#is more helpful because of the way immigrants change their surnames

[harlequinoccult]

ok well w that answer to my last ramble i hope you won't mind me coming back and rambling MORE-

the thing with Ariel "Vulpine" Fox (remember i said he has a Thing w foxes? his surname might have smth to do w that) is that, at his core, he is not a character that really fits into the vibes of slsq. and i love putting my ocs into Situations where they Do Not Really Fit In, because it forces me to think outside the box and go "ok, but what if they find themselves in that Situation anyway? how do i work with that while still keeping their character mostly intact?". and the mix of slsq and Vulpine is just * chefs kiss * especially delicious to me, bc Ariel always had a few screws loose, but he's always been a bit too level-headed to really lean into his innate madness, and slsq gives me the opportunity to really fuck with him and i love that-

Ariel's whole Thing is really that he's the perfect vigilante character. he would never make the profile of a serial killer. a killer, yes, oh he has no problem with killing you see, but it's usually done with some greater objective in mind. even in slsq im sure he's going to be extremely picky with his victims. the thing that really sets him off and makes him believe Murder Is Ok is injustice. because unfortunately for him, Ari has an unparalleled amount of empathy, which causes him to make some... contradictory decisions during his life. really, it all depends on who has earned his wrath. he will never kill poor people or people in need, in fact he usually goes out of his way to help them every single time, but put a cop in front of him and they're going to have the most slow, painful, cruel death possible.

there might be exceptions to the "no killing poor ppl/ppl in need" rule tho, if the person in question is an abuser who does nothing but inflict suffering on others and poison the local community with their toxicity. funnily enough, Carter fits the profile of Ariel's victims fucking perfectly, im honestly still thinking of a reason why he didn't kill Carter sooner other than "he didn't have enough time to do it". other people he'll definitely go after is the rich and corrupt politicians, which, not the best decisions for his anonymity or his safety, but if he's gonna get killing you bet your ass he'll try to cause some form of change while at it.

another thing he hates, has always hated and always will, is abuse of authority (which is why in his mind a good cop is always a dead cop). he has a general problem w authority even without the abusing part, especially hates when he's stripped of his autonomy and forced to do smth against his will (he IMMEDIATELY hates The Host on principle, and its going to get worse from here). he's always been a brat over being ordered around, even if he HAS to do what he's being told to do he's going to do it HIS way and fuck you if you have a problem w that. what matters is that he got the job done, isnt it? (i genuinely dont know how Carter managed to put up w him, those two together is a TERRIBLE mix)

most of all this does have to do w how he grew up, really. Ari is cannonically british (by which i mean, in my head he has a rlly subtle posh british accent that gets stronger the angrier he gets, which is even funnier to me bc the angrier he gets the more he swears and it usually involves a lot of FOCK and FOCKIN' and BLOODY being thrown around. like i get why OD would enjoy riling him up i rlly do-) which doesn't rlly have that much impact into his slsq story bc im not british and ik nothing abt britain but he is an immigrant and that's a lil bit important. to me. anyway-

he grew up in a very poor, very religious community somewhere in monarchy land (england), and was an extremely difficult, some would even say demonic, child. he's always had anger issues but it was MUCH worse when he was little (growing up he learns to deal w them to the point that getting him actually, truly angry without touching on what triggers him is extremely hard. good luck OD, his reaction to your annoying ass is mostly gonna be a sigh and a twitch of his fingers). his religious trauma, unlike w OD, has nothing to do w surviving catholic school (he went to a public school, somehow managed to be a massive nerd AND a delinquent at the same time, always had the highest notes of his class and was still despised by the teachers for being "disrespectful") and more w growing up surrounded by extremely religious people and realizing quite soon that praying did nothing to help w the systematic oppression they all were being crushed by. it only got worse when he started questioning the teachings of the church, growing more frustrated as he tried to get his peers to "see reason", and finally lost all hope when he went through his second exorcism (first one happened whem he was still very small, which im sure didn't fuck him up in any way whatsoever). has never entered a church since then, still knows some prayers that were burned into his brain and he can't forget no matter how hard he tries, genuinely believes that god never existed and if he did then he's fucking dead, and has a fascination w satanic symbols to this day that will probably never go away.

he had a somewhat mixed reputation growing up. in his tween years, he used the fact that he was considered "demonic" when little to scare and fuck with people who otherwise might have caused him problems. he got into constant fights in his childhood and his teen years, both because bullies would wrongly assume he'd be an easy target and then get punched and bitten and scratched until they cried, or because he was trying to protect someone else from being bullied. soon figured out that just not engaging unless someone else threw the first punch was a good way to de-escalate situations and keep him from getting in too much trouble (since he wouldn't be the one who "started it"), which was what made him begin to develop his stoic attitude. he started learning to control his anger because the people he wanted to protect were scared of him bc of his tendency to lash out, and because he realized that being in control of his emotions meant that he would fuck up less in high stress situations and make it easier to calm the people around him as well.

he got in constant trouble w the local authorities, being continuously searched and brought into the police station for a p big list of petty crimes (vandalism, theft, underage drinking, drug use, trespassing, public indecency, etc), but noticed that he was treated much more leniently than his POC friends who did much less shit than he did. which was also when his hatred for cops solidified.

life wasn't easy on him. he did a lot of questionable shit to get by, and he knows a lot of people in the same situations as him, so his morals are extremely gray as a consequence of it. he's not going to judge you for doing a bad. everyone does what they can to survive and survival is not a noble thing. he's extremely lenient w things that most ppl find unacceptable, and has a very clear understanding in his mind that everything is situational. which is why murder can be ok, and cannibalism can be ok, and any number of horrible things humans do can be justifiable and acceptable no matter what society says.

so he's not going to judge anyone on the cast of slsq for doing the things they do if they can justify it. but i can also very clearly see him killing the ones that do it just for the sake of it. with one exception: he will never murder the one he loves.

which is why i am sooooo excited to pair him up w OD, the one that kills p much without discrimination, and watch all the loopholes he forms in his mind to try and justify to himself why he's turning a blind eye to someone killing innocent people. he might try to nudge OD into having a smidge more of a standard, but if OD threatens to leave bc of it or gets too annoyed he's dropping it in a second. who knows, maybe OD is the one who might be able to convince him to drop the good guy "act" instead. who needs morals when you have love amirite?

i wouldn't say Vulpine is a yandere (there's too much effort to make sure that he and his loved one(s) are equals in every possible way for that i think), but with the borderline unhealthy, undying, nearly desperate devotion he develops for the ppl he falls for i think it's a pretty close thing tbh. he would do anything for his lover. anything. and he expects nothing in return. he just wants them to be happy, no matter what.

anyway uuuuhh there's so much more i can say abt Vulpine, i didnt even touch on his relationship w substance abuse or when he got arrested or his family, but this is already enormous, so have some specific slsq stuff instead (all of this is p much slsq specific tbh, Ari's backstory changes a lot depending on what story i decide to put him next, but some plot beats and traumas always stay the same): his mask of choice is similar to Cold's, a blank black mask, and his weapon of choice is a hunting knife. his specialty is informant (i was very tempted to make him a jack of all trades, bc one of his main characteristics is his adaptability, but i could NEVER envision him accepting doing that much for Carter. he would rather die), as mentioned previously his personality type is going to be apathetic w a side of caustic (still dont know if that's the right name but oh well), his clothing style is punk and practical and he wore ripped jeans for this bc he didn't know what he was getting himself into and he's soooo mad he didn't wear his cargo pants instead. he's actually kinda similar to Cold when it comes to superficial personality traits (stays quiet and observant most of the time, stealth killer, has a whole thing going on w shadows and anonymity and the mask, also exudes a intimidating aura that often scares people and gives him negative charisma. another reason he's not a jack of all trades is bc he'd make for an AWFUL bait)

and when in deep romance, if OD keeps trying to annoy him, he'll just kiss them to shut them up. it might just end up encouraging that kind of behavior long therm, but it works as a short therm solution so he doesn't rlly care-

(pt 1.)

Oh there is so much I could say that would veer into major spoilers for Overdose's route and beyond.

The Caustic personality is cynical, bitter, and sarcastic. Aggressive options will be separate and compatible with every personality type (aggressive doormats have been...interesting to write. imagine the most neurotic chihuahua-)

And concerning mc and Carter....there aren't a lot of job opportunities in Newcreed that aren't y'know, soul crushing drudgery, no matter what your relationship with Carter was, it was enough to pay rent if mc lived alone, or enough to afford necessities if they lived with the bastard.

And getting into Newcreed itself, The city is rotten. Crime rate is so high and the mayor doesn't do shit, the police don't do shit and the roads are fucked, but hey, expansive public transit and rent is low as hell. A lot of people immigrate to Newcreed (Cold and Sweetheart and his family are examples of this) because its a cheap place to live and the barriers for employment are little to none.

[didasgomas]

Tbf it's understandable that they think they might be related to Liam, but it definitely falls apart once you press the logic of how McLoughlin is a common surname considering the number of Irish immigrants (especially in New York). But it goes to show how desperate she is to believe that she's found Killian for sure!

As for Liam, all his relationships may seem deep to others but they never get further than surface level with him. He simply doesn't let people in and only Sam has had the privilege of that. Liam is great at playing a part but his sincerity when it comes to being invested in his 'friendships' is always disturbingly lacking. He's a strange and aloof guy that's for sure, but hey, at least he's not a liar and has never lied lmao

Yeah, my explanation is that Opal has a deep hatred for "that woman" and believes she is way too dumb to think of changing Killian's name at all, at least to one that doesn't sound too similar

She didn't search in New York at all because the woman had already admitted she was from a different state, and throughout Opal's search, she found out the woman made a very specific path through multiple states, so all she did was follow that path, and throughout her journey she had multiple disappointments because the boys were either too old or too young to be Killian, even if they had a similar name and/or the looked similar-ish to Ophelia.

Liam just happened to be the unlucky fella to meet all the requirements, and I say unlucky because Opal's mental stability had slowly been falling off the tracks over the years, so she let's just say she wasn't the most pleasant person to be around.

Your explanation makes total sense, and I think it can help make things more interesting too! Even if Liam does see her as a generally good person and maybe doesn't hate her as much as other humans, because she respects his privacy and keeps a reasonable distance as well, yeah, it's still mainly a superficial thing

Ophelia keeps her distance because her own privacy was repeatedly violated while she was stuck with Opal, so when she sees that Liam is a slightly more private person, she gives him his space. She still checks on him once a week or so if she has time, but otherwise she lets him do his own stuff.

If you need some extra details on all this, just ask

[merrock]

CHARACTER INFORMATION

face claim: davika hoorne.

full name: rafaella wattana.

nickname(s) / goes by: raf, rafa, ella, หนู or mouse in thai (by her paternal grandmother).

pronouns & gender: she/her & cis woman.

sexuality: bisexual/romantic.

birth date: april 27, 1990.

birth place: glendale, california.

arrival to merrock: 2019.

housing: shared apartment in the downtown district.

occupation: architect.

work place: n/a.

family: mother, father, two older sisters — giuliana and alessandra.

relationship status: single.

PERSONALITY

with the eldest sister bestowed the title of most serious, the middle sister bearing the title of the most determined, it was only fair if the youngest would maintain the position as the family’s most reserved. quiet and unassuming, rafa has long preferred solitude above all else, and considers nothing more bothersome than being the centre of attention. despite steering clear of drama and confrontation, she won’t hesitate to speak out against injustices or anything that she deems cruel.  due to the family’s ascent through the ranks, rafa’s highly selective of the company she keeps. she’s witnessed her fair share of manipulative and greedy people and the type of damage they can leave in their wake. only when a person has been thoroughly vetted (her methods? she won’t say) will she allow them into the fold and reward them with her loyalty, sentimental gifts and unwanted puns.

WRITTEN BY: Tea (she/her), aest.

BACKGROUND / BIO

when asked, rafaella wattana likes to divide her life into two parts: before and after “The Thing”.  

before “The Thing”, it’s simple. hardworking immigrant parents, determined older sisters — rafaella comes to understand that she can’t let the world slip by. rumour has it that she insisted on walking on her own to play dates at age five, had a career picked out by age seven, and memorised the main public transport routes by age nine “just in case”. under the watch of her siblings, rafaella develops a habit of piecing together a solution on her own before seeking assistance as a very last resort.

(it’s how they did it, and it’s what they expect her to follow through with, too). 

home, at times, can barely contain her father’s various side projects (of which there are many), let alone the bickering that ensues when said projects have a habit of falling through, courtesy of a shady businessman or two. and yet, the family remains close throughout it all, accustomed to pushing through when the odds appear stacked against them. it’s what rafaella has long been prepared to do, anyway: to find a way to overcome it by gritting her teeth and moving forward as expected. 

and after “The Thing”, life becomes a little more…  complicated. thanks to a curious investor, her father’s “small idea” takes off and the odds, finally, decide to fall in their favour. 

the changes are subtle but noticeable enough within the wattana household: the increase of phone calls and meetings with her father, the family’s eventual relocation to an upscale neighbourhood for the sake of the growing business, and the realisation that, regardless of how much she pretends, things are different. from a nobody to a somebody, her surname is synonymous with a fairytale rags to riches story; one that the local newspaper runs with for months on end. 

as much as rafaella acknowledges that the wealth has changed things for the better (see: not stressing over the cost of college and quitting from her tiresome part time job), she can’t help but crave the past. more-so when she’s uncertain if her classmates develop an interest in her because of her impressive portfolio, or for the fact that her father graces the front page of a well known financial magazine (she leans towards the latter).

to avoid the attention, rafaella heads on a mission to create a name for herself: an architectural degree here, an internship over there, moving with her best friend elsewhere. although she might not be lauded as the “next big thing” in business, or be a guest speaker at some convention halfway across the globe, or have people raving over a new venture, she’s proud that merrock has given her the opportunity to showcase her talents and be appreciated for just being her — regardless of who she’s related to. 

