#it’s not often but it happens and part of that is oldest sister syndrome from being 6 years older than my oldest sibling

[freshwitchgladiator]

hm

#this is a weird ranty post I’m feeling weird today and trying to figure out why and typing helps but I don’t want to look at this afterward #the one thing tumble tags are good for esp on mobile tbh #mothers day is weird for me and id completely repressed it until my sisters talked about getting treats at church for being #quote: FUTURE MOMS #my one sister isn’t even 12 yet. but I think about Mother’s Day and I just feel weird. sometimes the kiddos call me mom still #it’s not often but it happens and part of that is oldest sister syndrome from being 6 years older than my oldest sibling #my parents for a really long time worked opposing full time jobs so while mom was at work dad was home but usually sleeping because he #works the grave shift and is an idiot who pushes himself to be awake at such random times that he has three different sleeping pills he has #to take whenever he fully exhausts himself #one of them and only one is ambien. #but I remember from the time when I was in like 6th grade I was expected most days to get me and my brother up and off to school #he was in kindergarten at the time #and I remember one day getting hyper fixated on something for school that morning so I didn’t get my brother to school on time and I got #grounded for two weeks for it #I was expected to parent without actually having any of the responsibilities or ability to discipline and so when things went wrong it was #always my fault #but because I don’t have kids bio or otherwise I’m overlooked #you ever look at yourself at go “huh apparently I need therapy for that too” #shut up Alex

[conradscrime]

The Kennedy Curse

January 23, 2022

The Kennedy Curse refers to a number of tragedies that have seemingly all happened to members of the famous Kennedy family. Over decades of horrific accidents, deaths and just unfortunate events have surrounded this family and some even believe a curse had bestowed upon them, as it seems they do have lots of bad luck. 

Ted Kennedy himself brought up the fact that it was possible a curse had struck his family after a car crash in 1969, when at this point, he had already lost 4 of his siblings at young ages. 

Here is a timeline of some of the most tragic events that have taken place over the years surrounding the Kennedy’s. 

Rosemary Kennedy who was the sister of John F. Kennedy, was the oldest Kennedy daughter, and many believe she had a lack of oxygen at the time of her birth. Due to this, she had experienced some intellectual disabilities, and her family had sent her to a school for it. 

In Rosemary’s early 20′s she began to act out, having violent mood swings and would often throw “fits.” It was becoming increasingly harder for the family to keep Rosemary’s disability hidden from the public, remember it was all about image and in these days having an intellectual disability was considered a shame by many. 

Rosemary’s father, Joseph Kennedy Sr., decided to allow them to do a lobotomy on Rosemary in 1941, which was a fairly new procedure at the time. Joseph Kennedy Sr. did not inform his family that Rosemary had this done until after.

The lobotomy was botched, leaving Rosemary with the capabilities of a 2 year old, and she lost her ability to walk and talk. She spent the rest of her life in private institutions and was hidden away, barley associated with the Kennedy name as they believed if the public knew of her it would be damaging to them in the political world. 

Another tragic event took place a few years later. Joe Kennedy Jr., the oldest Kennedy son had began his political career, and his father believed he would become President one day. Joe Jr. had enlisted in the US Naval Reserve in June 1941 and was training to be a naval aviator. 

He was then dispatched to Britain, and had completed 25 combat missions before volunteering to be a part of top-secret assignments such as Operation Aphrodite and Operation Anvil. 

In August 1944, Joe Jr. was on one of these missions when an explosive carried in his plane detonated early, destroying his plane and killing both him and his co-pilot instantly. The details of this mission were kept a secret until WWII ended. Joe was only 29 years old when he died. 

Also in 1944, Kathleen or “Kick” Kennedy married William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington and heir of the Duke of Devonshire. Kathleen Kennedy’s nickname was “Kick” due to her spirited nature. However, the marriage didn’t last very long, when just after 4 weeks, William died in battle against the Germans in Belgium. 

On May 13, 1948, Kathleen went to visit her father in Paris to try to convince him that her new man, Lord Fitzwilliam was suitable. They took off in a private plane from Paris towards the Rivera and at some point they got caught in a storm. 

The plane began to experience severe turbulence, and as they emerged from the clouds, the plane was in a deep dive, about to crash. They attempted to pull up, but the strain on the plane was too much and it disintegrated. All 4 people onboard died instantly. 

The next tragic event took place when Jacqueline Kennedy gave birth to a premature baby boy named Patrick on August 7, 1963. The little boy lived for 39 hours before he died from complications of hyaline membrane disease. Before this, Jackie had already gone through a miscarriage and a stillbirth. However, one good thing came out of this, with more research being done on infantile respiratory diseases and syndromes. 

Of course shortly after this, a tragedy hit the Kennedy family that is perhaps one of the most famous tragedies and assassinations in history, that of John F. Kennedy. 

On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, who had been in office for just under 3 years, was shot dead in Dallas, Texas at just age 46. The man who shot JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, was killed before he could be questioned or prosecuted, which sparked many conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination. 

The Warren Commission investigated the case thoroughly, but found no evidence of a conspiracy. This did not stop people from coming up with theories however, such as the Umbrella man theory and whether Lee Harvey Oswald could have committed this murder by himself. 

A poll was done which showed that over 60% of Americans believe that the JFK assassination was part of a conspiracy theory, and that this has been shushed by the government. 

Less than 5 years after JFK was killed, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was also assassinated. Robert had served as US Attorney General from 1961 to 1964, and was subsequently a Senator for New York. 

In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nominee, and won the California primary on June 5. Shortly after this he was shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a young man who claimed to have acted in retaliation for Robert F. Kennedy’s pro-Israeli stance during the 1967 Six Day War. 

The assassination of RFK changed things, as it was now allowed for presidential candidates to have protection. 

A little over a year later, in July of 1969, Ted Kennedy was the next victim of the Kennedy Curse, when he left a party on Chappaquiddick Island to drop a woman named Mary Jo Kopechne at the ferry landing. While driving, Ted’s car skidded off the bridge into the water, and he was able to escape, swim away and leave the scene. 

Ted Kennedy did not report this to the police until 10 am the following morning, after Mary Jo’s body had been recovered from the sunk car. Ted was found guilty of leaving the scene of an accident and got a 2 month suspended jail sentence and his driver’s license was suspended for 16 months. 

Many believe Ted Kennedy had purposely driven his car off the bridge, because if it was a drunk accident, how was he able to escape the car, swim away and leave the scene so easily? While many believe he had gotten away with the murder of Mary Jo Kopechne, the Chappaquiddick Incident did ruin his chances of ever becoming President. 

He did run in the 1980 Democratic presidential primaries, but lost to Jimmy Carter. 

In 1973, when Ted Kennedy’s son, and JFK’s nephew, Ted Kennedy Jr., was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, bone cancer in his right leg at the age of 12. While he did need to have his leg amputated, it was successful, and the cancer never returned. 

David Kennedy, the fourth son of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel, had actually almost drowned as a boy, but he was saved by his father. 

At some point, David had begun using drugs to cope with the trauma he experienced, and when he was in a car accident in 1973, he became addicted to opioids. He went to rehab several times, but his addiction overcame him every time. 

On April 25 1984, David Kennedy was found dead from an overdose of cocaine and prescription medication. He was only 28 years old. 

When JFK was killed, his son, John Kennedy Jr., was 3 days away from his third birthday. In 1999, John Kennedy Jr. was working as a legal professional in New York. 

On July 16, 1999, JFK Jr. took a plane from New Jersey to Massachusetts to attend a family wedding with his wife Carolyn and sister in law, Lauren. The plane was soon reported missing after it failed to arrive at its scheduled time and stopped responding to communications. 

On July 19, debris was found in the Atlantic Ocean, and the bodies were found on July 21 on the seabed, Kennedy’s body was still strapped in the pilot’s seat. Many believed that JFK Jr. became disoriented while they were travelling over water at night, which is how they crashed. JFK Jr. was 38 and his wife, Carolyn Bessette was only 33 at the time of their death. 

Is it just a coincidence that a giant and well known family such as the Kennedy’s have experienced such tragedies in their lives? Yes tragedy strikes every family, but is it strange that so many plane crashes and young people dying in one family have occurred? Do you believe in the Kennedy Curse? 

#UNSOLVED MYSTERIES #unsolved #mystery #kennedy #family #tragedy #death #airplane #crash #assassination #murder #loss #Curse

[metanoia-adventures]

Big Rant read at your own risk lmao

Homophobia tw

You know… this year has really put some things into perspective for me, and because of that, I have decided to make one of my New Years resolutions to be truer to myself and become more authentic to who I am.  One aspect of that is watching/reading/ and listening to more LGBT+ related media- even though I watch them with an open eye and eye on the door because…. This kind of content isn’t welcome in my house.  Despite that fear, I love the content, I do. But I have realized that the problem with consuming more of this type of media is the… the ache that now follows me.  I hate it because it was easier to ignore parts of me that doesn’t “fit” with my family’s ideals. It was easier to accept that I am part of a community that derives from the “norm” while also acting like it isn’t as big of a part of my identity ass it really is.  It was easier to act like my mothers refusal to accept or acknowledge that I am different doesn’t hurt.  

But as I realize I have been repressing my wlw side of identity, it does nothing but make me sadder because I can’t come out. Not fully. Not while I live with my parents. Thought, fuck knows I’ve tried.  I told my mother I was biromantic when I was 15.  Five years ago.  And she told me it was wrong. That I didn’t know what I was talking about because I was too young.  I’ve known since I was 13. Before I came out to her (and accidentally at that), I had brought books about LGBT+ teens from the library to learn more about it for obvious reasons. However, I guess she had finally had enough and yelled at me for bringing them into our house and ordered me to never speak about it to my sisters because it was nothing but propaganda and an illness, essentially. Since then she has continuously ignore the fact that I’m bi, and when I had the guts to make a passing comment eluding to my attraction to girls she would scoff and rolls her eyes. (though I told one of my sisters and now she’s way too supportive and it makes me uncomfortable, but she means wells so I don’t say anything)

And my father… my father is straight up homophobic. The mere thought of coming out to him terrifies me because I have heard him spew slurs against gay people since I was a child. He says the word “gay” like it’s something disgraceful and disgusting. This man easily and often uses the f word. Coming out to him would be disastrous because he could stop me from seeing my sisters. He could kick me out and leave me to pay for school on my own.

Because of my parents, I have done this odd thing in accepting that I am biromantic, but for the most part denying my attraction to women.  And it’s helped keep me sane in terms of surviving under this household. But… with this new year’s resolution I’m realizing that I have not been happy for a long time.  The my attraction to women might be greater than my attraction to men which makes me more upset because it means another confusing mess of figuring out who I am yet again. And I’m just.. I’m tired.  I’m so tired.  I’ve spent the past few days feeling like a fist is constricting my lungs and heart, and the urge to start crying being a near constant feeling. Because fucking hell I to be open who I love. I  want a girlfriend.  I want a close-knit group of friends that gets it.  I want I want I want.  I want so many things, most of which I logically know take time, and that I only have a few months left under this household before I go off to college to get my bachelors, but it still hurts.  I watch these LGBT+ movies where the main character comes out and it’s nothing but support, and they’ve got their community and friends and partners, and accepting parents, and I just sit here, so incredibly happy for these characters, but at the same time absolutely heartbroken that I don’t, and can’t, have that.

I have one irl friend, and she lives- when she’s not at her parents- 4 hours away, and we’re not even that close! All of my online friends are amazing, and if you read this, please know that I love you, but.. I’m lonely.  I’m so lonely and I can’t even go out and meet people because there is a pandemic and where would I go? I’m new to the area. I’m leaving overseas in a few months.  What’s the point?  I mean, I’ve got my sister, but she’s 14.  I can’t talk to her about a lot of stuff because I don’t want to weigh her down with my problems and concerns and worries.  

I recently re-watched Love, Simon, and the scene when Simon’s mom talks to him about him being gay…. It had me biting my lip so hard I almost bled because I was trying not to start ugly sobbing, because my mother would never accept me like that.  She won’t. And it hurts. It hurts so much because I love her. And I’m so close to her despite her homophobia and refusal to accept me.

I just… what happens if I one day get a girlfriend?  Are my parents going to disown me? Are they going to make it to where I can’t see my sisters?  The thought of never being allowed to see my sisters terrifies me.  Maybe it’s part of the oldest sister/sibling syndrome but Christ I love those kids and I am so worried about how it’ll be for them when I leave for college and I just… I’m a fucking mess of emotions.  

I don’t know what the point of this post is, I really don’t, but I needed the release of writing this and sharing it with… anyone. I don’t want pity. i know I’m pathetic. But I’m once again 3 seconds away from crying and can’t even do that because I have to act like I’m perfectly fine in front of my family.  But I’m not, I know that now.  I’m sorry for wasting your time if you made it to this paragraph.  

#.thoughts

[ofedwrds]

CONOR EDWARDS + FAMILY // @gallaghertasks

MOTHER: sadhbh edwards neé grady , kate walsh

FATHER: robert edwards , tom hardy 

OLDEST SON: donnacha robert edwards , max irons

SON: conor grady edwards , paul mescal 

YOUNGER DAUGHTER: sinead ciara edwards , emilia jones 

PET: finley , irish setter

ROBERT EDWARDS ⎯⎯ father.

          robert was the older brother to henry edwards ( father to kassandra & valeria sutton ), and he was always one to feel like he needed to be the leader. robert was brilliant and calculating at all times, and even as a child, he had ambitious dreams. he wanted to work his way up the ranks in everything he did, always wanting to be in charge ( the only person being able to change his mind sometimes being sadhbh ). he had started working at the mi5 by being based in london, and his bosses had seen what a brilliant and calculating man he was, so they assigned him to some of the highest profile cases, and they often sought after him for his advice and potential solutions to the different problems they were facing. unfortunately, however, having such a high profile job was demanding, and robert was spending more time in london than back in cavan with the family.

          robert’s absence had put a strain on sadhbh, especially because she had wanted to be in the field as well but was often having to stay home. and when she was away, the kids were being raised by nannies, something that didn’t sit right with sadhbh because they were they’re kids, they should be there for them. for years, sadhbh had been threatening robert with a separation if he didn’t get his stuff together at work and come home more often, and sometimes robert did show up and stay for a couple of months, but they were just infrequent. 

          when working, robert had stumbled across the brotherhood ( of cavan ironically enough ), and he had reached out to his younger brother.  robert had thought it was a long shot, considering henry had two young girls he had to take care of, but when he had joined the brotherhood with him, the two felt unstoppable. that was until henry had passed away, leaving robert on his own. this had left robert saddened and more importantly, angry. after this was when he truly never came home, using the excuses of travelling and being stuck at work so he couldn’t board a plane and go back to ireland. 

          eventually, however, robert’s shady business caught up to him when all the members of the brotherhood were leaked. there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, and not even the best lawyers at his office could ( or would ) try to defend him. because of this, robert got a hefty sentence in london. he tries continuously to reach out to his family, and most of the time, sinead will write him back and he can get donnacha to pick up the phone every once in awhile, but sadhbh and conor have nothing to do with him. 

