#catholic university in california

[reasonsforhope]

"Faced with declining membership, aging buildings and large, underutilized properties, many U.S. houses of worship have closed their doors in recent years. Presbyterian minister Eileen Linder has argued that 100,000 churches may close in the next few decades.

But some congregations are using their land in new ways that reflect their faith – a focus of my urban planning research. Some are repurposing their property to provide affordable housing, as the housing crisis intensifies across the country.

Take Arlington Presbyterian Church in Arlington, Virginia. In 2016, the church sold its historic stone building to the Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing to construct a 6-story complex with 173 apartments, known as “Gilliam Place.” The building still houses space for the congregation, as well as La Cocina, a bilingual culinary job training facility and cafe. In Austin, Texas, St. Austin Catholic Parish is partnering with a developer to build a 29-story tower providing 200 beds of affordable student housing, in addition to new spaces for ministry.

Other houses of worship are pursuing similar projects today.

Same mission, new projects

Faith-based organizations have been building housing for many years, but generally by purchasing additional property. In recent years, however, more houses of worship are building affordable housing on the same property as the sanctuary.

This can be done in a variety of ways. Some congregations adapt the existing sanctuary and other faith-owned buildings, while others demolish existing buildings to construct a new development, which may or may not have space for the congregation. Another option is to build on excess property, like a parking lot.

Depending on how a development deal is structured, a faith-based organization may receive proceeds from the sale of its land, or from leasing their property to a developer – funds which they can then spend on ministry or on a new space for worship. If a new development includes space for the congregation, sometimes they rent out those spaces when the space is not being used for worship, which can also financially benefit the congregation.

Faith-based organizations often see these projects as a way to do “God’s work.” In some instances, they include community services beyond the housing itself.

Near Los Angeles, the Episcopal Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Placentia partnered with a nonprofit affordable housing developer – National Community Renaissance, also called National CORE – to develop 65 units for older people. The complex also includes a 1,500 square foot (140 square meter) community center. The city’s diocese has a goal of building affordable housing on 25% of its 133 properties.

For some congregations, these are mission-driven projects rooted in social justice.

In Washington, D.C., Emory United Methodist Church redeveloped its property and constructed The Beacon Center – which has 99 affordable housing units, community spaces, and a commercial kitchen that provides job training for recently incarcerated people – while preserving the sanctuary. In Seattle, the Nehemiah Initiative is working with Black churches in the Central District, a historically African American neighborhood, to redevelop its properties into affordable housing to keep residents from being displaced."

Potential to evolve

As states and cities struggle to provide affordable housing, studies have been conducted from Nashville to New York City on the amount of land faith organizations own, and their potential as housing partners.

In the D.C. metro area, for example, the Urban Institute found almost 800 vacant parcels owned by religious organizations. In California, a report from the Terner Center at University of California, Berkeley found approximately 170,000 “potentially developable” acres of land owned by religious organizations and nonprofit colleges and universities...

When thinking about the redevelopment process, Arlington Presbyterian member Jon Etherton told me, “the call from God to create, do something about affordable housing was bigger than the building itself.”"

-via The Conversation, July 19, 2024

[catholic-character-tournament]

Round 1 - Side B

firestar art by @kudos-si-do

Propaganda below ⬇️

Kirei

He fucked up so many people's lives so badly in just one decade (not on purpose) that the universe put him in the summoning pool of all world influencing souls. He doesnt really have any special powers but he does serve as a vessel for rasputin at one point. He's the guy who says "people die when they are killed"

please please please there's literally a type moon character in the gif on the top of this form so it's typemoonphobic if none of them get in but it shouldn't be her it should be kirei bc he's 50x funnier & more iconic than jeanne. funny lil murder priest who's fucking THE gilgamesh (from the epic of) in the church basement and dies in a knife fight w a 17 year old whose dad he wanted to fuck back in '94 before realizing that he was actually kinda lame and he's been bitter abt it ever since. he has an orphan torture factory in his basement but he's also canonically good at being a priest. he's so funny you should def try his mapo tofu i swear it's totally safe for human consumption and not made with any california reapers. did i mention he's a deadbeat dad.

Priest claims to be Pro Life to make Sakura Matou the most miserable girl on the planet, but he dies anyway.

bro became a catholic because he loves suffering

He’s a priest. Kind of. Not a very good priest obviously. There is something seriously wrong and fucked up with that man. It’s so entertaining.

he's gotta be one of the most insane catholic men ever with a very in-depth and interesting relationship with his religion and his relationship with god also he's the sexiest man ever to be conceptualized in the known universe and all of time

Will never forget the 40+ minute monologue in heavens feel being a thinly veiled metaphor for abortion

he wants to torment churchgoers and make them face their failures and suffering but all he ends up doing is motivate them to improve themselves. cringefail moment for him

he's absolutely insane. the coldhearted mercenary that barely reacts to anything is terrified of kirei. he's super fucked up. his ult in stay night is literally him channeling divine power into something called kyrie eleison. he's the vessel of rasputin (on account of being a priest with a huge....no i shant say) the biblical beast in grand order among other things. he gets drunk with and tops gilgamesh from the epic of gilgamesh in the church basement after gilgamesh from the epic of gilgamesh bats his eyes a little too hard at kirei in some of the horniest shot scenes ive ever seen. he also used to be a heretical "fixer" for the church, cleaning up scenes that would expose shit to the public. uhh what else. he holds cool swords between his fingers like a kid pretending to be wolverine but in my favorite route he just squares the hell up with the protagonist and they fight to the death outside planned parenthood

Firestar

Kitty jesus, he believes in starclan which is the kitty version of heaven/god and yea. All the warrior cats characters except those outside the clans or those that are atheist believe in the kitty heaven and would irl be bri-ish and christian as hell so. The authors are all older british christian women and so the way starclan is written is like undoubtedly that.

The main religion in the series is extremely catholic coded. Most clan cats believe in Starclan and the Dark Forest(or heaven and hell). There is a set of rule they must uphold and follow, where following them leads to heaven and breaking them leads to hell. Their religious leaders are sworn to celibacy, and the punishments that "code breakers"(or cats who break the rules) face are extremely similar to situations people with religious trauma have gone through.

OP notes: apparently converted to avoid getting his balls cut?? Idk. The discord yet wild for firestar so I had to include him because it's hilarious hehehe

[gaytommykinard]

Tommy Kinard HC:

He was born in Boston, MA.

He's a Jr. -- Thomas (Scott?) Kinard Jr. He doesn't tell anyone this.

He was baptized Catholic at his mother's insistence, but never attended mass at his father's (Lutheran) insistence.

He's a military brat.

He's a middle child.

His family moved to California when he was 7 years old when his father was stationed at Fort Irwin.

The family later moves to Kansas when his father is stationed at Fort Riley.

His parents got divorced when Tommy was 17.

He joined the US armed forces in 1997 at the age of 17. He wanted out of the house and was following his father's dream for him (he had parental consent).

His mother moves to California with his younger sister. Tommy's older sister still lives in Kansas. Tommy's father always hated California, often calling it a "socialist shit hole." He also lives in Kansas.

Tommy is (first) stationed in Fort Cavazos, Texas.

His first sexual encounter with a man was a student about his age who was attending Texas A&M University. They met at a bar, hooked up, and promptly never saw each other again. Tommy spent a month after the encounter worried that someone on base might know.

He left the army in 2003 and moved to Orange County, California, where his mother and younger sister (now 17) lived.

He joined the fire academy near-immediately and started his probation year in 2004.

Sal was not immediately his friend. Tommy was polite and (seemingly) straitlaced, while Sal was a loud firebrand. They didn't really mesh, plus Sal was a hardass who tended to be passive-aggressive.

Around 2005, his mother eventually moved back to Boston, MA, to care for her ailing mother. His younger sister had already left for college in Colorado. He is the only member of his family to still live in California.

Tommy tries to date a woman around this time (2005). They last about a month. She was very nice-- even offered to cook the firehouse dinner-- but that was it. She was nice, and Tommy felt like an asshole because he didn't feel any spark.

After his breakup, Tommy finds himself all the way in Long Beach, CA, tugging on a thread that came loose back in Texas years ago. He lets a man fuck him for the first time that night.

Gerrard leaves around 2011. Around this time, Hen starts joining him, Chim, and Sal for drinks after work.

Tommy has paid for sex with a male sex worker.

I feel Tommy deserves a "fuck around and find out era" where he has a hot, toxic mlm relationship with none other than Sal. The two of them have a fling around 2013 to start "blowing off steam." It starts with a blowjob that rocks Tommy's world. Toward the end, they have several consequential arguments. Sal doesn't think of himself as queer ("this is what guys like us do") or think of his fling with Tommy as a manifestation of his sexuality ("just blowing off steam"), but he doesn't give a shit what others have to say and idealizes having someone infatuated with him, and other's knowing about that (he definitely struggles with jealousy). Tommy, on the other hand, knows he's gay but isn't ready to come out because he is intensely concerned with what others might have to say. Tommy also wants a relationship with a healthier give and take and doesn't want to announce anything when the man he's with doesn't even consider what they're doing as a relationship. At this time, part of Tommy believed he didn't "deserve" something happy and feared pursuing something romantic with a man. Around the time Sal puts in to become Captain, their relationship had all but fallen away. Sal had become passive-aggressive again and increasingly reckless on the job, bordering on self-destructive. By the time he looks toward Tommy to follow him in protest of Bobby, he realizes that Tommy had long since stopped following him.

Tommy left the 118 around 2015, about a year after Bobby took his position as Captain. (Buck begins around 2016.)

