#this looks like the historical figures but it's spouse to be musical figures-

[erzherzog-von-edelstein]

Rekindling Feelings

This was for the fourth day of @hwsrarepairweek2022 week, though I think I’m a little late posting it. The theme was Historical.

Plot: Old spouses meet again at the Congress of Vienna and old feelings assert themselves again.

Characters: Spain and Austria (mentions of Prussia)

Ship: SpAus

Word Count: 1.7K

Spain walked around the outside of the gathering, trying to decide what to do. It was such an extravagant ball meant to celebrate the convening of the Congress. There was pageantry in spades as the peace with France was concluded, and Spain found himself adrift. 

At one time he would have been the most powerful person in the room, but those years were gone. Napoleon was defeated and there were other Great Powers discussing the fate of the continent, and he was not part of their number. Spain was just a small part of the decision making, and he wasn’t sure how he should feel about it. 

His empire felt like it was falling to pieces, and without it he had no idea of who he was. Large parts of the Americas were in open rebellion and he had yet to bring them back under his comfortable control. But the war with France was over and his attentions could be turned back to his empire. It would all go back to normal once he focused his energies. 

But as he watched everything unfold, though, his attention was not on his colonies. It was all focused on the slim figure in his white coat, who was almost always accompanied by Prince von Metternich or the emperor himself. 

Austria looked comfortable with the political machinations as only a man who had been raised for it could be. As Spain watched, Austria leaned elegantly towards Prussia like he was listening intently. There was something captivating about watching him victorious and in his element. 

Spain felt something stirring in his chest that he had not felt since the annulment, a kind of admiration for Austria’s skill. He was sure that Prussia could not see that he was standing next to a master politician or that he was being played like a finely tuned violin. His armies had been important, and Austria had been clever to secure his support.

But Spain also had the feeling that Austria’s attention was not all political either. He could see the way that Austria was leaning towards his newfound ally, and it made the most uncomfortable feeling stir in his chest. 

He knew the word for it, but he refused to think it. There was nothing more absurd than feeling jealousy over a man he had divorced decades ago. 

If he was honest with himself, Austria was just having a conversation with Prussia. But Spain could see the hints in the way that Austria was leaning and the tilt of his eyebrows. He could tell the tone that Austria was using, and it made his blood feel uncomfortably hot. That had once been the tone for him and only him. 

Spain felt himself chafing at the whole situation. Between his limited role in the peace and watching Austria flatter other men, he was feeling particularly ill-used. He wasn’t certain whether he missed the political attention or Austria’s personal attention.

He didn’t realize how much he was staring at Austria until the other turned his head towards him. Austria met his intense gaze, and Spain hurriedly looked away so that so that it didn’t seem like he had been glaring. 

He felt his heart flutter like he was embarrassed. He considered briefly whether he should ask someone to dance, since that was the point of a ball. But the music was between songs, and he knew it would be too transparent to ask the orchestra to play. He decided that it would be best to turn away and pretend that he had not been looking at all. 

Before he could turn away completely he realized that Austria had apparently taken notice and started advancing towards him. Spain felt the strangest lightness in his chest that he had not felt in centuries. 

He had thought that the feelings he felt for his former husband had died with the divorce, since he had felt such ample resentment at the time. But the way the traitorous organ in his chest was thudding said otherwise. It felt like a mirror of when they had first married; he was once again an outsider and Austria was a rich, politically savvy man. Spain almost chucked to himself as the thought crossed his mind that he should propose again to escape his political isolation.

 Austria reached him, and the closeness only served to remind Spain that he was a handsome man in his dark angular fashion. The experience of campaigning against Napoleon had given Austria an unusual tan, which stood out tremendously against his white coat. 

Spain immediately said, trying to excuse his staring, “Have I distracted you from your plotting?” 

He meant it as sarcastically as he said it, and Austria did not miss his meaning. He seemed to decide to not engage in an argument and instead said, “I have plotted enough for today.” He extended his hand and continued, “Now I would like a waltz. If you still remember how to dance with me.” 

Spain scoffed, “Of course I remember.” 

