#feisty needlepoint

[hometoursandotherstuff]

https://www.instagram.com/pinkhouseliving/

[starry-night-rose]

“I’ll have you know, I’m tougher than I look!”

Character Playlist / Character Inspirations

Full Name: Molly Adelaide Primrose

Nicknames: Mol (Family), Mademoiselle Curieuse (Rook), Boxfish (Floyd)

V/A: Tiffany Tatreau (EN) Maekawa Ryoko (JP)

!Twisted from Wendy Darling from Peter Pan!

Age: 17

Birthday: August 31st

Horoscope: Virgo

Species: Human

Gender: Female

Pronouns: She/her

Height: 157 cm (or 5’2)

Hair Color: Light Brown

Eye Color: Dark Blue

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Homeland: Queendom of Roses

Family: Unnamed Father, Unnamed Mother (deceased), Two Unnamed Younger Brothers

Dominant Hand: Ambidextrous

Dormitory: Heartslabyul

School Year: 2nd Year

Class: 2-C (No. 2)

Best Class(es): Magical History, Animal Languages, Astronomy

Worst Class(es): None! Or so she says...

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Favorite Food(s): Wild Berries, Pastries, Roast Beef

Least Favorite Food: Turnips

Hobbies: Needlepoint, Reading, Taking Care of Others,

Dislike(s): Dust, Being Sick, Stubbornness

Talent(s): Swimming, Storytelling, Babysitting

Sexuality: Bisexual (Male Preference)

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Personality: Molly is known around her dorm and the rest of NRC for being a responsible and dutiful young lady who would do anything to help others! Molly is also quite intelligent but does have a habit of being what is called a “know it all.” On the inside, Molly can also be very feisty and strives to be the best in all she can be! This can be seen as her being a perfectionist when it comes to grades and other subjects. Besides all of this, Molly is just a sweet girl who would do anything for those she loves!

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Tw for Parental Death and Depression

Backstory: Molly was born in the Queendom of Roses to two loving parents. Later, she became an older sister to two younger brothers. However, this happiness was short lived as when Molly was seven, her mother passed away. This left Molly’s father in a deep depression that left him distant from his family. Molly decided to step up and take care of the family in place of her mother. This left Molly wanting to grow up much faster and to be more mature in order to take care of her family. Later, Molly was accepted into NRC and was sorted into Heartslabyul.

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Trivia!

Molly has been swimming since she was little and has won many medals for it!

Molly absolutely loves bows and always tries to wear one in all of her outfits

Her favorite type of books are fantasy and memoirs!

Molly trained herself to write with both of her hands

Often is found scolding or patching up Porter Pierce (belongs to @rosietrace )

Molly claims to speak a multitude of animal languages such as porpoise and even dodo!

[pseudofaux]

Vereene (Arcana Apprentice)

Vereene has warm, friendly intentions but she’s very cautious after her lost time, so she comes off colder than she is. She is often unsmiling in public, and her eyes are a gold color that can unsettle people. To look more welcoming, she decorates her clothes and herself with lots of pretty patterns, motifs, and jewelry. She sometimes takes this effort beyond the point of good taste, and this is probably what Nadia comments on during Vereene’s first day at the palace.

Vereene fights her inclination to be a busybody. She’s a wannabe fixer, but not knowing years of her life has made her sensitive to the privacy of others. 

She does not fight her natural homebody-ness, because to Vereene there is endless--pleasurable!-- work to be done making a nest cozy and beautiful. It gives her a welcome sense of control over her life. When she’s off on adventures it makes her happy to decorate temporary spaces. She would absolutely paint the mast of a boat and stitch wind-catching spells into the sails. She would never dare mess with Muriel’s hut, but she wants to...

