Fashion Friday :: somewhere along the line, I started doing hipster Mad Men. Go figure?

I swear, I set out to do this straightforwardly.  I love me some vintage, after all.  And I legitimately like these outfits.

But then I started searching for a tan/gray plaid women’s coat.  And I was… ridiculously stumped.  I found this, though, and it was one of those moments where I said “well, if I can’t do it accurately, I’ll embrace the hipsterness of it.”  Open Heirloom Market Coat, ModCloth.

(Just ignore Ted.  It has been spectacularly hard to find decent pictures of… well, anyone this season, really.)  I put this here after I’ve already included the coat because the above picture doesn’t include a shot of what’s under Peggy’s coat.

And this will work too.  Honeydew It Right Top, ModCloth.

And because it’s hipster (and I’m pretty sure Peggy’s original was a dress, but I couldn’t find a dress I liked, so top and skirt, and I feel weird if both the top and skirt are just solid color and the same general color) birds on it.  Chatter and Chirp Skirt, ModCloth.

Well, hers doesn’t have a veil, but this is still closer than much of the outfit.  Millinery Masterpiece Hat, ModCloth.

And I’m almost positive Peggy’s shoes are kitten heels, but — these will do.  They match the coat nicely.  Craft Faire Flat in Cream, ModCloth.

But it’s an open blazer!  It’s… at least the right color, I sigh to myself.  Open Blazer, Eliza J.

But because it’s open it can be worn with this familiar beauty.  (More hipster time!) Owl That and More Top, ModCloth.

And this skirt is pretty close, actually.  Style Essential Skirt in Blue, ModCloth.

I don’t think I can explain how happy I am that my Joanie is wearing a butterfly pin.  Monet 1960s Gold Tone Butterfly Pin, KlinesJewelry at Etsy.

I figured since I used this one for Joan before, I can use it for her again.  Hot on Your Helix Bracelet, ModCloth.

And because hipster pinup always seems to involve patent leather 4-inch Mary Janes in my mind, here.  ‘S Marvelous Heel, ModCloth.

–your fangirl heroine

Fashion Friday :: so begins 2013′s Mad Men series.

And it is begun with cutesy hipster party dress versions of gowns worn by some of the ladies in promo photos.

First, my darling beauteous Joan, rightful queen of all she surveys.

It was this dress that made me decide to avoid looking for proper gowns and just do this hipster party style.  Grecian Glamour dress, ModCloth.

A bit cutesier, but that’s another part of the game here.  Drops of Enchantment Earrings, ModCloth.

Just go with it.  I don’t think you can see her shoes in any of the pictures, but these feel quite Joan.  Everything’s Aglow Heel in Gold, ModCloth.

Now, darling Peggy.

This is a bit edgier, a bit more casual, but I think it suits Peggy’s overall style.  Sanguine Outlook Dress, ModCloth.

Well, those are just about perfect.  Glamour Pearl Earrings, ModCloth.

Because I assume that were Peggy a modern semi-hipster, she’d be one of those modern semi-hipsters who’s preppy but in a vintage way so it’s still cool.  Right Here Heel in Black, ModCloth.

I wish this picture didn’t also have Pete in it.  But here, Trudy (Alison Brie).

Very cute, but then Trudy is a cute woman.  Window Trappings Dress, ModCloth.

Because Trudy feels like the kind of woman who would wear floral earrings, really.  Stylish Genealogy Earrings, ModCloth.

I mean, I suspect she’d be wearing heels, but in semi-hipster modern times, flats are fine when they’re four-times-over Mary Janes.  Homemade Ice Cream Flat in Vanilla, ModCloth.

–your fangirl heroine.

Spectacular Summaries Sunday :: top 10 gifts 2012 gave me

It’s not showing any signs of stopping yet.  And there will be much linking.

10. The Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy
No, really.  Hear me out on this one.  I will admit, this is sort of my wild card in-joke gift of the year, but for some reason, man.  That strange animated swirling glowing spectral star system is something my people and I absolutely cannot stop making jokes about.  (We realized that True Blood‘s Iraqi smoke monster is another of the Ghost Galaxy’s cousins, too.)  It wasn’t like it was creepy, but it was just so random that we can’t stop talking about it.

9. A Minor Bird by Sucré
Due to the way the days of this year panned out, I’m still putting my Top 10 albums of the year up tomorrow, but three of them go into this category, none of which should be surprising.  (Not that any of this list should be an overall surprise, but hey.)  Anyway, though.  Stacy has always been my favorite DuPree sister (I mean, I love them all very much, but Stacy plays keyboards, and that endeared her to me from the get-go) and her solo project, or solo-ish project at least, is just a legitimately good album in and of itself.  It’s become one of my favorite I Am Getting Ready To Go Somewhere Fancy albums (it’s got that certain je ne sais quoi about it) and also one of my favorite I Am Doing Creative Things Alone albums, and certain of the songs I just love to turn up at full blast and listen to as I take in the world around me.

8. Brave
As I just said on Friday.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who could say “but I don’t think I can actually explain how much this movie means to me,” and that actually makes me very happy.  This is one of the few movies I’ve actually gotten into heated almost-arguments about; “but I heard it was really feminist,” I once heard someone say, sounding sniffy about the premise.  “Yes, so?” was my immediate retort, and I proceeded to summarily dismiss just about every argument I had ever read a critic making against the movie (there are plenty of dude role models, why can’t a little boy have a girl role model because little girls are expected to have boy role models, Merida is not a lesbian just because she doesn’t want to get married and likes archery BUT EVEN IF SHE WAS why is that a big deal but I’m pretty sure her sexual orientation is the opposite of the point, etcetera).  I mention to you guys every time I go off on these giant rants, which might make you think I do it a lot, but not so.  There are plenty of rants I’ve wanted to rant that I’ve refrained from, but Brave is one of those rants I will rant forever.

7. Mad Men season 5
As I alluded to on Tuesday, I’m still not sure what to make of the situation with my Joanie (Christina Hendricks).  Because Mad Men has so much going on, I’ve noticed they have a habit of spending an episode dealing intensely with one character’s emotions, then just alluding to it for the next few episodes, and the situation with Joan was close enough to the season’s end that they didn’t circle back around to another Joan Feelings Episode.  We did, however, get Meaningful Looks between her and Don (Jon Hamm) and her being a Super Total Badass both at the meeting and in their new office space, so that’s something.  I was happy for Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) deciding to do what felt right for her and go elsewhere, but I really do miss her around Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.  I do.  I, as mentioned, mourn Lane (Jared Harris); I am intensely curious about many of the other characters and the paths they’re taking, particularly Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) and Megan (Jessica Paré).  This was largely a gift just because of how long we had to wait for it, I admit, but it’s also one of those cases where my ambivalence about many of the situations they explored is actually a compliment.  I’m intrigued, I’m just torn.

