Is it annoying to stay hydrated when the cup sizes are designed for someone who needs less than half the amount of water you do to stay hydrated? And the cups donāt fit in your (long) hands right?
How do they speak and what does their voice sound like?
asked by @blue-dartwing in this post
Letās tackle first Lilliandra because voice is so important to her. Her voice is beautiful, controlled, and deliberately shaped ā but not always warm. She's someone whoās been trained to be listened to, watched, obeyed, and underestimated in precisely the way she wants.
Lilliandraās natural voice is a bit medium-low for a woman, smooth and rich. Because of her singing and thaumavocalism, she has exceptional control over breath, resonance, projection, and tone. She can make herself sound softer, warmer, more wounded, more amused, more commanding, or more harmless with very little visible effort.
People might describe her voice as:
mellifluous
silken
low and clear
hypnotic
cultured
unsettlingly calm
Thereās a slight rasp, or just rough, when sheās tired, after overusing magic through her voice, after smoking, illness, or later when she develops breathing difficulties.
Tone
Her default tone is often assured. Lilliandra doesnāt usually sound like she is asking permission, even when phrasing something politely.
She can be warm, playful, flirtatious, or soothing, but thereās often a sense that sheās in control of the conversationās shape. She doesnāt have to raise her voice to dominate a room. In fact, itās often more dangerous when she drops her voice quieter.
Her sarcasm is quite dry, especially when pointing out flaws. Not āOh, thatās stupid.ā
More āA fascinating conclusion. Did it survive contact with thought?ā Or āYou may continue, if you are determined to embarrass yourself.ā
She can sound very sure of herself even when sheās internally panicking, which makes it harder for others to notice distress until she either goes eerily still or starts speaking too quickly in a spiral.
Word choice
Lilliandraās word choice is elevated, educated, and precise. She favours exact language, especially in academic, magical, or political contexts.
She rarely rambles in casual conversation unless sheās excited about a subject and sheās comfortable around the person. She can over-explain when discussing magic, experiments, metaphysics, or anything she is passionate about.
Her speech has a few modes:
Public noble mode: Formal, elegant, diplomatic, restrained.
Scholar mode: Precise, technical, intense. She may forget to soften herself.
āNo, the resonance is wrong. You are treating the spell as if the voice carries the magic, when the voice is the architecture.ā
Cult leader/Champion: Ritualistic, almost sermon-like.
āKnowledge does not ask whether you are ready. It opens, and you either look or blind yourself in refusal.ā
Private mode: more sardonic, indulgent, and intimate. Less polished around Miraak, Cinnara, Elikar, and eventually Serana and Ophelia.
Accent
She has a highborn Summerset Altmeri accent: polished, precise, and very noticeable in Tamrielic for a good few decades. By the start of Skyrim, itās been sanded down after her travels around Tamriel.
Her vowels may be long and clean. Her consonants are careful. She pronounces names correctly even when others do not, and may privately judge sloppy speech.
In Tamrielic, she may sound elegant but slightly formal, as she learned the āproperā version first and casual speech later. In Altmeri, she sounds more natural but also more socially revealing. Other Altmer may hear her and immediately deduce things like: noble birth, expensive education, court/performance training, and political upbringing.
Non-Altmer may simply hear āarrogant elf noble,ā which she will use to her advantage.
Code-switching
Lilliandra code-switches often. She may switch languages for intimacy, precision, or secrecy. She mostly sticks to Altmeri (her first language) and Tamrielic, thoug she does know other languages.
Around Miraak, language switching becomes very specific. She might begin in Tamrielic for clarity, shift into Altmeri when irritated or for something specific, and occasionally use Dovahzul terms once she learns them ā especially if teasing or challenging.
Also, her code-switching can reveal emotional pressure. When calm, she chooses the language. When distressed, the language chooses her.
Does she swear?
Yes, but not constantly. Lilliandra isnāt someone who fills every sentence with profanity. She enjoys creative insults instead.
Gesture and physicality
Sheās definitely not motionless.
She uses her hands when explaining/using magic: tracing shapes, marking rhythm, conducting invisible spell structures. She gestures more when excited about research though! Hand movements as she talks is often paired with her pacing. In public, itās more restrained. In anger, she may become very still.
