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shades of green in Van Gogh’s paintings

(via)

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Photography by Xuebing Du

Instagram: xuebing.du

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Studio Ghibli + Holding Hands

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If you’re writing about a character who’s rich and has a big house, and you’re writing in any sort of historical setting, I can’t help but feel that you’re missing an opportunity if you never talk about the Guests.

In a modern context, big houses rarely serve any narrative purpose beyond jokes about rooms nobody has ever been in, but historically, all that extra space served an important purpose. Apart from families generally being larger and multi-generational households being the norm, hospitality was a major part of a wealthy household’s basic social obligations. Travel was time-consuming and expensive, and obviously your rich buddies couldn’t just rent a room while they were in town (how gauche!), so you’d be expected to put them up for as long as they cared to stay. Indeed, being able to put up lots and lot\s of guests was one of the basic ways you demonstrated your high status.

This expectation of hospitality extended beyond your immediate social circle, as well. If you were the big name around town, you could expect to have government officials, artists and philosophers, travelling nobility, and the like hitting you up for a spare room on very little notice, and you had to be very careful about saying “no” because refusal might be construed as a snub – or worse, an admission that you can’t afford it! The upshot is that, at any given time, a large household might be playing host to a bewildering assortment of friends, relatives, friends of relatives, relatives of friends, celebrities both far-ranging and local, dignitaries, con artists, miscellaneous weirdos, and that one guy who nobody can quite place, but whose presence everyone is too polite to question.

(The miscellaneous weirdos are a big part of it, in fact. If you’ve ever wondered how someone makes a career out of something like “being France’s most famous lover”, that’s basically how it worked: you’d use your outlandish reputation to prevail on some random wealthy jerk’s hospitality, hang around their house as an “honoured guest” for a couple of months, then discreetly move on before you wore out your welcome and repeat the whole process somewhere else. There was a whole class of people who made lifelong careers out of being entertainingly weird guests.)

Like, sure, there’s no obligation to get into any of that if domestic affairs aren’t the focus of your story. However, if you are keeping the plot close to home, it’s something where a little bit of extra thought can pay large dividends. Keep it in mind when you’re plotting out that Pride and Prejudice Batman AU next time!

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Greta Lee as Maxine in Russian Doll (2019)

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The Palladian Bridge at Prior Park, Bath.

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coa.

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juliapamaral

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