Mariella and Rivka

Some explanation. Mariella and Rivka are characters in my Discworld Assassin stories. They appear together in "Hyperemesis Gravidarum" as thirteen year old student Assassins who end up having to deploy their trade skills several years ahead of schedule. Rivka has been described as "a small keg of powder with a fizzing fuse in it" and is capable of making would-be bullies, if they are wise, back off stammering apologies. But at least they're still able to walk afterwards. Unlike the bad guy she brought down with a throwing axe. While I wasn't consciously thinking in these terms, a reader ask Portman in mind as the character model. Damn, the thirteen year old Rivka has got to be Mathilde out of the film "Leon". The orphan who takes to lethal weapons like a duck to water. The third picture along has the sort of badass "go away, you are spoiling my day and I am not happy" look to it that I saw Rivka as having. The two on the left are head-shots of the adult Natalie P that carry something of the character as I wrote her in "Gap Year Adventures", aged eighteen or nineteen.

Meanwhile her best friend Mariella Smith-Rhodes, red-haired and from a country not unlike South Africa. Pleasant, well-adjusted, and while pretty in her own right, the disregarded plain jane tagging along next to her extremely attractive best friend. I found "Mariella" in an underwear catalogue. (don't ask. you will notice the shots are cropped). Three sample views here. The middle one perhaps says "I am finding you a complete idiot who is wasting my time. If you can't show me you're not, I'm going to get annoyed".  The other two are variants on a theme of "let's go and destroy something."

story links:

www.fanfiction.net/s/12321109/…

www.fanfiction.net/s/11536013/…

The shots have been posted here partly to get something out and reactivate this account, partly to offer an online friend somewhere to find them to see if he can build on the ideas  we were discussing in PM's on Fan fiction.

So over to you Ian! Thanks!