CHARACTERS AS COCKTAILS 🍹 ➤ Nondisney Ladies (part 3/3)

Eugene de Blass (The Flirtation | Confidences)

To be a submarine

I often wonder what life would be like if a different choice was taken. Whole universes resting on left or right, effort or slack, grace or ignorance. It is an often enough thought that people have - brighter bulbs have puffed their pollen upon the winds of the universe on this exercise. In my illness, it is a daily one. I used to live in Indiana. I moved there for love and was courageous enough to find it twice. I say courageous because I do not believe in luck. You have to make your own luck in this world; granted some folk are graced with coincidence and random generosity -  happy little accidents in the evolutionary algorithm. Luck is putting yourself in the right place, and working to find the perfect opportunity. I often wonder that too - if it was love that my partners saw or opportunity. Indiana saw me pressed to the edge - broke, desperate, hungry, heartbroken. Still I thrived and made things work. I too had broken down, had bared my soul, had looked into the abyss that dwells within every heart - still I rode with chin high and eyes clear. The knife’s edge that forms the barrier between our worlds is that I chose. I chose to hollow myself out in that personal hell. I was a robot, surviving any pressure simply because I was not allowed to feel it. I could not think, nor thrive, but I could survive. Now I eye warily the seemingly countless gauges, diving deeper to examine every shipwreck and artifact commissioned to the sea. Sweat beads as my mind creaks and wails; still the hands hold course. I wonder if it would be wiser to send unfeeling metal to discover. Or if the bravery of venturing into uncharted waters is the point.

This is the only tiktok you’ll ever need, I’ve made about 13 of these and I’m not stopping anytime soon

Reblog to open a rail line from your blog to the person you reblogged this from

a little bloody mary comic idea I had last halloween

[image ID: a four page digital comic.

panel 1: a thin woman with long dark hair and light skin is seen from behind sitting in front of a vanity mirror in a room full of mirrors. text placed on the back of her head reads, "lots of people know my name."

panel 2: a group of school girls gather around a mirror in a dark school bathroom lit with candles as one of them writes "bloody mary" on the mirror. text on one of the girls' backs reads, "I get calls all the time."

panel 3: the girls run out of the bathroom screaming. text: "but no one is ever happy to see me."

panel 4: a curvy person with light skin and a partially shaved head half-laid out on the floor of a bedroom looks startled as bloody mary emerges from a full-length mirror in front of them. text: "when they don't run away[...]"

panel 5: the person is shown from behind as they hold up a polaroid to bloody mary. text: "they ask me, hunched and trembling, to perform curses and hexes for them."

panel 6: bloody mary shown halfway through a mirror. text: "I never quite know how to respond."

panel 7: bloody mary has her head down on her vanity desk. text: "no one ever calls just to see me."

panel 8: a darker-skinned hand with long black nails writes bloody mary's name on a mirror with red lipstick in a candlelit room. text: "no one[...]"

panel 9: bloody mary emerges from the mirror in front of a darker-skinned woman with two buns and red lipstick, who is smiling. no text.

panel 10: bloody mary is shown up close as the woman tucks mary's hair behind he ear, showing more of her ghostly face, and a bright red lipstick kiss mark on her cheek. text: "except her."

panel 11: bloody mary sits in her mirror room admiring the kiss mark on her cheek with a hand mirror. no text. end ID.]

Okay this is...rather unlikely, but I just cracked myself up imagining that Edith's first novel was basically one of those "and then everything was fine and E/T/L became a (consensual) thing and they all lived happily ever after" fics. Maybe in her altered version there were no previous murdered wives, and the only ghost was a mother cruelly determined to continue her abuse from beyond the grave, so the Sharpes can be more sympathetic and it can be okay for her author insert (if that's even the right term?) to stay with them at the end. Look, this woman had genuine love for her husband (and some... interesting feelings about her sister-in-law), but then all the horrible stuff came out so now she's super conflicted and... processing, okay? She's processing. Then I cracked myself up all over again remembering that this would require a late Victorian publishing house to accept a book where the happy ending features lesbianism, polyamory, and incest.

I mean, she could write heavy subtext for the lesbianism, polyamory, and incest parts. Perhaps her character rescues her beloved husband from the ghost/metaphor and becomes Closest Bosom Friends™ with his extremely devoted sister. And they all live happily, respectably ever after, and 110 years later the academic analyses of the text are WILD.

In the 1950s it’s all “A classic tale of romantic and familial love triumphing over darkness!” In the present day there are John Mulaney memes like “I think Crimson Peak (1902) is about a bisexual incest triad.”

I do think a lot about What If scenarios for the canon, published version of the story. How did she change it? We have snippets of the text in voiceover, but even sticking strictly to her stated canon feelings about things, no Victwardian publisher would want to touch it if it was completely honest.

Or was the story we saw not what happened at all? Was it a complete fabrication? If so, what’s the truth? Did Edith even marry Thomas? Did he marry Eunice or leave abruptly unwed, and the story is the dark past and future she imagined for him?

I have one idea where she bases the story on a series of dreams- but oops, it turns out Mama Ghost sent those dreams and they were real. All this eventually leads to Thomas hanging for murder and Lucille swearing revenge on a woman she met once for like an hour, who isn’t even in the same country.

But I digress. Fascinating concept, Anon!

III

You look nice,” her smile is both to reassure herself and say to me,  “I mean it.” We have been talking for weeks now and a compliment at the top of things is an unconscious whisper,  “I am worried.” I can feel the creak of my bones when I walk, the fat clinging on as muscles dissolve - the trip to the toilet leaves me lightheaded. The camera captures the hollows of my eyes, the slow process of taunting my skin over the bones. The hair is oily and standing of its own accord, like fireworks that are frozen. I think it shows how hollow I feel. “How are you feeling? How is the new medication doing?” “A little better - I made it out of bed today.”

The Ukrainian Wreath

I’ll get right to it.

The  last few weeks have been heartbreaking, and there are no words to fully describe the devastation the Ukrainian people have suffered.

While living so far away can create a feeling of helplessness I wanted to try and do something to help. That is why I’ll be selling this print on my  Etsy shop with all profits going towards the Hospitallers.

A group of volunteer paramedics working in Ukraine to help those inflicted.

Stand with Ukraine. 🇺🇦 Stop The War.

Wishing you all a safe, and love filled week. ❤️

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1182646662/fine-art-print-the-ukrainian-wreath