He didn’t add that it had been a while since he had danced a waltz. In his own court he still preferred older dances. Before the war with France he had been living more and more in the past, where he was still glorious. But somehow it felt imperative that he did not appear unfashionable in front of someone who was setting the trends of the day. 

He took the hand, expecting to be led onto the dancefloor. He was not disappointed. Austria’s hand was stronger than he remembered it being. Austria said, as he pulled him into closed position, “I have missed dancing with you.”

Spain found that hard to believe since it had been at least a century, and the compliment seemed empty. But he could also not deny that he was surprised at how good it felt to have Austria lay his hand on his hip again. 

His mind went to the way Austria had been leaning towards Prussia, and his blood felt hot again. He said, “You certainly seem like you’re enjoying your new alliances.” 

He heard his own cutting tone, and noticed the way he unconsciously tightened his hold on the other’s hand. 

Austria’s gaze was sharp and knowing, like he was aware of the thoughts passing through Spain’s mind. He said, seemingly diplomatic, “You are out of practice. Otherwise, you would remember that appearing to enjoy alliances are part of the game. It was what I needed to defeat that disgusting little man.” 

Spain scoffed as he they swung around in the waltz. He was sure that he had not mistaken the glances or the body language, and that it was not all just persuasive political theatre. He said, “So you are staring at the cousin you used to loathe because he has a useful army?” 

He felt the jealousy boil up in his throat and he could not stop the words from tumbling out, “I know you have a liking for soldiers.” 

He knew it was a bridge too far, but he could not take the words back. He expected Austria to recoil and repudiate him. But he was surprised by the slow smile that spread across the other’s face. Austria sounded like he had a laugh trapped in his throat as he said, “I know that tone. I cannot believe that you are jealous.” 

He raised an eyebrow and boldly pulled Spain closer as he said, “Are you missing your old fetters? You always said you were happier without me.” 

Spain didn’t know how to answer the question. Until that moment he had been convinced that he was happier, and the wave of affection had taken his feet out from under him. He shook his head and said, trying to rationalize his feelings, “I am just impressed with how you handled the war. I haven’t seen this side of you for a while.” 

He looked directly at Austria and managed to keep some words to himself: Rodrigo, my Rodrigo. He could see the man he married for his brilliance and he was not sure how to handle the sudden tenderness.

Austria smiled at the compliment and said, “I could say the same. I heard so many stories about your heroic resistance against France. And I thought ‘that is the man I married.’” He paused before smirking, “And you are right, I do like soldiers.” 

Spain felt himself being pulled even closer and he realized that Austria was actually being forward. He must have been giddy on victory. Spain felt himself blush as he drew closer. He replied, “I would never lay down for him. Not with the empire in jeopardy.” 

It had been a bloody fight, but it had reestablished Spain’s reputation in Europe. Once the empire was in order it would all be perfect. Austria said, with the widest smile, “I almost wish we were m-“ 

His smile fell as he comprehended what Spain had said. His tone was considerably colder when he said, “What about the empire? What is happening?” 

Spain realized he had said more than he should have and couldn’t escape explaining. He sighed before he said, downplaying the situation as much as he could, “It is just a few rebellions because of this mess. Now that we have peace it will be over soon.” 

Austria’s grip loosened and he said, understanding what Spain was saying far too well, “And is he one of your little rebellions?” 

Spain knew who he meant and was certain he did not need to ask. His face must have given the answer away before he said anything. Austria scoffed and said, “I should have guessed from your new interest.” 

The music was drawing to an end and Spain could see that he wasn’t going to get a second dance. 

He felt like he was being so misinterpreted that he had to correct it. He scrambled, “No, Rodrigo. It isn’t like that. I-“ He paused to collect himself under Austria’s cold gaze, and he continued, “I remember why I loved you.” 

Austria released him and said, “I must get back to my chancellor. There are things we have to discuss for tomorrow.” 

It was a cold political rejection, and it stung. But then Austria took his hand and kissed it sweetly. He said, locking eyes with Spain one more time, “I could never resist you, dear. If you want to see me again tonight, send me a note. But only do it because you want me, not because you’re looking for options.” He pressed Spain’s hand to his face one more time before turning away.