SADHBH EDWARDS NEÉ GRADY ⎯⎯ mother.

          sadhbh came from a long line of spies, most of them working in london and all over the world. because of this, she always knew that it would be a dream of hers to be a spy and working in the field. a powerful and headstrong woman, she never made any compromises, and that personality trait was evident in the family as well. robert liked to think he held most of the power in the family, everyone listening to him, but he never made a decision for the family that sadhbh didn’t agree with. and if he tried to, she never hesitated to voice her opinions. in recent years, the edwards’ kids have learned about their father’s shady business on the side, but it was still their mother’s stern voice yelling in irish they feared.

          after finding out about her ex-husband’s business and involvement in the brotherhood, she had filed for an official divorce, transferred out of the uk and has been working in dublin at the directorate of military intelligence. it’s not as glamorous as working at mi5 was, but she gets to be closer to her daughter and work closer from home, so she’s been relatively content working there. 

DONNACHA EDWARDS ⎯⎯ oldest son.

          the first son born to sadhbh and robert, and it was obvious from the get go, robert had put donnacha on a pedestal. he had high expectations for his first born, and donnacha was determined to not let his father down. even if his father wasn’t around much, he was always doing things to make him proud. when his parents told him that he would be going off to spy prep school, donnacha instantly began packing his bags. and it was the same for when he went off to university. 

         donnacha was always too obsessed with his father’s approval to focus on his younger siblings. and when he did, it was in between school terms. he would teach conor the things he learned at school, fighting, knife throwing, cultural norms, and he would do the same for sinead when they were both old enough. ( it’s the one thing conor is grateful for from donnacha ). because he was the oldest, donnacha often acted like he knew everything, always offering advice when no one asked, and he was one of conor’s biggest critics. he never sugar coated anything about conor’s mistakes, and while sure, it helped him grow and become better, it also made conor hate donnacha. 

          after everything happened with his dad, it was hard to contact donnacha for a bit. he had been doing a job over in france, and for the longest time, not even sadhbh could get a hold of him. conor had thought about reaching out but decided against it. he had learned from an early age that when donnacha was brooding and miserable, it was best to leave him like that. eventually, donnacha had come around, and he sometimes comes back for holidays but is mostly just living in france working there currently. 

CONOR EDWARDS ⎯⎯ second son. 

          the middle child born seven years after donnacha was born. for the first couple of years, conor and donnacha would get along well enough. but as the two grew older, they were drifting farther and farther apart. this was partially because of their somewhat large age gap and the other part because of their different personalities. donnacha took more after their father, and it was obvious that donnacha felt like he was the head of the children. with that and sinead being the youngest, for the longest time, conor was the poster child of the middle child syndrome. he sought out friends with anyone and everyone, wanting to include people as much as he could because he knew that feeling of being left out. even though he did just as well as both donnacha and sinead, he was often overlooked no matter what he did.

          what changed his temperament was finding out about his father’s involvement in the brotherhood. he and his father had a strained relationship beforehand, but this was what sent him over the edge. up until a year ago, right after they found out, conor decided he didn’t really want to try to get his father’s approval as his career went down the drain. if anything, it was more of a reason to completely separate himself from his father. 

          conor still talks to his sister and mother on a daily basis usually, and donnacha and him only interact at holidays. his mother tells him about his father trying to get into contact with him, but the letters still remain unopened in his bedroom back in ireland. 

SINEAD EDWARDS ⎯⎯ youngest daughter. 

          being the youngest of three and the only girl, sinead’s always gotten what she wanted, but in all honesty, she’s never asked for much besides time with her family. she’s honestly conor’s best friend on the planet, and if it wasn’t for her, he probably wouldn’t have a relationship with his family besides his mother. she was the one who suggested the three edwards’ kids get matching tattoos, and if it had been donnacha to suggest it, he simply would have laughed and walked away. but sinead knew that she could ask her older brothers to do anything and they’d do it in a heartbeat. sinead’s a bit softer than the rest of the edwards’ and conor supposes that’s the reason why he has to be the typical overprotective older brother. he doesn’t want anyone hurting his little sister and would probably fight for anyone for looking at her a different way. 

FINLEY ⎯⎯ family pet. 

          in the summer where conor was sixteen, he stumbled upon finley in one of the fields where he would play rugby. covering the small puppy back home in his jacket, he had asked his mother to keep him, and sadhbh couldn’t say no to her boy’s baby blue eyes begging to keep him. she had told him yes but only if he was able to take care of him. so finley and conor became best friends quickly, and even though sinead’s the only one at home still, finley always knows when conor’s on the phone or facetime. 

#* 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐝𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 / development. #* 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐝𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 / tasks. #tl;dr? basically the men in this family are dumbasses #stan finley and the edwards women #also sadhbh is said like sive i'm sorry #death mention tw #?? idk its very brief tho ! #dont ask me about the math #just dont

[pavys-originals]

Fandoms I will be writing for + the original characters within

Including a brief summary of each. 

Birds of Prey Valerie Steward - Crime boss, rival of Roman Sionis, has Renfield Syndrome, usually likes the most expensive and lush possessions. Has very large circles beneath her (In a social/hierarchical sense).  Can be incredibly eccentric, and very passionate.

One/Omni- The first of the Blackcoats, a large group of highly trained marshal-like operatives. Omni himself usually does not get involved in combat, and pays close attention to details. 

Two/Hyinth- The second in the first thirteen/High Council of the Blackcoats. Isn’t quick to rush to violence, though they will do what they must to get things done. 

Three/Cettie- The financial backer of the council. Doesn’t usually get involved with the violent sectors of the organisation, she finds it a waste of time. 

Four/Aven- Pure bodyguard material. That’s it, that’s Aven. Not himbo- he’s to smart and sharp for that- just muscly man who will protect at all costs.

Five/Aretha- Now when I tell you that this woman knows how to kill someone and get away with it, I mean it. She trained to be Valerie’s understudy in a sense, and has perfected her own technique in disposing of people when asked.

Six/Giga- The techie. Honestly, they know so much about random stuff they will RAM it down your throat. They’re also kind of jokey, hence the pun. 

Seven- Seven gave up his name when he was fairly young, and is now one of the most powerful and down-to-earth of the Blackcoat high council, as he is the one who oversees the training regimens.

Eight/Axel- A total wild card of the group. Rarely follows orders, and lashes out with violence fairly frequently. He’s honestly a big softie though. 

Nine/Jerra- Usually the one that gets sent in when they need an undercover job done, or a mole of some description. He’s a phenomenal actor. 

Ten/Rocsas- One of the youngest. He’s very ‘in’ with the word on the streets of Gotham,and often informs the council of riots/coups that are being planned by the gangs of the city of crime.  

Eleven/Ixi- Iris/Thirteen’s twin. They are very detached, and don’t often show emotion in the work place. It is suspected that they show lots of affection in a domestic setting though. 

Twelve/Brutus- As his name suggests, he is the strongest of the group, naturally born this way and has honed his skills in since starting training. He is very protective, and follows orders. Not always the brightest spark though, but occasionally he will get a good idea. 

Thirteen/Iris- Sometimes referred to as the ‘softest’ of the High Council, as she is much more compassionate than the majority of her peers. She doesn’t mind it all that much, and often interjects in debates with the more emotional side of the story. 

Twenty-Six/Kalmiya- Almost an entirely blank slate, she is seen as the perfect soldier. Little room for emotions, much room for logic. However, she does seem to learn social cues and expressions very quickly off of other people. 

CATS  A note- about the cats ocs; Just because they are stated to have mated with another Tom/Queen does not mean I won’t write for them. If I write for the children, the bond between parents is not usually mentioned.  

Ariadne-A witch’s cat. She is quite mysterious, but once she warms up to you she’ll adore you like there’s no tomorrow. She is able to teleport over a short distance, has slight telepathy, and sometimes has visions of the future. 

Graciette- The pub cat. Daughter of Skimbleshanks and Jennyanydots, younger sister to the mischievous twins Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer, and older sister to the young kitten Electra. She is always on  time, and is very enthusiastic about overseeing the games in the pub. 

Leviticus- The oldest triplet, son of Ariande and the Rum Tum Tugger. He is very close with his grandfather, Old Deuteronomy, and very wise. 

Squiggletigs-The middle triplet, second son of Ariande and the Rum Tum Tugger. He is usually found with Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer, he is much more playful than his older brother. He’s like the middle ground between Leviticus and Pixietrick.

Pixietrick- The youngest child of Ariande and the Rum Tum Tugger, and their only daughter. She’s very much like her father, both in appearance and in personality. 

Fantasma- The inventor’s cat, and daughter of Graciette and Alonzo. A lot of her time in the junkyard is spent finding random little trinkets and other doo-dads to use for her inventions, or just random collections she has. She’s very shy, and very sweet. 

Zilke- The blind cat, mother of Quaxo/Mistoffelees and Victoria. She tried to stick by Macavity when he was kicked from the tribe, her love blinding her to the near regicide that was committed. Eventually, she became actually blind. 

Seattine- One of the two pirate cats, rumoured to be descendants of Growltiger himself. They rarely come ashore, but when they do, they play many a shanty for old Gus. Seattine favours the concertina as her instrument, and is usually very upbeat.

Hurdeon- One of the two pirate cats, rumoured to be descendants of Growltiger himself. They rarely come ashore, but when they do, they play many a shanty for old Gus. Hurdeon favours the hurdy gurdy, and is a lot calmer than his twin sister. 

Doctor Sleep  Elva Warren- The owner of a sweet little antique shop in New Hampshire. She is always welcoming to new faces, and she knows just what cheers them up when she meets them, what to say to make them smile, all because of her Shine. 

IANOWT  Marilyn Higgins - An uncool kid like Stan and Sid, though a lot of people consider her to be less cool then them. Mostly because of all the morbid facts she spouts, especially during Science class. Probably also doesn’t help that she knows a fair few ways that the world could end that make some people uneasy.

IT  Melissa Farley- A British exchange student from a small village in Norfolk. She is very kind to those around her, even willing to take them in and introduce them to her family’s traditions and interests. She has even offered to tutor some of the Losers, should they ever need it.  Tiffany Crandall- A farming gal from Ludlow, Maine. She moved to Derry with her grandmother and grandfather after her parents were hit by a speeding Orinco truck. She is neughbour’s with Mike Hanlon, and has very little fear when it comes to brawls. It’s traffic and roads she doesn’t like. 

Moulin Rouge  Celine Bisset- A dancer in the Moulin Rouge. She is usually quite gentle, unless her client asks for her to be rougher and more assertive. She ended up becoming a dancer there because her fiance left her stranded when he ran off with another woman. 

Overwatch Asteria Murphy- After surviving an omnic siege where Blackwatch was sent to free the inhabitants of an apartment block, Asteria joined Overwatch to try and make sure nothing like that happened again. 

Mars Virgil- Son of Asteria Murphy, and Jesse McCree. Grew up in Deadlock Grange with his mother, and Robert Virgil- the man he assumed was his father. He joined Overwatch after  an attack on his mother’s diner, and found out his true family soon after.

Resident Evil Village Ihrin Moreau- Sister of Salvatore Moreau. Unlike her brother, her experience with the Cadou did not mutate her into a fish at first glance. It is when she comes into contact with water that her first stage mutation reveals itself, and her true mutated form shows when she is critically injured. She is vain and practically unfeeling unless something catches her eye.

Aeolus Aetos- Self proclaimed “Lord of the Wing”. Aeolus is a man who’s mutation made him think so highly of himself that he only concerns himself with his own problems. He is vain, and keeps himself the most pristine he can. Being mutated to appear part eagle gives him both his pride and his expert hunting skills

Mori Russell- One of the village hunters, who survived the lycan attacks by fleeing into the forests, and hiding out of sight. 

Lena Vaughn- Daughter of the local brewer. Also survived the lycan attacks, but because of her skill with a shotgun rather than running away. 

Shallow Grave Deirdre Sullivan- A failing artist who moved from her family home in Ireland to chase her dreams. She’s partway there, she’s just lacking in the money.Money that she has a hand in keeping away from David. 

Star Wars  Alaana Rohiikshuul- A Jedi consular/seer. She is very down to earth, and tries her best to have the mysteries of the Force reveal themselves to her so that she may write of them. It is this constant search for knowledge that has her meditating for days on end, lost in her own thoughts. Alessandro  Rohiikshuul - Alaana’s twin brother, and the slightly more impulsive of the two. This is not to say he is outwardly violent. Like Alaana, he makes sure to exhaust all other options beforehand. He is much more openly passionate.  Othkiir Rohiikshuul- A young, feline force sensitive from Alaana and Alessandro’s home planet, Tmryn. He can be a little all over the place sometimes, but he tries to do everything he  can for the greater good. 

Daesha’Tiatkin- A Twi’lek force sensitive who deserted the Jedi Order in her late teens- opting to live a scoundrel’s life. She does what betters her, and usually her alone, though you should not mistake this for having no moral compass. She is impulsive, and almost always optimistic. 

Kyden Kenobi- Son of Sith!Obi-Wan and Sith!Alaana. Captain/Commander of the Night Witches squadron in the Empire’s fleet. Usually incredibly goofy and sweet. 

Trainspotting Ava Byrne- (First film)- A philosophy student who got stuck in Edinburgh when she left her home. She got stuck in the same apartment building as Renton and the other boys, but refuses to divulge in their illegal activities.  (Second film)- Ava didn’t end up leaving Edinburgh, the best thing she managed to do was write “The Ethics of Drug Use”, which was of course inspired by the boys’ old lives. She hasn't properly seen the boys since Mark left, though she will occasionally pass Simon or Daniel in the street, and give them a semi-respectful nod.

