#his parents were second and third generation immigrants

[trekkiehood]

In my stalag series Gale will be 3/4 German and his grandmother was Jewish. I don't know yet how much this will play into things other than he speaks fluent German (a fact he will hide) but I want it so I'm doing it

[mariacallous]

A decade ago, the U.S. Congress was on the cusp of passing a bill that would have legalized most of the nearly 11 million unauthorized migrants living in the United States and put them on a path to citizenship. Now, come Jan. 20, the country is set to launch what will likely be the largest mass deportation effort in its history.

“We know who you are, and we’re going to come and find you,” said Thomas Homan one day after President-elect Donald Trump named him as the incoming administration’s “border czar,” responsible for border security and the removal of unauthorized migrants. Homan has promised to carry out “the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”

If he succeeds, it will reshape migration for a generation or longer—not just in the United States but in much of the world.

This moment has been building slowly. Since roughly the 1960s, most of the advanced economies—with the notable exception of Japan—gradually opened themselves to larger flows of migrants. In the United States, the foreign-born share of the population rose from less than 5 percent in 1970 to nearly 15 percent today; in Britain, that share rose from a little more than 6 percent to more than 16 percent.

Most Western countries saw immigration as an economic winner, bringing talent and ambition and helping fill labor shortages in occupations from farm work to health care. There was a strong humanitarian impulse as well: Horrified by the refusal of most countries to admit European Jews fleeing Nazi persecution before and during the Second World War, Western countries adopted generous refugee and asylum laws obligating them to admit many of those escaping persecution, torture, or death threats around the world.

But in the 21st century, that welcoming spirit has crumbled. In the 2000s, Congress tried several times to pass legislation to legalize unauthorized migrants who were longtime U.S. residents, as it had done during the administration of President Ronald Reagan in 1986. The most recent effort failed in the House of Representatives in 2014, despite support from more than two-thirds of senators, including 14 Republicans.

Then over the past decade, both the United States and Europe faced a series of migration crises, with displaced people arriving at their borders in far larger numbers than governments could handle or their populations were willing to accept. Tinkering with asylum processing and enlisting help from neighboring states such as Mexico or Turkey bought occasional breathing room—until the number of arrivals would inevitably soar again, creating a fresh crisis.

With the growing number of migrants fleeing conflict, violence, or economic collapse—the number of displaced persons worldwide has doubled over the past decade, to nearly 120 million today—immigration has become more politically charged across the world. In Europe, populist parties running on anti-immigrant platforms have made widespread gains. Even countries that have historically welcomed large numbers of migrants, such as Canada and Australia, have become warier and are reducing immigration quotas.

But no country faces an about-face as stark as that in the United States. Trump returns to the White House with what he believes is a mandate to sweep the country of unauthorized migrants, including millions who have been in the United States for decades and millions more who have arrived in the past four years and enjoy temporary legal status under the Biden administration’s more generous schemes.

Trump’s first appointments attest to his seriousness. Homan has four decades of experience on migration issues; as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Trump’s first term, he was the architect of the controversial policy of separating migrant parents from their children when they crossed the border from Mexico illegally.

Trump’s new deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, has spent the last 15 years schooling himself in the intricacies of U.S. immigration laws to wield them in the service of a xenophobic agenda. At Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in late October, Miller told the cheering crowd that “America is for Americans and Americans only.”

And the president-elect’s nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Gov. Kristi Noem, deployed National Guard troops from her state of South Dakota to help stop migrants at the Texas-Mexico border.

It is not at all clear, however, that Americans actually voted for this agenda. Immigration was a big issue in the campaign, but surveys indicate that it ran well behind the state of the economy and was a second-tier issue alongside health care, national security, the Supreme Court, and the future of democracy.

Polls on immigration are also all over the map. A September Pew Research poll found that nearly 9 in 10 Trump supporters, and 56 percent of registered voters overall, said that they favor “mass deportations of immigrants living in the country illegally,” suggesting strong support for the Trump agenda. But 58 percent also favor allowing undocumented immigrants to remain in the country if they are married to a U.S. citizen. And considerably higher majorities—including half or more of Trump supporters—want to admit more refugees, foreign college graduates, and immigrants who can fill labor shortages.

The new administration’s actions will be a test of which of these competing priorities Americans will actually support. In his first term, Trump did not push very hard. While he all but shut down refugee admissions from overseas, took steps to curb legal migration, and tightened the U.S. border with Mexico during the COVID-19 pandemic, his administration did little to remove migrants already present in the country. The total number of deportations during his first four years was 1.5 million—half as many as President Barack Obama’s first term and similar to the number in Obama’s second term and outgoing President Joe Biden’s four years.

Trump was more successful in reducing legal migration. Immigrant arrivals slowed significantly under Trump, though much of that came from the almost complete shutdown of U.S. borders and immigration processing during the pandemic year of 2020, the final year of his first term. What would a mass deportation look like? Unless Congress changes them, U.S. laws make a huge increase in removals unlikely.

Migrants targeted for deportation are permitted to appeal their removal to U.S. immigration courts, an arm of the Justice Department. The backlog in those courts is more than 3 million cases, a sixfold increase since 2016; wait times for hearings can stretch to two years or longer. U.S. detention capacity for all migrants—either recent arrivals or those awaiting removal—is roughly 40,000.

Miller has pushed for the government to create tent cities along the border to expand that capacity, but the costs would be high. The American Immigration Council has estimated that it would cost $88 billion annually to detain and deport 1 million migrants per year, which is nearly nine-tenths of the entire current DHS budget. And many countries are reluctant to take their own citizens back. Venezuela has at times refused entirely, and others, including Cuba and China, are considered “recalcitrant.”

Homan promised in a Nov. 8 interview with Fox News to start by focusing on “public security threats and national security threats,” which is pretty much what the Biden administration and others have done; more than 40 percent of those arrested and targeted for removal by ICE in 2023 had some sort of criminal conviction or pending charge.

Beyond that, things get harder. Homan has promised to revive “worksite enforcement” in which ICE targets workplaces such as slaughterhouses and farms that are suspected of employing large numbers of undocumented migrants. The history of such raids suggests that they will be difficult.

Only one large-scale raid—against chicken processing plants in Mississippi—was conducted during Trump’s first term. Some 700 migrants were arrested and some deported, but the employers got off with a slap on the wrist. The Mississippi plants continue to face large labor shortages and continue to hire unauthorized migrants.

Many of Trump’s wealthy donors rely on foreign workers, including unauthorized migrants, and are likely to push back against the resumption of workplace raids.

Reaching deep into American communities will be harder still. To start, it is challenging simply to find undocumented migrants; unlike some countries, U.S. residents are not required to carry documents that prove their right to be in the country. Many states, including California, Oregon, and Washington, as well as cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, also have “sanctuary” laws that prevent local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE agents, making arrests and detentions more difficult.

