#mr. chastain

[mrs-stans]

How Sebastian Stan Survived Communism and Became Hollywood’s Most Daring Shape-Shifter

So you need somebody who can play the Winter Soldier, Trump, and Tommy Lee? We’ve got the guy.

Sebastian Stan, who can currently be seen in Marvel’s Thunderbolts*, photographed in February in Palmdale, California. Jacket by Prada; vintage T-shirt from Stock Vintage.PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

The sun is going down fast, and Sebastian Stan is trying to get inside a locked Romanian church. This windblown Monday in late February would have been his late father’s 70th birthday, and before the day is gone, he is determined to light a candle and say a prayer in the old man’s memory at a place that had meaning for them both. Stan was born and raised in Romania, where faith and superstition became rooted together for him. “Whenever I’m in a church, I have to go like this three times,” he says, making the sign of the cross with his right hand. “I have to do it. And I have to do it three times before I get on a plane.”

Just before we arrived at this Southern California church in pursuit of the sacred, Stan was indulging the profane. Is there another way to describe an encounter with a remote-controlled talking penis? The actor is based in New York, so when he visits LA, as he’s doing now to attend the Academy Awards, he has a full to-do list. Today, that includes a visit to the makeup studio Autonomous FX, which won an Emmy for transforming Stan and Lily James into Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson for the Hulu series Pam & Tommy. The whole day is a microcosm of what has established Stan as one of the more daring and endearing actors working today. He thinks deeply but has a wild side too.

We’ll get back to the robo-penis later.

Jacket by Dior Men; belt by Artemas Quibble; vintage T-shirt from Stock Vintage; vintage pants from Front General Store.PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

It’s getting late, and Stan has to hurry through rush-hour traffic to get right with God for his father’s birthday. The Biserica Ortodoxă Română Sfânta Treime (or Holy Trinity Romanian Orthodox Church) that he wants to visit to light the tribute to his father is meaningful to the Romanian immigrants who founded it, but it’s no soaring cathedral. It’s tiny, a single-story white stucco structure with a squat steeple that’s hidden behind much taller trees. Across the street is the headquarters of the Bilt-Well Roofing company, which is a comparatively much bigger operation.

Stan left Romania more than three decades ago, but it’s still a core part of him. So is the uncertainty of growing up in a place where the government dominated and demoralized its own citizens—which makes him especially attuned to authoritarianism in his adopted country of the United States. His old accent is gone, of course. Few who have seen him onscreen as the Winter Soldier in a decade and a half of Marvel movies—including the upcoming outcast team-up adventure Thunderbolts*—could find a trace of it. Stan’s character of Bucky Barnes is as all-American as his closest friend, Captain America. The character was a Brooklyn native, but Stan took on a neighboring Queens inflection for another famous (or infamous) performance, playing young Donald Trump in the scathing true-life drama The Apprentice. The role earned him both a best-actor Oscar nomination this year and the enduring rage of a vengeful, unchecked president.

Suit by Emporio Armani; shirt by Giorgio Armani; necklace and watch by Cartier. PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

New faces and new voices were exactly what drew Stan to acting in high school. He moved to the US in the 1990s, and—as an immigrant kid still struggling to adapt to the language and culture—it was a lot more fun to be Bum Number Two in a production of Little Shop of Horrors than it was to be himself. “I just remember how fun it was to try to change everything,” he says. Being onstage turned a shy kid into a scene-stealing extrovert—and he was good at it. His mother sent him to summer theater camp not far from their new home just outside New York City, and by the end of high school, he was being cast as the lead in Cyrano de Bergerac. He was a good-looking kid, but he still loved hiding his face beneath Cyrano’s oversized nose. “You’re dressing up, you’re putting on fake beards, you’re walking differently, you’re changing,” he tells me. “You take big swings. You take bigger swings than you do when you’re a young actor coming to LA to go on pilot season auditions and they try to cast you as yourself—and you’re only allowed to play yourself.”

“SEBASTIAN HAS ALWAYS BEEN REALLY FEARLESS,” SAYS CHRIS EVANS. “YOU CAN SEE THAT IN HIS CHOICES. HE TAKES BIG SWINGS.”

Stan prefers to push himself to the background. He is not an oversharer. He’ll talk about characters or stunts or the meaning he sees in a particular movie or TV show, but while fans know every detail about the lives of other performers they adore, Stan has built a following while keeping the specifics of his own life somewhat obscure. The pilgrimage to light a candle for his dad is something he would ordinarily have done by himself. But Stan agreed to share something of himself for this story, in defiance of the actorly part of his personality that wishes when you looked at him, you’d see someone else.

He pulls on the handle of Holy Trinity’s main doorway. It doesn’t budge. “Doesn’t look very open,” he says. He’s not ready to give up. He walks around the church’s property and finds an older man sweeping up outside the congregation’s neighboring all-purpose hall.

Stan opens his arms and addresses him with a traditional Romanian greeting of respect: “Sărut mâna…”

I kiss your hand.

Coat by Miu Miu; belt by Artemas Quibble; necklace and watch by Cartier; vintage pants by Carhartt from Front General Store.PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

A week later, Stan is wearing a Prada tuxedo. It’s the night of the Academy Awards at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, and instead of trying to win over a skeptical church janitor, he’s trying to reassure his fellow actors and filmmakers that he is just fine, despite losing best actor to Adrien Brody earlier in the evening. (The VF Oscar Party is off-the-record, but Stan gave us permission to set the scene.) Most well-wishers now come to him with condolences, but he didn’t expect to win, and in some ways he may have avoided a bigger headache.

Trump has made political retribution a hallmark of his new term in the White House, and he was enraged by the sheer fact of The Apprentice’s existence. The movie, written by veteran journalist and Vanity Fair special correspondent Gabriel Sherman, depicts Trump in the 1970s as a needy wannabe mogul, eager to escape the shadow of his powerful father and being taught by Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) that underhanded tactics are a shortcut to success. When the movie was released last October, a month before the election, the once and future president unloaded on it via Truth Social, calling it “a cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job,” and adding: “So sad that HUMAN SCUM, like the people involved in this hopefully unsuccessful enterprise, are allowed to say and do whatever they want.”

It’s unlikely that Trump had actually seen the movie at that point, but Stan has little doubt that he’s watched it since. “I would put money down he’s seen it 100 fucking times, of course, because he’s a narcissist,” Stan told me the previous week. “And I bet you there’s certain things he likes about it.” Such as? “How he looked,” Stan replies with a smile.

Pants by Brunello Cucinelli; vintage T-shirt and boots from Stock Vintage. PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

He is too modest to say it directly, but he’s more handsome than Trump ever was, even with the prosthetic makeup that thickened the actor’s neck and dental devices called plumpers that pooched out his lips and jowls. Autonomous FX did those makeup effects too, allowing him to look more like the disco-era version of Trump. Capturing him physically, while also surfacing the scared and desperate young man beneath that exterior, is what earned Stan his Oscar nomination. “He loses his humanity. I guess that’s essentially what happens,” Stan said of the movie. “As an actor, all you’re trying to do is just look at these very human things and identify with them.”

That doesn’t mean he wants Trump to put him at the top of his enemies list. Before the Academy Awards, Stan said he was trying not to worry about potential retribution and didn’t think it would happen, unless…“I don’t know, maybe if I win the Oscar, which is like 0.0000 percent.”

“HE’S WILLING TO PLAY UNLIKABLE CHARACTERS,” SAYS JESSICA CHASTAIN. “HE’S NOT HAPPY TO JUST BE A CONVENTIONAL MOVIE STAR.”

So yes, he’s feeling fine at the party. He took with him other honors from the backslapping season, like when Jane Fonda name-dropped him while accepting a lifetime achievement award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. “While you may hate the behavior of your character, you have to understand and empathize with the traumatized person you’re playing. Thinking of Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice,” she said.

Stan said her shout-out was “maybe better than winning an Oscar.” “I wasn’t at the SAG Awards,” he continued. “I wasn’t nominated. I didn’t go. But somebody told me to turn on the TV because Jane Fonda mentioned my name. I would never have thought in my life that she would know who I am.”

Jacket by Prada; vintage T-shirt and boots from Stock Vintage; pants by Prada; belt by Artemas Quibble; necklace and watch by Cartier. PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

Then there was the actual trophy he won, a Golden Globe for best actor in a musical or comedy, bestowed on him not for The Apprentice but for A Different Man, in which he plays a man with a disfiguring genetic condition who undergoes a radical medical procedure to look more “normal.” The back-to-back recognition caught the attention of Hollywood’s power brokers, including Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, who has been working with him for nearly 15 years now. “To see him winning a Golden Globe for one movie and then being nominated for an Academy Award for another movie in the same year is pretty darn impressive,” Feige says.

The Golden Globe win stirred unexpected emotions in Stan. “You never really think that you’re going to be up there,” he’s told me. “I realized from that Golden Globe moment that when it happens, it’s massive. You can’t help but reflect on everything and everyone that contributed to you getting there.”

One of them is Annabelle Wallis, Stan’s partner of several years. The couple had kept their relationship private before the Globes, when she accompanied him and got an “I love you” callout from him on the stage. Wallis joined Stan at the Oscars as well, wearing a forget-me-not blue Grecian-style gown, and he introduces her happily to me at the Oscar party. (She has heard all about our adventure trying to get into the Romanian church.) Wallis is an actor herself, best known for The Tudors and Peaky Blinders, but their relationship is not something either of them discusses. “I feel like it’s really difficult nowadays to be able to have any privacy whatsoever,” he said. “It’s the one part of my life that I try to keep somewhat for myself, even though it sort of ends up being out there.”

Stan gets that protective streak from another person who helped him get where he is—his mother, Georgeta Orlovschi, who also accompanied him to the Oscars. She raised him for many years as a single mom after she split from his father when Stan was young. “They were both very strong individuals with very strong personalities,” he says. “Neither wanted to be justified by the other. I think they both had a rebellious spirit.”

