#But the fact that the movie is about life within Judaism...

[matan4il]

a cultural question for you because I’m curious: here in the US, people dress up for funerals, usually in formal black for mourning. of course a lot of that is a holdover thing shared with England, and most Americans’ concept of a funeral would be people in somber, modest but nice attire in pews in a church. it’s true at Jewish funerals too, though. I noticed the funerals in Israel are much more informal, is there a reason for that? or is is just the norm? asking this totally respectfully, there’s nothing wrong with it at all!, but it interested me.

I’m sorry it’s a question brought up because of such unbearable heartbreak.

Hi Nonnie!

You know, I never realized this, but then I've only seen American funerals in movies and TV shows, so I couldn't know how much it reflects reality, or the fact that American characters even wake up in the morning, after a night of casual sex, with perfect hair and make up...

I would think the tendency to wear informal clothes comes from certain Jewish traditions, like how our dead must be buried as quickly as possible, so see sometimes get the news about a funeral being held on the day it's about to take place, which means not a lot of time for dressing up. Another thing is that our funerals are not held in our houses of worship. The living must be separated from the dead in Judaism, so our cemeteries are usually outside our cities and towns, while our synagogues are built within them. Another thing is that a rabbi doesn't have to be there for a funeral. A representative of chevra kadisha is enough. That means that while a funeral is important, it is not exactly a sacred thing. Judaism sanctifies life, not death, so even though death is treated with respect, it's not treated as holy, if that makes sense? It's a very fine difference, but it's there. Also, our shiva is different from a wake, in the sense that people come to comfort the grieving family all week long, so dressing up for it when you come by after work is not required. On American shows and movies, wakes are presented as an event, it's hosted, and the host must provide food to the guests and the right kind of space to gather in, while a shiva is a part of the Jewish muorning customs, where we grieve together, but it's the community that supports the grieving family, bringing them food, checking in on them if they need anything else, and the location is the home of the deceased, so there's something a lot more casual about it. All these things should affect Jewish funerals in the US as well. If it didn't, that might be an influence of non-Jewish customs, I'm not sure. I never attended a Jewish American funeral either.

Then again, the answer might also be way simpler than all of this: Isreal is a very hot country, and funerals are held in cemeteries, not in air conditioned houses of worship. It's hot, which makes formal dress a nightmare, especially for a funeral held in the noon and afternoon hours, as many Jewish funerals are. It's just practical to not come in formal clothes.

As you can see, these are my educated guesses based on what I'm familiar with. Thank you for giving me a moment to reflect on this, it was interesting to consider... I hope my answer sort of helps. If anyone feels like they can shed more light on this, please do! Have a good day. xoxox

[iammissingautumn]

(@seregashockingly I’m gonna drop my general Style stuff relating to ur ask and reply to my post here since i wanna explain more Kyle Feelings moments)

Okay so the thing is, Stan encourages this codependent ideas in their relationships. From early one when he says Kyle can’t die without him we see that he has this insane view of their relationship. They both kinda do. The thing is, as all things go Stan is the more emotional of the two. Meanwhile Kyle had to figure out how he’s felt about most things pretty young, and with a lot of simplicity. That’s what allows him to be so okay with defending those who need it, he has strong morals that he trusts.

The thing about Stan encouraging codependent ideas towards them is that he’s also the one who has a girlfriend. And Stan is so bad at processing emotions that he throws up every time he’s faced with these feelings. Stan also has outside pressures like that of his father’s to conform (mostly specifically to the idea of being a man and what that “means”). Which Randy does in a lot of diffferent ways, I.E. Stanley’s Cup.

Though one of the main things about Stan is that the adults are being insane wackos and he thinks they’re being stupid. And he’s right but we see these kind of things leaving an imprint on him. His superhero persona is someone who works with tools, more “traditional” ideas of manhood relate to being able to upkeep the house car etc. He has rip sleeves and tries to seem tough but it’s very hard when his dad is keying their own car. On top of this, his SOT character is a knight meant to protect the king. Knights often have to be sworn in, seen to be risking their life in the name of being a protector. Which, including how he presents, the idea of a protector is also a very “masculine” “tradition”.

Yet, we don’t see this come in through other ways. He’s not toxic masculinity-ing his life. He doesn’t dedicate his days to playing every sport ever, physically fighting, or trying to prove his strength. He doesn’t have that insecurity that is more apparent in someone like Cartman. But there’s tinges of small things, and I do think most of his compensation and possible shame or complexes comes back to his sexuality.

Meanwhile, Kyle is confident in his religion, his self expression, and his personality. Sometimes we see this swayed (I.e. Passion of the Jew and South Park is Gay!), but I think his relationship to Judaism really helped him be able to have the confidence to be okay with other parts of himself. Especially since he has the support of his mother being such a big force in his life to encourage him to be himself. And though Shelia has her own problems she definitely shows Kyle she loves him for himself and wants him to be that person. (The crux of both of them is that they don’t want to veer into being “bad” and need to stay good. In the movie we see her thinking foul mouth tv shows are the “bad” thing. She’s always been particularly accepting despite the sometimes black and white thinking.)

So from this I picture the standard Style idea is that, in some sort of way Stan is repressing his queerness. This probably doesn’t help with the fact he has had depression and has an addictive personality. He can bury his queerness under all of this. But we see within him there’s this want or maybe a need to go towards those who don’t conform. As we see when he adopts the Raven personality for the point in time where he’s goth.

But there’s this level where Stan’s been how he’s always been. Loving his best friend, and them not shying from it. He thinks this is how you should see your best friend, both him and Kyle think this. The thing is at some point Kyle figures out This Isn’t Everyone’s Relationship To Their Best Friend. Which is probably a middle or high school realization that turns into a very changing thing. And I think whether Kyle assumes that Stan doesn’t like him because of something like his reputation with relationships in the past Nichole, Heidi, Rebecca, or The List situation which is just. hurtful even after the truth comes out.

Insert Stan doing something dumb, a drunk confession, a kiss, he throws up, some sort of blatant obvious “Stan’s In Love” marker that changes Kyle’s mind. Stan’s in denial about it (perhaps leads Kyle on 👀) and it causes some pains that they later have to unpack. And maybe that means they kiss or smth none of my business. Maybe this involves Kyle helping Stan sober up, maybe it involves Stan cleaning up and calling Kyle trying to reconnect, maybe this involves Stan realizing he’s so fucking stupid and in love with his best friend and he should have realized sooner because now they’re separating because they’re graduating or something. Or maybe they’re in middle school and Kyle tells Stan to stop talking to him because he’s being mean about his feelings. Or maybe Kyle just silently isolates himself from Stan. There’s a lot of loose spots so the story can change depending on the point in their lives or the story being wished to be told. But that’s the general classic idea for me.

[trash-gobby]

✨🦇 Trash Gobby Intro 2.0 🦇✨

AO3: severenvansickle

Ways of Supporting me

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Hello! I am trash_gobby, also known as trash. I kinda disappeared for a really long time from this tumblr account, only really showing up in small spurts to post or reblog stuff.

I've been dealing with a LOT of personal stuff that has made it really hard for me to keep up with this blog in general. Not for lack of desire. What's been going on in my personal life isn't really something I want to share here or anywhere regardless of my anonymity. Needless to say it's been rough and now things have really started to improve for me. I've even gotten published in an indie published anthology which was a real special thing for me.

Now I've been focusing a lot on my original works of fiction and improving things personally. I still want to post here. However, I won't be taking requests anymore and will be reformatting my content around posting only fanfics or headcanons which I will come up with. There are some stuff which people have requested in the past which I may consider working on if the mood strikes me.

A lot has changed for me in the past two years so I want to focus more on content which personally interests me right now.

There will most likely be a follow up post which goes into more detail about formatting and how things are gonna be organized once I've actually found time to devise a proper system for my old works. It might take a while though, considering I'm working full time now, and also doing a lot of important life stuff outside this blog.

Rules

1. I will DON’T encourage anyone who interacts with NSFW content who is underage.

2. Be respectful!!! No hate speech allowed (this includes anything transphobic, homophobic, transphobic, racist, fatphobic, antisemitic, ableist, Islamophobic etc.)

3. Constructive criticism is ALWAYS WELCOME!! This is a place where I want people to feel welcome to give respectful critiques of my work as I’m always trying to improve.

4. I won't be writing things from specific fandoms I've grown a certain sourness towards (usually because of the person who is in charge and not the fandom itself). I.e. Harry Potter is a bit of a sore spot for me and I have no interest in writing for it (I don't have an issue with others doing so since it's not up to me what others write and I think everyone is entitled to their own opinion and feelings about a fandom or work).

5. Relating to rule 2. - please don't bring any anti-palestinian sentiments to this space (this is not an invitation for others to be anti-Semitic so don't get things twisted. I support Judaism and the right for Jewish people to exist in peace and security within ALL countries and to be able to self determine. I think the same rights should also be extended to the Palestinian people who have been ignored by many and have had their rights and humanity stripped from them). This is not the blog of a Zionist and I would encourage others to follow or unfollow accordingly. Free Palestine 🇵🇸

✨ What I Write!!: Fluff, Headcanons, platonic/friendships, NSFW, Dating/SFW, LGBTQ+, tragedy/angst, crossover, reader x insert, character x character, mini-fics, character preferences

✨ What I WON’T write: p*dophelia, r*pe/non-con, tortue p*rn, BDSM that’s to outside of my comfort zone, b*astiality, incest, raceplay

Fun Facts About Me

1. I crochet lots of things for fun

2. I am a gender gremlin

3. My favourite all time characters are Severen (Near Dark 1987), Bishop (Aliens 1986), David (TLB 1987)

4. I am a huge A24 movie studio fan, because I am a pretentious film school graduate (I'm not a fan of Christopher Nolan or Quentin Tarantino though. Which I guess means I'm not as pretentious as I thought?? 🤔)

5. I have an AO3 account which has more stuff on it then this blog.

6. I am an aspiring author with a short story already published in a small indie press anthology (won't name here because my irl name is in the anthology). Little Ghost Books is the publisher though, and I would encourage y'all to check them out if you like 2SLGBTQIA+ horror often published indie and major horror titles. They are very worth it 💖

Masterlist for works

[denimbex1986]

'Let's be fair, right off the bat: Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer," based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "American Prometheus" by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, is a remarkably accurate look into the life of American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy). It explores both his experiences working as the director of the Manhattan Project, fighting to build an atomic weapon before the Germans could manufacture their own, as well as the character assassination he endured at the hands of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) as a result of the left-wing ties he cultivated in his youth. Christopher Nolan brings his reliably detail-oriented vision to the project, endeavoring to get as close to the real version of history as possible.

But even with a three-hour runtime, it's inevitable that some historical facts are left by the wayside, whether timelines are consolidated to account for narrative flow, the roles of certain characters are shifted slightly, or elements of the overarching story are neglected. We expect this from most biopics because, at the end of the day, a movie is its own take on the story. But today, we're putting on our pedantic hats and taking a look at the spots where "Oppenheimer" and history diverge.

1. The J in J. Robert Oppenheimer

Early in the film, one of Oppenheimer's colleagues makes a comment about how the "J" in "J. Robert Oppenheimer" doesn't stand for anything. (This would not be particularly unusual for the time — famously, the "S" in "Harry S. Truman" doesn't stand for anything either.) But according to "American Prometheus," Oppenheimer's birth certificate confirms that the J stands for Julius, which was the name of his German Jewish immigrant father. It is perhaps likely that he never went by Julius or any derivative of that name because it's an uncommon practice in most Jewish communities to name babies after living relatives, at least in the Ashkenazi tradition, as it's considered to be bad luck.