Homan has promised to ignore such obstacles in deploying ICE agents: “If sanctuary cities don’t want to help us, then get out of the way, because we’re coming,” he said on Fox & Friends. Miller has also talked about getting friendly red states to call up state-level National Guard forces and sending them to assist ICE agents in blue states. This could set up unprecedented clashes across state borders.

The public reaction is hard to predict. Most immigration enforcement takes place near the border or quietly, when unauthorized migrants are detained on criminal charges and turned over to ICE. Sending agents into neighborhoods to arrest individual migrants will be far more explosive; nearly 14 million U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents live in households where are least one member is unauthorized. Nearly 1 in 3 Latino families—a group that voted  more strongly for Trump in this election than in the previous two—is faced with the threat of removal or family separation in the event of a mass deportation.

All of this assumes, of course, that the new administration chooses to be constrained by existing laws and norms. But other options may exist. With Republican control of both the House and the Senate, Trump may be able to push through laws not only to boost funding for removal operations, but also to weaken legal protections for unauthorized migrants.

His officials are likely to expand the use of expedited removal—a provision that permits removal without a court hearing for recent arrivals. Previous administrations have used the power almost exclusively to remove unauthorized border crossers shortly after their arrival, but Trump tried late in his first term to extend that power to migrants who had lived anywhere in the country for less than two years. The increasingly pro-Trump courts may help such an effort pass muster.

This week, Trump suggested he may go farther still and declare a national emergency—using broad powers granted by Congress to the president—in order to deploy the U.S. military to expedite deportations.

Even if his deportation plans fall short, a large-scale attempt of the sort being promised will mark a revolution in the U.S. approach to migration. Until now, conservative critics of immigration, including Trump himself during his first term, have focused largely on securing borders and reducing new arrivals. Right-wing parties in Europe, too, have focused on tightening borders.

But if the United States starts mass removal, populist governments in other parts of the world will likely be emboldened to take more draconian measures as well. Despite the political controversies, the United States has long been something of a model for embracing immigration—more than one-fifth of all the world’s migrants reside in the United States. Mass deportation will send a far uglier message.

If the effort proves too difficult, and Trump buckles to the inevitable backlash, the political debate in the United States may revert to where it has been for decades: how to provide a reasonable level of security at the border while continuing to admit new immigrants who benefit the economy—and looking the other way at the millions of unauthorized migrants who have settled and built lives in the country.

For decades now, that has been a messy and uncomfortable compromise. But the alternative promises to be much worse.

[stillaclownlol]

I will also talk about Tyler because he's also not normal about stuff 🫠

Right from the start you get these signs he's protective to a detrimental level lol

(BTW Aidlyn scene cuz I'm not normal about them ❤️ The way he literally wraps his whole body in front of her sent me lmao. Mans got his leg around her and everything 🤡)

He's pretty much like this with Taylor in all their scenes. In the Sorrel House he puts his arm in front of her when they see the phantom (that he does not think is real, considering his reaction).

He also has a tendency to drag Taylor away from situations with out asking for her opinion on it 🫠 He just kinda assumes she will want to go with him. Like when he drags her out of the house after saying the phantom was just a prank.

Sir. PLEASE. Kinda possessive of you-

I don't think Red did this on purpose because like. She hasnt really brought up their culture/heritage or anything in the story so far lmao (I'm crying). But idk like just this behavior reminds me a lot of the guys in my family 🙃 I think Latino boys get kind of socialized to be more aggressive and protective of their families at their own expense. He definitely seems like the kind of brother to impose a curfew- He has control issues like. We all see it right? He's a control freak.

Obviously his dad dying has a lot to do with this. His mother took it extremely hard, so then Tyler "stepped up" to take care of both his mom AND his sister, he's been parentified since a very young age (he doesn't look older than 10 imo). I think he feels a need to "be the man of the house" so to speak. He genuinely does not seem to have any hard feelings towards his mom even tho she...you know, fucked up. if any of you know the "latino boys are mama boys" cliche, but.

yeah.

(I do think Taylor has more mom issues because she kinda resents how Tyler has been parentified and she's allowed herself to be angry at their mom for leaving them to fend for themselves)

Sidenote: It looks like his family is very isolated. Like, its strange that nobody came to help Marianna after Ethan died. This isn't always the case but usually Latinos have large families (my mom's family had to push together eight beds so all the cousins could sleep in one room lol) WHICH probably means Tyler's branch of the family is, so far, the first and only to have immigrated to the US. He's probably already a second or third generation tho, his mom has only one surname and he and his sister never seem to speak Spanish, so I don't think they learned it (probably some basics). I don't imagine they've ever been to Mexico except MAYBE when they were very young (its kinda rare to visit...since...it's so hard to get out of there in the first place...🫠 I dont think my parents have been to Venezuela in more than 20 years...but also Venezuela is in way worse condition, so...)

But yeah like. His protectiveness of Taylor is something that actively works against her and something she dislikes. She always looks upset when he drags her out of a situation or tells her what to do. She just wants to help :(

BABYYYYY 🥲

Ofc she never says anything because for most of her life Tyler has put himself in a position of authority and is her caretaker. It's hard to speak up to somebody when they constantly say "I'm doing this for your own good, for your own safety, for-" Whatever. Taylor always believes Tyler does everything for her own best interests, so... even when she doesn't feel good about something, she'll still listen to him. It's a veryyyyyy slippery slope that can quickly become toxic, if it isn't already. Because besides being her brother, he's put himself as her parent figure as well.

He does the thing. You know. Where parentified kids try to overcorrect so they kind of coddle their own children and don't let them do anything because they're scared to death something is gonna happen to them 💀

I don't really know what the point of this was I just wanted to talk about how possessive Tyler can be and how unhealthy his attachment style is 😭 If I write Tyler and Logan angst tho just know it's gonna involve Tyler being overprotective and Logan being Not Cool TM about it 🫠

[ceekbee]

A note to Donald Trump from a friend of all of ours David Suzuki.

Proud to be Canadian

David Suzuki

Thank you Mr. Trump. Canadians are already tightly bound to your country physically, economically and culturally, so your threat to absorb us as a 51st state of the United States of America, forces us to ponder our values and reasons for remaining a sovereign nation that claims to be independent.

I am a Canadian, a third generation Canadian of Japanese ancestry. My parents and I were born and raised in Canada, had never visited Japan, yet were incarcerated during World War II as “enemy aliens”. Years after the war’s end when we were still mired in poverty, a $1500 scholarship worth more than my father made in a year, made it possible for me to attend Amherst College in Massachusetts. I am forever indebted to the U.S. where I moved to in 1954 for 8 years and where I received a superb university education because foreign students were valued as contributors to the education of American students.