Hat by Nick Fouquet; necklace by Cartier.PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

His father later disappeared completely, going into exile in the States. Constantin Stan was a cargo-ship worker who helped fellow countrymen evade government persecution that pervaded Romania in the decades after World War II. “He was a bit of a hero in my town,” Stan says. “My parents were part of the youth that were standing up to Communism. My father was helping people escape the country illegally, to the point where he was a wanted man. And he himself had to flee.”

Stan grew up not really knowing the man everyone else knew by the nickname “Tino,” apart from occasional telephone calls. But if his dad could vanish, it seemed plausible that his mother might too. Then one day she did.

Stan was about eight years old when his mother fled Romania to set up a new life for them abroad. Throughout his childhood, government mismanagement and corruption had led to food scarcity, fuel shortages, and electricity blackouts. The eventual revolution culminated in the downfall and execution of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1989. “I watched him get shot on television,” Stan says. “I remember that.”

The aftermath wasn’t necessarily better. “It was chaos,” Stan says, noting “how many orphaned kids were in Bucharest after the revolution because everybody didn’t have money. Nobody knew how to live. They’d been so suppressed.” He spent a year with his grandparents before joining his mother in Austria. “She came and got me when she finally had a job and established herself enough there in Vienna,” he says.

Sweater by Loro Piana; pants by Schott NYC; necklace and watch by Cartier; vintage tank top from Stock Vintage.PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

The anxiety he felt about losing her continued even after they were reunited. “She was working. She was playing piano at night when she could, and then she was teaching piano all day long. So at 9 or 10 years old, I was taking the trolley to school myself. I was taking the subway back myself,” Stan recalls. “Then I was coming home and I was alone, and I would have to make myself food and I’d do my homework and I’d wait for her to come home. That was a lot of alone time for a kid in a foreign country.”

He learned independence, but it scarred him too. “I remember waiting for her to get home and worrying: What if she doesn’t come home? I can see how that’s worked against me in certain ways and how it’s totally benefited me in other ways. You have a lot of time with your imagination when you’re a kid like that alone. So I feel I’m very good at using my imagination to believe certain things, which helps me in a way. But then there are times where I’m feeling a degree of uncertainty and lack of control over my life that can be paralyzing.”

“MY PARENTS WERE PART OF THE YOUTH STANDING UP TO COMMUNISM,” HE SAYS OF HIS ROMANIAN CHILDHOOD. “MY FATHER WAS HELPING PEOPLE ESCAPE THE COUNTRY ILLEGALLY—TO THE POINT HE HIMSELF HAD TO FLEE.”

Stan was around 12 when his mother began dating a man named Anthony Fruhauf, who was the headmaster of a small private high school in central New York. When they got married, Stan’s mother made plans to move with her son once again, this time to the United States. “He was really kind. My stepdad was a real influence in a good way,” Stan says. “In those early years in America, speaking English with him at home I think probably led to how I lost my accent.” He was all right seeing it go. He wanted to belong.

All this surfaced when Stan was onstage accepting his Golden Globe. “This is for my mom who left Romania in search of a better life, and for my stepfather, Tony, who took on a single mom and a grown-up kid,” he said, hoisting his award as his voice broke. Pointing heavenward, he added: “Thank you for being a real man.”

Coat by Bottega Veneta; belt by Artemas Quibble; necklace and watch by Cartier; vintage T-shirt from Stock Vintage; vintage pants from Front General Store. PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

Despite craving stability, Stan learned the value of taking chances, which has earned him a daredevil reputation among his actor friends. “Sebastian has always been really fearless,” says Chris Evans, who first appeared opposite Stan in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger and costarred with him repeatedly as the Marvel Cinematic Universe expanded. “You can see that in his choices. He takes big swings. When that Trump movie was kicking around, I remember thinking, I wonder who is going to take this job? It’s just got so many strings attached to it. And I was so unsurprised when I heard it was Sebastian.”

The devil on Stan’s shoulder urging him forward was Jessica Chastain, who became a close friend after they worked together on 2015’s The Martian and later the 2022 spy thriller The 355. “When we were on set for The 355, that’s when he first told me he had had the offer to play Donald Trump. A thing about Sebastian that people might not realize is he’s very, very thoughtful, almost to a point where he overthinks things. It could cause a little bit of stress. He was like, ‘Well, what do you think? What would you do?’ I said, ‘Do it.’ I was like, ‘What do you have to lose? Take a risk.’ As long as it doesn’t cause you physical danger, if something scares you—do it.”

Chastain saw Stan do that very thing in 2017’s I, Tonya, in which he played Tonya Harding’s then husband, who hatched the scheme to sabotage her rival, Nancy Kerrigan. “When so many people are trying to make you this conventional movie star, it’s a risk to do something that isn’t that,” Chastain says. “He’s willing to play unlikable characters. I find that executives have trouble with characters that may be complex and have dark sides to them. He really embraces that. He’s not happy to just be a conventional movie star.”

Coat by Loewe. PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

Marvel Studios was looking for a dark side when they were casting the role of Bucky Barnes in the first Captain America movie in 2010. Stan was a relative unknown, though he’d had a recurring role on Gossip Girl as a pathological liar of a rich kid. “You could see that he has so much inside him and so much behind his eyes. I’ll never forget that,” Feige says. “I said to Stephen Broussard, who was one of the producers on Captain America, ‘He’s going to be a good Bucky, but he’s going to be a great Winter Soldier.’ ”

Bucky evolves into that villainous alter ego in subsequent MCU stories, going from fearless soldier to shell-shocked prisoner of war and, eventually, mind-controlled assassin who struggles to break his programming and redeem himself. Getting the part was beyond game-changing for the actor. “I was actually struggling with work,” Stan says. “I had just gotten off the phone with my business manager, who told me I was saved by $65,000 that came in residuals from Hot Tub Time Machine.” He’d played the smarmy bully in that comedy a year before. Now it was his salvation.

Since then, the Winter Soldier has become one of the most beloved and relatable characters in the MCU, even though his story is far from the traditional everyman narrative. Bucky resonates because he’s damaged goods—the patron saint of fuckups struggling to do right. The arc culminates in his new lead role in Thunderbolts*, with Bucky leading a team of former troublemakers and outcasts. Feige says that, without Stan, the character’s strange journey wouldn’t have been the emotional gut punch it is.

After lunch, Stan goes to his appointment at Autonomous FX. The headquarters is tucked near an ice warehouse and a scrapyard in an industrial neighborhood of Van Nuys. Stan is trying on a pair of fake teeth that slip over his perfect pearly whites. The goal is to give him a more regular-guy look for Fjord, the movie he’s shooting in Norway with filmmaker Cristian Mungiu, a fellow native of Romania.

There’s a story behind these teeth—dating back to before Stan got braces as an adult. “When I got Invisalign, I was so obsessed with them,” he says. “The more you wear them, the faster they work. So I actually wore them at the fucking Captain America: The Winter Soldier premiere. I have them in and I’m smiling with them and people can tell. I was self-conscious because my teeth were always a little….” He splays his fingers into crooked angles.

The prosthetic teeth are modeled on Stan’s own before he fixed them. Stan has another blast from his past waiting for him too. After the fitting, Jason Collins, the founder and lead creative force behind Autonomous FX, takes Stan through the workshops, where sculptors are making limbs, bodies, and demonic babies. On the shelves, busts of other actors like Christian Bale and Annette Bening, used for previous projects, stare down with vacant eyes.

Collins and his company essentially provide the level-up version of the fake beards and noses that Stan first loved about acting in high school—except occasionally X-rated. As part of this nostalgia trip, Collins brings out a plastic tub with the remains of the robotic erection from Pam & Tommy. The latex has dried out and decayed away. This penis “character” was voiced by Jason Mantzoukas and had strong opinions about the Mötley Crüe drummer’s romance with the Baywatch star. It was a risky creative choice by the showrunners but added levity to the series and was inspired by Lee’s own autobiography, in which he banters philosophically with his sex organ.

The makeup team and the actor forged a bond along the way. “It really becomes a partnership,” Collins says. “We stare at him for weeks and months at a time. So we know the physical structure. We know what the span of his legs is and all that other stuff.”

“You get to know the actor very well,” says Stan. Their earliest meeting involved figuring out how to fit a prosthetic over his actual privates and snake cables for the controls down his backside. “When I first came here, they made a replica to work on. So they had to cast this,” Stan says, gesturing to his crotch. “I remember you’re like, ’All right buddy, well, I guess it’s good to meet you.’”

Jacket by Bottega Veneta; vintage T-shirt and boots from Stock Vintage; belt by Artemas Quibble; necklace and watch by Cartier. PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

After the makeup shop, Stan heads for the last stop of the day, the Orthodox church. After a persuasive conversation in Romanian, the custodian agrees to unlock the chapel for him. “Vezi ca pana,” Stan says. You’ll see it’s only for a moment.

As the doors swing open, the faces of saints stare down at us from rows of miniature shrines, not unlike the busts of the famous actors in the prosthetics lab. Both places represent things Stan believes in—the ability to transform into something new and a yearning to connect with something beyond yourself.

Stan doesn’t claim to be especially religious, but the Holy Trinity chapel takes him back to that fearful time living under Communist dictatorship, when he put his faith in higher powers and prayed for the best. “We would go to church a lot when I was little,” he says. “It’s still tied into certain things for me, because I felt such a degree of powerlessness over decisions being made early on.”

STAN IS NOT AN OVERSHARER. BUT HE AGREED TO SHARE SOMETHING OF HIMSELF HERE, IN DEFIANCE OF THE ACTORLY PART OF HIM THAT WISHES WHEN YOU LOOKED AT HIM, YOU’D SEE SOMEONE ELSE.

Stan and the man he wants to commemorate with a candle were estranged for years. He and his father finally reconnected when Stan was around 18 and began visiting Los Angeles for auditions. The New York kid would save money by staying with his father, who had settled in the San Fernando Valley (not far from the makeup shop, actually) and worked, once again, in shipping. The periodic visits brought them closer, and the relationship stayed tight until his dad died unexpectedly from COVID on a trip back to Romania in 2021.

