#i have seen people of my age tweeting they have lost their siblings fathers mothers and still trying to help others-

[caramelcuppaccino]

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[imcynfinite]

her name is cyn.

This kid. Head always in the clouds. You couldn't keep her grounded. Only liked reality when it stimulated her imagination. Read a lot of books because she liked the trip. Did a lot of unhealthy things for attention. Always compared to her sisters and never getting affection just for herself, there had to be another way to get noticed. So she stole. Glasses from her classmate's desks during reading time on the carpet (sorry, Salita), Sour Power candy from lunchboxes after bake sales, mechanical pencils from the supply shop that she'd tuck into her uniform jumper, books from the library after she read them, pretending she returned them just so she could have their worlds to escape to at home whenever she needed to. She lied a lot, too. A pathological liar. That's what her mother called her when she was caught in the act. She was ALWAYS caught in the act, but couldn't stop doing it. Lying felt good. Even as the lie formed words that she knew wouldn't be convincing enough, she could. Not. Stop. It was here that she first learned she could tell stories, but didn't see her power yet. She used them ill. When she couldn’t drift off, she grew resentful. Loved alone time. Sought after it to escape. Sure, she'd play dolls with her little sister, or watch Saturday morning cartoons and Toonami after school with her older sister. She allowed herself to be herself with her siblings, but only until she was compared to them or didn't have control over the situation. She was never good enough. She couldn't be the pageant queen with stardom in her future like her little sister, and couldn't be the first born who did everything right like her older sister. She didn't understand the pressures they faced holding such titles, but at that age, how could she? At that age, it stung. What could she do right? What title could she hold? She loved her sisters, but couldn't be them. So deep down, she grew resentful. Acted really mean towards them, in ways she couldn't help. Much much later on, she'd spend a day trying to understand why she grew cold with them so many times during her teens and young adulthood, and the resentment will click. It'll all make sense to her, the healing to not blame her sisters for their parents' comparisons will begin, and a newfound friendship and appreciation will bloom. But here? How could she have known? She loved food. Don't know when it started, but once it did, it took off. She ate a lot, because food made her happy. When she was sad and resentful, food was forgiving. Soothing. It didn't judge her in the slightest. She'd ask for more at dinner. Get the extra scoop of ice cream for dessert. Asked the kids during lunch if they were gonna finish that. Sometimes was so hungry, she'd sneak and take a bite or two of her lunch before the bell. She started gaining weight. That cute face growing round, belly poking. But she was fine. A beautiful, chubby kid. The first time she learned something was wrong with her body, though, was seven years old. Frustrated they couldn't find a communion dress that fit, her mother told her it was her fault. "You have to do something about this." A few years later, her father, out of deep frustration and desperate to bring her to shame to incite some motivation, called her an elephant. Her mother tried to take food away from her, but that just made her want it even more. How could something that made her feel good be so bad? The one thing that validated her existence was the enemy? No. Her mother tried, and tried, and tried. But little did she know, it just made the girl cling to it harder. Seek its affection. Crave its nurturing. She had no idea she was growing an addiction. This kid had charm. You see that smile? The softness in her eyes. The brightness in her spirit. She did things her way, because she projected the world as what she saw in her head. People were charmed by it, and she had no idea. Co-workers of her mother took a liking to her every time she came to the parties. One in particular always gifted her with Nancy Drew books, every birthday. Just because. She thought this kid was beautiful and joyous and couldn't help checking in on her or asking her mother how she was. Asking if she finished reading her book, and considering expanding her gifts to include The Hardy Boys. ...People watched this girl. Liked her spunk. Liked the mystery of not knowing what exactly she was, but feeling good being in her presence. This kid had charm, and she had no idea. How could she? If she wasn't being compared to, she was told no one would like her looking like she did, round belly and all. That having bad grades meant you were lazy and stupid, and not that you possibly had issues concentrating. Teachers complained about her staring out of the windows for too long and not doing her homework. Kids bullied her for not being pretty or not liking what they liked. That she kept to herself and was a "trouble maker". No one liked the kids who upset the teachers. Sisters that loved her but couldn't stick up for her. They didn't understand. She didn't have anyone to tell her she was just fine the way she was. Magnificent, even. She grew tired of the loneliness. Her imagination was fun, sure. But reality got realer, and she needed a way to deal. She just had to. So, she transformed. Right into high school, she became a vibrant spirit who cracked jokes to make people laugh. Rebelled against her parents and pretended not getting good grades and being fat was something she wasn't ashamed of. Joined drama club and performed on stages. Cut off her permed hair and rocked a fro. Writing like crazy and showing anyone who cared; growing a fan base in school and online. She didn't know it then, but it was here she was learning her voice had volume, and people wanted her to blast it. She became someone she'd write about in her stories. Even though it was all an act, her best starring role to date, it was enough to help her get by. To survive. It silenced the self-hatred that was beginning to build due to neglect of interrogation, but as time went on and new masks took form, she realized pretending meant neglecting that inner child who just wanted to be herself and liked for it. Who didn't want to be compared. Who didn't want to be frowned upon for not being pretty. Who didn't want to be told they were too much, or too little. Who just wanted to SHOW UP, without pushback. At 29 years old, I've realized how much of myself I've created just to be seen. Over the last five years, something has called on me to undo those masks and to begin living in my truth. As a storyteller who wants to hold up the mirror, I was chosen to perform, and I was then tasked to learn how to leave the costume backstage. Not to make a home out of it. For friends, for lovers, for parents, for society, I have done so much dancing to survive, but that isn't LIVING. That isn't love. It's not care, it's not protection, it's not kindness. For a majority of my childhood, I spent it daydreaming. Wishing reality could look like my wildest dreams. And here I am, facing what truth looks like and realizing that I can bend it. I can find a way to merge my dreams and my reality without disappointing my inner child who'd rather get lost in the clouds and pretend she's riding them. That kid doesn't know how amazing she is. I don't remember everything, but for the things I do, sometimes I'm charmed by her, too. I look in the mirror and don't always recognize that kid, but sometimes when I look off into the distance and my lover asks, "Hey. Where did you go?" or my mother looks at me and just smiles because I'm radiating light she can't deny, I remember. When I write my tweets and people respond with, "You should write a book. The way you write, I'd read anything you make," I remember. When I decide to meditate and my imagination brings me back to a dream I had a while ago, I remember. When I look in the mirror and look past the make-up and the experiences I've lived, I see her. She's so precious, man. She's a kook, lol. She's rambunctious and impulsive and loud and expressive and quiet and dreamy and fluid and hard. She's a whole ass universe. I wish she knew her impact. God, I wish she knew. I do my best to tell her... well, I'm learning to. When she wants to throw a tantrum, I'm learning how to parent her the way she needed. I'm trying to work with her. When she wants me to perform for people to get the attention she wants, I try not to fight her but get her to understand we can't do that anymore. That maybe we don't NEED to do that anymore. That maybe it's time we just be who we wanna be. She doesn't know what that means. I try to explain that it's like her daydreams, except real. She's not convinced. "Dreams are better." She walks away to her corner to embark on a mental journey. It's a constant battle with her. She wins a lot of the time. She's stubborn like that. But every now and again, when something in reality works just like or better than we could have imagined, there's a glimmer in her eye. Hope, I think.

As I learn to navigate adulting, I run into fear, and run away from responsibility. But 2019 taught me that it's high time I stop running, because the freedom I'm meant to have is so rich and the brilliance I harbor is so abundant, they're meant to marry. The mirror I want my stories to reflect to the world require I go through this transformation, and feel it ALL. I've stayed in places I didn't belong, loved people who weren't as good to me as they could, hid from opportunities that could give me wings, all because of who I thought I was. All of the voices from people I loved who, when I think about it now, were simply afraid for me and themselves and just didn't know how to say that. Despite knowing the masks I've put in place to survive and understanding that in 2020, I'm being asked to leave them behind, the fear of shedding skin is real. Because that means people I wanted to stay forever have to go. The stories I repeat to myself have to end. Discernment to trust I will always do my best to give myself what I need must be sharpened. Love, the way I want to experience it, must be given room to walk into and I have to set the example. 2019, my goodness. What an acid trip. A chapter I hated to write, and probably should have embraced more of. It dragged me because I had given up on myself during a period where curiosity could have governed me further. I remember being a kid who loved to be curious. Now, I hide away in fear. Where is that girl? I'm determined to meet her again. Talk to her. Conjure up a master plan. I cannot play small, and the universe has stopped begging. It's sitting back now, watching what I'll do now that it's not up my ass. I turn 30 years old this year, and there's something personal to that. A resonance very warm. Will I meet the beauty of that turning point of my life with arms wide open? Will I grab the opportunity to take that kid's hand and show her something different? Can I stand by her?... This kid's name is Cynthia. She's one of the coolest kids I know. And if no one else can, then I will. I'll stand by her. I'll stand by me.