In his late 20s, Tommy once accidentally slept with a married man. He got off a shift at the 118 and went out looking for a guy to fuck around with. He hooked up with an older man and had a very… mediocre night. A couple weeks later, he returned to the same place and hooked up with a younger guy. On his way out early the next morning, Tommy noticed a family picture in the man's front hall. He'd fucked the kid's father just a couple weeks earlier. Tommy stopped going to that establishment. He actually swore off hookups altogether after that.

Tommy loves crossword puzzles.

Tommy wears reading glasses.

Tommy is out to his family. His father was and still is less than supportive, his mother was disappointed but came around, and his younger sister was always happy for him.

The only family Tommy sees semi-annually is his younger sister. She's now married and has two elementary-aged sons.

Tommy has a pet dog.

Tommy hates marshmallows.

hold on. im copy pasting ur strikethrough bullet point into a fucking google doc so i can read it. smh.

ok loving the saltommy bits. good shit. moment of silence for sal deluca and his internalised homophobia. and another one for his "heterosexuality" lmao. rip. amen.

AND THE HOOKING UP W A GUY AND THEN HIS KID. LMAO. sorry but this sort of "accidentally slept with someone and then their parent not knowing theyre related" is always funny to me. oh tommy.

AND SPECIAL THANKS FOR PUTTING TIMESTAMPS ON YOUR HCS! im writing this pre-s1 (chronologically) fic now and i always forget what year people started (or left) the 118. not that its super important, but i was literally just thinking "were smartphones a thing back then? and when *is* "back then"?" so. yeah. im not gonna check the fandom wiki, just gonna go with your dates bestie, mwah

I LOVE ALL OF THIS <3 thank you for gracing my inbox with your presence <3

[hsslilly-blog]

claire swanson lore dump. i tried to be concise, so i linked to posts i've made before for context (and archival purposes). still very long. i'm open for asks! here’s her immediate family tree. here’s her masterlist, with a chronological overview. everything is under the cut.

background/lore

Claribel Marie Swanson (she/her) was born in Santa Barbara, California, on February 14th, 1990. She’s the single daughter of Christina Murray, a failed-actress-turned-nurse-turned-housewife, and Werner Swanson Jr., a psychiatrist and (at the time of her birth) university professor. Her paternal grandfather made a fortune selling engagement rings in the late 40s and since then the Swansons have lived very comfortably.

She was named after the character from The Tempest, as both her parents are fond of Shakespeare. Marie because her family is Catholic, but Mary didn’t fit her French-sounding first name.

Her parents met while working in a hospital, then got married in 1988. Claire was a planned pregnancy, by which I mean she is an IVF baby. No fertility issues involved. She arrived 9:47 AM, caesarean. From the moment she was born, her parents knew exactly what they wanted her to be, although their expectations weren’t in agreement; Christina saw in Claire a second chance of her dreams coming true, while Werner envisioned a more traditional career path to his daughter, akin to his own. If only they had talked at some point. But alas.

From age three, Claire had acting, dancing and singing lessons. Her mother made it her mission that Claire had the best training, attended every single audition for every role available and had as little free time as possible. By age seven, Claire had perfected her smile. By age nine, she called herself a ballerina. By age eleven, she wanted to be a full-time actress; she starred in an indie film called ‘Marigold’ around this time, in a very small part.

Her father wasn’t very pleased with his wife’s efforts at grooming Claire into an acting career, since it obviously hindered his plans of grooming Claire into an academic career. So, when Claribel turned 12, he told his wife that Claire was already old enough to make her own decisions and that, actually, she preferred biology anyway, so maybe Christine should back off. Animosity brews. This man isn’t even at home half of the time. What does he know about Claire?

Not sure. What Claire knew, however, was that her father was finally here and he was paying attention to her. So, yeah, she loved biology! And she did: from an early age, Claire was interested in genetics and she’s had a fondness for insects for as long as she can remember. Getting a break from constant auditions and being able to choose when she pursued her acting ambitions was a welcome change as well. Claire focused on academics for a while, but still acted: she joined Santa Barbara's Lit Moon Theatre Company at 14. She got diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at 15. She was in drama club, cheer team, and was valedictorian of her graduating class. Claire is proficient in Spanish and took French in high school.

Claire met her best friend Donna Ryder in elementary school. They’ve been inseparable since. In high school, Claire constantly begged Donna for more pages in the yearbook. They loved driving around Santa Barbara in Claire's car after curfew hours. Then, she met Sebastian Ballion, her other half (platonically) in middle school. He was her first everything. By which I mean OBVIOUSLY that he was her first director. They had big dreams together; she starred in lots of his short films throughout high school, and he was the one to come up with Platinum Blonde Claire when she was 17. A visionary.

On October 13th, 2005, Claire and Sebastian headed to the Swansons’ beach residence in Malibu for the weekend. There, she found her father in a compromising situation with his secretary. He bribed her into silence and she got a nice trip to Jersey with Donna and some new clothes. This, though, only delayed the inevitable: her parents separated by late 2007 and finalised their messy divorce in November, 2008. Claire doesn’t know how her mom found out, and as guilty as she was for hiding it from her, she’s glad she wasn’t the one to tell.

This all happens around the time Claire is preparing to go to university (2008). With her father drifting away (literally, as he moved out), plus financial “incentive” (he'd pay for her tuition as long as she pursued something other than performing arts), Claire decided to major in biology. She got into University of California, Berkeley and moved to the Bay Area. Being out in the world without the tutelage of either her parents was very liberating; you can bet Claribel wreaked havoc during that time. She’s always been very Claire, but it’s around this time she grew into Claire. She got more confident, more tactless, more charming and more reckless. She got a job as a drive-in waitress while living there. She had an abortion at some point. She loved going out dancing. And she loved being surrounded by queer people, as it was around this time she felt comfortable calling herself bisexual. I think Claire was happy here.

After graduating from UCB, Claire had plans of going to med school at UCSF, but in May, 2012 she received an acceptance letter to Hollywood University, which she did not remember applying to. She packed her bags, moved to L.A. and decided to major in performing arts, finally. Soon after, her father found out about it and cut her out/disinherited her. Bummer. Anyway, she had a Mysterious Benefactor now.

As for Hollywood U: most posts I make take place in an around her third year at HWU, in 2014/2015. You may notice my relationship with HWU is very "playing with dolls". I move a lot of plot elements around: for example, Bianca's ploy to get Claire expelled happens in her third year, around Oct/2014. Clash at Sunset comes out in Jan/2015. And I ignore what I consider stupid (which means you will NOT see the studio plotline on my profile). Claire is very close to Addison and Ethan, and sees Lisa as a younger sister. She starts dating her stupid professor by Dec/2014-Early 2015. This is good and appropriate and Claire is not an archetypal femme fatale (this man will lose his job).

claire's little head

Claire has a complicated relationship with her parents. Her mother never felt like a mother to her, filling more of a role of an older sister. She was her mother’s perfect little doll, a medium to live vicariously through. Meanwhile, her father was emotionally and (due to work) physically distant. She was her father’s strange creation, a successor desperate to be recognised as more than that. She grew up in a weird environment. Very privileged (which she is glad for), but very cold. She had her entire life planned out for her by her parents. Different paths. She escaped one and followed the other, tried escaping it too… only to fall back into the first. Her entire life has been directed, in a way, by other people. She is not aware of this (yet). Is Claire a role she plays?

These dynamics made her develop a profound need of approval from others; if she’s good- if she’s really, really good, then maybe they will love her. She needs to impress people. Attention = love. She needs the spotlight. When her mother clapped at her opening nights, she knew she loved her. When her father nodded after seeing her report cards, she knew he loved her. Most of her relationships (platonically or otherwise) are defined by this.

So, Claire has no body image issues, but she does have self-esteem issues; being overly confident often correlates with compensation. She feels innately unlovable. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her (because there must be something wrong with her). She works really hard to make people like her, love her maybe. She masks, then masks again. Romantically, she craves attention from her partners, but she has to work for that attention; if it’s too easy, she’s not interested. If it’s too easy, something is wrong (it’s never been easy?!). She uses her sexuality in her favour, but that's not a healthy behaviour.

Nowadays (as in, 2014), Claire is in good terms with her mother, but she doesn’t feel close to her. Christine invites her for brunch and margaritas and gives her TMI about her love life. As for her father, they don’t talk.

Claire has had many romantic relationships throughout her life, and this is important to her character. In no chronological order, and non-exhaustively, I'll list some of the men she has dated: Sebastian (inconclusive)(17), her first agent (33), guy running for U.S. Senate (45), her therapist (37), her parents' divorce lawyer (52), Chris Winters (31), her married tennis instructor (47), Italian F1 driver (32). Claire likes putting men in situations, but she is not an archetypal femme fatale. She dated her SJSU roommate Sabrina for a while. She had a situationship with Madeline, lead singer of a goth band and fellow HWU student. All of these were whirlwind relationships and very short lived.

She feels very lonely! She's always surrounded by people, but she desperately craves connection. She feels misunderstood. This is due to a combination of what I've written here + people's (especially men's) perception of her + her ASD diagnosis. I'll link these two other posts about her personality + relationships. Sorry! At the end of the day Claire is, like, just a normal person with lots of flaws and failings, and lots of good things as well. But she'll never get what she wants as long as she keeps pursuing people who put her in a pedestal. They go to bed with Gilda, but wake up with me. She's setting herself for failure. She's not being sincere with them, and, mostly, with her.

that's it for now. i could write about her forever. but i'll end here! this was mostly to centralise all the information in one place, as her lore was very scattered around my profile.

