#not pictured in the quote is jane trying to get used to the doctor calling her 'love'

[brokenhardies]

Sixth Jane and Fifteen

"Come on, love! There's a whole world out there just waiting for both of us!"

Taglist

@darth-caillic​ @sterling-writes​ @wonderguards​ @reirvival​ @arrthurpendragon​ @foxesandmagic @eddysocs @superspookyjanelle (want to be added or removed? send an ask or a dm!)

[fresh-prince-of-denmark]

Analysis of the Devil Ending: Who Died and Left Aristotle In Charge of Ethics? (Pt 5)

Hello and welcome back to me over-analyzing everything in Cyberpunk. If you haven’t read my other posts, please read those first! (V’s Mikoshi Poem, Johnny’s Mikoshi Poem, The Sun, New Dawn Fades).

This part took me a lot longer to complete. Not because it was particularly long…it was just painful. Jesus Christ. I hated every second of this ending. That shit hurted.

There were a few shards located at Arasaka’s estate that I chose to skip, as I did not find ant that were unique to the location. The three the game seemed to want to draw your attention to were actually not scattered as shards, they were spoken-word. The only shard I was able to find was a portion of The Odyssey. The other two pieces of literature are In Kyoto, which is quoted to V by the guard to takes her to the hospital room, and (what I believe to be) a reference to Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave. This section is going to be super theoretical. Like, more theoretical than the rest. So bare with me please.

Let’s start easy. This is the poem that the guard quotes at V as he leads her out of the operating room:

In Kyoto,

hearing the cuckoo,

I long for Kyoto

(By: Basho, translated by Jane Hirshfield)

Ten words. What could ten words amount to? The saddest goddamn words you’ll ever hear, dammit.  This poem is a feeling more than a concept. Ever feel homesick when you haven’t gone anywhere? Lonely when you’re around other people? That’s V. This was supposed to be a victory, supposed to be what they wanted. But now Johnny’s gone, scorned and betrayed, and no one they calls seems to even be able to give V the time of day. This was supposed to be a victory, their way of going back to the way things were, getting their life back, going home. But we can never go back, can’t ever erase our experiences, what we learn, how we grow. As Misty says, we should not fear change in of itself, but who we might change into. This just goes to show what happens when we betray ourselves by rejecting our own growth: all that’s left is bitterness and sorrow.

The next day when V wakes, you can pick up a shard containing a section from Chapter 8 of The Odyssey. Now, I’m not too familiar with the Odyssey. In fact, I hate the Odyssey. So if anyone wants to jump in here and add something more intelligent, I’m all for it. The Odyssey is the tale of Odysseus, who has been trying for ten long years to return to his wife and son after the Trojan war. Odysseus is basically listening to a bard remind him of all his Trojan War trauma, and begins to weep, at which time time people start questioning what’s up with this guy:

Say what thy birth, and what the name you bore,

Imposed by parents in the natal hour?

(For from the natal hour distinctive names,

One common right, the great and lowly claims:)

Say from what city, from what regions toss'd,

And what inhabitants those regions boast?

So shalt thou instant reach the realm assign'd.

In wondrous ships, self-moved, instinct with mind;

No helm secures their course, no pilot guides;

Like man intelligent, they plough the tides,

Conscious of every coast and every bay,

That lies beneath the sun's all-seeing ray;

Though clouds and darkness veil the encumber'd sky,

Fearless through darkness and through clouds they fly;

Though tempests rage, though rolls the swelling main,

The seas may roll, the tempests may rage in vain,

E'en the stern god that o'er the waves presides,

Safe as they pass, and safe repass the tides,

With fury burns; while careless they convey

Promiscuous every guest to every bay,

These ears have heard my royal sire disclouse

A dreadful story, big with future woes;

How Neptune raged, and how, by his command,

Firm rooted in a surge a ship would stand

A monument of wrath; how mound on mound

Should bury these proud towers beneath the ground.

But this the gods may frustrate or fulfill,

As suits the purpose of the Eternal Will.

But say through what waste regions hast thou stray'd

What customs noted, and what coasts survey'd;

Possess'd by wild barbarians fierce in arms,

Or men whose bosom tender pity warms?

Say why the fate o Troy awaked thy cares,

Why heaved thy bosom, and why flowed thy tears?

Reading this made me feel just how tired V must be. All this fighting, all this war, and for what? Much like Odysseus, V has been through hell and back (literally, depending on how you see it). And it never seems to end. V has been fighting for so long, yet there’s always something more; the tests the doctor gives her are endless, and they’re always being asked to do more, over and over again, with no results or end in sight. Odysseus is teetering on despair; nothing he does seems to do will ever be enough, just like V. The world will just take and take and take. It’s exactly what V’s poem asserts in Mikoshi; the world cannot be fixed, and resistance is futile. You can’t change how corporations rule the world, and as a protestor states on the TV in the hospital room, the rich have no boundaries or morals, and we are powerless to stop them from taking whatever they want. They can take not only our souls, but our bodies, devour them in order to prolong their own lives. Johnny would, of course, disagree. Even a slap in the face to The Man is better than submitting to a corpo-leash, even if that is the easier path. And in fact, he may be right, since it seems taking Hanako’s offer is the conformist path, and the only one that leads to Saburo coming back.

But Johnny isn’t there anymore to walk the rebel path at their side. No more guardian angel to whisper when they it most to never stop fighting.

There’s a lot more we could go into here with the Odyssey; comparing Arasaka to the story of Polyphemus and the cave, talking about themes of passion vs. commitment, yadayadayada. I hate the Odyssey so that can be someone else’s problem tbh.

The final piece is what the doctor asks V to read as one of their tests. Now, on surface-level, this is foreshadowing if V will choose to stay in their body, or be turned into an engram. It’s laughing at them, really, both pitying and mocking the fact that they believe they have a choice, since either way they’re once again at the mercy of the rich and powerful:

“And it was a sight to behold, he said, how a soul would choose its life; sometimes pitiable, sometimes laughable at times wonderful and strange. For in most cases, the souls made their choice according to the habits of a former life.”

I couldn’t find where this was from, or if it was a quote from anything. But googling it does bring up Plato’s Allegory of The Cave, which I thinks tracks pretty well. I found a quote from this chapter of Plato’s The Republic, which is strikingly similar in meaning. For the sake of my sanity, lets assume that this quote is referencing this one from Plato:

“And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the cave.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the allegory of the cave, it’s a philosophical discussion from Plato’s The Republic. It’s about how human perception is limited, and so true knowledge comes from the self via philosophical reasoning. Much like humans imprisoned in a cave with only shadows as their entire world, we cannot imagine the true world outside the cave until we leave to see it for ourselves.  Those who are freed from this limited reasoning have a duty to go back and free others, subjecting them to the full experience of awakening; both the pain and the triumph it entails. V starts out with a limited perception of things; a surface-level world, never stopping to see the bigger picture, until Johnny comes along and encourages them to question the status quo. In all other endings, V accepts this enlightenment. They challenge Arasaka, and try to follow Johnny’s legacy and Stick It To the Man. Yet if they accept Hanako’s offer in an attempt to return to “the habits of a former life,” they are rejecting this new understanding, refusing to leave the cave and live in ignorant bliss. This, I believe, is where Johnny’s true feeling of betrayal comes from: not because he’s being shredded, and not because he thinks V doesn’t know any better. V learned and changed just as much as he did, and this growth was something they were able to gift to one another. Johnny is proud of his change, proud to be someone trusted by V, proud at a second chance not to fuck things up. When V gives him control to go with Rogue to Arasaka, he’s ecstatic to prove himself worthy of that trust, to prove that he’s changed. Yet V, the person who aided in that change, is now actively ignoring and rejecting their own growth, and thus is betraying themselves. By not using their enlightenment to actively oppose the status quo and rebel, they are choosing the side of the oppressor by default.

Some of her last words if you choose not to sign the contract are to Goro, “You have no idea how good it feels to be free.” But the truth is, V is not free, and now they will never be free. By walking the path they have, they are choosing willful ignorance, stubbornly clinging to the darkness of the cave because it is easier to convince oneself that they are not a prisoner at all than it is to leave the comfort of one’s chains. Either way, they are caged, even if the bars the rich and powerful build around her are clear instead of solid. Her so-called freedom (and knowledge) is pure illusion — shadows depicted on a cave wall.

[captaincravatthecapricious]

Mabel AU- The Letters

@haberdashing

Martin is an at home care giver, trying to reach the Grandson of his latest client.

This is basically a rewrite of the first episode of Mabel.  There really aren't many direct quotes, only a couple very short ones, everything else is mine.

Thanks for reading!  If you want more of this AU, let me know, or just let me know if you enjoyed!   Another fic of some sort or other will be posted next week!

ARCHIVIST: Hello, you’ve reached Jonathan Sims.  I’m not here to take your call right now.  Please leave a message after the beep.  Thank you.  

[BEEP]

MARTIN: Hey, Jonathan, right?  My name is Martin Blackwood, and I’m with Kings County Home Help?  I’ve been taking care of your grandmother for the past six months.  I’m her at home carer?  I know I probably shouldn’t have your number, but I wanted to check in with you.  Nothing’s wrong.  Nothing’s wrong.  Gertrude Sims is fine.  Good, actually, for her age.  Sorry, is that insensitive?   In any case, I’d like a call back, if you aren’t too busy.  Right.  Let me apologize for how I got your number.  I know it’s probably unorthodox, probably breeching some privacy agreement or something… 

[SIGH]

[ASIDE]

Don’t tell him that, Christ what is wrong with you?

[TO JON]

Right.  Well I got your number from my coworker, Sasha, who’s friends with Tim, who’s friends with you.  And he apparently hasn’t heard from you in a little, and would like him to call you back.  He told Sash to tell me to tell you that, by the way.  That was the price for your number.  Sorry for that.  I’m sure you have …things.  A life in the real world and not in this distant and lovely house.  

…Sorry, that was… Anyways, give me a call back when you can, yeah?  Thanks.  Bye!

[ASIDE] 

Christ!  What’s wrong with you… catch sight of one pretty photo… SHIT, right, hanging up.  

[BEEP]

[MUFFLED THROUGH A POCKET] 

[QUIETLY SINGING TO HIMSELF OVER THE SOUND OF KITCHEN] 

…Onions in the paaaaaan.  Why aren’t you hot enough yeeeet?  The water sizzledddddd, but it isn’t sizzling noooow.  

[NEGLECTED PHONE SOUND] 

[REALIZING]

OH SHIT.  SORRY.  

[BEEP]

[CLEARS THROAT] 

Hi, Mr. Sims.  It’s me again.  It’s Martin.  I… I’m trying to reach you… again.  …As you probably can tell.  It’s just been three days, and I would really like a call back.  I just realized I didn’t give a number or like, I know you can probably figure out that you can reach me through this number, but I didn’t say it and I didn’t tell you when I was available, and maybe that’s why you haven’t gotten back to me.  At least I hope that’s why.  I… I can’t imagine not calling one of my Mum’s doctors back.  Anyways, my number is [CENSORED] in case you can’t just ring back or something.  Maybe your phone blocks unknow numbers and you haven’t even gotten this.  Maybe I was listed as private and you couldn’t call back.  Maybe you’re very polite and didn’t want to bother me when you didn’t know my schedule.  I’m available from 2-5pm and in the evenings after 9pm.  Or maybe you’ve got phone anxiety.  I know I do, heh.  I’m sweating just leaving you this message.  

Or maybe you’re just busy.  

Or maybe you tried to call, and I just didn’t get it.  The reception isn’t great out here, as …you probably know.  Given you grew up here.  But anyways I have made sure I can get your message even with the dead-phone zones.  It’s all set up.  So… just needing a call back when you can.  Well, not needing.  But… I’d like one.  Thanks.  Bye.  

[BEEP]

Hi.  It’s me …again.  Just… trying to reach you.  Whatever.  

[BEEP] 

Call me back and let me know you aren’t dead in a ditch somewhere, okay?  Sash says Tim is really worried… And… I might be too.  Not that I even know you.  Not really.  So if you aren’t rotting in some hole somewhere, give me a call back, please?

[BEEP]

Where did you go?  

[BEEP]

Hi.  It’s me.  …I’ve heard a lot about you, you know?  Mostly from you Grandmother, Gertrude.  

[ASIDE] 

Christ, Martin.  He knows his grandmother’s name.  

[TO JON]

Right.  Anyhow.  She’s told me a lot of stories, you know?  She’s actually pretty sharp.  Most of the time, anyhow.  Mostly lucid.  I’m not sure if that’s all because of her medicine or what.  I’ve… I help a lot of old people, at the end of their lives.  And well… when I say she’s sharp, I mean that she is sharp comparatively, and also just remarkably so.  Her words are confident, and considered.  She doesn’t waste words, but she doesn’t shy away from telling stories.  (I’m sure it’s just because she has no one else to talk to.  Not even you.)  But… you’ve stopped feeling like a real person on the other end of the line.  That’s part of why I wanted to call?  I guess?  The longer that it’s been since my first message, the more I doubt myself for calling, and why I called.  Sorry, then, for wasting your time.  Thinking of you more like a book character, than someone with feelings and thoughts and a life.  Someone who I know too much about for us to be casual strangers, even if I am a complete stranger to you.  It just feels like a weird imbalance, you know?  

Also… it’s a bit lonely out here, you know?  Gertrude has a lot of old photographs of you.  None of them are recent.  And I know it isn’t my business, but… never mind.  It isn’t my business… and I get it.  

But… she still has your photos up.  It’s my job to dust them.  So, every week or so, I get a really good look at them.  There’s one of you on the tire swing out back… it’s still back there, you know?  You have mud all over your dungarees.  And in your hair.  Then there’s one… you look about 7?  Your hair is in pig tails, and you are scowling at something off to your right.  I don’t know what it is, and I know I shouldn’t find that kind of adorable, but I do.  And there’s one of you in uni.  You’re flipping off the camera and your hair is short and you’re wearing eyeliner.  You look some odd combination of pissed off and like you’re having the time of your life.  

[ASIDE]

And really, really, really hot.  Christ, Martin, keep it together.  You are literally on the phone with him, and you haven’t even talked to him.  Jesus!

[TO JON]

I.. wish I could have known you then.  That’s the oldest you look in these.  Most of these are pictures of you when you were little.  Mostly just you.  A few of your dad when he was young, and one of your parents.  She’s pregnant, and it’s sunset.  They look so …happy.  Christ, I’m sorry about what happened to them.  I… I didn’t really know my dad either.  

Sorry.  This isn’t about me.  

I’m calling because this place is… spooky.  Spooky like a dark fairy tale.  

Everything here is a bit… magical and creepy.  

This house is old.  Like a museum.  Dusty boxes in the attic, full of treasures and dust the relics of the past, like the Long past.  Not just the past of one lifetime.  The garden is overgrown, despite my best efforts.  Sometimes, Gertrude comes out and helps me garden.  Usually in her chair.  Mostly I just wheel here out so she can get some sun while I work.  That’s where I hear most of the stories about you.  

It’s overgrown with twisting vines and the most beautiful roses I have ever seen, with scary-long thorns.  

I feel like I’ve walked into the setting for a classic.  Like Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice, or hell, even Tolkien.  Or even Grimm’s fairytales.  The original, dark ones.  

It’s… unsettling.  Especially when it’s foggy out.  

The rest of the hills disappear into the fog and the condensation clings to the flowers, desaturated with the thickness of the moisture in the air, and the everything is coated in the most delicate, perfect little water droplets.  

Anyhow.  The reason I’m really calling… are the letters.  

I was helping Gertrude move some things up to the attic.  She’s one of the practical sorts of old people.  She isn’t afraid of her death.  She wants everything to be easy on you, you know?  Make sure you don’t have to go through too much stuff when she passes on.  I’ve lived with a lot of people through their deaths.  It’s nice… making sure no one dies alone.  Making sure they are comfortable.  Making it as painless as possible.  

[ASIDE]

Lord knows my efforts were never good enough for my mother… but if I can help other people…

[TO JON]

I know it’s a little morbid.  But I like it.  I feel… useful.  I’m good at it.  I’m good at keeping up conversations, and at cooking, and cleaning, and providing medical assistance, as needed.  Not that I’m an actual doctor, but I, you know, do have a lot of training.  

Anyway.  The letters.  I was helping her move some stuff into the attic, and bringing down some older boxes so she could go through them and decide what she was ready to toss, when I found them.  This box full of letters.  Hundreds of them.  All unopened.  Sealed with a kiss.  Lipstick red.  Red as dying embers.  Stamped returned to sender.  Slightly scorched around the edges.  Tied in bundles.  Identical envelops.  Identical loose, looping cursive.  All from someone named Agnes?  All addressed to Gertrude.  

That would be fine, I guess?  

But she screamed when she opened it.  An inhuman sound.  

Like the sound was ripped from her.  

And, I have never cared for a more grounded person.  I have never seen her anything but… well not completely calm all the time, but mostly calm, you know?  I’ve seen her sharp, I’ve seen her annoyed.   Heh, half the time it looks like she wants to judge me, but then doesn’t… if that makes sense?  Mostly she looks… like she knows so much more than I do and that she is calm in her knowledge?  I’ve seen so much as a carer.  There isn’t much that rattles me.  Not death, not illness, not panic, but… but this was different.  

After that… she was shaken badly.  Screamed for what seemed like hours, then just stared at me and said “I’m going into the ground for you.”  I… I couldn’t calm her down.  Not until late evening, and I didn’t even have a break because the relief carer was off sick.  

I finally got her to bed, and… I had to take another look.  That’s when I got a good look at the envelopes.  I… I want to open them.  I haven’t.  I know I shouldn’t…. but…. I want to know what could have shaken her that badly?  Someone that stable and grounded, you know?  

Heh, maybe you could call me back and make sure I don’t do something stupid.  And ya know, let me know that you aren’t’ dead in a ditch.  Tim’s started texting me directly now!  He’s… he’s really worried about you.  

Anyhow, I just need to know-

[BEEP]

[CONTINUED BEEPING]

AUTOMATED VOICE: The voicemail inbox for [Jonathan Sims] is full. Please call again later. 

[DIAL TONE] 

[ionlyreadfivebookslastweek]

Bless The Broken Road - 28

Tuesday, June 29th.

Jane, Spencer, Morgan, and JJ were at Jane’s desk, talking and messing around.

Hotch approached the group, letting them know they had a case.

Jane’s demeanor instantly changed. Her body tensed and she remained in her seat while everyone else followed Hotch’s order to head to the briefing room.

Hotch noticed the change and put a hand on her shoulder.

“If you need to stay here for a case, that’s ok,” he told her.

Jane looked up at him before turning to look away with a sigh. “I need a moment to think about it.”

“Just let me know.”

He walked away to the briefing room, leaving her alone to debate what she should do. The last few weeks had been rough. Every case seemed to have at least one detail in common to the case on which she’d been abducted last year. Said detail brought up terrifying memories and flashbacks. It made it hard to go into cases without fearing that more memories would come back to her. Maybe it would do her good to sit out a case.

Jane waited for the briefing to end before informing Hotch of her decision.

“Garcia will update you on all of the information and you can help her from here,” he stated.

“Sir, yes sir,” Garcia spoke. Jane followed her to the roundtable room.

The case was in Boise, Idaho. Someone was abducting and torturing women before killing them and disposing of their bodies. Jane’s mind flashed back to the similar pictures that had been shown on her case.

“Jane? Did you hear anything I just said?” Garcia asked as Jane blinked and shook her head, bringing herself back to the present.

“I changed my mind. I’m going with on this case,” Jane stated, getting up and rushing to grab her go bag before Garcia could say anything.

She managed to catch up with the rest of the team at the jet before they took off.

“Addison, you’ve decided to come,” Hotch stated as she put her bag above the seats. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” she insisted, taking a seat next to Spencer. He gave her a questioning look but she told him, “I’m fine.”

~

Throughout the case, Jane continued to have flashbacks. She projected her anger for the man who had tortured her towards the UNSUB.

Near the end of the case, Morgan and Jane were driving together in one of the SUVs when Garcia called them with the UNSUB’s address. She told the pair that the rest of the team was on their way. As they were the closest to the house, they arrived first.

“We should wait for backup,” Morgan told her. Jane ignored him and jumped out of the vehicle, heading towards the door. “Wait, Jane!” he called after her.

Jane entered the house and found the UNSUB in the living room, holding a knife to the victim’s throat.

“You don’t want to do this,” Jane told him.

“I think I do,” he insisted. “I’m already going away, what’s one more kill?”

Jane tried to get him to drop the knife but saw there was no way to convince him. The sound of the other vehicles arriving distracted him for a moment and she was about to shoot him, saving the girl.

Upon hearing shots fired, Morgan came running in. He helped Jane get the girl out to the ambulance. Once she was getting treated, Jane stepped away.

Reid came running up to her. “Are you ok?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Why did you run in without backup? You could’ve been killed!” he yelled.

“Well, I wasn’t,” she replied defensively.

“What were you thinking?” she stayed silent. “Jane?”

Her mind slipped into a flashback of her and her torturer fighting. She watched it happen all over again. Him slamming her head against the wall. The gun he pressed against her temple. All of it.

Spencer watched her as all of these thoughts went through her mind. He saw that she was on the verge of tears and took her hand.

“Come on, let’s go home,” he told her.

Jane slept on the plane ride home, curling up against Spencer. He kept his arms wrapped tight around her as if he could protect her from her own nightmares.

Upon arrival back to the BAU, Garcia ran up to Jane and hugged her tight. “I heard what happened. I was worried sick! Don’t you dare scare me like that again!”

“Jane, can I please speak with you in my office for a minute?” Hotch interrupted.

Garcia let go of her and Jane stepped back, looking at everyone before agreeing and following Hotch.

After they’d shut the door behind them, they took up seats on opposite sides of his desk.

“What you did today was reckless,” Hotch stated.

“We didn’t have time to wait for backup. I had to go in to save her,” Jane argued.

“What makes you so sure?” Jane remained silent, not wanting to give an answer. “Based on your recent behavior, I’ve decided to order you a psych evaluation for tomorrow morning. Depending on the results, I may have to pull you out of the field for a while.”

Jane shook her head. “I’m not crazy.”

“Of course you’re not. You just need help.”

Jane stood up and exited the office without another word.

Spencer was waiting for her by his desk. He got up when he saw her walk out.

“Let’s go home,” Jane told him as she passed by, heading to her own desk.

“What happened?” she asked, following her.

She grabbed a few things that she had left at her desk before the case and turned back to him. “Let’s just go!”

He gave up trying to get any more information out of her and followed her to the elevator.

When they entered the apartment, Shortstack greeted them happily. Jane dropped her stuff off by the door and headed straight to the bedroom, letting Shortie follow her in before shutting the door, shutting Spencer out.

Spencer went to open the door only to find that she’d locked it. “Jane, please let me in. What happened?”

On the other side, Jane sat on the bed, staring at the door.

“Please, Janey,” he called.

She sighed and got up to unlock it. She opened the door before walking away and climbing onto the bed, letting Shortstack jump up to sit in her lap.

Spencer moved to sit next to her and she leaned into him.

“Please tell me what happened,” he whispered.

“Hotch ordered me a psych eval for tomorrow morning. I’m not allowed back into the field until I’m better.” She put air quotes around the word ‘better’.

“What you did was dangerous and reckless. I was afraid I might lose you,” he admitted. “Why’d you do it?”

Jane took a moment before speaking. “I was thinking about when I got abducted how I wouldn’t have survived if you and the rest of the team hadn’t gotten there when you did. I didn’t want that girl to die while Morgan and I were right outside.”

Spencer kissed the top of her head and wrapped an arm around her. “It’ll be alright. You just need some time to recover from what happened.”

“It was over six months ago,” Jane countered.

“Sometimes PTSD-” “Stop,” she cut him off, tensing up.

“Jane, it’s pretty clear that you’re showing the signs of-”

“Don’t! I don’t want to know a million facts about it, OK?!”

“OK,” he replied quietly. “What do you want me to do then?”

“Just... stay with me.”

“OK, I can do that.”

The three of them stayed cuddled up like that for the rest of the night until it was time to go to bed.

~ The next morning, Jane took her psych eval and was diagnosed with PTSD. They set up counseling sessions for her to attend, starting on Monday, and required that she only worked cases from Quantico until she was determined to be better by another psych eval.

“Think of a this as a good thing,” Spencer told her, trying to console her.

Jane looked up at him standing by her desk. “How is this a good thing?”

“Maybe taking time away from the field and talking with a counselor will help you feel better,” he suggested.

Jane sighed and looked back down at her desk. “Maybe.”

“We have a case,” Garcia announced, coming by her desk.

They dropped their conversation and followed her to the briefing room.

After the briefing, Spencer gave her a kiss and hug goodbye. “It’ll all be alright,” he whispered in her ear as he embraced her.

“I love you. Stay safe,” she told him before he headed out to the jet.

The team worked the case through the weekend, Jane assisting Garcia in her lab. When they arrived back early afternoon on Monday, Jane was in her counseling session.

When she was done, she was met at her desk by Spencer, who stood up right away and embraced her. “Hi,” he spoke into her hair.

“Hi,” she repeated. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too. How did counseling go?” he asked, stepping back to look at her.

She shrugged. “It went alright. It’ll take some getting used to,” she told him.

~~~

Thursday, August 12th.

The team was just nearing the end of a case in Baltimore. Garcia had sent the team the address of the house the UNSUB was located at, meaning that she and Jane should be done on their end for the case. They both moved to gather their things so that they could head home upon word that the UNSUB was arrested. Jane was just zipping up her bag when Garcia received a phone call.

“Garcia,” Morgan spoke as soon as she answered and put him on speaker. “I need everything you can give me on a Darius Marshall.”

“Who’s that? We thought the case was over?” Garcia asked.

“We didn’t profile a partner. The original UNSUB ran out of the house and I chased him but the partner was in another room. He came out and surprised us,” he explained.

“Morgan, what happened?” Jane asked, sensing there was something else.

“He caught Reid by surprise...”

Jane closed her eyes. “Derek.”

“They got in a fight. Hotch came in to shoot the second UNSUB.”

“Derek, please.”

“Reid’s in the hospital. He got beat up pretty bad,” he finally told them.

Jane stood immediately, picking up her bag. “I’m on my way.”

“Wait, hey now girl wonder, you don’t have to do that,” Morgan called after her.

She paused and turned back toward the phone. “Spencer’s hurt. Of course I have to.”

“He’s going to be fine. The doctor just wants to keep him overnight to make sure.”

“I don't care, I'm coming anyway. I'll see you in an hour.”

Jane headed to her car and drove up to Baltimore by herself. Garcia needed to stay behind and help the team find the UNSUB.

When she got to the hospital, the doctor reiterated what Morgan had already told her. Spencer was fine, just under observation for the night. She headed to his room and was greeted by Morgan.

“Hey, ladybug,” he greeted her.

“Hey, how’s he doing?” Jane asked, accepting his hug.

“He’s fine. Just resting right now,” he told her. “I have to get back to the team. I’ll check in later.”

“Alright. Thank you for staying with him until I got here,” she told him before he left.

Jane set her bag down and took a seat next to Spencer’s bed. Just as she was settling in, he began to wake up. Jane leaned forward in her chair and took his hand.

“Jane? What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice groggy from sleep.

“Morgan called me. He told me you were hurt so I drove up here to see you,” she explained. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m OK. Just sore.”

“Where’s it hurt?” she asked.

“My head, ribs, legs...” he trailed off.

“How are your lips?”

“My lips are fine?” he told her, answering in the form of a question.

She smirked and said, “Good,” before leaning in and kissing him.

Late that night, the team was able to catch the UNSUB and head back home. Jane stayed the night in the hospital with Spencer and planned to drive back with him in the morning. Hotch gave the pair the next day off in order to recover.