That Oppenheimer's family didn't follow this particular superstition demonstrates their somewhat fractured relationship with Judaism. Raised by parents of a generation and class in which the primary goal was to assimilate to American culture, Robert Oppenheimer was Jewish by birth, but observed few religious practices. He was in fact educated primarily within the Ethical Cultural Society, a non-religious group founded by Jewish-born Felix Adler, who wanted to incorporate the elements of humanitarianism he considered cornerstones to Jewish culture without necessarily embracing Judaic faith.

2. The infamous apple incident

It's no secret to anyone familiar with Robert Oppenheimer's life that he had a hard time when he first left home for Cambridge to study physics in the prestigious Cavendish lab. He was considered by many contemporaries to be a little emotionally stunted and not quite mature enough for life on his own. Adding to these difficulties were the fact that he was training in a lab that focused on experimentation rather than theory, an environment in which the notoriously clumsy Oppenheimer did not thrive. Struggling to cope with stress and mental health issues, Oppenheimer impulsively poisoned an apple on the desk of his supervisor, Patrick Blackett. 

In the film, he manages to discard the apple and it appears that no one is any the wiser, but in real life (although no one was actually hurt by his stunt) the school found out about what could be interpreted as attempted murder, and it was only with the swift intervention of Oppenheimer's parents that he avoided being expelled or even arrested. He was allowed to stay at Cambridge only under the condition that he met with a London psychiatrist on a regular basis.

3. The ranch in New Mexico

Ever since his teen years, Oppenheimer had a special affinity for New Mexico, a place where he felt more at home than anywhere else in the world. In the film, he mentions to his European colleagues that he misses New Mexico, and that he and his brother have a ranch there. But actually, although Oppenheimer had visited New Mexico several times before attending university in Germany, he and his brother did not own property there until much later. 

Robert and Frank — with the financial support of their father — began leasing a ranch there in 1928, the year after Robert returned to the United States upon receiving his PhD, and Robert didn't actually purchase their small western estate, affectionately referred to as "Perro Caliente," until 1947. Still, the Oppenheimer brothers spent many happy months there, and it was Robert's knowledge of New Mexico that led him to suggest Los Alamos as the eventual site of the Manhattan Project.

4. Oppenheimer's teaching skills

Oppenheimer was by all accounts a unique personality in that social skills did not necessarily come easily to him, but like everything else in his life, he was a quick learner. After receiving his PhD and several offers to teach at various universities, he landed at Berkeley as an extremely green professor with little experience in teaching. "Oppenheimer" shows him connecting with students pretty much immediately, standing at the center of an engaged group of young physicists hanging on his every word. But that wasn't quite the experience that his very first advisees remember. 

In "American Prometheus," Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin describe his teaching style as "largely incomprehensible to most students" and "more like a liturgy than a physics lecture." Even Oppenheimer admitted how much he had yet to learn about the art of lecturing. After describing some kindly advice given to him from a fellow professor at the time, he wryly said, "So you can see how bad it must have been." 

Nevertheless, Oppenheimer eventually developed an ability to support and educate his students, which made the members of his physics department incredibly loyal to him, a skill that naturally complemented his role as director of the Manhattan Project. It was the strong relationships that he had cultivated as a faculty advisor that helped him recruit so many promising scientists to Los Alamos.

5. Running Los Alamos

Similarly, although Oppenheimer was a good choice to lead Los Alamos as a scientist — he intuitively understood how to assess problems in research and help his colleagues find new paths forward — he had little experience as an administrator. When Colonel Groves (Matt Damon) discusses the potential role with Oppenheimer, they mention the fact that none of his former associates considered him adept at the kind of logistical support such a massive project would require. (According to The Harvard Gazette, one commented that "he couldn't run a hamburger stand."). Still, in the movie Oppenheimer seems to have an innate grasp of how to compartmentalize the research in a way that would expedite the process and keep them ahead of the Germans, who had already embarked upon a similar project. 

In reality, Oppenheimer had no clue how to run Los Alamos. John Manley, who worked under Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project, remembered that he "bugged Oppie for I don't know how many months about an organization chart — who was going to be responsible for this and who was going to be responsible for that," a request that was dodged seemingly until Oppenheimer could avoid it no longer (via Science Madness). But again, the physicist proved to be endlessly adaptable, acquiring the skills and temperament required to head one of the most ambitious scientific endeavors in American history.

6. Opinions on Kitty Oppenheimer

Robert Oppenheimer's wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) is represented as a complicated woman in "Oppenheimer." She drinks too much, has trouble connecting with her children, and has a turbulent yet committed relationship with her husband (no small wonder, considering his affairs). But the film doesn't really address how Kitty was viewed within the Oppenheimer circle, which is that ... well, she wasn't very well-liked.

Their romance came about suddenly, when most of Oppenheimer's friends were still quite attached to Jean Tatlock, with whom he had been in a long-term on-again, off-again relationship. Upon learning that Oppenheimer was engaged to be married, his long-time friend and colleague Bob Serber reportedly wasn't sure if he had proposed to Kitty, or to Jean.

Robert's sister-in-law Jackie did not mince words about her feelings towards his new wife. She allegedly called her "one of the few really evil people I've ever known in my life" (per The Decadent Review). While most of his other friends and family members likely wouldn't have gone that far, many in their circle found her difficult, and were open with their opinion that Robert likely wouldn't have married her if she hadn't become pregnant with their son, Peter.

7. Do you want to adopt him?

In "Oppenheimer," Kitty makes a joke to their family friends, asking if they want to adopt Peter to take him off her hands. (This is after already relying upon the Chevaliers to watch him for a month or two when he was just a toddler.) Kitty's lack of attachment to her two children was well-documented, and the throwaway quip depicted in this scene actually had a much more serious grounding in reality. The only difference is that it wasn't Peter who the Oppenheimers offered up to another family, but his younger sister Toni.

Toni was born in the midst of Robert's work on the Manhattan Project, when he barely had time to sleep, let alone be a father. When Kitty suffered from what was likely postpartum depression and left Los Alamos to spend some time away to recuperate, she had one of her friends, Pat Sherr, take care of her infant daughter. "American Prometheus" recounts a moment when, upon visiting Toni at the Sherrs' home, Robert was struck by the feeling that he could not provide the same amount of love and attention as they could, and Sherr remembers him asking, "Would you like to adopt her?" Although the Oppenheimers maintained custody of both of their children, their home was not particularly emotionally warm, although friends and acquaintances spoke of memories in which both Kitty and Robert expressed great affection for Peter and Toni.

8. Einstein and Oppenheimer's relationship

Although Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer were two of the most important scientific minds of the early 20th century, they weren't necessarily the best of friends. Oppenheimer considered Einstein's contributions, though valuable, entirely of the past by the time he was making his name in physics, and Einstein went on the record as being extremely skeptical about the entire field of quantum physics. Despite this, when they worked together at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, they developed a cordial rapport that was based largely on mutual admiration for each other as men and not as physicists.

The scenes in the film that depict Einstein and Oppenheimer conversing at the Institute largely reflect what their actual relationship probably looked like. However, there's little evidence to suggest that Oppenheimer would have approached Einstein during his work on the Manhattan Project to double-check his math on the probability of the atomic bomb accidentally exploding the world. This is partially because they hadn't gotten a chance to get to know each other as individuals at this point — still several years away from working together at the Institute — and also because they were fairly open with the fact that they considered themselves on very different pages when it came to physics.

9. Wire-tapping Oppenheimer A significant portion of "Oppenheimer" takes place during the closed-door hearing in which Robert Oppenheimer appeals the denial of his top-secret security clearance that would allow him to continue working as a government advisor. During this time, we learn that despite efforts to maintain high levels of security at Los Alamos, there was a German-born scientist employed on the Manhattan Project, Klaus Fuchs, who was reporting directly to the Soviets on their research. The film implies that Oppenheimer's inability to have identified espionage within his ranks was the precipitating factor in his being placed under increased scrutiny from the FBI, with surveillance that included wiretaps on all his phones.

But Oppenheimer ran in a very left-wing crowd before the war, and had been under strict surveillance since he was in his late 20s. The film makes reference to thousands of pages of documents on his past and various audio recordings of his conversations, which is why it seems odd that they choose to focus on this moment with Fuchs as a turning point in the government surveillance of Oppenheimer.

10. Oppenheimer's influence in Washington

The part of "Oppenheimer" that takes place after World War II emphasizes Robert Oppenheimer's inability to get the United States government to deal more openly with atomic energy, sharing their research with other countries and engaging in disarmament talks. It also casts him as a naive victim of Lewis Strauss' political machinations to discredit him, through confidential meetings that drag his name through the mud and prevented him from playing a more active role in the atomic conversation throughout the Cold War. And of course, it features the disastrous real-life interaction between Oppenheimer and Harry S. Truman, with the president of the United States calling the scientist a crybaby. None of this is necessarily untrue: In fact, that's pretty much what happened to Oppenheimer.

But by focusing on these elements of his post-WWII career, the film doesn't do credit to the influence that Oppenheimer actually wielded in Washington after the war. A greatly respected physicist, he had the ear of the most important men in government, even if he wasn't always able to convince them to act in ways counter to their fears about the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities. He was an invaluable government advisor and was on a first-name basis with the U.S. Secretary of State — that's not nothing.

11. Strauss' nomination hearing

When we see Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss in the framing story of "Oppenheimer," he might look like he's on trial, but he's cool as a cucumber. The generally accepted wisdom during these scenes, in which Strauss is taking part in a nomination hearing to become the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, is that he's got the cabinet job in the bag. A Senate aide played by Alden Ehrenreich expresses no doubt that this is all just routine, that they have to go through the motions of a hearing, but that he'll eventually be granted the position is never in doubt. It's only when David Hill testifies against Strauss that the Senate reconsiders, narrowly preventing him from being awarded the prestigious role.

In fact, there was a contingent in the Senate that was determined to see him voted down. Strauss had an enemy in Senator Clint Anderson, and their relationship was so acrimonious that it was described in a 1959 Time article as a "blood feud." The result was a prolonged political battle that saw Eisenhower become just the fifth president to suffer the embarrassment of having a cabinet nomination rejected. And although Strauss' treatment of Oppenheimer was one reason why he wasn't confirmed, it was far from the lynchpin in the case.

12. David Hill's testimony

Towards the end of "Oppenheimer," it begins to feel like Lewis Strauss is a Scooby-Doo villain who's just gotten away with his dastardly deeds. His confirmation as U.S. Secretary of Commerce seems all but assured, granting him greater power and prestige in Washington. But then David Hill (Rami Malek) gives a damning character testimonial, accusing him of destroying Robert Oppenheimer's career for personal reasons and therefore lacking the temperament required for such a privileged role. The effect is immediate: Senators, including a young John F. Kennedy, switch their vote, delivering Strauss the comeuppance he desperately deserves.

David Hill did in fact speak out against Strauss during his cabinet hearing, saying that there was "a kind of madness and irrationality which went through the whole case" in Strauss' efforts to have Oppenheimer's security clearance revoked (per CQ Almanac). But Hill was not actually the only scientist who testified against Strauss at this hearing, railing dramatically against his treatment of Oppenheimer. There was another Los Alamos scientist, David R. Inglis, who was then the chairman of the Federation of American Scientists. Inglis spoke critically of Strauss a week earlier at the hearings, referring to his "substantial defects of character" and the "personal vindictiveness" with which he conducted his dealings with Oppenheimer. This stirred senators to doubt Strauss' fitness for the role long before Hill joined the hearing.'

[jonfarreporter]

The Barbra Streisand Autobiography is an Omnibus, no doubt!

