#bernadette belle

[disastergay]

The Case of the Serialized Killer: Textposts Edition

happy halloween @alexis-royce! you have absolutely no idea how embarrassingly long it took me to hunt down the perfect text posts for these rascally little nerds

more to come (part two will be heavily maggie-dominated as is the nature of such an iconic badass)

[windshield91]

[elliot-olivia]

Just me and my family and the ghost of my father. Yeah, well, whether your father is let in will be up to you.

[pixiedane]

Chapters: 15/18 Fandom: Law & Order: SVU, Law & Order: Organized Crime, FBI Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Olivia Benson/Elliot Stabler, Minor or Background Relationship(s) Characters: Olivia Benson, Elliot Stabler, Maureen Stabler, Kathleen Stabler, Richard “Dickie” Stabler, Elizabeth Stabler, Elliot “Eli” Stabler Jr., Noah Porter Benson, Amanda Rollins, Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr., Jet Slootmaekers, Jamie Whelan, Carl | Maureen Stabler’s Husband, Bernadette Stabler, Ayanna Bell, Odafin “Fin” Tutuola, Stuart Scola, Tiffany Wallace, Additional Characters in Minor Roles Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Living Together, Domestic Fluff, Family Feels, Family Drama, Past Domestic Violence, Past Torture, Past Sexual Assault, Psychological Trauma, Childhood Trauma, Canon-Typical Violence, Crack Treated Seriously, Declarations Of Love, Additional Warnings In Author’s Note

Summary:

The enemy was on hand and the vests indicated shooting— at his team, his partner, his whole family. But he learned at a very young age to mold his fear into armor.

Or, the siege.

Chapter-specific warnings: gun violence, dementia, medical trauma

Bring It On

[conandaily2022]

Bernadette Belle Ong biography: 13 things about Miss Universe Singapore 2020

Bernadette Belle Wu Ong is a Chinese-Singaporean actress, events host, model and beauty queen with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance. She owns a jewelry brand called Cora. Born to Chinese parents in Metro Manila, Philippines, Ong is fluent in English, Mandarin Chinese and Filipino. A resident of Toa Payoh, Singapore, she trained to be a professional disc jockey and completed a…

[crepuscule-pourpre]

[everychingoes]

mary oliver, from october

rm, everythingoes (trans. doolsetbangtan)

fyodor dostoyevsky, from the brothers karamazov

yumi sakugawa (source)

ocean vuong, from on earth we're briefly gorgeous

sylvia plath, from the bell jar

bernadette mayer, from the way to keep going in antarctica

ada limón, from dead stars

rainer maria rilke, from letters to a young poet

mary oliver, from moments

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

In 2017 I interviewed Bernadette Wren, then head of psychology at the Tavistock Gids clinic, and asked what effect puberty blocking drugs have on the adolescent brain. Looking highly uncomfortable, she replied that the evidence so far was only anecdotal but that the clinic would study its patients “well into their adult lives so that we can see”.

Even back then, before whistleblowers had exposed the rush to medically transition children, it was alarming to hear that heavy-duty GnRH agonists such as triptorelin — used to treat advanced prostate cancer and “chemically castrate” sex offenders — were being prescribed to arrest puberty in hundreds of children as young as 11.

Moreover, they were being used “off-label” before any clinical trials. And the long-term study Wren promised never materialised: Gids (the Gender Identity Development Service) routinely lost touch with patients, and the 44 it did follow reported little long-term mental health improvement.

This shocking chapter in medical history, where the ideological objectives of trans rights campaigners trumped the welfare of disturbed children, is coming to an end worldwide. The decision by NHS England effectively to ban the prescription of puberty blockers comes after the Cass review noted these drugs could “permanently disrupt” brain development, reduce bone density and lock children into a regime of cross-sex hormones requiring life-long patienthood.

NHS England unites with other national health services including those in Finland, France, Sweden and, most notably, the Netherlands — where the “Dutch protocol”, a regime of early blockers then hormones, was devised in 1998 — in pulling back from prescribing them.

Even in the United States, where a toxic combination of extreme activism and medical capitalism has pushed child gender medicine to grotesque extremes, with double mastectomies performed on 14-year-old girls, there is some retrenchment.

Leaks from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the body which formulates guidance on “trans healthcare”, reveal doctors perplexed at how they should explain to an 11-year-old child that drugs will render them infertile. Crucially, liberal media such as The New York Times are now reporting grave medical misgivings about child transition, once dismissed as a culture-war issue for the Republican right.

Yet the question remains: how was this ever allowed to happen? For years, puberty blockers were cheerily billed as a mere “pause button”. In 2014, Dr Polly Carmichael, the last head of Gids before the Cass review ordered its closure, went on CBBC in a show called I Am Leo, saying of blockers: “The good thing is, if you stop the injections, it’s like pressing ‘start’ and the body carries on developing as it would if you hadn’t started.”

