#azula's house of wonders part II | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

diveronarpg · 6 years ago

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Congratulations, BECKY! You’ve been accepted for the role of GONERIL with an approved FC change to URSULA CORBERO. Admin Jen: Truly, Becky, you have left us speechless with this wonderful application! Your take on Grace was a bit unusual, and certainly not what I was expecting as I had established her in my mind as very cold and clinical. But the way you integrated emotions into her portrayal was brilliant -- it gave her a touch of volatility and extremism that accentuated the terror that Grace embodies so perfectly. I loved your future plots especially the evil scheme that you elaborated on and your writing sample left me trembling in both fear and admiration; everything just came together so intricately! I can’t wait to watch as she burns Verona to the ground! Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

Out of Character

Alias | Becky

Age | 22

Preferred Pronouns | she/her

Activity Level | I’ve sold my soul to you now, I can’t ever leave

Timezone | Ok so I wrote BST on Odessa’s app but the rest of the UK gang put GMT (time is a social construct and I’m actually a cosmic entity floating around the globe giving u all forehead kisses)

Current/Past RP Accounts | x x

In Character

Ok so I know you didn’t exactly accept her as an FC for Grace but I’m hoping you warm to edgy-looking neo-noir Úrsula Corberó once you’ve read the app. I admit that my idea of Grace may not be quite what you’re looking for but I wanted to give applying for her a shot because I love me Hot Mess of a character! (but I am also happy to come up with alternatives if not)

Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do?

Character | Grace ‘Goneril’ Daly

What drew you to this character? | So like any good prophecy/vision/intervention of fate, I woke up one morning with a mighty need to play a character who is Odessa’s opposite, the black fur coat leather skirt cigarette ash psycho babe to my honey sweet lace and silk angel of retribution, so I’ve sort of been slyly waiting for Grace’s bio to be released.

It’s her contrast to Odessa that initially drew me in with the chance to explore another character whose existence and presence in Verona revolves around her father’s ties to a mob, but resulting in a drastically alternate result. It will be very different playing a character who doesn’t particularly have a motive for killing (beyond self-preservation and power-lust) and is loyal to only herself.

Whilst I would usually play a character like Grace as being a cold-hearted, emotionless ice queen, I feel as though Grace is better suited to burning. She is a slave to her emotions, the rise and fall of them dictating her mood, all while highly strung and fuelled by a chaotic form of energy. You can very much tell when she is happy and when she is not. She’ll cry in front of you just as gladly as she’ll laugh and kiss you. She’s unkind, ruthless, impulsive, emotional, and she’s ready to antagonise people to her tar-black heart’s content.

Character inspo: Azula from Avatar, Jennifer Check from Jennifer’s Body, Bellatrix Lestrange from Harry Potter, War from Good Omens. Trope inspo Alpha Bitch, Ambiguous Disorder, Blatant Lies, Daddy’s Little Villain, Go-Getter Girl, Hair-Trigger Temper, Improbable Weapon User, Jerkass, Sadist, Spoiled Brat, Virtue is Weakness.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

i. A masterplan;

Step One: Grow to become an important part of the mob you were all but born into. Turn yourself into the perfect player, capable with weapons and unblinking in the face of danger. Step Two: Leave them. Join their rivals. Prove yourself to them by dispatching of a few former associates, low hanging fruit. Become just as relevant within their ranks. Step Three: Collate what you have learnt about the two mobs. Their strengths, their weaknesses. Make a few friends with similar goals to yourself. Corrupt them. Step Four: Start your own mob. You now know your enemies intimately. You know what it takes to break them. Bit by bit, steal Verona out from under their noses. Laugh at their mistakes and dance in the ashes of their burning empires as you build your own. Step Five: Be remembered forever.

ii. The double agent;

Traitor. Grace wears the title with pride, her smile sharp when she comes face to face with both Capulets and Montagues alike. Slinking from one mob to the other was a seemingly effortless transition, welcomed by none other than Damiano himself. She fed him information about Cosimo and his crew, spilling secrets around the end of her lipstick-stained cigarette. It was an easy way in, but now that she’s settled amongst her new comrades she finds herself looking back across the bridge with interest. Power is power but information is advantageous – Grace isn’t above feeding Montague-whispers back to her old associates, not if it means she wins friends on both sides of Verona. That way, it’s impossible for her not to win this war.

