#is a complaint on its own. in public or private whatever

[sergle]

I turned off rbs on that earlier post abt the AU that thin people live in because I could feel it wanting to grow legs. and. contrary to popular belief, I do Actually value my sanity. a snippet before I go finish making my stew: what's unsaid here, but should be EXTREMELY OBVIOUS. Is that nobody takes issue with someone who is thin, making their own post or talking to a friend, bringing up a time someone made unsolicited comments about their body. and complaining, bc who isn't going to complain abt someone being shitty at you. (that's not "skinnyphobia" btw it's usually just misogyny) but that's not what happens, bc what happens is that someone uses the time Jimmy called them emaciated in high school as a REBUTTAL, AGAINST a fat person who was already talking about their own bad experience. and that one time the dress shop didn't carry XXXS is Proof that fatphobia isn't real and that thin people suffer just as much. check and mate. your thing can't be true, because someone was mean to me Once.

[pixelmensupremacy]

I told you I'd be here. Momma has her soup ready

May I request some Leon Kennedy smut? I don't know why Im this way LMAO

But the genuine idea of you and him going to a party and sees you in one of his favorite dresses and takes you away from the party to have his own private party with you.

A/N: I wrote this instead of going to sleep.

Word count: 1.1k

WARNINGS: Porn with no plot, unprotected sex, kind of public sex, not proofread

Chatter and live music filled the enormous space; every attendant was elegantly dressed, and each of their outfits was prettier and more detailed than the other, embodying the extravagance of the Victorian era. The ornamentation of the ballroom was just as equally extravagant as the clothing of its residents. Crystal chandeliers hung low above the gorgeous marble pattern of the flooring; the soft light illuminated the patterns, causing the crystalline formations in the marble to spark.

Nursing a glass of champagne, (Y/N) wholeheartedly laughed at whatever her interlocutor was so passionately talking about, in hope that he wouldn’t notice how little she engaged in the conversation. Truth be told she didn’t know who the guy was nor how she ended up chatting with him; it wasn’t like she paid much attention to anything that happened that night, for her mind was occupied with far more engrossing matters. Looking past the man’s shoulder, her wandering gaze fell on said matter.

The soft blue of his irises anchored her attention, able to lure her in even when across the room; and as if he cast a spell upon her, she felt her legs soften. Leon smirked fully knowing she was watching; that charming smile of his was the last nail of the coffin and (Y/N) felt how her feet were about to give out. Quickly, she mumbled an excuse and stumbled her way through the dense wall of people that stood in her way.

“So, we meet again?” He stated, he sounded certain as if their meeting was bound to happen, and the smile on his face didn’t fade.

“I suppose you refuse to leave me alone.” She shot back with her hands crossed before her chest in a defensive position. Leon giggled in response, secretly enjoying the little game (Y/N) was putting up.

“Well then- he paused to look at her, a darker blue tinted his irises- I could if you so desire.” He raised his brow at her, waiting for the answer he knew he would get. She let out a sigh.

“I suppose we can negotiate on that. Meet me in the bathroom.” Leon drowned the rest of his drink, eager to finally be able to peel the fabric of the dress that had so shamelessly bewitched him into blindly following after her.

Slamming the door behind him and locking it, Leon wasted no time catching up with manifesting the desires that haunted his mind all evening into reality. His lips caressed hers gently at first in a way of making sure she was completely comfortable. And comfortable she was with her hands frantically seeking the zipper of his slacks all the while her tongue traced his lips, silently begging for him to let their tongues collide.

Lifting the fabric of her skirt, Leon groped her ass, causing a deep moan to rip out her throat; her head rolled back, instead fulfilling his wish to trace the delicate skin of her neck. Her fingers tangled in his dirty blond locks while she held onto his shoulders, fully giving up on undoing his pants. Luckily for her, he did it; unbuckling his belt, Leon traced her still clothed folds through the fabric of her panties. He hissed at the mixture of (Y/N)’s warm slick lubing his cock and the feel of the texture of the fabric that caused an almost painful sensation to tingle his dick.

She dug her nails into his scalp as her grip on his hair tightened in desperation, she whined a plead for him to get in her- a desire he too sought after. Unceremoniously, Leon ripped her panties just enough for him to insert the tip.

“Those were one of my expensive ones!” She murmured in complaint.

“Trust me, sweetheart, that is going to be your last problem by the time I’m finished.” He whispered in her ear, shivers ran down her spine, foul grin curled the corners of her mouth.

“You better keep your promise.” (Y/N) hooked her arms around his shoulders, in preparation for what was to come.

“Darling, when have I let you down?” His forehead was touching hers as he fully pushed in. In unison, they panted out silent moans of bliss. Every thrust caused her entire form to shake; her bottom lip was caught between her teeth, biting back the moans that threatened to escape past her plump lips. Leon kissed her, whilst his hand reached for her clit, rubbing tight circles on it. (Y/N) gasped, involuntarily granting his tongue permission in her hot mouth. The vibrations of her moans resonated against him further motivating him to keep up his pace.

Mercilessly, his cock slammed into her; the sound of his skin crashing against hers filled the room and probably slipped past the bubble that the bathroom had become. Her juices pooled on the counter as she was getting closer to her high though Leon wasn’t pleased wet. Intentionally, he slowed down, pulling almost completely out only to slam himself back in and hit that spot that had her squirm. He pulled the straps of her dress, revealing her hardened nipples. With his mouth he enveloped the left one with the hotness of his tongue that worked on circling it with the eventual interference of his teeth grasping the sensitive flesh; his other hand remained on her clit, putting pressure on it just enough to keep her on the edge.

(Y/N) was a moaning mess, any remorse left had gone long ago as she didn’t care if anyone could hear her; all she cared about was how good Leon’s dick felt stretching her out to her limit and how agonizingly slow he moved. Her nails dug into his flesh, sure to leave crescent marks on his fair skin. His name rolled down her mouth akin to a prayer that kept her sane; once she started pleading, that’s when Leon knew he brought her to her limit.

“Have you had enough fun, sweetheart?” His voice was hoarse but attractive nonetheless. She shook her head.

“Do you want me to make you cum?” His bangs tickled her forehead, she nodded frantically.

“Good.” Immediately, his hips crashed against hers; electric waves spread through her body, warmth rushed through her. A few thrusts were all it took for her to scream out his name as she reached her peak; her walls clenched, coating his aching cock with her cum. Following after her, Leon came inside her, painting her walls with his cum.

For a minute, they stood still, trying to catch their breath. Resting his head atop her chest. Leon listened to her heartbeat as he came down from his high; she planted her chin atop his head, deeply inhaling the scent of his shampoo and cologne, it almost made her walls twitch again.

“You gotta be careful wearing this dress.” He panted.

“Why?” She questioned, genuinely curious.

“It makes you a hundred times more irresistible.” (Y/N) giggled at his cheesy remark.

“Maybe I should wear it more often.” She suggested, a smirk appeared on her face.

[une-sanz-pluis]

What's the relationship between Henry V and his wife?

Hey, thank you for this question since it covers a topic I'd been wanting to talk about for awhile. Sorry it took so long to give you an answer. In my defence, I've had a lot on and I wrote a lot (a lot, like nearly 10,000 words a lot) in reply.

Unfortunately, we don't know an awful lot about Catherine de Valois's relationship with Henry V. This is largely because they were only married for just under 2 years and 3 months.* That brief a time tends to leave little evidence behind - it's also one of the reasons we know very little about Catherine's queenship. In spite of the lack of evidence, the relationship has been subject to much speculation, mythologising and (over)interpretation, and it can be hard to drill down through these layers to come to any kind of certainty about how they felt about each other.

There are three main interpretations of the marriage. The first is the romantic. This tends to work with the more romantic legends of both Henry and Catherine, and its roots lie in contemporary narratives, quite likely promoted by Henry himself. The second is that there was some kind of infatuation on Henry's behalf that was followed by disillusionment as he realised Catherine was not who or what he thought she was. The third interpretation argues that Henry was a cruel and abusive husband to Catherine.

I, personally, don't find any of these interpretations particularly convincing. The politics around the marriage suggest that we should be sceptical of the romantic, while the evidence of there being some kind of disillusionment or cruelty in the marriage is... pretty much non-existent; the evidence that is cited has to be heavily interpreted, with at least a pre-existing bias against Henry and/or Catherine in mind (if not a pre-conceived conclusion) to conclude that the marriage was unhappy.

I'm going to start with my own interpretation and then talk more in depth about these interpretations, debunking particular assertions said because there's a lot about them that annoy me.

Evidence, or something like it.

We have very little evidence of Henry or Catherine's personal lives at all and once we also factor in the limited evidence of their relationship, it gets very tricky to discuss this in any meaningful sense. Another issue is that their relationship was both personal and political. What might read as a personal gesture of love has to be understood as also existing in a public, political world. Being publicly seen as part of a functioning, loving marriage was advantageous to both Henry and Catherine's reputations and their rule, whatever they felt about each other privately, and unfortunately, it's the public face that largely survives. I'm going to discuss the public/political side of their marriage first and then turn to what little evidence there is to suggest at their private relationship.

A Partnership

Chroniclers in both England and France report romantic stories about Henry and Catherine. I'll discuss these more further below and the possibility of these being the result of some romantic gloss, but it's enough to say that the chronicles do uniformly give a similar view. The English king was in love and the French princess was beautiful (women very rarely get given any interiority in chronicle accounts). There are no reports of discontent between the couple, no complaints of mistreatment of one by the other.

It is easy to argue that the English chroniclers and those French chroniclers sympathetic to the English occupiers were unlikely to depict Henry V in a bad light but that would not explain the silence of chroniclers sympathetic to the then-Dauphin (the future Charles VII). We even have complaints of Henry's behaviour from French sources but these relate by claim that Charles VI and Isabeau of Bavaria were left to lodge at the Hôtel de St Pol in less grand estate than they were accustomed to while Henry and Catherine lodged at the Lourve in luxury and splendour. Jean de Waurin records:

And on this said day [Whitsun 1422] the King and Queen of England sat grandly and magnificently at table to dine, crowned with their precious diadems. There sat also at other tables in this hall the ecclesiastics, dukes, princes, barons, knights, and noble men, who were all honourably served, each one according to what belonged to his rank. So the king and queen that day held a court grand and rich beyond the French custom; and the people of Paris went in crowds to the castle of the Louvre to see the style and demeanour of the King and Queen of England holding open court and wearing crowns. On the other hand the King and Queen of France held their Court by themselves in their Hotel of St. Pol, but by no means so grandly or plentifully as they were accustomed to do in days gone by. .

I quoted it at length because it also gives a glimpse of how a French chronicler viewed Catherine at the time of her marriage, which as Henry's partner of equal standing (for as much as that was possible for a medieval queen-consort). This sense of partnership is also found in some of the surviving evidence: she received gifts alongside him, accompanied Henry on some ceremonial entries (the exceptions being when she made her own entry or when they made the ceremonial entry into Paris in 1420 where Henry entered with Charles VI and Catherine with Isabeau of Bavaria). It doesn't tell us much about the inner-workings of their relationship but it does tell us that, at least publicly, their marriage was not one where one spouse was drastically unequal to the other, but one where they were partners of equal standing.

As far as we can tell, Henry also gave Catherine the space to establish herself as queen. She was welcomed to England with pageantry that befitted her status and that centred her, not Henry, and took part in a ceremonial entry to Paris in 1422 where she was the centre. He was not present at her coronation - this has, perhaps unsurprisingly, been interpreted as Henry slighting her but it was custom for a king not to attend his wife's coronation unless they were being coronated together, so not to draw attention away from her. It's possible that the parts of their 1421 progress through England where they travelled separately served a similar purpose in allowing Catherine the opportunity to be centred as queen, though practicalities (such as the exorbitant costs of a combined household on progress, a frequent cause of complaint for other medieval kings) were undoubtedly at play too.

On a similar note, we have a letter from Henry seconding Catherine's request that her physician would have a benefice without cure. This isn't anything special or unusual but it does show that Catherine felt she could make these requests and Henry trusted her judgement enough to grant them. In the Calendar of Patent Rolls, we also find that he granted Catherine's confessor £20 yearly and that he pardoned Beatrice, Lady Talbot of a fine in part because of her good service to Catherine - which may suggest Catherine had interceded privately for her, or had spoken to Henry of her service.

Henry also named Catherine as one of the supervisors in his last will, written in June 1421. In the codicils added just days before his death in August 1422, he states:

we wish that our said consort after our death should live and reside with our most beloved son in his office

This, again, is fairly standard stuff since the children of medieval nobility tended to reside with their mother in the nursery until they were around 8 years old. But again, it does indicate that Henry saw Catherine as someone worthy of trust and that he wished for her to live with their son, where she might not be at the centre of the court during the minority, but would develop a close rapport with her son and quite possibly come to wield a great deal of influence as Henry matured and took on more responsibility. It also ensured her a continuing presence in the royal court. The chroniclers depicted Catherine as a prop to support the infant king, carrying him to parliament and so on, which does mean she was present on those occasions at, like Henry VI, at the symbolic centre of them. But this does not necessarily mean that was all she did. Queens were supposed to work behind the scenes.

Another piece of the puzzle may be the coupling of mottoes. At some point in 1420, a red cloth covering for the king's barge was embroidered with Henry's motto of une sanz pluis coupled with a second motto, humblement le requier ('I humbly request it') - this barge covering was said to have been for the "for the king and the queen", while the 1423 inventory of Henry's goods referred to a similar barge covering embroidered with the "mottoes of the king and queen". If they are the same barge covering, humblement le requier may be Catherine's motto or at least connected to her (Henry also had a tunic of white and blue satin embroidered with humblement le requier, which may have meant he was wearing clothes decorated with her motto or in his own motto referring to her). Malcolm Vale argues that these mottoes are a love dedication - a request by Catherine (she humbly requests Henry's fidelity), and Henry's answer (Catherine is Henry's "one" and there will be none other than her). It is likely, as Vale notes, that these are fairly conventional mottoes, gesturing towards courtly love rather than a heartfelt dedication but if Vale is correct in reading them as a "statement and response", they suggest that Henry and Catherine wanted their relationship to be seen as a partnership.

I also wonder if Catherine's motto of humblement le requier (if it was her motto) may have been a broader statement on her queenship, setting up her as an intercessor. We have very few indications of Catherine interceding to Henry - there is a story that she interceded with Henry for the release of James I of Scotland at her coronation feast but given Henry was not present, it's likely this story confused her role in James I's release during the minority of Henry VI - but the motto may be a suggestion that this was the role Henry wanted for his wife. My own gut feeling is that Henry intended to model his marriage with Catherine on that of Edward III's marriage to Philippa of Hainault, a famous intercessor and the woman who was seen as the paragon of medieval queenship.

Everything in this section is pretty typical queenly stuff. It can't tell us about Catherine and Henry's personal relationship but it does show that Catherine's queenship was conventional. There is nothing - nothing at all - that suggests her position was being undermined by Henry. Unless we wish to argue that medieval queenship was effectively a symbolic and utterly powerless role - and there's a whole bunch of queenship studies that says differently - Catherine was or at least intended to be a vital partner in Henry's kingship. That Henry did not live long enough for Catherine to get the chance to exercise this role long enough for a record of it to survive does not mean that she never played that role because he devalued her or refused to let her be a queen in more than name.

Personal Relationship.

There's very little surviving evidence of their personal relationship but there is some evidence that we can tease out that might tell us a bit more about their relationship.

One of these is that two harps were shipped from England to France in October 1420 for their use. This may have formed an entirely conventional gift, since playing musical instruments was a common hobby amongst the nobility. However, we know Henry had a particular interest in music himself - he'd played the harp since a child, purchased another new harp with a set of strings and a case in in September 1421, purchased bags to carry his own recorders and pipes/flutes and was possibly the "Roy Henry" who composed two mass movements. He was also part of a musical family - his mother may have composed music herself, as may his father (who is the other contender as the composer of the Roy Henry movements), while his brothers were patrons of noted composers of the era. So, the fact that two harps were shipped over for their use could indicate that they had a shared interest or Henry was attempting to share his interest with Catherine or introducing her to a hobby that his family prized. We know nothing about whether Catherine had an interest in music or what kind of interest she had to be more precise and of course it could just be a fairly conventional gift.

Another piece of evidence is Henry's will. In the original will, drawn up in June 1421, left Catherine a great deal of moveable goods. From his chapel and altar, he left her all the"gold, silver-gilt and silver treasures and all other ornaments", as well as vestments and books for 20 clerks that would serve Catherine after his death. He also left her all the beds, furnishings, vessels, instruments and possessions of his chamber and hall. He notes two indentures left that specifically detail the items he wishes specifically to be bequeathed to her and states:

we wish our aforesaid most beloved consort to have and enjoy all the aforesaid items bequeathed to her in this way if she should be happy to be satisfied with them as her interest and share of all our moveable goods that can come to her in any way after our demise. Otherwise our said executors should dispose of all the aforesaid items, thus bequeathed to our aforesaid consort, as is said above, as our other goods.

