#charles fortune

[besotted-with-austen]

Jane Austen: so, you go to Mr Collins' house and Elizabeth is there alone. She welcomes you politely, but she looks---troubled.

Colonel Fitzwilliam: and of course she does, after everything I said to her-

Fitzwilliam Darcy: do I sense if she is mad at me specifically or it is just her headache?

Jane Austen: roll an Investigation Check.

Fitzwilliam Darcy: *grimacing* it's a three.

Jane Austen: just her headache.

Caroline Bingley: *derisively* she only looks like she wants to stab you, Darcy.

Fitzwilliam Darcy: *shrugs* I guess I am too nervous to really give her a proper look.

Jane Austen: what do you do next?

Fitzwilliam Darcy: well, I-I tell her, "In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."

Jane Austen: Elizabeth blushes. She is absolutely stunned.

Georgiana Darcy: that is good, right? Right?

Fitzwilliam Darcy: I tell her that even if her family is--not ideal-

Charles Bingley: *making a face*

Caroline Bingley: *playfully disgusted frown* and I made my character romance you?

Fitzwilliam Darcy: -and I might be acting impulsively, I just have to let her know that I love her. That's it.

**Silence**

Jane Austen: *smacks her lips* okay-

Charles Bingley: *histerical laughter* I don't like the way you said it-

Colonel Fitzwilliam: it's an immediate natural one, yes? Please tell me it's immediate.

Georgiana Darcy: shhhh!

Jane Austen: give me a Persuasion Check-let me tell you, you have to roll very high.

Fitzwilliam Darcy: figures-very well-

Fitzwilliam Darcy: *beat*

Fitzwilliam Darcy: *flatly* natural one.

Colonel Fitzwilliam: JUSTICE!

Jane Austen: *claps her hands* you make your grand love confession, but Elizabeth stops you and immediately rejects you.

Fitzwilliam Darcy: ouch.

Jane Austen: she tells you that she could never marry the person that hurt her sister and destroyed Wickham's future-

Fitzwilliam Darcy: *dawning horror* I had forgotten they had talked, fuck-

Jane Austen: and, finally-

Charles Bingley: there is more? He is already dead-

Jane Austen: Elizabeth looks at you dead in the eye and says: "From the very beginning—from the first moment, I may almost say—of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."

Fitzwilliam Darcy: damn.

Caroline Bingley: *dying of laughter under the table*

Charles Bingley: I do not know if I can resurrect you after that.

Georgiana Darcy: I knew it, I should have given you Bardic Inspiration-

[k-wame]

JACOB FORTUNE-LLOYD & ED SPELEERS ↳ Midas Man (2024) dir. Joe Stephenson

[hegodamask]

"I treat people the way they treat me. I made my peace with that."

Jacob Fortune-Lloyd as D.S. Charles Whiteman/Karl Weissman in BODIES (2023)

[petit-papillion]

Charles singing while driving (and he's actually not that bad) - didn't know how badly I needed this in my life!

🎥 REDEMOTI0N

[redgillan]

i’m watching bodies for the plot

the plot

[wordsinhaled]

Wild to me that photo-shoots like this exist and no one has yet written the AU where Charles has many outfits for Edwin to lose his mind over. But it’s about more than just the outfits, of course. It always is.

So... if I were to do it it'd be like this:

Charles’ history and childhood are the same, and he’s chock-full of confidence issues, anger, a profound need for validation. When he’s in front of a camera he can make that all disappear for a bit, and just be pretty.

But what is he worth when what he is isn’t pretty? When he’s full of spitting, incandescent rage so strong it scares him; when all he wants is to fight back against the people who hurt him?

He thinks it’s ugly how much he can’t stand his dad. How jagged he is inside. How much he wants to be loved and held safe. How deep he carries the shame for wanting to simply be admired, and for daring to think he could deserve it.

He learns his way around a cricket pitch because he has to. Because it’s the thing to do. The thing that’s going to get him the least hurt, at home and at school. But it’s not foolproof: He’s never quite one of the lads. Never quite the right sort of son, either.

Charles who saves up for ages for drapey, pretty things; lovely things; things that feel too nice and look too nice on him, and secrets them away because if his father or his friends find them he’ll be dead. Charles who finds a secondhand camera in a charity shop. Charles who takes secret photos in the middle of the night of himself wearing his secret clothes, photos in which he could maybe be the kind of person he wishes he could be all the time. Confident. Cool. Not just pretty but beautiful. Unbroken.

He stashes the photos even though it would be safer not to keep them at all. And maybe it should be enough just to know he took them. But some selfish and needy part of him wants the evidence, the physical proof. So he’s got this shoebox of photographs stashed under a loose floorboard in his dormitory room at St. Hilarion’s, and after he dies, he retrieves it before he and Edwin leave the school together forever.

He won’t let Edwin look inside the box, at first.

Charles doesn’t show up on film anymore, or in mirrors. He tries to keep it a secret from Edwin—that this might be the bit that hurts the worst about dying, the being invisible. But it’s harder to keep this a secret than other things about his past.

