#I love the idea of adelaide in a mom role

[neko-sufis-world]

Ugh! Look what have you done now, Mr. Bosco. You made those girls crying non-stop. Traumatized of you. You're such a disappointment. 😒💢

-Neko-Sufi to Davis Bosco while she's pointing to Lola, Lana and Adelaide who's crying because they're trauma

Yup. Even you love little girls so much. But, this one, too much. Why? All you do is giving such a stupidest goddamn ideas of your roleplay! And even say any characters or animals move into Loud House which are FALSE! Ouh! Another thing, my real life self's sister told their mom about this. Wanna know what's next? Their mother starts to feel disgusting on you. Why? Because you're a *Beep*. Because you said you love little girls sooooooo much. 😒💢

-Usagi-Ijah to David Bosco

Yeah! And the reason is "Because they are so cute!" 🙄 Like what the f*ck?! It's sound like creepy and gross! Even we're okay some guy playing little girls, but they play with them just a little bit! Not much just like you! You playing with them too much than before! Never do something boy's stuff! 😠💢

-Akira Halilintar to David Bosco

Yeah. Besides your role-plays are so boring and gross. Because it's always featuring about you, Lola, Lana and Adelaide! Even giving some stupid plot which some of your plots not true. And thanks a lot! You made Neko and Rama's real life selves stress and upset and angry. 😑💢

-Gegergirl Solar to David Bosco

Even you say "Let's do the roleplay to make smile" WHEN NEKO'S REAL LIFE'S SELF IS ACTING NORMAL!!! AND WHEN SHE'S HAVING BAD DAY, YOU SAID "Let's do the roleplay to make you feel better" WHEN SHE CAN MAKE HERSELF FEEL BETTER BU WATCHING TV OR DOING SOMETHING!!! 😠💢

-Akira Blaze to David Bosco

Not only that, everytime you roleplay with one of them, and they're roleplay eachother. You tell one of them said "I'm waiting for you patiently". Are you sure you're waiting patiently? Sound like you're not at all. You're not patient. 😒💢

-Boboiboy Gempa to David Bosco

And you're toooooooooo misunderstanding so much about everything.

-Boboiboy Taufan to David Bosco

And uncanceled the roleplay which Neko's real life said she wants to cancel the roleplay with you because she wants to go to her uncle's house 😒💢

-Boboiboy Halilintar

I THINK MAYBE HE DOESN'T WANT HIS STUPIDEST IDEA OF HIS ROLEPLAY CANCELLED!! I GUESS I'M GONNA BURN HIS FACE! ESPECIALLY HIS STUPID AND GROSS STUFF!! 😡💢

-Gegergirl Blaze to Boboiboy Halilintar when she knows what David Bosco uncancelled the roleplay which Neko's real life self told him to cancel

[tveitertotwrites]

3, 16, 22 for pairing(s) of your choice.

Hey! Thanks for the questions! I am going to be answering for all of my pairings!

3). Quickies vs. Planned Sex - thoughts?

Brooklyn and Thomas: It depends on what is going on. Like when Brooklyn is doing theater and Thomas is either visiting for a weekend off of a film set or is living with her for the time, they might have some quickies between shows (if they have enough time with everything that needs to be done). They do like to plan out their sex sometimes but they also think that quickies are easier.

Claire and Ethan: A lot of their sex is planned but sometimes they will have quickies, usually when they work opposite shifts and only have about an hour where they overlap.

Adelaide and Tobias: Same as Ethan and Claire.

Charlie and Derek: At the beginning of their relationship, it was a lot of quickies but slowly started becoming more planned. When either of them are out working, then it goes back to quickies a lot but it is a mix.

16). What is their least favorite/most embarrassing sexual encounter?

Brooklyn and Thomas: Brooklyn's most embarrassing sexual encounter was just after high school. She was casted in a play made by one of her classmates in high school and she played a character who had to simulate sex on stage. It wasn't that embarrassing until her family insisted watching the show. Thomas' least favorite sexual encounter was when he first entered the hollywood scene. He had a one night stand with an extra from a movie he had briefly been asked to watch the making of.

Claire and Ethan: Claire's least favorite sexual encounter was with a guy she met her first semester in college and lost her virginity with. Ethan's was the last time he had sex with "Hopkins Girl".

Adelaide and Tobias: Adelaide's least favorite sexual encounter was with her boyfriend Ryan Stevens, he made her leave his house not long after she initiated sex because he had the girl he was cheating on Adelaide with coming over. Tobias' least favorite sexual encounter was when Ethan saw him and "Hopkins Girl" having sex.

Charlie and Derek: Charlie's least favorite sexual encounter was her rebound after dating Cora Tyler (her ex-girlfriend). The person she was with had no idea what to do but didn't want any help. Derek's most embarrassing sexual encounter was when he lost his virginity and he thought the house was empty but his ended up mom walking in.

22). Favorite thing/part about sex - intimacy, role-playing, etc.?

Brooklyn and Thomas: They both love the intimacy of it all.

Claire and Ethan: Everything, intimacy, rp, bonding, etc.

Adelaide and Tobias: Role-play.

Charlie and Derek: The feelings they have after, the intimacy, bonding, etc.

Any other questions?

[eruanna1875]

Thank you so much for the reply! I'm just now realizing the posts where you talked about this AU might've been a bit older, so I'm very grateful for your answer.

I love the oddly-fitting recast of Dipper and Mabel as Jim and Will. They're just as inseparable, and just as different, and it's very interesting.

Wirt as Charles Halloway. Yes.

I mean, he probably would be Like That as a father, feeling out of place in the role (and his time in the Unknown almost certainly would affect that - both in feeling older because of everything he experienced and in feeling inadequate because of letting Greg be put in danger). Plus, Charles Halloway is that woefully poetic type that Wirt is, so it fits perfectly. I can totally imagine the bit from the book where Will looks at his dad and just goes, "you can talk!"

Also, the villains. I must say, I've seen a number of little drawings of Bill and the Beast interacting, and this one seems the most fascinating and true-ringing possibility.

Because I recently read this part of the book, and because I have OTGW on the brain, I can't stop thinking about the Beast as Cooger. The Mystery Twins encountering him for the first time, what effect the carousel has on him (the tree ungrowing, and turning (back?) into a human form), the eyes. Because it literally says in the book, eyes don't change, no matter what age you are, and Cooger's eyes stared out of that boy's face. Considering that it's the Beast, that makes it super creepy.

Jumping ahead a little, the theme of saving the day through their joy honestly seems like it could be really fitting. Wirt's already seen this happen, with Greg, and now he's learning to follow that example. Mabel is already pretty darn good at this, but imagine having to do that in the climax of everything, when she's grieving. It just feels really powerful in the context of these characters.

I can't help but wonder who would fill the other roles. Adelaide as the Dust Witch? though she's kinda dust already now, lol. Stan with his salesmanship as Tom Fury? maybe he knows about this carnival because his brother disappeared in it years ago. Gideon could maybe be someone in the carnival?

I don't know. I haven't gotten to many others in the book so far besides the boys' mothers and Mrs. Foley (plus random townsfolk), and I'm guessing Sara is the mom. That'll be nice.

The train is totally the same one, though. It's the one that almost hit Wirt and Greg. And Wirt hears the whistle, and he remembers. Oh, that sounds cool.

I know I kinda jumped all over that, but you got my imagination racing. It's such a cool idea.

I'll bite - PLEASE TELL ME MORE about the Something Wicked This Way Comes AU with Gravity Falls and OTGW, it sounds so intriguing and I wanna know how it would work so bad

I have to admit I’m hazy on the details but it figures into my longstanding theory/headcanon that Wirt grew up to become Dipper and Mabel’s dad. A lot of the themes in Gravity Falls are very reflective of Something Wicked This Way Comes. Two children born minutes apart? The one wanting to stay older and the other dying to stay put? A special birthday, a strange small town, a terrible choice to make? Come on.

And what always appealed to me about thinking of Wirt as their father is the idea that he’s kind of a veteran of mankind’s ongoing battle with the supernatural. He stared his own demon down. So his children’s encounter with Bill would not seem terribly strange to him, and he would have at least a slight idea of how to fight back. So that made me think of Charles Halloway, and how he really feels too old to be the father of a young son (Wirt isn’t, but he feels it) but ultimately, how he comes in handy as this master of the library archives who’s able to find the information they need to combat this ancient evil. That felt like a very Wirt role.

And Cooger and Dark—if the Beast and Bill could be a duo I think it would really look a lot like that. So Bill is this smart-talking Barnum type like Mr. Dark, and the Beast, who already took a hard knock and possibly got a demonic demotion, is the skulking shadowy background player like Mr. Cooger. So Wirt is horrified to find that his kids not only have an antagonist of their own, but they’ve dragged his old friend with him.

Uh, so I guess they live in Gravity Falls in this version and Wirt works in the town library, and that’s as imaginative as I got.

[lilwritingraven]

Searching for Hope

Part Four

Masterlink

John Seed x Female Deputy/OC

Summary: After her encounter with John, Audry seeks refuge amongst some fellow friends.

Trigger Warnings: Verbal Abuse

Notes: I want to thank @proudspires for beta reading this and making sure it doesn’t sound crazy! And thank you to everyone who has been reading this series and leaving comments. It really makes my day!

************************************************************************

She was back in the water, each wave lapping across her thighs. Still dressed in her old black tank and green cargo pants, a favorite of hers these days. Her shoes were gone, toes curling in the sand.

What held her attention, however, was the figure shadowed by the blinding headlights of the van. She could tell who it was, even before he spoke.

“Worthless.” Worthless. Worth less. W o r t h l e s s. The words echoed as a whisper, floating in the air around her. “Stupid.” Stupid. Stu pid. S t u p i d. She cried out, each word a punch to her gut.

“Please, stop,” she wailed, taking a step back into the water, hand flying to her chest.

“Look at yourself. Getting knocked up by some cultist? I knew you were a low life nothing.” Nothing, noth ing, n o t h i n g.

“No-“ She was gasping, unable to catch her breath.

“You’ll never be a good mother.” Audry clenched her eyes shut, hands covering her ears.

“Shut up!” Tears fell, dripping into waves. “You don’t know anything!”

She was alone when she opened her eyes, cloaked in darkness. The van had disappeared along with him. Her father.

She sensed John before he spoke, his hand brushing lightly over her shoulder. “Audry.” His voice was light, humming her name in the way she liked. She leaned against his chest, head resting against his cheek. His hand curled around, resting lightly against the base of her throat. Slowly, agonizingly, getting tighter. “You’ll never be free.”

Alarm rang through her, any thoughts of escape flying out the window as his other arm came around her waist. He pushed the hem of her shirt up, fingers splaying against the skin of her stomach. “John, please…” She was always begging him these days, it seemed.

“You’re mine now.” His lips came to rest on her temple, speaking the words to her mind. “This child, our child, will need somebody to protect it.” Her heart sank, his laugh vicious. “World knows you can’t do it.”

She struggled again, but John held tight. “Leave me alone!” Desperate. She was desperate to get away. She couldn’t handle being held down, brought back too many memories of-

She was yanked awake, opening her eyes to bright lights and a face- someone standing over her, holding her down. “Audry, you need to sit still!” She knew him, had last seen him when…

Falling.

Falling.

“Amazing Grace-“

“Sheriff?” The shock of it was enough to send her falling back against the bed, chest heaving. Stood above her, hands on her shoulders, was Whitehorse. He was looking down at something. Someone, she realized. Someone who was pulling a string through her side.

“There we go.” His voice was rough, as familiar as her own. It brought tears to her eyes.

Audry reached up, fingers wrapping around his. “I thought- I was so worried you had-“ He looked back to her, features softening.

“Listen child, there will be time for catch up later. Right now, there’s more pressing issues. How far along are you?” It made no sense; how did he know? Audry gaped at him, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.

“But, when, how did you?”

“Pastor Jeffries informed us. Good thing too, the adrenaline alone would have killed that poor thing in there.” The look he gave was so tender Audry found herself squirming away, remnants of her dream still floating in her peripherals.

“I was 7 weeks when John-“ the words choked her, for reasons other than what Whitehorse had guessed.

He squeezed her shoulder, trying to be comforting. “He doesn’t know where you are. He won’t be a problem anymore.” Not true.

“Where am I?”

“The Henbane. We’ve taken up refuge at the prison, but don’t worry yourself with that.” He grunted as he stood, nodding at the woman stitching her side. “For now, you rest. You’ve got some healing to do.”

She could have told him that the last thing she wanted was to go back to her dreams, but it somehow didn’t seem important. Before he could leave, she grasped at his sleeve. “Please, can you call Adelaide?”

He paused, grimacing just a moment before allowing a small nod. “I’ll do what I can.”

_______________

Adelaide Drubman was more of a mother to Audry growing up than her own had been. So, when she came storming through the prison into the makeshift hospital, Audry could have cried with relief. She ignored the pain the pull of her stitches caused to give the older woman the hug she herself wanted.

And Adelaide never disappointed.

“Audry, I swear you’re trying to give me a heart attack. What’s this I hear about you getting captured and nearly killed by John Seed?” Her hands were all over Audry, pulling her shirt up, inspecting every square inch she could get her hands on.

“Addie, please,” Audry didn’t think her face could burn any brighter, looking at the other infirmary patients. Grabbing Addie’s hands, she brought her attention back. “Please. I need to talk to you. Somewhere,” her eyes glanced around the room again. “More private.”

Addie was not sensitive about privacy. “Audry, you don’t need to be modest with them. I’m sure they’ve all seen their fair share of boobs, penis’ and vaginas. Now come on, let me see the damage.”

Audry had been wrong; her face did get hotter. “Addie! That’s not what I meant, please.” She pulled them both towards the back room, where the makeshift doctor was residing.

“Alright darlin’, anything you need. You, out.” Addie pointed at the doctor/veterinarian. He scrambled away, smart enough not to make an argument. She sat Audry down and waited patiently, giving her full attention.

Audry swallowed, looking around the room to try and find her nerve. “I need- What I mean is- It’s like…” She let out a grunt, frustrated with herself. “I’m… I’m pregnant-“

“You’re what-“

“And John is the father.” Audry finished, cutting Addie off. The other woman leapt from her chair, sending it tumbling behind her. Audry looked down at her hands, despair pulsing through her veins. “I thought I could just continue fighting, just be, I don’t know, careful? But…” She released her breath, the strands of her hair flying into the air.

Addie was rooted to the spot, gaping at Audry. “Now, darlin’ I know you know how to use protection. Hell, I was the one who gave you your first condom!”

“Addie-“ Audry’s face grew horrified, but the older girl continued on.

“So, please, explain to me how this happened.” She folded her arms over her chest, looking down her nose at Audry; a look Audry had gotten many times growing up. She may not have been her mother by blood, but that never stopped Adelaide Drubman.

Audry bit her lip, playing with her fingernails. “I, um, might have been just a little, teensy, tiny bit… drunk…” She flinched at her own words, feeling the stupidity welling to the surface. “It didn’t pass my mind.”

“Audry,” And Addie laughed. “Was he really that good in the sack? That you couldn’t even stop to put on a condom?”

Audry did not want to be having this conversation. “Adelaide, please. There are more pressing matters than- than how good he was in bed.” Yes, her face was on fire. No, she would never live this conversation down. “How am I supposed to help, to save Burke, and Joey, and… and-“ She hadn’t thought about him since this all started, and shame ripped her open. “Oh my gosh, Staci!”

Addie grabbed her shoulders, pulling her up and into a hug as the sobs racked her body. “Shh, honey. It’s not your fault. I can help you. I’ll call my nephew, and have my bastard ex-husband send Hurk Jr. out here to help. You’re not alone in this.” Addie pushed the hair behind her ear, wiping a stray tear from her honeyed eyes.

“I- I don’t know if it will help. What if John finds out? Joseph seems to have a pretty good idea. They’re probably looking for me right now!” Panic rose like bile in her throat, threatening to overwhelm her. She gripped onto the older woman’s shirt like a lifeline. “I can’t be trapped with them. I can’t be owned by them.”

“That will never happen.” It was rare to hear Addie snarl, which is probably what made it that much more frightening. “Nothing will happen to you. I won’t let you leave my side.”

Audry looked up at the woman, eyes searching hers, nerves calming slightly. Slowly, her fingers began to relax. “Okay. Okay, I trust you.”

At that, Adelaide grinned. “What’s not to trust, darlin’?”

[dcbbw]

(last one, I promise!) Rachel prompt 28 - I'm alone and I just bought $15 in candy bars. What do you think?

Thanks so much for the ask, @zaffrenotes! I am using the DC Crew for this full-blown fic;  in the first chapter of Aftermath of a Breakup, the gang did not see each other over the Christmas Break. This is what they were doing instead of hanging out……

Prompt is in bold. Please excuse any typos and/or grammatical errors.

All characters belong to Pixelberry except Alyssa Devereaux; she belongs to @burnsoslow and is used with permission.

Song Inspiration: January, Millie Lee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3pIWpdzs2A

December 23

Riley

Riley stood in the feminine care aisle of her neighborhood CVS, braless under a tank top. Her sweatpants were loose around her waist and baggy everywhere else. She wore flip flops on her feet. Her hair was bushy and uncombed.

It was 12 degrees outside. She wore no coat.

Riley was not having a joyous holiday season. Ever since Drake Walker broke up with Riley at Target…her Target….life had not been good.

At work, her raise request had been turned down, and the Christmas bonus she received instead had been miniscule; while Maxwell used his bonus to pay off his credit cards, Riley was calculating how she could squeeze a dinner out and a tube of the new Bobbi Brown lipstick out of hers.

She wasn’t sleeping and was stress eating; her cart so far was filled with king sized chocolate bars, bags of some off-brand Cajun trail mix, and pints of ice cream.

If dealing with heartbreak and being broke wasn’t enough, Riley had a yeast infection, which is why she was now indifferently perusing her options for treatment. She tossed a box in the cart, and after a moment of thought, tossed in a box of Summer’s Eve as well.

As she dragged her feet up the aisle towards the cashier, she saw her Nosy Neighbor, Zack, headed her way. Inwardly, Riley rolled her eyes. The last person she wanted to see was anyfuckingbody. She mustered a tired smile and greeted her neighbor quickly.

“Riley, Riley, Riley! All set for Christmas?” Zack asked cheerfully.

Riley looked at him through slit eyes. Do I look ready for Christmas? Her tone, however, was neither sullen nor depressed, so she patted herself on the back for that.

“Just gonna be a quiet day for me”.

She eased past Zack towards the front of the store, hoping that was the end of the conversation. However, her neighbor followed behind her, still chatting. Riley tuned him out.

At the register, Riley pulled her items out of her cart, setting them on the counter. Zack reviewed her purchases, his eyes growing wide.

“Are you okay, Riley? That’s a lot of sugar!”

Riley kept her eyes on the counter, watching as the cashier swiped each item. “I don’t know, Zack. My boyfriend broke up with me less than three weeks ago. I’m alone and just bought $15 in candy bars. What do you think?”

Another candy bar was swiped. “Oh, my bad. $18 worth of candy bars.”

“I’m sorry, Riley”, Zack said softly. “You know, the church is having a dinner. You’re welcome to come.”

A sad smile crossed Riley’s lips. “Thanks, Zack. That’s very thoughtful of you.”

The cashier gave Riley her total; she dug in her pocket for her credit card.

Her card declined.

With a confused look, Riley ran the card two more times. Each time, it declined. The line behind her grew longer and a bit more impatient.

Riley couldn’t believe that on top of EVERYTHING ELSE, her card was freaking declining. To add insult to injury, it was the one with the highest credit limit.

Zack took out his card. “I got it, Riley. You can pay me back whenever.”

With tears in her eyes, Riley gathered her purchases and ran out the door.