6. Game of Thrones season 2
I never actually did a season 2 wrap-up post about Game of Thrones, largely because of the fact that the schedule I watched it on would have made it too late.  So I’m just going to link to my Game of Thrones tag, because gods know there’s plenty of meta scattered through the thousands of posts in there (and also because everything else gets a link, so consistency demands it).  Season 2 differs from A Clash of Kings more than season 1 differed from A Game of Thrones, and some of those differences were strange, yes.  (Having recently finished A Storm of Swords, finally, I’m looking forward to how they deal with the obvious changes Talisa [Oona Chaplin] is going to cause in the next seasons.)  But some of the changes, I actually… don’t entirely mind?  I don’t know exactly why Ros (Esmé Bianco), but a lot of the functions she serves are ones that other characters directly served and they’re just condensing it into one beautiful redhead, so that’s okay I suppose, and I’m fond of her for silly personal reasons.  For example.  And though I’ve gone off about this on my tumblr just a tiny bit, I guess this is the best time to really address the matter of Dany (Emilia Clarke) and her dragon drama (well, beyond the Doreah [Roxanne McKee] side of it, which I’ve already analyzed to pieces) here: anyone who says that Dany spent the entire season “just running around screaming about her dragons” is wrong and silly.  You know how long Dany actually spent “just running around screaming about her dragons”?  The equivalent of about one episode.  It was really “WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS?” (a reasonable question) then “OH you have my dragons” then she wasn’t in an episode then “OKAY I’M GOING TO GET MY DRAGONS NOW.”  I’m copypasting from a tumblr meme rant I did now, because this is also important: “Oh, and I actually really liked the changes to the scene in the House of the Undying, mostly because in the book, it came off sort of SUDDEN MAGICKS WHAT IS GOING ON OH NO HERE COME JORAH AND BLOODRIDERS TO HELP ME MAKE IT STOP and in the show, it was more HERE IS A LOT OF TEMPTATION, OKAY, BUT I KNOW WHAT I NEED TO DO EVEN IF IT HURTS, AND GUESS WHAT?  HERE I AM COMMANDING MY DRAGONS AND SAVING MYSELF.”  Also, it’s not like everyone else doesn’t “run around screaming about” one or two things, either.  So.

5. Halcyon by Ellie Goulding
As I alluded to last Monday and will discuss more tomorrow, this album is my jam.  I like that it’s a little darker than Lights (though don’t get me wrong, I love Lights too) and I feel a little more personally connected to a lot of the songs.  Also, I love that Ellie Goulding actually gets played on the “normal” radio sometimes (not enough to make my people grumble, like they do about Adele [which sucks, because she's still really talented, but], but enough) because it means that I know a song on the radio.  (“Only You” came on at a bar the other night; the friends I was with had been singing along to all of the Katy Perry, One Direction, and other insanity that played while I sat on top of the pool table and wrinkled my nose in confusion, but once there was Ellie, I could sit there whisper-singing to myself and smiling because finally I knew what was going on.)  This album is good for driving, for introspection; a lot of the tracks are good for exercising; it’s super morbid in places, even in the chipper-sounding songs (because really, “Anything Can Happen” sounds super-happy but isn’t, and I love that).  Also, she’s British.  This is a failing of mine forever.

4. The Avengers
Were there things this movie could have done even better?  Of course.  Perfection doesn’t exist, and once I heard that Joss had wanted to write in Janet Van Dyne to be played by Morena Baccarin, a hollow space of longing opened up in my heart (both because there should always be more lady superheroes and because there should always be more Morena Baccarin).  But did this movie do a lot of things really, really right?  Oh, yes.  The dynamics between the characters, the platonicness of every relationship (and I was thinking about this; it’s not rare to have a bunch of platonic dude relationships, but if there’s a woman, especially if there’s only one main woman, she’s almost always tied to one of the guys, but that is not the case here, thank goodness), the characterizations, the dialogue (of all of the characters, I actually think Nick Fury [Samuel L. Jackson] has the Whedoniest lines), the Whedonverse in-jokes (actors, references, anything in between) – it’s just overall warm fuzzies.

3. Synthetica by Metric
While Halcyon and A Minor Bird were sort of slow-burn favorites for me (there were tracks I loved intensely from the get-go, but the whole of the albums took a few listens to fall as deeply in love with), Synthetica was sort of instant.  I’ve been into Metric since junior year of high school, when one of the other editors on my school newspaper, who was graduating that year, gave me a whole stack of music to continue her Good Music During Newspaper Layout Parties legacy; I don’t think I’ve ever said thank you to her, because we haven’t actually seen each other… probably since then, actually, but I would very much want to.  Metric is a beautiful group, and Synthetica, while not perfect because that isn’t real, is almost a perfect album.

2. The Cabin in the Woods
For so many reasons.  I’ve refrained from writing too too much Cabin meta, but this is mostly because I’ve read some really intriguing pieces of it by other authors.  (I tend to talk more about things I hear/see fewer people talking about, I think.)  I really do love this movie, though.  I love it for all of its meta, I love it for its simultaneous genre critique and genre overhaul; I haven’t seen a lot of the allegedly big famous horror franchises, but I have been known to enjoy a terrible straight-to-video horror film or ten, so I’m comfortably aware of the conventions, enough to enjoy seeing them ripped to shreds.  I love it for its social critique: as some of the meta I’ve seen has said, the pigeonholing of characters is uniquely American.  The athlete/scholar/fool/whore/virgin thing is a different version of the ever-referenced Breakfast Club: characters have to be reduced to one thing by others in order to make them understandable to said others.  Clearly, there’s much more to them, but that would be too complicated.  Men are defined by what they do (sports, academia, humor) but women are defined by who they do (or don’t do).  What this movie does, though, is both acknowledge that this is the way that we (and in this case, “we” ends up being a global evil corporation based in ancient rituals and monsters, which is oddly apt) often view things and acknowledge that viewing things in such a way can only lead to danger.  Reducing people to one dimension and then sacrificing them so that we may continue to go on our merry only leads to badness.

