#delphine x elisha

[glitterportrait]

I am slightly bewildered by the speed with which a certain Barkskins pairing has devoured brainspace up in here, and thus am giving into a pressing need to ramble about it at some length.

So I didn’t have to get that far into Barkskins before realizing it had all the makings of a shippy feels pit-inducing trap for my brain: namely, a period piece with nuanced characters and dudes bonding and/or stabbing each other in nature. In previews I’d already glimpsed enough of Hamish’s long-dark-hair-with-a-sweetass-coat aesthetic to expect he’d be supremely fixatable; combined with the irresistible Yvon factor, I just figured my ship of choice had steamed full blast into port. And fixatedly ship them I do, both in a bromancey way and in a May-December (okay, like July-September??) way.

What I didn’t expect was to find a ship that actually had some swoony shit taking place right there in the canon. 

I mean, one can always hold out hope, and with each successive ep I did feel myself primed for some revelatory moment of attraction between characters. (Not that I wouldn’t have enjoyed the show without it, but I cannot lie. In the murky depths of my fangirlish heart I am here for the swoony shit.) I should perhaps take a moment to clarify that when I say swoony what I mean is shit that makes me swoon, which is usually some degree of yearning and/or pining expressed via stupid hardcore glances and that filthiest category of porn, hand touching.

Of course there was Rene and Mari, but despite my interest in their stories I wasn’t floored by what developed between them (though I wouldn’t throw the shirtless woodchopping scene out of bed or anything). I don’t actually see this as a fault, given the mess of a situation they’re both in with Trepagny and how it naturally constrained them, and I’d be very interested to see what might happen with these two in a second season. But yeah, they didn’t have me flailing. Nor did Mathilde and Captain Bouchard, as unexpectedly sweet together as they turned out to be!

Meanwhile Delphine’s character caught and held my eye because, well, your honor I love her. Her palpable desire to find connection and acceptance, to offer compassion to others and to take the risk of starting a family among strangers, all while battling the effects of trauma and the sense that she’s been indelibly marked as an outcast, both physically and otherwise -- her storyline just grabbed me.

After the disastrous wedding with Pierre I kept wondering if there’d be another suitor for her; and though I hadn’t picked up on it as clearly as @calamity-bean (beautifully articulated here), I did think Duquet was a possibility. In the scene where he and Cooke are dining at the Inn and Delphine approaches to fill their cups, I noticed the way Duquet looked at her (and was careful not to look at her overmuch, once she actually stood beside him). It was a notable if fleeting moment, and I thought OKAY, maybe something there, maybe more later? But it fell quite sadly short of my hopes for swooniness, and not just because Charles just... doesn’t do it for me, however much I admire his ambitions and complexities.

As for Elisha Cooke, welp. I’d thought of him mainly as a very conniving, very beardy foil to my main man (read: Hamish). Sure, his connivingness was fun to watch, and dude had a way with words; and I am a fan of a serious beard, even one that’s had buttermilk sputtered all through it, I guess. The backstory with his deceased wife, the almost Gothic devotion to her lock of hair and the gravestone chats -- all intriguing, yes. But whatever, you’re still getting in the way of Mr. Goames and how dare.

And then that spindly swindler, that crafty cooper, that bewhiskered bastard (say it with me in Bill Selby’s voice) had the unprecedented audacity to gaze up at Delphine with such dumb, unadulterated longing -- and awkwardly flirt with her by talking about albino beaver pelts, and freaking nutmeg in his beard -- and make her feel like the world contained some hitherto unimaginable wonder in it, and that in this world she seemed equally wondrous to him --

That is how I slammed face-first into a totally unanticipated wall of Delphine/Elisha feels.

I don’t know what will happen with these guys, assuming we even get that second season. My best guess aligns with @calamity-bean’s theory in that Duquet will come between them somehow, and weirdly I wouldn’t find that an unwelcome endgame, because I am a sucker for the level of angst that could involve. I would (horribly) sort of love something along the general lines of Elisha ultimately losing Delphine, not because Charles successfully woos her away--at least at first?--but because he succeeds in making Elisha think he’s losing her, and thus give into a maelstrom of his own worst flaws, which definitely drives Delphine away? Although I would absolutely hope for her to come out the survivor of any fall-out, and find some happiness in the end!

I dunno, it’s something I am thinking A Lot about obvs, and I may very well have to attempt fic-ish things in the course of processing my thoughts!

[mirdaniaa]

hand in unlovable hand

Two months after the attack on Wobik, Cooke and Delphine discuss how their paths might intersect.