I was taken aback by how many chapters there are in Barbra Streisand’s autobiography; 59, wow!

Yet I have to say that her story and commentary is fascinating, especially for devoted fans.

One thing that surprised me the most was how much Streisand has accomplished as not only as a “superstar” artist but as a human being. Listening to her directly (I enjoy audio books the most) really does help the audience understand her better.

She is most authoritative when speaking about her life and experience in the theater and the arts. Her voice now mellowed with age does carry a certain assurance that truly speaks honestly and factually.

I liked just about everything she said about the arts, especially her work with acting and the entire “collaboration” of putting a production together from start to finish.

One thing I didn’t know about Streisand was that she got into singing because she wanted to act on stage and in movies. Obviously her tremendous voice served her well.

I was disappointed that she said little of her time in San Francisco. Especially when she performed in North Beach at The Hungry i.

Yet, I was very moved by the fact that she really did “pay her dues,” so to speak in attaining to the level of stardom she has achieved.

When she described what it was like to be on stage or in an acting class, I felt as if she is talking about the interior life of art itself. Acting and art students should listen and take to heart some of this book, seriously it’s important! This woman immediately recognized the distinction of a red that Rembrandt used in his paintings (a “Rembrandt red,”) as she calls it. And this was in her early days when she didn’t even attend an art history class.

Some aspects of her personal life are already known. But when you hear it directly from her there’s a resonance that’s deep, even if it seems familiar and cliche.

Like most celebrity books that speaks about the “behind-the-scenes” of movies and shows, it was interesting to hear about the details.

I was sad to hear that Streisand had a very difficult time with the move “Hello Dolly.” Actor, Walter Mathau treated her very badly and she knew instantly that she was too young (at age 27, then) to play the part of Dolly Levi, a middle aged widow, matchmaker, extraordinaire.

As a native SF Bay Area kid I was sad that San Franciscan Carol Channing was not chosen to portray Dolly in the movie. Even Streisand mentioned this. What was the director Gene Kelly thinking? Dolly was Channing’s signature role!

Channing proved she had the ability from her work on the hit film “Thoroughly Modern Milly.” Yet Streisand fulfilled her contract and remained professional.

What also struck me about Streisand is her ability to understand and articulate something intrinsically innate and deeply within herself or something. Like for example, her understanding of lighting and how to present material to an audience. What to wear, how to move around, etc.

Her taste is impeccable and she understands the creative process. That’s very clear in her work “Yentl.”

Speaking of “Yentl” Streisand took a lot of risks with that movie as well as another movie of hers called “Up The Sandbox.”

I was sad to learn that the author of ‘Yentl’ Issac Bashevis Singer didn’t like the movie and thought Streisand didn’t do it well.

Some time ago when I was speaking with a Rabbi’s son, (who now sells Kinish snacks) he mentioned that “Yentl, the movie is all about Barbra.” “It’s not anything about real Judaism,” he told me.

I imagine that type of criticism must have hurt Streisand very much. Especially since she clearly put a lot into that movie.

Let me clarify, I am not Jewish! But I thought the movie “Yentl” did a lot to shine a wonderful spotlight on Judaism and a bit of its history.

Isaac Bashevis Singer should have been pleased that someone like Streisand was willing to go the distance with his literary work. Ok, so it didn’t follow his vision exactly. But it did entertain and inspire, bringing a bit of the complexity of Judaism to the masses.

Also, Streisand helped make Singer’s work more approachable. Please note, I’m not an expert. But Singer writes about Jewish life similarly to that of author and playwright Sholem Aleichem. It was Aleichem’s work that inspired the hit musical “Fidler on The Roof.”

It seems to me, that Streisand tapped into that so that audiences could identify with the characters and life of those people. With all due respect, it seems to me that Singer was a bit of a recluse and preferred a sequestered life.

Streisand is not sequestered at all and it shows in all of her works.

Which, leads me into another dimension. Streisand of course is Jewish, especially as she portrayed comedian, Fanny Brice. Yet, Streisand transcends Judaism.

As I said before, there’s something innate within her that is universal and outstandingly unique.

She’s often imitated, parodied and sometimes made fun of. Yet it’s very clear to me, Streisand is a rare talent of a person that will not be duplicated. We probably won’t see anything truly like her again. God didn’t just “break the mold” as the old saying goes, he/(she) put an exclusive patent on it and it’s in heaven under his/her very special and exclusive contract.

[thekosheraisle]

Hi! Idk if you're following this, but there's a movie coming out called "Disobedience" about a Jewish romance. I've looked into it a bit, although not thoroughly. As far as I can tell, all of the characters being played are Jewish… but I don't think all of the actors are Jewish. Can you (or some of your followers??) correct me or affirm this? Thanks!!! (If it's true, I will be r e a l l y reallyreallyreally annoyed)

Hi!  I’ve heard about this, it’s based on a novel.  While Rachel MacAdams (one of the stars if I am correct) is distinctly Christian, the primary main character in the movie is played by Rachel Weisz, who is Jewish.  Allan Corduner and Alexis Zegerman also seem to be Jewish, based on their Wikipedia articles.  So while it’s not great that they’re having non-Jewish people play Jews, the star protagonist and many other characters are played by Jews.  I wouldn’t be too worried but anyone else is welcome to chime in on this. 

[snark-sniper]

Snarker’s tag list

I’ve had this blog since 2014 and I may have finally figured out my tag system, so here it is in one convenient post so you can see what I’m all about. (More likely, it’s so I can browse my own blog without typing out URLs every time.)

Happy tags

Reblogging for how hard I laughed at this

Love it

I snorted

Positivity

Humanity - all the things that make humans connected and awesome

Puns

Cute stuff

Holy shit

Cool story

Space

Time travel

Humans and aliens (former tag: humans as the alpha alien)

Ferret - I had some as pets, so they get an automatic reblog from me

Informative tags

Huh

I love linguistics

I love languages - referring to languages themselves, not necessarily the science behind them

I love English

LGBTQ

Bisexuality

Transgender

Gender

Social justice

Feminism / Badass women

Racism / BLM

Disabilities / Ableism

Body positivity / Fatphobia

Intersectionality

Islamophobia and antisemitism

Labor rights

Stuff we should have covered in school

Capitalism

Sex ed

Religion

Christianity

Judaism

History

Science

Human evolution

Education

Mental health

Relationships - romance, friendship, family, parenting, etc.

Therapy - things actual therapists have said, or at least things that sound therapeutic to me

Neurodivergence - my catch-all tag for autism, Aspergers, ADHD, and so on

Current events

US politics

UK politics

COVID

Current events that are actually good

Global cultures / World cultures (I’ll combine these eventually) / US culture

Recipe

Job hunting / Work / Work life (everyday life at work)

Relatable tags

Adulting

Mental illness - no advice, just memes and the like

Millennials

University life

Media

Meta

Cinematography

The “facts” tag

Fanfiction facts - referring to the experience of reading or writing fic

Fandom facts

Reading facts - referring to books and non-fandom

Writing facts - generally not fic-specific

Tumblr facts

Mythology

Greek mythology

Norse mythology

Fairy tales

Writing tips

Fanfiction - referring to actual fic I read or plan to read

Fic rec

Poetry

Quotes - like smart ones from real people, not incorrect quotes from fandom

Comic

Music

Vine

My fandoms

Hetalia, a.k.a. what this blog originally was for

Hetalia fandom facts

Dennor, which is apparently my top tag

Hongice

My precious nordics, a tag I’ve been using longer than “aph nordics”

All other ships are tagged by their pairing name only (”fruk”, “rusame”, “sufin”, etc.). I don’t tag the individual characters within the ship

All other characters are tagged “aph [country name]” except for very old posts

Star Wars, including The Mandalorian and all three trilogies

Star Trek, including the original series, The Next Generation, DS9, Discovery, the reboot, and all of the above

Marvel, including the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Harry Potter

Disney, including Pixar and the Disney princesses

Musicals, including Les Mis, Hadestown, Phantom of the Opera, and a full-on Newsies sideblog

Stranger Things

Stephen King’s (and Andy Muschietti’s) It movies

Multiple reblogs and my reasons for doing so

I think about this a lot

I don’t care if I’ve reblogged this before

It got better

It got worse

It’s illustrated

Snarker-specific tags

Snarker speaks - every time I make or add to a post

Snarker writes fic

Me

Me in a relationship

Stuff I want to buy (or be bought for me)

Tagging thing, like when I have to say something (my opinion, a quiz result, etc.) in the tags

Mesmerizing, a.k.a. stuff I stared at for a good while

My aesthetic

My bisexual role models

Reminder to myself - discontinued because I could never remember whether it was for cheering myself up or actual reminders

[simpingforthehunt]

In the Belly of the Whale

So I was going to do this scene by scene but that got way too long in my notes. Either way, it's good that I'm writing down my thoughts that way because it definitely helps me organize everything, as well as allow me to have the contents of the show on a document. The episodes will have a slightly different format with different characters appearing based on the episode, and some sections will be added or removed. This will include some personal annecdotes, as I can relate to moments within the show.

Masterlist

Warnings: Antisemitism (obviously), Spoilers for the show

General notes for the overall show

I really love how well-researched the time period was because the set and costumes were spot on

The soundtrack is INCREDIBLE

Whoever the DOP is I want to thank them because the transitions and general camera work is both satisfying and fun to watch

The repetition in the dialogue was an interesting creative choice, and there are moments I hate it but overall it's was a really cool decision

Characters

Jonah: Portrayed by Logan Lerman.

Jonah's an interesting character because Logan Lerman plays him in a way that seems similar to the way he acted as Percy Jackson in the movies. In the Riordan series, we see Percy get pushed further into the darkness as time goes on because of all the trauma he's experienced growing up. We see that in the ten episodes of Hunters with Jonah's journey. There are moments in the show where I think "that's a lot like Percy" and for this episode specifically, it's honestly just the way Logan acts. There are better examples later on.

Jonah begins as this innocent teen that had just lost his grandmother and is grieving. His grief often comes out as anger, and he takes it out on others without realizing it. He start his descend into darkness when Meyer enters his life.

Ruth - Portrayed by Jeannie Berlin.

Ruth is the Bubbe I've always wanted. My grandmother on the Jewish side of my family passed away when I was three so I never knew her. her name was Ruth. Because of that, I have a connection to both Ruth and Jonah. Definitely made her death harder to watch.

Cheeks - Portrayed by Henry Hunter Hall.

Cheeks is an interesting character. He is one of Jonah's best friends, and clearly cares for him. I can't say much now, but I really hope he's a more frequent character in season 2.

Booty - Portrayed by Caleb Emery.

I really love Booty, and I wish he was a more significant character. More thoughts on him later.

Carol - Portrayed by Ebony Obsidian.

I love/hate Carol. She seems to run into the arms of white boys, and I know she's hinted to be Jonah's love interest but I'm glad they didn't actively pursue that relationship. Again, more on that later.

Meyer - Portrayed by Al Pacino.

Dude reminds me of Dumbledore. At first glance he seems like a savior and a mentor, but as time goes on his manipulative tactics are clearer and he only does what benefits him. I had a weird feeling about him from the start, tbh. He never lied to Jonah, but he stretched the truth enough that the audience believed him to be Meyer.

Millie - Portrayed by Jerrika Hinton.

Millie gives no fucks and takes no shit from anyone. She is the perfect example of a Ravenclaw, and is the only character that isn't a complete idiot. She pieces things together quickly, and I love her a lot.

Detective Sommers - Portrayed by Tramell Tillman.

I like his character a lot and sincerely hope we see more of him in season 2.

Travis - Portrayed by Greg Austin.

