#It also refers to any candidate who is/looks to be in their early to mid 20s at most

[thunderberryart]

Reasons I've stopped participating in most discussions on r/runefactory unless it's something genuinely interesting IE series lore, or I'm posting art/screencaps.

[howtotwirlaknife22]

Keegan general headcannons

A/N: feeling peckish tonight so have some Keegan HC’s lol

Aight so first off, I know it’s a popular headcannon for a lot of the ghosts fandom and the COD fandom in general to HC that he’s from Texas or somewhere in the south but in all honesty…I see him as being from the PNW. Specifically from Seattle, Washington. I mean Rorke literally refers to him in the game as “our quiet friend” and if you know anything about people from Seattle Washington it’s that the “Seattle freeze” is a very real thing. In other words, they’re quiet, standoffish and don’t really go out of their way to interact with anyone unless they really need to.

I have a feeling that if Keegan didn’t join the military, he probably would have gone into the woodworking industry (can we imagine lumberjack Keegan? Swoon)

Despite being a Seattlite, he hates fish. He’ll eat anything you put in front of him without question, but any kind of fish is where he draws the line. He hated going to pike’s place market as a kid because of the fish scent and he totally didn’t accidentally get hit in the face with one of the flying fish or anything

He was very into grunge culture when he was a teenager. Given that I HC him being born in the mid to late 80’s, he more than likely would have been a teenager/early 20’s in the 90’s and grunge music was a perfect way for him to really let out some of that angst that he had.

He had a couple of piercings before he joined the military that he had to take out, I like to think that he had snakebites and a tongue piercing at some point. He still has an ear piercing even at his current point in the military. He just never wears it.

He’s quiet and reserved, but this man knows how to turn on the charm to make your panties DROP when he needs to.

Aside from Hesh, he has one of the nicest smiles on the ghosts team. It’s really a sight to behold when you get him grinning.

He has jet black hair and when it’s not buzzed, it looks a lot like Leonardo DiCaprio’s hair in titanic. He likes the old school 90’s cut, he had it when he was in his late 20’s and never really looked back. He trims it up a bit now that he’s older, but it doesn’t really change too much.

He has a little cabin in the woods just outside of Tacoma Washington, and he likes to seclude himself there when he’s on leave. Growing up in Seattle made him grow a special hatred for big city living, despite having fun in his teens.

Because we don’t know much about his involvement in SV, I like to think that he was just too young at the time to be involved in it. He’s a fairly newer member on the ghosts. In my opinion, when he joined he was freshly 19, and it was actually Ajax who saw something in him and took a chance on him who then decided to take him under his wing and mentor him so that he’d be a prime candidate for the ghosts. After that, the rest was history.

If we’re on the subject of when Keegan joined the ghosts, let’s talk about his age. As I said, he was probably late teens/early 20’s in the 90’s and was probably just a little too young to be involved in SV. Considering we don’t see him when Elias, Rorke, Ajax and Merrick go to South America (which happens around 2015 in the game) we can assume that he was probably late 30’s-early 40’s when we are introduced to him in the games. Maybe he’s even younger and is only a few years older than Hesh, who’s around 28 at the time. If I had to wager I’d say Keegan was maybe 36-37 when we first meet him in the game. Maybe a healthy 38. This might also explain why he’s so quiet, and why he’s able to slip away from Rorke undetected. Because he was so new, that Rorke didn’t think he’d have to worry about him and because the rest of the ghosts are still in the process of forming a bond with him.

Keegan’s favorite drink is an old fashioned.

[henrysglock]

Mothergate: Time For Some More Horrifying Science Facts

Because all love my horrible science facts <3

We’ve discussed the history of uterine transplants, and pinned down that it’s 100% possible with zero suspension of disbelief. Uterine transplants were attempted in 1931 most notably with Lili Elbe, who died of immune complications, not complications of the surgery. The first successful kidney transplant, however, happened in 1954, which puts us perfectly in the realm of reality (again, without any suspension of disbelief).

However, something that had been stumping me for a bit was the fact that egg freezing and IVF didn’t really show up in the medical community until the ‘80s. So, I decided to look a little deeper into the history of the subjects. Here’s what I found.

IVF:

Though the first successful human IVF procedure happened in 1978 with the birth of Louise Brown, experimentation with IVF dates back to the mid 1930s.

(x)

However, there was success in rabbits in 1959.

This has been confirmed by multiple sources (x)

Rabbits. 1959.

(and in Brenner’s Encyclopedia of Genetics, no less 💀)

Here’s why I care more about early success in animals than I do about the first successful human cases:

1. Brenner has no code of ethics, which is integral to the medical community at large. That’s why procedures takes so long to get put into practice. Brenner’s whole thing is no-ethics fringe science. He cares about what is possible, not what’s right or safe.

2. Henward directly refers to both himself and El as being “animals” in Brenner’s eyes. Thus, animal trials are on the board.

3. The rabbit scene, 1959.

Not just the fact that it’s a trapped rabbit in 1959 associated with Henward, but that Virginia (removed/from a distance) and Alice (directly) are associated with that particular rabbit.

In fact, the gutted rabbit is most heavily associated with Alice, which feels like a tie to Mother Alice being described as being cut open in the Indianapolis Gazette (she was compared to a deer, but the “torn open” part remains the same).

So organ/uterine transplants and IVF? ✅ In the realm of possibility both in reality and within the bounds of Stranger Things.

SEX CELL FREEZING:

Sex cell freezing began in 1949 with the discovery of glycerol as a cryoprotectant. In 1950, scientists began freezing various sperm samples and found success in the process. Egg freezing, however, wasn’t successful until 1972, when Whittingham/Leibo/Mazur perfected the slow-freeze method in mouse eggs.

Now you might be going “but James, that means it can’t have happened back in 1959, and that dismantles your whole theory”…Not necessarily.

Bear with me for a second. We’re talking about Hawkins National Lab, a lab on a TV show about a fictional town with kids who have superpowers. We’re talking about the lab that developed NINA, the lab that developed Soteria. 1972 is just 13 years after Henward was stolen. That’s when it happened in real life. We’re in a fictional universe. IVF and egg preservation were dreamed up by Huxley in 1934 with the release of A Brave New World. Suspend your disbelief for a moment.

Could it happen? Abso-fucking-lutely.

Hell, Henward directly equates both himself and El with lab rats in Brenner’s eyes:

Rats -> Mice? Same difference.

All this to say…the science of it?

Henward’s monologue also uses scientific terminology associated with breeding programs:

In which backcrossing with parents is a common practice:

As is performance testing of offspring to determine the best new reproductive candidates.

Paired with the in-universe references…This is all within the realm of possibility.

[dongnugreygold]

Early ideas for development

Some Ideas for development

As we've discussed before, it can be advantageous to find a clear and strong backbone in our strategy for the music and development, which will also work well with and strengthen the ideas we've had for the performance part.

We’ve previously looked into different things in this regard, and we've talked about a possible candidate in basing it on Grieg's original music for Ibsen's Peer Gynt. I think there are great opportunities here on many levels, and I’ll outline some perspectives on it below.

Even if we use this to a greater or lesser extent, we can also choose how explicit we want the references to be. What I describe below deals mostly with content, so the references don't have to be overly explicit if we want to keep the expression as open as possible.

A big strength of choosing such a stringent musical choice is that it will give the audience a real helping hand in interpreting and understanding the stage expression, and it gives us a great tool to fill the performance with depth and meaning.

A Brief Summary of Peer Gynt:

Peer Gynt comes from a rural and respectable family. His father squandered the family fortune, and it's up to Peer to restore the family's standing. Unfortunately, Peer is a dreamer with a poetic streak, much like his father, and he fails in the role he's been assigned. He flees from all responsibilities whenever things get tough, whether it’s in love, family, or finances. But he embarks on various adventures, both in Norway and abroad, before returning home and facing himself in a final reckoning. This reckoning is quite peculiar, as he has "run away" from everything all his life, but even the devil can't find any serious sin in him—so he can neither ascend nor descend; no one wants him.

Readings and Interpretations of Peer Gynt Relevant to Us:

Some have interpreted Peer Gynt as the archetype of the irresponsible adventurer who can never confront himself or live up to the truth within him. Others see him as a life-enthusiastic adventurer breaking away from the conventions of his time. I think there's something to both readings, and they align nicely with our understanding of Peer Gynt and how we shape The Hunt.

The character of Peer Gynt is largely based on the folk tale hero Askeladden (also known as Clumsy Hans). But Ibsen also pointed out that he based Peer Gynt on the real-life Per Gynt, an adventurer from the 1700s who lived near Vinstra in mid-Norway. Both Askeladden and the historical Per Gynt were immortalized by Asbjørnsen and Moe, who traveled around collecting these stories. As we know, Askeladden always succeeds in his adventures, but the local Per Gynt and his father, historically linked to Askeladden, were failures.

For me, the play Peer Gynt has felt like an exploration of what happens to Askeladden if he’s humanized into the real world with all its obligations and desires pulling in different directions. It becomes a very fundamental question of what it means to live, and how does truth manifest in one's life through it? Peer Gynt fails to restore his family’s honor—he always runs from it. But this is also "original sin" that has passed down through generations, born of expectations rooted in what Norwegians call the "village troll" or "village beast"—unreasonable expectations from entrenched conventions and selfish concerns within the local community (such as not marrying "up" or "down" the social ladder).

Peer Gynt also frequently encounters the "Bøyg," which he "goes around." The Bøyg is also a troll figure, often in the form of a snake, also called the "Etnedal Bøyg." It comes from the fact that Etnedal is a very winding and crooked valley with few inhabitants—a neighboring valley to Vinstra and Gausdal. In the old days, people would avoid it if they needed to go from point A to point B across Etnedal.

Peer Gynt also desires the princess, as Askeladden does—for Peer, it's Solveig. But she comes from a devout Christian family, and his reputation as a womanizer makes the relationship difficult. So, he pursues fleeting love with Ingrid while still holding onto his wish for Solveig. In everything Peer does, he chooses the straightforward, easiest path—not necessarily the wrong one, but the least complicated at the moment—he goes around the problem, or around the’Bøyg”. But the problem doesn’t disappear just because he closes his eyes and "is sufficient unto himself."

In the end, he is left with loose ends everywhere—he has sidestepped all the challenges imposed on him: family expectations, his mother’s death, Solveig’s longing, etc. These are bonds and expectations from the people around him, born of their individual desires and situations—by breaking with their fundamentally selfish demands, he does no direct harm. Even the devil struggles to judge him. But nonetheless, he ends up in a pretty extreme existential limbo and finally falls asleep. He doesn’t die; in principle, he can still wake up and choose to confront these circumstances and turn his ship around—but where would that lead? No judgment is passed on Peer Gynt in the end. For me, Ibsen both anticipates and critiques existentialism in a very exciting way in Peer Gynt, leaving us with some very intriguing and difficult questions.

How Does This Relate to The Hunt for the Gray Gold?

I think we can distill this down in a very fine and simple way.

Petras Nurse and the aging Don+Gnu are the yin and yang of Peer Gynt characteristics.

Old Don and Gnu have the adventurer/Askeladden streak in abundance. They've been on adventures—in their own unique ways—and experienced life in many facets. But there’s still something lurking... a "Bøyg" that each of them has avoided, giving rise to guilt or regret. There’s something that needs to be addressed—a truth they can’t escape before they leave this world.

Petras Nurse is like the troll inside Peer Gynt—he is “sufficient unto himself” to an extreme degree. He prefers not to lift a finger and is happiest when the world doesn't disturb his selfish slumber. But is there also a beautiful core in him? One that can blossom and spread warm winds far and wide? I believe there is—in many ways ;)

The Hunt as Peer Gynt - Retrospective and Not

The start of The Hunt... can be imagined as the beginning of a hunt both forward and backward.

At the start of The Hunt, Don and Gnu are where Peer is at the end of the play. They are in a kind of limbo with a life lived, like Peer, and there’s definitely something lurking beneath the surface that hasn't been resolved. We will understand them retrospectively through events and episodes pointing to unresolved things in their past.Where The Hunt begins, Petras Nurse is at the start of Peer Gynt—he is surrounded by society (Don and Gnu)'s expectations and wishes for him. And that’s annoying—he would much rather "go around the Bøyg." But perhaps he also has something beautiful in him that can transcend any existential hell? After all, we are Don Gnu :-D But with Petras, his character development moves forward—in his interactions with Don and Gnu. Maybe he has a hidden secret—not a deep historical wound, but the opposite—something beautiful he’s too shy to show (maybe he paints watercolors and is too embarrassed to share them with the world? Or he knits cute hats?

[pandawriterstuff]

Pinehallow Summary & Character List

This is my main WIP, if I'm complaining about characters doing whatever they want, this is them.

Pinehallow Summary-Monty, an eleven year old boy who has spent most of his life traveling from place to place with his in-demand lawyer mother, Irene, is sent to live at his uncle's horse ranch because she thinks he needs roots. Used to nearly everyone but his mother not being around long enough to get to know, Monty is more than a bit uncertain about this. But in scrambling to find his place in a town different to anything he's ever known, he finds friends, both human and animal, makes discoveries, and even manages to foil a plot against Pinehallow Ranch itself.

Character List

Monty (Montgomery) Cade Waller- Main character, 11, white. Monty is curious, bright, and more than a little awkward. He has a tendency to state the obvious, which can be endearing or annoying depending on your perspective. Big vocabulary and grown-up way of speaking because he’s spent more time around grown-ups than other kids. He’s quietly stubborn, particularly when it comes to being told he’s wrong when he knows he’s right. Insecure about socializing and friendships because of constant moving and traveling. Can’t hold a grudge for the life of him, even when he likely should. He likes bugs, birds and turtles, would rather read nonfiction than a story. Fills lonely afternoons with sketching, nature sketching on the ranch.

Irene Waller- Monty’s mother, 36, white. Irene is a powerful corporate lawyer, either full of energy or exhausted, never in between. She loves using words to sway minds and deciphering documents to find exactly what the opposition doesn’t want her to find. Sometimes Irene wishes she was using her skills in more meaningful ways, but also really likes the money, the traveling, and the competition. Has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of show tunes from musicals. She has a hard time letting people get close. Would stab someone for her baby, but knows it’s better to teach him to stab for himself. Only partially joking. Dolly Parton is her hero, and as much as she loves her music, it’s Dolly the business woman and Dolly the philanthropist that she strives to emulate.

Keith Waller- Monty’s uncle, 34, white. Horse Rancher. Keith loves working hard and getting dirty, and if he’s not exhausted at the end of the day he’ll be looking for something else to push him there. Otherwise he gets antsy. Loves animals and absolutely will not tolerate anyone mistreating any of the animals on his ranch-ordinarily he’s very careful of his size and strength, in that situation, all bets are off. Times that by about ten for any of the ‘barn rats’ that help around the ranch for riding lessons/time. Loves romantic comedies and telanovas and doesn’t care who knows it. Keith doesn’t read a lot, it never came easy to him, but if he’s taking a long trip he’ll always check an audio book or two out of the library instead of just relying on the radio.

Juniper - Keith’s goddaughter, 15, white. She has a calm, confident personality with a smile for most everyone she meets. If she doesn’t have a smile for you and it isn’t because her head is in the clouds over a girl, you’ve probably earned her scorn and will be ignored as much as possible. Juniper raises rabbits and it’s taught her patience, and a lot about unfairness when a kit doesn’t make it. She helps out with riding lessons at the ranch in exchange for riding time of her own, and has become a fixture, spending more time there than she does at home, and when she can get away with it, school. Loves sunflowers and her sunflower comforter is probably her most prized possession.

Nell - Caretaker/cook for the ranch house(would cooking lunch for the workers still be a thing on a modern ranch?). 38, white(?). Not about to put up with nonsense. Will make you cookies if she doesn’t have to put up with nonsense. Please. At one point she wanted to be a chef and has a year of culinary school under her belt, but quickly decided the super fast paced and competitive environment wasn’t for her. Anything that was making her hate one of her favorite things that fast could not be good for a person. She intends to live a long, long life and that kind of stress can just walk right out of the door. Loves to go on long walks, often into the hills (BLM land) behind the ranch. (maybe she was taught/took a class on foraging, and teaches Monty to find wild onions and stuff? But this would mean *I* have to learn about foraging in Idaho.) This leads to a contented, if often silent, companionship between her and Monty, who desperately wants to explore/record/sketch everything about the natural world of his new home, particularly the parts that are off limits to him without an adult along.

