#Idk I always found it a bit fascinating how it doesn’t seem to have dawned on most people including his fans | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cozycryptidcorner · 4 years

Photo

Here is a monster match for the wonderful @rofax!

“Aquarius Sun/Virgo Moon/Taurus Rising. Little bit of an astrology nerd. I like to learn about it. I also think it’s totally made up and makes no logical/scientific sense, but is also right basically 100% of the time. Idk how much you know about astrology but basically I am an eccentric bitch who wants to save the world, is emotionally precise and perfectionist, and seems to really like material things and food! WAHOO. People say my sense of humor is the best thing about me and/or I make them laugh the most, big old bleeding heart, especially for animals. Easily overstimulated ): Anxiety and ADHD are a bitch lol. No self esteem to speak of. I am an atrocity before god. Speaking of: very quiet convert to and practitioner of old (would now be considered) pagan faith. Multiple gods, ancestor worship, local spirits, etc.”

You have been matched with a Huldrekall, the shy, beautiful male counterpart of the alluring Huldra. Contrary to popular belief brought to you by the patriarchy, the Huldrekall are not, in fact, shriveled and disgusting to look at, it’s just that straight men don’t like feeling sexually threatened, not even by forest spirits that they don’t ever see. Like the females, the Huldrekall are almost intangibly beautiful, with soft, glossy hair and large, innocent eyes, and have mossy, hollowed out backs. While they might easily cover up their backs with clothing, the tails are a bit less easy to hide, as the Huldrekall and Huldras use them for balance, and thus must shift them about while moving.

Like other forest spirits, the Huldra and Huldrekall can be found among the trees at a reasonable distance from human society. Oh, they do sometimes come out of their hiding places, put on a dress, and mingle, in the guise of a mysterious visitor or a passing traveler, but their home will always be back in the forest, no matter how many broken hearts they might leave behind. Besides the occasional affair, the Huldra and Huldrekall have a symbiotic relationship with coal burners, as they are willing to watch over the kilns at night in exchange for human food and the occasional piece of clothing. The coal burners don’t get the privilege of seeing their helpers, though, but sleep easy knowing their equipment is being cared for.

Shockingly, the Huldra and Huldrekall seem to respond well to things like good manners, polite exchanges, and positive interactions, almost like they are people with thoughts and opinions of their own. Though, when crossed, the Huldra and Huldrekall are terrifying when they want to be, merciless, cold, just as a human who has been horribly slighted might act. You think that their kind are, well, people, though that’s not what the fear-mongering, power-hungry humans would have anyone believe. Despite the lower, working-class people out in the country knowing better, the city folk are quick to think that what is unknown must be evil.

You met your Huldrekall while you were out gathering herbs and flowers, deep within the forest. He was laying out in the sun on a large tree root, back towards the sky, face nestled in his arms. It takes you exactly three seconds to realize what you’re looking at before you manage to step on a stray stick, the noise snapping loud enough to make your hair stand on end. Your Huldrekall sits up like a shot, his wide, sparkling eyes a light, dusty magenta, and he looks at you, fear dancing across his face, but something else, too. Curiosity? Fascination? You can’t tell before he scampers his tall but lithe body up the tree and through the leaves, hiding from you in the greenery, yet still clearly present as you try to go about your day.

Your Huldrekall follows you as you try to focus on the herbs you need, clinging to the bark of the trees like a child might hang on their mother. At first, you try ignoring him, thinking that he’s only keeping an eye on you because of fear, but there doesn’t seem to be a single essence of tenseness in his body as he slides down from one branch to another. While you focus solely on pretending to not notice his movements, he slowly, tentatively approaches, you can feel his unabashed stare burning through your back. Still, you don’t turn around, nor give him any hint that you know that he is there, because a part of you is just as interested in him as he seemingly is in you, and you don’t want to scare him off.

While you can hear him stiffen every time you accidentally make a move too sudden for his comfort, you don’t realize how close to you he really is until you risk a glance over your shoulder. He’s right there, balanced carefully on a low hanging branch, watching you work with fascinated eyes. He also doesn’t run when he catches you looking at him, either, which you suppose is a step in the right direction, he only flinches back ever so slightly. But he’s still there.

You have to go back home eventually, even though you would like for a moment so magical as this to continue on. As you walk back to the forest’s edge, your friend disappears along the way, slinking back through the trees. You don’t even know that he’s gone until you turn around to look for him, finding nothing more than the grass and leaves, and you feel… well, disappointed, you suppose, but unsurprised. Still, your work will have you back in the forest to forage again soon enough, and a part of you hopes that you will see him when that time comes.