1. True Blood season 5
I’m linking here to my talking about the season premiere, then my talking about the season finale, then just my True Blood tag, given the exceptional amounts of discussion that goes on within it.  (Aside from day topic tags, the only tags I have that are more populated than the True Blood tag are the Buffy tag and the Dollhouse tag.  I’m sure this is mostly season 5′s fault.)  I was going back and forth about whether I should put Cabin or this at number one on this list, but I realized that honestly, it had to be this.  It couldn’t not be.  I have several friends who watch True Blood, and the reactions to season 5 have been varied; “I liked it,” one said, “I just didn’t understand all of it.”  And that’s totally valid.  It’s very different from the books by this point, but I’m, as I have mentioned 1000 times, more than comfortable with that.  There are bunches of reasons that this is at number one, almost all of which I talk about way too often: Nora Gainesborough (Lucy Griffiths), obviously, by herself and also plus Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) and plus Salome (Valentina Cervi), the joy of Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten) and Tara (Rutina Wesley) like I mentioned on Tuesday.  Pam and Tara as individual characters, Eric and Salome as individual characters, Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) as an individual character, Luna (Janina Gavankar) and Sam (Sam Trammell) by themselves and together, the utter adorable that is Emma (Chloe Noelle), the awesome that was dearly departed Molly (Tina Majorino), the twist of fate that is evil Bill (Stephen Moyer), the fact that Sookie (Anna Paquin) got to develop outside of the context of any romantic entanglements at all, the joy that is assertive Alcide (Joe Manganiello), the fun evil of Russell (Denis O’Hare) and his cuteness with Steve (Michael McMillan), the sassiness and wonder that is Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis).  The fact that the book is fun, but the show is just getting dark and going into serious things like hate crimes and religious fanaticism, but cloaking it in this seemingly absurd world of supernatural whatever.  The fact that here is this show that people routinely brush off, as I’ve said, as being SEXY VAMPIRE SEX OHMAHGAH, but it is actually dealing with these more serious topics.  The fact that yes, sure, horrible things happen to female characters sometimes, but horrible things also happen to male characters; power on this show is divided fairly evenly between female characters and male characters; Lilith may be evil, but it’s fascinating that vampire God is a woman; when characters try to coddle women, they get called out on it (like with Sam and Luna); femininity is not regarded as an inherent weakness, but not every character “does” their femaleness in the same way: this is actually, at least in my read, a pretty lady-positive show.  The fact that this show is open to and seems to encourage non-vanilla/heterosexual sexualities and, provided that they are consensual and not rooted in evil, treats them just the same; the fact that this show is intensely bisexuality-positive.  The fact that sure, there’s SEXY VAMPIRE SEX OHMAHGAH, it’s about vampires and shifters and werewolves and fairies and goodness knows what else, but the whole of it is actually very well-written and the characters are realistic.  (Maybe sometimes a little too: having just been down South, I can [re-]vouch for the fact that folks like the townspeople extras in True Blood do definitely exist, particularly though not solely in that geographical region.)  Clearly, I could go on about this for ages.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: 5 of the many different reasons for strength found in female television characters

Television women (and film women, and literature women, and theatre women, and real life women, and anything in between) can be strong in a whole variety of ways.  I’ve talked about this before.  It’s not the same as Strong Female Characters, but it’s characters who are strong and oh, look, women.  Tonight I’m exploring some reasons why characters exhibit strength.  This is by no means a comprehensive list, of course, I haven’t seen nearly close to everything there is to see.  But here are a few things off the top of my head.

5. Because of family.
Dear.  Dear god.  There are few things more tiresome than a stock Mother character, whose only purpose seems to be to blandly care for the children and her husband, cook dinner, clean house, and look pretty.  But being a mother does not by any means negate a character’s strength, and oftentimes it motivates it at least to an extent.

• Alma Garret Ellsworth (Molly Parker), the wonderfully flawed adoptive mother to darling little Sofia (Bree Seanna Wall), who I’ve discussed at length in the past.  Does she make mistakes in her life when acting as a mother?  Of course.  Does she love that little girl, despite the accidental circumstances of their becoming a family?  Of course.
• Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairley), who… okay, yeah, I’ll own that the show hasn’t always done Catelyn right.  There are plenty of discussions of that on the internet already, so I’ll skip it, and just say: okay, but Catelyn Stark is actually pretty badass.
• Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), who I have to bring up just because of those woe-inducing discussions about loving her children, even if Cersei and family is a much slipperier slope than that as a whole.
• Sarah Connor (Lena Headey), who I won’t say that much about because I’ve still only seen season one of this show (I know, chastise me) but who I would feel wrong not including.
• Joyce Summers (Kristine Sutherland), as long as we’re talking about moms…
• …and Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Dawn Summers (Michelle Trachtenberg) because family strength can be a sisters/daughters thing too.  Oh, the Summers women.  Again: they had their flaws, they did, but in the end theirs was a ridiculously strong family.
• River Tam (Summer Glau), because Simon (Sean Maher) spent the entire series taking care of her, but then it was her turn.
• Priya Tsetsang (Dichen Lachman), because I’m sure that having a baby in the apocalypse isn’t easy, if it doesn’t lead to terrible death (I’m raising my eyebrows at you, Walking Dead), and knowing that said baby’s father is off living on a flash drive can’t be easy, but there she was, looking out for T (Brandon Dieter) with everything she could.
• Gemma Teller (Katey Sagal), because while she has been in a very consistent downward spiral, but family is what she’d like her guiding light to be and that counts for something.
• Tara Knowles Teller (Maggie Siff), who is mother to both of Jax’s sons and even though Abel isn’t hers by blood, he’s her son.  And if you screw with those kids, or with Jax for that matter, Tara is not going to forget it.
• Luna Garza (Janina Gavankar), who has had to actively work to get her Emma (Chloe Noelle) back before, but who loves that little girl, no matter what animal she grows to turn into.

4. Because of friends.
Since as I always say, family ain’t always blood.  I’ve discussed all of this before, basically, but I’m just going to list it out anyway.

• Pam de Beaufort (Kristin Bauer van Straten), Tara Thornton (Rutina Wesley), Nora Gainesborough (Lucy Griffiths), Jessica Hamby (Deborah Ann Woll), who are family but aren’t family and did some ass-kicking for the sake of such things to some extent (also for other reasons, listed below).  Special shout-out to Tara (because taking a bullet for someone, even if they misguidedly get you turned into a vampire after, is pretty badass; also because “and you still owe Pam”).
• Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), who regularly kicks ass in the name of her friends (and [former] lovers too, and her brother sometimes but whatever Jason) even when it’s maybe not the best of ideas and especially when nobody else will.
• Echo (Eliza Dushku), and at this point it’s easier if I just restrict this to talking about mid-season two and onward Echo so there aren’t issues of Caroline thrown in there (other people, again, can discuss Caroline much more intelligently than I), who leads her friends into the fight to save the world, then has to deal with the fact that the world hasn’t been saved and continues to fight anyway…
• …and here I’m just going to list off Priya again and Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams) and Mag (Felicia Day) and whoever else, everyone involved in the Epitaphverse.  These guys.  Fighting to protect themselves and those they love and whatnot.  And while Echo is inherently a fighter, these guys are largely not.  Priya fights when she has to, but it is not her default.  Adelle is much more of a fighter-with-words.  Mag, as I’ve previously discussed, probably wasn’t Combat Girl pre-thoughtpocalypse.  Etcetera.
• All of the Scoobies.  Period.
• All of the women of Serenity.  Period.
• Trixie (Paula Malcomson), going to shoot at Hurst (Gerald McRaney) as revenge for Ellsworth (Jim Beaver) with no thought to the consequences, just to her complete rage.  Among other things.
• Also Alma, and Joanie Stubbs (Kim Dickens) and Jane Cannary (Robin Weigert) and everyone else ever on Deadwood.  Period.