[bountyofbeads]

https://medium.com/@CleverTitleTK/their-own-two-feet-8ddd1dbb1602

You have to read this article on the immigrant roots of Ken Cuccinelli and yes his public charge grandparents when they arrived in this country with no education or money. Jennifer has done a great job of documenting(See Website For Documents) his family's immigrant history. His hypocrisy is rich. PLEASE READ 📖 AND SHARE. TY 🤔

😂🤣😂🤣

Their Own Two Feet

Jennifer Mendelssohn | Published August 30, 2019 | Medium | Posted August 30, 2019 6:15 PM ET

As the new public face of the Trump administration’s draconian immigration policies, acting USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli has wasted no time stirring up collective ire. Most notably, he set off a firestorm of criticism by rewriting the iconic Emma Lazarus poem that has long functioned as a kind of unofficial American immigration mantra. “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge,” he proudly told NPR’s Rachel Martin, who somehow resisted the urge to burst out laughing and/or slap him upside the head. (You can read several historians’ takes on the public charge rule here, but suffice it to say that the concept, which was meant to weed out only the very, very least desirable of immigrants, has never been enforced as rigorously as Cuccinelli is suggesting.)

Cuccinelli later elaborated thatLazarus’ poem was “referring back to people coming from Europe where they had class-based societies, where people were considered wretched if they weren’t in the right class.” Wink wink, nudge, nudge, we hear you! And if you had the word “Europe” in Bigotry Bingo, drink!

For the past two years, I’ve run a project called #resistancegenealogy, which looks at the family histories of public figures in order to show just how similar so many of our stories really are. Cuccinelli’s very public numbskullery definitely set a new record: never before I have I received so many texts, tweets, emails and Facebook messages from people so eager to learn about someone’s family tree. (Side note: Never before have I seen so many people who’ve never done genealogy try to do it themselves and get it so very very wrong. You realize more than one person in a town can have the same name, right? And that not all records are online? And that other people’s public family trees are very often…wrong? Here, read this.)

And never before has a family history — or at least the Italian half of that history that I’ll address here — been so utterly unsurprising. I mean, where did you all think the story of the Cuccinelli family of Hoboken, New Jersey was going to go, really? C’mon now.

And so, here I am, just a girl with some documents, standing in front of her country, asking it not to betray its immigrant past. Asking it to remember that welcoming the “wretched refuse of your teeming shore,” even when that “refuse” comes with little more than grit, determination and a desire to do better for their children, is a bedrock American value, a value that allowed many of you reading these words right now to be here. It’s a value that allowed Ken Cuccinelli — descended from Southern Italians of modest means and little education who would likely never pass muster under the proposed changes — to be here. I mean, hellooooo? Were you listening at allduring the 4th grade unit on immigration?

Cuccinelli called a New York Daily Newsarticle about his family history (albeit one that identifies the wrong ship’s manifest as his great-grandfather’s) “intellectually dishonest.” Any comparison to past immigrants, he maintained, was invalid because “the welfare state didn’t exist back then.”

Nativists love to fall back on this argument, but they also still love to contrast the behavior of current immigrants with what they believe to be their own ancestors’ spotless — and “legal!” — immigration and assimilation histories, despite the fact that comparisons to “legal” immigration at a time when there were almost no immigration laws for Europeans to break are inherently problematic. And despite the fact that the historical record is often at odds with their starry-eyed, mythologized understanding of their ancestors’ pasts.

“My great-grandfather knew upon arriving in the United States that he had to learn English and that he had to work hard to succeed in this country,” Cuccinelli told the Daily News.

“My family worked together to ensure that they could provide for their own needs, and they never expected the government to do it for them,” he said at a press briefing.

I’m so very very tired of telling you this very same story over and over again, but since so many of you asked — some less politely than others, btw, can we please work on that moving forward? — let’s go to the videotape and look at the Cuccinelli family story, shall we?

THE CUCCINELLIS

Ken Cuccinelli’s paternal grandfather, Dominick Luigi Cuccinelli, was born in Hoboken, New Jersey to — are you sitting down? — Italian immigrant parents who’d only been in the country for about ten years. Ken’s great-grandfather was Domenico Cuccinelli (né Cucciniello) born on the 6th of December, 1874 in Avellino, Italy. His 1897 marriage certificate  identifies him and his wife, Fortuna Preziosi, as farmers.

In March of 1901, Domenico became part of the massive wave of Italians who lit out for greater opportunity and stability in America, sailing on the SS Patria from Naples. Identified as a “laborer,” he arrived at Ellis Island with $8.75, equivalent to about $260 today. His contact in the U.S.? An unnamed cousin already living on Adams Street in Hoboken.

Ancestry indexed this record under “Camiello.” Which may be why you couldn’t find it.

Domenico’s wife Fortuna would follow her husband to America the following year on the Algeria, arriving at Ellis Island with their two small children and $20.

It’s important to remember that for all our talk of welcoming the huddled masses with open arms, American immigration history also has a pronounced strain of ugly nativism, a rather ironic twist for a nation founded on stolen land. (And we’re talking here only about immigrants by choice.) Which means that Ken Cuccinelli’s immigrant family was subjected to the very same brand of bigoted suspicion that he is now trying to inflict on others. The Ken Cuccinellis of the early twentieth century — though they didn’t typically have last names like Cuccinelli — were just as insistent that people like the Cuccinellis didn’t have the right to become Americans. That they wouldn’t fit in. That they had nothing to offer and would only be a drain on “our” resources.

“[Italians] are coming in waves and think they have a right to come….There has been a surfeit of unskilled illiterates for years and the people do not want any more of them,” opined the Jersey (City) Journal on November 29, 1902, just a few months after Ken’s great-grandmother arrived there.

So what became of the Cuccinellis? Well, the first we see of the family in American records is in the 1905 New Jersey state census. Father Domenico is employed as a laborer, supporting a family of six. And though they’ve been in the U.S. for three and four years at this point, neither parent reported being able to speak English.

But as is so often the case, the Cuccinelli family moved up in the world. By the 1915 census, both Domenico and Fortuna are listed as literate and English speaking, despite his having never had a formal education and her having only completed eighth grade. In 1919, Domenico, still working as a laborer and now living in nearby Jersey City, declared his intention to become an American citizen, a process he completed three years later.

You’ll notice the family’s 1922 address: 401 Monroe Street in Hoboken, where they are also listed in the 1925 city directory. Just a few houses down on Monroe (the entire neighborhood has streets grandly named after American presidents, incidentally) was another family headed by Italian immigrants — a boilermaker and a midwife. They had a son named Frank just a few years younger than Ken’s grandfather Dominick. Perhaps you’ll recognize the last name and wonder what would have been lost had his immigrant parents been barred.

By 1930, Domenico Cuccinelli owned a home on Madison Street. And by 1940, he and his wife were comfortably retired, living in a house worth $5000, the very picture of the American dream.

THE POLICASTROS

Ken’s grandmother Josephine Policastro Cuccinelli was also the Jersey-born daughter of Italian immigrants: Gaetano Policastro and Maria Ronga (also spelled Rongo) from Monte San Giacomo in Salerno.

A teenaged Maria Ronga (her birth certificate indicates she was 17) arrived at Ellis Island in November of 1903 with her widowed 48-year-old mother, Giuseppa Romano, who has no listed occupation, and three younger siblings. Giuseppa’s husband Giuseppe Ronga, a tailor, had died in 1901 at the age of 44, which may have played a role in their decision to move. With all of $5 between the five of them, they were detained at Ellis Island — as indicated by the “S.I.” for “Special Inquiry” stamped by their names in the margin of the manifest. The “Record of Aliens Held For Special Inquiry” list indicates the reason they were held, abbreviated as “L.P.C.;” it stands for “Likely Public Charge.” So yes, the great-grandmother of the man now beating the drums to tighten the public charge rule was…labeled a likely public charge herself.

After a day’s detainment and a hearing — at which Maria’s older brother Vincenzo, who paid for their passage, would have likely been called to testify that he could support his mother and siblings — the family was allowed to enter the United States, as were more than 98% of those who came through Ellis Island.

But make no mistake: there were many who would have happily sent the Rongas packing. Witness this Judgemagazine cartoon from the very year they arrived, which depicts southern European immigrants as filthy rats, bringing crime and anarchy into the country. (Nice Mafia hats, right?) Doesn’t this sound… familiar?

The new arrivals moved in with Maria’s older brother Vincenzo, now going by the name James, in Hoboken. Ken’s great-grandmother Maria found work as a candy maker, as shown in the 1905 census.

Two and a half years after her arrival, though she is somehow still only 17, Maria “Ronca” (age and spelling are slippery concepts, genealogically speaking) married Gaetano “Thomas” Policastro, a recently widowed father of two with an eighth grade education. Gaetano was also born in Monte San Giacomo and appears to have immigrated as a child in the 1880s.

