- The body horror of Circe transforming the men into pigs was beautifully disgusting
- I loved how the existence of the gods was never fully confirmed or denied. Were the storms Poseidon’s wrath or just bad weather? Was Athena appearing to Odysseus with the face of the woman he let die or was he hallucinating out of guilt? Magic clearly existed, because we had a cyclops and a witch and shades of the Underworld, but there’s magic and then there’s divinity. Is everything they say about the gods true or are they just an excuse?
- The removal of the Nobody scene was necessary actually. In the poem, Odysseus gives Polyphemus his real name in a moment of hubris and this causes all the problems later on because now Poseidon knows the name of the man that disrespected him. In the film, the problems are caused by the Greeks breaking Xenia by invading Troy. Keeping the Nobody scene would have detracted from the root cause of all the problems.
- I could write an entire essay about how cleverly Nolan uses events from the Odyssey to make a point about today’s society:
The Trojan War was about trade routes and Helen was just an excuse — just as wars today are waged for oil and resources, and governments give excuses to their citizens to make it seem better.
“The people from the sea” are feared as an invasion of bogeymen threatening innocents, but they’re actually just desperate men trying to find safety.
The Greeks pillage an island and ask “why didn’t you just give us what we wanted? We’re the good guys!” while the village burns behind them, not realising that to the villagers, Greeks and Trojans are all the same.
- Whoever let Anne Hathaway freeze her forehead should be fed to Polyphemus
- I hope Tom Holland escapes Marvel soon because he is a damn fine actor
dont tag bible stuff as mythology God isnt mythology
hi hello how are you. most if not all story-based religions are in fact considered mythology by definition including the abrahamic religions. god is in fact abrahamic mythos whether you think he’s real or not. im sorry if that upsets you but im assuming this is regarding the post i just reblogged and i have to say im surprised the part you’re upset about is me tagging biblicalia as mythology and not the entire discussion on who tops in jesus/judas ship discourse
i think ao3 should have a feature like an anonymous kudos but instead of kudos its "i jorked it to completion" and you can leave as many of these as you want and obviously authors would opt-in to this feature on a per-fic basis but like. i want the stats, you know.
jerk it to fanfiction??? noooo bro i was just joshing ya. wouldnt that be crazy? haha. fucking got you bro i cant believe youre so gullible. what a far fetched notion. that people would do such a thing. cant believe you fell for it
How to play: Find the word in any WIP and share the sentence containing it. Reply, reblog, stick it in the tags, tag us in a new post, or keep it private. All fandoms, all ships, all writers welcome.
“Sorry, did I frighten you?” Elliott chuckled. “Listen, I have some work to do this afternoon. I'll introduce you to the other women, they can look after you, and I'll see you again at dinner.”
You know that one trend that, Man I'm so depressed, I don't think there's anything that's gonna cheer me up- Hamburger.
I had that thing the whole day in my head. Just with Colonel Brandon. I'm obsessed with him, I just watched sense and Sensibility for the 26th🫣🫣
I wondered if you could write for him again? Perhaps a with smut because we all know that Colonel Brandon is very gentle with his wife, yes, the reader would be his wife, smut because they're trying for a child of course. And then like later when she is pregnant, he takes care of her and all like the perfect husband he is because I love him. Exactly. Well a fic that goes in this direction, if you have another thing in mind, I'm still up for it because I just love him. Very much. ❤️😅😩
Don't stop writing or I'll get depression and I'll have to pay a psychiatrist even though I have no moneyyyy! Love your writing!💅🥰🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹
Title: The Duties of a Husband
Summary: Christopher Brandon is a patient man. A disciplined man. A gentleman who treats even desire with solemn tenderness. Unfortunately for his composure, his wife enjoys provoking him.
Pairing: Colonel Brandon × Fem! Reader
Warnings: Smut
Author's Notes: It wasn’t exactly what you asked for, but I hope you like it!