Stan sometimes thinks his father’s story might make a good movie. In Romania, Tino was legendary for sneaking contraband Western goods like blue jeans and bananas into the country while smuggling dissidents out aboard the same vessels. “He worked hard and he loved America and he believed in being free,” Stan says. “I have always made the argument that immigrants to some extent are more patriotic than even the people that are born here because they don’t take things for granted. At least that’s what I saw in my father.”

The janitor guides us to the back of the church, where there’s a small side room with a votive stand arrayed with unlit candles.

“Can you give me one second? I’ll be right back,” Stan says.

He disappears into the shadowy alcove and strikes a light.

Later, driving away from the chapel, Stan tries to explain why he felt so compelled to go there. “I think it’s just the acknowledgment of how fragile we all are. Sometimes you go somewhere where it’s really not about you. It’s a moment to let go. Turn off for a while,” he says. “You don’t have to be anything in there. You don’t have to think any which way.”

Jacket by Balenciaga; belt by Artemas Quibble; vintage T-shirt from Stock Vintage; vintage pants by Carhartt from Front General Store. Throughout: hair products by Rōz; grooming products by Tom Ford Beauty.PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

He says something similar via text two weeks later, when he’s in Norway, starting work on his new role in Fjord—with his new teeth that resemble his old teeth.

“The feeling is always the same. Like it’s the first time,” Stan writes. “It’s always a mix of fear and hope. It’s losing yourself. It’s a free fall. Every time.”

[rarilee33]

Regina and Angela based off a Crimson Peak screenshot...

[arctic-hands]

Mine made my life in her class a living hell because I spoke out about her extremely inaccurate and offensive lesson on World War II in the fourth grade. She tried teaching us that hitler died in World War ONE, WWII was solely about Pearl Harbor, and no mention of the Holocaust whatsoever. Unfortunately for her agenda (or flat out incompetency, or both, it wasn't the only example of her being an inept teacher), I had already started independently reading books about the Holocaust, and from that day on she made it her mission to send me home in tears as often as she could

Incidentally, the books about the Holocaust I independently read in fourth grade (age nine, to non-Americans) are exactly the kind of books the government is trying to ban on the basis of being "too inappropriate for children". Chew on that one for a while.

does everyone have a teacher that they still have beef with/ hold a grudge against today??

[wtf-tfw]

mr rosemary, you goober! get your pierre ass over here dawg!!

[devilbrakers]

oc vibe game;

i was tagged by lovely mutuals @deadrlngers @feykiller @roguette @aezyrraesh and @ruvviks

RULES: post your oc and then 4 random pictures (or more) with no explanation to convey your character's vibe!

phoebe campbell | eden zhou | dmitri chastain | gray jeddore

taglist: @dollthorne @aztarion @theonlyadawong @celticwoman @mrs-theirin

@opaleyedprince @dmc4 @numbaoneflaya @saratrantoul @katsigian

@gauntlings

[starkwlkr]

Hi

It's ok if the request got deleted no need to say sorry,

Can u pls make a fic about papa nolan finding out about cillian and physicist!reader's relationship,

Like would he be angry or accepting, i was wondering

And then if u r comfortable with it then a time jump to the wedding or pregnancies

I would really like to know his reactions!!

This is really just a follow up to another anon request (which u made a fic on) and had this idea

Anyway so sorry for the long request

Have an awesome day ahead!!!!

nolan!reader x cillian murphy headcanons

I’m going to make these headcanons if that’s ok 🫶🏼🫶🏼 and i think i got carried away but who cares 😌

Ok so obviously y/n and cillian met in the early 2000s (you can make up how they met)

papa nolan knows that y/n is talking to a boy but he doesn’t know it’s mr. ‘my eyes aren’t even that blue’ so when y/n tells papa nolan that her bf is coming over for dinner, he’s preparing to meet so douche bag who says his favorite movie is pulp fiction or fight club (nothing wrong with that, but the film bros make me want to gauge my eyes out)

anyways, cillian shows up and ofc they get along great <3

after cillian and y/n are now OFFICIAL official obviously the press asks about what papa nolan thinks and if they get along

y/n and cillian are just the it couple of the 2000s like they’re on the cover of every magazine with those cheesy headlines ‘she’s got the beauty AND the brains’

literally any interview cillian or papa nolan do, they ramble about y/n and how proud they are of her

and you know how it goes, first comes love then comes marriage then comes y/n with a baby carriage🤍💍🍼 butttttt our fav nepo baby and Irish man don’t do it in that order bc my girl y/n got pregnant with their first baby in 2003 and she’s named alexandria

papa nolan is so excited about the birth of baby alex and he always offers to babysit whenever even if he’s busy

baby alex and papa nolan are my favorite duo 🫶🏼

eventually cillian and papa nolan work together on batman begins and you bet that baby alex is always on set

papa nolan at first did not want to bring her because he thought alex would be scared but she loved being on set and meeting everyone

her and christian bale become besties by the end of filming 🤞🏼

baby alex got to say the last “cut!” and everyone laughed because of how cute she sounded

bonus: cillian tried to get her to put the scarecrow mask on but she thought it was yucky (her exact words)

y/n and cillian don’t have kids until like 2014 because they were busy with work obviously like cillian getting movie roles and y/n being at work 24/7 and getting a literal nobel peace prize but eventually she does get pregnant and BAM it’s twins

it’s 2014 and they’re still not married (it happens ya know just ask academy award winner michelle yeoh)

but y/n gets pregnant and she wants to wait until the twins’ birth and then get married

but anyways the murphy twins arrive and papa nolan just cries happy tears because he now has more grandchildren to love and spoil whenever he wants to (they’re named scarlett and wyatt and papa nolan gives them nicknames idk what they would be but go wild with your imagination besties 🫶🏼)

papa nolan just wants to see his daughter get married and see her happy with her new family 🫶🏼

the day of the wedding comes and baby alex is the flower girl and steals the show

it’s a private wedding BUT that doesn’t stop it from being the most famous wedding of 2014

ofc christian bale is there like who doesn’t want batman at their wedding?? tom hardy, best man um yes?! peaky blinders cast, jake gyllenhaal (swifties, don’t hate me, I love jake and he’s one of my favorite actors)

jessica chastain and anne hathaway ofc they’re invited

u know if heath ledger was still alive he would def be invited 🫶🏼

I’m picturing the kids having career day at their schools and each kid takes an adult like papa nolan goes to alex’s school, wyatt takes y/n and cillian goes with scarlett and every adult is just like “fuck, how am i supposed to go on after them?!”

papa nolan goes all out with his presentation for career day like he even called hans zimmer and christian bale to impress the kids (obviously hans zimmer would impress the teachers, not the kids but some kids recognize the music from batman movies so let’s just go with it)

twitter loves the murphy-nolan fam 🫶🏼

no bc i just imagine the edits to beautiful boy with dad!cillian and I’m bawling

ok ok flashforward to 2023 and oppenheimer is coming out and twitter gets more content on the murphy-nolan fam

y/n finally does an interview bc she worked with the cast and taught them about ✨science✨

Y/N AND CILLIAN AT THE OPPENHEIMER PREMIERE AND THEN PAPA NOLAN PHOTOBOMBING THEIR PICS

overall the murphy-nolan fam has my heart and surprise! the murphy kids watched barbie because the twins are not even old enough to watch oppenheimer and I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t want to watch their dad have fake s e x with another woman (FLORENCE PUGH ILY)

[litcest]

Crimson Peak, by Nancy Holder

In 2015, director Guillermo del Toro released to the cinemas the movie Crimson Peak, staring Mia Wasikowska as Edith Cushing, Tom Hiddleston as Thomas Sharpe and Jessica Chastain as Lucille Sharpe. The film was a huge success, and shortly after its release, a official novelisation, written by Nancy Holder, was published.

Alongside the novelisation, an official art book, called Crimson Peak: The Art of Darkness, has also been published, giving further information on the characters and the world. Sadly, I couldn't find it, so I can't pull anything that was shown there.

I must also confess I have never seen the movie. I've heard of it, of course, but I didn't know anything more than 'mysterious siblings recruit a rich young woman to live in a haunted house'. And the story does live to it's reputation as a modern day gothic: decaying house, ghosts, incest.... all the best aspects of the genre!

The novel begins with Edith Cushing attending her mother's funeral, who had died from black cholera. Three weeks after the burial, late one night, while Edith was in her house, she starts to feel a presence in the room. Terrified, she hides under her blankets, but feels a cold hand touch her. She turns and sees her mother's decaying corpse, who tells her: "Beware of Crimson Peak". Edith tells this to her friend, Alan, but Alan's sister, Eunice, overhears and spreads the gossip that Edith is crazy.

Years pass by and Edith writes a novel about ghosts and grief, which she attempts to get published, but is rejected, for the reviewer thinks it's romantic enough for a woman author. Meanwhile, Alan had gone to England to study medicine, and while Eunice was visiting him, she meets Baronet Thomas Sharpe, whom she quickly becomes attracted to, due to his title and perceived wealth. After Eunice returns to America, Thomas announces he'll have a business meeting there, but he's also visiting to pay court to Eunice, who is throwing a ball to receive him.

Edith is not interested in any of it, as she has no time for social events. After having her book rejected, she goes to her father's office, where she intends to type out her novel and try to send it under the guise of being a man. There, she meets a charming English man who is looking for someone to finance his invention, which is a machine to dig clay. He sees Edith's novel and gets interested on it, and while they talk, she learns that he is Eunice's baronet, Sir Thomas.

Thomas' idea is to use the machine to dig deeper into the Sharpe clay mine, which produced a deep red clay, but most mines had collapsed, so he hoped to use his machine to tap into new sources of clay and restore his family business. Edith's father, however, sees no prospect in Thomas, thinking him to be a spoiled noble-man and dismisses his request for founding, not willing to give him money to invest in something that no one believes will work.

"You have already tried—and failed— to raise capital in London, Edinburgh, Milan."

