#she reinvents herself ever other month

[evans23]

Hello! May I request Severus Snape x female reader? He might be scolding her for something and even calling her stupid. But she doesn't pay attention and tells him that she thinks everything about him is beautiful...

Thank you 💖

(Sorry for my english)

You're handsome when you're angry

Pairing : Severus Snape x Reader OC

Summary : You are the assistant of Severus Snape. The man who lived. The sarcastic, cold angry Potions Master. And you think he his handsome. Even when he is angry.

Tag(s)/Warning(s) : None.

A/N : Thank you for your request ! I'm not used to writing about Snape because, well we have plenty of stories about him and each time I have an idea for our favourite Potions Master, I have that feeling that it has already been done, therefore, I hope you'd like it !

Also read on AO3

Six months. Six months since you'd been his assistant. You'd have thought the war had mellowed him out. That surviving a giant snake had made him more... agreeable.

But no, he was still the same good old Severus Snape. And he was now the one they called the one who lived. His name had been cleared of all shame thanks to Harry Potter. Or Bloody Potter, as Snape regularly muttered.

The potions professor had hardly appreciated the fact that Harry, in order to allow him to be officially pardoned and even receive the Order of Merlin, had made his memories public. At the time, Snape was in a coma, and McGonagall had encouraged Harry to bring justice to Severus, the bravest man who had ever attended Hogwarts, according to her own words.

Needless to say, when he woke up from a six-month coma, Severus wanted more than ever to jump off the Astronomy Tower... but he didn't have the strength to get up; the venom had made him weak, and all he managed was fall out of bed, face down, while Mrs. Pomfrey came running in, scolding him like he was still eleven.

And when Harry came to see him to thank him for protecting him all these years, Severus didn't tell him he was sorry and that he should have let him drop out of his damn ballet in his first year. No, he just told him, with cold calm, that he could put the Order of Merlin in his dark side.

Harry left the hospital wing with a big smile. Severus Snape was in better shape. And he was still himself.

And against all odds, when Minerva had offered him his old job as potions professor and Head of Slytherin... he refused. He had sacrificed enough of himself and life to finally stop thinking about himself.

He had traveled a bit, tried to find his place elsewhere, opened a small healing potions shop in Paris, tamed the demons that haunted the Vatican basements, lived a quiet life in a remote Swedish village where he barely lasted two weeks once winter came, then returned to the UK and wrote to Minerva.

The truth was, he didn't know how to be anything other than a potions professor. After all, he had spent his entire youth being one, and now he wasn't really old, but his soul was, and he was worn down. Worn down by life and the endless suffering it had inflicted on him.

Minerva had immediately given him back his job, arguing that the current potions professor could have competed with Longbottom, given how much she'd had to rethink the cauldron budget.

And two years later, you arrived. You were 33 years old. Not a young beginner, not a dunderhead fresh out of school. No, just a somewhat lost woman who'd struggled to find herself. A woman with her own past and her own wounds, and a recent career change that, you hoped, would finally open the doors to fulfilment, and especially to your dream career: Potions Master.

Snape had of course grumbled, protested, threatened to quit his job, but Minerva had been adamant. Hogwarts was part of a program for young wizards looking for their bearing, a pompous name given by the Ministry to people who had taken a little time to find their way in a world too fast-paced for them, or to those who had had to reinvent themselves after the war, and above all, Severus couldn't quit his job; he had nowhere else to go.

His house in Spinner's End had been burned to the ground, probably by Death Eaters. Not that he missed that hovel full of painful memories, but from then, Hogwarts was truly his one and only home.

When told about you, he had expected a 19-year-old girl, a recent graduate of a school with questionable training, whom he would have to keep a close eye on now that he had stabilized the cauldron budget. Not to a 33-year-old woman, disillusioned but eager to learn, capable of listening, absorbing knowledge, and above all, above all, not talking more than necessary. Or at least, not anymore. After one week you knew better. 

He would never have said it to your face, but one evening when McGonagall asked him what she should write in the report she was to submit to Granger, who was heading this rehabilitation program, he replied that you were promising and that he had nothing negative to say. McGonagall, her eyes wide as saucers, wondered for a moment if he'd lost his mind, her, who had never heard him compliment anyone, but she had the wisdom to say nothing about it.

You immediately found him handsome. Intelligent. Broken. Of course, you knew his story. Everyone knew it. It had been heard all over the wizarding world. But as the days went by, you were able to see beyond the story. You saw the man. And one day, you woke up hoping he would see you for yourself. For the woman you were, not the assistant.

He was tough, but he never shouted. His anger was cold, and he always spoke in the same laconic tone. Yet, you could tell whether he was in a good mood or not by a simple raise of one of his eyebrow. And you knew that after a class with the Gryffindors, and especially with McIntyre, a somewhat dreamy young boy incapable of following instructions unless you were behind him at all times, ready to catch his hand before he threw slugs instead of leeches into a potion that was particularly toxic if the wrong ingredients were added, then he wasn't in a bad mood or angry... he was unbearable. Suffice to say, you watched over McIntyre like a lioness her cubs, because you were the one who then had to put up with Snape until bedtime.

You didn't talk much, always about work, but little by little, you were getting used to each other, and he was putting up with you. At least, that's what you thought until today.

Today had been hell. You'd woken up late, and the glare Severus had given you... you were certain that if you'd still been a student, he would have given you detention until the end of the year... except it wasn't you he gave detention, it was McIntyre for setting his eyebrows on fire. His own, thank goodness, not Snape's. If that had been the case, you're certain McIntyre would have nothing left but his eyes to cry with on the train back to King's Cross forever.

However, you were the one who had to deal with detentions, which meant you'd never have another afternoon free until the end of the year.

Then you had to clean up the mess left by a fourth-year student who, Merlin knows how, had managed to make it impossible to magically clean the classroom. Three hours of scrubbing by hand, hands that were now red and irritated.

And after supervising the detention of two first-year idiots who had thought it clever to slip a toad into Madam Pomfrey's satchel, two idiots you should have made scrub the classroom after a second thought, you now had to spend your evening working with Snape on a highly unstable but terribly necessary position to vaccinate the thestrals who were suffering from a kind of purulent chickenpox, fortunately not contagious to humans.

The laboratory was dark, smoky, and smelled of a mixture of thyme, wood, and... Snape. Snape, his raven hair blowing over his eyes, was hunched over a cauldron inside which a purple liquid was bubbling bigger than your head. Your potion didn't have the same intense purple colour, but after a skeptical glance, Severus had said that was normal; purple could be more or less intense depending on the personality of the person brewing it. So you could easily guess that tonight, he was in as bad a mood as Filch's cat.

You didn't dare speak much. Not because he impressed you, but because you'd arrived a minute and fifteen minutes late, once again after your morning lateness, which had earned you a perfectly plucked eyebrow raise and a:

"Thirty more seconds and you'd have had to find another Potions Master to make life difficult for."

You hadn't replied; your past attempts at humour had taught you that it was a character trait very, very disliked by this man you admired almost in spite of yourself.

The problem wasn't that you weren't good at potions, it was that you operated on instinct, while Snape was rigorous. At least, that's what he said; you'd seen that he too had a way of sensing potions, of embodying them... and of being instinctive. But when you told him, you thought his gaze could have been the first to cast an Avada Kedavra spell. Or that he was trying to get into your head. When, still a little clumsy, you asked him with a crooked smile if that was what he was trying to do, he coldly replied that he already knew your head was empty and didn't want to inflict the torture of confirming it by entering it only to encounter nothingness.

You were busy stirring your potion, lost in thought, when it started to form black bubbles that made the table vibrate. It was when a greenish cloud began to rise from the cauldron that you realized: you'd made a mistake. Instead of using a specter's tear, you'd used a tarantula's tear.

A quick glance at Snape reassured you; he hadn't noticed. You tried to make amends by throwing in some catnip, but it only made things worse. A bubble burst with a dull thud, almost burning your forearm.

In an instant, Severus was leaning over the cauldron, wand in hand, muttering a formula you haven't heard before, and within seconds, the potion had returned to its original consistency.

"You brainless fool, are you completely stupid ? You could have set this classroom on fire ! The castle !"

He wasn't shouting, but his dark eyes flashed, and his voice, cold and sharp, hurt more than any scream.

"Do you want to die ?! Are you stupid or are you pretending ?! I should have told Minerva you were too incompetent to work at Hogwarts from day one."

He went on like this, accusing you of not taking anything seriously, of not being serious enough to have not yet found your way at your age, of not being reliable...

You took a step back, surprised, but you didn't lower your eyes. You were almost... peaceful.

"You can have your little smile... perhaps you'd like me to applaud you for not killing yourself like a first-year freshman ? Idiot !"