“Merry Christmas, Zack!” she called over her shoulder in a broken voice.

Olivia x Max

Maxwell was stretched out on his couch, wearing nothing but his pajama pants. He was firing up the blunt he had just rolled. He inhaled deeply, feeling the acrid smoke fill his lungs. He exhaled with a deep sigh and smiled up at Olivia, who was straddling his lap.

Her hair was loose and fell in soft waves to her shoulders. She was wearing Maxwell’s pajama top and a lacy thong.

“Do you think we smoke too much weed?” he asked with a frown.

“It’s CHRISTMAS! Green is the color of the Christmas”, Olivia responded.

“So is red”, Maxwell countered.

Olivia clutched the bottle of merlot in her hand and held it aloft. “Which is why we have this baby!” she giggled.

The couple exchanged kisses between tokes and pulls at the wine bottle.

“You’re a Queen, you know”, Maxwell murmured against her skin.

Olivia shook her head. “No, I’m not.”

“You are!”, Maxwell insisted. He motioned for Olivia to get off him; when she did, he sat up, his gaze fixed on the scenery outside their living room window.

“We could live in this place far away. Cordonia! That’s its name! We could all live there! Be royals and nobles and shit.”

Olivia exhaled. “And what would we do there?”

“Noble shit! The guys would walk around with ivory tipped canes and wear monocles. And the ladies would wear fancy dresses and sip tea all day.”

“What roles would we have?”

Maxwell thought as he swigged wine. “Drake would definitely be a Duke. Of a real masculine sounding place…like Ramsford!

Madeleine would be noble but barely…. she’d be like a Baroness or a Countess or something. Her place would have a weird name.”

“Valtoria!” Olivia proclaimed.

“Riley…. she’s a Duchess for sure. Of Fydelia!”

“She could change the name to Rydelia!”

“Liam…. he’s like a Lord or something. Of Krona.”

Olivia frowned. “Krona sounds too masculine. You should make Drake Duke of Krona, and Liam the Lord of Ramsford.”

Her green eyes took in Maxwell. “And what about you?”

Maxwell thought. He reached for the blunt. “I don’t think I’m Duke material. I would probably be a Lord or something. Of Lythikos! There would be mountains and snow and stuff so I could ski and sled year-round.”

“And what about me?” Olivia demanded as she reached for the wine bottle.

Maxwell’s arm went around her shoulder as he pulled her closer. “You’re the Queen, my dear.”

“Who’s my King?”

“Bertrand. He’s the King.”

“Over my dead fucking body!” Olivia swatted Maxwell’s thigh.

“You two could have an arrangement or something. A Cordonian arrangement! And I, the Lord of Lythikos, would be your most loyal servant.”

Olivia stood, stretching her lithe body. “Well, come along, loyal servant; we have gifts to wrap before the munchies overtake us.”

Leo x Madeleine

“What can we take that won’t trigger Mother?” Madeleine asked as she and Leo wandered Whole Foods.

They were spending Christmas Eve with her mother, who was a newly recovering alcoholic. Adelaide had been sober a little over thirty days. Madeleine picked up a carton of egg nog; it had alcohol in it. She searched for a non-alcoholic version.

“Your mother drank anything that had liquor in it and made sure it did have alcohol when it didn’t. For over twenty years. At this point, liquids period is a trigger”, Leo said. “We should stick with tea, water, and soda.”

“I want to support my mother, Leo! She’s making strides to get better, to be better!”

Leo pulled Madeleine closer to him; one arm went around her waist, his hand splayed against her back. The other hand took the carton of egg nog from her hand and tossed it back into the dairy case.

“I know you do, Mads. I want to support her as well. But you can’t be her babysitter. If she didn’t think she could handle a dinner party, she wouldn’t be throwing one.”

“But Father will be there……” Madeleine’s voice drifted off as Christmas carols blared from speakers.

Leo’s eyes narrowed and his jaw tensed a little. “Did she invite him?”

Madeleine shook her head. “I don’t know. All she said was we were invited, and Father was coming.”

“That bastard has some nerve! Okay, change of plans. Your mom is coming to our place!”

Madeleine looked up at Leo, her green eyes hopeful and uncertain at the same time. “Are you sure?”

“Addy has thirty days under her belt. I want to see her get thirty-one. Godfrey being anywhere near her guarantees she goes back to Day Zero. She’ll stay with us through the New Year. She can sleep in our room and we’ll take the sleeper sofa.”

“But you just said we can’t babysit her”, Madeleine reminded him.

“She’s about to step out in front of a bus traveling at high speed down a narrow road. We’re protecting her.”

“I love you so much!!” Madeleine was near tears as she hugged Leo tightly.

Leo kissed her hair. “Same here. Now, you call your mom while I see if they have any cookbooks in this bitch.”

Drake x Alyssa

Drake’s eyes were fixed on the road as he drove Alyssa to the airport. Alyssa was singing along with a 90s song on the radio. Her hand rested lightly on top of Drake’s as DCA loomed in the distance.

“I wish you didn’t have to go”, Drake muttered as he changed lanes.

“Shhhhhh…I’m serenading you”, Alyssa scolded.

Drake grinned as he shook his head. How did this little tornado bowl him over so quickly? She made him smile, she made him tingle, she made him feel complete in a way no one had before.

Not even Brooks.

Guilt and sadness filled him at the thought of Riley. He needed to talk to her, but he had no idea what to say. Sorry wasn’t going to cut it, and Drake wasn’t good with words. He was shaken from his thoughts by Alyssa asking him if he enjoyed her singing to him.

“Of course, Devereaux. You should stay and give me an encore.”

“When I get back! And if we’re still together this time next year, I’ll bring you with me. Daniel and my friends will be thrilled to meet you!” Alyssa promised, her blue eyes meeting his brown ones.

“If we’re still together next Christmas, I’m taking you to Texas.”

“Christmas needs cold and snow, not swimming pools and shorts!”

Drake took the exit to enter the airport. “When you come back, if you’re up for it, I want to introduce you to my friends. We get together about once a month or so and hang out. Dinner, movies, bowling……that kind of stuff.”

“I’d like that”, Alyssa said softly.

Her eyes grew anxious. “What will you be doing on Christmas Day? I don’t want you to be alone.”

Drake shrugged. “Sleep. Watch basketball. Dinner with my sister, her fiancé, and my nephew.” He leaned over and snatched a quick kiss. “Missing you.”

“Stop making me fall for you!” Alyssa giggled as she pushed his arm lightly.

“I’ve already fallen. Join me, won’t you?” Drake said softly.

“I might take you up on that offer.” Alyssa tightened her hold on his hand.

Drake pulled up to the doors to the airline; he shut his truck off and rushed around to open Alyssa’s door. He lifted her from the seat and helped her out. She grinned up at Drake, her eyes shiny with tears. She stood on her toes, throwing her arms around his neck.

“I’m going to miss you so much!” She pressed her pink lips against his.

“You’re back on the 28th, right?

Alyssa nodded. “Late flight, though.”

Drake kissed her again. “I don’t care if it lands at 2am. Let me know when your flight is due back. I’ll be here.”

After a lingering kiss and a tight hug, Drake pulled Alyssa’s suitcase from the back of the vehicle and walked her to the doors.

As a bitter cold wind blew through his wool coat as if it were a cotton shirt, Drake waved to Alyssa until he couldn’t see her anymore.

Liam

Liam pulled underwear and socks from his dresser drawer to toss into his suitcase. He had his Santa socks, his Christmas tree socks, his jingle bell socks, his reindeer socks. He frowned as he looked for his socks with the gift boxes; ahhhh, there they were!

He was going to Boston for Christmas. It wasn’t his original plan.

Liam had wanted to stay in DC, come into the office while everyone else was on vacation, get some work done.  Spend time with his friends, maybe go out for Chinese food and a movie on Christmas Day with Riley B. Or maybe Riley B. would cook Christmas dinner, and he could go to her place. Liam wouldn’t even have minded the fact that Drake would’ve been there.

Anything to take his mind off the fact that he was alone at Christmas when he wasn’t ready to be.

But when he met up with the gang last week, neither Riley nor Drake were there. Madeleine and Leo were going to her mother’s for a Christmas Eve dinner party and staying overnight. Maxwell and Olivia were going to Bertrand’s for the day and staying for dinner.

Liam figured Riley and Drake had plans as well, probably visiting Riley’s family in North Carolina. So Liam would be alone this Christmas, and the thought of going to an empty office drained him of his motivation to prove that he was worthy of the promotion.

After dinner with the gang, Liam had called his mom and told her he wanted to come home for Christmas. Eleanor had been ecstatic; she missed her sons.

“Is your brother coming?” she asked excitedly. Leo was not her biological child, but Eleanor considered him her own.

“Not this time. He’s going with Madeleine to see her mother. And he has to work the day after Christmas.”

“Well, we’ll see him next time! And we can Skypetime him or something! Now, I’m making a turkey and a leg of lamb. And my oyster dressing. And corn. And mashed potatoes with sour cream and giblet gravy.”

“Mom, you know I hate oyster dressing!” Liam protested.

“Your father loves it! I’ll make two dressings, but yours is coming out of a box.”

“Why can’t you just scoop mine out before you add the oysters?” Liam frowned.

“Stop frowning! Maybe I can do that…. we’ll see. You eat your weight in dressing, Mister!”

“How did you even know I was frowning?” Liam asked curiously.

“You’re my son. I know what you do!”

Liam smirked thinking that if his mom knew all he did……

“I know you do that too! So when will you be here?”

“Looking up flights now.”

“Let us know so I can have your father pick you up.”

“I can Uber, mom. You guys don’t need to come pick me up!”

“Nonsense. Your father will be there. Okay, gotta go……600 Pound Life is coming on, and I need inspiration to stick to my diet!”

Liam tossed in pants and sweaters; after some internal debate, he tossed in his work laptop. He had reached out to some old friends still in Boston, so hopefully he wouldn’t be working, but just in case. His packing done, he glanced at the clock. He had an early flight out in the morning, but he wasn’t sleepy.

He was thinking about Riley B. and what she was doing. He wondered what Drake bought her for Christmas. He hadn’t asked anyone for suggestions as he usually did. Liam wondered if it was a ring.

His eyes fell on the wrapped present he had bought for Riley B. They hadn’t done Secret Santa this year, but Liam knew Riley B. would love the bottle of Coco Chanel Mademoiselle. It was one of her favorite scents.

Liam decided to wait to see what Drake got her; it was five years now for them. Time to put a ring on it or let her go. If Drake did give her a ring, it could be an engagement present.

Liam hoped it wouldn’t be.

With a sigh, he climbed into bed and turned off the lamp. He grabbed his phone and texted Riley, wishing her a Merry Christmas.

She responded back almost immediately. Merry Christmas, bestie.

Liam stared at his screen before sending his response. You’re my best friend, too.

He rolled over, closing his eyes, phone clasped in his hand. I love you.

  Tagging: @sirbeepsalot @wannabemc2 @topsyturvy-dream @jared2612 @katedrakeohd @hopefulmoonobject @custaroonie @i-am-liam-rhys @jovialyouthmusic @thequeenofcronuts @fromthedeskofpaisleybleakmore @amomentofsinclairity @bobasheebaby @ao719 @sashatrr @marietrinmimi @ladyangel70 @gardeningourmet @umccall71 @angi15h @romanticatheart-posts @drakeandcamilleofvaltoria @blznbaby @tabithacarlisle @emceesynonymroll @bbrandy2002 @ab1901 @janezillow @debramcg1106 @radlovedreamer @jessiembruno @lodberg @thecordoniandiaries @ramseyandrys @caroldxnvxrs @princess-geek @burnsoslow @annekebbphotography @merridithsmiscellany-blog @emichelle @indiacater @loveellamae @forthebrokenheartedthings-blog @kingliam2019 @texaskitten30 @glaimtruelovealways @bebepac @zaffrenotes @queenjilian @princessleac1

[fishymom-art]

How do u created hate u girl? :o

AW YEAH, TIME TO MAKE A LOOOONG POST WITH ILLUSTRATIONS!!!!

All my stories begin with me creating a main character and then building a world around them. Same with HUGirl, but it was a liiiiittle bit funnier. In the beginning Diana was just... well, me.

Thhhat right, the original design of Diana and her character herself is how I used to draw myself back in 2016, when I first started calling myself FishyMom!

I drew myself in Ford Pines’ (from Gravity Falls, yes) outfit and with gills, because I was in Undertale fandom and I was in loooove with Undyne. I used to have a group chat with my friends who also liked Undertale and at some point they started calling me FishyMom, because I was bossy, caring and had gills, apparently. 

This design, as well as the nickname, stuck with me for a long time. At some point, I decided to make a character out of this design.

I called her Ford. You know. Because of the obvious thing XD. But I didn’t have a world for her yet.

Then I had a lot of things going on. In around 2014-2015 I was going to write two books about this world called Mirror World or Mirror Side. Some kind of shadows, who were assigned to you since your birth, would lead you into this world if you were unhappy. Mirror World has everything you ever wanted to have, creates a wonderful, flawless life and... brainwashes you completely into hailing the king of this world who harvests your powers to break out of the Mirror World and conquer the other side???? aka Magical Cult Kingdom, nothing else to say. 

Ford was going to be a right-hand-man of the king and had his mark on her face which meant that he sees through her eyes. But I never finished the book (in fact, I tried rewriting it 3 times and did not succeed) and didn’t really know how to put Ford in, since I already had a hecking lot of characters who were much more important to the story than she was. But she was still kinda there in the story.

(btw, the king’s name was Gaskard, which is Alex Gaskarth’s (vocalist of All Time Low) name written wrong. I didn’t know it was his name, my classmates were joking around when they said it when I was asking for a villain’s name. I was on their concert in 2017 uwu)

I was thinking about a sequel of the book at the same moment as I was still not writing the first one XD. And now it gets interesting.

In the first book, there had to be this girl, who was one of main character’s young sister and student. The second book was going to be about her and her twin brother. Her name was Elizabeth. 

The first picture is Elizabeth with her twin-brother, Noelle and second picture is the old Elizabeth.

A lot of things later, I decided to get rid of the story and make a whole new story for a sequel. But I was still left with Elizabeth. And I made her Ford. (and I made Noelle her sister instead of brother I guess...)

At this point, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted Ford to be a scientist. I wanted her to be a warrior. I wanted her to be the characters I was inspired by when I was creating her. And I knew the story I was going to give her.

But I still didn’t have a world. And I still didn’t have a name.

And then I did a thing

There was a blog on Tumblr before hate-u-girl that had something to do with Ford. And I posted comics there. And you could or could not have seen at least one of the stupid comics I drew calling them all under the name HUGirl, which was literally Human, but a “girl” instead of “man”. And I mean this one...

my eyes hurt from the art style and from tHE AMOUNT OF NOTES IT HAS. LIKE, LITERALLY, I JUST HAD TO SEARCH FOR IT, LAST TIME I SAW THIS ABOMINATION, IT HAD 3K NOTES, DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS MY MOST VIEWED ARTWORK??? MY LEGACY???? [heavy breathing] IS IT BECAUSE I TAGGED ZUTARA THERE??? IS THIS WHY?????

- ok, screaming aside XD

Yup! That was Ford! And there was also Huboy, who then went on to be Robert! (hoooo boi....). They were partners right from the beginning!!!!

And I finally started drawing the actual comic. THIS, everybody, is two ONLY pages that were made for the first ever try on “HUGirl” comic.

Ah, they were such babies....

The main antagonist of the comic, however, was someone fully new and someone who was also first just the way I drew myself.

Fishy Mom. Yes yes, you heard it right. Fishy Mom IS a character. That’s why at some point I asked people to call me RK (Ar-Key or, for Russians, Er-Ka), because that was a little weird. And she had to be some kind of a ruler of fully re-made Mirror World!!! 

I came up with the idea of making her a villain and a separate character after I made a cover on Die House and drew her in that dress for the first time. She evolved to an entity that can transform into your biggest fears (directly or indirectly). And Ford’s greatest fear was (and still is) water and fish.

Strange and unpolished, I left the first attempt and started drawing the second one, already including my baby Adelaide, who has a much bigger role than you think and I won’t be telling it. (Oh, and Robert’s lasagna appeared there too! Me and my friends made a lot of jokes about this lasagna XDDD)

Here are some of my favorite panels!

“big power with a tiny apartment?”

Diana and Robert were going to be a couple.

it’s a toxic haze all around

LOOK AT THIS BABY!!!

+ bonus of a badass Robert.

There had to be that other character called Complete Failure who has first appeared in this animation I made. All the characters in it are “the original cast” of HUGirl and will always be. I wanted them to be the villain for some time but quickly changed my mind and put Fishy Mom back into the role of the villain. They still remained a very important character to me who you can thank for the story HUGirl is now and will be.

Then Fishy Mom (or rather F-001 aka Fishy Good/Too Good To Be True) got a HuMan FoRm!!!! Yaaaay! Because a cartoony fish in the middle of a sci-fi post-apocalyptic drama would have been pretty weird. Btw, I have no idea at which point it turned into a post-apocalyptic comic, but I had to roll with it, because I put it as genre in WebToon and Idk if I can change it and I already came up with an excuse ahhaha.

My idea was that she put experiments and tried to create humans out of magic and science (i like that mix). This is when the “HU” in HUGirl turned into Human Urge Academy (now, Haze Unity Academy), the research academy on human life, who’s role is to create more humans because they can’t produce them the good-ol’-way anymore XD. And Diana (the “F” in the beginning of every experiment meant “Ford”, btw), alongside other characters, became a part of it and Fishy Mom became Diana’s personal nemesis, who was one of the experiments and wanted to kinda break free. It was still very weird and unpolished but I loved it. I had everything planned, from the beginning to the end and everything in the middle.

The last character I came up with was Susan Whaletaker. And she was anything but the character she is now XD. She was going to be the CEO of HUA and a pretty nice person. [turns to Susan now] NICE PERSON.

I had a lot of other thinking and writing in-between, but now I know exactly what I want to do with the story. And I have all those babes on my side uwu

It’s not a full story since it would have contained a lot of spoilers, but those are all the main events hehe, thank you very much uwu

if you have any other questions, please do ask!

[queenxxxsupreme]

I wanna hear more abt ur inspiration for darceria

Omg I love love love this question so much!! Also I apologize for how long this is. I just really loved this💕

So with Darceria I had been messing around with characters in my head the second I decided I wanted to write a fic about my baby Geralt (which happened to be when I was watching Betrayer Moon). At first, she wasn't an oracle because I hadn't even thought of that, of making that group of essentially magical beings. I'll explain that a little later. She was originally really insignificant. She wasn't a princess of a fallen kingdom, she wasn't blind, she could see the future. She was bland and I didn't like that. I wanted more. I wanted to make her more interesting and give her shape and definition.

So from there, I made her blind. I have shitty eye sight myself and it's progressively getting worse so I was sort of playing off of that. I've messed with blind characters before and when I say that I mean that I have written out different characters with different personalities, different traits, and different love interests that all were blind. None of those characters were lucky enough to make it further than rough drafts and charts and essentially they've been left in two binders that I keep with all my ideas for characters and plots and fics because seriously I think of new ideas every day and if I acted on impulse more than I already did, I'd have an insanely high amount of fan fics going at once.

(Fun fact, Wattpad is where I started and at one point on that platform I had close to fifteen stories going at once. That number has since been cut to ten after I finished a few stories. Yes I have an issue and yes I acknowledge it 😂🙈🤦‍♀️)

So back to Darceria. I decided to make her blind because I knew it would be difficult to write for her and I love the challenge. I also knew her being in the time period and the society she is in would introduce quite a few conflicts just because of her being blind and conflicts/problems are what drive stories in my opinion.

