𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚊 ✶ @voldemortxqz - Tumblr Blog

~“ This wasn’t a fairytale, and Tom wasn’t a hero. Despite knowing his kiss wouldn’t revive his lioness—that it wouldn’t heal her wounds and it wouldn’t save her—he kissed her anyway. ”~

Had this piece commissioned for Chapter 40 of The Brightest Star in the Sky! Work by @dara-art! I am so incredibly amazed with how beautifully she captured this emotional scene! 🫶🏻

READ HERE

peppershark

Nicholas Galitzine as Tom Riddle

I will die on the #thicklipsTomRiddle hill, and it’s why I think Nick G is an ideal choice to play Tom Riddle.

Here is why:

A lot of TMR art and fandom face claims have Tom looking nearly like a villain already with over-the-top sharpness to his features and a shadowy, shifty look. I love it, honestly. So hot.

But there’s also a solid argument to be made that Head Boy Tom Riddle would have to have the golden retriever innocence of someone like Nicholas Galitzine. Allow me to explain.

Based on the description in The Chamber of Secrets of the Ministry of Magic’s inquiry into Moaning Myrtle’s death, Tom wasn’t even noticed as a suspicious character (except by Dumbledore) because he was held in such high esteem by his teachers and classmates. To have this level of automatic deniability, Tom needed a top-ranking academic record, an irreproachable reputation, plus—and this is my argument—an innocent face.

I find David Kibbe’s 1987 body categorization scheme problematic in general, but for the sake of this conversation, describing “sharpness” (yang) in features, and “softness” (yin) can help us explain how some faces might have a certain level of ‘innocence privilege’.

Kibbe associates certain “soft” features like bigger lips, bigger cheeks (regardless of weight) and other more “romantic” body dimensions with “yin” energy, the “light”, gentle and feminine side, or white on the Chinese yinyang symbol. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Kibbe associates sharp, prominent-boned features with “yang” energy, the “dramatic”, intense, masculine side.

According to Kibbe, everyone has a combination of these features. I know, it’s very reductive, and an overly-simplistic reduction of the Chinese yinyang model. I bring this up, though, because Kibbe’s presuppositions likely overlap with how Hollywood has conditioned us to interpret these facial archetypes; for example, we see lots of representations of young TMR with very angular cheekbones, gaunt cheeks and dramatic features. He’s often interpreted as a “dramatic” Kibbe type, the side with the highest concentration of “yang”.

Considering Tom’s situation, however, it makes more sense to cast him as a young man as someone with a lot more “yin” in his features. Snakeface Voldemort is his villain era and that’s pure yang: dramatic, angular, sharp, and snakey.

So as a younger man, I imagine he would have to employ more “innocent” features. When you consider that Tom was viewed as more innocent than Hagrid—who is the *actual* golden retriever of the Harry Potter series—you have to assume that Tom not only seemed less shady in a circumstantial evidence stance, but he actually must have outperformed Hagrid in some of his genial, “yin” features.

This is why I love Nick Galitzine’s look for Tom. My eye types Nick as a “soft dramatic” Kibbe Type which underneath is a dramatic body frame of very sharp angles, but covered in softer contours of body shape and more “yin” features like big eyes and big lips. It’s a metaphor for Tom’s dark, ambitious energy covered in a winsome, innocent-looking softness.

Nick serves a lot of shady, mysterious energy in his expressions, but the lovely fullness in his lips, big eyes and slightly-soft cheeks counters his darkness.

Nick looks like a prince, like his role in RW&RB (2022) or the high school quarterback like his role in Bottoms (2023) or the gorgeous Jacobean fuckboy for King James in George and Mary (2024). All archetypes I think TMR employs to get ahead in a wizarding world where he’s the half-blood Heir of Slytherin who grew up in an orphanage but clawed his way to the top. Nick G’s look in general is a great example of how I imagine TMR would combine features, displaying the dynamic of his character.

Do you think Nick G makes a convincing Tom Riddle?

tomioneforever

For @obsidianpen Thank you for writing such a beautiful story. Your "Blood and Gold", together with "Somewhere in time" by SerpentInRed are the first Tomione fics I read that dragged me into this sinful ship.

This drawing started as a weekly practice but when I came to the background, somehow "Blood and Gold" latest chapter has found it way to lurk into my mind. And then it became a very loose interpretation of the scene Tom came into Hermione's dreamland to find her.

I let the butterfly emerged from Tom's shadow and lead him to her. And Hermione is so happy to see them, just like how he made her smile when giving her a parting kiss. And the butterfly from Tom glow when it reachs Hermione, just like love and a cough cannot be concealed, however he wants to deny it.

I'm really looking forward to the next chapters! Especially Tom's POV about this whole incident.