At home, Edith once more sees her mother's ghost, who warns again about "Crimson Peak". Before she can calm herself, there's a knock on the door and Thomas appears, wanting to talk to Edith. He invites her to the ball in Eunice's house. Edith tells him she doesn't want to go, but he insists further, having been taken by her wit and talent. She finally agrees to go with him and they walk into the party arm in arm, much to the disappointment of both Alan and Eunice, as Alan was in love with Edith and hoped to marry her.

In the party, we are introduced to Lucille, Thomas' older sister. She plays the piano as Thomas dances with Edith, sending jealous looks at the couple. Eunice is also outraged that her supposed suitor left her for Edith, but there's no changing Thomas' mind. Mr. Cushing is also unhappy with Thomas's attention towards Edith, and so hired a private detective to investigate him and his sister.

After the ball, Edith beings to spends most of her days with Lucille and Thomas, however, privately, Lucille tells Thomas she doesn't think Edith is the right woman for him, but she decides to let him have his way.

"He was different; this was different; this was not what they had agreed on. It was too bright out; she could not think. Trust was so hard to come by in this world. But of course she trusted Thomas. Who else was there?"

Alan makes a last effort to conquer Edith's heart, by showing her spectre photography, but Edith has made her mind and is just waiting for Thomas to propose, which she believes he will do soon, as Mr. Cushing's company board decided to finance his machine and he would return soon to England. Thomas himself is also hopeful to propose, having taken his sister's garnet ring to use as an engagement ring.

"Now as his sister moved apart from him, he felt a twinge of guilt, for he had not been entirely honest with her. He would give the ring to Edith, oh, he would, but not in the manner they had imagined. Not for that reason. Life was new for him. The sun had come out at last, and all those years in darkness—those secrets— were over."

Some of the narration of his point of view makes no sense now, but it will all become clear later. What matters is that Thomas doesn't intend from the start to do with Edith what he did to the others.

In the dinner celebrating the deal, Mr. Cushing presents Thomas with the information the private detective had found out and tells Thomas that he'll tell Edith if Thomas doesn't leave of his own volition. Having no choice, Thomas decides to break Edith's heart, telling her that her novel was stupid and that she was immature. She slaps him and runs to her bedroom, heartbroken.

The next morning, Mr. Cushing waits to be attended by his barber, but is attacked and has his head smashed in. Edith is unaware of this when she receives a note from Thomas telling her why he had said those awful things and begging for forgiveness. Edith does forgive him and decides that she's going to go after him before he leaves for England. She rushes to his hotel and his still there. Lucille has gone ahead, but Thomas had hopes to see Edith one last time. They kiss and he asks her to marry him, that they will find a way to make her father accept it.

Only that it's not needed, as Edith is then informed her father had passed from a fall. His official cause of death is listed as an accident, but Alan quickly becomes suspicious of it.

Despite the tragedy, Edith and Thomas go ahead with the engagement and have a quick wedding, followed by a short honey in London, before they move to Allerdale Hall, the Sharpe's ancestral home. Edith makes the plan to have her fortune moved from America to England, where she will the money to incest in Thomas' machine.

Their honeymoon is quite interesting, because, not only they don't consummate the marriage, but Thomas keeps mentioning Lucille all the time, no matter what they were doing.

"They had not shared the marriage bed as yet. She was so grateful that Thomas had respected her mourning—and yet, she was ready to be a proper wife to him."

"Indeed, they had listened to a Chopin program, and Thomas had remarked that Lucille would have loved it. He had spoken often of his sister during their excursions, and Edith had been touched by his devotion to her."

When they arrive at Allerdale, Edith finds the home to be decrepit and sinking into the mines below. The signs that there's something wrong going on are quite evident. Thomas's servant, Finlay, says the following upon meeting Edith:

"'Finlay, this is my wife.' 'I know, I know, milord. You’ve been married a while.'"

Which Edith dismisses as dementia. Then, as she waits for Thomas to fetch Lucille, she see the shadow of a woman entering the elevator that leads from the house to the mine. When Lucille shows up, she and Thomas dismiss the sight by saying that the elevator often moves on it's own. Edith also tells Lucille about her honeymoon, and notices her sister in law seems quite jealous of it.

"She spoke stiffly, clearly a bit jealous of their fine time. But one went on a honeymoon with one’s bride, not one’s sister. Surely Lucille understood that."

Then Edith asks Lucille for the house keys, as she's the new lady of the house, but Lucille is reluctant to hand them to Edith, telling her that the house is dangerous and it's best for her to not go exploring and opening doors for now.

"Lucille was possessive of everything… including her brother. Edith could not understand why Lucille wanted to remain the mistress of Allerdale Hall."

Edith retreats to her room to lay down, and Lucille complains to Thomas about Edith's intentions with her ghost stories and they bicker over the fact the Thomas still hadn't got Edith to officially sign over her fortune to him, which he promises will happen soon. Lucille is pleased and says that she'll get rid of Edith as soon as the transaction is done.

Thomas prepares Edith a tea to make her feel better, but Edith complains of it being bitter, but Thomas insists that it will be good for her health. The kiss, but Thomas leaves before it can advance any further, he retreats and Edith quickly falls asleep. All the while, Lucille watched from the keyhole.

"The sister spied through the keyhole in the door to their bedroom. She watched her brother refuse to perform his husbandly duties. She smiled and moved away."

When Edith wakes up in the middle of the night, Thomas is not there. Hearing noises, she picks a candelabra and leaves the bedroom to try to find her husband. As she explores the house, she is lead towards wax cylinders, which could be using to play sounds in a phonograph. As she examines them, a blood red ghosts appears and Edith goes running, the ghost chasing her. She gets in the elevator and ends up on the mines, where she finds many chests and vats. One of the chests has the initials Enola S., and Edith wonder if Enola is a relative of Thomas. The chest is however locked and she's unable to open it. Then a noise starts coming from the clay vats, and Edith rushes back to her bedroom.

Meanwhile, in America, Alan is suspicious of Thomas, as he watches all of Edith's things be sold to sent the money to her new husband. His suspicion grows when he finds out that Mr. Cushing had wrote a check fro Thomas on the day he died. Talking with Mr. Cushing's lawyer, Alan discovers about the hired private investigator and goes to interview him about his findings. The investigator tells Alan that not only was Thomas already married, but also his mother had died in mysterious circumstances

After seeing the ghost, Edith wakes up in bed, with Thomas by her side. She hears a piano playing and goes to check it, finding Lucille sitting in the a bench playing a song that she tells Edith she used to play to Thomas when they were little. She also tells a bit more of their childhood, how she and Thomas had been confined to the attic by their mother, who didn't want to have to deal with them. How very Flowers in the Attic of them.... Lucille also tells Edith how she likes to have her mother's portrait hanging on the walls, even though the woman had abused her and her brother.

"'Thomas wanted us to take it down. But I didn't want to,' Lucille said. 'I like to think she can see us from up there. I don't want her to miss anything we do.' Was that a smirk? Lucille smiled at the painting as if she and that evil-looking woman were sharing a private joke."

What is Lucille to smug that her mother is watching? An incestuous love affair? Yeah, it's a incestuous love affair, that Mrs. Sharpe found out about in life and disapproved. So now Lucille is happy that her mother is forced to watch it continuing... Lucille doesn't know about the Allerdale ghosts, but she is right in assuming her mother is watching.

As Edith explores the library, Lucille shows her some books that Mrs. Sharpe once had ordered from afar. One of them, as Lucille demonstrates, shows a Japanese couple having sex. Edith is horrified at them, but Lucille says it's fine, especially now that Edith has had sex. Edith shakes her head, saying that they haven't consummated the marriage, at which Lucille brightens up.

Later in the day, as Thomas works on his machine, Edith makes him tea, but he's immediately put off, asking her which tin she used. While Edith thinks that maybe she can have done the wrong tea for the afternoon, my mind immediately went for 'one of them is poisoned', specially because before, the narration made a big deal of Lucille and Thomas taking tea for Edith using the red tin.

Before he even drinks his tea, Thomas gets burned in the machine steam and as Edith bandages him, he tells her that the hill is nicknamed "Crimson Peak" among the locals because during the winter the red clay stains the snow. Edith is horrified, recalling her mother's ghostly warning.

As Edith further explores the house, she finds in the attic many tinkers that Thomas had build to entertain Lucille during the years they were confined there. They kiss and begin to raise her skirts, but they are interrupted by Lucille, who has brought tea.

That night, Edith wakes up sick and as she rushes to the bathroom, she continues to see things in the house, this time it's a ghost with a meat cleaver stuck on it's skull, parting it in half, that warns her to leave the house. She goes after Thomas, who once again wasn't in their bed, and when she finally finds him she tells him that she had seen the ghost of his mother. She begs Thomas to leave the house with her, but Lucille appears and dismisses Edith as insane, serving her more tea. After Edith is asleep again, Lucille confronts Thomas, asking him how could Edith know about their mother had died, but Thomas has no idea.

The next day, Edith and Thomas goes into town, so Edith can get some fresh air. In the post office, Edith receives a letter from Milan addressed to E. Sharpe, along with some letters from her lawyer. Before they can return to Allerdale, a storm begins and they get trapped in town. Having no where else to go, they decide to spend the night in an inn, where they finally make love.

When they return to the house on the next day, Lucille is in panic, worried about why Thomas had been away the whole night. Maybe thinking he had left her for Edith, not intending to return. She gets even more agitated when Edith tells her they consummated the marriage.

"Her distress was bewildering. She could not be surprised that Thomas had at last asserted his husbandly privilege, and yet it seemed almost as if Lucille thought she should have been consulted on the matter."

While they talk, Edith notices that Lucille has a key that is labelled as Enola and surreptitiously slips it away while Lucille makes more tea. Edith also opens the Italian letters, but it's in... well, Italian, and so she has to go to the library to find a dictionary. As she translates, she sees from the window that Thomas had made his machine work, but instead of going out to congratulate him, she decides to go to the mines to open Enola's chest.

