#because she lives independently and has a fabulous career and is killing it in life

[crimeronan]

my dad was on his best behavior tonight. i met him and his new wife. he has a white beard now and looks like every grizzled fisherman in an old sea myth. it was awkward but my siblings carried the conversation (as i was typing that sentence, my sister called to debrief and said "yeah, that was my goal, just to keep talking.") my dad's new wife repeatedly hassled both of my siblings about settling down and having kids, but left me alone, presumably because i'm Butch Dyke. my brother mentioned doing volunteer work with foreign students at college and she went, "oh, are they illegals?" which was the only really nasty reminder of Who These People Are. then when my brother said he'd been talking to a friend, she went, "oh, a giiiiirl?" and he got the meanest look on his face and flatly went, "no. they're nonbinary." truly taking one for the team in terms of being the most problematic one at the dinner table.

dad told several stories about when i was in elementary school, since that's the last time i was his daughter. he reminded me that a lot of who i am now comes directly from him in ways that aren't Always bad. he was the one who told me to beat the shit out of anyone who harassed me or my friends. he was the one who taught me how to fight. he was the one who impressed upon me that i'm ruthless before i'm ever a woman, however much he may regret that now.

i put on my best high-pitched all-american cheerleader appeasement voice for all of dinner, and his wife said, "oh, you sound just like your mother! your voice.... it's so strange" thank you ma'am. it's because my mother and i both know how to win.

#racism #just in case #i'm seeing him One more time before i go. for my sister's birthday dinner #but like i said. my sister is VERY skilled at keeping a conversation going. god fucking bless her. #this is actually a pretty positive post. i wanted him to behave and he did. i wanted his wife to behave and she did. mostly. #my siblings are both irritated about the grandkids thing -- my sister especially #because she lives independently and has a fabulous career and is killing it in life #and she'll never be good enough for them as long as she doesn't have a husband and child. #i got that lecture over a decade ago when i told dad i'm a lesbian. so it doesn't sting me anymore.

[danceworshipper]

Ida Sommer - HPHL MC

Info subject to change as more game information is released. All of my HPHL ocs exist in the same universe

[profile template by me]

Personal

Full Name: Ida Marie Sommer

Gender: Female (cis)

Sexuality: Pansexual (closeted)

Birthday: August 20th

Birthstone: Peridot

Zodiac Sign: Leo

Age: 14 (at beginning of game)

Blood Status: Pureblood

3 Positive Traits:

- Charming

- Spiritual (nature oriented)

- Resilient

3 Negative Traits:

- Childish

- Uncommunicative

- Vain

Usual First Impression: When first meeting Ida, people often assume she is immature, ignorant, and easy to take advantage of due to her sheltered nature and cutesy appearance. This impression is highly incorrect

Location

Birthplace: Germany (exact location TBD)

Current Home: Her father's estate in one of the richest areas (Germany)

Future Home: A beautiful cottage secluded from the world, near a mountainside (Germany)

Favorite Place: A cliff overseeing the sea in Japan, close to the little shop where she got her wand

Disliked Place: Her maternal grandparents' home, simply because she doesn't enjoy their company

Appearance

[image created using the Live Portrait Maker app]

Face Shape: Roundish jaw, soft features with a strong brow bone

Eye Color: Yellowish green

Hair Color: Light blonde

Hair Style: Ida wears her hair down or in a single braid. Her hair is mostly straight with side bangs, and is parted in the middle

Skin Tone: Light

Freckles/Spots: A few freckles on her cheeks, more visible when she's been out in the sun

Scars: None during her schooling. After graduation, Ida marks her arms with runes only she and Sebastien can make sense of to strengthen her connection to the world around her

Piercings/Tattoos: Single earlobe piercings.

Final Height: 5'9"

Final Weight: 137lbs

Physique: Thin with long legs, slightly wider than average shoulders

Clothing Style: Ida is a rich kid, so her clothing is always of high quality material and her jewelry is noticeably unflawed. She dresses modestly until she turns seventeen, when she stops caring what her parents think. Her favorite colors to wear are pastels

Carried Items:

- her wand

- a locket with a picture of her and her parents in it - not worn, but kept in her satchel

- a silver pocket watch stuck at 11:18 pm, handed to her by the same Seer who told her where to get her wand

- a handful of candy

- extra quills for her roommate who keeps forgetting hers

- a book from the Restricted Section about Elementals, written by Elementals and charmed so no one other than an Elemental can ever figure out what it says

Magic

Wand: 12 inches of firm Ebony wood with a koi-mer hair core. A pitch black, rounded wand with a pattern of scales carved into the handle. This wand was custom made in a small, almost unknown shop in Japan after a Seer she bumped into on the street told Ida that her perfect wand would be created there. It would seem foolish to go all the way from Germany to Japan on the word of an unknown Seer, but it was Ida's turn to plan the summer trip, so she picked a place in Japan close enough to the mentioned shop

Animagus: Loon

Boggart Form: A headless figure easily recognizable as herself, crumbling away into dust. A failed attempt to merge with nature resulting in her demise

Riddikulus Form: A statue of her like the one in her parents' back garden, over glorifying her features, that has been attacked and is crumbling away. She hates that statue

Amortentia (to others): Someone smelling Ida would smell lime juice, fresh water, and static electricity

Amortentia (to her): TBD

Patronus: Ida has never been able to cast a Patronus. Not for a lack of happy enough memories, but because of her powerful soul. The Patronus can never escape her magical core

Patronus Memory: N/A

Mirror of Erised: A tree so big it grows up an entire mountainside. The tree bark is covered in swirling patterns Ida recognizes as Elemental runes. She doesn't yet know what exactly this tree is, but she feels an undeniable longing for it

Family Spells: The Sommer family has no special family spells

Inherent Magic: Elemental

- Ida has all the magic of a normal witch, but on top of that has a deep connection to the earth and the magic stemming from it, even beyond the earth into the universe. If not properly trained (or if driven to a great enough temptation), an Elemental could vaporize the entire planet, or bend it to their will. They could also leave humanity behind if they so wished and become nature itself

- Elementals are theorized to have fragments of Merlin's soul fused with their own, hence why they feel strong connections to each other and can't ever fatally harm one of their own. Most Elementals also fall in love with each other as well, and the connection is thought to be stronger than a normal human's love could ever be. These connections help ensure no Elemental gives in to whichever temptation has the strongest pull on them. Only one Elemental has ever yet gone evil, and this is how it was discovered that they cannot kill one another

- This special magic is not hereditary. In fact, no one knows what causes someone to be born an Elemental, only that there have been less and less of them in the recent centuries. There are only two known Elementals left: Ida and Sebastien

Family

Mother: Lina is a warm hearted woman who wants the best for her daughter, misguided though she might be. She often has to shout at her husband to trying to hold Ida back, or discourage Ida's dreams. She noticed Ida's growing power long before her husband did, and was the one to finally contact someone for help when Ida grew so strong and uncontrolled she couldn't stop floating

Father: Elias is a business oriented man who, though he loves his daughter, up until her reveal as an Elemental wished she was a son. He's the reason Ida was homeschooled for so long, as he didn't think a girl was worth the tuition money. He refused to believe that Ida was anything other than ordinary until a man in a high position told him otherwise

Sisters: None

Brothers: None

Pets: A screech owl named Goldig, meaning 'cute'

Other Important Family: Ida's paternal aunt, Ingrid, is one of the biggest influences in her life as a child. Ingrid is an independent witch who lives fabulously by herself with her dead husband's fortune. Ida used to yearn for a future where she wasn't tied down by a man and could do as she pleased

Family Values: The Sommer family as a whole is mainly concerned with two things: remaining pureblooded, and growing richer. Most of the Sommers are decently good people, but they have period-appropriate prejudices and are willing to leave someone behind to save themselves, metaphorically and literally

Opinion on Family: Up until entering Hogwarts, Ida really only knew her family, so she loved them and thought very highly of them. As she becomes more socialized and learns more about the world, she starts to notice her parents' many flaws and though she never stopped loving them, she does resent them for homeschooling her and ignoring the signs of her being abnormal, because she used to think she was broken when in reality she's nearly a god

Friendships

Introverted or Extroverted: Extroverted

Best Friend: Sebastien Parr - another mc of mine who is also an Elemental, and an exchange student from Beauxbatons

Worst Friend: TBD

Friend She Didn't Expect: TBD

Who She Wishes Was Her Friend: TBD

List of Casual Friends:

- Sophia Burton @gcldensnitch

- Charlotte Grant @weasleysandwheezes

- canon friends TBD

Romance

Current Crush: None

Current Partner: None

Past Partners: None

Future Partners: TBD - will likely be picked from the game's characters, but could possibly be someone else's mc

Her Type: TBD

Hogwarts

House: Slytherin

Prefect Status: No

Quidditch: Never played, but loves to watch

Clubs: None

Organizations: The fake Headmaster's Apprentices organization that she and Sebastien use to hide what they're really doing

Favorite Class: Herbology

Least Favorite Class: History of Magic

Favorite Professor: TBD

Least Favorite Professor: TBD

Timeline

Young Childhood: Ida is kept at home. She knows no children her age, and spends most of her free time roaming her father's land. No matter how far she wanders, she never seems to get lost. Ida has strange dreams where she watches the world as an outsider. After being told by a Seer that her ideal wand would be created at a small shop in Japan, Ida convinces her father to spend a month there over the summer, and her mother takes her to the shop to get her wand. Ida sneaks out one night and climbs a cliff that looks out over the ocean. In later years she can't remember whether rising up over the waters and hearing the stars call to her by name was a dream or not, but she knows the moon smiled at her.

