#about.severine | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lucienfairfucked · 7 years ago

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(I gave myself the name of one of my OCs for this meme. If you want to send me a character to do I’d still appreciate it.)

01. Full name:

Severine Stark. Neither of these names was given to her at birth; the trader that raised her called her “Abilene”. Severine was the name she took as an acolyte in the Chapel of Skorm, and when standardised currency made a system of aristocracy possible in Albion, she eventually rose to its ranks and took the surname Stark as a mark of status.

02. Best friend:

The closest equivalent would probably be Ernest Faraday, one of the first members of the Alban Inventors’ Guild, a patronage she started. Ernest has always had one of those cute crushes on her, where he doesn’t expect anything out of it but he just likes spending time with her and occasionally bringing her huge bouquets of flowers or making her things in his workshop. The crush evolves into a lasting sweet fondness and mutual trust and appreciation that’s really just unique to them, like a lot of people don’t understand it but it works for them.

03. Sexuality:

I guess “pansexual” would be the word we’d use. She’s rarely turned anyone down because if they manage to approach her on that level in the first place, they usually know their worth (and that’s hot). But she’s a sworn bachelorette and has never gone in for monogamy -- honestly, she’s just never found anyone she actively wanted to commit to in that way.

04. Favorite color:

She’s really into black and gold, red and gold, almost anything and gold, honestly. Her colours need to be rich and deep, and she’ll import dyes and fabrics from the farthest reaches of Erda if she has to.

05. Relationship status:

Terminally single. I’m not going to say that Severine is always happy with this situation, because of course she isn’t always happy with it. But the aristocracy in Albion is a bit of a toxic mess (that’s how folk like Reaver end up with so much power) and the class divide in Albion is rather wide, so she doesn’t have a lot of close extended contact with people that aren’t in her patronage or other aristocrats. She thinks if she lived elsewhere, in Aurora or Samarkand maybe, she’d have a better time (which also goes back to her belief that she isn’t genetically Alban, although she’s never known her birth parents; she doesn’t feel connected to Albion but she feels more kinship in other lands). She also thinks that if she wasn’t a lich, a lot of things about relationships would be easier. It’s hard to be functionally immortal and have mortal-style relationships. Very hard. And it’s not like there are a lot of viable immortals just hanging around.

She does have flings and courtships and FWBs and all that, but no committed relationships.

06. Ideal mate:

She’d want someone like her. Someone who is passionate about arts and science, who likes the finer things but won’t lord them over others, who treats all people with respect and compassion, who is fussy about their hygiene and environment. She likes the well-read and thoughtful (one of her favourite things to do with Ernest is debate philosophy and theory), the well-travelled, people whose opinions and thoughts aren’t entirely formed by the small patch of land that they’ve never left. She needs someone who’ll let her cry on them but also stand her up afterward and say “all right, now it’s time to go to work” and not let her just lie in bed all day moping. Also, whoever it is would have to have a very well developed sense of courtship and romance because she’s definitely that kinda woman.

And of course, whoever it is would have to be okay with the fact that she’s a lich.

07. Turn-ons:

Like I mentioned -- really romantic gestures, declarations of passion, unabashed interest. Show her how much you value and desire her and she’s all yours. Dancing, she loves dancing. A good dancer will always catch her eye. A regal bearing-- and this one’s hard to describe, because people will assume it means “acting like a haughty princeling” or something and... no. That’s actually a turn-off. It’s just... a quiet confidence, a sense of self-worth, an easiness about a person that means they’re not trying too hard, that they know they don’t have to try to impress anyone. A magnetism that’s refined and a little sweet.

Also, she likes getting her back blown out by someone who’s all of the above in the streets but a freak-nasty top in the sheets. Just sayin’.

08. Favorite food:

One of the reasons she knew she had to start making money was because the best food she’d had was when she was working for Reaver, and she’d nick food from the catering at his soirées. Reaver is like the king of “I love Exotic(tm) things” so of course he’d have Samarkin dishes and shit brought in, to show how Worldly(tm) he was, and Severine would just die of bliss eating her stolen meals in her quarters. There was nothing native to Albion that could compare.

Well, now she’s had ample opportunity to refine her tastes, and I can tell you that what she enjoys most is the method of eating that’s common in port cities in Samarkand and the city of Aurora, where it’s basically a collection of hors d’oeuvres that are snacked on at leisure and often revisited throughout the day, augmented with small dense dishes cooked in the morning and early afternoon to keep energy up. It’s hard to do it with Alban food because Alban custom is to make heavy, dense meals eaten morning, sometimes noon, and evening; but she does her best incorporating imported food with local food to form her own hybrid. I didn’t even get into ingredients or specific dishes she likes or anything but honestly this answer is long enough.

09. Crushes:

This varies a lot. She develops and drops crushes the way people change their clothes, it seems.

10. Favorite music:

She loves stringed instruments but finds a lot of lute music in Albion to be too simplistic for her enjoyment. She likes what Aurorans do with lutes, using ones of different sizes in tandem to make a layered harmonic sound. But to be fair to Albion -- because in talking about Severine I feel like I’ve had to be very unfair to Albion -- there are some local lutists she enjoys and sponsors, and who play at her parties.

11. Biggest fear:

That someone will find the mandrake root that her soul is bound to and destroy it. It’s obviously a highly unlikely occurrence, but it’s her fear of its possibility that has made her so vigilant about making sure it stays hidden -- so the fear prevents itself from being fulfilled. There are worse ways to have a fear, I guess.

12. Biggest fantasy:

She meets the paramour of her dreams from question #6, they go on holiday to the Southern Islands or somewhere, she gets pampered the entire time and doesn’t have to lift a finger to do anything except ~get busy~. They come back to Millfields and said paramour immediately sets to work helping her with her work, taking on tasks she didn’t ask them to do but greatly appreciates, and generally proving their dependability and worth to her.

13. Bad habits:

She can be a bit of a lush, although never during working hours, to be fair. She is nitpicky about her appearance. She falls asleep reading or working and forgets to blow out lamps and wakes up in weird and painful positions. She curses a blue streak more than is ladylike.

14. Biggest regret:

Ever letting Reaver take advantage of her.

15. Best kept secrets:

No one knows that she used to be a Skorm acolyte, let alone one of the inner circle (not a First Shadow, but close). Even the people who know how long she’s been alive would still lose their shit over her having been a part of that particular cult.

16. Last thought:

Her last thought, in life? Man, I have no idea.

17. Worst romantic experience:

One word, honestly: Reaver. I mean, that wasn’t even a “romantic” experience, per se, since he’s about as romantic as a wet noodle, but still.

18. Biggest insecurity:

Sometimes she realises exactly how much power she’s amassed for herself, and she thinks it’s too fragile to depend on, or that she missed something vital and her house of cards will collapse, or that someone cunning will come along and rip the rug out from under her. Power makes people paranoid, money makes people paranoid, and having a lot of both is a recipe for neurosis. She’s levelheaded and pragmatic by nature, so she doesn’t fall into the trap of overthinking very often, but when she does it’s pretty deep.

19. Weapon of choice:

Shrewdness, social manipulation, knowledge, and money.

20. Role Model:

Albion is sorely lacking for role models; even its Heroes are often disappointing. Severine is a role model, to be honest, because she blazed a trail where no one else had bothered.

#about.severine #.severine #fable

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