#in no way do i support the British museum

[dreamswillbeyourwintermeat]

After saving Faerun my tav is going to open up a combination wine shop/museum because you would not believe how much booze and diaries I have collected.

[dresshistorynerd]

Hi, while looking through extant garments in a museum collection for reference for a school project, I found several garments of different designs that were all labelled as "binder" without any other context or explanation. Obviously my first thought was the kind of binder I use, especially for the first one that looks elasticated, but I have to assume they're for something else like gynecomastia or compression..? Do you know happen to know anything about them?

This is interesting!

They could actually be the types of binders you use. I immediately thought of 19th century male impersonators - female (?) actors who specialized in male roles in Vaudeville and other similar forms of theater, in which drag was integral part of, and would also have their own one man impersonation comedy and music shows and male stage personas. Basically they were drag kings. (Similarly female impersonators, basically drag queens, were also quite popular.) They were known to bind their chest, and other actors, who didn't necessarily do the impersonation shows, but played male roles on stage, would also often bind their chest for their performance. Here's for example two successful male impersonators, British Vesta Tilley (first picture) and American Ella Westner (second picture).

Queer women and trans masc people, who dressed in masculine clothing, (which was pretty common) also sometimes bound their chests, but unsurprisingly that was not exactly celebrated like drag performances were, so there weren't binders made for queer people specifically. I'm guessing they either made their own binders or used binders made for actors. Often those actors were the same people as those queer people, since drag performance was one of the few socially acceptable ways to fuck around with gender. Not all of them were queer, Vesta Tilley looks excellently queer in her drag, but outside stage she was respectable member of high society and very supportive of her husband who became conservative member of parliament (after she had retired). And I think we can easily imagine what kind of political opinions about queer people she was supporting when he was conservative in the context of 1923 Britain. But many of them were known to be queer, like Ella Westner, who eloped to Paris with a very interesting woman, Josie Mansfield (pictured in the last photo above), who was mistress to an infamous scammer and the man who murdered him. Westner was also buried in men's clothing by their own request.

I couldn't find pictures though what did the binders used for chest binding looked like, so I decided to look into what kind of other binders were used in the era. I think the first binder or perhaps both of them could be baby/infant binders (first two pictures below). Apparently people in Victorian era (and in 18th century) believed that chilled abdomen could cause cholera and I guess other bowel issues, so they treated cholera and tried to prevent it by wearing binders and belts (last picture), which could be also made from flannel or wool knit for extra warmth. And babies are quite vulnerable to bowel issues and cholera, so they made binders for babies too. I've seen many different types for these (for both baby and adult use) with some of them like cloth wraps, and some of them kinda corset looking though not corset shaped. If the binders you found were indeed for abdomen warming purposes, I'm sure they are for babies, since those for adults would be so low there definitely wouldn't be shoulder straps like that. The proportions on the first binder especially seem to me fitting for a baby, like the straps feel a bit too wide for adult scale. The second one is harder to guess, it could be a baby binder, but it seems to have boning in the middle, which would make maybe more sense in a chest binder?

But yeah Victorian medicine continues to be... interesting.

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

About the Fab Four conference....

Things I realised as it unfolded.

1. Meghan going against script.

The conference was about one thing, but Meghan’s answers never addressed the point of the conference or the questions asked of her directly.

No matter the question put to her, she gave an answer to a different question not asked. 

If you edit that conference, you realise everyone else kept to script while her script was from a different conference with different questions and answers.

2. A huge Dig at Kate. She really, REALLY went out of her way to embarrass Kate. William looked angry for a moment before putting on his game face.

What was the dig?

You have to go back a week or two before the conference to the BAFTAs. The BAFTA academy asked all female attendees to wear black in support of #metoo and TimesUp. All the awards shows that season, starting with Golden Globes, had asked their female attendees to wear black.

Kate turned up in dark green dress with a black ribbon belt. 

Cue angry media op-eds back and forth on whether Kate supported the cause and whether it was too political a cause for royals and perhaps the black ribbon was the only concession to a political cause. 

Or she didn’t care at all. 

Either way everyone was angry that she didn’t put out a statement saying clearly that she supported #metoo and TimesUp.

Fast forward to this conference and Meghan is asked a question about the foundation, and she goes into word salad about #metoo and TimesUp even though it had nothing to do with Foundation or the conference. 

And the media wrote in glowing terms about Meghan’s answer while glossing over the fact that it was word salad that had nothing to do with why they were there. 

That answer immediately set up a Kate vs Meghan situation with Meghan thinking she’d got one over because the praising articles were framed as Meghan better than Kate for saying clearly that she supported #metoo and TimesUp.  

**************

But as always, Kate got the last laugh. Her dark green dress for the BAFTAs honored the suffragettes (i.e. women fighting for equality), which was especially poignant because 2018 was the centenary for the women’s suffrage movement in Britain. (I was in the UK in July 2018 and there were a ton of museum exhibitions and displays marking the centenary in a lot of places we went to.)

So even though Kate couldn’t wear black, she still showed her support for women’s equality and the women’s movements in her usual awesome, thoughtful way: by tying it to history. It went over the heads for a lot of people. It did in February 2018. It still does now. 

It was incredibly tone-deaf of Meghan to be rambling on about #metoo and #times up -- American-created movements for supporting women -- while Kate had gone to the lengths she did to show her support to British women’s movement. Meghan’s rambling about the causes was definitely a dig at Kate but it didn’t land because there was no truth to it. Not when articles like the one linked above were being written in response to the social media complaining.

[qsycomplainsalot]

Lindybeige is Either an Idiot or an Asshole

Most Likely Both

--There could be more flattering ways to put it, but he's never once given us that favor so why should I. His videos are wildly speculative and often based in cherry-picked British sources, when they come with any sources at all - see his masturbatory piece about the Bren vs the “Spandau”.

--There are two videos that I absolutely loathe at the edges of my youtube recommendations, both just filled to the brim with misinformation and logical contrivances. Videos that neckbeards will endlessly quote at me without question, taking a frustratingly long amount of time to untangle by which point they'd have usually lost interest already. The first one is Shadiversity's video about boob armor, the other is Lindybeige's video about the French Resistance.

--This video will have you believe that the French Resistance on its own did nothing of worth, based in great part on the fact that De Gaulle glamorized its contribution to the war for political status. I cannot stress this enough, just because De Gaulle used the general idea of the Resistance to smooth over a lot of Vichy war crimes and restore national unity does not mean the Resistance did not exist as a capable fighting force. --The very first more specific argument he offers to support his view -if you ignore “ME AND ME PA FOUND THAT VERY FONNY”- is that most of the French armor was American-made and provided through the lend-lease policy, making French people less deserving of credit in winning World War 2. I assume that in his mind that would diminish the contribution of the French Resistance to war efforts, even though these tanks and armored fighting vehicles were used by the Free French Army, not the Resistance at any point of its existence, making the point moot while also conveniently ignoring that the United Kingdom received ten times the aid France did through that same program.

--The image is from War Thunder because it makes for a better glamor shot than having it stand behind a museum fence or in black and white.

--His next argument implies that De Gaulle was "allowed" to walk in the liberated Paris ahead of Allied troops to give a speech that solidified the myth of the Resistance I mentioned. Again, in this passing, deceptive comment, Lindybeige implies that De Gaulle walked in after the fact and that Allied forces did the heavy lifting, only allowing him to do his speech a their convenience. Even a cursory amount of research will tell you that Paris was in fact liberated by the FFI, the Parisian people themselves and Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division composed of Metropolitan and Colonial French with Spanish elements, supported only on the very last day by the US 4th Infantry Division and a special British unit sent to gather intelligence. --Following this, he quotes the speech De Gaulle delivered in front of the town hall the day the German garrison surrendered, but cuts it short of the part in said speech mentioning “the help of our dear and admirable Allies” to then call De Gaulle ungrateful, which I have a hard time believing could be anything but intentionally deceptive. He then goes on to claim that the French Resistance was not organized by De Gaulle but by the British, justifying the ludicrous claim with 'they didn’t tell him because French intelligence services were bad and would have leaked all of it’. This is of course ignoring the fact that De Gaulle had personally sent Jean Moulin back to France for the exact purpose of organizing the five big Resistance movements into one organization, which he did, creating the Council for National Resistance that played a major role in the liberation of Paris. How the British would have any hand in this may be explained by his further comments, where he goes on to say that agents of the organization preceding the MI6 had been infiltrated in the Resistance to organize it, which begs the question of who's responsible for it being a non-effective combat force if it had been the case. He then gives us a voice in a sarcastic tone by saying, “of course you and your British bias would say that !” but does not really address it. Because honestly yeah, you and your British bias would say that.

