#Added to the biography (MUSE)

[notoriousaesthetics]

✧ ( 04. 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐅𝐔𝐑𝐘) ── // LINK a single muse google doc.

───  𝒅𝒆𝒔𝒄𝒓𝒊𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏.

this is a premium single muse google doc that's inspired by greek mythology, caravaggio art, the italian renaissance and battlefield thematics. this doc encourages heavy amounts of writing specifically for the biography sections which can be extended on repeat. the easiest way to adjust images is ensuring that you replace them! this google doc layout also looks best on desktop! includes: 9 unique custom google doc templates + an additional instruction document that explains the terms of use & further guidelines. disclaimer: ✺ images do not belong to me and are credited to their rightful owners.

───  𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒎𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒖𝒔𝒆.

PERMITTED

customizing the templates, including changing colors, adding or removing elements, replacing images, and more.

mixing and matching pages from other notoriousaesthetic only templates to personalize design.

NOT PERMITTED

removing or obscuring the credit; it must remain intact and visible on all templates.

using the templates in illegal, defamatory, or otherwise harmful projects.

copying, selling, or redistributing the templates, whether in their original form, partially (e.g., individual pages), or remixed (e.g., modified versions).

── ✧ THANK YOU!

please ▸ ( like/reblog) ◂ this if you found this useful and intend to use the google doc! for any further questions, please contact me via tumblr or join my discord for additional assistance!

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Comet Donati [Chapter 4: Temporary Fix]

Series Summary: Sex, drugs, boy bands. You are a kinda-therapist recruited (via nepotism) to help Comet Donati through a recent crisis. Things are casual with Aegon, very not-casual with Aemond. Loosely inspired by One Direction.

Chapter Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+), drugs, alcohol, smoking, crepes, mental health struggles, the Cookie Monster pajama pants are removed...😏

Selected Chapter Quote: “I will push you off the Eiffel Tower.”

Word count: 6.7k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: ​@doingfondue​ @catalina-howard​ @randomdragonfires​ @myspotofcraziness​ @arcielee​ @fan-goddess​ @talesofoldandnew​ @marvelescvpe​ @tinykryptonitewerewolf​ @mariahossain​ @chainsawsangel​ @darkenchantress​ @not-a-glad-gladiator​ @gemini-mama​ @trifoliumviridi​ @herfantasyworldd​ @babyblue711​ @namelesslosers​ @thelittleswanao3​ @daenysx​ @moonlightfoxx​ @libroparaiso​ @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics​ @mizfortuna​ @florent1s​ @heimtathurs​ @bhanclegane​ @poohxlove​ @narwhal-swimmingintheocean​ @heavenly1927​ @mariahossain​ @echos-muses​ @padfooteyes​ @minttea07​ @queenofshinigamis​ @juliavilu1​ @amiraisgoingthruit​ 

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 💜

“Our father never cared about us,” Aegon says at the rooftop bar in Kansas City, a full year before you meet Aemond, a full year before you know him as anything other than a face to be printed on t-shirts and keychains like profiles stamped into coins at a mint, things to be acquired, traded, hoarded, lost. Aegon is swirling the ice cubes in his Salty Dog with a green plastic stirrer shaped like a pirate’s sword. He’s glowing from his sunburn, but he glows from within too; you have the sudden and distinct impression that he’s made of weightless luminance, slice a vein and he’d bleed daylight. A year later, you’ll find yourself thinking that if you cut Aemond, storms and rogue waves would come pouring out.

“I’m so sorry,” you offer, knowing it will not help. But it can’t hurt either, unlike those platitudes that well-meaning but ignorant people like to besiege him with: Of course your parents love you. I’m sure they did their best. You’ll understand how hard it is when you’re a dad someday.

“I figured it out pretty early on. How much he preferred Rhaenyra. How I was the antithesis of everything he could have wanted in a son.” Aegon shrugs; it can’t be changed, it’s like trying to stop the rain. He sips his Salty Dog. Ice clinks; he licks his lips. “It took Aemond a little longer. Helaena was always with Grandpa and Daeron was mother’s favorite, but I remember Aemond trailing after our father like a duckling, asking him about history and books and whatever else, just desperate with this need to be noticed, to be loved. If my father was leafing through a biography at the kitchen table, Aemond would spend hours on Google trying to come up with a fact he hadn’t read yet. If my father mentioned a movie, Aemond would watch it over and over again until he had the lines memorized. I remember one Christmas, Aemond wanted the Helm’s Deep Lego set because my father liked the Lord of the Rings. Then he kept asking Dad to help him put it together. ‘We’ll do it this weekend.’ ‘We’ll do it after I get off this conference call.’ ‘We’ll do it tomorrow.’ ‘We’ll do it for your birthday.’ Never happened. Well summer rolled around and I guess Aemond figured he might as well just do it himself. So he stayed up all night putting that fucking Lego castle together and left it on the kitchen table where my father couldn’t miss it. So the old man comes downstairs the next morning for breakfast and we’re all sitting there with our waffles and orange juice, and Aemond is trying not to act too proud but he is, he’s literally shaking with impatience for Dad’s praise, even a crumb, even just a few words, the maple syrup bottle was trembling in his hands. And my father strolls into the kitchen, glances at this meticulously constructed replica of Helm’s Deep—I mean it’s like a sculpture in a museum, it’s goddamn perfect—and he gives this little snort of a laugh. He says: ‘Wow, look at that.’ And then he sits down at the table, opens his biography of King George V, and never mentions it again.”

This moment is real but it isn’t. Sitting outside in the warm, windswept Missouri midnight with a popstar you’ll never see again (an incorrect assumption) and stories you have no right to hear (so you believe).

Aegon takes another sip of his Salty Dog. “Not me,” he says with a puckish, sad half-smile. “I was never going to beg for someone to want me. I go wherever, I’m with whoever. No strings. No anchors. Nothing stays the same except the band, and that’s what bought me my freedom to begin with, so I don’t mind it so much. Me father is disgusted by me. But this is who I am. And I’d rather force him to watch me torch his legacy than break my back trying to earn love that was given away long before I was born.”

“Do you think that’s a part of why you have no interest in settling down?” you say. “I mean, commitment is a two-way street. And if you commit to someone, you have to trust that they’ll commit to you back. That they love you now, sure, but also that they’ll keep loving you. Maybe that’s something that’s difficult for you to accept. That someone could love you for more than an hour, a night, a day.”

He taps his Salty Dog against the tabletop, considering you, perhaps even marveling: wind in his blond hair, blood in his cheeks. At last he asks, teasing: “What are you, some kind of therapist?”

