#the parisian dress anecdote

[literaryvein-reblogs]

"Model Making Mischief" Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta (c. 1885)

In Raimundo de Madrazo's prolific production, most of which was executed in Paris, where he settled when very young, his paintings featuring his favourite model, Aline Masson, are numerous. He depicted her in the most varied attitudes, poses and dress, whether in full-, bust- or half-length portraits or in genre paintings with other figures. When he painted her on her own it was almost always full-length, in costume or at the centre of a scene often with some degree of anecdotal content.

Here he depicted her in his studio during a rest from posing. She has approached the canvas to examine a sketch of herself and has audaciously painted a caricature of the artist, who is apparently looking on.

Despite the inconsequential theme and his insistence on including decorative elements in his pictures, here Raimundo de Madrazo demonstrated the extraordinary flair for painting female portraits that brought him such fame with contemporary Parisian high society. It is also evident in the soft, sensuous modelling of the flesh tones and his astounding ability to reproduce the qualities of the fabrics and the jewellery with which he adorned his model. From the compositional point of view, particularly striking is the ease with which he was able to construct a narrative theme, however slight, with a single figure and using resources typical of Baroque painting, in this case making a figure outside the field of vision an accessory to the scene.

Despite the apparent casualness of the image, a certain stiffness in the model's posture and an inexpressiveness in her gesture conferring an almost mannequin-like coldness upon her actually underline both the model's premeditation of her pose and her professionalism.

On the other hand, despite its purely incidental presence, the barely discernible figure in the painting on the easel still displays Madrazo's amazing confidence and his ability to suggest, with a few rapid touches of the paintbrush, the basic female contours, the volume of the flesh tones and the light on the model's dress.

The painting was sold at auction in 1989 with the title "En el estudio" ("In the Studio").

Source

[mote-historie]

Alfred Stevens, After the Ball. 1874

This painting, also known as Confidence, is one of several by Stevens to treat the theme of consolation. As in his other works from the 1870s, here the anecdotal content of a letter containing distressing news asserts itself in a glimpse of the life of fashionable Parisian women in their elegant interiors. Stevens's subject matter and his meticulous attention to contemporary dress and decor elicited analogies to seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art; in fact, one critic called him the Gerard ter Borch of France.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

[lamarseillasie]

When Marat meets Jeanne D'Arc

This is a little Marat anecdote that I discovered recently, reading some of the issues of L'Ami du Peuple: apparently, Jeanne d'Arc has been venturing into revolutionary France as a true patriot - she even appears in Marat's newspaper!

In February 1791, Marat received letters from a certainly somewhat mysterious person who signed them "Jeanne d'Arc". In the March 4 issue, Marat displayed one of the letters in L'Ami du Peuple, along with some other letters he had also received:

Jeanne d'Arc's letter denounces the Marquis de La Fayette in particular, and also recounts an episode in which his officers apparently violently intimidate some citizens in the Tuileries. In the letter, she refers to La Fayette as 'Mottié', which was also the way Marat used to call him in his newspaper. I'm not sure if it was Marat himself who changed his name to 'Mottié' when transcribing the letter or if it was actually originally written that way. In any case, it's interesting and a little funny to think that Marat might have induced other citizens to "defame" La Fayette by calling him by his family name. Here's a rather poor translation I made of the letter itself:

"The officers of l'état-major entered the Thuileries last Thursday, bayonets out to repel the people. Vinezac pushed the indignity to the point of striking a peaceful citizen with his sword, another citizen who blamed this violence was arrested by the aide-de-camp who usually accompanies the king's wife: but the people soon forced him to release him. A cent-suisse assured me that yesterday they had a man in bourgeois dress at their head to command them; he added that Mottié was a scoundrel who was betraying us; and that l'état-major was made up of nothing but brigands who had sold out to him. Mottié was heard to tell the king "that he had nothing to fear from the populace, that he was going to make them see that this scoundrel was not ready to reason, that the Parisian guard was devoted to him, that he had them marching to the beat, and that he would reply that everything would go as he might wish": a discourse that he had held at Gutgnart dit St.-Priest, when he wanted to withdraw. He knows you, Badauts, this vile scoundrel; he treats you as automatons who do his bidding, as brute beasts who know only the voice of your leaders, as ferocious satellites who would disembowel your mothers, and he does you justice. This is only for the flat soldiers who blindly obey their officers, against their fellow citizens, against their brothers. Among the large number who refuse to treat them badly, and who know their rights, how can there not be someone with a heart, who will put the bayonet in the belly of a Vinezac, a la Jarre, a d'Arbelay, and other brigands on l'état-major? Ah! If only one of them had the courage to put a bullet through the head of the counter-revolutionary Mottié, he would be the liberator of the fatherland, and France would be saved!

Signée Jeanne d'Arc.

Ce 29 février 1791."

Curiously, this is not the only time that Jeanne d'Arc appears in L'Ami du Peuple. In the issue of February 13, 1791, Marat briefly evokes her, praising her and asking her to get in touch.

"Warning.

The excellent patriot who signed her letters Jeanne d'Arc, is asked to give her well hidden address to the doorman of the Hotel de la Faudriere, rue de l'ancienne Comédie. We have something interesting to pass on to her: until now, she has been advised to remain silent, and we wish to obtain information on the important facts she has denounced. We will gratefully receive her new information,

Marat, l'ami du peuple."

It's not known whether Jeanne d'Arc passed her address on to Marat or whether they actually got in touch, as I couldn't find any other record in his newspapers, pamphlets or correspondence that mentioned her. Apparently, her identity was never revealed either and, considering that Marat received numerous letters from various readers of L'Ami Du Peuple, it is practically impossible to deduce who the real person behind these letters was. However, it is clear that she did at least pass on important information to Marat.

Doing a bit more research on the subject, I came across a short thread by historian Paul Chopelin on Twitter, in which he talks about this anecdote. According to him, the year before Jeanne d'Arc appeared in Marat's newspapers, the "Chronique du Manège", a royalist newspaper, mocked the militant activist Théroigne de Méricourt, calling her an "anti-Jeanne d'Arc". In this context, the Jeanne d'Arc who wrote to Marat may have adopted this pseudonym as a way of avenging Madame de Méricourt... Who knows!?

Although there is no concrete proof that can tell us who the mysterious person who signed her letters to Marat as Jeanne d'Arc really was, there is no doubt that this is all very fascinating: It shows us, in the end, that Marat really did have all sorts of people in his secret network of informants and patriotic companions!

[nordleuchten]

La Fayette and Emma Willard at the Opera

When Emma Willard was travelling Europe in 1830, she visited General La Fayette in Paris in late 1830. The two were close friends, had already met before and especially Willard had nothing but the purest admiration for La Fayette. In her book Journal and Letters from France and Great-Britain (1833) she re-printed several letters where she told her sister every last detail of her visit. Her letters are unusually engaging in my opinion, because they are so personal. Old letters and journals can sometimes feel very stiff, very old and completely removed from our modern reality – but hers is so lively, so ordinary that I could not help but relate to her during certain passages. Due to Willard’s hero-worship of La Fayette, I was afraid she would put him on a gigantic pedestal – but she paints a very humane picture of the ageing Marquis, one that is actually rather refreshing.

With all of that being said, here is a passage from Emma’s letter to her sister Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps from December 7, 1830:

I must now tell you, how it was that we spent the evening together. It was at the Opera Francais, usually called the Grand Opera. You will remember that he told me he had not been at a theatre since the revolution, and the first time he did go, he would go with me. One evening before had been appointed, and failed from the illness of one of the performers. It was the evening before last that we finally went [December 5]. I expected that the people would have cheered him as he entered. But he was in a citizen's dress, and went with a determination, as it appeared, not to be known.

The two boxes next, and each side the king's, were for the evening taken by the La Fayette family. There are places in each for six persons, two in front, and three deep. The General, Mrs. S-. of Baltimore, (a particular friend of Madame George La Fayette,) two of the General's grand-daughters, Col. C-, an officer of his household, and myself, filled the box to the left of the king's. Mrs. S— and myself were placed in the front seats, notwithstanding our entreaties that the General would take one of them; two of his grand–daughters had the two next, and the General was quite back where it was impossible for any one below to see him. The first piece was an opera, “Le Dieu et la Bayadère.” In this I saw the performance of M’lle Taglioni, the first dancer in the world. Much of this French opera dancing is what it should not be; but of Taglioni, though expected much, yet her performance perfectly astonished me; and I exclaimed in a pas seul, where she seemed divested of terrestrial gravity, and to fly, rather than dance, “this is the sublime of dancing!"

The scenery of the theatre — the splendor of the dresses and decorations — the crowds of actors, all capital in their parts — the perfection of instrumental music displayed by the grand orchestra, who were all so perfect in time, that it was as if one spirit played the numberless instruments — all this was admirable.

After we had been in the theatre about half an hour, an officer entered the box, bowed very low, and presented the General a paper, containing a few lines, written, as I observed, in an elegant hand. He looked rather grave, and perplexed for a moment as he read the paper; then said— “the king has sent for me to come to him. I must go, but I will return.” I begged him not to return on my account, if it would incommode him; but he said he could not consent to lose all the pleasure of the evening. Before he returned, the first piece was over; and those of the La Fayette family, in the other box, came in the interval, to greet us. Their countenances seemed a little shaded, and I though they were uneasy that he had insisted on sitting so far back. Mrs. S-. then took her place behind my chair, and all appeared determined that he should take the front seat, when he returned. Just as they had completed the arrangement, he came in, but he refused to go forward. Mrs. S-. now refused to take the seat, as did the other ladies also, who were in the box with us. Just then the sweet Mathilde La Fayette came from the other box to speak to her grand father. He told her to take the seat; and though she would not for the world have done an impolite thing by voluntarily taking the precedence of older ladies; yet she did not a moment dispute, what she saw was her grand-father's will.

Thus seated and arranged, we went through another dancing piece. It was the ballet pantomime of Manon Lescaut. The scenery and the dresses, represented the court of Louis XV. The stiff bows and curtsies,-- and hoops and trains, and elbow cuffs, -- the frizzed and powdered heads, and enormous head-dresses -- the silk velvet, gold-trimmed, long-skirted coats, and silver embroidered white satin vests,-- the little boys and girls dressed like their fathers and mothers, and curtsying and bowing as stiffly, -- the dancing of minuets -- slow, and graceful, and formal, --it was all pleasing: and the representation was historically true.

Gen. La Fayette was much amused. “Why,” said he, “this is exactly my time!” “Voila ce petit enfant!” exclaimed Mathilde, as a little boy, a sprig of nobility, in a long embroidered coat, and flapped vest, with his hair queued and powdered, appeared upon the stage. Said the General, “I was dressed just so, when I was of that age !” “Just so.”

That piece went off. But I observed that the eyes of the people, were ever and anon, turning towards our box; —and when at another interval, we rose from our seats, as every body did, suddenly there was a shout, “Vive La Fayette! Vive La Fayette!” It resounded again and again, and was echoed and re - echoed by the vaulted roof. In the enthusiasm of the moment, I exclaimed, “you are discovered - you must advance!” – and I handed him over the seats, unconscious at the moment that I was making myself a part of the spectacle. He advanced, bowed thrice, and again retreated — but the cries continued. Then the people called out “la Parisienne! la Parisienne!” You know it is the celebrated national song of the last revolution.

The curtain rose. Nourrit, an actor who, in the former piece had the principal male part, came forward. He was dressed as a Parisian gentleman. His figure was bold, and he bore in his hand an ample standard, which he elevated, waving the tri-colored flag. He had himself, been one of the heroes of the three days. He sung the song in its true spirit, amidst repeated applauses. When he came to the part where it speaks of La Fayette with his white hairs, the hero of both worlds, the air was rent with a sudden shout. I looked at him, and met his eye. There was precisely the same expression as I marked, when we sung to him in Troy; and again I shared the sublime emotions of his soul, and again they overpowered my own. My lips quivered, and irrepressible tears started to my eyes. When the song was over, the actor came and opened the door of the box, and in his enthusiasm embraced him. “You sung charmingly,” said La Fayette. “Ah General, you were here to hear me!” was the reply.

When we descended to leave the theatre, the thronging multitude reminded me of the time, when crowds for a similar purpose assembled in America. The grand opera house is an immense building. In the lower part is a large room, supported by enormous pillars, and used as a vestibule. To this room the crowd had, descended, and here they had arranged themselves on each side of a space, which they had left open for La Fayette, that they might see, and bless him as he passed. There was that in this silent testimonial of their affection, more touching, than the noisy acclaim of their shouts. There was something too, remarkable in the well defined line which bounded the way left open. A dense crowd beyond- not even an intruding foot, within the space, which gratitude and veneration had marked. I can scarcely describe my own feelings. I was with him, whom from my infancy I had venerated as the best of men; whom for a long period of my life I had never hoped even to see in this world. Now I read with him his noble history, in the melting eyes of his ardent nation. And I saw that he was regarded as he is, the father of France- aye, and of America too. America! my own loved land! It was for her sake I was thus honored, and it was for me to feel her share in the common emotion. My spirit seemed to dilate, and for a moment, self- personified as the genius of my country, I enjoyed to the full his triumph, who is at once her father, and her adopted son.

I do not know about you, but her descriptions have drawn me in, just if I had been there at the opera that day. The interactions of the family, the merry entertainment, La Fayette joking about his age and sharing childhood anecdotes, the want for historical accuracy being a think way back in 1830, the people singing their revolutionary song, the people lining up for La Fayette ...

A short clarification, the revolution mentioned in the text is not “the” French Revolution but “a” French Revolution – the July Revolution to be precise (also referred to as the French Revolution of 1830, the Second French Revolution, Trois Glorieuses or Three Glorious Days.) The Revolution saw the forced abdication of Charles X and the ascent of King Louis Philipe I. La Fayette played an important part during these events and many people of the time were of the opinion that King Louis Philipe more or less owned his crown to La Fayette. The revolution was also the reason why this visit with Emma Willard was the first visit to the opera this year for La Fayette. He thought people would think of him as vain were he to seek out a public place where the people would undoubtedly cheer for him (as they did).

[lady-literature]

for us to collide (part 4)

anyway who actually expected me to end this thing in 4 chapters lol

rip me ig

Read on Ao3 | part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 (final) | deleted scene

After the not-so-impromptu interrogation courtesy of her friends (because there was no way they hadn’t planned that, it was too coordinated) Robin doesn’t stop by for two weeks.

Which is… fine. Marinette is plenty busy anyways. The extra time she has free now that she isn’t entertaining a bratty vigilante, goes to more productive uses of her time. Like watching bad horror movies with her friends and jeering at the horrible acting and special effects.

(Red Hood stops by in the middle of watching Grizzly Rage and proceeds to rant for twenty minutes about ‘shitty, unrealistic blood splatters’. Marinette has long since passed the point of being worried about it.)

So, yeah. She doesn’t see Robin.

But Damian, oddly enough, seeks her out.

It’s early, and there isn’t anyone else in the studio right now which means Marinette has her music blasting and she’s humming along as she hand paints silk for Clara’s dress. It’s loud and she’s in her zone, so it’s only by Tikki warning her that she realizes someone entered her sanctuary.

Her eyebrows raise when she sees who it is.

“Uh, bonjour Damian," she greets confusedly, reaching over to lower the volume on her speakers. "I hadn’t expected to see you here. Is there something you need?”

He stops before her workstation, only slightly bigger than the ones the rest of her staff use due to the sheer amount of open commissions she normally has. She has an actual office on this floor, but Chloé uses it more than she does. Marinette likes the open space and being around her designers more than she likes the privacy.

His eyes catch on the two bouquets of flowers she’s yet to take home, neither of which have even begun to wilt—and likely won’t. (She’ll have to take them home soon before people start asking questions.)

“I was called here by Father, but he’s currently indisposed. I’ve been told to wait.”

She waits a moment for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, she asks, “So you came to visit me?”

“Yours is the only tolerable presence to be found.” His lips purse, and he crosses his arms. “And that includes that imbecile Drake who is no doubt still in his office like the pitiful insomniac he is.”

Her tongue is already halfway around a joke about excuses—she didn’t befriend Felix for nothing, okay? She knows how people like Damian work—when she realizes what he just said.

“Wait. Tim’s been here all night?”

Damian snorts. “He certainly didn’t return to the manor.”

She’s out of her seat in an instant, frowning and muttering up a storm as she rummages through the storage cubes pushed up against the far wall. She has a blanket, pillow and plain cotton shirt in her hands before Damian registers that she even moved.

“I’m going to kill your brother,” she says simply. “Would you like to come with?”

She’s gotten closer to Tim since working in Wayne Tower. He’s a notorious recluse and rarely leaves his office when he’s in the building, but Marinette makes it a point to visit him during lunch and before she leaves for the night.

He isn’t one of her Waynes, but he is a Wayne and her Waynes love and care for him so there’s not much of a difference really. She does like to think they might be something close to friends at this point though. And if the way Tim comes down to visit whenever he ventures out of his office means something, she might even be right.

Another thing that should be noted, is that Marinette is very much a ‘ride or die’ kind of person when it comes to the people she cares about. She will ruthlessly bully her loved ones into taking better care of themselves on threat of death because she is the semi-hypocritical mom friend and damn proud of it.

Damian looks her up and down, eyes lingering on the items in her hands and the determined set to her jaw and says, “Of course.” Then he’s plucking her things from her hands, offering her his arm and saying, “Shall we?”

Marinette laughs as she loops her arm with his. “We shall.”

***

She spends ten minutes scolding Tim before wrangling him onto the couch in his office and wrapping him up in the blanket so tightly he’d need to be an escape artist to get out of it. He tries to struggle anyway, but Marinette has too much practice at this and he doesn’t stand a chance in hell.

Damian stands at her shoulder and smirks the entire time, eyes dancing with amusement as she forces the CEO of Wayne Enterprises to take a fucking nap. Then, she’s treated to the sound of his surprised laughter as she begins switching out all of Tim’s regular coffee for magic-decaf—not that Damian knows it’s magic.

(By the devilish smirk playing at his lips, she’s starting to think that maybe Damian really is just as sadistic as Duke and Jason say he is.)

***

Damian starts dropping by more often after that (read: starts dropping by at all). Not that Marinette minds. She quite likes his company, actually.

He normally stops by first thing in the morning when Marinette is the only one in the workshop, walking in like he owns the place. For the first couple days, he asks about Ladybug and the rest of Paris’ Court, claiming that he’s curious about them.

She answers them, but only as far as she’d answer them for any reporter and is careful not to give away any sensitive information not known to the public. He gets a bit frustrated at one point, complaining that she must know more, but she stays stubbornly silent about it and, sometimes, steers the conversation deftly to the Great Bat and his Flock instead.

He eventually stops asking about the Parisian superheroes and instead their morning conversations turn to a thousand random things. Complaints and anecdotes and a silly back and forth between the two.

Marinette’s never been much of a morning person but having Damian there to keep her company is… nice.

She almost finds herself looking forward to mornings now.

***

When her Waynes learn that she’s started a food kitchen and makes a habit of spending her weekend there, they immediately insist on joining her, despite her protests.

“You guys really don’t have to do this,” she says even though the three of them are already in their aprons and Cass is eyeing the boucher, Vivian, and her collection of knives with glittering interest.

Duke grins at her, “We know, M. But we want to.”

Jason finally turns back to her from where he’s been staring at the kitchen with something just shy of awe on his face. “You’re downright incredible, you know that?” he waves a hand out at the seating area, and then at the people in the kitchen assembling the healthiest and cost-efficient meals she and Felix could find after days spent researching. “I would’ve killed for something like this when I was on the streets.”

“It’s not just me who’s got this up and running-” she tries protesting but then Fiona, the woman Marinette actually put in charge of this place, is at her side and all but shoving the four of them into stations.

Marinette ends up by the pastries, like always, and she can see Jason making sandwiches. Duke's been roped into making eggs and bean casseroles and Cass, by some grace, actually ended up by Vivian and is having a blast cutting up all the meats as fast as she can.