--After quickly rambling that there were too many people in France and not enough bushes for all people to join the Resistance, which I have to admit is an extremely pointed and pertinent thing to say in a video downplaying the efforts and suffering of thousands of people fighting back against Nazi occupation under constant threat of torture and execution if caught, he mentions that the German forced labor system had severely depleted France’s manpower of fighting age. He says that by 1944, only teenagers and decrepit middle aged men were left to fight in the Resistance, to the great disappointment of the British agents he mentioned earlier. According to him, this meant France lacked the manpower and the communication capability required to pull the Resistance off, which is again contradicted by the actions of Jean Moulin, who had seemingly managed to access both before his death.

--There are a few problems with that argument. The Service de Travail Obligatoire, STO for short, was a system put in place by Vichy France to supply Germany with civilian manpower to make up for their own shortfalls due to the Eastern front. Because Vichy had negotiated a relative independence compared to other occupied country, its own government was responsible for the order, although it was in almost every point similar to forced labor orders in Denmark or the Netherlands. Now the STO did deprive France of over six hundred thousand young men, many of them skilled workers. However as an incentive given by the Nazis, every three forced laborer sent to Germany would lead to the release of one French POW, meaning that as far as manpower was concerned, France pretty much lost only four hundred thousand men and received qualified military personnel for its trouble. Not only is it hardly the manpower drain pictured by Lindybeige, it also ignores that many of these forced laborers, my grandfather included, immediately skipped work and joined either the Resistance or Allied military regulars after operation Overlord, as they were not as tightly surveilled as POWs and minorities in concentration/death camps. It also bears mentioning that it was teenagers, dismissed by Lindybeige as a negligible quantity, that acted as reconnaissance troops for the Free French using their motorbikes to scout and guide the way to the German Kommandantur. In any case, most members of the FFI integrated the regular French army after the liberation of Paris, meaning they were definitely of fighting age. Of course that whole argument is dropped as soon as he brings in British involvement, at which point he finally points out how the Resistance disabled most of the railway network and stopped the famously lightning-fast German army from facing the Allied invasion properly. For their role in this sabotage, a hundred fifty Resistance members working for the French national railway company were shot and another five hundred deported.

--To put it simply, Lindybeige dismisses the Resistance as a useless, wasteful and infighting group of functional morons, while every successful operation they carried out, every display of good mobility and coordination is attributed to British uniformed soldiers overseeing it. In reality most of that effort was done by either agents of the French government in exile or the Allied command under Eisenhower, with no account mentioning any significant autonomous British involvement which stands to reason as De Gaulle and Churchill could not stand one another. In fact Lindybeige tries to pass off operation Jedburgh as a purely British operation while it was specifically a joint one with American, British, French, Belgian and Dutch operatives all along the Atlantic coast.

--The next part is baffling. Lindybeige points at the Allies stopping their shipments of weapons to the French Resistance after July 44 and justifies it by saying the various cells were fighting each other and were uncoordinated. Thank god the Brits stopped sending arms or there would have been a civil war between these silly French Resistance members. Of course what happened in August was the liberation of Paris followed by the integration of the FFI into the new French army, which would go on to liberate the rest of the country. But Lindybeige pushes this civil war angle pretty hard, calling at this point of the video both Vichy France and the Resistance to be pro French in a way and underlining the conflicts between the two as a reason why the weapon shipments stopped coming, with examples such as Resistance members exacting reprisals against Nazi collaborators, which is a completely moot point because Vichy France and collaborators had nothing to do with the Resistance and were in fact, at this point of time, recognized as the enemy by all Allied forces, meaning acts of resistance against them would in no way prompt Allied command to stop supporting the French Resistance. Lindybeige goes so far as to say that the OSS and British secret service stopping the weapon shipments in August 1944 legitimately prevented an outright civil war between the different cells of the French Resistance, which was in actuality pretty unified in its support to De Gaulle at this point thanks to the efforts of Jean Moulin as discussed previously. This hardly gels with the events following August 1944, where the members of the Resistance and FFI were enlisted in the Free French Army and were therefore issued American military equipment and training to function as regular troops. Now stop me if I'm wrong but it appears that in Lindybeige's mind all French people were ready to tear each other apart until the British stopped sending them pipe guns, after which the Americans sent them tanks which obviously disabled their ability to start a civil war.

--Two French colonial soldiers using a blend of Allied gear during the winter of 1944-45. They are presumably thinking of killing each other.

--Much like the Phantom Menace review this is addressing a piece of media were essentially everything is wrong, hence the length of this post. Lindybeige has obviously researched the topic to great length, then ignored half of it to record 17mn of vague, dismissive and unsubstantiated claim that each take an equal amount of time to debunk. He present the facts as if everything that happened on British soil was under British orders so as to make the French Resistance only effective on their accord, all the while disregarding the French government in exile and slandering the efforts of French people but also inadvertently of the Americans. It is my honest belief that this sad excuse of an historian is either profoundly lacking in literacy or actively trying to justify his xenophobia by bending WW2 historiography around his bias, and whatever it may be he should be deplatformed to avoid spreading more harmful and disrespectful lies about a group of brave men and women who fought to liberate their country from fascism.

[reggies-eyeliner]

THE CLASSIC MATCHUP - @astrolupin

THE "SMALL THINGS YOU DO" COUPLE<3

#now playing ... BEWITCHED by laufey!

peter b parker is gentle hugs around the waist in the mornings, cups of tea (or coffee !!) given before you've even fully rubbed the sleep out of your eyes, buying takeout for your weekly movie marathons, being way too invested in national geographic documentaries (or the food network/great british baking show) at hotels, he's the calloused hands that still tend to your wounds and the unapologetic embodiment of safety and laughter.

visual art?? oh yeah, he's asking you all about it! he has an appreciation for the little things you do when you are creating art (from the way you jam out to to music to how concentrated you look while working) and absolutely loves it when he leans over your shoulder to find yet another masterpiece. while he can't say that he's an artist himself, he'll always be there to support you and give you a new lens on things when it's time to take a break.

when it comes to stress and anxiety, peter knows how to handle it right away. while he'll occasionally add a joke or two to ease the mood, sometimes the tension needs to be eased in a more natural way. he'll hug you gently if that's what you need, offer to bring you a blanket or a cup of water, and let you talk about what's on your mind for as long as you'd like to. there is zero judgement in his eyes when he's talking, and if anything, he wants you to talk more.

considering his love for connection and community, he'll definitely never stop asking you out on dates like a stereotypical teen would in an old 90s movie. whether it be dates to the cinema, the art museum, or aquariums, he knows that he wants every moment with you to be special.

peter b also knows that as spiderman, things aren't going to be easy for either of you-- but regardless, he wants to spend as much time with you as possible. nothing makes him feel more at home than laughing until his stomach hurts with you after a long day.

contrary to what a lot of the spider society tends to say, peter b parker has a lot of things on his mind that he doesn't always verbalize. with you, however, words come out so easily-- he finds them like they've been in front of him the whole time with clarity, and he's always there to have deep and meaningful conversations around you. he loves being able to be versatile with you, from laughing about a stupid inside joke from years ago to intently watching you while you talk about whatever's on your mind.

RANDOMIZED TROPE:

" domestic fluff "

it's late fall-- the world is pitch black even though it's only eight o'lock at night, rain is pattering against the window, soft music is playing as peter starts plating dinner onto the counter. you both sit down as you talk about your day, what's been on your mind. laughter fills your ears as a smile makes its way to your face, both of you aren't doing anything the world sees as "grand" or "special," but it feels right. it feels like home and it feels like safety, and peter b parker is there, so it feels like love, too.

a/n: thank you so so much for the request!! i'm so sorry again that this took me so long! but aahjcachs i had SUCH a blast writing your matchup, thank you again for sending one! take care of yourself and have a good day :D!

[averagenolofinwean]

Maedhros and Thingol in a Mystery Dungeon With Traps, "Magical Artifacts" and Useless Air Vents AU

Maedhros: Don't touch it.