The BBC permitted her to make this unevidenced claim to an impressionable audience of six to 12-year-olds. Imagine hearing this as a developing girl, freaked out by your new breasts and periods. No wonder Gids referrals subsequently rocketed.

Carmichael failed to mention that she did not know if pressing “restart” on puberty is always medically possible — it is not — and in fact, almost every child Gids put on blockers went on to irreversible cross-sex hormones.

After years in a Peter Pan state while their peers developed, they understandably felt there was no way back and forged on with treatment. Yet if allowed to experience natural puberty, almost 85 per cent of gender dysphoria cases resolve themselves.

Nor did Carmichael tell CBBC kids that the blockers-hormones combination, if taken early enough, not only results in sterility but kills the libido so that a young person will never experience an orgasm.

At the 2020 judicial review brought by a former Tavistock clinician and Keira Bell, the brave young detransitioner rushed onto hormones by Gids, judges expressed astonishment at Gids’s lack of an evidence base.

Reporting on this issue for seven years, I too have been struck by a complete clinical incuriosity. Not only was data not collected, but those who queried treatments or pressed for evidence faced angry condemnation. Perhaps activists knew what research might find because one long-term Finnish study, recently reported in the BMJ, destroyed the myth used to justify blockers: that a child will commit suicide if denied them.

The Finns found that “gender-affirming care” does not make a dysphoric child less suicidal. Rather, such children had the same suicide risk as others with severe psychiatric issues. In other words, changing bodies does not fix troubled minds.

Yet even after NHS England’s announcement, activists refuse to heed the now-overwhelming evidence. In its response, Stonewall persists with the myth that puberty blockers “give a young person extra time to evaluate their next steps”.

Many questions remain unanswered: will private clinics still be permitted to prescribe puberty blockers; and is Scotland’s Sandyford child gender clinic still determined to close its ears to all evidence? Plus, we have few details on how the NHS’s new “holistic” treatment for gender-questioning children will operate when it opens next month.

This repellent experiment — in which girls who like trucks or little boys who dress as princesses, and who invariably grow up to be gay, are corralled inexorably down a road towards life-changing treatments — belongs in the book of medical disgraces. As do the cheerleaders who raised money for Mermaids and those who persecuted whistleblowers or damned journalists asking questions as transphobic.

In 50 years, chemically freezing the puberty of healthy children with troubled minds will be regarded with the same horrified fascination as lobotomies — which, never forget, won the Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz the 1949 Nobel prize.

--------------------

{Article source (behind paywall)}

[raphael-angele]

How I imagine Bianca if she lived:

One name: Bernadette Rostenkowksi Wolowitz

During Capture the Flag:

Bianca, yelling at Percy as they run: Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!

Percy: *panting*

Bianca: How am I faster than you?! I'm carrying more equipment and I stopped to tie my shoes!

Percy: I have asthma...BACK OFF!

---

Coming back from the Titan's Curse Mission:

Nico: Bia! *runs to her and hugs her*

Bianca: *hugs him back* Hey. *pulls away and looks at him* How was camp?

Nico: It was awesome! We did wood carving, and made smores, and I learned how to make a fire, Travis and Conner even let me join Capture the Flag

Bianca, who made them promise not to let Nico join CtF until he's trained and claimed:

Nico: :)

Bianca: That's nice. Why don't you go back to the Cabin and we'll talk about the mission.

Nico: Mkay :)

Bianca, walking up to Travis and Conner: You better explain to me why you chose to ignore my instructions about my little brother joining that game, cuz one way or another, I'm gonna leave grieving for a friend.

---

Leo, opening the door:

Bianca: You son of a bitch. What did you tell Nico?! Did you tell him that there's something going on between us because he thinks there is and he is completely freaking out!

Leo:

Leo: Please, come in.

Bianca: What in Hades is wrong with you?! Leo, my position as a Hunter could be compromised! I could get into a lot of trouble!

Leo: Wha- I didn't say that there was something going on between us. I said that you were always so nice to me, it would be nice to be with someone like you.

Bianca: I'M NICE TO EVERYONE!

Leo: I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it that way

Bianca: Damn right you are. You tell my little brother that there is nothing, never has been, and never will be anything between us.

Leo: I will...hey, Bianca?

Bianca: What?!

Leo: You think I have a shot with Thalia?

Bianca: Of course, you do! You're a sweetheart! Any girl would be lucky to have you! *leaves and slams the door*

---

After Leo "died":

Percy and Jason fighting:

Jason: For the last time, I didn't mean to!

