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needle-thread-thimble-spear · 5 months

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I've been trying to read about maids (and other servants), both as a personal interest and research for a work of fiction ive been drafting and redrafting for a long time. One of the first things I've read to that end is the original 1922 edition of Emily Post (Etiquette In Society, In Politics, and at Home). I'm not finished reading it, but it's been a very interesting look into 1920's high society- both by what the author puts proudly on paper, and what she suggests as a matter of course. For instance, there is a lot of humor in it where she might say something fairly clever or witty, but you can also tell that half the examples of "what you shouldn't do" are just poorly disguised attacks on people she personally despises in her own life. Also you get to see where the author brazenly exposes her classism/racism/misogyny, and the subtle ways those things are revealed just by nature of the social structure she is prescribing.

Anyway, I thought I'd post my thoughts on the chapter most devoted to a housekeeping staff (which is chapter 12, The Well Appointed House). This is a somewhat long post so more below the cut if you're interested! I'm afraid I'm not much of a historian, so my thoughts are rather brief, but I hope it's interesting anyway.

Every house has an outward appearance to be made as presentable as possible, an interior continually to be set in order, and incessantly to be cleaned. And for those that dwell within it there are meals to be prepared and served; linen to be laundered and mended; personal garments to be brushed and pressed; and perhaps children to be cared for. There is also a door-bell to be answered in which manners as well as appearance come into play.

The personality of a house is indefinable, but there never lived a lady of great cultivation and charm whose home, whether a palace, a farm-cottage or a tiny apartment, did not reflect the charm of its owner. Every visitor feels impelled to linger, and is loath to go. Houses without personality are a series of rooms with furniture in them. Sometimes their lack of charm is baffling; every article is "correct" and beautiful, but one has the feeling that the decorator made chalk-marks indicating the exact spot on which each piece of furniture is to stand. Other houses are filled with things of little intrinsic value, often with much that is shabby, or they are perhaps empty to the point of bareness, and yet they have that "inviting" atmosphere, and air of unmistakable quality which is an unfailing indication of high-bred people.

The subject of furnishings is however the least part of this chapter—appointments meaning decoration being of less importance (since this is not a book on architecture or decoration!), than appointments meaning service.

While the bulk of this chapter is devoted to detailing the structure of a house staff, and how best you (a well bred lady) should manage that staff, the chapter begins with advice on how to furnish your house in good taste. While this didn't immediately occur to me on the first read, I think it says quite a bit about the attitude of the author that "the things in your house" and "the people you employ to maintain those things" are lumped into the same category.

In very "beautifully done" houses (all the dresses of the maids are furnished them), the color of the uniforms is chosen to harmonize with the dining-room. At the Gildings', Jr., for instance, where there are no men servants because Mr. Gilding does not like them, but where the house is as perfect as a picture on the stage, the waitress and parlor-maid wear in the blue and yellow dining-room, dresses of Nattier blue taffeta with aprons and collars and cuffs of plain hemstitched cream-colored organdie, that is as transparent as possible; blue stockings and patent leather slippers with silver buckles, their hair always beautifully smooth. Sometimes they wear caps and sometimes not, depending upon the waitress' appearance. Twenty years ago, every maid in a lady's house wore a cap except the personal maid, who wore (and still does) a velvet bow, or nothing. But when every little slattern in every sloppy household had a small mat of whitish Swiss pinned somewhere on an untidy head, and was decked out in as many yards of embroidery ruffling on her apron and shoulders as her person could carry, fashionable ladies began taking caps and trimmings off, and exacting instead that clothes be good in cut and hair be neatly arranged. A few ladies of great taste dress their maids according to individual becomingness; some faces look well under a cap, others look the contrary. A maid whose hair is rather fluffy—especially if it is dark—looks pretty in a cap, particularly of the coronet variety. No one looks well in a doily laid flat, but fluffy fair hair with a small mat tilted up against a knot of hair dressed high can look very smart. A young woman whose hair is straight and rebellious to order, can be made to look tidy and even attractive in a headdress that encircles the whole head. A good one for this purpose has a very narrow ruche from 9 to 18 inches long on either side of a long black velvet ribbon. The ruche goes part way, or all the way, around the head, and the velvet ribbon ties, with streamers hanging down the back. On the other hand, many extremely pretty young women with hair worn flat do not look well in caps of any description—except "Dutch" ones which are, in most houses, too suggestive of fancy dress. If no caps are worn the hair must be faultlessly smooth and neat; and of course where two or more maids are seen together, they must be alike. It would not do to have one wear a cap and the other not.

To continue that thought, maids and dolls do have a lot in common, I suppose. As a side note, the author uses pseudonyms for some of her close friends when she is discussing specific examples, I wonder if a contemporary reader would easily be able to determine who she is writing about or not. Anyway, this section particularly sickens me, with reference to Mr. Gilding and his preferences. This detail is thrown in, as an afterthought, but leaves so much misogyny unsaid. Maybe Mr. Gilding doesn't need a valet, and would feel gay having some guy picking out his clothes or whatever. But why should that preference extend to the rest of the staff? Etiquette is full of little surprises like this. To continue with this train of thought of maids as an extension of the self-

The well-bred maid instinctively makes little of a guest's accident, and is as considerate as the hostess herself. Employees instinctively adopt the attitude of their employer.

Regardless,

Are maids allowed to receive men friends? Certainly they are! Whoever in remote ages thought it was better to forbid "followers" the house, and have Mary and Selma slip out of doors to meet them in the dark, had very distorted notions to say the least. And any lady who knows so little of human nature as to make the same rule for her maids to-day is acting in ignorant blindness of her own duties to those who are not only in her employ but also under her protection.

At least Post is not advocating for this kind of control over the lives of her staff, but now we know this happens often enough it needed to be remarked on.

Unless he is an old-time colored servant in the South a butler who wears a "dress suit" in the daytime is either a hired waiter who has come in to serve a meal, or he has never been employed by persons of position; and it is unnecessary to add that none but vulgarians would employ a butler (or any other house servant) who wears a mustache! To have him open the door collarless and in shirt-sleeves is scarcely worse!

I'm not so equipped to dissect this passage, as I'm admittedly not so equipped with the context a contemporary reader would have with how this comparison is meant to come across, but it doesn't feel like its a very flattering one at all. Again, I'm not really well equipped to be doing a deep dive on this. So while the above passages reveal the author's attitude subtly, those below I feel do it directly. I present them without comment.

A rule can't be given because there isn't any. As said in another chapter, a well-bred person always lives within the walls of his personal reserve, a vulgarian has no walls—or at least none that do not collapse at the slightest touch. But those who think they appear superior by being rude to others whom fortune has placed below them, might as well, did they but know it, shout their own unexalted origin to the world at large, since by no other method could it be more widely published.

But before going into the various details of service, it might be a good moment to speak of the unreasoning indignity cast upon the honorable vocation of a servant. There is an inexplicable tendency, in this country only, for working people in general to look upon domestic service as an unworthy, if not altogether degrading vocation. The cause may perhaps be found in the fact that this same scorning public having for the most part little opportunity to know high-class servants, who are to be found only in high-class families, take it for granted that ignorant "servant girls" and "hired men" are representative of their kind. Therefore they put upper class servants in the same category—regardless of whether they are uncouth and illiterate, or persons of refined appearance and manner who often have considerable cultivation, acquired not so much at school as through the constant contact with ultra refinement of surroundings, and not infrequently through the opportunity for world-wide travel. And yet so insistently has this obloquy of the word "servant" spread that every one sensitive to the feelings of others avoids using it exactly as one avoids using the word "cripple" when speaking to one who is slightly lame. Yet are not the best of us "servants" in the Church? And the highest of us "servants" of the people and the State? To be a slattern in a vulgar household is scarcely an elevated employment, but neither is working in a sweat-shop, or belonging to a calling that is really degraded; which is otherwise about all that equal lack of ability would procure. On the other hand, consider the vocation of a lady's maid or "courier" valet and compare the advantages these enjoy (to say nothing of their never having to worry about overhead expenses), with the opportunities of those who have never been out of the "factory" or the "store" or further away than the adjoining town in their lives. As for a nurse, is there any vocation more honorable? No character in E.F. Benson's "Our Family Affairs" is more beautiful or more tenderly drawn than that of "Beth," who was not only nurse to the children of the Archbishop of Canterbury but one of the most dearly beloved of the family's members—her place was absolutely next to their mother's in the very heart of the household always. Two years ago, Anna, who had for a lifetime been Mrs. Gilding's personal maid, died. Every engagement of that seemingly frivolous family was cancelled, even the invitations for their ball. Not one of the family but mourned for what she truly was, their humble but nearest friend. Would it have been so much better, so much more dignified, for these two women, who lived long useful years in closest association with every cultivating influence of life, to have lived on in their native villages and worked in a factory, or to have had a little store of their own? Does this false idea of dignity—since it is false—go so far as that?

Thank you for reading! There is a lot more one could discuss in that chapter, some of which I initially included but left out. I might return to this, after reading the full text, or if people are curious about it.

Oh, and you can read the full text yourself here on Project Gutenberg!

#maid #history #ce #emily post #etiquette #spinning

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cats-hobby1 · 3 months

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Cat Foster Care: Providing a Loving Temporary Home

Foster care for cats is a vital service provided by animal rescue and shelter organizations, providing needy cats with temporary homes. For cats who are waiting to be adopted, recovering from surgery, or just need a vacation from the stress of life in a shelter, this system offers important care. Cats in foster care benefit from reduced shelter overcrowding as well as assistance with socialization and rehabilitation, which increases the likelihood that these animals will be adopted.

The Importance of Foster Care

Foster care fulfills several important functions. It relieves the strain on overcrowded shelters, to start. Foster homes offer much-needed room, and many shelters are at or close to full. This implies that more cats can be saved from circumstances in which they might otherwise have to endure excruciating pain or be put to death.

Second, cats that are in foster care benefit from socialization. Because of their past experiences, many cats are fearful of humans or arrive at shelters traumatized. They can reestablish their faith in people in a safe and caring atmosphere that foster homes provide. Adopting a cat requires socializing since well-adjusted animals are more likely to find permanent homes.

Furthermore, certain cats have certain needs that are best satisfied at home. For example, shelters find it challenging to offer the 24-hour care that kittens need. In a similar vein, cats recuperating from medical procedures or ailments prefer the peace and quiet of their own home to the hectic, cacophonous setting of a shelter.

The Foster Care Process

Becoming a foster parent for cats usually entails a number of stages. Initially, through a shelter or rescue group, prospective foster parents must submit an application. Background checks, interviews, and a house inspection to make sure the setting is cat-safe may all be part of this application process.

Foster parents are trained on cat care after being accepted into the program. This instruction covers both medical care, which includes giving medication and identifying symptoms of illness, and basic care, which includes feeding and grooming. Foster parents receive training in assisting with behavioral problems and socializing as well.

After the training, the shelter or rescue organization matches the foster parent with a cat. This match considers factors such as the foster parent’s experience, the cat’s needs, and the home environment. The duration of foster care can vary widely, from a few weeks to several months, depending on the cat’s situation.

The Rewards and Challenges

There are benefits and drawbacks to cat fostering. The gratification that comes from knowing you have improved a cat's life is among the biggest rewards. Foster parents frequently talk about how joyful it makes them to see a terrified or sick cat turn into a confident, happy, healthy, and adoption-ready pet. The relationship that forms between a foster parent and a cat can be quite satisfying.

Fostering, meanwhile, is not without its difficulties. Cats that are ill or traumatized need a lot of time, compassion, and emotional support. Along the road, disappointments and setbacks are possible. It can also be bittersweet to say goodbye when the cat is adopted. Even though they know it's for the best, many foster parents find it difficult to part with their foster cats.

How to Get Involved

If you're interested in becoming a cat foster parent, start by reaching out to local animal shelters and rescue organizations. Many of these groups are constantly in need of foster homes and will be thrilled to have your help. Attend informational meetings, ask questions, and learn about the specific needs in your community.

Moreover, consider other ways to support foster care programs if you are unable to foster a cat yourself. Donations of supplies, financial contributions, and volunteer work are all vital to the success of these programs.

Conclusion

One caring and effective approach to make a positive difference in the lives of needy cats is through cat foster care. It serves as a temporary residence, promotes socialization and rehabilitation, and is essential to the ecosystem of animal rescue. Cat fostering has many benefits and challenges, but it also gives foster parents the opportunity to significantly improve the lives of these creatures.

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saturniade · 2 years

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having mental health issues is stupid. i hate anxiety i hate autism-related difficulties that prevent me from enjoying my half-baked pretense of a notmal neurotypical life. just set me fucking free from this mortal coil <-- girl who endures the horrors every day

#i am trying to analyze my emotions (HATE FRUSTRATION TURMOIL etc) and im. under so much stress all the time #cannot even begin to catalogue it all. tmi for all yall guys (lol) + its just ... so much #ukraine is the obvious one and a source of a lot of other stuff... like family and cats and being a refugee of course.#then its not having own room + being dependent on other people/social services for housing and money #household chores... talking to other people out loud every day... godddd everything fucking sucs #i need to like journal i guess. augggghhhjhgggghhhhhggg if anyone has good sources on self help. id rly appreciate them :(#yoo my post

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baeddel · 3 years

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discussion on this post, @horatiovonbecker asks @otatma their opinion about extended families as an alternative to the nuclear family. @otatma replies that it is “a good thing to strive for” but “depends hugely on the family being nontoxic.” true enough!

as it’s my activity feed and they can’t stop me i’ll butt into the conversation. i grew up in an extended family. i lived with my mother and my maternal grandparents, and my aunt would live with us some days out of the week. all of this was accomplished in a 2-bedroom bungalow. i had very little privacy and i hated it; when i was 15 i ran away. my mother pleaded with the council and we managed to secure a terraced house in a socialized housing estate with a bedroom for each of us, plus a spare room (almost unthinkable today). we live near our grandparents and they visit every day.

when i was 16 i met my absentee father. he had been homeless in England and imprisoned in Scotland and when he returned to Ireland that year i found him living in a rhizomatic extended family scenario spanning four generations and three households. they were always being chased out by landlords or paramilitaries and relocating and, in any case, one could never predict who would be living in which house at any time; children would live with grandparents one month, parents the next, aunts and uncles the next, and so on. even husbands and wives did not always share a home.

[long post: 3k words, on the historical development of family structure in Ireland and England and what it means for monogamy, the family and anarchy]

based on this i believed the extended family to be an Irish institution. this is an assumption i shared with most sociologists and historians until about the 1990s (Seward et. al., 2005, pg. 2). the standard narrative was that, world-over, families historically lived in large, three-generation households and that thanks to the industrial revolution this was deteriorating. “Max Weber himself implies in his magisterial way that the rise of capitalist organisation was associated with 'the household community shrinking' ” (Laslett, 1974, pg. 7). Ireland was traditionally conceived of as an exception to this process of deterioration as, on this account, the extended family remained dominant while the rest of the world was going nuclear. it turns out to be the reverse in both cases: the extended family was never the dominant family structure anywhere (ibid. pg. 2-3; Vann 1974, pg. 3-4), except for in Ireland beginning in the 19th century, where over the course of the 20th century it did deteriorate (Laslett, 1974 pg. 34; Gibbon & Curtin, 1978).

the reason for this is embarassingly obvious once you realize it. the fact is that not all families in a society can be extended families. if all children remain in the family home along with their children into perpetuity this house will soon have the population of a small town. this is actually the origin of society proposed by Filmer in Patriarcha (1680), where parental authority becomes the “fountain of all Regal Authority” as their progeny multiply, until humanity is scattered about in the Confusion of Tongues (pg. 11-15). without a Confusion of Tongues to interrupt the exponential increase (and millions, rather than thousands, of years to account for) we have to imagine another sort of family structure. the 19th century sociologist Frédéric Le Play proposed that a new family structure emerged out of ancient patriarchy which he called the Stem-Extended Family. on this account one son was selected to inherit and he remained at the family’s residence; the other siblings were dispersed (Gibbon & Curtin, 1978 pg. 2-3).

to the extent that this form of family organization did exist, it could not have been the dominant form. in a family with three sons, two of them would have to go and form nuclear families with their spouses. they might go on to build their own extended family, or they might not. in many societies the extended family was indeed considered “a good thing to strive for”, and this was the position adopted by the conservative Catholic Le Play, and later accepted by the Catholic Church, who lobbied for policy interventions that would stem the tide of nuclear proliferation in Ireland, particularly by limiting employment opportunities for women. For example, women were barred from civil service positions until 1973 (Seward et. al., 2005, pg. 7).

if this is the case, how could the extended family become the dominant form of family structure in Ireland in the 19th and early 20th centuries? the most significant factor was the reorganization of agriculture carried out by English colonial interests; after the infamous Potato Famine the population of Ireland almost halved (after already more than halving after Cromwell’s genocides), as well as the almost constant state of war that Ireland was submerged in (continuing into the 90s in the occupied North). in the aftermath it was necessary for families to consolidate (Seward et. al., 2005, pg. 3). on top of this, fertility was exceptionally low and emigration was exceptionally high (in the North it remains very high, especially among Catholics). as a result, more generations could live together, and children were more likely to leave the country than disperse elsewhere in Ireland (Seward et. al., 2005, pg. 14). throughout the 20th century, as industry and free secondary education were introduced to Ireland, more children began to move from country to town and nuclear families rapidly replaced extended ones (Seward et. al., 2005, pg. 6).

my family tree more or less follows this narrative along. in the chaos following the Land War my great, great grandmother was the head of a large intergenerational family involving aunts and uncles, as well as an adopted street orphan. my great grandfather met a homeless woman possessing a child out of wedlock and fell in love with her; they moved to this town and rented a house while he sought work as a street sweeper, starting a new nuclear family. in the 40s my grandmother worked in factories until she married my grandfather, a sailor, and they began their own nuclear family in the same town, renting different little apartments until, thanks to the state of the housing market in the 80s, they purchased the modest accomodations aforementioned. by the 90s this arrangement threatened to become a new Stem-Extended Family (with my mother and i playing the role of inheriting sons), but it proved inoperable in the new context of the 21st century’s mechanized Ireland, and we spilled over into our own single-parent home. given that both me and my aunt are infertile, the maternal line terminates here.

does it follow that we ought to give in and admit that the nuclear family is the natural unit of human society, and that the extended family is possible only in the middle of an ongoing genocide? despite what we’ve just said, there doesn’t seem to be good evidence for this either. while Gibbon & Curtin characterized a debate where Laslett “advanced the iconoclastic [proposition] that there had been little essential historical change in family structure” (1978, pg. 3) this doesn’t seem to actually be Laslett’s position. Laslett argued that family size has not changed considerably throughout history, but on the very first page of his landmark Household and Family in Past Time (1970) he emphasizes that he is “not concerned with the family as a network of kinship” and instead defines his area of research in terms of “coresident domestic groups”, which might bear little relationship to kinship structures. in the past the household very frequently involved not just blood relatives but “lodgers, boarders and visitors” (Vann, 1974, pg. 5) as well as slaves and servants. Vann quotes Etienne Hélin's caution that “[a]rithmetic means, although they varied so little covered a whole series of different situations” and describes how post-industrial English households had twice the number of blood relatives per house as pre-industrial ones, but fewer lodgers, and thus about the same mean. the difference between historical and modern families might not be one of size but of an increasing emphasis on blood relations.

it may come as a surprise that, as a matter of fact, Old English has no word for family. they have a word for relatives in general (sibb), for tribes (cynn, the root of Modern English kin), but the basic social unit known to the Anglo-Saxons was the hiw (and its many compounds), which might be translated ‘household’ (or, indeed, ‘coresident domestic group’). who belonged to a hiw? it was somewhat nakedly a property relation. it was not only a man’s wife and children but also his servants, his slaves, as well as his animals (Stanley, 2008, pg. 1). the Textus Rofensus makes only one distinction between members of a household, that they be “slaves or free” (ibid. pg. 7). it could also refer to a monastic group, involving the whole cloister. Stanley notes (and it seems true to me) that there is a virtual absence of family relations in the corpus of Old English literature. in fact i cannot think of a single example, except perhaps for the monster Grendel and his mother. in the mournful Wife’s Lament and the passionate Wulf and Eadwacer the emphasis is on completely personal affections and seductions, and in any case both depict forbidden relationships outside of the hired.

