🔥 = light smut (T-rated) 🔥🔥 = smut (M-rated) 📱 = modern AU
(unlinked ones are still in the process)
Physical affection prompts
(you can find the prompt list here)
1 - pats on the head 📱
3 - smiling into a kiss
4 - a hug after not seeing someone for a long time
5 - giggly cuddles
6 - chasing someone’s lips after they pull away 🔥
8 - brushing hands by accident
9 - wiping away someone’s tears 📱
11 - back hugs
12 - an incredibly loud and painful high-five 📱
14 - play wrestling 🔥📱
16 - kissing knuckles 📱
17 - tugging on the bottom of someone’s shirt 📱
18 - wiping away food from someone’s lips
19 - peppering their face in kisses 📱
21 - accidentally knocking your head into someone’s chin 🔥
22 - kissing someone’s cuts/bruises/scratches
23 - a hug that some might consider as ~too long~
25 - playfully biting someone 🔥
Colour symbol prompts
(you can find the prompt list here)
Black
Silver
Brown
Purple
Yellow
Pink 🔥🔥
Purple II
Free prompts
Home alone
Revenge on Mama 🔥
Teen parents 📱
Forever is composed of nows
Unprompted drabbles
Morning sweetness
Spice things up 🔥🔥
Joy of June
Friday night 📱
Friday night - the morning after 📱
using terms of endearment in an argument
napping on a train
@it-is-bugs ~200 words. I don’t know if this meets ‘flirting’ for the tag, exactly. But:
——————
“Ah, there you are,” Lucien greeted as he walked into the parlour.
Jean looked up from her knitting with an arched brow.
“I need your thoughts,” he explained.
“Oh?” she smirked. She crossed her legs toward him and tilted her head, awaiting elaboration. “On anything in particular?”
He missed a breath when he saw the twinkle in her eyes. He exhaled before answering, “A few particulars.”
He offered his hand. She took it, and gasped at the feeling of his hand at her back, guiding her down the hallway, and out to the car. He held the passenger door open and walked to the driver side. She watched him buckle up.
“Where are we going?”
“You tell me.”
“Lucien - ”
“Is it wrong that I wanted to take out the new car? And be alone with you?”
“Not wrong at all. Except considering the miles to the gallon…” she quipped.
“Worth every penny,” he insisted, pulling her hand to his lips. “I’d drive to Adelaide in this thing to have more time together.”
“You know, we do live together,” she laughed lightly.
“Alone together,” he clarified with urgent sincerity.
Her heart beat quickened. She gulped before leaning over to brush a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Adelaide’s not the only place we’ll find that. Start the car,” she whispered, and buckled herself in.
So I have a letterboard on my desk at work and update it every week, typically with a terrible pun or dad joke. Here’s a selection from the past year or so:
i just read ur post about the cora/robert scene in a new era and i’m literally begging you to talk more about your thoughts on how cora is bad at expressing sincere emotions !! that didn’t really click for me until i read ur post but now it makes PERFECT sense and i need to hear more 😩
~hears the distant echo of Robert’s line “Sometimes, Cora, you can be curiously unfeeling” from S2 & nods sagely~
Yes. Julian’s had this aspect of her character pegged from nearly the very beginning. Perhaps even S1E1.
*sips tea & clears throat*
Oh boy, where to begin? First by calling upon @randomabiling , @modernamericangirl , and @thedowntonhistorian who are all so much more eloquent than I am, and whose ideas are so intermingled with my own at this point that I’m not sure whose is whose anymore.
First of all, this isn’t to say that we don’t think Cora feels emotions. She does. But we’ve analyzed again and again how totally inept she is at expressing them, in particular sincere emotions of love, though it isn’t limited there. This is something we noticed, gosh, probably seasons and seasons ago (years, as we are some of the grandmothers of this fandom ha!)
We notice how, when there is any sort of real heaviness to any sort of emotion, she tends to lighten it or sometimes downright change the subject.
This has to come from her station, yes, and her upbringing, and I’m sure the sort of quiet trauma of essentially giving up her entire world at a very fundamental age for adult development (18-20 depending on Julian’s mood) for a man she knew did not love her the way she was in love with him.