He had shouted that last word. His only outburst. Now there was only silence. Heavy. You took a deep breath, then, quietly, without irony, you said to him,

"I think you're handsome."

Visibly taken aback, Snape looked at you as if you were growing a second head.

"Even when you're angry. Even when you're tough. I know it's because you can't bear to lose control. Because you never really had it. You were only given the illusion that you were in control. You lost something. Not a Lily. Freedom. The freedom to choose. The freedom to be yourself. But I admire you. I admire you for managing to get back up and fight every time, after every challenge."

Severus sighed deeply, and for the first time, you saw him remove his mask. Before you, you had the man, the real one, not the spy, not the professor, not the bat from the dungeons.

"It's dangerous... to see monsters as men," he murmured.

"I'm less afraid of monsters than of men," you replied with an enigmatic smile.

And in an instant, he understood. Understood that behind your smiles and your slightly awkward humour, there was a story. A story that was nothing like a fairy tale. Experiences, mistakes, back roads... a painful past. Maybe not as painful as his, but pain is pain, and yours was no less valid because you hadn't gone through the same ordeals as him. He knew better than anyone that you have no right to compare one person's suffering to another's. It wasn't fair. Every individual was unique, every suffering valid.

"Even the darkest potions have a light within them if you know how to look," you added without looking at him, already busy cleaning your work surface.

Severus froze, and for the first time in a long time, he didn't know what to say. He was dying to enter your mind, but he wouldn't. He saw no point in stealing someone's memories to get to know them better. In fact, Snape had never used his gift to get to know someone, because he'd never wanted to. But suddenly, you, he wanted to know you.

"No woman has ever told me I'm handsome," he said, before mentally slapping himself.

"Because they never looked properly," you shrugged.

You raised your head, a genuine smile on your lips.

"I see you. Not your story. Not your past. Just you."

It wasn't the first time he'd been offered this kind of philosophical statement, which he found a bit silly. Even Potter had said it to him, and it was after he had seen all his memories... well, him and three-quarters of the Ministry. But coming from you, it sounded true.

"I think you're even stupider than I thought," he said without any sarcasm.

"Oh, you have no idea. If you asked me out for a Butterbeer, I might well say yes."

"Even Professor Longbottom isn't that stupid," Severus added with a slight twitch of his lips.

"So, when are we going to drink this Butterbeer?" you asked, staring into his eyes.

He didn't need to use his magic to know what you were thinking. And for the first time in a long time, he felt like a man. For the first time in a long time, he no longer hoped. He knew. Yes, he knew that life was offering him a second chance to love and be loved.

[panxramic]

I like the different interpretations of Tallulah’s hair color people have been sending me.

Her hair didn’t turn black JUST bc of q!Missa. It turned black because it’s the color of the wither roses her papa likes, it turned black because it matches the feathers on the back of q!Phil’s wings, her hair turned black because it’s the same shade as the crows that flock their home. Tallulah’s hair turned black because death is very much a part of her every day life. It turned black because she *likes* it. Tallulah’s hair is black because it resembles her whole life and the people she loves.

I like to refrain from attributing certain things about Tallulah solely to one person because people just end up turning her into an extension of others. Especially when people attribute certain features of hers to someone she hasn’t talked to in months and she has never seen as a father.

They already did it to her once before, and I’d hate to see it be done to her again. She’s more than that. She always has been.

Tallulah’s journey with self discovery and finding her place in the world has been a rollercoaster to watch unfold. She’s gone through so much to prove herself, she’s fought hard to show the world who she is and who she isn’t. She’s gotten lost in promises and old memories. Tallulah has struggled with her identity as it has always been heavily tied to family, and family on the island is important and complicated.

She’s come to a place where she finally feels comfortable. She finally feels like she belongs in this family and now she can continue that path of self discovery. Because there’s no greater feeling than that freedom of being able to decide who you are. Of being in such a comfortable spot in which she can explore different ways to express herself.

I don’t think this necessarily has been a HUGE issue, but it’s definitely one that has been in the foreground for a while and an added effect of her struggles in finding a place on the island. Because finding that place is also a part of WHO she is, it’s part of her identity.

I remember her getting upset that she was seen as an extension of him for months. It was all anybody would ever bring up around her. She was the egg that was left behind, she was the egg that didn’t have a father. She was the egg that was abandoned again and again. And it was hard trying to combat that, bc how do you work around something that is genuinely affecting you to your core? Something that felt so defining in your life?

Well I think she’s come far in showing that she’s more than that. That she’s not just the sad traumatized egg that was abandoned. She’s grown a lot, she’s found a new place. There’s still sore spots sure. She didn’t like being called the “trauma egg” because again, it’s something she’s been trying to move past from. She’s more than just her trauma, she’s more than the people and the things that have hurt her.

I think that yes her past is important, everything she’s gone through has molded her into the egg that she is. But she’s not just her past. Her past doesn’t control her, not like it used to at least. It’s important that she’s reinventing herself in a way. Because she’s changed a lot, but she’s still Tallulah. Not the same one we saw at the start, but it’s still her. And at this point in time she’s more herself than she ever has been.

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

"I’ve spent a few years writing songs with little to no sense of direction, I think I’ve started to find my own sound again." Charlotte Wessels on restarting after Delain, dream collabs and why there are no guilty pleasures

Charlotte Wessels reinvented herself as a solo artist after leaving Delain in 2021

Since her shock departure from Delain back in 2021, symphonic metal star Charlotte Wessels has been working hard on a solo album, The Obsession, an ambitious record that Charlotte says showcases her “creative sweet spot”. 

Not only that, but she’s also been making monthly creations for fans and supporters of her Patreon, rescued a very cute dog and released two records via the Tales From Six Feet Under banner. Good grief. We put your questions to Charlotte about the split, finding inspiration in nature and, erm, turtles.

How interested are you in experimenting with genres, and which would be the most unusual one you’d like to try? Clockworkshrimp, Instagram 

“I’m very interested in experimenting with genres. Basically my last two albums consist of songs that vary wildly in genres: pop songs, fully electronic songs, metal songs… I even did a [dance subgenre] hardstyle track! I’ve spent a few years writing songs with little to no sense of direction, and I think I’ve started to find my own sound again. I’m in my creative sweet spot, but I’d love to do something classical or neoclassical.” 

Pick one person to: record a song, have a coffee, go on holiday with. Jessica Lleonart, Facebook 

“Ooh! I’d love to record a song with Trent Reznor, I love his work. For a coffee, I think Amanda Palmer; I love her and The Dresden Dolls. She really inspired me on my entire journey with Patreon and the art of asking for things, so I’d love to thank her. For a holiday I’d pick my partner and this sleepy dog back here. He’s a rescue dog called Legolas but we call him Lego.” 

Do you have other talents? Tonykumar7061, Instagram 

“Back in the day I was always hesitating about whether I would go in the direction of visual arts or music, and art is still something that I do every now and then just for relaxation. I love painting but I don’t know whether I would call it a talent! I also love writing, and gardening.” 

How do you handle creative blocks? Babs86, Instagram 

“I don’t want to say this out loud, because I feel like I’ll jinx it… but I haven’t had serious creative blocks yet. Especially now I’ve really trained myself so I have to release a song every month for Patreon. It might sound really crude, but if you’re ever stuck, just lower the bar! Don’t think about writing something amazing, just think about writing anything. Then even if it sucks there’ll be a little part that’s nice, and you can polish it and improve it.” 

Was it difficult to adapt after leaving Delain? Skinny_Vamp_Official, Instagram 

“Yeah, definitely. It was my life for 16 years, so of course there was that moment of ‘Now what?’ I knew I couldn’t fall into a black hole, I couldn’t dwell on it. I didn’t allow myself to as I didn’t want to let people down. It just took a lot of adaptation, but I’m so glad I had that safety net already of my fans. I don’t think I could have started again otherwise. I feel like I have to reintroduce myself now, the tension and the anticipation is so high. It all feels brand new again.” 

What guided you to write a novel for [side-project] Phantasma’s The Deviant Hearts? Would you ever be tempted to write another? Antonio Olivares Diaz, Facebook 

“The idea was to do a concept record. When you think of a concept album, you have to think about what the story is and usually let the music tell that story. It kept growing more and more detailed, so I basically bluffed and said, ‘You know what, I’ll just write a novella for it!’ It was fun and challenging and I might do it again one day.”

When did you first hear about Sophie Lancaster [who inspired Delain song We Are The Others]? Simon Parrock, Facebook 

“We were working on the album [also titled We Are The Others] in Stockholm in 2011, I think. I saw an animated video about her story and it grabbed me. I knew this was the story that we had to tell, because this is what happens when we judge books by their covers. I reached out to the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, because when you’re writing about an actual person who has family and friends grieving her loss, you have to be so sensitive, so I got permission from her family and we’ve worked with the foundation since.” 

