#askerose

[patron-saints]

VOID im here to hear about your blorbo i feel like youve mentioned Sibling Things can you tell me about Sibling Things im dying to hear about Sibling Things

oh captain my captain you don’t know how kind you are being to your communications officer today. holy shit. ALL I WANNA DO IS TALK ABOUT SIBLING THINGS.

ok so imagine you are an older sister and your kid sister is disabled and your dad spent your whole childhood infantilizing her and neglecting you and making you take care of her and teaching her to expect your care and so eventually the only way you knew how to show your sister you loved her was through service and the only way she knew how to ask for your love was for asking for you to do things. and imagine you loved each other so much and would do anything for each other.

now imagine you are a younger sister and your older sister left for a day trip to go see the wizard and not only did she not come back for you she became public enemy number one and you don’t know why and then your dad died and you had to run a country without him and without her and you made some really bad choices and you kinda hate yourself and when she gets back after years and years with no word she has the audacity to ask YOU to help HER even though she was supposed to always take care of YOU

anyway. um. they make me ill. like it’s so sad because they so so badly want things to be okay and to fix things but like. service is the ONLY way they know how. they can’t talk about it, they don’t have the words, they just have this love and care and hurt they can’t express right.

[patron-saints]

say some things you like about nessarose QUICKLY 🫵‼️

oh god oh god ok

i like how articulate she is!!! how diplomatic, how charming! i love the way she talks so much she's like a little british doll 2 me!

i like her anger--esp musical nessie's--i like that she's a character who is allowed to be angry--with herself, with her circumstances, with her loved ones--even if it isn't always the "right" response

i like how many different nessaroses and ways to play nessarose there are on this beautiful earth, how some of them are more princessy and some are more babygirl and some of them are howling in pain with no one to hear it and i love that all of those ARE nessarose because she is everyone who has ever played her and MORE

i like her sense of humor--esp book nessa's--so deeply dry and belays the fact that she is constantly watching and paying attention to everything

i like her opinions, her principals, her relationship to religion, i like that she cares about things so truthfully and passionately and is willing to defend them

i like her relationship with elphaba in the book the movie and the musical

i like her relationship with glinda too and i wish we saw more of it

i like how in the book when she gets older she tries so hard to figure out how to do things for herself

i like how she can be so sweet and so deeply kind and also so terrifying

i like her face, i think she's pretty cute

i like how her relationship with her disability is something that evolves throughout her story and throughout the media she is portrayed in

ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm oh yeah and i love everything we've come up with together about her :)

for legal reasons this is not a complete list i wrote this shit so fast my fingers hurt

but feel free to tell me things i forgot about things i like about nessarose or things you like about nessarose

[patron-saints]

please talk to me about what you would like to see in terms of new Nessa scenes in for good. do you have any specific ideas for dialogue you think would be good? What about shots? etc etc

hi astor thank you astor i love you astor

i mean first of all. i hope to god above we actually get new nessarose scenes. because like, my "no fears" -> "one fear" pipeline is just. no new nessarose scenes. i am OPTIMISTIC, because as @festivating pointed out to me (and you and i talked about at length also) she has two different outfits in the crumbs of teaser/trailer materials we've gotten so far, which means in all likelihood there WILL be more than one scene.

but actually "one fear" is a joke, because everything about the prospect of nessa in the new movie scares me sooooo bad. like, ok, maybe we get a flashblack! that could be fun and interesting! but what if they don't get the tone right and it just makes people hate her more than they do already? i would love to see an in-between state nessa especially because she's a character SO divided in halves between the acts for me, but i'm SO scared about what that could look like.

something i think i would actually want to see more of is. ok well everyone knows i'm going to say this but elphaba and nessa dialogue. actually my DREAM is that they'll do a flashback to scenes of them at shiz we didn't get to see in the first movie so when elphaba and her are falling apart in wwote it hurts people more. i want everyone to suffer like i suffer.

another thing i want them to fix is the just complete lack of logic in wwote. like. boq.... says he can't leave. and then right after elphaba's spell is cast he's like ok! i'm leaving! like dude nothing changed for you in terms of How The Law works. make it make sense. i need it to make sense.

