#patricia benedict

[nakeddeparture]

Patricia Benedict insists that Tina Parravicino’s passport be surrendered and Ian Weekes be fired as a magistrate - Barbados.

https://youtu.be/oguLB6GpNdU

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[refs-r-ences]

(Major spoilers for all Ace Attorney Games as well as Ghost Trick) I already posted something similar to this, but I’ve now played the Investigations collection and the Layton crossover, so I figured I might as well update it. Imagine a trial where “Calisto Yew" is the defence, with Kristoph Gavin as Co-council, facing off against Manfred von Karma as prosecutor, with the Phantom disguised as Daryan Crescend as the detective, Courtney Sithe as the coroner and Mael Stronghart as the judge. The defendant is Matt Engarde, accused of the attempted murder of William Shamspeare, who survived due to plot armor, with Cammy Meele, Luke Atmey, Ashley Graydon and Fifi Laguarde as witnesses. If it’s done TGAA style, then the Jurors would be Enoch Drebber, Nikolina Pavlova, Darklaw, Shelly de Killer via the radio, Roger Retinz, and Yomiel from Ghost Trick because why not. Now the culprit would turn out to actually be von Karma because of course it is, and since he got annoyed by Shamspeare, being well, Shamspeare.

[denimbex1986]

'It’s one of those odd April days in Los Angeles, the type that locals know well: Hours after noon, the sun still seems ambivalent about whether it wants to make itself known. An outsider wouldn’t think it possible for the gleaming capital of show business to feel so grayed out. But if you grew up on an island where colorless skies are the norm, it might feel familiar.

“It’s like, Will I? Won’t I?” the Irish actor Andrew Scott quips as he settles into his chair on the rooftop of the Edition Hotel in West Hollywood. He’s been in town promoting his Netflix series “Ripley,” which launched a few weeks ago, and the foreboding weather seems apt. On that limited series, the Italian vistas seem as unsettled as its antihero’s soul. The show’s vibe is “almost like L.A., what we’re looking at here now,” Scott says, as I begin to regret not bringing a jacket to our alfresco lunch. “It’s cloudy. I come from a place where the sky is normally like this.”

Scott’s “Ripley,” an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel about a grifter whose 1950s Euro-trip comes with a body count, is morally cloudy, too, and glamorously gloomy besides. Unlike the 1999 film “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” which placed an uptight Tom Ripley (then played by peak-heartthrob-era Matt Damon) amid the rustic charm of Italy and drew its charge from the contrast, this year’s version is a blunter object. Speedo-clad Damon romped through the Italy of your dreams; the baggily attired Scott staggers through a nightmare.

Written and directed by Steven Zaillian and likely to place Scott in contention for a limited-series lead-acting Emmy, it’s mesmerizing but cool to the touch, using Oscar winner Robert Elswit’s stark black-and-white cinematography to depict a landscape as forbidding as its central character. That may account for why the series got off to a slow start on Netflix’s weekly viewership charts. But “Ripley” has also attracted the kind of positive notices that suggest a potential long tail, especially as Emmy season looms.

The series was a crucial test for Scott, who, at 47, has proven himself a shape-shifter. The out gay actor, who in 2019 stole scenes as the “Hot Priest” on the second season of “Fleabag,” and who had an awards-season run for his lovelorn role in last year’s “All of Us Strangers,” knows how to win hearts. Even playing the villainous Moriarty opposite Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes on the 2010s BBC “Sherlock,” Scott became known for his loopy, outsized line readings. So what would it feel like to play a tamped-down sociopath?

But Scott didn’t see Ripley that way. “I found an enormous amount to like,” he says. “There’s something about that character that, I think, a lot of people see themselves in. And I think it’s to do with being an outsider.” Tom Ripley, plainly gifted, lacks the social connections of the wealthy American expats he meets (played here by Johnny Flynn and Dakota Fanning as layabouts and occasional boors). His flashes of rage — forcing him, later, to methodically dispose of multiple corpses — exist for Scott as a sort of frustrated creative impulse. “He probably is more of an artistic sort, but he doesn’t feel he’s got the class to call himself that.”

There’s something about Ripley, in other words, that’s tortured — a trait Scott can conjure with ease. On “Fleabag,” his unnamed Catholic clergyman struggled through a crisis of faith-versus-lust that was both funny and painful. In “All of Us Strangers,” his conflicted gay writer goes on a dreamlike journey to re-encounter his late parents, forgiving both them and himself for past miscommunications while falling in love with a character played by Paul Mescal.

“Fleabag” cut against, and “All of Us Strangers” leaned into, Scott’s rare status as a gay leading man. “And not afraid to talk about it and be open about it!” marvels Andrew Haigh, his “All of Us Strangers” director. There’s little Scott isn’t open about: In a wide-ranging conversation, he volleys back his answers with the relentless self-examination — and the fleeting tearfulness — of a person who’s spent time in his feelings.

It can be hard not to conflate the characters he’s played with the sense that Scott is Hollywood’s new prince of heartache. In fact, he has a direct line to the queen of such matters. “Taylor’s new album is sensational! I texted her yesterday to say how amazing it is,” Scott says about “The Tortured Poets Department,” which came out three days before our conversation. Taylor Swift, he says, is a friend, and he beams with vicarious pride about her 31-track magnum opus: “I think she is just a force of nature, just an extraordinary human, and this album is really, really amazing.” His favorite song on it, for the record, is “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” a ballad that begins with quiet heartbreak and builds toward a dramatic excoriation.

But Scott is perhaps being modest. Some believe that he is as much to credit for the title of the album as the men Swift sings about. Consider the explosion online after a 2022 Variety Actors on Actors conversation between Mescal and Joe Alwyn (who was dating Swift at the time, and is thought to have inspired a few songs on the album) in which they discussed their membership in a group chat called “Tortured Man Club.” Scott, they said, had initiated the chat.

“Let me tell you what that is!” Scott says. Just before Alwyn was to appear in the TV adaptation of novelist Sally Rooney’s “Conversations With Friends,” Scott — Alwyn’s co-star in the 2022 film “Catherine Called Birdy” — set him up with Mescal, of “Normal People,” another series based on Rooney’s work. “So they were about to play these tortured characters, and I had played a tortured character in ‘Fleabag.’ It wasn’t about our own characteristics!” The chat quickly died on the vine, he says. “I think there were three texts, like, ‘Hey, guys.’ You know those groups that you set up, and they just collapse.”

Short-lived or not, the existence of the chat had taken on a second life ever since the announcement of “The Tortured Poets Department.” And the whole incident speaks to Scott’s easy way of connecting people.

“He’s a great guardian of actors, if you’re lucky enough that he admires you or has respect for you,” Mescal says. “He’s got an overseeing quality, in terms of understanding that good art and good actors are hard to come by.”

Mescal, 28, and Alwyn, 33, feel in a sense like peers of Scott’s. “Fleabag” Season 2, which brought Scott to a new echelon of fame, was just five years ago, and in conversation, he has a Peter Pan energy: raffish, barking laugh and eyes that seem to twinkle with each new disclosure. And yet Scott makes for a notably older Tom Ripley — a character written by Highsmith to be just past college age.

“It was just a beautiful film,” Scott says of Anthony Minghella’s 1999 adaptation. “The idea of approaching that again, one of my first questions was ‘OK, who wants to do a carbon copy?’” Scott gestures at what, in the dim light of the patio, appears to be his delicately lined face: “Jesus, look at my age!”

Scott’s take on the character reads as more experienced, and wearier. More tortured, over a longer timeline. Scott can relate. Our conversation is the final stop on a lengthy press tour, which came on the heels of promoting “All of Us Strangers” during Oscar season; he flies back home tomorrow. Before that was “Ripley”’s long road to the screen: After some 162 days of principal photography from summer 2021 to spring 2022, the series, which had been made by Showtime, bounced to Netflix amid a fire sale at the Paramount-owned cable network.

Following “Ripley,” “All of Us Strangers” and his solo show “Vanya” on London’s West End last fall, Scott is on a career high, and he’s become a red-carpet fixture as a fashionista. (His all-white tux-and-tee combo as a nominee at this year’s Golden Globes deflated the pomposity of the event, while looking dazzlingly fresh.) “It’s a way of having fun, being creative — going, OK, well, this is a bit of a laugh.” Scott stammers, but goes on: “My mother was a very stylish, creative person, and it’s something I’ve always been interested in. Why not just have a bit of fun while we’re here?”

Scott has brought up his mother a few times before I get the chance to offer my condolences. She died unexpectedly on March 7 — less than a month before “Ripley”’s premiere. “It came very suddenly to our family,” he says, “and it’s landed in the middle of all of this stuff. Her spirit is so alive in me in the immediate aftermath of her death.”

There are painfully mixed feelings at play: Scott is proud of the work he’s done (and duty-bound to promote it), while part of him is elsewhere. Talking about his mother is a way of keeping her close. She was an art teacher, “and her way of dealing with people was so kind, but she wasn’t very good at small talk,” Scott says. “She connected with people in a very particular way. What I was taught was the idea of being authentically yourself.”

Which extends to Scott’s self-presentation. In our meeting, he’s neon-bright, wearing a teal crewneck sweatshirt under a fuzzy cardigan the precise shade of cerulean that Miranda Priestly popularized. “People say that they look back at photographs and cringe,” he says. “Who cares? It’s about playfulness. It’s about going, How would I be if I wasn’t scared of criticism?”

“Ripley,” in its ambiguity, is a show unafraid to trigger debate. Among the choices Zaillian (best known for his Oscar-winning screenplay for “Schindler’s List”) made was a greater fealty to Highsmith’s text. Minghella’s film untangled her complications: Tom lusted after Dickie (played by Jude Law), and he had to destroy what he could not obtain. Here, though, Tom seems repulsed by Dickie, even as he admires his lifestyle and easy way of being. Tom doesn’t seem to fit into any identity at all, leaving some viewers to wonder whether he’s even gay in this version.

“Everything that I feel on that subject is in the show,” Zaillian says when asked to clarify Ripley’s sexual orientation. “I don’t like to do anything overtly; I think subtlety is best. It’s not that I’m trying to hide anything, but I think it’s all there.”

Scott is willing to go a bit further. “I didn’t want to diagnose him with anything in particular,” he says. “I don’t think he would be comfortable in a gay bar or a straight bar. I think his sexuality is elusive to him.” What he does to Dickie is an expression of frustrated heartsickness, perhaps. “I think he has a feeling of love for him. Sometimes it could be sexual. Sometimes it could be fraternal. And sometimes it could just be amicable.” What was a quarter century ago rendered as an outright homoerotic story here gets into levels of confusion that feel more challenging, more novelistic. “If she was alive today,” Scott says of Highsmith, “I’d love to ask her a bit more about that.”

