AlidaART trade: white maiden

When I read the descrip of Alida's chara Annina, the first thing that popped to mind was the White Maiden folktale.

The White Maiden--her Chinese incarnation is Bai Mei (a better translation of the name would actually be "White Beauty", but that sounds like something you'd name a horse), the one I know best--is a very common story, in Asia especially, though variations of it are told as far east as Eastern Europe (I think there's a Russian ballet based on it or something... O.o). Broadly, any young female who died due to some betrayal in love can become one, but there's a specific story to it, too.

The basic gist of it is that a beautiful young woman died betrayed by her lover/husband/whatever and came back with a hatred of men. Driven by revenge, she eventually amasses a group of young female ghosts who share the same grief... sometime later (usually a hundred years or so) two lovers are separated by a twist of fate, and the girl winds up a member of Bai Mei's troupe; however, the boy, who loves her still, either sets out to find her, or to avenge her (some versions hold that she either died because of Bai Mei or that he somehow believes she did).

...I don't remember how it ends, though ;.;

(although there was this one movie version I saw of it, and he's there with a group of friends slaughtering Bai Mei's ghosts, and they've all gotten all bloody, and then he's about to kill her before she yells "It's me!" and he stares at her for a moment with the weirdest look on his face before kissing her roughly and tossing her aside to kill the other ghosts, and she's got this furious, huffy expression which is kinda ruined by the red ring around her lips that looks like when small children try to apply lipstick... but... never mind...)

....anyway....

Bai Mei reminds me of Annina for several reasons. Firstly, Baimei always described as being luminously pale (and her hair is variously black, white, or black with bands of white). Secondly, she's vampiric (as Annina is)--Bai Mei and her cronies like to lure unsuspecting males into their little grotto/cave/lake/whatever and drain their souls, and Annina is a vampire. But thirdly--and this one's the cincher--her hair. Bai Mei (and sometimes her ghosts, too) was able to control her hair, and used it to strangle people/suck out their souls/etc.... I'm sure I'm dead off about Annina's hair, but it made me think of this one XD

So (finally O.o) this is Annina dressed up as a White Maiden... she lives in Japan currently, and I know Japan does have a White Maiden tradition, so I'm sure she wouldn't be above dressing up to creep out the locals occassionally. Um... maybe.

...I wasn't sure if Annina has black or white hair (and was impatient to finish this picture, so didn't wait for Alida to respond.... *whistles innocently*), since she's an albino, but her pictures have her with dark hair... so I just made it white for now, because it fit with the picture better. If I'm wrong, Alida, tell me, and I'll rework it ^.^ ...or not, if you don't want me to.

The Chinese characters (in semi's horrible, horrible penmanship) at the top say (you guessed it) "Bai Mei."

[edit] I added a border and fixed a few small things that were bothering me, the most noticeable of which was the handwriting... but, other than that, you probably won't notice most of the changes.

...I wish there was a "minor edit" button for deviations...