An Alternate Ending of Auradon Part 2: Two

Chapter One~

            Evie finishes the final touches on her mannequin, and then turns to Mal, "What now?"

            "What now?" Mal repeats. "We've got the whole Isle to decorate now."

            Carlos tells her, "That's going to take a while."

            "We have our entire lives here now," Mal says.

            Evie looks around at all three of her friends. "This is serious."

            "What do you mean?" Carlos asks.

            "I mean, we left Auradon," Evie shrugs. "I so felt like I belonged there, but I just up and left everybody I love."

           Carlos starts to say something, but Mal holds up a hand to stop him. "Our friends are dying. Our parents are making sure of that. We had to make sure not to be there. But if you need to go back…”

            "No," Evie is quick to shake her head. "I lost the one person I needed there. Now all I need is you. Carlos and Jay too."

            "Then the four of us will make this work." Mal looks around at all of her friends. She says, "Because we're rotten."

            The other three finish for her, "To the core."

An Alternate Ending of Auradon Part 2: One

“Shall we?” Evie holds her arm out Mal.

“We shall,” Mal takes it as they step into the threshold of the Bargain Castle.

“I’ve never been here before,” Evie takes it all in.

“Well, here it is.” Mal wanders off from Evie, to the farthest end of the room. She turns with a sweeping gesture to all of the others, “This is my crib.”

Jay walks up to her and nuzzles his nose against her neck. “You missed it, didn’t you?” he asks.

“Well, yeah,” she laughs, playfully pushing him away. “Of course. Everybody misses their home.”

“I don’t,” Evie speaks low.

“What do you mean, you don’t?” Mal turns toward her.

“I don’t miss my home,” Evie meets her purple-haired friend’s eye, shrugging her shoulders. “I felt like I belonged in Auradon way more than I ever did on the Isle!”

“But we can’t go back,” Mal blanches.

“And it’s all our fault,” Evie looks down.

“Come on, guys!” Carlos speaks up for the first time since they stepped foot in the castle. “It’s not our fault that our parents are evil. And, besides, we have the entire Isle to ourselves now. We can do whatever we want.”

“You’re right,” Mal looks at him. She turns slowly to the other two, “Let’s do some decorating.”

So Many Ways to be Wicked~

I told you that wasn’t the end of the story, didn’t I?

An Alternate Ending to Auradon Part 2: One

What a Girl Is - What I Am - A Tribute to Christina Grimmie:

I didn't even know I knew who she was until she was senselessly shot down at her concert in Orlando. 

Christina Grimmie collaborated on one of my favorite Dove Cameron songs. What a Girl Is has touched me so deeply. I've always had a very bad relationship with food. It didn't have anything to do with my body at first. I've just always had this mindset that I shouldn't have food unless I deserve it. I started having issues with the way I view my body after a devastating thing happened to me in 2011. I still remember the first time I looked in the mirror and thought, "They're crazy. I am not beautiful." I still have issues with that sometimes (especially since my body always so sick), but I listen to What a Girl Is, and I remember, I am not just my body. 

But my heart has been devastated for the past 36 hours (and especially now after hearing about the mass shooting at the club in Orlando, seven minutes away from where Christina was shot). This young girl shouldn't have died. There was no reason for a girl, not two years younger than I am, to die living out all of her dreams. She was so beautiful. She was so happy. Christina was an angel. 

And I cannot lie when I tell you that her death has caused me to think a lot. 

And to reevaluate my life. 

At the beginning of this year, the one thing I told myself was that I had to be picked up for publishing before 2017. But as most New Year's Resolutions go, I kind of... stopped thinking on it. But events over this past month, poor Christina's death included, have fueled that fire back into me. I AM going to be picked up for publishing by the end of the year. You can be certain of that. I already have two different boutiques for the independent author looking toward me. I CAN do it. I believe in me. 

And I would just like to thank Christina for making me believe in myself again. I think, up there in Heaven, she can somehow see that. 

(This post was accidentally removed, hence the new publish date. I am very sorry to Christina's memory for this.)

Fairytales in 2016~

Yes, hello, I know I have been away all this year. But I have been sick. I have been busy. And I have been working on my newest novel project. 

In fact, I am writing about fairytales!

Both in my new project, and on this new post today. 

