#its just painfully obvious to me when a template has been used

[lilbirdblu]

back in my day there were none of these "templates" for fan videos where ya just plug in the photos and videos to miraculously create an edit with a fourth of the effort

back in my day every transition and effect and movement was done by HAND

kids these days have it so easy

[ryanccoleman]

“All goodness is in jeopardy”: Dead Girls at the End of the Decade

“As another year comes to pass, bringing another decade to pass, we find ourselves awash in the bodies of dead girls and women, fictional and very much real.”

This essay was originally set to be published in December 2019 on Much Ado About Cinema, to coincide with the premiere of Jennifer Reeder’s Knives and Skin.

There is a film that premieres today, the last month of the decade, called Knives and Skin. Directed by Jennifer Reeder, the film depicts the surreal transformation a community undergoes when one of its own, a teenage girl named Carolyn Harper, goes missing and later shows up dead. Knives and Skin may in fact be this decade’s last work of art to employ a narrative device come lately to be known as the “dead girl trope.” This term refers to the use in story of this conceit—a beautiful, young, presumably innocent, usually white girl has gone missing or wound up dead (almost always murdered), plunging the incredulous family/community/town surrounding her into chaos and calling a charismatic detective to chase after answers.

Much lately has been made of the dead girl trope—researching its origins, examining its variations, interrogating its largely uncontested whiteness and cisness. Of course stories of dead and missing women have been around as long as women have died and gone missing, but since the early ‘90s the trope has clogged up the culture, and even moreso in the past decade. Every day we are inundated with stories of women battered, disappeared, manipulated, and killed. We cannot afford to be flip or numb, to treat these stories as just that—fiction, as anything separate from the culture they have a mutually parasitic relationship with. The most important question people have begun to ask of the dead girl trope is whether it has any capacity to attack the misogyny it depicts and uproot the racism and transphobia which support it. Or does recycling the trope again and again, even by creators with the most altruistic intentions, do anything other than entrench the idea that violence is the logical conclusion to the question of a woman?

As the final installment in a decade long saga of women on the verge, how does Knives and Skin measure up? To answer this question we have to do two things. We have to understand the real world stakes, and we have to go back to where this bad dream began.

“When this kind of fire starts, it is very hard to put out. The tender boughs of innocence burn first, and the wind rises, and then all goodness is in jeopardy.” -Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

As another year comes to pass, bringing another decade to pass, we find ourselves awash in the bodies of dead girls and women, fictional and very much real.

In the world, women are abducted, disappeared, if returned at all returned in bruised condition, mass graves are discovered, long buried reports of abuse are painfully unearthed, and women are killed. In Nigeria, in 2014, 276 schoolgirls abducted from the town of Chibok by Boko Haram and driven hundreds of miles into ungoverned territory. Five years on, 112 are still missing. Bereft parents have died waiting for their daughters to be returned. “Even in a hundred years,” one mother told a reporter from Al Jazeera this year, “we will keep believing that our daughters will return home.”

In Canada, after years of fierce organizing from within indigenous communities, the government finally launched an inquiry into the murder and disappearance of thousands of indigenous women stretching back decades. The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, as it’s called, attribute it to "state actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies.” Indigenous leaders name it: genocide.

In our own country, thousands of immigrant women are detained, many having fled their homes due to domestic violence, state-sponsored sexual violence and femicide only to wind up in dehumanizing internment, their children confiscated from them like personal effects. A rising number of mass shooters explicitly name the hatred of women as a call to action, their patterns of domestic abuse (86% of the 22 mass shooters analyzed in a recent Mother Jones report had demonstrable records) shored up too late. Trans women and gender non-conforming afab (assigned female at birth) people face an epidemic of transphobic, misogynistic, often racist violence from intimate partners and total strangers alike. Violence in the street is entrenched by the indifference of the state—of the 22 trans women murdered this year to date, 18 cases remain unsolved.

In the culture, the flood of women’s bodies rises from our ankles to our thighs. Scanning best of the decade lists—it’s easy to see if you’re looking, and even if you’re not, it’s hard to ignore—dead and missing girls are everywhere. Though the carnage is not distributed evenly across formats—there is for example a remarkable lack of dead girl stories in film when compared with the superabundance in television and podcasts—the sheer volume is staggering.

Podcasting emerged as the most exciting new storytelling medium this decade, transforming from local radio curio to culture-spanning phenomenon attracting big tech money and A-list celebrity buy-in. The medium, built on the backs of stories of dead and missing women, has proven unable to go on without them. The show that kickstarted the podcast revolution was Serial, a solemn journalistic inquiry into the unsolved murder of a teenage girl. Serial set off a true crime boom as much as it set a template for much of the medium. Though few shows have applied the same rigor to their dead, damaged, or missing subjects, none have needed to in order to become wildly popular. Simply put, there is no dead woman that eludes the reach of the podcaster, and without dead women, there would be no podcasts as we know them.

Finally, my god, television. It’s not that a number of the best shows of the decade centered on the story of a dead or missing girl; there were in fact so many they constituted a thematic center for the entire medium this decade—The Killing, The Fall, Broadchurch, Pretty Little Liars, How to Get Away With Murder, Making A Murderer, Top of the Lake, True Detective, The Night Of, and The Jinx, to name some of the heavy hitters.

One more show waded into the morass this decade, and most notably—it was the reason for all this mess in the first place.

David Lynch came back to television after 25 years with Twin Peaks: The Return, a third season to his legendary 1990 television series. By all accounts, those original eight episodes launched the beautiful dead girl craze we’re still in the vicious throes of. The entire Twin Peaks universe—Lynch and Mark Frost’s surprise smash first season, the meandering second season in which ABC rescinded creative control from Lynch because he refused to identify the dead girl in question’s killer, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Lynch’s controversial 1992 feature prequel which features Laura Palmer, dead girl, as an alive protagonist rather than a silent mystery, the new season, and all the apocryphal literary spinoffs—centers on the beautiful, murdered, porcelain-white body of homecoming queen Laura Palmer, washed up on a riverbank in the pilot episode.

Every piece of writing on the dead girl trope addresses Lynch, if not exclusively, then in a fulsome manner. Alice Bolin, who published a comprehensive book of essays on the trope last year called Dead Girls: Surviving an American Obsession, first engaged with the subject in a 2014 essay on Twin Peaks for the Los Angeles Review of Books. And indeed, nearly every review of Knives and Skin I encountered while researching for this essay references Twin Peaks as an obvious ancestor to Reeder’s film.

Why? The aesthetic comparisons are evident—moody score, weird acting, woodsy small town setting, beautiful missing, and then dead, girl. But the comparison is broader than that. It’s almost compulsory, unavoidable. The impact Twin Peaks had on culture is impossible to understate. But the depth to which the twin images of Laura Palmer’s ghostly, smiling, peroxide and permed homecoming photo and her dead, drowned, blue-faced and plastic-wrapped crime scene photo, which the show flashes to in alternation, have seeped into our core imagining of what women fundamentally are in life and in death has absolutely not been reckoned with.