The oracle half of her character came from a relatively new idea I had in the last year for a Sam Winchester x OC fic. The character was blind and could see the future but how she saw the future was more prophetic and more physical. She'd have nose bleeds and she'd cough up blood and wake up covered in blood in her sleep. That physical part ended up turning into a character for a Pietro Maximoff x OC fic I have going on Wattpad right now. That character just isn't blind.

But when I thought of giving Darceria some sort of supernatural-y power, seeing the future came to mind. I thought it would really really awesome to take her sight but give her the ability to see the future. Sort of poetic/sort of psychotic on my half 😂

Oracle means a few different things but the meaning I took it as was a priest or priestess acting as a medium through whom advise or advise was sought from the gods. I really liked this so I started messing around with what an oracle would look like in the world of the Witcher. I thought about how an oracle would be useful and the first thing that came to my mind was a mage. Mages are advisors to kings and queens. They are heavily knowledged in science/magic and politics. Rulers depend on them for a lot and seek their advise. We saw in season 1 how important mages were to rulers. I highly doubt that without Fringilla's help Nilfgaard wouldn't have gotten as far as they did or it would have taken them much much longer to do so.

I sort of created oracles as the sister to the witch. They naturally have visions, naturally see things that have yet to happen. They have instincual feelings that they can trust. Like when it comes to chosing maybe going down this road or that road, they can sense which would be the wiser choice. It's a part of who they are genetically. But they also have strong magic genes too. They can cast spells to help see the future and that sort of thing. The oracles are just focused more on seeing the future and preserving the kingdom for the long run. (I have so much I want to say about this last sentence because of Darceria and her role in the fall of Romavek but EEK I CAN'T SPOIL)

I wanted to make oracles rare, to make them less known than witches and mages because having just anyone be an oracle would suck the fun out of it in my opinion. So I made it so that oracles are born every half century. They are also extremely rare in the story just for the simple fact that Romavek is the only known place to ever inhabit oracles. Romavek was very secretive and very solitary, even more so than Cintra. Romaveks (as we will see in future updates) very rarely left their country, their kingdom. They had no reason to. They didn't participate in wars unless absolutely necessary. I won't go much further into detail about that because I don't want to accidentally spoil anything.

I also wanted Darceria to be important, to have a destiny of her own that didn't involve Geralt entirely. So that's how I decided she'd be an oracle, a super important piece to Romavek culture and hierarchy.

When I was messing with her characterization, I played around before she was an oracle about the possibility of her being royalty. We know Geralt has sort of a bad habit of finding princesses and rescuing them/killing them (RIP Renfri my baby). So I thought hey what if she's a princess. Well then I saw quite a few different little stories where the OC or reader was a princess to a currently ruling country like Cintra or Kovir or some made up country. Whatever. So I was like well damn I don't want my story to be just another Geralt x princess!OC stories.

So she became a blind princess born with the gifts of an oracle.

As for her personality, I really like writing soft characters who know when to be tough. I am also a sucker for just writing asshole characters. Luckily, Darceria was not an asshole character of mine. She's soft and and she's quiet. She's observant and careful and nurturing. She doesn't like being babied or treated like she's nothing more than her disability. She's very independent but at the same time, she relies heavily on Zephyrina at times. Darceria is also cunning. She uses her disability to her advantage when needed. Like in the proglue, we see her faking being completely blind when she runs into Thominson and spills his drink on him. She fakes being more blind than she actually is to anger him, to get him out of the room. Also she has a very upsetting childhood. Though she was a princess in a thriving kingdom, her childhood is sad and depressing and tragic in a sense. Again we will see more in the future 🙈 I don't want to spoil anything!!

She's observant even though she is blind and she is observant through her other senses. Her "sight" as she explained to Ciri in chapter 1(I think) is very similar to how the creators and writers of Daredevil wrote how he sees in season 1 of Daredevil on Netflix. He sees fire. Darceria sees shapes of objects through sound and she feels them when she touches. Her senses are highly advanced, very much like Matt Murdock/Daredevil.

And as for her physical appearance, the white eyes was something that I thought was really cool. I was watching Supernatural when I saw Abbadon's eyes flicker to white. I thought it would be super cool for Geralt to come across a being with eyes that are different than everyone else's. He could sympathize with her, with how everyone stares at her when they see that her eyes are empty and white.

I absolutely love dark red curly hair (@ Natasha Romanoff) I hadn't seen very many redheads in the first season with the exception of Visenna (Geralt's mom) and Coral, the ginger mage who clenched her fist and kills an entire squadron of Nilfgaardian soldiers at the Battle of Sodden. So when I think of Darceria, I usually picture Scarlett Johannson as Natasha Romanoff in Iron Man 3. (fun Fact: Zephyrina's face in my head looks like Adelaide Kane)

Dareceria's name came to me in a really funny way. I was researching different midieval names and when I didn't like any of those names. Then I came across Daria. It's Polish and means kingly. I didn't like how close it was to Dara so I started adding different things to the end of the name. There was Darialene but that was what too much of a tongue twister and didn't flow off the tongue as nicely as I wanted it to. Dariara came across and in my head I pronounced it Dar-ee-air-ee-uh. So it's not that hard to pronounce but again when you say it out loud it doesn't flow nicely. Then I changed the name completely to something else entirely. Then I went back to Daria and started messing with it more. I messed with it for probably three days before finding Darceria. I personally think it fits in well with the names in the show.

I'm so glad you asked this @wayward-dream !!! I really really loved answering this💕💕sorry it ended up being so long though! I hope I answered you properly and I hope this makes sense!! Ask more questions if you need to please!!! I love answering this

[dichenlachmandaily]

Future Shock

In Altered Carbon, Dichen Lachman harnesses her passion to brave a dystopian world.

Dichen Lachman sits behind the front desk in the Palm Springs Art Museum lobby, her eyes loosely shut as a makeup artist dusts gold pigment across her lids. She’s wearing Ugg boots; her hair is tousled. Despite the 6 a.m. call time, she declines a coffee and instead reaches for an old-fashioned doughnut hole. Lachman (whose first name is pronounced Dee-chen) is poised but low-key, nowhere near the fiery intimidator she portrays in her latest project, the Netflix original series Altered Carbon.

The museum is closed today, quiet save for crew chatter and the clang of gown-draped hangers on the stylist’s rolling rack; art hulks off the walls in the shadows of unlit corridors. Following months of stunt work, emotionally taxing scenes, and 16-hour days on set, the stillness is welcome. Lachman spent the summer in Vancouver, British Columbia, where Altered Carbon filmed its first season. Between network events and promotional appearances from São Paulo to Seoul, she’s savoring the post-production time off at home, just being Mom. Mathilda turns 3 in May, and her favorite things are scribbling, Sia music videos, and the family dog, Whisky. Deep love for family is an attribute the 36-year-old actress shares with her character, Rei. Perhaps the only trait they share, she says — that, and a fondness for action.

When it comes to that devotion, Lachman refers to a full-body, teeth-gritting sensation, a compulsion to hug tightly, to fuse, to be together forever. Rei takes the sentiment to an extreme, but Lachman relates. “That whole idea that I’ll just eat it,” she says, in her soft Australian drawl, which she dropped for the role. “Like I say to my daughter sometimes, ‘I just want to eat you up, I love you so much.’ ”

When we catch up by phone after the museum shoot, a few weeks before Altered Carbon’s premiere, she delves deeper into the idea of eating one’s feelings and shares a story about her four-legged childhood friend, a Jack Russell terrier named Singhi.

“When I was leaving Adelaide to pursue acting in Sydney, I found two of her little furs on my jacket,” she recalls. “I didn’t want to throw them away because I felt like that was throwing my dog away. I didn’t want to keep them because I thought I would lose them. So I swallowed the two little dog furs. I imagined they’d be absorbed into my body and we’d kind of be a part of each other.”

“When I was leaving Adelaide to pursue acting in Sydney, I found two of her little furs on my jacket. I didn’t want to throw them away because I felt like that was throwing my dog away.” Dichen Lachman

Lachman had shrugged off the role of Reileen Kawahara when she didn’t hear back from casting for four months. It was an uneventful lead-up. She received sides, sans any contextual clues to the plot, and submitted a self-taped video audition.

Then she got the call.

“What is this?” She’d actually forgotten. “There’s no callback? Do they want to see me again?”

“No,” Lachman’s agent told her. “They just want you to do the role.”

“I subsequently found out Laeta was a fan of Dollhouse [2009–2010] and The 100 [2014], so she was familiar with my work,” the actress says. “This is the biggest show I’ve ever been a part of … I just feel lucky to have been a part of it and humbled watching everyone’s work on the show.” The 10-episode, multimillion-dollar series, which became available for streaming Feb. 2, is one of Netflix’s highest-budgeted undertakings yet.

An adaptation of the 2002 cyberpunk novel by Richard Morgan, the first in his Takeshi Kovacs trilogy, Altered Carbon stars Joel Kinnaman as Kovacs (pronounced Ko-vach), a body-swapping soldier summoned to solve a murder in the year 2384. Human consciousness has been digitized and can be “sleeved” into new bodies, establishing a world in which the rich live forever and reprobates evanesce in the dark, debauched underbelly of society.

“It’s woven in such an intricate fashion, you can’t really say the show is just one thing,” Lachman explains. “It’s a love story. It’s a murder mystery. It’s action packed. There are all of these philosophical ideas, too. You walk away thinking, If I could live forever, would I even want to?”

Lachman portrays Kovacs’ sister, first appearing in episode one as a figment from his past; she gets her big reveal midway through the season. (At the risk of leaking a spoiler, let’s just say Lachman’s grand entrance is badass, evidential of the months pre-production she spent training in Japanese combat.)

Along with Kinnaman, the cast includes James Purefoy as a “re-sleeved” murder victim in search of his own killer; Martha Higareda as a well-meaning cop intent on closing the case; Renée Elise Goldsberry as Quellcrist, a futuristic Robin Hood hell-bent on quelling elitism; Will Yun Lee as Kovacs’ “birth sleeve”; Ato Essandoh as Kovacs’ gun-slinging ally; and Chris Conner as the personified consciousness of a hotel where Kovacs resides. These characters are complicated and not always who they appear to be. The plot is layered with flashbacks, visions, and alternate virtual-reality dimensions. Timelines seem to intertwine, leading the viewer through a supremely satisfying plot twist to a finale that may very well render all of us worthless until the second season finally airs. According to Kalogridis, “the biggest success is that the whole thing actually makes sense

“We lived with my uncle 
and my aunts, my grandfather, and my cousins in a tiny 
little apartment. So I had a really …” she pauses, 
“colorful childhood, almost 
of another era.”

Lachman was born in 1982 in Nepal. At that time, more than 90 percent of the country’s population of 15.7 million worked in agriculture, fielding rice, sugarcane, and oilseeds. Fewer than one in 10 owned a telephone. There was no FM radio. No television stations. Terrain continues to hinder development, but modern-day residents can tune in to Altered Carbon — Netflix extended its streaming services around the globe in 2016.

“I was there until I was about 7,” Lachman recalls. “I think we had Superman, Supergirl, and Police Academy, but no real TV to speak of.” Those VHS tapes were her immersion into science fiction. “We shared electricity with India at the time, so three or maybe four nights out of the week we didn’t even have electricity; mostly it was candlelight. We lived with my uncle and my aunts, my grandfather, and my cousins in a tiny little apartment. So I had a really …” she pauses, “colorful childhood, almost of another era.”

Lachman’s father, a Sydney native, was trekking through the Annapurna region of the Himalayas when he met his would-be wife, originally from Tibet, who was working at her family’s restaurant, a backpacker/tourist destination. “He told a friend, ‘I’m gonna marry that woman,’ ” Lachman recounts of her parents’ meeting. He did. The family moved to Australia when Dichen reached school age. “I remember taking my cousin to school [in Nepal]; it was in a hut, and they were still writing on slate with chalk. My father thought I’d have more opportunities if we were in Australia, so we moved to Adelaide.”

She was 23, living on her own in Sydney and dabbling in low-budget films — not long after the dog-fur incident — when she landed the role of Katya Kinski on Australia’s long-running soap opera Neighbours, a veritable breeding ground for Aussie exports. (Margot Robbie, Chris and Liam Hemsworth, and Russell Crowe are all alums.) A leading role in Joss Whedon’s sci-fi series Dollhouse brought Lachman to California in 2008.

Here, she met husband Maximilian Osinski, who is also an actor in the sci-fi/superhero sphere. Both have appeared in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on ABC, albeit in different seasons, and worked together on TNT’s end-of-days drama The Last Ship. Most recently Lachman portrayed alien ringmaster Roulette in Supergirl’s second season. Then Netflix came calling.

“It’s so refreshing because all of the women are such intricate, complex characters,” Lachman says. “They get to be beautiful and fierce, and they hit back. I think this is largely due to Laeta really wanting to show us off like that, to give us more than just a one-note character.”

As Kalogridis puts it, fierce women are the backbone of the show; they promote an underlying message of “owning your body and owning your power.”

Kalogridis has a stellar team, from set decorators and fight choreographers to visual effects artists and cinematographers, whose credits read like a best-of sci-fi list: Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: Civil War, War for the Planet of the Apes, Wonder Woman, The Martian. “This was definitely a labor of love for a lot of people,” she shares. “It’s not a movie, but it’s not necessarily what you associate with TV. It’s sort of occupying an interesting in-between space.”

“We were world-building,” adds costume designer Ann Foley, who joined the Altered Carbon team after four years with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., during which time she dressed Lachman. “That was one of the things that really drew me to this project — helping Laeta build and develop this world. One of the challenges when you’re doing anything futuristic is trying to keep it grounded and relatable so people don’t get distracted by the costumes. You don’t want to pull anybody out of the story.”

Foley orchestrates a visual crescendo through the season in ensembles that define each character and provide covert signals to the viewer. Lachman’s commanding wardrobe evolves alongside Rei’s tumultuous story arc; androgynous Samurai- and Sōhei-inspired combat gear metamorphoses into regal, sinewy shapes. Threading together her range of looks is one choice color. “You see so much green in the world where Reileen and Kovacs grew up,” says Foley, referring to scenes filmed in Vancouver’s verdant forest near Widgeon Falls. “You’ll see there will always be an element of that color in her costume, because that helps to inform who the character is.”

In Episode nine, Rei sits with Kovacs and tries to express the intrinsic bond she has always felt with him — a full-body, teeth-gritting sensation, a compulsion to hug tightly, to fuse, to be together forever. Despite hundreds of years of separation, in this world where one’s consciousness can live forever, occupying different bodies, Reileen has never stopped loving her brother. They are family, and family comes first.

“Remember what Mom used to say?” Reileen asks Kovacs as they sit at a small table in a seedy Moroccan-style hookah lounge. She chooses each word slowly and carefully. “ ‘I love you so much, I could eat you up.’ When you were arrested, they put me in an orphanage. All I had left of you was one of your old shirts … They ripped that shirt out of my hands — I can still feel it tearing, the threads still in my fingers. I knew they were going to take those too. So I swallowed them. Just to have something, anything, left of you.”

That passion is the characteristic Kalogridis saw in Lachman and the reason she sought her out for the role. “She brings a real depth and age to a character,” Kalogridis says. “I absolutely believe her version of a woman in her late teens/early 20s and a woman who is 255, 260 … Dichen’s just a very old and interesting soul. She is the warrior goddess.” Lachman has ventured a long way from Kathmandu, from Adelaide, and from Sydney, but as with all of us, the sum of her past experiences defines the person she is today.

“There’s a moment,” Lachman says, “where [my character] discovers Takeshi in the yukuza warehouse, and they just start killing everyone around them. She looks at him and smiles. There was all this action happening around us, and I had to try to cover my laughter because I kept thinking, I can’t believe I’m doing this. Who am I?! I’m originally from a Third World country, then a sleepy little town in Australia, and I’m running around like Rambo on this set with hundreds of stunt guys and people shooting guns at each other …

“This is what I dreamed about.”

[elianabwrites]

Taurus Berkley

(art credit to me, I drew this up late last night. It’s not the best but it’s my best sooo)

Taurus aka Tauri and I have come a long way together; she has been in about a million different stories before we came to this one. She’s a trooper man. Anyway, here yah go:

Name: Taurus Berkley

Nickname: Tauri, Rus

Why did I pick this name?: Originally Tauri was supposed to have this long lost twin named Gemma (get it? Taurus . . Gemini?) but over time her story changed and her name just fits her and I love getting the Tauri (pronounced Tori) nickname from an unusual name and spelling.

Book and role?: Tauri is one of the protagonists of The Anomaly Series

Job: Tauri works for Adelaide Porter at her Home for Children as a primary caretaker and at The Haab’ Adelaide’s bar as a waitress/bartender/miscellaneous worker

Sexuality: She is extremely gay. Extremely, supremely gay. 

 Age: She’s around 18

Personality type: ESFJ

Character History: The Berkley family lived comfortably in the Shelves, the more affluent part of the country, Tauri’s whole life. In school she was well known but not particularly close to anyone. She’s in the peripheral of all her classmates memories; lingering along the edge of a party or sitting quietly in the back of a classroom. Tauri’s last year of schooling was very hard for her; while she was always aware of her sexuality she had never fallen for anyone like she did for her friend during senior year. Her very clearly has-a-boyfriend very ultra straight friend. It sucks. Also, she is a very curious young girl and wants to explore the world that has been hidden from her for her whole life. Unable to explore, trapped with her sucky feels Tauri decided to take a gap year rather than continue school. Tauri has one little sister named Mattisse aka Mattie and her parents are Hazel and Peter. Hazel is an energetic handful, like a soccer mom on steroids with a little bit of a hippy mixed in. Peter is calm cool and collected much like Tauri and little Mattie is 8 and an art prodigy (her name came to Hazel in a dream and now she’s convinced she’s psychic.)

Physical Description: Tauri has medium length brow hair that is almost always in a braid of some sort. She has grey-blue eyes and is slim and tall.She’s kind of gangly, her limbs seemingly too long for her to function. She has long bony fingers and is almost always in a flannel if she’s not out on the town.

Personality Description: Tauri is a calm soul, kind of like waves lapping at the sand. She is adventurous, adaptable, caring, charming(when she wants to be), aloof, impulsive, indulgent, and secretive. She is a free spirit and kind of aimless. Her ambitions are you be part of something; to have a large group of people, a family, of her own. Tauri is that quiet and unassuming girl that is always in the background but is low-key crazy and everyone knows it. She is kind of awkward in relationship and with people whom she likes having ignored that side of her for so long. She is selective when it comes to who she opens up completely to and it usually takes a while to earn her complete trust. 

Tauri is kind of odd; she likes being around people but participating in conversation with too many people completely exhausts her. She is willing to try almost anything once with only a few hard no’s. Meeting Halle was the best possible thing that could happen to Tauri. Halle brings out a version of Tauri that she couldn’t get out herself, she. Tauri is usually a doormat but very stubborn and proud so she won’t admit that. Adelaide and Halle don’t put up with any of it and expect only the best from Tauri and with people counting on her Tauri is willing to go against her deep-seeded ways.

(I’m sorry this is so choppy, I’m not good at describing anyone’s personalities even my own family members and friends, it’s a weird annoying quirk I have :/ )

Theme song: I’m Yours -Jason Mraz, Summer of 69 -Bryan Adams, 

Literal logline: Strong but smol bean with a mushy center who just wants to see the world and have a huge loving family but of course Halle and Reigan drag her into Huge Big Complicated Political Mess™

Quotes:

“My . . . Friends would never believe that I was here, well maybe that I was here but not what it’s like.”

