#like you see ‘raised Catholic’ more than ‘raised Protestant’

[suswous]

You know, I am curious, I have this idea that, in the US, someone who comes from a Catholic background but isn’t religious is more likely to identify in some way w/ the Catholic label than someone w/ a Protestant background is to identify as Protestant in some way

[mypoisonedvine]

𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓮𝓷𝓬𝓮 | laszlo kreizler x reader

𝓼𝓾𝓶𝓶𝓪𝓻𝔂 | being a traditional, well-behaved woman, you saved yourself for marriage. but the things your new husband has planned for you are... less than traditional, and might just show how poorly behaved you can be.

𝔀𝓸𝓻𝓭 𝓬𝓸𝓾𝓷𝓽 | over 9k

𝔀𝓪𝓻𝓷𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼 | SMUT (18+ only!!), virginity loss, age gap (unspecific; laszlo is in his 40s, reader is probably 20-25), multiple orgasms/overstimulation, fingering, oral f receiving, squirting, shy/innocent reader, religious reader (but nothing tooo shame-y or anything), some innocence kink, a hint of medical kink?, slightly pervy laszlo?!?! (moreso he's just a wee bit of a weirdo and says some cringe stuff but like. that's just his vibe sorry)

Laszlo was such an impossible paradox of a man.  Especially compared to the sort of man you always thought you’d marry— what you’d been raised for, even.

An accomplished doctor, a successful and wealthy man of high social standing— a kind, sensitive, intelligent, and patient partner who made you feel beautiful and special and, for lack of a better word, fancy.  That part was exactly as you’d always imagined for yourself, though you had never really believed you could find someone so wonderful.

And then there was the other half of him, the pieces that even in your wildest dreams you would’ve never thought would make up your future husband.  First of all, he was quite a bit older than you.  Even your parents, who had always preferred for you to marry someone already established (as they put it) rather than your own age, were a little concerned that he was in his mid-forties, and only a year younger than your father.  Of course, that was nothing compared to their offense at his profession, and the subsequent open-mindedness he had towards people your parents would rather pretend didn’t exist.  Then again, Laszlo himself having his disability made him the sort of person they would rather pretend didn’t exist, though he’d managed to hide it relatively well.

Maybe they could’ve forgiven any of that.  It was the atheism that put the final nail in the coffin, unfortunately… and someone as brash and unapologetic as Laszlo had no interest in hiding his beliefs to appease your parents.  He hadn’t brought it up, of course, or protested to the crucifixes and cross-stitched scriptures on the walls; but when they’d asked if he was Catholic or Protestant, he told them directly that he was a man of science and didn’t entertain any metaphysical notions or, as he’d so thoughtfully put it, fantasies.

They instantly forbade the courtship and warned you never to see him again.  And maybe that was when he surprised you most— he was so romantic, so… dashing.  He took a carriage to your home and literally threw pebbles at your window, daring you to climb down the lattice and join him for a midnight adventure.  It was then he suggested that you marry him anyways— he had more than enough to take care of you after a disownment from your parents.  He promised to give you anything you wanted, to treat you perfectly, to spend every day trying to keep you as happy as you made him without even trying.

There it was again, the contradictory enigma of Laszlo Kreizler.  A serious, even stern man, proposing to you like a lovestruck teenager.  He had eschewed fantasies a few evenings ago only to turn around and ask you to jump headfirst into a fairytale.

You said yes, though.  You really didn’t think twice about it— you knew he would be good to you.  And you knew you’d never loved someone like you’d loved him before.

You wanted to run away right then and there, but he told you to go home for a few more days, to gather your things— he would send for them while your parents were out, and you could move in with him as soon as you were ready.

When you did move in, though, he seemed a little surprised that you asked for your things to be moved to a spare bedroom.

“Is everything alright?” he asked you softly, stepping closer to you as you crossed your arms over yourself nervously; you waited until you were sure Cyrus was out of earshot, carrying your bags away, before you answered.

“Yes,” you replied quietly, “everything’s fine.”

“It’s understandable if you’re feeling conflicted now,” Laszlo assured.  “Having just left your parents, and not knowing if you’ll see them again—”

“It’s not that,” you promised.  “Well— of course, I feel something about that, but I’m happy to be here with you.  That’s not my issue at all.”

“Then what is?” he pressed.  “I hope you feel that you can tell me.”

You sighed as he reached up to brush your cheek; his touch always soothed you, though it felt a bit different here, in his home.  Your new home.  “I just… wouldn’t feel right about being in your room, until we’re married.”

He nodded.  “Of course.  I shouldn’t have presumed.”

You smiled a little, though it was more out of nervousness than anything.  “I… I wondered if you thought my parents were the only reason that we never— that nothing had—”

“Shh,” he soothed, pushing your hair back from your face until you looked up at him.  “I don’t expect anything from you now.  Well, only that you do whatever you like to make yourself feel at home here.”

“And what… what will you expect from me once I am your wife, Dr. Kreizler?” 

Though you were a little afraid to, you met his gaze; his brown eyes seemed deeper than ever, and you were powerless to look away from them.  “What do you think is right to give me, when you are my wife?”

You sighed a little, feeling his hand on your cheek move carefully down to your neck, his gentle fingers brushing along the smallest part of your collarbone exposed by your dress.  Words escaped you; you wanted him to know that just because you wanted to wait for him didn’t mean you didn’t want him.  Even before, even when you first met him, your mind had supplied you with thoughts that sent you straight to the confession booth.

You wanted to be one with him in every way you could think of… you just needed some to come before others, to feel right with your own beliefs.  Even if you loved an atheist, and felt surprisingly little guilt for it, you were still religious yourself and wanted to honor God’s intention for marriage.  

Didn’t mean you couldn’t yearn for your soon-to-be husband, right?  It certainly didn’t mean you couldn’t enjoy the full benefits of physical intimacy when the time came.

But obviously, you were far from brave enough to say all that.  Instead, you found your hands wandering to his chest, following the pattern of his suit coat up to his shoulders, biting your lip without even realizing it.  He simply continued to watch you, and you got the feeling that he understood you better than you could explain it yourself.  One of the bonuses of being loved by an expert on the human mind, perhaps.

You were almost in a trance, not noticing how long you were spending just gently touching and holding him in this simple way— until you looked up and met his gaze again, and felt a little weak.  “Can we marry soon?” you asked softly, almost under your breath.  You hoped he wouldn’t tease you, you weren’t secure enough for him to mock your obvious eagerness, to call attention to your desire for him.  Thankfully, he stayed perfectly serious, because he was just as affected as you were.

“As soon as you like,” he replied earnestly.

It was probably for the best that Cyrus walked in to the parlor at that moment, and you instinctively pulled back from Laszlo, crossing your arms again.  “Your bags are in the downstairs bedroom, madam,” he informed you, “down the hallway under the stairs.”

You nodded at him as Laszlo responded, “Thank you, Cyrus.  That will be all.”

He left, and you looked at your fiance again, feeling a bit silly for what he’d seen in you a moment before.  But he smiled at you, and you figured he’d be the last person to judge you for any of that.  “I’ll give you a little time to unpack and freshen up, if you like,” he offered.  “I hope you’ll join me for dinner at seven this evening.  I believe we’ll be having quail.”

“Of course— thank you,” you smiled, watching him begin to turn to depart.  But for a second, he hesitated— like he didn’t want to leave you— and you prayed he wouldn’t kiss you.  It’s not that you didn’t want him to… you wanted him to more than anything.  He’d only kissed you once before, at the end of a particularly exhilarating night out together, and you hadn’t stopped thinking about it for a moment since.

So no, it wasn’t that you didn’t want him to kiss you.  It was only that, if he did, you knew you’d have trouble letting it be just a kiss.

Therefore, you were just as relieved as you were disappointed when he departed without incident.

///

A few days later, you eloped.  You hadn’t felt much urge to have a ‘proper’ wedding when no one you knew approved of the marriage anyway— they were all too deep in your parents’ pocket, unfortunately.  And even if anyone cared enough to come, Laszlo refused to be wed in a church (you thought maybe he would bend on it if you really begged, he was overall quite accommodating to you, but it wasn’t worth your trouble) and so it would’ve just been another scandal.  

Truly, you were just as happy this way— it was the happiest day of your life, really.  You left the courthouse as Mrs. Kreizler, wearing a stunning silver band he’d had engraved with your new initials and flowering vines all around in a swirling, whimsical pattern.  His band was simpler, but you loved it even more— just because it was his, and seeing him wearing it made your heart skip all day.

Anticipation for your wedding night only grew with every passing moment.  Laszlo himself was in the bathroom with the door shut— you heard the sink running, the various sounds of him preparing for bed.  You were just trying to get your heart to slow down, trying not to have any specific goals or expectations for the evening.  Today had already been perfect.

But, of course, it was hard not to imagine what was next for the two of you— your things had already been moved into his room.  A vanity had been placed in it as well, a wedding gift from Sara Howard (a friend of Laszlo’s you had become acquainted with during this whirlwind romance), and you were using it now as you prepared yourself for bed.  You were already in your nightgown, having changed after Laszlo left the room (not that you had to, but it felt more natural that way), and you were carefully unpinning your hair from its meticulous style.

As you concluded the final steps of your evening routine, you saw the bathroom door open behind you in your reflection; your husband emerged, wearing an embroidered silk robe that offered a view of a sliver of his chest— not very much, but more than you’d ever seen.  You didn’t notice the way your thighs pressed against each other more tightly; he approached you slowly, and you eventually turned to look at him directly.  With you still sitting on the vanity’s padded stool, he towered over you when he stood close… and as you lifted your head to look up at him, his hand brushed softly along your jaw.  You tilted into his touch just a bit, smiling at him while your heart fluttered.

“You’re so beautiful, mein Schatz,” he whispered, and you felt a little giddy when he talked like that— he’d only ever indulged you in his German after having a few drinks, so this instance caught you off-guard in the best way.  Not to mention he’d called you Schatz before— treasure, apparently, and a common term of endearment— but he’d never tagged it with mein before.  And you were his, truly.  You were glad he’d waited to say it until it was actually true (even if, in a certain sense, it was already true before).

He motioned, rather subtly, for you to stand up.  It seemed simple enough, but you felt a little shaky as you did it— a nervous excitement, like the kind you would feel before a piano recital or debutante ball.  Except those were all public engagements, and this was as private as anything could be.

Touching your face again, he wove his fingers back around your neck, his thumb cradling your jaw right in front of your ear.  And he kissed you— just like that, quick at first but then slowing down as you both sighed a bit.

You admired how easily he’d done it, and thank god for it, because you would’ve spent quite a while working up the courage.  This was different from the night you’d kissed him after a few weeks of seeing each other— it was very different from the kiss you’d shared at the courthouse earlier that day.  It would’ve made sense if there was a sense of neediness to it, as if he were making up for lost time or relieving all the anticipation for this night.  But really, it was all rather relaxed, at least on his part.  Like he had all the time in the world: which, you know, he did.

You, on the other hand… you were feeling a bit more out of your element.  Not that you weren’t enjoying this new one so far, it was just a little unfamiliar.

His hand floated lower and traced down your back— delicately, with the tips of his fingers brushing your skin through the thin fabric until chills started to run over you.  You gasped a little into the kiss, and put your hands on the patterned lapels of his robe; you didn’t actually push him away, but he pulled back as if you had, examining your face carefully for a moment.

You hadn’t needed him to stop, but you were a little glad he did: just a moment’s break from it all before it became overwhelming.  His fingers still traced gentle shapes on your lower back through the nightgown, and you found your gaze drifting to his chest, to your hands resting on it— and your own fingertips ventured into the exposed piece of his chest.  His skin was paler here, with a reddish-blondish patch of hair just starting to be visible.  You touched it, taking a quick and shaky breath, and wondered why something inside you tightened as you pet him here.  He was so… masculine.  His looks weren’t sweet and boyish, no: he was broad and strong (he would deny that one if you said it, but to you he was) and sharp around the edges, and it was something you never expected to excite you so much.

But you loved that you could still feel a bit of friction from his beard after he’d kissed you.  You loved the subtle scent of his cologne, how sturdy he felt under your touch.

Your hands drifted up to his face, fingers brushing through his hair slowly, and he smiled at you.  His hair was just a bit long for what was typical of men these days, and you enjoyed combing through the dark brown locks and noticing the little golden highlights in the dimmed light of the room.

