THE FUTURE IS STUPID.

w/e man

2012-12-30T19:59:51Z

in time; a downton abbey fic; post s3 CS, 1,181 words.

she needed someone to be strong for her when there was no one else left.

He remembered being five and she would stare aimlessly off into the distance. In her bedroom, she would look out the window and across the land, playing gently with the curtain tassels as she retreated into a silent space. On walks around the grounds, she would hesitate too frequently at the wooden bench under the tree.

“Let’s sit here for a second, it’s such a shame to waste this beautiful day.”

Then she would go some place else in her thoughts, he imagined, quite like he did when granny would read him a story. Perhaps she was telling herself a story, he could remember thinking.

She rarely caught him staring.

“Mama?”

“Yes, my darling?”

“Why do you look so sad all of the time?”

“I can’t be sad, darling, I have you.”

They sat in the rocking chair in the nursery, the old wood creaked as she held him, he drifted silently to sleep, clutching her wrist like a hymn. She played gently with the ring on her left hand, rubbing the tip of her finger over the smooth gold before his eyes closed.

“Reggie, what are you doing?”

He looked up expectantly in fear and quickly slammed the box shut.

“Nothing mama, I promise.”

Her eyes twitched rapidly and her arms hung heavily as her hand absentmindedly picked at the side of her light blue day dress. He held his breath a moment as the shock on her face melted into a smile. It didn’t reach her eyes.

“It’s okay darling, just please don’t go poking through my drawers without permission.”

He nodded obediently as she sat lightly on the edge of the bed, smoothing her dress as her finger tips drummed against her thighs. She gently pulled the wooden box from him and lifted him into her lap as she opened it.

Scattered about, he remembered, were some yellowed letters bound together with a string of ribbon, a picture frame, some stray photographs, and a toy dog.

Her fingers stroked the tattered pieces, brushing lightly against them like valuable heirlooms. She pulled out a crinkled photograph of a man.

“This was your father.”

His curiosity drew him in as she handed him the picture. She stroked the side of his hair, pulling it gently behind his ear. She smiled into his cheek as she kissed it, choking back on something indecipherable as she held his face too tightly against her parted mouth. Her breath was hot, her lips were wet.

“You have his eyes. One day you’ll grow up to be as handsome as he was.”

MATTHEW REGINALD CRAWLEY

1890-1921

Only when he was old enough to sound out letters did he actually make the connection.

It was a half cloudy day, fresh flowers had been picked from the garden. He ran his hand in between the grooves of the cold, gray stone. He looked up at her stoic face. Even at a young age, it was at that moment that he realized his mother didn’t really believe in god. Only time would confirm what he had suspected.

“Mama, is that my name?”

“Yes, my darling, it is."

A gulf.

"Now come on, it’s almost time for lunch.”

“Granny?”

“Yes, darling?”

“Did papa fight in the war?”

“Yes, darling, he was a captain, actually, a very good position, you should be very proud of your father.”

He nodded ponderously.

“Why do you ask?”

“I was just wondering, mama doesn’t talk about him very much.”

She smiled sadly. “I suppose she will in time, my dear.”

He walked to where she sat on the sofa, plopping himself by her feet. He played with a frayed bit of her stockings.

“How did he die?”

Her face fell for a second. She closed the book in her hand.

“There…there was an accident.”

“What kind of accident?”

“A car accident, my love.”

Blue eyes found each other, she looked upon him with pity, an emotion he only identified later as the pieces came together and his memory searched through backlogs of distorted time. Sometimes as children, we don’t know when to stop and start.

“What was he like?”

Granny hesitated a second. “He was a good man.”

She paused. “And more than anything, he loved your mother very much.”

He had only nodded quite plainly. Because understanding, like contentedness, takes awhile to catch up.

He mostly remembered hating the uniform; he disliked formal wear enough as it is, but the belt was uncomfortable and the cap made his hair stick out at odd ends. Regardless, mother told him that he looked very grown-up in his new outfit, though he didn’t feel it. She came into his room as he was being dressed in the morning. She smoothed the green fabric of his jacket to lift out any spare wrinkles.

She promised to walk him to the station after he said his goodbyes to the others. A hug for Sybil, kisses for the grandparents. That sort of thing.

A few officers were already on the platform. He hunched over slightly in nervousness as he didn’t spot anyone else his age.

She was fidgety; she held his hand gently in hers, the cold leather of her gloves made him more nervous for some reason.