He finds you when it does come, in the dusty rose of the early twilight sky, looking for the petal of a particular flower that only blooms during the first light of dawn. Your Huldrekall approaches with more openness this time around, no longer poised and ready flee. There are times when he is… very close, looking over your shoulder, cheek almost touching yours, becoming more and more difficult to ignore. Almost as though he’s suddenly decided to demand attention, yet is still too shy to put anything to words.

You’re on your knees, fingers digging through the ground in search of certain roots. He’s mirroring you, sitting across the thicket, hands carefully to the side as he watches you work. Absentmindedly, you begin speaking, not really sure what to do with yourself or the strange silence. “This is used for joint pain, you grind it up into a paste, then rub it in the inflamed areas.”

“Really?” He asks, the first thing he ever says to you. His voice is smooth, soft, like a sip of cool water on a hot day, and a little tingle runs down your spine.

“Y-yes,” you manage to gain your footing again, “it can ease stomach pains too if chewed and swallowed in low quantities.”

He’s a quick learner, you’ll give him that. It probably helps that his curiosity seems insatiable, and once he starts talking, he shows no signs of stopping. The chatting isn’t unwelcome, though, and you find him to be a good conversationalist, despite his immediate lack of knowledge of anything outside the forest. Well, he actually has much information when it comes to the ancient magic of the trees themselves, even showing you how to gently tease a bit of energy from the bark if needed. Prayers must be said before and after, as the spirits of the forest don’t take kindly to pillaging.

Your Huldrekall is remarkably bright, too, able to pick up your tips and tricks with little to no trouble, able to remember just about everything that comes out of your mouth. All the little remedies and medicines you make don’t seem to matter much to him or his kind, though, because of their little magic tricks that seem to do the same, just in a different manner of execution. Still, though, he’s interested in “human way of things,” as he calls it, copying your work as you forage and search for different plants. One day, though, you go home and find a little bouquet of plants tied together with a vine, a collection that you don’t remember assembling.

You’ve started making a pretty penny selling roots and herbs from the deeper center of the forest since your kind doesn’t like going very far passed the outlying trees. Thanks to your magical guide, though, you’re able to venture out much deeper than you might risk by yourself, without having to worry about finding your way back. You could blindfold your Huldrekall, shake him about, and drag him through the trees and vines for miles, and he’d still be able to lead you back to the village where you live. It’s rather convenient, you suppose, but you don’t let anyone know just how easy it is for you, people pay you more if you act like you almost died by some giant, carnivorous flower mere hours before.

The gifts keep appearing. No longer in your basket, sometimes you find a pretty stone or dried blossom in your pockets, now, too, and though you try to figure out how he managed to slip them there without noticing, you can’t. You keep everything in a little box, pressing any flowers carefully between books of medicine, and polishing the stones if you get the chance. After letting the gifts pile up a bit, you decide to return the favor, getting a little knick-knack that you’ve kept lying around your home. You don’t really have anything you can slip it in since your Huldrekall is… well, naked, so you cut out the third party and give him the gift point-blank.

He’s enthralled by it, and by the seeming lack of shyness on your part. Even though it’s just a little cheap object you’ve managed to pick up sometime in your past, he acts like it might be worth its weight in gold. While you don’t really know what he does with it, you suppose that he must have a nest of some kind, but after that day, you begin to see more of his kind out of the corner of your eye. Up in the trees, hiding between leaves, watching with careful, weary eyes. Like him, though, they warm up to you eventually, some taking longer than others.

You fell asleep, perhaps by accident, one evening. Last night and the night before had been late ones, so your brain is clouded and your movements sluggish. In your head, you only meant to lay among the flowers for a few moments, just to restore a bit of your strength, but after you open your eyes, the sun is in an entirely different position in the sky. Your Huldrekall is nearby, sitting atop a log, his vulnerable back facing you as he plays lookout. He looks back when he hears you stirring, offering a reassuring, sweet smile. You lay your head back down and continue resting, feeling the warmth of safety emanating from him.

Sometime after that, he started to gently tug at your hand when you leave the forest, a little, reassuring squeeze, one that you don’t find unwelcome. Once, he follows you through the town, wearing fairly clean clothes from god knows where, and spends the night at your home. People look and people talk, but no one’s whispers bother you or your business, and they sure as hell don’t bother your Huldrekall. His spirit is free and magnetic, those same people who would demonize you for fraternizing outside your species soon become enthralled in his stories and words. Maybe you are a little jealous of all the attention he gets, but he makes it clear that he only has eyes for you.

The old gods in the forest are long forgotten by man, but not by your Huldrekall or his kind. They do a sort of worship that must have existed since the dawn of time, dancing and singing towards the moon whenever it is full. You get invited soon after your acceptance by his people, and even though you are nothing more than a quiet, interested viewer at first, that is quick to change. Eventually, you end up holding hands with other Huldra, aiming your face towards the sky and singing a hymn made with a language so old that the words themselves hold power.