This Knives and Skin grasps. The film’s Laura Palmer, called Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley), behaves much in the same way. In her first and only alive scene, she and a boy drive up to the shore of a lake at night. Without knowing anything about the film the first time I watched it, I tensed, anticipating exactly what ended up happening. Carolyn and the boy, Andy (Ty Olwin), walk from the car to the lakeside, silhouetted in the glare of the headlights. Before kissing, the two bicker about Carolyn’s glasses, whether they should stay on or be taken off. Andy says “keep ‘em on, I don’t care.” Carolyn responds: “I do care. I actually don’t want to see what’s about to happen.” The next time anyone in the film sees Carolyn, she’s dead.

If Knives and Skin does anything perfectly it’s this. The Laura Palmers of fiction and the Laura Palmers in fact, all around the world, have fused, like the twin images in Twin Peaks—alive: radiant, dead: serene, and in both cases speechless, compliant. It recalls Maggie Nelson’s question after seeing Hitchcock’s Vertigo: “whether women were somehow always already dead, or, conversely, had somehow not yet begun to exist.”

An avatar of young womanhood as always arcing toward extermination has emerged with a juggernaut’s relentlessness out of the scrum of the past three decades of dead girl TV. The characters in Knives and Skin live in this world. Carolyn Harper knows what happens to Carolyn Harpers. She doesn’t want to see “what’s about to happen” because she’s powerless to prevent it. The tagline of the film, “Have you seen Carolyn Harper?” lands as a joke by the end of the film. Carolyn Harpers are all we ever see.

Knives and Skin doesn’t so much rage with righteous injustice over the unfair and unthinkable death of one young girl as it does turn the palpable, ten-ton heavy despair of unfair and unthinkable death as the condition of young girls back on the viewer. “You guys doing okay,” Carolyn’s mother asks three of her daughters classmates who’ve brought her condolence casseroles. Carolyn’s body has just been discovered. An ice cream cake made for her birthday melts into a pale pool of sludge on the table before her. “Yes,” they say, emotionless. “You lying?” They nod again, “yes.”

Reeder has taken us back to the world of Twin Peaks in a time where dead girls are taken for granted, taken as givens. They still, however, even in this most melancholy meditation, destroy communities and upend lives. I’ve said that Knives and Skin doesn’t rage with injustice over the death of Carolyn Harper. But should it?

The reference point that floated into my head while watching Knives and Skin the first time, that I couldn’t shake the second time was not Twin Peaks, but its much maligned and misunderstood prequel, Fire Walk With Me. Lynch made Fire Walk With Me after Bob Iger and ABC tried to stage manage the surprise success of season 1 by forcing him to reveal Laura’s killer. “‘Who killed Laura Palmer?’ was a question that we did not ever really want to answer,” Lynch later told TV Guide. Season 2, largely without Lynch, was as a result baffling, anticlimactic and sensational in all the wrong places. The show was cancelled less than two years after debuting. Fire Walk With Me was a vengeance quest, Lynch’s intent to bring closure and justice to the story of a Pandora he had never intended to let out of the box.

Fire Walk With Me is brutal. Its examination of trauma is surgical, uncompromising, and to the bone. For the majority of the film the camera is glued to Laura, who walks, talks, dances, laughs, gobbles like a turkey, screams, cries, and eventually dies. As a spectator you are shoved in close proximity to Laura. Unlike the silent, pliant Laura Palmer of Twin Peaks, Sheryl Lee’s Laura in Fire Walk With Me is fully alive, every fantasy concocted about her by the characters in season 1 as well as the fans in the audience is in sharp, contested relief. She feels everything done to her immediately, unbearably, and so do you.

Many critics hated Fire Walk With Me, and it was a commercial flop. The film was booed at Cannes. In the New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote: “Everything about David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is a deception. It’s not the worst movie ever made; it just seems to be.” In a discussion on the dead girl trope for The New Republic, Sarah Marshall offered a remark that speaks directly to the film’s icy reception: “a dead woman is utterly incapable of offering up even the most cursory contradiction to the narratives that entomb her as readily as any casket.” Fire Walk With Me was one huge, bleeding contradiction.

The original bad dream, the dead girl’s nightmare we still haven’t woken up from was actually unpacked all those years ago, just months after it all began. Laura’s killer was her father, Leland. Her father had been sexually abusing her since she was a child, her mother knew, and within hours of Laura finally perceiving this fact in its full reality, he killed her. All of the weirdness, the quirkiness, and horror of Twin Peaks, along with the enduring, eroticized, and profitable trope it popularized emanates from this very personal, achingly common story of childhood sexual abuse. Is it any wonder people hated it? Or why the Laura Palmer of the original series is the figure we’ve chosen to preserve, pressed flat into the pages of culture forever?

“All goodness is in jeopardy,” the Log Lady warns Laura before entering the roadhouse where her life will begin to tailspin before its eventual crash. This is the essence and the power of the dead girl story. Though we have erected a world that is impossible for women to navigate unscathed, we continue to vest them with the symbolic responsibility of innocence. As if Laura’s singular life was the first domino in a chain that led to the unraveling of the entire world. But wasn’t it? 

Many have pointed out the racial and gender-specific freighting of the dead girl trope. Could Laura Palmer have been Latinx? How would the movie change if Carolyn Harper had been African-American, or trans? The answer on every level, symbolic and real, is drastically. What these depictions unconsciously reflect is the priceless value of white life. Imagine an entire town shutting down operations to mourn and search for a missing black trans woman? We can’t, because when trans women are murdered the only efforts to organize and demonstrations of rage come from within queer communities, often queer communities of color, who have historically adverse relationships with law enforcement. Black women face an escalated threat of violence due to the interlocking forces of white supremacy and misogyny. Yet the disappearance and death of black women and other women of color have historically never been met with the same uproar as with white women who meet the same ends.

It’s not that Knives and Skin is a failure because it seems more interested in the aesthetic allure of a dead girl than in drumming up indignation for the circumstances that configured her death. And it’s not that Twin Peaks was a failure because it prioritized white and cis tragedy over all others. Both Reeder and Lynch have done something profound when it comes to thinking and feeling through trauma, sexual violence, and grief. What remains important is to ask is whether each successive appearance of the dead girl trope is amounting to something, not on the individual but on the collective level. As Bolin has written, “It becomes harder and harder to subvert something that’s been used so many times.”