correspondingly, we find that the average Anglo-Saxon home was a large one; typically they were a single room which measured about 50 square meters and “could have accomodated up to about a dozen or so people” (Hines, 2003, pg. 139). there is no reason to suppose that this was to accomodate several generations of blood relatives; the Anglo-Saxons had many, now very unfamilliar, relationships to populate their houses with. there was husband, wife, and concubine, along with their children; there was slave and hostage (Lavelle, 2006), including many orders of slaves with different status (such as the relatively respectable title of bryti, a sort of ‘head slave’); and indeed guest, visitor, boarder, and in the case of lords and aristocratic thegns, perhaps retainers. in Beowulf about thirty thegns sleep with their lord in Heorot, pulling aside the bench-planks and replacing them with straw beds at night (and when the Geats arrive they incorporate them as still more visitors). we know that at least some beds were placed in recesses in the walls and had curtains (Wright), perhaps to accomodate private intimacy between husband, wife and concubine or, indeed, guest, retainer, hostage, slave, or (why not?) animal. even when husband and wife are the only kin relatives in residence we would hesitate to call this arrangement a ‘nuclear family‘, or indeed an ‘extended family’ should it include a grandparent.

why has industrial modernization corresponded with the narrowing of the productive unit of society to the nuclear family (or, increasingly, the single parent family)? why have non-blood relations become so systematically excluded from the household? these seem like open questions to me. our own experience leads us to suspect conditions placed on family structure by the labour market together with city planning. until the 70s in Ireland, as we discussed, it was typical (and indeed lawful) for wives to stay at home and husbands to work; today very few workers could afford to keep their wives at home, even without children. houses are also too small to sustain extended families (nevermind concubines, hostages and the rest). old council houses such as ours have two bedrooms, one for the parents and the other for the children, along with a room for guests. today they do not include the guest room. there are, in addition, only two common rooms: a family room and a kitchen. it is not only difficult to accomodate three generations in these houses (the small guest bedroom is a poor substitue for the reitrement room of many 19th century Irish houses), it is difficult to accomodate even two generations. teenagers will already complain about sharing a bedroom, and one sibling might take up the guestroom. but we know of women with six, seven, as many as twelve children who live here. as adults they could fill at least three of such houses. all of this is possible only on the theory that as the children grow up they will move out into their own homes.

so. it is tempting to analyze the family situation abstractly, counting up the merits and dysfunctions of different systems and comparing them. for example, using Hirschman’s well-known framework of “exit” and “voice”, we might ask how effective the different forms of family structure are at responding to dysfunction (abuse, neglect and so on). the extended family, we might say, gives a child better access to “voice” - they can turn to parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and siblings for help. your mother might answer to your grandmother who is therefore well poised to address parenting issues, while your father can probably smoothe things over with your uncle if you quarrel. this means that you actually have to worry less about “toxicity” in the family compared to a nuclear family where parents aren’t accountable to anyone. however, in case of a family wide problem, you may have much less room to “exit” compared to a nuclear family, where exit is expected.

which one is better? you might reply that the extended family sounds better. it very well might be; but in reality you’ll never get to act on this exercise in judgement no matter how much striving you do. the nuclear family does not predominate because of the tyrannical thirst for the awesome power of parenthood (no matter how much we do find this thirst satisfied), but because of the given conditions of labour, housing, inheritance and so forth. this is why @horatiovonbecker can reply that all of this is “fair enough” but that they ”don't think it follows that discouraging monogamy will help.” no, surely it does not follow. especially now that we know that family size and kinship relations are not essential features of domestic organization. why was monogamy ever implicated in the first place?

now it seems like a curious slip of the tongue that when Goldman and Parsons disagree about monogamy they do so by attacking and defending the family by turns. but at that time monogamy was not so easily separable. free love was not really polyamory. it was this and also the abolition of both marriage and parenthood, as they understood both as property relations: “marriage slavery”, as even Parsons called it, and parental ownership of children. it was also the abolition of sex work, which they understood as the "public” expression of the subjugation of women which finds its “private” expression in marriage (Marx & Engels, 1848, pg. 24-25), ie. that women are dependent on men’s property and must acquire it by marriage or by sexual labour. as a corrolary they advocated for divorce (which became an immense priority to later Soviet planners who designed mobile, modular homes which would allow couples to separate and cohabit arbitrarily). it was also access to contraceptives and to abortion, as well as, believe it or not, very often the advocacy of eugenics (on the account that with abortion, contraceptives and the freedom to select partners, the previously blind and mute force of sexual reproduction would become domesticated to the rational will; see the anarchist journal Moses Harman founded in the 1880s, Lucifer the Light Bearer, later renamed the American Journal of Eugenics).

this constellation of problems no longer appear all together. after most women entered the conventional work force we could no longer as easily see monogamy and marriage as a relationship of slavery. as we say in the previous post, for many women the struggle is that they are too independent, saddled with childrearing and wage labour and housework with only the cold comfort of the day-care for assistance. for this reason sex work no longer appears as anything special compared to the other forms of labour women do out of necessity; “sex work is work” is the guiding catchphrase of militant sex workers. contraceptives and abortion still appear as a leading issue in feminist agitation but we no longer imagine they have the power to transform the everyday life of the household (nevermind summon forth the genetic Ubermensch). all together the abolition of marriage was replaced, as @birlinterrupted reminds us, with its extension: gay marriage. as of right now monogamy and marraige are still inseparable (i can now marry one of my girlfriends but not all three), but we think it need not always be. all together the program fragmented as its success was realized in pieces and none of them were actually irreparably fixed by the property relation (even if they did emerge from it).

Engels actually believed that a true equality of the sexes would, “according to all previous experience,” result in monogamous men and polyandrous women (Engels, 1884, pg. 43), but he admits that we can only conjecture about “the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production.” he finishes this thought with this remarkable little statement:

[W]hat will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love, or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences. When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual – and that will be the end of it.

the straightforward correspondence between property, economic dependence and monogamy is still here, and which to us now seems insufficient to the problem (ie. the problem still persists after these given conditions are eliminated). broadening the question from questions of marriage, sexual access and economic dependence to the more general question of the organization of the household in general and the necessary social and economic conditions proper to it would clarify what’s really at stake in domestic oppression, the organization of reproduction, and so on. but it remains true that we can only remain sensitive to trends, to those of us organizing new experiments with the household, and where new opportunities might open as the present conditions dig their own grave.

Let’s give the final word to an old friend. What is the Family, Renzo Novatore? Why, nothing but “the denial of life, love and liberty.” Nevermind his entry for Love, which is a “deception of the flesh and damage to the spirit, disease of the soul, atrophy of the brain, weakening of the heart” and so forth.

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qm-vox · 3 years

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So You Want To Play A Fairest

(Portrait of Erin Peters by cantankerousAquarius. The character originally appeared in Night Horrors: Grim Fears, published by White Wolf; catch my take on her in New Avalon)

Previous Articles: So You Want To Play A Beast, So You Want To Play A Wizened, So You Want To Play An Elemental, So You Want To Play An Ogre, & So You Want To Play A Darkling

You ever wonder, flipping through a Monster Manual for D&D, or a Bestiary for Pathfinder, why nymphs and hags are both always, always, women? It’s older than you know. Dig into the sordid history of tabletops and you’ll find sylphs that Gary Gygax wrote, Chaotic charmers who use mind control to reproduce with non-sylph men; you’ll find the legacy of the matriarchal drow, who follow a mad goddess, and you’ll find the medusae, whose sexual dimorphism is so complete that their men are beautiful and can turn stone into people.

Dredge deeper and you’ll find the tales that Gygax and his wretched ilk based such creatures off of.

You ever wonder why we assign such powerful Gender to creatures of beauty and horror?

Fairest don’t. They know, every time they wake up from a nightmare that is also a wet dream. They know, every time they get hit on at the bar and have to decide how they’re playing this. They know, every time they look in a mirror and see not their own face, but the ten thousand horrors that made it beautiful.

If you are very patient, and lucky, and kind, they might tell you why.

If you aren’t, they may show you.

This article draws primarily on Changeling: the Lost and Winter Masques, as well as Swords at Dawn and Night Horrors: Grim Fears. Other sources, when used, will be cited. It requires Content Warnings for sexual violence, sexual slavery, abuse, gaslighting, addiction, substance abuse, self-harm, self-image problems, mentions of fascists & fascist ideology, and just, so very much incel bullshit.

Bonus Material Part Two: The Seeming Part

The end of this article, just past the customary Sample Fairest, will include some additional material intended to help you select a Seeming for your character and otherwise build them up as one of the Lost, much as So You Want To Run A Spring Court included material for Courts as a topic.

Take Me To Wonderland - Fairest Overview

Fairest is the fourth Seeming presented in Changeling: the Lost and possibly the most confused about its own identity. Its sections in Winter Masques present depths and nuance that are completely absent in core, essentially making Winter Masques required reading for Fairest players in a way that no other book is - especially since Fairest keep getting written in a particular way alluded to in the Ogre article, which I will expand on later in this article. Fairest is numerically well-represented in canon and popular in the fanbase, home to many memorable character concepts, but its bones with folklore and tradition are weaker than it fronts as.

Ogres and Darklings claim an innate relationship to physical violence; so too do the Fairest claim a relationship to violence. The violence of Perception and its dark twin, Judgement; of Rumor and its mad dog, Prejudice, the violence of Lies and their merciless master, Truth. Fairest, alone among the Lost, have casual access to the resources of a society that refuses to service or acknowledge Changelings, and with access to that society comes both opportunity and temptation. To be Fairest is to wield power that many other Lost cannot, but the opportunity that power offers is a lie; a Fairest can smile until her face breaks like a mirror, but she’ll never be “sane” enough for the masses to see her as anything but a useful pet.

Life’s Lush Lips - Homecoming As A Fairest

Fairest can make the dubious claim of having the least clear memories of Arcadia amongst all the Lost, with Darklings and Beasts jockeying for second place. This isn’t to say that the experiences Fairest have are necessarily more intense or more inherently traumatic than that of other Lost, but rather that the abuse Fairest suffer is so emotional, so targeted at their perception of their selves and their situations and their self-image, that the memories which do form are inevitably colored by those emotions, coloring the dreams they have of Arcadia with both the emotional resonances they had at the time and with their later attempts to grapple with their own trauma and transformation. For many Fairest, who cannot trust even their strongest memory dreams, attempts to understand their own Durance must rely either on the word of their Keepers (and Faeries lie, oh, how they lie), or on reverse-engineering their own behavior to try and conceive of a trauma that could cause it.

Inevitably, however, some things are seared into their minds. For almost all Fairest, their Keeper is high on the list of things they remember with absolute clarity. Other facts, shattered and scattered, vary more widely. Erin Peters remembers stretched years kept in a cold, dark room lit only by her own hatred; every detail of her cell is scorched onto the back of her eyes, but the otherworldly balls her Keeper took her to blur together like food coloring in syrup. The slaves of the Candle Countess have terrible nightmares of the choices they were confronted with, the decision, offered over and over again, to become complicit in the Countess’s cruelty or to be victimized by it. Metallic Flowering from the Shining City struggle not to use drugs to mimic the rush of pleasure they’ve grown used to receiving for performing their jobs well; they also scream in terror if people touch them. A Draconic and a Shadowsoul both remember being used for the sexual pleasure of alien horrors; the one dreams of coiled scales and terrible teeth, the other a lifetime of lurking in an alien maze, tasked to perform the duties of a living trap for the “wicked” and “unwary” who had not yet shed the last vestiges of kindness.

There are no “wild” Fairest. For worse and worse still, to be Fairest is to have been defined by the inescapable and all-consuming attentions of your abuser, and it is this more than anything that other Lost so often fail to understand about the Fairest. Their Keepers heap them with reward and punishment, manipulating the Fairest with honeyed praise, godly wrath, gaslighting, neglect, withholding food, wondrous rewards, drugs from beyond the realms of earthly pleasure, and other hooks and crooks designed to make the Fairest dependent upon their abuser. It is hideously effective, and the first obstacle, maybe even the mightiest, that a Fairest faces to their escape is the simple horror and joy of being alone again. Their masters will try other tricks to keep them in place - tempting them with pleasures, horrific punishments, oh-so-sincere apologies - but before a Fairest can escape into the Hedge she must face, in her mind’s eye, the lonely flight back to the Iron Lands.

The memories that draw Fairest home often have parallels to their experiences in Arcadia. A slave in the Shining City bites into an otherworldly pastry and recalls her grandmother’s pie in its place; the bride of the Demon Lover, curled up under the sheets, thinks about the broken smile of the boyfriend she left behind at home. A Dancer remembers the roller rink where he fell in love with skating, while across the endless tides of the Fairest of Lands, a Shadowsoul holds on like grim death to years of work at haunted houses, scaring kids for fun and for Halloween. Fairest, so famous for their skill at words, struggle to articulate to other Lost why this should be so. Darklings assume it’s because these memories are less intense than Arcadia, and that the Fairest are fleeing to safety. Beasts get it a bit more right by thinking that these memories taste like home. The truth of the matter is that those memories have an intrinsic and nameless meaning; the highs and lows of Arcadia are divine, flawless, absolute, and therefore worthless. They are the proclamations of merciless gods. What draws the Fairest home, more than pain and pleasure they can have on their own terms, is the understanding that those gestures - for weal or for woe or for anything else besides - were made because someone cared about them, personally. Once they fully internalize that their abuser views them as disposable, the Fairest comes home to someone who won’t.

Three Kiths And Flowering Is One And A Half Of Them - Fairest Kiths

Yeah we’re about to be like that about it.

All Fairest can excel in the social arena; their Blessing can be used to flare almost every social roll in the game, and Fairest can never be caught off-guard in a social context (they suffer no untrained penalties to social rolls). With the sole exception of Empathy (usually rolled with Wits) and sometimes Streetwise, there’s no time a Fairest can’t fall back on their words and expect to win through or at least buy time. This is, as you might imagine, a godsend when it comes to attempts to pass in mortal society; Fairest can usually front, charm, bluff, or Manners(tm) their way through things like renting an apartment, nailing a job interview, asking their roommate to do the FUCKING DISHES, or getting stopped by a cop, but both the books and the fanbase miss something here. While Fairest are superb at active social events, they’re no better at keeping a lid on themselves (Composure-based rolls) than mortals are - and given both the nature of their trauma and the fact that they are, you know, Lost, Fairest have a lot more to keep a lid on day-to-day than the human society they’re trying to blend into. Thankfully, Fairest are pretty good at being able to politely leave a situation and go somewhere else to scream, shout, cry, or have a psychotic break, as appropriate.

Of course, Fairest can’t make something from nothing. As discussed in So You Want To Play An Ogre, you can’t win a social game someone else refuses to sit down to, and social rolls shouldn’t be mind control. All the Glamour in the world can’t make your roommate do the FUCKING DISHES if they’re deep in the throes of executive dysfunction, nor can it make the cashier at Walgreens fail to card you for wine when their computer literally won’t advance without an ID. People who are keyed up about honeyed words or whose own trauma came at the hands of manipulators and abusers might refuse to play that game on the terms the Fairest is setting, which makes it hard to, as it were, turn this problem into a nail. Lurking down this path as well is the specter of becoming like the masters who made you this way; if you get used to saying what will get people to listen to you, eventually you start seeing people as enrichment puzzles that dispense the things you want. Madness waits down that road, and it waits for Fairest with a giant spiked bat, thanks to their Seeming Curse.

There’s no pretty way to say this so I won’t: Fairest are always on the verge of losing their minds. Their curse hits them with a flat penalty to all rolls against losing Clarity, which means that Fairest lose Clarity faster than other Lost and they do so more consistently. This necessitates a balancing act with avoiding becoming heartless manipulators; Fairest must engage in control-seeking behavior in order to stay mentally well, must be able to trust and rely on people close to them, structure their lives, and anticipate important changes or they end up on the fast way down. Other Lost often don’t understand this need or the Fairest curse to begin with, and so Fairest end up in unofficial support groups for one another, similar to those run by Darklings except no one will admit it’s a support group even at gunpoint. Woe fucking betide the friend or life partner who gets between a Fairest and her “book club”, “girls’ night”, “D&D campaign”, or other excuse for this vital community support.

Fairest Kiths are...bad. They’re bad. This is the part of the article where I’m supposed to talk about thematics and symbolism and metaphor, and I cannot do that here, because they are bad. Fairest has three viable Kiths that are actual Fairest Kiths, one that’s a Beast Kith who got lost and wound up here by fucking mistake, and a pile of garbage bigger than my self-esteem problems. I’m almost tempted to only talk about those four Kiths and save myself the time but I suppose I should show the work like I’ve done for all the other Seemings, so here we fuckin’ go I guess.

Flowering - This is it. This is the Fairest Kith. If you want to roll any other kind of Fairest you must first pass the trial of justifying why you’re not playing Flowering. In theory, Flowering draws its mythic heritage from nymphs and dryads, charming flower sprites, Knights of Flowers, and the like, but in practice Flowering’s only mechanical effect is 9-again on Persuasion, Socialize, and Subterfuge with no qualification or requirement, which doesn’t just make you better at everything Fairest is good at, it makes you better when you spend Glamour to flare it too. Want to represent a biobahn sith’s hypnotic dance? Flowering works. Want to create a vampiric Fairest with a sultry voice? Here comes Flowering. The siren at the bar who smells like sea air and gunpowder? Flowering. Everything is Flowering. Even the things that aren’t Flowering are Flowering because all Fairest Kiths have a social focus, which is Flowering’s undisputed arena of mastery.

Bright One - In theory, Bright Ones represent beings of light in the vein of Victorian fey (which...ugh...Victorians), but their Goblin Illumination is, how you say, useless, only becoming vaguely useful for a total of 2 Glamour as a passive defense that took you 2 turns to set up. Anything you want to represent here can be found in Flowering and with Elements or Communion (Light).

Dancer - You know how Flowering gives you bonuses on all social rolls? Would you like those same bonuses but on 1 less skill and only on rolls that “involve physical grace”? No? Run Flowering here and give your character a Dance specialty in one or more skills.

Draconic - One of the game’s premier melee options and a Beast Kith who took a wrong turn and ended up getting a free makeover intended for someone else. Draconic in theory represents Fairest as dragons, monster girls, demons, and in general at their most physical, but that idea sorta...falls down a bit? Draconic’s bonuses are all about Brawl and all the sample Draconics are swordsmen, which might suggest to the discerning reader that someone in the office wasn’t reading their own fucking game. Draconic Fairest don’t make bad melee boys if you invest in Lethal Mien, but honestly this is Dual Kith bait; slap it on your Hunterheart or your Razorhand and go apeshit.

Muse - Close but no cigar. In theory Muses are, well, muses; figures of inspiration, mentorship, teaching, creative fire. Their Kith Blessing is strong but requires access to mortals, which is complicated and roundabout on the best of days. If you have an idea that you think is Muse-shaped, use Playmate instead.

Flamesiren - Behold, we enter the realm of Okay(tm). Flamesirens are what Bright Ones wanted to be, and their hypnotic aura is actually a pretty neat tool; with cunning you can make it a one-sided penalty, and even if you don’t it’s an interesting method of de-escalating a social or combat situation by subjecting everyone to the tar pit that is your presence. If your concept involves light and color and you’re resistant to Flowering, Flamesiren will do more than nothing.

Polychromatic - Polychromatics don’t have a lot of roots in mythology; their modern inspirations are, well, Manic Pixie Dream Girls. But they get a shout-out here for being the only Fairest Kith who can muster up decent emotional defenses; not only can they magically boost their Composure rolls (and non-Composure rolls to resist magical and mundane emotional attacks for that matter), but others get a flat penalty to Empathy rolls against them, which makes them talented dissemblers. You’re still probably better off with Flowering - in a world of passive Kith Blessings, Polychromatic’s is extra passive - but I can see this Kith passing muster, and even being worth the two dots to Dual Kith in-house.

Shadowsoul - This one’s insane. Ostensibly Fairest Does Darkling, Shadowsouls get their Wyrd to Intimidate rolls which could be the whole Kith on its own and still be worth the slot, but in addition to that they get 9-again on Subterfuge (matching Flowering and Darklings there) and access to Contracts of Darkness, one of the most powerful in the game line, as an Affinity Contract. Is your Fairest spooky? Would you like them to be spooky? Here’s your one-stop shop.

Telluric - This is a Kith made of ribbon bonuses. In theory related to stars and celestial light, Telluric’s bonuses to rolls “with precise timing” isn’t...really worth considering. Run ‘em as Flamesiren and move on.

Treasured - In theory also able to muster emotional defenses, Treasured are Fairest who are literally made into works of art. They’re Okay(tm) but in their niche are beaten out by Polychromatic with a better effect for less resources.

Playmate - The last Real Fairest Kith(tm), Playmate appears in Night Horrors: Grim Fears where White Wolf tries to sell it as Peter Pan, but its powerful team-oriented bonuses mean that Playmates are useful anywhere Muse is wanted and more places besides. The front woman of an indie rock band could be a Playmate; so too could be an idealized baseball captain, the director at your local theater, the middle manager of a sinister conspiracy, or the night shift lead at a research lab. Do people do a thing in teams? Playmate does that thing.