[lokiondisneyplus]

Over five popular seasons, the story lines of “Better Call Saul” have unfolded across nail salons, fried-chicken joints and other strip-mall staples of American life.

When new episodes begin premiering next year, though, the locations that give the “Breaking Bad” spinoff its texture could be reined in or done away with altogether. The culprit? The novel coronavirus, which is limiting where the New Mexico-set AMC show can film, potentially altering both its style and substance.

“Like a lot of other people, we’re going to have to be very creative in where and how we shoot,” said Mark Johnson, the veteran producer who oversees the Vince Gilligan hit, whose writers just began collaborating on the series’s sixth season. “A lot of places just won’t let you in.”

Across the entertainment industry, casts and crew are beginning to return to work after a five-month hiatus. In states with loosened restrictions, such as Georgia and New York, production is starting to crank up under tight controls that alter how sets operate. Instead of crew members freely mingling, they’re being divided into “pods" that limit how production departments such as wardrobe or lighting can associate. Covid-19 officers monitor the health of the cast and crew to determine who is allowed on set. “Zones” dictate where those cast and crew can go.

These changes might seem technical, but they hint at the far-reaching effects the virus will have on final screen products. Interviews with 12 executives, writers, agents and producers across the Hollywood spectrum suggest a dramatically transformed world of entertainment. Until a vaccine comes along, they say, covid-19 will change what Americans watch as dramatically as it has where they work, shop and learn. Forget the new normal — movies and TV are about to encounter the new austerity.

Crowd scenes are a no-go. Real-world locations will be limited. On-screen romance will be less common, sometimes restricted to actors who have off-screen relationships. And independent films — that tantalizing side dish in the U.S. entertainment meal — could be heavily scaled back.

“A lot of people believe this is just about getting back to work,” said Mark Gill, a producer and former head of Warner Independent Pictures, the studio unit responsible for independent hits such as “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Good Night, and Good Luck.” “They don’t realize the massive cultural impact we’re about to face.”

For most of its history, Hollywood created entertainment based on a simple premise: Shuttle in large numbers of people and move them around at will. That’s certainly true of crews. But it especially applies to extras, the low-paid day laborers who pack sets and off-camera holding areas in order to create dense crowd scenes — and, in turn, lend the work real-world atmosphere.

Such scenes have of course been part of some of the most memorable moments in Hollywood history. From “Ben-Hur” to “Braveheart,” on-screen entertainment has become indelible thanks to hundreds of people you’ve never heard of packing tiny spaces, then moving as one when the cameras roll.

Yet the virus has essentially made these hires impossible. Many don’t want to risk their health for a $100 paycheck and remote shot at background glory, and producers don’t want to take on the liability even if they did. “Braveheart" used about 1,600 extras, many from the Irish Army reserves. Experts say the movie couldn’t come close to being shot today.

“Those of us in the entertainment business are not used to being told ‘no’‚” said Lucas Foster, a longtime Hollywood producer who counts the 2005 romantic-action hit “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” and last year’s Oscar-decorated blockbuster “Ford v Ferrari” among his credits. “And when it comes to things like crowds, there’s going to be a lot of no.”

Foster understands the challenges personally — he’s one of the first producers to have made a movie in the age of covid-19.

In March, the Los Angeles resident was in Australia, several weeks into preproduction on a new version of “Children of the Corn” when the pandemic began to spread. Millions of dollars had already been committed to the movie, adapted from the same Stephen King story that yielded the 1984 cult hit. So rather than shut down, he decided to proceed — cautiously. Foster created a production bubble, consulted doctors regularly, procured large amounts of tests, and engaged in elaborate workarounds in realms like crowd scenes.

He said it worked, but with major accommodations.

“I had to figure out how to do a crowd with no more than a few people at the same time. And with very specific camera angles. And by taking actors who would normally be close together and making them not close together,” Foster said. “In the end, I’d get the scene I needed but it looked different than it would have before the pandemic.” (Computer-generated crowds, he and other producers say, only work for more distant shots; anything requiring close-ups needs the real thing.)

It helped, he noted, that many of his actors were children, who are believed less susceptible to the effects of the virus, and that much of the movie was shot in cornfields and other vast outdoor spaces, a luxury not all films have.