Highsmith, whose own relationship with her lesbianism was complicated, likely wouldn’t recognize the world through which Scott strides. Indeed, he has previously expressed his dubiousness about language around sexuality — specifically, the term “openly gay,” which he derides. “It’s wonderful to be able to talk about sexuality in an open way,” Scott says. “But I do feel sometimes, other people — and by other people, I mean straight people — don’t have to explain or talk about their sexuality every time they go to work.”

Scott, thus far quick-witted and voluble, has begun to weigh his words carefully. “The idea that I’m being defiant by just being exactly who I am … Be open about it? Why wouldn’t you be open about it?” The distinction between disclosing one’s sexuality and not isn’t lost on Scott, and he doesn’t mind it — that’s what, to him, the word “out” is for. “But the word ‘openly,’ for me, just seems a little loaded.”

The actor’s newfound prominence as a gay leading man is both a turning point for our culture and a fact that might seem to lend him special access to certain characters. In his first conversation with Haigh about “All of Us Strangers,” “he understood so deeply what that character needed to be,” Haigh says. “You want someone to connect to the character on a personal level. And I don’t think Andrew is afraid of that. In fact, it excites him, and he wants to embrace how he can make it personal.”

And yet Scott resists the idea that the story is solely one for gay viewers: He remarks that just today, he received a note from a friend who watched with his wife, and was moved. “A lot of this stuff has really affected me in my own life growing up — God knows I didn’t have a lot of gay content,” Scott says. “We live in an identity-politics era. We’re separating each other more than we need to. This hysteria about your sexuality and how that is something that is only understandable to people who belong to the same tribe as you — it just doesn’t seem truthful.”

Part of Scott’s response might be a desire to sidestep misreadings of his intentions with “All of Us Strangers” and “Ripley.” In both projects, he plays a character who has experienced some version of same-sex attraction; in both, his character also seems miserable. “Sometimes I find it hard when you’re doing press,” he says, “because I feel so joyful and so emancipated. It seems like I always want to talk about the difficulties that I have with being gay, when actually, it’s the greatest joy of my life.”

His presence on the celebrity circuit, though, suggests that culture is still figuring out how to treat an out star at Scott’s level. At this year’s BAFTAs, a red-carpet reporter for the BBC asked Scott about Barry Keoghan’s genitalia as seen in the film “Saltburn,” implying that Scott and Keoghan (who is dating the pop star Sabrina Carpenter) had been intimate. Scott quickly walked away. “It was awkward,” he says. “It was a little bit weird. But I got an apology from the journalist. I think it was a series of unfortunate events. And I totally accepted his apology.”

Scott doesn’t dwell on the incident, saying, “I wouldn’t want him to suffer any more.” But the story resonates with a general sense that Scott’s work, or his public self, is held to a different standard. The understandable excitement around Scott booking massive jobs — and his experience of being the “first” or “only” in many professional settings — feels strange from the inside. “What is the best thing that we could do?” he asks me. “I don’t have the definite answer. Would it be unusual for us not to mention my sexuality at all?”

Well, yes — but we move on. The moment Scott’s experiencing is the culmination of an incremental build, after an initial leap of faith. He’d dropped out of Trinity College in Dublin (alma mater of Irish artists such as Oscar Wilde and, more recently, “Normal People”’s Rooney and Mescal) after six months to pursue theater. “Sometimes you shouldn’t have a safety net,” he says. “If you have a safety net, you’re going to be really, really safe.” Early screen roles included appearances in “Saving Private Ryan” and “Band of Brothers.” The parts gradually got bigger — his performance in the 2014 drama “Pride,” about the gay-rights crusade in Britain, is a fan favorite, and he was an appropriately sinister opponent for James Bond and MI6 in 2015’s “Spectre” before playing the lead in a 2017 London staging of “Hamlet.”

But it was “Fleabag” that lit his career aflame. Scott calls Phoebe Waller-Bridge “one of my main homies” and, to the extent that the Hot Priest phenomenon has followed him, says it’s all for the good. “It hasn’t prevented me from playing any other characters. And I just feel so proud of the process and the product.” Would he return to a hypothetical “Fleabag” Season 3, if Waller-Bridge asked him to? “Of course I would,” he says before unleashing one of those great Andrew Scott guffaws. “But she’s not going to!”

It’s hard to overstate the impact Hot Priest had, turning what had been in its first season a charming critics’ favorite into a world-devouring, Emmy-sweeping hit on the strength of Scott’s chemistry with Waller-Bridge. (Scott was not himself Emmy-nominated for “Fleabag,” but was the following year for an episode of “Black Mirror.”) Sad-eyed yet smiling, H.P. forges a deep understanding with Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag: They both know that they want to be together, and they both know that they cannot.

Which makes “Fleabag” an intriguing counterpoint to Ripley, a character who pushes his way past every limitation he cannot hack his way through. The monochrome look of the show turns Scott’s eyes into vampiric black pools of need; over eight episodes, we witness Ripley’s lower-class life and high-class ambitions, and his willingness to turn to violence to bridge the two. There’s an unholy gnarliness to Ripley that Scott sells well.

“Ripley” is a double risk, as Scott knew when he took on the role. The series updates — by more closely following Highsmith’s tricky, nasty novel — a film that’s widely beloved, and does so with a leading man whose reputation is for suffering sweetly. “I’m just concerned about how it would be perceived, how it would change things for me,” Scott says. He acknowledged that fear — then let it go.

“When I played James Moriarty, I was younger than people wanted the character to be. And they’d go, ‘I wanted the character to have a beard and wear a top hat, and this little fucker is now playing it like this, and I don’t want that!’ The biggest challenge for you is to put your dukes up and go, Sorry, but this is this.” Risk — in comparison to what Scott calls “cynical and unconfident” compromise — works.

His co-stars have noticed the chances he takes. “Technical brilliance is one thing. And then there’s this other part of Andrew that is incredibly raw in his performance,” Mescal says. “You could sit around and talk to actors about their lives all day — they love nothing more than talking about themselves. But Andrew lets an audience into the corners of themselves that we don’t talk about.”

Sam Yates, the director of Scott’s 2023 “Vanya” — which won an Olivier Award for best revival in April — describes the places Scott would go onstage as “trancelike.”

“How do you go through that without a level of someone else taking over?” Yates says, adding that Scott “is being led by a certain degree of technique, but by a huge degree by his aliveness to his own emotions. He would surprise himself constantly onstage.”

He seems to surprise himself in conversation, too, returning with frequency to a subject that’s evidently joyful to recall and painful to discuss. Previously this season, while being interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” his voice got tight when she asked him, seemingly not knowing the answer, if his parents were both still alive. Now, though, his mother feels like the third person at our table under a gray L.A. sky.

“You keep your Irishness alive by telling the story,” he says. “Thinking about my mom recently and talking about her — it was really important to me, in the eulogy, to celebrate her.”

I remark that his mother — her artistic sensibility, her impatience with pleasantries — feels very present to me. He pauses, seems to shudder slightly. Like a sudden storm, tears are rolling down his cheeks, and he takes a moment to speak. When he finally does, his voice is steady.

“It’s a really funny thing, to be honest,” he says. “I can’t disappear the fact that this has happened in the midst of all this. The juxtaposition of these two extremes in my life where all these projects are coming out, and I’ve had to be much more public-facing than I usually am, at a time when I’m going through this extraordinary personal loss.”

He begins talking more rapidly, becoming more animated as he wills himself out of crying. “I’m not even sure if it’s the right thing to do, but you have to tell your own truth. My job is to understand what it’s like to be a human being, and I don’t like perpetuating the myth that we’re all perfect. That you have to be a movie star.”

Scott’s production company, he tells me, is called Both/And — he notes the slash in the middle. “I’ve always believed that things are always both something and something else. It could be the happiest day of your life, and you’re hungry. You’re at a funeral, and you have a laugh. There’s always something else.”

I can relate: I’m pleased to be connecting, but sorry that I upset him. And so I apologize.

“No, no, listen! I’m upset anyway!” he says, then lets loose another hearty laugh, loud and rich enough to crack the tension of the moment. In its gusto and its surprising timing, it does feel like a laugh at a funeral, but sometimes those are the kind one needs.

“Ripley” may represent the greatest challenge this versatile actor has experienced — he’s at the center of each of its eight episodes, and nothing happens without him.

“We would do what we could in our time off, but I know it was really taxing for him,” Fanning, Scott’s co-star, says. “We found a lot of common ground, because we’ve both done this for the majority of our lives. We approach work in a very similar way — there’s a time and place to be serious, and there’s a time you need to tell some stupid joke. And we did that too.”

The presence of co-stars was a balm, but Ripley, necessarily, is alone a great deal. “Spending a lot of time with a character who is solitary when I was feeling solitary myself was quite tough,” Scott says. “I love that about my job — that you can go into a particular world — but it was very different from what gives me joy. It’s the sheer stamina that was needed: It’s a lot of acting.”

The show’s two bravura set-pieces involve the disposal of bodies. “It was important to me that this character was not a professional killer,” Zaillian says. “And so we have to see him think each one through. And Andrew can bring us into his thoughts and feelings.”

Scott, compact of frame, lugged his fellow actors (rather than dummies) as much as was feasible: “I remember doing a long take, seven or eight minutes, me just trying to lift something up, and Steve just let the camera go as I struggled, and didn’t cut.”

He doesn’t linger on this aspect of the shoot. Easily able to access heartache and joy, he tends to stop short when specifics about the work come up. “It goes into a sort of PR-speak,” he says, “where you have to tell people how much suffering you’ve been through.” He draws an analogy of a host throwing a dinner party: “If you spend the whole night saying, ‘Well, I couldn’t find any organic chicken, and the vacuum wasn’t working’ — they’re like, ‘Just give me my fucking dinner!’”

“He’s aware that his work isn’t for him,” Mescal says. “You’re providing a service to an audience. Nobody really gives a fuck about your process, and if they do, they’re boring.”

Elsewhere in our conversation, Scott edges up to describing his method for finding Ripley: “I’m always really interested in the vulnerability of people. What’s the thing they’re unconfident about? What are they hiding? It was hard to access that.” What he found, in the end, was less “a biographical sort of solution,” he says, than an absence — of the ease it takes to get through life. “Not everybody is charming and capable and socially adept and sexy. You have to advocate for people who don’t have it easy. That’s what made me have some degree of affection for him.”