“Well, actually…in a year from now…” You feel uneasy assigning such significance to yourself—it feels inevitably pretentious, over-confident, unearned—but you can’t help returning his smile. “I sort of will be.”

~~~~~~~~~~

You’re laying in your bed with the French doors that lead out onto the balcony wide open. The breeze—sunny and warm and smelling of the bakery next to the hotel, croissants and baguettes and half a million different sorts of pastries—breathes in through the semi-transparent linen curtains, a great inhale, a sighing exhale. You can hear footsteps and laughing on the sidewalk outside. The tourists are a cross-section of humanity, with languages from across the globe: a sprinkling of Portuguese here, Arabic there, Mandarin and Hindi and Russian. When the wind flutters the curtains aside, you can see the Eiffel Tower across the Seine. You should be out exploring Paris, but you’re not. You can’t seem to get out of bed. It’s been almost one week since the fight in Reykjavik. You don’t speak to Aemond and he doesn’t speak to you, and everyone knows this but they don’t know why. Not the whole story, anyway. They caught snippets through the sliding glass door, but they didn’t hear what Aemond said to you.

You’re just a groupie. You’re just a slut.

And now Aegon’s words come back to you too:  Whoever you are when you’re in high school…that’s sort of who you are forever, you know?

You pinch your eyes shut and roll onto your side away from the open balcony doors. Earlier you had gotten up, showered, deliberated leaving your room…and then immediately put back on your pajamas and crawled into bed. You have no idea where Aemond is now. He mopes around, he avoids you, he disappears on his 1960 Gold Star for hours, he takes notes in white ink, he takes calls on his iPhone.

There is the sound of a key—not a card, but a real, brass key, old and worthy of preservation just like the hotel—jangling in the lock of your door. Aegon steps inside. He’s FaceTiming someone in extremely poor Spanish.

“Adiós mi amor! Sí, te extraño. Claro que sí. Te extraño mucho. Vale, adiós. Hablamos pronto.” He hangs up and slips his iPhone into the pocket of his neon yellow cargo shorts. He’s wearing matching Crocs and a black Comet Donati band tank top. He pushes his aviator sunglasses up into his hair. “Hey.”

“Hey. Who were you talking to?”

“Camila Cabello. But she can wait.” He kicks off his Crocs and walks over to the bed, looking down at you quizzically. He tosses the brass key back and forth between his hands; Criston keeps the second copy of each one, so Aegon must have borrowed it from him. More likely, he thieved it. “You okay, Stargirl? You look stressed.”

“I am stressed.”

He grins, an eyebrow raised, sunburn on his shoulders. “Anything I can do to help with that?”

And you remember what he said to you back in Kansas City last June, a lifetime ago: I don’t think my worth is determined by who or how I fuck. I don’t think yours is either.

Aegon would never call you a slut. And even if he said it, he wouldn’t mean it in the way Aemond did. It wouldn’t be an insult, a belittlement, a curse. You watch him as he stands in the golden afternoon light, caring for you, wanting you in a way that is pure but not innocent. Do you want him too? Sure; Aegon’s beautiful, and you already know you have chemistry, and more than either of those things he is safe. But he’s not the one who keeps you up at night. He’s not the reason you thought, fleetingly and poisonously as you swallowed your birth control pill this morning: What a goddamn waste.

“Actually,” you say, peering up at him, your lips curling into a drowsy smile. “There might be.”

“Yeah?” He’s a little surprised but very enthused.

“Yeah.”

He whips his sunglasses out of his hair and sets them on the nightstand next to your souvenirs: the Colosseum pencil sharpener, the alabaster Apollo, the fighting bull refrigerator magnet, Portuguese soap and Austrian chocolate, the moose snow globe, the silica mud mask, the stuffed comet, the Eiffel Tower keychain you bought yesterday here in Paris, and if that’s cliché then so be it. The mattress shifts when Aegon climbs over to you, pushing up your oversized Jonas Brothers t-shirt. He touches his lips to the softness of your belly, bites lightly and playfully, gazing up at you through his shaggy hair as he works his way down to the waistline of your Cookie Monster pajama pants. And suddenly, you’re back in Kansas City a year ago, feeling the comforting, harmless heat of him in the downstairs bathroom of a rooftop bar, drenched in glowing florescence like moonlight, your back to a red wall and his mouth all over you, first above and then below, coaxing the darkness out of your veins like a shot of penicillin cures sepsis. He’s antivenom, he’s white magic, he’s a spell.

“You sure?” Aegon asks now, pausing as his fingers unravel the blue drawstring on your pajama pants like the bow of a Christmas present.

You reach down to knot a hand in his hair, wanting to be closer to him, and he smiles, knowing what you’re going to say before you say it. “I am so fucking sure.”

A resistless tug and your pajama pants have vanished. Aegon positions himself between your thighs and buries his face in the thin strip of fabric that still separates you, black lace you didn’t buy while thinking of him. Aegon inhales deep and slow. “Oh God,” he moans. “You smell just as incredible as I remember.”

His thumbs slip beneath the lace and whisk it away: the coolness of sudden air, the warmth of his tongue. You gasp, drowning in the best kind of sea, waves that cover splintering piers and razor-sharp barnacles, currents that erase memory. It’s exactly like it was before. It will always be this way with him, you know, you feel in your blood that carries all the same elements as his: iron, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen that builds DNA, hydrogen that ignites and burns. And just like that red-walled night in Kansas City, you are amazed by how quickly the ecstasy blooms in you, wispy and yet unbearably powerful, clearing thoughts and uncoiling muscles.

“Good girl,” Aegon murmurs with your wetness dripping from his lips, watching your face as he slides two fingers into you; his own eyes—murky blue puddles that hold few secrets—are entranced, rapturous. “Now come in my mouth, baby. I want to taste all of you again. I want to drown in it. Come in my mouth, can you do that for me?”

You can, and almost immediately: he plunges his fingers into you as he strokes you with his tongue and the rush is bliss yet superficial somehow, sunbeams on wave crests, without the kind of miles-deep tragedy, pining, promises that poets like to write about. Aegon notices the towel you’d draped over the desk chair after your shower and reaches for it to wipe his face with, but you stop him, drawing him to you by his tank top; and you drag your tongue up his chin and over his lips, tasting yourself on him, licking him clean. Then you take his fingers into your mouth and suck them until he looks like he’s going to pass out, like he’s going to forget how to breathe.

“Fuck,” he whimpers, and he kisses you just like he did a year ago, with an intense sort of need and his hand against your face, his flesh and blood hot and pressed to yours, palm lines on your cheekbone. He wants you in a way that is unburdened by pasts or futures; and who is anyone to condemn that? Perhaps that is the most painless form love can take.

And as the high dissipates, fog burned away at noon only to creep back in the next morning, Aemond returns to you: his words, his wrath, his flawed yet flawless face. You feel unexpectedly, overwhelmingly low. But this is not the time or place for tears; Aegon is still here.

Now I have to get him off too. Now I have to repay him. That’s fair, right?

“Just do it.” You fling one arm across your face as you look towards the balcony, breathing in Paris and daylight, spreading your thighs wider for him, anticipating the faint pressure-pain that will blossom into pleasure as his body melds with yours. “It’s fine. Go ahead. Just fuck me.”

But when your eyes drift back to him, Aegon still has his clothes on. He sits upright and traces the line of your jaw with his fingertips, studying you with uncommon quietness. “No,” he says softly. “No, I don’t think so. You look sad.”

You nod, unable to trust yourself to speak without your voice breaking.

Aegon sighs and flops down beside you on the bed, pulling you against him, whispering as his fingers twist in your hair: “Come here. Shh, shh. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t help.”

“You helped, Aegon.” Just not quite enough.

He kisses your forehead, and then your cheek, and then he looks at you expectantly. “Are you finally going to tell me what he said? That night in Reykjavik? I heard you screaming something about Missouri, but I don’t think that’s what fucked you up so bad.”

You hesitate as you lie together in the sunlit stillness threaded with distant footsteps and passing cars, Aegon twirling strands of your hair, fondness and familiarity and longing that he is politely trying to ignore. Beneath his neon yellow shorts, he is rock hard.

“Now I’m really curious,” Aegon says, smiling has he kisses your forehead again, entangled with you like tendrils of grapevines, morning glory, ivy. “Aemond’s fucked up too. He’s been lying on his bedroom floor and listening to The Script. He hasn’t done that since he and Shelby split.”

Shelby, you think desolately, flinching. “You warned me about Aemond. You told me he was full of demons.”

“Yup. I’m glad I can���t read minds. It’s gotta be like Poltergeist in there.”

But everyone has a few skeletons in their closet, don’t they? Bones that won’t stop rattling. Teeth that gnash and crave. “He called me a slut.”

Aegon pulls back, brow furrowed. He looks at you, trying to decipher which nerve Aemond hit. It is not a word that Aegon considers to be derogatory.

“But it wasn’t really what he said, it was how he said it, like…like…like because of what I’d done with you a year ago, I didn’t matter anymore. Nothing about me mattered. That he could never respect someone like me. That I had deceived him into thinking I was someone worth wanting.”

Abruptly, Aegon leaves the bed. He grabs his sunglasses off the nightstand and pads across the hardwood floor in his bare feet, steps into his Crocs, slides his sunglasses over his eyes, fluffs his blond hair that hangs in chaotic waves.

“Aegon…?”

“Come with me,” he says, nodding towards the door. He pulls a piece of cotton candy flavored Bubble Yum out of his cargo shorts and tosses it into his mouth. “Right now. Put some clothes on and let’s go.”

“Go where?”

Aegon does not elaborate. He only repeats while chomping noisily on his gum: “Let’s go.”

You rush to the bathroom and are ready in five minutes: flip flops, tousled hair, a flowing turquoise sundress you bought yesterday while shopping at Hermès with Baela and Rhaena. “Okay, seriously, where are we going?”

“Out,” Aegon says simply. You follow him through the doorway and down the corridor; like a bloodhound after evidence, Aegon tracks laughter that drifts through the hallway to Daeron’s room. The youngest Targaryen brother is playing Uno with Jace and Baela; Daeron has just made Jace draw four.

Aegon smacks Daeron’s shoulder and demands: “Where is he?”

Daeron is startled. “Huh? What? Who?”

“Aemond. Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

Aegon smacks Daeron again. “Where is he?!”

“I don’t know!” Daeron wails.

Mercifully, Baela intervenes. “Luke and Rhaena said they were going to the Eiffel Tower. Maybe Aemond went too…?”

“Cool,” Aegon replies. And when he sails out of the room, it’s not just you that goes with him; Baela, Jace, and Daeron file after Aegon as well, chattering conspiratorially. Aegon doesn’t wait for the elevator. He races down the grand staircase to the lobby: white marble floors and Oriental rugs, velvet armchairs and chandeliers, butlers scuttling and women hauling poodles around on taut leashes. Aegon strides past all of it without any interest. You follow him into the street outside and then across it, dodging taxis and limousines. Aegon believes crosswalks are optional. Next he locates the closest bridge over the Siene and traverses it.

“Are they gonna fight?” Jace asks Daeron excitedly. “You think they’re really gonna fight?!”

You plead as you hurry across the bridge, riverboats and swans gliding by below: “Aegon, I don’t want you to say anything to him.”

“I’m not going to say anything.”

“I don’t want you to shout anything either.”

Aegon peeks back at you, smirking wickedly. You know him too well. His pace picks up as he exits the bridge; next comes the vast stretch of gardens that surround the Eiffel Tower, strewn with picnicking tourists, fountains, ferns, lilies, roses, shrubs and trees and waddling ducks.

Jace gasps, euphoric: “Oh my God, they’re gonna fight!”

“Do you really see that ending well?!” Baela hisses back. “Aegon has to be on stage tonight! That’s not going to happen if Aemond snaps him in half like a KitKat!”

“Aegon, you can’t fight him,” you say, petrified. Aemond would win. Easily. Everyone knows that.

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Aegon, please!”

“What the hell happened?!” Baela puffs as she jogs up beside you, clutching your arm, bewildered and alarmed. You shake your head. Too long a story, not one you wish to share, not one you entirely feel you have a right to disclose. You’ve only told Aegon, and how is that going to turn out? You don’t want people to hate Aemond. You don’t want to alienate him from the band any further. That might seem contradictory given his recent disregard for your own wellbeing, but it’s—however regrettably—true.

“This is going to be so fucking epic,” Jace says. “Wait, do I have time to get popcorn? I think I should grab some popcorn. Wait, wait, there’s a crepe stand right over there, just give me five minutes. Aegon? Aegon?! Man, please, just postpone the beatdown for five minutes!”

“I hope you can sing Aegon’s parts too,” Daeron tells Jace. “I don’t have them memorized.”

“Cregan can do it.”

“Cregan is going to flay you alive if he sees you encouraging this.”

“He can’t sing all our parts,” Jace replies sensibly.

Aegon battles his way to the front of the long line of people waiting to purchase tickets to go up into the Eiffel Tower. They grimace and jeer at him, hurling swears in a myriad of languages. When he reaches the ticket counter, an aghast employee begins to implore Aegon—“S'il vous plait, Monsieur, vous devez attendre votre tour!”—until she gets a better look at him. Her mouth pops open; her sky blue eyes go impossibly wide. “Oh mon Dieu…”

“You know who I am, right?” Aegon says impatiently. “Yeah, you recognize me. Okay. I need to get up there right now. Me and my friends. What can I do to make that happen? I have lots of credit cards. I can also sign your arm or tits or whatever. What do you want?”

The employee settles for a selfie with Aegon, Jace, and Daeron. Daeron smiles dazzlingly and poses with two thumbs up. Jace gives Aegon bunny ears. Then the five of you receive your tickets. This time, Aegon is willing to wait for the elevator; it’s over 600 steps to the second floor alone, and you’re all already winded from the walk here. Aegon gets off at the first level, does a lap around the tower—tall glass barriers and metal cages around the balcony, a café and a gift shop—and then reboards the elevator to ascend to the next floor. The second level is more open. There is a railing around the edge of the walkway of course, but it only comes up to your waist. Next to one of the tower viewers is who Aegon is searching for: Luke, Rhaena, Cregan, Criston…and Aemond. He’s wearing dark jeans, a black Calvin Klein t-shirt, vintage Adidas sneakers like the ones Freddie Mercury had at Live Aid, sunglasses to shield his damaged eye from photographers, and a fanny pack. He’s biting into a Golden Delicious, round and shiny; juice glistens on his lips. None of them have spotted you yet.

You hear Luke ask Aemond: “Bruh, this is really embarrassing. You’re worth like $100 million. Why are you eating apples and pecans out of a fanny pack?”

“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find vegan food in Paris?”

Criston spies Aegon just as he’s closing in. He reads the fury on his face, his outstretched hand. “Don’t—!”

Aegon thrusts his palms against Aemond’s chest, hard, hard enough to force him back a couple of steps towards the railing. “Apologize,” he orders.

Aemond looks at you—for a moment, only a moment—and then back at Aegon. “For what?”

“You know what you did. Apologize.”

Everyone has gathered around. Criston’s dark eyes dart between Aemond and Aegon. He has a grip on Aegon’s shoulder, but he hasn’t dragged him away yet. He doesn’t know what this is about, and though he would never admit it…he’s intrigued. Cregan hovers close by; he lights a cigarette, taking advantage of Criston’s momentary preoccupation. Baela and Rhaena are gossiping in hushed voices. From behind his black sunglasses, Aemond stares at his brother, the wheels in his mind spinning. He doesn’t hit him, though he easily could. He doesn’t seem to have the spirit for it.

“Whoo!” Jace shouts, pumping his fist in the air. “Fight, fight, fight!”

Daeron mutters to Luke: “Are we taking bets?”

“Um, no?!”

“Right now,” Aegon tells Aemond, and shoves him again. “I mean it. I will push you off the Eiffel Tower.”

“Whoa, illegal!” Jace hoots. Cregan hooks a hand into the collar of Jace’s polo and yanks him back. “Hey, referee abuse over here—!”

“I will break your fucking arm,” Cregan growls.

“Okay,” Jace says. “Got it. No problem. I’m done now.”

“Apologize,” Aegon commands again, as if you’re the only people here: him, you, Aemond.

You are mortified. “Aegon, please don’t—”

“I’m sorry,” Aemond says. He’s looking at you again, and this time he doesn’t turn away. You wish you could see his eyes: windows to the soul, however clouded they might be. It’s the first time he’s spoken to you since Reykjavik. The gravity of it—his voice, his steady gaze, the gut-punch realization of how much you still want him—knocks all the words out of your skull. You sweep them up like a child collecting spilled coins in cupped hands.

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine.” Aemond’s tone is benign, calm, like he’s already rehearsed this and has just been waiting for the opportune moment. “I shouldn’t have said that. I was speaking out of anger. It was impulsive of me, it was indecorous.”

What the fuck? Indecorous…? Who uses words like that in casual conversation? Incurably pretentious Aemond Targaryen, that’s who. “Thanks, I guess. You must spend a lot of time with your thesaurus.”

“Well, I write lyrics, so.”

“Yeah.” You wait for Aemond to add the most important part: that he was wrong about what he said, that it wasn’t true. But he doesn’t go there. He only apologizes for speaking it into existence, for vibrating the air with its treacherous molecules. “Okay,” you tell Aegon. “I think you got what you wanted. Can we go now?”

“Sure.” Aegon slaps Aemond across the back and gives him one final glare, swift but cutting.

“What’s a thesaurus?” Daeron whispers to Luke, who shrugs.

“Some kind of dinosaur…?”

“That’s alright, boys!” Jace says, clapping his hands. “Walk it off! Take a breather! Plenty of time for Round 2 later!” Cregan bends one arm behind his back. “Ow—!”

“No smoking,” Criston snaps, ripping the cigarette out of Cregan’s mouth and stomping it into ash.