Thingol: Why?

Maedhros: It'll explode.

Thingol: Oh, that makes sense. *glares at Maedhros* But you can't tell me what to do, because I am king. *pushes the button*

Maedhros: NO-

-----------------------------------------------------

Thingol: I miss my wife. I wish she was here, so she could comfort me.

Maedhros: I wish she was here so she could deal with your mess for us.

-----------------------------------------------------

Narrator: The heroes came closer and closer towards their destination, the peak of-

Maedhros: Who's close to orgasming?

Narrator: -peak of the dungeon, where the ancient amulet of Phar Amazon lies, one of the last remains of an old culture-

Maedhros: I'd like to emphasise that I do not support the british museum or condone any of their actions.

Narrator: and where they hope to escape the dungeons. The road ahead-

Maedhros: We are currently climbing up a cliff. For educational purposes, I am going to clarify: A road is not a cliff. There is no road ahead, only climbing.

Narrator: -is even more dangerous than before.

Maedhros: If you don't shut up and I won't get any food in the next hour, things are gonna get very dangerous for you.

Narrator: Will our heroes find their way home again or will they bite the dust and lie here in this dirty dungeon?

Maedhros: *groans dramatically* I just wanna go home to my husband.

*A few seconds later*

Maedhros: I don't have anything against biting and being dirty, though.

-----------------------------------------------------

Thingol: You know what, Noldo? You're not as bad as I thought you were. You're actually quiet nice.

Maedhros: Great for you. You are as ghastly and incompetent as I imagined you would be.

[copperbadge]

Radio Free Monday

Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday! Ways to Give: Anon linked to a fundraiser for Jamari Woodard, a young Black teen who was recently attacked by a white man and stabbed in the head with a tire iron. He is doing well but not out of the woods yet, and is going to need a lot of support, plus will be facing medical bills. While the fundraiser has reached its goal, that was a minimum number for what the family will need. You can read more and support the fundraiser here; there's also a cashapp name in the top post if you prefer to give directly. Anon linked to a fundraiser for dee-the-red-witch, a trans woman who needs to raise $400 for uncovered expenses and bills, and to feed her family for the next two weeks. You can read more, reblog, and find giving information here, give via paypal here, or purchase her leatherwork here. Anon linked to a fundraiser for rayshippouchiha, whose mother recently passed; she needs funds for the funeral and memorial service. You can read more, reblog, and find giving information here. (and Anon, I know you were worried, but you did just fine filling out the form!) kshandra has been out of work for six weeks undergoing cancer treatment, and her disability claim is still pending; as the primary breadwinner with a disabled partner, the family is losing most of their income during the leave. They've received some insurance money but most has already gone towards living expenses. You can read more and support the fundraiser here, or give via paypal, venmo, or cashapp. News To Know / Help For Free: snowy2989 linked to information about >Unite Here Local 11 (I'm linking to their "about us" page because the home landing page has a strobing graphic image that I'm concerned might cause seizures). This is a Southern California (into Arizona) regional Hospitality and Tourism workers' union who are striking for higher wages, better healthcare and pensions, and more protections for undocumented and justice system-involved workers. Their mutual aid linktree offers ways to stay updated, support picketers, and offer activism aid; they don't appear to be soliciting donations. Recurring Needs: rhythmelia has an update to last week's post about yilinwriter, who has had their translation work used by the British Museum in a major exhibit without credit or compensation. The museum has removed the translations (along with the original Chinese, silencing the poet) but has said that because of that, they will not pay for them; however, there are still uncredited and unpaid translations in the exhibition catalog. Yilin now has a fundraiser, working to raise £15,000 by July 10 to get their legal case started. You can read more and reblog here, or support the fundraiser here. And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can post items for my attention at the Radio Free Monday submissions form. If you're new to fundraising, you may want to check out my guide to fundraising here.

[canmom]

the especially crazy-making thing about this 'witnessing a genocide' situation is like...

ok, so there's lots of catastrophes that are genuinely kinda intractable. economics shit, climate change. the problems may be evident but there's lots of room for reasonable disagreement about how to solve them and it's easy to get stuck in a bad equilibrium where the only way out is coordinating an enormous collective action problem and nobody is making any headway. that's one kind of bleak, but at least it's a comprehensibly difficult form of bleak.

i know full well that 'genocide' is a geopolitical football where everyone wants to position what the other guy is doing is a genocide but what you're doing is merely anti-terrorism, assimilation, whatever. this is because the post-wwii consensus is pretty clear cut that genocide is one of the worst things imaginable and one of the only things that really merit going to war.

thus WWII, the official Good War, is retroactively cast as a war to end the Holocaust, even if in practice the Allies were pretty indifferent to what was happening and would turn away refugees, and their solution to the problem of millions of displaced people was to jump on board an ethnonationalist colonialist project that would send them all off to a newly defined 'Jewish state' in a spare country the British happened to have lying around in the Middle East... and well, we're seeing how well that's working out for everyone. subsequent stories of genocide, such as Rwanda, Cambodia, or Bosnia, tend to end with 'and then xyz country invaded and put an end to things and the genocidaires went to court and we put up museums at the mass graves and shot documentary films'. even though the nigh-universal hypocrisy about the subject is rancid, you can at least kind of imagine that there is some pretense that the objective of this whole affair is to stop these kind of mass deaths from happening.

at this point there is no ambiguity that what the Israeli army is doing in Gaza is genocide. they've cut off two million people without food, water, and electricity, shut off their communications, and rained the most sophisticated modern weapons on them indiscriminately for going on three weeks. they've blown up most of their completely overwhelmed medical infrastructure and done everything possible to disrupt it. this war is so one-sided it's not funny, it's just a massacre. Hamas can annoy Israel with rockets but can't do a damn thing to protect the population they're ruling. and there is nowhere for people in Gaza to run to. the border with Egypt is closed. an insultingly tiny trickle of aid has made it in, which will instantly disappear to the orders of magnitude more hungry people.

in short there is no option left besides wait to die.

but, ok. in contrast to all those intractable problems... this one is very simple to solve. Israel could stop dropping bombs whenever they feel like it, and negotiate for whatever they fucking want, e.g. prisoner exchanges. they could let the Palestinians out of the ghetto and dissolve the situation that creates Hamas. they could easily continue to maintain Palestinians as second-class citizens. (look at how lopsided South Africa remains.)

and if they won't, because the country is ruled by fascist maniacs with broad support across the settler population, the US - which has all the leverage in the world - could threaten to hang them out to dry until they call a ceasefire. Israel has so thoroughly made enemies of all its neighbours that they would not last long without that US backing. it needn't even get to that point, if the US said 'stop' and made it clear there was any sort of line... Israel might feel it has to do a little damage control and try to look good on camera. maybe hold off on the white phosphorous. leave a few houses standing.

but none of that is happening. none of it.

it seems like the ground invasion will be starting. it might be well underway when i wake up.

despite the 'simplicity', it's still not at all clear what one little human can do about it. if i go to a protest tomorrow, for the symbolic gesture of "having done something" if nothing else, maybe it will make me feel better, but the most likely immediate outcome is that the government (currently going through a rape scandal, i love the uk) is going to step up its internal repression of Muslims. somehow, the idea that the people are displeased with their democratically elected agents won't factor into it. the protestors become 'other' by virtue of protesting, another problem to control.

it's common to ask 'what would you have done if you lived in Germany (or Poland) during the Holocaust?' a lot of people imagine they'd be heroes, hiding Jewish people in their attic or becoming partisans in the woods or whatever. in practice, history suggests that most people would have gone along with it without much complaint, or even taken the opportunity to steal from the victims, moving into vacant houses, taking over companies, even helping the Nazis round people up.

i must not become an inner emigré. doing nothing when i could have done something is unacceptable. but what i feel, faced with this situation, is pathetically impotent.

i feel so sick.

[historia-vitae-magistras]

How do the rest of the fam react when Matthew basically loses it after the whole nedcan breakup-kiku drama? I know you wrote a oneshot where Alfred gives him a puppy which was super cute! But I wonder if it freaks them all out because Matthew doesn’t usually draw attention to his suffering??

Ooooh, good question, thank you. So I've gone over like 15 different iterations of the windmill expanded universe, and I'm just using this ask as a brain dump now so buckle in folks, this got long. But the way it happened, without anyone falling out of love so much as priorities shifting and readjusting as time passes. That created a situation where no one's at fault, its not like anyone's committing adultery, but differences in age, experience, and psychology made the fallout very uneven.