In my senior year, on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the world when it launched Sputnik. In the following years as the Soviets launched a series of space firsts (a dog, a man, a team, a woman), the U.S. clearly lagged behind, but the response was amazing. The U.S. government began to invest massively in science and scientists. I was a foreign student, yet whenever I expressed my interest in science I would get offers of scholarships and jobs.

Of course, in 1962, when John F. Kennedy announced the goal of reaching the moon in a decade, the Space Race was on. At the time, it wasn’t clear how to do it or how much it might cost. The commitment was made and money, resources, infrastructure and humanpower were thrown in to meet the challenge. Not only did America succeed, sixty years later Nobel prizes in science continue to be disproportionately won by American scientists or researchers in the US while hundreds of unpredicted spinoffs like laptop computers, GPS and ear thermometers, resulted. It was an impressive expression of the kind of American resolve that could serve well as a model to meet the challenges of climate and ecosystem breakdown.

By the time I was doing postdoctoral work in the US in 1961, employment opportunities in universities, government and the private sector were enormous. It was a glorious time to be a scientist. Nevertheless, I chose to return to a Canada lagging far behind in support of scientists, especially in my chosen area of genetics. To my scientific colleagues, it seemed like academic suicide.

I chose to return because Canada was different, not better than the U.S., and those differences reflected values that mattered most to me. Canada had a health system available to all regardless of economic status or ability to pay. Tommy Douglas was a huge hero to me and all Canadians, a champion for the poor and disadvantaged yet his socialist party (CCF that later became the NDP), was respected and legitimate in Canada, but would have been outlawed as Communist in the US. And I was proud of the Equalization policy whereby the provinces that are better off economically share some of their wealth with those that are not doing as well.

As a biologist, I know diversity of genes, species and ecosystems, have maximized options and thus enabled life to survive and flourish in an ever changing environment. Humans have occupied many different parts of the planet because of an added level of diversity - culture. That’s why Quebec and its culture are important parts of Canada (to my great regret, I never learned to speak Japanese because my father always said “we are Canadians. If you learn a second language, it must be French”). The enormous diversity created by elevating Indigenous nations and immigrants from all parts of the world into the fabric of Canadian society provides adaptability and resilience few other countries have as we confront the ecological and economic limits we face today. That’s also why I value the National Film Board (NFB) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) that enable us to see ourselves and the world through the lenses of a Canadian perspective and our ever evolving values.

I have never regretted my decision to return home to Canada and I thank you, Mr. Trump, for reminding me why. I hope all Canadians reflect on this country and why we will fight to preserve our differences from your great nation.

[weirdthoughtsandideas]

Hey, so one of your parents are finnish? I'm curious, did they move here, and do you know any?

So some historical context: In the 1960s, Sweden begged for immigrants to come here because we needed more workers. So a lot of people from Finland moved over here to get some job opportunities, one of them being my grandparents. My dad was born in Sweden, as well as his younger siblings. The only one of his siblings born in Finland was his big sister (my grandma was actually only 19 when she got pregnant with her... I'm pretty baffled that by the time they were 30, they already had four kids... anyway)

Growing up, they spoke finnish in the household, but the older the kids got, the more they instead spoke swedish. It got to the point where they spoke swedish to their parents and their parents answered in finnish. This is a very common occurrence in immigrant families - and, the school encouraged them to also speak more swedish at home so that my dad and his siblings properly learned it.

Now, my dad understands finnish, but he's not at a confident level where he can teach it to us. He also only learned to speak and read, but not to write (which is it's entire own system). Thus, we never learned. It's a similar thing that happened to his siblings as well. My mom is 25% finnish, but she obviously only spoke swedish at home, but this does make me 65% finnish, 100% from my dad and 25% from my mom lol. But, also due to her only knowing swedish, my dad never had any use to speak finnish anyway.

What is interesting here is that my aunt moved to the US, and had kids there. And she spoke swedish to them when they were toddlers, but as soon as they started school, they started speaking more and more english, and now my cousins don't really understand any swedish at all. Just like me with finnish, they only know a few words at most.

So this is a classic example of how every generation of an immigrant family slowly loses the language. First and second generation knows it, but the second generation who has grown up in the new country has also learned that language, and when they have kids, it's a high chance they speak much more of the new country's language to them. Thus, third generation knows very limited of the language of the country their grandparents immigrated from.

We can see examples of this in media too. One example is One day at a time, where Elena (third generation immigrant from Cuba) does not understand spanish, and in Turning Red, where Mei does not understand Cantonese like the rest of her family seems to know, because they only spoke english to her at home.

It is sadly very easy for languages to disappear generations down the line when you move to a new country and start a family. So if you really want to keep it then you really gotta make an effort for it. I have a friend who grew up in the US half her life, but her mom grew up in Sweden and it was very important for her that she learned swedish - to the point where she woke her up early with textbooks, as well as taking her to Sweden a lot. They also moved back and forth between the US and Sweden during her childhood. But her mom could have just only spoken english to her, due to her dad only knowing english and them living in an english speaking country - but she was determined. I do understand how not everyone has this determination to keep a language, especially as you get more integrated with the new country.

[cygninae]

So this is really random, and no one asked for this, but have my nationality headcanons for a whole load of asoue/atwq characters.?? No real explanation for these hcs, it's just how I imagine the characters ! :) (might throw in some extra hcs along the way because why not.)

P.S I'm quite fascinated by the history of the colonisation of America and the patterns of immigration that occurred thereafter, which is partially why I'm making this post. However, I'm not American and have never received actual American education so I'm sorry if I am miseducated in any regard.

Sugar bowl gen

Esmé Squalor is British/Syrian

HC: she is a first generation immigrant to the USA when the events of the books take place. Her mother was Syrian and her father British. She has a twin brother who disagreed with her involvement in VFD and left the USA to go back to England once they were of age. She hasn't seen him since they were teenagers.

Jerome Squalor is British-American

HC: His parents immigrated to the USA from England before he was born.

Bertrand Baudelaire is French

HC: He is a first-generation immigrant and went to the USA on his own after the death of his parents.

Beatrice Baudelaire is American

HC: By the time she was born, her family had been in the USA for many generations. Some British and Irish ancestry.

The Snicket siblings are Chinese-American

HC: the Snicket siblings are second-generation immigrants to the USA. Both of their parents were Chinese.

Mrs (headcanoned first name Marzia) Quagmire is Italian-American

HC: she is a second generation immigrant. She grew up in a household that primarily spoke Italian.