~~~~~~~~~~

Hours later, after soundcheck, eating dinner in the gardens under the lengthening shadow of the Eiffel Tower, dark stripes that swallow up daylight like bathwater sucked down a drain. Everyone has a crepe that’s rolled up in wax paper, as Europeans serve it…everyone except Aemond, of course. He’s sitting by himself under a 200-year-old sycamore tree and gnawing morosely on a plain baguette that’s as long as his own forearm. His iPhone rings; he checks who it is and then silences the call. Luke goes over to sit with him, dripping whipped cream from his banana and Nutella crepe all over his white shorts speckled with sailboats. You keep trying not to look at Aemond. Each time you see him is like poking a bruise; it’s nothing but pain, but you can’t seem to stop.

“Oh wow!” Baela cries, beaming as she scrolls through her phone. “The Paris Opera Ballet is performing Romeo and Juliette this season!”

“Neat!” Rhaena says. “Like right now?”

“Yeah. We could catch a show before we leave next week.” She turns to Jace. “Baby?” And when he ignores her, she rubs his shoulder, her voice honeyed. “Jace?”

He groans. “Really? Ballet?”

Baela frowns. “I think it would be fun.”

“I think you can go without me.” Jace points to Aemond, grinning. “Take him, he likes archaic things. Hell, he is one now.” New lines appear in Aemond’s brow, but he gives no other indication that he’s heard this.

“You can’t spare one afternoon for me?” Baela says; and her words have turned from honey to battery acid. “Are you fucking serious? Do you know what I’ve given up for you?”

Jace sighs heavily. “I knew you were going to make this into a thing.”

“Me?! You’re the person who’s being unfair here, I’m asking for one afternoon—!”

“There’s literally no reason why you can’t go with someone who won’t feel like they’re being tortured for three hours.”

“Torture? That’s what my life’s work is to you? Torture?!”

“Well now I definitely don’t want to go anywhere with you if you’re going to act like this—”

“Act like what, like I want my boyfriend to occasionally show even a vague interest in something I care about—?!”

As they go back and forth, everyone else stares down at their dinner, actively dissociating.

Baela asks you: “You want to weigh in on this?” It’s not really a question.

You take a cagy bite of your baked apple crepe. “Um, honestly, I don’t really have much experience with couples counseling.”

“Great. Now’s your chance to acquire some.”

“Uh…” You eat some more of your crepe, slurp your citron pressé, a sort of do-it-yourself lemonade. Baela waits. Jace smirks at you, attentive but not for the right reasons. “Well. I guess what I can say is that it’s important for both people to have their interests valued and their needs met. So for every activity that Jace chooses, there should be roughly the same amount of time spent on something that Baela wants to do.”

“Yeah but I have a lot less free time,” Jace says. “Since…you know…I happen to be in a world-famous boy band in the midst of their third global tour.”

Baela pitches back: “Exactly, which has completely taken over my life, so I think if I could get just one fucking afternoon where you show me some minuscule amount of appreciation then that might be kind of nice, you know?”

“Jace,” you say gently. You can see on the periphery of your vision that Aemond is watching you, once again hidden behind sunglasses that you know he wishes he didn’t feel the need to wear. “It sounds like this is really important to Baela.”