The hand on your hip pulled you closer, pressing your body against his, and you tried your best to relax into the warm strength of his form while your heart kept racing.

When he kissed you again, he moved in slowly, watching your face before his own eventually met with it, and you fluttered your eyes shut as his lips gently pressed to yours.  This time, you found yourself leaning in for more, kissing him back with more passion; you let out a little dampened moan when his tongue brushed against your bottom lip, taking the next opportunity to gently move further into your mouth.  

He broke away all too soon, embracing you even tighter, pressing his cheek to yours.  And when you, in turn, wrapped your arms around him and pressed yourself against him everywhere you could… you felt it.

Even if you had very little knowledge about this sort of thing, you understood what that hard, curved shape was, pressed just above where your hip met your stomach.  You knew what it was, and your body did too— heat pooled at your core, every touch awakening you even more.

“Oh,” you sighed shakily, holding tighter onto him to just have something to hold onto.

“It's alright,” he whispered, soft words floating on his breath which tickled under your ear.  “It's alright, my darling, I won't hurt you.”

You hummed softly in return, nodding as his lips brushed over your cheek, then moved to your neck.  “I know,” you replied.  “I trust you, Laszlo.”

But you couldn't help but gasp when his tongue teased your pulse, his teeth gently grazing the most delicate places they could find.  His grip at your waist tightened when you whimpered.  “Is this pleasurable to you?” he asked softly; even such a formal statement made you shudder when he said it in that low, buttery voice…

You nodded, your back arching slightly to press yourself against him, but you felt him smile against you suddenly.

“I'd like for you to say it,” he explained, an unfamiliar darkness to his voice.

“It's… pleasurable,” you panted.  “When you kiss me there… it's like I feel every touch s-somewhere else—”

“Where, my love?”

“Here,” you sighed, grabbing his hand from your back and moving it between your legs.  He instantly cupped and rubbed your mound, and your knees nearly buckled from the pleasure.

“Mein Gott, you're so sensitive,” he observed, his own voice sounding a little strained, “I've hardly touched you.”

“L-Laszlo, just touch me more,” you pleaded.

Though he’d been so careful until that moment, he suddenly started to pull up the skirt of your nightgown rather hastily, nostrils flaring as he bent down slightly and worked to hoist the fabric up.  Finally, he got under it, but teased you by rubbing and groping at your thighs instead; under his breath, you just barely heard a growl before he began to kiss your neck again.

“Even if both my hands were strong, I'd wish for more to touch you with,” he mumbled against your skin.  “I'd still want to cover you entirely, reach every part of you at once.”

Well, you liked the sound of that, but one hand was doing you plenty of good already— especially when it slid back up to cup you again, making you sigh and moan as his fingers slipped through your folds, spreading your abundant wetness all around.

Desperate to return even a portion of the sensation he was giving to you, you placed your hand against the bulge in his trousers.  Though the shape and firmness of him made you gasp excitedly, he only let you rub it for a few moments before sighing and moving your hand away.  “Not yet, my darling,” he instructed.  “It's best if we take this one step at a time, for now.”

You felt a little silly, having to be held back like that, but you nodded.  He obviously knew better than you about all this.

It was almost too much, the way he was touching you: you had your arms wrapped tight around his shoulders to try to keep yourself upright, frankly.  And yet, for how overwhelming it was, you heard yourself saying—

“More, please,” you begged, “I-I need you, just give me more, please—”

“I will,” he promised roughly, “but not here.  I think it’s only right that I take you to bed, hm?”

If you weren’t all worked up, you might’ve made some witty comment about how at least the bed’s not too far or whatever— but no, you just let him guide you the few steps to the mattress, and you sat on it as you simply awaited further orders.  So little that he’d done to you, and you’d already do whatever he asked in exchange for continued attention.

You watched him roll up his sleeve— it took him a little while with the weaker hand, but you didn’t mind letting this moment last— and didn’t even notice the way your mouth had gone slack, you were nearly salivating.  “Lay back, darling,” he instructed simply, still looking at his sleeve as he finally folded it up to his elbow, “and open your legs.”

You obeyed, of course, and bit absent-mindedly on your lip as you slowly lifted your knees and parted your thighs.  There was no point being shy now, of course— and you were more than eager for him to get back to doing what he had been before— but you still felt a nervous hesitance that made your hands (and heart) shake slightly.  Something about stopping to get in the bed had brought a bit of sobriety to the moment, and you realized in retrospect how desperate you must have looked.  Surely he wouldn’t hold that against you…

He lifted your skirt again, up to your hips, and hummed lowly at the sight of your sex.  Your face burned hotter; you liked the way he touched it, but you didn’t feel entirely comfortable with him… staring at it.

Still, it was the sort of slight discomfort that felt oddly… good?  Yes, you were a bit embarrassed and exposed at the moment, but it felt wrong in that fun, naughty sort of way; it made your hips shift a little, presumably in hopes of some friction.  Thankfully, their wish was answered: his hand was on you again, pulling your lips apart, slowly exploring you until your eyes fluttered shut.

“May I touch you inside as well?” he asked— as if there was any risk of you turning that offer down.

“Y-yes, Laszlo, please,” you whispered, whimpering as you felt the tip of his pointer finger— suddenly it seemed a little thicker than you remembered— press up to your entrance and ever so gently slide inside.

“Just one to start,” he narrated softly as that one finger made your toes curl, only one finger making your hips twist and your back arch.  How could he do that to you so easily?  “And my thumb can help with this lovely little organ you have…”

His thumb circled your bud, and you shuddered all over— even inside— and instantly struggled to catch your breath.  “Laszlo, what… what is that…” you breathed, whimpering when he rubbed it again.

“Your clitoris, my love— you’ve never touched here before?”

He should’ve known you hadn’t— even if you had… explored yourself out of childish curiosity probably a decade ago, you would’ve remembered if it felt like this.  Shaking your head, you were surprised by his little growl.

“Your poor girl,” he cooed, something a little attractive about the slight condescension of it.  “You have so much to learn.  I can’t even imagine the things you’ve never felt before…”

He slowly moved the pad of his thumb up and down over the flesh, which only grew firmer as he continued.  “Oh!” you whimpered, hips rocking back against his touch— it was so wild of you, you thought, but you couldn’t really stop yourself.  He pressed harder and your whole body jumped.  “Fuck!”

He laughed a little, and your face got warmer.  “I’ve never heard you use language like that, Schatz, but it sounds impossibly adorable when you say it.”

“I-I’m sorry,” you began, “I couldn’t help it—”

“No, don’t apologize,” he insisted, “I’d rather you said it again.  Whenever you can’t help it, of course.”

You knew that Laszlo knew more than you about many topics, being a highly-educated man of great intellect, but you hadn’t expected him to introduce you to an entirely new body part that you’d been carrying with you this whole time.  If you’d figured out how to do anything like this to yourself, you might have spent your entire adolescence trapped in your room, so maybe it was for the best that you never put it together.

You weren't sure how any woman was meant to learn these things— you figured she wasn't meant to, unfortunately— but if she had a choice, you'd certainly recommend this method, provided she could find her own husband to try it with rather than borrowing yours.  What a visceral and beautiful way to learn how much that little organ could really do: Laszlo rubbing it with his thumb, with just the right amount of pressure to make a loud moan crawl out of you.

“The noises you make are just delightful, my darling,” he praised.  “Keep going, so I know what I should do.”

“Just do that,” you begged, “just keep doing that.”

“Only this?” he pressed.  “I shouldn't even add another finger?”

Of course, that was when he did— gently pressing his middle finger to your opening until it accommodated it, and you heard your own high-pitched whine in disbelief that you'd made the sound.  “F-fuck, that feels… Laszlo, you're so—”

But you interrupted yourself, because he did something so diabolical with his fingers just then.  He'd only twisted and scissored them inside you for a moment before curling them up, rubbing the most delicate place you never knew you had— just as he pushed down harder on your poor clit.  You felt ravenous all of a sudden, terribly overwhelmed but greedy for more.

“Please, oh god, please—” you started to beg before you even knew what you wanted.  He knew what you wanted, and he gave it to you: more.  It wasn't even very significant of a movement, and yet it turned your whole body into his plaything as you started to shake all over.

“You react more than I ever expected, my darling,” he cooed.  “I never dreamed how well you would respond to my touch.  I've only just begun and I think you're already nearly there.”

Before you could wonder where he was talking about, he pulled his fingers out of you carefully.  You heard yourself whimper a little, opening your eyes and looking at him worriedly.  He smiled, seeming to enjoy how much his interruption seemed to bother you; “Take off your nightgown, my love,” he requested plainly.  “I think I’d like to get a good look at you before I go on.”

Sitting up (and finding your head a bit more dizzy than you expected), you started by unbuttoning from your neck halfway down to your chest, before lifting the thin garment up over your head slowly.  You felt so strange doing this— undressing in front of a man— but your heart pounded with hope that he would enjoy what he saw.  Tossing the dress aside, you sheepishly bit your lip and waited for his assessment as his dark brown eyes grazed over your nude form.

He moved a little closer, his hand running up your leg and then around your side, reaching up to carefully cup one of your breasts.  You breathed deeply but unevenly, your chest rising and falling against his touch.  You were almost nervous that he hadn’t said anything yet, but the look in his eyes just became more and more clear; you whimpered under your breath when his fingers brushed over your hardened nipple, ever-so-delicately pinching it until your hips shifted a bit in response.  “How beautiful you are, my love,” he whispered, making you squirm again with just his words.  “Is it true you’re really my wife?  This lovely, delicate body that only I can touch and caress, laying next to me every night… I don’t know when I’ll really believe it.”

You had to shut your eyes for a second— you might be too brash if he kept on like that, praising you so tenderly.  “You could’ve been a poet,” you told him with a little smirk, blinking open your eyes again as he guided you to lay back once more, “if medicine didn’t suit you.”

“Oh, I’m no poet, Schatz,” he smiled in return, taking one more careful squeeze of your other breast before moving down to pet inside your legs again.  “All I am is painfully honest.”

His fingers slid inside you again, and you could’ve sworn he was rubbing inside you a bit more firmly than he had been before— thrusting a little faster, pushing a little deeper.  And all the while he was staring down at you, back and forth between your face and your hole, with a delicious darkness in his eyes.

It was still a patient endeavor, so much so that you never really noticed that he was getting a little quicker and rougher with it.  You really didn’t figure it out until you heard yourself choking out his name, groaning and gasping louder than you meant to— but you couldn’t suppress it very well, either.

You soon began to realize what he meant before with that nearly there comment, without even having any prior knowledge of what it could be… there was something instinctive about it, something totally natural.  You didn’t know what was coming, but you understood it; you knew you were on the edge of something and that if you could just get there it would be perfect.

Still, you couldn’t have known how much you would enjoy it.

You couldn’t stop moaning— it was this all-surrounding, ecstatic feeling, like… sinking into something.  Relaxing into something… something warm and soft and good.  Even a lifetime of religious repression couldn’t convince you this was anything but perfect.  Actually, nothing had ever felt right quite the way this did.

Your back arched rather dramatically, until you had a good view of the headboard upside-down; and he gave you few more fast, rough pumps of his fingers into your shaking body before slowing down to a stop and letting you rest.

Suddenly drained, you melted back down onto the bed with a long whine.  “How did that feel?” he asked, sounding a little formal about it, and you only could muster a little, exhausted laugh because what did he think you were going to say?  ‘It was alright, tickled a little bit, but I didn’t mind it.’

“That was… you… you’re so—” you began a few times, giving up to open your eyes wide when his fingers pet up and down over the seam of your lips, gently exploring you, making you quiver from how sensitive you’d become.  You weren’t even done recovering from the stimulation and he was giving you more; he seemed sort of absent-minded about it, the way he gently and repetitively slid up and down and up and down through your slick and swollen folds… but it was deliberate, you knew it was, because he smiled when you moaned weakly.

One finger pressed inside you again, and he watched your face closely and you shuddered.  You were just the slightest bit sore, and it felt like that one finger was more of a stretch than before… which seemed impossible, but with the erratic pulsing of your walls, it was a little hard to keep track.

