#fairy glamor frost

[sneglelack]

[astrolovecosmos]

The seasons played and still play a major role in understanding the zodiac signs. The western zodiac most are familiar with today originated from the northern hemisphere. Medieval Europe also played a big role in our understanding of the zodiac signs and their symbolisms and associations. Below is how Pisces represents or connects back to the winter season.

Pisces can certainly embody the imaginative and magical side of winter. Sparkling snow, shinning icicles, dancing flurries - Pisces is a sign of fantasy and creativity. Pisces is dramatic and glamorous as well as whimsical and dreamy. Theatrical, poetic, seductive, mysterious, or comforting beings. Due to Pisces's connection with spirituality and death/rebirth it isn't surprising their season is at the very end of Winter - the end of the seasonal year. Pisces is also the last sign of the zodiac - the end, completion.

Pisces is a demonstrative, fluid, and flexible sign. Pisces is associated with fast moving water - riptides, whirlpools, thrashing waves, rivers, floods, avalanches or mudslides. Much like the end of winter Pisces can be messy. There may be mud and slush and dangerous falling icicles, all depicted of Pisces's nature. Pisces can be a beautiful and enchanting frost fairy or old Gregg in bubbling waters. Pisces is sensitive and always changing or moving. They are the chameleon. Their symbol is two fish moving opposite of each other, opposite currents, fluidity, encompassing two sides of water. Easygoing, caring, reactive, tolerant and passionate, rebellious, freezing cold or destructively hot, illogical.

Pisces is a Water sign and is therefore most compatible with other Water signs and Earth signs. However it is commonly said that Pisces is a sign that may seem compatible with everyone due to their adaptable and personable nature. Pisces is a healing, soothing, playful, and encouraging influence. They can be compared to the snow melt that nurtures and feeds the spring. Pisces is also connected to sacrifice. Their ability to give their all to others is sometimes depicted as a dangerous flaw. While they do tend to put others needs above their own to detrimental lengths, it's important to remember this can also be a strength or honorable act. Pisces ability to sacrifice for others, their compassion and loyalty can also be a place of power. Pisces are also known to deal with savior complexes. Pisces's kindness is a double-edged sword.

Pisces is a sign of spirituality and the free expression of water and emotions. They are associated with less structured themes and ideas around spirituality vs. recognizable, structured religion today. Pisces represents our personal spirituality. Pisces is connected to what is sacred, to love, mercy, gentleness, mysticism, transcending, ideas about nirvana or enlightenment, to joining/union, and the malleable self but strong soul. All seasons can certainly have some sort of spiritual connection, but Pisces time is during quiet, reflective winter.

[callofdudes]

Dropping all my AU thoughts on you. (Lovingly) pt1??

Hunger Games AU: All of 141 bring previous victors from their games who find solace with each other in the capital. Would go through what they experienced in their individual games and how they won. But when the victors face off comes they all have to work together to end the games permanently.

Skyrim AU: Ghost works with the Dark Brotherhood. Johnny is 1000% a Companion. Gaz is a bard who is also attending the College of Winterhold to become a mage. Price is either a leader of the Companions, or he's a captain of the Imperial Guard. Don't exactly have a proper plot. And Gaz is obviously a redguard. Price is definitely a Nord. John is probably a mix of either Breton and Nord or something. It just makes sense. And Ghost is an Imperial. It just makes sense and I can't explain why!

Or, another Skyrim idea: Johnny as the dragonborn and Simon as a Daedric Prince of Akotosh who chooses to serve Johnny after doubting Alduin's reign.

Transformers AU: It could go either way, I envision it with Ghost as a Tranformer. He's the last of his squad who escaped captivity (I hope you catch on) and is sent to earth to protect Intel and find a place to stay. Runs into the annoying Scottish mechanic when his paint is dinged up. Or Simon as the angry mechanic who does not want to fix this alien thing that keeps yapping all day.

Rise of the Guardians AU: All the characters are there. If Y/n was present in this I'd make Ghost the angry easter Bunny who "hates his job". But if they weren't he's hands down Jack Frost. Sorry. Gaz can be Sandy (sandman) we all know who Price is, and Johnny can be the tooth fairy. If you know why, you know why.

Obviously a httyd AU: because everyone needs one. I'm already conjuring up things for Ghost's backstory it's insane.

Gaming AU: Price is a moderator for a large gaming community channel and streaming platform. He greenlights a lot of games that go through and plays them occasionally. RDR games and those likes. Johnny and Gaz definitely play the sims together. They'd play those games like Lethal Company and such. They try to play horror games but it doesn't always go well. Simon, (known to fans as Ghost) wears his mask or has one of those cool avatars. Plays horror games religiously and first person shooters which has attracted a glamorized following. Friends with Price and that's how he ended up getting together in the streaming group with Gaz and Johnny. They're annoying, but ok, they're cool.

Assassin's Creed AU: I've been working slowly on this for a while but Johnny as a sword/bow for hire whose work has slowed in the city he's at. So he packs up with friend Gaz who is going to a different city to study as a medic. Price is probably the king of said place. (I'm thinking of setting up in Greece or we're going to old Britain.) And Ghost is our famous assassin. And they meet and some stuff happens!

Not sure what to call this one (AU) As a young kid Johnny was diagnosed with ADHD and went to weekly day camp for kids like him. It wasn't particularly boring and Johnny had lots of fun. Until a new kid who is very socially awkward and reclusive starts coming. He's quiet and fidgety and doesn't make much eye contact. Johnny wants to be his friend. The story where Autistic Simon and ADHD Johnny become inseparable childhood friends.

Winged AU. I did a little thing on this a couple months ago. Some 30% of the popular are born with wings. Johnny is one of them. He's incredibly proud of his wings and it gives him some advantages and disadvantages in the military. Simon seems to hate Johnny for the sake of it. But every time Simon sees John's wings, he remembers the scars on his back and the pain of when his wings were torn off...

[shivaniboutique]

Christmas Party Costume Themes

Christmas party costume themes can add a festive and entertaining element to your celebration. Here are some Christmas party costume theme ideas:

Santa's Workshop:

Dress up as Santa, Mrs. Claus, elves, reindeer, or any character associated with Santa's workshop.

Ugly Christmas Sweater Extravaganza:

Encourage guests to wear the most outrageous and tacky Christmas sweaters they can find.

Winter Wonderland Creatures:

Choose costumes inspired by winter animals such as polar bears, penguins, or snow leopards.

Christmas Movie Characters:

Dress up as your favorite characters from classic Christmas movies, like Buddy the Elf, the Grinch, or characters from "A Christmas Carol."

Candy Cane Lane:

Attendees can wear red and white outfits, inspired by the classic colors of candy canes.

Gingerbread People and Treats:

Embrace the sweetness of the season by dressing up as gingerbread men, women, or other Christmas treats.

Christmas Carol Sing-Along:

Choose costumes based on characters from popular Christmas carols, like the Nutcracker, Frosty the Snowman, or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Holiday Villagers:

Have guests dress up as characters you might find in a festive holiday village, such as toy soldiers, carolers, or snowmen.

Christmas Pajama Jam:

Invite everyone to wear their coziest Christmas-themed pajamas for a comfortable and laid-back party.

DIY Ornament:

Encourage creativity by having guests dress up as their favorite Christmas ornaments using craft materials.

Festive Fairytale Characters:

Dress as Christmas-themed fairytale characters, such as the Snow Queen, Jack Frost, or the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Naughty or Nice:

Allow guests to choose whether they want to dress as naughty or nice characters, leading to a mix of playful and angelic outfits.

Holiday Glam:

Go for a glamorous look with sparkly and glitzy attire, embracing the dazzle of the holiday season.

Christmas in Different Cultures:

Have guests dress in outfits inspired by Christmas traditions from various countries around the world.

Holiday Time Travelers:

Encourage guests to dress in costumes from different eras, adding a time-travel twist to the Christmas festivities.

Choose a theme that suits the preferences of your guests and guarantees a jolly good time at your Christmas party!

[bujorulgalben]

💘+ What are your plans for Dragobete?

tell it to my heart | accepting!        

...Huh. Do you know what I realise, but only just now? I shall not a basil branch under my pillow for this year Dragobete... Lord, how long have I felt a need to do this. Or maybe it was the fairies, playing cruel tricks, in keeping dreams of my partner deliberately cloudy when in actuality... He was there. He was there the entire time.

Do not get me wrong! Tangents aside, I will still partake in tradition! Obviously!

Perhaps I will ask him for to join me for a walk in the forest - nothing glamorous, nothing too material! Bless you, Slava, for him to endure my ideas for Valentine's and his birthday will be a feat in itself! We will need a break from indulgences- oh, oh yes, I plan to celebrate it all! He was, indeed, there the entire time, and I will make up for all of the lost time... every overdue kiss. So yes, for Dragobete, we can go looking for the first clues of a coming spring. I will need to find some snowdrops to pin to his lapel!

I speak of spring, but it will still be chilly. There will be coffee and sweet things to warm us up... maybe găluște cu prune? Ah! I will ask for help with preparing the garden for spring! Yes! That could be a fun activity for us to do; I would like to plant some lilies of the valley where my own snowdrops and wildflowers are. The ivy my silly Romeo joked about climbing will need pruning… and, of course, our little sapling will need a new home now the threat of frost is gone, yes?

We end the day with homemade dinner and that same fireplace that thawed out our hearts...that saw we finally melted into one another. There, I will work again on those overdue kisses. It is good work. The best work.

I believe that these are my plans, as they stand. Did you take notes? Hm? For inspiration?

[karasbroken]

I'm going to start my #favorite little books list with an easy one, from my top ten of all time. This is something that might appeal to the ACOTAR crowd or the Bridgerton lovers, though it's neither about faeries or getting married, and is less explicit than either. Can I recommend Swordspoint, by Ellen Kushner?

Ellen is a fabulous queer woman (I follow her on FB and enjoy her glamorous writer life by proxy) who wrote about queer people (the hero of this story is canonically bi, many of the other characters, good, evil and indifferent are gay or bi) at a time when this was still transgressive. When I first read this in 1991 it was a revelation. Queerness just a fact, not a plot point? Incredibly badass duelist being completely wrapped around the catty twink's finger? Men and women whose personality and sexuality can't be neatly sorted into stereotypes?