Have we seemed to make much progress from Fire Walk With Me to Knives and Skin? Honestly, no. But have the horrors real world misogynistic, racist, transphobic violence ceased? Even if rates of violent crime are in fact down in the United States, one disappearance or death like the kinds depicted in Lynch and Reeder’s work would be too many. The most successful iterations of the dead girl trope have grappled with these tough, interceding concerns, like race—consider Top of the Lake and The Night Of. The least successful amount merely to prodding a dead woman’s body with a stick just to see how it feels—consider every episode of My Favorite Murder. The most that I can hope is that future creators considering employing the dead girl trope take the long view of all that came before and ask, is it worth it? Does the dead girl in my story deserve this? What kind of justice, in fact, does she deserve?

copyright © 2019 Ryan Christopher Coleman

[orionsangel86]

Narrative Mirror Characters in Supernatural – An Overview for the Uninitiated.

Mirror characters have always been a classic story telling device. The purpose of a mirror character is to reflect on the main characters journey and emotional state and to provide lessons for the main character to learn. Mirror characters in TV and movies can also be used for foreshadowing purposes and encourage the audience to question the main characters path.

A famous example would be Frodo Baggins and his narrative mirror Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. Gollum is a dark mirror for Frodo in that he represents everything that Frodo could become if he succumbs to the power of the One Ring. Frodo’s present is Gollum’s past as Smeagol, and throughout the books Frodo becomes more and more aware of his fate as he grows closer to Gollum/Smeagol and makes the decision to try to save him as a reflection of his desire to save himself.

Narrative mirrors are everywhere and widely used in all forms of storytelling. To deny them, is to deny basic storytelling tropes. Sometimes the narrative mirrors are extremely, painfully obvious, and other times they are quite subtle and have only a very minor meaning in the greater story.

Supernatural is a series which has used narrative mirror characters quite extensively throughout its long history. It frequently uses mirror characters to provide an additional layer to the emotional journeys of its lead characters to encourage emotional growth. Supernatural also often uses mirror characters to highlight unspoken main character storylines which support subtextual themes as well as foreshadowing potential future plot outcomes.

Supernatural relies so heavily on its narrative character mirrors, that recently in episode 14x04 Mint Condition it gave its viewers a textual lesson on character mirrors straight from its lead characters mouths:

Gif Source: (x) 

DEAN (Pointing at Samantha): She’s like your twin.

[SAM pushes his hair back just as SAMANTHA does the same.]

SAM: What? What are you talking about?

DEAN: Soft, delicate features, luxurious hair. She’s like your wonder twin.

SAM: Yeah.

[A man, DIRK, is crouching in front of the comic book stands picking up comics. He has a lollipop in his mouth. SAM points to him.]

SAM: Well, okay, if that’s me then that’s you over there.

DEAN: That guy?

SAM: Yeah.

DEAN: Yeah, we have zero in common

(The scene then proceeds to show just how much Dean has in common with Dirk)

Following this fun scene, the episode continues to show how much Sam and Dean have in common with their mirror characters in many ways, including a moving moment between Dirk and Dean in which Dirk talks about how important his friend Stuart is to him. (Stuart who was first introduced in this episode wearing a tan trench coat similar to the classic coat worn by Castiel – Dean’s best friend).

From this blatantly obvious in-show commentary, we can infer how the Supernatural creators like to present their mirror characters and how we, the audience, can keep a look out for them. The key indicators are as follows:

Similar clothing - Character clothing choices are very important in this show. The brothers are almost always dressed in plaid and what Castiel would probably call “lumberjack chic”. Castiel always wears a tan trenchcoat, formal attire, white shirt, blue tie. His mirrors are pretty much the easiest to spot. Arguably any side character wearing a tan trenchcoat is a mirror for Castiel.

Siblings – Where side characters are siblings, they are mirrors for Sam and Dean.

Parent/Child pairs – Less common, but also often a comment on Sam and Dean’s dynamic, Dean being the parent to Sam.

Immortal characters with a sympathy to humanity – usually a Cas mirror.

Tastes/interests – Like with Dirk, if a side character appears who the main characters bond with over mutual interests, the chances are they are a mirror for the main character in question.

Storylines; depending on overarching season plots – less obvious, but sometimes the most interesting. Characters that appear in standalone episodes that have an emotional tie to the mytharc plot of the season usually serve to give lessons to the main characters. Those characters will stand in for the main characters when dealing with their own emotional turmoil, which will usually be similar in theme to the emotional turmoil that the main characters are going through. Consider Ed and Harry from 9x14’s #Thinman episode - such a blatantly obvious Winchester mirror that it should need no explaining here.

By taking all these various indicators into consideration when watching any episode of Supernatural, it becomes rather easy to spot the character mirrors and depending on the actions and plot purpose of those mirror characters, we can usually conclude their purpose and the connection to the overall mytharc, or in some cases character development plot.

I’m about to pull out some big examples so you can use those as templates to go forth and find the mirrors! But my main point in this post is to argue that meta writers aren’t pulling this stuff out of our asses. Character mirrors are a story telling technique that is used frequently and with clear author intent. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you are seeing things when you believe that characters are meant to be mirrors. It is far more likely that they ARE intended mirrors than not.

I recently came across these tweets on Twitter:

Mark Harris is a former Entertainment Weekly executive editor and author of several books on Hollywood and the film industry.

Brian Koppelman is the co-creator and showrunner of the TV show “Billions” and has worked in the TV and Film industries for over two decades.

I would hazard a guess that both of these individuals have a greater authority on the inner workings of TV show production than YOU or I or anyone else in this fandom about to scream those immortal and highly ridiculous words “yOu ArE rEaDiNg InTo ThInGs!”

But by all means, if you are going to disregard my post as nothing more than a “crazy” fan trying to claim author intent where there is none, perhaps you could first take a look below the cut, because these mirror characters in SPN are hardly coincidence, and the general motto to run by is that if some characters are definitely mirrors, then the chances are that wherever you THINK you see a character mirror, and it makes logical sense, the INTENT was for you to see a character mirror all along. 

So therefore, never disregard a fan interpretation of a narrative character mirror when they see one. 

If you do, you are going to look like a huge jackass.

Please keep reading for glaringly obvious Destiel character mirrors along with some nice brother character mirrors for comparison. We ain’t kidding around folks.

First of all, lets consider some examples where Supernatural has used narrative mirror characters specifically to highlight Sam and Dean’s emotional growth.

A recent and very obvious example is from 14x12.

The brothers interview Eddie, the twin brother of a murdered man in a case they are investigating. Eddie is distraught by his brother’s murder, and he says the following:

“I can’t believe he’s gone. We were close. Best friends. Alan always said he was my big brother, ‘cause he was born first. By, like, four minutes. Losing him is like losing a part of myself. I never knew it could be this bad.”

In this situation, Eddie is a clear Sam mirror character, because his emotional response to his brother Alan’s death is exactly what Sam’s would be if he were to lose Dean. Dean, in this scenario, is the one learning the lesson. He is having to witness through a character mirror the pain that Sam would go through upon Dean’s suicide. This reflects the current mytharc plot in which Dean has chosen a suicide mission of locking himself away with the archangel Michael in order to prevent Michael’s escape.

