Evil Make-Believe Young girls, what’s the wonder in dreaming themselves power. Messy pink nail polish and fingers crackling with energy, arms twined with sharpie scribbles of magic symbols, coveted purple gel pen glitter. Grape-scented. Buckets of flowers and leaves and rainwater and maybe more exotic things, brewing potions and poultices, poisons for goblins and ghosts or whatever your local children’s mythos paints as a villain for little witches to vanquish. I was one of them once, and I always won. Sometimes you’re small and calling down the darkness. Sometimes you are the darkness, or want to be, evil in a distinctly sparkly, barbie movie children’s book way. You can tell I’m a villain by the way my colour scheme has switched to blacks and greys and methylated spirits purple. Look how my eyes are red now, or maybe toxic waste green. Customise the colour scheme of your corruption. The purple dress always less favoured than the pink wings and fluffy plastic “glass slippers”, but sometimes when they make you be the evil queen, not the fairy princess, you can take it as a compliment and eat their hearts in the roleplay game out of spite. You’re a method actor on this playground. The bushes and tree stumps are your nightmare palace. Cue the lightning, cue the bats, pause for thunder. And there are no boys allowed in the Demon Realm. It gets boring fighting over who gets to be
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