#( biography && odessa. )

[addictivecontradiction]

Shirley, 2020

[lullabiesofwoe]

[ josephine langford, cis woman, she/her. ] ✧･ﾟ is that [ ODESSA WARBURTON ] who just stumbled into town? rumour has it that they’re the [ TWENTY-THREE ] year old child of [ ILEANA AND KARSH ] from [ TWITCHES ]. i’ve also heard that they’re [ KIND-HEARTED ] but [ INSECURE ] and have [ 1 ] sibling. i could almost swear i heard [ ATLAS - SHANNON SAUNDERS ] playing when they appeared.

full name: odessa warburton

nicknames: dessa

age: twenty-three

gender: cis woman

pronouns: she/her

sexuality: bisexual

parents: ileana and karsh

siblings: cyril warburton

LIFE IN COVENTRY was beyond peaceful after everyone assumed that thantos had been defeated. but with a force that was as powerful as the other once was, a dark mark was bound to be left behind. while light and good preside, evil too will always lurk in the corners waiting to snuff out the light. but that wasn’t something odessa truly concerned herself about during her childhood. sure, she knew of what occurred from the bedtime stories that her parents told her. but she naively believed just as anyone else, that things were safer now.

due to this false belief, odessa was able to live out her childhood rather happily. she was extremely close to both of her parents, learning how to hone in and use her birth-given magical abilities. but the person she adored the most in her family was her older brother, cyril. despite their four-year age difference, he never treated her as if she was any lesser than him. it was one of the many reasons she looked up to him and always sought him out whenever she needed someone. but as the years dragged on, she began to notice a shift in her brother’s demeanour. while her parents were quick to write the change off as ‘teen angst’, she had a feeling there was a more sinister root of the changes.

while she couldn’t explain it, there was this feeling that loomed inside of her. something bad was coming. with cyril slowly distancing himself from the entire family, odessa was left on her own. she didn’t have any friends outside of the royal family that her parents served and was far too introverted to even attempt to make any. most of her days from then on were spent reading, crafting, or playing pretend. but just before her brother’s sixteenth birthday, tragedy unfolded. the darkness that she saw festering in her brother seemed to win out and he stole his parents' wedding ring and fled coventry to a new dimension that he would rule over.

despite her parents’ efforts to retrieve their son and break the curse that had been placed upon him, their efforts were fruitless. their family was somewhat torn from that moment on, all three co-existing but never truly as the family that they once were. when odessa was finally old enough to do so and confident enough in her magical abilities, she tried to find her brother but her efforts too proved to be hopeless. she began to resent herself and her abilities, deciding that they were of no use to her if she couldn’t save the one person she loved most in this world. instead of using her powers freely as her parents encouraged, she only used them when needed. all ambitions and dreams were shoved to the side, instead deciding to settle for a path that was carved for her. she remained in coventry where she served as a magical adviser the current royal family: camryn and demitri.

[mioritic]

Yiddish writers, Warsaw, 1922

From left to right, with short biographies:

Esther (Esye) Elkin (?–?) was the wife of Mendl Elkin.

Mendl Elkin (1874–1962) was born to a family of Jewish farmers in Belarus. Though working as a dentist for six years, he was more interested in arts and culture, and would spend his spare time writing for socialist newspapers and acting in an amateur Russian-Yiddish theatre group. He spent the 1910s–1920s between Bobruisk and Siberia before moving to Vilna and founding a theatre group, as well as editing literary journals and writing poetry. He would later move to New York, where he served as Chief Librarian for YIVO.

Peretz Hirschbein (1880–1948) was born near Grodno; his father operated a water mill. He studied at a yeshiva before becoming a Hebrew teacher. In his 20s he began to write poetry and plays in both Hebrew and Yiddish, and would soon move to Odessa to stage his plays. After his theatre troupe disbanded in 1910, he spent the remainder of his life travelling, finally moving with his wife Esther Shumiatcher to Los Angeles.

Uri Zvi Grinberg (1896–1981) was a Yiddish writer before moving into Hebrew. Born into a Hasidic family in what is today Ukraine, he served in the Austro-Hungarian army. Radicalized by the November 1918 pogrom in Lwów, he spent the interwar period between Palestine and Europe. He co-founded the self-proclaimed fascist group Brit HaBirionim and later served as a Member of Knesset for Herut. He was awarded the Bialik Prize three times, as well as the Israel Prize for his contributions to literature.

Khane Kacyzne (?–?) was the wife of Alter Kacyzne. Together they had a daughter, Shulamith, who survived the Holocaust by hiding as a non-Jew. Khane was murdered at Bełżec.

Alter Kacyzne (1885–1941) was a prolific photographer and writer, born to a bricklayer and a seamstress in Vilna. He took up photography early, at age 14, by which point he had also taught himself Hebrew, Polish, German, Russian, and French (alongside his native Yiddish) and had begun to write poetry. Through the interwar period he worked as a photojournalist, travelling extensively, as well as serving as editor for several literary magazines and writing for communist newspapers. He was beaten to death by Ukrainian fascists in 1941, and his wife Khane was murdered at Bełżec extermination camp.