They don’t stop until lunch, all four of them helping prepare meals for the upcoming week in bulk. After, they all go out for ice cream by the pier and Jason smears chocolate on her nose and Duke carries her around on his back when she complains about being tired.

Cass takes pictures of it all and later, Marinette gets them all printed out.

It ends up being a really good day.

***

The buzz from the charity gala and all the press regarding her and Damian’s non-existent relationship had calmed down weeks ago. There was still the odd article about Marinette being seen with her odd assortment of Waynes and the newspapers still called her ridiculous names when they got a picture, but it was about as close to normal as she gets.

The quiet lulled her into a false sense of security.

Ice Prince and Sweetheart Finally Seen on Date: Fairy Tale Romance or Publicity Stunt?

The ‘date’ in question was a coffee and lunch run for her designers and also Tim (because kwami knew he'd work through lunch if allowed).

Damian normally didn’t stay past Lilliane arriving in the morning (the poor dear was chronically late and always the last to arrive) but he hadn’t shown up until after she came that day and overcompensated by hours—which she hadn't minded. He kept to the fringes of her workspace and didn't distract her, instead focusing on his own thing. She wasn’t quite sure what he was up to, but she knew he was switching between his computer and sketchpad every so often.

(She's pretty sure he was hiding from Dick for some reason. He’s the only Wayne brother who doesn’t visit her at work, seeing as they have their bi-weekly gymnastic sessions; recently, with the addition of Mar’i, who still calls her ‘twin’ and whom Marinette still adores.)

And then lunch had rolled around, and it was Marinette’s turn to go out so she brought Damian with since he was still there.

They were out together for forty-five minutes. Tops.

“Why me?” she whines into the surface of her desk.

Damian, the asshole, just laughs at her and she can’t even be mad about it because he’s only just started laughing around her and not hiding behind so many of his walls. He laughs and Marinette knows it's precious so instead of shooting him the glower he deserves, she finds herself having to hide the smile slowly creeping on her face.

***

They’re splashed across the papers again less than a week later, only this time she has her Waynes there too.

Marinette's wearing her bright red sundress and she's somehow convinced Damian to wear a jacket with elaborate crowns and snowflakes embroidered up the sides. Because, as Chloé says: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

They see the camera this time and the photo splashed across the page the next day is of Marinette laughing with Jason’s arm slung across her shoulders as both he and Damian flip off the camera. Meanwhile, Duke and Cass stand just far enough in frame to capture their expressions of pain and amusement respectively.

(Marinette makes a mental note to order apology gift baskets for the PR department.)

There are a lot of headlines the next day about Marinette’s ‘harem of Waynes’ and how she’s a ‘horrible influence on such bright children’. She spends about ten minutes trying to decide whether she should be horrified or laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it and eventually decides on both.

Adrien, the little shit, sees the headline and immediately prints it out to hang in her kitchen.

It reappears every time she tries to take it down.

***

Gotham does not smile upon daytime heroes.

Not to say that Gotham really smiles on anyone, but it’s especially vicious to those that think they’re owed anything. She’s heard the way Gothamites talk about Superman and The Flash—it’s not exactly what one would call adoring.

But Ladybug's been a daytime hero her entire career and it is not difficult to see that there's something distinctly different about the way daytime heroes and Gotham’s vigilantes operate.

Something more vicious, maybe; something more restrained.

Without the light of day and without the people’s eyes watching them at every moment, the Gotham Bats have become something else entirely.

Signal, their Daytime Protector, is especially strange.

A bat who's meta, straddling the line between day and night. The Day Patrol, trained by the night.

Sometimes, when she and Signal talk about heroing, there is such an odd type of disconnect that it throws her. Nothing horrible or major, but little things she’s sure she wouldn’t notice if she wasn’t so intimately familiar with it all herself.

They don’t always talk about heroing though. After two months, Ladybug is proud to say she seems to be worming her way past his outer shell nicely. He tried so hard to keep his distance from her, but Ladybug’s always liked a challenge, and it isn’t long before she has him relaxing around her. 

Well, for a definition of relax anyway. He's still a bat after all.

But then, it’s pretty easy to get past Signal’s barriers when she’s already had practice breaking through the more stubborn bats like Robin and, to an extent, Hood. Not that Signal, or any of the bats, know that.

Which, speaking of the bats, isn’t it a bit weird she’s only met three spread across two of her alter egos? As Ladybug, she’d expect to be hounded by a few of them but the only one she’s met is Signal. She can’t decide if it’s because he’s the only one that operates in the daylight, or if they just don’t want to spook her into running or something.

Either way, they’re going to start giving her a complex. She’s heard so much about the rest of the Batfamily, and not one of them even wants to meet her? Either her?

(Maybe Marinette should ask Robin and Hood what’s up with that? The way they talk about how nosy Red Robin is, she’s surprised he didn’t drop by months ago and- is it weird that she’s offended by vigilantes not prying into her private life?

…Probably.)

***

Marinette blinks, stopping dead in her tracks.

Damian's on her fainting couch, sketchpad in his lap as he waits for her.

“Why are you wearing a beanie?” she blurts out instead of greeting him like a normal person. "You never wear beanies."

Luckily, Damian scowls at her question rather than at her. It’s a subtle but very important difference.

“Sorry,” she apologizes anyway, putting her bag down. “I haven't had coffee yet.”

He hums, then nods to her desk where she finds a steaming to-go mug. Her face lights up and she quickly snatches it, breathing deeply the lovely aroma. “You’re a godsend.”

That brings a quirk to his lips, closer to a smirk than a smile, but progress nonetheless.

After a moment, where she sips at her overly sugary monstrosity—just the way she likes it, when had Damian even noticed that?—and he continues sketching she asks again. “Okay but, I actually am kinda curious. What’s up with the hat?”

He sighs heavily, closing his pad. “It’s… better than the alternative.”

Marinette snorts. “Alternative to what? A top hat?” But instead of snapping back like she expects, he just continues to frown. Immediately, her lips turn down into a concerned frown. “Is there something wrong?”

“Yes,” he grounds out and Marinette puts her coffee down. She’s just about to open her mouth and say something else when he reaches up and rips the beanie off his head.

For the second time in less than five minutes, she stops dead.

Marinette opens her mouth. Closes it. Blinks, but the scene doesn't change.

His hair is still blue.

Damian Wayne's hair is blue.

Damian Wayne’s hair is vibrantly electric blue.

Her hand shoots up to cover her mouth as she tries to stifle her giggles.

Damian’s scowl deepens. He moves to shove his ridiculous beanie back on his head but her hand snaps out before he can.

“No! No, I’m sorry I just-” she giggles again. “You looked so upset by it and you took me by surprise. I like it!”

He glares up at her, still sat on the fainting couch so it’s her who has the height advantage for once.

“Don’t patronize me.”

She rolls her eyes, the hand that wasn’t settled on his arm reaching up to touch the bright strands. It's slow enough that he can stop her, but he, surprisingly, makes no move to.

His hair is a lot softer than she expects it to be. But she supposes he didn’t use that gel stuff today, planning on keeping his hair under a hat the whole time.

“It looks good on you,” she says softly.

He snorts disbelievingly and she smacks his shoulder lightly. “It’s true! I swear you could look good in any color.” She clicks her tongue longingly. “I wish I had your skin tone. I’m too pale to wear pastels like I want.”

He wrinkles his nose at her. “Pastels?”

“Oh you hush,” she quips, finally pulling her hand from his hair. “Anyway, if you don’t like it, why’d you dye it blue in the first place?”

“I… lost a wager with Todd.”

She laughs, starting to move around and get ready for the day. She doesn’t have any meetings scheduled, which means she gets the whole day to create. She’s pretty excited about it.

“I should’ve guessed it was Jason’s doing.”

Damian shrugs, settling back into the cushions. He drapes himself across them in a way that’s effortlessly elegant and like he’s ready to be photographed for a magazine cover or something. Must all her friends be so pretty? It’s playing hell on her self-esteem.

“But blue is your favorite color, right? So there’s that at least.”

Damian hums. “Todd had threatened to dye it pink or some other equally garish color.”

“Hey!” she exclaims in mock outrage. “What’s wrong with pink? I’ve been wanting to dye my hair pink for ages.”

“Nothing. It’s just simply not a color I appreciate.” He makes a face. “Like orange.”

Marinette huffs, but there’s a smile on her lips. It's quiet for a moment, for long enough that she thinks the conversation's been dropped. But then-

“Why don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“Why haven’t you dyed your hair?” he repeats. “Your friends—Couffaine and… Kubdel? They both have colored hair.”

Marinette shrugs. “I dunno. Never got around to it I guess. I suppose I could do it now. Dye mine in solidarity,” she jokes. “Oh! We could match even! Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“I thought you wanted pink?”

“Well, yeah. But blue is nice too. Besides,” she smiles wryly over her shoulder, “you just said pink was ‘garish’.”

Damian frowns slightly, shaking his head, “On me, perhaps. But I think you’d look very fetching in pink.”

“Oh,” Marinette pauses, feeling her face grow warm at the sudden compliment. “Well- Uh, pink it is, then.”

***

(Damian watches the blush rise on her cheeks as she turns away to try and hide it. Yes, he can’t help but think, fetching in pink, indeed.)

***

Luka insists on being the one to dye her hair, citing that he’s the one who had dibs all these years, but Alix and Jason both all but demand to be there too.

Her bathroom is not big enough for all four of them to sit in.

Not a single one of them cares.

Cass and Duke ask for progress pics along with Uncle Jay, and all her Parisian friends cycle through standing at the bathroom door to see how it's going.

The constant stream of people looking at her makes her feel not unlike an animal at a zoo. (When she wryly tells this to Alix, all she gets is her friend cackling on the ground.)

But, after all the bleaching and conditioning and waiting, she stares into the mirror with soft pink hair the color of bubblegum and thinks, yeah, it was worth it.

She thinks it again when Damian walks in the next day and almost trips over his own feet.

(She’s also wearing her Robin themed sundress, complete with hood, matching boots and personal touches not found on the mass-produced version—but Marinette doesn’t know why that would be relevant.)

Her favorite reaction to her new hair color though is, by far, Mar’i’s.

Marinette doesn’t see the young Grayson until a week later when she’s invited to the monthly family dinner Alfred insists all the Waynes attend—which includes her now, apparently (she tries not to show how pleased she is by that).

She arrived with Damian, who was kind enough to pick Tim and her up from work, and Mar’i takes one look at Damian and her standing next to one another before she starts babbling excitedly about Lilo and Stitch and Angel. A character who is—apparently—Stitch’s girlfriend and the complimentary pink to his blue.

Marinette is momentarily surprised, but Mar’i’s enthusiasm is contagious and it isn’t long before the rest of the Waynes are teasingly calling them Angel and Stitch. Marinette thinks it’s all very funny and adorable.

Damian, on the other hand, most certainly does not and threatens everyone who calls him that ‘ridiculous nickname’ with graphic depictions of bodily harm.

‘Angel’, oddly enough, sticks for Marinette. She finds she kind of likes it.

***

Later, Damian asks her about nicknames.

Well, he calls them ‘asinine titles’ and doesn’t so much ask as demand she explain why she allows anyone to call her by them seeing as she has a ‘perfectly serviceable name,’ in his opinion.

Ignoring the fact that she’s heard Dick call him multiple nicknames he hadn’t protested to, she says, “Well, I guess it’s that everyone uses Marinette. A nickname is something… special. A little more personal, I guess. And, I dunno. My parents named me Marinette, but it’s nice to share something between other people. And it shows they care.”

Damian looks confused after she’s done, but also thoughtful. He doesn’t say anything to that and Marinette doesn’t really expect anything to come of it.

She's proven wrong when, a week later, Damian calls her Starling instead of Marinette.

(And the transition from Dupain-Cheng to Marinette had been enough to make her beam—this is just ridiculous.)

***

When Robin disappears a second time, Marinette doesn’t get the chance to notice his absence on her own. He’s only stopped showing up four days ago—which is longer than normal, but not unheard of—when she hears unfamiliar voices on her balcony.

Looking out, she finds three semi-familiar individuals clustered around the plate of treats she leaves out for Robin and Hood.

Nightwing and Red Robin are both stuffing their faces full of the fruit tarts she had made while Spoiler glares at them and seems to be cursing the fact that her mask covers her mouth the same way Hood always does when she makes those raspberry scones he likes.

The scene is… odd. For many reasons but most pressingly that their arrival has come out of nowhere.

“Well,” Nightwing explains when she asks, “We wanted to visit ages ago, but baby bird threatened to stab us all if we tried.”

“He’s very… particular about you,” Red Robin tacks on while Spoiler nods sagely like she hasn’t crafted some strange straw monstrosity just so she can drink tea while still wearing her mask. Red Robin has one too, but his for the aesthetic rather than out of necessity.

Marinette stares at the three of them. “That… does not explain why you are here now.”

“Robin can’t stop us now, obviously,” Red Robin says casually, like he hasn't just kicked her heart into high gear with a few words.

“What? Why?” she demands, trying very hard not to sound panicked. “Is he okay? Was he hurt?”

Red Robin blinks, going quiet in that way Hood and Robin do when they’re judging her just a bit. She hates this family.

“No, he’s… fine.”

“B’s just benched him for the time being,” Nightwing helpfully supplies, amusement flickering at the edges of his lips. “He’s a little too… conspicuous at the moment.”

Marinette’s shoulders relax even as her brows furrow. Conspicuous? What in the world is that supposed to mean?

“Does that mean he won’t be coming around for a while?” she asks before she can think better of it.

The three vigilantes in front of her share a look before Spoiler says, “Probably. But the gremlin’s never been one to sit still so who knows?” she smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners as she leans toward Marinette conspiratorially. “But don’t worry. We can keep you company in the meantime!”

“We’re much better company than the demon anyway. Certainly less insulting.”

“Oh, he’s not that bad. He’s an ass, for sure, but you can tell when he means it and when he’s just stumbling over himself.” Marinette smiles fondly, “For someone so dignified, he trips over his tongue quite often.”

Now the vigilantes are really staring at her. She’s starting to feel pretty uncomfortable about it all when Nightwing beams at her, jumping up from his seat to sweep her into a hug. It startles her, but she doesn’t push him away, instead laughing at the sudden affection.

“Oh you really are perfect!” he exclaims, setting her down and still grinning like an absolute lunatic.

She’s smiling, because Nightwing’s joy is infectious, but she's even more confused than before. And then, before she can ask what he means, Red Robin’s wrist computer lights up—and damn, isn’t that cool? Marinette wonders if Tikki could do something like that for the Ladybug suit—and the three are moving to swing back out into the night.

She waves them off and they all promise to visit again.

Marinette shakes her head before going back inside with the empty pastry plate and four empty mugs.

***

Damian knows of Marinette’s friends of course. It'd take more effort not to when she talks about them every chance she gets and tells him all the wild stories about their escapades and misadventures.

(They also all came up in the background check he ran on her when they first met.)

Most of her friends are exceedingly normal oddly enough. Well, they’re all mildly famous and the leaders of their various fields, but they’re just civilians.

The only exceptions being, Bourgeois, Agreste, and Graham de Vanily.

Bourgeois is a former hero like Marinette, only she doesn't seem to still be in contact with the Parisian Court. All the articles he could find spoke about how Queen Bee was deemed unfit for her mantle and later replaced by the new bee hero, Ambrosia. Agreste was caught up in the scandal of his father being Hawkmoth, but he was found innocent and ignorant of his father's crimes (something Damian made sure to confirm). He now works at and is being groomed to own the bakery Marinette's parents run, seeing as their daughter has little interest to do it herself.

And finally, Graham de Vanily, Agreste's cousin, has a history of causing trouble wherever he goes. Nothing villainous, and rarely even malicious, but there's something about him that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Not everything is as it seems with the Graham de Vanily heir.

Besides those three outliers, Marinette's friends seem to be untouched by the vigilante life. Which means he thinks they must be utterly boring.

Only, when her friends start coming around to visit and drag her out for lunch or some other random outing, Damian keeps finding himself baffled by each of them.

They act strangely and with a dangerous air none of them should possess, except for Tsurugi. The questions they ask him are strange and the jokes they make have no sense. He's been warned about how he better treat Marinette so many times, he's started to lose count. (Which is ridiculous. He treats her just fine and would never intentionally harm her. What are they trying to insinuate?)

But, by far, his most memorable encounter is with Lahiffe. A veritable wolf in sheep's clothing.

Marinette is excitedly babbling about her newest idea for her summer collection, pressed up against him on the chaise and practically shoving her sketches in his face as she demands his critique and thoughts.

Her hands are waving every which way and, on more than one occasion, he has to quickly lean back so she doesn't hit him in the face.

He’s focusing on what she’s saying so much—because she has a habit of forgetting things if she doesn’t write them down and needs someone to remind her of the ideas she had at a later time—that he doesn’t even realize Lahiffe is there until he clears his throat.

Marinette jumps, almost elbowing him in the stomach. “Nino!” she shouts, springing up and flinging herself at the other man who catches her like this is something she does often.

“Heya, Nettie.”

“Wait- what are you doing here? You’re not-” she jolts back to look at Lahiffe’s amused expression. “Oh kwami, is it time already? Shit. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m so sorry! I have to give this one thing to Publishing but then I promise we can go, okay? Like, just five minutes!”

She's already moving before she finishes speaking, sweeping up papers and rearranging files and putting things away with all the swiftness and agility of a speedster. Damian watches her go about her routine, occasionally handing her something she’s dropped or pointing out a thing she’s missed, weaving around her chaos with practiced ease.

Then she’s sweeping out of the office with a distracted “be right back!” and he’s alone with Lahiffe.

The second Marinette leaves, the man’s attention swings onto him with a strange weight. For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything and Damian’s hackles raise with every passing second.

He doesn’t snap at him though, because he’s one of Marinette’s friends. Insulting him would only serve to make her upset and that’s something Damian's been trying to avoid causing as of late.

“Man,” Lahiffe says at last. “Alix wasn’t kidding about the whole besotted thing, huh?”

Damian rears back, straightening up to his full height. “I beg your pardon?”

Lahiffe laughs and waves his hand about like that’s supposed to mean something. “Ah, no need to be embarrassed about it, dude. You’re far from the first of us to fall for her charms.”

“What.”

“Yeah, we've all been there. I think over half of the Paris crew crushed on her at some point, including myself. None of us are into her like that anymore, so as long as you treat her right, you got nothing to worry about."

“I’m not- I'm not interested in Marinette,” Damian tries to protest but Lahiffe just calmly steamrolls over him.

“Nah. Everyone loves Nettie. It’s universal law or something. First, there was me and Adrien, then Luka—who she actually liked back for a while there but are now practically siblings. Chloé liked her in collége, but she hadn’t really come to terms with that at the time. Alix might’ve, but she’s pretty grey-ace and fluctuates on the romance points, so who knows.

“Oh! And Nath. He also snagged a date with her, but he was an Akuma at the time so I’m not technically sure that it counts. And he’s with Marc now anyway. Thinking of adopting a kid, last I heard. Anyway- my point was: everyone loves Nettie. And don’t bother trying to fight it, because it only makes her pull of gravity worse.”

Lahiffe then claps him on the shoulder like their talk amiable and not the most confusing speech Damian’s ever heard.

And then he doesn’t even get to say anything to that because Marinette is sprinting back through the door, grabbing her jacket and bag, telling him goodbye, and dragging Lahiffe out to who knows where.

Damian stands there longer than he cares to admit trying to make the world make sense again.

***

A week and a half after she learned Robin was benched, Damian catches her staring off into space as she doodles tiny robins in the margins of her sketchbook.

He gives her an odd look when she scrambles to hide them, blushing hotly and babbling about how she’s “Just fine! Nothing to worry about! I’m just, maybe, perhaps, a little worried for a friend even though I shouldn’t be, because his family says he’s just fine and-”

He looks contemplative when he leaves that day, but he didn’t ask about her outburst, so she extends the same courtesy to him.

***

That night, Robin returns.

“What,” she says around the laughter threatening to bubble out of her throat, “are you wearing?”