“It’s nothing, seriously.” Halle leveled a glare at her that Adelaide would be proud of, “I just don’t think that last night was a good idea. I mean it was good and everything I . . . I just don’t think that I think of you like that, you’re more of a friend to me than anything else.  I mean we’ve only known each other for like a day but you’re really cool and I think we would be great friends, you’re a great person and I had a lot of fun I just don’t think this would work be-”

“Oh Bree, the people in the forest won’t get you, like I said Miss Adelaide, Mister Trick, and I are going to protect you.”

[chershorowitzsarchive-blog]

you know who’s face i miss? adelaide kane’s no one can ever use her she’s mine fight me. but that’s not the point of this post i’m gonna follow suit and organize my characters cause i feel stuck and i need to move plots along so let’s get shit started? let’s plot and make new things up or idK let me kill something or someone damn it. 

alexandra ford - face claim: dove cameron ; little sister and high school senior she’s president of the art club, yearbook editor and she’s in the drama and music club in a committed relationship with food, she’s going to marry it someday. wants to be the next van gogh, but without the ear cutting and hearing voices deal and you know the suicide she wants to paint more flowers and kitty cats. honestly she’s more interested in the business side of art than she is in painting... wants to run her own gallery someday and you know finance new talents. resident airhead genius? good girl type, fam’s like the first family of fairwood ( her parents are full of themselves, although jace is the one that’s like done all the work for the fam ) honestly she’s fairwood’s own cher horowitz ( clueless as f ) raising big brothers is hard... like she has to do everything. 

big brothers: jace and finn

best friends: nathalia and uriah

like sisters: mia and ambob 

friends: she talks to everyone so be her friend tbh. 

unlikely friendship: axton 

accidental date: peter ross ( she interested tbh lmao. ) 

more than friends but not: uriah 

enemies: tbfH gimme idK who’d she’d fight but ya know lmao. gimme that whole “ i don’t like you thing... and she doesn’t get it because she’s alex and everyone likes her.. “

athena pearce - face claim: carlson young ; i can’t remember if she’s a sophomore or a junior idk wherever grade cass and rae are in that’s where she’s at. but anyway she’s co-captain of the soccer team currently captain ( which is a bad idea because who puts her in charge of anything? ) drunk 24/7, mommy and daddy issues af tw: suicide ( mommy killed herself when she started high school, which kinda brought out that whole wild child persona she has going on... dad had an affair while her mother was alive and is now married to that woman, thea doesn’t know yet but she still hates her step mom ) she honestly a me, me, me, me, party but it’s also like girl hates herself? ( tbh i’m getting hannah baker vibes here ) bisexual.. cause she doesn’t discriminate tbh she’s a hoe lmao. ( but i think she leans more towards girls ) resident dare devil like add the words dare to anything and she’ll do it without blinking an eye. 

best friends: reagan and cassie 

not blood but family: atlas 

coach: sebastian

friends: she could use some tbh lmao. 

hookups and exes: olivia, and you know half the school so gimme a list i want a JUSTIN and HANNAH plot u know that whole slide deal that happened gimme it. oh and the sex tape lmao she has one or six idK just gimme stuff. 

enemies: because she hates everyone mostly so yes i’m down. idk she cheated on your charrie or something cause like i said hoeeee as f. 

romantic interest: reagan, she in love with her oK

riley moore - face claim: emma watson ; baker extrodinare, runner up on ace of cakes and founder of queen of tarts bakery. which she’s in the works of franchising which means that she’s going to have to move to new york for a while ( which is why she’s putting it off, she doesn’t know if she wants to LEAVE.. but she does want her company to grow. ) she’s married to a cupcake and is basically a momma bear like 100% tw: abortion,  i think it comes from that whole you know i ended a pregnancy because i wanted to focus on my career type deal. ( only one person knows u know outside of the father of the kid lmao.. and that’s wren ). tbh she’s lorelai gilmore except instead of running an inn she feeds people... 

best friends: amelia davis and wren williams

ex baby daddy: idK it was one of emily’s characters but i don’t think she’s coming back? so like this open lmfao. 

self inserted mom role: uriah and james

romantic interest: noah kennedy ( she’s in denial lmao )

employees: she treats them like her kids tbH so like gimme 

enemies: she’s high strung as f, someone needs to be annoyed by her lmao. 

business partner: idK someone interested in her bakery or something.

areli echavarria - face claim: selena gomez ; resident serena vanderwoodsen, high school senior ( she’s like in some private school in town so she’s not in forwood high.. but idK i might change that get her expelled lmao. ) great white house and picket fence her parents are divorced her dad lives in spain and he’s like a big time CEO of a record company and her mother inherited a lot of money and then married dudes with a lot of money ( she gets married like once every two years i s2g ). she ran away to spain after sleeping with her best friend’s boyfriend... actually they had a relationship behind her back and she fell for him and she feels guilty. kind of came back with an entirely new attitude, she’s tired of that whole rich people vibe she wants to branch out ya feel... she thinks it’s like the fakest shit and u know typical serena plot lmao. 

best friend: billie ( idk is emily still here..)

boyfriend: atlas ( they are officially dating now bc u know what’s girl code. ) 

friends: gimme

enemies: same gimme

past hookups and exes: ^

gemma rhodes - face claim: amber heard ; heiress to a diamond cartel, her family controls 60% of the world’s diamonds and she’s basically rich as f. rich and pretty that’s gemma, she’s a shark like her entire life is business and she likes it that way, girl is an emily thorne type person. she just looks as people as stepping stones to achieving things and isn’t really in tune with her heart actually she pretends not to have one. that’s just a result of like parental control and brain washing and you know she has some mom issues here and there. and well basically i haven’t decided if she’s totally evil yet lmao. 

best friend: kat

fiance: jace

friends: she needs them

enemies: davis girls

romantic interest: idk why not hmu?  

charlotte lewis - face claim: candice patton ; her parents really suck, now they weren’t always that way for a few years of charlie’s life it wasn’t totally screwed up. her dad had a decent job, they weren’t rich by any means but they were middle class ya feel? and well basically she went to school like every other kid, with dreams and she was starry-eyed as f and then you know reality set in... her dad lost his job, her dolls lost their hair and her mom lost her mind. dad became a drunk, her mom walked out eventually and she was basically a six year old mother to her siblings.. and that’s where we are at now. charlie is a senior in high school but she isn’t exactly on the fast track to a university she skips too much of it to actually pass... ( she’s really smart tho... she just don’t got time. ) she works like 4 jobs to pay for the house and keep her siblings fed and all of that good stuff and well basically that just means she’s flunking out. kind of rough around the edges, with a shit ton of walls up and you know a bit of aggressive tbh she always ready to throw down lmao. 

best friend: 

friends:

enemies:

tutor: SOMEONE who wants to help her catch up and like not let her drop out like she’s thinking of doing. 

boss: idK she cleans someone rich kids house... so there’s that... and you know she has other odd jobs too. 

anything and everything.

james cunnigham - face claim: grant gustin ; nice guy 100%, no really he’s a good kid. he loves dogs and animals more than he loves actual people ( tbh he’s newt scamander... he’s awkward ok. ) will relate to them better than he does actual human beings and he’s like a giant fact book boy will talk and talk about random facts like good lord that’s just some talent. feel free to tell him to shut up at any time. wants to be a veterinarian or zoologist he hasn’t decided yet but he works at the local pet shelter he’s that weirdo always handing out flyers from the shelter and bringing awareness to the fact that the animals need homes. he has a siberian husky named summer and they are life partners he found him as a puppy and they have been inseparable ever since. ( tbh i get major clay vibes with him so like give me a hannah x clay dynamic for him please and thanks. ) his mom had an affair with a married man and that’s how he was born and he has a half brother who he just recently found out about... and well u know things have happened because of that.

half brother: uriah

cousin: wren

like a mom: riley 

best friends: lia and uriah

friends: he’s a good kid, he talks to everyone give him some friends he a nerd tho lmao.

enemies: omg someone dunk his head in the toilet and stuff like that pls lmfao. 

tutors: idK anyone want this spot? 

romantic interest: help he’s gonna marry his dog, no but like i said gimme. 

finnley gray - face claim: richard madden ; published author he’s at the top of the best sellers list, ex trust fund brat... gave up his family fortune to become a literature teacher. ( he loves books okay, he’s like mark sloan except he didn’t study medicine.. his passion is teaching and literature. ) things were going swell for him, except u know he left his ex fiance at the altar cause who wants responsibilities... he’s kind of an idiot idk who lets the dude teach i s2g. but yeah he’s a big man child who hates being accountable to anyone but it’s kind of changing? he doesn’t know... things are happening to him. he’s having an affair with one of his students cause you know he’s a hoe. 

best friends: jace and amelia 

like a sister: ambob and lexie 

friends: noah, and u know u can come here too lmao. 

ex fiance: kat 

girlfriend: yasmine 

enemies: gemma, gimme some k great thanks. u know outside of myself.

sebastian maradona - face claim: theo james ; ex soccer superstar, he played university level soccer then was signed to barcelona up until he got hurt and couldn’t play anymore he now coaches football at the high school and basically he’s about one step out the door lmao, he’s not cut out to deal with teenagers. he’s uptight and like super profesional and he tries to be laid back but it’s not working for him omg. 

best friends: 

protective over: cassidy, reagan and thea

crushing/crushed on?: reagan 

enemies: 

romantic interest: i’m down tbh lmao

connor whitaker - face claim: dominic sheroowd ; basketball captain, senior set to attend duke on a basketball scholarship ( resident nathan scott tbfh, but also like shane west in a walk to remember. ) kind of a douche, lone wolf and doesn’t associate with anyone who isn’t in his immediate circle of friends, intelligent but uninterested in school he wants to play for the NBA anyway. kind of lives a life where he’s the center of his own world and nothing really matters. 

best friends: give me

friends: i guess he runs with the popular crowd so sure he has friends.

enemies: he’s an arrogant as so let’s go for it

romantic interest: lia 

ex hookups and exes: go for it

saved faceclaims: nina dobrev, melissa benoist, katherine langford, douglas booth, sabrina carpenter, ADELAIDE KANE cause ya’ll can’t have her GRR. also i dropped chars that have some of these face claims cause idk wtf i was doing with them or who they were so yeah k bye.

[amorremanet]

OC profile meme: Adelaide?

oc profiles meme!

…okay, so, uh. Fair warning: Most of the length of this is actually taken up by the footnotes, and there are several periods where it stopped being about Addie specifically and turned into, “And now, I shall babble a lot about her, her brothers, their parents, their family dynamics, and a lot of THINGS AND STUFF that are generally related to this family of weirdos, because they are my weirdos and I love them.”

Also, the footnotes are kind of egregiously long, even by my standards. So, uh. That’s a thing. But anyway.

Full Name^: Adelaide Léonide Beauharnais Moncrieff.

Like all three of her brothers and several of their cousins, Addie got screwed by their family’s love of Significantly Significant and more-than-vaguely pretentious names.

For starters: she, Max, Seb, and Ambrose all wound up with, “Beauharnais” as a gratuitous middle name. It is their Mom’s maiden name, which she still uses almost as often as her husband’s surname. Giving it to the kids was their Dad’s idea.

It didn’t even have anything to do with carrying on Marceline’s family name, since she has two brothers who both had sons; Abe just thought it would be nice for the kids to have “Beauharnais” in their names, too.

Aside from that — Adelaide’s given first name was actually chosen for two reasons: 1. it’s a name with Family History™ behind it, just like all of the boys’ first names; and 2. in honor of St. Adelaide of Burgundy, one of the patron saints of victims and survivors of abuse (also, large families and princesses).

Léonide was just chosen for the sake of family history, rather than being a saintly name. The boys were not so lucky on that count, but Adelaide would’ve had a double-saintly name too, had Marceline not decided that she liked the name, “Léonide” more than, “Leonie.”

Addie is cool with that choice on her Mom’s part, because she got a French feminine counterpart of Leonidas as a middle name, while Max got his middle name from John the Baptist, Ambrose got that guy who the original Twelve Apostles recruited to replace Judas Iscariot, and Sebastian was middle-named after that long-winded douche who wrote The City of God, but he’s way more famous for praying, “Lord, please grant me chastity and self-restraint, but not right now!”

So, yeah. As far as middle-namesakes go, Adelaide is pretty sure that she won and her brothers lost.

Her Bastian is the only one she’s not going to lord it over when she’s bored or insecure or something along those lines, and that’s a relatively recent development, because watching her baby brother nearly kill himself multiple times and go to rehab made teasing him about his saintly middle-namesake really not funny to her anymore.

Seb wishes that Addie would let it be funny again, like?? Please? Acting like it’s not funny makes him feel broken.

Adelaide would be more open to listening on that count if their arguments about it didn’t tend to involve Seb saying that this middle-naming thing is totally funny because he’s a bigger drunken, worthless fuck-up than the patron saint of drunken, worthless fuck-ups, and not getting why his sister doesn’t think that it’s funny.

(It’s largely because she’s realized that her Bastian isn’t kidding when he calls himself a worthless fuck-up or make self-deprecating “jokes,” and she has no idea what to do to help with any of this, but helping fuel his problems is definitely not funny.)

Gender and Sexuality: Cis woman. // Bisexual.

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers.

Birthplace and Birthdate: May 27th, 1982. // Baltimore, MD. She’s a Gemini (Leo Moon, Virgo Rising).

Addie’s birthday is known as, “the Day of Driven Dedication,” her birth week as, “the Week of Freedom,” and the “way” that she was born under is, “the Way of Originality.”

And because I like sharing and want someone to see what I did here, these are the birthdates and signs for Addie’s immediate family members:

Abe: January 26th, 1949. // Aquarius (Capricorn Moon, Leo Rising).

Day: The Day of Striking Deeds.

Week: The Week of Genius.

(If Marceline ever heard this, she’d probably go, “So, is that astrology’s way of explaining the elaborate scale model of the storming of the Bastille that he built in the basement? Or the collection of Area 51 conspiracy theories? Or the time he responded to, ‘Dad, I’m gay’ with, ‘Hi, gay, I’m Dad’?”

Abe doesn’t believe in astrology, but might agree with that interpretation, if only because he likes it when his belle étoile affectionately teases him for being kind of a space cadet outside the office.)

Way: The Way of Empowerment.

Marceline: October 23rd, 1951. // Libra/Scorpio cusp (Leo Moon, Pisces Rising).

Day: The Day of Conflicting Destiny.

Week: The Week of Drama and Criticism.

Way: The Way of Extension.

Cusp: The Cusp of Drama and Criticism.

Technically, Marceline falls on the Libra side of the cusp here, but she’s right on the line.

Max: October 31st, 1978. // Scorpio (Scorpio Moon, Capricorn Rising).

Day: The Day of Attentiveness.

Week: The Week of Intensity.

Way: The Way of Grounding.

Max would really rather you didn’t remind him that he was born on Halloween. Like…… please don’t.

Unless you’re his daughter or his wife or maybe his sister, he probably won’t find it amusing

Ambrose: September 23rd, 1984. // Virgo (Virgo Moon, Aries Rising).

Day: The Day of the Breakthrough.

Week: The Week of Beauty.

Way: The Way of Modulation.

Cusp: The Cusp of Beauty.

Ambrose is, in fairness, right up on the cusp with Libra, but technically, he’s still on the Virgo side.

Sebastian: August 13th, 1985. // Leo (Cancer Moon, Pisces Rising).

Day: The Day of Long Odds.

Week: The Week of Leadership.

Which freaked him out, when his late cousin Jeremy was having an astrology phase and Seb had to hear this because Jeremy was one of his best friends, and ahahaha, no thank you, that’s not funny, Seb is not a leader or a role model or anything, why

Way: The Way of Grace.

Marie (Addie’s niece): July 9th, 2008. // Cancer (Libra Moon, Leo Rising).

Day: The Day of Dark Pragmatism.

Week: The Week of the Unconventional.

Way: The Way of Consideration.

Linda (Addie’s sister-in-law): May 13th, 1979. // Taurus (Sagittarius Moon, Scorpio Rising).

Day: The Day of Natural Appeal.

Week: The Week of the Natural.

Way: The Way of Solution.

Yes, I am slightly ashamed of how much time and thought I put into this, and into toggling my characters’ birth charts using the free chart-making things on alabe.com and astro.com — plus the book, The Secret Language of Birthdays, and their free app, for all of the, “Day of X,” “Week of Y” stuff — and of doing it all for no real purpose beyond, “I really like all these inane details,” “Sometimes, I get fun ideas from doing shit with these inane details,” and, “I want someone to see what I did here.”

But clearly, I am not nearly ashamed enough to stop doing it and/or at least not admit to it in public.

Species/Race & Ethnicity: Human (non-mutant). // White (French).

For the most part, the Moncrieffs have not lived in France since about 1781, when Addie and her brothers’ some-odd-great-grandfather sold off the family’s marquisate to join the Marquis de Lafayette in saving the American Revolution, then stayed an expat to find new opportunities.

The only exception to that is one ancestor who Seb is partly named after — partly because said ancestor’s name was Severin Sebastien vs. Sebastian Augustine, and partly because there have been other Sebastiens and Sebastians on the family tree — and he was only an exception because he stayed in Paris with his husband-in-all-but-tedious-legalities, and they eventually got involved in the French Revolution. Severin had no children, so the family in France died when he did.

Marceline’s family hasn’t been in France for several generations either.

This does not stop any of them from being ridiculously insistent on how French they are.

Addie has the most chill about it — which is particularly notable because she doesn’t really have any chill to speak of, ever and about most things — because she’s of the mind that bringing up the family’s French-ness is really only useful when it comes to matters of business, and more specifically, matters of advertising.

See, the Moncrieff family business is wine. The family’s first vineyard in the States is in upstate New York, and they have another in Maryland that was one of the big reasons why some of the family moved to the Baltimore area in the first place. Wine was the family business even before they came out to the States; a huge amount of land on the old ancestral holdings in Bordeaux was taken up by a vineyard.

Traditionally, most of the Moncrieff offspring go into the family business in some capacity.

This generation is sort of odd, in that regard, since Ambrose is a teacher, Sebastian is a mess, and only a handful of their odd cousins joined Max and Adelaide in going to work in the wine business.

(Max has been trying, fruitlessly, to get Seb to please, just come over here and take a job with the company, like. Not even a hard job, you can have a do-nothing desk job that has basically no expectations put on you, aside from you showing up and getting a haircut.

Although there are lulls between rounds of, “Sebastian, for God’s sakes, please stop being obstinate and just take the job,” Max has overall doubled-down on these efforts ever since his little brother went to rehab about a year and a half before the story starts, because dammit, he wants his brother to not die.

The big problem here is that Max is genuinely trying to help, but he’s coming at the whole issue from a place of, “It’s not as though Sebastian needs any of the money to be found in crime, he must need some guidance about what else to do with himself” — and he doesn’t get that this comes off as patronizing because he thinks that he’s being super-earnest about wanting to help his brother, so Seb’s constant refusals and exasperation make Max go, “?????”

[But to be fair, that’s not entirely his fault, since both of them have a problem of not trying hard enough to get on each other’s level, and getting several pieces wrong when they do try, and missing crucial pieces of information about each other’s situations.

So, it’s like…… Yeah, okay, Max isn’t doing great on his end, but Seb and his not-listening are part of the problem with everything, too.]

What Adelaide gets about all of this and Max doesn’t — largely because Seb is closer to her and has an easier time being open with her, so she knows more in general and has a better idea of how to listen and talk to him than their big brother does — is that although Max is sure that getting Seb a steady, reliable, non-criminal job would give him some much-needed stability, a job at the family business would do more harm than good.

Like, it would obviously be a position that he got by virtue of nepotism, which is pretty Not Good for someone who feels like he’s not qualified to be a person on a really basic level, much less anything else, so Seb would feel like shit for it, and he’d want to do a good job of everything but he would also feel like he couldn’t manage it.

