#vikingverse

G E M M A

how does this character sleep? (position, sleeping habits, bedtime routines.)

gemma has always been a light sleeper. even before the ice, before the nights rocked on the waves of a sea storm between denmark and the mouth of the volga, before sean tried to take her life in her sleep, gemma would wake at the slightest sound. premonitory perhaps. when she woke as a child, as a teen, while still young but after the ice, she would go and check on her brothers; as an adult, before the boys, she would find the moon and watch it in the sky until she grew tired, and after the boys were born, she would take one of them with her to sit and see the moon and stars. it's rare she sleeps a whole not unless she is ill or wounded.

each night before bed, she washed her hands. she's careful around the nails and knuckles, making sure they're spotless. sometimes the water is so cold her hands remain pink for long minutes afterwards but she survived the ice, cold hands are nothing.

for sleeping she is a flat on her back sleeper. when her sons get old enough to climb into her bed, they curl into her sides with ease because of this. for them, she always pretends she is asleep, letting them fall to sleep themselves next to her. and she watches the moon thru the window until her eyes fall closed on their own once more.

what are their pyjamas like?

gemma can and has slept in everything. she has slept on everything from the cold, frost bitten ground to the softest of beds.

but once she settles, wife and queen-consort of the prince of novgorod, and a comfortable safety that comes with those two titles settles into her spine, she develops a better sleeping habit including proper nightwear.

her nightgowns are always long. and range in colours from the deepest blues to the richest reds. with their trade route to greece and constantinople, dyes are easily found for her, as gemma doesn't like pale nightgowns. especially white. no white.

blood shows too easily on white.

what do they dream about usually?

young gemma's dreams were haunted by drowning.

unlike her brothers, whose nightmares often involved ice and the terrible, glowing eyes of their father, gemma remembers so clearly their mother's last breath before she sank beneath the river and never reemerged. weighted down as her husband commanded.

when they were first taken in by the raiders and their captain, gemma didn't sleep for almost a month on the ship, fearing the water flipping it under its waves and ran dragging them all down to the depths.

but after nolan- after the ice cracks under nolan and the current pulls him away and gemma, unthinking, dived after him to pull him back to the riverbank, drowning no longer scares her.

from time to time, she sees her mother's face. the begging lilt of her mouth barely above the surface. her wide, horror struck eyes. but the water doesn't scare her.

how neat/tidy is this character?

if you grow up an abandoned scrawny kid amid a crew of raiders, you will quickly learn that if your things aren't put away safely and clearly noted as yours, you will lose them to someone else. so gemma is neat.

she doesn't accumulate a lot of things. at least, not a lot that she attaches sentimentality to. (until the boys are born and then one of the gold plates she took on a raid in her youth becomes a display dish upon her dressing table with all manner of trinkets and objects, stones and pinecones and pieces of cloth they bring her because they saw it and thought she needed it.) everything has its place and if it can't be found in its place, it's missing.

how affectionate is this character?

honestly, gemma is affectionate. but not in ways other would see as affection -- until the boys are born and how gemma suits motherhood so well confounds so many, except it's so obvious she would be good at it as she has always protected and cared for others. but anyway -- because they don't equate gemma's actions with affection.

with tom first, then nolan, the most obvious signs of affection within gemma are seen. her caring runs deep and just because she doesn't say "i love you" as easily as others doesn't mean it isn't there. in how she listens or opens up herself to someone.

and with her sons, it is so viscerally there. undeniable. they each took their first steps from learning to walk by stepping on her feet, their chubby baby hands held in hers. their first word was "mama". they all have her smile because it was the smile the saw always, given so easily and freely to them.

but don't be fooled. the lupine ferocity that raised an army against her father and slaughtered him in his throne room remains, simmering underneath, ready to rage war should anyone attempt to hurt her sons.