Robin scowls from behind the full cowl he has on that she’s pretty sure belongs to Red Robin. It makes him look a whole ten years older and she can’t get over how ridiculous he looks. If he keeps doing stupid things with his face while wearing that monstrosity, she is definitely going to laugh at him.

“What are you wearing?” he shoots back petulantly.

She blinks in confusion, then realizes she’s still wearing her Red Hood inspired jacket right now. Tan colored fake leather with fuzzy, red inner lining, done with all the same pockets, buttons, and zippers Red Hood has on his own jacket. It looks almost exactly like the jacket she fixed for him all that time ago, except she's also added a soft, crimson hood and his own personal bat symbol stitched across her shoulder blades.

As far as things she's designed goes, this is one of her simpler ones. It's nothing like the elaborate creations she makes for the Ambrosia or Ryuko themed items.

But Red Hood was a simple kind of person, and she likes that it’s reflected in her work.

Robin doesn't seem to agree if the poorly concealed disdain on his face means anything.

“What?” she asks teasingly, “You jealous?”

He scoffs and looks off to the side. “Of course not. I simply do not understand why you’d want anything to do with that simpleton. Especially not when I know you have clothing articles referencing far superior individuals.”

She snorts good-naturedly, "What 'individuals'? You mean you?"

The way he raises his nose self importantly is answer enough, and she can't stop herself from rolling his eyes. "Well, it's certainly a start. But I'm not the only one."

"Oh, yeah? And who else is marvelous enough to stand on the same level as you?"

"Multimouse."

Her mouth goes dry, and she can tell Robin is pointedly not looking at her.

“Come inside,” she blurts in lieu of all the things she really wants to say—which are mostly just embarrassing variations of I missed you. “I can, uh, make us tea. If you want.”

It's the first time she’s ever invited him inside and she can see the small bit of shock on his face—well, what she can see of it anyway—before he schools it.

“Yes,” he says in a tone of voice that implies it was his idea in the first place. “That sounds… good.”

She steps aside, allowing him to pass her by into the flat. Only instead of just walking past her, he stops halfway through the doorway and stares at her. She’s about to ask what’s wrong when he reaches out with his hand to gently grab a lock of her hair.

“Pink suits you, by the way.”

She quirks her lips, “Yeah? You don’t think it’s… too much?”

The corners of his mouth turn down, “Absolutely not. You look…” he trails off, mouth flattening into a line and dropping his hand.

She blinks at the odd behavior. “Nice?” she offers tentatively.

He nods, but it’s a little jerky and strange. But before she can ask about it, he’s already turning to enter her flat like he owns the place, remarking about her choices of tea and if she’s finally acquired an ‘adequate teapot’.

She shakes off the moment and goes in to follow him before he wrecks her kitchen in his careless search for tea supplies.

***

MinnieMouse: COME GET YALL JUICE

and by juice i mean me

I still do not have an american license

JaneAustenStanAccount: what do we get out of it?

MinnieMouse: ???

the pleasure of my company??

also youre literally the one that invited me to watch megamind

JaneAustenStanAccount: and??

daisyduke: shut up jay

we all know youre soft for M stop tryin to play tough

MinnieMouse: this is why duke is my favorite

he’s a living callout post

swanlake: :(

MinnieMouse: second favorite

im so sorry cass ily

swanlake: :)

daisyduke: i aint even mad

JaneAustenStanAccount: I AM

guys wtf

MinnieMouse: you brought this on yourself

maybe you should be nicer to me

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

daisyduke: ‘get fucked jason’ -marinette 2k20

btw im omw for you now

MinnieMouse: thnx ur the best

also im bringing scones as movie snack

daisyduke: noice

swanlake: !!!

JaneAustenStanAccount: FUCK YEAH!!!

MinnieMouse: you dont get any Jay

JaneAustenStanAccount: >:(

i hate it here

***

Marinette doesn’t know a lot about Robin’s past, which she assumes is by design. Secret identities don’t lead well to handing out details and concrete information about one’s personal life.

But, she thinks, one would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to not see that whatever facsimile of a childhood Robin had was about eight different levels of fucked up.

It’s in the vague allusions to ‘training’ and the scorn filled way he says the word ‘mother’. It’s in the not-quite-confusion—because whatever family he has is better now, at least—of Marinette telling him about her own parents. About the happy memories she’s shared with them, of learning to bake bread and croissants and macaroons under the loving guidance of her father and practicing delicate designs and frosting techniques with her mother.

So, yeah. She knows he’s kind of messed up and definitely checks off the childhood trauma box that’s apparently one of the requirements for being her friend.

So when Robin suddenly decides to go against everything she’s learned about him up until this point and actually share something about himself—and when that thing he shares just so happens to be a story from his childhood—well… Marinette wouldn’t say she’s prepared, but she’s not- prepared.

He’s in her kitchen, because Marinette has learned her lesson about bleeding vigilantes on her couch, and she’s pretty sure he could’ve gone back to the Cave for this, but he came here for whatever reason. (Was closer, he said. Marinette doesn’t know if she believes him.)

She’s cleaning the knife wound on his arm, and she has his cape laid out across her island. There’s a hole in it she plans on sewing back up after she finishes sewing the hole in her reckless vigilante back up.

“You need to be more careful,” she scolds. “You’re lucky this didn’t nick something important.”

“It's hardly the worst wound I’ve ever acquired,” he tells her in a tone of voice that he probably thinks is reasonable. “At seven years old I had to dig a bullet out of my side in the middle of a Himilayan snowstorm while still making it back to base with time to spare after having successfully assassinated a Russian ambassador.”

Marinette pauses where she’s smoothing the gauze onto his bicep. Her eyes flick up to his, and she sees the exact moment he seems to realize what he just told her. He’s gone utterly still beneath her hands, with terror or worry or the effort it takes not to bolt out the window immediately, she doesn’t know.

“That’s horrifying,” she tells him as she finishes securing the obnoxiously bright bandage, “Never tell me that story again.”

She then drops a kiss onto his bicep, subtly imbuing it with enough luck that it will keep off any infection—the wound was filthy when he came in, seriously, was he in a sewer?—and pats his cheek warmly before moving to clean up all her supplies.

She feels his eyes on her the rest of the night, but every time she turns to him, she can’t tell what he’s thinking. All she knows is that he seems… softer, in a way.

***

Three days after Marinette’s unexpected look into Robin’s past, she finds a box on her desk. It’s a jewelry box, and the only reason she doesn’t immediately freak out is the fact that it lacks any of the miracle box markings.

Still, she opens it hesitantly, and inside, she finds a necklace. A completely normal, non-magical necklace that’s simple and pretty and very much shaped like a tiny toy mouse.

There is no note.

***

(Lahiffe was right.

The Earth spins around the sun. The sky is blue.

Everyone loves Marinette.)

***

The necklace is obviously supposed to be a reference to her Multimouse days, but that doesn’t exactly narrow down who could have left it for her.

Or well, it does, but all the people it narrows down to don’t make any sense.

Multimouse is a badly kept secret, but it’s still a secret. Most people outside Paris don’t know about her and the people in Paris didn’t exactly recognize her off the street either.

Her Court knows, obviously, and so do the Waynes and the bats. But her Court wouldn’t leave her mouse themed gifts, they tend toward ladybugs or their own animal motif as a gift (the amount of cat and bee themed items she owns is ludicrous).

Which leaves the Waynes and the bats.

But her Waynes wouldn’t leave the gift on her desk, and they certainly wouldn’t forget to put a note, so Duke, Jason, and Cass are out.

She must stand there thinking about it too long, because then Jeremy's walking in, just as bright and early as ever.

He sees her holding the box and his face turns a strange mix of curious and outraged. “Is it your birthday? I swear, Boss if you didn't tell us it was your birthday-”

“No, Jeremy,” she says, amused despite her confusion. “That’s not for a while yet. I found this when I walked in,” she shakes the box slightly for emphasis, “but there wasn’t a note.”

“Oh.” A smile slowly spreads across Jeremy’s face. “Oh?” he purrs, waggling his eyebrows at her. “Does the boss have a secret admirer?”

Marinette blinks and- what?

“What? No. I can’t- That doesn’t-” she splutters but Jeremy just laughs and walks over to his station to start setting up for the day, leaving Marinette to her breakdown.

Because this can’t have been left by a secret admirer. That’s just crazy.

There are exactly two people who could’ve left this for her and neither of them would be an admirer of any kind. And she wouldn’t want them to be anyway because that would be stupid and ridiculous and weird.

She doesn’t like Robin or Damian like that…

Right?

***

(It’s impossible not to love her, he realizes, mostly by accident.

She loves, wholeheartedly and unafraid and so much more than Damian had ever thought one person could. She loves with a ferocity and passion no person deserves or can match.

And Damian, foolishly, loves and wishes to be loved by her anyway.)

***

There are roses on her desk the next day, potted and still healthy.

The day after that, there’s a box of expensive chocolates. Like, the kind only Adrien, Felix, and Chloé buy without a second thought. The gossip has spread far enough that all of her designers know about the gifts and probably-admirer.

On the fourth day, there is a box full of high-quality pencils and a new sketchbook, one with nice thick drafting paper, but small enough to fit in her favored bag. Her name is embossed across the front, along with her personal motif of delicate apple blossoms.

On the fifth day, she shows up to find there is only a drawing, which should point to it being Damian, but drawing-her is holding a robin in her cupped palms which cannot be a coincidence. Drawing-her also looks serene and beautiful with her mouth curved slightly and her eyes gentle and soft and Marinette is as touched by the image as she is frustrated by it.

There are hair sticks on the sixth, and delicate pins shaped like flowers on the seventh. Another stunning drawing of her on the eighth, a bottle of wine older than Master Fu on the ninth, the softest cashmere blanket on the tenth, a basket of sweet floral lotions, a glass statue of a bird in flight—she gets so many gifts, Marinette has to stop keeping count.

It’s somewhere around day six that her designers must’ve ratted on her to either Felix or Chloé because it’s not long after that, that all of her friends learn about the gifts and start being terrifically unhelpful about the whole situation.

They each try to give her advice, which would be sweet if it wasn’t all equally terrible and conflicting.

They’re also placing bets on who they think her admirer is, Damian or Robin. They’re trying to be discreet about it—which means they’re failing miserably.

Marinette, admittedly, never expected any different from them.

***

Marinette begins watching Damian in the mornings with a newfound interest.

The gifts are always there before she arrives, which means they're also there before Damian arrives, so she’s in a prime position to catch his reaction.

Or, she would be, if he ever reacted. He barely glances at them and never says anything unless the gift is particularly obnoxious, like the giant stuffed mouse she found sitting in her chair last week. (It was almost as big as she was. Adrien, Nino, and Alix had ended up on the floor from laughing so hard when they’d seen it.)

Damian almost never comments on the gift she received that day, but whenever she uses or wears something that her mysterious admirer had gotten for her, he makes sure to compliment her. Which would be  very suspicious except that Robin does the same thing.

It’s just- they’re both so frustratingly silent about it all! Marinette is this close to just grabbing one or both of them by the shoulders and just shaking until they tell the truth.

It’s driving her insane! Before the necklace appeared on her desk, she didn’t even know that she liked Robin and Damian.

And now she’s overanalyzing their nonreactions. She hates it.

It feels too much like she’s back in collège, trying to sort out her feelings for Adrien and Chat. (Who ended up being the same person—which was just very inconsiderate of him, really. The least he could do is let her angst have meaning dammit!)

And- ugh. What if she doesn't even like either of them? What if her mind is just making her think she does because the idea of them liking her was presented? What then? Or what about the fact that the two boys are also ridiculously similar when she thinks about it. What if she only likes one and is just projecting her feelings onto the other because her mind associates the two?

Oh, she doesn’t like that thought. That thought makes her feel upset and like she wants to cry into a tub of ice cream.

Nino happily indulges her and doesn't even complain when she eats her way through his stash of mint chip as she dramatically complains about stupidly confusing boys.

Honestly, she may as well be back in lycée.

***

(What Marinette does not realize in the midst of all her careful analysis of his reactions, is that it’s not the gifts he’s focused on.

When she wears the necklace and hair sticks, she misses the way his eyes linger on the slope of her neck. As she cares for her roses, she doesn’t notice the way he follows the easy nimbleness of her fingers. She uses her sketchbook and eats the expensive chocolates and doesn’t pay attention to the way he steals glances at her lips. She doesn't see the way his hands twitch when she ventures just near enough to touch.

(She exists next to him, in any form or light, and he is captivated by her very presence.)

Marinette looks, but it is in all the wrong places.)

***

Strangely enough, it’s Signal who helps her with her internal crisis—completely unintentionally and in a very roundabout way—but he helps all the same.

He’s taken an… interest, she supposes, in her magic. One that is entirely his own and has very little to do with that Bat from what she can tell.

His abilities and hers stem from different origins, but she would be lying if she said his weren’t oddly complementary to her own. His precognition abilities stemming from his photokinesis has been useful on more than one occasion regarding the experimental spell matrices she, Tikki, and Nooroo have been testing out.

The magic is normally invisible to people without a Miraculous, but Signal seems to have little trouble seeing what she’s doing, even if he can’t interact with it the way she can.

(There is also the fact that she seems… more when he is around. Days that he spends watching her do her work go by faster and smoother than when he is away. Her magic is easier, and her mind spins with ideas and creations faster.

It’s an odd phenomenon and Ladybug is looking into it.)

There has been more than one occasion where Signal had warned her of the matrix’s imminent collapse with enough time for her to prepare herself for its blowback.

The version she’s working on today is their fifth iteration. It’s supposed to pull the miasma out of the building, filter it through her and Tikki’s own magical energy, before flowing back into the brickwork. Marinette had thought of the idea while talking with Nooroo.

If she can get it to work, it will shift the misfortune into good luck and order and release it back into the environment. Then she’ll only need to cleanse strategic portions of the city in a lattice network, and the creative and destructive energies will mix from there, balancing themselves without much input from her at all.

Of course, that’s only if she can actually get it to work. It’s been almost a month and this is the fifth version and it’s already collapsed on her three times in the last hour. Signal must see the frustration on her face and has taken to trying to distract her with small talk.

She’s very thankful for it, actually. If he wasn’t doing that, she would probably start screaming right here and now, on this random rooftop in the residential district. Which would just be very startling and embarrassing for everyone involved, so. You know. Glad she doesn’t have to do that.

Eventually, she asks him, apropos of nothing, “You’re a detective right?”

He pauses, and blinks at her, likely trying to follow the train of thought that led her to that question. She assumes he did not find it because when he speaks, he still sounds confused.

“Yes? I guess that’s technically what I am.”

“So you’re good at figuring out who’s behind a crime?”

Signal only looks more confused. “Yeah? But Ladybug, what-”

“Great, so. Hypothetically, if you had two suspects for a—well it’s not a crime. A… thing? Situation. How would you figure out which one of them is actually behind the… situation?”

Signal’s lips quirk, just a bit despite his confusion. “I think I’m gonna need a little more to go on than just ‘a situation,’ LB.”

Ladybug purses her lips and stares down at the light weaving intricate patterns in the space between her palms. Slowly, carefully, she tells him, “There are items being left where a person can find them. But the identity of the person leaving them and their intentions are unknown.”

“Are the items dangerous?” he asks worriedly.

Ladybug shakes her head. “No. They're more like gifts.”

“Are the gifts unwanted or creepy? Unsettling? Threatening?”

Another head shake. “Just confusing and… thoughtful.”

“Someone is leaving you thoughtful gifts and you're worried about that… why?” Signal asks, slowly and disbelievingly. 

“It’s because I- wait! I’m not the person!” she panics, causing the magic to spark dangerously in her hands but she barely notices. “The person doesn’t even exist. It was a hypothetical question!”

Signal stares at her. She can’t see his eyes or the top half of his face, but she just knows he’s raising his eyebrow judgingly at her.

“Stop that!” she snaps. “Stop being perceptive! I have enough perceptive people in my life so knock it off!”

Signal laughs like the horrible person he is. “But don’t you need me to be perceptive? That’s like, a requirement to be a detective.”

“Stop it,” she says again, mulishly and very childish.

And isn’t that an odd thought to have? Ladybug being childish.

How novel. Ladybug has never once been childish. She can’t afford to be, because when she is behind the mask, she is all the most important parts of herself. She is the Grand Guardian, is the one who must be in control at all times because she has an entire team to keep safe and alive.

Behind the mask, she’s all of her greatest responsibilities.

But here, in Gotham and with Signal, she is none of those things to him. She is simply another hero, that is his age and very much like him in ways so few are. Ladybug, in the moments she spends with Signal, is probably the closest she has ever been to carefree while in the mask.

It’s as comforting a thought as it is terrifying.

Signal raises his hands in surrender, but his lips are still quirked in amusement. 

Ladybug regrets starting this conversation.

She regrets it even more when, five minutes later, Signal manages to pull the rest of the story from her… along with a name.

She realizes her mistake a second too late to stop herself, and then all she can do is watch.

She watches, with ever-growing horror, as Signal slowly puts the pieces together. She watches, as her whole secret identity starts unraveling around her for the first time ever. She watches, stricken, as Signal opens his mouth to speak.

And then she grabs both sides of his head and Orders him to sleep.

***

The second Marinette bespells him, she regrets it.

She was panicking, okay? And Marinette panicking is very different from Ladybug panicking and truly, she creates messes just by existing.

Nooroo flies out of his hiding place to make distressed noises at the now unconscious Signal with her, which is… actually kinda soothing, if not exactly helpful.

At least she knows she’s not the only one upset right now.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no!” Nooroo frets, flitting around her head with agitated wings. Hers aren’t much better, if she’s being honest. “What are we going to do, Guardian? He knows who you are! This is bad.”

Marinette worries her thumb between her teeth, shifting her weight from foot to foot. With a thought, she's back in her civvies and Tikki is perched on her shoulder, blinking at the scene she’s suddenly a part of.

“Well,” Tikki says, sounding far too calm for the situation. “This isn’t ideal.”

The laugh that escapes Marinette is on the edge of hysterical. “You think?”

“It’s not ideal,” Tikki repeats firmly, “But neither is it a disaster.”

Nooroo lands on her other shoulder as she kneels down beside Signal to rearrange his limbs to not be so uncomfortable. “But he's unpredictable!” he argues, curling into the side of her neck like she will hide him from the world. “We don’t know what he’ll do with this information!”

Tikki hums thoughtfully. “Then we will have to ask. There are far worse people we could have been revealed to. We're lucky it was a friend rather than foe.”

“You think so?” Marinette asks softly, voice barely louder than a whisper.

She knows the Bat’s flock are good people. Many of them are her friends, or people she hopes to call friends soon.

But she doesn't know if these people Marinette calls friends could be Ladybug’s allies.

The bats hoard secrets like black holes, and perhaps they would keep hers just as well, but they could just as easily use it against her. Batman barely tolerates her presence, she can tell by the way Signal talks sometimes, and it is no small stretch of the imagination that he would use this to try and kick her out of Gotham.

Marinette cannot, as a Guardian, leave Gotham.

But more importantly, she doesn’t want to leave Gotham. It’s… her home now. Her friends are here. Her family is here. Robin and Hood and the other bats are here. Damian and all her Waynes are here.

Leaving Gotham would not only make her sick and jittery at the imbalance, but it would break her heart.

If, when Signal tells Batman, he reacts poorly, there is so much that Marinette is set up to lose. And that terrifies her.

Some of that thought process must show on her face—or perhaps Nooroo has just picked up on the turmoil in her chest—because the two Kwami are pressed on either side of her face, nuzzling and hugging as much of her as they can reach.

“We’ll make it through this, Marinette,” Tikki says firmly, no room for argument. “Don’t worry so much. Both of you. Everything will turn out just fine, you’ll see.”