He sighs again. “Baela, Baela, ballerina,” Jace muses, somewhat affectionately but without respect. “Okay. We’ll see. We might have time tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Baela agrees; but already she looks defeated. And she is not a woman who defeat comes naturally to. She’s been worn down by weeks, months, years of the same rote disappointment. She glances at a street vendor who’s selling falafel. “Hey,” she says to Rhaena. “Go get us some wraps.”

“Me?” Rhaena peers nervously at the falafel cart. “What if he only speaks French? Or some other language I don’t know?”

“Then point to the sign, you’ll figure it out,” Baela replies testily.

“I’ll go too, Rhaena,” you offer. “And you can order but I’ll stand there with you and help if any charades need to be done. Will that make it easier?”

“Sure,” Rhaena says. “Okay. Deal.”

And when you return ten minutes later, along with all the other food you have one order of plain falafel: no yogurt sauce, no wrap. You bring it to Aemond, who is stunned. “What’s this?”

“It’s vegan. Falafel is vegan. So here, your dinner just got a little more exciting.”

“Well…thanks.” He takes it with tentative hands.

“That’s so thoughtful of you!” Luke says cheerfully. “Do they have falafel in Kansas?”

“Missouri,” you correct. “And not really. But I ate a lot of it when I was at UChicago.”

This captures Aemond’s interest. “You went to UChicago?”

“Yes, Aemond. Shockingly, liking sex does not make women stupid.”

His iPhone rings: Mr. Brightside. Less than ideal timing. He rejects the call.

“Who was that?” Criston yells over.

“No one,” Aemond responds irritably.

“Your mom?”

“No, Criston.”

“How’s she doing?”

“She wasn’t the one calling, Criston!”

“Okay but I’m just asking, how is she doing like in general…?”

Back at the hotel, Comet Donati is getting ready for their first show in Paris: drinks in glasses, white lines on tables, hair and makeup, cigarettes and pills. You soak in your massive jacuzzi tub and stare up at the ceiling wondering: What am I doing here? What the hell am I still doing here?

But the thought of actually boarding a plane back to Kansas City is terrifying. Never seeing Aegon again? Never seeing Aemond again? Never seeing any of them except on YouTube or Spotify? You don’t want to leave their orbit. You don’t want to zoom off to the other end of the solar system just yet.

You wrap a towel around yourself and mosey out into the bedroom to get dressed. He’s there inspecting the souvenirs on your nightstand, chuckling and pushing them around with his knuckles, wearing a sequined blazer and skin full of ink: not Aegon, not Aemond, not Cregan, but Jace. You squeal, startled, and clutch your towel tighter around yourself. Unfortunately, it’s a very small towel. A very very small towel.

“These are neat,” Jace says. “So I collect tattoos and you collect souvenirs. We have so much in common.”

“We have exceptionally little in common. What do you want?”

He smiles, but never quite kindly. “What do you want?”

“I want you to take Baela to the ballet,” you say. “And I want you to get out of my room now.”

He turns all the way around to face you. He flings your moose snow globe from Stockholm into the air and then catches it, again, again. “Do you really?”

“Yes, Jace.”

And for a minute, or two, or what feels like forever, he doesn’t move. He just stands there staring at you, not moving any closer but not leaving either. Not listening to you. Not hearing you because he doesn’t want to. And you think, your heart hammering in your chest: At what point should I scream for Aegon or Criston? Will they hear me? Will they help me?

“Alright,” Jace says at last. He sets your moose snow globe back down on the nightstand, roughly, with a loud clunk. Then he walks across your room; but before he disappears through the doorway, he throws you a brass room key. Instinctively, you move to catch it, almost dropping your towel in the process. You snatch it back into place just in time. Jace is amused. Perhaps he planned it that way. “Aegon left that lying around,” Jace says, meaning the key. “Maybe you should be more discriminating when choosing who you give it to.”

“I didn’t give it to him. He took it from Criston.”

“Sure he did.” And finally, Jace leaves, as unwelcome as a funnel cloud or a hailstorm.

Aemond spends the concert in the shadows: pacing, taking his notes, ruminating over his many grudges. You spend it in the front row with Baela and Rhaena, wearing the neon yellow gown you found in Reykjavik. You try not to scan the arena for glimpses of Aemond. You fail miserably. Comet opens their concert with an interesting choice, an upbeat cover of Third Eye Blind’s How’s It Going To Be. When you ask Rhaena about it, she says it was Luke’s idea, which in your experience means it was almost certainly Aemond’s, or at least one that he enthusiastically endorsed. Daeron begins, peppy and animated, strutting across the stage:

“I’m only pretty sure that I can’t take anymore

Before you take a swing

I wonder, what are we fighting for?”

Aegon is next, characteristically a little sloppy, a little shaky, yet getting colossal cheers:

“When I say out loud

I want to get out of this

I wonder is there anything

I’m going to miss?”

Cregan’s voice is deep, sensuous, inviting yet with an edge like a blade:

“I wonder how it’s going to be

When you don’t know me?

How’s it going to be

When you’re sure I’m not there?”

Jace is technically the best singer, rich and smooth and nearly always pitch-perfect:

“How’s it going to be

When there’s no one there to talk to?

Between you and me

‘Cause I don’t care…”

And Luke leads the harmony as guitar notes pluck out of the monstrous speakers:

“How’s it going to be?

How’s it going to be?”

Aside from the cover, the setlist is the same as it’s always been since you joined the tour in Rome…but you’re experiencing it in a new way. You are needled by jealously every time you wonder what woman, moment, day, night inspired one of Aemond’s songs; you are nauseous with envy for everyone who’s ever been able to touch him. When they perform A Girl Named After A Car—which had previously always struck you as fun, light, unserious, perhaps satirical—you are consumed by a specific conspiracy theory. After fighting it for half of the song, you Google two words with your iPhone: Shelby car. Sure enough, there’s a vintage Mustang model called a Shelby. It’s gorgeous. It’s perfect for Aemond.

“Great,” you mutter to yourself.

“You okay?” Rhaena asks.

“Yeah,” you reply, slamming your phone back into your purse. “I’m awesome. I’ve literally never been better.”

“You don’t look awesome,” Baela says, smiling. “That’s okay. I’m not so awesome either at the moment.” She takes your hands and starts spinning you around the floor. “We can be hot bitter bitches together.”

It’s tradition for everyone to hang out after the concert, but you’re in no hurry to get to Jace’s suite; you certainly don’t want to be one of the first people to arrive. You don’t want to be alone with him. You walk very slowly, taking a detour to touch up your hair and makeup. As you are wandering a quiet section of the hallway, you observe that Aemond’s door has been left ever so slightly ajar. You peer inside to find it empty…but his notebook is on his nightstand.

No way, you tell yourself. No no no. Huge violation of privacy and respect.

“Oh yeah?” you object, barely audible. “And what would you call what he said to me?”

You go to the notebook and flip it open. Matte black pages slip beneath your fingertips.

“Just the first page,” you swear to yourself. “That’s all. Then I’m leaving.”

There’s a song written there; or, rather, partially written. He’s only worked out a verse and the chorus so far. Your eyes skim over it with lightning-flash quickness, cognizant that you cannot allow yourself to be caught. At the top of the page is one word in pale gleaming ink like pearls, opal, moonstone: Magic.

(Ver1) You walk into the room and I think:

How am I going to get you out of me?

Are you an infection, a lethal connection,

Or are you a fire to burn me clean?

“Nice,” you breathe, with hushed awe you wish you didn’t have.

(Chorus) Are you a witch or are you a spell,

Is loving you gonna be heaven or hell?

Black cats and white salt, ladders and doorframes

I think of magic every time you look my way

There are drunken, giggling voices and the sound of doors opening and closing in the hallway. You scurry out of Aemond’s suite and proceed to Jace’s before anyone thinks to come searching for you.

The room is thick with label executives and hangers-on, smoke and music; Watch by Maisie Peters is playing. She’s a friend of the band. You’re reasonably sure Aegon has hooked up with her, or at least aspires to. Speaking of Aegon, he is currently flitting around with Cregan. He stops briefly to say hi to you, a chilled emerald bottle of Kronenbourg 1664 in one hand, white powder on the other. He’s there and then he’s gone again. He might as well have been slingshotted to the other end of the galaxy. Criston is standing by the open balcony doors and talking to Daeron. Jace is at the bar laughing loudly—obnoxiously, hyena-like—with some mid-twenties guys you don’t recognize. Baela is glaring at him from one of the couches, seated next to Rhaena and Luke. But when she sees you, the rage vanishes from her face. She waves you over rather frantically.

“Look, I know this probably isn’t going to help your situation, but I just wanted to let you know that I am really, really hoping you’ll be willing to stay with us a little longer—”

“Yes! Totally!” Luke seconds, nodding.

“—And it’s not like we’re going to forget about you or prefer her over you or anything—”

“No, definitely not,” Luke says.

“What are you talking about?” you ask them. “Prefer who?”

Rhaena grabs your hand and squeezes it. You follow her eyeline across the room to the opposite couch, a mirage through warm smoke and icy dread. And you think: I should have known. I shouldn’t be surprised. Of course it would be here—in this city of Instagram models and Hallmark-card romance—that she would reappear like the moon growing large again after fading to a sliver, everything back in its rightful place, nature restored to harmony.

Sitting beside Aemond—on his good side, his unscarred side—is Shelby.