This is a simple mirror which specifically relates to the theme of the episode. However, other character mirrors have a wider lesson in mind. Another recent episode that used character mirrors for the brothers was 13x12 Various and Sundry Villains.

In this episode, the brothers come up against a pair of villainous witch sisters. The sisters are determined to bring their mother back from the dead and will stop at nothing to succeed. The sisters are dark Winchester mirrors in that they symbolise the lengths the brothers will go to in order to save themselves and their family – putting their own goals above the safety of the world. This episode took place during a season 13 mytharc plot in which the Winchesters own mother Mary was trapped in an apocalyptic universe and the Winchesters were looking for a way to save her (and Jack) regardless of warnings from Death herself that no good would come from jumping universes.

It was also a wider commentary on the Winchesters own toxic co-dependency – a theme that has been running within the subtext of the show since Season 8 which portrays the brothers co-dependent relationship as a negative force in their universe and something that they need to break free of – a theme which has been building quite nicely in these later seasons.

The episode 13x12 ends with the witch sisters horrifically murdering each other whilst under a spell in a scene which symbolically shows just what could happen to the Winchester boys if they don’t free each other from their own toxic relationship.

This was a prime example of character mirrors have a deeper message in terms of their relation to the main characters and their overall character journeys on the show.

Sam and Dean have had mirror characters established in the show since the early seasons. One obvious example was in 1x18 Something Wicked This Way Comes which prominently features a young boy called Michael who feels responsible for his little brother Asher. Michael is an obvious Dean mirror used to emphasise Dean’s loss of innocence at a young age due to the boy’s early introduction to monsters by their father.

Many of the early season character mirrors were used to provide backstory for Sam and Dean such as this one, or to provide dark foreshadowing (like used with Frodo and Gollum) for Sam particularly with the “Special Children” throughout seasons 1 and 2.

In the later seasons, character mirrors are more likely to be used to either provide Sam and Dean with emotional lessons, or highlight their co-dependency as a negative force.

See, its quite simple so far right? Would you actually deny that these characters were Winchester mirrors? You can possibly argue with my interpretation, but you can’t really argue against the mirrors themselves, that much is obvious.

Now is where it gets interesting. Because whilst you may have no problem seeing mirror characters for Sam and Dean in the show, would you feel the same way if I was to present you with an EVEN LARGER mountain of evidence for mirror characters for Dean and Cas? 

Another frequent use of character mirrors within the show in the later seasons is to highlight a potential romantic partnership between Dean and Castiel. This is a controversial opinion and one many viewers of the show either ignore or adamantly deny. However, arguably you can’t pick and choose your meta in this show. If you agree with one set of thematic mirrors, you must surely admit to the same filming techniques being used elsewhere. If mirrors exist between Sam and Dean, they must also exist between Dean and Cas, and sometimes those mirrors are just as blatantly obvious, if not more so.

One prominent example (and probably the most obvious) comes from episode 9x20. Written by the current showrunner Andrew Dabb, this episode was an attempt at a spin off show with a completely new set of characters. One part of this episode included a love story between monster characters David and Violet.

Please refer to this post: http://bluestar86.tumblr.com/post/178577156431/i-cant-recall-where-but-i-read-somewhere-that-a for further detail about this character mirror. Because it’s so obvious its laughable.

The basic mirror is that David is Dean. He is the son of a powerful monster family in Chicago who is pulled back into the war when his brother Sal is murdered. “David” = Dean, “Sal” = Sam. Get it? That’s one clear mirror. The back story alone is obvious enough.

Violet is the daughter of another powerful monster family, one that is actively antagonising the others and supports the war. She spends most of the episode wearing this:

Violet is clearly our Castiel mirror. A daughter of a troublesome monster family that wants to start war, but who tries to prevent that because of her love for one of the other families sons? Its Romeo and Juliet but it is also very Dean and Cas.

The turbulent relationship between David and Violet is told using lines previously spoken between Dean and Cas word for word, but in an obviously romantic way (because heterosexual romance is irritatingly obvious even when using lines previously given to “just bros”). Seriously, go read the linked post and just TRY to deny this mirror.

One of the more recent obvious DeanCas mirrors in the show comes from season 14 between Mary Winchester and AU!Bobby. In the episode immediately following 14x04’s lesson in recognising mirror characters in Supernatural Mary and Bobby show up to put our mirror recognition to the test.

Mary has been used as a mirror character for Castiel and vice versa since she was reintroduced to the show in season 12. In terms of the key indicators, she has often been seen wearing a tan trenchcoat, or a general tan coat with white and blue clothing (her clothing is often coded for Castiel) as well as her emotional journey being tied to his in her struggle to find belonging among her family.

AU!Bobby is a Dean mirror. His story very closely compares to many of Dean’s storylines over the years, including Purgatory and being traumatised by the loss of his son (a canonical fact being that both Sam and Dean acknowledge that Dean raised Sam and was practically his only parental figure).

The romance between him and Mary is still pretty much completely subtextual, and yet people still acknowledge its existence. It has been shown through longing looks and conversations with the brothers where Mary voices her frustrations at her inability to break through the supposed communication barriers between her and Bobby (an interesting storyline which compares extremely closely with season 13’s long running miscommunication theme for Dean and Cas.)

Bobby and Mary’s current story reflects Dean and Cas’s especially in Mary’s frustrations to get Bobby to open up to her about his troubled past. There is an underlying message here which indicates Castiel’s own frustrations at Dean for not being more open and honest with him (again this was shown far more subtly as recently as 14x12 in how Dean keeps things from Cas because they are far too painful for him to address). This mirror is practically undeniable, just like David and Violet. Yet both are romantic. 

The other glaringly obvious het character mirror pairing for Dean and Cas was Cain and Colette in seasons 9 and 10. Just because the story didn’t resolve itself, doesn’t mean the mirror wasn’t intended and specifically catered for Dean and Cas from the start.

Cain and Colette is a HUGE example of a mirror that was practically textually confirmed (and was actually confirmed by Jared Padalecki at a convention).

(x)

In fact, arguably 10x14 called for the audience to notice character mirrors before 14x04 did! Cain constantly reiterated that he was a Dean mirror TEXTUALLY. He told Dean that Sam was his Abel. He very clearly stated how Dean would live his life in reverse - Cain killed Abel first, then he unwillingly killed his wife Colette, before finally giving in and killing his demonic kin - the knights of hell.

He told Dean he would first kill Crowley - his own demonic kin in a sense, then he would kill Castiel - Deans... partner? Before finally killing Sam. How can I make this any clearer? Oh yeah. This:

In fact just got take a look at the source post for those gifs to see all the other ways Cas is a mirror for Colette and watch me laugh at anyone still trying to deny this: http://casclaire.tumblr.com/post/119456988024/and-everyone-you-know-everyone-you-love-they

Those were the het pairings (among many others) but Dean and Cas have also been mirrored to practically every other queer pairing in the show save one (and that was played purely for jokes for W*ncest fans). 

