#×°○ did i mention i live in the hills?┊biography. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

honeytoast · 1 year ago

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『 ROBERT SHEEHAN, CIS MALE, HE/HIM 』wait a second! isn’t that ( ISAAC MCCORMICK ) who just walked into jack’s bar? rumor around town is that the local is approaching their ( EIGHTEENTH ) year in virgin river. in the meantime, you can find the ( THIRTY-THREE ) year old working as an ( ENGLISH TEACHER & AUTHOR ) at ( VR HIGH SCHOOL ). rumor around town is that ( HE ) has a reputation for being a little ( LOQUACIOUS ), but they make up for it by being ( ALTRUISTIC ). 』

Hi, I'm Effie! It's been a bit since I've written in a group setting or at all so I'm very excited to be here writing with you all. I do want to share that I do suffer from pretty severe social anxiety so if I do take a while to respond to a message, please don't think I'm ignoring you. I assure you I'm probably just working up the courage to respond. Enough about me though. If you would love to learn more about this loquacious little shit please click that read-more link below ⤵

Basics:

full name: Isaac McCormick nickname: Is pronouns & gender: he/him, cis man sexuality: pansexual birth date: January 7, 1990 birthplace: Beverly Hills, California occupation: High School English Teacher at VR High School & author family: Violet Fern McCormick (daughter), Alexander McCormick (father, somewhat estranged), Fern McCormick (mother, deceased), Marianne O'Connell (maternal grandmother, deceased), Arthur O'Connell (maternal grandfather, deceased), Iggy Pawzalea (dog) height: 6’0” weight: 154 lbs hair color: Brown eye color: Green

Biography:

Trigger Warnings: death tw, mental health tw, suicide attempt tw (mentioned vaguely), hospital tw (mentioned briefly), parental death tw, teenage pregnancy tw, car accident tw

The first, and ultimately only, child of an affluent young couple, Isaac was born and raised primarily in Beverly Hills, California. Being their only child, his parents doted on him, giving him just about anything and everything he could possibly want. This didn't mean, however, that he grew up spoiled. Unlike his father, his mother wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth so it was important to her that their son knew not only the worth of a dollar but the meaning of hard work.

Growing up, the home they shared was full of love and laughter, and for the first fourteen years of his life, everything was perfect. The day everything changed began as any other. Isaac had been feeling sick for about a week, barely eating or leaving his bed so when he was finally feeling better, his mother was more than happy to fulfill any breakfast request he had that morning. He had decided to ask for his favorite thing; chocolate chip pancakes, but after realizing they were out of chocolate chips, his mom decided to take a quick trip to the store with Isaac along for the ride. It was on the way there that everything changed. Their car was struck by a truck that blew through the light. While Isaac was injured but came out alive, his mother wasn't so lucky.

Following the passing of his mother, Isaac fell into a deep depression. He blamed himself for her death and though his father did not, he withdrew, burying himself in work to distract from the loss of his wife. In an instant, the warm and loving home he once knew was replaced by the shell of what once was. For months, Isaac struggled with the all-encompassing grief and guilt he felt over the death of his mother, and just a month or so shy of his fifteenth birthday, he decided he couldn't take it anymore.

It was a member of the staff that found him and after a short stay in the hospital followed by a stay in a psychiatric program, Isaac was sent to live with his grandparents from his mother's side in Virgin River per his grandmother's request. At first, Isaac was angry. he thought it was bullshit that his father would ship him off to the middle of nowhere, but with time, he realized it was the best decision for him. Though it took time and a lot of therapy, things started to get better for Isaac. While the guilt and pain he felt over his mother's passing never truly subsided, he made room for it, and in time, he slowly began to find joy in life again. He made friends and even grew to like Virgin River. Sure, it was boring as shit for a teenager, but he soon found that there was a sort of peace that could be found in the surrounding nature. That, and he met a girl.

The two of them began as nothing more than friends, but with time they developed feelings for one another. Before long, they were positively inseparable and nauseatingly in love. So, it really shouldn't have been all that surprising when the two sixteen-year-olds discovered that they were going to be parents. For two weeks, they grappled with what to do in secret before deciding that they would keep their baby and raise her together. Naturally, their families were less than thrilled. It didn't take long after that before everyone in town knew, because if there was one thing the people of Virgin River were incapable of doing, it was keeping a secret. For weeks, it was all people could talk about, but with time it faded. Sure, there was still the occasional resident that gave a judgmental look or passing remark, but after a couple more “scandals”, the excitement seemed to die down.

Before Isaac knew it, nine months had passed, and the two became the terrified parents of a healthy baby girl whom they named Violet Fern after his late mother. Then two weeks later, Isaac found himself a single parent after Violet's mother took off with nothing but a letter to say goodbye. He was heartbroken and angry, but in time he understood. After all, taking care of a baby was a lot for anyone, much less someone who was still a child themselves. With the help of his grandparents and a little help from the residents of Virgin River, Isaac raised his daughter as a single parent. Though it was hard, he managed to graduate high school and even went on to college all while balancing parenthood.

After graduating college, he began working as an English teacher at the local high school. Though he originally got into teaching because it was what his mother did for a living and it helped him keep a similar schedule to his daughter when she started school, he found that he loved the job. He enjoyed not only teaching but also helping students discover and explore their love of reading and writing. The years passed quickly and before he knew it his baby girl was a sixteen-year-old teenager.

During that time, not all that much changed. He was still working as a teacher at the high school and also began a prolific career as an author. Despite doing well for himself, he and Violet stayed living with his grandparents. At first, it was because he was still young and struggling to find that balance between work and parenthood, but by the time he felt confident enough to move to a place of his own, his grandfather passed. Not wanting to leave his elderly grandmother alone, he chose to stay living with her to help her when needed. Following her passing a year ago, Isaac had the choice to sell the house and move elsewhere but chose to not only keep their home but continue living there. A choice he occasionally questions when his late grandmother’s friend sends him on blind dates after she made them promise to help him find someone nice to settle down with. While he hates those dates, he continues to go on them for fear that his grandmother may haunt him if he doesn’t.

Additional tidbits:

As a child, Isaac dreamed of becoming a professional chef. His mother loved to cook and passed that love on to him. While he didn’t end up pursuing a career as a chef, he still loves to cook and bake for those he cares for. He’s very much a stress baker. Usually, those baked goods end up in his class for his students to enjoy, but if you’re friends with him, you’re guaranteed to be gifted baked goods as well.

While Isaac escaped the car wreck that took his mother’s life relatively unscathed, he did suffer severe hearing loss in his right ear. Because of this, he often wears a hearing aid to help, but even that doesn’t allow him to hear everything. Due to his hearing loss, he occasionally drifts to the right when he walks. He has improved this with time, but if he’s distracted while going somewhere, he will still drift slightly. It’s best to keep to his left when walking with him to avoid being bumped into.

Isaac was and continues to be an avid reader. More often than not he can be seen tucked away with a book, reading and scribbling notes in the margins during his free time.

As a teacher, Isaac cares deeply for his students. He does his best to make sure every student’s needs are being cared for. Whether that is something as simple as ensuring that they understand what they are being taught or being there to listen to whatever problems they have in or outside of school. In his class, he has everything from snacks or drinks to personal care items in case any of his students may not have access to those things at home.

Isaac is an incredibly compassionate and giving person. He often anonymously donates to charity and loves to volunteer whenever needed. He even goes as far as to force his father to donate to charities and organizations often, wanting nothing more than to do some good and make the world a better place. His therapist thinks this may have to do with the guilt he still feels over his mother's death, but he insists it doesn't. He just wants to make the world a better place for when he eventually does leave.

Despite essentially being a trust fund baby, Isaac doesn’t live his life lavishly. He still lives in his grandparents’ old home with his daughter and prefers to live a quiet and simple life.

Personality:

+ compassionate, loyal, creative, and intelligent

-headstrong, loquacious, flirtatious, and pathologically altruistic

Isaac is a deeply passionate and selfless person. He goes all in for those he cares for, whether they are family, a friend, or even just a student of his. While he is normally as laid back as they get, he never hesitates to stand up for the things he believes in and hopes to instill that same passion in his daughter. A hopeless romantic at heart, he loves love, and hopes to one day find someone to share his life with, but is also afraid to open his heart up again. Especially since becoming a father, knowing that he can't bring just anyone around his daughter. That being said, the boy is a shameless flirt but he has somewhat gotten that under control as he's gotten older. He dislikes cops, believes in equal rights for all, and very much advocates for the reading of banned books. Especially those written by marginalized communities. In his free time, he loves spending as much time with his daughter as he can and hopes with everything in him that he's raising a strong independent woman who is not afraid to use the voice her mother gave her. All in all, Isaac is easy to get along with and does his very best to make the world a better place. Even if it's something as small and simple as donating to charities or helping the students in his class with whatever they need.

Potential Connections:

The best friend(s): (0/2?) Someone he is ride or die with. Could be someone he has known since high school or someone he has known for only a little while. Platonic soulmates who are always over each other’s houses. Perks include copious amounts of baked goods, a shoulder to cry on, & one good ear to listen to your problems.

Ex’s: (0/?) Admittedly he doesn’t have many of these. Aside from Violet’s mother, he hasn’t dated all that much, but these two dated for a while. Could be a few months to a couple years. They could have ended up as friends or enemies. Either is fun.

Ex blind dates: (0/?) He’s been on many. The possibilities are endless. Did they hit it off but not work out? Was it super awkward and now they avoid each other when possible? Did they hook up and then go their separate ways?

Enemies: (0/?) Not sure he would have many of these, but always love a little tension. This could have stemmed from something as small as a “stolen” parking spot to a long-simmering feud between the two. Maybe a blind date that went horribly awry. Idk. Flirtation or the start of something: (0/1) It’s no secret that Isaac flirts with just about anything with a heartbeat, that’s just how he is, but while most of it is just friendly flirtation this might be different. Could develop into more or just remain his favorite person to flirt with.

Violet’s mother: (0/1) I might put this out as a wanted connection. The two dated in high school and after having Violet, she left town with only a letter to say goodbye. He has mixed feelings about her. On one hand, he is still a little angry, but for the most part, he understands. Raising a kid is a lot of work and they were just kids after all. They haven’t seen each other in years and while he thinks about her often, he decided to not try and find her. Deep down, he may still have feelings for her after all this time.

Anything and everything. I know there is plenty I’m forgetting but it is late so I’m open to anything!

Aesthetics:

Big bear hugs, notes crammed in the margins of worn paperbacks, heart-shaped lollipops, messy beds, warm chocolate chip cookies, scars faded with time, twinkling fairy lights, a worn leather jacket with patches hand-sewn on with dental floss, chipped nail polish, cheerful laughter, and the ache of loss.

Pinterest | Playlist (to be added)

#vr. intro #death tw #parental death tw #mental health tw #suicide attempt tw #teenage pregnancy tw #hospital mention tw #bio: Isaac #why is this so long? omg I'm so sorry.#car accident tw

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chaoshaven · 1 year ago

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Chaotic Card 4- Blügon

Heading up north to Glacier Plains, we find today's card Blügon. A rare Creature but one of the few who has any information about a tribe called the Frozen. Art By: Khary Randolph, Etienne St.Laurent

Now, we've only gone over creatures from the Overworld tribe, as show by the blue border and the symbol in the top left corner. But there are five tribes total.

-Overworlders(in blue) live in grasslands, mountains, forest, castles, and design wise are either humanoid, a sentient creature, or an anthropomorphic animal, such as a bull, a cat, etc. Generally peaceful with other tribes, they have diplomatic embassies with Danians and Mipedians. One tribe they cannot seem to make peace with however is: -Underworlders (in red) living in caves, tunnels, all under ground. Aggressive and combat lovers, their designs are similar to Overworlders but more...evil looking? Both tribes have a minotaur creature but it really is down to a vibe check as to who goes where. -Mipedians (in yellow) are a reptilian tribe with a rigid social structure where the peasants listen to the ruling class. Which also means that there is a lot of political debates, and in fighting, which is not fun when you live in a desert. -Danians (in brown) are ant-like/insectoid creatures that live in a underground termite mound, called Mount Pillar. Also having a social structure, they all listen to the Queen. The typical hive mind trope that, isn't actually accurate to how real ant hills work! -M'arrillians (in black) are released in the 2nd big expansion, M'arrillian Invasion. Long story short which we will talk more about later, They want to enslave the world of Perim to do their bidding, like the British did. Aquatic/fish like character traits abound in this tribe.

None of these tribes are called Frozen though, so what gives?

The Frozen are a theoretical tribe believed to exist in Glacier Plains. Before this iteration of Chaotic, it was released only in Europe called Chaotic Now or Never! This was bought by Bryan Gannon who brought it to North America, then worldwide, but in the process reset the time back to the beginning of the story.

For Chaotic NoN! We were told of a mysterious tribe that existed called the Frozen.

The Frozen was teased about in the same release that M'arrillians first appeared for NoN and then in the first wave of Chaotic, they tease the Frozen. it's just one line, and no other flavour text mentions them, but it seems to be that either in the 3rd wave of cards, which was cut short by a lawsuit, or in the 4th wave, they were going to introduce the Frozen tribe. either by adding a new element, Ice, having them be a powerful Mugic casting tribe, or a whole new feature that would shake up the game.

Oh yea, the game. This is all theoretical, but there is an acutal game that exists. Onto Blügon!

Stat Spread:

Courage: 25-45

Power: 55-75

Wisdom: 60-80

Speed: 35-55

Energy: 35-45

Mugic Counters: 0

Elementals

Fire

Air

Earth

Water

Abilities:

Water 5, wherein every time you play an attack that would deal water damage, you deal an extra 5 damage.

Playstyle:

Blügon is outclassed, once again. He has a great ability! and in Dawn of Perim he would make a great front liner in a deck that focused on wisdom or water based damage. His Energy is middle of the road, so he's slowly been edged out as a front liner. While he could be used in a water based deck, there are other creatures out now that have his Water 5 ability, plus higher stats and a slightly bigger energy pool. There probably is a setup that would make him useful in competitive games nowadays, boosting his stats or his energy with Mugic or Battlegear, but like Attacat, there are other creatures whose natural, baseline stats and abilities make him obsolete.

Biography:

He lives in Glacier Plains and supposedly befriended a mysterious Frozen tribe, as well as a friend called Raimusa. I ship it. He is a simple Creature, with simple desires. He may not be used in tcg fights all that much nowadays but it just means that he can spend more time with his friend Raimusa.