You gasped sharply when he put the second finger in you once more, almost snarling a bit as he watched you react so strongly.  “Laszlo, I— I don't think I can do that again—”

“You can, I'm sure of it,” he encouraged, curling his fingers inside of you, which required a bit more force with your channel bearing down against him in response.  “It might even come faster this time, that little spot is all swollen now—”

Before he could finish that sentence, he proved it by circling the place, making your hips jump up as another whine eked out of you.  “O-oh, I— fuck…”

He smirked a bit, a delicious smugness to his expression, and the emotion looked much too good on him.  “See?  Just let me take control, my love.  I think you'll like what I do, if you simply let me do what I like with you.”

Fuck, that had to be the most beautiful thing you'd ever heard.  You were biting your lip to try to keep back the flood of terribly embarrassing things your pleasure wanted to say for you: you can do whatever you like with me; I'm yours; I'd do anything for you; don't ever stop, but also if you don't fuck me soon I might lose my mind, you know, things of that nature.  Instead you let out a muffled moan, and nodded to make sure he knew that he had your permission for whatever he thought was best.

And, of course, he’d been right about you: that you’d be even more sensitive after coming, and would be able to go through it all over again.  It only took probably a minute or two of dedicated, precise stimulation for the feeling to grow again… except it felt a little stronger this time, like it was building past the point that it had broken at before.  Maybe your tolerance was higher, or something?  You really weren’t qualified to say— all you could think about was this sensation, this tension, and the way he looked at you as you started to shake all over.

Your eyes fell shut instinctively, your shaking hands clutching at the bed under you; you felt sort of numb all over, except instead of everything being dulled and distant, it was only heightened.

“O-oh, oh, Laszlo, I—” you tried to warn him, words escaping you as the heavy, almost sharp feeling gathered tighter and tighter…

“Give into it,” he insisted, “it’s alright— I want to see it.  I want to hear you, I want to feel you when you come—”

His voice was getting darker, rougher, more demanding as he went on; and in the same way, his fingers’ thrusts into you became more aggressive.  “Fuck, I— I think I’ll— oh god!” you yelped.

“Yes,” he encouraged, “let go, darling!”

Your arms flailed around for a second before finding a lump in the sheets to grab onto tightly, your hips rocking against his hand, your head falling back in a scream; it was so intense, and so sudden, and you felt like the pressure that had been building broke so violently that it would’ve been painful without all the ecstasy running through your veins, numbing you inside and out.

You could tell that this one was different— hotter, warmer, wetter— but you had no idea what you’d done until the high had started to fade just a bit.

His hand slowed down to a stop, you heard him quietly catching his breath, and you blinked your eyes open… that’s when you noticed small wet stains on his rolled-up sleeve, and shiny fluid along his forearm— and a very proud grin on his face.

You felt your eyes go wide and your cheeks start baking.  He spoke up before you could even try to process what to say: “That was excellent, my love— I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so magnificent,” he praised.  “You’re incredible.”

You wanted to believe him, but it didn’t really offer much explanation.  “Laszlo, I… did I—?”

“No, darling, don’t worry,” he cooed, scooting a little closer on the bed as he pet the inside of your thigh.  “It’s natural— one of the… rarer ways that a woman’s body can respond to stimulation.  I’ve always found the concept fascinating, but until now, my knowledge was… purely theoretical.  Actually, I’d love to gather your perspective on the experience, possibly for a future research paper on the topic— but that’s an issue for another time.  There’s a more pressing matter I need to discuss with you.”

You raised an eyebrow, curious what matter could be discussed in a time like this.

“I… I'd like to try something else,” he announced, and you dropped your head back on the bed in a sort of defeat.

“Something else?!” you whimpered, still catching your breath from the last thing he had “tried”.  “What else could there be but making love?”

“That will be soon, I promise, I just… I can't resist such an opportunity,” he explained.  “Your scent is so erotic, and it's only grown stronger now that you’ve so generously covered my arm in your ecstasy.  And with anything that smells so delectable, one can't help but crave to taste it.”

You'd only heard about this before— sort of a dirty schoolyard secret, almost an urban legend.  The whole thing had always sounded odd to you, if maybe not as icky as you thought it was when you first had the concept whispered to you as a child.  You didn't realize it was actually something you might experience someday, assuming it was a practice reserved to the especially perverted.  Now that he was offering it, you found yourself biting your lip as you tried to imagine what it would be like.

“I'd like to pleasure you with my mouth,” he concluded, really spelling it out for you.  “Would that be alright?”

You weren't sure what to think of that, and yet you were already nodding yes.  This was your husband, after all— who else could you trust to do something like this?  Most of all, you did it because you wanted to please him.  Because he'd asked you for it.

He smiled a little when you agreed, and began to lean down between your legs.  Those deep brown eyes seemed to sparkle more than ever when he looked up at you, but his gaze couldn't stay with yours for long before he had to give a closer look to your cunt.  He carefully spread the lips with his fingers, humming at the sight.  “I wonder if it's even possible for you to be as delicious as you look,” he spoke quietly, and a needy whine caught in your throat.

It was just a gentle kiss to your clit first… then another, with his lips parted.  Then he started to ever-so-gently suckle at it, tongue softly petting it; he wasn't doing too much, physically, but you never could catch your breath while he was doing it.

You whined a bit when he broke away, looking down at him in search of an explanation but finding instead him looking back up at you with an indescribable look in his eye.

“How does that feel?” he asked, his voice rougher and darker than you'd ever heard it before, making you shiver gleefully.

“Wet,” you blurted out, making him smile a little, a small laugh on an exhale through his nose that made you feel a bit foolish in an unexpectedly pleasurable way.  “A-and warm… please don't stop, Laszlo, it felt so nice…”

He got back to it, a little more intensely than before, and your eyes rolled back when he really started to lap at you with his tongue— harder and wider each time, making you writhe from the intensity of it.

You couldn't even describe the sound you made when he pushed his tongue inside you.  He moaned against you in response to it, though, and thank God, he kept going.

He kept petting your thighs, even encouraging you when your legs clamped down around his head unintentionally; presumably that was his way of saying it wasn’t giving him any pain, which you were a bit concerned about, even if you couldn’t really stop yourself.  Sometimes you had the strength to meet his gaze, but most of the time you felt like you’d melt if you looked back at him— the way he was staring up at you was just too fiery, too intense, too beautiful.  

Just when you thought you were getting used to the pattern of his tongue’s movements on your clit, he gently pushed his two fingers back into your pulsing channel.  You were all tingly and sore inside, but a long, deep moan fell from your mouth as your back arched.

“Beautiful,” he praised, the word muffled by what he was doing— which he got back to more urgently than ever, twisting and thrusting his fingers inside you carefully at first.

“J-just like that,” you pleaded.  “Oh, Laszlo, I— I didn't know anything could… feel like this…”

You could feel the smallest smirk on his lips as he continued; even just being able to feel his smug smile there was such a lovely, erotic, totally novel concept to you.  

When he really buried his face in your legs, you could feel the roughness of his beard against the sensitive skin of your inner thighs and buttocks, and god was it the most beautifully filthy feeling.  It was really an excellent metaphor for the whole thing: the symbol of his maturity, the well-kempt facial hair itself a balance between his wildness and his meticulous self-control, rubbing raw your delicate and untouched skin in such an intimate place.  If you weren’t too busy shaking and crying and seeing stars on this bed, you might have appreciated the beauty in those parallels, but clearly you weren’t capable of thinking about it to that level of depth.

The stream of helpless praises you'd been trying to hold back earlier?  There was absolutely nothing stopping it from spilling forward now.  “You're incredible,” you blurted out, your hand holding tighter to the sheets beneath you.  “Laszlo— my husband— you… you must be the devil, o-or an angel or prophet— or something. You make me feel things, such incredible things, that I didn't even know—”

He opened his mouth wide around you, breaking the seal of his lips so he could speak against your skin.  “I'm just a man,” he promised, “I'm just a husband becoming addicted to his new wife's pleasure, that's all, my dear.”

As he started to do it again so suddenly, you reacted suddenly as well: your hand found his hair and grabbed it, and your mind was too far gone to worry about it being too aggressive.  Not that he gave any signs of annoyance— if anything it was the opposite, as he lapped at you harder in response.  

This, of course made your hips jump up— until his hand slipped out of you, grabbing them and pulling them down, keeping you still as he continued.  The simple show of dominance affected you greatly, another heavy pulse of pleasure hitting you suddenly.

“I-I'm close,” you whispered.  “Laszlo, I'm so close— and it feels so different than before— I swear, nothing's ever felt so— fuck!”

He hummed encouragingly, and your whole body rocked in time with the growing pressure.  His fingers sliding back inside you, seeming to curl even more than before, certainly added to the sensation.

Just as you were teetering on the edge, his teeth grazed impossibly-carefully over you, a sharp and raw sort of pleasure jolting your entire body.  Of course, you couldn't fight against that, and the feeling inside you snapped as yet another flood of pleasure ripped through your body.  Your ears were ringing but you still heard how loud you must have been, how totally wrecked and helpless your moans had become.  

It wasn’t as… aggressive of a feeling as the one that had made you… you know… but it was probably the most powerful in its own way.  The highest, the heaviest, the most whole.  You couldn't hear him moaning against you through all that, but you could feel it: a deep and bassy vibration that only heightened the feeling even more.  Your moans turned to cries and then sobs; it was too much, the feeling was spilling over inside you— you weren't sure how much longer you could take it all before you broke.

It seemed, however, that he broke first; he pulled away and sat up, leaving you both panting, sweaty messes.  

“God, you're so beautiful,” he sighed, grabbing you by the neck to pull you up into a filthy, heated kiss.  You surrendered instantly, grabbing into his shoulders with hands that were still pricked with pins and needles as your high dissipated slowly.  “I can't wait anymore,” he mumbled against your lips, “I need to be inside you.”

“Please,” you gasped softly— you'd been waiting for this all night, at least.  You'd never imagined yourself so eager, so desperate for it, though…

He made quick work untying his robe, leaning over you as he held tightly onto his cock and guided the swollen, leaking head between your lips.  Yes, even with desire coursing through your veins, a touch of anxiety was still present.  You just couldn’t imagine what this was going to be like, you could still hardly believe it was happening to you— and, though it was a bit crass to think, you were a bit surprised by the brief glance of his cock that you’d gotten.  You wouldn’t really know what was big or small or normal or abnormal when it came to that… you had nothing to compare it to.  What you did know was that it seemed much… thicker, than seemed appropriate to go inside you.  Of course you knew that a young woman’s first experience could be painful, you’d heard that bleeding was normal (if not expected, but that seemed a bit barbaric and certainly not what a progressive man like Laszlo was after) — yet, you still weren’t properly scared.  It was just the sort of anticipation that made you shiver and let out a long breath to compose yourself.

He groaned a little as he continued to rub against you, and you noticed the arm that held him up over you was shaking.  You could only imagine how frustrating it must have been to be giving you all that attention and not getting any in return for so long, and you could only hope he might take a little of that frustration out on you…

“Please,” you said again, quieter, as you looked up at him.  Thankfully, that was enough to make him press forward and slide into you all at once.

While his fingers had stretched you in such strange, sometimes overwhelming ways, his cock… it just fit.  It filled you exactly the way you needed— not too wide or too deep… though you suspected it would've been had he not prepared you so incredibly thoroughly.  And while his tongue has made you feel such unimaginable things, though his lips had effortlessly sucked ecstasy from your shaking body, having him inside you felt so simple and natural and easy.  

He hissed in his breaths as he moved— slow at first, but each one just a bit faster than the last.  Every movement stimulated all the places he'd already awoken inside you, and your legs moved on their own to latch around his hips while your head fell back with a satisfied sigh.

“My angel,” he groaned, staring down at you as each of his thrusts rocked you under him.  “I knew I— fuck, darling— I knew I'd have trouble keeping myself together when I was finally inside you.  Yet you're… you're even more perfect than I imagined.”

You smiled proudly, reaching up to hold his shoulders; he seemed encouraged by that, becoming just a bit rougher in his movements until your nails accidentally dug into his skin just a bit.

“I won't be able to last much longer,” he grunted, “but I-I can't stop.  I can't even slow down, I never… I've never lost control like this before.”

A shiver ran up your whole body, even seeming to make you clench inside— and he moaned in return, a beautifully pitiful sound.  

“I'm sorry,” he offered between panting breaths, and you barely mustered the energy to laugh. 