And it all fits into a believable fantasy world with no real emphasis on magic, just more leeway in time periods and social mores. We're sort of Victorian, sort of Regency, sort of Sun King France, all blended into it's own thing. Lots of room for the tensions of period romance. People in arranged marriages behaving badly. Gender conflicts and class warfare. Politics and rich people games and unglamorous criminal underworld.

It's good stuff. And it's not a long read. Some folks who don't read period work or are used to first person present tense might struggle a little with the writing style, which is rich and elegant. But there's a lot of action and a dash of spice and enough politics and death to be satisfying but not overwhelming. There is a radio play style audiobook too, read by the author and others. And there are more books in the world if that appeals, though this is completely standalone. If you've never had the pleasure, give it a try!

Snow was falling on Riverside, great white feather-puffs that veiled the cracks in the facades of its ruined houses; slowly softening the harsh contours of jagged roof and fallen beam. Eaves were rounded with snow, overlapping, embracing, sliding into each other, capping houses all clustered together like a fairy-tale village. Little slopes of snow nestled in the slats of shutters still cozily latched against the night. It dusted the tops of fantastical chimneys that spiraled up from frosted roofs, and it formed white peaks in the ridges of the old coats of arms carved above the doorways. Only here and there a window, its glass long shattered, gaped like a black mouth with broken teeth, sucking snow into its maw.

Let the fairy tale begin on a winter's morning, then, with one drop of blood newfallen on the ivory snow: a drop as bright as a clear-cut ruby, red as the single spot of claret on the lace cuff. . . .

[my-blog-attractions]

Winter Weddings

Winter weddings are a magical and enchanting choice for couples who seek a unique and cozy celebration filled with romance and warmth. With its crisp air, glistening snowflakes, and festive spirit, the winter season offers a captivating setting for exchanging vows and celebrating love. Let's explore the allure of winter weddings and gather inspiration for planning a memorable and charming winter wonderland wedding.

One of the most captivating aspects of winter weddings is the dreamy and ethereal atmosphere they create. The landscape covered in a blanket of snow, icicle-adorned trees, and the soft glow of twinkling lights add a touch of magic to the occasion. Imagine walking down the aisle with snowflakes falling gently around you or saying your vows in a cozy candlelit venue adorned with winter-themed decorations. The winter backdrop provides a picturesque canvas for a truly enchanting wedding.

Winter weddings offer a unique opportunity to embrace elegant and luxurious fabrics and attire. Brides can opt for glamorous long-sleeved gowns, embellished with delicate lace or shimmering details, adding a touch of sophistication and warmth. Grooms can don handsome velvet or tweed suits, perfectly suited for the season. Guests can also indulge in stylish attire, featuring rich textures, deep colors, and cozy accessories like faux fur wraps or elegant capes.

The winter season provides a rich and versatile color palette to choose from. Embrace the season's ambiance by incorporating deep jewel tones such as burgundy, emerald green, navy blue, and plum into your decor and floral arrangements. These rich hues create a sense of elegance and warmth that perfectly complement the winter backdrop. Consider adding touches of metallic accents like silver, gold, or rose gold to add a touch of sparkle and create a festive atmosphere.

Winter weddings offer the opportunity to create a cozy and intimate atmosphere for you and your guests. Embrace the warmth of the season by incorporating elements like flickering candles, soft lighting, and warm textiles into your decor. Create inviting lounge areas with plush seating and blankets for guests to cozy up and enjoy the celebration. Fireplaces, twinkling fairy lights, and soft draperies can add an extra touch of romance and comfort to the ambiance.

When it comes to the menu, winter weddings allow for a variety of delicious and comforting culinary options. Incorporate seasonal ingredients such as root vegetables, hearty soups, roasted meats, and decadent desserts into your menu. Offer warm and comforting beverages like hot cocoa, mulled wine, or signature winter-inspired cocktails to keep your guests cozy and in high spirits. Consider incorporating festive treats like gingerbread cookies, spiced cakes, or a hot chocolate bar to add a touch of holiday cheer.

Winter weddings offer the advantage of unique and memorable photo opportunities. The snowy landscapes, frost-kissed trees, and the soft natural light of winter create a stunning backdrop for your wedding photos. Embrace the beauty of the season by planning a romantic photo shoot outdoors, capturing the elegance and serenity of the winter scenery. Add some playful touches like snowball fights or snuggling under a cozy blanket to create unforgettable moments.

Winter weddings also have the advantage of being less busy than other peak wedding seasons, allowing for more vendor availability and potentially cost savings. Venues and vendors may offer discounted rates during this time, providing an opportunity to allocate your budget to other elements of your dream wedding. You may also consider taking advantage of the winter holiday season to incorporate festive decor and themes into your celebration.

In conclusion, winter weddings offer a captivating and enchanting experience filled with cozy elegance and romantic charm. From the snow-covered landscapes to the warm and inviting ambiance, every element of a winter wedding creates a unique and memorable celebration. Whether you envision a classic white wedding or a festive holiday-inspired affair, a winter wedding is sure to create a magical and unforgettable experience for you and your loved ones.

​Please visit Wedding Venue for more information.

[laresearchette]

Friday, December 02, 2022 Canadian TV Listings (Times Eastern)

WHERE CAN I FIND THOSE PREMIERES?: CHRISTMAS WITH THE CAMPBELLS (AMC+) SLOW HORSES (Apple TV+) DARBY AND THE DEAD (Disney + Star) THE GREAT AMERICAN BAKING SHOW: CELEBRITY HOLIDAY (The Roku Channel) HOTEL FOR THE HOLIDAYS (CTV Life) 7:00pm MATT ROGERS: HAVE YOU HEARD OF CHRISTMAS? (Crave) 10:00pm

WHAT IS NOT PREMIERING IN CANADA TONIGHT? A BIG FAT FAMILY CHRISTMAS (Premiering on December 04 on Crave at 12:40pm) CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF CHRISTMAS (Premiering on December 08 on CTV Life at 7:00pm) THE CROODS: FAMILY TREE (TBD - YTV) DESTINATION FEAR (TBD - DTour) FATAL FAMILY REUNION (TBD - Lifetime Canada) HOW DO THEY DO IT? (TBD - Science)

NEW TO AMAZON PRIME CANADA/CBC GEM/CRAVE TV/DISNEY + STAR/NETFLIX CANADA:

AMAZON PRIME CANADA THE CROODS RICHES (Season 1) THREE PINES YOUR CHRISTMAS OR MINE

CBC GEM MY OLD SCHOOL QUESTION TEAM SISI STAY TOONED

CRAVE TV 1UP COCAINE, PRISON & LIKES: ISABELLE’S TRUE STORY (Episodes 1-3) COMEDY CENTRAL’S JEFF DUNHAM – ME THE PEOPLE DEEP HEDGEHOGS THE HUNGER GAMES THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY: PART 1 THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY: PART 2 A LITTLE PRINCESS MATT ROGERS: HAVE YOU HEARD OF CHRISTMAS THE POWERPUFF GIRLS MOVIE     TITANIC (1997)

DISNEY + STAR DIARY OF A WIMPY KID 2: RODRICK RULES MICKEY SAVES CHRISTMAS PENTATONIX: AROUND THE WORLD FOR THE HOLIDAYS

NETFLIX CANADA FIREFLY LANE (Season 2 Part 1) HOT SKULL LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER MY UNORTHODOX LIFE (Season 2) SCROOGE: A CHRISTMAS CAROL "SR." SUPERMODEL ME: REVOLUTION (Season 1) WARRIORS OF FUTURE

FIFA WORLD CUP SOCCER (TSN/TSN3/TSN4/TSN5) 9:45am: Korea Republic vs. Portugal (TSN2) 9:45am: Ghana vs. Uruguay (TSN/TSN3/TSN4/TSN5) 1:45pm: Camaroon vs. Brazil (TSN2) 1:45pm: Serbia vs. Switzerland (TSN/TSN4) 9:00pm: Match of the Day

NLL LACROSSE (TSN3) 6:00pm: Wings vs. Thunderbirds

NHL HOCKEY (TSN5) 7:00pm: Sens vs. Rangers (TSN3) 8:00pm: Blue Jackets vs. Jets

NBA BASKETBALL (SN/SN1) 7:30pm: Raptors vs. Nets (TSN2) 7:30pm: Lakers vs. Bucks (SN1) 10:00pm: Bulls vs. Warriors

MARKETPLACE (CBC) 8:00pm: Investigating CDI College and uncovering a pattern of using misleading information to enroll students; the questionable claims about accreditation and revealing the real cost of dropping out.

RODEO NATION (APTN) 8:00pm: It's the moment we've all been waiting for! Cameron, Lionel, PJ and Jake travel to Las Vegas, each determined to become the next world champion. Cameron goes head-to-head with past champ, Jayco Roper, while Lionel attempts to recover from some big buck-offs.

MY SOUTHERN FAMILY CHRISTMAS (W Network) 8:00pm:  Under the guise of a journalist, Campbell has a chance to get to know her biological father for the first time -- without him ever knowing who she really is.

CATERING CHRISTMAS (Super Channel Heart & Home) 8:00pm:  Fledgling caterer Molly Frost is hired by perfectionist Jean Harrison for the renowned Harrison Foundation's annual Christmas Gala, but things get complicated when she falls for Jean's nephew.

TRAVEL MAN: 48 HOURS IN… (CBC) 8:30pm:  Richard Ayoade is joined by comedian Joe Wilkinson for a 48-hour fling around the historic city of Krakow. Poland's second city is known for its culture, fairy-tale old town and baked goods.

CATWALK 2: THE COMEBACK CATS DOCUMENTARY (CBC) 9:00pm: Exploring the stories of the people and cats involved in the competitive cat show circuit.

TRANSPLANT (CTV) 9:00pm: Bash's psychiatrist suggests an unexpected form of therapy; Mags gets evicted and meets an old patient who holds a grudge; Theo makes some questionable choices with a patient's mother; June's personal and professional worlds collide.

THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF CHESHIRE (Slice) 9:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE):  Reality series which looks at the homes, and lifestyles of Cheshire's most glamorous residents.

SUNDOWN (Crave) 9:00pm:  A wealthy man is vacationing with loved ones at a resort in Acapulco, Mexico until he receives a phone call. There's been a death in the family, and everyone must return home. However, the man pretends to lose his passport, which delays his return.