But, think of every Cora scene you can. She never really tells anyone she loves them. It’s obvious, of course, but to verbalize that sort of vulnerable emotion is difficult for her. The other upstairs characters do. Even Violet. She outright says she loves Mary. Robert tells Cora and his daughters. Matthew and Mary, yep. Edith? Yeah, she tells Bertie. But Cora does not. She smiles, she holds people’s hands and touches at their wrists, but the only time she ever says she loves someone is when she tells Mary in S1 when Mary is having a bit of a meltdown. That’s it.
In fact, she actively tries to neutralize the moments where saying ‘I love you’ happens or should happen.
This doesn’t at ALL mean she doesn’t feel it, but that she’s so in love and feels so deeply that it’s hard for her to say it without losing composure. And she has to maintain some feeling of control? Maybe? (Lots to conjecture on that note.)
Examples of teasing/unable to be sincere:
1. Robert gives that really sweet anniversary speech at dinner to which Lord Gillingham is all “awww that was really nice” and she responds “if only it were true.” Self-deprecating, yeah. But she could’ve answered ANY other way. Even a “Yes.”
2. When Robert is panting after rolling around his bedroom floor with a man who was literally trying to go to bed with her, Cora’s response to his VERY apparent anger (which, okay, he can be a Donk, but let’s cut him a little slack on that one), is “Golly, what a night!” Honey, what? Are you that bad at reading the room? No. You can’t just brush off strong emotions!
3. Or like when her husband is, y’know, bleeding out onto the dining room floor and he thinks he’s dying and he wants his last words to be that he’s “loved [her] very, very much” she doesn’t even say she loves him back! She is SO shaken that she barely manages “this isn’t it. We won’t let this be it.” She snaps at Violet over Marigold, totally unnecessarily in the next scene, and even Violet is like, “what the hell? Can we just focus on Robert?” When they’re pulling away after the ambulance, Cora is turned almost entirely towards the window of the car, not next to her daughters. Too much feeling. Too much. (Also my headcanon that her go-to strong emotion is nearly always anger because it makes her feel a sense of control in a situation she has no control over.)
4. When Isis goes, and Robert is sad and says AGAIN to her that he loves her, pretty plainly, “two people who love her, and each other, very much on either side,” she could’ve totally responded with a “yes; very much” or even a nod, but she barely manages to look up at him and says some weird thing about how she hopes when she dies she’ll be surrounded by loved ones. Robert is visibly NOT okay with that response (lol). But what she does manage to do is take his hand. (That’s her little I love you signal to EVERYONE, by the way.)
5. I’ve already discussed in length the Bricker scene where she chokes up in admitting that no one could take Robert’s place (though in not even those words), and Robert is so moved by this that he physically shrinks back and you can see the anger leave him. But does she edge into “I love you” next? No. Oh no, no. She pushes out a tired “very well!” and instigates anger time because feelings of deep love are Too Much!
6. Lastly, the DA2 scene sums it all up, too. “We aren’t sad people.”
Honey, you just told your husband that you’re probably dying of cancer and he’s sobbing because life is really screwing him over from every direction, and your response is “We aren’t sad people” as he’s crying???
But, the thing is, it isn’t to Robert, that line. It’s for herself. She’s not a sad person. She doesn’t let emotion get in her way, get the better of her. Is it because it caused her nearly a year of deep unhappiness when her husband did not return her love? Maybe. Is it because she was trained up by her ambitious mother to be totally and completely scheming to get ahead? Perhaps. Is she really just a realist and Robert is the romantic out of the two. Yeah, it does seem that way. But the fact remains that for her to even use the word ‘love’ about someone specifically (or at all, with various exceptions of generality) is unusual in the entirety of the series. In the garden scene, when she says “I loved you from the start,” Robert’s expression is one of shock, really. Like he’s realizing the enormity of the moment. Like an, “oh my god, she really is dying.” And then she trips into teasing and smiling again, though it NOT a smiling sort of life event.
You also see the moment the dam breaks for her, the most raw emotion we’ve ever seen of her (outside of Sybil) when she says “and then love came.” And then after he kisses her, and he tells her she’s been everything to him, her expression is so full of love and joy, then ZOOP “hope we can get tickets on the blue train!” Or is it the fact that she’s said ‘love’ three separate times in the space of two minutes and cannot keep going or she won’t be able to take it?
