#Muse: marguerite

[joyfulmagic]

@blackarrcw // Maid Marian && Sir Guy && Lady Marguerite of Gisborne (Marian/Guy Daughter)

“Mother, I can be like Uncle Robin if I go!” Marguerite, Margot, insisted, looking into her mother’s eyes with a determined gaze. “I need to help England, since with King Richard gone, no one has hope,” she reminded Marian, “you used to fight for those who have less also.”

Margot groaned, running her fingers through her long hair and growing increasingly frustrated with her parents. “Father is the sheriff and can keep me out of the hangman’s noose,” she added, “I can just focus on the corrupt wealthy as targets.”

Sir Guy walked into the room, looking between his wife and daughter before raising a brow. Turning to Margot, he cleared his throat before saying: “I support whatever your mother told you,” he informed her, patting her back gently.

He glanced at Marian, remembering her days as the Night Watchmen. They’d yet to tell their daughter about that, knowing she’d never let her mother live it down.

“Father, I just want to do what Uncle Robin did as an outlaw. I even have garbs that will help me hide in the woods,” she informed him, causing him to immediately have a throbbing headache as he thought of her ‘uncle’.

“Just because a relative did it, does not mean it is right for you. You can fight through political means,” Guy pointed out to her, infuriating her further. “A marriage to someone with a family known to be loyal to King Richard would help,” he added, “that way you can influence him and he can help be the future of England — or at least work toward it if he is of sufficient rank.”

Margot glared at her father at his suggestion of marriage, it being a contested subject in the household. “I truly would rather just steal from the absurdly wealthy,” she insisted to both parents, “I’ll get married when I am ready.”

[ravensilversea]

His idea of talking dirty might be 'I respect you enormously as a person. Let us pray.' -T Kingfisher, Paladin's Faith

[caramelmochacrow]

happy birthday miyu!!!! (im sorry i almost forgot, i got distracted!)

[arylleth]

marguerite furas, from the lover

₍ to devour and be devoured ₎ ㅤㅤ

[a-cloud-for-dreams]

I think one of the bonus scenes or diamond scenes should have been with Marguerite, Eveline, and Vasili (which would change depending on if you chose to let him live or not) since we didn't get to see the complexity of that whole mess. One brother/son dead who was killed by the other brother/son with so much left to say between them. It's so sad they won't ever get their closure :(

[noblehcart]

@walkingshcdow

"and i told you, cherie, i am perfectly fine."

[ladytsunadehime]

Tsunade: *collecting Uchihas one by one* What the fuck.

Me: 🤷‍♀️🤭😂 You love it

Tsunade: HOW DID THIS HAPPEN-

Tsunade: I AM NOT OROCHIMARU.

Tsunade: …. okay I get it BUT STILL.

Me: you’ll be fine. You are fine. Just accept it.

[neverwilting]

marguerite and her sisters have several cats, as it is the national animal of val moneux, but she jokes that her eldest cat is her heir, 'princess macie/meowcie'.

[untoldadventures]

Marguerite Tremaine Tags

[joyfulmagic]

@blackarrcw for Maid Marian! — Semi Prompted Starter

“Mother, please! I know how to handle myself in court. I’ve been shadowing father for two years now, where I could at least,” Marguerite begged, her mother having been lecturing her on proper court etiquette when a king was present. “He’s shown me the way to handle unwanted suitors as well,” she had to laugh at that, as Sir Guy had simply told her to tell him if anyone was bothering her and they’d be dispatched from her presence.

Marge huffed, exhausted from her archery practice and the lecture. “I’m better with this thing than father is by now,” she boasted, though it might be true as she was trained by the former Night Watchman. “Someday I hope to outshoot even you,” she beamed at her mother, letting one final arrow go flying toward the far away target.