Mr (headcanoned first name William) Quagmire is American

HC: like Bea, his family had been in the USA for many generations before his birth. British and Dutch ancestry.

Count Olaf is German-American

HC: Olaf is a second or third generation immigrant. His family were very wealthy but went to ruin and ran away to the USA. He still insists on keeping his ancestral title despite this.

Montgomery Montgomery is Pakistani-American

HC: Monty is a second-gen immigrant. He had three siblings who all moved across the USA once of age, but he made an effort to keep in touch with them and their extended family in Pakistan.

Ellington Feint is Chinese-American

HC: Ellington is a second-gen immigrant. Her father was American with British ancestry and her mother was a first-gen Chinese immigrant.

Captain (headcanoned first name Rory) Widdershins is Irish-American

HC: a third-gen immigrant who grew up very disconnected from his heritage due to being in the foster system.

Fernald "Widdershins" is Moroccan/American

HC: him and his sister Fiona (and theorised sister Friday) had an American mother and Moroccan father. Their father left before they were born and mother left when Fiona was young, so they were raised by Widdershins. They know very little about their heritage.

Moxie Mallahan is American

HC: her family had been in the USA for many generations before her birth. Distant British and Dutch ancestry.

Arthur Poe is American

HC: Poe and his wife both had generations of family in the USA. He has some Dutch ancestry.

Josephine Anwhistle is American

HC: her family had also been in the USA for many generations. She had distant Irish ancestry. She made effort to reconnect with her ancestry in some regards.

Ike Anwhistle is American

HC: Ike, too, had family for generations in the USA. Canonically in the books, he is the second cousin of one of the Baudelaire parents (I hc him on Bea's side of the family) so in my headcanon, his ancestry is British/Irish. His brother, Gregor, is obviously the same.

The Denouement triplets are American

HC: the triplets are third-generation immigrants with British and Dutch ancestry. Mother's side British and father's side Dutch. There had been plans to raise the triplets in England, but a mysterious friend of their mother convinced them to stay in the USA for reasons unknown...

Unfortunate Gen

The Baudelaire children are French-American

HC: Bea is American and Bertrand French, as stated above. They grew up speaking both languages fluently.

The Quagmire triplets are Italian-American

HC: their mother is Italian and their father American. Their mother and her parents made sure they grew up speaking Italian.

Fiona Widdershins is American/Moroccan

HC: As stated with Fernald above, her biological father was Moroccan, although her and Fernald never knew him nor that they were Moroccan.

Carmelita Spats is Dutch-American

HC: Carmelita is a fourth-generation immigrant and she has little connection to her ancestry due to not being in contact with her family anymore.

Beatrice Baudelaire II is Chinese-American

HC: as Kit is her mother, she has her ancestry, of course. I am personally a fan of the theory that Olaf is her father, not Dewey, so in this post, we'll say that his ancestry plays here too...

Ben (Violet's friend) is American

HC: Ben is American with British and Native American ancestry.

Well, I've probably missed about a million characters, but there it is ! This is a super random post but I just felt like I might as well post some headcanons for the hell of it. Always love to hear other people's headcanons for Snicketverse characters. Thanks if you read all the way to the end, I love you

[insurrection-if]

Sorry if this has been asked before (Tumblr search is a pain) but is Mutya Filipino? She has like the most Filipino name I have ever heard 😁

Aha, yep! ( ´ ∀ `)ノ

The Philippines is where Mutya was born (? - unverified to her knowledge) and raised.

Her (adoptive) father, Bato, was quite proud of himself after he decided on that name for her. You'd have to really press him to admit he spent a long time stewing over it, enough to have left her nameless for some time before the name Mutya finally came to him.

Also, just to tag on, I'll list out where each RO was raised and their parents' regional backgrounds:

Akil: Born in Egypt, raised there until early adolescence. Akil partook in international travel as a child, though rarely for vacation purposes. His main residence in the present is in the state of New York. It is his least favorite location for a home so far. Both his parents are native to Egypt.

Kamiko: Born and raised in Japan. Her first time outside the country was for work-related reasons. Her main residence in the present is the state of New York, a place made tolerable to her only in thanks to the presence of some loved ones. Both her parents are native to Japan.

Sigmund: Born and raised in Germany, though international travel was a rather frequent luxury afforded to him. Anything outside continental Europe declined drastically after the loss of his mother and his taste for travel vanished with her. He immigrated to the United States in his early twenties. His father is native to Germany whereas his mother was born and raised in Argentina.

Imka: Born and raised in the United States, second-generation on her father's side and third generation on her mother's. She never left the country until her abduction at the hands of her father. Her father was a Dutch immigrant, and her mother has ancestry from India, though she has been cut off from all familial ties there and in the United States.

Elouan: Born and raised in France. He rarely ever set foot outside continental Europe unless out of absolute necessity, though never very far from the continent still. His mother was born and raised in France; his father is entirely unknown to him.

Jae: Born and raised in Brazil. She had a few outings outside the country in adulthood and did not enjoy those experiences. Her parents and grandparents were all from Brazil.

Niccolo: Born in Italy, though claiming he was 'raised' there is a shaky description of things. In his years as a vagabond, he tried to make annual visits to Italy and Greece, and his sentimental reasons for this can be traced back to the fact that his father was from Italy and his father’s partner was from Greece.

Mutya: Born(?) and raised in the Philippines. She left her country for the first time in her late teens / early young adulthood alongside her older batch of siblings. She dutifully visited her home country whenever a family reunion was necessitated around an important event (milestones, holidays, ceremonies, etc.) Her adoptive parents are both native to the Philippines.

Fyodor: Born and raised in Russia. At the very start of the story, he has yet to set foot outside the country for the first time. His parents are both from Russia, and that is where his mother still remains.

Curadora: Born and raised in the United States, second-generation. She traveled out of the country now and then when her mother could afford it in childhood, always for personal matters. She has, however, become quite the international traveler in adulthood. Her mother was born in Mexico and her father (absent from her life, to her knowledge) is from the United States.

Dearil: Born and raised in an isolated, undisclosed cult commune that did not adhere to any national identity. Residents were a conglomerate of different origins and (former) nationalities all huddled outside any government's eye. His mother was Vietnamese whereas his father originally came from Poland. Dearil, however, would emphasize that their parental ties to him are largely limited to his conception alone.

Lempo: Born in Iceland (the native home of her biological mother) yet raised in Finland. She eagerly left the nation the moment she reached adulthood but later returned and settled back there to establish her (now disbanded) commune. Her foster / adoptive fathers are from Finland.

Retriever: Born and raised in the United States, third generation. Retriever and his family traveled to Europe on an annual basis throughout his childhood for visits to distant family. He keeps a present fondness for European holidays as a result of this. Distant branches of his family can still be traced by him in Switzerland.