#chaotic #tcg #cards

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mourningreveries · 3 months ago

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IN CHARACTER

FULL NAME: Lincoln Moreau. This is not his birthname; he adopts a new name after every Rule of 500 rest (More on this in the bio below) SPECIES: Vampire AGE: Very old DATE OF BIRTH: Actual birth date unknown, celebrates his turning date, which is December 24th GENDER IDENTITY: Cis-Male NEIGHBORHOOD: Hidden Hills OCCUPATION: Investor WORKPLACE: Moreau Investments POSITIVE TRAITS: Charming, Ambitious, Charismatic NEGATIVE TRAITS: Vengeful, Hedonistic, Unforgiving LENGTH OF TIME IN RAVEN’S PEAK: Originally from Raven’s Peak, but has not been back in centuries…UNTIL NOW (Dun dun dun!) FACE CLAIM: Charles Michael Davis

BIOGRAPHY

TRIGGER WARNING: Abuse, cruelty, murder, illness, drug use, alcohol use

Lincoln Moreau’s claim of being The First Progeny, a title he has proudly worn for most of his existence, is a hard one to dispute; he may not be the very first vampire to ever be sired from a member of the Original family, but he also very well may be, and he most certainly is amongst the first vampires to ever be created. What is known for certain, is that Lincoln was the very first vampire that Victor Morgrave ever turned, and the gift which was bestowed upon him is not one that he took for granted.

To understand why the man who would become Lincoln Moreau would embrace vampirism so vehemently, it is important to understand where he came from. The conditions that he’d been living in prior to the change had been less than ideal, though the less diplomatic would go as far as to say they were cruel. Things had started off well enough; he’d been adopted into a great house as a young boy, and loved by the father, who had taken him in off the street, at least as much as he loved the children who were of his bloodline, if not a little bit more so. But when the father passed away of illness and the eldest brother, who had always hated Lincoln and resented him for how much of his father’s affection he received, became the man of the house, Lincoln’s treatment underwent a dramatic shift. Though allowed to stay, he was forced to live in the stables with the horses, and made to carry out both the most physically demanding, and morally demeaning of tasks imaginable, whilst also suffering from terrible physical and verbal torment at the hands of the eldest sibling. Worst of all though, was the fact that he was forbidden from being social with the other siblings, whom he had been raised as kin with, and eventually, out of fear of their brother if they did not, they too turned cruel towards Lincoln. He was treated worse than should be allowable by one’s humanity, and year over year, as he lived a life without a single moment of pleasure, his rage, his bitterness, and his resentment grew; and he swore one day he would have his revenge.

What I failed to mention is that this supposed “great house” which Lincoln had once been welcomed into, but he was now basically a prisoner in, was located in the town of Raven’s Peak during the days of The Four Families, prior to the splitting of the stone which would change the world forever. And it was during this time that Lincoln first came into contact with the man who would go on to be one of the four original vampires, Victor Morgrave. Victor had been visiting the house to attend to some business with the eldest brother, when the brother brought him out to the stables to show him his favourite pastime; tormenting Lincoln. Even then, when Victor himself was a rather selfish and arrogant man, seeing the treatment of Lincoln stirred feelings of pity within him, and though he did not try to put a stop to the treatment that day, he never forgot about what the elder brother had done, nor the pain that Lincoln had suffered.

And so, when the all too familiar tale of the rock splitting the witches being changed unfolded, and Victor Morgrave now found himself to be a vampire, he remembered what Lincoln had gone through, and, driven by an instinct that he did not understand, he knew that to offer Lincoln his blood was to offer him a chance at not only liberation, but the revenge that he so greatly desired.

With his new power, Lincoln exacted his revenge upon the family that had made his life Hell on Earth for so many years. Then, with justice done, he found himself contemplating what to do next. He stayed in Raven’s Peak for a time, becoming the new master of the house that he had been thrown out of doors from as a young child. But as satisfying as this was, he soon found himself growing bored of the life that he had once desired to have more than anything, and filled with a desire to explore the world beyond Raven’s Peak, and see what it had to offer him.

As it turns out, the world beyond had more to offer him than he ever could have imagined was possible. For a man who had spent most of his life enduring unbearable abuse, to discover how many pleasures the world contained was an intoxicating experience, often times quite literally, and he found himself indulging in all of it, perhaps, on some level, trying to make up for lost time.

But as the years wore on and the truth of his eternal existence set in as being the reality he was now facing, Lincoln decided that the best thing he could do for himself was give himself some reprieve from the world; and the best thing he could do for the world was give it some reprieve from him. He never wanted the pleasure he derived from the world to wane or dwindle; he wanted to enjoy it all every bit as much for the rest of his eternal existence as he had the very first time. And so he instituted The Rule of 500, which decreed that every 500 years, he would lay down and sleep for a century, so that he would be able to awaken and find the world new and young and beautiful again.

Since then, the man who calls himself The First Progeny has built himself an empire. What began as a desire to invest in the ventures of people that he saw potential in, soon grew to become a full fledged investment business, which has had its hands and funds involved in helping to nurture some truly remarkable, not to mention many highly lucrative, companies, organizations, artists, and in one case, even a kingdom. What’s more, in cases where both loyalty and excellence are exhibited, Lincoln has bestowed the gift of immortality upon those whose interests align with his own; something which he considers to be the most sacred of investment that he can make in a person. With the fortune which he has accumulated, and the massive network of loyal partners that he’s sired for himself, there’s almost nothing that Lincoln can’t have if he wants it; and he wants it all. Though all should beware, that if you intend to make friends with Lincoln, don’t ever consider letting him down, and especially not betraying him; because Lincoln Moreau does not forgive those who disappoint him, and those who betray him? Well, let’s just put it this way: Lincoln’s entire life as a vampire has been ruled by the endless pursuit of pleasure, and nothing, absolutely nothing, brings him greater pleasure than exacting revenge on those who have betrayed or done wrong to him.

Now, Lincoln leaves behind what has been his home for the past two centuries, New Orleans, to return to Raven’s Peak for the first time since he left countless centuries ago. While he’s certain that being back will stir some memories that would be better buried deep, he can’t help but be curious to see how the place has changed in his time away, and he hopes that, perhaps, he can create some new, happier memories that will redefine what his birthplace as a vampire means within his mind.

#Musings of Lincoln: Intro #tw: abuse #tw: illness #tw: cruelty #tw: drug use #tw: alcohol use #tw: murder

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ravenspeakrp · 3 months ago

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Welcome to Raven’s Peak, Dusto, we’re excited to have you! Lincoln Moreau (Vampire, Charles Michael Davis) has been accepted. Please be sure to stop by the CHECKLIST for the follow list, tags to track, and other reminders.

OUT OF CHARACTER

NAME: Dusto PRONOUNS: He/him AGE: 29 TIMEZONE: EST TRIGGERS: None

IN CHARACTER

FULL NAME: Lincoln Moreau. This is not his birthname; he adopts a new name after every Rule of 500 rest (More on this in the bio below) SPECIES: Vampire AGE: Very old DATE OF BIRTH: Actual birth date unknown, celebrates his turning date, which is December 3rd GENDER IDENTITY: Cis-Male NEIGHBORHOOD: Hidden Hills OCCUPATION: Investor WORKPLACE: Moreau Investments POSITIVE TRAITS: Charming, Ambitious, Charismatic NEGATIVE TRAITS: Vengeful, Hedonistic, Unforgiving LENGTH OF TIME IN RAVEN’S PEAK: Originally from Raven’s Peak, but has not been back in centuries...UNTIL NOW (Dun dun dun!) FACE CLAIM: Charles Michael Davis

BIOGRAPHY

TRIGGER WARNING: Abuse, cruelty, murder, illness, drug use, alcohol use

Since then, the man who calls himself The First Progeny has built himself an empire. What began as a desire to invest in the ventures of people that he saw potential in, soon grew to become a full fledged investment company, which has had its hands and funds involved in helping to nurture some truly remarkable, not to mention many highly lucrative, companies, organizations, artists, and in one case, even a kingdom. What’s more, in cases where both loyalty and excellence are exhibited, Lincoln has bestowed the gift of immortality upon those whose interests align with his own; something which he considers to be the most sacred of investment that he can make in a person. With the fortune which he has accumulated, and the massive network of loyal partners that he’s sired for himself, there’s almost nothing that Lincoln can’t have if he wants it; and he wants it all. Though all should beware, that if you intend to make friends with Lincoln, don’t ever consider letting him down, and especially not betraying him; because Lincoln Moreau does not forgive those who disappoint him, and those who betray him? Well, let’s just put it this way: Lincoln’s entire life as a vampire has been ruled by the endless pursuit of pleasure, and nothing, absolutely nothing, brings him greater pleasure than exacting revenge on those who have betrayed or done wrong to him.

EXTRAS

FILLING CONNECTION: No INSPIRATIONS: N/A

#ravenspeakaccepted

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rocknrollflames · 9 months ago

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Last song I listened to: Hmmm ... I was in the car and I still turn on the local radio sometimes because I feel like I should, lol. I'm trying to think. I have a car that still has a CD player too! I love that! So that's what it was - a song off of GNR's Greatest Hits album. A friend knew I liked GNR and asked if I still had a CD player - so he gave it to me. So the answer is: 'Knockin on Heaven's Door' by GNR. And I actually like the album version. A lot of people only like it live, but I really dig the album version.

I have cats (too many - do you want a cat?). But I like dogs too. ; )

I love buffets, lol. I'm so weird. But hey, I love food.

I once met Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. But she was wearing regular clothes and no wig, so I didn't even realize it was her until I said goodbye! I was thinking the whole time that she seemed or looked familiar but couldn't place it. She mentioned she and Nikki Sixx were on his bike once, driving in the Hollywood Hills together, and to be considerate of the people who lived there, he just coasted down the hills so he'd be more quiet for them. And I remember thinking, 'Huh. Wow. Okay.'. But still didn't ask who she was.

The original directions were to tag the last 7 people in your notifications so I am going to do what I was told.

@elscaptive @elliotts-personal-property @oldsoulgunsnrosesgirl @takemetothetopp @ride-the-hammett @nenynra @littlemissheavenonearth @izzystradliniscute @beebemarie @prettypersuasion @greeneyezblackheart @guns-n-jovi @valupuyhol @jakelinestradlin @samanthasgone

Maybe I was wrong and this wasn't the four things about you game that you're supposed to send to the last 7 notifs. Sorry if that's the case!

OKAY! Evidently this is a different tag game!

Grrrr .... Hey - what did you expect? It's me. 😅

Did that right. See above.

I currently read articles, interviews, research material, biographies, song lyrics, short stories, Slash's autobiography, and what I have written and am editing. (It's a dramatic/romantic/smutty/comedic novel about a rock band and their road to getting signed and becoming successful. But it mostly centers on the guitarist and his girlfriend, and their interesting journey together during this time period. It's much more interesting than it sounds!)

Currently obsessed with: like I even need to tell you it's GNR and Izzy Stradlin, lol.

Last watched. Do you mean TV or movies or the sun setting or paint dry or a pot boil? Hmmm ... I've been watching my phone for a message I'm waiting on ... Oh! I know! The last thing I watched was Johnnie G. applying his makeup with a tutorial on how to do it!!!

Thanks for the tag, Alessia!! 🩷 @awrestlinggirlwholoves80sbands

Last song I listened to: I Am the Highway by Audioslave

Currently reading: Nothing recreational. I've been reading three different versions of the story of Tristan and Yseult for a research paper.

Last watched: I watched a couple minutes of an episode of Seinfeld with my dad after coming home from the concert last night

Currently obsessed with: Fall Out Boy forever and always lol.

Tagging: @arnold-layne @only-a-heartbeat-away

#4 random things about me tag game unless I was wrong #tag game #updated!

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quixoticism · 2 years ago

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I have a story to tell, about how I do history.

I recently came across the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Association website. I was curious if there were any men from Utah who fought in the Spanish civil war. Turns out there were a few, but the vast majority were born here and actually lived in New York when they went to Spain. This isn’t surprising, a ton of brigadistas lived in NYC. But I found one man who lived in Utah his entire life. To my knowledge he is the only LDS man in the Lincoln Brigade.

I’d like you to meet Alvin J Van Ausdal. (I still can’t find out what the J stands for, my guess is Julius, but Alvin never bothered writing it down, more power to him.) His grandather was Julius Van Ausdal, a Mormon pioneer of some renown, and Julius was most famous for...... being a committed “Indian Fighter.” Julius had a son, George, who was Alvin’s father. According to the 1900 census, George was a day laborer, probably on one of the large farms in and around the southern end of Utah Valley. These farms were huge, very exploitative affairs, and keep that in mind when I get to the latifundia in Spain later on in this story. You wouldn’t get these details from the ALBA biography, which mainly focuses on Alvin’s service in Spain. I instead got these from his familysearch page. Given the high probability of Alvin being a member of the LDS church, given the fact that he was born and died (but did not live in his adult life), in Santaquin, Utah. I thought the genealogy website run by the LDS church would probably have the most information about him. Boy was I wrong. For starters, he had two entries, which if you’re familiar with familysearch means he’d gotten no attention. I was able to get his obituary and findagrave from familysearch, confirming he was buried in Santaquin Cemetery in Utah. The obituary mentions a widow (who is not named.... 1951....), and a son, Fred Hill. Familysearch then indicated his wife was one Lucille Waters.

Lucille seemed to have a very flushed out familysearch page with lots of memories and sources, but it become very clear to me looking at pictures of her that Alvin was not a part of her life in any really meaningful way. I went to pull up the marriage license on Alvin’s profile, and to my surprise, Lucille was not the spouse, but one Anne Hausner. Alvin’s entry on his marriage license to Anne said he was divorced, so that neatly explained why he didn’t feature in Lucille’s well-attested page, including her obituary. I quickly indicated on their respective pages that Alvin and Lucille’s marriage ended very shortly after the marriage (two years at most).

Anne had no familysearch page, so I quickly made one for her and connected her to Alvin, then went to work filling in her information from ancestry.org. To my dismay, the only evidence of her entire life is her death certificate, marriage license, and entry in her father’s 1930 census. I can’t even find a photograph of her. Can’t find an obituary, no idea where she’s buried. She was born in Austria in 1904 (location I’m sure of, date much less so), making her one year older than Alvin. She died in 1971, and Alvin died in 1954, so it’s possible she remarried, and so her obituary and headstone would be in her second husband’s last name, but her name on her death certificate is Van Ausdal and the birthdate matches. Until a record of her obituary gets indexed, I have no way of knowing where she rests, or even what she looked like.

So back to Alvin. He was born in 1906 in Santquin, to a day laborer father and stay-at-home mother. By 1910 however, when Alvin was 3, George and Ellen owned their own hay farm. In 1920 at age 13, Alvin was still in school, and by 1930, he lived at 84 West Main Street, Santaquin Utah, and worked as a silver miner. Interestingly, he’s listed as a student in the 1930 Provo directory. BYU student? Possibly. Not sure how to check that one out.