First Year: N/A

Second Year: N/A

Third Year: Ida's uncontrolled Elemental magic reaches a breaking point, and Ida explodes her little study room as she lifts up in the air, unable to come down. Her mother sends for help: two healers, a historian, and three government officials later, Ida is brought down and informed that she will be enrolled in Hogwarts the following year. She is not informed why, though her parents are

Fourth Year: Ida enters Hogwarts with no social skills. She meets Sebastien and they're both informed of their true nature. As Ida struggles to catch up on her studies as well as train her Elemental magic, she also learns just how wonderful having friends her age is

Fifth Year: TBD

Sixth Year: Ida grows suspicious of Sebastien's "friend" Dorian. Other details TBD

Seventh Year: TBD

Post Graduation: Ida marks herself with ancient Elemental runes and her father gifts her the cottage. She spends a year and a half where almost no one hears from her, before appearing back in her friends' lives as if nothing happened, looking healthier and happier than ever

Career(s): Ida doesn't live long enough to have a career

Marriage and Children: Ida marries (TBD) from school, someone who had always had a crush on her that she eventually returned the feelings for. They spend a beautiful three years together before her end. Ida manages to give her love a son, but only after she's gone

Death: Ida sacrifices herself to stop Sebastien and Dorian from destroying the world. Ida's biggest temptation as an Elemental was always to leave her humanity behind and become nature, so she does. She traps the two men inside of a ridiculously large tree that grows out of the mountainside near her cottage. This tree forms from her body, and has a notch where her favorite necklace can be inserted to be allowed entry to the chamber Sebastien and Dorian are trapped. However, she hid the necklace in Japan, where no one will find it until a century has passed and her friends have passed away. Ida can occasionally gather her spirit into a physical form to communicate with her love and child that she left behind

Notable Facts Not Previously Mentioned

- Ida is the ancestor of my main hphm mcs, Gracie and Tessa Chiva, on their father's side

- The reason Ida is sent to Hogwarts and not Durmstrang is the fear of bad influences. No one wanted to risk her being corrupted

- Ida does feel guilty about leaving her love behind, but since she couldn't kill Sebastien and she still loved him and wanted him to be happy, this was the only way she could think of to stop him

- Her love watched her leave humanity behind. As they wept, Ida's spirit gathered to say her goodbyes, and point them to their son, who had been born from Ida's final breath at exactly 11:18 pm

- Ida thinks very highly of herself. This is both from being praised so much as a child and hearing so much about the good she can do as an Elemental

- She throws a graduation party so extravagant that it's talked about for decades after her death

- No one but her love knows what truly happened to her. All anyone else knows is that she and Sebastien disappeared at the same time

#hphl oc #hogwarts legacy #ida sommer #character profile

[whimsyverse]

Family #1: The Dolans

(this is a re-upload as I made some major changes to my mod situation, specifically the CC traits I'm using...nearly all of the traits from here on out will be from Chingyu's trait pack, just for simplicity's sake)

After a long delay of straightening out my many (many, many) mods and just generally fighting with my lack of motivation to do...things...I've finally placed my first family: the Dolans! Pictures above (left to right) are: Vincent, Donovan, Lucinda, and Lillian.

You may recognize Vincent, at least, from my first Whimsyverse project...that'll be an ongoing theme, of course, since I'm remaking all of these characters again. This time, though, instead of making them all adults, I'll be defaulting most of my major characters to teenagers for no real specific reason besides that it feels like I'm starting at the beginning of their stories. Also it's more work for me to make all of their families and I

am nothing if not a masochist...

Family Bio: Donovan Dolan is a dangerous and brilliant criminal for hire, performing everything from high-profile heists to hitman-style assassinations dispassionately for the highest bidder. However, this was not the case when he first met Lillian, an aspiring model, and their whirlwind romance ended with them married and Lillian pregnant with twins. While establishing himself as one of the most dangerous men alive, the twins Vincent and Lillian were growing up with their gentle and loving mother, who all but gave up her own aspirations to raise them. Vincent and Lillian resent their absentee and dangerous father for how he neglects his family, and for his part, it is clear that Donovan expects at least one of them to continue in his footsteps...though which one has yet to be decided.

Vincent Dolan

Meta Bio: Vincent is my version of that character we all make around high school/early college - the hyper-competent badass that’s just there to be awesome and to let us write super cool scenes. He was super cool and good at everything and had a tragic backstory and was super emo and edgy and graargh! However, as I grew, Vincent stuck with me and became a character I reused many, many times over, and as I became more competent of a storyteller (I said more competent!), he grew too. He remained the hyper-competent badass he started as (a bit of self-indulgence on my part, perhaps), but the tragedy of his backstory and the psychology of him wrestling with his trauma became more pronounced in how I wrote him. He was no longer just a bad-ass, he was a more complex character who, despite appearing to be unaffected by everything around him, was really hyper-repressed to a dangerous degree. I started writing him less as that hyper-competent Gary Stu and more as a normal man (or boy) who simply didn’t know how to express himself or process the trauma of his past - in which he watches his father kill his mother and threaten to kill his twin sister - without letting the pain that comes naturally to that trauma overwhelm him. So he simply shuts it all out. At the same time, he has drilled into his head (thanks, again, to his father) that he simply isn’t good enough. This no longer manifests as a sort of infantile, impotent angst, but rather a silent drive to always do better at everything he does - an intense focus that earned him the very fitting title “a model of intense apathy” from my friend. But one of the most fun parts of the character isn’t writing him being exceptional at everything (I actually enjoy emphasizing that he is not good at everything...anything that requires a modicum of creativity or personal expression is utterly beyond him), it’s watching him, with the help of people around him, discover the young man that he could have been. I recently wrote him smiling for the first time and it was very sweet.

Age: Teenager Gender: Cis Male Sexuality: Asexual Aspiration: Renaissance Sim Lifestyle: Energetic Walk Style: Tough Style: Basic

Degree: N/A Career: N/A Skills: Fitness (4); Logic (3)

Likes: Color Purple, Color Black Dislikes: Comedy; Mischief

Traits: Reserved; Alexithymia; Scary; Unfunny; Over-Achiever; Mentally Gifted; Shameless; Unique Appearance; Slower Romance Gain; Physically Gifted; Brave; Needs No One; Carefree; Heat Acclimation; Slower Friendship Gain; Seldom Sleepy; Cold Acclimation; Quick Learner

Donovan Dolan

Meta Bio: Donovan has never been especially well-defined, and as such, this will be a pretty short bio. He only ever really existed as a vessel to drive Vincent’s trauma. He’s gone from being a petty thug to a master criminal to a dangerous madman. But I tend to enjoy playing him more as a sort of mirror into what Vincent could become - a hyper-competent, dangerous psychopath - a term I use more or less literally here, to emphasize his utter lack of empathy/sympathy. Like many psychopaths, he appears, outwardly, to be extremely well-adjusted, even charming and charismatic, but without the ability to relate to others. He is highly focused on his job, whatever that may be at the time.

Age: Adult Gender: Cis Male Sexuality: Straight Aspiration: Fabulously Wealthy Lifestyle: Workaholic Walk Style: Tough Style: Basic

Career: Criminal (The Boss) Skills: Charisma (8); Fitness (8); Handiness (6); Logic (8); Mischief (10); Persuasion (4); Rock Climbing (5); Skiing (5)

Likes: Retro Music; Fitness; Rock Climbing; Dislikes: Video Games; Comedy; Backyard Music; Winter Holiday Music; New Age Music; Summer Strut Music; Tween Pop Music; Lullabies Radio Music

Traits: (*deep breath*) Abusive, Bad-Natured, Brilliant, Psychopath, Well-Balanced, Mentally Gifted, Argumentative, Emotional Control, Good Manners, Insensitive, Faster Relationship Gain, Physically Gifted, Socially Gifted, In the Know, Influential Individual, Mastermind, Natural Leader, Faster Friendship Gain, Over-Achiever, Connections, Brave, Carefree, Fortune Sim, Cold Acclimation, Savant, Great Kisser, Entrepreneurial, Shameless, Needs No One, Heat Acclimation, Hardly Hungry, Business Savvy, Alluring, Career-Minded, Dastardly, High Metabolism,

Lucinda Dolan

Meta Bio: Lucinda is even less defined than Donovan, usually. Once again, she exists simply to die and provide fuel for Vincent’s tragedy. She is usually described as being exceptionally kind and gentle, the opposite of her husband, and having made a strong impression on Vincent and Lillian during their childhoods. For the Sims version, I liked to imagine her as being full of life and energy and happiness. She leans a bit more into creative endeavors, which neither of her children took after. She still lives for her children, though, and the decision to give up her dreams as a model was her own...she wanted to be a parent more than she wanted anything else.