[renaultphile]

Thank you, these thoughts on the book really resonated with me 💖 I did think a lot about it after I finished it and I even turned back to the beginning to read the first few pages! I can certainly imagine re-reading the whole thing. I found many parts of it moving (especially towards the end), and much of the language extraordinary. An adaptation would be so good if they could stay faithful to the spirit of it, I was actually thinking today that it would make a great one-man show with the right actor.

Well, I just wanted to thank you for suggesting 'Memoirs of Hadrian'! It was hard going at times but my efforts were richly rewarded, and I really found myself warming to this guy! I would love to hear your thoughts on it of course 🤔

The pleasure is all mine!

As you said before, this is a difficult novel to describe, but I tried to organize some thoughts. Historically speaking, this is a gorgeously detailed work, so immersive and full of richness and three-dimensionality that at times you feel a little lost and annoyed by all the references that keep popping up. Hadrian traveled a lot, though, so his knowledge of all these things makes sense; it's not as if Yourcenar is dropping random information to make herself seem clever, she is actually trying to retrace and recreate a man's life through what would be his memories, turning hard (and often scarce) historical data into vivid experiences and the sentimental memories that such a thing should necessarily bring.

Hadrian is portrayed in a fairly good light, which again makes sense because we’re talking about what are supposedly his memoirs. While he acknowledges many of his flaws and shortcomings, they’re presented through his own perspective on the world, positioned in a specific time and place, as it happens for all of us. Like I always say, quality historical fiction should help us better understand the period it depicts, not so much through trivia but more through setting and context, and both are masterfully delivered here.

Of course, all of this doesn’t make it an easy read. It’s a slow, morose narrative that can sometimes take time to digest. I think the novel is best appreciated after you’ve finished reading it, when you have a full perspective. And even then, some people might just think it’s not worth it. That said, Memoirs of Hadrian has some beautiful, remarkable passages; its prose is like velvet to the ears, so poetic and musical.

“They would have had me see the resplendent god in place of the corpse, but I had created that god; I believed in him, in my way, but a brilliant posthumous destiny in the midst of the stellar spheres failed to compensate for so brief a life; the god did not take the place of the living being I had lost.”

The writing on the Egyptian journey has a particularly sorrowful, cabalistic quality that I find wonderful; it's probably my favorite part of the novel. Anyway, I don’t interpret the whole Hadrian and Antinous thing as a fairy tale—they were real people, and there are a number of things about their relationship that are quite repressive by our standards—but I do think Yourcenar’s reflections on love are magnificently vivid and authentic.

There are talks about a TV adaptation, but I'm not sure if that will materialize. We'll have to wait and see.

[grandhotelabyss]

Advice/hard truths for writers?

The best piece of practical advice I know is a classic from Hemingway (qtd. here):

The most important thing I’ve learned about writing is never write too much at a time… Never pump yourself dry. Leave a little for the next day. The main thing is to know when to stop. Don’t wait till you’ve written yourself out. When you’re still going good and you come to an interesting place and you know what’s going to happen next, that’s the time to stop. Then leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work.

Also, especially if you're young, you should read more than you write. If you're serious about writing, you'll want to write more than you read when you get old; you need, then, to lay the important books as your foundation early. I like this passage from Samuel R. Delany's "Some Advice for the Intermediate and Advanced Creative Writing Student" (collected in both Shorter Views and About Writing):

You need to read Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, and Zola; you need to read Austen, Thackeray, the Brontes, Dickens, George Eliot, and Hardy; you need to read Hawthorne, Melville, James, Woolf, Joyce, and Faulkner; you need to read Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Goncherov, Gogol, Bely, Khlebnikov, and Flaubert; you need to read Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, Edward Dahlberg, John Steinbeck, Jean Rhys, Glenway Wescott, John O'Hara, James Gould Cozzens, Angus Wilson, Patrick White, Alexander Trocchi, Iris Murdoch, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Vladimir Nabokov; you need to read Nella Larsen, Knut Hamsun, Edwin Demby, Saul Bellow, Lawrence Durrell, John Updike, John Barth, Philip Roth, Coleman Dowell, William Gaddis, William Gass, Marguerite Young, Thomas Pynchon, Paul West, Bertha Harris, Melvin Dixon, Daryll Pinckney, Darryl Ponicsan, and John Keene, Jr.; you need to read Thomas M. Disch, Joanna Russ, Richard Powers, Carroll Maso, Edmund White, Jayne Ann Phillips, Robert Gluck, and Julian Barnes—you need to read them and a whole lot more; you need to read them not so that you will know what they have written about, but so that you can begin to absorb some of the more ambitious models for what the novel can be.