Now the importance of queer representation is something we frequently discuss in fandom. So before some asshat decides to pipe up and accuse me I’ll just add a nice little disclaimer so said asshat can shut the hell up:

Theorising that queer pairings in Supernatural may also be mirror pairings for Destiel does not diminish the pairing or the representation in its own right. To claim it does so is utter bullshit. The pairing is still awesome and should be celebrated because hey! It’s on the show isn’t it? It’s out in the open as a canon queer pairing! YAY for US! Speculating that it could also be a Destiel mirror pairing only ADDS to the awesomeness. It does NOT diminish it in any way...

Unless you hate Destiel of course in which case... well:

So now we’ve got that out of the way:

Several of our best queer pairings in SPN over the years can also reflect Destiel and their relationship.

Charlie and Gilda is a prime example:

Gilda appears in episode 8x11 as a fairy from another realm who has been taken prisoner and forced via magic to do horrible things against her nature by a bad guy. Charlie is able to free her from her “masters” spell.

Sound familiar?

It should do, because this is basically Castiel’s story in season 8. He is brainwashed by Naomi to do bad things against his nature which culminates in Dean managing to break through to him by declaring how much he “needs” him. Isn’t it all so marvelously gay?

How about this awesome gay couple:

(x)

Honestly I could wax poetic about this episode for a thousand years, but I will just stress this: Anyone who tries to suggest that the mirror here is for Sam and Dean is clearly missing the fact that the entire point of this episode was about a BROTHER getting revenge for and mourning the loss of his BROTHER. So the Brother mirror is already well established at the start of the episode. 

But Cesar? Cesar is all Cas. He’s the “foreigner” supporting his partners revenge quest regardless of his own desires. Hell, even their names are similar. Besides, their entire relationship was a lesson for the audience in how to recognise body language. All those shoulder squeezes and longing stares? Destiel was all over Jesse and Cesar. I have no doubt in that.

But if that didn’t swing it for you how about this lovely canon pairing?

(x)

The fandom coined “DreamHunter” pairing between Claire Novak and Kaia Nieves was built completely on famous Destiel moments. Longing looks, pledges of protection, “I’ll go with you”, saving each other, trying to go back for each other, mourning the others death… Dreamhunter was also still completely subtextual until recently when Jody Mills stated “First love strikes quick” a simple sentence, and it was confirmed as canon in the show. 

Here’s a handy post of how dreamhunter was built on a Destiel framework:

http://bluestar86.tumblr.com/post/179549508598/tinkdw-first-love-strikes-quick-to-lose-it

Other than these obvious pairings above, there are literally hundreds of character mirrors used throughout the show’s 300 episode run so far which are put in place by the writers and the crew specifically to indicate some deeper meaning to the overall lead character emotional arcs. This has been common and frequent in the show throughout its long history. The above examples are just the most obvious ones related to either Sam and Dean or Dean and Cas.  Almost every episode of this show includes character mirrors in some way or another. Character mirrors specifically linking to Dean and Cas have been particularly frequent throughout Carver and Dabb era (practically every episode in season 8 had a tragic human x immortal creature love story for example).

So for ANYONE to argue that we are seeing mirrors where they don’t exist? Well, those people are straight up wrong. I don’t care who they are, or whether they have some status within fandom or if they are just some asshole on the internet, unless the denial of character mirrors is coming from the writers or the directors of the episodes, they are wrong.

Which leads me nicely to this:

My reason for writing this long meta post was because of this. Simple enough right? We got three kids in 14x13. One is a tall nerdy boy who just seems to radiate with the same aura as Colin Morgan’s young Sam Winchester. One is a fiery young lady called Max, who wears a plaid jacket and has a shy crush on her friend - she also gets behind the seat of the Impala at one point as if that wasn’t obvious enough. The other girl Stacy we don’t know much about, other than that she is quiet, pretty, with dark hair and clearly the object of Max’s affections.

When I first watched this episode with @tinkdw​ and this scene came up we both didn’t even have to think about it. It was so clear to us. Nice one SPN, we see what you did there. The framing, the characters personalities, the coded clothing... there wasn’t a doubt between us that this was framed intentionally, and in a scene literally moments before Cas comes home to his family.

It was supposed to be simple, no big deal. Yet another Destiel mirror among the mountain of Destiel mirrors the show has already given us. Its not even anywhere near as impactful as one of the character mirror pairings previously mentioned in this post. Yet it was enough to cause such a huge wank storm on Twitter and have BNF accounts start a parade of abuse and blame towards meta writers for even DARING to consider that Destiel mirrors may exist AT ALL in this show, let alone with author intent!

Colour me effing surprised.

If ANYONE tries to tell ANY Destiel shipper that they don’t have a right to see character mirrors in the show, to believe that there is author intent, to SHAME them for seeing those mirrors in queer pairings specifically. You go right ahead and block those people. Because their opinions are their own no matter how much they may scream like they have some kind of authority. They don’t. 

No one has any authority over the way you interpret the media you enjoy. Even me.

Don’t forget that. 

So my point on this post was basically to say this.

You go right ahead and keep looking for character mirrors in SPN, because they have been intentionally included in the show since its humble beginnings.  Destiel mirrors are a huge part of that. You are NOT wrong for seeing them. 

Max and Stacy in 14x13 were just the latest in a long line of Destiel specific character mirrors in a show renowned for using character mirrors to the point that it has textually given its audience A. Lesson. In. How. To. Spot. Character. Mirrors. 

I am not making this shit up.

At the end of the day, by believing the mirrors are intentional, and what makes this post controversial, is that it means I am telling you that TPTB are intentionally providing us with romantic Destiel subtext.

Well, that is exactly what I am saying. Because they are. There is no doubt about this. You don’t fill your show to the brim with romantic tropes, romantic character mirrors and an underlying romantic narrative C plot for at least 4 seasons without having some intentional desire to potentially make this thing an actual thing. 

You just DON’T. 

The writers know what the hell they are doing. They want to keep Destiel an option for endgame, so they keep it going throughout the show. Whether or not they eventually make it textual to a point that a general audience can’t deny its existence is another story, because that’s the kind of thing that need a green light from the CW suits. 

But the writers, the creators of the show, everyone involved to an extent, they all know what they are doing. Anyone who at this stage would deny author intent regarding Destiel loses all my respect because frankly its insulting to the creators themselves. No one is so idiotic that they would make something look unintentionally romantic for 10 years.

The mirrors are real. Destiel is real. The creators of SPN continue to include it so they can keep it an option for endgame because (and this is the part I don’t know for sure but can at least guess because I don’t consider the entire writing team to be asshole queerbaiters) they want to make it canon as much as we want it to be canon.

Whether they actually CAN or not is the issue at this point. The debate on whether or not we “are reading into things” has been null and void since season 12. It was practically null and void since season 8 TBH.