3. Because of self-preservation.
Surviving can take special effort sometimes.  And I celebrate it always.

• Yet again Priya.  I’m just going to let the instances of “Belonging” speak for themselves.
• Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner), because my darling is literally the definition of this category.
•  Can I just say all of the Scoobies again?  Because all of the Scoobies, in one way or another.  Buffy persevering through countless ordeals, Willow (Alyson Hannigan) struggling her way out of a dangerous addiction at least somewhat, Anya (Emma Caulfield) learning humanity, Tara (Amber Benson) finding a voice amongst everyone, Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) and her personal journey that I am largely unfamiliar with on Angel, and I’m just going to say Fred (Amy Acker) of Angel too even though I’ve seen literally three of her episodes yet but I know she is this kind of strong especially, Faith (Eliza Dushku) fighting to redeem herself, Dawn working to be taken seriously amongst the group, everyone.
• Tara Thornton is getting some extra credit here, too.  Damn, that woman has been through a lot, and maybe it took her being a vampire for me to actually get affectionate toward her for whatever reason, but special points given for literally trying to destroy oneself right off the bat and then learning the reasons why, even if she still isn’t forgiving Sookie for arranging it, being a vampire might actually be working for her.
• Joanie Stubbs, holy moly.  Joanie who could easily have collapsed under the weight of all that was on her shoulders, after her failed business venture particularly, but who soldiered on as best she could.
• Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), because surviving her d-bag brother all those years and finally ending up the stronger for it is the greatest ever, and because self-preservation is also a good way to encompass the fact that I love that my Dany learns from her mistakes.
• Bennett Halverson (Summer Glau), because I can’t get through a list like this without mentioning her somewhere.  Requisite “yes, she made some questionable choices, particularly re: her torturing Caroline-Echo plan” comment, requisite “but holy crap, she was a genius and did not let anything diminish that” comment.

2. Because of injustices that need to be combated.
Injustices of all sorts.

• Joan Holloway Harris (Christina Hendricks) and Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) both, in their ways, combat the injustice that is icky 1960s sexism.  And also the injustices of (in Joan’s case) d-bag husbands/lovers and (in both cases) d-bag bosses.
• Caroline Farrell, who I am mentioning here briefly to note that she was seeking to combat the injustice of animal and then human testing.  Among other causes, I’m sure.
• Echo, on the other hand, joins the abovementioned entire cast to, in one way or another, combat the injustice that is the thoughtpocalypse.
• Nora Gainesborough is getting a shout-out here, because I can’t not, and also because combating the injustice of the Vampire Authority that she had recently defected from after a moral epiphanyis pretty hardcore.
• And yet again, all of the Scoobies.  Combating the injustices of high school, college, demons, vampires, the Watcher’s Council, each other, personal struggles, interpersonal relationships, evil, and anything in between.
• And all of the women of Serenity.  Combating the injustices of the Alliance, d-bag criminals, d-bag clients, interpersonal relationships, and anything in between.
• Margaret Schroeder Thompson (Kelly Macdonald), combating the injustice of poor reproductive health education for mothers in the 1920s (among other things, but the “come talk about your vagina” line is my favorite forever).

1. Because why the hell shouldn’t they be.
This is the part where I point out how many of these listed women repeat.  Because strength is for everyone, for every reason, for anyone, for any reason.

–your fangirl heroine.

Sundry Sunday :: 5 ladies with perfectly non-standardly perfect smiles

Which is the best way I can think of to sum up ladies who have cute little gaps in their smiles that some people want to Photoshop out but I totally celebrate because all different things can be lovely.  And all of the ladies on this list feature on television programs I watch.  (Also this is just an excuse to make a list including these ladies.)  This is apparently called a diastema, and whatever, all these women are adorable as well as being massively talented.

5. Elisabeth Moss

Her smile is just so damn infectious anyway, and I think she deserves to be on many lists for many reasons, because I like her face and I like her performances and she just seems like a likable person.

4. Kat Dennings

A quote by her: “When I was younger there was a lot of discouraging talk: lose weight.  Color your hair.  Straighten your teeth.  Get a tan.  But I’m a firm believer in everyone being born with what they need to be attractive.  In all sorts of ways.  And I don’t really feel like I want to change that much by myself.”

3. Miracle Laurie

…this is kind of a list of ladies who are also on other lists and are often mentioned on here and I know that, but I am of the mind that the internet could always use more celebrating differences beauty lady lists that include them.

2. Jessica Paré

Talking about her teeth on the internet seems to be as much of a thing as talking about her musical number, so I’ll just leave it at that.

1. Anna Paquin

My forever darling.  Actually, all of these ladies have infectious smiles.  Even if it’s not the easiest to find pictures of the smiles, since although some celebrate it, others are like “what no this deviates from the norm we must criticize.”  Which isn’t cool.  Since people can be lovely in all sorts of different ways.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: 5 of the many different types of strength found in female television characters

So yesterday on my tumblr page I kind of went off on an internet list I found .  It was TotalFilm’s 50 Television Characters Who Deserve Their Own Movies list, and it made me a little cranky.  There were only 10 ladies on the list, period; while I was all over some of them, like my Willow and my Joanie, some of them were ridiculous (Sue Sylvester) and the majority of them were children’s media actionish heroines.  Which I have no problem with.  I was all about some of those shows, like Sabrina the Teenage Witch.  (Though it confused me – I mean, wasn’t there already a Sabrina-related film back in the 90s when it was relevant?)