Misc  (Special Ingredients- my original story in the works) Tex Hudson-  The eldest brother of the trio of brothers, and he was the one to change his name when he got married the first time, as if it would help him in his family’s “business”. He has quite a temper, and is usually rather gruff. There are occasions where he can be sweet, they’re just growing exceedingly rare. Sloane Sawyer- The middle brother, and arguably the most elegant of the three. Always in a suit, he acts like the perfect gentleman in front of others, however when there’s no one else around, he tends to gloat about how many kills he has under his belt.  James ‘JJ’ Sawyer- The youngest brother, but also the tallest. Standing at a whopping six foot nine, Jamie may seem like a beast of a man, but he actually quite gentle. He’s a little slower than the others when it comes to figuring some things out, but he doesn’t let that slow him down anywhere else. He is incredibly sweet, quite passionate, and not afraid to show his vulnerable side when his brother’s aren’t around. 

Victoria/Victor Farley- A pirate captain who sails within the Devil’s Ring (more on that in their first piece), and acts however they so please within the pirate code. Born as Victoria Farley on mainland England, they followed their father through to the centre of the Devil’s Ring- becoming one of his crew in the process. From there they fought on and on, till they became a ship’s captain themselves. 

Scenarios/genres I will write -Fluff -Angst -Smut* -Horror -A combination of those stated above *This will only be written when I am in the mood. Bear in mind these may take longer than usual because I have to be in the correct mindset. I will edit this when necessary

Character Q&A is currently open! 

I will include trigger warnings and such at the beginning of each Oneshot/imagine/headcanon list.

#oc x reader #x reader oneshot #x reader requests #requests open #please request

[bigskydreaming]

Headcanon that when Damian starts finally referring to each of his siblings by their first names, it goes something like this:

Damian started calling Cass “Cassandra” after someone gave him the full scoop on David Cain, and he refused to further acknowledge that degenerate with any connection to his sister. If nothing else, Cassandra was a deadly fighter and a force to be reckoned with, and giving the likes of David Cain credit for her mastery of the martial arts would be a disrespect to said arts themselves, and Damian will not stand for that. 

After all, Cassandra was one of the only adversaries capable of defeating Damian himself (and might always be such), and any association with the biological father who first taught her risked even the implication of that monster being similarly capable of withstanding Damian’s fury, should they ever meet, and should Damian feel compelled to seek justice on behalf of one of his victims. 

As well, he’d heard it said that all of David Cain’s efforts in regards to his daughter were made in the name of ensuring his own legacy. And Damian knew a thing or two about over-ambitious, obsessive tyrants who would seek to build their own immortal legacy at the expense of others’ souls, and he had no use for such. 

He did not turn his back on his grandfather’s intentions and his own intended throne, simply to cater to another madman’s delusions of grandeur, or his attempt to lay a claim to Cassandra’s life merely by staking a claim upon her with his name. No, whatever else Cassandra might come to be remembered for, it would not be her connection to that reprobate, if Damian had anything to say about it.

But then, too, just calling her Wayne instead would sound absurd, since that is of course his own last name as well. And no, that does not mean he considered it at first and thus was even now, already admitting to being....ugh....familial with her ....as being family was about the most mortifying ordeal Damian could contemplate submitting to. 

(Look, it gets glossed over far too often that for most of his life, Damian’s circle of family largely consisted of his mother and a ruthless, megalomaniac immortal supervillain occupying the role that for most families, would be occupied by a “Grand-poppy.” When most people are two, said Grand-poppies are happy to settle for whatever mish-mash of syllables they can mash together. When Damian was two, he got “No. ‘The Demon’s Head.’ Try again.” The kid’s anti-family stance is fairly well-earned when he first arrives, is all I’m saying. Its not necessarily spoiled brat syndrome as opposed to “I’ve yet to hear a convincing argument for why ‘family’ is at all a good or desirable thing” syndrome.)

Damian started calling Dick “Richard” when he grudgingly realized oh no, I respect him, with the consequence of that being that he had to find some distinct form of address for him at that point, otherwise Dick would by default be lumped in with all those he didn’t respect, aka 99.9% of the rest of humanity, and what’s the point of respect without acknowledgment? 

He finally started calling him “Dick” when he eventually realized that Richard was in its own way still a form of disrespect, by insisting there was a more proper form of address for his brother other than what his brother asked to be called. His own private feelings on the matter of Dick’s name were rendered irrelevant by the blinding grin Dick gave in return the first time Damian called him such - it was after all, a name Dick insisted on only as an honorarium to his own parents. Thus, it later occurred to Damian, a refusal to consider it to be so, or otherwise ‘beneath’ someone’s use, was to some degree or another likely just a back-handed insult to his parents, in Dick’s own eyes.

Damian started calling Drake “Timothy” when he considered the way some parents of his classmates used ‘full-naming’ their child as a form of threat or warning, and it occurred to him that he could pack far more disdain into a drawled “Timothy” than even he could manage to put into “Drake.” As an added bonus, his Father was so pleased to hear him finally begin addressing his most reviled brother by his first name, as it was an honor he still only reserved for family thus far - that he also completely failed to pick up on the threats and/or insults Damian had oh so carefully also layered into and around his first several uses of Timothy for his brother.

Damian finally started calling him “Tim” when he was backed into a corner that compelled some acknowledgement of exceptional skill or expertise no one else had managed to muster, and because Damian was not in the habit of backstepping on any of his choices or decisions. Thus when such a day came to pass, and he’d already ‘used up’ the only other progression available for acknowledging Tim as having moved forward in his regard, he was left without options: the only way to acknowledge that Tim was now a worthier individual in his eyes, distinct on his merits and not just as a member of his family, was to call him “Tim.”

Only belatedly did it occur to Damian that no matter his intentions when shifting from calling his brother Drake to calling him Timothy, in doing so he had inadvertently moved him into the category reserved exclusively for family, regardless of the fact that he’d been nowhere near ready at that point to admit to such in any other way. 

In fact, it may very well have been his constant utterances of “Timothy,” a name he had once delighted in using at every possible opportunity, gloating as he sneaked his contempt for the brother in question right under his Father’s very nose....well, it only occurs to Damian much later on, that his frequent addresses in a form he only associated with family, may have actually done the very work of associating Tim with ‘family’ in his mind, to such a degree that even he was no longer capable of denying it.

Which, in light of that, makes it entirely possible, and even likely, that their Father had not missed his intended purpose in using “Timothy” at all...but rather had deemed it more strategic to make no mention of that, and play the long game instead.

Sometimes, Father’s intellect was not so much staggering as it was staggeringly obnoxious.

Damian finally started calling his second oldest brother “Jason,” not long after the whole ‘Timothy’ fiasco got underway. His logic had seemed similarly sound at the time - after all, by virtue of Jason remaining the only member of the family not being addressed by his first name, there ran the risk of singling him out as significant from his other siblings in some way, and thus implying that Damian held him in more esteem than he did the others, even Dick or Cassandra. Which was pointedly absurd, of course, but people insisted on believing absurd things all the time. Thus it only seemed prudent that he stave that assumption off and in doing so, spare himself a great deal of time and aggravation likely to otherwise be spent explaining himself.

Moreover, he happened to note on more than one occasion that both Father and Dick’s eyes were overtaken with a curiously lost or distant expression, when Damian tended to refer to “Todd” as such in their presence - Pennyworth’s as well, for that matter. It was his understanding that even before his second oldest brother’s untimely demise, he was not in the habit of referring to himself or being addressed as Jason Wayne. Still, his name was written down as Jason Todd-Wayne on all official documentation, and was even what adorned the gravestone that remained in place, for the sake of an otherwise unknowing public.

After giving the matter some thought, Damian concluded that given what had transpired, and given the dynamics often at play in their family in the here and now, there was a degree to which it might at times feel like all of that was a thing of the past, or another life entirely. After all, he wasn’t given to undoing his choices himself, nor were any of his family, but there were few ways to regard a shift from his brother being Todd-Wayne in all iterations of his name, to being just Todd....as anything but an unwriting of that name, a kind of erasure of the history of Jason Todd-Wayne and his presence as such in this house and their lives. As if none of that had ever happened, or left no witnesses to say otherwise.

And given that their family and close circle of allies tended to be the only ones aware of Jason’s true name and thus likely to refer to him as Todd in any context at all....Damian’s own tendency to address him as such were probably the most frequent and stark reminder that for all that he remained family in all but name, there was a time when that was true even in name as well. Damian tended to believe that Father would be more than gratified to see Jason claim that name a second time, or reclaim it as it were, and he hardly doubted Dick would be far behind him in joy. He suspected though that Jason assumed otherwise, and was too proud to ever ask for what he likely believed Father never would offer again. There were many assumptions in play in all of that which Damian did not believe to be remotely correct himself, but he lacked confidence that he was the right person to cast those assumptions in doubt. And as a general rule, he didn’t do things he lacked confidence towards. It set a precedent he didn’t entirely care for.

So he let it be, for the most part, knowing as Cassandra and Tim likely did as well, that those older members of their family would always be players in a kind of private tragedy none of the rest of them had roles to play in. Any great third-act revivals or changes of fate would, of necessity, take place upon the stage all of that was set upon, not come from the seats they bore audience from. 

And so Damian deigned to address his remaining brother as “Jason,” rather than “Todd.” And all things considered....that, too, was not so bad.

Of course, in due time he came to refer to Duke by his first name, even though they were not, strictly speaking, “family” in all the same senses as he and his other siblings. Nor were they assuredly likely to be, given that the older boy considered his parents to be all the family he needed or wanted by that name. Still, he lived with Damian’s family, he fought with Damian’s family, it seemed silly and illogical to address him as Damian addressed those who were not his family, since none of the latter sort spent nearly as much time around he and his family as Duke did. And he did not dislike the other boy, certainly not enough to want him to feel ostracized or unwelcome by singling him out in such a way as that, so there was no good reason to insist upon calling him “Thomas” instead, Damian figured. 

And if he maintained steadfast in addressing Oracle as “Gordon,” well, as he saw it, if she cared to be addressed as otherwise, or as part of his family, then she could easily enough make all that happen - considering the spell his oldest brother remained eternally enmeshed in. So as far as Damian was concerned, any time she were to go ahead and simply marry the sap, he would be perfectly willing to revisit the matter of her name, and address her by a different one of her choosing. Until such a point however, Gordon she was and Gordon she would remain.

All of which left Brown. Who was most emphatically not his sister, nor would she ever be, if Damian had anything to say about it - up to and past the point of directing less loathsome prospects towards Tim to perhaps consider romancing in the future instead. Nor did she live with them, or appear on such a daily a basis as Duke, and thus warrant a similar manner of address and for the same reasons as Duke. Nor did he actually like her, as he did Duke, and thus care to address her by her name as he did with Duke. Nor did he actually like Duke, or anyone really, that wasn’t his point, not that he disliked Duke, per se....

Regardless.

For all of those reasons and more, Batgirl was a plague upon his House and a scourge from which he seemed always destined to endure. As was just proven, to even think of her was to invite chaos into one’s thoughts much in the way not turning her away at the threshold was to invite chaos into one’s life, She was, however, grudgingly tenacious if nothing else, and as many varied and sundried attempts to pry her from this mortal coil had not born fruit despite all logic to the contrary, Damian was not certain that even his own attempts to pry her from his family’s lives were worth the time and expenditure of his efforts and resources.

Not that he couldn’t do it, mind you. It just seemed more trouble than it was worth.

So with all of that in mind, and forced to acknowledge (as she kept count) the distressingly high number of times she’d aided him in....surviving some mishap where he was not at his best-equipped to do so, shall we say....it fell upon him to decide upon something else to address her as. Something that would neatly avoid all the pitfalls inherent on using her first name, as he did with family, or the pitfalls likely to come from using her last name, and thus giving credence to her claims of him being -ugh, what was it she’d called him yesterday? Oh yes. "An ungrateful little garden gnome with years of pent-up road rage and yet still several years to go before he can reach the pedals that make things go vroom vroom.”

Abominable woman.

But regardless, his plight was what it was, and thus Damian had no choice but to come up with some clever workaround. And so it was that he finally happened upon “Eggplant.” Which was a patently ridiculous color, in his opinion, as befit her patently ridiculous fondness for it and insistence on it being referred to it by that name and no other. Moreover, it was a clever play upon the fact that her actual surname was the name of a color, without actually being a way to refer to her by merely her surname, and having some distinction from that. 

Also, just last week he’d made some idle comment about Kent in passing, and she’d said “Well if you like him so much, why don’t you just marry him” and then laughed in that way she had when she found herself utterly hilarious, and small creatures found a reason to flee violently with all possible haste. 

And so, with that in mind, he determined that he would call her Eggplant. And at some point in the future, while boring him and his siblings to death with pointless narration as she scrolled through the Instagram feed of some crush of hers that she’d picked as her latest obsession, and with Damian’s siblings all being too polite and brainwashed or possibly blackmailed by her to object and so just allowing her to prattle on endlessly without reprieve....Damian would then interrupt and feign surprise to hear of this new romantic interest of hers. And then when she asked what that was supposed to mean, he would deliver his coup de grace: 

“Isn’t it obvious? You like eggplant so much you might as well marry it, which I assumed you had, and thus Eggplant was now your surname. You mean to tell me its not?”

Yes, Damian was confident. Eggplant would do perfectly.

....it did not, in fact, do perfectly. In actuality, the first time he addressed her as such, she squealed, seized him bodily in a completely unwelcome hug, and hoisted him off his feet while shrieking: 

“Omg, omg, you gave me a nickname? That’s sooooo adorable! Is this your first actual nickname that you’ve given out? Omgggggg, I can’t even, I’m so honored Lil’ D! Okay, everybody has to use Dami’s nickname for me from now on, otherwise you’ll make him feel bad, and this Eggplant kicks the butts of anybody who makes the baby Dami cry! Eggplant! Is that just the cutest or what!? And it even pays homage to my favorite color too, omg its perfect!”

Names, Damian ultimately concludes, were a mistake. None of them are worth any of this time and effort, and henceforth, anyone should feel lucky if he deigns to address them as anything directly at all.

Hmph.

[thatcnamomnwife]

Well, hello!

I really just wanted to check out this app because I don’t know anyone really who blogs here... maybe I could meet new people make friends I can chat with. I don’t work anymore and I have very little company. My ex husbands wife has come to visit and let our youngest boys play together and my family has come in and out to help keep things up in the house. I broke my leg in a car accident in October. I still can’t walk.