Percy: Oh, you didn't mean to? I'll show you what-

Bianca: HEY! Percy, Jason, other room, right now!

*other room*

Bianca: I don't know what you think you're doing but this is a very difficult time for the lot of us. We're doing this in honor of Leo and you're just gonna fight all night like a couple of children? What ever it is you're fighting about, put it aside, go back in there, and be a good friend or there's no dessert for either of you!

*main room*

Nico:

Hazel:

Frank:

Piper:

Thalia:

Reyna:

Bianca: Look at me when I'm talking to you-

Hazel, whispering to Nico: You ever notice how Bianca sounds just like dad?

Nico: ...nope

---

Hazel: Bianca, you've been to Olympus, right? On your first mission? What did it look like?

Bianca: Oh, it was beautiful. I looked down and it like it was like looking at a whole different world...if I could, I would've wiped it all out with my thimb like a God.

Hazel:

---

One summer: Hazel, Annabeth and Bianca decide to go to Disney World

Annabeth: Okay, so there's this place on Disney World where you pick your princess, they give you the hair, the makeup, the works. Haven't tried it before but I guess it would be fun to be Belle

Hazel: Oh, I wanna be Belle, too

Bianca: We can't all be Belle.

Annabeth: Alright then, how do we decide?

Bianca: Simple. This was my idea, I'm paying for it, I'm Belle. You bitches got a problem with that, we can go back to Camp right now.

---

Bianca: When was the last time you got any sleep?

Nico, figuring out a procephy: I don't know, two-three days? Not important. I don't need sleep. I need answers. I need to determine where in this SWAMP of unbalanced forces squatteth the toad of truth.

Hazel: Toad of truth? Is that a Greek thing?

Will: No, that's a sleep deprived thing.

Bianca: Okay, Nico. What happens to our brains if we don't get enough sleep?

Nico: They lose their ability to function and be rational?

Bianca: Exactly. So go march in there, go take a shower and get some sleep.

Nico: But I don't wanna go to sleep!

Bianca: I'm gonna count to three. One-

Nico: *sneers* Alright. *goes*

Will:

Hazel:

Will: Please teach me how you did that

Bianca: I raised him. I know how to get him to eat his vegetables, too.

---BONUS---

Taking Bianca to the drop off where she'll meet with the other hunters:

Bianca: Thank you for coming along to see me off, William

Will: Of course. Just wanna make sure you get there safe

Nico: Yeah, you'll get plenty of time looking for a new boy toy.

Bianca: Hey. I will not have you disrespecting me

Nico: Yes, ma'am

Will:

Will: Nico, you have a very attractive sister. You need to get used to the fact that even though she's vowed not to be in a relationship, she'll have plenty of suitors who would want to have her as their partner.

Nico: And you need to mind your own business

Will: Wha- I will not have you disrespecting me

Nico: You don't tell me what to do

Bianca: Don't you go disrespecting him

Nico: Yes, ma'am.

Bianca, to Will: You'll get there, you just gotta put some zing on it.

[sketchlm]

I mean, obviously this is Matt’s master plan to get rid of the EXU PC’s in order to make way for Liam and Ashley’s new PC’s. Bertrand Bell Jr and Bernadette Bell.

[youremyheaven]

Cancer Girls: Baby Voice Edition

I've noticed a pattern with many female celebrities who are known for their "baby voice" and I thought I'd make a post about it. Since Mercury is what affects our voice and style of speech the most, I'll be looking at Mercury placements along with big 3.

Obviously not everyone on this list has a natural baby voice, in fact I'd say the majority of them speak in a very affected pseudo baby voice for which they've become known. I had previously observed how Cancer rashi women do this THE most but here are more examples.

Marilyn Monroe

The OG Ingenue who was known for her breathy baby voice. She has Rohini Sun & Mercury along with Ashlesha Rising

2. Pamela Anderson

She has Ardra Sun, Punarvasu Mercury and Mrigashira Rising

3. Paris Hilton

She has a Pushya Moon and is known for her fake baby voice which her mother claimed she learned from her.

4. Drew Barrymore

She is Punarvasu moon & Mrigashira Rising

Many have noted that a lot of famous Punarvasus have a slightly ditzy way of speaking/demeanour. Almost all Mrigashiras have a very hyper, enthusiastic, kind of frantic and restless way of being and talking. They actually embody "golden retriever energy". I think the combination of these two nakshatras results in Drew's childlike enthusiasm and kind of frantic manic way of speaking and behaving. A lot of people think she's weird 😭but it's just her nature, even Pamela Anderson who shares similar placements has a similar demeanour.