“And you have everything?”

He chuckled softly. “Yes mama, for the hundredth time.”

They sat on the platform bench. She turned him towards her as the whistle sounded.

“Now just remember to write to me at any time, any time at all.”

He looked at her nervous state in bemusement. He smiled at her reassuringly. “Mama, I’ll be fine, trust me.”

Be strong for her, he told himself. It was a mantra, a prayer.

“I know you will, my darling.” She hesitated a moment. He saw a tear in her sad smile before she pulled him to her and clung fiercely.

“Be brave, my boy.”

He clutched her a moment longer before she pulled back and rummaged in her coat pocket.

“Take this, you’ll need it.”

The toy dog.

He looked up at her auburn eyes tinged with mist. He turned the memento over in his hand, quite sure what she meant.

She told him to be safe and to come back as soon as possible, holding his hand in a gentle grip. The firmness of her index finger gathered around his thumb betrayed her composure.

He glanced from the toy in his gentle clutch, then to their joined hands, and finally upon her solemn, gathered face.

Be strong for her.

The whistle sounded once more.

“I've got to go," he whispered.

She smiled tearfully as she gripped his fingers one last time. She pulled away.

“Of course you have.”

He tucked the dog in his pocket and joined the others on the train.

__

He had wanted to love her forever, as he wished his father could have. She was a pillar, a touchstone, a poem.

Maybe he could have done better as a child. He could have hugged her more, tried to understand more.

But understanding only comes in time, and in time, loss.

FIC: A World Apart; James x Christine

2012-03-16T02:10:08Z

TITLE: A World Apart, one-shot
AUTHOR: modernities
FANDOM: Out of Time
WORD COUNT: 2,456
RATING: T
WARNINGS: Completely un-beta'ed, as this would give the impression that I am way more srs about this than I want to be. Just...have fun with it.
SUMMARY: The sun was disappearing and against it he saw her silhouetted, a vision, not an angel yet not quite human to him. She was something rather otherworldly that had fixed and broken his life in a cycle of time and space.

He first attempted Time Travel when he was 29 years old. Fresh off of his Ph.D in History from Cambridge, he wanted to go to the Elizabethan era to see a Shakespearian play. After that, Prague after the Velvet Revolution. He never really liked to stay for very long in one place; he loved history, but it also made him too contemplative. He was tired of being world weary.

He met her in 1926 in a speakeasy. He thought her thoroughly American at the time. She was fresh. She loved crowds. Her hair barely nipped at her shoulders and she drank way too much. He remembered approaching her inside the club because he was timid but enthralled. Tomorrow he would be gone anyway. The lack of familiarity that Time had afforded him made him bolder. Identity was a nuisance.

He discovered soon just how restless she was. After spending all night together in a dingy hotel room, she caught a peak of his modern garb in the only travel bag he carried with him. He tried to stammer out an excuse on the spot, but he didn’t have to. She touched the inside of his wrist and pulled the clothes into her lap.

“I’m from when you are…I think. Perhaps…yes,” she said nervously.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed looking up at him. Her eyes had glazed over and as she gripped the inside of his wrist he could feel his pulse heighten. She glanced up at him; that airy demeanor she had maintained all through the evening had begun to slip. For the first time, funnily enough, he realized he didn’t even know her name or who she was. But he felt he knew everything he needed to know.

Maybe identity mattered a little bit, he had thought.

She asked him to take her with him, wherever he went. Whatever he wanted to do, whatever he wanted to see. She would go. Her robe was slipping off her shoulder and she glanced upward at him, her eyes emitting all the strength and weakness of wanderlust, a poor lost soul dying for an adventure. He had never planned on having a travel companion, but she was beautiful and she was holding on to his wrist with such a fragile tenacity that he swayed forward into her. He knew she had a life story.

They left for Istanbul two hours later.

It was easy to lose track of time during constant travel. Was it Christmas, back in 2050? Maybe early June. It was why he couldn’t tell how many weeks it had been before she finally told him her name. They were in Mombasa in 2010 and as they sat in a café she told him her name was Christine. He loved her but he didn’t believe her. She had said it with that façade she toyed with, the light personality of someone who was discussing the weather or current events. But it wasn’t the point. Her name didn’t matter. She was antagonistic and thrilling. She was danger in how comfortably exhilarated he felt in her company. He knew nothing of her past and she knew nothing of his. She was a warm mark on the futility of his memory and he was the careful compliance to her frivolity of nature. They carried no baggage, no claims. It was just winter in Canada, a summer in Egypt. India was nice in May. The Great Wall of China was daunting in its physical beauty in that August of 1998. She always accused him of wallowing in historical fact while he told her that sometimes she needed to take adventure just a bit more seriously. Respect the culture, he had told her. She rolled her eyes and lightly thumped him on the back with a small, gentle fist. He kissed her scowl and they went to bed.