#exophilia #monster match #huldra #huldrekall

44 notes · View notes

lesceriises · 4 years

Photo

—— carlota ninette

CHARACTER AVAILABLE?: YES PINTEREST AVAILABLE?: YES FULL BIO AVAILABLE: YES. the (unfinished) bio bellow is based on a fantasy setting. in a real life setting carlota’s mother didn’t disappear she died of childbirth complications. also if you have a muse you think would fit any of the characters mentioned in her bio and would like to write them... i'm game if you are. NOTES: if you have a muse you think would fit any of the characters mentioned in her bio and would like to write them... i'm game if you are.

IDENTITY

FULL NAME:

AGE: verse dependent

GENDER IDENTITY: female, she/her

SEXUAL IDENTITY: heterosexual

IDENTIFYING TRAITS:

sociable, bubbly, energetic, romantic, intuitive, impulsive, kind, compassionate, audacious, youthful, low-key very sad and depressed, curious, passionate, slightly ditzy, well meaning, romantic, at times speaks without thinking, used to be very gullible growing up, insecure, authentic, bad liar, self-deprecating (particularly as of late)

OCCUPATION: verse dependent

OTHER DEVELOPED VERSES: real life, asoiaf, harry potter [x], historical

APPEARANCE

HEIGHT: ‎5 feet 5 inches (1.70 m)

HAIR & EYE COLOR: brown & brown

SENSE OF STYLE: enjoys looking stylish but values comfort above all else. doesn’t follow fashion trends but enjoys playing with styles. has worn pant suits, bowties, and ties to several events. she often opts for comfortable flats (even trainers when she was younger) when wearing long dresses that cover her feet.

TATTOOS: 2 pretty much always covered. 1 dainty lavender tattoo under her left breast, 1 small conch shell on the inside of her left arm

FACE CLAIM: lily james, dakota johnson, camilla luddington, idk man

RELATIONSHIPS

PARENTS:

terezia and henrique

SIBLINGS:

OTHER NOTABLE FAMILY:

manuel (paternal uncle)

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: verse dependent

CHILDREN: verse dependent. for the sake of practicality usually none. there’s a verse where she has a step-child though.

BASIC BIO

when terezia was seven, she had a vision. they came and went in her family, but terezia only had a couple through her life. she saw herself saying goodbye to a man and knowing it was the last time. when the time came should she choose to stay, she knew she would be gone before her time.

( a life time later she will be sitting in the parlor a hot summer morning, looking at her husband waving him goodbye, and as the realization bubbles up to the surface of her brain she will want to stand and tell him to hold on for just a moment, narrow the space between them and hold him tight.

but that’s not how it’s supposed to happen so she won’t. she’ll do as she saw when she was a child, bringing her palm to her lips and blowing him a kiss before he walks down the lavish corridor out the grand door. and she will eat her breatfast, and she will play with her children, and she will put on her hat and go for a walk in the sand, and then she will enter the lighthouse and that will be the end of that.

for better or for worse, terezia has never been afraid of the unknown.)

// DARLING. DEAREST. DEAD. //

most of them don't want her there. a beautiful, poised, and compassionate but quirky woman who is fascinated by the things that so often scare others. she'll casually speak of death while tending to her flowers, she'll wear black to the beach and ask "can i try?" when she sees locals working on their traditional crafts. her curiosity has always come first, her fears and judgement later. she knows they think he deserves someone better. but they picked each other, all the way back to when they were sixteen, and for them, that's enough. adversity and disapproval was but a pebble in their shoes.

(she knows he's the one when he talks about the old neglected building at the edge of his home overlooking the sea.)

to henrique there was never a doubt that, if she'd have him, he would spend the rest of his life alongside her. if others feared she wasn't good enough for him, henrique worried he would never be worthy enough of her, and that she would end up stuck in a life she deep down deemed too boring and formal.

even when they were only sixteen, terezia was quick to remind him that that's not only his choice.

( "sometimes i think i'm cursed", he confides in her one day, "i have plenty of luck for the both of us." she replies.)

they raise a close-knit family - a little too close-knit some would say, but there's a kind of paranoia in the back of their brain (they know not everyone cares for terezia, and henrique was nearly taken from his parents as a child and with his eldest and only brother being disowned a lot of resentment lingers in the air). they like it though, and their children like it too.