But we’ve been getting into a lot of allusions and ‘probably’s lately. The next fact we have: In 1936 Alvin van Ausdal joined the Communist Party, USA, likely radicalized by his experience as a silver miner. In the 30′s the Communist Party was more of a subculture than anything else, occasionally running candidates for office. They didn’t agree with Stalin’s authoritarianism in the Soviet Union, on the contrary they thought the reports of the show trials and purges and famine were made up or overblown. Most of them were intensely patriotic. (A CPUSA joke from the 30′s goes: “How do you know a man used to be in the Young Communists League? (the youth organ of the CPUSA) He knows all four verses of The Star-Spangled Banner”.

Like everyone in the United States, he probably looked at Franco’s coup in Spain in July 1936 with great alarm. As a member of the CPUSA, he would’ve known about the International Brigades being set up by ComIntern. Eight days after the coup started, a conference of communist parties from around the world met to send aid to the Second Spanish Republic. The Lincoln Battalion was the first American unit sent over, in February 1937. The second, the Washington Battalion, was the one Alvin was a part of, and he arrived in Spain in May, as part of Company 3. Alvin would’ve fought at Villanueva de la Cañada, alongside Frenchmen and Bulgarians, and at Mosquito Ridge he would’ve been sent as a frontal assault into Fascist lines. He fought at Quinto, alongside Soviet tanks and went house-to-house at Belchite. He was joined by Canadians, and Germans and Italians who were taking up arms to fight other Germans and Italians on the other side. After 5 months of nonstop fighting, Alvin’s brigade got it’s first time of rest and relaxation. I’d give anything to know how the mormon from Santaquin spent the time.

In December, the XVth was sent to defend Teruel from a Nationalist attack. The winter of 37-38 was yet another of those “coldest winters on record”. The Lincolns called their position “The North Pole”. After two months of fighting the Lincolns were pushed out, told they were going to go on rest for three weeks, then sent back to the front and surrounded Teruel. The Nationalists did not withdraw, and Alvin did not get any rest.

Then The Retreats began. The Lincoln-Washington battalion was forced to fall back, and many were captured. In the Spanish Civil War, capture often just meant you fought for the other side now. Not so for the Internationalists. Franco had sent out a standing order for any captured brigadista to be summarily shot.

Then the battle of the Ebro was fought. The XVth crossed the mythic river Ebro, and charged across territory they had lost in The Retreats. The Nationalists rallied, and then pushed them back. At this point, my assumption is that Alvin survived capture, and made his way into France, since we next see him arriving in New York on August 4 1938, having departed from Le Havre.

Alvin left Spain probably during the Nationalist counteroffensive in early August. Nationalist troops captured Madrid without a fight on March 28, 1939, and on April 1, Franco declared the end of the war. Guerilla fighting would continue into the 1950′s.

Alvin landed in New York City, and lived in the Bronx at least until 1940, probably longer. He was a registered Democrat, and I can’t comment any more on his politics at that point due to a lack of sources. He married Anne Hausner on 16 March, 1940, in Leesburg Virginia. I have no clue why two Bronxites chose to have their marriage officiated in Virginia. He registered for the draft in 1940, listing himself as unemployed. He almost certainly had a FBI file, which I have been unable to find, but would like to very much. His 1940 and 1950 census records have not been indexed.

He moved to Amador, California during WWII, in which he never served (very typical of Lincolns to not serve during WWII.) He died in Los Angeles of a heart attack on December 23, 1954, and was buried in Santaquin Utah. I clearly don’t have the whole story, and I want it. What drove the Mormon miner, son of a hay farmer, grandson to a pioneer and Indian fighter, to join the Communist Party and fight in Spain? Why did his first marriage fall apart so quickly? Did he have any children from his second marriage? Who was Anne? I know he has a State Department file, and it’s pretty likely he has an FBI file. I’ve filed an FOIPA request for his FBI file, and will let the world know what I find.

#history #spanish civil war #communism #utah history

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dwellordream · 3 years ago

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“To understand what friendship between women was, we must first understand what it was not. Before turning to the ways in which female friendship illustrated the play of the Victorian gender system, we must develop grounds for distinguishing it from other relationships between women. This is a detour, for the subject of this chapter is female friendship; erotic desire and marriage between women are the focus of subsequent sections. But friendship, erotic infatuation, and female marriage have so often been conflated, and women’s relationships so commonly understood as essentially ambiguous, that the detour is a necessary one.

The language of Victorian friendship was so ardent, the public face of female marriage so amicable, the comparisons between female friendship and marriage between men and women so constant, that it is no simple task to distinguish female friends from female lovers or female couples. The question “did they have sex?” is the first one on people’s lips today when confronted with a claim that women in the past were lovers—and it is almost always unanswerable. If firsthand testimony about sex is the standard for defining a relationship as sexual, then most Victorians never had sex. Scholars have yet to determine whether Thomas Carlyle was impotent; when, if ever, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor consummated their relationship; or if Arthur Munby and Hannah Cullwick, whose diaries recorded their experiments with fetishes, cross-dressing, and bootlicking, also had genital intercourse.

Just as one can read hundreds of Victorian letters, diaries, and memoirs without finding a single mention of menstruation or excretion, one rarely finds even oblique references to sex between husband and wife. Men and women were equally reticent about sexual activity inside and outside of marriage. In a journal that described her courtship and wedding in detail, Lady Knightley dispatched the first weeks of wedded life in two lines: “Rainald and I entered on our new life in our own home. May God bless it to us” (173). Elizabeth Butler, whose autobiography included “a little sketch of [her] rather romantic meeting” with the man who became her husband, was similarly and typically laconic about a transition defined by sexual intercourse: “June 11 of that year, 1877, was my wedding day.”

The lack of reliable evidence of sexual activity becomes less problematic, however, if we realize that sex matters because of the social relationships it creates and concentrate on those relationships. In Victorian England, sex was assumed to be part of marriage, but could also drop out of marriage without destroying a bond never defined by sex alone. The diaries and correspondence of Anne Lister and Charlotte Cushman provide solid evidence that nineteenth-century women had genital contact and orgasms with other women, but even more importantly, they demonstrate that sex created different kinds of connections. The fleeting encounters Lister had with women she met abroad were very different from the illicit but sustained affair Cushman had with a much younger woman who became her daughter-in-law.

Those types of affairs were in turn worlds apart from the relationships with women that Lister and Cushman called marriages, a term that did not simply mean the relationships were sexual but also connoted shared households, mingled property, and assumptions about exclusivity and durability. We can best understand what kinds of relationships women had with each other not by hunting for evidence of sex, which even if we find it will not explain much, but rather by anchoring women’s own statements about their relationships in a larger context.

The context I provide here is the complex linguistic field of lifewriting, which brings into focus two types of relationships often confused with friendship, indeed often called friendship, but significantly different from it: 1) unrequited passion and obsessive infatuation; and 2) life partnerships, which some Victorians described as marriages between women. The most famous and best-documented example of a Victorian woman’s avowed but unreciprocated passion for another woman is Edith Simcox’s lifelong love for George Eliot, which has made her a staple figure in histories of lesbianism.

Simcox (1844–1901) was a trade-union organizer and professional writer who regularly contributed book reviews to the periodical press and published fiction and nonfiction, including a study of women’s property ownership in ancient societies, discussed in chapter 5. From 1876 to 1900, Simcox kept a journal in a locked book that surfaced in 1930. Simcox gave her life story a title, The Autobiography of a Shirtmaker, that foregrounded her successful work as a labor activist, but its actual content focused on what Simcox called “the lovepassion of her life,” her longing for George Eliot as an unattainable, idealized beloved whom she called “my goddess” or, even more reverently, “Her.”

Simcox knowingly embraced a love that could not be returned, though she was aware of reciprocated, consummated sexual love between women. Her diary alludes to a “lovers’ quarrel” among three women she knew (61) and mentions her own rejection of a woman who “professed a feeling for me different from what she had ever had for any one, it might make her happiness if I could return it” (159). Tellingly, though twentieth-century scholars often refer to Simcox euphemistically as Eliot’s devoted “friend,” Simcox rarely used the term, and modeled herself instead on a courtly lover made all the more devoted by the one-sidedness of her passion. Simcox defined her diary as an “acta diurna amoris,” a daily act of love, and aspired to keep it with a constancy that would mirror her total absorption in Eliot (3).

After bringing Eliot two valentines in February 1878, Simcox wrote: “Yesterday I went to see her, and have been in a calm glow of happiness since:—for no special reason, only that to have been near her happens to have that effect on me. . . . I did nothing but make reckless love to her . . . I had told her of my ambition to be allowed to lie silently at her feet as she pursued her occupations” (25). George Lewes, the companion whom Eliot’s friends referred to as her husband, was present at most of these scenes, and he and Eliot tolerated and even enjoyed Simcox’s attentions, which they consciously construed as loverlike.

During a conversation about Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s love poems, Sonnets from the Portugese, Eliot told Simcox “she wished my letters could be printed in the same veiled way— ‘the Newest Heloise,’” thus situating Simcox’s missives to her in the tradition of amatory literature (39). In private, Simcox indulged fantasies of a more sensual connection, reflecting on a persistent “love that made the longing and molded the caress,” and recalling how “[i]n thinking of her, kisses used to form themselves instinctively on my lips—I seldom failed to kiss her a good night in thought” (136).

In trying to define her love for Eliot, Simcox significantly refused to be content with one paradigm; instead, she accumulated analogies, comparing her love for Eliot to both “[m]arried love and passionate friendship” (60). Like a medieval ascetic, Simcox eroticized her lack of sexual fulfillment, arguing that her love was even more powerful than friendship or marriage because, in resigning herself to living “widowed of perfect joy,” she had felt “sharp flames consuming what was left . . . of selfish lust” (60).

In an unsent 1880 letter to Eliot, Simcox again found herself unable to select only one category to explain her love: “Do you see darling that I can only love you three lawful ways, idolatrously as Frater the Virgin Mary, in romance wise as Petrarch, Laura, or with a child’s fondness for the mother” (120). By implication, Simcox also suggested that there would be an unlawful way to love Eliot—as an adulterer who would usurp the uxurious role already occupied by Lewes. She concluded by explaining that her relationship with Eliot was too unequal to be a friendship (120).

In the absence of the sociological and scientific shorthand provided by sexology or a codified subculture, and in the absence of a genuinely shared life that could be represented by a common history or joint possessions, women like Simcox represented their unrequited sexual desire for other women by extravagantly combining incompatible terms such as mother, lover, sister, friend, wife, and idol. Other women deployed similar rhetorical techniques of intensification and accumulation to express sexual loves that were not equally felt and did not lead to long-term partnerships.

At age twenty, Sophia Jex-Blake (1840–1912), one of England’s first female doctors and an activist who helped open medical education to women, met philanthropist Octavia Hill (1838–1912). In a biography of Jex-Blake written in 1918 that still adhered to Victorian rhetorical conventions, Margaret Todd called her subject’s relationship with Hill a “friendship” but qualified it as one that made “the deepest impression . . . of any in the whole of her life.” Jex-Blake considered the degree of love she felt for women to be unusual, writing around 1858, “I believe I love women too much ever to love a man” (78).

During a brief relationship that Hill soon broke off, the two women may have been sexually involved, but even so their feelings were never evenly matched. During the period when the women were closest, Hill reduced their bond to mere chumminess by calling herself and Jex-Blake “great companions” (85). By contrast, Jex-Blake was in awe of Hill and described her as both child and mother, roles often eroticized for Victorians, writing in her diary of “My dear loving strong child . . . I do love and reverence her” (85). Even after the relationship ended, Jex-Blake thought of Hill as her lifelong spouse, referring twenty years later to the “fanciful faithfulness” she maintained for her first love, to whom she left “the whole of her little property” in repeated wills (94).

Like Simcox, Jex-Blake used intensified language to underscore the uniqueness of her emotions. When she described inviting Hill on a vacation that included a visit to Llangollen, a site made famous by the female couple who had lived there together, Jex-Blake wrote of her “heart beating like a hammer” (85) and then described Hill’s response: “She sunk her head on my lap silently, raised it in tears, then such a kiss!” (86). Female friends often exchanged kisses, but Jex-Blake’s account took the kiss out of the realm of friendship into one of heightened sensation. Although it was common for female friends to love each other and write gushingly about it, Simcox and Jex-Blake also wrote of feeling uncommon, different from the general run of women.

Simcox identified closely with men and Jex-Blake felt unable to love men as most women did; both were extraordinarily autonomous, professionally successful, and self-conscious about the significance of their love for women. Other women also had intense erotic relationships that went beyond friendship, but were less self-conscious about those relationships, which they rarely saw as needing special explanation, and which usually lasted years or months rather than a lifetime. An example of outright insouciance about a deeply felt erotic fascination between women is found in the journals of Margaret Leicester Warren, written in the 1870s and published for private circulation in 1924.

Little is known about Warren, who was born in 1847 and led the life of a typical upper-middle-class lady, attending church, studying drawing and music, and marrying a man in 1875. Her diary attests to a fondness for triangulated relationships that included an adolescent crush on her newlywed sister and her sister’s husband, and a brief, tumultuous engagement to a male cousin whose mother was the dramatic center of Warren’s intense emotions. In 1872, when Warren was twenty-five, she began to write incessantly about a distant cousin named Edith Leycester in entries that reveled in the experience of succumbing to another woman’s glamour: “Edith looked very beautiful and as usual I fell in love with her....Tonight Edith took me into her room. . . . She is like an enchanted princess. There is some charm or spell that has been thrown over her.”

Numerous similar entries recorded an infatuation that combined daily familiarity with reverent mystification of a sophisticated and self-dramatizing woman. Warren’s fascination with Edith lasted several years. Unlike Simcox and Jex-Blake, Warren never self-consciously reflected that her feelings for Edith differed from conventional friendship, but like them, Warren ascribed an intensity, exclusivity, and volatility to her feelings for Edith absent from most accounts of female friendship. Indeed, Warren rarely referred to Edith as a friend when she wrote of her desire to see Edith every day and recorded their many exchanges of confidences, poetry, and gifts.

Warren fetishized and idealized Edith, was fixated on her presence and absence, and used superlatives to describe the feelings she inspired. Within months of meeting Edith, most of Warren’s entries consisted of detailed reenactments of their daily visits and the emotions generated by each parting and reunion: “Edith was charming tonight and I was happier with her than I have ever been. She looked beautiful” (287). Warren created an erotic aura around Edith through the very act of writing about her, through a liberal use of adverbs and adjectives, and by infusing her friend’s most ordinary actions with dramatic implications.