Esther Shumiatcher (1896–1985) was born in Grodno, though her family emigrated to Alberta, Canada in 1911. Interested in poetry and screenwriting, she worked several jobs to make money: as a waitress, in a meat-packing plant, and helping her family run a boarding house out of their home. In the 1920s she went to Warsaw and worked extensively as a poet; her poem "Albatros" gave its name to a modernist Yiddish journal. She was married to Peretz Hirschbein, whom she met while he was taken ill in Calgary and nursed back to health in her family's home. After her husband's death in 1948, she moved to New York.

From the YIVO Archives.

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last week

Hi, this is Erica. Let's start the week with some good news from around the world

📖 A new bill will provide millions of children in CA with free books thanks to Dolly Parton

A new bill signed into law will now provide millions of children in California with free books thanks to Dolly Parton.

The bill, SB 1183, was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom and will provide funding for Parton’s “Imagination Library” program, providing free books to children from birth to 5 years old.

Aiming to encourage preschool children to develop an early love of reading and learning, the bill received bipartisan support in both houses.

🦁 Pride of lions airlifted from Ukraine to Colorado in “biggest-ever warzone rescue of lions”

A pride of lions that were living at the Bio Park Zoo in Odessa, a southern city in Ukraine that has been impacted by the Russian-Ukraine war, has been airlifted to the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Colorado, according to a news release.

“The big cats were urgently relocated when the war first broke by a convoy that journeyed over 600 miles across Ukraine and Moldova, arriving in Targu Mures, Romania, on May 24, 2022. The Targu Mures Zoo provided a temporary home for the animals for several months so that an emergency travel permit could be approved for the eleven lions to board an international rescue flight,” the release said.

🐶 Hundreds of Dogs Saved From Nevada Breeding Farm in Huge Police Operation

Authorities have seized around 300 dogs from a property in Nevada in what officials have described as a “large-scale” animal cruelty situation. Detectives from Nye County Sheriff’s Office (NCSO) obtained a search warrant for a property in Amargosa Valley following an investigation and visited the location on Tuesday.

There, officials arrested a couple — Oskana Higgins and Vasili Platunov — on felony animal abuse and neglect charges, the NCSO said.

✍️ This 33-year-old made more than 1,000 Wikipedia bios for unknown women scientists

Jessica Wade began writing Wikipedia biographies about women and minority scientists who never got their due — from employers, from other scientists, from the public. Wade has written more than 1,600 Wikipedia entries for long-ignored women scientists, and she has firm beliefs on ideas on how to support girls interested in the field.

She won awards and medals and was cited by Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia.

🐦 When you next hear cheerful twittering of birds, you should stop and listen: new study suggests that listening to birdsong reduces anxiety and paranoia

Birdsongs alleviate anxiety and paranoia in healthy participants.

Fun fact: Did you know that they play bird songs at Tokyo subway stations to stop people getting stressed out on their morning commute?

☄️ Nasa’s Dart spacecraft ‘changed path of asteroid’

Scientists have now confirmed the orbit of a 160m-wide (520ft) space rock known as Dimorphos was altered when the Dart probe struck it head on last month. Researchers came to the conclusion after making measurements using a range of space and Earth-based telescopes.

The mission was conceived to test a potential strategy to defend the Earth against threatening objects.

🤖 Tiny Robots Have Successfully Cleared Pneumonia From The Lungs of Mice

Scientists have been able to direct a swarm of microscopic swimming robots to clear out pneumonia microbes in the lungs of mice, raising hopes that a similar treatment could be developed to treat deadly bacterial pneumonia in humans. The technology is still at a proof-of-concept stage, but the early signs are very promising.

“Based on this mouse data, we see that the microrobots could potentially improve antibiotic penetration to kill bacterial pathogens and save more patients’ lives,” says Victor Nizet, a physician and professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego.

That’s it for this week. This newsletter will always be free. If you liked this post you can support me with a small kofi donation:

Buy me a coffee ❤️

Have a great week ahead.

Subscribe to the newsletter

[dear-indies]

Hi friends!

After hearing about Aidan Gallagher being Z*onist, I really need an alternative for him as a faceclaim, do you have any recommendations? Preferably in the same age range, other than that I’m really not picky when it comes to their looks!

Lucas Jade Zumann (2000) Ashkenazi Jewish - had a charity for Palestine in his biography for a while but now I can't see it, don't know if it's a mobile/desktop thing!

and then if you're willing to fuck around with gender:

Chella Man (1998) Hongkonger and Jewish - is deaf, trans genderqueer and pansexual (they/them) - had an acting from in Titans from that age range and has spoken up for Palestine!

Odessa A'zion (2000) Ashkenazi Jewish - has spoken up for Palestine!

I only suggest actors over 21 but these two would work perfectly!

[prussianmemes]

tagged by @oppenheimer-style

Last song I listened to:

let me live out my fantasies of being a depressed seaman in 1946 standing alone on a pier in sevastopol or odessa, staring out into the black sea on a cold winter night, with a full moon and smoking a fag, only my hands and head emerging out of my great full sized wool overcoat, battered by the freezing misty winds...

у чернооООГОО МОРЯЯЯЯЯЯ!!!

у чернооООГОО МОРЯЯЯЯЯЯ!!!