Also read on Ao3
The rain had begun before dinner.
It came softly at first, a whisper against the tall windows of Delaford, silvering the glass and blurring the dark gardens beyond. By the time the servants had cleared away the last of the supper things and the house had settled into its evening quiet, the rain had deepened into a steady, secretive rhythm — the sort that seemed made for closed doors, low candlelight, and the private world that existed only between husband and wife.
You stood near the hearth in your bedchamber, combing the pins from your hair one by one.
Behind you, Colonel Brandon watched in silence.
He had been quiet all evening, though not cold. Never cold. That was not Christopher’s way. His silences had texture — thought, restraint, tenderness carefully held in the palm of discipline. You had learned to read them since becoming his wife. The slight furrow between his brows when he was concerned. The way his eyes softened when they lingered on you. The manner in which his hand would hover at the small of your back in company, never possessive enough to offend propriety, but present enough to remind you that he was there.
Always there.
Tonight, however, there had been something else in him.
A waiting.
A heaviness.
You saw it now in the mirror as you withdrew the final pin from your hair and let it fall over your shoulders.
His eyes lifted at once.
It was not the gaze of a young man overcome by impulse. Christopher Brandon was not ruled by appetite. He was older, steadier, a man who had known disappointment, duty, grief, and the long discipline of wanting what he believed he could not have. Desire in him did not flare carelessly. It burned low and deep, like banked coals beneath ash.
But when it showed, it was all the more dangerous for its restraint.
You turned slightly, catching his gaze in the looking glass.
“My dear husband is very solemn tonight.”
A faint smile touched his mouth. “Am I?”
“Terribly.”
“I had not meant to appear so.”
“You rarely mean to appear anything,” you said, setting the pins upon the dressing table. “That is part of your charm.”
He lowered his eyes briefly, almost bashful despite everything — despite the wedding ring on his hand, despite the fact that you shared his name, his home, his bed. It never ceased to move you, that quiet modesty in him. He could command men, endure pain, carry sorrow without complaint, and yet a tender word from you could still undo him.
You crossed the room slowly.
He remained near the bed, coat already removed, waistcoat loosened, his shirtsleeves rolled to his forearms and the collar open at his throat. The candlelight softened the noble lines of his face, silvering the dark strands of his hair, making him look both severe and impossibly gentle.
When you reached him, you lifted your hands to the front of his shirt.
“You have been thinking,” you said.
His breath moved beneath your fingers. “That is hardly unusual.”
“No. But tonight you were thinking of me.”
His gaze returned to yours.
For a moment he said nothing.
Then, quietly, “Yes.”
The single word warmed you more than the fire.
You began to undo the buttons of his shirt, slowly, not from necessity but because you liked the way he watched your hands. You liked the stillness that came over him, as though every part of him had been ordered to patience except his eyes.
“And what thoughts occupied you so seriously?” you asked.
His hand came to your waist. Not pulling. Merely resting there, large and warm, his thumb moving once over the fabric of your nightgown.
“You know very well.”
“Perhaps I wish to hear you say it.”
That made his mouth tighten, not in displeasure, but in an effort to master himself. You had discovered, over the months of your marriage, that Christopher Brandon was not a man easily persuaded into vulgarity. His tenderness had depth, his passion had force, but he approached even desire as though it were something sacred — not to be thrown carelessly about, not to be cheapened.
Still, there were moments when you could coax the truth from him.
Moments when the husband overcame the gentleman.
His fingers tightened slightly at your waist.
“I was thinking,” he said, voice lower now, “of how much I want you.”
Your hands stilled.
The rain tapped steadily at the windows.
“And?” you whispered.
His eyes darkened.
“And of how dearly I hope,” he continued, with a gravity that made your heart ache, “that I may give you a child.”
The words settled between you with a tenderness almost too large to bear.