The only of the ladies that wouldn’t have led to a “female-centered action film” (which there should be more of, yes, but) were probably ridiculous Sue and my Joanie, and while they proposed that Joan’s film be a story of success and feminism (yay!!) there were comments in it that made me sad.  Comments like, as I discussed yesterday, “Pedro Almodovar lives to write strong female characters.”  Here, I’ll just copy-paste the commentary from the tumblr tl;dr in case someone didn’t see it, and just assume that I am also referring to television:

“Also, isn’t it weird that three-dimensional women written into films are being treated as a niche market?  It’s like saying “such and such lives to write kung fu movies” or something.  Why is it so unusual and unique and specialized to actually write female characters who don’t suck?”

Point being, it got me thinking about ladystrength that doesn’t just come in the form of Strong Female Characters.  It’s female characters who are strong in a whole big variety of ways and I celebrate them because they’re all equally valid!  So here’s some of that, with examples from a few television programs.

5. The physically strong, ass-kicking ladies
Sometimes, the Look I Am A Lady Look I Can Kick Your Ass trope is all that a character is written as.  (No immediate television examples, but, you know, action movies.  This is a movie problem too, but I’m talking television examples for the positives, so.)  And that sucks.  But sometimes a character is written to be able to kick ass with the best of them and she still has a personality that is interesting and valid.  A strength that is not only because of the physicality she has, but one that is shaped by that.  Such as:

• Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who was chosen, who has innate abilities, who trained and practiced and fought for her destiny, for her family, for her friends.  Who died twice in pursuit of a cosmic goal she didn’t even choose for herself, who inspirsd those around her to fight and be strong too.
• Zoe Alleyne Washburne (Gina Torres), who fought because of what she believed in and because she had to, who can be cold when she needed to be but who is also warm and loving with those that matter.
• River Tam (Summer Glau), who was conditioned to fight by bad people who wanted bad things and used those skills to help bring them theoretically to justice, who is graceful and elegant while kicking asses.
• Arya Stark (Maisie Williams), who wanted to play with swords and learns to fight with them and in other ways because she has to.
• Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie), who swore to protect one and then another, who can fight better than a lot of the men around her.

4. The polite, oftentimes quiet, but nonetheless courageous ladies
This is one that gets debated a lot online, isn’t it?  Sometimes sitting and doing nothing, or doing not much, doesn’t seem strong.  It seems weak, like you’re letting someone walk all over you, like you’re letting them puppet you.  But… no.  Not all courage is loud and overt.  Sometimes, just continuing to be can be brave, just being kind to people when it’s not necessarily deserved, having manners about things.  Such as:

• Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner), and sure, in TV canon especially she was a brat to her sister and her septa and whatnot sometimes (sometimes even the most mannered people can be snippy when they feel they can sort of get away with it, particularly when they’re, you know, barely a teenager), but Sansa my sweetheart, just there doing what she’s got to do, being polite and not speaking her mind and not lashing out so she can survive another day.
• Tara Maclay (Amber Benson), who was quiet but resolute in her beliefs and helped herself and others to act based on what she believed was right, as before I’ve mentioned.
• Joan Holloway Harris (Christina Hendricks), who often (not always) keeps her opinions about small things to herself and works to do what she can to make things work.
• Kaylee Frye (Jewel Staite), who has a smile on her face for everyone unless they’re hurting them she loves, as before I’ve mentioned.
• Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin), who can turn manners on for anyone, even the undeserving, and still be firm about her opinions while doing so.

3. The (not always perfectly, but strivingly) diplomatically strong ladies
This is the kind of strength that I was mostly talking about when I did the HBICs of awesome post awhile back.  This is for ladies that are firmly loud, or loud-ish, in their beliefs, and will do what they must, which is usually dealing with other people in a work-related and/or sociopolitical sense.  Such as:

• Again, my Joan who I love, because she is quiet about personal things (except when she suddenly lashes out for a moment, which is a different thing of course) but when it comes to keeping things around her functioning, she will whip that politesse out in a different fashion and just snark people’s faces off with a smile while she does what she can to, again, make things work like they should.
• Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams), running a relatively immoral organization with standards that are nonetheless driven by her personal morals and verbally (and sometimes organizationally) bitchslapping anyone who gets in her way.
• Alma Garret Ellsworth (Molly Parker), running her deceased husband’s gold claim and the first town bank with a smile and refusing to give into the demands of assholes.
• Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), my queen, who still has to learn some lessons and she knows it, but who rests not just on birthright but on the fact that she wishes to be a just queen, tries to act accordingly to her subjects, is upset when this does not go well, and comes out still fighting and doesn’t let it get her too down.

2. The evil and/or manipulative but so damn entertaining ladies
For whatever reason, these women are playing the antagonist, so you’re probably not supposed to root for them (I do anyway, sometimes, or at least I revel in them).  They’re not good, but they are still interesting characters who are not just I Am An Evil Woman Whose Entire Character Is Evil And Bad.  (Because this list is as much about ways that characters show strength via behavior as ways that characters are written in a technically strong or fascinating way.)  Such as:

• Drusilla (Juliet Landau) and Darla (Julie Benz), both of whom are psychotic in their own ways, but they are the fun kind of evil.  The kind that is just so wrong, and they just don’t care.  They’re unapologetic, they’re giddy in their evil, and sure, they have their reasons, but they also have the reason of just enjoying it.  They like to murder and they can fight, but take Dru’s fighting: really, when fighting physically she often just sort of flails around, effectively but still, and she relies on hypnotizing a lot of the time anyway.
• Nora Gainesborough (Lucy Griffiths), whose crazy comes from a different place but who is, as repeatedly mentioned, an ace liar and manipulator, a “political genius.”  She is often self-serving and while she’s not the oldest vampire or the most powerful (yet) she is a force to be reckoned with.
• Saffron or whatever (Christina Hendricks), my crazed manipulative devil woman darling.  When questioned about why she doesn’t just rob folk, she just smiles and replies, “You’re assuming the payoff is the point.”  Again, this is very consciously making the choice to do the legally wrong thing, because it is fun for a whole variety of reasons.  Sure, she can kick your ass if she has to, but that’s not the game, not really.
• Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), who is a bad person in so many ways, and is fairly aware of this in a delightful way.  She is the power behind many, many actions, actions which are not always for any greater good but her own and that of her children, and she is sometimes diabolical and cruel, yes, but she is so good at it.  Sometimes you get glimpses behind the dealing-with-others mask she so often wears and it’s just fascinating: that everything that has made her how she is has made her how she is is not an excuse always, but it’s so interesting to explore.

