HELLO!! thank you so so soooo kindly for this ask im kissing you rn bc there’s nothing i love more than talking about my darling angels

so here goes…

- bellatrix calling rita baby!! BELLATRIX!! CALLING!! RITA!! BABY!!!! this one is actually canon to me and it’s something that can be sooo beautiful and special and AAAAAA

- in a similar vein, rita calls bella darling… this one is less near to my heart but i still think it happens in literally every fic ive ever written lol

- okay this one’s a big one: rita is worse than bella at the start!! she’s offputting and more than a little stalkerish and hurts people for basically no reason and not a single soul likes her bc she’s AWFUL! and the only person who likes her is bellatrix who thinks she’s the most perfect person to have ever walked the earth, the best thing to ever happen to her even if their relationship is actively making her worse…. like i think rita doesn’t really have many morals when they meet whereas bellatrix is like. still trying to be good. i think at the start she wants to be good… and then that turns into wanting to be good for rita which is a slightly different thing that nonetheless drives me insane… but then also there are external factors and what not and she gradually loses sight of this etc etc and it ends w rita coming face to face w a line that she wouldn’t cross, a line that bella has crossed and that’s the point of no return for them in many ways (the dark mark)

- referring back to the last one again, when i say rita hurts people for no reason, to her there is always a reason, i think she cares a lot about the justification of all her actions even if it’s petty or a little irrational and ridiculous… like i think there’s always some logic that makes sense maybe only to her behind her actions and that’s why bella getting the dark mark is so unforgivable bc there’s no world in which she’d be able to somehow justify genocide even if she doesn’t actually care about the war at all

- bella on the other hand is the loyalest dog that has ever walked the earth and that’s why rita’s articles are unforgivable to her (this is the hc that rita writes an article about bella/the black family/whatever… i always think this comes just after bella gets the dark mark so rita justifies the 'betrayal' w the fact that bella betrayed her first) bc she just can’t forgive or even really fathom how rita would betray her like that bc she never would've done the same bc she's loyal to her very marrow and would've remained so even if her and rita were sworn enemies

- interesting to me also that if rita had been the one to get the dark mark (not that i think this would ever ever happen. but hypothetically) bellatrix would absolutely have followed her into being a death eater and everything. and if bella had been the one to write the article, i reckon rita would’ve probably forgiven it, probably even respected it a little…. so like even tho the two of them are so similar in many ways there’s this fundamental irreconcilable difference between them that leads to them falling apart no matter how desperately they try to cling onto each other :(

- a lot of people are like oh, they’re so toxic! but jen @quillkiller and i were talking about this the other day (most of these are things i’ve talked about w jen lmao and it wouldn’t be a post about quillkiller without jen being involved somehow… no one understands me and them like she does) and really, i think that removes a lot of the nuance, and i HATE when nuance is removed, bc i think that sure, to anyone else their relationship would seem toxic and unhealthy or whatever but for them it’s probably the healthiest thing they could have, probably the best thing that’s ever happened to either of them, i just think there’s SO much love

- so much love and sooo much romance, like to me it’s so incredibly romantic that the two of them have like allowed themselves to be shaped by the other, let someone so wholly into their soul that it’s unlikely they’ll ever be without them again, and then as it inevitably starts to fall apart the two of them are clinging by their fingertips to the edge of the cliff, just such sheer desperation as they try to make it work and complete devastation when it turns out they can’t…. like. that’s love to me. drives me crazy

- and that’s another thing!! they’re haunted by each other for the rest of their lives!! constant perpetual unending haunting, there’s no escape, there’s that fine line between love and hate and even if the feelings are all complicated now, it’s the sense that they’re SO intertwined that even though they’re apart and they don’t know what they would do if they actually saw each other face to face again, they can still see each other in everything. EVERYTHING.

- and it’s worse for rita imo (in terms of the haunting i mean) bc bella’s in azkaban, out of sight but never out of mind, and then she’s back and it’s horrible but then she’s dead and that’s even more horrible and rita carries that ghost around with her for the rest of her life, probably the only person who could still say she loved bellatrix by the time she died, even if they hadn’t spoken in decades… bellatrix is in every word she ever writes and every plan she ever makes and every single part of her life in some way. she lives in a flat that bellatrix has never been to but she’s still there in every corner of every room

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jen @targdyke ( @quillkiller )‘s number one fan and stalker <3