It was not the first time such a hope had been spoken aloud. Since your marriage, the possibility had hovered over you both — in glances, in the quiet calculations of dates, in the way his hand sometimes rested over your lower belly after loving you, as if he could will life into being by devotion alone.
But each time he said it plainly, it changed the air.
A child.
His child.
The thought filled you with a strange, aching warmth. Not because it was expected of you. Not because society would smile upon it. But because you had seen Christopher with those who needed gentleness. You had seen the patient sorrow in him, the old wound of having once loved and lost, the tenderness he tried to hide because tenderness had cost him so much. You knew what kind of father he would be.
Not loud. Not careless. Never cruel.
A steady hand. A quiet voice. A man who would stand between his child and the world without ever asking to be praised for it.
You reached up and touched his face.
“You will,” you said.
His expression shifted.
“My love—”
“You will,” you repeated softly. “And when you do, you shall be unbearable.”
That startled a laugh from him, low and brief. “Unbearable?”
“Entirely. Watching over me, worrying over every little thing, refusing to let me cross a room without offering your arm.”
His thumb brushed your cheek. “You make it sound as though you would object.”
“I did not say that.”
“No,” he murmured. “You did not.”
His gaze lowered to your mouth.
That was all the warning you had before he kissed you.
Christopher’s kisses were rarely hurried at first. He kissed as he did everything else — with purpose, with care, with a restraint that made the eventual loss of it all the more exquisite. His mouth moved over yours slowly, deeply, as though he meant to remember the shape of every sigh. His hand slid from your waist to your back, drawing you nearer until there was no polite distance left between you.
You melted against him.
The world narrowed to the warmth of his chest, the scent of rain and candle smoke, the quiet strength of his arms. His mouth left yours only to press against your cheek, your jaw, the sensitive place beneath your ear that made your fingers clutch at his shirt.
“Christopher,” you breathed.
He paused at the sound of his name.
You felt it — the effort in him. The discipline. The man who still, even now, wished to be certain he was not taking more than you freely gave.
So you gave him certainty.
You drew back just enough to look at him, then took his hand and placed it over your heart.
“I am yours,” you said.
His eyes closed for half a second.
When they opened again, something in him had changed.
Not vanished. Never that. Christopher did not become another man in passion. He became himself without armor.
He kissed you again, harder this time, with a hunger that made your knees weaken. His hands moved with reverence and need together, as though he could not decide whether to worship you or gather you entirely into himself. Your nightgown slipped from one shoulder beneath his touch. His mouth followed the exposed skin, warm and lingering, and you felt his breath catch when your fingers moved into his hair.
The bed was only a few steps away. Neither of you remembered taking them, nor exactly when the last barriers of linen between you had been pushed aside.
You were beneath him, surrounded by linen and candlelight, with the rain keeping its quiet vigil beyond the windows. Christopher leaned over you, one forearm braced beside your head, his face shadowed and beautiful with restraint.
“You must tell me,” he said, voice roughened, “if I am too much.”
Your hands slid over his shoulders.
“You are not enough yet.”
His brows lifted faintly.
For one breath, he looked almost shocked.
Then he gave a soft, helpless sound — half laugh, half groan — and lowered his mouth to yours again.
There was no more room for teasing after that. Not at first.
There was only the slow unraveling of him, and of you beneath him.
Christopher loved like a man making a vow again and again. Every touch seemed to say what his voice could not: that he cherished you, that he desired you, that he still scarcely believed he had been granted such happiness. Even when passion sharpened, his tenderness remained. He watched your face as though it were the only truth in the world. He listened for every breath, every tremor, every small sign that told him where pleasure became too much or not enough.
And when he finally joined himself to you, he went still.
His forehead lowered to yours.
The intimacy of it stole your breath.
Not merely the joining of bodies, but the look in his eyes — that solemn, aching devotion. As though this was not only pleasure, not only marriage, but hope itself. As though somewhere in the dark, quiet future, a child might begin from this very tenderness.