***

@bluesimani @how-to-fuction-properly @chocolatecatstheron @mystery-5-5 @nickristus-dreamer @mochegato @thenillabean @animegirlweeb @novaloptr @darkdaysandfakesmiles @optimistically-pessimistic0524 @clumsy-owl-4178 @g-arya @undecisioned @smolplantmum @blackmagicforever @i-wanna-be-a-ninja @wannajointhecrabcult @paintedhope7 @redscarlet95 @roselynfey @ira-sairain @lozzybowe @tumbling-down-hills-and-stuff @2confused-2doanything @pepelachanel @too0bsessedformyowngood @miraculouspenta @itsmeevie01 @corabeth11 @jalaluvsu

[cosmic-hearts]

castles in the air | lee donghyuck | one

lee donghyuck x female reader

genre; enemies-to-lovers, friendship, romance, fluff, angst

warnings; none

foreword; in which even though you might be a real-life princess with a prince promised to you right from the start, you won’t be getting your happy ever after.

next chapter >> 

“Which dress would you like to wear tonight, miss?”

Not a pink dress. Donghyuck hates pink. 

You resent yourself for it, but it’s the first thought that pops into your mind when the nice boutique lady presents your options to you: a peachy pink Alex Perry gown that reminds you of what you used to like when you were ten, a bold red Lia Stubella one that screamed movie star (except you clearly aren’t one), and a glamorous Elie Saab champagne silk dress that was honestly beautiful but had a plunging neckline that was a little too low for your comfort. 

You eye the pink dress warily, remembering the first time you met Lee Donghyuck. Back when you had even less of a say in the clothes you wore, your mother had forced you into a stiff candy pink dress with ribbons all around the waist. You felt like a walking stick of cotton candy, but your mum insisted that you looked adorable. Donghyuck gave you the stink eye all throughout dinner, and when you privately asked him why, he mumbled something about having a raging hatred for pink. 

It would be a hilarious anecdote if you could look back on it fondly with Donghyuck, safe in the knowledge that you two were best friends now, but reality is quite the opposite. You’re not best friends, neither are you two even friends. 

No. Definitely not pink, you think to yourself, mentally crossing it out even though a part of you wanted to wear it just to see the look on his face, to elicit some sort of reaction from him; it didn’t matter if it was one of disgust. It would be better than nothing.

Because resentment was the only form of emotion he could ever seem to spare you. 

—

Lee Donghyuck watches Sohui as she slings the tie around his neck and does a perfect knot, her deft fingers occasionally grazing his chest. She’s clad in a simple, off-shoulder white dress and wears minimal makeup, her inky black hair a glossy cascade down her back. 

She looks like an angel. 

“Are you sure it’s okay for me to go?” Her gentle voice lures Donghyuck from his thoughts and he smiles at her, placing an arm around her waist and drawing her close to him.

“You’re my girlfriend. Of course it’s okay.”

Her gaze is downcast, lips pouted in worry. “But your parents don’t know about me. And what about her—,”

“That’s why you need to come with me tonight. So they can know about you,” Donghyuck tries to keep his tone light to mask his worry; deep down, he too knows that tonight is going to be precarious and defining, and it could either make or break his relationship with Sohui.

When they reach the hotel, Donghyuck laces his fingers through hers, and he’s not sure if it’s to comfort Sohui or himself. He doesn’t miss the way her eyes widen at the intricate glass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, the artful statues of greek Goddesses posing in all their prehistoric glory, and of course, the people parading all around in their finest evening wear like nobility. It is moments like these when he’s painfully reminded of the sheer gulf between the worlds they come from; his reality exists only in her wildest dreams.

“Donghyuck-ah!”

He whirls round at the sound of his mother screeching his name, bracing himself for the whirlwind of interrogation that is sure to consume him. He tightens his grip on her hand, wondering if he and Sohui will make it out alive. 

Mr Lee hurries towards him, the click-clack of her heels against the marble tiles like a mocking countdown towards his impending doom. As expected, she stops short when she sees Sohui, hand interlinked with her son’s, her gaze hardening into one of icy judgement. Mr Lee raises a questioning eyebrow but remains silent. 

And so it begins. 

“Who is this, Donghyuck?” Mrs Lee asks in a tone of apparent civility but she doesn’t bother masking her cold appraisal of Sohui as she assesses her simple dress, lack of jewelry and unimpressive hairdo, in stark contrast to her own immaculate styling and head-to-toe designer wear. 

“Mother, Father, this is Kim Sohui,” Donghyuck says, wrapping an arm around Sohui’s shoulders, “and she’s my girlfriend.”

If looks could kill, Sohui would be writhing on the floor right now. 

“I see. It’s nice to meet you, Sohui. How long have you been dating my son?”

The poor girl stares down at the floor, fidgeting. “Four months?”

“And you know that my son’s engaged? And he has been for a period of time way longer than four months.”

The color dissipates from Sohui’s cheeks and she pales instantly. “Yes, Mrs Lee.”

“We can deal with this later, mother—,”

“Mr and Mrs Lee!”

The Lee family meeting is cut short with the arrival of another family; your own. 

Donghyuck’s eyes are immediately drawn to you; he clenches his jaw as a film descends over his eyes, that familiar feeling of mutiny washing over him.

He takes in your silk champagne dress, no doubt flown in from the most expensive Parisian or Lebanese designer. He takes in your flawless half-updo that’s been styled to perfection, not a curl of hair out of place. He takes in your polished, elegant strides, six-inch heels notwithstanding. Everything about you is immaculate and impeccable; you appear entirely self-possessed and composed, the very portrait of style and sophistication, grace and glamour. 

He doesn’t take his eyes off you as you greet his parents, a cordial smile playing on your lips when his parents gush over how beautiful you look tonight. 

“And who might this young lady be?” Donghyuck flinches when your mother asks, her sharp eyes pinned on Sohui like a predator does prey. 

“Oh, she’s just a friend of Donghyuck’s,” Mrs Lee says, at the exact moment Donghyuck blurts out “my girlfriend”. 

While everyone falls into stunned silence, anger radiating off his parents in potently palpable waves, Donghyuck’s eyes flit over to you immediately to gauge your reaction. Would this news be enough to shock you, to cause you distress, to cause your perfect facade to crumble for once? Because for once in your life, things weren’t going according to your perfect plan, and they were now out of your control? The very thought causes a sense of triumph to swell through his chest. 

But you don’t even bat an eyelid. 

Without missing a beat, you break out into a warm smile, extending your hand to Sohui’s. “Hi, my name is Y/N. It’s lovely to meet you.”

“I’m so sorry about my son,” Mrs Lee says, absolutely flabbergasted, “we had absolutely no idea about any of this.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” you say, and though Donghyuck tries his hardest to read your expression, you do a perfect job at keeping it inscrutable; he’s unable to figure you out. “We might be engaged, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t date other people, right?”

Your parents look aghast at your flippant reaction, and it nearly causes you to giggle.

“Your daughter is so understanding, as always,” Mrs Lee gushes, “Hyuck really doesn’t deserve her.”

Donghyuck’s head hangs low as he clenches his fists, his mother’s final verdict like a dagger aimed straight for his heart.

He can never win against you. 

—

After Mrs Lee banishes Sohui from tonight’s function, Donghyuck vanishes. You set off in search of him, feeling a sort of responsibility for what just happened even though you’re not exactly sure what you should be held accountable for. 

You traverse through the crowded expanse of the ballroom, stopping every couple of minutes for people to gush over how lovely your dress is, how exquisite you look tonight (you were indeed the daughter of the largest fashion conglomerate in Seoul; there was no way anyone would tell you your fashion sense was hideous). You smile and either demur or thank them politely, depending on how sycophantic they choose to be. You’re good at playing the game; you’ve been raised your whole life learning the ropes of how to be a people pleaser, how to be charismatic and alluring, how to draw people to you and your cause. 

And it’s always worked with just about everyone in your life. Except, of course, for Lee Donghyuck.

The one person you need to charm the most simply refuses to fall under your spell. 

It’s frustrating, but more than that, it’s terribly unsettling; is he able to see through your veneer of poise and confidence to the weak, less-than-worthy girl you’re so afraid to acknowledge? You’ve always believed that vulnerability wouldn’t look good on you, and that’s why you try so hard, in every aspect of your life, to maintain that flawless guise, that charade of effortless excellence. Yet, with a single withering sneer or chilly glare, Lee Donghyuck manages to strike down that meticulously manipulated illusion you’d gone to great lengths to construct.

You don’t like it. 

You shake off all unpleasant thoughts and slip on your game face as you step out onto the balcony where a familiar lone figure stands deep in thought, a forlorn silhouette in the darkness of the night. The wind whips through your hair as you move to stand next to him; you produce your shawl from your purse and wrap it around your bare arms. 

“Hi.”

You don’t look at Donghyuck; a part of you is afraid to see that ever-simmering resentment on his face. But he makes no reply, gazing out at the cityscape beneath you two. You pluck up the courage to continue.

“I’m sorry about Sohui. She seems really nice.”

You hear him exhale, a heavy sound that dissolves into the breeze. Yet he remains silent.

“If you’d like, I can talk to Mrs Lee—,”

“Shut up.”

The words on the tip of your tongue grind to an abrupt halt and die. Donghyuck finally turns towards you, his dark eyes piercing through to your very core.

“Why did you do that?”

Steeling yourself, you match his stare. “I really do think it’s perfectly fine for us to be dating other people. I know you don’t like me, and I won’t force you to. But I just want to remind you that what needs to be done has to be done, when the time comes.”

Donghyuck smirks. “You think I’ll marry you?”

Onward with the diplomatic route you continue. “I hate to put it this way, but you have no choice. We were betrothed to each other since we were kids and we’re bound by a formal contract—,”

At this, Donghyuck grabs your wrist roughly and you lurch forward, torso mere centimetres away from his. He inches his face closer to yours; you can count the beauty spots splayed across the expanse of his honey-gold skin, and the musky scent of his cologne makes your head spin.

You almost gulp in his face. Almost.

“Do you want to marry me?” He asks, all sardonic bitterness gone from his voice. It almost sounds like a genuine question, like he really wants to know your opinion on the matter.

You take a few seconds to clear your head, to formulate a prudent and politically correct reply that your parents would approve of.

But Donghyuck seems to be able to read your mind. “I don’t want a model answer, Y/N. I’m asking you what you really want.”

You chew your lower lip in unease, avoiding his probing gaze. What do you really want? All your life, all you thought you really wanted was to fulfil all the plans your parents had laid out for you even before you were born. To be a good daughter to your parents, a good student to your teachers, a good heiress to the family company. And eventually, a good wife to Donghyuck. Because all these were the means to an eventual end—wealth, material success, approval from your parents, and with those, you’d assumed, would automatically come some form of happiness (a nebulous concept you never truly understood or appreciated). Why should you question your parents, when they’d told you time and again that they only had your best interests at heart?

But now, being faced with Donghyuck’s resolute gaze, the defiant tilt of his chin, with his fingers burning into your skin, you’re not so sure anymore. 

What do you want?

“I-I don’t know,” you mutter softly, so softly that it almost gets carried away by the wind into the night. But Donghyuck catches it, and he doesn’t miss the quiver in your voice that tells him it isn’t very often you’re unsure of something and you admit it. His grip on your wrist loosens and he remarks, “I didn’t think that was possible.”

“What?”

“You not knowing something.”

Your cheeks almost colour with embarrassment. You snatch your hand out of his grip, take a step back and straighten up, ashamed of having let your mask of seamless composure slip, even if it was only for an instant. Looking him directly in the eye, you say in a sharp tone, “Don’t ever touch me again without my permission.”

With that, you turn around, your shawl flapping violently behind you in the breeze and hitting Donghyuck in the cheek. 

He watches you return to the ballroom and disappear into the ceaseless sea of designer gowns and overpriced tuxedos, right where you belong. But he can’t forget the flash of vulnerability he’d seen in your eyes, the shadow of doubt that made him think maybe you weren’t the infallible robot he always believed you were. 

Maybe you too, like him, want to break free from the confines of this cursed matrimonial match.

—

You sit at your desk, working on a history essay that you normally would have completed hours ago but it’s 7pm and you’re not even halfway through yet. You glance outside your bedroom window, or your ivory tower as you like to call it; your house was basically a castle set amid carefully cultivated gardens, and nights of rushing essays made you feel like Rapunzel stuck in an endless cycle of work. 

Anyone would say you were practically a princess. Born with the privilege of not a silver but golden spoon in your mouth, you virtually had the world at your fingertips. Your every whim and fancy came true; all you had to do was ask and you would receive.

But no one understood that this just made it even more difficult to prove that you are worthy. 

Do you even deserve everything you have? This was a nagging, disturbing question that you would likely never have the answer to.

Before you can delve too deeply into your existential issues, your phone pings with a text. 

Lee Donghyuck

Hi. 

You almost drop your phone. You had Donghyuck’s contact saved because your parents forced you two to text each other obligatory birthday wishes and congratulations whenever either of you did well in something. The last text was Donghyuck congratulating you on winning the debate nationals half a year ago. His texts always had this note of forced civility, like he’d rather be skinning a cat than sending you a text. But you hadn’t won anything recently, nor was it your birthday, so why did he deign to contact you?

Lee Donghyuck

Can we meet? I need to discuss something with you. 

You can’t forget the way he’d momentarily disarmed you, or the way you’d callously left him on the balcony that night. Why would he want anything to do with you after that horribly awkward encounter?

You

When?

Lee Donghyuck

Right now, if you’re free. 

It’s funny how your first thought is, what the hell am I going to wear? Then again, it’s not like you have regular midnight escapades with the boy who regards you as the bane of his existence; how would you know the dress code for such an occasion? You end up slipping into your baby pink Adidas tracksuit, the one you usually wear for your night runs—Donghyuck’s strange loathing for pink be damned. You have no intention to endear yourself to him, at least not tonight.

You slip out through the back gate and into the rose garden, where Donghyuck is waiting in the pavilion. His hands are in his pockets and he looks deep in thought, like he’s ruminating on contemporary problems of the 21st century when in reality, you’re sure he’s probably just dreaming about that girlfriend of his. He doesn’t even seem to mind your all-pink ensemble.

“Hey Donghyuck,” you say coolly, determinedly looking ahead of you and refusing to look at him, “let’s make this quick, please. I have an essay to write.” You almost immediately regret how petty that sounds, nothing like the businesslike tone you were striving for.

“Fine.” Did you imagine the mild disdain in his voice? “I just have a proposal for you that I think you might be interested in; I was wondering if you’d want to form an alliance.”

Now that's businesslike. You turn towards him, curiosity aroused. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to marry you; you know that clearly enough. But I’m sure you wouldn’t want to marry me either.”

You remain silent, unsure where he’s heading with this.

“The thing is, we never really tried to get close to each other; maybe that’s why our parents are so insistent that we’d be a good match. My parents don't listen to me when I tell them I don’t want to marry you; they say that I’ll get over it, which is bullshit, because I know what I want and it’s not you,” he says, looking over at you, “no offence.”

You smirk. “None taken. Please go on.”

“So if we show them that we’re making the effort to get to know each other better, but it doesn’t work out in the end, maybe they’ll let us off. I mean, mine won’t, but you can tell your parents that you don’t want to marry me; they’ll surely listen to you because you’re literally their darling princess. My parents will have no say then.” The sneer in his tone definitely isn’t imaginary this time.

You consider this for a moment, trying to find loopholes in his plan. “What exactly does ‘getting to know each other better’ entail?”

At this, Donghyuck takes a deep breath. “I need you to keep an open mind about this because it’s for the greater good, Y/N. It’s going to be painful, but I think we should pretend to date each other.”

You keep your expression stoic when really, you feel your heartbeat picking up speed and a surge of heat diffuses across your cheekbones.

Lee Donghyuck never fails to surprise you. 

“And your girlfriend is okay with this?”

“Yes, I’ve told her about it; she gave me her full support. After all, it’s all fake anyway. And this way we can break off our engagement faster, which is what we both want.” 

You know you should say no but you can’t deny that this was indeed a rather expedient plan. And you would never admit it, but you can’t seem to suppress that clandestine urge that had been bubbling inside of you ever since that encounter with Donghyuck—the urge to, for once in your life, take control of your own decisions. To snatch the reins of your fate away from your parents, to do something for yourself instead of for the people around you. This would be your one and only act of rebellion, the lone stain of sin upon your spotless record of dutiful daughter. The thought fills you with a dark thrill of exhilaration and sends electricity charging through your veins, a feeling foreign to your body. Almost immediately you feel years younger, like an errant child about to undertake a secret mission in the forbidden forest.

“Deal,” you say, extending your hand to Donghyuck’s and finally meeting his gaze with your own. “I look forward to working with you, Lee Donghyuck.”

[josy72]

Portrait of a Lady on Fire 🔥

Intervista del 14 /02/ 2020

The Black List Interview: Noémie Merlant & Céline Sciamma on PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE

Kate Hagen

My favorite movie-going experience in 2019 may have been seeing Céline Sciamma’s exquisite PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE at the 105-year old Prytania Theatre in New Orleans as a part of the New Orleans Film Festival. Being in an ancient theater only added to my immersion in the film’s sumptuous, sensual world, created by Sciamma and her incredible lead actresses, Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel. I spoke to Merlant and Sciamma about how they built a welcoming atmosphere on set, the power of the female gaze in narrative, secrets in cinema, and much more.

Noémie Merlant

What was your experience like reading this script for the first time? What resonated with you about the portrayal of Marianne?

It was a huge experience reading this script, because what I felt is that it represented something we’ve missed — these images, representations, and stories that we’ve been missing so much of. I realized that while I was reading that because we’re in a society and culture that is so inside the male gaze that we don’t even notice that this is the male gaze, this is one gaze — while I was reading it I realized that. And then, everything was so detailed — everything was in the script so the script was alive. There was all the breathing, the looks, the movements, the desire that was crawling…it was slow, and it was taking the time to build this love story of a woman and it was all about details taking the time, building excitement, expectations and desire slowly with new images, like the sex scene.

And so I realized the power of this love story. Marianne touched me really deeply because she’s a really modern character. She’s a curious voyeur, she’s a painter, she doesn’t want to get married. She is modern in that way, and that represents all these women that we’ve forgotten and erased from society and history. These painters — hundreds of women from that period were just erased. Through this love story with Heloise (Adèle Haenel) she finds her style of portraiture, because of their collaboration. She feels so grateful to be a painter that she’s stuck in the rules and the ideas and the way of “do a portrait that’s very good” and she’s stuck in this vision.Heloise wakes her up: “This is not me, this is not you, this is not us. This is not a woman, this portrait is not representing us.” And at that point, my mind changed. This script, for me, was what Heloise was for Marianne.

Throughout the film, we’re breaking out of that idea of the male gaze too — challenging rules by the old masters to create something entirely different. What was the most challenging part of creating this character for you? What was your favorite part about playing her?

There was not one scene that was particularly harder than another. What was hard was to keep something, a feeling, present from the beginning to the end of shooting the movie — there was a lot of restriction because of the period and the costumes and the dialogue and the light and the focus, it’s candle-lit. Every movement was written. I was finding a way to make it alive, and include me and my vision as an artist, too. I knew that I couldn’t move much while I was sitting, that I had to say the lines and do a smile or a gaze…But it was really trying to find a new way to look at Heloise each time, to find a new way to breathe. As the story grows and the desire grows too: Having a smile more open, more large, having movement more free, dresses less tight, and everyone smiling more.

I think the film does a great job of exploring the necessity of the collaboration among women that happens around art, but I also really loved that the film is about female kinship on all levels. Whether that’s making a meal together, sleeping together spending time together. What was the atmosphere like on set as you guys were creating that little bubble of the three of you in the house spending time together?

On set, the way that Celiné works is to create an environment of respect and kindness. But it’s about having fun too— we’re of course being serious because we’re working, but at the same time, we’re having fun. For this movie, we were all together in a house, we called it “Champs Mer.” Like the movie, we were all together in this house, the girls were together, and we were always together in creating and discussing what we did. It was really a parallel of the movie and the experience of the movie.

What do you hope modern audiences take away from PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE, which is a very different take on a period film than we’ve ever seen before.