~~~~~~~~~~

Bless The Broken Road Masterlist

~~~~~~~~~~

Tag List:

@cynbx @neon-deanmon @drw0301bieber @notsosmartbutcute @banananna99 @lydklein1

[taekwondorkjosh]

Avengers: Endgame - Lets make some sense of That Ending

okay, so this is OBVIOUSLY gonna be so fucking full of spoilers lol. I’m tagging it AND putting my discussion under the cut. I’m going to pad this out though, that way any links to this post on discord don’t show any spoilers of any kind. So uh... hopefully this is enough hahaha. Okay so, seriously, spoilers ahead, read at your own risk, yada yada.

Okay, so this is mostly an analysis of how the time travel used to save the universe works in Avengers: Endgame, and a discussion of my various headcanons and interpretations of what that means for the universe(s).

I’m not a fan of time travel. I’m often angered by its use in ways that make no sense. Time travel stories will break their own rules or not lay out enough of them for the narrative to make sense or have any tension. So, first, lets look at the rules we’re given and why they work for me. 

Banner spells out why they can’t just... go back in time and make things alright, in an inspired way. Since I can’t exactly get the quote, ill try and reiterate it here: You have a past. You travel through time and arrive in your own past. Now, everything between the moment you traveled to and the moment you left becomes your future. You cannot change your future and your past with the same action. You cannot alter your own past. 

So, because their current situation relies on Thanos performing the snap, nothing they do can change that. If they go back in time and try to kill Thanos, they must fail. Otherwise, why go back in time? It would be a waste of time and energy, because it must have failed: you already know it did. In short, anything you try to do has already happened in your timeline, or it created a branch to another timeline. Either way, you wouldn’t know you’d changed anything.

At first, this seems like it doesn’t work, and a lot of time travel stories don’t recognize this. They either point it out and break the rule, or they point it out and don’t break it, or they don’t point it out and don’t break it. In the first case, they’re breaking their own rules. In the second two cases, it often makes the entire film or story pointless outside of the enjoyment the audience got out of watching it happen. Either of the first two cases could have been what happened in Endgame, but instead, they give us more information during Banner’s conversation with the Sorcerer Supreme. 

This conversation with the Supreme makes it explicitly clear what happens when someone travels back in time and changes something: They create an alternate timeline. More importantly, the alternate timeline HAS NO EFFECT ON THEIR OWN TIMELINE. So, if they went back in time and killed Thanos, there would be a new reality where Thanos was mysteriously killed by people that appeared from nowhere and then disappeared. When they return to their own timeline, or should I say, their own reality, they would find no changes. All they did was create a branch, a new universe. 

So, now we have the rules. Anything they mess up changes nothing in their own reality, and in fact a lot of it would prevent Thanos from succeeding in the realities they leave behind. Win-win! However, they do promise to return the stones, so those handful of situations end up not happening. So now lets look at what did happen. 

Lets establish some language. The Prime Reality is the reality portrayed in the films and TV shows so far. More importantly, we’re going to assume that things occur as closely to the events portrayed in the Prime Reality media as possible, unless they are prevented from doing so by something related to time travel. Prime Steve is the captain america from this reality, the one who travels through time to return the stones to where they go. Now, what happened? 

First, chronologically, Prime Steve must choose between returning to Peggy in the 1940s, or returning to the Prime Reality when he was supposed to. He chose to stay in 1940, reuniting with Peggy and living an exceptionally long time. This creates a new reality, which we will call the Steggy Reality. 

Next up in the prime reality is the 1970 situation. Prime Steve stole four cases of pymm particles and Stark stole the Tesseract. Then, presumably almost immediately, Prime Steve returned and put the Tesseract back, fixed the crate it was in, and replaced the four pymm particles. Now, we run into a bit of an issue here, but since it is a problem that shows up later, we’ll address it there. Anyway, nothing was really altered so we don’t get another reality.

However, Tony’s interaction with Howard Stark exists in the Prime Reality. They imply this by Tony mentioning he remembers, more or less, something about that specific time and place. Its also implied that Tony is the one that counseled his father on thinking of a different name for his son, and also gave him that pearl of wisdom about money and time. This could potentially break some of their rules. However, Tony did not know that he would run into his father in the base. He did not know that he was the one who gave his father that little phrase. He might not have even realized that he was doing it. 

So this odd hiccup fits with the rules established. Tony did NOT change anything. His influence was already in effect in his own timeline, which was the only other possibility mentioned above. So, in the Prime Reality, Tony showed up suddenly and gave his dad some advice. Cool, moving on. 

So its 2012, New York. Scott, Steve, Tony, and Bruce are in NY during the events of the Chitauri invasion. Bruce goes and gets the time stone from the Sorcerer Supreme, and as soon as he leaves Prime Steve shows up and hands it back. However, this year is the biggest problem area. 

I mentioned a problem with the Tesseract, and it becomes a problem here for the mind stone as well. The mind stone, the Tesseract, and the power stone all had special containment units that are not pictured in the case Prime Steve took with him. So... what happens? Well, one way to handle this problem is for Prme Steve to go figure out how to make the Tesseract, the Scepter, and the power stone sphere thing as part of his journey through time. Another possibility is a retcon where he took those appropriate containers with him. Another one is to use the time stone to reverse time locally around the individual stones, with the help of the sorcerer supreme, to recreate them. That is the second easiest option, and is most likely considering Prime Steve as a character. 

So, lets get back into it. Lets assume that Prime Steve has all the appropriate containment devices, and he’s in 2012. He’s gotta get the mind stone scepter back to Hydra unfortunately. Well, he knows that Loki escaped with the Tesseract in this timeline. That’s not his problem, he can’t fix that. Its a new reality that they’ll just have to deal with somehow. We’ll call this reality Loki Runs Amok. 

So, how does he get the scepter back into the hands of Hydra without them thinking Captain America is an actual hydra agent? Well, I particularly like the idea of him disguising himself as Loki using the reality stone, nanotech, or help from the Sorcerer Supreme. People attack him, they think he disguised himself as Captain America to get the scepter, and lets them ‘beat him’ just enough so that he drops the scepter. So the mind stone is back where it goes. Now, this reality is fun, cuz Loki is TOTALLY going to figure out that someone used him as a scapegoat to drop off the scepter. he didn’t fight Captain America and tell a lie about Bucky being alive or tell Hydra agents he was one of them. So that’ll be fun. 

2013 Asgard is next chronologically. Prime Steve shows up and, almost immediately after Rocket sucks the reality stone out of Jane, he sticks her again. Any memory of Captain America is waived off as a hallucination. Cool. 

Now, Prime Steve heads to 2014 and drops off the power stone. Quill likely wakes up and is like ‘man I must have hit my head pretty hard.’ There’s no reason to believe that this would change too much, not really. So we don’t get a new reality where Quill never gets the power stone off Morag. 

Okay so, Prime Steve then goes to Vormir and replaces the Soul Stone. I don’t see any reason why he can’t just.... do that. I really like this cuz like, he gets to talk to the Red Skull again. How cool is that??? Now, that’s all the stones! they’re back where they go and Prime Steve leaves 2014 for the 1940s to create Steggy Reality. 

Something else happens here that is super cool though. In 2014, the entirety of Thanos’ army, Gamorra, Nebula, all of it, just disappears into Prime Reality and is Snapped out of existence. That’s one interesting reality. So the Sans Thanos Reality is born. This is the only one where Thanos failing is guaranteed. Cool. 

And that brings us to the present. Prime Steve did not show up when and where he was supposed to. I’m going to assume that Prime Steve didn’t exist in the Prime Reality as an old man. Its made explicitly clear, again and again, that Peggy waited as long as she could, married someone else, etc. The world would not have progressed the way it did if Captain America had been in it. So I refuse to believe that Prime Steve got back to that moment anyway but the way he was supposed: he put on his time travel dohickey and pushed the button at the ripe old age of Fucking Old. It wasn’t meant to keep him out there as long as it did, or maybe it was damaged, and instead of appearing on the platform he appeared off to the side, or he appeared a little early. I particularly like the idea of him appearing on the original quantum tunnel and just being like “aw beans” and walking out of the avengers base while everyone else is doing their own thing. He got to a safe distance and waited for things to settle, for himself to leave, and then met up with everyone as he did in the film. Either that, or he asked Doctor Strange to send him there. 

Alright, so there’s that! I hope my ramblings made sense! I’m probably going to write some more stuff on ideas I have about the individual realities. This was fun! 

[motiveandthemeans]

Jughead was never one for silly love quotes, but he now understood the whole ‘when you’re in love you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams’ thing. From the minute he woke up to the minute he fell asleep and all the restless hours in between his only thoughts were Betty, Betty, Betty.

 It had been a week since he’d had pizza at Betty’s and they’d fallen into a semi-routine. Each morning he’d text her good morning and wish her a good day at work, around lunch time they’d text a bit back and forth, make plans for the evening. 

 Monday they’d grabbed dinner at Pop’s and then made out in his truck for three hours. He had to admit, it never got old making out with a cheerleader in his truck. 

Tuesday, Betty had the day off. They’d spent hours in her garage working on her grandfather’s old truck. She looked so cute in her overalls and converse Jughead couldn’t help but kiss her fervently on the tailgate of the Ford jalopy. 

 She’d had Wednesday off too, they’d gone to a double feature at the Bijou and well, considering they were the only two in the whole theater...they readily took advantage.

 Thursday, Betty cooked them dinner after work (a mouthwatering pot pie) and they took Huck for a long walk. By the time they’d returned to her house, eaten, and opened a bottle of wine, Betty passed out halfway through Spider-Man. He’d gently laid her in her bed, kissing her forehead and left a note on her bedside table informing her that he’d call her tomorrow. And that she was cute when she snored.

 Friday night, Betty got off work and met him at Zigler’s to watch The Oriole’s and The Red Sock’s game. Betty had worn black scrubs that day with the Oriole’s emblem on the left breast. Needless to say, she was sour when they lost. 

 And now today: Saturday. Betty was off for the day, but he knew she had promised to take the twins to a kite festival in Greendale. 

 ‘Good morning, Betts. Try not to make anyone cry kite fighting this morning.’

 He smirked sending it. Two minutes later, she’d responded. 

 ‘I make no promises, the twins watched a YouTube video on it and I’ll admit to being that paranoid aunt.’

 ‘Make sure to send me pictures. Still on for tonight?’

 ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘I mean obviously yes. Just curious is all.’ She added the little upside down smiley face. 

 The bashful grin just would not leave his face. 

 ‘I don’t know, nothing as exhilarating as kite flying that’s for sure.’ 

 ‘Ohhhhh I don’t know about that, I’m sure we can come up with some creative ways to entertain ourselves.’ 

 Jughead smirked. 

 ‘Now Betts, tread carefully. I’m a man of action.’ 

 ‘So Clue or Scrabble?’

 The Serpent King let out a loud laugh. 

 ‘You don’t stand a chance at beating me in Scrabble.’ 

 ‘The game is on, Juggie. Got to go, twins have spotted funnel cakes and I’m bound by a promise I made to always buy them pastries.’ 

 Oh man, he was in deep. Way deep. 

By 11:00 Jughead wanted to put his head through a wall. 

 “What do you mean you fucked up the deal?” He snapped at the four Serpents before him. “It was a simple deliver and collect. You take the iPhones to the cellphone store and get the money. How can you fuck this up?”

 “The Ghoulie’s were everywhere, Jug!” Sack defended. 

 “They’d already shown up and delivered on a laptop bust they made-“

 “I don’t care.” He said emphatically. “Find another buyer, I want those iPhones gone by the end of business today.” 

 The four nodded, slinking away and out the door. Jughead turned to Joaquin. “What about the weed?”

 “All good, sold like hot cakes over at the local college.” Joaquin said. “Also some rich Northside dude, Hiram Lodge, asked to have a sit down. Said he has a business opportunity for us.”

 “Lodge? What’s a big wig like him want?” Sweet Pea asked. 

 “Probably the usual: beat up the guy that’s shagging his old lady behind his back.”

 “How much did he offer?”

 “Gave us $30,000 up front.” 

 Tall Boy let out a whistle. “I reckon that merits a sit down.”

 Jughead nodded in agreement. “Get me a file on him, I want to know everything.”

 Jug’s phone pinged: Betty

 It was a picture of Betty and two red heads about 10 years old (obviously Madison and Mason) floating in a hot air balloon. They all looked excited, though the boy looked a bit green but was obviously putting on a brave face. 

 ‘We got bored of kites’ she tagged it. 

 Jug let a smile slip on his face. 

 ‘Like I said, adrenaline junkie.’

 “Ahhhhh, I know that face.” Sweet Pea chided, shoving his shoulder playfully. “Nurse Betty strikes again.”

 “Shut up.” He replied, though he was still smiling. 

 “Serious about this girl, huh?” Tall Boy said. “That’s good. ‘Bout time you settled in.” 

 “Yeah, a Doctor no less.” Joaquin teased. “I don’t get it, how has a guy who’s never had a serious girlfriend land a Doctor of Nursing Practice and I’m still banging closeted Northside dad’s in khaki’s.” 

 “Because he has self-respect?” Sweet Pea offered. Joaquin lunges across the bar smacking his head in jest. 

 “So when are you bringing her back around man? Are you ashamed of us?” Joaquin continued. “I mean, she knows everything, right?”

 “...She doesn’t ask.” The leader replied, running his hands through his hair. “Which...is fine.”

 “She’s not ignorant, Jug. She’s gonna figure it out.” 

 “I know, I know...”

 “Well, the good news is she’s only here for a few more weeks anyway so you don’t have to worry about it for too long.”

 “Wait, what? What are you talking about?” Jughead interjected.

 “Betty, her contract is up in like 10 weeks or something.” Joaquin said. “What did you forget she’s a travel nurse?”

 Jughead sighed. “Uhhh...Yeah. I guess I did.” 

“Hiram Lodge, President and CEO of Lodge industries. Originally from Brazil, educated at Oxford, married to a smokin hot mamacita named Hermione, parents are from Mexico but she’s a natural born citizen of the U.S., she grew up in Riverdale and moved to New York after graduating high school with honors she moved to the Big Apple. They met at a restaurant she was working at in Brooklyn. She attended City College and got a degree in business. They have one daughter, Veronica, who came to Riverdale in her sophomore year of high school after her father was incarcerated for a few months for running a Ponzi Scheme. There, the heiress met her now fiancé Archibald Andrews. She attended NYU, he went to Julliard-“

 “Wait, Archibald Andrews?” Sweet Pea interrupted. “As in Archie Andrews? I love that guy! He’s going to perform at the VMA’s this year. Think Hiram will get us tickets?”

 “I think fucking not.” Tall Boy guffawed. 

 “I’m not sure it’s smart to mix business and family dynamics.” Jughead resolved.

 “Errr, well, you see Boss...this is where it gets...sticky.” Joaquin sputtered. 

 “What?” Jughead groaned in exasperation. 

 “Veronica Briseda Lodge is Elizabeth Jane Cooper’s best friend.” Joaquin explained. “Betty grew up next door to Archie Andrews. In fact, according to the engagement announcement her parents had posted in The Register, Betty and the Sherrif’s kid were the one’s that set them up. She’s the maid of honor and some guy named Reggie Mantle is the best man.”

 “Veronica. Betts talks about a girl named Ronnie, she sometimes calls her V. Well...fuck.” 

 “Hey I know that guy, Mantle!” Guy, a prospective new Serpent exclaimed. “He was QB for Riverdale High, dude was a tool if I ever met one. I remember that Andrews kid being cool though. Doesn’t his dad own a construction company?” 

 “Yeah, Andrew’s Contacting or something.” Tall Boy said, turning his gaze to Jughead. “Your old man used to work with him back in the day.” 

 “Huh, small world.” Sweet Pea mused.

 “Small fucking town is more like it.” He growled in response. 

He could make it work. Jughead was confident that he could find a way to date Betty without disclosing that her best friend’s father’s illicit activities with the Serpents 

 He could also work with the fact that she’s leaving in January. No biggie. They would figure out, live in the moment until they did. 

 What he was positive he couldn’t hide was the black eyes, busted lip, and bruised ribs he’d gotten in a brawl with Ghoulies. 

 And the fact that he was seven hours late for dinner at Betty’s.

 The rival gang attempted to crash the meeting with Lodge, a flamboyant way of trying to prove they were the one’s to be doing business with. 

 Malachi had sucker punched him out of nowhere and after that it was all a blur of fist and kicks till the Serpents were victorious. 

 He sat in his office at the Whyte Wyrm, using a pack of peas in lieu of an ice pack and scrolled through his phone.

 Two missed calls and three texts from Betty.

 ‘Dinner’s ready!’ Read the first at 6:47

 ‘Jughead it’s getting pretty late. Are you still coming?’ 9:40

 ‘Night.’ 11:30. 

 Well, there was no escaping it now. The honeymoon bubble had officially burst. Reality had set in and Jughead needed to face the music like a man. 

He didn’t feel that guilty showing up to her house at a quarter till two knowing she had Sunday’s off for Brunch with friends and dinner with her family. 

 He rang her phone as his truck pulled into her driveway. 

 One ring. Two rings. Three rings. Four-

 “Hmmm, h...ello? This is B-Betty (yawn) Cooper.”

 Even in her sleep she answered the phone as if she were at work. 

 “Betts, it’s me. Jug.”

 “Jug? W-what time is it?” She asked pulling her phone from her face. ��Christ it’s nearly 2 a.m.”

 He winced. “I know, look, I’m outside your house. Can we talk, please?” 

 He could sense her pursing her lips in thought. 

 “Please, Betts. I can explain. I’m sorry about tonight, so so sorry.” 

 “Alright, Alright.” She sighed into the phone. “It’s better this be done in person anyway, I suppose.” 

 Jughead jumped from the truck, racing to the door where he waited patiently for ire of a scorned Betty Cooper. 

 And he’d grovel till dawn if that’s what it took to keep her. 

[demigodofhoolemere]

I was tagged by the lovely @unwillingadventurer, thank you both! <3

The Rules are simple - answer the questions, then tag other Whovians to get to know each other better/find new people to follow, message, etc. If there are any questions you don’t have an answer for, feel free to skip it!

Doctor you started with: Time to admit the shame: at first, I skipped Nine. My sister and I already knew David Tennant from Harry Potter so we decided to start at The Christmas Invasion. We watched most of series 2 until we knew we were about to lose Rose and then we went back for series 1 to have more of her and better understand her history with the Doctor. Of course, fell equally in love with Nine as we did Ten, so that was kind of crushing to only have him for one series. But anyway, yeah, my first Doctor was Ten.

Favourite Doctor: Such a difficult question, because I always love the Doctor equally the same every single time, just in different ways. Choosing a favorite Doctor is always going to be out of the question. I suppose if I were forced to pin down a “my Doctor”, I have to say William Hartnell and/or Peter Capaldi. One is near and dear to my heart, he’s so lovely and he undergoes some of the most beautiful character development, and I think he very much embodies who the Doctor is at his core. Twelve feels like such a perfect amalgamation of every one of his past selves, and Peter brings such life and love to the character. He’s very much one of my comfort Doctors.

Favourite Companion: Alas I can't choose between companions either, but I do tend to have periods of loving certain ones especially. Aside from the 60s era companions, because they're all on my mind constantly and I love them all so much that putting them on a list feels almost unfair, a couple of favorites at the moment are Nyssa and Bill. And Sarah Jane, of course, is Sarah Jane, I love her.

Favourite Episode: To be fair, I haven't seen the entirety of the classic series yet, so my favorite episodes are very 60s-biased, and probably always will be lol. There are many that I love a lot, so I'm going to say The Romans as a tiebreaker (but to name a few, Marco Polo, The Chase, The Gunfighters, The Enemy of the World and The Mind Robber come very close). From the modern series, my favorite always has been and always will be The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit.

DW OTP: Ian and Barbara, for sure. I have some other ships that I really really like but these two are always gonna win.

Favourite line/quote: “It all started out as a mild curiosity in a junkyard... now it's become quite a, quite a great spirit of adventure, don't you think?” Perfectly sums up the show. That night in the junkyard began it all, and it's come so far since then.

Favourite Character that isn’t the doctor or a companion: Though I personally tend to call her a companion, at least honorarily, I know she's technically not one, so my answer is Jackie Tyler. I always loved her.

BrOTP: Everybody?? I don't know. I really love friendships and Doctor Who has a long history with an abundance of them, each lovely. Just to have an answer, though, I'm going to say Steven and Dodo.

Favourite DW fic (if you have one): I don't actually read much fic. I love anything that @unwillingadventurer and @lissy-strata write. I used to read a lot of Ten and Rose stories but I can't really recall them.

Favourite DW fanart/blog (if you have one): There’s so much great fan art that I love, but I generally don't know who it's from lol. I’ll go ahead and say @lissy-strata again. :P

If you could pick anyone to be the next Doctor, who would it be? (Why, if you feel like explaining): I’m generally pleased with whoever they choose, since they always bring their own specialness to the role. If I had to pick someone it'd be Andrew-Lee Potts or Alexander Siddig. On the note of fancasting though, whenever they next introduce a new incarnation of the Master, I really want it to be Paul Darrow.

If you could pick anyone to be the next companion who would it be? (Why?): No preference in actors, really (though I have a secret dream of them casting me...). Character-wise I'd love seeing a companion from another time again. I’d love to see more alien companions too, but we presently have Nardole filling that particular role so I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't do another alien for a while. I’m still hopeful for a companion from the past or future though. I miss that dynamic. 

Favourite fan theory: Well, most fan theorizing is rooted in the modern era, and I typically try to stay away from that part of the fandom because it's pretty messy, so I'm not very well versed in the fan theories. The ones that come to the top of my head are 1) Nine travelled without Rose when she turned him down and that's where all of the pictures of him are coming from, since he seemed to be somewhat newly regenerated when he first meets her and reacts to his own reflection for the first time, and he was lonely and came back to make the offer again. It makes sense and I kinda like it. The other one I've seen, which makes me laugh every single time, is 2) Rory is secretly the Master. I’m pretty sure this theory got dumped a long time ago but sometimes I still find the remnants of it and it cracks me up.

Tagging @afirewiel, @hanchewie, @marauders-on-gallifrey, @missys, and anyone else who just wants to

[swearronchanel]

As per request, 2.05

You guys have been so freaking sweet and kind  to me with your feedback since I started making these ridiculous posts, it’s insane but I love it!❣️ I literally started these as a joke because my one friend who watches call the midwife didn’t pick up the phone (and bc I was under the influence whoops hahaha it happens) but now I have so much fun posting every week! I’m sure I won’t stop these any time soon (what will I do when this series is over until Christmas? Yikes lets not talk about it yet)  Anyways @marialujan22 requested I rewatch and post for 2x5 & shit it’s been a while since I’ve watched series 2 but I couldn’t say no! Besides Im in a good mood because I have 10 days till spring break & only like 8 weeks left in the semester so here we go ..

idk if I’m mentally prepared for this

THE BIKE SONG I LOVE IT

“Somewhere far away, scientist we’re working on a magic pill, rumored to make pregnancy a case of choice..” Hell yea birth control, deff a magic pill in my opinion

Crazy that it took 3 series for the pill to become a thing & then there was still lame ass government guidelines

Jenny Lee! lol I often forget about her sorry not sorry, I liked her but she left. ya no importa

I love how “mature jenny” still narrates even though her character is never even mentioned anymore #letmenarrate lol jk I like Vanessa Redgrave’s voice

“Meanwhile other scientists were trying to send humans to the moon” fuck yea Hidden Figures

If CtM went up until 1969 that’d be lit, like the episode on mad men when they watched the moon landing! Just replace them with nuns and nurses and babies & replace the liquor for tea 😂

Shit I’ve said typed so much already

SISTER MJ💕 I wanna smack myself she’s brushing her teeth & I thought of that stupid toothbrush song from last week’s episode kill me

Nora’s pregnant again uh oh

Cynthia! SISTER E! Jane! It’s been so long

My bby Trixie 💕😍 I miss her pin curls! But now she’s serving those 60s looks so I’m here for it all

“Take that off this minute before you go to hell” LMAO TRIX YOU CANT TELL KIDS THAT

lol who am I kidding I would’ve said the same

I love sister Monica Joan, id quote everything she ever says but that’s too much work

Vicar’s wife? But who was the vicar?

LMAO WAIT DOESNT SISTER MJ FAKE A HEART ATTACK??

YES SHE DID IM DEAD I LOVE HER, WELL IT WAS LIKE ANGINA BUT IDC STILL FUNNY CAUSE SHE DIDNT WANNA GO

PRECIOUS SISTER BERNADETTE 😭💕

I STILL CANT BELIEVE MY BBY SHELAGH WAS A NUN, ITS SO STRANGE TO GO BACK AND SEE HER IN THE HABIT, LIKE YOURE PREGNANT NOW, WITH DR TURNERS BABYYY!!

anyone else really wanted to know how she was going to tell Sister Julienne “um i was already done with being a nun and now im love sick, I can’t stop thinking about Dr Turner so  I gotta ditch this habit”

damn I feel so bad like she did not want another baby & had no choice but to deal with it

No Jenny, tea is not gonna help right now

And heres the lady that scammed her

How much is 2 guinnis ? Idk how to spell that u already know I’m an ignorant American

Did she really tell a married woman keep her legs closed? It Doesn’t even matter if she was married or not like who are u anyway?? I would’ve bitch slapped her too, good for u Nora

Sister MJ saying her horoscope was right, we are the same😭

Wtf is spotted dick? Also I laughed because I’m immature Lmaoo

Sister J eating the pudding, she knows how to get to sister MJ 😂 I love them

Trixie teasing Jane about the Reverend lol aw

“I can’t knit I had a heart attack this morning” ME TRYING TO GET OUT OF THINGS

8 kids in one bedroom though yikes

Cute and classic bedroom moments 😭💕

“Naughty version of eggnog” like coquito? Lol nah, coquito is the bomb

IM CRYING SISTER BERNADETTE LOOKING IN THE DOORWAY

THIS BREAKS MY HEART EVERYTIME

THEY FUCKING CLOSED THE DOOR ON HER, MY BBY. I WANT TO HUG HER 💔💔💔 she deserves the world

Who is this irrelevant ass vicars wife? “Cherrio”

I’m so sorry Nora

Ew wtf a rat just bit the baby?

“Just tell me what you want sister” SHE WANTS YOU DOCTOR

THE WAY THEYRE LOOKING AT EACH OTHER OMG IM SHOOK

WHAT THE HELL TIM WHY DID YOU RUIN THE MOMENT ?!

sister MJ wants to roll bandages, make it happen! lol I love that Cynthia and Jane unwrap them all for her 😭

Aww i love babies !! but that one with a funny nose uhh

SISTER BERNADETTE BLOWING THE WHISTLE AND CHEERING 💕 MY HEART SHE IS SO ADORABLE

Aw I wish Trixie could have another scene going through old pictures and maybe share old stories with the new nurses💔 unlikely but you know I can hope. SHE DID HAVE THAT PHOTO OF HER AND CYNTHIA ON HER MIRROR LAST SUNDAY💕

“I’m a woman on a mission” beatrix, light in my life

Curly locks lol, when I was younger I  was called Shirley temple and when I dyed my hair I was called Goldie locks.. mind u that lasted into high school 😂 I’m staying blonde for good though, I don’t think I can pull off anything else

DONT GO OUT WITH HIM TRIXIE, HE’S TRASH

Laura Main’s angelic voice ✨👼🏼

who am I kidding she’s an angel

you know what would be fun and a dream? to go out with the ctm cast and get drunk and take trashy snapchat videos singing

Gin & a hot bath??

Trixie looked him up lol, good move

BUT HE’S STILL TRASH and an asshole

Pickle knife ?

again, this irrelevant vicar’s wife? vete ya

Everyone thinks Sister MJ is senile but she knows what’s up with Sister Bernadette..

“..but is all blank sadness and continued tears”  MY HEART💔 sister Bernadette/Shelagh has spent the majority of this show crying/being sad/distressed ugh!! Laura Main plays is beautifully but I CRY!? Let her be uninterruptedly happy please 😭💕

she (and helen) ruined me tbh, I used to have dignity

Is Jenny really naive or is she just pretending not to understand??

SEE SISTER BERNADETTE IS ON SCREEN AGAIN & IS UPSET

“I almost wish I was physically ill..” okay bRb CRYIN. THIS IS WHY I CANT WATCH THESE OLDER EPISODES I CRY TOO MUCH, I DONT LIKE TO SEE HER UNHAPPY

Remember when I started the show and didn’t know it was gonna ruin my life? Or before I grew attached? Yea me neither lmaoo those were the days when I thought downton killed me. I Didn’t know what was coming 😂 still love downton though rip #downtonmoviepls

Knitting needles?? aye dios mio

HA GREMLIN TIM AND JACK

Again how much is a gunniea and how do I spell it? I could google it but I’m busy here

She was willing to sell her wedding ring and risk her life for an unprofessional abortion. DO YOU SEE THE ISSUE? This isn’t just the a period drama either. Shit is real

“Are babies more valued because they can survive or do they survive beside they are more valued?” good question sis

lol Jane was so sweet and just bounced with no word

AT LEAST I KNOW WHERE SHE WENT THOUGH, THANKS FOR THAT NZ CUT SCENE

Trixie being a babe and getting ready to do her nails 😍💕 I wish I could do mine well but I’m trash and so I pay to get them done

The cross cutting in this scene is crazy but so well done (& yes look at me using real terms lol, I took a Music in film class last semester and had to know editing techniques 😂, I did fairly well too)

I really don’t know how she survived this

My bby trixie looking gorgeous as per usual. I love her so much, Helen u kill me

NO COÑFIO TRIXIE, HE’S NO GOOD

Haha why did I not remember the Gone With The Wind reference? Cynthia was so cute, I miss her carefree and happy

FRECO MOVE YOUR DAMN HAND, YOU ARE TRASH.

HE’S FICTIONAL BUT ID STILL FIGHT HIM

my poor bby😭💔 it is not your fault , he’s trash!! But this moment between the nurses warmed my cold heart

“Matrons in charge, virgins of iron” 😭😭

Aw Earth Angel playing, ✨🎼 I highkey pop to 50s/60s pandora stations

Jenny yes it’s illegal but do you think that matters rn??

TIM AS MAID MARION LMAO

Sister Bernadette looking at Dr Turner ah omg 😭they’ve come so far.

It’s not your fault Jenny but you should’ve told someone

Sister B & Tim won 👏🏼

LMAO ALL I CAN THINK OF IS THAT POST “WOAH CALM DOWN IM JUST TRYNA DATE YOUR DAD”

and she’s down, and the glasses flew

“You’ve hurt your hand” “well I’m sure there’s no need to amputate” ah sister b/shelagh lowkey has some of the funniest lines she just slips them in and people miss them !!

Here it comes ..

THE MOMENT..

“Would you like me to have a look at that?” UHM YEA

No but seriously I can barely remember what I thought when I first watched this but I knew something was gonna happen because a nurse can handle her own damn cut & well you know, she was in love with him

HE KISSED HER HAND. A fucking doctor kissed a nuns hand people, how scandalous & this was THE MOMENT I KNEW I WAS CORRUPT AND WAS GOING TO HELL, I AM SATAN I WANTED THE DOCTOR TO KISS A FREAKING NUN ON THE MOUTH LIKE WTF WHO RAISED ME? MY MOTHER WANTED IT TOO SO IDK BUT THIS KILLED ME, LIKE R.I.P HERE LIES GABBY, I WAS IN THE GROUND DECEASED. I’m actual trash. Someone dispose of me in the proper bin #recyle