iii. Sisters, sisters

Regina and Catherine. Both are equally as disgraceful to the Daly name – one can’t even bring herself to be enthusiastic about the opportunities that lie, shiny and golden, before them, and the other flutters her lashes and talks of peace, of all things. Grace has never paid them much attention, but now that she’s sided with the Montagues she’s realised that the Capulets could do with having their numbers thinned. Whether she’ll try to convince them to switch sides with her for the Montague brownie-points or simply wipe her sister off of the face of the earth forever remains to be seen, but if Regina and Catherine think they can keep their heads down and get away with making the Dalys seem anything less than destined for greatness, they’ve got one hell of a storm coming.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | I sure am, same goes for Odessa now, it’s time to make like Grace and embrace reckless abandon

In Depth

In-Character Para Sample:

She is the thing watching you from the edge of the road, where long grass shivers with the motion of something far more alive than it has any right to be; a pair of eyes that glint in the final rays of the sunlight’s reaches, bleached white enamel teeth ready to sink themselves into those who mistake the night’s cloak as a thing to hide under rather than be consumed by.

She is fresh fruit in the heat, a slow rotting taking place at the centre disguised by mouth-watering scents and a flesh that glistens under the sheen of morning dew. Decay is a dance, slow and tantalising, the heart turning to a sticky dark mess that slides through the fingers of anyone who dares to try and save it.

She is a doctor who has never been able to stop her hands from shaking at the prospect of a new body, eager to pick up the scalpel and press it down into soft flesh, revealing a mass of life clinging to the bones. Her favourite colour is red, the sort that looks black in the evening, droplets turning to pools that spread through pressed shirts and silk pyjamas like tears on pillows. There’s blood on her hands, not always metaphorical. She licks it off, rarely quite satisfied.

Grace fucks like the meeting of hips will reveal the monster that lies beneath her, as though touching there and there and there will unlock ribcages and unleash what’s trapped inside of hearts. But to understand why, you must crawl inside her skull and make sense of what lurks there beneath the smoke of burning houses and vultures picking at once-satisfied things–

“Please take a seat,” Damiano says, and Grace lingers before lowering herself onto the chair, her gaze gliding over the mahogany desk between them before raising to study the man himself.

He smells like her father. That’s the first thing she notices, the faint cologne. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes and the signet ring on his finger keeps catching on things, releasing a dull metallic sound each time. His presence is more regal than Cosimo’s and yet she finds herself thinking the exact same thing – you aren’t worthy.

These men had all inherited their empires, passed down like heirlooms, and as a result they had become lazy. Content. Uninspiring.

“I’m very happy to be here,” she chimes pleasantly. “However… unexpected it may be.” She doesn’t tell him how much she wants this. Doesn’t explain that being welcomed into the inner sanctum of the Montagues is as pleasing as a night of post-murder hot sex. “I’ve always been a huge fan of your work.”

Damiano doesn’t laugh, but he doesn’t need to. Grace is well aware that she wouldn’t have gotten this far if he didn’t intend to offer her something. “I have a proposition.”

I bet you do, she thinks, her well-orchestrated plan playing out like the sweetest of songs. Black-nail-polished fingers press to her chest, feigning surprise. “For me? Damiano, you’re spoiling me.” The words curl up from her lips like tendrils of cigarette smoke. She punctuates them with a light laugh.

The deal is a simple one: information for protection. Spill some secrets to join the ranks. Grace does so without blinking, switching silver for gold, and slowly the pieces begin to fall into place. As with any self-proclaimed god, she grazes her knees on carpet to say thanks to Damiano, sacrifices those she’s left behind, and fills her head with only the loveliest visions of tearing his and Cosimo’s empires to the ground.