In the chest, she finds a phonograph that she decides to use to play the wax cylinders she found earlier. She picks it up, but starts to hear a noise coming from the clay vats again. She goes to investigate it and, while she finds nothing, she goes drops the key. She recovers it, but it's stained with blood red clay and she can't get it off. Which is definitively a reference to Bluebeard, in which the wife drops the key to Bluebeard's murder room and he finds out by the stain in it.

Outside, Thomas has called Lucille to celebrate his success. But Lucille turns sour when Thomas mentions how he wishes Edith could see his success.

"'Oh, if only Edith could see it,' he blurted. The words were out of his mouth before he realized what he was saying. Lucille pulled away. She stared at him in disbelief. 'Edith?' Her voice shook. 'I did this with you. For you. I did it!' He put his arms around her again, trying to recapture the moment, to backtrack. Mentioning Edith at this life-changing moment was a stupid blunder. He never wanted to hurt Lucille, ever. Nor Edith, he thought wildly, panicking. Neither of them. 'Of course we did,' he placated her. 'We did this together. No one else.'"

Lucille is not placated by his words, and as Thomas goes back to his machine, she notices that Enola's key is missing. She runs back to the house and finds Edith, who is laying in bed, trying to hide her discovery. Lucille offers to make Edith some tea, which she accepts, and while Lucille is away, Edith places the stained key back into place, which obviously Lucille notices.

That night, Thomas visits Lucille in her room and notices that there's something wrong. They play music and dance, but the atmosphere is tense.

"Her eyes glistened with need and fear, and he remembered all that she had done for him. What she had endured for him. He had to be here for her. It was their pact."

"Lucille was gazing into his eyes and he could feel her weaving her spell around him. How old had he been when he had first surrendered? She was incredibly strong-willed, far more so than he. That was both a blessing and a curse. Lucille had kept them alive. Now they would begin to thrive. She had worked out the plan and except for a few unexpected hiccups—bumps in the night, literally—it was going well. They danced. She was his most perfect partner."

Meanwhile, Edith plays the phonograph and hears from three women: Pamela Upton, London, 1887. Margaret McDermott, Edinburgh, 1893. Enola Sciotti, Milan, 1896. The locations make her recall the places where her father had said Thomas had tried to raise capital. When she plays the recordings, she discover that they were Thoma's previous wife and, in Enola's recording, the hears the crying of a baby.

She shuffles through some pictures of the women that she had also found, and notices how in all of them, they are drinking tea. Just how Edith does. She comes to the realisation that the tea is poisoned. Also in a photo, there's a dead child.

It all becomes too much and Edith rushes out of the house, but she faints and is taken back inside by Lucille, who also makes more tea. Thomas, however, tells Edith not to drink the tea, but it doesn't really matter: the porridge he feeds Edith has also, unbeknown to him, poisoned. When Edith falls asleep again, Thomas leaves her side, unable to watch her die. He had always been absent when Lucille killed the other wives.

Thomas doesn't want Edith to die, but Lucille tells Thomas that they have no option, that Edith knows too much. Thomas is not brave enough to oppose Lucille, not when she been been whipped and beaten by their parents in his place, and she had always taken care of him.

"They had struck a bargain, vowing never to be separated. And in so many words, to kill anyone who tried to force them apart. Though he had been but eight years old when that pledge had been made, the memory of that day had never left him. It had haunted him all his life."

We get a flashback from their childhoods, when Lucille convince Thomas to sneak into the library to see the pornographic books, the same she showed Edith. Their father had founded them there and Lucille threw herself at him, to make sure that Thomas could scape unnoticed. Later, she blames Thomas for being hurt, telling him that if he hadn't asked to see the books, nothing would have happened. Thomas is confused, because it hadn't been him to suggest going to the library, but eventually accepts Lucille's version of events. In the years that followed, Lucille drugged their father and then killed their mother with a meat cleaver.

"She kissed his tears away. They clung to each other, orphans who could have been freed by the deaths of their nearly demonic parents, but were too haunted instead. Stripped of everything but darkness. Too late, too late for light?"

Back in the present day, Thomas notices he is actually in love with Edith, but he doesn't knows what to do. He has no chance to make this mind, as Edith, wandering the house in the dark looking for him in the night, is led to the attic by Enola's ghost, where she finds Lucille and Thomas in a romantic embrace. Lucille notices the intrusion and attacks Edith, who runs.

"'It's all out in the open now,' Lucille said triumphantly, turning her around to face her. Edith’s back slammed against the gallery railing. 'No need to pretend. This is who I am. This is who he is!'"

While the women fight, Lucille tries to ring the garnet ring from Edith's finger. Edith notices her jealousness and shouts that Lucille is not Thomas' real sister, but his wife. With a smug smile, Lucille replies that she is his sister and pushing Edith from the balcony, causing Edith to injure her leg.

To everyone's surprise, Alan arrives in England, convinced that Lucille is actually Thomas's wife and that Edith is in great danger. He tries to talk to Edith alone, but Lucille attacks him. She then hands the knife to Thomas, asking him to at least once in his life do something. Thomas agrees, but whispers to Alan to show him where to make a non-fatal stabbing, before taking him the basement, telling Lucille he finished the kill.

"Her brother, her beloved, her soul mate had torn his way out of his cocoon. Through the cut he had sliced in McMichael’s body, he had emerged a beautiful, black-winged moth."

Lucille drags Edith back inside, so Edith can sign the papers transferring her money to Thomas. While Edith refuses, Lucille taunts her, by telling Edith that Thomas never loved her, that he never loved any of his wives. Edith asks about the baby she heard in Enola's recording, and Lucille tells her that the baby was not Enola's, since Thomas never had consummated any marriage before. The baby belonged to Lucille and Thomas, and at first Enola had agreed to care of it, which is why Lucille allowed Enola to live longer than originally planned, but once Lucille realised the child was an abomination, she killed both.

"'Lucille whirled on her. "What vulgarians you Americans are. The marriages were for money, of course—quite acceptable for people like us, expected, even, for generations. But the horror?' And now the madness overtook her again. 'The horror was for love.'"

"All the love Thomas and I ever knew was from one another. And the only world that kind of love can live in is this one. These rotting walls. In the dark. Hiding."

When Lucille confesses to having killing Edith's father, Edith freaks out and stabs Lucille in the chest with the pen, before trying to run once more. Edith finds Thomas, who takes her to Alan, before deciding to go back to Lucille.

However, there's no appeasing Lucille, specially not when she notices that Thomas loves Edith. Heartbroken, she attacks and kills Thomas and then runs to the mines after Edith.

"'Is this how it ends?' the sister screamed in the throes of anguish. 'You love her? You love her?'"

Lucille finds Edith and screams that Edith is responsible for Thomas's death. The two women have a long fight that ends only when Edith, with the help of Thomas's ghost, plunges a shovel into Lucille. Edith then confesses her love for Alan and the two leave Allerdale Hall, with Edith having a new idea for a book.

I had heard to much about the movie and seem so many gifs of Lucille and Thomas that I expected their relationship to play a more central part to the story. I'm quite disappointed that in the end Thomas chose Edith, but I guess we couldn't allow the Byronic Hero to actually get an incestuous relationship....

Also, the novel makes a big deal of the manor be sinking in the hill. I kept expecting it to crumble doing the big showdown, but nothing happens. The house if still there in the end, and Lucille even gets to haunt it. I fully expected it to go all Usher.

[arcanechariot]

ranking my entire roster: oscar ed.

here, i'm gonna be going through all the oscar characters on my roster, rating them, giving my thoughts and letting you know if they canonically died (bc none of my boys are dead in my canon)

you can find my tldr tierlist at the very bottom, under the cut

spoilers ahead

colour key: clawing at the walls of my enclosure still feral i like him yesyesyes meh d e a t h

abel morales [a most violent year, 2014]

oscar plays a main character!! and he's a sad dilf!! ngl after scenes from a marriage, which i watched just before this, seeing jessica chastain play his partner again was triggering /j

anselm vogelweide ✝ [big gold brick, 2022]

did i watch the entire movie? no. do i want to? no. is anselm worth seeking out his scene (starting from 1:36:23)? absolutely. he has like 5 minutes of screen-time but, hey, we're used to that here. he's flamboyant and silly and i love him a lot

he does get blown up by a meteor which is pretty metal tbf

basil stitt ✝ [lightningface, 2016]

the entire film is about 20 mins, it's literally just oscar and it's an....interesting watch? i've said it before but, as someone who struggles with body dysmorphia, it's interesting to come at it from that angle but idk if that's what mr petsos had in mind. part of me just thinks it's pretentious to be pretentious. and like i love my pathetic men, don't get me wrong, but basil isn't the fun type of pathetic? he's just the sad depressed type....

he kills himself by jumping off the balcony of his apartment building which is just kinda like.... idk if i wanted suicidal ideation, i'd just silently unmask in my room. i don't need a short film for that

bassam ✝ [body of lies, 2008]

another lovely lil guy with very little screen-time. i didn't watch the rest of the movie after he got blown up and leo dicaprio survived a missile blowing up their car. i think, if we saw more of him, he would've been a more level-headed but just as sweet cecil

he gets blown up obvs which is kind of a glossed over death but at least it's quick?