Then, the routine and stability would be good for him, yes, but he wouldn’t be able to settle into them for long. He’d get bored and feel stifled and trapped, then hate himself for feeling stifled and trapped (and, “ungrateful,” which is how he’d put it, regardless of whether or not anyone else would agree), or he’d feel like it’s all too much pressure — especially given the whole, “he’s only here by virtue of nepotism, so he’d feel even more of a pressure to do well and like that standard is even more unreachable” — and he’d crumble under it.

Which would all be even Worse than the nepotism part of things, and Addie is trying to be understanding of how her big brother doesn’t get this shit about their little brother, and of how Seb doesn’t feel like he can communicate it to Max at all without making Max, “hate him more,” and of the way each of them think the other one hates him when that’s not true, it’s just that they’re doing a bullshit job of not-really-communicating with each other, and Addie gets it, she does

—but holy fuck, the both of you! you are ADULTS and she is your SISTER, not your trained message-carrying raven. Now do everyone a favor, get your shit together and TALK TO EACH OTHER instead of talking to her, and Ambrose, and Mom *ABOUT* each other

But anyway, as I was saying.

It’s sort of assumed by most people that Max will end up inheriting the position of CEO whenever Abe decides to retire, just like how Abe inherited it from his father.

Addie is probably Max’s biggest competition for the position, and she’s hellbent on not making it easy for him to just walk into it (which he’s not making easy for her in turn, because he has a huge chip on his shoulder about proving that he deserves the position and isn’t here solely because this is his family’s company and he’s the eldest son of the CEO, eldest grandson of the previous CEO, and so on, going all the way back to the some-odd great-grandfather who first started the company and Gaspard Maximilien Moncrieff, who wasn’t the firstborn son — since that was Severin — but who got the marquisate when his brother wouldn’t take it and first brought the family to America).

(Not that Max is deliberately making it hard for Adelaide to give him competition, here. He’s just dedicated, driven, determined, and very insecure about seeming like he’s at all incompetent or undeserving, or like he’s just an entitled rich kid who’s skating by on his family’s name — so, when you put that together with his aptitude, skills, and so on, he sets a really high bar for anyone to meet.

He’s aware of this, to some degree. He doesn’t get why Adelaide is his only sibling who feels like she’s up to the task of matching or beating him — though to be fair, it’s not that Ambrose thinks he couldn’t and more that he just doesn’t want to, vs. Seb, who definitely doesn’t think that he can live up to the examples set by any of his siblings, especially not Max’s — but still.)^^

Either way, Adelaide’s done some work she’s proud of with the company’s ad people, and she thinks there’s value in bringing up the family history in the company’s advertising. Partly, she thinks so because the family’s history is part of their brand, at this point. The company’s been around for long enough, and they’ve relied on the family’s history often enough, that part of what makes them stick out from other companies built around the production and sale of alcoholic beverages? is that their company can point at the Moncrieff name and at their history, and go, “Hey, look at our pedigree in making booze”

Mostly, though, Addie sees the value of family history here because it creates an easy appeal to authority and legacy:

e.g., “our family knows wine, so our company knows wine, and our wine is Quality™”

or, “our buckwheat single-malt is still made with the old ancestral recipe, handed down from the old marquisate in Bordeaux, first brought to us after this ancestor married that other noble family’s daughter from Brittany and the two of them learned how to grow better buckwheat and worked to refine the recipe — therefore, you can trust that we have a Quality™ product and you totally want to buy it now, don’t you?”

Otherwise, it’s like…… Yeah, okay. Addie sees the importance of her family’s history to them as a family — not least because Vigne Rêve (the family’s first estate in America, just outside of Poughkeepsie) is a National Historical Site, and they maintain a local museum there and everything, and if Addie has to endure another round of her grandfather and her baby brother arguing about some aspects of the museum and how it handles certain parts of history, she feels like she’s going to fucking scream

—but she doesn’t actually see the point in insisting on how French they are in most cases, like? To Americans, it makes the lot of them look pretentious. To French people, it tends to make them look completely ridiculous because none of them was born in France, none of them was raised in France, and Addie’s pretty sure that semi-regular trips to France while they were growing up (+ study abroad years in France, in her and Seb’s cases*) is not actually the same thing as legit growing up in France

So, Addie’s perspective is basically, “Seriously, fam. We’re not actually French, we’re Americans whose roots go back to France and the fact that Mom and Dad raised us speaking French at home as often as English — to the point that all four of us padded our college applications by taking the French language AP exams and SAT subject tests, and that Bastian can tell you he’s an idiot while reading Proust in the original French because, ‘none of the English translations get it right’ and this legitimately doesn’t faze him or strike him as weird or intellectually intensive? None of that changes how we are not actually French.”

(*: Max and Ambrose also did study abroad programs, but Ambrose went to Oxford for a conventional study abroad year — like what Seb and Addie did with their Paris programs — while Max went to DIS Copenhagen, did a summer program at the London School of Economics, and had a summer internship in Berlin through IES Abroad.)

Guilty Pleasures: Mint chocolate, pineapple on pizza, soft pretzels, arguing for the sake of arguing, deliberately (but playfully) winding up her brothers for no purpose beyond, “but they’re so cute when they’re wound up” (she really doesn’t mean this to hurt anyone, which is why she doesn’t do it to Seb that much anymore, and why she tries to steer clear of any genuinely sore or sensitive spots with all of them), finding excuses to stop by Seb’s place because she doesn’t feel like cooking today and he likes feeling useful and needed so maybe she can sweet-talk him into making her dinner (she can. she always can. she doesn’t even need to sweet-talk him, really; she just does that because she enjoys the sweet-talking aspect), binge-watching reruns of Law and Order: SVU, Catching All-Stars (the reality show about America’s premier superhero team), and Project Runway.

Phobias: Failure; not finding out what her full potential is and then actualizing it; (but at the same time) pulling an Icarus because she tried too hard or tried to go too far or opened the Ancient Tome Of Horrible Knowledge, Of Which Humanity Was Not Meant To Know, or something like that; loneliness; the CN Tower in Toronto — or, more specifically, the glass walk in the CN Tower, where logically, you know that you’re safe because you’re inside and the pod is secure, but you look down and the glass lets you see the ground and your brain goes, “DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER DANGER DANGER YOU’RE GOING TO FALL”; extreme physical heights in general tbh, though she’ll tell you that it’s not the heights she minds, but the threat of falling off of them (and she’ll cite amusement park rides as evidence, telling you how she doesn’t mind rollercoasters but can’t stand drop rides like the Tower of Terror at Disneyland).

What They Would Be Famous For: Well, she isn’t overly famous or anything, but she is actually fairly well-known in-universe, already, at least in certain circles.

On one hand, Addie can sometimes turn up in the, “society” pages of different gossip blogs or publications like the New York Post and Page Six. This is true of her parents, siblings, and some of her cousins, too, because their family is well-off and essentially minor nobility — just… y’know, this is still set in America, where we largely don’t acknowledge that we have our own de facto systems of nobility, even though we do.

This doesn’t happen to Addie herself all that often, unless:

there’s something big going on that the family’s involved in^^^

they sort of wandered into something that’s a big deal to social voyeurs, even if it isn’t a huge deal to them (like the one time, when Addie was at Barnard, when she dated the son of a Massachusetts senator who was tapped as a potential recruit to the All-Stars)

or it’s a slow news day

But she sometimes shows up in the society pages because of something or other involving whatever higher-profile trouble Seb’s gotten himself into this week

On the other hand, she’s getting a name for herself as part of the family business. Like, a few months before the story starts, she, Max, and Abe had an interview for a fairly big deal feature piece in Fortune, Addie commands a pretty decent amount of respect among business partners, and some people know her from that, even if it isn’t necessarily, “being famous” as such.

What They Would Get Arrested For: Well, there were a few times in undergrad when she only dodged a, “drunk and disorderly” charge by virtue of being a rich white girl. But generally speaking, Adelaide is, if not well-behaved, then at least not doing anything illegal or (ostensibly) too horribly irresponsible.

Unlike their self-destructive trouble-magnet baby brother, and their middle brother whose idea of a wild time would be spending so long in a really well-stocked library that he skips two meals and possibly gets locked in, Addie and Max are proponents of the, “stay within the letter of the law while violating the spirit of it” school of misbehavior

As well as being fairly well-practiced in it, both of them generally prefer to do so when it’s either for a good reason and/or working to a good end, or the infractions involved as so small that no one will actually care enough to do anything (and I’m talking like, “who took the cookie from the cookie jar” small, not like, “bored rich kids trying to justify shoplifting by being all, ‘whatever, it was just one pair of earrings’ or whatever”).

OC You Ship Them With: Margot, but it remains to be seen if that’s going to go anywhere beyond, “I like them individually, I think their interactions with each other are fun, they hit a lot of shipper trash buttons for me personally, and since I’m their writer, I could totally just make it canon if I wanted. I dunno if I want to yet, but I could.”

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: I’m honestly not sure.

Thing is, Addie can be an irksome little gadfly when she wants to be, but she generally doesn’t irritate anyone enough to actually want to murder her, and while she’s loosely affiliated with the story’s main superheroes by virtue of being close with her baby brother and Pete, she technically isn’t a member of the team and doesn’t want to be.

If she did end up targeted by supervillains, it would probably be either a coincidence (as in, “she wasn’t actually targeted, but statistically speaking, if you happen to live in a universe that has supervillains, there’s always a chance that you will end up in the crossfire of one of their attacks, like Max almost was during this one incident in Manhattan back in December 1997, i.e. the end of his first semester at Columbia”), or because Seb and/or Pete fucked up and got identified by a villain who didn’t promptly end up either dead or in custody.

So……… yeah. I don’t know. Good question.

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Dude, as long as it’s not going to demand a lot of thinking or attentiveness for her to enjoy it, Addie probably doesn’t care very much. Not like she tries to shut down any debates about the deeper meaning of pop culture or anything, but if she’s going to be reading or watching something for fun, then she’s looking for brain candy that she doesn’t feel like she has to pay a lot of attention to.

Vintage cartoons and “fill in the blanks” genre novels — like, potboiler noir knock-off detective stories, “what if it were like a sci-fi detective story with vampires or some shit,” and so on — are a common source of joy for her.

The ASOIAF books, she only read because Sebastian promised her that GRRM’s writing style isn’t particularly dense, and she’ll acquiesce that the books have the better story, but if she’s going to do anything with that universe, then sorry, brother, but she’s going to watch Game of Thrones, because if you ask her, it’s pretty much just a ridiculous, trash soap opera with more nudity, more dragons, and an actual production budget.

And she may not know more about Star Trek or Star Wars than you because Addie doesn’t want to actually engage with their fandoms or expanded universes or anything, but she can likely rattle off exact quotations or plot summaries better than you can, because the SW movies and TOS are good brain candy background noise, in her mind.

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Alleged “love stories” that consist entirely of some dude bullying some girl, and then they hook up because of reasons or something (the relationship between Judd Nelson’s and Molly Ringwald’s characters in The Breakfast Club is Addie’s usual point of reference for what she’s talking about here).

Talents and/or Powers: Well, she doesn’t have superpowers, but some of her mundane powers include, but are not limited to: motivating pep-talks that are sweet yet simultaneously kind of abrasive; multitasking (she’s not as good at is she thinks she is, and tbh, she probably should’ve been diagnosed with ADHD at some point*); remembering the details that you probably wish that she’d forget but spacing on some of the ones you want her to remember; being the absolute worst person to go with her baby brother to make sure that he doesn’t try to adopt every single dog at the ASPCA, because she’ll be right there with him going, “oh no, they’re so cute, we should take all of them home”; getting way too intense when she’s playing foosball, racquetball, Mario Kart, or literally anything else that has a competitive aspect; being the cool aunt who’s down for everything and can be a responsible chaperone while making it seem like she’s a BFF, rather than a babysitter; and looking bomb as Hell in a suit.

*: the fact that she hasn’t been diagnosed with ADHD is even more glaring in light of this one instance when she was at Barnard, when she went to a party where Adderall was available and being offered to people, she took some, and instead of getting high, she got the sudden, abrupt clarity that comes when you’ve been living with brain-static for your entire life and haven’t realized that this is not just a normal part of life that literally everyone experiences.

……Except then, Addie didn’t connect the dots here, or talk about this to anyone to compare notes on what happens when you take Adderall without having ADHD, and she went back to thinking the brain-static was just a normal part of life. She does wonder sometimes, because her mind wanders too much and onto too many tracks for her not to wonder, but she’s 35 and still doesn’t think she might be even a little bit ADHD.

Like, if you pressed her, you would eventually hit a wall where she has to admit that her rationale here is essentially, “Because of reasons” and the reasons do not exist. But that’s sort of a point because no one’s pressed her about this.

Unfortunately, one of the people who could probably help her the most (Sebastian, because he has more experience with psychoactive substances than his big sister does) has never heard the story of this night, and these days, Addie would be reluctant to bring it up to him, for fear of “triggering” him in a way that might mean screwing up his sobriety.

(note: I use the, “scare quotes” here not to question the concept of triggering, but to illustrate that Adelaide…… sorta doesn’t know what she’s talking about, right now.

Like, she understands the concept of triggers and triggering someone, and her understanding is more or less accurate, but when it comes to her baby brother and his well-being, she blows it a little out of proportion.

Meaning: when Seb is involved, her understanding of how triggers work gets hypervigilant and excessive about the power that triggers have over people, to the extent that you usually only see among people who are trying to go, “checkmate, sjws!!!” by presenting shit as like, “triggers are a way of blaming you for someone else’s mistakes because you said the word, ‘assault,’ it made them angry, and they decapitated a bunch of baby seals with a chainsaw and it’s all your fault, how very dare you use words, you horrible person, blah blah blah, don’t respect people’s ~so-called~ triggers because they’re just a bunch of whiny piss-babies, etc. etc. etc.”

I mean, her heart is in the right place, but Addie sort of hasn’t put it together that simply saying phrases like, “pharm party” or, “junky” around Sebastian isn’t a magic spell that will compel him to go get high.

Further unfortunately, Seb has only vaguely realized that she’s doing this, so he waffles between, “I don’t even know if I’m actually seeing a trend or if I’m ‘just being sensitive’ and imagining things” and, “ugh, if I’m not imagining things, I can’t call her on it. She’s trying to help, and I appreciate that, so I don’t want to make her feel bad.”

She also kinda hasn’t realized that talking about drugs and alcohol in general is also not a magic spell that will make Seb go out and use — which he has noticed more clearly**, but still hasn’t called her on, even though Pete’s pointed out to him that it’s kind of ridiculous because:

“Princess, what the fuck does she think we talk about at meetings [of AA and NA]? Our burgeoning collections of vintage Barbie Dream-Houses or something?”

and, “Seriously. Part of why we see Genevieve [Seb’s and Pete’s therapist] is for help staying clean, which generally requires that we talk about our drugs of choice at least a little bit. Does? Does Adelaide think that we — an unreasonably tall, unfathomably kind, and unfairly down on himself addict, and a witty, abrasive, temperamental, but resilient, insightful, and devastatingly good-looking addict — don’t talk to our therapist about being fucking addicts? I’m just???? WHAT.”

—but, still. She’s trying to help, she is just…… being sort of overprotective and misguided about the particular way in which she’s going about it. Whoops.)

(**: He might not have noticed, if the, “Adelaide is averse to and skittish about talking about drinking, getting high, parties or partying, or any of that with Seb, these days” thing had stayed a series of vaguely similar, disconnected incidents, like her aversion to brining up drugs and alcohol with him.

But it’s sort of difficult to miss this when your big sister:

catches you, slightly over a month sober for the eleventh time now, and trying to break the new high-tech lock on the liquor cabinet in your Dad’s study, a few hours into his birthday party [and getting absolutely nowhere because it’s a really good lock with multiple redundancies, designed to make someone get frustrated and give up on breaking past it, which is why Abe and Marceline picked it];

notices that you’re barely even fully aware of what you were doing until she startles you and brings you back around;

sees that you’re deeply upset by this, not because you got caught, but because you really are serious about staying clean, but then shit like this happens and it makes you feel like maybe you’re not serious about it, or maybe you’re too weak for it, and it all sort of makes you feel like you’re gaslighting yourself;

tells you to talk it out at her if you need to;

listens attentively, and hugs you while you cry on her shoulder;

……and then still can’t actually contribute to the conversation without stumbling over trying to find a bunch of euphemisms for drinking and getting high, apologizing for saying things like, “getting high,” “using,” “getting wasted,” and so on

………and when asked about why she’s sorry for saying phrases that tend to be commonplace in your life, making up some rationale about how you’re already upset and she didn’t want to make it worse

…………and then, before you can point out that you wouldn’t be upset about her using the phrase, “getting drunk,” abruptly changing the subject to ask if you want her to go ask Mom and Dad to put the alcohol away for the rest of the night so you don’t have to watch other people drink when you’re feeling upset and vulnerable.

Why Someone Might Love Them: …it’s past 1 AM on Wednesday, I’ve been writing this since Monday afternoon, and I’m seriously blanking on how to answer both this question and the next one.

Why Someone Might Hate Them: …so, while I feel bad about skipping them because it’s such a cop-out, I’m still going to skip them because I’m tired and I’m blanking on how to answer these, and *whines while making vague gestures at my bag of pretzels*

How They Change: This part, I’m sort of making up as I go and really don’t have hashed out yet, because Addie is one of my favorite secondary characters, but she’s still a secondary character. If this were a TV show, she’d be a colorful recurring cast member, but not a, “main cast member in all but name” recurring like Tara on Buffy, Isaac on Teen Wolf, or Kevin on Riverdale.

So…… I’m experimenting and kinda, “vibe-ing it” with Addie and where she’s going to go, at the moment.

But at least I have the integrity enough to admit that I’m “vibe-ing it,” instead of acting like it’s entirely intentional, I say, totally not casting a judgmental sidelong glance at JK Rowling for any reason whatsoever, nope, not me, I would never.

Why You Love Them: okay, full disclosure, I’ve been writing this since yesterday (and if I don’t get this posted ’til it’s technically Wednesday, I mean that I’ve been writing it since Monday), with only periodic breaks to sleep, or eat, or regroup because I could feel my thought processes getting messier than usual, or space out to cartoons for a bit.

So, my ability to bullshit is a little tapped right now, and all I’ve got for this answer is, “idk, I just think she’s fun, like? She’s loving but obnoxious, principled but still someone who winds her brothers up about pineapple on pizza just because they’re so cute when they’re wound up, probably the sort of person who would end up chasing a white whale while making deliberate references to Moby Dick and lampshading that this is a terrible fucking idea but continuing to do it anyway, and??? idk, I just really enjoy her.”

^: This point isn’t actually a legal name or anything, so much as something that’s important to Addie anyway (even though she’s a Catholic in name only, like she’s barely even a “Christmas and Easter” Catholic), but she picked Saint Monica as her Confirmation namesake.

She did this entirely because Monica was Augustine’s mom, and Addie thought that Seb would probably pick Augustine for his own Confirmation saint because Max picked John the Baptist as his saint.

See, for a long time, when they were growing up, Seb wanted to be Max, so Addie felt like, “why wouldn’t he follow Max’s example and just pick his middle-namesake.”

The endgame in this idea was that Seb never would’ve been able to go, “You’re not my MOM!” at her, because Addie could pull out a ridiculous misapplication of Church doctrine to go, “WELL TECHNICALLY, LITTLE BROTHER” and she’d win because Seb is genuinely devout, so she thought he’d just go with it

Then Seb went and chose John of the Cross, contemplative mystic and author of The Dark Night of The Soul, for his Confirmation saint, and by that time, Addie had forgotten her plan anyway because she was too busy with the early stages of college applications, competition season with the debate team and Model U.N. team, and about fifteen other things.

