|
|
Post by Lilianne Madeleine Lawrence on Oct 10, 2009 22:53:02 GMT -5
This application is complete  lilianne madeleine lawrence
* - - - once upon a time
full name: Lilianne Madeleine Lawrence
nicknames: Most people call her Lili, because it’s easier… though she does think it’s becoming a little childish for her now.
meaning of name: Well, I already had the name, and I think it has a ring to it. ‘Fairy Godmother’ isn’t much of a name to go on, so I just stuck with a name I already had. Lawrence, however, does mean ‘flourishing’ or ‘spreading’, both of which apply to Lilianne and what she likes to do: flourish and spread her thoughts and ideas.
age: Lilianne turned thirty-five quite recently, and she plans on remaining this age for at least another decade.
birthday: August the 2nd.
occupation: Stylist and salon owner.
play by: Kristin Chenoweth.
canon: The Fairy God Mother from Cinderella.
* - - - the fairest of them all
Lilianne is often likened to a pixie or a fairy in the way she looks: petite and light-featured, with high cheekbones and a small, ski-sloped button nose. Her eyes are somewhat wide-set and deep-set, bright olive in colour, though they have the tendency to darken to a grey when she’s not in a particularly good mood. With eyes which are so light and lashes which are so fair, Lilianne has to be careful with her make-up decisions: too much will make her already rather small eyes disappear, and too little will make them blend into her face and her look slightly ill, in her own opinion and words. To open her eyes up a little more, Lilianne will often apply her own false eyelashes – only one of two separate lashes on the edges of her own, and nowadays, only really for special occasions or when she’s feeling down about herself. She is one of those women who is not afraid to admit the ‘fake’ aspects of her look, believing that denial tends to make someone seem a little pathetic. There is nothing wrong, in her opinion, in wanting to enhance your beauty, do the best with what you’ve got, so why deny it? In fact, she encourages the opposite: confidence from self-comfort is key. She waxes her own eyebrows every week. They sit rather low down on her forehead, but are arched in precisely the right place: after all, she has been extensively trained to do this sort of thing. Her facial structure, for all its smallness, is very strong. Her cheekbones are high and constantly defined with a subtle dusting of blusher, her jaw is quite square and her chin pointed. This becomes more obvious when she smiles, a bright, happy smile which tends to don her face more often than not, with small, white teeth and thin, cherry lips. Her general countenance is one of happiness. There is no underlying hurt in her bright eyes, there is no deep-rooted pain in her manner: she has dealt with the obstacles put in her path, and she striven to move on.
As of late, Lilianne has become increasingly aware of the lines around her eyes. Beginning to fear that she will not be able to pass them off as ‘laughter lines’ for much longer, the blonde has taken to indulging in the products she thinks will help her ‘predicament’. Although Lilianne is by no means old, she is aware that she is no longer twenty-one. That is not to say, however, that she is going to go down without a fight, and she doesn’t understand why some women are so content just to give up trying when they hit their mid-thirties. This paranoia, coupled with childhood and teenage weight problems, means that she devotes a fair chunk of her time to running or being at the gym. She fears that the weight will come back to her quite quickly if she stops abruptly, and although she is trying to slow down – wean herself off of her ‘obsession’ – she cannot quit completely, nor does she want to. It is something she has depended on since she was fifteen years old and in denial, something she relied on to get her through her toughest time. Some of Lilianne’s biggest fears are regarding her looks, though she distracts from this simple fact by trying to help others improve their own physical appearances, mostly only at their own request. But, to her credit, Lilianne’s body is in great shape (though her weight does tend to fluctuate – perhaps not dramatically, but the odd pound or two – and there’s no doubt the woman notices every little change). In fact, if you put Lilianne in a bikini, you might notice the faint stretch marks from where she was forced to gain wait, but the streaks across her stomach – the different kind of stretch marks – have faded. One would never be able to tell that this woman’s tiny body, at the time not even fully developed, once carried a child full-term. Barely reaching five foot one, it could be easy for her to look disproportionate, and excess weight, she is convinced, would only highlight this fact, though thanks to her dedication (or, at least, she thinks this is the reason), her figure is extremely womanly; a perfect hourglass. For her height, her legs are long, her breasts ample, her hips just wide enough, and from a distance, one might not realise just how short she actually is. However, when the proximity is close enough, or when she is stood next to your average-sized woman, the difference is apparent, sometimes laughable, sometimes somewhat disconcerting.