[thespacewirednews]

Side-by-Side Galaxies Arp140

A barred spiral galaxy and a lenticular galaxy come together to create this interacting pair known as Arp 140. The lenticular galaxy, NGC 274, is visible on the right side of this Hubble Space Telescope image, and the barred spiral, NGC 275, is at left. The twosome is located in the constellation Cetus.

Lenticular galaxies and barred spiral galaxies have different structures. In barred spiral galaxies, a bar of stars runs through the central bulge of the galaxy (seen here as a bright-white, vertical haze in NGC 275). Typically, the arms of the galaxy start at the end of the bar. Lenticular galaxies, on the other hand, are classified somewhere between elliptical and spiral galaxies. They get their name from the edge-on appearance that resembles a disk. Lenticular galaxies have large central bulges and flattened disk-like spirals, but no spiral arms. They don’t have much gas and dust and are made up primarily of old stars .

Credit: NASA/ESA/R. Foley (University of California - Santa Cruz)/Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

[spacenutspod]

2 min read Hubble Glimpses a Bright Galaxy Group This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a tangled group of interacting galaxies called LEDA 60847. NASA/ESA/A. Barth (University of California – Irvine)/M. Koss (Eureka Scientific Inc.)/A. Robinson (Rochester Institute of Technology)/Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America) This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a group of interacting galaxies known as LEDA 60847. LEDA 60847 is classified as an active galactic nuclei, or AGN. An AGN has a supermassive black hole in the galaxy’s central region that is accreting material. The AGN emits radiation across the entire electromagnetic spectrum and shines extremely brightly. By studying powerful AGNs that are relatively nearby, astronomers can better understand how supermassive black holes grow and affect galaxies. Galaxy mergers are relatively common occurrences. Most larger galaxies are the result of smaller galaxies merging. The Milky Way itself contains traces of other galaxies, indicating it is the product of past mergers. Astronomers believe somewhere between 5% and 25% of all galaxies are currently merging.  This image of LEDA 60847 combines ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared data from Hubble. The ability to see across all those wavelengths is one of the things that makes Hubble unique. Different types of light across the electromagnetic spectrum tell astronomers different things about our universe. Ultraviolet light traces the glow of stellar nurseries and is used to identify the hottest stars. Visible light shows us moderate-temperature stars and material, and also how the view would appear to our own eyes. Last but not least, near-infrared light can penetrate cold dust, allowing us to study warm gas and dust, and relatively cool stars. LEARN MORE: Hubble’s Cosmic Collisions Hubble Science: Galaxy Details and Mergers Hubble Science: Tracing the Growth of Galaxies Download this image Media Contact: Claire AndreoliNASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MDclaire.andreoli@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Jan 23, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms Active Galaxies Astrophysics Division Galaxies Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Missions The Universe Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Hubble Space Telescope Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe. Galaxies Stories Stars Stories James Webb Space Telescope Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…

[eternal-echoes]

“Whereas the evidence in favor of a transgender brain has proven to be underwhelming, The Journal of Neuroscience Research published a 791-page issue explaining the differences between men's and women's brains and "documenting sex differences at all levels of brain function."(24) One of the authors, a professor of neuroscience from the University of California Irvine remarked, "So overpowering is the wave of research that the standard ways of dismissing sex influences (e.g, They are all small and unreliable,’ ‘They are all due to circulating hormones,’ ‘They are all due to human culture,' and 'They don't exist on the molecular level') have all been swept away, at least for those cognizant of the research.”)25)

Unfortunately, proponents of gender theory often don't seem cognizant of the research. Take, for example, Dr. Kristie Overstreet, who explained transgender identification by saying, "Gender identity is sense of self, so think of it as what's between your ears: sense of self, who you are. This is very different than biological sex, right? Hormones, genitalia, chromosomes: That's what's between our legs."(26)

Her level of imprecision is both astounding and irresponsible. As a clinical sexologist, she should be aware of the fact that one's chromosomes and hormones aren't isolated to the genital area. Furthermore, what's between one's ears reveals one's biological sex. If a gender theorist wanted to retreat to any place in the human body to escape from the reality of the binary nature of human sexuality, the brain would be the last place to hide.

In her book, Sex and the Developing Brain, Dr. Margaret M. McCarthy explains, "[E]very cell in a male brain is to some degree fundamentally different than every cell in a female brain."(27) Dr. Larry Cahill added, "[S]ex influences on brain function are ubiquitous, found at every level of neuroscience.”(28) Not only are brain cells and functions unique for men and women, entire regions of the brain grow in different proportions. For example, the medial preoptic area, which is associated with sexual pursuit, is 2.5 times larger in men. The dorsal premammillary nucleus, which is in charge of signaling the need for territorial defense, is also larger in males. However, the mirror-neuron system, which is in charge of reading others' emotions, is larger in women. The same is true of the prefrontal cortex, which is in charge of inhibiting impulses.(29)”

-Jason Evert, Male, Female, or Other: A Catholic Guide to Understanding Gender

—

Work cited:

24) Larry Cahill, "An Issue Whose Time Has Come: Sex/Gender Influences on Nervous System Function," Journal of Neuroscience Research 95: 1-2 (January/February 2017), Spc1, 1-791.

25) Cahill, "An Issue Whose Time Has Come," 12-13.

26) Kristie Overstreet PhD, "Why Are Many Doctors Scared of Transgender Patients?, TEDxLivoniaCCLibrary," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tG3LWxWZxg.

27) Margaret M. McCarthy, Sex and the Developing Brain, 2nd ed. (San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool, 2017).

28) Larry Cahill, "A Half-Truth Is a Whole Lie: On the Necessity of Investigating Sex Influences on the Brain," Endocrinology 153 (2012), 2542.

29) Cf. Louann Brizendine, The Male Brain (New York: Harmony Books, 2010).

—

For more recommended resources on gender dysphoria, click here.

[jbaileyfansite]

Interview with Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer from GQ Hype

Filled with cozy, Hemingwayesque signifiers of midcentury masculinity (think: taxidermy and artfully-tattered boxing gloves), the restaurant seemed perfect for a breezy, late-autumn hang in the West Village.

But there’s one problem: Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey have burgers on their minds. And while this place boasts a surplus of dead animals nailed to the wall, it somehow only serves snacks and salads in the afternoon. And as Bomer points out, Corner Bistro—a pub that, in his opinion, serves some of the best burgers in town—is just a six-minute walk away.

The British-born Bailey—who, in his black sweater, floppy beanie and overstuffed backpack, looks more like a backpacker who just rolled out of his hostel rather than one of the streaming era’s top heartthrobs—waxes rhapsodic about In-N-Out, the California burger institution, which he recently tried for the first time.

He asks the suave, Old Hollywood-handsome Bomer, who spends most of his time in L.A. with his husband and three teenage sons, where In-N-Out falls on his personal burger index. “Our boys are really good judges of burgers,” Bomer says, and for them, In-N-Out is up there—but so is the burger at Corner Bistro. And how can we send Bailey—the Viscount of Bridgerton himself—back to London without tasting New York’s best?

Our location, midway between Stonewall Inn and Julius, two of New York’s most historic gay bars, is apt. The project we’re here to talk about—the epic new Showtime series Fellow Travelers, in which the pair star—tips its hat to the legendary 1969 riots that happened in Stonewall, but goes even further, telling the story of gay liberation in the second half of the twentieth century.

Part epic love story, part political thriller, Fellow Travelers begins in 1950s Washington, D.C., with an illicit affair between the strapping Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller (Bomer), a State Department official savvy to the ways of power, and the earnest, energetic Timothy “Tim” Laughlin (Bailey), the kind of wide-eyed idealist who goes to D.C. wanting to change the world. When they first meet, Tim is a conservative Catholic boy; his passionate, intensely erotic affair with Hawk both liberates him and throws him off his path.

Through the decades-spanning run of their relationship, the series takes us from the Lavender Scare of the 1950s—when a McCarthy-era policy that institutionalized homophobia expelled many “sexual deviants” from government, resulting at one point in a suicide a day—to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

The series is based on the Thomas Mallon novel of the same name. But where Mallon’s book generally focuses on the 1950s and the explosive romance between Hawk and Tim, the series expands the Fellow Travelers universe to reach through the decades and cover the Vietnam War protests of the '60s and the White Night riots of 1979.

“It's been taught that LGBTQIA+ history begins at Stonewall,” says Jelani Alladin, the actor who plays queer Black journalist Marcus Hooks in the series. “It’s a kind of false narrative. Queer people have been around taking a stand for themselves since the beginning of time.”

It feels like a disservice to call a series so sexy and so compelling as educational. But Fellow Travelers does serve as an important history lesson for younger generations who may not fully understand the battles fought before their time. “It was a really dark period in American history that obviously we're not taught in school,” says executive producer Robbie Rogers, who prior to his work in film and TV was the soccer player who became the first openly gay man to compete in a North American professional sports league. “We're not taught LGBT history.”

When the first episode of the series came out in late October, a viral clip showcasing Bailey and Bomer in a particularly kinky sex scene had Gay Twitter shuddering with excitement. In the scene, Bailey’s Tim uses his power as a sub to persuade Bomer’s Hawk to take him to an important D.C. party. “I’m your boy, right?” he tells Hawk. “Your boy wants to go to the party.” In surely one of this year’s hottest scenes on film or TV, we see Bailey hungrily suck on Bomer’s toes and gamely attempt to put his foot in his mouth. Earlier in the series, Hawk gives Tim the name “Skippy” after thoroughly dominating him in bed, a gesture of affection as much as of ownership.