What’s on your playlist right now? Evim0204, Instagram 

“A lot of Vola! We just announced a tour with them and I’m a big fan. I’m not afraid to admit that I saw that tour announcement and I slid into their DMs like, ‘May I suggest me to support?’ If you don’t ask you don’t get!”

How do you feel when people compare your music to bands like Nightwish, Within Temptation or Lacuna Coil? Tiago Ferraz, Facebook 

“I feel good about it, I love all of those bands! That’s great company to be in and it’s an accurate description. Anything is better than just lumping us in as ‘female-fronted metal’, you know? As musicians everyone likes to think, ‘Oh my god, I’m so unique’ but genres and comparisons help people who might be looking for similar things to find you. It’s a good thing.” 

What is your relationship with plants and nature, and does it help in your creativity? Renaud Bongiovanni, Facebook 

“I always find inspiration in nature. Sometimes I organise little writing camps for myself – I’ll go somewhere in a cabin in the woods. I’m so much happier when the sun is out, and when I can plant my little seedlings.” 

Hammer: Has it helped with your mental health at all? 

“Yes! A few years ago I was in therapy and taking SSRIs [Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, a commonly prescribed antidepressant]. I was learning about how certain connections in your brain have to regrow. I was very frustrated because I wanted progress to be faster, and at the same time I had these little plant cuttings and I was trying to regrow their roots in water. I visualised my own process mirrored to the little cuttings, and now they’re fully grown plants. It’s hope, it’s patience, it’s beauty.”

Who are your biggest influences outside of metal? Simon Edward McMurdo, Facebook 

“I love Sia, her voice gives me instant comfort. Florence And The Machine, Kate Bush, Tori Amos – my girls!” 

Was The Exorcism video inspired by Epica’s visuals? Will you collaborate with Simone Simons again? Baryn Abrahadabra-Vettel, Facebook 

“In a way it was, because we wore amazing wigs for the Sirens - Of Blood And Water video we collaborated on, and I wore the same model in a different colour for The Exorcism. Simone sings on a song called Dopamine on the new album. I originally released a version of it online and Simone messaged me saying it was her favourite song, so I asked her to sing on it for the album!” 

What was the most challenging and most rewarding aspect of filming The Exorcism music video? Nivi Morales, Facebook 

“I always tell myself I’m going to do it differently, but somehow whenever we record a video I end up wearing something super-uncomfortable and end up being super-cold. I had to lay on the floor with my bare back. The outfit was stunning but it was slightly too tight on me, so the next day I had scabs on my collarbones from how it was digging into my skin.” 

What was it like posing for Tim Tronckoe’s portraits book? Bindi Eyre, Facebook 

“It was wonderful. He worked on The Exorcism video too, and the portraits book set the wheels in motion for that. He had so many ideas and I love it. He’s very encouraging and enthusiastic and always an optimistic creative presence.” 

Do you like turtles? Larue Joseph, Facebook 

“I love all animals! Yes to turtles, with their shells, having your own house with you all the time? How wonderful! As well as my dog, I have two crows that follow me on my walks – having a crow army would be my dream. I feed them every so often and it’s working!” 

Are you nervous to go back on tour with a full band for the first time since the end of Delain? Eric Jacques, Facebook 

“Sort of?! I only just realised how long it’s been since we’ve done a full tour, and this is an intense tour; there’s a run of 10 shows without a day off and I’m not getting any younger! I’m always super-careful on tour – I don’t drink, I eat healthy. I try to get as much sleep as possible, but I’m mostly just really excited to go on tour with the boys again.” 

What guilty pleasures have you got in your music collection? Eddie Sinner, Facebook 

“I don’t have any! I’ll never be ashamed of my Spice Girls album or anything like that. No guilty pleasures – only true pleasures.”

The Obsession is out September 20 via Napalm. Charlotte Wessels tours the UK from November 22.

[euphoriabled]

Sweet Amata lit a match; nothing left of home but ash. To the convent then, and soon again, Sweet Amata's lit a flame.

Sister Candelifera ( " she who bears the candle " ) Amata Fidelis. | Arsonist, Satanist, Sister.

⸻ Soul searching, was for those who wished to look inward and understand themselves, but Sweet Amata looked inward to see if anything lingered within her.

Her father had often spoke of Fire and Brimstone, and if God was full of wrath, wouldn't he enjoy such a spectacle? She gave him exactly what he preached.

She didn't understand. Wasn't this what they wanted?

God spread so much pain, she too could play God. She too could cause pain.

Was it really so cruel of her to accept this?

⸻ It isn't until she turns thirty-three and three months that she experiences her first ritual by chance. It sparks something deep within her. An understanding. She finds herself feeling desperate for the very first time; the beating organ within her chest scraping at the cage of her ribs, beckoning her to follow the messenger.

To embrace the teachings of PAPA EMERITUS I. For once, something had been lit within her, and not by her own hands. But could this really last? There was still this ever-lasting hollowness that crept beneath her skin; tongue running over her lips, she'd continue to look inward. Was there anything there? Was anything left? Now celebrate the end.

If she could only remember how this all began.

She finds herself slowly climbing up the clergy. She had something to prove, and she needed a little . . . reinvention. Candle in hand, she'd do what she could to help light the way and usher in a new era for The Clergy. As PAPA EMERITUS II takes over the mantle, she becomes increasingly aware that nothing lasts forever. A flame was simply a manifestation of desire; of purification; of divine energy; of transformation. From the darkness, rise a succubus, and usurp the throne.

The hollowness within her demanded sacrifice; her fingers craving the solace of a lighter. She begins lighting ritual candles instead. Little flames with bigger meaning.

It did little to satiate the growing desire within her to watch it all burn.

PAPA EMERITUS III soon takes over, and this time she understands what other's said could happen in a church. The feeling of the spirit moving through them.

He sang of it. A candle casting a faint glow. He saw it; saw her, and he understood. She knew, of course, that this song was not meant for her. It was simply for future rituals, but scrying with the aid of her candle, she couldn't help but wonder . . . Could he really feel the thunder? Would he think her soul was tainted, as others had? Perhaps he was right.

She could not hide in the darkness.

The death of PAPA EMERITUS III burdened her greatly and tested her faith; he had brought them all so much. He had won them awards and accolades, and this is what he received in return. Wrath.

When Cardinal Copia became PAPA IV she found herself conflicted, but he also seemed to understand this returning hollowness within her. She could also take his teachings to heart as he spoke to the core of her. Speaking to this sickening desire to be understood; to be known. All your faith, all your rage, all your pain, it ain't over now. It's the cruel beast that you feed; it's your burning, yearning need.

And as she settles into this new era, she finds herself far more connected to her faith. For nothing could be as powerful as loss when it came to forging a connection.

Tell me who you want to be and I will set you free.

She could still find her rightful place in The Clergy. It was no longer enough for Amata to simply believe or to follow. She needed to be at the epicenter. She craved the power that came with the core members of The Clergy. What must she do to get there? Whatever it was, she was ready and willing.

And then, the EMERITUS reign was over.

PAPA V was PAPA PERPETUA. A name that suggested eternity, and yet she knew deep down: everybody leaves one day. Amata found herself yet again conflicted. She knew very little of him, but when left in the dark . . . one could always light a candle.

@p0pestar this is your fault. okay, i have to go to sleep now genuinely i'm too tired to know if this is anything, so perhaps i will delete this upon waking LOL

[shmowder]

Yeah, divorces are cool and funny, but how about the actual weddings? It seems to me that the wedding of any Utopian would be the return of Sodom to Earth, of varying severity. Andrey is a professional toastmaster for sure!

Oh god Andrey's wedding. He's reinventing the seven deadly sins and adding a couple more, custom made by yours truly.

Words can never do it justice. If that man pops crystals on a regular Tuesday, I dread knowing what is considered sufficient for a once in a lifetime event like a wedding.

Andrey's bachelor party brings the flood back to wipe earth before the actual wedding happens. Of course you're invited, he's not going to slut it out there alone without you? It's his wedding and he will cherry pick which customs to follow and ignore.

The Utopians as a whole really know how to party- A wedding for one of them is just a chance for each of them to outshine one another. Everything is a competition to be THE main character in the room, especially another person's wedding.

Now the honeymoon? They are 100% taking you away from this dusty old town to a different more exciting place, if not a different country to begin with. Places which will put the Capital to shame.

One month, two or even 5 if the mood strikes them. They have no obligations and they're enjoying this love paradise with you. Whenever it becomes dull they'll finally decide to go back to the town.

While they all share the need to show off and have their wedding go down in history, each of their weddings is vastly different and reflects their inner personality... and biggest sin.

