(via vega-ofthe-lyre)
#in projects other than YOUR LIFE you mean #this louche time-traveller and his ridiculous face #remember when the only thing i wrote in rosaline lungs was him kissing her on the face and her freaking out utterly in the stacks? FUN. #but fine #like i would deny that he was a highwayman on the make #eoin macken #OOH FIONN CALVAGH OOH #rosaline lungs #i'm a ridiculous person
European Woman Examines Egyptian Hieroglyphics ca. 1900
© Sean Sexton
HATSHEPSUT CANON. it’s familiar territory!
(via vega-ofthe-lyre)
*chinhands at Isabel*
The Rosaline Lungs Chronicles: THROUGH NATURE TO ETERNITY
After successfully bringing down the Borgia knot (albeit not wholly of her own doing or of her own volition—no she’s not still dreaming of that one time she landed in il Valentino’s bed why do you ask), Rosaline Lungs is slotted back into research and Victoriana, figuring she’ll kick back, write a thesis, and never have to risk life and limb in a pre-plumbing period. Thing is, she’s also stuck watching Fionn’s back—whose probation is much stricter than hers, and whose corresponding irritation is much vaster. While it’s not a bad back to be watching—
No. No, we’re not talking about that.
It’s time to take a break from men, and apparently the time-space troubles agree: when a rift in the continuum starts to erupt around the suffrage conventions in turn-of-the-century America, it’s off to Gilded Age New York for Rosaline and Fionn, stuck in a mutual partnership of skill and legitimacy. They find the chronological fragmentation is happening around psychic political oddball Victoria Woodhull, whose liberation is coming from all the wrong places: namely, the Bellwether heiress smoking cigarettes and spouting dialectic in her living room. Esme (who should be in custody, but it’s not like Roz tried that hard, honestly) tells them to listen up and they do, but it’s when she says that she plans to take the United States presidency in the example of “the Egyptian queens” that their ears prick up: looks, then, like they’ve a Hatshepsut to be visiting (the one and only female pharaoh—honestly, from a historical perspective, Roz cynically expects her to be annoyed at stolen thunder) and a matrilineal pharaonic dynasty to unmake. Except Vickie insists on coming with, dying to meet her heroine, and when the time travelers institute a scheme (with the help of her charming biographer Theodore Tilton) to set up her sister Tennessee as Victoria in disguise, they lose Esme, and when they try to follow her chronological ley line they end up in Augusta Leigh’s backyard. Not wholly unsurprised to see them (the sheer amount of tinkering that has gone into George Gordon Byron’s history and future is unprecedented to the point of absurdity) but lonely during the Summer With No Sun, she appoints herself ensign and refuses them entry to Byron’s Egyptology collection unless she comes along as well.
So, with their motley troupe of fierce bitches at their backs, Fionn and Rosaline finally land in Hatshepsut’s palace at Djeser-Djeseru and into the lap of the conflict between Hatshepsut and her nephew Thutmosis. Caught between intellectually wanting to restore history to its rightful order and certain moral conflicts (the allure of protofeminism and, frankly, the fact that Thutmosis is kind of an asshole—not that Hatshepsut is a particular peach herself), the time travelers end up stuck in chaotic limbo, and there’s enough anachronistic dialectic flying around and inappropriate sexual potential to destroy a pyramid.
Which is, of course, what happens.
So this is…not going to end well, then.
STARRING:
Piper Perabo as ROSALINE LUNGS
Eoin Macken as FIONN CALVAGH
Ruth Wilson as ESME BELLWETHER
Rebecca Hall as VICTORIA CLAFLIN WOODHULL
Felicity Jones as TENNIE C. CLAFLIN
Philip Winchester as THEODORE TILTON
Michelle Dockery as AUGUSTA LEIGH
Indira Varma as HATSHEPSUT
Oded Fehr as THUTMOSISWith cameos by Natalie Dormer as ANNE BOLEYN and Holliday Grainger as LUCREZIA BORGIA
#rosaline lungs #what the actual hell is wrong with me #you know what i said about this being a mini? well it is based off books in my head (obvs) and each season is like two books and that is why these are so damn ridiculous #negl i am RIDICULOUSLY pleased by my vickie + ted casting. yay historicals that no one else cares about. i would just dreamcast the life and times of victoria woodhull but trolololo i don't feel like casting the entirety of the seneca falls convention. womp. so instead IT GOES HERE. #this is one half i love fierce bitches in history and one half i really fucking hate anachrolib feminism and want to make a lot of fun of it. and of course two halves i am out of my damn mind. so. #(true life: claire clairmont does not appear in the fierce bitch special because i refuse to cast her as anyone but holliday. whoops.)