Lilianne is blonde, and has been blonde all her life (except for a short period after one unfortunate incident involving a dye mix-up and a very angry customer). So used to dying her hair, and having been doing it for so long, Lilianne Lawrence could never tell you for sure what her natural shade is, though she would imagine it would resemble the dark blonde of her eyebrows. She is of the belief, however, that natural colour is just there to irk her and give her roots to battle with, for she is most definitely a woman destined for golden-coloured hair. She has yet to meet someone who has disagreed. Sometimes, she wears some natural extensions, just to give it that extra body and malleability, and yes, she does think they’re worth the money and the commitment they require. As for her haircut itself, she changes it rather frequently. Thus far, however, she hasn’t had the courage to cut it all off, though she sometimes will sport a cute little bob, if the desire should seize her. Fashion is also very important to Lilianne. She believes that following the latest trends isn’t the best thing to do, but encourages both herself and her customers to try something different, something personal to them, whilst remaining stylish. She often dresses to reflect her mood, possessing an eclectic wardrobe and far too many shoes and accessories, though she does tend to give things away quite frequently, in the hopes that the item might benefit another person. She enjoys putting outfits together, and make-overs remain as one of her favourite things to do, even in her mid-thirties. Lilianne, for all her adoration of fashion, could never pinpoint her own fashion sense to a person, particularly since she tends to go through ‘phases’. However, she does adore the colours purple, pink and blue, and floating dresses, bows and ribbons, and delicate patterns on solid colours.
* - - - look deep inside On the surface, it seems that there isn’t much to Lilianne at all: she is bubbly and somewhat eccentric in her methods, an interfering, confident, confidence-inspiring individual. The fact that she is not shy, at all, may irritate some people, though to most, it is quite endearing. Lilianne goes out of her way to make people feel at ease with her, though sometimes, she over-estimates how comfortable people are feeling, which can sometimes lead to a lot of embarrassment. Small though she is, she is also hard to miss. Not strictly loud, but remarkably effervescent and bright, with a penchant for showy entrances, it is safe to say that Lilianne doesn’t go anywhere unnoticed and never does things by halves. She is the type of woman who will introduce herself to anyone, though she is also pretty good at reading people (until she starts talking to them, then she loses the ability to identify whether they are still comfortable with her or not). At a party, she can usually spot the person who doesn’t really want to be there, who is uncomfortable, who is only there as a plus-one and has been abandoned by the one. It is like she is drawn to these people, and can never seem to stop herself from bubbling over to them and striking up the conversation. Lili tries to be everyone’s friend, whether they want her to or not. Yes, she does attach a lot of importance to what other people think of her, which has, indeed, lost her a friend or two in the past, though it does take a lot to make her abandon someone. Vital as the opinions of others are, friendship and loyalty is even more important. She does tend to avoid confrontation if she can, but once something has rattled her cage, she’s not afraid to let you know about it. All her confidence, however, does not mean that she doesn’t feel nerves or embarrassment, though this is infrequent, meaning she finds it quite difficult to hide when she feels this way. A certain redness dusts the base and back of her neck, and she becomes even more prone to rambling and giggling.
Lilianne is very opinionated, though tends to voice her thoughts in a way that could be interpreted in a number of ways. Some would describe her as being passive-aggressive, off-hand until really riled. When something truly upsets or offends her, she becomes far harder and less forgiving, and, somewhat surprisingly, she can hold a grudge for a very long time. She loathes prejudice of any sort, particularly since both she, being blonde and perky, and her best-friend, being gay, are exposed to it quite regularly. That isn’t to say that she doesn’t play up to the ‘brainless’ idea when it suits her, nor does it mean she isn’t prone to the odd ‘blonde moment’ from time to time. But she actually is an intelligent woman, who quite enjoys the look on people’s faces when they attempt to patronise her, having decided that she was just an airhead. The chance to promptly prove them wrong is too great to pass up, so rarely, she will indulge in an entire conversation where she plays the role of ‘stupid’ right until the very end, when she will conclude with the most intelligent argument she can conjure and then leave the conversation. Lilianne does her best to give everyone a chance (though, as mentioned, she’s not likely to give second chances to people who really rile her), which means she can be quite naïve. Still, she adopts the ‘innocent ‘til proven guilty’ motto, and ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’. Her trust in people means she is often let down, and admits that not judging people on looks alone is a hard thing to do. This idea can be a little contradictory, considering Lili devotes most of her time to improving the way people look, and tends to mentally decide what would look better on people, suit them more, just from first glance. However, she genuinely feels that looking good on the outside can lead to inner confidence, and that is crucial to a person’s happiness.
