sunfright | sunday.

THE LADY OF THE CAMELLIAS by Alexandre Dumas fils

Because you were the only person who ever made me feel instantly that I could think and speak freely. Everyone who clusters around girls like me analyzes our every word, trying to draw consequence for themselves from our most insignificant actions. Naturally, we don't have friends. We have selfish lovers who spend their fortunes not on us, as they say, but on their own vanity. With men like that, we have to be lighthearted when they are joyful, in fine fettle when they want to have supper, in a skeptical mood when they are. We're forbidden to have any feelings of our own, on pain of being jeered at and having our credit ruined. We no longer belong to ourselves. We are not beings, but things. We are first in men's pride, last in their esteem. We have female friends, but they are friends like Prudence, former kept women who retain a taste for extravagance that their age will no longer afford them. So they become our friends, or, really, our dining companions. Their friendship goes as far as utility, but never reaches the point of disinterestedness. They will never give you any but mercenary advice. It matters little to them if we have ten lovers or more, so long as they get a few dresses or a bracelet out of it, and can go out in our carriages from time to time, and come to the theater and sit in our boxes. They get our bouquets from the night before, and they borrow our cashmere shawls. They never render us any services, however small, without getting twice what it's worth. You saw it yourself, the night when Prudence brought me the six thousand francs I'd begged her to go ask the duke to give me. She borrowed five hundred francs from me that she'll never give back, or that she'll make up in hats that will never leave their boxes. So we cannot have - or rather, I cannot have - any happiness but one, which is, unhappy as I sometimes am, in poor health as I always am, to find a man who is of superior enough character that he will not demand a full account of my life, and will love me more for myself than for my body. I had found that man in the duke, but the duke is old, and old age can neither protect nor console. I had thought I could accept the life that he wished for me; but what do you want? I was perishing of boredom, and as long as you're going to be consumed, you might as well hurl yourself into a fire, rather than slowly suffocate from coal smoke. So, I met you, you - young, ardent, happy - and tried to make you into the man I had longed for in the middle of my noisy solitude. What I loved in you was not the man you were, but the man you might yet become. You refuse to accept this role, you reject it as unworthy of you, you are a vulgar lover. Do as the others do - pay me and let's speak of this no more.

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Some funny edits (not mine) from the Paris Opera Ballet's Lady of the Camellias (my forever favourite) and they describe me pretty accurately, tbh.

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A classical playlist with rain for mournful minds

Can't believe I didn't discover Dark Academia before. Where have I been? Living under a rock? I'm going to be listening to this on repeat while writing.

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WHAT'S GOING ON IN RL
So, after I had ECT therapy all those years ago, my concentration has been kind of botched, so reading is something I do very rarely, at least novels. Poetry and short stories, better, but novels are a lot. I had a surge while reading Call Me By Your Name and Find Me last year where I actually felt back to my usual reading self again, but it comes and goes and have been gone for months. However, yesterday I picked up Alexandre Dumas fils' The Lady of the Camellias and started reading - and I can't stop. It helps I know the story from other types of media, it helps I've read it before, but this is still me, reading a book! Feels so good.

I've gotten entirely fixated on the character called Julie Duprat, because she isn't in the ballet version which is my go-to version in general. And reading about her, I just had this old fandom-feeling of what if? What if she and Marguerite had soemthing, or at least Julie had something for her? Who stays with a dying woman until her last breath and arranges for her burial and to pass on her possessions to the man she loved? You have to be some kind of friend. Or a girlfriend. Or someone extremely dedicated due to your own feelings.

So, I'm planning on writing a fanfic about that, just to get my itch scratched. Haven't written that kind of fanfic in a decade, pretty much. I feel all fandom-full. ♥

Other than that, I'm getting nervous about my doctor's appointment tomorrow. I suddenly had doubts about whether it was by phone or I had to be at the clinic, but fortunately it's late enough in the day that I can call and ask about it. Just to make sure. I'm pretty sure it's by phone, but since it's my yearly follow-up, I really don't remember how we usually do that.

We'll see. Until then, nerves are gonna kill me. I hate uncertainty about appointments and scheduling stuff.

Today is just going to be me reading (and hopefully finishing) Lady of the Camellias and then see what I feel like doing with that.

Oh, and puzzles with my girlfriend!

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WHAT'S GOING ON IN RP
I kind of oopsed a Julie Duprat account (

pluralfirstperson) by compulsion after I started rereading The Lady of the Camellias. Not sure I'll do anything RP-related with her, to be fair, but I am definitely going to try and maybe write this epic fanfiction that's shaping up inside my head for the

genprompt_bingo. Love this book so much and really happy to be back to reading it, haven't read it in whole for years. If I could find someone to play Julie against, I would be really happy, but historical characters never fare very well on memes and I'm not going to modern AU her. Just not the same. I need my historical queer ladies fix covered, okay?