#bespangled

[thatswhywelovegermany]

die Flitterwochen verbringen

literally: to spend the bespangled weeks

to spend the honeymoon

Origin: The term probably derives from the Old High German filtarazan ("to caress") and the Middle High German vlittern ("to intimately giggle, whisper and caress"). Some linguists place the origin of the word to the city of Nuremberg where the bride was bespangled, and fripperies, gilt and flour gold were thrown in front of the newlywed couple leaving the church.

[sallysavestheday]

Hi Sally!! I saw you were taking prompt, and if you're up to a first sentence to fuel the fires of creativity, here's a lil something: 'She had never thought to meet Aredhel again, in this one long life of hers, but it seems Galadriel is not yet so old as to be free from her cousin's mischievous streak.' Thank you, have fun!

Thank you! This one took some mulling over; sorry for the delay. Have a quadruple drabble of The Girls.

She had never thought to meet Aredhel again, in this one long life of hers, but it seems Galadriel is not yet so old as to be free from her cousin's mischievous streak. The wood is filled with lanterns: gold and silver and blue and green, sparkling and dancing among the leaves as the breeze brushes them this way and that. Streamers loop and fall from the branches in a multicolored web of delight, and there is confetti, somehow, drifting wherever she steps. Galadriel’s hair is full of it, under the ridiculously overblown homemade crown. The bells and pom-poms on the points of Aredhel’s gift to her bob and jingle as she picks her way among the roots, following the sounds of revelry, resigned and increasingly amused. This is not how she had planned her return to society in Valinor. After thousands of years of rule in a diminishing realm, she had eschewed pomp, slipping from the deck of the ship into her mother’s arms, leaving the hullaballoo to Gandalf and the Ringbearer, creeping away under cover of the curious Eldar’s delight in all things new and strange. In Alqualondë she had shed her shoes and her responsibilities at once and settled into quiet, into a comfortable lack of ambition, into peace.   But there was no resisting the force of her cousin’s invitation. I will not stand for this isolation, Artë, Aredhel had written. If you do not come we will have words. Surely you will not leave me to wander the forests alone, whilst you mope in your bayside boudoir with your hair going frizzy in the mists? A hunt in the wild woods, the two of them unbound and fearless, as they had ever been, was too much to pass up -- and truthfully, the sweetness of the ocean view had already begun to fade. Wear this, so I shall be sure it is you, and not some ancient, melancholic horror, Aredhel had said, of the tinfoil monstrosity that now perches on her head. And here she is, winding her way into who knows what trouble, bespangled and belled like a cat eager for cream. The trees open into a torchlit clearing and a wall of sound. Quiet retirement is overrated, the erstwhile Lady of Lorien thinks, as the familiar faces turn to her, laughing and cheering. Perhaps, after all, she is grateful for these shouts of Welcome Home!

(Celeborn is going to laugh so hard when he arrives and hears about this. She'll have to organize an even bigger bash in his honor.)

[gatabella]

Marilyn Monroe points to the encircled date, March 30th, the day she'll ride a pink elephant, for the sake of charity on the New York opening night of the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus. Marilyn will portray "The Day After New Year's Eve" or a "Pleasant Hangover" in a special production for the benefit of the New York Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation. A gander at a bespangled Marilyn in white tights on a pink elephant will cost $50 per ticket. (1955)

[helila]

Stone did not become apple. War did not become peace.  Yet joy still stays joy. Sequins stay sequins. Words still bespangle, bewilder. [x]

[auburniivenus]

Forebodings of consequence flit cold and rabid across a nightmare-ravaged mind—but are ultimately ignored—as his black shadow covers her somnolent form, fangs bared, sweet jugular his aim… @estarion

ANGELS   NEVER   DIE.   In   the   sinuous   embrace   of   a   resplendent   summer's   night,   a   languorous   breeze   pervaded   the   scene,   much   like   the   satin-like   curtains   draping   the   cosmic   canopy.   Stellar   pearls   adorned   the   firmament's   vast   tapestry,   radiating   an   aerial   radiance   upon   an   indigo   cloak   bespangled   with   diamond-like   stars.   Dulcet   murmurs   of   a   zephyr   uttered   sweet   nothings   to   the   swaying   boughs   adorned   with   floral   coronets.   The   aromatic   air,   redolent   with   jasmine   and   lilacs'   captivating   breath,   was   as   intoxicating   as   golden   nectar   imbibed   by   starry   beings.   Caressed   by   the   tender   ephemeral   fingers   of   recumbent   beams   bathed   in   argent   moonlight,   every   verdant   leaf   and   petal   shimmered   like   gemstones   of   emerald   and   ruby.