I laugh about it now because my two other siblings here have both been in worse car accidents and walked away with scratches. My brother was knocked unconsious and woke up and walked 2 miles home. I hit a tree to avoid hitting the back end of a truck that was stopped in a work zone and when I hit the break popped back and broke my ankle tib and fib... I knew I had broken it but was not aware of how bad it was. My EMT was wonderful in keeping me calm. I heard comments when I got to the hospital about it being really bad but I didn’t want to see the damage. They knocked me out and put me into surgery. I woke up with a fixater on my leg. The next night after I asked for pain meds 3 or 4 times in a row because the Dilaudid didn’t work, my assigned surgeon came in and examined my leg. I had compartment syndrome and needed a fasciotomy asap. so the next time I woke up I still had the fix and then my leg was completely wrapped. Every time I tried to do physical therapy I would. Bleed everywhere. I found out I had two huge gaping cuts in the side of my leg and 2 equally gaping cuts in the top of my foot. In the hospital I tried my best to keep up hope that this would all be over soon. My friends at work (I’m a CNA) got ahold of me and cheered me on the get better and come back to work soon. But here I am. It’s February and I’m still wheelchair bound and not walking. The way my surgeon fixed my leg set it to where my toes almost faced the ground and my ankle is now fixed as if its ready for a stiletto. I have worked hard to get to rotate my ankle and lift my toes a little bit and as my physical therapy has me working on the they are working on lifting this deep scar on top of my foot.

It sucks to have to depend on everyone else to get help. I can do some things on my own. But I can’t cook my own food by myself. I can do dishes actually but it’s really hard. I can move from place to place with my walker. But since I’m on one leg it’s hard and I wear out fast. I can’t go anywhere unless someone takes me. Sitting in a car is hell because I lose circulation in my leg easily. If I get annoyed with my husband or my kids get on my nerves I can’t just go outside.

I spent the first month crying. Every day. I’m not kidding. I cried even harder Every appointment because my surgeon is a straight forward kinda guy. My home health nurse came in and saw that I was cracking and she suggested I act for a low dose antidepressant and I just gave and said yea. I’m tired of crying. Well it’s worked so far. I still get mad and throw fits and cry but I think that’s just me being human and besides that anyone in the medical profession is bound be make a horrible patient.

I am a lot better now. In fact despite the fact that my leg still doesn’t work, I’m in ok spirits. I miss my job, my residents, and most of my coworkers. I worked through what I feel is the worst part of COVID in my area and I worked while I had it. I was so proud of my self for not giving up in that mess. I miss the hard work. I wanna go back but I know I will never get to run around like I did before. It just sucks.

But in the midst of this whole crap show my husband and I got married in December! It was a beautiful low cost home wedding and my family couldn’t come because they were quarantined but we had our other loved ones there. I won’t lie I looked amazing in my wedding dress and my hair and makeup was gorgeous. Nothing has changed since we got married. We are still bickering at each other but at the end of the day I love him and he loves me. We have been through it all in these 6 years and I wouldn’t have him any other way. He’s lazy. He frustrates me but he is a good man and a good dad to our son. My daughters love him. My oldest calls him dad. And he has pretty much jumped trough hoops for them since he met them. We are all a happy family and I love my life. I just don’t like where I’m at in my life.

I have 3 kids. My oldest is 14 and she’s a type 1 diabetic. Shes a hormonal teen with diabetes. We have blood sugar issues every day. Hormones raging. She recently got grounded for not doing her chores and lying about her blood checks and she lost it over not being on the phone for a few days. But damn she is smart. She wants to be a mortician when she graduates college. She passes state testing like it’s nothing. And she’s a complete music lover. She was the 18th chair in junior all region choir last year. She was the youngest in her group to get in. So I brag on her a lot. My middle child is a lot of energy and she frustrates me. She’s 10 and she’s been stuck in this stage where she acts like she doesn’t have common sense. We’ve taught her how to use the washer and dryer several times and this kid still says she don’t know how to use it. She’s the one who argues even if she knows she’s wrong she will still try to make you think she’s right. She will agree to something one minute and then get mad about it later. She will not brush her hair and she does this on purpose because she claims is a part of her personality. She also recently told me she’s bisexual. She’s a good kid though. Teachers and kids at school love her she don’t get in trouble ever. And she’s also a smart kid! She excelled in school to the highest. I’m very proud of my girls.

My son is 4 and he is a big ball of adhd. He bounces off walls and he’s very violent. We have been trying to get him evaluated so we can get him on proper meds before kindergarten but It hasn’t happened yet. But he’s also a sweet kid. He is very smart too. He knows all of his colors and can count to 10. He knows his name. But he tells you he’s 400 years old instead of 4 lol.

My mom and sister are both life savers to me. They have taken care of me through this. When I need them they are there. My brother prefers to live his own life and visit at moms with me from time to time. But I love him. I miss him.

My dad left my mom when I was 13. He caught up with my half sister. Fell in love with his ex wife and moved away. I have seen him 4 times since he left and the last time I saw him was when I was 19 and pregnant with my oldest child. He’s never met my kids in person and he’s only spoken to my oldest on the phone once. 2 years ago he disappeared after planning to come stay on my moms property to get back on his feet and get proper medical treatment. He asked our side of the family for money (like $1000) and none of us had that. So he tried to make us feel bad and then never contacted us again. I’ve heard fromy step sisters that he’s been spotted here and there but we honestly Don’t know where he is, what he’s doing and if he’s even alive. I hate to say it but it doesn’t bother me anymore. I used to break down thinking about him dying and not knowing. Now I feel different. He’s been gone most of my life now.

I also have this best friend who is more than my best friend. She’s my soul. This girl has helped me through some of the worst parts of my life. She and I don’t get to see each other very often but we are always family to each other. She and I talk almost daily. I just love her.

That’s my family though. It’s a hot mess but it’s mine and I love it. At the end of every day I am blessed because I’m loved and cared for.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Chairman Graham, Ranking Member Feinstein, and Members of the Committee: I am honored and humbled to appear before you as a nominee for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. I thank the President for entrusting me with this profound responsibility, as well as for the graciousness that he and the First Lady have shown my family throughout this process. I thank Senator Young for introducing me, as he did at my hearing to serve on the Seventh Circuit. I thank Senator Braun for his generous support. And I am especially grateful to former Dean Patty O'Hara of Notre Dame Law School. She hired me as a professor nearly 20 years ago and has been a mentor, colleague, and friend ever since. I thank the Members of this Committee—and your other colleagues in the Senate—who have taken the time to meet with me since my nomination. It has been a privilege to meet you.

As I said when I was nominated to serve as a Justice, I am used to being in a group of nine—my family. Nothing is more important to me, and I am so proud to have them behind me. My husband Jesse and I have been married for 21 years. He has been a selfless and wonderful partner at every step along the way. I once asked my sister, "Why do people say marriage is hard? I think it's easy." She said, "Maybe you should ask Jesse if he agrees." I decided not to take her advice. I know that I am far luckier in love than I deserve. Jesse and I are parents to seven wonderful children. Emma is a sophomore in college who just might follow her parents into a career in the law. Vivian came to us from Haiti. When she arrived, she was so weak that we were told she might never walk or talk normally. She now deadlifts as much as the male athletes at our gym, and I assure you that she has no trouble talking. Tess is 16, and while she shares her parents' love for the liberal arts, she also has a math gene that seems to have skipped her parents' generation. John Peter joined us shortly after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, and Jesse, who brought him home, still describes the shock on JP's face when he got off the plane in wintertime Chicago. Once that shock wore off, JP assumed the happy-go-lucky attitude that is still his signature trait. Liam is smart, strong, and kind, and to our delight, he still loves watching movies with Mom and Dad. Ten-year-old Juliet is already pursuing her goal of becoming an author by writing multiple essays and short stories, including one she recently submitted for publication. And our youngest—Benjamin, who has Down Syndrome—is the unanimous favorite of the family. My own siblings are here, some in the hearing room and some nearby. Carrie, Megan, Eileen, Amanda, Vivian, and Michael are my oldest and dearest friends. We've seen each other through both the happy and hard parts of life, and I am so grateful that they are with me now. My parents, Mike and Linda Coney, are watching from their New Orleans home. My father was a lawyer and my mother was a teacher, which explains how I ended up as a law professor. More important, my parents modeled for me and my six siblings a life of service, principle, faith, and love. I remember preparing for a grade-school spelling bee against a boy in my class. To boost my confidence, Dad sang, "Anything boys can do, girls can do better." At least as I remember it, I spelled my way to victory.

I received similar encouragement from the devoted teachers at St. Mary's Dominican, my all-girls high school in New Orleans. When I went to college, it never occurred to me that anyone would consider girls to be less capable than boys. My freshman year, I took a literature class filled with upperclassmen English majors. When I did my first presentation—on Breakfast at Tiffany's—I feared I had failed. But my professor filled me with confidence, became a mentor, and—when I graduated with a degree in English—gave me Truman Capote's collected works. Although I considered graduate studies in English, I decided my passion for words was better suited to deciphering statutes than novels. I was fortunate to have wonderful legal mentors—in particular, the judges for whom I clerked. The legendary Judge Laurence Silberman of the D.C. Circuit gave me my first job in the law and continues to teach me today. He was by my side during my Seventh Circuit hearing and investiture, and he is cheering me on from his living room now.

I also clerked for Justice Scalia, and like many law students, I felt like I knew the justice before I ever met him, because I had read so many of his colorful, accessible opinions. More than the style of his writing, though, it was the content of Justice Scalia's reasoning that shaped me. His judicial philosophy was straightforward: A judge must apply the law as written, not as the judge wishes it were. Sometimes that approach meant reaching results that he did not like. But as he put it in one of his best known opinions, that is what it means to say we have a government of laws, not of men. Justice Scalia taught me more than just law. He was devoted to his family, resolute in his beliefs, and fearless of criticism. And as I embarked on my own legal career, I resolved to maintain that same perspective. There is a tendency in our profession to treat the practice of law as all-consuming, while losing sight of everything else. But that makes for a shallow and unfulfilling life. I worked hard as a lawyer and a professor; I owed that to my clients, my students, and myself. But I never let the law define my identity or crowd out the rest of my life.

A similar principle applies to the role of courts. Courts have a vital responsibility to enforce the rule of law, which is critical to a free society. But courts are not designed to solve every problem or right every wrong in our public life. The policy decisions and value judgments of government must be made by the political branches elected by and accountable to the People. The public should not expect courts to do so, and courts should not try. That is the approach I have strived to follow as a judge on the Seventh Circuit. In every case, I have carefully considered the arguments presented by the parties, discussed the issues with my colleagues on the court, and done my utmost to reach the result required by the law, whatever my own preferences might be. I try to remain mindful that, while my court decides thousands of cases a year, each case is the most important one to the parties involved. After all, cases are not like statutes, which are often named for their authors. Cases are named for the parties who stand to gain or lose in the real world, often through their liberty or livelihood. When I write an opinion resolving a case, I read every word from the perspective of the losing party. I ask myself how would I view the decision if one of my children was the party I was ruling against: Even though I would not like the result, would I understand that the decision was fairly reasoned and grounded in the law? That is the standard I set for myself in every case, and it is the standard I will follow as long as I am a judge on any court.

When the President offered this nomination, I was deeply honored. But it was not a position I had sought out, and I thought carefully before accepting. The confirmation process—and the work of serving on the Court if I am confirmed— requires sacrifices, particularly from my family. I chose to accept the nomination because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the place of the Supreme Court in our Nation. I believe Americans of all backgrounds deserve an independent Supreme Court that interprets our Constitution and laws as they are written. And I believe I can serve my country by playing that role. I come before this Committee with humility about the responsibility I have been asked to undertake, and with appreciation for those who came before me. I was nine years old when Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman to sit in this seat. She was a model of grace and dignity throughout her distinguished tenure on the Court. When I was 21 years old and just beginning my career, Ruth Bader Ginsburg sat in this seat. She told the Committee, "What has become of me could only happen in America." I have been nominated to fill Justice Ginsburg's seat, but no one will ever take her place. I will be forever grateful for the path she marked and the life she led. If confirmed, it would be the honor of a lifetime to serve alongside the Chief Justice and seven Associate Justices. I admire them all and would consider each a valued colleague. And I might bring a few new perspectives to the bench. As the President noted when he announced my nomination, I would be the first mother of school-age children to serve on the Court. I would be the first Justice to join the Court from the Seventh Circuit in 45 years. And I would be the only sitting Justice who didn't attend law school at Harvard or Yale. I am confident that Notre Dame will hold its own, and maybe I could even teach them a thing or two about football.

As a final note, Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the many Americans from all walks of life who have reached out with messages of support over the course of my nomination. I believe in the power of prayer, and it has been uplifting to hear that so many people are praying for me. I look forward to answering the Committee's questions over the coming days. And if I am fortunate enough to be confirmed, I pledge to faithfully and impartially discharge my duties to the American people as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Thank you.

#politics #us politics #trump administration #us supreme court #us congress #us senate #amy coney barrett #news #npr #SCOTUS

[arcticdoctor]

BASIC INFORMATION:

FULL NAME : jonathan ( vinay ) bhavsar.  MEANING:

name: jonathan, meaning yahweh has given from hebrew origin.

surname: bhavsar, traditional occupation of dyeing and calico printing from hindu origin.

MONIKERS / NICKNAMES : the doctor / jon.

GENDER & PRONOUNS : cis-male, he / him. ETHNICITY : indian.  DATE OF BIRTH & AGE: august 24, 1815. ( 30 years old )  ZODIAC SIGN : virgo — the sign that seeks goodness in humankind. ORIENTATION : bi, bi, bi !  MARITAL STATUS : single, as his parents remind him as often as humanly possible.  OCCUPATION : doctor. ( the highest role out of the doctor / physician / surgeon / apothecary options. he fought to be called doctor. )  CURRENT LOCATION : the hms promethean. 

BACKGROUND:

PLACE OF BIRTH : calcutta, the capital of british-held territories in india. RESIDENCES : london --- he lived in a ( fairly small ) home with his parents and youngest sister. he was rarely at home, however, spending most of his day traveling by horseback to patients.   RELIGIOUS VIEWS : agnostic, although he doesn’t really recognize that about himself. his mother especially tried to instill in him a connection to christianity, but it just led to him asking a lot of questions she couldn’t answer. it would not be until he was an adult himself that he learned she still practiced hinduism.  EDUCATION : very much scattered in his youth, but his parents were very determined that he have a good education so it eventually picked up. they spent a good deal of their resources to see it happen. medical school in his early twenties. partnership with an older doctor for a few years until they parted on bad terms, but by then, he had made enough of a name for himself to continue his own practice.  LANGUAGES SPOKEN : english, latin, greek, french, german. learning urdu and persian ( farsi ).  FAMILY : 

parents: mother ( aditi bhavsar ) + father ( sahil bhavsar )

siblings: thomas bhavsar ( brother, 2 years younger --- a rascal! all play and no work! bums off jonathan constantly! he’s always off on some con but truly means well. ), sophia bhavsar ( sister, 3 years younger --- oldest sister syndrome, very hardworking, absolutely musically gifted, just started her own family. ), rosanna bhavsar ( deceased, was almost 5 years old at time of death ), dinah bhavsar ( sister, 10 years younger --- the surprise and absolute jewel of the family, a bit lost in what she wants, lives at home. )

OTHER FAMILIAL RELATIONS : the rest of his family still resides in india, and he has yet to meet them. he has written to a cousin a few times, but that’s the extent of his contact.  