Affection, even on a dark project, is what it’s all about. “He’s a big advocate for play,” Mescal says. “He takes the work very seriously, but he wears it lightly. And that allowed our chemistry to be pretty playful and organic.”

On “All of Us Strangers,” the pair, already acquainted, bonded deeply. “It developed into a genuine love between them, and you can still see that now,” Haigh says. “I felt like I’d been a dating agent, and I brought these two people together.”

The film, shot quickly after “Ripley”’s protracted production, helped Scott emerge and reset after playing Tom. “Sometimes a change can be as good as a rest,” he says. “Although, I have to say, I do need a rest now.”

I have one last question before I let Scott go. He’d said he wondered how “Ripley,” with its grand ambition and with Scott at the center of the story, might change things for him. What kind of change would he want?

It turns out the real question is what kind of change doesn’t he want. “You want to keep your life,” he says. “I like my life. I don’t want people to become the enemy. Because I like people.”

He lets out a sigh. “I’m glad to be wrapping up the promotion aspect of it, because it’s been quite a big journey, and obviously, I need to go and be with the people I love.” He smiles, and his eyes turn down slightly. “So it’s just time for me to exit stage left for a little while.”

I turn my tape recorders off; Scott has given me enough. But he waits a second, his gaze once again as eager as during the formal part of our interview: What had I meant when I used the word “obversely”? (I’d said that the Hot Priest persona seemed like a gift, but — obversely! — potentially limiting as well.) He usually uses the word “conversely” to describe what he thought I meant.

We both look up definitions on our phones, and conclude that the two words mean the same thing: two feelings coursing at once, in seeming opposition to one another. Like the lovability and loathsomeness dueling within Ripley; like happiness and sorrow in a single charged moment. Both/and, or something like that. Words are funny things! And isn’t it amazing, Scott muses, that we can use language to communicate what we’re feeling. What an invention. What a gift. He grins. And if there’s another feeling behind it, both the smile and something else, the sun is suddenly shining too brightly for me to see.'

[hphmmatthewluther]

Back By Midnight: Operation BULLSEYE - Part 4/4:

Previous chapters can be found here, here, and here!

It's here at last! The final chapter of this OPERATION is here! Writing this has been an amazing process over the last nine months and I'm so happy that so many people have enjoyed the spy au as much as I have!

Also, this story features characters from @akaisenhatake and @camillejeaneshphm!!

Taglist of peeps who might be interested (lemme know if you want to be added or removed!): @akaisenhatake​ @camillejeaneshphm​ @catohphm​ @fangirl-screaming​ @rosachaotic​ @ag907​ @nikyiscreepy​ @oseathepebble​

One other thing to note! From here on out, this story is going to be an original story, meaning the names of many characters have been changed. I'll be putting out a guide soon, but for now I hope you're able to figure out who's who!

Every few seconds, the wind whistled through the several bullet holes that were now scattered across the windows of the 28th floor of the building.A woman’s finger traced across one of them, the one closest to the lift. From there, she could see the position where the bullet had come from on the building opposite, as well as the flashing lights from the half a dozen police cars that had been summoned to the scene. She stepped away from the window, and over the dead body that was still lying there, blood soaking into the waxed floor. For a moment, she lingered, looking over the body and at the lift shaft, the doors having only now been fully deactivated. 

Then, for a split second, she saw it there. The memory of a pale hand which had flashed the V sign at her, before clanging against the lift as it disappeared. She scowled at the memory, before only then realising what had caused the clang: a silver bracelet-looking thing on the person’s wrist. It could have been a watch, but she would have seen that from the position the hand was in. Her scowl softened for a moment. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

“Meredith!” came another woman’s voice from the open door. “In here, if you would.”

At once, Meredith Sharrow started down the corridor, as two people in forensic suits walked the other way towards the corpse. Before she went inside the room, she tried to get her face into a neutral expression, dusting down her black jacket and skirt and tidying her brown and orange hair, as well as getting any sleep out of her eyes, trying not to nudge her pink contacts. It was, after all, early in the morning by now. She came into the room, wondering why whoever this was couldn’t have broken into their London headquarters at a more reasonable time. But she couldn’t think about silly complaints like that right now. Not considering who had called her in.

Meredith stepped through into the room, just as sleek and modernist as the rest of the building, and was greeted by a woman in her early forties with long orange hair, and a long red overcoat. There was also a large sniper rifle in her right hand, which she promptly put down. Meredith nodded to her, hoping it didn’t look like too much of a bow. “...High Priestess.”

“Oh please, “Miss Warwick” will do just fine, Miss Sharrow.” Pamela Warwick closed the door behind her and gestured to the room. Just as there was in the corridor, several bullet holes were present in the glass. Others were in the room too; someone taking inventory of the items in the room, two men examining what looked like a small silver cuboid, and a police officer trying to talk to a blonde man shivering in a seat, his legs bouncing up and down.

“...Miss Warwick.” Meredith began, “Is this the Fool who was in the room with the intruder?”

“Indeed he was.” Warwick sighed, “The whole experience seems to have been a little too much for him.” her eyes darted to the side for a moment before continuing. “But he’s the only lead we’ve got, or more accurately, the only lead we have before Mr Wakabayashi shows up. He’s due back here in just a few minutes…though he will have to take the stairs.”

Meredith understood what Warwick was asking of her. Nodding once more, she made her way over to the police officer, who unlike this witness, was clearly no fool. She nodded to him and he returned the gesture, before making his way out of the room. The blonde mouse-faced man looked up at her. Meredith looked back down, and tried not to laugh.

“So…seems you’ve been through the wringer tonight, Mr…” she began taking a clipboard and pen in her hands, before looking to him for an answer. He looked up at her, his lip quivering. “Mr…” she repeated, tapping the pen against the plastic of the clipboard. That always hurried people up.

“I-I’m…I’m, b-, um…Benedict. Benedict Godwinson…i-it says over…” he pointed to the sign on his desk, which sure enough, had his name on it. Meredith scowled. How on earth had she missed that? She’d lost valuable seconds over this!

“Right, right…” she sighed, “now, getting to what you saw. Why did you let the intruder take the device?”

His eyes widened in fear. “I-I didn’t know! H-He said he was part of the IT Team, a-and Mr Wakabayashi wanted him to do some work on the device!”

Meredith rolled her eyes, overhearing that the man in question had arrived and was going up the stairs at this very moment. “Fine, fine…what gave him away? When did you realise he wasn’t who he said he was?”

“W-When the guard started banging on the door…h-he said he’d get us both…a-and I didn’t know what to do, but then…the intruder told me, he said to not worry and that it’d be ok.”

Meredith took a mental note of that, if not writing it out fully. Benedict made him sound like some kind of Gentleman Thief. She didn’t expect someone like that to actually exist. Looking down at the notes the police officer had taken, she saw a circled in bullet point that read “CAN NOT REMEMBER PHYSICAL APPEARANCE - PANIC?”. That didn’t help, but at least she knew not to ask. Suddenly, she heard footsteps growing louder and louder. “...Is there anything else you can remember? Anything at all?!”

Benedict shuddered as she asked the question, blinking rapidly. “I…I…I dunno, it was all so loud and disorienting with the bullets and the flashes, but…I do remember…he put his hand to his ear a lot of times.”

Bingo. One of the oldest mistakes in the book. It reminded Meredith of one of the Bond films, where someone Bond was working with gave themselves away by constantly pressing his earpiece. On a subconscious level, she’d already attached the word “spy” to whoever this intruder was. “...Very well. Thank you for your time…I imagine you’ll get some paid leave or something.” she said, smirking, before walking away and handing the clipboard to Warwick.

“Our intruder was cordial to a fault, able to get up here without anyone noticing, and had an earpiece. Which means this wasn’t a simple burglary.” Meredith reported, returning to her neutral expression once more.

Warwick took the clipboard and examined it, before stashing it away in her bag. “I assumed as much from where I was positioned, but it’s good to have proof. Well done.” she said, as the footsteps grew louder still. “Here he comes…keep an eye on the person with him. Looks to be a Chariot.”

Walking down the corridor (Meredith saw that the body had been marked out and moved) came Ryuji Wakabayashi, who’d for some reason not changed out of his white suit he’d been wearing when he left the building. Alongside him was a woman who looked similar to Warwick from afar, with the long ginger hair, but was younger, only about Ryuji’s age. Meredith bit her lip when she saw how the trip up the stairs had tired the man. It made rushing to interrogate that mouse-faced man well worth it.

“High Priestess,” he said, nodding. “...Meredith.”

“Ryuji.” Meredith said curtly, gesturing to Benedict. “Might want to hold off on the ranks for just a moment, though.”

Ryuji craned his neck into the room, seeing Benedict still sitting there. “Oh, that fool…” he muttered, before clearing his throat. “Godwinson, you can go now, thank you.”

Benedict shot up, nodding, before leaving. “Th-thank you, Mr Wakabayashi, I-I’ll be off…” he whimpered, heading out, realising the lift was out, and rushing down the stairs.

Pamela cleared her throat. “Now we’re all here, we can get down to business.” She led them all into the room. Meredith watched as Ryuji frowned at the bullet holes and the missing ID machine. “...To start with, I can’t be the only one who thinks this was connected to what we all bar this Chariot here did yesterday.”

Ryuji wore an unmoving frown. “Why? We’ve done this dozens of times now, and we made sure to purge any data MI6 might have got, just like we always do.” he pointed out. “What’s so different this time?” he clicked his tongue as he wandered around the room. “And it was only the machine that was taken?”

Meredith nodded. “Correct. The intruder came here looking for the machine specifically, it would seem.”

The Chariot cleared her throat. “What’s more, there was a breach of the building’s mainframe at the same time as the intruder was in the building. All footage and data from that time is corrupted.” she reported.

“Thank you, Miss Campbell.” Ryuji said through gritted teeth. “This is all irrelevant, however, in the wake of the fact that this intruder succeeded. The fact that the only resistance they met along the way was one Minor Arcana. Well, and you, High Priestess.”

“That was only by chance.” Warwick pointed out. “There wasn’t much I could do considering I was shooting across a road at someone I couldn’t fully see. Believe me when I say you do not want to play the blame game with me. Especially not when we have a perfectly good deceased person to place the blame on.”

“Someone you shot.” Ryuji retorted. “But I suppose you’re right. You know that…he…doesn’t like infighting.”

“If that’s the case, he doesn’t like most people in Reflection.” Meredith muttered, causing Warwick to chuckle.