So as a Pacific Nation, Zee saw it coming a thousand miles away. Mai's schedule was opening up, and there was chatter amongst the East Asian democracies from the late 80s onwards that, oh, that pointy tulip-headed fucker is in our airports a lot. Kiku has dairy in the kitchen a lot more than he used to. There's yet another new statue to some Dutch fuck in a square in Tokyo. He and Mai aren't meeting up as nearly as much as they used to. So she's sitting on Jack's back deck drinking a beer, going, "Fuck, mate, Mattie's going to be even more depressed than usual." And even Jack, who typically pays far less attention to politics, much less any other anglo's sex life, is wrangling a gator out from under the floorboards and nodding sagely in agreement because even he's fucking noticed.

But then three, four, and five years pass, and things have yet to explode. Matt is so consumed with depression and internal problems that he doesn't realize how much Jan's withdrawn until it's too late, and the not-breakup. He never fell out of love, but when it comes to where Jan wants to spend his time, it's not with Matt. And at some point, that discussion happens, and Matt's absolutely blindsided. The boy who saw Francis and then Alfred leaving him coming a thousand miles away and adjusted halfway decently because he had time to prepare is just bashed over the head with the new status quo. And he doesn't know why. Jan has never sat down and discussed what he did in the far east. Everything Matt knows, he knows second-hand, in the abstract.

So he's showing up at Arthur's in a state even his father is like, "oooh shit" and Matt just kind of lays down and doesn't get back up. Arthur doesn't know what to do with him except bring him a cup of tea and give him an awkward pat. They have a very difficult conversation about Jan and Kiku that's absolutely humiliating for Matt because how could he not know these things? But yeah, Matt just kind of goes down like a dead log and lays there cuddling the cat until he's practically growing mushrooms. Profoundly unwell. Arthur can't do shit to fix it, so he goes and collects Matt's things from Jan like he's restocking the British Museum because he has to fucking something. He gets... rather protective of Matt. He throws out Francis when he starts making pithy comments about how Frenchman doesn't take this sort of thing lying down; they take it on all fours making vigorous love to a third party.

Alfred shows up when he looks for Matt to fix his headspace again and can't find him. He and Arthur got into it because they always get into it at least a little bit, and they're suddenly silent because they realize Matt's just gotten up, hefted the cat under one arm and left the room and gone to lie down in his actual bedroom rather than intervene. And he always intervenes. His prime biological directive is to keep the peace, and he just says fuck it, you're loud; I'm going to go be depressed in another room. Alfred has a blue screen of death. He doesn't understand why Kiku fucking Jan would make any difference; he has his harem of part-time partners. He doesn't know what to fucking do. The head shrinking and emotional support is Matt's fucking job. He gives Matt a solid pat on the shoulder and tells Matt, "I love you, dude, feel better." And fucks off back to North America.

Not long after that, Matt's deep-seated embarrassment about his existence overrides the depresso long enough to eat a solid meal and book himself a flight home. But he's not back for even a month before he's lost his fucking marbles and gone feral in the woods again. And it's not a good time of the year for it. Alfred ends up picking him up from a rural ER somewhere and doesn't know what the fuck to do with a baby brother who can't get his shit together, so he shovels some anti-worm meds and a rabies shot into Matt and puts him back on a plane to England. Calling up their father like "Jan and he were your idea. You broke it; you fix it!"

Arthur does what he hates most in the world and calls Alasdair. He'd rather call in an air strike on his house than call Alasdair for help, but father's favourite knife is fucking broken, and he can't fix it, and if anyone might be able to, it's Alasdair. And lord, even if he can't do much, he does get Matt on Vitamin D and an antidepressant. And he and Arthur practically force Matt out of bed and make him start going for walks and eating more than twice a week. It's all kicked in enough that when Jan sends him some vaguely guilty tulips, Matt hurls the entire thing against the wall, and starts swearing and screaming and throwing shit; Arthur breathes a sigh of relief and starts in Jan, too because oh thank god, Matt's finally releasing an emotion! He gets better pretty rapidly after that because the pressure eases up.

And then when he finally goes home, Alfred impulse purchases the pupper.

[oh-saints]

TIKTOK CHALLENGE

as cliché as it sounds, george has been hopelessly in love with his best friend for the past decade and everyone in the world can see that. well, except the person herself. until the viral “when you kiss your best male friend” tiktok challenge tries to play the cupid between the two.

“what’s next?”

george russell x archaeologist!OC

tw: none except 3.5k words (?!), best friends to lovers, angst to fluff, george being true (british) gentleman

note: i wrote this randomly and for fun without thinking because i couldn't sleep at 2 am and now it's 5 and i have to go to work in 4 hrs so ofc this is not beta-read.

george remembered the first time he met roweena as clear as the day.

it was the exhibition day for their dreams 10 years ago and george was carrying a miniature of silverstone circuit, complete with lewis hamilton’s f1 car to show how he aspired to be an f1 driver. everyone had been laughing at his dreams, saying how futile it was and saying how he should get a more realistic dream—when for george, it was as realistic as it got. then roweena came by to his seat, pulled out her hand for him to shake, and said, “i’m glad i’m not the only one who’s going to prove they’re all wrong about our dreams” while holding a miniature of terracotta under her arms, signaling her desire to become an archaeologist.

ever since, they had been inseparable. two peas in a pod, people say, and they couldn’t agree more. two of the most out-of-the-box children in the school, fighting against the world’s prejudice upon them. roweena had it more than george, probably, as she fought her place fair and square as a respectable archaeologist in a very much male-dominant environment—you know, the “male’s stronger for field job, you female should stick working at the natural history museum instead” bullshit.

it made them, more often than not, find the meaning of solace and endless support in each other. distance between them be damned, they’d find a way to get in touch no matter how busy they are or no matter how different their time zones are. they’d call once a week, he’d visit her site if she was away for a research, she’d go down to watch his races if she had the freedom, they’d spend a dinner or two whenever there was no race for george and no site visit for her.

it wasn’t rare if a new colleague or acquaintances of theirs would think they were dating when they saw how george greeted his best friend of a decade. with the height roweena inherited from her family and the growth spurt george hit when puberty came knocking his door, george would always envelop her in a tight bear hug, sometimes she’d be lifted to the air and spun around by the 6-foot giant if he was in a happy mood.

but one thing george never missed doing. he’d always slip a gentle kiss or two on top of roweena’s head as he hugged her while silently taking in her signature scent of lavender shampoo that somehow didn’t fade, even against scorching sun.

due to their proximity, a lot of his fans shipped them both and they weren’t scared to voice out their support on social media. in real life, he’d find a banner with their hugging photos compilation on the stands. those things played an ugly part to the arguments he always had with every of his past girlfriends at some point of their relationships, no matter how much they “accepted” george and roweena’s unusual dynamics at the beginning of their relationship. and george would let them all go without another fight; not because it was futile to fight jealousy, but because he himself knew how much he wanted his own best friend to be his girlfriend instead.

every time george fought with his girlfriend over this topic, he’d always get reminded that he badly wished roweena was his girlfriend, so he wouldn’t be having this conversation, for george knew roweena wasn’t going to get worked up at all over something as petty as jealousy. george knew because he’d seen roweena dating some other guy that wasn’t him, and those dating stories ended not because of jealousy but because roweena picked several conventional men that somehow always cheated on her because she was deemed too independent for those arseholes.

and every time roweena cried over those men, george would always get reminded that he badly wished to be her boyfriend instead, so she wouldn’t have to shed a useless tear for someone who didn’t even deserve the time and energy she’d put into their relationship. he knew he could treat her so much better, he would give her every thing that’s the best in this world. he already tried, even when she didn’t know any of it yet.

like right now, as george watched her interacting animatedly with mick schumacher from his paddock.

over the phone, she’d been begging to be introduced to the german because “finally there’s a cute guy amongst 20 of you!” and no matter how much george had tried to prevent the inevitable from happening, one cute pleading from roweena and he was a goner. if meeting mick would make her have the best time of her life, especially after a three-month long research trip to egypt, so be it. who was he to deny her wish?

so here he was, being briefed by his team but his eyes couldn’t look away from roweena and mick and his brain couldn’t focus on anything else than warning himself not to slamchoke the blonde german if mick laid his fingers one more time on roweena’s shoulder. was this how his ex-girlfriends felt whenever george and roweena interacted?