Sex is a powerful, world-shifting force in Fellow Travelers, but it’s also a Trojan horse. While the early episodes bristle with erotic energy, every exchange between Bomer and Bailey is about power as much as it is about sex. And the further you go into Travelers, the more you realize what’s really at stake when these two hit the sack.

“Even in the ‘50s, they had joy,” Travelers creator and writer Ron Nyswaner, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Philadelphia, says. “You might be struggling, but that doesn't mean every moment of your life you're a victim of oppression. Behind closed doors they had a life—it's just that at any moment, the police could come through those doors and ruin that life.”

That unapologetic approach to queer desire is still pretty revolutionary in a big-budget prestige series on a major network. Gone are the days when gay characters were allowed to exist onscreen as long as they adhered to respectability politics. In Fellow Travelers, the queer characters are allowed passionate, unapologetically freaky pleasures.

“There's no shame attached to that,” Bailey says. “And I do think Matt's character detonates something in Tim. It's a gift to meet someone [who does the] radical act of helping you feel less shame and understand that intimacy that can be explored in so many different ways.”

Religion is a big theme in Fellow Travelers. Hawk is bound by covenant to his wife; Tim struggles with Catholic guilt. And like many queer people, Bomer and Bailey themselves have both had to negotiate religion within their queer identities.

“It took me a long time to dismantle it and to question what I was being told,” Bailey says. “Religion is interesting because it’s the voice of the shame but also [a source of] relief. There was this person that I could speak to—and I definitely did have that full conversation with a higher power. But the contradiction is brutal. To really lean into that as a gay kid who's not born into a gay family, you see both sides of what religion can provide, which is scathing judgment—as I felt it looking back—but also a real space for catharsis and nourishment.”

Bomer says he has an individualized approach to religion: “It's something that I've found for myself over years and years of exploration. It's just highly personal that way.” Bomer is proud to have raised his kids in a truly intersectional environment. “They go to an Episcopal school, but they're in school with Muslim kids, with Jewish kids,” he says. “We gave them that experience and then let them find their own way from there.”

On the way to Corner Bistro, Bomer gives Bailey a capsule tour of gay West Village. “That’s an iconic lesbian bar,” he says, pointing out Cubbyhole on West 12th street. Later, he asks if we’ve ever been to Fire Island. “You can have any experience you want there,” Bomer tells me, when I confess my anxiety around Speedos. “It's not just one thing.”

These streets bring up certain memories for Bomer. He tells us about coming up as an actor in New York in the early 2000s, at one point living in “a renovated crackhouse in Brooklyn.” Later, he worked two jobs to afford a one-bedroom apartment he split with a fellow aspiring actor—none other than Lee Pace, the famous, and famously tall (6′ 5″, if you don’t know), actor and Internet Boyfriend who Bomer has known since high school. “I’ll tell you how long I've known Lee Pace,” he says. “I’ve known him since he was shorter than me, when he was 14 and I was 15.”

As gay men are wont to do, trust that the group veered off-topic to talk about vocally-prodigious divas. Bomer has just seen the Broadway production of David Byrne’s Here Lies Love, which tells the story of the rise and fall of Imelda Marcos, the wife of the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. And when he finds out that I grew up in the Philippines, he tells me how much he loves Lea Salonga, the Tony-winning Filipino Broadway star who appears in the production.

We ask Bailey if he’s familiar with her. “Do I know Lea Salonga?” he asks. “She was Fantine!” he retorts, referring to her role in Les Misérables in Concert: The 25th Anniversary.

From there, we fall into a Filipino diva rabbit hole, talking about former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger (currently appearing in a well-received West End production of Sunset Boulevard that Bomer tells Bailey they must catch together), Mutya Buena of the Sugababes (an iconic U.K. girl group that Bailey and I separately saw live recently), and Darren Criss (who Bomer directed on The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story—technically a straight male, but one who earns diva status for his formidable vocals and the dance he did in a red speedo on Versace).

As we near the pub, a thirty-something woman walking hand in hand with her man does a hilariously convincing impression of the Distracted Boyfriend meme at the sight of Neal Caffrey and Anthony Bridgerton casually strolling through West 4th Street.

“Her neck!” Bailey says, audibly concerned.

In Corner Bistro, with sandwiches and coffees in hand (Bailey decides on a classic burger and a grilled chicken sandwich), we settle down in a cozy booth and talk about the points in their careers where Fellow Travelers found the actors, the hard-won representation Hollywood’s queer community has been fighting for for decades, and the LGBTQ+ talents of color they’d like to support on their own projects.

Bomer, of course, has been famous since the early 2010s, when he became a star on the series White Collar, and along with Neil Patrick Harris, proved that openly gay actors could become leading men. Since then, he’s conquered Broadway (The Boys in the Band), won a slew of awards (Golden Globe and Critic's Choice trophies for The Normal Heart) and become a producer and director.

In the past, Bomer has discussed the way doors closed on him even as he was being celebrated for being an out gay actor. When asked about that now, he says, “I choose just to never look back in anger about anything. Ultimately, my career is a lot richer because I decided to be open with who I am.”

“It’s a wave of progress that Matt's been surfing and is at the front of,” says Bailey. “And it's been a real honor to be able to get on my boogie board next to him.”

Before he became a global star mid-pandemic playing the grumpy, furry-chested Anthony Bridgerton on the Netflix juggernaut Bridgerton, Bailey was an award-winning actor in both the West End and British television. Huge fame didn’t find Bailey until his early 30s, so when it did, he had a clear idea of what he wanted to accomplish with his platform.

“I feel the responsibility immeasurably,” Bailey says. “I get it when people are saying you create a chair and bring people [to the table].” He talks about the connection between the civil rights movement and the queer liberation. “The Black queens are the ones who really started to fight,” he says. “It's amazing to feel politically activated. And if there's any project to do that, it's going to be Fellow Travelers. It will change the way I see myself in and the world I live in.”

The intersectionality makes the story Travelers is trying to tell even richer—most of all in Alladin’s scene-stealing portrayal of the conflicted Marcus Hooks, a pioneering Black journalist who pushes against segregation as he grapples with his own sexuality. “When I look at older men today, I'm like, You guys have endured so much,” Aladdin says. “From the Second World War all the way through to the AIDS crisis, it was nonstop life crisis after life crisis. To have been able to survive through all that, there needs to be a real, solid weight on the feet of [these characters].”

Part of the pleasure of watching Fellow Travelers is picking up on the cinematic references hidden in each scene. Hawk and Tim’s first interactions evoke the forbidden affair in David Lean’s 1945 classic Brief Encounter. When Hawk’s family settles in suburbia, the show evokes the Technicolor repression of the great Douglas Sirk melodramas. When Hawk and Tim run through the beaches of Fire Island in the ‘70s, that iconic image of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissing on the beach in From Here to Eternity may flicker in your mind. And in some ways, the series plays like a gayer, hornier The Way We Were—an epic love story tossed on the tides of political change. (In this version, of course, the Barbra Streisand character is an eager foot-licking sub and Redford’s Hubbell Gardiner is a daddy with a pit fetish.) Fellow Travelers allows us to imagine an alternate timeline where queer love has always gotten as much screen time as cinema’s great heterosexual romances, giving other kinds of stories the chance at celluloid immortality too.

In the book, Hawk is described as being more handsome than Gregory Peck. But seeing Bomer in period-appropriate clothing, the Old Hollywood leading man I thought of was Montgomery Clift, the talented and ultimately tragic gay actor who starred in classics like Red River and A Place in the Sun. For a time in the mid 2010s, Bomer was attached to star in a Montgomery Clift biopic for HBO, to be directed by the great gay director Ira Sachs. “Ira is a genius,” Bomer says. “[But] I think that ship may have sailed.”

Still, when I press him about doing it in the future, he lights up. “You know, I’m [now] the same age Monty was when he passed away,” Bomer says. “I always thought it'd be really interesting to do a play about the last night of his life, when he's watching one of his old movies on TV. And he had this man who lived with him and took care of him for the last chapter of his life.There's an interesting play in there somewhere…. Maybe Liz Taylor swings by.”

What’s changed since the mid 2010s is that a lot of Hollywood’s current gatekeepers are queer people who were fighting from the bottom a decade ago. “It's the people, the gatekeepers who are now going, ‘We are going to make this [queer] story,’” Bailey says. “This narrative that gay people have to be closeted in order [for a project] to be commercial and in order for things to be interesting to people—it's been dismantled. But it's slow because it's not just straight people who think that—I think everyone believed that in the system of Hollywood.”

Nyswaner, who has been working in Hollywood since the early ‘80s, has seen that shift up close. “When I grew up in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, I never heard the word ‘homosexual’ spoken aloud,” he says. “There was no conversation that I ever had with anybody about homosexuality. It was not just bad, it was the unspeakable thing—that's how terrified people were of us.”

And while he agrees that, in some ways, it feels like the LGBTQ+ community is once again losing ground on some rights, Nyswaner refuses to accept that there hasn’t been change. “Sometimes I hear people say, ‘Well, we haven't gotten anywhere.’ And I'm here to say, ‘Oh, yes, we have.’ Because actually you can turn on the television and find gay characters.”

Fellow Travelers is the culmination of a dream for a number of the men involved in the series.

“When I met Ron, he was talking about how he thinks about this as his lifelong legacy project,” Bailey says. “And I just said to him, ‘Whoever ends up going on this journey with you, I think it'll be the same [for them] probably.’”