APPEARANCE:

FACECLAIM : dev patel. HAIR COLOUR / STYLE : black, curly when he doesn’t cut it for too long. he tries to keep clean-shaven, but he prefers trimmed facial hair.  EYE COLOUR / SHAPE : black-brown, round eyes. HEIGHT : 6 ft. 2 in. BUILD : lean but athletic. SPEECH STYLE : he tends to get over-excited when he speaks, and his speech becomes rapid, often littered with interjections and questions. he’ll cut himself off and let his train of thought go where it will, which can make it difficult to have a conversation with him on occasion. in his profession, he is soft-spoken and kindly in his speech. gentle. comforting.  RECOGNIZABLE MARKINGS : calloused hands, a scar on his thigh ( horseback riding incident ), misc. scars from just... not looking after himself as closely as he should and pushing himself too far.  BEAUTY HABITS : grooming ( trimming hair and beard ), cleaning his glasses, regularly bathes, obsessively washes his hands. 

PERSONALITY:

TROPES : the relentless optimist, the idealist, friend to all living things, from zero to hero, good is not dumb, hope bringer, curiosity killed the cat.  INSPIRATIONS : okay this is not going to make any sense to anyone else because it’s less these whole characters and more... moments of them. also only in retrospect? but: leo ( the great ), fox mulder ( the x-files ), chidi anagonye ( the good place ), kim hui seong ( mr. sunshine ), samwise gamgee ( lord of the rings ), patroclus ( mythology ), mary oliver poetry. i took inspiration from the concept of a good character, a character who is bright-eyed and childlike, a character who loves and laughs and is maybe a bit too excited to uncover the secrets of the world, even if those secrets are horrible and monstrous. curious to a fault and has never apologized for that curiosity, even if it gets him in trouble.  MBTI : enfj ( extraverted, intuitive, feeling, judging, assertive ). ENNEAGRAM : type two --- the giver. ALIGNMENT : neutral good — a neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. HOGWARTS HOUSE : ravenclaw. POSITIVE TRAITS : optimistic, steadfast, curious.  NEGATIVE TRAITS : tactless, overly determined, naive.  HABITS : he is constantly moving, constantly talking, constantly in motion. he takes on / off his glasses a shocking amount of times. he people watches.  HOBBIES : reading, sketching, exploring, astronomy, gardening, philosophical debates.  USUAL DEMEANOR : this gif really feels right. he tends to be a bit bouncy, speaks with his hands a lot, tries to make himself smaller than he is so as not to intimidate anyone. i feel like you see him, and you know he’s not a threat. he also smiles at most people! 

HEALTH

PHYSICAL AILMENTS : he was seasick for a while, but he’s finally used to ship. beyond that, he’s pretty healthy.  NEUROLOGICAL CONDITION : adhd, obviously undiagnosed.  PHOBIAS : fear of being buried alive, if only because he has heard some horror stories. :-/ ALLERGIES : none. SLEEPING HABITS : this boy definitely has insomnia! it takes him a long, long time to fall asleep. you can catch him wandering, reading, or laying on the floor groaning to himself when it’s particularly bad. sometimes, he’ll just... forget to sleep? he’ll get wrapped up in something that excites him, and suddenly, it’s been 48 hours.  SOCIABILITY : fairly social! he loves, loves, loves talking to people, but he can be a bit annoying. he also doesn’t realize when he’s being annoying, which can make the situation worse. he’ll spend three hours talking to someone about deeply personal things and realize he doesn’t know their name. and then he’ll run off mid-conversation to go be by himself.  ADDICTIONS : none. on the occasion that he drinks, he’s such a light weight that it reminds him not to drink for the next year. 

#this was for my own benefit so i could keep his story straight lmao #this was genuinely so fun tho #love to give life to jon's family ! #reference.

[twistedtaleshq]

“ Don’t scare you? That’s my specialty. “

HARRY HOOK of ISLE OF THE LOST

( HE ) is new to ( STORYBROOKE ) and is the child of ( CAPTAIN HOOK / MILAH ). ( HE ) is forever stuck at ( 19 ) years of age and is said to look like ( THOMAS DOHERTY ) . ( HE ) is ( POWERLESS ), but ( ARROGANT, COMPULSIVE,  RUTHLESS ). However, ( HE ) is ( LOYAL, DETERMINED, ADVENTUROUS ).

BIOGRAPHY

Being the middle of child would make anyone crazy, and perhaps that’s exactly why Harry is the way he is. Born to Captain Hook and Milah on the Isle of the Lost, he was probably the one person who didn’t get nearly enough attention. The only boy in his family, most expected him to have his father’s love, but that wasn’t entirely true. Truth be told, Harriet and CJ have always been the two most loved and as much as Harry would like to admit he’s fine with it, there’s a part of him that wishes things had been… different. 

Not much is known about his childhood, other than the fact things were harder on him. His father wanted him to captain his own crew. Captain Hook taught him, trained him, and pressured him into doing everything bad and somehow Harry still managed to slip up. When Hook decided his son was a lost cause, his attention turned to his oldest child, Harriet. Harry may have been his initial pick, but Harriet had the determination to make things work in her favor.

Soon after that, CJ was born. Putting Harry in a position he never wanted in the first place. Whoever told you middle child syndrome wasn’t a thing, clearly has never been the middle child. His new baby sister got the attention from his mother and after a while, Harry’s personality shifted from a happy child to something more dark in nature. After a while, he faced a minor obsession with making his father proud -- even going as far as stealing one of his hooks -- which he holds as often as he can. When questioned about his hook, Harry has given some bizarre answers, one of them being if my hand could be bitten off by a crocodile, too, it would be for the best. He may not have ever been made a captain, but he did become the first mate of Um’a ship.

When Mal was sent to Auradon, Harry grew angry and resentful, but mostly because UMA felt that way. Making friends with Ursula’s daughter came at a dark time in his life and he’d never replace her. In a way, Harry feels like he met her at an important time in his life where both of them felt misplaced by those they wanted to impress. Harry, with his father. Uma, with her mother. Meeting GIL happened to be the next best part of his life. Eventually, the three of them went on to be known as the SEA THREE, with Uma taking over Mal’s spot the moment she got picked to go to Auradon for their villain rehabilitation program. 

As time progressed, Harry distanced himself further from his siblings and his parents. By the time the barrier came down for good, Harry had already tasted the power of being good and he couldn’t say he was too much of a fan. He’s only known how to be evil and that’s exactly what he preferred to be as long as it meant having Gil and Uma at his side.

When Hades’ spell fell across Auradon, he didn’t fight the fog that followed. He has no idea where the hell he is now, but it has to be better than Boreadon. Now in a place unknown to him, he does blame MAL and BEN for not having protecting them like they claimed they would. 

CONNECTIONS

THE SEA THREE: UMA, GIL, HARRY. On the ISLE OF THE LOST, they were known as the Sea Three. Harry’s loyalty knows no limits when it comes to Uma and Gil. They’re his best friends and they have been through a lot together. This new world is something else they’ll get through together.

MILAH: Unknown to most, MILAH has always been connected to an alternate universe. For Harry, he only knows her as his mother, but she’s always been much more. The mother to BAELFIRE and the former wife of THE DARK ONE, Milah was killed, resurrected, and forced to spend the rest of her life on the ISLE OF THE LOST due to her past. She just happened to fall in love and have three children with the man she never got her happy ending with in the other world. Milah has always been there for Harry, though she’s always treated him a little different. Harry doesn’t know her connection to the STORYBROOKE characters, and hell, part of him probably wouldn’t even care. 

KILLIAN JONES: This man looks just like his father, but rumor has it -- they’re not even connected. Harry isn’t entirely sure how that’s possible, but he can admit one thing. He’s got his eye on him. Harry saw him arrive on a pirate ship, but it’s not the ship he’s familiar with, either. It’s different. A different color. A different structure. Everything is so... different.

THE CORE FOUR: MAL. CARLOS. JAY. EVIE. For Harry, being stuck in this town is all their fault in his eyes. He’s always held some sort of resentment towards MAL because she got to leave the Isle first. Sure, they may have made up temporarily -- but all good things come to an end. He doesn’t trust them. Mal and Ben were supposed to protect them and clearly, they haven’t done a good job.

SKILLS

FENCING: Born a pirate, Harry is a skilled sword fighter. He has been using swords since before he could walk, which gives him an advantage in most fights.

SAILING: He has a vast knowledge of navigation, probably stemming from his father's lessons. Although he is not a Captain, he seems to have more knowledge about a ship than Uma.

INTIMIDATION: Since he has no magical abilities, Harry has found other ways of being intimidating. On the ISLE OF THE LOST, he was Uma’s muscle. If someone owed a debt to Uma, Harry was sent to retrieve it. 

THIS CHARACTER IS TAKEN.

#fc: thomas doherty #descendants #tm #descendantsm #descendantst #descendantstm

[pandap-0-p]

Age au; Bela is now the oldest

((So this one was fun and interesting.

I think, as kids, Natalia would have aged differently than her siblings did. Natalia has a serious, no-fun personality and I think suddenly having two kids following you around would really put a lot of stress on her. She becomes a provider: she hunts their foods, she provides furs for winters, she finds them places to sleep and rest. She ultinately becomes a “guardian” figure over a mother or sister figure. That growing, and viewing herself as both a provider and a guardian, would really change the way she intereacted and the roles she played in other parts of her history and I think that the Belarus we see currently would be vastly different.

We see now that Natalia has no say and no power over her government or her brother’s interference within it. I definitely think that the days of the USSR and world Wars, and Belarus in modern history would turn out differently. Natalia would feel compelled to provide and protect her people, and herself. I think for so long she would fulfill this role for her brother and sister that when Ukraine and Russia no longer need that of her, she would feel lost. She would then cement herself as that role for her country. I can’t say she would win the battles we know she has now lost, but I think she’d put up much more of a fight— She would rebel against corruption, against conquerers and invasion until she was beaten very, very thoroughly into submission— and would rise again against whatever she believed to be a threat. The relationship between her siblings would become strained, particularly with Russia, as she would see him as a constant walking insult to her age and to all the things she did to ensure not only his survival but his comfort and livelihood.

Overall, I think if this AU happened, Natalia would be a different type of “done with their shit” person. No frilly dresses, no complacency. I think her interests in the occult and her love of traditions would remain, and heavily influence her feelings towards others.

I aged her (in human appearance and general attitude) from 19 to 36. Ukraine would be the middle child, probably around 30 and Russia the youngest, whom stopped aging at 28. I think Ukraine would have a similar personality to the one she canonly has, though she would be constantly anxious over the tumultuous relationship between her siblings. Natalia and Ukraine get along decently, and Natalia can openly express (though rarely does she) her feelings to Yekatarina. Russia would definitely have “youngest child syndrome” and it would //drive Natalia insane//. They do love one another and cna get along as people, just... Not as nations representing their people. What Natalia sees as disrespect and an infringement of her rights and sovereignty, he views as “Whats best for them both”. Natalia often butts heads with her government officials. And his. Anyone who says something she doesnt like. Almost everyone. She’s old and cranky. Other nations are still scared of her. She just wants to take a nap, maybe take a month and disappear to live off the land, go hunting, have things the way they were before she had anyone to take care of for a little while without everything falling to chaos. Please help her. ))

[treybriggsthewriter]

Astrid the Devil is now being released on Wattpad as well as www.astridthedevil.com.

Start from the beginning and bookmark the story:

Astrid the Devil - Part One: Astor The Immortal - Prologue (on Wattpad) https://my.w.tt/QCEwEKBdIU

Read Chapter Three Now! RIGHT NOW: https://www.wattpad.com/701618695-astrid-the-devil-part-one-astor-the-immortal

All Astrid the Devil artwork is created by @freemechanism!

Chapter 3 Excerpt:

“The world is so small, Alicia. You see one person, and they’re actually another. You build your own community, and it’s actually just you.” Alicia’s father held her small hand as they watched the town burning. Crumbling, heat waving the shrunken bodies of their friends in the wind. She wanted to tell her mother to stop sobbing, to stop sucking in those deep breaths.

It was their neighbors she was sucking into her lungs. Couldn’t she understand that?

Alicia moved her legs, shakily, and followed her family to the car. There was nothing to be done for the town. No one else seemed to register the loss they’d just faced. The friends she’d made in the last twelve months. The faces, small and large and sometimes even tiny, all turned ashen and blending into the atmosphere.

As far as she knew, this was the third time in as many years that her mother had breathed in her burning neighbors. That her father spat tobacco to the side, irritated, watching with a slowly rising venom that she didn’t find accurate enough. She couldn’t remember a lot from the years before her 13th birthday, though. That was the one where her father declared she had to be ‘tested or eliminated.’

She couldn’t cry. She hardly ate. Her hair grew like an animal. These were signs that she had inherited the ‘syndrome’ and her father had to know whether or not she was ‘a full one.’ They had to do ‘the test.’

That was the birthday when her mother pleaded with her father to just let her be, to let her live whatever life she had in store for her.

“She either is one or she isn’t. But we have to know now. And we have to protect her if she is,” he reasoned. Her oldest sister agreed to help him. They had long, somber talks about it for the weeks leading up to her birthday. Her mother wasn’t invited to those talks, but that didn’t stop her from screaming at her husband about it every chance she got.

“You killed the last two tryin’ to test this out! You won’t kill her, you WON’T!”

That was the birthday when her father locked her mother in the closet, ignoring her screaming. Where Alicia struggled and fought, only giving in when her father held her in a headlock and she almost passed out. And the one where her sisters held her down in the tub, their father egging them on, and she’d drowned. The one where she’d spit blood at her oldest sister, chaotic, trying desperately to get up. The blood seeped into Mae’s face, into her skin, and her sisters let her up, stunned. The one where her mother cried upon her release, hugging Mae grimly, calling Alicia a ‘devil.’

“You GAVE it to her, Harold! How could you?! You said you couldn’t give it to the normal children! You promised! What did you do? What’s gonna happen to them?”

“I did no such thing. Calm down. Mae’s just protecting her sister.”

Maybe they’d always been on the run.

