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dynal · 5 months ago

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Can I cheat and tell you to answer ALL OF THEM... i love hearing about altai.

this is DEFINITELY a big cheat but you know what i love you and any opportunity to talk about my ffxiv guys i will take. so as a bonus you'll also get gaius.

HERE COME THE BOYS! i'm putting it below a readmore since it will probably. get long.

🪷 what gives this character inner peace?

For Altai, prayer, definitely. At least at the beginning. As the story continues he feels he can't connect with his god as well and thinks he's losing his mind. That's when sticking around the Scions helps him feel a little better.

For Gaius, staying close to his personal hero (Altai). And reminiscing on the few happy memories he has. But reminiscing on those memories can also bring melancholy or could send him spiraling so it's a difficult balance.

🪰 what is the worst thing this character has witnessed but not experienced?

For Altai: Ugh. Look at the MSQ. Every time one of his allies dies he grieves. Even when strangers die he grieves, whether they're meant to be the "good guys" or the "bad guys" because he's not really sure where they "go" when they die. In his religion they would at least find some semblance of peace, but what about here, in this world he's hardly known?

For Gaius: Basically anything he may have heard/seen while he was trapped in the stone. Without the power to physically influence the outside world he was helpless.

🐁 how are this characters ethics?

You know Altai, he's a pretty typical "good guy" but there's a lot of extra quirks that separate him from a typical hero. Being an older man and being a follower of religion will do that to you. He deeply dislikes prejudice and reductive thinking, and believes in the freedom of all, regardless of who they follow. So whenever some kind of subjugation is happening, his brow furrows a little further and his speech gets a little more sharp--a little more old world one could say.

Gaius will just start eating people if someone doesn't stop him. He's seen the horrors of the world, witnessed the uprising of Garlemald. He's done with the bullshit and done with being trapped and unable to help.

🚬 smoking/drinking habits? signature brand or drink?

For all the jokes I've made about Altai rolling cigars I'm not sure if he genuinely smokes. It may be a more spiritual, every-once-in-a-while-for-a-ritual thing. He did often imbibe in the Utter Poison that was the centuries-aged liquor in the temple's cellar.

Gaius doesn't really get any bodily effects from drinking or smoking, but he does enjoy a good ale with friends. It's a social thing.

🌫️ how does this character feel about lying?

Altai doesn't like to lie. He'd rather be honest about a situation than have to keep up a lie. He's not the kind to think some topics are "off-limits" (like talking to a child about death) because everyone has to learn at some point (and perhaps subconsciously, knowing that he was essentially orphaned and was relentlessly bullied by his peers probably makes him think "hatred can be taught at any age, so can any other topic").

Gaius will skirt around the truth or keep quiet about something. He doesn't like to reveal his own cards (especially regarding his whole shapeshifter "I dunno if I can actually die" situation).

🐦‍⬛ fursona?

Altai is a Takin, a sort of goat-like creature that is more closely related to sheep.

Saying Gaius would be a wolf would be a copout, and he's a shapeshifter, so I guess he could be whatever. Maybe a wolverine.

♟️describe how they would play chess, if they would.

Altai would know how to play chess, but it may be a regional variant. Gaius would know too many regional variants, and would know a variant that would make a historian go "hang on a second, nobody's used this variant for over 500 years".

🎲 are they lucky?

Neither of them really believe in luck.

🐌 do they carry their home with them or is it a place?

they carry their homes with them(they carry it in their hearts)they are never without it(anywhere they go,home goes,they fear;and whatever is done by them is their home's doing,such tragedy)

🦤 are they particularly smart in any way? how so, or not?

Altai is a religious scholar--at least for his religion! He's pretty logical though so he figures out situations well.

Gaius was a scholar of astrology when he was alive, and learned a lot of stuff while he was stuck in the stone. He ends up using a lot of historical evidence to navigate situations.

🪽does this character believe in a higher power?

Altai: Yes, he follows the god Lupus (and by extension, his three blood-bound consorts).

Gaius: Can't remember that which he worshiped in the past but I've been toying with the idea of him following Thanatos. Something about following the embodiment of death but being unable to die.

🦪 how would this character describe their gender, if asked?

Altai: I suppose I'm a man. Have I experimented beyond that? Hmm, well, my god, Lupus Therion Alsaab Kekkuon, praise his name--he had invented himself into the form of man and was punished for it, but lived out his future immortal life as a man. So I suppose it would take some self-invention to make myself a man... But in a way, I've done that... Hmm... Though there was that one time I was transformed into a female succubus. It was interesting.

Gaius: When my body erupted into this world, it may have been deemed of another sex, but I am all man! After all, that's what I've carved this body into. I have the scars to prove it. I don't believe I was disgraced for this choice in my mortal life. At the very least, the people who mattered most to me, they knew I was a man. Well, that doesn't mean I can't shapeshift into something else if I feel the urge. I've been known to turn into women--actually, let's end the conversation here.

🫁 yuri or yaoi?

Altai has the big-hands-big-guy nature of yaoi but Gaius has the inherent tragedy of yuri.

👛 what is always with this character?

Altai: Basically always seen with his satchel (tome, inks, pigments, brushes, pens). Gaius also hangs around with him often enough to count. Also keeps wearing the stone as a memento.

Gaius: After the woman he fell in love with disappears, he keeps her bandana with him, always.

🦇 biggest material fear (ie heights, bugs etc)

Altai doesn't like it when things pop up out of nowhere and scare him. He's got a bit of a weak heart for that. Gaius has a dual fear/attraction to long, golden hair. It makes him think of his old best friend, who he loves, but he also misses dearly. Fear and desire are intertwined you know.

🪱 would this character move a worm off the pavement or save it?

Yes. Altai would feel bad for it if it was drying up, and would try to saturate it with some of his water before finding a suitable mud patch for it to burrow in. Gaius would briefly consider eating it but then would choose to save it.

🐞 does this character have any notable accent or dialect? what about other languages?

Altai: He's from the Isle of Raum in the New World. He has a deep accent that isn't really similar to any found in the other continents (I'd equate it to a Slavic accent). He knows an ancient language that was used in his tomes and can speak it fluently. This also means he can understand old-speak characters like Urianger very well.

Gaius: He's from an unknown place. His accent is a bit of a neutral mish-mash of all the places he's been (ending up with a vague, rough-American equivalent).

🦑 any pets?

Altai has Edme, his personal Chocobo. He makes good friends with all sorts of critters and is sometimes secretly spotted taking care of strays.

Gaius doesn't have any pets. He is the pet.

🛡️how does this character protect themself and others?

Altai is mainly a tank. You already know how this goes.

Gaius will sacrifice his own mutated flesh for others. He can't die.

🪓 would they make it to the end in a horror movie?

Altai would hopefully survive. If not, he'd die protecting others. Gaius would be genre-aware and become a bigger threat.

⚖️ how do they seek justice?

Altai will try his best to go the reasonable route. Gaius is the one who takes Altai's true heart and will forcibly rend justice from the hands of the oppressors if he has to.

#love mail #stag #altaiba'atarix faolan #gaius morningstar #wolposting

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ayurvedainitiative-blog · 1 year ago

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Chapter 6 - Steadiness In Samadhi

Day 44

For a few moments, keep your body and your eyes steady and you will see, almost immediately, the mind will so become steady. If you stand still, the mind will become still and the breath will become steady.

This is when the time stops, death stops and immortality begins. You wake up before time swallows you and before this earth gulps you. Then, you swallow time. This is samadhi. Samadhi is that state where you feel you can stay like that for a million years.

It is a state where the mind freezes. It is just like things remaining fresh, if they are put in a fridge. Samadhi is the refrigerator of your life. It is the secret of youthfulness, the secret of bubbling enthusiasm and the secret of renewal of life.

It is steadiness but we have the wrong understanding of samadhi. We think it means going underground and not breathing. People in samadhi fast and become skinny. They apply ash all over their body. They have wrong ideas about it. When you are in samadhi, every experience of your senses becomes very bright, colourful and complete.

When you are happy, you feel expanded. You feel as if you are bloated. Something in you is expanding. You are not aware of your body, but you feel an expansion taking place. And what happens when you feel sad? You feel uptight and sorrowful. There seems to be a contraction, tightness or reduction in you.

And when you feel expanded and your awareness is expanding, you tend to fall asleep. And when you want to have a keenness of awareness, you seem to be more uptight and not relaxed. It takes alertness to thread a needle. A drowsy or drunk person cannot do it. If they have to string very small pearls, they cannot do it.

It needs keenness of awareness to do something very minute. There are many people who are very skillful. They can carve things on one grain of rice. They have a lot of sharpness of awareness. At the same time, when the awareness is expanded, there is no keenness of awareness. When there is keenness of awareness, there is no relaxation, there is no expansion of awareness.

The combination of both of these is sabeeja samadhi - when you are totally relaxed, happy and expanded and when, at the same time, you have that sharpness of awareness and sharpness of intelligence. Your senses become so clear that it can perceive better, see better, think better, hear better. 95% of the population in the world cannot hear properly. If you tell people something and ask them to repeat it, you can bet that they will not be able to do it.

Or, if you talk to them for 15 minutes and ask them to repeat what you said, they will hardly be able to repeat what you said for one minute at the most. What you had said in the rest of the time has just passed them by. They have not heard it.

This happens with sight too. People are not able to see things as they are. We are insensitive to people's feelings because we do not see or hear properly. Samadhi is being sensitive to other's feelings too. When you become sensitive, the world and the nature becomes sensitive to you. Nature listens to you. How can this happen? What is the condition?

Patanjali says, "Ksheena vritti." When a these five activities that we have dealt with before, when these vrittis, the activities are subdued.

#Rejuvenate yourself with Ayurveda and Yoga Campaign #Ayurveda #Doctor #Treatment #Nadi Pariksha #Medicine #Pure Herbs #Sudarshan Kriya

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mystacoceti · 1 year ago

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It’s too easy to reduce the problem of “the gay writer” to the split between those gay writers (like myself) who, on the one hand, feel that all art is political one way or the other and that all they write is from a gay position—and, in my case, from a black and a male position as well—and those writers who, on the other hand, feel that all they write is fundamentally apolitical, even if it involves gay topics; that they are just writers who happen to be gay, or, indeed, black, or female, or male, or Jewish or what-have-you. Whatever one’s knee-jerk reaction to either stance, the truth is that a tally of what writers from both groups actually write in their fictions, in their poetry, in their plays would show that, outside of direct statements on the matter, there’s no simple way to tell from their creative work—for certain—which ideological theme each espouses. Writers who believe that art is fundamentally apolitical often produce extraordinarily socially sensitive works. And it is an endless embarrassment to us who believe in the fundamentally political nature of all human productions that, simply from the plot reductions of their stories, or even from the expressed sentiments of their poems, measured against whatever notion of “political correctness” they believe in (and, like the rest of us, I believe in mine), writers who express the most “correct” political sentiments can produce the most politically appalling work.

If we are ever to solve our problems, I believe the opposition between the two—the belief in the fundamentally apolitical nature of the best art and the belief in the fundamentally political nature of all art—needs to be carefully undone. Personally I suspect that more important than which of these positions a particular writer adopts is whether that writer sees his or her own position as opposing the majority opinion around, or whether the writer sees his or her position as merely an extension of what most other intelligent people think. In the academy, for instance, there’s a tendency to see everything as politicized: Thus writers who have longstanding academic connections can assert their oppositional stance by upholding art to be fundamentally apolitical.

I’ve lived most of my life outside the academy, in a society and at a time where and when the notion that there might be any political aspect to any work not announcing itself as propaganda is hardly entertained or is wholly pooh-poohed. Thus my oppositional belief in total politicization. But, if I’m honest, when I read with great care, say, much of Harold Bloom, or even Paul de Man, not to mention Milan Kundera, in The Art of the Novel (three critics who uphold that art is fundamentally apolitical), it seems that much of what they mean by “apolitical” is precisely what I mean by “political.” I just don’t know if they’d give me as generous a reading as I give them. And, indeed, the generosity of their readings, one way or the other, would be controlled, I suspect, by their perception of what each saw as the major abuses of the position he polemicizes against.

"The 'Gay Writer' / 'Gay Writing' . . . ?", Samuel R. Delany

#pearl diver

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trad-masculine · 2 years ago

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I resonate with this, and tell my friends to listen to birdsong on their commutes to and from work.

There's a robust science on the effect of birdsong on psychological health and stress reduction. The effect can be so powerful you can feel it in a few minutes. Car speakers are often the best audio system people own and the fullness of the sound environment is important. It's also a gateway to the deep mind, hearing birdsong in one direction and silence in another will direct fear towards the silence as birdsong in an indicator of no predators on prowl.

This connects up an appreciation of the experience of nature for people who are too busy and too disconnected to ever seek getting it naturally. It slots directly into the sort of lifestyle optimization that everyone in the cohort is adopting to maintain the workload and stress they are under. From there it's not hard to value nature as a path to stress relief. Then hiking and gardening, specifically for appreciation of the experience, instead of as a rote habit. So many people have gardeners, because the garden is purely a social front for clout. Just as so many people do hiking for cardio, but never experience nature, instead pumping a top 50 Playlist on Spotify and hardly spending even a minute of the whole time just connecting to the forest around them.