Age: Adult Gender: Cis Female Sexuality: Bisexual Aspiration: Super Parent Lifestyle: Close-Knit Walk Style: Feminine Style: Basic

Degree: Drama Career: N/A Skills: Acting (3); Charisma (4); Comedy (2); Dancing (4); Fitness (2); Painting (2); Parenting (6); Piano (4); Singing (5); Wellness (2)

Likes: Alternative Music; Singer Songwriter Music; Pop Music; Easy Listening Music; Americana Music; Color Black; Color Purple; Dancing; Painting; Piano; Singing Dislikes: Baking; Cooking; Mischief

Traits: Emotional; High-Spirited; Tender; Light-Hearted; Family Oriented; Role Model; Mediator; Kindness Ambassador; Responsible; Beloved; Incredibly Friendly; Good Manners; Emotional Control; Compassionate; Family Sim; Domestic; Gregarious

Lillian Dolan

Meta Bio: Unsurprisingly, Lillian, like her parents, has never been extremely well-defined, but I have had her appear occasionally in stories - I just never really cemented what kind of character she was. In the past, she was the polar opposite of Vincent: energetic, cheerful, impetuous. Other times she took more after their mother and was more quietly calm and confident. In this case, I decided to make her sort of a high-strung workaholic who doesn’t really know how to relate to people, mostly because that’s how she was in one of her more recent appearances. So hey, maybe that’s now her canon personality!

Age: Teenager Gender: Cis Female Sexuality: Bisexual Aspiration: Figuring it Out Lifestyle: Coffee Fanatic; Workaholic Walk Style: Normal Style: Preppy

Degree: N/A Career: Lifeguard Skills: Logic (4); Persuasion (2); Research and Debate (5); Rock Climbing (2); Writing (3)

Likes: Wellness; Research and Debate; Rock Climbing; Fitness; Writing; Color Black; Color Purple Dislikes: Video Gaming; Comedy; Mischief; Cooking; Baking; Dancing; Color Pink

Traits: Serious; Generalized Anxiety Disorder; Smart; Avoidant; Knowledge Sim; Top Notch Toddler; Physically Gifted; Mentally Gifted; Over-Achiever; Seldom Sleepy; Speed Reader; Independent; Learning about Life; Career-Minded; Quick Learner

#simblr #sims 4 #simblog #the sims #whimsyverse

[batgirl-87]

MC Character Challenge

Tagged and Created by @cptaincarswell 

(If there is another one like this I was never tagging in so…) Thank you so much for tagging me! Honestly this is a lot harder than my Jacob’s one! I hope I did a good job explaining my MC…

Rules: Choose five characters (movie or tv show) that represent your MC/ MC’s different layers.

1. Sirius Black - Harry Potter

Let’s just get the obvious out of the way =p 

Where to start…

Dramatic entrances

Just dramatic tendencies

Good hair (even after 12 years in Azkaban, the rest may be a mess but the hair is looking fabulous! =p)

Love Remus Lupin

Okay, a bit more siriusly now 😉

Unwavering loyalty and fiercely protective nature (that may be taken too far…)

Witty and sarcastic (“run along and play with your chemistry set” - classic! =p)

Charming and charismatic (she can probably convince almost anyone to do anything… maybe a bit manipulative too…)

Rebellious and mischievous

Flirtatious and seemingly confident

Secretly really insecure

Dark vengeful side, can be vicious towards those he hates

Sure, we have magic, but you know what’s satisfying? Punching someone in the face!

2. Emma Swan - Once Upon A Time

Forced into be the Savior seems fitting, right? Fine, if she has to do this, she will, because no one else will =p Plus she’s probably the best at it anyway 😉 It may be stressful and a weight on her shoulders but she’ll handle it herself and appear cool and collected while doing it.

A natural leader and hero even though she may not want to be (Have to deal with the Cursed-Vaults and R/Cabal even though this is definitely not what she signed up for)

Strong and independent (but also lonely)

Practical and realistic

Strong sense of justice

Will do anything to protect and save those she cares about

Self-sacrificing (which is easy to do if you don’t care really if you live or not)

Dark Side

Distances herself from others to protect them

Trust issues

Abandonment issues

Very guarded with her feelings (particularly when it comes to love)

Feels like she has to appear strong and keep things together despite how stressed and overwhelmed she is with great responsibility thrust onto her shoulders - probably also feels like she has to handle it all by herself/on her own

Gets Captain Hottie Hook =p

3. Kate Beckett - Castle

I think Kate shows how determined and even obsessed Keira is with finding her brother. She’ll push herself to her limits and doesn’t care about placing herself in dangerous situations, even engaging in reckless behaviors that could severely harm or even kill her to find her brother. And she’ll try to do it all herself. (Also I love Stana Katic!)

Strong sense of justice (even if it’s her own set of morals/ethics)

Strong and independent

Her own savior/hero

Doesn’t like when someone tries to control her or even protect her - she demands respect and wants a partner, not a protector (Keira just doesn’t do well with being told what to do/authority figures - she wants to do what she wants when she wants!)

Determined and hard working 

Determined almost to the point of obsession and recklessness - doesn’t care about what happens to her as long as she succeeds and will cross lines to do so

Can be secretive

On a one-woman mission

Speaks multiple languages

Likes to keep her past and personal life/feelings private (Keira doesn’t really talk about herself much to her friends - her mom, life in Canada, etc.)

The loss of her mom drives her - serves as her motivation to become a detective (while Keira lost her mom as well, the loss of Jacob is a strong motivator for her influencing even her career choice as well)

However, wants to be defined more than just by her mother’s death (Keira wants to be defined more than her brother and the Cursed-Vaults)

Struggle to love herself and accept someone else’s love

Survives getting shot to the chest (it’s very difficult getting rid of Keira =p)

4. Mazikeen “Maze” - Lucifer

(Kind of looks like a batarang right?! =D )

She’s beauty, she’s grace, she’ll punch you in the face (and then stab you and rip your throat out). Keira enjoys a good fight but also has a darker side that primarily gets unleashed when people she cares about are threatened or harmed. She can and will cross the line and do what’s necessary especially in difficult and stressful times. And those clothes!

Quick to anger and acting out violently (prefers getting mad than showing she’s actually sad)

Gets a thrill and pleasure from fighting (Duelling is fun and all but Keira does really enjoy physical fighting. May also have a taste/skill for knives - related to Bellatrix afterall 😜)

Confident in her fighting abilities

Sarcastic

Can come off as cold and uncaring

May sometimes act impulsively especially when angered (Keira has a classic fiery Irish temper)

Struggles with showing vulnerability and opening up

Secretly lonely and insecure about her friendships - like she cares more/does more for them and they don’t really care for her - worried about betrayal 

Fiercely loyal and protective - so much she easily becomes a sadistic vengeful killer if anyone harms those she cares about (well Maze is a demon =p - Keira definitely has a dark side that hasn’t really needed to come out much but after this Rakepick stuff…. Anyway she’d have no problem torturing or inflicting pain and destroying someone’s life if they hurt those she cares about)

Keira would definitely wear a lot of Maze’s clothing actually - leather, duh =p badass and a little sexy 😜

(Bonus - since you included Eve in yours 😉) 

5. Jamie Moriarty - Elementary 

Besides the fact that I just love Natalie Dormer, I also want to highlight Keira’s intelligence and manipulative capabilities, as well as her not really being good or evil but as more of a neutral. (If she wanted to run a criminal empire she could =p Who knows what the future will hold? =p) Also could possibly show what she could become if she didn’t have her friends. (More reasons she needs Bill as a partner).