^^: …This footnote is seriously just here because I can’t help Hogwarts Sorting all of my OC’s and I got thinking about it while writing that answer and its spiel about ambition, proving oneself, meeting challenges and the like, so here we are.

Max: SLYTHERIN primary, GRYFFINDOR secondary.

Max would, along with Addie, most likely end up being a Gryffindor vs. Slytherin Hat-Stall. But Max would ultimately end up in the Snake Pit, rather than the Lion’s Den, by virtue of his values, rather than his behaviors or personality traits, exactly.

I mean, his personality and behaviors definitely fit better with how people perceive Slytherin overall — like, if he wound up in Gryffindor, he would be very much a Percy Weasley-model Gryffindor, who’s intellectual but not as invested in learning for its own sake as Hermione, Remus, or a Ravenclaw, and really fixated on Doing Cool Shit or Doing Great Things, to the point that his ambition can overshadow the values and ideals that underlie and guide it

(so much so that people would rather try to argue that Percy should’ve been a Slytherin, rather than actually asking why he’s a Gryffindor or examining what him being in Gryffindor means about Gryffindor, Slytherin, and the Sorting system overall)

Where Max differs from Percy, though, is that all of his ideals are important to him, and he does care about Doing The Right Thing (which he usually conflates with doing the thing that’s best for everyone, or as close to it as possible, which is where his Hufflepuff points come from) — but Max values ambition, determination, and cunning more than he values courage and daring and nerve.

So, y’know, a Slytherin version of the reason why Percy and Wormtail aren’t Slytherins (Percy values courage, nobility, daring, and moral righteousness more than ambition and so on, while Peter values boldness, self-righteousness, and being a big, obnoxious, grandstanding bully, which is why he could go from allying himself with James and Sirius [who were bullies like that] to joining Lord Tom-mort Voldingdong [who is, without question, the biggest example of a bully like this in the entire series, because Heir of Slytherin or not, he would’ve done as well in Gryffindor as Harry would’ve done in Slytherin], and not see these stances as contradicting each other)

Or a Slytherin version of the reason why Neville is a Gryffindor and not a Hufflepuff (by trying to push for Hufflepuff because he felt like it would involve less pressure and he wouldn’t be a failboat who didn’t live up to Hufflepuff’s values, he shows that he places a higher value on the traits that Gryffindor looked for in his students than any of Helga Hufflepuff’s ideals)

Basically, what this means for Max is that he does fixate a lot on the morality, the rightness or lack thereof, and so on of what he does, and he does hit several points where Gryffindor and Slytherin canonically overlap with each other (determination and conviction, a distaste for being told what to do, a tendency to come off like a complete asshole, a habit of slipping into a self-aggrandizing mindset that goes like, “I’m right, you’re wrong, my way of doing things is inherently better than yours, and there’s nothing you can you can do about it,” a tendency to assume that he knows what’s best for people more than they do, and “a certain disregard for rules”)

(though you’d be forgiven for not guessing the last point, since Max ostensibly seems like he’s a total stickler for the rules and would probably make out with a student conduct handbook

—but Max’s take here is generally, “A lot of these rules are actively counterproductive. Yes, a lot of rules serve a purpose and help make things better for everyone, because complete anarchy is fundamentally, completely unsustainable and would probably end up reenacting the Reign of Terror because humans are bastards. Bastards with the potential to do better, yes, but most of us choose not to, and trying to instate anarchy — whether it’s in the sense of complete disorder, or actual political anarchy — based on idealistic hopes, rather than acknowledging the material reality and humanity’s established precedents will do more harm than good.

“However, a LOT of rules are either fundamentally wrong — such as the legislation that used to punish people for having consensual same-sex intercourse — or are greatly misapplied in ways that are wrong. Or, they just don’t do anything beyond pointlessly regulating things that don’t actually need to be regulated. There are some things that it’s silly to fight because it would be a waste of time and energy — such as people telling you to type things in a certain font — but there are others where you can and should ignore and/or flout them because they’re asinine.”)

…and what makes Max more Slytherin is that. in the breaking rules example, he would advocate for people to break the rules more cleverly and with more cunning than just going, “look at me, I am defying the rules!” There are smaller ways of protesting, or maneuvering within the letter of the law in order to defy the spirit of it, and Max would favor those approaches to situations because they’re less likely to get you caught, which means you have a better chance of being able to affect more change over a longer period of time.

More generally, though, it would come down to how he would sooner compromise somewhat on the ideals to get something done, and then try to improve that something once it’s out there. Likewise, he thinks that ideals, values, morals, and ethics are great, but you need to back them up with action and ambition, or else they’re meaningless — so, the drive and determination of Slytherin are more important to him than all of the self-righteous moralizing and, “who actually cares about pragmatism, we have ideals and a Cause” shit of Gryffindor.

Finally, while he definitely believes in some versions of The Greater Good, Max wouldn’t prioritize The Greater Good above all else.

Like, for one thing, he wouldn’t put it above the human element (e.g., he wouldn’t leave Harry in an abusive home, and if he had to keep Snape at Hogwarts for some reason, he would still try to get Snape help, rather than taking advantage of how damaged he is and manipulating him in service of some, “Greater Good,” and thus, he wouldn’t let Snape get away with whatever the Hell he wants as a professor, since Max wouldn’t have any guilt to assuage by letting Snape have more or less complete carte blanche to be a douchebag to children, and he would understand that any alleged lessons that kids could learn from having an asshole teacher wouldn’t be worth it compared to what they can get out of having a more positive learning environment)

For another, while Max would believe in The Greater Good, in the utilitarian sense of trying to create the most good for as many people as possible, he would be pretty exasperated by the idealistic, pie in the sky, “there is almost definitely no way that you can actualize this in the real world, and trying to pursue it without room for constructive compromise” sense of The Greater Good, and he would negotiate hard — and not be above manipulation, word-twisting, and so on — but he’d still rather try to find a compromise (within reason), than be an absolutist who gets nothing done

Adelaide: GRYFFINDOR primary, SLYTHERIN secondary.

The other Moncrieff Hat-Stall, and much like her brother’s Slytherin Sorting, Addie’s Gryffindor Sorting would ultimately come down to her values and priorities. And much like Max, probably no one would believe, at first, that she was almost a Slytherin, because she would seem so undeniably Gryffindor that the idea of her being in Slytherin would seem like a really bad joke.

Contrariwise, if she’d wound up in Slytherin, then she’d probably adapt to it well enough to do well there and find a way to flourish, but there would probably end up being some kind of disconnect between her and a lot of her Housemates, because she would definitely be all like, “Fuck, man, I want to win the match against Ravenclaw (or whoever) too, but I want to win because we’re genuinely better than the other team, not because we cheated. If we can’t prove that we’re better by working hard and beating them fairly, then we don’t deserve to win but we *do* deserve to be put in our place by losing, period.”

Also, she’d probably end up being more of a loner within her own House, rather than playing into all of the ridiculous miniature games of thrones that we Slytherins no doubt get up to, trying to vie for social status and then exert it over each other.

As far as most people would ever hear, Addie just refuses to play those games because she thinks they’re a stupid waste of time, but the reality is a little bit more nuanced.

On one hand, she would kind of have moral objections to those games of social status and lording it over each other (because the whole point of a House is to promote togetherness of people who should work better with each other than with members of other Houses because they share similar values, not to create sub-hierarchies about who’s better than whom and start treating each other like status objects and tools to gain it).

But on the other, there would definitely be an element of, “screw you guys, I’m going home” or, “I’ll make my own theme park! With black jack! And sex workers!!” because Addie doesn’t fucking want to kowtow to some smug, smarmy little shits like Draco, Pansy, Narcissa, Lucius, or Tom-mort Voldingdong Riddle

—which would have a mix of Slytherin motivations (she doesn’t want to lick boot because she’s better than that and fuck you, that’s why; she doesn’t want to follow someone else’s directions and be their courtier because fuck you, Martha, you can’t tell her what to do), and Gryffindor ones (most of the people involved in these games within Slytherin House tend to be assholes with whom Addie would have many serious moral objections, and fuck you, she’s not going to play nicely with them just because they’re Malfoys or Parkinsons or whoever).

(Basically, I see Addie’s objections to the intra-Slytherin social gaming nonsense as being kind of in the same, “Any man who must say, ‘I am the king’ is no true king at all” vein (with apologies to GRRM and Tywin Lannister), as my headcanon Theodore Nott’s objections to Draco’s bullying bullshit behavior patterns, just without the lack of challenging fundamentally Blood Purist assumptions under the guise of supporting meritocracy.

Like, my headcanon Theodore gets on Draco’s case and tells him not to be such a ridiculous, bullying little shit because it’s “demeaning for someone of his status” and, if he truly believes in the power that they have by virtue of being wealthy white Pureblooded young men, then Draco has no need to try and assert his superiority or dominance by tormenting people who are so far beneath them and disadvantaged in ways that they are not. All it does is make people think that he’s weak, especially when he goes on about being so powerful and so strong but then runs crying to Snape or Umbridge or whoever as soon as Potter, Granger, Longbottom, and their pet Weasleys fight back — which shows that Draco cannot back up his threats on his own and suggests that he might not be deserving of his superior position because he might not actually be better than those whom he would rule and subjugate.

Addie, on the other hand, would look at all of the intra-Slytherin social gaming nonsense and self-aggrandizing, bullying bullshit behaviors and go, “Okay, so you’re all essentially a bunch of tiny, dumb-ass birds who are puffing up their chests, spreading their tail feathers as far as possible, jumping around while making obnoxious, annoying shrieking noises, and so on, in an attempt at seeming bigger and more threatening than you actually are. If you need to reaffirm that you have power by harassing people and hurting them, trying to cow them into submission, then you don’t deserve to have power. I’m not going to play into your games when you are really just sad, pathetic, and ultimately insignificant. Run along.”)

But anyway, as I was saying: Addie would wind up getting Sorted into Gryffindor because she values nerve, daring, boldness, Doing The Right Thing (or at least sticking to some sense of internally derived values and beliefs, if you don’t get on a moral high-horse about it being Completely Right And So There Because Fuck You That’s Why), and so on more than all of the Slytherin traits she has or values she shares.

Like, she’s someone who wants to win, and would push herself and her team to ridiculous lengths in order to win (like, Addie, honey? Oliver Wood called and he said you should chill), and she would utilize cunning when she comes up with different strategies for how they could win… but she wouldn’t advocate or allow for any cheating.

She wouldn’t, because according to her, if you win by cheating, then you aren’t really winning. It doesn’t count, she wouldn’t find it satisfying, and she would absolutely judge someone who did find it any kind of satisfying because how the fuck even can you enjoy a so-called “win” that is tantamount to admitting that you should have lost.

Which is, admittedly, a bit of a complicated point.

Like, the “disregard for rules [coupled with a tendency to be okay with them when you’re the one making them]” bit of both Houses isn’t being threatened either way, but on one hand, Addie’s objection to cheating has a Gryffindor sense of valuing the game itself, but she values the game out of a Slytherin’s drive to win. On the other, it’s definitely a Gryffindor’s morally self-righteous objection to cheating, but it’s also based in a Slytherin’s drive to prove yourself and be the very best, like no one ever was.

What ultimately makes this more of a Gryffindor point, to me, is that both Gryffindor and Slytherin ultimately do believe that some people are just better than others, and certainly don’t object to getting in people’s faces to go, “ha ha, I’m better than you” for whatever justifications someone pulls out for this (whether overtly, like James, Sirius, Draco, Tom-mort, Bellatrix, Harry when he takes Draco’s bait, and the list goes on

or more subtly, like most of Snape’s put-downs for people and Albus “paragon of virtue” Dumbledore being all like, “Hagrid, you’re not allowed to keep feeling bad that Rita Skeeter outed you as a half-giant because she’s trash and you are better than this” or, “My brother Aberforth challenges me and won’t let me manipulate him, so I’m going to make snide little comments about his maybe being illiterate and maybe having sex with goats when he’s not here to defend himself, because ugh, I’m right and he’s wrong and why doesn’t he just agree with me about things”)

—but Gryffindor House’s way of doing this is usually more grounded in some kind of underlying sense of moral self-righteousness that Gryffindors genuinely believe in.

Like, James is weird among Gryffindors, when he flat-out says that he’s tormenting and publicly humiliating Snape just because he exists. Most Gryffindors have some kind of moral justification for being shitty to people, like how Hermione hexes the D.A.’s sign-up sheet, even knowing that Umbridge is okay with torturing students, because if someone rats the rest of them out, then they deserve to have ‘SNEAK’ magically break out on their face.

But for all Slytherins will have some kind of underlying belief that we’re better than whomever we’re being shitty to (whether we deserve to have it or not, and in fairness, we probably won’t), and we might bullshit a justification for it… but unless we’ve really sold ourselves on our own bullshit (which, unfortunately, plenty of us have), we won’t believe those justifications. We will know that we’re being shitty to people and that it is, in most cases, nowhere even close to being right or justified, and we’ll do it anyway.

—Which is all relevant to Addie’s opinions about cheating because she does genuinely believe that whether or not to cheat is a matter of moral fiber, and that choosing not to cheat means that, even if you lose, you’re still better than someone else who would choose cheating instead of doing the work to be the best, and she would rather have the moral high-ground of not cheating than the win.

Make no mistake: she still absolutely wants the fuck to win, but… It’s like she says, “Winning by cheating doesn’t count because it isn’t really winning. It’s tantamount to admitting that you should have damned well lost. Either win with honor, or suck it up and lose.”

So, yeah. The Gryffindor and Slytherin are both strong in her, but the Gryffindor does ultimately win out by enough to count.

For another example: Addie wouldn’t rule out subterfuge or sneaky ways of doing things — like Max, she could get behind working within the letter of the law while defying the spirit of it, if she thought that was a more or less right choice — but in order for her to do so, there would need to be some kind of Cause, some kind of Greater Good, some kind of moral or idealistic justification, and/or some kind of larger endgame goal that she can’t accomplish through any other means (or if those other means would do more harm than good).

Aside from that, if this was a prolonged amount of sneaking or a particularly underhanded form of subterfuge, Addie would probably spend the whole time complaining on and off to someone, even just her journal or Ambrose (because she knows that he understands when she’s just venting without any plans to actually go against the plan and won’t get personally hurt, like Seb might, or get offended and argue back at her, like Max), and all of her complaints would be about how she sees the point of the sneaking but would much rather do it some other way where they could be more direct instead of manipulative and sneaky.

Like, manipulation has a place and she’s overall totally fine with using it — and she would agree without question that it’s better to use subterfuge and manipulation than to just beat the shit out of people until they either say they’ll play by your rules or die — but she’d rather get the Right Thing done out in the open. She doesn’t doubt that, sometimes, the Right Thing has to be quieter or underground, and this doesn’t make it any less Right or any less brave, but it sucks when you can’t be open and honest about it.

(Which is where most of her Hufflepuff points end up coming from. Her sense of ethics and commitment to honesty might not be that strong — and she is definitely more committed to both of those things on moral grounds than a more Hufflepuff reason like, “it’s called not being a dick to people, you should try it” — but they do exist.)

Like, with Adelaide, we’re talking about someone who looked at the situation where her baby brother had just nearly killed himself twice over and wound up hospitalized twice within a single week — once for an OD that might’ve been intentional or could’ve been an accident, he legitimately had no idea; and then again for inexplicably (as far as they knew) passing out and falling backwards down the stairs at their parents’ house — where everyone in Seb’s life was on the same page about him needing professional help and wanting him to go to rehab, and everyone knew that he was going to be difficult about it, at best, because he had insisted to all of them that he was fine, even after that particular series of events…

…and still went, “Okay, but do we really need to lie to him in order to get him to the intervention? Look, I get it that he’s lied to all of us more than enough times that we can feel like it’s justified to tell him one little lie that’s hopefully going to be good for him in the end — but it might not end up being good for him. If we catch him off-guard, it might make him get defensive, and it make him start pushing back at us and lashing out instead of letting us try to help him. He could hurt himself more than he already has, or he could hurt someone else, whether he means to or not, and just? It could do more harm than good to lie to him and we might end up hurting him with that deception without it accomplishing anything.”

……and who only wound up relenting about that because: 1. she was given permission to not go help Pete, Margot, and Ambrose get Seb up to Abe and Marceline’s place for the intervention, and thus, Addie didn’t have to lie to Seb herself;

and 2. Pete gave her a few minutes after she stormed out onto her parents’ back deck, then followed her, and despite being pretty high himself at that particular moment — and really only getting away with it because only Margot and Todd could tell for sure, and neither of them was saying anything right then — sat with Addie and gave her a Talk about how he didn’t like the idea of lying to Seb to get him to the intervention either

—“I mean, it’s like you said: lying could go really, very badly for all of us, especially him. And more importantly, to me at least? My Princess values honesty so much that he asked your Mom for permission to sneak some of your parents’ good booze to our unofficial Into the Woods cast party, back at St. Andrew’s, instead of just taking it from the cabinet which is what I would’ve done, because he felt like it would be a better decision for everyone if your Mom knew that we were going to be drinking.

“Once, I had to listen to him agonize for, like, ten days about whether or not it was okay for him to put up a front of being a dick to some ex-boy of yours, because you hadn’t listened to him about his honest reasons for not liking the douche, he didn’t have any proof that you were believing him about at the time, and he accepted that he was going to have a hand in something that would hurt you because dumping someone or getting dumped does tend to suck like that, but he didn’t want to do you any additional hurt through that deception.

“Even worse? He values honesty so much that he gives people the benefit of the doubt when he really fucking shouldn’t, I mean? How many times have we had to hear him say some shit about how Josh was really serious about treating him better this time? Or how Rémy said that he didn’t put anything in Seb’s drink, Seb just got plastered like a cast model of David Lee Roth’s dick and blacked out, and that seemed legit because that’s something that he would do? Or how Mark apologized and he seemed really upset about hurting Seb, so Seb was going to trust him again?

“The downside of this for those of us who don’t treat him like shit for fun or because we’re insecure about our dick size or because our parents were mean to us, or whatever sob story any of his exes has ever sold him on? The downside for us, is that we know that lying to Seb, even for his own damn good? Is going to hurt him. He’ll probably end up blaming himself more than us, after being angry with us for a little while, but that’s really not much better and he’s still going to be hurt.

“But the thing is? There really isn’t a way to do this — this meaning the intervention, and rehab, and getting him to accept help? We can’t do that without hurting him, at least a little bit.

“Your brother is the best friend I’ve ever had in my life, Addie, and I, the gayest of all possible gays, would rather have sex with my own sister than willingly, deliberately do anything to hurt him. But there isn’t a way to do this without us telling him things that he doesn’t want to hear, which will absolutely hurt him in the short-term, because he’s an emotionally sensitive marshmallow and, at first, everything we have to say is going to sound like we’re calling him a fuck-up, accusing him of deliberately hurting us, and confirming all the self-degrading bullshit that he believes about himself.

“It’s going to hurt him and it’s going to suck for all of us, but we need to do it, because every other thing we’ve tried to make him care about what he’s doing to himself? Hasn’t fucking worked. And being above-board with him about it? Hasn’t fucking worked.

“Know why it hasn’t worked? Because he doesn’t want to hear what we want to tell him, and unfortunately, he is really good at showing us enough of what we want to see that we back off. Because we want him to be okay, and we want to believe him when he says he is, and whether he’s taking advantage of that intentionally, or just freaking out and falling back on shit that he knows will work? It doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters now is that he straight up doesn’t give a fuck about whether he lives or dies, and we need to get with the program and stop using kid gloves techniques.