I pair Vereene with Nadia. And with Nadia in private she is doting and very affectionate, mostly content to be the one spoiled because she knows she supports Nadia in other ways... but keen to do some spoiling of her own (especially in sensual but non-sexual ways, like shampooing Nadia’s hair in the bath, putting on her jewelry, and making sure their bed smells niiiiiiice). Home is safety is freedom. In public, anything more than a forehead smooch would make Vereene uncomfortable. Hand-holding A++ at all times, though (it feels sweet and like a hidden intimacy when they press the pads of their fingers together).

Magic specialties: knots and fastening (and the corresponding unraveling), protection.

Familiar: Bramare, a magpie. Clever boy, and feisty. Brings her baubles from time to time that she incorporates into needlepoint.

Enjoys:

Embroidery (for beauty) and mending (for function), and being able to put them together, like a pretty sweep of flowers across darning? BLISS. Kintsugi is like her entire philosophy/aesthetic: honor-repair-use, rinse, repeat.

Nadia. Even in the ways the might seem to clash-- Nadia’s adventurousness against Vereene’s steadiness means they can depend on each other for adventures and in the middle of them. Nothing Vereene remembers makes her as warm or excited as Nadia and her attention.

Muriel’s company if she can get it-- they can work in companionable silence on their projects! Vereene’s idea of a wouldn’t-that-be-great-afternoon: she and Nadia visit Muriel’s hut, they take treats they won’t pressure him to eat and some creature comfort supplies they won’t do anything but leave in a basket near the door, and they finally read that book (Nadia), finally attend to the mending basket (Vereene), and finally breathe easy in the company of others (Muriel).

Faust and every other familiar ever, pretty much. She feels free to be soft with animals in a way she does not want to be with people. Deeply pleased to have earned Chandra’s affection.

Untangling things. The more delicate the work, the more satisfying it is. Multistrand necklace made of delicate chain in a hopeless knot? She’s your girl.

Flavorful foods, but not too spicy hot (**/**** stars on takeaway, ya dig?). Loves learning Prakran flavors. Warm > cold, even in the summer months.

Comfort and coziness: the girl has an insane amount of decorated pillows, cushions, blankets, throws, shawls... 10/10 has slippers for visitors and 12/10 would do anything to make a guest comfortable and feel well cared for.

Beauty, which she’s always happy to find and appreciate. Mosaics, gardens, paintings, well-made furniture, tapestries, swirly staircases, stained glass, coastlines, illuminated manuscripts, script on signs... Pretty makes her happy.

To provide for these enjoyments-- shopping! Being surrounded by people and only needing to engage when she’s ready to buy is soothing. Being around all that stuff is inspiring. She loves to hunt the red market for colorful things and if she goes on her own she doesn’t like to come back without something to show Nadia, even if it’s a one-off sort of “isn’t this a lovely color?”

Privacy. So she can be herself.

Not a fan:

Rule breaking. Honestly, she’s a stick in the mud. When circumstances call for it she’s fine making exceptions, but she’s pretty strict! Kind of schoolmarmy (r.i.p.)

Anyone abusing kindness, anywhere. Full stop. HUGE PROBLEMS with Lucio until he thinks about what he’s done. She honors sincerity and honesty even if they are selfish, but she can’t abide a liar or manipulator. This makes her uncertainty about her own past very difficult to contend with. And it makes her fiercely protective of Nadia’s heart, which Vereene knows to be deeply kind.

Getting dirty. She’ll worm-wrangle, but she will want to get cleaned up as soon as humanly possible.

Waiting. She can get very impatient to finish the task at hand and go home!

Fussiness in others, which is... hypocritical. She isn’t warm to most of the courtiers.

See more:

Above comissioned and gifted from the amazing @wingcinna. Below a much-appreciated gift from the divine @queenofthearcana:

And sweet @chibibugeisha made this mood/aesthetic board for Vereene I'm pretty much catatonic over:

Read more:

Promises, Promises (NSFW)

A Little Inspiration by the wonderful @rosethearcanist

[manifestoonmoralmanlove]

Gormless Ch. 1 - Alexia’s Thug Fuck Quest

A well-meaning friend gave me a book series that is hilariously bad.  The first book was Souless and my riffs were entitled brainless. This second book is entitled Changless and these riff are then gormless.