CANADA'S DRAG RACE: CANADA VS. THE WORLD (Crave 2) 9:00pm: You're invited to The Weather Ball on this week's episode of Canadas Drag Race: Canada vs the World.

1UP (Starz Canada)  9:00pm: Valerie is a competitive gamer whose impressive skills have landed her a place on her university's male-dominated esports team. Told she'll never be a starting player, Valerie forms an all-girl team to take down the guys at the national championship.

CRIME BEAT (Global) 10:00pm: Terrie Ann Dauphinais, a young Metis woman, is found dead in her home; her death was deemed a homicide, but no charges were ever laid, and the case went cold; new developments in the investigation lead to a dramatic turn of events.

CASEY ANTHONY: HER FRIENDS SPEAK (Super Channel Fuse)  10:00pm:  More than seven years after her acquittal, Casey Anthony's friends recall their tense interviews with police and the media circus surrounding her high-profile trial in which she faced the death penalty after her daughter was found dead.

[rockislandadultreads]

Dark Retellings: Fantasy Books to Read

Midnight in Everwood by M.A. Kuzniar

There’s nothing Marietta Stelle loves more than ballet, but after Christmas, her dreams will be over as she is obligated to take her place in Edwardian society. While she is chafing against such suffocating traditions, a mysterious man purchases the neighbouring townhouse. Dr Drosselmeier is a charming but calculating figure who wins over the rest of the Stelle family with his enchanting toys and wondrous mechanisms. When Drosselmeier constructs an elaborate set for Marietta’s final ballet performance, she discovers it carries a magic all of its own. On the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve, she is transported to a snowy forest, where she encounters danger at every turn: ice giants, shadow goblins and the shrieking mist all lurk amidst the firs and frozen waterfalls and ice cliffs. After being rescued by the butterscotch-eyed captain of the king’s guard, she is escorted to the frozen sugar palace. At once, Marietta is enchanted by this glittering world of glamorous gowns, gingerbread houses, miniature reindeer and the most delicious confectionary. But all is not as it seems and Marietta is soon trapped in the sumptuous palace by the sadistic King Gelum, who claims her as his own. She is confined to a gilded prison with his other pets; Dellara, whose words are as sharp as her teeth, and Pirlipata, a princess from another land. Marietta must forge an alliance with the two women to carve a way free from this sugar-coated but treacherous world and back home to follow her dreams. Yet in a hedonistic world brimming with rebellion and a forbidden romance that risks everything, such a path will never be easy.

The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid

In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline—her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered. But when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en route, slaughtering everyone but Évike and the cold, one-eyed captain, they have no choice but to rely on each other. Except he’s no ordinary Woodsman—he’s the disgraced prince, Gáspár Bárány, whose father needs pagan magic to consolidate his power. Gáspár fears that his cruelly zealous brother plans to seize the throne and instigate a violent reign that would damn the pagans and the Yehuli alike. As the son of a reviled foreign queen, Gáspár understands what it’s like to be an outcast, and he and Évike make a tenuous pact to stop his brother. As their mission takes them from the bitter northern tundra to the smog-choked capital, their mutual loathing slowly turns to affection, bound by a shared history of alienation and oppression. However, trust can easily turn to betrayal, and as Évike reconnects with her estranged father and discovers her own hidden magic, she and Gáspár need to decide whose side they’re on, and what they’re willing to give up for a nation that never cared for them at all.

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn't mind—she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse's fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard and forest that protect their homes from evil. After Vasilisa's mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa's new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows. And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa's stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent. As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed—this, in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse's most frightening tales.

For the Wolf by Hannah F. Whitten

The first daughter is for the Throne. The second daughter is for the Wolf. For fans of Uprooted and The Bear and the Nightingale comes a dark fantasy novel about a young woman who must be sacrificed to the legendary Wolf of the Wood to save her kingdom. But not all legends are true, and the Wolf isn't the only danger lurking in the Wilderwood. As the only Second Daughter born in centuries, Red has one purpose-to be sacrificed to the Wolf in the Wood in the hope he'll return the world's captured gods. Red is almost relieved to go. Plagued by a dangerous power she can't control, at least she knows that in the Wilderwood, she can't hurt those she loves. Again. But the legends lie. The Wolf is a man, not a monster. Her magic is a calling, not a curse. And if she doesn't learn how to use it, the monsters the gods have become will swallow the Wilderwood-and her world-whole.

[lovinajhurani-zaramalikakrystal7]

Adornment, what a science! Beauty, what a weapon! Modesty, what elegance!”   #sky #ice #travelgram #winteriscoming #frosty #uttarakhand #adventure #frost #christmas #instagram #picoftheday #instasnow #wintertime #skiing #incredibleindia #wanderlust #naturelovers #beautiful #mountain #shimla #kashmir #blizzard #snowplow #ig #travelblogger #ski #chilly #snowphotography #trekking #snowtime FOUNDER DIRECTOR&CHAIRWOMAN @illuminating_diamondspirit @malikakx_julietshimmerjasmine @zaramalikakrystal_smqxjsja @beautiful_beauties01 @heers_education19 @ningxi_lutingxio_mulan_muliang @zaramalika_krystal_sqxjsjam "SHE IS A MESS OF GORGEOUS CHAOS & YOU CAN SEE IT IN HER EYES." AN ENIGMA:-A MYSTERY WHICH CAN NEVER B FIGURED OUT BY ANYONE, A BUTTERFLY:- PRETTY TO SEE HARD TO CATCH Hopeless ,Romantic , Dreamer ,Love To Play Pani Pani,Firefly,Fearless,Fashionista,Kool,Sweet,Cute,Gudluking,Fashionable,Glamorous,Classy,Introvert ,Reserved,Unpredictable ,Moody ,Contradictory,Short Tempered,Stubborn Kind Of Person.The Most Difficult,Complicated ,Confused Girl.Extreame Shopholic Person,Travel Freak, Clinical Psychologist, Child psychologist and counsellor, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Medical practitioner of Alternative systems, MRHS(Member Of Rural Health Society), Travel blogger, Voice over artist, Live Story Teller & Motivational speaker,Anchor,Model,Actor,Dancer,Makeup Artist&Lover& Blogger,Beauty Blogger,Author&Script Writer,Jewellary Designer,Fashion Designer And Blogger,Food Blogger social worker, social activist&A CHEF also...... GIRL WITH MULTIPLE TALENTS..... MOTO OF MY LIFE:- KARMA HAS NO SPECIFIC MENU , YOU ARE SERVED WHAT YOU DESERVE. NO BEAUTY SHINES BRIGHTER THAN A GOOD AND PURE HEART. FIGHT FOR A FAIRY TALE IT DOES EXISTS. IT IS BETTER THAT 10 GUILTY PERSON ESCAPE THAN 1 INNOCENT SUFFERS. LOVE ALL, TRUST A FEW, DO WRONG TO NONE. http://tiktok.com/@malikakrystal https://www.facebook.com/KAYANAAT.LOVINA.PRINCESSOFTHESKY?ref=bookmarks https://m.facebook.com/transmissionofcivilization/?ref=bookmarks https://m.facebook.com/Auroramalikakrystakayanaatxeniajulietshimmerjasmin/?ref=bookmarks https://m.facebook.com/beautifulstylishdivacharmingclassyfashionista/?ref=bookmarks https:// (at Dumping Yard Kisingarh) https://www.instagram.com/p/CZ6YlSJLM_E/?utm_medium=tumblr

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Chunky Bracelets

I was gonna only do half of this today but then I finished it.

Summary: Icy reflects on her past; decidedly, it is better to do the victimizing than be the victim. 

Self-harm mentions.

Sometimes the face reflected in the glass isn’t the one she wants. Sometimes the face in the mirror seems unnatural, like it shouldn’t be. And maybe that’s because it is. It was different some time ago...a long time ago now.

Icy rummages through her drawer and finds her favorite eyeshadow, her mascara, and her eyeliner. She draws it on thick and winged, accents her lashes, and adds a soft tint to her lips. Sometimes she chooses black or a deep navy blue, but today she is feeling for something lighter. Something like first frost on the grass. She fixes her hair into it’s high ponytail and accents it with diamonds, some faux and some real.

Her work is done. She is nothing like she was back then.

And she should be glad for it. There was nothing to like about her back then. Not her weird interests, not her awkward personality, and certainly not her looks--the way she dressed, her unkept, unwashed hair. Those ridiculous glasses and those painful braces.

She taps her eyeliner pencil against her chin; she could probably make it work now. The outfit anyhow. She thinks that her style of dress wouldn’t have been so terrible had it not clashed with whatever the hell had been going on with her face and personality.

Chunky studded bracelets clamped over blue and black arm warmers that fit too loosely around her arms paired with a ridiculously oversized muscle tank top--she can’t remember which band logo it had boasted. Ripped skinny jeans--they would have been anyhow if they weren’t so baggy on her--tucked into studded combat boots.

Yes, she could make that work now. But they didn’t sit well with braces, and glasses, and tangled hair. They were worn even worse on someone who stuttered through every conversation. Someone who rambled on about stupid things like snowglobe collections, famous brooms used by famous witches, and bands that no one else cared about.

She runs the comb through her hair until it is silky and immaculate. Until she has worked any trace of that person out with the knots. She doesn’t think about that person often. She tries to think none of her at all. Even still, after so long, and even in private solitude, it brings color to her pale cheeks.

Icy had been such an easy target, she doesn’t blame the lot of them. She wasn’t their favorite; their favorite was a short chubby girl with awful hand-eye coordination and a habit of stumbling over her own feet. But she was a good second.

They had many names for her but mostly she was a poser. A wannabe. An abomination to the punk-rock scene.

And her lyrics were just as absurd. Solstice had made that clear enough when she snagged her notebook and read them all out loud.

“Sing for us, Icy!” She shouted. “We want a concert!”

She did. She isn’t sure what she thought she would accomplish. Maybe she thought that she would have been a phenomenal singer, that she would have showed them all. And maybe she would have if she hadn’t been red-faced and anxious. Her song was shaky and off key.

She never sang again. Never wanted to.