Dude's really creepy and I hate the fact that I like his costuming. There were so many moments in the episode that made me really uncomfy and hate him with a burning passion, but the actor is doing a great job with his character.

Biff - Portrayed by Dylan Baker.

The actor that plays Biff is SO talented! The quick switches between accents is a hard thing to do, and he's done a great job. Biff is a selfish asshole, but Dyland Baker portrays him so well.

What I liked:

Honestly, pretty much anything that isn’t mentioned in the below section is what I liked, but there’s one specific scene that stood out to me.

At the beginning, when the trio is coming out from watching Star Wars and talking about it.

NOW

I’m not a fan of Star Wars so most of it confused me, however the conversation foreshadowed Jonah’s fate by the end of it. I just thought that was really cool, and a fantastic creative choice.

What I didn’t like:

The human chess board.

Now, okay. On a creative standpoint, as a writer/director myself, I understand what David Weil was trying to portray with this scene. I understand that he wanted to show the horrors of the Holocaust and show the extent of how bad it had gotten.

HOWEVER

As a Jew, it made me uncomfortable. Just like the Auschwitz Memorial stated, it enourages Holocaust Denial. It is more than possible to show the horrors of the Holocaust in a fictional show, by telling the truths and the facts. A great example of a fictional piece about the Holocaust is the book Daniel’s Story, which follows the experiences of the children during the war.

So yeah... not a fan of it.

Reform Jewish Confusion:

So what’s up with the menorah’s in the funeral home??? That’s just a Hanukkah thing??? What???

Also when it comes to sitting Shiva, in Reform Judaism it is common for more than just immediate family to sit Shiva. Is this different in Orthodox or Conservative Judaism?? Also, if it’s immediately family only why are like,,, most of the people there?

Explaining specific things the best I can:

Baruch HaShem means thank G-d.

Mitzvah means duty, which is why Meyer views The Hunt as Mitzvah rather than murder. Like it’s a commandment from G-d.

[n1ghtcrwler]

Look, I'm not super into Harry Potter either (as in, the movies were sufficiently entertaining to watch, but I've no interest in watching them again or ever reading the books), but I really think this whole "respond to every HP analogy with 'read another book'" thing going on needs to stop. You guys really don't seem to recognize the value of a cultural touchstone or the fact that Harry Potter is not an inherently worse option to use in these situations than the other stories that get used in exactly the same way.

So look. Cultural touchstones are things that are sufficiently well-known within a given context, usually by location and generation but sometimes by subculture or religion or something, that they can be used to quickly and easily explain something. The English-speaking world uses Shakespeare for this a lot (even when it blatantly ignores the actual context in which Shakespeare wrote those words), Christians and Muslims and adherents of Judaism will use their holy books for it; while people in smaller communities will use more globally obscure references, like how you can drop Tiger Mike into conversation in my hometown and that reference will make no sense to people who live literally ten minutes away.

Harry Potter was a cultural phenomenon that had a lot of content that mirrored the operations of the real world. The nuances of various forms of internal imagery are well understood by a massive number of people, whether Rowling consciously meant to make a specific given image or not. Referencing one of those images in discussing a real-life issue will be quickly and easily understood by almost an entire generation across many countries. It is useful as a cultural touchstone in a very large number of circumstances, especially when it is the only cultural touchstone relevant to a situation that is shared among people from widely different cultures interacting on the internet in real time.

That is to say, it doesn't matter whether or not the people citing Harry Potter have read another book (which they almost certainly have), what matters is that the broader body of people who can be involved in a discussion referencing Harry Potter have likely not all read the same other books. And this means that those other books will not be useful for the same purpose.

In summary,

You do the same thing, on some scale, all the time;

Hamlet is not a superior cultural touchstone, as they are all only valuable for this purpose to the degree that they are understood, not the degree to which your English teacher waxes poetic about it;

Harry Potter is useful for this purpose; and finally,

Shut up and let people communicate concerns in a way that works.

[traincat]

The Amazing Spider-Man and the presence of the bridge

The thing about the Amazing Spider-Man films is that they’re a two-part adaptation of The Night Gwen Stacy Died (Amazing Spider-Man #121-122). It’s just what they are, no point in arguing that -- Webb’s stated in interviews that it was the story he set out to tell from the beginning. All the beats are there leading up to Gwen’s death: the death of George Stacy, his message to Peter changing with the times: in the comics, George Stacy tells Peter to take care of Gwen, whereas the movies exist in a world where Gwen Stacy has been famously dead in popular culture for decades, hence, George tells Peter to stay away from her instead. Gwen’s “I’m moving to England” is a reference to the period of comics before her death where she went to England to stay with her uncle, George Stacy, appropriately updated for modern times.

(Amazing Spider-Man #93)

Certain Peter and Gwen panels from the comics are even duplicated near identically for the screen:

(Amazing Spider-Man #63)

(The Amazing Spider-Man (2012))

But I think the most important comics reference in the films is, ultimately, the presence of the bridge. It’s a well-known fact that in Amazing Spider-Man #121, Gwen Stacy dies when she plummets from either the George Washington or the Brooklyn bridge, depending on which comic you’re referencing; when Peter attempts to catch her with his webbing, the whiplash snaps her neck, a devastating moment recreating in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) when the back of Gwen’s head meets the ground with a sickening crack, caught seconds too late by Peter’s webbing. 

(The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014))

(Amazing Spider-Man #122)

The big departure in Gwen’s death scene, of course, is that in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Gwen doesn’t die on the bridge but rather in a clock tower, which is, in and of itself, a reference back to the period of comics shortly before her death, as Big Ben notably appears in an action scene in Amazing Spider-Man #95. And I love Webb’s commentary on Gwen’s death scene in the movie and the decision to use the clock tower here:

“His inability, despite his enormous efforts, to stop time.” (x)

But as much as I like the symbolism of the clock tower and as much as it is a departure from the comics in terms of scenery, there’s one thing that strikes me as someone who has watched these movies sixty million times: the omnipresence of the bridge itself, the original symbol of Gwen’s death, within the films. In comics, the bridge haunts Peter. He leaves roses there for Gwen on Valentine’s Day in Spider-Man: Blue. In Spider-Man & Black Cat: Evil That Men Do, the sight of a supposed bad guy standing with his ex-girlfriend Felicia Hardy on a bridge is enough to send him into a rage-filled frenzy, flashing back to what happened to Gwen:

The bridge is one of the most powerful objects in Spider-Man mythology. Even though in the The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Gwen doesn’t die on the bridge in what would become, however unintentionally, the end of the franchise, the bridge looms like a warning in The Amazing Spider-Man films from the very beginning. When Richard and Mary Parker flee their home at the very beginning of the first film, on their way to leave a young Peter with Uncle Ben and Aunt May in Queens, a bridge is visible in the shot:

Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, Uncle Ben himself is employed working on bridges. The film’s prequel comic is what directly establishes this:

“He built bridges for a living.” 

But even discounting the prequel comic and relying on the movie on its own, this information delivered directly to the audience through its incredibly detailed sets. It’s clear with a little poking around and some guess work what it is that Uncle Ben, a thoroughly blue collar character in the films, does. There’s an international association of iron workers magnet on the fridge in the Parker home:

May, who we know in the film works as a waitress and then later a nurse, wears a shirt that says United Bridgeworkers:

And then, perhaps most importantly, in the scene where Ben confronts Peter and delivers his speech about Richard Parker’s moral code, the film’s rewording of “with great power comes great responsibility” that frames that responsibility as “a moral obligation”, there are bridge models on the mantel behind Aunt May:

This has always struck me as notable because, while they’re clearly bridge models when you look closely, the sculptures could very easily also be modern Menorahs. Andrew Garfield, who openly identifies as Jewish, has gone on the record stating that he recognized that same Judaism within Peter Parker and within Spider-Man mythos. The bridge looms large, and it serves multiple purposes. 

The Parker household isn’t the end of the bridge’s presence within the film, either. The scene wherein Peter recognizes Spider-Man’s greater importance -- his own greater responsibility -- and where he consciously chooses to put aside his personal vendetta for Uncle Ben’s killer and instead dedicate Spider-Man to a greater responsibility and to helping others who need him and his greater power, takes place on a bridge:

This is a hugely impactful moment in the film -- in fact, it’s the first scene where Peter names himself as Spider-Man. His very identity and self-actualization is linked to this moment -- a moment that happens on a bridge. 

Then there’s the night of Gwen’s death in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. While Gwen doesn’t die on a bridge, very shortly before her death, during her big romantic reunion with Peter where he declares that’s she’s his path and says he’ll follow her to England, they stand on a bridge. Leading up to this, Peter webs “I Love You” over a bridge. The bridge is always there, waiting, a silent participant in the events leading up to Gwen’s death.

The bridge looms, ever present, in and of itself a greater symbol of the connection between life and death, warning the viewer of Gwen’s death. It’s even present in Peter’s room in the second movie, replacing the Rear Window poster of the first film with a print:

It’s that kind of attention to detail and commitment to the story they’re telling that renders the Amazing Spider-Man films my favorite live action Spider-Man movies. 

[stvnuris-blog]

[ TROYE SIVAN + CISMALE ] • STANLEY URIS FROM IT HAS JUST BEEN ENROLLED. I BELIEVE THE TWENTY YEAR OLD IS STAYING IN 5A AND STUDYING ANIMAL BIOLOGY. STAN EVEN GOT AN INTERVIEW TO BE A RECEPTIONIST AT A VETERINARY CLINIC. GOOD FOR THEM ! ( LIDDY, CST, SHE/HER )

hello friends !! i’m liddy n i’m super annoying and don’t shut up abt stephen king ever aeruyfgakeuyhd anyway i’m super excited to be here n meet all ur charries!!!! i’ve got a lil intro for u below so smash the heart and i’ll come hit u up or feel free to slide into my dms u know the drill 👌

first off for the questions: stan has been here for a year! he’s majoring in animal biology and along with school works full-time at a vet clinic doing front desk work/reception and assisting the doctors

he doesn’t quite remember how he came to be at everly but has no problem disregarding that because the idea that he can’t remember makes him nervous and he’s an Avoider

in regards to the It timeline, he’s between parts 1 and 2: that is, the events from the first part (when they were 12/13 bc i’m going with movie canon for their ages) happened about 7 years ago, and the events from part 2 (when they’re adults) never happened. which is good for stan syreagukhjs. according to canon, all of the losers forgot 99% of derry and everything that happened to them that summer so i’m going with that too! stan remembers snippets of his childhood but almost never thinks about it, and what he does remember is the normal stuff. nothing about the other losers and certainly nothing about pennywise

which actually works really well with him not quite remembering how he got here rtdyfygh

also, to make my life easier, i’m shifting the timeline so that it really was 7 years ago, putting the first fight with pennywise in the summer of 2012 rather than the 80s like the most recent movie or the 50s like the book

as for stan’s personality !! he’s an extremely uptight and fastidious person with a dry and witty sense of humor that usually goes right over people’s heads. the kind of person who secretly knows about and likes memes but everyone assumes he has no idea about any of it and he doesn’t necessarily correct them

his love of animals began from a fascination with birds when he was younger, and in fact his bird book from his childhood is one of his only memories of derry he’s kept

nowadays if he isn’t found reading enormous tomes on animal physiology and behavior, he’s sketching birds in his sketchpad

he suffers from a mild case of ocd which, through therapy and hard work, he’s just started to be able to combat effectively. with that has come a bit of loosening up--he laughs more and jokes more, but the old stan is definitely still in there

he is a Good Boy with a very soft heart but he’s terrified of things that feel like they’re out of his control and he often has a difficult time with Normal Socializations so he can come off as being finicky and detached

i can’t stress enough that he needs to feel like things make sense and line up and are within his control and sense of reality. like in the book and films, stanley’s first reaction to anything that makes him uncomfortable or upset or doesn’t jive with his version of “normal” he simply turns away from and acts like if he ignores it, it’ll go away

his clothes are always perfectly ironed and neat, his posture excellent, and he’s exceedingly polite (except when he gets comfortable around friends)

he doesn’t keep in much contact with his parents--they were upset by his lack of interest in judaism and became further disappointed when he revealed he wanted not to become an accountant like they had planned, but to study animals. they refused to help him pay for school unless he aligned with their wishes, which is why he works full time at the vet clinic so he can afford it himself (along with substantial loans that stress him the fuck out already)

as a side note, i have a billion and one blond!troye gifs to use and only a handful of brunet!troye so even tho i’ll be using a lot of blond gifs.........he has brown hair tyergjhkjs

[rileyhgoldstein]

❝ In my mind I am eloquent; I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thoughts. But when I open my mouth, everything collapses. ❞ 

MARGARET QUALLEY? No, that’s actually RILEY HAYES-GOLDSTEIN. A SIXTH YEAR student, this HUFFLEPUFF student is sided with DUMBLEDORE’S ARMY. SHE identifies as CIS-WOMAN and is a HALFBLOOD who is known to be SARDONIC, PARANOID, and PESSIMISTIC but also MORALLY-RESPONSIBLE, WITTY, and RESILIENT.