You wrapped your arms around his shoulders.
For a time, he moved slowly, almost reverently. The rhythm was deep and measured, his breath warming your mouth, his eyes closing only when feeling threatened to overcome him. You could feel the restraint in every line of his body. He was holding back for you, as he always did. Giving you gentleness when you knew there was hunger beneath it.
So, naturally, you decided to provoke him.
When his breath grew uneven and he paused, resting his forehead against you for one long moment, you slid your hands firmly over his shoulders and smiled.
“Colonel,” you whispered, “are you tired already?”
Christopher went utterly still.
His eyes opened.
For a heartbeat, the only sound was the rain.
Then he answered you without words.
His next movement was sudden enough to steal the air from your lungs.
You gasped, fingers tightening on his shoulders, and his mouth curved against yours — not smug, exactly, but close enough to make heat rush through you.
“Tired?” he murmured.
You tried to answer. Failed.
His lips brushed your cheek, deceptively tender, while his body set a deeper, more demanding rhythm that made your teasing dissolve into broken breaths.
“I assure you,” he said, voice low and controlled only by effort, “I am quite capable of fulfilling my duties as a husband.”
A laugh escaped you, breathless and helpless. “Duties?”
His hand slid beneath your back, holding you closer.
“Most solemnly.”
The words would have sounded absurd from any other man. From him, spoken in that low, grave voice while his body pressed yours into the linen, they made you laugh and shiver at once.
“You are impossible,” you breathed.
“I have been called worse.”
“By whom?”
His mouth brushed your temple. “No one whose opinion I valued.”
You would have answered him, would have teased him further if only to see that dangerous softness return to his eyes, but Christopher chose that moment to shift his weight and take hold of your hips.
The change was subtle at first. A firmer grip. A deeper angle. The careful tenderness remained, but something more deliberate entered him, something that made your breath catch before he had even moved again.
He held you as though you were precious.
He loved you like a man who had been starving.
His eyes lowered to where your bodies met, and for a moment he simply watched. The sight seemed to undo him by degrees. His lips parted. A faint crease formed between his brows, not of pain, but of concentration so intense it bordered on reverence. Candlelight caught on the sheen beginning to gather at his throat, along the open vee of his shirt, across the strength of his chest where the fabric clung damply to him.
Then he moved.
Neither fast nor slow.
Worse than either.
Measured. Deep. Mercilessly controlled.
He drew out halfway, enough to make you feel the loss, enough to make your body tighten around the absence of him, and then he drove back into you with a force that sent a broken sound from your mouth.
“Christopher—”
His fingers flexed on your hips.
Again.
Out, just enough.
Back in, hard enough to make the bed shift beneath you.
The rhythm was not hurried. He was not chasing his own end like a careless boy. No, this was something far more devastating. He took his time with you. He watched what each thrust did to you, watched your mouth fall open, watched your hands clutch at the sheets, watched your composure come apart beneath him piece by piece.
And you watched him in return.
You could not help it.
A man had no right to look so handsome in such a moment.
The thought came to you with almost offended clarity through the haze of pleasure. He should have looked disheveled, perhaps even foolish. Marriage, surely, was meant to make a husband familiar. Human. Less untouchable.
Instead, Christopher Brandon looked like some solemn, ruined saint of devotion and desire.
His dark hair had fallen loose over his forehead, damp with sweat. His shirt hung open, sleeves rolled and wrinkled from your hands. His breath came heavier now, restrained sounds caught low in his throat each time he sank back into you. The noble severity of his face had not vanished, but it had changed. Softened. Darkened. Desire had sharpened his features and undone them at once.
You stared at him through half-lidded eyes, caught between moans, helplessly fascinated.
He noticed, of course.
Christopher always noticed.
His gaze lifted from the place where he entered you to your face.
“What is it?” he asked, voice rough.
You swallowed, though your throat had gone dry. “Nothing.”