“if your head doesn’t come down from the clouds in the next fifteen minutes, i’m going to tell roweena myself you’ve been in love with her.”

toto’s use of his signature authoritive voice brought george back to earth. how the fuck did he know? combine that with the threat from his team principal, george was rendered speechless. it wasn’t often toto had to resort to pulling out a threat but he knew toto would seriously take an action for what he promised. meaning, george seriously needed to get a fucking grip on himself.

toto pointed out the direction of his hospitality room. “fifteen minutes to sort your shit out, george.”

george’s feet didn’t spare any more time to head out the engineer’s section, his head hung low both from embarrassment being caught red-handed by his boss and from remorse failing andrew as they presented their strategy proposal for this weekend.

george planted himself face-first on the makeshift bed, hoping mother earth would swallow him at that exact moment, as soon as he closed the door. if toto—someone who is usually the last one to know things outside of f1-related stuffs—knew, chances are the whole crew also knew about it.

his phone vibrated on his pocket.

Peter Bonnington – Mercedes Engineer

Roweena searched for you, now she’s coming your way.

Might as well tell her before Toto does.

yeah, bono’s text confirmed his fear of everyone in the paddock had smelled his coffee.

a series of knock placed against his door. “g, are you okay?”

it didn’t escape george’s attention that it couldn’t get more ironic that roweena was pretty fast in catching on these things, whenever george was troubled about something, like she had a special sensor for ‘george in trouble’, but never about his unrequited love towards her.

“yeah, come in.”

in all honesty, it wasn’t like confessing slipped off george’s mind. god knows how many time the words had already reached the tip of his tongue, but never made it past his lips because he was so afraid of the consequences, should all things go south. he didn’t think he could handle rejection, more over if she shied away from him after his stupid stint. she’d been a constant fixture in his life; as his pillar of support, as someone who always put his head on his shoulder, as his source of fighting spirit. she was everything george russell had become to be today.

including the mess in his head.

“you don’t look okay.”

he vowed this day would never come into his professional work, probably the reason why he kept dating someone else to keep his mind somewhere else. but how could he be okay when his frustrations had reached another whole new level?

“can we not talk about me right now, squirtle?” george had to stick his moniker for her, as roweena’s look very much reminded him of the pokemon, to make it sound like another day in the office. “tell me what you’ve been doing on other teams’ paddock.”

roweena flashed him a sympathetic look. it had been their shared trait to talk about something else when they were actually overwhelmed inside. knowing how it felt, she entertained his request. “i have something else more interesting for you, actually.”

“what can be more interesting than mick third-wheeling esteban and elena?”

roweena laughed to hide away her nervousness. impulsivity was never her forte so she didn’t know how to do it. god, why did those tiktokers make it so easy to execute it? “but i need to you do something for me. will you do it?”

the very pair of those beautiful brunette eyebrows she loved so much shot up at her request. “you know, i don’t think i had ever said no to you. i don’t think i can, either.”

that exact, particular reason was the reason why she, deep down, felt very guilty of what she was about to do. but after seeing esteban and elena again after a while, roweena wanted to do something about what she was feeling, despite knowing what she was about to ask of george would make or break their friendship. “why not?”

“because you’re my best friend,” george answered as if it was the most obvious thing in this world and roweena couldn’t blame him for not knowing whatever she never told him. “what is it?”

so roweena decided to do this the only way she knew; wing it away. “i want you to kiss me.”

the room felt as if they were transported to the arctic all of the sudden. but like a whiplash, you felt the hot, burning sensation hitting your skin soon afterwards. supposedly it took a while until the pain subsided, but the way george went rigid nailed the pain in its place for a while for roweena.

“is this the new joke danny taught you?”

“of course, not.”

“why do you want it, then?”

“why not?”

“there’s no logical reason why you’d want it,” george stood up, his frustrations towards everything going on in his life growing palpable every minute. “we’re best friends.”

should she just tell him the truth or should she keep playing the game? “exactly! i need to test on something and it requires a man to kiss me. but since i have no boyfriend and i don’t want to catch on an STD and i trust no other man like my best friend…”

“so what, i’m your best friend, caregiver, partner in crime, business partner,” george chuckled, but roweena didn’t like the sound of it. “now i’m your lab rabbit, too?”

roweena had gone through so much with george together, including the all-time lows in his career. the tone he was using now didn’t sit well with her. she understood he was under stress from performing well after a luckster weekend last week, but george russell was the epitome of gentleman. the man before her wasn’t the george she knew.

before she could abort the mission, george continued his tirade.

“i’ll have to say no this time,” george shook his head fervently as his hands went to his waist, his voice now turning gentle after he saw the hurt flashed in roweena’s eyes. he had to hold it in; she didn’t deserve the outcome of his frustrations towards himself. he kept repeating she deserves better on his mind as he released a deep breath. “god, that was the hardest no i’d ever said to someone.”

despite roweena being scared her best friend was turning into someone she didn’t recognize at a glance, she couldn’t help but get curious as to why george russell, at last, refused to commit a crime with his partner. “why now?”

george’s head snapped back to look at his best friend, looking so painfully breath-taking in the black sundress he bought for her when they were strolling rome before the imola grand prix. “what?”

“why do you say no to me for this one request? why now?”

george couldn’t take it anymore. if this broke apart their decade-long friendship, it gave him a better closure than letting toto do it for him. “do you seriously not know or are you acting stupid?”

something stabbed his heart immediately after seeing the hurt glazed again her beautiful eyes—the only deep place he’d let himself fall freely. he could tell he also brought shock to her system but sometimes a shock therapy was needed. “george, i—i—i truly don’t know. what are you saying?”

“for someone who earns cambridge’s masters by finding out about old civilization, you really should try keeping up with the modern ones,” george laughed in disbelief. “even toto ‘the finance guy’ knows about how long i’ve been in love with you.”

out of all explanations george could give, that was the last thing on roweena’s mind. with the impertinent way george had been speaking to her, it didn’t occur to her that he could possibly harbouring the same feeling as the one she’d been trying to bury since the first time he started dating.

as soon as george uncovered what pulled him towards a woman, roweena swiftly realized he was shooting cupid’s arrows towards models and other long-legged kinds—the very kind that was 180 degrees different than her. she soon concluded she belonged nowhere near his spectrum of interest so she decided to pull out of the race before it even began. why bother competing in a fruitless pursuit?

alas, george was his friends first before anything else. as much as it hurt her that he would never choose her to stand by his side for those red-carpet appearances or gala dinners, she was happy if he was. because if he was happy, he’d be happy on the track and nothing satisfied her than seeing her best friend achieving his dreams the way she did hers. that way, she had a piece of mind that at least, they’d get to say big, fat fuck you to the people who were laughing at them 10 years ago.

but like how their lives changed in the span of 10 years, roweena—especially her, who studied the development of civilization as her major—fully accepted that people’s life priority could change due to circumstances. hence, she’d take any time george would make for her. on the same side of the coin, she couldn’t possibly wait around any longer for george to come to his senses and ask her instead to be his girlfriend, so she decided to date around as well.

call it overcorrection or whatever you wish for, but it sucked when you feel like everyone else you meet paled in comparison to the george russell. had anyone told her beforehand that one of the effects of being friends with a male was how your boyfriends couldn’t match up to the standards they’ve set up for you, roweena certainly wouldn’t come up to george’s booth the first day they met and befriended him straight away.

today, it was true she felt jealous of esteban and elena together in the alpine paddock. she felt God wasn’t fair to her for not giving her own esteban ocon to her life when all she ever did was to be a good human being. but it was the viral tiktok challenge lando showed her right before she went back to the mercedes paddock that kicked her sense. lando, sneakily so, tried to persuade her to doing it with him and at first she was sold at the idea, but that was when she saw george’s figure retreating deep inside the grey paddock—somehow—from the corner of her eyes and suddenly, she felt everything she was about to do was wrong in so many levels.

“you really should do something about that,” the mclaren driver said. “george won’t be staying around as long as you think he will.”

so she used the very lame excuse lando just pulled on her on george, as out of character as it sounded for her, because she thought george would pay no mind like he always did whenever she popped her crazy ideas. that way, no one would find out about what she kept hidden these past years.