Her father told them they’d better get moving before ‘they’ came back. He said they’d be back. And Harold was always right. Why would now be any different?

From fire or water or genetics, maybe they were always on the run.

… …

Alicia’s father was a mansion, both in size and personality. Wealth seemed to spill from him when he winked, making better-classed men spill secrets and give them room and board. He smiled, and the hearts of women seemed to turn to gel, to allow entry, to encourage it.

Her mother was quite the same. She was poised, radiating charm and luxury without ever needing to make a penny. Men seemed to wilt when she talked to them, her hands always gloved and clasped. Judith walked by and even Alicia closed her eyes to take in her beautiful scent.

Her sisters were vibrant and almost song-like, all tall with wide smiles and impossibly white teeth. The oldest was the envy of Alicia’s entire life. She was so tall Alicia had to bend her head back to talk to her. She often wished she was as regal and delicate as Mae Free. At 19, Mae wound men and even women around her finger with the smallest gesture. They were close. Mae took to staring at Alicia for long periods, almost uncomfortably so, but it made Alicia feel prettier. She didn’t mind it.

They charmed their way across the country, even to the white folks that despised them inwardly. All it took was one good scam a year, and they lived like they were rich. Judith dressed them lavishly, making sure to separate them by glove color. Alicia’s were always black leather while the other girls donned white satin.

Judith wanted it apparent that Alicia wasn’t to be approached.

Alicia was pretty but not much else. She lacked the charm of her family so deeply that they left her home when they went out. There was too much venom in her glances, too much anger in the curves of her body. Where her sisters and mother were lengthy and regal, she was petite and curvy. People stayed away from her. Her father couldn’t risk having her around for the scams; she was a dead giveaway that something was wrong. She had never quite fit into the mold, but hiding behind her family protected her nonetheless. Where she lacked charm, their own charm billowed and blanketed her.

No one ever complained that Alicia didn’t help when they robbed or stole. Her mother forbade it.

“It’s harder for us dark girls, but it’s not impossible. You just have to learn how to work people. Don’t worry. Anyone touches you and your father will eat ‘em. Cut ‘em up and eat ‘em, girl,” her mother used to joke. Alicia would look down at her deep brown skin and nod. At 16, running away from another town, she wondered for a moment if she was the reason these towns kept burning. Was her family on the run because of her skin color? Mae was the same brown, but she was lengthy and charismatic. Her sisters Sara and Mary were lighter with looser curl patterns, more like their father. Were they hunted because of Mae and Alicia?

No. The marks for the scams never knew what hit them, but they were never bold enough to burn down towns. They went after older white men that boasted and flaunted their wealth. The ones who cornered black women and tried to guilt them into sex. The ones that belonged in prison but skidded by on their wealth and race, terrorizing blacks. They could hurt you in numbers but were almost always too afraid to even look in your direction alone. Talking helped with their anxieties. They could hardly close their mouths long enough to light a cigar let alone burn a whole town of innocent people.

This time, though, it was hard to ignore her father’s quiet anger turning to shame. Her mother’s stillness, anguish flowing through her. The words she didn’t say were all soaked in blame toward her husband.

How could you, Harold?

Alicia was not considered the loveliest, but she would always be the smartest. Her charming mansion of a father was the one they were after.

And whatever was after him was not going to back down until he wafted in the wind with the others.

… …

Alicia heard her parents arguing all the time. They didn’t bother stopping when they realized their daughters were awake, huddled in the back of the flashy black car (her father’s pride and joy). The argument was heated enough to make Harold pull over to the side of the road, deep in the country, to better turn and yell at his wife. Alicia stared out the window, eyeing the darkness of the woods, and tried to ignore them.

It was an argument they had a lot, and her mother never seemed to shrink until her father’s unsurpassable rage bubbled up.

“…how do you know that was actually your brother? We ain’t goin’ there. I’ll be damned if I get tricked by one of those damn things…”

“I’ve known my brother my entire life, Harold! You think I don’t recognize his voice on the phone? Are we really going to lose every person we know and love because of your paranoia?”

Harold cut the engine of the car and turned to face his wife.

“You understand what we’re facing? Did you see what happened back there? If they destroy my body, or worse, the girl’s body…” Judith scoffed.

“According to you, ya’ll would be fine! You’re dragging us around the world. Dragging us. The girls need friends. They need school, not going around swindling and pointing guns at people. This ain’t right. Whatever we’re up against is nothing compared to how lonely we all feel. You are supposed to protect us, Harold. You got all these extra lives, or so you say, and you can’t even protect us…” Alicia watched her mother’s golden brown skin redden, anger and exhaustion flowing through her.

“So I say? Heh. So I say.” He paused for a long time, eyes closed, trying to calm down. Judith gave Alicia a tight smile from the passenger’s seat.

“There’s only one place left to go, Judy. You don’t have to worry your pretty head about it. I got a friend down south in the city, in Chastain, she’s supposed to keep us safe from them. She asked for me and the girl personally, she’s been lookin’ for us…”

“Don’t you call her ‘the girl.’ You know I hate that. Just because you made her a monster don’t mean she gotta be ‘the girl.’ And what about the rest of us? The normal ones? This woman gon’ take care of us, too? How do you know her?” Harold was quiet for a moment.

“Back when I was young, she was good friends with my momma. She’s like me. Like the girl…I mean, like Alicia. She knows more than I do and she’s been around a long time. If anybody can help us, she can. And she can teach the girl how to handle herself.”

Alicia started to stare down at her own feet. Mae squeezed her shoulder in support. A strange noise, staticy and low, forced her to look up.

Outside of the car, the light of the day was slowly retreating into the distance. It looked like rain. Sara, Mae, and Mary all focused on their gloved hands as their parents argued. It was a moment Alicia would think about a lot later. The family all sitting there together, beautifully dressed, with the sky darkening quickly over them. It was like a picture.

She would think about looking over to her mother, the heat of her fear. Then turning her head back to look at Mae and finding her staring, hard, unblinking, head tilted painfully.

“You mean to leave us, don’t you? You mean to give my baby to that woman and send us away? I’m guessing you’re not coming with us, either? You’re going to send us off to live like thieves while you cozy up to some woman in the city and my baby is doing God knows what…”

“I’m sending you away from burning to death, woman, don’t you want that?! You think they’ll stop at me? They don’t know which of us it is!”

“You’re not keeping my baby there. You stay. We’ll go.”

“Alicia and Mae will stay with me. The rest of you are the normal ones, remember?”

“Mae…yeah. How could I forget your little bathtub experiment? You give one of my babies your extra lives and doom another to a shorter one.” Harold seemed hurt by her words, turning further to see her better. Judith’s white gloves shook with anxiety.

“Mae agreed to it. She agreed! The girl has to be protected. She has to have a Latch. It’s…”

“So you say,” Judith murmured. Harold let out an angry growl, teeth gritting, and struggled to calm himself. Judith tensed up at his anger, swallowing the rest of her words.

There was that noise again. Alicia felt her stomach churn as the sound grew louder.

Shuffling. It wasn’t static. It was the sound of the dirt moving under feet. A lot of feet.

“Something’s about to happen, Alicia, I can feel it,” Mae said slowly, her dark cheeks blushing. Alicia nodded. Mae didn’t move again. Not an inch. She sat and stared at her sister until tears welled up in her eyes. “I love you, Alicia. Don’t feel bad.”

“Daddy…” Alicia’s voice came out hoarse and shaky. Harold froze. The other girls looked up in confusion. Mae seemed to be having trouble breathing.

“You hear somethin’?” Judith asked knowingly, straining her neck. Alicia and Harold could always hear the things they couldn’t. Harold held up his hand to shush her.

“Where’s it comin’ from, girl?”

“I…Daddy, it’s everywhere. I hear them from everywhere.”

The windows of the car turned pitch black. Like someone dumped black paint over the car, like there was a black wall on all sides of them. Alicia couldn’t see anything, not the woods, not the sky, not even the window itself. The darkness completely consumed the car.

Judith’s heavy breathing was the only noise. Gasping, she was always gasping and sucking in air. Alicia tried to listen to the shuffling over her mother’s panic but, abruptly, it was gone.

The static disappeared.

The silence was too thick.

“Daddy…drive! Please!” Sara’s voice was thick with worry. Alicia reached across Mae to grab her second oldest sister’s hand, black glove against white, and held it until she stopped shaking.

She closed her eyes and listened.

Everywhere…they’re everywhere! But one’s real close…

“They’re in front of us…” As soon as Alicia spoke, a pair of big brown eyes opened next to her, outside the car window. The whites seemed to blaze into the car, stark against the pitch black. The pupils constricted until they looked like tiny dots in a sea of brown, and somehow they still focused on her. They slowly slid over to see the back of her father’s head. A wide, white smile seemed to tear across the window.

“Heh.”

The front window shattered, an ugly roar filling the car, and Alicia felt her body sliding into her sisters. Judith let out a violent screech, fighting against black hands bursting through her passenger side window. A sticky substance traveled along the unbroken glass, thick like molasses but bubbling. Harold was silent except for grunts, his foot pressing uselessly against the gas pedal. The car leaned forward as if tipped by a giant, screaming ripping Alicia’s ears, and more pitch black hands and blobs burst inside. She gripped the window crank, preparing herself for the worst.

...read more on Wattpad or at www.astridthedevil.com!

#creatures #dark #diverse #graphic-violence #horror #monsters #originalcharacter #paranormalhorror #supernatural #woc #paranormal #books #wattpad #amreading #astridthedevil #freemechanism #treybriggsthewriter #horrorwriters #horrorart #black characters #black original characters

[pinkxsheets-blog]

On Bathroom Equality

Having your first period is, well, let’s call it: “an experience”. Having your period in public when you are not prepared and your best friend is not around to whip out the little magic bag she always carried in her school bag (thank you), is scary. Being unable to afford the adequate sanitary products is an experience no girl/woman should go through. Living in a system which fails to support females with their basic sanitary needs and makes profit out of their biological functions is, well, discrimination.

However, this is the reality we all (some more affected by it than others), face. 

I had my first contact with periods when I was about the age of 5. I have always followed my mum wherever she went, so, in the school toilet she took the opportunity, showed me her sanitary towel and explained, that this, becoming a woman through bleeding, would also happen to me one day. It would become a monthly ritual, and I had to always be prepared. Years before I would even hit puberty I was forced to carry the necessary supplies with me wherever I went. 

Some (e.g. younger me) could argue that my mother was a bit paranoid, even extreme. The truth is, however, she only feared I could experience this significant part of a woman’s life the same way she did. My mother spend the first few days she bled thinking she was going to die, but too embarrassed to ask for help (I mean, rural Brazil in the 80s? Good luck in mentioning your vagina), until her mother, embarrassed herself, caught up with what occurred with her oldest daughter and with no other explanation than “this will happen a lot” and no dime in hands gave her a piece of cloth and said: “Here. Cut it to the right size. Later, wash it, and use it again.” 

Other than having sympathy with my mother when she recalled the hard cloth ripping into the skin of her thighs, the disgust of having to wash out her own blood out of it and the occasional experience of the inadequate material permitting the blood to run down her legs, embarrassing her - a confession of the sin of being born a poor woman - this issue was not one that affected me much. I say much, because obviously, like every other woman have I as well, for my own lack of planning or due to the unregularity of our bodies, felt the humiliation that it is standing/bleeding in a public place with no measures to support our most basic sanitary needs. This feeling of occasional humiliation and discomfort however turns into anger when I see headlines like the ones covering the newspapers two weeks ago of English girls missing school for being too poor to afford sanitary products. 

 This again brings to mind a question Elmira and I have been asking ourselves lately: How can we reach gender equality if additional financial burden are connected with existing as a girl/woman? The western society is always quick to judge upon development countries and the challenges imposed upon women and girls in these, but very often fails to look deep into their own structures that might be holding females back: the so called "tampon tax" is one of these. Yes, it is a topic most of us have heard a lot about (and many roll their eyes to to this perfect example of the "western feminist making a fuss over small things and demanding one more privilege"). But the affordable, or even free, possibility to obtain female sanitary products is not just one more privilege when once a month your body does what a female body is supposed to do: bleed. Uncontrollably. With no holding back (it might seem unnecessary that I mention this, but just in case some of you -as some dummies on twitter have- hold onto the illusion that women can "hold it back just like pee").

 The taxation of a product so necessary to us not only condemns women and girls in poverty to discomfort and humiliation, but can also be seen as a mechanism of a misogynistic capitalist system to keep these women empoverished, and to punish them for being what they are: women. If this taxation is just another measure of brining money to the state to be used in the benefit of the people and not a punishment on the needs of the female body, how come other sanitary necessities as well needed by our non-menstruating peers such as toilet paper are then not taxed as a luxury? And yes, I am aware that razors for men AND women are also taxed as a luxury, but hey, other then the media would like you to believe, having fresh shaved legs is not of the same importance to as being able to function efficiently without having to have blood dripping down our thighs. Allowing women access to the most basic sanitary products and the comfort, well-being and hygiene that comes along with them should never be seen as a privilege. The current failure of this exposes capitalism as lacking the ability to address equality, and exposes a misogynistic system.

 The real issue with the taxation and cost of female sanitary products is not the extra pound middle class women have to pay for their period. The real issue is the comfort and hygiene that comes with it being sold to poor girls as a luxury they can't afford, and even more importantly, occasionally leading to girls, fearing the humiliation of their blood stains, missing out on school. This leads to another challenge trapping young women in poverty and taking away their equal right to a bright future.

Recent studies have shown that underprivileged girls can miss in average 4 days of school a month, solemnly due to the fact that sanitary products are not available to them. And even though headlines of the situation of the girls in Leeds have only been going around recently, this is not a new problem, just a not properly addressed one. Due to the embarrassment girls and women face when facing this issue, lack of understanding and support of the community that surrounds them and the low priority such problems have in the face of starvation, death, literacy and many other daily struggles, women and girls have been choosing to remain silent and find their own, often dangerous, solutions. 

“Teenagers and young girls are being forced to wrap or stuff toilet paper down their knickers, to prevent them from bleeding all over themselves while at school. The cost of sanitary products are just too much for some girls and their families, and it’s leading to missing school and it’s putting their health at risk.”, says The Guardian. In other cases, families with many girls use pieces of cloth, which are then washed out and shared between the girls, exposing them to a huge risk of general diseases. 