Diabolical mastermind

Clever and cunning

Manipulative - uses people to do her dirty work or distract them from interfering

Likes a challenge/mind games

Likes to feel smarter than others  

Likes to be in control/have the upper hand/be one step ahead

Confident (possibly overconfident) in her skills, intellect, and abilities

Gives credit where it’s due and respects other intelligent, manipulative, and clever people

Can view situations as a game (but she’s pretty sure she’ll - and determined to - win)

Focus on benefitting herself and doesn’t care who she has to take down in order to get what she wants

Curious

Will stop at nothing to protect those she cares about (i.e. her daughter)

Doesn’t like to appear/show her vulnerability (aka her daughter)

More dramatic reveals?! Yes please =p Love a good plot twist!

Honorable Mentions: The Witch - Into the Woods; Blair Waldorf - Gossip Girl; Veronica Lodge (or maybe even Cheryl Blossom) - Riverdale; Loki - Marvel; Wolverine - X-men; Selene - Underworld

Summary: (This got long - don’t have to read! You can probably see the running themes here)

Keira comes across as a strong, confident, sarcastic person who actually hides a lot of insecurities, trust issues, and overwhelming stress. While charming and charismatic she actually is quite guarded and doesn’t like to open up or be vulnerable but that also leaves her feeling alone. While appearing even flirtatious at times she is particularly guarded and insecure about the whole ‘love’ thing and struggles with believing anyone would actually accept her for her, flaws and all. Takes awhile for her to feel comfortable around others and a long time for her to feel safe opening up and even then she rarely shows her vulnerability to those close to her. Likes being independent and handling things on her own even if that means struggling and being overwhelmingly stressed - doesn’t like to admit she needs helps or can’t handle things on her own (even though she needs support she prides herself on her independence). Normally pretty cool and calm but definitely has a fiery temper than can easily be set off causing her to lash out angrily and even violently. Also has a flair for the dramatics and can be quite rebellious and mischievous. 

Is an incredibly determined and resilient individual, particularly when it comes to finding her brother, but in general when she wants something it’s hard for her to let it go and she’ll cross lines to get it and even push herself to extremes and engage in dangerous and reckless behaviors - doesn’t matter what happens to her as long as she succeeds. Normally likes to take things into her own hands without involving others, in a way to protect them, but also keeps her at a distance from them so maybe also in a way to protect herself from her fear of being betrayed by people she has opened up to and trusted - again leaving her feeling alone, especially when she truly does need support. But she also just doesn’t like being told what to do =p 

She has a strong sense of justice, and has a hard time keeping her mouth shut when she sees an injustice, and is fiercely loyal and protective towards those she cares about; however, is a true neutral, living more in a grey area, so her code of ethics may be different than others (she’s not a Death Eater but she totally understands killing Dumbledore, would have done it herself if they asked! And she’ll fight Harry about it! =p). She doesn’t normally get involved in things (such as the second wizarding war) unless necessary and rewarding from her own perspective. She enjoys a good fight and is probably the first to sign up for some dangerous mission (as long as she feels she’ll get something out of it even if it’s just the thrill and adrenaline rush). While she may have insecurities when it comes to her relationships with others, she’s confident, maybe too much so, in her skills, intellect, and capabilities (and therefore does not handle defeat well and does not like being the one be to used and manipulated when she likes to have the upper hand and be one step ahead). 

She definitely has a dark side, particularly when anyone she cares about is threatened or harmed or when she feels it’s called for in difficult situations. She can be vicious and has no issues torturing, inflicting pain, and completely destroying someone’s life - quite literally will cut a bitch =p (and if she needs to be a bitch she can be a bitch =p) She can be very manipulative and vengeful, no problems using others has her puppets, although again normally only does so to protect or avenge those she cares about (i.e. doesn’t do so for her own personal amusement). Also I think she’s good at compartmentalizing. Honestly feels like her friends need her because, let’s face it, they’re too “nice” and “good” and they need a friend willing to do the dirty work and cross that line into the darkness… even if they don’t know about her doing that…because she does try to keep that darkness in her hidden from her friends. (But her friends and that support truly keep her from snapping and acting out more violently and diving into that darkness as easily as she would alone).

Think that’s it =p Hope I explained her well, I don’t know…

Tagging: @wilhelminafujita @bluerosesburnblue @arnyan @callmederok @jadeowl19 @missnight0wl @changeling-fae @sly-vixen-up2nogood @gryffinpuffthunderbird @unforgivablecurse-breaker and anyone else who wants to!I’m sure I’m forgetting people - I’m sorry, it’s not personal I swear! Just please do it and tag me! =)

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[brajeshupadhyay]

Julia Hartley-Brewer confesses she once begged for cash

Spender: But Julia Hartley-Brewer also invests

Journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer says her biggest financial regret was not investing in the stock market and starting a pension when she was younger. 

Julia, 52, who hosts the breakfast show on TalkRadio, also reveals that although these days she wears Chanel perfume, drinks champagne and gets paid up to £3,000 for three minutes of her time, life has not always been easy. 

She spoke to DONNA FERGUSON from her home in North London which she shares with her husband and their 13- year-old daughter. 

What did your parents teach you about money? 

Not to spend it on something you don’t need or love. My parents grew up without money and always knew the price of everything. As a result, I can’t bear to waste it. I spend a lot of money on things I value, but I will never waste even 20 pence on something I don’t need. 

My parents were students when I was born. My mother went on to become a GP, but she was a student doctor for most of my childhood. She broke up with my father when I was a few months old, and then remarried. But my father remained 100 per cent involved as I grew up. 

My dad had several jobs. He had grown up poor – he used to do a coal round and give the money to his mum to buy food. He eventually became a postgraduate teacher, an economist, and he also worked at the BBC. 

Growing up, I never worried about money. It was tight but middle-class tight – not working-class tight. We lived within a strict budget and there was never any money to splash about, but equally, we never struggled.

Have you ever struggled to make ends meet? 

Yes, definitely. When I was at university, I remember being too terrified to put my debit card in the wall machine because I thought if I didn’t have any money it wouldn’t come out again. 

After university, I did some unpaid work experience at The Times newspaper. I had nowhere to live and no income, so I moved into a squat in the East End of London and ate a lot of rice, pasta and tinned tomatoes. 

Once, I was 40 pence short of the Tube fare, so I stood at the station and asked people for money so I could afford to get on the train. I didn’t find it humiliating – I just accepted that was what I needed to do to get where I wanted to be. 

After that, I got a job at a local newspaper in London earning £9,000 a year. Even in the 1990s, that was still not a lot of money. It was a struggle. I used to walk everywhere because I couldn’t afford public transport. I had no spare cash and still had college debts to pay off. But I always knew deep down that I’d be OK. I didn’t have a sense of hopelessness. I saw what I was doing as a stepping stone to something better. 

My experiences have given me a tiny inkling of understanding as to what it is like to live day to day, week to week. 

Of course, I always had my parents as back-up. At the same time, I knew I never wanted to be in that financial position again.

Have you ever been paid silly money?

Yes. I once got paid £3,000 for a three-minute after dinner speech which was fabulous. I was one of a number of speakers at the event and thankfully they didn’t pay me by the word. 

What was the best year of your financial life? 

It would have been this year if it hadn’t been for the pandemic, so last year was my most successful. 

I’d rather not say how much I earned in 2019, but I was presenting the breakfast show on TalkRadio. When you’re getting up at 4.40 every morning, you tend to get well compensated for it. 

What is the most expensive thing you bought for fun? 

Celebrating my 50th birthday – I spent a hell of a lot of money on a party. I invited 170 guests and had a marquee and caterers – and it was worth every single penny. 

What is your biggest money mistake? 

Not investing in a pension and stocks and shares. I’ve been good at earning money and not spending it – I don’t fritter it away. But I have not been good at investing it. I wish I had been. 

During lockdown, I had a massive sort-out of my finances and one of the things I’ve been organising is my pension. 

I’ve also started investing in the stock market since the pandemic started. I figure the only way is up for stocks and shares, so I have put a lot of money into a FTSE100 tracker fund as a long-term investment – more than my annual Isa allowance of £20,000. I like the idea of a tracker because it’s low cost. 

The best money decision you have made? 

Going freelance. I left a staff job as a political editor at the Sunday Express in 2011. I trusted I could earn more money by backing myself – and it’s paid off every single year since by a long way. I also feel I have got more say over my career. 

My dad always advised me to have ‘walk away’ money – a sum that allows you to be financially independent, so you can always walk away, whether it be from a relationship or a job, and still be able to pay your bills.

Do you own any property? 

I do. I own my three-bedroom flat in North London with my husband. We bought it in 2006 which I have since been told was the peak of the housing market. Regardless, it has been a great investment and more than doubled in value. It’s really near the Tube and has a 50ft garden which is fabulous for parties as I’ve discovered. 

What little luxury do you treat yourself to? 

I have worn Chanel perfume since my teens. I also love champagne. I am quite happy to spend money on a nice glass of Taittinger.

If you were Chancellor what would you do? 

I would get more houses built by requiring councils to prioritise the private development of more homes and slash all the costs relating to planning. 