“Very witty, Miss Sharrow. A little surprising too, seeing as-” she looked like she was about to say something more, but each of them felt their phones buzz. They all took them out, and Meredith knew that each one had received the same message:

You are summoned to the Tower. Please arrive promptly. A meeting of the Senior Ranks will be held in response to recent developments with Operation TEMPERANCE.

Ryuji kept his face still. “Like we said, blame the corpse. Come along, we’ll take my jet.” He said, beckoning Miss Campbell and turning to leave. Before he went down the corridor, however, he turned to Warwick and Meredith. “Well? Coming?”

The two still in the room looked at each other before looking at Ryuji. “Really? In all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never invited us to fly with you.” Meredith observed. “What gives?”

“What gives is that the High Priestess and I have to work out a convincing story to tell at this meeting, and you’ll need to be there too in case anybody asks you.” Ryuji explained. 

Pamela sighed, before relenting and walking out the door. Ryuji turned to Meredith once more. “Come on. I don’t want to have to pull rank on you.”

“Bull.” Meredith hissed under her breath, grabbing Warwick’s sniper rifle and bag for her, making sure that the clipboard was still inside. As she left, she took one last look at the room, visualising the thief walking in, grabbing the device, knowing there was a chip to remove, ducking down, blinding the guard, escaping down the corridor. Another word for the intruder was very quickly replacing the word “thief” in her head. Apart from the word “arsehole”, that is.

***

For Meredith, the time between leaving the room and boarding the jet felt like nothing. Before she knew it, they had taken off from London City Airport (the area for private jets, not the bit everyone else went through). At least the jet lag wouldn’t be too bad when they landed; they’d be arriving at around 8pm local time and so would be able to more or less keep their body clocks stable. That didn’t concern Meredith, necessarily, but it was clear that it meant far more for Ryuji, who seemed even more irritable than usual, to the point that when the Chariot, who Meredith now knew to be Nessa Campbell (who happened to be flying the plane) described his anger as “needing his beauty sleep”, Ryuji simply got up and walked away from the others without a word.

“Typical.” Nessa sighed, returning her attention to the myriad controls in front of her. “I haven’t even flicked the “seatbelts off” sign.” A few moments later, she did, taking a moment to look at the door Ryuji had gone through before rolling her eyes and returning to her task at hand.

Meredith would have joined in on insulting Ryuji, but Warwick shot a pointed look at her. “Don’t be so quick to point and laugh, Miss Sharrow.” she said, examining the clipboard Meredith had procured for her earlier, “As the overseer of this Operation, the Lovers Wakabayashi will be the one covering for all of us. It’s a lot of pressure, something you may one day realise if you ever get promoted to a Senior Rank.” Meredith leant forward a little when she mentioned promotions. Warwick simply smiled back. “You’ve only recently been promoted from the rank of Devil, correct?”

Meredith nodded in reply. “Yes…this is my first assignment as a Hanged Man, Miss Warwick.”

“And you’ve done remarkably well. I imagine the Empress will be most pleased.” she reassured her, though she didn’t look up from the clipboard. “What did you mean here by “had help”? What gave you that idea?”

“The witness said that the intruder put his hand to his ear several times.” Meredith explained. “It would explain how the data became corrupted the very moment he stepped foot in the building and how he got away so quickly, especially when you consider…” she trailed off for a moment as she thought through what she was about to say, and whether it might get her in deep trouble.

“Considering what?” Warwick asked, finally looking up at her.

Meredith gulped silently. “Considering your testimony, where you said a loud car horn caused a distraction allowing him to leave your crosshair. And then there’s the fact that he couldn’t have fled the scene on foot…” she looked over to Nessa’s tablet, still open on the scrambled data. “Miss Campbell, would you mind if I borrowed your tablet for a moment?”

The Chariot nodded. “Of course, Hanged Man. It’s completely at your disposal.” she said, a phrase she knew off by heart by now.

Snatching up the tablet, Meredith began tapping away at the screen, flicking through various collated files on the incident. “All this stuff on cybersecurity…maybe the reason they could get in isn’t in the code, but instead…ah ha!” she minimised the tabs on firewalls and fibre optics and opened up another folder of corrupted video footage. “Look, Miss Warwick, the CCTV footage from the surrounding traffic lights is gone too, in the exact same style, but for about a minute or two longer than inside the building. Our intruder can’t have done it alone, the timing of the corruption simply doesn't add up.”

Warwick nodded, leaning back on her chair. “That certainly is a wrinkle. Especially when you consider mine and Wakabayashi’s shared conclusions on tonight's events.”

Meredith stayed very still, unsure whether Warwick was upset with the conclusion she’d reached, or angry, or wanted to erase any trace of it, or anything else. “Your conclusions, Miss Warwick?”

“Indeed. He may be in denial about it, but the famed “Byakko of Ice” knows when not to ignore a coincidence. I looked back at the aftermath of our explosive outing this afternoon and was surprised to discover that it was an ambulance that first came to the scene. Not the fire brigade, as any witnesses outside might have called for, but an ambulance. And the only way that could be the case is if someone inside had not been killed, merely injured.”

Meredith nodded, digesting this information. “...So the MI6 agent we wanted to take out…he survived, got medical attention, and came back to get revenge?”

“Perhaps, or maybe he contacted someone and they did it for him. Even before this, I had a strange feeling when we found the MI6 location in that old building. It was a far too aggressive move for them, and we should have known about it sooner. Perhaps our intelligence system simply missed it, deemed it too unimportant.”

“...Perhaps.” Meredith put down the tablet, and looking out the window watched as the jet flew across the Pacific Ocean. She got the nasty feeling that they were almost there, made even worse by the fact that she felt like she was missing something obvious. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before the jet was truly starting to descend, landing upon an airstrip surrounded by watchtowers, with military vehicles patrolling to boot. Home sweet home. They had their IDs and cards checked before being escorted onto one of the Jeeps, which sped out of the runway and down a long, winding road towards the more built up part of the island. Eventually, the Jeeps slowed down near a busy junction, which happened to be just a few metres away from the turnoff to The Tower.

“This always happens…” Ryuji groaned, rolling his eyes as the tourists in rental cars as well as some permanent residents drove past, no care for the fact that they had right of way, or that they more or less owned the island.

Meredith was growing more restless by the second, the stress of everything that had happened as well as the fact that a Meeting had been called all weighing on her brain. “...For god’s sake! Can’t they install traffic lights, or a roundabout, or something?!” she said, slamming her head back against her seat in frustration. Warwick merely watched on, with a slight amount of amusement on her face.

“Patience, Miss Sharrow. This junction always takes time, it’s the way the island-” but to her surprise, someone had actually stopped. Meredith leant out of the window to see a middle-aged man in a floral t-shirt and sunglasses (despite it being night) in an open-top expensive looking car. He smiled and gestured for the jeeps, and the drivers, seemingly surprised, took a moment to begin moving again. Meredith tried not to stare too much, but it was difficult for some reason. She needed that structure and order in her life again, the type that Reflection was normally so good at enforcing. Thankfully for her, the Tower was the best place for this.

The skyscraper stuck out like an incredibly sore thumb, towering over everything else on the Island. It was a miracle the land didn’t tilt slightly, Meredith thought to herself as they stepped out onto elegant red carpets with a golden zigzagged lining around the edges, leading up twin sets of stairs between three bronze fountains. Above the automatic doors which led into the reception area was that large red logo once more, the snake looming overhead as the group walked in. They were at once met by a group of people in white shirts and black waistcoats, who looked to Meredith like fools.

“Welcome to Reflection.” The one in front began, bowing slightly. “You’re just in time, Miss Warwick, Mr Wakabayashi, you’re both just in time for the meeting. I have also been told that Miss Sharrow and Miss Campbell have been invited to relax in the waiting area outside until the meeting comes to an end. Please, follow me.”

Meredith kept moving forward, down a corridor and into a lift, even if her legs were telling her to turn and run. But she couldn’t afford to look weak, especially not in front of Warwick or Ryuji, as the former would never respect her, and the latter would absolutely go straight to her aunt about it. Their guide pressed one of the uppermost buttons, before quickly stepping out and letting the lifts scarlet and gold doors close. The occupants of the lift turned to each other.

 “It appears that all of the higher-ups and representatives have been called.” Nessa said, reading off of her tablet. “...Doesn’t look like we will be late, fortunately.”

“I’ll be sure to let your aunt know you’re here, Meredith.” Ryuji droned, pushing his dark hair up slightly. “She may want a word, after all.”

To Meredith’s surprise, it was Warwick who spoke next. “Actually, Meredith pointed something out rather interesting to me whilst on the plane here. It should be on the Chariot’s tablet, and might come in handy when explaining our side of the story.”

Meredith merely nodded. “I’m glad I could assist, even if I’m not able to attend the meeting.”

Ryuji looked like he wanted to retort, but was interrupted by Warwick. “Look, you two can stop acting so formal, especially since we’re working together to save our careers. I’m aware you two have something of a rivalry, something about often being in the same division as you’ve worked your ways up.” she said, allowing herself to smile at the two and their shocked expressions. Meredith thought that she did pretty well, at least she didn’t drop her jaw like Ryuji did. “Yes, yes, I’ve done my research, as I do on everyone I work with.”

Time passed as the High Priestess and the Lovers discussed their story, the Chariot busy on her tablet, leaving the Hanged Man feeling like the world was turning upside down. Looking around, they thought back to the much less elegant and decorated lift in the building in London, how that pale hand had emerged to disrespect her before descending with the lift. The hand of a spy, with a silver bracelet…but why was it up there in the first place? Her eyes widened as her memory corrected itself, the presence of a card held by the hand whilst doing the two-finger salute now restored. Why? Her first thought was as a trophy, but then judging by what she knew about him, it somehow didn’t seem right. In her head, it all rested on whether or not the spy had broken in as a direct result of what had happened earlier that day or not.

Suddenly, the lift doors opened out into a smallish room with three doors, the left and right ones leading out into a balcony area. The group continued forward through the other door, into a room with red carpet and a few plants, as well as a pair of ornate double doors, covered in gold that snaked across their surface. Warwick gestured to the red velvet seats that dotted the room. “Chariot, Hanged Man, wait here. These meetings normally don’t go on for too long, but considering the circumstances…well. There are some magazines available.” she pointed over to a pile on a table near the wall. Without another word, she opened the grand doors, walking inside.

Ryuji took another look at Nessa and Meredith. “...You saw something in the smoke, didn’t you?” he asked the latter. “...Be very careful. When you get this high up, you’ll realise there are no such things as secrets.”