Now, some schools do provide free sanitary products to support their students, however, this is often done in an inadequate way. In many cases, the girl has to ask for permission of the teacher -which often gets declined- to leave class and go talk to the nurse as she did not bring sanitary products with her. Once arriving at the nurse, it can be that the girl has to face a questionnaire as to why she did not bring tampons with her in the first place. Besides being humiliating and agonising, all this process leads girls to waste valuable time in class and/or be stuck in an uncomfortable situation, both being obstacles to young girls to reach their full potential. “The minute you have to ask someone for something that you need for your normal bodily function, you're creating a barrier," says Ferreras-Copeland. The attempt to avoid this situation also leads to many girls using their tampons/sanitary towels longer than they should be, which can lead to cervical cancer or shock syndrome. 

All of this could be avoided with one simple step: provide school bathrooms with free female sanitary products. Not only will this be a step towards economic equality and an aid to girls in need and to their families, it will also give young girls their dignity and respect back. To critics of this measure that point out state money should’t be used to “afford this kind of luxury”, I can only point of how hugely classist this viewpoint is: It completely ignores the needs of low-income families who sometimes need to choose between spending their last ten pounds on food or on buying sanitary products. Also, while I do see a bigger urgency in bringing these products to schools, I also don’t see why this shouldn’t be extended to offices, workplaces - keeping women concentrated and feeling well while doing their job - and public bathrooms, being a huge help to homeless women who struggle hugely during their period, and also improving the wellbeing of women generally while being out and about.  

To those of you who are willing and have the means to get active on this issue, the removal of the tampon tax is currently being discussed. Call/write to your MP and let him know how you feel about this issue. The removal of the tax would be one step towards equality and at least lower the economical burden imposed on girls and women in need. However, we are still far from seeing these products freely available on each public toilet. Let the government know that is something you care about, but in the meantime you can also take action yourself that can have a huge impact on someone else’s situation. Organisations such as The Homeless Period and Action Aid are great to support to help girls in the UK and abroad. If you are not the donation type of person but are still looking for your good action for the day, remember that whenever you have that extra five pounds, you can just buy a box of pads and tampons and leave them on a public toilet, or give them to a homeless woman on the street. Be a homie, help a sister out.

- Vanessa Terschluse

References:

The Price Young Girls Pay When Tampons Aren't Free | Broadly URL: https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/the-price-young-girls-pay-when-tampons-arent-free

Sarah Marsh Girls from poorer families in England struggle to afford sanitary protection The Guardian URL: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/mar/17/girls-from-poorer-families-in-england-struggle-to-afford-sanitary-protection

#UK #tampon tax #feminism #periods #tampons #equality #poverty #text

[operationrainfall]

I’m gonna start this piece with a fact about myself that only my oldest friends know – I’m a huge fan of weird hybrids. Even as a young lad, I was engrossed with those picture books that let you mix and match body parts to create strange chimeras. So it should be no surprise that I was instantly drawn to the premise of SuperMash. After all, it’s a game all about mixing together different video game genres in surprising ways. So of course I was ecstatic to cover the game. The question is, can SuperMash live up to the ambitious gameplay hook?

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The story starts with a garage sale, the acquisition of a retro game console, and an eviction notice. The main characters are Tomo and Jume, a brother sister duo that happen to run a used game store together. Presented with that eviction notice, they decide to use their newly acquired PlayType console to try and make some money. Their ultimate goal is to use the console’s unique capability to mash together two disparate game genres into a working mini game, package them, and sell them for enough money to find a new place. There’s other side notes, such as Tomo’s estranged relationship with Meryl or a mysterious older gentleman interested in the PlayType, but most of the story is about the siblings finding a way to make things work financially. Though I wasn’t that drawn to the characters themselves, I did appreciate all the nods to game culture and retro collector syndrome.

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For the gameplay itself, you play Tomo as he mashes together specific 6 genres for research purposes. These are the available genres – Action / Adventure, Platformer, Stealth, Shoot ‘Em Up, JRPG and Metrovania. There’s specific tasks you have to accomplish to move the story along, as well as optional side quests that reward you with currency. You use that hard earned cash to buy packs with something called Dev Cards. These are used to manipulate factors in the mini games to your advantage. There’s a variety of them you can adjust – Player, Enemy, Weapon, Level, Glitch and Music. Speaking of Glitches, you can encounter beneficial and harmful ones. Some positives include spawning extra health or randomly killing all foes on screen. Some negatives include the screen titling, being trapped in ice blocks or the dreaded Glitch Ghost haunting me. Though I didn’t use the Dev Dashboard to implement cards that much, it’s nice that there’s something in-game to make things a bit less random. You also acquire more Dev Cards every time you successfully beat a mini game (referred to as a Mash). Besides this, you can also select the length and difficulty of each individual Mash.

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If you have the impression there’s a lot of player control, you might be in for a surprise. See, every time you either manually or randomly roll the dice to create a Mash from two genres, there’s one thing you have zero control over – the objective. There’s a decent range, from killing a group of foes to only killing a specific one, collecting a set amount of currency, finding and selling weapons, rescuing lost characters and a whole bunch more besides. At first I really liked the sheer amount of variety. Early on, you only have to fulfill basic requirements to progress. But once you start investigating the mysterious journal that came with the PlayType console, things get a bit trickier.

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Every time you have to fill out a journal page, Tomo is supposed to suss out and complete specific objectives. The problem is these objectives aren’t really clear. For example, to fill out the Action / Adventure journal page, you are supposed to find 4 gem-like objects. But the names of these objects aren’t specified. So I thought for sure I had already found the Fire Wordstone, and kept avoiding Mashes that listed finding that as a goal. Problem was, I actually had a different Wordstone, so I was accidentally wasting time. Or take the Metrovania journal page. Instead of objects, it displays what appear to be specific stages, but with no clear names. As a result, I have literally been trying to fill out the Metrovania page for more than an hour, with no success. An additional irritant is that sometimes SuperMash didn’t tell me when I had unlocked a journal page objective. And keep in mind you don’t get to set the objectives, so you could be playing for a while before you are able to progress. Thankfully, once you do fill out a journal page, you get to experience a cool boss challenge based around that genre. These range from fighting a giant airship to defeating a fantasy monster to infiltrating a base.

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While I was frustrated by the journal roadblocks, I don’t want to give the impression that playing through SuperMash was a constant slog. If anything, it was a mixed experience, with some good and some bad. Let’s start with what I enjoyed. I loved all the nods to the game industry in SuperMash. For example, there’s a cat girl wearing bandages named Sheila, a pixelated swordsman named Tye and a man armed with a gun and cardboard box named Mercenary Mongoose. Likewise, the visual styles of the genres are reminiscent of consoles from many generations, from NES to Game Boy to SNES to Sega Genesis. I also adore the silly Mash titles the game generates. Many are totally ridiculous, while some almost look as though they could have been real games. SuperMash takes a Mad Libs approach to composing all the Mashes, often with hilarious results.

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When it comes to how the actual genres are mixed together, that’s pretty crazy unpredictable. Some of the genres work surprisingly well together, and others are a mess. Say you’re playing a Stealth Mash as a Platformer character. This means you’ll be able to jump on top of enemy heads as well as shoot them with silencers. Or you’re playing a JRPG with Shoot ‘Em Up. You’ll encounter aerial raids, and get interrupted by random encounters, complete with ATB systems. But then you’ll get nightmare combinations like Action / Platformer and Stealth. I’d say for every fun Mash, I had a handful of bad ones, and a lot was dependent on the RNG. I got less and less worried about quitting a Mash quickly if it had many rough Glitches or absurd requirements.

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Now let’s talk bad. It should be noted that right before you boot up SuperMash, you get a disclaimer about how the system can produce strange results. I’ve encountered lots of unintentional bugs, such as being unable to leave a challenge room, or being literally blown into stage geometry, unable to escape. It’s also a pain when you’re doing well in a Mash and the PlayType console has a hiccup, forcing you to quit. I get that Digital Continue was going for an authentic tribute to old school consoles, but that’s a little much. I also encountered some really wonky physics, such as being unable to navigate through a door. There’s even times when the path forward in a Mash is less than clear. I should point out the item you need will likely be in that Mash, but you’ll have to figure out what it is. An example is a noxious gas cloud. You could get past it with a gas mask, or with an invulnerability bubble. You just have to figure it out on the fly.

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Also, though I feel most of the genres are done justice, there’s a couple that fell a bit flat – JRPG and Metrovania. I’d say both are the most complex genres on tap, and it’s hard to distill their essence into a 5-10 minute mini game. Frankly the JRPG games reminded me of Koei Tecmo mobile RPG adventures. Sadly that’s not a compliment. Often I would pray my randomly generated party had enough mana to cast spells and not get steamrolled by basic foes. Lastly, I have two complaints about time. It takes upward of 20 seconds to load each Mash, assuming it doesn’t crash midway. Finally, I’m not a fan of how many Mashes have strictly enforced time limits. I hate being rushed, though I admit some of the Mashes without a time limit took way too long.

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In a weird way, I feel like SuperMash is the bastard child of Retro Game Challenge. Both have an admirable focus on retro with amazing creativity on display. I just feel the execution here was a bit rough at times. Also, I would have died to see some more genres represented, such as Beat ‘Em Up, Racing or even Rhythm. But if you enjoy crazy games that indulge in their passion for video game nostalgia, it’s hard to go wrong for only $19.99. Just be ready to navigate some choppy waters.

IMPRESSIONS: SuperMash I'm gonna start this piece with a fact about myself that only my oldest friends know - I'm a huge fan of weird hybrids.

#Digital Continue #Hybrid #Indie #Retro Game Challenge #SuperMash

[viking369]