That would create more jobs and make housing cheaper. I think we need to build two million more homes immediately. 

We need to get more people into their own homes. Overnight it would revolutionise our country.

What is your number one financial priority? 

Most people would say their children, but I’ve never worried about my daughter and I feel I will never need to. 

So my number one financial priority is for my husband and I to have a wonderful and comfortable retirement.  

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Stealing screen time: Ocean's 8 and the rise of female crime gangs

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Stealing screen time: Ocean's 8 and the rise of female crime gangs

In 1924, a 19-year-old girl in a seal fur coat strolled into a Brooklyn grocery, asked the clerk for a dozen eggs, and pulled out a gun. The newspapers went wild for the Bobbed Haired Bandit, and they mourned when Celia Cooney’s string of brazen thefts put her in jail. How dull. Cooney was the first famous female crook of the Hollywood age, a symbol of a major cultural shift where women left the home to earn an independent living just like a man. (Even illegally.)

Consider Cooney the wicked godmother of the all-female thieves in Ocean’s 8, a sequel to the hit heist franchise that stars Sandra Bullock as George Clooney’s ex-felon sister, Debbie Ocean. Together with Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, Sarah Paulson, Mindy Kaling, Awkwafina and Rihanna, she schemes to slip a $150m diamond necklace off actor Anne Hathaway’s neck at the Met Gala. Gary Ross’s slick comedy is designed for fabulous gowns, not factual accuracy. According to the FBI, while male thieves scheme in packs, criminal women tend to work either with a boyfriend or alone.

Still, Hollywood has drooled over girl gangs ever since, well, 1954’s Girl Gang, an exploitation flick about a Fagin-esque mobster who hooks beauties on heroin to manipulate them into doing his evil will. Fierce, yes – feminist, no. Soon after, schlock legends Ed Wood and Roger Corman got into the act with the B-movie nasties The Violent Year and Teenage Doll, which at least let brutal women call the shots. Like Rebel Without a Cause, these drive-in movies tried to tap into larger themes about nihilism and bad parenting. Unlike James Dean, the actors were cast for their ability to fill a push-up bra, and their films mainly marketed to men with taglines like: “See what happens behind the locked doors of a pajama party!”

Faster, Pussycat Kill! Kill! starring Tura Satana, Haji and Lori Williams. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

These trash flicks claimed to be ripped from the headlines, promising audiences that real life wild women stalked the earth – and if you were lucky, you could be their next victim. The iconic Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! makes that pledge upfront. Its opening narrator swears: “This rapacious new breed prowls both alone and in packs, operating at any level, any time, anywhere, and with anybody. Who are they? One might be your secretary, your doctor’s receptionist – or a dancer in a go-go club!” Faster, Pussycat! director Russ Meyer knew his three buxom thieves were on the wrong side of the law, but the right side of the 1960s culture war. Sure, they’ve barged into an old man’s house armed with knives and cleavage to loot his hidden fortune. But to audiences, the coot deserves it for sniping: “Women! They let ’em vote, smoke and drive. Even put ’em in pants! And what happens? A Democrat for president!”

Alas for Faster Pussycat! lead Tura Satana and her fellow femme fatales, they usually ended the film dead. Just like the hardliner judge who feared Cooney could inspire a generation of bombshell bandits, these early B-movies couldn’t let criminals go free. Not that actual women were running headlong into a life of sin. Today, only 7% of bank robbers are female, which makes real life lady villains so rare that many do get turned into flicks that can truly claim they’re ripped from the headlines.

Take the 1999 Kingwood stick-up spree where four middle-class high school girls grabbed rifles and robbed a string of fast-food restaurants in Texas. “We kept saying: ‘I can’t believe this,’” the arresting officer told People magazine. “It was like a movie.” Two years later, it was: the teen comedy Sugar & Spice, in which a clique of cheerleaders sticks up a bank in order to fund their best friend’s accidental pregnancy. The girls coordinate their plan with Barbie dolls and study Point Break like a blueprint. As ringleader Marley Shelton chirps: “All we have to do is watch a bunch of movies and learn from their mistakes.”

Israel Broussard, Emma Watson, Taissa Farmiga, Katie Chang and Claire Julien in The Bling Ring. Photograph: Allstar/Studiocanal/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

This time, the ladies live. So do the spoiled snots in The Bling Ring, based on the true story of a pack of gossip magazine-obsessed girls who break into celebrity mansions to steal Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan’s designer threads. Unlike the earlier exploitation flicks, today’s girl gang films are less interested in punishment or titillation. (Unless they’re the critically panned 2004 groaner Taxi, which concocted a posse of bank-robbing Brazilian supermodels headed by Gisele Bündchen just to watch them strip their disguises down to bikinis.) Instead, directors like Sofia Coppola are interested in the satire of a cabal of superficial kids stealing from people who aren’t much different. The joke is that no one deserves designer loot – and when chief troublemaker Emma Watson gets caught, she convinces the media that crime was merely part of her “spiritual journey”. To Coppola, society is the ultimate mark.

Jada Pinkett Smith, Kimberly Elise, Queen Latifah and Vivica Fox in Set it Off. Photograph: Channel 5

On the opposite end of the moral spectrum, F Gary Gray’s 1996 thriller Set It Off is an attack on how capitalism consistently finds ways to pay women less money than men, particularly women of color like leads Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Vivica A Fox and Kimberly Elise, who play four janitors desperately trying to scape together a living wage. To them, holding up a bank is fair revenge – banks and bosses have forever skimmed from their paychecks, too. In Set It Off, ladies steal simply because they don’t have better options, as though the promises of Celia Cooney’s generation of working women never came to be. Twelve years later in Mad Money, another semi-biographical flick riffing on the 1992 Loughton Bank of England thefts, where a female janitor at an incinerator convinced her co-workers to smuggle £600,000 in set-to-be-destroyed bills, woman are still weighing the cost benefits of being wives, serfs or crooks. When Queen Latifah (yes, again – she also stars in Taxi), asks Diane Keaton what she calls trading sex for money, Keaton quips: “A good percentage of marriages.”

What separates these all-girl gangs from all-guy heist flicks like Reservoir Dogs, The Usual Suspects and Lock, Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels is the sense that men go looking for a fight. Women in these films, however, are used to fights coming to them: a world that demeans their work, limits their opportunities, hooks them on smack, and forces them to single-handedly support their children. Crime is merely the best of bad choices. Even Tura Satana is just looking for a better way to make cash than go-go dance for goons – and you sense she’s been putting the con on men since puberty. Kidnapping and robbery are just the next level up.

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Oceans 8 is the first all-female flick that makes crime look glamorous. Finally, Sandra Bullock’s girl gang is allowed to be smart, capable and sexy – a rare combination in an already rare illegal career path, which is what convinces her the ladies can get away with the jewels. As Bullock smirks: “We will not be the prime suspects.”

Soon, however, women like them will. Ocean’s 8 is launching a new trend in ladylike larceny. Next year, Elizabeth Moss, Melissa McCarthy and Tiffany Haddish will team up for DC adaptation The Kitchen, about a cabal of 1970s wives who take over a gangster syndicate when their husbands are sent to prison. Before then, Viola Davis and Michelle Rodriguez lead a four-lady team of bandits when their spouses are slain in Steve McQueen’s Widows. “The best thing we have going for us is being who we are,” swaggers Davis in the trailer, “because no one thinks we have the balls to pull this off.” If their crime wave is a bigger success than Celia Cooney’s drugstore muggings, maybe they’ll inspire more real-life girl bandit gangs – who in turn will inspire even more movies.

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Wisdom teeth, witless television

When I explained the content of this post to my sister, she asked me how it was relevant to the research I came to do in Peru. My response: everything I do here is relevant... right? Relevant or not, I blame this post on the physical limitations I’ve been under since Friday, the day on which I had my wisdom teeth removed. This is the result of a weekend spent in bed, eating ice cream and indulging in one of America’s favorite past times. 

Although my mother has worked as a dental hygienist for over thirty years at various reputable dental offices, I’ve waited until now, at the ripe age of 27, to get my wisdom teeth extracted by a maxillofacial surgeon that has no connection whatsoever to my mom. What adds to the irony is the fact that I’m currently living in Lima, Peru. Yep, that’s right: I declined several offers to have the unnecessary third molars extricated from my overcrowded jaw while living in the states with full dental coverage and, instead, opted for their removal at Peru Dental in the Miraflores district of the capital city with international student health insurance that may or not retroactively cover the procedure. This is in no way intended to discredit Peruvian dental care: the care I received was perfectly adequate (my wisdom teeth are no longer in my mouth!), and I especially appreciated the expediency with which the situation was handled from start to finish. In the United States, for example, this process can easily take months, from initial inquiry phone call to intake appointment to scheduling to surgery to recovery. Here, in Lima, it took a whopping total of four days. It began with a desperate email sent out in the wee hours of the morning on Tuesday complaining of extreme pain and inflammation at the site of my lower right third molar, and ended Friday at approximately 12:45 pm, when I walked out of the clinic with blood soaked gauze pads shoved into the empty sockets that once housed my wisdom teeth.

