I can’t with these two.
That’s their whole relationship, right there.

⁂
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me

★

tannertan36

pixel skylines
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I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
sheepfilms

祝日 / Permanent Vacation

Product Placement
Peter Solarz
dirt enthusiast

shark vs the universe

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
styofa doing anything
Three Goblin Art
d e v o n
occasionally subtle
Monterey Bay Aquarium

Janaina Medeiros

seen from United States

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@redberryd
I can’t with these two.
That’s their whole relationship, right there.
Lucien and Jean in Season 5 5.02 - “Sorrow Songs”
The fact that all this is in one episode is extraordinary.
#cries
Cobert drabbles - Masterlist
🔥 = 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
Goodnight Cobert Shippers =)
Flirting.
@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.
“Guide the way, Jean.”
I don't remember writing this . Also.. topical now, with the mentiom of price of gas...
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:
To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
Jane Austen
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.
Nobody asked me but when did I let it stop me?
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 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.
Boston Brahmin - Wikipedia
we differ on Isidore being the pusher of marriage BUT I LIVE for your headcanons and you know it. They always make so much sense.
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.
Even when we are surrounded by others, it’s just we two.
Reblogging my post from half a year ago. It took me forever but I’m still pleased with the results. These darlings 😍❤
I want to write stuff after seeing " a new era".
#dead
The Blissful by Ann Summers / 32-38 A-D + 32-38 DD-FF
#jeannie taking care of her husband