“Beloved, what do you have to apologize for?” you teased through a grin.  “Surely you're not worried that I will be left unsatisfied.”

“I would rather bring you to orgasm again,” he explained, “but I'm so desperate for you, I'm afraid I lack the patience for it.”

“I would rather pleasure my husband, for once,” you replied, “but you couldn't possibly feel what I felt, I don't think I'll ever be able to really return the favor—”

“It's no favor,” he insisted.  “Your pleasure is what I desire.  And a good wife gives her husband what he desires, no?”

You whimpered desperately, pathetically even.  “I'll be good for you, Laszlo,” you promised weakly, “I want to be a good wife to you…”

“You're a very good wife, my dear,” he assured.  “Look how much pleasure you've let me take from you, look how you've soaked our bed with your lovely nectar…”

You weren't sure which part of that aroused you the most… but our bed was a serious contender.

“And you taste absolutely divine,” he added, before kissing you again to let you taste it, too.  It was a sloppy and needy kiss, not precise and careful like basically everything else he'd done to you so far, but you loved it.  You loved any sign that he might be just as desperate as you.

Once again his speed and intensity picked up, until you could hear his skin hitting against yours loudly, and your back arched a bit at how perfectly dirty it felt.  His cock hit a spot deep inside you, and you sucked in a sharp breath.  “Laszlo,” you blurted out, and he groaned as he moved his kiss to your neck.  

“Keep saying my name,” he demanded.  “Tell me who your husband is— who makes you feel this way you've never felt before.”

“Laszlo,” you said again, “I'm yours.  Anything you want from me, it's yours.”

“Yes,” he agreed with a heavy sigh.

“Your wife, always,” you continued, and it made your own heart swell along with encouraging him: he moved faster, rocked deeper into you, and breathed heavy against your ear as your back arched from the erotic perfection of the moment.

“My wife,” he repeated, making you whine and nod and bear down on him with your walls.

“Yes,” you gasped, “yes— yours, I’m yours—”

“I-I can't hold back anymore,” he moaned, “I don't… I don't even know if I can bring myself to pull out before—”

“Don't,” you begged.  “I want it inside, Laszlo.  I want all of you inside me.”

“Oh, darling, mein Schatz, I—” he choked, but he never finished his sentence.  He just moaned louder and louder and fucked you faster and faster— until you were nearly screaming from how hard he hammered into you.

It stopped all at once; he pressed himself as deep inside you as he could, so deep you felt like you were struggling to breathe, and hid his face in the curve of your neck as he came inside you.

And for a long, beautiful moment, you just laid together; you were sort of halfway between awake and asleep, your whole body thrummed with emotions and sensations you never thought you could fit within yourself.  Time passed, surely, but you wouldn’t have known the difference.  His weight on top of you wasn’t too heavy, though it did keep you pressed into the mattress and sheets— not that you were going anywhere anyways.

You only really came back to reality when you felt small kisses trailing your neck; you hummed and squirmed a little beneath him, making you both groan as it stirred where you were connected.  He must have been a bit sore, too, though you felt like you’d been through quite a lot more and had a better excuse.

He moved again, just barely, and you winced as you held onto his back.  “Don’t go,” you whispered, afraid of the pain if he didn’t just stay still inside you.

“I have to, sometime,” he breathed in return.

“But—”

“I know, my love,” he cooed, “I’d stay inside you forever if I could.  But I’ll hurt you more if I don’t give you time to rest.”

Resigning yourself with a sigh, you nodded a little and scrunched up your face as he pulled his hips back.  It did sting, but it faded quickly once he was out— and the feeling was replaced with a warm, wet feeling that you realized must have been his seed leaking out of you.  It made you feel a bit dirty, but wonderful, too.

He laid beside you with a deep breath, his hand coming up to your face and turning it so you would look back at him.  You had to blink a few times to really see clearly, and even still, everything seemed a bit blurry around the edges.  The whole world seemed a bit softer, really.  “I love you, darling wife,” he told you simply, his voice soft but no longer a whisper, and he pet your cheek as he leaned in to kiss the bridge of your nose.

“I love you too, husband,” you cooed in reply.  “You’re so wonderful— a-and you’re nothing like I imagined, sometimes.”

“Perhaps I should have been more careful,” he offered nervously.

“No— that was perfect,” you promised.

“I meant the very end, there,” he clarified, his hand running down over your body and resting on your stomach.  “You might have wanted to wait longer… if you had a child so soon, you might wish we had more time just the two of us.”

Your heart skipped a beat as you realized what he meant.  “Oh, that…” you mumbled, smiling a bit to yourself.

“I fully intended to have my finish elsewhere, to lower the chances— I didn’t think I would become so… impulsive,” he sighed.  “I hoped to still control myself, but I’m afraid I wasn’t quite able to, once I was within you.  But I couldn’t help it, with the way you feel…”

“It’s alright,” you laughed weakly, “it’s not as if I were acting rationally.  I never… I didn’t think I could be so… so—”

A thousand words came to mind.  Unladylike.  Animalistic.  Desperate.  Insatiable.

“I didn’t think I’d ever act like that,” you said instead, voice getting a little softer as you felt a bit shy again.

“I knew you would,” he responded, making you look at him with wide eyes and warming cheeks.

“You— but I— I was always—!”

“Yes, you behaved very well each time I met you” he recalled with a proud smile, “always so sweet and well-mannered.  But I knew you had so much need within you, so much hunger… a being of pure instinct just waiting to take over when the time was right.”

Your heart skipped a beat— you felt a bit… accused by that statement, yet you couldn’t really deny it.  Even if you hadn’t known it before, it was clearly true now.  “How… how could you have sensed that?” you wondered.

He raised an eyebrow as he looked at you again; you loved the way he looked in that moment.  His expression was familiar, but the total lack of composure— flushed cheeks, sweat on his brow, messed hair— was totally new and quite pleasant.  “If you didn’t have any desire to misbehave, my darling, you wouldn’t have been going out with me.”

[helaelaemond]

Lost Absolution Pt3 - Osferth x reader

Pairing: Osferth x reader

Word count: 3.4k

Fic summary: Osferth thinks of you during morning prayer, and sneaks into your room to find your scent while you're gone. He chases his pleasure, guilty though it makes him, and you watch him find his pleasure. Can be read as standalone piece. Masturbation, mutual masturbation, solo dry humping, mentions of oral and fingering.

Content warning(s): Religious guilt, historically inaccurate representation of Saxon Christianity and Roman Catholic traditions, angst

Rating: Explicit

Part 1 / Part 2

Tag list: @sylasthegrim / @myfandomprompts / @arcielee / @babyblue711 / @troublesomesnitch

Masterlist

You walk with Osferth to morning prayer. You prefer to pray later, but he likes to start his day with it in the little chapel on the estate. There is ice on the ground, and you insist on holding his arm to keep him steady.

"You're still healing, lean on me," you tell him with a quiet laugh. In the courtyards, your fellow servants bustle about their business and pay you no mind. In your concentration, keeping focus on the pathway, you miss how Osferth looks down at you with longing.

"I am well, lady," he replies softly.

You smile up at him. He's so tall. "And you shall stay that way, so long as you do not fall. Careful-"

He puts the weight on his foot wrong on a little patch of ice, and it throws off his balance. With a strangled noise of surprise, he clutches onto your arm and shoulder. It's impossible to stop him from falling, but you greatly reduce the speed with which it happens - your feet are firmly planted on solid ground, and you manage to ease him, more than drop him, to the ground.

"Osferth!" you laugh. You lean over him as you grasp his arm and waist, doing your best to keep him safe. "Are you alright?"

His cheeks flush from the cold, from the embarrassment. "I'm sorry."

"There is nothing to forgive," you assure him warmly. "Are you in pain?"

He shakes his head and bites his lip. Casting his eyes down, he tries to get up, but winces.

"Let me help."

For a heartbeat, it looks like he is going to protest. But when you squeeze the hand you hold, and you smile so kindly, he nods. With your help, he gets back on his feet. The light is gone from his eyes, though, and he won't look at you. When you try to take his hand again, he clasps them both behind his back.

"Your wound, is it-?" Without thinking, your hand goes to his stomach to feel his dressings. The touch makes him flinch. Osferth's sudden change in demeanour makes you swallow. "Forgive me."

His expression is pained. "There is nothing to forgive, lady."

During the weeks that he has grown healthier and stronger, you have repeatedly asked him to use your name and not a title to which you have no claim. Usually, you are both laughing when the topic is raised, but you don't feel like laughing now. Quietly, you ask, "won't you use my name?"

He bites his pretty lip and looks down. His brows furrow like he's concentrating, and unreadable expressions flicker across his face. How difficult he can be to read sometimes, you lament. He won't let you in, not really. There is something holding him back.

"Not today, lady."

"Alright." Tentatively, you take his arm again. The expression he wears would make any passer-by think you were marching him to the gates of Hell, so uncomfortable is he now. He is all stiff and icy, but perhaps it is the pain. You'll have to examine him later.

At the door of the chapel, you let go of his arm and turn to him. "I'll return for you when the bell rings."

"You are very kind," he murmurs, expression fixed on the ground. "I do not thank you enough for all that you do."

You give him a smile that he does not see. "It is why I am here, Osferth. I am here to help."

"But still. I do not thank you enough."

He gives you a pained smile without meeting your gaze before ducking into the chapel. You watch him go inside, and as the door closes, you turn back to your work with an ache in your chest.

There is no one else in the chapel this morning. That is not unusual - many different worshippers come in at different times, and most of the estate is made up of servants who are busy at this hour. So Osferth has the little hall to himself. He approaches the altar, and makes the sign of the cross.

"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen."

There is a small wooden statue of the Mother to the left of the altar, and Osferth fixes his eyes upon it as he clasps his hands in prayer, and sinks to his knees in front of the pew.

"Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum."

The words roll off his tongue without thinking. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.

His forehead drops onto his clasped hands and he groans softly. The feeling of your hand on his waist will not go away. It had been a soft pressure to hold him safe, yet it had felt like... like... like you were holding him for something else. When you had bent over him, your hair had tickled his face and he caught the smell of rosemary in it. Yes, that's what you use to oil it sometimes, rosemary. That scent haunts his nights.

How good it would feel to bless your womb with his child, to bury himself in you and find his completion with his nose buried in your fresh-smelling hair-

"Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus-"

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now.

Osferth swallows and fixes his eyes on the statue again. "Nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen."

You wore a green dress today, green like moss in spring. Osferth loves that colour on you. It makes him think of warmer days. The collar is high and there are laces across your neck against the winter chill, and he stares at the Mother until she resembles you. At her throat, he sees those laces, and he can feel himself untying them to touch the skin underneath. How warm you must be compared to December.

Just the thought of the skin at your throat makes the blood rush between his thighs. The breath he takes in is shaky. "Ave Maria, gratia plena. Dominus..."

Three more Hail Marys are spoken softly by the time he is hard, and his mind is foggy. Rosemary. Spring. Moss. Hail Mary, full of grace. Rosemary, spring, moss. The Lord is with you. The slope of your neck, the shadows of your collarbones. Blessed are you among women.

Blessed are you among women.

When he had been sick, you had worked over his bare torso and touched his flaming skin with a soothing hand. Most memories of that time have faded with the healing of his body, but fragments remain. Your fingers ghosting over his heart, carefully applying pressure. Your strong grip at his hip to turn him slightly and fit bandages around his back and stomach.

Pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death.

From the precipice of death you had pulled him, yet closer to it he now returns. For this is purgatory, surely, to desire you like this. To need you.

"Forgive me, Lord," he sighs quietly. "Help me, please. I'm... w-weak. Please."

Even as tears begin to spill down his cheeks, the vision of you returns to his mind. In his mind, you take him into your arms and stroke his hair. You hold him close and comfort him. He grips his hands tighter together and closes his eyes as if this will help. Breaths quicken, but whether that is from anguish or arousal, he doesn't know.

The vision of you slips your dress off and you cradle him in your lap. He weeps, and you run your fingers through his hair as you soothe him. Osferth is allowed to weep, and he is comforted with a hand behind his head, and a nipple in his mouth. He suckles on you in his mind and whimpers.