In addition to quickness of the whole ordeal, I was impressed with the nonchalant confidence of my surgeon: he worked with tact, precision, and a sprinkle of humor appropriate for the foreboding occasion. Sure, he was about twenty-five minutes late to the scheduled appointment time, but, rather than feeling annoyed, I found comfort in the way he walked into the clinic wielding an impressive leather suitcase on wheels and an air of unapologetic arrogance. This was clearly not his first rodeo. From the moment he covered my face with what seemed to be a medieval medical garment – a green piece of stiff cloth sporting a mouth hole – I knew I was in good hands. He applied a local anesthetic and, before I knew it, I heard (but luckily did not feel) crunching and ripping, indicative of a successful extraction. He asked how I was feeling as he casually proceeded to wash his hands.

“Ah, it’s pisco sour day tomorrow,” he lamented with a shoulder shrug and instructions to avoid spicy foods and jogging. As we parted ways, I thanked him profusely, sputtering drool and feeling for my lips, which were entirely numb. He winked at me coolly as he answered a call on his cell, and that was that. A lovely experience overall. My only complaint thus far is that I wasn’t prescribed something a bit more... effective for the pain. I had envisioned myself post-surgery lying prostrate in an OxyContin induced bliss, sucking down vanilla milkshakes and mango licuados. Instead, I popped 100mg of Ketoproteno, some nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory Brazilian drug that is about as effective at killing pain as those little pink sugar pellets girls take the week of their period are at preventing pregnancy.

The first three hours after the extraction were fairly miserable: my lips were numb, my gums were inflamed, and my mouth was full of bloody, viscous saliva. Additionally, my throat muscles were incredibly tender in the aftermath of all the aggravation, making swallowing quite uncomfortable. One glance in the mirror was enough to conjure images of horror film victims, as gooey crimson matter spilled from my lips into the sink, staining the porcelain red. Without adequate drugs, without the hope of consuming a delicious frozen beverage in the foreseeable future, with a mouth that felt estranged from my body and absolutely no desire to be in a vertical position, I concluded that the only recourse for such dire straits was mind-numbingly stupid television. Alas, after months of ignoring my sister’s rave reviews, I succumbed to the ridiculous pleasure of watching The Bachelor, Season 21, starring Nick Viall.

As a self-described progressive liberal feminist with a strong aversion to reality TV, I’ve seen more than my fair share of this show. My sister and mother are serious fans, and Monday evenings during “Bachelor season”, when new episodes are released to millions of eager viewers, play out in eerily ritualistic fashion in our household. It’s well understood that everyone, my father included, will gather in front of the big screen at approximately 6:57 pm to appreciate this paragon of pop culture. Talking is only permitted at commercial breaks, and meals are planned around the two hour viewing block from 7-9 pm. Assuming the role of disinterested-but-acquiescent-eldest-daughter, I sit in the leather recliner by the window, purposefully apart from the other members of my family who genuinely enjoy watching the buffoonery, whereas I pretend to hate every minute of the show and jeer at the disgracefully dimwitted banter of the cast members. I get immense pleasure out of blatantly counting the number of times the characters say “like” with my hands and openly criticizing the shallowness of the supposedly deep conversations held during one on one dates (i.e., “Like, I’ve never had anyone, like, open up to me so... much before” in response to one contestant’s scant account of a car wreck he was in as a teenager). It especially irks my sister when I interrupt particularly intense scenes with witty play-by-play.

Given my history with The Bachelor and its relatively low ranking on my scale of “things that are important and/or impactful in my life”, I was shocked to find myself utterly captivated by the current season (or at least by the first five episodes available on ProjectFreeTV). Perhaps it was the drug cocktail affecting my judgment, perhaps the fact that this was my first time watching the show alone, perhaps the content was suddenly inexplicably more interesting than any season prior – whatever the reason, I devoured episode after episode hungrily, paying undivided attention to every little detail.

Episode 1, for example, begins with a parade-like procession of all the Bachelor’s suitors stepping out of a limo and introducing themselves to him in creative – and often painfully embarrassing – ways as they vie for the coveted first impression rose (I felt a twinge of pride when Raven jumped out the vehicle squealing like Pig Sooie, paying homage to my former stomping grounds). Before Nick meets them, however, the viewers watch brief autobiographical clips about each contestant, in which she describes herself and her motives for being on the show. I was struck by the number of highly educated, working professionals on this season. Among the ranks are: an attorney, a neonatal nurse, a travel nurse, a special education teacher, several business owners, a mental health counselor, a doula, a plastic surgery office manager, a chef, and a dental hygienist, to name a few. Several of the women speak multiple languages and sought to impress Nick by wooing him with their polyglot skills fresh out the limo. While their careers and backgrounds vary greatly one to the next, it seems that most of the women on this season view marriage in a similar light: as the last critical ingredient in the recipe for happiness. Great hair plus good friends plus sweet career equals almost complete – secure a husband and you’re there.

As much as the aforementioned equation seems to reek of judgment, I have to admit, I was surprised to find myself identifying strongly with many of these women and their sentiments regarding life’s priorities. I, too, have always firmly believed that serious partnership and/or marriage should ideally come after one has developed a strong sense of worth and self, that only after one has expressed his or her ability to be an independent agent is that person capable of choosing an ideal partner. Basically, I prescribe to that equation (minus the fabulous hair) in that it emphasizes the timing and placement of serious romantic commitment in the series of life events. That being said, I have yet to secure a career, and I feel I have a long way to go in terms of cultivating my sense of self – but I’ve been in love before. I’ve even made serious decisions based on that love, choices that have altered the course of my life.

While I have absolutely no regrets about any of those experiences or the unexpected beauty of their outcomes, I’m quite certain that all my previous relationships have come to an end precisely because they broke from my “timeline.” Because I had fallen in love before having real direction or a sense of where/what/how/who I wanted to be, I felt constricted, guilty for being selfish, pressured to make decisions delineated by partnership boundaries. Whether those feelings were projected on me by former lovers or self-induced is impossible to determine: what matters is that I simply wasn’t ready to relinquish the utterly individual journey of cultivating me, a process that undoubtedly differs for everyone but, in my experience, is defined by a singular, uncompromising self-determination. Perhaps, then, it would be wise for someone with my mentality to approach partnership, cohabitation, marriage – deeper and more formal commitments that go beyond physical attraction, desire, or even love – as the last pieces of a puzzle that has mostly been solved. A sentiment which I apparently share with many of the contestants on Season 21 of the Bachelor.

Let me be clear: In no way am I claiming that The Bachelor has suddenly become a progressive, feminist, highly intellectual program – quite the contrary. In fact, it is due to the inherently ridiculous nature of the show that I find certain themes so compelling in this season. In seasons past, I have abhorred the obsession with marriage that defines the show. The objective of The Bachelor is to produce an engaged couple in slightly less than two months, after all. I blame the show for perpetuating and culturally cementing the idée fixe that romantic love must progress in a series of urgent symbolic displays: social media posts, a ring, a designer dress, a house, a dog, a pregnancy, a baby, etc. The first date Nick organized for the women on this season was a wedding dress photo shoot. Enough said.

Though there are several aspects of this round of The Bachelor that make it unique from previous seasons, such as the selection of a cast that actually includes non-white women and one contestant that openly identifies as bisexual, it still seems to extol traditional gender roles to an extent that makes me uncomfortable. While I understand that The Bachelor is a reality TV show and physical appearance is the first thing to grab viewers’ attention, I often feel as though the contestants – and the Bachelor himself – seem to prioritize and laud a brand of feminine beauty that is not only harmful but unrealistic: the women are always dressed in excessively fancy outfits that seem unfit for the occasion (a floor length evening gown for lunch?), sporting full make-up and long flowing locks to do something like scoop cow dung (yes, that happened in episode 5). In no way am I trying to police women and their freedom to express themselves however they please – sometimes it’s fun to curl your hair, put on some lipstick and rock a sexy mini skirt. But it’s alarming when every contestant feels pressured to adhere to one specific, narrowly defined set of beauty standards every time the camera is rolling, and it’s even more alarming when an individual expresses grief and stress in the face of “failing” to meet such standards – a feeling that has been expressed quite often on this season already. Quite honestly, I can’t see how it would be possible to be on a show like this and not feel the pressure to look “perfect” given that Nick almost always leads with a comment on how the women look, the most blatant example of which took place during initial introductions as he looked each contestant up and down before speaking to her, only to then comment on how “great” she looked or mumble “wow” while shaking his head side to side in awe. 