Books l'm currently reading:

I've just been window shopping through journals like Kritika and other Sovietology collections, reading a mish mash of different articles hoping to find something new after finishing Schattenberg's Brezhnev biography (which kicked ASS btw, across the board).

Currently watching:

brainrot of watching more House M.D. to understand properly the in-jokes of my buddies and also because I can't be bothered to slog through more of Fargo.

it's not lupus. it's never lupus. :-(

Movie watch list:

There are so many. You have no earthly idea. But a few:

I'm awful enough with watching shows, let alone managing to watch kino films. So I've been trying to cover what I can.

Not quite sure who to actually tag, as some of these questions were a bit out of my usual activities, but tagging @scrtchptch @strziga @kriegsherrin @towerjunkies @mauswife @henbane-heretic @ladabane and whoever else wants to move to the rhythm with it...!!

[emersonlogan]

                                     ᴇᴍᴇʀsᴏɴ ʟᴇᴇ ʟᴏɢᴀɴ

                  son333333333333333333lol (eighteen 3′s) on aol.

NICKNAMES: Sonny, Captain Logan (self-anointed since kindergarten). BIRTHDAY: ♋︎ July 3rd, 1979. ♋︎ LIVING ARRANGEMENTS: tba! OCCUPATION: Cafe Worker at Blossom Records. EDUCATION: Freshman at CCU, majoring in Maritime Engineering. HOBBIES/HABITS: Skateboarding. Wandering, exploring secluded areas (finding a hidden cove at the farthest end of the beach or a creek in the woods, sneaking into abandoned buildings, getting mugged in a dark alleyway). Doodling dumb little cartoons. Music festivals & raves. Embellishing stories about wild things that happened at the aforementioned music festivals and raves. Superstitious rituals. Camping. Picking an awful lot of fights for a kid who weighs about 150 lbs. LIKES: Tony Hawk. Boats. Post-rock, neo-psychedelic, hardcore, ska punk, and any alternative or experimental rock music of the ’90s. Skateparks. Treating places he certainly should not skate in like skateparks. 25¢ vending machine knick-knacks. Seagulls (feeding, imitating, chasing, having full one-sided conversations with). Mentos-diet coke rockets. Anchovies. Bonfires, s’mores, ghost stories. Newspaper comics. Play Station. Souvenir culture. Making the Teller sisters smile. :) DISLIKES: Shutting the fuck up about San Francisco. Quietly sitting still, not drumming on any surfaces or disruptively shaking his leg. Staring at a screen for longer than thirty minutes. Clothes that fit less than two sizes too large. Cops. Class. Coffee. Dave Matthews Band. That condescending fake laugh Elaine does when she’s making fun of someone. 

                                                SECRET. When Sonny knew he needed cash if he was going to go through with his plan to run away, he stole an envelope of money that the Freese family had spent years saving up to pay for recent renovations to the ice cream shop. He knew he would’ve had a clearer conscience if he tried to steal some funds from richer families like the Archers, and he knew the Freeses would spend years paying it back and recovering from the bad PR around town — and it seems like they’re still trying to bounce back to this day. But, he also knew the softhearted Scott would be the easiest to take advantage of— the most likely man in town to trust his daughter’s friends around his money, not suspect Sonny, not pursue the burglar, and lay down and take it when he lost his money. He stole the cash with enough buffer time for the heat to die down before he finally left Cherry, and gave the bulk of it to Odessa to cover the expenses of moving him into her home.

                                             BIOGRAPHY.

Class clown. Ne’er-do-well. No-good loud-mouthed hyper-active smartass who needs to wear his helmet with that damn skateboard. Sonny was always the court jester of the school. He would thumb his nose at figures of authority — including the more popular and powerful members of his own friend group. Though it was much more playful and harmless in the case of someone like Harvey, he showed a pretty open disdain toward people like Lux or Elaine, for one reason: he mostly liked or disliked people based on how they treated his high-strung and haunted twin sister, Libby Logan.

No one needs to be reminded that things were always tense in the Logan household, but Sonny never made it easier for anyone. He didn’t have the complacency to watch the mistreatment of his sisters. An early childhood friendship with a spitfire like Zahra Jackson inspired him to stand up for himself, and he had a lifelong habit of talking back and keeping Glenda in a wrathful mood. 

His relationship with Sabrina was always volatile, his feelings towards her fluctuating between aggrievement and compassion depending on how cruel or doting Glenda was towards her on that given day, but it was ultimately loving. He would just never be as close to her, or anyone else, as he was with Libby. 

He took his role as the older twin, only brother, and bravest, most wicked-gnarly and badass rebel in the family to play the hero for his sisters, jumping in front of bullets whenever he could, using his own brazenness for good. If Libby got a bad grade on an art project, he would skateboard through the house and break a lava lamp to make sure his mom’s rage was focused on him more than her. He would try to take the fall for Libby setting off the smoke alarm, and reason that he was going to get in trouble for something bad he did that day anyway, so there was no reason for both of them to suffer. 