[not-poignant]

UTB question: apologies if this has been addressed in FFS, but I was wondering if you had any commentary on Dr Gary's last name- a brief google search only tells me it is very rare and exclusive to Australia, but nothing else. as a White European (tm) my first and entirely uneducated guess was Aboriginal Australian etymology?

Tbh I'm not 100% certain, but the family I knew with the name were Greek immigrants. Talking to them and also research - it's a European / Slavic name.

However, the name's also been found in Ukraine, in Russia, and in Holocaust records as Konowalo and Konowalou. There are other spellings like Konowalos and Konovalos as well. It was likely Anglicised by the family when they arrived here decades ago, because 'ous' is a common syllable at the end of many Greek surnames here.

It's definitely not Indigenous Australian! (It doesn't, to my knowledge, resemble any of the language groups I'm familiar with). A deeper dive will reveal more connections to Ukraine, Russia, Poland and more. A konowal/konoval was an archaic Slavic word for a veterinarian.

I've gone with the 'Australian' spelling. Tbh it's the same with my last name. My birth surname (which is not the surname most people know me by) is Dutch, but it's spelled a little differently here than it is in some parts of the Netherlands, and it's pronounced differently too (I guess you would say it's pronounced in an 'Australian' way, it's not how Dutch people naturally pronounce it). Sometimes when immigrants come over, especially if it was a few decades ago, they change or alter the spelling of their surnames. It doesn't happen as much these days, but it's definitely part of the historical Australian immigrant experience.

Hope that helps!

[misnomera]

On racial stereotyping of the Haans in TMA...

Right so as someone who is ethnically Chinese I have NO FUCKING clue how I didn’t notice this more distinctly in my initial binge of tma (going too fast and not paying closer attention to character names and descriptions, probably) but the Haan family storyline is, all horror elements aside, pretty fucked up in terms of racial representation re: stereotyping. This got long as hell, but please please please take a moment to read through if you’ve got time for it. thanks.

To start off, the Haans are one of the few characters in tma with an explicitly specified race and ethnicity—Chinese—and pretty much the only explicitly Chinese characters in tma, other than the mostly unimportant librarian (Zhang Xiaoling) from Beijing. But like, Haan isn’t even a properly Chinese surname, at least not in the way that it’s spelled in canon (it should be Han, one a. A quick google search tells me that Haan as a surname has...Dutch origins??).

Of course, that could be chalked up to shoddy anglicization processes within family histories, which certainly isn’t uncommon with immigrant families, so I’m not going to dwell on names too much (although I also find it interesting that John Haan’s name is so specifically and weirdly anglicized that he changed his own surname?? Hun Yung to John Haan is a very big leap of a name change and frankly not very believable. ANYWAY, this is not that important. I don’t expect Jonny, a white Englishman, to come up with perfectly unquestionable non-Cho-Chang-like Chinese names, though it certainly would be nice. Moving on).

What really bothers me about the Haans is how they almost exclusively and explicitly play into negative Chinese immigrant stereotypes. I don’t even feel like I need to say it because it’s like...it’s literally Right There, folks. John Haan (in ep 72) owns and operates a sketchy takeout restaurant. They’re all avatars of the Flesh—and John Haan is Specifically horrific and terrifying because he cooked his wife’s human meat and fed it to his unknowing customers. Does that remind you of any stereotypes which accuse Chinese people of consuming societally unacceptable and ethically questionable things like dog/cat/bat meat (which, if it’s not already crystal fucking clear, we don’t. do that.), which in turn characterize us as horrible unfeeling monsters? John Haan’s characterization feeds (haha, badum tss) directly into this harmful stereotype that have caused very real pain for Chinese people and East Asians in general. 

And Jonny does nothing to address that from within his writing (and not out of it either). And, speaking on a more meta level, Jonny could’ve easily had these flesh avatars be individuals of any race (like, what’s Jared Hopworth’s ethnicity? Do we know? No? Well then). Conversely, he could’ve easily, easily had a Chinese person be an avatar of any other entity. So why did he have to chose specifically the Flesh?

(This is a rhetorical question. You know why. Racial stereotyping and invoking a fear of the other in an attempt to enhance horror, babey~)

On Tom Haan’s side, Jonny seems weirdly intent on having other characters repeatedly comment on his accent (or rather, lack thereof) in relation to his race. Think about how, in ep 30 (killing floor), the fact that Tom Haan had spoken a line to the statement giver in “perfect English” was an emphasized beat in that statement, and a beat that was supposed to be “chilling” and meant to signify to us that something was, quote-unquote, “not right” with Tom Haan. Implicitly, that’s saying that it was unexpected, not “normal”, and in this case even eerie, for someone who looks Chinese to have spoken in fluid, unbroken English. Mind you, the line itself was perfectly scary on its own (“you cannot stop the slaughter by closing the door”), so why did Jonny feel the need to note the accent in which it was spoken in? Why did Jonny HAVE to have that statement giver note, that he initially “wasn’t even sure how much English [Haan] spoke”? 

This happens again in episode 72 with a Chinese man (and again, his ethnicity is Explicitly Noted) who we assume is also Tom Haan. This one is rather ironically funny and kind of painfully self aware, because the statement giver expresses surprise at Haan’s “crisp RP accent” and then immediately “felt bad about making the assumption that he couldn’t speak English,” and subsequently admitted that thought was “low-key racist.” Like, from a writing perspective, this entire passage is roundabout, pointless, and says absolutely nothing helpful to enhance the horror genre experience for listeners (instead it just sounded like some sort of half-assed excuse so Jonny or other listeners could say “look! We’ve addressed the racism!” You didn’t. It just made me vaguely uncomfortable). And again, having other people comment on our accents/lack thereof while assuming we are foreign is a Very Real microaggression that east asians face on the daily. If Jonny needed some filler sentences for pacing he could’ve written about Literally anything else. So why point out, yet again, that the crazy murderous man was foreign and Chinese? 

At this point, you might say, right, but yknow, it was just that the statement givers were kind of racist! It happens! Yeah sure, ok, that’s a passable in-universe explanation for descriptions of Tom Haan (though not John Haan, mind you), but the statement givers are fake made up people, and statement’s still written by Jonny, who absolutely has all the power to write overt discrimination out of his stories. And he does! Think about just how many minor (and major!!) characters are so, so carefully written as completely aracial, and do not have their ethnicity implicated at all in whatever horrors they may or may not be committing. Think about how many lgbtq+ characters have given statements, and have been in statements, without having faced direct forms of discrimination, or portrayed as embodying blatant stereotypes in their stories (though lgbtq+ rep in tma certainly has their own issues that I won’t go into here). Jonny can clearly write characters this way, and he can do it well. So why, why, am I being constantly, repeatedly reminded in-text of the fact that the Haans are East Asian, that they’re from China, that they’re Chinese immigrants, that they’re second-generation British Chinese or whatever the fuck, and that they’re also horrifying conduits for blood, gore, and general fucked-up-ness? It’s absolutely not something that is Needed for the stories to be an effective piece of horror; the only thing it does is perpetuate incredibly harmful and hurtful stereotypes.

And listen, I love tma to bits. It’s taken over my blog. I’ve really loved my interactions with the fandom. And I am consistently blown away by Jonny’s writing and how well he’s able to weave foreshadowing and plot into an incredibly complex collection of stories. But I absolutely Cannot stop thinking about the Haans because it’s just. It’s such a blatant display of racial stereotyping in writing. And I’ve certainly seen a few voices talking about it here and there, and I don’t know if I’m just not looking in the right places, but it certainly feels like something that is just straight up not on the radar for a lot of tma fans. And I’m disappointed about that. 

Just, I don’t know. Take a look at those episodes again and do some of your own thinking about why these characters had to be specifically Chinese (answer: they didn’t.). And in general, PLEASE for the love of god turn a critical eye on character portrayals and descriptions whenever they are assigned specific races/ethnicities (Some examples that come to mind are Jude Perry, Annabelle Cane, and Diego Molina), because similar issues, to an extent, extend beyond the Haans, though I haven’t covered them here. 

You shouldn’t need a POC to do point out these problems for you when they’re so glaringly There. But for those of you who really didn’t know, hope this was informative in some way. I’m tired, man. If some of the only significant Chinese characters you write are violent cannibalistic men with a perverted relationship with meat, just don’t do it. Please don’t do it. 

EDIT: Since the making of this post Jonny has acknowledged and apologized for these portrayals on his twitter and in the Rusty Quill Operations Update, which went up September 2020. A long time coming, but better late than never. This of course doesn’t necessarily negate the harm done by Jonny’s writing, and doesn’t make me much less angry about it, but is appreciated nonetheless. For more on this topic there’s a lot of productive discussions happening in my “#tma crit” tag and in the notes of this post

[girlactionfigure]

Ellen Naomi Cohen was born on September 19, 1941.

She was mocked by people who didn’t know her heart, she was teased by supposed friends. Even after her death, the cruel joke was that she choked on a ham sandwich.

All this because of her weight.

The jokes hurt her, as it does many people who are called “fat,” who are ridiculed for the way they look, but she hid her pain well, as do many.

In high school, she adopted the name “Cass,” and, some time later, she would assume the surname “Elliot” in memory of a friend who had died.

According to a 2019 article by writer, Sheila Weller, “Cass—Ellen Naomi Cohen—was a middle-class Jewish girl from Baltimore who left high school six months before graduation to go to New York and try Broadway. She lost the role of Mrs. Marmelstein in ‘I Can Get It For You Wholesale’ to a budding young Jewish singer-actress who did her share to establish the rule that you didn’t have to be classically beautiful to be a star: Barbra Streisand. Cass then got a job as a coat check girl at a Manhattan nightclub, the Bitter End, singing and trying to get random agents’ attention, as she juggled hangers and quarters as tips.”

Cass Elliot had a wonderful, soothing voice, she had a wonderful personality, a beautiful soul, but the story is that initially not even John Phillips wanted her as part of his new group, which would become the Mamas and Papas. According to insiders, Phillips thought she was too fat and didn’t fit the image of the group. It was only when the group realized that she had a beautiful voice which actually made the group better that she was allowed more opportunities to sing.

When she was finally featured, she had to make up a story that she had a terrible voice until a pipe fell on her head, which somehow made her voice better.

Even after that, Elliot’s weight continued to be a source for jokes.

In one of the Mamas and the Papas biggest hits, “Creeque Alley”, Elliot had to join the chorus, singing, “And no one’s getting fat except Mama Cass!”

After she left the group, she tried to get away from the name “Mama” Cass to no avail.

“My mother was The Little Engine That Could,” her daughter Owen Elliot-Kugell told Weller. “Weight shaming was something she dealt with all her life. She was constantly insulted and hurt by people calling or thinking her fat. But she never talked about her pain, and when she performed, she hid that pain. But I know — I could tell—that it bothered her. As a child she was teased as a fatty. Her weight was something she bore the scars of for the rest of her life, be it failed auditions for Broadway shows or lonely nights after The Mamas and The Papas’ performances at Carnegie Hall or the Hollywood Bowl, coming home alone when everyone else had a partner.”

She once said, “I’ve been fat since I was seven and being fat sets you apart.”

“For others, that might have been a handicap but Cass turned it into a strength,” according to The Guardian. “She opened the door for others like Janis Joplin and Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane,” says DJ Annie Nightingale. “I adored her voice, you couldn’t help but like her and she helped establish a genre of independent women.”

“Cass’s impact on 60s teenagers with weight problems was significant,” said The Guardian. Nancy Roberts, founder member of the Spare Tyre Theatre Company, a group inspired by Susie Orbach’s Fat is a Feminist Issue, explains: “She was this wonderful sexy role model and inspiration who made it less of an incriminating burden to be fat.”

“Aside from breaking the weight-shaming stigma and rising as an improbable female icon, Cass was other things young women weren’t allowed to be then but can be now — a proud single-mother-by-choice and a working mother who supported her child alone,” according to Weller.

“At 25, Cass knew she wanted to be a solo mother — a bold choice at the time, even in bohemian circles,” according to NexTribe.

“She wanted me more than anything else in the world — she told people that,” her daughter said.

But, even with all her personal and musical triumphs and outwardly confidence, Elliot constantly felt the brunt of the fat jokes and the pressure to be slim.

“She said she’d never go on stage because Michelle was beautiful and she wasn’t,” says John Phillips, one of the Papas. She was persuaded to change her mind but no one stopped her trying dangerous diets.

Elliot tried desperately to lose weight, once going on a six-month long crash diet, losing 100 of her 300 pounds. This would lead to a stomach ulcer and throat problems, which was treated by drinking milk and cream, leading her to regain much of her weight back.

At age 32, Elliot would die in her sleep. Immediately, there were rumors that she either died because of drugs or that she died while eating a ham sandwich.

Frank Zappa would even reference the sandwich in his song, “We’re Turning Again” with the lyrics, “We can visit Big Mama, we can whap her on the back, while she eats her sandwich!”

As recent as 2007, even Snopes had to post an entry and dispute the ham sandwich myth of her death.

