How To Be Katniss Everdeen for Halloween!

I get a lot of requests for something like this, so in honor of

a) my just-released new Hunger Games parody and b) my favorite holiday fast approaching, here's how I put together my quick & easy Katniss costume for Halloween last year - since then, I've worn it in two different music

videos in addition to the sketch above.

:)

The inspiration for my interpretation of Katniss's look came from the artist known as RatGirlStudios - especially here and here.

1. Olive Green Tank Top - I got mine on sale for $6 at Forever 21, but any standard olive/hunter/forest green shirt will work.

2. Brown Leggings - Again with the Forever 21, this time for just $5. I was originally looking for a lighter shade of actual pants, more beige than brown,

but going darker and tighter ended up being a good decision once I was running around and climbing trees in the woods - way less dirt shown, and much easier to move in!

3. Black Combat Boots - Any style will do.

Sleek and simple is ideal.

4. Brown and Gold

Belt - I wanted a gold accent to complement the gold of the Mockingjay pin, and a plain brown belt with a gold buckle tied the outfit together nicely.

5. Fingerless Gloves -These - bought for $9 at Hot Topic - made the look a little more badass.

6. Mockingjay Pin -

These were so hard to find when I was first looking, but might be a little easier post-Comic Con - if you still don't have access to an actual pin, however, you can easily create one yourself with a Mockingjay pendant necklace or keychain from Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com - just remove the pendant from the necklace/keychain part and hot glue a small safety pin to the back. Voila!

Braid your hair, of course, and as far as makeup, go for natural, earthy tones. Optionally, you can add blood, dirt, a toy bow, and an orange backpack. Send me pictures if you do end up dressing up as Katniss, and let me know if this is helpful! :D May the odds be ever in your favor.

TAG: 10 Things I Like in a Guy

LIfting this tag from Blair's new post. :)

1. Integrity. Someone who values honesty and treats people with kindness, compassion, and respect.
2. Passion. This translates into talent and ambition, two other highly attractive traits.
3. Intelligence. Someone clever who can keep up in intellectual conversations or debates, or even better, start them himself.
4. Silliness. I like hilarious guys who don't take themselves too seriously.
5. A sense of adventure. I need a partner-in-crime.
6. A sense of style. Guys who know how to dress and style themselves are hot.
7. Progressive sensibilities. Homophobes, sexists, and racists need not apply.
8. Unconventionality. Life should never be typical or boring.
9. Charisma. I'm always most drawn to the guys who can hold a room in rapt attention.
10. Courage. In action and in thought.

Top 10 Favorite Fairytales You May Not Know, and 5 You Only Think You Do

10 INTERESTING TALES YOU’VE PROBABLY NEVER HEARD OF:

1. The Goose Girl: This one involves a talking horse named Falada, a protective magical handkerchief, a scheming servant girl who takes the true princess’s place, and a really, really creative punishment.
2. The Six Swans: To rescue her brothers-turned-into-swans, a princess takes a vow of silence and sews shirts made out of stinging nettles, and is almost burned at the stake by her new husband because her mother-in-law accuses her of cannibalizing the children.
3. East of the Sun and West of the Moon: This fairytale was inspired by the myth of Eros and Psyche and inspired Beauty and the Beast. It has to do with troll kingdoms, cursed talking white bears with castles, magical gowns, and personified weather anomalies.
4. Tam Lin: Technically a ballad and not a fairytale, but still one of the coolest stories ever. A girl ventures into Faery to rescue her true love, Tam Lin, who is being held captive by the Faerie Queen, from being a human sacrifice to the Devil.
5. Bluebeard: Lord Bluebeard’s new wife wonders a) what’s behind the one door in the manor that she’s forbidden to open, and b) what happened to all of her husband’s ex-wives. Spoiler Alert: a) is very related to b).
6. Donkeyskin: This one gives a new meaning to ‘disturbing’. A king tries to marry his daughter, she stalls him and escapes, eventually working as a scullery maid in a far-off kingdom, where she goes through multiple trials to win the heart of the prince.
7. King Thrushbeard: It’s kind of like The Taming of the Shrew, except with disguises and royalty. A haughty princess is forced to marry a beggar, becomes a kitchen maid, attends a ball, and eventually discovers the true meaning of ~love~.
8. The Three Little Men in the Wood: A wicked stepmother forces a girl to go pick strawberries in the wintertime wearing nothing but a dress made out of paper. Instead of dying, she meets some magical dwarfs and marries the King. Her jealous stepmother and stepsister come up with a crazy scheme to get back at her, and let’s just say it backfires big time.
9. The Princess in the Chest: So, the princess is sort of a zombie slash monster who kills and eats her would-be-rescuers. Not exactly your typical fairytale, to say the least.
10. Tatterhood: An ugly princess fights off an army of trolls with a wooden spoon, saves her much lovelier sister from a pack of witches, and comes up with an...interesting...way to make herself beautiful.