The Rosaline Lungs Chronicles: O, CURSED SPITE!
All is not well in the office of Injoint Firm Chronospatial Negotiations. Their best field agent, one Fionn Calvagh, has gone rogue and is now in cahoots with known time-space felon Esme Bellwether (heiress to the Bellwether fortune). To curb their chaotic joint through time and space, the head office has tapped Rosaline Lungs, a self-effacing bookworm trapped in Victoriana: not the likeliest candidate for the job, one would think, but ah, did we mention that she was once Ms. Bellwether’s dearest friend and may or may not have been fucking Mr. Calvagh?
Well. Was definitely nearly on the precipice of fucking. Or something like.
So, with the firm’s hand pushing firmly at her back, meant to bring back her coworkers or earn a space on the temporal blacklist alongside them, Rosaline hurtles headlong into the Renaissance. First up is France, 1520, where Rosaline must attempt to foil Esme’s plot to kidnap Anne Boleyn from the French court while endeavouring herself not to end up in Francis I of France’s welcoming bed. Yet when they end up on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, they notice something very much amiss: France is fortifying its southern borders. Against Italy—or more precisely, against the King of Italy, (the middle-aged but still apparently robust and terrifying) Cesare Borgia.
Oh.
And it’s off some twenty years back, into the papal palace, where the four of them (Roz, Esme, and a deeply bewildered Anne and Francis) find both the Borgia nest to navigate (featuring both the delicious and ruthless Cesare and sly, lovely Lucrezia—his queen regent if they’re not careful), and Fionn in the center of it all.
Rosaline has no idea how she’ll explain any of this to the firm, and the clock is ticking…
(Backwards.)STARRING:
Piper Perabo as ROSALINE LUNGS
Eoin Macken as FIONN CALVAGH
Ruth Wilson as ESME BELLWETHER
Louis Garrel as FRANCIS I OF FRANCE
Natalie Dormer as ANNE BOLEYN
François Arnaud as CESARE BORGIA
Holliday Grainger as LUCREZIA BORGIA
#this is what i do instead of the biopic meme #whatever whatever i'm fabulous. #rosaline lungs #i am feeling that this is actually a wacky bbc miniseries more than a movie i mean please there will be second seasons slash volumes; i am seeing victoria woodhull and claire clairmont and feminist meta in volume two OOOBVIOUSLY #why is it four in the morning why am i pretending i am coherent why do i exist at alllllll
hotelsongs replied to your post: BABKA, Y U NO HERE THO. I listened to “Xmas Cake” like ten times last night…
I FEEL THAT WE SHOULD DEVELOP PERSONAL CANON FOR HER. She sounds Pratchett-y and Victorian and is clearly a time traveller, ja?YES.
Ms Lungs is an agent sent back in time by the Powers That Be to correct Cesare’s life course to ensure that he dies when he’s supposed to and Italy doesn’t become a unified state before its time. (They’ve had trouble with him before, you see; there was that one time when he ignored all their best efforts to keep him on track and ended up setting himself up as a King-Pope with his sister as co-ruler and they fucked up the entirety of world history in the process, and can you just imagine the paperwork on that particular bump in chronology? They don’t want that to happen again, now, do they.)
Pros: no corsetry, no button boots, Cesare ends up being one hot fuck (it was an accident) (she swears), and it’s all providing Rosaline with abundant anthropological material to finish up her research paper and gain her doctorate so she doesn’t have to go on miserable junior field assignments like this anymore and can kick back in that nice director’s office she’s been eying.
Cons: she’s fallen in love with Cesare along the way, and she finds herself loath to take him down when the time comes.
But that viral agent is still waiting in its vial in her left boot, and the clock is ticking, and she’s got her bosses breathing down her neck.
What’s a girl to do?
let the less-loving one be me
ASK & SUBMIT & INTRO & LJ
queens and huntsmen, physicality stanning, theater feelings, hilarious myopia, nonstop verbosity, delusions of grandeur. fictional moral compass not found.