[nesiacha]

Reflections on the Comments of Maximilien Robespierre and Manon Roland on Condorcet

Nicolas Condorcet (1743-1794)

A long time ago, I found on the excellent site Les Amis de Robespierre what Madame Roland and Robespierre thought of Condorcet. Here is the link: Les Amis de Robespierre. I will translate the thoughts of the different protagonists from this article and give my personal opinion.

Robespierre's Opinion on Condorcet: Condorcet and Robespierre often attacked each other on the issue of war in 1792. Robespierre said about Condorcet’s articles that he knows "nothing worse and more treacherous." After the arrest of the Girondins, when Condorcet fled, Robespierre apparently said, "This coward Caritat, who, like his friend Brissot, fled national justice, and who no less deserved it," and "The coward Condorcet began to fear the responsibility for his liberty-destroying impostures." A few days after the last statement, Condorcet died, either by suicide, from understandable stress, or, some say, possibly murder (I personally doubt the third hypothesis, but I mention it nonetheless).

In his speech on May 7, 1794, when Robespierre spoke about religion and morality based on republican principles, he released new cutting remarks against Condorcet: "A timid conspirator, despised by all parties," and whose writings are described as "the treacherous jumble of his mercenary rhapsodies." Such violent and cutting words against Condorcet. Yet, on the insult of cowardice, someone else who was initially allied with Robespierre before becoming an enemy would join him in this term.

Manon Roland's Opinion on Condorcet: The woman who was called muse of the Gironde had harsh words for Condorcet in her memoirs. She described him as "weak of heart and health," and added, "A brief note on Condorcet, « whose spirit will always be on the level of the greatest truths, but whose character will never be above fear." She concluded about him, "Such men should be left to write and never employed."

My Reflections: I thought these were heavy words. Of course, Condorcet also said very harsh things, and it must be said that my boundless admiration for him when I was very young (especially since the activist he was for gender equality could only please the future feminist in me) was greatly tempered when I read his equally cutting speech about Robespierre. Speaking of Robespierre in this way: "He talks about God and Providence; he calls himself a friend of the poor and the weak; he gets followed by women and weak-minded people. He gravely receives their adoration and homage, disappears with danger, and is seen only when danger is past. Robespierre is a priest and will never be anything else," I need not say more about what irritated me when he spoke of women this way. Firstly, there were many politically active women who did not follow Robespierre or necessarily the ideals of Condorcet. Should we, for example, speak of Albertine Marat who declared to Alphonse Esquiros, "She then spoke to me about Robespierre with bitterness. 'There was nothing in common,' she added, 'between him and Marat. Had my brother lived, the heads of Danton and Camille Desmoulins would not have fallen.'" Even if I slightly disagree with this part that if Marat had survived, Danton's head would not have fallen (Danton being a very corrupt character and Marat starting to doubt him greatly, especially according to the excellent biography of Danton written by Frédériche Bluche), we are far from admiration for Robespierre from an important revolutionary activist like Marat's sister. And this is just one example among many. We can profoundly disagree with men and women for their political convictions, but what makes feminism and above all gender equality is not imposing a woman's way of life, whether it be thoughts or convictions. I will make a provocation by paraphrasing Voltaire to transpose what I mean: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Although personally being cowardly, I would not do it to the death, this exactly reflects what a feminist person should be. And clearly, Condorcet did not respect this part, which makes his conception of gender equality totally imperfect (to put it mildly) by lumping many women together with Robespierre's speech and mocking their political convictions. I feel with him that as long as these women were in agreement with him, it was acceptable, but as soon as they had different political convictions, he cataloged and despised them.

However, do I agree with what Manon Roland and Robespierre said about him? Is everything to be discarded from Condorcet?

Regarding Robespierre, let's not forget that he was an adversary of Condorcet, so it should be taken with a LOT of caution. And let’s not forget that when Robespierre made his speeches, he himself committed acts that can be easily criticized.

Regarding Manon Roland, let’s not forget that Condorcet had positions that were quite difficult to situate within the Girondins and Montagnards split. The group we will call the Girondins did not like to be called that way, and there were more political dissensions between them, and Condorcet did not share all the positions of the Brissotins. So, her words should also be taken with some caution, and she too has things to be blamed for.

But let’s think, would a coward have moderated his criticisms on the moderation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the Constitution of 1791? Because he publicly showed strong criticism.

He was a fervent opponent of the death penalty and stuck to his principles to the end. While some Girondins tried to spare Louis XVI not out of abolitionist conviction or royalism – most were republicans, including some before their time, like Manon Roland – but to not further legitimize the day of August 10, 1792, Condorcet voted against the death penalty out of conviction, whereas Robespierre, who had been an opponent of the death penalty, voted for the death of Louis XVI, rejecting the reprieve. However, he also felt that Louis XVI’s high treason deserved an exemplary punishment, being one of the few to demand that he be condemned to the galleys. He also advocated very early for the rights of Black people. Furthermore, what hastened Condorcet’s end was his condemnation of the arrest of the Brissotins – although his end was accelerated by the fact that he fled, which led to his death sentence in the summer of 1793. To my eyes, a coward would not have condemned the arrest of the Brissotins publicly. He would not have voted in contradiction to his own camp for his convictions (on this point, there is a certain parallel to be made with Robespierre facing the Constituent Assembly of 1789-1791, as Robespierre often intervened against a large majority to make his political ideas and those of so many others triumph).

Of course, I find it unfortunate that in popular culture, Condorcet is often forgiven for his mistakes because he also made mistakes that endangered the French Revolution, particularly the question of war, or what he said about women when he attacked Robespierre. His Panthéonization, for me, is deserved given that he, along with others, advocated generous ideas, and in his biography by historian Antoine Resche, “a public instruction project which, if it was not taken into account under the Revolution, laid the foundations of the school as it has been conceived since the Third Republic, that is, necessarily widespread education, by degrees,” but it is unfortunate that popular culture forget, especially Louis Michel Le Peletier, who proposed a mixed, free, and compulsory primary project defended by Robespierre. When speaking of revolutionaries defending the rights of female citizens, Condorcet is highlighted but not Charles Gilbert Romme, Guyomar, Charlier, and many others. Even more so, we forget revolutionary women like Théroigne de Méricourt, Pauline Léon, Claire Lacombe, Simone Evrard, Albertine Marat, Marie-Anne Babeuf, and many others, as the list is long.

In conclusion, what do I think of Condorcet now that you know that my admiration for him as a teenager has long been greatly tempered and that he is not among my favorite revolutionaries? Well, I still have a fondness for him, a recognition, and a admiration for him like for other revolutionaries, including Manon Roland and Robespierre, although they are not in my top 20 either and not my favorites characters of the frev. They were, fundamentally, complex people caught in a complex period who made, of course , grave and even unforgivable mistakes, but as was said on Tumblr, faultless revolutionaries are quite rare ( (even if there are people in my eyes who are indefensible or rotten like Fouché, Carrier, Tallien, Barras, Charles X, etc.) especially during these during this hellish period of civil war, external and former leaders like Louis XVI who betrayed his people or émigrés who were ready to do anything to destroy the necessary gains of the revolution. . And they are still considered today in a period that is a victim of a black legend that must be constantly combated .

P.S : Forgive me is there was an article Tumblr about what said Manon Roland and Robespierre about Condorcet I checked but I might have missed it

[matchesarelit]

Imagine If You Will...

(Spencer Agnew Drabble)

So... the Mountain mall wasn't the worst place to work, the crowds were anything but chaotic, but tucked away in the info booth you found yourself often able to focus on simple directions and parking validation, for the most part, that is of course until the Dew™ released a new flavor, and distributing samples became part of the job description.

Smosh Masterlist

A/N: Obvs no affiliation with mtn dew

Swinging your feet back and forth, you swiveled in aimless circles, the tepid weather outside mixed with the lack of any seasonal sales had left the mall all but empty. The heavy thud of a box sounded from the other side of the desk, as Samantha dropped the package off, In your months working under these specific fluorescents this box was the first of its kind. Yet the packaging was anything but non-descript; cold neon greens and the little mountain graphics coated not only the cardboard but the bright pink tape that bound it.

Reaching across the bench to pull it over, you sliced it open revealing another layer of wrapping, once again neon green, the tissue paper was nicely tied with a ribbon, yet seemed to be about to burst.

Finally reaching product after sifting through the copious amounts of padding you were somewhat confused by the abundance of cans, 'Is this... our yearly bonus?' your words were muttered somewhat in jest but were laced with confusion nonetheless. Tugging some sort of invoice from her back pocket, your colleague read out 'Sampling Product', her finger forming bunny rabbits over the phrase.

"So we're giving out samples now? I guess its somewhat informative...?" You mused still not truly convinced.

"It does mention it adds a fiver to our hourly rates for the next couple months.' she added with her eyebrows raised.

"Well then" you muttered hands on your hips, suddenly much more impassioned over the news "Better get to it then oh-" As you ferreted through the box you retrieved a few tees; the 'i' information symbol on the front and the Mountain Dew advertising on the back- honestly not too horrendous...if you ignore the familiar neon green of the fabric.