Extras:

Pinterest board

Time for more of ‘Becky attempts to write headcanons’:

Her parent’s little angel turned little devil. Spoilt from a young age, she soon learnt that she could get away with near enough anything provided she smiled sweetly to her parents and told them just how much she loved them. When her sisters were born, the attention that had been on her drifted and Grace found that she had to work harder and harder to hear her name on her parent’s lips.

Grace grew up restless. Her ambitions would flit like moths around a lightbulb, becoming half-planned dreams and broken things. It wasn’t until she was rushed to hospital following a road traffic accident* (which resulted in the removal of a kidney) that she decided to train to become a paramedic. *Her parents later suggested that it was no accident and had in fact been planned by the Montagues,

As a paramedic, she always manages to be first on the scene when an incident linked to the mobs is called in. Strategically, if someone fails to complete a murder she can finish the job herself, or silence any witnesses. Similarly, it also gives her the opportunity to plant fake evidence or remove weapons from the scene. For those evading the eyes of the authorities, she can also help those who have been hurt and can’t risk a trip to the hospital.

She is resourceful and will use whatever is to hand as a weapon. Has been known to dish out the odd black eye, broken nose, crushed windpipe, and acrylic nail scratches. Her father himself trained her to use a pistol and rifle under the guise that he was teaching her to hunt (which, technically, wasn’t a lie – they just never specified the quarry).

She lives by 3 important rules. One: trust only those you would die for. Two: protect what is yours. Three: if something is boring or unimportant, do not waste time on it.

Grace needs to be needed and wants to be wanted. She can’t stand shrinking into shadows and being forgotten. No, she must remain the life of the party and attract the attention (be it good or bad) of everyone.

She was once arrested and fined for drunk and disorderly behaviour on whilst on holiday in England. She slept it off in a cell and was released the next morning with a hefty fine.

She is a big fan of piercings and has a stick n poke shark on her ribs.

Inspo quotes:

“I’m a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise.

“Her mood is cruel, her nature dangerous. Her will fierce and intractable” – Euripides (translated by Philip Vellacott), Medea

“But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.” – Junot Diaz, The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao

#accepted: goneril #accepted

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lightdancer1 · 3 years ago

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Avatar Flash-Fic, Azula's House of Wonders Part II

As Azula sat at the chair in front of the device, she looked at her brother and gave him an explanation that made his eyes glaze over. She'd developed the caged lightning into something that revolutionized energy, offering houses the kind of artificial lightning she'd developed that replaced the need for candles and the dangers even to Firebenders of potential smoke inhalation. She explained the wires, nexuses, alternating currents and direct currents and it was all words, in sequence, that would have made sense to other people he was sure.

All he could do was nod and pretend he understood it, the way he had when he was a kid and Azula had fixated on whatever topic had drawn her interest. First the not-quite-dead dragons, then lightning (which had abruptly changed one day and she had not gone near it even when she could generate that power herself for a long time, and he wondered if that was at least a part in her taming it here). Then weather, then other things besides.

"So, with all of that, that's what this can do. I can tap this," Azula pointed to the device "and send a signal over the wires."

Zuko blinked.

"That...."

Azula nodded, that same bright smile on her face.

"Something, Zuzu, that will make it impossible to recreate the old days. Ozai, Long Feng, Azulon, they all relied on secrecy to do what they do. In autocracy information is more precious than gold. If people want a better world, and a freer one, then there must be a way to break that monopoly."

She kept pointing to the signal.

"Aang's forty leagues away with the other device, and-" she heard a gust of wind near the window and nodded. "And he's ready."

Zuko watched his sister tapping at the device, hearing a strange, almost musical rhythm. A set of beeping sounds that he didn't understand, and didn't need to understand.

-------

Forty leagues away, Aang bounced with a bit of nervousness as his kids paused. The boredom of just *waiting* on this latest device from Azula had ended, and they listened with some awe and even chills at the constant beep-beep-beep from the device.

"Roku," breathed Bumi, the eldest. "It really does work."

Aang nodded, as he listened to the message, and then sent one back.

------

In her house Azula's fist pumped with joy when she got the response, her smile even wider.

"It works," she shouted. "It WORKS!"

Zuko blinked.