one thing i am like TERRIFIED of also is that they'll make her death longer/more visible and i almost sort of want that and then also at the same time i'm like AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA cuz i'm already sure i'm gonna sob in the theatre no matter how intensely they cover it.

oh oh and my even more far out dream that will never ever happen is glinda and nessa get a scene togetherrrrr. please jon i would kill for it

all in all i hope they "make it clear to us that [nessa and boq's relationship] is an unbalanced toxic relationship that uses class differences to keep one member trapped without portraying nessa as physically abusive or intentionally malicious and gives her space to be a sympathetic character" to quote, um. you. <3

[patron-saints]

have you read the book? if so what’s your opinion on book nessarose

hi anon!! thanks for coming by!

i have read the book! i ADORE book!nessie. she’s charming. she’s horrible. she’s hilarious!

i think maguire did a poor job in writing her disability realistically. he wrote her main issue as being w/ balance, but people with no arms are generally Better at balance due to doing most stuff with their feet—which she doesn’t do either. i think there’s a good watsonian explanation for that, which is that frex did not want her to have any autonomy or self-sufficiency, and discouraged her from learning how to do that. but i honestly think maguire just didn’t know, especially because she Does try to gain some autonomy later in the book in really bizarre ways, like having four copies open of the same book. girl just use your toes.

anyway. i think the fact that her fixation is on religion instead of on romance is REALLY interesting. both her and elphaba were traumatized by religion growing up, and for elphaba it made her an atheist, and for nessa it made her a zealot.

she is not a good person and religion doesn’t make her a better one, but it helps her survive the trauma of elphaba leaving.

as does glinda!! i love their relationship in the book SO much! i’m so glad they HAVE a relationship. i love that they were able to get closer and i love that it’s glinda that cast the spell on the shoes—it makes her feeling like she has a reason to give them to dorothy make SLIGHTLY more sense too.

aiugh. sorry i’m rambling because i’m slightly distracted and also i love her so much. ok.

i love her introduction, i love when she’s like a whiny little baby asking to go to the sex club and she doesn’t even know it’s a sex club, and i love her two full page monologue she does when elphaba’s visits as a set up just to insult her.

also i love the sisters relationship in the book too!!! it makes a lot of their codependency more clear, the ways they care for each other too.

what about you anon? what do you think of her?

[patron-saints]

happy birthday loveliest friend!! if you could give nessa main character status in some true witches of oz media, what would that look like/how would you expand her role? if that's too big, what are your favorite differences between the 3 nessas?

hiiiiii cass <3 thank you so much for the ask!!

if i could give nessa main character status in a witches of oz media i think the biggest and most important thing to do would be INCREASE SCREEN TIME. genuinely just GETTING her IN MORE SCENES. like if they can add glinda to wonderful we can add nessa to popular. or one short day. take her with you. she can third wheel it's fine.

i mean also if it's not a wicked adaptation, if it's a Wizard Of Oz adaptation, i think there are genuinely infinite possibilities of what incorporating East could look like, but focusing on like, why the shoes are important to West is a big part of it, and you can DO that by showcases their relationship more. i know you and i talked about the shoes being a Home Spell instead and i think i also saw @spiribia talking about this once? like. if the shoes are always designed to take you home, giving your little sister shoes that take you home makes sense for both the sentimental nature of their dynamic/why she wants them back AND also as a woz adaptation.

i think also, something i have been TRYING to find the words for for a long long time, is a struggle that i have with like, the idea of wicked (especially the musical) being a story that makes you believe the wicked witch of the west is not actually that wicked, that it is all just propaganda? and i would love to play with the idea of writing a like. what would that look like if that was also true for the wicked witch of the east? what kind of person was she, Really, if we can't take singing munchkinlanders at their word?

but i don't know! maybe there isn't a way to do it. but i want to ask the question anyway!!