1. The intellectual or otherwise mentally gifted ladies
This is, as we all know, one of my pet things.  Not every character has to be a genius, no.  People naturally have different strengths and weaknesses.  And intellectual gifts do come in different forms, which are interesting always.  Such as:

• Again dearest River, who is gifted in the physical fighting sense and in the being preternaturally graceful sense but is also freakishly smart.  For the majority of the series, she’s more intellectual than physical anyway, what with the mind-reading and the future-glimpsing and the obscure knowledge about everything and all.  And I love that she so effortlessly straddles the possible physical/intellectual dichotomy and it seems perfectly good.
• Also Bennett Halverson (Summer Glau), did you really think I’d pass up the opportunity to talk about her.  While she can do the above-mentioned manipulative thing, I don’t think it’s necessarily a thing she does just because it’s fun.  Sure she tortures Caroline because it’s fun, but she is not by nature evil.  And a lot of her viewpoints that could be considered wrong are, I think, more a product of a different kind of thinking about things than most people partake of.  Bennett does not make the best choices always, i.e. the torturing, but Bennett also doesn’t do things for no reason, she thinks them through.  And Bennett is a super-geniusy genius.  She’s, as before mentioned, big with the brilliant, and sure she let her accident lead to copious amounts of revenge-related fantasizing, but she also didn’t let it stand in the way of so many (morally gray) intellectual accomplishments.  Which is awesome.  (The theoretical accomplishing, not the moral grayness.  Though that is fictionally fascinating.)
• Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) went to secretarial school and probably never considered herself an intellectual in the strictest sense.  She may not even think of herself as such now.  But Peggy’s talents are largely related to intellectual/creative ability, and they are strong and awesome.  She knows how to take charge of what she wants and she knows how to show off without being a showoff.  She is useful and helpful and a damn good copywriter, and I applaud her always.
• Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan), who starts out as the Smart One and is then the Magic One and is then the Dangerously Addicted One and is then the Recovering One, who I just want to hug so hard.  She’s so bookish and learning-friendly, and that’s how the magicks start: she’s teaching herself new and interesting things.  Eventually it becomes her way of feeling powerful and useful amongst the group, and then the power starts to overtake her, but you know what, addiction is a disease.  I do not, not, not condone the actions she takes while in her addiction, no, but at the same time I also do not condemn for them.  She is still a very smart and very powerful character, and one whose strength can sometimes also be her weakness, but because of the intellectual ability and the help she gets, she knows that and knows she did the wrong thing and she wants to change and she’s able to figure out a way to start to do that.  (And disclaimer as always: comic canon, I have no knowledge of you.)

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: one thing (temporarily) ends and another begins.

Aka, the Sunday I wished the Tonys weren’t because I wanted immediate Mad Men season finale and True Blood season premiere and the weekdays I made up for it.

Obviously I’m into a lot of television programs.  But of currently-running programs I think I am the most intensely into three right now: Game of Thrones and Mad Men and True Blood.  (As evidenced by massive collections of posting pertaining to them, often in sequence, and the immense ladyfeels I have about some of their characters.)  So it was sort of neat and tidy that Game of Thrones ended one week and the next week Mad Men wrapped up and True Blood its place. The tried and true HBO Sunday night pattern will not fail me.

So.  SPOILERS I GUESS.   Bullet-pointy as always.

Mad Men:

• After two weeks of everything happening quickly and all at once, the season finale actually felt sort of slow.  Not bad-slow, at least bad in terms of boring; it was just a different pace than the breakneck speed of angst and tragedy we’ve been subjected to recently.  It’s what aftermaths feel like though: the more I think about it, the more I appreciate the fact that this episode was finely scripted fallout and building tension.  Building to what?  Well, I guess in eighteen months or however long they make us wait this time we’ll find out.
• One of my people compared it to the series finale of The Sopranos: it’s fascinating, and lots is happening, but it’s all so relatively small compared to what’s gone down in the past that you just have to feel like it’s just paving the way for something horrendous.  It doesn’t matter that not a lot of horrendous actually goes down.  It’s the art of making you think it could.
• We’ve had a season now of Megan (Jessica Paré) as a main character, and I still can’t decide how I feel about her.  I like that she’s willing to call Don (Jon Hamm) on his bull.  I don’t necessarily like how he sometimes babies her.  I like that she’s ~going after her dreams~ in theory but it also makes me wary for future plot dramatics.  I don’t know if I have any defining feelings about her a a person.
• I still can’t decide how I feel about Don’s getting Megan the commercial.  On one hand, it was the right thing to do (although seriously, that was their Beauty and the Beast setup?  She looked like a German beer festival waitress in that costume) but on the other hand, it makes me very, very wary.  That look on Don’s face at the end, I think I know what that might mean and I don’t like it.  He’s been so good this season.
• I think it’s interesting that every time we’ve seen an adult female’s mother on the show this season, it’s served the function (at least for a little while) of questioning the daughter’s modernity.  Megan’s mother Marie (Julia Ormond) has shown up a couple of times now to be passive-aggressive and to wind up boinking Roger (John Slattery), but this time she also basically told Megan to give it up and let Don have her as a kept wife, essentially as arm candy or a trained housepet that cooks dinner.  Peggy’s mother Katherine (Myra Turley) really only showed up long enough to criticize Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) for deciding to cohabitate with her boyfriend Abe (Charlie Hofheimer) without marrying him.  And Joan’s mother Gail (Christine Estabrook) has been there to support her and to help take care of her child, but she still had plenty of things to say in the first few episodes that made Joan (Christina Hendricks) really cranky.  (“Greg’s not going to allow you to work.”  “Allow me?”)
• Oh and while we’re on the subject of Joan.  Let’s talk about Joan.  My darling should have some proper meta slated for sometime in the nearish future, so I’m not going to spend time going into the subject of what transpired two episodes ago right now.  (Except to say ow, my heart.)  I just want to buy her a drink and give her a hug and tell her it’s okay.  She shouldn’t feel like she’s expected to solve everyone’s problems, and she should know that she certainly shouldn’t feel like her only worth in problem-solving or in anything else is her ability to use womanly wiles.  She can use them like nobody’s business, but this way of thinking is legitimately not her fault.  This way of thinking is the bull that she’s surrounded by on a daily basis; the if only I mentality is understandable, it really is, but baby, it wouldn’t have solved the problem.  I also want to tell her that yes, the guys are basically jerks, and yes, she deserves better coworkers.
• Completely shallowly, though, I will (again) exclaim GLASSES CHAIIIIN. 
• You know who I want to hit the most lately?  Pete (Vincent Kartheiser).  I want to punch the smug little smirk off of his face and shake the weird entitlement/white knight hybrid mentality out of his skull.  He is not a good coworker.  He is not a good husband.  He is not a good self-actualized person.  He should really work on those things.  He owes it to himself as a person and he owes it to Trudy (Alison Brie) who I will irrationally defend forever.  I’m not saying he’s a bad person (though these last episodes haven’t exactly given a lot of evidence that he isn’t), but he needs to figure out his issues.  He needs to sort out why he behaves in such ways as he does and not do it.
• Also, this is the second Mad Men season finale that has had a sequence that made us stare at each other and go “wait, this must be a dream.”  We had that reaction regarding Don’s proposal to Megan, and we had that reaction to Pete’s weird avenging hero-that-fails scene on the train.  I’m still coming to terms with the whole business of Pete and Beth (Alexis Bledel) and her husband Howard (Jeff Clarke).  I still don’t know what to make of it.
• Basically, you know.  Feelings.