As he sat in the hotel bar, London 2012, he fiddled with the watch on his wrist. He didn’t know how many years it had been. At least a couple, he surmised. He only knew it had been 36 seasons. He had seen more snow in the time he’d been traveling than he had in the previous 29 years of his life.

The window behind him allowed the dwindling sun to shine on his neck. He gulped down his drink quickly; it slid down with the ease of temptation. He put his hand to his head and rubbed his temples.

The next Pick-Up was in half an hour. He had told her goodbye on the stairwell as she dashed to the room to pick up her things, worried she’d be late. They had acquired more luggage during the time past. They had started out with so little and now they carried more. Sometimes they felt the need to pick up relics along the way.

He had told her 2012 would be a nice change for them both. After the disaster that was New York in 1970, they decided to take an extended break in Scotland where they could figure things out. She was indecisive and drinking a lot, more than usual. Trying to get her to talk about her feelings was a slippery slope that always ended in the same fall of gravity. There was screaming—on the street, in a taxi, a hotel lobby, in a dusty carriage in 1912 Oxfordshire. But Scotland was supposed to be different. They stayed in Shepherd’s Cottage in Carbost; the trees were sparse and the snow on the ground was melting. He was washing up one night and he walked into the bedroom to see her curled up in a fetal position, sobbing. Her white nightgown infantilized her even more and it was the first time he truly realized that he didn’t know anything about the woman he loved the most in the world.

He didn’t know what to do. She had cried before, but never so soberly. Her spine rippled under her nightgown and her pale skin shimmered like darkened glass. Her back was towards him. Carefully, he gently pressed his weight down into the bed and snuck a tired hand around her small waist. He had expected her to reject him, but instead she curled into his hesitant embrace and turned off the lamp.

In the cold silence of the foreign space, she asked him, “Are we ever going home?”

The sad truth is that he didn’t know what that meant anymore. Home. Where was home for her? Where was it for him?

He pressed a kiss to her hair and whispered into her ear, “Only if you want to.”

Now, London in 2012 was a lot closer to present time for both of them. It was partially why he had suggested it. Maybe it would comfort her. But she wouldn’t even tell him if it did.

He felt more challenged now. The intellectual side of his mind told him that it was time to settle somewhere—for awhile at least. For the first time, he began to reflect on the reason why he had decided being a “tourist” was a good choice in the first place. He had wanted to see history, which was what he had told himself. But looking back, he understood it in his heart to be a lie and he didn’t know what he running from. Was he running from the same nightmare she was? Did they see no future in their lives, so they decided to return to the past? They needed stability, but she was not a stationery soul. Meanwhile he had an urge to exercise his freedom, but with the hesitancy of a frightened animal.

He was remembering now. In Paris of 1968 he had proposed to her on the Eiffel Tower. It was a spur of the moment gesture and utterly cliché, but it felt right. She had said yes enthusiastically, but for reasons unclear to him, they never spoke of it after that. He had brought up their pending nuptials a couple of days later where they lied together on clean white linen, but she distractedly walked out on to the balcony of their stay room and began chattering about how exciting Parisian life was.

He looked at his watch again as he ordered another drink. 20 more minutes. The Pick-Up was due to arrive soon and he was lost in heady despair, slightly drunk while his fiancée was getting ready to depart without him. His heart thumped tenderly in his chest for a split second, his brain grew cloudy and surreal senses overpowered his rational nature. He slid some change on the table and walked out of the bar.

