Tagged by @see-arcane, thanks. Y'all ignoring the rules tho.
Rules: In a new post, show the last line you wrote (or drew) and tag as many people as there are words (or as many as you’d like).
This is hard to figure out because I made eleven edits recently.
“But?”
He shook his head and brushed his hesitance aside. Putting on a gentlemanly smile, he offered his arm for me to hold. “Alright, Miss Westenra, let’s get you home.”
I giggled, taking his arm and hoping that he would correct that to Mrs. Holmwood sooner rather than later.
I only know like two people fr and they never respond anywayyyys @company-and-co @fitzrove
Hello! I've been loving the ship asks. I saw you mention Lucius/Arthur in a previous post (for Dron 🙌🏼) and was wondering if you would be willing to expand. I love this ship so so much but I haven't come across many other Luthur shippers 😍. That bookshop scene in CoS though, just saying 👀
thank you so much for the ask, @lumosatnight - absolutely delighted to find someone else who has the exceptional taste to see the potential lurking in lucius malfoy/arthur weasley.
i don't have a huge manifesto for this one - although many of the things i mentioned when yelling about my dron agenda also apply for luthur:
they're written to be different ends of the spectrum of the same personality type - and, especially, written to have mirrored attitudes towards their role in wizarding society and their duty to their families and causes.
they occupy mirrored roles in the war - arthur heading up the scrambling post-dumbledore order, which operates out of the burrow while lucius suffers through the ascendant voldemort operating out of malfoy manor! delicious - which means they'll have mirrored experiences post-war. and that will make the hurt/comfort slap.
they occupy mirrored positions in harry, dumbledore, and fudge's lives.
so there's a lot of space in this ship for really dramatic political-intrigue-with-feelings stories. and those are stories i'm enormously fond of.
but, most importantly, lucius and arthur - just like their sons - are fucking obsessed with each other.
the two them beefing in the middle of the bookshop is iconic - not least because it comes directly on the back of arthur walking up diagon alley [having discovered that harry saw the malfoys in borgin and burkes] banging on about how much he'd love to have lucius arrested, and directly before lucius slips the diary into ginny's cauldron so that he can neg arthur over a minor professional success by making his daughter a murderer. they spend half the series trying to one up each other - aided and abetted by ron and draco - often in ways which, even as the tone of the series gets darker, are just pure camp. arthur strutting into the manor during half-blood prince so he can have a rummage in lucius' secret compartment... well, the smut writes itself...
and, as i've argued for dron, that silly, petty, campy tone allows them to be brought together in all sorts of settings in ways which feel not only fun but plausible. a big reason why lots of marauders-era enemies-to-lovers or rivals-to-lovers pairings always feel a bit dull to me is that the characters selected usually lack that sort of "i claim to hate you and yet could recite, from memory, everything you've eaten for dinner for a month" spark.
[james couldn't pick regulus out of a lineup, be real.]
but luthur do - and that can lend itself so well to a bit of fluffy high-school crack and to a first war things-aren't-serious-until-they-are fic. so well, in fact, that it depresses me i've never found one.
plus, ron and draco having to confront the idea of their dads snogging is excellent. especially if they've also been dabbling in it themselves...
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I'm writing this with all the pent-up rage of an entire year of seeing "Lucy's so dumb, she should have picked my favourite suitor" posts and "who should Lucy have chosen?" polls that always result in practically no votes for Arthur.
This is not an anti-Jack or anti-Quincey post by any means, though it may come across as defensive. It is just a pro-let-Lucy-choose-for-herself post. And yes, letting her choose for herself even includes letting her be monogamous when she has made the conscious decision to remain monogamous.
So, to the proposal descriptions--
Seward tries to hide his anxiety by putting up a front of sternness. From how Lucy describes it, it sounds like he's negotiating a contract:
He spoke to me, Mina, very straightforwardly. He told me how dear I was to him, though he had known me so little, and what his life would be with me to help and cheer him. He was going to tell me how unhappy he would be if I did not care for him, but when he saw me cry he said that he was a brute and would not add to my present trouble. Then he broke off and asked if I could love him in time; and when I shook my head his hands trembled, and then with some hesitation he asked me if I cared already for any one else. He put it very nicely, saying that he did not want to wring my confidence from me, but only to know, because if a woman's heart was free a man might have hope. And then, Mina, I felt a sort of duty to tell him that there was some one. I only told him that much, and then he stood up, and he looked very strong and very grave as he took both my hands in his and said he hoped I would be happy, and that if I ever wanted a friend I must count him one of my best.