“so no,” george’s voice brought roweena back to reality, the same voice that could make her heart jump uncontrollably from the very first syllable over the phone. “i’m not going to kiss you unless you mean it.”

“what if i do?”

“but the problem is you don’t—”

george didn’t have the chance to finish himself when roweena marched forward with a determination george had never seen before and closed the gap between their lips. the kiss was exactly how one would describe roweena; silently passionate, silently wanting to prove everyone wrong—it was george this time around that she had to prove herself to—but deadly nonetheless when provoked.

“what do you know about how i feel anyway?”

george shivered to the bone under his windbreaker, as if there was an Icelandic air sweeping by his body despite the scorching british summer outside, at the way roweena whispered those words against his lips. “b—b—but i thought—"

if george managed to speak one more word with that husky voice he always produced whenever he just woke up or whenever he was sleepy beyond help, she couldn’t be held responsible for what she intended to do to him. thin walls be fucked. “that’s your problem, giant. you think too much.”

“oh, squirtle,” george pulled away at the nickname he proclaimed to hate but silently loved because she gave it to him, his fingers swept away her hair strands from her face and tucked it behind her ears, his lips went on a full lopsided smile because to do that without having roweena in her arms with tears running down her face was another level of sensational feeling he could swear he was bursting. “is that a challenge?”

it was incredible how roweena went from reciprocating george’s smile to exuding her inner vixen out. her eyes went down to his lips, her own opening to a small gap just perfectly enough to tempt george to slot in his, unleashing all the pent-up sexual frustrations he had to take care of himself the past decade. roweena moaned as george coaxed himself into her mouth, blown away at george’s capability to do such sensual act with so much gentleness.

as the saying went, you couldn’t get enough of an addicting taste. george felt that to a different dimension now, he felt like a dying camel searching for water. he thought her lavender shampoo was the peak intoxication, but her raspberry lip gloss on that plush lips beat the shampoo down by a long mile. combine that with the short breaths she kept making as his hands travelled down south, tracing her bodyline to be kept inside his modula oblongata, george had to pull himself away before a member of his team walked in on them ravishing each other.

it was a good thing he experienced this when he now had more control of himself—god knows what’d happen if this had happened when they were teenagers.

“as much as i want to have you in so many ways here,” george pecked roweena’s lips as a compensation, she was looking disappointed it ended too early for her liking. “i don’t want our first time in somewhere as appropriate as the hospitality room, okay?”

“but i’ve waited too long for that!”

“stop pouting,” george gave her another peck at her pouting lips, to which roweena tried to elongate more into another deep kiss. the racer chuckled at her attempts, shaking his head in disbelief of how much time they spent for nothing when they could’ve had this since ages ago. “uh, oh. i’ve been waiting since forever, too, you know? besides, my team needs me down for another briefing.”

“oh, i thought you’re done with it?”

“it’s your fault i can’t focus on it when you’re all over mick,” george put some pressure on his grip at her waist, feeling the curve fitted perfectly with his hands. “don’t do that again. i’m losing hairs as we speak.”

“but how do i prove to them we’re dating now?”

the naughty glint in her eyes told him a completely different thing than her innocent appearance. who is this girl and what have you done to his sweet roweena?

“don’t tempt me, you vixen.”

[prince-rowan-of-the-forest]

Ribbons and Rainstorms

Epilogue - 2000 years later...

----

Hello everyone! Thank you so much for reading this far!, since you've made it here I'm assuming you enjoyed my fic, but hey! Consider reblogging? Or leaving me a nice comment? Thank you to everyone who gave me advice and support whilst I wrote this, it wouldn't be the same without everyone in the Big Bang server helping to make this happen <3

Do read this epilogue, though, I personally think its worth it :D

I can't remember who it was who suggested the names for the characters in this chapter, but I love you, and thank you so much.

This fic is my child, I even have a wall in my bedroom dedicated to it, so, you best appreciate it or I'll be coming for your kneecaps!!

<- Previous | Masterpost

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“You sure it’s this way?” Lara said, turning to her companion, who was squinting at a map as he deftly avoided the thick plant roots that seemed perfectly placed to trip up a person.

“Certain,” he replied, “But— Lara— are you sure we should be doing this? The forest— eugh— definitely doesn’t seem to want us here.”

“Sure, it’s a pretty dense forest,” She said, “But I don’t think forests are sentient, Nathan.”

“Right, right,” Replied Nathan, before he stepped straight into a muddy ditch, getting the stuff all up his trouser-leg, “Why are we doing this again?”

Lara rolled her eyes, “The locals tipped us off about an ancient temple in these woods, it could be the discovery of the century! Don’t you want to be famous?”

“Not if it means getting killed by a forest that seems far more dangerous than it should be,” Nathan said, glancing back at his map, “We should be nearly there— just up this hill, if this temple even exists.”

Half an hour of trekking through the forest that just seemed abnormally out to get them, the pair of archaeologists finally came upon the temple. The place was old, black marble chipped and no longer shining, the braziers fixed to the pillars rusted and filled with ash and fuel long since burned out. The inside was dim, filled with dust and the smell of mildew. Vines and plants trailed across the floors and up the walls, hugging the pillars and walls with thorns and probing shoots. The place was certainly old, and certainly abandoned. 

“Wow…” Lara whispered as they mounted the crumbling steps, clicking on her torch as they entered the dark space.

“We— we should check that the walls are structurally sound before we go in here,” Nathan protested, staying back at the entrance, Lara turned back, rolling her eyes.

“It’s not like we’re taking a sledgehammer to it,” She said, “If it hasn’t collapsed in the time it’s been standing here, I doubt it’s gonna collapse now.”

She dumped her pack on the ground, fishing around inside until she pulled out a high-grade camera. Quickly flicking up the lens cap so she could take photos of the space. 

In one corner was a pile of moth-eaten blankets that barely resembled blankets anymore. A closer look revealed that they had become home to a fair few critters over the years. Nathan deftly cut a sample of the material, running his fingers over it and calling out that it was certainly a good two-thousand years old. Frankly, he was astonished any of it was still here. 

“There’s not much else here — I don’t think,” Lara called, running her hand over the crumbling stone altar. The draped fabric had been entirely eaten away, but the priceless metal decorations — the candelabra, the bowl, the chalice, still remained, “I bet these would fetch a pretty penny, I wonder if the British Museum would be interested.”

Nathan scoffed, “As long as it’s stolen from a native people, I’m sure they will be.” 

“Okay, maybe not the best idea, but we should— we should definitely report this to the historical society.”

“Yeah, good idea— hey Lara— what’s that?” Nathan asked, gesturing behind her. 

“What’s what?”

“Behind you, on the wall.”

Lara turned around, stepping black so the beam from her torch could light up most of the wall. 

Against the back stretch of wall hung a tapestry, a tapestry that depicted two figures holding hands, one with flowing black hair, dressed in beautiful robes that fit the fashion two millennia ago, and the other with tan skin and dressed befitting of a prince from a fantasy book. 

“Oh how beautiful,” Nathan whispered, the sight taking their breath away, “What a lovely tapestry…”

“Can you tell when it was made?” Lara asked.

“Well— based on their dress and the needlework—" he said, slowly approaching the tapestry and running his hand over it, before lifting up the bottom corner and checking the back, “And the wool, it looks to be from a few thousand years ago, but…”

“But what?”

“The fabric has almost no wear and tear whatsoever, the colours are exceptionally bright…” Nathan mumbled, “If someone told me this was made yesterday I wouldn’t be surprised, based on condition alone.”

“How is that possible?” She asked slowly, joining him in front of the fabric to run her hand along the edge, “It should’ve been ravaged by the elements, moths, other forest creatures— but it’s not damaged in the slightest… not even frayed…”

“Very strange,” Nathan nodded, stepping back again to see what it depicted, “Do you think they were friends?”

Lara looked at him with an odd expression, before letting out an exasperated sigh, “‘do you think they were friends’ no friends look into each other’s eyes like that— they’re holding hands— are you dense?”

“Okay okay ,jeez,” He raised his hands in surrender, “Who were they, do you think?”

“Perhaps the ones who live in this temple?” Said a voice from behind them. Both archeologists turned in sync, wide eyed, to stare at the tall figure in the doorway. When he took a step forward — into Lara’s torchlight — they both gasped, because he almost perfectly matched one of the figures on the tapestry. Dress and all — he looked like he’d just stepped out of a storybook, he was almost glowing. 

