The Get To Know Me Tag (Writer Edition)

 

Thanks to Skye for tagging me for this! It was fun to fill out.

Vital States and Appearance 

Name- Elizabeth Egely (if you're confused how to pronounce my last name you're not alone, my family can't agree either. To add to the confusion sometimes my last name changes entirely depending on who you're talking to.)

This was his response to 'Are you Dimitri?'

Nicknames- Usually Liz, occasionally Lizzy, I may or may not have murdered the person that suggested Betsy when I was 8. No offense to anyone actually named Betsy. Although at this point, if I know you're talking to me I come to pretty much anything. Pavlov would have loved me.

Birthday- December 30th 

Hair length and color- Slightly past shoulder length dirty blonde hair. It has a bit of layering at the front which I really like. My hair is pretty thin so it's nothing major, but still.

Eye color- I have blue eyes although they change slightly depending on the day. Sometimes they look like grey/blue, sometimes they look ever so slightly greenish, but at the end of the day they're blue. 

Braces/piercings/tattoos-  I used to have my ears pierced but I need to get them done again at some point.

Righty or Lefty- I'm a Lefty

My secret is out

Ethnicity- As far as heritage goes, I'm a mix of everything. The family joke is that we're all mutts. I've heard that there's quite a lot of Norwegian, German, English, and Irish in us. I have a birthmark called a 'Stork bite' that is apparently a sign of a lot of Norwegian so there's that I guess. Although whether that's accurate information or not I have no idea.

Firsts

First novel written- I haven't actually written a novel, although technically I did enter the Rooglewood '5 Poisoned Apples' contest and that story was just under 20,000 words. 

First novel completed- Still not sure if it counts but my Snow White retelling is my longest story that I've actually completed. It's terrible, but I completed it.

Award for Writing- I won the first day of a 150 word short story contest in January. Nothing official and its's small but it meant a lot.

First Publication- Nothing yet.

Conference- Currently I've never been to a conference although from what I've heard Realm Makers sounds like it could be fun.

Query/pitch- Don't have one. 

Favorites

Novel (That you wrote)- I haven't written any, but that's what procrastination gets you. Currently my favourite one to work on is March Week.

Genre- My personal favourite is probably fantasy/urban fantasy. I love 'real' (or sort of real, like Ingary in Howl's Moving Castle, or Stars Hollow in Gilmore Girls) and then it has the possibility of magic or portals to other places. 

Author- Diana Wynne Jones, Maggie Steifvater, Dodie Smith, Neil Gaiman, Markus Zusak, Ray Bradbury...There's so many good authors

Writing Music- It really depends on what I'm working on, or what mood I'm in. 

Time to Write- Either after drinking coffee or at night. 

Writing Snack- Umm...I'm a very snack-ish person so as long as I like what I'm eating pretty much anything.

Movie- As of this moment Pan's Labyrinth, The Imitation Game, and Spirited Away

Writing Memory-

This is less physically writing related, but at one point I decided to do a Pinocchio retelling that was mostly set in a circus and I'd saved a couple Shakespeare quotes to a Pinterest board among other things. I'm still not sure why, I've never had any particular attachment to Pinocchio but anyways, I decided to do it and then for the next 2 days, I saw so many beetles and other bugs. After that I almost stepped on a green cricket, which by the way, I have never seen a green cricket in my life and neither had my grandma or anyone else in the family. I stopped seeing the weird bugs after the green cricket showed up so that may or may not have been related to him although he seemed like the type to make a dramatic entrance.

Following finding out that green crickets do actually exist, I was babysitting for my aunt and I took her kid with me to the park (where we went pretty much every day) and we stumbled across people setting up for a sort of suggestive-for-a-circus aesthetic for a food drive and there was going to be a group of people that put on Shakespeare's play 'A Comedy of Errors'. The coincidence was too much for me so I did something that I never do, I initiated a conversation with a complete stranger. One of the characters was a ringmaster and for whatever reason I told him how I had been planning on writing a Pinocchio retelling and had found a green cricket and now I'd stumbled across a 'circus' and how it was such a weirdly surreal coincidence and the fake ringmaster said 'Well it has to happen now!'