At school, he embellished stories or outright made some up to make his mother’s treatment of him sound more funny than tragic. Pushing real facts into the absurdity, going from “my mom makes me wear a leash when she brings me to the grocery store??” in 1st grade to “my mom makes me sleep in a doghouse when I’m bad” in 4th grade, to “my mom slipped dog tranquilizers into my oatmeal because I’m too hyperactive” by middle school. It was impossible to tell how much was made up, or if there were any crumbs of truth to his stories, but they seemed too crazy to be real. By all accounts, he seemed to have a good sense of humor about his mom’s strict parenting and convinced himself and almost everyone else (barring Libby, probably) that he wasn’t genuinely hurt by his home life. 

Unexpectedly, the one person who seemed to immediately notice the toxicity of Sonny and Glenda’s relationship was his mysterious estranged Aunt Odessa, who made a rare, standoffish appearance at a family function when he was in 7th grade, and could tell after witnessing a small blow-up in the corner of the room that this kid was NOT going to survive in Glenda’s house with his stubborn, feisty, tactless spirit. Before making her Irish goodbye, she pulled him to the side and gave him her contact information if he ever needed to talk. She never extended the courtesy to Sabrina or Sabrina’s mini-me, Libby, almost as if it was too painful to even look at them.

For the next year, Sonny would make offhanded jokes to his friend group about running away someday (it runs in his family!), but it never seemed like he was seriously working out logistics of an escape route.

Deep down, even he didn’t realize that he was sincerely considering it, but that may have been out of a fear and denial of how conniving some of his plans were to disappear, and a refusal to believe he actually had it in him to do what he had to do to get away with it. 

Sonny knew that it was a stretch for a 14-year-old to expect a modest, aloof woman to spontaneously adopt him and take on all of the expenses that come with making space for a rambunctious teenage boy in her house, and he also knew that he would need some kind of insurance if he was going to survive on the streets for long enough to make his next move if she didn’t let him in. To soften the blow in either outcome, he needed money. And, tragically, he knew where to get it if he wanted to pull his escape plan off without a hitch.

In the Spring before their freshman year of high school, the Freeses had finally saved up the huge funds they needed to get much-needed renovations done on the ice cream shop, and they left an envelop of money behind the counter in the shop overnight to pay the contractors that would be there in the morning - a shop that that infamously had a busted lock they didn’t rush to replace because they had enough trust in their neighbors.

Sonny’s moral compass knew if he was going to do what he was thinking to do, he could’ve taken from the pockets of a richer family, like the Archers or the Hargroves. But the realistic and frantically desperate side of him knew that the Freeses were the least likely to actually track him down and persecute him. The plan felt like an intrusive thought he wanted to swat away, but on an evening that he came home twenty minutes past curfew to find that Glenda had locked the doors and windows for the night, allegedly assuming he was sleeping over a friend’s, he impulsively skated to Frost-ee’s notoriously unreliably-locked doors and swiped the envelop of cold cash, and spent the rest of the restless, paranoid night sleeping over Cristiano’s. 

Over the course of the springtime and into the Summer, he watched as the Freeses not only went into debt with the renovation team, but also had their local reputation damaged in a way that would impact business in the long term, because so many townies would know them as the scumbag scammers who tried to get free service and lied about the money going missing. 

Sonny stayed in town for the rest of the Summer after it happened, waiting for the scandal to die down a bit before he took off, so people wouldn’t immediately realize it was him. 

The longer he stayed, too scared to say anything about what he did out of fear of the consequences, the more he realized he was completely locked into this plan and there was no turning back. His relationship with the gang would be unsalvageable if they ever found out what he did, (to the Freeses, of all families!) and then he would lose the only reason he had to stay in Cherry. If he managed to hide that he did it, he would be too wracked with guilt to act normal. So, as far as he was concerned, one impulsive move messed up everything he had to live for in Cherry, and his only option was starting a new life somewhere else.

The one person he let in on his scheme to run away was Libby, though he never said a word about the envelope. He only pitched it to her because he wanted her to skip town with him, because she was the one person he thought he could never leave behind. 

She didn’t take it well. She said she would hate him forever if he left, and never talk to him again if he really did it. He convinced himself it was typical Libby Lou dramatics and thought that she would eventually follow him once she realized he was serious about leaving. 

On a muggy August night, he made his move. 

He left instructions for Libby on how to find him, and contact information so he could guide her along the way, but it turned out that she was making good on her promise to never speak to him again. The longer he waited for her to call or show up, the more he started to resent her for, in his mind, choosing Glendzilla over her twin brother.

He pushed forward with making a life in San Francisco, and it became a bastion of freedom for him. He had a surprisingly smooth proposition and move-in with Odessa and her longtime partner, Levi. 

Granted, Odessa was distant — more like a wise older roommate than a caretaker. Though she did everything she could to materially help Sonny, and felt like helping him would make up for abandoning Sabrina, she’ll always be haunted by what happened to her in Cherry, and it was hard to let her walls down around someone who had the same big green eyes as her daughter. She was hands-off in parenting him, since he was already clearly a pretty scrappy and independent kid by the time he got to her, and she never really got a chance to mentally prepare for raising a child, much less one who already came with such a strong personality. 

He spent a lot of time at Bay Area punk shows and music festivals, and stayed out late on school nights. Odessa could tell that he reveled in freedom after a childhood under Glenda’s roof, so she didn’t really have the heart to give him a curfew, and would just do her best to advise him on avoiding hangovers, addictions, and STDs. 