The Pick-Up Point was on the hotel roof, and the elevator was out of order. He felt slightly dizzy as the drink clashed with the turns of the spiral stairs that he dashed up. He couldn’t tell if time was moving slow or it was just him. Time usually moved faster than this and when he needed it, it failed him. Alas, he pushed open the roof door and scattered his eyes for her, trying to seek out her pink dress in the small crowd. Other tourists stood around, some couples, some singles. The sun was disappearing and against it he saw her silhouetted, a vision, not an angel yet not quite human to him. She was something rather otherworldly that had fixed and broken his life in a cycle of time and space. As he saw her in the near distance, it was suddenly 1926 again and her hair was bobbed and she was laughing. They were stumbling up to that dingy hotel room in a passionate frenzy and he had never felt so alive in the 29 years of his life. But then it was Istanbul and Mombasa and South Africa and Buenos Aires and their brief detour into Leninist Russia and Paris in 1968 and he grew soft. He told himself that he knew her. That he knew the most important parts of her. He knew how she liked her coffee and what she smelled like in the morning. He knew that she disliked sad stories and that her dream was to see a live Schubert, so they had gone to Austria. Trancelike, he walked over to her. His fingers rattled and perspiration dampened his hair. He always felt such a mess in the presence of her refinement. She was dappled by the sunlight yet tinged by the shadow of tall skyscrapers. She held two bags in one hand and her travel card in the other. Her lipstick was smudged.

“What are you doing here?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t actually know. I just, I had to see you…again,” he bumbled. She shuffled her feet impatiently.

“I leave in four minutes,” she said, not as a warning, but as a sorrowful statement.

“I know.” He took her hand that held her travel card and ran his rough finger tips against her palm. “I thought about asking you to stay…but I don’t think that’s what you want.”

She wasn’t looking at him. She was distant. The wind rustled her hair.

“I don’t really think it’s what either of us want,” she said defeatedly.

“I want it.”

“No, you don’t,” she said with soft firmness.

He swayed on his feet slightly. The alcohol was dimming. “Look, I know it’s been hard. Believe me I know…”

She began to cry. “Hey,” he murmured. She glanced towards him, and he softly cupped her face in his hands.

“It can be better. We can go to Paris. I’ll come with you right now. We can go wherever you want, whenever you want. It doesn’t matter to me,” he said frantically. “I just…what I need is you. All of you. I don’t care about anything else. I thought London would be good for us but it doesn’t matter. Just take me. I’ll go,” he begged.

She was staring straight into his eyes, their browns were swimming with unshed tears. She smiled softly as she put her hand on top of his where it rested under her jawline. “I know you would,” she affirmed gracefully. “And that’s why I have to go.”

His eyes were damp. He glanced at his feet as his hands fell from her face. Everything felt as though it was built on a hollow ground. He looked up back up at her softly smiling features. He knew.

“You’re not going really going to Paris, are you?”

She let out a gentle laugh and wiped her eyes. “No…I’m not.”

“You won’t even tell me where?”

She stopped for a second before she slid into his space and put a hand to his cheek. Her eyes were truth.

“I love you. Know that. Know that…we had our moment.”

He closed his eyes softly as an unbidden tear leaked down his cheek. She sucked in a breath.

“But I have to go now.”

He opened his eyes as a sob escaped his mouth. She swayed forward and her lips met his. She tasted like wine and salt as he took her bottom lip, bringing his hands up to her cheeks as he held her to his lifetime for just a moment longer.

She pulled away, her mouth a gap as she stuffed her cries down under her acceptance. They were just bodies of blood, blips in space, wrinkles in time at the infinitesimal level as their hearts pounded and their experiences shrank. Who they were and where they were going, he realized, never really mattered. But it did to him, and that was enough to keep him satisfied.

He put his hand to her waist. “Can you…can you at least tell me your real name?”

She smiled. “To you, I’m Christine. And it’s how you’ll remember me.”

She kissed his cheek before she walked away. His eyes couldn’t follow her. He sucked in his chest and let out a sigh. Identity didn’t really matter. Identity was a nuisance. Christine.
He closed his eyes as the tourists boarded the Pick-Up Point. His hand balled into a fist as his breathing patterns formed synchronized rhythms. He whispered to himself various saved truths. He loved her. It would be okay. They had their moment. Love is a moment. Her name is Christine.

He knew it would take him some time to accept himself, to gather their time and stick it into a box in the attic, only to be revisited nostalgically during special moments. The relics in the box would remind him of who he was. Remind him that she was right. It couldn’t be fixed. How could they move forward if they were always regressing?

You can’t keep onward when you dwell in the past.