His hips moved again, and the answer left you in a gasp.
“Not nothing,” he murmured.
You should not have said it.
You knew you should not have said it.
But pleasure had made you honest and bold and quite without sense.
“Do all husbands look like this in the marriage bed?”
He stilled.
Not completely. Not enough to grant mercy. He remained seated deep inside you, his hands still at your hips, his body hot and trembling faintly with the effort of restraint. But his eyes fixed on yours with sudden, dangerous attention.
For one heartbeat, the rain seemed to grow louder.
“What did you say?” he asked softly.
The softness should have warned you.
Instead, you smiled, breathless and wicked. “I only wondered whether all husbands look so handsome while fulfilling their duties.”
His expression changed.
Only slightly.
A gentleman would have laughed.
A lesser man might have preened.
Christopher Brandon lowered himself over you until his mouth hovered near yours, his hair brushing your forehead, his breath warm against your lips.
“I shall make certain,” he said, each word quiet and perfectly clear, “that you never find out.”
Heat rushed through you so sharply that you could not answer.
He kissed you then, but it was not the slow, reverent kiss from before. It was deeper, hungrier, edged with a possessiveness that made your body tighten around him. His hand slid from your hip to your thigh, lifting it higher against his side, opening you further beneath him.
When he moved again, the angle changed.
You cried out against his mouth.
“There,” he breathed, as though he had found something he had been patiently searching for. “There, my love?”
You nodded helplessly.
He did it again.
Your head sank back into the pillow.
“Oh—Christopher.”
The sound of his name seemed to pass through him like fire. His control slipped for a moment, just enough for his breath to break, just enough for his grip to tighten as he thrust into you again with that same deep, devastating precision.
“My sweet wife,” he murmured.
There was tenderness in it.
There was possession, too.
Not the ugly sort. Not the grasping claim of a man who thought love meant ownership. Christopher’s possession was different. It was devotion made desperate. A vow spoken with hands and mouth and body. The fierce astonishment of a man who had once believed himself condemned to loneliness and now found you beneath him, warm and willing, whispering his name as though it belonged in your mouth.
You reached up and pushed the damp hair from his forehead.
The gesture undid something in him.
His eyes closed briefly, and his face turned into your palm.
For one suspended second, he was unbearably gentle again.
Then your body clenched around him, and his composure cracked.
A low sound left him, rougher than any you had heard from him before. His hand caught your wrist and pressed your palm to the mattress beside your head, not hard enough to hurt, only enough to hold. His other hand stayed at your hip, guiding you into each thrust, keeping you exactly where he wanted you.
The bed creaked softly beneath you.
The rain covered the rest.
You were glad for it.
Glad for the rain, glad for the closed doors, glad for the great quiet house that knew better than to intrude upon this intimate undoing of composure. You had thought, once, that a man like Christopher would be silent in bed. Controlled. Almost austere in his pleasure.
You had been wrong.
He was quiet, yes, but not silent.
He breathed your name like a prayer. He murmured praise against your skin, low and broken and almost reluctant, as though the words escaped him despite his best efforts.
“So beautiful.”
Another thrust.
“So warm.”
Another.
“So entirely mine.”
Your fingers curled around his wrist.
“Yes,” you gasped. “Yours.”
His eyes opened.
The effect was immediate.
He looked at you as though you had given him something sacred, something dangerous.
“Again,” he said.
You could barely hear yourself over your own breathing. “Yours.”
His restraint frayed further.
The rhythm deepened. Still not frantic, not careless, but harder now. More insistent. He pulled out halfway and drove back into you again and again, each thrust striking that place inside you that made the world flash white at the edges.
You could feel sweat on his skin when your hands slid beneath his open shirt. Feel the heat of him, the controlled strength, the tremor in his muscles each time he forced himself not to lose all gentleness.
“Do not hold back,” you whispered.
His laugh was strained, nearly pained. “You do not know what you ask.”
