Name: magemadi (Signed) · Date: 13 Jul 2020 05:13 PM · For: Blue Curaçao

Last one, let’s do it! Blue Curacao is a fun liqueur that’s for sure, and it’s with your last deadly sin of sloth, so NICE. I say this every time I know but your IMAGERY! LAURA!! THE SNAKE aHAHHH it’s so good!! With sloth being the slow constriction to death of the snake (who I assume would be Nagini) as it suffocates its prey. Also, super cool reference with the Gordian knot -- the impossibly tangled knot that can be solved by simply cutting the knot. NICE! The liqueur choice with its (artificial) blue cover makes me think of the dress Nagini wears in the circus in Crimes of Grindelwald, but Nagini also has some dark blue streaks in her scales, I think, so double cool imagery based on the drink choice. A slow death, and a nice cap to this drabble series, Laura!

 

~Madi

Broom Racing

Name: magemadi (Signed) · Date: 13 Jul 2020 04:47 PM · For: Rosé

Wooo it’s Rosé time, yessss my favorite! Oh my god and you’ve paired it with Lust as your deadly sin, hell yes! This imagery is really really cool because (correct me if I’m wrong) it’s allllll about the pleasure ;) It’s a look into the mind of someone who is experiencing *ahem* a lot of pleasure at the moment, and I think that’s why the eyes are seeing but not really and the coloring descriptions really stuck out to me in this drabble. I also really enjoyed the middle paragraph (loose term) about the golden snitches! That speaks to lust in a different capacity to a sexual one, and it’s more about the lust for power and for prowess in Quidditch and whatnot, which is a cool visual to have in parallel with the other one. Rose is a great drink, and I’m glad you chose to pair it with lust in this series -- it works super well!

 

~Madi

Broom Racing

Name: magemadi (Signed) · Date: 13 Jul 2020 04:32 PM · For: Cointreau

Yeet, another one! Laura, this may honestly be my favorite drabble so far in this collection. I really got a sense of gluttony here with the way you described this alcohol compared to the others, and that’s a huge kudos to you. Gluttony seems like the most difficult deadly sin to craft a story around, but by really focusing on where the eyeline is supposed to follow this drink when it’s poured and overflowing, that really highlights the need of the reader (?) who wants this drink. It’s beautiful imagery, really, and the dichotomy of the heat of the drink versus it’s beauty makes it difficult for the reader or to-be imbiber to resist the heat because it’s so tempting anyway. Fantastic job with this one! 

 

~Madi

Broom Racing

Author's Response:

Hey Madi - thanks for stopping by again! :) 

 

Ahhhh I'm so so glad you liked it - I had so. much. trouble with this one, with working out how it fitted with Tom and his personality and the colour scheme and everything: it's even less of a natural fit for Tom as a sin than greed is, haha, so it was hard to pin down the initial kind of idea and image for it. As a character he never seems to take too much of things, yk: his kleptomania is kinda pointed to certain items or certain people's things; but there's always meaning behind it. I always kinda thought of gluttony as sort of not being able to restrict yourself and the idea of a cup spilling over fit with that kind of interpretation of it, I think? where someone can't stop themselves from pouring continually, even though the cup is full and about to be overful, they just... keep pouring and pouring and pouring. And it was fun to go back to taste as a sense and the benefit of the colour orange is that it's a colour full of food- and taste-related words and references :P so that worked out super well :) 

 

Cointreau is one of those liqueurs which can be added to coffee, haha, so I liked the idea of it with warmth and heat and then the weird dichotomy of this kinda strong, rebellious sort of drink in a little, china teacup, which is so dainty and kinda posh and 'proper' :P And that's kinda like Tom himself: he's not posh or proper but he can pretend to be and fit in, but if you actually look and aren't fooled by the facade, you can see the psychopath underneath and just how dangerous he really is. The heat kinda linked it back to the others too again - I liked through all of them having some kind of undercurrent of something dangerous, some way someone could get hurt and hot Cointreau would definitely burn your throat :P 

 

Thank you so much for the review! :) 

 