Learning to value the home garden as a source for insects, to invite birds and become a part of the local ecology and biome through listening to birdsong is a quite viable pathway. It also comes with the benefit of learning to value sound as a part of one's experience of the world more generally, and plays into discovering the use of whole experiences as part of living a better life, which is within reach of caring deeply about preserving the beauty of nature, and integrating the wild and natural world into where we live, instead of having it be a distant separate idea.

It's a good tool in the good fight.

The thing that gets me is. I talked about curiosity about nature in that post because it seemed like the gentlest, least guilt-trippy, and least "doomer" way to direct people toward the point that we, as humans, need to have basic awareness of the ecosystems we belong to and learn about them in spite of the systemic barriers because the alternative is "capitalism drives us to extinction"

Basic fundamental joys like picking a fruit and eating it or seeing a butterfly are part of a bigger reality of basic fundamental needs like food and clothing and shelter, all of which our current system holds hostage.

What I most want for people is for them to have hope. Despair about our environment is so crushing and is immobilizing a whole generation, and I did not feel hope until I started paying attention to the ecosystem directly around me. Participating in taking care of the ecosystem around me is what freed me from that despair.

And by encouraging people to explore the natural world, I want to reassure that preserving our planet for future generations offers "bread, and roses too": that there is something outside of donating money you don't have and watching the Amazon burn, that you can have agency and do something with your hands, that love and enthusiasm itself is a powerful force with real, tangible impact.

But no, apparently the concept of caring about something in your immediate surroundings is itself so horrid and draconian that it's a breathtakingly offensive attack on your sense of self.

#so listen to the birds!

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blackberry-gingham · 3 years ago

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Jealousy, Jealousy | Wolverine x Fem!Reader

<… Prev | Chpt 5

After a crazy night of misfortune, you and Logan just start to bond in the morning

tag list: @samatedeansbroccoli @smokeywhalee @mickeyperkins @the-goon-tm @tolovaj (Wolverine tag list open to additions or reductions, whichever you prefer lol)

tags: slow burn, still on my bullshit with dad bod stuff, except THIS TIME we have a confident big guy, well “big” in as much as wolverine can be described as such, emotional hurt/comfort

You don't say much more that night. Logan falls asleep for good pretty quick and meanwhile, you find a place to get comfortable there in the living room.

This place isn't much bigger than the one you left behind, but you can't say you feel comfortable to go hunting around the rooms for a bed to steal. However... The floor isn't a very welcoming alternative. Bastard could've at least offered you somewhere first.

No matter, you suppose.

You slink out to grab a pillow and blanket of your own and... Maybe some entertainment in case you can't sleep. With what little you have, you make a comfortable arrangement on the floor and lay down the case of just one of your many instruments safely along the wall.

Once you're settled, you stare at the ceiling for a long while.

Thoughts and questions come over you. So many questions... You think they must all be running together, like a great tidal wave or one, massive chain of explosives. They fight for your attention, meaning not a single one achieves victory. Your job, your ex house, where you're going...

More drained than anything else, your eyelids drag themselves closed. So much has happened in such a short amount of time... Now here you are, falling asleep in the house of a complete stranger. An asshole one, at that.

If the exhaustion wasn't leaving you so numb, then perhaps you could dedicate some energy to leaving. Leaving here. Leaving town. Hell, maybe even leaving for back home.

God.... What a mess.

Even with Logan's persistent snoring, nothing stops you from going under. Nothing... Aside from the faint glow of morning. You swear, all you did was blink, but the stiffness in your back thanks to the hardwood floor tells you otherwise.

Your little patient is exactly where you left him, sound asleep on the couch with seemingly no intentions of getting up. To be honest, you don't feel much like getting up either. A quick sleep like that leaves you feeling hardly any better than the night before.

And yet... There's plenty to do, just as there always is. The least you can do is sit up.

Stretch. Stretch. Pop.

There, at least your back feels a bit better.

Soft sunlight streams in, returning an ever so slight warmth to your skin. Your head feels overwhelmingly full, and entirely empty all at once. The thoughts from last night return to you once more. What are you going to do?

Where do you go from here?

All the same helpless, hopeless thoughts from before... And yet no rejuvenation from sleep to help see you through them. It's been a long time since you've felt like this... Not since you fought tooth and nail just to pack up your life and make it out here.

What a fool you were. Look where all that got you... All that struggle. All the stress. All that money.

Wasted.

Wasted so that you could have your good name ruined with your landlord.

Wasted so that you could take a gamble and lose, putting your dream on the sideline to serve piss poor beer all night, every night in a dingy little dive.

Wasted so that you, at the lowest of lows, would wind up crashing on the floor in the house of the very man who ruined things for you.

And you don't even have the energy to care. He's right there you know. There's nothing stopping you from doing whatever it would take to get your anger out. To let him know what you think of him. How you feel.

You go so far as to stretch out a hand. He's so... close. You lean over furhter, further, further... Your hand knows not what it'll do but then-

Then. You lose your nerve.

With a sigh, you lightly drop it harmlessly onto his head. Your fingers crinkle at contact, met with such an unusual texture... The strands are not quite soft, as you might expect. Rather, they're quite thick and bristly to the touch, like the fur of a feral animal.

Strange indeed, although... You suppose that would explain how a man like this can manage a hairstyle quite like that each day. All without the use of gel or product, too. It's natural for him.

Interesting... The very corner of your mouth quirks up, and oh so carefully, you run your palm along his scalp. It's a bit softer after you've petted it down a few times. More like a little dog's now, although that thought could be more attributed to little wriggle he does in response to your touch.

Must be the tiredness, but... You almost get it in your head to see what other shapes you can form the strands into.

You go so far as to twist one, deep brown strand around and a round your finger. It leaves behind a perfect little curl. Amused, you think perhaps one more, only... There's that exhaustion, hitting you again.

Like all the negative thoughts you were previously thinking came crashing down on your head. Like all the pain and anxiety of the last few days collectivly came to knock the wind out of you.

Like... Your brain simply decided to just stop enjoying things.

Why bother. You remove yourself from his vicinity and inch back over to your spot on the floor. After all, it's not like any of that will make you less tired.

So for now, you watch the sunrise. The little golden beams as they flit through the glass. Everything is silent. Everything still.

All it takes is the dull, crash behind you to get you just a little started. You whip your head around to investigate.

Sounds like someone dropped a rock.

Logan groans tiredly, face mashed into the floor while at least one leg remains stuck atop the couch cushions.

Can't be good for his concussion, but... You'll deal with it later. For now, you turn back to your empty head and the hypnotic light.

Logan rolls onto his back, forcing the rest of his body to join him on the ground. He rubs his forehead and props himself up. Once, then several more times he blinks. The ambient light seems... Normal, now.

He slowly sits up, wrenching his eyes shut reactively as the morning sunlight hits him. It's warm and bright... But not as painful as he was expecting.

His beady eyes squint open, almost too narrow to catch sight of the lone figure seated just a few feet away. Almost.

He jumps, immediately assuming danger. His heartbeat pounds so loud, he can feel it. His eyes shoot open. And, if he were only a little less careful... He nearly would've unsheathed his claws too.

It's not too often anyone gets the drop on ole Wolverine... But he's gotta admit, he's almost impressed that you've managed to do it twice.

Logan rubs his forehead tiredly, "You're still here?", he asks gruffly.

At any other time, you might snap back.

But not this morning. Not after the time you've had. All that you've been through... The twists and turns and sucker punches life has caught you with...

You're tired of fighting.

You glance at him just a moment, from the corner of your eye and nothing more.

As you turn back to watch the sunrise, Logan notices. He notices that you don't say anything. That you hardly even give him the time of day. Maybe that's not a big deal on the surface. After all, you've done it before.

But then... This time is different.

This time lacks the... Well, spirit of before.

"Sorry, I uh didn't mean it like that", he drags himself across the floor, still tired and a little dizzy from his recovery and just waking up, "Was just surprised is all"

With a sigh, he drops down to the ground beside you. His arms are crossed beneath his forehead, holding it up just enough to keep his face from touching the ground.

You don't believe that. But you don't care enough to reply either.

The two of you sit in silence for a long while. Logan finds he's feeling better by the minute. You however, feel very much the same.

He peeks up at you quickly. Once. Twice. Then a little longer the third time.

No reaction.

If anything, you seem closer to going back to sleep now than ever before.

Logan stretches his arms all the way out in front of him and gives a long groan. His hips arch up just a touch, and for a moment, you think he looks very much like a big dog. The moment is short lived however, as he flops over to his side just after.

The front of his body faces you. His head does too, propped up against the heel of his palm with an air of enticement. He stares at you in silence. Quiet. Watching. And all far more awkwardly then he's used to.

He's been around women plenty of times. Near, around, inside... But this experience now has him starting to find the beginnings of a question for which he has no answer.

How the hell are you supposed to be with them?

This silence. This lack of engagement or interaction. What does he do? What does he say? He hasn't been this close, this alone, with a woman that he wasn't actively trying to bed in...

Well. He doesn't even know.

His eyes dart from left to right and back to you again, "So, do you wanna-"

He cuts himself off. A new smell has tinged the air. He crinkles his nose and knits his eyebrows, trying to be sure it is what he thinks.

A slow, glistening stream glides down your cheek. Your eyes are fixed ahead, looking forward and somewhere far, far from here.

It is.

In an instant, he scrambles to sit up, "Oh come on, don't... Do that"

You close your eyes to block him out. The tears only come quietly and a little quicker this way.

Any type of better mood he was working on is shot. He looks at you and an intense urge to get away washes over him. This isn't his problem. Hell, he doesn't even know what to do. Why should he stay for this?

Besides, makes him feel like shit...

Then... A new thought hits him.

Maybe that's because it should.

You wouldn't be anywhere near this situation right now if it weren't for him. It's clear you don't have or know anyone around here. A stranger in a strange land, just trying to make a new life for yourself.

That sounds like someone he knows...

Is this what he is now?

Crazy? Angry? Paranoid? And now running around making pretty girls cry. He huffs a sigh and hauls himself up.

You don't turn to look, but you do watch him go. It hurts a little, although you know it shouldn't. He doesn't owe you anything. He doesn't even know who you are. But still... You wouldn't mind seeing him take a little responsibility.

Hardly a minute later, a light, hollow thunk clatters beside you. Logan sits back down with you. He scratches the back of his wild hair and nudges the tissues closer to you, "Here, I uh... Brought you these"

You look from him to the offering and back again, "Thanks...". Cautiously, you take one while he holds the box in place.

"Sure"

"And... Thanks. For last night", you clear your nose and swipe the back of your hand across your cheeks, "I appreciate the help"

"Sure. Couldn't let em hurt ya", he pauses, then gives a short huff of laughter, "Wouldn't want you to think everyone here is an asshole... Maybe just-", suddenly the laughter dies from his voice, "me"

Any reaction you would've given to that is cut off by the sudden crack and hiss of his beer. He shakes his head and anxiously takes a sip.

You check the time, "Already? It's not even 10"

"It's for the taste", he takes another sip, then sighs deeply, "I can't get drunk anyway"

You make a face, but he answers your question before you can pose it, "It's the healing... thing... Or so I'm told"

"Ah", you nod with understanding and go back to collecting yourself.

"And, look... I'm uh... I'm sorry, alright? For.... Well, for everything I guess", he ends the confident statement with a surprisingly shy finish. You almost don't feel the need to push back. It's clear to you that he sees "sorry" alone could never truly cover everything he's done, so...

"Forget about it", you sniff and straighten up, "It's over now"

Logan looks at you silently, but turns away and nods, although he can't say he believes you mean that. It's quite the answer he was looking for, but... It's admittedly far better then the one he deserves.

"Want some?", he offers you the beer can.

"No, thanks", you sniff one more time, just to make sure you're all clear, "Could go for some food though"'

Just at the mention, Logan grows a visibly more excited, "Oh, that I have!", he gets up, then pauses mid motion, "Uh, do you... like toast?"

No need to play coy, you already know that's about all he has, "That's fine"

Hell, you even manage a smile.

#wolverine x reader #logan howlett x reader

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kendrixtermina · 3 years ago

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Edelgard and “meritocracy” - an essay

In this essay I wish to adress the common argument that “meritocracy bad, therefore edelgard bad” & the logical leaps therein.

Before we begin, I’d like to stress that she doesn’t even use the word “meritocracy” & they’re not even looking at it’s modern definition but reacting to the way it has been used as a fighting word to denigrate the poor specificically in the post reagan modern USA & then assuming Edelgard means the exact same thing by that without bothering to examine what she actually says & in what context.

Modern capitalism & the way it uses rhetoric of merit as an excuse is bad & with its reduction of human value to their moneymaking ability, definitely inherently ableist, I agree totally.