[patron-saints]

happy birthday!! in terms of like Your Nessa to the extent there is one conglomerate character vision, what do you take/like most from different source materials (ie books vs musical vs movies) or different actors?

hi anon !!!!! <3 thank you so much for this ask!!! woke up in the middle of the night & coughed for genuinely several minutes nonstop until it hurt <3 and now i’m scared to go back to sleep <3 so Thank You for an excellent distraction!!

also this is SUCH. a good question. omg.

i have a lot of different versions of nessa nestled in my head and her characterization does vary a bit from au to au, from canon to canon, but i will do my best to answer how i think of her generally!!

i first read the book in oct 2024 after being a fan of the musical since 2009, and her characterization in the book (and in @festivating’s fic attrition/etc) DEF. def influenced my nessa obsession going forward after that. alto ACTUALLY it was seeing the musical again that Made me read the book for the first time and erica ito’s performance (2024 2nd national tour cast s/o) is what got me on my wwote kick so i also have her to thank!

but anyway: from the book, i think her sense of humor is probably the biggest thing i incorporated into my nessa world view. she has this very like…particular way of being funny where if something is amusing To Her specifically she’ll say it even if she’s the only one who finds it funny? and she’s extremely dry in her humor too, and her banter w elphie is peak, so i think those things all influenced me A Lot. i ALSO. OFTEN. make my nessa’s religious because of book nessa! i think her relationship to religion & the way it contrasts w elphie’s is such a fun layer into their characterizations & their relationship.

one of THE. musical nessas of all time to me is catherine charlebois—as part of mine and @summerwoodsmoke’s holy wwote quest we watched hers and were just so so taken by how passionate and truly possessed by the character she seemed to be. i love how sweet and loving she is in act 1 (esp the way she seems to both Constantly check in with elphie and act as her personally appointed hype man) & how genuinely Manic she is in act 2. she also looks Quite a bit like the nessa in my head, tho my visual design for her varies and is also heavily influenced by…

Jenna Bainbridge, who plays her currently on broadway and who i am categorically obsessed with. she is easily one of the Babiest nessa’s of all time, insanely cute little crush on glinda (“that ✨✨galinda✨✨ found for meee”) she plays her so so sweetly and with such an earnest, trying her best energy (with just a Hint of the princess flavor moral superiority) and SO SO much compassion—you can see how much she loves & understands nessa in every aspect of how she plays her

i could really really talk about musical actresses all day (other faves include amanda rose, stefanie brown, natalie ortega, michelle london, kimber elyane sprawl, & deedee magno hall, lol) BUT i do also really really wanna tall about marissa/movie nessa too and i’m already worried this is too long !

marissa’s nessa is SOOOOO so important to me, her mannerisms, her speech patterns, her big beautiful brown eyes and the WAY you KNOW she was playing her bisexually….. on purpose…… all of the love in the Whole World!!!!!!! while i don’t love how much they cut of her scenes in act 1, some of the changes they made to her characterization in act 2 felt GENUINELY so validating and vindicating based off of My Own understanding of nessa & how she operates. the fact that she held out against the pressure from the emerald city as long as she did in the movie is probably my favorite major change (besides making her arc less ableist!) and it is something i’m sure will come up in my fics going forward for suuure.

rambled so much and i feel like i barely scratched the surface but thank you again so much <3 feel free to drop by and ask more any time :)

[patron-saints]

assign nessarose a pet, a plant, and a daemon go

me nd @festivating have given nessarose several different pets over the course of several au’s but my favorites have been her cats (musical & modern au) and her bearded dragon (book modern)

plant is so like. do i say rose bc it’s easy or rose bc it’s true or something else. cuz the thing about roses is the duality right! and that’s nessa too, first impression vs. lasting impression, delicacy vs. dictatorship, charming & terrifying…. like it DOES kind of just. work. but also i could see her as some type of ivy or succulent too tbh

for daemon for her i rly like vulture !! i think it would scare the shit out of people and prevent them from grabbing her chair and also she would think he was the most beautiful thing ever

[patron-saints]

ideally, what wouldve been a future you wouldve wanted for nessa?

i have a lot of ideas about this that at some point i would love to be more articulate about! but in the meantime, i think i would love to see her like, able to recover from the abuse and conditioning of her father, and able to see herself as an autonomous person who has the power to affect change positively in the world. i think she thinks she's doing that in the book but she isn't really, and in the musical she is so trapped in by her circumstances she traps everyone else, too.

i want to see her happy, more than anything! to see her loving herself and the people around her in a way that works best for them.

i know a lot of people like "evil" characters because they like the fact that they are evil, but for me, nessarose's descent into the position she's in is both hot AND heartbreaking. i want a better world for her, one where she doesn't have to make those kind of choices!

and i want her to kiss girls