Organisation and hygiene is important to Lilianne, though one wouldn’t think it if they judged purely on her execution of things. Often, people are surprised at some of her suggestions, wondering where she could possibly be going with it. She is polite and pretends not to notice when people stare at her like she is mad (a word often thrown about to describe her by strangers, much to her annoyance); there is always a method behind her decisions, though they are rarely immediately clear. Some people find her manner and quirky way of addressing different situations awe-inspiring, though some simply find it hectic, though none can say she doesn’t eventually achieve her desired goal, no matter how weirdly she might go about scoring it. She loves the overwhelming sense of achievement she gets when she does something right, and is quick to credit herself – though she is usually gracious and does so mentally, but she does sometimes simmer over – when this happens (though she refuses to let people thank her). This is why she so enjoys to make people over, regardless of their will. Genuinely believing she knows what’s best for people, she sometimes goes out on a whim, ignoring the requests people give her in her salon and doing something she thinks will work better, and often not bothering to tell them she is going to, for fear they would stop her: yes, she knows what is better for them, or at least, their look. Thankfully, most customers have been grateful to her, though there has been the odd backfire and one or two customers who have refused to pay, even though she could tell they liked the look she’d chosen without consulting them. She gives people ‘trial runs’ with certain make-overs, requesting that they style their hair in one way for a day or two, or wear this type of clothing for a week, all the while over-seeing the whole process. If she, and of course, the other person, decide that the new look works, she’ll devote more time to perfecting them, in efforts to make them stick and to help improve a person’s look. However, this is not always the case, and many of her ‘clients’ revert back to their original ways, and this is not always a bad thing. Yes, she believes that looks are important and is not afraid to admit it, but at the end of the day, it is what’s on the inside that counts, and happiness is key. Still, that doesn’t mean that she readily accepts unnecessarily dark clothing, something she thinks should be reserved for funeral attendances.
Lilianne is a song-writer and a singer, and this will always be her first love, though few people know it. She doesn’t like to admit it, because she knows that she has failed in this field, she hasn’t achieved her dream. Though she is, indeed, grateful that she gets to help people on a daily basis (a stylist has the additional and more important, less known job of boosting a person’s confidence and listening to their woes), deep down, she knows it is not what she really wanted to do. Mentally, she will try to deny it, for thinking on it too much summons memories of a time she continues to work hard to forget. Still, she adores music of all varieties, and is a sucker for great lyrics and melodies, believing they can touch people in so many overwhelming ways. Sometimes, songs of her own will just pop into her head, but she cannot play an instrument or write actual music, so they just drift there for a while before becoming lost and forgotten again. Every now and again, she will speak in rhyme, and will occasionally, jokingly, sing things. She does like attention, but doesn’t often sing in front of people she doesn’t know well. After all, how would she be able to gage their reaction? She actually doesn’t wish to annoy people, nor be punched in the face by someone desiring silence. Lilianne is also a dress-maker, a lover of fine materials and designing things. In fact, the woman is more creative than she lets people know. In fact, there is a lot more to Lilianne in general than she lets people know, whether it’s because she doesn’t want them to judge her and afraid of what they’ll say or think, or whether it’s because she doesn’t think it’s necessary for people to know it, even she cannot be sure. All she knows is that she has missed her chance to do what she truly wanted to do – be in musical theatre. It is her secret passion, though she likes most types of music, the exceptions being rap and r’n’b (which she refuses to accept as being music at all).
