I am sending the Character development one off lee bc i hit ask limit: Talk about boundaries that she has around herself. What would it take for someone to break through her walls?
hooooo boy. here we go. this might be the best ask i’ve ever gotten so,,, let’s get it on
first off, for anyone to break through her walls, they would have to be persistent as hell. she would have to genuinely see / feel that they care about her very deeply in order for her to let her walls down. it would probably take a rather long lasting relationship / friendship for her to be able to truly open up. she has this very set and perfect image that she shows to the outside world. most of it is real but exaggerated for the sake of the show.
now, there are different levels of opening up; the first of which would be becoming softer. being a bit less loud, less confident and harsh and perfect. speaking more gently to this specific person, offering soft gestures that aren’t inherently flirty or sexual such as forehead kisses or such. her way of speech would still be compliments that don’t make her seem too soft, stuff like “it’d be pretty boring here without you” or similar things. next up she would start saying more genuine things, speaking more hesitantly and less coherently. she would be less fast and less confident in her speech, her gestures, her entire way of acting. she might even say “i love you”.
I think the thing she keeps most hidden, the biggest wall she’s ever put up, has to do with her self esteem: because one of the biggest, most obvious things about romilda is her confidence, her flirtiness, the easy way she makes everyone want her. there’s a boundary there that is nearly impossible to break through. what lies behind that wall is as simple as it is devastating: if she isn’t wanted, she doesn’t know who she is ( “like any unloved thing, I don’t know if I’m real when I’m not being touched” ). she needs to feel wanted and needed and loved and adored. when someone refuses her or doesn’t want her back ( i.e harry ) it breaks her to pieces. she doesn’t know how to handle it. in her mind, being wanted is one of her defining traits. and if someone doesn’t want her, she loses her sense of self. it’s one of the main reasons why she was so willing to use a love potion in such a case: because if she couldn’t get harry to want her, then who the hell was she?
this is definitely the wall that is hardest to break through, as it is something she herself is hardly conscious of, and even if she does realize it to an extent, it’s definitely not something she could ever say out loud. it would take a lot, someone would have to prove to her that they truly want and love her, would have to stay with her for a long time and not leave her or get bored with her, would have to show her that they understand her and understand she is very human and can be vulnerable under her perfect facade, and show her that they love her anyway. it would still be something she finds extremely difficult to articulate, and even more so to admit out loud, but if it comes to a conversation circling the subject with someone she truly loves and trusts ( which, again, it isn’t easy to become, as one of her boundaries is that she pretty much blocks herself to real love and tries to keep to just having fun ) she might be able to spit it out, eventually.