His knees begin to hurt. The floor of the chapel is cold stone, and he gasps as reality comes crashing around him. "Forgive me, Lord, please. I do not mean to have these thoughts, I-"

This place is not for him right now. He cannot be in the house of God whilst his mind is plagued with such unholy thoughts of you. Ice be damned. He hurries out of the sanctuary, and back to the hall he has been afforded for his healing. It's still early and there are few people around, but still, he wraps his cloak tightly around him. No one needs to see him in such a state.

As expected, you are not here when he returns. He approaches the little antechamber you are using during your time as his helper, and he peeks in. It's only to make sure you're not here, of course, but...

It's wrong, what he does, he knows this. But he doesn't care enough to stop. Your bed is unmade, and the blankets are crumpled towards the bottom of it. At the top, the single soft pillow is folded in half, and the shift you wear to sleep is thrown across it.

Don't do it. Don't come any closer.

Osferth swallows. There are butterflies in his stomach as the visions of being in your lap come rushing back. Rosemary. Spring. Moss.

He glances around, but no one will come. The hall is private, for his use only, and yours. Finan often strides in like he owns it, but it is too early in the morning for him. You are not due back at the chapel until the bell is rung and that is another half hour away at least. You won't be back.

Osferth is in your room, and he is alone.

His feet slowly carry him across the room to your bed. The butterflies make him float, and before he can stop himself, he has reached out and taken your night shift into his hands. Bringing it up to his nose, he inhales deeply. Eyes closing, he lets the smell of you wash over him. God, it's better than he thought.

It takes the strength from him. He sits down on the edge of your bed. Against the linen, his mouth opens, and he runs his tongue along it as if to catch a taste. All it does is dry out his mouth. But it's something. It's something tangible about you. If he doesn't think about it, then he doesn't need to register what's happening.

He can just live in the moment, and forget about it later. As if it never happened.

Hands turn into fists in the fabric as he presses it to his face. There are different smells at different places of the garment. Along the neckline is that rosemary. It must have dripped down your scalp and neck and onto the linen. His eyes roll back into his head as he thinks of the journey it got to take. He envies the oil.

It has anointed you in places he will never touch.

Control is ebbing away from the once pious man. Further down your night shift he goes, below where it would cover your waist. With new vigour, he runs it under his nose until he catches a sweetly sour scent that makes his mouth water. Inhaling deeply, he feels his mouth pool with saliva. That smell, that fucking smell. He wants to taste it on you so desperately-

"Oh, Lord."

Osferth squeezes his hand around the fabric where your smell clings faintly, and pulling it away again, he licks his fingers for the ghost of your taste. Nothing. Perhaps he will find your undergarments and suck them in his mouth until your taste is as familiar as bread and ale.

He fumbles with his leather harness that has a cross embossed onto it, and he casts it aside. With it goes the cross around his neck. There is nothing holy left here.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now,"

It is to your pillow that he now turns. On it, the smell of rosemary is much stronger, and he moans into it. In the privacy of his solitude, Osferth moans your name. Tears of absolute need leak from his pretty eyes.

"My sweet lady, lady, lady."

Using the strength you have nurtured back into him, Osferth climbs atop your bed and presses the pillow into his face. He inhales as desperately as a drowning man until you are in his veins and he will never get you out. Rosemary fills his mind, moss and spring, laces at your throat. The vision of himself in your lap morphs into something else now. He lies on his stomach with his face buried into your pillow, and he cannot stop his hips from grinding down against the mattress.

In his mind, you are below him. You're on your stomach, too, and he fills you from behind. You mewl softly as his cock fills you perfectly, like he was made for you.

Blessed are you amongst women.

With you, Osferth is most blessed. In reality, his clothes are rough and grinding against the bed hurts, but he is not in reality now. He moans into your pillow that he imagines is your hair. You moan back so sweetly it almost feels true.

Into your pillow he whimpers your name. The movement of his desperate hips still only so he can push his breeches down. His hard cock springs free and it's flushed and leaking. He can't bring himself to look at it. Instead, he covers it with your pillow. Onto his stomach he returns, this time with it between him and the bed. How easy it is to think of this dry softness as you.

There is an ache in his stomach and back as he fucks your pillow desperately. He grinds against it as he would grind against you. His chest tightens as he thinks of you. How fucking wet you would be for him if he treated you right. He bites his lip as he thinks about spreading your legs and pressing his tongue there, sliding it up and down and letting it slip inside you, if that's what you liked.

He's never even kissed a woman. But he's seen the act, although it never much interested him. He never wanted it until he met you. Now, it's all he can think about. What do you look like between your legs? Pink like a summer rose, perhaps? Or dark like fine wine, rich and generous? He doesn't care. He wants every version of you.

His thrusts get more desperate as his thoughts carry him away. Once he's made you come on his tongue and long fingers, he'll push you onto your stomach and fill you from behind like this, like he's fucking your pillow. He'll ask you to turn your head towards him so he can kiss you and see your expression, and whisper in your ear how beautiful you are. Surely you'd say something sweet in return.

You're so good to him. You take care of him.

Let Osferth take care of you. He wants to be so good to you. So good.

He cries out your name again. All reason has left him, all sensibility.

So when the door creaks open behind him, he barely has the sense to glance over his shoulder and look at who it is. When he sees it's you, he's sure it's just his imagination. Moss green. Laces at your throat.

You see him on his stomach atop your bed, your pillow under his hips. You watch as he grinds against it, eyes half closed, forehead sweaty. It sends bolts of heat between your legs. You're lost for words, and lost to need.

"Osferth?"

When you call his name, he whimpers again. His hips keep moving. "My lady!"

You're frozen in the doorway. Even if you had wanted to, you can't make yourself move forward, lest it break the spell over you both.

When you pull up your skirts and expose yourself to him, he is sure he has died and gone to heaven. When you bury your fingers into your folds, he whines your name. It's the first time you've heard him use it.

"Yes, Osferth."

He is utterly lost. He's never been aroused like this, never been driven so mad with need, so plagued with visions. Straining his head to watch you makes his neck begin to ache, but it doesn't matter because you are rubbing circles between your thighs and grinding down against your hand and your face is split with frustration and delight and he knows how you feel and-

"Oh! Oh, Lord, my God-!" Osferth moans. Tears leak down his cheeks.

"Yes, yes! Fuck, Osferth, I-"

"Oh, oh! Yes, oh-!"

He comes with a guttural noise that sends you spiralling, too. He jerks against your pillow again and again as he rides his high with green in his eyes and rosemary in his nose. Spring, he has hopes for spring. Pleasure washes over you both in powerful waves. For Osferth, this means curling up on the bed and panting, eyes closed at the intensity of it.

For you, it means leaning against the doorway and letting your knees give out. Your skirts fall back into place as you slide down to sit on the floor, breathless.

Osferth is turned away from you. A few minutes pass, and your heart begins to return to a steady pace along with your breathing. From the sounds of it, he is coming back down, too. "Osferth?"

If he hears you, he ignores you. You watch as he sits up - still facing away from you - and sorts out his clothes. You didn't get to see his nakedness, and you still haven't. God, you want to. You've dreamed about sliding his cock into you hand and mouth, and how good it would be to see what you so long for. But no, he hides himself, turns himself away.

"Osferth, please look at me."

He turns to you as he walks around the bed to pick up his cross and harness, but he doesn't meet your eye, let alone speak. You're in the doorway, though, and he'll have to acknowledge you at some point. Slowly, he puts the leather garment back on, and there is a certain solemnity in the way he puts his cross necklace around his neck. With it in place, he finally looks in your direction. There is a spot over your shoulder that he fixes his gaze upon.

"Forgive me, lady."

"You said my name for the first time."

He licks his lips and looks down as he clasps his dirty hands behind his back. Perhaps in another life, he'd let you lick them clean. "I did. For that, I am sorry."

"For that?" you echo.

"And for... for everything else."

You push yourself to your feet and walk over to him. He side-steps to prevent you from grasping him with your outstretched hands. It makes you want to cry. "Please don't apologise for anything. Just... let me hold you. Hold me. Please."

"I can't."

"Please."

Osferth's eyes are red. "I can't. Please, forgive me."

"Do you love me?"

The directness of your question catches him, and finally, with round, shining eyes, he meets your gaze. He looks wounded. "I... I don't know if that is of consequence."

Before you can even think about what you're doing, you touch his cheek with the hand you found completion with. He turns his head slightly and catches your damp fingers on his lips. His eyes close as a moan almost too quiet to hear escapes him. You move closer to him. "It's of consequence to me."

"I'm sorry," he breathes. "You deserve a man better than me."

"I want no man but you."

He hangs his head. "I will not damn you."

There is no chance to argue before he has left your room. You sit on the bed he has left rumpled. You press your night shift to your nose, and smell rosemary there. No matter how hard you try, you cannot catch his scent. He's not here. It's like he never was.

[sea-owl]

So I know I've said before that I headcanon that the Featheringtons Irish side comes from Portia. I also headcanon that she socially married up where Lord Featherington had the title and she had the money. Most likely being a rich merchant's daughter, so she's new to the aristocratic scene. She also had some sort of vibe to her that I could never place my finger on.

Then I was rewatching some clips and one that always stuck out to me was when Portia takes Marina to the bad side of town as kind of like a scare straight tactic saying hey here's what's going to happen if you don't do something about your situation. That scene kind of gave off the vibes that Portia has personal experience with it.

It wasn't until I was visiting my Mexican American grandmother and all her siblings that I realized why Portia kind of gave off familiar vibes to me. Portia, at least to me kinda gives off Catholic mom vibes.

If that was to be her background of an Irish Catholic woman or even a catholic woman in general who married up than I can see why she would constantly be in survival mode like she is on the show and her need to keep up appearances like another member of the ton.

Catholics had been persecuted in England, and that's not even getting into the mess of British and Irish political relations, for over a good 200 years by the time we hit the Regency era with some relief from James the 2nd who had a catholic wife but he was honestly an anomaly. And in 1689 parliament banned any future monarchs or their spouses from being catholic, which was reinforced in 1701 with the Act of Settlemant. George the 3rd, the king we see on the show, was known to actively reject catholic relief bills. It wasn't until the late 1700s that catholics could own land or inheirt land or join the army. And even longer, in 1791-93 when they could practice their religion without fear of persecution. Being to hold any political power wasn't a thing until The Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829.

Interreligious marriages weren't really looked favorable either but a catholic wife with a protestant husband was tolerated more but the kids had to be raised protestant. I could pot see a catholic wife being quiet about her religious background if it meant her survival.

But anyway back to what I was saying there is enough in the show that I could see this being a thing or something to have fun with as an idea. A Portia who is trying to survive so she marries out of her religion, marries up socially, and now she's doing everything in her power to keep make sure her position is secured. We could also apply this to Penelope with her writings and her jabs at the monarchy if this is her family history. I can see Portia also doing these kinds of warnings that she did to Marina on a smaller scale too throughout the girls' lives to make sure they stay on the path she's trying to lay out for them. After all it wasn't that long ago and society more than likely still sees catholics as second class citizens.

Now, do I expect anything like this from the show? No. It's a historical romance fantasy show, and I don't see them diving into something like this. Plus, Portia is meant to serve as a foil to Violet. It's a fun idea to play around with and could potentially explain some of Portia's actions. I do kinda hope we dive a little more in Penelope's family history as we watch her and Portia's dynamics shift and change.

[msfbgraves]

Work vs Jobs

What I'm going to say is not in any way new - you can read Marx, Chomsky, Graeber, Bregman if you want to ponder it at length, but in the offline world it is still seen as a radical idea.

When reading about the sandwich- to- minimum wage- ratio, I saw all these Tumlblr comments basically going: (sobbing) 'fuck you, I'm not gonna buy that (sobbing some more').

So then I thought: if so many of us are cutting back on things like sammies because who indeed would pay €8 for a döner or $10 for a sandwich, how can this not cause a recession?

And then I remembered a Jon Stewart interview with some banking hotshot, saying that yes, because of the pandemic there were fewer laborers around, and yes, we absolutely had to force them to take jobs with bad pay, because supply and demand doesn't go for multinationals, so yes, they had to raise interest and prices artificially to force a recession, cannot be helped, how else would anyone work?

There's so many people who share that view, that if you didn't force people to take jobs, they wouldn't do any work, especially unpleasant work. A uni friend of mine who supports the German Green Party had argued vehemently against a basic income for that reason, because who would deign to clean the streets if they weren't forced to by threat of starvation, homelessness and having their children taken away?