Owen Elliot was seven when her mother died. “It’s been hard for my family with the sandwich rumour,” she says. “One last slap against the fat lady. People seem to think it’s funny. What’s so darn funny?”

According to reports, there was no evidence to support the choking theory. The official autopsy revealed she had little to eat during her final hours. “There was left-sided heart failure,” wrote pathologist Keith Simpson. “She had a heart attack which developed rapidly.”

Heart failure.

Cass Elliot not only had a beautiful voice, but she also had a beautiful heart which few people got to see.

Anthony Kiedis of Red Hot Chili Peppers cited The Mamas & the Papas, and especially Elliot, as an influence, in an interview for Rolling Stone, saying, “There have been times when I’ve been very down and out in my life, and the sound of her voice has sort of given me a reason to want to carry on.”

“She was a one-woman triumph against adversity; she was ahead of her time; women now are finally doing what she did 50 years ago,” says her daughter. “I look back on her and realize that, just by example, she taught me, and others, not to accept it when someone says you can’t do something.”

“I’m proud to be my mother’s daughter,” says Owen. “When I’m having a tough day, for whatever reason, I think of all the ‘you can’t be this; you can’t do thats’ that my mother heard but ignored or conquered. She was a hero to me.”

The Jon S. Randal Peace Page

Ellen Naomi Cohen was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 19, 1941, the daughter of Bess (née Levine; 1915–1994) and Philip Cohen (died 1962) All four of her grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants.

[herorps]

Hey flo do you have a guide to naming Chinese characters?? So I can be ethnically correct !

i apologize for how late this is. i’ve had a very busy work day and i’m only now getting some downtime to sit down and answer this the way i want to answer this. i want to start off by saying that i am chinese-american and that what i say and how i name my chinese characters is based on my personal experiences in my community growing up and what i’ve gathered through long-sought out research and diaspora twitter. 

i also want to say that of course your ethnically chinese character can have an western name, it’s very common that we do, especially in modern times and in immigrant spaces, however i think we should be able to normalize using ethnic names. also unless you are adopted ( see: leah lewis ), in my experience you 100% have a chinese name on top of having a ‘western’ name, so if you want to give your character a western name it’d be accurate to give them a chinese name as well ( see: natasha liu bordizzo/liu chengyu ).

if you find this guide helpful, please like and reblog the post, validate me and if you have any questions/corrections/add ons please let me know! 

i would have you start off by reading this really helpful guide. it’s a little long winded and you don’t have to read all of it but they do a great job with describing the different romanizations of names and how they’re different across different dialects/regions. you need to first decide what context your character exists in, whether they’re from beijing or taipei or hong kong, their full name is going to be spelled differently based on what background you want to give them.

my mother’s surname is actually a great example of this. her surname is 湯 which in mandarin chinese is pronounced “tang” but because my mother’s family is originally taishanese, her last name is romanized “hong” everywhere that uses an english spelling. alternatively, if my mother’s family changed their romanization when they moved to hong kong, where they speak cantonese, her last name would have been romanized as “tong”. 

another example of this is chou tzuyu. because she from taiwan, the romanization of her name is chou tzu yu but if her family was from, like, shanghai her name would be romanized zhou zi yu. same chinese characters ( 周子瑜 ), but because they are pronounced differently across different languages and because she is taiwanese, the romanizations are different. 

so after you’ve decided what romanization you want to give them, the next step is to actually choose a name. i personally begin with the given name with all of my characters because i like attaching a meaning to the given name over the surname. and also surnames are pretty easy to find/figure out.

here is a guide that discusses a little bit about naming conventions in china, particularly about gendered names. i really like what tangelotime had to say about the fact that gender doesn’t really matter when it comes to naming because, in my opinion and experience, it doesn’t. i would say that what would be “gendered” is possibly the way a name sounds. idk how to explain this but there are some names that sound “girly” but more in the sense that it’s like girly vs. butch. and i can’t think of a good example of this so you’re just gonna have to ... idk go with your gut. but for the most part, chinese names are gender neutral. 

what tangelotime also said about how giving a chinese name is intense is absolutely true because there are so many things that parents may consider including chinese zodiac and fengshui and radicals in a certain character and what it means---it’s a sport that i do not have the effort for nor the intelligence to properly explain. however, i think the guides that i’ve linked so far do a good job in explaining that in a way that i cannot. here is another extensive guide, but this one discusses historical contexts ( for all u historical rpers heh ) and more importantly imo, the list of themes that a parent might take in creating a name. 

8/6/21 edit: i came across these pictographs of characters from mdzs that analyze the etymology by the radical that gives you a lot of insight to possible name meanings and to the written chinese language. 

additionally, here is a video by avenue x, an amazing creator on youtube who reviews c dramas and gives a lot of in depth cultural context for some of the shows she watches, that explains the names of characters from word of honor and gives the poetry references that the writers may have used. 

so if you’ve taken a look all the guides i’ve given you, good on you, i really appreciate you putting in all the work. now let me give you some examples of how different things may be taken into consideration when giving a chinese name. 

my given name is 安儀, romanized “on yee” because my family speaks cantonese. the first character means “safe” while the second character means “appearance,” so together my name means “safe appearance”. but, my mom also took into consideration the radicals of the characters as well. the first character looks like it has a hat or a roof on it right? that is intentional. the character underneath the hat is the character/radical for girl, so my mom wanted to make sure that her daughter had something over her that would protect her. hence why she chose the character 安. the second character in my given name consists of primarily two other words/radicals, 亻+ 義. the first radical is a variation of ⼈, the chinese word for “person,” and the second radical can roughly translate to “righteous” which means when put together, 儀 can mean “righteous person.” however 儀 can also come to mean “the appearance of a righteous person” if you consider all of the meanings i’ve given so far. my parents thought heavily about what my name means, not only on a translation level but also on a structural level. 

if you’re writing a family with multiple children, consider having a generational name. in short, generational names usually have a shared character among a single generation of family members. both of my parents and their siblings are named in this manner. my mom and her siblings all have the 華 ( wah ) character in their names. my dad and his brother have the 少 ( siu ) character and his sisters have the 美 ( mei ) character in their names. my grandparents ( both sets ) thought to give their kids a generational link in their names. 

now let’s look at jackson wang’s given name, 嘉尔, which he explained was homophonic in meaning. this is a tangent but chinese people love homophones and it’s why we don’t trust the number 4 but love the number 8. his given name, romanized “gaa yee”/”jia er”  is essentially a homophone for “plus 2″. he said ( in a video that i cannot find anymore ) that his grandfather named him because he wanted the meaning to be “a king with two guards to protect him”. jackson’s last name 王 (wong/wang) means “king” so “king” “plus 2″ is the intention his grandfather had in naming him. 

but if you’re really not versed in things like fengshui or poetry or you don’t have someone with chinese literacy available to you, the next best thing is to honestly ... take a look at media. whether that’s celebrities or film/tv/book characters ( written by actual chinese people pls ) and see what their names are ( or at least the romanizations are ). this will help you figure out what sounds appropriate and what sounds like you’re just mashing sounds together ( see: cho chang is she korean... is she chinese?? who the fuck knows ). and then finding characters that give off a meaning ( like my name meaning “safe appearance” ) is just fine imo. 

and honestly sometimes giving a name doesn’t have to be so deep. like fan bingbing’s name literally translates to “ice ice” and i don’t even know what her brother, chengcheng’s name is supposed to mean, i think their parents just think having the duplicated character is fun and cute. so don’t stress yourself out. 

also a lot of what i’ve gone over has pertained to the common 3-character name ( 1 character surname, 2 character given name ) but you can also consider a 2 character name ( 1 character surname, 1 character given name ) ( see: xiao zhan ) or even a 2 character surname ( see: ouyang nana ). 

so finally, to get you started, here is a short list of characters and their romanizations that you can take a look at.

thank you so much for bearing with me, i know this is a lot of information to take in but it is great that you are seeking this information out in the first place. i also know that this may seem very daunting, and even for me it’s daunting sometimes, but if you have any more questions, please let me know and if you have anything you’d like to add, please let me know. 

[starryeyedrookie]

For part 2 of Meet My MC for @openheartfanfics

Evelyn Long: Facts From The Past

Childhood

Born on November 12, 1992, Evelyn Amelia is the oldest child of Robert and Rosalie Long.

She has two siblings. Benjamin, born August 9, 1994 and Alexandra (Ally) born September 23, 1996.

From the time she could talk she was very inquisitive, always asking, “Why?”

Her parents wanted her to learn to be disciplined from a young age, therefore encouraging her to take up piano at the age of 4.

She was a competitive figure skater from the age of 8 to 16 and dreamed of going to the Olympics, until a knee injury forced her to retire.

She did ballet to help her in her skating.

Family

Evelyn’s maternal grandparents, Amelia and Thomas Long, immigrated to New York from China after they got married at the age of 18.

Her paternal grandparents, Gloria and Robert Yeung, were also New York living Chinese immigrants and ironically, became neighbours with Amelia and Thomas, after the latter moved.

Growing up, Robert and Rosalie were best friends who later became high school and college sweethearts and got married.

Robert is a mechanic and Rosalie is a veterinarian.

After they got married, Robert decided to go the unconventional way and change his surname to Long.

Fun fact: Rosalie was going to change her name to Yeung so she and Robert could have the same surname, but Robert insisted that he change his, because Rosalie was more successful and well-known than him.

Although they were a pretty well-off family, and helped their children through university, Evelyn’s parents always encouraged them to be hard workers and have a job if they weren’t in school.

Ben is an Officer in the United States Navy.

Ally followed in her mother’s footsteps and became a veterinarian.

Evelyn is closest with Ben and considers him her best friend.

Relationships

Evelyn’s first and only boyfriend was Alexander (Alex) Rossi, whom she began skating with at the age of 10 until her retirement.

They started dating at 14, but slowly ended up falling out of touch after Evelyn retired, sadly realizing that besides a passion for skating, they didn’t really have much in common.

Alex reached out to her again during her sophomore year and although she got some closure about what had happened, she wasn’t interested in a relationship because she wanted to focus on her studies.

They both moved on, but no longer keep in touch.

What inspired her to pursue medicine

After needing surgery and months of rehab, she decided that she would pursue medicine to help, support, and encourage patients the way her doctors and therapists did for her.

Thanks for reading!

Taglist: @mercury84choices @quixoticdreamer16 @a-crepusculo @josiesopenheart @headoverheelsforramsey @mm2305 @adiehardfan @schnitzelbutterfingers @potionsprefect @natureblooms24 @genevievemd @writer-ish @jamespotterthefirst @sophxwithers @liaromancewriter

Please let me know if you’d like to be added or removed❤️

[anachronisticcrab]

Nico and Portuguese

I don’t know if this bugged anyone else, but in the Hidden Oracle it didn’t sit right with me that Chiara and Apollo, who were both fluent in Italian, couldn’t understand Paolo when he spoke Portuguese, even though Nico could understand him because he speaks Italian (as seen in BoO when he read the Portuguese inscription in the Church of Bones, and when he was able to translate that Paolo wanted Apollo to have his lucky bandanna). At first I figured it was just weird Uncle Rick discrepancies and stuff, but then I figured why not do a bit of googling to see if I could find an explanation. I did a bit research on Italian dialects and second languages, as well as its connections to Portuguese, Catalan, and Spanish, and I think I discovered why Nico could speak with Paolo and understand Portuguese when no one else could

Just as a forewarning, I want to say is that I don’t speak Italian or Portuguese, I have never been to Italy or Portugal (or any other country that speaks Portuguese), and I am in no way an expert on the subject of any language. If you have any information on this topic, please correct any mistakes I make and feel free to add anything related to this. That being said, let’s get into this monster of a post

First of all, obviously Italian and Portuguese are very close together (they are both derived from Vulgar Latin, and have at least superficial similarities). However, this post will be looking into specific dialects and historical facts that would support Nico understanding Portuguese from Italian whereas the other two people who are confirmed to be fluent have no idea what Paolo says

I started trying to find out a bit more about Italian (because I knew there were differences in the language depending on where you are in the country, because everything in Italy varies from region to region). It turns out there are around 34 recognized spoken dialects within the country of Italy, and Standard Italian comes from Old Tuscany/Florence. The dialects vary from region to region, and even city to city in the country. All the different dialects are vastly different, especially between North Italy and South Italy. If you had a southern Italian speaking their native dialect and a northern Italian speaking theirs, neither of them would have any idea what the other was saying, unlike with different dialects in English, where you still know what the other person is saying. For example, in Venice, the dialect changes depending on the island you are on (ie. Burano to Pellestrina)

If we look specifically at the Veneto Region (where Venice and Verona are, and where Nico is from), one of the dialects is Venetian, although there isn’t a lot of information on the language that I could find, and even less about it’s roots. However I did find out that it is closer to Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese than it is to Standard Italian (Tuscan), and the language isn’t just spoken in and around Venice, but also in Trieste, Croatia (which led me down the path of Croatia and Venice thanks to Nico visiting there, and I’m gonna make a post about that too now because it’s really cool to me and I’ve got ideas for that) , Slovenia, Mexico and Brazil

Apparently, in certain parts of Brazil, the Talian dialect of Venetian holds co-official status with Portuguese. (I couldn’t find a whole lot of info on this, so I’m not sure where or if this is a true/accurate fact). From around 1875 to the 1920′s, there was a mass boom of Venetian immigrants to Brazil, and of the largest place in the world for people of direct Italian descent is actually Sao Paolo, Brazil. The only article I could find on the Talian dialect cut off two paragraphs in and required a paid subscription to read more (which I couldn’t do since I’m broke), so all I know is that a Portuguese dialect of Venetian is spoken in some areas of Brazil, more of them down south from what I could gather