Music and Politics Rant

This is a long one. If you're looking for the TL;DR version, sorry oh denizens of Short Attention Span Theatre, there isn't one. This is cross-posted from my other blog. My oldest (Thing 1) and I recently had a debate over the relative musical merits of Kate Bush: I think she has merit, Thing 1 thinks she does not. It was one of those debates and ultimate disagreements that reasonable, educated people have that, far from being destructive, add the sort of spice to life to keep it from being an unrelieved death march. I'm not a fanboy for anyone, including Kate Bush. I long ago started thinking of her as the Charles Ives of pop music: a pile of interesting ideas that often deliver something significant but at least as often get in each other's way. Like Ives, people tend to either love her or hate her and have legitimate reasons for both positions, but tend to simply entrench for "reasons." And this sort of "debating" got me thinking (a dangerous prospect). The whole discussion with Thing 1 started when I watched a 2014 BBC documentary on Kate Bush. I thought it was pretty well done. It showed a number of intelligent, talented people who find merit in Bush's work. It interviewed Lindsay Kemp, who still had four years left in the tank at that point, and showed his influence on art rock at the time (basically everybody from Bowie on) (It also showed a couple of other things, perhaps without meaning to. It showed through Kemp's gestures the extent of mime vocabulary's influence on what might be characterized as "gay mannerisms", Kemp being a dancer and choreographer with heavy mime influence, having studied with Marcel Marceau. It also shows the difference between European artists and intellectuals and US pseudos. In the interviews, several people casually remark on having seen Kemp's "Flowers", based on Jean Genet's "Notre Dame des Fleurs". You would be hard-pressed to find any in the US to this day, outside of core LGBTQ+ culture, who have heard of Kemp, "Flowers", or even Jean Genet other than by reference.). And then toward the end it shows why rock critics as a group are ignorant, vicious little parasites. More on that below the fold, wherever the Hell that might be. Once upon a time I was in newspapers, and one of the things I did was write music reviews. It was a paycheck, and as I’ve noted elsewhere, I’ve always been closely involved with music. I wrote by two rules: 1) Be consistent, and 2) make it about the music on its own terms. On the first point, it doesn’t matter if the readers agree with you; they just need to know what to expect from you. If they know you don’t like a particular artist or a particular type of music, they can read you through the appropriate filter. The second point breaks in two. First, it’s about the music, not the people. I did not savage Van Halen because they were pricks who brutalized the little people who had to service their every whim. I went after Eddie Van Halen (who let’s face it was the real core of the band) who went shredding up and down the fretboard at random with no regard for chordal or modal structures (In fairness to Mr. Van Halen, he no longer plays like that and is a far superior musician than when every blockhead with a K-Mart electric six-string thought Eddie was God and gave us a generation of speed monkeys with zero musicianship.) (The speed monkey syndrome unfortunately spread to other instruments. It was the overwhelming norm among the Celtic fiddlers who followed Bonnie Rideout to Ann Arbor and insisted on playing faster than their talents, compensating by dropping notes out at random, and then blaming all the rest of us for all the ensemble issues. To all of you, I give an eternal, “Fuck you and the banshee of an instrument you tuck under your hiply stubbled chins and rape with your bows.”). Second, you have to put it in the music’s own frame of reference. It makes no sense to pan a Metropolitan Opera performance of Cosi fan Tutte because it isn’t a Black Sabbath concert. I realized early on that almost no rock music critics could grasp either of my rules (From this point on, you may assume that “Robert Christgau is a wanker” is flashing subliminally in the background.). From the beginning of such things, Rolling Stone has been the center of rock criticism (I just damned near wrote “crock recidivism”. I’m not a nice person.). It has also been the center of what is wrong with rock criticism for just as long. These guys were groupies. They were wannabes who couldn’t cut it, so they hung out with the guys who could, basking in the limelight. The reviews weren’t reviews, they were hagiographies. “The music must be great because I party with these guys.” “They must be significant because I party with these guys.” Everything was on a chummy, first-name-only basis (“Mick and Keith were really rockin’ it Thursday night.”) that became the norm for roughly forever (Cam Crowe slipped a screamingly funny joke about The Rocket’s review style in his movie Singles.). As tastes changed and their substance-abuse buddies died, faded away, or became arena bands (and now nostalgia bands playing the Peppermill in Wendover), Rolling Stone found itself unsuccessfully playing catch-up, jumping on every bandwagon that rolled down the street in a desperate attempt to get in front of The Next Big Thing and failing miserably. If it weren’t for Matt Taibbi, that rag would have no reason to exist. In the 70s other rags stepped into the breach, but they took the Stone’s style sheet and were all clones of one another. They couldn’t comprehend my rules, either. I remember one of these rags (probably Circus, but who honestly gives a shit at this point, they were fungible) going after every Harry Chapin recording because it “wasn’t rock.” Well no shit, Sherlock. Chapin wasn’t a rocker, he was a folkie, self-proclaimed, and condemning him for not being what he wasn’t was…well…not even wrong. Congratulations, rock critics, you just earned Stephen Frys’s second-greatest insult, right after “I almost care.” There was one exception to the Clone Wars: Creem. But that didn’t make it good, just different. Admittedly, Creem was covering a lot of things no one else was, including the early days of punk and all that was happening over at CBGB. But my gods the pretension. Memo to Lester Bangs: Just because you covered something doesn’t mean you invented it. Just because you came up with the label “punk rock” doesn’t mean you created punk rock. Punk rock was created by garage bands (US) and pub bands (UK) (I always envied the UK guys because no matter how, frankly, BAD you were, there was someone willing to book you. Here in the US? Not so much. Although you could always get homecoming and prom gigs if you were just another shitty cover band.) (Punk was spawned by my half-generation, the Late Boomers. The reason was simple: We were fucking sick and tired of the hypocrisy of the Early Boomers, our big brothers and sisters. They were the 60s Children, the Flower People, and they were still peddling that bullshit even though the wheels had fallen off the wagon and there was a global recession. They accused us of being self-centered for not “working for change” like them while they busily leveraged the huge advantage of having sucked up everything before we ever got on the scene. They took their 60s, corporatized, commoditized, packaged, and slapped a smiley face on them, and expected us to swallow it all without question. The problem was that we just didn’t believe hard enough in the dream. Meanwhile we were saying, “The fuck? Our dreams hit the wall at 110 per in Fall ’73! The wreckage is everywhere, but you dicks and everybody else is just stepping over it like it isn’t there!” We wanted to wave our private parts at them, so we did. Which is a long way of telling you Millennials that, if you lump the Early and Late Boomers together, your ignorance is showing. Yeah, there are plenty of Late Boomers who sold out [You hear me, Barry Obama? You sold us all out, but history will always remember you fondly because you landed between the Texas Turd Tornado and Hitler 2.0.], but we were the first ones to face the New Normal you folks are now dealing with. You need old wise men and women for your villages? Trust me, we’re available in hordes.) As yet another aside, there were garage bands, and there were garage bands. None of us were very good, but most of us wanted to improve to something resembling competency. The early punkers simply didn’t care (Hell, a lot of them, such as the New York Dolls, were so bad they made The Kingsmen sound like conservatory virtuosos. And the Noo Yuck critics, apparently on permanent bad acid trips from frequent visits to Andy Whore-wall’s Fucktory, kept rubbing out one after another for them all. “Daringly campy!” “A raw, animal sound!” Shit-shoveling by rapidly deteriorating white guys desperate to continue being perceived as bleeding edge.). Fortunately, this only lasted a few years before a lot of the punkers decided it maybe would not be so inauthentic if they actually learned how to play their instruments. I don’t care what John Lydon continues to blow out his ass, Black Flag was never boring. But I really can’t leave the topic of pretension without a mention of The Village Voice, the self-proclaimed font of all things cool and hip for over six decades and running. In reality The Village has been overrun with gentrifying yuppie scum straight off the set of Thirtynothing since before Rudy Giuliani parked his malignancy in the Mayor’s Office, and The Voice has followed suit. And Robert Christgau was at the center of it all. It has never ceased to amaze me how someone so admittedly ignorant could be such an expert on everything. He admits he is “not at all well-schooled” (understatement) in 50s and 60s jazz, yet he has reviewed jazz artists such as Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and Sonny Rollins without any of that context and has declared Frank Sinatra the greatest singer of the 20th Century (A meaningless statement. How can you compare Sinatra and, say, Pavarotti? You can’t, and anyone with a lick of humility and two brain cells to rub together doesn’t even try.) while apparently ignorant of Nelson Riddle’s role in creating Sinatra’s best albums. He was an early promoter of punk, right through all the “authentic vs. poseur” wars, blissfully unaware that this was not a rebellion unique to punk but rather was a recurring fight in music, most recently before that in the “this is jazz/this is not jazz” that started with the rise of bebop after the Second World War, that caused a butt-ton of damage to the genre, and that Miles Davis was a pivotal player in until he finally got over it and put on that shiny red leather suit and released Bitches Brew, which Christgau unironically nominated to Jazz & Pop as jazz album of the year in 1970. He considers the New York Dolls one of the five greatest artists of all time. Please. The Dolls were influential, true, and for two reasons: 1) Their show was cheap and entertaining and so readily copiable and copied, and 2) their musicianship was so crude a half-trained baboon could cover it. Not exactly reasons to put them in GOAT contention. Finally, Christgau doesn’t like and is nearly completely ignorant of classical music. This tells me so many things, but two bubble immediately to the surface: 1) He has neither the music history nor the music theory to hold 90% (at least) of the opinions he’s been paid for over the last half-century, and 2) he’s a shallow little shit who needs to sit in a corner and STFU. And believe it or not, all that was just a warm-up to get around to John Harris. Toward the end of the Kate Bush documentary is a roundtable discussion of her latest album (Aerial) by several UK rock critics, including Harris. Harris makes the remark that the music sounds like something you’d hear in a department store and that it’s obvious Bush hadn’t been in a studio for 12 years. I’ll start with the statements themselves and then turn to their wider ramifications. Department store music? I’d like to know where Harris hangs out that this is the ambient Muzak. Let’s chalk this one up to hyperbole and move on to the “12 years” remark. He doesn’t really elaborate on this (not entirely his fault, given the roundtable format) so we can only speculate on his actual point. Do her pipes sound rusty? Not really. Does the technology sound dated? No (And trust me, I keep up. It’s not like I sit around listening to Sergeant Pepper’s going, “Oh wow, they played those tapes backwards!”), and even if it did, that would be one to lay on the producer and the engineer. Is the music dated? An ambiguous word, “dated”, but I’m afraid we’ve finally reached what Harris was driving at. By “dated” do we mean it doesn’t sound like other music being produced now? First, when has Kate Bush ever sounded like anyone else, and second when did sounding like everyone else become a standard of musical quality? It hasn’t and it shouldn’t, but I’m afraid this is the point Harris is trying to make. Perhaps, though, he meant this sounds like her old material. Saying that an artist is repeating themself is a helpful criticism, especially if you explain why you think so. Frankly that’s a point I can agree with; I find a certain sameness in her work since Hounds of Love. But that isn’t even remotely what Harris says. He says she sounds old-fashioned, which is never a useful comment, merely a pejorative one, and worse, a pejorative aimed not just at the artist but at the listener. You are listening to old-fashioned music. You are old-fashioned. You are outdated. Catch up! Under the best of circumstances, this is unmitigated bullshit. Coming from Harris, it is unmitigated bullshit that is part of a career full of it. Harris’s cred as a “serious person” essentially rests on his 2003 book The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock (repackaged in 2004 as Britpop: Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of English Rock) and the follow-up BBC Four 2005 documentary The Britpop Story. His thesis is that 90s Britpop was the last great shining moment for UK pop. No, really. At this point, let facts be placed before a candid world. The UK has been a popular music powerhouse for quite awhile, and by “powerhouse” I mean a global influence. Let’s start arbitrarily with Gilbert & Sullivan, pass the baton to Ivor Novello, and then to Noel Coward. The Second World War made hash of it all, and the post-war generation found that the US had stolen the baton, but rather than going gentle into that not-so-good night, both the rockers and the mods invaded the US and stole much of the thunder back. This continued into the 70s, whether you’re talking about arena bands, metal, prog rock, or punk, and on into the 80s, again whether you’re talking about power pop, synthpop, or New Wave. Big influences that can still be heard around the world. Compare Britpop. The whole point of Britpop was to be a calculated foil for Grunge and as safe and marketable as possible, the perfect theme music for the Tony Blair years. It has so little edge it couldn’t leave a mark on a piece of talc. Its influence has been negligible except as a template for profitable pap. In 1997 the whole sham came unraveled as Oasis released the bloated disappointment Be Here Now and Blur abandoned the field to join the US “lo-fi” movement. Their lasting influence is Coldplay, and let’s be honest, if Coldplay is your gold standard, I’m afraid you actually have a pyrite mine. But Harris thinks Britpop was the shining end of UK rock. There are a number of holes in this assertion; two are glaring. First, there are still plenty of new bands in the UK churning out good stuff (That Harris seems blissfully ignorant of these bands makes me wonder just who is out-dated and needs to catch up.). Look them up yourselves; I’m not falling into the trap of naming a few here. Suffice it to say they’re diverse, and you’re likely to hit on several you consider acceptable regardless of your musical tastes. They’ve even been having an influence in the EU, but we’ll see what Brexit brings (Influence in the US? Not so much since we have reached a level of insularity here that rules out anything beyond our borders having merit, in spite of having access to it all on The Interwebz.). And these bands have a Hell of a lot more to offer than the Britpop slag did. Which brings us to glaring hole two. As noted previously, Britpop didn’t really have an impact. None outside of the UK, and damned little in the UK on any time scale longer than the life of a mayfly. Britpop was a nothingburger with a side of flies and a So? Duh! Harris, though, raises this localized, ephemeral phenomenon and turns it into the last scion of the UK pop tradition. This should just be considered a bad case of the sillies, except that Harris’s new schtick is political commentary, especially for The Grauniad. In keeping with The Graun’s policies, his position is “Support Remain but maintain that ‘both sides have merit’.” Which raises his Britpop position from silly to ironic, because Harris’s thinking on Britpop (“It was important in the UK, ergo it was IMPORTANT!”) is just the sort of insular, UK=World mentality that made Brexit possible. Brexit happened, for the most part, because of a bunch of people who believed that, whatever the puzzle was, the UK was the only piece that mattered. Harris’s elevation of Britpop on so high a pedestal rests on the same belief, even though he’s a Remainer. So it’s unintentionally ironic. It’s symptomatic of a malignant mindset. And it’s still silly. And so I give you Christgau and Harris, Exhibits 1 and 2 in my case for the beyond-uselessness of rock critics. And the former is still being allowed to write revisionist histories of the music of the last half-century while the latter is still being allowed to…well…write. What a world.

[theliterateape]

Chris Churchill Saves the World | America is a Country of Losers — Part III

By Chris Churchill

Part I Part II

Part III — American Super Losers Get Legendary!

When I was a kid, I always knew I wanted to be famous but I didn’t know what wanting that really meant. I realized now that I just wanted to be seen. 

I always felt like an outsider in many different ways. In my neighborhood. In school, I was the gifted kid, pulled out of class to be with others in other schools with the same other-y label. While singled out in class as the smart one was nice to hear, it didn’t do a lot for feeling normal with your friends at recess. And though minorities in this country feel this all the time, I’m white and until I was twelve, most of my friends were black. Oddly enough, that wasn’t the thing that made me feel weird. It was becoming full-fledged white when we changed neighborhoods later that made me feel other in many ways. (Go ahead and laugh, but, I still don’t trust white people.)

Even in my own home, I often felt like an outsider. I was the last of five kids. They all remembered what it was like to be in a two-parent, all-the-kids–together household. My memories are only of being in a house with one parent who was either never around physically or, due to her extreme mental health issues, wasn’t around emotionally. Those siblings were older, and, even though they loved me, they couldn’t be there for me in the same way they had been able to be for each other. They were busy with school, funding their way in the world, and in my oldest sister’s case, raising her own kid. Everyone who was supposed to be mine was in a perpetual state of temporary to me.

Mork from Ork and the Sweathogs were there for me everyday at 4 p.m., though. So there’s that. 

More importantly, though, in my mind, being famous one day was a way to be seen. To be taken into full consideration. To be understood. It was a misguided belief but I was a kid. It was the best I could figure out. My goals were planned by a lonely kid who happens to sport the same cowlick I do. 

My entire life’s trajectory was based on being seen, no matter what cost to my relationships, my own sanity, or my wallet. More important than career, security, routine, love, whatever was to be seen. To know that people thought of me when I was gone. That maybe they told stories about me. If they told stories about me, maybe that meant they liked having me around. If they liked having me around, surely that meant they would be overjoyed to never leave me.

Abandonment issues, right? 

I wanted to know I existed. Being famous would surely take care of that for me. I wanted to be legendary.  There’s where I fell into the American Loser Syndrome. Anything to be seen. Because, after all, that’s the most important thing, isn’t it? Seems that every YouTube superstar believes that being seen is the most important thing. Music stars, film stars, news anchors, comedians, politicians, and writers. Fame is the priority. 

When I reached an age where it was reasonable to assume that fame may not find me, I tried to figure out what I needed. I needed to know I was seen as equals to the rest of the world. I needed to know that people thought about me. I know that now. But for those who never wanted fame, try to imagine what it’s like to not know that those who love you actually lobe you. It’s a hollowness that is disheartening and confusing. 

Those celebrities seem happy. I know people talk about them because I hear them talking about them. I talk about them. 

When I was a kid, I always wanted to be famous, but a little voice in my head always responded to that desire with, “You will be, as soon as it’s not a big deal anymore. As soon as it doesn’t matter to you anymore.”

For years now, I’ve been in therapy working it out, and I finally came to the realization that all anyone needs to know about that craving to be legendary is to fully understand and fully internalize that you are legendary to someone. Not everyone. Someone specifically.

 People think about you when you’re gone. They do. Not everyone. Particular people. 

People talk about you. You are the subject of some of their studies. You are even the hero in some of their tales. 

You are legendary. 

Americans as individuals need to understand and accept that they are legendary because they exist. Just like everyone else. They are legendary without a YouTube following or a TV show or international celebrity of any kind. You are already good enough. There are other people who see you. Even if you don’t know who they are, they’ve seen you. And they’ve spoken about you.  When I was in my late twenties, still in the throes of striving for fame, regardless of what that might entail, I had a wonderful Christmas memory. My four-year-old niece on my wife’s side, Madeline, who I had never gotten to like me like most kids do, finally decided I was okay. Amidst the holiday activity at this big, extended family, Christmas party, there we were, on the floor, rolling a ball back and forth to each other. I felt like I had won. This kid likes me! A few years later, I had a weird moment of clarity when I was thinking about the fact that I was still not famous (of course, mistakenly equating fame with love).

Amidst my disappointment, my memory of that Christmas Eve came to me like a leftover image on a recorded-over VHS tape. (“Oh yeah… why did I record over that?”) For the first time I had a healthy thought about fame. I thought, “I’m famous to Madeline. That’s pretty cool.” And I truly felt it. Then I reexamined my life and saw that there were a lot of people that saw me that same way. My other nieces, my nephews, my siblings, my parents, my wife. Hell, even my birds. I’m that “Legendary Chris” to them. (And they are legendary to me).  You are already famous, unique, and magical. And I hope you are already rich beyond your wildest dreams but only in a currency you may have not yet recognized and valued as it should be valued. The currency of connection to others. Feeling connected, validated, and loved. Seriously, don’t gloss over that part. That’s important. I am legendary.  I am famous. I am magical. To someone.  You are legendary, famous and magical to someone. 

If you accept that, you’ve already won.

#Losers #celebrity #validation #legendary