Bones: Born and raised in the United States, second-generation on his mother's side. He first set foot outside the United States at age eighteen and never intended to look back. Not until shortly before Mockingbird's induction into the HAWKS. His mother was born and raised in Sweden whereas his father was born and raised in the United States.

Mishka: Born and (by their definition of their experiences) raised in Russia, though they traversed through many nations in their earliest years. Their memories of that time are fickle to them. Their parentage is entirely unknown to them.

[miss-bvnny]

Bradley, his parents, his brothers, and his kids. Three generations of Uppercrust jerkwads.

From top to bottom, left to right, we've got Bradley ''Big B'' Uppercrust the second. A proud purebred German Shepherd with a mean eagle on the fairway and a snout for the cutthroat hotel and spa business. Alongside his lovely wife Donna Uppercrust, a second generation immigrant purebred Siberian husky. Not a Karen but something much worse (Closer to a Hilary), constantly looking down her nose at others and quite frankly she was a nightmare at PTA meetings.

Runty Bradley Uppercrust the third, a smartass Siberian Shepherd mix who took a bit of a detour from his destiny as a Lawyer to ''Find himself'' in skateboarding and Elton John music. Pictured by his side are his brothers Bill Hader Jasper Uppercrust, a German Shepherd who's a pilot, and Nathan Fillion Trenton ''Tab'' Uppercrust, a Siberian Husky who sits at the head of an architect firm. Both of them were snobby jerks as pups and now they're snobby jerks as adults.

Beckham ''Becky'' Uppercrust, a Border Collie/Siberian Husky mix. She loves hockey and is the muscle to the schemes of her sister. Buckwheat ''Bucky'' Uppercrust (who may look familiar but all resemblances are strictly coincidental) is a Pomeranian/Siberian Husky mix who skateboards like her father apparently did once when he was young and cool. She's got Bradley's mouth, and he's proud AND scared about that. And lastly, little Greyson ''Grey'' Uppercrust, a Siberian Husky puppy runt. His interests include drooling on Bradley, long naps, and crawling at high speed through the house after a bath to give Bradley some exercise.

Bradley's single dad-ing it for now, but I'll draw his boyfriend later.

[desertfangs]

What do you headcanon Daniel's family background as being? Molloy is an Irish name but do you think his family had already been living in America for generations? Could he have been a child of immigrants and possibly spent some summers overseas with his family in the UK? 

What a great question! I go back and forth on Daniel's family a lot, I don't have a solid, firm grasp on them, to be honest. My feeling is that his grandparents are the ones who came over from Ireland. Maybe one of his parents was already born, a baby or a young child at the time.

I think it was the grandparents largely because I feel like his family was pretty firmly middle class and so the grandparents were the ones who sort of worked their butts off so his parents were in a more comfortable position. And not that you asked, but I also think his family was a pretty traditional 1950s American nuclear family: picket fence, Dad worked, Mom stayed home with the two kids (Daniel and his older sister) and a dog.

I could definitely see them taking family trips to the UK and Europe a few times (probably not every year but every few years), maybe he and his sister were shipped off to a great aunt or cousin for the summer once or twice.

Regardless, I don't think his family had been in the States for a super long time. I see him as second or third generation for sure. And I think one of his grandmas is extremely superstitious and while Daniel feels like superstitions are probably silly, he's also likely to avoid walking under a ladder.

[cartoonscientist]

me: just to put in perspective what a rough childhood Dad had and why he's so emotionally constipated, Grandpa's parents were from Transylvania and he almost got run over by a fire horse as a child

my mom: wow, I guess you're right, he was a second generation immigrant

me: and Dad's a third generation immigrant. this is what people are talking about when they talk about generational trauma. his side of the family is still all freshly fucked up by like, famine and war and imperialism.

Mom: and Dracula and werewolves

me: well yes, of course, we can't forget the omnipresent threat of werewolves and Draculas

[neathbound-fiends]

Okay so lil breakdown of the guys™️ and their general accent situations

Elliott's is honestly probably the weirdest out of everybody's. He was probably either second or third generation immigrant, and I think he carries a weird blend to his speech because of it. The people already living in Virginia and their accents he picked up on and was influenced by for sure, but I feel like there is definitely also some influence from Dutch being the first language of his family (as his parents were either directly from the Netherlands or only a generation removed from it)

Warren picked up her mom's accent, and Florence picked it up from the gang. I imagine that Spite probably corresponds relatively closely to Spitalfields, so somewhere on the east end is roughly what I imagine for it? Florence wasn't around her parents enough to really pick up anything from Ireland, she just got from the gang (which she considered her real family anyway)

I don't know what accents we think cats would have. Arthur just sounds like Salem from Sabrina the Teenage Witch in my brain

Doc is 100% Brooklyn accent. SELDOMLY he has to not sound like that for work purposes, and will affect a transatlantic one instead, but that's rare and pretty much for Embassy functions only

Bolormaa's family's been in the Neath for generations since Karakorum fell, but living in the Khanate I think has kept things isolated in a way that I think his accent would be different from somebody else you pulled from the Surface from the same area. A sense of preservation and stagnation in equal measure that would be really interesting to delve into more deeply

Rhoda's family is only a generation or two remived from living in Gujarat, and I think you can definitely hear it in her voice, though she's learned to suppress most of it for the purpose of blending in to Society circles. Privately, especially if you're someone with whom she feels intimate, I think you're much more likely to hear it

[little-red-honeybadger-old]

Hogwarts Legacy MC Ask Game Pt. 2

Was bored so I decided to do @sweetnsourdoh's MC ask game. No particular order, just having fun!

3. Where is your MC from? (England, Scotland, Ireland, France, etc. The more specifics, the better!) DANIEL: Daniel grew up in Woking, Surrey, in England. He's spent a majority of his life in this region. Both of his parents, and his stepfather, were from this region. ESTHER: Esther grew up in Inverness, Scotland. However, her mother is from South Korea and her father is from Sweden. TZIPORA: Tzipora was born in Düsseldorf, Germany to German Jewish parents. At age five, she immigrated to Wales. English is her third language, with German and Welsh being the first and second. MARY FRANCES: Frances was born to a northern English father and a southern Irish mother, and grew up in London. Specifically, she grew up in Croydon.