Laura xx

For Battleships Round 2

Name: magemadi (Signed) · Date: 13 Jul 2020 07:35 AM · For: Limoncello

Yeet let’s gooo! Limoncello is a liqueur I’ve had before and it tasted like lemon Pledge to me but your descriptions of it here (aside from the aforementioned lemony flavor) are so cool, and I can totally see where you got some of your inspiration from. The use of silver and pin prick feelings is great because when you drink this liqueur it burns your throat but it’s not an even burn -- it comes and goes, much like pin pricks can when your foot falls asleep and the like. IDK if that makes sense to you, but yeah, it’s a smooth drink that catches you after the fact. This is a great one for the greed deadly sin too, I think, because it is so slick and smooth, you hardly know what you’re doing and how greedy you might be with drinking it until you’re too far gone and the greed has overtaken you. I like the little half alliterations/repetitions too with the breaking branches, -claws sets, and whatnot because again, it’s that bite that the limoncello has, and is the bite that Tom Riddle’s greed for blood can have as well. 

 

~Madi

Broom Racing

Author's Response:

Hey again! :) 

 

Haha, I know what you mean: one of our family friends makes his own limoncello and he loves it and will offer us some at the end of dinners and honestly, none of us like it but he's so convincing and so lovely that every now and then someone ends up having to take one for the team and have a glass of it with him :P It's just... way too strong and too sour for me, even though I love lemon as a flavour :/ Ahhh I'm so glad you liked the combination: Limoncello to me has always felt super rich and thick and it's a really bright, shining kind of yellow so it seemed to fit with greed well - and yea, it's super smooth, though that's definitely something you notice after you've noticed the super sour taste :P 

 

I loved kinda twisting it back almost with the idea of branches and needle-like leaves from lemon trees - and the way those would feel and sound, before you even got the lemons to make the limoncello :P and trees and nature are so so good for alliteration and repetitions: there's so much available to describe and so much you can really focus on and so many synonyms available for things, so it was a really fun one to write - especially because describing nature and things is really familiar because honestly, half of what I write is landscapes, I think :P 

 

Yes, it's like a hot sort of bite, limoncello! It's kinda distinctive, I think, because of the sourness and the smoothness, so it sort of lingers in a way - and that's definitely Tom-like, haha, the idea of biting and burning. Greed was a bit of a weird one to work out for him - it's not a natural fit as such with his character from the books: we know he's jealous and angry and proud, but greed is a bit of a strange one, so I'm so happy you thought it worked! :) 

 

And omggg the foot falling asleep pin pricks thing with the limoncello burn is a super cool image and describes it so well :D 

 

Thank you for the lovely review! :) 

 

Laura xx

For Battleships Round 2

Name: magemadi (Signed) · Date: 13 Jul 2020 07:23 AM · For: Crème de cassis

Laura!

 

Okay so this prompt was pride, and while I’ve never heard of creme de cassis before, google tells me it is also a dark red liqueur made from blackcurrants so hell yeah to another one of those! This one was more difficult for me to decipher meaning-wise because I wasn't familiar with the drink pairing, but it still works. As we all know very well, Tom Riddle slash Voldemort was a very proud and vengeful wizard, and so he would be very uppity about the alcohol he consumes. If it’s not top shelf, he’s not drinking it, and it’s all about appearances with him too. When he returns to full human form, he immediately stands tall, proud, and strong, and I got that imagery from the last lines of this drabble. Great job!!

 

~Madi

Broom Racing

Author's Response:

Hi Madi - thank you so much for stopping by! :) 

 

Ahhhhh omg creme de cassis is delicious, haha - it's the liqueur in Kir Royale, if you've ever had/heard of that on a menu! It's sort of purplish? which made it a bit different and the dark, purple-black colour of blackcurrants worked so well with pride, which I liked with purple :) It's a very sweet drink and kinda thick on it's own - but as it's often with champagne, there's that suggestion of wealth or status in some way, which I thought worked with the idea of pride, yk? And yea Tom is super proud and super haughty so it's his kind of emotion - though I have no idea if it'd be his kind of drink? yk, I've never thought about that before, haha: what would Tom Riddle's drink of choice be? :P 

 

I lovedddd describing the blackcurrents, too: describing food is so much fun and I can't believe I haven't done more of it in the past :P It was an image which was so clear in my head, but it was odd to have to kinda expand it outwards into 150 words worth of drabble, haha. It was so fun to describe the mould too - sins are bad things and the idea of the fruit in the bowl going bad and mouldy and just sitting there, waiting for someone to go and through them away, felt kinda appropriate for pride, with all the connotations of feeling above things and too good for things in that kinda toxic, dangerous way :) 

 

Thank you for the lovely review! :) 

 

Laura xx

For Battleships Round 2

Name: magemadi (Signed) · Date: 13 Jul 2020 07:09 AM · For: Campari

Hi again Laura!