For a time she unclasped the studded bracelets and swapped her skinny jeans for plain blue jeans. She traded her tank tops for oversized plaid sweaters in a soft baby blue. Somehow that made things worse. And of course that did. She was no longer a wannabe but a full blown dork. She supposes that at least the style had fit the person.

She picks through her closet for something to wear. She isn’t sure if she wants to go for the pastel goth aesthetics or something darker, something old school--batcave maybe. But then she’d have to break out the hairspray and style it all over again.

She transferred schools after that year. When they started throwing things at her and crafting little ornaments to hang in her hair she had requested the transfer. Her requests went ignored until she got careless--until her sleeve fell back and they found the scars.

She runs her fingers over them. Where they would be if she hadn’t tattooed over them. If she can’t see them, then they aren’t there. If they aren’t there then she never had a reason to put them there. If she never had a reason to put them there then she was never anything but suave and cool, smooth and confident.

The school that she was transferred to was smaller. Private. It wasn’t even in her home realm. She tried many styles then; one week she was preppy, the next she tried for something more sporty, and the week after that was whatever everyone else was wearing. And then she settled on simply being a punk-rock poser again. At least that took little effort and acting. There is something poetic about that, she knows.

She settles for pastel goth today, it goes well with her hair. She holds the dress against her body. Her elegant, slender body. There is a soft shimmer to her skin. Her skin has always had a shimmer to it. She studies the mirror again. Her cheeks are sculpted just as elegantly, her eyes are framed with makeup instead of glasses. Her hair falls over her shoulder in long, groomed waves. She has a pretty face. She likes to think that it is well earned.

She has earned her right to look down on the frizzy-haired and the bespectacled. She has earned her right to mock fareries that are too fat for their wings and witches that are skinnier than their broomsticks. She has earned her right to torment those who need to get themselves together.

She is glamorous. She has status. She has earned her right… And yet she feels hollow. Fake.

It is a nagging and persistent itch that is ever present each time she opens her mouth to let one of those loathsome pixies know that they are weak. She is fake. It is all a lie.

She tugs her dress on and steps out into the hallway.

“Oh perfect, you’re just on time!” Stormy greets.

“We were just reminding Mirta that she doesn’t belong here.” Darcy adds.

The girl is cornered. Icy rolls her eyes. The girl makes it too easy. Laughably easy. She is wearing Lucy’s arm warmers. She squeezes her eyes shut and covers her ears with her hands. Her fingernails are painted in an alternating red and black.

“She doesn’t need the reminder, she already knows.” Icy shrugs. “Don’t you, Mirta?”

“Y-yes.”

Icy rolls her eyes. “Then what are you doing here? This is a school for witches not, whatever the hell you are.”

“She’s a fairy in a witch’s clothing.” Stormy remarks.

“A poser.” Darcy comments, quirking a perfectly penciled brow.

A poser… Icy folds her arms over her chest.

She doesn’t think much of it throughout the day. She doesn’t think of it at all, really. Not until she makes it back to the dorm. And then she doesn’t stop thinking about it.

And the more she thinks about it, the more she thinks that she had made a mistake. She isn’t sure which kind or when exactly she had made it. But when she stands in front of the mirror and scrubs her eye makeup away, she is damn near certain that she has.

Sometimes when she stares for too long at her bare face she sees an awkward girl with glasses and braces and messy hair. And sometimes when she stares for much too long, she misses that person. That kinder person. That lanky girl with the arm warmers, studded bracelets, and oversized shirt. That stupid girl who--rather poorly--played the guitar in a stupid garage band.

“Hey.” Darcy leans in the door frame. “We’re going to the bar. You coming?”

“Let me reapply my makeup.”

“We still have to get ready too.” Stormy shrugs.

Icy wanders back to her closet. To the very back of it; he tugs on the arm warmers, clamps on those chunky studded bracelets. For old time’s sake, she tells herself.

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Blood Sister | Feeding Habits Update #5

Hey People of Earth!

Are we back for another Feeding Habits update? Today let’s chat chapter six!

Blood Sister is the first chapter in Harrison’s POV and also the longest chapter in the book (a little over 8k words). It took me about a month to write!

Scene A:

Harrison gets back to the NYC apartment he shares with his mother after running errands to ward off either the spirit that haunts their walls or to rescue whatever is stuck in them. His mother preps for a dinner as Harrison has invited his old pal Reeve over.

Scene B:

Harrison removes a litter of kittens from behind the drywall. One of the kittens is dead. Strangely, a German Shepherd puppy is also in the litter.

Scene C:

Reeve appears in a glamorous blur and makes an interesting first impression on Suz who seems slightly stunned and endeared by her.

Scene D:

At dinner Reeve confronts Harrison about his “straight-edge” lifestyle since moving to NYC and he realizes her judgements about his life being monotonous are very true--he lacks purpose.

Scene E:

Harrison and his mother clear the dishes and Suzanna confronts him on the fact that he hasn’t told her that Reeve is in fact Lonan’s sister. Suz knows the boys’ relationship is complicated, and plays Devil’s advocate by outright asking Reeve how her brother is. Reeve, who hasn’t seen Lonan longer than Harrison, has assumed Lonan lives with them or is close by, and feels semi-betrayed that Harrison has kept his whereabouts a secret.

Scene F:

Reeve and Harrison drive to a garden and he’s reminded of the event that lead to him and his mother’s return to the east coast.

Harrison meets Winona outside a convenience store, the same woman Lonan meets in ch.6 of Moth Work. She takes him to her mansion where she’s hosting a party and introduces him to her husband. Harrison makes multiple bad decisions which you can probably figure out for yourself!

Scene G:

Harrison wakes up in Winona’s house and is confused to see her and her husband standing over his leather jacket. If we remember what happened in ch. 6 of Moth Work, Lonan gets beat up by Winona’s husband and has Harrison’s jacket & angel chain stolen. We can assume from this scene that Winona has a) recognized the jacket and b) chosen him to come back to her house for the purpose of also beating him up (which happens).

Scene H:

Reeve and Harrison jump a fence into a garden to give the dead kitten an unorthodox “water burial” in the garden’s fountain. Reeve confronts him on why no one has seemed to care about her whereabouts for the last year, and also suggests the only reason he wanted to see her now is because he misses Lonan. Harrison miserably drinks too much wine.

Scene I:

Harrison wakes up in the cold, very drunk, and Reeve is gone. A security guard looms over him. Harrison asks the confused man if he thinks he was separated at birth. Harrison isn’t referring to feeling like he’s been removed from a sibling bond, like the kittens, but a deeper, “indissoluble bond” formed between two people (like the kittens and the puppy). This connects to the title “Blood Sister” as Reeve suggests she and Suzanna may be connected in this way, to the kittens, and to Lonan and Harrison.

This idea of “indissoluble bonds” was reinforced when I listened to Stephanie Harlowe’s coverage on the Parker-Hulme case, and this was the title of her video! This idea of an immutable connection between two people who are forever separated, like the dead kitten despite its death, still being connected to its siblings, was very relevant to how Harrison feels about Lonan.

Excerpts:

Here’s the entire first scene <3

Something has died in the drywall. Suz insists there must also be a ghost—she hears cries when she sleeps—so when Harrison returns to their apartment with both a handsaw and a bottle of holy water, she’s more than pleased.

Today, it snows in New York City, and no amount of brushing off his hair and jacket rids him of the snowflakes he tracks in. His face stings with the bitter early March air, and he’s resettled easily into the east coast grit; he likes the taste of instant coffee and the smell of gasoline.

Harrison shoulders off his jacket, the leather rigid with frost, and undoes the loop of his scarf one-handed. The apartment smells overwhelmingly of cloves and apple peel, and he is unsurprised when his mother rushes over to him, flushed from the kitchen heat, her #1 Dad apron bunching at her hips, and pushes a highball glass into his palm in exchange for his findings.

“It’s a secret recipe,” she says, twiddling through his errands. Suzanna lifts the bottle of holy water to eye level, unscrews its cap, and daps two soaked fingers to her lips just as he dips his fingers into the glass, around its rim, and then into his mouth. The hot mull of liquid bursts against his taste buds, citrusy. “Wish I believed in this shit as much as I believe nutmeg is my new holy saviour.”

Harrison downs the rest of the glass’s contents, the cider’s spice grafting down his throat. Its heat clings to the roof of his mouth, a subtle burn that numbs his tongue, but he likes it, its sweetened acid like a rucking back to life.

“Is that the secret?” He runs his pinky along the base of the glass so the last drops of liquid climb up his fingernail.

“The Lord?”

Harrison laughs and accepts the holy water she hands him, rescrews its cap in place. “Nutmeg.”

Suzanna takes his empty glass and whisks toward the kitchen. On the stove burbles two saucepans and one Dutch oven, the fan whirring like the pleats of an accordion.

“Maybe it’s both,” she says.

You asked for the entire second scene? Here Harrison finds the litter of kittens:

The first thing Harrison removes when he saws through the drywall lining the two-prong outlet is a dead kitten. Its body shifts onto his hand with damp weight, like an overripe pear, its silver hair glass-like under the beam of his flashlight. Though it sits comfortably in the pit of his palm, though he knows he cannot kill or revive it, his first instinct is to lay it on the beach towel Suzanna laid out because he fears he’ll crush it with just one pulse of his thumb.

Its eyes are the size of his pinkie nail, gently shuttered like it’s drifted to a lawless sleep. The animal will remain in this state—only death, but as he looks at it, braying its hairs back with his forefinger, he considers alternative options. Harrison knows little of necromancy, but considers anointing it with the holy water, lighting a red-cased candle in front of it, chanting a verse from Revelations.

With the flashlight secured between his molars, Harrison pulls out four more kittens, all that mew as they cling to his fingers, their noses twitching against his skin like it’s feed. They burrow into the beach towel, trampling over one another with blind fervency, all shimmery silver. In comparison to their deceased sibling, they wriggle, pink-nosed, and don’t settle against the grain of the towel, always wagging, like earthworms.

Harrison believes he’s done—removed the dead animal and rescued four more. Good work which he’ll take to a farm just outside the city—Suzanna has a friend. He’s nearly clicked off the flashlight when he sees it, just a subtle glint of something else—an animal that isn’t silver, but a dry brown.