I think this may all be because her loving him is NOT what they say, or what they have to say. It’s a given. It’s something unsaid and established from years and years ago and to broach the subject is uncomfortable and creates feelings of shame in Robert. But Robert needs to pour out his expressions of love because he felt he owes that to her. As a sort of way to erase his shame, his penance of sorts for pursuing her dishonestly is to remind her that he does love her now. And Cora lets him because she loves him. She comes across as this passive recipient of his love, the vessel for it, but she isn’t really. She’s really the more physical of the two of them. Anyway, I’ve drifted into an enormous tangent.
I’ll sum this mess up by inviting my ladies who I tagged to pipe up, or anyone else for that matter. I’d love to hear your thoughts, too, anon. Over-analyzing characters is my favorite pastime. Sincerely.
This is why I always believed (and (i hope), wrote) Cora to be the more pragmatic, less emotional l one. The trope is the over-emotional American and the emotionally-stunted British husband and this show absolutely knocked that on its head. Cora did love him first, but never not once did they state that she loved him blindly. Robert feels guilty for how their relationship started and Cora is always like meh, it’s not that big a deal. Because she knew exactly what she was doing. She loved him but she married him and made a life with him with both eyes open. She was determined to make it work no matter what.
You don’t survive and thrive as a countess from nowhere’sville USA by wearing your emotions on your sleeve. You armor up, every single day. You have a pretty good stranglehold on your emotions and you don’t give anybody any more ammunition than they already have.
Robert really believes he makes decisions with the logical, calm British brain when most of his decisions are made out of passion or feelings. Cora’s like a freaking general - she sees the entire battlefield all the time and knows what’s up. She can out-calculate even the dowager.
A master strategist and smart-cookie navigates the life she lived and she saved vulnerability or emotional realness for when it’s needed. (See: apologizing to Mrs Hughes over the coat. There was true and honest regret there and she gave it plainly.) hilariously EVERYONE in the family is like “oh she’s such a silly emotional American just so much passion. She doesn’t understand British ways ghastly accent lol teepee” And Cora is eyeing Sir Richard like a bug on a slide and preparing sink his battleship to boot.
She also has a pretty narrow field for those she truly loves. Robert will love and adopt literally anybody or anything. PUPPIES. BABIES. SAD VALETS. PRETTY MAIDS. Cora’s fond of Matthew but she’ll die before she puts his future above that of her daughters. Her circle of trust is way way smaller and WAY harder to climb into.
I used to believe that Cora saw the best in everyone. Age (lol fandom grandma) has made me realize that she sees no point in antagonizing people needlessly (O’Brien) especially if they’re useful (Thomas) and outside of Violet herself, she is perhaps the most cunning (and underserved) character of the entire series.
Most of this is, I believe, a by-product of JF going “you are the lynchpin character of this series, the raison d’etre, but also I have no idea what to do with you”. Had he allowed her to be an affectionate, doting, effusive wife, the emotional resonance of Robert’s choices wouldn’t be nearly as powerful. Her role is to be his foil, and his counterweight, and that means much of her dimension was lost in the shuffle.
(I will say I sort of call foul on an inability to read the room after the Bricker incident. She couldn’t believe that Robert would truly truly think she’d done anything to encourage this dude to come into her room and she spoke as if saying “this fucking guy, am I right?” And she was stunned that Robert thought she was guilty of something. Just absolutely stunned. She wasn’t about to say “glad you beat the shit out of that dude” or “thanks for fighting for my honor, dingo” because she really thought he understood and he…didn’t. And boy howdy was she not about to soothe his ruffled ego with platitudes because there was one person in that room who really did break bad and it wasn’t her.)
Lol, @whatsabriard you know I’d welcome your commentary ANY DAY. Any time. Xoxox.
I, too, am of the camp that Cora went into marriage full-on knowing what was up. And we know that making a decision with that knowledge and being okay with it at the outset does not guarantee happiness. And she does say she has been happy since he fell in love with her. And regardless of the amount of happiness she may have felt in that first year, it doesn’t detract from the massive upheaval of a very young adult’s culture, world, friends, family, you name it. And no matter what sort of a person you are, if you’re twenty, a new wife to a man you love who you know doesn’t love you in return, with new responsibilities, new structures and hierarchies to learn, not to mention battling the stereotype of being a too-passionate American girl, there’s bound to be some unhappiness, even if there is zero regret. (Which I do believe there was zero regret.) I’m sure she had to really learn very quickly to isolate intense emotion and work in the realm of the tangible.