T I M O T H E E

how does this character sleep? (position, sleeping habits, bedtime routines.)

timothee, unlike his mother and two brothers either side of him, is a heavy sleeper. it's the one thing he inherited from his birth father. as a baby he was commonly found lying on his stomach, dead to the world. (cos of this, he was often the one gemma picked up to sit with her as she watched the moon. because he remained asleep unlike his brother who took sometimes hours to get back to sleep.) he snores too, loud rattling things from his core, that keep his younger brother finn awake (so finn is always the first to join gemma in bed, unable to stand timmy's snoring and retreating to the quiet of his mother's room).

on warmer nights he moves more in his sleep, regularly kicks covers off. he tends to dream more on warmer nights as well, faces and voices he's never met coming to him in his sleep.

what are their pyjamas like?

like his mother, timmy favours darker colours for his nightwear. it's intrinsic to him, even if he doesn't fully remember why. he was only small when finn was born so he doesn't remember how traumatic it was, doesn't fully retain the image of his mother's blood stained white nightgown and her frantic panic that she was losing her child. he just remembers being lifted by jack and carried from the room, crying and trying to reach for her as nolan shielded her from timmy's view, and then, hours later, being told he had a baby brother.

what do they dream about usually?

despite having never met him, after timmy learns he has his grandfather's eyes, the idea hangs over him like a terrible omen. for all he knows of his grandfather is his abandonment of his mother and uncles. so when he overhears his uncle tom saying to gemma, "he has father's eyes-" ["and lee's." "is that better?"] it becomes a weight he can't shake.

he doesn't want to be like his grandfather. but he has his eyes. green, hazel, like his uncle lee's, golden maybe in the light but not quite the dark brown of gemma, finn, tom, or his grandmother who drowned.

(his birth father's eyes are brown as well. but timmy wouldn't want them if they were his.)

timmy dreams, when it's warm and he's restless and moving in his sleep, of going further east. of seeing what's there. of spreading the kingdom that way. novgorod is beautiful, it's home, but timmy wants to see beyond it. when his mother was his age she lived as a pirate, then as a jarl. she took a kingdom for her own. timmy wants to do the same. make something of himself.

how neat/tidy is this character?

a mess™.

emotionally, mentally, physically. unkempt, unfettered, unapologetic in his messiness.

how affectionate is this character?

timmy grows up with the bright, warm beacon of his mother's affection always shining on him and his brothers but also watching the reserved, almost secretive way she exists around her husband. and somewhere in the middle of that forms timmy's expression of affection.

gemma is "mama" -- he and his brothers bring her things they find, thing to make her smile. she has a smile just for them. she's theirs above everyone else's. she is easy to love so timmy does, so openly.

but with others, he's more careful. his stepfather adores him; they aren't spoiled or coddled growing up but they want for nothing. timmy appreciates his caring and attention. appreciates how he loves his mother, love each other her sons, but timmy does not allow himself to love his stepfather back. there is genuine affection, care, and trust, but he holds back from love because he isn't his father and altho gemma has made it clear their birth father will never be allowed in her presence again or near them ever, timmy has a wall. purely out of love for his mother.

58. trapped/held captive.

sean has been held captive before, ropes and cloth binds he has escape from. but metal cuffs and a cage suspended from the ceiling he has never experienced before.

the metal -- bent and misshapen from other wrists and ankles -- pushes into his muscle with every move of his hands, sending a hot slide of blood from the open wound cut deep into the flesh of his wrist. bone grinds against the steel.

below him, his captors eat, laughing amongst themselves. from time to time, one will pass beneath him, prodding up into the cage to make sean jump, or reaching high enough to hold the edges of it, rattling him within the confinds.

dehydration dries his mouth, leaving his tongue heavy behind his teeth. but he is far beyond complaining. he won't beg for his release.

not yet.

not when word has been sent to gemma of his capture along with ransom demands. sean does not expect her to pay them, she does not owe him that. but he won't have her hear of him begging. not when he's been captured before.

💟: how is your style different in this work compared to previous ones? has it more shifted for the story or just developed in general?

in many ways it's similar to my usual MO -- i'm a slut for messy family dynamics, morally grey folk, and seeing where anger leads. but now, both with this and with other things, i enjoy personal growth. emphasis on the personal.

and i mean personal growth in negative and positive ways. but the important part is they do it for themselves and this definitely shows more "selfishness" with characters' choices towards fulfilment. before changes of that sort had a reaction upon how others saw them, on how much love they were deserved of, on their goodliness, etc; now, how others react is their own business, the characters' actions and growth are for themselves. if it costs or gains them love, so be it. that is not why they did it.

i also think this is the first time i've divided the family so gorily. usually when there's space between them, the care and familial bond remains. (even in the other variations of this 'verse -- dune and borgia -- the love is there even with thousands of miles between them.) but in this, the siblings are severed both physically by space and emotionally. gemma has no intention of returning to her brothers, and when tom leaves, he truly hates lee. this is definitely the sharpest the split has ever been between them.