5. Wonyoung

She has Punarvasu Venus conjunct Saturn (both of them are exactly conjunct so idk which one would be her amatyakaraka) and she has received a lot of flak for her "fake baby voice" 😭 Her real voice is naturally deeper and more mature but honestly Wonyoung is such a good example of a Jupiter dominant woman; they are obsessed with presenting themselves a certain way and are very "image conscious", this truly extends to everything from clothes, style, etiquette, speech, voice, absolutely everything. They know exactly what behaviours will elicit what responses.

6. Halsey

She is Punarvasu Moon (atmakaraka) & Mars along with Swati Mercury & Rising

She's known for singing in cursive 😭 but also just has a very sugary high pitched speaking voice. If you observe her even she has a very expressive, animated way of speaking, she's not quite ditzy but she's still almost childlike in her demeanour from time to time.

7. Ariana Grande

She is Ardra Sun & Punarvasu Mercury and she rose to fame for playing a ditzy airhead on Nickelodeon. She in fact spent many years speaking like Cat Valentine off screen as well until she underwent an image revamp in the mid 2010s and adopted a blaccent.

This video shows how when she was younger not only did she have a fake baby voice, she also had a very different slightly ditzy demeanour.

8. Shehnaaz Gill

She is an Indian reality star turned influencer who is known for her baby voice and exaggerated cutesy mannerisms. She is Pushya Moon.

(the interview is mostly in Hindi but you can observe her mannerisms and way of speaking)

9. Melissa Rauch

She has Punarvasu Mercury (amatyakaraka) and played Bernadette on Big Bang Theory where she spoke in a distinctive high pitched voice whereas in real life, her voice is entirely different.

10. Kristen Bell

She has Punarvasu Sun & Mercury. She literally voiced Princess Ana in Frozen. Watch any interview of hers and you will see how expressive she is when she talks, she uses her hands a lot, her face is so animated and its so Punarvasu like🥰

(Tumblr does not allow me to embed more than 10 videos per post so I'll just be linking the rest)

11. Jennifer Garner

She's Mrigashira Moon (atmakaraka), UBP Mercury, Rohini Stellium (Venus, Mars & Saturn)

She's a very good example of a typical Mrigashira. She always speaks like a very sweet, enthusiastic kid; very expressive, very animated.

Here's a link to her interview.

12. Mandy Moore

She's Revati Sun (atmakaraka) , Pushya Moon, Mrigashira Rising

She voiced Rapunzel in Tangled and imo Rapunzel is Tangled is a veryyyy good example of Mrigashira behaviour in many ways but especially with her mannerisms and manic pixie like behaviour which makes sense since she was voiced by a Mrig actress.

Here's a link to Mandy speaking

Here's a link to Rapunzel in Tangled

13. Jenny Slate

She is UBP Sun & Moon and Punarvasu rising

Her sense of humour and how she delivers jokes is a good mix of UBP and Punarvasu

Here's a link to a stand up bit

I've noticed that many Pisces rashi folks (UBP & Revati) are very expressive storytellers and have a very specific style of delivery (Salma Hayek, UBP Moon is a good example and so is Rihanna, Revati Moon).

Jenny has the dryness/deadpanned delivery of UBP mixed with the expressive frantic style of Punarvasu

14. Anna Kendrick

She is Ashlesha Sun (atmakaraka) & Mercury (amatyakaraka)

She has that typical Cancer girl sense of humour and speaking style

Here's a link

15. Mindy Kaling

She is Ardra Sun & Moon, Rohini Rising with Punarvasu Mercury

She rose to fame playing Kelly Kapoor who is a very typical Cancer gal tbh, replete with the slightly ditzy, hyper & manic style and mannerisms and squeaky excited voice.

Here's a link to her being Kelly

Here's a link of her as Mindy Lahiri on The Mindy Project

`16. Leslie Mann

She is UBP Sun, Revati Mercury and Pushya Ketu

Here's a link to an interview but Leslie is such a good example of this ditzy, kind of naive way of speaking. Her mannerisms and the way she delivers is so Pisces girlie of her.

17. Lana del Rey

She is Ardra Sun, Ashlesha Moon & Punarvasu Mercury

Lana is a good example of an introvert Cancer gal. People often think they're kind of weird and kookie and they have a chaotic kind of manic pixie way of speaking and behaving that it throws people off.

Here's a link, her speaking voice sounds very young and soft.

18.Rose Byrne

Pushya Sun & Moon, Ashlesha mercury

She's usually more composed and elegant but when she's more comfortable you see that Cancer girl charm come out. One thing all these women have in common is how they like to act out their stories and be very expressive with their face and body; their sense of humour is very silly and slapstick.