An   ELYSIAN   symphony   resonated   through   that   arcadian   landscape;   the   elusive   music   weaved   by   hidden   nocturnal   creatures   wove   enchanting   harmonies   upon   the   silence.   The   somnolent   murmur   of   the   brook   dancing   over   pebbles   served   as   the   constant   rhythmic   anchor   to   nature's   grand   orchestra.   As   velvet   shadows   draped   their   rarefied   tendrils   around,   emotions   billowed   like   flocks   of   exquisite   birds   woven   from   dreams   and   desires,   find   solace   in   celestial   realms.

PRINCESS   OF   LUMINESCENCE   lay   in   repose,   enveloped   by   the   sanctified   company   of   shadows.   Her   tresses,   a   string   quartet   of   auburn   strands,   interwove   with   the   rich   loam   beneath   her.   Illuminated   by   argent   moonbeams,   her   lithely   slumbering   silhouette   was   traced   in   celestial   chiaroscuro,   lending   a   touch   of   iridescence   to   her   pristine   facial   features.   As   she   slept,   her   breath   issued   forth   as   ebony   silk-wrapped   whispers,   its   lullaby   testament   to   the   depths   of   her   somnolence.   Unbeknownst   to   her   dreaming   spirit,   the   air   shimmered   and   twisted,   crimson   cantrips   hidden   amongst   the   perfumes   of   summer's   sweet   evening   respiration.   In   mid-dream's   embrace,   she   adjusted   position;   a   seraphim   adjusting   its   wings.   Thus,   exposed   like   a   gleaming   alabaster   kissed   by   twilight's   sighs,   her   porcelain   neck   invited   ASTARION   predacious   regard.   A   vulnerable   nymph   lying   prone   and   unsullied.   The   target,   beloved   upon   first   sight,   was   laid   bare   for   his   indulgence,   her   tender   nape   ripe   for   harvest   like   an   AMBROSIAL   FRUIT.

A   sigh   escaped   the   fissure   of   her   margins   tinted   with   the   hue   of   a   blooming   rose,   as   a   singular   and   mysterious   aroma,   akin   to   the   metallic   tang   of   blood,   caressed   her   unsuspecting   nostrils   with   unwavering   persistence.   "Astarion."   Whispered   she,   her   voice   resonating   with   an   ineffable   sweetness   mired   in   languor.   Her   orbs   fluttered   agape,   and   in   that   serendipitous   moment,   her   delicate   hands   found   his   stalwart   shoulders,   expelling   him   from   their   intimate   embrace.   “Are   you   insane?”   Queried,   her   tremulous   timbre   melodic   in   their   anxiety-ridden   inquiry.   Her   gaze   of   molten   caramel   collided   with   his   crimson   pools   reflecting   relentless   BLOOD   LUST.

[ruknowhere]

Counting, This New Year’s Morning, What Powers Yet Remain To Me

- Jane Hirshfield - 1953-

The world asks, as it asks daily:

And what can you make, can you do, to change my deep-broken, fractured?

I count, this first day of another year, what remains.

I have a mountain, a kitchen, two hands.

Can admire with two eyes the mountain,

actual, recalcitrant, shuffling its pebbles, sheltering foxes and beetles.

Can make black-eyed peas and collards.

Can make, from last year’s late-ripening persimmons, a pudding.

Can climb a stepladder, change the bulb in a track light.

For four years, I woke each day first to the mountain,

then to the question.

The feet of the new sufferings followed the feet of the old,

and still they surprised.

I brought salt, brought oil, to the question. Brought sweet tea,

brought postcards and stamps. For four years, each day, something.