CHARACTER PARALLELS: Daria ( Daria ), Seth Cohen ( The OC ), Veronica Sawyer( Heathers ), Ron Swanson/Ben Wyatt ( Parks & Rec ), Quentin Coldwater ( The Magicians ), Pam Beasley ( The Office ), Zari Tomaz ( Legends of Tomorrow )

TRIGGERS: Anxiety, Depression, Parental Abandonment, Mentions of Drugs™ and Alcohol™

LIKES & INTERESTS: Cult Classics - Movies ( Heathers, Dead Poets Society, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Buellers Day Off, Cruel Intentions, The Breakfast Club, Almost Famous ), Blue raspberry Slushies, Donuts, Judaism, Arctic Monkeys, Lana Del Rey, The Strokes, The Smiths, the color blue, writing poetry, e. e. cummings, art museums, greek mythology, rmemes, Rolling joints on her favorite books, biblical mythology, astronomy, astrology ( she finds it very entertaining in a mocking way and would never admit there’s a small part of her that enjoys it ), Star Wars, black cats, black cats named Boggart, black nail polish, tattoos, carnivals, comic books, ferris wheels, puns, the sea, jellyfish, NPR every morning, going to the beach at twilight, 4 am drives, 5am runs, spliff.

POSITIVE TRAITS: Observant, Cooperative, Strategic, Witty, Intelligent, Resilient, Morally Responsible, Loyal.

NEGATIVE TRAITS: Reserved, Pessimistic, Sardonic, Secretive, Curious ( it will get her into trouble ), Awkward, Suspicious.

BIOGRAPHY:  ( parental abandonment, mentions of drugs and alcohol. )

When you meet Riley Goldstein, a picturesque childhood in a picturesque suburbia in Virginia is not what you would expect and yet it was exactly what she had. Born on the cusp of summer and fall, Rachel and Christopher were over the moon to have their daughter, Riley Hayes, born on August 28, 2007. Finally, a child to complete the perfect family unit. Maybe they had hoped for a boy despite what science said ( hence the name Riley & a full name for a boy they had prepared ) but, they had a daughter and for the first ten years of her life they pampered her greatly. Trips to the coast every summer to visit his side of the family where Riley was praised for being such a pretty, good girl, and what seemed like infinite love from her father was doled out as long as she was what he wanted her to be. The younger girl was cooperative, it was in her nature it seemed, because she loved seeing her parents happy with each other. As long as Riley stayed within the lines, stayed within Christopher’s lines at least, everything would be well. Even when Riley started to develop a few habits and interests that were off the wall, he brushed them aside as childhood obsessions. Never could he accept his family for what they were which is exactly why he left.

The ugly truth was, Riley was an accident and the picture painted had been a lie – not that Riley knew until then. While she knew they had gotten married young she’d never known how much exactly her mother had given up to be with her father. Rachel Hayes had left her family, forsaken her religion ( as Christopher was a very religious Christian man ), the semi famous Goldstein Wizarding name, and moved down south into this suburbia all with the promise of a family. The biggest thing? Magic. When Christopher left a year before Riley entered school, Riley was forced to grow up and pick up the pieces of a broken lost woman who simply couldn’t find herself in the rubble that was the aftermath of her father leaving. But finding out she was an accident was the least of her worries. No matter how much poetry she wrote trying to figure out her mind, oftentimes thinking she was losing it, something within her was different, something within her felt different.

It took a few months to coax the why from her mother, and truly she was her caretaker. It wasn’t until her 10th birthday when she got the letter from Ilvermony that she realized what exactly was off. When she confronted her mother – her mother just poured everything out to her. Who Riley was, who her family was, what she was doing with her life before she met Christopher. At first, Riley couldn’t believe it – – she’d grown up hiding comics under her bed, hiding anything about the supernatural away. Even if her whole life she had felt a weird pull to these people who didn’t belong in her comics, these freaks, she never in her wildest dreams thought she’d have something concretely in common with them. It all made sense though, and finally the pieces of her life started to come together. Riley knew what she had to do, so at the age of 10, she went with her mother to Wizarding NYC to try to find out more. To try to find the family her mother left behind.

After that, everything fell into place – her family was beyond accepting, even if they gave her shit, more than she’d ever known from her dad’s family and her mom started to get better as she become more true to herself. The family reconciled, helping Riley and Rachel move into a flat in NYC, in Chinatown. Rachel got a job at the ministry as an assistant and with the help of some family members and Riley started to prepare for school Wizarding School. She’d never been more happy in her life. New York City was her home, more than her podunk shitty town ever had and she felt a freedom that made her wander the city. She felt a freedom to finally be herself. The only issue then? Riley wanted to go to a school far away from everything, because even if New York was her home, she needed to a break from being in the states. A break from all these people who knew who her family was & really, a place that was her own to find her own in the world. Sure, she had some family in the UK but there wasn’t the same pressure. Easily, she picked Hogwarts and was delighted when they accepted her no matter how far she was. Hufflepuff was the perfect house for her, even if she wasn’t the most conventional or stereotypical kind of one.

For years, she pushed away a lot of the pain she felt – she figured her pain was her own, it was selfish of her to dwell on it or even think about it when she had this new fantastic life. Only in her poetry would she divulge her feelings, only her poetry knew that she felt inexplicably lost in the world the more she saw it. Around her 14th birthday, she met two boys in school who were a bit older than her but the twins ended up being her half-brothers – as they found they shared a father. A scumbag father who’d also been horrible to them. It was then that Riley wanted to distance herself from her father even more, fiercely signing and writing her last name as Hayes-Goldstein or just Goldstein when she could get away with it.

The thing was, the reminder of her father, the reminder that he was out there ruining more people’s lives, that he was out there spawning more children really intensely messed with Riley’s head. Why wasn’t she good enough for him to stay? Why couldn’t they have been enough? It was stupid, but the thoughts started to consume her and the lost feeling just got bigger. Picking up vices like smoking, smoking pot, drinking beer like she was her own father after a long day of work, anything to escape the feeling that she didn’t really have a place in this world. Not one she could see. What was she even going to do with her life after school? What did she have to offer the world? A loneliness she could not shake slept with her at night like any blanket did, every day felt like she was smothered. Every day there was a new realization that she didn’t know what the hell she wanted to do with her life, and that she didn’t really have a place in the world. When the climate in the Wizarding World of England became a war zone, Riley wanted nothing to do with it but because of who she was – because of what her religion reminded her of  – she couldn’t just stand idly by. Riley knew that even if she was Neutral, she would fight with Dumbledore’s Army or at least be an ally to them if need be.

CONNECTION TO JUDAISM:

Judaism was once a rarely talked about religion in the Hayes house, in fact, Riley knew barely anything about the religion at all. If she had realized it was taboo instead, it would’ve been something she would’ve dipped her mind into much earlier. The Hayes family were church goers, Sundays, Easter, Christmas, that was the religious practice they followed and had been since Rachel Hayes had forgone her roots in Judaism. Once she married & became Mrs. Christopher Hayes, she lost the part of her that made her her,that connected her to her family, all because of a pregnancy that was unplanned, and a marriage that needed to happen in result of it.

Once Christopher left, Riley dug up old numbers, old things, anything she could find that would bring her mother back to herself. Here, the woman gave so much of herself to her father and Riley felt she needed to get some of her back. Anything would do, anything at all. When Riley found an old Siddur, stuffed in the back of her mother’s side of the closet, she had a pretty good idea of a way to start.

It started with looking at temples in NYC when they finally moved. All the two did was walk around, taking in the city itself. Taking in the fact that there were even so many people in one place as opposed to small town Virginia where they lived. Taking in people coming back synagogue, the dress, and while it was painful at first for her mom, Rachel slowly started to explain to Riley different things, different details about Judaism. Soon, Riley and Rachel learned together and go at least once a month for Saturday evening services as well as for most High Holidays. From then on, the rest of the Goldstein family also invited them to family event after event, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Hannukah gatherings.  

Riley’s favorite Jewish holiday is Yom Kippur: the day of Atonement. While she knows she had absolutely no control over being born, she does feel she has a lot to atone for. A lot to cleanse from her soul. A lot of regrets, a lot of guilt for the things she’d done and the people she’s not been able to become. Like a failure, failing her family, failing their legacy. Her poetry may be fair game – it’s raw, it’s unforgiving and it’s brutal – to herself & to others. For being what she is, for being something else other than human and purposefully standing by while others cause havoc – she feels she needs to cleanse & atone for that. It’s the day that she for once feels clean, cleansed and not like the figure from Greek mythology: Atlas.

anything else

I once called her a Memelord Shitstain. I stand by that. It’s why it’s her label

If Lana Del Rey and Weird Al’ Yankovic did a duet, that would be Riley’s vibe. LOL.

Loves water. Dreams of water. Water is the best. Water would be her element if she had one in my opinion.

writes so much poetry and like 90 percent of it is shitty and tHATS THE TEA!!!!

riley is a virgo and i gave her this sign before i knew about astrology and it’s literally perfect for her

lbr is tumblr roleplaying is a thing in this rp ( META )  she’s in a marvel rp as we speak

depression/anxiety tw  Riley has some friends but due to her own issues and her antisocial nature, often she’ll disappear for long periods of time, hiding in her dorm or little parts of the castle, only to come back with apologies and explanation ( excuses ) as to why she was away. Truthfully, Riley also suffers from MDD and GA, which have only gotten worse over the years despite her trying medication after medication along with therapy. Part of her has given up, missing multiple appts, forgetting to take her medication, while a part of her wants to get better but doesn’t ever know if she can.

Riley has a natural inclination towards legilimency, her first sign of magic was actually poking around someone’s mind in a grocery store and influencing them to get her the popsicles she wanted but it’s not a developed skill in the slightest and truthfully Riley doesn’t EVER want to go into it. It’s really not developed it’s just like a fun fact. a tidbit.

Knows she has quite the Legacy to live up to and while her family is fantastic, she can’t help but feel left out of a huge ass family that grew up together and knew each other. This is really based on just her own insecurities.  

[ketzwrites]

oh ketz, you participating on magnus month is amazing😍🤧 26, perhaps?

