over the misty mountains cold

hey guys! i still exist :) 

i start classes today and i wanted to show off my new favourite dress. it's by teenage runaway and i'm really excited about it because it's business in the front, skeleton party in the back!

hope you're all doing well!

xoxo

mouse

if you miss me

i know i haven't been updating here nearly as much as i should be, and i'm sorry. 

if you'd still like to know what's going on in my life, i post (pretty sporadically, but more frequently) on tumblr here:

http://robertmapplethorpes.tumblr.com/

i'll hopefully be back sometime soon but i'm taking a minor break from this blog. i'm in california visiting my dad right now (which is really fun!) and posting here just isn't at the top of my list of priorities. i do miss it though and i'm still keeping up on everyone's post through my reader, so don't worry!

i hope you guys are doing well!

xoxo

mouse

nerd girls are easy

i was inspired to write this post both because i haven't written anything on here in too long and because of this post on buzzfeed shift about the 'fake geek girl' meme. 

first of all, let me just get this out of the way: being a woman is a disadvantage in this world. but it's not the greatest disadvantage. there are a million factors that could make someone worse off even just in this city. i am upper-middle-class, i am white, i am relatively thin, i am relatively healthy. i have it really good. i know that. 

but being a girl, or someone who is perceived as a girl, and trying to join the 'boys club' that is geekery--it's difficult. men have had this whole disenfranchised thing down for years. if you're a guy and you'd rather play dungeons and dragons than go to a party, you might get made fun of, but that's an acceptable choice. if you're a girl and would rather play dungeons and dragons than go to a party, what the fuck is wrong with you?

it's bad in the gaming world--this blog , entitled fat, ugly, or slutty, illustrates that well. if you're a girl that plays games, it's because you're fat or ugly--meaning men want nothing to do with you, so you have nothing better to do with your time--or you're slutty, meaning you're only playing these games to get attention from men. why?

john green, who i don't know a ton about but who seems like a really great guy, has said “…because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff… Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness’.”

this is one of my favourite quotes about anything, because it's correct. it's so true. i get so excited about things like supernatural and lord of the rings and the general awesomeness of stuff and that's what makes me happy. i love watchmen, i love sherlock holmes, i love neil gaiman. and yet when i post my watchmen tattoo on reddit, i get accused of being an attention whore. men who post similar tattoos? none of that. when i talk about how really really cute kili is in the hobbit 

(and he is really really cute)

it's assumed that that's why i liked the movie, because wow there's a hot guy in it stop the presses 

when i know things about things, people are shocked. maybe it's my hair, maybe it's my voice (being raised by a californian has left me with a bit of a valley girl accent sometimes), but for the most part i'm fairly sure it's because i'm a girl. i can't enjoy these things, i can't understand them to the fullest extent, because of my genitalia. 

I'M SORRY BATMAN I CAN'T UNDERSTAND YOU OVER THE SOUND OF MY BOOBS

anyway, it's like seven in the morning and i've been up for two hours because i'm anxious so i thought i'd just spit this out and it probably doesn't make sense and i might edit it heavily later but yeah i hope you guys are all doing well and had a great new year!!

xoxo

mouse

oh mistletoe

 merry merry merry christmas!

i hope you're having a good holiday!

i'm getting to spend it with my friends and my mom and sister and the cat in pennsylvania and it's lovely and snowy and we've just driven 20 miles just to rent love actually

 we decorated me a bit along with the tree

xoxo

mouse

i'm not dead, i only dress that way

 i really like how my hair turned out! it's true red leaning more towards orange than pink.

i'm set to take the megabus to visit my mom & sister & all my lovely friends in pennsylvania and i have such a tendency to overpack that i subscribe to the 'wear as much as possible while traveling' school of thought so i don't have to put as much in my suitcase. i'm actually wearing a second skirt under this dress, but you can't really tell. you can, however, tell that i've overloaded a little bit on the jewelry!