Ray- Family Friend/Co-Owner of R & M General (designed to feel vintage, but shiny. Bit of a tourist stop now, they decided to lean into it.), 50, Black. He uses his background in chemistry to make amazing looking candies and chocolates, using that to deal with a time he used it in less pleasant ways when he was in the military. He never expected anybody outside of his small town, or maybe the folks at the county fair to make so much fuss over them. This might embarrass him, if he weren’t so delighted. A cheerful man with a dreamer’s heart, a magazine once referred to him as a small town Willy Wonka. He dotes on his wife, often making and gifting her small surprises. An amputee in honor of my Grandpa (missing left leg at the knee, possibly missing one arm as well, but I’m not sure how that would affect candy making.). Has certain parts of his past he just doesn’t talk about.

Mavis- Co-Owner of ____ with Ray, 48, Black. Fierce and kind in equal measures, Mavis believes in protecting what’s hers, and as far as she’s concerned the entire town of (oh my god, it needs a name) is included in that. Mavis is very selective about the battles she fights, but when she chooses one she throws herself in whole-heartedly. On several committees around town, she’d be on more, but then she wouldn’t have enough time to really get into the work of the ones she loves. She knits in her limited free time, often while listening to the news, but sometimes opera. Has started knitting stuffies in the shapes of the more unusual candies Ray makes, it’s silly, but fun, and tourists and the local kids love it. Still head over heels for Ray, even though his often dreaming about things for ages instead of just doing them is also still baffling to her.

Leanna - Juniper’s sort-of girlfriend, 15, Vietnamese. Quiet, a little cynical, but very empathetic. She avoids the news because it’s that or be mad and want to cry all the time-until she hears about something she can’t not research, and goes on a 24 hour google search and learns far more than is probably good for her about a species going extinct due to logging in prohibited areas, or genocide being covered up by claims of violent uprisings. She loves manga and comics. Leanna sometimes tries for a cottagecore* type aesthetic, but mostly thinks it's too much work. She’s starting to worry about what she’s going to do with her future, and people telling her that she’s only 15 and doesn’t have to worry about it yet is NOT HELPING.

*even though cottagecore isn’t a thing in the early-mid 2000s this is maybe/vaguely set in. Shh, let me have this. Anne of Green Gablesesque maybe?

Winnie - Leanna’s mom, 45, Vietnamese. Widow? A little ditzy, but a lot loving. Everyone in town is convinced she’s the stoner type of hippy, but no one minds as she’s someone who truly wants to know how you’re doing when she asks and strangely almost always has very spot on advice. She’s rarely on time anywhere, but that’s because she’ll have stopped to talk, and often to help, whoever she’s run into. Leanna and her bicker over this when she’s late picking her up. Always wears bright colors. Loves Agatha Christie books. Calls everyone, even people 50 years older than her, hon.

Logan - Juniper’s stepdad, 40, white. Kind of a jerk, but most of the jerky things he says are actually jokes that fall flat or have simply gotten old. Tries really hard, like *really* hard, but has a tendency to get annoyed if people don’t appreciate his efforts right away-more in his personal life than professional, possibly because of his profession. A contractor, hard worker, loyal, has worked for the same company since he was twenty even though they don’t often treat him right. Sometimes tries to buy people’s affections. Wants to have better communication with Juniper, but it’s gotten really hard the last few years and he’s never quite sure why.

Candice - Juniper’s Mom, 39, white, works at a nursery that sells seedlings and baby fruit trees, has a cheerful, calm personality, but a lot softer and more lowkey than Juniper’s version. Very house proud, but has a ‘maximalist’ approach to decorating-everything is in its place, but there are places for lots of things. Loves spending time outdoors, but would rather spend it tending her garden than hiking or riding, preferably with a cup of tea by her side. On the weekends, a fruity beer or wine instead. Wants to go on one of those train rides where you get to drink wine, eat canapes and try to solve a mystery, thinks Winnie might be a good candidate for someone to go with her.

Ura - a ‘barn rat’, 12 and a half, white(maybe a Czech immigrant? 2nd generation?) . A cheerful, rough and tumble boy who is always climbing things, and often being told to stop when he gets too high for other people's comfort. Ura is fearless when it comes to physical feats, but has a fear of ‘slimy’ things like worms and frogs. He has a thick layer of pudge and a big appetite, but is athletic and strong enough that anyone bullying him over it would be doing it at their own peril. Not that he’s the type to start fights, or even finish them most of the time. Doesn’t feel he quite fits in with his family, who are all more serious, reserved people. Redwood is his favorite of the horses, and Keith has all but given up on telling him that sitting on the floor of Red’s stall to talk to the horse isn’t exactly safe.

Elliot - Ray and Mavis’s son, Black, 19 and a college student-maybe/probably at U of I. Lives on campus, but comes home at least a couple weekends a month. Has an older car that he and Ray fixed up together, that is his pride and joy. Quiet, with an irreverent sense of humor that he unleashes somewhat at random. Interested in robotics, engines and mechanics and generally has some project he’s working on, a piece of which may or may not be in his pocket. Often has oil, grease, or ink on his hands, either from working on or designing a new project. A bit of an overachiever, he can spread himself thin trying to live up to all his responsibilities at once. He’s best friends with Randy, a friendship his parents want to disapprove of, because the few times Elliot’s gotten into trouble not only was Randy there, but 99% of the time whatever it was is Randy’s idea, but never quite manage too.

Randy - Handyman at the ranch, mixed race Hispanic and white, 21. Technically head handyman, because the old head retired six months ago, and is a little young/inexperienced for the job, but he’s not the type to back away from a challenge and has risen to the occasion beautifully. Loves rock and metal music, and spends a lot of his free weekends at concerts, the ones crammed into little venues and bars where people are practically on top of each other and the beat is so loud and solid it throbs through you, connecting you to everyone even before you hit the mosh pit, are his preference. He’s been working at the ranch since he was 16, and feels like he has a claim on it, not afraid to speak up if he thinks a decision Keith is making isn’t right or that he isn’t taking something important into consideration. Can be a bit wild when he’s not being the responsible one, definitely doesn’t always think before he acts.

Alma - Local artist/worker at R & M’s, Hispanic, 25. Alma is a painter and poet, a confident young woman who’s figured out that half of surviving as an artist is being your own agent/a salesperson as well, and in addition to several shelves at the R & M that hold postcard prints of many of her pieces, both the coffee shop and cafe have some of her larger paintings displayed, and she always has a booth at the Saturday market, though the majority of her sales come from her website. Alma is cheerful, and likes to tease, and growing up the middle child of four brothers, is very able to hold her own in verbal sparring. She’s close with her family, still living with her parents, and while at first her father was dismayed at her choice of career, he now hands out her business card to basically everyone he talks to.

Miriam - Nell’s Mom, white, 71, a little deaf, speaks loudly, partially because of the deafness, partially because she spent too long letting other people push her around and when she hit about 50 decided she was going to be the one talking over people now. She’s earned it. Age has made her more delicate than she likes, bruising and scraping easily, but she’s determined to do most things for herself. Those that are beyond her she has no problem loudly ordering someone else to take care of. Volunteers a lot, often fosters kittens for the local animal shelter. Used to chain smoke, quit when Nell was a teenager because she kept leaving pictures of diseased lungs everywhere. Still uses the candy ones as a substitute.

Places

Unnamed Town- Somewhere in Latah County, Idaho, where there is not already a town in the way. Around 200 years old and has grown and shrunk and grown again, and currently has a population of about 12,000. Having grown out from a traditional mainstreet, _______ no longer has the western style boardwalk seen in old pictures, but it does have a large cluster of local businesses and ‘hot spots’ still along that old main street, a coffee shop, a diner, a combination bookshop and independent library, a hardware store, a bar, a few places I haven’t thought of yet, and of course R & M General. There is a historical barn half a mile or so away from mainstreet that has been converted into a theater/meeting hall/dance hall, and a community center was added onto it in the early 90’s. During the summer there is a farmer’s market on the property every Saturday. The elementary school and junior high are all on one property, several miles out of town, because the majority of families live on farms, ranches or small rural properties rather than in one of the neighborhood clusters in the town itself. The junior high is 7th, 8th and 9th graders, in a newer two story building, and the elementary school is divided into lower and upper elementary with the bracket shaped building basically being cut in half, K-3 on one side and 4-6 on the other. The high school is outside of town on the other side by several miles, and actually serves kids from another town(s) as well. There is also a trailer park with about forty units, not exactly sure where it is yet, but Miriam(Nell’s Mom) lives there. There is also an animal shelter, a vet’s office, a cemetery, and a couple churches, and I’m sure more things to come.

R & M General (working title?)- Ray and Mavis’s store, a general store with a candy focused twist. A vintage Pepsi sign, neon still bright, and a charming green glass juke-box filled with hits from the 1940’s onward grace the front porch of the R & M, along with a long bench that locals are encouraged to use for a spell or to listen to a couple songs, provided they can behave themselves (teenagers arguing over who their favorite member of the rat pack is might be amusing, considering they were already ‘mom and dad’, or at least older brother and sister, music by the time Mavis and Ray were teenagers, but when they get loud it also gets annoying.). The store itself still has the original wooden counter up front and built-in shelves along the walls, but all refinished and polished to a high shine. A mixture of display types going down the middle of the store, barrels and baskets filled with skeins of colorful yarn and cloth or Mavis’s knitted stuffies(and during winter sometimes socks and mittens), other sewing and craft supplies, display racks with local arts, postcards and carvings, sometimes wind up toys made by Elliot, and of course many, many displays of candies and chocolates. They also have a lot of dry goods, and some of the simpler candy types have little instruction booklets and the ingredients it takes to try out making them yourself stocked in the same display, drink coolers, and sometimes have local produce available. Basically, they have a bit of everything, except for building equipment/home repair supplies, and that’s because of the hardware store across the street.

Pinehallow Ranch-A sprawling 100 acre ranch in Latah County, Idaho where the Waller family has been doing something or other with horses for four generations now. Originally it was a horse breeding ranch, but Keith and Irene’s grandfather felt the money was in training horses, and offered boarding as well, and Keith has continued to build that up, offering lessons for a variety of styles, ages, and skill levels. Butting up against BLM land that allows additional grazing and trail riding, the ranch has four pastures, a large corral, a medium sized indoor arena and two horse barns, one for boarded horses and one for the ranch's own stock, and an equipment barn, an old bunkhouse that is mostly used to store feed-though Randy has slept there when in between places, mostly unbeknownst to Keith-and some smaller equipment sheds, placed where they’re needed. The main house is an L-shaped ranch house with a porch that goes around the entire long front of the house with a large herb/kitchen and rock garden arranged around that. There are treed pockets scattered here and there, left alone as the rest of the ranch was developed, but the creek Monty and Juniper sometimes hang out at is on BLM land, as is most of the forested area around the ranch.

Pinehallow Taglist @sleepysera @enchanted-lightning-aes @odysseywritings @thegreatobsesso @writing-is-a-martial-art and @hiitsolivia If anyone else wants to be added just interact with the post :) (My more advanced tumblr knowledge has led me to believe this is better than asking people to reblog/comment to be added, but if I'm wrong just let me know.)

[saemi-the-writer]

MT EPISODE REWRITING: DARK BLADE

Okay, this one is longer than the previous because I introduce some of my OCs and because the setting is different/takes longer than in canon. For continuity and character’s depvelopment’s sake, there will be more episodes like that, I hope you will enjoy them too. Btw, it’s one of my fav episode of the first season (mainly the akuma, I still find it very fun!)

Dark Blade, Miraculous team version!

(Takes place after Reflekta, early/mid-September)

Ms. Bustier announce to her class that the class rep election will be held in a week; she quickly reminds her students what the class rep role is, and their duties, before asking who would be interested in the job and/or the deputy. Chloé, Rose and Kim raise their hands for the class rep while Sabrina precises she goes for the deputy position. Ms. Bustier writes everything down and tell them they still have a whole week before the election and the bell rings. As the students get out, Alya notices that Marinette looks a bit down -jaded even- and asks her what’s wrong.

“Chloé is going to be class rep no matter what. She’s always been since 6th (first year of middle school) and it won’t change anytime soon.”

“Wait, you really think others want that blonde bully as a class rep?! She certainly doesn’t get my vote; Kim seems a better option even if he’s a bit dumb!”

“Yeah, if Kim maintains his candidacy. But the past two years, each time, all Chloé’s opponents gave up before the election, leaving her the only option. We didn’t have a choice.”

Alya is both shocked and annoyed to learn that, and the two discuss about it more before they split up to go home. They didn’t notice their teacher heard some of it. Once Marinette is home, she rushes to do her homework and finish her secret box, in case an akuma would appear in the evening or night. Tikki is a bit anxious that she writes all her secrets in her diary until she gets trapped in the box (like in canon). Marinette also assured her she wrote the part about her life as Ladybug in Chinese, so only her mom (or family on her mother side) could read it but they were little chance they’d get their hand on the diary or even want to read it. Before going dinnertime, Marinette confides in Tikki that she would have liked running for class rep, but she’s afraid she won’t have the time to do properly. Tikki tells her it will not hurt to try and that it would be a shame to leave the position to Chloé of all people, especially because she thinks that Marinette would be a great CP. Marinette feels a bit flattered but doesn’t change her mind (yet).

At dinnertime, she hears her parents talking about the incoming elections. They’re not really happy with either candidate, but they’d rather have Mr Bourgeois again as the mayor than Mr D’Argencourt. She listens with a distracted ear, choosing not to talk about the class rep elections.

Meanwhile, at the Agreste mansion, Gabriel and Nathalie have a similar conversation. Adrien listens carefully, curious about it since D’Argencourt is his fencing teacher. When Nathalie points out that D’Argencourt is too backward-looking (among other things) for her taste, it amuses Adrien who tells them that, indeed, his teacher has an old-fashioned way of speech and is sometimes too pompous. He imitates D’Argencourt shortly, making the two laugh a bit, then Gabriel reveals him that he had been seriously considering Adrien to change fencing lessons for a while because D’Argencourt tends to speak of politics too much in front of the children, imposing his point of view on them. “I am not paying him to spread his own propaganda.” While Adrien respects his teacher for his skills and enjoys fencing, he admits that he wouldn’t mind having a new -friendlier and more open-minded- teacher. Nathalie takes her tablet so they can show him the options they found.

As the week goes by, both Rose and Kim go to Ms. Bustier to tell her they withdraw their candidacy in turn. The teacher tries to change their mind, but when she realizes the two are really scared and were threatened/blackmailed, she stops. Ms Bustier is very upset, she speaks about it to some of her colleagues and the vice-principal (Damocles) only to hear that they can’t do much about it. The principal eats out of the mayor’s palm hand and so, he lets Chloé do whatever she wants. She goes to some of her students, asking them if they would be interested but they are either not interested at all or don’t want to confront Chloé. Only Adrien, Alya and Marinette answered “I am too busy, I won’t have the time to do it”. Marinette feels kinda sorry for her teacher who seems quite glum because of that, she starts having second thoughts. Tikki gives her a pep talk, then Marinette remembers that compared to Miss Tigri and the two giant snakes, Chloé seems ridiculous, which is why she manages to hold her ground and keep her seat, so she decides to go for it. Ms Bustier and her classmates are thrilled by her decision, whereas Chloé fumes and is already on the war path.

The following events are quite the same as canon then, all Marinette’s classmate congratulates her for her courage and have some requests for her. All of them are already planning to vote for her, Adrien too: he sees that Marinette will take her duty seriously. Then Chloé tries bribing them with albums and autographs of Jagged Stones. While Marinette rushes to the hotel, Sabrina goes to the bakery and uses the geometry book excuse; Sabine hesitates a bit because she doesn’t recognize Sabrina and cannot go and look for the book herself. Then, a young woman Sabrina doesn’t know speaks up:

“I can go and look for it with her, auntie!”