17. Tell me about your MC's family. Do they have parents? Siblings? Cousins? What's their relationship with them like? DANIEL: Daniel is the youngest of six children, all boys -- Samuel, Morgan, Graham, Martin, and Jonah. He has a very strained relationship with them, as several of them were physically and emotionally abusive to him growing up due to his gentle and shy demeanor + lack of magic. The relationship with some of the brothers he's closest in age to, Martin and Jonah, are improving, but there's always a nagging feeling in the back of his head that this is conditional. As for his mother, Daniel often feels that he doesn't have one; she is an incredibly narcissistic woman who puts her image before her children, and oftentimes tells people that she only has five children, and not six. As his father walked out on the family when Daniel is was very young, his primary father father figure is his stepfather, Eric, who like his brothers, was a bully of a man. Even though Daniel is 5'11 by the time that he gets to Hogwarts, and is much taller than his stepfather, he still very much fears him. Truthfully, he wishes Professor Fig were his father.

ESTHER: Esther is an only child, and had a great relationship with both of her parents. Though her parents came from very different backgrounds (her mother was Korean-Scottish and half-blood, her father was a Swedish muggle), they both agreed on one thing: their number one priority was making sure their daughter was happy and well-cared for. They were truly very good parents, and Esther always felt as if she could tell them anything at all.

TZIPORA: Like Esther, Tzipora is an only child. Her mother, Hilda, passed away in labor, leaving Tzipora and her father, Josef. Tzipora always loved her father, and considered him to be her personal hero. When he passed, however, she was six years old and was sent to an Orthodox Jewish orphanage where her primary parental figures were the rabbi who ran it and his wife, whom she had generally positive relationships with; when not at the orphanage, Tzipora was in one of twelve foster homes for the next nine years, leaving her with a very nervous and anxious attachment style as nothing seemed to ever be permanent. Due to long-term abuse faced by a male caretaker in the orphanage, Tzipora has a very difficult time with authority figures, but eventually begins to come to terms with what happened -- and that it wasn't her fault. Nowadays, she considers Professor Fig to be the closest thing she has to a father, and trusts him with her life. In a timeline where Fig dies, she would be taken in by Professor Weasley.

MARY FRANCES: Frances is biologically an only child. She was born to two squibs, Maureen and Sterling, both alcoholics at the time; though her mother eventually got sober, her father never did. Due to this, Frances and her mother were often physically abused and she was exposed to a lot of domestic violence that left her with serious emotional issues. Though Frances loved her father, she always blamed herself for his violence of her and her mother; on the other hand, Frances's mother leaned on her as moral and emotional support from a very young age, severely straining their relationship. When both of her parents passed from Scarlet Fever when Frances was ten, she was taken in by her father's former business partner, Irving, and his wife, Sophia, who had two children, Amos and Audrey, and would later go on to have a third, Olivia. Despite being given a job (as a maid and nanny) and a place to live, Frances was only ten years old and was never truly treated as a part of the family by her foster parents. She did, however, form an extremely close bond with all three children and openly refers to their Amos as her brother and Audrey and Olivia as her sisters. Professor Fig is her closest parental figure.

37. Silly bonus question #1: Who does your MC fancy? 👀

DANIEL: Sebastian. He melts under the glance of those big brown eyes.

ESTHER: Amit. She finds his enthusiasm cute, and loves his passion for learning.

TZIPORA: Natty. Tzipora thought for a bit that she was just getting overly attached to one of the first people to treat her with kindness; instead, she realizes that she's a lot gayer than she originally thought she was.

MARY FRANCES: Sebastian. Not only does she melt, but she lives for his approval and attention.

[total-takes-island-takes]

okay lets do this

Austin - english. Hes so english thats like 500 generations of english in there. His family was in england before the romans were

Ass - vietnamese! second generation canadian, still speaks some with their parents and grandparents

Bonnie - hispanic a la the previous take

Caesar - his family had been in canada forever, has roots in sweden

Courtney - half korean, half hispanic. first generation born in canada, both of their parents are immigrants who met after moving

Fren - british i think

Frollo - FRENCH!!!! FRENCHIE!!! most of his family is from quebec

Joner - english, italian, and irish roots. no particular connection to culture

Julia - this is random but danish and greek. her father is danish, migrated in his 20s to canada while her mother is a second generation canadian

Kelly - scandie, but their family is several generations canadian

Kitty - korean, third or fourth gen canadian

Mal - english, with some german and italian in there. claims to be 0.03% japanese

Max - I like the half indonesian hc :) his dad migrated, his mom is a 3rd gen italian, she grew up in the states but moved to canada for school. he travels a lot for family

McLovin - doesnt know, never asked. #america (hes confirmed from the midwest right)

Michael - french-irish. both sides of her family speak french, french last name, etc. some other stuff, just not as culturally relevant

O - black 👍 hes from minnesota, doesnt really know much about his ancestry

Patrick - english descent

Peter - irish/english/scandie/some other stuff probably

Scary - FINNISH. like actually literally a citizen cause their parents are both finnish. death metal childhood.

Scruffy - hispanic as well

Sha-Mod - english descent

Staci - italian and half-lebanese on her mom's side. probably like a million other things they could tell you about, too

Love how we got to go through two whole types of discourse today

[ruminativerabbi]

Pittsburgh

Like most of my readers, I suppose, I have been watching the trial of Robert Bowers, the perpetrator of the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, with a strange brew of emotion concocted principally of fascination, horror, pride in our American justice system, and intense personal engagement—the latter despite the fact that I’ve never actually been to Pittsburgh, thus also obviously not to that synagogue, and that I did not know any of the victims personally.

The charges alone were hair-raising enough to consider during the trial, but the verdict feels even worse: guilty of 22 crimes, eleven capital counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death and eleven capital counts of using a firearm to commit murder during and as part of a crime of violence. Of course, none of the above was at all unexpected: even Bowers’ own lawyers did not waste the court’s time by arguing that their client was not the shooter, choosing instead to argue that he was not primarily motivated by hatred of Jewish people in general, but specifically by his hatred of the HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and his understanding that at least one of the congregations housed in the building he attacked worked with the HIAS to assist immigrants in need.

There’s a lot here to unpack. The HIAS has been around for a long time, having first been founded in 1881 to assist Jewish persons newly arrived on these shores in finding lodging and employment, and in developing a sense of belonging in a new place so unlike their countries of origin. That remained its primary focus for a long time too—which is why supporting the HIAS was, in my childhood, as uncontroversial a thought as supporting the March of Dimes or the JNF. And it did its work famously well, establishing an office on Ellis Island itself in 1904 and assisting hundreds of thousands of those who arrived there. They provided translation services for would-be immigrants who didn’t speak English well or at all. They lent the truly indigent the $25 “landing” fee that all who passed by those portals were obliged to pay one way or the other. They provided lawyers to argue before the so-called “Boards of Special Inquiry” the cases of individuals who might otherwise have been sent back to Europe. On top of all that, they found the funds to launch nation-wide searches for relatives of the newly arrived so that the former could provide affidavits of support for the latter to guarantee that they—the new immigrants—would not end up as indigents living off public money. They opened a kosher restaurant on Ellis Island that eventually served more than half a million meals. And they created a kind of charity travel bureau to assist new immigrants in covering the cost of train tickets to wherever it was they were going to settle. Perhaps most useful of all, they opened an employment bureau to help newcomers find work.