So keep looking out for the Destiel mirrors (and the Sam and Dean mirrors and any other character mirrors you may pick up on) and you go right ahead and post and speculate and tweet and blog and do whatever the hell you want to do to voice your opinion on the topic because NO ONE has the right to police what you see in the show - especially when it has already been proven to be clearly intentional on the part of the creative team.

Finally I will leave you with this humble message from our “overlord” in case my post hasn’t already swayed you away from negative thinking and believing the deniers:

Thanks for reading. :)

[magicalsalamander]

u always have such long in depth stories that are so well written. i've always wondered how you keep yourself motivated to write them and if you follow a schedule and if u have any tips to give to writers too

Thank you! I appreciate it!

An odd feeling fills my chest reading this because I don’t believe I’m in a position to be giving anyone advice. However, peer to peer, human to human, I’m more than happy to spare all the knowledge I got to you!

So, let’s break it down!

Let’s tackle the ever-pressing question: How to stay motivated and meth~od~ology. Again, this is just my input and methodology, so know this may not work for you or everyone, but maybe you can take bits and pieces of it and tailor it to yourself and find a better way to approach writing. Which is what I want you to do. My way of doing things is because...it works for me.

In regard to the product, I write long-winded stories because that’s how my mind works. Every author’s style is a “physical” manifestation of the way they process and emit information verbal, written, or symbolically. A writer’s style will match the author, so no style is wrong.

Sidestepping for a moment, but I’ll tie it in I promise. When I was younger I was painfully (I mean awkwardly painful that made others uncomfortable) shy. I even formed a stutter because I was terrified of speaking. Now, luckily, I can say that I have no issue with that and I’m totally fine public speaking or speaking intimately. I found my confidence by reading to pick up new vocab and mimicking people around me who were better speakers. I think by doing so I really formed the way I carry myself and write (i.e. going back to the point that a written is a manifestation of their personality). You can notice if you really look at a piece you can tell the state of mind a writer usually was in when they wrote this.

How does this tie into advice? Well, my “advice” is if you want to become a “better writer” work on yourself. Your perspective on life is unique. Mold your thoughts, ask yourself those questions that are hard, ask others questions, figure out different perspectives while you’re at it. This may be looking at things too seriously, but I want to give you a genuine answer. You know how politics can be divisionary? It’s usually them vs us? Well, both sides have their own reasons and to them, those are good reasons. Maybe not to you, but try understanding the opposite side, really look at their motives. You’ll be able to write antagonist better that way, and in turn, write a more solid protagonist.

So to bring it back, I write long stories because I found out I can’t do short fics (which I consider to be under anything basically under 5k) because it’s not how I process/imagine things. I’m huge on imagery, maybe because I’m also a traditional artist (drawing & painting) so I see the world with colors, shapes and relate those to emotions. I feel so unsatisfied if I write something that lacks a short background or gives the character a reason for something. I’m aware it’s possible to write short fics, because it’s the reader’s decision to interpret, but it’s not me. Know regardless of the way you write something the reader will have their own story.

This leads to my second point. I want you to answer these questions for yourself: why are you writing, who are you writing for, what are you writing about, when can you, where do you write? Simple questions, but they need solid answers. The simple things in life often need more attention than those that seem complex.

My answers to a few: I write for myself and no one else. I hope that this should be true all across the board. I find the biggest issue for writers on this platform (and maybe across other writing sites) is that individuals use it as a platform for validation. It’s not easy this day and age to go to a social media site and not be bombarded by likes, following, or any other feedback system that promotes that. However, I could care less if a post I put out has two, a hundred likes or a thousand.

Why you may ask?

Well, simply because—it doesn’t matter. This is for a number of reasons. A few of them are because people do click on the post but most often don’t leave a note or give feedback. This, I found to be true because people either forget, don’t bother to, or are too shy. This doesn’t mean that it wasn’t enjoyed, you have no idea the impact your post could’ve made, that could’ve been the best post they’ve read. I want you to keep in mind that you don’t need to prove yourself to anyone. Keep yourself in check with this. Also, remember, people will come to your story, sometimes it’s not the right time for them. Maybe the message in that fic, whether it be neutral or purposeful, will come to someone when they most need it. The time you post may just not be that time. So, don’t feel discouraged if you’re not getting notes.

You want long term building, not short term.

Motivation:

Motivation is such a fickle little minx, right? I want to address that usually the lack of motivation is because of many reasons, but typically its stress, anxiety, insecurity, and procrastination. Procrastination, the biggest factor in my opinion, under a psychological definition, is an irrational delay. It’s been linked to the activity under avoidance being the cause of stress and anxiety. When your feeling too overwhelmed you probably don’t want to write, right? It takes too much thought and energy. So when your feeling like this I advise you to either rethink why you write if it does increase your anxiety. Or distract yourself until you feel that you can come back with a fresh mind. There is no “deadline”. No timeline.

On the contrary, though, it’s a good method to keep yourself accountable, so if you can accomplish something with a bit of pressure then set a deadline. It’s how I was able to complete Gold Embers Touch the Blue Veil. I was so unmotivated recently. I always came home tired and nothing creative would come to me. But I said, “Nope, we’re doing this.” Because I knew if I just wrote something (i.e. drafted to draft) then I would feel better later because I gave myself a foundation. With that foundation and when I’m feeling frivolous with my words, I can now accomplish so much more because I have something to work with.

I don’t have a schedule. I write based on when the ideas come to me. How can I fit writing into my existing schedule? I always write a storyboard, then I tackle it from there, so start to finish always varies. Often my stories can take weeks if not a month or two to write. I take a few days break sometimes so that way I’m not hypercritical of everything I’ve written. I never rush to put out something for the sake of putting it out there. Rushing never usually gives good results.

There is no bad idea either. Don’t go into a story you’re about to write already knocking it down. Remember, write for yourself, I swear to you, if you enjoy what your writing someone else will too. You think J.K Rowling wrote HP thinking, “Ahhh, I need to change all this because my mind is telling me someone may not like this.” Hell no. She wrote her story the way she saw it and it’s amazing because it’s her.  

Methodology:

Write a storyboard. Will you for sure remember the thing you told yourself to remember in the morning? Did you forget to write down that appointment? Did you remember that you have that assignment due if you didn’t write it down? The majority will say they don’t. That’s why I’m a huge believer in having a “story board”. What that means to me personally is mapping out how you want the story to go. I personally can’t use the write-and-go method. I need structure so I can reference back and tweak it later. So, I recommend opening up a doc or whatever you have to use and follow this set up. It’s concise, keeps things neat and easy to follow. It’s basically a flow chart but a bit more professional. I’m sure you can find other templates, but this is mine.

Write about something you want, not something you think would get notes. Write it because you see that niche isn’t being filled, or if you want to add to that genre. As an example, there are a million and one coffee shop AU's, but what can you add?