In 1908, Thomas and Maria had the first of their eight children together, Ken’s grandmother Josephine. The 1910 census shows them living with Maria’s family, including her mother Josephine Romano Ronga. Thomas is working as a salesman at a market. Both the 1910 and 1920 census indicated that Ken’s great-great-grandmother Josephine never learned English, even after being in the country for 17 years. And…so what? Immigrants often took their sweet time learning to speak English, if at all. Their children learned to speak English at school so that one day their great-great-grandsons could become the attorney general of Virginia and maybe one day feel the need to cover up the naked statute in the state symbol. Problem solved.

Though the 1930 census shows the Policastros owning a home worth $12,000, as the nation tumbled deeper into the grips of the Great Depression, like so many Americans, they appear to have fallen on hard times. A series of legal notices in the Jersey Journal(available on GenealogyBank) gesture to the outlines of the story: A lawsuit over non-payment on a $8150 bank note. A foreclosure on the Policastro home on Paterson Plank Road. A bankruptcy hearing. A District Court judgment against Thomas for $450, filed by James Ronga. Would the Policastros have met their own great-grandson’s requirement that immigrants always “carry their own weight?” (According to the Annual report of the Attorney General of the United States, about 1300 of New Jersey’s approximately four million residents voluntarily filed for personal bankruptcy in the fiscal year ended 1931.)

But by 1940, now nearing 60, Thomas Policastro had rebounded. The census shows him renting a home in nearby North Bergen. He is listed as the proprietor of a scrap metal business, and earning $1300 a year, right around the national average. Two of his American-born sons served during World War II. The Policastros proved that they deserved the chance they were given — the chance to have ups and downs and everything in between, the chance to pave the way for future generations to soar.

But one last point. Like the Cuccinellis, the Policastros also had neighbors of note, though they may not have been as well-known as the Sinatras. In 1920, the Policastros lived just a mile away from another Jersey City family headed by a Jewish immigrant who never completed high school and worked for decades at an overalls factory in nearby Paterson. This family was from the former Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia, and had arrived in 1896. Much like the Policastros, this family also eventually found themselves in the pages of the local newspaper. In 1940, the patriarch was arrested with his son-in-law and two other men on charges of stealing from that very same overalls factory; the charges were later dropped and the sentence suspended after they made restitution. But all of that Jewish immigrant’s grandsons would go on to college and upstanding careers. Two served in the military. One became a lawyer. One had a master’s degree. And in the fall of 1986, one of that immigrant’s great-granddaughters left Long Island to enroll at the University of Virginia, a venerable institution founded by an American president. Here she is in the First Year Faces Book, resplendent in a Benetton vest and pearls.

And one of her classmates at that venerable institution? Well, she knew him by his nickname: “Cooch.”

So yes, the scions of two Jersey City families headed by those uneducated and sometimes troubled immigrants seemed to have done alright for themselves. It’s a quintessentially American story, one I see day in and day out doing genealogical research: immigrant narratives are messy and imperfect and complicated but almost universally, they ultimately end with those families in a much better place than they would have been otherwise. That same great-grandfather’s sister, for instance, stayed behind in their ancestral town of Sniatyn and is presumed murdered during the Holocaust. So was my maternal grandfather’s brother, despite his writing a desperate letter to President “Rosiwelt” begging for refuge for his family in America.

How many future Ken Cuccinellis are the Trump administration’s increasingly restrictive immigration policies going to keep out? Who or what are those policies protecting, other than unfounded racist fears that follow in the very worst of American traditions?

Just about twenty years after Ken Cuccinelli’s family arrived from Italy and began their ascent up the ladder of the American dream, the ladder that lifted him to the grounds of Mr. Jefferson’s University and to law school at George Mason, to elected office in the state of Virginia and to a nomination to head a federal agency, Congress enacted the infamous Johnson-Reed Act, which set up quotas specifically designed to keep out people just like them. The number of Italians arriving in America dropped from 200,000 a year in the first decade of the twentieth century to under 4,000.

As Cuccinelli’s own career makes clear, the critics were dead wrong about the potential contributions of humble immigrants like his ancestors. And so is he.

CREDITS: I’m grateful to Megan Smolenyak, Michael Cassara, Rich Venezia and Tammy Hepps, who provided research, translation and editorial assistance.

[acuppellarp]

Welcome (back!) to A Cup-pella, Jeanne! We’re excited to have you and Lacey Mikhailov in the game! Please go through the checklist to make sure you’re ready to go and send in your account within the next 24 hours. 

OOC INFO

Name + pronouns: Jeanne, She/Her Age: 25 Timezone: EST Ships: /Chemistry Anti-Ships: /Forced

IC INFO

Full Name: Lacey Renee Mikhailov Face Claim: Abigail Cowen Age/Birthday: 23, October 30th Occupation: Baker at Snickerdoodle’s Bakery, cheerleader for April’s Showers Personality: Generous, stubborn, guarded, sheltered, ambitious Hometown: Sandusky, OH Bio:

Take one part warm Ohio summer nights spent chasing fireflies through wide open feels, two parts Sunday church services, three parts abandonment issues, and one part good, traditional Russian cooking, and you have the recipe for Lacey Mikhailov’s childhood. While she won’t go into too many details if asked about it, she likes to tell people that her youth was everything she could’ve hoped for, and to an extent that’s true. Would she have liked to have a mother who was present rather than someone who spent every opportunity away from home? She absolutely would have. But when Brenda Mikhailov got pregnant young by a man she met in a fit of passion one night, it laid the groundwork for what would be Lacey’s life spent with her grandfather as her source of emotional and physical support.

There was never an official discussion about Ilya raising Lacey full-time; it just sort of gradually happened. Brenda asked him to babysit for a day and it ended up being the whole weekend. She said she would take Lacey to her doctor’s appointment, and then call up Ilya last minute to say she couldn’t and he would have to. By the time Lacey started school, it was automatically assumed that her grandfather would be the one to sign her up and take her to her first day, something he did with a giant smile and about three dozen photos snapped and added to a scrapbook that’s still sitting on Lacey’s bookshelf to this day. When Brenda told Ilya that she wanted to “see the world” and move out of state later that year, there wasn’t even a question on if Lacey would be going with her or not. Brenda packed her bags and gave her daughter and father a hug, and then drove off without seemingly any second thought.

Despite growing up outside of the traditional nuclear family unit, Lacey didn’t want for anything. She never knew Brenda as her mother, so her loss didn’t sting much during childhood. Ilya wouldn’t let it. Instead, he would spend their time after he got off of work and she got home from school in the kitchen, showing Lacey how to sift flour and press dough to her heart’s content. Back in Russia, he’d been a baker by trade, and watching his granddaughter fall in love with it was nothing short of beautiful. Lacey always insisted on making homemade treats for her school’s Halloween and Christmas parties, and that’s when she came to love the expression on people’s faces when they first tried her creations.

When she as in middle school, her aunt Dory moved in to give Ilya a hand raising Lacey, and the three of them became a family that was thick as thieves. Ilya and Dory were at every science fair, church program, and poorly-played volleyball match of Lacey’s life and she couldn’t imagine it any other way. Last she heard, her mother had settled somewhere in Washington where she married and had three replacement kids whom Lacey has never met. She doesn’t even know if her step-father or half-siblings know she exists, but she tries not to think about it too much. If you ask her, she drew the best lot in life. She would express to her Aunt Dory (not her grandfather, never her grandfather — the last thing she would want is for him to think he was anything less than amazing) about how it hurt to think about her biological mother not wanting her, something that is still painful to think about even now that Lacey has grown. Dory would assure her that it was entirely Brenda’s loss, but that has never completely dulled the ache.

Losing Ilya was painful, but not entirely unexpected. Lacey was in her junior year of college at the time, earning an obligatory business degree in the hopes of one day opening her own bakery. Saying good-bye to the person who taught her everything she knew definitely left her feeling lost, and she wound up taking the following semester off of school because she simply didn’t have the capacity to give it the focus it deserved. To this day four years later, she still doesn’t really know what compelled her to go to New York in the first place. She’d talked it over with her family and friends, idly wondering if maybe a change of scenery would do her some good, and before she knew it her and her aunt were looking at flights for the East Coast.

It was originally meant to just be a vacation for the two of them, to help set a new pace now that her and Dory were learning to cope. But it’s like as soon as the plane touched down in the city, Lacey felt at home. They were only there for a week and a half, hitting up the city’s tourist traps as well as tracking down some little hole-in-the-wall places. Still, within the span of a few days after returning home to Sandusky, Lacey told her aunt she wanted to move out there for real. By the end of the year, Lacey found herself settling into the city, feeling both terrified and unbelievably proud all at once. Her grandfather had always told her to never hold herself back and being inNew York felt like the ultimate testament to that.