blue jones [sucker punch, 2011]

asylum!blue: he has less screen-time but he's a needy lil horndog and i can appreciate that (he also gets slutty glasses)

club!blue: we see a long more of him and he's just an absolute slut. i love his suits, his eyeliner and the random lil music number they gave him. he's cunty and i love him to bits

bud cooper ✝ [suburbicon, 2017]

husband. i'm already carrying his fifth child. he has so little screen-time but he uses it so well. he's a cunning little sleaze-bag and i enjoy every second of his time. his ass is so thick and he has the lil tummy-overhang 🥹🥹 did i watch the rest of the movie? no. do i watch his scene (particularly the first one) on repeat? yes

he gets poisoned in like a horrible horrible way that he didn't deserve (he's just a conman, your honour) and oscar makes sure we all know he just orally ingested a caustic substance

cecil dennis [revenge for jolly, 2012]

personally i think rfj is a fun silly movie if you just turn your brain off. some of the jokes fall flat but, if you have the true oscar brainrot, you'll overlook it and watch the movie because he's a main character!! (also because there's a scene where he fucks a hooker over a bathroom sink and he whimpers. it's glorious)

i'm not much one for subby men but cecil can get it any day

evgeni kolpakov [w./e., 2011]

literally the definition of a knight in shining armour. ev is adorable and gentlemanly and generous and ughhhh.... he's literally such a comfort character to the extent that i've planned multiple vent fics with him. he's not a main character per se? he definitely could've used a lot more screen-time but, as always, he makes the most of it. also his love interest is weird and cares more about living vicariously through some lady in the past instead of just marrying ev and loving him like he deserves?? make it make sense???

fartman marco cruz [lenny the wonder dog, 2005]

is he a main character? no. is he a good character? no. should you watch the movie? FUCK NO. he's a silly subby bottom but really we don't get any character development for him

moral of the story? do. not. watch. lenny. the. motherfucking. wonder dog

john i of england [robin hood, 2010]

possibly a controversial placement but i love to hate king john. he's a bratty little thing but i have like a headcanon where he's fucking the captain of the guard who's like this giant, beefy guy so that might be why i like him so much. he's a little shit but, as soon as he crawls into bed with his big, beefy man, he's all snuggles and whimpers

the movie isn't bad either (especially not by my standards). it drags on a bit at times but there's some good actors in it and russell crowe puts on a very funny english accent

notice how i refuse to mention the contacts. i will not acknowledge them

john jackson ✝ [mojave, 2015]

this movie was a chore to sit through, brother, and oscar seems to try his best at a michael keaton/beetlejuice voice which threw me off. i don't mind the buzzcut or the tiny pink speedos but the shitty wig at the start of the movie and the voice he puts on really made me cringe

also he just got shot at the end which seemed kind of anticlimactic for him being a big villain. maybe that was the point? but it was just kinda like 'oh okay'

i'd say this wasn't worth the watch. 93 minutes felt more like 4 hours, brother

jonathan levy [scenes from a marriage, 2021]

disclaimer: i only watched 2 episodes because jfc this is a lot to get through

in my head, jon is a little ray of sunshine who was cheated on by his wife and abandoned with their child when she ran off with her younger boyfriend. as perviously stated, i am a proud member of the mira hate club because i don't think jon deserved a single part of what she did to him....

in term of oscar's performance though; it's amazing, as always, and we get some lovely shots of his butt, his tummy and even his dick 👀👀

jon, i would treat you right and give you as many kids as you want. you deserve the world

kane [annihilation, 2018]

he's very pretty and brooding and there's a lovely shot of him covered in blood, which is always great, but he didn't really get much in the way of character development because we see so little of him so i can only put him so high imo. it's a v pretty movie tho!

laurent leclaire ✝ [in secret/thérèse, 2013]

main character!! also possibly another controversial placement but i see laurent as more of a tragic character rather than a straight-up villain

imo laurent just signed up for fucking around with this woman who was clearly not getting the attention she needed from her husband. he didn't intend for things to go as far as they did. i feel like, to an extent, laurent may have thought he was doing the right thing; setting thérèse free from a suffocating marriage and giving her a better life with him, because she clearly enjoyed his company a lot more than camille's. both he and thérèse are responsible for their relationship becoming toxic and neither of them are faultless

tldr; i think if he just went for literally anyone else, he would've been fine. i really do think he has the capacity to be a loving husband and possibly even a wonderful father but the situation that he and others put him in changed him

(also i'm sorry but i struggle to really hate a character when they're attached to those kissable-soft lips and big, sad eyes....)

leto atreides i ✝ [dune, 2021]

actually the love of my life. i have an oc for him and even got a commission done for them together. his character may not be entirely accurate to the book but oscar!leto is perfect in every way; he's a brilliant father, a loving husband and a passionate ruler. what isn't to love??

well, maybe the fact that he was taken from us too soon....

llewyn davis [inside llewyn davis, 2013]

ngl starving artists hold a special place in my heart. he plays into my saviour complex because he's like a lil stray dog with nowhere to go. he reminds me of like the good parts of my abusive ex, who was also a struggling musician/deadbeat, and i'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing though....

anyway, he sings and that's lovely to listen to and he actually cares about other people, unlike my abusive ex. ngl i'd take this stray in from the rain

lucien [ticky tacky, 2014]

another short film by mr petsos and one that i like

lucien is an unhinged little horndog and i love him for it

i feel like there's not much more to say

mikael boghosian [the promise, 2016]

i love him. he's adorable. he's smart. he has horrible ptsd

he's one of these characters that i really like but he's just so tortured that i feel i'd need to write a really emotionally charged fic to really do him justice

moon knight system [moon knight, 2022]

jake lockley: we get so little screen-time of jake but he's my papí and i refuse to believe he wouldn't be the perfect daddy dom

marc spector: possibly controversial but, after steven and how much i fell in love with him, marc seemed kind of meh to me? i still like him, don't get me wrong, but he doesn't illicit as much of a reaction out of me as much as stevie or jake. maybe i just need to rewatch the series

steven grant: absolute husband. baby boy. i would treat him right. i adore him. he's every star in the (k)night sky and i would spoil him every day and tell him how much i love him

nathan bateman ✝ [ex machina, 2014]

another main character!! also i'm a soft bf!nathan truther. he shows love in his own ways and i like him a lot. he's quirky and silly but also likes intelligent conversations over drinks and sushi, which i am so there for

i'll come and live in your bunker, hammy. just say the word 🥺🥺

(also he dies by stabbing but the actual stabbing seems so weird because the knife just slides in like butter with no resistance which lowkey makes me laugh every time)

orestes [agora, 2009]

just a lil guy who respects women and i love that for him. honestly tho i love orestes so much and he deserved the world. he's present throughout the movie and he's absolutely blessed

outcome 3 david castillo ✝ [the bourne legacy, 2012]

a minor character and not worth watching the whole movie but he's still lovely and i'd recommend watching his limited screen-time if you can. but imo there's just not enough screen-time for me to get a proper grip on his character

he dies via explosion but jeremy renner survives.... bro, that's just unfair

poe dameron [star wars, 2015-2019]

I LOVE MY SPACE HUSBAND!! 💛✨

we see him more and more with each movie. like i'll sit and watch rise of skywalker mainly for the fact that poe's in it most of the time and also he wears this slutty indiana jones outfit, which shows off his tummy and his boobs

he's honestly amazing and so so lovely. i can't recommend him enough

richard muñoz [the letter room, 2020]

the moustache is certainly a choice but i like richard. he's the main character, he's a silly lil guy just trying to do his part to make the world better and he puts his career at risk because he thinks a lady might be trying to harm herself. like he's absolutely lovely. i just wish we got more of him

robbie paulson [law and order: criminal intent, 2006]

robbie is adorable and i'd protect him but he falls into the same vein as basil for me; he's a very sad, pathetic sub and i can't really do much with that. he's very sweet but....idk i'm just not a dom and i prefer to do the whimpering ngl

rydal keener [the two faces of january, 2014]

another main character!! tiny and babyfaced but also very horny and in love. honestly i think i need to rewatch this movie because rydal is very sweet but i don't think i got a good read on him with the first watch. at the moment, he keeps falling to the wayside because i wouldn't know how to write him

but he's definitely not the regular daddy dom i like (see; anselm, jake, leto) so i don't really see myself writing for him a lot

santiago 'pope' garcia [triple frontier, 2019]

unlike rydal, santi is the complete opposite of 'not a daddy dom'

santi wears tight jeans, a backwards baseball cap, silly sport sunglasses and he has these silver streaks and that five o'clock shadow that drive me crazy

papí actually drives me crazy and i love him so much. i'd give him as many kids as he wanted

oh, also the movie's pretty good go watch it. it has pedro pascal too

shiv ✝ [pu-239, 2006]

main character oscars, my beloved 🙏🙏

shiv is a younger oscar so he still has that kind of babyface subby vibe but, despite having a horrible time throughout the movie, he has a lot more character to him IMO than like basil or robbie

he just wants to be successful and provide for his son and the girl he knocked up (who has no interest in him) but he's kinda dumb and very unlucky

he's the kind of pathetic that i like; more of the king john-type pathetic, i think? where he isn't just depressed? only, unlike king john, i don't think i'd maliciously peg shiv into oblivion. he deserves kisses and cuddles

also i quite like the movie. it can be a little ham-fisted at times but i generally think it's a pretty good (if not slightly depressing) watch

snl characters [saturday night live, 2022]

kind of a lot here but we'll go quick-fire and in order of the sketches in the episode (also these guys don't come up on my tierlist but i should correct that)

herb tangier, paw patrol: socially anxious but trying to do the right thing. just a silly anxious lil dad. i love him. worth watching

donald, workplace harassment seminar: no, i'm good. i didn't like his hair and just the humour was really stupid imo. not worth watching

cunty unnamed gomez addams-lookin ass maximillion ashbury, aidy's dream: the humour was really stupid and ham-fisted but like the accent and the suit and the way he just popped his ass right out? absolutely magical. worth watching

felix cruz, home repair show: this sketch actually got a couple laughs out of me but he's not really my type. worth watching

michael b jackson, fiction workshop: i love my fanfiction-writing king. meh

john, aerotoilet: i have many thoughts about this sketch; it's incredibly fucking stupid and cringey and like it very much makes me question the american sense of humour like....do you guys actually find stuff like this funny? but also it's one of the dilfiest looks oscar has ever had imo. and it's so good that i've based an entire oc around his look from this. just look at my gifsets

ofc, if i'm talking snl, i need to talk about teddy sullivan. teddy is the oc based off of john's look and vibe but he also incorporates elements of oscar's other snl characters. there's a lot i could say about teddy but he's lovely and i'm sure i'll write for him sometime soon

william tell [the card counter, 2021]

a main character again!! also he's a strict military daddy

the scene where he pulls on the latex gloves and pushes a guy down on the bed is so important to me....

very much worth a watch imo

[oacest]

not that anon but truly everything about the john lennon's necklace scenario was sooooo romantic right up to here you are mr. lennon and noel literally describes it as a moment of weakness. not to read into one little story too much but they are not boyfriend/boyfriend they are chasing each other around jessica chastain and tom hiddleston's murderincest house.