💝: who has your favourite character arc? give a brief summary.

since i've already spoken about gemma, let's look at nolan.

and his arc of rising from a sickly young teen brought into the ranks of their pirate horde all the way to filling the space at gemma's side as confidante and right hand, in a way that neither her brothers nor any of her lovers could.

looking at gemma's arc (i know, i haven't shut up) she grows in power the further and further she separates herself from the images of herself put upon her by others. but that is where nolan differs. yes, he has followed gemma, as general, as jarl, and finally as queen, and he respects her as all of those things. but nolan has and always will see her as gemma. underneath the crown, all the blood washed from her hands, he sees her.

he isn't the loudest in his support of her. she has others in her ranks -- travis, chucky, dylan -- who cry her name on a battlefield for strength. nor is he the strongest, which surprises many for when the space at her side became unoccupied with braden's exile, everyone expected another berserker to take the free spot. someone with equal ferocity to her, equally battle hewn and bloody, like connor or jack. nolan is-

he's careful, and quiet in his watchfulness. and she trusts him. because she sees him looking at her and knows that he- that he knows things others have missed. things they don't see because they don't expect to see them in gemma. nolan sees them and doesn't judge them. or use them against her -- like when he finds out about sean (in fact, when sean starts following them in the first place, nolan is the first to notice), gemma doesn't have to beg him not to say anything. because nolan is quiet. and non-judgemental. he merely offers a place for gemma to put her feelings. a shoulder to rest her head. a voice to respond when she needs an echo. if that's what she wants. the lack of expectation in her immediately [if at all] accepting it but offering all the same.

other people's care used to come at a price for her. with nolan it doesn't. gemma isn't afraid to let him know things, to let him see her at her most vulnerable, her messiest. if he did this because he wanted power, gemma would know and would have cut him loose by now. he almost drowned when the ice broke crossing the river, she could have been rid of him long ago if she wanted. but she doesn't. she is content to let him be there. she looks at him the way she could have once looked at tom, or perhaps would have in another life. but instead she is here. telling nolan still shivering in furs after she pulled him from the raging waters that drowning is her worst nightmare. because it's how her mother died. in return he isn't worried his gentle concern for her is going to be pushed away. because they both know she doesn't need him. as gemma rises, it becomes plainly obvious that her succession is purely because of her, no one else. yet when she finally takes her estranged father's crown, trembling from the adrenaline, four months pregnant with her would be enemy's child, a burned to death husband hundreds of miles behind, and covered in dead men's blood, she howls. she howls in triumph, gutteral and aching, but her howl is a solo. the moment is hers and hers alone. and there at her back, barely in the room but undeniably present, is nolan.

even the one time she rages against his concern -- rages against all of those who followed her from lee's rule -- after nick is killed and she hears the news, something inside her snapping in heartache for what used to be, nolan doesn't go far. she screams for everyone to leave, which they do. they respect her too much to argue. but nolan stays on the other side of the door. he sits cross legged upon the ground, leaning his back against it, and lets her sob without judgement. there for when she reopens the door and allows him back in.

[unironically plays toastool's treehouse over their faces] do not enter is written on the doorway / why can't everyone just go away? / except you; / you can stay.

💙: how has the idea changed between starting it and where it is now?

it started off as "what if she had a big axe?", this hacking and bloody thing that was meant to reach a point and accept that final moment -- the crowning of lee as jarl -- as triumph. they became the heirs their birth father originally cast them aside to gain from his second wife. it was golden. but then i started looking beyond that moment and it became painfully clear that this moment could not be sustained. the high would end and all things would come crashing down, especially around the siblings who weren't lee. because lee might be contented but what of the others?

now it has pushed so far beyond its original ending boundaries and where once the four shared the space as the main protagonists, some have been pushed aside to allow others into the spotlight, and others again have shifted into antagonists, their stories becoming tragic mirrors of their still-protagonist siblings' arcs.

basically i cracked the blood family apart and made it about the found families they make along the way, for better or worse. they still become their birth father's heirs, but in a more . . . nebulous way, mirroring their parents in ways they never expected to, including parenthood itself and inherent cruelty.

does that make any sense at all?