Note: I haven't read every single writer on that list; there are even three I've literally never heard of; I can think of others I'd recommend in place of some he's cited; but still, his general point—that you need to read the major and minor classics—is correct.

The best piece of general advice I know, and not only about writing, comes from Dr. Johnson, The Rambler #63:

The traveller that resolutely follows a rough and winding path, will sooner reach the end of his journey, than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hours of day-light in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages.

I've known too many young writers over the years who sabotaged themselves by overthinking and therefore never finishing or sharing their projects; this stems, I assume, from a lack of self-trust or, more grandly, trust in the universe (the Muses, God, etc.). But what professors always tell Ph.D. students about dissertations is also true of novels, stories, poems, plays, comic books, screenplays, etc: There are only two kinds of dissertations—finished and unfinished. Relatedly, this is the age of online—an age when 20th-century institutions are collapsing, and 21st-century ones have not yet been invented. Unless you have serious connections in New York or Iowa, publish your work yourself and don't bother with the gatekeepers.

Other than the above, I find most writing advice useless because over-generalized or else stemming from arbitrary culture-specific or field-specific biases, e.g., Orwell's extremely English and extremely journalistic strictures, not necessarily germane to the non-English or non-journalistic writer. "Don't use adverbs," they always say. Why the hell shouldn't I? It's absurd. "Show, don't tell," they insist. Fine for the aforementioned Orwell and Hemingway, but irrelevant to Edith Wharton and Thomas Mann. Freytag's Pyramid? Spare me. Every new book is a leap in the dark. Your project may be singular; you may need to make your own map as your traverse the unexplored territory.

Hard truths? There's one. I know it's a hard truth because I hesitate even to type it. It will insult our faith in egalitarianism and the rewards of earnest labor. And yet, I suspect the hard truth is this: ineffables like inspiration and genius count for a lot. If they didn't, if application were all it took, then everybody would write works of genius all day long. But even the greatest geniuses usually only got the gift of one or two all-time great work. This doesn't have to be a counsel of despair, though: you can always try to place yourself wherever you think lightning is likeliest to strike. That's what I do, anyway. Good luck!

[a-cloud-for-dreams]

Eveline's genes are elite cuz she was the mother of two of the most attractive Thornes

(I would add Vasili here too but he was, y'know, a traitor. Also after I noticed he looked like a live-action Geronimo Stilton I couldn't unsee him. He always exuded rat energy we love to see it 🤷‍♀️)

[goodqueenaly]

What do you think the tone of Cersei's and Jamie's chapters will be in Winds of Winter? Will they be somewhat apocalyptic?

I’m not sure if “apocalyptic” would be exactly the word I would choose, if only because, well, there is a literal apocalypse coming courtesy of the Others sooner rather than later. However, if by “apocalyptic” you mean “momentous”, “catastrophic” and “foreboding imminent disaster or final doom”, then I very much agree. Cersei and Jaime I think are both hurtling toward a terrible, shared climax, one that can only end, as foretold long ago, in violence and death.