Conversation style
Lilliandra listens very well, but not always kindly.
Sheās observant. She notices word choice, hesitation, breath, eye movement, posture, and what someone avoids saying. She listens like a performer, a scholar, a noble, and a predator all at once. That means speaking to her can feel flattering at first. She makes people feel heard. Then later ā sometimes āthey realise she has heard too much.
Her listening style depends on relationship.
With strangers: attentive, charming, analytical
With perceived enemies: polite, surgical, quietly predatory
With Elikar: more reactive, more emotionally exposed, sometimes defensive
With Miraak: challenging, intimate, often layered; she expects him to keep up
With Ophelia: clearer, gentler, more direct; she avoids false softness and respects her daughter's silence
What people deduce from her voice
Just from hearing her speak, people might assume she is:
educated
noble-born
wealthy or formerly wealthy
trained in etiquette
a singer or performer
arrogant
dangerous if crossed
used to command
not as harmless as her looks suggest
hiding something
Very perceptive people may notice the performance. They may realise she is not simply āwell-spoken," but that she's developed a mask of sorts. Miraak especially has noticed that. He understands that her voice is another tool. Not fake, exactly ā but weaponised.
In-game voice accuracy?
Nah, definitely not.
I do not know who's done this. But i'll tag a few people whose OCs I'd love to learn about! No pressure tagging: @hircines-hunter @friend-of-giants @theoneandonlysemla @honeybeebunny111 @scholarlyhermit @umbracirrus @azuras-catspaw @saltymaplesyrup @knifecalledlust @artaeums @sanzas-reverie @dragonhold @juliette-has-a-pencil @tobianidiot @sassybakalesbian @flycasual @stormbeyondreality
If you see this and want to do you own, š«µ do it!
I caught up with my tags for the last several weeks! š i have the energy to participate finally
Tagged this week by: @flycasual @honeybeebunny111 @hircines-hunter @saltymaplesyrup @intyaliel
and over the last few weeks: @chiqita @skyrim-forever @theoneandonlysemla @cresu @umbracirrus @blossom-adventures @heavy-metal-dick @nerevarbean @stormbeyondreality @blue-dartwing (tagging you all back if you haven't posted!)
I'm still working on my submission of @tes-season-unending-fest prompt "Recovery"! So have a snippet! Touching on the more immediate consequences to Lilli resurrecting Miraak. >:)
Words: 330 || Warnings: mentions of death
Miraak wakes to the smell of woodsmoke before dawn has coloured the sky.
For one long, empty breath, thereās only the expectation of green-black light. Stone slick with old ink. Pages turning where no hand has touched them. A skyless height above a sea that is not water, and the patient pressure of a thousand hidden eyes fixing themselves upon him because he has dared to sleep.
Instead, there are wooden beams overhead. Only woodsmoke, wool, the faint, bitter trace of a healing draught left too near the bed.
And beneath all of it, Lilliandraās breathing. Thatās the sound that keeps him from rising immediately. It catches once, shallowly, almost too quiet to mark as distress, then steadies with effort.
Miraak turns his head.
She lies beside him on her back, propped more upright than comfort should allow. Pillows are wedged beneath her shoulders. Another is tucked against her side, keeping her from rolling onto her ribs in her sleep. The blankets sit low across her waist despite the chill, because fever makes her overheat and shiver in turns. Her hair is unbound over the pillow, a spill of gold made dull by the dimness before dawn.
Her face is bloodless beneath the golden undertone of her skin. The bruising begins at her throat and disappears beneath the neckline of her nightclothes, mottled violet and blue-black where power has torn through flesh that could not properly contain it. Her right hand rests over her sternum, fingers curled as if even in sleep she means to hold herself together.
She looks very little like the creature who had stood over him in Apocrypha with dragon souls burning in her, furious and terrible and doomed.
She looks very little like the elf who had witnessed him killed.
Killed.
The word comes as coldly as winter. Moraās tentacle through him. Moraās voice around him. Moraās ownership finally tiring of defiance and making an example of the first Dragonborn in front of the Last.
tangentwithtanner
origamiaround
yousharknotpass
baratheonpilled
janainaart
romaincrisis
kaledo-art