Describing how Edith invited her to visit her country home, for example, Warren wrote, “Edith came in and threw herself down on the chair and said quietly and gently ‘come to Toft!’” (291). Although Warren got along well with Edith’s rarely present husband, Rafe, she relished being alone with her and described the awkward, jealous scenes that took place whenever she had to share Edith with other women (362, 369). Warren found ways to dwell on the details of Edith’s beauty through references to fashion and contemporary art. Like many diarists, Warren had an almost novelistic capacity to observe and characterize people in terms of prevailing aesthetic forms.

She described Edith with flowers in her hair, looking like a pre-Raphaelite painting, and recorded her desire to make images of Edith: “I sd. like to paint her. . . . It wd. make a good ‘golden witch’ a beautiful Enchantress” (290–91). A ride with Edith inspired Warren to pen another impassioned tableau: “All the way there in the brougham I looked at Edith’s beautiful profile, the lamp light shining on it, and the wind blowing her hair about—her face also, all lit up with enthusiasm and tenderness as she leant forward to Rafe and told him a long story . . . I . . . only thought how grand she was” (369–70).

Shared confidences about Warren’s broken engagement to their male cousin became another medium for cultivating the women’s special intimacy. By assuring Warren that she did not side with the jilted fiance´, Edith declared an autonomous interest in her: “‘I wanted you to come here because— because I like you.’ She was sitting at her easel and never looking at me as she spoke for I was standing behind her, but when she said ‘because I like you,’ she looked backwards up at me with such an honest, soft, beautiful expression that any distrust I had still left of her trueness melted up into a cinder” (290).

Just as Warren heightened her relationship with Edith by writing about it so effusively and at such length, the two women elevated it by coyly discussing what their interactions and feelings meant. Before one of her many departures from London, Edith asked Warren: “‘[A]re you sorry I am going? . . . How curious—why are you sorry?’ Then I told her a little of all she had done for me . . . how much life and pleasure and interest she had put into my life, and she said nothing but she just put out her hand and laid it on my hand and that from her means a great deal more than 100 things from anyone else” (293). Edith’s gesture drew on the repertory of friendship, but in the private theater of her journal, Warren transformed the touch of a hand into a uniquely meaningful clasp.

This is not to say the relationship was one-sided. If Warren’s diary reports the two women’s interactions with any degree of accuracy, it is clear that both enjoyed creating an atmosphere of pent-up longing. Edith fed Warren’s infatuation with provocative questions and a skill for setting scenes: “She asked what things I cared for now? And I said with truth, for nothing— except seeing her” (303). Three days later, just before another of Edith’s departures, Warren paid a call: When tea was over, the dusk had begun and I . . . sat . . . at the open window. . . . By and bye Edith came and sat near me. . . . The room inside was nearly dark, but outside it was brilliant May moonlight. . . . Edith sat there ready to go, looking very pale and very sad with the light on her face. . . . We did not talk much. She asked me to go to the party tonight and to think of her at 11. . . . She said goodbye and she kissed me, for the first time. (303–4)

Warren is exquisitely sensitive to every element that connotes eroticism: a darkened room, physical proximity, complicit silence, a romantic demand that the beloved remain present in her lover’s mind even when absent, a kiss whose uniqueness—“for the first time”—suggests a beginning. Any one of these actions would have been unremarkable between female friends, but comparison with other women’s diaries shows how distinctive it was for Warren to list so many gestures within one entry, without defining and therefore restricting their meaning. Warren’s attitude also distinguishes her emotions from those articulated by women who took their love for women in a more conjugal or sexual direction. Her journals combine exhaustive attention to the beloved with a pervasive indifference to interrogating what that fascination might mean.

Never classified as friendship or love, Warren’s feelings for Edith had the advantages and limits of remaining in the realm of suggestion, where they could expand infinitely without ever being realized or checked. Women who consummated a mutual love and consolidated it by forming a conjugal household were less likely to leave records of their most impassioned moods and deeds than those whose love went unrequited or undefined. Indeed, women in what were sometimes called “female marriages” (a term I discuss further in chapter 5) used lifewriting to claim the privilege of privacy accorded to opposite-sex spouses.

Like the lifewritings of women married to men, those of women in female marriages assumed intimacy and interdependence rather than displaying it, and folded their sexual bond into a social one. They described shared households and networks of acquaintances who recognized and thus legitimated the women’s coupledom, liberally using words such as “always,” “never,” and “every” to convey an iterated, daily familiarity more typical of spouses than friends.

Martha Vicinus’s Intimate Friends cites many nineteenth-century women who described their relationships with other women as marriages, and Magnus Hirschfeld’s magisterial, international study of The Homosexuality of Men and Women (1914) noted that same sex couples often created “marriage-like associations characterized by the exclusivity and long duration of the relationships, the living together and the common household, the sharing of every interest, and often the existence of legitimate community property.”

Sexual relationships of all stripes were most acceptable when their sexual nature was least visible as such but was instead manifested in terms of marital acts such as cohabitation, fidelity, financial solidarity, and adherence to middle-class norms of respectability. Because friendship between women was so clearly defined and prized, one way to acknowledge a female couple’s existence while respecting their privacy was to call women who were in effect married to each other “friends.” Given that “friends” was used to describe women who were lovers and women who were not, how can we tell when “friends” means more than just friends?

…There are many instances of published writing acknowledging marital relationships between women by calling them friendships. Victorian women in female couples were not automatically subject to the exposure and scandal visited on opposite-sex couples who stepped outside the bounds of respectable sexual behavior. Instead, many female couples enjoyed both the right to privacy associated with marriage and the public privileges accorded to female friendship. The Halifax Guardian obituary of Anne Lister in 1840 recognized her longstanding spousal relationship with Anne Walker by calling her Lister’s “friend and companion,” a gratuitously compound phrase.

Emily Faithfull, whom we will encounter again in chapter 6, was a feminist with a long history of female lovers. An 1894 article entitled “An Afternoon Tea with Miss Emily Faithfull” described her home in Manchester, decorated by “Miss Charlotte Robinson,” whom Faithfull readily disclosed “shares house with me.”80 Faithfull left all her property to Robinson in a will that called her “my beloved friend” whose “countless services” and “affectionate tenderness and care . . . made the last few years of my life the happiest I ever spent.” To call one woman another’s superlative friend was not to disavow their marital relationship but to proclaim it in the language of the day.”

- Sharon Marcus, “Friendship and the Play of the System.” in Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England

#victorian #sexuality #history #sharon marcus #between women

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alexjvng · 3 years ago

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Not everyone can say they’ve been to the Big Apple, but [ALEXANDER JUNG], a [TWENTY FIVE] year-old [CIS MAN] has lived in [FOREST HILLS, QUEENS] for [SIX MONTHS]. This is the city of dreams and [HE] knows it, because they came to NYC to be a [RECEPTIONIST]. Well, that and as a [NEW EMPLOYEE] to [LUCIFER VALE] and [ROOMMATE] to [KAL HYUN-JIN]. Living in the city means they meet all kinds of people, but everyone always seems to think they look like [KIM TAEHYUNG]. They even got away with free cab fare once because of it!

hello!! i’m c and i’m really excited to be here!! alex has lived so many lives now, but this is his most tragic version yet. i apologize for how sad (and long) this gets... there’s a really useful TLDR right at the end though! and all triggers are tagged accordingly before they are mentioned.

trigger warnings: mentions of abuse, addiction, bad parenting, car crash, child abandonment, depression, drug/alcohol use, family death, overdose.

DISCLAIMER: all medium sized gifs used on this blog are made by me from scratch, please do not steal/use without permission !

BASICS

NAME: Alexander Jung

NICKNAMES: Alex, AJ

AGE: 25

BIRTHDATE: December 17th, 1995

BIRTHPLACE: Nephi, Utah

ZODIAC SIGN: Sagittarius

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: bisexual biromantic

GENDER & PRONOUNS: cis man, he/him

OCCUPATION: receptionist at Second Circle Entertainment Studios

MBTI: INTJ, the architect

ALIGNMENT: chaotic neutral

+POSITIVE TRAITS: independent, courageous, loyal, protective, witty

-NEGATIVE TRAITS: closed off, emotional, impulsive, insecure, stubborn

CHARACTER INSPO: james cook (skins), jason dean (heathers... minus the homicidal part), allison reynolds (the breakfast club), justin foley (13 reasons why)

BIOGRAPHY

Born on a very cold night of December 1995 in a small town in Utah, as the second child of the family. An older brother, and a younger sister named Millie born in May 2000, the three of them from different fathers: (tw child abandonment mention) the first two left town and didn’t take responsibility. Alex has no idea who his father is, but neither does have a care to ever meet him. The father of his younger sister did stay, for the first years of her life... only to eventually leave their mother for a younger woman to never look back. It seemed like their mother had a type: the most awful assholes you could ever meet.

(tw abuse/addiction) The siblings grew up in a pretty toxic/abusive environment after their mother developed an alcohol and drug addiction over trying to find ways to numb the trauma/pain of being dumped by Millie’s father left her. Taking home various questionable boyfriends, most of Alex’s childhood memories involve a lot of yelling and loneliness. He didn’t have many friends at school given he was too shy/anxious, all he ever had was his siblings.

For being a small town, it was really saddening how no one really ever cared to help the siblings. Their grandparents had passed away before things got difficult, and their mother didn’t really have a good relationship with her older sister who was in Chicago graduating college and doing her own thing. At least the siblings were together protecting each other, right?

And then... the unthinkable. As soon as his older brother graduates high school: he leaves town to never look back either. Just like Millie’s father. It was really hard to process. Alex was just a pre-teen, he could understand if he’d want to leave their family home behind... but them? Why? He never got those answers, instead: it was now his duty to protect Millie, and he took that responsibility really seriously.

Shit kept being really toxic at home, Alex stayed because he had no other options. Plus, despite everything: he always tried to be a good son, be there for his mother, but she was unreachable. The final straw came after a school day when Alex was 16 and arriving home, and let’s just say... (tw implied assault), he walked in just in time to save his sister from something terrible in the hands of their mother’s current boyfriend. When he told his mom about it though, she called him a liar and sided with her boyfriend at the time. This broke him enough to leave home that night, taking Millie (who was only 11 back then) with him.

Alex made it to Las Vegas, Nevada the next morning. He had made conversation with a kind lady who sat next to him at one of the latest bus stops. After learning the kids’ story, she offered them to stay with her and her husband. At first it was meant to be “for a while”, but the kidless couple grew fond of the pair fast and allowed them to simply stay. In only two years: the couple became the parents Millie and Alex never had (but always wished). Alex was certain their mom would never look for them either way: and he was right all along. It was for the best though.

As soon as Alex turned 18 he started the process of becoming Millie’s legal guardian. (tw overdose) This is when he found out their mother had passed away from an overdose just a few months before. Still, this meant she had a little over a year to try and look for them but she didn’t move a finger. He did cry a lot when first hearing the news, and it was even harder to break it to Millie. Sadly, he couldn’t say he was shocked... it was an expected fate given the lifestyle she was living.

But he did get to become Millie’s legal guardian, and as thankful as he was with the couple who took them in: he wanted to start over somewhere new, calmer than a big busy city. He had saved enough now, and with the couples help... they offered them to relocate to West Reading, Pennsylvania where they had some relatives. And so the siblings did. Alex got to finish high school there, but there was nothing he felt passionate enough to pursue college for. So he only worked to provide Millie a good life. He had to grow up too fast, in charge of his little sister now.

But Millie... she was intelligent, and she landed a scholarship at the University of Washington. After she moved to Seattle for college, Alex now had “more free time”, but his lifestyle didn’t change much. He only got to learn new hobbies, maybe go out a bit more: nothing too out of the ordinary. Till tragedy stuck again...

(tw car accident/death mention): Alex got the hardest call of his life in the early hours of March 31st 2021. A rainy night out, a drunk driver... Millie didn’t make it. His whole world came crashing down. He just lost the person he loved the most in this world. What was the point of anything anymore?

He spiraled out of control. Went on a bender of being drunk (amongst other stuff) and partying basically every single night. Suddenly he was acting exactly like his mother, but he didn’t give a shit about it. Anything to numb the pain, maybe he now understood her reasons. Was he ready now to forgive her? Not really, but he definitely empathized more with her now. Felt for her.

(tw suicidal thoughts) Near the first monthiversary of Millie’s death, he was done, he simply took his motorcycle and rode wherever the road took him. Somehow he made it to New Jersey, and thank God he decided to stop at that Walmart at 2am, or else who knows what could have been of him.

He was high as a kite when he decided to approach two attractive men at the distance and shoot his shot. It’s now embarrassing to look back at, but in that moment it seemed like a good idea. What he ended up with instead? One of their numbers... but for a job offer in NYC. He was unsure if this was a prank or not, but it did leave him thinking. When he sobered up the next morning and called it and it turned out to be a legit thing: he couldn’t actually believe it.

He took that as the universe’s way of telling him to get his shit together. He also knew if Millie was still here: she’d encourage him to take the opportunity. So he did.

He moved to NYC a few days later, and he is forever grateful with Lucifer Vale for the opportunity for him to start over in a city as exciting as this one. He was so used to simple jobs like waiter, or cashier, that it was a shock to find out being the receptionist of an adult entertainment film studio was such a big responsibility, so he’s trying his best to not fuck it up. What do you mean filming porn is so complicated and not just a fun, sexy time?

He is still incredibly depressed and needs a hug and should really go to therapy, but will he ever? He’s just living life as it goes, surviving: exploring and learning more about “the city of dreams” each day.

PERSONALITY/HEADCANONS

A lone wolf. Extremely independent. Probably spends way too much time alone in his room blasting loud, sad alternative music... his roommates are probably sick of this behavior by now.

The quiet kid who sat in the back of the class and never spoke to anyone ever.

Is definitely stuck on his emo phase, but he’ll never admit it. Maybe he has some punk characteristics, but he doesn’t go around calling himself “punk”. It’s more punk to tell people you are not punk. If you wanna know what he thinks he is: he thinks he’s just a rock boy. He likes to rock out, to throw shit around, to go nuts, lose himself.

Favorite band is Bring Me The Horizon. But he enjoys any other band that has depressing lyrics and loud guitars, some examples are: Taking Back Sunday, My Chemical Romance, Creeper, Sum 41, etc.

Knows how to play guitar and is really passionate about music, but would never pursue a career there. If he ever found the right people though: he’d be open to join a band as a guitarist, since back in Pennsylvania he used to get together with a bunch of friends to have jam sessions in a garage just for fun.

Has a bunch of tattoos that I have yet to plan/decide, but not enough to cover his entire body... Matty Healy style (tried to find a less problemtic person to give the example but was unable to, so we rollin’ ldkfjgkdfg)

Lip piercing that sometimes is there, sometimes it’s not... depends on how he’s feeling /:

Rides an old motorcyle bc he is Edgy like that

Given all the shit he’s went through: he has a REAL hard time trusting people. Most likely (not to quote Maggie Lindemann but) sleeps with a knife under his pillow. You never know who is out there to get you /:

However if he grows fond of you: you have a friend for life. He is very protective over the ones he cares for, would take a bullet for them without hesitation.

