Finally done with my chibis of Cardan and Jude! I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I put so much effort into their clothes and hair. I know this isn’t the hairstyle she wore with this dress, but it was so iconic for her I just had to draw it.
You can buy prints and stickers of this at my RedBubble!
This story was first created between myself and a dear friend of mine. We wanted to write a fun fanfic story about a bunch of different metal bands. We created our own characters, picked a band name, and decided we wanted to try and write the wildest story we could following the characters. Ten years later it’s evolved into this thing that lives rent free in our hearts, mine especially. We got some 40 or 50 chapters in on the original draft and after complications of the site it was originally posted on crashing, which caused us to lose 5 chapters, plus getting caught up with life, it sat and collected dust for a while.
While it was shelved, we still constantly discussed ideas and characters and finally, about 5 years ago, we sat down and really plotted the story out, revised some things, and created a new character or two. We got so far into a re-write before life got in the way again. With permission of my lovely friend, I’ve taken the story over, because we didn’t put so much love into this for it to just sit and not have anything be done with it. That said, for the first 12 or so chapters, anything that’s written from River’s POV, I cannot take credit for.
Everything from about that point on will be written by me, though it was planned in great detail by myself and my friend.
As I said this is a fanfic, featuring more than a few of our favorite bands. We’ve taken some liberties with this, of course, and therefore I feel a need to ADAMENTLY state that nothing in this piece of writing has ever happened and that everything is entirely a work of fiction. This piece is meant to be a love letter to heavy metal, to these bands, and to the art of storytelling. Maybe one day I’ll take the time to sit down and reimagine this little world that my friend and I have created and turn it into something completely original, but it is definitely not this day.
All that said, I do hope whoever picks this up enjoys it.
Content Warning: this has a little bit of language. It’s just a bit of an intro.
Word count: 695
River
Stockholm, Sweden
The lights dimmed in such a way that made the energy peak in a matter of heartbeats. The crowd’s voice rose as one, a mighty roar with a chant echoing behind it:
“Memento Mori!”
A mantra repeated again and again.
Remember that you will die.
Harsh, but undeniably true. We all succumbed to the harsh realities of life with the only certainty being that everyone would, in fact, die in the end.
But though that was the only certainty of the future at this point, I chose to divert my eyes to the present, to the sliver between the curtains where thousands of emotional faces conjoined with their chanting. Bodies of all ages and sizes and backgrounds here to marvel at our gift.
Scott handed me one of my guitars, a Kirk Hammett signature ESP (fitting for the song about to be played), customized only to feature my signature camo paint job. I looped the leather strap over my neck, letters scrawled “RY”. River Young. The joke was that the initials were my name so the crew found it appropriate to identify me as Ry. But the strap was my first, worn and scathed from years of travel, given to me by a man I owed my life to. “Good luck,” Scott said and we clasped hands in a second of comradery, guitarist and the tech who kept her life organized.
Low thrumming came from Oblivion’s bass guitar and I forced myself back to the present again, the screaming of the crowd demanding my attention. The first of our brigade had snuck up on stage without their detection. I made my way up the ramp to the back of the stage, Tygo—our fearless and indescribably patient manager—slapping my hand in a low-five as I went by. The drums, a steady beat of snare and symbols, joined the thrumming, the pulsing, my own heart rate picking up to match the tempo.
Before I was even fully on the stage, I began strumming out the solid riff of Metallica’s iconic Orion. Jess’ guitar doubled mine as we both strutted onto the stage, the lights coming up in a blinding wave. The screaming intensified.
“Are you motherfuckers ready to party?” Jess called into her microphone as I took a stand to her right. The crowd’s volume rose. In a Children of Bodom tank topped with a leather jacket, black tendrils falling down her back, she looked like a well-entitled member of metal royalty. “I can’t hear you!” More clamoring for recognition.
I begin to strum out the chords, fingers dancing down the neck of the guitar, letting the strings sing. Oblivion hammered on his bass across the stage from me, the humanized representation of his instrument. Broad shoulders, long thick pitch black hair, chiseled facial structure. This song was one of his favorites; you could see it by the intensity in his expression, tightness in his shoulders.
His twin brother, Avaalon, matched the pace with his drums, crimson hair whipping around his head as he jammed out from the back of the stage, our insignia proudly displayed on the bass drum. A grinning grim reaper, Memento Mori painted in blood red across it.
Kristian had appeared last, tapping out the notes for his own keyboard arrangement, making the whole song sound a bit more on our end of the genre. Symphonic metal with the traces of death metal that Jessii thrived on. Kris, the only one with short hair—almond colored—already grinning like it was Christmas morning as his fingers charged away across the white surface of his keyboard.
