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The Ruined Abbe


pippychick

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Author: pippychick
Title: The Ruined Abbé
Summary: The Marquis de Sade finds himself in the vicinity of a potential conquest.
Feedback: Yes, please.
Fandom: Quills
Pairing: Sade/Coulmier, Coulmier/Madeleine
Warnings: Abuse, Anal, Angst, BDSM, Bi, B-Mod, BP, CBT, CR, D/s, Dom, Exhib, Fet, Fingering, HJ, Humil, M/M, M/s, MCD, Oral, Other, Rim, S&M, Solo, Spank, Tort, Violence, Voy... and Blasphemy, Bullying, probably more, but I've start warning on a chapter-by-chapter basis.

Solo story or chaptered story: Chaptered.

URL: http://movies.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=600094870

As this story goes on, I keep trying to understand why I'm writing it, you can tell this from my ridiculous author's notes. I don't really have any idea why, except that it wants to be written. Aren't all stories like that?

Anyway, if you read, I hope you enjoy it. And if you enjoy it, I hope you'll consider leaving concrit, especially if you think I've got something wrong, or not gone into enough detail, or missed something out.

Thanks,

dafdes

Edited by dafdes
correction
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I’m going to write down some thoughts on this story’s process and the ending, so if you’re following the story and want to avoid spoilers, don’t read any further.

Coming Soon!

Something I personally detest, though I’m quite sure some people like it, or it wouldn’t exist. And I know it’s a bodily fluid, but eww… just the thought makes me want to curl up in a little ball on my chair.

In fact it’s the same reaction I have during occasional episodes of Call the Midwife.

There are worse things I’d happily write instead. Murder, rape, incest – all of those would be easier, and predictable. Why on earth would I write it? Never write with a Marquis de Sade muse: he’s very cruel. First, I will have to read it, over and over again, many examples of it.

Git.

I don’t even know what it’s called, and so far I refuse to research it.

But seriously, I know why. I have to write something I hate so that I can write about that experience. When I finally leave Coulmier alone, he’ll be where he was at the end of the film, desperate to write, to add to Sade’s collection of stories. Can we seriously think the character enjoys that fate? That he’d choose it? I think Coulmier would really rather not. That is why I must do it.

Having figured that out doesn’t make it any more palatable.

I don’t write like him. In the sense that as you read Sade, some (actually a lot) of the things he writes are more like reports than fiction. He tells you, and shows you, but he doesn’t always delve very deeply into the psychology of his characters. He delves deeply into the psychology of his readers. No two people would get the same experience from reading him.

For instance, there’s an amazing amount of murder and incest in ‘Florville and Courval’ but it’s not the characters who really question themselves. It’s you, because you know things that the characters don’t, and you get to observe their reactions when they find out the truth.

No, I don’t write like him. I wish I did. I wish I could write something perfect where, no matter where someone draws their own personal line, it’s always a knife-edge between titillation and horror.

As it is, I must write the way I do it, which means I must thoroughly understand the conflict in Coulmier’s psyche, so that I can put it across. If I succeed at that, it will have to be enough.

And so here I am, killing time instead of doing what I have to do.

I swear, just the thought of it…

Git.

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Ok, there have been a couple of new chapters since I last posted on this thread, the last one in particular was quite tricky to write.

I really did come close to giving up on this. Basically, I’ve given myself the challenge of writing some of Sade’s perversions in a presentable way, and you won’t be surprised to learn that’s impossible.

There’s been a dominant blasphemous theme to the last few chapters, and I’ve found myself wondering what Sade would be so scathing of if he were writing today. Although, given all the scandals involving the Catholic Church, he’d probably still have a good go at them.

On the face of it, it’s easy to imagine that if you could get a time machine and bring him here, he’d be very pleased with this world. But then, dig a little deeper and I begin to wonder.

It’s a promiscuous world that has sex on every billboard, true. But it’s a world of slut-shaming, of sexual images that are so sterile, packaged and perfect they’re barely human. It’s a world where even the darker variants of our fantasies are sanitised (fluffy handcuffs, anyone?), instead of existing as they are, as a point on a spectrum that begins with desire, and ends in destruction.

Anyway, enough of that. If you read, I hope you enjoy it, and if you enjoy it, I hope you’ll consider leaving a few words.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, there is a new chapter up, but if anyone is reading this topic, before you rush off to read it, please do take a moment to read my extended warning.

The chapter contains heterosexual content. It is necessary for Coulmier to write something, and since he is to continue Sade’s work, I have attempted to make the original story as authentic as possible. I also opted to emulate the lighter fiction Sade wrote because it makes for a better contrast.

While this story is essentially slash, the original story Coulmier writes is not. For all that the real Marquis de Sade was bisexual, he had a lot of time for female characters in his stories, and it would be remiss of me to consciously imitate his style while ignoring the kind of content he wrote.

So, you are now thoroughly forewarned. Twice.

I really enjoyed writing this chapter, because it was a challenge. I hope that if you don't mind the content, that you'll enjoy reading it.

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Hi again,

I thought I would just use this space to keep some of my thoughts on the story, and on Sade and Coulmier, because I can see the end, and it’s not pretty. It’s more or less a lot of opinionated tl;dr, but I can’t help it. This is what happens when I have to read a lot in order to research a story.

I’ve written an essay on Sade and Coulmier, and who they were really, and to be fair the Quills film doesn’t do either of them any justice at all. I’m not going to reproduce that essay here, but it’s worth noting I have a lot of respect for the real Coulmier and I think it needs to be said.

The inmates of Charenton Asylum were encouraged to be creative. He encouraged Sade to write. They had a theatre, and dinner parties, and most likely a million other little things that promoted mental well-being and stability. All this, in the middle of the eighteenth century. Coulmier was a man so far in advance of his time it beggars belief. He was usurped at Charenton by Royer-Collard, for political reasons, but he and Sade remained friends right up until the Marquis’ death.

Coulmier also had disabilities of his own, and while Quills might have employed Joaquin Phoenix to portray him, the real man is referred to in at least one historical source as a hunchback dwarf, which makes his pioneering approach to treatment in the field of mental health all the more admirable. There’s evidence Sade felt that same admiration for him having struggled to overcome his own difficulties, and then to help others.

As for Sade, I’ve already mentioned in one of my story’s author notes that he had a four year relationship with a laundry lass at Charenton before his death. Her name was Magdeleine. I know what a lot of people say about his writing, even those who’ve read it. So many people claim he had a poor attitude towards women, but I don’t believe that, and I’ve read the worst of it.

He spent so long in prison, and he seems to have had an unusually high sex drive. All of that enforced isolation and celibacy (especially when he was younger, in the Bastille) must have made him a little mad. Honestly, there’s no wonder some of his ideas were so dark. But, had he not been incarcerated, then he might never have written anything of note, and he’d have passed into history, famous only for evading the guillotine during the Terror.

I don’t see sexism in his work – I see feminism. When he urges his characters and readers to sexual freedom, he doesn’t stop with the men. Today women aren’t free like that, and I kind of think we should be. Regardless, to return to Magdeleine for a final thought. One of the last useful things Sade did was teach her, a common laundress, to read and write. A man who hated women wouldn’t have done that.

Having read his essay to novel writers, I’m not sure he would have approved of fanfiction. But erotic fiction written by women, including and probably especially slash – he’d have got a real kick out of knowing about that.

There end my useless ramblings.

dafdes

Edited by dafdes
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