He felt happy with his new life in San Fransisco. He miraculously finished high school and got a job he loved working on the local docks. He thought he made peace with never returning to his hometown, until he got a letter in the mail straight from Cherry, California. And it wasn’t Libby finally reaching out to him. It was Lux, dead and more menacing than ever.

(Christ alive this is getting so stupidly long. You get the gist. He’s back in town in the interest of clearing Libby’s name. He knows there’s hard feelings and he feels awkward for the first time in his life. He enrolled in CCU to have an excuse to stay in town long enough to solve the mystery in the event that his old friends and sisters make it clear that he isn’t welcome. He got a job at the Blossom Records cafe to get closer to Mac. I’ll see you all on the dash.)

                                              PERSONALITY.

Before his houdini act, he was known as the loudmouthed comic relief type of kid who, by all accounts, really seemed to have a heart of gold. He was always quick to reach out to people when they were going through something, but not at all in a Francesca Freese way. He wasn’t qualified to give advice or react seriously to people’s problems. His specialty was, fittingly, escapism. He lived in a house where there was no leveling with his parents or fixing any his family’s problems, so the only way to survive them was to just walk away every once in a while and look outside of his house to find some kind of solace in life. He went into other people’s problems with that same strategy.

Growing up by the coast, in a restrictive household, he always romanticized sailors and pirates, and dreamed of being the captain of his own ship, far away from society’s dumb rules and stressors. Everyone knew he was planning to travel the seven seas when he grew up, but nobody guessed that he would make his maiden voyage at the age of 14.

He has a lifelong habit of wandering off without telling anyone, and is a survivor of child leashing, which only ended when Glenda got tired of him trying to escape and opted to let him roam free and simply never tell him she loved him ever again. On more than one occasion, Sonny almost caused traffic pileups from crossing the road without looking both ways as a child. He kept every lifeguard in Cherry in the early ’90s busy. He could not be trusted around a “Keep off the Grass” or “No Trespassing” sign.

Sonny has always loved the idea of exploring, travelling, and going on adventures. He’s a devotee of souvenir culture, even on extremely small scales. If he went to the beach without Cristiano, he would bring back the coolest seashell he found that day. If he went to the grocery store without his sisters, he would stop at the 25¢ vending machines and get a glittery little bouncy ball for Libby and a plastic butterfly ring for Sabrina. (I have a list of worthless little presents he’s given every member of the gang + some lifelong townies that I’ll probably post soon!!)

100% Sonny was the kid who hid these little trinkets in your coat pockets for you to find the next time you wore it, and he would also just mess with stuff in your room, so you would be getting ready for bed the night after he visited and see he positioned your G.I. Joes to be 69ing. He’d leave secret messages in the last few pages of your notebooks that you wouldn’t find until you got to that page in the last month of school. More than one of the gang members absolutely ended their freshman year of high school finding a crude doodle in the back of their math notebook of a duck in a pirate hat smoking a cigarette, with a caption that said ‘CAPTAIN LOGAN WUZ X.’ 

He’s hugely sentimental. Even in his skeleton’s connections, it’s loud and clear that he’s still impacted by the end of his friendships with Zahra and Cristiano. It’s fair to say that he never stopped thinking about the gang while he was in San Francisco. He still seems to remember the tiniest, dumbest details and anecdotes about everyone and can’t help the big bittersweet smile on his face when he’s reminiscing about them. 

He picked up some bohemian lifestyle choices from spending time with hippie layabouts back in San Fransisco. He’s allegedly tried a wide array of psychedelic drugs, reads Adbusters, plays the bongos, likes the idea of liking the Beat poets and Hunter S. Thompson, and suddenly understands Astrid Van Allen’s lectures better than ever after dating an archetypal 90′s Wicca girl in high school. At his core, he’s still an unserious chucklefuck who loves Adam Sandler movies, but he’ll supportively nod along to Casey’s rants about the government and interpretations of Camus.

                                           HEADCANONS.

Did not like Lux Lewis, mostly out of loyalty to Libby. His relationships with the other popular girl side of the group (Alice, Elaine, Kitty, Virginia, Zahra) fluctuated, but I think he really chalked up most of their worst personality traits to Lux rubbing off on them. (Elaine stayed on thin ice at all times though.) He got along best with the group members who were the right mix of weird/offbeat/alternative and outgoing (Cristiano, Casey, Rocky, Frankie). He still tried to dick around with the quieter friends like Noah, Rory, Mac, and Zev, but as much as he admired them, I think his loud personality might have been overwhelming to them and he might have felt like he was pulling teeth trying to drag them out of their shells. (I don’t think Mac fits neatly into the latter group but their connection requires that they weren’t that close in their childhood so I’m lumping him in there.) His relationship with Harvey was it’s own bag of mixed but generally positive feelings; he definitely had more good will toward Harvey than the cheerleaders thanks to his friendship with Libby, but a part of Sonny did resent him, unfairly, solely for the fact that Glenda always tried to morph him into Harvey’s clone.) 

Sonny was the skatepark rapscallion who taught Libby how to shred!!!!! (as mentioned in the Sports section of her bio.) 

He left Cherry before everybody’s shit hit the fan after middle school, so he doesn’t know anything about things like Rocky or Virginia moving to the Southside, or Alice falling from grace.