“I do.”
“No.” His mouth found your jaw, your throat. “You think you do.”
“Then show me.”
He lifted his head.
For a moment, he looked at you as he might have looked across a battlefield: assessing danger, consequence, the point of no return.
Then his mouth curved faintly.
“You are becoming very bold, Mrs. Brandon.”
“You encouraged me.”
“I fear I have created my own undoing.”
You tightened your legs around him. “Then be undone.”
That did it.
Whatever remained of his careful distance vanished.
He kissed you hard, almost desperately, and the next thrust stole every clever word from your tongue. He held your hips firmly now, using that steady strength of his to draw you back to meet him, making you take each deep stroke until you were no longer laughing, no longer teasing, no longer capable of anything but sound.
He watched you fall apart.
That was perhaps the most intimate cruelty of all.
He watched with those dark, devoted eyes while pleasure built in you beyond bearing. Watched as you tried to turn your face aside and caught your chin with gentle fingers.
“No,” he murmured. “Stay with me.”
“I can’t—”
“You can.” His voice shook, but his gaze did not. “Look at me.”
You did.
And that was your undoing.
The sight of him above you — damp hair across his forehead, mouth parted, eyes dark with love and hunger, body moving into yours with solemn, ruthless devotion — pushed you over the edge. Pleasure broke through you with such force that you clutched at him blindly, crying out his name as your body tightened around him again and again.
Christopher’s face changed.
For the first time that night, he looked truly lost.
His rhythm faltered. His jaw clenched. A hoarse sound escaped him as he buried his face against your neck, still moving, still holding you close as your pleasure took him with it.
“My love,” he breathed. “My love, I—”
He did not finish.
He could not.
His body went taut above yours, his arms gathering you so tightly that you felt surrounded by him completely. His final thrusts were deep, unsteady, stripped of all performance and all restraint. He came with your name against your skin, his voice low and broken, his whole body shuddering as though the feeling had gone through him soul-deep.
Afterward, he did not move away.
For a long while, neither of you did.
The rain continued against the windows, soft and steady, as though nothing in the world had changed.
But everything in you felt altered.
Christopher’s weight rested carefully over you, not enough to crush, only enough to comfort. His face remained hidden against your neck. His breathing was uneven, warm and damp along your skin. One of his hands moved from your hip to your waist, then lower, settling with aching tenderness over your belly.
The gesture made your throat tighten.
You placed your hand over his.
He lifted his head slowly.
The passion had not left his face entirely. It lingered in the flush of his skin, the softness of his mouth, the dark disorder of his hair. But his eyes had returned to that familiar tenderness, made deeper now by vulnerability.
“Are you well?” he asked.
You laughed softly, still breathless. “You ask that as though you did not just try to prove a point.”
A faint, mortified warmth touched his cheeks. “I may have been… provoked.”
“You threatened to make certain I never discover whether other husbands look handsome in bed.”
His gaze lowered, almost shy now that the words were spoken plainly.
“I meant it,” he said.
The sincerity of it made you smile.
You touched his face. “I know.”
His thumb moved slowly over your belly, thoughtful and tender.
For a moment, neither of you spoke.
Then he bent and kissed you there, just below your navel, with such quiet reverence that your heart clenched painfully in your chest.
“Christopher,” you whispered.
He rested his cheek against you, eyes closed.
“If it should happen,” he said softly, “if we are blessed so…”
Your fingers moved into his hair.
He swallowed.
“I would spend my life deserving it.”
The words pierced you more deeply than any declaration of passion could have done.
You tugged gently until he came back up to you. He followed at once, settling beside you and drawing you into the curve of his body. You tucked yourself against his chest, listening to the slow return of his heartbeat beneath your ear.
“You already do,” you said.
His arms tightened around you.
Outside, the rain fell over Delaford.
Inside, Christopher Brandon held you as though you were his home, his hope, and every tender future he had once thought lost to him.