Here's a link

19. Emma Bunton aka Baby Spice

she is Pushya Sun, Mercury and Venus

(isnt it sweet that someone whose alter ego is literally called Baby Spice is a Cancer stellium 🥺)

Here's a link but Baby Spice is also a good example of a less manic but still very cutesy Cancer girl

Many Cancer girls have a tendency to "act cutesy" or "babyish" but also more often than not they are just very in touch with their inner child and kind of goofy and silly.

20. Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen

They're Mrigashira Sun, Punarvasu Mercury & Ashlesha Rising

If you've watched Full House or any of their movies, you can see the ditzy girly girl behaviour of Punarvasu come out but irl they're more introverted and a little awkward, sort of like Lana and seem funny in a shy way.

Claire Nakti had observed in her Swati video about how Swatis and Punarvasus share certain similarities, I've seen this extend to their behaviour and mannerisms as well. Jennifer Tilly, Mila Kunis (both Swati Moon) and Emma Stone (Swati Sun) all have a very similar energetic girly, sweet and humble but kind of kooky and silly style of speaking and story telling.

[sonicgirlsmackdown]

Sonic Girl Smackdown Official Bracket!

102 will enter, but only 1 can leave!

Matchups below the cut, and round one will begin sometime soon!

Breezie the Hedgehog & Relic the Pika

Nicole the Holo-Lynx & Lupe the Wolf

Dulcy the Dragon & Thunderbolt the Chinchilla

Bunnie Rabbot & Matilda the Armadillo

Clove the Pronghorn & Nephthys the Vulture

Sally Acorn & Conquering Storm the Lynx

Fiona Fox & Julie-su

Mina Mongoose & Gold the Tenrec

Cassia the Pronghorn & Echo the Dolphin

Pearly the Manta Ray & Abyss the Squid

Sonar the Fennec & Coral the Betta

Opal the Jellyfish & Bernadette Hedgehog

Rosy the Rascal & Merna the Merhog

Jian the Tiger & Bunker the Tortoise

Cinder the Pheasant & Carrotia the Rabbit

Princess Undina & Rosie the Woodchuck

Hope Kintobor & The Iron Queen

Metal Amy & Phage

Blade the Shark & Nic the Weasel

Lara-su & [winner of Blade v. Nic]

Whisper the Wolf & Lumina

Blaze the Cat & Tikal the Echidna

The End & Shahra

Tekno the Canary & Squad Commander Red

Tiara Boobowski & [winner of Helen v. Black Rose]

Amy Rose & Vanilla the Rabbit

Avatar & Scarlet Garcia

Rebel Rouge & Thorn Rose

Momma Robotnik & Lady Goat

Lah & Rachel

Surge the Tenrec & Topaz

Queen Aleena & Rusty Rose

Witchcart & Maddie Wachowski

Sticks the Badger & Sage the AI

Cream the Rabbit & Wave the Swallow

Lindsey Thorndyke & Zeena the Zeti

Molly & Sonia the Hedgehog

Honey the Cat & Belle the Tinkerer

Princess Elise the Third & Knuckles the Echidna

Frances & Jewel the Beetle

Sara/Seira & Nimue

Merlina & Tangle the Lemur

Shade the Echidna & Lanolin the Sheep

Prim Rouge & Maria Robotnik

Perci the Bandicoot & Sir Percival

Helen & Black Rose

Marine the Raccoon & Rouge the Bat

Cosmo the Seedrian & Amy Doll

Claire Voyance & Ella

Zooey the Fox & Jojo

Ebony & Batten Rouge

Lady Walrus & Mrs. Vandersnout

[ayasenisan1713]

Hey, for those who want to write lotm reaction fics, I have an idea.

Imagine if Sefirah Castle was annoyed because it was mistreated and started to complain by suddenly showing clips of all the times Mr. Fool destroyed the space to the Tarot Club members while Mr. Fool is sleeping. (But don’t represent it with a person(s); it only has living characteristics, it’s not a person. It’s like the dice of probability which can be 'communicated' with (threatened) and wants to take revenge when it’s not threatened—unfortunately Gehrman scared it until the end).

Tarot Club startled by the sudden images on their god in Sefirah Castle: How blasphemous. *still watching*

You don’t need to tweak the original story or drop Klein’s vest, you can simply show the moments above Sefirah Castle that are convenient and in the order you want, it’s your choice whether to add thoughts or not.

It has so much potential with Mr. Fool divining gods, threatening sealed artifacts and reprimanding Creeping Hunger, responding to the Sea God’s believers’ prayers, scamming Leonard into taking the Star card, protecting Bernadette when she visits her corrupted father, listing his allies and enemies before the final battle, negotiating deals with the lamp god, saving Fors on full moon nights, recruiting other Tarot Club members (you can even add Gehrman’s because he made his marionnette choose his code name aloud), not reading his own Bible then having to take it out when Amon rings the bell, conjuring figures of people that aren’t there because he is lonely, telling Arrodes he is scared at the end, etc… Yes I pretty much remember the whole novel more than a year after reading it.