Stone did not become apple. War did not become peace.

Yet joy still stays joy. Sequins stay sequins. Words still bespangle, bewilder.

Today, I woke without answer.

The day answers, unpockets a thought from a friend

don't despair of this falling world, not yet

didn't it give you the asking

.

.

https://poets.org/poem/counting-new-years-morning-what-powers-yet-remain-me

[libidomechanica]

The quietly

Think I speak as I guess, they look at our stately claspt with trembling knees than his chant from his brethren of love, the wild woddes my son! Twas he wakes the naked trees, bespangled caves, echoing grace that out his lips, and said, except the walls moulder, give a gilded to outward than the most was on the short the fled wings, a things, and he sings. Ushering branching mouth of her fill with this one. Gate, Luke Havergal— luke Havergal.

[rachaelmayo]

This is Meadow Dragon, a compilation of a bunch of leftover scraps of stuff.

The background board with the mountains originally had something entirely different on it - a character, I think. I obliterated it with watercolor, acrylic, and colored pencil.

On top of that, I cut out a bunch of pointy grassy lines from a scrap of watercolored bristol board. I used an odd brand of pencils called Tricolors to work in some texture.

The dragon is from yet another project I had planned that it just didn't fit. So I cut *it* out and layered it in among the grassy bits. The dragon is colored with Blick Studio pencils.

Then I bespangled the picture. Bufferflies, shiny bits, pearly bits, and paint pen - I stopped just short of attacking it with glitter. I mean, even I recognize that there are limits.

Mom loved it. It hangs at her house now.

[9w1ft]

and maybe it’s not entirely bejeweled but karlie’s dress is at the very least bespangled 😆

[banana-with-a-bow-tie]

Within the compass of a drop of water we are told that sometimes a thousand living creatures may be discovered; and to those diminutive creatures, no doubt, their size is something very important. There is a creature inside that drop which can only be seen by the strongest microscope, but it is a hundred times larger than its neighbor; and it feels, no doubt, that the difference is amazing and extraordinary.

But to you and to I, who cannot even see the largest of these creatures with the naked eye, the larger animalcule is as imperceptible as his dwarfish friend; they both seem so utterly insignificant that we squander whole millions of them, and are not very penitent if we destroy them by thousands.

But what would one of those little imperceptible animals say if some prophet of its own kind could tell them that there is a giant being living, that would reckon the 'whole world of a drop of water'--as nothing; and could take up ten thousand thousand of those drops and scatter them without exertion of half its power; that this 'giant being' would not be encumbered if it should carry on the tip of its finger all the thousands that live in that great world, a drop of water; that this 'giant being' would have no disturbance of heart, even if the great king of one of the empires in that drop should gather all his armies against it and lead them to battle! Why, then the minuscule creatures would say: "How can this be? We can hardly grasp the idea?"

But when that microscopic philosopher could have gotten an idea of man, and of the utter insignificance of its own self, and of its own little narrow world--then it would have achieved an easy task, compared with that which lies before us when we attempt to get an idea of our great God. 

We think of the infinite nature of God in being able to marshal all the stars, and govern all the orbs which bespangle the brow of night; but I take it to be quite as great a wonder that He should even know that such insignificant nothings as we humans are in existence, much more that He should count every hair of our heads, and not allow one of them to fall to the ground without His express decree. 

The Infinite is as much known in the small as in the magnanimous; and God may be as really discovered by us in the drop of water as in the rolling orb! But this is astonishing of God--that He even observes us!

Charles Spurgeon [Audio] [More gems]

[qvnthesia]

Qvnthesia's Masterlist

This blog is 18+ ONLY. To interact/follow, please be above 18 years of age. A majority of my works contain adult themes ranging from topics focusing on mental health to smut.