Despite the fact that it’s a period film, it’s modern because it shows things like the abortion scene that we’re not used to seeing. The sex scene is an entirely new image, a new representation of the lesbian story which has of course existed before, but has never been present enough. The female gaze and intimacy of women…that’s a story that hasn’t been told, with the woman as subject and not as object. This feeling of creating mirrors this new experience of love — the excitement of imagination and artist collaboration, and the desire that grows slowly in details and images.

Céline Sciamma

How did the initial idea for this film spark within you? What was your writing process like knowing you were going be directing the film as well?

Well, I wanted to write a love story, I wanted to dedicate a film to love and to desire. And to have these two emotions embodied very patiently — what the process of falling in love actually looks like, moving away from the conventional idea of love at first sight and romance.

The chemistry between Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel in this film stars with a smolder then becomes incendiary, as you mentioned. How did you work with the two of them in pre-production and on set to make their relationship be viscerally felt on screen?

This chemistry definitely burst in front of my eyes during the casting process. First, I met Noémie alone with my casting director — she made a strong impression. Then during callbacks, the second round was with Adèle, and when I saw the both of them in the frame I knew that this was right.There was this strong physical contrast that I was looking for, very cinematic, but there was a strong also sense of equality, since they’re the same age, same height, and both have very strong intensity. We stopped there! We didn’t rehearse at all, so that they would actually meet on the set and during pre-production. Sometimes I rehearse before shooting, it depends on the film — WATER LILIES we rehearsed a lot, GIRLHOOD we rehearsed a lot, TOMBOY not at all, and PORTRAIT not at all. Because it was about love and all the danger of the unknown, it felt right for all of us to actually also be in that position.

There’s a sort of pervasive sensuality in this film — whether its a smear of paint or crumb of bread, we’re immersed in the same sensual world that the three leads are in. How did you work with your various department heads to make the world of this film come alive?

By being really minimalist regarding set design. It’s a paradox — even though this film is period piece, this is a film where I had less innovation on the set design because we’d come to this castle in the Parisian periphery where we shot most of the film, and it was untouched for… 150 years? So, the color of the walls…we didn’t choose that. [laughs] We entered this room, and we decided that we were gonna leave it that way. And there was a vibe from the past that actually made me super confident — so whereas in my previous film [GIRLHOOD] there was a lot of set construction, even the teenager’s rooms, there was no fourth wall, so then we decided to put very few things in the frame, just wooden boxes and fabric that was very low-key: linen, cotton. This also extended to the costume design, but with fabrics that were silky. To anchor the film and the sociology of that particular moment in Brittany— period pieces are often mundane, you know. We built the bed, we built the table in the kitchen, we felt we were inventing very minimalist furniture.

There are so many elements in this film that reflect modernity and almost an otherworldliness that we don’t often see in period films, whether that’s the abortion scene or the ghostly visions, or the psychedelic sequence. At what point did you decide to bring in these contemporary trappings to a tradition period film?

They all came up along the way, like “Oh, I want Adèle to appear because it’s mostly about ideas. I want Adèle to appear as a ghost because it’s the present of a love story, but also a memory of a love story, the contagion of these two layers.” The idea behind this is the fact that the minute Noémie falls in love and she knows it, she’s already haunted by the last image that she will see of Adèle. And then, when you have this idea, you try to really be brave about it and be generous about it, not make it this little anecdote, but put it all over. That what happens with Orpheus and Eurydice for instance — I was looking for a scene, a sort of “Netflix and chill” scene between the three girls where they would be super involved in a climatic bit of fiction, and then talk about it, and do a whole show of suspense. And then I thought, it’s also a way to see the myth from a woman’s perspective, and from the perspective of Eurydice. Sometimes it’s just an image — like for instance, Adèle on fire is an image that came out of nowhere, but was immediately like “I want this.” Suddenly, it gives you the title, suddenly, you have to find, “Why would she be set on fire?” So it should be outside, it should be a great fire, and then it’s “Maybe it should be a bonfire!” It’s strange to believe in your intuition and connect things that are not supposed to be connected. You begin to build the plot around strong desire for certain images that have mystery, and suddenly, you bring enough in to not rely on the mystery, but to connect them and to build the narrative around them.

Your last four films have been about developing the female identity, however that may look. Do you feel like you’re making a films in similar thematic territory, or is each film its own thing?

Well, after the the sort of adolescence trilogy (WATER LILIES, TOMBOY, and GIRLHOOD) I really felt like I was departing with PORTRAIT because it’s a story about grown-ups, with professional actresses and a love story that is fully lived, whereas before there was always a love interest, but it was mostly desire as a way to discover yourself. With this one, even though they are discovering themselves, it’s about this iconic couple, this duo and how a love story involves immense patience.

I’m still thinking about the last ten minutes of this film — that art show sequence is so breathtaking, especially as it concludes with the book in Heloise’s hand. You were speaking earlier about finding images before finding the plot — did you already have the images in mind for that ending sequence at the start of the film?

The last scene I had in mind since the beginning, I basically did the film to land there. But I didn’t actually think about the fact that there would be three endings, because there are three endings of the film. For instance, from the book, the page 28 reference, that’s a totally different process — it’s really about looking at a lot of painting at the time and the art of portraiture. I liked the fact that there were little secrets involved, and I decided I had to hide a secret in the painting. I thought it would be in the painting that Marianne would do, but then maybe it could be in the painting that Marianne would see. I had a list of different types of secrets, it’s very codified — for instance, in painting at the time, especially for marriage portraits, there’s a cage and a bird inside, if the door is open, it means she’s not a virgin anymore, if it’s closed, she is. I was finding our own little secret code, and also relying on the audience’s pleasure and intelligence that I’m always trying to think the audience has, that the viewers are the most intelligent person. It’s also knowing that the pleasure of being a viewer in cinema is about being immersed in a film and speaking the language of the film, and as the film goes more and more and more, you speak the language of the film, and the page… it’s a fucking number, but suddenly it means something for you as much as it means something for the character. That’s the kind of thing I’m always looking for — I thought about it for months, finding just the right treasure.

[laurapetrie]

history asks! ♡

Mes reines sans tetes! I’ll do Anne first because it’s her anniversary today. ♡

✰ What made you fall in love with them? To be perfectly honest, the Tudor court strikes me as very heavy, so the idea of this “little, lively, sparkling brunette” prancing around court with her bejeweled hair floating down her back just sounds like a fun time.

✰ Favorite anecdote involving them? That time she had a meltdown over Henry dicking around about ending his marriage, and she told him she was getting too old for his shit. I don’t know, there’s just something so human and funny about that. I also love her debut at the Chateau Vert, because the image of her all dolled up and gleefully throwing sugar candy and rose petals around is very endearing. ✰ Your favorite thing about them? Her wit, her ambition, her warmth, her humor. ✰ Your least favorite thing about them? She was incredibly flawed, but for the sake of the ask, I’ll say nothing, I forgive all her transgressions because I think she is a beautiful fairy tale queen who smells like strawberries and plays the lute like a princess! ✰ Best books about them? The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn by Eric Ives. My bible! ✰ Favorite place associated with them? Hever Castle. It’s so easy to picture her wandering the sunken rose gardens, even though that came later. ✰ Who do you ship them with? Thomas Wyatt. She traded love letters and sonnets for gifts of dead boar. Oh, Anne, no. ✰ Favorite friendship? Her entirely innocent relationship with George warms my heart! ✰ Favorite outfit? Her silver star-spangled dress and little matching slippers fastened with diamond stars that she wore at the French court. I repeat: DIAMOND STARS! Or her white satin dress embroidered with gold acorns and honeysuckles and tied with gold ribbon. She knew how to dress! ✰ Favorite event they were involved with? Her time in France is so interesting to me. She might have met da Vinci - where’s that TV show? ✰ Favorite portrayal in film, television, etc? If there isn’t one, who could play them? GENEVIEVE BUJOLD IS THE ONLY ACCEPTABLE ANSWER. I am incredibly fond of Dorothy Tutin, and Natalie Dormer would have been ranked much higher if The Tudors hadn’t been awful, but Genevieve is Anne. They should have retired the role after she did it. That scene where Richard Burton slaps her in the face and she doesn’t even flinch? An actual queen. ✰ Favorite quote about them? “She who has been the Queen of England on earth will today become a queen in heaven." ♥ ✰ Favorite quote by them? “I have only a little neck.” She kept her sense of humor until the very end. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. ✰ Three random facts about them? She loved cherries, she decorated her clavichord with green ribbons, and she had a collection of diamonds and rubies set in gold roses and hearts. ✰ Favorite picture/painting of them?

To paraphrase Jim Morrison: A sixteenth-century fox. ✰ Would they like you if they met you? Considering that I would be her loyal slave and obey her every whim, I think she would. ✰ Would you hit it? 👀 I would totally change teams for Anne Boleyn. ✰ Would you attend a party with them? Yes! Bring out the mulled wine and marzipan! ✰ What do you think they would give you as a gift? A fancy little lapdog, or a single pink rose. ✰ Describe them aesthetically. Jeweled headbands, handwritten love notes,  keeps a diary, velvet dresses.

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Now for Marie.

✰ What made you fall in love with them? It took me a long time to warm up to Marie, but she really was just a sweet girl who got mixed up in something she didn’t understand. It’s hard not to feel sympathy for her. ✰ Favorite anecdote involving them? She allegedly brought the croissant to France! I have some doubts as to the veracity of that, but as someone who has spent many a morning at a Parisian boulangerie, I would like to thank her personally if it’s true. So flaky. ✰ Your favorite thing about them? Her loving personality and her wardrobe. ✰ Your least favorite thing about them? She wasn’t nearly as oblivious as her critics claimed, but I just think she didn’t have the makings of a great queen. I don’t dislike that, though; if anything, I think it makes her more tragic and relatable. ✰ Best books about them? Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution is the best. And there’s a really beautiful coffee table book by Hélène Delalex that I bought at the Versailles gift shop! ✰ Favorite place associated with them? The Petit Trianon. I feel the need to reiterate that IT WAS NOT A FAKE PEASANT VILLAGE! But does it still seem fun? Oui. ✰ Who do you ship them with? Louis, and only Louis. He kissed her in public while she was sitting in a meadow eating strawberries and cream! I am so bored by this Fersen myth that refuses to die. ✰ Favorite friendship? Polignac and Lamballe, obviously. ✰ Favorite outfit? The pink ribbon-and-ruby headdress she wore to the opera. Also, I translated Dans la garde robe de Marie-Antoinette for funsies, and the girl owned an inordinate number of pink and lilac taffeta petticoats. ✰ Favorite event they were involved with? I have a soft spot for the sad party princess years. Husband can’t get it up? Go to a masquerade ball in Paris! ✰ Favorite portrayal in film, television, etc? If there isn’t one, who could play them? Norma Shearer is my fave. I’m still bitter she didn’t win an Oscar. ✰ Favorite quote about them? “If only they knew what she is worth,” courtesy of Louis. Loving husband award! ✰ Favorite quote by them? I love her apology to the executioner for stepping on his foot. I like to imagine that she said it with the perfect soupçon of disdain. ✰ Three random facts about them? The fresh milk she drank at the Hameau came from Sevres porcelain cups allegedly molded on her own breasts, MOPS NEVER EXISTED, and she served the lemonade herself at her Trianon garden parties. ✰ Favorite picture/painting of them?

Très mignonne.

✰ Would they like you if they met you? I think so. She seems pretty easy to get along with. ✰ Would you hit it? 👀 No. Give me seven years! ✰ Would you attend a party with them? I would hate myself for it, but...yes. Glitter and confetti and champagne and masquerade masks and diamonds! ✰ What do you think they would give you as a gift? A giant pink powder puff. ✰ Describe them aesthetically. Frosted cakes, strings of fairy lights, delicate pink velvet chokers, stolen kisses.

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Two of my very favorites! Let’s start with Marie.

✰ What made you fall in love with them? My great-aunt is a big patron of the Metropolitan Opera, and she dragged me to see La traviata when I was 13. I loved it and had to know more, but there really wasn’t anything in English about Marie at the time, and I wasn’t fluent in French yet, so I had to content myself with an old copy of La Dame Aux Camelias that I bought for a dime from a used bookstore. I love a good muse.

✰ Favorite anecdote involving them? I love all the anecdotes about her sweet tooth because they’re super relatable (ordering petit fours and licorice to be shipped to her apartment! Bonbons at the theater!), but my favorite story is a bit darker. Right before she died, she decided to attend the Paris Opera one more time. Smothered in all the diamonds from her jewel box, she whirled to Viennese waltzes all night with reckless abandon, and then went home to die. That always touches me. It’s like she was making one last attempt to fight off the inevitable. ✰ Your favorite thing about them? How she transformed herself into an educated, witty woman with a penchant for classic literature. She wasn’t the average courtesan - she was super intelligent; she wanted to be surrounded by culture and intellect, and she willed that into being. ✰ Your least favorite thing about them? WHY WERE YOU SO MEAN TO NED HE LOVED YOU SO MUCH! ✰ Best books about them? The Girl Who Loved Camellias and La Vérité Sur La Dame Aux Camélias. ✰ Favorite place associated with them? Her fabulous apartment with the sumptuous pink silk canopy bed and her vanity table covered in bows and ribbons. ✰ Who do you ship them with? Mostly Romain Vienne (I feel like he was the only man who truly “got” her and he could have been one of the great loves of her life, but she didn’t want to lose his friendship), but also with Edouard de Perregaux. They met at a masked ball and he wooed her with pink champagne! ✰ Favorite friendship? Lola Montez! It’s odd, because they’re so different temperamentally. I love how Lola made Romain remove her garter and then slapped him (at their first meeting!), and Marie was just like, “Yeah, she does that sometimes.” ✰ Favorite outfit? Her dark blue velvet cloak lined with pink satin and the little diamond cap that went with it. ✰ Favorite event they were involved with? I have a soft spot for the country interlude with Ned - drinking milk and making daisy chains with my one true love? Sign me up. ✰ Favorite portrayal in film, television, etc? If there isn’t one, who could play them? I know she’s technically playing Marguerite, but I feel like Greta Garbo intuitively understood the inner workings of Marie. ✰ Favorite quote about them? “Alphonsine Plessis could not make enemies.” ✰ Favorite quote by them? “I’ve always felt that I’ll come back to life. I want you to put a very weak bolt on my coffin; this is the most important thing of all.” Mon coeur est brisé! ✰ Three random facts about them? She loved french fries (it’s the first thing she ate when she got to Paris!), she had a pet parrot, and an admirer once sent her a rosewood trunk (an actual trunk) of chocolates individually wrapped in hundred-franc notes. ✰ Favorite picture/painting of them?

Very Lola Montez, non? ✰ Would they like you if they met you? I hope so. She’s my fave. ✰ Would you hit it? 👀 I would not want to join that very lengthy list. I’d rather be a trusted friend, one of the few people not to exploit her. ✰ Would you attend a party with them? Call Tortoni and order five trays of cream puffs! We’re on our way! ✰ What do you think they would give you as a gift? A first edition of Manon Lescaut, or a box of sugarplums from her favorite patisserie. ✰ Describe them aesthetically. Pink champagne chocolates, rose baths, candy shops, satin pajamas in pastel shades, Liszt’s “Love Dream” playing in another room, silk hair ribbons, too many pillows on her bed.

----------------------------- And Madame de Pompdour! ✰ What made you fall in love with them? I don’t remember. I’ve just always loved her. Maybe her drenched-in-pink outfits started it. ✰ Favorite anecdote involving them? The night Louis thought he was going to score after a late-night party, so he asked her where she wanted to go, and she said, “Home to my mom’s.” Oh, Jeanne. ✰ Your favorite thing about them? She knew everyone was waiting for her to fall because she didn’t have aristocratic blood, so she taught herself everything there was to know in order to ensure that there would be no reason to laugh at her. Madame de Pompadour had balls. Pastel, porcelain balls, to be sure, but still balls. ✰ Your least favorite thing about them? Girl should not have gotten involved with the Seven Years’ War. Just a mess in general. ✰ Best books about them? I’ve read a bunch, but none of them have struck me as extraordinary. Maybe it’s time for a new one! ✰ Favorite place associated with them? Château de Bellevue. The paneling was robin’s egg blue and there were flowers everywhere - it’s the building equivalent of Pompadour herself! The fact that it no longer exists is my personal Library of Alexandria. ✰ Who do you ship them with? No one, really. ✰ Favorite friendship? Her friendship with Louis endured much longer than their affair, so I’ll go with him. I love how she had her own little theater to entertain him. ✰ Favorite outfit? SO MANY. The petal pink gown she wore while driving her pastel chariot, the frothy negligees she wore at her toilette, the cherry domino and jeweled bow and arrow she wore when she dressed up as Diana at a masquerade…the list goes on. ✰ Favorite event they were involved with? I love her daily routine at her vanity -  porcelain paste pots filled with cream, swansdown powder puffs, ribbons, and pompoms of small pearls and jewels. Did you know the pompom is named after her? Fun fact! ✰ Favorite portrayal in film, television, etc? If there isn’t one, who could play them? I’d love to see Clemence Poesy in an off-beat, Marie Antoinette-esque candy-colored biopic. ✰ Favorite quote about them? “Pompadour, this name which rhymes with love, will soon be the most beautiful in France.” Ah, Voltaire. ✰ Favorite quote by them? So many gems. I can’t choose! ✰ Three random facts about them? She hated sex, she tried to live on a diet of chocolate and vanilla and became ill, and she had a spaniel puppy named Mimi that she loved so much she had the dog’s image engraved in a Sevres cameo. ✰ Favorite picture/painting of them?

Total doll face. ✰ Would they like you if they met you? I would throw myself on her fainting couch and weep if she didn’t like me. ✰ Would you hit it? 👀 Considering how much she hated sex? Non. ✰ Would you attend a party with them? Yes! Preferably a masquerade ball that we can attend in her fairy-tale carriage. ✰ What do you think they would give you as a gift? A dainty porcelain figurine of a ballerina in rose pink. ✰ Describe them aesthetically. Getting ready at her vanity with pretty ribbons and hair pins, rose perfume, cold hands, hot cocoa spilling out of a pink porcelain tea cup.

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But of course.

✰ What made you fall in love with them? My family is originally from Hungary, so ever since childhood I’ve had a soft spot for that beautiful, highly-strung empress who loved the Hungarian people so much.

✰ Favorite anecdote involving them? When she first came to Vienna, she made her debut in a diamond crown and a pink and silver gown embroidered with roses, riding through the streets in a glass coach encrusted with gold. The throngs of people kept shouting that she was “a fairy tale princess,” but she remarked to her mother that she felt like “a freak in a circus.” (And Sisi loved the circus, so this was obviously a low point.) I think it just sums up the contradictions of her life so neatly. ✰ Your favorite thing about them? Her love for Hungary, her desire to forge her own existence, and her magnificent lustrous hair, haha. ✰ Your least favorite thing about them? Her maniacal obsession with beauty. It’s time to put down the meat mask, Sisi. ✰ Best books about them? I really like Joan Haslip’s book, The Lonely Empress. (Not to be confused with The Reluctant Empress, which is also excellent.) ✰ Favorite place associated with them? Possenhofen! I associate it with all her happiest Christmas memories - the sleigh rides through the snow, the apples and roasted chestnuts, the glittering individual Christmas trees picked out by each child. ✰ Who do you ship them with? Happiness. (And just a litttttttle bit with Franz Joseph in the early days. To quote Sisi: “If only he wasn’t an emperor!”) ✰ Favorite friendship? Probably Ludwig. They had so much in common (most of it bad). ✰ Favorite outfit? The pink silk dress she wore to her 22nd birthday party that made her look like a sugar bonbon. And, of course, the sprinkling of glittering stars in her hair and the tulle cupcake of a dress that she wore in the Winterhalter portrait. ✰ Favorite event they were involved with? Favorite is obviously the wrong word here, because it was an utterly awful tragedy, but I could read every book in the world ever written about Mayerling. ✰ Favorite portrayal in film, television, etc? If there isn’t one, who could play them? The sentimental choice is Romy. Her Sisi is impossibly candy-coated, but I grew up with those films. ✰ Favorite quote about them? Franz Joseph coming in strong: “Her whole life was spent in doing good and she never injured any person.” ✰ Favorite quote by them? “I am the fairy queen Titania.” Damn right you are. ✰ Three random facts about them? Her bedroom ceiling and walls were decorated with scenes from A Midsummer’s Night Dream (painted by Klimt!), she gorged herself on cream cakes when she wasn’t dieting, and the night she “stole” the emperor from her sister, she was only wearing a simple pink voile dress with a diamond hair pin. ✰ Favorite picture/painting of them?