And She Had Huge Titties, I Mean Massive Badondadonks, Absolutely Enormous Bazoggahoggas - Lost’s Canon Fairest

Remember when I said we had to get back to this after So You Want To Play An Ogre? Now we’re getting back to this. I’m not gonna re-state my caveats from that article and I’m not really gonna go back over the bit about So White Wolf Was Run By Fucking Nazis because, in all honesty, I do not have the fucking time to restate all of that in new words. Give thanks that OPP got out alive and let’s get right down to it.

Fairest have a very consistent characterization in canon that is only really challenged in Winter Masques; the narrative put forth in Lost is that Fairest, being attractive, have an uncomplicated power which privileges their lives. Which is a rather bloodless way to describe how White Wolf kept writing and publishing Fairest as heartless abusers and manipulators getting their jollies and emotional needs met by casually destroying their fellow survivors, manipulating them through sex appeal, outright lies, cattiness, cruelty, and betrayal. Much as simply queering Ogre does not help Ogre in and of itself, queering Fairest only takes you from incel and Nazi propaganda about women into...incel and Nazi propaganda about twinks, femmes, & in general anyone with the temerity to be found attractive by straight white people.

I’m not bitter, you’re bitter.

So what do you do at your table, with your Fairest concept? Lemme open up by saying that like, Fairest qua Fairest is perfectly solid, and if it wasn’t there wouldn’t be an article here; Fairest has a lot to say for itself about feminized violence, about your personhood being reduced to a product for the consumption of others, about emotional abuse & neglect, gaslighting, and sexual assault, but the conclusion White Wolf arrives at (”Fairest have unalloyed power over mortal and Lost society and they abuse that power”) is super fucking obtuse and betrays a serious lack of concern for what the Fairest undergo. It ignores the way a Fairest’s ordeals will force her to confront her relationship to her own gender and alter her willingness and ability to be consumed, disconnect her from her former society while also isolating her from her new one, and these questions are important for you if you’re looking to play a ‘classic’ Fairest.

But that leaves some hanging questions. Male Fairest face the almost inescapable fate of “failing” maleness on patriarchal terms; even the most strapping, broad-chested, athletic Adonis of a Fairest has become a man of layered words and reflexive empathy, whose Manly Stoicism(tm) is a cracking facade at best and entirely abandoned in a more typical circumstance. Men who become Fairest thus face a second journey after their escape from Arcadia; confronting what being men means to them and building their gender identity back up from the rubble it’s become. The temptation to accept success on society’s terms is always going to be present, and it’s always going to be offered like it’s possible, but it’s a losing game for these Fairest; they simply cannot be the men that other men demand they become.

Now, the discerning and loyal reader is surely about to ask, hey Vox, where’s the butch Fairest I was promised back in the Ogre article, to which I respond WE’RE GETTING THERE but I gotta use this as a bridge to talk about something that cuts across Fairest of all genders, be they cis or trans. Lost 1e makes a lot of hay out of the idea that Fairest “are rarely conventionally attractive”, and core even provides some interesting written concepts for that...which make it into exactly none of the art. Every published Fairest is conventionally attractive for various definitions of conventional, be it as a supermodel or a waif, but that leaves the question of Fairest who genuinely are not - and, tragically, Fairest who were not, and were then made into someone more easily consumed by their Durance. You know what I’m about to say, and I know you know I’m about to say it, but I’m gonna say it anyway: all bodies are beautiful, but Fairest know well that beauty and attraction aren’t the same, and neither are beauty and happiness. All Fairest, from the roundest bear to the most wide-eyed waif, are the products of Keepers who valued their bodies in that state, and that idea is going to haunt them day in and day out for the rest of their extended lives. There is no such thing as a Fairest with an uncomplicated relationship to their body, and that White Wolf seems to think that an uncomplicated relationship is their default state is...disgusting, frankly.

Which brings us, at long last, to butch Fairest (also bear Fairest but I’m gonna stick with the one set of terms or I’m going to go mad and this will never be published), who have a complicated journey ahead of them. On the one hand, the assertion of control and ownership over their own bodies, their own identities, cannot be overstated. On the other hand, elements of those bodies are going to be completely out of their control; a nascent butch Fairest may well hit the gym to get swole only to discover that she literally, physically cannot, that she has been Assigned Dex Build At Durance. Hauling your corpse out of Arcadia with an extremely feminine appearance shaped by your Keeper might complicate attempts to present in a more masculine manner or even just to appear androgynous, and those complications can be discouraging. For those that stick to it, this journey will take them two places; one is the bared-teeth, bloody-knuckled assertion that this life is theirs and you can have it if you can fucking take it, and the other is into the ranks of the Freehold’s retained warriors, usually in Summer or Autumn, though a vibrant representation of Spring knights will make it seem as if Spring has more butch Fairest than it actually does. These Fairest are aware, or will become aware, of how much of their job involves de-escalating or pre-empting violence; a focus on Physical stats or skills is not necessarily common, but hyper-specialization therein likely is. A butch Fairest is a lot more likely to have, say, Brawl 4 (Multiple Opponents) and no other Physical skills than she is to have Brawl, Weaponry, Athletics, and Stealth, in part or in whole because her first weapon of choice is going to be an Intimidate roll.

At every turn you’re able to, challenge White Wolf’s narrative about Fairest by asking yourself what your Fairest wants, why they’re this way, what they’re frightened of, and how the way they behave relates back to these. They’re not products; they’re people, just as hurt and Lost as the rest of their peers.

Princesses And Pastries - Fairest In The Courts

Fairest have a complex relationship to the society of their fellow Lost. On the one hand, they have the same need for community, support, companionship, understanding, honesty, and material aid as all Lost; a Fairest is not magically proof against being homeless, against starving, against the dangers of existing in the modern world without things like a photo ID or car insurance, and Freeholds provide all of these things. On the other hand, the thing most Fairest fear most, even if they can’t articulate that fear, is their own power - social influence, emotional trust and betrayal, status, political power, and authority. Fairest are all too aware that being good at this game does not make them immune to it - after all, that’s the lesson they learned at the hands of their Keepers.

What follows from this is a complex dance of interactions that each Fairest in some ways has to feel like she’s managing on her own, even if she’s not (and she rarely is; those support groups exist for a reason). If you give a Fairest a doughnut in a social setting, she will lick that doughnut even if she doesn’t intend to eat it right away, solely to hear someone else say something along the lines of “well it’s yours now”. As Fairest filter into Freehold society and take up social roles at all levels of power - officers, messengers, ‘ambassadors’ to mortal society, secretaries, pledge-smiths, teachers, monarchs - their responsibilities and rewards become their doughnut. That Fairest make a big deal out of both their job and the benefits that come with it is rarely, as other Lost sometimes think, about aggrandizement or reveling in power for its own sake; it’s about the sheer relief and assurance of hearing someone say, to the Fairest’s face, that this is her doughnut and no one is going to take it from her.

Younger Fairest tend to flit between two or three Courts; their initial selection may be based entirely on friendships, Vibes, or a gut-check decision based on an initial pitch by that Court, and Fairest can go quite far even in a Court that doesn’t quite actually fit their needs. Eventually, though, those Fairest who survive their youth will gravitate towards a Court whose ideals speak to them, even if its current social order isn’t living up to those ideals. If they’re going to be condemned to live as exiles in the world of their birth, the Fairest can at least be the person she wants to be, god damn it. Fairest aren’t any more or less vulnerable to a toxic Court environment than other Lost, but they’re good at detecting it beforehand. Unfortunately they’re also good at telling themselves they can change it.

Spring - Though early Spring joiners are of course rare in general, Fairest are among those Lost who more commonly choose Spring as a first Court. Spring’s highly social focus and chaotic internal organization is almost tailor-made for the skill set of your average Fairest, but therein too lies a sense of threat; for many Fairest, Spring can remind them of their Durance, and their joining of the Court is as much motivated by fear of a powerful cultural body as it is by any genuine Desire, maybe even more so. Many such Fairest end up caught in Spring’s middle-road trap, spinning their wheels without recovering or worsening more or less until they finally die, but when Autumn can sniff out the fearful ones it puts a lot of work into cooperating with Spring to get them out and where they can be helped.

Summer - More Fairest dabble with Summer for dreams of glory, or because they want to believe in Summer’s apolitical sales pitch, than ultimately stick with Summer. Those that do stay often serve as officers, as the Sun’s Tongue or the Arrayer of Distant Thunder, and as Court sorcerers. Fairest skilled in Contracts of Separation can make for surprising Jaegers, hounding their prey down more like a private investigator or a serial killer than a traditional hunter, but while striking this is fairly rare. Fairest who stick with Summer are those who are looking for its high ideals and are often among those rare Summer Courtiers who can competently articulate both those ideals and their pitfalls without falling prey to cynicism and bitterness.

Autumn - For those Fairest who hurt others to feel safe, Autumn is waiting. The Leaden Mirror can be attractive to young Fairest because it’s easy to perceive Autumn as atomized, defined by personal relationships rather than webs of political influence, but when the Fairest discovers those webs the existence of Option Two: Resort To Violence as an acceptable tool to the Ashen Court is perversely reassuring rather than threatening. The image of the Fairest as a witch, tempting and threatening, clings to them in Autumn but it’s honestly not their most common role; Autumn employs its Fairest as rumor-mongers, the Other Woman who seems a little too familiar with your husband, therapists & counselors, oneiromancers, and ambassadors to Hedge communities. The work Autumn does is harsh on Clarity, and Fairest are especially vulnerable to that harshness, but if the Court invests the time in helping its Fairest members, the self-awareness and self-confidence it offers can be a godsend that no other Court can give them.

Winter - As the Court which is actually selling what Fairest think Autumn has - to wit, the ability to simply say “no” to all social interactions with no justification required - Winter has a strong undercurrent of Fairest membership at all tiers of its power. Fairest often end up directly involved in Winter’s money-making enterprises, and flourish as Squires and Armigers with their fingers on the pulse of the Court’s morale. Winter’s hands-off approach displays a tremendous amount of trust in its Fairest from their perspective, and the demeanor of the Coldest Court - Winter’s indifferent equality - has a potent, merciless appeal. The trap of drowning in Sorrow sucks more than a few Fairest under, but if their peers can be there for them there’s always a way back out.

This Is Not A Pipe - Fairest And Lost’s Themes

My many thanks to Izzie M for her extensive help on this section. I’m not sure I’d have been able to grapple it down, emotionally or intellectually, otherwise.

Fairest go through some intense shit, and the shit they go through can never fully be addressed, never fully be recovered from. It’s no mistake that Fairest, like Wizened, are among those Lost likely to never fully gain resolution with or from their Keeper, and this is because they embody the dark truth that no matter how much progress you make, how much you heal, your trauma has changed who you are as a person and you will be dealing with it until you die. But, as alluded to extensively above in the discussion of Fairest and gender, Fairest also embody the way in which society will attempt to stamp you, mold you, turn you into a product to be consumed or an archetype to be placed into its churning machine, and its attempts to reshape who and what you are and can be are, in themselves, a form of trauma and abuse.

Fairest deal a lot in expectations. They’re expected to be perfect victims, they’re expected to be happy (because they’re beautiful and attractive, because they can front as Doing Okay, because they have a form of access to ‘normal’ society), they’re expected to want romance and sex (since everyone else wants those things out of them), to perform emotional labor, to be available, intimate, understanding, to keep up appearances. Fairest escape the chains of their Keeper only to be clapped in the chains that extend into the eyes and minds of their peers, and they cannot move without hearing the clink of them.

Fairest are primed to represent victims of ongoing emotional abuse and neglect; sex slaves and victims of child abuse might find themselves in Fairest, as might husbands or wives of abusive partners (and boy, re-living my bullshit there was a bonus prize I didn’t want to receive for writing this article), children pushed to over-achieve (here overlapping with Elemental) until they break, pastor’s daughters and cult kids (here overlapping with Beast), and others. However, Fairest also hit their thematic stride when talking about trauma from a society that will not give you an exit. A trans person is first punished by society for “failing” to perform their assigned gender, then made to perform their new one to expectations that they cannot set, do not control, and do not consent to; such a person might easily be Fairest, as might a man breaking under the expectations of Maleness, a college student losing their mind in finals week with no one to help, or even more ‘ordinary’ sex workers expected to perform emotional and physical labor for a society that rewards their work with violence and dehumanization.

Fairest are people with complex internal worlds and they damn well know it, but the temptations to let others define them are numerous; society promises all manner of rewards for being who and what it wants you to be, for wanting the things it tells you to want, for being the kind of person who wants and does those things. To be Fairest is to know at any time you can start faking it and receive those rewards insofar as they’re actually on the table, but it is also to know, every second of every day that you’re performing that role, that it is fake. If you can’t find a community with which you can be genuine...well. You can always get more hurt, and in this way Fairest also bring another theme of Lost into focus: that the Lost owe compassion and understanding to their fellow victims, because failure to care can only hurt both them and everyone in their blast zone.

Feet Pics For Legos - Coping As A Fairest

Fairest are among those Lost who are most concerned with their day-to-day social interactions and safety rather than their immediate, very physical environmental safety. They are perhaps the Seeming most likely to live in a group setting (in an apartment with roommates or romantic partners, in a house shared between multiple households, splitting the bills in a condo, with their parents), and are definitely the Seeming most comfortable with the idea of living with mortals who aren’t ensorcelled. Indeed, Fairest don’t tend to do well living alone; even a Fairest who wants or needs a private place to be, choosing to keep a home in which others cannot lay a claim, will likely crash at friends’ places, sleep over at the Freehold commons on some pretext or another, stay the night with a lover, or otherwise have a place to flop down while surrounded by other people. Having other people - their greatest reality check - around the place helps keep the Fairest centered in the real reality, better able to pick apart the mortal from the Wyrd from their own unrelated hallucinations, and a Fairest who is isolated - or who is permitted to isolate herself - quickly begins to dissociate and may soon be incapable of caring for herself until someone can get her back into the present.

Those invited over as guests to a Fairest’s home may note a lot of concern for those she lives with. She likely schedules the event well in advance, is clear about the boundaries of those she lives with (”That’s Brenda’s room, the door stays shut.”) and in general treats her communal home with a lot of respect and love. Respecting these boundaries and in turn having her own respected is very validating for the Fairest and is vital to be able to feel safe and at ease in her own home, and impressing their importance on guests further reinforces that this is, as it were, her doughnut. While not dismissive of their own literal physical safety per se, a Fairest’s anxieties rarely center around her body being violently attacked by strangers. For those that do have such anxieties, they may choose to solve that problem by simple expedient of rooming or living with someone large and scary.

Another detail of note which is touched on in Winter Masques is that Fairest tend to seek out life’s little pleasures. Though they are not necessarily wealthier than other Lost, how a Fairest chooses to spend her money tends to follow particular patterns. Rare is the Fairest who doesn’t have clothing they like, a phone that works, a wallet or purse that can actually hold all of their stuff, and in this regard most Fairest without a special interest in fashion as a hobby in and of itself will have an aesthetic that is self-expressive but serviceable and hard-wearing, but any place the Fairest haunts, frequents, or lives in will get little touches everywhere. Fairest spend the little bits of extra money for good toilet paper, soft soaps that won’t hurt the skin, good shower supplies, high-quality razors, boots that won’t wear through - and they spend their serious money on their hobbies and preferences. A Fairest with a passion for cooking scrimps and saves to get a fully-stocked kitchen; a Fairest who likes building and connecting invests in Legos or Hot Wheels and creates elaborate environments for them. A gamer Fairest has headphones that can vibrate your constipation away and a fiber optic connection to ensure that lag will not stand between her and your doom. The reasons for this are manifold, and Lost’s canon writing suggests that Fairest seek pleasure to alleviate a desire to return to Arcadia. This is, to put it mildly, a stupid assertion; rather, the Fairest provides her own pleasures in part because it is one of the most emotionally clear ways to lick the doughnut, and in part because it reminds her that she can be happy under her own power, can seek pleasure, stimulation, engagement, without placing herself at another’s mercy - ironically making it easier to go out every day and do exactly that as a member of her various societies.

As a Fairest settles in she tends to look for “her” people, and quite often they’re good at compartmentalizing this, wearing different hats and having different feelings about those hats without feeling fake or distressed about the bare fact of that. She’ll have her personal friends and family, like her housemates, her girlfriend, maybe her mortal family, her neighbors, and then folks like her Motley (which are like her personal friends and family, but In The Know), her fellow Fairest and the Freehold broadly, her work friends and fellow hobbyists. A Fairest who does, say, sex work, thinks of herself as a Sex Worker and understands herself in the context of that broader social group. It can be a lot! Many Lost barely have a handle on being a member of both the Freehold and a Court, and the way Fairest flit to and fro between many communities, slipping seamlessly from one role to another, can be exhausting to watch - but by doing so the Fairest also builds bonds between those communities, highlights their common needs and interests, draws them together over their similarities and strengths. Darklings and Wizened get a lot of the work on the ground done, but it’s often a Fairest in the role of whistleblower, figurehead, and champion all at once.

After all, this, too, is her doughnut.

Example Fairest - Clara Belltower, Spring Playmate

Clara Belltower is a mime.

Well, no, not exactly. Clara Belltower is a self-employed porn actress, erotic script writer, and director, whose primary thing is mimes, clowns, and more broadly circuses and performance venues. She came back from Arcadia eight years back fleeing life as her Keeper’s Stepford Wife, and ran face-first into the money issues that haunt the Lost in general. What started out as a practical choice in new career - and an attempt to find and express an identity not created for her by her abuser - became a creative passion that has stayed strong with Clara and propelled her to status in the Spring Court, which retains her keen eye for decoration, direction, and theatricality in service to its high rituals and revels. Clara’s livestreams and online presence are also a convenient avenue for the Freehold to launder its less legal revenue streams, which has endeared Spring’s “silent siren” to the Winter Court and cemented her as a mover and shaker.

Clara’s ambitions reach beyond erotic miming, as talented as she is at both creating and purveying such. She has her eyes on four different strip clubs in Freehold territory alone whose owners and operators need to fucking go, and she wants Winter’s help making it happen; further, she wants the Freehold to take over operation of those establishments for the benefit of the workers. Clara’s vision is popular in Spring and has its supporters in Summer too, but the Declining Seasons have been cool on the concept, citing a need to maintain subtlety and avoid entanglements with the mortal world that might invite the eye of, say, the IRS - or mire the Freehold in a protracted war with local police departments. Clara’s passion burns with a righteous simplicity, envisioning a Freehold that is active in improving the city around it - if the cops want to throw down, bring it on! Her influence over Winter means the Coldest Court cannot simply dismiss her desires, but neither is it willing to go to war. Something is going to have to give, soon.

This concludes the Fairest portion of the article. Some additional thoughts on Seeming follow.

Bombing Your Own Position - Choosing Your Seeming

So it’s been six articles and I’ve talked about the ways various Seemings can represent responses to the things which traumatize us; neurodivergences for which society abuses us, the machinery of capitalism, violence, prison, and more. But how do you go about choosing your character’s Seeming? The obvious choice is to make a character that puts a lot of yourself at the table; to seek out a Seeming that reflects your own traumas, your own issues, your own anxieties and struggles, and then grapple with them in this fictional context. But RPGs can be an emotionally challenging medium, and you may well not want to deal with your own bullshit during your magic trauma fairy game. That’s valid!

Now, the second obvious piece of advice is to think about your proposed character’s themes and traumas and then select a Seeming from there, but this can get complicated. Many Lost players feel as if they need two Seemings, and to those players I say: no the fuck you do not. But it is true that people are messy and do not fully resolve, that the broad spectrum of the world of sorrow and loss is not easy to fit into 6 discrete categories whose creation was often managed by, not to keep repeating this point, fucking Nazis. I have found in my experience that it can be helpful, when you’re torn between two Seemings or you have a character you’re sure is this Seeming even though they look like or could be that one, to ask yourself why the character is not the other option. Why is this alluring and sensual Darkling not a Fairest, what makes this brutal and violent Wizened not an Ogre? This question naturally leads to others about their abuse and their reaction to it, and can start your momentum for writing your concept out.

As an addition, while I’ve spoken of various Seemings as being well-equipped to represent specific traumas, they don’t own those traumas. Elementals are metaphorically autistic, but there’s nothing stopping you from running an autistic Fairest or an autistic Beast instead. Rather, those Seemings outlined as being “for” or “about” certain traumas are those whose selection will make those traumas thematically central, cause you to return to them as a topic over and over by virtue of being who and what they are. Real people have complicated problems which intersect with one another, spawning new problems that are more strange than the sum of their parts, and it’s both valid and interesting to write your Lost that way - just keep in mind that it’ll still be complicated at the table too.