Meredith showed no reaction. “You have a meeting to get to, and a missing ID machine to explain.” she said simply, sitting down and grabbing one of the magazines. They were all almost a decade out of date, and some of them, she noticed, seemed to be for younger children. Ryuji turned towards the door which Warwick was holding open for him and left the room, the door closing behind the two with a loud slam.

Meredith turned to Nessa, but she was on the other side of the room, her back turned,  busy on her tablet. She leant back, remembering her time as a Chariot. It had been a lot of work, chauffeuring higher-ups around as well as monitoring the armoury and vehicles the company had at its disposal, as well as dealing for said arms and vehicles. Nessa likely didn’t also have the advantage of having an aunt who was a higher-up. It was then that she heard voices from within the other room.

“...is it true?”

“Hey, save it for the meeting, you know the rules.”

“What? I’m allowed to ask a little, aren’t I?”

Meredith blinked. Nobody below a Lovers rank was allowed to even know what happened in the Meetings. The room was supposed to be soundproofed, or so she’d heard. She very slowly tilted her head so her ear was closer to the wall, before immediately turning around when the door to the room with the lift opened. Her hand went to her gun on instinct when she saw the hooded figure, but didn’t pull it out. This was good, because on closer inspection this was one of the higher-ups. Although, admittedly, they weren’t exactly dressed like other agents.

His “hood” was in fact a medical fabric of some kind that covered a fully bandaged face, the mouth covered and the eyes dimmed under the layers of bandages. Below that was a formal suit with a green handkerchief in the pocket. He was eerily still, standing in the doorway for a moment, before turning to Meredith. “Pardon me. Has the meeting begun yet?”

Nessa and Meredith stared at each other for a moment. “N-no, I don’t think so.” Meredith stammered, not making direct eye contact with the masked figure, who merely nodded in response.

“Good, good…” he nodded at the both of them before walking forward, absent-mindedly scratching the wrapping below his right eye with one hand as he yanked open the door and walked into the meeting room, closing the door without a slam this time. Meredith sunk back into her seat, taking her hand off of her gun. There were certain divisions that kept to themselves, and you didn’t go near if you valued your life or career. The Moon Division, the area of expertise for deep cover operatives, was one of those divisions. They were higher-ups, but since they couldn’t send all of them to a meeting they had a representative who went instead. They called the guy who represented the Moon Division “Mr Nobody”. She’d always wanted to know why.

Nessa now had her eyes on her tablet again. Meredith leant right back against the wall, shutting her eyes as if she’d fallen asleep after a long flight. She concentrated on whatever slight fault there was in the walls of The Tower, and listened.

***

Meredith didn’t know what the room looked like, but from her aunt she’d heard that it was exceptionally elegant but dimly lit, with a long table in the middle that stopped at the far wall, on which was a large carving. It sounded too fantastical to be true, but when she’d peeked through the door when Mr Nobody stepped through that was exactly what she had seen. Without any visuals, her mind began to fill in the blanks

The meeting room was silent now, all gossip now spent. The higher-ups took their places, Warwick separating from Ryuji to sit further down the table. Ryuji, meanwhile, took his seat among the three other Lovers. He looked between them all, knowing them all fairly well: Estevao Raphael, who was currently scowling at the table, Lauren Brayden, who was savouring the last few seconds in which she was allowed to use her phone, and Pascal Brunel, who looked like he wished he had some popcorn. Meredith didn’t blame him. The most senior of the Lovers, Pascal had made no attempts to get a promotion, seemingly enjoying his position at the lower end of the top. Meredith had never understood his mindset, nor why he was allowed to keep his position, but at least he seemed to be happier than most people in the room.

The room was now silent. A side door had been opened, and out stepped a woman with brown hair in a red version of the clothes the receptionists had been wearing. This was no clueless fool, however, but a member of the island’s permanent staff, who also happened to be in charge of enforcement. The person in the seat Meredith imagined herself sitting in, Ryuji, looked down the long table. The Judgement representative walked past him and the rest of the Lovers, past Mr Nobody, past a woman in a lab coat, a man in a wheelchair with several sheets of paper in front of him, past Warwick, and past the two at the very end of the far edges of the table. He knew them very well indeed. On the right sat Maverick Cunningham, a middle-aged man with black hair in a quiff that made him look like if Elvis took up arms dealing. On the left was a woman around the same age as Cunningham wearing a deep purple overcoat. This was Vivian Sharrow.

Thus sat the highest ranking officials of Reflection, an organisation which seemingly found being a pharmaceutical company not thrilling enough, and decided to branch out into having hidden influence in every industry, especially the criminal industry. Maverick and Vivian, the Emperor and the Empress, turned to the large engraving on the wall. It depicted a man in robes with his right arm up holding a candle that burned at both ends, surrounded by a sword, cup, wand, and pentacle.  Above its head was the symbol of infinity, and above that was the roman numeral I.

The Judgement representative cleared her throat. “May I have your attention. Presenting the Magician, who calls this meeting to order.”

The giant monolith carved into the wall began to hum, and the outline of the Magician began to glow a neon red. A few seconds passed, and each Reflection member took out their card and placed it on the table in front of them. Ryuji did the same, taking a moment to look down at the card. It had always seemed rather strange to Meredith that he carried an image of two naked people as identification, but her mind was nowhere near that now. Soon enough, a voice emerged from within the carved wall.

“Welcome, my good friends.” the voice boomed. Meredith had expected a loud and deep voice, but instead it sounded rather calm and neutral. “I do apologise for calling all of you here, but I am afraid that the topic of this meeting is too important to avoid or to send in a simple message. To begin with, I must inform you all of the death of the Knight of Swords. His efforts to aid Reflection will be missed. I leave finding a suitable replacement for the position to the Empress.”

Meredith imagined her aunt nodding dutifully. “Thank you, Magician.”

The voice continued. “The more unfortunate news comes from the reason he was killed, and why I have summoned you all here. High Priestess, if you would brief the others on tonight’s events?”

Meredith heard a chair move as Warwick stood up. “At approximately 10 pm local time, an unknown intruder was found on the 28th floor of Reflection International’s London Headquarters. Entering through unknown means, he walked into the office on the floor, posing as an IT worker to an employee, before taking hold of an experimental identification device, codename T-LD…” Warwick explained. She took a pause for a moment. Meredith knew why. She was about to mention her role. “...At which time I, on the opposite building conducting a routine inspection, spotted the intruder and proceeded to prepare for elimination.”

“It was here that I called for security.” she continued. “The Knight of Swords was the first to arrive at the office, which the intruder had locked. The Knight proceeded to attempt to kick the door down, shouting threats to both the intruder and the employee.”

Meredith allowed herself to smile. Already, she was beginning to pin the blame on the deceased agent. “The Knight persisted in knocking and yelling, though that was not what allowed the intruder to escape my line of sight with the T-LD. Instead…it would appear that the intruder had one or more accomplices who created a distraction to allow the intruder a window to duck down, and was likely to be intentional as evidenced by the deletion of traffic light CCTV footage, as identified by a Hanged Man within the tower at the time, Meredith Sharrow.”

Meredith tried not to move her face too much. Getting mentioned in a Meeting like that, and by Pamela Warwick of all people? No wonder they didn’t let the lower-downs hear what happened, if she knew she’d been name-dropped she’d never shut up about it. As she had been thinking about this, Warwick had continued, moving on to the lift shaft.

“...the Knight then proceeded to engage the intruder within the lift shaft, making clear his knowledge of the fact that I would fire at whatever emerged from the lift doors. In spite of this, however, he was unable to apprehend the intruder. We believe they used a metallic weapon to strike the Knight, causing him to topple out of the doors and into the line of fire. He fully understood the level of efficiency needed, and failed. I shot the first thing that emerged from the lift shaft, as agreed.”

She couldn’t measure their expressions, but somehow Meredith knew that Warwick had quite literally got away with murder. Still, the mention of a metallic weapon…the way the metal thing on his wrist had bumped against the lift…it was so simple, and yet…Meredith then realised she should be focusing on the top-secret meeting. “...and escaped with the machine. I immediately arrived at the building, followed soon after by the Lovers and the Chariot driving him.”

There was a silence as all of this was taken in, as if it was being judged. “...thank you, High Priestess. Does anyone here have any objections to her telling of tonight’s events?” the Magician asked the table.

If they did, nobody said anything. “Very well. It pains me to discover that the Minor Arcana are unable to work under the efficient conditions of those with higher ranks. Perhaps we may need to revisit our training regimen to see what is needed. Emperor, you are in charge of this area. What would you say the priorities of the training are? What blind spot might need dealing with?”

Maverick cleared his throat, before beginning to speak in that smug voice of his. “Our training regimen is one of, if not the best in the world, Magician. It forces those who hope to improve to be ruthless and efficient in their tasks, to remain detached from anything that might bring them down, and to work in the modern world of private military affairs.”

“The modern world…I see…” the Magician hummed for a moment, as did Meredith. Why did this spy not seem to fit the many other mercenaries or opponents she’d come across? Why did she keep calling him a spy? It hit her then, though it seemed to elude the Magician. “Well, in any case, work to make sure the Minor Arcana are ready to enter the higher ranks.”

“Thank you, sir.” Maverick said, glad not to have been reprimanded. 

“But now comes the larger question, my friends. What are we to do about our missing machine? Lovers agent Wakabayashi-” the Magician said, Meredith knowing that all eyes were now on Ryuji. “What say you on the theft of the machine you were testing? What might happen to the project?”

Ryuji took a breath. “I don’t believe it is any sign of weakness for the project. It is not as if, after all, it was a failure. In fact it was responsible for dozens of successful identifications and subsequent assassinations during its testing phase. Perhaps we were a little public with it-”

“A little?” Pascal asked, chuckling. “You blew up three floors of a building! You call that “little”?”

Ryuji stumbled over his words for a second but quickly recovered. “Such eliminations had been done before, and caused no problems like this. The problem is not with the machine, I cannot emphasise this enough.”

“...I agree.” the Magician said, bluntly. “And Lovers agent Brunel, while your point is valid, I do think there is an explanation for it. Perhaps, after the downfall of our last project, we were too cautious of further failure, hence why Project Temperance has been in testing for so long. Long enough for somebody to begin identifying a pattern.”

It was as if in her head the carving was moving, swooping across the room, gazing at each and every member present with its unmoving red eyes. “We have not suffered a failure like this since Project Strength. Our caution, our need to keep things hidden, has led to critical exposures. But we cannot, and will not, keep Project Temperance secret for long. Wheel of Fortune!”

The man in the wheelchair cleared his throat. “Yes, Magician?”