5 FAIRYTALES YOU’VE BEEN LIED TO ABOUT:

1. Cinderella: Disney simplified this one to the extreme. No pumpkin carriages or bippity-boppity-boos here: Cinderella had to visit her dead mother’s grave to make wishes, her mom sent messenger birds to do her bidding, the stepsisters actually cut off their heels and big toes to fit into the shoe but were called out on it and ended up getting their eyes plucked out by said messenger birds. Oh, and the slippers definitely weren’t glass—they were made out of fur.
2. Sleeping Beauty: Well…the Prince didn’t just kiss Sleeping Beauty. He had sex with her. While she was asleep. And then she got pregnant and gave birth to twins. While still asleep. It gets even more disturbing from there on out, but I’ll leave it there.
3. Little Red Riding Hood: First of all, there was no woodsman to show up and save Little Red and her grandmama from the wolf’s belly. They were just...eaten. Second of all, the wolf actually cooked a meal out of the grandmother’s flesh and offered it to Little Red (still disguised) before eating her, too. Cannibalism and death. Lovely.
4. The Frog Prince: There’s one very distinctive difference between the original story and the romanticized, fluffy ‘modern’ version: the princess did not kiss the frog. She threw him against the wall in a moment of frustration at his rather lewd demands, and then—and only then—did he turn back into a prince.
5. The Little Mermaid: Not only did the little mermaid lose her voice in the deal with the sea-witch, but it was also part of the agreement that every step she took on land would feel like walking on knives. Did the prince appreciate this painful dedication? No, he married someone else and the witch commanded the little mermaid to kill him or she would never be able to return to the sea. She couldn’t do that, so she killed herself instead. Happily ever after indeed.

A couple weeks ago I offered to give some advice on high school and being a teenager, and you guys sent in tons of fantastic questions! Here are a few extras that didn't make it into the video:

"I'm 15 and never been kissed. What's wrong with me?"
Absolutely nothing is wrong with you, that's what! I had my first kiss at 17, and I turned out just fine! There's no need to rush, guuurl...chances are high that those high school boys you aren't kissing? Yeah, they have no idea how. Do you want your first kiss to be sloppy and gross and forgettable, or do you want it to be on your terms, with someone who knows what he's doing? I'm just saying. Do not settle, do not compromise, and keep your standards high! Kisses will come.

"My two best friends are in a really bad fight. What should I do?"
Stay out of it at all costs. If the problem doesn't involve you, don't get involved. Since you care about each of them, it might seem tempting to jump in, mediate, take sides, try to resolve the conflict, etc., but all that will do is make you enemies and waste your time. Firmly state your neutrality and let them work it out; there's no benefit to your involvement.

"How do I become closer with friends I want to get to know better?"
Go on adventures with them! The best bonding tactic, in my opinion, is building up memories of shared experiences--from which stories, escapades, and inside jokes will naturally result.

"I like my guy friend and he likes me too but our small school has an unspoken rule against dating. Should I date him anyway?"
That's a tough situation, but there's a simple answer: Go for it! Take risks! Forget the rules! Break them! Break them all! The potential negative consequences aren't that dire.

"My crush is giving me mixed signals. He's nice to me but mean to my friend. What should I do?"
Tell him to stop being a dick. If he genuinely likes you, he should be winning your friends over, not alienating them, and genuinely nice guys aren't mean in general (if he's not a genuinely nice guy, get out while you still can). However, you should also consider the fact that he might actually be crushing on your friend and his mean teasing = flirting. Oh, teenage boys.

"Do guys like smart girls?"
The smart ones do, and those are the only ones that matter.

"Will guys even notice me if I don't hang out with the popular kids?"
If a guy finds you attractive/interesting/etc. he's not going to care what clique you belong to unless he's cripplingly insecure and obsessed with high school social status, in which case you don't want him anyway.

Share your own advice in the comments!