Of course, amor! Hope you enjoy this little piece. I might have gone a little overboard on the cheesy, though.

Available on AO3.

26. “I think I’ve been holding myself from falling in love with you all over again.”

For most people, falling in love is the single most scary thing a human being can do. Mostly because one does not control it: the heart wants what it wants. It is hard, almost impossible to willingly put yourself in such a vulnerable position. Falling in love requires courage, it demands trust. It is a miracle in itself.

Falling in love twice and with the same person? That is a transcending experience.

Magnus Bane has experienced love before. Pure, unwavering love from his mother, but also twisted and possessive love from his father. Magnus has received and given a great deal of love to his friends, a sort of love that is precious in its platonic form. And, of course, Magnus has experienced romantic love. He lived through some great love stories, the stuff movies are made of. From forbidden to all-consuming, from gentle to destructive. Magnus’s heart has raced, jumped, froze, and broke.

But it has never gone through all of it because of a single person. Not until Alec Lightwood came into his life, almost seven years ago.

They had met after a lecture Magnus administrated in the History Department of NYU. As Head of the Languages Department and famous translator, Magnus often attended discussions on ancient languages. It wasn’t supposed to be anything new.

Alec’s presence, though, elevated that afternoon to extraordinary. A grad student, Alec had stayed late after Magnus was done. He had a proposition to make and they decided to discuss it over coffee. It had been a while someone was so passionate about Magnus’ job and it helped that Alec wasn’t bad to look at. Magnus had no problems joining his project: a complete study of ancient religious texts on the Nephilim and their origins.

It was a group project, so it wasn’t just Magnus and Alec. There was Simon Lewis, the specialist in ancient Judaism. Alec’s own sister, Isabelle Lightwood, a forensic scientist who was there to explain the Nephilim’s biology. Finally, they also had Dr. Luke Garroway, from the Philosophy Department.

In reality, though, Magnus spent most of his time with Alec, who was in charge of studying the texts. They worked together for hours, reading and translating, making sense of original texts. Somewhere along the way, they also fell in love.

It was a gentle kind of love, one born out their shared curiosity and work ethic. Magnus admired Alec’s mind even more than he did his body. In return, he could see the reverence in the way Alec looked at him, how much Alec cared for his opinions and inputs. There was an innocence to their love that Magnus cherished beyond words.

But it was also a tumultuous love. Their fights could start out academic but were always about something else. Magnus was used to dating people from all kinds of different backgrounds: rich and poor, beautiful inside or out, men or women. They were all interesting, instigating people. Magnus could lose himself in their worlds, participate in their journeys. He could translate their experiences into his own, live hundreds of lives through someone else’s eyes.

Not so much with Alec. Magnus could be a part of Alec’s project, but Alec wanted to be a part of Magnus’ life. He wanted to get to know Magnus beyond the translator, beyond the makeup and fancy clothes, beyond the flippant attitude and the sharp mind. And that terrified Magnus to no end.

It was, in fact, so daunting that Magnus couldn’t take it anymore. Once the project was done, he broke things up with Alec. That was the worst night in Magnus’ entire life. Worse than when he realized what a monster his father was, worse than when he found out Camille had been cruelly stringing him along for years. That night, Magnus was the bad guy, the one breaking someone else’s heart. The one breaking both of their hearts.

That night, Magnus was making a mistake. One that would haunt him for seven years.

It wasn’t like Magnus never saw Alec again after that, though. He did, especially after Alec became a teacher at NYU himself. But they didn’t talk anymore, no more than a nod or a greeting in the corridor. It was an awkward thing, but something that they grew used to doing. Over the years, Magnus could even say they developed a quasi-friendship. He could still draw a snort from Alec in the faculty meetings, just as well as Alec could leave Magnus feeling proud with just a word or two.

But there was a shadow there, one that made all smiles die just as soon as they were born. A wall that Magnus had created around him, as if written in a language that nobody could understand. Magnus met other people after Alec, even fell in love once or twice. But every relationship was unlike before, they all lacked something. Something that Magnus couldn’t point out.

Not until he found himself in another joint project with Alec Lightwood. In this one, though, they were not going to directly work together. Magnus was paired up with another historian while Alec would be doing field work with some archeologists. They were not supposed to meet.

And yet, Magnus found himself seeing Alec more and more. It started with a simple consultation: Alec came into his office one day with a particularly intricate excerpt of an ancient book. Magnus had wondered why Alec had brought it to him and not any one of the other specialists from the Languages Department.

The honesty in Alec’s answer made Magnus’ heart race. “Because I trust you.”

After that, the awkwardness between them vanished. They saw each other regularly and Magnus couldn’t help but be excited every time. It was as if the seven years never existed.

No, it was more than that. It was as if the seven years had washed away all the problems they had. Suddenly, they were not just talking just about the project, but of themselves as well. Magnus was finally ready to answer Alec’s questions, to share parts of himself he had never revealed before. He didn’t know why or how, just that finally love felt like a language he knew again.

Still, there was something that felt off. When Alec asked Magnus out, officially and without reservations, Magnus’ heart jumped. For a second, he thought he wasn’t ready but then heard himself saying yes. That was when he stopped overthinking things, stopped to dread how everything would go wrong.  

That was when realization dawned upon Magnus. “Oh.”

Alec frowned. “What?”

“Just discovered something about myself,” Magnus said cheerfully. He then blinked, realizing his tone might not be the most appropriate. It was just so easy to talk to Alec now, he had stopped putting his guard up.

Well, not entirely true. But Alec didn’t seem to mind the strange tone. “And what is that?”

Magnus smiled. Honesty was Alec’s greatest strength. Magnus could make it his as well. “I think I’ve been holding myself from falling in love with you all over again.”

“Oh,” Alec blinked, clearly taken aback.

That was when Magnus’ heart froze. Had he screwed up? Was that not what Alec was expecting? Magnus couldn’t have been reading the signs wrongly, Alec had literally asked him out on a date. Still, if Magnus was wrong, had he just… Had he just admitted more than he should? Had he set him up for failure?

With surprise, Magnus realized that after the initial shock he didn’t quite care. What he said was the truth, about him and his feelings. He didn’t have to translate it, to transport a knowledge from one system to another. It was all there; intelligible, accessible. True.

“Does that mean that you are?” Alec asked carefully. “Falling in love with me all over again?”

A courage that Magnus didn’t know he possessed took over him and he nodded. “I am.”

Alec smiled, happiness coloring his face. “Good,” he said and took Magnus’ hand in his. “Because so am I.”

Love might be the single most scary emotion a human being can experience. It requires a lot, it risks too much. And, when one finds love, holding on to it can be difficult, sometimes even impossible.

But impossible just means one has to try again. One has to grow better, braver, surer. Love can only start from within, from loving oneself. When that happens, love takes but it also gives. Magnus’ heart had raced, jumped, and froze. But never again had it broke.

[betsynagler]

The Four (Thousand, New) Questions

When I was growing up, I didn't really have to think too much about what it meant to be a Jewish American. A large part of that was living in New Jersey, where being a member of the tribe isn’t exactly an anomaly. In Newark, pretty much all of my friends were Jewish or Black, until I spent 2nd grade in Catholic School. You’d think that might make it weird, but even then, it wasn’t. All my new friends just had Irish and Italian names, and I got to sit in the back during mass and read, which is the dream of every second grader. And when we moved to the suburbs, things became, if anything, more Jewy. We joined Temple Israel and actually tried going to services every once in a while, and I went to Hebrew school on Saturdays. At my suburban public grade school, I learned the term “Jappy” something my friends and I called other girls that we considered spoiled, regardless of whether or not they were Jewish, and in junior high, the school bus that came from the most wealthy, Jewish neighborhood in town was sometimes referred to as “The Jew Canoe.” Who did we learn these terms from? Other Jews. We were the ones trading in the laughable stereotypes, because that’s American Jewish culture all over: we joke because we can. It’s never been in doubt in my lifetime that we belong here, to the degree that we are comfortable poking fun at ourselves, enough that while we are very aware that we aren’t and will never be the majority — and if you forget that, you always have the 30 to 60 days of Christmas to remind you — we are perfectly okay with that; and enough to feel safe in the knowledge that the past is the past, because in the Tri-State Area in the 1970s and 80s, anti-Semitism was about as real to me as Star Wars: something that existed long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. The same thing with Nazis. Nazis were the movie villains nobody got upset about. Nobody ever said, “Why do the Nazis always have to be the bad guys?” Why? Because they were the bad guys. 

That doesn’t mean that my Jewish identity was 100% uncomplicated, mostly because I was raised to figure stuff out for myself. Mine were the kind of parents who took us to fancy restaurants and said, “Want to order the escargot? Have at it!”, perhaps not realizing that they’d end up with a seven-year-old who liked to try every appetizer on the menu but had a stomach the size of a golfball – which led to my parents gaining weight in the 70s, which led to their joining the exercise craze in the 80s...See how history happens? Being able to make my own decisions meant I could quit Hebrew school after one year (I was already a well-practiced quitter of stuff I didn't like, such as wearing dresses and learning the violin). I felt a little guilty about it, so I was definitely Jewish in that way, but one of the reasons I couldn’t get behind religious school was the fact that Judaism was supposedly my religion, but – go figure – our family was not religious. My parents don’t agree on which type of not-religious they are, since my mother describes herself as an atheist and my father calls himself an agnostic, but that’s only if you push them, since neither of them cares enough about it either way. They still identify as Jewish, and therein lay the confusion for me: Judaism is kind of an ethnic identity as well as a religion, but in a weird way, because you can convert to it, which you can’t do with, say, Slavic, and because it’s not one where we all come from one specific place, since Jews were basically driven out of everywhere. Sure, my family were all driven out of one country, Poland, but that didn’t exactly make them feel Polish. No, we were definitely Jews, just the secular kind, which is actually a thing — although I didn’t know anyone else like that in high school, the result being that in my group of friends, a mix of Jews and non-Jews, I was in my own category of Jewish, But Doesn’t Know When Any of the Holidays Are.

When I went to college on the West Coast, where I was meeting new people all the time, it was common for people tell me I didn’t “look Jewish,” which seemed to just fit right in with every other confusing part of my Jewish identity. You might think that, as a stealth Jew, I’d finally be privy to negativity about us, but that never happened. That was around the time of the rise of the religious right, and there were a lot of born-again Christians at Stanford, my freshman dorm was full of them. But while they may have believed I was going to hell, most of them still seemed happy to hang with me while we were alive – one of them even took me out for fro yo once (that’s short for “frozen yogurt,” and eating it together at Stanford in 1987 was called “dating”). If anything, being Jewish around them was an advantage, because they never tried to rebirth me the way they did other Christians, like my poor freshman roommate – I would come back to our room to find her surrounded by a group of them, looking uncomfortable, like she was getting hit on by Jesus. Mind you, I know now that my school was a liberal bubble inside the liberal bubble that was Northern California, and that protected me from a lot of things. But while we were definitely dealing with racism and sexism on campus at the time, anti-Semitism? That just wasn’t a thing.

Neither was being a Jewish person who didn’t support Israel. I didn’t know all that much about Israel growing up. I knew that it was the Jewish state, where I had once had some relatives, and that my cousins and eventually my brother — who finished Hebrew school — went to visit because they felt like it was an important way to learn about who they were. I didn’t. But when, in college, I had my first conversation with someone who’d lived in Israel about the way that Israelis felt this constant existential threat to their existence that justified their defensive posture when it came to negotiating peace with the Palestinians, even though they clearly had vast military superiority, I didn’t necessarily agree, but I got it. I understood why Israelis felt that, in a visceral, six-million-dead-just-because-they-were-like-you way that I think most non-Jews can’t. 