But 3H does NOT take place in the modern world. Progress is always relative to what came before. It*s progress away from entrenched problems.

It’s a total failure to even imagine a world different from the sucky one we live in - that’s exactly what tolkien meant by that saying that if we’re prisoners we have a duty to escape.

Edelgard doesn’t live in a capitalist society nor is she bringing about capitalism (if anything Claude’s the one talking of free trade & giving the merchants what they want, though he is almost certainly playing them much like the church)

And the main component of capitalism - factory owners, rich elites who owns large swathes of companies or real estate - is nowhere to be found.

In our world that cropped up because industrialization made owning factories, offices, trade etc. more lucrative that just owning the land, so factory owners replaced landed lords, essentially promising the peasants freedom if they helped them overthrow the kings but granting them only in a limited manner - the flawed inequal democracies that resulted were a compromise between peasants and factory owners.

But by and large the nobles are very much in the same niche as the factory owners today - they own the land and get special trade privileges (the means of production), they often abuse the populace with impunity, the peasants are very poor.

Edelgard cracks down on corruption & special trade privileges even during the timeskip.

And like the rich of our world, they have a self-mythology propaganda justification based on merit. Yes, there is the “by the grace of god” argument, too, but crests give you extra fighting power, and if you look at the Ferdinand support for example you do see that Fodlan’s nobles - especially the adrestian ones - see themselves as a honed elite that is trained from birth & therefore better at ruling.

Not quite the same argument a modern billionaire uses - who is very invested in convincing you that they didn’t get their power and wealth by their birth - but a myth nonetheless.

Edelgard’s not bringing “meritocracy” as in brutal competition opposed to caring social safety nets, but as opposed to unearned privilege.

If you wanted to compare that to any kind of sociohistorical context, you might look at Napoleon’s peasant liberation or the implementation of civil service examinations in ancient China.

That wasn’t an all good thing - In the same way that Europe is very impacted by the legacy of rome both good & bad (there are persisting bad attitudes toward war, authority and agriculture for example), east asia still has a lot of education obsession causing pressure & unhealthy work habits to this day.

But if you compared ancient china before the reforms to ancient China after it definitely got better, by ancient china standards.

We couldn’t expect the people back then to come up with all advances up to our exact modern values at once (not can we be sure how much of our values will stand the test of time)

Considering that Fodlan’s ideal of merit is basically what Lorenz, Ingrid and Ferdinand are embodying for their respective countries, and that she stocks her inner circle with very different leaders, it is no stretch to say that she wants to shake up the social ideas of what even counts as merit, to make ppl value other things that crest power or elite upbringing, the same way we might say today that hey, cleaners are valuable actually.

Edelgard is basically doing her world’s equivalent of taxing the billionaires - reducing the power of what the overprivilieged class happens to be, & it’s obvious from her talk of how she despises inequality that she would hardly be for rule of factory owners.

When Edelgard says that she wants to make Fodlan more merit-based, that has to be taken in the context that she lives in a world where your birth determines everything, incompetent nobles can be as lazy as they want, and no one cares how competent you are if you lack a crest, title or both.

If she looked at our world, she would quickly see through the propaganda that it is supposedly “merit based” and object to how wealth and national origin obviously dictate wealth & opportunity while talented people go to waste in sweatshops.

Now of course there have been arguments even against “perfect” meritocracy - one is the devaluation of working class jobs.

To this one could answer that this is more a flaw in how merit is conceived. Historically there have been societies that exahlted blue collar work, artisans or farming.

The second argument, however, is not so easy to get rid of: That is devalues people who can’t just go & produce like machines, especially the unemployed, the sick, the mentally ill, the disabled…

But at this point we’ve got to lean back & get our definitions straight, & make it clear what we even mean by “meritocracy” -

Because if we’re just talking about the basic idea that competency should be rewarded, I don’t think too many people disagree with that. We might see a problem with valueing the competency of a doctor or lawyers dispropottionally over the competency of a cleaner or a bricklayer, but we all, by and large, want the people who prepare our goods and services to be competent. Maybe we wouldn’t exalt it over all over qualities, but most of us admire skill.

Of course the problem with the political rhetoric of “meritocracy” is that it goes beyond just rewarding skill, first with the afore mentioned rewarding of only some skills, but mostly with the reversion or overemphasis of the above: Saying that skill is the only thing that matters (to the exclusion of any inheent human value) & that those who don’t have it are worthless.

First I want to throw out the thought that this is a product of the production/profit orientation of capitalism, but one could of course imagine, as many sci fi authors have done, a non-capitalistic society that is still obsessed with merit at the exclusion of those who are not oriented towards productivity & care more about fun & relationships than producing, or those who can’t produce because they are sick or disabled.

So now we must ask ourselves the question: Which of those views does Edelgard actually hold?

Cause I want you to notice that they’re not the same. “Skill should be rewarded & jobs should be done by competent people” is not the same position as “Skill is the ONLY thing that matters and if you don’t have it you are worthless”

In one position, skill is a good quality, in the other, it's a prerequisite to worth.

Most of us here probably agree that skill is admirable (we like and reblog pretty fanarts), but not that the unskilled are worthless.

Looking at her superficially I could perhaps see how someone might suspect her of the latter - She gravitates to & surrounds herself with skilled intelligent people and she’s obscenely superpowered.

It’s an misunderstanding that Dimitri makes in-universe, he accuses her of “only benefitting the strong”

But note that her answer to that is that she wants to empower the weak to no longer be weak & decide their own lives, instead of accepting charity. (Contrast with how Dimitri romanticizes abyss, for example, even as Claude points out that locking the poor underground is hardly help.)

Of course she can say many things, as rulers often give florid speeches.

But let’s have a look at what she actually thinks. How does edelgard actually act towards people who struggle or aren’t productivity oriented?

This is one of her lecture questions from part I:

“When one professor lectures many students, some will inevitably have trouble keeping up, while others will get too far ahead in their studies. I wonder how this problem might be solved…”

Her favorite answer is “lectures should be optional”.

Which part of that sounds like a bell curve type eugenicist “only skill & intelligence counts” kind of person? She wants the struggling students to be taken proper care of, not just the good ones.

Look at the speeches she gives to Petra & Lysithea about not giving up on themselves & wanting them to move forward from an empowered mindset. Look at how she tells Lysithea to take it easy & not overtax her body. (Not "don't whine & keep working")

Look at Bernadetta - very much an ‘unproductive’ individual with great struggles & limitation. Does Edelgard dismiss her as a weakling? Not at all. Not even in the C support. She makes sure to stress her good qualities when introducing her, makes an effort to be more patient so as not to scare her, & they become good friends.

Look at the Linhardt support - at first she mistakes his behavior for youthful lazyness (He’s 16 after all) & wants to get him to apply himself, but when she realizes that he just has different priorities, she respects that, & works to get him the exact sort of position that he wants. No “suck it up!” or dismissing such a different lifestyle. Nor does she chide him for hating fighting at any point.

Edelgard does everything in her power to accomodate people so they can do their best. She sees the value even in strange unsocial people that society would dismiss. She found a job for someone like Jeritza & helped him, she doesn’t hesitate to make Dorothea a general or Manuela the prime minister no matter what people say or if they don’t act like typical politicians.

Also, when she talks about choosing her sucessor, she wants them to be brilliant/competent yes, but also kind and 'an outsider' (ie, impartial) - hardly a PoV of "if you are skilled you can do whatever you want and if you aren't no other quality matters". She's prizing kindness & objectivity just as highly, something which is absolutely reflected throughout all her actions & behaviors towards others.

She doesn't devalue living quietly & low key without making waves - in fact, that is her dream life, which she deems superior to achievement and ambition, which are to her just tools to archieve good aims.

She couldn’t be further from having a narrow definition of what a “valuable” person is, she is all ABOUT empowering people to take control of their own lives, no pity-driven charity, no paternalism, none of that. This is one of my favorite traits about her, so I can’t help but get mad when people accuse her of being the exact opposite.

But maybe the biggest argument is abyss. This is where the genuine underclass lives, poor, struggling, traumatized, refugees etc.

Edelgard isn’t as vocal during Cindered Shadows as Claude - she can’t blow her cover & just isn’t as expressive personality wise. But she’s the one who makes everybody swear to take care of Abyss no matter who wins.

And her route is the one where, instead of telling you that they lost people, Hapi tells you that they’ve all been pretty much fine over the timeskip.

If you want to help the struggling & the poor and those who don't have "conventional" skills, you should back edelgard.

#edelgard #edelgard von hresvelg #three houses #fire emblem: three houses #fire emblem three houses #fe3h

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jzargo · 4 months ago

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@bees-bees-fear

I'm not even sure where to begin with this but I'll try.

"Who is to say it's incorrect" I don't know how to tell you, again, that generalizing a whole fucking race is a bad thing to do. The Qunari - all of them, those living under the Qun and those living free like the Tal Vashoth - are a massively varied people with different passions and desires. Sten himself points this out in Dragon Age: Origins when you ask him to describe the Qunari. "People are not simple. They cannot be summarized for easy reference in the manner of: 'The elves are a lithe, pointy eared people who excel at poverty.'" This is exactly what Solas does here.

"He's right about the Dalish" actually he's wrong about them too! While Solas does have information about the origins of Dalish people (information, I might add, that he refuses to share unless romanced, so it's hardly fair for him to judge the Dalish people for not knowing something he refuses to tell them) he, again, MASSIVELY oversimplifies what the Dalish have become. This is a running theme with Solas.

"It's a made up region and religion and economy" yeah and Solas is a made-up character who says bigoted things about the fantasy races that exist in the fantasy world he lives in. Are you saying then that the Orlesians who constantly call your character either "knife-ear" as an elf or "ox" as qunari aren't being racist because elves and Qunari aren't real? Like, no, none of these things are real, but they're real within the space of the game which means we need to engage with it in that manner. The Orlesians are being prejudiced and racist and bigoted, and so is Solas in this moment.

"It's like calling communism a cult" I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say with this one actually. While the Qun is also a sociopolitical movement, the Qun dictates every single moment of life for the Qunari. It says what job they'll have for the rest of their life, what role they'll play in society, who they'll breed with, and harshly reeducates people who stray from this purpose. Communism…isn't that? It might be what the far-right think communism is, but there's no real comparison between the two. Meanwhile the kind of large-scale control the Qun exerts over its members is in-line with what cults do to control their members.

"Vampires aren't in a cult for drinking blood, they just do that." That's….that's a totally different thing? Qunari don't have an instinctual desire to create an oppressive regime. What are you saying.

"They're a fantasy race mixed with dragons blood" "Even Cole admits you're holding something back" Even IF Qunari do have some deep, instinctual desires relating back to their probable connection to dragons, they are still a varied and intelligent people and to treat them like ticking time bombs who can explode at a moment's notice is wrong. Bull is probably one of the most measured, collected, and restrained companions you have in Inquisition: while it's true that he likes fighting, I think looking at his conversations with Solas alone is enough to prove that he is a man in control of himself. Solas constantly attacks and berates Bull, and Bull always responds in a measured manner. Even after leaving the Qun.

"We constantly battle splinter cells causing problems" we do that ONCE in all 3 games: in Dragon Age 2, where the Arishok being camped on Kirkwall's doorstep has caused MASSIVE unrest. The other times we're fighting organized attacks (and this only happens twice: once in Dragon Age 2 when the Arishok attacks Kirkwall, and then again in Tresspasser when Solas has incited the Qunar). We fight Templars more than we do Qunari.

"Boiling it down to cults and bigots is reductive" I'm actually not just boiling it down to these things. I recognize that there is nuance in all of these discussions to be had. I actually like Solas as a character and think he's incredibly interesting and well-written! However, I do think he also has some massively over-simplified views of the Qunari and Dwarves in particular. He has a very singular world-view that he refuses to engage with or re-examine - which is why he's an antagonist. If he grew and learned to see the world as a complex but worthwhile place, he wouldn't be trying to tear down the Veil to bring back the old world he thinks is better.

Solas is a massively complex character, and I think you're doing him a great disservice by insisting that he's right about this. Solas is complex and interesting because he is, on more than one occasion, wrong, but refuses to see that. He's too prideful to see that he's wrong. His name literally means pride! That's his fatal flaw!!

And you know, it's possible the Qun did grow out of a genuine desire to help its members find a purpose. The Chantry also didn't start out as an oppressive theocratic dictatorship (Andraste freed the elves, after all), but both, somewhere along the line, became warped by people seeking to utilize these structures for power. Elves remain oppressed and have been excluded from the Chant of Light (unless Leliana is made Divine), and the Qun is now more of a cage than it is a guide.

Dragon Age presents a complex world, and reducing aspects of it down to "The Qunari are savages, they need the Qun, Solas is always right" are oversimplifications that I genuinely don't think is supported by the text.

i enjoy solas as a character but anytime i see someone start talking about how kind he is and lamenting about 'why do people misunderstand himmm' i want to shove these screenshots at them. he's a bigot, jan.