In my research on Talian, I found out about another dialect, this one of Portuguese. It is called the  Paulistano dialect, and is spoken in and around Sao Paolo, the city I brought up before. Paulistano has direct influences from the Venetian language, as it was created thanks to Northern Italian immigrants who spoke with think foreign accents, and a new dialect was created, and preserves characteristics from Venetian

Not gonna lie, I think that they might just be different names for the same language, but I’m probably wrong about that. As I said, I really couldn’t find a lot of information on this topic so I’m probably very wrong by saying that

On top of that, historically, Venice and Portugal (the places that created both languages) have had extremely close relations. In the 15th century, the Portuguese kings used Venice’s ports to help with the spice trade from Asia, South America, and Europe. There were Portuguese and Spanish people coming in and out of Venice’s docks all the time. This is presumably why Venetian is much closer to Spanish and Portuguese than it is to Italian

As you can see, Venetian and Portuguese have deep rooted histories and simmilarities, and show how Nico would be able to understand Portuguese. Nico would’ve grown up speaking a very similar language to Paolo’s, and Paolo may have grown up speaking a dialect inspired by Venetian

I did try to use Paolo’s name to see if I could get an idea of where in Brazil he might be from, but I have absolutely no idea. Montes was originally a French or Spanish surname, suggesting he might have had French or Spanish roots, but that could also be pure bullshit, because I genuinely don’t know. If he was Spanish somewhere along the line, he most likely lived towards the south, closer to Sao Paolo and probably knew either Talian or Paulistano

At this point, you might be wondering why Apollo or Chiara can’t speak or understand Portuguese, and my answer is the following:

Apollo was probably only fluent in Standard Italian/ Tuscan after the country unified in 1861. After all, Italy is the capital of music, art, and is well known for being sunny and warm all the time, and Apollo is the god of all that stuff. Therefore, he probably learned the standardized language, and didn’t bother with any local dialects (after all, most people don’t speak the individual dialects with tourists/foreigners)

Now Chiara was a bit different. She was from Italy, so she would’ve known a regional dialect, and I came up with an issue there. She could have been from Venice, and that would have thrown this whole thing into the trash. That would have thrown out this idea, and mean that my research would have been for nothing, and that it really was just a stupid error on Rick’s part

So I looked up the origins of her name to check this out, praying to all the gods I could think of that my two days of research and googling wasn’t for nothing. The first thing I saw was that most Italian surnames with an ‘i’ at the end are from northern Italy. Just as I was about to start crying, I found a link on ‘The Noble House of Benvenuti’, and it turns out she was most likely Tuscan. Therefore, she probably speaks a regional dialect of New Tuscan or something of the like, and wouldn’t know Venetian

Also, after a bit more digging just to double check some of the facts in this post, I found out that even if she was Venetian, she might not have spoken it. Since Venice is a dying city, apparently Venetian is a dying language, and most people who are fluent in it are older, and there are lot’s of other dialects in the Veneto region anyways. Nico probably only knows it because he lived in Venice before the city started really dying out! The only reason Paolo can communicate with someone could be because of the whole hotel thing!

[emersonfreepress]

out of curiosity, have you come up with R's last name yet?? (this isn't meant to rush you or anything i swear lol i just remember you said you were close to choosing one👀)

😅

. . .

😩

no. still no! it's honestly a very good thing that I thought to check their name's authenticity because it takes way more thought than I initially put in. I found a good reference list of common Catholic names in Goa that has been helpful for brainstorming, but Rupan/Rohan is from Tamil Nadu so I'm unsure how much overlap there is in Christian naming conventions.

Right now, I'm leaning toward a Portuguese surname... and I will be keeping R's first names the same. Also trying to figure out what name order makes sense since they don't actually use fixed surnames in Tamil Nadu... but I can't tell to what degree that applies to Tamilian Christians and how they specifically tend to change their names when moving to countries that require surnames for legal ID. im cry help me ._.

but! I'll definitely figure it out and settle on a full name before they get introduced in the demo. as the American kid of immigrants with a distinctly African sounding name and just being who I am... no version of me could exist that would be lazy about naming a non-American character. not a look i vibe with lol

i'm also obsessed with giving characters thoughts and feelings about their own names. that doesn't have much to do with anything else, i just wanted to share 😆

[vulpes-incendium]

Question 0-0 I’m writing a historical fic (Ming dynasty to opium wars if that helps) with both HK and Macau in it (also has the rest of the gang), should I use the official Hong Kong Cantonese romanization of HK’s name or not because idk if the official Hong Kong romanization existed at that point, if not, how should I write his name? (I feel like you’re the name authority now lol so that’s why I’m asking 😆)

Romanisation of Cantonese in HK (+ other Chinese speaking countries)

Ahhh this is quite a complicated question. I'll try my best 🙈🙈🙈 Remember, I’m not a linguist nor a historian, these are only information I researched and based on my own knowledge. I could answer you right away that it’s safest to stick to the HK system for HK’s name now, but since romanisation has something to do with history, I thought this bit of insight would interest you and some others as well?

Basic facts

The standard English romanisation of Cantonese the HK government uses was introduced in late 1800s to early 1900s after HK was colonised and Hanyu Pinyin (Mandarin pinyin) in the 1950s after the PRC established, both did not exist back in the period you mentioned. So even Yao might not be Yao back then! (but I’ll talk about that later)

Also, the language has evolved a lot since then, plus there are also many other dialects (that are not mutually intelligible with Cantonese or Mandarin), this could play a role in it too!

Cantonese

How the system worked in Hong Kong 🇭🇰

So I only heard this from my parents and grandparents! Back then (30s - 50s) people just went to the registration office and said their names in Cantonese, the officers (mostly British I think) would hear it and translate it on the spot. I have yet found an official romanisation guide by the HK government (unlike Macau), but I believe with time, they kind of built up a system? HKers are used to the romanisation and would just know how to romanise names. There are some cases with names romanised not in the usual way, like 林 is usually Lam (99% of the time), but there are some romanised as Lamb, could be because of the mistakes made by some officers or they weren’t too used to the system, it does happen sometimes, but they are rare.

The government probably has a system for the street names, but it’s also a mess, they don’t necessarily reflect the pronunciation well, one obvious example would be “G” to “K” like the “K” in Hong Kong, it’s pronounced more like “Gong” in Cantonese, name romanisation has this problem too, but that’s another story.

Pre-colonial Hong Kong

Hong Kong was of course in the Canton/Guangdong region back then, there isn’t really like a border or anything like now. As the name hinted, the region speaks Cantonese. I couldn’t find that much information on the people living in HK, but one of the most famous people active around the HK area was 張保仔 Cheung Po Tsai, a pirate, active in the late 1700s. He wasn’t born in the area that is now known as Hong Kong, but HK was the area where pirates were active, because it’s surrounded by the sea. His name is romanised using the HK romanisation system, but I believe this is how the HK government preserves history. Mind you, this is the modern HK romanisation, his name might not be romanised like that back then, but I couldn’t find further info.

I believe only some people’s names were romanised in Cantonese because (Nanjing) Mandarin was the language the government used (which I heard was quite different from the Beijing dialect, aka modern Mandarin). There were only a few exceptions to have their names romanised in their native dialects (Cantonese, Hokkien, etc) to highlight their heritage/ importance to the region.

Hong Kong before the colonial period was very small and there weren’t a lot of people living there, most of our ancestors fled China for HK due to wars or political instability, but that was mostly after the Brits took power. So I’d say, for the sake of simplicity and also due to lack of information, using the HK system now would be fine, which is Wong Ka Lung or Lee Siu Chun, it also shows his identity (from HK) and his language. See this post for more info on his name.

Macau 🇲🇴

I have to also mention that even among Cantonese, the romanisation could be different too! Macau’s system is similar to HK’s but not 100% the same, this is because their system is based on Portugese pronunciation. Some common differences are Leong instead of Leung in HK or Ao instead of Au in HK. I’m not quite sure when they started using the system, but the document I found from the Macau government in 1985 showed they had a system for quite a while.

My bet for Macau is that his name was probably already romanised based on the Portugese system at that time, he’d probably also be given a Portugese name for the ease of communicating with the Europeans too. I have 2 names for Macau: 王濠鏡 Wong Hou Keang, popular among the Chinese fans which is based on one of Macau’s old names (I romanised his name wrong in my previous post using the HK system) and 王嘉麟 Wong Ka Lon, suggested by a HK fan, it shows his relationship with HK sharing the word 嘉 (many parents give siblings a sharing name). I use Vicente or Marco as his Portugese name. I can do a detailed post on this later.

Mandarin

Pre-PRC China (pre-1949)

Before the PRC was established (and Mandarin pinyin was introduced), I believe each country had their own method of romanisation for Chinese (all different dialects), probably catered to  their own speakers. Wikipedia said Nanjing dialect-based romanisation systems are more commonly used until the late 19th century, but I can’t really confirm that, since I don’t speak the dialect and I couldn’t find much info on that. But it could make sense, Nanjing was once the capital and a very important city, I could see why that would be the case.

If you look at this book from 1742, you can see the romanisation is very different from what we are used to, it's a French book so it’s based on French pronunciation, on top of the fact that the language back then was a bit different than nowadays (both French and Mandarin).

A notable example would be Confucius. It’s the latinised from 孔夫子 (Kǒng Fūzǐ in Mandarin pinyin) in the late 16th centuries by the early Jesuit missionaries in China, which consisted of mainly Italians, but also Portugese and Spanish I believe. Nowadays, of course his name wouldn’t be romanised like that, but this name was made popular by them based on Italian/Latin I think. In theory, his name would probably be based on the Nanjing-dialect, which I have no clue of, it does sound like Beijing Mandarin though.

Wade-Giles I believe was the most used romanisation system pre-pinyin. It was created in the 19th century and based on the Beijing-dialect. This may not be obvious if you look at important people in the modern (mainland) Chinese history because the Chinese government has probably changed the records to make the status of Mandarin pinyin more important (eg. Peking to Beijing). However, you can still find some hints in Chinese living abroad or non-mainland Chinese (most prominent example would be the Taiwanese).

Michael Shen Fu-Tsung was one of the first Chinese people who moved to Europe (late 1600s, from Nanjing/Nanking), he was using his Portugese name Michel Alfonso most of the time when he was in Europe, but his Chinese name was romanised using the Wade-Giles system later, could be because his life was more well-known in the west than in the east, so when Wade-Giles became popular, the European used the system when they refer him by his Chinese name?

All in all, China’s name would probably be romanised differently in each period by different countries. Not sure about Nanjing-Mandarin, but in Beijing Mandarin, his name 王耀 would be romanised as Wang Yao in both Mandarin pinyin and Wade-Giles luckily.

Taiwan 🇹🇼

Taiwan still used Wade-Giles until the government started encouraging the people to use Mandarin pinyin in 2009. I would say if you’re using 林曉梅 (Lin Xiao Mei), Lin Hsiao Mei would be more accurate to the time, for 林乙玲 (Lin Yi Ling) it’s Lin I Ling according to this. For Wade-Giles, names were usually hyphanated too I think so that the westerners know they have to use both words to refer to a person’s name, so Lin Hsiao-mei or Lin I-ling? (It’s not important, I just wanna mention my observation)

Taiwan also has another official language, which is Taiwanese (Hokkien). Now I don’t speak Taiwanese, but it’s also an important representation of the culture too and some people’s names were romanised from their own dialects, which leads me to my next point...

Other dialects

Some names were romanised from their own dialects, an example would be Koxinga from 國姓爺, or 鄭成功 (Zhèng Chénggōng in Mandarin pinyin). It’s the Dutch romanisation of Hokkien. From his name, you can probably tell why his name was romanised this way. He was of Hokkien and Japanese descent and he was most active in Taiwan (well, the sea regions, his family were pirates), hence he had most contact with the Dutch (he eventually replaced Dutch Formosa with Kingdom of Tungning). His name was also romanised differently, either from Beijing Mandarin or based on other languages, but I supposed he was most well-known by Koxinga.

Most of the Chinese immigrants in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Phillipines and Myanmar are of Hokkien (Hoklo) descent. I believe this is why many Chinese names are romanised differently in these countries, say the surname 陳 is usually Tan in Malaysia because it is romanised from Hokkien or Teochew (it’s Chan in Cantonese and Chen in Mandarin). This could theoretically happen in HK too, but most people wanted to integrate into the community and the majority of HKers speak Cantonese (eg. my grandparents were Shanghaiese but their names were in Cantonese).

Cantonese in Pre-PRC mainland China

This is just an extra piece of information if you’re interested, it’s about Cantonese in mainland China after British Hong Kong was established (mid-late 1800s), which is probably not your subject of interest, but maybe if someone wants to do an oc, or idk, just want to know in general? Long story short, there’s still not really an offical way to romanise names, but in my opinion, you can tell someone’s story/background from how their names were romanised.

Cantonese like 康有爲 Kang Youwei and 梁啓超 Liang Qichao were romanised like that (pinyin) because they worked at the Chinese government and I think the Chinese government now romanised them like that? Their names were probably not like that back then, not sure.

Another example would be 孫逸仙 Sun Yat-sen. He was Cantonese, born and was mostly active in the Canton(Guangdong) region. He’s more well-known as 孫中山 in Chinese (he had a lot of names), but he mostly went by Sun Yat-sen when he’s with westerners since he studied in HK. It looks a bit different than modern HK romanisation (it would be Suen Yat Sin I think), but I believe it was because that was the time the HK government just started developing the system, and as I’ve mentioned, there are some exceptions when romanising names in HK.