So if I ever finally write that Pinocchio story, I'm going to dedicate it to a green cricket, a fake ringmaster, and to Skye who was just as invested in this occurrence as I was when I told her about it. 

Essentially this was the plot of it at the time

Childhood Book- 

I had quite a few... The Secret Garden, The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a couple Jules Verne books, Tom Sawyer, I had an abridged copy of Anne of Green Gables and White Fang, Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys, The 20th Century Children's Book Treasury. I read pretty much everything we had several times over at one point, I would've read anything. I started reading the dictionary, a thesaurus, and even the directions on shampoo bottles on multiple occasions. The word-starvation was real and nothing could satiate me. For all of that though, I was surprisingly unimaginative when it came to coming up with my own writing ideas. I always felt so boring and everyone else doing literally anything just seemed so much more interesting. The first books that had an enormous positive impact on my writing came around when I was about 13? 14? with Joan Bauer's books 'Rules of the Road' and 'Hope Was Here'. Before that, my mom had a lot of G.A. Henty audiobooks and missionary novels, and I had essentially tried to write one of those  (and there was a playlist), had I known anything about Tolkien at the time I think I would have lost my damn mind.

Current

Reading- I've been in a bit of a reading slump, it's definitely not for the lack of anything good, I just can't seem to concentrate lately. There's the Book Thief (I want my blood to be made out of this book), I'm over 2/3's of the way through Agatha Christie's Autobiography, Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente, The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury, and I'm a couple pages into Brideshead Revisited. I have a couple more things scattered around all over the place but at this point I can't remember what they are.

Writing- I've been writing snippets for my 'March Week' story. I'm not completely sure what it is, I know what I want it to be, but the plot for a good portion of the book is simply 'How long can I get away with describing this sandwich?', 'the townspeople do something weird', 'Ridley (my protagonist) is both annoyed by people and also eager to see them as projects' and 'Someone threatens the people camping out in front of the Witchery before it opens with a broom'. It's a story (at least in my head) full of paper, and ink, desperate clinging to cataloguing memories, ridiculous magic, hopefully a bittersweet ending, and kind of insane people who are all convinced they know what they're doing, there's a place called the 'Witchery', and there's a weird storm that has been inconveniencing this town for years and it's not what anyone thinks it is.

'It had long been debated as to what the storm was or what it was being caused by. Some residents of the ocean-side town believed that maybe this was a punishment of some kind; perhaps it was the end of the world. Most people rejected this theory, as first, the idea that their town was the one being punished rather than the neighboring towns and cities put the idea out of most people's heads' already. And second, most thought the fact that they had been holding off and rescheduling the apocalypse for the last 10 years so they could set off fireworks was remarkably entertaining. While everyone who tried various magical ways to stop the storm from happening all secretly believed they could stop an apocalypse, the truth was, they couldn't.'

'And there it was, the look that always hit her like salt on a wound.'

'Ridley called him a pissant. He found that he quite liked that.' (the poor thing never has a chance in the world)

Listening to- It hasn't been for writing exactly but 'Folklore'- Taylor Swift, 'Rare'- Selena Gomez, 'Seelie'- CLANN, The Imitation Game soundtrack, Conan Gray in general, Hozier...

Watching-

Anime- The Ancient Magus's Bride, and then there's been a few others I've been casually rewatching like Fruits Basket, and Snow White and the Red Hair. Although I keep dropping things and forgetting about things a lot lately.

Movies- I've been on a bit of a Wes Anderson kick lately so there's been, The Isle of Dogs, The Darjeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Grand Budapest Hotel. (Honestly I've enjoyed them all. There's some bits I could have lived without, but overall I've liked different things about each of them) Duck Soup (The Marx Brothers really were Monty Python before there was a Monty Python), Pan's Labyrinth (I've been on the lookout for dark fairytale vibes), Amelie (the movie is gorgeous), rewatching Scream (perfect for coming into spooky season). I camped out in the backyard with my sister, fairylights, and fruit to watch Scream and A Cinderella Story because of a Darling Desi video.