And I need you all to know that experiments with basic income have proven that this is utter, and I mean utter bullshit. Even The Atlantic is seeing now, that there are people for whom working wasn't worth it because of the abysmal conditions, have begun working when the pay was high enough to justify the cost of work - in time or commute or rent.

There's this protestant view of the human spirit that suffering is somehow good for the soul, and this medieval catholic idea that the concept of "work" and "doing penance" is somehow one and the same, and therefore it is morally just to make others and yourself suffer through work, possibly to get a pat on the head from God, whose existence is taken as a given. And that has bled into the idea that jobs are

-morally just

-supposed to be awful, because good for the soul. The more intrinsically rewarding a job, the lower the wages, that's why caring for your own family is unpaid work the world over (both important and intrinsically rewarding)

-something you have to force sinful people into against their will

And both research and experience have proven time and time again that this isn't good, neither for people nor human society at large.

-First of all suffering doesn't make you a good person, ask Art Spiegelman, writer of MAUS, when talking about his father;

-Miserable workers do worse work, ask, well, any labour board in any country

-People actually choose to work for wages when the benefits outweigh the costs, ask the Finnish Government's minimum wage pilot, and the Mincome project.

If you guarantee people housing and a livable income whether or not they choose to work for wages, a few things happen:

People who couldn't afford to work less than fulltime because the cost of care would outstrip the benefit of wages, now choose to take on smaller jobs, stimulating both their wellbeing and the economy;

An increase in informal care makes sure that so many fewer people get sick (excluding antivaxxing tradwives, goodness knows what they're about....), costing the economy billions less

A greatly reduced crime rate, and far fewer incarcerations.

The reason why we're mostly not in a recession that several people who weren't working before, because of high wages, actually ARE working now and nobody needs to bully somebody out of their small business to become a barista at an understaffed Starbucks instead.

What people have been doing, however, is quitting pointless jobs that were actually killing them and keeping them away from their families.

And sure, corporations do not like that.

They need people tired and absolutely miserable so they spend their meagre disposable wages on immediate relief: overpriced food and alcohol, forcing them to clock back in until they die.

If a few employees die, that is absolutely fine. Cost of doing business. We need a critical mass of employees to replace them. You can replace a dead person with a former small business owner, no biggie.

If people get sick, they do not carry any - and I mean not any - of that cost. Society does, but they're not in society, they're in business. Money is not the means to an end, money is the entire end, no matter the cost.

They need to extract as much 'value' out of people as they can, then discard them. Again, it's not about making the employees do good work, it's about having their labour be of very short term gain, and having enough surplus people to be able to work employed people to death.

For that, they need to create poverty where, by rights, there isn't any.

And even they understand that people do not hold with that. So they conflate the idea of "labor", i.e. activity to sustain to make something new, sustain something or improve something, with the idea of a "job" - a position where you, potentially, are used to get a few shareholders richer with no regards for your wellbeing or that of your community, and if you want to get an increase in wages, you have to accept that your time spent there will be increasingly miserable. There are good jobs and bad jobs - indeed some jobs need you functioning at a minimum level of physical health, or are indeed fun, but even they will make you artificially miserable, either by forced poverty (you are a teacher! That is so rewarding! Of course you make nothing!), or moral injury (not only are you not doing anything useful, you are actively making people's lives worse). And they tell you this is necessary, like that episode in Black Mirror where someone has to kill three people or the world will come to an end. People have to be employed, otherwise the economy will tank, making everybody's lives super duper awful and nobody will ever even bother to come out of bed anymore.

There's is useful work done in jobs, but they are not the same thing.

If you guarantee people food, housing, and healthcare, they take better care of themselves, their loved ones, their environment, choose work that suits them, be it about the amount of hours or the kind of work, commit fewer crimes, spend more on fun, make more art, raise more children (their own or others), have fewer addictions. Exploitation is only in the interest of like 5 big companies in the world right now, and they exploit people so they neglect other people who also then have no other choice to get exploited until they die. So please let no one ever tell you that, because there is obviously a lot of work to be done, people have to be forced into jobs. Work is a necessary activity, a job is a place where work may or may not be done under artificially miserable conditions (or what economists think are miserable conditions. Dentists get paid so well because everybody thinks it is a horrible job; meanwhile, I've known a fair few, and those who choose it enjoy it well enough! And yes, every office has a Dwight, but those people truly are outliers).

The person who says "no one wants to work anymore" or "without jobs no work will get done" and especially "without us the economy would tank" are lying through their teeth! Especially those people who say that about "tanking the economy". They're trying to artificially tank it right now! To make people stop doing work they deem necessary and start doing jobs that benefit only the corporations!

Work is necessary, and people will always want to work, and work for wages too. Jobs are designed to be prisons under the current conditions. They will only be opportunities if you can freely choose to leave them at any time, with no risk to your wellbeing.

[oksurethisismyname]

Hiiiii as a queer person living in the Bible Belt of the USA, I’m envisioning a “Christian trauma AU / general theology AU” because you know my main focus is always Sanji. This assumed that we’re in the USA, modern era, and I guess maybe a college or post grad AU for how they meet each other? This is a lonnnnnnnng text post so scroll at your own risk. To keep it from being toooo long I’m also sticking to east blue crew.

Hear me out:

There are a million different sects of Christianity so we’ve got a ton of angles to use.

Garp is catholic (but think FRENCH laïcité instead of American Amy Coney Barret Supreme Court justice weird catholic cult), Dragon straight up rebels against the strict structure and goes about his atheist ways. Neither of them really raise Luffy anyway so 💁🏻

Luffy ends up being agnostic. It’s not that he doesn’t believe in a higher power but he knows he needs to take action and that he can’t rely on a higher power to fix the problems of the world. Very Albert Camus, revolting against the absurd and holding himself to a higher responsibility in life

Zoro comes from a Shinto or Buddhist background. He’s not judging anyone’s religious beliefs unless they’re harming others.

Nami has religious trauma from the Baptist church that set up in her town and made it impossible to be herself. Belle Mere is so clearly queer and she’s harassed and dies at the hands of some zealous bigots who were emboldened by the words of the local Baptist church pastor (Arlong)

Ussop comes from a chill Protestant background (maybe Presbyterian?) But he’s more of a CEO (Christmas Easter Only) in terms of actually attending any sort of church. Honestly, with his dad out of the picture and his mom dying, he just had bigger things on his mind like living every day.

Finally, Sanji. Oh boy, Sanji has major “Quiverfull movement Christian” trauma from Judge. For those who don’t know, quiverfull is a Christian extremist movement where the idea is to have as many kids as possible and adhere to very strict purity rules and gender roles. Contraception isn’t allowed. Women wear long skirts and non fitted shirts to hide their womanly form (ew), and most of the time these parents homeschool there kids to avoid the “temptation” or “impurity” of modern society.

Judge had these 5 kids who he’s raised in this faith but Sanji never liked how Judge treated his mom. Why was Sora supposed to be “seen and not heard?” Why was it ok for his brothers to use scripture to bully and hurt and spread hate? Why would a loving god create women just to subjugate them? Judge wouldn’t like this, and once Sora passes away (probably because Judge wouldn’t let her seek medical care post birth of the quadruplets, so her health deteriorated for years), Judge locks him up and makes him do all sorts of horrible “prayer” and “repentance” practices, which are really just abuse.

Sanji would maybe escape when they go into town to get something mundane like a printer or a new wifi router (which only judge is allowed to use the internet). He’d probably bolt first chance he gets and when he meets Zeff, Zeff can recognize the signals of abuse. He takes Sanji in and even though Sanji never believed women were less than men, he still has years of trauma and gender roles beaten into him that he has to unpack.

His choice to cook? That’s a huge rebellion. Wearing tight fitting suits that look sinful? That’s a middle finger to his dad. He always treats women like goddesses because he feels so much guilt for the sins of his father. When he finally joins the Strawhats, he’s so overwhelmed with how free and nonjudgmental they are (of important stuff, obviously they’ll still poke fun at small stuff) that he feels comfortable dropping little comments here and there, opening up.

Ussop will be comforting Nami about something and sanji will tell him is so refreshing to see a man be so nurturing. He goes to Ussop often, asking how he’s so confident sharing his emotions.

Nami will be ordering them around and he’ll do everything she says with a smile, just happy to see her free to do what she wants (which is be a bossy bitch)

Zoro will talk about Kuina one night and Sanji will sob, overwhelmed with joy that she got to have all that strength and a friend like zoro even when faced with hurtful gender expectations.

Luffy above all is the most jarring for him. He grew up hearing about sin and sinners and temptation and evil but when he sees Luffy doing his thing, taking down bad people, fighting for the underdog, he knows that if there is a God (he she it they? Who cares), Luffy is doing their work.

—��————

Bonus Gay Cherry on top is that Sanji meets Iva and gets into drag, starts performing, does some events, and through that gender liberation is able to find some peace in who he is, tucking away all the hate he was born into. And he ends up with zoro the end bye

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

In the same thread of thought as the hosanna poll, I'm very curious to know how many of you who are/were Christian know the etymology of "Hallelujah"? This one is a little nuanced, in that a lot of people probably know that it's a generic praise-word for God, but I'm curious to know if folks know more than that without looking it up? I was told it was basically a nonsense word or something that we didn't know the origin of growing up and find that so, so frustrating now that I know exactly what it means and where it comes from. I also really don't like the modification to "Alleluia," because it changes the underlying root word in the Hebrew.

I'm gonna put in basically the same options as the other poll, although slightly modified after seeing some of the responses.

Sorry fellow yidden and other non-Christians; this poll is specific to people who identify as Christian and/or who were raised as such. (Edit: gerim who were raised Christian can vote, but you have to base it off of what you were taught as a Christian, not what you know now.)

(If you're wondering if you "count" as Christian or having been raised as such, for these purposes I would say interpret it broadly to include anyone who views Jesus as the messiah and grew up reading the New Testament as part of your bible.)

Explanation of Hallel to be forthcoming!

Edit: if you vote that you do know, please provide as full an explanation as possible in the notes. Most everyone raised Christian knows it's a praise word; I'm trying to figure out if folks know any more than that.

[reasonandempathy]

Which side typically strives more to appeal to emotion and intuition (or the "heart"), liberals or conservatives?

I would say the right-wing is typically more based on “appeals to emotion/intuition” than the left (I’m ignoring liberal v conservative for this point), but they both center emotion. Both the left and the right tend to prioritize “us” and for protections/systems of society that help “us”.

The main difference between the two is that the left-wing defines "us" at the broadest possible level and takes steps to convince others to expand their definition of “us” to meet them. If "Us" is "white straight male protestant citizen of the USA", they work to start getting rid of some of those adjectives. Get rid of male (suffrage), get rid of white (civil rights), get rid of straight (LGBT), get rid of Protestant (freedom of religion).

The right-wing typically starts “us” at a very specific level (family, friends, school) and then chips away at what "us" is until it’s a smaller and smaller category, but it does so only after it has power. If "Us" is "every Citizen of the USA", then it will start braking that apart into different classifications (race, gender, class, etc.) until they start breaking coming across the place where people refuse to break it up any more. Famously, Nazis were making moves to start killing old and disabled people as "useless eaters" in society with the T4 Program, which was where doctor groups and the Catholic Church, who had previously signed off on the killing of Jewish people started raising noise, helping the program to be "dissolved" (read: go underground) in 1941.

For a less historical example of what I mean, look at the gay rights and gay marriage issues in the US, where for decades the right-wing vehemently opposed same-sex marriage on a whole host of matters, stating things like it would damage “traditional marriage” (meaning “our marriages”) and would lead to beastiality and pedophilia. Simultaneously, left-wing efforts were on educating people and building empathy towards LGB relationships so that queer relationships would be seen as equivalent to or part of “our marriages”.

Now that gay marriage is relatively popular in the U.S. those rights are (relatively and temporarily) “off the table” until they can sufficiently chip away at the approval numbers until they can work back those rights as well. And we're already seeing moves to break that "us" on the right, despite significant to overwhelming public support for marriage equality.

If marriage isn’t your cup of tea, you can look at poverty & refugees as well. “Why take in refugees when our own people our poor?” vs “We have a responsibility to everyone.” The sincerity of the statements is less relevant than the perspective of the statements themselves.