Van Helsing Hate Crimes - Seeming Politics

White Wolf spent a lot of time waffling back and forth on whether or not Seemings represent distinct cultural and political identities in a given Freehold, drifting towards ‘yes’ when the writers thought about the way Blessings and Curses create consistent, measurable differences between Lost of various Seemings, and towards ‘no’ generally whenever they were asked to actually outline a Lost society such as a sample Freehold or Entitlement. Some Entitlements are locked to specific Seemings, often times with little thought as to why, while other times Seeming-based power blocs are alluded to as worldbuilding elements (such as in Lords of Summer) without much in the way of supporting detail. Why should these things happen, when, how, what does the buildup of this violent fracture in a Freehold society look like?

On the whole, I have taken the stance in these articles and in my own worldbuilding that some amount of fantastical prejudice exists amongst the Lost, but that the systems of oppression have not taken root. Maybe it’s idealistic of me to view the Lost as unwilling or unable to produce internally racist power structures that create an underclass for the benefit of an appointed elite, but in general I feel as if Freeholds are too small, each individual member too precious by simple dint of being a living being in a physical body, for this kind of evil to flourish. That said, you may have also noticed that I identified two Seemings - Darklings and Fairest - as explicitly self-uniting and in some senses self-governing on the basis of common traumas that they often cannot fully explain to outsiders, and indeed community with people that understand your bullshit without you having to say it aloud - that is, those who share a Seeming with you - can be invaluable to all Lost. Ultimately, however, I want to advise against looking at Seemings the way that, say, Vampire: the Requiem looks at Clans, and instead to treat them as reactions to trauma rather than a kind of alternate racial identity.

Next up: So You Need To Write A Fetch

#Changeling: The Lost #rpg #fairest #trauma #abuse #seemings #violence

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let-me-luve-you · 4 years

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Winter Storm

Jared Padalecki x Reader

Summary: You play Cordell Walker’s daughter on the new show Walker. Jared takes you under his wing. What happens when a winter storm hits all of Texas.

Warnings: Mentions of a rough upbringing, Texas winter storm, power outage, water problems, some angst, scary weather, fluff, protective Jared, maybe a cuss word somewhere

A/N: As a Texan, this past week has been scary. I have been extremely blessed to not have the problems that a lot are. I was lucky and did not lose power and did not have any pipes burst. This idea came to me after seeing that Jared and Gen were helping others while dealing with their own problems at their house.

HERE ARE SOME LINKS TO HELP OUT IF YOU ARE ABLE TO.

KICK THE COLD - AUSTIN MUTUAL AID

GENESIS WOMEN’S SHELTER & SUPPORT

FEEDING TEXAS

LIST OF ORGANIZATIONS SEEKING DONATIONS IN DALLAS AREA

THE WAY HOME

You do not have to donate to any of these organizations, but if you feel the need to help, here are a few links. ^^^^ There are plenty more out there if you don’t want to donate to these links.

MASTERLIST BUY ME A COFFEE

Winter weather will be hitting Texas this weekend. You can expect lots of snow and ice. It is best to prepare for possible power outages and water being turned off. That is worst case scenario, but be prepared as Sunday will be a cold one.

You panicked. Growing up in North Texas you never had to deal with severe winter weather. You were used to dealing with tornados. But the way they were talking on the news, this weekend was going to be bad.

Thankfully you had the day off and were able to go to the store. You grabbed a case of water and food that you could prepare and food that didn’t have to be cooked to eat. You were still getting used to the adult life as an 18 year old, but since you had been taking care of yourself the last few years, you learned a thing or two in the kitchen. You made sure to grab some snacks as well since they didn’t have to be cooked or stored in the fridge either.

As you pulled up to your apartment building, you got a call from the lead and producer of the show you were on. You still weren’t sure how you managed to land the role of Stella in the new show Walker, but you were grateful. You put the car in park and grabbed your phone.

“Hey Jare.” You said. Jared was the older brother you always wanted, even though he plays your dad and he has moments where he acts like your dad. You didn’t have a great life growing up and to have a male figure in your life to help you in anyway, made you happy. Same thing with Gen.

“Hey Y/N/N. How’re you doing?” He asked.

“I’m doing good. Just got back from the store. Am I needed on set?” You asked in a panic thinking you missed something.

“No, no you’re not needed. Just wanted to call and tell you we are not filming Monday or Tuesday next week. And depending on the weather and roads, we may cancel Wednesday as well.” He informed you.

“Oh. Is it because of the storm?” You asked.

“Yeah. We aren’t sure how bad it’ll be, but we are hoping we are just being over cautious.” He said. “You said you went to the store?”

“Yeah. I just wanted to get something’s so I won’t have to get out. And I got some stuff. I won’t need to cook in case we lose power. Also filled up with gas in case I lose heat and need to warm up some.” You told him.

“Come stay with us. We have plenty of room and we have a fireplace. We just restocked our firewood supply. I don’t want to be worrying about you all weekend.” He said.

“I’ll be okay. Really. Thank you for the offer though.” You said nicely. You really did mean it. You were used to taking care of yourself that when people did want to help you, you appreciated them.

“Well. I have my truck if I need to come get you. If you change your mind, come over. The kids would love to see you.” He said. You heard Gen agree with him in the background. “And Gen would too.”

“Well after the storm, I’ll come over for dinner to see everyone. And I’ll even come another night to babysit so you and Gen can go on a date.” You said with a laugh once you heard Gen immediately laugh.

“Gen says you don’t have to, but I will take you up on both offers.” Jared told you. “Okay. Well stay in touch. They say it’ll start sometime tomorrow night.”

“Y’all stay safe and stay in touch too.” You said. “Bye Jare.”

“Bye Y/N/N.” He said before hanging up. You put your phone back into your pocket before lugging all of the groceries into your apartment. You put everything away before going to change out of your winter clothes.

After changing into some PJs to be comfortable. You decided to meal prep some so you wouldn’t have to worry about it later. And if the weather isn’t as bad as they think it’ll be, you can just eat them throughout the week.

Sunday morning, you woke up and looked outside. All you could see was white fluffiness. You smiled as the world looked at peace. You loved snow. You always thought it brought beauty to the world.

When you walked back to your phone where it laid on its charger, you saw a couple of texts from Jared and Gen. Both had sent you photos of Tom, Shep, and Odette playing the in the snow. Then you saw Jared’s text about possible rolling power outages.

You picked up the phone and called Jared and before he could even say hello, you asked, “What does that mean? Your text... I don’t understand it.”

“It means they’ll shut the power off for an hour to three hours to preserve energy.” Jared said.

“Oh.” You said.

“Yeah, so if the power goes out, don’t worry, it should come back on.” He reassured you.

“Okay. Thank you for letting me know.” You replied.

“Of course. How are you doing anyways?” He asked.

“Good. Just woke up. Felt good to sleep in. I’m probably about to start warming up my lunch.” You informed him. “How are y’all handling it over there? I saw the pics you and Gen sent. The kids look like they’re having a blast.”

“We’re doing good. The kids are definitely loving the snow. I did have to help Gen gather the chickens this morning which wasn’t fun.” He said with a laugh.

“Oh gosh. Yeah chasing chickens isn’t fun. Are they okay? I didn’t even think about y’all’s animals?”

“They’re all in the barn with heat lamps. Thankfully the barn is powered by solar so we don’t have to worry too much if the power goes out since we have a lot of energy stored up.” He said.

“Good that’s good. Well I’ll let you get back to doing whatever you were doing. Thanks again for letting me know.”

“Anytime. If you need something, holler. Okay?” He asked.

“I will. Bye.” You said. You heard his farewell as you went to hang up the phone. After preheating the oven, you took the lasagna and boxed garlic bread out of the freezer. You figured, while the power was still on, you could cook the one meal you prepped that couldn’t be eaten cold until you cooked it and it was leftovers.

An hour later, you sat at the counter charging your phone and iPad while you ate. When you went to take another bite, the power cut off.

“Great.” You whispered. You knew it was only going to be for a few hours, but you were a little aggravated by the inconvenience. You stood up and went and put on thicker sweatpants and your socks. When you made it back to your phone to text Jared that your power went out, you saw you barely had any service. That concerned you in case you needed to make a call for an emergency.

Power just went out. Hopefully y’all didn’t lose power. I’ll let you know when it’s back on. Sent 1:23 pm

You continued to eat as you awaited a response. Shrugging when you finished your meal and put the dirty dish in the sink, you moved to the living room to read a book you started the night before.

Hours later, you still had no power and you still hadn’t heard from Jared or Gen. You had checked social media, but neither had posted anything. You decided to scroll through Twitter and saw the horrors of people’s pipes bursting and roofs caving in flooding their homes.

Seeing people in Austin posting that, you decided to grab a tote to store your valuables in. Sadly, it wasn’t a lot, but the idea of losing what little you had that meant something to you scared you.

You needed to go to your car to charge your phone and warm up some, so you decided to store your valuables in the trunk. Thankfully you had a covered parking space that was right in front of your apartment. When you put the tote in the trunk, you checked to make sure the tail pipe was clear of snow before you started the car.

After spending an hour in the car, you decided it was time for bed. Grabbing every piece of blankets you had, you cuddled up in Jared’s hoody that you stole from him when you filmed episode 2 of Walker and all the blankets. You even had on two pairs of socks on since you got cold earlier.

The next morning, you checked to see your phone still had more than half its battery life left. But what shocked you was still no response from Jared. You got on Instagram and saw that Gen had posted a boomerang of him with his socks on as gloves, but neither had checked in with you.

You were kind of upset by this. You knew they didn’t owe you anything, but it still hurt. Going to the kitchen, you saw it was flooded.

“Oh no. Oh no. Nonononono.” You panicked. You ran to the bathroom and grabbed all the towels you owned and rushed back to the kitchen. You threw them down to try and absorb as much water as possible. You opened the cabinet and saw the pipe that had burst. You grabbed your phone and called the landlord.

“Hey Craig. I had a pipe burst this morning.” You said when he answered.

“Can’t do much with the weather like this.” He said not really caring.

“Can you turn the water off or something? Or tell me where it is and I’ll do it.” You said getting angry.

“Can’t do that either. If I do that, your neighbors lose their water too.” He said.

“Well what am I supposed to do. Just sit in water all day?” You asked with an annoyed tone.

“City’s running out of water anyway so they may shut it off. So won’t be long before it stops.” He said. You got so mad that you hung up. He was useless.

After 3 hours, all of your towels were soaked and you started using some of your clothes to help absorb what the towels couldn’t. You had tried calling Jared to see if he knew what to do but it went straight to voicemail. Same with Gen.

After using most of your clothes to stop the water, you decided to pack a bag in case you had to leave. Plus it would let you know what you could use to absorb the water that still remains. Thankfully your landlord had turned the water off after multiple people called about pipes bursting. All you had to do was finish cleaning up the mess.

Two days later, you were sitting in your car, about to go back into your apartment when you got a call from Gen.

“Y/N. Oh my gosh it’s so good to hear from you. We haven’t had service, plus we lost power and had a few pipes burst. Are you okay?” She asked worriedly.

“I’m okay. Sitting in my car right now so I could charge my phone and warm up a bit.” You told her.

“You don’t have power still?” She asked.

“Nope. And I also had a pipe burst. But I cleaned it up and nothing was damaged. Did you have any damage done? Is everyone okay?” You asked concerned.

“Yeah. We are fine. And just minimal floor damage.” She told you. “Jared is cleaning that mess up while I’m going to the store. Do you need anything? We have some of our neighbors over trying to stay warm and I’m grabbing them stuff too. So I don’t mind getting you anything.”

“I’m okay. I have plenty.” You said. You wanted heat. You wanted to sleep without having to wear five layers, but you refused to ask.

“Well if you do need something, text or call. Hopefully we get service back.” She said.

“I will. Thanks Gen.” you said as you hung up. Ten minutes later you got a call from Jared.

“Pack a bag and bring some blankets.” He said before you could even greet him.

“What?” You asked genuinely confused.

“I said, pack a bag and bring some blankets. Also if you want to bring any food you don’t want to go to waste or if you have water, bring that too. I’ll come in and help you carry.” He said.

“Wh-wait.. what is happening?” You asked.

“I’m coming to get you and you are going to stay with us for a couple of days. I just got off the phone with Gen and she said you had a pipe burst and you don’t have heat. So you are going to come stay with us until your power is back on and the pipe is fixed.” He said. “I’m pulling up. I’ll be inside in a second.” He hung up before you could say anything.

You went and unlocked the door before moving to your room. You grabbed your big suitcase and packed what few pair of pants you had, a weeks worth of underwear, two weeks worth of socks since you hated having cold feet, and the remaining three sweaters and seven shirts you had. It barely filled your suitcase so you decided to throw in a couple of hoodies as well.

“That all your packing?” Jared asked concerned. No one knew how long this was going to last.

“It’s all I got clean.” You answered honestly.

“No way.” He said in disbelief. You shrugged and told him to follow you as you walked into the kitchen. He saw the pile of clothes and towels on the ground. “Oh Y/N. I’m sorry this happened to you.”

“Happened to you too.” You said before moving back to your room. You grabbed a blanket and started to fold it, starting a pile you were taking with you to the Padalecki’s. Once you finished that, you grabbed your pillow too.

“Want any books or anything? You have room in your suitcase.” Jared said as he pointed to it. You shrugged and grabbed a few books you had been wanting to read. After throwing them into the suitcase, you ran to the living room to grab your iPad and chargers.

“We can charge them in the cars if we need to.” Jared said when you thought about not putting them in your bag. You nodded before throwing them in and zipping it up. “This ready to go to the truck?” You nodded once again before he grabbed the suitcase handle and stack of blankets and your pillow with ease. “Go figure out food and I’ll come back to help.”

Once in the kitchen, you grabbed the full water case you had bought a few days before and the almost empty one that you had already opened. You then moved to the fridge to grab the few casserole dishes you had left to eat. You grabbed your travel food carrier and put the casseroles in first before the almost empty case of water in after it. You saw Jared walking back in and asked,

“Is there any food of mine you want? I’ve got everything packed that will definitely go bad before I get back. The rest has already gone bad.” You said while looking at Jared who was looking through your cabinets. He found your snack one and grabbed a few things and shoved them in your carrier.

“That’s all I want.” He smirked. “Ready to go? We can come back in a couple of days if we need to.”

“Ready.” You walked to his truck and he helped you load the water and carrier. As you got into the passenger seat and started to buckle, you said, “thanks for coming to get me and letting me stay with you.”

“Anything for family.” He said smiling at you before driving carefully back to his house.

“But we aren’t family?” You said more as a question.

“You’re my tv daughter, so technically we are.” He said with a laugh. “But in all seriousness, I do see you as family. Me and you have gotten close over these past few months. I can see you as a daughter and I can see you as a little sister.” You could hear the sincerity in his voice.

“Really?” You asked. He nodded his head. “It means a lot to hear you say that. I see you as a big brother.”

“Good.” You saw him smile. “That means you can ask me for anything or do anything and I’ll be there for you. Sorry I didn’t come get you sooner. I thought about it.”

“It’s okay. I tried calling but could never get through. It happens. I’m just glad nothing more serious happened. I’m glad we are all safe.” You said honestly.

“And we are about to get you warm. We have the fire going in the living room and in mine and Gen’s room. Kids have been sleeping with us or on the floor in our room. You’re welcome to make a pallet in front of the fire and crash there.” He said as he pulled into his driveway.

“Sleeping in front of a warm fire sounds lovely right now. Thank you.” You leaned over and gave him a big hug. “I love you Jare.” You said before pulling back to kiss his cheek.

“Love you too y/n/n.” He smiled at you. “Now let’s go take all this in and get you warmed up.”

Tags: @deadcoldhearts

#jared padalecki #jared x reader #jared padalecki x reader #jared padalecki rpf #jared padalecki one shot #jared padalecki imagines #jared padalecki fanfic #jared padalecki fanfiction #jared rpf #cordell walker #walker #walker rpf #walker fanfiction #walker fanfic

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missmentelle · 4 years

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COVID-19, Inequality, and You

This pandemic has been a bad time in a lot of ways, but one of the most devastating impacts we’re going to see besides the death toll is the economic impact - the economic impact on real, working people, not on stock index numbers. Unemployment rates are skyrocketing, and people are being thrown into financial chaos as a result.

But for all the talk we’ve heard during this pandemic of “we’re all in this together”, and “we’re all in the same boat”, it’s important to remember that, financially, we’re really, really not. Job losses, evictions and health crises are not equally distributed; if anything, this pandemic has been a stark reminder of inequality as the wealth gap grows wider and wider.

My own life has been a weird cross-section of the ways that the pandemic has economically affected different people in very different ways - my mother has completely lost her job at a seasonal tourist restaurant that will likely go out of business, my brother’s hours at his campus security job have been cut as the school moves online, my boyfriend is seeing his savings rise as he goes out less but makes exactly the same salary at his financial tech job, and I’ve fielded multiple job offers through this pandemic as government grants for social services boom in my region in anticipation of a coming homelessness crisis.

The news has been reporting on unemployment numbers and shuttered businesses, but there hasn’t been a lot of in-depth coverage about the ways that this is really going to affect people’s lives. There will be a lot of unexpected consequences to this pandemic if governments don’t step in to provide relief, including:

‘Eviction freezes’ are throwing tenants into debt without protecting their housing. Many places have put moratoriums on evictions during the pandemic, which is great. You don’t want a sudden surge in mass homelessness during a pandemic. But “no evictions” does not mean “no rent” - people who are currently being protected from eviction are still being charged rent, and their arrears are growing every month. As soon as eviction protections expire - which is set to happen very soon in many places - landlords can move forward with evicting tenants, going after their back rent, sending their debt to collection agencies and destroying their credit scores.

A lot of people are about to lose most of their possessions. If you get evicted, your parents or friend might have room for you to move in with them for a while. They probably do not have room for your couch, dresser, bed, table, desk, bookshelves, TV and an entire apartment full of stuff. Putting your things in storage is an option, but you need to be able to pack and transport all of your things to the storage unit and pay for the unit every month. You could try selling the stuff you can’t take with you, but it may be difficult with so many other people also struggling financially, and you may have to leave on short notice. A lot of people who get evicted will end up abandoning a lot of their stuff, which they’ll have to re-purchase all over again to get back on their feet.

People with low wages are disproportionately likely to lose their jobs. If you work as a software engineer, you’re probably still employed. If you work as a hotel maid, there’s a good chance you’ve lost your job or had your hours cut to nearly nothing. The jobs that are most impacted by shutdowns are jobs in the service and hospitality industry, and they tend to be low-wage, hourly jobs that cannot be done from home - bartenders, servers, hotel clerks, and dishwashers are way more likely to have lost their jobs than lawyers, accountants, engineers and college professors. In many ways, the people who are getting kicked the hardest right now are the ones who could least afford it.

Not every university will survive this pandemic. With a lot of universities and colleges scrambling to figure out whether to have in-person fall semesters, the future of a lot of post-secondary institutions looks bleak. Many students are choosing to take a year off or defer their admission rather than deal with online courses that have been haphazardly thrown together. On top of that, it’s not clear if international students will be able to attend university abroad this year, or if they even want to take the risk. This adds up to a whole lot of lost tuition money, leaving some universities with no way to keep operating - at least one American university has already permanently closed its doors because of the pandemic. The big players - Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia - will probably pull through, but smaller colleges are at serious risk of going under, leaving their students in limbo and at risk of not finishing their disrupted degrees.

A lot of people are about to go from “poor” to “disabled”. The people most likely to contract coronavirus are the workers who have to interact with the public every day - not only nurses and doctors, but grocery store workers, delivery people, ride-sharing and taxi drivers, transit workers and janitorial staff. Those who survive are at risk of life-long complications of coronavirus, including permanently reduced lung capacity - that’s not great when you need to work a physically demanding job. A lot of people are about to find themselves in a situation where they are no longer able to do their jobs due to a virus that they contracted because of their jobs.

Many women’s careers may never recover from this. Daycares and schools are closed, and women are bearing the brunt of it. In a world where women still tend to earn less than male partners, it’s women’s careers that have taken a backseat when things get rough. Even when both partners are working from home, women are the ones overwhelmingly taking on most of the domestic and child-rearing chores, which hurts their work performance and leaves them more vulnerable to layoffs. And that’s a relatively privileged position to be in - without childcare services available, many working moms and single moms have had to quit their jobs, whether they could afford it or not, because they have no other options for their children. This kind of career disruption is something that these women may never totally recover from, especially as they try to re-enter an increasingly hostile job market.

Black and brown people are the most affected by rising unemployment. People of colour - especially immigrants and women of colour - are facing higher rates of unemployment than other groups. Hispanic and Latina women are in particularly dire circumstances, which is alarming, as they are also the most likely to be dealing with an uncertain immigration status. People of colour - particularly women - are disproportionately likely to work in industries that have been impacted by the pandemic, like the hospitality, food service, retail, child care, beauty and personal care industries, and they face systemic racism that makes it difficult for them to advocate for safe working conditions or access adequate medical care.