At first, he thinks it’s a rat that’s raked through the walls to where it is now, but the longer he shines the flashlight, the more he sees it is not a rat, or even a kitten. What sits, jittering behind the outlet, is a pup.

Like the kittens, its nose twitches back and forth, its eyes small enough to be the ovular black beads on Suzanna’s rosary which hangs, decorative, above the front entrance. “It’s a cleanse for the spirit,” Suz said when he questioned her reasoning for bringing religious memorabilia into a house of two atheists. “Dianne from church told me.” Dianne is a beer-bellied schoolteacher, proud pothead and mother of four who frequently volunteers at the church’s weekend functions with his mother. “She’s into that kind of thing. Seances. Jesus Christ. I think she mentioned they had something spicy going on in college.”

“Something spicy?”

“Spicy. Like hot wings. Habaneros. One-night stands. I don’t know Harry, it sounded illicit.”

They both grinned.

Harrison does not know when him and Suz began getting along. There was no one date or time, no anniversary to look forward to for their official reunion. One moment he struggled not comparing her face to the one he knew in his early teens, and the next, they crouched over a salad bowl of burnt popcorn, taking turns painting each other’s fingernails with the same shade of red nail polish—Crazy for Carmine

The dog can’t yet focus its eyes on anything, but Harrison swears it stares at him. It fidgets from its position crouched on the outlet, so when he extends his hand, an offering, he’s surprised when it crouches onto the tip of his finger, shimmying into his palm. It’s even smaller when he holds it, plum-sized, and velveteen. Its eyelids flicker like the apartment’s bad TV signal, and when it opens its mouth to cry, its teeth, no larger than the tip of a toothpick, prick up.

“You’re not a tabby,” he says, drags his fingers through the suede-like gloss of its fur. The pup curls against his knuckles, murmurs languidly until Harrison pets its head again.

“Did you say something, Harry?”           

Harrison stands from his crouch when his mother materializes from her bedroom, the animal still pared delicately in his palm. When he glances at her, he’s surprised to see she’s changed out of her usual loungewear, a tank top and bell-bottoms, and into a patterned shirtdress that sways to her knees. The Matisse-like design, organic shapes, all the colour of a celery stalk, drapes to her knees, flounces when she twirls for him.           

“I thought we agreed on business casual,” he says, but smiles wider the longer he looks at her. Tulle gathers in a funnel down her waist, pluming her so she looks less like his mother and more like a fairy.          

“I’m taking the business side, and you’ll take the casual.”          

“She’s just a friend, Mom. She’s not expecting anything.”           

“She’s got an English last name,” Suz says. Her eyelids glitter with gold pigment, her lips tacky with rouge. “Of course she’s classy.”           

Harrison thumbs the back of the pup’s head and shifts closer to Suzanna when she cocks her head toward it.

“I think Reeve is more than classy,” he says. “Maybe stylish. Exclusive. Superior. Glamorous.”           

Suzanna shifts the pup from Harrison’s hands to her own, neatly patting its head with her pinkie until its murmurs soften. When she holds the animal, it’s like he no longer stands behind her. It’s just her in her Matisse dress and the dog, comfortably blinking in her hand. “You found a puppy in a litter of kittens?” she says, less of a question, and more of a declaration of wonderment. She lifts the animal to eye level. Its nose wrinkles, like the skin of a fig. “Looks like mama picked up a stray. A beautiful stray. You’re absolutely beautiful.”

Reeve making only iconic appearances:

Reeve appears in their doorway wearing cat-eye sunglasses, a bottle of pinot noir slatted between her arm and chest. Though it’s been storming since early morning and there has been no sun in the city since the week previous, her appearance is so believable—cheekbones subtly tanned like she’s mastered the timing for a perfect sunlike glow, the sunglasses teetering neatly on the tip of her nose and staying there, like they’re a dog she’s taught to sit and stay—that Harrison’s almost convinced she commissions the sun to come out twice daily for a private show, just for her.

“We booked an appointment,” she says, letting herself into the apartment in a faux-fur blur.

Harrison swivels as she unzips, tooth by tooth, the red skin-slick vinyl of her gogo boots. Her hair falls in an untamed fringe around her forehead, the front sections pinned back by an array of rainbow-coloured butterfly clips. It mimics the fray of her jacket, fluffed around the hood’s perimeter.

Reeve dusts snow off her corduroy culottes, readjusts the collar of her black turtleneck. “When I moved to the city, I forgot how gruelling the winters can become.” She taps the heels of her boots onto the welcome mat so slush flakes onto the rubber before slipping her feet out elegantly, like Cinderella. “I almost believed New York City existed in a fictional bubble where everything remained dry and hot, like in Egypt, or the Mojave. When I asked for a hellish climate, I was hoping for sun and the occasional forest fire. Not ice and more ice.”

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” Suz speaks where Harrison’s words shrivel. She steps from the kitchen to the entrance, her dress flouncing when she extends a hand toward Reeve. “William Shakespeare.”

Reeve looks up. The cold has pinched her cheeks pink, drooled water to her eyes so when she blinks, tears sprout to her jawline. “Suzanna,” Reeve says, and embraces his mother with willful ease, like they’ve been girlfriends for a decade, like they purchase pavlova from the same patisserie at the same time on Thursdays, like they help each other whip perfectly fatty meringues at the same baking class so they can master the same pavlova and never buy it again. “I’ve heard nothing about you and yet I feel we’ve known each other for years. What do they call that? Blood sisters.”

So here’s the whole third scene lol:

At dinner, Reeve pops the cork of a bottle of pinot noir with her teeth before Suz tells her she and Harrison don’t drink. She’s in the middle of saying she’s a prophet, the bringer of wine, her lips parted around the cork, traces of her lip gloss gumming around its circumference.

“No alcohol?” Reeve says, spitting the cork into her palm so a glob of red transfers onto her skin.

Suz stirs a serving dish of clams with an olive wood spoon, their shells phosphorescent in the artificial light. “Harry and I have taken a break from spirits. Except for the holiest one of course.” She points to the roof as if signaling to the man upstairs and dishes a spoonful of clams onto Reeve’s plates, the shells chiming against the ceramic.

“That’s so reverent.” Reeve pricks the edge of a clam with a toothpick and swallows its frill into her mouth. “So virginal.”

Harrison accepts a spoonful of clams from his mother and adjusts a sprig of rosemary so it lies perpendicular to the plate’s edge. Olive oil gums under his fingernails and soaks into the fibres of a slice of bread he rips at the crust.

“I always assumed you’d be a partier if you ever moved back to the city,” Reeve says, and it takes Harrison a moment to realize she’s speaking to him. “Disco. Karaoke. Cocktails. Men who buy you cocktails.”

“Has that been your life in New York, Reeve?” Harrison sucks a lobe of clam between his lips. Its brine coats his tongue in a burst of salt and cilantro.

Reeve tips the bottle of wine to her mouth, its red gift bow shifting, silverish with light. “You could say that. I just expected more. Not that your life now is boring. But I assumed there would be more glamour.”

Harrison sops up a dribble of oil onto a shear of bread, and says something like, “I thought so too,” before swallowing.

“We have glamour,” Suz says as Harrison absently eats more clams. She points to the chandelier the two found at the bottom of a New Jersey dumpster, yet to be installed, sitting in its crystal glory on the floor. She explains the story of how it came to be as Harrison eats and listens for the mewing of the kittens, thinks about their one dead sibling that now lies curled inside a shoebox, separated in eternal rest.

Reeve is not wrong. Life in New York City has been far from glamorous. He shares this apartment with his mother who pays for all of the rent—it’s been months since Harrison could hold down a steady job. He tries with odds and ends—repairing a neighbour’s bathroom sink, tacking sconces up outside the apartment for a hundred bucks. His room is a décor-less box that smells like wallpaper even though it’s sanded smooth and painted with two coats of an eggshell-finished oatmeal white. There is no dancing, no music, no colour, no partying, no alcohol or men with alcohol. Not anymore, at least. Her statement should not sting—this is the utter truth. The apartment is repetitive shades of indistinctive creams, furniture he and his mother pick up off the curbs of wealthy homeowners, incomplete, yet his home, nonetheless. No matter the story Suz tries to spin—look at the exposed brick, look at the counter space, look at the custom-moulded baseboards the previous renters installed—he knows what Reeve has said is true. Life in the city is comfortable but monotonous—an unrelenting kind of normal.

“We found kittens,” Harrison says, promptly interrupting the women’s conversation that has quickly moved away from the apartment to their favourite places to eat gelato. Suz’s clam drifts off her toothpick; Reeve almost chokes on a gulp of wine. Harrison swipes a chunk of bread through olive oil and chews. “That’s glamorous.”

Reeve sets the wine bottle back onto the dinner table and folds her hands over the other. Her manicure is chipped, just the remnants of a tortoiseshell marble. “What kind? Calico?”

“They’re just kittens. And a dog.”

“You found a dog in a litter of kittens?”

Harrison eats one last clam and finishes his portion of bread. “Glamorous,” he says, his mouth half-full.

The beginning of scene 4:

While Suz and Reeve discuss room décor and clear the plates, Harrison checks on the kittens. Dishes clank rhythmically as they’re soaped, rinsed, dried, the ceramic whimpering in time with the kittens. He hasn’t named any but understands their differences. Though the quadruplets share the same silver coat, one has a slightly larger nose than the rest, one has a fleck of gold in its blue eye, one has pinstripes scrolled across its forehead like a branch of lightning—small details like this differentiate them.

In his palm, the one with the golden eye crawls, its underbelly sateen. Tomorrow, he’ll make the drive just outside Brooklyn where he’ll drop the kittens off at an old farmhouse. Suz’s friend from rehab is selling it, some Theodore Harvey, but his wife fosters animals, and was delighted to have the new additions. Though he hasn’t spoken to his mother about this arrangement, he also knows tomorrow he will keep the dog. Juniper, he’s named her—June with the eyes like a solstice.

When his mother pokes him, he jumps, and the kitten shimmies off his palm.

The sounds of dishes clinking morphs into the filmy mutter of a talkshow Reeve watches, sipping absently at her gifted bottle of red wine.

She nudges a pastry into his hand, where the kitten once sat, the skin of the pasteis de nata oiling his hand. He crunches into it as she watches patiently, as if waiting for a review, and its caramel flavour ruminates on his tongue.