I hope I inspired you all and will soon see a multiplication of lotm reaction fics on AO3.

But please don’t do it in a chronological order, even if you don’t use my idea, it’s really boring and I’ve already read chapter 1 so many times by now with the fics on Lofter.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

C'est fou comme les gens ont de moi cette image de femme sophistiquée, glaciale. C'est une telle erreur, c'est tellement mal me connaître.

- Catherine Deneuve on herself in Belle de Jour (1967)

In anticipation of a new film this summer by Catherine Deneuve called ‘Bernadette’ where she plays Bernadette Chirac, the wife of French Jacques Chirac, I’ve been re-watching some her back catalogue of films. She’s done over 64 films and at almost 80 years old she’s still going strong. And yet out of her many films I’ve always been drawn back to one film which has become a cult classic. Watching it and re-watching it and even gorging on books on its making, new intriguing details reveal themselves about this landmark French art house classic - Belle de Jour (1967).

I once had the privilege of having dinner with her - or rather sat around the same table - through a Parisian host and his lovely wife who had gathered an eclectic group of friends across generations together. I was too self-conscious to talk about her film career directly. I was on surer ground when we indulged in small talk where she was perfectly down to earth and very pleasant. I felt it would be rude to go all fan girl on her and pepper her with questions about Belle de Jour in particular as she’s known to be very ambivalent about her experience of the film - a film that really defined her in the eyes of many people.

But it didn’t mean she didn’t recognise its cultural importance though as she was quite happy to amuse us with a funny story about Belle de Jour. A newly restored 35mm version was funded by the fashion house Saint Laurent back in 2018. Deneuve always had a close relationship with Yves Saint Laurent and also the fashion house. She was the one to introduce Buñuel to Saint Laurent. So the fashion house had a glitzy premiere in New York. But they didn’t count on many of their guests being late. Most of the guests were stuck in the New York traffic and the rain. However Martin Scorsese was the only one to get out of cab and run like a mad man through the pelting rain and huge traffic. A true cinephile, he was so desperate to see the film restored to its former glory that he would go to any lengths to see it.

In Belle de Jour, Catherine Deneuve, whose limpid beauty is capable of sustaining any interpretation, is a perfect Severine and demonstrates a remarkable control in progressing, with enormous economy of gesture and movement, from frigidity to physical warmth as the bored housewife who indulges in part time sex work.

“I felt they showed more of me than they’d said they were going to,” Catherine Deneuve remarked to Pascal Bonitzer in 2004, about the making of Luis Buñuel’s 1967 Belle de jour. “There were moments when I felt totally used. I was very unhappy.”

The story of Séverine, a deeply disenchanted haute bourgeois Paris housewife who finds erotic liberation through byzantine psycho-sexual fantasies and part-time work at an upscale brothel, Belle de jour certainly made extreme demands of Deneuve: her character is flogged, raped, and pelted with muck, among other assaults. But despite her objections to the way she was treated and her difficulties with Buñuel, Deneuve’s performance in Belle de jour turned out to be one of her most iconic.

Deneuve, who had become a star only three years earlier, as the melancholy jeune fille in Jacques Demy’s 1964 all-sung musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, was just twenty-three when Belle de jour came out; notably, Buñuel’s film was released in France less than three months after Demy’s radiant, MGM-inspired musical The Young Girls of Rochefort, starring Deneuve and her real-life sister Françoise Dorléac.

But Belle de jour, more than any other film from the first decade of her career, defined what would become one of the actress’s most notorious personae: the exquisite blank slate lost in her own masochistic fantasies and onto whom all sorts of perversions could be projected. (Deneuve as deviant tabula rasa was first seen in Roman Polanski’s 1965 Repulsion, in which she plays a damaged beauty plummeting into psychosis; but Belle de jour doesn’t portray its heroine as mad, instead remaining deliberately ambiguous about the origins of her unconventional desires - and presaging the bizarre libertines she would later play in such films as Marco Ferreri’s Liza, 1972, and Tony Scott’s The Hunger, 1983.)

Buñuel was at a very different stage of his career from his young star, but Belle de jour represented a peak for him as well, the greatest - and most successful - film of his extremely rich late period. These works, bookended by 1964’s Diary of a Chambermaid and 1977’s That Obscure Object of Desire (his final film), were made mostly in France - where Buñuel had begun his filmmaking career with the incendiary, surrealist Un chien andalou (1929) - following the exiled Spanish director’s two decades in Mexico.

