girls

(the monstrous feminine, the rejected turning to despair, the inherent humanity to a human)

depressed gremlins with REALLY specific romantic types

crow47: objection, nona's type is literally every girl ever

beelzebae:

i think like. a good summary of one of my favorite character motifs is just. black rose bride.

edgelord kids and fucked up mages

ianthe is both at the same time

specifically thinking about how adaine and raven are shaped by their vastly different terrible family situations in kind of similar ways but yes her too

so: a strong sense of alienation from a family or society, sometimes with the coping mechanism of trying to be the REAL monster (but the real monster is the trauma)

People with incredible power to do harm and the various ways they navigate that capacity, people (related) whose ethical principles do not correspond to the dominant society they're in

i think one of the biggest throughlines between almost all my characters is responding to isolation or mistreatment with the deepset belief that they themselves are simultaneously a twisted ugly thing undeserving of forgiveness and also smarter and better than everyone.

so in short, both very correct.

by the point that i played adaine from, she'd mostly gotten over this but she did spend most of season one thinking simultaneously there was something broken about her and that nobody could see or appreciate how smart she was in comparison to everyone else (dumbasses and also aelwyn).

adaine is truly a princess with the disorder

it makes them such compelling little creatures to me, they're so sad! and often so abrasive! but i forgive them for all that, because fuck me, look at what they put up with

i think another fun example of this to me is faith who will openly declare that shes better than everyone else and also desperately beg someone to love her and then turn around and spit on their love because it's not what she wants it's just pity.