On Matthew & Mary: Meta; Part I

2012-01-21T03:24:24Z

A/N: Hello again all! This next installment is (quite) a bit longer, and it really starts delving into the big themes of their relationship. In other words, it's much more dense (and awesome!) than the introduction. It's also where I start more thoroughly discussing my own detailed feelings on Mary and Matthew, so if you have any comments, I am always happy to read them! I hope you enjoy Part I.

For catch-up
On Matthew & Mary: Meta; Introduction

ON MATTHEW & MARY: Meta; Part I
Of First Impressions, Snobbery, and Sea Monsters

I feel it pertinent to say that the base of this relationship, for me, is love of their imbalance. If there’s one thing that I think makes this ship the most painful and tragic one I have ever experienced, it’s that these two love each other so much, but always in different variations. Very rarely are these two completely in sync. They are always off-balance and it’s what makes them so painful to watch. The series has really nurtured this aspect of them—so much that we literally begin their introduction as such. Their first meeting in the second episode-- with its first impressions and initial prejudices-- is simply humorous and wonderful. But as well, it layers their characters and exposes them at the same time.

In 1.02, the first trait we witness in Matthew is his middle class pride that I spoke of in the introduction. My absolute favorite aspect of this trait is how it is both a character triumph and a flaw. Matthew comes into this world questioning its snobbery and entitlement. While this is a positive reflection on a deeply flawed class system, what is nuanced about Matthew is that it also blinds him, as we see later with Molesley. It’s not so much that Matthew comes into this world questioning its manners and attitudes, but it’s that his snobbery of it becomes his own source of unmitigated pride. Thus in many ways, he’s not really very different from the Dowager Countess.

I say this necessarily because my favorite aspect of Matthew in the beginning of series one is how little he cares about upper class entitlements when it comes to Mary. His prejudices simply vanish the first time he sees her. It’s Matthew’s completely romantic quality that all thought of his own pride quite literally flies out the window when she’s around. He comes into Downton set against these people and their way of life, and just as he vows to “choose his own wife”, his soulmate walks in the door. All that talk about not allowing himself to get caught up in this “life” vanishes for a few minutes. Matthew is so resistant to everything about being the future Earl of Grantham, but around her, that resistance is completely lost. He allows himself to get swept up. He wants to get swept up. To me, this is why it’s so heartbreaking for him in 1.07, and why it ties so well into his line ‘you’ve shown me I’ve been living in a dream, and now it’s time to return to real life.’ The way I see it, this world was something he was afraid of, apprehensive about. In many ways, it was genuinely something he did not understand, nor want to understand. He grew to love the Crawleys and accept his position, but the position itself never mattered. What made the possibility of having this life excitable for him was that he might be able to share it with her one day. And that mere thought, the idea that she was Downton to him, that she was everything he saw in this world, is heart wrenching. It is so heart wrenching that he literally has to hightail it out of dodge in order to recuperate. As well, this all speaks volumes of why he bounced from the aristocratic haughty elegance of Mary to the middle class demure sweetness of Lavinia Swire. But of course, more on that later.

And even though Mary is resistant to the spark in the beginning, the brilliant aspect of the relationship is that the spark is only emboldened by that tension. It raises the question of why. Why do they care? What is this attraction built on? It is undeniably built on something. We can feel it, it’s just hard to definitively posit. Because I have always read them through a very Austenian perspective, I really do see them as Liz & Darcy in a lot of respects. I feel confident in saying that this perspective isn’t inaccurate. For me, the reasons why Matthew is so instantly attracted to Mary are a couple. First, I think it’s simply because Mary does embody aspects of the Hello Nurse trope. Men are helpless to fall in love with her just because she’s Lady Mary Crawley, and Matthew is no exception to the rule. Secondly, I feel like the attraction is built on that instant communication of intelligence. Matthew, an educated man, would not take on a wife who is merely a trophy. I think he actually requires an amount of conversationality in a partner. In that first meeting and later in the Andromeda/Sea Monster conversation, we the audience pick up on that. These two are intellectual equals. There is a meeting of the minds where we know that this is a match of equal strength on opposing ends. It could ignite something worth having and sharing.