Seemingly elegant (but not strictly ‘refined’), Lilianne’s ability to be crass occasionally surprises people, much to her amusement. She very much enjoys proving people wrong, though gloating about such things is unladylike (mostly). Some of her scruples are quite old-fashioned; yes, she still believes that men should kiss women on the cheek when meeting, open doors for and pull out a seat for them, which slightly contradicts her independence, and so she often keeps these traditionalist ideas to herself. For as long as she can remember, she’s been surrounded by people, friends and acquaintances, but could count on the fingers of one hand her true friends; surprising, since she trusts so easily. But yes, like everyone, Lilianne has a dark side. She can be manipulative and offensive, speaking without thinking, or speaking with thinking but not really caring about what she says (though this, it must be said, is rather infrequent). Her values include trust, loyalty, honesty and respect. She is a very sociable person, enjoying parties a lot, be it throwing them, organising them or attending them. She loves the atmosphere and, for the majority of them, the spirit. At the other end of the spectrum, Lilianne enjoys reading, both magazines and crime-thriller novels. Once a month or more frequently, she will sit down for hours on end and just read, because really, it is not often that the woman gets to stimulate her mind. When reading, she wears glasses, and her bottom lip is often twisted between her teeth as she takes in the text, a habit she has when concentrating. She is also a very forgetful person, and often described as being ‘away with the fairies’; sometimes, she fails to notice what is going on right under her nose, focussing on minor details as opposed to the blaringly obvious ones, thus, she forgets about them. She misplaces things frequently, and is so casual about it and her forgetfulness that it can be rather annoying. Her indifferent attitude, and the way she seems to float through life without a care in the world, can sometimes make her seem ignorant, though this is not the case. Lilianne is not the most complicated of people, but she is not the simple person she appears to be at first glance. She does have issues, thinks which still jar her bones and things which even make her cry if she thinks on them too much, but doesn’t every person? She will never, ever be the woman who caves in to challenges or grief, nor one who publicises the latter of these things. Her issues are her issues, but she does sometimes wish, just now and then, that someone would ask her how she is, really. But Lilianne is sweet, and she is generous and loving, though the line between her desires and those of others can often become blurred, and yes, like all women, she has an enemy or two.
* - - - the family honor
Rose Richardson and Alexander Lawrence met when they were twenty-two, in Oxfordshire, England: she worked as a nursery school teacher and he was an accountant. There is no juicy back-story behind their meeting – it was a chance encounter on a cold February afternoon, on which he bumped into her whilst rushing to a meeting with an important client. That is the glamorous version. What it doesn’t tell is that Alexander and Rose both shouted at one another, glared at one another, and then met again the following morning in the local coffee shop. The plain truth was that they couldn’t avoid one another, and eventually, they got to talking, perhaps accepted that fate, or chance, or even themselves, wanted them to. Scarcely a year later, they were married, with a small wedding and few guests – something Rose had never really wanted, though their haste to be wed overpowered her childhood fantasies of the ‘fairytale wedding’. People warned them that they were rushing into things, and a few years down the line, this would become abundantly apparent. Rose fell pregnant six months after she and Alexander married, and on the second of August, 1974, they welcomed their daughter, Lilianne Lawrence into the world. She was a loud baby, who spent most of her time screaming, crying and gurgling her version of a laugh. She would remain their only child, much to the dismay of Alexander – who has always wanted a son – and Lilianne herself, who grew up wanting a sibling to play with, fight with, share with and talk with.
Regardless, Lilianne grew to be a lively child, oozing with confidence and thrusting herself into everything she could. From the age of three, she attended dance classes, and her mother would tell her, later in life, that she’d been a drama queen even in the womb. At the age of six, she decided that she was going to be famous, singing and dancing and acting on the stage in front of huge crowds, every single day. That was why, when it came to her first school play at the age of nine, and she was cast as ‘child number one’, she was both angry and disappointed, not to mention confused. Although she never spent much time with her father, her mother would give her constant encouragement and praise, making her genuinely believe she could – and indeed, should – do the things she so wanted to do. As a result of this disappointment, Rose decided it was time to stop soothing her daughter’s ego so much, or further upset might ensue. After that, Lili’s love for performing seemed to dwindle, and after less than year, she’d stopped dancing completely. Slowly, her weight started to creep upwards, and eventually, she was facing obesity and her confidence was dwindling. This time, her mother absolutely insisted that she take up dancing again, knowing that her daughter was unhappy and loved the sport, vowing to work harder to achieve the right balance between encouragement and head-swelling. However, Lilianne struggled with her weight throughout all of her teen years, and occasionally found (and indeed, still finds) herself battling with her body into her twenties and early thirties. She has now just come to accept it as a persistent problem which she has to work to beat.
Her childhood was a stable one: she attended school, she made friends, she moved house twice, once leaving her friends behind and having to start again in a new school and area. Thankfully, being blessed with confidence and an endearing sort charm, she took all of this in her stride. It was after this second move, when Lili was eight, that she met the boy who would become her best friend in the world. He was being cornered by a bunch of taller girls, being asked questions he was clearly uncomfortable with, and so Lili – sensing his unhappiness – interfered, asking them in the most irritating way she could what they were doing, what they were talking about, and if she could join in. She and Leo Prewitt were then best friends by default, and this status stuck as they got to know and appreciate one another. Perhaps she would’ve developed a romantic sort of love for him, had he not come out to her when they were teenagers, and had she not found herself in a the stickiest of situations shortly following this. Still, the adoration remained, and the pair are still incredibly close, and instead of loving him romantically, she loves him, unconditionally, as a friend, and has stood up for him to the homophobes of the world, as well as to his own more-than-a-little-bit homophobic parents. Although she would never verbally admit it to him, Lilianne values Leo’s opinion above that of anyone else, and considers him to be one of the most important people in her life.