Would sleep with anyone he finds remotely attractive. This musing sums it all up. It’s not like he has commitment issues: it’s more that, again... he doesn’t really trust people, so he’s rather keep things casual. However, when he falls: he falls hard and clowns /:

Is actually a really nice cook, he had to learn it to be able to survive and make food for himself and his sister, but he doesn’t give himself enough credit. He also really enjoys baking, a secret hobby that serves as a way of relaxing.

Is also actually really smart... a fast learner, if he would have cared enough for his education: he’d be going places. /:

Still keeps in touch with the couple who gave him shelter in Las Vegas, and their relatives from Pennsylvania: since they are the closest thing he has to a “family”. Still, he feels alone most of the time, especially without Millie around.

Has a thing for older women... is probably the mommy issues /: i will actually request a wc that is an affair with a married woman smh.

Would much rather hide away in his room, but wouldn’t turn down an invitation for a good party. He does drink, but tries to stay away from hard drugs given he doesn’t want to end up like his mother. He is your friendly neighborhood stoned kid though.

All his life he has just been... existing. Has never had a real passion. He’s pretty lost: just going where life takes him, but doesn’t really have a goal in life other than surviving another day. Alexa please play Numb by MARINA.

Low self esteem, pretty quiet, usually keeps to himself. Emotional. Broken. A tortured soul. Really hard to get him to open up so he just... is bottling up a lot of baggage. Heart been broke so many times.

Definitely has undiagnosed clinical depression, someone please hug him and drag him to therapy.

Yes, the oddly specific locations mentioned here were a tribute to Brandon Flowers and Taylor Swift xx

WANTED CONNECTIONS

His estranged older brother and biological father (submitted to the main too).

People he knew from his stay in Las Vegas, or from back ‘home’ in Pennsylvania.

People he met at a rock show like that Blink 182 song... he loves a good concert, one of the very few places he feels alive at /: alternatively: people stuck on their emo phase too and they bond over that

Hook ups/one night stands: Plenty of room for that, any gender, any age... the older the better he said <3

Exes: doesn’t matter if it was just casual or actually exclusive. Feel free to suggest it ended badly and they broke his heart (something not hard to do to him, rip): we love angst in this house

A fwb: when he is sad over his older married woman not giving him attention, he goes to them 😔. It’s all pretty superficial... just a fun, casual time. Bonus points if the lines are blurred and they have soft moments that are confusing at times

A one sided crush: all Alex really wants is to be loved... and this person has it bad for him, but he is unaware and doesn’t really reciprocate these feelings. Could get really sad and angsty /:

He’s fairly new in the city so… friendships he’s developed around! People that actually get him to leave his room and have fun downtown.

Neighbors because those plots are simple but cute and I’m a sucker for them lmaoo

Ultimately up to anything and everything pls give us all the plots !!! <333

TLDR

Born in a small town in Utah as the middle child. An older brother and a younger sister (Millie), all from different fathers. (tw child abandonment). Alex has never met his own, neither does he care to (as he ran away from town after learning his mother was pregnant). When Millie’s father left their mother for a younger woman to never look back: their mother fell into a deep depression and (tw addiction mention) developed an addiction to alcohol/drugs to numb the pain. (tw abuse) He grew up in a pretty toxic/abusive environment given this. The siblings took care of each other, till his older brother left them too and it was just him and Millie. Ran away from home at 16 with a (back then) 11 year old Millie, and stayed with a kind couple that offered them shelter in Las Vegas, till he turned 18 and became Millie’s legal guardian. He then moved to Pennsylvania where the couple had some relatives. (tw death/overdose) This is when he learned their mother had passed away from an overdose, but had enough time to look for them but never did. Millie went to college to Seattle, and Alex stayed in Pennsylvania living a regular life (tw death mention) till he got the call that Millie passed away in a car accident. He spiraled out of control, (tw drug/alcohol use) went on a bender of alcohol/drug use, and one night just rode without direction till he made it to New Jersey. He met Lucifer Vale at a Walmart there and was randomly offered a job at his company, an opportunity he took to try and get his life back around and has been in NYC for 6 months now.

#ENYC.INTRO #tw drug/alcohol use #tw addiction #tw overdose #tw death #tw car crash #tw depression #tw abuse #tw bad parenting #tw child abandonment #PHEW what a ride...

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eli-kittim · 4 years ago

Text

Is Paul a Witness to the Historical Jesus?

By Goodreads Author Eli Kittim

——-

Paul: The Visionary Witness

Paul is the earliest New Testament writer. And there is compelling textual evidence for concluding that Paul’s witness to Christ is exclusively based on visionary experiences (see Acts 9.3-5; Rom. 16.25-26; 2 Cor. 12.2-4). Critical scholarship would unequivocally concur that Paul never saw Jesus in the flesh. Yet on the very basis of his own personal revelations, which exclude human sources, Paul’s knowledge of Christ surpassed that of his contemporaries. In Gal. 1.11-12, Paul makes it abundantly clear that he’s not a reliable witness to the historical existence of Jesus. He writes:

For I want you to know, brothers and sisters,

that the gospel that was proclaimed by me

is not of human origin; for I did not receive it

from a human source, nor was I taught it,

but I received it through a revelation of

Jesus Christ.

Along similar lines, the German New Testament scholar and historian, Gerd Lüdemann, from the University of Göttingen, ascribes the belief in Jesus’ resurrection primarily to Paul’s visions. In his book (“The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology,” Translated by John Bowden [London: SCM, 1994], 97, 100), he writes:

At the heart of the Christian religion lies a

vision described in Greek by Paul as

ophehe——‘he was seen.’ And Paul himself,

who claims to have witnessed an

appearance asserted repeatedly ‘I have

seen the Lord.’ So Paul is the main source

of the thesis that a vision is the origin of the

belief in resurrection.

——-

Bart Ehrman Says that Paul Tells Us Nothing About the Historical Jesus

Bart Ehrman, who is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, once wrote on his blog:

Paul says almost *NOTHING* about the

events of Jesus’ lifetime. That seems weird

to people, but just read all of his letters.

Paul never mentions Jesus healing anyone,

casting out a demon, doing any other

miracle, arguing with Pharisees or other

leaders, teaching the multitudes, even

speaking a parable, being baptized, being

transfigured, going to Jerusalem, being

arrested, put on trial, found guilty of

blasphemy, appearing before Pontius Pilate

on charges of calling himself the King of the

Jews, being flogged, etc. etc. etc. It’s a

very, very long list of what he doesn’t tell us

about.

Even Kurt Aland——the German Bible scholar who founded the Institute for New Testament Textual Research, and one of the principal editors of the Nestle-Aland-Novum Testamentum Graece——went so far as to question the historicity of Jesus. In his book (“A History of Christianity,” vol. 1 [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985], p. 106), he writes:

the real question arises . . . was there really

a Jesus? Can Jesus really have lived if the

writings of his closest companions are filled

with so little of his reality . . . so little in them

of the reality of the historical Jesus . . . .

When we observe this——assuming that the

writings about which we are speaking really

come from their alleged authors——it

almost then appears as if Jesus were a

mere phantom.

No wonder, then, that in his magnum opus (the Epistle to the Romans) Paul sets about describing the gospel of Christ NOT as a biography or an objective historical account but rather as a *revelation* that has been “promised beforehand” through the agency of the Holy Spirit (1.1-3 NRSV):

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be

an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God,

which he promised beforehand through his

prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel

concerning his Son.

——-

Conclusion

Gerd Lüdemann, professor of History and Literature of Early Christianity, concluded an essay——(“Paul as a Witness to the Historical Jesus” in R. Joseph Hoffman, “Sources of the Jesus tradition: separating history from myth” [Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2010], p. 212)——with the following sentence:

In short, Paul cannot be considered a

reliable witness to either the teachings,

the life, or the historical existence of

Jesus.

Christianity preserved the apocalyptic literary tradition of Judaism and reevaluated it in light of its own messianic revelations. The New Testament refined this type of literature as it became the vehicle of its own prophetic and apocalyptic expressions. Apocalypticism, then, not historiography, is the *literary style* of the New Testament, which is based on a *foreknowledge* of future events that is written in advance! It is therefore thought advisable to consider the collection of New Testament writings as strikingly futurist books (see Lk 17.30; Heb. 1.2; 9.26b; 1 Pet. 1.10-11, 20; 2 Pet. 1.19; 1 Jn 2.28; Rev. 19.10d; 22.7, 10, 18, 19)!

——-

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harrison-davies · 4 years ago

Text

"I will face God and walk backwards into Hell."

Full name: Harrison Grant Davies

Nicknames: Harry (by only a few people)

Age: Thirty-five

Date of Birth: November 30th, 1985

Birth place: London, UK

Currently residing: Heartsdale, Georgia (Sugar Hill Lake)

Time in Heartsdale: Six years

Occupation: Architect

Relationship status: Single

Orientation: Straight

TW: homophobia mentions, early pregnancy termination mentions, underage drinking

BIOGRAPHY

Harrison was born and raised in London, UK to two well known surgeons that pretty much lived for two things: their careers and their reputation. Despite growing up with everything he wanted easily handed to him and a caring sister, the lack of parental presence and education turned him sour, making him look for his parents attention through scandals and fights in school that would damage his last name, Davies.

He was only ten years old when his then nineteen years old sister came out to her parents which proved to be the ultimate blow to the Davies, resulting in her being disowned and thrown out - this only added to Harrison's home issues who didn't understand why did his sister's sexual preferences matter so much, and her being the only present family member to him. Needless to say his teenage years were a bit wild and rebellious with nights spent outside home, underage drinking and regular escapes to visit his sister.

In his last high school year he met a girl that changed it all though, and for the first time Harrison fell in love and was ready to do anything not to let his parents interfere with their stupid high standards and obsession with reputation, but it proved to be short-lived when the girl became pregnant and although the young couple knew it would be difficult but were happy, the two families would come together to brainwash her into terminating her pregnancy and not "ruin" her future.

His relationship with his parents hit rock bottom then and the moment he was accepted into his preferred university to complete his Architecture degree he avoided them at all costs, deciding to move to the US after graduation.

He's always loved to draw and architecture was one of his main interests growing up with history and psychology right behind it, he still draws in his free time though not as often as he did growing up.

He's been in the US for the past twelve years though his accent remains intact, something he made sure he wouldn't get rid of. Harrison chose to move to Heartdale six years ago because of a well paid job opportunity in Atlanta as well as wanting a balanced life and because he fell in love with the little town when he once visited in a quick job visit. He visits and loves his homecountry despite everything though, having lived in NYC and Chicago before moving to Heartsdale.

Personality-wise he's charming and confident but he's distant and romantically not very easy to get through, a mix of his family issues and his teenage broken heart - resulting in lots of drama and angst which he figured he would avoid with less relationships and more flings/one-night-stands instead. He is easy to be friends with though.

WANTED CONNECTIONS

Friends: people like him are the ones he'd probably get along with best, but looking for complete opposites that no one thought could become friends type of friendship too!

Exes: Oof. He has way too many. Because of the way he was brought up and the way his relationships always ended up he would never say he knows how to keep one, the contrary.

Flings/FWBs/ONS: Harrison has learned to have these more often than relationships so definitely these too.

People that don't like him: it's pretty easy after all!

Neighbours, people that know him from London (even though he left twelve years ago), people he works with (not necessarily architects), all of the possible connections! Open to anything really!

#hdintro #hi everyone! come plot w me anytime

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barrybluejeansandbestjeanist · 5 years ago

Text

Notes on the Artemis Fowl movie by yours truly.

Bear in mind I wrote these while watching the movie. There’s a lot of them.

1. If you think the police and/or reporters would ever be anywhere near fowl manor you’re wrong.

2. Mulch isn’t bad so far but he’d never be caught by police.

3. Is our first introduction to Artemis him running? I think not thank you very much.

4. Plus it looks like he’s going to do some water sport. Also wrong.

5. Surfing!!??!!?

6. Artemis doesn’t have even close to the coordination to do that.

7. I don’t even think he knows how to swim.

8. He doesn’t love Ireland.

9. Of course he doesn’t love school! Have you seen his teachers’ remarks on him? They aren’t nice.

10. It was a boys-only school but that’s definitely one of the smaller offenses.

11. He did do the chess thing if I recall correctly.

12. Same for the opera house.

13. He didn’t clone a goat or name anything Bruce.

14. Unusual is an understatement.

15. Dr. Po?!

16. Fake chair! Yeah!

17. That exchange from the Arctic incident wasn’t a bad choice to include. Too early though I think. We’ll see how the rest of the movie goes.

18. He’s got blue eyes. At least there’s that.

19. He doesn’t have a biography!

20. His mom isn’t dead! Disney is just scared of showing mental illness.

21. If you think Angelina Fowl can’t control Artemis you’re wrong. She calls him Arty for god’s sake. He loves his mom.

22. Mysterious absences my ass. He’s the one that should be presumed dead.

23. “This is a sensitive area doctor” sure.

24. Fake chair ftw.

25. The burden of his father’s name?! He’s proud of that name.

26. This scene wasn’t so bad. We’ll see how the rest of the movie fairs.

27. Who does he think he is? He Artemis freaking Fowl!

28. Skateboarding! I’m about to have an aneurysm.

29. Also, why is he wearing jeans? Get this man a suit!

30. He did not like being at home with his dad. Not in the first book anyway. His parent being out of the way allowed him to do what he did.

31. His dad’s actor looks good for the part.

32. His father is a criminal. World-famous. He did not just deal with antiques and rarities.

33. His dad also didn’t care for fairytales.

34. Music’s nice I guess.

35. Why is arty wearing a hoodie?! He would never!

36. Artemis was not taught about fairies. He discovered them himself with basically no help.

37. So much physical contact between Artemis sr. and jr. No.

38. His dad did not believe in any such legends.

39. They shared only a passion for crime and that didn’t even last.

40. He wasn’t determined about any such thing. See point 36.

41. He wasn’t preparing Artemis for anything like that.

42. Fairy stones? What are those?

43. There was no peace made between humans and fairies.

44. Tuatha De Danaan? What is that?

45. Artemis would want to get to the point I guess.

46. His work was not coming to an end. What is going on? Can we meet Holly soon?

47. I’m ten minutes in and suffering.

48. Artemis wasn’t really one to smile unless things were going his way.

49. You are a child! You are still a kid! You’re like a literal baby still!

50. The whole point of him being 12 in the books was that he could still believe in magic as well as science. Wtf is going on?

51. I do know the Hill of Tara.

52. I take issue with “all I really want is to believe in you” but I don’t have time to get into it here.

53. He’s still wearing a hoodie. >:(

54. Hugging his dad. No.

55. I will accept the helicopter on the front lawn if only because it seems one thing that could’ve happened in the books.