for real, this is when I really knew that I was never going to love any other show like this and I allowed it to ruin me

BUT HONESTLY WHAT THE HELL WAS HE THINKING? THATS A BOLD MOVE

BOLD IN GENERAL BECAUSE YOU DONT KNOW IF SHE LIKES YOU BUT BOLD x1000 BC SHE IS A NUN, YOU KNOW MARRIED TO GOD, VOW OF CHASITY AND ALL THAt??

What if she would’ve freaked tf out or told sister Julienne? I don’t even know. I’ll just be grateful for how things turned out

“At this moment I only know I’m not turning my back on you because of you but I’m doing it because of him” AHHHH, DONT WORRY BBY GOD LOVES U AND UNDERSTANDS YOU LOVE HIM AND THE DOCTOR, LOSE THAT HABIT AND GO PROPERLY KISS PATRICK 😭

Sister MJ judging the baby contest is the purest thing & I need it to cleanse my disgusting soul that wants a dr to get with a nun #notsorrythough

“In Nonnatus we were good at tending other’s wounds and there were times I felt we were all each other’s children..” brb I’m crying I love that they’re like a family��😭💕💔

I’m so happy they didn’t kill Nora and she actually was happy in the end. I really wasn’t sure for a moment (obviously when I first watched lol)

“ Free reliable contraception came too late to help her, but in time the scientists triumphed. Her daughters and granddaughters lives remained transfigured, long after man left fleeting footprints on the moon.” Vanessa always knowing what to say in the end.

Lets see how the pill is going to be reintroduced this series, I’m interested  in how it’s going to play out.

I’ve said that so many times though so I’ll be done

The End.

[booksummarieswithkatz]

Shadowed Flame by R.J. Blain, a summary

Okay, terms to know can be found here.

Now that that’s out of the way let’s get on with the story.

Matia Evans is the living the dream. As the twenty-something heiress of NYC-based Pallodia Industries, she’s made a name for herself as the beautiful, silent, and business-savvy adopted daughter of CEO and founder Ralph Evans. But of course, all protagonists have to have at least some issues, so Matia is totally colorblind after Ralph killed her mother and nearly killed her in a drunk driving accident as an infant. While her disability makes it nauseating for people to view the slide shows she creates, she can also see smoky projections of people’s emotions. This is most important in how she sees the Vice President of Pallodia, Chuck Harthel, whose aura is black as pitch and oozes towards others as if trying to infect them with his filth.

At the beginning of the story, Matia and Ralph are headed to a business meeting in London (much to Matia’s surprise and chagrin, as her shyness turns her into a stuttering mess and is not appreciated by suspicious airport security). As Ralph and their driver, Sam, chat and get their luggage situated, Matia heads into a shop to grab a camera to support her addiction for photography. One day she hopes to be able to see color, and when that day comes she will look through every picture she’s ever taken and see the world she missed. But in the meantime, she finds herself face to face with a super hot guy, sweaty and shirtless. She takes a good, long, lascivious look, and then snaps a bunch of pictures of him (conveniently not capturing his face), then runs like a startled rabbit through La Guardia airport’s security and into the terminal.

After getting some coffee at a restaurant in the terminal, she calls her dad to check up on his progress through security. Ralph’s only answer is “run for the terminal gate and wait for me” before hanging up. Surprised and worried at his cryptic message, Matia heads towards security to find him. Then the bombs go off.

Awakening in the rubble, Matia immediately begins ordering the other survivors to begin rescuing people while they wait for the emergency services to arrive in an effort to ensure her father isn’t in the rubble. After six hours of leading the survivor’s efforts, in heels no less, Matia finally collapses as the blood loss, smoke inhalation, and exhaustion stops bothering her and starts killing her. It is then that the sexy shirtless guy shows up again, his name is Ryan by the way, and picks Matia up to have a heart to heart and do some first aid. He gives her a bunch of water and tells her all about how much he loves nature and quiet places. It’s pretty romantic, until she stops talking and starts seizing. Luckily for us, Ryan is actually a Fenerec, and he’s been putting wolfsbane in the water he gave Matia, as he takes a gamble and attempts the ritual to turn Matia into a Fenerec too. Her will to live is strong, and the wolfsbane keeps her newly acquired wolf docile and prevents her from transforming in the middle of the survivors’ rescue efforts. That would have been awkward.

So a week later Matia wakes up high as fuck in a hospital, when she is finally lucid enough to tell the doctor her name, she gets upgraded from Jane Doe to primary hospital funding donor and super VIP. Ralph shows up in roughly twelve seconds as a nervous wreck who thought he’d have to bury his baby girl. They have a nice touching moment about how the equipment Pallodia donated is what made Matia’s recovery possible, and then they get an assload of drugs to take care of Matia’s shiny new asthma and possible lung cancer.

The father-daughter duo head home and then promptly to work the next day, Ralph because he hasn’t been working while Matia was missing, and Matia because Ralph would never leave her by herself and home. Once there they find out the surprise, vice president Harthel has actually called a meeting of the board, without telling Ralph about it and in a different room than they are supposed to do them in. Matia convinces her father to hold off on crashing the party until she gives him the signal, and then she hides in the attached kitchenette to hang with the caterers and listen in.

Harthel performs the incredible stunt of shoving both his feet in his mouth so far they come out his ass when he claims that Matia is dead and Ralph has stopped coming to work in his grief (he spoke with both of them that morning) he also wants to elect himself “temporary” CEO and lays out his special-emergency-totally-not-preplanned restructuring program for the company. Matia shows up and goes:

Then Ralph appears and smacks Harthel with the corporate by-laws and fires the bastard. But don’t worry, he’ll be back.

So the board decides that Harthel needs a replacement and they all unanimously vote for Matia to do it, probably as vengeance for tossing a pitcher’s worth of ice water on them to get their attention. Matia finds out Harthel’s secretary has no qualifications and was given an unlivable wage with no benefits in hand written check by Harthel. Which, other than being horribly illegal, is also kind of a dick move. So Matia marches down to HR and starts flipping tables to find out who let that happen and then promptly has to leave to go to a meeting Harthel had scheduled with the New York branch of the company she was supposed to visit in London before. After a delightful Italian dinner with the fabulous company of nervous businessmen who though Pallodia was going to buy them out and dismantle them, Matia has a chat with the head of the group, Dalton Sinclair, about how awesome her business skillz are. That’s when a car rams into Mr. Sinclair and Matia gets knocked out from behind.

She awakens tied up in a dingy lodge in the middle of who knows where in the company of, you guessed it, Chuck Harthel. Who in his anger at being denied control of Pallodia and getting sacked, has abducted her and begins to beat the shit out of her, taking pictures and videos to send to Ralph. After several days, a broken hand, and a copious amount of bruising, Harthel gets a phone call from a mysterious man (spoiler! it’s Ryan) that threatens to skin him alive, tells him exactly where he is, and says he’ll let Harthel live if he leaves Matia behind and gets the fuck out of there. Harthel, being a little bitch, runs like his ass is on fire, but not before dropping Matia in a bathtub and turning on the water to drown her.

Matia awakens, again (this is becoming a habit for the story), to find she has somehow become a puppy and is torn between staying in the tub and drowning, or trying to get out and deal with the raging inferno the rest of the cabin has become. She decides to stay in the tub, and then crawls into the wreckage to find shelter from the blizzard outside among the coals. Not long after, a man finds her and puts her in his coat, carrying her off to his own lodge a few miles away. The mysterious stranger (Ryan) plops her into the sink and washes out all the blood and ash from her fur and she finally becomes lucid enough to tell that the mystery man is Ryan! (Sooooooo surprising, nobody thought that the hot shirtless guy had no purpose in the story at all, right?) Ryan reveals that she is in fact a wolf pup and not a dog, bandages her broken paw, and makes dinner.

Once she’s been fed, he helps her to change back to human and dumps her in his jacuzzi to soak, because he decided that the jacuzzi was more important to hook up to his emergency generator in blizzard than any other appliance. After she is all relaxed from the jacuzzi, they have a chat about being a Fenerec, and Ryan reveals that he is a rare submissive wolf, and a rogue working for the Inquisition. He also reveals that he hates the idea of being in a pack, because he likes freedom and shit, to which Matia says she’d never restrict his freedom, and he is so touched by this that they fuck. Also they’re mates now. As one does.

The next day, Matia wakes up to the delightful feeling of Ritual Sickness, where newly turned Fenerec vomit and shit themselves uncontrollably for three to five days as they go from human to superhuman-wolf-monster. Once that mess is over with, Matia gets up early to get some food (2500 calorie diet turning into a 25,000 calorie diet does that to you) and smells strange wolves outside. Behold! Three Fenerec in their wolfish guise appear before them! It’s Dalton Sinclair and co. (remember them?) they are most displeased with Ryan; you see, turning someone against there will is a no-no, in a public place is a bigger no-no, both at the same time is a H U G E no-no, and Ryan did that, he also then used Inquisition resources without permission to perform an unauthorized operation to rescue Matia, then took her to his house without telling everyone. But they are mates now and she’s cool with it and nobody noticed and nobody died, so it’s all good; they just have to catch they Fenerec that blew up La Guardia. And also kill Harthel since Pallodia secretly hires a bunch of Fenerec and witches on behalf of the Inquisition, so he’s in some deep shit.

Matia starts growling and getting really cranky because her wolf is over protective of her new submissive mate, and doesn’t like that he will let Sinclair just boss him around. Sinclair decides that she is an amusing puppy and heads down the mountain with his wolves to stock up on enough food for the five of them. While they’re gone Matia and Ryan (whose actual name is Dexter Cole, and sounds like the villain from an oscar-bait movie about slavery) turn into wolves, trash the place while they play, and then go hunting. When they return, they get put in timeout for ruining the furniture and shift back in Ryan’s room, and when they reemerge (after Matia tries to seduce Ryan again) they find two new wolves and also Ralph. So Ralph demands Ryan take his shirt off because, and I’m quoting here, “’I only want the best for my daughter, and that includes everything.’”(p.2682 fucking kindle locations man) So after a not terribly funny no-homo joke, it’s revealed that the two new wolves are Matia’s grandparents, that Matia is a fire witch, and that being a Fenerec is repairing the damage to her eyes so she is starting to see in color. That last one happened earlier but the scene wasn’t important enough to mention.

So they make Matia turn into a wolf again, have a moment about how adorable she is as a puppy, then stuff her down Ralph’s shirt so he can snowmobile down the mountain. After a long conversation that sums up what everyone should have already known, they get back to New York and head to Ryan’s apartment there. Matia finally gets to shift back to human, and promptly eats fifteen extra-large meat lover’s pizzas. As one does.

Everybody makes plans to catch the rogue Fenerec terrorist cell, which consists of abducting Matia, hiding her from Ryan so he turns into a nervous wreck, and then tricking the rogues into thinking they can get Ryan to join them. Needless to say, Matia hates this idea and Ryan agrees because he’s too submissive to say no, or something.

They bring Matia over to an Inquisition base and tell her all about how Ryan has been a certified rogue for some sixty years (remember how she’s like 20? yeah.) and that he needs to retire and join a pack before he looses control and gets put down, Matia agrees (because him being a murder hobo for the Inquisition means she won’t get to keep him tied to her bed) and also agrees to join Sinclair’s pack, because the alpha of the pack that owns most of NYC is a little bitch and doesn’t deserve anyone cool in his pack (though he is the alpha of her grandparents but whatever). Matia meets two super sassy old witch twins, who teach her how to use the monitoring equipment to listen to what’s happening with Ryan, they also get to explain how fire extinguishers work as Matia’s witch powers are coming in hot and she starts smoking and her hair catches fire when she’s mad. Eight uncomfortable hours of listen to Ryan breath later and the twitches (twin witches) convince Matia to take a fucking nap already and lock her into a nice hotel room that just so happens to have silver bars beneath the walls and across the windows.

Matia awakens (again) with the horrible feeling that something is terribly wrong, its her mate bond (which gives you psychic powers now? Idk) and the twitches reveal that Ryan was shot because (A+ if you guessed it) Harthel is in command of the rogues! So they lock Matia back in the room and tell her to chill the fuck out while Sinclair’s pack (who happen to be ex-black ops members of the Inquisition) head over to his last known location and try to extract him.

But Matia is the main character and main characters can’t follow simple instructions, so she melts the silver on the window, burning her hands in the process, and breaks the bulletproof glass with her fists before jumping out the window, turning into a wolf (without help for the first time) and using the mate bond to track down Ryan. She comes to a seemingly abandoned aircraft hanger, lights the sucker on fire, sneaks in, grabs Ryan’s body, drags him out into the woods, then goes back in to kill some rogues. The rogues are in the middle of being berated by Harthel, they notice Matia, do nothing, and happily watch as she attempts to rip the bastards face off, she gets thrown off him in the scuffle and before she can go back in Ralph shows up and shoots Harthel right in the face. Ralph for dad of the year.

The rogue pack immediately surrenders to Ralph and Sinclair’s pack behind him, and the alpha asks for mercy for his pack in exchange for his fool cooperation because Harthel was a sorcerer and they could not deny his direct orders. The Inquisition says that’s mostly ok, but the alpha, his second, third, and fourth, as well as their submissive (who was the bomb technician) were summarily executed for their crimes. Also, because happy endings are what books about young women are meant for, Ryan is old enough as a Fenerec that he survived a bullet through the heart, and once he’s back in action they have some wacky attempts at flirting while they are high off their minds on painkillers. The End.

[sarenthestalwart]

WAITING, a short story about the waiting room for the afterlife

I opened my eyes, and there I saw a light at the end of a tunnel.

           I blinked my eyes twice more, then twice again, and the tunnel around my vision blurred away, and I saw the light was coming from a small pen.

           “Right eye’s reacting normal. So is the other one.” The man in the all-white outfit said. “You successfully crossed over. Congratulations, ma’am.”

           Huh? Is this a doctor’s office? Why is it so monochrome? Everything in here was so sterile and blank. Not a picture, not a decoration, not one little hint of color.

           “Oh. Looks as if you’re still suffering from the whiplash of crossover.” The white-jacketed man told me, only confusing me more. “Ahem. You are Miss Jane Dodge. Unemployed, on disability, volunteer extraordinaire, and your kidney failure finally caught up to you after ten years of dialysis.”

What?

“And yes, this is the afterlife, Miss.” He said casually. His tone was only possible for people who’d spent decades seeing and doing what would’ve been odd, abnormal, or out-there to anyone on the outside. Like a coroner who eats pizza and burgers after they just got through examining a body.

I didn’t speak a word when the woman, just as plain and non-descript, helped me off the table that was a solid block that rose from the floor. I was dead? I am dead?

“I know this is a shock, Miss Dodge, but this is in fact the hereafter.” The doctor-looking man told me again. It was odd, but I felt no drop in my stomach or like a weight of a ton had toppled on top of me. It could’ve been that it hadn’t sunk in yet. Although more likely, maybe I’d already accepted that I’d die. I’d been fighting my own body for years and I’d been kept alive through a machine that cleaned my blood and a hope that happenstance would deliver me a new kidney.

Is this really what the land of the dead looks like? It’s so… I’d say plain but plain is plastic, plaid dinner cloths and wall paper that’s the solid yellow of a rubber duck. Ice-flavored popsicles had more than this setting. It was more like, devoid. Empty, bare, and vacant of any signs that someone was or will have been here.

I didn’t comment though and continued to follow the woman away from the room, on to a hallway and toward another door. It had no knob but it opened regardless by a force unknown and not seen, by me anyway. This is where I came into a relieving sign that I’d not be left to solely the company of the glacially dispassionate woman guiding me.

The room was gigantic, the size of a football mega-dome. It was packed, wall-to-wall, or horizon-to-horizon, from left to right. “Go on ahead and choose a spot to get comfortable, ma’am,” the quote-on-quote nurse told me in a voice as hollow as an echo-chamber. “Someone from one of the ladders will call on you.” She then closed the door the moment she ushered me out onto the floor of this oceanic titan of a room.

With no further instruction or clue, I just followed her last piece of advice and waded through the sea of dissimilar faces for a place to try and get situated. I recalled that the woman mentioned a ladder. What ladder? I don’t see any ladders. Forget ladders, I don’t see anything resembling furniture. Everyone I listlessly passed by were either standing up or sitting on the floor. I spotted one man in jacket that was layered with three shirts underneath laid down in what I believed was a concentrated effort to nap.

I was so lost in my torn focus to locate a hint for either an area to recline or the supposed ladder that icy woman mentioned I never noticed how close to the opposite end of the room I had gotten. That’s when I saw the doors. They looked like the sliding doors from the original Star Trek show, and they had this emblem on them that looked like two solid, parallel lines going top to bottom, with nine more lines running perpendicular like bars between those two. A ladder, basically.

“You’re not going to find anything, ma’am,” a man’s voice called out from behind. I whipped around to see the man, who was barely past the thirty-something milestone, with dark hair and an olive complexion. He had a hard-boiled tone of voice and a face to match, but his eyes looked as if he’d switched his old ones for a softer man’s. “Only way that door opens is if the operator on the other side hits the button.” He told me.

“Uh,” I began. Not my first choice of words, but this place wasn’t exactly the first thing I thought of for the afterlife. “What… what are these doors?” I ask finally, once my lips decided to follow one of my brain’s mess of one hundred other questions.

“They’re the way out.” He said simply.

Out of here?

“And not out right away.” He added, like he’d told that to several other people before me.

“So… those go…” I started once more, pointing upward to the ceiling. Or faded dome of light above everyone in here’s head, would be more accurate.

“Up to where the Lord is. Or down into the fiery pit.” I turned and saw another man. This one had a kept appearance, his salt and pepper hair combed back with gel and a pair of thin, straight eyebrows that obsessive grooming had to be responsible for. As for his face, I could see no blemish and he had the kind of cheeks that men with practice in flashing a trustworthy smile could only have. He looked incredibly recognizable, especially as I looked over his suit.

“Wait. I’ve seen you.”

“I bet you have, miss. Ted Leo,” he said, introducing himself, showing off the white clickers in his chompers. “Speaker for the Almighty, a messenger of the good word, entrepreneur of the gospel, and voted most likely to succeed in his senior class.” Now I knew who he was. He was a televangelist. He died in a plane crash on his private jet. The Soaring Prayer Machine, he called it in a TV interview.

“Got anymore titles for yourself, Leo,” the first man addressed neutrally, unmoved from his spot. Ted Leo’s expression, or his response, was not neutral.

“Yes,” the preacher said pointedly. “It is, gentleman. And a gent always introduces himself, Mr. Deangelo.”

“Forgive him, Miss,” Ted Leo spoke, his attention back to me. “Some people just do not have enough patience.” I didn’t care, honestly. I turned back to the dark-haired Deangelo.

“Um, how long will it take to get called?” I asked him, referring to his comment of the departure from the room not being immediate.

“Good question, ma’am,” another voice chimed in. This time it was another woman’s voice. She was a little brown in the face, from a tan, more likely than anything else, and she had this lopsided haircut that hung over the right ear and left the other exposed. She also had on a hospital gown and was skinnier than a sunflower’s stalk. Cancer. Had to have been cancer. “Don’t ask for specifics on how long some of us have been in this stadium. He,” she pointed at Deangelo, “might as well have just gotten here but I swear we’ve all been here for the same long length of time.”

“Stephanie,” another female voice chimed in, this one clearly more elderly. “Don’t have such a rude tone of voice.” She scolded.

“Jesus, Shirley. You and I are both dead and you still treat me like I’m fifteen.” She responded back.

“Don’t blaspheme, Stephanie!” Shirley scolded again, harsher. The younger woman simply didn’t respond and turned back to me.

“Steff,” she firmly introduced herself to me so that the older Shirley heard it. “Shirley over there’s quote-on-quote favorite, and only disappointment.” The mother, Shirley, shot who I think was her daughter a look as if something foul had passed under her nostrils. “Don’t mind the hospital gown.”

“I was actually a doctor when I was alive. Irony of ironies, I get killed by liver cancer, the very thing I was trying to avoid.”

“Sorry about that,” I offered, although she seemed to wave it away.

“And it looks like you already met Deangelo and the one-balled bandit over there.” She pointed her eyes toward Ted Leo, who was quick to straighten the suit he had on at the remark.

Oh wait, yes. Ted Leo was a prosperity preacher. Those TV-host priests that told his watchers that surrendering their savings to him would mean double in “rewards” for them. I suddenly had the taste of dried vomit in my mouth.

“Jane.” I finally responded back in intro, and that’s when I got a friendly grin from Stephanie. Or Steff, as she seemed to prefer. “What was that about… just got here.”

“Exactly what I said. I got in here,” she gestured to the entire room. “And short and dark over there arrived shortly afterward.” Deangelo shrugged his shoulders when I looked over at him.

DING

I swung my head at the sound and the door I’d inevitably stepped in front of slid open. Inside the cubicle room behind that door was a man dressed in all white, his head as smooth as a polished cue ball, and smirk that looked plastered onto his lips.

“Miss Marguerite Delany.” He called, voice powerful and tone even. The woman he called for, a lady in a pink tracksuit, jogged forward and entered. “Toward your destination,” the indiscernible man told her, loud enough that I heard it, and the door shut. I turned back and I saw a moment of frozen anticipation from every face I could register. Like a perfectly caught picture of apt attention for something that had been promised to every subject in the photo.

“And like that,” Deangelo spoke up as everyone, almost torturously, tore their eyes off that one door. “The waiting game resumes again.” He finished.

“Is there a list, or someone to talk to?” I asked, although part of me was measuring up that there just might not.

“Sorry, ma’am,” yet another new voice chimed in, another man. This one had a smoothness to it that could nearly convince someone to use a gravel road as a slip and slide. And when I saw him, his trimmed and deliberate appearance said he would attempt to sell ice to an Eskimo. He was similar in attire to Ted Leo, but I saw the tiny American flag pin on the lapel of his suit jacket. “I’m afraid there’s no such person.” He filled in.

“Now, I don’t try to tell divinities how I think they ought to run things,” the sly man went on, “but I do make this promise. To petition the Man Upstairs for one of those things. Can’t be right, making all these good people so nervous as they wait.”

“That your new campaign slogan, Bobby?” Deangelo asked, voice about as passive as a supercar driving by at a hundred miles an hour.

“I’ll have you know,” the man started, as politely as possible. “That I am in fact, concerned for the well-being of all.” That statement got a scoffing blow of air out of Steff, or maybe Deangelo. “And I do not simply say things, for the sake of currying favor.”

“Miss Jane, say hi to Bobby, the blowhard, Wilkinson.” Deangelo told unceremoniously, with no shame. “Former state governor, and former shoe-in for the House of Representatives.” Geez, how many people would I know down here? Wilkinson, infamously, had an aneurysm during a townhall meeting after he initiated a shouting match with a PE teacher. Tumbled off the edge of the stage and got impaled under the chin by the bayonet of the model musket he brought with him.

“Ma’am, a little advice. Do not, at all, mix yourself with those. That call names.” Wilkinson said to me. Normally I don’t dislike anyone, but Wilkinson, he was someone who made me want to cross my index fingers over each other in an attempt to ward him off. I turned my body away like just having it face him would cause me to catch whatever repulsed more than some away from him.

“Mister… Deangelo?” He looked at me, ears open. “If it’s not too much… how did…”

“How did I kick it?” He finished for me, and I nodded. “Gas leak in my house.”

“Couldn’t smell the damn stuff because I’d gone… nose-blind, I think. I turned into Robert Duvall from Apocalypse Now.”

Oh yeah. My grandfather worked the pump at a gas station and got so used to gasoline stink his smeller couldn’t smell the stuff anymore.

“It wasn’t the fumes that killed me, though. It was because one of my yuppie neighbor’s kids decided to shoot a firework into my house.” Deangelo than made an exploding noise, including a gesture for emphasis.

“Whuh… what made them do that?” I asked, appalled.

“I had a sign in front of my house that told anyone passing by that I was a veteran.” Deangelo pulled out a pair of dog-tags from under the shirt he had on, jangling them on those bead-like chains. It read ZANCA, DEANGELO, 822-46-7475, O POS, CATHOLIC. “And that explosive fireworks could set off an episode. For some reason assholes take politely asking to not be assholes as a reason to be bigger ones.” That filled out the numbers in the picture for me.

“I’m so sorry,” I apologized.

“What’re you saying sorry for? Unless that little punk-ass grew his hair out and they stacked another foot of shit on top of him, you sure weren’t the one who blew me into this place.” Deangelo defined to me. He sure had a potty-mouth. Then again, I guess being dead is a bigger issue than someone possessing a colon-cave, as my dad called it.

DING

Another toll of a ghostly elevator bell called out, and the door in our pocket slid open, revealing the weirdly grinning man inside. “Mister Van Lowe.” He inquired, that voice of his reverbing like his mouth was encased by an invisible tube. A black man in a pastor’s collar and colors passed us and plotted to his fate.

“Praise be to you, good brother,” Ted Leo signaled to the passing preacher, thinking perhaps that they might of one mind and one soul, joined in their equal professions.

“Bless you, Mr. Ted,” The man responded, his spread evenly and with no implications. “And I pray you now see the light, since it seemed you didn’t while you were alive.” Ted Leo’s smile suddenly cracked as one corner seemed to droop, like a comedian’s when he saw his joke wasn’t landing. The black man in priestly garb then continued, entering the cubbyhole of could be called an elevator to the final destination, and he was gone as curtly as that last woman. Once more, all the anticipating watchers turned away in disappointed after a second of held-breath and dashed hopes.

“Good Lord’s a good tease, I tell you,” Ted Leo japed, attempting to step back up in his pep.

“I can wait. I’ve been patient and I know my place is assured,” Shirley guaranteed in a gone over tone.

“Sure, it is,” Steff commented severely. The quality in that statement of hers told a dozen tales that fit into a how-to manual of being a family. And the way I heard Shirley blow out an insulted fume of breath told a dozen counters to those tales. “Did he tell you at those AA meetings you never went to?”

“Why do you do that, Stephanie?”

“What? Ask questions? Point out bullshit?” Steff bit back.

“Say those miserable. Cruel. Things about me!” Shirley indicted.

“You know they’re all true.” Steff retorted. “And not some of them or most of them. All of them. That’s why you hate it when I say them.”

“Stephanie, I might not have lived the most virtuous life, and yes I slipped a few times but I always remembered what God taught me. Unlike you.”

“Did he teach you to drag around your three-year-old baby girl so hard she broke her arm that one time?” Steff criminated, but Shirley looked prepared to put up her fortifications.

“That was an accident, and you don’t know how awful I felt for doing that!”

“Did he also say somewhere in the scripture or some hidden passage that you could get more glazed than a rum-cake? And then throw things at your flesh-and-blood’s head when she told you to please, please stop?”

“Okay,” Shirley conceded, “I drank a little and… yeah, I lost control sometimes.”

Anyone with at least one working ear could tell that whatever guilt she truly felt was tepidly acknowledged. That was more evident when she blurted when I listened to her blurt another defense.

“But the Devil had a grip on me!” Shirley screamed. Steff irked at the screech with a head-shake.

“I can’t be held accountable for that because it wasn’t me,” Shirley pleaded, but it was more like a plea to herself more than it was at her daughter. “Not me, just some other, version of me. I told God of my sins and he forgave me.”

“Really?” Steff dissented in a hurt tone full of old pains. “Did he also happen to forgive you when I was seventeen, you locked me in my room for two weeks straight just because I gave the girl I was friends with a kiss on the cheek?”

“Whuh… Stephanie that act was more than an innocent peck,” Shirley opposed. “The look in your eyes, there was desire. Terrible desire for something unwholesome.”

“It was a kiss on the cheek!”

“And that would’ve led to more. I did what I had to, to keep you from making a choice you’d regret. Just like my sister had done a year earlier.”

“By locking me in my own room?”

“Stephanie, you’re twisting things again.” Shirley attempted calmness but Steff bared an intensity that wasn’t having it, and I don’t think I would either even with all my politeness.

“You shut me away in my room for two whole weeks! I had no light because you put those blockers on my windows for no reason!”

“The neighbor was a deviant, and she produced a deviant daughter that got you to kiss her.”

“I needed to go to a therapist for three years because of everything you put me through! Those two weeks was just an example!”

“I didn’t want to do it!” Shirley altercated. “I didn’t! But what was I supposed to do!?”

“Understand.” Steff countered. “Love your daughter like you’re supposed to.”

“I say she understood perfectly.” Ted Leo asserted all of a sudden, pushing himself into the argument. “Any mother who sees her daughter about to fall toward those unnatural temptations.”

“Will you cork it, Teddy.” Deangelo intruded. “There’s no choir for you to preach to anymore.”

“And to you,” Ted Leo responded, not even losing the pizzazz he could have brand-named in life. “I say, you no longer have any basis to be rude to anyone, seeing as we are all due to meet our judgment.” Deangelo flung a dismissive hand at the small screen sermonizer, and Ted directed himself back towards the quarreling daughter and mother.

“Miss Stephanie,” Ted Leo charmed. “I see there is resentment between you and your mother.” Steff sucked on her teeth to express her attitude of the understatement the tube-box pastor stated. “But she is your mother. The reason you exist. I can tell she was scared for you out of love and sought to aid you.

“Your sister, was it, she had the same afflictions as your daughter?” Ted Leo asked Shirley. The older woman gave a solid, affirmative nod.