True Blood:

• WELL.  Unlike Mad Men, which picks up months and months and months later, True Blood picked up this season literally right after last season ended.  Actually backtracked to a couple of events that transpired in the finale.  Considering the cliff-hangery nature of said events, that made sense, but.
• I have fewer things to say about this, because I love True Blood a lot but it does not get me quite as feelingsy right off the bat; also premieres don’t get me as feelingsy as finales.  Probably because they’re introducing plots and ideas and things, not wrapping them up (for now).  But this is not from a lack of enjoyment.  I did enjoy it quite a lot.
• Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten) is brilliant and I really really hope that she and Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) have a chance to make up amid all the AVL political messes and surprise-vampire-Tara (Rutina Wesley) (??) and many other things that are going to be going on.  She may be apologizing to Eric, but she is not apologizing for who she is.  She’s still good ol’ caustic Pam.  And I love her for it.
• Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) is beautiful.  I don’t really care about her hanging around with drunk college kids, though I see the point it served, and when did she put green in her hair, and that was a fancy Rock Band setup.  (Makes sense, it being all in King Bill’s Grand Mansion and all.  Though I can’t imagine Bill ever playing Rock Band.)  Mostly I am just devoting a bullet point to Jess because of when she burst into Jason’s (Ryan Kwanten) and told off Steve Newlin (Michael McMillian) and… whoops.  That sounded a hell of a lot like babygirl verbally declaring her intent all assertively.  (And while wearing a corset, which… yes, was there before, but.  But.)
• Well, I’m worried that Nora (Lucy Griffiths) is eventually doomed.  I don’t know when, it might not be for a while, and I hope this is one of my failure predictions.  I like her.  I am fully aware that this is completely irrational since she hasn’t been there for that long and my best reasons for liking her are that I like vampire family structure stuff, I like ladyvampires who are capable, I like that she was wearing leather wristlength gloves while she and Eric got, y’know, reacquainted and that she kept her bra on even though it’s True Blood where you can show all the boobies you want (and the gloves and the bra coordinated), and I like British people talking.  But.
• The synopsis on our television for the episode contained, after the descriptions of what everyone else was up to, the phrase “Alcide warns Sookie.”  Seriously, other than wolf politics what does Alcide (Joe Mangianello) do but warn Sookie (Anna Paquin)?
• Eric and Bill (Stephen Moyer) are buddies now, okay.  They couldn’t have thought they were getting out of this that easily though.  If it was going to succeed, it wouldn’t have happened until the second-to-last or last episode of the season.
• Also, Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) is a pro.
• This is officially nothing like the book.  And I do not care at all.

–your fangirl heroine.

Fashion Friday :: a fierce, emotion-inducing Mad Men lady fashion double feature

Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) my love.  Peggy my darling.  I am so proud of you but you also made me chew on my lip compulsively with feelings every time you were on screen this episode.

Let’s do this the most modern way ever, because this dress is totally the now version of that one.  Freeway From Commitments Dress, ModCloth.

Low heels are practical.  Peggy is practical.  Go with it.  Go About Your Afternoon Heel in Black, ModCloth.

These are pretty, but not too flashy.  Peggy is pretty, but not too flashy.  Welcome Bach Earrings, ModCloth.

And another cute coat.  Everyone on television has such nice outerwear, I’m jealous.  Wuthering Delights Coat, ModCloth.

And Joan (Christina Hendricks) my darling.  Joan my sweet.  This is a cap from season four, but she wore this dress again briefly in this episode and I was giddy because I love this dress (and I love that they rewear clothes).  I am still processing this episode emotionally, but baaaby.  That’s all I can really say.

There’s actually a website that replicates Joan’s dress custom made, but for already-made alternatives that are similar thematically but not the same, there’s this great Stop Staring! dress.

Yet another pair of black pumps.  Why not.  What a Gala Heel, ModCloth.

And the 1928 pen necklace, again.

And here’s a set of gold leaf earrings and a brooch from Etsy to finish it off.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: a Mad Men MBTI

(Aaaand Joan and Peggy both wound up in my I__J range.  I swear I don’t plan this, I have no way of doing so with the type indicators I use, but it happens and I embrace it.)

This is taking into consideration the characters in their entirety.  And again, speculative, all of these are, but based on observations from the show and not from hypotheticals too much, so that counts for something.  I adore doing these.

Joan Holloway Harris (Christina Hendricks)
ISTJ.  “They are noted for devotion to duty. Punctuality is a watchword of the ISTJ. The secretary, clerk, or business(wo)man by whom others set their clocks is likely to be an ISTJ… ISTJs are easily frustrated by the inconsistencies of others, especially when the second parties don’t keep their commitments. But they usually keep their feelings to themselves unless they are asked. And when asked, they don’t mince words. Truth wins out over tact… Only in times of great distress is the Introverted Feeling expressed… Otherwise, feeling is inferred, or expressed nonverbally, through eye contact, or an encouraging smile.”  I have given some thought to the introvert/extrovert issue with a lot of these characters, and for as sociable as she can be, for as good as she is at handling people, I really do think Joan is an introvert in her way.  She’s one of those introverts who is good at putting on an extroverted face, but it’s pretty clear that it’s just that, putting on a face.  She does it because it’s expected of her, because it suits her work life and her social life, and she’s not dissatisfied because of that (though she is dissatisfied, period; I swear, this woman is getting some meta tl;dr someday, in more than just these short bursts).  But what she projects is only a part of who she is as a person and only a part of how she actually feels about things and people around her; very few of the characters on the show get to know Joan the introvert because she doesn’t let them.  She doesn’t want them to see that part of her.  It took a few episodes in the first season for us the audience to even get to know Joan the introvert.  But for as skilled as she is at faking it, because she was raised to be admired, Joan the introvert is in there somewhere.