I mean to say I have entitled them gormless! Not that my riffs are dumb, and the effort I spend on them stupid since I’m the only one who enjoys them. HAHA!

The story is SUPPOSED TO be about how a badass lady hits baddies with her umbrella and bangs her hot werewolf husband.  In reality it’s mostly poor attempts at being witty, flirty, and superior.

For the last book check out the brainless tag.

If you want the TL;DR version but want to read these new riffs anyway?

This story is set in supernatural Victorian steampunk England.  Alexia is our NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS protag.  She is a soulless, which means she’s able to negate the abilities of vampires and werewolves by touching them. She’s recently married a big oaf, named Lord Connel Maccon.  He is an important werewolf man.  Their relationship is mostly arguments about how Maccon can’t tell her fucking anything.  Alexia has also recently become head of ~Soulless affairs~ in Queen Victoria’s government.  She also has a family full of evil women.  These women are evil because they do the same shit Alexia does...but like...while blonde.

Chapter 1 - Alexia’s Thug Fuck Quest

So the last book opened with Alexia dispatching a vampire at a ball. I can admit that’s a good intro. It catches your attention.

This one opens with her husband (Maccon) being woken up early to head into work. You ever in that situation? Hardly pulse-pounding.  Okay I’m being a bit glib.  He is head of the Supernatural (BUR) police and it’s an emergency. However we’re only given vague details, and when he refuses to tell his wife the vibe is not ~I don’t want her to panic~ but rather she’ll find out about it at her meeting tonight anyway.  Again, that doesn’t exactly leave you excited.  Despite the incident sounding severe, he doesn’t seem upset or in much of a rush.  He putz about getting ready, and plays a bit of tonsil-hockey with her before he heads out.

This scene does have to give us a bunch of exposition but I still think it could have been tightened up considerably.  Alexia eventually staggers outside to be surprised to see a bunch of werewolves from Maccon’s pack setting up on the lawn. This upsets Alexia, cause she’s gonna host a party in a few days. (This party never actually happens by the by.) But I mean GOSH! How untoward of them!  Her husband has not and will continue to not tell her fucking anything because they both don’t have functioning brains.

She’s confronted by Major handsome handsome of the studly handsomes, that being (his real name) Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings.  This isn’t even a funny name.  Where’s Luke the Duke? Major Minor? Have you not heard the Earl of Sandwich is full of Bologna? Are any of these GOOD jokes? Not really but they’re more fun than just having a stroke while masturbating to the bland brick, known as Channing Tatum.

However, this guy is not only physically attractive but he’s a violent, condescending, nitwit, so totally Alexia and by extension every woman’s type.  He assumes she’s a servant, tells her not to worry her purdy widdle head, and that if she’s good he might fuck her later. Alexia starts bashing him over the head with her umbrella.  They make a clear point to say that, since he’s a werewolf and she doesn’t have supernatural strength that this assault would not actually hurt him in any way.  Which, like, I can get behind that. Dude was being a jackoff, so he should totally get a whap to the noggin that could not possibly actually hurt him.  But because violent men are hot, he responds by almost striking her.  Luckily one of Maccon’s male servants Tunstell intervenes.  He smacks Tunstell, and then begins to turn into a wolf in order to ~discipline~ them both.  