She finished up her last year of classes online and earned herself a degree in business, and was able to soon find a job at a bakery that her and her aunt had stopped by during her first visit. Currently, Lacey’s biggest source of pride has come from introducing a few recipes taught to her by he grandfather into the small business, which now offers a select range of Russian desserts courtesy of her. The next step is to actually invest in her own business, the same goal she’s had since she was little. Lacey’s vision board is filled with photos and inspiration to keep her focused on that goal, and every last bit of money goes into an account to help her get her feet off the ground.

Pets: Two cats with her, plus two more living with her aunt back in Ohio. The little babes in Ohio (Peanut Butter, or PB, and Jelly) were much too attached with her aunt’s dog and Lacey couldn’t bear to separate them. She adopted Eva and Zsa Zsa shortly after she moved to NYC. Zsa Zsa is definitely the more rambunctious of the two and likes to hide in places to spook Lacey (and now her roommates). Good luck opening a cabinet to not find her sitting in there. Eva is much more relaxed and introverted and likes to camp out on Lacey’s pillow, but she’ll wander out to ask for pets every so often.

Relationships:

April’s Growers — Lacey has an entire lifetime’s worth of love to give and was raised knowing the importance of giving back, so she recently signed up to join April’s little committee. She makes sure to give her fellow members nothing but support, but she does struggle when it comes to voicing her own ideas. She’s working on it though, and the more comfortable she becomes in the group, she hopes to be able to give it her all without hesitation.

Jemma Sterling — Coming from a small city, Lace way underestimated how much she’d be able to live by herself in New York. She was able to rent a room from a nice little Russian couple in Brighton Beach for a while, but ultimately decided to move closer to work and ended up finding a roommate in Jemma. She is… more than a bit intimidated by how open and free Jemma is with herself, and she’s seen more of her naked than she ever planned on, but Lacey can appreciate how to-the-point and amusing her roomie is.

April’s Showers Cheerleaders — Lacey loves spreading positivity and showering people with support, so when she first became aware of the little cheering squad for the soccer team, she jumped right in to join. She enjoys all the other ladies, and despite knowing almost nothing about sports, she’s trying to at least get to know them better and have them teach her the ins and outs of soccer.

EXTRA INFO

Lacey ♥ / mikhailacey/ Trying to save the world, one red velvet cake at a time 🍰🍪🍩 Five latest tweets:

@mikhailacey: When your aunt facetimes you just so you can say goodnight to your cats ♥♥♥ @mikhailacey: A little boy said I look like Princess Ariel today, no compliment will ever hold up @mikhailacey: Question for people who’ve ridden public NYC transport their whole lives: how? @mikhailacey: Is crimped hair still in style? Asking for a friend (read: me) @mikhailacey: I can bake marlenka in my sleep but I just burnt microwavable mac and cheese #sendhelp

[nothingneverforever]

The Haunting of Hill House (2018)

I remember sitting through the first episode of this series with my mom, thinking that it wasn't the best option for us to commit to, worrying that it would be a waste of our precious mother-daughter bonding time. The pacing of the first/second episode was too.. American, the emotional expressions too unsubtle, leaving little room for my audience participation, the acting too stilted, and the actors behaving too much like stage thespians .. and because I'd chosen the series after seeing rave reviews online, I remember sitting through the first episode thinking, huh, this is the shit people been losing their minds over?

And then.... suddenly, quickly, it became one of the most deeply affecting and disturbing shows I'd experienced, and thus eventually, one of my favourites. I'm deciding to write this now, about 9 months after I finished the series, because I've just started on The Haunting of Bly Manor, which is described as a "follow-up" series to Hill House. The narratives are not connected, but much of the cast and crew are the same, which is nice because I was so so so so so impressed with the acting of these specific returning actors in Hill House, and after reading a little more into the production process, I've been allowed to understand that the crew is fucking epic and genius as fuck too. I love this series!!!!!

The title of a Youtube video that I love a great deal on this series, by one of my absolute favourite film analysis video essayists, Ladyknightthebrave, is: Stretching Genre - A Haunting of Hill House Video Essay. And maybe this is what I'll talk about first - genre. I've never particularly cared for 'horror' because I'd rather be able to engage with themes and tropes I can relate to in my own life, stories that resemble my own world from my own ever-romantic perspectives. I've always wanted to delve into horror, to appreciate the elaborately designed surfaces as well as be affected in whatever ways by any depth of conversation or concept, but I don't think I've ever been able to achieve any of this. I've tried to enjoy both superficially (i.e. entertainment value) and also more real-ly many horror productions, but always left with a deep sense of meh.  Crimson Peak (which I reviewed here back in 2016) might be the closest I've come to engaging genuinely with anything from this broad genre, but even then I think I liked it more for its kitsch value, its beautiful beautiful beautiful soundtrack, than for the genre-specific parts of the narrative. But I mean, everything makes a film right? The soundtrack and the costumes and the acting are the horror elements in themselves too, I know.

Even then, a lot of the simple reactions I've read for Hill House are ones of surprise, where audiences went in not realizing that a series with the words The Haunting of.. in its title would leave them feeling utterly heartbroken, distraught (sad), emotionally-invested as it were any other drama series. In that Ladyknightthebrave video I mentioned, at multiple points in her essay she says, simply, "hey,... I'm sad" when referencing a particular scene or conversation. And that was, too, my overwhelming reaction to the whole series.... I'm sad!!!!!

Perhaps I should describe the plot a little first.. so the Cranes are a family of 7, mother and father and 5 lovely children: in descending order of age, they are Steve, Shirley, Theo, and twins Luke and Eleanor (Nelly). Here is the official synopsis:

This modern reimagining of the Shirley Jackson novel follows siblings who, as children, grew up in what would go on to become the most famous haunted house in the country.. Now adults, they are forced back together in the face of tragedy and must finally confront the ghosts of their past. Some of those ghosts still lurk in their minds, while others may actually be stalking the shadows of Hill House.

And, from wikipedia, here are some of the notable reviews of the series:

Corrine Corrodus of The Telegraph graded the series with a 5/5 rating, calling it "the most complex and complete horror series of its time." Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave unanimous praise to the Netflix adaptation, describing it as "essential viewing," and stated that "[the show] contains some of the most unforgettable horror imagery in film or television in years." David Griffin of IGN gave the series a rating of 9.5 out of 10, calling it "a superb and terrifying family drama," and Paul Tassi of Forbes described it as "absolutely fantastic" and stated that "it may actually be Netflix's best original show ever."

Horror author Stephen King, who holds considerable admiration for Jackson's novel, tweeted about the series, "I don't usually care for this kind of revisionism, but this is great. Close to a work of genius, really. I think Shirley Jackson would approve, but who knows for sure."

Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, in interview with The Jerusalem Post said, "My favorite Netflix series, with no competition, is The Haunting of Hill House."

Due to obvious reasons I give zero fucks about what either King or Tarantino might have to say about, uhh, anything on this planet, but YASSSS RETWEET everything above!!! It is essential viewing!!! Indeed the most complex and complete series of its time!!! Unforgettable imagery!!!

Okie so now on to my own original thots... 

My main learning was this: Horror, i.e. the presence of something horrific, for it's characters in the show/story, isn't about feeling frightened or them 'losing their minds' or being driven to questioning their own perceptions of reality or anything like what we've seen in the last 7 decades or so of seeing the genre develop and evolve. In Mike Flanagan's beautiful ode to Shirley Jackson's incredible story, we come to understand that horror is only ever about genuine trauma. I guess, like I talked about earlier, I never really understood what horror's raison d'etre was at all.. like... why?? What is the greater, lasting impact of having audiences shaking in their boots? What is intended by eliciting a gasp or a scream? WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ALL THIS?!

I asked, and I've been asking and asking for years, and finally Hill House provided: Horror is, in fact, about unspeakable pain.. Pain that has no outlet in a world that will only ever be skeptical of such experiences... it's about being genuinely haunted in such a way that you can never dream of stability in your life ever again; it's about developing into a closed-off, maladjusted adult, knowing that your experiences of early life cannot be related to anyone else's in any way, not even that of your siblings. I remember taking away this lesson very early on in the series, possibly midway through the second episode. Because the siblings (Steve, Shirley, Theo, Luke, Nelly) are all utterly flawed and thus 'real' characters, we're able to quickly why they are the ways they are. (Important note: the siblings are not flawed in ways that make them unlikable at all, or unrelatable, or downright unpleasant to watch - this is a flaw that other productions have definitely fallen prey to before in the name of achieving that 'realness' however Hill House judges things so perfectly that we are endeared to their flaws and never put off by them.) Their disparate experiences with Hill House growing up, their subsequent very personal meaning-making journeys (some looking more like denial, some resulting in substance dependency), their different levels of having access to the 'truths' about what went on in that cursed home, all of this meant that the siblings ended up, where we see them in 'current day', being broken adults with a lot of misplaced anger, unprocessed trauma, and resentment toward one another. It is the aloneness in all their experiences that is the true horror, and the horrors were a very personal, existential kind and so there was no room for mutual bonding and sharing until it was too late, until their babiest of baby sisters had lost herself to the pressures calling her ‘home’.