“...How’s our budget looking?”

There was a rustling of papers and typing on a laptop. Meredith hadn’t expected the Wheel of Fortune to be allowed a laptop, though she supposed it made sense, considering how much financial information was digital and/or encrypted. “We have had an excellent year, and stand to make record profits as per usual, leaving us with a more-than-healthy 40% surplus for use if and when needed.”

“Good.” the Magician said with a sinister edge, as if that information gave him the key to some ultimate doomsday weapon. “I am proposing that we accelerate Project Temperance. The T-LD shall be replicated, developed, and improved. We will make the necessary connections, eliminations, and deals. We will be ready to deploy the Project worldwide in…ooh, let’s make it…six months?”

There was a brief murmur. Nobody had seen the Magician like this before. It was as if, like Meredith, they had taken the theft personally. Nobody steals from Reflection and dares to taunt them too. It made her desire to become a higher-up even more strong.

“Oh, worry not, friends. I am quite confident you will all manage. We talk of the projects being far off dreams, but here? A machine so successful someone had to steal it?! We will hit back, and whoever they are, they will see just how small they are in comparison to us. How…out of place they are in our world. This is why you are called here. Tonight we being organising Project: TEMPERANCE.”

Meredith’s mind drifted as the meeting turned to discussions of targets and quotas. Nobody heard much about the Projects. They were worked on by the higher-up Divisions, though sometimes lower-downs were called on to assist in testing, like Meredith had been here. She also knew that the last project had failed, and the Magician had punished her aunt and the Emperor for it, giving the role of overseeing Project testing to the Lovers. This meant two things: firstly, that her aunt would see this as an excellent opportunity to please the Magician and redeem the Sharrow name, and secondly that Ryuji was going to be unbearable about it. But it wasn’t all misery in her mind. The spy…it was more than a fluke, or a bluff, or boast. It was indeed out of place. And she knew why.

***

Before long, the meeting had ended, and the higher-ups emerged. The Empress walked out, and over to her niece. “There you are. Thank you for waiting patiently and not causing a fuss.”

“...I am not a child anymore, Aunt Vivian.” Meredith said, not looking up.

“That remains to be seen. Come along, I’ve managed to book you a room here.” she said as if it came at great personal sacrifice to her.

“...” Meredith was going to say something back, but noticed Warwick and Ryuji walking out too. “Just one moment, it won’t take long-”

“Meredith!-” Vivian began, not continuing the sentence as she watched her niece approach Warwick.

“Ah, Miss Sharrow, and the nicer one of the two, I might add. How may I help?” she asked, smirking, as if she knew Meredith wanted to get away from the Empress.

“I was thinking about the intruder…and, well…it might sound odd, but I was thinking about…why he feels so…odd.”

“Odd how?” Ryuji asked. They had gone out one of the side doors onto the balcony, looking out over the ocean, tree-covered areas (Meredith was unsure if they were jungles, or forests, or something else) and the tourist towns down below. “You mean sort of…out of place?”

“Exactly!” Meredith said, acting like she’d not heard those words used to describe it. “I think…well, I think of him as a spy.”

Warwick raised a ginger eyebrow. “A spy, hm? As a sort of “character” we can make assumptions out of?”

Ryuji rolled his eyes. “With respect, Meredith, and the fact that this matter is now with the higher-ups, I don’t imagine you need to worry about that intruder for much longer. Not when the new assignments come in.”

Meredith couldn’t help it. She scowled at him. “Listen! He’s a spy, right? Like a classic secret agent! None of this cyber-nonsense, or this far-off “eliminations”, or jobs done by hitmen, but a spy. You send one person who is skilled enough to more or less convince you to give what he wants over to you, uses gadgets, isn’t afraid to get physical…oh, come on! Isn’t it at least plausible that someone out there does things the old way?”

Warwick considered this. “A fascinating hypothesis, Miss Sharrow. A “spy”, someone who can miraculously survive explosions, sneak into buildings, and more…It makes for a compelling adversary.”

Ryuji simply scoffed once more. “Speculate all you like. I have business to attend to. Nessa, let’s go, my workload has almost quadrupled.” he said matter-of-factly, walking away with Nessa behind him, offering a quick wave to Meredith before leaving.

Warwick smiled at Meredith. “I’ll walk you to your room. The lift will be packed with everyone trying to get out, you need to tell me more about this spy idea, and…” her smile changed a little, to show something other than kindness. “There are some parts of the Tower best avoided.”

They walked out from the balcony and down the stairs, past floors that Warwick pushed Meredith away from, presumably where they tested other projects. A faint part of her wondered if Project Temperance started its life here too. She found herself clinging to her tarot card. Taking it out, she turned it over to reveal the Hanged Man, dangling there upside-down by the foot, as if by some strange magic he had swapped his neck for his ankle. She looked at the card, imagined the spy in the same position, and smiled. She’d never believed in Tarot, but somehow she felt her future was brighter than ever.

[incorrectbatfam]

Jason is a hopeless romantic 100%

it just doesnt show

But everyone goes to him whn its time to plan dates

Dick: Hey, can I ask you something?

Jason, reading: No.

Dick: You see, Wally and I have our weekly date night coming up, but we've been to pretty much every place there is. You got any ideas for how to shake things up?

Jason: *scribbles coordinates and tosses him the Bat-plane keys*

[later]

Wally: Wow, I've never been to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Dick: I'm glad you like it.

Dick: *texts Jason a thumbs up*

Jason: *read at 8:55 PM*

———————

Tim: Jason, glad you're here! I totally forgot it's me and Bernard's six-month anniversary. Help me out, man.

Jason, clipping his toenails: Fine. You better write this down 'cause I'm only saying it once.

Tim: *nods*

Jason: Go to Home Depot. You're gonna need some rope, a tarp, hammer and nails, a hatchet, matches, and fuel. After that...

Tim: *furiously takes notes*

[later]

Bernard: A camping trip was a great idea. It's nice to get away from it all. And I can't believe you set this all up yourself.

Tim, chuckling nervously: What's a boyfriend for if not to build a tent and chop down a tree?

———————

Duke: So the school dance is coming up.

Jason, working: Theme?

Duke: Under the sea.

Jason: Ugh, how cliché. Anyway, Armand's Tailoring has a blue suit that'll match whatever your girlfriend's wearing. Tell him I sent you. After that, call Patricia's Bistro and make a reservation with the code word "surreptitious." Alfred can take you in the limo if you give him a 24-hour heads-up to clean it. Once you're there, remind the DJ he owes me a favor to get your song requests bumped up. And remember, a slow dance is basically moving your feet in a square but otherwise go with the flow.

Duke: Sweet, thanks!

———————

Cass: Steph is sad.

Jason, cooking: *sighs*

Jason: *takes out a tub of ice cream*

Jason: *scoops a hole in the middle*

Jason: *fills it with candy*

Jason: Here.

Cass: Thanks!

———————

*phone rings*

Jason, waking up from a nap: What?

Kory: Sorry if I woke you. Barbara's coming over for breakfast in half an hour but I burned it with my powers. It was supposed to be eggs benedict.

Jason: Order takeout and put it on fancy plates.

Kory: You're a lifesaver—

Jason: *already hung up and went back to sleep*

———————

Kate: It's Renee's birthday tomorrow. I have a gift, but I'm not sure if it's good enough.

Jason, polishing his gun: If it's from you, it will be.

———————

Bruce: *walks in*

Bruce: Hey, son. Selina's not talking to me after our argument. How do I tell her how much she means to me?

Jason, reciting Shakespeare: I know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say, "I love you."

Bruce: You're right. I'm just gonna tell it to her straight. Thank you.

Bruce: *leaves*

Jason: *takes off his headphones and turns around*

Jason: Did someone say something?

———————

Damian: Todd, what is love supposed to feel like?

Jason: Why do you want to know?

Damian: None of your concern. Now tell me.

Jason: *shoots a training dummy*

Jason: It's when they're lodged in your head like a bullet. Except without the excruciating pain and messy red stuff.

Damian, nodding: Tell me more.

———————

Roy: *takes down a villain*

Jason, sitting on a roof: *wolf whistles*

Roy: The hell?

Jason: I know hot when I see it.

Roy: What are you doing here?

Jason: I brought Arrowdogs.

Roy: You hate Arrowdogs.

Jason: But you don't.

Roy: Aw, how sweet—EYES UP HERE, TODD!

[e-b-reads]

Mostly I hold onto books that I enjoy, so there's nothing I'm desperately yearning for! However, there are a few books that my sister and I sort of joint-owned as kids, and they always stayed on her shelves as we separated things out. I think they're at my parents' house still, though neither of us are! Two series that come to mind are Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles, and the Mysterious Benedict Society books by Trenton Lee Stewart.

Weekly Bookish Question #383 (March 31st - April 6th 2024)

Is there a book you once owned but don’t anymore that you wish you could have back? What happened to it?

[wouldyourecognizethisperson-poll]

Top 50 Most Recognized People

(as of February 11, 2025)

These results are based on the first two poll responses (know who they are in person, or not in person but still recognize) added together.