Other things to keep in mind is the hero’s journey doesn’t have to be linear, Try to teach, teach the readers and yourself something. That way you keep something fresh for yourself. Grow each time you finish something. Whether you know it or not, you grow a little bit each time. Your opinions will change and grow, so take it all in stride.

With all that knowledge you’ll become a better writer because you’ll be able to see a wider breadth of ideas and put in details that don’t always seem obvious and develop your own style.

I’m sorry that this post was long and that I got preachy. But from my writing style, I guess you could already have predicted I would’ve done this, huh? Haha. I hope this was helpful!! Feel free to send me an ask if you have any more questions.

[tech-to-teach]

Finding Your Reflection in a Frozen February

Who says you can't see your reflection in ice? This February has been as cold as it gets. We've seen everything from gentle snowflakes dancing on the wind, to arctic temperatures forcing falling water to freeze everything in stillness for as far as the eye can see. And I can still see my reflection...

My early February thoughts on Techy Teaching find me thinking of "Education Equity, the Digital Divide and Covid-19." I don't care where you teach in Nova Scotia, there is no way that you didn't notice the glaring differences between families and their access to education during our forrays into online learning. With students that lacked access to electronic devices and parents that couldn't afford to provide at-home internet, the ones that did their best to provide devices to multiple children with multiple schedules, and those that insisted the cameras stay off so that nobody would see their living conditions (or didn't dare to even participate for the same reasons), the truth became painfully obvious. Not that the truth didn't exist before Covid-19. Ask anyone who works in a school and they will tell you who knew the truth. I'm truly thankful that our political leaders have finally taken notice and have begun to take steps to close the gaps, even if it did take a global pandemic to do it.

Speaking of the pandemic... could I have chosen a better time to do my Masters? Actually, maybe I could have. But my real point is, my courses are all about the integration of technology in education and there could never have been a better use for my time than to add tools to my teaching toolkit that I would end up using to further the education of my students, whether I wanted to or not!

Enter WeVideo.

Okay, I was not new to the website that boasted of its ability to help even the beginningest of beginners to create and edit their own video. "Use a template," they said. "You don't need prior experience," they said. Indeed. My first attempt left me confused and overwhelmed and frustrated and deflated. All my puffed up feelings about myself as a techy person quickly blew out the window.

Act 2, Scene 1: Class 5, Saturday, February 5, 2022

"Boys and girls, your assigment today is to get together with your group and create a WeVideo." Just kidding. Becky doesn't treat us like children. She treats us like the grown professionals we are; perfectly capable of approaching our assignments with wisdom and professionalism...and skill. Oh... uh... I didn't realize skill was a requirement here. Thank goodness for guest speakers and online tutorials that you can start and stop as many times as you want...

A-MA-ZING!!!

Sarah, Tracy, and I had an adventure creating a collaborative WeVideo. It's interesting how some practice and experience can blow those puffed up feelings right back through the window to where they belong. I feel that I should assure you that once you get the hang of all those layers, a WeVideo is really easy to make and I have discovered that making videos is my jam. I have already created two videos since.

Want to know what else is my jam? Creating apps. Did you know that there is a website out there that will help you create apps?? No, seriously, though. You have got to try it!

Meet Glide.

I kid you not, it does just what it says. And now I am the coolest because I walk around with all the tech tools I can think of RIGHT IN MY POCKET!!! How cool will it be when I am finally confident enough to share my app with others so that they can be as cool as me?

I swear, I am not that arrogant.

Of course, since creating apps is my new jam, I got to thinking: what if all the documents you ever needed in order to successfully function as a staff member in your school were to be gathered together into one, easy-to-access space? What if that space was someplace you could easily get to, even when you were three doors down from your computer?

BAM! Wish granted.

My principal, Michelle loves it! On the day I shared it with her, she tweeted about it:

I don't know how many other apps I can possibly make, but my hope is to find more things to add to the Staff Hub than I already knew I could!

Let the snow snow. Let the freezing rain freeze! I'm just over here having a little fun and earning a Masters degree while I'm at it!

[casuallynerdytaco-blog]

ten fashion tips for young women with ostomy bags

The big stoma bucket list

after a life crippled by Crohn's and Colitis my 101 stoma bag lady challenge

Ten fashion tips for young women with ostomy bags – my experience so far

So here we go, after just over seven months of living with my temperamental stoma and unplanned fistula here are some of the lessons I have learned concerning looking trendy and feeling confident while living with an ostomy bag. As a young woman finding clothes that fit, flatter and make you feel sexy is hard enough without having to worry about what your ostomy looks like, I’ve found the best way to deal with that is to wear whatever you feel comfortable and confident in.https://www.pinterest.com/powerpoint_templates/game-powerpoint-templates/ If that’s baggy jumpers and sweat pants go for it. But I think the best way is to show off your figure, flaunt what you’ve got, and wear your body with pride…ok, I’ve not braved a bikini yet, so maybe I’m not great a role model but I really don’t think hiding under layers of pyjama-like clothing, or resorting to prison-esk jumpsuits is the way forward. You might disagree, some of this sounds a bit preachy – but give me a chance:

Avoid the “bin liner look” : don’t choose an outfit just because it hides your ostomy bag

If you approach every shopping with the attitude that every outfit has to render your

THE DRESS – I would never have worn this b4 Winnie – she is so much more cool than me

figure unrecognisable just because you have a bag of, well crap, attached to the outside of your body, you will (in my opinion) end up feeling worse than your stoma when you’ve eaten too much high fibre stuff. My tip, don’t hide away. Your body is amazing, you are amazing, and that should be celebrated, not hidden under baggy jumpers and sweat pants. Just because you have an ostomy it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel sexy….in fact I THINK IT MEANS YOU SHOULD FEEL SEXY. If you see something you look damn good in, buy it, wear it out and see how amazing you feel. Try not to worry about if people can or can’t see your ostomy – that’s hard, and I can’t talk – no one can see it just be yourself and you’ll be surprised to learn that no one cares if you have a little lump under your dress. If they’re looking that hard they must like you anyway, or be envious of your show stopping dress.

2. Use your operation as a chance to change your wardrobe : don’t hang on to those body con dresses which will make you feel like crap

In the weeks following my operation I bit the bullet and went through my wardrobe and got rid of all the über skin-tight dresses I knew I wouldn’t feel confident enough to wear again. Yes it was painful, yes I’m not ashamed to say that I cried, but now they’re gone and I no longer have the temptation to stare at them longingly and feel upset, or worse try them on and get upset. I’m not ashamed of my body, and I didn’t get rid of them because I will never wear anything figure-hugging again – I got rid of them because I knew I would no longer feel confident in them or comfortable. And you know what I don’t miss them. Since that day I have changed my sense of style and I still look great, if anything having an ostomy has made me more adventurous with my fashion sense and less like the rest of the crowd in the same Primark body con dress.