#sophie.txt #dragon age meta #long post #i'm tired scoob

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mimeparadox · 4 years ago

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The New Half-Truths about Corsets

As true as it is that corsets are often misrepresented in audiovisual and written media, and as glad as I am to see people defending them, GOD, am I annoyed by the current discourse. Not because the defenders are wrong —they’re not, in general terms—but because Twitter, Instagram, and their incentivitization of easily digestible sound bites over nuance haves stripped the conversation from all the complexity inherent in a subject as big as corsets. In seeking to be more accurate, corset defenders have often just muddied the water further, with a brand-new set of half-truths.

Here are my favorite (least favorite) talking points.

“Corsets are literally just bras!”

As a cis dude, I’ve never had reason or occasion to wear bras. I have worn corsets, though, and let me tell you, things like having to take off one’s boots after one has been out in the snow while wearing a corset is work—moreso, I imagine, that if I’d been wearing a bra. Actually putting on boots before a corset? Even harder, enough that “boots before corsets” is a common bit of advice. Corsets aren’t torture, but they do force one to rethink how they interact with the world, in ways different than bras do.

To be less glib though, yes, corsets could and did provide the sort of breast support that is now provided by bras. This doesn’t render the multiple differences irrelevant! For one, breast support is the one thing bras are meant to do: with corsets, it is secondary or even inessential, evidenced by all the corsets that do not provide breast support, such as corsets for men, old-timey corsets for kids, and underbust corsets, which are still definitely corsets.

(Megan Fox in Jonah Hex, wearing a corset that is doing exactly the same thing as a bra. Yes, I know it’s not historically accurate; that is not the point.)

What most miffs me about this argument is that it is exceedingly reductive, and displays simplistic thinking regarding both corsets and bras. Because yes, corsets were like bras…and? What is this argument trying to say, given that bras their own baggage? Is the argument that corsets aren’t torture because corsets are bras? Plenty of people find bras uncomfortable, and something to be abandoned as soon as it becomes feasible. Corsets were purely practical because corsets are bras? Plenty of bras exist for primarily aesthetic purposes—some even do a fair amount of shaping. In the end, both garments have complicated, multifaceted, and distinct features, histories, and semiotics, and trying to equate them in a single sentence says nothing useful about either of them.

“Stays are not corsets!”

Amusingly, this argument seems somewhat incompatible with the previous one, given that stays have much more in common with corsets than with bras, but here we are.

Yes, 18th- and early 19th-century stays are significantly distinct from the corsets that we see later in the latter century, and if someone wants to don Bridgerton-inspired looks that accurately reflect Regency fashions, they should not look at Victorian corsets to obtain it. And yes, one can make the case that stays and corsets were entirely different animals.

Here’s the thing, though: historically, that’s not a case that people made. Corsets are we know them weren’t considered to be a completely different thing from stays, but rather a different style of stays—two different breeds of dog, perhaps, but dogs all the same. Once the term corset entered regular parlance, the two terms were usually used interchangeably, as can be seen in multiple 19th century documents, including technical ones where differences between the two, if they existed, would have been noted.

The Duties of a Lady's Maid: With Directions for Conduct, and Numerous Receipts for the Toilette (1825)

English Patents of Inventions, Specifications, 1865, 3186 - 3265 (1866)

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What’s more, it’s not until very recently that people began treating stays and corsets as altogether different things. Gone with the Wind, the book? The terms corsets and stays are used interchangeably. The Oxford English dictionary? Describes stays as a sort of corset. The longest-lasting site dedicated to corsets on the internet calls itself the Long Island Staylace Association, with no indication that doing so represented an inaccuracy on its part. Sure, Elizabeth Swann should have properly said “You like pain? Try wearing stays”—at least it one wanted to be more accurate (if not good: good writing is partly about making oneself understood). But speaking here, and now, looking backwards? Very few people are trying to be that precise.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that corsets have had a variety of styles and features throughout history, and the term is by no means exclusive to what we most often see as corsets. The S-shaped corsets from the Edwardian era are very different from Victorian corsets, as are the more girdle-like garments that followed. While not everything is a corset, I’ve yet to see a convincing argument that the term isn’t broad enough to include 18th-century stays.

Tightlacing, Part 1: “Almost nobody did it”

Statements about tightlacing annoy me more than most, largely because they involve clearer instances of wrongness, but also because they hit closer to home.

Tightlacing has always been an imprecisely defined term: Lucy Williams, one of the best-known contemporary champions of corsetry, talks a little bit about the various ways the term has been used in her post “Waist Training vs Tight Lacing – what’s the difference?” found on her site. Usually, it refers to a quantitative measure—your corset must reduce X amount to be considered tightlacing—although recently, the discourse appears to have adopted a more qualitative definition, applicable to any instance where someone is shown displaying discomfort at being laced into corsets, regardless of how tightly they are (or aren’t) being cinched.

(Left: Moi, wearing a custom corset from The Bad Button Corsetry; Right, Upper: Scene from Bridgerton; Right, Lower: Scene from Enola Holmes)

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Take, for example, the scene that has most recently caused a stir, from Bridgerton, where the character Prudence Featherington is seen grimacing as she is laced into her corset stays corset, while her sisters wince in sympathy and their mother, Portia, insists that she be laced tighter. Others have raised objections to this scene, focusing mainly on the fact that Portia’s mania for a smaller waist is anachronistic and makes little sense given fashions that de-emphasize the waist, but fewer have noted that for all the hemming and hawing that is being done by the characters, Prudence’s figure is ultimately not all that compressed, and seems perfectly in line with everybody else’s. Is what is been done to her tightlacing? A lot of people appear to think so! And yet, that assertion carries some implications. If Prudence is being forced to tightlace here, is everyone else with a comparable silhouette (again, pretty much everyone) also tightlacing? The answer is kind of important, especially if one also wants to claim that tightlacing was rare.

It’s worth noting that Valerie Steele’s The Corset: A Cultural History, one of the seminal works on corsetry throughout history, doesn’t actually attempt to make a case for the rarity of tightlacing. What it does attempt is to determine the accuracy of claims that women regularly laced down to 18 inches, 16 inches, or even smaller measurements, which is not quite the same thing. When exploring the question by looking at collections of surviving corsets from the era, the book has this to say: "Statistics from the Symington Collection [...] indicate that out of 197 corsets, only one measured 18 inches. Another 11 (five per cent of the collection) were 19 inches. Most were 20 to 26 inches.” While Steele readily admits this is hardly conclusive evidence, she took it as a sign that women with 16-inch waists were nowhere near as common as accounts suggested they were. Case closed, asked and answered, no one tightlaced, right?

Well, no.

Again, it comes down to definitions. Even speaking quantitatively, very few people define tightlacing as “lacing down to nineteen inches or fewer” (certainly no woman in Bridgerton is that tightly laced). The consensus, rather, is that tightlacing is not about the size of the corseted waist, but about the size of the reduction. How much people cinched, however, cannot be determined by looking only at corsets, because doing so requires not only those corsets’ measurements (and even those don’t tell the whole story, given that they don’t necessarily indicate how tightly they were worn) but also the starting measurements of the people wearing them.

In other words, say someone with a 33-inch waist uses corsets to reduce their waist measurement to 25 inches. This, according to most definitions, would be considered tightlacing—a 24% reduction!—and yet the absolute measurements would be nothing to write home about. How is that reflected in Steele’s sample of corsets? Impossible to say. A 25-inch corset could also be worn by someone with a natural 27-inch waist.

What, then, can we say about the frequency of tightlacing? Well, if we’re talking about dramatic reductions of, say, more than four inches (a two-inch reduction, by the way, can look like this—again, more dramatic than what we see in Bridgerton) one can say, with a fair level of confidence, that it was probably not the norm. And yet, “not the norm” is itself a very broad category, and given the numbers involved, “a minority of people” can easily still be “loads and loads of people”, as seen, for example, with COVID-19. Even if two percent of the population who wore corsets tightlaced, that’s still hundreds of thousands of people—hardly “almost no one”, as some argue. And if wearing corsets as seen in Enola Holmes or Bridgerton counts as tightlacing, the number becomes even higher.

Tightlacing, Part 2: “Tightlacing is bad”

Perhaps not coincidentally, another element of the current corset discourse involves taking all the baggage usually assigned to corsetry in general and applying it to tightlacing instead. Corsets are not painful, goes the argument, but tightlacing is. Corsets are not unhealthy, but tightlacing is. People could do everyday things in corsets, they’ll say, but not when tightlaced. Arguments made against corsets in the 19th century were slander made by people who just hated women (another half-truth I have little time for), but are apparently utterly unobjectionable when applied to tightlacing. This, as many modern-day tightlacers will tell you, is bullshit, but it feels like an especially odd argument to make in light of everything else.

As in, what is the point? It feels a lot like saying “I’m not sex-negative, but having sex with more than X partners is icky.” And given the history-focused slant of the current discourse, it’s safe to believe that most people arguing against tightlacing are not people who have attempted it. There is, however, an existing community that will happily tell you, based on personal experience, what tightlacing is actually like.

So from personal experience: tightlacing may not be like wearing a bra, and there are definitely some considerations that you have to take while doing it— getting dressed, sitting down, and eating are all done differently when tightly laced—but this is more logistical than anything, and also applies to other things—running in steel-toed boots is much different from running in sneakers, and the advice when doing the former is often “don’t”. Additionally, the margin for error decreases the more tightly laced one is, but corsets aren’t special in that regard: proper care is much more important when one is flying a commercial jet than when one is flying a one-seater. But yes, you can do physical activity while tightlaced. Not necessarily the sort that you could do in exercise clothes, but then, the fact that suits are not optimized for running doesn’t make suits bad.

Tightlacing, in the end, is not really different from wearing a corset. Some people will like it, some will not, but ultimately, how pleasurable or how unpleasurable it is (it’s very pleasurable, in my book) depends on what you put into it, and that’s something quite a few people—not a majority, but also not “almost nobody”—who are often far more tightly laced than people in movies, would attest to, if people listened.

#Corset #Historical Fashion #Bridgerton #Enola Holmes #Tightlacing #Stays

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purplerose244 · 3 years ago

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It was always you

Hello everyone!! 😊

I’m a bit late but I really wanted to contribute to the @lukadrien-june event, I hope this is okay! Based on the third prompt, while throwing in some character study for sunshine boy! 💛

Enjoy!! 😙😙

Summary: Love was supposed to be easy, at least in his head. A pure perfect fairy tale... except it was not. Adrien takes probably more time to realize it than other people but he is getting there. Especially not alone.

Read it on the AO3 here

If there was one thing that Adrien wished he had known, before giving up homeschooling once and for all and finally starting to build a life, was that loving wasn’t nearly as simple and dreamlike as his extremely well-developed imagination had led him to believe. He truly wished that he could borrow Bunnix’ Miraculous sometimes, just to head back to that room where he used to spend his entire time on his own dreaming of himself and his soulmate and getting married at sight, and tell him that if living was hard outside, heart matters were even harder.

Love wasn’t that ideal, it wasn’t reductive.

It wasn’t nearly that basic either. It took him a while, but he had figured it out.

It had all started with Ladybug of course, most of his new experiences in the real world had started with her. He had fallen in love with her pretty much two days after meeting her… granted, being stuck into his own house for years thinking of himself as a poor prince in waiting of a savior rather than a knight out to get the princess, might had developed in him a bit of an eagerness for romance. She was smart, beautiful, courageous, resourceful and a hero, what was there not to love? Besides they were Chat Noir and Ladybug, they were meant to be… because… that was Ladybug. The moment he had realized how much he loved that image – if he used to fantasize before looked at him now –, and how he had started to slowly care less and less about knowing what was hiding behind it, that was the dealbreaker. He didn’t want to be in love with a figure, an icon for Paris, because it was what all people had always reduced him to. It would have not been a good way to start, and it would have not been fair for her either.

Getting over all those dreams about the marriage, the children and the hamster – oh the hamster, heart stay still – that he had wished for so intensely had been… easy? Not exactly, but smooth. A strong emptiness and pain that had slowly faded away with time. After all, Ladybug was never going to be far from him, and she cared about him a lot, he knew that much. He could love her, no matter what, no matter in what way.

After that singular and very one-sided experience, a spectacular sequence of disasters had made him slowly and steadily feel aware of how much messier the concept of relationships really was. One thing was dodging Chloe’s overly affectionate tendencies or his fans’ intense assaults over him; the other realizing that Kagami was ready to commit into something he wasn’t sure of, that Lila was still somehow convinced that he wanted something to do with her after all of her lies – for a fox this sly she sure was in denial… why did that sound hypocrite? –, and that Marinette had apparently harbored feelings for him almost as soon as they had met – oh yeah that was why. Life, a real, multifaced, worth living life was chaotic and confusing, it hurt, and it saddened, and he was behind everyone, struggling like mad to catch up.

