#emmelina: general

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emmelina is known, to those who have an actual head for politics, to be the best hope for a better rule if she can be put on the throne. HOWEVER, the common people of her kingdom don't really know much about her. she has spent nearly every moment of her life within the walls of the palace, her outdoor time spent in enclosed gardens and courtyards. to them, she's likely just as spoiled and indulgent as the rest of them, nothing more than another rotten branch of the royal family tree. evelyn becomes her only true method of communication with the outside world, and it is only when her cousin arrives in court that she begins to see there could be a way to fix what's broken, to make a difference, to communicate with people outside the palace walls. it is only after evelyn arrives that she is able to - - slowly - - begin to make inroads with the commoners of her land, a path that's as dangerous for her as it is difficult. there is no small amount of ill will built up toward the royal family, particularly in the palace's immediate environs. there are those who would rather see her dead or held for random than vying for a crown, and it's difficult to know who to trust.

[izzy246girl]

1, 4, 22, 35, 44 OC asks

hiii i got 15 minutes of wifi so i could send you that aru shah art!

What was your first oc ever?

This girl named Mariposa - she was a complete and utter Mary Sue and makes me cringe in retrospect, but I wrote so much about her and drew art for her.

4. A character you rarely talk about?

Hm… Hyacinth Amira Devin, maybe? She’s a minor character in The Other Side, an applyfic on Wattpad, complete and utter sunshine girl over a layer of heavy denial. (I think if Aarav - your oc - ever met her and she mentioned ‘oh yeah I was born of a one-night stand’ that’d give him mental illness)

22. Is there any OC of yours people tend to mischaracterize? If yes, how?  No, not really.

35. Any sibling characters? YES YES YES Adelaide Eulalie Auclair being the most prominent. She’s fucked up just a tad <3 (Clara’s older sisters, Emmelina and a girl whose name is undecided but I’m considering naming her Florence, haven’t shown up in her oneshot yet but I am excited to write them)

44. Something you like about your OCs in general

Their backstories - I love fucked up lore

[rjzimmerman]

The connection is incredibly moving and strong. The video is about 5 minutes. Watch the whole thing, but if you’re impatient, go to the 4 minute mark and watch the mom gorilla bring her baby to the glass partition to show the human mom holding her own baby. This happened at the Franklin Zoo in Boston.

More about this. Extract from the story from Upworthy:

Humans and gorillas may look and live quite differently, but we share a whopping 98% of the same genes. Of all mammals on Earth, only the bonobo chimpanzee is closer to humans in terms of genetic makeup.

A viral video of an interaction with a gorilla mom at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston has people marveling at the maternal similarities we share with the primates. The video shows Emmelina Austin kneeling in front of the glass barrier of the gorilla enclosure, holding her sleeping 5-week-old son, Canyon. The gorilla mom, Kiki, who gave birth to her own son, Pablo, via c-section in October, comes and sits right up close to Austin, gazing at the newborn and gently touching the glass as if she wants to touch the baby.

The video, shared by Emmelina's husband Michael Austin, shows Kiki sitting close to Canyon for nearly five minutes. At one point, she moves her body out of the way as if to show off her own baby, who is standing behind her. It's almost like you can hear her saying, "Enjoy this sleepy newborn phase while it lasts. Soon he'll be running around like my little rascal here."

Of course, the sweetness of the interaction is colored by the controversy of keeping primates in captivity. Some people feel that keeping any animals in captivity is wrong and have ethical issues with zoos in general. However, the reality is often not so simple. For one, interactions like this one can lead people to care more about gorillas in the wild, as people see up close how connected we are.

Franklin Park Zoo announced in March that a new $8.1 million gorilla habitat will be unveiled this summer, giving the zoo's six gorillas a 360,000 cubic foot space to enjoy. Western lowland gorillas are critically endangered in the wild, and cooperative, inter-zoo programs like the Gorilla Species Survival Plan (SSP) help ensure the survival of endangered species in zoos and aquariums as well as support conservation efforts in the wild.

[dutch-and-flemish-painters]

Photography of Nicolaas Bastert

Syvert Nicolaas Bastert (1854, Maarssen – 1939, Loenen aan de Vecht), was a 19th-century Dutch landscape painter, best known for his scenes along the river Vecht. He is counted among the "second generation" of the Hague School.

Bastert was born into a prominent family on the estate Otterspoor to Maarseveen. At first he seemed destined for a career in marketing and worked in the office in the trading company of his father, Jacob Nicholas Bastert, in Amsterdam. He then turned to art and was admitted to the National Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam in 1876. He was a pupil of August Allebé, Marinus Heijl, Petrus Josephus Lutgers, and Charles Verlat at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. In the studio of Marinus Heijl he met the young painter George Poggenbeek, with whom he would remain lifelong friends.

In 1878 Bastert, following a winter course at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, and met with Hein Kever and Theo Hanrath. He then traveled with Poggenbeek through Switzerland, Italy and France, a period Bastert would describe as "a great pleasure". He studied at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp in 1879 and about the same time became a member of Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam and the Hollandsche Teekenmaatschappij. Between 1880 and 1882 he lived and worked with Poggenbeek in Amsterdam, in the studio of Poggenbeek at the City Gardens. Together they would often travel to a cottage in Breukelen in the next seven years to paint Dutch landscapes. There Bastert did many paintings near the river Vecht, both in Breukelen and Maarssen Nieuwersluis. In 1882 Bastert had a private studio in The Hague. His style was strongly influenced by the painters of the Hague School. He soon attracted attention with his work. The art critic Jan Veth called him in May 1888 "The king of light". He wrote: " In the place where Bastert's paintings hang, there is a window through which one can behold all the glory of the Vecht." From 1885 it was regularly sold his work, which allowed him to develop his own style. During his time in The Hague, Bastert often felt lonely. In 1885, therefore, he moved into a studio in the State Oosterpark in Amsterdam, next to that of Poggenbeek. Later, after his marriage to Eva Versteeg, he settled on the estate Zwaanvecht te Nigtevecht. In the first decades of the twentieth century, he often painted in the picturesque village of Heeze. Bastert won gold medals at exhibitions in Amsterdam, Munich and Paris. He was a member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam, Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam and the Pulchri Studio in The Hague, where most of the Were members were in the Hague School. His pupils were Constantia Arnolda Balwé, Leo Kurpershoek, Marie van Regteren Altena, and Eva Emmelina Seelig. Bastert died in 1939, at the age of 85, in Loenen aan de Vecht. In 1895 the Van Wisselingh firm of art dealers had a solo exhibition of Bastert's works and after his death they did the same for his later works.

