Quixotically Yours

There she goes again, making magic happen! One of my favorites from our collab. Shot by Brittany Bowen.

Q: What do you do when your photo client cancels and leaves you hanging?

A: You take pictures of the other Great Britt, that’s what. 

Oh interwebs; your shenanigans amuse me.

(Source: shit-thatblows, via nerdwithheels)

Ta-da! #toinfinityandbeyond #tattoo #ink #firsttattoo #scripttattoo #disney #friendsforinfinity #goodomentattoo #blonde @misscharlotteself

Why can I only think of Donnie Darko? 

(Source: flickr.com, via disclosur)

aquaticallyinclined:

arasellle:

livinginthewing:

greatbritt:

In my most recent bout of insomnia, I read the ORIGINAL Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. I have not read it since I was a little girl. To summarize: badass mermaid cuts off tongue to be betrayed and still saves his sorry ass. 

Here is the story in a nutshell:

Mermaids pierce their tails with shells according to social status. They throw awesome parties, and they come of age at fifteen. TLM is allowed to surface on her fifteenth birthday, with the blessing of her father and sassy grandmother.

She sees a party ship, thinks the prince is a dish, and watches the ship sink. She saves his life and drags him to shore, where his unconscious ass gets rescued. 

TLM goes emo for a while, madly and mournfully in love. She lets her sea-garden die, and stalks the beach where she saved him in case he returns. Seasons go by. With her sister’s help she finds where he lives, and stalks him at his palace. 

Then she goes to the sorceress, where she gets her TONGUE CUT OFF in payment. She is given a potion that will give her legs, but it hurts like a chainsaw cutting her torso to feet. Oh, and every time she takes a step it feels like she’s walking on knives. Awesome. 

And then the prince leads her on. He lets TLM follow him around, kisses her, and tells her she will never be the woman of his dreams. Still, just to be close to him, the broken hearted little mermaid lives as happily beside him as she can, until he marries another woman. TLM holds the train of the other woman’s wedding dress as her handsome prince weds someone else. Then she dances at the wedding until her feet bleed, knowing she will die the next day. You see, the sorceress warned her that if the prince wed someone else, TLM would die and become foam on the sea.

Her last chance to save her own life is to stab the prince while he sleeps. Instead, she kisses the sleeping bride good bye, wishes him a final farewell, and falls into the ocean.

Happy ending? kind of. She gets to spend the next 300 years in purgatory as an air-spirit trying to win an immortal soul by doing good deeds. But she now has the hope of earning an immortal soul, which mermaids cannot have on their own.

Clearly Disney took a few creative liberties. “Ariel” is not what Mr. Andersen had in mind. His story is one of self-sacrifice and solitude- the ultimate unrequited love.

Will someone please make this version a movie now?

I could be wrong but from memory her time in purgatory was also extended by a day for each tear shed by a child.

That’s true. Though that whole ending was added on after Anderson was told that his ending where the mermaid just dies was too depressing.

I’m a huge Anderson fan. So I’m just going to talk about him a bit.

The Little Mermaid is said to be written on they day of Edvard Collin’s wedding day, which Anderson refused to attend, instead fleeing to the isle of Fyn. When the story had been published, Anderson wrote a letter to his friend the poet B.S. Ingermann saying, “I don’t know how other writers feel! I suffer with my characters, I share their moods, whether good or bad, and I can be nice or nasty according to the scene on which I happen to be working.” Anderson’s suffering was particularly reflected with The Little Mermaid’s, and I’d go so far to call the story biographical.

Hans Brix, Anderson’s first biographer, related the bottom of the sea to the lower class. And Anderson had indeed been born poor, ugly, and in possession of a mind and heart too forward for his time. What fortune he did have was his way of telling a story and his charm, so though he had little, he was able to make his way as a young man staying with wealthy families who he befriended with his gift. One of these families was that of philanthropist Jonas Collin, who had quite a few children, but most notably in regards to Anderson’s life was his son Edvard who was nearly the same age as the young writer.

Edvard Collin was everything that Hans Christian Anderson was not: handsome, rich, and cold hearted. Though they stayed intimate friends for most of Anderson’s life, they would never been as close as Anderson would fantasize and never dare to express, just as his tongueless creation could never feel at liberty to express her own feelings. Anderson in his letters begged Collins to call him by the familiar you (Du) instead of the formal you (De), but was repeatedly refused. Collins eventually married, drifting apart from Anderson who did eventually know some requited lovers, both male and female.

Anderson wrote several other works hinting homoeroticism, but I maintain the belief that The Little Mermaid may not only be one of his most famous stories but his most intimate. There’s no doubt that Collin’s wedding would have been the appropriate amount of inspiration for Anderson’s tragic story, and it’s not difficult to imagine how a man such as Collin must have seemed almost princely to Anderson. The inadequacies of condemned to life of sea not only parallels Anderson’s economic disadvantage, but his personal ones as well granted his insecurities in his lot in life and the query of feeling like an unnatural creature who could only long to be in another body if he wished to stand a chance at pursuing his desired one. And of course as I had previously mentioned, the great sacrifice of silence which he through which he had to suffer. The legacy of the fairytale reflects how deeply Anderson must have invested himself into his story. Therein lies its greatness.

This anecdote is beautiful! I had no idea the inspiration for the story was so multi-faceted and heart-wrenching. Yet another reason to fall in love with the original story.

This anecdote is beautiful! I had no idea the inspiration for the story was so multi-faceted and heart-wrenching. Yet another reason to fall in love with the original story.

(via the-eyeball-fairy)

Twins

Another original selfie from last week. =)

(Source: cinnamonteal)

urhajos:

Safe Travel

My latest project. I threw the chess pieces in as an afterthought, and they completely re-made the image. I’m very pleased with the results, and it required a lot of work!

(Source: babyblues86.deviantart.com)