The next day, you'd donned the bright shirt and as you began to stack a little tower of cans, on the smallest of folding tables, you watched the stores slowly open up for the day ahead. The weather was once again mild inside and outside the shopping center, but the day dragged on. You would swear it took hours for the long hand of the clock to shift even slightly, and even worse by the time it hit ten you'd already received four separate complaints about your attire and the shelling of so called 'sugary garbage' ... Cause yes Dorris I chose for this mall to be owned by Mtn Dew, me the person at the info desk at nine AM on a Sunday...

Nevertheless, customer service frustrations aside, the day passed easily enough, a few samples were taken with mixed reactions, a couple four-packs bought, but otherwise it was business as usual.

"Excuse me-uh am I able to try some of this" The man on the other side of the desk was peering through his curls to look between you and the signage sheepishly. Trotting out from the behind information desk to the small folding table with a nod, you grabbed one of the tiny sample cups, filled it and handed it to him as he exchanged a quiet 'thank you'. Expecting the exchange to end there you turned to retreat to your station, only for him to speak up once more catching you in the act...

"So um-'Ultimate'...what flavor is that?" Sizing him up somewhat as you reached for a can you relented, curious of his reaction to the overzealous biography printed on the back of the can, "The description we get from the can is 'Chaos Berries grown on mountain alcoves, watered with traditional dew.'"

He looked back at you somewhat vacantly, seemingly lost in the avant-garde flavor description, so in an attempt to shock his system you countered with a giggle; "But to me it just tastes like lime." After your confession he found his words quite quickly in turn.

"I was just thinking the same thing - the lime thing- not the um- Chaos Berries" His tone was jovial but still immensely hesitant.

"Do you like it? In my experience that's all that really matters," Suddenly feeling it important that the conversation continues you found some words you weren't entirely sure fit together as you stuttered on; "I-Its like I always say; the real chaos berries are the friends we tasted along the way." Okay. So they definitely didn't all go together, at least not in the same analogy, and yet in place of his confused stare he was now looking at you with a warm smile. You thought it must have been the sweetest smile you'd ever received, his eyes were crinkled slightly on the edges in good natured amusement and overall it left nothing for you to do but return it as best you could.

"Well um thank you, I- should um-" He motioned to a random store as he waved goodbye briefly before starting off after a solid minute of silence between the pair of you. You waved to him briefly before retreating to your seat to find a small queue in front of your desk waiting for assistance. Quickly returning to work with a fresh warmth in your cheeks, you tried your best to focus on the task at hand for the hours to come.

[k17y]

ㅤㅤㅤI   AM   REWORKING   ALL   OF   MY   MUSE’S   BIOS:   DYNAMICS   ARE   INEVITABLE   DESPITE   MY   BEST   ATTEMPTS.   THERE   ARE   JUST   TOO   MANY   MUSES   THAT   ARE   IMPORTANT   TO   KITTY’S   DEVELOPMENT   &   I   SHALL   STOP   FIGHTING   IT,

@fizzarollitm   -   THAT’S   HER   BIG   BROTHER, @jizzlords   -   THAT’S   HER   SUPER   HOT   BROTHER   IN   LAW, @p1mp1n   -   THAT’S   HER   DADDY, @m0neybags   -   THAT’S   HER   MONEY   DADDY, @reshelldential   -   THAT’S   HER   BOYFRIEND, @voxistem   -   THAT’S   HER   [ redacted ]

ㅤㅤㅤTHERE’S…   SO   MUCH   MORE   ACTUALLY,   BUT   THE   FINALIZED   LIST   WILL   BE   PLACED   ON   THE   REWORKED   BIOGRAPHY   PAGE   ( WHICH,   YES,   I   WILL   LET   EVERYONE   KNOW   +   LINK   IT   IN   THE   PINNED )   IF   ANY   OF   MY   MUTUALS   WANT   TO   ESTABLISH   A   DYNAMIC   &   BE   ADDED   TO   THE   LIST,   PLEASE   LET   ME   KNOW   <3

[noforkingclue]

Hey if you're still taking requests for Thomas Thorne from Ghost BBC, would it be alright for me to drop this in,? Got the idea after reading your work for him with a singer!reader. (This sweetheart of a man needs more love)

An old childhood friend of Alison or Mike, who is an author who hides behind a pen name. When the couple heard how they are trying to look for a temporary new place to stay to try get some fresh new ideas for a story they offered a room to her which she takes up. During her stay she ends up catching Thomas eyes as she works on her latest novel for a tragic romance, with over hearing her saying some poems/haikus out loud to see how it sounds before adding it in to the story. By the time she's finished she asked them if it's possible for her to rent a room for her next work since the stay seems to really kick up her creativity for more stories in the future.

(Bonus: if you wanna make this a NSFW, wile writing a spicy scene, she ends up getting so worked up she has to relive herself only for Thomas to walk in at that moment.... breaking his brain at the sight before him)

Note: requests are currently closed

Of course anon! I didn't include the NSFW bit as I don't write NSFW for Ghosts.

Any way, hope you like it :)

Title: His Muse

“Thanks for letting me stay here Alison. I really appreciate it.”

You set down your suitcase and looked around the room. You swore that the room was bigger than your flat. Alison and Mike stood in the doorway.

“Don’t mention it,” said Alison, “and sorry the room is in a bit of a state. Mike was-”

“We were.” interrupted Mike

“Mike was,” continued Alison, “meant to get ‘round to decorating it.”

“Hey, I was busy! I had to fix the electrics and then the boiler…”

“Honestly guys, it’s perfect. I just need a space away from the flat at the moment. You know what they say, a change of scene can help get the creative juices flowing.”

Alison nodded and Mike looked curious as you set up your laptop.

“What are you going to be writing?” he asked

“Not sure yet,” you said, “that’s why I’m hoping a change of scenery would help.”

“Well we’ll let you get settled in. Give us a shout if you need anything.” said Alison, pushing Mike out of the door and leaving you alone.

After they left you shiver. Button House was truly a beautiful place. Yes, it was a bit run down but you could feel the history seeping through the walls. You looked out of the window and admired the scenery. It was so quiet here although you couldn’t quite shake the feeling that you were being watched. Well, guess that was the curse of these old places- too much history could make you think that it was haunted

*

“Alison. Alison who is that.”

Alison sighed as Fanny’s shrill voice cut through the clamour of the other ghosts.

“She’s a friend,” Alison replied, “she’ll be staying here for a while.”

“Why!”

“She’s an author,” said Alison,”she wanted somewhere to write.”

Now this caused all the ghosts to immediately become more.

“What’s she writing?”

“It should be an adventure story!”

“Don’t be stupid. It should be a biography about a distinguished Conservative politician who-”

“Died without trousers.”

“Who had a very influential career and helped inspire younger generations in politics.”

Alison pinched the bridge of her nose as she ignored the ghosts and tried her best not to walk through any of them as she made her way away from them. She didn’t notice Thomas staring at the door to your room with a dreamy expression.

“A fellow artist.” he said softly

*

You tapped your pen on the desk as you stared at the blank word document in front of you. The little blinking line was taunting you. It was just radiating a smugness. Knowing that you could put down all the words you wanted to say.

You just had to think of them first.

‘Divine’

You froze and looked over your shoulder. You could’ve sworn that you heard-

You shook your head and turned back to your laptop. No, it was just your mind playing tricks on you. Staying in an old house your overactive imagination was playing tricks on you. Just a pity that it wouldn’t work with the book you were trying to write.

‘Soul mates. Kept apart by time and death.’

This time you stood up. You had definitely heard something, you knew it. You slowly walked around the room.

“I know you’re here,” you said, “even if I can’t see you. I’m not going mad. However,” you took a deep breath, “I’m trying to work so if you don’t mind fucking off.”

You stood there for another minute and then sat down. You looked back at your laptop and paused. What was that the voice had said? Soul mates separated by time and death? Now that you could do something with.

Thomas sighed as he left the room. He sunk down to the floor as he heard you tapping away on that… machine of yours. It didn’t have the same romance as writing out words by hand but things had changed a lot since he had died.

He only hoped that he had done enough to inspire you. To become your muse.

“Thomas, mate, what are you doing here?”

Pat approached him, giving him a disapproving look.

“Alison told you to leave y/n alone. She needs space to think.”

“Oh I am aware,” sighed Thomas, standing up, “I was only hoping that I might inspire her in the same way that she so inspired me.”

Pat gave him an infuriatingly disapproving look and Thomas stood up. He smiled again as he heard you tapping away and let Pat usher him away.

Maybe his job was done.

*

“Y’know,” you said through a spoonful of cereal, “I really think this is working.”

“Oh?”

Alison looked up from her coffee.

“Yeah, I’m actually writing!”

“That’s great,” said Mike, “what’s it about? Oh yeah, don’t forget to credit us in the book. Y’know, plug Button House.”

“Mike!” said Alison

“What?” said Mike, “got to plug the business.”

You smiled and laughed lightly.

“Of course I’ll credit you guys,” you said, “if it weren’t for you two I doubt I would’ve written a word!”

You took another spoonful of your cereal.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” you said, “do you think I could stay for a bit longer?”

“Stay?”

Mike and Alison glanced at each other.

“It’s just I feel so much better here,” you continued, “so much more inspired. I’ll pay rent of course.”

“Done,” Mike slung an arm over your shoulders and led you out of the kitchen, “we’ll get something drafted up. Make it official.”

“Thanks Mike. Oh yeah, been meaning to ask, is this place haunted?”