College and tourist towns are at risk of complete economic meltdown. A lot of towns or small cities depend on their local university or annual tourism to survive. A huge crowd of strangers flocks to their town for a few months per year and gives local businesses the money they need to pay for necessities year-round. My hometown is one of these places - most businesses are only open from May - September, and they make enough money during that time for everyone to scrape by for the rest of the year. Those tourists aren’t coming this year, which is something that locals have only learned as they begin to run out of last year’s money. You don’t need to work for a university or a hotel to be impacted by school and tourism shutdowns - the ripple effects will be felt by entire communities.

Escaping domestic violence will be difficult even after lockdown ends. It’s not exactly a secret that domestic violence has skyrocketed since the global pandemic began, a fact that many experts attribute to the fact that everyone is trapped indoors together and under a lot of stress. But even as lockdown regulations start to lift in areas that handled the pandemic responsibly, victims of domestic violence will face higher-than-usual barriers to escape - many victims may have lost their jobs and burned through their savings, and may have difficulty finding a new job that can finance their escape. Victims with health issues may also be wary about going to shelters for fear they will be further exposed to the virus.

Poor children will fall even further behind their upper-middle-class peers. I come from a part of rural eastern Canada where reliable internet access is simply not available. So for young children in the region, school effectively ended in March - they do not have the resources needed to connect to online learning. And children from rural areas aren’t the only ones missing out - more than half of all students in the United States aren’t accessing their online classes regularly, and marginalized kids are especially likely to be absent. Poor kids are staring down the barrel of an enormous education gap; they are less likely to have a stable internet connection and a device for their online learning, they are less likely to have books at home, and their parents are more likely to be essential workers who still have to go to work right now and don’t have time to teach them. Middle-class and wealthy families can afford laptops, educational software, tutors, books and time at home to educate their children - when schools are eventually back in session, the gaps between children from different socioeconomic backgrounds will probably be the widest they’ve ever been.

Don’t get me wrong - I am not arguing that we should end lockdowns prematurely to ease the economic impact. Public health measures exist for good reason, and I don’t think any of us want to even imagine, much less live through, the personal, physical and economic devastation of letting a pandemic rage out of control and melt down our healthcare systems. Despite what many people seem to believe, managing a global pandemic is not about “health vs. economy” - letting the virus rage out of control and kill millions would devastate every economic and social system we have. The preservation of human life has to come first.

What we need instead is comprehensive action to recognize and address the issues that come with long-term quarantines and economic shutdown - we need rent relief, social safety nets and basic assured income programs to get our most vulnerable friends and neighbors through this pandemic. The world will probably never return to the “normal” that we knew before the pandemic struck, and it shouldn’t - it’s time for a new, better normal that doesn’t leave our most marginalized people behind.

#missmentelle #askmissmentelle #coronavirus #COVID-19 #pandemic #social justice #social work

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putflowersinmyhair-callmepretty · 4 years

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The fate of a nun (Finan x OFC); part 1

A/N: Hi there!

This story is my first attempt to write a fanfiction. English is not my first language, so feel free to let me know how to improve my writing/language skills 😊 I will try and post a chapter per week, let’s see how it goes! The story takes place in season 3 and you will notice that I have used some of the sequences and dialogues from the tv series, changing them to include my OC. I did try not to be too colloquial and informal with my writing -giving the time of the story- but I preferred to make it more enjoyable and “readable” than realistic, same goes for Finan’s accent. I’m nervous and excited to share my work, hope you enjoy! Bacini, Cate.

Summary: The life of the young novice Aoife completely changes when the Lady of Mercia arrives to the Abbey of Wincelcumb. Oaths, battles and love will turn her in a warrior.

General warnings: Violence, Blood, Strong Language, Smut, Fluff, Graphic description of violence

Chapter’s warning: Violence, Blood, Graphic description of violence

Words: 4981

Chapter One: The Lady and the nun

Abbey of Wincelcumb, Mercia

“To be a girl is already a disadvantage.” the knight said, hitting the petite girl on her waist; she stumbled backwards, gripping her sword. It was heavy in her hand. “You are shorter.” he hit her on the shoulder “Weaker.” He held his sword at her throat, “You must be faster.” she gripped his wrist and dragged him closer with all her strength and while he moved onwards, she pulled a dagger out of her vest and pointed it under his chin, drawing out just a drop of blood. She smiled sweetly, looking at him from under her dark long lashes “And smarter.” She softly said. He pushed her dagger away and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. They were too close to be socially acceptable, but she didn’t want him to step away. She wanted him to make a woman out of her and something in his light blue eyes told her that he too was thinking of their late nights spent in the stables, the promises whispered in between kisses, the dreams of escaping together. He grazed his rough knuckles against her full cheek, whispering an intimate “Very good, lady.” “She is not a lady, she is novice.” Despite her old age and heavy figure, the Abbess had managed to slip behind them without a sound and was now watching them with her arms crossed and a look of disapproval on her stern face. With the agility of the warrior, the knight stepped away from the girl and lightly bowed to the nun “I meant no harm, Mother.” “She is young and innocent.” she hissed “I gave you a shelter and the permission to teach her to fight. Do not push your fortune, Lord.” “I am a Lord as much as she is a Lady, Mother.” The Abbess looked at him one last time, then turned to the girl “Aoife, you shall go pray.” with a last cunning smile to the man, the girl curtsied, spun on herself and run inside the nunnery. That was the last time Aoife saw Sir Cenric.

Abbey of Wincelcumb, Mercia. Two years later. Summertime.

The girl kissed the horse between the eyes and jumped from the fence, cleaning her hands on the dress. She had blossom in a young woman of vibrant beauty; dark long hair run down her back, dishevelled and tangled by the wind; the apple of her cheeks was red and full, and a sprinkle of freckles adorned her straight nose. She wasn’t as petite as before, still short but with the agile and full body of someone who had spent half her life lifting and displacing weights. What she did not look like, without any doubt, was a nun. There was something too seductive in the curve of her full lips and in the way she moved. There was no mirror in the nunnery, but she had seen her reflection in the water of the stream, and she had liked it, she did look very pretty, and she acted on it. Singing lightly, she moved to the enclosure were the pigs were rolling in the mud. “Hello!” she cheered, pouring the food in their feeder “Eat and fat!” “Aoife!” the Abbess shouted from the entrance of the nunnery “Go wash! The Lady of Mercia is approaching!” She run down to the stream, heart beating fast against her chest. While undressing, she thought about the Lady, about the stories she had heard from the pilgrims. Lady Aethelflaed of Mercia was a lady warrior, respected as – if not more than – her Lord. And somewhere in her soul, Aoife found the hope of a new life in the service of the Lady, far from the nunnery she was forced in and closer to the adventures she had always dreamt.

She reached the Abbey with drops of water falling from her hair and wetting her garment. The Abbess shot her a poisonous look when she entered the hall, but she was too focused on the Lady to notice. The young woman was sitting regally on the opposite side of the room, in front of her they had placed a plate of meat and a cup of red wine, but she didn’t appear hungry; she was talking animatedly, the sound of her voice sweet but confident. “Someone is threatening my life.” she was saying “And I am here to ask for shelter and protection.” “Of course, my Lady.” the Abbess answered immediately “Rooms shall be prepared for you and your guards. But the only protection we can guarantee are these walls and our prayers.” “And my sword!” Aoife said, without hesitation. Aethelflaed had not noticed the young girl yet, for her standing in the dark of the door. She was wearing the garment of the nuns, but the Lady could tell she was far from it. “Who are you?” she asked, curious. “She is a novice, my Lady. She has no vocation, but she is great help. A pilgrim taught her use the sword and she believes she will fight in battle one day.” “Thank you, Abbess, but I asked the girl.” Aoife smiled to the Lady and bowed “I am Aoife, my Lady. Just Aoife. I would like to offer you my protection, for the time you shall spend here and more, if requested.” Aethelflaed reciprocated her smile “I do need a maid.”

Abbey of Wincelcumb, Mercia. Two years later. Wintertime.

“Tell me about your knight.” Aethelflaed asked one night. She had lived in the Abbey for months now and she had found herself growing fond of the young novice. That night, they were sitting on the Lady’s bed and Aoife was brushing her hair, preparing her for the night. She smiled wistfully at the question, images of a happier past invading her memory. “He came when I was fourteen, asking for shelter and cures. He was wounded and at the time I was helping in the nursery. We spent most of the day together, me healing his wounds, him telling me stories of the battles he had fought. He was handsome and a grown man and my only way out of this place. And I fell in love with him. When his wounds healed, he decided to stay to expiate his sins, or that is what he told the Abbess. I do believe, and I hope pride is not my sin, that he stayed for me. During the day he taught me to fight with a sword, a spear and my own body; and during the night he loved me and promised me children and a future together. Then one day, without a word, he was gone, leaving me nothing more than his weapons and my sore heart. Stuck in this place I strongly dislike.” Aethelflaed called her friend back to reality squeezing her hand firmly “I will not leave you here, Aoife. This is my oath to you.” Aoife smiled to the Lady, fondly “I oath my soul and my sword to you, my Lady. For all the time you shall need me, I shall be by your side”.

At supper time, the nuns were eating, lightly conversing in small groups. The taste of the food had been better since the arrival of the Lady; the Abbess strongly believed that every pleasure was sin, but even she could not offer a Lady the bland broth they used to eat on wintertime. They were eating bread and a tasteful stew of meat and vegetables, which warmed the body and the soul. Aoife was savouring every spoon of it, eating slowly and in silence, eyes down on her plate. Aethelflaed had just asked the Abbess how she could bear living a life far from people and the Abbess was taking her time to explain what an honour and a pleasure it was to live in the service of God. Aoife decided not to pay close attention to the conversation, fearing that she would not be able to hold her tongue. And while she was slowly drifting in a lovely place of satiety and tiredness, three nuns burst out of the kitchen, fear on their faces. “Abbess! There are men in the kitchens! Danes!” Aethelflaed and Aoife jumped up, the first shouting orders to close the doors, the second already pushing the table against the main entrance. They asked the nuns to remain calm and quiet and have faith, but they exchanged a look and their hands flew to the hilts of their swords. Aoife could feel her heart beating furiously, she had never used her sword against a human being, she had never inflicted pain on a body, and she was scared. But she knew that the safety of her Sisters and her Lady depended on her bravery in that occasion. She gripped the hilt stronger and removed the blade from its sheath. She was ready. And then, the Abbess took the fool decision to talk “This is God’s house. You will leave at this very moment! If you do not and you are Christians, then He shall send you to the depths of hell.” “Abbess, they are Danes.” a nun remarked. “Well then, if you are heathens, He will strike you down!” “What if I’m Christian by birth and a Dane by my heart? What then?” a male voice came from behind them, Aoife turned around swiftly, one hand on her sword, the other searching the hilt of her dagger in the folds of her garments. She was taking aim, ready to throw it; but Aethelflaed voice stopped her “Uthred!”

Aoife and the Abbess soon found out who the man was. Aethelflaed had told Aoife great stories about Uthred of Bebbanburg, born a Saxon, raised a Dane. He had sworn his sword to King Alfred but for reasons that even Aethelflaed didn’t know, he was now an outlaw of Wessex. He wasn’t outlawed in Mercia, though, and Aethelflaed had somehow reached for him when she had feared for her life; and he had come to help her, the daughter of the man who had outlawed him. It was bizarre, to say the least, but Aoife admired him, for honouring his oath of protection to the Lady. She had caught her friend looking at him with loving eyes, more than once, and she would ask about it later. She did understand Aethelflaed, of course; Uthred was a handsome man, a combination of delicate and harsh feature, an interesting look. With him had come a diverse group of people; there were Danes and Christians in his entourage, a young monk and an even younger Dane sorceress, as beautiful as dangerous looking. She sat at the table with the Lord, followed by the monk and two other men, a Dane and another one, perhaps a Saxon, but she wasn’t sure. He was the most handsome man Aoife had ever seen. He was also intimidating, tall and strong, with full hair and beard darkest than the night, harsh the lines of his scarred face. However, a light of kindness was gleaming in his black eyes, and he shot Lady Aethelflaed a smile before sitting heavily on the bench. Food was brought for the warriors as they were all sitting around the table, Aoife squeezed between the Lady and the Abbess. She could not take her eyes off the warrior; he really was handsome, and not many men had passed through the Abbey after Cenric. She was young and in the blossom of love desires, it was no sin to watch. Of course, she could feel Aethelflaed and the Abbess’ gazes on her cheeks, the first repressing a smile, the second ready to send her to bed if the situation would get worse. She did not want another Sir Cenric in her Abbey. The warriors too had noticed the young nun interest in their companion, Uthred had to cover a laugh with a cough when his eyes met those of the Lady of Mercia. The warrior himself was trying not to be affected by the girl staring at him; he was used to the attentions of women, married and unmarried. He had struck women prettier than that girl, prettier than Lady Aethelflaed herself; yet, he had never felt as abashed as under the gaze of that young nun. She was, without doubt, pretty; not even the unpleasant garment of the nuns could wash down the colour from her sweet face, and he had never seen bigger eyes, nor longer lashes. But it wasn’t her appearance to make his head light, it was the intensity of her gaze that was digging into his scarred soul and planting there the seed of a fatal attraction. He felt in his bones, that she was meant to be either his eternal happiness or his final destruction. Not without difficulty, he directed his attention to the Lady of Mercia. “Your guards are not, Lady.” he mumbled while chewing down his food; he had a strong, thick accent, it was sure he was no Saxon nor Dane, but she couldn’t figure out where he came from. “Not what?” Aethelflaed asked. “They are not guards.” the young Dane at his right added “Their swords are trinkets.” “They are good men.” “I am sure they are loyal” the warrior continued “but they are not guards.” “They are bad men.” Uthred agreed and his eyes turned to Aoife. He shot her a smile. “She is braver than any of them.” he looked at the hilt of the sword shining against her hip “Where did you get that sword, nun?” Aoife could feel the foreigners’ eyes on her, and her cheeks warmed up, but she proudly lifted her chin to answer. She could not, however, interrupted by the Abbess. “I do not like you, young man. You have a very high opinion of yourself.” Aoife turned to look at Aethelflaed and they both found it hard to repress a smile. Uthred was looking at the Abbess with no sign of embarrassment on his face. “I am a heathen, I am godless, and an enemy of Alfred.” He said harshly “But I will save your lives.” Aoife liked Uthred, he was intriguing and clearly a good man, but she agreed with the Abbess when she stated that the man was telling them half-truths. What was the real reason for his coming? She was sure Aethelflaed knew it too. Most of all, she couldn’t stand the Dane witch; she was arrogant and rude and made her feel unsafe and uncomfortable. When she called the Abbess a hag, Aoife’s gripped her dagger in hatred. The Abbess was indeed a strict woman, but she had raised her and showed her love and kindness in her own bizarre way; she was like a mother for Aoife and she would not let some Dane treat her that way. Aethelflaed squeezed her hand to urge her to let go of the dagger “Aoife.” she whispered warily “No.” She was her Lady, after all, and Aoife obeyed quickly; but her action didn’t go unnoticed by the warriors who were now watching her cautiously. She smiled timidly at her friend and hid her face behind her cup of water. The handsome warrior was still staring at her.

Aoife was sent by the Abbess to prepare the room for the warriors; she knew it was meant to keep her away from the men and she didn’t blame the nun; she was young and beautiful and warriors were known for taking what they wanted from girls like her. She was filling a pot with clean water for them to wash away the dust of the ride when she heard steps behind her. She spun quickly, sword in hand. The warrior was standing in the doorframe, hands raised and a crooked smile on his face. “I didn’t intend to straddle you, Lady.” She was breathing heavily, hand shaking around the sword “What do you want, warrior?” His smile grew wider “I don’t want to harm you, if that’s what you’re thinking.” he moved slowly to the chair and sat down; she pondered the danger and decided to keep her distance. “I will not come closer.” he insisted “I just wanted to introduce myself, my Lady.” “I am no lady.” she answered harshly “What are you then? A nun? A warrior?” “I am a woman, is it not enough?” “I didn’t mean to insult you; I’m just curious on why a simple woman knows how to wield a sword and would risk her life for a Lady. Are you Aethelflaed’s guardian?” Aoife laughed, she was letting her guard down “I don’t guard the Lady, I help her.” Finan watched the girl relax a little, her grip on the sword not as steady as before. He could easily disarm her if he wanted to, but he wished to keep talking with her. Her soft Saxon accent was a pleasure to his ears, used to the noise of the warriors. He leant back against the chair, arms crossed over his chest “And what is the name of the helper?” “Aoife.” a stern voice answered from behind him. The Abbess seemed to take great pleasure in interrupting her conversations, Aoife noticed. She was staring the warrior up and down suspiciously, until her eyes fell on the cross hanging from his neck. “You are a Christian.” she stated and lost some of her composure. “I am, Mother.” He answered calmly, he did know how to enchant any type of woman. “I was raised as a god-fearing man.” “But I can tell you are no Saxon.” “Born in Ireland.” “And you swore your sword to the heathen.” “We are bonded, him and I, Abbess.” The Abbess raised her guard again and she turned her attention to the girl “I will not let it happen again, Aoife. You know how these stories end. Go back to your room and pray.” Aoife bowed slightly “Yes, Abbess. Goodnight, Lord.” The man watched the girl crumble under the Abbess’ words; she looked younger that she already was. Aoife. She walked straight for the door, head down to hide the tears of embarrassment that threaten to spill, when she passed close to the warrior, she heard him say, as low as a breath of wind, “Finan.”

Aethelflaed was already in bed when Aoife entered the room. “Where were you?” “Making the room for the warriors.” She sat near her legs on the bed “I met Finan.” “You were making love eyes at him at dinner.” the Lady laughed, kicking her friend’s hip lightly. “You were making love eyes at Lord Uthred! I was only admiring a handsome man; they are rare in a nunnery!” Aethelflaed laughed. It was a delicate laugh, very regal and feminine, Aoife had felt envious of her Lady, many times each day, and she did again at that point. She was beautiful, elegant, feminine and at the same time a strong, intelligent, independent warrior. And she was just Aoife, pretty and clever enough, but clueless of the world and people. “Uthred is a strange man. I could never fully understand him. I don’t think anyone will ever. But he is loyal and kind and merciful. And his men are the same. Especially Finan, his closer friend, his right hand. I would not oppose a marriage between the two of you.” It was Aoife time to laugh, she stood up and turned her back to the Lady, before she could see how red her cheeks had turned. She blew on the candle and the dark fell on the room “You need to sleep, Lady. You are lovesick and don’t know what you are saying.” “Perhaps, my friend. Time will tell.”

They were once again eating, sitting around the table in the hall. The Abbess was less than pleased with the men gorging themselves with the provisions for the long winter; however, Lady Aethelflaed had promised to repay the Abbey entirely. She was much more worried for Aoife, who once again was sitting in silence, food untouched in front of her, watching with desire and curiosity the Irish warrior. She didn’t know where she did wrong with that girl, she raised her as any other novice and she was, without doubt, a good Christian woman, but she was no nun. The Abbess could see on her unripe face the desire of being loved, not only and solely by God, but by a man in flesh; she was fond of the girl and she wanted the best for her. Therefore, before going to ask the nuns in the kitchens to bring more food, she sat down next to the Lady of Mercia, immediately catching her attention. “How can I help you, Abbess?” “I have a favour to ask, Lady. It concerns Aoife.” she looked at the girl with a sweet smile “She is a smart, kind woman, but she is no nun. When the time comes, please, take her with you, Lady. She deserves the life she desires, outside of these walls.” Aethelflaed held the Abbess’ hand, squeezing it gently “I promise I will, Abbess.” The Abbess stood up and thankfully bowed, before leaving for the kitchen. Aoife had followed the conversation from the corner of her eye, but too far to hear what they were saying. She took the Abbess place near her noble friend “What did she say?” “She asked me to drag you away from here. She said you are Satan in the flesh and she doesn’t want you anymore.” the woman answered, stifling a laugh, Aoife pushed her with her shoulder “You would be lucky to have me by your side, Princess.” Before Aethelflaed could reply, the Abbess barged into the hall, closing the door behind her with shaky hands. Everybody stood up, Aoife right behind Aethelflaed. “What is it?” Uthred asked, while Aethelflaed was calling “Abbess?” “Danes. Outside.” the nun answered at short of breath, she was visibly shaken, and Aoife was quickly at her side, upholding her fragile body. Uthred and his men continued asking question and pulling out their swords; Aoife was next to Aethelflaed once again, sword in her left hand, dagger in her right. “They may not know we are here” Uthred was saying to his men. They were discussing the situation, and Uthred finally decided “We wait inside, and we remain silent. Abbess you will go to them and talk with them.” “No, no I will not.” she said, stepping backwards. Aoife was ready to catch her if she passed out. “Yes, you will, because you must.” Uthred replied, as kindly as possible, given the situation. He explained them all the plan: she had to try and convince the Danes that Aethelflaed was not in there, to waste some time so they could take advantage from it. He tried once again to convince the Abbess, telling her that it was the only way to save the nuns and his men. And Aethelflaed, of course. The Abbess looked so shaken and scared that Aoife felt the need to protect her. “I will do it.” she declared, stepping in front of the nun. She saw Aethelflaed tensing up next to her, but she would not let the Lady stop her from protecting her home. However, the Abbess took her hand into hers, with a low “No”; she squeezed them hard putting in that gesture all the love she had never expressed in words but had always felt for the young woman. “No. This is my home, my responsibility.” she looked the Dane straight in his eyes “I will do it.” and with a last squeeze on Aoife’s hand, she left the room. From the window at the left of the door, Aethelflaed and Aoife watched the Abbess approach the Danes. She looked and sounded as the proud woman Aoife had always known her to be, and the girl was smiling, proud of being raised by her, a powerful independent woman. She stood her ground proudly but cautiously until the very last moment, when a Dane cut the throat of the last guard alive and she lost her head completely. She screamed for the Danes to take her instead, she insulted them and, in a last desperate attempt to save them all, she grasped the axe from the stump. She wasn’t even able to throw it before she was struck by a spear that pierced her front to back. Aoife watched the Abbess fall to the ground, a rag doll under the force of the stroke. The scream that was leaving her mouth was muffled by a strong callous hand. Finan had reached her and with a hand on her mouth pleaded her to make no sound. “They will kill us all, Aoife. Please.” He wiped away the hot tears that were falling from her eyes and lightly stroked her cheek with his rough thumb. She felt as if anger and sadness could kill her and, for the first time in her life, she wanted to inflict pain on someone. On the Dane who had killed the woman that had raised her. She nodded and the Irishman let go of her as quickly as he had reached her; she tightened her grip around Cenric’s sword, feeling the power of the warrior growing in her, fed by the darkness that was covering her soul.

