#denise things

[stevita]

❝ I thought the punishment usually came after the crime. ❞ Hailey to her darling mother

It seemed Hailey had something to say about it when she came downstairs to find Denise, clad in a tracksuit, not serving breakfast. “Punishment? Dear, this isn’t a punishment. I just think we all went a little overboard last night at dinner, and we could all do to cut back this morning to make up for it.” 

Last night, that blooming Dolohov girl had invited herself over for dinner--and brought along her three siblings. Denise didn’t even know she’d had three siblings. She’d been forced to cook far more than she’d planned to for the guests, and while she was able to control herself when it came to picking her portions, her children had disappointed her--Hailey less so, but that’s why Denise was going to let Rob deal with Phillip. He had the firmer hand about these things, physically, at least. Denise’s big power-weapon was her artful skill at guilt-tripping, and that worked much better on her daughter than her son. 

“Now, go on and put on your tracksuit. We can go for a run in the park together, what do you say to that? A little mother-daughter bonding time. I’m sure your brother and father will find something to do.” 

[stevita]

“ready for it” is SUCH a Denise romance anthem 

[stevita]

denise in the dorms one year over xmas break: “I think this year I’m gonna make a new years resolution to lose some weight. yeah!”

ariadne, who can’t believe she’s been forced to share a dorm with this obsessed nutjob for all these years and whose head is about to explode from listening to her talk about salads all break: “while you’re at it why don’t I make a resolution to lose my fucking MIND because I know I’ll be able to keep that one if you’re around honestly” 

[stevita]

ok but hypothetically, what would happen if denise came back as a ghost? (i almost dont wanna know bc shes so horrible but damnit shes really interesting as a character)

She would honestly probably guilt-trip and fat shame all of her descendants forever, so I guess it’s a good thing she’s in wizard hell with her husband instead. Like, I don’t think I could bring myself to inflict Denise on the world forever. 

[stevita]

the winter of 77 denise terrorizes literally everyone on the train platform. both her kids and lise, of course, but also dane because he was ‘always an enabler’, and she’d call gene and doreen terrible friends for not telling her that her son’s gone and got himself sucked into what could be called a major media scandal and she even goes as far as telling gene that he had that heart attack coming (cause he had a heart attack earlier in the year, but it wasn’t serious, nothing bad can happen to him cause he’s protected by blood magic), and she goes on to verbally attack a handful of reporters, three complete strangers (”can you BELIEVE what my child has DONE”) and like, probably someone’s cat 

everyone’s in shock because they’ve never seen her like this, even her own kids would have been used to seeing her act sweet and normal and bringing down the hammer in subtle ways (like making some passive-aggressive ‘poor-me-I-am-the-victim comment and letting rob take it as his cue to do her dirty work), but nobody’s ever given her a reason to terrorize an entire train platform before 

but honestly, her not knowing what’s going on in her OWN family is her OWN damn fault, because maybe if she wasn’t so obsessed with kale smoothies and working out, she’d have noticed that the newspapers have stopped coming to her doorstep months ago 

denise is such a monster but I’m ????? somehow really proud of what I’ve created? I feel like with her I’ve succeeded in casting shame where it really belongs. 

[stevita]

@ anon who wanted to know if I had any songs for Denise: Provanity and Leeds United (both by Amanda Palmer) are also really good ones

[stevita]

I was out for a smoke just now and it hit me that even though denise and cressida are opposites in terms of their modus operandi, they’re much more similar than cressida and lise would ever be--they’re two sides of the same coin, practically. The gaslighting and emotional manipulation, acting sweet to your face while on the inside thinking of nothing but their own selfish agenda, the slipping things into your juice without your knowledge. 

meanwhile lise is the sweetest little angel ever to burn down half a town

[stevita]

D'you think there's any *massively* suppressed feedism in Denise's being? I've often thought the most fat-phobic are rebelling against a part of themselves that wants to embrace fatness. Could Denise fall into this category?

Yeah no sorry but most fatphobic people are just assholes many of which are just afraid of losing power/thin privilege in the event that the status quo changes and suddenly all bodies are valued equally. I mean, I’m sure there are ~some~ out there who outwardly act fatphobic because they’re afraid of their own desires, but I think they’re just exceptions to the asshole rule, and drawing the conclusion that the reason people are fatphobic is that they’re trying to cover up their secret feedism is kind of like saying that all those loudly homophobic people are only like that because they’re secretly gay--it finds a way to blame the problem on the people who are being stigmatized in the first place. 

As for Denise...well, there’s no denying there’s something in her gene pool. Her parents were obviously mutual gainers and feedist leanings tend to pop up in her gene pool at random, like in Clae and Caleb, who, although they can relate to Liesel, certainly didn’t ~get~ it from her--left to develop on her own, she would have been your average, garden-variety civ, but she got a little disrupted along the way,and if you asked her, she’d call herself a civ, even though she partakes in things that make her seem like an encourager at the very least. 

And Kiley got it, too--she isn’t Denise’s direct descendant, but they do share a last name and a common ancestor. 

But Denise herself doesn’t have any desire to partake in anything feedist and she objects to all of it--entirely on a superiority-complex-rooted, aesthetic basis, but if you asked her she’d also state her motives as economic (’it’s a waste of resources!’) and religious (cause gluttony is a ~deadly sin~). For the record, though, Denise is a terrible Catholic--I mean, whatever happened to thou shalt not kill? Cause she very much did try to kill her daughter-in-law-to-be FOR the simple act of doing feedist things with her son.

If the innate tendency is genetically influenced, then sure, she has the genetic material in there somewhere, but it isn’t expressed in her, just like I almost certainly have a gene somewhere in my coding for green eyes because my dad’s eyes are green, but as you can see, mine are brown.