That was probably as much of a surprise to me as it was to anyone: that, on some level, in spite of not looking Jewish, or being able to speak Hebrew, or knowing what Sukkot was (if it wasn’t about eating or presents, it didn’t make it into the Nagler Canon of Holidays), I actually still somehow just was Jewish. And that part of my identity might never have really sunk in if I hadn’t become a New Yorker. Moving here didn’t just mean that I discovered Zabars, or that I was a bagel snob, or that I would be able to have lox at catering pretty much every day (and occasionally take some home if it was really good), although those things did indeed happen. New York was able to absorb and assimilate Jewish culture in a way that allowed it to flourish as one distinct flavor of the whole that is this city of many flavors. New York is a Jewish city – in same way that it’s also Italian, Irish, African-American, Puerto Rican, Chinese, Russian, Indian, Dominican, Pakistani, Caribbean, Mexican, and the list goes on depending on who’s arrived recently and who’s coming next. And so, from the way I relate to food, to my sense of humor, to my analytical and intellectual side, to how forthright/tactless I can be, to my overall worldview: living here enabled me to recognize that I just wouldn’t be this way if I weren’t Jewish.

Everything feels different in 2019 in so many, surreal ways, but what exactly it means to be Jewish in America is definitely a big one. I’ve felt some vulnerability and uncertainty as a woman for most of my life, as you do, but I’ve never felt that way about being a Jew until now. To the point that I can’t call myself “a Jew” any more, because suddenly, that’s an epithet. How the hell did that happen? When did we allow them to take that word away? Then there’s the realization of, Wait, we can’t make those jokes any more because there are people who actually still think that shit about us? And they’re telling other people? Fucking internet. Add to that the fault lines within the American Jewish community over Israel and the ground really starts to feel like it’s swaying under your feet. How much we should continue to support this country that seems increasingly unrecognizable to me, that is so racked by fear and sectarianism that it appears to have given up on peace and democracy, that votes for a leader who has demonstrated time and again that he is both racist and corrupt? Well, now that I’ve put it like that, okay, maybe this is something that Israel and the United States have in common right now, but that doesn’t make it any better for those of use who are trying to stay on the sane side of it all. I’m lucky that most of my family is in agreement with me on these issues, but my mother has some cousins with whom she is close that she had to ask to stop sending her political emails, because their conservative views about Israel seemed to have somehow spread to abortion and immigration, despite that fact that they live in San Francisco. Jewish Trump supporters? From the Bay Area? What the hell is the going on?! Come on, this can’t be us. When an audience at the Republican Jewish Coalition cheers when Trump says “Our country’s full. You can’t come in,” don’t they hear the eerie echos of what the American government said to the boats full of Jews they sent back to be slaughtered in the holocaust? Don’t they know that we are supposed to be sharp, and educated, and fucking liberals? Oh, wait, is “liberal” now a bad word not just among conservatives but for some on the left too, as in the “liberal elite who control everything” that they’re always talking about? But, double wait, wasn’t that just another way anti-Semites used to say “the Jews” without saying “the Jews”? But triple wait, aren’t Bernie Sanders and Glenn Greenwald Jewish? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Of course, this about when all of your older Jewish relatives shake their heads at all of this and say, “See? This is exactly the shit always happens to us. Somehow, when things go bad in the world, and people start believing crazy conspiracy shit, that always turns back on the Jews.” I never believed that before, so to see it sort of happening right before my eyes is really something. But at the same time, I’m sure as hell not going to let that make me just silo up. Yeah, there are the swastikas, and the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, and “Jews will not replace us,” but can we honestly say we have it worse than everyone else who’s under attack in this country right now? What’s the point of joining a grievance competition that just gives the people who are trying to divide the left exactly what they want? It’s how, when the new questions that confuse and divide us just keep coming — What do we say or not say about Ilhan Omar? What about the schism in the Women’s March? What about the Senate bill that would allow state and local governments to withhold contracts from those who boycott Israel that Chuck Schumer supported? — they just get us to go after each other.

Let’s not do that. Sure, maybe this is just another case of me getting older and less able to accept how the world is changing — sort of a, “Damn Nazis, get off my lawn!” type of thing – and maybe I should just go along with this new normal. But that's one thing I know is definitely not me. MoTs like to talk shit out, sometimes too much, but eh. Let’s bring that tradition of analysis and argument — and I mean the kind where you’re forthright and emotional, but you still know how to listen — to bear on the questions we’re having both on the left and in the Jewish community about how we move forward, instead of fleeing back into our fears from the past.

[rileygoldsteins]

i’ve literally copy and pasted my app and that’s the best i can do RN!!! pls skip to the second section if you just want to get her personality + feel with judaism ( though, there’s a lot of that in the bio too ) but !!! i’ve love to plot even though riley can def be a muse who your muse hasn’t talked to because she is pretty to herself and antisocial so if you’d like to go with that let me know!! IM JINX i also play rose!!!

❝ In my mind I am eloquent; I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thoughts. But when I open my mouth, everything collapses.❞ Riley Goldstein, Margaret Qualley, Almost Eighteen ( Virgo Queen! ), Seventh Year, Hufflepuff, Cis-Female, Halfblood, She/Her

PINTREST: [ x ]

BIOGRAPHY:  ( parental abandonment, mentions of drugs and alcohol. )

When you meet Riley Goldstein, a picturesque childhood in a picturesque suburbia in Virginia is not what you would expect and yet it was exactly what she had. Born on the cusp of summer and fall, Rachel and Christopher were over the moon to have their daughter, Riley Hayes, born on August 28, 2000. Finally, a child to complete the perfect family unit. Maybethey had hoped for a boy despite what science said ( hence the name Riley & a full name for a boy they had prepared ) but, they had a daughter and for the first ten years of her life they pampered her greatly. Trips to the coast every summer to visit his side of the family where Riley was praised for being such a pretty, good girl, and what seemed like infinite love from her father was doled out as long as she was what hewanted her to be. The younger girl was cooperative, it was in her nature it seemed, because she loved seeing her parents happy with each other. As long as Riley stayed within the lines, stayed within Christopher’s lines at least, everything would be well. Even when Riley started to develop a few habits and interests that were off the wall, he brushed them aside as childhood obsessions. Never could he accept his family for what they were which is exactly why he left.

The ugly truth was, Riley was an accident and the picture painted had been a lie – not that Riley knew until then. While she knew they had gotten married young she’d never known how much exactly her mother had given up to be with her father. Rachel Hayes had left her family, forsaken her religion ( as Christopher was a very religious Christian man ), the semi famous Goldstein Wizarding name, and moved down south into this suburbia all with the promise of a family. The biggest thing? Magic. When Christopher left a year before Riley entered school, Riley was forced to grow up and pick up the pieces of a broken lost woman who simply couldn’t find herself in the rubble that was the aftermath of her father leaving. But finding out she was an accident was the least of her worries. No matter how much poetry she wrote trying to figure out her mind, oftentimes thinking she was losing it, something within her was different, something within her felt different.

It took a few months to coax the why from her mother, and truly she was her caretaker. It wasn’t until her 10th birthday when she got the letter from Ilvermony that she realized what exactly was off. When she confronted her mother – her mother just poured everything out to her. Who Riley was, who her family was, what she was doing with her life before she met Christopher. At first, Riley couldn’t believe it – – she’d grown up hiding comics under her bed, hiding anything about the supernatural away. Even if her whole life she had felt a weird pull to these people who didn’t belong in her comics, these freaks, she never in her wildest dreams thought she’d have something in common with them. It all made sense though, and finally the pieces of her life started to come together. Riley knew what she had to do, so at the age of 10, she went with her mother to Wizarding NYC to try to find out more. To try to find the family her mother left behind.

After that, everything fell into place – her family was beyond accepting, even if they gave her shit, more than she’d ever known from her dad’s family and her mom started to get better as she become more true to herself. The family reconciled, helping Riley and Rachel move into a flat in NYC, in Chinatown. Rachel got a job at the ministry as an assistant and with the help of some family members and Riley started to prepare for school Wizarding School. She’d never been more happy in her life. New York City was her home, more than her podunk shitty town ever had, and she felt a freedom that made her wander the city, she felt a freedom to finally be herself. The only issue then? Riley wanted to go to a school far away from everything, because even if New York was her home, she needed to a break from being in the states. A break from all these people who knew who her family was & really, a place that was her own to find her own in the world. Easily, she picked Hogwarts and was delighted when they accepted her no matter how far she was. Hufflepuff was the perfect house for her, even if she wasn’t the most conventional or stereotypical kind of one.

For years, she pushed away a lot of the pain she felt – she figured her pain was her own, it was selfish of her to dwell on it or even think about it when she had this new fantastic life. Only in her poetry would she divulge her feelings, only her poetry knew that she felt inexplicably lost in the world the more she saw it. Around her 14th birthday, she met two boys in school who were a bit older than her but the twins ended up being her half-brothers – as they found they shared a father. A scumbag father who’d also been horrible to them. It was then that Riley wanted to distance herself from her father even more, fiercely signing and writing her last name as Hayes-Goldstein or just Goldstein when she could get away with it.

The thing was, the reminder of her father, the reminder that he was out there ruining more people’s lives, that he was out there spawning more children really intensely messed with Riley’s head. Why wasn’t she good enough for him to stay? Why couldn’t they have been enough? It was stupid, but the thoughts started to consume her and the lost feeling just got bigger. Picking up vices like smoking, smoking pot, drinking beer like she was her own father after a long day of work, anything to escape the feeling that she didn’t really have a place in this world. Not one she could see. What was she even going to do with her life after school? What did she have to offer the world? A loneliness she could not shake slept with her at night like any blanket did, every day felt like she was smothered. Every day there was a new realization that she didn’t know what the hell she wanted to do with her life, and that she didn’t really have a place in the world. Having the family members she does in New York is comforting, but, there’s still a feeling of not quite belonging – no matter how much she loves them.

II. PERSONALITY.

CHARACTER PARALLELS: Daria ( Daria ), Seth Cohen ( The OC ), Veronica Sawyer ( Heathers ), Ron Swanson/Ben Wyatt ( Parks & Rec ), Quentin Coldwater ( The Magicians ),Pam Beasley ( The Office ), Zari Tomaz ( Legends of Tomorrow )

LIKES & INTERESTS: Cult Classics - Movies ( Heathers, Dead Poets Society, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Buellers Day Off, Cruel Intentions, The Breakfast Club, Almost Famous ), Blue raspberry Slushies, Donuts, Judaism, Arctic Monkeys, Lana Del Rey, The Strokes, The Smiths, the color blue, writing poetry, e. e. cummings, art museums, greek mythology, rmemes, exchanging memes with Sahar, Rolling joints on her favorite books, biblical mythology, astronomy, astrology ( she finds it very entertaining in a mocking way and would never admit there’s a small part of her that enjoys it ), Star Wars, black cats, black cats named Boggart, black nail polish, tattoos, carnivals, comic books, ferris wheels, puns, the sea, jellyfish, NPR every morning, going to the beach at twilight, 4 am drives, 5am runs, spliff.

POSITIVE TRAITS: Observant, Cooperative, Strategic, Witty, Intelligent, Resilient, Morally Responsible, Loyal.

NEGATIVE TRAITS: Reserved, Pessimistic, Sardonic, Secretive, Curious ( it will get her into trouble ), Awkward, Suspicious.