🧡: what were previous working titles/ideas?

so at the moment everything i have written is marked with "vv" for vikingverse in google docs. to tell the whole thing cohesively, it'll likely have to be divided into parts, potentially by sibling or by "season" (some actually a season of a year, others symbolically seasons of one of the siblings' lives). collectively all the parts have a series working title of "full grown in strength the mistletoe stood", a line from the stanza 32 of poetic edda, which tells the story of baldr's murder at the hands of loki and the first step in the prophesied chain of events leading to ragnarok, aka: the death of the aesir and vanir and rising of the new gods. (it's meta-ish and i'm pretentious.)

staying on the theme of plants, i haven't actually named any of the parts because i'm not sure how many there may be, but i have a list of norse and slavic sacred plants that i will group into posies as titles for each part. (once again, i am pretentious.)

💝: who has your favourite character arc? give a brief summary.

my entire heart belongs to gemma. who just wants to be good enough. and who eventually learns that it is when she steps away from being her brothers' only sister, her husband's pagan wife, her foster father's heir, even braden's best friend, that she truly becomes her own. and from that, a mother of a dynasty that lasts centuries.

she was always good enough, she just needed to stop letting others decide her value.

which is difficult to grasp when the man who made her cast her and her brothers out into the ice after killing their mother to marry another, much younger woman. it's very difficult for a young girl of 7 to understand that she is worth anything when the seed that bore her didn't want her. and from there, it became a pattern of making sure she served a purpose in order to remain loved;

she kept her brothers alive thru that winter so they wouldn't abandon her or die, leaving her alone;

she became their foster father's favourite child to make sure she would always have a place amongst his crew;

she got lee his crown, she gave nick control of the fleet, she got braden back into the horde after his self exile for tom all because it was what her brothers wanted and she carved her self worth out of their hearts.

but when she removes claude's lungs thru his back -- not because he lied; not because he hid the truth of their foster father's wishes; not even because he cut braden's tongue out of his head and left him for dead in the snow. because he tried to destroy their family and gemma is lynchpin on which the family's power centres -- she looks at her blood covered hands and realises this is all she is. the battery from which her family holds power. while she carries the bloodstains. and this is as much as her brothers' love will let her be.

so she removes herself from the situation. she breaks the family (i would say first but i can't cos it's cracking in other ways too but her leaving highlights the fractures that already exist) and goes to find herself in the wilderness. her men to follow her but she has nothing to offer them, she's unsure where to go next. they don't care. and it's something. it's enough for now.

1. abandoned places -- neville longbottom.

Nature has taken back the house. Mildew. Damp. Rot. The house stinks of it, the stench embedded into the parquet flooring and stucco work of the high ceilings, into the net curtains his gran always insisted they keep up lest the neighbours see what they were doing.

No one has looked through in years. For probably longer than the last time Neville was here.

It feels wrong, the fact he has to buy it back from the Ministry after it fell into disrepair. When Augusta died, Neville hadn’t wanted it, leaving the Longbottom house unclaimed, to fall through the bureaucratic cracks. The realtor selling it to him – for a massive discount, Neville must admit, but that’s due to the massive missing chunk of the roof and left free standing wall – is a chipper blonde with earrings he knows Pansy will compliment before their tour is over.

They step over the ivy vines across the kitchen doorway and Pansy nudges Neville’s arm when she spies ‘Neville, age 7’ on the frame in Augusta’s neat cursive.

Pansy is the only reason Neville is buying the house. She agreed to move in with him under this one condition. “We can fix it up,” she had said over breakfast two mornings ago. “You know Dean loves a decorating project.” And she’s right, Dean does. The same way Pansy loves picking paint and Neville will love digging out all the weeds and invasive plants that have taken over the space. Now, all along the windowsill, are plants he can’t name. Blood red, almost black, strong thick trunks that have choked anything else that has attempted to grow near them.

Nature has taken back the house. Lichen on the walls, brambles blocking the skylight in the atrium hallway, and the roots of the old myrtle tree gnarling up the tiles of the downstairs bathroom.

47. rituals (ready or not lore) -- vikingverse.