“In some ways, Fellow Travelers is a span of my life,” Ron Nyswaner says. “I was an infant in the McCarthy era. And then I came out of the closet in 1978 and just danced and did cocaine and had multiple sexual partners—we didn't know what was coming, which was the AIDS crisis.” Nyswaner was nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1993 for Philadelphia, the landmark drama about an AIDS patient who sues his employers for AIDS discrimination. In a way, the historical span of Fellow Travelers gives the battles fought in Philadelphia their context.

Rogers remembers being a closeted soccer player in the late 2000s, watching Tom Ford’s A Single Man and hoping one day to be able to find love and take control of his own narrative. And Bailey recalls, post-Bridgerton, realizing that he could suddenly write his own destiny and vowing to seek out “a sweeping gay love story.”

Bomer, meanwhile, says—laughing, but seemingly dead serious—that it’s his goal to play a queer character from every decade of the 20th century. “A queer Decalogue,” he says, referencing the Krzysztof Kieślowski classic.

Bomer’s next project might just help him do that. He’s currently producing a Steven Soderbergh film on Lawrence v. Texas, the case that overturned the sodomy laws in Texas in 2003 but started in the 90s.

There are many more stories to tell. And as our interview winds down, Bomer and Bailey start spitballing dream projects.

We talk about All of Us Strangers director Andrew Haigh, who’s revered for his portraits of gay intimacy. “Andrew Haigh has been a special filmmaker for years,” Bailey says. “I think [his film] Weekend informed actually how I approached the sex scenes in [Fellow Travelers].”

“I’d love to play Jessica Fletcher's queer grandson who moves back to Cabot Cove,” Bomer says, referencing Angela Lansbury’s iconic role in Murder, She Wrote. “He's inherited her house and he finds an old journal in her library, and it's a case she never saw and he takes up her mantle.”

And moments before the restaurant speakers suddenly start blaring George Michael’s “Freedom ’90,” Bailey comes in with a killer pitch: “I’m obsessed with the Sacred Band of Thebes, an army of 300 gay lovers in [ancient] Greece. They partnered in pairs, this gay army, and they overthrew a Spartan army… I want to do that as a comedy.”

“Oh hell yes!” Bomer says.

“Just get all the queer actors together,” Bailey says, laughing.

“Lee Pace, everyone,” Bomer says.

“Where would we film it?” Bailey asks.

“Mykonos?” Bomer suggests.

“Flaming Saddles, down the road,” Bailey counters with a chuckle, referring to a gay bar in midtown.

“Oil us up and let’s go!” Bomer says.

Source

[hlficlibrary]

✤ Coming Out Fics ✤

A series of posts with the top five fics of each category by kudos plus five more hidden gems from that category! Remember to leave kudos and a comment on the fics you enjoyed to show your appreciation! You can find the library's other recs here.

- Top 5 H/L Fics -

1️⃣ And Then a Bit by @infinitelymint (E, 158k)

“We’d like to give the fans what they want.” Magee states, placing his hand on the table in front of him and leaning forward. “We want to give them Larry Stylinson.”

Or, take a parallel universe where Louis and Harry were never together, mix in a two year hiatus and an impending comeback, pour in a dash of lost fans, two tablespoons of strong friendship and a Modest! employee with a good idea. Add a squeeze of pretending to be a couple, lots of kisses and a tattoo or two. Stir. Serve: the mother of all publicity stunts.

(aka Harry and Louis fake a relationship for publicity. Eventually it becomes a lot less fake and a lot more real.)

2️⃣ led by your beating heart by @missandrogyny (E, 33k)

Nick leans over. "Oh," he says, his voice smug. "Who is that?"

Harry just blinks at his phone. "Um," he manages to stammer out.

"Who's that, Harry?" Nick asks again, but this time he raises his eyebrows and smirks. Harry knows Nick is just teasing, and that he's not really looking for new Harry Styles gossip, but, um. He might have found something. Accidentally.

Harry opens his mouth to speak, but all that comes out is another 'um'. He really needs to work on translating his thoughts into words. But then it probably wouldn't be any help right now, would it? His mind is as blank as a newly erased etch-a-sketch.

"Oh," Nick says again, this time gleefully, seemingly having picked up on Harry's distress. "Looks like we've got a story here! Are you going to call or delete her number?"

Her number. So Nick thinks it's a girl. Well, Harry can't blame him: 'Lou' is kind of an androgynous nickname. His stylist's name is Lou.

But this Lou, well, Louis, he's kind of, really, really not a girl. He's really pretty though, which, is something.

(Or: AU where Harry's in One Direction, Louis isn't, and they reconnect over a game of 'Call or Delete'.)

3️⃣ California Sold by @isthatyoularry (M, 123k)

Notoriously closeted boyband member Harry Styles is famous on a global scale, meanwhile Louis, as his best friend, is back home in Manchester, living the typical life of a 24 year old. When Harry needs Louis with him in LA, a publicity stunt gone wrong changes their friendship forever.

A fake-relationship AU between two lifelong best friends.

4️⃣ Shake Me Down by @agreatperhaps12 (NR, 208k)

Harry's new to college, fresh out of Catholic school and conversion therapy camp, and Louis runs the campus LGBTQIA organization.

5️⃣ Time Bomb by ThisSentimentalHeart (M, 291k)

“Why exactly are you here?” Louis asked, feigning annoyance and failing pathetically at it. “My publicist told me I can't go anywhere near you.” Harry said, eyes still smudged with last night's eye liner. “That makes you my favorite person in the world.”

Or the one where Louis has everything: a lead role in a giant Hollywood franchise, a glittering new house with an entertaining Irish neighbor, and a steady, normal boyfriend who he probably loves. Louis never expected to become a household name among young Hollywood overnight. He also never expected to find something endearing about the enigmatic rockstar who keeps showing up on his back porch.

HIDDEN GEMS:

💎 Caught In Your Gravity by @lululawrence (NR, 62k)

It felt like the blood froze in Harry’s veins even as he got a bit lightheaded. He hadn’t even made it two practices, only one of which he was remotely in charge of, without giving it all away and now he and Liam were both absolutely fucked.

“Shit,” Harry breathed out. “Who all have you told? Does everyone know? I thought I covered it better than that…”

“No, no,” Louis said quickly. "They’ll figure it out soon enough, though, because they’ll get used to you changing things up, but you’re only going to trip over your so called Americanisms for so long before they realize it’s because you don’t actually know fuck all about football.”

Harry sighed. “Yeah. I figured. I just need to bullshit for long enough to allow Liam to get the situation figured out from his end.”

“Right, which brings me to my entire point. I think we can find a mutually beneficial arrangement with all of this.” Louis leaned forward. “You need to learn the ins and outs of the sport incredibly fast. I can help you with that.”

“What do you want in exchange?”

Or, an AU inspired by a 30 second trailer of Ted Lasso that doesn't actually have much in common with the show at all.

💎 That Smile and That Midnight Laugh by yeah_alright / @uhoh-but-yeah-alright (T, 50k)

Harry’s never noticed how lovely Louis really is. Maybe it’s just that she’s usually so guarded – a little tense, a little irritated, a little put out. At least when she’s at school, and also usually when she’s around Nick, which are the only times Harry has really seen her. Until tonight. Tonight Harry’s seen her with her guard completely down. Too busy laughing and enjoying herself to remember to be prickly, maybe. She seems different.

It feels different.

A Ferris Bueller's Day Off AU that picks up right where the movie leaves off, and imagines what might happen if Ferris' girlfriend and sister become friends. And maybe something more, too.

💎 some evening in springtime by delsicle / @eeveedel (M, 20k)

Fresh out of veterinary school, Louis moves to a sleepy small town in Texas to take over the local animal clinic. But his new life is quickly interrupted by a middle aged rancher with a bad leg and a mysterious past, who really needs Louis's yoga skills.

💎 still feel the same around you by momentofclarity / @gaycousinlarry (E, 13k)

Twenty-five years is a long time to fall in love with someone, to learn all the ways a person can fit into one's heart. It’s also an awful long time to lie to one of the most important people in your life.

The Act My Age Girl Direction AU.

💎 Glass Heart by @musketrois (G, 7k)

“26-year-old West Ham footballer Louis Tomlinson was seen getting acquainted with 24-year-old pop sensation Harry Styles and others. Although it is not unordinary for these two professions to be social, we can’t wait to see what this budding relationship will bring to London’s social scene.”

-Celebrity Blurb 25 March, 2017

[snowviolettwhite]

Spent today working on the mood-board for my upcoming 9-1-1 Alternative Universe Fan-Fiction Set In 2011. Making moodboard and doing interested boards help inspire me and get ideas flowing. So I want to share it. Look how adorable teenage Buck, Eddie and Shannon are. They look so young, little cutie pies.

It will be called "don't have to be sorry for leaving and growing up." It is from Harry Style's Matilda.

Below is what I have written so far, it is still in the works. You can also check out my 9-1-1: Lone Star Fan-Fiction.

---

Set in the early 2010s with barely eighteen and barely out of high school Buck and Eddie running away from home to California and joining the fire academy and eventually joining the 118. Eddie would bring baby Christopher with him. Eddie's parent did not think he was mature and adult enough to take care of Chris as a 20-something year old, so is would be even worse for teenagers, people who are transiting from childhood/teenage-hood to young adulthood and still being treated like kids.

---

It is June of 2011. The schools wide across the nation are all out for summer vacation from Hershey, Pennsylvania to El Paso, Texas.

Evan Buckley is the blonde, blue eye rascal who is always getting hurt and in trouble. He is the baby of the family but the only person who has ever paid attention to him is his big sister Maddie.

Edmundo Diaz is the young teen dad who got his best friend and girlfriend pregnant. He is the middle child and was the sane one compared to sisters until now.

