre pioneered erotic writing in fanfictions, and remains dominant in the fanfiction scene to this day. Despite that, English fan content creation has long surpassed the generic limitations set slash fictions, and started writing its way to more possibilities.

Notes

[T/N: I omitted the original second footnote (and number the rest accordingly) because it is simply the author explaining their word choice in their own Chinese translation of the word “canon,” which lends little to this English translation. ]

[1] Archive of Our Own, or AO3, is the largest fanfiction platform at the present. Before AO3, most fanficitons were published on Livejournals and Fanfiction.net.

[2] “pressed against the pending physics of my passed down last name” by gyzym.

[3] “DILF” by twentysomething. The excerpt does not include explicit love making scenes (that follows right after), yet is still a prime example of a climactic point.

Image Sources

Junseo

Tatarnikova

Works Cited

Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers Television Fans & Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 2012.

Russ, Joanna. Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans, and Perverts: Feminist Essays. Trumansburg: Crossing, 1985.

#fanfics #fandom #fandom studies #doujins #fan fiction #fanfiction #homosexuality #ao3 #archive of our own #yaoi #fujoshi #lgbtq #queer #fanart #translation #cultural criticism #cn to eng

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