With his face still shrouded in the dark of his hood, the seer offers the knife to the four, the jewelled handle waiting for one of them to take it from him. “Which one of you is strong enough to do it?” he asks, a hum on his voice. “You know what needs to be done. One of you just needs to take the blade.”

Gemma looks to her brothers. Tom can’t even meet her eyes, turning his head quickly away, focusing on something, anything else. His hesitance is sweet, that cloying sticky sweetness of a baby brother towards his older sister. But in this room it is misplaced.

Lee has yet to take his eyes from the knife.

He is the oldest, the rightful heir to their father’s throne. But the bargain has always been this – the one that takes the knife, that spills the blood, will be king.

Nick does not move either.

Anger, scorching and sharp, twists in Gemma’s gut. If any one of them should hesitate here, it is Gemma; it is the one whose husband now has a head start from them, the indecision of power versus love weighing her hand to her side. But no. Gemma knew when she said yes, knew as her attendants strung beads of silver and pearls around her neck and tied ribbons, soft and white, into her dark hair that Jonny was going to be this. Prey. All for a crown their father had attempted to kill them all for.

The seer bellows, “Did your mother drown in that river for nothing? Take the blade and decide, which one of you will be king?”

“Fine,” Gemma snaps, feral. None of her brothers flinch. Fuck them, fuck them and their softness, their unwarranted protection of their sister’s marriage. No. If they had any real love for her, one of them would have taken the knife before she could. The crown is theirs by blood and by oath. Cowards, each one of them, wasting what she brought them. The simpering bastards don't deserve their father's throne.

Through her teeth, she says, “I’ll do it myself, then.”

59. transformation -- jennifer check. (this is only 300~ characters, sorry.)

24. SUMMER SOLDIER | vikingverse; tom holland and braden holtby.

"come raiding with us," tom asks, again, more solid in his tone as he trudges through the water-heavy sand after braden hauling the boat to shore. pointedly he continues to ignore him, busying himself with the mooring rope.

tom's knuckles collide with the tattooed muscle of braden's upper arm. he's glaring, eyes wide when he whips his head around to face tom. "i know you heard me," tom retaliates; braden is mute, not deaf. "come with us. me. come with me."

braden can't meet his eye.

he hasn't been raiding in three years. not since his tongue was cut from his mouth and he was left bleeding in the first snows of winter. he would never admit it -- can't anyway, but would never all the same -- but he's scared. three years is a long time to not reach for his axe. tom sees it in the clench of his jaw. he places his hand on braden's arm, palm warm to the ink of his mani tattoo.

"i will be with you."

25. A LETTER TO THE YOU YOU KILLED | asshole immortalverse; gemma arterton, zayn malik, and post malone.

post has gone and ruined a perfectly good day of standing around the MET waiting for strangers to almost recognise them in the old artwork around them, that's what he's done now. zayn's gaze glazes over, not removing his eyes from gemma's profile as he lets her handle the whole thing.

her nose is different . . . or singer-sargent got it wrong, which is the more likely of the two options. she pinches the bridge and releases a sigh.

"i thought you were meeting him for brunch to break up with him," she hisses, barely under a whisper. "not give him lifelong trauma. what happened to keeping a low profile?"

post might be the youngest immortal of the three but he has over a century and a half of experience at it; he knows better than this. "i panicked."

"and that led you to changing the plan from 'gently letting him down' to 'throwing yourself from the empire state building', did it?" over her shoulder, zayn lets his eyes follow the person slowly backing away, obviously catching the end of her last sentence. "how many people saw?"

post shrugs, nonchalant. as if he has the space to be right now. "i don't know," he admits, "like, maybe 18. and then a couple on the ground."

zayn doesn't need to look at gemma's face to know she's a minute from throttling post to death.

neville longbottom

1. sexuality headcanon: bisexual. tbh everyone i write is bisexual unless it's implicitely stated in canon that they're gay/lesbian. cos i don't wanna respect that. neville is bi and i will live in this headcanon until the end of time.

2. otp: pansy parkinson/neville longbottom, but also neville longbottom/blaise zabini, and daphne greengrass/neville longbottom as well. honestly, neville and a slytherin ex-schoolmate makes the most sense to me. hannah abbott whomst? (except draco cos draco's patheticness and need to be ~loved wouldn't jive with what neville's got going on. the other three have a lot more backbone than draco does even tho i love my terrible gemini slytherin bimbo a lot.)

