iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Travel Photography: Big Sur Back in February I took a trip to California for my birthday, and one of the major highlights of that photographic journey was our drive through Big Sur.... emilyophoto.com/2026/10/06/travel-p…

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Nothing like getting excited to see an inquiry from my website only to realize I’m not actually the person they want. I’m out here losing jobs in a whole new way.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I feel like the universe is just messing with me now. After losing out on yet another job and having had my worst year on record since the pandemic I got an email from someone looking for headshots. Except they were looking for a photographer in Brooklyn who has the same name as me. Cool.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

No, I was just talking about the initial response to the song. I don’t think the lyric videos were even out when I made this post.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I… I don’t know? I wasn’t referencing the lyric video at all.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I was primarily making a joke about how people from Pittsburgh hate Cleveland.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I am happy that she is happy and I thought Showgirl was pretty fun even though it’s not my favorite. I’m not sure exactly how your comments pertain to my original post?

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Are you referring to the lyric video?

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

All Swifties appear to have become Pittsburghers today for how much they hate Cleveland (tbf I liked the other three songs a lot).

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Huzzah! Welcome to the neighborhood ♥️

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

He did play Achilles in the movie Troy many years ago so maybe that’s what happened in your brain?

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I stopped playing that game when they wanted me to burn someone as a witch because how dare they.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Also Tim Curry’s brief but significant role as the Prince of Darkness in Legend is the reason we have certain tropes in modern day Romantasy as it was a major influence on writers of my generation even unconsciously and in this essay I will…

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

This version had way more weird Fae shit and I am 100 percent here for it.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Okay so I chose Legend as my Tim Curry movie to watch obviously and I downloaded the Ridley Scott blu ray directors cut and it is a WILDLY different version from the one I remember as a kid and it’s actually an incredible film? Missed the Vangelis score but the movie actually made way more sense.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I never know if hashtags actually work here but I’m gonna throw some on this thread anyway. #photographywork #pittsburgh #photographer

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Check out www.emilyophoto.com for my work and feel free to send me a message if you’re interested in setting something up!

emilyophoto.com

Photography by Emily O'Donnell

Creative Writing & Fantastical Photography

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I literally do it all! My main work is event photography but I have also done food and product photography, senior pictures, family sessions, baby photos, maternity, fashion, and probably more I’m not even thinking of.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Hello Pittsburgh people specifically - does anyone need new headshots, branding/lifestyle photos, engagement and/or wedding photography, or even boudoir??? I’ve had literally one job this summer and I’m going a little stir crazy so I’m begging someone to hire me to take some pictures for them.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

On the day that my cat is scheduled to die I receive a piece of mail addressed to my father - who has been dead for 20 years, never lived at this address or in this city. It was junk mail but still I ask why? Why does the universe want me to exist in a perpetual state of grieving?

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

I have a lot of friends. But at the same time I don’t feel like there is anyone I can call or text to just come over and keep me company while I’m sad. Grief is so isolating. All I can do is retreat to my bedroom and escape into a book and hope a cat comes to cuddle with me while I still have them.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

You would think that I would be used to this by now. That I would know how to deal with bad news and mysterious illnesses and the potential for more loss. But I feel like I’m only getting worse at dealing with it. All of the grief piles up, it’s all connected and it just hurts so much more.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Of course grief compounds grief. Losing Glen Hansard forced me to grieve my sister all over again, because his music is so connected to my memories of her. The idea of losing one of my cats and her sister being alone for the first time feels a bit too familiar. Losing both of them is unthinkable.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Why does this keep happening? I feel like I have been surrounded by death and disease far too much in my life. I know people who have never had to experience the death of family members or close friends. I have lost maybe a dozen people in 20 years. That doesn’t feel normal.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

All I know is that now I am a wreck. I don’t know how to help anyone, not my niece, not my cats, not the world. I was thinking about going to a witchy Celtic festival downtown today because I could really benefit from that kind of experience. But now I don’t want to leave the cats.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