I mean, obviously. ✰ Would they like you if they met you? I honestly have no clue. She’s a hard one to pin down. Maybe she’d like my Hungarian blood! ✰ Would you hit it? 👀 I would stay far, far away. Too many neuroses!

✰ Would you attend a party with them? No. I feel like she’d be miserable the whole time. I’d have to bring her ten glasses of champagne to brighten her up. ✰ What do you think they would give you as a gift? I demand my own set of diamond stars for my hair. I demand it! ✰ Describe them aesthetically. Sleigh rides, delicate jeweled tiaras, fairy tales, decorating for Christmas, girly ribbons, mistletoe, snowflakes on eyelashes, the smell of vanilla.

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WHO DID THIS.

☆ What made you fall in love with them? Nothing. I am not in love with her. I am in deep, deep hate with her.

☆ Favorite anecdote involving them? Um. I like that she played “Tea for Two” as a hymn at church. That’s cute. And she liked rich gooey chocolate cake, especially with cherries. That’s…relatable? I am struggling. Oh, she sent Jessica expensive French chocolates filled with a special sort of black truffle that Jessica became obsessed with. If Decca’s happy, I’m happy.

☆ Your favorite thing about them? Her cheekbones. And she was funny, I suppose.

☆ Your least favorite thing about them? HER POLITICAL VIEWS DIANA NO DIANA STOP.

☆ Best books about them? Diana Mosley: Mitford Beauty, British Fascist, Hitler’s Angel.  (Lord, what a title.) It’s the most even-handed one out there. Don’t read her memoirs unless you want to read about what an utterly blissful wedding present Hitler gave her, or cheer when Baby Diana’s teddy bear gets burnt to a crisp in a house fire.

☆ Favorite place associated with them? Asthall Manor, even if there are ghosts.

☆ Who do you ship them with? Bryan Guinness. The dream. He encouraged her to buy French couture! He scattered rose petals around her when she slept and left love poems on her pillow! He proposed to her in deliriously romantic fashion! (”Only when true love should hit me like a thunderbolt!”) I would never leave him.

☆ Favorite friendship? Probably with Lord Berners. I’d like to go to his house and see his pastel doves that look like confetti. And he had good cake for tea. But he liked Diana, so I must question his judgment.

☆ Favorite outfit? Her  white faille dress with an enormous pale blue bow at the back from Louise Boulanger.

☆ Favorite event they were involved with? Her wedding to Bryan, where Nancy and Unity were bridesmaids and wore dresses of gold tissue tulle with long pearl and crystal necklaces that were presents from Bryan, that prince among men!

☆ Favorite portrayal in film, television, etc? If there isn’t one, who could play them? Imogen Poots is my dream Diana.

☆ Favorite quote about them? Courtesy of Nancy: “She is far more dangerous than her husband.” Guess who spent the war in prison? I want a copy of that letter so I can frame it. Nancy was such a goddess.

☆ Favorite quote by them? “You no more have to learn sex than how to eat a Mars bar.” She knew her way around a bon mot, do admit.

☆ Three random facts about them? She used hot chocolate as face cream when she was in prison, she knew how to scramble eggs, and she didn’t know how to hide her diary from her father.

☆ Favorite picture/painting of them? Footage not found.

☆ Would they like you if they met you? I’m Jewish. So.

☆ Would you hit it? In the face.

☆ Would you attend a party with them? Okay, I admit, I’d totally go on a Bright Young Things treasure hunt with her and Bryan while she’s wearing her emerald tiara. But only once!

☆ What do you think they would give you as a gift? Probably some obscure gilt-edged novel in the original French from the 1700s that was originally owned by Madame de Maintenon. ☆ Describe them aesthetically. Ruffles, jeweled tiaras, peter pan collars and hair ribbons, Parisian rooftops, chocolate truffles.

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I’m doing both! It’s gonna be loooong.

LEE ☆ What made you fall in love with them? The picture of her in Hitler’s bathtub, where she washed off the mud of Dachau. Not only is it a great photo, but it’s such a middle finger to the Nazis.

☆ Favorite anecdote involving them? That time she was crossing the street in New York City and almost got hit by a taxi and Conde Nast pulled her back at the last second and PUT HER ON THE COVER OF VOGUE. What kind of modern fairy tale nonsense!

☆ Your favorite thing about them? Everything. I love it all - the It Girl years, the surrealist years, the war correspondent years. Gimme all of it.

☆ Your least favorite thing about them? I feel like she’d be a difficult person to get along with sometimes. Very stubborn.

☆ Best books about them? The Lives of Lee Miller and Lee Miller: A Life with Food, Friends & Recipes.

☆ Favorite place associated with them? Paris, mais oui.

☆ Who do you ship them with? The aviator who flew over her ship when she was sailing for Paris, just so he could scatter rose petals over the deck in her honor, then crashed and DIED. And you can’t even get a text back!

☆ Favorite friendship? I love her relationship with her brother Erik, who was, by the way, a total babe.

☆ Favorite outfit? Everything she wore for her photoshoot on headbands for Vogue.

☆ Favorite event they were involved with? Just Paris in the 20s in general.

☆ Favorite portrayal in film, television, etc? If there isn’t one, who could play them? Kate Winslet was supposed to play her a few years ago, but I haven’t heard anything about it since. She would be perfect.

☆ Favorite quote about them? Not exactly a quote, but when she broke up with Man Ray, he sent her a page ripped from his notebook that just said LEELEELEELEELEELEEE. Un peu Crazy Joe Davola, no?

☆ Favorite quote by them? “As for me, I frankly don’t know what I want, unless it is to have my cake and eat it.”

☆ Three random facts about them? She was a chorus girl in George White’s Scandals, she served a snobby British critic marshmallows in coca-cola when he said Americans didn’t know how to cook (apparently delicious), and her childhood sweetheart died when he jumped out of a rowboat to impress her. (All these men dying for her! Lee!)

☆ Favorite picture/painting of them?

The sass.

☆ Would they like you if they met you? God, I hope so.

☆ Would you hit it? To quote George Costanza: “I say this with an unblemished record of staunch heterosexuality,” but if I went that way? Hell yeah.

☆ Would you attend a party with them? No, she’d look too good and no one would notice me.

☆ What do you think they would give you as a gift? Some fancy spaghetti dish that she whipped up with a surrealist touch. Noodles would probably come in three different colors, or something like that.

☆ Describe them aesthetically. Vintage cameras, love letters, fancy fashion magazines, cloche hats, bicycling in Paris.

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DECCA ☆ What made you fall in love with them? The poem she wrote about her pet lamb, Miranda, who she tried to hide from the Bolshies: “Me-ran-der, Me-ran-der, soon to the butcher I must hand her.” I knew right then that she would grow up to be hilarious and amazing. It was love at first sight. Oh, and stealing from stores with her governess and then going out for walnut cake with lots of icing as if nothing had happened.

☆ Favorite anecdote involving them? When she stole a bunch of chocolate truffles from Buckingham Palace when she was presented at court, only for them to come tumbling out of her bouquet when she was getting her picture taken. That would only happen to her.

☆ Your favorite thing about them? EVERYTHING. A GODDESS AMONG MERE FASCISTS.

☆ Your least favorite thing about them? I do think that at first she was a little blind to the terrible things some of the communists were doing. But that’s understandable, given the monsters her sisters surrounded themselves with.

☆ Best books about them? Hons and Rebels (I do not care that it’s embellished!) and her letters.

☆ Favorite place associated with them? San Francisco, where she ran away when she fell in love with Bob. She literally moved across the country because she was terrified of the intensity of her feelings for some guy. A totally rational reaction. Did I mention that I love her?

☆ Who do you ship them with? I love her relationship with Esmond. I really, really do. I wish they could have had more time running their little Italian dream restaurant together. But I really love her and Bob, the nice Jewish boy who “made her heart flip.” They hitch-hiked to their own wedding and slept in haystacks together! And they had that terrible apartment at Haight-Ashbury where you could only get in by the fire escape, but they were so in love they didn’t care! An adorable communist romance for the ages.

☆ Favorite friendship? Decca and Nancy forever.

☆ Favorite outfit? Those adorable oxford heels she wore when she and Esmond posed for Life magazine in their Greenwich Village apartment.

☆ Favorite event they were involved with? Her series of articles for the Washington Post (“Baby Bluebloods in Hobohemia”) that recounted her hijinks with Esmond in America.

☆ Favorite portrayal in film, television, etc? If there isn’t one, who could play them? NO ONE IS GOOD ENOUGH. I would accept Jenna Coleman, though.

☆ Favorite quote about them? When Bob saw her stealing food from the OPA cafeteria: “This, I decided, was the girl for me.”

☆ Favorite quote by them? “At least Nancy reads, is still funny, & is not a fascist or an idiot.” PUT IT ON MY GRAVE.

☆ Three random facts about them? She was the lead-singer in a kazoo-based Beatles cover band, she beat Maya Angelou at Boggle, and when she first came to America, she thought cookies were “little cakes made in the shape of cooks with sugar-icing aprons and hats.” She never recovered from the disappointment.

☆ Favorite picture/painting of them?

Adorbs.

☆ Would they like you if they met you? IF SHE DIDN’T LIKE ME I WOULD DIE. DIE.

☆ Would you hit it? No, I love her too much and wouldn’t want to get too close and wreck the illusion. Flaubert talks about it!

☆ Would you attend a party with them? I would get good and wasted with Jessica Mitford.

☆ What do you think they would give you as a gift? Maybe a bag of butterscotch sweets from the village shop in Swinbrook.

☆ Describe them aesthetically. Fog rolling in off the Golden Gate Bridge, laughing until her nose crinkles, the crackle of vinyl, train rides, eating raw cookie dough even though she’s not supposed to, mismatched knee socks, engagement ring is from Etsy.

[rhinoswriting]

A Life On The Road - Part 4 (A Luke Hemmings FanFic)

Overview: Elizabeth and Calum have been best friends since they were 15/14 respectively. Elizabeth is from and lives in the UK, but her family lived in Sydney for a brief 2 year period which is how the two met.

With 5SOS embarking on their biggest and most ambitious world tour to date, Cal has invited Elizabeth along to work as a photographer/content creator for their social media. This is in the hopes that travelling with them will help Elizabeth achieve her dream of becoming a full-time travel writer.

Elizabeth is acquainted with the rest of 5SOS but doesn’t know them tremendously well. Obviously that changes as they are all forced to be in one another’s company for the duration of the tour. As the tour progresses and new friendships blossom, Elizabeth feels the connection between her and Luke grow more and more.

A/N: Picking up in Paris. There’s drinking and swearing in this one.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

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

“That was genuinely one of the best meals I’ve ever had.” Michael announced as we exited the restaurant.

“It was incredible! I’m still so jealous of your main though, Mikey. Like, mine was good but I should have got the same as you.” I replied.

“So where to next? The night is still young and we have no obligations before tomorrow’s soundcheck.” Ashton asked the group.

A bar was obviously the unanimous decision. But I did convince them to walk aimlessly until we found a bar. That way we could see some of the landmarks lit up and I could get some content both for the band insta and to go alongside any Paris articles of mine that got picked up.

“I’m going to have my work cut out topping these,” I told the guys as I reviewed the short series of photos I had just taken of them by The Louvre, “So I think that counts as me done for the night. Time to find the nearest baaarrrr!”

It didn’t take long to find a bar. It also didn’t take long for us to all have a cocktail glass held in each hand. While the meal was excellent, it was quite a posh place, something none of us were exactly used to. This bar felt much more like our kind of place. It was time to really relax and have fun as nothing more than a group of friends.

In terms of music it was a bit hit and miss as to whether or not we knew the song playing. While that stopped us singing, it never stopped us from dancing. Also, not being familiar with a song was an excellent opportunity to get the next round of drinks in.

“Hurry up! I don’t have a good grip on these! Quick! Take your fucking drinks!” I yelled as I returned from the bar doing my very best to carry five glasses.

“Thanks, EP!” Cal shouted back as he took two glasses from me, passing one on to Michael.

“TO EP FOR ADDING MORE FUN, AND RIGHT NOW DRINKS, TO TOUR AND BEING A STEP CLOSER TO ACHEIVING HER DREAMS!” Ashton called as he raised his glass into the air for a toast.

“TO EP!” The four of them shouted as they clinked their glasses together.

“You guys are too much at times,” I laughed, “But thank you very much none the less.”

With that slightly embarrassing moment of attention out the way we got back to dancing and sipping on our drinks. After a few songs Cal excused himself to the smoking area. Not long after he’d gone Michael went up to the bar as it was his turn to buy the round, leaving just me, Luke and Ash dancing in a little triangle of space. That was until Live In The Moment by Portugal. The Man started playing. 

As soon as we recognised the song Luke gave me a knowing look as I exclaimed ‘As if!’ because only hours ago in that random little coffee shop had we bonded over our mutual current obsession with the song. From that point until the song faded into the next Luke and I were solely focussed on one another as we passionately sang the lyrics at each other and let the beat draw our drunk, dancing bodies closer together in the already small space. 

Without even realising it we became only inches apart, loudly singing into each other’s faces with our drink-free hands moving between air punches, waves and resting on each other (his hand on my waist, mine on his shoulder). And then far too soon the song was over.

“That’s officially made my night,” I declared as I took a step back and downed what remained of my drink, “That was the best coincidence ever.”

“I think that just became our song.” Luke smiled down at me while pushing a few curls back out of his face.

“Are you fucks going to take your drinks now? Because I’m 30 seconds away from drinking them.” Michael somewhat playfully asked, pulling the two of us out of our bubble.

It wasn’t long after taking our drinks from Michael that Mr. Brightside came on and the five of us went mad for it on the dancefloor. And it turned out that, just like a multitude of other clubs I’d been to, Mr Brightside was a subtle signal that closing time was fast approaching. After the two songs that followed, the music stopped and the house lights came on.

“Boooo!” We all declared, clearly not ready for the night to be over just yet.

We collected our jackets from the cloakroom as we were ushered out into the cold Parisian night air with the rest of the crowd. Once out on the street we checked the time for the first time in hours. Realising it was 3:05am and nowhere else was likely to still be open we began our walk back to the tour bus.

It may seem strange to say, but drunk walks home at the end of a night out are one of my favourite things in the world. I get such a feeling of togetherness when I’m laughing and slightly staggering down the street with friends. It always makes me feel like I belong. And semi-lost under the streetlights of Paris I had that feeling of belonging wash its warmth over me. I took two large steps to catch up with Cal and looped my arm through his, 

“I so fucking glad I’m here. Thank you so much for being my best friend. And thank you for having bandmates that are so easy to get along with.” I told Cal as I placed my drunk, sleepy head against his arm as I wasn’t quite tall enough to reach his shoulder.

As Cal and I continued our drunk heart-to-heart we absentmindedly followed the other three in what we hoped was the direction of the tour bus. Seeing as we hadn’t been paying much attention to them and their antics, it was a bit of a surprise to hear Ash shout “Smile!” at us. Thankfully we were quick enough to pose. 

The result was a pretty cool photo of us, arms still linked, pulling tongue-out faces while flipping the camera off. I asked Ash to send it to me, edited it a bit and kept it in my Insta drafts for review and posting in the morning. By the time I’d done this, we’d managed to find our way back to the bus. Once we all piled in we promptly collapsed in our bunks for what remained of the night.

*

The next day was actually quite a relaxed one for me by touring standards.

I was woken up by Michael repeatedly prodding my upper arm. Once I stirred and opened one eye to find him there, he let me know that Ashton had gone and done a coffee run and mine was waiting for me in the kitchen area. Begrudgingly I got up, because I knew the caffeine would do me good, and I also really needed painkillers for my head. As I padded into the bus’ kitchen area in my XXL tee I saw that the guys were looking just as rough as I felt and probably looked too.

“Thanks for the coffee, Ash.” I said as I picked up the cup with my name on, “I don’t suppose there’s any painkillers on this bus?”

“Got some on my coffee run. Here you go.” Ash responded handing me the small rectangular box.

“You lifesaver.” I said taking the box and settling down on the small sofa next to Luke who was barely awake.

As everyone was pretty hungover we didn’t talk much. We just sat in a comfortable silence while we waited for the caffeine to kick in. 

The silence was finally broken by Lou getting onto the bus and letting the four guys know it was soundcheck in 30 minutes. This prompted them to go and change out of their joggers and freshen up a bit. As they did so I dug out my laptop, charger and notebook from my bunk in order to set up a temporary desk at the kitchen booth’s table and get some work done.

After two hours I’d managed to finish, proof read and send off my article on Glasgow to ELLE; as well as flesh out two article ideas for Paris. Pleased with what I had achieved in that time, despite my headache only being dulled slightly by the painkillers, I took a break. 

Predictably, after making some instant mug ramen, I ended up on Instagram; which was when I remembered the photo in my drafts from last night. I clicked onto it and saw drunk me had gone a bit too far when altering the brightness and warmth of the photo. Once I had edited them down and was pleased with how it looked, I tapped out the caption “Two of a kind!” with the emoji of the two dancing girls at the end, tagged Cal and hit ‘Post’. Not quite ready to go back to work, I decided to get dressed and head into the venue to see what the guys were up to.

The guys were just finishing up the meet and greet, so I hopped round to the front of the venue and gave some of the roadies a hand with prepping the t-shirts and hoodies into piles by size at the merch booth. In between pile sorting, Lou appeared to let us know the boys were in Dressing Room 4 doing radio interviews over the phone and to avoid that area of the venue until they were done. Not knowing when exactly that would be, I headed back to the bus once the merch had been sorted and video called Drew.

“Work is so shit without you. Your replacement sucks too.” Drew complained.

“Aww I’m sorry, Drew! Have you heard back from the other firm you applied to?”

“No, not yet. But I should hopefully within the next week. I can’t survive much longer with these people. How’re you surviving on the road?”

“Really well actually! Not to rub it in or anything.” I laughed.

As I was divulging into some of the details and anecdotes I heard someone slapping their hands along the length of the bus as they approached the door.

“Oh. It sounds like I’m going to have to go.” I managed to say before the door opened and Luke stepped onto the bus, “Adios. I’ll call you again soon.”

“Oh shit, sorry, I didn’t realise you were on the phone.” Luke apologised as he caught the tail-end of my conversation, “We’re all just chilling in the main dressing room now, so I said I’d come and find you.”

“Let me grab my camera gear and I’ll be right with you.” I told him while shimmying out of the booth at the front of the bus.

After a few wrong turns backstage, which resulted in a game of Marco Polo between Luke and Michael as a way to guide us the right place, we were back into our comfortable evening routine. They got prepped and hyped up and I documented it with my camera. That evening I took each of them down the hall to a really cool, cobalt blue door I’d spotted for some solo shots. Luke, taking the longest to decide on his stage outfit for the night, was the last of the four I photographed.

“That red silk shirt was such a good choice.” I complemented him as I held my eye up to the viewfinder, “It contrasts this cobalt door so well. And the two together really bring out your eyes.”

“He doesn’t need a bigger head than he’s already got!” Cal called playfully down the corridor.

Luke let out his infectious giggle and I seized the opportunity to grab another photo while chuckling myself. It was a great photo. Such a pure moment captured. I almost didn’t want to share it on their social media, but I knew that was a foolish, and not to mention selfish, thought.

Not long after that the guys were called to the stage. I took my place side of stage and ritualistically fist bumped each of them as they took to the stage for another amazing show. I felt I had already got enough content while in Paris, so I chose to just enjoy the performance instead of worrying about shots and footage. It was the first time I had let myself do so on this tour and I had a blast.