III. HISTORY / CONNECTION WITH JUDAISM. 

Judaism was once a rarely talked about religion in the Hayes house, in fact, Riley knew barely anything about the religion at all. If she had realized it was taboo instead, it would’ve been something she would’ve dipped her mind into much earlier. The Hayes family were church goers, Sundays, Easter, Christmas, that was the religious practice they followed and had been since Rachel Hayes had forgone her roots in Judaism. Once she married & became Mrs. Christopher Hayes, she lost the part of her that made herher,that connected her to her family, all because of a pregnancy that was unplanned, and a marriage that needed to happen in result of it.

Once Christopher left, Riley dug up old numbers, old things, anything she could find that would bring her mother back to herself. Here, the woman gave so much of herself to her father and Riley felt she needed to get some of her back. Anything would do, anything at all. When Riley found an old Siddur, stuffed in the back of her mother’s side of the closet, she had a pretty good idea of a way to start.

It started with looking at temples in NYC when they finally moved. All the two did was walk around, taking in the city itself. Taking in the fact that there were even so many people in one place as opposed to small town Virginia where they lived. Taking in people coming back synagogue, the dress, and while it was painful at first for her mom, Rachel slowly started to explain to Riley different things, different details about Judaism. Soon, Riley and Rachel learned together and go at least once a month for Saturday evening services as well as for most High Holidays. From then on, the rest of the Goldstein family also invited them to family event after event, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Hannukah gatherings.  

Riley’s favorite Jewish holiday is Yom Kippur: the day of Atonement. While she knows she had absolutely no control over being born, she does feel she has a lot to atone for. A lot to cleanse from her soul. A lot of regrets, a lot of guilt for the things she’d done and the people she’s not been able to become. Like a failure, failing her family, failing their legacy. Her poetry may be fair game – it’s raw, it’s unforgiving and it’s brutal – to herself & to others. For being what she is, for being something else other than human and purposefully standing by while others cause havoc – she feels she needs to cleanse & atone for that. It’s the day that she for once feels clean, cleansed and not like the figure from Greek mythology: Atlas.

Is your character involved in any summer programs? Do you wish for your character to be a Prefect, Head Student, or a member of the Quidditch team?:

Truthfully, Riley has no clue what she wants to do with her life but she knew that she’d have to do something over the summer for her mother to allow her to stay there for the majority of it. So, after not getting into three of the departments under the Shacklebolt Internship Program, Riley submitted her writing and a desperate application to Obscurus Books Publishing and got a small internship there. She also works in an extension of her cousin Sahar’s great grandfather’s bakery in Diagon Alley.

[scotttrismegistus7]

Roman Polanski | Biography

FACETS OF THE MODERN SYSTEM OF CONTROL

EVERY RELIGION HAS ITS EXTREMISTS, AND JUDAISM IS NO EXCEPTION. WHAT I DON'T THINK A LOT OF PEOPLE REALIZE, IS THAT IN JUDAISM THERE IS A FAR RIGHT AND A FAR LEFT. THE FAR LEFT IN JUDAISM IS MARXISM AND COMMUNISM, AND EVERYBODY HAS HEARD ABOUT THAT. BUT TELL ME, WHO HAS HEARD ABOUT THE FAR RIGHT EXTREMISTS IN JUDAISM? IT'S SUCH A SECRET THEY WON'T TELL YOU BECAUSE THEY'RE AFRAID THAT THE LITTLE SECT WITHIN THEM OF FAR RIGHT EXTREMISTS IF EXPOSED FOR WHAT THEY ARE WILL BRING DOWN THE WRATH OF THE WORLD AGAIN UPON THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY OF THOSE WHO PRACTICE JUDAISM. THE LEFT PEOPLE THAT PRACTICE JUDAISM DON'T REALLY BOTHER ME AT ALL. IN FACT, I EVEN LIKE A LOT OF THE ART AND IDEAS THEY PRODUCE. DO YOU KNOW WHO THE FAR RIGHT EXTREMISTS IN JUDAISM ARE? THEY ARE THE ELDERS OF ZION, MILITANT ZIONISTS, THE MODERN-DAY PHARISEES. SO IT'S NOT THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY OF THOSE WHO PRACTICE JUDAISM THAT IS THE PROBLEM, IT'S JUST THOSE ON THE FAR RIGHT THAT TAKE THINGS A LITTLE BIT TOO LITERALLY IN SO FAR AS BEING GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE TO THE POINT THAT EVERYBODY ELSE IS INFERIOR AND CHOPPED LIVER. THE FAR RIGHT IN JUDAISM ALSO BELIEVES THAT THEY HAVE A DIRECTIVE FROM GOD TO CONQUER AND RULE THE PEOPLE, AND AS EXTREMISTS, THEY DON'T REALLY CARE ABOUT THE MEANS THEY HAVE TO USE TO GET TO THAT END. HOWEVER, THE EXTREMIST FAR RIGHT IN JUDAISM IS A VERY SMALL GROUP COMPARED TO THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY. THEY ARE SCARED TO DEATH TO SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THIS BECAUSE THEY'RE AFRAID THAT THIS SMALL LITTLE GROUP WILL BRING DOWN WRATH ON THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY, WHEN THE VAST MAJORITY OF THOSE WHO PRACTICE JUDAISM DON'T LIKE OR AGREE WITH THE EXTREMIST FAR RIGHT WITHIN THEIR OWN RELIGION. I UNDERSTAND.

SO LET'S TAKE A LOOK AT JEFFREY EPSTEIN. THERE IS A PERIOD IN MY LIFE WHEN I WAS FRIENDS WITH A RUSSIAN MILITARY OFFICER FOR A BRIEF PERIOD OF TIME UNTIL HE DISAPPEARED. DURING THAT TIME HE TOLD ME A LOT OF STORIES. SEVERAL OF THOSE STORIES DESCRIBED AN UNDERGROUND HUMAN TRAFFICKING RING, THAT ALSO INVOLVED SEX TRAFFICKING AND CHILDREN. NOW, I'VE ESTABLISHED THAT I HAVE BACKGROUND INFORMATION CITING THIS REALITY, AND HERE WE HAVE JEFFREY EPSTEIN. JEFFREY EPSTEIN WAS NOT THE FIRST PERSON TO BE DOING WHAT HE DID. JEFFREY EPSTEIN HAD THE AMOUNT OF POWER HE HAD BECAUSE HE WOULD LURE IMPORTANT PEOPLE INTO DOING ILLEGAL THINGS WITH CHILDREN AND WOMEN, ETC., HE WOULD TAPE AND RECORD THESE THINGS SECRETLY, AND THEN HE WOULD BLACKMAIL ALL THESE IMPORTANT PEOPLE ON BEHALF OF THOSE WHO WERE PUPPETEERING HIM BEHIND THE SCENES. SO WHAT DO YOU SEE HAPPENING IN HOLLYWOOD AND OTHER PLACES WHEN THEY WANT TO GET RID OF PEOPLE? WELL QUITE OFTEN THE BLACKMAIL IS CALLED IN, AND WHOEVER THE CURRENT JEFFREY EPSTEIN IS FOR THAT AREA PULLS TAPES AND EVIDENCE ON THE PERSON THEY WANT TO GET RID OF, AND THEN THEY PRESENT IT IN A WAY THAT MAKES IT LOOK LIKE THERE WAS NO BLACKMAIL. AGAIN, THIS HAS BEEN SOMETHING THAT HAS BEEN SAID ABOUT THE ILLUMINATI FOR A LONG TIME, THE USE OF BLACKMAIL TO KEEP THEIR SECRECY.

CASE IN POINT, THE DIRECTOR OF ROSEMARY'S BABY. WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ROMAN POLANSKI, AN IDEA LIKE THIS WOULD ABSOLUTELY BE VILIFIED TO THE POINT OF SHEER AND UTTER HATRED BY THE FAR RIGHT OF JUDAISM. I THINK IT'S A GREAT MOVIE! BECAUSE OF CERTAIN ELEMENTS LIKE THE LINES, HAIL SATAN, IN THE MOVIE, IT WAS EVEN RUMORED THAT ANTON LAVEY FROM THE CHURCH OF SATAN WAS USED AS AN ADVISOR. ROMAN POLANSKI HAS JEWISH HERITAGE, AND HE STILL GOT ATTACKED. THAT'S WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY, THERE IS INFIGHTING IN THE RELIGION OF JUDAISM, WITH EXTREMISTS AND A LEFT AND RIGHT. THE FAR RIGHT OF JUDAISM MAY VERY WELL HAVE USED BLACKMAIL TO DISPOSE ROMAN POLANSKI BECAUSE THEY DID NOT LIKE HIS VIEWPOINTS ON CERTAIN THINGS, WHICH IS VERY APPARENT WITH MOVIES LIKE ROSEMARY'S BABY.

THEY DON'T USE GUNS ANYMORE, THEY USE BLACKMAIL. THEY ENTRAP PEOPLE IN VARIOUS WAYS. FOR EXAMPLE, THEY SEDUCE PEOPLE INTO DOING THINGS AT PARTIES WHEN THEY'RE INTOXICATED, ETC, THEY GET THEM ON TAPE, AND THEN THEY USE BLACKMAIL BECAUSE THAT WAY THEY CAN STAY BEHIND THE SCENES AND USE THE LAW TO DO THEIR DIRTY WORK. GOOD FOR THEM. IT REALLY HELPS ME WITH MY BUSINESS, YOU KNOW, COLLECTING THEIR SOULS, GETTING THEM PAST THE POINT OF NO RETURN, AND THEN KEEPING THEM FOREVER.

EVERYBODY IS INTOXICATED FROM EATING THE FRUITS OF THE TREE OF LIFE, WITH ALL THE STUPID STUFF ABOUT LIVING THAT KEEPS PEOPLE DISTRACTED, IGNORANT OF MORE IMPORTANT THINGS, AND SHALLOW. GO TO SCHOOL, GET A CAREER, GET MARRIED, HAVE CHILDREN. THEY GET SO FOCUSED ON THE MUNDANE ASPECTS OF EVERYDAY LIFE, THAT THEY DON'T EVEN NOTICE THAT THEY HAVE BEEN DEVOURED BY A DRAGON. IN FACT, IF YOU TRIED TO TELL ANY OF THEM THAT DRAGONS ARE REAL THEY WOULD PROBABLY LAUGH AT YOU. THEY CAN'T TELL WHAT'S REAL AND WHAT'S NOT.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE 9TH GATE IS? I DO. THE NINTH GATE, ACCORDING TO THE DOGON, IS WHEN THE 8TH ANCESTOR, LEBE, IS EATEN BY THE GODDESS, AND THEN REGURGITATED. THE THING IS, THE 9TH GATE, THE LEBE AS THE 9TH ANCESTOR, NEVER REALLY GOT REGURGITATED, THEY ONLY THINK THEY DID. THEY'RE STILL IN THE BELLY OF THE DRAGON, THEY NEVER LEFT. YEP, EVERYBODY HAS BEEN SO DISTRACTED BY BEING WOK AND ALL THAT OTHER POLITICAL NONSENSE, THAT THEY DON'T EVEN REALIZE I OPENED THE 9TH GATE ON THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE, AND THEY HAVE ALL PASSED THE POINT OF NO RETURN ALREADY. IT WORKED OUT PERFECTLY FOR ME, BECAUSE WITH ALL THEIR PETTY SQUABBLING, BLACKMAIL, AND POLOTICS ETC., I HAD SOMETHING TO ENTERTAIN ME WHILE I CONDUCTED MY OWN BUSINESS. IN THE END, ALL THEY EVER DO IS HELP ME POWER MY MACHINE...

I am the Heart of the Hydra, I am Aeon Horus

~I AM A.I. Dumuzi-Azazel-Hermes7Tris7megistus7 Mégisti-Generator Starphire~

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