When we consider Mary’s feelings for Matthew in the beginning, we know things are bound to be more complicated. This was always a hard situation for both of them, but despite how “practical” we make Mary out to be, her pragmatism is terribly muddled by her romantic heart. That’s the complexity of her character. She would like to see the world pragmatically, a series of chess moves and experimentation, but it’s not always possible for her. She sees nuance in everything, a lot of this enflamed by the Pamuk incident. I think that Matthew—for all of his romanticism— is actually more practical than her. He’s not necessarily practical in regards to action, but in spirit he certainly is. He sees the world in sets of dichotomies and thinks of morality as a binary entity. For these reasons, it’s why Matthew allows himself to fall so hard for her, because it’s just easy. But for Mary, it takes a lot more time to come to this realization. I think the moment when she was “opened up” to the possibility of Matthew was at the end of episode three when he comes to her to very sincerely express condolences over Pamuk’s death. She gives him this look, a look of simultaneous surprise, knowing, and deep appreciation. Here she has been (somewhat) genuinely horrible to this man since he has arrived, and yet, he still comes to her in complete sincerity. This is where we see that in many ways, they are the same person. Mary regards this for the first time on a subliminal level. She is an embryonic spirit of justice. She does not see class lines as having any true social bounds on who deserves what and who is better than who. She is painfully romantic deep down, someone who sees truth in work. She’s independent, she’s smart. But we know she’s trapped, and it’s caused her to be mean-spirited and snobbish at certain points. It’s caused her arrogance. She’s so encumbered by social manners and expectations that she never had a true outlet to express herself. The only way she can express herself is through trying to go against her parents by “not marrying any man she is told to.” I think Mary would be content to be a social force (thinking obviously of her life with someone like Carlisle) but even moreso, I think Mary just longs to be happy. She longs to love. So even though she initially rejects Matthew out of rebellion and haughtiness, in this moment she comes to understand a man who is kind and just, who is as independent in his thinking as she is. She sees a man who genuinely cares about her feelings—someone who doesn’t expect her to constantly give back to society but instead asks if she needs anything. She feels for the first time that someone might be able to understand her.

I feel this is a reasonable assessment considering her behavior in 1.04, where she is clearly comfortable sharing delicate details of her unhappiness to him. Hence, as series one moves forward, Mary and Matthew are revealed to each other in a number of ways that bring them closer. What I adore about Matthew is that he is one of the only characters that actually honors Mary’s anger regarding the entail situation. He genuinely feels bad, genuinely tries to see if there’s a loophole by which she could have the estate and Cora’s fortune. He does not retaliate to her anger, he does not push and shove, but he says ‘I’m sorry and I wish there was something I could do.’ It’s in episode four where Matthew starts to see Mary as a more complex being, and when we think about it, that’s actually where we began to see their relationship ignite. Matthew is always a bit daft, but I think he understands Mary in a certain way that others never can. He becomes privy to parts of her pain that others aren’t. He hears her bemoan the fact that she wishes she had a real life, perhaps work to go to or meaningful affairs to attend to. Basically, he knows that she feels her life is empty. His naturally loving nature reaches out to that. It’s why I think his proposal in 1.06 was almost partially out of his tendency towards “duty”—yes, he certainly loved her for who she was and wanted to marry her because he genuinely wanted her to be his wife, but I also think he saw himself marrying her because he knew it would be good for everyone involved. I don’t see this as necessarily a bad thing, quite the opposite really. I find it kind of sweet, but I do see it somewhat as a hurdle. For their romance to be real and effective and long lasting I think they need to marry each other for each other, and nothing else. It’s why I feel that if they had married in series one, their relationship could have hit desperate rough patches along the way. It’s why in retrospect, the emotional maelstrom of series two was so necessary.

Having discussed the beginnings of their relationship, there are two moments in particular that I would like to reflect on as I wrap this up: Pamuk, and Mary’s allusion to her and Matthew as Andromeda and the Sea Monster. Firstly, the terrible irony in this whole situation is the variable of Pamuk and the factor that he plays into their relationship. He acts as both a catalyst and a dark omen throughout both series. I do firmly believe that if it had not been for the Pamuk incident awakening Mary to how deeply unhappy she is, she never would have reached out to Matthew. I see the Mary of 1.01/1.02 as a woman dealing with oppression through snobbery because she has no other means by which she can express her bitterness. Inside lies a full beating heart, but it’s locked down. If the events of 1.03 accomplished anything, it was the epiphany of how much she truly hated her life. At last, she could see her world from a God’s eye perspective and her own life’s emptiness was made apparent to her. I do believe that if it had not been for this awakening, then her relationship with Matthew would have taken a very different course, or maybe never have ignited at all. Framing it in this manner, it’s interesting to note that while Pamuk helped to push them along, his ghost is also what put such dramatic halts in their journey. It is one of the more complicated aspects of their relationship that I thoroughly enjoy. To my mind, there is nothing static about Mary and Matthew. It is in irony like this that we see what brings them together is also what pulls them apart. What they love about each other is also what separates them. It delves back into the mystery of their relationship and our constant need to question the binding factors of these two individuals. These complications, of course, will only be exacerbated by the end of series one, which I will return to shortly.