For Cersei, I think the tone of her chapters may be briefly triumphant, but will be overall characterized by increasing paranoia of the people and events around her. Though I very much believe Cersei is going to win her trial by combat (whatever her feelings might be toward the trial itself, especially if Lancel is the Faith’s champion), and may have a moment of celebration and validation as a result, Cersei I think will not at all believe her problems are over. The murder of Kevan (likely to be read by Cersei, as prophesied by Varys, as a conspiracy by the newly minted Hand Mace Tyrell), combined with the likelihood that Margaery and her cousins will be acquitted by the Faith, will I think convince Cersei that the fatal (in every sense of the word) danger she believe Margaery poses to her and Tommen is very much still active. Moreover, that internal threat Cersei is going to believe she still faces from the Tyrells (and, not entirely unrelatedly, the Faith and its High Sparrow) is going to be exacerbated by the approaching external threat of Aegon and Arianne. As a result, I think Cersei’s chapters are going to reflect her increasing anxiety and sense of oracular doom - as she realizes (I think) that Arianne is the younger and more beautiful queen, and as she eventually realizes that it is her own once-beloved twin that will fulfill the valonqar prophecy. Speaking of whom …

I find it a bit more difficult personally to predict the tone of Jaime’s chapters, if only because I’m not sure what precisely Jaime’s takeaway will be of his portion of Lady Stoneheart’s plot (especially given that, at least until this point, he’s not quite come to terms with the injustices committed by his father and his family’s faction, himself included). Nevertheless, I do think we’re going to see a tonal shift to determined, resolute fury once Jaime learns about the outcome of Cersei’s trial - which is to say, when Jaime realizes that Cersei has, officially, taken the position that she never so much as looked at Jaime with impropriety (and been legally recognized as such), ostensibly to save her own skin. All of Jaime’s bitter reflections from AFFC and ADWD on Cersei’s infidelity, and all of his murderous musings, are I think going to crystallize into a singular sense of purpose - to return to King’s Landing, not to rescue Cersei as she begged in her letter, but to kill her. And if you need a sense of how dark and disturbing a tone such a moment could have … well, just read about the almost identical murder of Marguerite of Burgundy in The Strangled Queen.

[ladytsunadehime]

Tsunade: Are you okay?

Me, having a break down about the Sannin again: I’m fine sobs

Tsunade: God I’m so tired of you.

Me: BUT TSUNA ITS YOU AND ORO AND JIRAIYA?!

Tsunade: And-

Me: don’t be like this-

Tsunade: drink some water before you dehydrate yourself

[zaebeecee]

Drowning in Stardust

🦌 RadioDustTober: Short Story Edition 🕷️

Day 14: Tip-Toe

Human high school/Persona AU (dating; queerplatonic or romantic) | Marguerite = Vaggie | Hollis = Husk | Noriko = Niffty | Vincent = Vox

CWs: None

It was never wise to interrupt Alastor when he was working on his radio scripts.

Word count: 1043

•••

The door to the study lounge was open.

Normally, that was a good sign: the door being open meant no study sessions were going on, so anyone was free to enter as long as they stayed quiet and respectful of anyone else inside. The study lounge itself was just off the main lounge on the ground floor of the dormitory, most frequently used by the students who had no need or inclination to walk across campus to the academic building and do their work in the library. Because it was so easy for any student to access any time of day (excluding curfew), that meant things sometimes got… left inside. Like books. Or hats. Or—

“I need my BJD tool kit,” Noriko whispered, tugging on Charlie’s sleeve with a firm and pleading insistence. “I have to put Blitz’s head back on, and I can’t do it without my hemostat.”

“Why are you using surgical tools for wire shit?” Maggie whispered, at the same time as Hollis muttered, “It’s so fucking weird that you make dolls of your classmates.”

Charlie looked down at Noriko. “Why did Blitz’s head fall off…?”

“Because they’re more precise, no it isn’t weird, and because the Millie doll punched him so hard it flew off,” Noriko said, very matter-of-fact.

Charlie sighed and looked at the open door again. “I mean… they must be done, right? Neither of them would leave the door open if they were still working.”