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emmelina is like. by all accounts everything a princess should be. evelyn is her mostly-feral cousin who is also her one and only real lady-in-waiting (it's a long story).

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of the two cousins, emmelina is known for her kindness and beauty, Evelyn is known for her sharp tongue and her boldness

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lina's kingdom is literally decaying (the castle is. literally falling apart in places?) and her parents do NOT care, but they're also not about to give up the throne, and she's STRESSED.

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EMMELINA "LINA" DELACOURT & EVELYN MONTANE:

once upon a time, in lands far away, two baby girls were born to two very different families linked by blood. in the south, a princess was greeted with a week of feasting and dancing (while a nurse tended the celebrated child). in the north, a family gathered to pass a bundled baby around from arm to arm, whispering words of love.

the princess, emmelina, was born to a a kingdom in decline although none of the nobles seemed to know it. the sole child and only heir, she grew up in a drafty palace secretly crumbling into the sea, while the only attention paid to its upkeep went to new paint and new tapestries, embroidered hangings. revels seemed a near constant in the palace, which the royals rarely left. feasting and dancing, great masques, concerts for the newest most celebrated players.

meanwhile, outside the palace halls, whispers of dissent were building as the common people struggled, crime ever on the rise in city streets the royals didn't care to keep safe.

emmelina grew up a lonely child, and then a worried young woman whose attempts to make her parents see reason fell on ears that would not hear her.

meanwhile, the struggles in the kingdom were not unknown to the north. nominally ruled by the palace in the south, the north was governed by the brother of the king - - - and a much more peaceful place. the lord and lady had been watching with mounting concern as the lands in the south crumbled. what had begun a slow shift of pebbles was swiftly becoming a landslide, but there was hope to be found. emmelina was known to have a good head on her shoulders, and her uncle hoped she would be a better queen than her parents before her.

to be sure, he sent his daughter to find out.

evelyn montane, the princess's cousin, arrived in court with her sharp tongue and a scowl, expecting to dislike every bit of it - - including her cousin. emmelina was the only thing that surprised her. the two became fast friends, a balance of emmelina's courtly grace and poise and evelyn's sharp tongue, lina's diplomacy and evelyn's boldness.

evelyn wrote back to her family often, and through her letters hope for a better future grew. but that hope could only be sustained if the kingdom survived to see lina on the throne.

no one wants a bloody coup, much less one between families. so while the girls survived each day in the crumbling castle by the sea, trying to stop up every leaking gap they could on their own, the king's uncle set to work to try to find a way to peacefully pass the crown from his brother to his niece as soon as possible.

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depending on preferences, i can and will absolutely write BOTH emmelina and evelyn in meme replies, threads, etc. "canonically," so to speak, they'd be together a good amount of the time, so it can pretty much always make sense. (if interacting with two muses at once is overwhelming, this also does not NEED to happen - -they're individual characters and can of course be written separately. it's entirely optional.)

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@wntrbird said: i just want someone to love me. to LINA!

oh - - oh, she does not like the sound of this. she does not like the way the words sound, falling from sansa's mouth. never has sansa been anything other than kind, and she deserves more than the doubt lina thinks she hears in the words. (for what else can be in words like that but doubt that they will ever come true?)

lina fiddles for a moment, spinning a flower stem between her fingers as she settles it in its vase. (flower arranging surely would not rebuild her family's castle, but at least it had made this room a little brighter.) her eyes, when she turns to sansa, are bright and blue yet warm. twin pools of warm water.

"of course you do," she says, stepping forward to reach out for sansa's hands. "and you will." someone who would love her for more than name or title or land, for more than the beauty so plain to see. "and....well. i know it isn't quite the same, but i do love you, you know. it's how i know that you deserve no less than the very best love. and i can't help but think that that shall be worth the waiting for, don't you?"

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emmelina is the heir apparent to her parents' throne, and evelyn IS in the line of succession. it would go from lina to her younger sister in the event that lina never had any children, and then from there would pass to evelyn's branch of the family. evelyn wouldn't be the first in that family to inherit (that would likely be her father or her elder brother), but the branches are close enough that she does factor in. there has never been the kind of discord between the two branches of the family that would cause any vying over a throne. there are no plots within evelyn's family to take the crown from emmelina's, though they don't make it a secret that they would prefer lina on the throne sooner rather than later, thinking her parents unfit to rule (spoiler alert: they are). the girls always got along well, though they didn't see very much of each other until evelyn came to court (her family's home isn't terribly far by distance, but the journey is challenging). they've become closer since then, though they can tend to butt heads. for all of their differences they're both very stubborn and have their own ideas of what the right thing to do is in any given situation. evelyn isn't one to back down from her opinion simply because her cousin is a princess, and emmelina isn't one to let go if she thinks she's right.

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nan and bee once said that my rp types were "feral gremlin women and virgos" and i said "you know what, you're right" and that's how we got evelyn (feral gremlin woman) and emmelina (virgo).