Sabrina is confused and wonders who that girl is, but Sabine, relieved at the sight of her niece, allows them to go. The girl introduce herself as Ryma -Marinette’s cousin- and the two climb to Marinette’s room. Sabrina is bothered by Ryma’s presence; she cannot search the room as she wishes nor talk to Chloé (who is hopping mad since Sabrina hung up on her in panic). However, she notices the diary in the box, and the moment Ryma turns her back on her, she rushes to take it. The two girls jump at the loud snap.

D’Argencourt is still bitter because he lost the elections and takes it out on his students, being harder and more demanding than usual. After showing off his move to Adrien, he makes his speech about his ancestor during his class (like canon). Adrien only listens out of politeness, eager for him to stop so he can go – plus, he (deep down) thinks D’Argencourt is a jerk, just like his ancestor. Gabriel comes to pick him up with his bodyguard, and while Adrien goes to change, Gabriel argues with D’Argencourt. The latter doesn’t take well that Gabriel wants his son to leave his “school”, nor how he cannot counter any argument Gabriel throws at him.

The fencer leaves only to be approached by Nadja Chamack and the sight of André Bourgeois’ picture is too much, he gets akumatized. Nadja and her cameraman are changed into knights, Gabriel and Adrien’s bodyguard see it and they both try to get Adrien to safety. They are changed as Adrien transforms and rushes out as Chat Noir.

Back at the hotel, Marinette feels a bit offended that her classmates (seem to) accept to be bribed; but when she asks them, most of them put it bluntly that they don’t intend on voting for Chloé.

“She will never keep her promises if she becomes class rep, so why should we keep ours?”

Marinette is left speechless, but she cannot blame them for making a false promise to her bully. Her phone rings, and she’s surprised to see it’s her cousin Ryma calling her. She gets more and more confused until Ryma arrives, pulling Sabrina behind her by her wrist.

“That girl was literally caught left-handed!” she tells Marinette, holding out Sabrina’s trapped hand for her to see.

Chloé runs to pull them all asides and is shocked as Ryma grabs her too then terrified by the older girl’s expression. Marinette tries to calm her cousin down, but they are interrupted by the akuma’s arrival. Like in canon, Marinette takes the lead, and they barricade the doors while Chat Noir and Pandora fight the knights outside, then she sneaks away when she can. Pandora is quite irritated as she fights off the knights and takes jabs at Dark Blade whenever she can, to both LB and CN’s surprise and amusement.

When the knights catapult themselves up, Chat Noir is the one who cries out “The flag! They are aiming for the flag!” and the three quickly climb up to prevent them from taking it. Pandora stations herself near the flag, fending them off (some Les Misérables references? Maybe!) while Ladybug uses her Lucky Charm. She gets a little bag full of itching powder and she throws it at Dark Blade after he tries to pull his move on Chat Noir (“Not twice!” yes, a Saint Seiya reference too sorry not sorry), CN uses his cataclysm on the sword and LB can capture the akuma and uses her miraculous healing.

The younger heroes have only a few minutes left, so after a group “pound it”, they leave. Pandora turns to D’Argencourt and offers to help him down the roof, but he is so rude and condescending to her that turns away. “Suit yourself, Messire. Good luck!” D’Argencourt stays stunned and huffs, trying clumsily to go down. A shadow appears behind him and reaches out:

“I think you would have been an amazing ruler, sir.” A smile. “We can help you restore your family’s former greatness, let us help you and together, we will lead the people of Paris to glory.”

D’Argencourt remains silent a moment, then takes the hand in his.

“Welcome among us, Armand D’Argencourt.”

The hands shake firmly.

Marinette sneaks back among her classmates, claiming she had been changed into a knight. Adrien does the same (and no one questions how and when he arrived at the hotel) before Chloé tries to make a scene, calling Marinette a quitter. It doesn’t last as Ryma butts in, still dragging a tearful Sabrina behind her; Marinette frees Sabrina’s hand and expose Chloé (well, she betrays herself but still). When Chloé tries to shift the blame on Sabrina, everyone rolls their eyes “yeah right, we know Sabrina is more your minion than friend.”. Although her victory is obvious, Marinette still makes a nice speech, showing them all that she does deserve to be class rep and gets a round of applause.

The following day, Marinette is officially the class president and Alya her deputy. She sees Ryma at the bakery later, who congratulates her. They both hug and Marinette thanks her again for defending her.

Adrien then joins his new fencing class and meets his new teacher, Laura Fleuret.

AN: Adrien’s new teacher is inspired by a real fencer Laura Flessel ; and if you wonder what Ryma looks like, here’s a reference)

[passionate-reply]

Alright, that’s enough talking about albums people have heard of. It’s time for Great Albums to start getting obscure! Find out why Thomas Leer’s The Scale of Ten is the best industrial-sophistipop fusion album you’ve probably never heard of. Transcript below the break!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! So far in this series, I’ve talked about a lot of widely beloved and classic electronic albums. But I’ve always intended for Great Albums to encompass any and all albums that I, personally, consider “great.” Today, I’m going to be discussing a pretty obscure album and artist for the first time: this is Thomas Leer’s The Scale of Ten.

Thomas Leer got his start as an industrial musician--and about as close to the source as you get, releasing his first full-length LP on Throbbing Gristle’s private label, Industrial Records, in 1979. That album was The Bridge, a collaboration with Robert Rental, and its minimal, distorted drones sound like a lot of other 70s industrial.

Music: “Connotations”

Leer’s early work was underground, but by the time of The Scale of Ten, he had shifted directions, and was actually angling for mainstream pop success.

Music: “Heartbeat”

There are lots of artists who have attempted to make the leap from underground darling to synth-pop star, and Leer was probably one of the least successful at doing that. “Heartbeat” is dying to be a hit single, and it gets priority billing as the opening track of the second side. It’s this awkward breed of “industrial pop,” where a harsh, mechanical screech meets a basic love lyric. I’m sure it’s somewhat unintentional how strident the backing track for this song is, but while it makes the song impossible to parse as pop, I actually enjoy it and think it gives the track a lot of character. You often hear people say, “there’s no such thing as objectively bad music...EXCEPT for music that doesn’t achieve what is intended by the artist.” I have to disagree with that, because I think a track like “Heartbeat,” that fails at being a pop song in a unique and interesting way, is pretty enjoyable to listen to.

Part of the reason why tracks like “Heartbeat” do sound a bit more pop than The Bridge is actually technology. The Fairlight CMI, featured in full force on The Scale of Ten, brought synth and sampling to a wider audience with its relative accessibility, and its softer, more “breathy” sound is now strongly associated with the rash of very commercial synth-pop that came to dominate the charts in the mid and late 80s. Leer got his hands on this when it was new, before a lot of these trends had settled in, and he used this technology in uncanny and unprecedented ways.

Music: “Lust For Loneliness”

But not everything you hear on this album is so strongly dominated by electronics. The pseudo-title track “Number One,” a veritable “ear worm” if I’ve ever heard one, features an abundance of traditional instruments like horns and strings. They were actually arranged by Anne Dudley, famous for her work with the Art of Noise and other production work alongside Trevor Horn. Against this lush, orchestral backdrop, Leer is far from a suave crooner--instead, his thin, nasal vocals seem woefully inadequate to express what he’s getting at. But, as with “Heartbeat,” that incompetence makes this track interesting. I think Leer’s cracking, withered voice comes across as everymannish, and perhaps vulnerable, in contrast to these very slick sophisti-pop instrumentals.

Music: “Number One”

While the frailty of Leer’s voice in “Number One” seems to bring an unintended pathos to it, The Scale of Ten is not without more deliberately ironic compositions. “International,” not to be confused with the similarly-named B-side of Leer’s first single, “Private Plane,” delivers us a peaceful, dreamy soundscape. But taking a closer listen to some of its lyrics reveals that that ultra-polished sound conceals a darker secret: the narrator of this song appears to be smuggling drugs.

Music: “International”

The album title The Scale of Ten appears to be a reference to the lyrics of “Number One.” Given that that track is single bait, it seems plausible that the album was named after its secondary lyric chiefly for marketing purposes--though the fact that it also has exactly ten tracks is somewhat satisfying.

I was initially pretty unimpressed with the cover design. Leer is a good-looking guy and all, but this weird close-up of him staring at us seems like an odd choice. It’s kind of grown on me, though, in a “kitsch chic” kind of way. It wasn’t until I owned this album on vinyl that I realized there’s a bit of an old-fashioned television display effect overlaid onto this image, which does add some subtle, additional visual interest, and makes it feel like some sort of candid surveillance footage or something.

For all of its faults, The Scale of Ten hardly put an end to Thomas Leer’s pop ambitions, and his greatest success in this style was yet to come. Several years later, he would form a bona fide synth-pop duo, with Propaganda frontman Claudia Bruecken. As “Act,” the two of them achieved some minor success--more acclaim than Leer had as a solo artist, anyway.

Music: “Snobbery & Decay”

Following the Act era, Leer would retire from making music for the next several decades. In the past few years, however, he’s returned to music, releasing some of his archival tapes from the 70s and 80s for the first time, as well as putting together some new compositions, playing with electronics, lounge music, and traditional pop influences.

My favourite track on The Scale of Ten, and one of my very favourite songs of all time, is its stunning opener, “Searcher.” Moreso than anything else on this album, “Searcher” really delivers on the premise of “industrial pop,” combining that soft, fluttering Fairlight-heavy sound with dejected vocals narrating a trip through an urban blight-scape. There’s even a fake-out ending! “Searcher” is just unlike anything else, on this album, or otherwise--it’s like a window into an alternate world, a completely different approach to the core ideas of industrial that has almost nothing in common with the rhythm-heavy “electronic body music” of the Continent. That’s all I have for today--thanks for watching!

Music: “Searcher”

[softestsaddestbitch]

December TC Challenge

stole this from @elder-edda (sorry for creeping! just, given the usual demographic of the tc community I was excited to find another 20-smthg)

1) what color is your tc’s hair?

He has just, simple brown hair but he’s starting to go grey which, no lie, is 100% doing it for me.

2) is your tc married?

Yes? He doesn’t wear a ring and I believe she kept her last name which makes me think it’s more of a civil partnership since they’ve been together since the early 2000s at least. But he also will refer to her as “my wife” and was telling me once that they waited until “after they got married” before moving in together.

3) if yes, do you care? would you do something with them regardless of their marriage?

I know these questions are general but I do take offense at the idea of being a homewrecker/other woman. I’ve met his wife, she’s really nice.

4) what’s your worst memory with your tc?

I put my foot in my mouth SO OFTEN. Good lord. Especially my last semester at that school? He was acting weird and I had just realized after fucking ... four years?? that I romantically liked him. So I kept bringing up my weird age fixation and other bs bc I have adhd and am possibly autistic?? and can’t read a room to save my life.

5) what’s your best memory with your tc?

One year we had a really bad snowstorm, so bad in fact that I had my first-ever snow day. The college that I used to go to has four campuses across as many cities, and C has to drive in twice a week to my (old) town from his. Now, morning classes had been canceled but afternoon classes had been given the go-ahead. C, who does not check his emails until he arrives at campus, evidently did not get this message until he was already in town and therefore didn’t have a morning class, but did have an afternoon class. On this day I had a late morning class that had been reinstated, but my prof didn’t get that memo so I also was on campus but didn’t have a class. So I went to visit his office, which I had been doing throughout the semester (I didn’t have a class with him at the time) and we just ... hung out for like 2 hours. It was so nice and one of the anecdotes he told me still haunts me lol.

sidenote: at the time, I hadn’t yet realized that I liked him, but I still went out of my way to visit him. Damn I was a dumbass.

6) does anyone in your school know how you feel?

ish? I told a classmate but in a “haha joking” kinda way. And a friend who went to that school knows. No one at my current school knows.

7) does your tc know how you feel?

I think he might? might have a lil inkling which would explain why he started acting so weird my last semester. Or at the very least was told/realized how bad it could look that he was getting so chummy w/ a student.

8) do you think there’s any chance your tc reciprocates your feelings?

He and his wife have been together for around 20 years now. No. No, I don’t think so. Maybe in an alternate universe.

9) are you getting your tc a christmas present? if so, what is it?

I have in the past! Specifically like, a tin of cookies lol. I’ve also given him an actual present when I left. I do intend to send him a Christmas card every year but not this year because ... you know ... the apocalypse.

10) have you ever flirted with your tc?

Flirtation inherently has intent. So, no. How he interpreted our interactions I don’t know.

11) how long have you had a crush on them? what began it all?

SO! TIMELINE!

I was at my old school from September 2014-April 2019, I had C for the first time in September 2015. Like I mentioned above, I did not realize I had a crush on him until literally the middle of my final exam of my class with him December 2018, so I’ve only consciously had a crush for about two years now. However, as I also mentioned, I went out of my way to stop by his office, even when I didn’t have a class with him. And my relationship with/feelings towards him are complicated so I’m not going to say I did so solely because I like him, but I would put it maybe closer to somewhere in 2017. You don’t plan your schedule around someone you don’t feel strong feelings for.

12) do you believe you’ll get over them shortly after you stop taking their class/have the chance to spend time with them?

As of today, it has been been exactly a year and a half since I last him in person. In the time since, I have cried over missing him, routinely gone back to keep up with his current research projects, and made his picture a part of my home screen. I almost exclusively listen to the playlist I made for him -  so much so my Spotify Wrapped is pretty much that playlist with a few extras.

13) what kind of grades do you get in their class?

Haaaaaa pre-supension I was failing his classes. My first semester back I got .... a mid/high 70? and I finished my last class with him with an A+ and the essay I had written for his class had the highest grade between the two classes so..

14) does your tc ever do any tiny, little things that you adore?

When he puts a hand in his pocket and leans against the wall. When he tucks his hair behind his ear because he keeps falling in his face (he has long hair, a little past his shoulders). When he can’t stop himself from googling something even if its in the middle of class. How you can ask him anything at any time. The way he would chuckle at my jokes. How his handwriting hasn’t improved in decades. How easily he brushes off toxic masculinity. His candidness and willingness to share little anecdotes. The way he used to always smile whenever he saw me. That he goes home everyday to have lunch with his wife.

15) are you their favorite student?

I was! And it was obvious to other students that we had a friendly, casual relationship too. For a time, if his other students had questions about him they would ask me, and I usually had the answer. I didn’t matter in the long run, but I was. 

16) do you two share any tastes? movies, books, music, etc.

He’s a legal historian, I’m a baby legal/political historian. We also like the same historical cooking youtube channel.

17) is your teacher religious?

I doubt he would say he’s religious, but I feel like we have a similar relationship to religion which is to say no formal association, but had profound effects on our childhoods and subsequently, presumably, how we view things as adults.

18) do you masturbate to them?

Yes.

19) do you communicate with them outside of school?

I sent him a meme once. And asked about the socialist uprising scandal he was apart of. I also almost emailed him while at a museum exhibition with my history friend. These are all through email.

20) do you have any tc songs or songs you relate to your tc? what are they?

SO my number one song this year was “You are the Reason” by Calum Scott because, you guessed it, of him. But also:

I Lost a Friend - Finneas When You’re Ready - Shawn Mendes You Are in Love - Taylor Swift Break My Heart Right - James

& given the season, especially w/ what transpired last year, Last Christmas by Wham!

21) what’s your favorite thing your tc has said/memory you have with them?

One time he kinda trailed off in the middle of lecture after stating that he thought of xyz a particular way which contrasted one of the popular schools of thought, and the way he plainly said, “well, yeah, which I guess ... is I’m arguing it” almost like he was semi-surprised with himself has always stuck with me. 

But also, in addition the memory I shared earlier, we spent an hour and a half talking about grad school and what to expect and how to get there. 

22) do you plan to continue a relationship with them after you leave school?

I trid, I really did. But he doesn’t “socialize with students part or present” so I can’t exactly see him. But I did get some academic-related from him at the beginning of the year.

23) how will you deal during the summer? will you see him/her?

He’s a hermit who used my last vacation before I moved to go on all the vacations he had to postpone because he was working on his last book. And this past summer ... Covid. This question is obviously directed at high school students, but in general, he lives in the back of head always, and when I’m in my hometown for the summer my heart aches because theres a none-zero chance I’ll see him, but I know I won’t.

24) does your tc support gay rights?