“And yeah, it sucks to realize that that’s what we’re dealing with. I don’t blame you for not wanting to hear it, and when it’s on your own time? You can believe all you want that Max was making shit up, exaggerating, or misconstruing things in the whole, ‘I told him he was going to die, and he said, “So the fuck what”’ story — but you aren’t on your own time right now. We’re on, ‘trying to save your brother from himself’ time now, and we have to act like it.

“But, for what it’s worth? Personally? I believe Max. I don’t know how many times Bastian’s almost died have been accidental or intentional or whatever, but I know my Princess, I know that he has deliberately tried to kill himself more than once, and I know that he’s thought about dying by suicide more than he wants any of us to know. Know how I know that? Because I’ve been his friend for almost fifteen years and I’ve lost count of how many times he has said or done something that, if it wasn’t just outright and obviously suicidal, then we can see it leaning that way, if we look at it in retrospect.

“And I feel like rancid, microwaved vomit for how badly I’ve fucked up in trying to handle things as they came up with him, but I wanted so fucking badly to believe that, even when things were rough for him, he had enough of us on his team who could help him and, no matter what happened with anybody else, he’d always have me. He’s done so much for me, he’s gotten me through some of the worst shit in my life, he’s been there for me when I didn’t feel like I had anybody else, whether I did or not, and It was like a matter of pride to be there for him in the same way.

“He’s my best friend, Adelaide. I was supposed to be able to find the magical combination of things I could do or say for him to make him get better or at least keep him from getting worse. Admitting that I couldn’t? Sucked. It sucked so badly that I ignored all my instincts until the second time he wouldn’t admit that Mark had put him in the ER. After that? It’s been a few months of me trying to nudge him into getting help and being, by my standards, perfectly above-board about it.

“Not that I’ve lied to him about it, but I’ve tried being subtle, like trying to gently lead him to the, ‘You need help’ conclusion in a way where he’d think it was all his own idea. I’ve tried being telling him outright that he’s hurting himself in ways that he is better than and telling him that I love him and want better for him than that. I’ve tried being all, ‘Please don’t you dare die on me, I would be a fucking mess if I lost you.’ About the only thing I haven’t tried is telling him that he is hurting me right here, right now, because I’ve been terrified of it going sideways on us and making him get worse instead of better.

“I know I’m not alone in this, either. Todd was trying it before he got clean, and he’s been trying it even more since he got back from rehab. Everyone in this house has tried talking to him, except for Linda and Marie, and you can’t blame Linda when he still gets skittish around her without her even needing to be mad at him, and you can’t blame Marie because she’s five.

“Addie, we have all given Sebastian innumerable fucking chances to do this without lying and ambushing him into an intervention, and it has. not. fucking. *worked*.

“At this point, yeah. We are the taking a huge risk by deceiving him, even in the name of helping him. But if we don’t take that risk, then everything about how this has gone so far says that he is going to keep getting worse until he pushes his luck too far and dies.

“We might not feel good about lying to him, but right now? It’s not about us or how we feel. It’s about what’s right for him and what’s going to help him. You don’t have to like me or anything, but I know you love your brother, and right now, he needs us to put our egos aside for his sake. If we really want to help him — if we really, honestly love him and if we really want him to get well — then we need to suck it up, go all in, and resort to desperate measures that we might not feel good about. Because playing safe with his feelings and our comfort has, so far, only made him worse.”

(On the level of ideas, this was a moment of a Slytherin primary, Gryffindor secondary talking to a Gryffindor primary, Slytherin secondary, about the balance between ideals and results in trying to help someone they love get to somebody who, unlike either of them, could actually help him like they needed.

After Adelaide agreed that lying to Seb was, in this instance, as close to okay as anything was going to get, the moment also involved a moment of, “Uh, as an aside? Why did you say that I don’t have to like you? I mean, sure, you were Bastian’s friend first, but you wouldn’t be my friend if I didn’t like you”

“…um, I actually wasn’t aware that you thought of me as a friend? ……Really?”

“Yes. Really. …Why would you think I don’t see you as a friend? Did I do something unfriendly?”

“No, just… I can’t go into that with you right now. It’d take too long, and we need to get back to the intervention planning session. …Preferably before Max kills Todd or Margot. I don’t think my Princess will play nicely with going to rehab if we let anything happen to those two.”

But now I’m like ten miles away from the actual topic, oops.)

TL;DR: much like how Max is ultimately a Slytherin because he values getting results and the actual doing things more than ideals, Addie is on a very fine line between Gryffindor and Slytherin, but she’s ultimately a Gryffindor because she places more value on why someone does things and would rather have the moral high-ground than the exact victory.

Ambrose: RAVENCLAW primary, SLYTHERIN secondary.

Ambrose is getting skimmed over af because this is way too long already — like, “I have resorted to typing in TextEdit and copy-pasting into the tumblr box, because Firefox keeps trying to stall out on me, oops” too long — but the gist of his Sorting is that anyone who spends ten minutes with him can see that he’s a Ravenclaw.

There is nothing close about this; every other House lags so far behind his Ravenclaw-ness that it isn’t even funny. His Ravenclaw-ness comes out in both conventional ways (e.g., he’s a nerdy, deadpan snarking little shit who loves learning, did well in school and was usually a teacher’s pet, and out of his siblings, he’s the one who would ignore someone telling him not to do something just for the sake of seeing what happens, and the one who’s most likely to waste his last words saying, “oooh, what does this button do?”)

and unconventional ones (e.g., he’s an artsy fartsy little shit who enjoys sewing, watches all of the weird History Channel conspiracy theory documentaries just to see what they’re on about, sometimes reads shit like, “I married Bigfoot and she’s having my baby!” tabloids because they’re so out there that he has to see them for himself, and would rather not gossip, but if you’re going to gossip, then he wants to hear everything)

That said, almost no one would see his secondary House coming, at least not until they get to know him, and even then, there’s not a guarantee that people will see this in him. Like, he’s determined and resourceful, but not in a way that makes most people think it comes out of anything but him being a dedicated nerd. Likewise, he can be cunning, sure, but he generally doesn’t go there, first. And sure, he’s willing to go to extreme measures and even cheat or break the rules, but he’s just so nice that a lot of people don’t pay it any mind.

Frankly, even Seb and Adelaide usually forget or overlook all of Ambrose’s Slytherin traits, even though they usually come out more in his interpersonal dealings than they do when he’s on his own. Which is, in a way, part of why he is such a secondary Slytherin: he’s so skilled at manipulating people that he can convince you that he isn’t manipulating people. Usually, Ambrose does what Pete wanted to do with Seb before giving up and resorting to “desperation tactics” — leading people to conclusions and ideas while making them think that they came up with it all on their own — but if not that, then it’s going to be pulling the right strings to try and keep his siblings from losing their shit, or playing peacemaker between them and spinning things exactly the right way

Sebastian: HUFFLEPUFF primary, GRYFFINDOR secondary.

Seb is, like Ambrose: 1. getting phoned the Hell in right now

and 2. a case where his primary House isn’t really up for debate, and all of his other options lag way, way behind Hufflepuff, and are so close to each other in how much he aligns himself with those Houses’ values and ideals that his actual secondary House only wins by a narrow margin.

Aside from being their Houses, the only reason why they’re different on this cout is that, as I said, people would totally peg Ambrose as a Ravenclaw but Seb would get mistyped as a Gryffindor pretty easily.

And, like? I can’t blame people for that, because Seb, admittedly, doesn’t act like how most people expect Hufflepuffs to act.

For one thing, he isn’t a, “You have ten fingers? I have ten fingers! Let’s be friends!!”-model Flufflepuff, or a happy-go-lucky, Hobbit-like stoner who’s always super chill with everyone and about everything, or a tireless try-hard who keeps telling himself, “I must work harder” while pushing himself beyond his limitations, and he isn’t cheerful and peppy all the time (and based on some of his precedents, the people who love him would be incredibly Concerned if Seb started being uncommonly happy and peppy like some people baselessly stereotype Hufflepuffs as being, because his precedents say that, when he acts like that, he’s probably high, tipsy but not drunk, or deliberately faking because he’s actually more miserable than usual).

He does kind of fit some of the more obviously negative stereotypes associated with Hufflepuff, whether fairly or not — e.g., he can be a pushover and a doormat; he’s a disaster whom some people would say falls under the heading of, “I’ll take the lot / and treat them all the same”; etc. — but even so, a lot of his outward behaviors are more in line with what people expect from Gryffindors, for better and (more often) for worse.

For example: Seb has a habit of running into dangerous situations, even before he gets into the superheroics line of work, which always, in every fucking fandom, makes some people mis-type characters who are obviously Hufflepuffs as Gryffindors, despite how they are obviously Hufflepuffs. I could go on all day about how this is a flawed piece of logic that relies too much on people projecting their own values and ideas onto the characters — e.g., they look at the heroic acts as being brave, noble, courageous, etc., and assume that these acts must be about bravery and courage for the people doing them, even though you could do heroic deeds in order to manipulate people

—but it’s even more glaringly wrong with Sebastian because he really explicitly doesn’t see these acts as being about any of the Gryffindor values.

Like, he doesn’t flinch from danger when he rushes headlong into situations where he could die or get seriously hurt… but before he gets into superheroics, he’s usually doing these to keep Margot safe because she’s one of his best friends and he won’t just sit there and do nothing to help her while she does dangerous things. After he gets into superheroics, he doesn’t see anything that he does in that line of work as brave or even as particularly heroic; he sees it as an ethical obligation to humanity, because he believes that if you have the power to help people and to make life safer for them, and you do nothing, then you do share partial responsibility for what happens to them because you made the choice to stand idle by and do fuck-all nothing.

For another thing, uh. Okay, Seb’s depression and addictions skew a lot of things about his situation, but if you ask him, it’s not a matter of courage to keep fighting them. Depending on how badly off he’s doing when you ask him, he might try to tell you that the real act of bravery on his part would be killing himself for real and getting his problems out of his loved ones’ lives, and then he’d probably berate himself for being a, “coward” because he hasn’t found a way to make any of his attempts on his own life stick yet.

So, no. It might be incredibly brave, overall, to keep fighting his own mind and his mental illnesses, day in and day out, just to wake up in the morning, but in Seb’s case, from Seb’s perspective, his choices to do so are not brave and they aren’t about bravery and anyone who thinks otherwise is either speaking in general terms that happen to be wrong of him, or trying to make him feel better.

The thing is, he doesn’t personally feel like he relies on nobility, chivalry, courage, moral righteousness, or any of that Gryffindor shit to keep fighting. He relies on loyalty and love. Like, on the smaller scale, one of the biggest things that gets him out of bed in the morning when it seems like too much and he’d rather not? Is that he has six dogs and they need him.

On the bigger scale, the people in his life are his biggest and most frequent reasons for doing almost everything

for better (e.g., he can easily be talked out of doing stupid things by thinking about whether or not his Mom would be disappointed in him for what he’s doing; “Be the person who your seven-year-old niece already thinks that you are” is an effective way to make him think about the potential consequences of his actions, and, “Pete needs me to be there for him” motivated him to kick a relapse right after Pete got back from rehab)

for worse (e.g., one of the things that he liked about alcohol, drinking it as a teenager, was that he wanted so badly to feel like he belonged and like his peers actually liked him, and other kids at cast parties seemed like they liked him when he was drinking;

and the first time that he fell off the wagon after going to rehab happened because his Dad had a bad reaction to anesthesia after an arthroscopic surgery, his Mom told his siblings not to tell him too many details so he wouldn’t worry too much, but that backfired because Seb worried anyway and his anxiety dragged his imagination to Hell with it, no one would let him do anything to help and that made him feel helpless and worthless, and being too emotionally overwhelmed and desperate, he texted one of his old “drug friends,” got his hands on pills, and got high)

and for a little bit of both (e.g., while it’s nice that he’s too loyal to let Margot go do dangerous shit by herself, they are still doing things that are extralegal and dangerous; while it’s nice that he’s so willing to sacrifice things for his loved ones and for people in general, it’s a lot less nice when you consider that he does genuinely feel like he’s only worth anything insofar as he’s useful to and doing good for others;

and one of the biggest things that made him relent and go to rehab was that he’d justified a lot of his self-abuse by telling himself, “Well, I’m only hurting myself, so it’s not a problem” and he didn’t want to hurt anyone else, even though he didn’t think there was a problem with the logic, “As long as I’m only hurting myself, it’s okay and there’s nothing bad about it, because I’m not hurting anyone who matters”).

One of the biggest issues here is that Seb could unwittingly give overly Gryffindor-biased people some ammunition because of how little he values himself and how much he dismisses any of his legitimate good points, because it would seem to be a lot like Neville’s push for Hufflepuff over Gryffindor.

But the thing is, when Seb devalues himself, it isn’t a matter of, “I should go to Loser House because I can’t be a Winner, that’s too much pressure” like it was for Neville; it’s a matter of, “All those traits are good and I have none of them because I am garbage.”

He values the Hufflepuff traits — loyalty, acceptance, fairness, kindness and compassion, hard work, etc. — more than he values courage, daring, moral self-righteousness, wit, creativity, learning, cunning, resourcefulness, or determination. If he ever seems like he’s talking them down, the reality is that he is talking himself down and berating himself for )allegedly) not having the good traits that he feels like he’s “fooled people” into thinking that he has.

But, with that said, Gryffindor is his secondary House for a reason. It really is a close call between that, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin — you could probably get any of them, depending on what day you ask, though Slytherin would probably be somewhat less common (regardless of the results below, Seb isn’t actually very Slytherin, at heart, and a lot of the places where he could be a Slytherin are probably actually Hufflepuff traits that happen to overlap with Slytherin) — but Gryffindor wins out because, for all he doesn’t really care about most of Gryffindor House’s values or traits, Seb does want to do the right thing.

He has a fundamentally more Hufflepuffian understanding of, “the right thing” (and he’s not an absolutist about it in the Capital Letters For Significance way that you’ll see more readily among Gryffindors), but still.

And because I like sharing (breakdowns gotten using this quiz):

MAX

ADELAIDE

AMBROSE

SEB

^^^: for example, the kerfuffle that ensued after Doctor Delphi of the All-Stars got outed and, overnight, got an endorsement deal from the family’s company — which was not really an issue of either business or politics, for all the public statements on the matter talked a lot of solid socially liberal talk about equality this and anti-hate that and so on, and for all people who were critical of the decision were right to say that the company’s endorsement deal with one gay celebrity superhero wasn’t really the same as actual political progress for LGBTQ people, and could have been seen as pandering to LGBTQ consumers

Just…… yeah. Those aspects of the situation were definitely still there, and it was fair to make note of them, but they weren’t at the foreground of Abe’s mind.

See, by that point, Seb had been out to his family for a few years and was getting increasingly invested in learning about LGBTQ history and the experiences of other LGBTQ people*, which Abe noticed and could admit that he didn’t get in a way that another LGBTQ person might.

His not really getting it wasn’t helped by how he saw a lot of this as, “Sebastian is being sensitive and upset again, because he does that a lot, and it’s nice that he cares so much about other people and their pain, but now, I feel helpless to do anything to help my son because I have no idea how to make him feel better about problems neither of us can actually do anything to fix on our own, or how to make him not get so upset about other people’s suffering when it’s not his fault or???? Anything?????”

So, basically, Abe wanted to put the company on the side of LGBTQ rights less out of concern for the larger social or political implications, or even out of concern for the business, but entirely because he thought that putting the company’s support behind a gay public figure might? maybe? help his son?? feel better???? maybe??? please????**

—none of which actually directly involved Addie, but at the time, she was taking a parentally-mandated mental health year off before starting at Barnard College, and staying with family in New York City, so it got noticed and turned into a Thing when she went clubbing with a few older cousins, one Saturday night

*: and in fairness? Seb was genuinely interested in this stuff for its own sake…… but it was somewhat more pressing because, on one hand, he wanted to try and figure out what his own place in LGBTQ communities and history might end up being.

And, on the other, he was friends with Pete as well as dating Damian, his best friend to first boyfriend, on the sly, and had to admit that there were parts of their experiences that he didn’t get.

Because Seb was, at this age, “high-strung and tightly-wound, and somehow, still the biggest Pollyanna you have ever met in your life” — in Pete’s words — he wanted to help and do right by two of the most important people in his life, and he decided to supplement listening to Pete and Damian with trying to read up on anything he could get his gay little hands on [which, given that he had rich parents and two siblings with access to top-tier university libraries — Barnard and Columbia, respectively — was a lot].

Which led to a lot of sadness and anxiety because so much of what Seb learned was so upsetting, and it’s very easy for him to get emotionally overwhelmed by other people’s suffering, the impulse he always feels to do something about it because people are being hurt and it sucks, and the realization that, in most cases, he either can’t do anything or has no idea what he could do.

**: Abe tries his best, he really does — and he and Seb often end up having, “strange minds think alike” moments where they come up with the same or similar equally weird conclusions, logic, solutions to, and/or approaches to something completely independently of each other — but…… well.

At the same time, Seb has always been emotional and sensitive in ways that Abe doesn’t always know what to do with, and he’s still tried and done a pretty okay job — like, the biggest problem here is by no means exclusive to him, and he can’t really be blamed for it because no one who’s close to Seb has understood all the different ways that his depression manifests itself as symptoms of depression because they’ve been going on for long enough that people think of them as, “just little Sebastian things”

—but Abe still had plenty of moments with Seb that went like, “uhh, mon belle étoile? Our five-year-old son is having an existential crisis about Winnie the Pooh and he’s very upset about it. He won’t go to bed, I don’t know what to do or to tell him, and I think I’ve only made it worse. Can you please come help him?”

and, “Nothing I’ve said or tried so far has made my son feel any less bad about everything he’s been reading about LGBTQ people and history. I can’t very well tell him not to read it because he’s a teenage boy who’s trying to find an understanding of himself and of where he fits in the world, and he can’t get this particular understanding from any of us, as far as I know.

“Besides, if I told Bastian not to read any of it, he’d probably just continue doing so anyway, because that’s generally what tends to happen when you tell him not to do something and make him get even more curious about it, and??? IDK what to do, maybe it might make him feel better if I put the company’s support behind some LGBTQ public figures and causes??? He has a Thing about looking into the philanthropic ways we spend some of our money, so maybe it’ll do some good for his emotional well-being if we support LGBTQ people and causes???”

—Abe does genuinely love all his children equally, but

At the same time, he has an easier time relating to Adelaide and Ambrose than either Max or Seb, because Seb is emotional in ways Abe doesn’t always get or know how to help with, and Max has always had a Thing about seeming as self-sufficient as possible and prickling when people offer help even if he probably needs it, which Abe has an easier time with than, “oh no, Sebastian’s upset and I’m unable to help,” but it still makes it harder for him to relate to Max, sometimes

But on one hand, Ambrose’s way of doing things tends to either line up with Abe’s or else complement it pretty well, and both of them have a primarily logical way of interacting with the world, where it’s not that feelings are unimportant, but they’d rather take a minute to breathe and get people grounded, then try to proceed with logic at the foreground, rather than making heat of the moment emotional decisions about things

And on the other hand, Addie is ultimately more of a Feeler than a Thinker — just… getting Myers-Briggs about it (she’s an ENFP vs. Abe’s ESTJ and Ambrose’s ISTJ) (and Marceline is an INTJ, Max is an INTP, and Seb is an ESFJ) — but Addie has an easier time with switching between feeling her emotions and letting them be valid (most of the time), and taking actions in the world that are based more in a logical approach and an attempt to balance between the emotional, subjective side and the necessity (if you ask her) of an organized, thought-out, and logical approach

Since I’m MBTI nerding already: Abe and Adelaide have the same cognitive functions in their stacks — Extroverted Intuition (Ne), Extroverted Thinking (Te), Introverted Feeling (Fi), and Introverted Sensing (Si) — but they’re just rearranged a little bit differently.