The last time I had a series of terrible events happen like this was April 2024 right before my sister died. That was also around the time of the last total solar eclipse and the next one is in just a few days. I don’t know what that’s about.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Last week one of my favorite singers died tragically. Last night I learned that my niece has developed a seizure condition that could be epilepsy but the doctors have no idea really what is wrong with her.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Today I took her sister to the vet because she has a small growth on one of her legs that I thought might be a cyst. It is a tumor. Both of my cats have some form of cancer. The second might just be able to have it removed and it will be fine but I don’t know if it has spread yet.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Last week I took one of my cats to the vet because she had lost some weight and was throwing up. I thought she might have a thyroid issue. Turned out to be lymphoma with an inoperable mass in her stomach and no treatment available and no clear timeline for how long she has left.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Thanks lady. Any update for Pancake?

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

It’s a rough week to have cats 😢

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Oh no lady, I’m in a similar boat over here. We took Talula to the vet last weekend because she had lost weight and immediately got extremely bad news. I guess at least I didn’t have to wait for a phone call. Instead we are just waiting to see when we have to let her go and it’s pretty devastating.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

So that’s my opinion on that situation. I know I could be wrong, because all of this is extremely parasocial of me. But I’ve seen others making claims without having any of the knowledge I have gleaned from years of being a fan, listening closely, and watching them together.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

But not Glen and Marketa. They may have shared a lot of pain and heartache. But there was also so much love. And that’s what Glen Hansard gave to the world, all of his love.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Honestly, we have seen many musical love stories over the years that have begun and ended in far worse ways. That were deeply problematic and abusive, bitter, angry things that sometimes taint the music the couple made together.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

And throughout all of this, you can see her learning what she wants and what she has to let go of to make it happen. They have to let go of the romantic dream in order for the musical partnership to survive. And so they do, and the music continues. I am so grateful for that maturity and wisdom.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

And yes the age gap is definitely a factor in this. Marketa talks openly about her girlhood crush on Glen, and how she wanted to be with him and waited until she was old enough for it to be acceptable. She also talks about how she adopted too much of his worldview and needed to carve her own path.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

The two of them kept making music together years afterwards. The last album Glen Hansard released was a Swell Season reunion. It is clear that these are two people who fell in love through music, and that was always the thing that bonded them deeply.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

In the documentary you really do see a lot of raw footage chronicling their relationship and how the pressures of fame and their different personalities created immense stress to both of them. It’s kind of devastating to see them struggle to communicate in conversation. They can only do it in song.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

I also firmly believe in listening to women and I listen to Marketa Irglova when she sings, when she speaks, in her interactions with him and I have never heard her say anything negative about him or how their relationship began or even about how it ended.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

So as a long time fan I know I could be biased, but I’ve always been pretty wary of idolizing men. And it is clear from his own songwriting that Glen Hansard was not an easy person to be in a romantic relationship with for much of his life. But he was at least self-aware about it.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

But never once in the years since has anyone accused Glen Hansard of inappropriate behavior (to my knowledge) and I have been a fan for a very long time. I saw The Frames 5-6 times before Once happened and I saw The Swell Season on the tour that is captured in the documentary.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

I remember being a fan during all of this and wondering at it in real time. I listened to their songs about each other and felt the sadness and heartache. It was always clear that they loved each other and that they weren’t meant to be.

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

In the outpouring of emotion from fans, I have seen comments crop up about the age gap between Glen and Marketa. And from the outside, it can seem sus. She was underage when they met, played music together over the years, and started dating while filming the movie:

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Emily O’Donnell @faelai.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

In the wake of Glen Hansard’s death and all of the funeral footage I saw today, I decided to sit down and watch The Swell Season documentary that serves as an unofficial and bittersweet sequel to Once. And it makes me want to discuss something that I have seen some controversy about in recent weeks.

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