mentions: food + chris is implied to be slightly older than reader + mentions of reader having chubby cheeks.
sometimes your boyfriend simply chooses to be your biggest tormentor. exhibit a: he’s been teasing you about the (’cute’ in his words) way you eat strawberries for the past several minutes.
“i’m just saying!” he says with a laugh, watching you from the couch. “you’re just so cute about it!”
you still don’t get it, and he hasn’t elaborated in the slightest. you think it might be in the same way he finds his other friends closer to your age cute when they so much as breathe sometimes--like felix. then again, you’ve seen the way felix acts sometimes, and it is, indeed, cute. but all you’re doing is eating some strawberries you cut the tops off of, and you aren’t doing it any cuter than how a person normally eats strawberries. you’re literally just eating them. simple as that.
you pick up the bowl and move over to sit with him instead. “just try to explain.”
and he manages to quell his giggles as he hugs the pillow he’s been holding tighter against his chest. “okay,” he says. “you love strawberries.”
this is a fact. most people know it about you, but you’d say they’re probably your favorite fruit--or among the top of your list if nothing else.
“so you get this really cute look on your face when you eat a really good strawberry,” he says. “also... these,” he reach out, pinching one of your cheeks, and he chuckles again when you grimace. “automatically make you cute. it’s like when jisung eats and his cheeks puff out.”
you swat at his hand, “so you’re saying i look like a squirrel.”
“no!” he laughs, “i’m saying all of it just makes you... cuter.” he paws through the air until he catches your hand in his. “it’s like when you say i’m cute.”
“because you are!”
“i don’t get it--you say it when i’m not even doing anything!”
“because you’re cute!”
he giggles, pulling the bowl of strawberries aside as he ditches the pillow in favor for you. “then i guess,” he places the quickest peck against your lips, eyes crinkling as he smiles hard, “we just have to agree that we’re both cute.”
even if you don’t get it... you think you can agree to that one.
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Then, on his arrival in Constantinople, after much counsel with himself, considering that he was already unequal to the amount of pressing business and believing that there was no room for delay, on the twenty-eighth of March he brought the aforesaid Valens into one of the suburbs and with the consent of all (for no one ventured to oppose) proclaimed him Augustus. Then he adorned him with the imperial insignia and put a diadem on his head, and brought him back in his own carriage, thus having indeed a lawful partner in his power, but, as the further course of our narrative will show, one who was as compliant as a subordinate.
No sooner were these arrangements perfected without disturbance than both emperors were seized with violent and lingering fevers--
AM 26.4.3-4
this was one of those illustrations that was originally supposed to be a 5 page comic until I realized I don't know anything about later roman empire architecture or visuals or art or anything, so we'll revisit that later. maybe
for right now though, these two are fascinating. we have two brothers acting as one body, even becoming ill in tandem with each other, it's giving This Throne Is Cursed. like, the last time I read about emperors coming down with life threatening illnesses, it was Caligula, and that moment in his biography marked a very specific tone shift. I spent the rest of the (first) time reading about Valens and Valentinian waiting for something comparable to Caligula's reign to happen lmao (Dio 59. 8. 1-2)
and since Caligula was already on the mind, I started thinking about Tiberius: I think he would've loved these two since he had a whole thing about twin-ification and brothers and etc etc etc. ofc, Rome is both a Mouth and a Tomb, so it's going to go badly for someone/everyone eventually, but honestly I think that Valentinian and Valens were the best we could've hoped for. like it could've been so much worse
Tiberius and the Heavenly Twins, Edward Champlin
Failure of Empire: Valens and the Roman State in the Fourth Century A.D, Noel Lenski
⭐ I have a tip jar (ko-fi)!
⭐ and other places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app
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melyzard replied to this post:
You know, given that P&P was published in 1813 before the 1696 window tax was repealed, she might just be admiring both the outdoors AND the expansive and numerous windows themselves. I mean, good windows really were a big sign of wealth and consequence until 1851 when the tax was finally repealed.
But yeah,also,yeah, she's definitely more interested in the outdoors than the Great Chimney Places of the Wealthy
It's true that windows were a major status symbol at the time and long before, but I don't think Elizabeth much cares about that, in all honesty! That is the relevant historical context for Mr Collins's rhapsodies over Rosings' windows, for instance:
she could not be in such raptures as Mr Collins expected the scene to inspire, and was but slightly affected by his enumeration of the windows in front of the house, and his relation of what the glazing altogether had originally cost Sir Lewis de Bourgh
He's silly but he's not mistaken in identifying the windows as a significant status symbol (which without that cultural context can seem like just another Mr Collins absurdity). But Elizabeth specifically, as a person, is consistently not very interested in these kinds of status symbols (though she knows they're there and understands what they signify). She is attracted to natural beauty and unassuming elegance, which is the overwhelming note at Pemberley:
She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste.
Even when it does come to Pemberley's expensive interior, she focuses on the aesthetic dissimilarity to Rosings and, even more, about what is suggested about Darcy's relationships to other people dependent on him (Elizabeth's takeaway from the pretty interior decorating project for Georgiana is "He is certainly a good brother" and not how much disposable income this represents, say).