And suddenly, I realised: this is the true evil. Ghosts don't ruin lives by doing a good epic scare here and there or by turning your irises white by revealing some fucking scary shit: ghosts are seriously... so... fucking... evil because they ruin your whole entire lives..!!! Horrifying realities take the form of many different things, even if they all originate from one main source. The Crane siblings, as children, had to deal at once with their mother being predisposed to falling victim to the spirits of the house due to, as hinted, mental health conditions of her own, while also dealing with differently confusing aspects of a house and a home that taunted them by making them feel unsafe and secure all at once. Now I say all this from an.. artistic appreciation pov, because I am myself unconvinced that the 'supernatural' or anything of a spiritual realm influences our daily lives. Which is all the more significant, right? That a ""skeptic"" like myself (although I'm not an insensitive and stubborn over-rationalizing dumb male like Steve is in the show) could suddenly realise the tragic effects on many many vulnerable souls of a world that clutching on to its medical models and objective scientific truths.

From the series' wiki page: The Haunting of Hill House received critical acclaim, particularly for its acting, directing, and production values, with many calling it an "effective ghost story."

So yea... finally I know what that means. Finally I know what effect a ghost story can and should have. Finally I understand the potential of the genre!!! Sigh there is literally SO much I could say about how and why this is the best series in the world but maybe I'll stop here for now..? There would be no end if I were to discuss everything because it's one of those series that has 'easter eggs', in the form of hidden ghosts (visual) lurking in the dark or specific lines that foreshadow something else later on, but I've never really cared much to 'reveal' these things so yea, go forth and enjoy this best show everrrrr :-)

(For example there is a lot of discussion online about how each of the 5 siblings represent the 5 different stages of grief à la Kübler-Ross, with the eldest Steve being in complete denial that there was ever any supernatural presence to explain their experience, Shirley reacting with sheer anger to all around her, Theo bargaining her way through her own internal conflicts, Luke being surrounded by swirling depression fueling his drug dependency, and Nell eventually accepting the so-called inevitable, etc etc etc but this kinda analysis is a little too lowbrow and heavy-handed for me to get into so yea haha)

There is a specific dialogue that I want to reference however on my way out: when Nell's suicide/death is revealed early in the series, Shirley has the difficult talk with her young children about it. And these 2 simple lines umm basically summarize the entire plot:

Shirley's son: Why did she die? Shirley: I don't know.. I'm just so sad that she did

Everyone watching the show would relate to that immediately but also that sentiment rings more and more and more true as the episodes come to reveal what a painfully innocent and giving soul Nell was... :(

So sad !!!!!

----------

Edit: copying below my mom’s initial thoughts after I forced her to read this post hehe, because her words describe a lot of what I think and feel too, and because I want to remember our discussion and reflection forever!

Each of us -  lives scarred at some time – in some private way – religion drowns it, cosmetises – but horror – is the Couch of reflection, reliving and something of a letting it out.  Feeling again the horror/fear/anxiety/pain/aloneness of that  real trauma – but in an shared room, even if only shared with an older, saner, wiser, learning you.

[womenofcolor15]

French Cinema Organization Defends ‘Cuties’ Director During Backlash As Viewers Slam The Movie For ‘Sexualizing Children’

Netflix and filmmaker Maïmouna Doucouré have come under fire for the controversial coming-of-age film, Cuties. Now, UniFrance – a French cinema organization – is defending Maïmouna and her drama. More inside…

When the Cuties poster was first released, it was met with TONS of criticism. Mainly, people were outraged at how the poster sexualized young girls, which resulted in a trending #CancelNetflix hashtag.

The film is a coming-of-age story about an 11-year-old named Amy navigating life in modern society.

The synopsis reads:

Eleven-year-old Amy, her mother Mariam, and her younger siblings have newly relocated to a home in an impoverished suburb of Paris, awaiting Amy’s father to rejoin the family from Senegal. But as Mariam becomes increasingly distracted by challenges within her marriage, Amy begins to feel the weight of family responsibilities. Eager to seek refuge from her life at home, she becomes fascinated with a free-spirited and rebellious group of girls at her school. Hoping for a taste of freedom and the chance to become popular, she convinces them to let her join their dance crew, which the girls have dubbed “Cuties”. But as they rehearse for a local dance contest, Amy finds herself increasingly torn between her traditional Muslim upbringing and the diverse cultures and attitudes of her new friends in her adopted city.

Here's what the Senegalese-French film director said about her directorial debut:

“The main character of Amy is my alter ego,” director Maïmouna Doucouré told Shadow & Act. “She's based on my story. Just like Amy, I had questions about my femininity because I was growing up in two cultures, my parents' Senegalese culture, and then the French culture. So I had all of these questions also about how to become a woman."

“All of the stories that you see in the film are based on the stories that [were] told [to] me and I realized that these girls were learning to construct themselves and their version of femininity based on what they saw in social media. I realized that these girls were growing up with a vision that was objectifying women and that they were growing up with this idea of a woman being an object and a woman's worth and value being based on the number of likes that they received."

However, everyone didn’t see it that way.

Below are a few controversial scenes from the movie, which we are posting strictly as the reference point for a proper discussion to take place, as opposed to second hand descriptions:

Are we sure that Jeffrey Epstein didn’t direct this movie? #cutiesnetflix pic.twitter.com/Nc9kVT6E6V

— Lolly Holes (@LollyHoles) September 11, 2020

And here are the outraged reactions:

#Netflix aka #Pedoflix has lost over $9 billion in market value since the #CancelNetflix hashtag went viral over the show "Cuties" which depicts young girls, age 11 being sexualized among other things. Good. #SaveOurChildren pic.twitter.com/5ASFhjPcWC

— Alex Poucher (@alexpoucher) September 13, 2020

Cancelled my membership due to the movie “Cuties”. I will not support pedophilia #cancelnetflix pic.twitter.com/py9MrAxjEj

— Griff (@griff8864) September 14, 2020

#CancelNetflix It is everyone’s responsibility to safeguard children and protect their innocence. So the Netflix censorship board all sat down and agreed that this was okay??! Pathetic!! pic.twitter.com/05s7Z7GHo4

— Tsitsi (@exceptional_tsi) September 14, 2020

There's two posters for cuties. Netflix used the worst one imaginable and described the movie horribly. pic.twitter.com/rIek28Zxff

— lyle abner (@lyleabner) September 10, 2020

Director Maïmouna Doucouré won a Directing Award for Cuties when the film debuted at Sundance in January. Months later, she found herself in the middle a online sh*tstorm of controversy after the release of the film’s poster. She said

The outrage got out of control where folks began to send to her death threats.

“I received numerous attacks on my character from people who had not seen the film, who thought I was actually making a film that was apologetic about hypersexualiation of children,” she told Deadline in her first interview since the incident. “I also received numerous death threats.”

“We had several discussions back and forth after this happened,” she continued. “Netflix apologized publicly, and also personally to me,” she shared.

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos called her up to apologize.  Some right wingers have also used this debate to further their unfounded Qanon theories that people like Oprah, Ellen, the Obamas and Susan Rice (the latter two who became directly affiliated with Netflix AFTER this film was made) are on a mission to promote sex trafficking in everyone's faces.  They believe Trump is the designated person who will protect chldren from child predators.  Yes, the man who is accused of visiting Pedophile Island with Jeffrey Epstein and accused by almost 100 women of sexual assault.

Again, the conspiracy theories hold no water and have no credibility, but in a climate where conspiracy theories are being passed off as fact and believed by those looking to simply believe in something simplistic, it's all quite dangerous rhetoric. Many believe Cuties is simply being used as a vehicle to futher push these conspiracy theories.

Although the backlash has been tremendous, Maïmouna said she has received “extraordinary support” from the French government, and that the film will be used as an educational tool in her home country.

Most recently, French cinema organization UniFrance, which is backed by the French government and represents hundreds of local producers, sales agents, directors and talent agents, sent out a memo to the industry to “offer its full support” to the director and its French producers.

In part, the organization wrote:

Cuties offers a subtle and sophisticated denunciation of the hyper-sexualization of a young generation who translate and reproduce the images that inundate them in their daily lives, particularly via social media. Whether we are spectators, parents, teenagers, producers, or distributors, this film invites us to reflect on the power of these images and the complexity of the constant dialogue between young people and the generation of their parents. This film appeals to our sense of discernment, be that on an individual or a collective level, and calls on us to assume our responsibilities.