// I MUST BE A MERMAID. I HAVE NO FEAR OF DEPTHS AND A FEAR OF SHALLOW LIVING. //

when ninette is born she already has four siblings to keep her company. she doesn't know how not to be a family person - how not to be surrounded by people. at times her parents' peculiar ways felt suffocating to her, and for a long time, ninette struggled to fully grasp why her parents always want to know where their children were and who they were with.

her innate almost childlike passion and curiosity for life as well as her casual lively demeanor have always been both a blessing and a curse and often landed into trouble. she’s well-meaning, always, but sometimes speaks without thinking or does things impulsively. she’s a little bit air-headed and selfish in this manner, and her emotions and feelings often control her more than she controls them.

still, she has three older brothers with very strong personalities so from a very early age she’s been trying to keep up with them and showing them that girls can do everything boys can. she’s never been rebellious or assertive by nature, although she likes to make bold choices and statements at times, but having a lot of brothers just forced those sides of her to develop.

ninettea can be an incredibly stubborn person.

- - - when ninette was 6, tereza gave birth to martim. it was an exciting occasion, and ninette was overjoyed about having a baby around.

the first time ninette felt true fear and hesitation in her life was when her mother asked her if she would like to hold her brother. he looked like a doll, but he wasn’t one, and she feared she would hurt him, drop him or bump his head against something. and first time ninette was truly able to grasp what the world responsibility means, was when she held her three day old brother in her arms.

alas, the joy of the occasion didn’t last.

tereza had already been ill while pregnant. sometimes she wondered if she would see something, but she had long ago gladly accepted that she didn't share her great-grandmother's gifts.

she choose to press on - with her pregnancy and her projects.

they aren't keen on her working, but she loves her job. the department of mysteries is a fascinating place and her curiosity binds her to the study of time and matter. while pregnant, terezia renovated the old lighthouse at the very edge of the property by the sea - were not for the rocks, it would be possible to jump from the first floor of the lighthouse to the sea as the drop wouldn’t be significant. terezia turned into her study: while it was an intellectual space, it was also always open to her children with large comfortable pillows scattered on the floor in every room. one of ninette’s most cherished memories of her mother is of sitting on the floor of the lighthouse watching her clean her work-space, melodiously singing away, windows open.

one hot summer afternoon terezia sent two of her children, ninette included, that had been playing in the lighthouse back to the main-house. the hours passed and when a servant went to check the lighthouse, the lights were on and a door was open, but terezia was nowhere to be found. her neck-scarf was found clinging to the rocks, wet with sea water.

terezia’s disappearance shocked the avis family to its core and sparked all sorts of rumours: that she had run away, that she has taken her own life, that she had been killed, that she was conducting illegal experiments… they were endless. when the ministry investigated, they took several of terezia’s notebooks (which they never returned) from the lighthouse. ninette was only 5 and her way of coping with her mother’s disappearance was to believe she was a mermaid who had returned home.

( the first time ninette experienced heartbreak wasn’t when she heard her mother had disappeared, or the day they gathered by the seafront and threw flowers and paper boats into the ocean in her homage. she cried, she hurt, but it all seemed so surreal it took a couple days for her brain to register what had happened. no, the the first time ninette experienced heartbreak was weeks after, when she fell down a tree and hurt her arm and rushed inside the lighthouse calling for her mother. she knew she would get scolded for climbing that tree but she didn’t care - she wanted her mother to comfort her. it took minutes to dawn on her that she could call all she wanted that she wasn’t going to get an answer back, now or ever again. that was the first time ninette ever felt her heart shatter inside her chest. )

one of ninette’s siblings believes their mother was taken by merfolk who were enchanted by her voice. another that their mother conducted an experiment which accidentally sent her either back of forward in time. ninette isn’t a child anymore and, objectively, she knows it’s silly and preposterous to actually believe that her mother was under some sort of spell which wore off and she was forced to return to her mermaid form. still, that’s how she chooses to see it.

every other alternative is too awful to consider.

- - - (she nearly drowned twice: once when she was 7 and another time when he was 16.

the second time was a dumb accident and she was intoxicated but first time - the first time was only two years after her mother’s disappearance. she didn’t even realise what was happening and came out of it swearing she had heard her mother’s voice and was simply chasing it.

both episodes left her with underlying mental scars that usually only surface in nightmares.

despite this ninette has never been fearful of the sea and gleefully runs towards it, diving in, always with her head underwater, feeling like she’s at home.)

- - - she's seventeen and sitting at the table suggesting they all work on renovating the lighthouse together over the summer, having it all beautiful by the day of their mother's disappearance as a kind of homage.

natalia's knife scratches against her place with a squeak. it's a warning but ninette presses on until natalia says she refuses to partake in such nonsense - if ninette wants to save the lighthouse she can and should, but, she says, snapping, suddenly and vicious "don't make it about mum." pedro is too busy to dwell on it too much, louis prefers not to remember, and martin seems to choose to honor his mother's memory by not being stuck in the past - but the others are unable to let go in their own ways, natalia going as far as securing a summer internship in the ministry not out of passion but out of an uneasy sense of lack of closure and obligation.

it's an uncanny quietness that falls in the dinner room, especially when all the siblings are present and all ninette can muster after a long pause of sinking her teeth in her bottom lip, with a sob sitting in the back of her throat and watery eyes, is a quiet "she was my mum too."