56. Where are the Butlers? Why are neither of the fowls being guarded? I need more Juliet and Butler in this movie NOW.

57. And Holly.

58. Pretty sure they don’t have a lighthouse. Also, pretty sure fowl manor wasn’t next to the ocean.

59. Might’ve been near a Forrest. I don’t quite remember.

60. Legos?! LEGOS?!??!!

61. Also, star wars? I don’t think Artemis has ever seen a sci-fi movie. He’s too busy making them a reality.

62. Artemis would also not sleep with a book.

63. Why did Butler’s name in the subtitles appear as Domovoi? You know there’s a whole thing about his name and why Arty doesn’t know it right?

64. So his dad disappeared. Not bad. A little late but okay.

65. Everyone has already aired their grievances about Butlers actor so I shall refrain from doing so as well. I’ll just say one word and leave it at that. Eurasian.

66. Also, fowl manor doesn’t look bad. I can accept this house.

67. No no no. No one should be calling him Domovoi. Only Butler.

68. Also, that isn’t the training he had.

69. He is the butler though? I mean. Only sort of but like. ???

70. No. You could not call him Dom or Domovoi.

71. Very large man in a suit is slightly acceptable.

72. He could totally snap you in half but not without good reason. Come on, guys. He’s a nice guy. Scary, but nice.

73. Like, the dude cooks and gardens and whatnot. How is that not nice?

74. Also, I’m still hung up on the goat thing. Like I don’t deny that he could clone a goat but why on earth would he name it Bruce. Is it a Batman reference or something? I don’t understand this movie.

75. World wide manhunt? Pardon my doubt.

76. Superyacht? Owl star?

77. I get it. It’s a stupid pun.

78. I guess the South China Sea is close enough to Russia.

79. Again. Not an antiquities dealer.

80. Robberies? He ran a criminal empire!

81. Not sure how one would go about stealing the Rosetta Stone or why but sure.

82. I’ve never even heard of Boru’s Harp.

83. Nor the book of kells.

84. Why are you calling Butler Dom???

85. Yes! He is a criminal mastermind! Thank you for slightly acknowledging that!

86. Also, Artemis is not that rash.

87. He’s your dad and a criminal.

88. Why must Disney do this to my boy? He was an incredible character, smart, cunning, and a criminal and now he’s just a sort of smart kid. Lame.

89. I swear if this “raspy voice” is opal I will be so disappointed.

90. What is this? Artemis is supposed to be kidnapping fairies, not the other way around!

91. What is this Aculos and why should I care about it?

92. Also, why isn’t it Christmas? You could at least set it in winter. For crying out loud.

93. That isn’t word for word Artemis. I know you can remember it exactly.

94. I’m starting to think Orion is better than this fool.

95. Why is he wearing a hoodie?!??!???!

96. Just going to have a secret basement full of whatever secret stuff shoved in there because of course.

97. Also. As if butler would know about any of this.

98. Bunch of bottles of water. Okay.

99. ‘Cause Artemis Sr. totally knew about the fairies.

100. This is a stupid basement.

101. I’m so done with this.

102. Ah yes! An important journal! Predictable.

103. Stupid poem. Stupid way of finding the journal.

104. That was opal I see. I’m dying.

105. Beechwood. Isn’t that guy related to Holly or something? Also, not from the books.

106. Yes, Arty fairies exist. Surprising no one.

107. I like how they made the city look I suppose. And they kept the name the same. Of course, it must be noted that not all fairies live in haven. There are other cities.

108. Why is holly a baby? She shouldn’t look like a child. Also, tons of people have already spoken on holly’s appearance as well so I won’t say anymore.

109. Koboi mentioned. It was totally opal.

110. The fairies don’t look bad either. Though I don’t know if the little things are supposed to be goblins or what?

111. I guess not. These goblins also seem way too smart.

112. “You and I would make a great team” foreshadowing.

113. I do think mulch being taller is kinda funny.

114. Briar Cudgeon looks about how I expected. Do you think he’ll get his face melted?

115. Opal and Cudgeon working together. Unsurprising if a bit early.

116. You spy or you die. The CIA’s motto.

117. L.E.P. Recon. Nice.

118. I’m also not going to address the changing of roots gender and the fact that Holly is supposed to be the first female officer because again, many people have spoken at length about that. Still upset though.

119. Kelp and Verbil are around I see.

120. What is the Aculos? Like I get that it’s a weapon by why should I care?

121. Also, I think Root should be smoking.

122. Holly’s father? Why should he matter or even be a part of this?

123. They kept Holly 84. Good.

124. Reinforcements? Juliet?!!!!

125. She’s 12? She’s supposed to be sixteen! No!

126. Niece!!!! She’s supposed to be his sister.

127. Also, screw Disney for changing the fairy alphabet so we can’t read it.

128. Artemis should be able to decode it though. He’s not much of a genius, is he?

129. Foals needs a tinfoil hat and should look way way nerdier.

130. Troll! Time! Yeah!

131. Yeah! Lava chutes!

132. Foaly’s CGI is a little wonky but whatever.

133. So that’s why Holly’s father is important. Stupid.

134. The executors. You mean the council.

135. Don’t just fly over the surface unshielded, you dolt!

136. Butler your camouflage sucks ass.

137. Butler wouldn’t complain.

138. Butler’s eyes are freaking me out. No one’s eyes look like that.

139. The LEP helmets are stupid looking.

140. That isn’t what a troll looks like. Stop it, Disney.

141. Time Stop. Not a time freeze.

142. The magic looks cool.

143. That’s not how a time stop works. But at least it looks cool.

144. I suppose I can accept that’s how they do mind wipes.

145. “This is a strange wedding” is the best joke so far.

146. Why are none of the fairies shielded?

147. Holly has such boring motivation.

148. You shouldn’t just read your dad’s journal Arty. It’s rude.

149. I’m so over arty’s dad already knowing about the fairies as well as this beechwood fellow.

150. Why does this Aculos exist? If it’s so dangerous, why not get rid of it?

151. Opal Koboi. Finally.

152. Like Arty would ever dress like that. He’d still be wearing a suit and be spotless.

153. “They’re real.” No kidding!

154. Fox!

155. I’m surprised they included trying and succeeding to shoot holly.

156. Kinda wish they’d kept the bury an acorn to get magic thing but small fish and all.

157. Now it’s starting to remind me of the real Artemis Fowl story.

158. Cudgeon is slimy and annoying and I’m here for it.

159. That’s a shitty looking cage.

160. “Not happy” I wonder why?

161. Reflective glasses! Yes! Give me the fowl crew in cringey reflective sunglasses.

162. The Mesmer is done nicely. Love Juliet’s glasses.

163. A flannel and reflective sunglasses. That classic Artemis fowl look.

164. So he did decode their language.

165. The acting isn’t terrible.

166. Most humans are afraid of gluten how do you think they’d handle goblins is a good line.

167. Again. Not how time stops work but okay.

168. So let me get this right. Instead of the fairy bible which Artemis poisoned a fairy to get they just replaced it with his dad‘s journal. great.

169. Don’t give Artemis a weapon! He’s gonna cut his own arm off!

170. The time freeze does look cool though.

171. I can appreciate them gathering on the beach. That’s kinda cool.

172. Finally a suit! Get this kid properly clothed!

173. Though that tie is a little sus. Why’s it so skinny?

174. That fight scene wasn’t too bad. Again Arty is definitely not supposed to be good at anything physical but it’s whatever.

175. Flair for the dramatic? This is hardly as dramatic as the book.

176. I hate opal’s voice.

177. Waged war on your people? That was 10,000 years ago!

178. Opal’s motives are also super boring.

179. I’m sad we don’t get to see arty practicing his evil smile in the mirror.

180. In one of those pots. From under the rainbow. Fun.

181. Glad they kept the whole while I’m alive stipulation.

182. Glad to see the goblins still have fire powers.

183. These goblins really shouldn’t be so smart.

184. I hope we get to see mulch unhinge his jaw soon.

185. I do like mulch.

186. This heart to heart is stupid. Artemis wouldn’t trust holly just like that me thinks.

187. I like that mulch is up on all the human pop culture. I do wish he’d make a Gordon Ramsey reference though since he likes him.

188. Mulch not wanting to be tall is excellent character motivation though.

189. Now this is the heart to heart I needed.

190. Is he gonna unhinge his jaw?! I’ve been waiting for this the whole time!

191. Yeah!!!!!!

192. Eat that dirt!

193. Mulch!

194. “What would your parents be?”

195. A really really big dwarf.

196. Sick safe. Nothing mulch can’t handle.

197. That definitely isn’t what I expected from mulch’s hair but that’s okay.

198. Yeah! Holly punched Artemis! Now there just needs to be a lollipop remark.

199. Is that the Aculos? It looks stupid.

200. Also, I do appreciate the inclusion of the iris cam.

201. Opal, you’re so boring.

202. Cudgeon is taking over. Kinda wish it was of his own will because that’s more interesting but whatever.

203. Troll time part two. I doubt butler is going to almost die fighting it. Maybe he’ll wear a suit of armor though. That’d be cool.

204. How is it we’re an hour in and only just now get a d’arvit? Surely many other scenes warranted that.

205. I do like that mulch pickpocketed butler.

206. Don’t just stand in front of the door when A Troll is about to be sent in!

207. The wings do look really cool though.

208. Also, Juliet really shouldn’t be trying to fight a troll.

209. I mean. None of them should but you know.

210. Mulch eating the Aculos is very in character. I’m glad Artemis’s bedroom is being destroyed. It was terrible.

211. While I don’t care for the way the troll looks (Far too human, not enough claws and venom) the amount of destruction it’s causing is appropriate I feel.

212. I guess that’s how the fight can go.

213. Also, Juliet is so smart and strong yet she can’t pull herself over a ledge? Pathetic.

214. Don’t move butler to a completely different room! He’s got a back injury! You probably just made it worse!

215. Butler isn’t going to die. This is stupid.

216. Trouble doing the lords work.

217. I told you butler would be fine.

218. One of the times Butler would nearly die. If we’re following the books then more should follow.

219. Also what is this room they’re in?

220. Butler would not be ashamed to cry.

221. I’m living for everyone’s reactions to where mulch stored the Aculos.

222. I like the way it looks when they get grabbed by the time stop.

223. She’s gonna save Artemis. Obviously.

224. I like the way it looked when the time stop broke.

225. “Breaking every rule in the book” we haven’t even seen your book! Just his dad’s stupid journal.

226. He and holly should not be friends yet. He kidnapped her!

227. Ooh, forever friends how sweet! Get fucked. Both of you.

228. Now are we in Russia?

229. Opal annoys me so much.

230. So are you trying to tell me that this Aculos is the movie’s version of the book? Holly’s saying that poem.

231. This isn’t how magic is supposed to work.

232. >:(

233. I will admit it looked cool. Begrudgingly.

234. Your dad isn’t dead.

235. He’s in the secret basement that still exists for some reason.

236. Also, I didn’t note this before, but I doubt Arty ever called his dad, dad.

237. Opal is thwarted.

238. Why she so ugly looking? Pretty sure she was supposed to be pretty.

239. This is so stupid.

240. Opals accomplices, you mean those two dunderheads she had helping her?

241. How are there still fifteen minutes of this torture left?!

242. Again. Butler would not be ashamed to cry.

243. Just wait until Artemis gets magic of his own.

244. I’m so tired. It’s 12:14 at night and I just want this torture to end. Please god just let the credits roll already!

245. And now they’re famous. Whoop de do. Just tell us how mulch gets captured and escapes and end the movie. That’s all I ask.

246. You know he hasn’t been referred to as Artemis Fowl the Second throughout this whole disaster. What a slight to him.

247. Ray bans.

248. Oh yeah. Brag to opal. Great idea.

249. Criminal mastermind. Juvenile Genius. Same difference.

250. Why is his tie so skinny?

251. Is he gonna fly the helicopter?! Finally something in character!

252. Now just let mulch escape and finish this godforsaken nightmare!

253. Fowls? Protecting us? Pardon me while I laugh.

254. They do the unhinging of mulch’s jaw nicely.

255. And now they mission impossible him out of there. Perfect.

256. I’m dying. Let it be over. Please.

257. No more!

258. Fly off into the sunset. Of course.

259. Thank god! Credits! I’m free!

260. And another thing! They didn’t have the follow-up scene with Dr. Po! That would’ve been a way better ending! And you can’t just have one scene without the other!

#artemis fowl #artemis fowl movie #artemis fowl the second #artemis fowl the movie #hate

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corvidaedream · 4 years ago

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i cant sleep, i am thinking about lucy again

the further i get into my research the more i come up empty, or with more questions than i started with

obviously ive expanded research to best guesses — what did a lower class woman in general do, how did they generally live, what was cambridge like? — but i keep finding little details about her that i want to know more about

i found a biography of seth’s granddaughter that spends one chapter on her ancestors, where lucy is mentioned exactly twice. what i did get, however, is a new story about seth’s life. in 1770 his father dies and his mother simply leaves her children and stepchildren behind, taking everything of value with her. the youngest child is only a year old, and seth has at least four younger siblings who need to be cared for by “other relatives and guardians”. there is no follow up in the biography on where these children, lucy’s sister- and brothers-in-law go.

essentially penniless, seth leaves cambridge to start a carpentry shop in charlestown that same year. he’s 19. lucy is 18 or 19. In 1774, four years later, theyre married in cambridge.

when does he come back for her? does she see him often despite the distance? do they write? or does he simply vanish for three years and then return out of the blue to court her?

what relatives are these children with? does lucy find herself suddenly the sort of mother to a four year old brother in law? has she helped seth care for them prior to their wedding, looking after them for a few hours at a time? does she love them? if theyre there in charlestown, where do they go?

what is it like to be building a new family in the recently shattered remains of an old one like that?

does she help in the shop? does she visit charlestown? ever? do they live there? or do they live in cambridge the whole time, where seth suddenly pops up again after the battle of bunker hill working for george washington’s troops as a cook?

i cant find her, i just dig and dig and all i ever find is long dark hair to her ankles, continental money in the fireplace, three sons who all die childless at sea, and a daughter, died in infancy. and just these suggestions of stories, like i could connect the dots, create little constellations out of the faint stars i find, but i am afraid of tracing the wrong shape out.