We have to make a note here that even as a wolf he’s totally hot.  Unnecessary and inappropriate book! UNNECESSARY AND INAPPROPRIATE!   As he lunges at them, Professor Lyall (Maccon’s 2nd in command) and also in wolf form, intervenes and wins.  The two transform back to humans.  Lyall explains that she’s Maccon’s wife not servant.  So Channing is humiliated and the pack goes to set up their tents on the back lawn instead of the front.  Apparently Channing is the 3rd in command of the pack, he does not get along with Lyall or Maccon but acts mostly respectable to them, and they’re back early from some military excursion due to something ~irregular on a boat.~  But of course we don’t care about that.  Alexia inquires if Channing would actually be down with fucking her. However Lyall tells her to not fuck him.  She’s like, “Why?”

DAMN GIRL ARE YOU FOR REAL? She was way into marrying her husband, we’re told in text they’re in love and having lots of great sex. They’ve only been married monogamously for like a month, she’s never had sex with anyone else, and she’s seriously considering cheating on her husband with his inferior that hates him.  All this doesn’t even consider that in the brief time she interacted with Channing cubed he treated her like a child and would have beat the shit out of her if two separate people hadn’t intervened.  

FUCKING WOW GIRL!

I don’t think it was the author’s intention to make it sound SO SPOT ON as if Alexia is plotting to fuck this hotter, younger, Neanderthal but I’m no longer a pre-teen, I have the reading comprehension skills to pick up a love triangle this disgustingly obvious.

Anyway in response to WHY she should steer clear Lyall responds he only likes taming feisty women. To paraphrase:

“Some women are into being refined” says Lyall

“Yeah and some women are into needlepoint, it’s not my thing,” Alexia responds.  Thanks for not kink-shaming and showing us where Alexia stands in her personal preference.  

Despite this, money down, right now, he tries to rape her and Maccon comes in to save the day. Double money down if her and Maccon fuck right after that trauma and they do a shitty job of acting like near rape is a trauma.

So we leave off this chapter with Alexia getting ready to go to a meeting at the Shadow Council, but is interrupted by her old pal Ivy Hisselpenny showing up.  Ivy says she has exciting news. They banter so inelegantly and for far too long about how Alexia doesn’t give a shit she’s busy but oh you must know!  Eventually Ivy spits out that she’s engaged.

Guessing right now, it’s not the guy she was supposed to be flirting with at the end of the last book. That it’s some new dude who’s bad for her, and that this is some cutesy subplot where Alexia, and dude she flirted with last book comes in and saves her too.

Golly!

Say something nice faps:

They’re making the bad guy (Channing) sound like an actually bad guy despite being a hot love triangle man.

Shit did happen?

She did some decent exposition.

[antoine-roquentin]

ROSALIND HELDERMAN: Yeah, that's right. She's charged with acting as the agent of a foreign government without properly registering with the Department of Justice. This is not an espionage charge. Espionage, which has been used for people like Robert Hanssen and others, is a charge that's applied to people who release classified or defense information that could be harmful to the United States. And that is not what Ms. Butina is alleged to have done. Instead, what she is alleged to have done is, essentially, act as a lobbyist for a foreign government, to have worked to advance their interests without letting the U.S. government know.

I would note that a number of people we would more traditionally think of as Russian spies have been charged under the same statute in recent years. It's the same statute, for instance, that was used to charge Anna Chapman. Who people may remember - the other redhead charged a few years ago with living undercover for years and working for Russian intelligence.

DAVIES: So Maria Butina is alleged to have contacted people, tried to influence our political system without registering it in ways that we're going to get into in some detail. But let's start, kind of, back in her story.

She grew up in Siberia and then around - I don't know - what? - 2012 or so, establishes a gun rights organization in Russia, which is pretty unusual. And she connects with Alexander Torshin, who is a senator in Russia's party who - he happens to be a member of the National Rifle Association, right? How is a Russian senator associated with the NRA?