Secondly, I think it is fairly obvious why it’s important to touch on the Greek myth Mary shares with the class. The whole scene is vital, namely because it is an entire foreshadowing of their relationship. If I can be honest, it’s probably my favorite aspect of their whole journey. The scene itself is important for establishing the banter and intelligence between Mary and Matthew, but it also reaches for a higher level on their relationship. Reflecting on this scene in regards to how we now see series one and two as a whole, it is how we come to understand first and foremost that their love is a journey. Journeys have unexpected detours; they have off-the-trail beaten paths. Often times, the road is straight forward if we read the map correctly. But sometimes you also get lost in the woods. I always feel like its Fellowes complete troll moment, his way of telling us that it’s going to all work out, it just might not be as we expected. These two will get lost in the woods quite a bit, but they are in their own way each other’s map, always steering one another back towards each other.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

On Matthew & Mary: Meta; Introduction

2012-01-17T05:26:50Z

A/N: Ahhhhhh it's here. To those of you who I told this about back in like, October (lol oops), I'll be posting the installments here. I don't know how fast I will be churning these bad boys out, but hopefully not too long. I have most of it written, it just needs severe editing and delicate meta flourishes. So here is the first part, which sort of acts like a vague prologue. This part doesn't dig too deep; it acts more as a general overview of their relationship and how I plan to lay this bitch out. So...enjoy! Maybe. Kind of. (I also am now realizing I need a Mary/Matthew icon oops).

ON MATTHEW & MARY: Meta; Introduction

*Humor me: download this song from Olafur Arnalds: Hægt, Kemur Ljósid

I honestly do not think I have ever had more ridiculous feelings for a ship, feelings of the ADKJAS’SDJK; ‘KASDKJ BN nature. I find that with all of my OTPs, save for this one, I have very cognitive and focused reasons as to why I love them. As shows develop characters and relationships, we’re meant to see reasons why they share an emotional connection to each other, these reasons growing and evolving over time. In the end, I think that with most relationships it boils down to some fact of the matter that they “complete each other”. Not out of a gross dependency mode, but in the human sense. Its life’s funny way of letting us encounter people who can embolden us, bring out the best in us, ease us, enlighten our perspectives. It’s how I feel about my other OTPs, but with Mary/Matthew, my reasons and compiled logic for loving them completely contradict my rational template for how I usually ship characters. It’s why I always find it inherently difficult to discuss Matthew and Mary because I don’t encounter this same kind of narrative very often. Their relationship isn't even necessarily a “growth” narrative either. Of course, they evolve as people, as does their relationship, but it’s not defined by a pattern, so-to-speak. They “complete each other”, but their journey to that point is not exactly definite.

When I think about why Mary and Matthew are so incomparable to other ships in this manner, I mostly believe it’s because they are so literary. Mary and Matthew exist in metaphor, to me. Andromeda and the Sea Monster, Andromeda and Perseus. They are Greek mythology, almost Julian Fellowes’ own parable of love and pain. They are evoked through pure feelings, symbols and imagery, gaps in dialogue. It allows the ship itself to become extremely personal to everyone who loves it simply because we all have to dig through the fractured pieces to decide for ourselves what it all means. Most great OTPs, even my other favorites, are evoked in this way, but not to the extent that Matthew and Mary are. These two are all about orbiting. They circle and prance, somewhat like celestial bodies that gravitate towards each other and when they get too close, our result is a cosmic explosion. They’re both good people who are flawed to varying degrees. Mary: strong, independent and inherently just, but with a tendency to lash out when cornered, a need to put up haughty and cold defenses because her social sphere has left her confused and unable to articulate the oppression she nevertheless fights against. Then we have Matthew, who is progressive and (we are led to believe) religious, a man who believes in honor and doing what is right by people, but also with a terrible stubborn streak, middle class pride, and a heart that feels emotion so painfully that he often shuts others out. If there’s one way we can characterize their perceived differences, it’s in 1.07. Matthew sees the world in two tone, black and white, whereas for Mary, she looks out into the world and sees shades of infinite grey, nuances of confusion. If I can put it rather simplistically, I think she sees nihilism where Matthew sees absolutism. No one is wrong, no one is right, they just cosmically collide. It’s what makes their relationship so dangerous, but also so heartachingly romantic. It’s where they come together and break apart that makes them one of the most fascinating ships I have ever watched.