“This is good,” he says around a mouthful of pastry.

“$4.99.” Suz smiles and takes a nibble herself. “For six.”

Together they stand over the kittens, passing the tart back and forth until Harrison gives the final piece to his mother. The apartment whirs with the calculated singe of automated laughter and the purr of the kittens. He knows one sits dead in a shoebox on his bedroom dresser. The ground too hard to dig, a burial still necessary.

Suz licks a crumb from her thumb and wipes her palms along the skirt of her dress. Their focus shifts to Reeve who lies sprawled against the two-seater, yelling something at a contestant on the show who’s gotten an answer wrong—tulip, not two lips. That’s fabulous. You are fabulously a failure.

“You didn’t tell me she was Lonan’s sister.”

Harrison pokes at a flake of pastry and wipes his hands on the front of his jeans. Reeve’s bangles clatter in a cyan jangle as she applauds at the same contestant she previously ridiculed. There are so many things he could say to his mother—he knew Reeve first, Reeve isn’t just Lonan’s sister to him, more like his own, but when he adjusts himself, swallowing and tidying the hem of his shirt, all that comes out is, “I didn’t think you needed to know.”

“I would’ve like to,” Suz says. “Does she know? That you don’t know where he is?”

Harrison’s fingernail catches on a loose thread, and he yanks it out so even Reeve glances back at its upholstered plink. “I know where he is, Suzanna.”

Reeve and Suz being icons (direct continuation from the above):

Harrison turns back to the kittens who plow over one another like ants. Heat flushes his throat, prickles his cheeks and ears and suctions like a vacuum. Though Suzanna eventually leaves, joining Reeve on the couch, propping her feet on the same coffee table so their polished feet touch, toes pink like raw cherry tomatoes, though he knows they’re both right in knowing and not knowing where Lonan is, though he knows it should no longer matter to him, he finds himself leaning against the table where the kittens encase each other in a plastic shoe bin, ticking his fingers at his side.

He does not know what the reality television show is about. From the blots he hears from the TV’s can-like speaker, he concludes it’s something about botany, love, vengeance, fertilizer. No one theme—it does not even know what it is itself. Suz has materialized with another tart, and she and Reeve nibble at it with fervency, so close, their tongues almost touch as they dart across the custard. The sight is almost viper-like, their teeth notched forward, and it should be venomous, or at its worst—friendly, but all Harrison sees is girlish, maternal intimacy.

Suz and Reeve laugh at a contestant who wears a tartan printed jumpsuit and mismatching earrings—one the shape of a pineapple, the other an urn-like bead she claims holds the ashes of her great aunt. They outline her figure with their pinkies. They clutch each other’s hands. They flush like beets and wipe crumbs from each other’s mouths.

Reeve’s momentary lapse into delicacy:

Harrison turns his back and pretends to tend to the kittens. They all know he does nothing but thumb the backs of their heads, let them suckle against his fingertips—they all know, and yet, he continues doing it. Silence cuts through the apartment like hot glass.

If Reeve and Suzanna still touch toes, it’s because neither want to loosen the other’s pride. The only sound in the room belongs to the television which has moved away from dishwashing to a watering hose—four for four, as if this is a discount, as if anyone will truly need that many watering hoses.

“I haven’t seen your brother since late August,” Harrison says once the commercials simmer back to the gaudy laughter of the reality television show. At first, he doesn’t look at Reeve. He knows what he’ll see—some form of betrayal. She didn’t come here looking for Lonan. She hasn’t even asked for him, but he knows what he’ll see when he looks at her. Best friends do not keep secrets.

When he concedes, he is right. Reeve looks at him from under a thick smear of kohl, her eyes focused, like slate beads. Her lips are pink from wine and she unhinges a fleck of opal nail polish from her thumb. Her mouth does not move, a straight line that cranks with her jaw.

“Where is he?” she asks, fluttering her lashes when Suz pats her arm. If Harrison is right, Reeve hasn’t see her brother since she peered in on him when the two shared the tent, pearled a few smoke rings from Harrison’s cigar, and left for the east coast. Before he left, Foster filled him in on the details of her eventual cross-country desertion, though there weren’t many. How he’d last seen her at the motel, a margarita wobbling in her palm, what she’d said to him, to stay special, that there weren’t many people like him left, and how she had vanished like vapour by the time they realized to check. While Reeve hiked across the country by herself, he and Lonan swam through nighttide and badly waltzed in a four-by-four bathroom. She made an anonymous life in New York City, hailing cabs with just her eyes, and learning the easiest ways to shoplift. Alone. Her last memory of Lonan one where he pretended to sleep so he didn’t have to say goodbye to her.

“Las Vegas the last time I saw him,” Harrison says. He feels the urge to apologize for something, to hug her, or cry. Though her expression unbends from severe back to her perfected mould of glitzy conviction, her momentary lapse into delicacy startles him. He looks back to the kittens who seem more interested in themselves than him.

Reeve tightens her grip around the neck of the wine bottle and tactfully sips, her pinkie erect, her lips pursed just the right amount. “What happened?” she asks and sets the bottle onto the coffee table. She lets a dribble of wine fall from her mouth so she can dab at it like a wounded animal.

Harrison and Reeve in the car:

Harrison brings the box with the dead kitten and Reeve brings the bottle of pinot noir. Together, they settle in her red Beetle convertible, a car she insists she pawned for a quarter its listing price, though he figures from the way she settles in it, carefully placing the wine bottle in the cup holder, wiping her hands on her thighs as if checking for grease, that it must belong to a roommate or boyfriend, if she has either. The car smells faintly of pineapple and vanilla, a scent not unfamiliar to him, the waft strengthening as the tree-shaped air-freshener swings closer to him with every turn.

Reeve asks vaguely of his time in the city, how life has been for him and his mother since they moved from Vegas in mid October. Her mouth flutters with speech, each word like the hull of a hard candy she specially tastes before sharing. Has it been marvellous, just as you thought? Don’t you ever wonder how a city could become so brilliant? Isn’t the weather maddening? Don’t you adore it? She asks about Foster, what living with him was like, what saying goodbye to him the week previous was like—was it tragic—and he could tell her his move in with him and his mother wasn’t much of a plan—not a last resort either, but a salvaging. A necessary resuscitation. Reeve’s lips as dubious as shadow puppets.

Here’s some of the flashback with Winona at the convenience store:

The woman stood under the hex of the convenience store’s light, spooling her in a feverish blue. The sun had been down for hours, but its residual heat clung to Harrison’s arms in tacky gusts that wound up his fingers. Like the woman, he reached for his cigarettes. Vehicles spun across the highway just beyond the gas station, and when he raised his head after lighting the cigarette, the woman was staring at him.

“Aren’t you too young to be out without a parent or guardian?” she asked. Her hair was the colour of his mother’s candlesticks, a waxy boxed red. Her rings waggled in the false light.

“Maybe,” he said, a curl of smoke looping out of his mouth. “Can’t remember which life I’m on. There are so many. I could be ninety-seven. Tomorrow might be my birthday.”

It was September in Las Vegas. White licks of car exhaust laced the black sky, and though it wasn’t cold, Harrison pulled his jacket tighter around his chest.

Winona tries to figure out whether or not Harrison is a local by getting to know his eyes/face lol:

Harrison dropped the butt of his cigarette and stomped out its embers. When it was fully out, he fit his hands into his jacket pocket and approached the woman. Up close, her trench coat was pebbled with lint, a bead from her charm bracelet missing. She crushed her cigarette too, and when her hands were free, she stepped toward him with both palms out, and pressed them to his cheeks so he felt both the heat of her skin and the watery bite of her jewelry. She examined each plane of his face as if they were sides of a prism. Her perfume, a vinegary sort of citrus, stung his eyes the closer she got, the fur of her jacket’s trim brushing his chin when she pressed to her toes for a better look.

“You could be so many things,” she said, tilting his jaw at the same moment her pinkie slid from the jab of his nose bridge to his top lip. She pushed her face closer to his and inhaled, her plastic nail marking his skin with a pixel of glitter. “You’ve got the face of an angel. Which means you’re good. You’re sacred. You’re discreet.” When her finger poked into his mouth, her knuckle snagged on his canines. “Could also mean you’re a fraud. A criminal. You know, Lucifer wasn’t always the fallen angel.”

A bit of the party:

Winona’s front lawn was manicured, cropped neat at its soil scalp. Clusters of people huddled in different places—four gargling in the stone fountain just before the iron gate, two drinking from three martini glasses at once, a group of on their backs, arms wound like a wicker basket, shot glasses teetering between their teeth like human serving tables.

Winona parked opposite the house that pulsed with light. Harrison got out when she did, and with ease, she punched into the gate, leading him past her perfect lawn, her party guests, as if they were simply garden statues.

Inside, more people concentrated, all stopping Winona for a moment to say hello as she passed. She moved in a way only the owner of a house would, her strides easy, like she knew exactly where to take him and when.

“I know it’s busy,” Winona said, adjusting her volume for the holler of party guests. “I promise it’s always like that. Who is it that says we need partners for life? God or my therapist? This is that but every week. You meet so many people.”

Harrison listened to her haphazardly. Though he’d been in Las Vegas for a month, he hadn’t been out except for a few errands at the grocery store or for cigarettes, despite his mother’s insistence he quit. The party was overwhelming. Bass from the stereo caught him by the throat and held him there as he and Winona threaded through her house that seemed closer to a mansion. The interior smelled like cleaning bleach and fruit cocktails, and he could hardly walk without someone rearing into him. He should’ve left, known better, done better, but it thrilled him, every moment of the party’s chokehold.

When Winona pushed through her French doors and out to the back pool, Harrison tailed her closely, unsure he’d be able to keep pace if he lost sight of her, even for a moment. The backyard smelled artificially floral, like orchids, tuberose, the grassy melt of citronella candles.

Some of my fave Harrison dialogue:

“You should’ve told me you were into vintage. Cheap but chic. I like it, angel.” Her ring finger smushed into his jaw, and then against his hairline.

“What’s vintage about me?”

Winona laughed, though her eyes remained glass-like. “Your jacket, of course. You’re thrifty. Into second-hand.”