#messages from the ouija board #sadies day job #child death mention //#i guess? not a recent one just a death in 1784

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yourladyem · 4 years ago

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Walt Disney

One lesson you can learn from studying the life of Walt Disney is your actions and your words are what make up your integrity. How you act and what you say can either help or hinder your testimony to others. Walt Disney was a man of integrity and humility. He set up the chairs for his own private screening of Fantasia. He gave money out of his own wallet to any cast member who went the extra mile for a customer. He and Roy would forgo a paycheck at times in order to pay their staff when they were first starting out broke and creating Micky Mouse cartoons. He rode his own Park attractions in full disguise and timed his rides with a stopwatch to see if the employees were cheating his customers out of the full allotted time for each ride. He worked until the early hours of the morning painting the "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" attraction the night before the grand opening of Disneyland.

Walt Disney was also a brilliant man ahead of his time. He sold over 3 million Mickey Mouse watches in 1935 in the middle of the Great Depression thanks to the genius of his marketing team. He invented animatronics and created Stereo sound when he made Fantasia with a multi-track sound system that made the audience feel as if they were at a live concert. It was called Fantasound.

The man who created one of the largest empires in the world, never cared about making money. In Pat Williams’ biography "How to Be Like Walt", Walt himself stated, “I’ve always been bored with the idea of just making money. I’ve wanted to do things, I wanted to build things. Get something going. People look at me in different ways. Some of them say ‘The guy has no regard for money.’ That’s not true. I have had regard for money. But I’m not like some people who worship money as something you’ve got to have piled up somewhere. I’ve only thought of money in one way, and that is to do something with it, you see?”

He disliked dealing with the financial side of the growing empire and left that to his CFO and brother, Roy. Walt hated it so much that after endless failed attempts, Roy finally convinced his younger brother to attend a stockholders meeting.

Two good things came out of that meeting. The first came when Walt saw the stone faces of the businessmen in their perfect expensive suits. He just found his inspiration for the bank bosses for his future film, Mary Poppins.

The second good thing came after he boldly read a simple letter from a man in Florida who owned a couple of shares telling Walt Disney, “I don’t care if I ever get any dividends. You just keep up the good work and keep making good pictures.” After reading the letter, Walt focused his attention back to the room and stated, “I wish this company had more shareholders like that one. He understands what Disney is all about. Now, it’s been very nice to see all of you, but if you don’t mind, I’ve got a studio to run.” and left the room. Roy never asked him to attend another meeting ever again.

Walt struggled to convince Roy to back the idea of Disneyland. Many of the famous classic films we know today including Alice in Wonderland, Fantasia, and Pinocchio bombed at the box office. Constantly in debt after so many failures, no matter how many awards the studio won over the years including setting records for a single nominee. It looked like the dream of Disneyland was going to be delayed even longer.

Instead of reaching out to rich friends in Hollywood or begging the stockholders, the people he turned to for the financial backing for Disneyland were his own employees. They believed in his dreams as much as he did. He wasn’t too confident in asking his own people for money and the first person he asked was the studio’s nurse, Hazel George. She not only donated to the cause but also spearheaded the in-house charity group Disneyland Backers and Boosters.

Another prominent woman at the Disney studios was Harriet Burns, the first female Imagineer who helped design and build the Disneyland attractions. And before she became the future Mrs. Disney, Lillian Bounds, was a young inker and painter at the Disney Brothers Studio (later renamed the Walt Disney Studios) along with her friend Kathleen. Two of Walt’s very first employees at the start up studio were women doing the hard jobs and not just errand girls who simply looked pretty and got coffee for the bosses.

Most of the staff loved Walt. He never discriminated or thought lowly of anyone no matter their race, background, religion, or anything else. Neal Gabler’s biography "Walt Disney: A Triumph of the American Imagination", suggests the slander and lies of him being Anti-Semite most likely came about from Anti-Semite Ben Sharpsteen who worked for the studio and Walt was “guilty by association.”

Pat Williams states, after consulting many Disney scholars, another likely reason for the rumors was because of a smear campaign against Disney during a strike in 1941. Union chief, Herb Sorrell once told Walt “I will smear you and I will make a dust bowl out of your studio.” Sorrell stayed true his word of tarnishing the Disney name. For nearly 80 years those rumors have circulated but nothing to back up those ridiculous claims. Firsthand accounts including other Jewish employees who hated Walt because he didn’t agree with their political stances, never accused Walt of being an Anti-Semite.

Kathleen and Richard Greene also addressed the question of Anti-Semitism in the Disney family in their book, “Inside the Dream: The Personal Story of Walt Disney”. They discussed the relationship a former Jewish neighbor of Roy and Walt’s childhood neighborhood in Kansas named Meyer Menda saying she never experienced any sort of Anti-Semitism from the Disney family. As well as Walt’s daughter Sharon dated a Jewish man at one time with no family objections.

Also, if Walt Disney was an Anti-Semite, he never would have hired the famous Sherman Brothers who wrote the music for "The Jungle Book", "Mary Poppins", "Aristocats", "Bedknobs and Broomsticks", and the song "It’s A Small World" for the attraction. Robert Sherman recalls in "How to Be Like Walt", the time Walt defended the Brothers and fired one of his own lawyers who hated minorities and who called the Sherman Brothers the “Jewish boys.”

In the biography by Pat Williams, "How to Be Like Walt", Joe Grant, a Jewish animator for Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and the only animator to animate both Fantasia films, said, “Some of the most influential people at the studio were Jewish.”

Neal Gabler’s biography, "Walt Disney: The Triumph of The American Imagination", mentions production manager Harry Tytle and Kay Kamen stated the Walt Disney studios had more Jews than the Book of Leviticus. Harry Tytle had changed his last name from Teitelbaum to hide his Jewish background but when he told Walt Disney he was half Jewish, Walt replied if he were all Jewish, he’d be better.

Pat Williams and Neal Gabler also report firsthand testimonies of Walt’s love for the Jewish community. Including, how Walt donated money to Jewish charities and even had a Protestant preacher, a Catholic priest, and a Jewish rabbi at the opening ceremony of Disneyland to bless the event. Pat Williams’ biography also states that in 1955 the B’Nai B’rith chapter of Beverly Hills cited Walt Disney as their man of the year.

Walt was never a racist, sexist, nor hated minorities of any kind. If he did, he never would have hired them for spotlighted high-profile positions and certainly never would have made the “It’s a Small World” attraction that not only celebrates the cultures of the world but also showing the world we aren’t that different from each other outside of customs and languages.

Pat Williams mentions the time Walt told Billy Graham on private tour of the Park “Billy, look around you. Look at all the people, representing all nationalities, all colors, all languages. And they are all smiling, all having fun together. Billy this is the real world. The fantasy is outside.”

One of his story artists was an African American named, Floyd Norman. He also testified saying, “I never felt any prejudice from Walt.” A statement found in Neal Gabler’s book.

Walt Disney loved all people no matter status, age, race, religion, or gender. Everyone was equal in his eyes and deserved the same amount of respect no matter what. He never even allowed his employees to call him Mr. Disney. Everyone was on a first name basis. He believed everyone deserved a fair and equal chance at life and he did his best in words and actions to shows that.

So why have the rumors lasted so long? The slander and lies sadly have continued to spur on because many people choose to simply regurgitate rumors out of laziness instead of researching the information themselves. Hollywood does it, college professors do it, and even biographers. Research information yourselves and never take rumors for fact without backing them up with real facts. Especially firsthand accounts and eyewitnesses. These testimonies were firsthand accounts of people who knew him and worked for him and the real Walt Disney was a kindhearted, loving, brilliant man ahead of his time who loved people, loved by his people, and wanted to create a utopia of his own for everyone to enjoy.

Sources:

How to Be Like Walt by Pat Williams

Walt Disney: The Triumph of The American Imagination by Neal Gabler

Inside the Dream: The Personal Story of Walt Disney by Kathleen and Richard Greene

Highly recommend these biographies! You might want highlighters and pens with you when you read them.

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lotusik · 4 years ago

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How Hecate came to Vancouver Island. (June 7the 2020)

Image from Hecate Park & image of Hecate I made into a postcard.

I’ve grown up here on Vancouver Island. We moved here from Manitoba by the time I was 6 years old. It wasn’t til summer 2013 when I really became aware of the goddess Hecate (a story for another post!) and it was another few years before I clued into the connection between two local places I knew about, Hecate Park and Hecate Strait, with the goddess Hecate. I think the delay was due to the difference in pronunciation, the locales are pronounced Hek-et, and after hearing it my whole life, it just took me some time to connect the dots!

Hecate Island, image by Kira Hoffman

Since that time I have discovered there are 16 locales (as well as a fishing lodge and an inn) named Hecate on Vancouver Island and the surrounding areas! Obviously as a devotee of Hecate, I was thrilled to have this physical connection to a goddess associated with such faraway lands in history, and lands so different than the Pacific Northwest. But as so often happens, the actual story of how these places came to be named Hecate is neither terribly exciting, nor surprising really when the history of this island is looked at.

1903 Nootka House

Kwakwakaʼwakw children in Yuquot (Friendly Cove)

Vancouver Island historically, and presently, is home to the Kwakwakaʼwakw, Nuu-chah-nulth and Coast Salish peoples. In the 1800s the British came and began their colonization of these lands as if they did not already belong to others. While this post isn’t about the atrocities that happened here, I would be remiss not to mention them. The repercussions are still being felt to this day. I recall being really surprised when I learned that a large proportion of Canadians actually knew almost nothing about the attempted genocide. Though it is now finally starting to be talked about in schools, the information being shared is not entirely accurate and still quite problematic according to a young Kwakwakaʼwakw woman I spoke with, whom has recently finished with the school system. I am grateful to my grandparents (an amazing couple whom I have much more to write about in another post) that raised me to be respectful of the land and the original inhabitants, and for always having been aware of what happened in this place. It has led me to feel a strangely conflicted feeling about living here. Feeling both so at home with this island’s spirit, yet always feeling a deep longing for Europe, and being but a guest here. I feel the same conflict about being thrilled to have locations named Hecate here while knowing how those locations came to be named.

HMS Hecate aground in Neah Bay east of Cape Flattery between 15 and 21 August 1861

In 1860 Captain George Henry Richards first came to B.C. to do survey work on the H.M.S Plumper until she was decommissioned, he then continued the work aboard the H.M.S Hecate. And thus we see the origins of all these places being named Hecate. Captain Richards did survey work around Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast for two years. By all accounts he was a kind and fair man. Oftentimes he was called to break up disputes between the Indigenous people and whites, and he would invariably always call out the whites as being in the wrong. There are also stories of him giving treats and gifts to the Indigenous people and being generally very kind. I was personally very glad to read this. He also had some sweet mutton chops.

Captain George Henry Richards, Royal Navy, BC Archives

In naming places around coastal BC, apparently the indigenous names were kept as much as possible, but much that was not named already or if the indigenous name could not be used, then those places would be named. Many of the names given by Capt Richards were for his crew and even a favourite racehorse.

Here is the list I compiled of all the places named Hecate, on and around Vancouver Island, starting from the South and moving upward North Island and over to the Sunshine Coast.

Hecate Passage (E. of Chain Islets, W. of Plumper Passage)

Hecate Park (Cowichan Bay)

Hecate Street (Nanaimo)

Hecate Mountain (NE of junction of Uchucklesit Inlet and Alberni Inlet)

Hecate Bay (NW. of Meares Island, E. of Catface Range)

Hecate (abandoned locality NE side of Nootka Island)

Hecate Lake (N. end of Nootka Island, E. of Saltery Bay)

Hecate Channel (Between Zeballos and Tahsis Inlets)

Hecate 17 (East shore of Zeballos Arm of Esperanza Inlet)

Hecate Cove (N. side of Quatsino Sound, E. of Quatsino) [There is also the Hecate Cove Fishing Lodge]

Hecate Island (Just N of Calvert Island)

Hecate Strait (Between Haida Gwaii & mainland) [On Haida Gwaii there is the Hecate Inn]

Hecate Rock (shoal in Duncan Bay)

Hecate Rock (Goletan Channel, Mount Waddington)

Hecate Reefs (I’m assuming this refers to the reefs in Hecate Strait)

Hecate Place (street in Vancouver)

According to British Columbia Coast Names by John, T. Walbran, Hecate Strait, Bay, Passage, Channel, Cove, Island, Rock (there are two in two different places) and reefs were named directly by Capt Richards between 1861-1862. The other places will likely have been named directly from those named by Richards.

{With libraries & archives being closed due to Covid 19 I wasn't able to access some of the information I'd originally gathered when I started this article several years back. That said, I think it contains most, if not all of the relevant information.}

While I was doing this research I realized there are quite a lot of places all over the world named Hecate, She certainly has made her way around the globe!

And lastly, I recently was also made aware of someone local who at one time had a boat named Hecate (retired), which if I get permission I will share a photo here of the boat herself, or at the very least, the beautiful wood sign with the name that was on the boat. They named the ship actually due to the goddess, the family having had a long time interest in Greek mythology.

Resources and references:

The private journal of Captain G.H. Richards: the Vancouver Island survey (1860-1862) (The first part is here: http://ronsdalepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Private-Journal.pdf ) Ronsdale Press 2012

British Columbia Place Names G. P. V. Akrigg, Helen B. Akrigg, UBC Press 1997

British Columbia Coast Names 1592-1906 by John Walbran, J.J. Douglas Ltd 1977-2003

BC Geographical Names https://apps.gov.bc.ca/pub/bcgnws/

The Coast of British Columbia: Including the Juan de Fuca Strait, Puget Sound, Vancouver and Queen Charlotte Islands, United States. Hydrographic Office, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1891 - British Columbia

Dictionary Of Canadian Biography http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/richards_george_henry_12E.html

Cobble Hill Historical Society https://cobblehillhistory.org/vignettes/item/26-hms-hecate

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/vancouver-island#:~:text=The%20Treaty%20of%20Washington%20(1846,of%20British%20Columbia%20in%201871

Image Citations:

Nootka (Nuu-cha-nulth) House, 1903, Meany, Edmond S. (1862-19350 IN Meany Album v.2, p. 26, Digital Collection: American Indians of the Pacific Northwest Images, Edmond Meany Collection no. 132, Negative Number: NA 1150

Nuu-chah-nulth children at Friendly Cove, 1930s Alamy Stock Photo/Contributor Matteo Omied, Image ID 2BD7Y77

HMS Hecate - Public Domain

Captain George Henry Richards, Royal Navy; HMS Hecate and HMS Plumper, BC Archives, A-02432

#vancouverisland #hecate #hekate #history #colonization #uncededland

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veale2006-blog · 4 years ago

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The Truth Behind St. Valentine’s Day Long but worth the read. February 14, 2021 St. Valentine’s Day is the world’s “holiday of love.” Since the Bible states that God is love (I John 4:8, 16), does He approve of the celebration of this day? Does He want His people—true Christians—partaking of the candy and cards, or any customs associated with this day?

When God says He wants you to live life abundantly (John 10:10), does that include celebrating a festive, seemingly harmless holiday like Valentine’s Day? The God who gives us everything—life, food, drink, the ability to think for ourselves, etc.—surely approves of St. Valentine’s Day, the holiday for lovers to exchange gifts—right?