I groan and blink my eyes. My dark eyelashes float in and out of my vision slowly. I’m looking up at marshmallow shaped clouds. Wait a minute. The clouds are actually shaped like mashmallows?

I started 2016 (after finishing Richelle Mead's Soundless, of course) with reading fairytales. The old fashioned fairytales. Grimm Brothers and before. 

Five months into the year, I still have two more fairytales left to go: Cinderella and Peter Pan. 

“Because that is Cinderella’s story,” I pointed to the castle. “And it’s the final part of my mother’s world.”

And now you're probably asking yourself what fairytales I have read this year. So let me tell you. Sleeping Beauty. The Sword in the Stone. The Black Cauldron. Rapunzel. The Snow Queen. Snow White. The Little Mermaid. 

And now I am going to ruin your probably perfect views on these tales. 

“So which fairytale will you go to first?” I gestured all around us. We stood exactly in the center of the nine tales, their castles and towers looming straight over our head. She didn’t have a clue.

Sleeping Beauty was a real beauty. In fact, she was so beautiful that, upon finding her and thinking her dead, a king performed necrophillia on her. Little did he know, she was actually alive and she became pregnant. With his twins. Even throughout the labor, she stayed asleep. In fact, she did not wake up until the girl twin sucked her finger trying to find the breast, and ended up sucking out the splinter from the spinning wheel that evidently put the princess to sleep. The king found her again and found out that she was alive and with twins. He continued seeing her on the side of his wife. After his wife found out, she sent a servant to kill the twins to feed the king them. The servant, of course, wouldn't kill babies, but the king didn't know that when he was told he ate his own kin. 

Constance spoke up, “Did you know that in the very first written version of Sleeping Beauty – though it was actually called Talia, Sun and Moon – the man who came and found her was actually a king, he wasn’t a prince. He was married and everything. But then he screwed Sleeping Beauty, thinking she was actually dead. I think that’s called necrophilia.”

The Sword in the Stone and The Black Cauldron are not traditional fairytales, you may say, even though Disney did animated films of them. Both of the books were written in the 1900's, even. But they are two stories that take place in my book, and there are definitely some twists. Such as dead fairies in The Sword in the Stone and a suicide in The Black Cauldron. 

I turn to find Megan le Fay lying out on a bed of lard. The queen of fairies is an awful gluttonous woman, and the form she’s taken shows it. Her hair is long and black, but really greasy. I open my palm to show her my dagger, and she flinches away.

“I’m not going to let anyone die!” she cried.

And at that, he grabbed her face and kissed her. It was a harsh and hard kiss that I was really afraid would hurt her. Of course, that made me want to hurt him.

In the original Rapunzel, it was an Ogress that took her. After the prince helped her escape, the Ogress cast a spell that caused the prince to go blind, but a tear from Rapunzel's eye fell upon his and cured him. And then the Ogress tripped while running and died. 

“You are not taking my princess anywhere,” Mother Gothel said. “She was the prize I received for the King stealing herbs from my garden.”

“Herbs,” Constance scoffed. “You can get those anywhere.”

There is not one troll in Hans Christian Anderson's The Snow Queen, thank you very much, Frozen. What there is, though, is a looking glass that shows your reflection as something truly ugly and horrid. And this looking glass broke into millions of little tiny shards, and happened upon the luck of piercing one unlucky little boy in both the heart and an eye, causing him to see everything as truly ugly and horrid. This little boy was taken by the Snow Queen, and his neighbor friend spent the whole story following talking crows and reindeer to find him. 

I felt a small prick in my eye and a tug at my heart. If I had not been standing there, Kay would’ve been struck with the shards of the looking glass that turns everything beautiful into something horrid and ugly. I was struck with them instead.

Snow White is... Snow White. Admittedly, Disney's film doesn't divert from the story of it too much. The original fairytale traumatized readers with a death during labor and Evil Queen being killed by being forced to dance in heated iron shoes until she fell dead, but the rest of it as just as innocent as Saturday morning cartoons.

"Paul," she leaned over the bed toward me. "In Grimm's fairytale Evil Queen is forced to wear iron hot shoes in the end and dance until she dies. But today, I can simply trick Evil Queen into eating her poisonous apple instead. Now, tell me, which death is more merciless?"