I'm MAGICAL, you guys! My Hogwarts letter finally arrived - a decade late, but better late than never, amirite? Exploring Pottermore has been kind of a bittersweet experience. The artwork is beautiful and all of Jo's added notes are spectacular (I've LOL'd multiple times...Y SO HILARIOUS, JKR?), but I can't shake the feeling that I would have enjoyed it all so much more a few years or even months ago, in Potter mania's ~glory days. Since LeakyCon my HP obsession has slowly and peacefully declined into nostalgia, which re-experiencing Philosopher's Stone along with Pottermore definitely isn't helping. Regardless, the site is beautifully and lovingly crafted, and I highly recommend that all non-beta users check it out come October.



My wand is ebony, unicorn core, 10 3/4 inches, surprisingly swishy. Here's what that says about me, according to Pottermore:


Aaaaand finally, I received JKR-approved confirmation re: House status. It's official, y'all: G-DOR 4 LYFE.


It's nice to have my innate Gryffiness made legitimate, to say the least. I've always had a little bit of an obsession with Sorting and its relation to other sorts (har har) of personality typing. JKR has said she based the four Houses on the four classical humors/temperaments (see also the trope of the Four Temperament Ensemble), which interestingly correspond with the four Keirsey types. Following this formula, we typically have:

Gryffindors as Artisans & Sanguines (hollaaaa)
Slytherins as Rationals & Cholerics
Ravenclaws as Idealists & Melancholics
Hufflepuffs as Guardians & Phlegmatics

Obviously most people possess attributes from multiple types and temperaments (as elaborated upon here), but for sorting purposes we're referring to the most dominant category. Knowing your Jungian/Meyers-Briggs personality type will easily allow you to categorize yourself into a type/temperament, which will indicate your likely Hogwarts House pre-Pottermore. For a more in-depth outline of this concept, click here.

[EDIT: A friend made me realize that I should clarify that the Keirsey types aren't like, automatically transferable to the Houses (unlike the temperaments, which JKR herself has referenced). Rather than rules, they're more like guidelines...ones that I for one break, since I'm a Gryffindor/Sanguine but also an ENTP, which is usually considered Rational/Slytherin. ;) So tada! There are exceptions.]

Even though my Sorting generally matched up with my personality, I know of a lot of people who don't feel that theirs does. Personally I found the questions to be insightful and well-constructed, with a lot of psychological backing (i.e. left vs. right and other seemingly arbitrary questions actually being clinically proven to hold psychological significance). If you answer them honestly and searchingly, I can't see how it could Sort you improperly. Something I've pointed out to friends who say otherwise is the fact that maybe you're not the person you were when you originally self-Sorted, and - like Dumbledore posits in Deathly Hallows - perhaps some of us Sort too soon.

What Hogwarts House do you identify with? If you're already in Pottermore, too, are you happy with your Sorting?

I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.

- Tom Stoppard

I posted a video today about my greatest passion: telling stories.

Stories, and the words we use to tell them, are incredibly powerful things. Words can be tools and they can be weapons; they can be anything you choose when you know how to wield them. When you think that no one can possibly understand how you’re feeling, a passage in a book or a lyric in a song or a line in a poem or a quote in a movie speaks the words right out of your thoughts more eloquently and clearly than you even aspired to express, and you remember that this writer, too, is human, with all of life’s human experiences.

I want to experience so much in life. I want to go so many places, meet so many people, achieve so many goals, feel so many feelings, be so many things. I have millions of dreams and hopes and wishes and goals and possibilities and desires and inspirations and opportunities that seem impossible to live out all in one lifetime, but they’re not - not when you’re a writer, or a reader, or an artist, or an actor, or any other kind of story-teller. Stories make us limitless.

Bradley Whitford once said, "Fall in love with the process and the results will follow. You’ve got to want to do whatever you want to do more than you want to be whatever you want to be, want to write more than you want to be a writer, want to heal more than you want to be a doctor, want to teach more than you want to be a teacher, want to serve more than you want to be a politician. Life is too challenging for external rewards to sustain us. The joy is in the journey." As I think about where I am in my own creative journeys, I couldn't agree more. Passion is key; skill will follow.

Which is why it's so fun to look back on my (completely un-skilled) efforts as a kid! One of the three stories I shared in the video - a fantasy adventure story about a girl named Charlotte that I wrote when I was ten - is available online for your reading/laughing pleasure. You can view it by clicking here. :)

Charlotte