Producers say the added cost required to implement all the safeguards could also result in a lower-end finished product. Films and TV shows achieve their level of shine through an endless period of refinement, with actors and directors often attempt 10 or more takes of a scene. With everything now going longer — and thus costing more — they may not have the luxury.

One producer of multiple studio hits said he expects the number of takes to drop significantly as the virus balloons budgets. He also expected a diminution in night scenes, which tend to be more involved and expensive than day scenes. He said some productions will be able to make the switch, but not all will be as lucky.

Also unlucky, say Hollywood veterans: movies where characters seek to get lucky. Many insiders say romantic scenes will be a major challenge in movies. Two agents separately reported they had high-profile clients who told them they wouldn’t shoot love scenes during the pandemic.

“I think every agency right now is looking down their client list to see which actors have spouses who are also actors, because then we could try to get them cast, too,” said one of the agents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by their company to speak to the news media. “I’m joking. Sort of.”

The added wrinkle is even if the actors trust each other in real life, many of their characters would still have to take precautions on screen.

“How do you send two characters on a first dinner date when people aren’t really going on first dinner dates?” said a creator of romantic comedies who asked not to be identified because they did not want to be seen as criticizing colleagues who are attempting new projects. “You can send them on a socially distant walk, I guess.”

Writers say that leads to a broader dilemma: how much to incorporate the pandemic into their stories. On one hand, they say they don’t want to pretend the virus doesn’t exist. But acknowledging it poses its own challenges.

“Do you really want your stars wearing masks because that’s what characters would do? Do you want to have people engaging with each other in groups no larger than six? Do you want to write stories where everyone is at a safe distance?” said Mark Heyman, the co-writer of “Black Swan” and “The Skeleton Twins” and creator of the CBS All-Access historical drama “Strange Angel.” “Because a lot of those things won’t be very much fun to watch.”

Yet if creators aren’t willing to do that, he said, it could lead to those shows or movies getting shelved out of a fear that audiences will judge them inauthentic.

Heyman was working on a series set in a high school for Netflix when the lockdowns began. That project has now been put on pause. “It’s not easy to make a show about high school,” he said, “when there is no high school.”

To avoid reminding viewers of the pandemic, creators may take an approach that will lead to an unusual trend.

“I think over the next few years you’re going to see a lot more movies set in the past,” Foster said. “Even movies written for the present will be changed. They’ll make it the ’90s because then you don’t have to deal with these questions. And then you can just put in some cool ’90s music, so everybody wins.”

A few creators have gone the other way, leaning in to the pandemic.

Writers on Apple TV Plus’s “The Morning Show,” set at a news program, have torn up existing scripts to make the pandemic a part of the story line, according to a person familiar with the show who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. But with a lag time of months between shooting and airing, experts say that creators also risk looking out of date by the time episodes release to the public.

Sensing an opportunity, horror filmmakers have also tried to embrace current events.

“The horror genre is very suited to the pandemic and lockdowns — we’re always trying to create a feeling of being trapped anyway,” said the horror filmmaker Nathan Crooker.

When quarantines hit this spring, Crooker gathered nine noted horror filmmakers and had them shoot an anthology film — short fictional movies connected by the larger virus theme — and titled it “Isolation.” He required filmmakers to use only the materials and people they were in lockdown with, even prohibiting Zoom and other technologies.

“I think we’re going to get a very cool effect that mirrors what people are going through,” Crooker said of his work. “But I don’t know that every movie that gets made would want to look like that.”

One consequence of the virus could turn out to be the movies that don’t get made at all.

Some of the most beloved films of the past two decades, from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” to “Whiplash,” “Little Miss Sunshine” to “Fruitvale Station,” were independently financed. But before rolling cameras, independent productions require insurance policies to protect them from workplace lawsuits, along with completion bonds, in which a guarantor assures they will step in with funds to finish the movie if production is halted.

Experts say no company will cover covid-19 with either policy, effectively preventing production.