The Little Mermaid is the original fairytale I find to be the most traumatizing. The mermaid doesn't lose her voice, she loses her tongue. And she never even wins her prince. She dies instead. 

"What is the next fairytale?" she asked. 

I pointed just as we approached the crashing waves. 

She backed up, "No way."

Now, you may wonder what exactly my novel is about. Well. It is about this girl who gets stuck in a world of these fairytales, and to get out she must play them all out. But she's not the kind of girl that will simply play them out and leave them that way. She's the kind of girl that will get the princesses out, so that maybe they might find themselves. 

I had to explain it to her, “The only way to get out of my mother’s world is to get through it. And to do that, you’re going to have to play the heroine in each of my mother’s fairytales. In the proper order. And with that ring on. If you take it off, it’ll just disintegrate.”

My favorite fairytale that I've read in 2016 is another untraditional fairytale like mine. In fact, most people probably would not call it a fairytale. But because I am writing a fairytale and this story has helped inspire parts of mine, I am calling it my own personal fairytale, because fairytales inspire. 

And the book that I am talking about is called The Glittering Court. 

I already knew I love Richelle Mead, especially after meeting her last year. And now I know that I love how she can spin a fairytale. 

First, she takes you through a world filled with glitter and glam. A world our protagonist is used to, until she runs away and has to pretend she's not used to it. There are storms and ships and pirates. And then our protagonist is thrust into the gold mining industry. I just never knew what she was going to do next! And I think that is the truest trait of a fairytale, and the trait I hope my own fairytale has the most of. 

"Tink?" I turned toward the sound.

"Is that Tinkerbell?" Constance asked. 

Happy Birthday, Camryn- Er, I Mean, Dove Cameron! The Beginning of a New Novel:

“I still can’t believe you’re leaving tomorrow,” he said.

I laughed at him, “Don’t be such a drama-baby. I’m only going to be gone for the summer.”

“The summer can last a really long time,” he told me. “You watch Phineas and Ferb with me.”

I laughed again. Phineas and Ferb were pretty crazy. I moved in to hug him, feeling his warm body against mine. As I pulled back from him, I said, “Goodbye, Garret.”

“Camryn, wait,” he grabbed my wrist to pull me back into him so I would get to feel that warmth again. “I have to tell you something before you go.”

“What?” I laughed. “Can you make it fast? I have to be up at four in the morning to leave.”

“Uh, I don’t know how quick I can be,” he laughed as well. “It’s kind of important.”

“So is my leaving in the morning,” I tried pulling away again to get to my house next door.

“I- I like you,” he turned me to face him.

“And I like you, Gare,” I tweaked his nose.

“No- No, I mean-” he sighed, and looked up at the star filled sky as if trying to come up with the right words to say me. “We’ve known each other for such a long time.”

“Garrett, what is it?” I changed my tone, noticing how serious he was being.

“We were practically born together,” he said.

“We were born in two different hospitals across town,” I looked up at him.

“Yeah, but we were born on the same day, and that’s gotta account for something,” he shrugged.

I giggled.

“And then we moved into our houses on the same day,” he gestured to either side of us. “Right next to each other. Who would’ve known?”

“I think our parents knew.” I took his hands and pressed them back down to his sides.

He intertwined his fingers with mine, and sighed, “And then we grew up together.”

The porchlight at my home flicked on, my parents letting me know I needed to get in for bed.

I started to step back, breaking the bridge our hands had created between us, “And will our life story form a point anytime soon?”

“I like you,” he told me again.

“Garrett, I already you that I like you too.”

“No, he took a deep breath, his chest puffing out. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m in love with you.”

“Well,” I let out a long breath. I moved close again and shoved my fingers into his so thick sandy hair. “It’s about time.”

“Oh,” his sigh traveled throughout his whole body, and I could feel it through the length of mine. It was the sweetest sigh I’d ever felt come from him.

He leaned in.

“Camryn!” my dad called just before Garrett’s lips met mine.

“No,” I groaned, turning my head to look at my father’s silhouette.

Garrett’s mouth landed on my cheek, but I relished in that feeling still.

“You’ve gotta be up in seven hours,” Dad called. “Let’s get to bed.”