Sounds like he hardly popped the question so much as stated: "I would be honoured to have you (I need you I need you I need you I need you) as my wife. If you don't love me back, I will die."
This proposal comes across as very neurodivergent to me. He goes into it thinking mostly about what he wants from Lucy and how good the marriage would be for his mental health, not stopping to consider if she's already seeing someone (literally the man who introduced them) or just maybe... that he's putting too much of a burden on her with this style of proposal. This approach would work better with another no-nonsense B, but Lucy is overwhelmed. He didn't think of her feelings in the matter because he was too busy schooling his own emotions so he wouldn't screw it all up. It comes across as very scripted until he sees that he's upset Lucy-- that is when we get a glimpse of his care for her. But then he's back to his bullet points of "but could you love me one day? do you love another now? on a scale from one to ten, how would you rate this interaction?"
Lucy gets through Seward's entire proposal without getting carried away and writing about Arthur instead, but with Quincey--
I suppose that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from fears, and we marry him. I know now what I would do if I were a man and wanted to make a girl love me. No, I don't, for there was Mr. Morris telling us his stories, and Arthur never told any, and yet—— My dear, I am somewhat previous.
She certainly finds Quincey charming, but she cuts herself off to talk about Arthur. While she momentarily thinks that telling adventurous tales would win a woman's heart, she says that it didn't win her own. There's a sort of peacocking going on with Quincey prefacing his proposal with tales of his adventures. It's very much like Seward's stoic attempt but with far more confidence and pizzazz.
Mr. Quincey P. Morris found me alone. It seems that a man always does find a girl alone. No, he doesn't, for Arthur tried twice to make a chance, and I helping him all I could; I am not ashamed to say it now.
Quincey "found [her] alone". Now, before, she said "Mr. Morris was telling us his stories"-- who is us? I am guessing that perhaps Lucy's mother or someone else was sitting in as a chaperone? And then Quincey found an opportunity to talk to her in private?
Again, she drifts off talking about Arthur while she's trying to explain Quincey. "Arthur tried twice to make a chance"-- my best guess for what this means is that Arthur has tried to have un-chaperoned time with Lucy twice before in order to propose to her, but he never succeeded despite her attempts to aid him.
Which makes this all so much funnier? Some joke that the Suitors probably arranged it all, but this hints that Arthur has been trying his damndest to propose, but the one day he actually gets a chance to, he finds out his two friends proposed to her first! Those dogs!!
I do not know myself if I shall ever speak slang; I do not know if Arthur likes it, as I have never heard him use any as yet.
Lucy interrupts her "haha the silly American talks silly American gibberish" with "would Arthur like it if I spoke this way?" Gah, she's so in love with him. It's funny that she says she's never heard him use slang considering she's already mentioned "Dress is a bore." which she even called slang.
Well, he did look so good-humoured and so jolly that it didn't seem half so hard to refuse him as it did poor Dr. Seward; so I said, as lightly as I could, that I did not know anything of hitching, and that I wasn't broken to harness at all yet. Then he said that he had spoken in a light manner, and he hoped that if he had made a mistake in doing so on so grave, so momentous, an occasion for him, I would forgive him. [...] And then, my dear, before I could say a word he began pouring out a perfect torrent of love-making, laying his very heart and soul at my feet. He looked so earnest over it that I shall never again think that a man must be playful always, and never earnest, because he is merry at times. I suppose he saw something in my face which checked him, for he suddenly stopped, and said with a sort of manly fervour that I could have loved him for if I had been free...
She remarks that Quincey's more light-hearted nature makes him easier to refuse than Seward. However, she finds it harder to reject him when he drops the act and starts behaving more earnestly. She finds it easier to imagine loving him when he's being sincere. She doesn't have this same thought with Seward because, unfortunately, even when he snapped out of his legal negotiation of the potential marriage, he still kept himself emotionally guarded through the rest of the interaction.
Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say it.
I must say... Lucy here is not saying "I want a harem of men.". Stop. Just stop saying that she is. That interpretation has led to every single adaptation that brands her an insincere cheater who strings along men and deserves to be punished by the narrative. Just stop. What she is expressing here is guilt at not having an option that would please all parties involved. She's been raised as a people-pleaser, but in this scenario, there is no choice she could make that wouldn't lead to someone being hurt. So, she makes the decision to follow her heart rather than her guilty conscience.
And think, just earlier, Jack planted this seed of insecurity by saying that he'll be upset if she does not love him. And then goes even further to imply her loving another robs him of his hope. It makes it so that, even when Quincey is more gracious in accepting her refusal, she can't help but beat herself up for practically destroying these men's lives (hyperbole, of course) all for her own happiness!!
Lucy clearly displays polyamorous traits. She laments that, if she did not love Arthur so much, she could love Quincey (rip Seward). But she has chosen not to explore those feelings. Part of her cutting herself off while writing about Quincey to talk about Arthur could be subconsciously reminding herself: "nope, there is no chance with him, I want Arthur". She compares the two constantly as if to remind herself she made the right choice. There's also her love for Mina, but she has plausible deniability in this era and can claim that as just classic girl love.
But when she considers a woman marrying "as many men as want her" it is not reflective of her being polyamorous because she doesn't have this thought out of "I love these three men enough to marry them" but "I feel guilty about being loved by three men at once, and I have to repay the favour somehow, but I can't". She does not say "as many men as she wants" because it's not about the woman's feelings but about the feelings of the men that surround her. But you know what? She showed agency when she picked the man she wanted and didn't bow and pick the man who would be the most devastated upon being rejected, and I'm proud of her.
Lucy is incredibly brief when describing Arthur's proposal, but let's. just. think about this. Previously, she has tried to hold back her overwhelming love for Arthur in her writing to Mina (she failed, lol). Other than wanting to be discreet, she explains:
My dear, this quite upset me, and I feel I cannot write of happiness just at once, after telling you of it; and I don't wish to tell of the number three until it can be all happy.
She doesn't want to taint her happy feelings with bitterness about how "oh, I'm so horrible and selfish for picking the man I love! I don't deserve to be loved by anyone!" And even then, she goes into a bit more detail in her post-script:
P.S.—Oh, about number Three—I needn't tell you of number Three, need I? Besides, it was all so confused; it seemed only a moment from his coming into the room till both his arms were round me, and he was kissing me. I am very, very happy, and I don't know what I have done to deserve it. I must only try in the future to show that I am not ungrateful to God for all His goodness to me in sending to me such a lover, such a husband, and such a friend.
Such a friend. Before this, Seward and Quincey were not friends of Lucy's. They were acquaintances that knew her through Arthur (though she does not explicitly state this about Quincey, so she could have met him somewhere else?), and upon being rejected romantically, they swore friendship to her. Before then, they saw her as a potential bride.
But Arthur was already a friend to Lucy. They have been close for longer than she's known either of her other suitors, and while they'd never said the L-word (love) to each other before, I think what wins Lucy's heart is that Arthur is genuine with her. We don't get to see it (she teases us!! how dare!!), but that feels like the most plausible thing that would set him apart from Seward and Quincey. Now, the other two are honest men (we see it when they comfort her), but they both initially put up a front to impress/entertain Lucy. Meanwhile, Arthur doesn't bother with that. He comes into the room, and she's practically already in his arms! It's so effortless with him. She doesn't have to imagine herself being happy and in love with him because she already is.
✨Ep 11 | We Love Lucey is live now. This instant!✨
This week Arthur Weasley and Lucius Malfoy form the centre of a delightfully complex slash ship with some serious vintage sitcom vibes.
Join us as we craft new fanfiction LIVE by the seat of our pants, and find out why we decided to channel ‘I Love Lucy’s own Lucy Ricardo when she said “Think harder. We can be nastier than that."
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