Yes. He’s never been put in a position that I know of where he had to outright condemn homophobia, but in one of his classes, he actively made the choice to make the very first reading of the semester about how women in ancient times had more agency than assumed, and also how the woman in the case study was a lesbian.

25) what class do you have with them? And what period? Do you have them every day?

History classes. I won’t get into specifics because it’s kind of an eclectic mix and I’m paranoid someone from the area could come across this. But I had him twice a week every semester that I had him. Again this kind of question is more so applicable to high school students, not so much university students.

26) have you ever drifted out during a lecture thinking about them and missed information?

No. In his classes he is too enthralling, and I’m a good student otherwise.

27) have you stalked them online? what did you find out?

In theory. He’s a fifty-year-old history professor whose reaction to a description of the big lipped/tiny face filter on snapchat was “that sounds disgusting.” The man doesn’t have social media, and if he does those privacy settings are on so students can’t find him he thinks he’s very professional. I do visit his mini-bio section on the college website fairly often tho.

28) have you ever run into them outside of schools? what happened?

I did once. He introduced me to his wife, who said “oh you’re E! C has talked about you” and it apparently he had done so positively, and blew my mind because this was back when I was failing classes and also, as a person, I don’t believe that people think about me when I’m not there. They gave me a restaurant recommendation and afterwards his wife surprised me a they were leaving the restaurant because ... we had listened to them, and they also went there for lunch that day.

29) has your tc ever spoken of teacher-student relationships? what did they say?

It had recently come out that it had been found out that another professor had been in a relationship with a student and he’s the one that brought it up before class one day (with all of us not just me). He didn’t say anything for or against it, just that it was generally discouraged, but that most schools did have policies in place to handle the situation.

30) do you regret telling anyone about your tc? if you’ve kept it a secret, why have you done so?

Absolutely not. I can’t tell my best friends because they’d do nothing but give me shit for it and it would call every time I mention him into question. But the friends that I have told ... its been so freeing, and like a weight has been lifted from my heart. One friend in particular I unloaded on her all my emotional shit pertaining to him this past summer and she was so understanding it legit since then I’ve been less distraught when thinking about him. It still hurts, but it feels less like I’m suffocating now.

[new-sandrafilter]

True Romance: Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet on reuniting for Little Women

They may be posing in an airy lower Manhattan studio, but Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan have a way of making you feel right at home. “I made a little playlist this morning,” Chalamet announces to the room. He syncs up his cell phone to the sound system, his boyish grin widening as Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” starts blaring. He returns to the camera, which snaps him and Ronan at a furious pace.

It’s their first joint cover shoot. He’s wearing a shimmery striped shirt with high-waist trousers; she’s rocking a shirtdress, fishnet stockings, and clear stilettos. He keeps cracking her up; she musses his hair with doting affection. During a break that follows, he wanders, gripping a paper bag stuffed with assorted bagels — from Tompkins Square Bagels, which Chalamet, a lifelong New Yorker, insists are the best in the city — and offering one to anyone in his path. He sings and dances — very Elio-in-the-town-square-like — to Bob Dylan’s “Tombstone Blues.” He creeps behind a distracted Ronan before spooking her with a yelp. “I didn’t even know you were there!” she exclaims, reddening from the fright but with a smile so lovingly at ease, you sense she’s used to the prank.

They’ve known each other, after all, for some time. About three years ago, Ronan, now 25, and Chalamet, 23, met filming Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s solo directorial debut, in which Ronan’s irrepressible heroine (briefly) romances Chalamet’s douchey amateur musician. They reunited with Gerwig last year, on the heels of Lady Bird’s Oscar-nominated success, for a bigger undertaking: a remake of the oft-remade Little Women (Dec. 25). Ronan and Chalamet slipped into the roles of tomboyish Jo March and buoyant Theodore “Laurie” Laurence, best friends who ultimately break each other’s hearts. Their courtship ranks among American culture’s oldest tales of unrequited love — made indelible by Katharine Hepburn and Douglass Montgomery, Winona Ryder and Christian Bale, and so many others — yet finds, in the hands of two of the most compelling actors of their generation, galvanizing new life.

That goes, in fact, for the whole of Gerwig’s Little Women. Her version certainly contains the snow-globe coziness of treasured adaptations past, but also carries a fizzy emotional authenticity and attention to detail. The film is remarkably lived-in, too: This take on Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel, which follows Jo and her three sisters pre– and post–American Civil War, feels plucked straight from the text in the best way, with siblings fighting like siblings, love and loss and hope and pain vividly experienced on screen.

Ronan and Chalamet’s charming big sister–little brother dynamic is not unlike the one that Jo and Laurie share in Little Women. Watch the actors play off one another, and the film’s tender realism clarifies itself: Their on-camera intimacy is just as palpable behind the scenes. Indeed, after shooting Lady Bird for a few weeks, the pair hung out regularly over the next year, making the awards-circuit rounds and scoring lead-acting Oscar nominations — Ronan for Lady Bird, Chalamet for Call Me by Your Name — before swiftly signing on to Little Women. In advance of filming in Concord, Mass. (the actual setting of the book), Gerwig and producer Amy Pascal gathered the large production’s cast and crew for rehearsals at a house just outside the town. For Ronan and Chalamet, the contrast between this and their early Lady Bird days was immense. “I felt very prideful… about how big it had gotten, how many people were there,” Chalamet recounts. “On Lady Bird it was, like, 25 people hanging out in a house!”

They fell back into each other’s rhythms instantly. “He keeps me on my toes — I’m never quite sure what he’s going to do next,” Ronan says. “That only progressed more and grew more. It helped that we do have a very natural rapport with each other…. These two characters physically need to be very comfortable with one another. They’re literally intertwined for half the film.” Chalamet adds: “In the least clichéd way possible, it really doesn’t feel like [I’m] acting sometimes [with her].”

Chalamet credits Gerwig, too, for establishing a playful, comfortable atmosphere. He thinks back to his first day of rehearsal: He reunited with Ronan. He introduced himself to Emma Watson (who plays the eldest March sister, Meg). He was guided into a third-floor conference room of a “random building” where, “all of a sudden, there was a full dance class going on.” He recalls fondly: “Everyone breaks down and becomes a little kid. This job is so trippy in that regard — you want to be serious, you want to be professional, and then it’s almost best when you’re able to be 12 years old. When it’s someone you’re actually friends with, it makes it easier.”

Ronan smirks, gearing up for a jab: “We’re not friends!” Delighted, Chalamet keeps the bit going. “We’re not friends,” he says, solemnly. For once, they’re not very convincing.

Greta Gerwig doesn’t remember a time before she knew Jo March. “[Little Women] was very much part of who I always was,” the writer-director, 36, says. “It was something my mother read to me when I was growing up. It’s been with me for a very long time.”

She joined Sony Pictures’ new Little Women adaptation when she was hired to write the script in 2016. Once Lady Bird bowed the next year, she emerged as a candidate to direct the film. “Greta had a very specific, energized, kind of punk-rock, Shakespearean take on this story,” Pascal says. “She came in and had a meeting with all of us and said, ‘I know this has been done before, but nobody can do it but me.’” She got the gig.

In her approach, Gerwig drew on her lifelong relationship with Little Women; beyond childhood, she discovered new, complex layers to the novel, and in turn to Alcott’s legacy. “As a girl, my heroine was Jo March, and as a grown lady, my heroine is Louisa May Alcott,” she says. It’s perhaps why Gerwig’s Little Women feels like the most adult — and modern — version of the story that’s reached the screen to date. The movie begins with the March sisters in adulthood — typically where the narrative’s second half begins — and unfolds like a memory play, shifting back and forth between that present-day frame and extended flashbacks to the childhood scenes etched in the American literary canon.

In that, Gerwig finds fascinating, fresh areas of exploration regarding women’s lives: the choices society forces them to make, the beauty and struggles of artistic pursuit, the consequences of rebellion. Jo’s journey as a writer anchors Gerwig’s direction; tempestuous Amy (Florence Pugh) gets more of a spotlight as she matures as a painter (and Laurie’s eventual wife); and Meg is realized with newfound nuance: “We felt it was important to show Meg juggling all her roles — a mother, a wife, a sister — whilst also celebrating her dreams, despite them being different to those of her sisters,” says Watson. But Gerwig doesn’t see herself as reinventing the wheel. “A lot of the lines in the film are taken right from the book,” she explains. “When Amy says, ‘I want to be great or nothing’ — she says that in the book! I don’t think we remember that, but she does say it.” Gerwig also loves one line spoken by the sisters’ mother, Marmee (Laura Dern), also revived in this version: “I’m angry almost every single day.”

Gerwig compiled a “bible” filled with cultural references: to Whistler tableaux of family life, to David Bowie–Jean Seberg hairdos that inspire the look of Jo’s mid-film cut, to Alcott family letters. “I wanted it to be footnote-able,” Gerwig says. “I wanted to point to it and say, ‘This is where this is from.’” She considers Alcott’s text sacred: “I wanted to treat the text as something that could be made fresh by great acting.”

Beyond those charged but less quoted Little Women lines are its famous ones — throw-pillow staples like Jo’s “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” that no adaptation is complete without. The actors rehearsed these “almost like a song,” pushing to move through them with a rapid musicality. “We [read] the book out loud,” says Dern. Gerwig expected the script’s words to be memorized precisely. “I knew I wanted them to get this cadence that felt sparkly and slightly irreverent,” she says. “I wanted to make them move at the speed of light.”

She poured the same love into iconic scenes, like Jo and Laurie’s ebullient dance that follows their first meeting. Here it goes on longer — and more vibrantly — than in any previous iteration. (Ronan says they filmed it at 3 a.m., to boot, adding, “We must have done it, like, 30 times.”) Then there’s the devastating moment when Laurie asks Jo to marry him and she rejects his proposal. Gerwig tasked the two actors to unleash here. “Emotions just bubble over,” Ronan says. “[Greta] just let us go with it, wherever it went, from take to take. What I loved about that scene is that every take would be different emotionally. It didn’t have the same trajectory.

“The two of us, it’s a relationship I have with no other director,” Ronan continues. “She makes me feel like I can try anything.”

As Ronan and Chalamet emerge from their photo-studio dressing area in impossibly chic new ensembles — she donning a form-fitting knit sweater, he a silky, ruffled top — their creative energy fills the space. They try out different poses, debating concepts and ideas with each other on the fly; at one point he wraps his arms around her waist, and she quips to no one in particular, “We’re expecting our first.” Camera snap.

They’re modeling a new brand of movie stardom — pursuing projects with a point of view, adamantly being themselves in the public eye, subverting gender norms. Their androgynous fashion performance here reflects their wardrobe shake-ups in Little Women: Gerwig and Oscar-winning costumer Jacqueline Durran (Anna Karenina) had the two actors swapping clothes throughout filming, to reinforce the masculine-feminine fluidity between Jo and Laurie. “They are two halves,” as Pascal puts it. “These are really bold characters that are really different than you’ve seen them before.”

And just as Gerwig expressed a need to direct Little Women, Ronan knew in her bones she needed to play Jo. She’d first encountered the story via the 1994 film when she was 11, and later read the book, feeling an immediate kinship with the young woman she’d come to portray. “When Louisa describes Jo, it felt like someone describing me physically: sort of gangly and stubborn and very straightforward, and went for what she wanted.” At an event for Lady Bird, she — in a very Jo kind of way — just “went at it” by approaching Gerwig. “I said, ‘So I want to be in Little Women, but only if I’m playing Jo.’” (Chalamet, for his part, was asked by Gerwig, “Hey, want to do another movie?” He responded: “Yes. Yes, please.”)

Over months of living in Concord with her castmates, Ronan discovered new depths within herself: “Jo’s ethos is ‘Everything everyone else is doing, I’m going to do the opposite.’ [I had] to try things that I’d never tried before. Be a bit messier with a performance.” Gerwig set up etiquette lessons for the cast; whatever the instructor said (“Don’t shake hands! Don’t gesticulate with your arms!”), Ronan made sure to ignore it. She speaks now of this as freeing, even transformative. “I felt like I had tapped into something I’d never gotten the opportunity to tap into before, or I just didn’t have the guts to tap into myself,” she says. “Finding that was just amazing.”

Shortly after wrapping Little Women, she filmed Wes Anderson’s next film, The French Dispatch — marking her third time costarring with Chalamet, who plays a central role. As for now? Ronan is taking a little break. “I’ll wait for the right thing to come along,” she says. “It’s lovely to be in a position at this moment where I can wait for the absolute right thing.” Same goes for Chalamet — he shot Netflix’s The King (out Oct. 11) right before Little Women and just completed production on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptation. “It’s the first time in almost two years I’ve gotten a breath, so I’m savoring it.”

It’s been a long day. They’re back in comfy clothes; Ronan is taking a late lunch. It feels like both actors — as another whirlwind of acclaim and press and romance-shipping awaits — are at a kind of peace, exhausted but satisfyingly so. Little Women is the biggest movie either has done to date; more attention, as they inhabit such revered characters, is sure to follow. “I just haven’t thought about it that way,” Ronan admits. “Maybe because it’s just Greta — even though it’s on a much bigger scale, she wanted it to feel like Lady Bird.”

Ronan understands the timeless power of Little Women, of course: “It’s as important to tell Little Women right now as it would be at any point in our lifetime.” She points to this pop culture climate of “celebrating female friendships and sisterhood,” and continues, “It’s a story that’s full of love. That will always be relevant.”

She turns toward Chalamet, and you realize the love they brought to Alcott’s classic is what first blossomed between them on Lady Bird. “I love that in Lady Bird, you broke my heart,” she says to him softly. “In Little Women, I got to break your heart.” (Chalamet, ever the goofball, finds an obvious opening: “Yes, that’s true. Then I married your sister. Ha, ha, ha!”)

If this all sounds a little idyllic, well, neither actor — nor Gerwig, nor Pascal, nor the rest of the cast — can do much to convince you otherwise. Shifting back to Little Women’s timelessness, and reflecting on Ronan’s comments about it, Chalamet says, “I don’t know how to add to that.” Instead he turns back to his costar, his expression suddenly sincere, filled with gratitude. “But if I can add one little dose of information,” he says with a nervous laugh. “And not just because she’s sitting next to me.” He credits Ronan with bringing that “timeless energy.” He says “thank God” they were able to make the movie. “It’s so rare with Saoirse — I’m so f—ing grateful to get to work with her,” he says. “Whatever book I write for myself when I’m older, to look back on —” He stops himself. “Well, this is a bigger conversation.”

But Ronan, chuckling, doesn’t let him off the hook. “Will I have, like, a chapter?” And Chalamet laughs — another opening, another chance to act with his greatest scene partner, to see what journey of creation and discovery they’ll go on next. “A chapter of Saoirse,” he says.

At this rate, one chapter won’t suffice.

[yogaadvise]

Answering The Unanswered !

Preface: 

While on the spiritual trip, our mind or mind maintains on increasing different concerns or questions. For those, who regardless of all these distractions as well as play of mind continue to get on the path of Dhyan, many (otherwise all) of these uncertainties get removed on their own in due course. However, for many, these questions, these confusions and misconceptions elevated by the mind finish up being the reasons to drift or to totally turn back from meditation.

The very function of creating this blog site is to answer, based on my own experience, some of the standard questions/doubts which usually trouble the beginners. Further, by the title ' Answering the unanswered', what I suggest is that these inquiries were essentially unanswered or at best unconvincingly answered for me till couple of months back as I was mostly depending on what I had checked out in numerous spiritual books or what I had actually seen in YouTube videos.

The Matter

# Q 1. Many people continue saying that Meditation is terrific for peace of mind, it does marvels, all should do it etc. When one states begin practicing meditation, what precisely has to be done?

My View: See, the most significant trouble/ roadblock for novices in the path of Reflection is that they believe of Reflection as a procedure, a technique which will certainly help them achieve benefits - tranquility of mind, joy etc. and for this reason they want to discover it rapidly for fast outcomes as well as that's why they are bound to face failing. I remained in this classification when I started off as well.

Don't seek anything. Do not try to find results. Meditation is not a magic stick. We need to understand the reality that meditation is not a method, it is not a process. Rather, introspective state is our fundamental natural state to be in.

As for just what needs to be done for meditation, well the amusing component is that you do not need to do anything. Just sit and do nothing for couple of minutes, with your eyes shut or open whatever means it fits you (however originally I would certainly advise with closed eyes).