Dwayne Johnson - 99.4% of respondents recognized

Will Smith - 97.4%

Daniel Radcliffe - 96.1%

Benedict Cumberbatch - 96%

Snoop Dogg - 94.4%

Ed Sheeran - 94.3%

Leonardo DiCaprio - 94%

Misha Collins - 93.4% - TIE

Rowan Atkinson - 93.4% - TIE

Danny Devito - 93.1%

Taylor Swift - 93%

Ryan Gosling - 92.8%

Robert Downey, Jr. - 92.7% - TIE

Zendaya - 92.7% - TIE

Morgan Freeman - 92.4% - TIE

Bill Nye - 92.4% - TIE

Elliot Page - 91.7%

Emma Watson - 91.6%

Dolly Parton - 91.5%

Jojo Siwa - 91.2%

21. Robert Pattinson - 90.9% 22. Nicolas Cage - 90.8% 23. Simon Cowell - 90.6% 24. Adam Driver - 90.2% 25. Jeff Goldblum - 89.8% 26. Prince Harry - 89.7% 27. Billie Eilish - 89.6% 28. Tom Holland - 89.5% - TIE 29. Lin Manuel Miranda - 89.5% - TIE 30. Chris Hemsworth - 89.3% 31. Jimmy Fallon - 89.1% 32. Pedro Pascal - 88.9% 33. Neil Patrick Harris - 88.8% 34. David Tennant - 88.5% 35. Peter Dinklage - 88% - TIE 36. Mads Mikkelson - 88% - TIE 37. Will Ferrell - 87.9% 38. Patrick Stewart - 87.8% 39. Oprah Winfrey - 87.7% 40. Lil Nas X - 87.6% 41. Taika Waititi - 87.5% 42. John Cena - 87.4% - TIE 43. Meryl Streep - 87.4% - TIE 44. Dan Howell - 87.4% - TIE 45. Weird Al Yankovic - 87.3% 46. Ariana Grande - 86.8% 47. Matt Smith - 86.7% 48. Tom Hiddleston - 86.5% 49. Tom Felton - 85.9% 50. Chris Pratt - 85.6% - TIE 51. Taylor Lautner - 85.6% - TIE

And the top 25 LEAST recognized

Steve Gonsalves (Ghost Hunters) - 0.3% - TIE

Jackson Browne - 0.3% - TIE

Tara Lipinski (figure skater - 1998 Olympic Champion) - 0.5% - TIE

Yanni (Greek musician) - 0.5% - TIE

George Lazenby (Australian actor) - 0.5% - TIE

Eric Burdon (singer from The Animals - ex. "House of the Rising Sun") - 0.8% - TIE

Christine Lakin (actor - Step by Step) - 0.8 - TIE

Peter Frampton (musician, member of Humble Pie) - 0.8% - TIE

Tippi Hedren (actor known from "The Birds") - 0.9%

Brian Eno (musician) - 1% - TIE

Lauren Daigle (musician) - 1% - TIE

Kate Maberly (actor known for The Secret Garden) - 1.1%

Joss Stone (musician) - 1.3%

Patricia Quinn (actor known for The Rocky Horror Picture Show) - 1.4% - TIE

Joshua Bell (musician - violinist) - 1.4% - TIE

Lance Armstrong (athlete - cyclist) - 1.6% - TIE

Thalia (actor/musician) - 1.6% - TIE

Grace Slick (musician, member of Jefferson Airplane) - 1.7% - TIE

Michelle Kwan (Olympic figure skater) - 1.7% - TIE

Sean Paul (musician) - 1.8%

Taio Cruz (musician) - 1.9%

Andrew VanWyngarden (musician - member of MGMT) - 2% - TIE

Julie Christie (actor) - 2% - TIE

Jennifer Grey (actor, known for Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller's Day Off) - 2.1% - TIE

Dave Davies (musician, member of The Kinks) - 2.1% - TIE

[ellswritings]

Masterlist ;)

*= smut

The Hunger Games

Imagines

Finnick Odair

Wasting All These Tears On You

Don’t Be Late

Love and War

Peeta Mellark

They Don't Know About Us

Katniss Everdeen

Johanna Mason

Haymitch Abernathy

Worse Things

Cato Hadley

Marvel Sanford

Clove Kent

Coriolanus Snow

Sejanus Plinth

Series

none yet :(

Teen Wolf

Imagines

Scott McCall

Stiles Stilinski

Derek Hale

Jealousy, Jealousy

Peter Hale

Chris Argent

Lydia Martin

Issac Lahey

Allison Argent

Malia Hale/Tate

Liam Dunbar

Kira Yukimara

Series

Lupus Nox- S1 Cast, Prologue, S1 E1, S1 E2, S1 E3, S1 E4, S1 E5, S1 E6, S1 E7, S1 E8, S1 E9, S1 E10, S1 E11, S1 E12

The Maze Runner

Imagines

Thomas

Newt

Minho

Gally

Aris

Brenda

Sonya

Harriet

Series

none yet :(

Marvel

Imagines

Steve Rogers

Sparks Fly

Tony Stark

Snowflake

Bucky Barnes

Loki Laufeyson

Natasha Romanoff

Clint Barton

Logan Howlett

Peter Quill

Misery Loves Company

Gamora Ben Titan

Peter Parker

Peter Parker (TASM)

Thor Odinson

Michelle Jones-Watson

Wanda Maximoff

Pietro Maximoff

Series

none yet :(

Once Upon A Time

Imagines

Regina Mills

Emma Swan

Killian Jones

David Nolan/Prince Charming

Peter Pan

Rumplestiltskin

Neal Cassidy/Baelfire

Series

none yet :(

Bridgerton

Imagines

Anthony Bridgerton

How To Be A Heartbreaker

Colin Bridgerton

Benedict Bridgerton

King George

Simon Bassett

Eloise Bridgerton

Series

none yet :(

Harry Potter

Imagines

Harry Potter

About Time

Ron Weasley

Hermoine Granger

Fred Weasley

George Weasley

Remus Lupin

Sirius Black

James Potter

Like I Can

Draco Malfoy

Lucius Malfoy

Tom Riddle

Luna Lovegood

Bellatrix Lestrange

Series

none yet :(

Glee

Imagines

Finn Hudson

Sam Evans

Jesse St. James

Quinn Fabray

Santana Lopez

Brittany S. Pierce

Rachel Berry

Mercedes Jones

Mike Chang

Noah Puckerman

Series

none yet :(

Criminal Minds

Imagines

Aaron Hotchner

Undercover Heat

Spencer Reid

Derek Morgan

No Place Like Home

Emily Prentiss

Jennifer Jareau

Matthew Simmons

Luke Alves

Kate Callahan

Series

none yet :(

9-1-1

Imagines

Evan 'Buck" Buckley

Eddie Diaz

I Knew You Were Trouble

Bobby Nash

Athena Grant

Howard 'Chimney' Han

Maddie Buckley

Series

none yet :(

Gossip Girl

Imagines

Chuck Bass

Nate Archibald

Dan Humphrey

Serena Van Der Woodsen

Blair Waldorf

Carter Baizen

Series

none yet :(

Pitch Perfect

Imagines

Jesse Swanson

The Flirting Game

Beca Mitchell

Chloe Beale

Bumper Allen

Cynthia Rose

Benji Applebaum

Donald Walsh

Fat Amy/Patricia Hobart

Series

none yet :(

Miscellaneous

Chandler Bing

New Years Eve

We Can’t Be Friends

[penspolin]

Why Sophie won't be genderbent, exploring sexuality in Bridgerton

I've gathered some evidence for why Sophie will not be genderbent in S4. None of these are confirmed, of course, but I think this should help to alleviate concerns.

Probably the most obvious - they've already risked a lot by gender bending one character (Michael), so I don't foresee them doing it again.

Directly tied to reason 1, the show already made a change from Book!Benedict this season by making him canon bisexual. That is already one substantial change, and I personally don't see them giving both Francesca and Benedict gender bent endgames.

Directly tied to Benedict's sexuality, there is one particular scene that stands out a lot: during Benedict's last conversation with Tilley, he explicitly says that gender does not matter to him.

"Paul could be Patricia, or Polly, or Peter, or all three at once."

I'd argue this was included 1) to convey his sexuality directly to the audience through dialogue itself, 2) to highlight his concept of freedom, and 3) to emphasize that this experience is a bisexual (pansexual, potentially) awakening, not a homosexual one. I've noticed a standard in media to give characters an LGBTQ+ experience that confirms to them that they've never really liked the other gender (in this case, women) all along, they were just "playing pretend." But what we know very well by now from Benedict is that he doesn't play by society's game. If he was not attracted to women, he would not have been pursuing them for so long. Benedict having an LGBTQ+ experience this season makes him so happy because he's finally grasping at the freedom he once found in art. There is a lightness to Benedict in the last two episodes of S3 because he's broken through a barrier, admitted to a core part of himself, and lived the way he wants to, away from the watchful eye of society, in direct opposition to what society deems "appropriate."

Contrast Benedict's sexuality to what we've seen of Francesca, who has never expressed such explicit interest in both genders. Up to this point, she is a societal conformant, and we witness her struggle with that. While I do think she harbors deep feelings of love for John, her last scene with Michaela indicates that her love for him isn't romantic. It's also important to note - Benedict has had previous experience with a gay man; as far as we know, Francesca has never interacted with a member of the LGBTQ+ community and thus does not carry that same knowledge. As we've seen with other plots in Bridgerton, women were not often privy to the same knowledge and experiences as men (shielded, so to speak), and so her understanding of sexuality could be understandably limited.

4. Went off on a tangent there, but the final reason why I don't think Sophie will be genderbent: Sophie's identity as a bastard and maid derives conflict from her gender. Men, even illegitimate ones of wealthy families, were typically fairly well-off. I hardly think the bastard son of an Earl would be immediately cast out and turned into a maid or servant. Additionally, Jess Brownell has indicated that she doesn't want to mess with the books "too much," and while she's made some gender and sexuality changes, I do not foresee her changing something so pivotal. For this backstory to present conflict, Sophie must remain a woman.

[vogu3s]

”Back to Simple” Vogue Italy, January 1993

Models. Patricia Hartmann, Benedicte Loyen & Nadja Auermann

Ph. Steven Meisel

[whineandcheese24]

(just to be clear, this is not an attack on anyone's headcanons, and the following is entirely my own opinion and interpretation, and not meant to be taken as the only possible explanation/interpretation)

so I know the general consensus is that Benedict is bi, but I feel like pan is a better label. I'm generally not a fan of ascribing modern labels of sexuality to historical figures or characters given the nature and evolution of sexuality and gender concepts. But pan just feels like a better label for benedict.

like all things with sexuality the label pansexual can mean different things to different people, but the way I understand pansexuality, and its difference to bisexuality, is that it is both a more open term for attraction, and that bisexuality tends to denote attraction to multiple genders, whereas pansexuality can denote attraction divorced from gender (this is a personal interpretation, and is not meant to be taken as fact or a universal definition)

as for why I think it's a better label for Benedict, there are a few reasons. for starters, I think that Benedict isn't attracted to men and women, so much as he is attracted to people. he does live in regency era England, but Benedict does strike me as a man who has tried things. maybe never sex with a man before Paul, but I feel like if Benedict had a blanket attraction to men, he might have noticed before now (especially after his experience at the orgy in s1).

his conversation with Tillie, about not being attracted to every woman, and about two people's attraction regardless of gender strikes me less as accepting attraction to more than one gender, and more as removing gender from the equation.

and finally I think Benedict sums it up best in what he says to Tillie in ep8 "Paul could be Patricia, or Polly, or Peter, or all three at once." Benedict doesn't seem to have become aware of an attraction to all men in general, but of the possibility of attraction to specific men, and that this attraction has nothing to do with their gender, they are simply attractive

I just think that pansexual fits better as a label for Benedict than bisexual

[nakeddeparture]

Granny sends fiery response to Benedict’s threat of suing her for her freedom of speech and her opinions: “Come out de man place” - Barbados.

https://youtu.be/UT1eKmzOsfY

Like/share/SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube channel - ✔️🔔/HAVE YOUR SAY/comment on YouTube (it costs you nothing). WhatsApp #2527225512.