I’ve fully decided he had a big fat crush on Maddie when he was little. She was an aspirational figure to him, as someone who traveled across the country every year and had this worldly adventurer’s mystique in Sonny’s eyes, but more importantly, she was very nice, and pretty, and matched his goofy energy, and he thought that her being kind of tomboyish made her the coolest girl he’d ever met. I don’t think she had the ability to make him shy, per se, but I’ll bet that any time she said something vaguely approving toward him he got tongue-tied and suddenly couldn’t keep eye contact.

You may have noticed that he’s listed as 21 and Libby is listed as 20 on the skeletons page... 👀 Hmmm............... ...................Anyway.

TW: DIS0RDERED EATING ! He has some hang-ups and weird habits with regards to eating, from a childhood of Glenda denying or tampering with his food for punishments. He used to survive mostly on sealed 7-Eleven snacks, and to this day he still avoids eat homemade meals or restaurant food. You’ll mostly catch him eating tinned sardines, crackers, beans, and bagged spinach. He also has a deeply-ingrained habit of starving himself when he feels really guilty and is compelled to punish himself to ease his conscience. 😔 He doesn’t know how much a victim he is to the Catholic mentality Glenda injected into his brain that Suffering = Virtuous.

UH OH!! I accidentally decided it would be really angsty and fun if he convinced everybody to participate in a time capsule and he invited everyone to bury it in his favorite piece of beach to celebrate their middle school graduation. Perhaps we... could all pitch ideas for what our characters threw in there.   

                           WANTED CONNECTIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!

I want to say that he made sure to have one last one-on-one hangout with every member of the gang in the month before he blew this pop stand. I like the drama of him having one unforgettable day with each of his friends, even though there would be a tension hanging over his head the whole time, because they would think that they were going to continue this great friendship with him in high school, while he knew it was supposed to be the last time he would ever see them. I would love to plot these out with everybody pleeeeease. :) (Don’t actually feel pressured though. I’m gonna say he reached out to make plans with everyone - even Elaine the Pain - but they didn’t have to actually indulge him.)

Roommate(s)?? His living arrangements are up in the air right now!! Not sure if he’d be dorming through loans or if he would want to save as much money as possible by living off-campus. If anyone has a character or family that would’ve posted a tenant wanted listing over the Summer, or needs a dorm-buddy, lmk! <3 He could be on the Southside or Cherry Proper, but it would probably have to be a very humble apartment if he’s in the mainland. 

There are some wanted connections mentioned in the interview section on his app! The friend he had his first drink with, the girl whose hand he held (could be upgrade to a very awkward smooch or honestly might’ve been completely chaste and just him trying to cheer her up when she was sad as opposed to it being a romantic thing if that doesn’t fit!, the older kid who gave Sonny dirty magazines in exchange for letting him into Sabrina’s underwear drawer wait not that one), or any other first-time memories. I had some muses in mind when writing those anecdotes, but I didn’t mention any names because I wanted to leave them open to anyone or make the characters inconsequential NPCs. (EDIT: i just revisited the app and realized I actually cut out all but two of those anecdotes from my original draft because otherwise Sonny would’ve been rambling for like twenty minutes, but the other ideas that involved other muses were: first time someone actually got him to focus and study for a test without any distractions, first time seeing a shooting star while looking at the sky with someone, first time he threw a punch, first time playing spin the bottle or truth or dare, first bicurious confession or homoerotic experience. :0 )

I just want to secure a childhood Play Station buddy. You know Glenda would never let him play Mortal Kombat under her roof but I feel like he needs to have that essential 90s tweenage boy experience. Who did he have Red Bull-fueled all-nighter sleepovers with. Who is he gonna have a Twisted Metal rematch with? Maybe they would listen to CDs with Parental Advisory Stickers on them or would go to the Blockbuster and rent R-rated movies together (even though Sonny can’t make it five minutes into a movie before he starts yapping or gets restless and suggests they take a 3am walk to 7-Eleven to get snacks and draw dicks on stopsigns). 

When I mentioned in the Logan Fam plotting session that, between being the only son in the family, and having an absentee father and a much-too-present mother, Sonny has some hangups on masculinity and didn’t really have a father/older brother figure in his life, I realize that B was probably joking when she said that “any time sonny had some sort of boy problem, sabrina would drag west to him by the ear like “FIX IT!!”” But. T. Hear me out—  

[youritalianbookpal]

Ten Questions Book Review - The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal

What is it? Ceramist inherits family netsuke, and decides to investigate the history of his family (the Ephrussy) throughout two centuries.

Who should read it and why? I think this book is perfect for collectionists, history buffs, and all the people in between.

Which genre(s) is it? Non-fiction, biographical.

What is the setting? The netsukes travel from Japan to Paris to Vienna to Japan again, between the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries.

How are the characters? No characters, but I loved how the people in the story were described. There is a love for knowledge and research behind this book that is enchanting to me. If they feel so real it's because they are and were real, and it's the magic of this book.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the novel? Again, the most prominent strength here is most definitely the depth of the research. We follow Edmund De Waal through the years, we follow his family through the centuries. And the images evoked, knowing that they come from random pieces of paper or family stories... To me it's so beautiful. A weakness, if so I have to define it, is that I would have preferred even more photographs. We hear all this talk about the netsuke and then... We see maybe two? I would have loved to see more, more family members, more letters, more photographs of how the places described look today. Maybe it's my edition, I don't know, I just felt like I needed something more.