i'm on a bit of a my chemical romance kick lately, thanks to meg from meg's ragged edge (that's a link--go visit her!) who told me about their new songs--i think boy division might be my favourite.

xoxo

mouse

special effects vs manic panic

after my first-ever dye job, using manic panic in pillarbox red 

special effects in nuclear red 

special effects in devilish. i really wish my hair was still this long! 

ive been dyeing my hair red (with small intervals of other colours) for more than two years now, and i've learned some things about the process. i get a lot of questions--more frequently in real life than on here--about what i do to it/what kind of dye i use and why so i thought i'd just make a big post rather than pack for winter break.

i've used three colours consistently throughout my hair dyeing career: special effects in nuclear red and devilish, and manic panic in pillarbox red. 

pillarbox red was the first colour i ever used in my hair (besides that time in 8th grade when i dyed some purple over my natural brown but you couldn't really tell anything was different) and i started off with it because manic panic is sort of the most well-known brand of fantasy colour hair dye out there. i really liked the result, obviously, because here i am years later still dyeing my hair bright red! there are pros and cons to each of the brands and colours:

manic panic-pillarbox red

pros:

• a very true, bright, orange-based red
• comes in that tub thing which is really easy to use 
• fades to an orangey colour that i actually quite like
• doesn't leave much of a mess; comes off of most surfaces quite easily (including skin)

cons:

• fades quite quickly, after only a few washes
• although it is bright, it's not all that...vibrant, if that makes sense

special effects-devilish

pros:

• looks amazing directly after dyeing, probably my favourite immediate colour payoff
• lasts quite a long time 

cons:

• comes in those awful squeeze bottles that are a pain in the ass to use especially when you've got dye all over your hands
• after the first wash, looks really more pink than red
• stains skin pretty badly, and most surfaces as well
• the water will run pink/red when showering for a few weeks which can stain (i've learned not to take a bath with special effects in my hair within at least a few weeks of dyeing it, because it will stain the tub--usually with a shower it's not much of a problem because the water goes down the drain too quickly for it to stain, but in the bath it can be a problem both with the water and if i lean my head against the side of the tub and it's really hard to get off)

special effects-nuclear red

pros:

• a very bright red that doesn't look pink at all
• lasts much longer than manic panic

cons:

• most of the same cons as devilish, except the problem with fading (the squeeze bottle and the staining are problematic as is the shower thing)
• a little bit darker than i'd really like--it's not quite bloodred but it leans a little more in that direction than do the other colours

basically, i still have no idea what i actually like the most. it's on my mind because i dyed my hair today--i used a combination of nuclear red and pillarbox red, which isn't something i've tried before. 

so far it looks like this, which i actually quite like, but as you can tell my hair is still wet and i can never really gauge how nice a colour looks until it's dry. i used an entire tub of pillarbox red first and then combed in some of the nuclear red over it--i hope it turns out well, because then maybe i can stick to it!

do any of you dye your hair--fun colours or natural ones? what's your favourite brand?

xoxo

mouse

i've got a bulletproof heart; you've got a hollow point smile.

 

 hey guys!

i'm finally done with my semester which means i should hopefully be updating more frequently. 

this is what i wore today to go christmas present shopping--tripp pants and a shirt that's actually a slip but i knotted it in the back so it'd just look like a tank top.

this necklace is a gift from one of my good friends.

if you know anything about me in real life, you know that i love the show supernatural. the necklace is in the shape of an anti-possession symbol used on the show. my friend doesn't watch the show but knows my love for it, and apparently spent a long time googling 'supernatural gifts' and 'pentagram thing supernatural' before finding this. i love it! 

 my hair is pretty faded--i'm going home to pennsylvania on thursday so i'll probably give it a dye job tomorrow.

ah, yes, my bed is a mess. my room is a mess! it's not nearly as bad as it has been known to be, though, so i'm okay with it for now. i plan to clean over break, but a lot of it's just clutter that's not going anywhere unless i throw out half of my junk. 

xoxo

mouse