[angeltreasure]

Catholicism Masterlist

NOTE:::: Items highlighted in red are my favorites for learning Catholicism.

Books for Learning Catholicism:

The Word on Fire Bible

Catechism of the Catholic Church second edition (pdf here)

Catholic Faith Handbook For Youth by Brian Singer-Towns and other contributors (pdf here)

Books About Prayer:

The Liturgy of the Hours by Word on Fire

The Secret of the Rosary by St. Louis de Montfort

The Rosary for the Holy Souls in Purgatory by Susan Tassone

10 Wonders of the Rosary by Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC

The Memorare Moment by Rev. Francis Joseph Hoffman

Blessed Sacrament Prayer Book edited by Bart Tesoriero

Heart of the Christian Life: Thoughts on Holy Mass by Pope Benedict XVI

Meet the Witnesses of the Miracle of the Sun by John M. Haffert

Our Father: Spiritual Reflections by Pope Francis

The Prayers & Personal Devotions of Mother Angelica, introduced & edited by Raymond Arroyo

Books About Saints:

Lives of the Saints: For Everyday in the Year by Fr. Alban Butler

Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska - Divine Mercy in My Soul by St. Maria Faustina Kowalska

Send Me Your Guardian Angel by Fr. Alessio Parente

Forty Dreams of St. John Bosco: From Saint John Bosco's Biographical Memoirs by St. John Bosco

Saint Charbel by Paul Daher

Mornings With St. Thérèse by St. Thérèse Editor: Patricia Treece 

The Secret of Mary by St. Louis de Montfort

The Confession of St. Patrick by St. Patrick

Saint Rafqa the Lebanese Nun (1832-1914) Teacher of the Generations and Patron Saint of the Suffers Father Elias Hanna (L.M.O.)

Rediscover the Saints by Matthew Kelly

Other Books:

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

7 Secrets of Confession by Vinny Flynn

Our Grounds for Hope by Archbishop Fulton Sheen

How to Share Your Faith by Bishop Robert Barron

How to Discern God’s Will for Your Life by Bishop Robert Barron

An Exorcist Tells His Story by Gabriele Amorth

This Is My Body by Bishop Robert Barron

Apps:

EWTN

Relevant Radio

Formed

iBreviary

CatholicTV

Mass Times for Travel

Websites:

EWTN

Relevant Radio

The Divine Mercy

Word on Fire

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)

Some social media:

Bishop Robert Barron

Divine Mercy

Breaking in the Habit

Sensus Fidelium

EWTN

Sacred Music:

Harpa Dei

Floriani

Groups:

The Association of Marian Helpers

Rosary Confraternity

Brown Scapular

Adoration Sodality of the Most Blessed Sacrament

What really happens at a Catholic Mass, short film

— —- —— — —- —— — —- —— — —- ——

This is by no means a complete list because I keep reading more books and finding new resources as a pilgrim in this life. Maybe you’ll find something here to help you grow in faith. May God bless you abundantly.

[denimbex1986]

'There are some actors who always, no matter the size of their role or the context of their performance, draw the eye. Andrew Scott, who has most recently appeared as the slippery, scheming protagonist in the Netflix series “Ripley,” is one of them. He is enthralling to watch, his emotional notes meticulously constructed, with playful touches of chaos that always leave space for moments of discovery and surprise.

Here are a few of Scott’s favorite modes of performance, and how his popular roles reflect an actor excelling at his craft.

The Madman

In Scott’s breakout role, in “Sherlock,” he plays Moriarty, the criminal mastermind opposite Benedict Cumberbatch’s contemporary Sherlock Holmes. From Scott’s first appearance, in the Season 1 finale, he electrifies an already energetic show.

Cumberbatch set the tone for “Sherlock” with his brutal, fast-paced wit; deductions tumble out of his mouth with strict precision, and in an impersonal monotone. Scott’s arrival, and his erratic singsong speaking, break this rhythm. There’s a menacing playfulness to not only his rhetorical delivery but also to his facial expressions. It adds a new dimension to the show.

In their initial confrontation scene, Sherlock aims a gun at Moriarty, asking, “What if I was to shoot you now?” Moriarty responds with a cartoonish look of shock that starts at the top of his head and ripples down: his eyebrows popping up, his eyes widening, jaw dropping and neck drawing back.

The rapidity with which his expressions unfold emphasize Moriarty’s dangerously fickle temperament; when he threatens Sherlock back, he speaks softly at first but then erupts midsentence, his face contorting horrendously as the timbre of his voice lowers to a grisly rasp. But just as quickly the moment is over: Moriarty returns to his lighthearted tone of villainy and excuses himself.

For as stylized a performance as Scott gives, it’s always believable for the character, particularly in this world of grand crimes, intricate designs and eccentric genius. Sherlock is the perpetual steady force, playing his violin and wandering through his mind palace, while Moriarty is the agent of chaos who serves as his match.

The Charmer

The most prominent element of Scott’s performance as the so-called hot priest in “Fleabag” is his coy smile. When he is introduced in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s delightful comedy-drama, at a family dinner, his smile is polite and disarming.

It’s when he and Fleabag are out for a cigarette break, and he casually flings an expletive at her as she walks away, that a boyish grin spreads across his face. His eyebrows lift slightly in an expression suggesting that he is challenging her.

Part of his charm is a matter of contrast: He is a holy minister meant to provide spiritual guidance, but also a foul-mouthed heavy drinker who can barely hide his sexual desires. As he’s finally about to give in and sleep with Fleabag, his mirthful smile fades, one corner of his mouth angled up in a look of satisfaction, but there’s no joy behind the expression. His look is hard and resigned to the transgression, and there’s just a shadow of his coy smile beneath.

At the end of the series, the priest says that he is unsure whether the euphoria he is feeling is because of God or because of Fleabag, and Scott’s performance clues us in to the answer. Scott’s ebullient energy — that almost manic, kinetic charge he often imbues in his characters — comes through most vividly in the scenes when the priest is talking about God. Scott’s priest, despite his love for Fleabag, realizes that she hasn’t altered his faith. She has reinforced it.

Scott’s charm is on display in a different way in the new Audible podcast adaptation of George Orwell’s “1984.” His audio performance tricks the senses: You can, somehow, actually hear the smirk on his face as he plays O’Brien, an undercover cop posing as a revolutionary in a dystopian society. Scott leans into the lilt of his natural Irish accent, and his exaggerated shifts in pitch, along with the meticulous way he hangs each syllable on the air and marks the time with cryptic murmurs and pauses, creates a seductive mystery.

The Wounded Man

Scott’s most recent big-screen role was in the 2023 film “All of Us Strangers,” where he shows how much melancholy he can instill in a performance through nuanced silences and stillness. He stars as Adam, a lonely gay screenwriter who encounters a stranger named Harry and then returns to his childhood home to find his deceased parents there, just as they were decades before.

Scott’s performance is muted, his eyes constantly contemplative, his expression that of sadness that has hardened into a stony exterior. Even his sadness is restrained; in a scene in which he discusses his sexuality and childhood bullying with his father, he is composed and dismissive of the difficulties he has faced until his father begins to sob. Adam’s face and upper body then likewise crumble.

Scott’s most devastating performance may have been captured in a 2012 short film in which he performs the monologue “Sea Wall,” by Simon Stephens.

Scott plays a man recounting a personal story of love, faith and devastating loss, and realistically captures the ramblings, interruptions and deflections that people often employ in conversation. He uses the entire studio space behind him, wandering around, pacing, glancing out the windows, thus creating a full sense of setting around him. His mannerisms are precise and seem to intentionally create parallels in his storytelling; a large, grasping gesture can demonstrate both his young daughter reaching innocently upward and his attempt to summon a word from thin air.

The Rogue

In the hands of the wrong director and the wrong lead actor, Tom Ripley, the sociopathic con man turned killer from Patricia Highsmith’s popular book series, could easily be flattened to a common criminal. What makes Ripley more than just another bad guy in the latest mystery-thriller is his elusiveness; his Ripley is often psychologically opaque and unpredictable.

Scott’s performance in “Ripley” is reserved but not at all withholding. He leaves just wide enough of a window through which the audience can see Ripley’s thoughts and emotional reactions while leaving the rest open to interpretation.

Scott’s charisma usually bleeds through his characters, who even at their most villainous are effortlessly alluring. But Scott corks his charm as Ripley, who isn’t suave in either his social interactions or his crimes. The stillness that this Ripley exudes barely disguises the frenetic energy beneath the surface. In the scenes in which Ripley suspects he is about to be caught, he smiles and makes small talk, tries to relax his posture into a faux act of confidence. But his eyes are tense and focused, like that of an animal spotting a predator.

Ripley is stiff; his conversations are often practiced, from his answers to the way he sits. Perhaps the most prevalent emotion that Scott reveals in this character is shame. When Ripley’s unrefined taste comes under attack — “Who in the world would wear a purple paisley robe,” Ripley’s will-be victim says with a derisive chuckle — embarrassment flits across his face just briefly, in the hardened creases around his mouth and a quick downward glance. Then it’s gone as quickly as it appeared.'

[ponochino]

"He could be Patricia, Peter, Polly, or all three at once for all I care." - Benedict

So what I'm hearing is that Benedict would 100% be attracted to a gender fluid person and which means Sophie Beckett could be gender fluid (which could work really well with the double identities in the story line, if done respectfully) and then Bridgerton could explore a whole new facet of being queer beyond just sexuality.

Make it happen.

[book--brackets]

Round One Is Complete!

Round One of the Best Childhood Book ended just a few hours ago! Thanks to everyone who voted, and here are the winners:

Poll 1: Pegasus by Kate O'Hearn

Poll 2: The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis

Poll 3: Matilda by Roald Dahl

Poll 4: Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer (by an insanely close 1.2%)

Poll 5: Oz by L. Frank Baum

Poll 6: The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

Poll 7: 39 Clues by Various Authors

Poll 8: Warriors by Erin Hunter

Poll 9: The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede

Poll 10: The Ranger's Apprentice by John Flanagan

Poll 11: The Sisters Grimm by Michael Buckley

Poll 12: City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

Poll 13: Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine (though there was a great push from @dianeduane)

Poll 14: Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Poll 15: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Poll 16: Percy Jackson by Rick Riordan

The next round of polls will be posted tomorrow (3/21) at 12 PM EST, and stay tuned for some fun resources for the eliminated books!