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Key: smut ⟡ | angst ᯓ | fluff ♡| mature themes included ☾

The Vampire Diaries

Elena Gilbert/Rebekah Mikaelson

crying in my prom dress ᯓ

Elena Gilbert/Henrik Mikaelson

let go, love. i'll catch you. ♡

Elena Gilbert/Elijah Mikaelson

Time After Time ♡

Elena Gilbert/Klaus Mikaelson

Gently Into the Cold, Dark Earth ♡ See You In My Nightmares ☾ ♡ ᯓ

misc.

something i wait for. ☾ the other kids fit in. ᯓ ☾ Into Your Arms Tonight ᯓ ☾

Star Wars

Anakin Skywalker

bespangled prairies ⟡ᯓ Another You ♡

Hunter (The Bad Batch)

in action. ♡

Marvel

tba.

Wizarding World

tba.

House of the Dragon

tba.

The Count of Monte Cristo

tba.

The Hunger Games

tba.

Percy Jackson

tba.

X-Men

tba.

Knives Out

tba.

Peacemaker

tba.

The Boys

tba.

Bridgerton

tba.

layout ib (and credits to) @jetii and @sansaorgana 💗💌

[this-wasnevertheplan]

I’m pretty sure in 1984 when Van Halen released Jump, it was never expected to be played in the waiting room of a mortgage office. Yet here we are on Wednesday morning listening to a man in a bespangled jumpsuit which is cut down to his navel stuffing his crotch into a camera.

[mutant-music]

Counting, This New Year’s Morning, What Powers Yet Remain To Me

- Jane Hirshfield - 1953-

The world asks, as it asks daily:

And what can you make, can you do, to change my deep-broken, fractured?

I count, this first day of another year, what remains.

I have a mountain, a kitchen, two hands.

Can admire with two eyes the mountain,

actual, recalcitrant, shuffling its pebbles, sheltering foxes and beetles.

Can make black-eyed peas and collards.

Can make, from last year’s late-ripening persimmons, a pudding.

Can climb a stepladder, change the bulb in a track light.

For four years, I woke each day first to the mountain,

then to the question.

The feet of the new sufferings followed the feet of the old,

and still they surprised.

I brought salt, brought oil, to the question. Brought sweet tea,

brought postcards and stamps. For four years, each day, something.

Stone did not become apple. War did not become peace.

Yet joy still stays joy. Sequins stay sequins. Words still bespangle, bewilder.

Today, I woke without answer.

The day answers, unpockets a thought from a friend

don't despair of this falling world, not yet

didn't it give you the asking

.

.

https://poets.org/poem/counting-new-years-morning-what-powers-yet-remain-me

[ranikrajan]

The sun rays in my heart

We have heard that stars have guided travelers in journeys. Journey on and beyond the earth. Now a days, it is rare to see the stars shine. Yet, they have competition from the city lights. Similarly, I have this celestial manifestation in my life, otherwise known as “Bespangled Joe”. This being sparkles, flickers, radiates and glistens (warmth and lustre) in a cycle. Although never fails to dazzle mere mortals.

On a calm evening, on the terrace of my residence, I attempt to watch the stars. I was told, they watch over us. Is it out of care or is it surveillance? My phone rang and I saw the name. It is the one who shines.

[cinema-tv-etc]

Blithe Spirit Serena Evans, Charles Edwards, Angela Lansbury, Janie Dee and Simon Jones

Blithe Spirit review – Angela Lansbury's happy medium

Gielgud, London

The Broadway veteran plays a magnificently dotty Madame Arcati in this remarkable production of Coward's glacial comedy

Susannah Clapp - Mar 2014

She strides on in plaid tweeds, and shimmies around in a bespangled gilet. Under a sparkling hair-net, bright ginger plaits snake around her ears like headphones, a hair arrangement modelled on the woman who looked after the actress as a child. Burbling necromantic nonsense, she judders across the stage in an Egyptian sand dance, swoons into trance and gushes over ghosts that she can't see. Yet she also has hearty, bullying-off moments and flashes of beady-eyed shrewdness. She is part Brown Owl, part Barn Owl.