“You heard him,” I slowly backed away from my best friend – if not more than that now.

“Wait, just another minute,” he said.

“Garrett, I don’t think I have another minute,” I pointed back toward my dad.

“Then just take this,” he pressed something into my hand. “I found it at the flea market. It’s kinda a sort of promise ring.”

“Garrett,” I held the ring close to my heart.

“You should go,” he pointed as my dad called for me again.

“I’ll see you in three months,” I started to back away one last time.

“Don’t forget me,” he said.

And I asked him, “How could I forget you when I love you just so much?”

He mouthed the words, “I love you.”

And then I turned away from him before he could see the tears starting to form in my eyes.

I ran back to my house for my last sleep before I would officially become NASA’s next summer intern.

Aimee's Mal-oween~

Descendants first premiered on Disney Channel on July 31^st. I didn’t watch it that night, even though my sister bought the DVD for me that very day for my birthday two weeks later. I had to wait until I finished Melissa de la Cruz’s prequel book, The Isle of the Lost, first, of course.

In Isle of the Lost, Mal – daughter of Maleficent – is a sneaky little thief who paints the town with graffiti. She refuses to believe that she has any friends until situations push her into relying on them. She wants to be bad… but maybe she’s actually a little bit good.

Dove Cameron plays Mal in the sequel movie, Descendants.

I really admire Dove Cameron so much. I probably talk about that a lot. I know I wrote my one article on Cambio about her.

You see, while we were still dating, my last boyfriend drove me to Wal-Mart for a middle of the night rendezvous. He paid for a copy of The Isle of the Lost for me. For me, Dove Cameron’s relationship with her boyfriend is my goal for a relationship. And I’ll have it one day. But for now, I just enjoy having Dove as an inspiration. And her character, Mal, too.

So, I’m sure you can guess by now who I costumed as for Halloween.

That's right.

Maleficent's daughter.

Mal.

On October 18th, Disney Channel did a special Mal-oween night. They showcased a few Liv & Maddie episodes, sported a Wicked World marathon, showed a special Descendants fans thing, and, of course, played Descendants itself. Well, since our satellite went out that very weekend, I had my Mal-oween on HALloween.

And that's what I wanted to tell you all about.

The day started nice and slow with me waking up at four in the freaking morning. I have no idea why I woke up that early. But alas. Shanghai and I started, and read a third of in two hours, a really good book.

It’s called Switched and it’s the first book of the Trylle Trilogy by Amanda Hocking.

It’s really good. You should read it.

And then my sister woke up at eight, and the first words from her lips were, “Let’s go to Wal-Mart.”

My sister had a couple of last minute items to pick up for her own Evie costume, and she wanted to go ahead and pick up a birthday present for our niece to get that stress out of the way.

Inside the store, I asked for assistance in finding 5 Seconds of Summer’s newest CD (it was funny, because as soon as I told her the cover was super colorful, she knew exactly which album I was talking about). The worker and I happened to be standing right next to the Descendants CD, so I told her that my sister and I were going to be Evie and Mal. She got really excited about that. It made me really happy.

And then it was time to get home and get ready!

I took a couple of hours so I could get ready slowly. It’s easier and less painful for me that way. And by the time my niece came over, I had just put on my shoes.

That's when I discovered that my sissy-in-law and I looked like twins! (She's not technically my sister-in-law anymore, as she and my brother divorced, it's simply just easier to call her that. Plus, she's still one of my best friends!)

And then I had a mini photoshoot. See, my iPod broke, I can’t remember whether I told any of you that. So I use my sister’s iPod for the work I have to do on apps. And I borrow her iPod for pictures too. Only her front camera is broken. But I really needed pictures of my adorable costume. So I came up with this brilliant idea of setting it up as a video recorder and posing in various ways for the back camera. Then I just made screenshots of my favorite poses. And voila, photoshoot done!

 I’ve never thrown or been invited to a Halloween party, and Mobile weather can be tricky instead of treating. But every year my Church celebrates with a Fall Fest, and it is my favorite outing of the year.

I had been impatiently awaiting the festival for weeks. Every day of the last week, I kept asking my sister, “Why can’t tomorrow be Halloween?” I even asked the day before Halloween, and then I just screamed, “BUT IT IS!”