They say if you want to be treated like an adult act like an adult. How are supposed to act like an adult at eighteen years old, haven’t been out of high school even a month, being dragged home by the cops and being scolded at the front door or being yelled in your childhood bedroom. Sometimes this makes you want to run away.     

----

It is June of 2011.

The city of El Paso, Texas school district has let for summer break and held graduation for this year’s high school seniors, they are no longer twelfth graders.

They are adults or as much as one can feel like an adult at eighteen years old, and silently sobbing in your childhood bedroom, hugging your worn-out stuffed animal dog with your back pressed against the door, trying not to wake your napping infant son who in his crib as your mother is yelling at you.

“Edmundo Diaz, you are in so much trouble young man. Open this door right now! You live under in my house. You live by my rules and aren’t too old to be put over my knees. Just wait until your father gets home. I can’t do deal with you.”

Edmundo Diaz or Eddie as he prefers being called was a good catholic boy. He never misbehaved or caused trouble but a little too soft, that was until Shannon showed up. They met in the eighth grade. They became best friends and were inseparable until they lose touch but found their way back to each other. She introduced herself being all sweet and friendly. She was sunshine. His family hated Shannon. They said she was a bad influence on him and he started acting different after meeting her. She was his first kiss, his first girlfriend, this first time. Good catholic boys wait until marriage, she is his first and only.

Shannon will back soon, she is visiting colleges in California. When she comes back they will make a plan for themselves and for their beautiful baby boy, Christopher. For now, he has been having never ending fights with his parents. It is about how stupid he was getting a girl pregnant while still in high school and a teenager or how he needs to toughen up or grow up. It is kind of hard to grow up when nobody goes around hiring eighteen-year-old and your parents are still treating you like a child.

“Edmundo, how could you let this happen? You and Shannon are still kids. You are barely able to take care of yourselves. How are you supposed to take care of a baby?”

---

Inspired By This Photo:

[sarahalainn]

NASA, ESA, M. Wong (University of California - Berkeley), G. Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America); CC BY 4.0

今日は日本人宇宙飛行記念日

クラシックで宇宙旅！🪐

今回1番チャレンジだったのは14分に纏めることでした

何度も何度も通しで作品を聞いて、物語を作って音楽を編集してみました

いつかは良かったらフルで聴いてみて欲しい！

生で聴けるチャンスがあれば理想🪐

今回初めて使ってみたDAW。意外と使いやすいかも？

1. 戦の火星

2. 美と平和の金星

3. 翼のメッセンジャー水星

4. 快楽の木星

5. 老たる土星

6. 魔術師の天王星

7. 神秘な海王星

「Peace of Mind〜土曜の朝のサラ・オレイン」

‪TOKYO FM/FM OSAKA (radiko)‬

‪ ●毎週土曜の朝8:30-8:55

Storytelling over Holst’s Planets!

So today is the anniversary of the first Japanese (civilian) who went up into space!

Honoured the occasion by playing Holst’s planets and story telling over it, Peter & the Wolf style.

Only big problem was fitting it into under 14 mins for the radio show. Listened to the work in its entirety several times before cutting & stitching in the most musical way possible.

But of course, nothing better than to hear it the way it was intended, so hopefully you’ll want to hear the whole work now!

First time using Reaper. Feels quite intuitive?

個人的には今日、映画「ムーミン谷とウィンターワンダーランド」の記念日！もう5年の月日が経ちました

この赤いリスの声優🐿️もやらせて頂きました^_^

ツリーのてっぺんに🌹というのがロマンがありますね

Personally, today marks the release of ‘Moomins and the Winter Wonderland’. 5 years flew by just like that!

I also did the voice acting for this red squirrel. Was an honour to wish the Moomins a Merry Christmas🎄

I love how they topped the tree with a rose🌹

[weirdestbooks]

Countryhumans Oneshots

The United States of Idiots:

50 Times the States Did Something Super Dumb and Funny. And America's Reaction to His Kids Being Crackheads.

Sleepy Twin:

Delaware is tired and decides to take a nap on his twin New York.

Coffee:

In America’s household, there is one rule. Don’t touch the Coffee Trio’s coffee.

Bonding:

Delaware tries to bond with one of the newest territories, Hawaii.

Bonus Scene From Chapter 5 of Secrecy and Deception:

"A British man talking about how the Declaration of Independence was important and great. He almost laughed but was not able to hold back giggles. Dad also looked incredibly amused by that. Britain would probably be getting a call from Dad laughing about this." -Missouri, Secrecy and Deception

Americanized:

Oklahoma used to be the Indian Territory. Now, he's an American State that wants nothing to do with them. What happened to cause this? Based on @walkingtalkingcountries' headcanons!

Languages:

America is very tired and forgets English.

A Reckoning With Oneself:

Ireland is a very catholic nation and over a thousand years old. Therefore, being queer and accepting queerness is hard for him.

The Living Ghost of a Long Dead Brother:

Sweden meets her long-dead half-brother.

Sammy and Sammy Junior:

Polynesia is a very close family. They visit each other and hang out often. It's a shame when one of those meetings goes a bit sour due to an accident.

America and the Struggles of Having a Human Face:

America has body dysmorphia. It's not something he's handled well.

The Frozen State:

Lake Superior. Beautiful, but deadly. Michigan learned that the hard way.

Camping is Deadly:

Florida is a great brother and friend. He's just not the best person to go camping with.

Dog Therapy:

Alaska gives his nephew therapy with the help of his dogs.

Concerned Family:

New Zealand was abused. He doesn’t think so. His family is concerned.

Arson:

California likes fire. They also hate their brother.

Human Perceptions:

Sometimes New Jersey just wants to pretend to be human. That does make things awkward when his human friends start talking about his family though.

A Dead Man's Flag:

Delaware was the reincarnation of the son of Forest Finns. Due to his reincarnation-caused amnesia, he has very limited memories of the man he calls isä. But a gift from his uncle might spark a new memory to return. More importantly, he had a physical trace of his father.

Fuck Tourists:

Hawaii hates tourists. America gets her a shirt.

Fear:

Illinois is haunted by the threats of the mob, not that his roommate is aware. That won’t stop Michigan from comforting him as the nightmares awaken him again and again.

United States of Ameridad:

America is a dad, and he loves helping and caring for each and every one of his kids.

Hawaii and the Celtic Nations:

Hawaii visits the Celtic Nations, oblivious to their family ties.

The Sign:

Germany has a funny sign. So does his father.

Finland's Wings:

Finland gets a new flag. In doing so, he also gets a pair of wings.

The Thoughts of an Empire:

Russian Empire was an awful person. He didn’t think of his son as a son. Just as a tool.

Southern Neighbors:

Texas has a problem

impermanently:

An angry man shoots and kills New York. It’s the first time a state dies.

The Burn Recovery:

Alaska is hurt badly. Luckily, he always has his dad to help him.

Nieuw York:

New Netherlands was murdered a long time ago. It’s really unfortunate who found her body.

The Parental Sibling:

Delaware is sick. Luckily he has a big brother/father figure who can look after him

What's the Worst Way to Punish an Introvert?:

Sometimes child abuse isn't as apparent as it seemed. Take this case of Finland and the Russian Empire.

America and his Cat:

Just a little America drabble.

Tulips: [Non-canon]

Canada is picking up his boyfriend from the airport so they can spend a week together. (Not canon to my countryhumans universe, this is a requested oneshot)

The Fire Pokémon Club:

Five countries have the ability to create fire. So why not make a club?

India Gets Revenge:

India does not like the curry that exists in England. She really shouldn't.

The Fires of Hatred and Passion Are Much the Same:

France and Britain are somewhat enemies. However as time goes on, they become fonder and fonder of each other.

An Old Friendship:

Morocco was the first country to recognize America's independence. The two countries have been firm friends ever since.

The Outlier of Oceania:

Madagascar is not Polynesian, but her sister, French Polynesia, seems determined to drag her to Polynesian family reunions anyway.

The Boston Christmas Tree:

On the hundredth anniversary of the Halifax Explosion, Massachusetts and Nova Scotia meet again in Boston.

ASEAN Nonsense:

A typical ASEAN meeting can be very exhausting for it's namesake.

The Funky Gender of the Northern Carolina:

North Carolina has a strange relationship with her gender.

The Place of Origin:

North Carolina is the home of her father's birthplace. They talk about that.

Alba agus A Mac:

Scotland adores his son, the personification of the Orcadians.

York and Jay:

New York and New Jersey have a sibling rivalry. Sometimes, it feels too real for New Jersey.

Meeting Mississippi:

The time has come for the US states to meet their newest sister, Mississippi.

When the Father Had Power [Non-Canon]:

When America goes back in time, he confronts the man who raised him.

The Dragon's (Grand)Son:

A talk with Wales ends up with Britain gaining dragon traits. They learn to adjust.

A Drowned Out Voice:

The District of Columbia had always been different from her siblings. That difference always made her feel so alone.

Sammy's Crush:

American Samoa has been crushing on Fauna for months. Will he finally have the courage to ask them out?

[criphd]

Raphael Magarik (contributing writer): I confess that I have only read the “Jewish” parts of Marxism and Form (1971), my favorite work by Fredric Jameson, the great literary theorist who died this week. That is to say, I have read the chapters on Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Bloch, Lukács—all but the chapter on Sartre, which is, at least for me, a hundred pages of impenetrable, gentile boredom. The names of these theorists are emblazoned on the book’s cover as if they were a musical supergroup, like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Jameson was trying to explain and defend Hegelian Marxism, which promised that historical materialism could approach literary texts not as propaganda or morality plays, but as complex forms, in whose development we could chart the course of an evolving, universal history. Somehow, the book he ended up writing consists of a series of mournful vignettes about Central European Jewish intellectuals.