Despite these problematic elements, which are less specific to The Bachelor and more generally a symptom of our society’s ills, I felt inspired by many of the cast members who introduced themselves as empowered women proud of their accomplishments. Had they obviously been in hair and make-up for hours just moments before these introductions? Yes. So what. I appreciated their perception of marriage not as a goal in and of itself, but as a component of a much larger picture. As I listened to many of the women on Season 21 explain their desire to be on the show, it seemed that they genuinely viewed partnership as a supplement to rather than the essence of identity.

Is The Bachelor still full of shallow conversations and unbelievably petty gossip? Yes. Is the underlying premise still ridiculous and counteractive to cultivating realistic notions of what constitutes a healthy marriage? Mostly. Did it distract me momentarily from excruciating pain and even offer some fodder for larger conversations on female empowerment and autonomy in romantic relationships? Absolutely.

In conclusion, I decided to post this because I’m feeling incredibly humbled. Humbled by having my face momentarily deformed with swelling, humbled by the fact that I identify with contestants on a show that I have always ridiculed, humbled by the realization that my mind isn’t as open as I thought it was. Who knew reality TV could be so enlightening?  

[brajeshupadhyay]

Spender: But Julia Hartley-Brewer also invests Journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer says her biggest financial regret was not investing in the stock market and starting a pension when she was younger.  Julia, 52, who hosts the breakfast show on TalkRadio, also reveals that although these days she wears Chanel perfume, drinks champagne and gets paid up to £3,000 for three minutes of her time, life has not always been easy.  She spoke to DONNA FERGUSON from her home in North London which she shares with her husband and their 13- year-old daughter.  What did your parents teach you about money?  Not to spend it on something you don’t need or love. My parents grew up without money and always knew the price of everything. As a result, I can’t bear to waste it. I spend a lot of money on things I value, but I will never waste even 20 pence on something I don’t need.  My parents were students when I was born. My mother went on to become a GP, but she was a student doctor for most of my childhood. She broke up with my father when I was a few months old, and then remarried. But my father remained 100 per cent involved as I grew up.  My dad had several jobs. He had grown up poor – he used to do a coal round and give the money to his mum to buy food. He eventually became a postgraduate teacher, an economist, and he also worked at the BBC.  Growing up, I never worried about money. It was tight but middle-class tight – not working-class tight. We lived within a strict budget and there was never any money to splash about, but equally, we never struggled. Have you ever struggled to make ends meet?  Yes, definitely. When I was at university, I remember being too terrified to put my debit card in the wall machine because I thought if I didn’t have any money it wouldn’t come out again.  After university, I did some unpaid work experience at The Times newspaper. I had nowhere to live and no income, so I moved into a squat in the East End of London and ate a lot of rice, pasta and tinned tomatoes.  Once, I was 40 pence short of the Tube fare, so I stood at the station and asked people for money so I could afford to get on the train. I didn’t find it humiliating – I just accepted that was what I needed to do to get where I wanted to be.  After that, I got a job at a local newspaper in London earning £9,000 a year. Even in the 1990s, that was still not a lot of money. It was a struggle. I used to walk everywhere because I couldn’t afford public transport. I had no spare cash and still had college debts to pay off. But I always knew deep down that I’d be OK. I didn’t have a sense of hopelessness. I saw what I was doing as a stepping stone to something better.  My experiences have given me a tiny inkling of understanding as to what it is like to live day to day, week to week.  Of course, I always had my parents as back-up. At the same time, I knew I never wanted to be in that financial position again. Have you ever been paid silly money? Yes. I once got paid £3,000 for a three-minute after dinner speech which was fabulous. I was one of a number of speakers at the event and thankfully they didn’t pay me by the word.  What was the best year of your financial life?  It would have been this year if it hadn’t been for the pandemic, so last year was my most successful.  I’d rather not say how much I earned in 2019, but I was presenting the breakfast show on TalkRadio. When you’re getting up at 4.40 every morning, you tend to get well compensated for it.  What is the most expensive thing you bought for fun?  Celebrating my 50th birthday – I spent a hell of a lot of money on a party. I invited 170 guests and had a marquee and caterers – and it was worth every single penny.  What is your biggest money mistake?  Not investing in a pension and stocks and shares. I’ve been good at earning money and not spending it – I don’t fritter it away. But I have not been good at investing it. I wish I had been.  During lockdown, I had a massive sort-out of my finances and one of the things I’ve been organising is my pension.  I’ve also started investing in the stock market since the pandemic started. I figure the only way is up for stocks and shares, so I have put a lot of money into a FTSE100 tracker fund as a long-term investment – more than my annual Isa allowance of £20,000. I like the idea of a tracker because it’s low cost.  The best money decision you have made?  Going freelance. I left a staff job as a political editor at the Sunday Express in 2011. I trusted I could earn more money by backing myself – and it’s paid off every single year since by a long way. I also feel I have got more say over my career.  My dad always advised me to have ‘walk away’ money – a sum that allows you to be financially independent, so you can always walk away, whether it be from a relationship or a job, and still be able to pay your bills. Do you own any property?  I do. I own my three-bedroom flat in North London with my husband. We bought it in 2006 which I have since been told was the peak of the housing market. Regardless, it has been a great investment and more than doubled in value. It’s really near the Tube and has a 50ft garden which is fabulous for parties as I’ve discovered.  What little luxury do you treat yourself to?  I have worn Chanel perfume since my teens. I also love champagne. I am quite happy to spend money on a nice glass of Taittinger. If you were Chancellor what would you do?  I would get more houses built by requiring councils to prioritise the private development of more homes and slash all the costs relating to planning.  That would create more jobs and make housing cheaper. I think we need to build two million more homes immediately.  We need to get more people into their own homes. Overnight it would revolutionise our country. What is your number one financial priority?  Most people would say their children, but I’ve never worried about my daughter and I feel I will never need to.  So my number one financial priority is for my husband and I to have a wonderful and comfortable retirement.   THIS IS MONEY PODCAST Is the coronavirus recession better or worse than it looks? Can you make a profit and get your money to do some good? Are negative interest rates off the table and what next for gold? Has the pain in Spain killed off summer holidays this year? How to start investing and grow your wealth Will the Government tinker with capital gains tax? Will a stamp duty cut and Rishi’s rescue plan be enough? The self-employed excluded from the coronavirus rescue Has lockdown left you with more to save or struggling? Are banks triggering a mortgage credit crunch? The rise of the lockdown investor – and tips to get started Are electric bikes and scooters the future of getting about? Are we all going on a summer holiday? Could your savings rate turn negative? How many state pensions were underpaid? With Steve Webb Santander’s 123 chop and how do we pay for the crash? Is the Fomo rally the read deal, or will shares dive again? Is investing instead of saving worth the risk? How bad will recession be – and what will recovery look like? Staying social and bright ideas on the ‘good news episode’ Is furloughing workers the best way to save jobs? Will the coronavirus lockdown sink house prices? Will helicopter money be the antidote to the coronavirus crisis? The Budget, the base rate cut and the stock market crash Does Nationwide’s savings lottery show there’s life in the cash Isa? Bull markets don’t die of old age, but do they die of coronavirus? How do you make comedy pay the bills? Shappi Khorsandi on Making the… As NS&I and Marcus cut rates, what’s the point of saving? Will the new Chancellor give pension tax relief the chop? Are you ready for an electric car? And how to buy at 40% off How to fund a life of adventure: Alastair Humphreys What does Brexit mean for your finances and rights? Are tax returns too taxing – and should you do one? Has Santander killed off current accounts with benefits? Making the Money Work: Olympic boxer Anthony Ogogo Does the watchdog have a plan to finally help savers? Making the Money Work: Solo Atlantic rower Kiko Matthews The biggest stories of 2019: From Woodford to the wealth gap Does the Boris bounce have legs? Are the rich really getting richer and poor poorer? It could be you! What would you spend a lottery win on? Who will win the election battle for the future of our finances? How does Labour plan to raise taxes and spend? Would you buy an electric car yet – and which are best? How much should you try to burglar-proof your home? Does loyalty pay? Nationwide, Tesco and where we are loyal Will investors benefit from Woodford being axed and what next? Does buying a property at auction really get you a good deal? Crunch time for Brexit, but should you protect or try to profit? How much do you need to save into a pension? Is a tough property market the best time to buy a home? Should investors and buy-to-letters pay more tax on profits? Savings rate cuts, buy-to-let vs right to buy and a bit of Brexit Do those born in the 80s really face a state pension age of 75? Can consumer power help the planet? Look after your back yard Is there a recession looming and what next for interest rates? Tricks ruthless scammers use to steal your pension revealed Is IR35 a tax trap for the self-employed or making people play fair? What Boris as Prime Minister means for your money Who’s afraid of a no-deal Brexit? The potential impact Is it time to cut inheritance tax or hike it? What can investors learn from the Woodford fiasco? Would you sign up to an estate agent offering to sell your home for… Will there be a mis-selling scandal over final salary pension advice? Upsize, downsize: Is swapping your home a good idea? What went wrong for Neil Woodford and his fund? The incorrect forecasts leaving state pensions in a muddle Does the mortgage price war spell trouble in the future? Would being richer make you happy? Inequality in the UK Would you build your own home? The plan to make it easier Would you pay more tax to make sure you get care in old age? Is it possible to help the planet, save cash and make money? As TSB commits to refund all fraud, will others follow? How London Capital & Finance blew up and hit savers Are you one of the millions in line for a pay rise? How to sort your Isa or pension before it’s too late What will power our homes in the future if not gas? Can Britain afford to pay MORE tax? Why the cash Isa is finally bouncing back What would YOU do if you won the Premium Bonds? Would you challenge a will? Inheritance disputes are on the rise Are we primed for a Brexit bounce – or a slowdown? How to start investing or become a smarter investor Everything you need to know about saving     x  Some links in this article may be affiliate links. If you click on them we may earn a small commission. That helps us fund This Is Money, and keep it free to use. We do not write articles to promote products. We do not allow any commercial relationship to affect our editorial independence. The post Julia Hartley-Brewer confesses she once begged for cash appeared first on Shri Times News. from WordPress https://ift.tt/3g7MXYA