Alison didn’t need to see Mike’s face to know that he was immediately panicked. Maybe, when things are a bit more settled, maybe she’ll gently bring up the subject with you.

“Is she staying?”

She jumped as Thomas stuck his head through the wall. He beamed as she nodded.

“My muse,” he said again, “my muse. You must read her book to me once it is done. So I can see how much I inspired her”

“Oh fuck.” Alison said as Thomas disappeared

[historiavn]

RAHHH I FINISHED MY MUSE LIST

Muses are sorted using the Google Docs tab feature

This document is best viewed either on desktop or the Google Docs mobile app with the Print Layout feature toggled on.

Underlined content means that a hyperlink is contained within the text. This really only applies to my original characters, where there’s hyperlinks to biographies for historical figures and events tied to their backstories.

[villainsrph]

004. TRUE LOVE. — $7. adjustable carrd template. made with single muse blogs in mind, but is fully customizable and includes a template paragraph for a muses list. pages included are home, rules, about, verses, & mains. about page features space for stats and biography. home page features space for a small description.

fairly easy to edit, but does require knowledge of adjusting multiple containers colors, highlight text colors, etc. small tutorial included inside with editing notes/tips. multiple spots for quotes/extra info either below or above buttons, and optional images. each page includes spots for two images. does not require pro lite.

- do not claim as your own or redistribute. personal use only. - adjust and edit as needed! (adding or removing containers and sections, fonts, colors, etc.) please do not remove or move credit! as long as there's credit, please feel free to edit / customize as desired! - if you're thinking of signing up for or upgrading your carrd account, consider using my code VRPH ! - demo available & purchase here !

I'm open to kind and constructive feedback! please reach out with any questions or suggestions for future templates, things I can do better, etc! if there's any problems with purchasing or editing, don't hesitate to message me.  thank you so much !

interested in custom work or custom graphics for this template? I offer commissions !

[spell-bloom]

chaaostheory's oh hey? whatup? theme with my edits

Okay so to preface, I know fuck all about coding, but with a little help of W3Schools and Stack Overflow I was able to achieve what I wanted. If you have any issues, please don't hesitate to dm/ask me. All credits for this wonderful code goes to @chaaostheory

Features:

fontawesome 5.1 icons

hint.css tooltips 

scrollable biography section along with two other small boxes

scrollable stat box

six links

a traits box with space for six traits

a tv tropes box with space for nine tropes

side statics for development, availability, etc. 

My Edits:

locked the character selection tab to not follow when you scroll down the screen

allowed the character selection tab to scroll when you have many muses

changed the titles for the sorting hat and wand info boxes for personal preference.

dark version for people who have light sensitivity

hovering over the first character box has the pop up below instead of above

Stuff to Remember:

when adding new characters, be sure to change the number or else the code will break

when editing the bio and extra info boxes, be sure to use paragraph breaks

the side statics follow when you scroll down the scren, fixing it completely messed up the code

CODES: Dark version / Light version

THIS HAS JAVASCRIPT

[chaotic-history]

The Nouvelle Biographie Générale's article on Villette, 1866

Because my sleep-deprived brain decided last night that translating Villette things was clearly my top priority. Footnotes like this (1) are original; the ones like this ¹ are added by me.

VILLETTE (Charles, marquis DE), born December 4, 1736, in Paris, where he died on July 9, 1793. His father, treasurer extraordinary of war, left him a 150,000 livre pension; his mother was popular for her wit and her beauty: he therefore had an easy path in the world. After having gone on a handful of campaigns, he returned to Paris (1763) with the rank of quartermaster general of the cavalry [maréchal général des logis de la cavalerie]. He was imprisoned, for what reason we don’t know¹, in the Strasbourg citadel; as soon as he had left at the end of six months, he went to Ferney to seek out Voltaire, who had been a friend of his mother. ‘I currently have at home with me to cheer me up’, wrote Voltaire, ‘a young M. de Villette, who knows all the verses that have ever been written, and who writes them himself, who sings, who does impressions of other people quite amusingly, who tells stories, who is a pantomime, who would delight even the inhabitants of this sad Geneva’². With the support of the philosophe, whom he didn’t hesitate to call his father, Villette threw himself into the literary world, wrote many verses, competed for prizes from the Académie Française which he didn’t win, and above all sang in every tone praises of Voltaire, who reciprocated doubly by calling him the French Tibullus. Displaying with effrontery his taste for unnatural vices, as was attested to by his contemporaries, it was thought that he would not marry, until he married a person equally distinguished by her virtues and by her amiable qualities in the Ferney chapel in 1777, and he thus became, according to a rueful joke of the patriarch of Ferney, a doctor in utroque³. He had with her a son, whom he had baptised in 1792 under the name of Voltaire-Villette. This marriage did not prevent him from returning to his vicious habits, nor from engaging in scandalous intrigues with fashionable women, among whom were Mlles Arnould et Raucourt. At the time of the revolution, Villette drafted the cahiers du bailliage for Sentis, in which he spoke warmly of the new principles, and he collaborated on the Chronique de Paris. Named deputy of Oise for the National Convention (1792), he protested strongly against the September massacres, and voted, in the trial of Louis XVI, for his imprisonment [rather than his execution]. He succumbed a few months later to a languishing illness. He owned the hôtel where Voltaire lived in Paris, on the quai which today bears his name; he acquired the château de Ferney and preserved the heart of his protector (1) in an urn bearing this inscription:

His spirit is everywhere and his heart is here.

Of a very slim literary talent, Villette was truly what Mme du Deffand called him: ‘a comic character’⁴. The wits of the time did not spare him; people laughed especially at his belief that he could share in Voltaire’s fame, and this epigram ran for a long time throughout Paris:

Little Villette, it is in vain

That you aspire to glory;

You will never be anything but a dwarf

Who plays a giant on the comic stage.

However, he was kind, devoted to his friends, and during the revolution he showed real courage in standing firm in his beliefs against the prejudices of the nobility and against revolutionary excesses. Palissot assures us that Villette’s best works should be attributed to Gugeland, his secretary. Be that as it may, these are the works which he had printed: Éloge de Henri IV; Paris, 1770, in-4°; Éloges Historiques de Charles V et de Henri IV; Amsterdam (Paris), 1772, in-4°; La Patroclée, ou Commencement du Seizième Chant de l’Iliade, Traduction Littérale en Vers; Paris, 1778, in-8°: Palissot attributes this to Voltaire; various pieces in the Almanach des Muses, reprinted in Œuvres de Boufflers et de Villette; London (Paris), 1782, in-18; Œuvres du Marquis de Villette; London and Paris, 1784, in-12, and 1786, in-16; Edinburgh and Paris, 1788, in-8°: in general, his Lettres contain interesting anecdotes. Between 1784 and 1792, Villette presented eight operas to the Académie Royale de Musique, which seem to have been neither put on nor succesful.

(1) This relic, preserved by his son, was given in 1864 to the government, which had it placed in one of the rooms of the Bibliothèque Impériale [now the Bibliothèque Nationale de France].

¹Like pretended father, like son, it was for causing a stir by planning to duel a lieutenant-colonel whom he had publicly insulted, according to Grimm’s correspondence.

²Voltaire to the comte d’Argental, February 27, 1765

³In utroque jure, meaning a doctor of both civil and ecclesiastical law, ie., if Villette gets married he will have sex with women as well as with men. Voltaire uses the term in this way in a letter to Villette from June 7, 1765.

⁴Mme du Deffand to Horace Walpole, February 12, 1775

[deadn30n]

btw, my muse list has been updated ( removed some muses, added some muses ) as well as linked biographies and updated other links

i'm still working on bios and will be adding them probably over the next week, but please make sure to take a glance so you know who's still available to write with and who isn't!

[notoriousaesthetics]

✧ ( 03. 𝐏𝐄𝐓𝐀𝐋 & 𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐋) ── // LINK a single muse google doc.

───  𝒅𝒆𝒔𝒄𝒓𝒊𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏.

this is a premium single muse google doc that's inspired by marie antoinette / sofia coppola, the rococo art movement, the regency era and coquette fashion. this doc encourages heavy amounts of writing specifically for the biography sections which can be extended on repeat. the easiest way to adjust images is ensuring that you replace them! there's also a good amount of drawing assets in the doc as well. this google doc layout also looks best on desktop! includes: 8 unique custom google doc templates + an additional instruction document that explains the terms of use & further guidelines. disclaimer: ✺ images do not belong to me and are credited to their rightful owners. ✺ the image coloring psd used can be found here ( click here for psd coloring )

───  𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒎𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒖𝒔𝒆.

PERMITTED

customizing the templates, including changing colors, adding or removing elements, replacing images, and more.

mixing and matching pages from other notoriousaesthetic only templates to personalize design.

NOT PERMITTED

removing or obscuring the credit; it must remain intact and visible on all templates.

using the templates in illegal, defamatory, or otherwise harmful projects.

copying, selling, or redistributing the templates, whether in their original form, partially (e.g., individual pages), or remixed (e.g., modified versions).

── ✧ THANK YOU!

please ▸ ( like/reblog) ◂ this if you found this useful and intend to use the google doc! for any further questions, please contact me via tumblr or join my discord for additional assistance!