Rejecting so many people he cared about had been awful. Some of his closest friends, all important parts of his life in different ways, and all because he wasn’t smart enough to understand feelings and his own clearly weren’t right. When Marinette had smiled at him with tears in her eyes, saying that it was okay and that she understood, Adrien had decided that it was enough. He wasn’t going to attempt anything else, if it always ended up with hurting someone he cared about.

He could deal with his feelings on his own, he always did, without paining anyone. There was no problem anyway, after Ladybug no one had ever shaken his heart.

No one, no one at all… and during that time, between slowly realizing that perhaps looking for wedding rings after two days sounded a little unreasonable and somehow managing to hate his face plastered all over Paris even more than before, the Music Festival had occurred, along with the awakening of Captain Hardrock. The famous tripping over the bridge had happened, a goofiness that had somehow gotten him into a band.

Him had happened. The charming, kind, intriguing guitarist of the Liberty, that had welcomed him the moment he had been there.

Luka Coffaine.

… Adrien was starting to hate his heart a little bit.

Luckily or unluckily, around that time he had found himself too caught up in his and other people’s messes to even realize how he had always unconsciously smiled at the boy whenever he was there, and how it had become normal for him to stay with him after band practice, without caring on how father could had reacted to his delay – just how dense was he about his feelings… never mind. It took Lila to finally focus on something other than plotting, Chloe to start paying attention to her own life instead of worsening others, and Marinette and Kagami to begin exchange sweet looks for him to finally find some normality to think – and develop an extremely intense fanboy soul.

Enough to realize that ever since Desperada, with the brilliant introduction of Viperion to the team, Adrien had found himself as Luka’s confidant, the only one besides Ladybug aware of his secret identity. Exciting stories, confessions, insecurities, all while the guitarist was making such an effort to communicate with words, because he trusted him enough not to judge his mind.

And Adrien was enjoying the confidence, the vicinity. A lot. Truly a lot.

… way too much for it to be normal.

It had woken him at night. He had teared up in his bed, curled on one side while Plagg had been purring next to his ear all night. It was the first time that being in love had felt this terrifying. He didn’t want to mess everything up, not again, not with Luka. The freedom he felt with being on the Liberty, the time spent with his friends in the band, the warming welcome he had always received from captain Anarka and Juleka – and by extension Rose, those two always came in pair –, and every single moment spent without having to care about who he was and what did he represent because Luka didn’t care about covers, he cared about the real music coming from people. Everything could disappear in a moment.

With that set of mind, he had spent some of the most tense moments of his life, constantly pondering about what to do next. What exactly was a person supposed to do if he liked another without making a mess? What was the alternative to confess his undying love and hope to plan a wedding at the end of his studies? Was there an alternative??

His anxious attitude had inevitably gotten the attention of his group of friends, that for some miracle hadn’t gotten tired of his denseness, especially Marinette. She hadn’t seemed to care much, especially not while distractively holding the amulet Kagami had made for her – somehow love life had made the fencer even deadlier during practice, like she was fighting was someone, impressive. It had taken them to bribe him with a new recipe of croissants from the Dupain-Cheng bakery to be forced to talk, a necessity that had exploded out of his lips the moment his friends had been gathered on Marinette’s bed to listen. The sweets had been amazing. Just a bit salty… but that was probably because he hadn’t been able to talk without tearing up all over the food.

At the end of the discussion, Marinette had squeaked so loudly his ears had started to ring.

“You have to confess and get together, you two would be a great couple!” To which he had responded that he didn’t want to risk it, especially since he didn’t know how it was going to end.

Alya had slammed her hands over her own knees – ouch –, standing up.

“You have to man up! Don’t think about what could happen, go for it and make him yours!” To which he had said that he didn’t want to be insensitive again in case it didn’t go well – also that that kind of wording was a little confusing, enough to turn him bright red.

Then Nino had looked up from his phone, looking a little baffled. He had changed too, considering that love matters used to make him all nervous.

“Why don’t you ask him out first and see how it goes from there? You don’t have to become boyfriends if it feels too soon.” The table had gone silent, all eyes were on the DJ, who simply arched an eyebrow. “… you do know you can go on a date with someone, realize that it’s not working without actually get together, right?” More silence had followed. Adrien was sure that he had felt a weird mixture of disappointment and relief, while Marinette had looked so very shocked.

In conclusion, Nino was amazing. Like that was new.

Starting from there the blonde had been practicing in front of the mirror every day, terrified of rejection but less tense over how things could go. Despite fans and admirers his past relationships, if those could be called, weren’t giving him much of a booster or a good feeling about how this chance was going to play. Somehow it hardly mattered. Luka was a very reasonable person, he was going to reject him very nicely. It had been almost uplifting the idea of the guitarist treating him with absolute kindness, even while shattering all of his dreams.

One day Luka had called him over for an improv session. It happened often, this artist was extremely instinctive when it came to music, and he had told him that having a more rational and accurate player like Adrien around grounded him to his usual style. It was flattering every time he was called for that same reason, it was an occasion that made the blonde ignore all about his current schedule – of course he was at fencing right now, Kagami could cover- uhm, confirm for him –, to finally focus on something that he really wanted to do. Luka was always waiting over the bed of his room, playing a few notes, stopping for minutes then going again. It was calming and endearing, like Adrien was allowed to hear the inside of his mind.

He had been standing there, legs crossed at the end of the bed while Luka was lying down with the instrument. There had been only sounds for all of this time, without additions or suggestions or anything. It was nice. Really nice. Adrien had wondered what else could he discover out of him just by stay close like this, and how much he wanted to. The need to let those words out had been steadily growing without him realizing it.

“Luka?” Until they were out. “Do you wanna go on a date with me?” Mirror practice had helped, it had come out almost mechanically. There was a spark into his stomach, the adrenaline pouring out. The melody in the air had stopped for a pretty terrifying second.

Then it had come back as a full, real song. It was timid, sweet, and sincere.

“I’d love to.” In his own giddiness, Adrien could admit of being wrong. Yet he was almost sure he had seen the calm and controlled guitarist blush the tiniest little bit.

A single date at the restaurant where Alya’s mother worked at without people in the way – he loved his friends so much – had followed another one walking hand in hand through Rue Montorgueil in disguise – at last he had achieved his long-lasting dream of looking like someone else without the mask –, that had followed another one at a secret party Chloe had organized at Le Grand Paris for her classmates – she had given him such a smirk at seeing his plus one, gossip was coming. It had nothing to do with the dates of his daydreams, the ones he had lived through his head for years: every single time his stomach was so tense it felt like it was burning, painfully, making him question if he really wanted this. Then, the moment they were there talking, engaging themselves into an interesting topic while letting time pleasantly leave them behind, the stress was gone and there were only the two of them.

They had gone like this for months. Some absolutely lovely months. At some point Alya, stopping him at school, had calmly stated that him and Luka combined with Marinette and Kagami were making her feel single, and she had a boyfriend, so it was probably time to make it official. He had agreed with her, of course he had. He liked Luka… yeah right, he loved him. Everything with him felt so real, so close and intense, like he was finally living.

His feelings weren’t the problem… Luka’s were.

Not that he doubted him. Not after all the little orange blossoms left over his keyboard before band practice – they meant eternal love, oh heart stay still once again –, the songs sung for him whenever he felt upset or angry at his father, or the hand kisses at the end of every single date, like he was being cherished every single time. One of the guitarist’s biggest qualities was his sincerity, Adrien was absolutely sure he could trust him and his heart. Just how he had never blamed anyone before, not Chloe, not Kagami, not Marinette, not even Lila, for their feelings towards him.

They had been real, like his own feelings for Ladybug used to be… but they were for Adrien only, the supermodel, Paris’ iconic pretty face and perfect boy. That perfection in him, one he had been forced to practice in order to please his father, that was attracted others, but it wasn’t in any way all that was in him.

What was all the rest? It was also there. But it came out only whenever he wore the mask.

With time, the image he had been forced to wear for the profit of his father had grown into an uncomfortable, old sweater that he hadn’t known it had felt unbelievably itchy until he got the possibility to take it off, to try something else. And that black-leather armor was his absolute favorite. Nothing felt like freedom as that, nothing felt like him as those moments, whenever he jumped into the sky holding hard onto his staff. Thanks to his Miraculous he had discovered himself. Thanks to that he had found out that he liked making jokes, he loved puns, he liked making a fool of himself for the sake to have fun. He liked risking, he liked dancing, he wasn’t too keen on closed places, and he absolutely loved how the moon reflected into the Seine at night after patrol. Everything was him, so vividly him it made him choke a little at the mere thought of it.

Adrien Agreste was another mask, one he was growing considerably tired to wear. He had been through some love experiences now, even though they did not end quite well: there was no point into pretending to be someone he wasn’t, there was no meaning into hiding himself when he truly wanted to establish a bond with someone. He had known this, he knew this.

But if everyone liked Adrien better… if Luka liked Adrien better, how was he supposed to do that?

The tension coming from those thoughts was there only when he wasn’t around his favorite guitarist, making him at least forget about the dilemma coming with. Even so, around those times he had found himself at least wondering exactly what kind of opinion his date had about Chat Noir. He wasn’t sure, they had never talked much in their superhero personas, because of the urge of the moment and because with his lady’s strategic mind and a power like Second Chance it was unfairly easy sometimes to solve the situation – Ladybug needed to start bringing Viperion more often and yes, maybe just a little bit to see more of Luka in sexy snake cosplay. He was fairly sure he didn’t mind him, he seemed to even smile at him sometimes – total heart eyes –, but he wanted to be sure.

It had been night at the Liberty, they had ordered pizza. Sugary drinks made Rose giggle like mad, so Juleka had brought her to her room to take a nap and probably cuddle, leaving the two of them alone. That wasn’t weird. Wondering if the guy Adrien was dating liked his cat counterpart, that was weird. At the end, looking at how relaxed the boy over the sofa was while distractively bending the last pizza crust, he hadn’t been able to do pose a potentially confusing question, asking instead what he thought about Ladybug – he had made a mental post-it to whine loudly into his pillow later.

Luka had brought up stuff he already knew, how she was a great leader, an inspiration, extremely smart and courageous. Despite the failure of questioning him Adrien had smiled, he was weirdly happy they thought the same about his partner.

“She has a huge responsibility and deals with it incredibly, that’s commendable… with that being said, my favorite is Chat Noir.” A boom inside. “He’s hot.” A second, bigger explosion had occurred into Adrien’s head – in a feeble spark of lucidity he had begged his brain not to produce smoke out of his ears. Luka had laughed, playing some more, without looking directly at him. “And he’s such a selfless, reliable person, you can tell from how he doesn’t hesitate to help others or support me or Ladybug. He’s incredibly loyal, and… really funny.”

It had taken perhaps a second too long, in which a thousand of tiny little Adrien running all over his brain had been screaming out loud hysterically about how this handsome guitarist was a Chat Noir fan, and it had been the best day ever. Then he had managed to talk, ask, his voice was a little raspy.

“You… you like his puns?” Luka had scooted closer to him, smirking a little.

“It’s our little secret.” With that he had put a hand around his shoulders, bringing him closer to him. The blonde had abandoned himself into the embrace, trying to hide the giddy smile in his chest.

It got easier to let himself go from that moment forward, knowing that at least some parts of Chat Noir Luka didn’t mind at all. Having Nino groaning like mad after they had all taken their matchmaker ice creams from Andre, with Adrien coming out with a “I scream for an ice cream”, had been worth it just to see the guitarist rolling his eyes with an endeared smile. It had felt good. He couldn’t fully let go, being a model and famous and all that baloney, but he could stop pretending for a moment and embrace a little bit more about himself.

It had hit him much later that perhaps, maybe, possibly, the matter of telling Luka about his superhero identity was meant to come up at some point. It hadn’t seemed an important matter before, he was not supposed to do reveal it anyway according to Ladybug. Then again, this wasn’t a relationship behind masks like that one, it was as open as it could be. Also Plagg wasn’t exactly the biggest fan or rules anyway, he had doubted he would have minded. Hearing Luka talking about his latest adventure with Viperion, basically summarizing everything Adrien already knew from his point of view, made him feel a bit guilty about not coming clean. Still, it was hard to recall that unpleasantness with Luka always ending the discussion making a comment about Chat Noir, probably catching up over the fact that Adrien was also a ‘fan’. Knowing that such a charming boy like Luka considered his pun machine alter ego attractive, stating that the only blondie with green eyes as handsome he knew was Adrien, was definitely a good way to end the day.

Then, that had happened. Apparently, Hawk Moth had thought that the idea of unleashing once again Gorizilla over the powerless city of Paris was a hilarious idea. It had taken them forever to calm him down, the bodyguard had been all agitated since there had been no sign of his protegee – at least for what he knew. Cataclysm, Lucky Charm, Miraculous Ladybug, the script was old and overused and after the most tired pound it ever Adrien had called it a day, sinking into his own bed as soon as he had been home.

The unconscious was a calming place, a pleasant one, just like Luka.

Just like Luka… Luka… the date.