3. brotp: honestly, i love dean+neville as best friends forever, but i'm also very very into luna and neville as friends because [and we'll come back to discussing them, i promise] they are both sidelined so much by the golden trio and i can see in the cool, clear light of adulthood, the two of them reevaluating their self worth and realising they were treated super shittily by potter-weasley-grainger. and, of course, if he's dating pansy, then blaise and theodore nott interacting is very important to me because theo is such an underrated gem.

4. notp: neville/anyone in the golden trio. not one of them deserves a second of his time after hogwarts after how they treated him. which isn't to say they wished death upon him, but if neville had died in the battle of hogwarts, they all would have chalked it off to an expendable death for the greater good whilst neville was actively trying to keep as many people as he could alive since they were, oh that's right, all fucking children?! i just don't have the time to navigate one of them pulling their head out of their ass and realising neville's worth and that leading into a romance. gimme neville and a slytherin who has always known neville's worth but was ultimately a groomed child of an abuser any day.

5. first headcanon that pops into my head: neville attends muggle botany seminars during the summer months because muggles know just as much about their plants as the wizarding world does about magical plants and neville likes succulents and the amazon rainforest.

6. one way in which i relate to this character: when i was younger i did attempt to make myself smaller to fit into the space allowed to me in the lives of people who ultimately did not give a shit about me and i am better off without.

7. thing that gives me secondhand embarrassment about this character: purely the fact he's so tied to joro. like. god i wish this series had nothing to do with that transphobe.

8. cinnamon roll or problematic fave?: largely a cinnamon roll with sinnamon roll tendencies like in book seven when he wanted to murder the carrows so harry had to make the "no murdering" rule and also easily falls into bed with a lot of slytherins.

gemma in the vikingverse

1. sexuality headcanon: bisexual with a penchant towards large bearded men and women who remind her of her mother. (her mother was drown in the volga when she was 6, obviously she's gonna carry some serious issues from that. let her live.)

2. otp: i wanna say jonny/gemma because i'm a parody of myself, but even tho i love the dynamic of viking shieldmaiden and christian monk bond over their differing gods and fall in love after she saves him from a bear attack, but i've gotta say coots/gemma does a lot for me in this. he's claude's brother and yes, gemma does kill claude, and yes, coots initially attempts to kill her in return, but she ends up having his child and that's a whole Thing™.

3. brotp: braden+gemma until the end of time. yes, he pushed her away when his tongue was cut out and he spent a year wallowing in self pity, but gemma always kept an eye on him from afar. they are bound, the blood soaked berserker and the axe wielding shieldmaiden; they stood elbow to elbow in countless shield walls. she stayed awake thru ten nights as he bled from the mouth, watching over him to make sure he didn't choke on his own blood. his sword is branded on her forearm from using it to cauterise a wound from an arrow in battle. he isn't her brother but at this point in her life, she loves him more than her actual siblings.

4. notp: i can't in good faith say "claude/gemma" for this as i would 100% write and read blood ritual hatesex between them, yeah, i said it. tbh any of the young guns/gemma. they are beloved to her, absolutely, but she leads them and she couldn't.

5. first headcanon that pops into my head: the tattoos down her thigh are dedicated to freyr.

6. one way in which i relate to this character: about to get too real to fast but sometimes i wanna fight my dad for how i felt pushed out of the family by him starting a new one with my stepmom and stepbrother.

7. thing that gives me secondhand embarrassment about this character: she literally falls in love with and marries a fucking christian nerd who she has to save from getting his ass whooped by a bear. girl, plz. there's literally 4 other men and 2 women in your life you should rate higher than the virgin you had to save. bb girl, his dick game will not be good, i'm telling you now.

she declines a marriage proposal thru her teeth, despite her brother's hand on the back of her neck; when tom accuses claude of cutting out braden's tongue she agrees to be braden's second in the ensuing challenge against him; and when she pulls nolan from the frozen river, she insists she's ok thru the careful clasp of her teeth.

gemma is all teeth and grit, ice in her bones, so often her words are silently stated. with a look or the raise of her brow. so when she speaks, it's heavy. means something. carefully chosen.