“I didn’t see Alastor leave,” Hollis said. “Door might be open because Vincent left, but I ain’t about to risk interrupting just Alastor, let alone both of them. Just get your tools tomorrow, Ko.”

“Noooo,” Noriko whined.

“Would it really be that bad?” Maggie asked skeptically. “It’s open to the whole student body. They can’t just commandeer shit like that.”

“Oh, they can, and they do.”

“I’ll go get them,” Charlie said, holding her hands up. “I’m not scared of either of them, and if they wanna give me crap, let them try.”

Disentangling herself from Noriko, Charlie went to the study lounge door and knocked softly. She didn’t hear an answer, negative or otherwise, so she carefully peeked in and glanced around.

The room looked largely unoccupied, save for a low table in front of one of the couches, where she could see Alastor’s book bag, the ratty notebook of story ideas he always had on him, and a couple of pens next to a box of colored pencils. She didn’t see Vincent’s things anywhere, but she also didn’t see Alastor, which was very weird because she could see his cane leaning up against the arm of the couch. Maybe he had to step out to get something? she mused as she walked into the room, stopping when she got far enough that she could see around the back of the couch to what was actually on said couch.

Hollis had been right about Alastor not leaving, but he had apparently missed the fact that Anthony had come in at some point, definitely after Vincent was gone (she couldn’t understand what the Hell their problem was with each other). Alastor was lying down on the couch, one leg extended out across the cushions and one foot planted on the floor, an open book draped across his face and hiding his features. Anthony was also lying on the couch, but he was sprawled on top of Alastor, head resting on the other boy’s chest and feet dangling off the other arm of the couch thanks to his unfairly long legs. His arm was draped across Alastor’s waist, fingers curled where they rested against the carpet, and he looked to be sound asleep. Alastor also might have been, but he also frequently reminded them that he didn’t sleep, so Charlie wasn’t willing to take the risk.

After glancing around the room and seeing Noriko’s tools on the table in the corner (of course), Charlie bit her lower lip and began walking towards them as silently and carefully as she could; while she wasn’t afraid of interrupting Alastor, catching him being so cuddly with the guy that was “maybe his boyfriend because they claimed that once but also both of them are full of shit and trolls so maybe not” was probably a guaranteed death sentence. Reaching the table, she began rolling up the leather case for the tools, freezing when some of them clattered together and Anthony made some kind of noise from the couch. She glanced over, but neither of them were moving, so she went back to her task before buttoning it up and hurrying out of the room with it.

Despite the fact that she didn’t want to make any sound or make it obvious that someone else had been in there, she did close the door to discourage anyone else from entering before she went back to the group and held out the tools for Noriko. “Here.”

“Thank you~!”

Maggie raised an eyebrow. “You look paranoid.”

“What? Nooo,” Charlie said, waving her down. “No no no.”

Hollis frowned. “Did he give you shit?”

“He didn’t say anything. Now, come on, let’s go, we’ve got a Russian test tomorrow and Mr. Rivers will gloat for days if we all fail.”

•

The moment he heard the click of the door, Anthony opened one eye before he lifted his head and glanced around. “Yep. She’s gone.”

Alastor reached up and hooked his thumb under the book, lifting the bottom half up off his face and giving Anthony a smile. “Sounded like the poor dear was about to have a heart attack.”

Anthony laughed, folding his hands on Alastor’s chest and resting his chin on his laced fingers. “Y’know, you were right. Psychological warfare is fun. She’s probably worryin’ about you huntin’ her down right now.”

Alastor giggled. “Maybe we should do it to your siblings next.”

“Only if you want them to beat you up. They ain’t the most agreeable.”

“You could always protect me.” Alastor batted his eyelashes in an overdone show of faux innocence that made Anthony cackle.

“Dork,” he said fondly, leaning up to kiss Alastor on the tip of his nose. “Come on, let’s go fuck with someone else.”

“You always have the best date ideas.”

•••