When the Danes burst in the room, Aoife was ready. Hitting people was harder that she thought; the sword shook in her hands every time she hit bones, splashes of hot blood exploding on her face and her vest. Every stroke she placed was stronger than the previous. She knew that Aethelflaed wasn’t in the fray, Uthred had been irremovable about it, but he had been unable to stop Aoife from participating; she wanted her vengeance, and he could not deny her that. However, she was aware that Uthred had asked Finan to stay close to her, preventing her from being killed. She could see him from the corner of her eyes, expert in the art of sword. And thanks God that she was keeping an eye on him too because she noticed the Dane charging Finan from behind, sword in front of him. Later, Aoife would have remembered those moments as the longest of her life. She would have remembered the weight of the dagger in her right hand, her voice as that of someone else screaming for Finan to duck, the whistle of the blade cutting the air and the dull sound of it penetrating the Dane’s neck. She would have remembered in her worst nightmare the man staring her straight in the eyes while life was leaving his body, the thud of his knees hitting the hard floor and a last, pathetic gurgling. The Danes then retreated outside the Abbey, and she reached for the dead man to recollect Cenric’s dagger from his still warm body. She knew Finan was standing behind her, even before he opened his mouth. “You saved my life.” he stated, and she turned around in silence, accepting his help to stand up. She had no words left to answer, too shaken to care for it. And she left him there, surrounded by dead bodies of Danes and Saxons.

She had been guided to the bench by unknown hands. She could hear the Danes outside blocking the entrance, and inside Aethelflaed and Uthred discussing, while the warrior were taking the weapons out of the dead bodies. However, it was all no more than a noise in the distance of her mind. She couldn’t think of anything else but the lifeless bodies of the Abbess and the Dane. She could also feel blood drying on her skin, but she could not push herself to care about it. The Abbess was dead. She had killed a man. Her ears couldn’t catch the words of Aethelflaed, nor those of the warriors, everything a buzz in her mind. Was she about to die? “Are you alright?” a kind voice asked from her side. It was a warrior, a Saxon she could guess from his accent. He was covered in dirt and blood, but she could see that he was young, probably around her age. She nodded slowly, fiddling with her hands, as dirty as those of the warrior. “It will be all right, Lady. Lord Uthred is planning to negotiate, and his plans always work.” he continued. His words swept some of the clouds away from her mind. Negotiation? Was Aethelflaed in danger? The warrior hands were on her as soon as she gripped her sword “He will not hand the Lady to the Danes.” he assured her “It’s not clear what he would do, but that’s not it.” he searched someone with his eyes “Look, she is safe. There.” he pointed to the door of the nunnery; Aethelflaed was being escorted by two men as far as possible from the entrance, where she would be safer. Aoife stood up, once again sword ready, but a large, rough hand lower her blade, delicately. “There’ll be no need of your sword now, Aoife.” Finan smiled down at her “You will hide and wait for it to be over.” he stopped her protests simply raising a finger “You have done enough. Stay here.” Aoife would have never imagined that Uthred was so quick on his mind. He was able to strike a bargain with the Dane and offer him the Dane seer in place of Aethelflaed and, as quick as they arrived, the Danes were gone. Once sure of her Lady’s safety, she crawled upstairs to her room and threw up in her piss pot. She then fell asleep on the floor, covered in blood, dirt and tears.

Aoife was shaken awake when the sun was already high in the sky; Aethelflaed was kneeling next to her, clean face but tormented eyes. “Aoife stand up. We are to leave this place.” Chapter Two.

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mythvoiced · 3 years

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ALLOW ME TO PLACE THESE Q'S HERE FOR OUR FAVE GOBLIN: Besides meat, what other foods does he find delight in? What's something that gives him utter peace as soon as it's there? How was his life during the Joseon era? Are there certain things in the past that he wishes could be available in the modern world, or is he fully comfortable with what's at hand? How would he feel if a particular gumiho suddenly hugged him from behind? 👀 LOVE YOU

-. @jeoseungsaja | Alex I would literally kill for you, if anybody ever comes at you, let them know I’ll be the last thing they see, BECAUSE I LOVE Y O U

---

This got so loNG I’MS O sorr y- Also look at this gif taken from the pack you sent me the link of <W<

-. Besides meat, what other foods does he find delight in? Would saying ‘fish’ be a bit too close to meat? Okay, that aside I do think Shin has a rather varied palate, mostly because he's had plenty of time to visit any place he’d wanted to visit and explore dishes and specialities to the point where it would be extremely shameful if he chose to not keep an open mind about new dishes. I also think he’s particularly fond of Korean dishes (in a similar fashion to Hyun) simply because it feels like home, especially if it’s traditional enough that it can bring him back to the beginning of it all, perhaps without reminding of the contexts that had made the beginning difficult. And I also think he might be a little bit of a gourmet: he’ll absolutely eat what he can get, considering how fond he seems to be of beer he can’t say he doesn’t like junk food or anything you could get and/or make easily. But for some reason I have a feeling that Shin thinks of food in a ‘the eye wants its part too’ fashion, meaning that he also enjoys when something looks good, when it’s presented well, and when it looks like it’s trying to make an impression - which is something we’ve seen him do before. Kim Shin is characterised by an interesting combination of ancient and modern, old and young, where he is both wise and petulant, reliable and petty, and these many contrasts living within his personality, can present themselves in something as simple as cuisine, too. So, yeah, he’ll eat ramyeon. But also that Canadian steak. And he loves homemade... and sitting in fancy restaurants.

-. What’s something that gives him utter peace as soon as it’s there? The people he loves. The Goblin has lived so long, has seen so many things, has owned a great deal of trinkets, properties, treasures. But nothing material can bring him the peace that the people he holds dear to his heart can. Because even objects with value only have said value because they remind him of those he’s had to move on from, loved ones he no longer gets to see. So, he might show anger at losing a plate Louis XIV used to eat on, but did that plate bring him peace? No. Does knowing Ji Eun-tak is safe, sleeping in a room in his house, hopefully soundly, bring him peace? Yes. Does the pitter patter of Saja’s houseslippers headed towards his bedroom bring him peace? Yes. Does purposefully ignoring Deok-hwa’s faux innocent smile in his peripheral asking him for money bring him peace? Yes. Simply getting to sit there and witness the people he loves be themselves, alive, hopefully well, going about their existence by pursuing their hobbies, engaging in their quirks and habits, is the most Shin doesn’t dare to ask for. That’s when he’s tranquil: when he gets to see those he loves be, free of plight, or imminent danger. When he’s sitting on their couch and watching Eun-tak spread her homework across their coffee table and occasionally shoot him that special smile, while Saja slurps on his milk and gets too invested in a drama playing on TV, and Deok-hwa is walking into the room babbling about some girl-related nonsense, well... What more can he possibly want?

-. How was his life during the Joseon era? I remember one shot of Shin in Joseon era, I think he’s sitting at a table and having a good time, possibly even gossiping about something, I don’t remember the episode this scene was in, nor can I find it anywhere else, but unless I’m having brain fry, I vaguely remember his appearance as well: according to his outfit, he must have been a yangban. Yangban is sort of what you could have considered nobility at the time, the ruling class of the Joseon dynasty, made up of military officials and/or scholars. Why am I mentioning this? Well, because obviously Kim Shin would have found a way to become a yangban. The title/class of Yangban is, this all according to my research so if I’m wrong shoot me and pls correct me, something a man had to earn by passing certain exams/attending a school, that would basically qualify them for the social status that would then turn the entire family into a yangban family (also because women couldn’t take these exams and studies, nor become officials or scholars, but could still inherit the title of yangban female from their fathers, for example). So, how was his life during the Joseon era? Well, high class I would say. I don’t remember what was being discussed in that scene, so I can’t say for sure, but I can’t see Shin choosing to become a military official yet again. Considering his experiences with the empire while serving it as a general, I can see Shin simply defying from the crown by minding his own and no longer offering his self and his services in any direct way to the palace. I can see him as a scholar, perhaps simply living his life as a yangban male and every now and then attending a few things just to maintain his status, all while he simply continued to explore the country and play pranks on other officials. And I can’t tell you why, but I can absolutely see him play pranks on other officials, or sneak some reading material to a daughter, or monopolise the attention of court ladies just because he can, going as far, of course, as he can get away with flirting with anyone at the time. He most definitely grew fond of a few faces here and there, since Shin is literally incapable of not growing fond of someone, once you enter his heart, you simply do, it’s far too big for a man like him, and far too willing, far too desiring, desiring to give and receive love, to give and receive attention, to give and receive the warmth and familiarity of connections. So, he led a good life, definitely financially speaking and simply in terms of quality, he was probably annoying for some, and probably avoided the very centre of palace life, because I can see him not wanting to have as much to do with royalty anymore.

-. Are there certain things in the past that he wishes could be available in the modern world, or is he fully comfortable with what's at hand? Shin is the sentimental type. I’m not even headcanoning it, and even if he attempts to hide it, he usually does an awful job at hiding just how much he cares and how much things affect him. He’s very loud and almost obnoxious at times in his reactions, he explains himself the same way a child might at times, he’s excitable, and he doesn’t feel shame to show Saja how much it matters to him, what impression he’d make in front of Eun-tak. He cares, and while vocal admittances are usually reserved for those very serious moments, he’s always proving just how sentimental he is. So, I would say, it’s a yes to both those alternatives. First the latter: yes, he’s fully comfortable with what’s at hand, because the modern world simply has so much to offer that he enjoys. Even if he doesn’t understand it or make regular use of it, you can see him move about the modern world rather comfortably, learn about any new customs, institutions, or ways of living. He keeps himself up to date (the business card thing, I swear-), he likes to tap into new passions and likes. And at the same time, he loves the world he came from. I always feel like, compared to perhaps Hyun, who I’m mentioning here because you know him which makes comparison easier (;3), who doesn’t feel himself to belong in any particular era but rather to existence as a whole, whenever I watch Shin, he’s extremely self-aware of the fact that his time on Earth has long ‘expired’. Other than the fact that he literally should have died back in Goryeo, one of the things that kind of fortifies this idea for me is what Shin looks like when he does actually die (and then returns): he’s dressed in the same clothes he wore when he ‘died’ in Goryeo. Shin’s soul seems to belong to Goryeo still, and as such, the life he’d led at the time (now, personal interpretation) somehow feels like The life, his life, while all the centuries that followed had been the extension. The culture, the habits, the food, the garments, anything, honestly, that belongs to Goryeo feels as if it’s something Shin knows, things he grew up with, things that shaped him, that was his time, and the modern world, Joseon, they’re times he’s visiting, even if it’s against his will. That’s the vibes I get. And I realise this answer is perhaps a little too much in contrast to the question :’3

-. How would he feel if a particular gumiho suddenly hugged him from behind? 👀 Oh YEAH- Now, I could answer this question by dipping into what we’ve seen Shin do in the canon in romantic scenarios/romantic-coded scenes, but I don’t want to. Because I don’t want to recycle reactions and demeanour he portrayed for/relating to Eun-tak, I want to explore what he does, and who he is, in the particular world that is verse 4 (because, this is a particular verse for Shin as well, since Yeo’s the bride <w<). SO, the reaction obviously always depends on what stage of their relationship they’re in <w< In the canon, he usually startles when Saja does anything remotely romantic(-coded?) (well, safe for some scenes where he looks a little surprised but not displeased-), but in my boat- Circumstances are different, Yeo/the person is different, and they’ve been interacting differently. I think at a point in time in which nothing has been said but a lot has perhaps been done and/or hinted at, insinuated, he’d probably startle and not really know what to do with himself. The worry that this is just a fox-antic meant to tease him or poke fun at him might be small, but very much present, so he’d just try to play it off with some lame line, half-jokingly insinuating Yeo’s being sweet because he wants something, or even straight up interpret it as Yeo holding onto him because he stumbled and Shin was just... there, to hold onto to so he doesn’t have to fall flat on his face. Have things been... discussed though, honestly, we know sometimes Shin acts like a shy virgin, which is honestly adorable, and he might even act that way a little bit in this scenario where he just has that goofy smile on his face and is doing that flustered shifty eyes thing, but I also like to think that the moment Yeo’s arms are around him, Shin just.. laughs. Like, a warm, heartful chuckle, as he leans back into Yeo’s chest and just kind of leans his head back and turns it enough to be able to look at Yeo, give him a silly flirty one-liner, maybe try to get a kiss out of hi- Or he’ll end up turning around in his arms still to grab his face and SMOOCH HIM- Might be vary slightly depending on what Shin’s doing, but this is the gist of it, yet, no matter what, sMOOCH FINALE-

#jeoseungsaja #a:#the goblin;about #the memories i have of you are not quite as bloody as you might be inclined to assume;historical wang yeo & kim shin #ALEX I CAN'T BEGIN TO DESCRIBE THE HURRICANE OF EMOTIONS I GOT WHEN I SAW THIS ASK #FIRSTLY oh goodness i hope these are any good at ALL it's been so long since i've seen a full episode aND might be a little off on #quite a few things actually i'm not sure but basically I HOPE THESE MAKE SENSE #SeCONDLY th ank y OU s O m uCH THANK YOU SO HECKING MUCH I CAN'T SAY IT ENOUGH #JUST? THESE the reason I wrote way too much is just because you GAVE ME SO MUCH THINKING MATERIAL THESE #HONESTLY I GOT TO DO SO MUCH THINKING AND SETTLING AND #JUST thank you so much for sending these and for giving my Kim Shin a SHOT hONESTLY? I got so excited writing this my brain suddenly went #'hey make a single muse blog for kim shin bc this is kind of BOSS' BUT I WON'T because he's all set up here iT'S JUST THAT #THE THOUGHT POPPED UP AT ALL? goes to show how much you do for him and me and my inspiration and writing and BASICALLY #if folks aren't stanning Alex on both jeoseungsaja and theimpalpable i'm NO LONGER ASKING-#gonna post it in a pinned pOST I SWEAR JUST?? this is she is YOU'D JUST- honestly-#;queue

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lindberghtm · 4 years

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* . desirée lindbergh was spotted in the fashion district adorning prada platform chelsea boots , with some airpod pros on . they’re most likely listening to you know i'm no good by amy winehouse . you may know them as @desi or as that aisha potter lookalike . their twenty first birthday just passed . while living in the upper east side , they’ve gained a bit of a reputation . they’re known to be duplicitous but on the other hand reliable . wonder if they’ll be the next person to hit the headlines . ( cis female / she/her + c / 21+ / she/her ) .

hey !!!!!! i was planning on coming thru with a cool intro to establish myself as a ~ cool ~ person , but covid has absolutely ✨ decimated ✨ my social skills so ,,,,,,, this is what im left with . anywho hi i’m c ( short for clown tbfh ) , im 21+ , from the rainy ole’ pnw , & i use she / her pronouns . i was in wealthy like , , , , AGES ago & tbh i’ve been missing it real bad lately so here i am with a brand new bitch , , , , , ms . desi lindbergh 🖤 i just finished reading the girl with the dragon tattoo so you’ll find elements from that novel in my biography like the names , & the general ‘ company comes first ‘ & ‘ no one gets a divorce in this family ’ attitudes . but hennyway here’s a pinterest board , & my discord is 𝐌 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐁#1264 ( the best tiktok song imo ) . my bio is rambly but there are stats at the top , personality & wanted connections ( inc . this sideblog w wanted plots ) at the bottom ! xoxo

* . stats .

full name : desirée ‘ desi ’ charlotte lindbergh - montenegro

age : twenty - two

gender : cis female

pronouns : she / her

pob ; current home : london , england ; current residence in tribeca .

family : henrik lindbergh ( 80 , deceased , ceo of lindbergh corporation ) ; miriam montenegro ( 46 , lives in the upper east side & london , supermodel turned vindictive widow ) ; no siblings or pets .

birthday : september 2 , 1998 ; virgo sun , taurus moon , cancer rising .

career : heiress / model / daddy’s credit card swiper .

drinking / drugs / smoking : yes / no / occasionally .

physical : aisha potter fc , dark brown mid - length hair , dark brown eyes , no tattoos , two ear lobe piercings in each ear , 5 ′ 6 ″ .

* . character biography .

1998 : miriam montenegro , an english model coming from a humble background , made it big when she was scouted for runway shows , eventually making her way to being a household name . by the age of twenty five , she’d found love ( or , financial comfort , rather ) with the fifty nine year old henrik lindbergh , a swedish business magnate whose involvement in global industrialization spanned far wider than the european economy . the relationship took the world by surprise , miriam’s friends being far more involved in pop culture than an aged man . while she claims it was love , the world had already made up its mind on her motive — money .

the pair got married six months after they initially became involved , & desi was born a year after . her father , the product of the ‘ silent generation ‘ , was of the impression that children should be seen , not heard , an outdated idea that her mother was comfortable abiding by . desirée , by association , quickly became accustomed to the spotlight , the interest in the uncommon relationship between miriam & henrik only growing after the birth of their sole child . desi grew up a prop , a toy for her mother to dress up in matching outfits & parade on the global stage , before stepping behind closed doors & forgetting about the child entirely . this led to desi being raised almost exclusively by nannies , her mother more interested in savouring the last of her youth & her father too busy with his international duties . originally based in london , the family moved to new york when desirée was starting her schooling to be closer to the hustle & bustle of american life .

2017 : desirée is graduating high school a year early after having been sent to institut auf dem rosenberg , a swiss private school that prides itself on being highly exclusive∫ˆ highly expensive . the name was a selling point for her father , but more importantly she would be safe & out of the way on another continent while her parents bickered ceaselessly . desirée found herself to be nothing special at rosenberg , her identity having been formed on the idea that public exposure equated to popularity ; without the constant public eye while at school , desi found a freedom & lightness she hadn’t before experienced . she could be real , & have real friends , & not be putting on a fake smile to allude an air of comfort . most of all , she could get away from her spiteful mother , who , once desi hit puberty , saw her as a threat to her own beauty , success , & public popularity . being sent to private school was the best thing to happen to desi & her mother’s relationship .

after graduating , desirée moved back to new york city , moving back into the expansive upper east side apartment , & being sure to move into a room on the opposite side of the home from her parents . being thrust back into the spotlight , a ‘ homecoming ‘ of sorts that her mother capitalized on , desi fell into a depression . she feared leaving the house , she feared that people would only want to be her friend in order to access the family’s wealth ( a seed of an idea planted in her father at the age of twelve , when she was told there was to be no dating unless their family’s net worth was over 500 million ) . soon enough , though , desi made the choice to get in contact with her mother’s rival modeling agency , inquiring about the possibility about modeling . they , of course , welcomed the legacy with open arms ; her mother , however , decided that this deceipt would not be tolerated under her roof , & kicked desi out as soon as she’d heard . desi called her father crying , explaining the situation over the phone , who immediately created a separate bank account of her own for desi , secretly hidden away in an overseas bank to avoid her mother finding out . the account held far more than desirée needed , but it was her father who enabled her to get back on her feet , find her own home , & start a career for herself .