Out of pure will and terror he had managed to get on his feet, realizing with horror that not only he hadn’t just fallen asleep, but he was also late. Two. Hours. Late. Dread didn’t describe properly the feeling that had taken over. Begging a very annoyed looking Plagg he had launched himself into the night sky, running on all four out of pure despair. When he had arrived at the restaurant, miserably closed, Luka was leaning over the wall of the entrance that was off, humming a very mellow, very melancholic melody. And he had dressed up, for once in his life wearing something classy, a white dress shirt and a black jacket without sleeves. His hair had grown a bit in those months, enough for him to pull a little ponytail.

What a waste, Adrien had thought. What a waste on someone like him, this beautiful person lightening up as soon as he was there, running to hug him, saying that he knew there had been an akuma today and he was happy to see he was okay. Except he wasn’t, this wasn’t, it was not okay. He was taking advantage of his position, the fact that there was stuff he was keeping for himself. It wasn’t fair for himself, most importantly it wasn’t fair for him.

“And you’re okay with this?” He didn’t know what he had been implying with those words, he had felt the need to get them out. To be heard. Because Luka always listened.

The guitarist had given him a weird, aware look, holding up his hands.

“I am if you are.” Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Nothing but that feeling of guilt had filled his heart, and Adrien had rushed in, hugging him as closely as he could. Luka had embraced back, caressing his back slowly and gently as it was his way of being, telling him that they could postpone on a day with a less dangerous akuma terrorizing the city. Adrien had kept his eyes shut, choking silent sobs against his jacket. Thinking that maybe it was okay, maybe they could still keep going like this. H was scared, besides there was no need to change anything, or even better there was no need to say something that wasn’t needed. This was enough, this could be enough.

Adrien had then opened his eyes, only to feel them pinching. From the window of the restaurant, he could see the lonely white table with two dishes and two glasses, and all around… were candles and roses. Luke remembered. He had remembered the mention of the romantic gesture the blonde had done for a girl that hadn’t gone as planned. He had remembered how Adrien had always wished for something like that for himself. He knew how much of a hopeless romantic he was. Luka knew him.

At the same time, he didn’t. He didn’t know him. It was not okay.

It was not okay, and it was not enough.

Mirror sessions were back after that, more frantic than ever but less frequent than he would have liked – he was dense he could admit, not enough to proclaim to his father or Nathalie that he was Chat Noir while in the shower. He had wished it was like preparing for a shooting, or even imagining to be an actor like mom was. The tension was nothing like. The number of warnings coming from all directions was massive, starting from how once again his friends were getting worried about him – he wasn’t going to resist the bribe of chocolate chip cookies for long –, how Ladybug had expressively told him no one was supposed to know about their real identities, how there was no telling how Luka was going to react over the fact that his date was the cat boy with whom sometimes he fought crime with – man that was a weird line to say out loud. He had found it hard to sleep, too tense to get lost into his dreams, questioning his decision all night long.

One night, after a particularly harsh internal battle between him himself and he, he had rolled over a little too much forgetting about his poor little cheese-eating friend. He had been on his way to apologize to the squished kwami, but with a single firm gesture coming from his tiny arm Plagg had gotten him to shut up, eyes widened and extremely pissed.

“You’re telling him.” His eyelid had twitched a little. Right, he had kept him awake as well. “I don’t care what Ladybug says, I don’t care what Tikki says, you’re telling him.”

“Huh, okay?”

“It’s not a question Adrien, it’s an order. Do it or else you won’t find Atlantis that much of a natural disaster.” Wasn’t for experience he would have doubted that this tiny guy was able of much. Good thing he did have precedents, so Adrien had opted to nod and lay down once again. Following orders was still pretty normal for him anyway. “… besides…” Plagg had scooted closer to him, nudging against his shoulder while closing his eyes. “No secret is worth taking away your happiness, kid.” Adrien had found no problem sleeping from then on.

At last, after a bit more of self-convincing, it had all come down on the matter of when. Adrien wasn’t exactly sure if the news was particularly good or bad, consequentially he had no idea if the reveal had to be organized during a joyful or tense situation. Was a date a good idea? Or was it better to simply invite him over, or go to his house and talk? Luka was a great listener, but he didn’t always like to talk much, maybe he was going to feel pressured in the second case. He communicated better with songs… but writing a jingle about how he was a superhero in a leather suit with a ring that could pulverize the Tour Eiffel didn’t sound like a hit – maybe… or maybe it was, he had to ask Luka later if the matter was going to be solved. After so much time pondering, he had been left with nothing concrete, no ideas. He couldn’t ask his friends, nor Ladybug. Maybe this was a bad decision after all – never mind Plagg that was still glaring.

He had been trying to focus on his Chinese homework all afternoon, his mind running miles with him unable to make it stop. Then his phone had lightened up, a welcomed distraction that had blossomed into absolute delight at reading the sender’s name. Despite the migraine coming along with the situation, it was all worth it just for a chance to be with him.

Melody: Hey Sunshine

Melody: If I remember right you’re free tomorrow

Melody: Do you want to come over?

Me: Of course I do :)

Me: My schedule ends early afternoon

Me: Is the evening okay?

Melody: Perfect

Melody: Dress nice, it’s a date

Melody: A special one, for a special day

Me: Why? What’s tomorrow?

Melody: Wanna guess?

Me: …

Me: Thursday?

Melody: Ahah, well also

Melody: But also exactly one year since the Music Festival

Melody: It’s the day you and I met

Somehow while melting into an absolute puddle of tears and adoring whines, Adrien had realized that this guy was too wonderful. In his heart the last thing he wanted to do was ruining something good, especially a night Luka had prepared for him. But this wasn’t about himself anymore, this was about giving him what he deserved. Hopefully they were going to have a date still after this.

Hopefully. Adrien had tried to forget about that eventuality, at least enough to finish his homework. It had taken him a while to fall asleep that night – Plagg had simply whispered “thin ice” in a very grumpy tone.

The next day he had used all his experience as a model to look his best, raised two thumbs up at his mirror, and headed out. He had begged his bodyguard to leave him alone on this one and the big guy had actually agreed, somehow seeing his seriousness and commitment more than his father – granted that the bar was pretty low on that one. The path leading to the Liberty was not exactly short from his house, yet he had felt the absolute need to rethink everything. Perhaps to find it in himself the strength to blame himself for wanting to come clean only now. It had been a year, a year since he had met Luka. He had changed so much, his thoughts, his world, himself. He was there to make just another change and take control, it was terrifying and exciting…

…

… and there he was.

When he saw the Liberty, his stomach did that fluttering again. Pure tension and longing mixed together, because this was about him and it was making him grow terrified; but this was about him, and he loved everything that involved him. The sight of the ship covered in aromatic candles and roses with the table prepared on the bridge, the most romantic place once again, should had not surprised him after all. He still had to close his eyes for a moment to recollect himself.

Luka was waiting on the dock, smiling at him. It was such a lovely view, and when he extended his hand towards him it turned into the perfect view.

“You look amazing. You’re ready?”

He was. He finally was. Adrien sighed, shaking his head.

“I have to tell you something first.” Huh, something was wrong. The guitarist had changed expression, he looked so confused and hurt all of the su- wait. “Ah! No! Not that kind of ‘I have to tell you something’, an actual ‘I have to tell you something’!” He had practiced this moment for so long, how was it possible he had never noticed how off it sounded? Luka let out a nervous laugh. Ah, his hands were sweating already, where was Chat Noir’s confidence when he needed it? “I really need to get this out of my chest.”

“Oh, okay. I’m listening.”

“And if afterwards you have doubts about…” He didn’t like it, but he needed to state it as it was. “… all of this, I’ll understand.” He was in. He was doing it. No turning back. That most likely didn’t sit right with Luka, he wasn’t looking any less distressed.

He reached for him, grabbing one of his hand for comfort. Even though he didn’t understand, he was still doing his best to be there. Gosh, Adrien loved him, so much.

“Don’t jump to conclusions, tell me what it is and then we can talk about it.” He looked for communication in his relationships, he had told him from the start and even before, during the times they used to talk about anything and everything, waiting for the sun to set behind the bridge over the Seine. The blonde hoped they were going to talk too.

He closed his eyes again, took the deepest breath in his life, and nodded.

“It might sound crazy, but please listen to me and believe me.” Luka nodded immediately. “I…” He had composed a whole speech about how much these last months had been amazing, how he was sorry that he had kept quiet over something important for so long, and how he hoped that they could still try and be together for real. A convincing discussion slowly leading to the reveal. “… I’m Chat Noir, and I love you.” Out of all of that he had taken seven words max and blurted them out without a single thought in his head.

The cat was out of the bag, classic cat superhero style. If only that knowledge wasn’t making him feel worse. He was tense, sweating, completely still, waiting for his judgement. Every second was turning into a minute then an hour then it was getting lost into his own misty head.

It was warm outside, even at that hour.

Those long fingers clenched around his hand.

Adrien looked up. Luka was smiling tearfully at him, his blue eyes were mesmerizing. He laughed happily, then he reached for his cheek. Heartbeats echoed into the blonde’s head as he got closer, eyes narrowed but still open as to catch any kind of rejection. It hit him very very slowly that this was actually true, this out of world fantasy was not a fruit of his messed up imagination, and the moment the realization took over Adrien closed the distance between them. Wow. Luka kissed nothing like he would have expected. His hand on his cheek was careful and gentle like him, but his lips were caressing his with want and passion, like they had lost all the patience behind the moment they had met in electric need. Closeness was something Adrien had missed for such a long time and could never get enough of. Luka’s closeness was whole, real, his. He reached for his jacket, just to hold onto something and have another proof that this was happening.

They parted, and then got closer, kissing again and again, happily trapped into a bubble in which time and space couldn’t reach them. When they back away with trembling breaths, Adrien felt his lips getting immediately cold and couldn’t help himself as he reached for one last peck. Luka laughed into it, pressing back then leaning his forehead over his. There was an amount of sweetness into those eyes that it made the blonde want to look away, his sight getting all blurry.

“I love you too.” His hand was still over his face. “Will you be my boyfriend?”

The answer was the clearest of his life. It was screaming from the bottom of his stomach, it was highlighted in neon in the middle of his brain. He was almost tempted to tackle him to the ground and let his actions speak for himself – alright he needed to chill for a moment –, then confusion hit him. He… he said it, he had said it, right? He told him the truth about his identity. Then what was this lack of reaction? Where was the amazement, the fright, the confusion, even the anger? Adrien Agreste had just confessed he made a habit of running over the roofs of Paris in full cat cosplay and this was the reaction?

“I… you… what’s going on?” Luka giggled, probably still caught up with the latest nice mood. Maybe he didn’t believe the blonde, maybe he didn’t hear him at all. For a musician this talented it sounded farfetched to miss a sound, but you never knew. “I’m… I’m Chat Noir, Luka.”

The guitarist blinked, smile slowly decreasing but without disappearing.

“Yeah, I heard that.”

“As the superhero, Chat Noir.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“Then why aren’t you saying anything about that?” A little shrug. The last thing he would have expected was this nonchalance. It was maddening. “I’m a superhero, I’m Chat Noir! Why aren’t you mad? You deserved to know! You should’ve known for a…” Suddenly the guitarist’s eyes were not as easy to find as before. Like they were hiding something. “… a… while…” Again, Adrien was extremely dense emotionally, and some things were harder to understand for him. But he wasn’t stupid, most important, he couldn’t ignore that little guilty grin of his taking over. “… you knew.” The pressure that had assaulted him for the last period disappeared completely, now there was only absolute shock. “You knew I was Chat Noir?!? What in the world, since when?!?”

The guitarist passed a hand over his neck, looking a little reluctant. It was a little weird of an emotion on him, on someone so on track with himself and proud of his persona. He took his hands, gently guiding him onto the bridge. That was one relief at least.

“To be honest, I was never completely sure. If you hadn’t told me I wouldn’t have known one hundred percent… but at some point I started to have my suspicions.” He led him near the rail, the moon was mirroring into the water of the Seine. His heart soared at the view. “It was the kind of thought you pay attention to only when something comes up, so I never actively tried to prove it was real.” He sounded relaxed. Perhaps he had made peace with it for a while.

Adrien nodded absently, feeling a weird limbo between relief that he wasn’t completely recognizable and that there were at least doubts in people’s minds.

“Okay, but there has to be a time when you started to think about it.”

“… there was a moment.” Once more Luka looked guilty, while smiling still. He looked at him, raising his hands. “Again, it was a doubt, not a certainty. I never actively knew for sure you were Chat Noir, okay?” The blonde frowned but nodded. “Well… remember the Desperada incident?”

He gaped, so strongly he almost chocked.

“You have a suspicion for months?!” Luka laughed a little, that managed to calm him down a little.

“An idea, a speculation, call it what you want. It got me and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.” He leaned against the rail, looking pensive. “We were hiding in the lockers, and while I was in there I heard you opening and closing a locker… then opening and closing a door.” Holy Miraculous he was an idiot. “When I found you with Ladybug in the sewer you left, and I got the snake Miraculous. Right after that Chat Noir was back.” He grinned, eyes lightening up. “From that moment the possibility has never really left my mind, and nothing has happened that made me think it couldn’t be real.” Of course not, Adrien was never around Chat Noir and Chat Noir was never around Adrien. It almost made sense – sure, ‘almost’.