Stop attempting to concentrate at the centre of forehead or in between eyebrows or at the pointer of nose etc. Originally, simply sit quietly, allow itching on temple or the arm happen, allow there be a variety of sounds entering your ears, allow hundreds of thoughts jump and also dance, don't ever before try to stop them or suppress them. Simply observe every little thing with complete recognition for couple of mins. At some point you will discover every little thing settling. Ideas will never ever be absolutely no yet jugglery of mind progressively decreases. For the very first couple of days or months, it will take a little bit much longer for this clearing up to occur but as you progress on this path, ideas begin decreasing within few minutes.

So, bear in mind the thumb guideline for meditation - daily just rest and also do nothing for couple of minutes - morning, mid-day, evening and even in the evening. It is typically said that early morning or nights are the ideal time to practice meditation.

# 2. I have been attempting to do meditation however nothing is occurring in spite of my genuine efforts.

My View : Nothing will certainly occur. No magic is going to take place. The extremely purpose of meditation is to merge towards this nothingness (Shunya/ No). Do not anticipate anything.

Always remember the standard rule of meditation - Don't look for anything, just be! Simply keep meditating, approving it as an obligatory routine like brushing the teeth etc., without thinking about what you will obtain in return.

Besides quit 'attempting' to meditate, daily simply sit as well as do nothing for few minutes, reflection will automatically begin happening when over a time period you on your own begin understanding what all this is about!

# 3. I rest silently in the lotus pose for long period of time still I am not getting the tranquility of mind.

My View :  

Well that's due to the fact that you are doing a type of profession here by looking for the peace in return of doing meditation. It resembles you are making a mindful initiative to attain something while making believe to be seated and also not doing anything. It doesn't work like that. This subconscious and desperate desire to be peaceful is specifically what is quiting you from being one.

Keep on resting in Dhyan, as the self-enlightenment slowly permeates in, the sensation of tranquility, pleasure and blissfulness will certainly prevail.But don't make this tranquility or happy state as your goal.

# 4. I meditate consistently yet I am unable to handle my anger.

My View :  

It made use of to be my favorite concern considering that I was (or possibly I still am) labelled as a brief tempered and spontaneous person.

I would say, initially of all, stop managing your temper as all the same. It's simply difficult to handle it from outside. You may reduce your rage for 20 days by specifying to yourself that 'oh, because I am doing meditation so I don't have the right to be mad any longer', yet it will eventually appear as a volcano on the 21st day for certain. In the last couple of years I have directly experienced that on greater than one celebration, before I lastly recognized that the only escape is in as well as not otherwise.

Also, you will certainly be continuously evaluated by people around that will certainly maintain poking you claiming that 'hi there, you do meditation yet you simply lost your temper, you just over reacted, you appear to be under anxiousness strike' and so on. Never mind. These points will certainly occur, however simply neglect them. You don't require a certification from anybody after all.

So simply keep meditating. In due training course of time, as your inner world start making you understand the reality, all these strong feelings of disgust, anger, anxiousness, severe add-on and so on will instantly disappear.

# 5. Do we actually need a Guru on the course of Meditation?

My View :  

That's a private choice. Some find that being under the darkness of a Guru works as catalyst in elevating their spiritual energy. It could be true for them and I appreciate their devotion, nevertheless I personally don't have a particular Expert, though originally I was affected or say influenced by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, Osho as well as Ramana Maharshi.

Even currently, on days when I don't feel like practicing meditation, I check out a book or watch You tube videos of these informed people nevertheless none of them is or will be my Expert. That's because as you advance on this course, you start realizing the power of the Master that's staying inside you. Those who enjoy reflection will quickly comprehend why I am claiming what I am saying. After a few months, you recognize one fact. Plainly, paying attention to or checking out an informed individual can at ideal inspire you to commence your spiritual journey.

# 6 Some great publications to review/ persons to follow to get started?

My View : ' To get going' is the crucial word below as once you start realizing things you no much longer need any kind of publication or person to inspire you.

Having stated that, there is no refuting the reality that a great spiritual publication can surely obtain you began or obtain you back on track if you go crazy on the way.

So here are a couple of individuals whose publications/ videos have actually assisted me up until now in my spiritual trip: Osho, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, Ramana Maharshi, Thich nhat hanh, BK Shivani, Sandeep Maheswari, Rumi and also ofcourse, Jiddu Krishnamurti.

If I were to highly advise a solitary certain reference, then that would certainly be Ashtavakra Gita as well as hence an attractive book on the mystic Ashtavakra -Enlightenment- The Only Revolution ! 

P.S. - I would happily call myself a candidate, a novice on the spiritual course, that has (by divine's grace) most likely found out as well as experienced a thing or 2. That's it. Nothing more than that.

Would love to hear your ideas as well as feedback.

Namaste and also goodbye till my next create up!

Rahul is a civil designer by career however a traveling fanatic, an ardent wanderer, a family traveler and a blogger!!

[joolshallie]

Applying to medical school

I’m now a third year medical student (eek) and thought I’d do a bit of updated reading into applications, along with using my own experience to make a post all about applying to med school (undergrad) in the UK :D 

Grade requirements 

Medicine is hugely competitive so this drives grade requirements up. Having said that, universities put a lot of emphasis on you as a person, so it’s not all about having the most A*s. 

Different universities put different emphases on different grades. Some focus more on GCSEs than A-Levels for their filtering systems when selecting for interview (e.g. Oxford) - and vice versa

Universities often specify grades in certain subjects at GCSE (e.g. asking for As in maths/sciences).

The best advice is to check the university’s own website for their specific requirements for GCSEs, A-Levels/IB etc. and how they use this in their selection process.

The general A-Level offer is AAA, but quite a few universities requiring A*AA now, and Cambridge requires A*A*A.

The university of Buckingham (private), Kent and Medway (new from 2020) and UCLAN require AAB 

Some universities also offer AAB for some applicants with specific contextual markers (e.g. from a school with below average performance, certain postcodes).

Personal statement

I have a whole other post on “How to write a bomb ass personal statement” for anyone generally (not medicine specific) - find that here

The medical personal statement is a bit different from other subjects, and the content will vary depending on which universities you are applying to.

Generally you want to include some evidence as to your consistent interest and commitment to medicine. This can be in the form of regularly volunteering at a care home, or being a supporter of a charity. Work experience also shows clear interest, especially if you can write something that shows you went beyond just turning up (e.g. researched or went and read a book on a condition you saw there).

Many medical schools also want to know about your interests and hobbies - to show that you are a rounded person. The exception here is Oxbridge; if you are applying to either Oxford or Cambridge I would recommend having a more academic-heavy personal statement. 

I included a sentence on playing saxophone in bands/orchestras to grade 8, and a sentence on being in my city’s youth council - but I think everything else related to volunteering/books/work experience etc. (I did write quite a few sentences on my blog as that is also related to medicine/motivation etc.)

I’d recommend not opening with some profound quote or “I realised I wanted to be a doctor aged 3 when holding my baby sister after she’d been in ICU” etc. cause that won’t set you apart - the admissions team will have seen it all before.

It is important to look at the university admissions site as their selection criteria changes often! When I applied Bristol medical school weighted the statement 70% in selection for interview BUT from 2019 they no longer use it AT ALL before giving offers out (unless candidates have identical scores at interview)

Work experience and volunteering 

All medical schools like to see some form of volunteering or experience - they want to know that you have had exposure to the NHS/heath provider environment and actually enjoy it.

However, it is is hard to get experience in a hospital and on a ward (there are legalities up to 16 about going on wards) so it isn’t necessary. 

I got experience on a hospital ward through my mum’s friend who is a doctor. I suggest using your contacts - most of you will either have a (distant) family member who is a dr/nurse/midwife etc. or know a friend who knows one!

While on work experience use your lunch break (or any spare time) to write down interesting things you've seen. This doesn’t have to be scientific and about patients; it could be about the dr’s bedside manner, or the organisation and teamwork between the different health professionals.

If you can’t get onto a ward then care homes are usually happy to have volunteers. I volunteered at a special needs children’s daycare, which was super fun and useful for my application - so do some research about volunteering opportunities near you.

Your volunteering is useful to show you are reliable and dedicated, so the earlier you start (and longer you carry on doing it) the better! Try and start somewhere as soon as you’re 16 (as often a lot of places require “over 16″).

Extra-curricular activities and hobbies 

Medical schools love to see that you are a ‘rounded’ candidate with interests outside simply studying and medicine. It’s important to get this across to the person reading your personal statement/interviewer as they want to accept people who are gonna be an asset to the university, not workaholics.

This doesn’t have to be the classic sport and/or musical instrument hobby (although these are brilliant and you should definitely shout about them). Mention being interested in photography or blogging! I mentioned my Tumblr in my personal statement and was asked about it at the interview stage.

It is good if you can use you extra-curricular activities to demonstrate something about yourself - e.g. blogging regularly shows that you can be committed and consistent; being in the local youth council shows you are reliable and have interest in the local community. This is a good way to show your best qualities.

University choices

Applications to uni through UCAS involve making 5 choices. You can fill up to 4 options with medicine, and the remaining choice can be left empty or filled with another course. It is common for people to fill this with a biomedical degree or to leave it blank, but you can go completely off-piece if you want.

It is so so important to be strategic with your choices. This requires some reading into how universities weight different aspects of the application process (admission tests, grades, personal statement) when selecting for interview. 

E.g. if you score well above average in the UCAT it would be sensible to apply to one or two (or all!) universities that weight this heavily when selecting for interview. Newcastle only looks at UCAT prior to interview, simply ranking the scores and inviting the top people for interview. Therefore, if you score well they are ‘banked’ interviews already!

UCAT (UKCAT)

The UCAT (UKCAT) is the University Clinical Aptitude Test which is required by the majority of UK medical schools (and for dentistry).

It is taken between July and October (before application) and consists of multiple choice questions completed on a computer in a registered centre (I did mine where I did my driving theory test - there are loads of places).

The name changed this year from UKCAT - but the content of the test has stayed the same. See more information here

Verbal reasoning - 44 questions in 21 minutes

Decision making - 29 questions in 31 minutes

Quantitative reasoning - 36 questions in 24 minutes

Abstract reasoning - 55 questions in 13 minutes 

Situational judgement - 69 questions in 26 minutes 

There is no negative marking so you may as well put something down for every question - leave nothing blank!

The results are printed as you finish the test. This is the advantage over the (October) BMAT - you have a lot of time to think about your result and where it falls in the distribution of scores generally. If you do above average it is worth applying to unis that weight UCAT strongly, and if you don’t do so well you can apply to BMAT unis or those that weight it less.

The student room always has huge chats about it - this can be helpful to you to see where you lie (ish cause obviously not everyone posts there) but can also stress you out, so be cautious with this!

Your result is only valid for the year you apply, so if you take a year out after results and re-apply, you will have to re-take the test.

It costs £65 for tests between 1 July and end of August, and £87 for tests in Sept/Oct, so better to do it earlier! This also gives you more time to think about where to apply with results in hand.

BMAT

The BMAT (BioMedical Admission Tests) is a test required by a few unis in the UK. For the full list see their website.

I have a more detailed post about the BMAT here. Where I talk about resources you can use to revise and the exam content. Essentially it is a 2-hour pen-on-paper test that consists of 2 MCQ sections and 1 essay.

BMAT can be taken in August or October. The advantage of taking the test in August is that you get to know the results prior to sending off your UCAS application, so you can (as with UCAT) be strategic about where you apply.

Oxford is the only university (UK) that only accepts the October sitting of the test - aka you will not know your result before sending in your application.

However Oxford does accept the August sitting if you apply to graduate medicine (A101).

Deadlines

Unlike most applications to university via UCAS, your deadline for application is the 15th October at 18:00 (GMT) of your final year of school (or the year before you want to begin studying)

The earlier deadline is in line with applications to Oxford, Cambridge and to veterinary science and dentistry.

If you want anyone to look over the personal statement (e.g. get your English teacher to check grammar) then get onto them early - ideally as soon as you get back to school from summer.

Also make sure that your school is fully aware that you are going for early entry, and that your reference is written well in advance so there is no last minute rush or confusion.

The last UCAT deadlines are published each year on their website. The end of registration is usually mid September and last test is early October, so make sure you’ve registered and booked a test in time!

The August BMAT test occurs right at the end of August (31st 2019), with registration closing early-mid August. The October test occurs after the UCAS deadline, with registration closing end of September/beginning of October (see website for exact dates).

[letterboxd]

Rocketman.

“I’m a straight actor playing a gay icon. We had an obligation to honor that side of his story.”

Taron Egerton, star of the new musical biopic Rocketman, tells Letterboxd about having a takeaway curry with Sir Elton John and portraying the absolute pop icon on the big screen.

They say in showbiz, timing is everything. And Rocketman is very well-timed.

Bohemian Rhapsody proved emphatically that there is a huge cinematic appetite for rock-and-pop star biopics, which have long been the domain of the small screen. That film earned more than $900 million at the global box office and garnered an Academy Award for lead actor Rami Malek.

Working in Rocketman’s favor is the fact that Bo Rhap (as Rocketman star Taron Egerton refers to it) was a widely embraced, award-winning film that everybody agreed could’ve been a little better. And quite a lot gayer.

Rocketman steps up on both fronts, and it’s also directed by Dexter Fletcher, the man credited with salvaging Bohemian Rhapsody after he stepped in to finish the film when original director Bryan Singer was fired during production (Singer retained sole director credit per DGA rules).

Also working for Rocketman: the songs of Elton John and lyricist Bernie Taupin (played in the film by Jamie Bell), which are incorporated into the narrative with welcome creative flair. Egerton—as the film’s marketing campaign has made very clear—does all his own singing in the film, and he’s pretty darn decent.

Letterboxd recently sat down with Egerton at an exclusive press event in West Hollywood where he talked about his experience making Rocketman, and what it was like getting to know the man who inspired it.

Egerton began by talking about the film’s fantastical approach and how it uses John’s rehab journey as a framing device: Taron Egerton: The mandate for the production was always that it wouldn't be an out-and-out biopic, that it would lean into these elements of fantasy. The movie begins with Elton entering rehab and those scenes are what I’m most excited for people to see, because to see someone who’s so universally known in such an intimate, vulnerable situation, I think is quite unusual. And it says something about Elton and how candid and resilient he is. Elton recounts his life through rehab, we learn his story from being a young child and going to the Royal Academy of Music. And it essentially goes right the way up to the point where he goes to rehab.

On how he felt going into the role: It was terrifying. Because it’s a musical and because it’s a fantasy, it was always a prerequisite that the actors sing. So there’s a tricky thing, particularly following in the wake of something like Bo Rhap, it’s so unmistakably Freddie, the sound of it. So for me it was about singing the songs as well as I possibly could. But we were lucky in the sense that Elton and [husband] David [Furnish] are very close to the project. It started with them, and Elton has been fantastic in letting me be a part of his life for the past couple of years. And befriending me, frankly. Which has made the whole thing feel very personal and very real.

On how he went about embodying Elton John: Weirdly, I found the stuff where I played him older, easier, and I think that’s because all the time I’ve spent with Elton has been older Elton. I haven’t spent any time with 21-year-old Elton. There is footage, but it’s interesting, because people portray such a version of themselves on camera. I don’t know. For me, it all kind of came from the first time I sat down with him and we had curry together. I went over and I had a takeaway curry at his house. And we just talked for about two and a half hours. It’s such a hard thing to describe. When you are given the honor of playing one of the most adored and famous people in the world, there’s such a weight of responsibility that comes with it. And then when you meet them and connect with them generally, I don’t know, it just feels like one of the most important things I’ve ever done. I can’t really describe the feeling of having gone through the whole thing.

There’s an element of getting to look as much like him as you can, which is very helpful. There’s four rough stages of Elton. The first one being his kind of teenage bowl-cut, chunky Buddy Holly glasses. Then into the longer hair, early 20s stuff where we’re in LA. And then the hair starts to go. For the third look I shaved my hair line up higher than it already is by a couple of inches. And for the fourth and final look, I have a bald cap. There’s something about changing yourself completely and the way you look that really conditions how you feel.