Did I cry and/or laugh? I have cried, I'm not going to lie. Especially for the depictions of anti-Semitism, both in France and during the Second World War in Vienna. I don't think I laughed.

Who shouldn’t read the book? If anti-Semitism and narrations of the Holocaust trigger you, I would not suggest reading the biography of a Jewish family in general.

Any random comment? I would just LOVE to see the netsuke in person.

Which quote stuck with me?

All these cousins can start a sentence in one language and finish it in another. They need these languages as the family travels to Odessa, to St. Petersburg, to Berlin and Frankfort and Paris. They also need these languages as they are denominators of class. With languages, you can move from one social situation to another. With languages, you are at home everywhere.

[conandaily2022]

Ryan Keith Yates biography: 10 things about US Capitol riot suspect from Holiday, Florida

Ryan Keith Yates is an American man from Florida, United States. Here are 10 more things about him: He hails from Holiday, Florida. Aside from Holiday, he has lived in other parts of Florida including Clearwater, Odessa, New Port Richey, Palm Harbor, Oldsmar, Leesburg and Ocklawaha. He has lived in different parts of Idaho, USA including Boise and Moscow. On July 19, 2011, he was arrested in…

[xtruss]

Certified as an aviator only two decades after the Wright brothers' first flight, Earhart used her fame to promote air travel and equal opportunities for women. Photograph By Sarah Leen, National Geographic Image Collection

Why Does Amelia Earhart Still Fascinate Us? The Missing Aviator Embraced The Modern World—In Technology, Women's Rights, and Celebrity Culture.

— By Rachel Hartigan | October 17, 2019

Alex Mandel first encountered Amelia Earhart on a summer afternoon while reading his father’s old magazines in the backyard of his childhood home in Odessa, Ukraine. “It was just a brief biography of her and a story of how she disappeared,” he said. That was enough.

For more than 30 years, Mandel has described himself as “an admirer of Amelia Earhart.” He met a fellow admirer and soulmate through what he calls the “Amelia community.” With her, he made a pilgrimage to all the important sites in Earhart’s life. These days he plans vacations around the Amelia Earhart Festival in Atchison, Kansas—where aficionados gather to savor all things Earhart in the town where she was born and locals come to enjoy the airshow and fireworks.

During the event last July, the mustached Ukrainian in suspenders could be found sharing his considerable knowledge with visitors to Earhart’s birthplace museum. When asked why the aviator has held his attention for so long, his answer is simple: “She was an inspiration.”

Fireworks explode during the Amelia Earhart Festival in Atchison, Kansas, while spectators watch from the lawn in front of Earhart's childhood home. Photograph By Gabriel Scarlett’s, National Geographic

Although the distance that Mandel has traveled to feed his fandom is unusual, his fascination with Earhart is not. The aviator has managed to hold our collective attention for nearly a century—from 1928 when she was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger (a death-defying feat at the time) through last August when Robert Ballard led a high-tech search for her lost plane.

Yet Earhart wasn’t the only daredevil female pilot breaking records during the early days of aviation. Ruth Nichols flew faster. Louise Thaden flew higher. Why is Earhart the one who still captures our imagination?

In some ways, she was groomed for it. That first flight across the Atlantic—on a plane dubbed the Friendship—was funded by Amy Phipps Guest, a wealthy woman whose family begged her not to make the flight herself. Instead, Guest hired publisher George Putnam to find a suitable female passenger. “There were other female pilots at the time, probably some that were better pilots than Amelia,” says Cynthia Putnam, George’s granddaughter. “But she fit the bill. She looked the part.” (George Putnam and Amelia Earhart married in 1931.)

Tall, lanky, and Midwestern, Earhart resembled Charles Lindbergh, the first aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic. “She is photographed before that first flight with lighting and from an angle that was very self-consciously stylized to resemble the way Charles Lindbergh had been photographed,” says Tracey Jean Boisseau, a historian at Purdue University. “They developed the name Lady Lindy, which she did not appreciate.”

When the Friendship landed in the United Kingdom in 1928, Amelia Earhart (center) captured the public's attention, although she'd only been a passenger on the trans-Atlantic flight. From left to right: Amy Guest sponsored the journey, Lou Gordon was the plane's mechanic, Wilmer Stultz piloted the plane, and Mrs. Foster Welch was the mayor of Southampton. Photograph By Bettmann, Getty Imagines

When the Friendship landed in London, the plane’s pilot and navigator were ignored by the crowds. Although Earhart had been merely a passenger or, as she put it, “a sack of potatoes,” she received all the accolades. She capitalized on the experience by writing a book and going on to become a public face for the new field of aviation.

But Earhart was determined to earn her adulation and prove—to men and women—that women could accomplish what men could. The more aviation feats performed by women, she wrote, “the more forcefully it is demonstrated that they can and do fly.” Four years after the flight of the Friendship, she flew solo across the Atlantic, becoming only the second person to do so.