 

Ooh yes wrath with campari, very nice very very nice!! Campari is a bitter liquor, which pairs well with the deadly sin of wrath, especially since it’s also a dark red one, which could be compared to blood, probably, and is hopefully one of the reasons you chose to pair these two together? I am also loving all of the snake imagery in this one too, especially as snakes (at least in regards to the ones Voldemort employs) give venomous bites, so the poison overarching theme continues!! The phoenix-esque description or at least starting a revolution/war description with the smoke/spark/ash lines is really really cool and dark, just like Tom Riddle is. Loving this so far, and you, as usual, knock it out of the park with your descriptive words!

 

~Madi

Broom Racing

Author's Response:

Hey Madi - thank you so much for stopping by! :) 

 

Yes, glad you like! :D I tried to match the colours of the drinks with the typical colour of the sin, so red for wrath - and the bitterness I actually didn't know about! I read it when I googled Campari, haha, but I didn't really register it, so it was a bit of a lucky break? But yea it's super dark, kinda blood-like, which worked so well, especially with Tom and his canon bloodlust :P And yess snakes! I try not to write about snakes because they terrify me, haha, but it's hard to avoid with Tom - and it's a fun image to right, all the circles and the long body (*shudders*). 

 

I loved using fire in this. It seemed a bit cliche - wrath and fire: both red and dark and evoking war and death and anger and all those things - but it worked too well to not :P And it was so fun to write, with all the smoke and ash which kinda felt to me like the aftermath of wrath: when something's over and people are sort of waiting for it to clear to see exactly what's happened. And yea, Tom definitely likes to think of himself as a phoenix, haha, with his obsession with immortality and wrath - the threat of burning and destroying things :) 

 

It was kinda one of the easier ones to write, because wrath is an emotion so easily associated with Tom :P but I'm so glad you liked it! :) 

 

Thank you so much for the review! :) 

 

Laura xx

For Battleships Round 2

Name: magemadi (Signed) · Date: 13 Jul 2020 06:44 AM · For: Absinthe

Hey Laura! 

 

You write Voldemort/Tom Riddle so well, so I had to check these drabbles out! These themes of each drabble focused around a different type of drink paired with a deadly sin is ingenious, especially as alcohol *is* technically a poison to the human body so good one to you there. Absinthe is quite the drink to start off with for sure, mostly because it can be quite hallucinogenic if it's the right kind, and I think you capture that essence very well here. The repeated words describing colors and patterns and flavors, combining colors with tastes and other nouns works with the drink this is about. Also, the ending with the dear diary bit actually made me giggle a bit because it is just a bit weird to think about a teenage boy tom riddle writing in a diary, regardless of the important plot point it served in canon. Great job with this first drabble, Laura, I'm excited to read the rest! 

 

~Madi

Broom Racing

Author's Response:

Hi Madi! Thanks so much for stopping by! :) 

 

I really love writing Tom, haha - he's become so familiar now so it's easy to slip into his voice/mindset and the world he's in, so it's kinda comforting to go back to that when trying something new or which I'm not very good at - and I've never been good at drabbles (or anything short at all, haha) and prose poetry is super new :P Yessss I liked the connection between that, yk? Especially because most of the drinks in the collection are spirits as well, so they're not weak, and the stronger something is, the more poisonous - technically :P I really wanted to have a lot of structure in my head for these, so then I could move away from it if I wanted to and kinda go a bit off-beat with the description :P 

 

Oh yea Absinthe is a hell of a drink for definite :P I liked starting with green too - it felt very Tom-like, with his Slytherin pride :P - and I liked the idea of envy with the diary, too: especially as the diary's the only real connection he has to his muggle background and heritage, and yet he's someone who desperately wants to fit in with the pureblood crowd and all their rhetoric. Ahhh I'm so glad you liked the description - I was a bit nervous about it because it's almost a bit... abstract? and not really describing anything in particular or anything particularly solidly, if that makes sense, so it felt very hit or miss :P 

 

It's a real question, yk: did he actually ever write in it? like, he owned it but why? It is definitely a weird image: teen Tom Riddle with all his murderous ambitions, writing down his ~feelings in a diary :P 

 

Thank you so much for the review! :) 

 

Laura xx

For Battleships Round 2