All that being the case, what’s not to like? My parents were big supporters, never setting aside an envelope from the HIAS without putting a check or at least a few dollar bills inside before mailing it back. As well they should have: three of my four grandparents came to this country through Ellis Island and all benefited from the presence of the HIAS officials waiting for them to disembark and helping them through what could easily have been a harrowing experience in a foreign language they could barely speak. And that, of course, was without knowing that being sent back to Europe would almost definitely have meant eventually being killed along with two-thirds of European Jewry during the Second World War.

Later, the HIAS was instrumental in saving as many European Jews as possible, famously saving 1400 children the Nazis had incarcerated in French concentration camps and bringing them to America. (Nearly all their parents were subsequently murdered by the Germans.) All in all, about 45,000 Jews were saved by the HIAS during the war, none of whom would otherwise have survived. And then, when the war was over, the HIAS assisted in finding homes for more than 300,000 Jewish souls left in D.P. camps with no place to go. Eventually, the HIAS would also play a major role in helping Jews permitted to leave the Soviet Union in finding new homes in Israel, Western Europe, or the U.S.

It's hard to imagine why Robert Bowers would have cared about any of this. Nor, apparently, did he. But the HIAS also took on another role in the latter part of the twentieth century. In 1975, the State Department asked the organization to assist in the settling of 3,600 Vietnamese refugees here in the U.S. And that constituted a sea change for the organization, which now turned from its original raison d’être of helping Jewish immigrants to helping refugees of all nationalities in need, extending its mission to address the needs of all displaced persons in need of assistance in finding or settling into new homes. And that was the part that Robert Bowers apparently couldn’t stand. “HIAS,” Bowers posted online, “likes to bring invaders in who kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch our people get slaughtered.” And then he famously concluded that post with words that were subsequently repeated a thousand times: “Screw your optics! I’m going in.”

And in he went—to a synagogue housing three different congregations, one of which had indeed participated just a week earlier in HIAS’s annual National Refugee Shabbat. Shouting, by police accounts, “All Jews must die,” he set to his deadly work. It didn’t take that long: Barrows entered the building at 9:50 AM and by 11:08 he had surrendered to police. And so, in just a little over an hour, eleven died. Two were a married couple. Two others were brothers. Six others were injured, which figure includes four police officers. The dead, in alphabetic order, were Joyce Flenberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil Rosenthal and David Rosenthal, Bernice and Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax, and Irving Younger. They ranged in age from 54 to 97. None was guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At first, it might almost sound as though Bowers’ lawyers were right, that this was “about” HIAS and its mission to assist refugees of all kinds and points of origin and not “just” about killing Jews. But Bowers didn’t shoot up a HIAS office and neither did he take aim at any of their refugee clients. Instead, correctly understanding that part of the Jewish worldview includes a deep and ineradicable sense of identity with the refugees and displaced persons in this cold, uncaring world we inhabit (a point presented in Scripture not as a good idea or even as a noble one, but as a divine commandment), he took aim at Jews because they had embraced their Judaism and the worldview that their faith calls upon them to adopt. And it was that specific part of Jewishness that Bowers couldn’t tolerate, the sense that it is requisite that all who would call themselves godly or decent feel a deep sense of kinship, not with the masters and rulers of the world, but with the powerless, with those seeing refuge from tyranny or poverty, with the defenseless and the desperate. And it was expressly to express his loathing of that kind of worldview—one so identified with Judaism that it would be impossible to imagine Judaism without it—that Bowers chose to act. He chose innocent victims because they were Jewish, because they were in synagogue on Shabbat morning to affirm their Jewishness, because they were associated—both in Bowers’ mind and probably correctly—with the mission of the HIAS not to turn away from those seeking refuge in the world but to turn towards them and to embrace them as fellow children of God.

And now, the verdict having been handed down, we turn to the next part: the sentencing phase of the trial scheduled to begin on Monday, at which time the jury will have to decide whether to sentence Bowers to life imprisonment without parole or to death.

As always, I find myself unsure where I stand on death penalty issues. On the one hand, who could possibly qualify for execution if not a man like Bowers, a violent extremist who mercilessly executed eleven innocents to make some sort of demented political statement about an issue to which none of his victims had any direct connection? He falls in the same category, then, with Dylann Roof, the young man who murdered nine innocents in 2015 after spending an hour studying Bible with them at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and who was subsequently found guilty and then sentenced in state court to nine consecutive sentences of life without parole and in federal court to death. Both men acted willfully and intentionally. Neither had any particular personal animus against any of his victims. Both were angry souls fueled by violent hatred. If the death penalty is the ultimate punishment our justice system metes out, then to whom should it be meted out if not to people who fully intentionally kill innocents specifically because of their faith or the color of their skin?

On the other hand, I see the arguments against the death penalty too. The victims don’t come back to life when their executioner is executed; the death penalty speaks to a need to punish felt by the living but yields exactly nothing at all to the dead. Should it matter if the deceased individuals were on record as being opposed to or in favor of the death penalty? And how should faith itself impact on the way we feel about the death penalty? Do we argue that the Bible itself, which clearly has no problem at all with the notion of execution as the proper response to violent crime, should be our guide? What about the strictures that Jewish tradition places around the death penalty, strictures so tight that it would be more or less impossible for a traditional rabbinic court to sentence anyone to death even if such a court were to have the authority to hand down such a sentence? In the end, do we support the concept of the death penalty in theory because it is, after all, the ultimate in punitive acts at the same time we oppose it in reality because of the possibility of error? Is it relevant in this regard to mention the over 300 convictions that have been overturned based on DNA evidence since the Innocence Project began its work in 1992? Surely that should be irrelevant here—neither Bowers’ own lawyers nor even the defendant himself tried to deny that he was the Pittsburgh shooter. Or is it irrelevant, given that, by supporting the idea of sentencing the man to death, we are saying clearly that we support the death penalty while knowing that that the work of the Innocence Project makes it more or less certain that innocent individuals have been executed in our nation’s history?

All these are the thoughts I bring to the conviction and eventual sentencing of Robert Bowers, the perpetrator of the Pittsburgh massacre. What happens to Bowers will happen without any input from myself. But what I can do, and invite all my readers to join me in doing, is to pray that his victims rest in peace and that their deaths collectively serve as a mass sanctification of God’s name in this violent, crazy world we inhabit.