- - - in her teens ninette felt very isolated and out of place. the brother she was closest to was always busy, she wasn’t close with her only sister, all her friends seemed to be getting boyfriends and girlfriends and preferring their company to hers, all her friends seemingly wanted to be grown-ups while ninette just wanted to enjoy her youth… and on top of it all she missed her mother dearly more than ever before. it was a complicated time for her and thus she ended up sacrificing a part of her personality by giving into peer pressure and hanging out with people who seemed to fit in (at least from her point of view) better than she did.

surrounded by people but all alone. that’s how she felt.

it didn’t help that her father sent her to boarding school.

she was never supposed to go to one but after the death of her mother her father thought it was for the best that she did. it’s a very controlled environment, she will come home every other weekend, she will be safe. it’ll be good for her. are words her father told himself often and which no one ever heard.

ninette was extremely upset and sad over this. while she loves meeting new people and visiting new places, she’s also very much a homebody and family-centered. being apart from her family and friends she had known all her life brought her great pain and frustration. at the time, she also couldn’t understand her father’s change of heart, and a part of her felt like she had done something deeply wrong.

her teenage years were somewhat tumultuous, especially because she wasn’t making the right kind of friends - the ones that are good for you. this lead her to have made several questionable life choices, tasteless jokes, and started a couple rumors. she also got in the habit of drinking too much and doing drugs (she never officially went to rehab but she was very close to and she honestly probably should have gone. nowadays she stays away from drugs and sticks to only one or two glasses of wine or champagne every other meal as she knows that if she doesn’t hold herself back it can become a problem).

all of this is, mostly, behind her thought. it took years but she realised she was fostering unhealthy friendships and habits and that the longer it took her to walk away the harder it would become to do so at all. so, one day, without any warning, in a dramatic but determined gesture, she simply cut them all out of her life.

- - - ( “what is it with you and your uncontrollable need to be liked?” one of her acquaintances from boarding school asked her once, and she was already a little drunk, so the words don’t hit her as hard as they normally would have. her shoulders simply rose and fell in a lazy shrug.

“i don’t know.” it had been an honest answer, she kept talking anyway, no filter between her thoughts and her mouth. “i guess i - well, i’ve never been the pretty one, or the smart one, or the brooding one, or the bold one, or the funny one… but i’ve always been good at meeting people so i guess… i guess very early on i just thought ‘maybe i can be the likable one’.” )

- - - her father died of heart disease when she was 21 and in england studying. tommy, her boyfriend, is there and his presence helps ease the pain.

it’s funny, all those years they spent in such proximity and yet they had never truly known each other until they were miles away from their families and on their own.

this is what having real friends - real love in your life feels like, she remembers thinking when tommy has his arm around her shoulders and her best friend cosima holds her hand.

- - - ( there’s something special about all of the fancy formal and informal highly decorated parties and events taking place towards the end of the year.

there was a time in her teenage years when she had stopped feeling this way ( at that point in her life being surrounded by people only made her feel more alone ), but she was glad that wave of depressing isolating disenchantment seemed to have passed and be well behind her. not even know did she feel tempted to circle back to it; while the last handful of years had had their downside moments, they been good to her, sometimes better than she felt deserving of.

it was nice to be able to catch up with those she didn’t get to see as often, even if only in a superficial manner, and comforting to realise that time and distance don’t matter when it comes to some friendships.

it was perhaps a little sad or even pathetic to admit it, even if only to herself and nobody else, but she had needed this - was thankful for it. all the mingling and socialising and re-connecting and helping out and offering support to others when needed ( because in these events, after glasses of moët & chandon, feelings often get the best of people ), it was all helping keeping her busy and distracted.

at the very least, she could thank tommy’s parents ( whom, truly, she was still fond of ) for that. the holidays themselves were going to be painful, she had been bracing herself as best as she could for it, but until then she didn’t have much time to sit around dwelling on how her life had so suddenly been thrown upside down for there were too many events and parties to attend to or help plan. not that the heartache she woke up with, carried with her all day, and said goodnight to every night ever let her forget it, anyway.

these days, she had been trying to think of the pain that made it seem like one of her limbs was missing as a friend - as a reminder that it only hurt was much as it did because it was had been something good and real.