Lilianne’s transition from childhood into puberty was a relatively smooth one, even if it did come a little early (incidentally, Leo was the one to convince her to talk to her mother when she got her first period and promptly decided that she was dying), and her secondary school experience was, by and large, a happy one. As everyone expected, Lili’s grades were average, except for in music, drama, and, a little surprisingly, English. However, it was not due to a lack of ability, but rather, a lack of interest. To her, spending her teenage years working was not worth it, unimportant, and irrelevant to what and who she wanted to be. Really, who needed excellent grades to be a singer, an actress? So she remained the social butterfly, ignoring the advice of her elders and enjoying herself. Until she hit fifteen. It was at this age when she really began to grow into her figure, her body, much to her horror. The new, sudden curves and breasts terrified her, and instead of becoming more confident and comfortable with and in herself, she regressed into her shell, not aware of how to use and accept her body. It was at this time that Lilianne really began to struggle, starting to fight a battle which would rage on for a further two years and haunt her for the rest of her life. Her family noted a marked change in her demeanour: they no longer needed to worry about her being ‘too sociable’ and not getting the grades, but they just needed to worry. Suddenly, she stopped dancing again, stopped going to her drama classes, stopped going to parties. Her interest in the opposite sex seemed to disappear, not manifest, as her body developed, and her interest in the junk food – and eventually food altogether – she so loved diminished. It was a man double her age who first noticed the problem, and actually acted to try and reverse it. Her music teacher. Thirty-year-old Charles Clark instructed only-just-fifteen-year-old Lilianne to stay behind one of his lessons, after weeks of uncharacteristic silence and melancholy. The pair had always gotten along in that healthy, friendly student-teacher way, and Mr Clark’s intentions were purely honourable, born out of concern for the health of his favourite student.
Lilianne, harder than she’d ever been before, quickly developed a great deal of respect and trust for the man. It was she who stayed behind after all her lessons, she who chose to spend her break and dinner times in his company. He found her cared about her too much to fret over what people might think, if that thought even ever crossed the man’s mind. He made no indication to Lilianne that it had. He did not mould her to be his little sex-toy, he was not a monster. Their relationship simply grew too close far too quickly, and Lili figured that he didn’t realise the seriousness of the situation until afterwards, until she was gone from his life. It was after just two weeks that the pair slept together, when she turned up at his office brighter than she’d been in a while. She still doesn’t understand why she went to him that evening, as the school cleaners were packing away their equipment, but she felt like she owed him something. She didn’t know, as he held her and kissed her hair, that he was more terrified than she was. Because he couldn’t fall for a student. It was improper, illegal. Lilianne was too blinded to care: she was convinced she loved him, and he didn’t know whether to feel happy or aghast that he thought he felt the same way. Happy because it meant he hadn’t just used her or taken advantage of her, or aghast because it simply could not be: her body was not as old as her mind. But it was a whirlwind, and the following week, Lilianne met him at his small, orderly little home and joined him in his bed, and it made her feel grown up and safe and loved, and she was sure this was what she wanted. He never said to her ‘when you leave school’, ‘when you’re eighteen’, but they both thought it. The fear silenced them.