In other words, he's leaving her a lot of stuff, he's got stuff he wants her specifically to have but he's also giving her the freedom to pick and choose what she wants, and if she doesn't want them, they're to be dealt with like his other goods. (n.b. "our most beloved consort" was a standard term of address, it isn't necessarily a statement of his true feelings).

This paragraph also ends with this note:

Item, we bequeath to our same consort a golden cross of ours with a piece of the wood of the Holy Cross, now in her custody, which we were accustomed to wear.

Which suggests that he might have lent this relic to her - one that might have been important to him, given he states he was "accustomed" to wear it - and wishes that it belong to her now. It may have been a gesture of affection that he loaned the relic to her, or it may have been another conventional gift, perhaps given when he left England for France in June 1421, knowing she was pregnant.

Just four days before his death, Henry added codicils to his will. Most of these codicils is concerned with the future - making provisions for his son - but the first codicil concerns itself with more bequests for Catherine, this time fairly specific bequests, and the provision of her dower. While these may have been a fairly standard provision and may reflect Catherine's enhanced status following the birth of a son and heir, it also indicates that he was thinking of her. Interestingly, the fact that this is the first codicil may well indicate that he was thinking of her in his last days, regardless of the fact that she wasn't physically present.

None of this tell us a great deal about what Henry felt for Catherine. Because their lives were heavily politicised, it's impossible to know what was a gesture of genuine affection between the two and what was a politic action that showed the respect of a king for his queen. Determining which was the primary motivation for any of Henry's actions is an exercise in speculation led by our own feelings, not an exercise that finally reveals Henry's.

Catherine's perspective.

Thus far, I've spoken mainly about evidence that hints at Henry's feelings and actions towards his wife, not Catherine's. By and large, the main reason for this is that we simply don't have evidence for her perspective. This isn't unusual; as Ruth Mazo Karras points out, it's rare that the surviving historical evidences any woman's perspective on her marriage.

The closest thing we have to evidence is a letter Agnes Strickland mentions in Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman Conquest:

Early in the same spring [of 1422] Katherine wrote her warlike lord a most loving letter, declaring that she earnestly longed to behold him once more.

However, Strickland does not give a source for her letter and in Letters of the Queens of England, 1100-1547, Anne Crawford says that none of Catherine's letters are known to survive though she (nor anyone else) doesn't mention Strickland's citation of a letter. Having said that, Strickland is nowadays notorious for inventing "facts" about her subjects that are have no basis in truth. So I'm inclined to treat this letter as a bit of romantic fakery, whether by Strickland or by someone else.

Catherine did pay for Henry's tomb but this seems to have been a standard action for a widowed queen and we don't know whether she had any influence on the design and construction of the tomb. She was not buried beside Henry or in the same chapel, but in the Lady Chapel (her tomb was dismantled and her body exhumed in 1502, she is now interred in Henry's chantry chapel), which is very close to the chapel of St. Edward where Henry was buried. We don't know why she chose this burial location, or if she chose it at all.

Given her status as Henry V's widow and queen and the fact that she was footing the bill for his tomb, it seems likely that she had some opportunity to be buried beside him, but it wasn't taken up. It might not have been wholly her choice. There was limited space in St. Edward's chapel (Henry VI struggled to find space for his own tomb, which was never built) and there might have been political issues or propaganda at play. Depending on how quickly she had to make that decision, Catherine may have been considering an uncertain future where she might not remain in England (if her son was to achieve France, if she married a foreign lord). Alternatively, her second marriage may have meant that burial beside Henry was a denial of Owen and their children or, given the heights of Henry's reputation, was no longer something she (or others) felt she "deserved" following her re-marriage. We just don't know.

And that pretty much sums up Catherine's perspective: we just don't know what she felt about Henry.

Success or failure?

Politically and dynastically, I think we can say the marriage was successful - it produced an heir, it promised peace with France and Catherine appears to have been a popular and successful queen-consort in England. It is true that the peace with France never came to fruition or that the birth of more children could have safeguarded Henry VI's reign and the Lancastrian dynasty but... these issues were caused more by the marriage's end than by its actuality, and other factors were at play - not least Henry V's premature death.

Personally? We just don't know. The evidence isn't there. We don't know what Catherine felt about Henry, we know frustratingly very little about her. Henry's actions suggest that he was treating Catherine with the respect her station and status as his wife deserved, that he was using the tropes of courtly love to do so, but we have no idea whether this reflected anything of his own feelings for her.

The Romantic Fairy Tale

The romantic interpretation of their marriage tends to fit in with the more romantic legends of both Henry and Catherine; at its core it is quite simply a fairytale-type of story. He is a handsome warrior king who sweeps the beautiful French princess (most commonly the most beautiful woman in existence) off her feet, she falls instantly in love with the magnanimous conqueror.

It is true that chronicles have fostered a view that the relationship between Catherine and Henry was a romantic one, and this view is perhaps aided by William Shakespeare's depiction of their courtship in Henry V. Although some productions and a great deal of scholarship offer up much darker interpretation of their one scene, a lot of times it is presented as a romantic one - particularly in the filmed versions of the play. As big as a shadow as Shakespeare casts, Catherine's scenes in Henry V are ahistorical, appearing to be Shakespeare's inventions.

Chronicle accounts of Catherine and Henry's relationship need to be viewed with a good deal of cynicism. They could be written to promote certain messages or to flatter patrons (or potential patrons), dedicatees and/or desired readers. Titus Livius Frulovisi reports in the Vita Henrici Quinti that Henry fell in love with Catherine at their first meeting but as Katherine J. Lewis points out, the book was addressed to their son, Henry VI, and the story's inclusion may have been to please him. Frulovisi was also employed by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, Henry V's brother, and the Vita was intended to lionise Henry V, so these no doubt played a role in its depiction of Henry V's marriage to Catherine. Being a good husband was an ideal of kingship, since the king could be said to be metaphorically married to his kingdom and the way he was perceived to treat his wife could be seen as reflecting his ability to rule well.

There are similar stories of Henry V being greatly pleased when he receives a portrait of Catherine or becoming lovesick upon hearing the report of his ambassadors' meeting with her. In these stories, the moment of "instant love" comes before Henry ever meets her. Those particular stories could be said to be deploying the tropes of courtly romance to gloss over the fact that Henry's intention to marry Catherine was driven by much less emotive reasons. Given one of these stories is contained with the letter of a Venetian merchant who was trying to sell Henry a balas ruby (a red spinel), this may have even been a story deliberately publicised by Henry - perhaps with the intention of making himself look eager for marriage, perhaps to put pressure on the French.

Monstrelet tells us that Henry greeted Catherine "joyously, as if she were an angel of God" upon her arrival in Paris in May 1422. This might be a sign of personal affection for Catherine but there are other factors at play. Given his goals in France and her status as Charles VI's daughter, it'd be especially politic for Henry to greet Catherine affectionately. The fact that this was the first time they'd seen each other after the birth of their son may have also played a role in this greeting.

Henry V does seem to have been especially conscious of the ideals of kingship and trying to behave in line with them. As I've already indicated, his behaviour around Catherine - especially in public - may well have been intended to give the image of himself as a devoted suitor and husband. It doesn't necessarily mean that there was nothing but cold-blooded cynicism in his approach to Catherine but it's pretty clear that Henry had an acute understanding of his image and what was desired of him, and it would be short-sighted not to imagine that this understanding didn't play a role in his relationship with Catherine. The relationship between a king and queen was political just as much as - if not more than - it was personal.

There is little evidence that Henry was moved by any romantic impulse into fast-tracking his marriage to Catherine. During initial negotiations with the French, he asked for a dowry of 2 million crowns and rejected the French's counter of 800,000 crowns. His decision in 1420 to forgo a dowry for Catherine might have been a gesture of love or some other romantic feeling - or it might have been (and is, in my opinion, more likely) a shrewd political move, where Henry avoided taking a dowry that implied his inheritance of the French throne was through his marriage to Catherine rather than in his own right.

At the end of the day, too, they didn't marry because they fell desperately in love. They married for diplomatic reasons, for political reasons and for a peace treaty. It was the politically wise thing to do. It was, after all, a fairly standard marriage within the context of his own family and the medieval and early modern European monarchy. This doesn't mean it was a bad marriage or that there was no possibility of love. But it's not the reason they got married. We have very little evidence of their married life together to know whether any romance did develop.

Infatuation Followed By Disillusionment

This interpretation generally follows a particular narrative where the stories about Henry falling in love with Catherine at their first meeting are true but it's more of an infatuation or crush and as he gets to know Catherine better, he finds himself disillusioned by her and they become estranged. This might happen for a variety of reasons: a realisation that the Treaty of Troyes was not the win he thought it was, the realisation that while she's pretty, she's unintelligent, or the realisation that she's ruled by lust.

There is no real evidence for an estrangement. I believe it draws mainly on the idea that they spent about half of their marriage apart but, personally, I suspect that time was more of a reaction to the military situation in France following the Battle of Baugé and the fact that Catherine was pregnant for the first time (I'll discuss in much more detail below).

Catherine as the femme fatale and the Treaty of Troyes.

There have been reassessments of the Treaty of Troyes that argue far from the disastrous blow to France, put England at a disadvantage. The argument then follows that after Henry's rather slow realisation of this fact, he came to blame Catherine (...somehow) or at least distanced himself from her as a result. I'm... not entirely sure what logic Henry would have used since Catherine appears to have had no role in the actual negotiations and Henry was a 33-year-old man surrounded by the best people to advise him. Frankly, this interpretation seems to be heavily based on the misogynistic narrative of "a pretty young woman bamboozles an older man with her beauty in order to ensnare him in her evil trap otherwise he wouldn't have made such a stupid error" (we find a similar narrative with Margaret of Anjou and the surrender of Maine and Anjou). There are no indications that the Treaty of Troyes came to be viewed as an unfair bargain in England or that Catherine's reputation or relationships suffered as a result.

Catherine as a "dumb blonde".

This view is best surmised by novelist Anne O'Brien who describes historians' typical depiction of Catherine is the "archetypal ‘dumb blonde’", or Anne Crawford who claims:

Katherine had beauty to recommend her but neither the intelligence nor personality to captivate for long a man of Henry V's qualities.

There is no evidence that Catherine was lacking in intelligence, education or personality. Even if she was, she is still deserving of respect and personhood. The idea that Catherine was poorly educated comes from now-debunked claims that Isabeau of Bavaria neglected her children; most likely Catherine was educated to the standard for royal women and knew how to speak both French and English upon her marriage to Henry. It has been suggested that poems like John Lydgate's Temple of Glas and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight could be connected to Catherine, which could, in turn, make her the patron behind them. It's difficult to tell what the evidence to support this interpretation of Catherine is. Largely, it seems to insist on her lack of intelligence on the basis the misogynist claim that she was governed by lust and thus "unwise" and the belief that the absence of evidence on Catherine's life and personality tells us something meaningful about her personality. It does not. Absence of evidence isn't evidence, it is only an absence.

Catherine as a nymphomaniac.

Uncritically accepting the claim that Catherine was "unable to fully control her fleshly passions", this view is often an extension of the "dumb blonde" narrative wherein Henry eventually learns that Catherine is a hollow creature who cares only for lust and pleasure and is repulsed by her. The most extreme example I know of is Denise Giardina's novel, Good King Harry, where Henry first falls in love with Catherine only to discover that Catherine is the young and beautiful version of her monstrously oversexed and monstrous mother, Isabeau of Bavaria. Catherine is neither a virgin on her wedding night nor faithful to Henry, at one time even boasting that he didn't father Henry VI. Giardina's depiction is tied up in the incredibly misogynist depictions of Catherine as a slut or a nymphomaniac.

There is no evidence that Catherine was an adulteress. There were no contemporary claims that she committed adultery or that any of her children were bastards - even when we might imagine that it would be beneficial for these claims to be aired (i.e. if it was plausible that Henry VI wasn't Henry V's son, why didn't Richard, Duke of York claim that? Why didn't Richard III claim Edmund Tudor was a bastard when he was denigrating Henry VII's ancestry and falsely claiming Owen Tudor was a bastard?). The evidence for Catherine being a "slut" are basically a standard antifeminist smear by a chronicler that has been uncritically repeated. We know of only two sexual relationships she had - both of which were with men she married (and she was married to Owen Tudor), her second marriage was made years after being widowed in her early 20s. The view of her as "sluttish" because of her Tudor marriage may reflect moralistic outrage over the fact that Owen was Welsh and of much lower status than Catherine, as well as the possibility that the marriage was perceived as a "profound betrayal of Henry V's memory". There is no evidence that her relationship with Edmund Beaufort was sexual and the idea of Catherine marrying Beaufort may have even originated from the Beauforts, not Catherine. Even if she did have a sexual relationship with Beaufort (which we do not and cannot know), are we really saying that a woman having sex with three men, two of which were her husband and the other she almost married, over the course of a lifetime makes her a slut? Even if Catherine had sex with 58 trillion different people (which she very obviously didn't), we as modern commentators should do better that to uncritically repeat and confirm the misogynistic and slut shaming rhetoric of medieval and early modern writers.

But to come back to the question that this behaviour could have had on her marriage to Henry - well, we have no evidence of this. It is incredibly unlikely that she cuckolded him or had any affairs, and we have no evidence that Henry was repulsed by Catherine liking and wanting sex. It's possible, of course, that there was some kind of sexual incompatibility between them though we don't and can't know that. At the end of the day, there is no evidence to hang a theory on.

A "Cruel" Marriage?

The interpretation that the marriage was a cruel one. Typically, this is hand-in-hand with the revisionist interpretations of Henry (cf. Ian Mortimer, Keith Dockray, A. J. Pollard) that see him as a warmongerer and the worst of the late medieval English kings, utterly unredeemable. This interpretation most commonly features an cold and brutal Henry, often a marital rapist, abusive, neglectful or just not interested in Catherine beyond the getting of heirs.

There is no real evidence that the marriage was an unhappy one, that Henry raped, abused, neglected or otherwise mistreated Catherine. I am aware in saying this, I am making it sound like evidence of any of this would have naturally existed and survived to be picked over; I don't believe this to be the case. Abuse often occurs in secrecy and silence and it is perhaps to be expected that any evidence of historical cases of abuse would be limited and fragmentary, if it survived or even if it existed in the first place. But an absence of evidence is still an absence of evidence. It's not proof, it doesn't provide any support for a theory.

In view of the absence of this evidence, the arguments that the marriage was unhappy or cruel largely heavily interpret (if not over interpret) the few facts of their marriage that we can talk about. These are:

That they spent about half of their marriage apart

Catherine did not attend Henry V's deathbed

The marriage was political and/or the result of a peace treaty.

General unsupported assumptions of their personalities

Catherine was "very young" at their marriage

It took them a while to conceive a child.

But almost all begin with the argument that Shakespeare's depiction of Henry and Catherine in Henry V was unquestionably a romantic one and that Shakespeare (as he always does) has muddied the waters, ensuring that we cannot perceive the truth. To be entirely blunt, if one dips their toe into the scholarship on Shakespeare's Catherine, one very quickly finds that Shakespeare's depiction is far more complicated with its view on Catherine and her relationship with Henry.

They spent about half their marriage apart.

This is usually marshalled into an argument about there being some incompatibility or dislike between the two. That if Henry had really cared for Catherine, he would have been at her side at all times, or at least spent less time away from her (see above for the idea that there was an estrangement).

The extreme brevity of their marriage and the paucity of evidence of their lives makes the time spent apart very difficult to assess clearly. The statistic of "half their marriage was spent apart" seems like a cold, hard fact but we are talking about a marriage that lasted just over two years. We have no idea whether that statistic would have remained the same had Henry V not died in August 1422 and their marriage lasted for longer, or whether that statistic would be the same if England and France had been at peace. Medieval kings and queens often spent time apart - at times, they were even criticised for spending time together because it cost more money to maintain the two separate households as one.

What we do know, however, is that the lengthiest time Catherine and Henry spent apart - from June 1421 to May 1422; a little less than a year - was impacted by two major developments. The Battle of Baugé (22 March 1421) was the first English defeat in France since the hostilities had reignited in 1415 and it was there that Henry's brother and heir, Thomas, Duke of Clarence, died. Clarence was a major commander in Henry's campaigns; the impact of his loss cannot be understated. In addition to any personal grief Henry felt at Clarence's loss (who was the brother he spent most of his childhood with), it is likely that Henry believed that his presence was needed in France, that he needed to step up to cover the loss of Clarence and ensure the fallout of their military defeat was minimal. Given that chronicle accounts depict Henry as trying to attend to military matters despite being ill (an action that quite possibly led to his own death), this seems like a fairly solid bit of speculation. If he was unsparing of his own physical health, even when near death, the idea that he only went on campaign to be cruel to his wife doesn't really stack up. He believed his presence was necessary and went.