It is above all Angela Lansbury that people have come to see in Blithe Spirit. The 88-year-old actor, who has played mother to Elvis Presley, Laurence Harvey and Hamlet, who has starred in Gypsy and Sweeney Todd and been svelte and crisp as Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote, now takes on one of the stage's lovable gargoyles. Madame Arcati, the preposterous medium who claims to have had her first ectoplasmic manifestation when she was five and a half, is not actually the largest part in Noël Coward's 1941 comedy. Yet she – inhabited with benign splendour by Margaret Rutherford on screen – is the character everyone remembers. Lansbury gets a Broadway burst of applause whenever she arrives on the stage. She earns it. Not only for her rococo adornments but for something more central. Her Madame Arcati is not merely a dotty fraud but someone who believes in her own mystic powers. This is essential. For the grip of Michael Blakemore's remarkable production – one that grows in the course of the evening – is in showing how disturbing this glacial comedy can be.

Coward wrote Blithe Spirit in five days during the second world war. At the premiere the audience walked on planks over rubble caused by an air-raid to watch a play that seemed to giggle at death. The plot is like a parody of a folk tale in which a witchdoctor wreaks havoc among superstitious villagers. A man whose first wife died of a heart attack while listening to a comedy show on the BBC Light Programme (does the audience's pleasure at this show scepticism or belief?) takes part, with Wife Two, at a seance. The ghost of Wife One turns up, unseen by all but her former hubbie, and causes mayhem. Wife Two gets done in by Wife One and herself comes back for a double haunting. Yet the dialogue is pure Coward, acidic and nonchalant. "Anything interesting in the Times?" "Don't be silly, Charles."

It is not altogether surprising that Graham Greene considered this "a weary exhibition of bad taste" or that others recoiled. Yet the play was an enormous popular success: its record number (for a non-musical) of 1,997 performances in the West End was to be broken only by The Mousetrap. The war years spawned a number of plays featuring time travel and marvellous returns, JB Priestley's among them. Still, you could hardly say that this tale of a trio at war among themselves offers much solace. The ghosts are furious. The ending is not happy. Coward said: "If there was a heart, it would be a sad story.'

What it does have is technical daring and theatrical brio. A versatile misogyny, in which one vamp, one crank, and one nag circle around a charming male wastrel, allows ample opportunity for sharp-edged performances.

Many people still find it easier to laugh at a batty woman than a witty one. So Lansbury gets more comic approval than Janie Dee as Wife Two, who is not yet at her most goldenly relaxed best (and shoe-horned into a hideous purple dress with cut-out shoulders). Charles Edwards as the suave but set-upon Charles, the part that Coward played on tour, is effortlessly accomplished: urbane rather than arch, suggesting a lifetime at ease with his own good opinion of himself. Patsy Ferran makes a scene-stealing debut as the alarming maid who gallops everywhere. She adds something singularly disconcerting. With her head on one side, and a swivelling eye, she sticks her face too close to everyone for comfort. As if she were hoovering up ectoplasm.

It is hard to imagine Coward's plaited dialogue better projected in the scene in which Charles talks both to his living wife and to his ghostly first, whom only he can see. New playwrights should study it, as they should the spectacular moments of spectral action in which childish magic and adult chilliness meet. With the arrival of ghosts, doors need to be opened and shut by an invisible hand. A gramophone must begin playing Always without assistance. No massive machinery is employed here. There is no recourse to cinematic special effects. This is theatrical sleight-of-hand taking place in front of the audience's eyes.

One of the most beguiling asides in Blakemore's memoir Stage Blood, which has just won this year's Sheridan Morley prize for theatre biography, comes when the great theatrical veteran describes a technical difficulty in The Front Page. He explains that he solved it by using a device that "I remembered from my time as a child conjuror". Those days have stood him in good stead.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/mar/23/blithe-spirit-review-angela-lansbury-happy-medium

Dame Angela, making it look effortless at 88: QUENTIN LETTS reviews Blithe Spirit

Dame Angela Lansbury was born in 1925, the same year as June Whitfield (not to mention Tony Benn and Pol Pot).

That makes her 88, not so rare an age these days but still unusual for someone taking a leading role in an expensive West End show.

So how is she as Madame Arcati in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit? Does she convince as this dotty old cabbage? Of course. She is perfect. Makes it look effortless.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2583921/Dame-Angela-making-look-effortless-88-QUENTIN-LETTS-reviews-Blithe-Spirit.html

Blithe Spirit (2020) From Margaret Rutherford to Judi Dench - Movie Review