It only happened twice, but it was enough: Lilianne fell pregnant at the age of fifteen. Terrified, horrified, she hid the growing stomach beneath loose clothing and the same sombre attitude she’d adopted for months. She did not tell Charles; she didn’t want anything to happen to him, couldn’t stomach the knowledge of what they’d call him and do to him. She’d seen teachers, on the news, accused of terrible things: she could not, would not, do that to him. She made it six months with zipped lips, and would’ve probably carried full-term without saying anything, but her parents noticed. How could they not? They ranted and raved at her, cried and worried: Lilianne simply stared at the wall, no longer able to hold her silence about her pregnancy but able to hold her silence on the paternity of her child. The family quickly moved away, and to this day, Lili is convinced it was for shame. The reason she gave her friends was ‘my dad’s work’. It wasn’t until labour began, when pain and panic become overwhelming, that she admitted who the father was. She didn’t know what to do with a child, couldn’t even begin to imagine raising one. Charles was the only person she could think of with answers. If Lilianne had known that her confession would summon the father to the hospital and result in her never seeing him nor her child again, she never would’ve done it. She would have waited until she was eighteen, when she was a legal adult and no longer under the protection – the control – of her parents. But when she spat out his name, the fact that he taught her music in school, through thick gasps for oxygen and to release the pain of childbirth, it was accompanied by frantic begging and pleading for them to please, please not report him. Her explanation that she was willing, she wanted it, went unheard. They acquiesced to Lilianne’s requests, but didn’t tell her that it was on the condition that the father took the baby and moved far, far away. She never knew what happened to her first love nor her child, being with her for only a day before she was taken, literally, out of her arms. Before it happened, it was as though she knew, and her eyes and mind united to memorise every part of the pure little girl, with her light hair and her light eyes and Charles’s fuller lips. Her colouring gave her name, one that popped into Lili’s head and stuck immediately. And so she watched from behind her hands, a watery barrier, half a curtain and a pane of glass as her father handed the baby, the little girl, over to the father who’d only just discovered that she existed. Lili had felt the discomfort in her neck only numbly as she stretched to watch, as the anguish which stole her when Charles didn’t put up a fight to stay, or even see her before her walked out of her life with their child, was entirely consuming. But she saw her father mouth the baby’s name, and it sparked the tiniest amount of… hope: ‘Farren’. Little Farren.
The Lawrences were away for a year. They moved back to the same area, and Lilianne returned to the same school, sixteen and a half, terrified of her body, humiliated at losing her child and having to keep her some dirty secret. Mr Clark had moved to a different school and a better job, they told her eagerly, knowing they’d been almost-friends. The switch back to normality was sudden, and it struck her so suddenly that it hurt. The fact that she was struggling even more now both surprised her and seemed logical, somewhere within her addled mind. She simply couldn’t readapt to this schoolgirl life. By the time she was seventeen, her curves had virtually vanished, her chest flattened, her face hollowed: she was clinically anorexic. She was hospitalised soon after her seventeenth birthday, having refused to eat for pretty much the entirety of the summer of nineteen ninety one. It was the support of her best friend (who she never told about her child, who she feels she has betrayed, necessarily or not), and her family (her mother, in particular) which got her through this hard and heavy patch. Somewhat surprisingly, it brought Rose and Lilianne closer than they’d ever been (Rose silently believed that all of Lili’s bitter resentment was reserved for her detached father) and that was how they remained until Lilianne decided to up and move country when she was twenty-six. She wasn’t aware that she was moving to the exact place where her daughter would attend college.
At nineteen, things started to feel like normal again, she started to feel like herself again. She had not forgotten about her daughter and Charles, but after a year and a half of waiting and searching, staring at little blonde girls and wondering, she knew it was time to give up, move on. Hopefully, little Farren was happy. Charles would make her happy: she didn’t know that he would die when Farren was a young teenager, leaving her in the care of an unpleasant step-family. And so Lilianne had her first serious boyfriend. They were together for about a year and half when he proposed to her, and she readily accepted. It all happened exactly how she thought it should, how she imagined it to… But their engagement lasted two weeks before she returned the ring to him, telling him she was not ready for marriage. The truth was, she was terrified that she was turning into her mother. As much as she loved the woman, she didn’t want to be her, and more importantly, she didn’t want the relationship which Rose and Alexander had. Lilianne spent next to no time with her father; the two of them being opposites, they never understood one another, never had that ‘sacred’ father-daughter bond people talked about so often. He threw money at her in place of his love. And he and her mother? They had fallen out of love by the time she started nursery school, barely spoke to one another by the time she had her first ballet recital, and had officially separated by the time she hit puberty, though united to take control over her pregnancy. Lilianne lost nothing in losing her father, who she doesn’t speak to anymore. Her biggest blow was the sudden death of her mother when Lili was thirty. She got the phone call three hours later, telling her that there’d been a car accident and that Rose had died at the hospital. Immediately, Lilianne blamed herself: if she had not left the country, left her mother behind in England, this never would have happened. Her mother had always encouraged her to follow her dreams, do what she wanted to do with her life and not let anything hold her back, but Lili couldn’t help but feel like she’d failed her somehow, and still feels that way. The funeral, so opposite to the birth of her daughter, joined that very day to be one of the worst days of Lilianne’s life. That was the last time she spoke to her father. The death of Rose impacted Lilianne heavily, and perhaps this is why she tries so hard to be motherly and friendly to everyone – to fill that metaphorical gap, left by the theft of her own mother and her chance to be a mother. However, more than twenty and nearly five years on, Lilianne is getting on with her life. Although she is not the success she once dreamt of becoming, although she has made decisions which still pain her, she is… content. She has to be.