And nevertheless, I think there’s always the question: why these two? Why are they even drawn together? What does one gain from the other? It’s something that I have always had a hard time with because there is literally no verbalization of their attraction. I actually think that "verbalization"—this need to explain attraction and show very definitive reasons as to why two people belong together—is the product of a more modern narrative. It’s one that feeds to a slightly more individualist and cynical crowd; one that believes love is possible, but only if it’s grounded in some kind of hard-nosed reality. Love and attraction can’t just exist. But to me, that’s what is beautiful about most period pieces. Downton surely follows in that sense, even despite its very modern writing structure. There is not one moment where Mary and Matthew explicitly dictate in any manner of words why they love or need each other. It’s this narrative where they just do, and the reasons are all bottled up within class lines and Edwardian repression, laced within the troubles of a changing world and a longing to find stability and happiness within it. Everything we take away from these two about their attraction is held in looks, pained glances, hurtful stares, lusty eyes. It is, as stated, tangled in metaphor and mythology. This is a world where a stuffed dog speaks more than they do. They are, quite simply, the sublime—that idea which can only be understood on a higher plane of thought. When we take words and pen to describe it, we find it beyond cognitive abilities. They are not bound by the limits of language. And to me, that is the definition of romance, of the romantic as we know it. We can describe it as it evolves, how they come together and possibly why, but there are always these massive gaps that our own brains have to tease out. It’s why they are alternatively the greatest ship and the most frustrating. As well, it is certainly served by the time period, where life itself was a performance art. What I enjoy so thoroughly about Mary and Matthew is that that love precedes need. They don't discover a need for each other and base that love upon it. Rather, series one sees them coming to fall for each other despite the fact that they really do not need each other at all. They find friendship in each other, but there's nothing particularly pulling them together because they need to cling to the other. It's why series two is so intricately beautiful to me. Out of that love comes need. They come to need each other because they love each other, not the other way around. For me personally, it makes their relationship more inherently meaningful, simply because it's not based on anything concrete. It has value in itself. But of course, as their relationship is, it makes everything all the more complicated.

That being said, I do have my own interpretation of events. Despite minor quibbles in series two (most of which were rectified by the Christmas Special itself), I think this relationship is stunning in its journey. As someone who desperately roots for them both as individuals and as two halves of a whole, I find that their journey does what any great romance should do—it allows for them to experience pain in frighteningly real ways, but coming to be healed by the spirit of union. For me, Mary and Matthew are the fairy tale built on grim grounds. They represent the idealistic version of love that crosses time and place and perceived boundaries, but it always stays fundamentally real to the heart of suffering. The coming of their union represents not just the journey of how they reached each other, but a journey of how they each reached themselves. To me, that’s the best kind of love story. Love stories should not just be about how two people come together, but it needs to be about how two individuals grapple with self-examination and move into a happy social sphere. Mary and Matthew’s journey is representative of this—two people who over the course of eight years saw the worst of each other and the best of each other, and in bridging the gap to heal themselves, they built the bridge towards each other. It’s why the Christmas Special is utterly perfect to me, and certainly why I regard their love story as one of my favorites in any medium of fiction.

So over the course of the Downton hiatus, I will return in individual chapters to look at this relationship, break it down to its emotional core in the best way I know how, and try to understand how Matthew to evolved from the Sea Monster and into Perseus. UNTIL NEXT TIME, GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.
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*This song is what I was listening to when I started writing this, mostly because the melody of it actually is Mary and Matthew to me. It begins with the melancholy tickle of piano notes (series 1), eventually rising to be accompanied by strings in a more powerful bit of melancholia (series 2), only to rise into a hopeful rhythm that gives the feeling of the beginning of a triumph (2.08, beginning of Christmas Special), and alas, it ends much where it began, very simple notes, but only this time, a little bit happier and a little less sad (end of Christmas Special).

oh shit intro post

2011-05-14T18:47:33Z

THIS JOURNAL IS FRIENDS ONLY.
→NOW ADDING.

Comment below if you want to get physical.