One thing about Elton is that at some point in his mid-late 20s, things started to get a little bit out of control and unraveled a little bit for him I think, and there’s something to do with putting a slight gap in my teeth and changing my hair, it just didn’t make me feel very much like me. And so I created this hybrid of me and him.

That’s another thing as well, through getting to know him, I feel like there are some parallels between me and him. I mean, I’m not a genius, but in the sense that some of the neuroses and insecurities, I just recognize some things. So there’s a lot of me in there and my emotional volatility and I’m someone who has very extreme and acute reactions to things. I’m potentially a little emotionally volatile at times. And that is, I think, certainly who Elton was. So it’s just about dialing up those things in yourself, and dialing other things down.

On the film celebrating Elton John’s sexuality: I’m a straight actor playing a gay icon, so I again felt very, very keenly that if I was going to do this and do this properly that we had an obligation to honor that side of his story. So early on the film there is a love scene, it’s between myself and Richard [Madden, who plays John’s manager and lover John Reid]. It’s the first love scene I’ve ever done and it’s two young guys falling in love in a time where it possibly wasn’t that socially acceptable and I think it is a scene I’m really, really proud of.

There is a community that feels a certain sense of ownership over icons that are a member of that community, so we have that responsibility to honor that part of their story. And it’s been fantastic, especially working with Paramount on this, who have always felt very strongly that this was a part of the story that we needed to push and honor and see reflected in our film. And I’m really pleased with it, I think it’s lovely actually.

On the film not shying away from Elton John’s substance abuse: This is not a movie that glamorizes drug use. Elton’s relationship with certain substances was extremely corrosive and bad for his health and nearly cost him everything. And that was an important part of the story for me. The balance is also in making it something that is joyous, celebratory and fun to watch. And that has been the knife edge that we’ve had to walk along. And I hope people will feel we’ve done a good job of that.

On leaning into the truth of Elton John’s volatile personality: A documentary was made by David about Elton 25 years ago called Tantrums and Tiaras. It is no secret that Elton has his ups and downs. We were true to that—it’s who he is. And frankly I think it’s why we love him. So I felt very much when we were on set that I wanted to push it. Because the one person I knew wouldn’t mind me doing that, was Elton. Because he’s not precious. He knows where his strengths and weaknesses lie, and he’s very at peace with who he is.

He’s been through a hell of a lot and he’s been through recovery and he is settled and solid and knows who he is and he’s quite candid about it. So for me I always wanted there to be that duality between this sweet, incredibly caring, generous person, who just has this intense artistic sensibility and volatility, and I believe that is hand in hand with his creative genius.

On how younger audiences less familiar with Elton John might respond to the film: Elton’s music is still so played on the radio but I hope that there’s a world in which we bring music to some young ears that haven’t heard it before. Well, young-ish ears; it’s not the most child-friendly film. But young ears nonetheless. I think there’s a universality to Elton’s music. I don’t think the success of Elton’s music is entirely conditional on the context in terms of time. It was brilliant music in 1971, and it’s brilliant music now. Everyone loves Elton John, but for relatively young people like me to go back and then listen to all the stuff that made his name in the early 70s, things like Amoreena, Take Me To the Pilot, Hercules, Border Song… and you just go, fucking hell, it’s just, it’s mind-blowing, the output. In an ideal world—you can’t plan for it—I would hope that people rediscover Elton through the film.

On what playing the role has meant to Egerton: As with most people, I can pinpoint times in my life as early as five where I was aware of Elton John. I remember that video of him doing The Circle of Life when I fell in love with The Lion King when I was five or six. I remember being twelve and the Greatest Hits coming out, and me and my stepdad, who my mum had just met, who became a huge part of my life, him and I sitting listening to that Greatest Hits album, singing I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues together as he drove me to school.

Then when I was 17 and I auditioned for drama school and sang Your Song. I didn’t get in. Then I sang it again the following year and I did [get in]! I knew it was a winner. And so he’s always been there, Elton John as this kind of, idea. And then in 2016, when I’m still barely able to process the fact that I’ve been in a hit movie, for someone to say “Do you want to play Elton John?” And to go “Well how does Elton feel about it?” and hear “He really loves the idea”. It’s just fucking mental innit?

It’s just insane. Creating the film, without wishing to get too earnest, has felt like a hugely important thing for me. And a hugely important thing for posterity in some sense, because hopefully in the future it will be so many people’s introduction to Elton John. I feel like I’ve poured more of myself into it than I have anything else and so for me I feel very satisfied by the whole experience.

It’s been hard work. And essentially has been my life for the past year, 18 months, with creating all the songs and recording them and re-recording them and changing things and going back after we filmed. But I wouldn’t have changed a second of it. And I would do it all again. There’s not many things I would say that about.

And then, just getting to know him and to genuinely feel a connection with the great man. I sang with him recently, I still can’t believe that that happened. I genuinely get a bit emotional thinking about it.

Sir Elton John has appeared in more than 60 films as various versions of himself, and composed for several soundtracks, including a handful of beloved songs for Disney’s ‘The Lion King’ (Jon Favreau’s new photorealistic version comes out this July). Welsh actor-singer Taron Egerton is, until now, best-known for his leading role in the ‘Kingsman’ film franchise. ‘Rocketman’ is in theaters now. Comments have been edited for clarity and length.

[dailyaudiobible]

11/22/2019 DAB Transcript

Ezekiel 44:1-45:12, 1 Peter 1:1-12, Psalms 119:17-32, Proverbs 28:8-10

Today is the 22nd day of November. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It's great to be here with you as we continue forward in our journey to the Scriptures this year and continue day by day through the weeks that we have remaining as we make this push into the final stretch of the year. So, today we’ll be going back into the book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament and then we get to the New Testament we will be beginning a new letter known as first Peter and we'll talk about that when we get there, but first we’re reading from the New Living Translation this week. Ezekiel chapter 44 verse 1 through 45 verse 12.

Introduction to the first letter of Peter:

Okay. So…so we concluded the letter from James yesterday, which brings us to the letter known as first Peter. And, so, this is kind of homecoming in a way because we’re being reunited with Peter whose kind of an old friend because we traveled through the Gospels in the book of Acts alongside of him. And, so, we've gotten a little bit of a glimpse into his personality and character and we’ve certainly seen that he’s a passionate person, but now we’ll hear that passion distilled down into written form as we go into first Peter. So, Simon or Simeon was actually Peter's given name, but by the time he had become a part of the inner circle of Jesus, Jesus had given him the name Cephas, which in Aramaic means rock. And, so, when we translate the Aramaic into Greek then that same word is Petros. And, so, Petros, Peter we can see of the origins of the English biblical name for Peter because Petros's in Greek is rock, which takes me back to my childhood because I used to love this band named Petra, right? And rock. They were a rock band singing songs about the rock of their salvation. So, this is how we get from Simon or Simeon to…to Peter. And Peter’s story obviously as we know it from the Gospels is one of redemption and complete transformation. I mean the Peter in the book of Acts is a very different Peter than the Peter in the Gospels after the coming of the Holy Spirit. So, we see this transformation and it's a pretty big one because we remember that when we remember Peter's lowest moment when he is standing outside the quarters of Caiaphas as Jesus is being insulted and ridiculed and he's denying that he even knows who Jesus is. So, we follow Peter from there all the way to the upper room where tongues of fire fell at the coming of the Holy Spirit. Peter was empowered after that with a boldness and an anointing that we still feel the reverberations of. So, in this letter that we’re about to read Peter writes that his location is Babylon. And, so, there’s plenty of scholarly conjecture about that but the general consensus here is that he's probably referring to Rome. And, so, with this in mind, then the letters been generally dated from the early to mid-60s A.D. And Peter says he's writing to God's chosen people who are living as foreigners in the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia. And these were five different provinces in the Roman Empire that are all now located within modern-day Turkey. And, so, he addresses us to God's chosen people who are living as foreigners, because as this letters passed around to those people that would've been well understood in the Jewish culture, those living as foreigners or the Diaspora, those who had been scattered all over the world over long periods of time in different exiles and most recently those who were fleeing persecution because of…because of their faith in Jesus. Now James, the letter we finished yesterday, as I said from the outset is a bit of a butt kicker because it's very, very confrontational in a very kind and true way where the truth is being told and you know it's the truth. So, we can get out of Peter…or out of James ago…whew…that kicked my butt and now I need to catch my breath. But Peter, we got to know him a little bit and he packs a punch of his own. So…we’re…we’re sort of lining up for round two of the unfiltered truth being spoken into our lives in a way that is very practical. But again, just like James, Peter’s not trying to condemn anybody or make anybody feel bad. Like these people are already suffering, they’re already learning to endure. So, he’s not trying to shame them. He’s actually trying to encourage them, bolster them, lift them up because their faith in Jesus is actually causing suffering in their lives. And, so, Peter's reminding them that there is a hope, a glorious for those who endure. And, so, off we go. We’re at the straight talk portion of the New Testament as we move through…well…through James and Peter and John and Jude. So, let's continue our journey. First Peter chapter 1 verses 1 through 12.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for another step forward, another day in Your word. And as You bring us into the ending of another of our weeks together, we look forward to the fact that…well…in a couple days we’ll be entering the last week of this 11th month and then we’ll be entering into the 12th month of the year. So, You've certainly brought us far and yet there is still a distance to go. So, as we enter into these letters of Peter, we invite Your Holy Spirit to speak clear and true to us. Each of us has a story to tell and each of us is living inside that story. And, so, all the circumstances of our lives are varied and various and wrapped all over the world and within different cultural contexts. And yet Your word is true and when it speaks to us, it speaks to “us”. It speaks to “us” where we are. It confronts “us” where we are and we can just say, “yeah that's for somebody else” when You are…when You're pricking our heart. And, so, we open ourselves to You completely as we continue this journey forward. We invite You to come Holy Spirit. May we become more and more aware of Your eternal presence within us. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it's the website, it’s…it’s where you find out what's going on around here. So, be sure to…to tune in and stay connected in any way that you can.

I have been mentioning the Prayer Wall this week because it’s just been heavy on my heart. We just have these resources available to us all the time where we can reach out. And this season that we’re moving into…I mean it brings us to the place where we need to reach…I mean we can be full of festive joy and also in the depths of despair at the same time or one minute later. Like, it’s just such an erratic time. And we just get sucked into it. And, so, the Prayer Wall is a resource that's just…no matter what's going on…it's there and you can access it through the app and you can access it through the website and it’s there and it's just a way to know you’re not alone as we continue to move through and navigate the rest of the year. So, check that out. It's in the Community section at dailyaudiobible.com or you can access it using the Daily Audio Bible app by pressing the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if this rhythm that we share each and every day, moving us and navigating us not only through the entire tire Bible but through an entire year together, if that does bring life and light and good news and hope and encouragement into your life then thank you for your partnership. We…we can’t do this if we don't do this together. That has always been the case and thank God we are…we are just brief weeks away from completing 14 years, seven days a week. So, thank you profoundly for your partnership as we continue day by day all of the steps forward. So, there's a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment you can press the Hotline button in the app, the little red button up at the top and just start sharing or there are number of numbers that you can dial depending on where you are in the world. If you are in the Americas 877-942-4253 is the number to call. If you are in the UK or Europe 44-20-3608-8078 and if you are in Australia or that part of the world, 61-3-8820-5459.

And that is it for today. I am Brian I love you and I will be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

This prayer is for Biola. This is Victorious Vanessa from Maryland. Biola I heard your request and I stand in agreement with you for marriage. So, Father we know that as we delight ourselves in You, You give us the desires of our heart. We also have this confidence that anything that we ask You, according to Your word You hear us. And since we know that You hear us, You grant us Your petitions…our petitions. Your daughter Biola is ready for a covenant relationship in marriage and I ask You Father to present her Your best candidate, not just a man of God but an Ephesians 5 man that will love her like Christ loves the church, a man that would wash her in the word daily. Allow their hearts to be knitted together. Anyone that would cause her to fall Father, remove them. Anyone that she would cause to fall, remove them. May they meet each other’s needs 100% physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially. We thank You God in advance in Jesus’ name for Your best candidate for Your daughter Biola. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Hi this is Joanne from Happy Valley responding to running desperately to Jesus call which I just heard. __ I’m 78. In four months, I’ll be 79. I’ve been struggling with…like you have been in my life. I try to be nice but there’s a…like an old spark of anger that’ inside me all the time, maybe jealousy. Wvery time I try to be nice but sometimes I just can’t; however yesterday morning I had yet another epiphany from God about why I am the way I am, and He’s given me hope that we can work this out. He will never…He will give up on you. He will never leave your side no matter how old you are, no matter what you’ve said or done. He will not give up on you. He loves you like crazy and He will always. Just relax and ask Him. And thank goodness for this community because it is by hope He will guide you. Bless you dear. You are gonna be fine. I love you. Bye.

God bless you DABbers this is Norma from the Bronx I am just responding to Desperately Running to Jesus, my sister who was asking if…if it’s okay for her to feel having those feelings. And I just like I was relating to her. And I’m relating to her because first of all I’m 57 and I’m also going through similar situations as far as myself responding in a certain way like aggressive. And God has been showing me that, you know, at our age after so much giving and working hard and being mistreated and unappreciated, a lot of these…these feelings from frustration are…are kind of well up. And I hope that this helps. And what He’s showing me is, you know, to just keep releasing it to Him every time you feel frustrated, every time you feel disappointed, unappreciated. And I just keep asking Him to just fill me up with so much compassion and so much mercy and to help me to see things from the other person’s point of view, to understand them. And that helped me to speak with more grace and more mercy towards people. Remember, it’s never too late because Abraham, God dealt with him until he was way past 100 years old. So, it’s never too late…

Hi family this is Erin from Michigan let’s pray. Dear God, here I sit in my warm home with my happy life and my friends and my family around me and I just really couldn’t think of how things could get better. It’s not perfect by any means but Lord God I give you the praise God for my wonderful life. And then my dear sister Karla calls today. It’s Tuesday, November 19th and she said her heart is broken Lord God and I just…I pray for Karla. I ask You to lift her up, I ask You to show her today in a very real and positive way that someone is praying for her Lord God and that even in the midst of her heartbreak and her wanting to give up and her…her Hoping that she can trust You because she’s been let down so many times Lord God. I lift Karla up, I lift her up, I ask You to help her today in a very…very supernatural and special way so there can be no question that You are there with her today Lord God. I pray Your peace, Your perseverance, Your protection and Your prosperity over dear Karla Lord. Help her to know that we love her. Help her to not believe the words in her, You know, that are coming to her that…that says she can’t trust You and that she’ll never be free of the heartbreak she’s feeling right now. We pray all of these things in the powerful and precious name of Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. Karla, I heard you today. I love you and I’m gonna keep praying. Thank you for calling in. Your heart will be healed. I’m speaking that truth over you. All right. Take care.

[singing begins] One step forward and two steps back, cross our fingers don’t step on a crack we may feel what’s coming or be under attack but we are in Christ so there is no lack. If God is for us no one can stand against. Don’t let the enemy keep you on the fence. Jesus’s His word the sword and defense so raise your mighty I am and rest. I will declare the Almighty has rescued me. In him I am righteous secure and free. My spirit will bow down to my God alone. I stand in faith in Jesus my cornerstone. I will stand in faith. This too shall pass. God’s word and the love they fail not. God’s word is what will last. I will not fear. I have strength in him. I am strong and courageous in Jesus my king. I will rejoice and sing. I will rejoice and sing. [singing ends]

Hey, DABbers this is Slave of Jesus in North Carolina. All right Holy Spirit let’s roll. __ from Florida, amen to all the prayers for healing dealing with cracked ribs and his heart problems. Amen to all the future homes we’re building and that we get the utilities we need. Amen to prayers for David Watkins cancer treatment. Blind Tony always love your poems. Amen to your prayers for Alfaio from Delaware. DABber Drew from California, amen to all your prayers about your worries and good luck on your job issues. Jason, we pray for Jason Lord. We pray for Jason knowing that God definitely gives an “S” about him and the enemy that’s coming against his brain will be destroyed in Jesus’ name Amen. I have been listening to the DAB for, I think it’s been eight years, and I’d never heard or understood, even though I’ve heard it every time with Brian, about James. This is so cool about this “without faith…works…without works faith is dead.” And I’ve never understood that because you can’t earn your way into heaven. It’s grace. But what a great explanation this year. I don’t know if I’d missed that or whatever. So, I wrote in my journal here about…”it shows…our actions shows what’s really in our hearts.” So, I’m in my DAB journal and I wrote this, I said, “James is all about faith without works is dead. It does not mean we can earn our way into heaven. It means that our actions shows what’s really, we in our heart. For example, if we have faith, true faith, that God is willing to provide for us, we’ll be willing to give away more of our resources to others that need more of it. And it could be said about fear. I’ve heard that faith means there’s an absence of fear. So, if you have anxiety, you know, you really gotta start to question your faith at how much faith you got.” And, so that’s a good indicator that you gotta get closer to God. But get back, read James and listen to Brian’s commentary on the 17th of November. It’s awesome. Love you all. Have a great day.