* - - - connect the dots
Since there wasn’t much to go on for the Fairy Godmother in the film, I’ve kinda been grasping at straws. One of the most discerning features of the Disney character is her age: they have made her older to achieve that motherly, loving feel. Although I have decided not to make Lilianne ‘old’ by any means, I knew that making her any younger than thirty would not work. I have also decided to make the character worried about her age: although the Fairy Godmother doesn’t demonstrate any sort of insecurities, I wanted to give my character that element of realism and believability. Lilianne, as a meticulous person when it comes to looks, would definitely notice every single line and dwell on them. I wanted to capture, instead of the idea of her being old, the idea of her aging, and really not liking it. The second thing one tends to notice about the Fairy Godmother is the fact that she is plump. I tried to incorporate this idea by mentioning her weight struggles, and her obsession with trying to keep fit and thin. The intention was to imply that Lilianne shares the same body shape with the Fairy Godmother, though she probably spends more time on maintaining her looks than the Disney character, since I wanted some variation there. The anorexia idea was included to show the opposite end of the spectrum, and again, the highlight Lili’s struggles with her body, both mentally and physically.
In the Disney film, the Fairy Godmother says about Lucifer the cat, after was scared away, “serves him right, I say.” In response to this, I have decided to make Lilianne a person who is somewhat unforgiving and very loyal. The Fairy Godmother sees that Lucifer is an unpleasant creature towards Cinderella, whom she is obviously very protective over, and through this loyalty, she does not like the cat and thinks her deserves what he gets. I tried to expand on this idea; both Lilianne and the Fairy Godmother try to avoid confrontation, but they also both have opinions and are not afraid to voice them, particularly when it comes to standing up for someone they love. In the case of the Fairy Godmother, this person is Cinderella, and in the case of Lilianne, it was for her best friend, Leo, though she would do the same (that is, dislike someone by default because of their attitude towards someone she is close to) for the people she loves the most. Also, the Godmother was dismissive and off-hand, but still very clear, in her dislike of the cat, and I have, and will continue to, incorporate this into Lilianne, who probably gets away with saying a lot of things because of the way in which she says them. The forgetfulness was something I had to include, because it is one of the traits of the Godmother which you notice immediately. I plan to make this comical in Lilianne, as it was in the Disney character.
The idea of Lilianne as a stylist is a parallel of The Fairy Godmother making over Cinderella. The Disney character seemed to very much enjoy herself as she transformed Cinderella, so I decided that Lilianne would also enjoy to do this. Both characters attach a lot of significance to appearance, though both acknowledge that there is more to life than that: looks are just a confidence-booster. Confidence is another idea which I have shared with Lilianne. Both characters are unafraid to use their own methods to gain what they desire to, even if it means confusing or surprising people. In Cinderella, the animals are obviously confused by her execution of the transformation, and I would like to make Lili surprise people in much the same way. The idea of Lilianne going on whims and deciding what she thinks might be better for a person’s look comes from the fact that Cinderella is never consulted on her outfit for the ball; the Fairy Godmother just goes ahead and does what she thinks will be best. The ‘trial run’ idea which I have attached to the people who Lili ‘transforms’, and the fact that many people return to their ‘old ways’ afterwards, is a reference to the ‘until midnight’ idea of Cinderella. Lilianne’s own ‘magic’ doesn’t always stick, and she doesn’t always follow through with her make-overs after the ‘trial run’.
Obviously, the Fairy Godmother enjoys singing and speaking in rhyme, and though it would be illogical for Lilianne to do this all the time, I thought it would be fun to say that she occasionally does the latter, and loves to do the former. Not much is known about the Disney character, which is why I have included Lili’s dreams of performing for a living. The Fairy Godmother is but a figment of Cinderella’s imagination, there to do her bidding, but I thought it would be more realistic to give Lilianne dreams and hopes, and relevant to the canon for her to have failed. Instead, she devotes her life to styling others, even though it is not what she truly wants to do. I liked the idea of the Fairy Godmother having had dreams once, but she ended up being what someone else wanted her to be, as did Lilianne.