It’s hard to know what Jameson would have thought of this observation, not just because his origins were WASPy and patrician, but because he largely avoided personal reflection, even as he built a superstar career defending, often single handedly, Marxism’s claim to primacy among High Theories. But the Jewishness of Marxism and Form is no coincidence. It reflects the “elective affinity” Michael Löwy would later trace between early 20th-century Central European Jewish writers, barred by antisemitic prejudice from academic postings, and thus institutionally marginalized and driven toward a utopian, romantic mode of left-wing politics. Löwy’s student Enzo Traverso later studied a cohort of doubly “heretical” adherents of what he called “Judeo-Marxism,” who rejected the vulgar, dogmatic scientism of Karl Kautsky and the Second International, as well as Orthodox religiosity and post-war Zionism. Often rebels against both Jewish and contemporary left pieties, these Judeo-Marxists produced eccentric, offbeat theories, probed the arcane troves of Kabbalah and Christian mysticism, and tended more toward modernist experimentation than by-the-book socialist realism. Thus, if one wanted, as Jameson did, to find sources for a Marxism that was intellectually rich, thick with ironies and paradoxes, and critically adequate not just to proletarian novels and folks songs, but to Balzac and Beethoven (and then, in Jameson’s eclectic, catholic, and massive corpus of writing, to pretty much any cultural artifact whatsoever), then of course one would end up writing about Jews.

And despite Jameson’s ideal of objective impersonality, there are hints he was aware of his Jewish focus. A section epigraph in his chapter on Ernst Bloch reads, “Next Year in Jerusalem! —Old Jewish Prayer,” the single pithiest distillation of the utopian longing that animates Jameson’s whole career. More telling, perhaps, is the uncharacteristically personal turn with which he concludes his discussion of Marcuse, writing that despite the bleak, unrevolutionary conditions of mid-century American capitalism, “it pleases me for another moment still to contemplate the stubborn rebirth of the idea of freedom” in several minds, the last of which is that of Marcuse, the “philosopher, in the exile of that immense housing development which is the state of California, remembering, reawakening, reinventing—from the rows of products in the supermarkets, from the roar of traffic of the freeways and the ominous shape of the helmets of traffic policemen, from the incessant overhead traffic of the fleets of military transport planes, as it were from beyond them, in the future—the almost extinct form of the Utopian idea.”

In Jameson’s hands, the paradigmatically Jewish condition of exile undergoes a double metamorphosis, first into Marcuse’s estrangement from the land of his birth by the Nazi catastrophe, which either killed or uprooted nearly all of Jameson’s book’s subjects, and then second, into the existential predicament of the social theorist lost in post-war consumer capitalism, adrift in a history that seemed to have lost its plot. That predicament, and his oft-repeated, defiant insistence that nonetheless, one must not, could not, forget Jerusalem and the dream of a redeemed future, was, of course, Jameson’s great theme. So it pleases me, in spite of his studied impersonality, to point out that in 1971, Jameson had only recently left Harvard for the University of California, San Diego, where he overlapped with Marcuse for several years—and that perhaps here is an autobiographical clue that Jameson was a quiet devotee of our exilic tradition, which he reimagined as the melancholy condition of the left intellectual in an unfriendly historical moment, struggling to transform his nostalgia into hope for a future, into a yearning for a world transformed.

-- from the jewish currents shabbat reading list & parshat nitzavim-vayelech [idk if it's accessible now but i've linked a sign up to the newsletter]

[film-classics]

Rosalind Russell - The Miracle Woman

Catherine Rosalind Russell (born in Waterbury, Connecticut on June 4, 1907) was an American actress known for playing sassy, wisecracking women in 1930s and '40s comedies. Despite going through postpartum depression, the deaths of her siblings, breast cancer, and rheumatoid arthritis, she thrived as a charismatic actress on film and the stage, earning the nickname "The Miracle Woman.”

Raised in a strict Irish-American, Catholic family. She attended  Rosemont College and Marymount College, before graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, unbeknownst to her parents who believed she was studying to be a speech teacher.

Against parental objections, she began her career as a fashion model and took acting jobs in upstate New York, Connecticut, and Boston before eventually appearing in Broadway.

In 1933, Russell went to Los Angeles, where she was hired as a contract player for Universal Studios but did not appear in a movie. Unhappy at Universal, she moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where she broke through in the classic screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940), directed by Howard Hawks.

She took a break after giving birth from her career, but made a comeback with RKO Pictures and then with Columbia Pictures. She continued to appear in critically acclaimed movies and Broadway shows through the mid-1960s, including the title role of the long-running stage comedy Auntie Mame (based on a Patrick Dennis novel) as well as the 1958 film version.

After years of battling breast cancer and even getting a double mastectomy, she died at her home in Beverly Hills, California at 69 years of age. Months after her death, she was honored by her acting colleagues with the “Interlude With Rosalind Russell” at the Shubert Theater in Broadway.

Legacy:

Nominated four times for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in My Sister Eileen (1942), Sister Kenny (1946), Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), and Auntie Mame (1958)

Won all five of her Golden Globe Award for Best Actress nominations: Sister Kenny (1946), Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), Auntie Mame (1958), A Majority of One (1961), and Gypsy (1962)

Won the 1953 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for Wonderful Town and was nominated for the 1957 for Best Actress in a Play for Auntie Mame

Nominated for the 1959 BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress

Won the Golden Apple Award in 1942 for Most Cooperative Actress

Awarded the Look Magazine Award for Film Achievement Award in 1947

Covered Time magazine in 1953

Was the namesake of the Rosalind Russell State Theater in her hometown in 1955

Wrote the story for the film The Unguarded Moment (1956) and adapted the novel, The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, into the screenplay for Mrs. Pollifax-Spy in 1971, under the pen name C.A. McKnight

Won the Golden Laurel for Top Female Comedy Performance for Auntie Mame (1958) and was nominated five more times

Presented with a medallion by the National Conference of Christians and Jews in 1962

Honored for her distinguished service by the UCLA in 1964

Named the Woman of the Year by Hasty Pudding Theatricals, a student society at Harvard University, in 1964

Is the recipient of the Floyd B. Odlum Award by the Arthritis Foundation in 1971

Appointed by Congress to serve on the National Commission on Arthritis and Related Musculoskeletal Diseases during the 1970s

Received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1972

Appeared in John Springer's "Legendary Ladies" series at The Town Hall in 1973

Awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1973 by the Academy for her extensive charity work

Presented her with the National Artist Award in 1974 by the American National Theater and Academy

Awarded the Life Achievement Award in 1975 by the Screen Actors Guild Awards

Hosted by First Lady Betty Ford at the White House in 1976

Honored with the Rosalind Russell Week in 1977 by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley

Co-authored her autobiography, Life Is a Banquet, in 1977

Is the namesake of the Rosalind Russell Medical Research Center for Arthritis  at the University of California, San Francisco, created by a Congress grant in 1979

Inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in 2005

Ranked #28 on Premiere magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time in 2006 for His Girl Friday (1940)

Honored as Turner Classic Movies Star of the Month for July 2008

Inducted in the Online Film and Television Association Film Hall of Fame in 2014

Was the subject of a 2016 exhibit at the Mattatuck Museum in her hometown

Honored by the Berlin Film Festival‘s 27-movie tribute in 2022

Has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the 1700 block of Vine Street for motion picture

[justforbooks]

David Lodge

Booker prize-nominated author and critic who was known for his Catholic novels and satires on academic life

David Lodge, who has died aged 89, was, like his close friend Malcolm Bradbury, a professor of English literature who became even better known as a novelist. The two men occupied adjacent offices for some years at Birmingham University in the early 1960s and greatly influenced each other. Both were grammar school boys from non-academic backgrounds who became leading figures in English letters without ever darkening the gateways of Oxford or Cambridge universities. Both wrote novels in part out of an instinct to reach a wide constituency of readers with literary tastes.

Lodge worked briefly for the British Council before getting his first academic job in 1960, as a lecturer in English literature at Birmingham. In the same year his first novel, The Picturegoers, was published. This and the novel that followed, Ginger, You’re Barmy (1962), were written under the influence of Graham Greene, a fellow doubting Roman Catholic novelist whom the young Lodge much admired. Lodge’s own PhD, The Catholic Novel from the Oxford Movement to the Present Day, had examined the genre to which he himself began to contribute.

The protagonist of The British Museum Is Falling Down (1965), Adam Appleby, agonises over the rights and wrongs of contraception, and Lodge’s early fiction was clearly rooted in his own scruples and discontents. The novel was also notable for its gift of literary parody: Adam is researching for an English literature PhD and sections of the novel mimic the styles of leading 20th-century novelists. This dexterity was as characteristic a feature of its author as the religious questioning. The subject matter of this and most of his subsequent novels was drawn from his close knowledge of literary academia, and its follies.

David was the only child of a dance-band musician and sometime singer, William Lodge, and was brought up in Brockley, south-east London. His mother, Rosalie, was a Roman Catholic and he was educated at St Joseph’s academy, a Catholic grammar school in Blackheath run by a religious order, the De La Salle Brothers. He went to University College London to read English – he said that he was put off applying to Oxbridge by the impression of it he received from reading novelists such as Evelyn Waugh. From 1955 until 1957 he did national service in the Royal Armoured Corps. The experience would later be used in Ginger, You’re Barmy, which gives a jaundiced picture of army life. He then returned to UCL as a postgraduate.