The party foul: i never really thought of it from your angle before, which definitely makes sense. I can see how she’d be like “wow, amiright?” even though it isn’t how I read it at first. I think I still stand by the idea that it was not what she should have said, and she knew it. Here’s why:
She invited Bricker to stay knowing Robert would be away, (which is fine! She’s an adult woman and can do what she wants. That’s not the issue!), and when she told Robert so, she knew he didn’t like it. She knew Robert didn’t like Bricker, period. And that’s the issue here. At some point after Robert was such an ass to her after the museum — because he was a Giant Ass — she began to flirt (playfully) out of spite. And hear me out, because I am not really on Robert’s side in this argument.
(Cora is never really wrong, and when she is, she does apologize - I don’t count that as deep emotion, but that is such a lovely scene.)
Bricker had no right to be in her room. None! Creep. And Cora deserved to have a freaking friend for once in the entire series who wasn’t her maid. It was delightful to see her show off her mad brainy art skills. But even if Cora is in the right, that’s an entirely inappropriate response to what transpires in her bedroom. She’s trying to take a mountain and shrink it to a molehill. Because for Robert — regardless of his wrongness — has a right to be upset, just as Cora would’ve had a right to be upset if she walked in on a woman in Robert’s dressing room even if he had no intention of bedding her, whom she’d expressed her dislike for (outside of Jane. Jane is a whole situation about which I, even a Robert apologist, cannot justify or defend. Just … what the f dude. Anyway. God bless Cora.) That’s just a line in that type of relationship one does not cross! Even if the other person is wrong. If something obviously makes your partner uncomfortable, you don’t do it.
(Now, there are arguments that she did tell Bricker to stop, and her flirting was really that sort of charm a hostess is supposed to possess, but I don’t know. I’d honestly need a rewatch to say one way or the other on that point. Anyone?)
Something else about the Bricker scene I want to point out and get your sharp opinions on: At what point in the Bricker scene does Robert’s anger shift? Does it? To me, Robert is not angry at Cora until Bricker moves from calling her Lady Grantham and then says “when you chose to ignore a woman like Cora” with her name all emphasized … and then Robert’s eyes go to her because in hearing that, he must think she has said he ignores her. And does he? Yeah. He sorta does in a way that Bricker very obviously does not. So while, again, Robert is incredibly wrong to beat up a man, Cora’s response of “Golly, what a night,” even if she thinks Robert would never assume she’d do anything, does not match the moment. She knows how angry Robert is. And while I don’t think she should have apologized (because she’s not really in the wrong!) I don’t think making light of the moment is going to move the impending argument in the right direction. And that’s what I mean by ‘read the room.’ She tries to make light of it because the alternative is a real argument and conversation, and I always interpret her little *covers face* after Robert leaves as an “oh fuck!” because she sorta knows she had a hand in making Robert angry. (Again, understand that I’m not saying Cora is wrong here, she’s definitely not as wrong as Bricker or Robert, but she’s not entirely right either. Lots of shades of gray, which, is very true to life, isn’t it?)
I lose any and all sense at the very beginning of the art dealer situation when Robert grumpily conflates cora with his dog. He very the hell meant that Bricker was flirting with Cora when at that point he really wasn’t and Robert is EXACTLY Mary, thinking if he puts down a toy it’ll still be there when he wants it. Because until the war, Cora had done exactly that - been waiting for him to remember she exists. He was not dealing very well with her independence at all, poor donk.
I feel like there’s a history of gentle teasing between them when things are emotionally rough (though maybe that’s me seeing my own defense mechanism in Cora. Use humor to deflect) and in that moment she had believed that his thrashing of Bricker meant that they were on the same side. If you think you and your partner are of the same mind, a kind of pressure release like that isn’t nearly so dire and it didn’t suggest she wasn’t going to talk to him about it. Quite the opposite in fact. She was like “well that was a shitshow, what do we do now?”
What I thought about as I was falling asleep last night was that the two emotions Cora can access most easily are anger and grief. And that’s just…so sad. Is that because it’s the two emotions the Dowager could respect? Or does that start earlier - Martha couldn’t have been all sunshine and rainbows to deal with, either.