And then we have Chiang Kai-shek, who was not Cantonese (he spoke Wu, another Chinese dialect) but his name was romanised from Cantonese, probably because of the KMT activities he participated in were in Canton/Guangdong? He did change his name and the romanisation for his political career (he went through a lot of names too, I don’t speak Wu unfortunately to tell you whether one of his names were romanised from Wu, but some were from Mandarin using Wade-Giles). His name looks like it’s romanised using the HK system to me, it could really be that the Cantonese in the Mainland adopting the system when it was developing and got popularised in HK.

Cantonese might not be the main language used by the Chinese government (even though it almost became the official language of modern China), but since Canton/Guangdong was an important trading spot (on top of HK and Macau), many foreigners would learn Cantonese too.

Conclusion

Romanisation is to aid their own countries, it would be catered to their own languages, Turkish doesn’t have the letter Q, or W is pronounced V in German, Yao’s name in German could be “Jau” if the Germans were to romanise his name to cater their own people. The influence of the countries contributes a lot in it too. As you can see there are many names romanised from Dutch, because the Netherlands was a strong power, so I guess that’s why sometimes the Dutch romanisation would be more used? The HK romanisation and Wade-Giles got so popular probably because the British Empire was so strong back then or that English became an international language. And of course there is history too. Taiwan’s old name, Formosa, means beautiful in Portugese, because the Portugese were the first Europeans to discover Taiwan.

There are still so many different romanisation systems nowadays, one can tell where you’re from or where your root is just by seeing your romanised name. Say the surname 鄭, it’s romanised as Cheng in HK and Taiwan (different languages though), Cheang in Macau, Zheng in China and Tay or Tee in Malaysia and Singapore (Trịnh and Jung/Jeong would be the equivalent of the name in Vietnamese and Korean respectively) and they are all based on different languages, romanising different languages/dialects based on different languages.

Again, I’m not a linguist nor a historian so I might not be 100% correct! Please correct me if I got any of these wrong! Sorry for turning this into an essay lol, I really really appreciate your effort on making your fic historically accurate! Feel free to ask me more, I’m glad to help!

[fcrtune]

character summary 

Orphaned at the turn of the 20th century, Norton Campbell spent his youth in the darkness of the mines, working tirelessly in hopes of lifting himself out of poverty. The otherworldly provocations of a mysterious meteorite and a desperate desire to change his fate become the catalyst for a horrific mining accident of which he is the only survivor, badly burned and pulled from the rubble two days later. With pieces of the mind-altering meteorite now willingly kept upon his person, he continues to pursue his fortune, only soon after to receive an unexpected invitation that tells of a game with a tempting reward...

personality traits 

Norton often sought to control the impressions which he left on people, to prove himself trustworthy and reliable, convey his dedication, and show himself as worthy of respect. In the months following the accident, however, the effort he was willing to commit to his persona dropped substantially. The gloomy underbelly to his personality came creeping through: aloof and moody, opportunistic and self-serving, he has spent his life driven by a desperation to change what he saw as a decrepit fate. The meteorite magnets he keeps on his person have an effect on his personality, encouraging greater bouts of avaricious behavior and worsening the emotional instability he already struggles with. He has a tendency to keep people at a distance, and is particular about what, and to whom he devotes his time. His teammates have eventually come to describe him as a loner, as someone who’s hard to get to know and sometimes difficult to deal with.

Cunning:    Observant and opportunistic, Norton has taken great care in the past to craft an image of himself which best suits his immediate purposes. He keeps an eye on his surroundings and the people around him and knows how to use his understanding of others to turn a situation in his favor. He is quick and eager to learn; despite his background as a miner, Norton’s geological knowledge allowed him to change his career after the accident and become a prospector without any formal training. 

Determined:    Above all, Norton is determined and unwavering in his pursuit of his goals. His persistence is his proudest virtue. Whatever he can give, he will, in order to see his ambitions realized. Because of this, he is stubborn but no less reliable when it comes to seeing things through, so long as they are of some importance to him. 

Moody:    Norton is prone to mood swings. He is easy to irritate, although he won’t often show the extent of his emotions to people he’s not close with. Alternatively, when angered, he can find himself overpowered by them and may occasionally lash out at the people around him. Because of his emotional volatility and somewhat gloomy disposition, he can seem less approachable than many of the other survivors at the manor. 

Avaricious:    Greed continues to be a force that drives him, born from desperation and the urgency with which he works to change his impoverished lifestyle. Since childhood, he has struggled to connect with the people around him, and the ‘separateness’ he feels has reinforced his self-centered way of thinking. He will go to extreme lengths in order to further himself, and desires money above all else. The effect of the meteorite material with which his piercing is crafted helps to encourage these avaricious tendencies. 

Unstable:    Especially following the mining incident, Norton has shown himself to be mentally unstable. Partly because his habitual method of dealing with challenging emotions is to repress them, periods of little sleep and high emotional volatility continue to come about once his subconscious can no longer withstand the unresolved, and vastly unacknowledged, feelings that accumulate.

physical traits / origins

age:   28 years old height:   185 cm / 6 feet tall weight:   173 lbs / 78 kg wide frame & broad shoulders. ‘muscle, skin and bones.’ continued malnourishment has left him thinner in certain places while hard labor has lent him an imposing and muscular figure. he is agile and resilient to injury as a result of his active lifestyle.  well-defined facial features, cheek bones and jaw line. eyes are sunken, irises a very dark brown. black hair, parted in the middle and usually half-covered by an old mining hat. slightly tanned, skin somewhat darkened by the sun following his change in career. burns most notably spread across the left side of his face, but also his left shoulder, extending upward toward his neck, inward toward his collar, and downward toward his chest. some smaller spots on his left arm and hand as well. the burns regularly cause him discomfort or pain, especially at night.

his father was latino, his mother western european. both were american immigrants. following the death of his father, norton adopted his late mother’s surname. he initially continued to speak spanish with a few friends of his father, but stopped during adolescence. he does not have an accent when he speaks english, and has not spoken spanish to anyone in years. 

mental health

suffers from claustrophobia and nyctophobia, both grounded in the trauma of the mine’s collapse. nyctophobic episodes are not constant, but rather come about in times of great emotional stress. may experience a blurring of the line between the present and the past. should his head deceive him further, he can become panicked and begin to reexperience aspects of the initial trauma. nightmares also become more frequent during times of stress, as a result of habitual emotional repression, and may leave him sleepless, depending on the severity of the imagined experience. regular sleeplessness worsens mental instability and may culminate, in extreme cases, in auditory or even visual hallucinations.

( more to be added )

headcanons / etc

unenthused about writing in his journal and tends to be very brief about the day’s events. careful, scratchy handwriting. makes occasional spelling errors due to poor literacy. although he was taught to read by the elderly miners, he is not especially well-read and did not have access to a formal education. 

may drink when liquor is available to him, but generally prefers to drink alone. occasional smoking habits from his youth have been abandoned due to poor respiratory health after years of underground coal mining

( more to be added )

[irvinginfo]

John Irving - Biography Review

Irving is a famous British surname, an adaptation of the original Scottish surname Irvine, that is derived from the river Irvine in Dumfriesshire, now known as Liver. Most likely, Irving first became famous as an epitome of wealth and privilege. John Irving was the greatest favourite son of King James I of England. As a boy, he attended court and became familiar with the royal family and the way they lived. He became a close friend of Queen Mary II and later played a major role in her reign.

Known as the man who "broke the bank", John was said to have amassed a fortune during his lifetime. A patron of arts and a lover of dancing, his artistic inclination eventually flourished into painting, music, and architecture. It is rumoured that he may have been the inspiration for James Joyce, when he wrote some of his novels. John Irving's life and career are well-known in Britain and around the world. He was born in Glen, ashire, in 1816 and moved to London when he was a young man.

Some of his most famous people include Queen Victoria, Arthurian actor Sir Walter P. Conan Doyle, American writer Mark Twain, and author Mary E. Frye. A fellow Scot, he was also interested in philosophy, poetry and religion. Born in Chicago, USA, he was a distant cousin of American President Ulysses S. Grant. Although he never lived in Scotland, his birthplace, he had a large influence on the country and on its people. His son, John, became a US citizen in 1857 and moved to Boston where his brother, George was born and later went on to become one of the greatest English writers of modern times.

The present-day financial climate in America has made many wealthy Americans consider relocating to Britain. John Irving moved to Boston in order to study medicine. He earned a degree at Harvard University and was appointed professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. However, he was not able to practice as an ophthalmologist in England because of the ban on practicing medicine in England. Instead, he opened a private practice in Boston, and was known for his scientific and philosophical writings.

Besides his professional accomplishments, John Irving is well known for his humorous writings including his popular series of nine published poems entitled The Descent of Man. This collection of work is often described as his "Zz Top" series, which means that in every one of his books he predicted the future. In his Descent of Man, for instance, he said that in years nine of his journey he would have a meeting with a man who would change his entire life.

The "Zz Top" became extremely famous in America and it was soon used by newspapers as their favorite headline, along with headlines from other countries. The most famous example was when newspapers around the United Kingdom announced, "IT'S IT IN THE ZZ." This caused many readers to rush to the stores and buy items such as the telephone, television set, and fridge.

Because of his fame, some people began to imitate John Irving. Many were disappointed when they found out that he wasn't really an author or a physician. Others, however, were impressed by his courage to enter a profession that was against his entire family's wishes. One of the most important characteristics of John Irving, along with his fame, is his long friendship with America's first President, Andrew Jackson, and his love of America.

Today, his writings are still read by many people all over the world. His short stories, published in periodicals and online, continue to delight readers. It is interesting to learn about the connections between American life and that of nineteenth century America, and how some of his short stories helped shape our nation's attitude towards immigrants. Because of his popularity, it is easy to understand why people want to learn more about John Irving.

[memorylang]

Fathers’ Day, Familiarity and Faith | #38 | June 2020

If my COVID-19 experiences were a Netflix Original Series, I feel someone could title it, "The Groundskeeper."

Synopsis: Returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Mongolia, now back in Nevada, learns a thing or two about hedge trimming and much more about life living.

The inspirational hit series stars award-winning memoirist Daniel Lindbergh Lang, director and editor. “Please support the official release.”

Quirky thoughts keep me sane. More on these later, of course. 

The U.S. celebrated Father’s Day 2020 on June 21, so I commemorate it with reflections from being my father’s son. 

The adventures follow both my Mothers’ Day reflections (#36) and Easter in America stories (#35). I focus now on continued COVID-19 adventures in yard work, sorting and reminiscing. 

Chronologically, we pick up from my stateside Week 11 (May 15-21), when my sisters came home from their unis’ spring semesters. With them as collaborators, I continued sorting our family’s memorabilia. After a few weeks’ interlude 'round Memorial Day, big changes occurred Weeks 14 through 16 (June 5-25) through Fathers’ Day.  

I also consider Pentecost and the Spirit. Easter 2020 ended Sunday, May 31, so we’re in a fruitful new time. In fact, I write here results from the smattering of routines I shared before. 

Lastly, to clarify, many assume my dad’s Asian. But that’s untrue. He’s Austrian-American. That’s where I get my “Lang” surname. Ethnically, I’m about half Austrian. Culturally, too, Dad’s family influenced me far more than Mom’s when I grew up. My mom was ethnically full Chinese, hence that half.

Now back to Dad!

Father’s Perspective on My Boyhood 

During my 2020 time home since Peace Corps’ evacuation, Dad often prods me to take on projects he sees around the yard. So, I do yard work. I don’t like desert heat, so I usually work the daily tasks an hour or two at dawn, sometimes dusk. Picture three months this way.

But Dad would tend to demand a certain perfection on many projects, expecting me out there working when there’s work to do. I’d rather let nature do as it pleases. Peace Corps experiences taught me decorated yards generally feel overrated. When I’m older, I feel I’d much rather have my family frequent parks to get our yard fix. Nonetheless, yard work lets me chat with God, who reminds me empathize. 

It is difficult to say, "I serve the Father," if I do not serve my father. 

With this in mind, I consider the patient progress of waiting while working often. 

Dad grew up in rural America’s Midwest from the mid-20th century. Dad’s parents and community were largely Austrian-American Catholics. Dad’s grandfather immigrated with Dad’s great-grandfather because land in Austria was scarce, late-19th century, yet plentiful in Kansas. My dad grew up on a farm as a third-generation Austrian-American. He funded his higher ed. through U.S. military service and numerous side jobs, including those in teaching and sales. 

Through Dad, I’m a fourth-generation Austrian-American—though, only second-generation Chinese-American, through Mom. I wasn’t quite on a farm, having grown up between Midwestern suburbs and an urban West. Still, Dad regularly tasked siblings and I with yard work.

An Energetic Kid, Ages 4-7 

Now this gets interesting!

This mid-May 2020, my younger sister and I unearthed Christmas letters our parents (mostly Dad) had written to Dad’s siblings—my uncles and aunts—since before 2000. Turns out, our mom kept hard copies in the bins beside her desk. From these, Sister and I read pretty enjoyable pieces about our child selves. 

Here I share Dad’s tales from grade school me in Indiana (used with permission): 

2001: "Daniel is 4 years old now and is looking forward to kindergarten.  He likes outdoor activities and he is quite strong for his age.  He can do a lot of sit ups and push ups already.  He likes to walk with [his mom] at the airport, which is nearby." 