“And she bit at me like a bear when I voiced my disapproval.” The strained mother relayed, and the video-taped minister nodded in comprehension.

“You gave her a bible, correct?” Steff capitalized, answering for Shirley.

“She stood at the door and made me read Genesis 19 and Leviticus 18 and 20.” She bitterly recalled.

“Perfect,” Ted Leo congratulated. “Those passages spell it out plain, simple, and beautifully, thank you Jesus.” I don’t know if it’s due to me being itchy in the foot or a restless mind, but listening to Ted Leo talk like that was rustling my jimmies.

“The people of Sodom chose to turn to relations against the natural way of things and social oppression and injustice reigned, by God. And I know and do not believe that the Good Lord can get any clearer than the word ‘abomination’ to clearly say what activities such as laying with another of your sex are.” He articulated.

“Didn’t Jesus…” I began. I had no chicken in this fight, and some of my cowardice toward unrest in torrid discussion appealed to me to withdraw. But no, I’d placed my prized cock down and I pushed myself to let it crow. “Didn’t Jesus also say that a camel has an easier chance of passing through the eye of a needle than for… for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven?” Now Ted Leo’s eyes were on me now. His smile didn’t break but his brow knitted.

“Forgive me, Miss Dodge,” he set up. “But, while I do know my scriptures, thank you Jesus, and I am glad to see you know it well, I am also afraid that I have failed to understand the purpose of that interjection.”

“She means,” Deangelo spoke up from behind me. “You got about as much to worry about as the nice dyke you’re aiming your crosshairs at.”

“Well then, mister, by God. Why not humor this old prophet and enlighten me?” The televangelist put that out like it was a dare.

“Here’s your enlightenment; you’re a thief.” Deangelo visibly declared, leaning his whole body forward to punctuating each word of his statement. “A fraud. A shyster. A scam artist. A clown with fake promises and an even faker doctrine of gospel. That good enough an enlightenment for you?”

The preacher’s grin, one that had been a sign that he’d won at a competition that everyone else wasn’t in on, went into a dimpling straight line after Deangelo had concluded.

“That is an awfully bold accusation, Mister Deangelo. I am honest man and I thank Jesus for such strength of character.” Ted Leo parried.

“Honestly greedy.” Deangelo matched. “You stole honest people’s money.”

“I took donations.” The televangelist played.

“And put them right in your pocket.”

“If you follow the paper trail, my son,” Ted Leo continued, getting Deangelo to give the man an embittered scoff. “You will find, by God, that those seeds went to good use. The International Fellowship, the Sacred Heart Priesthood, the US Heritage League, the Assemblies for the Impoverished, and good golly Jesus the Jesuit Aid Foundation, mm-mm.” The preacher flourished his finish with a bow, but Deangelo wasn’t impressed from the stare I could see him giving.

“And, uh, what about that luxury worship hotel?” The dark-haired opponent put forth. “The one you promised your congregation? I think, oh, how much of it was finished before the Hillwater Herald started looking your way. One… Yes, just one.”

“There were some complications roadblocks, forgive me, oh Lord.” Ted Leo dismissed. “We needed to keep the construction contractors for their effort, thank you God.”

“You raised two times more than what was needed, wise man.” Deangelo gobbed. “And you exceeded capacity for that luxury resort spot, too.”

“We got more than what was needed.” Ted Leo just shrugged and pouched his lip, as though it was as meaningless or as unimportant as a accidental brush in a school hallway. “If God was watching, and I know he was, thank you Lord, he would applaud them for their generosity.”

“And you exploited the Hell out of them.” Deangelo shot back. “Just how much did you actually give to those charities, hm? One? Maybe, two… Pennies? And how’d you like that limousine, or that ski resort, or that plane of yours?”

“Son, by God, if you do not cease—” The preacher warned.

“Oh,” but Deangelo continued, not threatened at all. “And how did that court case treat you? You know, the one that indicted you for wire fraud and tax fraud after three current employees admitted that you’d pocket the money in prayers requests and not actually read them?”

The Preacher got real quiet all of a sudden. The kind of quiet that’s required when you need to think of a good excuse for being caught in not just a lie, but a fib to bury the facts.

“Son. You have to realize,” Ted began, rationalizing clear even at that start, “that a ministry, God forgive us all, can’t run itself on good words and faith alone.” I fought to not scoff at those words, but Deangelo did my suppressed, desired action for me.

“And I don’t recall God, praise him, ever forbidding his servants from indulging in the good things every now and then.”

My abhor started to rise, and I thought to myself that I could not recall Him condoning the practice of profiting off of the problems of vulnerable people. The preacher rarely just went for small gifts and little fulfillments. It was skiing trips, hunting expeditions, a garage with four luxury rides that all had six digits to the price tag, and house too big for just him alone.

“I gave them something to believe in,” he continued to dig in. “They gave and gave and could, could… Well so what if I took a bit off the top?” He snapped, his preacher’s bravado dissipated and supplanted by a man who was a defendant in the court of mankind. “I was spreading the word of God. Shouldn’t I get a little something for that hard work?”

DING

We were silenced again. Another door opened. The gigantic quiet that washed through the waiting area was so palpable it was like the lack of noise was its own person, patiently and religiously waiting for what the herald of the other side would say. The Operator called out, “Stephanie Bridges.”

A pause, a frozen moment came and went, and I turned to Steff. I was seconds behind everyone else in the circle I’d found myself in. But I was only one she made eye contact with. She began her walk toward the Operator, looking at Shirley one final time. Without saying it, Steff was bidding her mother goodbye. A goodbye for good. Then when she began her departure again, she looked back at me and Deangelo. That look was a praying glance. An invisible deal with a divine that she might see us later. Death makes people from every corner of the spectrum become long-lost friends it seemed.

There was one less of us now. Really though, I thought of us in two halves. I and Deangelo, and then the other three. It was a dehumanizing distinction, I knew, but I couldn’t keep myself from dreading that if Deangelo was the next to leave, I’d be the last to stand eyeball to eyeball with and outside of the ring from the others that’d be left.

“I normally avoid speak ill of somebody,” Wilkinson suddenly spoke up after keeping his lip zipped for most of the exchange, “when they’re not in the same room to defend themselves. But I do say, it’s best that one negative influence. Is now departed.” I had every reason to commentate by simply looking the man in the eye, but I kept to looking at Deangelo who provided the action for himself.

“I may have said it once, perhaps even twice or three times, or even hundred,” Wilkinson prattled. “But it’s those kinds, those kinds of people, that make the everyday, average, good person hesitant to be as such.”

“Amen,” Ted Leo agreed, so did Shirley as she silently raised her hand and nodded with closed, contemplative eyes to praise the notion.

Deangelo blew a raspberry at the trio and shook his fist in front of an area that made me avert my eyes. Shirley’s mouth dropped open like it was a stone in water and her eyes bugged out. I’d have been offended at the gesture too if I wasn’t too preoccupied with finding some comedy in that face.

“And what, exactly, was the whole purpose behind that? That obscenity?” Wilkinson asked.

“Oh, sorry,” Deangelo insincerely apologized. “I thought people from Asshat-Vania knew the gesture of congratulations for speaking out the ass so well.”

“Sir. Does every sentence that falls out of your mouth need to splice in a cuss? Every single time?” Wilkinson implored.

“Aw, did my freedom of speech hurt your fee-wings?” Deangelo mocked in a baby-voice. “I thought you were all about letting people say what they wanted.”

“I. Am, sir. Like when I condemned NPR for removing Patrick Pearl from their lineup.”

“And bravo for defending your endorsement, Bobby.”

“That is completely, totally disconnected.” The governor nevermore diverted. “But, even if, though it was gladly appreciated, Patrick Pearl had not spoken for my campaign for the proud, venerated position of Senate, I would have still been on his defense for merely, simply expressing his thoughts, ideas over the tragedy at Kennedy High School---”

“By thoughts-ideas,” Deangelo interrupted. “You mean crack-, no, splintered-pot conspiracies.”

“Opinions are protected under our constitution, sir.” Wilkinson steadily countered.

“And how do you think the parents of those murdered kids react to that? Or those whack-jobs that chased them around the country saying they lied it ever happening?” Deangelo snipped.

I remember that wretched event. A crazy with a handgun… no, crazy would give him an excuse. Angry and spiteful is what he was. A hateful monster who had to show everyone just how much hated by turning a pistol on a bunch of kids who never did nothing to warrant the thought of execution.

If my brain still works like it did in life, I recall that this Patrick Pearl was a pundit that had enough raging bile to fill a lifetime supply of chemically-questionable energy drink. He accused the parents of those poor children of staging the massacre to push an agenda. Then his listeners went out on personalized crusades, though I’d argue that Pearl personally spear-headed their operations, and harassed the grieving parents to force a confession out of them. A confession that their departed children are un-dead and admit they’re part of a conspiracy.

Crazy. Insane. Inhumanly uncaring and blindly hateful.

“Those people, who you have described as whack, were apprehended by police. And, I am for, no matter how disgusting, the expression of beliefs. By all.” Wilkinson punctuated. “It was written by our Founding Fathers and it’s justly defended by our troops.” He spoke. All he was missing was the podium.

“Thank you, Senator Suck-up,” Deangelo replied sarcastically. “For being such a stand-up guy and having such a boner for the military.

“In fact, seems to me that you’d would have loved for there to be nothing but boners in the ranks.” Wilkinson coughed like he’d taken a sip of an imaginary drink and was caught off guard once Deangelo said that brazen tidbit. Then the passed-on veteran went on.

“But what am I talking about, you’re a consistent man. So, you must’ve had a good reason to propose that standing during the national anthem should be a requirement.” Oh, now that I could not forget. There was this wave of protest started by a 49er boy against police brutality and how much the departments were not doing to, at the minimum, reduce the frequency. I recall that a boy, Jalal Holmes, did just that at a football game for his high school. My neighbor Dwight, nicest man I ever did know, and with a comedy routine that consisted of fart jokes, stood in front the boy’s house and set fire to the jersey he owned that had Jalal’s name and player number. That boy’s father Zakariah stormed out his house like God Almighty called down the thunder toward Dwight. I had never heard that man cuss but I heard him, clear as a polished trumpet, swearing so much I believed Jesus felt a headache come on. And him and he were the best of friends.

“Those athletes showed spite, hostility toward a national treasure of a symbol. And, thus, showed the men who fought to make sure those colors still fly.” Wilkinson pitted. “How could you go say to me, to all people still alive right now, that they should do such a---”

“He never said they should have done it,” I cut in, suddenly and loudly, breaking Wilkinson from his word-twisting statement. “And don’t try to say that is what he was saying because it wasn’t.” Wilkinson was stunned, like how any politician appears when he answers a tough question only for it to be asked again, and with just a yes or a no.

“Yeah, I never said they should’ve done all that kneeling,” Deangelo echoed. “I thought it shouldn’t have been done. That player who started that whole movement was given the suggestion to kneel by a fellow vet like me and I still think he and anyone else shouldn’t have done it.” Wilkinson opened his mouth again to push back into the debate, but Deangelo was quicker.

“But all I ever heard from you, your cult-followers, and your bought buddies is what he… what anybody, can’t do and you wanted to make it a law.”

“So, you still approve of flagrant scorn---”

“Bobby,” Deangelo halted Wilkinson once again from putting words in his mouth. “I’ll phrase this so that there’s no way for you or the rest of the Stooges can mistake or misuse it.” He told the late politician, while insulting Shirley and Ted Leo for extra measure. “I fought for my country so that anyone back home could express what they wished to express, not so that cowardly assholes could use me as a hand puppet to zip the lips on people for saying something they don’t want to hear.

“Do I think there are some things people shouldn’t say? Yes, I do, there’s actual consequences to words. I don’t think total strangers should yell faggot or retard at everyone, and yeah, I’ll tell them they shouldn’t. But do I try to shove a kind of allegorical gun in peoples faces demanding they say or do what I want them to? No, I don’t.” Deangelo finally closed out his statement and then took a stand that looked as though he was ready to outlast whatever rallying defense Wilkinson might try to playback to him.

DING

Same as before, any bustle that was happening slammed on its breaks. Seemed to me that the single door we’d been in front of was now “our door,” and I and the four that remained invoked a wish that needed no words spoken or hands clasped. The operator, they’re shining head smoother-looking than a boiled egg, stood unflinching out towards the open-eared crowd with his mismatched smirk.

“Deangelo Zanca,” the Operator called. Deangelo looked over at me and the look he gave said that it was he who was beckoned for passage. I didn’t say a word but my voice hitched nonetheless. Time meant nothing in this place meant to be a rest stop before the first real step into the beyond, yet I felt like my best friend since forever was going away and all means of staying in touch were obliviated. “Deangelo Zanca,” the Operator repeated, as though they were a voice on a cassette tape on playback.

“Here’s looking at you, kid,” Deangelo said to me, quoting Humphrey Bogart. He walked toward his destiny and stepped into the hands that would show him his fate, and the Operator closed the door to leave all of us to wait once again. For minutes that’d feel like hours that felt like days.

The doors slid shut, and now my last peer was gone and was stuck behind.

“As that saying, that phrase goes,” Wilkinson piped in once the loud silence returned to droning, distracting debate. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.” I heard Ted Leo and Shirley readily sound off in agreement to him, even echoing his words. I kept quiet then, as I was not invested in engaging those three in anything, especially not Wilkinson.

“The man may have been a soldier for our honorable, our strong military,” Wilkinson continued. “But it’s exceptionally clear and upfront to me that Mr. Deangelo is that type that makes it hard for the good, the decent folk who just want to live, to speak, and to stand up freely.” He went on, as though he was standing above a crowd of his adoring supporters who hung on to every word. Ted and Shirley certainly were filling in those roles as they gave their affirmations from the first consonant to the last beat.

“And if it’s on your minds, yes, yes, I refer to the people who cried war when I personally shut down those altars for murder.” That statement kicked me from inside my stomach. The metaphorical altars he was recounting were the women’s medical centers that were around my part of my home state. That was the fancy term for an abortion clinic.

Wilkinson was, while he still had the lungs to breath his hot air, a staunch man’s man of the right wing, as he would want his people to believe. America was first, the rest second, and carried a list in his head and on the tip of his tongue any number of things would be the crack to shatter an already fracturing American society. Men marrying men, women kissing other women, women putting on big boy pants to do a man’s job, and individuals of Hispanic or non-Caucasian descent taking jobs that few white people truthfully wanted.

And that abortion was no less than the malicious severing of a life that had been horrendously deprived a chance to do great things, good or ill.

I’m not pro-choice, myself. I had two unplanned daughters at a time where I was making barrel-bottom bank in teaching and tutoring and probably should’ve had more abundant resources at the ready to ensure their futures. I had them anyway because I always planned to have little children. Just came earlier than planned, but plans change. But I knew how lucky I was when my girls still became the incredible people they were, because it could’ve been worse. And I claim only so much credit for that outcome, as much as my older sister who had Jesus’ heart on her shoulder, as I believe that she carried me through those stormy days and hard nights.

Wilkinson made an oath on his campaign trail for governor of my state that he’d combat the opioids and other narcotics that were in his state, and ensure the greater well-being of the people he would be looking over in both health and happiness. I’d heard politicians make those kinds of pleas to the public to get themselves a shiny new office with a shiny new desk. And my dear old Dad said I’d be better off praying to the sun to not burn no one then to trust those kinds of words. But, when life was tougher than trying to sift sand through a colander, where in my county we had so many poor folks we were like a colony, I just had to believe that maybe, just maybe, perhaps for once, I could put my faith in Bobby Wilkinson to uphold his end of the bargain when he got my vote.

“There is not, by God, not anything that can justify those horrific institutions, with He as my witness.” Ted Leo swore. I could think up two. Like if a woman couldn’t tick down their list of things that said their unplanned baby could be a wanted child, or if it was a baby that was having a baby.

However, for me, I had another, more personal, close to my heart, reason, to have wanted those clinics to stay open. And it was why, as much as I deeply wished I didn’t possess such a poisonous emotion, I hated Bobby Wilkinson.

“It’s their own fault for getting knocked up in the first place.” Shirley jumped in, wanting to be in on the crowd. “Take responsibility. It might not be your plan, whore, but it’s His plan.” She bespoke on her Lord and convenient Savior’s behalf, ringing her blazing tone aloud like a blaring crow.

“I do my best, my absolute best to keep myself a humble, a respectful, an unpretentious soul, but I saved the lives of many a soul.” I clenched my fist when Wilkinson declared this false victory.

“Saved the lambs from the slaughter.” I clenched my toes.

“Averted a massacre, a genocide time and time over.” I clenched my jaw.

“Yes, indeed, by the grace of God.”

“Amen.”

“Be quiet,” I exclaimed at the triad. “You miserable vultures.” They all looked at me as if they just felt a butterfly bite them with a wasp’s sting. “You didn’t save no one, you liar.” I accused.

“Uh, uh, ma’am, madam” Wilkinson recovered, bringing his guard back. “I am afraid that I do not understand what that outburst was for.”

“I voted for you,” I told. “You promised that you’d help clean up the drugs that flooded the state you called home,” I recounted bitterly.

“Ma’am, what in the world—” Wilkinson tried to speak his piece, but my mind was not at enough peace to let him speak until I spoke mine. And he was going to have a piece of my mind.

“Jovanni Dodge, my brother, uncle, math teacher, advocate, husband to a wonderful and father to a beautiful, and a recovering addict,” I testified to him. “And that clinic was what could’ve saved his life.” Wilkinson, and his two yes-people, looked at each and then looked at me. Like they were wondering if maybe the quiet woman they believed I was had walked away and a look-alike of her came in.

“Beg your pardon, young lady,” Shirley began, asking of me, “Why would a place of murder be a thing that could save a life?”

“The Ketch Women’s Clinic, in the county that he lived in, that was the only HIV testing place within miles.” I told to Wilkinson, because he was who had to hear this. “And it also provided clean needles for addicts who were wanting to be rid of their terrible habit. My brother had been fighting heroin for two whole years, and he was so close to finally beating it.”

“But then,” I continued, my scowl deepening to where it could be there forever. “And then you shut it down. Jovanni fought so hard and so long and thanks to you, he went cold turkey and fell right back into his death spiral.”

“That isn’t my fault,” Bobby Wilkinson tried to divert. “My condolences and I’m sorry for your loss, by the way, but he chose to reinsert that needle in his veins.”

“Yes, he did, I concede to that. But because you shut it down, no one could get clean needles. Jovanni was infected with HIV after he had to share a needle and like a case of the flu, nearly half the people in Ketch got infected.” I spelled out to him.

“Uh-hah,” Wilkinson guffawed, which he attempted to cover up as a cough. Although the preacher and the ex-drunk weren’t so mindful.

“Ms. Jane, God bless you, that doesn’t change the fact that Mr. Wilkinson did right by closing down that ill place of infanticide.” Ted Leo shielded.

“And you, Mr. Leo,” I retorted. “Ought to know that women’s clinic in my county never provided termination services to begin with.” In fact, over a quarter of those places didn’t actually provide those services Wilkinson had sought to cut off.  

“Ma’am, once more, deepest apologies and sympathies, but I quickly turned around and halted the outbreak. I asked my commissioner to tell me seriously what ought to be done and—”

“You went home and prayed on it and a month later God answered you shall restart the clean needle exchange, I know the thread you spun, Bobby Wilkinson,” I spat his words back at him. “And I still believe your words as much as I believe a rat is a squirrel.”

“Now hold on, Missy.” Shirley scolded at me, as if I was her child. “He may have struck a small number of places that had nothing to do with those murder castles, but he still struck a righteous blow against the ones that did. Bobby Wilkinson was, and still is, the good, spiritual, worthy man that he always said he was.” She grinned in self-assurance, taking home a hypothetical gold medal for debate against her lesser opponent, me. But I wasn’t fazed. I was alive long enough to witness the governor’s fall from the stage that ended his life, and the bombshell tip that shred his legacy that Shirley and Ted still clung to in shreds.

“Would a righteous man, or just a decent person, have ignored the warnings that told him what would happen if he did close those places and ended that program, hm?” I responded, my sass creeping into my voice. “Because after he’d stuck his skull with the sharp end of that revolutionary rifle, a former aid of his came clean to the press that they had, in fact, warned Wilkinson that shutting down those health centers would have the consequences that came afterward.”

“Yes.” I cut in again sharply. “Wilkinson was told that an infection could break out and he went ahead and closed them anyway.”

“Well, ahem, Ms. Dodge. You see,” I could see sweat on his brow, as he thought of what line he could use in his handbook of handwaves to pardon or distract. This was what Wilkinson would do if someone snagged his line. He was good at laying it on thick when he spoke, but once he was caught with his hand in vault box, that silver knife in his mouth found out it was spreading him too thin.

“You must understand. Miss Dodge. I had a lot of promises to keep… They couldn’t give up their lifestyles and then… Well, I promised my people I’d improve the public’s health, and closing those places had to do with protecting women’s health, yes?” I could hear the quotation marks around women’s health when he said the words, and my eyeballs, my lids, and my brows told him visibly as a lit flashlight in a blacked-out room that I was still waiting for a hunky-dory conclusion to his defense.

“What was I supposed to do?” Wilkinson appealed, petitioning for compassionate accord. “You do know, at least remember, how many evangelicals and others lived in your state and how loud they are, right?” He argued, earning him the unnoticed judgment of Ted Leo and Shirley as they could hear him trying to throw them under the bus. “I needed to do something to get them on my side, and even those moderates are on the pro-life side if you ask them about it, so—” He took a big pause, like he was reminding himself that people need to breath to live. That was a weird thought, considering we were all dead in this big room.

“People like results that are immediate,” the could-have-been senator told in words that weren’t written for him. In other words, he was making an attempt at being honest. “That was the most obvious way to get results. Shallow results, yes, of course, sure, but still it needed to be done. I was warned, clear and simple, and I possibly could’ve tried to use the scalpel over the hammer but my heart was in the right place, and I was thinking about what I thought was the most evident, most undeniable path forward so— Oh why do you keep giving me that look?” He asked desperately, as that look was the one that grown people recognized too much. It was the look their mama’s and papa’s gave them when their little kids keep avoiding saying yes or no to a question, serious or not. Like I said, he attempted to be honest.

“Don’t try to yank me down with that.” I scolded him. “You expect me to see it through your eyes when you can’t even see past your own nose.” Wilkinson wanted sympathy, but I and everyone else who had no fog in their heads had none to give him. The man himself had none to give, withal, even when he still had the life and the power to do more than pray for solutions and think sympathetic thoughts.

“You didn’t care about your state, one bit. Not one, single, little, bit. You just cared about how you could throw your weight around with that shiny desk and pretty governor title.” I accused him.

“But, ma’am, madam… miss. I stopped the infection, I overturned my mistake, I learned my lesson, I---” He pled his case, missing his own urgency to get me to zip my lip. No such progress.

“Like bull, you did. My two baby girls and the rest of their class, half the school, had to transfer to one a district over because you made another cut to teachers’ pay at their middle school. Then you got the children again when you made teaching sex ed illegal. Three teenage girls in just my neighborhood had babies in their bellies before they were fifteen! Oh, and lest we forget,” I phrased eloquently, as if I was speaking a captioned quote to him, complete with my index finger in the air. “You banned churches from sheltering the homeless. Just before winter. What the hell did the homeless ever do to you?

“And each time your aids told you it was a bad idea. They won’t miss that school, you said. It’s what my parent constituents want for their angels, you told them. Who actually wants to host a person who got themselves kicked out their own house, you lied. So much for that promise that you’d look out for the health of your people, huh!” And I had been dumbed down by convicted hope that Wilkinson would uphold the bigger promises, I thought to myself.

“Well—”

“And, you had this to say to your aid about ‘druggies’,” I stopped him hard, with one more, closing sting. And it would make it hard to not get why I had such animosity toward him for the death of my brother.

“They’re drug addicts. People care about them as much as a house cleaner cares about rat shit.” And those were the words that branded Bobby Wilkinson’s good, honest, reprehensible name, under the sky, and six feet under, one that never deserved his power. A late tin-pot tyrant, my smarty-pants youngest baby would’ve called him.

“That seat, our state, it’s people, my people, friends and family. It was a stepping stone to get closer to more power. And that stone was made up of all our necks.”

Bobby Wilkinson clenched his fists and reopened them. He did that again, while grinding his teeth. He had to be trying to push out an assemblance of a reply. Because he just had to save himself, somehow. Save himself in the eyes of his own self-judgment that he was good, or at least not bad. Same as what Shirley and Ted Leo had to be doing, in this place without defined space or precise time.

DING

Our door opened up, like clockwork. And as likely as a good clock will tick down the seconds, the Operator called out for the next soul to reach their spot in the afterward. “Zari Khalili.”

A small, rail-limbed woman in a hijab with her eyes to the floor directly before her passed us, obviously heeding her name. And I could obviously feel the thinking stares of the three-ring circus.

“I know where she’s going.” Shirley said spitefully.

“Personally, even if I know the Lord’s got his reasons, his will be done, it’d be so that the willfully ignorant to his light just went there immediately.” Ted Leo added, his mercy clear as an unwashed window. All I did was sigh for the both of them as I hated that I’d predicted what their thoughts had to be.

“Why…” Bobby Wilkinson chimed, suddenly, incompletely. “Why won’t they just call…” Once more, he didn’t finish his phrase. “I’m sick, done with waiting here.” He protested weakly.

“Yes…” Shirley agreed. “I been here longer than that no good— why can’t they just say our names? I’ve been good, I’ve said my prayers, begged for my absolution, I should be in my right place by now.” The woman listed, as if she expected it to work like a magic spell and at last summon the Operator with her ticket to the good life thereafter.

“Be patient in affliction, my children.” Ted Leo encouraged with a hand on Wilkinson’s and Shirley’s shoulder. “He has a room prepared for all of us here, and we have not been wearied in doing good. We did right by the Lord, our God, and any moment that door will open, our names will be called, and we’ll earn our reward.” The late preacher pontificated, assuring Bobby, Shirley, and himself that they’d receive their compensation for lives superficially well-spent.

“Of course,” Shirley chimed in, wanting in on the affirmation circle like she was the last one who got picked for any ball game. “I— we did our part. He forgives, and bequeaths accordingly. I know He does. He has to— I’ll be— We’ll be called on.”

“Are you really so sure.” I droned; my look averted from them still. “Do you believe that, or do you know it?”

“Guh-hah,” Ted Leo laughed in his throat, a restrained guffaw as if there was some nerve in my question. “Ma’am, bless you, but do I detect doubt in your voice?” Yes, you do, I answered in thought. And doubt’s no bad thing. It’s made sure that I didn’t listen to hucksters done up in cloth of a clergyman.

“Just see me as a kooky woman for a second and humor my thought process.” I petitioned, now turned around so I could do the talking and my back not required to do the listening. Ted rolled his neck and stood with his feet apart in a ready stance, so I spoke my notion. “I just met you. Met all you three. And at this moment you’re telling me you’re sure that your place in paradise is a cinch. All sewn up, a sure bet your fate is with Him.”

“You bet, ma’am.” Ted Leo answered, with no stammer or stutter to emit that he had any irresolution at all. “I’m no betting man, as it is forbidden. But I safely bet, that as sure as there’s a God in Heaven, that I… as well as these two… am due to walk into His arms when they call our names and enter those doors.”

“Definitely. Assuredly.” Wilkinson mirrored.

“He’s got to.” Shirley parroted.

“Very well,” I conceded. “Then why wait.” They all peered at me as if to beg for my pardon. “Don’t wait for them call your name. Walk up to those doors and just, invite yourselves in.”

“Uh, sorry, I apologize, but I don’t think those are rules.” Wilkinson vouched.

“I don’t see a whiteboard. No blackboard either. Or even big screen with a long list.” I pushed. “Maybe you got it all wrong. Go, take a seat in front of that door and wait.”

“It, it might be awful rude if we presumed.” Ted Leo distrustfully reasoned, trouble laced in his speech. “It’s all part of a plan, and it’d be terrible to go against what He might wish for.”

“I think He’s flexible,” I countered. “He’s lived so long He knows how unpredictable we can be as His creation. I don’t think three people coloring outside the lines will do a thing to his mood.”

“Now, now, wait, wait, that ain’t true,” Shirley interjected, her defenses starting to enfeeble once more, as though she might be fighting to not do what I was suggesting. “So many people have gone outside His boundaries and He sent His wrath on them. Uh, um, Sodom and Gomorrah. The Egyptians. AIDS, the fires on the East coast, uh, uh, muh…” Shirley searched for more examples, something to rebalance herself and say why the last word had to be hers. Or someone that wasn’t me.

“Nah, come on, go on. We’re already dead, right, so this is your chance. Stand in front of that door and run in when it opens.” I dared, spearing my cuticle right toward the gate that would take us all, as far we, and they, believed. “Go on! Do it! It’s right there!” I held my ground for several seconds, waiting for them. A fraction of me was truly waiting for one of any of them to do what I was risking of them, but the rest of me already predicted that none of them would try it. And I, like a goose aiming its bill southward to get away from cold winter, knew why.