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Stealing screen time: Ocean's 8 and the rise of female crime gangs

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Stealing screen time: Ocean's 8 and the rise of female crime gangs

In 1924, a 19-year-old girl in a seal fur coat strolled into a Brooklyn grocery, asked the clerk for a dozen eggs, and pulled out a gun. The newspapers went wild for the Bobbed Haired Bandit, and they mourned when Celia Cooney’s string of brazen thefts put her in jail. How dull. Cooney was the first famous female crook of the Hollywood age, a symbol of a major cultural shift where women left the home to earn an independent living just like a man. (Even illegally.)

Consider Cooney the wicked godmother of the all-female thieves in Ocean’s 8, a sequel to the hit heist franchise that stars Sandra Bullock as George Clooney’s ex-felon sister, Debbie Ocean. Together with Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, Sarah Paulson, Mindy Kaling, Awkwafina and Rihanna, she schemes to slip a $150m diamond necklace off actor Anne Hathaway’s neck at the Met Gala. Gary Ross’s slick comedy is designed for fabulous gowns, not factual accuracy. According to the FBI, while male thieves scheme in packs, criminal women tend to work either with a boyfriend or alone.

Still, Hollywood has drooled over girl gangs ever since, well, 1954’s Girl Gang, an exploitation flick about a Fagin-esque mobster who hooks beauties on heroin to manipulate them into doing his evil will. Fierce, yes – feminist, no. Soon after, schlock legends Ed Wood and Roger Corman got into the act with the B-movie nasties The Violent Year and Teenage Doll, which at least let brutal women call the shots. Like Rebel Without a Cause, these drive-in movies tried to tap into larger themes about nihilism and bad parenting. Unlike James Dean, the actors were cast for their ability to fill a push-up bra, and their films mainly marketed to men with taglines like: “See what happens behind the locked doors of a pajama party!”

Faster, Pussycat Kill! Kill! starring Tura Satana, Haji and Lori Williams. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

These trash flicks claimed to be ripped from the headlines, promising audiences that real life wild women stalked the earth – and if you were lucky, you could be their next victim. The iconic Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! makes that pledge upfront. Its opening narrator swears: “This rapacious new breed prowls both alone and in packs, operating at any level, any time, anywhere, and with anybody. Who are they? One might be your secretary, your doctor’s receptionist – or a dancer in a go-go club!” Faster, Pussycat! director Russ Meyer knew his three buxom thieves were on the wrong side of the law, but the right side of the 1960s culture war. Sure, they’ve barged into an old man’s house armed with knives and cleavage to loot his hidden fortune. But to audiences, the coot deserves it for sniping: “Women! They let ’em vote, smoke and drive. Even put ’em in pants! And what happens? A Democrat for president!”

Alas for Faster Pussycat! lead Tura Satana and her fellow femme fatales, they usually ended the film dead. Just like the hardliner judge who feared Cooney could inspire a generation of bombshell bandits, these early B-movies couldn’t let criminals go free. Not that actual women were running headlong into a life of sin. Today, only 7% of bank robbers are female, which makes real life lady villains so rare that many do get turned into flicks that can truly claim they’re ripped from the headlines.

Take the 1999 Kingwood stick-up spree where four middle-class high school girls grabbed rifles and robbed a string of fast-food restaurants in Texas. “We kept saying: ‘I can’t believe this,’” the arresting officer told People magazine. “It was like a movie.” Two years later, it was: the teen comedy Sugar & Spice, in which a clique of cheerleaders sticks up a bank in order to fund their best friend’s accidental pregnancy. The girls coordinate their plan with Barbie dolls and study Point Break like a blueprint. As ringleader Marley Shelton chirps: “All we have to do is watch a bunch of movies and learn from their mistakes.”

Israel Broussard, Emma Watson, Taissa Farmiga, Katie Chang and Claire Julien in The Bling Ring. Photograph: Allstar/Studiocanal/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

This time, the ladies live. So do the spoiled snots in The Bling Ring, based on the true story of a pack of gossip magazine-obsessed girls who break into celebrity mansions to steal Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan’s designer threads. Unlike the earlier exploitation flicks, today’s girl gang films are less interested in punishment or titillation. (Unless they’re the critically panned 2004 groaner Taxi, which concocted a posse of bank-robbing Brazilian supermodels headed by Gisele Bündchen just to watch them strip their disguises down to bikinis.) Instead, directors like Sofia Coppola are interested in the satire of a cabal of superficial kids stealing from people who aren’t much different. The joke is that no one deserves designer loot – and when chief troublemaker Emma Watson gets caught, she convinces the media that crime was merely part of her “spiritual journey”. To Coppola, society is the ultimate mark.

Jada Pinkett Smith, Kimberly Elise, Queen Latifah and Vivica Fox in Set it Off. Photograph: Channel 5

On the opposite end of the moral spectrum, F Gary Gray’s 1996 thriller Set It Off is an attack on how capitalism consistently finds ways to pay women less money than men, particularly women of color like leads Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Vivica A Fox and Kimberly Elise, who play four janitors desperately trying to scape together a living wage. To them, holding up a bank is fair revenge – banks and bosses have forever skimmed from their paychecks, too. In Set It Off, ladies steal simply because they don’t have better options, as though the promises of Celia Cooney’s generation of working women never came to be. Twelve years later in Mad Money, another semi-biographical flick riffing on the 1992 Loughton Bank of England thefts, where a female janitor at an incinerator convinced her co-workers to smuggle £600,000 in set-to-be-destroyed bills, woman are still weighing the cost benefits of being wives, serfs or crooks. When Queen Latifah (yes, again – she also stars in Taxi), asks Diane Keaton what she calls trading sex for money, Keaton quips: “A good percentage of marriages.”

What separates these all-girl gangs from all-guy heist flicks like Reservoir Dogs, The Usual Suspects and Lock, Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels is the sense that men go looking for a fight. Women in these films, however, are used to fights coming to them: a world that demeans their work, limits their opportunities, hooks them on smack, and forces them to single-handedly support their children. Crime is merely the best of bad choices. Even Tura Satana is just looking for a better way to make cash than go-go dance for goons – and you sense she’s been putting the con on men since puberty. Kidnapping and robbery are just the next level up.

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Oceans 8 is the first all-female flick that makes crime look glamorous. Finally, Sandra Bullock’s girl gang is allowed to be smart, capable and sexy – a rare combination in an already rare illegal career path, which is what convinces her the ladies can get away with the jewels. As Bullock smirks: “We will not be the prime suspects.”

Soon, however, women like them will. Ocean’s 8 is launching a new trend in ladylike larceny. Next year, Elizabeth Moss, Melissa McCarthy and Tiffany Haddish will team up for DC adaptation The Kitchen, about a cabal of 1970s wives who take over a gangster syndicate when their husbands are sent to prison. Before then, Viola Davis and Michelle Rodriguez lead a four-lady team of bandits when their spouses are slain in Steve McQueen’s Widows. “The best thing we have going for us is being who we are,” swaggers Davis in the trailer, “because no one thinks we have the balls to pull this off.” If their crime wave is a bigger success than Celia Cooney’s drugstore muggings, maybe they’ll inspire more real-life girl bandit gangs – who in turn will inspire even more movies.