“Who are you?” Nathan asked hesitantly.

“Why, I’m Ro, of course,” they said, “I know mortals have been severely lacking in whimsy the last few centuries, but surely you haven’t forgotten us all completely. Also, I thank you for correcting your friend, that is in fact my husband.”

“Wait— slow down— just a little bit,” Lara said, raising a hand, “This tapestry is two-thousand years old, you’re saying you are this person— and the other is your husband?”

“Precisely,” Ro said, as though the information made any sense at all, “See?”

He gestured to their hair, where an elaborately designed crown sat atop his bun — the only thing about his appearance that wasn't depicted in the tapestry. It seemed to be made from gold and silver embellished with red and purple gemstones. It looked… incredibly expensive. 

The archeologists didn’t know what exactly the garment meant — unfortunately the culture around hair accessories had been lost to time, and now there were only brief records of the practice — but they could easily assume it was special to this strange person. 

“Now,” He said, reaching behind him and drawing a sword that was as thick as both Lara’s arms and twice as long, “Do you wish to do harm to this temple?”

—-

Lara and Nathan left the temple with no clue how to explain to the rest of society that they had just met — talked to, been threatened by — a God, but they would have to work it out before they got back, because that was without a doubt what had happened to them today. 

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<- Previous | Masterpost

[magpie-to-the-morning]

Stone Heart - Part One

Moodboard by @acrossthesestars

Rating: Teen

Pairing: Steven Grant x Demisexual!Reader

Word count: 1.5k

Tags: Just pure cotton candy fluff

Summary: Maybe Steven’s one-sided friendship isn’t so one-sided after all... AKA a Moon Knight Pygmalion AU

Author’s Note: You can thank @letterfromvienna for encouraging me to turn this silly little idea from a throwaway idea to a two part bit of self-indulgent, romantic fluff, and for contributing some wonderful ideas and bits of dialogue. Thank you also to @acrossthesestars for endless support in the form of proofreading, hand holding, and mood board making. I love you so much, my crow. 🖤

Steven can’t remember the first time he decided to take his break in the classical statuary gallery rather than the usual staff canteen. He’d tried eating there first, hoping to befriend some of his new coworkers. Months into working at the British Museum though, most of them remain politely disinterested in getting to know him.

He’d tried, really he had. Memorizing the names of their kids, remembering birthdays, letting them vent about their days. He’d even tried to organize after hours meet ups but after one too nights sitting at a bar surrounded by empty stools, silent phone in hand, he’d given up. He’s too talkative, too excitable, too… much.

It’s easier this way, retreating to the overlooked room tucked behind the Parthenon sculptures. That area is always swarmed with guests eager to see the Elgin Marbles. Steven avoids it. The idea of all those stolen artifacts in one place makes his neck itch. Granted, the museum is filled with those sorts of objects but somehow the sculptures and friezes in that room (at least, the ones not missing their heads) seem to glare down at him accusingly.

He much prefers your gallery. Sunlight streams in from banks of antique windows, painting the marble-clad room in shifting shades as the light changes. Blush pink and champagne gold in the morning, cool green in the afternoon when it filters in through vining ivy. His favorite time to visit is in the velvety blue nighttime when the lights are dimmed and moonlight glints off milk-white stone. It’s magical then, easier to imagine that the statues are just on the verge of leaping out of the shadows, bending closer to hear his late-night chatter.

Each one is familiar. The hunter, endlessly pursuing a stag he’ll never reach. The musician strumming her lyre. The bull-headed minotaur pondering his strange existence (“You and me both, mate.”) Steven’s walked the floor enough times to know them all from every angle. Knows every raised stone eyebrow and deceptively animated hand gesture. Time and again though, he finds himself drawn to the far left corner.

To you.

“Hullo!” He greets you with a half-wave and a shy smile, a brown paper bag clutched in his hand as always. “What’ve I missed?”

He eats slowly, contentedly, imagining you telling him about the day’s visitors or any new additions to the gallery. He’s not mad. He knows you’ll never truly speak to him. Your lips may be quirked in amusement, your eyes kind and somehow knowing, but you’re still a statue.

But hey, everyone has their flaws and Steven, spending his breaks on the bench beside your plinth, isn’t one to judge. You’re a good listener and while he wishes he could be the same for you, he appreciates the patient way you let him natter on. He tells you about his days, the postcards his mum sends, dogs he stopped to pet on his way in to work. Most of all, he tells you about his work in the museum.

“Did you see that new Ennead poster they have downstairs? It’s missing two of the gods. Two! I mean, I know marketing is busy but that’s a bit of an oversight, innit?”

“I told you about Donna, yeah? My boss in the gift shop? She’s making me stay late for inventory. Again. And the inventory she’s got me doing - you should see it. Boxes and boxes of Anubis plushies, just piles of the things. I’m all for getting the kids interested but it just seems weird to have little stuffed death gods all over the place.”

“You’ll never believe it. Remember the new hire I told you about? AJ? They quit. They didn’t even make it two weeks and oh, you should have seen Donna’s face when they told her off. It’s almost worth the extra shifts I’ve had to pick up.”

“Oh, I meant to tell you. The museum cafe has a gelato section now. You probably didn’t have gelato. Erm, like, a softer ice cream sort of thing? But I guess you didn’t have ice cream either… I don’t either, really. But they do have some nice fruit sorbets. Oo, like this mango raspberry one…”

It’s not all museum talk, though. Steven talks to you about archaeology journals he’s read, discoveries made and theories shared. He makes an effort to share details relevant to what he imagines to be your origin, but that’s proven difficult.

The plaque beneath your feet is scant on details (“Stone Maiden. Date unknown. Artist unknown. Marble.”) and even his own research hasn’t turned up much additional information. According to a researcher in the Antiquities department, experts disagree on when your sculpture was made, and even how. It’s so detailed, almost uncannily so, leading experts to argue whether a classical sculptor would even have been capable of sculpting such life-like precision.

He does his best. From the wreath of roses carefully woven through your braided hair, he guesses that you might have been a gardener. Your garb is fairly modest for a classical statue, though it’s gauzy and evokes sheer, clinging material so well he’d blushed the first time he saw you. He can’t tell much from that, but the scroll clutched in one hand suggests an interest in learning. He likes to imagine you slipping out of a sun-drenched villa to read in the shade of an olive tree. No, a willow, somewhere with cool water you can dangle your bare feet in. On especially rough days, Steven likes to imagine sitting down beside you and asking every question he’s ever had about you and your life, and what your voice might sound like if you had one to answer him with.

As the months slip past, Steven finds himself sharing more intimate glimpses into his life.

“His name is Gus! He’s just got the one fin, bless him, but you’d never know it with how he zips around. I’m not sure the bowl is big enough though. Should I get him a tank, do you think?”

“She never showed. Said something about me having the wrong day but that doesn’t seem possible, I think I would have remembered having a date, hello!”

“Yeah, so, the ankle restraints are helping with the sleepwalking. Maybe it’s for the best that dating hasn’t been working out - who wants to come back to a flat with ankle restraints and heaps of books everywhere? Besides, I think the place might be haunted? I’m the only one there but I can’t tell you how many times I put something down in one place and it turns up in another. So, unless Gus is some sort of rapidly evolving ‘super goldfish’…”

He comes to rely on these times with you, feeling more at ease than he does around Donna, whose expectations he’ll never meet or his co-workers, too absorbed in their own duties to pay much attention to an aspiring Egyptologist who can barely hold down a position in the gift shop. At least you’re always there to listen.

“I brought the new issue of Current Archaeology. The cover story’s about Dr. Salima Ikram’s latest discovery in Saqqara and oh, she’s just fantastic. Here, listen to this…”

“Are Oreos really vegan? I thought they were when I packed some for lunch but now I’m not sure… Maybe I’d better not. D’you want one? I’ll leave one here, yeah?”

“Ok this is silly but… I saw this flower on my way to work. It’s a peony, I think? Someone left it on the bus and it made me think of you. I imagine you don’t get to see many flowers and you might miss your garden, so, here.”

He wonders sometimes if he’s being a coward, or a fool, spending so much time and energy speaking to someone who will never talk back. Is it fear of rejection that keeps him coming back to you again and again?