"Son of a bitch, it does." His voice was much smaller.

He looked at his sister with keen eyes as she turned to him.

------

"As I said, I've been thinking about what you said when you wrote your last letter. You're not wrong, the world that made the war was broken. But we can't fix it by trying to leap back into the world before the war. That might have been more likely if the Air Nomad Genocide had failed. But since it succeeded enough that if not for Aang and Tenzin there'd be no Airbenders at all, that was never going to happen. But this-"

She pointed at the light around her and the device she'd just used.

"We can change the world beyond Republic City with this. Light, in houses, that is safer than candles. Communication transmitted over those wires that's instantaneous. I'm working on expanding this to sound but so far those experiments..." She waved her hand dismissively. "I mean there's promise there but there's a lot of bugs in it."

Zuko nodded as if he understood anything of what that meant.

Azula then turned to one of her other blueprints.

"I've been keeping up on some of the recent work with physics."

Zuko laughed at that one. "Why doesn't that surprise me?"

Azula glared.

"Sokka's ideas work, Zuko. Other people aren't convinced yet, but they do. Relativity.....it would change things as much as my own ideas. If physics is not as orderly, Spirit World shenanigans aside, as it seems?"

He went over to the concept and saw a strange device, a round metal semi-sphere with a set of strange spheres within it and edges like fins around it.

"The Earth Kingdom's love of those radioactive metals and Sokka's theories led me to that. I'm going to burn that, incidentally, after you've seen it because I want to make this point to you." He paused then and looked at it more closely.

His sister went over to him and formed a fist.

"With those discoveries, I could take that metal, find a means with some help from someone like Beifong, and have this much" she showed him the fist, "and build a bomb to destroy cities. And that's not the design you're looking at, by the way. I already burned that one. This one?"

Her face became haunted.

"It's an extension of Sokka's theory. And it takes one of the fundamental aspects of artificial fire, the kind made by fire-rocks, and extends it. I'm not sure how many hurdles people would have to cross for it, or how easy it would be to make this fusion bomb into what it is, but that design could be built on a scale to wipe out entire islands of the twenty-nine islands. Or to make Father's old pipe dream from the end of the war real."

Zuko turned back in horror to the design.

"See, the reason I did that was because I could put these designs together. These wonders I've built? I was the first person in the right place, in the right time, with the right things to do it. if I hadn't someone else would. Future Industries has the world's smartest people here. The thing you're looking at is a reminder that it doesn't take spiritual power, or Bending of any kind, to develop something that could be more destructive than anything short of an Avatar as powerful as Kyoshi."

Zuko dropped the blueprints like they were poisonous and Azula conjured some of her flames that reduced them to ashes.

"When we grew up, Father and Uncle both believed that Bending was always superior to everything else." An affectionate tone crept into her voice. "Mai and Ty Lee taught me otherwise earlier. And that...." He looked at the ashes.

"Someone, some day, might see the same things and come up with the design. Others, with a sufficiently determined mentality and goal, might make it into an actual weapon. No matter how powerful or smart any one person is, an idea is an idea. It grows, and it arises, independent of the people who created it."

Zuko nodded, understanding the point.

"When we were kids, I think people might have believed you'dve designed that thing just to use it."

Azula shook her head. "And that's why I wanted to show you that. There are some things too horrible to use. Creation is always a two-edged sword, Zuzu."

She pointed to the lighting above him.

"My lightbulbs can bring light out of darkness. That fusion weapon would do....something. I'm not entirely sure what it would do. If possible, I'd like a world where it's those things" as her finger pointed to the lightbulb, to the various electrical devices that hummed, "and not the other as much as you do."

Zuko nodded, gulping.

"So...." he said quietly, "I understand that lesson. Would you like to show me some of the other things you've built?"

Azula nodded, and the memory of the terrible device faded, or more precisely was repressed, as she showed him different aspects of how her caged lightning could remake the world.

-------

Ten years later, Azula made her first return to the Fire Nation with her wife at her side, her older children with her. Her youngest was still in school and had, in Azula's view, entirely the right idea in apathy to the idea of returning to the place that had done such harm.