When he was 24 and still studying for his PhD, Lodge married Mary Jacob, a fellow Catholic, whom he met while both were English undergraduates. Soon the couple had two sons and a daughter. (He would look back with something like amazement at their conviction that they should use only the methods of birth control approved by the church.) The third of their children, Christopher, had Down’s syndrome. He lived at home until he was in his 20s, and his care and education were a central commitment of family life. Lodge was later to raise funds and campaign on behalf of sheltered communities for adults with learning difficulties.

Two formative periods in the US – at the Harkness Commonwealth Fellowship (1964-65), then as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1969 – animated both Lodge’s academic studies and his fiction. He turned to the campus novel, a genre in which he became a household name. Changing Places (1975) featured Philip Swallow, a bumbling, middle-aged English literature lecturer who is liberated, sexually and intellectually, by an academic exchange with a dynamic American professor, Morris Zapp. As well as exchanging jobs, the two men take up with each other’s wives. Zapp, based on Lodge’s friend Stanley Fish, became his best loved character. The novel won the Hawthornden prize and his widest readership to date.

It was followed by the playfully allusive Small World (1984), which continued Swallow’s and Zapp’s misadventures, and then Nice Work (1988), whose two main characters, a feminist academic and a bluff businessman, enacted the clash between two worlds. Inevitably, they also have an affair. These last two novels were both shortlisted for the Booker prize.

The main location for Lodge’s campus novels was the University of Rummidge, a scarcely disguised version of the University of Birmingham, where he continued to work. The novels reflected the academic fashions of the period, of which he was a slightly hesitant leader. His early criticism, such as his Language of Fiction (1966), showed him applying the close reading techniques of the “new criticism” to classic fiction. This first book was widely read by students and he was soon established as a leading academic analyst of classic fiction.

In the late 1970s, like other literary academics of his generation, he was stirred by the arrival of literary theory in British universities, and his own critical writings changed in response. The first symptom of his new interest was his collection Working With Structuralism (1981). His Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader (1988) would become a standard anthology for students. He was a pioneer in making the sometimes arcane vocabulary of narratologists accessible to the general reader.

He had a special liking for the work of the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, whose delight in the novel’s subversive clash of different voices and viewpoints clearly appealed to him. By the mid-80s, however, Lodge’s interest in such theory had waned, and he was later to decide that it was a movement that had exhausted itself.

Thanks to the success of his fiction, by 1984 he was working only part-time as an academic, and in 1987 he retired from his post at Birmingham, though he continued to live in the city for the rest of his life and was made an honorary professor of his old university (and later emeritus professor). He was to admit that his use in his fiction of his observations from his professional life sometimes made colleagues, and therefore himself, uneasy. He remained a critic, however, as well as a novelist. For two years his column in the Independent on Sunday exemplified, for the general reader, the usefulness of particular items of critical vocabulary. Selections were collected in The Art of Fiction (1992).

His campus novels had taken him away from the Catholic themes that he had still been exploring in How Far Can You Go? (1980), which was the Whitbread book of the year. (In this novel Lodge gives one of his leading characters his own experience of having a child with Down’s syndrome.) Paradise News (1991) returned to the territory of religious dogma and doubt, and seemed to announce Lodge’s inexorable move away from religious certainty: its protagonist only achieves contentment by conquering his Catholic hang-ups.

Yet, Lodge’s fiction was not exactly becoming more secular: both Therapy (1995) and Thinks ... (2001) have leading characters on whom Catholicism still has its hold. Lodge had come to describe himself as an interested observer of Roman Catholicism, rather than an actual believer, but his fiction tells the story of a writer still fiercely engaged by Christian themes.

With academia behind him, he entered new territory as a writer. At the end of the 1980s he adapted Small World then Nice Work for television (the former for Granada, the latter for the BBC). He then adapted Charles Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit as a six-part BBC serial (1994). If Ulysses was his favourite novel, Dickens was probably his favourite novelist, and his involvement with this dramatisation seemed a logical fusing of his populism and his literariness. He also wrote three plays, including The Writing Game, staged at Birmingham Repertory theatre in 1990 and adapted for television.

His literary tastes were catholic (in the non-religious sense) at a time when literary academics were becoming more specialised. He wrote introductions to the works of authors ranging from Jane Austen and George Eliot to EM Forster and Patrick Hamilton. His critical generosity and sound judgment made him a natural choice to chair the Booker prize judges in 1989. He seems a quintessentially English proponent of a peculiarly English genre – the comic novel – but his work was widely translated. In France his popularity was marked when he was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1997. In 1998 he was made a CBE.

Ever the trained critic, he was candid in his analysis of his own narrative, confessing that, as a novelist, he had used up much of his own experience by his 60s. His later novels remained literary, but were not necessarily rooted in what he called “phases of my own life”, like the novels that had gone before. So Author, Author (2004) dramatised a period in the life of Henry James, while A Man of Parts (2011) was based on the life of HG Wells. They were biographically impeccable, but made less of Lodge’s gift for comedy than earlier novels. The former suffered the misfortune of being published at the same time as Colm Toibín’s novel about Henry James, The Master. Lodge wrote a rueful account of the coincidence and its consequences in The Year of Henry James, or Timing Is All (2006).

In 2008 he published what was, in many ways, his most autobiographical novel, and one of his best, Deaf Sentence. Lodge had started losing his hearing in his mid-40s. Up to this point, only those closest to him had realised that his partial deafness had deeply influenced him. It contributed to his decision to retire from academia and turned him in on himself. Struggling to keep up with conversations, he said, had stopped him being amusing. Lodge often spoke of his feelings of anxiety, undiminished by literary success or academic standing. Yet the deafness that depressed him in life became comic in his novel.

Admirers of Lodge’s novels were often surprised to find him, in person, dolefully reflective. This was the spirit of his memoir, Quite a Good Time to Be Born, published in 2015. Covering the period from his birth to his breakthrough, at the age of 40, with Changing Places, it gives (despite the title) a glum and minutely circumstantial account of growing up a Roman Catholic in the 1940s and 50s.

Lodge looks back with some amazement at his younger self’s respect for Catholic doctrine. Two further volumes of memoirs, covering later periods of his life, followed. Writer’s Luck (2018), should have relished his middle years of celebrity and success, but is more precise about the small disappointments of his literary life. Varying Degrees of Success (2020), covering the years after academia, lets us know just how wearying the business of writing can be.

His last published work of fiction was The Man Who Wouldn’t Get Up (2016), a collection of short stories mostly composed between the 1950s and 90s. Humorously fable-like, they serve as a reminder of this melancholy man’s comic instinct. Fiction allowed him to combine his literary-critical intelligence with a gift for observing absurdities, in order to fashion his own peculiarly bleak brand of comedy.

Mary died in 2022. He is survived by their three children, Stephen, Christopher and Julia.

🔔 David John Lodge, writer and critic, born 28 January 1935; died 1 January 2025

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[catholic-character-tournament]

Round 1 - Resurrect Bracket (Losers Bracket) Side B

ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to [make it to the finals]

Propaganda below ⬇️

Kirei

He fucked up so many people's lives so badly in just one decade (not on purpose) that the universe put him in the summoning pool of all world influencing souls. He doesnt really have any special powers but he does serve as a vessel for rasputin at one point. He's the guy who says "people die when they are killed"

please please please there's literally a type moon character in the gif on the top of this form so it's typemoonphobic if none of them get in but it shouldn't be her it should be kirei bc he's 50x funnier & more iconic than jeanne. funny lil murder priest who's fucking THE gilgamesh (from the epic of) in the church basement and dies in a knife fight w a 17 year old whose dad he wanted to fuck back in '94 before realizing that he was actually kinda lame and he's been bitter abt it ever since. he has an orphan torture factory in his basement but he's also canonically good at being a priest. he's so funny you should def try his mapo tofu i swear it's totally safe for human consumption and not made with any california reapers. did i mention he's a deadbeat dad.

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Priest claims to be Pro Life to make Sakura Matou the most miserable girl on the planet, but he dies anyway.

bro became a catholic because he loves suffering

He’s a priest. Kind of. Not a very good priest obviously. There is something seriously wrong and fucked up with that man. It’s so entertaining.

he's gotta be one of the most insane catholic men ever with a very in-depth and interesting relationship with his religion and his relationship with god also he's the sexiest man ever to be conceptualized in the known universe and all of time

Will never forget the 40+ minute monologue in heavens feel being a thinly veiled metaphor for abortion

he wants to torment churchgoers and make them face their failures and suffering but all he ends up doing is motivate them to improve themselves. cringefail moment for him

he's absolutely insane. the coldhearted mercenary that barely reacts to anything is terrified of kirei. he's super fucked up. his ult in stay night is literally him channeling divine power into something called kyrie eleison. he's the vessel of rasputin (on account of being a priest with a huge....no i shant say) the biblical beast in grand order among other things. he gets drunk with and tops gilgamesh from the epic of gilgamesh in the church basement after gilgamesh from the epic of gilgamesh bats his eyes a little too hard at kirei in some of the horniest shot scenes ive ever seen. he also used to be a heretical "fixer" for the church, cleaning up scenes that would expose shit to the public. uhh what else. he holds cool swords between his fingers like a kid pretending to be wolverine but in my favorite route he just squares the hell up with the protagonist and they fight to the death outside planned parenthood

Soap

Religious trauma coded. Popular hc that his family is Catholic.

He's gay and has a funny hair cut. Is that not enough to be Catholic?

he was such a bad bitch they had to kill him off in the third game bc he would've mopped the floor with the main antagonist otherwise. rip soap keep thotting it up in heaven we miss u every day

`!!!6ths -- propaganda by my kitten