“It looked like you were having a good time tonight.” Cal later remarked when we were all back on the bus and on the road to Brussels. 

“Don’t tell Lou, but I sort of let myself take tonight off shooting to enjoy the gig as I already have so much Paris content.” I confessed as I reclined on the sofa in the lounge at the back of the tour bus.

“Your secret is safe with us.” Cal reassured with a wink, before taking the final swig that remained in his beer bottle, “Right you fucks, I’m off to bed. See you in Brussels.”

Not long after, Mike and Ash made their way to their bunks as well. This left just Luke and I chilling in the back lounge. As he was scrolling through Netflix looking for a film to put on, I asked him, 

“Are you not shattered too?”

“Eh,” He shrugged, “A bit, yeah. But I always have trouble sleeping. Plus after our drunk chat the other night I’d like to hang out with you more, and I seem to only really get the chance at night.”

“I’m not going to argue with that.” I responded while draping a blanket over my shoulders as the opening credits to Groundhog Day began. After a pause I continued, “We can hang out during the day you know. Like take a break and grab lunch or something. Hey, why don’t we do the coffee run together tomorrow? That’ll be an opportunity to hang out.”

“I’d like that,” He smiled, and then tugged a little at the blanket, “Don’t go hogging all the blanket.”

I released my grip on the blanket, allowing Luke to drape it over himself as well. The added warmth of his body next to mine made me feel even cosier and it wasn’t long before I nodded off to sleep.

The tour bus abruptly coming to a stop a few hours later managed to rouse me from my slumber. As my eyes fluttered open, the rest of my body registered that I wasn’t in my bunk, or even laying down, and that the warm thing my head was on smelt very good. Once my eyes were open and no longer fuzzy with sleep I realised that I had fallen asleep during the film, as I was still sat on the lounge’s U-shaped sofa. Luke must have fallen asleep at some point during the film too, as the nice smelling thing my head was resting on was his shoulder, and I could feel his head resting gently on top of mine as he snored softly.

“Wake up. Hey, Luke. Wake up, “I prompted as I gently shook his thigh, “I think we’re in Brussels.”

[paganinpurple]

Miraculous Hogmanay

I got a ko-fi request from miraculousstuffwotifound: “hey could I possibly request a drabble of the miraculous class celebrating Hogmanay? bonus points if Luka (who is theorised to be Scottish) is the first footer and everyone is super confused by the Scottish custom. <3 I love your writing!”

 I didn’t quite use the whole class but I did go with our fav four. Enjoy the Adrinette and Lukanette teases!

Marinette stared at her phone in confusion for a moment after reading the message that had drawn her attention with a sharp ping.

“Everything okay M?” Alya asked her from her place on the couch, watching the Parisian celebrations on the television while Adrien and Nino sat on the floor, having the latest bout in their thumb war over the table. They looked dangerously close to knocking over the bottle of Champagne.

“Uh, fine,” she said, glancing up briefly before looking back at her screen, “Just didn’t expect to get any messages. I thought the network would be overrun.”

It was already 11:47 pm on New Year’s Eve and when she had heard her phone chime, she had expected it to be an early celebratory message from someone who knew they’d be too excited to send one later. She’d already done the same, sending out messages to her whole class minus the three her parents had encouraged her to spend new year with. New Years was supposed to be spent with friends after all. It was why her parents had gone out with their own friends for the night.

Returning to her phone to reread the message before her, Marinette nibbled on her lip awkwardly as she scanned the screen.

Are you at home for new years? Luka x

She briefly wondered where he had gotten her number from before her common sense caught up to her and she realised that he must have asked Juleka, so he could contact her himself. Despite the text sounding perfectly innocent and friendly, Marinette felt her heart pick up its rhythm and risked a panicked look across the room to ensure no one else had noticed.

Yeah, I’m home. U?

She agonised for a few minutes before adding a kiss of her own on the end. Giving it one last glance to proofread, she quickly hit the send button before she could overthink any and every possible undertone of the message. The reply was fast and frustratingly cryptic.

Not quite 😉

She stared at the message for a minute or two. “What is that supposed to mean?” she eventually asked aloud.

“Marinette! Quick! It’s the countdown!” Adrien shouted suddenly, full of endearing child-like excitement.

Dropping her phone in her haste, she dashed across to her friends, Alya’s arm slinging over her shoulder as they began to chant.

“5! 4! 3! 2! 1! Joyeuse année!”

Fireworks exploded in the skies over the bakery and Marinette found herself jumping on the spot with her best friend before launching herself at her for a hug. Nino soon tapped her on the shoulder and tilted his head towards Alya, a silent request to kidnap his girlfriend away from her which she quickly complied with.

There was a moment of brief awkwardness when she realised why and turned away from their public display that they were attempting to pass off as a simple new year’s kiss. As she did, her eyes met Adrien’s and they both blushed profusely as they tried to work out how to broach the topic of the same tradition.

“Um, we don’t have to-”

“Would you like to-?”

They both gave a small chuckle before Adrien placed a gentle peck against her cheek.

“Happy new year, Marinette.”

Marinette simply stared, cheeks darkening further as she slipped into another of her fantasies. Adrien had kissed her. Just on the cheek, but still -he had kissed her! Maybe he’d lean back in and they’d share a far more intimate moment?

She sighed deeply and might have remained frozen there forever, eyes glassy and Adrien beginning to worry that she had zoned out, but it was at that exact moment that the doorbell rang, and she shook herself free long enough to furrow her brow in confusion.

“Is that your parents?” Nino asked.

“It’s far too early,” she said, opening the door and turning to make her way to the downstairs entrance. She had locked up earlier and no one would have been able to make it up to the front room like normal, so she’d have to traipse down to let whoever it was inside, “And they have keys.”

Bounding down to the door quickly, she took a quick glance through the marbled glass and took in the view of dark hair ending in obviously teal tips. Wait, it couldn’t be? Could it?

She flung the door open so swiftly it almost bounced off the wall and only her quick reaction time saved her having to explain a dent in the plaster to her parents later. “Luka?” she gasped.

“Hi,” he said, standing before her, a bottle of something amber coloured in one hand and a simple wave coming from the other. “Can I come in?”

“Of course!” She stepped back for him to enter, closing and locking the door again once he was inside before leading him up the stairs to the front room.

As they made their way up in a strangely comfortable silence, Marinette eyes were drawn to Luka’s outfit. He wasn’t dressed unusually for him -just jeans and a t-shirt- but the writing across his chest caught her attention. It was hard to get a good look without openly staring but she was pretty sure the words weren’t French, and it was frustrating her that the cursive font made it difficult to tell.

They quickly made their way into the living room, alerting the others to their presence when the door clicked closed behind them. “Look who I found,” she announced, as the others ceased their dancing.

“Luka?” shouted Alya, her eyes flicking towards Adrien briefly before she moved forward and enveloped him in a hug, giving Marinette a pointed look over his shoulder.

“Nice T-shirt dude,” Nino said after she had pulled back, his face equally confused looking as Marinette had felt when she had tried to decipher it. “What does it say?”

“Oh. It’s English,” Luka said, “or rather Scots. It says, ‘Happy Hogmanay.’”

“Hogmanay?” Marinette asked.

“Oh, wait a minute!” Adrien suddenly burst out, “That’s the Scottish flag in the background isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Well spotted.” He turned to face Marinette. “Hogmanay is what we call New Year’s Eve in Scotland. Just like it’s called La Saint-Sylvestre here.”

“So, you’re actually from Scotland too, not just your maman?” Alya asked.

“I was born there. Maman brought us over here just before Juleka came along.” He smiled softly and Marinette’s tongue suddenly felt far too large for her mouth. “She’s determined to make sure we remember everything she can tell us about Scotland.”

Marinette had almost forgotten about the bottle he was carrying until he lifted it, passing it over to her and placing his hand over hers as she reached out for it.

“Here. For you and your family. Guests too,” he said, glancing at the others.

“Oh no! I c-can’t accept-” She cut off unexpectedly at the sound of his gentle laugh once again, a soft sound that made her feel like she had swaddled herself in a fleece blanket -fluffy and warm and impossibly comfortable.

It’s Scottish tradition Ma-ma-marinette,” he chuckled, “I’m your First Footer. I was the first foot to come in over the threshold after midnight. I have to bring you a gift.”

Glancing down at the amber liquid, she noted with a little uncertainty that it was Whisky. Real Scottish Whisky too, from the look of the label. That was kind of…intimidating actually.

“You’re meant to pour out a small shot into a glass and sip it straight -it’s called a dram,” Luka was telling Adrien who was peering over her shoulder at the bottle for a look of his own, “but it can be too strong if you’re not used to it. I take mine with water and ice.”

Feeling her face heat up from the proximity of the only two boys to have ever set her heart compass spinning, Marinette quickly moved away to get glasses for everyone, struggling at first to reach the ones furthest back on the top shelf until Adrien leaned over to help. His chest brushed her back as he did so, and she had to force down a squeak at the contact.

Dashing to the counter, she attempted to pour out small measures of the precious liquid but soon found her hands shaking to do much more than splash the liquid towards the glasses, almost coating the counter while she tried. Luka reached out and steadied her hand helping her to pour first the whisky before topping up one with water from the jug in the fridge to show them all how much to add.

“You should all try it straight first. Just to see what you think,” he said whilst Marinette tried to regain the strength in her knees.

He smirked then began to laugh as they all made a unique assortment of faces at the taste of the strong liquor before adding water and ice, making it only marginally more palatable for them.

The fun of the night continued again soon enough and the longer it went on, the more Marinette seemed to relax – most likely aided by the glass of whisky and multiple glasses of champagne she had drunk.

Turns were taken dancing with one another to the music playing from the TV and anecdotes were shared. Nino became disgruntled for a while when Marinette told a particularly embarrassing story about him tearing his jeans in école and attempting to hide it with his coat tied around his waist until someone had grabbed it from him, but he soon warmed up again when Marinette squawked at his threats to tell everyone of her own childhood adventures.

Luka even convinced them all to attempt singing Auld Lang Syne, something which failed so hopelessly that the girls collapsed to the floor in giggles while the boys attempted to continue with the dancing. Their circle was far too small to allow them to move in and out and Nino kept uncrossing his arms as he tried to concentrate on the lyrics.

“This isn’t fair!” he snickered when the boys too finally gave up, tipsy and slumping to the ground in fits of laughter, “I’m good at English! Some of these words are made up, I’m sure of it.”

“They’re Scots, not English,” Luka explained, scooting across the floor on his knees to sit on Marinette’s right, “There’s Scots, there’s English and there’s Scottish-English. And I haven’t even mentioned Gaelic yet.” He burst out a snort of laughter when Nino flopped onto his back with a grumble.

“So, what does Auld Lang Syne mean then?” Adrien asked from Marinette’s other side, making the girl jump at his sudden appearance.

“Old long ago. Basically, it means ‘the good old days.’”

“Hey! Describe me in Scots!” Adrien said leaning his chin on Marinette’ shoulder and speaking with a ridiculous amount of enthusiasm for a boy who didn’t realise the girl beside him was slowly combusting where she sat.

Luka watched him for a second as he thought before finally- “Bricht easy chuffed. It means you’re excitable,” he snickered.

“What about Nino?” Alya asked watching her boyfriend purse his lips from his spot on the floor next to her before losing her balance and slumping down beside him.

“Leave me out of this!” he complained before rolling over to snuggle into Alya’s side.

“He’s definitely crabbit,” Luka said with a teasing smirk. “Grumpy.”

“And me? And Marinette?” Alya’s slurred and muffled voice asked from Nino’s shoulder.

“Well, right now you’re steaming, blootert, pissed. And puggelt” He hadn’t dropped that smirk. “Drunk and tired.” He only received a soft snore in reply and turned back to where Marinette sat beside him, Adrien also starting to doze lightly on her shoulder.

The sensation of his breath on her neck combined with the intense look Luka was giving her, she began to wonder if a person could actually melt into a puddle, and if they could, would Adrien notice that his pillow had disappeared before or after she started to evaporate from the heat in her face?

“As for Marinette,” Luka said, glancing at the half-asleep boy on her other side before his eyes found hers again, holding her gaze, “I don’t think I’m the only one here who thinks she’s an extremely bonnie lass.”

[centrifuge-politics]

Brick Club 5.5.2

Welcome to another Hugonian tangent on my part. I am the Victor Hugo of Brick Club. I’m going to hop into the chapter halfway because the cut is just an offensively long look into literally a single line à la my research in the eight pound cannon last volume. So if you have any interest in medical(?) care(??) in pre-germ theory Europe, specifically the use of the mentioned “chloruretted lotions,” by all means read my essay.

First of all, it took me ages to figure out what this illustration reminded me of but I got it:

Gillenormand continues to rankle me in a powerful way, the shriveled bastard. “M. Gillenormand did not permit anybody to explain to him—” yeah, because heaven forbid anyone with actual expertise explain anything to a rich royalist old man. I’m so glad he gets to be happy and unburdened considering he’s the fount from which literally all of Marius’s woes sprang from to begin with. Poor bourgeosie has been sad and grumpy in his manor home while Marius was nearly driven to suicide but all’s well now, I suppose! You heard it here first, folks, everything is Gillenormand’s fault. No, I will not be taking constructive criticism.

Gillenormand’s unearned joy is sharply contrasted with Marius’s grave reservation. He’s very much in a state of shell shock—“the whole affair of the Rue de la Chanvrerie was like a cloud in his memory; shadows, almost indistinct, were floating in his mind…he understood nothing in regard to his own life”—and instead of dwelling on his inability to process what just happened, Marius is clinging to the idea of Cosette, of life, of the future. “Let us emphasise one point here: he was not won over, and was little softened by all the solicitude and all the tenderness of his grandfather.” Good! Fucking excellent, because Gillenormand has proven himself to solely operate in his own interest and he will discard anyone who isn’t immediately useful to him with little thought. It’s immeasurably satisfying to see Marius turn and leverage himself against Gillenormand in service of his own interests for once.

I have done my due diligence, now onto what I really want to talk about: when we thought bleach was medicine and used it on Marius.

Marius’s wound gets horribly infected (natch) and “it was not without difficulty that the chloruretted lotions and the nitrate of silver brought the gangrene to an end.” Silver nitrate I recognize, its caustic properties mean it can be used as a topical antiseptic, although it’s no one’s first choice today. Despite being a clear liquid solution, it will also permanently stain the top layer of your skin brown if you come into contact. This fades fairly quickly as your skin naturally exfoliates away, in about a week or so from personal experience.

I was much more intrigued by, first of all the word ‘chloruretted,’ and second of all what kind of chlorine compounds would be used as treatments for infection in 1832. I went googling and found an illuminating article from 1827 titled, “The Chlorurets of Oxide of Sodium and of Lime, As Disinfectants” by Thomas Alcock (as well as a subsequent review of this article from The Lancet the same year which is amusingly awful). I’m going to start with some definitions and then I very much wanted to talk about this article that is only barely tangentially related to the situation. Sorry.

Chloruret is an archaic translation of clorure which is just the French word for chloride. Chloruret seems to have been used to refer to not only chlorides but chlorates and hypochlorites as well, which is, uh, not a great system because sodium hypochlorite, sodium chloride, and sodium chlorate are bleach, table salt, and herbicide respectively and, it goes without saying, very different! So I’m doing some guessing in context as to what compound these authors are referring to. Chloruret of lime is the compound calcium hypochlorite (CaClO)—which you might find today in swimming pools—and I believe chloruret of soda is just sodium hypochlorite (NaClO) which is slightly confusing because this is the exact same compound as chloruret of oxide of sodium. I have a 0.5% solution of NaClO in my bathroom right now to clean my shower with, this is what we colloquially call bleach.

All of these chloruret compounds were known to prevent decay, but it’s unclear if anybody really knew why, which leads to a couple of highly questionable recommendations from Alcock and his contemporaries. Alcock begins his article relating how chloruret of lime or soda was used to slow the decay of corpses for identification and investigation as well as to disinfect hospital equipment, sick-rooms, sewer systems, anything. Alcock and his reviewers didn’t have a concept of bleaching agents, but Alcock observes “both the chloruret of lime and of the oxide of sodium have the disadvantage of discolouring the muscles when applied to them.” Additionally, this article was written before germ theory supplanted the miasma theory of disease and Alcock continually recommends the use of chlorurets “in destroying putrescent and infectious effluvia” with the belief that clearing out a bad smell would also purify the ‘bad’ air spreading disease and infection. He actually has an entire section relating cases from French doctors where chloruret of lime cured “asphyxia” caused by breathing the Parisian sewer fumes.

The reason chlorine bleach works as a disinfectant is because it pretty indiscriminately kills organic material by destroying proteins on a molecular level. This is great when you’re just wiping down operating tables and hospital rooms, but very bad when you start applying bleach to living, organic patients. Alcock quotes a French medical report recommending “Applications of the chlorureted water to be made to the buboes, the carbuncles, and the gangrenes of persons labouring under the plague” which isn’t the worst idea considering antibiotics are over a century away but also “Water containing half a dram or one dram of the concentrated chloruret of oxide of sodium to each pint, to be given to the patients afflicted with plague as their common drink.” It probably goes without saying, but this will not cure infection or plague or anything except the condition of having intact stomach lining. There is no good reason to ingest hypochlorite in any form, despite the section titled “On the Internal Use of the Chloruret of Soda.” Do not drink bleach.

The next section is a series of gruesome anecdotes of hospitalized patients who were cured of gangrene in every imaginable body part using chloruret of soda. Alcock, despite constantly mentioning how disgusting this all is, takes a certain amount of satisfaction in vividly describing just how horrific each infection presented before bleach swooped in to save the day. To skim, gangrene is when body tissue dies, in this case due to some sort of bacterial infection. Avoiding anything too graphic, dead tissue rots and this is bad and will send you into septic shock.

This brings us, unfortunately, back to poor Marius. Who has been dragged through an effluvious sewer with open wounds and now has gangrene. Alcock relates an account that might be comparable, that of a boy with an infected wound on his cheek, closest to Marius’s grazing head wound. The treatment was “a solution of the chloruret, in the proportion of one part to six of water” applied directly to the wound and dressings. This apparently worked very well, the infection cleared out “and the surfaces granulating kindly.” So Marius, despite needing sections of dead skin cut away, might not even have too much of a scar from his head wound, although it would be kind of badass, wouldn’t it? Can I see Marius with a gnarly face scar from a) being shot and b) being slathered in bleach?

Second, he was shot in the shoulder through and through. This might present more of a problem because the wound goes pretty deep near some pretty vital areas and sepsis is a major concern because we don’t have antibiotics and, lord, how did Marius actually survive this? Alcock provides an example of “a case of punctured wound received in dissection…the patient experienced immediate relief from the diluted chloruret of oxide of sodium [NaClO], used as a lotion, combined with free use of leeches.” A winning combination and “the patient recovered without any untoward circumstance.” This has got to at least leave a significant patch of discolored skin from the repeated application of bleach, if not an impressive scar to boot. Hugo specifically says nothing of this, but sodium hypochlorite solutions were apparently also frequently injected at infection sites for deeper wounds or more internal infections, specifically in the bladder, the uterus, and, oddly enough, the nose for atrophic rhinitis). I get that everyone was working with what they had but…bleach injections is a challenging concept.