TV- Untamed, Mentalist, re-watching Gilmore Girls, Vincenzo, New Girl, there's some others but it always depends on when I get the opportunity. 

Future 

Want to be Published- I would love to if I could get my act together.

Indie or Traditional- Traditional

Wildest Goal- Aside from actually getting published, my wildest goal is to become someone that lore is written about. Maybe the book I publish will end up with some weird conspiracy or something attached to it. One can only hope. 

I think pretty much everyone has been tagged for it by now, but if you haven't feel free to do it!

P.S.

I have to apologize profusely, I know a few of you have tagged me for things but my memory is awful, so I've completely forgotten which tags they are. So if you guys have something that you tagged me for that you would like me to do still, I'd be incredibly grateful if you could write it in the comments. I really appreciate you guys tagging for things, I'm just, again, crap at remembering things.

A Few July Highlights (Some Of Which Border Into August)

One day I will learn how to make shorter titles, but it is not this day. I'm writing these down because I will forget them and I'd rather not do that.

Saw 'The Imitation Game' (this movie did something to me. It's so good!! It has dark academic vibes if you're looking for that), Fleabag (made me emotional), Leap Year (so cute, Irish, and hilarious), Pan's Labyrinth (the essays that could be done about this movie), What a Way to Go (1964) (very campy. Gorgeous costumes. I liked it better the second time because of dumb personal reasons, but it's fantastic. It started my slight Edith Head obsession), Parasite (this movie is crazy), Ghibli movies (always stunning), there was a bunch of other movies too. 

Running straight towards swarms of bats with a phone camera after night swimming.

I jumped off a dock. (it was a few feet higher/taller? than me for context. I'm not great with heights so it felt like I proved something to myself.)

Finding Miley Cyrus's Plastic Hearts album. 

Lorde's back!

Aurora's 'Cure for Me' 

Conan Gray's 'People Watching' 

Cherry picking (for possibly the first time?).

Stayed in a hotel room and watched Devil Wears Prada and the second half of Juno while sort of babysitting. 

Found a basic recipe for Milk Tea, drank Peach Quenchers from Tim Hortons, and had a brown sugar oat milk espresso latte from Starbucks that was perfectly mixed and I'm still thinking about it. 

Realized that if you wrap gifts in brown paper and ribbons it looks incredibly aesthetic and it looks like you put more thought into it than you actually did. 

Found a yellow box that unlocked a deep childhood memory of a Blues Clues episode. I don't know why I'm so obsessed (and always have been apparently) with this box.

Not the best photo, but this is the general idea

Some low-hanging smoke underneath streetlights at night looks perfectly aesthetic and spooky.

Ran into a coyote with one of my younger siblings while walking on a park path that I walk on all the time. Thankfully it wasn't aggressive and it just walked into the woods. Obviously I know better than to try get close to a coyote but part of me realized I would be the idiot in a story that would follow the thing that I shouldn't into a magical woods.

FYI because I'm awful at finishing a post right the first time, this post may get updated several times.

Basic Milk Tea Recipe, No Tapioca, (Could Be Made Dairy-Free As Well)

I've been slightly obsessed with Milk Tea lately and it's cold which is nice when it's so hot outside. Most recipes require a lot of ingredients so it was nice to find one that was basic. I dropped a couple ingredients, but it's still pretty much the original recipe. The actual original recipe link is here 

Ingredients for Milk Tea:

3 black tea tea-bags (Personally I've just been using Red Rose Orange Pekoe tea-bags)

2/3 cup boiling water

2 TBSP packed brown sugar

1 1/3 cup milk (or whatever kind of milk you'd prefer except coconut milk it changes the flavour too much)

Ice 

Instructions: 

Steep tea-bags in 2/3 cup boiling water for at least 5 minutes.

Squeeze the remaining liquid out of the tea-bags as you take them out and then stir in 2 TBSP packed brown sugar into the tea. Let this sit until it's room temperature or at least until it's significantly cooled down and then pour 1 1/3 cup milk into the sweetened tea solution. Add ice. And it's done.

*One trick that the original recipe had, if you want a stronger tea taste you could make ice out of strong brewed black tea and put that in instead of normal ice.