Many of these late projects were cowritten with Jean-Claude Carrière and focus intensely on sexual perversion (a theme that recurs throughout Buñuel’s work). Belle de jour certainly falls into that category, and also, typically, skewers the entitled classes. Yet it stands out as the director’s most intricate character study—but of a protagonist who resists definition; the heroine, frequently trussed up and mussed up, retains an odd, opaque dignity in her debauchery.

In that same interview with Bonitzer, Deneuve was judicious enough to distinguish her experience of making Belle de jour from the final product, calling it a “wonderful film.” But her first meetings with Buñuel hinted at the duress that was to follow. According to John Baxter’s 1994 biography, Buñuel, it took time for the director to “warm to” his star: “He felt, with some justice, that she had been foisted on him, first by the Hakims [Belle de jour’s producers], then by her lover of the time, François Truffaut.” After dining with Buñuel at his house, the book recounts, Deneuve “left with little more than an impression that he disliked actors in general and was reserving his decision about her. The only advice he offered was the advice he had always given actors: ‘Don’t do anything. And above all, don’t . . . perform.’”

Though Deneuve deferred to her director, she was no puppet; Belle de jour is as much hers as Buñuel’s. The filmmaker, famously resistant to “psychological” interpretations of his work, stuffs Belle de jour with his trademarks, confounding any attempt to parse meaning: the surrealist blurring of fantasy and reality, fetishism, sexual perversion, blasphemy.

But as Séverine, Deneuve, despite operating in the nebulous realm between dream and waking, imbues the film with irresistible and very real lust - and luster. Sporting the chicest Yves Saint Laurent finery, Deneuve revels in the peculiar desires of her character while always inviting our own. As Buñuel himself acknowledges in his 1984 autobiography, My Last Sigh (published a year after his death), Belle de jour “was my biggest commercial success, which I attribute more to the marvelous whores than to my direction.” (Per Baxter, after the filming of Belle de jour, he would finally admit of his star, “She’s really a very good actress.”) Deneuve’s gift was to update the world’s oldest profession for her still-expanding résumé.

The director had some modifying to do as well. Buñuel, who adapted Joseph Kessel’s 1928 novel with Carrière, assessed the source material dryly in My Last Sigh: “The novel is very melodramatic, but well constructed, and it offered me the chance to translate Séverine’s fantasies into pictorial images as well as to draw a serious portrait of a young female bourgeois masochist. I was also able to indulge myself in the faithful description of some interesting sexual perversions.”

He wastes no time in establishing those bizarre erotic proclivities. In Belle de jour’s opening scene, Séverine and her doting husband of one year, Pierre Serizy (Jean Sorel), a handsome, dutiful surgeon, are snuggled close in a horse-drawn carriage; he interrupts the tender moment with the lament “If only you weren’t so cold.” She pulls away, defensive. The sound of horse bells, which has been increasing in volume from the film’s first shot - and will indicate Séverine’s dreams or fantasies throughout - stops. Pierre orders his wife out of the cab; when she refuses, he and the two drivers remove her by force. She is gagged, bound to a tree, and whipped by the coachmen, who are then instructed by Pierre to rape her. When one begins to ravish her, Séverine appears to be in ecstasy.

This carnal reverie is soon interrupted by the Serizys at home, preparing for their usual chaste bedtime ritual. Pierre, in white pajamas, asks his pale-pink-nightie-clad wife, under the covers in a separate bed, what she’s thinking about: “I was thinking about you . . . and us. We were out for a ride in a carriage”—a scenario Pierre has heard before.

The fantasy clearly belongs to Séverine alone; she finds erotic thrills in her secret thoughts of debasement and humiliation, her florid imagination compensating for her sterile, sexless existence. Her most private desires will soon be realized at 11, cité Jean de Saumur, the address of the boutique bordello run by Madame Anaïs (Geneviève Page), given to Séverine by Pierre’s louche friend Husson (Michel Piccoli).

At Madame Anaïs’s, Séverine - now going by the nom de pute Belle de jour, a reference to her two-to-five shift (she insists on being home when Pierre returns from his workday at the hospital) - is horrified at first but proves to be a quick study. A burly Asian client scares off her two seasoned colleagues with his mysterious, buzzing lacquered box, but she is absolutely transfixed; after the john leaves, she, lying prone on the bed, lifts her head, her luxuriant mane of blonde hair disheveled, to reveal a woman still drunk on orgasmic pleasure.