So, it’s pretty much an understatement to say that I was excited for it. I was shaking when we got there. But, then, of course, my aunt had to stop us for pictures.

Look at my niece’s face! She was a cat cop, of course, and she was very rotten.

However, my sister and I – Evie and Mal – were truly rotten to the core.

Our Church is raising a lot of funds for the youth and childrens’ departments. With all of the older kids having graduated and gone off to college, it’s not so easy to do the fundraisers we used to. So, for the Fall Fest they sold raffle tickets for awesome prizes and $10 gourmet caramel apples. I joked to my aunt, who helped make them, about them being gross because I detest caramel. She somehow mixed the three showcase apples in with the apples for sell, and would you believe that the only showcase she accidentally sold went to my mom AKA: HER SISTER? Also, they had one of those candy count guess games with candy corn, and I kept guessing low numbers like 12 and 2 just to bug the guy in charge of it.

The night was really fun and cute because I got to spend it with my niece and young cousins.

My eleven-year-old cousin brought his girlfriend of a year there, and so I finally got to meet her (I will not provide a picture of her since she’s not a part of my family, and privacy). She is just too cute. And she’s almost a whole foot taller than my cousin is. Their costumes went together, but I’ll hold out on telling what they were because it was weird and his mom didn’t like it too much. But what’re you gonna do. I mean, kids, right? After spending some time flipping around in the bounce house with my niece and the two boys (don’t worry, I didn’t go in it when other kids were(; ) and chasing the three-year-old all over the parking lot for a good half hour, I went into the cafeteria like room of the Church to kill time with my sister, eleven-year-old cousin, and his girlfriend. We were the only four in the room, and after telling my cousin that he had cooties because his girlfriend sat on the opposite side of me (I think she’d decided she really likes me!) from him, he got up and ran into the kitchen. The kitchen is set up so that there’s an entrance into it from either side of the cafeteria. He kept running from one doorway to the other, sticking his head out and making faces at the three of us girls. Then he ran out into the hall, making silly noises the whole way. His just too cute girlfriend looked straight at me, and said rather seriously, “At least he’s fine on the eyes.”

There is a cake walk at the Fall Fest every year. The fest has been going on for maybe six years, and I had yet to win one darn cake walk. My sister has won, like, four times. I was soo determined this year. They play three or four rounds at a time with fifteen minute breaks in between. The first round I was eating, so I only got in halfway. My youth pastor’s wife watched the second round. She said hey to me with a mouth full of drink, took another sip of it, and then said hey to my sister with a mouth full of drink. It was funny. What was even funnier, though, is that almost every cake walk win was a number that I had been seconds from landing on. So, I was determined to win the third and final round. My sister and I sat on a number for the whole fifteen minutes so we wouldn’t miss a chance (we kind of started a trend, though, because a bunch of younger kids started sitting with us, haha). My number was 2, which is my lucky number. The game started. After I lost the first call, I was certain I wouldn’t win at all. Then I landed back on my 2 for the second call, and I finally won! A sweet, little girl – I’m sure I’ve had her in one of my VBS classes at one point – gave me the exact batch of cupcakes I wanted without me even telling her. I gave my eleven-year-old cousin and his girlfriend one cupcake each, then he ended up stealing a second one and dropping some of it in my drink.

My youngest cousin, at just three-years-old, spent most of his time playing in the little “fishing pond” they’d set up for the toddles. Meaning to keep my eye on him while his mom was inside working, I tried to play “fishies” with him, but he fussed because he wanted to play all by himself so he could make the shark eat the fishies. What a big boy!

We ended up getting rained out, which is the first time that’s ever happened before. We ended with an early trunk-or-treat and door prizes. It even stormed too hard for trick-or-tricking. But I’m sure we all got enough candy at the Church. The rain melted my purple hair to a nice silvery lilac, which looked really pretty, but I still had to try on my sister’s wig and niece’s cat ears!

FORTUNATELY, the festivities did not end there! Most of my Halloween preparing and costuming had been for Dove Cameron, the true face of Maleficent’s daughter, so, of course, I tweeted a whole bunch of my pictures to her on the night after Halloween. And I still can’t fully breathe, because all of that. Resulted. In. This.

I’m so happy. And I so hope your Halloween was just as good as mine.