~~theme makes an appearance:

It was only later, when he stumbled, bloody knuckled, through their front door, stepping over partygoers and martini glasses, that he understood. He hadn’t come to the party thinking about Lonan but managed to attract the same people. He hadn’t drunk the magenta liquid thinking about him but managed to exit the house stumbling, as he did, his knees knotted like a newborn lamb. There was something inconceivably indissoluble about them—their bond mirror-like, one making one decision, and the other mimicking it with vigour, unknowingly inseparable.

God tier denial:

“What do you miss about him?”

Harrison blinks. He hasn’t expected her to speak to him again, in fact he’s pictured the night whittling into gauzy silence, them setting the box afloat in the fountain, and then leaving once more, wordless. Reeve drinks another sip of wine. Its scent stings, like earthy cranberries.

“I don’t,” he says, which is a lie, and they both know it. Harrison has never been a good liar, but especially a bad liar around Reeve who’s always managed to snuff out the truth. She looks at him in absolutes, like she sees his every answer scraped into his cheek and doesn’t need to check his work. Her eyes are feline and rimmed with kohl and aquamarine mica—she doesn’t need anyone to tell her the truth because she holds it in her fist. “He has a girlfriend. He’s happy.” Harrison rations more wine down his tongue, three times as much as he’s intended to drink.

“But what do you miss about him?”

Harrison misses nothing. He sleeps little and smokes too much because he misses nothing. He walks by himself, eats by himself, talks to himself because he misses nothing. He jumps from job to job, person to person, place to place because he misses nothing. He wakes up in dazes the colour of blackberries because he misses nothing. He blinks dreams from his eyelashes like they’re bad spells because he misses nothing. He holds himself, he drinks himself, he leaves no company for anyone because he misses nothing about Lonan. He misses absolutely nothing.

Harrison sits up and lifts the dead kitten’s box. He feels Reeve’s gaze when he lowers it into the fountain, the box giving into the slosh of water, and feels her gaze once more when he sits back and drinks more wine. The moon makes him miserable, its silver gloat like a reminder, of how easy it would be to look at it and see Lonan’s face appear in its dime. He doesn’t register how much he drinks, just that it feels better than not drinking. He doesn’t register that Reeve never takes the bottle, that it’s just him and its open gape of wine. As the kitten swirls around the fountain, he tries not to think of its siblings back at the apartment, all mottled over each other like burrs. An unbreakable bond, and what that means, even as one of them sits alone, gurgling along the current of a fountain.

If you didn’t ask for angst before, you sure did now:

He does not remember falling asleep, and so waking up feels illusory, shimmery, like a mirage. He focuses on dart of yellow light and a man wearing a security uniform telling him he can’t be here, here being the garden, past the fence, under the fountain. Snowflakes have clumped against his eyelashes and he blinks twice to dislodge them. The man must ask him if he’s intoxicated, never noticing the shoebox floating in the fountain, because Harrison says, “Who’s to say? I miss so many things,” and isn’t talking about the bottle of wine or Reeve that both seem to have vanished, as if they were never there. Harrison blinks again, searching for Reeve’s outline somewhere in the crisp bushel of dead foliage, but she never reappears—has he imagined the entire thing, or is she magical, effervescent, invisible? What was the last thing she said? Drink it all. It’s good for you. It’s like your own personal healing tonic.

“Do you think it’s possible I was separated at birth?” Harrison asks the security guard, who leads him by the elbow out past the iron gate and into the parking lot where he stumbles over a patch of glazy slush and onto his knees.

“Are you a twin?”

Harrison draws his index finger through the slush, doodling nonsense—letters of his name, an eyeball, a singular, faceless nose. “I can’t stop thinking about him.”

“Your twin?”

Harrison shakes his head.

Snow and slush dredge his jeans and the hem of his jacket; a streetlamp filters him and the security guard in foamy yellow. His skin has numbed from sitting out in the cold too long, and in some places, prickles with heat, like the fritz of pine needles. Reeve has dissolved in the fresh spatter of snow that settles on the pavement, his fingers. The fur fringe of her hood gone, the slick of her boots. She will not be here tomorrow. He may never see her again, and yet this is not what makes him ache in the way he does.

His hands move for him. Dividing the snow in slopes, curves, lines—letters. When he’s finished, he rests his chin on his own shoulder and dries the slop of slush from his nail. The security guard leans over, bends down to get a better look, but Harrison doesn’t have to look to know what he’s written. Chiselled so the flurries fill its gaps, like cement. His name will be erased by dawn. Lonan.

So that’s it for this very, very long update! See you for chapter seven!

--Rachel

[phroyd]

A Great Actress Leaves Us! - Phroyd

Bibi Andersson, the luminous Swedish actress who personified first purity and youth, then complexity and disillusionment, in 13 midcentury Ingmar Bergman films, died on Sunday in Stockholm. She was 83.

Her death was confirmed by the director Christina Olofson to several Swedish news outlets. Ms. Andersson had a stroke in 2009 and had been hospitalized in France.

Her emotionally complex role in “Persona” (1966), the film that made her acting reputation, was one of the great stereotype reversals in film history, a definite departure for the thirtyish Ms. Andersson, who had begun acting in her teens. Before that film, Bergman had given her roles “symbolizing simple, girlish things,” she told The New York Times in 1977. “I used to be called a ‘professional innocent.’”

Few moviegoers could disagree. In “The Seventh Seal” (1957), Ms. Andersson played a gentle, young medieval-era wife and mother who was part of a traveling acting troupe. Whenever she appeared onscreen — with her long “Alice in Wonderland” blond hair and beatific glow — the sun came out and birds sang.

In “Wild Strawberries” (1957), she was first seen as the protagonist’s turn-of-the-century sweetheart, sitting on the forest ground collecting berries in a tiny basket while wearing a fairy tale maiden’s striped and ruffled dress, her hair in a combination of braids and Victorian ringlets. But in the same film, she also played the brash, short-haired, tomboyish, contemporary teenage hitchhiker, smoking a pipe just because she knew she shouldn’t.

The haircut may have been a catalyst. When she did “Persona,” it was with a close-cropped pixie cut; she played a sensible nurse with reading glasses and a sunny exterior who reveals herself to be both talkative and troubled. The character’s personality then seems to merge with that of her patient (Liv Ullmann), an actress who has had a breakdown and refuses to speak. When the film opened in the United States in 1967, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it “a veritable poem of two feminine spirits exchanging their longings, repressions and mental woes.”

Most of Ms. Andersson’s acting honors, like most of her film and stage work, were European. In addition to winning four Guldbagge Awards, the Swedish equivalent of the Oscar, she was named best actress at the Cannes Film Festival in 1958 for “Nara Livet” (“Brink of Life”), sharing the award with three co-stars, and best actress at the Berlin Film Festival in 1963 for the title role in “Alskarinnan” (“The Mistress”). Paradoxically (and surprisingly, to many), neither was a Bergman film.

n the United States, she did win National Society of Film Critics awards twice: as best actress for “Persona” and as best supporting actress for “Scenes From a Marriage” (1974), in which she and Jan Malmsjo played the central couple’s unhappily married, viciously bickering dinner guests. But she never became a full-fledged American star.

Her earliest Hollywood effort, which preceded the American premiere of “Persona” by six months, was “Duel at Diablo” (1966), a forgettable western starring James Garner. Ms. Andersson was an American white man’s wife who had been abducted by Apaches and wanted to go back.

A decade or so later, she played the soft-spoken psychiatrist of a schizophrenic teenager (Kathleen Quinlan) in “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” (1977) and Steve McQueen’s Norwegian wife in a drama that was an unusual choice for him, “An Enemy of the People” (1978), Henrik Ibsen via Arthur Miller.

She did films for the directors John Huston and Robert Altman. She was Richard Chamberlain’s mother (although Mr. Chamberlain was a year older) in the 1985 mini-series “Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story,” about the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis. And she made a glamorous cameo appearance as a helpful Stockholm socialite in flashback scenes of “Babette’s Feast” (1987).

Critics were kind. David Thomson, in “Biographical Dictionary of Film,” called her “the warmest, most free-spirited of Bergman’s women.” Bergman, who employed certain actresses in film after film, was notorious for his claustrophobic, almost fetishistic relationships to them during filming. The fact that he and a number of the women also had affairs seemed almost secondary.

When Ms. Andersson made her Broadway debut, in 1973, Clive Barnes of The New York Times praised her “absolutely unforced naturalness.” Derek Malcolm of The Guardian once pronounced a particular screen performance “superb, even by her exalted standards.”

Berit Elisabeth Andersson was born in Stockholm on Nov. 11, 1935, the younger of two daughters of Josef Andersson, a businessman, and the former Karin Mansson, a social worker.

In her teens, determined to become an actress, Berit began taking classes and appearing as an extra in Swedish films. She made her credited movie debut in “Dum-Bom” (1953), a comedy about a mayor whose twin brother is a clown. In 1954, she was accepted into the Royal Dramatic Theater’s prestigious acting school in Stockholm.

Her work with Bergman began earlier, however. She appeared in a commercial for Bris soap, which Bergman had agreed to do because of a 1951 national film-industry strike. Four years later, he cast her in “Smiles of a Summer Night”; her character name was Actress, and she had one scene.

Other Bergman-Andersson projects included “The Devil’s Eye” (1960) in which Satan sends Don Juan back to earth to seduce a young vicar’s daughter; “The Passion of Anna” (1969), in which Ms. Andersson plays a recent widow trying to hold herself together; and “The Touch” (1970), about a married woman having an affair with a neurotic American. The film, Bergman’s first in English, also starred Elliott Gould.

Ms. Andersson’s last films were “The Frost,” a 2009 drama about a couple grieving for their son, and “Arn: The Knight Templar” (2010), originally a mini-series, in which she played an evil mother superior.

She had a long and busy stage career in Sweden, starring in classic works by Molière, Chekhov and Shakespeare, and even appeared twice on Broadway. Both “Full Circle” (1973), a wartime drama, and “The Night of the Tribades” (1977), with her frequent film co-star Max von Sydow, had particularly short New York runs.

After Ms. Andersson’s romantic relationship with Bergman in the 1950s, she married Kjell Grede, a Swedish screenwriter and director, in 1960; they divorced in 1973. Her second husband, from 1979 until their divorce in 1981, was the politician and writer Per Ahlmark. She did not marry again until 2004.