Do not be so certain. Do not assume anything. Do not even take this article’s word for it. Go to history books and encyclopedias. Go to the Bible. Then you will know the real truth behind St. Valentine’s Day. And you will know what God expects you to do about it!

Valentine’s Past Like Christmas, Easter, Halloween, New Year’s and other holidays of this world, St. Valentine’s Day is another attempt to “whitewash” perverted customs and observances of pagan gods and idols by “Christianizing” them.

As innocent and harmless as St. Valentine’s Day may appear, its traditions and customs originate from two of the most sexually perverted pagan festivals of ancient history: Lupercalia and the feast day of Juno Februata.

Celebrated on February 15, Lupercalia (known as the “festival of sexual license”) was held by the ancient Romans in honor of Lupercus, god of fertility and husbandry, protector of herds and crops, and a mighty hunter—especially of wolves. The Romans believed that Lupercus would protect Rome from roving bands of wolves, which devoured livestock and people.

Assisted by Vestal Virgins, the Luperci (male priests) conducted purification rites by sacrificing goats and a dog in the Lupercal cave on Palatine Hill, where the Romans believed the twins Romulus and Remus had been sheltered and nursed by a she-wolf before they eventually founded Rome. Clothed in loincloths made from sacrificed goats and smeared in their blood, the Luperci would run about Rome, striking women with februa, thongs made from skins of the sacrificed goats. The Luperci believed that the floggings purified women and guaranteed their fertility and ease of childbirth. February derives from februa or “means of purification.”

To the Romans, February was also sacred to Juno Februata, the goddess of febris (“fever”) of love, and of women and marriage. On February 14, billets (small pieces of paper, each of which had the name of a teen-aged girl written on it) were put into a container. Teen-aged boys would then choose one billet at random. The boy and the girl whose name was drawn would become a “couple,” joining in erotic games at feasts and parties celebrated throughout Rome. After the festival, they would remain sexual partners for the rest of the year. This custom was observed in the Roman Empire for centuries.

Whitewashing Perversion In A.D. 494, Pope Gelasius renamed the festival of Juno Februata as the “Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary.” The date of its observance was later changed from February 14 to February 2, then changed back to the 14. It is also known as Candlemas, the Presentation of the Lord, the Purification of the Blessed Virgin and the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.

After Constantine had made the Roman church’s brand of Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire (A.D. 325), church leaders wanted to do away with the pagan festivals of the people. Lupercalia was high on their list. But the Roman citizens thought otherwise.

It was not until A.D. 496 that the church at Rome was able to do anything about Lupercalia. Powerless to get rid of it, Pope Gelasius instead changed it from February 15 to the 14th and called it St. Valentine’s Day. It was named after one of that church’s saints, who, in A.D. 270, was executed by the emperor for his beliefs.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in early martyrologies under the date of 14 February. One is described as a priest at Rome, another as bishop of Interamna (modern Terni), and these two seem both to have suffered in the second half of the third century and to have been buried on the Flaminian Way, but at different distances from the city…Of the third Saint Valentine, who suffered in Africa with a number of companions, nothing is further known.” Several biographies of different men named Valentine were merged into one “official” St. Valentine.

The church whitewashed Lupercalia even further. Instead of putting the names of girls into a box, the names of “saints” were drawn by both boys and girls. It was then each person’s duty to emulate the life of the saint whose name he or she had drawn. This was Rome’s vain attempt to “whitewash” a pagan observance by “Christianizing” it, which God has not given man the power or authority to do. Though the church at Rome had banned the sexual lottery, young men still practiced a much toned-down version, sending women whom they desired handwritten romantic messages containing St. Valentine’s name. Over the centuries, St. Valentine’s Day cards became popular, especially by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These cards were painted with pictures of Cupid and hearts, and meticulously decorated with lace, silk or flowers.

First Man Called Valentine But who was the original Valentine? What does the name Valentine mean? Valentine comes from the Latin Valentinus, which derives from valens—“to be strong, powerful, mighty.”

The Bible describes a man with a similar title: “And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD” (Gen. 10:8-9). He was said to have hunted with bow and arrow.

As mentioned, the Romans celebrated Lupercalia to honor the hunter god Lupercus. To the Greeks, from whom the Romans had copied most of their mythology, Lupercus was known as Pan, the god of light. The Phoenicians worshipped the same deity as Baal, the sun god. Baal was one of many names or titles for Nimrod, a mighty hunter, especially of wolves. He was also the founder and first lord of Babel (Gen. 10:10-12). Defying God, Nimrod was the originator of the Babylonian Mystery Religion, whose mythologies have been copied by the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans and a multitude of other ancient peoples.

Under different names or titles—Pan, Lupercus, Saturn, Osiris—Nimrod is the strong man and hunter-warrior god of the ancients.

But what does the heart symbol have to do with a day honoring Nimrod/Valentine?

The title Baal means “lord” or “master,” and is mentioned throughout the Bible as the god of pagans. God warned His people not to worship or even tolerate the ways of Baal (Nimrod). In ancient Chaldean (the language of the Babylonians), bal, which is similar to Baal, meant, “heart.” This is where the Valentine heart symbol originated.

Now notice the name Cupid. It comes from the Latin verb cupere, meaning “to desire.” Cupid was the son of Venus, Roman goddess of beauty and love. Also known as Eros in ancient Greece, he was the son of Aphrodite. According to myth, he was responsible for impregnating numerous goddesses and mortals. Cupid was a child-like archer (remember, Nimrod was a skilled archer). Mythology describes Cupid as having both a cruel and happy personality. He would use his invisible arrows, tipped with gold, to strike unsuspecting men and women, causing them to fall madly in love. He did not do this for their benefit, but to drive them crazy with intense passion, to make their lives miserable, and to laugh at the results. Many of the gods of the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Assyrians and others were modeled after one man—Nimrod.

But what does this have to do with us today? Why should we be concerned with what happened in the past?

What God Thinks Read what God commands His people concerning pagan customs and traditions: “Learn not the way of the heathen…For the customs of the people are vain” (Jer. 10:2-3). Also notice Christ’s words in Matthew 15:9: “…in vain they do worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”

Throughout the Bible, God describes “heathens” as those who worship things that He had created (animals, the sun, the moon, stars, trees, etc.), or man-made idols, or anything but the one true God. He calls such people and their practices pagan. True Christians understand that God hates any customs, practices and traditions that are rooted in paganism.

But just how serious is God about paganism?

When He rescued the twelve tribes of Israel from brutal slavery and led them out of Egypt, He commanded them, “After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein you dwelt, shall you not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, where I bring you, shall you not do: neither shall you walk in their ordinances” (Lev. 18:3). God demanded the Israelites not to defile themselves with the pagan practices and customs of surrounding nations (vs. 24-29). “Therefore shall you keep Mine ordinance, that you commit not any one of these abominable customs, which were committed before you, and that you defile not yourselves therein: I am the LORD your God” (vs. 30).

God cursed Egypt—a nation of nature-worshiper—with ten plagues and freed Israel from slavery. He rescued Israel from Pharaoh’s army by parting the Red Sea and leading His people to safety. He fed the Israelites manna—special bread made by God—from heaven. He protected them from battle-tested Gentile armies, delivered them into the Promised Land and drove out their enemies.

How did Israel treat God in return? “Our fathers understood not Your wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of Your mercies; but provoked Him at the sea, even at the Red Sea…They soon forgot His works; they waited not for His counsel: But lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert…They made a calf in Horeb, and worshiped the molten image. Thus they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eats grass. They forgot God their Savior, which had done great things in Egypt; wondrous works in the land of Ham, and terrible things by the Red Sea…they despised the pleasant land, they believed not His word: But murmured in their tents, and hearkened not unto the voice of the LORD …They joined themselves also unto Baal-peor, and ate the sacrifices of the dead. Thus they provoked Him to anger with their intentions” (Psa. 106:7, 13-14, 19-22, 24-25, 28-29).

God explicitly commanded Israel to cast out and utterly destroy all nations that occupied the Promised Land (Canaan). Above all, His people were not to make political alliances with them or marry into their families (Deut. 7:1-3, 5, 16). “For they will turn away your sons from following Me, that they may serve other gods” (vs. 4).

But the Israelites thought they knew better than God. They decided to do things their own way. “They did not destroy the nations, concerning whom the LORD commanded them: But were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works. And they served their idols: which were a snare unto them. Yes, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils [demons], and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood. Thus were they defiled with their own works, and went a whoring with their own inventions” (Psa. 106:34-39).

To wake them up and get them back on track as the model nation He had originally intended, God gave Israel over to their enemies. Israel repented and cried out to God. God rescued them. With their bellies full and lives protected, the Israelites went back to pursuing other gods. God punished Israel again. Israel repented and cried out to God.

And so went the deliverance-idolatry-punishment-repentance cycle (vs. 40-46), until finally, God had no other choice but to divorce unfaithful Israel (Jer. 3:6-11).

He used the Assyrians, one of the most brutal warrior nations in history, to invade, conquer, enslave and relocate the entire northern kingdom of Israel (II Kings 17). Having “disappeared” from history, the modern-day descendants of those ten “lost” tribes are unaware of their true identity even to this day.

Later, God sent the southern kingdom of Judah (mainly the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi) into Babylonian exile (II Kings 24 and 25). Because they kept (at least physically) the true Sabbath, which is a special sign that identifies the one true God and His people (Ex. 31:12-18), the Jews were able to retain their true identity.

The Israelites were severely punished because they lusted after pagan customs, rituals, traditions and practices. As you can see, God does not take paganism lightly.

Why Paganism Is Wrong Just why does God hate anything that resembles pagan customs? Is it possible to “whitewash” or “Christianize” pagan practices and make them clean? Is it okay to practice pagan customs as long as you “worship God”?

Notice what God says in Leviticus chapter 18. After rescuing Israel from slavery, God warned them not to practice the customs they had picked up in Egypt, or learn the ways, customs and traditions of the Gentile nations that they would encounter in the Promised Land (vs. 1-3). Instead, God commanded Israel to follow His ways (vs. 4-5).

God then describes the pagan ways of these ungodly nations in great detail. In verses 7-20, He condemns all kinds of heterosexual sex relations that fall outside the holy boundaries of marriage—incest, fornication, adultery, etc. In verses 22-23, God condemns homosexuality and bestiality. Together, these sins break down and destroy the family unit that God had so lovingly created and instituted.

Notice what God links to these perversions: “And you shall not let any of your seed [children] pass through the fire to Molech, neither shall you profane the name of your God: I am the LORD” (vs. 21). God ties in the perverse sexual practices of ungodly, pagan nations with human sacrifices—parents offering the lives of their children to pagan gods!

The Bible shows that Israel not only disobeyed God and wholeheartedly embraced the sexual immorality of the Gentiles, they even went a step further.

“And they have turned unto Me the back, and not the face: though I taught them, rising up early and teaching them, yet they have not hearkened to receive instruction. But they set their abominations in the house [the temple at Jerusalem], which is called by My name, to defile it. And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into My mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin” (Jer. 32:33-35). (To learn more about these child sacrifices to Molech, download from our website our sermon Santa Claus is Molech and our booklets The True Origin of Christmas and The True Origin of Easter.)

Imagine. Israel committed a sin so vile, so disgusting, that it even shocked God! But that was then. What about today? Surely, parents do not sacrifice their children to pagan gods today—or do they?

Do not be so certain. Perhaps their lives are not being sacrificed—but what about their innocence?

Parents today expect their little ones to “fall in love” and have boyfriends and girlfriends. They think it is “cute” when little boys and girls hold hands and act like a couple, sneaking a kiss or two when no one is watching. Some parents get worried when their kids do not show romantic interest in the opposite sex. They constantly ask them, “Do you have a boyfriend yet?” or “Who’s your girlfriend?”

Yet these same parents are surprised when their teen-aged “little girl” gets pregnant. Or catches a sexually transmitted disease. Or gets an abortion behind their back.

St. Valentine’s Day is just one of many tools the “god of this world” (II Cor. 4:4) uses to get parents to sacrifice the innocence of their children.

When little boys and girls draw each other’s names in a lottery and send Valentine cards and gifts to each other, declaring their “love,” they are learning the first stages of intimate relations that the Creator God designed specifically for emotionally mature adults. Instead of embracing the carefree innocence of youth, growing up without the headaches and heartaches of adulthood (finding a job, paying bills, marriage, raising a family, etc.), children today are taught to lust after each other. They are caught up in a daily drama of “If-you-loved-me-you’d-sleep-with-me; I’m-pregnant; It’s-not-mine, she-had-an-abortion.” By the time they reach adulthood, virtually every shred of innocence, sincerity and moral decency has been stripped from them. Emotionally drained, they have world-weary, “been there, done that” attitudes. And their lives are just beginning.

This is why we live in a world where a teen-aged virgin is a rare find. Where what used to be called “shacking up” and “living in sin” is now simply “living together.” Where sex is nothing more than meaningless physical recreation—no emotional attachments, no cares, no concerns. Where people change sex partners as conveniently as they change clothes. Where unmarried twenty- or thirty-something’s have had at least five sexual partners—and that is considered a low number, especially in the United States. Where men are not referred to as “my husband,” or “my fiancé,” but as “my second baby’s father.”

How pathetic!

Satan has deceived the whole world (Rev. 12:9) in multiple ways—especially when it comes to intimate relationships. St. Valentine’s Day is just one of his tools for deception. (To learn more about this great deceiver, read Who Is the Devil?)

“Come Out of Her, My People” Concerning the near future, when man’s Satan-influenced world is about to collapse, God declares, “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils [demons], and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed [increased] rich through the abundance of her delicacies” (Rev. 18:2-3).

Concerning this pagan, satanic system, God commands true Christians,“Come out of her, My people, that you be not partakers of her sins, and that you receive not of her plagues” (vs. 4).

St. Valentine’s Day originates from the ancient paganism of this Satan-influenced world. It is designed to deceive mankind by appealing to fleshly, carnal desires—or, as the Bible calls them, the works of the flesh.

“Now the works of the flesh are manifest [made obvious], which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry…drunkenness, revellings, and such like” (Gal. 5:19-21). Do any of these sound like Lupercalia to you?

Ultimately, “they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” A true Christian is focused on God’s soon-coming kingdom (Matt. 6:33) and the world to come—not on the fleshly cravings of this world. A true Christian must strive to “put off the old man” and actively imitate the perfect, righteous example of Jesus Christ. A Christian knows that he must actively come out of this world, out of its pagan-infested customs, practices and traditions.

Christians do not celebrate St. Valentine’s Day!

Have a blessed day and weekend. May Yeshua the Messiah bless you, Love, Debbie

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