“Covid is an absolute disaster for the independent-film industry,” said Sky Moore, a partner in the corporate entertainment department of the Los Angeles law firm Greenberg Glusker who has spent several decades putting together film financing deals. “The lifeblood of independent-film financing is loans, and loans need insurance. Now you have this massive hole in the middle of all of it.”

Moore believes the toll will be vast.

“I think 50 percent of the independent industry goes away,” he said.

(Movies financed by large studios do not buy these policies; Netflix or Disney would just absorb a shutdown or lawsuit as the cost of doing business.)

Even if they can work around the insurance issues, many independent films won’t get made because they simply won’t have the money. “It’s already hard to get funding for a lot of these movies,” said Shaun MacGillivray, a producer who makes large-scale independent documentaries. “And now you’re telling investors the budget is going to be 30 percent higher?”

The independent-film world is trying to push ahead, slowly. The Sundance Film Festival, the epicenter of the indie-film business, where companies like Hulu and Netflix sometimes pay more than $10 million for an independently financed movie, will hold a partially physical, partially virtual edition in January, albeit at just about half the length.

“We are reminded daily of the power of what is made newly visible to us, the importance of what we look at,” Tabitha Jackson, the director of the festival, said in a letter to staff this summer explaining why the festival needed to go on. “My hope for this edition of the Sundance Film Festival is that through a multiplicity of perspectives held by artists and audiences in their various communities we will also come to feel the power of where we look from.” Left unspoken: What happens in 2022, when the well runs dry because new movies can’t be insured and produced?

Whatever entertainment can get made, experts say, will have a more hermetic look. Even television shows, once shot heavily on sets, now often rely on the authenticity of locations; a police procedural feels like it does because detectives are popping into pizza places and apartment buildings.

“We don’t want everything to be a chamber piece,” said Johnson, the “Better Call Saul” executive producer. “But if many shows look different, I think that’s okay, because the world looks different.”

Then, considering the challenge further, he added, “And if that doesn’t work, then at least our show has a lot of deserts and open roads.”

[thecursedhellblazer]

MUSE FILE.

Tagged by: @rapxir​​ (( Thanks, gal! )) Tagging: @thegreenxrcher​​ @paradiseturnedhell​ @adventurepunks​ (Nick) @cosmosfated​ @laughter-in-white​ @awaywardboy-andhisangel​ (Dean?) @darkdabbling​ @xstabcastx​ (Ava) @pi-jessicajones​ - & whoever wants to steal it ! (Tag me if you do!)

BASICS!

AGE:��Verse dependant (adults main verse: 40-45, but looks 5-10 years younger) GENDER: Male SEXUALITY: Pansexual / Demiromantic INTROVERT, EXTROVERT, OR OMNIVERT?: Omnivert. John adapts his behaviour depending on the circumstances and who he is dealing with. That makes it extremely hard to get to know him, or to figure out when he is honest or when his attitude is simply part of the umpteenth act. HEIGHT: 5′11″ BODY TYPE: Slender, not the fittest, but not overly soft either. EYES: Blue HEALTH: Physically, he is mostly healthy, despite the amounts of cigarettes he smokes and how much he drinks. The demon blood has a great part in keeping him that way, so he can be moderately fit even despite his bad habits. Mentally, he is anything but. Between PTSD, depression, night terrors, addiction to both nicotine and alcohol, and a possible personality disorder, a psychologist or a psychiatrist would have a field day with him. MEDICATIONS: Do unhealthy amounts of alcohol and cigarettes and the occasional drugs count? TEMPERAMENT: Charismatic, smooth, smart, apparently affable and somewhat compassionate on one side, and cynical, ill-tempered, nasty to the point of being sadistic, dangerous and not the best example of mental health on the other.

FAMILY!

FATHER: Thomas Constantine (deceased) MOTHER: Mary Anne Constantine (née Quinn, deceased in childbirth) SIBLINGS: Still born twin brother (“The Golden Boy”), Cheryl Masters (older sister) SPOUSE: None / verse dependant...kinda CHILDREN: Two adopted kids (Timothy Hunter and Ruby Dixon) None PETS: None / verse dependant

ADDITIONAL!