He doesn’t have to really actually say it. It’s the wistful glances that do him in, probably, the ones he fails to hide well enough. One day, with no preamble, Edwin presents him with a full-length mirror in an ornate frame. “We going somewhere, mate?” Charles asks. Edwin tells him no, this mirror is different. He’s enchanted it. “Look again, Charles,” he says gently. And Charles looks again, and realizes he can see himself.

And who the fuck is going to stop him choosing what he likes now, when he’s picking out his outfits for the afterlife? His cunt of a dad? The ignorant tossers who drowned him to death? Charles’d like to see any of them try.

It seems like it won’t be Edwin who stops him either—Edwin, who goes a little glazed round the eyes every time Charles draws up short to stare at a silk shirt in a highstreet window. Nah, Edwin Payne’s a bloody first-rate enabler of all of Charles’ base needs to feel worth it. Charles has got the best best mate in the world. He doesn’t say anything as Charles’ wardrobe slowly grows. Just smiles his little enigmatic smile, the one that's just for Charles with its tantalizing flash of teeth, and drags his gaze over Charles like he approves of Charles’ daring every time Charles wears something new.

So one day he shows Edwin the box. The photos. A month later Edwin brings him a vintage camera and a roll of spelled film. Offers to photograph him.

And Charles could cry. Could shake apart into tiny little pieces. He wants to be seen so fucking bad. By Edwin in specific. By Edwin, who wraps himself all up in tweed and pinstripes and flushes regularly at the sight of Charles’ collarbone. By prim and proper Edwin, who puts his hand on the small of Charles’ back and tells him to buy the silk shirt; that is why they get paid for taking on cases, isn’t it, after all? Port Townsend has changed him. Changed them both.

“We all have our pleasures,” Edwin says, and there’s that smile again, that raised eyebrow—and what does it mean? Charles wants to know Edwin’s pleasures. Wants to be one of them.

Can he be one of them?

There’s a tiny little thrift store in this little seaside town, crammed full of clothes Charles loves almost viscerally and just has to have - but he doesn’t try any of them on until they’re back home in London, in the familiar comfort of their cluttered, dimly-lit office. He digs the camera out of the bag of tricks backpack then, puts in the film; checks and rechecks that he’s put it in right.

One evening he sets the camera on the desk in front of Edwin, who is reading. Waits patiently for his attention to catch on it and for his curious eyes to lift to Charles’ face.

“Right,” Charles says. Past the lump of nerves in his throat and the phantom heat in his cheeks and the impending thrill of being looked at. “About those photographs. You asked if I’d...”

“Be amenable,” Edwin finishes for him, like he’s remembering their conversation precisely.

Charles wants to shrivel up. And he also wants to stand taller, prouder. Angle himself just right. Because Edwin’s watching him now, appraising, and the idea that he might like what he sees makes something unbearably good fizzle down Charles' spine. “Well, I'm. I'm a bit more than amenable, mate,” he says. His voice is a rasp in his throat.

“Are you indeed,” Edwin says evenly. He steeples his fingers. Like Charles is a case and he’s already solved him. Like Charles is one of his cherished first-edition detective magazines with a fraying binding and Edwin is going to fix him right up.

Maybe it'll be easy. Done in a flash. Or if not, maybe Edwin will be up for the challenge. Charles wants to find out which, more than he's ever wanted something in his entire short life and in his afterlife combined.

[spacer4t]

[bunnysrph]

[diver5ion]

[fictionadventurer]

What was the point of Scrooge's trip with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come? On a structural level, it makes sense--three is the fairy tale number, and you can't visit the past and present without also including the future--but on a character level, it doesn't quite seem necessary. Showing a man that he'll die alone, unloved, and unmourned seems like the strategy you take as the last-ditch effort to convince a guy that he needs to change his ways. But that situation doesn't apply to Scrooge. He started softening immediately after he first arrived in his past. By the time he finished with the Ghost of Christmas Present, he was fully onboard with the need to reform, so the Ghost's vision of his future seems like unnecessary cruelty. Why show him all this when he was already planning to change his ways?

A few things come to mind. One is that this vision of the future wouldn't have affected Scrooge unless he had already changed his ways. A cold, hard businessman could have seen his lonely death as just the way of the world, might have viewed the people who stole the clothes from his corpse as just people doing what's practical in this world. He needed to relearn the value of the intangibles--human connection, respect for others--to see the true horror of the lonely death and the vultures who defiled the dead man.

But why the horror? Can't he reform without being threatened with doom? It's possible--but it's also possible such a reform would be temporary. After all, Scrooge started as a friendly, loving young man, but retreated into himself and his business out of fear of poverty and fear of the way the world looks down upon poor people. Even if a reformed Scrooge started on a course of Christmas charity, there was always a chance that the enthusiasm would fade, and the worldly fears would start creeping back in. The only way to beat those fears is to give him something to fear that's even worse than poverty. He needs to see the horrible end that his selfish ways would lead to, so he won't be tempted to slide back into them.