More (Oddly Specific) Old Hollywood Trivia That I Didn't Know

 

In the 1910's through the 1920's roughly at least half of the silent movie directors were women (and some others were producers, and there were other jobs that they held). It was actually a surprisingly female dominated era considering (at least in that particular sphere). There were more female directors than there has been in all of film history apparently. Eventually they started getting pushed out after movies really took off, particularly with sound being incorporated, but for awhile it seemed to be a female dominated field. Obviously men did it too, it was just interesting to discover that we've never had that same sheer number of women in charge since then. According to some articles, particularly this 'The Atlantic' article, silent films were seen as more of an 'eccentric hobby' and weren't anything that would make serious money. WWI was also going on for part of the time, so there was probably more freedom than there was previously for women to be taking on these jobs. 

Lillian Gish (1893-1993) A Silent Movie Director
I don't know anything else about her currently.

Lucille Ball

I Love Lucy was one of the first sit-coms filmed with multiple cameras (and it was filmed in front of a live audience so the reactions were all genuine. Some of the laugh tracks from other things have been taken from the I Love Lucy audience reactions). Before that, shows were usually filmed with just one camera. It was the first show to show an interracial couple and the first one to have a pregnant woman play a pregnant woman even though they could not use the word 'pregnant'. Lucille and her husband did have a rocky marriage behind the scenes, particularly because of his drinking problem and his continuous adultery and they eventually did divorce to the dismay of the nation (Lucille called it her darkest day), although they remained friends. He apparently was really nice when he was sober but everyone knew to stay away from him if he was drunk. I think he was a raging alcoholic but I could be wrong about that. Lucille apparently had a famous temper as well but also considering everything she went through I think she was entitled. I forget what her exact reason was but Lucille, I'm assuming because of her husband but don't quote me on that, felt a little self-consciously threatened by the lady that played Ethel. She would have Ethel dressed down in comparison to her so she'd look better but eventually I think they had a genuine friendship and Lucille eventually stopped doing that. So that's something I guess. Although the lady that played Ethel and the guy that played Ethel's husband apparently kind of hated each other so it's kind of interesting to discover what some of the real-life dynamics were. Lucille and 'Ethel' eventually went on to work together on 'The Lucy Show' without the guys so I feel like that sort of speaks to they're friendship. I could be wrong, but I don't think there was even a in-show explanation for it, they just dropped the guys and did a show together which good for them honestly. I find it kind of hilarious though. That's sort of a brush-over of details though. Lucille did stuff in-between the shows, it wasn't just an immediate decision. She worked on a failed musical called 'Wildcat' and struggled with exhaustion at one point collapsing on stage. So there was definitely time that passed between both shows.

Janet Leigh (And Jamie Lee Curtis)

Janet Leigh (from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho) is Jamie Lee Curtis's mom (Jaime Lee Curtis, while she is famous for a lot, she was one of the original Scream Queen/Final Girls). I guess where her mom got murdered in a shower, she gets to take out the killer (not literally, I just mean instead of being a movie murder victim she got to be a Final Girl). Which is the kind of horror movie trope growth that I'm here for.

Janet Leigh (Top)
Jamie Lee Curtis

Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor's mom at one point confronted Louis B. Mayer who was a notoriously imposing chief at MGM Studio's to get better roles for her after MGM (If I understood the documentary right, was starting getting stuck only doing small roles). According to Elizabeth Taylor he angrily responded 'Are you trying to tell me how to run my f***ing studio?!' She said (in a can-you-believe-it sort of tone) ' and foaming started around the edges of his mouth and he used words that I can promise you I had not heard until then, and since have become a favourite part of my vocabulary.' So she ended up responding to him 'Mr. Mayer, I want you to apologize to my mother right now, I am leaving your office and I am never going to come back in because I would love to go to school, to proms, to basketball games, football games, I don't give a damn if I ever act another day in my life.' She also said 'that I learned a rather cynical thing, I didn't get fired the next day and I realized I must have a intrinsic monetary value otherwise I would have been out on my fanny.' 

