#but it shouldn't be too bad

[violant-apologia]

An Appointment at the Parlour of Virtue

aka marian's homoerotic antagonistic extravaganza

words: ~1k

it's on ao3 or literally right here!

Marian stalks the Veilgarden streets, shifting in discomfort. She chafes against the aroma of spices, bristles at the discordant music and scowls at passing lovers. This is far from her usual haunt, as any onlooker would be well aware. It would perhaps undermine her authority were her crew to find her here: a captain so severe in this den of intemperance. Luckily, after so many recent brushes with watery demise, they’ll all have better things to do than tail their captain to this meeting.

The Parlour of Virtue is a large building for Veilgarden, where buildings often run squat or narrow. Its services are desired enough – and its clientele rich enough – to finance the grand facade. Speaking of the clientele, they look almost as out of place in Veilgarden as Marian. They loiter around the entrance, checking watches and tapping feet and clad in classy suits and frocks. Some have faces Marian remembers from the margins of Slowcake’s; the rest are masked. The Parlour caters to tastes expensive and eclectic – those wealthy enough to afford its premium services are also those least likely to want Doubt Street catching wind. Marian is not notable enough to go masked; besides, her face is already obscured with ragged bandages. The expressions on the unmasked faces as she skips the queue are ones of jealously, not recognition.

The inside of the Parlour is comfortably warm. More masked clients mill around the lobby or whisper to receptionists at polished wood desks. Marian is nodded through by stockinged women she recognises but couldn’t name. She climbs scarlet-carpeted stairs to the gallery of suites, doors numbered and, for the most part, occupied. As she follows the usual route, her attention drifts to the sounds behind the doors. Many are the typical affair for such an establishment, but as she traverses deeper into the building, the noises get odder. Recorded music and staccato tap-dance. A screaming argument. Chewing. The Parlour caters to all tastes.

Eventually Marian reaches the customary room and lets herself in. She takes a seat on the luxurious bed (shared by most rooms) and observes the neatly-folded pile of silks that lays on it (not shared by most rooms). Sinning Jenny is late. She is often late. But she always comes.

“You’re late,” Marian says as the door opens at almost ten minutes past the hour. “Again.”

“And I apologise again,” replies Jenny. Her cheeks are a little red and her breaths come heavily, fluttering the veil that hangs before her eyes. “I’m not as spry as I used to be. You’ll have to teach me your methods sometime.”

“Here’s an easy one: don’t work yourself to the bone on a hundred lost causes,” Marian replies.

“Ah, so you’d rather I didn’t make it here at all,” Jenny grins.

“Shut up,” Marian retorts, “and sit down. Lets get this over with.”

Jenny laughs (infuriatingly) and takes a seat on the bed next to Marian. She takes the silk bandages in her hands – seafoam blues, this time.

“Lovely colours,” she mutters to herself, “must remember to mention that to Ruth…” She lets the silks flow onto her lap. “Shall we get started?”

Wordlessly, Marian hold out her arm.

The process is painfully slow, and Jenny agonisingly gentle. She takes the right arm first – the one with skin beneath. She unwinds the ragged bandages like an expert. Marian doesn’t know whether Jenny has other tomb-colonist clients; nor does it concern her. The pair’s relationship is one of debt and repayment, nothing more.

Jenny works in silence – soon the old bandages are gone and Marian’s pale skin is left bare. Jenny takes one of the darker silks from the pile, secures it up the forearm, and begins to wrap. As she does so, her fingers graze Marian’s skin; Marian jerks her arm away.

“Watch it,” Marian spits, breaking the silence.

Sorry, Jenny mouths. Marian bristles. Despite the decade between them, Jenny still manages to make her feel like a child. It’s insulting.

“Done,” Jenny soon says. Indeed, the arm is covered. Marian flexes her fingers beneath the bandages: not too tight, not too loose, and the colours complement her old uniform well.

“Acceptable, ma’am?” Jenny asks with a smile. A coy twinkle plays beneath her veil.

Marian rolls her eye. The eye in question is still not visible, but she hopes Jenny gets the message anyway.

“Other arm?” Jenny offers. Marian shuffles over and Jenny moves to her left side. The bandages here are significantly more damaged, poked and pierced from within. Jenny barely has to work them before they fall away in scraps, revealing the mass of brambles beneath.

“Don’t prick yourself, princess.”

“I’ll be careful,” Jenny chuckles.

The process is even slower on this arm – the bandages have to both hide the vegetation and restrict its shape to that of a more traditional arm.  In her many visits here, Marian has noticed that Jenny gets more stressed – and more likely to make mistakes – when she works in silence. It is for this reason and no other that Marian clears her throat.