Starting off with pride! and none other than Maria Kaina herself. The town is her playground. The world bends down if she gives the word.

Preparations for her wedding will begin a year in advancement, and the two of you will go on many trips to the capital to get your measurements taken and have the best tailors at your beck and call. She truly plans on looking like a god on her wedding day.

Maybe even orders for a new building to be made just for her to have her wedding in. Carpeted red floors and glittering crystal chandeliers. The two of you get your portrait painted on that day, and it's hanged at the entrance of her wing in the crucible. Everyone in town is invited to marvel and gawk at her and her untouchable spouse.

Oh and if you start hearing voices in your head afterwards, do not worry it's just her "immortal" relatives saying hello before going back to their own focus.

Or on a more artistic note, an experimental wedding with Peter Stamatin. Maybe resembling envy? He plans everything by the hand and designs concepts that are so abstract and far off from reality. Instead of the cathedral, the wedding should take place in the cemetery. Only a handful of people are invited–including grace as the flower girl–it's in the dead middle of the night under a full moon. Actually scratch that, that man is so extra he'd wait for a full eclipse to have his wedding under.

The ring is the truly main event, he designed it himself. It took so long searching for a jeweler that could weild it without a single mistake. So many prototypes and failed attempts thrown in the dust. Making this become a reality cost more than the entire combined town income in a year.

Of course that jeweller is dead now, why do you ask? Anyway the ring's catch is that it can never, ever be removed. Unless the finger gets cut off, of course. it's as permanent as the bones in your body and even after you die it will remain etched onto your skeleton for eternity.

Yeah he has a matching pair, duh.

The list goes on, lust and Andrey, Greed and Vlad, Sloth and Eva.

[the-coffee-fandom]

✨ Nimona Fic Recs ✨

A good handful of Nimona fics I really enjoyed (I especially suggest the bottom three)

As The Rain Continued To Fall (Complete)

Rated G - Hurt/Comfort

Ballister x Ambrousois

It was the middle of the night, and it was dark, and he was Awake.

A night, after the end of the Movie. Ballister, alone with his thoughts.

Ashes Of The Hearth (Incomplete)

Rated T - Hurt/Comfort

Ballister x Ambrosius & Nimona

Nimona knows her power. Knows her limits.

Well, most of them.

Sidewalk Reinventions (Complete)

Rated G - Hurt/Comfort

Ballister & Nimona

Nimona, the Best and Most Renowned Shapeshifter in the World, or: a chronicle of the shapes Nimona takes through the years.

Happiness Found In You (Complete)

Rated G - Fluff

Ballister & Nimona

Here’s some fluff for that sad little man with the baby girl eyes

Following the ending of the movie!!

Not A People (Complete)

Rated G - Hurt/Comfort

Ballister & Nimona

Nimona always has a habit of getting injured during fights but nobody has ever worried about her, that is, until Ballister Boldheart came around.

(I’m) The Monster Under Your Bed (Complete)

Not Rated (G rating content) - Angst With Happy Ending

Ballister x Ambrosius & Nimona

Be it simple curiosity, or something deeper, one day Ballister asks Nimona a question

He's not ready for the answer.

Late At Night (Complete)

Rated G - Hurt/Comfort

Ballister x Ambrosius & Nimona

Nimona is still getting used to Ambrosius, it helps that Ballister loves him very much.

Twenty Seven Thousand Years Of This (Seven More To Go) (Complete)

Rated G - Hurt/Comfort

Mentions of: Panic attacks and PTSD

Ballister & Nimona

“Shhh, stop. Stop, it’s okay,” The voice soothes, now, hands hovering above her head, already formed into the shape of her hair, but doesn’t dare to touch her. “Nimona—listen to me. You’re home. You’re alright.”

Home. Noun. Four letters. Two syllables. But what the fuck does it mean to a girl who’s been a deer and a fish and a shark and a dragon and somehow in the end, despite all of that, nobody at all? What the fuck does it mean to a girl who’s seen the moons change its shape too many times over and brought fire to every valley where her baby feet steps?

or: violent nightmares aren't new to nimona. what's new is the pair of arms that holds her regardless, and a place that normal people call home.

Enough Courage To Trust (Complete)

Rated G - Fluff

Ballister x Ambrosius & Nimona

Nimona and Ambrosius don't really like each other, let alone trust each other. One of those days, they finally get a chance to bond - through kicking ass and having pizza.

Me And The Devil, Walking Side By Side (Complete)

Rated G - Hurt No Comfort

Gloreth & Nimona

On her seventeenth birthday, Gloreth sets out into the forest to finish what she started.

Or, one possibility for how the knights came to be.

Kiss It And Make It Better (Complete)

Rated G - Fluff

Ballister & Nimona

After Ballister removes the arrow from Nimona's leg, she decides she kinda enjoys the attention.

Stick Figure Stones (Complete)

Rated G - Hurt/Comfort

Ballister & Nimona

The first time Ballister came across the well, he was drowning.

Or; I thought "what if Bal found the well" and wrote this in like an hour and a half :>

A Glimpse Of What I Call Home (Complete)

Rated G - Fluff

Ballister & Nimona

Ballister realizes his dream of having a family has already been granted, after a minor slip up from Nimona during casual conversation.

Eight Months Later (Incomplete)

Rated T - Hurt/Comfort (but highlight the hurt)

Mentions of: Su*c*de, Panic Attacks, and PTSD

Ballister x Ambrosius & Nimona

Nimona’s alive. Ballister wants her to know how much people love her. He takes her to her memorial.

It doesn’t go great.

My Glory Is Yours (Complete)

Rated T - Angst With A Happy Ending

Ballister x Ambrosius & Nimona x Gloreth

Eight years after the fateful incident with Nimona, Gloreth makes a wish to fix things by the old well where they met. To her surprise, she finds herself 1000 years in the future.

[autistic-beshelar]

pillars of eternity ask for ylva, 1, 2, and 12 <3

yippee yay!

what is your watcher's class? how does it relate to their backstory?

so this is a fun one out of universe bc on my first playthrough ylva was actually a ranger and she had a wolf! after learning more about the lore and doing another playthrough, i decided to make her a rogue, but i'm keeping the original class as part of her backstory

she's glamfellen, and grew up with her clan, and one of her roles was as a hunter, as well as a mender and skinner. most hunting of larger game was done with bow and arrow, and she was fairly skilled, and also had interest in crafting the bows, using the blade to shape them - though she wasn't yet permitted to. many of the hunters also knew how to fight in close quarters, as the land is perilous, and when necessary ylva used blades for that rather than the bow.

when she left the land by trade ship, she left her bow behind, but brought her daggers. she had little use for the bow, it having always been a tool for hunting, but she picked up many skills in the blade as a sailor, whether for fighting or for crafting.

and then in deadfire she fucken dies as comes back as a cipher. rogue/cipher SLAPS to play, and i really liked the idea of her coming back different, as becoming a cipher being a sort of progression of her watcher abilities, only gained by having lost herself.

2. what is your watcher's disposition?

mostly benevolent, generally honest (though a bit more deceptive by deadfire), often rational, and diplomatic when necessary, though she's not necessarily that good at it - despite being away from home for half her life, she's never quite gotten that hang of social rules. there's some stoic thrown in there, as her demeanour is stoic, but she certainly isn't emotionless.

she's very rarely aggressive - she's not a hot headed person, and if she's aggressive to you then you've really earned it, and she will still typically display it in a very stoic way (see: her miming dragging a knife across her throat to lord gathbin, direct eye contact, unblinking, dead expression.) the only time she was ever cruel was to the harbingers at the very end of beast of winter bc she was absolutely going the fuck through it.

she's occasionally clever, though it's usually to tell a dumb joke with a completely straight face (see: her, an elf, standing next to aloth, an elf, "i have never seen any elves.") and i don't think she's ever had any passionate dialogue - while she is passionate about things, she's usually quiet and calm about it.