EXXXACTLY the rituals are convoluted and incomprehensible and not hinged 🙏

[marzipanandminutiae]

First off, your blog has increased my sympathy for Lucille's character, so congratulations, I hope you're proud. Though, to be fair, I was never in the EvilTM camp, more of the Batshit Crazy Because Of Massive Trauma viewpoint, which, you know, she was.

Anyways, my actual reason for the ask is about Eunice. I've never read any of the extra source material so I don't know if this is explained somewhere. But basically why Eunice McMichael?

The Sharpes presumably met the McMichaels while they were visiting Alan in London (perhaps his graduation?). There's no father in the picture, but otherwise, she doesn't seem to fulfill any of their criteria. She has family and is highly social (lots of people to notice and care if she went missing/died), she's young and desirable to have as a wife (there must've been some competition for her back home at least), she's not older or widowed (i.e. "undesirable"), and while she's clearly rich, she's not the sole inheritor of her family's estate (they'd be working solely with her dowry, a much lower figure).

It's heavily implied (/stated outright?) that Lucille is the one who chooses Thomas's brides. There's no logical reason to choose Eunice. But following with your "sapphic" take on Lucille, I think she just has a thing for Eunice.

A lot of words just to say that but what are your thoughts?

Welcome to the Lucille Appreciators Club! Meetings are Fridays at 7:30. I'll bring snacks.

So, this is such an interesting question. The bios don't shed much light but they do provide some on how the Bride Selection Process works

Namely, that it's far from an exact science.

Per the bios, Bluebearding has never been Plan A. Plan A is finding investors for the goo-mining business. Marriage + Murder is the fallback option- that they keep having to fall back on. They've never actually chosen a bride on purpose before Enola, exactly- Margaret developed a passion for Thomas on her own; Pamela's dying father begged Thomas to marry his disabled daughter so she'd be cared for. Enola seems to have been the first one who didn't just fall into their laps, so to speak

And Thomas picked her.

So no, it's not always Lucille's choice- she encouraged him to go along with Mr. Upton's notion and propose to Pamela, the first time, but how much she was involved with the inception of the other marriages is up for debate. Which makes me think Thomas picked Eunice- I can't imagine such a fluttery little social climber being other than annoying to Lucille.

Why EITHER of them thought she was a good idea when she had so many friends and family to miss her...well, the Sharpes aren't very good at crime, frankly. Enola still has relatives writing to her five years later, so I suspect they would have come looking for her eventually. The snare seems to have been tightening around Thomas and Lucille for a while now, without them knowing it.

I do imagine that Edith's superior "qualifications" made a key lynchpin of Thomas' argument to convince Lucille to switch targets, though. And an interesting Word of Actor tidbit: Jessica Chastain thinks Lucille's desire to protect Edith by leaving her alone, at first, was genuine. Because she loves delicate, beautiful things, and saw Edith that way.

[mrs-stans]

Best Feature Winner: A DIFFERENT MAN #TheGothams2024

[himblebo]

I’m always thinking about clothes and clothes hold so much significance in Rebecca and I just need to say that I would redesign Danny’s costume for the musical to set her firmly in the past that she can’t let go of. Everybody else dressed for 1926, Danny dressed for 1916 or thereabouts. I don’t recall if it’s ever explicitly stated how long Maxim and Rebecca were married, but the number 10 is rattling around in my head so it’s what I’m going with. It would distance her further from reality and do some of the storytelling for her character visually. She doesn’t care for what’s new, she wants things to stay the way they were with Rebecca. So she would probably be wearing the same kind of uniform in 1926 that she would’ve been wearing when she and Rebecca first came to Manderley however many years ago.

Something along the lines of this silhouette, which isn’t terribly far off from the existing costume, but is still different. A wash dress or tub dress would simply be the most practical daily attire!

No weird hip peplum thing, and proper undergarments so that the frumpy unfitted bodice has that soft pigeon-breast shape.

There’s still quite a bit of fabric in the skirt, but rather than flaring out at the hips it falls more straight—flattened hips are in from this point on until curves start to come back into fashion later in the 1930s. Remember, fabric was rationed during WW1–and the kind of thrift that was instilled in everyone during that time, let alone someone like Mrs. Danvers, is a value that would likely stick around for awhile in rural areas like the coast where Manderley sits (as opposed to cities, where trends and goods cycle much faster), giving her more reason to keep wearing the same things: they are perfectly serviceable garments, no need to spend the time or money making replacements. That would be inefficient and wasteful.

I’m almost certain that the existing hip peplum and slouchy bodice are intentional to make the actress appear stern and frumpy, but that also doesn’t scan right for me—Mrs. Danvers would keep her clothes perfectly tailored. There’s also something to be said of the implications of an older style—even if you’re not a fashion historian, most people see an older style and immediately have some sort of association of seniority or authority (it distinguishes an older person when in contrast to newer styles) as well as a certain frumpiness or orneriness (the resolution not to change). If it’s properly tailored and has the proper support garments (girdle and brassiere at this point, maybe a bust bodice for shaping, but we’re past corsets and into flattening the hips without accentuating the natural waist), it can have the same effect and communicate more about the character’s past and motivations.

I think one of the best examples of this tactic I’ve seen in costuming is Jessica chastain’s character in crimson peak—I clocked immediately that her clothing was 15-20 years out of style, and it told me right away that the passage of time (and the refusal to accept the passage of time) was an important aspect of the story.

Anyway I’m absolutely supposed to be doing something else right now and none of the books I have in the office go past the 1890s so. This post would be better if I had access to the 1910s catalog reproductions that I have in my workshop at home.

[bloody-wonder]

making progress on old series

let it not be said that i can only start new series🧐

new releases:

empire of the damned by jay kristoff (book two in: empire of the vampire). i might have mentioned this one once or twice already so let's keep it brief. i loved it! even more than book one, i think. love liathe joining the main cast, love jean françois' everything, love how everyone got queerer, love the reveals at the end. very excited for the last book in this series, altho i'm a bit disappointed that it's now three books instead of five - since there are five vampire houses i wanted them to keep taking on a house in each book, with blood chastain being the final boss. very rude of kristoff to betray my vision.

the sunshine court by nora sakavic (book four in: all for the game). i don't think this spin off continuation was necessary and i didn't particularly enjoy it but i'm glad jean stans now have their own sacred text. my biggest fear was that nora would retcon something about the og trilogy and that didn't happen so i can just keep living in peace while mostly ignoring tsc fan content. more thoughts on why i didn't vibe with tsc in these posts.

mislaid in parts half-known by seanan mcguire (book nine in: wayward children). so this series consists of books focused on individual wayward children as well as of ensemble books which are usually weaker and this particular novella unfortunately belongs to the latter category. i still liked it fine and it was a quick read but tbh i'm ready for this series to wrap up so i hope goodreads isn't lying about the next book being the final installment.

fence vol. 6: redemption by cs pacat & johanna the mad. i rated it five stars but ngl i have no memory of what happened in this volume altho i read it in february😅 i like this series overall but i feel like the first few volumes were more exciting. weirdly now that the slow burn is finally starting to pay off i suddenly lose interest😕

heartstopper: volume five by alice oseman. i'm not a big fan of heartstopper in general, i think it's overhyped, but i did like this volume more than the previous ones. maybe i'm biased bc it features tori coming out as ace which prompted me to pick up solitaire which i loved and so it retroactively cast a more favorable light on the graphic novel. looking forward to reading the last volume bc i like finishing things and then i might as well read the nick and charlie novellas - at which point i will have become a person who doesn't like oseman's books all that much and yet has somehow read all but one of them🫤

mammoths at the gates and the brides of high hill by nghi vo (books four and five in: the singing hills cycle). i have only really liked the second singing hills novella so at this point it would be smart to admit that this series is simply not for me and stop reading it but. these books are so short and perfect for when you want to get through something quickly even if you know you're not likely to enjoy it. and if indeed eight stories are planned then it means i have now read more than half so i might as well complete the series🤷‍♀️ *gets shot by sunk cost fallacy police*

series i completed:

regency faerie tales by olivia atwater (read books two and three: ten thousand stitches and longshadow). love love LOVE these books!! i read half a soul last october and ten thousand stitches this january - both times when i was sick in bed and i couldn't have wished for better books to help me recover from a cold. the first one is pride & prejudice meets jonathan strange & mr norrell, the second one is a cinderella retelling, both have lovely romances and can be read as standalones. i think half a soul is fairly popular (and constantly compared to the book that shall not be named😒) but ten thousand stitches is very underappreciated. i for one think it's at least as good, if not better, than half a soul - apparently people just can't appreciate a love interest who isn't angsty and brooding😒 longshadow is a companion novel too but imo it features too many characters and concepts from the previous books so it should definitely be read last. i didn't like it as much bc i think it relies too much on the stuff we already know and love instead of giving its protagonists enough time to shine but it is queer which made me realize we don't have nearly enough queer fae books. what a disgrace🧐

noumena by lindsay ellis (read book three: apostles of mercy). so this was unfortunately mind-bogglingly boring. this type of sci fi is usually not my cup of tea and so i stay away from it but i decided to give this series a try bc it was written by lindsay ellis. the first book was entertaining enough but both sequels bored me to tears. it seems i was under a misconception that the story was gonna be about a sad girl trying to navigate a third thing type of relationship with a freaky alien but it was instead about her navigating instalovey relationships with random humans and the alien was also there sometimes. big disappointment����

series i'm slowly working my way through:

the memoirs of lady trent by marie brennan (read books two, three and four: the tropic of serpents, the voyage of the basilisk and in the labyrinth of drakes). i read book one last december and liked it just enough to continue the series but every next book after that turned out to be amazing. follow lady trent, a 19th century dragon naturalist and adventurer, legendary as she is scandalous, as she travels through fantasy africa, oceania and arabia in search of dragons living and extinct, starts various political upheavals, makes breathtaking discoveries and finds love - a life journey she recounts as an old woman in a delightfully snarky narrative voice.