Adrien took a few deep breaths, still recovering from that sudden reveal – a confession that did not go the way he would have expected. He looked at this guy who so calmly was taking everything in, a view that was calming like very few other things and, slowly, he smiled, joining him at admiring the Seine. He let his head fall onto his shoulder, closing his eyes for a moment.

“I was so worried about this.”

“I’m sorry, I really didn’t know what to do. On one hand I didn’t want it to be true, because it made me feel anxious whenever I looked at the news and saw another dangerous akuma.” He wrapped his arm around him protectively. It felt so nice. “On the other, it was kind of an endearing thought, that the two gorgeous blondes I knew just happened to be the same person.” Gosh he was going to die, this person did not hold back with compliments with either of them.

Speaking of…

“Wait, if you were thinking about it since back then… were you teasing me on purpose whenever you talked about Chat Noir in front of me?” Whoa, he had to take in the fact that this very zen guitarist was able to make such a suggestive smile. I made his entire face burn. “Oh my gosh.”

“You were always blushing whenever I did it, I couldn’t help myself.”

“For real??”

“It was too adorable. At that point either you were really him or you found him attractive as well… which I would’ve understood.”

��Stooop!!” Adrien covered his eyes, his heart bursting out of his chest, laughing out what was left of his fear. “… you really don’t care? I’m the one who asked you out, not Chat Noir.” A bit a sadness made him step away just a little. “And people like me better when I’m not him…”

“If people aren’t into you when you’re a blonde superhero with a sexy catsuit, maybes there’s something wrong with them. I suggest blindness.” It got him to laugh. Luka brought him closer, arms around him. “Besides, there aren’t two people here. You are Adrien, and you are Chat Noir. Being a superhero is a part of you. And I love it, because it makes you… you.” Truly sincerity was his biggest quality. Adrien didn’t doubt a word that had come out of his mouth. He leaned his head into the crook of his shoulder.

“Are you sure?” Luka nodded, his hair tickling his cheek.

Then he pulled away. He put a finger under his chin, raising it up. Their eyes met. There was such a calm, comfortable world behind those blue globes. It made him want to never leave.

“You’re a rare symphony, Adrien Agreste, one that had been kept hidden for far too long. I wanna hear that song, your soul, finally free to be heard. I want to know its beauty, because the echo alone is astonishing.” He knew him. He knew all of him. “The kind and selfless to a fault, the professional and determinate model, the mischievous and enchanting superhero, these are all notes that play in your life, that make your life. And I wanna be part of that song, if you will let me.” He pressed another, shorter kiss on his lips, as to seal this moment forever into his body, forever into his heart.

There was no way Adrien would have been able to stop tears. Luka gulped. The blonde smiled, a horribly wide, unsophisticated curve that would have made all of his photographers shudder at the same time. Perhaps that was why it felt so immensely good.

“You… y-you’re not allowed to say you’re not good with words after this.”

The guitarist laughed, relieved, holding him closer.

“It’s a yes then, Sunshine?” Adrien smiled, reaching forward again, thinking that there was no imaginary world of his able to replicate this.

“It’s a yes, Melody.”

This was pure, unparalleled, wholesome reality.

#lukadrien #luka coffaine #adrien agreste #chat noir #viperion #miraculous #miraculous ladybug #ml #ml fic #ml fanfic #lukadrien june 2021 #fanfiction #fic

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barrel-crow-n · 5 months ago

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I felt it at the end of Six of Crows where the ending just made the whole book feel like it was just a set up for the next one where we supposed to get those gut punches

I gotta say, I don't really get this one? This is how books work? The first book leads into the next one. But I wouldn't really call it a set up. CK was the aftermath, and true there were more "gut punches"(?) But that's because CK was supposed to be deeper and dive into themes rather than focus on the job like book 1 was

Banter doesn't make a compelling character and I would say, "Snippets of characterization doesn't either",

Banter is an important part of Six of Crows because the whole cast are, well, teenagers, and that's what teens do. However snippets of characterisaton? How so? I felt the characters were well rounded. I could tell their personalities, and the reasons they are the way they are. I could understand their motivations and actions. What does "snippets of characterisaton" mean? Do you mean it was spread out throughout? Well of course. No one likes a massive exposition dump. And some parts of character were also becoming more evident as results of character arcs so had to be later.

but because there was hardly anything about these characters that wasn't directly stated to the audience... I had to rethink it.

Really? Hate to break it to you, but sometimes things have to be stated. Inej's opening paragraph about Kaz and his cruelty was necessary because it demonstrated his reputation and added context to the rest of the chapter. Inej praying to her saints shows religion and I wouldn't say that's tell really because then everything is tell. Nina's love for food wasn't directly stated, and neither was her hope and good will - that was shown through her treatment of Matthias. Jesper's whole thing was putting up a front to hide his self hatred. The Wylan can't read reveal had to be shown but there was evidence throughout the books, his stubbornness and bravery was also shown. Matthias has to identify his problems to deal with them but I don't see why you'd count that because that's how problem solving works. I'm not gonna dwell on this bit because I don't have my copy with me and it will become too tiring.

Nina and Matthais is just lust and a walking PSA for tolerance. I started not to like them at near the end of Six of Crows where Bardugo just started preaching the point of their relationship. "Maybe we can change Druskelle min-" okay. Got it.

Nina and Matthias aren't just lust. That's a big part of it but they laugh together and form a connection. And changing minds isn't the POINT of their relationship. Relationships aren't like that. The point is that they love each other. And the changing minds part is separate. Matthias didn't leave the druskelle because his dick led him astray - that's very reductive of him as a character. Nina as a PERSON (NOT a potential partner) showed him that his way of thinking was wrong. Matthias then wanted to change other minds because he's a good person that wants to help others like him. Nina was just going to kill them all.

If you need a specific example of something that could be explored better. It would be the setting. Ketterdam, The Slat, The Crow gang.

That's fair, I did also want more about these places but it's Dregs. Not the Crows. The Crows are just the six of them. The Dregs are the actual gang, so what was already there about them you managed to miss.

A huge emotional linchpin of the finale is "home",

Not... really? I don't see where you got this idea from? Out of the Crows the Slat was only Kaz's home really. Jesper and Inej lived there and Jes had friends but it wasn't really home, and Inej didn't like it there really. Nina never lived at the Slat, nor did Wylan I don't think? But even then he never wanted to be a criminal so it was just a place to stay rather than home, and Matthias never step foot there. And of all of them, Kaz, who has the deepest connection to the Slat, never really feels big about it, he just doesn't want to get ran out of Ketterdam. He didn't really care about the Slat, he just wanted control of his gang and the city. Inej gets a ship which will allow her to reach her goals and reunites with her parents but I would call that purpose and family, not home. Wylan and Jesper move to the Van Eck mansion, but it's too early to call that home, for either of them.

None of it resonates because we never quite spent time with them. It's certainly a place. And Bardugo says they're a gang but not as hard working as Kaz. Is it necessary for it to be deeper for the plot? Nope. She made sure of it.

They really only exist to uplift Kaz.

..No? They were quite important in the finale (it was Dregs that fake kidnapped and tortured Wylan) and besides ROTTY AND SPECHT (my overlooked faves) are Dregs and they were always there helping out. They don't "uplift" they help.

Barrel Trash Kaz. Who is the Baddest of the Bunch, I swear. Except oops, there's worst or simply lesser.

Well, yeah? There's two definitions to the word bad?? Kaz's bad is cruelty and ruthlessness. The lesser Dregs are at the bottom of the pecking order. I... don't really get what you mean by this. Kaz is powerful and hardworking and some of the other Dregs are lesser - because they are beneath him. Kaz wouldn't be at the bottom of the Barrel that literally makes no sense, he's very powerful and influential in the Barrel, he's just a horrible person that people in universe deem villainous. Hence Baddest of the Bunch.

I find the morality of these books actually not all that grey? It's pretty flat.

You.. can't call morality flat. That's not how that works???? It's a spectrum from black and white tf does flat mean. Also it's very grey?? Kaz is definitely darker grey with his terrible actions, Inej hates killing but does it and states that she would kill those people all over again if it meant staying free, Jesper loves fighting and scamming people but feels guilt at many of his actions simultaneously, Wylan breaks into places and commits crime but doesn't enjoy it, Nina was fully prepared to massacre an entire group worth of people - yes they were druskelle but that's still a big body count. And Matthias literally hunted Grisha but now is a very caring and supportive friend, specifically towards Jesper whom he gave advice to.

You can rest easy that Bardugo is always going to put these protagonist in as good of a light as she can possibly get so you can stay on their side.

Literally no. Bardugo never sugarcoats Kaz who is the worst of them and feels the least remorse for what he does. Their enemies are just worse than they are and the story is told from their perspective.

The only character that actually has undeniable flaws you can't explain away or justify is Matthais.

Kaz literally feels no remorse for his actions, Nina is too patriotic sometimes, Jesper likes scamming and fighting people.

And not for a lack of trying. The implication with the way the Druskelle work is pretty harrowing. Bardugo makes sure we don't think about it too much or have Nina be flirty. It's partly why i think she had the sorry bastard die.

I have no idea what this paragraph means so I'm just gonna skip

Inej says she killed innocent people but we never see it. More of that just saying how things are.

Where would we see this in the space of the plot. Why would Kaz send her on such jobs at any point during the duology

We briefly thought Kaz killed a good person until it's revealed he blackmails a sex worker that's at the same place Inej was sold.

Well yeah, that's why he isn't pitch black and is, in fact, grey. He still tortured a young boy, he still murders and cons and steals. He's still a murderous thug.

Of course, Kaz always has a reason. Kaz doesn't do random acts of violence. That's not "Leigh not wanting him to be morally grey" or whatever (although, she is literally the author and authoritarian intention builds the world so??) youre saying because he still drops a guy off a lighthouse, but Kaz always has reasons. He doesn't just randomly kill people. Doesn't change the fact that he literally loves psychologically torturing people. Sure he never hurts people like Elise, Hannah, and Alby but he literally traumatises people with graphic descriptions of violence/threats.

You can dislike a book but calling it a concept and then making criticisms that are pretty dubious imo is... an interesting take.

The Six of Crows books are only uplifited by what their fandom took and actually put the work in exploring properly. Even then, the fanon is kind of frustrating.

Six of Crows feels like a concept of a series.

#no hate to you personally but i just cant understand your takes

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valeriehervo · 4 years ago

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Valérie Hervo runs Les Chandelles, the legendary Paris sex club where members of French high society, politicians, barristers and rock stars (and an increasing number of Brits) come to indulge their erotic fantasies. Can it survive the twin threats of the pandemic and a moral backlash?

Adam Sage

Saturday March 20 2021,

Valérie Hervo is outraged. She has just been listening to a radio station where two male presenters, chatting about her forthcoming appearance on their show, kept referring to her as the owner of a “group sex club”.

“That really is low-class vocabulary,” she tells me. “It’s very macho as well. Only a man would say something like that.

“And it is not what this place is about. To me, it is a journey through the mystery of the senses to a land of sensuality and encounters.”

Hervo is particularly aggrieved at what she took to be the implication that she organised sexual games for the benefit of men.

Nothing could be further from the truth, she insists. “Here, everything revolves around women’s pleasure. This is a place where a woman can do what she wants, when she wants and with whom she wants – and if she wants to do nothing, she does nothing.”

Hervo opened Les Chandelles, her recreational club – as she would prefer it described – in 1993, and it has since become a part of French high-society folklore.

Any Parisian will tell you that this is the place where the country’s political, economic and cultural elites live out their sexual fantasies beyond the sight of ordinary mortals, where government ministers, television presenters, rock stars and chief executives engage in the ancient practice of libertinage.

But what exactly goes on behind the plain façade in a narrow street near the Louvre in central Paris? And what might this tell us about French values? Or indeed about British values, given the steady flow of clients rumoured to have crossed the channel in recent years in the hope of fulfilling their “erotic potential” under Hervo’s stewardship?

With telephones barred from the club (they have to be left at the entrance) and hardly anyone willing to talk openly about their evenings there – “It’s a matter of intimacy,” says Hervo. “You don’t start telling everyone about your sex life at dinner parties” – such questions have given rise to few answers and much speculation.

Now, with the club closed because of the pandemic, Hervo, 53, has written a book that explains what happens when the dancefloor empties, usually around 1.30am, and the salons around it fill with writhing, sighing bodies.

Les dessous des Chandelles, which could be translated either figuratively as The Secrets of the Chandelles or literally as Underneath the Candelabras, is the portrait of a quintessentially French establishment.

Where else would the lost property include designer thongs or customers eat Ladurée macarons off the back of a naked woman, a famous male barrister end up in an alcove with his female rival days after their clash in a criminal court, or Mick Jagger reportedly be turned away for wearing a pair of jeans?