12. what does your watcher think about the gods?

boy.

well the tl;dr of her backstory, religion wise, is that she grew up in a clan that of course worshipped rymrgand, and for the first few years of her life she believed in him very strongly. then some Things happened, and her feelings started to change. she no longer saw the comfort in finality, and longed to seek beginnings. she was somewhat drawn to berath, as someone who was already so surrounded by death, who understood its place and importance and necessity, but berath also promised change, and hope, and reinvention. she never worshipped berath has she once did rymrgand, but she's always felt a connection to them.

as for the other gods, she's always respected them the same way she respects nature. eothas gifts us the light months, and ondra gifts us the shining darkness, and magran gifts us our light and our warmth.

except skaen fuck that guy.

things changed when she met them. but not completely. she certainly saw them more as people, as individuals, rather than the concepts she'd always known them as, and they felt to her very much like a family at war with itself.

she sees them as incredibly powerful people who cannot help being what they are. in some ways she still has some respect for them - for abydon particularly, and for berath, who she feels a kinship with now more than ever. (despite the circumstances, despite that she did seek her freedom, she felt like something was stolen from her when eothas took berath's chime from her. it should have been her decision, not his.)

but she also despairs that these... creatures, these amalgamations of souls, have shaped so much of their world. she doesn't want them to die, she doesn't even necessarily want them to leave altogether - though she certainly fucking despises skaen, and woedica, and has very, very little patience for ondra - she just wants... freedom. that's always been her wish, really.

she sympathised with eothas, but in the end he was only acting as the god he was made to be - fulfilling his role as redemption, without any real acknowledgement of the autonomy of all those he claims to care for, without any regard for the death his actions will bring.

uhhh lets end this on a happy note. mmm she still thinks religion is important! the gods may be messy, complex beings, and religion may be deeply flawed, but she knows how important it is to have faith, to have community. she was quite inspired by how much waidwen affected eothas, and wonders if it's possible for people to shape the gods - if they were created by people, can they not be recreated? she's also inspired by tekehu's devotion to ngati, despite her own conversations with the goddess leaving an incredibly sour taste in her mouth. and she wonders if with all his faith and charm and power, he can shape her the way he shapes water.

[evesaintyves]

989 words, for @remadoramicrofics prompt "haunted."

Read it below or on AO3 🎸

Tonks's old bedroom floor is a mess of rumpled t-shirts and her rattiest underpants. Five days since Remus took off his ring, knotted the strings on his traveling case, and told her he'd made a terrible error. All she's done is sleep. She dozed off on the macrame throw pillow and it left a crisscross red rash on her cheek, went downstairs before she noticed, and her Dad gasped, "Dora?" 

She just fled back upstairs without breakfast.

It's not even her throw pillow. Mum has snuck them in her old room sometime since she's been gone. Other things, too, an elegant white bowl to hold all the knuts and plastic hair clips and ticket stubs that were scattered across her chest of drawers. Mum's things, minimal and clean, make Tonks's stuff, the fairy lights and the thrashing band posters, seem like they're trying too hard. It's just like her last year at school, the stress-cracking of all the faultlines between who she is and who she is supposed to be. She was constantly reinventing herself back then—a new chin, a chelsea cut, a ring in her eyebrow. But she's not the only one in charge of her body anymore. It's making decisions without her.

And it's so shit to want Remus here to settle behind her on her squeaky old bed, tuck his bony knees into the parenthesis of her legs, stroke his skinny fingers up her arm and say, like he does, that he's sorry—but at the same time to want to scream at him so hard he vapourizes into a fine red mist.

In the afternoon, her mother does her two-tap no-time-to-pull-your-knickers-up knock and comes in with cups of tea.

"Your father tells me you've been looking ill."

"I'm not."

Andromeda sits on the side of the bed.

"You were a terrible pregnancy," she says. "I'd have sworn you were trying to fight me from the inside."

Tonks pulls her knees to her chest. "This one's a scrapper. I can tell already."

Andromeda smiles into her cup.

Tender moments have a way of making Tonks show her belly. Her mother doesn't say much, just sits and keeps her company, and before long Tonks is compelled to overshare. That she isn't even sure Remus ever really loved her, but maybe loved an idea of her that she led him on into believing while they were still just awkwardly clicking teeth in stolen moments at headquarters; an idea worn smooth and shiny by those months they were apart.

Almost as soon as she married him she was up the duff and puking, breaking out in spots faster than she could morph them away. Still having dreams that Sirius was just tilting on his heels—suspended in the moment he might have been saved—waking up choking. Remus seemed perturbed that she could spend hours staring at the telly, not watching, just trying to shush the noise in her head. It seems so stupid now, but she'd really thought that he, of all people, would understand.

"My mother used to tell me," Andromeda says, "that I'd better stop all my moping about, that men don't care for girls who brood. And that I'd never get married and out of her hair, acting that way."

"What did you say?"

"I didn't say anything. I made a plan and then I climbed out my window in the middle of the night. Your father picked me up in his old car and took me to his parents' flat—you know the story. Let me tell you, Nymphadora—" She pins Tonks with a look. "—how much brooding I did in his old bedroom. I was a wreck. The room smelt of some horrible potion he used on his model railway. The carpet crunched underfoot. And I was worried about what was going to happen to—to some of the people I left. I was crying every night. Waiting until your grandparents left for work in the morning to creep into the kitchen like a ghoul. I had..." She pulls her posture up straight. "Difficulty adjusting, at first."

Tonks's throat is getting tight, and tears are needling the rims of her eyes. It's not just that she's grabbed for that kind of love story and missed; it's also that her mother never talks to her like this—spilling the way Tonks sometimes does, talking fast, saying things she probably shouldn't. It makes the world feel all the more unfixably cracked.

"Dad—Was Dad...?" Tonks can't even finish, her voice is cracking and squeaking. She curls forward and hides her face in her mother's sleeve.

"He'd lie with me—and touch my hair. He used to tell me if I didn't eat I'd disappear and it was going to be very difficult to explain to the officiant why he had an invisible bride."

She says it gently, sadly, as if she knows what it'll do to Tonks, and she's right. It's full waterworks now, the type Tonks has always sworn she wasn't going to do over a bloke. It's coming out her eyes and nose, it's thick and salty in her mouth, it's getting all over her mum's silk blouse. She's going to hate that. Tonks flops back against her pillows, sniffling, wiping her face with her palms, automatically morphing the puffiness out of her eyelids.

Her mother turns to inspect the shiny web of snot Tonks has left on her sleeve. Her face gets that pinched, long-suffering look for just an instant. Then she takes Tonks's empty cup of tea and stacks it in her own, and tucks Tonks's feral bedhead back behind each ear with her cool fingers.

"Supper's at seven," she says. "Your father's trying out a lasagna."

She shuts the door behind her when she goes, and it's just Tonks and the frenzy of the rock bands on her walls: forever joyfully flailing, forever faithful to their own silent beat.

image: egon schiele, woman lying on her back

[drunkenworgen]

change: Has your OC ever drastically changed their appearance? Significant haircuts, big tattoos, complete wardrobe swap, etc? Why? How do they feel about the change?

Character design OC asks

(Accepting!)

In short: yes, she has.

Currently her hair is short, styled in an undercut with the left side shaved close to her head. She used to wear it in a long, loose ponytail, tied with a leather band. During a particularly bad bout of depression, she took a dagger and cut it off as a way to regain some sense of self. She let it grow back after this, but found she much preferred shorter hair and started keeping it that way soon after. It was quite a freeing experience.

As for tattoos and other body modifications? She has three tattoos, one brand, five ear piercings, and two piercings you only get to see if you’re one of her partners. The tattoos were purposeful and planned, and all have a meaning to her. The piercings were also planned, though she left Gilneas with one set of earrings and one tattoo, she decided to get more as a way to sort of reinvent herself. The brand on her back was necessary and painful. It keeps the Seed of the Void in check, and she may have died slightly while it was being applied. It’s fine. She’s fine now.

There was also a wardrobe swap simply from being in Gilneas as a guard to leaving Greymane’s service. She’d been toying with the idea of leaving for months prior to the Fall, and that was the last straw. Greymane could have prevented at least some of the destruction that happened, but he didn’t. So she went from the blues, greys, and golds of the Greyguard to a much darker color palette.

All in all, she’s happy with the changes, as they’ve allowed her to express herself in ways she was previously unable to for various reasons.

( @nixalegos )

[twistedtummies2]

Gathering of the Greatest Gumshoes - Number 11

Welcome to A Gathering of the Greatest Gumshoes! During this month-long event, I’ll be counting my Top 31 Favorite Fictional Detectives, from movies, television, literature, video games, and more!

SLEUTH-OF-THE-DAY’S QUOTE: “It really is very dangerous to believe people. I never have for years.”

Number 11 is…Miss Marple.

Miss Marple is one of the most popular characters created by Agatha Christie: a woman whom many consider to be the single greatest mystery writer in the history of English literature. (Yes, even more than Conan Doyle.) While Christie wrote many marvelous books, and created a number of equally marvelous characters, only two have managed to make this list. On the bright side, however, one will be in my oncoming Top 10 (I won’t say who, nor where they rank exactly), and Miss Marple herself only JUST misses out on making the same, which I’d say is pretty good.

I mentioned with Ellery Queen and Father Brown the idea of the “Accidental Detective” or “Busybody Detective.” I think many would argue that, at least in the world of literature, Miss Marple – while not the first of this kind (the aforementioned Father Brown predates her by about twenty years) – might have been the most popular and influential. Miss Marple is not a detective by profession in any regard; she’s not even a priest or an author. She is, in fact, a rather prim, elderly spinster lady, who lives largely alone in a fine old house, living a life of sublime comfort and seeming tranquility and peace. She is, some would argue, the single least likely of all unlikely detectives there have ever been. She’s old, she’s petite, she’s mild-mannered, has a few eccentricities…in short, she seems more like that kind, well-off grandmother or aunt down the road than a super sleuth.