( and my god, she misses it every day and it hurts so overwhelmingly much everywhere all the time - even when she happens to laugh the underlying pain is still present. and not having a best friend there with her any longer makes it all a thousand times more difficult to bear. )

they have known each other all their lives and were together for three years. they grew so much together, shared so much - they had hopes and dreams and they were going to get married and… then it was over, just like that. all it took was a dinner with his parents to tell him they had found someone perfect for him.

ninette knows that there is always someone better than her, but it hurt anyway.

maybe it’s weird, but she has never wished she could blame him or get angry at him for not standing up to his parents - for doing exactly what they ask of him. she has always known him as such and never expected him to change.

she doesn’t believe that she’ll ever not want to share things with him ( even the smallest most mundane things at times ), but she hoped that one day thinking of the pain as something good would help make everything easier. that it would help her no longer feel like something had struck her in the chest leaving her forgetting for to breathe for a second when she remembered she no longer could just call or text or want to see him.

because she still did.

and it was such an excruciating journey to go through time and time again; the innate knee-jerk reaction to want to tell him about something or simply ask him about his day, only for a second later to dawn on her that she couldn’t, or rather, shouldn’t. she still spoke to him when they happened to be thrown under the same roof, all quick and polite conversation, desperately attempting to maintain some sort of normalcy, as if it was possible to act the same way she did before they had been together.

but was easier for both of them to keep a distance, ninette had easily and gladly respected that. it didn’t feel like it, not in the least, but it was.

he wasn’t here tonight however ( and she suspected cosima wasn’t either ) but was going to have to face him again eventually and in a bittersweet way she didn’t mind it - seeing him would hurt, but she also missed being in his presence.

she could swear that even in the noisiest of rooms, the quietest voice could mention his name that her ears would somehow be able to hear it, and she always stops everything she’s doing and thinking about to try to listen. even when she’s speaking to other people her attention always wonders to whatever voices are speaking his name - she can’t ever keep herself from paying attention to what’s being said about him.

maybe she should, but he’s still a dear friend ( he’ll always be a dear friend, he’ll always have a part of her heart ), even if they haven’t talked in a while.

nothing could prepare her to hear cosima’s name in the same sentence as tommy’s though.

“i swear. cosima. ”

it hits her like a mallet to the temple and suddenly it’s as though the air had been sucked out of the room, leaving her feeling slightly dizzy.

all at once she feels the pain of cosima’s sudden and inexplicable ghosting, the pain of when tomás told her they had to end things —- and now the pain of hearing the two of them are together.

it’s heartbreak all over again only this time times three, and ninette stands very still, not even daring to open her mouth, afraid that if she makes the slightest of movements she’ll disintegrate into a million pieces.

it’s an awful thing and she hates herself for it, but doubt and insecurity immediately begin to cloud her mind like they hadn’t in years, and she can’t help but wonder if cosima and tommy had been together before…

no. she admonishes herself.

tomás wouldn’t have done that to her, he would never cheat on her or lie to her, and, despite all that happened ( and which she’s still struggling to wrap her head around ), she wants to believe cosima wouldn’t have either.

“wait, don’t you know her car?” all eyes turn to her and the world begins moving at a regular pace again.

ninette reminds herself to breathe. slowly.

she was like a sister to me, she thinks.

“we were friends.” she replies.

“why would you have befriended her?” “she befriends everyone. but it’s a gift car, i don’t have it.”

the voices and their playful bickering become background noise but the grin was still gracing her lips - or rather, now plastered on her lips, but the people around her didn’t seem to notice the slight change.

a part of her was thankful for it.

another wanted to fall on the floor with her flowy elie saab dress pooling around her like a kind of protective shield, uncontrollably sobbing her heart out and to hell with whoever saw it and what they thought.

she can feel her chest collapsing in on itself.

breathe, she reminds herself again. she had learned many things during her three years ( which felt more like a whole lifetime ) with tommy and how to breathe when the world seems to be falling apart had been one of them.

breathe.

“i should go check on my sister.”

it’ll be fine. it’ll be fine. it’ll be fine. it’ll be fine. it’ll be fine. she repeats the worlds time and time again inside her brain as she walks away, her hands tightly holding the flute of champagne close to her chest. not tonight, she concedes, but it’ll be fine it’ll be fine it’ll be fine .)