2002: "Daniel is five years old.  He is in kindergarten.  He is [...] very competitive.  He is in the same school as [his older brother] and is rapidly learning to read now.  He is good at math, and he studies very hard." 

2003: "Daniel is six years old.  He is very competitive and naughty.  He always keeps track of the books he reads and comes home to tell us how many books he has finished.  His goal is to reach 100 books this year.  He is over 90 already.  Well, he likes to pester [his brother a lot].  He thinks that is fun. [...]"

2004: "Daniel is seven.  He is goal oriented and a 'do'er.  He is good at making all kinds of crafts.  He is our family's talented teacher.  He taught [his younger sister] how to read before she went to kindergarten.  He also gives homework assignments to the others, except [his older brother].  He always pesters [his brother] as usual." 

God graced me with energy as a kid. 

I noticed three themes. For one, I seemed to follow Dad’s lead in filling my time productively. He served in the U.S. Army National Guard and emphasized self-discipline. As a civilian family practitioner, too, he advocated for daily exercises, such as sit-ups, push-ups and walking. I seemed to follow suit.

On the other hand, I was a kiddo with an older brother, and I didn’t mind expending plenty spare energy to bother him. Thankfully I stopped pestering when I grew up with enough self-awareness to know good people don’t intentionally troll. Uni helped. 

Curiously, I noticed the letters seemed to note many of my interests resembling Mom’s. Arts, reading and studying seemed more like Mom’s interests than Dad’s, yet I hadn’t realized my similarities to Mom back then. Of course, Dad values education, too.

Studious Beyond Belief, Ages 13-19

As I went through elementary school, Dad’s military service included deployments overseas to Afghanistan (2005) and Iraq (2007). In 2008, our family moved from southern Indiana to North Las Vegas, Nev., where I started middle school. Since my younger sister and I hadn’t found letters from Dad’s years deployed with the others letter, we figured Mom wrote them. By 2009’s end, Dad retired as a lieutenant colonel. But he continued work elsewhere, including in a dozen nations to indigenous peoples of the Americas. 

Here were Christmas letters from my adolescence on. Coincidentally, I noticed the first couple we found both came from my last years at respective schools. 

2010: “Danny, 13, is finishing at [...] a magnet [middle] school associated with math, science and technology. He [earned last year] a 4.0 [grade-point] average. He received a letter this past week from a magnet high school stating that he was the type of student they were looking for. [I, Dad, think Danny] is also in the National Junior Honor Society [service group]. [...] Danny continues to have to be at the school bus stop at 5:50 in the morning.” 

2014: “Danny is the ultimate study robot, with his inhuman ability to study for hours on end in place of sleep, or other usual activities for high schoolers.  He attended NV Boys State this past June, and he has risen to the rank of Division News Editor within [Kiwanis] Key Club--a HS service group.  Danny and [his younger sister] also attended Key Club activities in CA in Nov. [...] As this is his senior year [...], he should be starting to apply for colleges now, but [...] he has not applied to Yale, which is causing his mother to feel that she is a ‘failure’ if none of her kids get accepted at this prestigious school--it’s used by Chinese mothers as a guilt trip for their kids! [...] He also received an AP with Honors award [from his magnet high school].  He presently is in the ‘top 10’ students in his class ranking.  But if he doesn’t get his applications in, then there is always UNLV [Las Vegas]!” 

2016: “Daniel is now a sophomore at UNR (Reno) in the Honors Program, and is an honors ambassador. He says he has 1 major in journalism with 3 minors at the present time, and he works at the library when time permits. He also completed an internship in publishing during the summer session, when he stayed in Reno and frugally survived during the summer by ‘couch surfing’ at several different locations. Several of us attended his confirmation at Easter in Reno. He also [...] presented at a few [conferences]. Additionally, he is involved in [the Kiwanis] Circle K service group on campus, as well as the Knights of Columbus, and he sings in the choir at the local Newman Center. Based on his Facebook postings, he seems to be enjoying college immensely. [...]” 

I definitely loved service groups—and still do, if Peace Corps counts! 

Seeing these letters in 2020, I feel amused how Dad wrote of my later academic interests with distance. Dad’s 2002 line about 5-year-old me, “[Daniel] studies very hard,” escalated exponentially, noticeable by his 2014 line about 17-year-old me, “Danny is the ultimate study robot, with his inhuman ability to study for hours on end in place of sleep.” I figure my peers were similar, though… 

I feel amused, too, how Dad included Mom’s wanting me to pursue STEM careers. Chinese often expect this of their kids. In some sense, I’m glad Dad let me escape the Asian tendency and Mom’s ideal to have me pursue a Bachelor of Science. Back then, I contended a bachelor’s from the professional School of Journalism would still make me hireable. 

Sure enough, Peace Corps hired! 

Besides, I felt vindicated later when I learned my minors in English literature, Chinese studies and communication studies resembled my late mother’s fields of English literature and international relations... She clearly benefited from Liberal Arts. More on these in previous reflections, though. :)

Back From Mongolia

Snap back to March 2020, when I just returned to America after our COVID-19 evacuation from Mongolia. 

I was really into “Frozen II,” the cathartic film easing me back into the States. My first week back felt very different from those after. Because “Some Things Never Change,” I discerned to do “The Next Right Thing.” Waking to various “Frozen II” numbers of looping in my brain, days began with such thoughts. 

My first days, I often compared experiences to Mom’s when she raised my siblings and me. Despite being at home, I was alone. Dad worked away, plus siblings had school and work. (This preceded American schools canceling or moving online.) So, I felt confused what to do. 

I discerned I could tidy the house, serve where others couldn’t. Whether dishes to wash or rooms to clean, I addressed what I saw. I imagined Mom felt this way when my siblings and I attended school and Dad worked. 

I also considered my living father matters as much as my late mother. So, honoring Dad honors her, too. 

Dad always had yard projects he wanted me doing. I had to weed so much when I first returned. 

I felt insights, at least. I considered, weeds are eternal. Weeds will always grow on spiritual life. Weeds attempt to choke our crops’ life. We must uproot our weeds and prune dead areas to fortify new and better parts of being. The physical and spiritual are one. … Yet, weeds still annoy me. 

Noticeably, my labors seemed to confuse many in my family. They seemed mostly to recall the 2015 me who’d choose studying over chores any day. But I guess most hadn’t factored I’ve experienced plenty in my years away from home, especially during my months living alone cooking for myself in Mongolia. House tasks are necessary parts of life. 

Besides, I’d already been doing these tasks others seemed disinterested in, even back at Christmas 2019, when I sorted Mom’s books, and later during post-evacuation Week 9 (May 1-7), packing up Mom’s desk after three years gathering dust. I felt frustrated others seemed slow to accept I’ve changed since Peace Corps. I pray for grace.

The New Journey

June 6, 2020—just days after Pentecost and coincidentally one month to my 23rd birthday—marked one huge occasion. 

Dad remarried! 

I felt excited.

I also noticed a curious parallel in threes. For, on my family history adventures, I discovered something about Dad’s parents. In 1987, his mother's spouse passed away; on the third year, she married again, in 1990. 30 years later, my dad’s spouse passed away in 2017; on the third year, he married again, in 2020. Coincidences comfort me at times.

That day, I’d also finished revisions to submit my thesis to a different journal for publication. I’d tried before with one in June 2019 and February 2020, but unfortunately my work hadn’t fit within their scope. Still, the editor believed that  I could publish it in the right place! 

College Town Return

That Week 14 (June 5-11), Dad also purchased a house in Reno, Nev., where my kind stepmom may move, too. Dad requested aid moving things in Reno. My younger sister and youngest brother both opted out, so I went instead. I prefer Reno’s weather, anyway. 

In Reno again, I felt parallels to past years. 

Helping my youngest sister and her friend move from a condo and house to the new place, I recalled the many who helped me move between Reno homes during my undergrad. Honestly, I felt weird to think of my dad relocating to Reno, especially since I hadn’t known the area he chose existed during my years studying in town. 

Mongolia returned to mind, too, while I lugged belongings in and out of the condo, up and down stairs. Hard to believe that that was three months ago when Peace Corps evacuated us. Exactly three months before, March 9, 2020, was my first Monday in Nevada again. 

Writing of Mongolia, I also recalled every bellhop who's hauled my 23 kg (50 lbs.) luggage up stairs in Asia. God bless them. 

On the bright side, with helping the sister and friend move, Dad said I got stronger. That felt good. When he asked how many push-ups I could do, I said 50—my new personal record met just days before. When I started working out the month and a half prior, I could only do half that. 

Thanks to the lifting and yard work tasking me in Reno, I paused my fitness routines. I realized, I’ve enough strength and endurance for what I’d want to do. So now, having met the goals, I still work out, just less concerned about gains.

Tests of Faith

Back to that ‘groundskeeping.’

With Reno versus Vegas, I prefer hedges to palm trees. Hedges are more fun and less merciless. They leave my body less bloody than palm trees, too. Reno’s weather also keeps cooler. 

As you’d expect, yard work leaves plenty time to reflect, chat with God. In earlier days these chats opened with lamentations about the heat and constant tasks. But God graces peace.

Ultimately, Dad’s tasks need someone to do them. He’s busy working full-time out-of-town, and siblings still have activities they must or would rather do. So I volunteer. 

On the other side, Dad at times says he’ll compensate me once the bills are paid. There always seem bills to me, though. Since it’s been three months now, I try to think of this like the Kingdom. Whether or not I see rewards, I try to persevere. I must trust the Father to provide in time, no matter the wait. It’s a spiritual exercise. 

Pa says he’s glad I’m financially stable, too—My scholarships, grants and work study graduated me debt-free. Those seem good, I guess. 

So, spiritually exercising while laboring, I consider parables of workers in the field and masters. Christ spoke of such. Parables about fields and wages seem more nuanced after feeling comparable questions. 

I think, too, to re-education labor camps sometimes. During China’s Cultural Revolution, my mom’s parents—both teachers—were sent to those. So, my ‘toiling’ in Dad’s backyards are surely nothing compared to what my grandparents involuntarily endured. I can bear my ‘shackles.’ 

These bring me to privilege.

At the day’s end, I have places to stay, food to eat and stable internet. Many Americans and people worldwide face greater turmoil than these, perhaps including you, my reader. So, I try acknowledging my ‘hardships’ hardly compare. I try to focus prayers for the needier. Faith helps me through.

On a happy note, I just reached the Diamond League on Duolingo! So, life could definitely be worse...

The Climb

One day during Week 15 (June 12-18), after Dad came home at dusk from work, he asked me to get out the ladder to climb the backyard tree. I thought that was wistful thinking! 

Well, I had the time and realized he wanted me to climb after all. The tree had a fallen limb he wanted me to saw off, since I weigh less than him. I insisted I’d only climb with him around.

Well, he came around. 

I ascended and sawed four limbs! Before the climb, we thought I only had to address a single one. But as I climbed for it, I found more. Thankfully, these were thin limbs. Dad gave some advice from below, handed me our hand saw then left me while he took care of other tasks around the yard. I climbed higher, wedged my feet in semi-stable positions and got to work.

Atop, the wind blew, so the tree rocked. I clung high in a swaying tree. Good Lord. 

But I felt amazed, handling my saw even with my off-hand. I’d cling with one arm and saw with the other. When branches got stuck, I had to grab them, push and jerk them away from other sections to send them down. Dad had me call out, “Timber!” With the final branch out, I let the saw fall. 

Success felt like redemption from that random tree I climbed the first culture-shocked day I returned to Vegas from Mongolia. This time I’d such control. My safety depended on it! Plus, I only grazed the back of my hand, as opposed to gashing my palm like the last time I left a tree. Less bleeding is better. 

By the end, my arms and legs trembled, not from worry but from muscle fatigue. Still, I felt empowered. Throughout my childhood, I could never climb a tree. Now I passed the physical I hadn’t expected a month and a half prior. 

All told, my climb took just half an hour.

Staying the Course 

In a week and a half, I turn 23! So I’ll be one (1) 23-year-old, hehe. Look forward to new reflections on how I’ve grown and changed. 

As an extension of my paternal family history projects, I started writing memorable quotes from Dad. My siblings and I wound up adapting these and more into our Fathers’ Day 2020 gift! Dad enjoyed our “Book of the Father” we printed. 

Meanwhile, America begins to slightly reopen amid COVID-19 conditions, and the post-solstice summer’s begun. So, I encourage us to, whenever possible, still #StayHome more than usual, wear our face masks, maintain physical distance and of course wash our hands. We’ll get through this.

And I hear some are struggling with loneliness, too—If you need someone to talk to, you can always count on me. It’s among the most challenging feelings, given we humans are social beings staying physically apart. Writing, phoning and video calls help me, at least. Feel free to reach out. I keep you and loved ones in my prayers.

Best wishes, and till we chat again.