book two is my favorite so far bc it found a perfect balance of fast-paced adventurous plot on the one hand and character and relationship development on the other. i'm a bit sad that natalie left the main cast after this book - one of the only two criticisms i have of this series is that the titular lady trent remains the only important woman character. i think it wouldn't be too far-fetched to have one more woman on the team and natalie was a perfect protegée who, might i add, is also canonically ace. hate to see her leave😒

book three introduces a love interest who i at first found kinda bland but he grew on me in book four. my favorite relationship in the series however remains the one between lady trent and her trusted colleague tom wilker with whom they used to butt heads when they first met but who is now her dearest friend and longtime companion on her journeys. there are many books about romance and friendship but not so many about the utter satisfaction of having a coworker you can absolutely rely on. my prediction/wish for the last book is for wilker to turn out to be gay and find love too🤞

the other criticism i have has to do with the worldbuilding and i'll elaborate on it when i complete the series later this year.

the witcher by andrzej sapkowski (read books two and three: the time of contempt and baptism of fire). i'm enjoying this series much more than i thought i would. the key to success here is to leave behind all expectations you have from reading western epic fantasy or indeed from the witcher adaptations. this saga started as short stories and sapkowski remains a short story author first and foremost which might irritate a reader expecting a novel with a neat three act structure but which i personally found fascinating. the opening chapter of book two told from the pov of a messenger who encounters all major characters on the road, gets a death prophecy from a girl he doesn't know to be ciri and indeed dies as the chapter ends - i think that was a very creative way to reintroduce the reader to the main cast and plot essentially through the format of a short story.

another thing sapkowski does a lot is conveying everything through dialogue which, as you might know, is like bookish catnip to me lol. some dialogues are there just for the sake of dialogue, only bc the author wanted some side characters he made up to have a funny conversation. to be fair, at worst this structure becomes too meandering but i gotta say i find that chapters that are focused on mundane scenes seemingly going nowhere are more fun than plot focused chapters about sorceresses and wizards fighting or whatever. the witch trial chapter in baptism of fire - that's where it's at for me.

the thing i'm still not so sure about is the way women and women's issues are represented. very mixed feelings on what happens to milva in book three, tho i think i wouldn't be so skeptical had she not been the only woman on the main cast in that book. (cahir and regis are such fun characters with interesting motivations and stuff so ig i'm pissed that the only female character's deal has to be about that). ciri on the other hand is written very well imo and i totally did not expect her to be in a sapphic relationship. sure hope nothing bad happens to her gf🥲

vorkosigan saga by lois mcmaster bujold (read books one, two and four (??): shards of honor, barrayar and the vor game). so after reading the warrior's apprentice and the mountains of mourning last year i took a step back and read cordelia's books which i unfortunately didn't like. cordelia is a type of female character i don't vibe with and the gender themes in her books, while likely very progressive for their time, often made me roll my eyes, grind my teeth etc. in my goodreads reviews i explain my issues in more detail. the ethical implications of uterine replicators haunt me still😕

returning to miles in the vor game was both welcome and disappointing bc i keep expecting more from this man and he keeps falling short of my grand lymondesque expectations. in this book in particular i was immediately hooked on the arctic base plot only for it to be cut short bc this is a space opera and miles needs to go do pew pew pew in space, just like in book one. boo. now that i know weatherman was formerly a short story bujold later incorporated into the vor game i think it's curious that i seem to like miles a lot in short stories and novellas (the mountains of mourning remains my favorite) but am underwhelmed by the full length novel miles.

i will say however that now i have sufficiently adjusted my expectations and am very motivated to find out if there is a vorkosigan book out there that i will absolutely love. so i'll keep reading a few books per year - there's something soothing about slowly working one's way through a very long series😌

the realm of the elderlings by robin hobb (read books two and three: royal assassin and assassin's quest). the farseer books are the longest and (for the most part) the most boring books i have read this year. normally i don't torture myself like this but i wanted to do it for the fool and see how his relationship with fitz develops. was it worth it? i would say yes but only bc i let myself curate my own perfect reading experience and skimmed aggressively, sometimes skipping entire chapters. and i will do it again!👿 bc i will keep reading the elderlings books to see how the one million page yaoi plays out.

the only part of the farseer trilogy i really enjoyed was the second half of assassin's quest - not just bc fitz and the fool were cute and heart-wrenching together but bc of the entire unlikely fellowship on this quest. nighteyes is my favorite which is a feat on hobb's part bc normally i don't care about animal companions or am annoyed by them. kettle is iconic, always remember to take an auld woman on a quest (or she will chase you down and join despite your protests and prevarications). i hated starling but in a series where most characters provoke zero emotions that was a welcome change. kettricken was also there. their group dynamic was delightful and i wish the entirety of this series (or at least of this last book) was this slow burn psychological character study in close proximity group dynamics. but you can't always have what you want ig🤷‍♀️

what's next:

finishing the memoirs of lady trent - only one book in the main series is left and then there's also a spin off about her granddaughter, i think

rereading swordspoint which i first read back in 2020 and found underwhelming but it may just have been bc captive prince was such a hard act to follow for many gay books i tried back then. i hope i will like it more now that i can meet it halfway and if it goes well i want to complete the riverside trilogy right away

sometime this fall i'm gonna read pandora and vittorio the vampire. finishing the vampire chronicles is on my bookish bucket list and now, two whole years after i reread three of them to refresh my memory, i finally feel sane and brave enough to keep working towards that goal. so wish me luck🥲

finishing joanne harris' st oswald's series which started with one of my favorite dark academia novels gentlemen and players. i read the sequel last year and liked it a lot so now i want to read the final book a narrow door which also seems like a perfect autumnal read

the new evander mills mystery comes out in october and i'd like to read it before the year ends

2024 reading updates | goodreads

[shakespearean]

Academy Award winner Ariana DeBose (West Side Story), Emmy winners Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) and Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones), Oscar nominee LaKeith Stanfield (Judas and the Black Messiah), Chris Messina (Argo), Ted Levine (The Silence of the Lambs), Danny Huston (The Constant Gardener), Matthew Jacobs (Bar America), Rhys Coiro (Entourage) and Stephen Dorff (Blade) have joined Academy Award winners Al Pacino and Jessica Chastain in Bernard Rose’s Lear Rex, a film adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear.

[joker-daughter]

In the book, the mom comes from a family of old money, she is super rich. She is beautiful, fit and looks like 5 to 10 years younger than her real age, mid to late 40’s. Jessica Chastain, Angelina Jolie, Rachel Weisz, Jennifer Connelly. The actress has to have sex appeal. A great role because she is a complicated person.

The daugther is around 22, a few years younger than Tom’s character. She is nothing like her mother, they don’t look alike, Tom’s character never Connect both women until is too late.

Cailee Spaeny, she was Priscila Presley, for me she can be perfect, she is 26 and looks younger. She has the acting shops because the role is not easy either.

I read the book and it is very good, a thriller, murder/mistery. Where Tom’s character has a character arc similar to Talented Mr. Ripley.

oof Rachel Weisz would be kinda perfect…and I’m on board with Cailee as well, that would be amazing casting ngl and I know the broad story line already, I just haven’t read it

[thelittlestspider]

St. Bernedine's School For Girls character masterlist

Odile Peters - she/her. 16. lesbian. Odile is a tomboyish gearhead from Motor City, exiled to St. Bernedine's for her safety after being caught in a gunfight between the city's feuding families.

Odile wanted to go to Blackwood instead, but her mother was adamant St. Bernedine's would be good for her (famous last words). Fc: Kiana Madeira.

Angelica Monét - she/her. 16. Angelica is a bubbly girl with her head in the clouds. Her family thought St. Bernedine's would help her become more serious and disciplined, which is a total drag, but it's free, so she gets it.

Bernadette Rousseau - she/her. 16. Bernadette is a distant relative and namesake of Saint Bernedine. So there's sort of this weird pressure on her by her mother to be like Saint Bernedine (teacher devoted to her students), but nobody ever considers the part where Bernedine was killed saving her students, and never intended to become a martyr at all.

Marianne - she/her. 16. A wan, depressed girl who prefers to wander through the library or the underground cemetery with her sketchbook than interact with most people. She is the daughter of a rich family who exiled her to St. Bernedine's because they didn't want to deal with her problems.

Francine Richard - she/her. 16. Francine is an honor student determined not to let St. Bernedine's less than stellar reputation drag her down. She plans to move away from Vietta City as soon as she graduates and study to become a doctor (?).

Starla Wilkins - she/her. 17. lesbian. Fellow Motor City transplant. Starla was sent away by her family for troublemaking. She would've rather went to live with her grandfather, but c'est la vie, as they say. She has a strange pet spider named Chrome.

Odette Peters - she/her. 14. Odile's younger sister.

Margot Fontaine - she/her. 16. Margot is the troubled daughter of Ms. Darlington, born out of wedlock. Margot puts on an air of polished sophistication to hide her violent nature. Fc: young Olivia Hussey or young Isabelle Adjani.

Ms. Darlington - she/her. 40s. Ms. Darlington is the charismatic latin and history teacher that students and teachers alike swoon over. But behind her charming and colorful facade lies a darkness that is all consuming.

Ms. Sharpe - she/her. 30s. Ms. Sharpe teaches theater and literature. She has a stern, melancholy air that never left after the death of her wife. Due to her manner and appearance the girls at St. Bernedine's are mistrustful and reluctant to confide in her, especially after the disappearances begin. Fc: Jessica Chastain.

Mr. Herrera - he/him. 30s. The only male teacher at St. Bernedine's, Mr. Herrera teaches athletics and health.