#Maggie as a ballerina (Odette probably)

[nyssasorbit]

Do I want to make new ornaments for my wreath? 🤔

(For reference, here are the old/current ones:)

[bloodinhershoesrpg]

WHEN THE CURTAIN DROPS…

Think of yourself back on the day, try to see what has turned you into what you have become. Distant seem the days of lace on lilac cotton dresses and golden locks of hair, those that used to be as soft as your now bruised heart. Your life was not at all bad, in fact, those days were filled with dream-like sequences of the upper class in the East Hamptons; untouchable and spotless inside mansions ever so similar to overpriced dollhouses. Reveries would come and in the same way, they would go, as your hero turned flesh — your best friend, your secret keeper, your backbone — would pull yet another card from under his sleeve asking you teasingly if it happened to be your card. Infantile giggles grow distant inside your mind, pushed into its darkest corner as you pull your own sleeve down in nervousness; how sad it happens to be there are no aces up of it, just cracks you struggle to hide. It hurt you to think of your childhood only because it lasted so little, parties and games to be replaced by a mother who had more than wine mom issues, and a father that would soon drop his role of Jeu de Cartes’ joker, to turn into an enraged beast. Ballet was always a great part of your life, the melodious arrangements you now dance to used to be your lullabies, now the ghostly charm they hold hurts almost as much as what you had to witness -- turns out all the screaming and all the circling drains of reproaches and apologies would begin to make you numb, until you found yourself at the most perfect point to escape, only to realize there was little left for you to feel. If anything.

…YOU SHOW YOUR TRUE COLOURS

Flash forward eight years with a ballet career to your name and an estranged older brother, your walls are painted dark instead of baby blue, and the music box you packed by mistake has gotten broken now fulfilling the somewhat comical function of an ashtray. The honour was yours to play Odette just a year before, a vision as delicate and pearlescent it was hard for others to believe who you were once the curtain had dropped. Here your reputation is sought after while your life in America could not have been any less lugubrious; anyhow, how many ballerinas around you can brag of nearly stabbing their father to death? Oh, of course, that is something you would rather not to discuss, no matter how nitid it stays in your mind — the gruesome red adorning your tennis skirt when you whipped your hands, makeup smeared all over your face as you answered repetitive questions with your feet hastily hanging out of a parked ambulance. Your hair was so long it covered your face as you looked down in shame, perhaps confusion, momentarily dragging you away from the scene just to think you should probably cut it soon. Crows would circle your once beloved dollhouse, happy to pluck portions of you right out the moment you got carried away just to write a motive: Self-Defense, on the dotted line. It was easy to assume and easy to judge when it had not been them the ones whose lives were short of any sort of peace, when it had not been them whose money would cover the mouth of many; house staff, tutors, nannies, just to keep the dirty secret under lock. What scares you the most, however, is not what you did but to find yourself thinking you should have done it better.

VICTIM OR CULPRIT?

You don’t find it a bit funny to have a Shakespearean name, as Desdemona James happens to be, so just Mona gladly suffices the name tag ordeal; whoever chooses to call you differently is often glared at. At age twenty-four there is plenty you are still capable of offering, the latest of your dancing roles being Little Red Riding Hood, because if there is something you happen to enjoy is giving fairytale characters your own little touch of morbidity. Some may say that, under layers of dark eye makeup, you could pass as the twin of Brie Larson. Otherwise, you remind them more of an insomnious Hugh Jackman.

IN RELATION TO

RHIANNON CONNORS: The perfect mess found her perfect roommate, never minding which of you two is each, Rhiannon Connors could not be any more fitting in terms of coexistence. There are little people you actually let in, the taste of guilt crosses you every time you refuse to speak of your past in front of her, for trust is something you two claim to share. Perhaps is suspicious for none to say a word about the lack of family pictures hung on the walls of your foyer, leaving so much room for interpretation it could easily get dangerous. Little does she know, but the kind of talent she has at almost a blatant display often makes you insecure about your own, at the end of the day your part is more of a “guest star” with little consistency while hers is well-versed into the production. ENLAI ZHANG: It’s easy for you to get vexed if those around you talk too much, as it is when they speak too little. For someone who has worked with Cristina and Katerina for years -- in the name of all things holy, with Theodore, for instance -- it definitely puzzles you to have Enlai as the silent one in the corps. Well, unless you happened to be around, the friction between the two of you never reached hostile lands, yet it does not mean you’re necessarily amiable, either. If Alice in Wonderland took place within the walls of the opera so many would play no roles but the queen’s hollow-headed court, the queen being Daphne in the flesh, giving him the role of no less than the visibly scarred, haunted and scattered Mister Mad Hatter. ALIONA CHERNOVA: Not like you would get easily attached, in spite of having done so countless times before, but there are pretty good chances you would miss those smoke breaks by the side of Russian dancer Aliona. The two of you make quite a grim little team, silently judging everyone from the choreographer to the subscribers, increasing the pollution of whichever place you are in. There is a touch of royalty in her, as her mannerisms are hard to ignore, so very distant from your bluntness. Anyhow, many bring to your attention not just your similar characters but your rhyming names — it seems like it’s a bit too late for you two to claim the roles of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW

Chances of Survival: Average Applicant must be open to portraying dissociation, domestic abuse Faceclaim is slightly negotiable (suggested alternative: Halston Sage)

Starring: Maggie as Desdemona James

TW: child abuse, violence

Lullabies, love, the smell of lavender. These are things Mona thinks good childhoods are made of. There was a little period of her own that felt like that. Her big brother, Damen, made her early years joyous. He’d play hide and seek with her, cover her ears when their parents, Ariadne and Bill, were fighting. Cover her eyes if they couldn’t escape the room in time. Nothing hurt so bad to see when she knew her big brother was there to protect her. Time goes on and children grow into targets. Hand shaped bruises were for mother to hide, not children. Not for awhile. But things can only get worse when you live with a forest fire for a father and a bundle of twigs for a mother. Mona had two escapes: time with Damen and ballet.

Just because things were often tense at home doesn’t mean Mommy and Daddy didn’t want the best for their children. Damen was put in only the finest music programs to cultivate his gift for piano, and in turn, Mona was placed in the most prestigious of ballet schools in the area. Time together between siblings was often spent dancing and playing the keys together. Damen would try to get Mona’s little hands to reach all the keys for a chord and Mona would try to teach Damen to plié. They brought comfort to each other in times of trouble - and it seemed as though times were often of trouble.

Damen, being five years Mona’s senior, began to get out of the house as a teenager, leaving Mona to herself. With Damen around less, more attention was directed at Mona at home - and attention she did not want. Her father was hateful, possessive, and often showed Mona that she belonged to no one but him.  She made friends here and there in school, but eventually became withdrawn. She used to confide in friends at sleepover what kind of a maniac her father could be, what kind of blithering and oblivious drunk her mother was. Some friends even told their own parents out of concern. Nothing ever came of it. If there was one thing you could say about the rich, it’s that “family affairs” were kept within the family. And what good were friends when they added no chances for survival? As Mona grew up, watching her brother moreso from a distance, she threw herself deeper into ballet. Damen was no longer a confidant and a protector, but rather a warm memory and occasional reprieve. Friendships were replaced with alliances. “If we push each other, one of us might get the part.” She would go straight to ballet practice after school, complete her homework there, and not come home until she was certain that dinner was ready. Then, she’d try her best to go unnoticed until bed time. Sometimes Bill was occupied with other things, and other times he was firmly focused on making Mona’s life hell.

Life, while often hard, was not as bad as it could have been. That’s what Mona always reminded herself of. She had food, clothes, a brother who loved her even if her parents didn’t seem to, and most importantly, a passion.

Things changed in the time it takes to pick up a knife.

It was Christmas time. Damen was home for the holidays. Mona’s mother was somewhere in the house, sloshing around and weeping over one thing or another, as usual. Mona, for once, had gone out to socialize. A tiny crush on a peer from her ballet class had inspired her to go to a party out on a yacht. Yes, Mona came home late. No, she hadn’t been drinking. She reeked of other people’s cigarettes, and someone had spilled a glass of very expensive champagne all over her beautiful new tennis skirt. No parent would have believed she hadn’t been up to no good. Not many parents would react in the way that Bill James did, though. He tried to corner Mona, screaming accusations about her behavior and her virtue. Years of practice allowed for her to escape from him several times. She ran into the kitchen, simply because it was the closest room connected to the hall that led to her bedroom. But fingers ripping into her scalp, that familiar pull as she was yanked back and off her feet stopped her short. There was a struggle. A counter’s corner dug deep into her gut and a blade glimmered before her in the dim light from the moon in the window. It didn’t take a thought. Mona remembers the pain in her gut from the counter - then the look of horror on Damen’s face and his mouth moving around the words, “What have you done?”

Ambulances, police vehicles, handcuffs. It’s all a blur, especially after eight years. Mona doesn’t talk about it. What is there to say? Bill wasn’t even out of the hospital before Mona had spent all of her money from birthdays and christmases to find a home out of the country. They decided not to press charges, brush this under the rug just like every other painful and violent event that had happened in that house. The James family has enough money to pay off any and every individual who knows how or why Desdemona James stabbed her own father that night.

At sixteen years old, she left her parents behind in America as soon as she could, and with them, Damen. It was painful, but the rift that grew between them after that night was worse than the pain of leaving. He never understood her decision, because he had never seen the way their father had turned on her as they grew older. At least Mona can blame the physical distance between them for their estranged existences.

Now, in another country, Mona’s life is all too similar to those days she spent alone with her ballet. Only now, without the attacks from her father and with the sting of repressed memories and a bitterness over the childhood she wishes she’d had. Performance is still Mona’s strongest skill. One hones these abilities when living a life full of deep, dark secrets. Ballet keeps Mona busy and satisfied enough. Still, the weight of Mona’s past bears heavily on her shoulders. Regret colors her thoughts, only in ways that she can never admit. It’s one thing to regret stabbing your father - but it’s another entirely when your only wish is that you’d managed to kill him.