The second major development was Catherine's pregnancy. Ironically, Henry VI was probably conceived around the same time as the Battle of Baugé was being fought and it is likely that Henry knew Catherine was pregnant when he returned to France. While queens did sometimes accompany their husbands on campaigns, it is possible that, this being Catherine's first pregnancy and in the uncertain atmosphere after Clarence's death, it was considered too risky for Catherine to return to France with Henry. Henry's time in France was marked by attending sieges, where disease was rife and would risks to the health of both Catherine and their unborn child. Given English concerns that the Treaty of Troyes would undermine English independence, it may have also been considered politically expedient that their first child was born in England, rather than in France (one French chronicle claims Catherine did accompany Henry into France but was sent back to England upon the discovery that she was six months' pregnant). Another possible factor here is how Catherine experienced her pregnancy - she may have had a difficult time with it and the idea of travelling to France utterly unappealing or deemed unwise.

This separation could be said to make up the bulk of their time spent apart and we have two major developments that may have impacted on it. Henry likely felt his continuous presence in France was necessary after Clarence's loss, Catherine may have remained in England for a variety of reasons, not all controllable. Yes, one of those reasons could possibly be a dislike of one spouse by the other or a mutual dislike but it could just have easily been an external factor (and I think the latter more likely, given the lack of contemporary comment). We don't and can't know.

Catherine did not attend Henry's deathbed.

There are a few things to note about this. Firstly, there may have been a fear of contagion. We don't know exactly what Henry died of** to know whether contagion was a valid fear or not, but it's possible it was. Catherine's absence may well have been designed to protect her from illness and death. Secondly, Henry's health seems to have deteriorated rather quickly. John, Duke of Bedford - Henry's brother - was summoned to Henry's deathbed late and "found him worse than he had been told". It is possible that it was not thought Henry was in great danger until it was too late.

Thirdly, less than two months after Henry's death, Charles VI also died. His death seems to have been expected. Catherine was staying with Charles in August 1422 and it's possible that she was there not just because Henry was meant to be on campaign but to attend her father's deathbed. In other words, Catherine (or those around her) may have had to choose between being with her father or husband for their death. And if Henry deteriorated quickly, that choice was may have been made for her. (It may have also been in response to the criticisms of how Charles and Isabeau had been treated, cited earlier).

Fourthly, Henry was sick and dying. Although he's typically discussed as being rational and clear-minded to the very end, he may not have been lucid. David Rundle notes that one of the codicils added to Henry's will while he was dying was "hardly grammatical" and suggests that Henry was "less than lucid". Commonly suggested ailments such as dysentery, dehydration and/or heatstroke could made him feverish and delirious. In other words, he may not have been in a sound mind to summon Catherine or for the lack of summons to be a deliberate slight against her.

And to underscore that point, Henry was dying. To me, when someone is dying, they get to choose, free from recriminations, who they want at their deathbed. We don't have access to Henry's emotions to know his specific motivations, we could just as easily argue that he didn't want Catherine there because he didn't want her to see him to die or in the state he was in. We have the exact same evidence for both. Regardless, Catherine was fit and healthy and Henry was literally dying.

Finally, Katherine J. Lewis makes the point when discussing Catherine's presence at Henry VI's French coronation that while contemporary accounts make no reference to her presence, administrative records place her with Henry VI on the coronation expedition:

It has been argued that she did not accompany Henry [VI] to France, yet while she is not mentioned in chronicles, administrative records indicate that she was with Henry in Rouen at least, if not at the French coronation itself. This is a reminder that Katherine’s absence from narrative sources should not be taken as evidence that she was no longer important.

Perhaps her absence from chronicle accounts of Henry's death do not necessarily mean she was not important or not present at the actual event? It may be worth noting that one of Henry V's biographers, John Strecche, claimed Catherine was present (however, Monstrelet claims she was kept ignorant of Henry's death for some time after).

The marriage was political and/or the result of a peace treaty.

Pretty much every royal medieval marriage was political and quite a few of them were in attempt to put an end to hostilities between nations or hostilities. Yes, Catherine and Henry's marriage was this in this category. It was normal and expected for them. Catherine had first been the subject of marriage negotiations when she was two years old. All of her siblings had married for politics except those who tied very young and Marie, who became a nun.

It doesn't make the marriage automatically cruel or destined to be unhappy. Most couples ended up in a relationship that was workable. Some of the more celebrated loving marriages in the history of English monarchs were political matches to begin with (e.g. Richard II and Anne of Bohemia) and even matches designed to end hostilities (e.g. Henry VII and Elizabeth of York). It is entirely possible that Catherine and Henry could have had a loving, affectionate marriage along those lines.

The idea that there was some family tradition in the Plantagenet royal family about marrying only for love and that Henry callously spat on this tradition, as Ian Mortimer has suggested, is nonsense. Edward III did not marry for love; he married so his mother could get an army to depose his father. If he got to choose his bride from the daughters of his mother's ally, his choice was between a girl close to his own age or a toddler. Richard II did not marry for love, he married as part of a political alliance - and these marriages did, in fact, become loving, or at least strongly affectionate. Henry IV had likely met Joan of Navarre once or twice when he married her. Historians have suggested that some of the "love matches" in the Plantagenet family (e.g. Joan of Kent and Edward of Woodstock, Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, Joan of Navarre and Henry IV) may have been had more pragmatic reasoning behind them.

The main arguments for the "arranged marriage" showing Henry's disregard for Catherine are:

the unrealistic demand of 2 million crowns for her dowry and his refusal to countenance Charles VI's counter-offer

that there were other brides he had negotiated marriage with.

Honestly... both are all pretty standard features of marriage negotiations. The marriages of medieval royalty weren't really about them as individuals; it was about getting the best deal. They were about the country, about the political, the financial and the territorial. Henry's unrealistic demand for 2 million crowns as a dowry probably reflected his lack of interest in peace at the time (it should be noted, as Anne Curry does, France also showed a similar lack of interest).

As far as Henry's potential other brides... again, standard. Chaucer's Parlement of Foules has been argued to represent the many suitors vying for Anne of Bohemia's hand; other brides were also considered for her eventual husband. It didn't mean they thought any less of each other. It is not... really true, either, as Ian Mortimer and the novelist Anne O'Brien have claimed, that Henry considered marriage to two of Catherine's sisters before settling on Catherine. That's actually incredibly disingenuous - Henry had been suggested as a prospective husband for both Michelle de Valois and Isabelle de Valois but these matches had been raised by Richard II in 1395, when Henry was 9, and Henry IV in 1400, when Henry was 13, respectively. Henry V had nothing to do with these negotiations beyond the being the subject of them. Possibly, he was more involved in the negotiations for a marriage between himself and an unnamed daughter of Charles VI in 1408, but we don't know this for sure. By the time Henry V acceded in 1413 and gained total control over his own marriage, Catherine had been the subject of marriage negotiations with France since 1409. Nor does Henry's attempt at negotiating marriage between himself and a daughter of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, in 1411 suggest any real disrespect for Catherine; it was simply standard practice.

Personalities.

Another argument that their marriage was a cruel or unhappy one is generally the argument that they possessed certain personalities that were incompatible. Needless to say, the view of Henry as an abusive or cold husband is often tied to the revisionist view of him that tend to read him as monstrous. There isn't the space to go into my feelings about these reassessments but to me, these arguments run to extremes and never come to grips of why Henry was so beloved beyond complaining about "luck" and "Lancastrian propaganda".

We know very little about Henry's personality; very little of his private/personal life survives. We know even less about Catherine's. What we think we know about Catherine's personality comes from the myths about her relationship with Owen Tudor, the posthumous attacks on her as oversexed, and the supposition that her absence from the historical record tells us something important about her personality. None of these are reliable sources; the latter tells us more about the assumptions and biases of historians than they do Catherine. An absence of evidence is just that - an absence - not evidence itself.

(For more about the problems in determining personality in late medieval figures, see the first section in my post on Margaret of Anjou)

The most recent development of this supposed incompatibility is the idea of incompatible sexualities, where Henry is "something of a prig" (or a prude or a misogynist) because he apparently gave up sex with women after his accession to the throne and Catherine was "rather jolly", as Lisa Hilton puts it, because of all those marvellous myths about how she hooked up with Owen Tudor. In both cases, they show the difference between medieval/early modern and modern attitudes towards sex. From a medieval and early modern perspective, a chaste king was a good king as it reflected their capacity for restraint and ability to rule not only their body, but the realm (see here and here), while female sexuality was always suspect. We have very little evidence of their sex life, either together or with other partners. It's possible there was some incompatibility - but there's no real evidence of it and this narrative relies on criticising Henry for living up to contemporary ideals and praising Catherine for the contemporary and historiographical reports of her behaviour that are awash with misogyny and slut-shaming.

Catherine was "very young" at their marriage.

Catherine was born 27 October 1401, meaning she was 18 years old when she married Henry on 2 June 1420. This might seem young to modern eyes - "barely an adult" - but that's to modern eyes, not medieval. 12 was the minimum age of consent for marriage in canonical law though this was not necessarily the age at which most women married or when their marriage was consummated (most waited until later). The evidence suggests that most women married in their late teens or early twenties, though women of the gentry and nobility typically married in their teens or below canonical age - and for these women, that consummation was often delayed to their mid-to-late teens. For a comparative statistic in Catherine's own social class, the average age for the first marriage for English princesses from Edward I to Henry VII was 16.65 according to Kim Philips.

Catherine's age, then, was entirely average for her sex and even a little later than her class and later still within her family. Comparing her to her female relatives shows that Catherine was actually older at her wedding than all but four of her relatives.*** The age at which Catherine gave birth - 20 - was also unexceptional and a far cry from her sister-in-law, Blanche, who gave birth when she was 14 or her daughter-in-law, Margaret Beaufort, who gave birth when she was just 13.

The alarm bells Ian Mortimer rings at the idea of the "pubescent" Catherine marrying Henry is also... incredibly disingenuous. The appeal of her as a bride was not her age but her connections and status as the last unmarried daughter of Charles VI. Judging a marriage on an alternate history is not history or even an argument. It doesn't tell us what actually happened or even what would have happened had this alternate history really taken place. It's true that Catherine was 8 when a marriage with her was first posed in Henry IV's reign and in her pre- and early teens when marriage negotiations appear to have been seriously considered. But she didn't marry Henry then, she married him when she was 18. She was an adult. Even by modern standards, she was an adult.

It is true, too, that Henry V, born 16 September 1386, was 33 and thus 15 years Catherine's senior. This sort of age gap is unexceptional for their own time, particularly because Catherine was an adult when they got married. And, as I've said, we have very little evidence of their relationship to know what role this this age gap played in their marriage, whether Henry was truly a domineering partner as Anne O'Brien claimed.

It took awhile for them to conceive a child.

This one truly boggles the mind.

Henry VI was born on 6 December 1421, which means he was probably conceived in mid-March (possible dates are March 12, 1421 - March 22, 1421). This was around 10 months after Henry V and Catherine had married. We don't know why it took them 10 months to conceive so to presume it tells us something about their relationship or even their sex life is a very limited perspective. Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester never conceived a child with his second wife despite being very into her and very into sex.

There are many reasons why that ten month gap could have occurred. One of the reasons may well be that Henry didn't want to spend any time with Catherine and was snubbing her, though we have no supporting evidence or this. Another reason might be that Catherine did a conceive a child earlier but had a miscarriage. There's no evidence of this, true, but we have very little evidence of specific occurrences of miscarriage. Another reason may be that Catherine and Henry were taking the time to ease into their relationship before they had sex. One or both of them may have had subfertility problems (it might be telling that Catherine only had 3 or 4 children with Owen Tudor, despite being with him for around 10 years, or that in spite of the stories of Henry's wild youth, there are no known illegitimate children for him). And, quite simply, sometimes it can just take that long to conceive a child without there being a particular reason behind it.

We don't know anything about Catherine and Henry's sex life, (obviously; we know precious little about them). But interestingly, those dates for Henry VI's conception? They fall in Lent and a good medieval Catholic wasn't supposed to have sex at all in Lent. If either Henry or Catherine wanted to avoid having sex with each other, they had the perfect excuse to avoid it. This doesn't necessarily mean that they were in love or that they sexually desired one another; there may well have been more pragmatic motivations at play (the desire for an heir, for one). It does tell us, though, that they had sex at a time when one or both of them could have had the perfect reason to opt-out and didn't take it. Perhaps they didn't find each other as repellent as some historians, novelists and commentators think they did.

And, really, I don't think Henry could win the "not an evil abuser" prize with this kind of logic. If Catherine had gotten pregnant immediately after their marriage, it'd be proof Henry saw her as his "broodmare" and cared nothing for her beyond the getting of sons. Instead, the delay in conceiving a child is proof of his disregard of her. It's not really about the evidence, it's about taking a preconceived idea and looking for evidence to support it, even when the evidence could have multiple meanings. I could easily spin both potentials as proof of romance.

What was it like, really?

In some ways, I want to answer this with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ We just don't know, the evidence isn't there. I know, I know, I took 10,000 words to say "who knows lol".

Their marriage was absolutely a standard medieval royal marriage. It was arranged and political, like the vast majority of medieval royal marriages, and like a not insignificant portion of marriages in the nobility, it was intended to bring an end to (or at least respite from) hostilities. There was nothing particularly nefarious in the idea, anymore than there was for Edward I and Marguerite of France, Edward II and Isabella of France, Henry Vi and Margaret of Anjou, and Henry VII and Elizabeth of York.

What limited evidence for their relationship shows that Henry V treated Catherine with respect and care. It doesn't necessarily mean he loved her or even that he particularly liked her - at the very least, he was aware of that, as his wife and queen, she was due these things and ensured she got them. That doesn't mean he couldn't have liked her, or even loved her, just that a royal marriage was both a political and personal relationship and it's impossible to determine, at this great distance, with the limited surviving evidence, just what was politics and what was personal.

Very likely, he was also aware of the way that his behaviour towards Catherine would impact his public image. Whatever his faults, Henry V was incredibly skilled at public relations. He was adept at giving his people what they wanted, at being their perfect king - and likely knew that he needed to be (seen to be) a good husband to maintain that image. And he wasn't stupid. Catherine was the daughter of Charles VI "le Bien-Aimé"; she was in, a way, France in a way that Henry could never to be. Regardless of what he actually felt for Catherine, he knew that if he wanted to be accepted as regent and later king of France, he could hardly mistreat Catherine. Her mistreatment could easily become a public scandal and a focal point for dissatisfaction - disastrous for an usurper.

We'll never know whether his treatment of Catherine was solely inspired by good politics and image; he may have very well cared for her in her own right. Or he might not. But I really don't see that he would have been callous, abusive or neglectful of her. There is no hint of it in the historical records and it would have been disastrous for his goals in France.

We don't know how Catherine felt about Henry. We have so little evidence about Catherine's life that anything could be true and any claims as to "what she was really like" are disingenuous, whether they're arguing for her victimhood or her love affair or her failure to be the true equal of the "great man" she married.

It speaks to the way that Catherine has primarily been seen as a romantic object that everything in her adult life must be explained by a romantic or emotive relationship instead of seeing her as a woman who was at the centre of the political sphere and who had more in life than romance, sex and men. We don't know that she loved Henry or that he loved her; we don't know that she expected or wanted that from her marriage. But in accepting that, we have no reason to assume that therefore, the marriage was doomed her to deep unhappiness and a cruel husband.

In short, I think their marriage was a standard marriage rather than uniquely cruel. I do not think it was abusive. I think it was respectful and that Henry saw Catherine as his partner. I think their relationship was more likely to have been companionable than antagonistic. I don't think it was romantic, though I can't say we can rule out the possibility that love might have (or could have had) entered into it once they got to know each other.

* They married on 2 June 1420 and Henry died in the very early morning of 31 August 1422. This comes out to 2 years, 2 months and 29 days, not counting 31 August 1422.

** The main consensus on Henry V's death is some kind of gastrointestinal illness, most commonly given as dysentery though it's unlikely to be a single dysentery infection, acquired in December 1421, that killed him. For more detail, see this post.