Earhart landed near Derry, Northern Ireland, where her arrival left a mark that was felt beyond aviation, according to the city’s Amelia Earhart Legacy Association. “Women didn’t drive then, but Amelia arrived in a plane,” explained Nicole McElhinney, a group member who spoke at last summer’s Amelia Earhart Festival. “Women didn’t wear trousers, yet she was wearing a flying suit.” (Indeed, the farmers who first encountered her thought she was a boy.) Instead, at a time when women’s suffrage was still new, she demonstrated what women could do.

In 1932, Amelia Earhart made a solo flight across the Atlantic, becoming only the second person to do so after Charles Lindbergh. She landed in a field near the city of Derry in Northern Ireland. Photograph By Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo, Alamy

“She wanted equal marriages and she wanted equal opportunity in all occupations and she wanted equal pay for equal work,” says Amy Kleppner, who accepted an award at the festival on behalf of her mother Muriel, Earhart’s younger sister.

That may be why she seems so modern. She was a pioneer—in the fight for women’s equality, in the world-changing development of aviation, and in crafting a public image during a new era of celebrity culture. And she did it all with an aw-shucks modesty that suggested that anyone could accomplish what she did, as long as they were doing it for “the fun of it.”

“She embodied many good values for people in general and Americans in particular,” says Mandel.

But perhaps the reason Amelia Earhart is still with us as an icon is that she vanished without a trace just short of a historic achievement. “She doesn’t die of old age, she doesn’t die of disease, she doesn’t die in front of our eyes even in an explosion,” says Boisseau. “She dies in the way most conducive to legend building—out of sight and somewhat mysteriously.”

On July 2, 1937, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared while attempting to become the first aviators to circumnavigate the globe at the equator. They were aiming for Howland Island, a speck in the Pacific, and couldn’t find it. They only had two more legs of their record-breaking journey to go.

A painting of the plane that Amelia Earhart called the "little red bus"—the Lockheed Vega 5B that carried her across the Atlantic—is displayed at the aviator's birthplace museum in Atchison, Kansas. Photograph By Gabriel Scarlett, National Geographic

Generations have puzzled over what really happened to her. Did she crash the plane and sink to the bottom of the ocean? Did she land on a deserted island and die a castaway? Was she captured by the Japanese? They’ve searched underwater and on deserted islands, in colonial archives and the New Jersey suburbs, and even in the basement of her childhood home for clues to the fate of the missing aviator—so far without any definitive answers.

“The mystery is part of why, anytime you talk about important women, she’s always in the conversation,” says Jacque Pregont, who coordinates the festival in Atchison. “I hope they never find her.”

[liz-entertainment-television]

Shirley (2020) dir. Josephine Decker

[thelovewittch]

SHIRLEY (2020) dir. Josephine Decker.

[addictivecontradiction]

Shirley, 2020

[dear-indies]

Hi Cat I hope you're having a good day! I'm looking for a Jewish male fc who is between 20-35 who has spoken up for Palestine who can play a superhero thanks so much for your time <3

Karim Kassem (1986) Egyptian / Egyptian Jewish - posted on his stories several times for Palestine!

Lukas Arnold (1995) Sudanese / Jewish - has spoken up for Palestine, made a great video called "I'm Pro-Palestinian because I'm Jewish (Here's why)" which everybody needs to watch!

Lucas Jade Zumann (2000) Ashkenazi Jewish / possibly German - did have a link for a Palestinian charity in his Instagram biography, not sure if he's removed it or I can no longer see it on desktop!

and then if the character doesn't have to be a man, all the following have spoken up for Palestine too!

Asia Kate Dillon (1984) Ashkenazi Jewish / Unspecified - non-binary and pansexual (they/them).

Sim Kern (1986) Jewish - is non-binary (they/them).

Pauline Chalamet (1992) Ashkenazi Jewish / English, Scottish, Irish, French.

Hari Nef (1992) Ashkenazi Jewish - is a trans woman.

Chella Man (1998) Hongkonger and Jewish - is deaf, trans genderqueer and pansexual (they/them).

Rivkah Reyes (1992) Filipinx-Jewish (uses they/she but mostly they).

Medalion Rahimi (1992) Iranian, Iranian Jewish - uses she/they.

Tommy Dorfman (1992) Jewish - is a trans woman and a lesbian.

Anna Shaffer (1992) Black and White / Jewish.

Isabella Roland (1994) Jewish.

Josette Maskin / MUNA (1994) Jewish - is queer and nonbinary (she/they).

Tavi Gevinson (1996) Ashkenazi Jewish / Norwegian [converted to Judaism].

Ariela Barer (1998) Mexican and Ashkenazi Jewish - has deleted the post saying she's non-binary so I'm unsure if they still identify as such, uses she/they.

Minami Gessel (1999) Japanese / Ashkenazi Jewish.

Odessa A'zion (2000) Ashkenazi Jewish, English, some Irish, Northern Irish, Welsh, German.

Iris Apatow / Iris Scot (2002) Ashkenazi Jewish / Irish, Scottish, Finnish, German.

I hope this helps and as always, please let me know if anybody else has spoken up for Palestine that are not listed on THIS masterlist!

[in-pretension]

Shirley (2020) / Josephine Decker

[lisentrailer]

Shirley Official Trailer#2 (2020) Biography Series