off with your head!

as alluded to in the tags of this post, i have indeed finished my actual redesign of riddle's overblot form, and it is indeed a tiny bit freaky.

notes and close-ups under cut :3c

Riddle claims he doesn't care much about fashion, but after spending time with Vil, he starts paying more attention to how he presents himself. He'd never admit it, but some of his favorite outfits were chosen with Vil's advice in mind.

Neither of them is particularly good at accepting compliments. If Vil praises Riddle's intelligence, Riddle immediately starts listing all the mistakes he made. If Riddle compliments Vil's beauty, Vil starts talking about the amount of work required to maintain it. Their conversations often become accidental compliment battles.

YOU CONVINCED ME TO MAKE KALIAZURIDO!! It was originally meant to be ship free but omg the premise of this trio as a poly.

My original idea was the flower having enough magic to cast a final blessing for someone who it deemed worthy. Since it explains why it never reacted to anyone else who touched it as it was passed around. It could combine with ur idea it felt the blot residue in Riddle and wanted to heal him before eventually deciding to gift it's blessing to him.

Riddle doesn't know why nor does he think he's worthy for it. Why did it choose him of all people?

Maybe that bum fae council from book 7 try to pressure them to surrender Riddle since it's a stolen treasure. So it becomes an argument of giving up solely the flower or both Riddle and it.

Azul and Kalim are already discussing various ways to hide Riddle out since y'know death is not a good alternative to undo this curse. Maybe Riddle decides to sneak away because he doesn't want to put either of them at risk, unaware Malleus and his grandmother are already discussing how to go about this development.

None of this would've happened if Crowley didn't ask the Housewardens to clean the storage room 😭😭

DJRKRKCISJENFOQKSNWJE (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧✧✧ʸᴱˢ

(Cue evil laugh) YOU SEE THE VISION AHAH!

(No fr it was funny seeing how long the thread actually turned out to be lmaoo😭)

Oooh that's actually very inline with Disney mechanics, though that begs the question- WHAT exactly made Riddle worthy of the blessing in the first place?? I'd imagine that's a reoccurring question that kinda haunts the narrative if you get me? Cause before this all happened he was just living his life and the worst he had to deal with was graduating before making it in the real world. Now he's got to deal with ancient fae laws and people who'd be ready to kill him just to take back something he frankly never even wanted, and for that matter doesn't think he quite deserves either?? Like yes he acknowledges his own abilities and he's quite proud of it too, but in a sense all his accomplishments were more so out of a sense of obligation rather than fulfillment.

For example, remember how shocked he was to hear that Azul thought of them as rivals in academics? That probably fits into the narrative, in a way that makes him wonder if there was really more to life outside of what was expected of him. If that makes sense???

Also maybe at first Riddle's in denial about the flower choosing someone it believed was worthy of its blessing. He'd have more of a reason to believe that it could've been anyone and he was just the unlucky victim of happenstance. (Clearly that's not the case but he'll get there eventually..)

RIGHTTT- damn the council's always haunting the narrative I swear 😭

But it also reminds me how the flower was essentially blessed by the first fairy queen as we discussed so there's probably a lot of ongoing debate on how to deal with Riddle. Because technically speaking the flower was the one who gave him it's blessing. However, the flower itself shouldn't have even BEEN in NRC in the first place. Much less catching dust in some daft storage room without care.

It becomes a whole thing that invites more attention than anyone really wants, but can't do much about considering the heritage and BIG powers involved. Like the fairies want Riddle and the flower, mostly because there's a HUGE chance that the flowers probably been drained of all it's magic bestowed by the first fairy queen. Thus, making Riddle the only other recipient besides the current fairy queen to be beholden to her blessing.

It's a significant matter but more or less one that should probably be the concern of the diurnal fae and not the nocturnal far. Except Malleus feels the need to involve himself because Riddle was one of the people among the others who were subjected to the whims of his overblot. In a sense, Maleficia believes they shouldn't intervene but Malleus on the otherhand believes they should help him. Or at the very least ensure Riddle DOESN'T die.

Of course the main trio are blissfully unaware of Malleus' impending involvement and try to plan out what to do on their own. I'd imagine the Leech twins and Jamil get involved because of how big the case has gotten(and how insistent Azul and Kalim are with helping Riddle), while the Heartslabyul squad also find themselves joining because there's no way they're just going to let Riddle DIE.

Riddle for that matter is very overwhelmed because again, while he's faced many obstacles that were all very life altering, none have really involved him to be at the center of it all. The last time that's happened was his overblot- and he'd survived by SOME miracle...

So yes, running away and changing his identity is sounding very appealing right now. Especially because he doesn't know how long he can keep this from anyone outside of Sage's Island. That is if they don't already know...

nets

I had the massive honor of being by commissioned Malleus’ ENG VA for a dual print ❤️💚