*** Catherine's mother, Isabeau of Bavaria, was around 15 when she married Charles VI. Of the sisters who married, Isabelle had been just shy of her 7th birthday, Jeanne 4 and Michelle 16. Of Catherine's French sisters-in-law, Margaret of Nevers was 9, Jacqueline of Hainault 14 and Marie of Anjou was 18. Of Catherine's mothers-in-law, Mary de Bohun was probably 10, Joan of Navarre 18. Of Catherine's English sisters-in-law Blanche and Philippa of England were 10 and 12 years old respectively. Of the wives of Catherine's English brothers-in-law, Anne of Burgundy was 19, Jacquetta of Luxembourg was 17, Jacqueline of Hainault 14, Eleanor Cobham around 28 and Margaret Holland around 12. Of Catherine's daughters-in-law (it is not certain that she had a daughter herself and if she did, there is no evidence this daughter ever married), Margaret of Anjou was 15, Margaret Beaufort was 1 or 3 (12 when she married Edmund Tudor), and Katherine Woodville 7 years old or under. In the cases where the marriage produced offspring, we're looking at the women being in her mid-to-late teens when she gave birth to her first child. The two exceptions are Blanche of England (14) and Margaret Beaufort (13). In cases where their first marriage produced no issue (e.g. Anne of Burgundy, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Eleanor Cobham) we cannot know when the marriage was consummated. Eleanor Cobham, at 28, was the oldest at her marriage but her sexual relationship with her spouse likely predated their marriage by some years. n.b. the ages given are consistent with each woman's first marriage, not the age at which they married into Catherine's family; Jacqueline of Hainault married both Catherine's brother, Jean, and Catherine's brother-in-law, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, and so is listed twice.

References

Tracy Adams, The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria (John Hopkins University Press 2010) Anne Crawford, Letters of the Queens of England, 1100-1547 (Sutton 1997) Anne Curry, Henry V: From Playboy Prince to Warrior King (Penguin 2015) Anne Curry & Susan Jenkins (eds.), The Funeral Achievements of Henry V at Westminster Abbey (Boydell Press 2022) Geoffrey Hilton, A New Biography of King Henry V: Told by John Strecche Canon of Kenilworth 1426 (2017) Lisa Hilton, Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens (Phoenix 2008) Katherine J. Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England (Routledge 2013) Katherine J. Lewis, “Katherine of Valois: The Vicissitudes of Reputation”, Later Plantagenet and the Wars of the Roses Consorts: Power, Influence, and Dynasty (Palgrave Macmillan 2023) Ruth Mazo Karras, Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages (University of Pennsylvania Press 2012) Carolyn King Stephens, The “Pentangle Hypothesis”: A Dating History and Resetting of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”', Fifteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 31, 2006 John D. Milner, “The Battle of Baugé, March 1421: Impact and Memory”, History Vol. 91, No. 4, October 2006 J. Allan Mitchell, "Queen Katherine and the Secret of Lydgate's 'Temple of Glas', Medium Ævum, Vol. 77, No. 1, 2008 Ian Mortimer, 1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (Vintage 2010) Kavita Mudan Finn, The Last Plantagenet Consorts: Gender, Genre, and Historiography, 1440-1627 (Palgrave Macmillan 2012) Neil Murphy, "Ceremony and Conflict in Fifteenth-Century France: Lancastrian Ceremonial Entries into French Towns, 1415-1431", Explorations in Renaissance Culture, vol. 30, no. 2, December 2013 Anne O'Brien, blog, The Love Affair That Never Was Maria Pia Pedani, 'Balas Rubies for the King of England (1413-15)', EJOS, V, No. 7, 2002 Kim M. Phillips, Medieval Maidens: Young Qomen and Gender in England, 1270-1540 (Manchester University Press 2003) David Rundle, "Of Republics and Tryants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460" (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1997). Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman Conquest, vol. 3 (Lea & Blanchard, 1841) Malcolm Vale, Henry V: The Conscience of a King (Yale University Press 2016)

Novels Mentioned Denise Giardina, Good King Harry (Random House 1999) Anne O'Brien, The Forgotten Queen (Mira Books 2013)

Shakespeare Criticism (selection) Kavita Mudan Finn and Lea Luecking Frost, "“Nothing Hath Begot My Something Grief”: Invisible Queenship in Shakespeare’s Second Tetralogy", The Palgrave Book of Shakespeare's Queens (Palgrave Macmillan 2018) William B. Robison, "The Bard, the Bride, and the Muse Bemused: Katherine of Valois on Film in Shakespeare’s Henry V", The Palgrave Book of Shakespeare's Queens (Palgrave Macmillan 2018)

This post may also be of interest.

[thessalian]

Thess vs the BBC

This is going to need to be two rants - one personal, one more ... indicative of the increasingly fascist-leaning hellscape in which I live. Sorry to fans of Doctor Who and a whole bunch of other terrific programming; today we’re flagging up the issues with the BBC.

The British Broadcasting Corporation actually reached its 100th anniversary last year. Well, at least as a private entity. It became a public organisation of the sort it is today in 1927. And ... y’know, they’ve been censoring shit for nearly as long. Back in the day, they wouldn’t refer to Prohibition at all, and pretty much pretended no one existed but the UK. Which ... y’know, still the Empire at that time, eye-rolling but about right for the time period. Thing is, they also shu down discussion of items of local and national politlcal controversy, because the government got upset. So I guess this current situation is old news.

This is ridiculous on so many levels for a country that seems to love its monarchy, however many bags of dicks its monarchy is and how functionally useless said monarchy is in the day to day. See, the internet has been my enabler in one fairly big thing, and that is when I want to figure out how something works or why it is the way it is, I poke at its foundations. Something I’ve been doing since being a kid and taking apart every piece of electronics in the house out of sheer curiosity ... or, like, my own brainspace with the help of coping mechanisms I learned in therapy. For everything else, I have Wikipedia and other stuff all over the internet. Why I’m bothering to go into that right now is because I was desperate to find out what the BBC’s official creed was. Because it’s not going to be written down as “We will do whatever the government says like good little mouthpieces” ... right? Right, actually. I’ve had a look at the BBC Charter as provided by the royals (which mostly waves people at Ofcom, the Office of Communications) and the accompanying document that clearly states that the editors of programmes are entitled to make decisions without influence from the owner.

Thing is ... ownership of the BBC is a bit tricky at the minute. Thatcher privatised a lot of it in her day, and the license fee freeze awhile back had to have also hurt. Hell, the BBC’s space on the politlcal spectrum’s been in question for a very long time. Usually it’s been left-leaning individuals thinking that the BBC is full of right-wing types and leans very right in its reportage, while Tories from Thatcher on down insisisted that the BBC was very culturally left-wing and that the establishment was “fighting against it”. Which ... is honestly kind of good, if you think about it. If the left thinks it’s right-leaning, and the right thinks it’s left-leaning, that suggests some kind of impartiality or at least lack of favouritism.

Well. Here we are in 2023 and even that nod to impartiality has gone out the fucking window.

First there’s the transphobia thing. Because, seriously - it keeps apologising to Rowling any time it isn’t purely complimentary or supportive of her TERF bullshit, and then there was the “We’re being pressured into sex by some trans women” article, which was literally, “lesbians feel obliged and pressured into having sex with trans women” with a skew towards “trans women aren’t women so lesbians shouldn’t feel obliged to have sex with them”. That one did at least get looked at by the complaints department, but despite the whole “your sample size is too small and thus your data is inconclusive” nature of the poll this shit was based on, it still exists at the moment. So ... yeah, sorry, BBC’s perfectly happy to keep this transphobic bullshit going.

This was over a year ago, when focus was a bit more Covid-directed, and it wasn’t specifically focused on acts of censorship and direct pandering to the current party in government. Now, though ... now we have serious pandering bullshit. So let’s talk for a little bit about Gary Lineker. I mean, there’s not that much to talk about - he used to play football (for the North Americans, just assume that I mean ‘soccer’ whenever I say ‘football’; it saves time), he has also been the face of our biggest-name potato chip brand, and has been presenting a football programme - Match of the Day. (I can’t think of an American version exactly but the best comparison I have is Hockey Night in Canada.)

Thing is, he also has a Twitter account. And opinions about the UK government’s unlawful (by ECRH standards and UN standards) treatment of asylum-seekers arriving in small boats. Apply the second to the first, and you have the BBC apparently cancelling him. Like, literally said, “Okay, you’re critical about the government’s policies, you can’t present a football programme until you’re back in lockstep”. To which Lineker and his co-presenters and a lot of potential incumbents said, “Okay, then we won’t present”. So currently the BBC will be having Match of the Day with out commentators. So if you happen to see a lot of jokes about Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg sitting on an obvious set for a TV programme ... that’s why; the jokes have been huge about getting only the rightest of right-wing pundits to present the show because apparently that’s what the BBC wants right now.

And no, that’s not even really joking, given the post I made yesterday about the BBC refusing to air a David Attenborough nature documentary series because of the potential for “right-wing backlash”. Apparently we don’t want anyone worrying about climate change because that’s not in the interests of the right wing at present. Sooooooo ... yeah, that’s a thing.

Honestly, never been so unhappy to have paid my TV licence in my life. I don’t even really need one; I don’t watch anything on the BBC, or live television at all. I only pay the fucking thing just in case I one day might want to watch live TV and because the constant hounding letters from the TV licence people give me anxiety. Which is probably the plan at the end of the day, which pisses me off. See, that’s where the BBC gets all its money - from our licence fees. And of course, the government sets the value of the TV licence. So you see where the government has the BBC by the short and curlies, and you kind of have to wonder, have the Tories already applied pressure, or is the BBC just rolling over pre-emptively? Either way, most of the ‘independent’ (or rather, non-government-funded) news organisations are owned by Rupert Murdoch, who’s also excessively right wing. So suffice to say that a whole lot of our news is skewed that way for one reason or another. Living here is getting a little terrifying.

[hamstermastersamster]

Chief Irons is for sure utterly unhinged in the RE2 remake, but he just ain't as creepy as he was in the OG game.

Originally, Claire comes across him as a passive non-hostile. You get immediate Bad Vibes from him and his weird fixation with the corpse of the mayor's daughter . . . and then you look around his weird office and private collection room, and you get More Bad Vibes that you have discovered yourself through environmental storytelling, but you don't really find out just how fucked up he is until later when you (again, YOU as the player!) discover his private dungeon. The game shows you, it feeds you clues, but it leaves you to put the pieces together.

Contrast with the remake, where (in scenario B at least) he's openly hostile the second HE finds YOU, vile and swearing and an abusive dick to women and children alike - an obvious enemy. The game screams at us that he's a Bad Guy. We don’t find his creepy office until after we already know this, at which point the reaction is *shrug* “guess that tracks”. And then we even get subjected to diary entries in which he explicitly revels in his guro fetish, just in case we hadn’t had it rammed forcefully down our throat hard enough.

But that isn’t even his final form! We then learn that he's director of an orphanage? That does evil experiments on innocent kids? Right in the middle of the city? While he's promoted as a huge lover of charity in local newspapers?

Okay, okay, game. I get it xP He’s a Bad Man.

This sorta leans into one of my big issues with Resi as it progressed as a series and started adding to original canon, but particularly post-RE3 and in the RE1 remake, and that is . . . it makes Umbrella and its agents cartoonishly evil. The true horror of Resi was never the zombies - they're a side effect of the terrible things that terrible human beings are doing to one another, and amping up the theatrics like the remakes do sucks away all the implicit horror in that slow-burn discovery of the details.

I know the original few games aren't winning any awards for great dialogue and voice acting, but the underlying premise wasn't farfetched at all. In fact, I'd argue that "big pharma company secretly owns huge swathes of American infrastructure, politicians and public figures, and is developing bioweapons under the table because it's rich and ethically bankrupt, and is covering up/oppressing attempts to bring that to light" is MORE believable in this day and age than any other! The clue is in the (Western) franchise name! It's RESIDENT evil, it lives here right with us, under our noses!

But the characters and the monsters and the scenarios just increasingly veer into the cartoonishly silly in some of the later games. I feel like it started in Code Veronica (which, okay, I DO love, but I can still have complaints about it xP) with Ashford's OTT theatrics (’crazy’ people are simply not as scary as ‘sane’ people deliberately doing horrible shit), and Wesker’s transition to his Matrix persona. RE4 with its cult (wandering away from scientific threat and into the occult) and its tiny manzombie antagonist. Absolutely fucking everything about RE5 but ESPECIALLY Jill randomly getting turned into an evil bulletproof kung-fu master until you successfully grope a parasite or whatever out of her cleavage.

After which I completely stopped playing new Resi games until the HD remake era, hoping that we would get back to the more grounded aesthetics and narratives of the OG games. But then there was whatever the hell RE Zero was all about (opera singer leech monster on a train say whaaaat? Whyyyyy D:). And in the RE1 remake, adding all that unnecessary shit about the Spencer family and Lisa Trevor and just . . . ughhhhhh. The more they pad out the lore, the less I like it xD

Maybe that’s a controversial opinion, I don’t know. Lots of people love Resi for its cheesy, silly, unbelievable nonsense, to the point that it’s almost become part of the franchise aesthetic. But I do feel that, in the early games, it was perhaps unintentional, and they just doubled down on it later. And if you like the cheese, you know, more power to you! Personally I just really love to see Umbrella treated like a serious threat, and it kinda breaks my immersion when I’m about to kill Evil NeoWesker for the 65 millionth time and he opens combat by dramatically throwing his sunglasses slow-mo into my face.

It’s funny, though, I’ll give you that.

For the most part, RE2 remake does a decent job of remaining as realism-grounded as the original. But it definitely felt like a narrative mis-step with Irons. He was much more fun as a sinister creep than an in-your-face monster. I wasn’t going to right away, but maybe I’ll play through the Claire A scenario and see if they handle him with any more subtlety in that.

[robertreich]

Bezos, McConnell, and COVID Capitalism

As a former Secretary of Labor, I often receive mail from workers with job complaints who apparently believe I still have some authority. But the email I received a few days ago from a worker at Amazon’s Whole Foods delivery warehouse in Industry City, Brooklyn, New York, was particularly distressing.

She said that six of her co-workers had tested positive for COVID since October 22, because “safe social distancing is not only being ignored but discouraged,” adding that “when we express our discomfort to management, we are yelled at about filling orders faster, or told that we can take a leave of absence without pay.”

She ended by noting “we work for a trillionaire.”

Well, not quite. Jeff Bezos is worth $180 billion, making him the richest person in the world. And his corporation, Amazon, which also owns Whole Foods, is among the world’s richest corporations.

Bezos has accumulated so much added wealth over the last nine months that he could give every Amazon employee $105,000 and still be as rich as he was before the pandemic.

So you’d think he’d be able to afford safer workplaces. Yet as of October, more than 20,000 U.S.-based Amazon employees had been infected by the virus. That estimate comes from Amazon, by the way. There’s been no independent verification, nor has Amazon revealed how many of them have died.  

Decades ago, employees in most large corporations could remedy unsafe working conditions by complaining to their union, which pressured their employer to fix the problems, or to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (founded in 1970), which levied fines.

Alternatively, they could embarrass their companies by going public with their complaints. As a last resort, they could sue.

None of these routes is readily available to Amazon warehouse workers -- nor, for that matter, to warehouse workers at Walmart, or to most workers in other super-spreader COVID workplaces such as meatpacking plants and nursing homes.

Amazon’s workers have no union to protect them. (Throughout its 25-year history, the corporation has aggressively fought union organizing.) Nor, for that matter, do 93.8 percent of America’s private-sector workers. Fifty years ago, more than a third were unionized.

And OSHA? Since the start of the pandemic, it’s been useless. Although receiving more than 10,000 complaints of unsafe conditions, it has issued just two citations.

Amazon employees who go public with their complaints are likely to lose their jobs. The corporation prohibits its workers from commenting publicly on any aspect of its business, without prior approval from executives. So far during the pandemic, it has fired at least two white-collar employees who publicly denounced conditions at its warehouses, as well as several warehouse workers who raised safety concerns to media outlets.

Amazon isn’t alone. A survey conducted in May by the National Employment Law Project showed that 1 in 8 American workers “has perceived possible retaliatory actions by employers against workers in their company who have raised health and safety concerns” about COVID.

The final option is to sue the company, but lawsuits against employers over COVID have been rare because of difficulties proving that the employee contracted the virus at work. A Washington Post analysis found that since the pandemic began, just 234 personal injury or wrongful death lawsuits have been filed due to the virus.

All of which reveals the utter fatuousness of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s and his fellow Senate Republicans’ demand that any new COVID relief package must include a corporate “liability shield” against COVID cases.

Even if such lawsuits were successful, corporations already have limited liability. That’s what it means to be a corporation. In the unlikely event Amazon were sued and plaintiffs won, Jeff Bezos would remain comfortable.

The heinous resurgence of COVID makes clear that corporations need more -- not fewer -- incentives to protect their workers from the virus.  

As millions of Americans lose whatever meager income they had, they should not have to choose between taking a risky job – such as in an Amazon warehouse -- or putting food on their family’s table.