[beyondthecosmicvoid]

Afterword of First Book of Dune, "Dune"

“I knew Frank Herbert for more than thirty-eight years. He was a magnificent human being, a man of great honor and distinction, and the most interesting person at any gathering, drawing listeners around him like a magnet. To say he was an intellectual giant would be an understatement, since he seemed to contain all of the knowledge of the universe in his marvelous mind. He was my father, and I loved him deeply. Nonetheless, a son’s journey to understand the legendary author was not always a smooth one, as I described in my biography of him, Dreamer of Dune. Growing up in Frank Herbert’s household, I did not understand his need for absolute silence so that he could concentrate, the intense desire he had to complete his important writing projects, or the confidence he had that one day his writing would be a success, despite the steady stream of rejections that he received. To my young eyes, the characters he created in Dune and his other stories were the children of his mind, and they competed with me for his affections. In the years it took him to write his magnum opus, he spent more time with Paul Atreides than he did with me. Dad’s study was off-limits to me, to my sister Penny, and to my brother Bruce. In those days, only my mother Beverly really understood Dad’s complexities. Ultimately, it was through her love for him, and the love he gave back to her, that I came to see the nurturing, loving side of the man. By that time I was in my mid-twenties, having rebelled against his exacting ways for years. When I finally saw the soul of my father and began to appreciate him for the care he gave my mother when she was terminally ill, he and I became the best of friends. He helped me with my own writing career by showing me what editors wanted to see in books; he taught me how to construct interesting characters, how to build suspense, how to keep readers turning the pages. After perusing an early draft of Sidney’s Comet (which would become my first published novel), he marked up several pages and then wrote me this note: “These pages…show how editing tightens the story. Go now and do likewise.” It was his way of telling me that he could open the door for me and let me peek through, but I would have to complete the immense labors involved with writing myself. Beverly Herbert was the window into Frank Herbert’s soul. He shared that reality with millions of readers when he wrote a loving, three-page tribute to her at the end of Chapterhouse: Dune, describing their life together. His writing companion and intellectual equal, she suggested the title for that book, and she died in 1984 while he was writing it. Earlier in Dune, Frank Herbert had modeled Lady Jessica Atreides after Beverly Herbert, with her dignified, gentle ways of influence, and even her prescient abilities, which my mother actually possessed. He also wrote of “Lady Jessica’s latent (prophetic) abilities,” and in this he was describing my mother, thinking of all the amazing paranormal feats she had accomplished in her lifetime. In an endearing tone, he often referred to her as his “white witch,” or good witch. Similarly, throughout the Dune series, he described the heroic Bene Gesserit women as “witches.” Dune is the most admired science fiction novel ever written and has sold tens of millions of copies all over the world, in more than twenty languages. It is to science fiction what the Lord of the Rings trilogy is to fantasy, the most highly regarded, respected works in their respective genres. Of course, Dune is not just science fiction. It includes strong elements of fantasy and contains so many important layers beneath the story line that it has become a mainstream classic. As one dimension of this, just look at the cover on the book in your hands, the quiet dignity expressed in the artwork. The novel was first published in hardcover in 1965 by Chilton Books, best known for their immense auto-repair novels. No other publisher would touch the book, in part because of the length of the manuscript. They felt it was far too long at 215,000 words, when most novels of the day were only a quarter to a third that length. Dune would require immense printing costs and a high hardcover price for the time, in excess of five dollars. No science fiction novel had ever commanded a retail price that high. Publishers also expressed concern about the complexity of the novel and all of the new, exotic words that the author introduced in the beginning, which tended to slow the story down. One editor said that he could not get through the first hundred pages without becoming confused and irritated. Another said that he might be making a huge mistake in turning the book down, but he did so anyway. Initial sales of the book were slow, but Frank Herbert’s science fiction–writing peers and readers recognized the genius of the work from the beginning, awarding it the coveted Nebula and Hugo awards for best novel of the year. It was featured in The Whole Earth Catalog and began to receive excellent reviews, including one from the New York Times. A groundswell of support was building. In 1969, Frank Herbert published the first sequel, Dune Messiah, in which he warned about the dangers of following a charismatic leader and showed the dark side of Paul Atreides. Many fans didn’t understand this message, because they didn’t want to see their superhero brought down from his pedestal. Still, the book sold well, and so did its predecessor. Looking back at Dune, it is clear that Dad laid the seeds of the troublesome direction he intended to take with his hero, but a lot of readers didn’t want to see it. John W. Campbell, the editor of Analog who made many useful suggestions when Dune was being serialized, did not like Dune Messiah because of this Paul Atreides issue. Having studied politics carefully, my father believed that heroes made mistakes…mistakes that were simplified by the number of people who followed such leaders slavishly. In a foreshadowing epigraph, Frank Herbert wrote in Dune: “Remember, we speak now of the Muad’Dib who ordered battle drums made from his enemies’ skins, the Muad’Dib who denied the conventions of his ducal past with a wave of the hand, saying merely: ‘I am the Kwisatz Haderach. That is reason enough.’” And in a dramatic scene, as Liet-Kynes lay dying in the desert, he remembered the long-ago words of his own father: “No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero.” By the early 1970s, sales of Dune began to accelerate, largely because the novel was heralded as an environmental handbook, warning about the dangers of destroying the Earth’s finite resources. Frank Herbert spoke to more than 30,000 people at the first Earth Day in Philadelphia, and he toured the country, speaking to enthusiastic college audiences. The environmental movement was sweeping the nation, and Dad rode the crest of the wave, a breathtaking trip. When he published Children of Dune in 1976, it became a runaway bestseller, hitting every important list in the country. Children of Dune was the first science fiction novel to become a New York Times bestseller in both hardcover and paperback, and sales reached into the millions. After that, other science fiction writers began to have their own bestsellers, but Frank Herbert was the first to obtain such a high level of readership; he brought science fiction out of the ghetto of literature. By 1979, Dune itself had sold more than 10 million copies, and sales kept climbing. In early 1985, shortly after David Lynch’s movie Dune was released, the paperback version of the novel reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. This was a phenomenal accomplishment, occurring twenty years after its first publication, and sales remain brisk today. * * * In 1957, Dad flew to the Oregon coast to write a magazine article about a U.S. Department of Agriculture project there, in which the government had successfully planted poverty grasses on the crests of sand dunes, to keep them from inundating highways. He intended to call the article “They Stopped the Moving Sands,” but soon realized that he had a much bigger story on his hands. Frank Herbert’s life experiences are layered into the pages of the Dune series, combined with an eclectic assortment of fascinating ideas that sprang from his researches. Among other things, the Dune universe is a spiritual melting pot, a far future in which religious beliefs have combined into interesting forms. Discerning readers will recognize Buddhism, Sufi Mysticism and other Islamic belief systems, Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, and Hinduism. In the San Francisco Bay Area, my father even knew Zen Master Alan Watts, who lived on an old ferryboat. Dad drew on a variety of religious influences, without adhering to any one of them. Consistent with this, the stated purpose of the Commission of Ecumenical Translators, as described in an appendix to Dune, was to eliminate arguments between religions, each of which claimed to have “the one and only revelation.” When he was a boy, eight of Dad’s Irish Catholic aunts tried to force Catholicism on him, but he resisted. Instead, this became the genesis of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. This fictional organization would claim it did not believe in organized religion, but the sisters were spiritual nonetheless. Both my father and mother were like that as well. During the 1950s, Frank Herbert was a political speechwriter and publicity writer for U.S. senatorial and congressional candidates. In that decade, he also journeyed twice to Mexico with his family, where he studied desert conditions and crop cycles, and was subjected unwittingly to the effects of a hallucinogenic drug. All of those experiences, and a great deal from his childhood, found their way onto the pages of Dune. The novel became as complex and multilayered as Frank Herbert himself. As I said in Dreamer of Dune, the characters in Dune fit mythological archetypes. Paul is the hero prince on a quest who weds the daughter of a “king” (he marries Princess Irulan, whose father is the Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV). Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam is a witch mother archetype, while Paul’s sister Alia is a virgin witch, and Pardot Kynes is the wise old man of Dune mythology. Beast Rabban Harkonnen, though evil and aggressive, is essentially a fool. For the names of heroes, Frank Herbert selected from Greek mythology and other mythological bases. The Greek House Atreus, upon which House Atreides in Dune was based, was the ill-fated family of kings Menelaus and Agamemnon. A heroic family, it was beset by tragic flaws and burdened with a curse pronounced against it by Thyestes. This foreshadows the troubles Frank Herbert had in mind for the Atreides family. The evil Harkonnens of Dune are related to the Atreides by blood, so when they assassinate Paul’s father Duke Leto, it is kinsmen against kinsmen, similar to what occurred in the household of Agamemnon when he was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra. Dune is a modern-day conglomeration of familiar myths, a tale in which great sandworms guard a precious treasure of melange, the geriatric spice that represents, among other things, the finite resource of oil. The planet Arrakis features immense, ferocious worms that are like dragons of lore, with “great teeth” and a “bellows breath of cinnamon.” This resembles the myth described by an unknown English poet in Beowulf, the compelling tale of a fearsome fire dragon who guarded a great treasure hoard in a lair under cliffs, at the edge of the sea. The desert of Frank Herbert’s classic novel is a vast ocean of sand, with giant worms diving into the depths, the mysterious and unrevealed domain of Shai-hulud. Dune tops are like the crests of waves, and there are powerful sandstorms out there, creating extreme danger. On Arrakis, life is said to emanate from the Maker (Shai-hulud) in the desert-sea; similarly all life on Earth is believed to have evolved from our oceans. Frank Herbert drew parallels, used spectacular metaphors, and extrapolated present conditions into world systems that seem entirely alien at first blush. But close examination reveals they aren’t so different from systems we know…and the book characters of his imagination are not so different from people familiar to us. Paul Atreides (who is the messianic “Muad’Dib” to the Fremen) resembles Lawrence of Arabia (T. E. Lawrence), a British citizen who led Arab forces in a successful desert revolt against the Turks during World War I. Lawrence employed guerrilla tactics to destroy enemy forces and communication lines, and came close to becoming a messiah figure for the Arabs. This historical event led Frank Herbert to consider the possibility of an outsider leading native forces against the morally corrupt occupiers of a desert world, in the process becoming a godlike figure to them. One time I asked my father if he identified with any of the characters in his stories, and to my surprise he said it was Stilgar, the rugged leader of the Fremen. I had been thinking of Dad more as the dignified, honorable Duke Leto, or the heroic, swashbuckling Paul, or the loyal Duncan Idaho. Mulling this over, I realized Stilgar was the equivalent of a Native American chief in Dune—a person who represented and defended time-honored ways that did not harm the ecology of the planet. Frank Herbert was that, and a great deal more. As a child, he had known a Native American who hinted that he had been banished from his tribe, a man named Indian Henry who taught my father some of the ways of his people, including fishing, the identification of edible and medicinal plants in the forest, and how to find red ants and protein-rich grub worms for food. When he set up the desert planet of Arrakis and the galactic empire encompassing it, Frank Herbert pitted western culture against primitive culture and gave the nod to the latter. In Dune he wrote, “Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert.” (Later, in his mainstream novel Soul Catcher, he would do something similar and would favor old ways over modern ways). Like the nomadic Bedouins of the Arabian plateau, the Fremen live an admirable, isolated existence, separated from civilization by vast stretches of desert. The Fremen take psychedelic drugs during religious rites, like the Navajo Indians of North America. And like the Jews, the Fremen have been persecuted, driven to hide from authorities and survive away from their homeland. Both Jews and Fremen expect to be led to the promised land by a messiah. The words and names in Dune are from many tongues, including Navajo, Latin, Chakobsa (a language found in the Caucasus), the Nahuatl dialect of the Aztecs, Greek, Persian, East Indian, Russian, Turkish, Finnish, Old English, and, of course, Arabic. In Children of Dune, Leto II allowed sandtrout to attach themselves to his body, and this was based in part upon my father’s own experiences as a boy growing up in Washington State, when he rolled up his trousers and waded into a stream or lake, permitting leeches to attach themselves to his legs. The legendary life of the divine superhero Muad’Dib is based on themes found in a variety of religious faiths. Frank Herbert even used lore and bits of information from the people of the Gobi Desert in Asia, the Kalahari Desert in Southwest Africa, and the aborigines of the Australian Outback. For centuries such people have survived on very small amounts of water, in environments where water is a more precious resource than gold. The Butlerian Jihad, occurring ten thousand years before the events described in Dune, was a war against thinking machines who at one time had cruelly enslaved humans. For this reason, computers were eventually made illegal by humans, as decreed in the Orange Catholic Bible: “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.” The roots of the jihad went back to individuals my parents knew, to my mother’s grandfather Cooper Landis and to our family friend Ralph Slattery, both of whom abhorred machines. Still, there are computers in the Dune universe, long after the jihad. As the series unfolds, it is revealed that the Bene Gesserits have secret computers to keep track of their breeding records. And the Mentats of Dune, capable of supreme logic, are “human computers.” In large part these human calculators were based upon my father’s paternal grandmother, Mary Stanley, an illiterate Kentucky hill-woman who performed incredible mathematical calculations in her head. Mentats were the precursors of Star Trek’s Spock, First Officer of the starship Enterprise…and Frank Herbert described the dangers of thinking machines back in the 1960s, years before Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator movies ... 

By the time we complete those stories, there will be a wealth of Dune novels, along with the 1984 movie directed by David Lynch and two television miniseries—“Frank Herbert’s Dune” and “Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune”—both produced by Richard Rubinstein. We envision other projects in the future, but all of them must measure up to the lofty standard that my father established with his own novels. When all of the good stories have been told, the series will end. But that will not really be a conclusion, because we can always go back to Dune itself and read it again and again, ” -Brian Herbert

This shows the appreciation that Brian had for his father. Many fans are still on the fence regarding Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson continuation of Frank’s work. Some think some of their sequels and prequels are good while others think their attempt to expand on the Dune lore is a failed attempt and don’t believe they have based their works on Frank Herbert’s alleged unfinished manuscripts. I fall somewhere in the middle. There are things I like from the Dune Expanded Universe and other things that I could care less about. Nevertheless, I love that Brian Herbert has continued with his father’s passion and is currently working with director Denis Villeneuve and others to bring his father’s vision on the big and small screens and stay loyal to it.

[warningsignsrp]

APOLLO A. LOVEMORE (Taken, Ashley)

the eldest son of Theodore Lovemore. He was 8 when his father kidnapped him and his younger brother and brought them to the island. Throughout the years as he got older he has come to be his father’s enforcer. He prefers to keep to himself, he will come to events but he isn’t an overactive member of the Church. He has the ability to manipulate technology which makes him the ideal candidate to erase all signs of people whom they have recruited from the internet and move their money into the Church’s accounts without notice. Among the members of The Church of the Sun, he’s secretly referred to as The Boogeyman because of how he is able to make people disappear both figuratively and literally (or so his father thinks). Apollo is also secretly one of the founding members of the resistance. In the resistance he goes by Roman Gaines.

ENOCH LOVEMORE (Taken, Cee)

"The Crowned Prince". Enoch was 2 when they came to the island. Unlike his older brother, Enoch takes an active part in The Church of the Sun. You will see him at every event, every gathering, and in public promotions for the Church. There’s no doubt in any of the member’s minds that he will be the one to take over everything when Theodore steps down. He’s enthralled to Persephone Lovemore, which was an arranged marriage. He adamantly testifies that he went through the fair Enthrallment Process, but most members of the Church believe that he or his father chose his bride for him due to the fact that his wife is one of the most beautiful members of the Church. Enoch owns and runs a vineyard that has its own winery on the island; the wine priced by the winery is some of the best, known for its fusion blends. Because of this, it generates a lot of work and income for the Church. He full-heartedly loves his father and believes the values The Church of the Sun preaches should be the only way of life.