A final, indulgence; the subsequent review of Alcock’s article in The Lancet is absolutely laughable as a modern reader. It’s three and a half pages long and its criticism basically amounts to: yeah, chlorurets are great and all, but salt does the exact same thing so this is useless. It’s so smugly dismissive of Alcock’s terminology, his case presentation, and the usefulness of even exploring the applications of chlorurets that it borders on anti-intellectual. And, in the process, is so blatantly wrong about chemistry and medicine that it reads like parody today. “Chloruret of soda, to use for once Mr. Alcock’s nomenclature, is a ‘disinfecting agent,’ and preserves animal substances;—common salt preserves animal substances, but has it been proved that it is not a disinfecting agent?” The Lancet says, with an air of ‘gotcha!’ then continues, “Let the test of experience decide.” Earlier, they said, “It is certain that culinary salt will answer many of the intentions to be effected by the chloride of soda, and it is a disinfecting agent in a very great degree. We do not pretend to ascribe to it all the properties of the chloride of soda, but we are certain that it possesses a great many of them.” That’s a lot of unfounded speculation for a noted medical journal. Also, since The Lancet is petty, I can be petty; chloride of soda is a bad name for sodium hypochlorite because chloride is Cl and a soda (Na) of that is NaCl which is sodium chloride which is just salt, Lancet. Not saying chloruret is a better term, but I haven’t based my entire snarky critique on that basis! Beyond the petty, the test of experience is in and salt and bleach are, shockingly, not interchangeable as disinfectants, something that is easily tested, even in 1827. Salt is a desiccant, it kills some bacteria by sucking the water out of it. Bleach is an oxidizer, it kills bacteria by literally breaking apart the proteins in organic material. This is why, despite The Lancet’s flippant dismissal of the substances’ differences, we use salt to preserve foodstuffs and not bleach. There are so many legitimate critiques of Alcock’s article, he overly relies on anecdotal evidence, his measurement recommendations are unclear and unstandardized, he injects bleach in patients, but this review is just lazy.

[lumiereswig]

😮 or 😊 for "Forgotten" (I think it could go either way), but the last two paragraphs in Chapter 16. (more to follow)

i’m putting this one under the ‘keep reading’ because ol’ candle hands needs to quote the 2 paragraphs at length and that could be ~spoilery~

Though perhaps they weren’t so strange. Didn’t she see a Parisian gesture in that gold-dressed courtier, his face alive with love for the whole world? Wasn’t there a touch of clock-keeper to the old gentleman, dignity exemplified, with a neat brown waistcoat where village rags had been? The maid was so familiar, her eyes alight, the grace of twenty years of courtly dancing in her feet—and didn’t she know the man with a fiddle, a whole history behind his tunes now, embracing a housekeeper’s boy thrumming with energy as his mum cries with joy?

And the man in the center of it all, crouching with shock in the middle of a hug each servant had no wish to ever leave—didn’t she know him best of all, in all these strangers, so well she could recognize him anywhere? The hero of every half-forgotten anecdote, the character she loved best in each of her friends’ old stories: the golden haired boy who wouldn’t stop reading, the temperamental man who translated Greek myth for fun, the one who taught Lumiere fantasies and made Mrs. Potts laugh and listened to Cogsworth and sent Plumette flowers for her birthday, every year, just because he was wild and free and loved giving flowers when he could. Oh, he had flaws too—Belle had heard of pride, and vanity, and temper, and howling—but Belle loved a character who felt so real, who was no Prince Charming but a strange, and wild, and delightful man.

so, 😊—what was I thinking when I wrote these bits?

Two things—different things for each paragraph. The first one was very important, because I had to (in one swoop) show the IMMEDIATE contrast between the sad sack villagers we’ve spent 90% of the story knowing, and the people they really are when the curse isn’t veiling their eyes. Like the Lumiere intro chapter earlier—which was fucking hard to write and still needs a redraft—the radical shift in personality is really important to get across as quickly as possible. For Lumiere, you need to know when the lights have gone out—and, for this chapter, exactly when they come back on. (they actually come on earlier—when he cries “Quit your whining, Cogsworth, and get a bandage,” that’s Lumiere taking action and cutting a jibe at the same time since the party scene in Chapter One.)

The second paragraph is one of those blissful moments where you realize the writing just works. I hadn’t really been planning this, but I got to this chapter and realized I needed to get Belle romantically drawn to Adam somehow, despite this story skipping over the entire traditional plot of Beauty and the Beast. And then, while writing this, I realized I already had!!! The staff did it themselves, by telling stories about Adam every other chapter—those references to the Odyssey and the monster earlier on had been intended just as cheap literary foreshadowing, but they actually really worked to start Belle falling in love. (And it actually works, because of all people, Belle-the-bookworm would fall in love with someone through a story.)

[orientalistart]

Ludwig Deutsch (Austrian, 1855-1935)

Early morning, Id el-fitr

signed, inscribed and dated 'L. Deutsch Le Caire 1902' (lower left)

Despite the startling clarity of his pictures, the details of Ludwig Deutsch's life remain elusive and vague. Brought up in Vienna, he studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste before moving to Paris in 1878. There he befriended several Orientalist artists, including Arthur von Ferraris, Jean Discart, and his lifelong friend Rudolf Ernst. It is likely that he studied with the French history painter Jean-Paul Laurens prior to his participation in the Société des Artistes Français from 1879 to 1925; his other instructors and mentors, however, are unknown. (Deutsch's first Orientalist works appeared in 1881, well before his inaugural trip to Egypt and the Middle East. It is possible that he was influenced early on in Paris by the widely circulating pictures of Jean-Léon Gérôme.) In 1898, Deutsch earned an honorable mention at the Société's annual Salon, and, in 1900, just two years before the present work was painted, he was awarded a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle. Later, having established himself as the center of an entire school of Austrian Orientalist painting, he would receive the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. In 1919, Deutsch gained French citizenship and, after a brief absence, began exhibiting again under the name "Louis Deutsch." (It is assumed that Deutsch left France during the First World War due to the official hostilities between France and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He may also have ventured to North Africa at this time.) In an effort to stay current and revive what was now a waning genre, Deutsch's technique in the years after 1910 began to change; his late pictures hovered between the highly detailed, polished surfaces for which he – and several other Orientalist painters – had become renowned, and the looser brushwork and more highly keyed palette of Post-Impressionism.

Throughout this long and varied career, Deutsch consciously avoided the picturesque and anecdotal qualities that marked so many contemporary Orientalist works, and chose instead a far broader and more modern approach. Drawing from all aspects of Middle Eastern life – especially Egyptian – and isolating and scrutinizing particular moments in time, Deutsch's paintings are today seen as verging on the cinematic, with all the spectacular and static qualities of a promotional film still. (Deutsch's process may again have been partially indebted to the works of Gérôme, whose own paintings were often marked by both high drama and a chilling frigidity.) His intensely detailed series of guard or sentinel pictures (one of which, The Nubian Guard [private collection], was completed in this same year), bazaar scenes, and images of the local literati were facilitated by an enormous collection of photographs amassed in Cairo, many of them purchased from the well-known studio of G. Lékégian. (Deutsch also acquired hundreds of decorative objets while abroad, which furnished both his Paris studio at 11 rue Navarin and the Orientalist pictures he produced there. The tombak, or ewer, in the present work, for example, placed in a basket atop the woman's head, was a favorite and oft-repeated souvenir.)

The subject of Early Morning, 'Id el-fitr, though less common in Deutsch's oeuvre, was a familiar one in the nineteenth century, in both literature and art.1. Writing in 1885, Thomas Patrick Hughes offered the following description of the events that took place on this religious holiday, including the rituals that Deutsch refers to here:

On one or more days of this festival [" 'Idu 'L-Fitr"], some or all of the members of most families, but chiefly the women, visit the tombs of their relatives. This they also do on the occasion of the other grand festival. ["Idu 'l-Azha"] The visitors, or their servants, carry palm branches2, and sometimes sweet basil, to lay upon the tomb which they go to visit. The palm-branch is broken into several pieces, and these, or the leaves only, are placed on the tomb. Numerous groups of women are seen on these occasions, bearing palm-branches, on their way to the cemeteries in the neighborhood of the metropolis. They are also provided, according to their circumstances, with cakes, bread, dates, or some other kind of food, to distribute to the poor who resort to the burial-ground on these days. Sometimes tents are pitched for them; the tents surround the tombs which is the object of the visit.3

In addition to Hughes' concise account, Deutsch would have had many other sources from which to draw. His personal library included several volumes detailing the intricacies of Egyptian culture, many of them illustrated by his compatriots and peers. Indeed, the drawings by Leopold Carl Müller (1834-1892) in Georg Ebers' Egypt: Descriptive, Historical, and Picturesque, published in German in 1878 and translated into English a few years after, may have inspired aspects of Deutsch's composition4. So too, contemporary photographs and popular illustrated newspapers – often used by Deutsch as references for his paintings - may have aided the artist in the creation of this image, either directly or in mood 5 (Fig. 1). Unique to Deutsch, however, are the brilliant color scheme (note how the red of the young girl's dress is mirrored by the close-fitting caps of the seated men and the rose petals strewn along the ground) and the subtle symbolism of the scene. The fragility of the flowers (a common adornment for tombs during special ceremonies) may be meant as a reminder of the brevity of life and, in the juxtaposition of Arab children and well-worn tombstones, the continuity of Egyptian culture and the circle of life are pointedly suggested. Deutsch's interest in the distinctive form of the Arab tomb and tombstone may be gauged by the repetition of the motif in another important painting of the period. The enduring popularity of such subjects among his contemporaries, moreover, extended far beyond Deutsch's adopted Parisian home; the present work was acquired in Cairo more than a decade after it was painted, perhaps during Deutsch's return to the region during World War I.

We are grateful to Emily M. Weeks, Ph.D., for writing this cataloguing note.

1 'Id el-fitr, or "feast to break the fast," is an important annual Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan. On this festive day, a celebratory meal is had, ending the month-long period of fasting. The sheer number of cemetery (Arabic, maqbara) scenes in Orientalist art is striking: Jean-Léon Gérôme, Carl Haag (1820-1915), William James Müller (1812-1845), and Amedeo Preziosi (1816-1882) were just a few of the many artists who tackled this subject. In these works, Shaykh's tombs are often prominently featured, the domed silhouettes of which provide much architectural interest. Though not made the focus of the composition, in the middle of Deutsch's picture, in the distant background, the dome of one such structure may be discerned. 2 Palm branches were richly significant in Islamic culture; in ancient Egypt they symbolized immortality. Their presence in this exotic image would have brought a sense of familiarity to European Christian viewers, for whom palms also held special meaning. 3 Thomas Patrick Hughes, A Dictionary of Islam, London, 1885, p. 196. 4 Ebers (1837-1898) was a German archaeologist and novelist. Müller would contribute several illustrations to various editions of his book beginning in 1878. Perhaps the most influential publications for Orientalist artists during the nineteenth century were Edward William Lane's An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (London, 1836) and Owen Jones's The Grammar of Ornament (London, 1856). Deutsch is known to have referenced both of these in the details and subjects of his compositions. (In Lane's volume, an image of an Arab tomb and tombstone is included [p. 524], along with a detailed description of its structure and use [p. 522].) 5 There were numerous cemeteries in and around Cairo which Deutsch may have visited or known and referenced here. Among the most widely photographed and illustrated were the Arab cemetery near the Bâb en-Naṣr and the "Southern Cemetery," or Qarafa, extending south of the Citadel near the mosque of Ibn Tulun. The sobriety of Deutsch's composition would have been shared by members of the Orientalist community at this time: 1902 saw the deaths of James Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836-1902) and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant (1845-1902), and Frederick Goodall (1822-1904) declared bankruptcy in this year.

[crazyblondelife]

This & That from Bald Head Island - Second Edition

Happy Saturday! Today is our last full day at Bald Head and we’ve had the best time, but I’ll admit that I’m ready to get home and get back into the swing of things! It’s so great to be able to get away, recharge, rest and put some perspective on things! This has truly been an amazing two weeks! I’ve taken long walks with the dogs, spent time on the beach with Baldy, read a book (see below) and eaten some delicious food! Life is good!

Today’s post is a happy post about things for now and for fall that I’m loving and want to share with you! I hope you enjoy and I would love for you to leave a comment at the end if you have something to say!

We’ve had my daughter Sarah’s dog…John Wayne and our dog Amos with us here and they’ve had just as much fun as we have! They’ve both decided they need to sleep with us so the bed has been a little crowded.

This porch is one of my favorite places to be…I love to sit in the rocking chairs and drink coffee and read in the. mornings. I’m almost finished with The Last Thing He Told me by Laura Dave and I’ve really enjoyed reading it! It’s suspenseful and an easy summer read!

I’ve started following several new Instagram accounts that I’m loving and two of them are Every Day Parisian and See My Paris! If you’re dreaming of Paris as I am…these are for you!

Fashion and Beauty

I have a bit of an addiction to having lip balm or lip gloss on my lips and found this lip balm by Jane Iredale! It goes on smoothly, comes in seven colors, contains SPF and is very hydrating! It’s been great to have in my beach bag!

These boots from Marc Fisher are on my wish list for fall! I got the black leather version last season and wore them so often! They’re going to sell out quickly so get them early if you want them!

I’ve admittedly done a little shopping since being on the island and found this cute dress and the Dolce Vita sandals at Island Passage! The colors are perfect for transitioning into fall and I’ll just throw on a pair of booties and a denim jacket for the perfect early fall outfit!

I’ve been obsessing over these shoes from Cult Gaia for a while now and I think they’ll be perfect with white jeans and a denim jacket…

For The Home

I love a candle burning in the house and I’ve recently discovered Paddywax Candles. Paddywax is based in Nashville and makes candles, diffusers, incense, body products and more! I bought the coconut amber scent…it’s beachy and smells delicious!

I have several books by India Hicks and love them all for their inspirational pictures and decor ideas! I’ve just ordered this one and I’m sure it will not disappoint!

Style icon India Hicks's charming take on entertaining, featuring dreamy tablescapes, found centerpieces, and enjoyable family anecdotes. ~ Amazon

Even at the beach in the middle of summer, I like to have blankets around in case I get cold! This cozy one from Serena & Lily is so soft and comes in three colors. Also love this less expensive option!

And a few more things…

For years now, my morning supplement routine has included Welleco Super Elixir, Goop Glow Morning Skin Superpowder, Isogenix Ionix Supreme Adaptogen Powder, and Sakara Life The Foundation Daily Supplement. I was recently sent Dose & Co Collagen Peptides for Hair, Skin and Nails and I’ve been taking that as well. The jury is still out on the collagen, but I definitely like a tablet better than a powder.

Did you know that Williams Sonoma has a blog? If you’re looking for a little entertaining inspiration for your next outdoor gathering, look no further than this post…Seven Easy Party Ideas for a Summe!r Spent Outdoors. Williams Sonoma also has a whole section of their website dedicated to pumpkin food…fall is coming!

This recipe for an Iced Brown Sugar Latte with Shaken Espresso from Half Baked Harvest sounds like the best thing ever!

I’m leaving you with a fabulous recipe for the weekend and a fun boutique with things for fall and for now!

Spicy Garlic Lemon Butter Shrimp with Parmesan Corn Polenta via Half Baked Harvest

[beautiful-belgium]

Alfred Stevens - After the Ball, 1874  ‘This painting, also known as Confidence, is one of several by Stevens to treat the theme of consolation. As in his other works from the 1870s, here the anecdotal content of a letter containing distressing news asserts itself in a glimpse of the life of fashionable Parisian women in their elegant interiors. Stevens's subject matter and his meticulous attention to contemporary dress and decor elicited analogies to seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art; in fact, one critic called him the Gerard ter Borch of France.‘ - The Met

[biofunmy]

Where the Resistance Helped Plan the Liberation of Paris

The tunnel to the subterranean bunker that played a pivotal role in the liberation of Paris is long and narrow, each step down deceptively steep.

It takes 100 of those steps to reach the former military command post where, for six days, members of the French Resistance helped orchestrate the city’s release from the Nazi occupation in 1944.

For decades after the liberation, the bunker, in the southern end of the city, languished in neglect, abandoned and visited only by urban sewer explorers or tagged and occupied by squatters.

But on Aug. 25, when the French capital marks the 75th anniversary of its liberation during World War II, the newly restored underground shelter will be inaugurated as part of the redesigned and relocated Musée de la Libération de Paris-Musée du Général Leclerc-Musée Jean Moulin — an unusually long name aimed at honoring key heroes of the French Resistance.

Above and below ground, the museum walks visitors through one of the darkest and most joyous periods of modern Parisian history, from the calamitous moment France fell and German forces captured Paris in 1940, to the moment the city was liberated four years later by the Resistance and Allied forces.

The Musée de la Libération had previously operated in near obscurity above the Montparnasse train station and was little known among Parisians, much less tourists. Visitor numbers were dismal.

Now a few steps from the catacombs, the hope is that the bunker will help the museum become a new tourist attraction in the 14th arrondissement — one that preserves the memory of an important moment in Paris history.

During their tour, visitors learn that the bunker was originally opened in 1938 as an air raid shelter, and that its existence was known to the German army. What the Germans didn’t know, however, was that the Resistance, led in Paris by Col. Henri-Rol Tanguy, would take it over in the week leading up to the liberation, and use it as a command post and communications hub. Equipped with its own telephone exchange, the shelter gave Colonel Rol-Tanguy and his staff access to 250 telephones around Paris, including at police headquarters and in air raid shelters, allowing them to bypass official communication lines that were likely to be tapped. It also served as an effective hide-out, as messengers gained access via the nearby railway line, either to deliver intelligence or receive new orders from Colonel Rol-Tanguy.

A continuous soundtrack overhead brings the command post to life, playing recordings of sounds often heard during the war: a haunting wail of the air raid siren; shrill, strident rings of old-fashioned telephones; calls from members of the Resistance; the click-clack sound of running footsteps that conveys a hair-raising sense of urgency.

The restored “disinfection room” near the entrance where victims would have been treated in the event of a gas attack; vintage gas masks; and the stationary bike used to generate electricity in the event of a power shortage all serve as stark reminders of the realities of war. The bunker also recreates the room that housed the telephone switchboard and the office where Colonel Rol-Tanguy would read reports and dictate messages to his wife and secretary, Cécile Rol-Tanguy, also a member of the Resistance.

Above ground, more than 300 artifacts are on display, including new additions, such as pistols used by soldiers in the 2nd French Armored Division led by Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque (better known as Général Leclerc), and a red, white and blue dress bearing images of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. The Parisian wife and mother Marguerite Sabaut wore the dress for the victory parade down the Champs-Élysées on Aug. 26, 1944.

Marguerite Sabaut made this red, white and blue dress and wore it during the celebratory parade down the Champs-Élysées on Aug. 26, 1944.CreditJulien Vidal/Musée de la Libération de Paris-Musée du Général Leclerc-Musée Jean Moulin/Roger Viollet

The redesigned museum also pays tribute to Général Leclerc and Jean Moulin, who were key architects of the French Resistance. Under Gen. Charles de Gaulle, Moulin would unify the Resistance across France, coordinating efforts with local factions across the country. Leclerc would lead the liberation of Paris with his 2nd French Armored Division and the help of Allied forces, dealing the final blow to the Germans.

Visitors become progressively better acquainted with the two men, and the decisions they made at key moments during the war, from additional artifacts, like Général Leclerc’s cane and French shell jacket and the final handwritten letter Moulin’s mother and sister would receive before his death in 1943.

The Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, commissioned the relocation of the museum above the underground bunker in 2015, after meeting Mrs. Rol-Tanguy, now 100 years old.

At the end of the war, then a young 25-year-old mother of two, Mrs. Rol-Tanguy worked around the clock for six straight days and nights alongside half a dozen young women in the bunker, while Colonel Rol-Tanguy and his staff came and went, meeting with fellow Resistance fighters scattered throughout Paris.

For her son Jean Rol-Tanguy, 76, the restoration of the command post will bring to life his favorite war story heard growing up: how every day at 10 a.m. between 1940 and 1944, a German soldier would call the bunker and ask if there was anything to report; and how during the week of the liberation, the female workers at the switchboard would pretend that all was status quo.

“My parents never really talked openly about the war,” he said. “It was only when they met with old comrades from the Resistance that they would talk about it in front of us. This anecdote always made them laugh.”

Musée de la Libération de Paris-Musée du Général Leclerc-Musée Jean Moulin

Avenue du Colonel Rol Tanguy Place Denfert Rochereau, 14e arrondissement

Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Admission is free, but visits to the bunker must be booked in advance. Reservations can be made online at http://www.museesleclercmoulin.paris.fr/.

Sahred From Source link Travel

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