[the-postwar-times]

Character Introductions

Johann Richard Cohen

Our leading man in the story. A stone faced and towering middle aged German-Jewish immigrant. After fleeing Germany in 1941, Richard enlists in the United States Marine Corp and serves until the end of the war. Standing broad shouldered and at 6'6, he often comes off as quite intimidating. Which is quite helpful in his work as a detective. Trying to build a life for himself and his family in the U.S after the end of the Second World War, Richard finds himself struglling to adapt to life in the States, the expectations of men in the 1950s and battling the realities of his own past.

Valentina Margo Maria Romanov

The daughter of a well known Russian-American socialite and Spanish opera soprano. A fairly quiet yet fiery woman who grows frustrated with the treatment of her as a delicate thing that must be protected. She has spent most of her life underneath her parents thumb, sheltered from the outside world. While she tries to accept her role as the daughter of supremely well off parents, she struggles to be happy in the life they're making her live. She desperately craves freedom. And she hopes that her marriage to a man named Dominic will offer her some freedoms for the first time in her life. She is a highly skilled pianist and often times performs in upper class venues. She also adores the color pink to an almost revolting level. 

Schubert Harold Cohen

Richard's twin brother. A middle aged man suffering from severe mental illness. Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic after the war, Harold struggles to get by in day-to-day life and depends heavily on Richard for support. And is often in and out of both psychiatric facilities and jails. Harold’s symptoms of mental illness were heavily aggravated after his service in the European theater, during which he was shot through the head and suffered a traumatic brain injury. In the U.S, Harold finds difficulty trying to integrate into American culture and often feels outcast because of his status as both a German and a Jew, facing discrimination for both his heritiages. As well as his peculiar looks and mental illness. He is known as the “nutcase.” and is lovingly nicknamed by the people that know him, “screwy Schuey.”

Adler Bauer

Richard and Harold’s father. A veteran of the First World War who is sent home early from service after suffering lung damage from a debilitating gas attack. Because of this he spends the rest of his life with a constant cough. A cruel and abusive man, he raised Richard and Harold under an iron thumb. He spent his life as a farmer until the Second World War took his farmstead away from him. His whereabouts after the war ended are unknown. 

Mathilda Bauer

Richard and Harold’s mother. A withdrawn and quiet woman. She finds much dismay in her life and feels hopeless. She is killed during the war in 1942.

Dr. Milton Adam Burke

A middle aged man working as a psychiatrist. He is well known for his sometimes bizarre and unorthodox treatment methods and ability to work with even the most difficult of patients. Despite this, he is well regarded in his field and sees much success with his patients. He has a warm demeanor, is very soft spoken and has a general air of calm around him.

Konstantin Artur Romanov

Valentina's father. An old fashioned and intimidating third generation Russian-American socialite with more money than he knows what to do with. His intimidating nature is not warranted though, as he is a fairly quiet and soft spoken man. He is regarded as somewhat of a minor celebrity in Boston. His great, great grandparents made a fortune in the California Gold Rush. While he is sociable, he tends to keep to himself and holds a fairly awkward nature.

Sarita Maria De Leon Romanov

Valentina's mother. A high class woman who believes the world should view her and treat her as nothing less. Originally from Spain, she was a well renowned opera singer before marrying Konstantin and moving to the U.S. She values money and status over almost anything else and goes to great lengths to maintain her reputation. 

Agatha May Cohen

Richard’s eldest daughter. A tomboyish girl who struggles to understand the world around her as she watches her father and mothers marriage disinigrate.

Vera Mathilda Cohen

Richard’s second daughter. Diagnosed as retarded at age two. Much against Richard’s wishes, after her diagnosis Heather placed Vera in a state mental institution where she stayed for almost 2 years. She stayts there until 1951 when Richard is able to remove her from the facility and take her home. She is extremely quiet and refuses to speak. 

Margaret Tiffany Cohen

Richard's third daughter. A bright and happy girl. She is bubbly and talkataive, seeming to never quiet.

Heather Joan Mason

Richard’s ex-wife, divorced in 1951. The two were married in 1942 and the relationship quickly turned sour. A bitter and manipulative woman who expects more out of everyone then is reasonable. She regrets her relationship with Richard as well as having children with him and isn’t afraid to make that known. She has a stinging tongue and an air of unpleasantness around her. 

Rutherford Benjamin Hudson

A friend of Richard and Harolds. A lawyer who is heir to his fathers massive fortune and ship manufacturing business. He is a rather attractive man with a propensity towards reckless and dangerous behavior. He enjoys cars, particularly open-wheel single-seater formula racing, sailing, golfing, and reading tedious and boring law books. He is well spoken, well groomed, and extremely confident. He is bombastic and outspoken and accurately defined as a playboy minus the women. 

Dominic Grayson

Valentina Romanov’s fiancé. Another socialite that rubs elbows with the Romnoav family. A tall blonde man who thinks very highly of himself and his status. The kind of man who hates being told no.

Sidney John Bishop

The lieutenant overseeing the beat patrol in district D-4. An older, well experienced man. He has three sons and his wife passed away in 1948. He struggles to keep Richard in line a lot of the time. He sympathizes with the discrimination and harassment Richard often faces from other officers on the force, but he’s often frustrated that he can’t get Richard to change his attitude. He continually covers for Richard when he gets in trouble and keeps him from getting dismissed or penalized. And he and Richard eventually grow quite close. Eventually he is transferred from overseeing the patrol officers to overseeing the homicides and violent crimes detectives.

Donavan Prince

A younger officer new to the Boston PD. A difficult young man who uses his job to assert authority over others, even when not warranted, and give him an inflated sense of self importance. He is generally troublesome and picks fights with other officers. He is particularly unfond of Richard because of his age, nationality, marital status, height, and the rumors surrounding him. He’s a shorter man and is extremely self conscious because of this and tries to overcompensate. He is generally protected from being reprimanded for his actions as his father is the deputy police chief.

Peter Clark

A young man working as a patrol officer with the Boston PD. A level headed man who works with Richard as his patrol partner. 

[oni-verse]

feels kinda corny to make stuff like this so i'm putting it under read more. juliet & koda's parents ^^

juliet's dad & mom. his dad is an immigrant from china & his mom immigrated from canada. they went to new york city where juliet was born & raised, and died when juliet was 9 in a car accident. he spent 5 or 6 years in the system after their deaths.

koda (and bo's) dad & mom. (their last names are "campos sequeira", not separate.) these two actually did get names, not that i really think about them a lot. they're both brazilian, his dad is Inácio, he's second generation. his mom is Vanessa, she's third generation. they had koda & bo in massachusetts and raised them there, until they passed when koda was 17 & bo was 22. they were away for a work thing & ended up in a building collapse, which is when koda went to live with bo before he moved to nyc.