Bezos, as well as every major employer in America, can easily afford to protect their workers. And as Mitch McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans should know, the richest nation in the world can easily afford to provide every American adequate income support during this national emergency.

That they’re not doing so is disgraceful.

[macnevercries]

Seashells and Sunset (Bakugou x F! Reader)

Warnings- public sex, oral (reviving), degradation, praise, established relationship, cursing?

♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

“You ready yet? I’ve been waiting for an hour”

Bakugou’s scowl turns to a small smile when you walk out of the bathroom, a bright smile on your face.

“Yes I’m ready, I just wanna look good for you baby”

He scoffs at your words “You always look good”

Although he might not see it, his words mean a lot. He pokes you in the ribs when a blush spreads across your face. Pulling you into his chest he plants a kiss on your exposed collar, the sundress you wear giving him all the room he needs to leave marks.

“Katsuki! Stop I don’t want to wear a cardigan, I don’t need a hickey today.”

“Oh but then people won’t know who you belong to sweetheart” he growls his words into your neck, a smirk visible in his voice. You spin away from him, escaping his grasp before he can do anything. You grab your beach bag and lock the door, heading out to the car.

Bakugou, always the gentleman, opens your door for you. You toss him the keys as he walks around the car and gets in. Despite not wanting to, you have to admit he’s a responsible driver. One of the best you’ve ever seen. And he manages to do it all with his large hand splayed across your thigh.

You used to lean your legs towards the door, but throughout the time you’ve been with your boyfriend you learned to do as he asked. Now whenever you get in the car, your legs are always tilted as close to him as you can. He chuckles whenever you do it without thinking, he’s trained you so well.

You pull up to the secluded beach, although his schedule was busy with work most of the time, being a hero had its perks. The exclusive pro-hero beach had silky white sand that never got too warm, clear water and almost no people. The perfect place for a weekend date. When you get out of the car Bakugou takes everything in his hands, saving your pretty little arms the work. He doesn’t struggle to carry it all but he does occasionally grunt, sending a shiver down your spine.

You lay down on your shared blanket, balancing on your hands and tilting up your face to bask in the gracious rays of sun.

“Get up dumbass, no tanning before sunscreen or you’ll burn”

You frown but strip your sundress, fumbling to get it over your head. Bakugou does his best to keep his jaw up when he sees your new swimsuit. Despite having seen your body many many times his breath is always taken away by your beauty. How could an asshole like him get such a gorgeous and kind girlfriend? It’s something he asks himself everyday.

You lay on the blanket, stomach down, ass up. He tries to tear his crimson eyes away from the exposed flesh. The way your thighs splay across the ground is causing his brain to malfunction.

“You’re staring” you state your words without looking up. He startled for a second, snapping out of his daze. Growling under his breath, how it was your fault he was staring, he grabs the sunscreen. Squeezing it into his palm, his calloused fingers massage the lotion into your pliable skin. His touch is magical, you melt into it and lean into his hands. He spends extra time covering your ass, leaving a few love pinches and slaps on it as he goes.

You flip onto your back for him to do the other side. Your arm blocks the sun from your eyes and while the sky turns a deep orange you wonder if this is even necessary. As he rubs your skin, he worships your body internally. The things you do for him, the things he wants to do to you.

He fingers travel below your bottoms, just at the hips to ‘cover you completely’. That changes quickly when he pushes your knees apart, propping his elbows between them and his face eye-level with your pussy.

Your head snaps up when he drags a thick finger over your clothed folds. Your eyes wide, the innocence portrayed in them creating a vast difference from the slick drooling from your cunt.

“Bakugou, we’re in public, stop messing around.” You whisper yell, looking around the beach to make sure no one was looking.

He kisses your thigh, a deviant look in his eyes. “No one is here baby, the sun in down and the beach is private. Plus, you’re already so wet, I know you want this.”

You look at him skeptically before laying your head back down. There was no way you could tell him no, he always manages to get his way. He grins at your compliance, pulling your swim bottoms to the side and groaning at the sight. You hadn’t gotten in the water but you were dripping.

He licks his lips, diving straight in. His kisses to your lower half are hungry and harsh, Teeth graze your clit, causing your hips to jump at his face. His laugh sends vibrations through your core, making your thighs tremble. He links his arms around your hips to pull you closer. He’s infatuated with you, the smell, the taste, the small sounds escaping your parted lips, the heaven of your chest, everything. Your hands dash to grip his head, pulling his spiked hair as he speeds up, going harder. He craves your orgasm, the pride swells in his chest while blood swells in his cock as you shake, trying to keep your reactions to a minimum in case anybody walked by and heard. Your hands release his hair from the vice grip you had, quivering as you pull him up towards you.

The fact that you come that hard just from his tongue says a lot. Bakugou has your body mapped out and he’s in the mood for traveling. His chin glistens when he meets your gaze and kisses you, the taste of you on his tongue. You’d let him do whatever he wanted to, whenever he wanted to. After all, he was so good to you.

There’s a tent in his swimshorts, one that’s poking your thigh in a not-so-inconspicuous way. You giggle at his attempt to ask for help, reaching down to cup him through the thin fabric. He moans and ruts into your hand, the sensitivity of his body and need coursing through his veins.

You really did love when he got like this, a little bit needy, an occasional whine escaping him. You almost never got to be in control so the few moments that he let himself go were special.

You pull down the shorts, freeing the painful looking erection. He’s rock hard, pre oozing from the red tip. All this just from going down on you? You would tease him but you were afraid the moment would end, washing away with the soft crashing of the waves.

When you thumb his slit, spreading the bead of white that gathered he snaps back to reality, snarling and pushing you down onto the blanket, the sand comfortable beneath it.

“You thought you had control slut? Just wait until I’m down with you” he laughs darkly, a faint blush of embarrassment graces his cheeks from the realization that he let himself go for a second.

He gets on his knees in front of you and pulls your hips towards his, earning a surprised squeal that makes his dick throb. He slides the tip through your folds, mixing your excitement with his own. He lines himself up with your leaking entrance, slowly pushing the head past the tight ring of muscle. You groan in unison, wiggling your hips for more.

“Dirty little slut can’t wait huh? Fine then”

Before he can even finish his sentence he thrusts the rest of his length inside you. You gasp, squeezing around him at the burning pleasure. He curses under his breath, so tight.

Barely giving you time to adjust, he starts at a quick pace, only going faster when you give him drawn out mewls and moans. He needs more, there could never be enough of you.

He pushes up your swim top, squeezing your breasts roughly and rolling your nipples between his fingers. He leans down to bite them, soothing the sudden pain with warm kisses and soft licks. Sex with Bakugou was a heat flash, everything was so hot, too hot. Sudden changes between gentle and hard giving you whiplash. You wouldn’t have it any other way.

He pistons into you faster as he pulls away from your tits, satisfied with the number of marks he’s left. His grip on your hips is bruising, but it’s all made up for the each drag of his cock against your velvet walls. You can feel every vein, every ridge and the spots where his girth is wider than the rest. The slight upward curve hits your g-spot, stars dancing behind your eyelids. Your bodies fit perfectly together, no man had ever pleased you like he had and he knows it.

Your hands grip onto anything you can, nails dragging down his tan muscled shoulders, eliciting a hiss from him. He feels you clench around him, making him go impossibly quicker, drawing out your orgasm. He follows quickly, pulling out and giving his length a few desperate pumps before coming on your chest. Coming down from your high, you mumble a complaint about the stain on your new swimsuit. He shuts you up with a kiss, saying something about getting you a new one.

He gets up and pulls his shorts back on, grabbing another blanket to cover the two of you as you watch the rest of the sun go below the skyline, the full moon’s reflection on the ocean the only light. He shakes his head and you can’t help but be mesmerized by his beauty.

His tousled blonde locks move with his head, shaking out the sand and the shape of your grip. Even with your hand print out of his hair, the scratches down his back will take a while to fade away.

[blu-joons]

DATING EXO HEADCANON A⇴Z ⇴  Do Kyungsoo

A ⇴ AFFECTION

Kyungsoo loves to cuddle up to you, having you close to him gives him a lot of confidence and support. At times he can be completely shy and wrap himself around you, other times he can dominate and bundle you into a tiny ball.

B ⇴ BEFORE DATING

When he first saw you, his attention was definitely grabbed. He definitely had his guard up around you to begin with, slowly bringing it down the more he got to know you. It took a while for you to get to know Kyungsoo too, he was a bit of a mystery, but if anything, that attracted you to him more as you tried to figure him out.

C ⇴ CONFESSION

As the guard came down, the feelings for you grew. You always felt as if Kyungsoo left you wondering, so when he told you that he needed to speak to you, you didn’t have a good feeling. But as he began to open up to you, at last, you realised you had nothing to worry about at all. It was a surprise for you to hear how he felt, but as you listened to him, you realised those feelings matched your own for him perfectly too.

D ⇴ DATES

His favourite date with you was one where he could impress you. That normally meant Kyungsoo inviting you to his place and cooking for you. He loved to try new recipes out on you and decorate the table nicely to make an evening of it, never letting you down with anything that he made for you. On other occasions, he loved to take you out for the evening, he was conscious of people keeping an eye on you, so he’d keep these dates very lowkey, all the while making sure that you always had the best time whilst with him.

E ⇴ EXPERIENCE

Kyungsoo was yet to experience a proper relationship before he met you. He’d had a few brief relationships in school, but nothing since his debut. He very quickly became protective of you because he was terrified of how things would be perceived on the outside, he didn’t want to hurt you, and wanted to make sure you were absolutely sure about dating him before doing anything too serious. You loved how protective he was of you, but you also knew how to handle yourself and anything that might come your way.

F ⇴ FIGHTING

The two of you very rarely fought, Kyungsoo was very passionate about a lot, and was very protective of you, sometimes forgetting that you could take care of yourself. You knew he meant well when he did this, so you’d try not to make too big of a deal out of things, but at times Kyungsoo forgot that you didn’t need him to hold your hand. Rather than shout, the two of you were very good at talking, Kyungsoo had worked hard on being able to open up to you, and during the times when you disagreed with each other, he would certainly put that into practice and tell you exactly how he was feeling about the situation.

G ⇴ GETTING TO KNOW HIS FAMILY

He was keen to introduce you to his family quickly as his first proper girlfriend. You were terrified, but Kyungsoo knew that they’d all love you regardless, the fact that anyone could date him was a big enough surprise for his family as they so often loved to tease him, and now thanks to you, he could finally silence them.

H ⇴ HOME

His protective, nurturing nature meant that he wanted to move you into his apartment quite quickly. He knew that it would be safer for you to be around him so that he could keep you safe from people being around your home, not to mention how much he loved to wake up in the mornings and be able to see you beside him.

I ⇴ ��I LOVE YOU”

You were the first to say, ‘I love you,’ one night when the two of you sat down and talked. Just a few moments later, Kyungsoo said it back, it felt like a natural point that the two of you reached together in your relationship. Neither of you knew what exactly flipped the switch, but the two of you knew straight away that they only answer was love.

J ⇴ JEALOUSY

Kyungsoo tried not to let himself get jealous, but he was definitely protective if someone got too close. He tried not to cling to you and trusted that you’d be able to handle yourself in any situation, but that didn’t stop him from worrying from time to time. If he was jealous, you’d be able to tell by the look in his eyes, it always was a give away in telling you what was going on. He’d try and protest when you called him out on it, but he knew that you could see right through him and finally he’d admit to how he was feeling.

K ⇴ KIDS

He definitely saw a family with you in the future, it was just a matter of when. Now that his enlistment was completed, he knew that he wanted to start thinking about settling down alongside the group. He wasn’t getting any younger, and he knew that there was no one else that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. When the time was right, he knew that the two of you would have the opportunity to have your family together.

L ⇴ LAUGHTER

Around you, Kyungsoo really feels like he can be himself. For other people, he leaves a bit of a mystery behind himself but around you, he’s very much an open book. Quite a few people fail to see how funny Kyungsoo is, but you’re so honoured to be one of the few people that get to see that side to him. Whilst around others, he’s quite shy, around you, he’ll do whatever. He loves to know that the things he does make you laugh and can help to brighten up your day whenever you’ve had a tough day at work.

M ⇴ MISSING

He’ll put his guard up on tour, he’ll do whatever he can to prove to everyone, including you, that he’s alright. But on the inside, he’s suffering and struggling without you there. You can tell just by the look in his eyes during interviews that he’s having a difficult time, and whilst he’s happy to pretend to everyone else, the moment the two of you call, you call him out on his mood. He’s stubborn, and so are you, and you’ll wear him down until eventually he admits to how he’s feeling and how desperate he is to see you. He knows its tough, and he tries to be alright, but deep down he misses you a lot and never really knows how to cope. Its hard on you too, never having the right answer as to how you can make him feel better.

N ⇴ NICKNAMES

Kyungsoo isn’t a huge fan of nicknames, you’ll usually just call him ‘Kyu,’ but even that is enough to put a smile on his face. Just hearing you mutter his name is enough to send butterflies of excitement around his body.

O ⇴ OBSESSION

He’s obsessed with your hands; he loves to have a hold of them and know where you are. It doesn’t matter where the two of you are, he’ll hold them as often as he can and keep you close by.

P ⇴ PDA

Being affectionate in public isn’t a huge deal for Kyungsoo, his affection is usually enough to know where you are and make you feel safe. He’s very private about your relationship, he doesn’t like to share too much and much prefers to keep as much about you to himself as possible to not risk hurting you.

Q ⇴ QUESTIONS

If he’s not heard from you in a while, he’ll be asking you what’s wrong to make sure you’re safe. He’s known as the mum for a reason, he makes sure to know where you are so that he knows that you’re well looked after and taking care of yourself.

R ⇴ RANDOM FACTS

Whilst so much of your relationship is kept private from the world, around the boys is a completely different matter. He can sit for hours and tell them all about you especially and all the qualities he loves about you. When you’re alone with them, they’ll always tell you all the things that Kyungsoo says though so that you can tease him about it whenever you get the chance to see if it really is true or not.

S ⇴ SEX

He quite likes to be the dominant one but will still strive to make things romantic and loving for you. He likes to take his time with you and make you feel loved, sometimes you’ll encourage for more, but Kyungsoo knows what he’s doing. He knows just the touch of his finger is enough to sometimes put you under his spell, he takes his time to know what you like, and once he finds out, he’ll always make sure to use it to his advantage.

T ⇴ TEXTS

If he doesn’t hear from you in a while, sometimes he’ll send you a few panicked texts. He can’t help but worry about you most of the time, he always wants to be there to look after you, and when he’s not, he struggles.

U ⇴ UNIVERSE

You were the one that allowed Kyungsoo to be himself. For so long he felt like he needed to be D.O that everyone adored, but there were always sides that he shut off to the world. However, you were the exception, inviting the real him into the world.

V ⇴ VACATION

If he had even just a few days off, Kyungsoo loves to use them to take you away. He was very frank in that he wanted to use the time away from work to focus on you, despite everyone telling him to rest. Wherever in the world you wanted to go, Kyungsoo would make sure to take you, although more often than not, all you wanted was home.

W ⇴ WHINING

He was far too shy to ever whine, he’d sometimes sit with a pout on his face, but that was as usually as Kyungsoo really got, he didn’t want you to hear him whine.

X ⇴ XXXXX

Lots of little kisses was Kyungsoo’s style, he could never just kiss you once, it always had to be twice, and even then, he’d tend to add a few more onto that. Whenever he kissed you, he also liked to have a hold of your body so that he could put you exactly where he wanted you. There would never be any complaints from you though, any bit of affection that you could get from Kyungsoo you’d take, and always repay it back to him.

Y ⇴ YOU

You were the one he trusted, the one he knew would be by his side forever.

Z ⇴ ZZZ

Whenever the two of you slept, Kyungsoo loved to have you nice and close. A protective arm would be around you as often as possible, he much preferred to be the big spoon and hold you close into his side to keep you safe.

---

Masterlist

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The withdrawal of $475,000 in cash by the man who killed 22 Nova Scotians in April matches the method the RCMP uses to send money to confidential informants and agents, sources say.

Gabriel Wortman, who is responsible for the largest mass killing in Canadian history, withdrew the money from a Brink’s depot in Dartmouth, N.S., on March 30, stashing a carryall filled with hundred-dollar bills in the trunk of his car.

According to a source close to the police investigation the money came from CIBC Intria, a subsidiary of the chartered bank that handles currency transactions.

Sources in both banking and the RCMP say the transaction is consistent with how the RCMP funnels money to its confidential informants and agents, and is not an option available to private banking customers.

The RCMP has repeatedly said that it had no “special relationship” with Wortman.

Court documents show Wortman owned a New Brunswick-registered company called Berkshire-Broman, the legal owner of two of his vehicles (including one of his police replica cars). Whatever the purpose of that company, there is no public evidence that it would have been able to move large quantities of cash. Wortman also ran his own denturist business and there is no reason to believe it also would require him to handle large amounts of cash.

