Leave Us the Counterpoint @primrosedalliance - Tumblr Blog

nervousladytraveler

A new chapter of Duty!

Demelza and Ross enact another secret plan--with a little help from Ross's late father.

Read Chapter 73 ("Dirty Work") here.

#lucretiassister #poldark fanfic #poldark modern au #duty

donneundoneonlyharriet

Excerpt from Chapter III, “Jordan River,” from Busman’s Honeymoon

Excerpt from Chapter IV, “Household Gods,” from Busman’s Honeymoon

Excerpt from Epithalamion Part 3, “Talboys: Crown Celestial,” from Busman’s Honeymoon

victusinveritas

Comics by Rose Anne Prevec.

cannibalings

you can’t even dig up your lovers grave and pry open their casket and cradle their corpse to your chest anymore. because of woke

nervousladytraveler

Me, whenever I tackle the invasive vines that are strangling my honeysuckle and forsythia.

putridpride

Joan Jett's leather jacket at the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame

mudwerks

(via Sheet Music For Cats And Their Lovers : Moritz von Schwind’s Katzensymphonie, 1868 - Flashbak)

fictionadventurer

Can I just go crazy over Harriet Vane's character arc through the romance in Gaudy Night?

Harriet had her love life exposed in an extremely public, shameful way. Naturally, she wants to hide from love and avoid being hurt again. Oxford seems to offer her a place where she can live a peaceful, solitary intellectual life unbothered by emotions, safe from all the dangers of the world. Yet she finds that danger can come even to Oxford.

She wants to be an independent woman, yet she also doesn't want to be hurt. These goals cancel each other out. She could marry a man who would protect her from life's dangers--but she'd lose her self-respect.

Peter shows her over and over that he's not going to protect her from life's dangers. Being with him makes life more dangerous. Being with him opens her up to more pain. He's not going to keep her safe. What he is going to do is stand beside her and help her to face the dangers. She can be an individual and be in love--but she has to be willing to be hurt.

By the end of the story, she is. They've both opened up about their inner pain and how they've hurt each other in the past. They don't have to hide in peaceful solitude or fight battles alone. They can face the pain of life together.

fictionadventurer

I'm sorry, I'm still obsessed with how the mystery structure is woven into Harriet and Lord Peter's romance.

Wimsey had his whole "love at first sight" thing, but he also got to spend an entire book investigating a mystery surrounding Harriet. While she was stuck in prison, he got to talk to people who had known her in her former life, got to meet her friends and learn about her background and discover all sorts of details about who she is as a person.

Harriet never got to do that for Peter. She just knew him as an aristocrat, as a detective, and as someone who wanted to marry her. She interacted with people who knew him as one of those three things, and she got to know him in the context of a relationship where she never got to see much beyond the surface.

In Oxford, Harriet gets to dig into Peter's past. He stops asking her to marry him, which finally gives her the chance to ask questions about him. She meets people who knew him before he knew her, who know him in lots of different roles. She gets to see what he's like as an uncle, how he deals with disciplining an irresponsible son of the family. She learns about his work with the Foreign Office. She meets an old college friend who knew him as the silly aristocrat you show off to your friends. She meets someone who knew him as a commanding officer. She even gets to watch him sleep--which is explicitly, with multiple allusions, compared to death--then rummages through his pockets gathering evidence that gives clues about his personality.

She learns what made him fall in love with her. She learns that other people can fall in love with him. All this is evidence that lets her piece together a picture of the history that led him to this moment, and helps her figure out how she feels about him.

He got to investigate her, and her investigation of him puts them on equal-enough footing to marry. The head's not getting in the way of the heart--it opens up the heart, because for them, knowledge leads to love.

fictionadventurer

Maybe my favorite thing about the whole Harriet and Peter romance in Gaudy Night is this.

Harriet's spent an entire book wondering how one could possibly reconcile a life of the mind and a life of the heart, because it seems like your only options are to give yourself over to passionate emotions that destroy your mind, or to retreat into an emotionless intellectual life that withers the heart.

Both seem dangerous because on the one hand, she suspected that the lonely intellectual life could drive someone insane, but what drove someone insane in this case was focusing on emotions to the exclusion of all rational thought. She can't choose either, but can't see a way to have both.

Then in the final moment before Peter's final marriage proposal, they go to a concert. Not just a concert, but a duet. Two musicians working in counterpoint--playing individual tunes that weave perfectly into one complete song.

To the appreciative Peter, music is

ravishing heart and mind together.

And here's the solution. The perfect analogy. In music, the heart and mind aren't opposites, but partners. Emotion turns the orderly and intellectual into something beautiful. Order elevates emotion into something sublime. You don't have to cut out all passion or give it free rein--you can control it. You don't have to suppress the mind to experience passion--knowledge can enhance the passion.

As a romantic analogy, it goes even further, because music can be played by two people in different ways. They can be individuals whose melodies entwine into counterpoint. One person's melody can be supported by the other's harmony. Neither one is necessarily better or worse--it's a matter of taste. Which do you prefer? Which can you best play, best appreciate?

Harriet didn't have to reject marriage because of some bad examples of marriage, just as she doesn't have to reject all music because bad songs exist. What matters is this particular person, this particular song. Can she and Peter work together to make something she finds beautiful?

That's why it's so perfect that the very next thing Peter does is make his final proposal. Only moments before, Harriet found the solution to her intellectual problem. Now, at last, can she love Peter with her heart and her mind.

#gaudy night #dorothy l. sayers #lord peter wimsey

biologicalstepfather

If you know who Emmett Till is please reblog.

I’m trying to prove a point to my dad.

jennycalendar

I LOVE A MARRIAGE PROPOSAL AT FIRST SIGHT

jennycalendar

I love lord peter he gets it entirely. Sees harriet for the first time ever across a crowded courtroom (because she’s being prosecuted) (for murder) and does some sort of Wifeguy Transformation and starts running around yelling IF ANY FUCKING PERSON TELLS ME MY WIFE DID IT IM GOING TO BLOW UP THIS WHOLE FUCKING BUILDING (about a woman he just met) (about a woman who has like 200 pieces of evidence stacked against her) and this is after three books of him being like oh haha i’m never going to get married marriage is for the birds i love being a bachelor #BachelorLife. did not even give anyone a second to breathe before launching into wandering home from the prison where he visited this total stranger obsessively crafting how their days would look like if they got married. She would write mystery novels and he’d go out and party and then he’d come home and it would be so cute guys you don’t even know (he’s talking to no one there is no one here)

oldshrewsburyian

#and part of the proposal involves him saying he’s good in bed and can provide references to that effect (@pinkcupboardwitch)

talkingpiffle

#I think it’s crucial to say part of his approach is to say in the politest way possible: I can Fuck and I have receipts#ROMANCE#‘how to fumble a goddess - a death row memoir’ by peter death bredon wimsey#dorothy l sayers (via @harrietvane)