[artist-issues]

I love your post detailing greta gerwig's changes in her adaptation of little women, but isn't Narnia definitely flavored with some universalism? In the Last Battle, a worshipper of Tash ends up in heaven because he's like "truly seeking the face of God" essentially even if he knew Aslan by the wrong name because his culture only exposed him to Tash. Also, I was raised protestant so I don't know if catholics have a different idea about what counts as universalism or not, but basically I'm not so sure if this will get in the way of her working on the films, especially if she does the Magicians Nephew. Unrelated, I wonder how they're going to go about adapting the Horse and his Boy without it being lambasted for racism etc lol

I think "flavored" with Universalism is a good way to describe The Last Battle--and only The Last Battle, and only that bite of the meal that deals with the young Calormene. Because my understanding of Universalism is that they believe all people, regardless of their beliefs contradicting Biblical Christianity, go to heaven and are not condemned for choosing to be god-of-their-own-life.

You can't quite look at C.S. Lewis' entirety of work and believe he was a Universalist in that sense. He certainly believed in the Biblical truth of Hell. Otherwise, specifically in Narnia, there would be no "Darkness on Aslan's Left Side" that all the creatures who fear and hate him disappear into at the end of the world. That seems like a pretty straightforward representation of Judgement.

I think the whole thing with Emeth the Calormene is interesting. From the language Lewis uses, it seems like he's trying to say something about the posture of a heart more than the name one swears by. Emeth is confused that he's been allowed into the True Narnia because "all my life I have served Tash." But Aslan basically looks at the heart; he says if Emeth had been serving Tash, his deeds and his heart would match Tash. It actually seems more like Emeth didn't know who Tash was at all, or he would have been performing vile works to please Tash. Aslan also says Emeth would never have kept "seeking" for so long if his heart had been serving Tash, which implies that Tash is easier to know than Aslan.

All of that is fascinating (I do think it is the theologically weakest, if not worst, part of the Chronicles of Narnia series.) But I don't think it has anything to do with Universalism as we know it today. Unitarian Universalism is just "Believe whatever you want as long as your belief system doesn't judge other people's belief systems, and you'll be fine with 'God.'" Lewis certainly didn't subscribe to that unbiblical worldview, even with the Calormene in the Last Battle.

I don't know what you mean about the Magician's Nephew.

The real problem with Greta Gerwig is not that she claims Unitarian Universalism. It's that she can't tell a story that is faithful to the original books; she has to transpose it into her own values. So, for example in what we're talking about, if she were doing "The Last Battle," she'd certainly cut out The Darkness on Aslan's Left Side scene, and maybe even reduce the whole conversation between Aslan and Emeth to "all are welcome!" But the main thing she'll do is elevate Susan, Lucy, Jill, Aravis, and Polly to a disproportionate degree.

Finally, I would just say, I'd love for somebody to explain to me what makes The Horse and His Boy racist. (With a reminder that nobody on this website knows my race, so nobody can claim that race-based unconscious bias is what's keeping me from seeing it.)

Lewis invented his own race that, yes, is heavily influenced by Western-Arabian-Nights-interpretations of Middle Eastern cultures. But the Calormenes don't serve Allah, they serve Tash and other gods. The Calormene characters are not all ugly. The Calormen food is not all disgusting. Aravis is a Calormene, and she is a heroine and a main character. Not even every Calormene is even evil, or the enemy of Narnia, though the nation is. What, just because a non-white nation is depicted in Narnia and you can see what culture their fantasy culture is based on, that makes it racist? How? Because Lewis doesn't even write all Calormenes as good or evil, he writes them as humans. Explain to me how that's racist.

(I mean, not you, @childlessoldcatlady, I'm enjoying answering this question. I just meant, someone explain it, now that I'm on the subject. Thanks for the question. I'm Protestant, too.)

[transmutationisms]

Since the show focuses more on logan and thus the patriarchal structure of abuse, do you have any thoughts about how motherhood and abuse/neglect are handled on the show? Given how in the family structure the mother has less agency than the father, but both 'own' the children as property.

i'd say with people of the social milieu depicted on the show, it's not so much a matter of the mother having 'less' agency—it's more that the mother is in the position of both owning the children and being owned by the father. we can see this in logan institutionalising connor's mother, for example, or fucking caroline over in the divorce. it doesn't lessen the mother's power over the children, but it means that subject position is defined both in relation to the children and to the husband.

there are also a few different meanings and purposes of familial ownership being teased out here. the way logan sees his children as extensions of himself is specifically as a way of carrying on his legacy, personally and professionally. his ownership of his wives is different. occasionally they might be useful as assets to show off (marcia in 'tern haven', possibly connor's mother with the recny), and he sees them as biologically useful insofar as they can produce his children (the strong implication that caroline was coerced or pressured into motherhood). but he's not trying to carry on his bloodline through them, obviously, and his view of women as inferior means he doesn't identify with the mothers of his children the way he does with the children.

meanwhile, because these characters are so wealthy, much of the domestic labour is passed onto staff and assistants. so, caroline's failing as a mother is generally portrayed in the emotional register: the accusation that she never really had time for her kids, her continued antagonism of shiv, her lack of interest in kendall, the way even her relationship with roman resembles that of a pair of friends at a cocktail party more than it does any kind of emotional guidance or nurturing or whatever. all of this is of course contextualised by logan fighting for custody in the divorce, and preventing caroline from getting good legal representation. so, the patriarchal ownership structure can interfere with the expected nurturing role of the bourgeois mother, which leaves the children basically raised by employees and kept in certain states of 'emotional adolescence' (because the family unit is isolated from wider social networks, something logan exacerbated in many ways via his wealth).

the obvious departure from this pattern is tom's mother, who's a divorce lawyer, because the wambsganses are germanic protestants, not displaced scottish catholics. also they're like, petit-bourgeois social climbers so it's sort of a different work ethic &c. but it's not like their family unit is any major structural departure from the patriarchal structure the roys represent; in many ways tom's social striving is trying to continue his parents' legacy in a way analogous to the roy siblings' attempts to take over waystar for their father. anyway yeah, the show is generally less interested in motherhood than fatherhood, but is still i think peripherally attuned to the role of the mother within the family, and the way those expectations about child-rearing affect both the mother and the children.

[ananke-xiii]

SPN Comparisons with novels, tragedies, myths and other stories that I don't totally vibe with:

"Widower arc" and Romeo and Juliet: I feel like this one is a slippery slope. As I've said, I see the theme and the movie reference but I've found out a more compelling way to see that arc, a way that's profoundly related to Dean and Castiel alone which I find more interesting. Cause if you agree with the Romeo and Juliet of it all in "Advanced Thanatology" then you will also see it in "Red Meat" where we even have Billie as a reaper to complete the death theme. Which means you either acknowledge that both Sam and Castiel serve as Juliets to Dean's Romeo and/or acknowledge that Dean's suicidal tendencies have nothing to do with a specific character per se but with the idea that Dean can't find meaning in himself without someone else. And I tend to agree with the latter because, for instance, "Regarding Dean" is, to me, precisely about that: everybody is regarding Dean but how does he regard himself? I don't see the episode as sad as many people do, I think it's actually hopeful in the sense that Dean accepts the fact that he needs to work on himself, takes responsibility for his past and decides he wants to move on. It's a rather positive episode although it is bittersweet like every moment of growth is.

Romeo and Juliet is pertinent to Crowley and Dean as well: Juliet's Crowley's pet just like Dean was the domesticated "Queen" Crowley wanted to rule Hell with. A queen whose death he had a hand in and who resurrected transformed into the Queen of the Underworld, a title which Dean rejects. This time the association is indeed sad, just as Crowley and Dean's summer of love is. If the comparison must be done, spn writers seem to say, it will not be about the commercialized, uncritical romantic idea of love associated with the play.

Finally I don't like the comparison because Cas, Sam and Juliet the Hellhound (lol) didn't fake-die voluntarily, not just straight-up died to avoid something or escape from something. They unfortunately succumbed to their opponent and this is no small detail that can be ignored, imo ( I love symbols and evocative images but I am also a very literal person, I know, I am a living contradiction, blame my sun squaring my moon).

Castiel as Don Quixote: if anything Metatron is the kind of guy Cervantes makes fun of in the Don Quixote. It's him who uses literature as escapism and it's him who wants to write a story where he is the hero because he wants to walk in Cas' trenchcoat. Metatron's windmills were a bit more real because Heaven did have a beef with him, still he had to go ahead with that, admittedly funny, "X" façade that literally nobody asked for. Metatron implicitly comparing Cas to Don Quixote in s10 revelas more about him than Cas (Metatron was, after all, the main character of "Meta fiction", an episode where he literally creates illusions for Cas to believe).

s6 Dean and Cas as Orpheus and Eurydice: I don't see it at all. Apart from that one shot where Dean turns and Cas is still in the holy fire cycle the parallels don't parallel like at all. It's visually nice because it shows how Dean is still conflicted after everything they've been through and the whole Godstiel's arc will indeed change his relationship with Cas forever. But, like, I don't see Orpheus's myth at play at all.

Sam and/or Dean as Christ figure and/or sacrificial lamb and/or scapegoat: now this is where I have to come out as born and raised Roman Catholic cause this is all about redemption and salvation and, from what I've gathered, Protestants have it worse. I still need time to process all this but I suspect there is something at play that doesn't add up. Christ, lamb and goat all have in common one thing among many: the concept of sin. Specifically the concept of humans as sinful creatures that must be redeemed. Now, this is not Christ's sin or the lamb's, they act as conduit for the salvation of others. So here's my problem with these symbols in SPN: what's the sin in this story? I mean, the original human sin that must be redeemed? It seems to me that both Sam and Dean don't redeem other people, don't really save other people but themselves. They sacrifice themselves to redeem themselves of what they think it's their sin. It's, again, the family business: hunting things and saving people which basically means killing monsters and save people from death and apocalypse but not sin. How can one character be a Christ figure if all they(try/want to) redeem is only their own (perceived) sin? And how does a Christ figure prevent the Apocalypse while Christ himself very much brings it about? Is Apocalypse the sin? But then it's the angels' or god's sin, not the people's. Christ and the apocalypse are very much connected by the concept of resurrection but characters like Sam and Dean very much stops at the symbolical crucifixion/sacrifice aspect of Christ story. They went very close in s13 with the Second Coming of Sam Winchester via Lucifer's grace in Apocalypse world (!!!!) but it really stopped there.

Now I enter a story pov not a religious one but there is the whole "willingness" towards sacrifice that must be studied, really, cause no lamb or goat actually wanted to get killed (I personally would argue Christ too with the whole "my god why have you forsaken me"). They got CHOSEN and here we are again with the "destiny vs free will". Grrrr.

It seems to me that there's a certain "cult of death" at play throughout all 15 seasons of SPN which makes me think that I really need to get my hands on Eco's essays about heroism and fascism.

Okay my brain hurts now but I'm sure I've got more somewhere.

[enchi-elm]

I've been writing some smut for two of my OCs in the Turn fanfic You've Caught Me Between Wind and Water, Lt. Jameson Mullcock and Lt. Frederico Ridgewell. It's going really well, so well in fact that I might end up submitting it to an erotica magazine in the future--which would prevent me from posting it on AO3.

To that end, to cover my own disappointment, here's some bits of lore for these two, gratis:

Background

Frederico

Full name is Frederico “Dico” Miguel Carvalho dos Reis Ridgewell

He is a Portuguese-American (mother is Portuguese) and stands in for the many Portuguese-American contributions to the Continental Army (go look up Pedro "Peter" Francisco)

Father split when Frederico was young, he grew up with his mother in New York in a Portuguese neighbourhood

Speaks fluent Portuguese

James

Jameson Mullcock is just Jameson Mullcock, but he goes by James

He is Irish-American and stands in for the many Irish-American contributions to the Continental Army (I explicitly wanted to include an Irish-American character because there were shitty stereotypes in the army against the Irish from other nationalities; like, we have primary sources for this)

James does not disclose he is half-Irish when he enlists and just lists his birthplace as Philadelphia

His mother is Abaigeal Noiréis (Abigail Norris), born in Galway, Ireland (thank you @mercurygray for naming her and helping me with her backstory!)