[fcrox]

He was a lion among the weak, a tempest among a calm forest; the hidden shadow waiting to strike. Always. A smile that concealed as much as it revealed, and eyes that wove riddles instead of offering answers. He was a man weaving gold thread out of rubble and dirt.

✧ threads ✧ about ✧ headcanon ✧ the mail ✧ ✧ aesthetics ✧ musings ✧ connections ✧ mirror ✧

BASIC INFORMATION

FULL NAME: Amycus Harlow Carrow

ALIAS/NICKNAME: Carrow, Crow, Myc (hates it), Amy

AGE: Twenty Seven

BIRTH DATE: April 1st, 1952

BLOOD STATUS: Pureblood

AFFILIATION: Death Eaters

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Cis-Man. He/him

CURRENT LIVING CONDITIONS: Townhouse, London

OTHER: Carrow Manor, Cottage outside of Hogsmeade

OCCUPATION: Alchemist, Owns a shop in Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley with alchemical portals connecting them, called Aureum Solis

PETS: Titus (northern hawk owl)

WAND: Walnut, Dragonheart string, 13 1/2, hard flexibility

PATRONUS: Osprey

BOGGART: a cage for all eternity

AMORTENTIA: unknown.

SCENT: gun powder, chamomile, caramel

INSPIRATION

SONG: Insane by Black Gryph0n, Ruthlessness by Steven Rodriguez, Like you mean it by Steven Rodriguez, Villain by K/DA, Blood sweat and tears by Arcane/Sheryl Lee Ralph, The Line by Twenty One Pilots, Time by Hans Zimmer

PINTEREST: to be added here !!

AESTHETIC: The shimmer of gold, the darkness of a starless night, the echo of sound from another room, a dark cave, a table of alchemy ingredients, the sound of bubbling cauldrons and flasks, a shadow shapeshifting from a shadow into purest forms of light, a shatter glass vial, the wish for immortality and a greater beyond

RELATIONSHIPS

PARENTS: Eris and Erebus Carrow.

SIBLINGS: Alecto Carrow (twin sister).

SIGNIFICANT OTHER: None.

OTHER FAMILY: Rabastan Lestrange (brother-in-law).

CHILDREN: None.

EDUCTATION:

SCHOOL: Hogwarts

HOUSE: Slytherin

EXTRACURRICULAR: Charms Club, Astronomy Club, Herbology Club

CLASSES INVESTED IN: Alchemy, Potions, Herbology, Defense against the Dark Arts, Transformation, Charms

SPOKEN LANGUAGES: English, Welsh, Spanish, Russian

OTHER LANGUAGES: Ancient Runes (reading)

PHYSICAL TRAITS

EYE COLOR: Hazel

HAIR COLOR: Dark Blonde/Light Brown

HEIGHT: 5'11"

SCARS: dddd

PERSONALITY

INTELLIGENCE: Very High. Adaptive.

SKILLS: Wandless magic (decent), Dueling (practicing, decent), Non-Verbal Magic (decent), Fiendfyre Casting and control (expert), Alchemical Knowledge (decent, adept, seeking to become an expert)

POSITIVE TRAITS: Creative, Patient, Cunning, Determined, Invested

NEGATIVE TRAITS: Vicious, Duplicitous, Manipulative, Stubborn

MBTI: INFJ

BIOGRAPHY:

Born April 1st, 1952 Amycus came into the world shortly before his sister, Alecto. A fact he holds over her to this day, the wizard is and always has been more than proud thinking himself to be the older of the two. And the more emotional twin.

His childhood was spent with the education of every pureblood wizard, the standard curriculum that one would follow until the day that the Hogwarts letter would arrive. By then Amycus already knew both the expectations of others as well as his own wishes and needs. Early on her found himself drawn to the art of alchemy, the magic behind it. At the end of the day wasn’t it the one true way that the world was woven?

Upon his arrival at Hogwarts young Amycus was sorted into Slytherin, found himself at home and granted his parents’ approval on the matter. He found himself a group of friends, never having to look back. Beyond that it was immediately clear that he’d taken a liking to certain matters and over the years Transfiguration, Charms, Potions and eventually Alchemy became part of his class roster and daily schedule. There was something drawing him in, into the art of turning one thing into another. To him any of those topics and classes inevitably ended with exactly that, whether it was the simple transfiguration of one item to another or the way charms seemed to adjust the flow of things, all the way down to the way alchemy seemed to have the power to take one element only to replace it with another. It was magic in its purest form.

And so, upon graduation, Amycus found an apprenticeship with an alchemist. He was dedicated and willing to learn, eventually become a full-fledged alchemist himself who then, years later would open his own shop, Aureum Solis. With time a second location was added, in Hogsmeade and over time a portal was constructed, his own invention outside any network.

Of course, the war did not miss the wizard. Given his family and friends, the young man found himself equally drawn to the cause of the Dark Lord. After all, wasn’t the idea of purity the path he walked as well? Amycus was ambitious, and so he joined up with the others and eventually received the Dark Mark. The wizard doesn’t deny his involvement in the cause, if asked but is also smart enough not to parade the fact around.

Over recent years the older Carrow twin has managed to establish himself as one of the top alchemists for the cause. Always on the search for more, the desire to discover even the path to immortality has been added to his goals. Amycus has become someone to supply his fellow Death Eaters with things such as small smoke nades and other items. Just recently he’s discovered a way to turn almost anything to stone, wondering just what he can use that fun little party trick for.

[eldritchxembers]

For: Juice's Muses | @hxesandruin Location: Tattoo Parlor Character: Aris | Biography

Aris sat at the small table in the corner of the tattoo shop, a half-finished design spread out in front of him. The hum of the shop and the sound of needles buzzing in the background barely registered as he focused on the details. A few ideas were scribbled in the margins, but nothing felt quite right. It had been a few months since he’d arrived in town, and he had built up a solid clientele - then again - people would fly in just for one of his tattoos.

But then there was this client in Cardinal Hill. They weren’t exactly close friends, but there was something comfortable about them. It was a loose friendship, and Aris didn’t mind that.

With a frustrated exhale, Aris pushed his chair back and ran his fingers through his hair, then pulled the sketch closer, his eyes narrowing as he tried to find that missing piece. He hated taking over another tattooist's designs but the artist had flaked, and Aris wasn't about to let a potential client just ... miss out on good ink.

“Alright,” he muttered under his breath, “what’s missing here?”

He glanced over toward the door as it swung open, catching sight of the man stepping inside. A quick smile tugged at Aris’s lips. “Hey, you’re right on time. Just give me a sec, I’m working on your design. Ah - sorry, the other guy had an emergency or something... so... ” He gestured to the sketchpad with a flick of his hand. “Want to take a look? I’m thinking about adding a bit more shading here, but I’m not sure.” Aris rubbed his chin thoughtfully, still unsure about the design but knowing he could trust the feedback. "What do you think? Anything you’d want to add or change? Or I could scrap it and do something in my style. 'Cause this is kinda shit."

[mihai-florescu]

just finished the central concerto and. okay this is a little bit of a tangent but while i was reading it i was reminded of this book of poetry we had at the place i did my internship called The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky and i wanted to see if any of the poetry was available online (there are a few on poets.org but far and away from everything) and discovered that there was an orchestral suite based on the poems under the same name with three movements I. And Musing Awhile II. Luna and Stella and III. Trail of Tears. I found them all on youtube performed by the London Philharmonic and definitely recommend listening to them. They made an interesting background to read the second half of the central concerto to.

The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky is a translation of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft's Ojibwe name though and she's considered one of the first native poets in the United States. I have opinions on her fuckass husband but Jane herself is fine from everything I've heard about her. I do wish more of her poetry was available online outside of the 2007 publication of her manuscripts but alas... well anyway central concerto was good this is just my long winded way of getting there. -📖

I apologize for taking so long to reply, i wanted to read the poems and listen to the songs with a clearer mind, which romanian politics this past few days has made... difficult... not to go on a tangent but there are ideas spouted by the man currently in the lead in the presidential election that i have never heard from any other politician, no matter how insane. Everything is a conspiracy. Water is not h2o. C sections are a manipulation to make women lose the divine thread that connects them to their babies and we should stop them, as well as abortions (obvi. What far right man would be pro). And his campaign has been made in the last months... on tiktok... no one normal knew who he was until he suddenly was in the lead after the first round of voting This Weekend. Tangent over, but a needed reference for my excuse to why i am more scatter brained than usual.

I read the poems on poetry.org as well as her biography, native american writers is not a topic i know very much about and as always im grateful you show me new and interesting things! A lot revolving around michigan, which i am glad i can picture in my mind even if my memories are blurry. I liked the poem Invocation in particular. As for the music, i enjoyed it but cant really say much as it's not a topic im qualified whatsoever to comment on. Im a fan of one art medium paying homage to a piece from another though (of course, as a fan of musical adaptations of various books, it's something ive been fond of for years. Theres something uniquely beautiful in creating something that in turn can inspire another work of art to be born, adding to the richness of creation and life itself. Maybe one of the qualities i love most about art in general, this ability to inspire and spark new thoughts into existence)

[redemptionmade]

so i've added kyle, stan, kenny + marjorine to my blog and i intend to write up a biography for all of them + my other muses in the next few days hopefully? you'll be seeing half finished bios for a lot of them in the upcoming weeks days