It’s possible. But maybe it’s something else. The recognition of a kindred spirit, albeit one locked in marble. The dream that maybe, just maybe, his friendship could mean something to you, too.

It may be fantasy but it’s also the one moment in his day where he feels less alone.

Which is why when he walks into your gallery the next day to find your plinth empty and his usual bench occupied by a woman who looks oddly, impossibly familiar, the cardboard box in his arms crashes to the ground.

Part Two

[jazzyblusnowflake]

Why not move? I’d never stay in a country that treats its women this way. And you working for the government indirectly supports that. Good luck.

Okay so

i've been mulling over this ever since it came to my inbox and i've been trying to find a way to answer this and NOT be impolite or improper because i am aware that not everyone knows the complications of straight up moving to a different country, as it is not as simple as just moving to a different STATE, like the US, [and to be fair i've heard that even THAT could be stressful] and as someone who has LIVED in 3 countries and has visited another 5+ countries, let me tell you that your question is extremely ignorant and insensitive and straight up hurtful to all the people who both DONT want to leave their communities here and also the people who DO want to leave but are too poor to do so.... because our country, due to the prohibition by good ol' murica has now the lowest money currency value on the PLANET, and we have been suffering in silence for DECADES- with NO way to transfer money into our country- [donation campaigns are usually a scam, pay attention to those please] so in short? we are poor as absolute FUCK-!

and the process of moving somewhere else is already hard enough for people who DONT have as much financial issues, let alone US.

what exactly would anyone propose we do? when we dont have the money to request for any sort of visa, nor to get a house in a different country, nor food, nor for studying, living, getting medical or MENTAL health help- etc etc etc???

and reports of smuggling people out of the country usually come back as human trafficking or the gov blew them up or killed them somehow? idk this has actually happened with a PLANE once-

the only way to leave this country is being filthy rich, fucking LUCKY, or just a very very VERY smart student which again more often than not requires both money AND luck to get accepted in any university... so again.... no money!!!

like im sorry for snapping but here i am being told "why don't you leave" as if i haven't tried to find a way all my life, as if its some sort of sick joke- i cant, i fucking CANT!- i have family members i care about and wouldn't want to leave- other countries treat us like garbage thanks to online media portraying us as monsters- i cant spend another 10 years to study shit all over again just to send a letter to foreign universities with barely enough luck because im NOT that smart at all!! and it reminds me of when i look at my dad and say i wish we lived somewhere else and he looks at me like "then leave" in the cruelest way imaginable because he KNOWS we cant fucking leave due to him being a diplomat-

every country has its own culture and history and communities that they value and want to protect and stand by, so people cant just LEAVE, and even if they do, more often than not, other places would never accept them or appreciate them the same way their own country would. Like did yall tell black people to leave america after the BLM movement when George Floyd got killed? this is our home and we need to stop saying "then leave" and start saying "we need to start fixing this shit"

we are so fucking tired. please stop saying "then leave" if you just "don't want to help"...

as for me working for the gov, my dad is already a diplomat and keeps me away from doing anything against the regime, and also i'm considered one of the LUCKY ones in my country, who has a job that ensures a constant pay since the first semester of UNIVERSITY. im one of the few that could actually have a meal at night without worrying about what i'm going to eat tomorrow, and at the same time i teach kids from the inside to not take shit from the gov. i consider myself VERY lucky.

we aren't playing a videogame to take shallow black and white SIDES- even the protesters have destroyed privet properties and peoples cars and etc etc, and some people straight up want the monarchy system back as if that very system wasn't the entire reason that half of our countries riches and history isn't in the BRITISH museum today instead of their homeland!! this shit started over the freedom to WEAR what we want not to HURT everyone in blind rage!!!

Please never say "just leave" to anyone else ever again, especially to someone who doesn't even know if they'll live another day stepping out of the door, let alone drive all the way to an airport or the country boarders or something.... if they even HAVE the money to go that far.

So thankyou for reading and being concerned in your own way but id rather stay here and die in a country that doesn't accept me as a WOMAN than to live a futureless life in a country that wouldn't even accept me as a PERSON.

[munsons-maiden]

It's been brought to my attention that Worlds Apart has been stolen again. I don't know the name of the Wattpad account yet, and I don't know whether they at least credited me or not, but:

1. If you know their account's name, please report them and let me know the name, either in my inbox or via dm, so I can reach out and tell them to take my work down

2. I only post my stories on tumblr or on my AO3 account munsons_maiden so if you see my stories on any other account or platform, it means they've been stolen.

I DO NOT GIVE CONSENT FOR ANY OF MY STORIES TO BE REPOSTED.

The fact that this KEEPS happening, again and again, is disheartening and discouraging and, frankly, makes me want to stop posting my stories altogether for a while. World Apart, for example, took me half a year to write; 6 months of working on this story every single day, hundreds of hours not only of writing but also plotting, re-writing and editing. My heart and soul have been poured into it, and part of a deeply personal traumatic experience which, by writing this story, didn't entirely heal but soothe to a point where I started to make peace with it.

I'm not the only writers this happens and keeps happening to.

And it needs to stop. If you want to steal something, go to the British Museum or shit, but don't steal stories. It makes you a horrible person.

Over and out.

For those new to tumblr: rePOSTING = copy-pasting a story and then posting it as a new post on your own account, don't do that; reBLOGGING = pressing the two little arrows beside the like button at the end of the post and it means supporting a writer (or artist, gifmaker etc) to spread the works they created and it automatically shows who originally posted it so reblogging is what needs to be done to support us and keep fandoms and this site alive while reposting makes you a shitty person with a special place in hell hopefully reserved for just you, and not in a good way.

[dhigham]

April 2024.

This is my first attempt to update my blog in a very long time, so I have forgotten how this all works. This is the smallest of toes dipped in the unknown waters.

My researches into the Napoleonic Wars which I under took to help me produce the prints for 'printsforartssake' rather took over my life and have resulted in six books which I have put on the 'Blurb' website.

The first was British Firearms of the Napoleonic Era, which, being the first had several deficiencies. So I recently rewrote the beginning, added pages and clarified some points. I am not sure if the revised edition is available yet, that depends on the availability of my 'tech support', next time he is down from Edinburgh.

Volume II is British Edged Weapons of the Napoleonic Era.

Volume III. Weapons & Equipment of the Armies of Napoleon.

Volume IV. British Uniforms & Equipment of the Napoleonic Era.

Volume V. Histories & Uniforms of the British Infantry Regiments at Waterloo

Volume VI. Histories & Uniforms of the British Cavalry Regiments at Waterloo.

This is the preface to the sixth book which sums up what I was attempting to do.

'This book began, as all the others, as an attempt to organise what had grown into an almost unmanageable pile of images and information. The original intention was to have to hand a simple but comprehensive pictorial reference work for illustrative purposes but it began to expand as the size of the subject became more apparent and it turned out that there was always more to discover, which was half the fun. It in no way purports to be a work of definitive scholarship and any faults and omissions, such as there are, are completely unintentional. It was compiled from a variety of websites, including auction houses, costume suppliers, re-enactment groups, museums, replica makers, model makers and forums and of course, books. All acknowledgments, where the source can be found, appear on the relevant page.' 

I shall now attempt to add a couple of sample illustration.

Above uniforms of the 15th Light dragoons. (Vol VI)

Above: A trooper of the 16th Light Dragoons c. 1793 (Vol VI)

Above: An Officer of the 95th Rifles carrying the 1803 Officers Sabre and details of the weapon.

[rootisms]

A small and far from complete list of why every root faction is problematic and should be cancelled:

Marquise de Cat: They literally wanna industrialise the woodland. Kaczinsky would be seething if he knew what these kitties were up to (I do not support the unabomber in any way shape or form)

Eyrie Dynasty: Their claim on the woodland is entirely built upon them ruling it before. They are textbook conservatists yucky.

Woodland Alliance: Revolts are indiscriminate and hurt a lot of people involved. Their radicals with no clear goal after they win.

Vagabond: They're an egomaniac out for blood.

Riverfolk Company: Capitalism.exe

Lizard Cult: T-theyre a cult? Like what else do I have to say.

Underground Duchy: They are actual colonisers.

Corvid Conspiracy: Terrorism doesn't always win the day and they are trying to take control of the woodland via less than moral tactics if we read their plots.

Lord of the Hundreds: Ontologically evil.

Keepers in Iron: Visist the British Museum.