The fuller quote when she first approaches the window is pretty clear about what Elizabeth is focusing on, IMO:
Elizabeth, after slightly surveying it, went to a window to enjoy its prospect. The hill, crowned with wood, from which they had descended, receiving increased abruptness from the distance, was a beautiful object. Every disposition of the ground was good; and she looked on the whole scene, the river, the trees scattered on its banks, and the winding of the valley, as far as she could trace it, with delight. As they passed into other rooms, these objects were taking different positions; but from every window there were beauties to be seen.
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// wip day.
i'm working on a new project that is (for once) not connected to any of my bigger original universes, so i thought i'd share some of the writing i have for it! taglist down below, feel free to take this opportunity to share your own wips (in a separate post of course) if you have any!!
the first part is a sort of introduction to the story, from the perspective of main character marshall! the second part is a snippet from a scene much further into the story, to kind of paint a picture (for both you and myself lol) of what the setting and the tone of the story is gonna be like. it's a bit different writing than what you're used to from me so please take a moment to read the warnings first!!
warnings >> blood, cult, death, implied cannibalism, gore, religion, violence
God won't speak to me.
He spoke to my sister when we were eleven, her howls echoing through the backyard of our childhood home as the venom of a wasp spread quickly through her veins.
He spoke to my mother the day we buried her oldest son, the hem of her alcohol-stained dress torn where it had caught on the thorns of a blackberry bush she had blankly passed through.
He spoke to my father the day he put the barrel of a .44 in his mouth, reenacting what he had classified a sin for all the wrong reasons, his trembling finger on the trigger strong enough to rip apart the last tendon holding our family together yet not to finish the job.
I was eighteen, when I was found on the river bank near Overture, Louisiana, the sharp end of a jagged knife plunged deep within my side and my bloodied hands clutching the cross necklace of my brother, my breathing akin to the ice cold shallow water grazing at my ankles as I stared up at the star-spotted sky with glazed over eyes, blue chapped lips shaped in the final hum of a prayer.
A black abyss stared back, a strained vacuum without comfort, leaving me with a plea unheard and the metallic taste of blood in my mouth.
And God did not answer.
'Gotta dig… Just gotta dig. Gotta get 'em out of there… Gotta take 'em home…'
The physical distance between Marshall and the grave did not muffle the continuous mumbling, the shaky voice of the young priest clear as day like a whisper directly in his ear as the eerie silence looming over the church's cemetery left him with not much else to focus on. He knew he should turn around and leave, at that hour of the night— get back in his car and return to Posey in the motel, get some sleep while he still could— yet curiosity held him tight within its grasp, and each step he took pushed him closer into the wrong direction.
'Just the bones… Just the bones…'
The man was hunched over, back turned towards Marshall and partially obscured by the few last rows of gravestones stood between the two of them. His neck twitched— a sudden and unexpected movement at an angle Marshall did not hold for possible, yet it had happened entirely too fast for him to clearly see.
'Hey, is everything alright?' he called out; well against his better judgment, hairs on his forearms standing up straight as his feet carried him another few inches closer to the priest.
And the closer he got, the more he wished he had listened to himself.
If he had just turned away, he wouldn't have had to notice the unusual and unplaceable noises bubbling up from the priest's direction. He wouldn't have had to realize the priest was sat next to a coffin, yet to be lowered into an undug grave. (A curious practice, but Marshall was not one to judge— Overture'd had to endure a rather tiresome series of curiosities as of late, and an unburied corpse in the middle of bumfuck Louisiana in the midst of a yet to be explained power cut would be the least of its problems.)
'Just the bones…. Gotta dig… Gotta bring 'em home.'
'Do you need help?' Marshall persistently asked, his voice muffled by the thrumming of his own heart in his eardrums while his eyes trailed over the coffin— splintered and shattered at the lid, the glimmer of the distant church lights barely enough to reveal the outline of an axe resting on the dirt at the priest's ankles.
'Have to do it, there's no other way. Gotta dig, gotta dig, gotta dig—'
'Hey!'
Marshall should have never stayed in town.
He realized that now, as the priest's obsessive muttering came to a sudden stop forcing Marshall to hold still too— yet he had already approached too closely, and realized that no dirt had been dug in at all, and realized that the priest's hands were instead stuck inside the coffin repeatedly plunging deeper and deeper into the rotting remains of the corpse inside, once white vestment covered in blood and gore and he stared up at Marshall with a faint glow in two milky white eyes and with a wide grin exposing bloodied and shattered teeth, much akin to a predator looking at its next prey.
'Just the bones,' he repeated, the nodding of his head nearly belittling— as if to convince Marshall this was how it was supposed to be, as if to convince him the Word of God was not to be neglected and his fate as a sinner was a gift to the Divine Light and as if to convince him as long as he would not struggle it would all be over soon.
'Gotta dig.'
Marshall could not move, lamb to the slaughter as the priest rose to his feet with the axe in his hand.
'Just the bones! Gotta take 'em home.'
taglist (opt in/out)
@velocitic, @deadrlngers, @euryalex, @ordinarymaine, @gurathins;
@mojaves, @shellibisshe, @dickytwister, @mnwlk, @rindemption;
@ncytiri, @calenhads, @noirapocalypto, @florbelles, @radioactiveshitstorm;
@strafethesesinners, @fashionablyfyrdraaca, @aemondtargeryen, @radioactive-synth, @katsigian;
@estevnys, @elgaravel
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