“You’re scared.” I told them. “Scared that when— if you did, it’s gonna go the other way. You’re scared to see what could be waiting if you go in and it opens to the other place.”

“And who are you to judge us!?” Shirley screamed at me. “Are you really so righteous, hm? Have you never made mistakes or begged for forgiveness or done nothing wretched!?”

“Sure, I have.” I responded simply. “I wasn’t the best sister I could’ve been. There was a time I was so uninterested in working I became a leech to my big sister, and I didn’t think twice about how much she had to be doing to help me out when I was barely doing anything. I even cheated on my husband for a man that I wasn’t really in love with. And I neglected my health until it was too late, and it cost me my liver. Now my baby girls will have to go on without their mama.

“But I cleaned up my act and got back on feet, paid back my sister the great motivator for all she tolerated. My husband and I couldn’t recover from the hurt I’d put on him, and we split, but he and I promised we’d never resent each other and now he’s out there, still breathing, ready to take care of my girls even if they’re grown.” I told them all with absolute faith.

“And all that is exactly what you three didn’t do,” I addressed to them, altogether. “I made some wounds on the world and I did my best to heal them.

“You all hurt the world you came from and had done too little to heal it.” I explained to them, as they tried to utter something that could keep up their denial of what pain they’d caused. But no words were coming out of their lips.

“You ran your state like your personal plot of land and said it was for the greater good. You coaxed people out of their money and labeled it charity. And you, you may have only directed your abuse to one person, but you got the nerve to say that locking away your baby and throwing bottles at her head was love. I’ve seen love, even heard it and held it and tasted it, and what love you had was rinsed out with the backwash at the bottom of a bourbon bottle,” I pointed at them, Wilkinson, Ted Leo, and Shirley all.

DING

The threesome whipped their heads to the door, like deer who just heard a twig break in the distance. I took slightly longer, turning to face the door and reserved myself to listen to who the Operator called.

“Jane Dodge.” I froze for fifteen whole seconds as if I’d been blasted in the ear by a trumpet. The Operator looked at me with that unchanging smile that wasn’t made to make friends. That face never changed by even a muscle twitch, but the look they had made me imagine they had a raised brow of awaiting. Waiting for me to respond and enter.

I took timed steps into the vehicle that’d deliver me to my soul’s final destination, holding myself to my words from before. I meant what I said, that fear or stressful tension would not hold me to this waiting room. I didn’t spare the three one look of goodbye or an acknowledging side glance over the shoulder as I stepped within the box, but I turned around in time to see those threes’ faces just before the doors closed. All of them were different, but they all waved signs with the exact same message; next time, next time for sure it’d be one of them, for sure next time.

I stood behind and to the left of the Operator as they pushed the lone round button to start the journey. I heard no strain of a cable, felt no upward pull or downward slack. I had to assume that we were moving. The Operator didn’t attempt conversation and they didn’t flex a single joint as this blank box went whoever knew which way.

“What does it look like?” I asked, out of a need to cut the silence and sate an urgent curiosity. “Up… up there?” The Operator didn’t answer me, nor did they acknowledge my words.

“Or… or the other place?” I asked again, hoping that they’d answer this time.

“Isolated, cut-off, empty, with the noiseless barrage of weeping and gnashing of teeth.” They responded this time. I wished they hadn’t now. What made the regret all the more was how they seemed to take a measure of pleasure out of telling me, even if they wasn’t facing me.

Now I was scared. I’d been so before but now there was no crossed agitation to mask over it.

I ran movies in my head over my life that was no longer.

What had I done during my living years to believe that I actually think I may stand alongside my mother and father in that afterworld my pastors always said was promised to the good folk? Did I leave a little heaven behind on my way to next life? What exactly was counted as good? How much help had I given to others? Have I hurt or hated less people than I aided and loved? What if hating just one person was enough to undo my chances? Yes, I was piqued at Bobby Wilkinson but I didn’t actually hate him, did I? But if I did, I had a good reason to, right? Am I being selfish thinking I should be getting go to a good life in the hereafter?

What was I going to see when those doors opened?

I imagined a burst of flame that would fill this box and leave the Operator on his lonesome with not even my ashes remaining. No, I was already dead, so maybe it’d be this red, soot-dusted claw, bigger than me, that would reach in faster than I could scream to drag me away. Or I could end up in yet another limbo. A gray valley where there’s no sound and only phantoms of what could’ve been.

“We’ve arrived.” The Operator announced. Not one part of me challenged to move. My eyelids turned down the instinct to blink and my lungs rejected any offer to fill up on oxygen.

The doors parted.

A gold, pearly light shined in, blinding me. I had to toss my arms in front of my eyes thinking the shine might just singe them for real. Then calm overtook me. Then peace, and then assurance. I let my arm fall back to my side as blazing light faded into a friendly glow of warm embrace.

I took two steps forward, and looked out. There was a sky so blue it was like not one gloomy cloud of grey ever appeared in it once. Tall, green grass that looked as soft as the kindest heart that I could make a silk blanket out of it. A wind that blew just right that it seemed like it was singing hello to me. In the distance, too, was a house. I knew it couldn’t be that one, with the same stories spiced into every coat of paint and laid into every brick, but someone here made the effort to make it look just like my sister’s home.

“Hey! Ms. Dodge!” That was Deangelo’s voice. I took another step and saw him waving at me with a German Shepherd dog jumping at his side. “Check it out! It’s Raff, my old dog from my army days!

“And look, look!” He got the canine to calm down and held it’s head like a papa who wanted to show off his brand, spanking new baby to the whole world, and I saw that the doggy had this pink mark over one of its eyes. “I know it’s him because he’s got the same scar from his missing eye! I mean it’s not gone anymore but still it’s him!”

I heeded at the Operator, my dark browns asking what my mouth couldn’t.

“It is real.” The Operator responded clearly.

“They’re right.” Oh Lord, is it? It was. Steff showed up at the entrance, her hospital gown disappeared and replaced in a best dressed for a music fest.

“Come on,” Steff urged. “This place isn’t just everything we thought it was. It’s more.” She held out an inviting hand, wide open to take mine and show a place where there was no more strife, and just the goodness that what meant for all in life.

I took her hand. She didn’t need to pull me as I seemed to float with my feet buoying on top of lush, warm air, and my heart increased in peace. Steff smiled at me and began to try and take me to whatever wonder there might be to see, but I didn’t budge yet.

One question, a noisy demand for an answer rattle against the back of my skull until it dinged into the front of my mind and caught me to stop.

“Hey?” I asked, tentatively, of the Operator. They stopped and looked to me with gaze that didn’t blink, not once or ever.

“I saw so many entrances down in that waiting place. Why can’t you just get everyone in a line and send them where they should go? Either up where I am or down there.”

“Down there?”

“You know---- down, down there.”

“Miss. Where do you think they are right now?”

And then the doors closed.

And for those three and the rest like them, that had hurt and excused it with no anguish for its infliction, the gates wouldn’t open They’d be isolated, cut-off, empty, and left to weep and gnash their teeth. Their want for a just reward will stay as a want.

END

[networkingdefinition]

Costumes Quotes

Official Website: Costumes Quotes

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push();

• A film is a great deal about what you see, and the silhouette of a character tells you a lot. I’d love to go into film costume. – Clemence Poesy • A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist. – Ronald Reagan • A lot of movies try to set up a world with cool sets, costumes, camera work. In Brick, the world is born from the words. – Joseph Gordon-Levitt • A producer has to know all about everything from set-building to costumes to acting – Alan Ladd • A screenplay is really an instruction manual, and it can be interpreted in any number of ways. The casting, the choice of location, the costumes and make-up, the actors’ reading of a line or emphasis of a word, the choice of lens and the pace of the cutting – these are all part of the translation. – David Nicholls • A simple garb is the proper costume of the vulgar; it is cut for them, and exactly suits their measure, but it is an ornament for those who have filled up their lives with great deeds. I liken them to beauty in dishabille, but more bewitching on that account. – Jean de la Bruyere • A woman in the depths of despair proves so persuasive that she wrenches the forgiveness lurking deep in the heart of her lover. This is all the more true when that woman is young, pretty, and so decollete as to emerge from the neck of her gown in the costume of Eve. – Honore de Balzac • Acting is not my favourite thing. I don’t like wearing costumes and wigs. – Victoria Wood • All through my life what I’ve loved doing is watching movies. I love the escapism of film, I love stories. So it is incredible to be able to be in them as much as I am, to see them from the first stitch in a costume to the end product. – Keira Knightley • And that’s when I realized, when you’re a kid you don’t need a costume, you ARE superman. – Jerry Seinfeld • And weren’t, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren’t. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and and playing guitar at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow. – Neil Gaiman • Another thing I take issue with are people who take their dogs on “play dates,” or even worse, people who choose to dress their dogs up in outfits better suited for homosexuals participating in a gay pride parade. Dog costumes are right up there with something else I find particularly offensive: sweater vests. – Chelsea Handler • Any time you talk about the look of the film, it’s not just the director and the director of photography. You have to include the costume designer and the production designer. – Spike Lee • As a costume designer, it’s important to give each person his or her own personalized look. – Eric Daman • As a rule, I try to avoid the French Quarter because of the crowds, especially Bourbon Street. But hey, some people love it. A great, wild, adult thing to see is the costume competition in front of the bar Oz on Bourbon early morning on Fat Tuesday. – Bryan Batt • As I wouldn’t wear a costume, I couldn’t imagine him wanting to wear one. And seeing that the greater part of my wardrobe is black (It’s a sensible colour. It goes with anything. Well, anything black)[…]. – Neil Gaiman

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Costume', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_costume').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_costume img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Calvin: Trick or treat! Adult: Where’s your costume? What are you supposed to be? Calvin: I’m yet another resource-consuming kid in an overpopulated planet, raised to an alarming extent by Madison Avenue and Hollywood, poised with my cynical and alienated peers to take over the world when you’re old and weak… Am I scary, or what? – Bill Watterson • Cause a costume can be comfortable It can make you feel more beautiful It can even make you look like someone else But it’s still you, so there’s nothing you can do Like a bad habit, the one you couldn’t kick, there it always is And it’s nothing that no doctor’s gonna fix. – Conor Oberst • Celebrate your success and find humor in your failures. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Loosen up and everyone around you will loosen up. Have fun and always show enthusiasm. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. – Sam Walton • Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story. – Mason Cooley • Costume design is so important and really helpful, and I really love that aspect of character development, just figuring it out. – Katherine Waterston • Costume designers don’t care about trends. They appreciate, above so many other qualities, that tailoring is everything, which is a mantra for the way I dress. Ladies: The most important thing in clothing is to find a good, inexpensive tailor, because clothes at the stores are made for bodies that are anomalies. ��� Ginnifer Goodwin • Costume is a huge part of getting into character. Your body soaks in what you’re wearing, and you turn into someone else. – Jane Levy • Costume jewelry is not made to give women an aura of wealth, but to make them beautifu – Coco Chanel • Costumes and scenery alone will not attract audiences. – Anna Held • Costumes are fun. Dress up like a pilot some night and watch as people stare! – Tim Heidecker • Costumes are so much better than clothes. They’re like drugs, they change your personality. – Mary Woronov • Costumes are the first impression that you have of the character before they open their mouth-it really does establish who they are. – Colleen Atwood • Costumes, fashion, it’s all an expression of self, and the more you push the boundaries – the more that people work at creating alternative ideas – the more it changes people’s ideas of beauty. – Reese Witherspoon • Courtrooms contain every symbol of authority that a set designer could imagine. Everyone stands up when you come in. You wear a costume identifying you as, if not quite divine, someone special. – Irving Kaufman • Debased men, but they all had something in common: They showed a keen regard for virtue, and tried to dress themselves in that costume. Hypocrisy, for all its bad reputation, at least showed a decent respect for goodness. – Orson Scott Card • Diplomacy is the police in grand costume. – Napoleon Bonaparte • does you costume involve leather?” she’d asked. and he’d said, “Actually, yeah, it might.” it really did. it involved a leather dog collar, leather pants and a leash, and the leash was held by Ysandre, who was in skintight red rubber, from neck to knee high boots. she’d topped it off with a pair of devil horns and a red tridant. she’d made Shane her dog, complete with furry dog mask. ***”Breathe,” Myrnin said. “I’m not much for it myself, but i hear it’s quite good for humans.”*** – Rachel Caine • Drag for me is costume, and what I’m trying to do is, sometimes I’ll go around and wear makeup in the streets, turn up to the gig, take the makeup off, do the show, and then put the makeup back on. It’s the inverse of drag. It’s not about artifice. It’s about me just expressing myself. So when I’m campaigning in London for politics, I campaign with makeup on and the nails. It’s just what I have on, like any woman. – Eddie Izzard • Each character represents a different color on the big palette of what this ultimate painting is going to look like, who your guy is, and just try to be as honest and simple and real as you can possibly be. The outer trappings are incidental – costumes, period, makeup – all of that is rather insignificant at the end of the day. – Ron Perlman • Every day each of us wakes up, reaches into drawers and closets, pulls out a costume for the day and proceeds to dress in a style that can only be called preposterous. – Mary Schmich • Every year, I have to spend another hour working out. Pretty soon I’ll be spending eight hours working out just to fit in the costume. I have the feeling that the minute I stop doing the character, boom, Roseanne Barr. – Cassandra Peterson • Everyone goes to the ‘Grands-Boulevards’ (in Paris, ed.) and let himself loose… …Do not picture these in costume, they are not for the most part… …perhaps a clown with a big nose, or two girls with bare necks and short skirts… …the parade of the queens of the halls (markets) is also one of the events… …Some are pretty but look awkward in their silk dresses and crowns, particularly as the broad sun displays their defects – perhaps a neck too thin or a painted face which shows ghastley white in the sunlight. – Edward Hopper • Fashion offers no greater challenge than finding what works for night without looking like you are wearing a costume. – Vera Wang • Figure skating is theatrical, and a part of it is wearing costumes. My costumes were very over-the-top and outrageous for figure skating. But for me, it’s all beautiful. Even when nobody else believed they were beautiful, I felt beautiful in them. – Johnny Weir • For each human being there is an optimum ratio between change and stasis. Too little change, he grows bored. Too little stability, he panics and loses his ability to adapt. One who marries six times in ten years won’t change jobs. One who moves often to serve his company will maintain a stable marriage. A woman chained to one home and family may redecorate frantically or take a lover or go to many costume parties. – Larry Niven • For the kind of thing that we were showing, the budget was sufficient. As we were speaking of in Haiti, we had not done that before in exactly this form and we had to have costumes for it. – Katherine Dunham • Fresh from a costume fitting, where I had been posing in front of the mirror assuming what I thought was a strong position – arms folded, butch-looking…you know – I met with the woman in charge of Holloway police station. She gave me the most invaluable advice: never let them see you cry, and never cross your arms. When I asked why, she said ‘because it is a defensive action and therefore weak. – Helen Mirren • Get my swan costume ready. – Anna Pavlova • Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I always go all-out with my costumes. – Ginnifer Goodwin • History, we know, is apt to repeat itself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume. – George Eliot • I always go into a blocking rehearsal with an anchor, with a blocking plan. And sometimes they’ll step into the room and they’ll be in costume and you’re like, “That sucks, that’s not going to work. Let’s think of something new.” – Ava DuVernay • I am interested in costume. Clothes in your daily life are important: your choices say something about you, even if what they’re saying is about non-choice. And what you wear in a film is crucial. – Clemence Poesy • I am out in public and using the phone. I am in a phone booth, got the phone in my hand and a man taps on the glass and says You using the phone? Nope, I’m superman, i am just looking for my costume. Here’s your sign! – Bill Engvall • I am very sorry if I have caused any offence. It was a poor choice of costume. – Prince Harry • I believe that God—if he exists at all—is what we want him to be. The true God is unknowable, and so we dress him up in costumes that make him visible to us. Then we come up with a lot of very silly rules that we attribute to him and tell everyone if they don’t follow those rules, they can’t be part of the gang. – Michael Thomas Ford • I can still fit into my Battlestar Galactica costume! – Dirk Benedict • I consider myself an artist, but instead of paint or clay, my medium is drag. I put so much of myself into my drag from every detail of the costume, makeup and hair to my performance, the way I speak or even stand. – Manila Luzon • I definitely feel, when I’m wearing the costume, that I could scare people and hurt them. – Joan Severance • I design all of my costumes. I like to go out there and feel like I have contributed to every part of what I do. I choose the music, the choreographer, I’ve obviously chosen my coach, my costumes – all if that falls under my realm of power, my realm of influence. – Johnny Weir • I don’t believe in fashion. I believe in costume. Life is too short to be same person every day. – Stephanie Perkins • I don’t think I ever said, “I want to be an actress.” But for Halloween, I dressed up as a movie star from when I was seven to when I was twelve. The costume was always a long dress, with makeup, and my hair curled, and jewelry on. And the movie star was always Jenny McCarthy. So right there you could see a little pattern. – Jenny McCarthy • I don’t think that I could fit into the costume anymore. – Lee Meriwether • I dressed up as a veterinarian for a Halloween costume party. I had the lab coat. I got a couple of stuffed animals for patients and put bandages on them. – Tracy Chapman • I felt like, in the recent past, people have been apologizing for Superman, a little bit, for his costume, for his origins, and for the way he fits into society. – Zack Snyder • I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience’s ear a chance to understand what’s going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra. – Stephen Sondheim • I gradually work myself into a frenzy as the shoot approaches, while we’re choosing the costumes or working with the make-up artist. I’m not so much interested in my character as the film itself. – Jeanne Moreau • I had a lot of fun with my costume designer. – Adam Lambert • I had nothing and I was still changed. Like a costume, my numbness was taken away. Then hunger was added. – Louise Glück • I hate bananas. I just hate them. But I also think a banana suit is the funniest fruit costume a person can wear. – Paul Neilan • I hate Halloween. I hate dressing up. I hate – I wear wigs, makeup, costumes every day. Halloween is like, my least favorite holiday. – Amy Poehler • I hate Technicolor. Everybody in a Technicolor movie seems to feel obliged to wear a lurid costume in each new scene and to stand around like a clotheshorse with a lot of very green trees or very yellow wheat or very blue ocean rolling away for miles and miles in every direction. – Sylvia Plath • I hate the terminology of “costume” because my clothes are not costumes at all. I think they’re high fashion, avant-garde, and more couture, definitely, and yes, some of my pieces are not particularly wearable, but I wouldn’t say they’re costumes, I’d say they’re more couture. – Christian Siriano • I have a ton of cousins on my moms side of the family, and we would put on shows together all the time and put on costumes, and we even charged our parents money. – Maulik Pancholy • I have been interested in fashion since I was a kid. Then I lived in London, where it was more about costume and a personal statement of who you are than about fashion. – Zaha Hadid • I have friends who wear Star Wars costumes and act like the characters all day. I may not be that deep into it, but there’s something great about loving what you love and not caring if it’s unpopular. – Kristen Bell • I have over five thousand costumes and props and cars, and I have a twenty-five thousand square foot warehouse full of memorabilia. – Debbie Reynolds • I just love doing costume dramas; I am very lucky, as I see myself as a part-time time traveller. – Julia Sawalha • I knew ‘Be Our Guest’ would be performed on a set and in costume, but anyone with a history in Theatre In Education will know that can mean anything. – Pippa Evans • I knew I would grow up and wear a costume one day, and that’s exactly what happened. – Cassandra Peterson • I like that totally mixed up kind of eclectic group of personal props and bits of costume and I think the fun of doing that is where I was very lucky with Doctor Who. – Lalla Ward • I like to work in costumes, makeup, and hair that allow me tremendous freedom. – Jessica Lange • I liked the choreography, but I didn’t care for the costumes. – Tommy Tune • I love all the voiceovers I do. I can’t remember them all, but I seem to do them all of the time. And there’s nothing easier because you just stand and read the script, and you don’t have to act the way actors do. You don’t have to be made up and put costumes on. – Stan Lee • I love costumes. I love getting dressed up because it really helps my imagination make the leap to believe that I am who I say I am. – Alessandro Nivola • I love costumes. My dream growing up was always to have my own costume and prop shop. – Amy Sedaris • I love fashion. I always have. When I was a kid, I was in almost full-on costumes when I went to school, and I’ve retained a bit of that in my adulthood. – Lake Bell • I love putting on an outfit or a costume and just looking at myself in the mirror. Baggy pants or some real funky shoes and a hat and just feeling the character of it. That’s fun to me. – Michael Jackson • I loved doing all those costume dramas. I didn’t think, ‘Ooh I’ve got to avoid being typecast’ – you can’t ever be dictated to by what other people think. I just do things because I fancy the parts and the directors. – Helena Bonham Carter • I only assumed those dresses were costumes, based on the garish nature of the plumage. – Kami Garcia • I picked out my Halloween costume. I’m going as ‘Slutty Madeleine Albright.’ – Conan O’Brien • I put the costume on and said ‘It’s not very comfortable, but it looks amazing,’ so it’s all good. – Chris Hemsworth • I read and watch movies. I can’t go to the movie theater much anymore, though, because I get recognized. It’s worse sometimes if I wear a costume and try not to get recognized. I watch most of my films on airplanes – Ayumi Hamasaki • I realized that I wanted to play characters and do traditional theatre. I wanted to make believe again. I like putting on a costume and pretending to be someone else for a few hours, and I have a great respect for playwrights. – Lusia Strus • I remember playing football dressed in peculiar costumes with some friends in France and laughing so hard we couldn’t even stand up, let alone kick the ball. – Fred Frith • I said old Jesus probably would’ve puked if He could see it – all those fancy costumes and all. Sally said I was a sacrilegious atheist. I probably am. The thing Jesus really would’ve liked would be the guy who plays the kettle drums in the orchestra. – J. D. Salinger • I see my face in the mirror and go, ‘I’m a Halloween costume? That’s what they think of me?’ – Drew Carey • I see myself wrapped in lies, which do not seem to penetrate my soul, as if they are not really a part of me. They are like costumes. – Anais Nin • I thank you for your kind invitation to introduce me to the president of the Republic. Since I have not been out of my atelier for two months, I have no appropriate costume for this circumstance. Please excuse me. – Camille Claudel • I think color, for a costume designer, is one of your biggest storytelling devices. – Alexandra Byrne • I think I’m better at live shows than I used to be because I’m way more comfortable with the uncomfortable pauses between songs. Now, rather than trying to talk or do a costume change, I’ll use those moments for myself. I listen to what other people are playing, or just rest, or dance, even though I don’t know how to. – Fiona Apple • I think of clothes a lot like costumes. I think of what I wear in real life as being my real life character’s costume. – Ginnifer Goodwin • I think people feel starved of nice, glamorous entertainment. They want to see costumes and gaiety and a singer; old-fashioned entertainment – it won’t die easily. – Ronnie Corbett • I think that when you put yourself, as actors have to do, in other people’s shoes, when you have to put on the costume that someone else has worn in their life, it gets much, much harder to be prejudiced against them and even to be – to not try to look at the world in a sense of “I’m not going to judge somebody. I’m going to try to understand who they are and what they’re about.” – Kevin Spacey • I tried to end our little duel. I called out pacifying words; I entreated; I finally surrendered. Still Clyde came, my pirate costume so great a success that it had apparently convinced him that we were back in the golden days of romantic old New Orleans when gentlemen decided matters of hot dog honor at twenty paces – John Kennedy Toole • I try to get to know the actors as much as I can. I feel like I’m friends with them for starters and for a week or two, we rehearse when they’re getting the costumes together. – Gus Van Sant • I try very hard not to take work home, but it can be tricky. Sometimes it feels as if you are wearing your costume underneath your own clothes! I suppose things are always ticking away in the back of your mind. – Anne-Marie Duff • I wanna begin saying a story about my son. I have a four-year old son who loves superheroes from Spider-Man to Iron Man to Batman. He’s got all the costumes. One day he looks at me and says ‘Dad, I want to be light-skinned so I could be Spider-Man. Spider-Man has light skin.’ That was sort of a shock. This is why I am excited to be a part of the Marvel Universe, so I could be hopefully provide that diversity in the role of the superhero. – Djimon Hounsou • I want to create things while I have time on Earth, and the art of costume and culture has always inspired me. – Johnny Weir • I was obsessed with being popular when I was in high school and never achieved it. There’s photos from our high school musicals and things, and I’m comically in the deep background, wearing a beggar’s costume. – Mindy Kaling • I will confess I did none of my own singing. I did all my own costume and makeup, though. – Gary Cole • I would love to play the Femme Fatale or an action role like Trinity in the Matrix or something like that. You know, a part with a lot of costume changes. – Josie Maran • I’d hear some beautiful Sade or Kings Of Convenience ballad remixed in a club and I liked that these simple little songs seemed to be masquerading. They had put on superhero costumes, got all beefy, and here they were on the dancefloor. I was interested in that. I can’t make electronic beats, so I leave it to the pros like Boys Noize and Chromeo. – Feist Ideas, Possums, Officers • If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character, would you slow down? Or speed up? – Chuck Palahniuk • If human beings had genuine courage, they’d wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. – Douglas Coupland • If I’ve learned anything in twenty-nine years, it’s that every human being you see in the course of a day has a problem that’s sucking up at least 70 percent of his or her radar. My gift – bad choice of words – is that I can look at you, him, her, them, whoever, and tell right away what is keeping them awake at night: money; feelings of insignificance; overwhelming boredom; evil children; job troubles; or perhaps death, in one of its many costumes, perched in the wings. What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives. – Douglas Coupland • If Jacob was right and clothes were costumes and makeup a mask, then our attitudes and habits must be our shields. – Justina Chen • I’ll tell you…why Wonder Woman worked. Or Bionic Woman. Or any of those [shows] really. It was because it wasn’t about brawn…it was about brains. And yes, she happened to be beautiful, she happened to be kind of extraordinary in some way, but she wasn’t a guy. And I think that, [now], they…put out a female hero, and all they are doing is changing the costume from a man to a woman…they’re not showcasing any of the tremendous dichotomies than women possess in term of softness and toughness, sweetness and grit, inner and outer strength. – Lynda Carter • I’m a big comic book nerd so every time I’m in costume and see everyone in costume I’m just like “This is sick.” – Franz Drameh • I’m a child of the downloading age. I remember when I was 10, a friend who went to the same school as me came to our [school’s] costume party with a really weird hairdo. She had all these little knots in her hair. I asked her who she was and she said she was Björk. I thought this Björk must be a really cool person, so I got on the internet when I got home and found as much as I could on Björk and I fell in love. – Tove Styrke • I’m a fiend for costume jewellery and have countless pairs of rhinestone or diamante earrings, which are so flattering when they catch the light. I love the designers Alexis Bittar and Kenneth Jay Lane, and I always go to jewellers Butler & Wilson. – Joan Collins • I’m a pain in the ass to all of the costume designers with whom I work because I have very strong feelings about the subject. – Meryl Streep • Im able to hang up the character with the costume at the end of the movie. – Kevin Spacey • I’m glad I was born when I was. My time was the golden age of variety. If I were starting out again now, maybe things would happen for me, but it certainly would not be on a variety show with 28 musicians, 12 dancers, two major guest stars, 50 costumes a week by Bob Mackie – the networks just wouldn’t spend the money today. – Carol Burnett • I’m not the best audience for that because I’m not a great science-fiction fan. I just never got off on space ships and space costumes, things like that. – Gary Oldman • I’m sure favorite moments in movies are things that just happen accidentally when the camera is there. You have to do all the homework to get yourself into the period, the costumes, the style, the voice, the hairdo or whatever it is, but once you’ve done all that work, you have to kind of let it go and just be there. If you’re always thinking about it, it just looks a bit over-thought. – Tom Hiddleston • I’m sure that there must have been times when you have read books or watched films and found yourself secretly wishing for the villain to win. Why? Isn’t that against the rules by which our society lives? Why should you feel this way? It’s simple, really; the villain is the true hero of these tales, not the well-intentioned moron who somehow foils their diabolical scheme. The villain get’s all the best lines, has the best costumes, has unlimited power and wealth- why on earth would anyone not want to be the villain? – Mark Walden • I’m very good at living out of a suitcase. I love dressing up every morning. It feels like a costume, in some ways. – Morgan Saylor • I’m very much into the costuming of any character that I portray and it’s one of the great things about making movies is it’s a collaborative art form so you get all these artists who are looking specifically about for this instance your character’s costume and what that might tell about your character. – Jeff Bridges • Immortals is without doubt the best-looking awful movie you will ever see. Eiko Ishioka’s costume designs alone deserve an Oscar nomination. “They weren’t at all historically accurate,” grumbled a woman in the elevator after the sneak preview, as if lots of documentation exists about the wardrobes of the gods. She added: “I guess that’s what we deserve for using free tickets we got at a Blackhawks game. – Roger Ebert • In a costume, you need very exaggerated body language – as you say, sort of mime-type skills. – Warwick Davis • In dreams we are true poets; we create the persons of the drama; we give them appropriate figures faces, costumes; they are perfect in their organs, attitudes, manners; moreover they speak after their own characters, not ours; and we listen with surprise to what they say. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • In general, costumes are the first thing in life that let other people know who we are. They indicate who the person is without saying anything. – Molly Parker • In some ways, Halloween is much easier for women. They can just dress as sluts, and it’s kind of a costume, if they never do any other time. – Chuck Klosterman • In the old days when I first was coming up, you would turn up on set in the morning with your coffee, script, and hangover and you would figure out what you were going to do with the day and how you were going to play the scenes. You would rehearse and then invite the crew in to watch the actors go through the scenes. The actors would go away to makeup and costume and the director and the DP would work out how they were going to cover what the actors had just done. – Paul Bettany • Inside the envelope with the letter was a little Princess Leia action figure USB flash drive. For me to store my novel on, since he was right – I never back up my computer’s hard drive. The sight of it – it’s Princess Leia in her Hoth outfit, my favorite of her costumes (how had he remembered?) brought tears to my eyes. – Meg Cabot • It is a process of finding the right music then planning a costume to fit that style of music. – Nancy Kerrigan • It is amazing to me how deeply into the popular culture the creature has become. There are zombie walks in every major city. I live in Toronto, and last year 3,000 people came out dressed as zombies…. I do not get it. Maybe it’s an easy costume: Splash some ketchup on and rip up your jeans — although most people already have torn jeans — and you’re done. – George A. Romero • It is only in the case of the Priestly Code that opinions differ widely; for it tries hard to imitate the costume of the Mosaic period, and, with whatever success, to disguise its own. – Julius Wellhausen • It reminds me of how grandmother always had the right costume for me to wear. You wear the right outfit and you feel like the person you’re pretending to be. – John Boyne • It took me a while to warm to the ’20s costumes on ‘Downton.’ I love it when women accentuate their curves, and that era was all about hiding them. The shapes they wore then were in tune with female empowerment. Cutting off their hair and hiding their busts was a way of saying, ‘We’re equal to men!’ – Lily James • It was amazing that during rehearsals, without any of the costume on, the character was there complete. It just happened. Half the time, I didn’t know I was doing it. – Peter Mayhew • It was something I was more interested in myself. When I went to see my sister dance at ballet, I was really into costumes and the arts, and my family was also supportive of whatever me and my sister wanted to do. I would say I pushed myself the most to be into design. – Christian Siriano • It was the sheer variety of the pain that stopped me from crying out. It came from so many places, spoke so many languages, wore so many dazzling varieties of ethnic costume, that for a full fifteen seconds I could only hang my jaw in amazement. – Hugh Laurie • It’s an addiction. I love clothes. I like to go down Melrose and look in all the windows and I go to different flea markets. I have lots of costumes. You never know when you’re going to have to dress up like a milkmaid from the 1600s. – Zooey Deschanel • I’ve always been attracted to romantic secondhand clothes. But my style developed as I started going to these strange raves where everybody had these very definitive costumes. – Florence Welch • I’ve always been misrepresented. You know, I could dress in a clown costume and laugh with the happy people but they’d still say I’m a dark personality. – Tim Burton • I’ve always wanted to be Wonder Woman, of course. She had the greatest costume. – Kelly Hu • I’ve always worked closely with the designers and whoever’s making the costumes. Comfort is the last thing you want on your mind when you’re competing. In an ideal situation, you’ll have something where you’ll put it on and you’re fine and you don’t have to worry about it at all. – Kristi Yamaguchi • I’ve done a lot of costume drama and theatre – the National Theatre and In fact, most of my work at the theatre, at the National Theatre anyway, was period. – Brenda Blethyn • I’ve done approximately 15 films, and most of the things I’ve done have either been stunt or costume work. – Verne Troyer • I’ve made quite a number of movies like Castaway and a few others where I’m the only guy in the movie and the only place to be is right next to the camera in costume ready to go in order to get it. The years, and more specifically probably the four months prior to beginning shooting, is where the big preparation is that the director does because I knew we were going to get on the set. And the good news is, if you’re the boss, if it ain’t good, you don’t use it. You just cut it out. – Tom Hanks • I’ve never done a lead role in a film this big [like Doctor Strange], in a franchise this big. One of the reasons was, I wanted to know what the toy box was like. And it’s just insane, the amount of facility that everyone gets, but the amount of artistry and craft that’s brought to every aspect of filmmaking. I mean, you go to your first costume fitting and it’s one of thirty. It’s a myriad, but it’s for a reason. There are so many incredible costumes in this. – Benedict Cumberbatch • just because I don’t have on a silly black costume and carry a silly broom and wear a silly black hat, doesn’t mean that I’m not a witch. I’m a witch all the time and not just on Halloween. – E. L. Konigsburg • Madonna has a far profounder vision of sex than do the feminists. She sees both the animality and the artifice. Changing her costume style and hair color virtually every month, Madonna embodies the eternal values of beauty and pleasure. Feminism says, ‘No more masks.’ Madonna says we are nothing but masks. Through her enormous impact on young women around the world, Madonna is the future of feminism. – Camille Paglia • My book is very wild. But you know during the period of BATMAN, that there were thousands of Batman and Robin costumes sold and these weren’t just for kids. – Burt Ward • My costumes were made for sex appeal not for women. – Brenda Holloway • My fancy dress costume of choice is… something 1920s or 30s, when there was still so much elegance and attention to detail. An excuse for ultimate dressing-up indulgence. – Ellie Goulding • My father has developed a tradition of surprising us at some point by appearing in fancy dress. He buys a new costume each year and typically gets carried away. A couple of Christmases ago he appeared in an inflatable sumo outfit. Its endearing, really, and only quite embarrassing. – Pippa Middleton • My first acting experience was a non-speaking role as a robot. My costume was a cardboard box covered in tinfoil, but I was so shy I refused to go on stage. – Jessica Raine • My girlfriend’s a costume designer in the theater. – Philip Seymour Hoffman • My mom did costumes for the Pointer Sisters. – Slash • My mom used to make my costumes when I was little; she sews a lot. One year, I was a bride and I had a big wedding dress and a bouquet. Another year I was a medieval princess with a long teal dress and a veil. It was a little extravagant, but it was cute! – Sasha Pieterse • My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will. – Henry David Thoreau • My objects dream and wear new costumes, compelled to, it seems, by all the words in my hands and the sea that bangs in my throat. – Anne Sexton • Nice costume,” he said. “Ditto. I can tell you put alot of though into yours.” Amusement curled his mouth. “If you don’t like it, I can take it off.” I tapped my chin thoughtfully. “That just might be the best proposal I’ve had all night.” “My offers are always the best, Angel. – Becca Fitzpatrick • No matter how many modern parts I do, people still refer to me as Mrs. Costume Drama. – Helena Bonham Carter • No touching Baby Jesus.” “But we’re his parents!” proclaimed Mary Beth, who was being generous to include poor Joseph under this appellation. “Mary Beth,” Barb Wiggin said, “if you touch the Baby Jesus, I’m putting you in a cow costume. – John Irving • No, officer, I have no idea why I’m wearing this possum costume. I called you what? OH. My bad.” -Nastasya – Cate Tiernan • Nothings makes a woman look older that a rich costume. – Coco Chanel • Now people need special costumes to ride bicycles. I mean, a helmet, what, are you an astronaut?? – Fran Lebowitz • Now what else is the whole life of mortals, but a sort of comedy in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each ones part until the manager walks them off the stage? – Desiderius Erasmus • O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales. – Leo Rosten • Oh, hello,” Dr. M says, shaking Balder’s hand. “Wonderful costume. I’m a bit of a role player myself on the weekends. Tell me, where did you get the helmet?” It was forged in the North, blessed by the hands of Odin, given to me by my mother, Frigg,” Balder answers. Lovely. I got mine on the Internet. – Libba Bray • On the side of box of my superman costume it actually said – ‘Do not attempt to fly!’ – Jerry Seinfeld • Once you embody the language, the character comes really naturally, especially when you put the costume on. – Lucy Liu • One time I forgot my costume, and I had to do a scene in my pants, and I got my knob caught in a clapperboard. – 2D • People always seem to assume that we have a full, back-up support team – make-up, costume and a driver – but usually, in a war zone, there’s only me and the cameraman. – Kate Adie • People assume, because I’m Hef’s girlfriend, that I’m a Bunny and I’m a Playmate and I’m a centerfold, but they’re different things. If you’re a Playmate or a centerfold, which is the same thing, you pose for the magazine, you are one particular month, and not every Playmate is a Bunny. A Bunny is a girl who used to work at the Playboy Club, she had the Bunny costume, and now that we don’t have Playboy Clubs, it’s just Playmates who work special promotions and are fitted for a Bunny costume. – Holly Madison • Period costume films are fun to discover, but they’re not relatable. It’s more, ‘Wow, that’s cool – did it really look like that back then?’ Whereas with a comedy, you’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s me, that’s my friends.’ No matter what, I want people to relate. – Paul Feig • Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon). – Harold Rosenberg • pools of blood are not recreational even lifeguards drown when the undertow breaks bread with the underbelly demons disguised as sharks have not put enough thought into their costumes a wiseman stays ashore when pointed fins read like italian subtitles the end is near (…) the beginning – Saul Williams • Radio is truly the theater of the mind. The listener constructs the sets, colors them from his own palette, and sculpts and costumes the characters who perform in them. – Mercedes McCambridge • Satan himself can’t save a woman who wears thirty-shilling corsets under a thirty-guinea costume. – Rudyard Kipling • She said, “I’m going to have you fired.” I had two people say that to me today, “I’m going to have you fired.” Go ahead, be my guest. I’m wearing a green velvet costume; it doesn’t get any worse than this. Who do these people think they are? I’m going to have you fired!” and I wanted to lean over and say, “I’m going to have you killed. – David Sedaris • Shigure Sohma: [got Tohru a maid costume for White Day] I can’t wait to for her to call me master while wearing this. Hatsuharu Sohma: Just don’t get arrested, okay? – Natsuki Takaya • Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to a deed. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to deed. A skillful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge; yet not the details, but the quality. What part does he play in them – a cheerful, manly part, or a poor, drivelling part? However monstrous and grotesque their apparitions, they have a substantial truth. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • So you couldn’t protect yourself? The absolute erodes; the boundary, the wall around the self erodes. If I was waiting I had been invaded by time. But do you think you’re free? I think I recognize the patterns of my nature. Bud do you think you’re free? I had nothing and I was still changed. Like a costume, my numbness was taken away. Then hunger was added. – Louise Glück • So, did the costume come with a condom, or is that sold separately? – Rachel Vincent • Some directors hand over portions of their movie to their head of department to the point where it’s like, “I’m not going to talk to you about the costumes, but I’m going to let you talk to the expert.” Rather than, “You want to talk stitching, let’s talk stitching. You want to talk grade of leather? Let’s.” – Idris Elba • Someone’s going to put the clothes on you, and part of being an actor is wearing costumes. Costumes tell you an awful lot about who you are, so you just, it’s nothing. – Morgan Freeman • Sometimes I steal costumes. – Rich Fulcher • Steampunk is…the love child of Hot Topic and a BBC costume drama – Gail Carriger • Tales of adultery are much improved by period costumes. – Mason Cooley • The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic form and graceful motions will express themselves through the most barbarous and tasteless costume. – Percy Bysshe Shelley • The costume designer designing clothes that helped the comedy in The Proposal, that sold the character. Each and every detail was so perfectly thought of, what wouldn’t be here? That’s a lost art. – Sandra Bullock • the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life. – Oscar Wilde • The costume of women should be suited to her wants and needs. – Amelia Bloomer • The costume that I wear on the show is a little snug and doesn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination. I don’t have a problem with it because of the way this character’s been written. – Jeri Ryan • The Dutch at close proximity looked much like Americans, apart from their peculiar uniforms, and so it was their uniforms I fired at, half convinced that I was killing, not human beings, but enemy costumes, which had borne their contents here from a distant land; and if some living man suffered for his enslavement to the uniform, or was penetrated by the bullets aimed at it well, that was unavoidable, and the fault couldn’t be placed at my feet. The private charade was not equivalent to Courage, but it enabled a Callousness that served a similar purpose. – Robert Charles Wilson • The fashion I’ve acquired over the years is so sacred to me – from costumes to couture, high fashion to punk wear I’ve collected from my secret international hot spots. I keep everything in an enormous archive in Hollywood. The clothes are on mannequins, also on hangers and in boxes with a photo of each piece, and there’s a Web site where I can go to look through everything. It’s too big – I could never sort through it myself! But these garments tell the stories of my life. – Lady Gaga • The first time I met Prince he invented me to his birthday party in Minneapolis. It was a costume party and I came as a beatnik – a beret and a charcoal goatee. He was dressed like an executioner. I talked to him for awhile and he didn’t know who I was, and when I told him he was real surprised. – Paul Reubens • The historical side of fashion was very attractive to me when I was a teenager in Moscow, working for the costume departments in various Russian theater companies. – Alexander Vassiliev • The Hulk was a unique character because of his strength and power. He doesn’t have a costume like Spiderman or like Superman – The Hulk is more visual. His passion and his strength, that is what separates him from anything else. – Lou Ferrigno • The kinds of things I like with crystals are the really beautiful costume jewelry, vintage pieces, and they usually have that diamond shape. – Zoe Kravitz • The only difference is that religion is much better organized and has been around much longer, but it’s the same story with different characters and different costumes. – James Randi • The skeptics said you can’t put on a costume in the middle of New York – which isn’t true, because everyone’s in a costume here. – Avi Arad • The tabloid that said that I dressed up as a medieval, like a sexy medieval something and that upset me more than the dating rumors that have been circling around that were fake. If somebody thinks I’m going to dress sexy to a costume party, they have another thing coming. – Jennifer Lawrence • The threats against democracy today are in general completely normal. They walk around in costume and tie. – Carl B. Hamilton • There is the danger of over preparation, of loss of spontaneity; over rehearsal is the most terrible thing you can imagine. We do have a very close association between costume and set designer, though. And the cameraman is very important, of course. – Terence Fisher • There’s going to be a Halloween costume [of lavash from Sausage Party]. The whole thing is just so ridiculous. It’s nice. It’s silly, and it’s surreal. – David Krumholtz • There’s no mystery to it. Nothing more complicated than learning lines and putting on a costume. – Morgan Freeman • There’s nothing more fun than putting on an old costume and jewelry and being in a house that’s decorated from the ’20s or ’30s or whatever. • There’s something about being there, on the set, in costume, in the moment, where you start to get a feel for the scene, which is not the same as sitting in your office writing it. – Lionel Wigram • They know they’re going to look beautiful, and I don’t think women should look like costumes. They shouldn’t look like fashion victims. – Ralph Lauren • They said they wanted a lot of feathers, glitter, colourful colours. A costume. So I had a lady here in Calgary make it. She just kind of put together what I had in mind. – Owen Hart • They take the paper and they read the headlines. So they’ve heard of unemployment and they’ve heard of bread-lines. And they philanthropically cure them all by getting up a costume charity ball. – Ogden Nash • This is my costume. I’m a homicidal maniac. They look just like everyone else. – Christina Ricci • To me, achieving tone, achieving consistency, is exactly the job of a director. It is to be the fusing, the nexus of a whole bunch of people contributing to the complex life of a movie. There are actors, there’s a cinematographer, there’re costume people, set people, there are all these things, and you somehow have to be the person in the middle of it who is making it all synchronize into the same magic bubble. – Edward Norton • To me, the appeal of opera lies in the fact that a myriad of singers and instruments, each possessed of different qualities of voice and sound, against the backdrop of a grand stage and beautiful costumes, come together in one complete and impressive drama. – Junichiro Koizumi • Vitamins ruined my life. Not that there was much left to ruin, but still. I know that blaming vitamins for my horrible life sounds strange. After all, vitamins are supposed to keep people healthy. Also, they’re inanimate objects. But thanks to them I was stuck in the Jackson Center Mall watching my father run around in a bee costume. – Elizabeth Scott • We have a costume closet at home. My family will put on a costume for any excuse. – Bryan Batt • We needed to have a great set decorator, a great D.P., a great costume designer, everybody. Without all these people, we would have made a shitty movie. – Vincent Paronnaud • We post photos of the Halloween costumes and the mustaches made of cupcake frosting. We don’t record the tantrums?and that’s as it should be. But we shouldn’t mistake that for reality. It’s stagecraft. – Libby Copeland • We talk about theatre museums filled with old costumes and things. What we also need is a theatre museum of the old routines on videotape. We are only the custodians of those techniques, and they should be preserved. – Jim Dale • We were a family that made our Halloween costumes. Or, more accurately, my mother made them. She took no suggestions or advice. Halloween costumes were her territory. She was the brain behind my brothers winning girl costume, stuffing her own bra with newspapers for him to wear under a cashmere sweater and smearing red lipstick on his lips. – Ann Hood • Well, I design costumes because I started with the theater in Chicago, but somehow a few lines just sort of fell to me to do it. And I studied it in school and I always liked it. – John Malkovich • Well,the fun part of being a writer is that it’s like making a wonderful film, with no limit on my budget. I can design the sets, the costume, the lightings, I write the script, and then I get to perform all the roles as I step into each character’s skin, zip up, and adopt that point of view. So, to me, they are all compelling and fascinating. – Robin Hobb • What keeps this industry alive is creators doing their own work. Once you change a costume or origin enough times, it’s a dead body – you’re just electrocuting it and keeping it sort of shambling on. There is a lot more creator-owned stuff now, and some of it I look at and go, ‘Oh, that’s his pitch for a TV show. That’s his pitch for a movie. That’s him saying oh, this kind of thing sells.’ I didn’t do that. – Mike Mignola • When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. – Sam Walton • When I get up in the morning, I go and I work with beautiful women and charming men and funny comedians and dramatic artists. And I’m presented with costumes and great music to choose from and sets. I travel a certain amount of places, so I’ve been living in a bubble. And I like it. – Woody Allen • When I go out and I’m presenting the best side of myself, I want to look different from everyone, but I don’t want it to look like I’m wearing a costume. – Rachel Roy • When the Strokes first started playing gigs, instead of getting into a costume for the shows, we talked about how we should dress every day, in real life, like we’re playing onstage. I don’t really care about clothes, but it’s about wearing something that gives you social confidence. Or maybe helps you pick up chicks. – Julian Casablancas • When you put your costume on and you get your hair and your makeup done [for a role] and you stare in the mirror you feel like a different person. – Michael Shannon • When you’re wearing an animal costume and something bad happens, your facial expression doesn’t change. The animal is deadpan the whole time. If you’re skiing in a gorilla suit and you fall, you just see a gorilla who has no emotion. It’s just a stoic gorilla, wildly falling down a hill, out of control. – Demetri Martin • When youre young, the blue blazer feels like a grown-up costume. – Willie Geist • White is too brilliant to be seen, so yellow is its filter, its costume, revealing that pure light has not only brightness but emotional resonance and depth. – Richard Grossinger • Wild Bill was a strange character, add to this figure a costume blending the immaculate neatness of the dandy with the extravagant taste and style of a frontiersman, you have Wild Bill, the most famous scout on the Plains. – George Armstrong Custer • Without my husband’s costumes I wouldn’t have known how to accomplish what I saw in my own mind’s eyes for choreography. And then seeing our choreography and knowing the background of it I am sure helped my husband a great deal with what he designed for us. – Katherine Dunham • Women: You can’t live with them, and you can’t get them to dress up in a skimpy little Nazi costume and beat you with a warm squash or something. – Emo Philips • You cannot climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure. – Zig Ziglar • You can’t do a machine without knowing something about how it’s going to work. As for the romantics, the costumes bored me and I don’t enjoy doing period clothes. – Boris Vallejo • You can’t have a bad time at Disney World. It’s not allowed. They have hidden electronic surveillance cameras everywhere, and if they catch you failing to laugh with childlike wonder, they lock you inside a costume representing a beloved Disney character such as Goofy and make you walk about in the Florida heat getting grabbed and leaped on by violently excited children until you have learned your lesson. – Dave Barry • You know, being in a rock band, you can’t overdo the costume changes too much because everyone thinks, oh, that’s not a real rock band. Look how many times he changes costumes. That’s not rock. Rock’s about going on in a T-shirt and staying in it and getting it all dirty. But that’s not really my approach. – Mick Jagger • You look at Cheney, Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, and Bush – if you saw them on Halloween, they wouldn’t need a costume. You’d give them a treat and compliment them on what great-looking demons they were. They are demons. There’s no doubt about it. – Tommy Chong • You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World. – Dave Barry • You only get one shot in your life and you might as well push yourself and try things. There’s so many interesting aspects of making a movie; the costume department, the set design, the casting itself, the locations. It’s a great, great thing to be involved in if you have the headspace for it, and I do. Try anything once. – Jason Statham • Young people, however, tend to ignore the customs of their elders. Adolescent rebellion has been responsible for all manner of absurd costumes. The more ridiculous a certain fashion is, the more adolescents will cling to it. – David Eddings • Youth is terrible: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and a variety of costumes mouthing speeches they’ve memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand. And history is terrible because it so often ends up a playground for the immature; a playground for the young Nero, a playground for the young Bonaparte, a playground for the easily roused mobs of children whose simulated passions and simplistic poses suddenly metamorphose into a catastrophically real reality. – Milan Kundera • Youve got to leave the reader with more than just a name and a costume – they need to know who the character is, what theyre like, what kind of attitude they have, what sort of role they play. – Kurt Busiek

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'a', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_a').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_a img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'e', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_e').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_e img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'i', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_i').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_i img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'o', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_o').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_o img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'u', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_u').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_u img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

[equitiesstocks]

Costumes Quotes

Official Website: Costumes Quotes

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push();

• A film is a great deal about what you see, and the silhouette of a character tells you a lot. I’d love to go into film costume. – Clemence Poesy • A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist. – Ronald Reagan • A lot of movies try to set up a world with cool sets, costumes, camera work. In Brick, the world is born from the words. – Joseph Gordon-Levitt • A producer has to know all about everything from set-building to costumes to acting – Alan Ladd • A screenplay is really an instruction manual, and it can be interpreted in any number of ways. The casting, the choice of location, the costumes and make-up, the actors’ reading of a line or emphasis of a word, the choice of lens and the pace of the cutting – these are all part of the translation. – David Nicholls • A simple garb is the proper costume of the vulgar; it is cut for them, and exactly suits their measure, but it is an ornament for those who have filled up their lives with great deeds. I liken them to beauty in dishabille, but more bewitching on that account. – Jean de la Bruyere • A woman in the depths of despair proves so persuasive that she wrenches the forgiveness lurking deep in the heart of her lover. This is all the more true when that woman is young, pretty, and so decollete as to emerge from the neck of her gown in the costume of Eve. – Honore de Balzac • Acting is not my favourite thing. I don’t like wearing costumes and wigs. – Victoria Wood • All through my life what I’ve loved doing is watching movies. I love the escapism of film, I love stories. So it is incredible to be able to be in them as much as I am, to see them from the first stitch in a costume to the end product. – Keira Knightley • And that’s when I realized, when you’re a kid you don’t need a costume, you ARE superman. – Jerry Seinfeld • And weren’t, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren’t. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and and playing guitar at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow. – Neil Gaiman • Another thing I take issue with are people who take their dogs on “play dates,” or even worse, people who choose to dress their dogs up in outfits better suited for homosexuals participating in a gay pride parade. Dog costumes are right up there with something else I find particularly offensive: sweater vests. – Chelsea Handler • Any time you talk about the look of the film, it’s not just the director and the director of photography. You have to include the costume designer and the production designer. – Spike Lee • As a costume designer, it’s important to give each person his or her own personalized look. – Eric Daman • As a rule, I try to avoid the French Quarter because of the crowds, especially Bourbon Street. But hey, some people love it. A great, wild, adult thing to see is the costume competition in front of the bar Oz on Bourbon early morning on Fat Tuesday. – Bryan Batt • As I wouldn’t wear a costume, I couldn’t imagine him wanting to wear one. And seeing that the greater part of my wardrobe is black (It’s a sensible colour. It goes with anything. Well, anything black)[…]. – Neil Gaiman