You can read more from me here at DanielLang.me :)

[gtunesmiff]

Ravi Zacharias (1946 – 2020)

When Ravi Zacharias was a cricket-loving boy on the streets of India, his mother called him in to meet the local sari-seller-turned-palm reader. “Looking at your future, Ravi Baba, you will not travel far or very much in your life,” he declared. “That’s what the lines on your hand tell me. There is no future for you abroad.” By the time a 37-year-old Zacharias preached, at the invitation of Billy Graham, to the inaugural International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam in 1983, he was on his way to becoming one of the foremost defenders of Christianity’s intellectual credibility. A year later, he founded Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM), with the mission of “helping the thinker believe and the believer think.” In the time between the sari seller’s prediction and the founding of RZIM, Zacharias had immigrated to Canada, taken the gospel across North America, prayed with military prisoners in Vietnam and ministered to students in a Cambodia on the brink of collapse. He had also undertaken a global preaching trip as a newly licensed minister with The Christian and Missionary Alliance, along with his wife, Margie, and eldest daughter, Sarah. This trip started in England, worked eastwards through Europe and the Middle East and finished on the Pacific Rim; all-in-all that year, Zacharias preached nearly 600 times in over a dozen countries. It was the culmination of a remarkable transformation set in motion when Zacharias, recovering in a Delhi hospital from a suicide attempt at age 17, was read the words of Jesus recorded in the Bible by the apostle John: “Because I live, you will also live.” In response, Zacharias surrendered his life to Christ and offered up a prayer that if he emerged from the hospital, he would leave no stone unturned in his pursuit of truth. Once Zacharias found the truth of the gospel, his passion for sharing it burned bright until the very end. Even as he returned home from the hospital in Texas, where he had been undergoing chemotherapy, Zacharias was sharing the hope of Jesus to the three nurses who tucked him into his transport. Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias was born in Madras, now Chennai, in 1946, in the shadow of the resting place of the apostle Thomas, known to the world as the “Doubter” but to Zacharias as the “Great Questioner.” Zacharias’s affinity with Thomas meant he was always more interested in the questioner than the question itself. His mother, Isabella, was a teacher. His father, Oscar, who was studying labor relations at the University of Nottingham in England when Zacharias was born, rose through the ranks of the Indian civil service throughout Zacharias’s adolescence. An unremarkable student, Zacharias was more interested in cricket than books, until his encounter with the gospel in that hospital bed. Nevertheless, a bold, radical faith ran in his genes. In the Indian state of Kerala, his paternal great-grandfather and grandfather produced the 20th century’s first Malayalam-English dictionary. This dictionary served as the cornerstone of the first Malayalam translation of the Bible. Further back, Zacharias’s great-great-great-grandmother shocked her Nambudiri family, the highest caste of the Hindu priesthood, by converting to Christianity. With conversion came a new surname, Zacharias, and a new path that started her descendants on a road to the Christian faith. Zacharias saw the Lord’s hand at work in his family’s tapestry and he infused RZIM with the same transgenerational and transcultural heart for the gospel. He created a ministry that transcended his personality, where every speaker, whatever their background, presented the truth in the context of the contemporary. Zacharias believed if you achieved that, your message would always be necessary. Thirty-six years since its establishment, the ministry still bears the name chosen for Zacharias’s ancestor. However, where once there was a single speaker, now there are nearly 100 gifted speakers who on any given night can be found sharing the gospel at events across the globe; where once it was run from Zacharias’s home, now the ministry has a presence in 17 countries on five continents. Zacharias’s passion and urgency to take the gospel to all nations was forged in Vietnam, throughout the summer of ’71. Zacharias had immigrated to Canada in 1966, a year after winning a preaching award at a Youth for Christ congress in Hyderabad. It was there, in Toronto, that Ruth Jeffrey, the veteran missionary to Vietnam, heard him preach. She invited him to her adopted land. That summer, Zacharias—only just 25—found himself flown across the country by helicopter gunship to preach at military bases, in hospitals and in prisons to the Vietcong. Most nights Zacharias and his translator Hien Pham would fall asleep to the sound of gunfire. On one trip across remote land, Zacharias and his travel companions’ car broke down. The lone jeep that passed ignored their roadside waves. They finally cranked the engine to life and set off, only to come across the same jeep a few miles on, overturned and riddled with bullets, all four passengers dead. He later said of this moment, “God will stop our steps when it is not our time, and He will lead us when it is.” Days later, Zacharias and his translator stood at the graves of six missionaries, killed unarmed when the Vietcong stormed their compound. Zacharias knew some of their children. It was that level of trust in God, and the desire to stand beside those who minister in areas of great risk, that is a hallmark of RZIM. Its support for Christian evangelists in places where many ministries fear to tread, including northern Nigeria, Pakistan, South African townships, the Middle East and North Africa, can be traced back to that formative graveside moment. After this formative trip, Zacharias and his new bride, Margie, moved to Deerfield, Illinois, to study for a Master of Divinity at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Here the young couple lived two doors down from Zacharias’s classmate and friend William Lane Craig. After graduating, Zacharias taught at the Alliance Theological Seminary in New York and continued to travel the country preaching on weekends. Full-time teaching combined with his extensive travel and itinerant preaching led Zacharias to describe these three years as the toughest in his 48-year marriage to Margie. He felt his job at the seminary was changing him and his preaching far more than he was changing lives with the hope of the gospel. It was at that point that Graham invited Zacharias to speak at his inaugural International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam in 1983. Zacharias didn’t realize Graham even knew who he was, let alone knew about his preaching. In front of 3,800 evangelists from 133 countries, Zacharias opened with the line, “My message is a very difficult one….” He went on to tell them that religions, 20th-century cultures and philosophies had formed “vast chasms between the message of Christ and the mind of man.” Even more difficult was his message, which received a mid-talk ovation, about his fear that, “in certain strands of evangelicalism, we sometimes think it is necessary to so humiliate someone of a different worldview that we think unless we destroy everything he holds valuable, we cannot preach to him the gospel of Christ…what I am saying is this, when you are trying to reach someone, please be sensitive to what he holds valuable.” That talk changed Zacharias’s future and arguably the future of apologetics, dealing with the hard questions of origin, meaning, morality and destiny that every worldview must answer. Flying back to the U.S., Zacharias shared his thoughts with Margie. As one colleague has expressed, “He saw the objections and questions of others not as something to be rebuffed, but as a cry of the heart that had to be answered. People weren’t logical problems waiting to be solved; they were people who needed the person of Christ.” No one was reaching out to the thinker, to the questioner. It was on that flight that Zacharias and Margie planted the seed of a ministry intended to meet the thinker where they were, to train cultural evangelist-apologists to reach those opinion makers of society. The seed was watered and nurtured through its early years by the businessman DD Davis, a man who became a father figure to Zacharias. With the establishment of the ministry, the Zacharias family moved south to Atlanta. By now, the family had grown with the addition of a second daughter, Naomi, and a son, Nathan. Atlanta was the city Zacharias would call home for the last 36 years of his life. Meeting the thinker face-to-face was an intrinsic part of Zacharias’s ministry, with post-event Q&A sessions often lasting long into the night. Not to be quelled in the sharing of the gospel, Zacharias also took to the airwaves in the 1980s. Many people, not just in the U.S. but across the world, came to hear the message of Christ for the first time through Zacharias’s radio program, Let My People Think. In weekly half-hour slots, Zacharias explored issues such as the credibility of the Christian message and the Bible, the weakness of modern intellectual movements, and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. Today, Let My People Think is syndicated to over 2,000 stations in 32 countries and has also been downloaded 15.6 million times as a podcast over the last year. As the ministry grew so did the demands on Zacharias. In 1990, he followed in his father’s footsteps to England. He took a sabbatical at Ridley Hall in Cambridge. It was a time surrounded by family, and where he wrote the first of his 28 books, A Shattered Visage: The Real Face of Atheism. It was no coincidence that throughout the rhythm of his itinerant life, it was among his family and Margie, in particular, that his writing was at its most productive. Margie inspired each of Zacharias’s books. With her eagle eye and keen mind, she read the first draft of every manuscript, from The Logic of God, which was this year awarded the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) Christian Book Award in the category of Bible study, and his latest work, Seeing Jesus from the East, co-authored with colleague Abdu Murray. Others among that list include the ECPA Gold Medallion Book Award winner, Can Man Live Without God?, and Christian bestsellers, Jesus Among Other Gods and The Grand Weaver. Zacharias’s books have sold millions of copies worldwide and have been translated into over a dozen languages. Zacharias’s desire to train evangelists undergirded with apologetics, in order to engage with culture shapers, had been happening informally over the years but finally became formal in 2004. It was a momentous year for Zacharias and the ministry with the establishment of OCCA, the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics; the launch of Wellspring International; and Zacharias’s appearance at the United Nations Annual International Prayer Breakfast. OCCA was founded with the help of Professor Alister McGrath, the RZIM team and the staff at Wycliffe Hall, a Permanent Private Hall of Oxford University, where Zacharias was an honorary Senior Research Fellow between 2007 and 2015. Over his lifetime Zacharias would receive 10 honorary doctorates in recognition of his public commitment to Christian thought, including one from the National University of San Marcos, the oldest established university in the Americas. Over the years, OCCA has trained over 400 students from 50 countries who have gone on to carry the gospel in many arenas across the world. Some have continued to follow an explicit calling as evangelists and apologists in Christian settings, and many others have gone on to take up roles in each of the spheres of influence Zacharias always dreamed of reaching: the arts, academia, business, media and politics. In 2017, another apologetics training facility, the Zacharias Institute, was established at the ministry’s headquarters in Atlanta, to continue the work of equipping all who desire to effectively share the gospel and answer the common objections to Christianity with gentleness and respect. In 2014, the same heart lay behind the creation of the RZIM Academy, an online apologetics training curriculum. Across 140 countries, the Academy’s courses have been accessed by thousands in multiple languages. In the same year OCCA was founded, Zacharias launched Wellspring International, the humanitarian division of the ministry. Wellspring International was shaped by the memory of his mother’s heart to work with the destitute and is led by his daughter Naomi. Founded on the principle that love is the most powerful apologetic, it exists to come alongside local partners that meet critical needs of vulnerable women and children around the world. Zacharias’s appearance at the U.N. in 2004 was the second of four that he made in the 21st century and represented his increasing impact in the arena of global leadership. He had first made his mark as the Cold War was coming to an end. His internationalist outlook and ease among his fellow man, whether Soviet military leader or precocious Ivy League undergraduate, opened doors that had been closed for many years. One such military leader was General Yuri Kirshin, who in 1992 paved the way for Zacharias to speak at the Lenin Military Academy in Moscow. Zacharias saw the cost of enforced atheism in the Soviet Union; the abandonment of religion had created the illusion of power and the reality of self-destruction. A year later, Zacharias traveled to Colombia, where he spoke to members of the judiciary on the necessity of a moral framework to make sense of the incoherent worldview that had taken hold in the South American nation. Zacharias’s standing on the world stage spanned the continents and the decades. In January 2020, as part of his final foreign trip, he was invited by eight division world champion boxer and Philippines Senator Manny Pacquiao to speak at the National Bible Day Prayer Breakfast in Manila. It was an invitation that followed Zacharias’s November 2019 appearance at The National Theatre in Abu Dhabi as part of the United Arab Emirates’ Year of Tolerance. In 1992, Zacharias’s apologetics ministry expanded from the political arena to academia with the launching of the first ever Veritas Forum, hosted on the campus of Harvard University. Zacharias was asked to be the keynote speaker at the inaugural event. The lectures Zacharias delivered that weekend would form the basis of the best-selling book, Can Man Live Without God?, and would open up opportunities to speak at university campuses across the world. The invitations that followed exposed Zacharias to the intense longing of young people for meaning and identity. Twenty-eight years after that first Veritas Forum event, in what would prove to be his last speaking engagement, Zacharias spoke to a crowd of over 7,000 at the University of Miami’s Watsco Center on the subject of “Does God Exist?” It is a question also asked behind the walls of Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola Prison, the largest maximum-security prison in the United States. Zacharias had prayed with prisoners of war all those years ago in Vietnam but walking through Death Row left an even deeper impression. Zacharias believed the gospel shined with grace and power, especially in the darkest places, and praying with those on Death Row “makes it impossible to block the tears.” It was his third visit to Angola and, such is his deep connection, the inmates have made Zacharias the coffin in which he will be buried. As he writes in Seeing Jesus from the East, “These prisoners know that this world is not their home and that no coffin could ever be their final destination. Jesus assured us of that.” In November last year, a few months after his last visit to Angola, Zacharias stepped down as President of RZIM to focus on his worldwide speaking commitments and writing projects. He passed the leadership to his daughter Sarah Davis as Global CEO and long-time colleague Michael Ramsden as President. Davis had served as the ministry’s Global Executive Director since 2011, while Ramsden had established the European wing of the ministry in Oxford in 1997. It was there in 2018, Zacharias told the story of standing with his successor in front of Lazarus’s grave in Cyprus. The stone simply reads, “Lazarus, four days dead, friend of Christ.” Zacharias turned to Ramsden and said if he was remembered as “a friend of Christ, that would be all I want.” =====|||=====

Ravi Zacharias, who died of cancer on May 19, 2020, at age 74, is survived by Margie, his wife of 48-years; his three children: Sarah, the Global CEO of RZIM, Naomi, Director of Wellspring International, and  Nathan, RZIM’s Creative Director for Media; and five grandchildren. =====|||=====

By Matthew Fearon, RZIM UK content manager and former journalist with The Sunday Times of London

Margie and the Zacharias family have asked that in lieu of flowers gifts be made to the ongoing work of RZIM. Ravi’s heart was people.

His passion and life’s work centered on helping people understand the beauty of the gospel message of salvation. 

Our prayer is that, at his passing, more people will come to know the saving grace found in Jesus through Ravi’s legacy and the global team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

[theliberaltony]

via FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to a weekly collaboration between FiveThirtyEight and ABC News. With 5,000 people seemingly thinking about challenging President Trump in 2020 — Democrats and even some Republicans — we’re keeping tabs on the field as it develops. Each week, we’ll run through what the potential candidates are up to — who’s getting closer to officially jumping in the ring and who’s getting further away.