Over the past several weeks, we have been closely following the exceptionally violent reaction to the film in the United States, during a presidential election campaign in full swing. In this context, UniFrance and all of its members wish to pledge their full support to Maïmouna Doucouré and to reaffirm their commitment to supporting the freedom of artistic creation and expression. This is because one of the great strengths of cinema is its capacity to reach beyond borders and boundaries, and to offer a critical and constructive viewpoint on the world and the excesses of today’s societies.

Furthermore, we consider that the call to boycott the film and to have it removed from the Netflix catalogue, in addition to the hate messages, insults, and unfounded speculations about the intent of the director and her producers, pose a serious threat to the very space that cinema seeks to open up: a space of discussion, reflection, and of helping us to see beyond our own preconceived ideas.

You can read the full message here.

Avengers: Endgame star Tessa Thompson also came to the film’s defense:

Disappointed to see how it was positioned in terms of marketing. I understand the response of everybody. But it doesn’t speak to the film I saw. https://t.co/L6kmAcJFU1

— Tessa Thompson (@TessaThompson_x) August 20, 2020

”#CUTIES is a beautiful film. It gutted me at @sundancefest. It introduces a fresh voice at the helm. She’s a French Senegalese Black woman mining her experiences. The film comments on the hyper-sexualization of preadolescent girls. Disappointed to see the current discourse,” she tweeted. “Disappointed to see how it was positioned in terms of marketing. I understand the response of everybody. But it doesn’t speak to the film I saw,” she continued.

Netflix didn’t make this film y’all.

— Tessa Thompson (@TessaThompson_x) August 20, 2020

Writer Caz Armstrong wrote an essay for In Their Own League, about Cuties and she said Netflix “betrayed” Maïmouna by originally marketing the film with a sexualized image of the young characters.

  Original CUTIES movie poster, before Netflix tried to sexualize 11 year olds. pic.twitter.com/dHETTjS6FT

— Al Steel (@KnightofResist) September 12, 2020

  “When Netflix’s marketing puts out a sexually provocative poster, they are deliberately leveraging the most controversial aspect of the film in an inappropriate way,” Armstrong writes. “They’re doing exactly what the film itself puts under the microscope, sexually exploiting girls without the mature discussion required. It’s clickbait.”

While we get what the director was trying to do with the coming-of-age film, there’s a fine line that’s should be balanced when it comes to displaying children in a sexual manner, even when it is attempting to prove a point about the problem of sexualizing children.

While we’re all aware of how children these days are being exposed to explicit content at an earlier age, one must be super mindful with storytelling in order to properly get the point across.

Photo: Netflix via AP

[Read More ...] source http://theybf.com/2020/09/18/french-cinema-organization-defends-%E2%80%98cuties%E2%80%99-director-after-backlash-as-viewers-slam-the-m

[true-crime-analysis]

The Victims of the Aurora Shooting

On July 20, 2012, a deadly shooting transpired at a Cinema 16 theatre in Aurora, Colorado. This tragedy happened during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises. A devastating total of 82 casualties were reported. 58 people received non-fatal injuries from gunfire, 4 from tear gas, and an additional 8 people were injured whilst fleeing the theatre. 12 people were killed. This post is a tribute to the fallen victims. 

Jonathan Blunk, 26, pictured with his daughter. Jonathan Blunk was a father of two, as well as a Navy veteran. Between 2004 and 2009, Blunk had served three tours in the Persian Gulf and North Arabian Sea. Blunk was killed while protecting his girlfriend, Chantel, pushing her beneath the theater seats.  According to family and friends, Blunk had wanted, if able to choose, to die as a hero. And indeed he did. 

Alexander Boik, 18. Boik’s dream was to become an art teacher. He had been accepted at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, where he would have attended classes in the fall of 2012. Boik enjoyed baseball, music, and making pottery. His family had said that Boik was dating a young woman who was also present at the shooting. She fortunately survived. Boik’s family specified that Alexander was “loved by all who knew him”, and that he was “a wonderful, handsome, and loving 18-year-old young man, with a warm and loving heart”. 

Jesse Childress, 29. Described by Air Force Captain Andrew Williams as knowledgeable, experienced, and respectful, Childress had been an Air Force cyber-systems operator. Childress had been based at the Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado. Tech Sergeant Alejandro Sanchez, a co-worker and bowling teammate of Childress, said “He would help anyone and always was great for our Air Force Unit”. Ashley Wassinger, another co-worker, said that Childress “was a great person, fun to be with, always positive and laughing. Really just an amazing person, and I am so lucky to have been his friend”. 

Gordon Cowden, 51. Cowden, a “true Texas gentleman”, was with his two teenage children the night of the Aurora tragedy. Thankfully his children survived the shooting, ultimately escaping unharmed. Cowden had his own business and also loved the outdoors. He was, as described by his family, “a quick witted world traveler with a keen sense of humor”. Cowden’s family went on to say that he “will be remembered for his devotion to his children and for always trying to do the right thing, no matter the obstacle”. Cowden was the eldest victim of the Aurora shooting. 

Jessica Ghawi, 24. Jessica Ghawi, also known as Jessica Redfield, had only just prior to the shooting, written about surviving a mall shooting in Toronto. The beloved sports writer’s death came as an absolute shock to her brother, Jordan Ghawi. Jessica has been described by friends and colleagues as smart, outgoing, and witty. Hockey player Jay Meloff, Ghawi’s boyfriend, was hit very hard by her death. “140 characters could never do you justice nor could all the words in this world. Never wanted to fall asleep because it meant missing time with you”. Meloff had tweeted the previous words shortly after Ghawi’s death. 

John Larimer, 27. Larimer was a Navy petty officer and the youngest of five siblings. When the shooting began, Larimer immediately rushed to shield his girlfriend, Julia Vojtsek, his life being taken soon thereafter. He had once told his brother Noel that the best way to die was in the process of saving someone else’s life. John Larimer had immense pride for his country and will continue to be loved by his girlfriend, friends, and family. Adam Kavalauskas, a former friend and college roommate of Larimer, expressed that Larimer was “never selfish” and was “always serving others”. 

Matt McQuinn, 27. On the night of the shootings, Matt McQuinn was with his girlfriend, Samantha Yowler, and her brother, Nick Yowler. When the shooting commenced, McQuinn and Nick Yowler attempted to shield Samantha with their bodies. The young woman was unfortunately shot in the leg, but was able to escape with her unharmed brother. McQuinn, however, did not survive. His stepfather, David Jackson, stated “I know he’s a hero. He and Sam were very much in love and planning their life together. I am sure they were thinking very seriously about getting married soon.” 

Micayla Medek, 23. Medek was out with a group of about ten friends to see “The Dark Knight Rises” on July 20. She was an avid fan of the Green Bay Packers and loved to hang out with friends. Medek’s aunt, Jenny Zakovich, described her as an independent-minded and sweet girl who rarely asked her family for anything. “This shouldn’t have happened to somebody like her,” Zakovich said. Anita Bush, the cousin of Medek’s father, has said that she hopes “this evil act...doesn’t shake people’s faith in God”. 

Veronica Moser-Sullivan, 6. Veronica was the youngest victim of the Aurora shooting. “She was excited about life as she should be. She’s a 6-year-old girl,” said her great-aunt. Veronica, an only child, tragically died on the operating table at a local hospital. 

Alex Sullivan, 27. Sullivan was celebrating his 27th birthday with friends on the night of the shooting. His first wedding anniversary with his wife Cassie would have been just two days later. Sullivan was cherished by his family and friends, and was described as “just a big teddy bear” who gave great hugs. He was smart and funny, with a great smile, according to his loved ones. Sullivan was an enormous movie fan and a comic book geek, as well as a fan of the New York Mets. “He was a very, very good young man,” said Joe Loewenguth, Sullivan’s uncle. 

Alexander Teves, 24. “Alex was a very wonderful, kind, caring person,” said Teves’ aunt, Barbara Slivinske, “He had a great sense of humor. At one point he grew his hair ten or twelve inches long so that he could cut it off and donate it to Locks of Love”. Teves died while protecting his girlfriend as the gunman attacked several movie-goers. He had a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the University of Denver and was aspiring to become a psychiatrist. Alexander Teves is survived in part by his two younger brothers, ages 16 and 17. 

Rebecca Wingo, 31. Wingo was working towards an associates of arts degree at the Community College of Aurora. She had joined the Air Force after graduating from high school. Wingo became fluent in Mandarin Chinese and served as a translator. Her father, Steve Hernandez, posted a FaceBook post saying, “I lost my daughter yesterday to a mad man. My grief right now is inconsolable. I hear she died instantly, without pain, however the pain is unbearable”. A friend of Wingo, Hal Wallace, said that she had “the sweetest smile you’ve ever seen. She got prettier as she grew older”. 

Other victims who survived, but received extensive lifelong injuries. 

Ashley Moser, the mother of Veronica Moser-Sullivan, suffered a miscarriage not long after the shooting. She also lost her ability to walk as a result of many critical gunshot wounds. Moser will remain in a wheelchair for the remainder of her life. 