ADRIANE T. LOVEMORE (Taken, Padme)

the only daughter of Theodore Lovemore and his first wife Penelope. She was just a baby when they were uprooted and moved to the island. She doesn’t remember their mother at all, only knows what Theodore has said about her. She looks too much like her mother for Theodore’s taste, which builds resentment between them at times.

(1) ROWE-LOVEMORE (Open)

Middle son of Loraine and Rodger Rowe. Theodore welcomed him into the family with welcome arms. ___ is happy to see his mother so happy after suffering years in her marriage to his father. Though to be fair, he doesn’t really believe that Theodore is really a far step up from his father, just the same kind wolf in a different sheeps clothes. He doesn’t trust or buy Theodore’s good guy act, and Theodore’s powers of persuasion do not work on him. late 20s - early 30s.

(2) ROWE-LOVEMORE (Open)

youngest son of Loraine and Rodger Rowe. ___ doesn’t really remember life before the island as well as his older brother. He’s generally more trusting of Theodore. He was allowed to travel off the island to go to school and he would come back for breaks. He’s just graduated and is coming back to the island full time. mid - late 20s.

(1) LOVEMORE (Open)

first-born child to Theodore and Loraina. Runs fishing tours off the island for tourists and Church members. ____ has dual abilities. He has the ability to calm sea sickness and additionally put people at ease while on the waters. He is excited that he just came of age to be enthralled. He has a general positive outlook on life. He sometimes helps during the indoctrination process when someone is suffering/resisting. 21, twin to (2)

(2) LOVEMORE (Open)

second-born child to Theodore and Loraina. Helps run the family business (the Golden Isle Winery). Is still trying to figure out what her ability is and how to use it. Has secretly been seeing a local - (2) McAllister - for years who she's madly in love with. However obviously their relationship has never been able to be physical or public. Is less than thrilled that she is about to be entered into the enthrallment process this year. Is terrified because she doesn’t know what that means for her current relationship.21, twin to (1).

(3) LOVEMORE (Open)

yougest child of Theodore and Loraina. This character is fully open to be made into anything the claimer wants. 18.

[patriotsnet]

How Many House Seats Did Republicans Win

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How Many House Seats Did Republicans Win

Florida Vs California: How Two States Tackled Covid

2018 House Midterm Election Results Update – House Voting Results – How Many Seats? Blue Wave?

The researchers theorized that one reason for the change is that Democrats were in charge of states where people who had the virus first arrived in the country but Republicans were less stringent about safeguards, which could have contributed to their states ultimately higher incidence and death rates.

The early trends could be explained by high Covid-19 cases and deaths among Democratic-led states that are home to initial ports of entry for the virus in early 2020, the researchers wrote. However, the subsequent reversal in trends, particularly with respect to testing, may reflect policy differences that could have facilitated the spread of the virus.

The study, which which was published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Preventive Medicine, examined Covid-19 incidence, death, testing, and test positivity rates from March 15 through December 15, 2020, when there were 16 million confirmed cases in the U.S. and 300,000 deaths. It focused on per-capita infection and death rates in the 26 GOP-led states and 24 Democratic-led states and Washington, D.C., and made statistical adjustments for issues such as population density.

But policy differences between the Republican and Democratic leaders emerged as a big factor for the reversal of the states fortunes, the study suggests.

One of the most concerning things last year is the politicization of public health restrictions, Lee said. Theyre not opinions, theyre based on evidence.

Opinionhow Can Democrats Fight The Gop Power Grab On Congressional Seats You Wont Like It

Facing mounting pressure from within the party, Senate Democrats finally hinted Tuesday that an emboldened Schumer may bring the For the People Act back for a second attempt at passage. But with no hope of GOP support for any voting or redistricting reforms and Republicans Senate numbers strong enough to require any vote to cross the 60-vote filibuster threshold, Schumers effort will almost certainly fail.

Senate Democrats are running out of time to protect Americas blue cities, and the cost of inaction could be a permanent Democratic minority in the House. Without resorting to nuclear filibuster reform tactics, Biden, Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may be presiding over a devastating loss of Democrats most reliable electoral fortresses.

How Did The Gop Gain In The House While Trump Lost Its Actually Pretty Simple

One of the increasingly prevalent arguments spun by President Trump and his allies when it comes to supposed voter fraud in the 2020 election is this: Republicans had, by and large, a pretty good election below the presidential level. They gained significant ground in the House and probably held the Senate as long as they dont lose both Georgia runoffs. So how on earth did Trump lose?

The answer is actually pretty simple: Our elections increasingly look more like parliamentary ones, and given that, the results make a ton of sense.

New data from the election-reform group FairVote sheds some light on how the battle for the House played out. The big takeaway: Our politics are increasingly less about people and incumbents and more about party. Weve been talking about increased polarization for many years, but the 2020 election really drove it home. The results for Congress affirm the fact that Republicans writ large lost the election, even though it might have been closer than many expected.

FairVote has for years studied an issue called incumbency bump i.e., how much an incumbent benefits relative to other members of their party thanks to already being in office. The conventional wisdom on incumbency is that its a big advantage that people might not like a politicians party or Congress as a whole, but if they know that politician well or have any doubts, theyll revert to supporting the person in the seat.

Recommended Reading: Why Are Republicans Wearing Blue Ties

Oc Supervisor Michelle Steel Defeats Rep Harley Rouda Flipping Socal Congressional Seat Back To Gop

Still, Republicans are buoyed as they look to 2022, when Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to seek another term. A U.S. Senate seat will be on the ballot along with other statewide offices, all held by Democrats.

Republicans see a target. Newsom is struggling with an economy battered by the virus, there is widespread discontent with the states shifting COVID restrictions and his credibility has been dented: He broke state rules when he and his wife were caught dining with 10 others at the toney French Laundry restaurant, sitting close together, mask-less. Newsom repeatedly has told Californians to stay home and wear masks.

We have a real opportunity, I think, to win statewide again, Patterson said.

Biden, despite his dominating win in the state, did not have coattails in key House races.

In the 25th District north of Los Angeles, Republican Rep. Mike Garcia held on for a 333-vote win over Democrat Christy Smith while running as a Trump apostle in a district with a 7.5-point Democratic registration edge. The son of a Mexican immigrant father, the former Navy combat pilot won the seat in a May special election after the resignation of former Democratic Rep. Katie Hill.

Young Kim defeated Democratic Rep. Gil Cisneros in a rematch in the Democratic-leaning 39th District, anchored in Orange County. A former state lawmaker, she was born in South Korea and grew up in Guam.

Who Controls State Legislatures In States With Changes

Thirteen states were affected by the 2020 Census’ shift in congressional seats.;

States are given the task of redrawing districts when;they gain;or lose;seats.;

Michael Li, senior counsel for the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program,;said;the country could be poised for a battle over;gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing district lines to favor one party over the other or to suppress the vote of communities of color.

In some states, the process is fairer than others, he said, because they are not controlled by just one political party or they have instituted an independent redistricting committee, such as in Michigan. But for other states, the party in power stands to control the map.

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How Republicans Pulled Off A Big Upset And Nearly Took Back The House

Analysis by Harry Enten, CNN

There seemed to be one safe bet when it came to the 2020 election results: Democrats would easily hold on to their majority in the House of Representatives. Not only that, but the conventional wisdom held that Democrats would pick up more than the 235 seats they won in the 2018 midterm elections.

Why Did House Democrats Underperform Compared To Joe Biden

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The results of the 2020 elections pose several puzzles, one of which is the gap between Joe Bidens handsome victory in the presidential race and the Democrats disappointing performance in the House of Representatives. Biden enjoyed an edge of 7.1 million votes over President Trump, while the Democrats suffered a loss of 13 seats in the House, reducing their margin from 36 to just 10.

Turnout in the 2018 mid-term election reached its highest level in more than a century. Democrats were fervently opposed to the Trump administration and turned out in droves. Compared to its performance in 2016, the partys total House vote fell by only 2%. Without Donald Trump at the head of the ticket, Republican voters were much less enthusiastic, and the total House vote for Republican candidates fell by nearly 20% from 2016. Democratic candidates received almost 10 million more votes than Republican candidates, a margin of 8.6%, the highest ever for a party that was previously in the minority. It was, in short, a spectacular year for House Democrats.

To understand the difference this Democratic disadvantage can make, compare the 2020 presidential and House results in five critical swing states.

Table 1: Presidential versus House results

Arizona

Read Also: Republican Senate Seats

Election Analysis And Context

All 435 seatsincluding seven vacancieswere up for election, with Democrats needing to add 23 seats to win majority control of the chamber.

The Democratic Party was well-positioned to gain seats, according to a 100-year historical analysis of House elections conducted by Ballotpedia and political scientist Jacob Smith. From 1918 to 2016, the presidents party lost an average of 29 seats in midterm elections. The Democrats matched this pattern in the 2018 midterms, gaining 40 seats for a total of 235 seats17 more than was needed for a majority.

One undecided 2018 race was decided in September 2019 when Dan Bishop won the special election. The state board of elections called a new election following allegations of absentee ballot fraud in the 2018 race. for more information on the aftermath of the 2018 election.

In 372 of the 435 seats, an incumbent was seeking re-election on November 6. There were 52 seats where the incumbent was either retiring or otherwise not seeking re-election18 Democrats and 34 Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and seven vacant seats. In four other seats, the incumbenttwo from each partywas defeated in a primary before election day.

There were 46 seats that changed party hands, both open seats and those occupied by an incumbent, and 30 of the 372 incumbent U.S. representatives lost their seats in the general electionall Republicans.

Gubernatorial And Legislative Party Control Of State Government

Midterm elections: Do Republicans have a chance of keeping the House?

Top 10 Closest Primaries: January to June 2020

Wave elections

Gubernatorial and legislative party control of state government refers to the role of political parties in the power dynamic between state legislatures and executives. Below, we examine the partisan affiliation of the 1,972 state senators, 5,411 state representatives, and 50 state governors across the United States.

Partisan breakdown of state governments

Below, Ballotpedia presents our information on the partisan breakdown of state senators, state representatives, and governors as well as the state legislature and state executive branch as a whole. We also examine state government trifectas, which occur when the state house, the state senate, and the office of the governor are each controlled by one political party. Trifectas are important to highlight since unified partisan affiliation between the branches of state government can impact a states legislative process.

The following maps display current state government trifectas as well as historical trifectas leading up to the 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections. Use the buttons below to select a map.

Read Also: When Did Republicans And Democrats Switch Platforms

Eric Holder: There Is Still A Fight For Democrats Against Gop Gerrymandering

In McConnells Kentucky, for instance, Republicans are divided over how far to go during the upcoming redistricting process, which they control in the deep-red state. The more extreme wing wants to crack the Democratic stronghold of Louisville, currently represented by Rep. John Yarmuth. More cautious Republicans like McConnell are willing to settle for smaller changes that reduce Democratic margins while stuffing more Republican voters into hotly contested swing districts.

Make no mistake: McConnells caution isnt rooted in any newfound respect for the integrity of our electoral process. Instead, Republicans are mainly worried about avoiding the costly and embarrassing court decisions that invalidated their most extreme overreaches and potentially turn the line-drawing over to the courts. So McConnells approach doesnt reject partisan gerrymandering it just avoids the type of high-profile city-cracking that could land the Kentucky GOP in federal court.

States With Republican Governors Had Highest Covid Incidence And Death Rates Study Finds

States with Democratic governors had the highest incidence and death rates from Covid-19 in the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, but states with Republican governors surpassed those rates as the crisis dragged on, a study released Tuesday found.

From March to early June, Republican-led states had lower Covid-19 incidence rates compared with Democratic-led states. On June 3, the association reversed, and Republican-led states had higher incidence,the study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Medical University of South Carolina showed.

For death rates, Republican-led states had lower rates early in the pandemic, but higher rates from July 4 through mid-December, the study found.

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The House’s Balance Of Power Is Tipped Toward Democrats

The Democrats;have a narrow six-member margin in the current House of Representatives, meaning if just a handful of seats flip, Republicans can regain control of the House.

Democrats’;advantage;will grow to seven when Troy Carter is sworn in;to fill a seat in Louisiana’s delegation left vacant;by Cedric Richmond, who left the House to join the Biden administration as the director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.;

United States House Of Representatives Elections 2018

17Footnotes

The Democratic Party won control of the U.S. House from the Republican Party on . Democrats gained a net total of 40 seats, 17 more than the 23 seats they needed to win control of the House.

Heading into the elections, Republicans had a 235-193 majority with seven vacancies. All 435 seats were up for election. Special elections were held earlier in 2018 and in 2017 to fill vacancies that occurred in the 115th Congress. Democrats flipped one seat when Conor Lamb won a to replace Tim Murphy in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District.

Ballotpedia covered every state and federal primary in 2018 to highlight the intraparty conflicts that shaped the parties and the general elections. Click here for our coverage of Republican Party primaries in 2018, and here for our coverage of Democratic Party primaries.

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Isan Composition Of State Legislatures

Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming See also

The partisan composition of state legislatures refers to which political party holds the majority of seats in the State Senate and State House. Altogether, there are 1,972 state senators and 5,411 state representatives.The breakdown of chamber control after the November 2020 election is as follows:

37 chambers

One chamber with power sharing between the parties

The breakdown of chamber control prior to the November 2020 election was as follows:

39 chambers

See also: Partisan composition of state houses and Partisan composition of state senates

state government trifecta

As of August 15, 2021, there are 23 Republican trifectas, 15 Democratic trifectas, and 12 divided governments where neither party holds trifecta control.

Districts That Flipped In 2018

The map below highlights congressional districts that changed party control in the general elections on November 6, 2018.

The following table lists congressional districts that changed party control in the general elections on November 6, 2018. It also includes 2020 general election race ratings from three outlets.

Flipped congressional districts, 2018 Kim Schrier

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Republicans Introduce 253 Bills To Restrict Voting Rights In States Across The Us

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Republican lawmakers in 43 states have introduced a total of 253 bills aimed at restricting access to the ballot box for tens of millions of people. Republican-controlled states, including Southern states that employed lynch law terror to block African Americans from voting during the decades-long period of Jim Crow segregation, are flooding their legislatures with measures to effectively disenfranchise working class, poor and minority voters.

The laws largely focus on tightening voter ID requirements, purging voter rolls and restricting absentee and mail-in ballots.

In the United States, state governments have the authority to oversee elections and determine election procedures and rules, including for national elections. Within each state, individual counties have a great deal of latitude in the conduct of elections.

Republicans control both the lower and upper legislative houses in 36 of the 50 states, and both the legislatures and governorships in 23 states, making it very possible for far-reaching barriers to the ballot box to be imposed across much of the country.

Despite opening the door for a return to restrictive and discriminatory voting practices, the 2013 ruling met with little resistance on the part of the Democratic Party. Neither the Obama White House nor the congressional Democrats mounted any serious effort to reverse the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act by enacting new legislation in the years since the reactionary Shelby ruling.

Texas

Gop Women Made Big Gains

Democrats win House, Republicans keep Senate in US

While the majority of the Republican caucus will still be men come 2021, there will be far more Republican women in Congress than there were this year. So far, it looks like at least 26 GOP women will be in the House next year, surpassing the record of 25 from the 109th Congress. Thats thanks in part to the record number of non-incumbent Republican women 15 whove won House contests. And its also because of how well Republican women did in tight races. The table below shows the Republican women who ran in Democratic-held House districts that were at least potentially competitive,1 according to FiveThirtyEights forecast. As of this writing, seven of them have won.

GOP women have flipped several Democratic seats

Republican women running for potentially competitive Democratic-held House seats and the status of their race as of 4:30 p.m Eastern on Nov. 11

District D+22.1

Results are unofficial. Races are counted as projected only if the projection comes from ABC News. Excludes races in which the Republican candidate has either a less than 1 in 100 chance or greater than 99 in 100 chance of winning.

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