She is Catholic and married a Protestant British soldier she met during the occupation of Ireland, then followed him to England and then Pennsylvania and had to keep her faith secret

James is raised Protestant and only knows a little of the Catholic faith, which he keeps secret (because there was a considerable anti-Catholic sentiment in parts of the colonies)

Knows a little bit of Irish and wishes he knew more but doesn't think he'd be welcome (or feel comfortable) among the Irish soldiers and officers

Personality and looks

Frederico

olive skin, dark eyes, tousled dark hair

enough weight on him to look conspicuously healthy at Valley Forge in 1777

exactly as athletic as he looks but not quite as intelligent

drop dead gorgeous and doesn't care

cinnamon roll, too pure for this world, is the only one unaware that people believe this of him

a dark horse so dark you can't even see him coming

James

pale enough to look anemic, eyes and hair too light for people's comfort

tall, gangly; gaunt, even by Valley Forge standards

more athletic than he looks and more intelligent too

sarcastic slacker who's too smart to let people know how much more responsibility he's capable of taking on

has maybe two vices (tea and tobacco) that he'll hold onto, everything else he's already resigned himself to losing

would rather light his arm on fire than go after something he wants in a direct, open, and honest manner (and be Seen? Are you mad?)

Occupation

and the whole reason I put this post together, which is to remind future Apfel that they are 2nd LIEUTENANTS in LAMB'S CONTINENTAL ARTILLERY which was reorganized in 1777 from LAMB'S INDEPENDENT COMPANY NEW YORK ARTILLERY which drew from artillery companies in NEW YORK, CONNECTICUT AND PENNSYLVANIA. OKAY??

AND ARTHUR GARRICK IS A 1ST LIEUTENANT AND CAPTAIN ARMISTEAD FOLK IS THEIR CAPTAIN. AND PERKINS IS THEIR ENSIGN. IT'S ALL ONE GROUP. REMEMBER THIS!

CALEB WAS PART OF THIS GROUP. THEY WERE ALSO IN PEEKSKILL AND AT THE WHITEMARSH ENCAMPMENT.

YOU ALREADY WROTE LAMB INTO THE STORY IN CHAPTER 8.

YOU ALREADY FIGURED THIS OUT.

YOU DON'T NEED TO RESEARCH IT AGAIN.

...

@georgios-kyriacos, I believe you expressed interest in these two :)

[joyfulapostate]

hi!!

for context, i was raised baptist, im queer, my mother converted in her late 20s i believe? and my father was raised strictly baptist as well. my mom has been listening to sermons on youtube obsessively, and my father will lose his mind if you (collective) say ANYTHING that has even the slightest chance of questioning the bible in any way. i’m closer with my mom than my dad, we both have adhd and im autistic, my dad is emotionally and verbally abusive.

i started questioning pretty much everything since mid 2020 ish??, and i just started accepting the idea that my parents would probably disown me, or at the very least ground me until they’re dead, if they knew anything about me that’s not an ✨image i’ve made specifically for them✨. (my main spotify acc has seen so many mental breakdowns it’s not even funny at this point😐)

anyways i just was wondering if there’s a Specific Reason i’ve been really really drawn to catholicism, catholic guilt, and really anything regarding that? it’s just been like A Thing for me especially really recently and i’m just always sitting there like “why tf do i feel like i have catholic guilt i’ve only stepped foot in a catholic church one single time and it was for a craft show????”

if there’s no specific answer that’s totally cool i just thought i’d try to ask someone who seems to know what they’re talking about bc ive been thinking about it a LOT recently

(i also feel like im letting down my grandma, she was the sweetest lady and she absolutely made my childhood so much better and im so grateful for her. she was pretty much the backbone of her church, she died seven years ago and i just feel like if she saw me now she wouldn’t recognize me even if she had every form of proof in the world it was me. i don’t know if she would even accept i was her grandkid at this point.)

It’s so great that you are giving yourself room to become more than what others expect you to be. We all deserve that. And it takes courage to create space for yourself, especially in a worldview that tends to reduce our self image.

I am so sorry that you are dealing with an abusive situation. Your safety is important and you deserve to have a healthy support system.

I think that the idea of “Catholic guilt” is a more popular trope than guilt from Protestant traditions. I see it mentioned more in personal conversations and in books, TV, and movies. It absolutely makes sense that this idea would resonate with you.

It can be helpful to study other traditions to give you context for your own experience, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to claim something from another religious tradition as your own. It doesn’t sound like that’s what you’re doing, I just try to be careful about stuff like that.

I was also raised in a Protestant faith, but I had Catholic friends and attended Mass at several points in my life. When I was still a believer, it seemed like there was a great chasm between these belief systems. But now that I have some distance from my former faith, I see that they have more similarities than differences. Shame and guilt run through them both. There’s guilt about familial obligations, Jesus’ death, and “sinful” actions. (I personally think that sin is just one god’s opinion and it matters more that we try to treat each other well than follow a non-negotiable rulebook.)

It may not be possible to be totally open now now, but I believe it will be in the future. I didn’t share my doubts when I was still dependent on my parents and it felt awful at the time to keep anything private. Because it felt like privacy implied guilt. But now I am grateful to my past self for waiting until I felt secure enough to share my doubts. I found people who felt safe and confided in them. I built relationships based on mutual respect and informed choices, which hadn't felt possible before.

I still have distance with some of my religious family members. But some of my more progressive family members and I have made a lot of progress in understanding each other. Love can overcome doctrine in many relationships, but not others. It’s a difficult reality to face, especially when you don’t have the opportunity to communicate with them. I know that I had to grieve the people I’d lost and the idea that I would see them in heaven. But there are people in this world who will understand you, support you, and hope for you to have a wonderful and fulfilling life that allows you to grow beyond their expectations. And it sounds like you already are that kind of person for yourself, and that is an impressive accomplishment in its own right.

[electrificata]

I think an important part of engaging w/ politics is understanding yourself/the way you like to see yourself. Like if you value logic and enjoy thinking of yourself as a balanced and logical person, you need to know that, so you dont end up advocating for something just because it makes you feel like youre being logical (both sides have good points etc).

A big one is people who value rebelliousness and like to feel like theyre being subversive and will ignore any wider perspective that will go against that. Thinking of blue state conservatives and that whole intellectual dark web thing from a few yrs back and dirtbag leftists.

Actually the catholic coquette fleabag femcel thing is a rly good example of this. Like, youre a young woman living in brooklyn or LA or a nice neighborbood in chicago, and maybe youre surrounded by vegans and people who use academic and psych jargon in everyday conversation and the type of activist who's more concerned with not offending anyone than actually helping someone, and you feel like theres a lot of bullshit around you (youre not wrong) and you want to disrupt your immediate surroundings so the best way to do that is to find the diametric aesthetic opposite of what they value and go hard.

Youre catholic now (you were raised some kind of noncommittal protestant but whatever). You care about tradition, not progress. You want to get married and quit your job and have babies and you like to talk about how the feminists hate you for that (you have only received criticism for this on twitter). You eat more steak now. You wear a lot of lacy white dresses. You start reading about women saints who starved themselves for god. You dust off your "edgy" humor from high school and deliberately provoke people and then scoff at how easily offended they are. Your vegan acquaintances are shocked. You feel subversive. You are not reckoning with the fact that conservative catholicism is an ideology thats been dominant over giant swathes of the world for literal millennia, because you occupy a small claustrophobic social circle where it is not. You arent dealing with the bits of history where catholics were genuinely oppressed unless you need it for an argument. Your roommate who was raised catholic and has specific, legitimate criticisms of the church and its ideology just doesnt get it. You buy a mantilla and start thinking of casually withering retorts for when you post a selfie in it and someone says youre engaging in cultural appropriation. Youre a rebel.

[lestweforget5]

H/C

Any worry or concern that Millie and Johns families have about them being together (idk like power dynamics, Catholic/Protestant, the fact that Millie has never actually paid attention to boys romantically before?) went away the second they see them together. (Instantly calmer and happier)

Hambone has a hard time trusting in the kindness of strangers. Because, while there were a few bad ones, he hadn’t thought that most of the medical staff at the hospital were bad for krauts. But at least one of them was hurting Millie (or allowing Millie to be hurt.) Just anxious thought spiral resulting a quick to anger and quite defensive Hambone. It gets better when he gets home but still flares up every now and again.

Malnutrition and stress can both affect bone healing and healing in general. Aside from Millie’s poorly set leg, Millie, Hambone (face), Macon (neck), Hoerr (ribs(fractured or bruised?)) and Bucky (skull/facial bones (bit of a h/c after watching the episode)) all deal with chronic pain issues at the camp which get better once they heal more after liberation.

Also bit of a question but in the show when the Stalag guards want a list of Jewish POWs, do you think there would have been a similar threat disguised as a request about the female NCOs? I don’t think they would have told Millie, who was obviously struggling, but would the Majors/head officers have made contingency plans?

Hello, Nonnie! Thank you for the ask and for sharing these lovely ideas! Your answers are beneath the cut for length.

I definitely think there were some raised eyebrows and, maybe, a little concern right after Millie revealed her relationship with Brady to her family. A traumatic year-and-a-half, no obvious interest in boys as a child, not even an allusion to this relationship before Munster--it's definitely quite a surprise for her family. But Fonda can put in a reassuring word after seeing Millie and John together briefly in the last chapter of Sunward I've Climbed and Kenny can talk more about it and give more details about what Brady's like once he returns. I actually just wrote a draft of a scene of Cleatus asking Kenny about John the other day! And then, yeah, once everyone sees the two Bradys together, any worries evaporate.

I hadn't thought about that angle with Hambone before, but it would definitely make perfect sense, him getting a lot more suspicious of strangers. But, yeah, he's definitely especially prickly and defensive of Millie, even after the war. Some of it is guilt, but he does genuinely like her (platonically, of course), too. Seeing the long-term effects of that play out would be heart-breaking but also interesting, especially in light of this article.

I definitely agree that their injuries could result in chronic pain. Millie's injuries are bad enough that, even after the doctors do what they can to fix things following her repatriation, she still has some chronic pain and weather bones for the rest of her life.

Religion is easier to hide than gender, so it wouldn't be hard for the Germans to get a list of all the female prisoners, so a list wouldn't be the threat. But would the Germans use threats, generally, toward the female prisoners as a way to help ensure compliance or something, I would not put it past them. Millie would definitely not be told, as she was already fragile, especially early on. The most they could probably do was keep people around her and try to keep her away from the attention of the guards. "Out of sight, out of mind," as she notes about Solly and the guards in one chapter.

[pineapplerightsideupcake]

I have a question, are you Israeli? If so, have you ever talked about Palestinian women struggles because of the Israeli government? as a radfem? I didn't look through all your blog so I'm not sure but I'd like to hear your answer

I’m American and not even technically Jewish. My grandmother converted to Catholicism to marry an Irish catholic but her sister stayed Jewish and moved to Israel in I thiiiink the mid 60s? And both my uncles and one of my aunts re-converted. And some of my other family married into yet more Jewish families. So I have a TON of Jewish relatives including some Israeli family. My own mom stayed catholic to marry my Italian catholic dad and I got raised catholic technically but like, obviously Judaism was never far from my life. I’ve lit a lot of Hanukkah candles and been to like 400 bar/bat mitzvahs lol.

Although I actually had Palestinian neighbors for a bit. Mom dad and cute little girl. We never talked politics. Just normal neighbor stuff. They were really sweet people. I actually think about them a lot and I imagine they must have lost someone but I hope not.

Hopefully you can understand that me calling out anti semitism and pointing out that “eradicating” Israel will create MORE war not less, doesn’t mean I love war and enjoy thinking about civilian casualties.

I and all my family support a two state solution and I would love nothing more than for the hostages to be returned and for ceasefire to be called.

As for what I think as a radfem? Women as always bear the worst of war. The complications of menstruation, birth,and miscarriage are all made worse by a lack of access to sanitation and doctors. Or food or clean water. And of course women and girls not only face the threat of rape from soldiers but from men in the refugee camps with them.

That said, I don’t have Netanyahu’s phone number. I frankly don’t feel safe at a protest. I wrote both my senators that I hope they would prioritize facilitating diplomatic relations over simply funding weapons should the opportunity present itself.

If you know of any organizations that aren’t 3 Americans on a .org with zero way of getting supplies to Gaza, please let me know. But I alternately see people saying to donate here or there but then say nothing gets through so it’s pointless.