Of course, a super sleuth is what Miss Marple is. Miss Marple doesn’t go out of her way to find crimes and solve them, but whenever a murder or some other injustice effectively falls into her lap, and she feels the police aren’t doing well enough to figure it out, she takes it upon herself to lend her assistance in solving the crime. Her age, her experience, and – much like with Father Brown – her plain common sense are her greatest assets. While Miss Marple is not typically harsh or unkind, it’s indicated that – even before taking up her "hobby" of solving befuddling crimes – she’s seen a lot of human injustices and cruelties. Under her gentle-hearted surface, she’s privately a bit jaded. She’s not grouchy or overtly cynical, but she's also never remotely shocked or startled when terrible things happen, nor particularly upset by any motive for them, because she’s seen it all. She understands human nature and its capacity for evil, so she trusts no one completely and sees no great surprises.

Once again, the character of Miss Marple is one who has been adapted many, MANY times over the years. The first highly popular interpretation onscreen was Margaret Rutherford: her somewhat comedic film takes on the Miss Marple stories actually reinvented the detective somewhat, accentuating her eccentricities and making her a more zany character than usual. While not really what Christie imagined, this version is still popular today. Other actresses who played the character in movies include Angela Lansbury and Helen Hayes. She’s also starred in a couple of TV shows; the most recent featured first Geraldine McEwan in the role, then later Julia McKenzie, after McEwan decided to retire from the series. Arguably the strangest interpretation was an anime with the very long title of “Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Poirot & Marple.” This series adapted various tales of Christie’s, including not only the Miss Marple books, but also several tales featuring her other most famous creation, Hercule Poirot. The two detectives were connected by an original character named Maybelle: a relative of Miss Marple who works for Poirot.

Most fans of Miss Marple seem to agree that the definitive screen portrayal of the character was Joan Hickson, who played the part in a TV series that ran from the mid-80s all the way into the early 90s. (She is the fine lady pictured here.) Hickson also narrated several audiobooks of the Marple stories, only adding to her legacy. To say she was right for the role is an understatement: long before being cast in the TV program, Hickson had appeared in a play based on Christie’s story “Appointment With Death.” The author was so taken with her performance, she later told Hickson that she felt, one day, the actress could be a perfect Miss Marple. As evident from critical reception since, this was a case of excellent judgment. No matter who you prefer in the role, considering that as recently as 2022 there were new Marple stories still being printed (obviously by contemporary authors; Christie’s work, in general, has many contemporary treatments to uncover, some better than others), it’s safe to say this grand old lady is still in the prime of her crime-solving life.

Tomorrow, the countdown enters the Top 10!

CLUE: “The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.”

[ziggyevenstar]

i don’t know how someone who messages you first thing in the morning, studies with you in the library before class, sits next to you in class, someone you walk to her dorm room after class, someone you talk to when you get home about cases and school stuff— could just become some stranger you’re shy to even send a message to.

a few years ago, Q unfriended everyone else in our friend group except for me. i’d like to think it was because law school for her was a toxic part of her life and we were a part of it so naturally she wanted to switch schools and let go of us too. i also like to think she didn’t unfriend me because we were the closest. we were— everyone knew that. she was never anywhere without me and i was never anywhere without her. still, there was this part of me that thought, “maybe she just forgot to unfriend me too”. she never replied to me for years (to all of us). i didn’t even know we were graduating the same year. i found out the same day we had our graduation. that was the first time in a long time we talked, and i kept pretending that nothing changed: law school was toxic for her, she wanted to reinvent herself, and whatever she was doing— cutting us off— it was all for her mental well-being. that’s all it was. and i respect that.

a few months ago i messaged her and we made plans. i don’t want to go into details about it but basically she offered to do this thing with me and i accepted. she made a commitment to me that entails us living together for almost a month. by this time i started to feel like we’re no longer the same people who were best friends but i was positive we could pick up where we left off. i messaged her last week about it because the deadline’s tomorrow and i have to know some details about this thing. she didn’t reply. the worst part was i was left on read. she didn’t even bother to just long press my message. i understand if she changed her mind, i understand if she got anxious, i understand if she realized that she didn’t want to live with me for a month— but i mean at least let me know. also she shouldn’t have offered. i messaged other people a few hours ago if i could join them instead, they all answered within a few minutes and said i could join them. so i guess problem solved. i just never had an experience like this and it’s awful to feel so much disappointment towards a friend,,, like i’m sorry but there’s no sweeping this under the rug, there’s no being mature about this, do not talk to me ever again

[xtruss]

One of the Greatest Westerns Ever Made Is Now Streaming After Decades in the Wilderness

After Years of Inaccessibility, Maggie Greenwald's "The Ballad of Little Jo" Is Newly Available on Blu-Ray And Streaming — Here's Why That's a Cause For Celebration.

— By Jim Hemphill | March 25, 2024

'The Ballad of Little Jo'Fine Line Features

Throughout most of the 1980s the Western was assumed to be a dead genre, certainly compared to the central role it once played in Hollywood’s construction of a national mythology. While there were occasional outliers like Lawrence Kasdan‘s “Silverado” and Clint Eastwood‘s “Pale Rider,” for the most part the responsibility the genre had to reflect and shape American values was taken up by either science fiction movies like “The Terminator” (which fulfilled the Western’s function as an exploration of the changes wrought on society by evolving technology) or urban cop films like “48HRS.” and Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” sequels, which transposed the form’s archetypes and moral questions to a contemporary setting. Although the decade closed out with the successful “Young Guns,” that film was an anomaly whose success probably had more to do with its cast of attractive teen idols.

Then something funny happened in the early ’90s: Right as Hollywood seemed to have given up on the Western, it came roaring back with a vengeance and yielded the most varied, complex, and satisfying group of films since the glory days of John Ford and Delmer Daves. The box office and awards success of Kevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves” in 1990, followed by Clint Eastwood’s triumphant return to the genre in 1992 with “Unforgiven,” suddenly made Westerns commercially viable again, and filmmakers who had been biding their time were able to will their dream projects into production. Lawrence Kasdan returned to the genre for the underrated and ambitious “Wyatt Earp,” Walter Hill made two of his best films with “Geronimo: An American Legend” and “Wild Bill,” and talented directors like Jim Jarmusch (“Dead Man”), Sam Raimi (“The Quick and the Dead”), and Melvin Van Peebles (“Posse”) made Westerns as different from each other — and as equally nourishing — as one might expect.

One of the best of the ’90s Westerns has also been one of the most difficult to see, but a special edition Blu-ray release in December and a streaming premiere this month have rescued it from years of inaccessibility. When writer-director Maggie Greenwald‘s “The Ballad of Little Jo” was released in 1993, its relationship to the other Westerns of the time was a bit of a coincidence — Greenwald had written the script before “Unforgiven” — but there’s no question that her film, like the best 1950s Westerns of Budd Boetticher, Howard Hawks, and Sam Fuller, benefited from the comparisons and contrasts enabled by being part of a recognizable tradition. Like those directors, Greenwald was brilliant at using the language of the Western as a shorthand, expressing her point of view not only by what she depicted and how but by where her treatment of the material paid tribute to the Westerns that had come before and where it deviated.

“The Ballad of Little Jo” is based on the true story of a society woman (played brilliantly by Suzy Amis in a performance that deserves to be spoken of in the same breath with James Stewart’s work in the Anthony Mann Westerns) who, shunned by her family after giving birth out of wedlock, rides West and reinvents herself as a man – Josephine Monaghan becomes “Little Jo” Monaghan, a successful sheep farmer who, like the characters in “Shane,” “Heaven’s Gate,” and dozens (hundreds?) of other earlier Westerns, defends her land against an evil corporation. Along the way, she sidesteps the advances of a young woman who sees her as a potential husband and carries on a romance with a Chinese laborer (the only person who knows her true gender) while becoming friends with a guide and mentor named Badger, played by Bo Hopkins in a role that can’t help but evoke associations with Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch.”

The casting of Hopkins gives the viewer a clue to what Greenwald is up to, as she slyly references and honors not only Peckinpah but a whole history of American Westerns at the same time that she finds new directions for the genre. Much as Hopkins retains the strengths of his performances in Westerns like “The Wild Bunch,” “The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing,” and “The Culpepper Cattle Co.” while also revealing new layers of sensitivity, the film as a whole delivers the satisfactions of Westerns — “The Magnificent Seven,” “The Gunfighter,” “Shane” — that explore both the liberation of a life defined by rugged individualism and its limitations, but deepens and expands on the mythology. Part of this is inherent in the premise, and most of it is due to Greenwald’s probing intelligence and unerring visual sense.