If Wortman was an RCMP informant or agent, it could explain why the force appeared not to take action on complaints about his illegal guns and his assault on his common-law wife.

A Mountie familiar with the techniques used by the force in undercover operations, but not with the details of the investigation into the shooting, says Wortman could not have collected his own money from Brink’s as a private citizen.

“There’s no way a civilian can just make an arrangement like that,” he said in an interview.

He added that Wortman’s transaction is consistent with the Mountie’s experience in how the RCMP pays its assets. “I’ve worked a number of CI cases over the years and that’s how things go. All the payments are made in cash. To me that transaction alone proves he has a secret relationship with the force.”

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada @abpoli @nspoli

[dontcallmecarrie]

Downward Descending

the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and every villain is the hero of his own story. 

Justin Hammer didn’t consider himself a good man. 

Kind? Yes. But not good.

aka thanks, commenter, I blame the plot twist my brain came up with on you because I had zero inspiration for this AU up until I saw your comment

probably won’t make sense if you didn’t read part one to this mess and heads up, the protagonist becomes a villain here. Under the cut because it ran away on me, again.

.

Above all things, Justin Hammer was a realist. 

Kind of hard not to be, considering; between their [fading] memories of another world, and the life they’d been stuck with this round as the heir of Hammer Industries, they’d never really had a chance to get their head in the clouds.

Other people could dream of a better future, and he really did wish them all the best— but in the meantime, he had work to do.

.

Justin didn’t understand these people. 

Sometimes, he wondered if he ever would.

.

Justin didn’t think much of his family: oh, sure, they were loaded, but...well, for obvious reasons, he didn’t think very highly of some— okay, most— of their parenting choices.

Look, some people just aren’t meant to be parents, okay? But at least they try and give a damn.

These guys didn’t even bother.

Not when their heir turned out to be a normal kid instead of a once-in-a-generation child prodigy and genius [no hard feelings, though, Stark]. 

Eh. Whatever. 

Might’ve been for the best, actually; at least it was him and not some other poor kid who got stuck with dealing with all the crushing expectations and comparisons to a frankly impossible ideal, and at least they didn’t try to pull any of that shit with his little sister because if they had then...he wasn’t sure what he would’ve done, but it would not have been pretty.

[they were an older sibling twice over. some things were etched into their soul.]

.

It wasn’t like Justin had set out to quasi-adopt just about everyone remotely his age, okay? It just sort of...happened. 

Okay, look, it’s not his fault everyone his generation looks like a kid to him, they’re all brats and for some reason, all their parents came in different flavors of shitty because their IQs were sky-high but their collective emotional intelligence wouldn’t have filled a teaspoon so looks like it was up to him to step up.

Look, it made perfect sense at the time!

.

Sometimes, it’s funny how Justin is the most mature person in the room. Other times, it’s just pathetic.

Especially when it’s two grown men half a second from duking it out while in public, like they weren’t supposed to be setting an example for their kids.

Justin couldn’t help his dark look at the spectacle, even as he ushered Stark and Pym to the buffet tables on the other side of the room, all the while trying to keep the conversation light. He didn’t really have the time for hobbies, not with all the private tutors his parents kept foisting on him, but it was still nice to hear what other people his age got up to. 

...unless said kid was Stark, in which case they all got regaled with an overenthusiastic spiel on something that went way over Justin’s head but hey, he’d had plenty of practice nodding along to Steph’s chatter so this was nothing.

.

Looking back, it’s kind of sad how something as simple as giving half a damn was enough for Stark to consider them lifelong friends.

Even sadder, because Justin hadn’t even realized it at the time; he’s just been his usual self.

But apparently, that was enough for some people, was significant enough to be remembered even decades later— long after Justin himself had forgotten all about the encounter.

.

There weren’t a lot of things Justin put actual effort in. 

Emotionally, that is; he was not afraid from hard work, never had been, but there was a world of difference between brushing up on engineering terms and being there for someone. 

Not like his mother, who’d apparently thought giving birth to him and his sister was enough involvement in his life, and proceeded to spend all her time in the Bahamas whenever she had the chance. Not for his father, who constantly tried to make him into something he was not, and finding him wanting [when he wasn’t being a sexist piece of shit who regularly cheated on his wife, anyway, but that was a whole other mess entirely].

But maybe that’s why he tried to be kind, why he tried to be there for the people around him.

...oh, and apparently he’d been known for giving good advice in boarding school to anyone who asked. Which was weird, but whatever. At least he’d helped?

.

Justin tried to be a good older sibling. Really, he did, trying to be as supportive as he could be of Steph as he could.

Sometimes, though, that landed him in some...interesting situations.

Such as her infamous ‘fashion design’ phase, which lasted for five very memorable months, during which he wore even her most dubious of creations without complaint even though he really, really couldn’t pull off that particular shade of orange. 

There were probably pictures still floating around, actually, but he was in no particular hurry to dig them up.

Not that he was ashamed, because he’d like to think he pulled off some of those combinations remarkably well, but... well, if it were anyone other than his sister asking, he probably wouldn’t have done it.

Goodness knew how long it’d taken for some of the other guys at boarding school to look him in the eye afterwards. 

.

Several decades in, and Justin Hammer had yet to express interest in anyone.

Oh, he was perfectly polite and charming to everyone; courteous and charismatic, but...well.

'Gentleman’, some called him; ‘in the closet’, dismissed others with a scoff.

The truth was somewhere in between: Justin couldn’t help but see everyone his age or younger as kids, and between that, his natural older sibling instincts, and his own personal issues with his body that came and went, well...

At least Stark was always a good distraction, nobody paid attention to him when the guy was around. 

.

Justin worked at his company long before he became its CEO. 

It was a bit awkward at first, because everyone seemed to be uncomfortable with the idea of the boss’ kid looking over their shoulders, but once they saw he did good work and pulled his weight [and didn’t regularly make tasteless jokes about kitchens or whatever bullshit his old man was up to these days], things picked up the pace.

He bounced between departments a bit because he wanted to get a better feel for the company, and it was during his brief foray in the marketing department that he came across something that gave him pause.

Now, he knew Hammer Industries followed federal guidelines on who they did and didn’t sell to, officially, but...there were a few grey areas sometimes. 

Normally, it wasn’t something he’d have blinked at, but he recognized the names on this particular proposal.

“Von Doom? Latveria? Geez, Victor, what’ve you been up to?”

.

Once upon a time, there had been a boy who appreciated silence when studying during a time when most children his age were anything but.

So when another brat showed up, he hadn’t exactly been happy about it at first. 

But they were quiet, and seemed to prefer to keep their nose in their book, and so they’d come to a wordless agreement to share the space. 

For over three years, they studied together and shared exasperated looks when the other brats got loud, and so it was that a friendship was born.

It wasn’t until they stopped showing up one day that Justin learned that there was turmoil in that student’s country that’d forced them to go back, and only then that he learned his silent studymate’s name.

.

An unusual childhood friendship wasn’t much to go off of.

But it was something.

And knowing what he did about Victor, and the pull his country had in the international sphere... it was a risky gamble, but he was fairly certain he could pull it off.

So Justin quietly but firmly took that particular proposal from the ‘reject’ pile, and took it to his father to look over.

He was still fairly new at this, but he knew how to play the game. It was a risky gamble, but if this panned out, they’d have a significantly stronger foothold in places their rivals couldn’t even dream.

Worst comes to worse, well... everyone was so focused on what was going down in Yugoslavia, it wasn’t like they’d particularly care if a few shipments went missing, now, would they?

It wasn’t pretty, but then, Justin wouldn’t get anywhere in the world if he was afraid of getting his hands dirty.

.

Latveria’s reputation as an unstable country ended when the scion of one of their most eminent families went and united its people, kicking out all of the outside factions vying for territory as he did.

Then he promptly turned around and revitalized its economy, infrastructure, and gods knows what else because seemingly overnight, Latveria turned into one of the richest countries on the planet. 

Sitting back in his chair, Justin smiled as he put down the newspaper.

“Huh. Sounds like someone’s been busy.”

.

He got a very slick cell phone via courier, not long after that. 

That, and a slip of paper with a simple ‘Thanks’ in Victor’s signature scrawl.

.

Years passed.

Years passed, and shit went down, but no matter what hurdles life threw his way, Justin powered through them nonetheless.

Like when his little sister had a kid and their parents freaked out because she wasn’t married, and then freaked out even more when little Timmy turned out to be on the spectrum and Justin wasn’t remotely surprised when she cut all contact with them after that.

Goodness knew he’d have done the same long ago, after all the shit they’d pulled over the years.

He was just happy she chose to keep him in her life, and that Timmy seemed to really like him as an uncle. 

.

Stark was a bona fide hero, was talking about privatizing world peace. 

Justin wished him the best of luck.

But...well, he hadn’t been the one to propose their rivalry, but if Stark wasn’t in the industry to compete against, then... oh, bother.

Looks like he’d have to change up his plans.

.

Stark was acting weird. Well, weirder, he’d never really been able to understand him in the first place.

“What’s wrong?” Justin asked as he pulled him to the side. Sure, it was probably rude to ignore the gala’s host, but he did not like the look in Stark’s eyes, no matter how bright his smile was.

“Hey, Justin! How’ve you been? Long time no see, but—”

“You’re not okay.” He said, making sure his tone brooked no argument because he knew Stark, had known him since they were kids and he was not okay.

It was like a switch flipped: Stark’s smile vanished, and he reached out towards him for a moment before he sighed and were those tears in his eyes? “Yeah, you could say that.”

.

The government wanted to take Stark’s super-fancy suit, and...this, he could work with. Somehow.

Damn it, he’d need to tweak some of his plans even more...

.

For a few seconds, Stark looked very betrayed when he caught sight of him in the courtroom. 

Then his face went blank in the way Justin had long known to be his ‘I am screaming internally but I refuse to let the cameras see’ look, and he felt bad for him even as he submitted his own findings to their audience.

To be honest, they were a long ways off from developing anything close to what Stark already had in hand, but it never hurt to be prepared for the future. If one man could do it, what was to stop another?

They were all lucky Stark was a good man who didn’t abuse his power.

Justin was no hero, but if lightning were to strike twice...better him than a potential threat.

Besides— Stark needed competition if he didn’t want to stagnate. Who knows? Hopefully, they’d be able to push each other to greater heights.

.

Ivan Vanko was a dangerous man. Just as brilliant as Stark, but with an edge that could only have been gained from a hard life.

Dealing with him would be like playing with fire, Justin just knew it.

[Like knew like, after all.]

But he knew people, knew how to work them, and considering that little display at the race track?

He could work with this.

.

It takes a handful of phone calls to put out all the fires from the past few days. 

Perk of being a well-known and respected figure in the defense industry, Justin supposed; Stark’d once mentioned his contact list was classified six ways to Sunday, so really, having a few senators on speed-dial was nothing. 

He had to do some extra sweet-talking to calm down some of the generals, and may or may not have made mention to some of his older contracts to get Stern to ease up, but whatever.

.

Why he was invited to Stark’s birthday celebration, he didn’t know. 

But he brought a bottle of apple cider and champagne anyway, because why the hell not.

.

This party was really, really not his style.

So when he was pulled aside by the man of the hour, he raised an eyebrow when he noticed he was out of his suit and— wait.

Justin whipped back to where the piece of equipment that had been the source of all this mess was dancing on the table, while Tony was in a rumpled suit not three feet from him.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

.

Stark looked like shit. 

...and was apparently dying, because he’d passed up Justin’s offer at a toast, even though it had been an inside joke for almost as long as they could remember.

Also, he’d looked stricken when Justin had tried to joke about it, that was another pretty big clue.

They weren’t normally one for hugs, but this time they didn’t hesitate to offer— and so felt very very awkward when the closest thing they had to a childhood frenemy proceeded to break down in their arms.

Justin’s older sibling instincts flared to life and they tried to murmur reassurances the best they could, but.

Wasn’t like there was much they could say, now, could they?

Stark was dying, and there was nothing they could do about it. 

Something inside Justin was screaming, and the part of him that wasn’t trying to be there for someone absently wondered why...then he noticed what he was saying, and kicked himself for not paying attention earlier.

“—ever give up, I’m here, know you are not alone—”

Geez. Talk about sappy, normally they only got like this around their sister or nephew.

But whatever it was they’d said, it apparently helped. 

Or something, because Stark was honest-to-goodness crying but after a few minutes, started to calm down and pull himself together.

“I’m so, so sorry about this—” Stark started, and Justin cut in.

“Don’t be, looks like you needed it.” And he clearly had; already he looked a lot better than before.

“I...should get back to the party, shouldn’t I?” Ah, looks like Justin wasn’t the only one feeling awkward now.

“It’s gone on for a while, and you look pretty tired. You sure you don’t want to wrap it up instead?”

“...yeah, that’s... probably a good idea. See you around, Justin. Hopefully.”

“See you later, Stark.” 

.

Stark apparently invented a new element in his basement. 

He knew this, because Stark called him up to say he wasn’t dying anymore. 

Once he hung up, he felt torn between immense relief, and exasperation that he’d need to rewrite his plans again.

.

...aaand kinda ran out of steam again. Long story short, yes, this is the AU where Justin Hammer maybe sort of becomes the Lex Luthor of the universe and may or may not end up accidentally creating a League of Evil of sorts because he’s frenemies with Tony and Victor von Doom ends up having a similar dynamic with some grad student and Ivan has some really good ideas and loves sticking it to the man. 

Said club only grows when the Avengers Initiative forms, and Loki escapes custody and joins for the sole purpose of pranking Thor and giving Fury a headache and Justin may or may not end up getting a crush somewhere along the way.

No, I’m not sure how we got here either.

[readerinsertfanfiction]

Hi! I was wondering if you can do Kakeru Manabe dating Momiji’s twin sister. She was also born with the zodiac curse, and like they tell everyone and are ready to tell Akito and he doesn’t improve, how would everyone react? Including Manabe. Would they defend her and try to make him agree to them dating? Thank you if you read this have a good day or night sjsnsnsj 😅 ALSO IM SORRY IF ITS TOO MUCH DJDKWNDK

Heya! While I do write for Fruits Basket (thank heavens for another fandom in my inbox for once lol) I write reader!inserts not the story of your OC that you don’t feel like writing out yourself. So what I will do is write a Kakeru Manabe x reader story with a character that has the zodiac curse, but otherwise there will be no Momiji’s twin, because I sure hope that the OC has more of an identity than just being a copy of Momiji.

A/N: Of course I write a Fruits Basket piece on the eve of Lunar New Year. 😅😅😅 HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR TO THOSE WHO CELEBRATE. 🐮🐮🐮

Fandom: Fruits Basket

Character: Kakeru Manabe

Prompt: Sohmacursed!reader

He slept in the flowerbeds without a care. Earning complaints from many. The school council president dared to roughen him up in public, earning a surprised look as the image of prince charming broke. He did everything differently and earned no ire, only more fans for the actions he took. Kakeru Manabe was a strange individual that went against the grain and that had your attention. Someone who was capable of pulling out a different side out of everyone.

Affable was a word that would suit him. Along with attentive, for he always thought and minded the rest first, even while he slept in flower beds, or did something silly that earned Yuki’s fist once more. Kakeru Manabe was, by all accounts a charming young male that had deserved his spot in popularity despite his ditzy outer appearance, if only because of something dark hidden beneath. It was attractive, for a Sohma at least. For they often lived under a façade as well, for they often craved the genuine attention of those surrounding them.

And here was the danger for you, for a Sohma was not supposed to interact with those from the outside. For they were not allowed to be with those uninitiated and you were very much not an exception. In fact, you were a reason even.

“We can’t be together,” you had stated, and Yuki had solemnly nodded, understanding the why but not willing to accept it just like that. However, as a fellow Sohma what was he to suggest else? The outsiders wouldn’t understand and as much as Kakeru was someone of great understanding and acceptance he was just another outsider. After all, it wasn’t unheard of from their own mothers to abandon their children once they found the curse, what obligation had he not to do the same?

“Ahaha, please don’t be like that,” Kakeru had responded, first thinking that you were jesting. Your humour had always been rather outlandish, it was why the two of you got along so well. Just last week you had been the one confessing to him, albeit covertly, but now it was him who returned the words to you, openly. Surely feelings couldn’t have changed that quickly?

“Oooh, is it because you’re actually the heir of a throne in a foreign country? It is fine, I will be your Prince Charming!” the male had exclaimed, thinking that you truly were playing a game with him, but at your stern expression Kakeru’s bright shimmering light dimmed a little as he eyed you and then Yuki and then you again.

“Is it because of my family?” he questions, a pensive look on his face as he recalls the complications his own family came with. The difficulties Machi had to suffer from. The things he fought so hard to break away from. Was it all fruitless in the end?