2020 : desirée hardly speaks to her mother , though they keep up the public illusion that they are as close as a mother - daughter duo can be . her father though , now 80 years old , was actually close with desi , the two catching up daily & him celebrating her accomplishments she believed were self - earned . in october , though , she received a phone call from her father’s attorney , mr. berger , who informed her that henrik was in the hospital in critical condition after a heart attack . she flew to stockholm , where her father had been taking care of business items , & realized that it was time to say her goodbyes . her father & her played chess , talked about her childhood , & reconciled on any old issues . he passed away three days after she’d arrived . seeming as if he’d been able to tell something horrible was coming , henrik had updated his will a matter of weeks before the heart attack , naming desiree as the sole inheritor of all his assets & belongings . except , of course , her mother , who inherited a whopping five dollars from her husband . this was , mr . berger explained to desi , so that miriam could not claim that she had accidentally been left out , & was entitled to more of his estate .

if this wasn’t enough , the press soon released that interntional business mogul henrik lindbergh had passed away , & the companies he owned were now owned by a twenty one year old model who had never truly worked one day in her life . to make matters worse , her mother quickly played the victim , launching a multitude of lawsuits against her own daughter for defamation & coercing her father to leave her mother out of it . berger quickly chose desirée’s side , though he couldn’t become her personal attorney out of conflict of interest with the executing of the will . as the accounts lie in limbo during the legal battle , desi is relying solely on the secret account her father made her in switzerland ; if her mother knew , she would try to go after it , as well .

2021 : desirée has layed low over the last few months , her mother continuing her public display of heartache as the widow . desi can be said to be two - faced due to her sweet disposition one day & her cold attitude the next . in reality , she is normally kind & thoughtful , giving the benefit of the doubt to those two wrong her , but lately she has become more withdrawn , secretive , & volatile . she was recently photographed in a restaurant , crying on the phone with her head in her hand , something she would never normally allow to happen . overall , though , she doesn't want to speak publicly about the legal battle because she considers it a delicate matter & wants to take the high road . because of this , she puts on a face that she's happy , has done her mourning , & intentionally does things to make it seem like life is normal , like making appearances at events about new york city & being spotted hanging out with friends . only a very small handful in her inner circle notice the immense stress she's under because she's good at managing it , & doesn't want to be pitied .

* . personality .

personality wise , she is quite bubbly , thoughtful , dependable , observant , calm , & chooses her words carefully . on the other hand , she can be very hot & cold , self - isolating , two - faced , & tells blatant lies when she ought not to , & denies vehemently when others call her on her bs . she’s the type to remember someone saying they like something , in passing , then suddenly she shows up with that exact thing when she sees them next . her love language is definitely gifts & acts of service . considers herself a good advice giver but won’t take any advice others give her . kind of an air head , in that she can get so wrapped up in her own world that she forgets that others aren’t just npc’s in her life sfjklsd . can get overwhelmed easily , & retracts back into herself & isolates in her apartment for days on end , pampering herself with huge shopping sprees , overpriced face masks , & too much champagne . her way to deal with problems is to pretend they’re not there until eventually they go away 🤡

the world knows the bulk of the lindbergh - montenegro affair , as its known in the media , thanks to her mother taking interviews left & right to allude to her being snubbed by her own daughter . desi pretends that it does not bother her , that justice will be served & that legality will prevail over her mother’s cries , but the weight of the affair is taking a toll on her .

* . wanted plots .

click here for sideblog with wanted plots !

best friend / ride or die : someone desi’s been friends with for YEARS , knows all her family’s bs , prob has called her mother a b*tch to her face dflkjsdkl . literally the nicole to her paris , the lorelai to her rory .

squad : a group of friends who go clubbing every saturday & get brunch & gossip the next morning , have shady nicknames in their gc , have designated ‘ roles ’ in the friend group ( mom friend , the cr*ckhead , the wingperson , etc . ) , go on trips together , have the wildest birthday parties , etc . please !!

first love : this would’ve been in their teens , a summer fling that she fell hard for & who her father didn’t approve of bc he’s business - minded first . they tried to do long distance when she went back to school in the fall , but it didn’t work out & now they’re either on good terms & have sweet memories of that time , or one is still kinda salty how things ended .

bad influence : encourages desi to get the stick out of her *ss , & when she hangs out with them , they tend to go overboard on whatever the entertainment of the night may be .

friends to lovers / slow - burn romance : they’re friends first , but there’s been undeniable romantic tension between the two of them ( imagine pope towards kiara in obx ) , & their friends can pick up on it . they’ve never acted on it , worried of ruining the friendship , but they’re always a lil disappointed when the other goes home with or gets involved with someone else , but are ultimately there to pick up the pieces afterwards .

enemies / mutual dislike : maybe someone whose family her father screwed in business , their parents could have been friends before desi’s mom turned on them somehow , they think desi thinks she’s queen of the world , etc . let’s plan it out hehe

cheating : oop ! i love the angst , so gimme someone who either a ) cheated on desi , or b ) they think she cheated on them due to some tabloid article , rumor around town she was seen with someone , etc . their relationship was prob rocky as fuck , toxic , & lacked trust & communication . just a total shit show tbh .

that’s all i can think of now dskljfkl please feel free to reach out over tumblr msgs or on discord !

#wealthyhq:intro #excited 2 be here 🖤

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themaidishere · 3 years

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Commercial Cleaning Service Benefits

The use of a commercial cleaning service nyc is widely known in commercial establishments and wider domiciles. The term is actually a catch-all phrase for a group of jobs that are commonly associated with cleaning. Usually, it is large offices with many rooms that need it, although, many large homeowners are also some of the clients of this type of company.

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If you live in a small house, you probably only need one maid because if you have too many maids in a small house, the maids will not be able to do their job properly. Larger homes usually need two or more maids to do the job well.

You can hire individuals looking for house cleaning jobs, but most people are not comfortable letting strangers into their homes. If you use a cleaning service to hire a maid, you can feel secure knowing that the maid will do the job right and won't take anything from your home.

Most cleaning services do a thorough background check and drug test on all of their potential employees. When you hire someone you don't know there is no way to know if the person you are hiring is a drug addict or a thief. That's why hiring through a cleaning service is the safest way to go.

A professional maid will also clean your home better than anyone you can hire on your own. When someone applies to work for a cleaning service, they have to go through a training course to learn how to properly clean a house. Most cleaning services require you to pay them and they pay their employees.

Airbnb - Why It Is Vital to Opt for a Home Cleaning Service

Airbnb cleaning Jersey city and other sites are taking advantage of this irritation and have set out to offer travelers a completely different approach to travel accommodations. Not surprisingly, hotels and motels are very upset and have resorted to lobbying as a mechanism to protect their businesses.

The reason individuals love Airbnb is that it is now possible to quickly and easily turn their home into a small money machine. Few people will get rich using Airbnb, but there is certainly a lot of money to be made. Since it's even possible to rent out a single room, a whole new world has opened up for travelers looking to save big on accommodation and for homeowners looking to generate a little extra income.

More and more homeowners are discovering this possibility and the income that participating in the site can bring them. However, it is important for homeowners to realize that cleanliness is a very important issue when it comes to Airbnb. After all, users can write reviews and, of course, express themselves on social media. If your home is too dirty or unpleasant in any way, it will undermine your efforts. Bad reviews will cost you dearly, as there is a lot of competition.

The best way to ensure that your home offers consistent and reliable service and cleanliness levels is to opt for a professional and experienced domestic cleaning service.

A domestic cleaning service knows best how to keep your home as clean as possible. This way, you will be able to protect your reputation and keep new guests coming for years to come.

#cleaning service

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lettersnorth · 3 years

Text

A Call For Help

Heartwood House was quiet that afternoon. Some job must have taken a number of the mercenaries away on business. Not unexpected. It may well be that his report would have to wait. As Atreus stepped over the threshold he pinged Aislinn's security orb just to be sure. And received a cheerful answering ping originating from her study. It seemed she was in after all. That was unexpected. The woman usually made a point to take on as many jobs that came across Heartwood’s desk as possible. To the point of overload, if anyone cared to ask for his assessment. No one ever had.

The door to her study was slightly ajar and he pushed against the polished wood with a sharp rap as he entered. The hyur looked up from her place behind a desk covered in a sprawl of parchments, tomes and papers he had come to expect. It wasn’t how he would organize his work but she seemed to need to spread it out, as if she could look at it all at once. A feat he knew Spoken incapable of, though that didn’t stop them from trying. He allowed his internal chronometer to count five seconds, long enough for the disoriented look to dissipate from her expression as she switched her focus to him. Shifting tasks quickly also was not their strong suit. They were highly inefficient in so many ways.

“Is now a good time.” a statement, not a question. He checked his readings again. 98% efficiency. Maybe that lagging two percent could be found in his faulty language subroutine.

“Atreus.” Aislinn nodded and motioned to the empty chair that sat in front of her desk. “When did you get back?”

“I just walked through the door.” that was better.

“Well, then let me ask; how was the trip?” she ventured.

“Where are the others.”

If she was caught off guard by the pivot in conversation, she didn’t show it. “A flood of jobs came in all at once. They’re out, dividing and conquering.”

“But you’re not.” Atreus stated.

“No.”

“Why.”

He watched her cast around for an excuse before he arrived at the answer himself. “Your deficiencies are getting worse.”

“That’s not it. And it’s insulting when you call it that.” She muttered.

“Then what.”

She was cursed, that’s what. Or might as well be. To Aislinn’s mind a person couldn’t just absorb cursed energy without being affected by it. All the misfortune that had befallen her, befallen the people she loved, it all made sense now. She was the problem. She was becoming a cursed object herself. And Heartwood certainly didn’t need a bad luck charm out in the field. She had told Atreus she had enough work to handle here, at the House, but even to her ear she had sounded defensive. What she had said was true enough but she didn’t like it. His expression hadn’t changed a micro ilm but she could read his disbelief in that blank space.

She sat at her desk, studying the problem from all angles. Moments earlier Atreus had finished his report. His long-limbed frame, modeled after the Garleans he was meant to serve, had settled in the chair on the other side of the desk with a fluidity that belied his synthetic make and left her to her thoughts. By Atreus’ account approaching Lord Beauchene was going to be no easy feat. The man eschewed most social functions and kept his estate well guarded, keeping everyone at arm’s length. She could certainly guess as to why that would be. If she was him, she might do the same. The only foothold that Atreus had found was that his youngest sister was due to have her season. In a move that all but bowed to Ishgardian tradition and social decorum, reclusive House Beauchene would celebrate this happy occasion by opening its doors and hosting the first ball of said season.

“I’d suggest finding another mage.”

“There is no other mage.” she said with a sharp shake of her head. “Not any that I can recall as having anything to do with my...deficiency.” That was sarcasm, he was sure of it. Likely directed at him. "So it seems, against all good sense, I'll need to head to Ishgard myself."

Now, suns later, Aislinn sat alone in her sparse but serviceable inn room in Ishgard and placed another log on the fire. Her chair was already as close to the fireplace as she dared and still, the idea of going so far as to climb into it was becoming more appealing as night began to fall and a frost slowly rimed the thin window panes. What Atreus had said was true, not that she doubted it. But she only needed to walk down the length of the market and hover inconspicuously in millinery shops, dressmakers, jewelers to hear the gossip.

Aislinn poked the fire, pulled her cloak tighter around her and methodically considered her options. Ren, with his Ishgardian connections, was the obvious choice. But he would have questions. She thought of explaining everything to him, what had happened to her in Ul’dah, ran such a scenario through her head and didn’t like what she found. Though it had mellowed with time, Ren was still capable of a temper. There would be no subtle, careful approach to Beauchene. There would be an apoplectic bull she had let loose upon the man and she would never get her answers. Eliane could perhaps arrange a meeting but she rejected that idea out of hand as well. Aislinn would never ask her to keep something from her husband. Bertram...well, that was simply out of the question. Aislinn had learned her lesson there. And Ishgardian nobility and subtlety wasn’t really Cravendy’s thing.

She rose suddenly from her seat and pulled a small, square box from the haversack she had left on the bed. Opening it, she set it on the nightstand and carefully removed the small linkpearl that sat nestled in the cushioned interior. A parting gift from Locke Fairwind.

“I want you to have this. It's a linkpearl, specially designed. Untraceable, so you don't have to worry about any prying ears. It's capable of sending out a single message before it breaks, and once it does it'll let me know exactly where you are. If you ever find yourself in need of a helping hand, just call. I'll come running.”

It had been the better part of a year since she had stepped off the Endless Waltz and watched the airship disappear into the clouds. Much had happened in that time. The events of the last year had changed her and left her with only scant moments to think back on the ship’s devilish Captain. Wyda’s death and the fallout, Cravendy’s arrival, the trouble with the mad Isghardian and his rogue Allagan tech. The missing Heartwood members.

Through all of that she had held this last trick back. Even now, she hesitated. She had called on help before when she had needed it most and all it had taught her was that in the end, despite all the promises, she was on her own. And that had been a lesson given to her by someone far closer than Locke. Someone who, by all rights, should have been there. If she couldn’t depend on him, of all people, could she truly depend on the Captain?

But she knew what she needed. She needed someone who could lie and lie well. Far better than she could. Someone who wouldn’t balk at the story she told or look at her with pity in their eyes.

That night, she was woken from a nightmare by one of the worst attacks yet. After the searing pain had subsided and her lungs stopped aching from the work of drawing breath after gasping breath, she rose from her sweat drenched sheets and reached for the small box on the nightstand. For once, she didn’t mind the wintry chill in the air as it cooled her heated skin. But she knew she was running out of time.

Fitting the linkpearl in her ear, she took a bracing breath and began. “Locke, this is Aislinn...I’m in Ishgard and I need your help.”

A few seconds later she heard the delicate click of something within the linkpearl snapping. Just as he had said, it broke after relaying a single message.

If he didn’t answer she would be no worse off than before, she reasoned.

#ffxiv rp #balmung rp #rp snippets #Flashpoint #Atreus Sergius #Locke Fairwind #aislinn north #To Ishgard!

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universalfanfic · 3 years

Note

Regency AU - Either Person A or Person B is in danger of being ruined socially: for Stutton? it give me Stutton vibes

This may be a Part One? Depending on if I ever manage to get caught up on asks. So... Please enjoy this snippet and its “cliffhanger ending”.

“Mother, I refuse.”

Sutton clenched her hands at her sides and pursed her lips. Her mother’s expression didn’t waver, she could be just as stubborn and Sutton felt a trickle of unease at the steel in her mother’s eyes.

“We have no choice.” Her mother said. “I’ve already arranged for you to be introduced to Captain Rogers at the next ball.”

“You cannot just marry me off against my will! I’ll refuse him.”

“Oh? Refuse him and be left destitute?”

Sutton scoffed and looked away, but her mother marched forward, her skirts swirling around her feet.

“Don’t scoff at me. You know Howard’s firm has been in decline recently. And beyond that, what he has legally must go to Tyrese.”

“Tyrese would not leave me destitute.”

Her mother took a breath.

“No. But you would leave his allowance smaller than it already is and with slimmer chances of a good match. Would you do that to your brother when you have another option available to you?”

Sutton hissed under her breath. Using Tyrese wasn’t fair. She would disgrace herself in public for him and her mother knew that.

“Why would Captain Rogers agree to this match?” She asked instead. “His family is of good fortune last I heard.”

“And your head is in the clouds far too often to hear the local gossip. Captain Rogers cut Captain Rumlow in town, right in front of everyone. His social standing is in question and he could use our family’s name to salvage his own.”

Sutton, indeed, had not heard the gossip. She rolled her eyes.

“Over ignoring him in public? Please, mother. A man of his wealth only has to announce an apology and his name will survive-”

“Captain Rogers refuses.”

The statement lingered. That was a bit more severe.

“Oh.” Said Sutton.

“His reasons are his own, but he is a man that stands by his convictions.” Her mother paused, a soft, pleading look took over her face. “By all rights, he is a good man, Sutton. Please. I am thinking only of your future.”

---

Sutton found herself, coiffed and pristine, at the ball. Her nerves were alight and she wanted to hide in a far room, but of course she couldn’t. And she couldn’t look as frazzled and nervous as she felt either. Lest she also give herself a poor reputation and ruin Captain Rogers’ only reason to marry her.

Which she still didn’t want to agree to.

Her mother arranged Sutton’s curls herself with a few decorative pins and the reminder that Sutton should be concerned for her own future. And of how sincerely wonderful a match Captain Rogers would be.

Captain Rogers was newly stationed in town, though his family’s name was well known. It seemed like the locals hadn’t stopped chittering about him and his fellows since their arrival. Though in Captain Rogers’ case, now the talk was for a different, less admirable, reason.

If Sutton weren’t so distressed, she might have been impressed with how quickly her mother was able to negotiate the arrangement.

The dancing hall was full of people and lively music. Mr. Stark was hosting, yet again, and his parties were always an event. Sutton would have been more eager for a few dances if a looming marriage arrangement didn’t shadow the entire evening.

“You mustn't look so glum, Sutton. You’ll put off all the eager gentlemen looking for a dancing partner.”

Sutton turned at the voice and put on a smile.

“Glum? At a Stark party? Hardly.”

Natasha, her dear friend, smiled as she took Sutton’s hand.

“And yet you’ve been scowling at the crowd for the last few minutes. Tell me; did Victoria drive her carriage by your house with a new, fancy bonnet?”

Sutton laughed lightly at that. As much as was socially acceptable.

“No. Though I wish it were something so trivial.”

“Oh, I sense delectable gossip. Now you must share.”

No one in the room was paying particular attention to them yet, and no one approached to make introductions. Sutton dipped her head closer to Natasha’s in order not to be overheard.

“I hardly want to even say.”

“Sutton, I insist. You’re hardly ever in poor spirits and you’ll make me worry.”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“My dear sister-in-arms, you know that I am full of secrets.”

That, of course, was an understatement. If there was one person who kept tabs on all the local gossip, and some beyond, it was Natasha Barton. Sutton was too afraid to ask how she found out so much.

“My mother,” Sutton whispered, “is planning to have me...to have me wed to Captain Rogers.”

Natasha cocked a brow, looking rather more conspiratorial than sympathetic. Sutton frowned.

“That certainly would salvage his social standing.” Natasha said.

“Not you too. Really; does no one care that I would rather marry for love than for station or fortune?”

“Do you think you couldn’t love a man like Captain Rogers?”

“I do not know him, so I could not say.”

Natasha flippantly waved off Sutton’s argument as if it were no important matter.

“That’s what the courtship is for.”

“Ugh, never mind I said a thing, then. You’re just as impossible as my mother.”

“I shall take that as a compliment.”

Sutton was kept from returning a snide remark by two approaching figures. One familiar and the other a stranger. Both women smiled politely as the two men stopped before them.

“Mrs. Barton, Miss Regan.”

“Mr. Stark.” Both women said in unison.

They dipped slightly in greeting and Anthony Stark bowed at the waist.

Anthony Stark was not only the host, but a friend of the family. Sutton was quite fond of him, generally, despite his shortcomings. But her opinion of him could be swayed depending on who he was about to introduce.

“Might I introduce Captain Rogers,” Mr. Stark said. “He’s recently arrived with his company and will be staying in town for the foreseeable future.”

Sutton’s mouth went dry and her heart thudded. Mr. Stark dropped a few notches in her list of esteemed peoples.

Captain Rogers was a tall man with well kept blond hair and a defined jaw. He held himself in a stiff, business-like manner, and he offered them a polite enough smile, though Sutton felt it was a bit forced.

She and Natasha dipped as he bowed, and Natasha cast her a knowing look from the corner of her eye. Sutton knew the look. It said Natasha thought that Sutton would be impressed or should be forced to admit that she was. And true, Captain Rogers appeared to be the sort of gentleman that would attract all of the local ladies gossip, but for how much would that account in terms of personality? A handsome man did not necessarily mean he was genteel underneath and away from the public eye.

“A pleasure to meet you, Captain Rogers.” Natasha said. “Your service to this country puts us in your debt.”

“Hardly.” Captain Rogers said. “It’s a duty and an honor to serve.”

“Admirable, Captain.” Natasha smiled, disarmingly friendly. “And, pray tell, do you have an estate here? Or are you boarding with friends for your duration?”

Steve dipped his head.

“My family has an estate in Brooklyn,” he said. “It’s of enough size that I hope to be able to host dinners for some of the men without family in the area.”

“So generous of you, Captain.”

Sutton’s tone was neutral, she had the practice, and she kept her expression just as neutral as all eyes turned towards her. Mr. Stark had a shine in his own eyes and a curl of his lip that said he was amused. Likely he knew of her mother’s schemes already. Likely he was the very one her mother had conspired with to introduce her to Captain Rogers in the first place. And if that were the case he knew her enough to guess that she was less than enthused.