Hervo explains that her club is a bastion of French “savoir vivre”, where a select group of beautiful, intelligent and well-educated people conduct themselves in a way befitting a nation that has given the world some of its greatest suggestive literature, from Molière’s Dom Juan to Laclos’ Les liaisons dangereuses.

Consider, for example, her account of one of the Eyes Wide Shut theme parties she holds from time to time. “A naked woman, her gaze hidden by a Venetian mask, lies on a table,” she writes. “A nymph in a transparent toga joins her. She kneels down and delicately pulls her legs apart.”

She has torrid encounters herself, for instance with a woman whose perfume she found bewitching and whose body she discovered behind a veil in an alcove.

Much of her time, however, is spent looking after her patrons, like the couple of regulars who realised to their horror that their adult son and his partner had also begun going to Les Chandelles. Hervo tells how they begged her to help them avoid what they said would be a “regrettable” meeting.

On another occasion, a male customer arrived with his mistress, explaining to Hervo that his wife was stuck at home because she was ill. An hour later, the wife arrived with a younger man, she writes. “Don’t say anything to my husband,” she told Hervo. “He thinks I’ve got the flu.”

Hervo promptly rushed downstairs where she found the husband, “naked and frolicking with his partner and a few other accomplices”. She advised him to leave through the emergency exit.

I am discussing these and more adventures with Hervo at a table in her club’s pink and white restaurant, which is to be found at the bottom of stairs that wind down from an ordinary-looking blue door on the street.

Opposite us is another staircase that leads to what could easily be mistaken for an 18th- century Parisian literary salon – were it not for the mattress in the alcove at the end of it.

A third staircase, encased in walls painted in gold leaf, descends to a dancefloor, a bar and more salons with their alcoves, benches and mattresses.

It is difficult to find an English word to describe Les Chandelles. Some have called it a swingers’ club, although that conveys none of the cerebral sophistication and cultural aspirations that go with elite sex in France.

Others have used the term wife-swapping (or échangisme, as the French call it), but Hervo is no more happier with that than with group sex.

“For me, échangisme is very reductive and sad,” Hervo explains. “It involves some kind of contract between four people and they all need to agree, which can’t happen very often.”

What prevails at her club, she says, is libertinage, a concept dating back to a 12th-century rebellion against the church by disaffected clerics who were determined to place physical love above the courtly version promoted by troubadours and their ilk.

The contemporary version of this philosophy involves making “everything possible and nothing obligatory”, Hervo says.

One couple might go for sex, either with each other or with someone else, she says. A second might go along to watch. A third could be happy with a turn on the dancefloor.

“For some, it is enough to have an imaginary journey. For others, they will want a little bit more. But what happens in the salons is the icing on the cake and it doesn’t matter if nothing happens, because we’ve had such fun with the preliminaries.

“Everyone goes at their own rhythm. You may be happy with a look, a caress or with voyeurism. But that is all very different to échangisme.”

Libertinage, which has come and gone in France over the centuries – the early 17th and the mid-18th being among the high points – enjoyed a return to fashion from the late Nineties with the emergence of hundreds of clubs amid a spirit of unrestrained freedom.

The number has since fallen, with adepts taking to organising their own house parties. At the last count there were 269 such clubs left, according to French state radio.

The health crisis looks likely to drive many more out of business, their activities scarcely being compatible with social distancing.

Les Chandelles, however, has a status apart, and this should offer it protection against the vicissitudes of fortune.

Hervo says her customers include “politicians from both the left and the right” and “celebrities from across the whole world” (she refuses to divulge their names).

Hervo says that as her club’s fame has grown, so has its allure to visitors from Europe, the US, Asia and “a lot from Britain”.

It is not enough just to cross the channel and knock on the door, though. In order to get in, you need erotic knowhow, Hervo says, along with familiarity with Parisian savoir-vivre.

“It is an alchemy. A way of being,” she says.

In his Histoire du libertinage, Didier Foucault, a history lecturer at Toulouse University who is a specialist on the subject, writes of how the practice became fashionable after 1600 among aristocrats driven “by a haughty refusal to bow either to common law or to any authority whatsoever, be it temporal or divine”.

There may be something similar about the French elite that frequents Les Chandelles. The entrance fee is €96 for two, or €310 with dinner and a bottle of Deutz champagne thrown in. If Deutz is too downmarket, there is Cristal Roederer for €490 or Dom Pérignon Rosé for €470.

But the selection policy is not based on money, Hervo insists. More important to her are “elegance, refinement, education and taste.

“I have a very tough door policy. I turn away a lot of people.”

The badly dressed, the ugly, the vulgar, have no hope of getting past her, she says, while the overweight may struggle as well, at least if they are male.

“I know I shouldn’t be saying this, but I am going to say it anyway. I think I would be more concerned by a fat man than a round woman. Round women can be very beautiful but, in general, men who are fat are… Well, someone who lets himself go physically is someone who does… not respect himself. And if he doesn’t respect himself, he is less likely to respect other people.”

Les dessous des Chandelles is a strange, almost dual work. On the one hand, it is a window onto this secretive world of privilege and exclusion created by Hervo beneath Rue Thérèse in the French capital.

On the other, it is a tale of the author’s personal voyage through libertinage and her claim that the sexual liberation she found along the way, first in other clubs and then in her own, helped to unshackle her from a traumatic childhood marked by incest, guilt and depression.

Our conversation reflects the same duality.

For much of the interview, Hervo comes across as the archetypal Parisian businesswoman, complete with carefully applied make-up, an elegant hairdo, an articulate discourse, a headstrong Yorkshire terrier and a well-trained fiancé – Tom, the maker of an excellent Sancerre white wine, who rushes off shortly after I arrive and returns later with an armful of her outfits for the photoshoot, including an all-white suit and a glittering jacket.

One minute she is talking with off-putting clarity about the female orgasm, telling me in a tone that brooks no argument that “a woman’s sexuality is so much richer than that of a man”. The next she is explaining, with equal equanimity, how she resisted underworld attempts to take over her club following her divorce in 2005.

Like all self-respecting Parisiennes, she knows how to throw a strategic fit of pique as well, announcing that the photographer is driving her mad and that Tom had better summon a friend for help, and be quick about it. The friend duly arrives with a bottle of sancerre to enable Hervo to get through the afternoon session.

Yet, from time to time, there are signs of the scars left by childhood, as when she concedes that she took refuge in libertinage in part because “at night-time, you can’t see the suffering so much… the glitter masks the pain”.

At one point, her eyes fill with tears as she discloses that her relatives have refused to speak to her since the publication of her book, which recounts her rape by her grandfather as a young girl, her parents’ refusal to believe her, her teenage struggles with depression, her toxic marriage to a man 20-odd years her senior, and her salvation in swingers’ clubs.

It was her former husband who introduced her to libertinage. She writes of her first experience in a club where “in a salon plunged into darkness… some couples are making love while others are observing them”.

She did not want to join in – at least not the first time – but says, “My emotion [was]great and my excitement real.”

“I was 24 and I instinctively knew it was right for me,” Hervo tells me. “What I liked in those places was a feeling of freedom and especially a feeling that I was meeting couples who seemed to get on well together.

“That was not the image of the couple I had received as a child because my parents argued all the time. It was like Disneyland as far as I was concerned.”

When her former husband suggested opening their own swingers’ club in Paris, she jumped at the chance. He put up some of the money, they borrowed the rest and she became the manager.

“It was a success straight away, because I think it was the first club to give so much importance to women,” she says. “At that time, in 1993, in other clubs, the women were just treated as objects and it was the men who took charge of the games and who brought along their wives.

“I think that they were probably men of little courage who were not able to cheat on their wives and who went to this sort of place instead. But that was not at all in the spirit of libertinage.”

Les Chandelles would be different, she decided. “Women who are objects are women without humanity. Here, I made sure that the women were subjects.

“In fact, I created here what I never had myself. I tried to encourage women to take their time, to dare to set the tempo, to ask men to be attentive and unhurried and to be gallant, because women adore gallantry.”

She says her door policy has always involved refusing entrance to couples if she suspects that the woman is being dragged along against her will or kept in the dark about the true nature of Les Chandelles. “Even now in 2021, there are boors who don’t tell their partners where they are taking them,” she says. “It’s increasingly rare but it still happens. But if I have the slightest doubt, I question them. You get a feeling for these things.”

Inside the club, no means no, she says, explaining that men can be expelled for repeating a request to a female customer if they are turned down the first time.

“I think women are much safer in this sort of place than in traditional nightclubs where they get hassled all the time,” she tells me.

She says that she herself came to see Les Chandelles – of which she has been the sole owner since extracting herself from her disastrous marriage 16 years ago and buying her former husband’s share – as a refuge from the wounds left by her troubled childhood.

“This has been my bunker and my incubator,” she says. “It was where I revitalised myself, and where I discovered myself too.”

Can her club really be as idyllic as she pretends?

For years, Les Chandelles has been described in the French press as a favourite haunt of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, who resigned following his arrest on suspicion of rape. Although the charge was ultimately dropped, reports of his attendance at Les Chandelles have done nothing for its image.

Recently, it has also been linked with Gérald Darminin, President Macron’s interior minister, who, it has emerged, went to Les Chandelles in 2009 with a woman who had asked him for help in overturning her criminal conviction – he was legal affairs adviser for an opposition political party at the time – and who has accused him of raping her later that evening.

He denies her claim, but the publicity has scarcely been an advertisement for Hervo’s establishment.

She says the coverage has been misleading and unfair. DSK, for instance, barely ever visited Les Chandelles, she insists.

“There are many other politicians who came more often than him and who were much more important than him,” she says.

As for Darmanin, she says that when he dropped into the club a little over a decade ago, he was a young bachelor, and that young bachelors sometimes visit “for an evening with – what’s that word they use now? – oh yes, les sex friends, that’s it.

“And there’s nothing wrong with that. If you find yourself on your own for a year or so, you might want a regular one of those. Why not?”

Until now, the interview has gone smoothly enough, interrupted only by the barking of Cerise, Hervo’s Yorkshire terrier, at the emergence of the photographer from below.

But then I make a big mistake. Noting the entrance policy favours single women – who are allowed in on evenings otherwise reserved for couples, when single men are banned – I ask Hervo whether she uses them as an enticement for male patrons seeking a threesome with their wives and another partner.

She looks daggers across the table. “That is really a stupid, male, Cro-Magnon thing to say,” she tells me. “It’s very maladroit of you.

“Single women come because they want to have fun, because they could meet a man who pleases them, or a woman, or perhaps neither. Sometimes, it’s just two women friends who come for a drink because they know that here they won’t be bothered and because they will be appreciated because they are pretty.

“When I began here, I didn’t receive single women in the evening, because society considered that a woman who came alone to an establishment like mine was either a whore or a bitch. I fought to make people understand that life does not work like that, and I am proud to say that today I have single women among my customers.”

I ask Hervo if she is a feminist. “I certainly am not a neo-feminist,” she says, explaining that she laughs off wolf whistles in the street, likes being complimented on her looks and wants to “seduce or to be seduced, freely. But I am feminist for some things. I am in favour of women being able to experience pleasure alone at first, to discover their bodies and to enjoy their bodies, and only afterwards to share all that with a partner if they so wish.

“That sort of thing has not always been possible in the past.”

Pointing out that Foucault’s history of libertinage shows how sexual freedoms have come and gone over the centuries in France, I wonder out loud whether the country is shifting back towards greater restraint.

“You’re right, it is,” she says. “The difference is that today, it is not religion that is trying to cover everything up, it’s our moralising society. There is a very prudish scent around these days.”

In a thinly veiled attack on #MeToo, she complains in her book that the social networks have been transformed into “popular tribunals”, that the law has come to treat women “as weak beings which have to be protected” and that the ancestral French game of seduction is being subjected to new codes and new rules.

It is difficult to determine whether the pandemic will brake or accelerate this trend. Some predict that when the crisis ends, we will see a repeat of les années folles (the mad years), as the Twenties were known in France, with a yearning for freedom, parties and libertinage.

Others forecast the continued spread of the Anglo-Saxon-style feminism that Hervo abhors and the curtailment of French love-making and seduction. She is not overly worried, though. On a personal level, she has emerged from years of therapy able to confront her past and look forward to the future, she says. She has become a part-time therapist herself, has a house in the country, where she has spent much of the past year, and is planning to “marry the man I love” this summer.

Even if the moral backlash gathers strength, she thinks that Les Chandelles will continue to triumph.

“There have always been currents and countercurrents, but if society goes one way, people will need a place of liberty where they can do what they want, where they will have the freedom to talk, to exchange.”

Indeed, she believes that her club may even come to play a role similar to that of literary salons in the 18th century, when they nurtured the ideas that helped to topple the ancien régime.

Only in France could there be dreams of Enlightenment amid the shadows of a basement sex club. Les dessous des Chandelles by Valérie Hervo is published by Cherche Midi

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