First of all “Robert is EXACTLY Mary, thinking if he puts down a toy it’ll still be there when he wants it” UM YEAH. What’s funny to me is that Robert seems to reflect Mary as opposed to Mary reflecting her father. I think Robert sees a lot of himself in Mary, whether that’s an accurate assessment or not, or perhaps identifies a lot with her. The eldest child. Fiercely protective of Downton and the legacy. The difference is that Mary is a pragmatist like her mother. I think @randomabiling said that Cora and Mary are actually a lot more alike than not, which I really deeply agree with.
(And in that vein of Robert seeing himself in Mary, I think of how he treated her after Matthew’s death. How he wanted to coddle her, send her up to bed with a kiss to the forehead, how he fussed at the dining table that “She is living a nightmare” and I think of reaction to Cora’s illness. Anyway …)
Yes! I think teasing is their love language in a lot of ways. And I agree wholeheartedly with your analysis of all of that.
And finally, YES! Truly 100%. Her go-to emotion in a lot of emotionally intense situations is anger, followed closely by grief. She is easily happy, too, but we’ll set that aside for now. My girl @randomabiling has an amazing analysis of Martha and I think I fall in line more with your second assessment that it stems from childhood. Almost like survival-mode? Maybe not even from solely Martha, but as a defense to any sort rejection? I don’t know.
Julian, you rascal. You made the most interesting character to play with the one we know fairly little about!
Martha, Martha, Martha. Where to begin? I had been contemplating Martha’s backstory for a little bit as I am writing a pre-canon story which I also anticipate writing a prequel to once I can finish the original (ambitious). So her character and motivations were very much on my mind when @ohtobealady , @modernamericangirl and @downton-historian and I started down a rabbit hole.
Martha’s attitude in Season 3, the only time we see her first hand, always intrigued. Prior I had accepted her role as main orchestrator of the whole cash for class scheme to get the Levinson family ahead. However, she seems so dismissive of the Crawley’s traditions, ideas and just general way of life in the episodes she’s in, I began to wonder. She downright looks down on them. Why would she want to have married Cora off to what she seems to deem as a backward way of life?
My conclusion is that Martha herself is actually from money. Old money. She’s not of the New York set; her family came over on the Mayflower. She’s what they called a Boston Brahmin, through and through. Her ancestors fought during the battles of Lexington and Concord during the Revolution, they penned and engineered the young American experiment. They were often descended from aristocratic families. Martha doesn’t seem to be as thirsty as even an Astor, she transcends even that class.
Further backstory - Isadore’s parents immigrate as German Jews. His father opens a small mid-western mercantile that does surprisingly well. Isadore is a 1st Gen American with something to prove. He heads East for his education and meets Martha’s older brother in college. A bit of a rebel and a laser accurate reader of people, she sees big things in Isadore. I don’t know how much love plays a part for her, but there is definitely respect for his intellect, his savvy and his drive.
They marry against her own parents wishes. @modernamericangirl girl mentioned this next part and I think it fits so well with what I was formulating about Martha, but perhaps it’s Isadore who wanted Cora to marry the way she did. Which is why she signs his money over with not a lot of turmoil over what he’ll think or regret. Isadore is the one still trying to prove to his wife’s family, to her friends, to the world at large that he is worthy.
Oh, such an interesting new thread to talk about.... I personally think it was Martha the instigator of Cora and Robert's cash for title marriage, or at least the instigator of Cora being brought to London to look for such an arrangement. Back then it was really important to Martha that the Levinsons could somehow go past their 'new money' status and prove that they could be accepted by established society (Even if it was on the other side of the Atlantic where a lot of established society happened to be desperate for cash...).
But people change... Martha changed after 30-odd years, she's more modern and doesn't put as much value into a title as she once did. She probably got the recognition she so much hungered for, so now she can afford to look down on (or rather, say what she really thinks of) the aristocracy. I also think that these views may have been informed by her despise of Violet (Mutual despise, to be sure)
I’ve run all kinds of Martha ideas in my head. I think I always end on the idea that Martha liked the idea of having an aristocratic daughter in theory. But 20+ years of living away, a devastating war and more have forced her to confront what that stylish decision really meant. A lot of those cash-for-title marriages ended unhappily and not only is Isadore’s fortune gone, sue us minimal contact with her(disinherited) granddaughters I think she now resents her choice, resents the loss of her daughter to this family.
And Jesus. She probably resents having Harold and only Harold to keep her company.
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