Ms. Andersson was married three times. Her survivors include a daughter, Jenny Grede Dahlstrand, and a sister, Gerd Andersson, a former ballerina with the Royal Opera.

In 1977, looking back on her first two decades of movie acting, Ms. Andersson told American Film magazine that she felt “no connection with what I was doing” in her early screen appearances, even describing them as corny. But there was one exception.

“‘Persona,’ on the other hand, I’m still proud of,” she said. “Each time I see it, I know I accomplished what I set out to do as an actress, that I created a person.”

Phroyd

[intergalacticrp]

NAME :// FAYBELLE THORN ORIGIN :// EVER AFTER HIGH AGE :// TWENTY-THREE JOB :// ASSISTANT TO MALVINA MACPHERSON FC :// LEE CHAERIN (CL)

They say I'm trouble         They say I'm bad                  They say I'm evil                           And that makes me glad

BIOGRAPHY ://

Faybelle’s early years were full of moving from place to place, bad neighborhood to bad neighborhood, never staying in one location for too long as her mother struggled to put her life back together. She made ‘friends’ after each move and sometimes even got to stay in the same school, but had to get used to idea that she’d end up leaving them eventually, reinforcing her mother’s lessons that no one else would ever be there for her. And of course, none of them ever invited her to hang out after school. Her time after school and on weekends was mainly spent alone and studying as her mother attempted to support the two of them, rarely lasting long at jobs first due to depression and later her temper

It wasn’t until shortly before high school that the two found any sort of stability in their lives, when her mother finally found work that she hadn’t immediately hated everyone and was able to rise through ranks. Unfortunately, it was also when Faybelle discovered the circumstances behind her conception, and her mother’s attitude and their lack of a relationship. Refusing to blame herself for the way her mother was, she threw herself into her school work, and cheerleading. And she’d certainly never admit to working harder in some misguided attempt at earning her mother’s love, regardless of what her therapist said.

College is still what she would consider the best time of her life. Having gotten in on a cheer scholarship, Faybelle was made captain in her second year, quickly turning them into a championship winning team with her no nonsense approach to practice. It didn’t make her many friends, but it didn’t matter to her. She was finally doing something she loved and was good at. She had one or two people she was close to off the cheer team, and that was enough. She wasn’t one of those stuck princesses who needed the whole school acting like the sun shone out of her every orifice.

During her senior year she picked up an internship working under Malvina Macpherson, and quickly grew to respect the woman and her ability to manipulate everything and everyone around her, striking fear into the hearts of those beneath her.  Faybelle was always a bit conniving and backstabbing, but under Malvina she took it to new levels, emulating the woman in every way she could. Graduating with a degree in business, she learned just how much she’d gotten her new idol’s attention when she was immediately offered a position as her personal assistant. It’s not glamorous, and she’s nowhere near satisfied, but it was a start.

AESTHETIC ://

thorn bushes. shimmering fairy wings. cool tones. perfecting the art of being petty. an elegant spell book. all one has is herself. platinum hair. sharp wings, an even sharper glare. seelie or unseelie. dark frost. a sheer black capelet. gothic lace. the prick of a spindle. freezing fire. she is the property of no one. pompoms in the air. metallic nails. angel wings - angels fall. quartz jewelry. money, power, glory. life’s a bitch but so are you.

MISC :// (tw: rape)

Faybelle’s mother is a bitter woman. She fell in love young, but her lover only wanted her for her body. When she was hesitant to give him what he wanted he took it for himself - drugging and then raping her. She was hurt in every sense of the word. Nine months later Faybelle was born. Not only did the psychological damage and unplanned pregnancy turn her hateful and cold, it also lost her the job opportunity of a lifetime.

From an early age, Faybelle was taught by her mother that the only person she can ever count on and trust is herself. Life is a bitch, so she should be one too. It’s the only way to keep yourself safe. Faybelle took those words to heart.

With a talent in gymnastics and a flair for putting on a show, Faybelle made a fantastic head cheerleader in high school. Back then everyone seemed to hate or envy her, or sometimes both. 

She never dated, claiming that she just refused to be tied down by any one person. And it partially was because of that, but secretly she was (and still is) afraid of getting attached to anyone. She grew up seeing the effects of what that did to her mother.

Faybelle hates working as an assistant. Not that she’s got anything against Malvina personally, she just despises working underneath someone. On the plus side though, she’s working for someone very close to Yen Sid himself and who knows what doors that could open up for her in the future.

Has a tendency to invite herself to parties and whatnot. 

CONNECTION ://

duchess swan: her only real friend. beneath their competitive, bitchy attitudes they care a lot about each other.

briar beaumont: frenemy.

katherine “kitty” cheshire: they get along well. both love causing chaos.

bonnie “bunny” blanc: college roommate. timid little thing.

malvina macpherson: boss. she’s an admirable woman, but faybelle still hates working for her. 

AVAILABILITY :// OPEN || TAKEN BY FELIX

[wigwurq]

WIG REVIEW: BATTLE OF THE SEXES

We all know who wins at the end of the Battle of the Sexes, the 1973 tennis tournament/public spectacle between 29yo Billie Jean King and 55yo Bobby Riggs and yet it is a win that we all needed to see again in 2017 in movie form. I really wish this movie had come out on November 10, 2016. It would have been cathartic to see the reaction shots of misogynist men seeing a lady reign supreme and, well, it still felt cathartic now, almost a year later. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE WIGS? Let’s discuss:

When we first meet Ms. King as played by tanned insect Emma Stone, she has  subtle Farrah waves. This wig isn’t terrible. Meanwhile, Sarah Silverman serves up Jacqueline Susann realness with some extra frosted action in this gingham fantasy cocktail dress. YAYYYS MA’AM. I think I need to renew my wedding vows so that my mom can recreate this lewk.  

 Anyway, after getting no respect from Bill Pullman (yes, BILL PULLMAN), Billie Jean decides to start her own damn ladies tennis tour (wurrrrrqqqqqqqq!) and nothing says the start of ladies tennis tour like a trip to the salon, amiright?

There at the salon, BJK realizes that she might have some feeeeeeeeeelings for the lady hairdresser. This is also where the movie gets really boring (nothing against lesbian love, obvs - sadly it is expressed as really moody and boring in contrast to the fun of the rest of the movie!)

 Anyway, whatever - you go, gurls. Again, this wig is fine.

As is this shorter shag the lady hairdresser/new mistress gives her.

Oh meanwhile, BJK was apparently married at the time to a blonde Ken Doll and possibly the most supportive husband of all time. Dude straight up looks the other way at lesbian affairs, will totally ice your knees, lawyer up all your Virginia Slims tennis deals all while looking like he’s going to escort Barbie to a date at a 70s disco ski lodge or something. 

Back to Emma Stone’s wig, I guess my biggest problem is that is just doesn’t look like BJK’s real hair. HERE is the real BJK and Bobby Riggs (who looks pretty much exactly like Steve Carell - a good dude wig for once!) But BJK? NOPE. I don’t know why it’s so hard to find a feathered 70s shag wig that has the body and texture of this hair. WHY IS THIS SO HARD TO DO?!

THIS DOES NOT LOOK LIKE BJK HAIR! OK? OK.

The other ladies of the Virginia Slims Tennis Tour all serve up (that is actually a pun here - ugh TENNIS) some good lewks - most of them wiglessly. Oh and if you look into the center of this picture you will see a Becca/Jules SuperBad reunion! They’re also apparently really good friends in real life - thanks internet! 

These lady tennis players also serve up FASHION. JUST LOOK AT THESE EFFING TENNIS DRESSES. Here is where we get to the true stars of this movie:

ALAN EFFING CUMMING and also Wallace Langham (aka Josh from Veronica’s Closet) play the dudes who design these glamorous tennis gowns and also provide support, wisdom, and general sassiness. If this story were a fairy tale, they would obviously be the fairy godmothers (all puns intended).

LOOK AT WHAT THEY’RE WEARING TO AN AIRPORT IN HAWAII.

LOOK AT THEIR VAGUELY MATCHING LEWKS AND PORTABLE CHAMPAGNE GLASSES. I WANT TO BE THEM WHEN I GROW UP. 

I think that Alan Cumming’s hair is just styled into the coif it should always be and Wallace Langham is wearing a wiglet but DAMN IT WURQS SO WHATEVER. Also at the end of this movie (absolutely no spoilers) Alan Cumming absolutely does his best Rupert Everett in My Best Friend’s Wedding impersonation and it makes me wonder what Rupert Everett is up to and can he be in a movie with Alan Cumming please? Thanks.

Oh also - basically everyone is in this movie INCLUDING ELISABETH SHUE. She doesn’t wear a wig but I just want everyone to know that she is getting work and looks AMAZING.

EVERYTHING SHE IS DOING IN THIS PICTURE WURQS. I amend my previous statement: I want to be Elisabeth Shue in this picture when I grow up. 

VERDICT: WURQS

[diaryofanobsessivefangirl]

Sarah's stepmom is not happy either because she can't measure up to Sarah's birth mom. First off, she looks nothing like Sarah's mom. Sarah's mom looked like an older version of Sarah: a glamorous, dreamy figure with long brown hair. Stepmom, with her brittle beauty - short frosted hair, drawn face, frown lines - looks more like a real person than Sarah's mom, the actress. Second, stepmom acts nothing like birth mom. Birth mom loved Merlin the dog [note family photo of Sarah, parents and dog on her mirror], while stepmom won't let him in. In her physical appearance and her character, stepmom is harsher, more realistic and a tougher disciplinarian than birth mom. Stepmom works hard at being a good mom. She goes out frequently with Sarah's dad [probably not every weekend, as Sarah claims, but often enough to keep the spark alive], but also spends time with her children. Toby's getting along fine, but stepmom worries about Sarah. Is she socially and emotionally on track? Stepmom doubts it: "I'd like it if you had dates at your age" she exclaims to Sarah. Sarah responds by throwing a fit and storming upstairs. While particularly concerned about her stepdaughter, stepmom doesn't know how to communicate with her and tell Sarah that she does, in fact, love her. Stepmom's comment to dad "She treats me like a wicked stepmother in a fairy story no matter what I say" summarizes stepmom's hurt, frustration and probably some of her broken heart that she can't get through to Sarah.

Interesting approach on Karen, Sarah’s stepmother, by this site