3. Try tops which have embellishments, frills and a different shape – so they don’t cling:

I’m not talking Elizabethan style frills, just a few little touches to draw attention away from your bag. You might not feel the need to do this, but I found this helpful when I first started going out following my op. I didn’t want people to see my bag straight-away, I wanted to cover it, so I found having a few little frills or a loose belt worked really well. Also try tops where the waist line flicks out, or floaty shirts, which I’m told by magazines are really “in trend” right now. Even wrap-around tops can work well as the crease covers any bloating easily.

4. Raise the waistline – try high-rise jeans, skirts and dresses with higher waist lines

I always avoided high-waisted garments; to be fair I always thought they looked pretty ridiculous on anyone who wasn’t a six-foot stick thin Victoria’s Secret model. I especially despised (and still do) those high-waist shorts which show more of young girls’ backsides than if they were wearing Bridget Jones’ knickers; you know the ones I mean, the ones that leave nothing to the imagination. Anyway since my operation I’ve had to throw out my well-worn loyal skinny jeans, which rested rather painfully on my stoma, cutting off circulation and causing minor explosions and a lot of discomfort in car journeys, and I’ve fallen in love with high-waisted jeans. Well not all but some amazing petite skinny ones from Next. I searched a long time for them but finally bit the bullet and bought them for £45 but I’m hardly ever out of them. They fit perfectly and totally cover Winnie. With a top tucked in you would never know I had an ostomy – until she swells up, and even then it’s not that obvious. I’ve also found little skirts which have high waists teamed with a cute vest top make a good match, try and get vertical stripes, seems to give the illusion of a tiny waist.

5. Amazing shoes – go to town with your feet:

If your not sure about your outfit, or don’t want to draw attention to your stomach area (and we all have those days) go to town on your feet. Yes, that’s right I’m telling you to go out and get amazing shoes. When I say amazing I mean killer heels, in daring styles and colours. You know those kind of shoes that everyone comments on, the ones that people say “Wow I love your shoes” without even paying attention to your outfit. And it doesn’t have to cost the world, shops like New Look, Next, Primark even, (my favourite Dorothy Perkins) have show stopping shoes which won’t leave you crying and up all night worrying about money.

6. Go daring in the makeup department:

Ready for the Races – THE DRESS

Feeling under the weather or not very confident, I find going bold and bright really helps. Since my op I have started to brighten my mood by wearing bright pink lipstick, painting my nails as often as I can, and really paying attention to my hair and makeup. Ok sometimes I feel like I’m becoming a cartoon character; before my op I wouldn’t have dreamt of wearing bright red lipstick to work or painting my nails all different colours – but it makes me smile and I find it makes people around me happier. Of course always bare in mind what’s appropriate, but if you can always add a bit of colour, you’ll be surprised how much more sexy you will feel.

Ostomy underwear can be ugly (see previous post), but sometimes the hold-it-all-in underwear, no matter how ugly it is, can provide a boost of confidence and a seem free look which can be attractive. Just be aware that if you find yourself in a certain situation (you know what I’m talking about) to dim the lights – most are worse than Bridget’s granny pants when they’ve been put in with a dark wash! Try to get sexy underwear. Wearing it will make you feel better, prettier and happier, especially if you’re having a hard time with your ostomy. I save my granny pants for especially bad days and being at home, but on nights out I like to wear the no VPL high rise pants from M&S. Some people swear by the shaper underwear – you know the underwear that sucks you in – I’ve not tried it so I can’t, but in the right situation I might give it ago.

8. Tights can add extra security and seam free look:

If you have an ostomy it can be hard to hide the lines. At first I was worried wearing tights would make emptying my bag harder, and leave me more prone to explosions and leaks. The opposite has been true. I find wearing tights helps to give me added security holding my bag firmly in place come what may.

9. Always carry a scarf: an amazing tip I’ve picked up along the way

I can’t remember where I saw this, but a fellow ostomate shared this tip on Youtube a while back. Always carry a scarf in your bag. It can be one of those thin fashion scarves, and as pretty as you like, or a full blown scarf in Winter. I always carry a thin one with butterflies on it which is feminine and delicate. Basically the idea is that when your ostomy bag fills up and your a) not ready to empty it, or b) unable to empty it – you whip out the scarf and drape it over your shoulders so it rests where your bag is and covers the area that’s filled up. Sounds too simple to work, but it really does. It’s so simple and adds a touch of class and bohemia to any outfit. Crazy right.

10. Don’t care what people think – you’ll be shocked how little they notice

Shockingly enough hardly anyone will ever notice your ostomy bag. No one will ever know you have one, unless of course you choose to tell them or have a full-blown Marylin Monroe moment while waiting for the bus (has happened to me far too often). Most people wouldn’t say anything if they even noticed. For God’s sake James Bond has walked into bars for years with a revolver down his tuxedo pants and no one has made a crude joke…so why would they notice your ostomy bag. The only way people will is if you keep patting it – a habit I’m trying to stop – and fussing with your outfit. Wear what you want, enjoy fashion, feel confident, you’ve been through hell and back and now its time to start enjoying life….live it.

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9 thoughts on “ Ten fashion tips for young women with ostomy bags – my experience so far ”

Ever since I was small, I always love to be stylish. I really find fashion very interesting. Thanks for this great tip. One of the best sites I always check out is http://www.kellylundberg.co/. They also share a lot of style and fashion tips.

I love the fusion – style tips + iconic people. Perfection. What a beautiful post! ❤

I have always been a girly girl,and now with my stoma, Sally, I am to wear skirts and dresses all the time. I agree w/ your tips for sure. I find peplum style dress also work really well at masking the ostomy and emphasizing the waist. And I may have to look into investing in some undergarments.

good for you 🙂 I have found I am becoming more daring with some of my choices. Be warned that the underwear can be steep, and not all of it is attractive, but if you want support I would recommend Comfizz. It is not pretty but great for working out and for long trips and anything where you think you might want to hold your bag very securely. You can get some of the underwear on prescription, so i would start there xx

I really like your fashion sense and tips. You are lovely.

I think you are fantastic! You are stylish and fun and I loved reading your ideas. I am searching for ideas to help my mum at the moment and was inspired by your cheerful approach.

Thank you so much Karen

The stoma blog roll

Braving a bikini after ostomy operations – what was I so worried about? July 27, 2016

It’s not all about poo – five things about stomas and IBD this #WorldIBDDay May 19, 2016

Getting caught short, why toilets need to be accessible for everyone May 15, 2016

Me and Winnie are back – we are sorry we have been away for so long March 21, 2016

Being on the other side of the hospital curtain – the worry of being a relative January 18, 2016

2015 in pictures: a year of running, love and adventure – with a few hiccups and bruises along the way December 31, 2015

Christmas time with a Stoma – warning it’s rogue nut season December 24, 2015

The story of Winnie so far

Blogs I Follow

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