HELDERMAN: Yes. So our understanding is that Torshin - Senator Torshin, now, central banker Torshin became affiliated with the NRA before he became affiliated with Ms. Butina. That's our best understanding. We've reported that he knew a lawyer who lives in Tennessee named Kline Preston. Mr. Preston had done a lot of work in Russia and at some point introduced Alexander Torshin to the president of the NRA at that time, Dave Keene, who's an important figure or has been in Republican politics - conservative thought, really. He had worked as an opinion editor at The Washington Times. And so Torshin had his own connection to the NRA. He had become a lifetime member. And he had actually written a little booklet in Russia featuring cartoons advocating for the expansion of gun rights which borrowed heavily from statistics and even sort of mottoes of the NRA, but all written in Russian. He and Ms. Butina got connected, our best understanding, is through the organization that she founded in Russia, The Right To Bear Arms. He went to one of their rallies and then quickly became a sort of patron and supporter of hers.

DAVIES: And the gun laws in Russia - what? - permitted hunting weapons but not handguns?

HELDERMAN: Yeah. They're very restrictive. And that's exactly right. They - you're allowed to own a hunting rifle. And apparently, you know, in Siberia, where she grew up, that's fairly common. Hunting is a pastime there, as it is here. But you're not allowed to own a handgun. And so there was a lot of room if you wanted to say you wanted to expand gun rights to try to do so. And, in fact, her organization did do some actual lobbying of the Duma to try to expand gun rights over there.

DAVIES: Maria Butina establishes gun rights organization in Russia, which is kind of a curiosity and she does it in association with Alexander Torshin. That leads to relationships with gun enthusiasts and conservatives from the United States which eventually leads to these political connections for Maria Butina in the United States in what the FBI alleges is an effort to influence American politics. And it raises the question of was this gun rights organization in Russia a real thing? I mean, you can look back and say maybe it was part of a Russian sponsored initiative to connect with conservatives and find a way into Republican politics. Is that a stretch?

HELDERMAN: Experts I've spoken to say, no, it's really not a stretch. We don't know for certain that that's why it, in fact, happened. But they do say it's very odd to think of an organic gun rights group in Russia. Vladimir Putin is an autocratic leader. There have been street protests over the years in Moscow and elsewhere that he has not appreciated and has done real crackdowns against. And so, the notion that he would allow a group to push to arm the citizenry is very unlikely. What we've been told is that this group would have been done at least with the approval and knowledge of the government, if not its sort of direction. And so you do have this kind of question, was this all an attempt to make ties with American conservatives?

DAVIES: Right. And that kind of assumes a real long game mentality within the Russian government. You've got to plant this thing and hope that it leads to something. And I guess a critical question would be Alexander Torshin, Maria Butina's ally, and his relationship with Putin and the Kremlin. Are they close?

HELDERMAN: We do believe that they're close. He was a senator from President Putin's party. You don't get to be a central banker, which is a role that in Russia the way it operates is going to allow for some opportunities for personal enrichment, without government support. He was, in fact, sanctioned by the U.S. government this year because of his closeness to the Russian president. So, yes, we do believe that he has important ties to Putin and to the presidential administration there.

DAVIES: In 2013, Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin invite David Keene, who was then the president of the National Rifle Association - right? - to Russia with some other American gun enthusiasts. Why would members of the NRA be interested in Russia? What was this about?

HELDERMAN: Well, I think that one thing that happens in this time period is people are intrigued by the idea of gun rights in Russia. You know, a lot of people at the NRA sort of came out of the anti-Soviet movement. And the notion that freedoms were opening up, particularly the freedoms that they valued like the right to own a gun, were opening up, was quite interesting. I also understand that the trip was quite fun. This was a trip to attend the annual meeting of Maria Butina's group, The Right To Bear Arms. And so there were dinners and there were events. We're told one event was a fashion show featuring women wearing clothing with - designed for concealed carry.

One person who was at that event told us that he went to dinner with Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin, he and his wife, and they presented him with very carefully chosen gifts that showed that they had researched he and his wife's interests. Special fabric for his wife who was a needlepointer and stamps for him. He was a stamp collector. And so it was a fun trip. There was also a lot of hunting, big-game hunting in the wilds of Russia that a lot of NRA folks were quite interested in.