The contents of the box are one of the film’s many mysteries (when asked what is inside, Buñuel would reply, “Whatever you want there to be”). Yet the greatest enigma is Séverine herself: why does she recoil from the slightest sexual advance from her husband yet lose herself, both in fantasy and in her new line of work, in elaborate masochistic tableaux? “Pierre, it’s your fault too. I can explain everything,” Séverine insists to her husband in the opening fantasy sequence, as she’s being forcibly removed from the landau. But of course, she can’t - and won’t.

As in Repulsion, there are flashbacks to possible childhood trauma in Belle de jour. In one, a man appears to touch a young Séverine inappropriately; in another, she stubbornly refuses the Blessed Sacrament. But unlike in Repulsion, whose final, prolonged shot of a menacing family photo is offered as the root of Carole’s pathology, these scenes in Buñuel’s film are almost non sequiturs, presented not as psychological explanation but as blips in a baroque sexual surrealism.

As Séverine’s reveries and job demands become stranger and more mysterious - in one daydream, she is pelted with thick black mud by Pierre and Husson, who call her “tramp” and “slut”; a ducal client solicits her in the bois de Boulogne to perform in a necrophilic rite - Deneuve retains her porcelain, celestial inscrutability, while simultaneously transforming into an earthbound debauchee, delighting in her own defilement. Madame Anaïs (whose early, shameless flirtation with Séverine - who eventually reciprocates - is the first of the many moments in Deneuve’s filmography that would cement her status as a lesbian icon) touts her new employee’s regal bearing to prospective customers: “[She’s] a little shy, perhaps, but a real aristocrat.”

Séverine’s coworkers, Charlotte (Françoise Fabian) and Mathilde (Maria Latour), are constantly remarking on the impeccable cut and style of her ensembles. Yet what this seemingly untouchable goddess craves most is the brutality of her latest john, the thug Marcel (Pierre Clémenti), a rough with metal teeth, a walking stick that doubles as a shiv, and fetishwear (shiny boots of leather with matching overcoat) that could have been dreamed up in an atelier overseen by Kenneth Anger and Pierre Cardin.

Séverine’s relationship with Marcel will lead to Pierre’s ruin - or does it? The ambiguous ending of Belle de jour suggests that everything that preceded it may have existed only in the heroine’s cracked dreamscape. Like the buzzing box, the film’s final scene is whatever you want it to be.

Yet one thing is certain: Deneuve transcends kink. And despite her misery during the Belle de jour shoot, she would return for even more bizarre treatment three years later in Buñuel’s Tristana, losing both her virtue and a leg.

Almost 55 years after it was made Belle de Jour continues to be a compelling film. It takes on greater curiosity for me as I live in Paris and there are Séverines aplenty that I come across. But the film also speaks to a non-French audience even today as it remains a shrewd commentary on the hypocrisy of social relations and sexual politics. Buñuel invites us to ponder the transgression of a socially respectable woman secretly being a prostitute in the afternoons, but I don’t think he bothered to pose the question why a socially respectable gentleman should be secretly visiting a prostitute in the afternoons - which happens more than one might think and that behaviour is normalised. Something to think about.

[zootopiathingz]

rapid fire: what would charlastor name their 15 kids

1. Beatrice

2. Arwen

3. Belle

4. Florence

5. Simon

6. Emily

7. Alastor Jr.

8. Charlotte Jr.

9. Olivia

10. Roseanne

11. Sabrina

12, Harrison

13. Bernadette

14. Madilyn

15. Timothy

[unboundprompts]

Character Name Ideas that Start With the Letter B

-> feel free to comment suggestions, I'll do my best to add them to the list.

Male:

Benjamin

Barrett

Brady

Brayden

Bernard

Brendon

Brett

Brody

Brooks

Bryce

Bryan

Beckham "Beck"

Bram

Bear

Brantley

Benedict

Booker

Ben

Brandon

Bates

Barton

Barry

Branson

Briggs

Bellamy

Bruce

Blake

Brennan

Bastian

Blaine

Baxter

Britton

Benito

Benji

Bronson

Broderick

Bjorn

Boyd

Branch

Bridger

Female:

Beatrice

Bridgette

Bernadette "Birdie"

Belle

Brooke

Beth

Bexley

Brielle

Brynn

Bella

Berkley

Blakely

Brianna

Briella

Brynnlee

Bonnie

Blossom

Bess

Brea

Barbara

Becky

Beatrix "Bea"

Blythe

Beverly "Bev"

Bunny

Bronwyn

Brayleigh

Bristol

Brittany

Belle

Blessing

Bethany

Bree

Bryanna

Gender-Neutral:

Beck

Bodhi

Beckett

Beau

Brantlee

Bailey

Briar

Blaise

Birdie

Bleu

Billie

Bo

Beanie

Brinkley

Brooklynn

Bellany

Brentlee

Benny

Banks

Brinlee

Baylor