My favourite part was the fact that she was so 'can you believe it?' with her tone and then she momentarily paused her story to essentially say 'I learned words I'd never heard of, and now they are some of my personal favourites' before continuing on. It's one of those weird details I hyper-fixate on. That's pretty much this whole post though, the weird trivia details I get stuck on.

Katherine Hepburn

According to Jerry Adler, talking about Katherine Hepburn, 'a group of us were going to her house between a matinee and evening and she'd made some sort of shrimp thing I don't know what it was. Anyways, the car was full of us and so she sat in the trunk of the car while we drove over there' she kept telling them she'll be fine.

 

This isn't a particularly detailed post by any means, it's just weird random facts I found.

A Slightly Messy Post Ft: Several Photoshoots And Hopefully Some Summer Vibes

Full disclosure, this project made me lose my mind a little. It's not what I set out to do, but I'm okay with that. This project was heavily inspired by the Florence and the Machine music video 'Rabbit Heart' (Raise it Up)

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery- air, mountains, trees, people. And I thought, 'This is what it is to be happy.' -Sylvia Plath

It wasn't that Henry was less of himself in English. He was less of himself out loud. His native language was thought. -Raven King (Maggie Steifvater)

She recognized the strange happiness that came from loving something without knowing why you did, that strange happiness that was so big it sometimes felt like sadness -Maggie Steifvater (The Raven Cycle)

There is nothing like love to put blood

 back in a language, 

The difference between the beach and its

discrete rocks and shards, a hard 

cuneiform, and the tender cursive 

of waves; bone & liquid fishegg, desert

& saltmarsh, a green push

out of death. The vowels plump

again like lips or soaked fingers, and the fingers

themselves move around these 

softening pebbles as around skin. The sky's 

not vacant and over there but close 

against your eyes, molten, so near

you can taste it. It tastes of 

salt. What touches 

you is what you touch.

-Margaret Atwood 

Remember this feeling. This is the moment that you stop being the rabbit. - Nora Sakavic (The Foxhole court)

When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it to yourself, or someone else. -Margaret Atwood

  A midnight scribble, a morning sigh, you watch the words, curl up and die. Madness lives inside your head, of poems lost, and pages dead. A mind possessed, by unmade books, unwritten lines on empty hooks. -Michael Faudet 

The best moments in reading are when you come across something- a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things- that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, maybe someone even long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out and taken yours. -The History Boys

For what it's worth, it's never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you're proud of, and if you're not, I hope you have the strength to start over -F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory- Dr. Suess

This was made through sheer spite against a certain stubborn breeze that kept blowing around tablecloths, the oppressive heat, and a butterfly that refused to stay put, among several other smaller inconveniences. In other words, I don't know what else I was expecting but I'm happy with how it worked out in the end.

 

Running Wild In Impractical Outfits Tag

So I'm not sure if this exists or not already, but I'm trying my hand at creating a tag. Photos are from Pinterest. I might do this tag too at some point, but I'm probably going to take awhile so I thought I'd get it out there. I don't have an official header for this tag so I thought you guys could put a song, or a photo, or just leave it empty if you prefer.

The Rules I guess

- Put a link to my blog (Autumn Ink)

-Put a link to your post in the comments

(You don't have to, but I'd love to see your answers)

-Tag people if you want 

(this tag has me as it's creator, it was never going to be done well)

-Have fun with the tag and feel free to add things, change locations, or whatever you want.

-The outfits you choose can be from anywhere you like (movies, books, shows, real life, etc.) and they can be as practical or as impractical as you'd like. Choose with as much flagrant disregard for custom or rules as you choose.

-You have to bring a different fictional character of your choosing to each location

At the Beach (Or the Holiday House from the song 'the last great american dynasty- Taylor Swift')-

Car Wash-

University of Glasgow-

Abandoned Castle-

A Fictional Place of Your Choosing-

Picnic-

Summer Roadtrip-

In the Woods-

Dancing in the Rain-

Paris-

In a cottage with a garden-

Circus or Masquerade-

On the Moor (a tract of uncultivated upland)-

Fun Bonus Question-

It's the 20's (or some other era) and your husband's been mysteriously murdered. What's your outfit?