Suzy Amis, 1993, “The Ballad of Little Jo”©Fine Line Features/Courtesy Everett Collection

Most Westerns are about masculinity and how America defines what it means to “be a man,” and many of the best entries in the genre have been films that delve into the contradictions and complexities of the question. By telling the story of a woman who lives her life as a man in the old West, Greenwald explores traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity through a different lens than just about every other Western ever made, even ostensibly female-driven works like “Bad Girls” and “The Quick and the Dead” which, while both have considerable strengths, don’t really engage with the issue on a deep level. Like most Westerns, “The Ballad of Little Jo” takes place in a world where maleness is glorified as a source of power and progress, a fact that Greenwald sharply interrogates via the unique perspective Little Jo’s character provides. Greenwald asks the viewer to consider and reconsider ideas many Westerns (and American films in general) take for granted by posing two simple questions: What does Little Jo gain by becoming a man, and what does she lose?

Greenwald uses familiar conventions both the traditional way and with a spin that gives them a whole new dimension. One of the hoariest cliches in the Western, for example, is that of the “redemptive woman,” the schoolmarm or minister’s sister who exists in the movie to civilize the hero and help him assimilate into society. In “Little Jo,” the redemptive woman is a man, but by making him Chinese — and therefore “lesser” and isolated in the eyes of the white men in the film — Greenwald plays with ideas of power, gender, race, and economics (Jo’s lover works as her handyman) and explores how they intersect in fluid and fascinating ways. The ways in which the viewer is expected to understand these issues are irrevocably affected by seeing them through the eyes of a woman who is pretending to be a man; long before the end of the movie, the line between “male” virtues and “female” ones — a defining feature of many classical Westerns — has been satisfyingly and provocatively blurred.

The pleasures of the film are not merely or even primarily ideological; part of Greenwald’s greatness is how organically woven into the narrative these ideas are. There’s nothing anachronistic about the film, even though, like all great period movies, it’s an equally valuable reflection of the time in which it takes place, the time of its release, and the time in which you’re watching it. Greenwald has the confidence not to force or overstate her ideas but just sets the drama in motion and lets the audience draw their own conclusions.

From left, Rene Auberjonois, Suzy Amis, 1993, “The Ballad of Little Jo” ©Fine Line Features/courtesy Everett/Everett Collection

She also provides a textured and expressive visual experience for the viewer that makes “The Ballad of Little Jo” one of the most purely gorgeous independent films of its era, and also a Western with a distinct look. Other directors had taken pleasure in the small details and nuances of day-to-day living in the old West — Robert Altman in “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” Walter Hill in “The Long Riders,” Budd Boetticher in his detailed depictions of what it really meant to be a cowboy tending to a horse — but Greenwald takes it as far as anyone ever did, focusing not only on where Little Jo lives, but how and why, and how the simultaneously beautiful and forbidding landscape informs her choices. The movie is filled with specific pieces of costume and production design that allow the viewer to ponder the frontier existence in all its particulars, not just its sweeping vistas; it’s an intimate approach that perfectly complements Greenwald’s efforts for us to see everything through Jo’s perspective.

At the same time, “The Ballad of Little Jo” has a sweeping, epic quality that belies its limited budget, as well as a giddy embrace of some of the Western’s most basic pleasures. When Little Jo, in a sense, “conquers” her territory and succeeds on both her own terms and society’s, it’s immensely satisfying, and her sense of freedom is intoxicating. Yet just as Gregory Peck in “The Gunfighter” or the guns for hire in “The Magnificent Seven” are trapped in their roles, Jo is trapped by successfully becoming a man — she can’t escape her role any more than Steve McQueen could escape his. Greenwald ends the film with an allusion to another great Western, John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” with her own take on the idea that “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Like everything else in the film, Greenwald’s perspective on this topic is complex, ambivalent, and, to a degree, open-ended, inviting the audience to continue the discussion after the film is over.

In a sense, Greenwald is doing what the best Western directors have always done despite the “revisionist” label erroneously attached to the ’90s films in the genre. The best Western directors have always been revisionist — John Ford cleverly subverted the idea of the redemptive woman back in 1939, for example, when he made her a prostitute in the same movie where he made the villain the most extreme representative of capitalist philosophy. Like “Stagecoach” — or “Red River,” or “High Noon,” or “Buck and the Preacher,” or any of the other all-time great Westerns — “The Ballad of Little Jo” looks both back and forward.

Also like those films, it’s a singular personal statement. Given that Greenwald was the first woman to write and direct a wide-release American Western in the sound era, it’s hard not to draw parallels between her own journey and Little Jo’s, forging her way forward in a male-dominated field and choosing what to retain and what to discard — and like her heroine, showing everyone else how it’s done. One doesn’t need to know anything about Greenwald or the production history of her film or even its context as a ’90s Western to enjoy it, though; it stands on its own as a masterpiece that has always deserved to be better known and more easily accessed. Its renewed availability is a cause for celebration and an opportunity to rediscover an American classic.

“The Ballad of Little Jo” is currently streaming at Kino Film Collection and is available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber.

[basilone]

and another, for the 5 line meme - 'new heaven and new earth' for Ron and whoever you want, but it has to be an AU!

Ahem, nobody should count the amount of sentences in this baby because I'm pretty sure there are more than five? But I can't shorten this, and these feelings need to happen. It's a continuation of the popstar/rockstar AU that I wrote a little bit for here! 💚

new heaven and new earth

“Listen to this,” she crows, folding herself into the tight space between him and the armchair’s rest, all cloud of glitter and blonde hair fanning out over his dark shirt, “they are talking about album”– and she is on her phone again, fingers of one hand scrolling the screen effortlessly while her other hand pats his knee –“they call it shocking, Ronald,” she laughs, so clearly excited at the prospect, “let me read for you, yes?”

He peers over her shoulder – small as she is, tucked under his arm, it takes no effort at all – and frowns as he takes in a slightly more reputable website than the regular gossip sites he thought she might favor for this, finding some online music magazine that’s pretty well-sourced despite their continuous critique of his albums and live shows on her screen right now, and spies his own name appearing several times on that page alone.

“Speirs,” she reads out loud – and isn’t it strange, hearing his last name from her when she always calls him Ronald? – while nestling herself against his side, “is of course no stranger to c-o-n-t-r-o-v-e-r-s-y”– and she spells that out the way she always does the English words she doesn’t like to pronounce –“with his stage shows often a bath of fake blood and dimly lit violence, pfah Ronald they are acting like you are cuh-razy,” she dismisses offhand before continuing, “and his formerly heavy social media fight with Tatiana precedes the frenzy that is his shocking guest appearance on her latest album, titled new heaven and new earth, and the growing rumors that Speirs is credited as co-author in its liner notes in what looks to be a reinvention of Tatiana’s image.”

“They’re right about that liner notes bit,” he says, remembering her neat cursive penning him into the credits of her album unprompted, “but I’m not doing this because it’s controversial”– he could have just staged her murder when she showed up at his gig three months ago, given her too-pretty face the Carrie treatment of fake blood, made her the haunting thing he sings about night after night –“and you’re not reinventing a damn, look at you,” he mutters, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear as her bubblegum makes a loud popping sound, “you’re still the fucking beauty queen, all sparkly and wholesome, except that you’ve just about remembered you’ve got a bite to you.”

“The bite’s new,” she says, worries, exhales, and her voice is too small all of a sudden, “and I am doing something with my voice that–”

“Sounds perfect,” he interrupts, plucking her phone out of her fingers and throwing it onto the much bigger couch opposite their seat, “and don’t you make yourself small, you’re already too tiny as it is”– and her annoyed huff is just what he’d hoped to hear, even when the elbow that lands in his side is too sharp –“just fuck what they say, Tatia, they don’t know you like I do.”

He doesn’t realize how badly he’s messed up – he never calls her Tatia out loud, never admits to knowing her so well even though he’s spent every waking moment of new heaven and new earth’s recording sessions with her this past month – until she turns toward him and he spies the flicker of gold-specked light in her eyes that he’s only ever seen from her when she cares about what happens next.