“I made it to Polythreme.”

“Oh!” Jenny says. “I’m glad you’re following those leads!”

Marian scoffs. “I couldn’t fairly come back here if I didn’t keep my end of the bargain, could I?”

Jenny laughs. “I suppose not. Anyway, did you find the surgeon? Did he help?”

“Yes,” Marian says, “and no.”

Jenny’s face falls. “I’m sorry, Marian.”

“Oh piss off,” Marian responds, “you don’t care a jot. You just want me out of your hair.”

“I’ll remind you that there’s no actual obligation for me to make these meetings.” Jenny pulls a bandage tight around the vine.

“You want me off your conscience, then.”

Jenny sighs. “I’m also not responsible for the Campaign. Is it so difficult to imagine that I just want the best for you?”

“Yes,” Marian responds. “You’ve made a whole business profiting off of devotion. Forgive me for guarding mine.”

“Do you mean the Parlour or the Church?” Jenny asks. “It doesn’t matter, you’re wrong either way.”

She fastens the final bandage and trails a finger over her work. Marian shivers. “It’s been fifteen years, Cook. Why do you think we do this?”

Jenny’s fingers drift to the final set of bandages. She takes the end of one  at the base of Marian’s neck.

“Guilt,” Marian mutters. “The Church did this to me.”

“I’m not the Church,” Jenny murmurs, beginning to unwrap. Her breath tickles the slivers of newly-exposed skin. “War’s over, soldier,” she breathes. “You’re safe now.”

“I—”

A rose petal flutters onto the sheets.

Marian jumps up, snatching the last silks from Jenny’s lap.

“I think it’s best if I do the last myself,” she stammers. “I’m more practised, and all, and you’re obviously not focused on quality.”

“Oh,” says Jenny, “perhaps I was wrong. We can return to a purely professional relationship, if you’d like?”

“I— no, I’d—” Marian struggles, “Aurgh!”

She storms out of the room. Light, infuriating laughter rings out behind her as she stamps down the hall. Then Jenny calls out.

“See you next month!”

[idontshitpostbuttheolympicpark]

a metacarpal recovery is 3-4 weeks, with the amount of medical professionals these guys have access to I wouldn't be surprised if they get him in the car in 3 or under, he'll be fine soon

[devourcr]

3 quizzes left today and i'll be able to breathe a bit. ✌️

[godofvillains]

((So I am putting this blog on a queue for a bit, just cuz I haven't really been feeling this blog too much? But Shigs is there, and he always will be.

I'll be slowly going through my drafts and queuing them. But I will allow none to publish. The only person I will actively be RPing with is Red. Everyone else gets shoved into the queue, waiting to be published.

I will mostly be active over at @un-chained. I MIGHT be on @narehatehollow a bit here and there, but your best bet is Narinder.

I plan to try to get up early tomorrow and work on threads here.

[stump-not-found]

mabel pines #1 hater

[demigods-posts]

something about annabeth being twelve years old. telling percy she'd let her father rot in the underworld. while also wearing his ring on her neck. really breaks me. because she'll spend the next five years trying to fix what her father broke. and ultimately blame herself for the cracks in the window. but he's the one that gave her the hammer. and it'll take her years to admit that. so instead. she'll just wear the necklace like a noose. and let it slowly kill her. because she'd rather quietly carry his burden. than admit she never had the strength.

[llutik]

inspired by the last dany chapter in a dance with dragons

the empress card for twitter user toadpeee tarot deck. Big thanks to her for her patience with me

[starlit-roses-ships]

You’re not a burden in your f/os eyes even if you need comfort or reassurance frequently. Your f/o loves taking care of you whether that be by listening to you, talking to you, spending time with you, helping you out, or simply reassuring you that everything is going to be okay. It puts them at ease to know they can make you feel even just a bit better in any way they can. ❤️‍🩹

[shokveyv]

shut up

[spielzeugkaiser]

I love your art soooo much-it gives me life!! 🥰🥰🥰

I have a question about Milek and Jaskier! Milek says they fought before Jask went missing-what did they fight about? Did Milek say something he shouldn’t have? 👀😢 is there ANGST?