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Costume', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_costume').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_costume img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Calvin: Trick or treat! Adult: Where’s your costume? What are you supposed to be? Calvin: I’m yet another resource-consuming kid in an overpopulated planet, raised to an alarming extent by Madison Avenue and Hollywood, poised with my cynical and alienated peers to take over the world when you’re old and weak… Am I scary, or what? – Bill Watterson • Cause a costume can be comfortable It can make you feel more beautiful It can even make you look like someone else But it’s still you, so there’s nothing you can do Like a bad habit, the one you couldn’t kick, there it always is And it’s nothing that no doctor’s gonna fix. – Conor Oberst • Celebrate your success and find humor in your failures. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Loosen up and everyone around you will loosen up. Have fun and always show enthusiasm. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. – Sam Walton • Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story. – Mason Cooley • Costume design is so important and really helpful, and I really love that aspect of character development, just figuring it out. – Katherine Waterston • Costume designers don’t care about trends. They appreciate, above so many other qualities, that tailoring is everything, which is a mantra for the way I dress. Ladies: The most important thing in clothing is to find a good, inexpensive tailor, because clothes at the stores are made for bodies that are anomalies. – Ginnifer Goodwin • Costume is a huge part of getting into character. Your body soaks in what you’re wearing, and you turn into someone else. – Jane Levy • Costume jewelry is not made to give women an aura of wealth, but to make them beautifu – Coco Chanel • Costumes and scenery alone will not attract audiences. – Anna Held • Costumes are fun. Dress up like a pilot some night and watch as people stare! – Tim Heidecker • Costumes are so much better than clothes. They’re like drugs, they change your personality. – Mary Woronov • Costumes are the first impression that you have of the character before they open their mouth-it really does establish who they are. – Colleen Atwood • Costumes, fashion, it’s all an expression of self, and the more you push the boundaries – the more that people work at creating alternative ideas – the more it changes people’s ideas of beauty. – Reese Witherspoon • Courtrooms contain every symbol of authority that a set designer could imagine. Everyone stands up when you come in. You wear a costume identifying you as, if not quite divine, someone special. – Irving Kaufman • Debased men, but they all had something in common: They showed a keen regard for virtue, and tried to dress themselves in that costume. Hypocrisy, for all its bad reputation, at least showed a decent respect for goodness. – Orson Scott Card • Diplomacy is the police in grand costume. – Napoleon Bonaparte • does you costume involve leather?” she’d asked. and he’d said, “Actually, yeah, it might.” it really did. it involved a leather dog collar, leather pants and a leash, and the leash was held by Ysandre, who was in skintight red rubber, from neck to knee high boots. she’d topped it off with a pair of devil horns and a red tridant. she’d made Shane her dog, complete with furry dog mask. ***”Breathe,” Myrnin said. “I’m not much for it myself, but i hear it’s quite good for humans.”*** – Rachel Caine • Drag for me is costume, and what I’m trying to do is, sometimes I’ll go around and wear makeup in the streets, turn up to the gig, take the makeup off, do the show, and then put the makeup back on. It’s the inverse of drag. It’s not about artifice. It’s about me just expressing myself. So when I’m campaigning in London for politics, I campaign with makeup on and the nails. It’s just what I have on, like any woman. – Eddie Izzard • Each character represents a different color on the big palette of what this ultimate painting is going to look like, who your guy is, and just try to be as honest and simple and real as you can possibly be. The outer trappings are incidental – costumes, period, makeup – all of that is rather insignificant at the end of the day. – Ron Perlman • Every day each of us wakes up, reaches into drawers and closets, pulls out a costume for the day and proceeds to dress in a style that can only be called preposterous. – Mary Schmich • Every year, I have to spend another hour working out. Pretty soon I’ll be spending eight hours working out just to fit in the costume. I have the feeling that the minute I stop doing the character, boom, Roseanne Barr. – Cassandra Peterson • Everyone goes to the ‘Grands-Boulevards’ (in Paris, ed.) and let himself loose… …Do not picture these in costume, they are not for the most part… …perhaps a clown with a big nose, or two girls with bare necks and short skirts… …the parade of the queens of the halls (markets) is also one of the events… …Some are pretty but look awkward in their silk dresses and crowns, particularly as the broad sun displays their defects – perhaps a neck too thin or a painted face which shows ghastley white in the sunlight. – Edward Hopper • Fashion offers no greater challenge than finding what works for night without looking like you are wearing a costume. – Vera Wang • Figure skating is theatrical, and a part of it is wearing costumes. My costumes were very over-the-top and outrageous for figure skating. But for me, it’s all beautiful. Even when nobody else believed they were beautiful, I felt beautiful in them. – Johnny Weir • For each human being there is an optimum ratio between change and stasis. Too little change, he grows bored. Too little stability, he panics and loses his ability to adapt. One who marries six times in ten years won’t change jobs. One who moves often to serve his company will maintain a stable marriage. A woman chained to one home and family may redecorate frantically or take a lover or go to many costume parties. – Larry Niven • For the kind of thing that we were showing, the budget was sufficient. As we were speaking of in Haiti, we had not done that before in exactly this form and we had to have costumes for it. – Katherine Dunham • Fresh from a costume fitting, where I had been posing in front of the mirror assuming what I thought was a strong position – arms folded, butch-looking…you know – I met with the woman in charge of Holloway police station. She gave me the most invaluable advice: never let them see you cry, and never cross your arms. When I asked why, she said ‘because it is a defensive action and therefore weak. – Helen Mirren • Get my swan costume ready. – Anna Pavlova • Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I always go all-out with my costumes. – Ginnifer Goodwin • History, we know, is apt to repeat itself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume. – George Eliot • I always go into a blocking rehearsal with an anchor, with a blocking plan. And sometimes they’ll step into the room and they’ll be in costume and you’re like, “That sucks, that’s not going to work. Let’s think of something new.” – Ava DuVernay • I am interested in costume. Clothes in your daily life are important: your choices say something about you, even if what they’re saying is about non-choice. And what you wear in a film is crucial. – Clemence Poesy • I am out in public and using the phone. I am in a phone booth, got the phone in my hand and a man taps on the glass and says You using the phone? Nope, I’m superman, i am just looking for my costume. Here’s your sign! – Bill Engvall • I am very sorry if I have caused any offence. It was a poor choice of costume. – Prince Harry • I believe that God—if he exists at all—is what we want him to be. The true God is unknowable, and so we dress him up in costumes that make him visible to us. Then we come up with a lot of very silly rules that we attribute to him and tell everyone if they don’t follow those rules, they can’t be part of the gang. – Michael Thomas Ford • I can still fit into my Battlestar Galactica costume! – Dirk Benedict • I consider myself an artist, but instead of paint or clay, my medium is drag. I put so much of myself into my drag from every detail of the costume, makeup and hair to my performance, the way I speak or even stand. – Manila Luzon • I definitely feel, when I’m wearing the costume, that I could scare people and hurt them. – Joan Severance • I design all of my costumes. I like to go out there and feel like I have contributed to every part of what I do. I choose the music, the choreographer, I’ve obviously chosen my coach, my costumes – all if that falls under my realm of power, my realm of influence. – Johnny Weir • I don’t believe in fashion. I believe in costume. Life is too short to be same person every day. – Stephanie Perkins • I don’t think I ever said, “I want to be an actress.” But for Halloween, I dressed up as a movie star from when I was seven to when I was twelve. The costume was always a long dress, with makeup, and my hair curled, and jewelry on. And the movie star was always Jenny McCarthy. So right there you could see a little pattern. – Jenny McCarthy • I don’t think that I could fit into the costume anymore. – Lee Meriwether • I dressed up as a veterinarian for a Halloween costume party. I had the lab coat. I got a couple of stuffed animals for patients and put bandages on them. – Tracy Chapman • I felt like, in the recent past, people have been apologizing for Superman, a little bit, for his costume, for his origins, and for the way he fits into society. – Zack Snyder • I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience’s ear a chance to understand what’s going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra. – Stephen Sondheim • I gradually work myself into a frenzy as the shoot approaches, while we’re choosing the costumes or working with the make-up artist. I’m not so much interested in my character as the film itself. – Jeanne Moreau • I had a lot of fun with my costume designer. – Adam Lambert • I had nothing and I was still changed. Like a costume, my numbness was taken away. Then hunger was added. – Louise Glück • I hate bananas. I just hate them. But I also think a banana suit is the funniest fruit costume a person can wear. – Paul Neilan • I hate Halloween. I hate dressing up. I hate – I wear wigs, makeup, costumes every day. Halloween is like, my least favorite holiday. – Amy Poehler • I hate Technicolor. Everybody in a Technicolor movie seems to feel obliged to wear a lurid costume in each new scene and to stand around like a clotheshorse with a lot of very green trees or very yellow wheat or very blue ocean rolling away for miles and miles in every direction. – Sylvia Plath • I hate the terminology of “costume” because my clothes are not costumes at all. I think they’re high fashion, avant-garde, and more couture, definitely, and yes, some of my pieces are not particularly wearable, but I wouldn’t say they’re costumes, I’d say they’re more couture. – Christian Siriano • I have a ton of cousins on my moms side of the family, and we would put on shows together all the time and put on costumes, and we even charged our parents money. – Maulik Pancholy • I have been interested in fashion since I was a kid. Then I lived in London, where it was more about costume and a personal statement of who you are than about fashion. – Zaha Hadid • I have friends who wear Star Wars costumes and act like the characters all day. I may not be that deep into it, but there’s something great about loving what you love and not caring if it’s unpopular. – Kristen Bell • I have over five thousand costumes and props and cars, and I have a twenty-five thousand square foot warehouse full of memorabilia. – Debbie Reynolds • I just love doing costume dramas; I am very lucky, as I see myself as a part-time time traveller. – Julia Sawalha • I knew ‘Be Our Guest’ would be performed on a set and in costume, but anyone with a history in Theatre In Education will know that can mean anything. – Pippa Evans • I knew I would grow up and wear a costume one day, and that’s exactly what happened. – Cassandra Peterson • I like that totally mixed up kind of eclectic group of personal props and bits of costume and I think the fun of doing that is where I was very lucky with Doctor Who. – Lalla Ward • I like to work in costumes, makeup, and hair that allow me tremendous freedom. – Jessica Lange • I liked the choreography, but I didn’t care for the costumes. – Tommy Tune • I love all the voiceovers I do. I can’t remember them all, but I seem to do them all of the time. And there’s nothing easier because you just stand and read the script, and you don’t have to act the way actors do. You don’t have to be made up and put costumes on. – Stan Lee • I love costumes. I love getting dressed up because it really helps my imagination make the leap to believe that I am who I say I am. – Alessandro Nivola • I love costumes. My dream growing up was always to have my own costume and prop shop. – Amy Sedaris • I love fashion. I always have. When I was a kid, I was in almost full-on costumes when I went to school, and I’ve retained a bit of that in my adulthood. – Lake Bell • I love putting on an outfit or a costume and just looking at myself in the mirror. Baggy pants or some real funky shoes and a hat and just feeling the character of it. That’s fun to me. – Michael Jackson • I loved doing all those costume dramas. I didn’t think, ‘Ooh I’ve got to avoid being typecast’ – you can’t ever be dictated to by what other people think. I just do things because I fancy the parts and the directors. – Helena Bonham Carter • I only assumed those dresses were costumes, based on the garish nature of the plumage. – Kami Garcia • I picked out my Halloween costume. I’m going as ‘Slutty Madeleine Albright.’ – Conan O’Brien • I put the costume on and said ‘It’s not very comfortable, but it looks amazing,’ so it’s all good. – Chris Hemsworth • I read and watch movies. I can’t go to the movie theater much anymore, though, because I get recognized. It’s worse sometimes if I wear a costume and try not to get recognized. I watch most of my films on airplanes – Ayumi Hamasaki • I realized that I wanted to play characters and do traditional theatre. I wanted to make believe again. I like putting on a costume and pretending to be someone else for a few hours, and I have a great respect for playwrights. – Lusia Strus • I remember playing football dressed in peculiar costumes with some friends in France and laughing so hard we couldn’t even stand up, let alone kick the ball. – Fred Frith • I said old Jesus probably would’ve puked if He could see it – all those fancy costumes and all. Sally said I was a sacrilegious atheist. I probably am. The thing Jesus really would’ve liked would be the guy who plays the kettle drums in the orchestra. – J. D. Salinger • I see my face in the mirror and go, ‘I’m a Halloween costume? That’s what they think of me?’ – Drew Carey • I see myself wrapped in lies, which do not seem to penetrate my soul, as if they are not really a part of me. They are like costumes. – Anais Nin • I thank you for your kind invitation to introduce me to the president of the Republic. Since I have not been out of my atelier for two months, I have no appropriate costume for this circumstance. Please excuse me. – Camille Claudel • I think color, for a costume designer, is one of your biggest storytelling devices. – Alexandra Byrne • I think I’m better at live shows than I used to be because I’m way more comfortable with the uncomfortable pauses between songs. Now, rather than trying to talk or do a costume change, I’ll use those moments for myself. I listen to what other people are playing, or just rest, or dance, even though I don’t know how to. – Fiona Apple • I think of clothes a lot like costumes. I think of what I wear in real life as being my real life character’s costume. – Ginnifer Goodwin • I think people feel starved of nice, glamorous entertainment. They want to see costumes and gaiety and a singer; old-fashioned entertainment – it won’t die easily. – Ronnie Corbett • I think that when you put yourself, as actors have to do, in other people’s shoes, when you have to put on the costume that someone else has worn in their life, it gets much, much harder to be prejudiced against them and even to be – to not try to look at the world in a sense of “I’m not going to judge somebody. I’m going to try to understand who they are and what they’re about.” – Kevin Spacey • I tried to end our little duel. I called out pacifying words; I entreated; I finally surrendered. Still Clyde came, my pirate costume so great a success that it had apparently convinced him that we were back in the golden days of romantic old New Orleans when gentlemen decided matters of hot dog honor at twenty paces – John Kennedy Toole • I try to get to know the actors as much as I can. I feel like I’m friends with them for starters and for a week or two, we rehearse when they’re getting the costumes together. – Gus Van Sant • I try very hard not to take work home, but it can be tricky. Sometimes it feels as if you are wearing your costume underneath your own clothes! I suppose things are always ticking away in the back of your mind. – Anne-Marie Duff • I wanna begin saying a story about my son. I have a four-year old son who loves superheroes from Spider-Man to Iron Man to Batman. He’s got all the costumes. One day he looks at me and says ‘Dad, I want to be light-skinned so I could be Spider-Man. Spider-Man has light skin.’ That was sort of a shock. This is why I am excited to be a part of the Marvel Universe, so I could be hopefully provide that diversity in the role of the superhero. – Djimon Hounsou • I want to create things while I have time on Earth, and the art of costume and culture has always inspired me. – Johnny Weir • I was obsessed with being popular when I was in high school and never achieved it. There’s photos from our high school musicals and things, and I’m comically in the deep background, wearing a beggar’s costume. – Mindy Kaling • I will confess I did none of my own singing. I did all my own costume and makeup, though. – Gary Cole • I would love to play the Femme Fatale or an action role like Trinity in the Matrix or something like that. You know, a part with a lot of costume changes. – Josie Maran • I’d hear some beautiful Sade or Kings Of Convenience ballad remixed in a club and I liked that these simple little songs seemed to be masquerading. They had put on superhero costumes, got all beefy, and here they were on the dancefloor. I was interested in that. I can’t make electronic beats, so I leave it to the pros like Boys Noize and Chromeo. – Feist Ideas, Possums, Officers • If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character, would you slow down? Or speed up? – Chuck Palahniuk • If human beings had genuine courage, they’d wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. – Douglas Coupland • If I’ve learned anything in twenty-nine years, it’s that every human being you see in the course of a day has a problem that’s sucking up at least 70 percent of his or her radar. My gift – bad choice of words – is that I can look at you, him, her, them, whoever, and tell right away what is keeping them awake at night: money; feelings of insignificance; overwhelming boredom; evil children; job troubles; or perhaps death, in one of its many costumes, perched in the wings. What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives. – Douglas Coupland • If Jacob was right and clothes were costumes and makeup a mask, then our attitudes and habits must be our shields. – Justina Chen • I’ll tell you…why Wonder Woman worked. Or Bionic Woman. Or any of those [shows] really. It was because it wasn’t about brawn…it was about brains. And yes, she happened to be beautiful, she happened to be kind of extraordinary in some way, but she wasn’t a guy. And I think that, [now], they…put out a female hero, and all they are doing is changing the costume from a man to a woman…they’re not showcasing any of the tremendous dichotomies than women possess in term of softness and toughness, sweetness and grit, inner and outer strength. – Lynda Carter • I’m a big comic book nerd so every time I’m in costume and see everyone in costume I’m just like “This is sick.” – Franz Drameh • I’m a child of the downloading age. I remember when I was 10, a friend who went to the same school as me came to our [school’s] costume party with a really weird hairdo. She had all these little knots in her hair. I asked her who she was and she said she was Björk. I thought this Björk must be a really cool person, so I got on the internet when I got home and found as much as I could on Björk and I fell in love. – Tove Styrke • I’m a fiend for costume jewellery and have countless pairs of rhinestone or diamante earrings, which are so flattering when they catch the light. I love the designers Alexis Bittar and Kenneth Jay Lane, and I always go to jewellers Butler & Wilson. – Joan Collins • I’m a pain in the ass to all of the costume designers with whom I work because I have very strong feelings about the subject. – Meryl Streep • Im able to hang up the character with the costume at the end of the movie. – Kevin Spacey • I’m glad I was born when I was. My time was the golden age of variety. If I were starting out again now, maybe things would happen for me, but it certainly would not be on a variety show with 28 musicians, 12 dancers, two major guest stars, 50 costumes a week by Bob Mackie – the networks just wouldn’t spend the money today. – Carol Burnett • I’m not the best audience for that because I’m not a great science-fiction fan. I just never got off on space ships and space costumes, things like that. – Gary Oldman • I’m sure favorite moments in movies are things that just happen accidentally when the camera is there. You have to do all the homework to get yourself into the period, the costumes, the style, the voice, the hairdo or whatever it is, but once you’ve done all that work, you have to kind of let it go and just be there. If you’re always thinking about it, it just looks a bit over-thought. – Tom Hiddleston • I’m sure that there must have been times when you have read books or watched films and found yourself secretly wishing for the villain to win. Why? Isn’t that against the rules by which our society lives? Why should you feel this way? It’s simple, really; the villain is the true hero of these tales, not the well-intentioned moron who somehow foils their diabolical scheme. The villain get’s all the best lines, has the best costumes, has unlimited power and wealth- why on earth would anyone not want to be the villain? – Mark Walden • I’m very good at living out of a suitcase. I love dressing up every morning. It feels like a costume, in some ways. – Morgan Saylor • I’m very much into the costuming of any character that I portray and it’s one of the great things about making movies is it’s a collaborative art form so you get all these artists who are looking specifically about for this instance your character’s costume and what that might tell about your character. – Jeff Bridges • Immortals is without doubt the best-looking awful movie you will ever see. Eiko Ishioka’s costume designs alone deserve an Oscar nomination. “They weren’t at all historically accurate,” grumbled a woman in the elevator after the sneak preview, as if lots of documentation exists about the wardrobes of the gods. She added: “I guess that’s what we deserve for using free tickets we got at a Blackhawks game. – Roger Ebert • In a costume, you need very exaggerated body language – as you say, sort of mime-type skills. – Warwick Davis • In dreams we are true poets; we create the persons of the drama; we give them appropriate figures faces, costumes; they are perfect in their organs, attitudes, manners; moreover they speak after their own characters, not ours; and we listen with surprise to what they say. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • In general, costumes are the first thing in life that let other people know who we are. They indicate who the person is without saying anything. – Molly Parker • In some ways, Halloween is much easier for women. They can just dress as sluts, and it’s kind of a costume, if they never do any other time. – Chuck Klosterman • In the old days when I first was coming up, you would turn up on set in the morning with your coffee, script, and hangover and you would figure out what you were going to do with the day and how you were going to play the scenes. You would rehearse and then invite the crew in to watch the actors go through the scenes. The actors would go away to makeup and costume and the director and the DP would work out how they were going to cover what the actors had just done. – Paul Bettany • Inside the envelope with the letter was a little Princess Leia action figure USB flash drive. For me to store my novel on, since he was right – I never back up my computer’s hard drive. The sight of it – it’s Princess Leia in her Hoth outfit, my favorite of her costumes (how had he remembered?) brought tears to my eyes. – Meg Cabot • It is a process of finding the right music then planning a costume to fit that style of music. – Nancy Kerrigan • It is amazing to me how deeply into the popular culture the creature has become. There are zombie walks in every major city. I live in Toronto, and last year 3,000 people came out dressed as zombies…. I do not get it. Maybe it’s an easy costume: Splash some ketchup on and rip up your jeans — although most people already have torn jeans — and you’re done. – George A. Romero • It is only in the case of the Priestly Code that opinions differ widely; for it tries hard to imitate the costume of the Mosaic period, and, with whatever success, to disguise its own. – Julius Wellhausen • It reminds me of how grandmother always had the right costume for me to wear. You wear the right outfit and you feel like the person you’re pretending to be. – John Boyne • It took me a while to warm to the ’20s costumes on ‘Downton.’ I love it when women accentuate their curves, and that era was all about hiding them. The shapes they wore then were in tune with female empowerment. Cutting off their hair and hiding their busts was a way of saying, ‘We’re equal to men!’ – Lily James • It was amazing that during rehearsals, without any of the costume on, the character was there complete. It just happened. Half the time, I didn’t know I was doing it. – Peter Mayhew • It was something I was more interested in myself. When I went to see my sister dance at ballet, I was really into costumes and the arts, and my family was also supportive of whatever me and my sister wanted to do. I would say I pushed myself the most to be into design. – Christian Siriano • It was the sheer variety of the pain that stopped me from crying out. It came from so many places, spoke so many languages, wore so many dazzling varieties of ethnic costume, that for a full fifteen seconds I could only hang my jaw in amazement. – Hugh Laurie • It’s an addiction. I love clothes. I like to go down Melrose and look in all the windows and I go to different flea markets. I have lots of costumes. You never know when you’re going to have to dress up like a milkmaid from the 1600s. – Zooey Deschanel • I’ve always been attracted to romantic secondhand clothes. But my style developed as I started going to these strange raves where everybody had these very definitive costumes. – Florence Welch • I’ve always been misrepresented. You know, I could dress in a clown costume and laugh with the happy people but they’d still say I’m a dark personality. – Tim Burton • I’ve always wanted to be Wonder Woman, of course. She had the greatest costume. – Kelly Hu • I’ve always worked closely with the designers and whoever’s making the costumes. Comfort is the last thing you want on your mind when you’re competing. In an ideal situation, you’ll have something where you’ll put it on and you’re fine and you don’t have to worry about it at all. – Kristi Yamaguchi • I’ve done a lot of costume drama and theatre – the National Theatre and In fact, most of my work at the theatre, at the National Theatre anyway, was period. – Brenda Blethyn • I’ve done approximately 15 films, and most of the things I’ve done have either been stunt or costume work. – Verne Troyer • I’ve made quite a number of movies like Castaway and a few others where I’m the only guy in the movie and the only place to be is right next to the camera in costume ready to go in order to get it. The years, and more specifically probably the four months prior to beginning shooting, is where the big preparation is that the director does because I knew we were going to get on the set. And the good news is, if you’re the boss, if it ain’t good, you don’t use it. You just cut it out. – Tom Hanks • I’ve never done a lead role in a film this big [like Doctor Strange], in a franchise this big. One of the reasons was, I wanted to know what the toy box was like. And it’s just insane, the amount of facility that everyone gets, but the amount of artistry and craft that’s brought to every aspect of filmmaking. I mean, you go to your first costume fitting and it’s one of thirty. It’s a myriad, but it’s for a reason. There are so many incredible costumes in this. – Benedict Cumberbatch • just because I don’t have on a silly black costume and carry a silly broom and wear a silly black hat, doesn’t mean that I’m not a witch. I’m a witch all the time and not just on Halloween. – E. L. Konigsburg • Madonna has a far profounder vision of sex than do the feminists. She sees both the animality and the artifice. Changing her costume style and hair color virtually every month, Madonna embodies the eternal values of beauty and pleasure. Feminism says, ‘No more masks.’ Madonna says we are nothing but masks. Through her enormous impact on young women around the world, Madonna is the future of feminism. – Camille Paglia • My book is very wild. But you know during the period of BATMAN, that there were thousands of Batman and Robin costumes sold and these weren’t just for kids. – Burt Ward • My costumes were made for sex appeal not for women. – Brenda Holloway • My fancy dress costume of choice is… something 1920s or 30s, when there was still so much elegance and attention to detail. An excuse for ultimate dressing-up indulgence. – Ellie Goulding • My father has developed a tradition of surprising us at some point by appearing in fancy dress. He buys a new costume each year and typically gets carried away. A couple of Christmases ago he appeared in an inflatable sumo outfit. Its endearing, really, and only quite embarrassing. – Pippa Middleton • My first acting experience was a non-speaking role as a robot. My costume was a cardboard box covered in tinfoil, but I was so shy I refused to go on stage. – Jessica Raine • My girlfriend’s a costume designer in the theater. – Philip Seymour Hoffman • My mom did costumes for the Pointer Sisters. – Slash • My mom used to make my costumes when I was little; she sews a lot. One year, I was a bride and I had a big wedding dress and a bouquet. Another year I was a medieval princess with a long teal dress and a veil. It was a little extravagant, but it was cute! – Sasha Pieterse • My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will. – Henry David Thoreau • My objects dream and wear new costumes, compelled to, it seems, by all the words in my hands and the sea that bangs in my throat. – Anne Sexton • Nice costume,” he said. “Ditto. I can tell you put alot of though into yours.” Amusement curled his mouth. “If you don’t like it, I can take it off.” I tapped my chin thoughtfully. “That just might be the best proposal I’ve had all night.” “My offers are always the best, Angel. – Becca Fitzpatrick • No matter how many modern parts I do, people still refer to me as Mrs. Costume Drama. – Helena Bonham Carter • No touching Baby Jesus.” “But we’re his parents!” proclaimed Mary Beth, who was being generous to include poor Joseph under this appellation. “Mary Beth,” Barb Wiggin said, “if you touch the Baby Jesus, I’m putting you in a cow costume. – John Irving • No, officer, I have no idea why I’m wearing this possum costume. I called you what? OH. My bad.” -Nastasya – Cate Tiernan • Nothings makes a woman look older that a rich costume. – Coco Chanel • Now people need special costumes to ride bicycles. I mean, a helmet, what, are you an astronaut?? – Fran Lebowitz • Now what else is the whole life of mortals, but a sort of comedy in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each ones part until the manager walks them off the stage? – Desiderius Erasmus • O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales. – Leo Rosten • Oh, hello,” Dr. M says, shaking Balder’s hand. “Wonderful costume. I’m a bit of a role player myself on the weekends. Tell me, where did you get the helmet?” It was forged in the North, blessed by the hands of Odin, given to me by my mother, Frigg,” Balder answers. Lovely. I got mine on the Internet. – Libba Bray • On the side of box of my superman costume it actually said – ‘Do not attempt to fly!’ – Jerry Seinfeld • Once you embody the language, the character comes really naturally, especially when you put the costume on. – Lucy Liu • One time I forgot my costume, and I had to do a scene in my pants, and I got my knob caught in a clapperboard. – 2D • People always seem to assume that we have a full, back-up support team – make-up, costume and a driver – but usually, in a war zone, there’s only me and the cameraman. – Kate Adie • People assume, because I’m Hef’s girlfriend, that I’m a Bunny and I’m a Playmate and I’m a centerfold, but they’re different things. If you’re a Playmate or a centerfold, which is the same thing, you pose for the magazine, you are one particular month, and not every Playmate is a Bunny. A Bunny is a girl who used to work at the Playboy Club, she had the Bunny costume, and now that we don’t have Playboy Clubs, it’s just Playmates who work special promotions and are fitted for a Bunny costume. – Holly Madison • Period costume films are fun to discover, but they’re not relatable. It’s more, ‘Wow, that’s cool – did it really look like that back then?’ Whereas with a comedy, you’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s me, that’s my friends.’ No matter what, I want people to relate. – Paul Feig • Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon). – Harold Rosenberg • pools of blood are not recreational even lifeguards drown when the undertow breaks bread with the underbelly demons disguised as sharks have not put enough thought into their costumes a wiseman stays ashore when pointed fins read like italian subtitles the end is near (…) the beginning – Saul Williams • Radio is truly the theater of the mind. The listener constructs the sets, colors them from his own palette, and sculpts and costumes the characters who perform in them. – Mercedes McCambridge • Satan himself can’t save a woman who wears thirty-shilling corsets under a thirty-guinea costume. – Rudyard Kipling • She said, “I’m going to have you fired.” I had two people say that to me today, “I’m going to have you fired.” Go ahead, be my guest. I’m wearing a green velvet costume; it doesn’t get any worse than this. Who do these people think they are? I’m going to have you fired!” and I wanted to lean over and say, “I’m going to have you killed. – David Sedaris • Shigure Sohma: [got Tohru a maid costume for White Day] I can’t wait to for her to call me master while wearing this. Hatsuharu Sohma: Just don’t get arrested, okay? – Natsuki Takaya • Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to a deed. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to deed. A skillful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge; yet not the details, but the quality. What part does he play in them – a cheerful, manly part, or a poor, drivelling part? However monstrous and grotesque their apparitions, they have a substantial truth. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • So you couldn’t protect yourself? The absolute erodes; the boundary, the wall around the self erodes. If I was waiting I had been invaded by time. But do you think you’re free? I think I recognize the patterns of my nature. Bud do you think you’re free? I had nothing and I was still changed. Like a costume, my numbness was taken away. Then hunger was added. – Louise Glück • So, did the costume come with a condom, or is that sold separately? – Rachel Vincent • Some directors hand over portions of their movie to their head of department to the point where it’s like, “I’m not going to talk to you about the costumes, but I’m going to let you talk to the expert.” Rather than, “You want to talk stitching, let’s talk stitching. You want to talk grade of leather? Let’s.” – Idris Elba • Someone’s going to put the clothes on you, and part of being an actor is wearing costumes. Costumes tell you an awful lot about who you are, so you just, it’s nothing. – Morgan Freeman • Sometimes I steal costumes. – Rich Fulcher • Steampunk is…the love child of Hot Topic and a BBC costume drama – Gail Carriger • Tales of adultery are much improved by period costumes. – Mason Cooley • The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic form and graceful motions will express themselves through the most barbarous and tasteless costume. – Percy Bysshe Shelley • The costume designer designing clothes that helped the comedy in The Proposal, that sold the character. Each and every detail was so perfectly thought of, what wouldn’t be here? That’s a lost art. – Sandra Bullock • the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life. – Oscar Wilde • The costume of women should be suited to her wants and needs. – Amelia Bloomer • The costume that I wear on the show is a little snug and doesn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination. I don’t have a problem with it because of the way this character’s been written. – Jeri Ryan • The Dutch at close proximity looked much like Americans, apart from their peculiar uniforms, and so it was their uniforms I fired at, half convinced that I was killing, not human beings, but enemy costumes, which had borne their contents here from a distant land; and if some living man suffered for his enslavement to the uniform, or was penetrated by the bullets aimed at it well, that was unavoidable, and the fault couldn’t be placed at my feet. The private charade was not equivalent to Courage, but it enabled a Callousness that served a similar purpose. – Robert Charles Wilson • The fashion I’ve acquired over the years is so sacred to me – from costumes to couture, high fashion to punk wear I’ve collected from my secret international hot spots. I keep everything in an enormous archive in Hollywood. The clothes are on mannequins, also on hangers and in boxes with a photo of each piece, and there’s a Web site where I can go to look through everything. It’s too big – I could never sort through it myself! But these garments tell the stories of my life. – Lady Gaga • The first time I met Prince he invented me to his birthday party in Minneapolis. It was a costume party and I came as a beatnik – a beret and a charcoal goatee. He was dressed like an executioner. I talked to him for awhile and he didn’t know who I was, and when I told him he was real surprised. – Paul Reubens • The historical side of fashion was very attractive to me when I was a teenager in Moscow, working for the costume departments in various Russian theater companies. – Alexander Vassiliev • The Hulk was a unique character because of his strength and power. He doesn’t have a costume like Spiderman or like Superman – The Hulk is more visual. His passion and his strength, that is what separates him from anything else. – Lou Ferrigno • The kinds of things I like with crystals are the really beautiful costume jewelry, vintage pieces, and they usually have that diamond shape. – Zoe Kravitz • The only difference is that religion is much better organized and has been around much longer, but it’s the same story with different characters and different costumes. – James Randi • The skeptics said you can’t put on a costume in the middle of New York – which isn’t true, because everyone’s in a costume here. – Avi Arad • The tabloid that said that I dressed up as a medieval, like a sexy medieval something and that upset me more than the dating rumors that have been circling around that were fake. If somebody thinks I’m going to dress sexy to a costume party, they have another thing coming. – Jennifer Lawrence • The threats against democracy today are in general completely normal. They walk around in costume and tie. – Carl B. Hamilton • There is the danger of over preparation, of loss of spontaneity; over rehearsal is the most terrible thing you can imagine. We do have a very close association between costume and set designer, though. And the cameraman is very important, of course. – Terence Fisher • There’s going to be a Halloween costume [of lavash from Sausage Party]. The whole thing is just so ridiculous. It’s nice. It’s silly, and it’s surreal. – David Krumholtz • There’s no mystery to it. Nothing more complicated than learning lines and putting on a costume. – Morgan Freeman • There’s nothing more fun than putting on an old costume and jewelry and being in a house that’s decorated from the ’20s or ’30s or whatever. • There’s something about being there, on the set, in costume, in the moment, where you start to get a feel for the scene, which is not the same as sitting in your office writing it. – Lionel Wigram • They know they’re going to look beautiful, and I don’t think women should look like costumes. They shouldn’t look like fashion victims. – Ralph Lauren • They said they wanted a lot of feathers, glitter, colourful colours. A costume. So I had a lady here in Calgary make it. She just kind of put together what I had in mind. – Owen Hart • They take the paper and they read the headlines. So they’ve heard of unemployment and they’ve heard of bread-lines. And they philanthropically cure them all by getting up a costume charity ball. – Ogden Nash • This is my costume. I’m a homicidal maniac. They look just like everyone else. – Christina Ricci • To me, achieving tone, achieving consistency, is exactly the job of a director. It is to be the fusing, the nexus of a whole bunch of people contributing to the complex life of a movie. There are actors, there’s a cinematographer, there’re costume people, set people, there are all these things, and you somehow have to be the person in the middle of it who is making it all synchronize into the same magic bubble. – Edward Norton • To me, the appeal of opera lies in the fact that a myriad of singers and instruments, each possessed of different qualities of voice and sound, against the backdrop of a grand stage and beautiful costumes, come together in one complete and impressive drama. – Junichiro Koizumi • Vitamins ruined my life. Not that there was much left to ruin, but still. I know that blaming vitamins for my horrible life sounds strange. After all, vitamins are supposed to keep people healthy. Also, they’re inanimate objects. But thanks to them I was stuck in the Jackson Center Mall watching my father run around in a bee costume. – Elizabeth Scott • We have a costume closet at home. My family will put on a costume for any excuse. – Bryan Batt • We needed to have a great set decorator, a great D.P., a great costume designer, everybody. Without all these people, we would have made a shitty movie. – Vincent Paronnaud • We post photos of the Halloween costumes and the mustaches made of cupcake frosting. We don’t record the tantrums?and that’s as it should be. But we shouldn’t mistake that for reality. It’s stagecraft. – Libby Copeland • We talk about theatre museums filled with old costumes and things. What we also need is a theatre museum of the old routines on videotape. We are only the custodians of those techniques, and they should be preserved. – Jim Dale • We were a family that made our Halloween costumes. Or, more accurately, my mother made them. She took no suggestions or advice. Halloween costumes were her territory. She was the brain behind my brothers winning girl costume, stuffing her own bra with newspapers for him to wear under a cashmere sweater and smearing red lipstick on his lips. – Ann Hood • Well, I design costumes because I started with the theater in Chicago, but somehow a few lines just sort of fell to me to do it. And I studied it in school and I always liked it. – John Malkovich • Well,the fun part of being a writer is that it’s like making a wonderful film, with no limit on my budget. I can design the sets, the costume, the lightings, I write the script, and then I get to perform all the roles as I step into each character’s skin, zip up, and adopt that point of view. So, to me, they are all compelling and fascinating. – Robin Hobb • What keeps this industry alive is creators doing their own work. Once you change a costume or origin enough times, it’s a dead body – you’re just electrocuting it and keeping it sort of shambling on. There is a lot more creator-owned stuff now, and some of it I look at and go, ‘Oh, that’s his pitch for a TV show. That’s his pitch for a movie. That’s him saying oh, this kind of thing sells.’ I didn’t do that. – Mike Mignola • When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. – Sam Walton • When I get up in the morning, I go and I work with beautiful women and charming men and funny comedians and dramatic artists. And I’m presented with costumes and great music to choose from and sets. I travel a certain amount of places, so I’ve been living in a bubble. And I like it. – Woody Allen • When I go out and I’m presenting the best side of myself, I want to look different from everyone, but I don’t want it to look like I’m wearing a costume. – Rachel Roy • When the Strokes first started playing gigs, instead of getting into a costume for the shows, we talked about how we should dress every day, in real life, like we’re playing onstage. I don’t really care about clothes, but it’s about wearing something that gives you social confidence. Or maybe helps you pick up chicks. – Julian Casablancas • When you put your costume on and you get your hair and your makeup done [for a role] and you stare in the mirror you feel like a different person. – Michael Shannon • When you’re wearing an animal costume and something bad happens, your facial expression doesn’t change. The animal is deadpan the whole time. If you’re skiing in a gorilla suit and you fall, you just see a gorilla who has no emotion. It’s just a stoic gorilla, wildly falling down a hill, out of control. – Demetri Martin • When youre young, the blue blazer feels like a grown-up costume. – Willie Geist • White is too brilliant to be seen, so yellow is its filter, its costume, revealing that pure light has not only brightness but emotional resonance and depth. – Richard Grossinger • Wild Bill was a strange character, add to this figure a costume blending the immaculate neatness of the dandy with the extravagant taste and style of a frontiersman, you have Wild Bill, the most famous scout on the Plains. – George Armstrong Custer • Without my husband’s costumes I wouldn’t have known how to accomplish what I saw in my own mind’s eyes for choreography. And then seeing our choreography and knowing the background of it I am sure helped my husband a great deal with what he designed for us. – Katherine Dunham • Women: You can’t live with them, and you can’t get them to dress up in a skimpy little Nazi costume and beat you with a warm squash or something. – Emo Philips • You cannot climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure. – Zig Ziglar • You can’t do a machine without knowing something about how it’s going to work. As for the romantics, the costumes bored me and I don’t enjoy doing period clothes. – Boris Vallejo • You can’t have a bad time at Disney World. It’s not allowed. They have hidden electronic surveillance cameras everywhere, and if they catch you failing to laugh with childlike wonder, they lock you inside a costume representing a beloved Disney character such as Goofy and make you walk about in the Florida heat getting grabbed and leaped on by violently excited children until you have learned your lesson. – Dave Barry • You know, being in a rock band, you can’t overdo the costume changes too much because everyone thinks, oh, that’s not a real rock band. Look how many times he changes costumes. That’s not rock. Rock’s about going on in a T-shirt and staying in it and getting it all dirty. But that’s not really my approach. – Mick Jagger • You look at Cheney, Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, and Bush – if you saw them on Halloween, they wouldn’t need a costume. You’d give them a treat and compliment them on what great-looking demons they were. They are demons. There’s no doubt about it. – Tommy Chong • You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World. – Dave Barry • You only get one shot in your life and you might as well push yourself and try things. There’s so many interesting aspects of making a movie; the costume department, the set design, the casting itself, the locations. It’s a great, great thing to be involved in if you have the headspace for it, and I do. Try anything once. – Jason Statham • Young people, however, tend to ignore the customs of their elders. Adolescent rebellion has been responsible for all manner of absurd costumes. The more ridiculous a certain fashion is, the more adolescents will cling to it. – David Eddings • Youth is terrible: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and a variety of costumes mouthing speeches they’ve memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand. And history is terrible because it so often ends up a playground for the immature; a playground for the young Nero, a playground for the young Bonaparte, a playground for the easily roused mobs of children whose simulated passions and simplistic poses suddenly metamorphose into a catastrophically real reality. – Milan Kundera • Youve got to leave the reader with more than just a name and a costume – they need to know who the character is, what theyre like, what kind of attitude they have, what sort of role they play. – Kurt Busiek

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'a', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_a').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_a img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'e', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_e').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_e img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'i', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_i').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_i img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'o', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_o').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_o img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'u', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_u').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_u img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

[systcmglitch-blog]

Gone But Not Forgotten: Nyleen Kay Marshall

On June 25th, 1983, Nyleen Kay Marshall had gone on a family picnic in the Helena National Forest of Clancy, Montana. She had been playing with a group of other children at around 4:00 PM. The group of children she had been playing with, however, had started to walk ahead of Nyleen, and by the time they had turned around she was nowhere to be seen.

There was an extensive search done around the area, hundreds of volunteers and cadaver dogs came in to help find the young girl, however Nyleen had seemingly vanished. The only clue given at the time was a man seen talking to Nyleen wearing a purple jogging suit just before her disappearance.

In some reports, the stranger had been said to have been trying to get the children to play “catch the shadow”. The man was stated as not being part of the picnic group, and has not been identified.

Nyleen’s family had been questioned about her disappearance, and her stepfather was even considered as a person of interest in her kidnapping. Her mother would later be murdered in Mexico sometime in the 1990′s.

In a later interview, Nyleen’s uncle would state that he had seen two men in the park that he recognized from wanted posters. The posters stating that these people, a man and a woman were in fact wanted for a case of kidnapping.

Three years after Nyleen’s kidnapping, a letter was sent to investigators from Madison, Wisconsin stating that they had picked up a “girl named Kay” and included details about the case that had not been released to the public. They went on to further state that they had a decent income, worked from home and even home schooled Nyleen. The letter went on to say that he traveled with her all over the US, Canada and even Great Britain. He claimed to love Nyleen, and despite knowing that her family missed her, didn’t want to give her up. Below is a quote from sitcomsonline of a user that had transcribed the letter that had been sent. Please be aware that it is hinted that some sort of sexual abuse occurred in the letter, so please read at your own discretion:

(The first line is cut off) … all I could tell them was that she was O.K. I hope that Child Find can get the following back to her family. I picked “KAY” up on the road in the Elkhorn Park area between Helena and Boulder. She was crying and frightened and as I held her she was shaking and I decided that I would keep her and love her. I took her home with me. I have a nice investment income and I can work at home so I care for her myself all the time. I teach her at home and she likes to go with me when I travel. She would gladly recount to you trips to San Francisco, New York, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Nashville, Chicago, Puerto Rico and Canada. We were even in Britain for a month last year and she loved it. Nobody questions passports. Her hair is short and curly now and she has really grown. She is about 45 inches and around 50 pounds. She has all four of her permanent upper and two of her lower incisors at this time. She takes a bath and brushes her teeth every day. *** The next part of the letter isn’t shown. I’m not sure if it’s just a paragraph or a whole page.*** (Continued from previous page) … it is or where it comes from, only that I get it from the bathroom every morning. It is actually a spoonful of my s*men. It doesn’t affect her physically. I have NEVER “molested” her in any other way. She is a sweet little girl and it is because of how much I have grown to love her that I realize how much her family must miss her. But she has adjusted and seems happy. She trusts me and isn’t afraid. We play alot and she laughs when we clown around. She smiles and acts coy when I tease her. She giggles when we snuggle and hugs me sometimes for no apparent reason. I love her and I have her. I just can’t let her go!

Later, there would be numerous anonymous calls (there are claims that it was only a total of three) to the Child Find Network claiming to be the author of the letter, all tracing back to phone booths. One of which being a phone booth in a pharmacy in Edgerton, Wisconsin. These phone calls and letters indicated that Nyleen Kay Marshall was also being sexually abused.

With the indication that Nyleen and her abductor were in Madison, Wisconsin, the FBI had gone and even asked doctors and dentists if they had recognized Nyleen, however no one seemed to have recalled seeing her.

The phone calls had stopped after they had been traced back to Wisconsin, however, after an airing of Unsolved Mysteries that featured Nyleen’s case a call had been put in that claimed Nyleen was actually a classmate of theirs. The classmate would sadly not be Nyleen Kay Marshall, but in a positive twist, would wind up being a separate missing child, Monica Bonilla.

It is still unclear if these calls and letters are truly from the man that had kidnapped Nyleen, and some wonder if she hadn’t just wandered off and gotten lost in the forest.

    Theories

1. Franklin Delano Floyd & Sharon Marshall:

Though it isn’t confirmed, there is speculation on discussion boards that the two seen on the wanted posters that Nyleen’s uncle spok of were Franklin Delano Floyd; a now death row inmate convicted of the murder of Cheryl Ann Commesso, and the kidnapping of his own stepson. The other person speculated to have been on the wanted poster is Sharon Marshall, Floyd’s wife at the time.

Floyd (pictured above) was also convicted of the abduction and rape of a young girl from a bowling alley in 1973.

What makes Floyd seem even more plausible as a suspect is the fact that Sharon Marshall was actually raised by Floyd as his daughter. This was only discovered when investigating her mysterious hi-and-run death that Floyd had been suspected of. He had given a number of inconsistent statements regarding how Sharon had even gotten in his custody. In one story he gave, Floyd claimed that Sharon had actually been abandoned by her family, and he had rescued her. Authorities believe that Sharon Marshall, who was later identified to be Suzzane Marie Sevakis, was kidnapped by Floyd sometime between 1973 and 1975.

2. Nyleen’s Stepfather:

Due to him having been a person of interest in the investigation, some believe that her very own stepfather had been the one to have kidnapped her. What makes this hard to beieve is that no one reported him as missing from the group at the time of Nyleen’s disappearance.

It is common to suspect the family in cases like this, however I personally don’t see this particular theory as a solid one. Given that he wasn’t seen near Nyleen at the time of her vanishing, and that no one had reported him away from the group. As well as the fact that a public place seems like the last place to abduct a family member, not to mention that it would be nearly impossible to appear as not missing at a family gather, while hiding the young girl.

3. A Case of Wandering Off:

Some believe that Nyleen simply wandered off while playing with the group of friends. It had been stated that the area had rough terrain, and it would be easy enough for a young girl to simply wander off into the forest chasing after an animal, or even just hiding from the other kids in play.

The area reportedly has swamps, a creek bottom and even mine shafts in the immediate area where she was last seen.

My only personal hesitation regarding this theory is that the area had been searched, and though small it seems unlikely to me that the girl would go missing and not have been found and that a stranger would write and call as many times as the man had making the claims that he did.

4. Racine County Jane Doe:

In 1999 a young woman was found badly beaten. Upon Isotope testing Jane Doe may have been originally from Alaska or Canada, which is coincidentally the location of Nyleen Kay Marshall’s childhood home.

Many see a great deal of resemblence between Jane Doe and Nyleen, and what makes this theory even more compelling is that Jane Doe was found in Racine County, only 60 miles away from Edgerton, Wisconsin.

There have been no remarks on the Racine County Jane Doe being ruled out as a match to Nyleen Marshall as of this post. Though other’s have also stated that the reconstruction of what Jane Doe may have looked like (given by the Center of Missing and Exploited Children in 2012) and a photo of Nyleen’s mother are eerily similar.

Above: The reconstructed image of what the Racine County Jane Doe may have looked

Below: Nyleen Kay Marshall’s mother as seen in Unsolved Mysteries

Even more incriminating is that Jane Doe showed signs of malnutrition and sexual abuse before her death. She was suspected to be between the ages of 19-35, and at the time she was found, Nyleen would have been about 19 years old.

5. Out of State Mother:

in 1997 a Montana had written an article about a young woman who had given birth to a baby girl. The woman, however, had very little memory of her past, but did state that she believed her mother’s name was Nyleen. The theory is that this was Nyleen herself, and she had given birth to the child of her kidnapper, who alluded to molestation despite claiming he had not done so “in any other way”.

While there is a lot of speculation, the case of Nyleen remains unsolved. If still alive, Nyleen would be 38 years old.

If you have seen or have any information on Nyleen Kay Marshall please call the Jefferson County’s Sheriff Office at (406)-225-4075.

[wolfdenlin77-blog]

Recapping Twin Peaks: The Return: Part 10

Before watching each week's installment of Twin Peaks: The Return, the titles given for each part offer a nice little hint for what's in store, or, in the cases where the title doesn't provide an obvious prompt, a way to later look back on the element that David Lynch and Mark Frost wanted you to pay the closest attention to from the beginning. The title of Part Nine was This is the Chair, and in that episode, we got some seriously important information from that chair: the directions from the late Major Garland Briggs (Don S. Davis) that will get the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department closer to understanding where and when and how Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) can be found. This week's title, however, is Laura is the One and while we're not left with any immediately accessible explanation for what that means, we know that Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) is somehow the key element to restoring, and hopefully healing, the toxic sadness now coursing through the metaphorical water supply within the town of Twin Peaks.

If you recall, we learned in Part Eight that Carel Struycken's character, credited so far as just ??????? in The Return, and his cohort in the White Lodge (though I'm personally on the fence that this is what this is) Seorita Dido (Joy Nash) sent the golden goodness of Laura into Twin Peaks to combat the rivaled evilness of Bob (Frank Silva). The essence of Bob was most recently within Dale Cooper's Doppelgnger, who we've been calling Evil Cooper, but was removed by the Woodsmen (led by Robert Broski) and is now god knows where. Even without that essence, the ratio of bad versus good in Twin Peaks and the other new locations (Las Vegas, South Dakota, New York, Philadelphia) leans more on the bad side. Like really, really bad. Twin Peaks used to be a town where, aside from the occasional incest, prostitution ring, and murder, the worst thing to happen on any given day is finding a fish in your percolator. Now, it's a place where pinched-face psycho killers call their grandmother a cunt. So, if Laura is the One, as we've been told by the auteurs themselves, perhaps that means she's the one to finally snap Cooper out of his Dougie stupor; in other words, Laura contains the Prince Charming-esque kiss that's gonna bring him back around. Hell, we'd place a Mr. Jackpots-sized bet on it.

Part Ten opens with another appearance from Richard Horne (Eamon Farren), who we now know beyond the shadow of a doubt is the terrible, terrible god-awful son of Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) who we still have not seen. He pays a visit to the trailer park where Miriam Sullivan (Sarah Jean Long) lives to try and sweet talk her out of not telling the police that she saw him mow a little boy down with his truck. Unfortunately for her, she tells him she already called and wrote a letter to the Sheriff, to which he gives up the sweet talk and just kills her instead. Ramming his way into her home, we hear the sounds of brutal violence and then the camera lets us peek in to see that not only did he beat her to death, he opened up the gas on the stove and left a burning candle next to it as well. Spoiler: Things are going to get even more heated.

In back to back displays of violence, we go from here to the front of the New Fat Trout Trailer Park where Carl (Harry Dean Stanton) sits in a folding chair strumming Red River Valley on an acoustic guitar. His song is interrupted by a red coffee cup being thrown through the window of a nearby trailer and we go inside that home to see Shelly's daughter Becky (Amanda Seyfried) being manhandled and screamed at by a hysterical, runny nosed Steven - her husband - played very Leo Johnson-y by Caleb Landry Jones. Based on this display, he may even have Leo beat and it seems like Becky might have something worse than soap in a sock coming her way. Those familiar with the original series and Fire Walk With Me might be wondering whatever happened to 'ol new shoes Leo. It'd be interesting to see his storyline wrapped up in The Return along with a few others we're curious about like Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn Boyle, Moira Kelly) for instance. Let's not hold our breath, though.

Meanwhile, at a doctor's office in Las Vegas, Cooper/Dougie is being examined while his temporary (although she doesn't know this yet) wife Janey-E Jones (Naomi Watts) watches, looking visibly pleased that he's mysteriously lost a bunch of weight and is now in excellent shape. Once back home, Janey seduces Cooper/Dougie into the bedroom and the two engage in loud sex (poor Sonny-Jim) and then fall asleep in each other's arms. It will be sad when Janey learns down the line that the man who just gave her what was probably the first orgasm of her marriage isn't actually her husband. With the real (manufactured) Dougie gone, having been sucked back into the Black Lodge and destroyed, she'll be left with no husband at all and doesn't deserve that grief. Janey -E Jones 4-EVR.

In another part of Las Vegas, the Mitchum Brothers (Jim Belushi, Robert Knepper) are watching the news and see a report that Ike the Spike (Christophe Zajac-Denek) has been arrested. Part of the report includes hilarious footage of Janey and Dougie/Cooper after having been attacked by Ike in front of the Lucky 7 Insurance building and the brothers put two and two together that the man who thwarted Ike is also who they previously knew as Mr. Jackpots. They make plans to call off the hit they had arranged on Ike themselves and to set up a meeting with Dougie/Cooper/Mr. Jackpots soon. To further complicate the life of Dougie/Cooper/Mr. Jackpots, we later also learn that Anthony Sinclair (Tom Sizemore), who works with Dougie/Cooper at Lucky 7 and who we already knew was an asshole, is in cahoots with Duncan Todd (Patrick Fischler). With Mr. C breathing down his neck, Todd orders Sinclair to influence the Mitchum Brothers to kill Dougie/Cooper by telling them he's the reason their $30 million insurance claim got turned down. And if that fails, Sinclair will have the do the job himself. Seriously, what if Dougie/Cooper gets killed before Cooper wakes up? Don't rule it out, anything can happen in Lynch land. Anything. Lynch and Frost have already been throwing us curve balls and dragging us around by the nose for 10 weeks now and nothing would be more of a gut punch than killing off the series' most beloved character. We wouldn't put it past them.

Back in Twin Peaks proper, we're gifted with a new installment of former doctor Lawrence Jacoby's (Russ Tamblyn) Dr. Amp show, which Nadine Hurley (Wendy Robie) watches while sipping a protein shake from the desk of her very own business called Run Silent, Run Drapes - a play on the title of the 1958 film Run Silent, Run Deep starring Clark Cable and Burt Lancaster. As Nadine watches, she says he's so beautiful out loud to herself, in reference to Jacoby. Where the hell is Ed? And why does Nadine seem more, well, out of it than usual?

Over at the Horne house, we're happy to see that Johnny (played here by Eric Rondell) survived his nasty encounter with the wall in Part Nine but is not looking very good. He's situated at the dining room table, fully restrained, staring at terrifying teddy bear robot with a Mr. Bill face that also kind of looks like a loaded pot bowl. Soon enough, Richard Horne shows up and, in one of the most difficult to watch scenes ever, violently chokes his grandmother Sylvia (Jan D'Arcy) demanding the code for the safe. Once he clears out not only the safe, but her purse and silverware, he calls her a cunt and leaves both her and Johnny slumped and crying on the floor.

In his hotel room in South Dakota, Gordon Cole (Lynch) is sipping bordeaux and drawing a picture that looks like a tree growing out of a cow with a hand snatching at it when he gets a knock on the door. Upon opening it, he sees a vision of Laura and it's interesting to note that it's her in the Donna, are you my best friend scene from Fire Walk With Me. What could this be trying to tell us? Well, based on the fact that Albert Rosenfield (Miguel Ferrer) is there to tell him about the text that Diane (Laura Dern) received from Evil Cooper (Around the dinner table, the conversation is lively), and that she replied back (They have Hastings, he's going to take them to the site), maybe it's a warning that we can't assume who's a friend anymore.

And finally, the Log Lady (the late Catherine E. Coulson) closes Part 10 with a message from her log to Hawk (Michael Horse) saying electricity is humming, you hear it in the mountains and rivers and that now the circle is almost complete. She also urges him to watch and listen to the dream of time and space, and says that it all comes out now flowing like a river. Bottom line: Hawk and Laura are about to get shit done. Let's see if we get closer to learning how next week.

DAMN FINE QUOTES:

Pee Culiar. Dougie/Cooper

We're just naked, screaming little fucks. No wool for us! Dr. Amp/Jacoby

NEXT WEEK ON TWIN PEAKS:

- Benjamin Horne (Richard Beymer) and Beverly Paige (Ashley Judd) get that dinner together.

- Speaking of dinners, perhaps Albert and coroner Constance Talbot (Jane Adams) will share more than just a fancy feast?

- Jerry Horne (David Patrick Kelly) finally finds what he's looking for maybe.

- The US Postal Service has its revenge on Chad Broxford (John Pirruccello)

- Hawk, Bobby, and Frank investigate the clues they've collected so far regarding Jack Rabbit's Palace and the Log Lady's last message.

- Hopefully, Richard Horne gets eaten by one of the lions on the nature program Sarah Palmer was watching in the premiere.

TONIGHT AT THE ROADHOUSE:

Rebekah Del Rio (with Moby on guitar) sing No Stars. You may remember Del Rio as the singer of LLorando from that gut wrenchingly sad scene in Mulholland Drive.