[girluntilurcall]

⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ biography .

molly o'shea was born in dublin , ireland , into a life of luxury . the only daughter of an aristocratic , high-society catholic family . her father was a businessman , owning shipping lines that brought wealth and prestige to their name . her mother , a refined woman of impeccable grace , ensured that molly was raised with all the poise and etiquette expected of a lady of her status . from the moment she could walk , molly was dressed in the finest silks , meals were the most exquisite , and her education was of the highest standard .

she was raised in a grand townhouse overlooking the river liffey , where she spent her days reading poetry , learning music , and engaging in the social obligations of a young woman destined for a comfortable life . tutors came and went , ensuring she could speak french and spanish , play the piano , and dance gracefully at the lavish balls her parents often hosted .

despite all the wealth and privilege , molly always felt suffocated . no one listened when she expressed her longing for something more . a life beyond glided cages , beyond arranged marriages and whispered gossip in candlelit halls . the adventure she read about in books , the freedom she longed for—it seemed impossibly out of reach .

then , one day , she saw her chance .

america . the land of the free . a place where one could reinvent themselves , where the old rules did not apply . she read about the untamed frontier , the outlaws and revolutionaries who carved their own destinies from nothing . it was reckless , foolish even , but she didn’t care .

with stolen jewelry and a heart full of romantic notions , she boarded a ship , leaving behind the only life she had ever known . the journey across the atlantic was long , and for the first time , molly experienced what it meant to be without comfort . the ship was crowded , full of other people who , like her , sought a new life . she kept to herself , clutching her books and the pocket mirror that was given to her , reminding herself that this was worth it .

upon arriving in america , she did not know where to go or what to do . the world did not open its arms to her as she had imagined . she was a young woman alone in a country that did not care for her beauty or her high birth . she was not special here . her accent , her refined ways , they made her stand out , and not always in a good way .

and then , she met him .

dutch van der linde . a man unlike anyone she had ever encountered . he was older , charming , intelligent , and , most importantly , he spoke like a man who truly believed in something greater . he reminded her of the revolutionaries in the books she had read—idealistic , powerful , unafraid . he promised freedom , adventure , a purpose . he made her feel seen . he made her feel loved . and so , she followed him .

at first , it was everything she wanted . she was dutch's woman , draped in new finery , exempt from the drudgery of camp life . she thought she had found where she belonged . but as the months passed , the cracks are beginning to show .

now , she's trapped . alone in a world she barely understands , tied to a man who no longer sees her , surrounded by people who do not care whether she stays or goes . she watches as dutch turns his attention to another woman , a younger woman , just as he once did with her . she tries to warn them , tries to make them see what's going wrong , but no one listens . no one ever listens .

molly o'shea , the girl who once dreamed of adventure , is now waiting for an ending she cannot escape .

⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ dossier .

NAME: molly o'shea .

AGE: 25 .

GENDER AND PRONOUNS: cisgender female , she / her .

HEIGHT: 5'4'' .

ORIENTATION: bisexual / biromantic .

APPERANCE: molly has curly copper-red hair in a half-up half-down hairstyle , emerald green eyes , and freckles all over her body . molly wears alot of makeup , most notably eyeshadow and red lipstick . molly most commonly dresses in a corseted , low-cut, green top with a golden-gilded pattern and trim with matching golden jewelry , as well as a long dark red skirt and a gold necklace with a real ruby gem in it and pearl earrings , and white button boots with a small heel . the top is much higher on her waist and it is fancy , very tight , showing off her neck , collarbones and most of her cleavage . her skirt is a very saturated shade of red , and it is tiered with shining gold ribbon around each layer . the style does not feel like her own choosing .

[crystals-of-light]

Starfall Sunday

Does your OC hold onto hope for a better future? For themselves? For those they love? Or for their society?

She doesn't really think that far ahead, honestly. Her mind and thoughts tend to inhabit the moment rather than planning for the future, or dwelling on the past.

Has your OC ever made a conscious decision to make a fresh start? Or have they even reinvented themselves completely? What did they hope to leave behind? Was it truly possible to do so?

She dos try a bit to mold herself to Thancred's image, but she is mostly true to herself, and she is still figuring that self out.

Is your OC skilled in repairing or rebuilding what is broken or worn? Or would they sooner dispose of something and replace it with something new and (perhaps) better?

Poor thing is all thumbs. All thumbs. She prefers to just get a new thing when she's broken the old beyond basic repairs with tape or the like.

Does your OC find their moods affected by the seasons? Do they struggle more during colder and darker months? Or do they find unique pleasure in each season?

She whines a lot more when it's cold, but ultimately she doesn't have too many issues with it. She just doesn't like it. XD

What would social or cultural renewal mean to your OC? A return to a previous golden age of freedom, tradition or peace? Or a fresh beginning for society into something new and enhanced?

Again, that's not really something she thinks about all too often. The future is for other people, she lives day to day and goes with the idea that every day is brand new, and something to take advantage of as much as possible.

[rockislandadultreads]

LGBTQIA+ Pride Month: Romance Recommendations

Solomon’s Crown by Natasha Siegel

“A pair of thrones between us, and my heart clutched like a rosary within his hands ...”

Twelfth-century Europe. Newly-crowned King Philip of France is determined to restore his nation to its former empire and bring glory to his name. But when his greatest enemy, King Henry of England, threatens to end his reign before it can even begin, Philip is forced to make a precarious alliance with Henry’s volatile son—risking both his throne, and his heart.

Richard, Duke of Aquitaine, never thought he would be King. But when an unexpected tragedy makes him heir to England, he finally has an opportunity to overthrow the father he despises. At first, Philip is a useful tool in his quest for vengeance... until passion and politics collide, and Richard begins to question whether the crown is worth the cost.

When Philip and Richard find themselves staring down an impending war, they must choose between their desire for one another and their grand ambitions. Will their love prevail, if it calls to them from across the battlefield? Teeming with royal intrigue and betrayal, this epic romance reimagines two real-life kings ensnared by an impossible choice: Follow their hearts, or earn their place in history.

Love & Other Disasters by Anita Kelly

Recently divorced and on the verge of bankruptcy, Dahlia Woodson is ready to reinvent herself on the popular reality competition show Chef’s Special. Too bad the first memorable move she makes is falling flat on her face, sending fish tacos flying—not quite the fresh start she was hoping for. Still, she's focused on winning, until she meets someone she might want a future with more than she needs the prize money.

After announcing their pronouns on national television, London Parker has enough on their mind without worrying about the klutzy competitor stationed in front of them. They’re there to prove the trolls—including a fellow contestant and their dad—wrong, and falling in love was never part of the plan.

As London and Dahlia get closer, reality starts to fall away. Goodbye, guilt about divorce, anxiety about uncertain futures, and stress from transphobia. Hello, hilarious shenanigans on set, wedding crashing, and spontaneous dips into the Pacific. But as the finale draws near, Dahlia and London’s steamy relationship starts to feel the heat both in and outside the kitchen—and they must figure out if they have the right ingredients for a happily ever after.

I’m So (Not) Over You by Kosoko Jackson

It's been months since aspiring journalist Kian Andrews has heard from his ex-boyfriend, Hudson Rivers, but an urgent text has them meeting at a café. Maybe Hudson wants to profusely apologize for the breakup. Or confess his undying love... But no, Hudson has a favor to ask--he wants Kian to pretend to be his boyfriend while his parents are in town, and Kian reluctantly agrees.

The dinner doesn't go exactly as planned, and suddenly Kian is Hudson's plus one to Georgia's wedding of the season. Hudson comes from a wealthy family where reputation is everything, and he really can't afford another mistake. If Kian goes, he'll help Hudson preserve appearances and get the opportunity to rub shoulders with some of the biggest names in media. This could be the big career break Kian needs.

But their fake relationship is starting to feel like it might be more than a means to an end, and it's time for both men to fact-check their feelings.

Sizzle Reel by Carlyn Greenwald

For aspiring cinematographer Luna Roth, coming out as bisexual at twenty-four is proving more difficult than she anticipated. Sure, her best friend and fellow queer Romy is thrilled for her--but she has no interest in coming out to her backwards parents, she wouldn't know how to flirt with a girl if one fell at her feet, and she has no sexual history to build off. Not to mention she really needs to focus her energy on escaping her emotionally-abusive-but-that's-Hollywood talent manager boss and actually get working under a real director of photography anyway.

When she meets twenty-eight-year-old A-list actress Valeria Sullivan around the office, Luna thinks she's found her solution. She'll use Valeria's interest in her cinematography to get a PA job on the set of Valeria's directorial debut--and if Valeria is as gay as Luna suspects, and she happens to be Luna's route to losing her virginity, too . . . well, that's just an added bonus. Enlisting Romy's help, Luna starts the juggling act of her life--impress Valeria's DP to get another job after this one, get as close to Valeria as possible, and help Romy with her own career moves.

But when Valeria begins to reciprocate romantic interest in Luna, the act begins to crumble--straining her relationship with Romy and leaving her job prospects precarious. Now Luna has to figure out if she can she fulfill her dreams as a filmmaker, keep her best friend, and get the girl. . . or if she's destined to end up on the cutting room floor.