Also does Geralt know Mileks plush friend is called Roach? Because surely that’s a clue that Milek is his…(I love this universe so much)!!🥹❤️❤️❤️

[MASTERPOST] That was the last conversation they had before Milek stormed out - and when he came back, Jaskier was. gone. The thing is, Jaskier knows what Milek is interested in (and he is not even wrong about that, Milek has an interest in medicine, and helping people, and I think when they met he was Shanis biggest fan) and I think Jaskier is aware that some of the conflict does have its roots in Milek not wanting to leave him, even if they get really heated and ugly in their arguments. Milek shouldn't feel like he has to care for him, or have to protect him and at times I think Jaskier feels quite ashamed, which leads him to being way too unrelenting at times - especially if he thinks he's doing something to protect Milek.

[neighboringheart]

just finished earthspark season 3 here are my thoughts

guhhh urghuuu oughh I think I hauve covid I need optimus to make megatron and prowl get along by locking their pussies together with magnets and ordering them to make each other feel good while he watches from nearby

I need to see megatron so into it bc he's used to optimus putting him in situations from their time together on earth but this is not a side of optimus that prowl is used to so he's so flustered whimpering and squirming away from megatron's fat node as it grinds against his own but every time he glances to optimus he just sees that piercing gaze and shivers needing to be good for him

prowl overloads first squirting on them both with a yelp and a flutter of his doorwings and he looks so ashamed immediately after but that changes quickly when megatron gets so turned on by how cute he is that he presses prowl to the ground to hump against him with all his strength until he's squirting too

at the end optimus removes the magnet and praises them both which makes prowl's spike pop out and he tries to push it back in but now he's got both of them on him ready to push him into another overload

anyway yeah the season was okay still felt drab compared to the first season but not quite as disappointing as the second was but I'm sad Grimlock still didn't talk and Tarantulas didn't come back like I'd hoped orz I really wanted him and prowl to interact it would've been so joever for me if he'd shown up again I would have gone insane and I'd be talking about prowl getting filled with eggs instead

...what could have been

[krakensdottir]

So, about Good Omens:

It's still good, guys.

Like if you didn't like it before, that's fine. But if you loved it then, and now you suddenly think it's bad, you're lying to yourself. Not on purpose, but your brain is trying to reconcile what you've learned about the author with what you felt before. Understandable, it's trying to avoid contradiction.

But that isn't how it really works. In reality, toxic traits of an author do not retroactively poison their work. That's why we talk about separating the art from the artist.

Anyway, this isn't about NG and it never was - he's said as much himself, several times. This is a promise he made to a friend, and whatever else you can say about him, that friendship was real. He damn well better keep his promise. This story changed lives, minds and hearts, and it deserves to be completed, for its own sake and for Terry's, and that's that on that.

(And no, we are not going to get a magically pure Season 3 without NG involved. It'd be nice, but it's not happening. The facts are that no one else knows what they planned together, and the screen version wouldn't even exist if not for NG and that promise. Besides, he's already written the script. Remains to be seen whether he'll be on set at all, but he is involved, and that's that. We can either enjoy something beautiful from a problematic creator, like we always talk about on here, or we can't.)

[spicyvampire]

Alright this is all I'm gonna say about this but after 10 episodes this show whole moral goodness dilemma/debtors vs rich people before the climax in the next 2 episodes: Joke better not be the only one growing and understanding stuff, Jack needs to have also acquired some level of moral nuance during these 10 episodes too, after being a debtor/becoming a debt collector/helping people while being their debt collectors/"freeing himself" from that situation/and spending his whole life watching people exist in that infernal cycle with no way out, he should have moral nuance, and we are at a stage he should understand his boyfriend's way of thinking now to a level that Joke lying to him about the ring shouldn't be an issue that takes more than 10/20 minutes to digest, forgive Joke and come up with a plan to fix it together with Joke and the gang all in that time frame

[mamawasatesttube]

timcassie is so compelling to me. they were not into each other even a little bit. it was such a messy coping mechanism fuelled entirely by grief. they were making out with each other because they were both substituting each other for kon. cassie was far more aware she was doing this than tim was. unironically, dating a girl here is one of the gayest things tim has done

[eri-pl]

Yesterday I was checking how the Noldor sailed and there's a wonderful paragraph there. It basically goes like: "Ossë didn't attack the Noldor despite his love for the Teleri, because the Valar had said to not interfere with them." And then, after one or it two sentences, "Uinen made some storms and drowned some ships". (Sorry, it's from memory, but this general meaning.)

Which means it basically went something like this:

Ossë: They killed my friends!

Uinen: What are we going to do about it?

Ossë (who is still on probation I guess): Nothing. There Valar forbade us from doing anything. *sniff* Hey, where are you going?

Uinen: ...shopping.

*a few storms later*

Uinen: ... So, my lord, Ossë didn't do anything. And I'm... Well, I'm not sorry, but I'm ready to take whatever punishment you see fit.