Caleb Medley has serious brain damage as well as an eye injury due to a shotgun wound to the head. He requires a feeding tube and has severely impaired movement. Medley can no longer speak. After the completion of three brain surgeries, he was the last victim of the Aurora shooting to be discharged from the hospital. 

The Community First Foundation collected over $5 million for a fund for the Aurora victims and their families. The Aurora Victim Relief Fund announced on November 16, 2012, that each claimant would recieve $220,000. On July 25, 2012, three out of the five hospitals treating Aurora victims announced that they would either limit medical bills or forgive them entirely. 

[pruittwrites]

Barley Candy And Chicken Bones

“Barley candy and chicken bones for Christmas, it’s a Canadian tradition.” Zack told an unbelieving Emiko. “In Tokyo we drink barley tea, and eat fried chicken on Christmas.”

This dumbfounded Zack. “What do you eat for dessert, tuna ice cream?” Which he knew she had tried, but didn’t care for.

“It’s a whole lot better than fruit cake I’ll tell you that. Christmas dessert for us is what you call Strawberry Shortcake. Sponge cake shaped like a Christmas tree, with strawberries and whip cream.”

Zack smiled at his college bride. They had dated for six months before he proposed, and had planned a small wedding, with mostly family and a few friends. Through no fault of them, or their family, only friends made it to the wedding.

An emergency landing kept Emiko’s parents from making the ceremony. Thankfully they were all right. Zach’s Mom and Dad were both doctors at the same hospital, and emergency surgeries called them back at the last minute.

The couple had tried to postpone, but each parent insisted that the wedding not be ruined. The wedding was beautiful, and the Zach and Emiko’s friends had photographed and videoed every aspect of the wedding for each set of parents.

Anne and Marty, Aika and Hisashi had both felt horrible about it. So they reached out to the others and came with an idea to make it up to the two young people. They had went on a small honeymoon, putting most of the money towards a future home.

The Hobbs and Ishikawa families promised to give the couple a Christmas trip to anywhere they wanted. Now Zack and Emiko were dreaming of where that would be. They ruled out place by place, as they realized that this was one of those once in a lifetime family memory trips.

Family Memory Trips were what Marty had always called those adventures that Zack and his family talked about years later. Like the time they had went to Colorado to ski. It was the most fun he remembered anyone having with a broken leg.

His Dad had fell off the ski lift the first day, but he did his best to keep everyone else laughing. He didn’t find out til years later that his Dad was in severe pain, but didn’t want to ruin everyone’s trip.

Then there was the time they went camping in September. They didn’t tell the kids, but the reason for that trip were cut backs at the hospital, which eliminated the vacation budget that year. The kids didn’t know the difference.

Emiko listened for awhile, then added her own stories. Her Dad opened his own business when she was 13, and worked a lot of long hours. Still, for her birthday, he closed the shop, and spent the entire day with the family. He didn’t say anything, but her Mom told her he had lost a major client because of this.

Then she talked about the time her Mom had went through major surgery. That Christmas, they expected to be very low key, but her Mom decorated every room in the house. Story after story, they realized the sacrifices their parents had made for them.

“We can’t take the trip we were thinking about a few minutes ago can we?” Zack said, knowing her answer. “No, but we can do something much better.” As she picked up her phone to text her brother.

That night they both talked to their siblings, and worked out a plan. Instead of a major trip to some exotic place, they chose a small bed and breakfast near their home. Hank Crenshaw cut the price he charged Zack’s parents to almost nothing, just enough they hoped, for Marty not to make the connection. They split the remaining cost of the rooms with Sally, Zack’s sister.

Emiko called the local travel agent, and orchestrated her parents booking their tickets through her. Her brothers helped them with the cost for Aika and Hisashi.

Each set of parents didn’t say anything to them, but they were both suspicious. Still, they had promised to do whatever the kids wanted. So the four of them prepared for the Christmas trip.

Each were a little disappointed when the other siblings made excuses to keep their parents from buying their tickets. The two couples arrived a little sad, afraid the whole family wouldn’t be together for Christmas. It was a week before Christmas, but the kids had a plan.

Zack and Emiko knew they were the offspring of mystery lovers and crossword enthusiasts, so they had to give them an ‘aha’ moment without spoiling the entire surprise. So, when they got in the car that had been sent for them from the airport, Emiko’s oldest brother was the driver.

When they got to the hotel, Zack’s sister greeted them from the desk, where the hotel clerk would normally have been. Over the course of the first hour, each child surprised the parents with their presence. This was sure, they reasoned, to throw the four off their guard.

The next few days were a whirlwind of activity. Zack and Emiko had planned different things, but those turned out not to be more monotonous than memorable. It was the unexpected moments that became special.

Marty couldn’t sleep that night because of his acid reflux, so he slipped downstairs to sit in the lobby and look at the decorations. Zack’s sister got her Mother’s looks, but her Father’s stomach. She was popping antacids as she walked down the steps. “Dad, why are you up?”

Seeing the pills in her hand replied. “I didn’t have those. Share with your Father.” Then after a few minutes he pulled out his phone. Sally was disappointed for a minute, afraid the special moment would be ruined by distraction.

“I’m not tweeting, I’m getting your brother and his pre-middle aged stomach out of bed to join us.” It took three rings, but soon he joined them, unshaven and hair out of place, still smiling.

The three of them didn’t go to bed until long after the antacids had kicked in. The only detriment was, breakfast became brunch for everyone the next morning, precautionary meds were the first course. Late nights were one thing, burping up dinner was another.

After this, Aika and Anne decided they were going shopping. The men thought they’d stay back while all the girls attacked the mall. The ladies didn’t think so. For love of their spouses, Hisashi, Genzo, Haruto, Zack, and Tom, Sally’s husband, all went to a mall before Christmas.

These are the men who ordered everything online two months ahead just to avoid this nightmare. They walked into every store, were attentive as the women found nothing to wear, then carried the bags of “nothing” all through the mall.

Coffees, popcorn, and all sorts of sweets were sampled. Pictures were taken with Santa, and yes, they all waited in line for an hour to get the pictures. The men even purchased the ugliest Christmas sweaters they could find. Much to the detriment of each spouse. It was a wonderful afternoon.

That night, Zack surprised them all with a sleigh ride through the snow that he had scheduled. It was ok, but forgettable, until Tom lost his balance getting out of the sleigh, and tumbled into the snow.

That sparked a snowball fight, started by Genzo’s wife, Mina, which turned out to be the highlight of the night. It was another late night, only this time everyone joined in. Soon it was Christmas Day, and everyone gathered for a huge feast, spontaneous holiday karaoke, with very bad, off key, wonderful noise, and gifts.

True to tradition, the parents insisted the kids go first. The four had pooled their resources to give Zack and Emiko got two tickets to Hawaii. The parents had guessed the plan, and planned accordingly.

Not to treat the daughter any differently, Sally and Tom got the European trip they had dreamed about. Aika and Hisashi got their two sons, and daughter-in-laws each a trip. One to Alaska, and the other to Australia.

The last few years had been good to the elder Hobbs and Ishikawa’s businesses. They were able to give their kids what they hadn’t been able to years before. Each had raised good children, and were now able to reward the wonderful adults they had become.

After the money they knew had been spent on this special trip, they didn’t really expect large gifts from the kids. An while they weren’t that expensive, they were very special.

Marty got a banjo from Zack. Though an old one, it was a fairly inexpensive, used one, with one special feature. Zack had found it online, then brought it with him to a local bookstore to get an autograph from a musician that he knew his Dad loved. The banjo player had just wrote a book, which was the reason for Zack’s purchase of the banjo.

He knew his Dad would love an autographed book, but he’d love the autographed banjo more. Zack made sure it was just vintage enough to earn the interest of the musician and author, and he was right. Zach even got a song played by the artist on the banjo, and a video for his Dad.

Marty had tears, not so much at the gift alone, but the love behind it. Anne expected something more commercial, knowing it was hard to capture lightning twice. So she prepared herself for the huge smile, regardless of what was in the box.

What she didn’t expect, was a pack of assorted notes wrapped in ribbon. Confused at first, she recognized the writing almost instantly. It was from her best friend of over thirty years. The next was from another friend she hadn’t seen in almost that long.

“I emailed, called, and text everyone I could get a hold of. You never were much for gadgets, so I thought this may be special to put a little old fashioned into your Christmas. The last few letters are from each of us.”

Anne’s face soon matched Marty’s, as hugs were exchanged to everyone. Emiko handed her Mom her gift first. It was large, and Aika couldn’t figure out what it was. When she opened it though, she was ecstatic.

It was a portrait of her Mother in the traditional Nihonga style. “It was from that old photo you love. I think the artist did a really good job, but it’s unsigned.”