When she stepped off the boat, her mother, hair entirely grey as Azula's hair had its first strands of grey in it, hugged her tightly.

"I want to show you something," Ursa said quietly, as her daughter followed her into the Palace where Azula paused. Now she understood why there'd been the specific requests, and at the volumes they made.

The old smoke and candle-lit Palace with its fearsome shadows now had new shadows, traces of Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation influence shaping chandeliers that took her ideas in places she hadn't expected they could be taken but which she admired.

Her jaw dropped, slightly. Ursa's hand was on her shoulder, affectionately.

"Zuko couldn't make meeting you himself because he had a meeting."

Azula nodded. "Well he is the Fire Lord."

Ursa nodded.

"He'll be here soon. You were right in what you told him all those years ago. People can bring light to the world, without the light being a village set on fire."

Azula smiled and shook her head slightly.

She put her hand on her mother's and couldn't resist an amused smile at her wife and kids gawking at the place she'd once called home and would be just as glad to leave when Zuko no doubt intended to avenge her enjoying showing off everything she'd done with his own tour.

For the first time in her life, it was a potential sibling competition she found she might enjoy.

#atla aus #azula's house of wonders part II #azula

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lightdancer1 · 3 years ago

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Where do you get your ideas for each au that you write from? Every time I read one of your stories I find myself beyond amazed with the plots and just the way how you write these stories overall.

With my first AU it was simply wanting to write Avatar: The Last Airbender as it would have been written if it were a part of my broader multiversal cosmology. Including the Urhalzantrani as the central cosmic figures, a multiverse, and the slow dawning awakening on the part of the people in that universe of the nature of the truth....and since it's an ATLA story they get to fight back and win a victory. In the course of writing that story one of the main ideas, a Fire Nation Katara as a villain and a bloodbender led me to the idea of the opposite, a Water Tribe Azula who'd be a hero.

That led to the idea of the Dragon-verse, which combined with it themes from the alternate history novel Fatherland. The Dragon-verse also took in the other half of my main themes in my original fiction, with that Azula incorporating a few aspects of Xaderavcal the Unifier on smaller scales, specifically the experience of mind-whammy from super-science, a berserker mode, and gleefully burning down the society that made her into what she became.

From there it grew to seven different AUs, each of them designed to interweave into the others, with the House of Wonders AU in a separate kind of storyline that spun out of talks with @ultranos over the notion of what time in the asylum would have realistically done to Azula and how the storyline might have evolved if she had actual realistic human limits.

The seven AUs basically developed from the first when the glimpses of alternate universes in a specific scene in the third story of the Fire and Water verse led me to want to develop various universes, with the seventh, the Fire Sage AU, working as the 'if it had been the 'good' cosmic horrors instead of the bad ones that made first contact' scenario.

I also take in each case with the Fire Nation various influences from real life societies and fictional totalitarian regimes that serve as the theme of various universes, as well as experimenting with a variety of different people to fill the niche of Fire Lord, and making each case where this happens feel like its own story and its own universe rather than coming across as cookie cutter plots.

Also at a broader creative level, I never lose sight of the idea that each of these worlds is a deliberate creation, where the characters are devices to tell specific kinds of stories. One very deliberate aspect of telling such different stories and different iterations, like the affably evil totalitarian overlord of the Dragon-verse versus squishy happy cuddly badass Iroh in the Sins-verse and the Azulon II spinoff or House of Wonders Ursa vs Empress of Humanity Ursa is to reinforce that. I think too much of the Avatar fandom, as Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit show regularly and sadly loses sight of this because the world as it was created felt real enough it was easier to feel the characters were real, and not characters in a story. Treating them as means to tell the tale allows each tale to stand on its own without feeling like they duplicate each other or are required to do so.

TL;DR: To slightly misquote J.R.R. Tolkien 'the tales grew in the telling.' And include elements from my original fiction + reading on history and military history, which is very helpful in telling war stories and making them feel like actual glimpses of other worlds that could exist.

As always I appreciate and am humbled by the feedback. It's a pleasure to know that people enjoy reading my stories as much as I enjoy writing them.

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