Ulmo: You are on clam duty. Both.

Seriously, Tolkien had so many hidden gems. Yeah Ossë couldn't do anything because of course everybody listens to the Valar, well, except Uinen in the very next sentence, she didn't care.

[dollypopup]

Forgive the rant, but it's been weighing heavy on my heart. So much of the speculation of the Lady Whistledown reveal is the nail biting of 'Oh, I hope it's not too bad for Pen!' or justifying how her actions as LW actually weren't that bad in hopes to minimize the fallout

But there seems to be so little care to the fact that Penelope hiding it from him is going to break Colin's heart.

He is so elated to be with Penelope because he feels like this is the one person he can truly unmask with, that he can reveal all his cards to, and be accepted, and he is going to realize that is a one sided feeling in his relationship. Not only did Penelope feel she couldn't unmask in the past, but she feels she cannot do so even after their engagement. Even after he has reassured her of how much he cares for her and how much he trusts her.

I know everyone wants to skip over the angst of it and get to the 'oh look, they're so happy in love!' but y'all

Penelope is going to hurt him. He put his heart in her hands and she's going to crush it. He's going to have to look in the eye the fact that she didn't trust him enough to inform him of this very large part of her life, and he's going to understand that she kept it from him purposefully. Yes, she has her reasons, but like. . .that's painful. It's a slap in the face. Is it fully understandable her not telling him right after he asks? Or before? Of course! A lot happened! She had the most intimate experience of her life in the back of that carriage, and she'd gone through a lot of ups and downs that night, but after that excitement simmered and she had a chance to breathe, she should have told him.

But she doesn't.

Worse, she decides he simply doesn't have to know.

The fact that Eloise has to put an ultimatum on it at all is proof of that. Colin is falling in love with half of Penelope, and she's making it so that he does so on purpose. She is actively hiding half of herself from his eyes, and regardless of reason, when one party of the relationship is open and vulnerable, and the other is secretive, the secretive party is doing their partner a disservice.

Right now the person who has poured the work into the relationship is Colin. He has confessed his feelings first, he made all the big moves, he openly declared his interest in her, he proposed, he proved to her that he finds her desirable, he has hit every single love language in the BOOK. He's said repeatedly how wonderful she is, he's given her an engagement ring, bought them a house, he's chased down her carriage, he asked for those lessons to spend more time with her, he's had physical touch aplenty.

But I feel like so much of us as an audience are riding on the fact that we know Penelope has pined for Colin for a long time, and not understanding that Colin does not know that. And even if he does, she has not shown him that she loves him.

And I need to see Penelope pour into him an equitable amount as he's poured into her. They're both two people who embody 'I want to be so full of love, I forget what it's like to be hungry', and we forget that both of them have been denied affection. This fandom sympathizes the most with Penelope to the point where we don't want to see that Colin has also been pushed to the wayside. This man is starving for love and romance. Not just to love, but also to be loved.

People forget that Colin has been denied affection from his family, from his sexual experiences, even from Penelope. She didn't write back to him the same way his siblings didn't. Colin has been disparaged in his household, too. He's been made to feel like a burden, like he has no right to family funds, hell, he was all but called a pathetic virgin in Season 1 by his own brother, the head of his household, and his mum and Daphne and Anthony all assumed that he needed his messes cleaned up for him and he says aloud no one takes him seriously.

I want to see Colin be loved. I need to see it.

It's not a scorecard, I get that, but if you look at it objectively, Colin has done so much in his relationship with Pen, and she's lying to him. She's keeping from him a secret that reinforces what others have said of him: that he's gullible, naive, too trusting, someone that needs his muck ups solved for him, just a foolish boy caught up in his fantasies. And when the truth of Penelope's deception comes out, and he's going to question if all those people were right all along, and questioning his trust in himself (because, mind, this is the second woman who has said she loves him and has been keeping a huge secret from him, if that happened to me, I'd be closing my heart off for a very long time), he's going to need her to mend the wound that she'll pry open.

Colin said a hurtful thing about Penelope in Season 2, and then spent Part 1 of Season 3 soothing the pain that caused her. Now, Penelope is doing a hurtful thing to Colin, and she will have to heal that hurt, too. He is a tender, soft-hearted person who trusts her completely, and is falling arse over elbow for her, only to then get tripped up on her own web of wires and do a barrel roll in the dirt. And I know they'll choose each other, I know.

But after she helps him up, I need to see Penelope romance Mr. Bridgerton, assuredly, fervently, loudly.

Because he deserves to be.