Her Mother laughed through tears. “It doesn’t have to be signed. I recognize my daughter’s brushstrokes. Don’t you know I’ve been a fan of your art since preschool crayons?”

Emiko blushed. Not used to painting this way, she was saving this little tidbit of information until she saw whether or not her Mother liked it. Her Mom insisted she sign it right away. Aika knew her daughter, who like most artists, were never far from their tools.

Emiko handed Hisashi his gift. Like Anne, he was prepared for, not a lesser gift, but a less spectacular one let’s say. He too, was pleasantly surprised. Hisashi, a Jazz fan, opened the box to see an original record and cover of “Ella and Louis”. Plus one of those portable turn table that he could hook to his laptop.

Each of the other siblings had gifts just as special, and the parents treasured each one. A vintage pocket watch for Marty from Sally. Plus, a doctor’s bag from the turn of the century for Anne.

Each of Hisashi and Aika’s boys, and their wives, got their Dad special records, including one of Bing Crosby’s Christmas records. Aika was given a classic typewriter for her office, plus a limited edition fountain pen. After telling each child they spent too much, records were played, and gifts were enjoyed.

The treasure though wasn’t the crackles of vinyl, clackety typewriter keys, or banjo strings. The real art in the room wasn’t even the painting, or the letters. It was the children, each parent looked at their most precious contribution to their legacy. Which was the happy faces of the gifts that God had given them.

Because of a Child, Christmas became a reality. An while no other is quite like Him, I do believe He intended for Christmas to always be filled with children. May your home, and heart, be filled with both Christ and the children, those precious gifts, He gives this Christmas.

Merry Christmas from PruittWrites!

from Barley Candy And Chicken Bones

[acuppellarp]

We’re excited to announce that Aly has decided to level up Eva Vega from a mumu minor character to a main character! Please go through the checklist to make sure you’re ready to go and send in your account within the next 24 hours. 

OOC INFO

Name + pronouns: Aly + She/Her. Age: 27. Timezone: GMT. Ships: Eva/Chemistry. Anti-Ships: Eva/Forced.

IC INFO

Full Name: Eva Sofía Vega. Face Claim: Gina Rodriguez. Age/Birthday: 29/January 31st. Occupation: Music Journalist for Billboard Magazine. Personality: Adaptable, Chill, Enthusiastic, Impulsive, Sarcastic. Hometown: Chicago, Illinois. Bio:

Originally from Chicago, the Vega family have many members, and not very much money to go around. There are seven children in total, with Eva the eldest girl (she has two older brothers, three younger brothers and one younger sister), and the only one born to her absent father. Unfortunately, her mother, Camila, has just never been able to hold down a solid relationship, but she has always done everything she can for her children with what little money she has, and if anyone were to ask Eva who her hero is, she’d say her mother without missing a beat. Because Camila has always worked multiple (admittedly minimum wage) jobs, her mother, Eva’s widowed grandmother, has always been a staple in their home, moving in with Camila when Eva was still in diapers.

Until she was old enough to work herself, Eva would help out her abuelita with her younger siblings as much as she could, then begun to work part-time jobs as soon as she was of age to do so. Basically, she’s no stranger to hard work; she has seen her mother do it her whole life, and has always done her part, too. For a person coming from so little, Eva has a huge amount of pride, and definitely does not accept handouts. She has been taught to be independent, strong and hardworking, three things she takes very seriously. Which is kind of a feat really, because to know Eva is to know she takes hardly anything seriously at all.

It doesn’t matter how tired she is, or how overworked she may be, Eva is generally seen with a smile on her face. She’s always happy, always bubbly, and does genuinely have a heart of gold, although she’s by no means perfect. Recreational drugs are definitely a big factor in how Eva keeps her cool the way she does. It’s fair to say she’s a bit of a stereotypical hippie when it comes to that kind of lifestyle, in fact. She’s very free as far as love, too; she’ll give anyone a chance, and even a second one if she feels they deserve it, though she’s definitely not a pushover, and if someone really wrongs her or someone she cares about, it’s not something she’ll forget about, nor will she hesitate to call anybody out on their crap.

As far as romantic love, Eva has never been very lucky in it. It took her a long time to accept the fact that she had no attraction toward the opposite sex, mostly because she wasn’t sure how her mother and grandmother would take the news. Fortunately, it turned out they were both very supportive, though Eva lost what little relationship she had with her father in coming out, but that was never any kind of heartache for her; her dad has always been an absent figure in her life, anyway. Her mother and grandmother are to credit for raising her, not him, so their opinions are the ones that matter. Of course, being the loud, vibrant person she is, once she’d truly accepted herself for who she was, she began to really embrace it, and is now a very big, passionate voice for any and everything LGBTQ+ related.

Something that has always been there for Eva, that has always been a constant in her life, is music. She’s no singer herself, but she has a big interest in sound and the way it’s created, and is always up to speed with the current music scene. Her second constant is writing. Without a television in the Vega household when Eva was growing up, both reading and writing were definitely good pastimes, and Eva loved to get lost in her own imagination, filling notebook after notebook with her own, original creations. Naturally, a job where she could incorporate a little bit of both, music and writing, was right up her alley, and Eva worked her butt off at community college, with the end goal to go into music journalism.

Moving to New York after graduation was a big deal for her, not only because it was an expensive move, but because it meant leaving her family behind in Chicago. Though, her siblings were all a little older by that time, a little more self-sufficient, and thanks to the multiple part-time jobs she had worked over the years and all of the spare change she had accumulated, she was able to make it work, though only with the promise of a job at the other side. How Eva landed herself a position writing for Billboard Magazine, she’ll still never know. Then again, she has always been one of those people who can talk her way into getting what she wants, so maybe it shouldn’t have been too surprising, but still. Eva is grateful for the job she has been afforded every single day.

New York City was where Eva felt she could fully spread her wings. It was there that she fell further in love with the music scene, where she really got to make it on her own, and where she first experienced real, true love. Unfortunately, the situation wasn’t ideal, and the whole thing ended almost unfairly, but Eva definitely doesn’t regret it. The experience has, however, become a bit of a deterrent for her as far as romantic relationships go now; Eva is almost thirty, and while she won’t admit to it, she’s scared to let herself be vulnerable enough to actually share her life with someone else. She doesn’t feel she’s missing out, though, at least not for now.

For now, she has her thriving social life, her job, and her life in the big city to keep her occupied. Oh, and her notebooks, all brimming with original stories. Though, she doesn’t allow people to read them. For as confident as she may be, and as much as she doesn’t really care about other people’s opinions of her, she’s very guarded and private about the things she writes in her spare time. To be published some day would be amazing, but it’s almost like stage fright for her; she has the talent, she just can’t showcase it, so for now, her journalism quenches her thirst. She’s beginning to crave something more, though. Quietly, of course. And to herself – Eva Vega doesn’t like to put on anybody else, she never has. She’s the suffer in silence type; a true artist, if you will.

Pets: N/A. Relationships:

Riley Lynn — Roommate. Eva’s previous lease was up around the same time Riley was graduating and having to move out of the dorms. Eva put out an ad for a roommate, Riley saw it and answered it. They didn’t know each other super well before, it was more just a ‘right place, right time’ kind of deal, but it has worked out well for them.

Luciana Muñoz — Ex girlfriend. Eva and Luci met when Eva was dating Luci’s older sister, Alejandra. They dated for around six months, but when Eva and Luci begun to hit it off, Eva ended things with Alejandra. Eva and Luci then begun dating in secret, their relationship progressing pretty deeply. Because of Alejandra, though, neither ever dared to actually tell people about the two of them, so after over a year together, they decided to eventually call it quits. It ended pretty bitterly, mostly because neither really wanted it to be over, it just kind of had to be.

Hunter Clarington — Best friend. Hunter won’t admit to the fact that they’re best friends, but they totally are. They’ve known one another the whole time Eva has been in NYC, with Eva getting to be a bridesmaid at Hunter’s wedding. They’re complete opposites, and while Eva is very open with her affection, she understands that Hunter isn’t, but knows her well enough to know that she cares right back. They can definitely call each other out on their crap at this point without the other blowing up.

EXTRA INFO

[ This is for the masterlist, but also a fun little way to get to know your character! ]

Eva Vega/@evalasvega/description: I’m that big a deal, they feature my name in Billboard every single issue.

Five latest tweets:

@evalasvega: .@netflix I don’t know what the ending to that movie was but you can cancel my subscription. @evalasvega: .@netflix wait no don’t really cancel it, I would be so lost! @evalasvega: SOS there’s a literal other hamster coming out of one of my friend’s hamsters… This is either a real life Alien remake or I’m witnessing a labor. Someone send help. @evalasvega: Hamster update: IT HAD NINE. Mother and babies are all well. I need a joint. Midwifery is hard. @evalasvega: Finding $5 in my pants pocket and then realizing they’re not my pants is basically setting the tone for this whole week.