There's also the fact that seeing his death makes him ecstatically happy to find that he's alive after the Ghost is gone. Had Scrooge been spared the vision of his future, he might have been happy to find himself on Christmas Day, but his joy would have been nowhere near the manic glee he experiences after coming back from the future. Now, he doesn't just get a new start--he gets a second chance. Coming back from his own grave makes him mindful of his death, but it also makes him hyperaware of the fact that he's still alive. He isn't in the ground yet. He still has time to do good and make connections with others so he doesn't die alone.

Seeing the past reminded him of the innocence he'd lost. Seeing the present reminded him of the people whose lives he was missing out on. Seeing the future reminded him that death is waiting, so it's important to live virtuously while we can. All three are important because all three brought him outside of himself and taught him to value the wider world, just in time to live through another Christmas Day.

[ndcgalitzine]

BODIES (2023) | 1.08 'Know You Are Loved'

[k-wame]

JACOB FORTUNE-LLOYD & ED SPELEERS ↳ Midas Man (2024) dir. Joe Stephenson

[hussyknee]

Lmaoooooo

[leclerrari]

Charles Leclerc ahead of the Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi (2023) || Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet (1899)

[redgillan]

why you should adopt charles whiteman/karl weissman as your new blorbo

1. daddy

he’s described as “the matinée idol in the dapper suit” and that’s exactly it. pressed suit, slick hair with a slutty curl that falls sluttily on his forehead, pencil moustache, folded handkerchief that matches his tie. this might also appeal to the whore in you: ✨sleeve garters✨ the sexiest accessory a man can wear. and if you still need convincing: the pinkie ring

this is a man who will not leave his one bedroom apartment in whitechapel unless he looks like a snack and we thank him for it

2. daddy

the universe handed him a child. this wisecracking idiot with his cockney accent is fighting for his life as a jewish man in 1941, the last thing he needs is an eleven yo girl with an attitude blackmailing him but now he’s cooking for her, buying her lollipops bc he thinks she’ll like them, and planing their escape to inverness. the eternal bachelor is now a grumpy single dad, thank you very much

karl weissman, know you are loved by me, i love you

[wordsinhaled]

payneland neighbors AU

(a.k.a. one of my million WIPs that may actually be seeing the light of day)

edwin is an Alive Boy, who has had a near-death experience being bullied while he was at school, so he can now see ghosts.

charles is a Dead Boy, who is starting a detective agency out of his new flat, which happens to be next door to edwin's.

edwin does not realize charles is a ghost at first.

they are mutually down bad and trying hard (and failing) to be normal about it.

pining and shenanigans ensue.

should be able to get this posted to Ao3 sometime later today as chapter 1/? of who knows how many because apparently payneland has made me that person with multiple multichapter WIPs, lmao ~*~*~

Edwin does not think about his new neighbor across the hall.

(Said new neighbor's name, it will turn out, is Charles.

And Edwin most certainly does not fixate on the compelling glint of Charles' single earring in the sun, or the curve of his smile so easily offered.)

The story of it is this: Edwin had held the door to their building for him one fine spring day. Simple politeness, and moreover basic human decency, both dictated this was the proper thing to do for someone carrying such an absurd quantity of unwieldy parcels.

He had not expected the stranger to look so taken aback.

(He had an honest-to-goodness crystal ball propped precariously atop a stack of antique-looking books; and those teetered on top of several cardboard boxes near buckling under the weight of whatever they held within. A cricket bat protruded from the pin-encrusted rucksack slung over his shoulder. People did insist on having such incongruous pastimes, Edwin thought; and, apparently, atrocious packing habits to go along with them.

But the titles of the volumes Edwin managed to glimpse were as intriguing as the crystal ball was misguided—and he'd found himself rather helplessly curious.

"Cheers, mate!" the person he will soon know to be Charles had said, sounding obscenely grateful as he manouevred his way inside, and had flashed Edwin a grin so radiant and wide it hurt Edwin's cheeks in sympathy just to look at it.

Still, Edwin tried to think no more on him; nor on how surprised he'd appeared to be at Edwin's tiny show of kindness—at Edwin's perceiving him at all, even. Tried being the operative word.)

He'd been aware Jenny was letting the rooms across the hall, because she asked him several weeks ago if he might know any potential tenants. Edwin had informed her he did not. His last neighbor had listened to ungraciously-loud electropop at all hours of the night and harbored a seemingly endless stream of stray cats despite Jenny's very clear policy against animals.

Edwin would far prefer the space to stay blessedly vacant and blissfully quiet for as long a stretch as possible. He deserved some sort of a reprieve, he'd thought.

it seems he is not about to get one.

Edwin is reading when he hears a muffled string of colorful swearing, the lugging of things, the scraping of furniture across hardwood floors. While he may be able to studiously avoid thinking about the beautiful boy he'd met downstairs, Edwin cannot escape the inevitable and inconvenient fact that they will now be living in proximity. The telltale commotion that can only be made by someone moving in comes right to his proverbial stoop.

Who else could it be but him?

Edwin sighs. The only thing for it, he supposes, is to go over and introduce himself.