As an ENFP, Addie’s functional stack goes Ne-Fi-Te-Si, so she primarily approaches things using Extroverted Intuition to look for all the cool new possibilities in life, all the fun ways she can connect the dots in unexpected ways, all the shiny neat ideas that she hasn’t explored yet, etc. When it comes to feeling vs. thinking, her actions are guided by her values and her senses of what the best options are, what’s most exciting, and so on, but she tries to use organized, logical approaches to actualize them IRL

As an ESTJ, though, Abe’s functional stack is Te-Si-Ne-Fi, so he has a sense of ideals and emotional sensitivity that he relies on in how he approaches things, but his primary approach to the world is to break things down logically and intellectually, and to try and sort out which things are more or less useful for whatever he’s trying to do, make, fix, or otherwise work on

And as an ESFJ, Seb’s functional stack has some of the same functions as theirs — Ne and Si — but instead of Fi and Te, he has Extroverted Feeling (Fe) and Introverted Thinking (Ti), and his stack goes Fe-Si-Ne-Ti, which means that his primary way of relating to the world and approaching situations is based on people and feelings, but rather than prioritizing an internally-guided sense of values, morals, ethics, etc. like Abe and Addie do, Seb instead focuses on interpersonal relationships, group harmony and social cohesion, and potential threats to those things

Which is additionally unhelpful for Abe because, sadly, it’s not uncommon for ESFJs to have trouble understanding their own feelings, much less being able to articulate them in a way that others understand, because they’re guided by a Feeling function, but being Extroverted means that its focus is on the world outside themselves and that it’s harder for them to sort out their own feelings on their own.

Add in how some of them (like Seb) end up repressing the shit out of their, “negative” emotions in the name of, “not dragging other people down” or, “not ruining everything for everyone else”…

…and how Seb specifically puts a lot of effort into trying to put his fingers in his ears and ignore all his “negative” feelings — especially the “selfish” ones (as in, “the ones that come from sources other than compassion and/or empathy for other people and their pain”) — until they go away, refusing to try and understand them in a way he could communicate to people more easily, for several reasons (e.g., “if you don’t give them enough attention to understand them, then the feelings won’t be real and they can’t ruin everything for everybody else”)

……and yeah. That’s a recipe for exhausting Abe’s ability to help when his primary approach to most situations is to identify the problem and then try to fix it, or at least come up with something that might make the situation better, if he can’t fix everything right now

Also, y’know. Addie has had her fair share of rough spots in her life — and another thing she and Seb have in common is that both of them have dated some serious douchebags before, though Addie has thankfully never wound up in an emergency room because of one of her douchebag ex-boyfriends — but she hasn’t been living with clinical depression that has gone undiagnosed and thus untreated until about chapter three

[trudy101]

name/alias: Brittney timezone: Eastern tell us something about yourself!: My name is Brittney. I live in Michigan in the Eastern time zone. I love animals, music, books, movies and TV shows, Pinterest, and Polyvore. I often spend my time bike riding, cooking and cleaning, taking care of my mom and cats, surfing the internet, reading, and doing many other things. If you need to know my triggers, PM me, but the major ones are animal abuse/neglect, child abuse/neglect, animal/child abandonment, and suicide/self-harm. what kind of plots are you into?: Friends to lovers, Enemies to friends, sexual tension, best friends, Alice in Wonderland-type thing, sisterly bonds as well as family bonds, mother/child relationships, hauntings, age differences, mythology such as Persephone and Hades or Beauty and the Beast, and many others.

who are some favorite face claims of yours?: Emily Browning, Crystal Reed, Holland Roden, Lee Pace, Adelaide Kane, Maria Ehrich, many, many others.

what species do you think you’re going to make?: Enchanters are my favorite right now, but it depends on what happens between now and when the site opens. what do you hope to see on itws?: Just various plots and threads playing out, the skin, etc.

I would love to have a partner that is willing to plot and talk as well as roleplay with me. They should have good grammar, a good handle on their characters and the story that we would be writing, and wouldn't split without saying something. I usually write M/F, but am willing to try out threesomes like on From Dusk till Dawn (Richie/Kate/Seth) or F/F relationships. Also my rp buddy shouldn't mind age differences since I've been kind of wanting to try that out. Nothing too gross. Just like ten or so years difference.  My current character idea will be played by Emily Browning as seen on Sucker Punch, will have a little sister that she has a large role in taking care of her, and I would love to explore a haunting plot as well as age differences.

[wp-yahoo-style-1042-yahoopa-blog]

Why New Mom Katherine Heigl Wishes Her Style Were More ‘Adventurous’

Photo: Getty Images

These days, it’s the little things in life that make her happy. And those little things often involve the very basics of hygiene, says Katherine Heigl.

“I’m so proud of the mornings when I do wash my face and brush my teeth,” Heigl tells Yahoo Style. “My shower routine is maybe every couple of days. Yesterday I went to get my roots done. It felt so good to take a shower and put on a little makeup and something other than leggings and a sweatshirt and get out of the house. But now I’m so exhausted by it.”

So shouldn’t she be out having sushi with her husband, singer Josh Kelley, and reveling in her temporary makeover? “My hair looks really great right now. It’s such a waste. I do feel like we need a nice dinner out,” says Heigl, adding that it’s never going to happen.

Katherine Heigl and Josh Kelley (Photo: Getty Images)

Why, you might ask? Six weeks ago, she gave birth to her first son, Josh Jr., who joins sisters Naleigh and Adelaide at the family home in Utah. Now Heigl is figuring out how to balance a newborn while raising two daughters, 8, and 4, and trying to wear something other than elastic-band pants with oversize shirts.

“I gravitate more towards classic styles, like Victoria Beckham dresses and fitted things around the waist,” she says. “Her stuff is very classic in my mind. I’m not as adventurous as I wish I was. You have to know the rules before you break them, and I don’t know the rules. I stick to what works for me. If I end up working with a stylist who can break the rules, sometimes I will, and sometimes I get afraid.”

On her new show, Doubt, premiering Feb. 15 on CBS, Heigl plays an attorney who wouldn’t sweat any of that style stuff.

“Sadie is smart and competent and good at what she does. But she doesn’t do anything else. She works. She orders a pizza. She goes to bed. She doesn’t have nice things,” says Heigl. “I believe personally that style is an important part of a character.”

Heigl in Doubt (Photo: Getty Images)

When Heigl got the role, she gave the character a makeover of sorts. “I can’t have her be a total slob. Initially for me, her having style was about what looks best on me as a person. The easiest thing for me at the time to look good was my waist. I did a lot of high-waisted pencil skirts and fitted tops. Then I got pregnant, so a lot of the rest of the season was trying to hide that,” she says.

Adding to her family was never part of Heigl’s master plan. The pregnancy test’s coming up positive was a complete surprise.

“I wasn’t intending to have a third child when I did the pilot. We were waiting to see if they would pick it up. Everyone had good vibes about it. And I woke up one day, felt funny, took a pregnancy test and went, ‘Oh s***.’ I wasn’t expecting that. I would have to work all through my pregnancy,” she says, adding that she filmed until two weeks before delivery.

Now she’s admittedly suffering from massive baby brain.

“We’re in the thick of it. I’m so tired,” she says.

Her son was the first child she conceived biologically; both daughters were adopted. “For me the only difference has been the hormones. Your body goes through this physical process to birth a child. The hormones made me a crazy person and unlikable for the first couple of months. It’s so completely out of your control. I don’t use excuses. I try very hard to be kind. It overtook me. Once he was born, same thing. Your body starts producing different hormones to breastfeed and make you love your baby. The highs and lows of that are the only difference for me,” she says.

Happy New Years Eve from the Kelley girls! Here's to a spectacular, joyful abundant 2017 for all! ????????????

A photo posted by Katherine Heigl (@katherineheigl) on Dec 31, 2016 at 6:33pm PST

Heigl made headlines for her contentious exit from Grey’s Anatomy back in 2010, during the sixth season of the ABC show, earning a reputation for being difficult. But she has a pretty dead-on sense of humor. She’s spent the last seven years paying public penance for something she’s trying to get past. In fairness, men, no matter their transgressions, don’t seem to have the same issues.

Doubt, like Grey’s, is an ensemble cast, meaning Heigl isn’t carrying every one of the 13 episodes already in the can. “It took some juggling” at the smart of her pregnancy, she says. “It wasn’t as bad as I imagined it might be. Everyone was so supportive. It was only toward the ending of filming — I was so tired. Now I have this great time off to be with my newborn,” she says.

@joshbkelley caught me soaking up some morning baby love…❤️❤️❤️❤️

A photo posted by Katherine Heigl (@katherineheigl) on Feb 3, 2017 at 11:53am PST

Her family is what it’s meant to be, says Heigl. “Becoming a mother has been the most beautiful experience of my life. I’m so blessed. My kids are pretty damn cool. They realize that he’s not leaving,” she says of her newest addition.

When she became pregnant, Heigl, 38, who for years had tried to quit smoking, suddenly found herself with zero desire for nicotine or alcohol.

“I wasn’t mentally prepared, but it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. It must be some kind of psychological thing. You just shut it down. I didn’t have any issue quitting smoking. I had tried to quit several times in the past. As soon as I got pregnant, I was fine. I’ll have dreams about having a cigarette. It’s really hard. It’s the idea of giving yourself this naughty treat,” she says.

1st day back on the exercise train postpartum and I'm feeling fine! And yes I am wearing a sweatshirt with my own face on it…only sweatshirt I had that was warm enough for Utah…then of course there's the fanny pack…and the ol' Miss ski hat…I mean the whole outfit's pretty badass…????????????

A photo posted by Katherine Heigl (@katherineheigl) on Feb 8, 2017 at 4:12pm PST

Given that she doesn’t have to go back to work anytime soon, Heigl is digging being a temporary stay-at-home mom and running the show her way.

“I love being in charge at home. Being away from home is hard. It kills my soul. I’m so grateful to have time with him,” she says.

Related: ‘Star Wars!’ From Daisy Ridley to Kate Middleton, the Best of the BAFTAs Drew Barrymore Wants to Age Naturally, but She Will ‘Throw Down for a Face Cream’ Laverne Cox on When She Feels the Sexiest (Hint: It Involves Beyonce) Meryl Streep Slams Trump In New Speech; Calls Herself ‘Overrated’ Proud Feminist Padma Lakshmi on Taking Her Daughter to the Women’s March

Let’s keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Style + Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

[chalantness]

Hey I was wondering if I could make aesthetics of your next generation kids? And if it is ok could you give me some ideas on what would fit the kids best?

Of course, darling; people giving some love to my babies’ babies is one of my favorite things ever!

And, I’m not quite sure what ideas you’re looking for, so I’ll just give a little blurb about each kid and you can let me know if you want to learn more.

James Samuel Rogers: (fancast: Colton Haynes); named after his godfathers, James “Bucky” Barnes and Sam Wilson; sometimes called “Jamie” by his family; track and field, football; artist: favorite mediums are paint and charcoal; also into photography; loves taking long walks through the city; weather aesthetic is probably bright blue skies with gray rain clouds and puddles of water on the ground; wears his varsity jacket like a uniform; favorite color is probably navy blue, but also just most shades of blue; sketches in coffeehouses to unwind; adores his little sister; definitely a dog person, but he loves all animals, really; likes to cook

Tatiana Marie Rogers: (fancast: Katherine McNamara); her middle name is derived from her godmother, Maria Hill; into cheer, gymnastics, singing; red is her favorite color, hands down; her nails are always on point; she can run across the city in stilettos as if barefoot; leather jackets and sheer shirts, but also lace blouses and summer dresses; she wears the American flag like a shawl, basically; likes to bake and especially likes to decorate; weather aesthetic is blindingly bright summer skies; black cats bring her good luck; her drink of choice are milkshakes, especially strawberry with cherries on top

Nicole Philippa “Nikki” Stark: (fancast: Adelaide Kane); named after Nick Fury and Phil Coulson; high end fashion, modern minimalist interior designs, marble, precious metals; rose gold is probably the best summary of her; her first tattoo would probably be of her name spelled out with the Periodic Table; freckles; spends her childhood next to her father in a lab or next to her mother as she runs a billion-dollar company and loves every second of it; gold glitter and winged eyeliner; probably owns a glass tea set; drink of choice is champagne; weather aesthetic would be a bright spring morning with a bit of a breeze

Stephanie Pietra Barnes: (fancast: Alycia Debnam Carey); named after her godfather, Steve Rogers, and her uncle, Pietro Maximoff; her vacation of choice would be space; sci-fi queen; would get the map of the stars tattooed on her back if she could; garlands of silver stars and twinkling lights cascading from the ceiling; loves teddy bears; shades of purple; flowers in her hair; lounging at home in pajama shorts and an unbuttoned flannel falling off of her shoulders; also a fashion icon; neon lights in the dark; weather aesthetic are clear starry skies and a blanket of snow

Torunn Thorsdottir: (fancast: Cara Delevingne); the youngest of three; literal princess; fine silk robes and furs; hills of green grass and an abundance of flowers and sunlight sweeping over an open field; gold bracelets adorning her wrists and precious stones embellishing her hair; flower garlands cascading from tall palace ceilings; a grand courtyard with a stone water fountain; she adores her role as a ruler and would die for her people; political cunning and charm; the darling little sister who is treated like gold and adores her siblings; stars visible in the sky while the sun starts to set

Riley Margaret Wilson: (fancast: Samantha Logan); named after her father’s late fellow pararescueman, Riley, and maternal great-aunt, Margaret “Peggy” Carter; would live at the gym if she could; morning jogs are a must; fresh fruits and smoothies and granola and orange juice straight out of the carton; pastel workout gear and matching shoes that cost a pretty penny and her wrists covered in colorful hair ties; aviators and bomber jackets and laced-up heels; prints everywhere: camouflage, leopard, flowers, feathers, plaid; the sun rising over the silhouette of the city; farmer’s markets and mom-and-pops and state fair’s; cherry popsicle-stained lips

I… spent way longer on this than I thought I would and have to get ready to leave, but I’ll come back and write the rest of these blurbs!

I hope this gave you a little insight on my babies’ babies.

[yaltonrp-blog]

Congratulations Caroline! You have been accepted for the role of Beatrice Durand with the FC of Adelaide Kane. We really liked your thoughtful take on such a complex issue and how it affects Bea. Please send us an account within the next 24 hours with the ask and submit boxes open.

Welcome to Yalton! We look forward to roleplaying with you.

OOC:

Name/Alias: Caroline

Pronouns: she/her

Age: 19

Timezone: est

Activity Level: oh my goodness, I suck at determining this. Honestly like a 8 maybe 9 on the weekends, and between 4 and 8 on weekdays because I’m currently a Biochem major in university and well it mostly depends on if I have homework or if I have a lab report due, I’m usually good at getting on at least one a day, maybe twice, and if something huge comes up I will notify you guys. It just fluctuates so much and like sometimes a 5 to me is like an 8 to someone else or something.

Things you aren’t willing to write: smut and personal triggers

IC:

Biography Info:

Character Name: Beatrice “Bea” Durand

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Gender: cis female

Age: 21

Major/Position: creative writing major

FC: Adelaide Kane, Crystal Reed, Shelley Hennig, Caitlin Stasey, Troian Bellisario 

Biography:

death/miscarriage mention tw, eating disorder tw

1992 was a bad year for Laurel Price, while she was pregnant with her first child, her husband was killed in a horrific car accident, and shortly after that the woman has a miscarriage. She was told she’d never be able to bare a child. The young woman had a hard time dealing with the pain and was in complete ruins for years. That was until she met, Jacob Durand three years later. That same year, on a rainy London night, a miracle came  and she found she was pregnant with Beatrice. Bea was her miracle baby, or so she had been told plenty of time. The girl was constantly told she was special, though she never believed it, how could a girl be so special and have her father leave her just three years into her life. Miracle, special, perfect, words that her mother used constantly as the young girl grew up, she couldn’t count how many times she had hear them by the time she found her passion.

The child was never one for the outdoors, so it was no surprise when Bea got her hands on the old typewriter in her grandmother’s attic. With no paper, Beatrice would spend hours pretending to write stories on this broken typewriter, her imagination running wild. As she grew, it was what kept her from thinking she always needed to be perfect. Her precious typewriter was ripped away from her at age nine when the girl moved with her mother to the states where Laurel would meet a new man. Someone who would be much better than Jacob Durand ever could be to Beatrice and within a year, Beatrice had a new father, Kaden Adams. With Kaden came his sons, Uriah, Xavier, and Zachariah, three rowdy boys who were the complete opposite of the young, quiet Beatrice. Beatrice felt so out of place in her new family that it began to take a toll on the girl. She was different and in Bea’s mind, not perfect.

Freshman year of high school was when the it spiraled. Beatrice had a hard time making friends, she never knew how to really fit in. This is when he destructive behavior on herself began. It was small at first, Beatrice didn’t have friends at lunch so instead of going to the cafeteria to sit alone at lunch, she’d go to the library to study or to the field to practice shooting some soccer goals, though the library didn’t allow any food and you couldn’t exactly eat and practice at the same time. When Beatrice cut out lunch to study or practice, she figured it wouldn’t be so bad to cut out breakfast, and soon enough, she had cut out eating full meals. It was hard at first, but soon she got used to the hunger. It wasn’t long before Beatrice associated food with failure. As time progressed it was noticeable that Beatrice was losing a lot of weight and her energy went downhill. Her mom kept a close eye on her, she knew Bea never one to eat much, especially when she was stressed. When Beatrice went to her yearly physical the next year, her doctor brought up some concerns about Bea’s weight to her mother, in which Beatrice tried to pretend everything was okay. Laurel (Price) Adams finally took action to get Beatrice help after Uriah had found food hidden in Bea’s room, some that were thought to be eaten at dinner. 

Instead of sophomore year of high school, Beatrice Durand was sent to a rehab facility for anorexia. Acceptance was the first step for Bea, it was hard for her to believe that she had a problem, it she had a problem that meant she wasn’t perfect. The year was a roller coasted for her, she had her ups and downs but going there when she did, was probably the best choice for her before her losing weight gave permanent physical effects on her body. Beatrice learned healthy techniques to take care of her body along with dealing with her destructive behavior. After a year and a half, Beatrice was deemed healthy enough to be released. Though Anorexia is a lifelong struggle and this time with having her daughter home again, Laurel wouldn’t ignore what Beatrice was eating and made sure to keep her with a therapist and help her keep up with the things she learned through the past year and a half.

Returning to school was one of the hardest parts, the girl had studied during her time in rehab but she was still behind and she had to be held back a year. Beatrice nearly relapsed that year, but with the help of her loved ones and professionals, she was able to find healthier ways to deal with that feeling of failure. That’s when she began writing again, a healthier outlet. Beatrice was now at a happier time in her life and by senior year, she seemed to mostly have a handle on things and was ecstatic to receive her acceptance letter to Yalton where she would major in Creative Writing. Though her mother was terrified to let Beatrice go to Yalton, Green Creek, Ohio was fairly far from Phoenix, Arizona, but with conditions from Laurel made and agreements from Beatrice, she was allowed to attend the university.

State at least one headcanon about the character:

Beatrice would rather go by Bea instead of Beatrice

Anorexia is a lifelong battle and Beatrice still practices the things she learned when she was fifteen, by going to a therapist, doctor’s appointments, eating healthy and recording it in a food journal.

Beatrice is almost never caught without at least one notebook on her just in case she has any writing ideas to put down

Beatrice is bisexual

She is on the soccer team at Yalton

Beatrice is kind and caring and almost never yells and it’s very rare that she’s angry.