This leads on to the independence the Godmother seems to have: not much is known about her as a character, though things can be interpreted about her personality. I added the part about her parents marrying quickly and falling out of love, and Lili’s mother’s death, because I wanted it to affect Lili’s future life, her reluctance to settle down because she’s fearful of ending up like her own parents. The idea of Lili as the mother of ‘Cinderella’ came to be later; I was intrigued by the idea of getting rid of the ‘god’ in ‘godmother’, and paralleling this idea by making Lilianne her biological mother but not actually knowing Farren to help her. I also thought this idea would add to Lili as a character, give her a bit more history in order to make her additionally three dimensional, and, in a way, to give a reason for her overwhelming optimism: she’s lost a lot, and she dealt with it as she had to. Now she’s living her life, thinking about her daughter but not having her as a vital part of her life, and adopting the idea that life is for living, and mistakes have been made and cannot be reserved. Dwelling would help nobody, and, like the Fairy Godmother, Lilianne has an extremely bubbly personality, having learnt to always look on the bright side of things. One of the main factors, also, about Lilianne’s character is that she doesn’t know how to go about finding true love, so instead, focuses on helping others find theirs, like the Fairy Godmother does for Cinderella.
* - - - the stuff heroes are made of
The day was cold, the frost pressed against the window panes, hissing its prayers to be let inside, where the artificial heat was turned up so high that it turned the cheeks of the customers and employees alike burned, rosy red. Those walking past would look inside, envying, at the people without coats and scarves, with flushed faces and a comfortable manner, neither tight nor tense with the iciness of winter. She, however, would’ve taken the iciness of winter at that very moment, as the heat of the blow-dryers being used either side of her assaulted her bare arms, and the curling iron in her hand warmed her hands, and the central heating and electric radiator toasted the place until she could barely stand it. Lilianne was a summer girl, through and through, but looking outside and seeing cold, but feeling nothing but heat, heat, heat, made her head hurt and her brow gather beads of sweat. This was ridiculous. She finished styling the customer’s hair as quickly as she could without burning either of them or doing a bad job, accepted her payment, gave her change and wished her a nice time for the party she was attending that evening, then rushed out of the salon as quickly as she dared. The cold wind on her face was a slap, and she inhaled sharply at the sudden and thorough change in temperature. It both dizzied and refreshed her, and she took shallow breaths while clutching the wall behind her as she tried to regain her bearings.
At two o’clock in the afternoon, it had already been a long day, and more than once, she had considered closing, giving up on pretending to be in a chipper mood and caring about things that, today, seemed mundane. Ordinarily, she would probably have been interested in that party her last customer told her about; enthusiastic even, bold enough to ask if the invitation was open. Perhaps she would mentally plan her outfit for the evening, regardless of whether she was going to attend or not, because that was the type of thing she enjoyed doing. Today, however, she just found herself smiling and nodding, making a detached comment about peep-toe shoes, keeping up her usual appearance of happy little beautician, enthusiastic about everything. But Christmas was approaching, and Lilianne wasn’t ready for it, and what it would bring. Joviality and a five year anniversary. Five years, already? It was hard to believe, and even harder to accept. Some mornings, Lilianne would wake up and decide to telephone her mother. And then she would remember, and be struck with a wave of guilt and sadness. She didn’t deal well with loss nor mourning, and when she thought on it too much, it became overwhelming.
She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall of the salon, aware that people were staring at her for her little tank top in the dead of winter. Her skin protested in goose-pimples, but her face was still red with heat. Was she going to cry? This was absolutely ludicrous. Sighing and running a hand through her hair – a habit borne of stress and the desire to calm herself – Lilianne decided to send a text to Leo, hoping he’d snap her out of it. Come save me from work, it read, thoughts are distracting me. Am wasting my time here. Her employees could handle the rest of her appointments for today: she’d had enough. And after all, what was the point in owning your own beauty salon if you couldn’t up and go home when you felt you had to? She returned inside when she realised that she was suddenly cold. “Guys,” she told two of the girls who were gathered around the bookings book, “I’m not feeling too great. Can you share my others? Three o’clock hair styling and then some nails at three twenty: nothing too taxing. Thanks,” she chirped, not stopping to talk before she gathered her coat and bag and all but ran to the door to wait for Leo outside. “I’ll be back around half five.” Ugh, she really needed a holiday.
* - - - the mouse behind the ears
your name: Aelisa
gender: Female… most of the time xD
rp experience: Three years, give or take (:
age: Seventeen
how you found us: Jen <3
[/size] |
|