As my own hands continued their job, I marveled at these individuals as if it were our first time performing together. All so different, all so very wounded and beat up from life. We were a little fucked up and alone to start with, but what brought us together is also what helped us heal. And that’s what came from the guitars, Oblivion’s bass, Kristian’s keys, Avaalon’s drums, and Jessii’s voice; the music we had been making together for the last four years. I was not looking at band mates or even friends. They were my family.
Favorite Thing About Them: It varies from version to version, since her personality is a little different in each retelling, but most common among all is the fact that she never lets her hard life make her bitter or destroy her kindness. Even in versions where she is bitter and not always kind (for example, Leslie Caron’s The Glass Slipper), there’s still a clear spark of warmth and goodness within her that her stepfamily can’t extinguish and which is eventually rewarded.
Least Favorite Thing About Them: This isn’t her fault, of course, but the fact that in most versions she’s beautiful while her stepsisters are ugly or plain, implicitly linking beauty with goodness and worth. This probably explains why so many modern retellings either make the stepsisters beautiful too or give one of them a redemption arc. The latter choice fits with Perrault’s comment that the younger sister was less bad than the older one anyway.
Three Things I Have in Common With Them:
*I love pretty clothes.
*Like Disney’s Cinderella, I love animals.
*Like most versions of her, I always try to be kind.
Three Things I Don’t Have in Common With Them:
*I’ve never been abused or treated like a slave.
*I don’t have small feet.
*I’m not very good at housework (not that Cinderella is naturally good at it, per se, she’s just had plenty of forced practice).
Favorite Line:
This passage from the Disney version:
Oh, that clock! Old killjoy. I hear you. “Come on, get up,” you say, “Time to start another day.” Even he orders me around. Well, there’s one thing. They can’t order me to stop dreaming. And perhaps someday… (sings)
….THE DREAMS THAT I WISH WILL COME TRUE.
This is an excellent quote to cite whenever anyone claims (either as praise or as a criticism) that Cinderella is always passive and “never complains.“ Here she’s unabashedly complaining and annoyed at being jarred out of her dreams and forced to start another day of hard work and insults from her stepfamily. But at the end, we find the real key to her character: the thing that helps her survive and saves her from becoming hard and bitter. It’s that she never gives up hope.
And from the 1997 version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, when she prays to her father’s spirit in the garden after the Stepmother insults her following the ball:
“Father, I know I promised that I’d never leave here, but after tonight, I don’t see how I can stay. If you only knew how she’s changed, you’d understand. I deserve better, Father. I deserve to be loved. And that’s what I found out tonight, and that’s all that really matters.”
BROTP: Her Fairy Godmother, and in the Disney version the mice and birds.
OTP: The Prince.
NOTP: Her Stepmother, or. in the case of the opera La Cenerentola, her stepfather Don Magnifico.
Random Headcanon: As a princess and later a queen, she’ll always respect her servants, employees and subjects as equals to herself, and be renowned for her fair, generous treatment of them. She’ll also be a particular advocate for orphans and other children in need.
Unpopular Opinion: The Cinderella of the Disney version and other traditional retellings deserves all the defense in the world; to disparage her as a weakling for “letting” her stepfamily abuse her and being “helpless” without her Fairy Godmother is victim-blaming. That said, retellings like Three Wishes for Cinderella, Ella Enchanted, Ever After, Cinder, Mechanica, et al, that feature a feistier, less conventionally sweet and more proactive Cinderella are welcome too. There’s room for both types of Cinderella, just like there’s room for both types of women in the real world.
Song I Associate With Them:
Disney’s classic, "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes.”
“In My Own Little Corner” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical. (Actually I’m tempted to list every song from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s score.)
“Non piú mesta accanto al fuoco” (”No longer sad beside the fire”) – her triumphant final aria from La Cenerentola.
The title song from the 1935 Betty Boop cartoon Poor Cinderella:
Favorite Pictures of Them:
This illustration by Edmund Dulac:
This illustration by Arthur Rackham:
This illustration of the Grimms’ Aschenputtel by Elen Abbot:
Disney’s Cinderella:
Yanina Zhejmo in the 1947 Russian film version:
Leslie Caron’s scrappy gamine Ella from 1955’s The Glass Slipper:
This illustration by Kinuko Craft:
Brandy Norwood’s 1997 Rodgers and Hammerstein Cinderella, with Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother:
Laura Osnes in the Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical, 2013:
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