You shook your head once more, a soft smile on your lips as you took a step away from the male, creating distance between the two of you. It was regrettable that Yuki was here, when it was supposed to be a private moment, but also fortunate, for you were sure that he was needed to pick up the pieces of his friend that you were to leave behind.

“It is mine,” you answered honestly, remembering the way Akito had reacted to Rin and Hatsuharu, recalling the story of why Hatori’s fiance had suddenly left him, the heartbreak, the pain, the inevitable tragedy that was to come, but above all the lack of what you wanted to give him the most; the curse holding you back. And that was all you had been willing to say as you turned away, leaving him with only your rejection.

But Kakeru was amongst the many traits of affableness and charm also determined, unwilling to let go once he had understood that this went against yourself as much as it went against him to let you go.

Kakeru knew himself not to be as kind and as empathetic as he would like to be, often needing others to explain to him what the perspective of the other was. But he understood family and especially complicated families as a member of one himself. Or so he had believed when he tried to dive into yours and tried to figure out what it was that had made you say what you had.

“Have you tried to embrace a Sohma? Have you ever pressed their body against yours and felt its true form?”

The mysterious head of the Sohma family had left Kakeru with even more questions as he wondered what it was that Akito had meant. Kakeru had, without a fear, approached the head to put the hierarchy of the Sohma into question. An inquiry that had earned him a cold and callous ire in which he was challenged to do the one thing you had always avoided. Was it in there that your secret laid?

He had considered it, Kakeru had, but the thought disturbed him as he realised the implications that Akito had so carefully suggested. Was he able to disturb your boundaries as such, to force out your secrets to him so casually all for the sake of starting a relationship?

“You will destroy it before you have it,” were Yuki’s words when he tried to seek counsel from his friend. Yuki’s grey eyes had been so sad, back to that gloomy cold prince he had been before they became friends. It was a loneliness that Kakeru had come to recognise in all members of the Sohma, which he sometimes saw in you as well.

“Whatever it is,” the male decided to tell you instead, “I hope one day you will come to see me as someone that you trust enough to share your secret with,” he had told you after relaying the story of his meeting with Akito. He regretted his own noisiness, lamented his curiosity, but had satisfied himself with patience. Patience that he was willing to use to wait for you to be ready, or for his feelings to die out, though Kakeru had a feeling that was going to be another long while. He was after all, quite stubborn.

[smol-nevi]

I don't generally make this kind of thing a habit, but I think if you happen to be on the Crystal RP Discord, aka @crystal-rp-ffxiv, you should probably be aware of this kind of behavior, so here goes.

If you're on Crystal RP and the admin team decides they don't like you, you're going to be living under a microscope while they wait for you to mess up, if not bait you, probably while making up conspiracies about you as well. As for how I know this, I was a moderator for about a week's duration and saw it first-hand.

Unapologetically lengthy post. Receipts in the link above, long version below the cut.

From the first time I looked in the mod chat I knew something was wrong. I read backwards in the channel, thinking I'd acclimate myself and see what kind of rules precedents had been set and that sort of thing. I mostly just found out that they had it out for a particular member (at the time using the name Jericho) for not much reason. They'd spent a troubling amount of time over the past few months watching him and another member like vultures, believing them to be the same person and waiting for them to make some kind of mistake that would justify banning both of them...despite keeping different schedules, having different personalities and typing habits, and visibly being two different people. The admin team had come to the conclusion that Jericho was a troll who wanted to make them look bad, and anything he said or did was scrutinized to a ridiculous degree for evidence that would corroborate their belief.

Except none of the things they believed at all were true: he'd had a minor argument via DM with the head admin Benjimir Thursby's wife, Tessariel Aerlinn, who had made an overly broad statement about anime and Asian culture. Jericho had told her that overgeneralization about 'Asian culture' is potentially racist, and she became extremely angry, saying that because she's Asian, she can't be racist against Asians. After that, it seemed that Jericho was considered fair game for whatever retaliatory actions the two of them could justify.

Even a cursory glance at actual racism in Asia pokes Tessariel's statement entirely full of holes, and having personally read the conversation I didn't see anything actually inaccurate in his statement even if she believed it didn't apply to her. I asked what he had done that would merit such a response, because it felt very disproportionate to anything I'd ever seen him do publicly, and that was what I was told. The exchange via DMs had been screencapped and kept in a channel for evidence, and while I didn't get a copy of it, I did read it, and I said that I thought it sounded awfully one-sided and punitive and would have been much better as an actual conversation. I also expressed that I was concerned how much of the channel had been solely devoted to what was basically a witch hunt, considering that some of the server members had over the course of the past couple of months commented that the admins' behavior towards Jericho seemed biased.

I basically got a pat on the head and told that my opinion was "valued" but wrong. This would happen a lot over the course of the week.

Shit continued to escalate. Their favorite punching bag, who was acutely aware of the grudge by now and probably trying to be nice and discuss something that he thought they could all talk about, brought up some articles that stated that LOTRO might be having a graphical overhaul. This actually ended in him being put into some kind of time-out mute, because "everyone knows those articles are debunked already" despite them still being hosted on reputable games news sites. Back-channel, the admin consensus was that he was in fact trying to bait Benjimir and Tessariel into somehow looking stupid in public, because [paraphrasing] 'he knows how important LOTRO is to them.'

Benjimir in fact went off publicly about how he knows the dev team and they sent him 'personalized swag' for 'being himself' and that everyone should just listen to him because he's right. Someone else made a reasonable request for sources on statements that Benjimir made about the LOTRO improvements not happening, and they immediately became the team's private #2 punching bag.

The whole time I reiterated that this was really uncomfortable and I had serious concerns about the way they were handling Jericho. And as always I received a pat on the head and was told to not worry about it, there were really good reasons for it, really. He was 'bringing down the quality of discourse' on the server somehow. Benjimir decided that the only way he would unmute Jericho is if Jericho talked directly to him, and that Jericho tried to talk to any of the more level-headed members of the team first was taken as obvious evidence that he wanted to evade rules and create problems. I asked when we planned to unmute him, and Tessariel immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had messaged me, which wasn't incorrect but the way she worded it felt highly accusatory and I was beginning to feel that I was also in trouble somehow for not agreeing with the rest of the team.

Things came to a head quickly when I woke up and looked at the mod chat and they were having an animated conversation that started with Benjimir asking if it was 'bad that he was laughing at Jericho' and most of the rest of the team talking about how he was stupid, uninformed, a troll, etc. for the sin of having some misgivings about cryptocurrency, of all the things. One of the mods self-described their behavior as bullying. I said that this was extremely unprofessional and that I thought they should keep conversation to actual moderation matters, and if they had a personal disagreement with a server member they should handle it in a personal venue, not via official server moderation channels.

I was, for the final time, patted on the head, and told that this was not something they would consider, because the moderation team 'needs to be able to vent for their mental health' (never mind that the job was not stressful except for the rest of the team committing worse behavior than the server members) and that maybe I was in fact too sensitive for the job. Benjimir heavily implied that I had become too close to Jericho and was being manipulated, managed to misgender me somehow despite my having used solely male or neutral pronouns the entire time I'd been on the server, and after relating a story in which a couple of years ago a well-liked moderator left after having the same complaints as I did (which he saw nothing at all troubling about), suggested that I should be demoted to babysitting the lore channel.

So I took some time to collect receipts, which are linked at the top of the post, and told him where to shove it.

Since that time, things have actually somehow gotten worse on Crystal RP. Benjimir posted an entire page screed vaguely talking about "rampant negativity" that stated anyone with questions should DM him.

Upon DMing him with questions, Jericho was banned, the only reason given being that he was a 'poor fit' for the server in some vague way. I was immediately banned afterwards for calling out this decision as being driven by a personal vendetta in the feedback channel and let him know afterwards via DMs in no uncertain terms that I had logged everything I needed and would be building my case (and that he is an asshole). Jericho was reinstated, though I'm not sure what the conditions of his return were as that was after my ban and I didn't ask since I didn't want to stress him out further. Benjimir also reprimanded someone for discussing asexuality, stating in a DM to them that the conversation was somehow ERP related. I called him out on this via DM as well. Tessariel was not much later caught posting my last DMs to Benjimir in an entirely unrelated server, though she didn't include the part after that where I brought up his aphobia (during Pride Month, in a server with a rainbow icon no less). Benjimir for some reason decided to suddenly start following my FC's Tumblr well after our falling-out.

And as of today (6/24), Crystal RP now has seven pages of draconian rules, because it wasn't micromanaged hard enough before or something. Notably, a lot of these rules describe behaviors that they wanted to punish Jericho for but couldn't at the time justify, or that they'd like to punish me for but have nothing they can do to me. Or they exist to justify their own behavior, as now seen in the very beginning of the channel:

"This approach also provides our volunteers with leeway to act in good faith without the burden befitting a professional occupation."

"So we afford them the means to speak openly, vent, lament, candidly and yes, sometimes crassly and raw about everything and one."

Not only did they behave unprofessionally and shit-talk before, they have now encoded in the rules that this is acceptable and even good moderator behavior, because they saw someone else do it so it's fine (a lot of this wording is very similar to what I was told when I protested it). So rather than address anything I ever said past or present, Benjimir is choosing to double down and giving himself and his team explicit permission to be shitty, right in the opening paragraphs where you'd have expected a mission statement or at least some sort of welcome.

Which is about all you need to know about that server and its owners, in my estimation. I'd considered not even posting to Tumblr about it, but given that it's only getting worse, I think it should be generally known that this is how you can expect to potentially be treated.

[brasskingfisher]

*Rant warning*

OK, so recently I've started seeing a lot of posts encouraging people to boycott the BBC/ not pay the tv licence because of some transphobic story published on their news site (I don't know the details, I deliberately started trying to avoid the news about 18 months ago to prevent giving myself an aneurism) but boycotting the BBC over this is only going to make the situation worse, and more likely for similar stuff to happen again in future.

Now, you're probably wondering how that can happen since boycotts work by depriving support and funding to an organisation/company thereby encouraging change. AH, but y'see the BBC is govt. funded (and despite generally being impartial) tends to brown nose whichever political party happens to be in power (and therfore holds the pursestrings), and the current govt. are ideologically opposed to the idea of a public funded anything (broadcaster, health service, transport etc.) Now the massively corrupt arse clowns currently in govt. are also trying to push a very particular nationalistic, capitalist, xenophobic and hetronormative cultural agenda, attacking anyone and everyone who doesn't fully agree with it and have been trying to interfere with the BBC (and it's impartiality) through various means. Now this transphobic piece was probably intended as a sop to these fuck nuggets as a 'See, we're toeing the line.' gesture, and has rightly been attacked.

THE PROBLEM is that if people's reactions to this piece is to say "F you!" and boycott the BBC rather than just complaining about it, it gives the same cockwombles the chance to say; "This public body isn't fit for purpose. It should be done away with and replaced by a privately funded equivalent." Now, that privately owned alternative is going to beholden to whoever funds it, and therefore will have no oversight beyond it's shareholders and so will promote whatever agenda they want to present regardless of its' accuracy (e.g. Fox News, The Daily Mail etc.)

So if you want to do something proactive about this, then, lodge a formal complaint, register to vote and campaign against the fucking tory scum who are doing this shit!

TL;DR: The BBC is trying to suck up to a shitty, corrupt, racist and transphobic govt. who want to replace it with a shitty alternative they control and boycotting the BBC plays into their hands

[nordleuchten]

Hi ! Facts about the Lafayette couple. Thanks.

Hello Anon,

well, well, the La Fayette couple, Adrienne and Gilbert  - where to even begin with these two? Their marriage was arranged and arranged marriages were very common for the time and people of their position. A family with wealth, a title and influence was keen on preserving all of this – and tried to add to it by trying to arranging marriages with families who as well had at least one of these things. A truly popular combination was a family with a great name/title that had fallen on hard times and a very rich family without too great a name. Now, La Fayette and Adrienne were lucky in so far as that they really loved each other. Their marriage was far more than pure convenience. Still, not everything was picture perfect. La Fayette had different mistresses and although he loved Adrienne, I always feel like it took him quite some time to realise just how wonderful Adrienne truly was, how loyal and devoted. It was not entirely uncommon that a man and a women in an arranged marriage barely know each other prior to their marriage. That again was different with La Fayette and Adrienne. La Fayette actually lived with his future in-laws together in their house prior to the marriage. Behind the scenes everything had already been sorted out, but the bride and the groom were still none the wiser (although La Fayette was told before Adrienne was told). Partly responsible for this living-arrangement was Adrienne’s mother, the Duchess d’Ayen. She was the metaphorical lioness protecting her cubs. She was fiercely protective of her daughters and thought that Adrienne was still way too young. So La Fayette moved in with them, they had some time to get to know each other and to mature a bit. La Fayette also won over the Duchess, who was a bit skeptical at first.

When La Fayette and Adrienne finally married, she was fourteen and he was sixteen. Their marriage contract stated that they should continue to live with Adrienne’s family and that their marriage was not be consumed for some time. This rule again was included due to the input of the Duchess – who still thought her daughter way too young for any martial endeavours. Regardless of that, Adrienne became pregnant with the couples first child during this proposed period – the popular opinion is, that La Fayette after some time simply wanted to be with Adrienne and sneaked into her room (something that he supposedly confessed to later in life). Whatever happened, they both seemed quite happy.

When La Fayette departed for America, Adrienne was completely clueless, she said that herself but there is also circumstancel evidence to support her statement. She had a young and sickly daughter to look after, a daughter that would die a few months later when La Fayette was still in America. She furthermore was pregnant with their second child and Paris was on fire with rumours. Newspapers printed rumours about La Fayette’s death on the field or something similar every other day and she often had no possibility of hearing from her husbands for months and months (before La Fayette’s first return to France they had not heard from one another for roughly eight months). The news of the death of their oldest child Henriette reached La Fayette so late that he send Adrienne many letters asking about Henriette, asking if she was well, long after Henriette was deceased. But despite all of it, Adrienne put up a brave face in public and never complaint. In general, whether she agreed with her husband or nor, weather she liked what he did or not, she never criticised him in public, never embarrassed or questioned him in front of others.

After the conclusion of the war in America La Fayette and Adrienne together with their children moved into their own home. They were, for people of their time and status, very engaged parents. They started hosting their “American Dinners” on Mondays and Adrienne was also included in La Fayette’s “Plantation-Project”. La Fayette kept a lively correspondence with George Washington but Adrienne also exchanged letters with Washington. There is one lovely, humours account by Washington in a letter to La Fayette dated September 30, 1779:

“(...) But at present must pray your patience a while longer, till I can make a tender of my most respectful compliments to the Marchioness. Tell her (if you have not made a mistake, & offered your own love instead of hers to me) that I have a heart susceptable of the tenderest passion, & that it is already so strongly impressed with the most favourable ideas of her, that she must be cautious of putting loves torch to it; as you must be in fanning the flame. But here again methinks I hear you say, I am not apprehensive of danger—My wife is young—you are growing old & the atlantic is between you—All this is true, but know my good friend that no distance can keep anxious lovers long asunder, and that the Wonders of former ages may be revived in this—But alas! will you not remark that amidst all the wonders recorded in holy writ no instance can be produced where a young Woman from real inclination has prefered an old Man—This is so much against me that I shall not be able I fear to contest the prize with you—yet, under the encouragement you have given me I shall enter the list for so inestimable a jewell.”

This is just such a funny, carefree, teasing letter between the three of them. Its adorable. But these carefree times soon came to an end with the onset of the French Revolution (you could argue that the Revolution had already begun long prior to 1789 but in that year it rapidly gained speed).

La Fayette entangled himself in the political and military matters of the day and when everything started to go down the hill (from his perspective at least) he tried to fled to America and got caught before he even could reach a harbour. Adrienne and the children stayed behind in France. Now, it had became some sort of custom that the women of (aristocrat) man who fled France during the Revolution “divorced” her husbands. (“Divorce” because these divorces were often not real civil divorces in accordance with the law but more a sort of public separation from their “treacherous and anti-republican” husbands that could get these women a passport and/or out of prison. It also opened them the opportunity to marry again later in life.) Somebody proposed a divorce to Adrienne and she was absolutely repelled by the idea. She had married La Fayette for better and for worse and she would not, not under any circumstance divorce her husband. Period. In fact, she started signing all her papers with “la femme de Lafayette”, “the wife of Lafayette”. After and eventful and fearful time, Adrienne was eventually released from her prison in France. She gathered her two daughters (her son was safe in America with his tutor) and went to Austria were La Fayette was still imprisoned in Olmütz. She had some family connections to the court in Vienna and eventually obtained the permission of sharing her husbands imprisonment. Although accounts vary, all accounts agree that Olmütz was a true hell-hole. Adrienne and her children were treated better than La Fayette  - but the treatment was still not good. Soon Adrienne became ill and the prison doctor could not really do anything. Adrienne was told that she was free to go, leave this place behind, find a good doctor, settle down somewhere more comfortable. Nobody wanted to see her suffer or even die. The only stipulation, if she would leave now she was not allowed to ever return – and with that Adrienne stayed and suffered and hasted her death because she would not leave her husband behind. In my opinion her sacrifice at that moment made La Fayette understand just how incredible his wife was. He never forgot what she endured for him and her actions probably lead their relationship to unknown heights.