- - -

marcus left her with a dismissive hand-wave ( these things always seem to happen in public with her, like a cruel cosmic joke designed to humiliate her ). he had said it was for the best. she hated that she hadn’t seen it comes and she hated the desperation in her tone when he began to walk away from her. there’s a part of her that still thinks if they were alone she would have thrown herself onto the floor at his feet ( maybe if she had cried hard enough, begged hard enough he would have stayed ). she had felt safe enough to believe that they had each other and that was that. why would you leave the person you’re with to let politics decide which stranger to marry in the future? she felt pathetic that she believed that, and she could feel herself slipping again.

everybody leaves. always.

she ended up resorting to finding comfort in bad old habits and companies. at least those are the ones who seem to be always there, ever constant, and they welcome her back without judgement.

her eldest brother grew increasingly worried and one day the two had a quarrel in the palace’s foyer after ninette showed up to dinner so merrily out of it she could barely stand. at one point he tried to reach for her but she pushed him away - once, twice, trice, and on the forth time he lost his balance and fell down the long imposing staircase.

she was so inebriated that it took her brain moment to register what had happened but once it dawned on her she was immediately struck by a wave of frantic panic and promptly made her way down the staircase ( nearly tripping on her own feet and tumbling down multiple times ). her brother was still conscious when she reached him, falling on her knees by his side, already crying and apologizing. the last thing he told her was to leave so no one would blame her for what had happened.

#i love her sm :(

1 note · View note

torterragarden · 7 years

Note

top 5 female and top 5 male characters in anything (top 10 if 5 isnt enough), add reasons if you want to 🙋 and a happy new year 🙌

OKAY SO I’M FINALLY GETTING AROUND TO POSTING MY ANSWER FOR THIS THANK YOU FOR BEING PATIENT. I spent so much time thinking about this because I loved this question and I ended up coming up with a top 10 female characters + reasons and I probably went way overboard like this is so long and I’m sorry. So unfortunately I haven’t made a list for male characters because I got so extra with this female characters list, but another time perhaps. Anyway, top 10 female characters here we go!!

10. Piper Mclean, Heroes of Olympus series - I think what I really like about Piper is that she has a lot of qualities that badly written female characters tend to have, but… she’s written well. What I mean is like… Piper is selfish. She’s whiny. She’s a brat. She’s emotional. Usually when a female character has traits like that, she isn’t likable and probably wasn’t intended to be. But Piper is given a depth and respect that those other female characters aren’t usually afforded. She’s flawed, but she knows it, and she hates her flaws and she tries to better herself. And she’s more than those flaws too! She’s brave and kind and loving, and her emotions - all of them, no matter how ugly - are ultimately her strength. I love that she’s allowed to be so emotional, that it’s good that she’s so emotional, because I feel like there’s this idea that female characters have to be emotionless in order to be “strong” or whatever so anyway yeah I love Piper

9. Emily Davis, Until Dawn - I have a knack for taking a liking to female characters that the majority of the fandom hates, and then loving them even more out of spite. Admittedly, a lot of my aggressive love for Emily is a reaction to the amount of (unfair, reeking of double standards and sexism) hatred she gets in the fandom, but even disregarding that, I do really like her. I started liking her very early on in Until Dawn. She seemed like she had a lot of personality and I liked that, and I only liked her more as the game went on. I mean… I literally have a post listing all of the reasons that I love Emily so that should tell you everything, right?

8. Amethyst, Steven Universe - I hesitated to put Amethyst on the list, since I’m not sure if she technically counts as “female”, but at the very least I think it’s fair to say that she’s female-coded and female-aligned so… I thought it would be okay? She would probably have been a lot higher up if not for the fact that I’ve lost a lot of my interest in SU, but I still love Amethyst a hell of a lot. I relate to her very strongly, for reasons that are not super comfortable to talk about. Much like Amethyst, I tend to bottle up everything and let it eat away at me until everything just explodes in the ugliest way. I think very little of myself, but I try my best to stay chill-passing because I’d rather die than tell anyone how I’m actually feeling. I don’t like going into detail about this but basically Amethyst is important to me because I relate to her in a lot of ugly and painful ways, and loving Amethyst is almost like learning to love myself. Almost.

7. Princess Bubblegum, Adventure Time - It’s funny that Adventure Time as a whole is one of those “I Definitely Like This But I’m Not Super Passionate About It” things, but there are like, four things in that show that I do feel Super Passionate about. Princess Bubblegum is one of them (the other three are Ice King, Marceline, and Bubbline, in case you were wondering). Gotdamn dude I love Princess Bubblegum and I think she doesn’t get nearly enough attention for being as interesting as she is. From the beginning I loved how she was simultaneously really sweet and morally ambiguous, that’s a really funny and intriguing dichotomy. I love that while she’s ultimately working for the Greater Good™, she’s really ruthless and vindictive. She has good intentions but she’s so very flawed, and she can be downright terrifying. Bubblegum is just endlessly fascinating to me and I really love her.

6. Cassie Cage, Mortal Kombat - Well obviously she had to be on this list, she’s where I got my url from. My love for Cassie Cage is less about who she is and more about what she represents to me, I think. Mortal Kombat isn’t exactly known for having great depictions of female characters but they did improve a lot in Mortal Kombat X, and I fell in love with Cassie partially because, to me, she embodied a lot of the positive changes. I loved that she was the heroine of MKX, I loved that she wasn’t overtly sexualized, I loved that she was funny and confident and just so damn cool, in that way that classic action heroes are cool. Chewing bubblegum and flipping people off and sassing everyone and just being exactly what comes to mind when you think “bad ass”. She was so different and so unexpected and I was so pleasantly surprised with Cassie Cage.

5. Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games - Katniss is one of the most important fictional characters ever written okay. This is a girl who grew up in extreme poverty, who took it upon herself to take care of her family at age 12, who was hardened because of her circumstances but still compassionate, and still so vulnerable. She suffered from severe PTSD, she was used as a pawn by the Capitol and by the rebels, she was manipulated and taken advantage of and she lost everything because of it. And in the end she still found a way to stand up and keep going. She didn’t magically get better but she made a life worth living for herself, even if she had to constantly remind herself of the good things in her life. I fucking love Katniss okay.

4. Jaehee Kang, Mystic Messenger - Yeah I kind of feel like trash for having a character from a god damn dating sim on here but tbh Mystic Messenger is so good it makes me angry (you are a dating sim what business do you have being that good fuck you) so I don’t feel too much like trash. Only a little bit like trash. Anyway, Jaehee. Holy god where do I even start. She is just so beautiful. That’s the first word that comes to mind, and I’m not even talking about her appearance (although yeah she’s definitely very attractive). It’s just her, man. She is so kind, so patient, so hard-working, so strong after everything she’s been through. I love that even though outwardly she’s more serious and formal than most of the other characters, there’s this underlying sweetness and quirkiness that shines through, like when she fangirls over Zen or when she says things like “benefits were effing amazing” when explaining to her boss why hosting fundraising parties is a good idea. I also love that as kind and polite as she is, she can and will mercilessly drag people she’s a fucking savage and I love her. I just love her so much. Jaehee is effing amazing.

3. Asami Sato, Legend of Korra - First of all, she’s canonically a bisexual woman in a relationship with another bisexual woman and that’s super important to me for representation. Second of all, even before Korrasami was made canon I really adored Asami. Because seriously, Asami is one of the kindest and most loyal characters in anything ever, she is such a good person through and through, even though there are so many things that have happened to her that sound like the sort of things that would motivate most characters to be villains. Her mother was murdered, her father was a terrorist who betrayed her and threatened to kill her friends, her boyfriend cheats on her, her closest friend and love interest leaves her for three years, her father fucking dies in front of her after they had just barely started to reconcile. Asami faces so much tragedy, if anyone has a right to be an asshole it would be her, yet she is still so unfailingly kind and brave and good. Also, for the record, she is probably the prettiest animated character I have ever seen in my life.

2. Agent Texas, Red vs Blue - Okay so. Red vs Blue has a lot of… issues with how it writes the few female characters it has, and I’m not going to act like Tex is this amazingly well written female character because she’s really not. But this isn’t my top 10 well-written female characters this is my top 10 favorite female characters, and whatever writing problems RvB may have, I really do love Tex. So much. It’s also a bit complicated to love Tex cause it’s like… which one lmao. I love Beta!Tex, who was tough and snarky and effortlessly bad ass, but also kind and compassionate and very, very chill. Like sure she could kick your ass and you know she could, but eh, she doesn’t really need to. The fact that you know she could is enough. And then there’s Epsilon!Tex, who was just angry, but who in many ways was the most important iteration of Tex to me. She was angry because ffs she was tired of not being her own person. She was tired of Church seeing her as His Girlfriend and not much else, she was tired of being Allison’s shadow, tired of her existence being all about other people, never about herself. Tex’s story is ultimately about a search for agency, to create an identity for herself separate from what other people want from her, and that’s always stuck with me.

1. Hermione Granger, Harry Potter - Honestly, I’m not sure if I’m putting her here because she is genuinely my favorite female character, or I’m putting her here because I can’t imagine putting anyone else here. Though I guess if I can’t imagine putting someone else here, that’s a sign that she is my favorite? Idk. I like Harry Potter less than I once did, less than I think a lot of people in my life realize, but being a Harry Potter Fan is such a big part of my identity to them that I don’t think they can see me any other way. But, even with my enthusiasm for HP these days being relatively low, I can’t deny that the series had a huge impact on me growing up and it definitely did a lot to shape the type of person I am, and it’s always going to be a bit special because of that. Hermione played a big part. She was one of the first female characters I can remember really admiring. I was nothing like her but I wanted to be, because she was smart and bad ass and complex and honestly do I even need to explain why Hermione is amazing? You all know. However I feel about HP now, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget the impact it had on me and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget Hermione.

#thank you so much for sending this ask btw #i had so much fun thinking about this #and writing it #ask #laggage #female characters

2 notes · View notes