I Tag (if you guys want to do it)

McKayla (Tales of a Triple Threat)

Livia Rachelle (Rose Petals and Fairy Dust)

Megan Chappie (The Pen and the Cross)

Samantha (Bookshire)

Violette (Violette's Universe)

MovieCritic (Movies Meet Their Match)

Skye (Ink Calamities)

Feel free to do the tag even if I haven't tagged you.

There's Something Iconic About Pink And Yellow

 

5 Iconic Pink Outfits: (in no particular order)

1. Jackie Kennedy's Pink Suit

2. Marylin Monroe's pink dress (Gentleman Prefer Blondes)

3. The 'Pink's' jackets (Grease)

4. Marie Antoinette (Marie Antoinette 2006)

5. Audrey Hepburn's pink dress (Breakfast at Tiffany's) (I haven't officially watched this one to the end yet)

5 Iconic Yellow Outfits:

1. Clueless (1995)

2. Belle (Beauty and the Beast 1991)

3. The Bride (Kill Bill 2003) (I haven't seen this one yet either, but the outfit is really famous)

4. La La Land

5. Mirror Mirror

There's just something about pink and yellow. Especially blocks of pink or yellow. Something about these colours, particularly in an outfit, that make it iconic. Although that is true for most colours since blocks of colour usually grab our attention anyways, but I'm curious as to why these colours stick out so much. Maybe it's simply the fact that pink and yellow are very bright, showy, care-free colours and thus, they make an impression with all it's timeless simplicity. Maybe it's not any deep sort of answer except that pink and yellow are just fun colours. So many things have a deep meaning, or require some heavy thought that having the bright pop of it feels like a relief. It's pretty, so we enjoy it without worrying about it, because there are no consequences liking a colour. Maybe it's the contrast that appeals to us. Maybe there is a deeper answer in some cases. Maybe it's all of the above. It doesn't have to be one thing.

Common colour theory associations with yellow according to, alumni.sae.edu/2016/03/08/what-do-colors-mean-and-represent/: Yellow is a color associated with sun. It symbolizes optimism, energy, joy, happiness and friendship. It might also stand for intellect. On the contrary, yellow can indicate jealousy, betrayal, illness and danger

Pink is one of those colours that is usually seen as a very feminine colour. Sometimes pink has been associated with being weak, being girly, unable to take things seriously. A lot of people, myself included, seemed to go through the same 'against anything girly' thing because for whatever reason we thought that enjoying feminine things meant you couldn't be smart, or you were weak or whatever it was. At least as far as I went, I never cared if other people liked it, but I just didn't like it personally at the time. It seems silly to me now, but it's kind of nice to know that I wasn't the only one who had the same aversion to it at the time.

 And that goes for guys too, guys that liked pink were strange and obviously couldn't be manly at the same time. But now, despite the fact that throughout film history in particular we've clearly always loved pink and yellow, the general cultural view on pink (or yellow) seems to be that it's more of an empowering colour now. Pink is a colour to have fun with. Loving pink doesn't always equate to being silly or vapid anymore. Which again, there was never anything wrong with pink or yellow, and clearly a lot of people have always loved pink and yellow, it's just sometimes that's how it's been portrayed. Now movies like Clueless for example, took advantage of this stereotype by taking the (at first) seemingly spoiled, rich, dumb blonde girl who only liked to shop and wear (iconic btw) outfits by dressing her up, reveling in the femininity of it while also fleshing her out and showing that she was much more than a 2-dimensional mall-shopping teenager. 

Some (More or Less) Iconic Outfits that only have a touch of pink or yellow

1. Grace (Ready or Not)

2. Harley Quinn (Birds of Prey) 

3. Emma (Emma 2020) (Emma always has some yellow around her wherever she is)

4. Harry Styles

5. My Neighbor Totoro

6. Debora (Baby Driver)

So what do you guys think about pink and yellow? Like it, hate it? Why do you think it's so iconic? What's some of your favourite iconic outfits that have these colours? There's so many outfits I could have put in this post but I didn't. I've been wanting to do this post for awhile and a pink-suited vampire finally pushed me to get it done. I might go watch Pretty in Pink for the first time after this. It seems fitting.