DAVIES: Maria Butina, she wasn't exactly a typical figure that you'd see at these NRA functions. What was she like? How did they react to her?

HELDERMAN: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. You can kind of see what her appeal would have been at an NRA convention to the leadership there to - you know, the men. And it's not entirely men, but it is largely older men who are running that organization. She had a sort of frontiers woman quality that I think a lot of people found appealing.

She had grown up in Siberia, which is quite exotic. She talked about how she had lived in the forests of Siberia, where she had learned to hunt bears and wolves. She had, at a very early age, started a chain of furniture stores that had been, apparently, somewhat successful and then sold the chain and moved to Moscow with the proceeds to kind of make her way in the world. So she was kind of a capitalist. She was, obviously, attractive. She was a real networker. She would urge people to become friends with her on Facebook. She would hand out her card. She was very friendly, wanted to make friends with people.

And the other thing that we've heard was that some people assumed that because she ran this gun rights group, she was actually sort of anti-Putin. I don't think she would make comments against the government. But there was a sort of assumption that Russia was a restrictive society. And so she was doing something sort of feisty and rebellious by organizing this group. And it doesn't seem as though people gave a lot of thought to the fact that that was probably a sign that the government was actually supporting her. And of course Alexander Torshin was part of the Putin government.

DAVIES: All right, so we have Maria Butina and this senator, Alexander Torshin, hosting these American gun enthusiasts. And as this story unfolds, some of these relationships lead to important contacts for her in the United States with Republicans, which lead to some of this influence efforts that are at issue in these charges. But another interesting aspect of this, and you wrote about this, is a renewed interest among American conservatives, particularly Christian conservatives in Russia. What was going on here?

HELDERMAN: Yeah. This is really interesting. You know, when Donald Trump came onto the scene in 2015 and started kind of talking warmly about Putin and how it would be great to get along better with Putin, for a lot of people, that kind of came out of nowhere. You know, the Republicans have traditionally been sort of the anti-Russia party. And so that was really confusing. And it's true that that did part ways with the Republican foreign policy establishment.

But there was this kind of more subtle movement that had been happening in conservative politics for the last couple of years that it fit much more in line with. You know, you had Mitt Romney in 2012 saying that Russia was our No. 1 geopolitical foe. But conservatives had started to become intrigued with Putin's Russia around a few issues. And one of them, as you noted, is conservative Christians. Russia was a much more traditional society than ours. There's a valuing of traditional gender roles that many conservative Christians find appealing.

The Russian government has also been very famously anti-gay rights, which Christian conservatives also appreciated. There's also been a renewal of the Orthodox Church, which is something that Vladimir Putin has really advanced for his own goals in many cases. And so there's been this kind of intrigue for American conservatives in what's been going on in Russia.

DAVIES: So how do we see that expressed? Were there articles written? Were there trips by conservatives to talk to Russians?

HELDERMAN: Yeah. There's all of that. There are articles that are written. Pat Buchanan wrote an opinion column in 2013 urging Americans to take another look at Putin. You see American conservatives who actually go to Russia and testify in front of the Duma in favor of anti-gay laws. There are various kinds of conferences that are held. Torshin actually hosted or helped host in Moscow his own prayer breakfast, kind of similar to the National Prayer Breakfast that you see here in Washington each year. It brought together Russian Orthodox leaders. But some American Christians started to go to Russia to attend that event. And so that was a way for Torshin to meet Americans as well.

i really like this interview cause it’s like 

“oh yeah russians, like many in the third world, were eager to take from and adapt republican philosophy, like pro-gun laws and discriminatory acts against lgbtq people, from the republicans wholesale”

*immediate whiplash*

“but you know, putin is a dictator so there’s no way he’d accept the ultra-democratic practice of lobbying for these things, he’s clearly playing the long game to infiltrate american spy agencies”