Captain Rogers tilted his head in a gesture that said he knew her comment meant more but would graciously ignore it.

“It’s not my aim to draw attention to myself. I simply wish to bolster morale where I can. I know just as well the struggles of being a solitary man in a foreign place.”

They studied each other with equal scrutiny. Sutton was sure he found her at least slightly unpleasant, seeming to toe around the edge of decency. But then, he didn’t have much room for judging her on that account, did he?

On her end, she was immediately suspicious of men who managed to only say the right thing in their conversations with the fairer sex. More than once she’d seen her peers swoon for a man who presented himself as wholly doting and refined, only to show himself as stubborn and as affectionate as a mule once wed. Or worse.

She had vowed to herself that she would never succumb to such a match, but now all the choice had been ripped from her.

And Captain Rogers was rushing from the gate with only the right things pouring from his lips.

“Well put, Captain Rogers.” Natasha said blithely.

Mr. Stark looked between Sutton and Captain Rogers before he clapped the man on the back and gave Sutton a wink.

“Mrs. Barton,” he said, “would you do me the honor of a dance? It looks like your husband is momentarily distracted by the buffet table.”

Natasha’s eyes sparkled despite Sutton’s nails digging into her arm.

“It would be my pleasure Mr. Stark.”

Propriety forced Sutton to relinquish her hold on Natasha despite the growing anticipation in her stomach. The last thing she wanted to be was left alone with the man her mother would guilt her into marrying.

Mr. Stark left with Natasha on his arm and Sutton turned back up to Captain Rogers. His gaze was elsewhere for a moment, but he turned to her before she could search to see where he was looking. The smile he gave her was pressed and obligated.

“Would you like to dance, Miss Regan?”

Nothing would delight her more than to deny him and find a more quiet corner of the party to retreat to. But she could see her mother now, off behind Captain Rogers, and she was giving Sutton so murderous a glare that to follow through with her own wishes would be tantamount to suicide.

And denying him would be a sign to everyone that she agreed his social standing was in ruin and she wanted nothing to do with him. With her family’s good name, it could destroy him most thoroughly.

Sutton’s face split in just as obligated and polite a smile as she held out her hand.

“I would be honored, Captain.”

They made their way to the dance floor and Sutton felt all the eyes in the room upon them as they took their places. Natasha selected an especially lively song and Sutton readied herself as she reminded herself of the first steps to the dance. Captain Rogers stood across from her, his shoulders a little too tense and his eyes not quite meeting hers.

The music started and everyone stepped forward, nearly coming together, hands up, and stepping away. Spinning, turning, weaving around each other. Sutton saw Captain Rogers clear his throat rather than heard it before they stepped forward again to circle each other.

“I’m assuming your mother already informed you of her designs for us.”

Sutton bristled internally, but focusing on the dance helped keep her from glaring outwardly.

“Recently, yes.” She replied. “I have to thank you both for finally including me in on the details of my future.”

They pulled away, twisting about the room, and Sutton felt her love of the dance wain as Captain Rogers’ discomfort only seemed to grow.

“Your mother approached me with the proposal,” he said when they next met. “In my situation, I have just as little choice as you.”

Sutton’s hackles rose at that and her eyes sharpened.

“Really, Captain? Last I checked, I had little choice in the success of my father’s business, while you had every choice to cut Captain Rumlow out in the town square where all could see you.”

This time Captain Rogers didn’t duck in uncomfortable sheepishness. His own look hardened and his jaw tensed in defense of his actions.

“You don’t understand the circumstances.”

“You should know that circumstances hardly matter to the masses.”

They turned again and Sutton made eye contact with Natasha at the front of the dance line. Natasha grinned, hopeful, and Sutton frowned. Natasha made a face in return. Sutton would have to have a word with her after the ball for leaving her like this.

“Do you object then,” Steve said as they held up hands, nearly touching, and turned, “to marrying a man with what you consider a tarnished reputation? Without knowing the details of such?”

“I object to marrying a man I don’t know when I swore to marry for no less than love.”

“You anticipate that I’ll fail to reach your expectations of love.”

“I find it interesting how you assume my agreement to this arrangement without asking me, and now know my innermost thoughts on the future. Your ability to know a person after mere introductions astounds me.”

They spun away from each other, back into their lines, and Sutton’s heart pounded as her anger swelled. How dare he! How dare he imply that she was the one in the wrong here. When she had so little choice in life compared to him; how dare he scoff at her for wanting to cling to this one decision.

The music ended and the lines bowed and curtsied to each other, finishing the dance. Another woman hurried to the musicians to request the next song and dance. Sutton smoothed out her dress and brushed back some of her curls. As much as she loathed it, she knew what would happen next.

He would ask for one more dance, to openly show his interest, and she would be obligated to accept thanks to her mother. Then everyone in attendance would share murmurs about the possible forming connection.

Before the end of the ball he’d go to her mother, to ask to call on her, and her life would be locked on the track of her mother’s design. For her good.

She swallowed and attempted to catch her breath as she briefly met Captain Rogers eyes. He gave her a nod and another bow and stepped away from the dance floor.

He did not ask for another.

Sutton blinked at the dismissal. If he were just another man at the ball, she would not have thought twice about it. One dance was perfectly acceptable. But Captain Rogers was supposedly agreeing to an arranged marriage with her, and not making an effort to show interest in her was shocking to say the least.

She and her mother made eye contact from across the room, and her mother appeared just as scandalized and irate. Their saving grace was that no one else was aware there was supposed to be an interest, arranged or otherwise. Or likely Sutton’s own reputation would have been gossiped about as well.

A thought arrested her. Perhaps he now wanted to call off the arrangement because of her bluntness in their conversation. Her mother could never know the cause, if that were the case. She feared her mother’s wrath more than she feared being left destitute.

Though, would he really call off everything because she had the audacity to be blunt with him? When he was the one who asked? If nothing else, it seemed her opinion had offended him enough that he felt the need to slight her.

A man with such a delicate disposition, over such a matter as a personal conviction besides his own, didn’t bode well to Sutton for what she would be subjected to in a marriage.

If there was still a marriage to be had.

Her mother idled in the crowd, obviously fretting now, and Sutton left the room. Her emotions were too tumultuous to be in public and she needed some space.

[][][][][]

First Lieutenant James “Bucky” Barnes smiled sharply as Steve Rogers stepped off the dance floor. It was a strained expression and Steve frowned when he saw it.

“What is it?”

Bucky clapped his good hand on Steve’s shoulder and kept the smile for the sake of the company in the room.

“You’re finished dancing already, then?”

Steve tipped his head and shifted so that they could speak with a sliver more privacy.

“Can I assume you don’t approve.”

“Steve, you’re meant to be showing interest in this girl. Wooing her; and you only ask for one dance? There’s not another ball scheduled later this week. Now is the time to lay foundations.”

“Miss Regan made it plain that she doesn’t agree with the arrangement,” Steve said. “I won’t force her hand under public pressure.”

“Steve, you have likely insulted her or called this arrangement into question. Unless you mentioned these thoughts to her before the dance ended?”

Steve remained silent making the answer obvious. Bucky huffed under his breath.

“Steve, I lost an arm and yet you manage to somehow be more of a frustration for me.”

“Last I checked it was my reputation at stake, not yours.”

“You say that as if I don’t care about your reputation for you; since someone has to. You want to stick to your convictions and have nothing to do with Captain Rumlow, fine. But don’t toss aside your best opportunity to keep your family’s name in good standing.”

Of course Bucky, as ever, had a fair point. Steve’s parents had labored to build his family’s name from the ground up, and it wasn’t a burden he bore lightly. As their only child, it was his duty to continue the legacy they started. To continue on so their struggles were not in vain.

And it seemed to do so meant marrying one Miss Sutton Regan.

If she would accept him.

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revlyncox · 4 years

Text

Democracy Is Not a State

Delivered to the Washington Ethical Society on January 10, 2021, by Lyn Cox

Congressman John Lewis reminds us what is possible when we join together, combining our collective action and sense of purpose to keep our country grounded in our best and highest ideals. His final instructions to us were to “walk with the wind,” to stay together and respond to the movement of our time in the spirit of peace and with the power of love.

That is what is happening in Georgia. This past week, we learned that Georgia will have two new Senators. The Rev. Raphael Warnock will be the first Black Senator from the state, of which about a third of the population is Black. The congregation Rev. Warnock leads, Ebenezer Baptist Church, is the former pulpit of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is also a congregation that Rep. Lewis attended. Jon Ossoff will be the first Jewish Senator from Georgia. Ossoff interned for Rep. John Lewis as a young man, after having written him a fan letter when Ossoff was 16 years old. Relationships built over years make a difference.

Regardless of political party, we can agree that democracy depends on the ability of citizens to exercise their right to vote. True democracy rests on free and fair elections, in which obstacles to the right to vote are not placed unfairly and disproportionately in front of voters from marginalized communities. The runoff election in Georgia was historic, not only because of the outcome, but because of the momentous turnout. Overcoming voter suppression was a major task, and one that grassroots organizations in Georgia have been working on for years. Multiracial democracy is a threat to white supremacy, and white supremacy has been trying to prevent the full flowering of multiracial democracy from the beginning.

Yet there is progress. Between 2018 and the November election, 800,000 new people registered to vote in Georgia. Registering and mobilizing new voters is the big story of this election, and that was achieved one conversation at a time, one knocked-on door at a time, one phone call at a time, one relationship at a time. Stacey Abrams is a strategic genius and a focused advocate, having started the New Georgia Project seven years ago and Fair Fight two years ago.

Abrams will be the first to tell you that a wide variety of leaders and grassroots organizations share the credit for voter turnout in this election. For instance, LaTosha Brown has been fighting voter suppression since 1998, and her Black Voters Matter project helped mobilize voters across the South. In a series of tweets on Friday, Abrams named 30 different grassroots organizations that coordinated their efforts to help Georgians exercise their right to vote, noting that the runoff election was a demonstration of “decades of strategy, grit, + building.”

Between Rep. Lewis’ reminder about clasping hands and moving together, and the turnout in Georgia’s runoff election, our takeaway should not be limited to admiration for the most visible leaders, candidates, and public officials. We can and should admire their good character traits and their dedication to service. We can and should thank the movement leaders who made this possible, especially Black women. But we should not elevate these officials and movement leaders to the point where we regard them as something other than human, an example too rarified for us to follow.

The lesson here is that organizing is happening all around us. Coordinated solidarity to enact structural change for liberation is part of how we help bring the full promise of multiracial democracy into being. There may well be someone like Stacey Abrams in the movements you are part of at your workplace or in your neighborhood. Let’s listen. There are definitely organizations in our own communities being led by the people who are most impacted by marginalization. We can follow the example that has been set out for us by supporting power-building and relationship-building that is already happening locally. Grassroots organizing takes a long time. It requires a lot of one-on-one conversations, very little in the way of immediate results, and broad participation. That path is available to any of us, nobody has to be a superstar to participate in repairing the soul of our nation.

We contrast the progress in building multiracial democracy in Georgia with the violent attempt to destroy multiracial democracy that happened on January 6. Because this Platform is being recorded for posterity, I feel that I have to be very clear about the events of this week; please take care of yourself if a reminder of these events is overwhelming for you. On Wednesday, at the urging of their demagogue, white supremacist insurrectionists invaded the Capitol building, threatened the safety of elected leaders and staff, looted the building, and left chaos in their wake for others to clean up, primarily janitors and facilities staff who are People of Color. They were not merely rascals ignoring the rules of orderly protest, they were an armed mob seeking to disrupt the practice of democracy. Computers were stolen, putting our national security at risk. Five people died, including an officer from the Capitol Police.

In our community, I know we are holding intense emotions about this incident. I am particularly mindful of the impact that this has on those who work for the Federal government, for whom the area around the Capitol is an everyday environment, a place full of memories and colleagues. My heart also goes out to those who live near the Capitol, who had to deal with armed white supremacists wandering the neighborhood unimpeded. To anyone who has ever been treated roughly by the Capitol Police for non-violently exercising their first amendment rights, the lack of resistance to the mob may not have been surprising, but it was yet another insult, a reminder that the level of force with which police respond to protestors is a choice. For People of Color, Queer people, Muslim people, Jewish people, immigrants, or anyone who holds an identity targeted for violence by these insurrectionists, Wednesday’s events were a chilling show of power that was precisely intended to make us feel afraid for existing as our whole selves. We cannot let that fear stop us from living fully, nor prevent us from persevering in the work of liberation.

On Wednesday night, I invited the WES community to gather by Zoom to process the day’s events, to overcome the numbness of trauma by feeling our feelings, and to lift up our shared values in a way that only a community like ours can do. It was short notice, and I apologize if you didn’t hear about it in time. Please reach out if you would like to talk to me or to a member of the Pastoral Care Associates about how you are feeling. More than twenty of you were able to attend. Just from that sample, I know that there are feelings of rage, worry, disgust, helplessness, disappointment, and confusion. There are also feelings of readiness, of curiosity about what to do next, relief about the Georgia election, and even optimism that there are long-deferred actions for repair that can take place with the new Congress. Emotions are what they are, and they will be affected by your previous experiences with oppression, trauma, and violence. Feel your feelings. Please know you don’t have to be in those feelings alone.

The violence on January 6 was designed to reinforce white supremacy. It was a reaction to the expansion of multiracial democracy, fed by the shock of racist white people that the votes of people who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color were allowed to have an impact. White people have been told since the moment Europeans arrived on this continent that the land and its abundance and the benefits of government are for ourselves, that white people own this country, and that this is unassailable no matter what happens to the bodies, voices, and lives of those who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. This worldview is gravely harmful and wrong.

The incredulity with which the insurrectionists faced the results of the 2020 election, urged on by politicians who capitalize on their racism, is rooted in the belief that only white votes are legitimate. Their invasion of the People’s House was meant to mark their territory, to show that their ownership remains primary, and that they can and will use violence to maintain that ownership. White supremacist violence as an attempt to derail multiracial democracy is not new, and it has worked before. We all have choices ahead of us to reduce the chances that this tactic will continue to work.

One avenue is to confront and dismantle white supremacy in all of the ways it shows up around us. For those who have been the targets of racism their whole lives, simply living and thriving is an act of resistance. For those of us who were socialized as white, the construction of a wall of ignorance around the machinations of white supremacy is part of how the system operates. For those of us who were raised with barriers to perceiving racism, let’s not wait another moment before removing those barriers and taking action to uproot racism.

We saw again this week how deadly white supremacy can be. It shows up in the minds and hearts of well-meaning people and in the institutional practices of well-meaning communities. It shows up in the decisions of governments from the level of homeowners associations to the U.S. Congress. It shows up in art and music and literature. We don’t have to look far to find a place to begin uprooting racism. For all of us, the outpouring of voter empowerment in Georgia reminds us that there is room for everyone in expanding multiracial democracy.

Another thing we can do is to insist that the threat of violent white supremacy is real, and that we should take it seriously. Perhaps that seems obvious after this week, but we’re already seeing efforts to humanize, sanitize, and excuse the perpetrators of destruction. News articles about insurrectionists who died emphasize their good qualities or accomplishments instead of their criminal records; an obvious departure from the media treatment of racial justice activists and those who have been murdered by police. Jokes about the perpetrators seem to imply that they are too stupid to be held responsible. Calls to understand their pain and excuse their racism rely on stereotypes that are demonstrably untrue. Exhortations to “move on” without practicing accountability reinforce the idea that harm caused by white people should be consequence-free. White supremacy is and always has been a threat to our national security and our national wellbeing, and the sooner we recognize and address that, the better.

Failing to take white supremacy seriously contributed to our vulnerability to Wednesday’s events. Racist militia groups have been allowed to grow and thrive for years when anti-racist groups have been infiltrated, sabotaged, and undermined with outrageous punishments and mysterious deaths. After the Charlottesville event where Heather Heyer was murdered, nothing happened to reduce the potential for future right-wing violence. The Capitol Police knew that the crowds planned for Wednesday were likely to be dangerous. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal said:

We all were aware of the danger. Ten days ago, Maxine Waters had raised the issue of our security on a caucus call to the Speaker and asked what the plans would be. And 48 hours before, we had gotten instructions from Capitol police about all the threats: that we had to be on high alert, that we had to get to the Capitol by 9 a.m. before the protesters, that we couldn’t plan on going out, that we should have overnight bags. It was very clear, and everyone understood what the threats were.

Rep. Jayapal points out the discrepancy between what the Members of Congress were told about impending events and how the Capitol Police were prepared on the outside of the building. Whether failing to have adequate staff or backup or hard barriers was a result of underestimating the threat or of deliberate collusion or both, the lack of preparedness is a product of white supremacy.

When we recognize the enormity of the problem, we are led to work on systemic solutions. That means examining laws and policies, and the uneven application of those laws and policies. At a Symposium yesterday, award-winning peacemaker and spiritual care activist Najeeba Syeed spoke about the “myth of interpersonal peacemaking,” and how it can be a distraction and derailment of the systemic justice-making that provides the foundation for authentic, lasting peace. Trying to understand and relate to Nazis does not yield systemic change. Attempting to de-radicalize loved ones is another project, not the same thing as building multiracial democracy or expanding liberation. Professor Syeed reminded us that “Peace is not the absence of violence … Peace is the absence of injustice.”

In a week with so many low points, even as we notice the high points, it is understandable to feel disoriented. I have said before that hope is doing the next right thing, working toward a better world even when the outcome is not assured or even clear. Yet if your sense of reality was turned upside down this week, or you were overwhelmed with an experience or a reminder of trauma, maybe the next right thing is especially elusive right now. In that case, the next right thing is to take care of yourself. Drink water. Eat nourishing food. Maybe go outside at some point during the day. Talk to people who care about you. The movement will still be there when you have regained a sense of the ground underneath you. You are a precious being of worth.

Another next right thing is to check up on each other. Remember your federal employee friends. Follow up on a Caring News email. If you’re reaching out to someone who might be having a hard time, you might ask, “Is it OK if I ask how you are?” Let’s try not to make people feel obligated to re-live negative experiences if they aren’t ready. Just being present is often helpful. Even if we can’t fix anything, we can give people the option not to be alone in their grief.

If you have a little more energy and want to channel your feelings into positive actions, consider something that will have a material impact on your local community. R was telling me about Mutual Aid in Washington, DC, especially in Ward 5. For information about Mutual Aid throughout the District, check the website for Bread for the City or find them on Facebook. I also checked in with D, who is involved with Silver Spring/Takoma Park Mutual Aid. You can find them on their Wordpress site or on Facebook. If you’re involved in Mutual Aid, feel free to mention it during Community Sharing or post in the Facebook group later.

R tells me: “Mutual Aid is a non-hierarchical way for neighbors to help neighbors. Anyone can ask for any kind of assistance, and anyone can offer to help. Some roles require some training and learning codes of ethics/responsible service. It's not a particularly ‘formal’ or ‘organized’ thing - it's all hands on deck, and everyone is just doing their best.” R went on to say that there are short-term and long term roles, and those who are able can donate any time.

If you’re wondering what this has to do with dismantling white supremacy, building relationships with your neighbors both is and is not about a larger goal. Building relationships with neighbors is a primary good; it’s something that is valuable and satisfying to do for its own sake. Similarly, offering care when you can and giving people a chance to practice care when you need it are both good, full stop. Neighbors helping neighbors is a form of resistance to oppressive structures.

In addition, neighbors who have strong bonds with each other are in a better position to advocate for their communities. If you and your neighbors are working to overcome environmental racism where you live, or redirect funding to basic human services, or update policies in the local school that have a negative impact on students of color, you will have a head start if you already know each other. This could be its whole own Platform, so I’ll pause there and just say that strong, connected, diverse local communities can be a manifestation of multiracial democracy and a home base for even more positive change.

Forming authentic relationships with our neighbors, community organizing, building power, paying attention to local issues, caring for ourselves and each other: these are some of the tools with which we will resist white supremacy and build multiracial democracy. This way is slow, and it is often hard, and it works. Growing multiracial democracy is a constant practice; Rep. Lewis reminded us that “democracy is not a state.”

When white supremacy attempts to use violence to enforce a warped and harmful vision of who we should be and how we should be together, one of our avenues for resistance is renewing our commitments to communities living into a vision of wholeness. That can mean your local mutual aid society, it can mean a project like the Food Justice Initiative, it can mean a coalition like the Washington Interfaith Network or the Congregation Action Network, it can mean a voting rights organization like Fair Fight, it can mean a community like WES. A better world is possible. There are pockets of it already living and moving among us and around us and within us. Clasping hands (figuratively, for now), traveling together with the winds of our time, let us gather our collective strength to stay grounded in a vision of the world that is possible.

May it be so.

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