Although there was a lot of attention this week in the media on whether major names like Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke will get into the Democratic presidential race, candidates who have already been on the official campaign trail staked out positions on big issues that have been in the news. Although Democrats are generally unified on immigration — denouncing President Trump’s proposed border wall — fractures are forming around “Medicare-for-all” proposals and the “Green New Deal.” Progressive candidates have faced some pushback from the field’s centrists, who believe that their aims could be achieved in a more incremental fashion.

Here’s the weekly candidate roundup:

Feb. 8-14, 2019

Stacey Abrams (D) On Friday, Abrams is visiting Washington, where she will deliver a speech at the Democratic National Committee’s Winter Meeting and participate in a discussion about race and political power in the United States at the Brookings Institution. Michael Bennet (D) The Colorado senator hinted at a presidential run during an appearance on “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “We’ve got a million people that are going to run, which I think is great,” he said. “I think having one more voice in that conversation that’s focused on America’s future, I don’t think would hurt.”

Bennet discussed his diverse professional background as one of the ways he was different from the field’s current candidates, citing his time in business and as Denver Public Schools superintendent.

On policy, he joined many Democrats in supporting a public health care option but said that such a plan did not necessarily mean that private insurance should be eliminated. Joe Biden (D) The Washington Post reported Thursday that Biden was still undecided about a presidential campaign, noting that he originally intended to decide by the end of 2018.

On Wednesday, CNBC wrote that Biden is signaling to several Democratic donors that he is leaning toward joining the presidential field but that his decision is not yet final.

The former vice president eulogized the late Rep. John Dingell on Tuesday, saying that the longtime Michigan congressman was one of only a few people he “looked up to.”

“He gave me confidence,” Biden said. “He made me believe more in myself more than I had. John had that special capacity to do so. Because when you are with him, you knew you were with greatness.” Michael Bloomberg (D) The billionaire former New York City mayor is prepared to spend at least $500 million during the presidential campaign cycle to defeat Trump, Politico reported Wednesday.

“That’ll get us through the first few months,” said Kevin Sheekey, one of Bloomberg’s top aides, noting that Bloomberg put $100 million into his last mayoral election.

Last Friday, Bloomberg told The Associated Press that he would reach a decision on a presidential run by the end of February and pushed back on speculation that he would not run if Biden launched a campaign. “My decision doesn’t depend on what other people are going to do,” he said. “My decision depends on whether or not I think I can make a difference.” Cory Booker (D) Booker visited Iowa and South Carolina during his first weekend on the campaign trail as a declared presidential candidate. In Iowa, the New Jersey senator continued to pitch his theme of unity and optimism to voters. In South Carolina, he addressed racial discrimination, saying that the country needed a leader who is “telling the truth about racism, not participating in racist statements, demeaning and degrading people like we’re seeing now.”

In an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday, Booker said that if he wins the Democratic nomination, he will “be looking to women first” when he considers a running mate. “I believe there should be a woman president right now, and I worked very hard to get one,” he said. “We have such a great field of leaders. I think that you will rarely see a Democratic ticket anymore without gender diversity, race diversity.”

This weekend, Booker will be in New Hampshire for six events across the state. Sherrod Brown (D) Brown said that he’s “not ready to jump” into the presidential race during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast Tuesday. But he has given himself a March deadline to come to a “joint decision” with his wife, journalist Connie Schultz.

The Ohio senator rolled out two bills Wednesday with Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill: The first is a “cost-of-living refund,” which would double the Earned Income Tax Credit; the second would lower the Medicare eligibility age to 50, allowing people to buy in voluntarily. Steve Bullock (D) The Montana governor will visit Iowa this weekend. Bullock has said that he is unlikely to make a public announcement about whether he will launch a campaign until later in the spring, after Montana’s state legislative session. Pete Buttigieg (D) The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, joined MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday morning for a lightning round of questions on where he sits on the ideological spectrum. “I consider myself a pretty strong progressive, but I don’t consider the left-center spectrum to be the most useful way to look at our politics right now,” he said.

Last weekend, Buttigieg made his first trip to Iowa since announcing his presidential exploratory committee. While there, he shared his support for “Medicare-for-all” and the Green New Deal (which seeks to make massive public investments to combat climate change) while continuing to play up his military background and executive experience.

In an interview with New York magazine, Buttigieg expanded on how his local experiences could be helpful in the Oval Office, using South Bend’s sewer system as an example. “They’re so important that we make sure they work basically all of the time. Which is why you never think of them — that’s kind of the point,” he said. “But it’s not that different from national security. It’s like I say, the more freedom [people experience], the less they think about it.”

In both the New York magazine story and an interview with CNN, Buttigieg was critical of the social views of Vice President Mike Pence (a former Indiana governor and U.S. House member), saying to CNN that “politically [Pence] is a fanatic and he damaged our city and our state through choices that his social extremism led him to make.” Julian Castro (D) In a CNN interview Saturday, Castro said that even though he knows his candidacy has “special meaning for the Latino community,” his message is intended to be all-encompassing. “I’m also aware that I have to have policy proposals and a vision that includes everybody,” said Castro, who is a former mayor of San Antonio and served as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration. Bill de Blasio (D) De Blasio was scheduled to visit New Hampshire on Friday, renewing speculation that the New York City mayor is contemplating a presidential campaign. But he canceled the trip after a New York City police detective was killed during a robbery Tuesday. John Delaney (D) The former Maryland congressman spent the first half of the week in New Hampshire, his 14th trip to the state. He opened an office in Manchester and attended a “politics and eggs” breakfast at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics — one of 10 events in three days.

Delaney broke with several other Democratic presidential contenders by revealing that he was opposed to the Green New Deal. Tulsi Gabbard (D) During her first visit to Iowa as a presidential candidate, the U.S. House member from Hawaii and National Guard major touted her dedication to service and outlined her views on foreign policy, responding to criticism over her recent comments about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In Iowa, she said he was a “brutal dictator” but said that she didn’t feel the United States should be “the world’s police.” Kirsten Gillibrand (D) Gillibrand toured South Carolina, with seven stops across the state, from Friday through Sunday, including meetings with Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin, who leads the National Conference of Mayors, and a group of women leaders.

The New York Times highlighted Gillibrand’s “feminist campaign” Tuesday, describing how advocacy for women has already become a centerpiece of her candidacy and one that differentiates her from fellow female Sens. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren thus far.

This weekend, Gillibrand is again visiting New Hampshire for a collection of meet-and-greets, walking tours and town halls, after having traveled to the Granite State just two weeks ago. Kamala Harris (D) Harris attracted headlines Monday after she admitted during a New York radio interview to having smoked marijuana in college. “I did inhale,” the California senator said. “It was a long time ago, but yes.”

The remarks came during a larger discussion about marijuana, during which Harris said it wasn’t true that she opposes its legalization. She said that she supports legalization but has “concerns” and that its effects on users should be researched. John Hickenlooper (D) The former Colorado governor visited New Hampshire on Wednesday and Thursday and said he’s going to decide on a presidential run in the next “six weeks.”

During his stop at a Manchester house party, Hickenlooper joked about his unusual surname and how it taught him in his childhood how to “deal with bullies” — a reference to how he would approach running against Trump.

Hickenlooper added that he still wants to learn more about the Green New Deal and criticized Trump’s proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border while also saying that there are “border security issues” to solve. Eric Holder (D) After a speech at Drake University in Iowa on Tuesday, Holder, a former U.S. attorney general, said he would reach a decision on a presidential run in the next three to four weeks. “I’m concerned about the direction of the country,” Holder said. “I think I’ve got some ideas and visions that I think would be useful to the nation.”

On the issues, Holder said that the U.S. was “at a point where we should think seriously about [marijuana] legalization” and that he supports the Green New Deal, labeling it “our generation’s moonshot.” Amy Klobuchar (D) Klobuchar launched her presidential campaign Sunday during a snowy outdoor event in Minneapolis. She outlined her humble political roots and described her motivations for getting into the race. “I’m running for every parent who wants a better world for their kids,” she said. “I’m running for every student who wants a good education. For every senior who wants affordable prescription drugs. For every worker, farmer, dreamer, builder. For every American. I’m running for you.”

In an appearance Monday on “Good Morning America,” the Minnesota senator defended herself against allegations that she was abusive toward her Senate staff, conceding that she is “tough” and “push[es] people” but said that it was because she holds “high expectations.”

She mocked the president after he, referring to her kickoff rally, tweeted that it was “bad timing” that she was “talking proudly of fighting global warming while standing in a virtual blizzard of snow, ice and freezing temperatures.”

“I’m sorry if it still snows in the world,” Klobuchar said on “Good Morning America” on Monday. “But the point is that we know climate change is happening.”

Next Monday, Klobuchar will participate in a CNN town hall in New Hampshire. She will then travel to Iowa on Thursday. Jeff Merkley (D) Merkley is “still exploring” a run for president, he told Northwest Labor Press this week. The Oregon senator denied that his decision will be based on whether Bernie Sanders, whom he endorsed in 2016, decides to run. Seth Moulton (D) After telling BuzzFeed News on Monday that he is thinking about running for president, Moulton confirmed the sentiment publicly Tuesday during question-and-answer sessions after a foreign policy speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

“I’m thinking about running for president,” Moulton said in the BuzzFeed interview. “I’m not definitely running, but I’m going to take a very hard look at it. A very serious look at it. Because I believe it’s time for a new generation of leadership, and we gotta send Donald Trump packing.”

The Massachusetts congressman added that his decision will not be based on who else launches campaigns, saying that he doesn’t “look at this as a horse race.” Beto O’Rourke (D) As Trump held a campaign rally in El Paso, Texas, O’Rourke defended his hometown during a protest march Monday, criticizing the president for his rhetoric on immigration. “We are making a stand for the truth, against lies and hate and ignorance and intolerance,” O’Rourke said. “El Paso has been the safest city in the United States of America not in spite of the fact that we’re a city of immigrants but because we are a city of immigrants.”

Trump mentioned O’Rourke during his event, referring to the former U.S. House member as “a young man who’s got very little going for himself, except he’s got a great first name.”

Politico reported Wednesday that O’Rourke met with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to discuss a possible run for Senate against Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, in 2020. Tim Ryan (D) Ryan is “seriously considering” a presidential run, he said on CNN’s “Erin Burnett Outfront” on Wednesday.

The Ohio congressman, perhaps best known for his 2016 challenge to Nancy Pelosi to lead House Democrats, added that he doesn’t “feel any pressure for any timeline at this point.”

“The country is divided,” Ryan said. “We can’t get anything done because of these huge divisions that we have, and people in communities like the ones I represent … are suffering because of this division. You can’t win the future divided.” Bernie Sanders (D) Sanders is leaning toward announcing a presidential campaign by the end of February, Fox News reported Thursday, citing two sources close to the Vermont senator.

Earlier in the week, amid the controversy that engulfed Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat, over a tweet interpreted to be anti-Semitic, Sanders called the freshman congresswoman to offer his support, The Daily Beast reported. Howard Schultz (I) The former Starbucks CEO continued to face criticism from Democrats over his potential independent bid for president, and Schultz returned the favor, discussing his misgivings with both Democrats and Republicans at a CNN town hall Tuesday. “Both parties today on the far left and the far right are more interested in partisan politics, revenge politics,” Schultz said. “I think we could be doing so much better than we are.”

During the event, Schultz acknowledged that his “business experience is not qualification to run for president.” But he argued that he could bring a pragmatic, results-focused approach to combating problems like climate change and economic inequality. Elizabeth Warren (D) Warren officially jumped into the 2020 race, announcing her candidacy for president at a rally in Lawrence, Massachusetts, last Saturday. Before a crowd of 3,500 supporters packed into Everett Mills — the site of one of the most famous labor strikes that catalyzed massive changes to labor rules — Warren said: “Millions and millions and millions of American families are also struggling to survive in a system that has been rigged by the wealthy and the well-connected. Hard-working people are up against a small group that holds far too much power. … Like the women of Lawrence, we are here to say enough is enough!”

Warren took the stage to Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” before making her official announcement and kicking off a tour through early-voting states. She made her debut as a presidential candidate in Dover, New Hampshire, before heading to Iowa on Sunday. She continues on to South Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and California this weekend. Bill Weld (R) Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts and 2016 Libertarian vice presidential candidate, is attending a New Hampshire Institute of Politics “politics and eggs” event on Friday.

Citing Republican sources, WMUR reported Wednesday that Weld’s remarks at the event will include a “substantial move toward a challenge to President Trump.” Weld recently re-registered in Massachusetts as a member of the Republican Party. Marianne Williamson (D) Williamson, a popular self-help author and one-time congressional candidate, was profiled by ABC News’s “Nightline” this week. She explained her desire to get into the presidential race, despite her lack of political experience.

“I think what we need in the White House is more a visionary than just a political mechanic,” she said. “America is morally off course. … More than anything else in America today, we need a moral and spiritual awakening.”

“We need an awakening of American minds,” Williamson added. “Show me any traditional politician who’s had a 35-year career at that kind of awakening. That’s a skill set. That’s experience. That’s expertise. And I believe it is a qualification that would — you would do very well to put in the White House.” Andrew Yang (D) Yang is spending his own money to demonstrate his proposed “Freedom Dividend,” a form of universal basic income that would pay all Americans 18 years or older $1,000 per month. One family each in Iowa and New Hampshire are already receiving $1,000 per month from the entrepreneur, according to CBS News.

ABC News’s Kendall Karson contributed to this report.