Harry Crane (Rich Sommer)
INFJ.  “INFJs have a knack for fluency in language and facility in communication… Extraverted feeling, the auxiliary deciding function, expresses a range of emotion and opinions of, for and about people. INFJs, like many other FJ types, find themselves caught between the desire to express their wealth of feelings and moral conclusions about the actions and attitudes of others, and the awareness of the consequences of unbridled candor.”  Oh, Harry.  Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce’s resident derp.  He tries to be a decent person, I think, and sometimes he has decent ideas, but his well-intentionedness has bit him in the ass before.  Sometimes he doesn’t think before he acts, and that leads to silly.

Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss)
INTJ.  “INTJs are perfectionists, with a seemingly endless capacity for improving upon anything that takes their interest. What prevents them from becoming chronically bogged down in this pursuit of perfection is the pragmatism so characteristic of the type… they do tend to be scrupulous and even-handed about recognizing the individual contributions that have gone into a project, and have a gift for seizing opportunities which others might not even notice… INTJs are idea people.”  Idea people.  Oh, my Peggy.  My dear.  She is just intelligent and brilliant and she loves what she does genuinely and I love her for it.

Lane Pryce (Jared Harris)
ISFJ.  “ISFJs are often unappreciated, at work, home, and play. Ironically, because they prove over and over that they can be relied on for their loyalty and unstinting, high-quality work, those around them often take them for granted–even take advantage of them… In the workplace, ISFJs are methodical and accurate workers, often with very good memories and unexpected analytic abilities… ISFJs make pleasant and reliable co-workers and exemplary employees, but tend to be harried and uncomfortable in supervisory roles.”  Lane.  Lane is so British.  I feel like that’s the best way to describe him sometimes.

Megan Calvet Draper (Jessica Paré)
ESFJ.  “ESFJs are generous entertainers… They by nature “wear their hearts on their sleeves,” often exuding warmth and bonhomie, but not infrequently boiling over with the vexation of their souls. Some ESFJs channel these vibrant emotions into moving dramatic performances on stage and screen… ESFJs are also capable of discerning patterns and philosophies, but such perceiving is subject to the weakness of the tertiary position, and the results often lack the variety and complexity of connections that more complex systems require.”  Megan didn’t fit in at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce because (everyone treated her crappily and) she is just too much of an optimist, I think.  Or she tries to be.  I don’t have a lot of Megan feelings still, at least not ones that last, but I think she’s at her core a decent human.

Don Draper (Jon Hamm)
ENTJ.  “ENTJs are often “larger than life” in describing their projects or proposals. This ability may be expressed as salesmanship, story-telling facility or stand-up comedy. In combination with the natural propensity for filibuster, our hero can make it very difficult for the customer to decline… Clarity of convictions endows these Thinkers with a knack for debate, or wanting knack, a penchant for argument… Feeling in this type appears most authentic when implied or expressed covertly in a firm handshake, accepting demeanor, or act of sacrifice thinly covered by excuses of lack of any personal interest in the relinquished item.”  While Joan is an introvert who acts like an extrovert, I think Don is an extrovert with introvert tendencies in some ways.  He has a lot of internal though process business to deal with, but he also needs to be with other people sometimes to be happy.  He isn’t comfortable being alone, even if he likes being by himself sometimes.  He needs people in his life.

Betty Hofstadt Draper Francis (January Jones)
ESTJ.  “ESTJs are joiners. They seek out like-minded companions in clubs, civic groups, churches and other service organizations. The need for belonging is woven into the fiber of SJs… Much of their evaluation of persons and activities reflects their strong sense of what is ‘normal’ and what isn’t… Extraverts are attracted to the ‘object,’ the external things and people in observable reality.”  Betty also has introvert tendencies in her extroversion; Betty is also uncomfortable with being alone, though.  She needs to define herself by either doing something that pertains to people or by the people she is around.

Roger Sterling (John Slattery)
ESFP.  “ESFPs love people, excitement, telling stories and having fun. The spontaneous, impulsive nature of this type is almost always entertaining. And ESFPs love to entertain — on stage, at work, and/or at home… Almost every ESFP loves to talk. Some can be identified by the twenty minute conversation required to ask or answer a simple factual question… When overused or overestimated, however, Thinking becomes a liability.”  Roger is really a hot mess of a man sometimes.  His extrovert tendencies get him in trouble; he sometimes gets ideas in his head and can’t let them go no matter how awful they are, which is the other letters acting up.

Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser)
ENFP.  “ENFPs are both “idea”-people and “people”-people, who see everyone and everything as part of a cosmic whole. They want to both help and to be liked and admired by other people, on both an individual and a humanitarian level… For some ENFPs, relationships can be seriously tested by their short attention spans and emotional needs. They are easily intrigued and distracted by new friends and acquaintances, forgetting their older and more familiar emotional ties for long stretches at a time. And the less mature ENFP may need to feel they’re the constant center of attention, to confirm their image of themselves as a wonderful and fascinating person.”  Pete has his ideas, yes.  Pete also tries to be a people person, which sometimes fails but sometimes succeeds.  But, uhm, attention spans and needs for attention?  Sounds like Pete all right.

–your fangirl heroine.

Fashion Friday :: when the inspiration for more Peggy strikes, I have to take it.

(Pardon the picture of atrocious blurriness.  It is literally the only one I could find that wasn’t teensy or just her face.)

Yes, this episode was a few weeks ago.  Yes, I had fully intended to post about this adorable weirdness on Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) then, but I couldn’t find the right dress.  Yes, I had intended to do an ode to Joanie’s floral bombshell dresses this week, but I wasn’t really finding the right dresses for that.  And then I found this.

It’s not perfect.  Peggy’s looked to be a fancier fabric, and it had that big bow.  But it’s the right length, the right bright pink, the right sleeves… I’m going to run with it.  Deep Blue Scene Dress in Pink, ModCloth.

And you know what?  Not having a giant bow is an easy fix.  Get some ribbon and make that bow belt yourself!  I mean, it might not be quite as giant, but it’s the principle of the thing.  This ribbon is from JoAnn’s.  All craft stores carry ribbon, a lot of ribbon, and pink is one of the easier colors of ribbon to find.

Thanks for the easily spotted jewelry there in your Graduated Double Row Pink Pearl with Crystal Necklace, Debenhams.

I cannot see and don’t remember if Peggy dearest had earrings in.  I’m sure they wouldn’t be as lovably ridiculous as these if she did.  But they’re sort of cute, in a “playing dress-up” kind of way, and that was basically what Peggy was doing, so it suits.  Beauty Anew Earrings, ModCloth.

Similarly, I cannot see and don’t remember Peggy’s shoes, but these feel fundamentally Peggy-dresses-up to me.  Vintage Reserve Lydia Heel, ModCloth.

–your fangirl heroine.