After they were eventually all released from prison they settled first in Danish-Holstein and then in the Netherlands before returning to France. Adrienne managed to regain a lot of the property that they had previously lost during the Revolution. Although she was successful in that regard, her health (and beauty) was forever ruined. Despite all that she took great joy in seeing her children marry and becoming a grandmother. When Adrienne died on December 24, 1807 La Fayette was absolutely shattered. He wrote a very, very long and very, very sad letter to a friend, retelling Adrienne’s last days and expressing his grieve:

“As yet you have always found me stronger than circumstances, but now this event is stronger than me. Never shall I recover from it. During the thirty - four years of an union in which her tenderness, her goodness, the elevation of her mind, charmed, adorned, honoured my life, I felt myself so used to all that she was to me, that I could not distinguish it from my own existence. She was fourteen, and I was sixteen, when her heart amalgamated itself with everything that could interest me. I knew I loved her, I knew I needed her, but it is only now that I can distinguish what life which I had thought was to have been entirely devoted to worldly matters. (...)”

The letter is really long but so worth the read if you are interested. Really! It is such an honest, open, affectionate and reflected statement of their relationship. Adrienne’s last words were “Je suis toute à vous” (I am all yours) and La Fayette had these words inscribed on a miniature of Adrienne that he constantly had upon his person. Here is an account of the portrait from Jules Germain Cloquets book “Recollections of the Private Life of General Lafayette, etc”:

“In his children he cherished the memory of their mother, (Mademoiselle de Noailles,) whom he had loved most tenderly, and whose name he never mentioned but with visible emotion. One day during his last illness, I surprised him kissing her portrait, which he always wore suspended to his neck in a small gold medallion. Around the portrait were the words, “Je suis à vous ,” and on the back was engraved this short and touching inscription, “ Je vous fus donc une douce compagne: eh bien ! benissez moi .” I have since been informed that regularly every morning Lafayette ordered Bastien [his valet] to leave the room, in which he shut himself up, and taking the portrait in both hands, looked at it earnestly, pressed it to his lips, and remained silently contemplating it for about a quarter of an hour. Nothing was more disagreeable to him than to be disturbed during this daily homage to the memory of his virtuous partner.”

I hope you have/had an awesome day!

[somewillwin]

Poppy x mc anon fic

“Can we talk?”

Poppy’s perfect pink nails dig into your wrist once the bell rings, causing a piercing pain to travel up your arm. You meet her chocolate brown eyes, cold and unrelenting.

You furrow your brows, confusion making its way onto your expression. Everyone else is going already, and the class empties out quickly, leaving only the two of you in front of the teacher’s wooden desk.

“What is it?” You ask. Poppy never talks to you in a public space, if it isn’t an attempt to mortify you in front of the whole school. And when it’s only the two of you… well, usually very little talking is involved, not when your lips are trailing paths all over her skin.

Her wanting to talk is new, and you’re not sure what you should expect from it.

“Are you fucking professor Kingsley?”

The question is so blunt and unexpected that it leaves you speechless for a few seconds, mouth slightly open.

“I- what?”

Her nails dig in even deeper, causing you to tear your arm away from her grasp with a hiss. Your wrist is marked, now. “Ah fuck Poppy, that hurt!”

“There are rumors going around,” she continues, ignoring your complaints “that you and the professor do more than just grading papers in her private office.”

She’s angry, you can tell. It’s not the kind of explosive anger you got used to, that leads to shouting and threats. Her rage is quiet and icy, this time, turning her eyes into hard stones.

Her ire only manages to make you angry as well.

“And why should I tell you,” you spit out, causing her eyes to flash dangerously . You have to force yourself not to flinch. No matter how much time you’ve spent with the woman, she still manages to somewhat scare you.

“Because,” she replies, her voice just above a whisper between white, clenched teeth, “I don’t share. And if you can’t make me your only priority, it’s not gonna work between us.”

Laughter bubbles up from your chest, coming out ugly and mocking. “Well this is just rich, coming for you,” you exclaim, whispering be damned. “Poppy, you have a boyfriend, for hell’s sake. It seems a little late do decide that whatever we have going on is exclusive.”

“So you are fucking her.”

“That’s not what I said!” You exclaim, now exasperated “but even if I was, it’s not any of your fucking business.”

“It’s not anything like my boyfriend!” She shouts back, sounding like an angry child. Poppy lashes out, as she often does when unable to control her own feelings, and tries to shove you back. However, you’re ready for her, grasping her hands and pulling her in against your body. She’s shorter than you are, and she has to tilt her chin up to stare into your eyes, breath grazing your lips.

“How is it different?” You ask with a calm tone, suddenly collected once again. You feel her breathing catch in her throat at your proximity, her expensive perfume is strong and intoxicating.

“Because I don’t like my boyfriend,” she whispers, and hell, she almost sounds shy, insecure. It’s that side of her that you’ve seen so rarely, and it intimidates you even more than her bursts of anger. Because Poppy is human, and not a perfect ceramic doll, or a post on the T.

“but the way you look at Kingsley, I…”

You feel your heart beat faster at that confession, and heat envelopes you. “Oh,” you manage to say. So that’s what it is about? Poppy is jealous of your feelings? It makes your head spin, because how could anyone expect something like that?

“Yeah,” she says bitterly, “ ‘oh’. Now let me go.” She gives an half hearted tug, unable to free herself from your grasp. Instead of freeing her, you pull her even closer than before, molding her form against yours.

The taste of her lips is familiar, by now, sweet cherry. You feel her stiffen beneath you for barely a second, before she’s kissing back with a slow exhale. There has always been hunger inside you, when you kissed her. But now it’s different, it’s even better, and it’s scary, because for some reason Poppy hates the idea of you liking someone else. And that means something, and you wonder when your hookups have started to have meaning, after weeks and weeks of affairs behind closed doors.

As the kiss deepens you let her wrists go to grasp at her hips, keeping her in place, your fingers poking at her like claws. She moans softly in your mouth, as she lets her arms circle around your shoulders.

It’s otherworldly, kissing Poppy Min Sinclair. You don’t think you’ll ever get tired of that unique feeling, and you wonder how you ever did without it in the first place.

You think of her boyfriend, that blonde, narcissistic actor that she doesn’t even like, and you gently bite into her lower lip, claiming her.

She whimpers as her fingers grasp onto your hair, and God, it’s addictive to feel her unravel beneath you.

“Not here,” she gasps when you finally let her lips go. However, her hands push you your head against her neck, as you possessively lick and bite the fair skin of her throat.

You had forgotten where you were, and frankly, you don’t even give a damn anymore. If you get caught, Poppy gets caught as well, and you would both fall from grace. You let your hands travel down her body, under her skirt, until you’re palming the burning flesh of her thighs.

It doesn’t take too much effort to lift her petite form up, and you’re kissing her again as you settle her on the mahogany desk.

You lean back, just enough to take her appearance in. Her eyes are barely open and glassy, her lips are plump and her hair is disheveled. Right now, Poppy looks like the incarnation of sex, and you hold in a whine when she slowly licks the lip that you had just bitten.

Poppy is anything but a patient woman, she grabs the collar of your shirt with a heated “don’t you dare stop now,” and while you ravish her mouth you let your fingers slip under her skirt once again.

Her underwear is soaked, you feel it just with a brush of you knuckles, and you hear Poppy’s breathing stop for a second, her hips rolling against your hand.

In another occasion you’d draw back and tease, make fun of how desperate she’s being for your touch. But right now what you want is to fill her, to wipe away from her mind whatever pitiful attempt her boyfriend might have made with her in the bedroom.

Poppy moans when you scoot the lacy cloth to the side and let your fingers touch her directly, feeling just how wet she is for you. She’s pressed hard against you, chest against chest, lips against lips, and even if your wrist is bent in an almost uncomfortable position, you slip two fingers inside her.

“God,” she says against your mouth, meeting your hand with rhythmic thrusts of her hips. She doesn’t kiss you anymore, she just bites her lip and closes her eyes, forehead pressed against yours. It makes pride and hunger tear into your chest, the way you are absolutely wrecking her world, and when you suck at her neck and curl your fingers she gasps your name like a prayer instead of a curse. She comes with a muted scream, stiffening against you, ass raised from the desk, and then she finally comes down with a sigh.

“God,” she says once again, her hand coming to fix her hair, scooting blonde locks away from her own face, as you wipe your glistening fingers against your pants.

“Good?” You ask her with a cheeky smirk, and she rolls her eyes as an answer, even when you can see the small grin tugging at the corner of her lips.

“Acceptable.”

You snort, fixing the collar of your shirt. Then it’s quiet, and you’re no longer in your own private bubble with a gorgeous lover, but you’re in an empty classroom with the woman you despise the most in the whole school. She gets off the desk and you know it’s over like that.

You won’t talk about what happened, about what she said, and you’ll do it all once again, like always.

“I’m not having an affair with professor Kingsley.” You state, before she can leave. You don’t know why you do it, but you do nevertheless. Poppy stops in her tracks and looks at you, her face is unreadable.

“Just so you know.” You feel the need to clarify to her.

You swear you can see her eyes soften for a second, and you wonder if her shoulders relax because of relief.

“Okay.” She says, looking almost as awkward as you feel. She takes a lock of her hair and brings it behind her ear. “See you tomorrow, then.”

You give her a wry smile. Tomorrow, when you’ll be back at screaming at each other for the pure enjoyment of everyone else in that building, like a couple of starved tigers that are forced to circle each other in a circus, while the crowd goes wild.

“See you tomorrow, Poppy.” You agree.

She hesitates and opens her mouth, as if to tell you something, but then she decides against it and turns around, closing the door and leaving you behind.

——

Thank you anon for this 😳😳

Tag: @origmansello @poppysminion

[rametarin]

The problem with Eat Da Buuuuuuugs.

It’s not that insects aren’t a high protein, nutritious meal. Because, objectively, they are that. The problem also isn’t “high class vs. low.”

The problem with Eat Da Booooooooogs is that it’s based on moralism and oughts. You OUGHT to brush your teeth, so we invented a state-mandatory toothbrush; it now records the number of times you’ve brushed your teeth and rates how you did it and informed your insurance provider. You OUGHT to have, but you didn’t, so now the state will punish you with higher personal fees and lower how much it will help subsidize the cost, and state subsidies make medical and dental care affordable, so the end result is you pay a literal fortune for not doing what the state thinks you OUGHT.

There are people alive, right now, that for religious reasons, pseudo-spiritualist reasons, moralist dogmatist reasons, absolutely abhor the consumption of red mead and the use of plains and grazing lands, for grazing and feeding animals for food.

Some abhor it because they believe that private property should not exist, and they do not feel people should be able to own livestock; that ‘society’ should own all livestock and be forced to share it. Whether you’re a productive member, or you just sit on your bed playing The Sims and doing ketamine all day. Guess which of the two likes this idea more.

Some abhor it because they’re exisetnailly terrified of life and its consequences. They crave some sort of logic and reason to their existence and a life after death, and aren’t satisfied with the Christian version, so they drift back and forth between their own schizophrenia and the world’s pseudo-spiritualism/New Age Enlightenment, “I take a little bit from all the popular religions and choose what my personal bia- I mean, sixth sense, validates as reasonable to me.” So they dislike the idea of eating red meat, because they don’t want to die and come back as an animal for slaughter. They’re terrified that in a past life or in a future life, they’ll be the meat and suffer for someone elses enjoyment.

Some are spoiled, out-of-touch moralists that believe it’s based on “suffering.” They morally believe penning, owning, feeding and then consuming animals for their flesh is ethically wrong, and so have decided that shouldn’t be a thing other people are allowed to do.

Some are simply shills for Russian or Chinese or Brazilian cattle grazers and want other western countries to adopt anti-meat eating policies under the beliefs that lack of access to red blooded animal protein will reduce the size and strength of their enemies, as well as give them the market on beef, pork and chicken exports to other countries- both legitimate and contraband meat.

Some are simply uppity futurists that believe for humanity to experience a, “global, social evolution,” we have to give up the personal private means of owning and producing anything and turn it over to a central authority that manages that and distributes resources accordingly. They don’t like meat eating, because it’s messy and requires a lot of trained, knowledgeable people to make the food. If everybody just ate plants, they wager, they could grow more in bulk and not only secure where the food comes from through controlling arable land for growing food, but control everybody dependent on the food.

Some are trendy know-nothing, “environmentalists,” that will hop on whatever poorly informed bandwagon that touts itself as progressive. Just, the sort of soy sop that will scream about loving science one minute and then ignore where the cloth medical mask says, on the fucking box, “it won’t prevent viruses like COVID-19.” But still wear it and goose step around demanding you wear it to show your patriot- I mean, to show you believe in THE SETTLED SCIOOONCE. These ones believes that cow farts and burps are extremely detrimental to the atmosphere in the form of methane produced, as well as their production of CO2 from breathing and to a lesser extent, living, dying and excreting.

The problem with that is that cows, chickens and pigs are also part of the carbon cycle, and as far as CO2 production, agricultural meat is kind of.. benign. Meat eating does not affect the CO2 cycle directly. You can argue that transportation of it might affect some, but if you switch out gasoline and diesel for electric vehicles, suddenly red meat drops to virtually nothing in the CO2 department.

And then if you count the methane emissions, well, we have workarounds to virtually eliminate cow, chicken, pig, goat and all major red meat food gasses.

So CO2 outputs and methane outputs can drop to virtually nothing, we can clean up our agricultural sector into non-problematic in any way. To where any argument that growing animals for food has any effect on climate change, at all, just becomes an bogus lie from someone hellbent on using the institutions of our society to make cattle, sheep and pig farming, legally impossible.

And ultimately, why?

Because you can grow more bugs in a smaller space on shittier diets? We already have meat alternatives.

The biggest argument for bugs as food is you might be able to grow more of them in space for cheaper and take them further. That’s it. A million bug buttholes still produce noxious clouds of nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and methane. Leafcutter ants down in South America make bacteria filled piles that rival human wastewater treatment plants, for example. They still emit the same noxious gasses that animals do.

And when it comes to methane production, cows don’t hold a candle to the amount of negative atmospheric effects that rice farms do. Are we going to tell Asia, “no more rice,” because the global effects of climate change? It makes no fucking sense to single out cows, sheep, pigs and chickens as even relevant sources of these gasses, where even IF we can deal with every conceivable complaint or concern, people still just want you to no longer be allowed to grow them and just EAT the BOOOOOOGS.

I’m not opposed to crushed up insects as another alternative protein. I am absolutely, 100% opposed to vegetarians or vegans or fabian socialists trying to get the government to subsidize this source of protein, demand that every taxpayer put forwards money to public schools to provide the bug pattys as their source of nutrition (if only by not just the factually reduced cost but the suddenly subsidized captured market that is school lunch budgets and mandatory purchases), and either charge cattle and beef plants more as a “luxury tax” or punish them for being, “dirty, environment destroying” sources of food.

These people are not content to leave you alone to the things you enjoy, you have to be financially and economically incentivized to give them up, institutionally punished, or effectively give away your opportunity for a brighter future if you persist in consumption and traffic of them. Eat Da Boogs is about whether moralists are allowed to use the institutions and the legal system to enforce subjective, preferential things on other people for bogus reasons, and if you can be compelled to do someone elses, “right thing,” or what they think you OUGHT to do.

So. I’m not against bugs as a supplemental nutrition source. I’m against uppity vegans trying to make the government subsidize it and violently take over every single niche, both economically and through government regulated FIAT to eliminate the one held by beef, sheep, goat, chickens and pigs from our agricultural sector and culture.

Once humans are no longer allowed to grow animals for food, and they’re all effectively killed and disappear, there’s no undoing that. That culture will disappear. And that’s ultimately what they’re counting on.

After that, all they need to truly force vegetarianism on “society,” is eliminate the legal growth of insects as a food source for the same moralist precedent reasons as they deemed red blooded animals to be no good as food or agriculture. With no remaining alternative but to try and domesticate other animals.

The Bugs are about more than crushed up insects on a patty. They’re about using shitty false pretenses to eliminate choice from you and take agency away. It’s not about not wanting to eat bugs, it’s about wanting to eat pork and beef and chicken and the existence of an alternative emboldening them to try and ban those.