SMOKES: He is a chain smoker. DRINKS: He can be clinically defined as an alcoholic. DRUGS: He did some in his younger days, now rarely, mainly when he is so messed up that cigarettes and alcohol can’t do their job properly. DIET: The only times he eats properly is when there is someone taking the task of feeding him upon themselves (usually it’s Chas). Otherwise, John either eats whatever he finds or completely forget that humans can’t live off alcohol and the occasional glass of water or juice. The only meal he can truly be bothered to cook is breakfast, even if he ends up making it at the oddest times of the day and the night, and not when he should. That also connects to how changeable is routine is. His eating habits get a little better when he is staying with someone or when he has guests he gives a damn about. He actually makes an effort to provide decent food at the right time, even if he doesn’t often succeed. It’s more likely that whatever company he is having does that job in his place. ALLERGIES / INTOLERANCE: None that he knows of. TATTOOS: John has several tattoos spread all over his body (arms, chest, back, some of his legs too). They are almost (if not all) seals and symbols used in spells, protections, or at least have a magical meaning. Visual comics reference: here. MAKE-UP: It something he used to put on in his younger days, especially whenever the Mucous Membrane had a concert. Nowadays, he almost never does. JEWELERY: He usually wears a watch (not a very expensive one, so it doesn’t really count as a jewel) and he has his ears pierced in different spots (from his punk days), but he doesn’t often wears earrings. GLASSES / CONTACTS?: None. PERFUME?: He wears cologne from time to time, usually if he has a date of some sort or has to meet with some specific people (Zatanna for example) and he is given the time to prepare. Also, if he needs to attend events or go to places with a dress code (if he bothers enough to do it).

MISC!

WRITES LOVE POETRY?: He has written a few love songs during the years, and has even sang some of them to the people they were addressed to. It’s definitely not a habit for him, though. CELEBRATES BIRTHDAY?: If he can help it, he doesn’t. It’s one of the worst days of the year for him (if not the worst), because it’s also the anniversary of his mother’s death and it marks the beginning of everything that has gone downhill in his life. He usually hides away, refusing to see anyone, with the only goal of drinking and smoking the day away. If anyone is stubborn enough to try and change his routine, they usually end up becoming the target of John’s ugliest moods. FAVOURITE COLOUR?: Blue, in all its shades. SLEEPS: His sleeping patterns are inconsistent and rarely regular and he has nightmares more often than not. There are times when the only way he has to fall asleep is drinking himself into oblivion. Other times, he is so exhausted that he passes out before his body touches the bed. And then there are the times where, whether on purpose or not, he stays up for several days in a row. HAS PLUSHIES?: None and he never had one. As a kid, at times he stole Cheryl’s old ones, but it was just to annoy her. MUSIC TASTE?: Mostly punk, rock, some metal and any combination of those. He doesn’t mind a bit of folk music too, from time to time, especially the Irish one. READS?: He mostly reads newspapers and magical/occult tomes. For leisure, he reads a bit of everything, even if he enjoys historical dramas and thrillers/horrors the most. At times he digs up comic books, even if less often. FONDEST CHILDHOOD MEMORY: The period that his father spent in jail. Life didn’t get much easier, but at least he was free from the constant abuse for a while. SINGS IN SHOWER?: All the damn time.

[tricktster]

Where am I? The uncanny valley, my friend.

There is a trope in horror that I particularly love, where the protagonist realizes they are Seeing Something That They Were Not Meant To See. Maybe they open the freezer in the basement that their spouse always keeps padlocked and find a collection of severed fingers, or maybe they gaze on the unspeakable tentacled geometries of an eldritch god. No matter what The Thing is, though, the bell can’t be unrung. They can’t go back to living their life the way it was before they saw The Thing, and even in the happiest of scenarios, the ones where they get out alive, their discoveries haunt them in every frozen dinner or plate of calamari. 

I am in The Villages, the largest gated over-55 community in the world, and as a non-retiree, I was Not Meant To See This Place. 

Figure 1: Honestly some of the better art here.

Here is what happened: My parents, whom I love dearly and respect to my core, announced essentially out of the blue a few years back that they would be purchasing a house in The Villages, Florida, a retirement community that essentially occupies an entire county in central Florida. This was something of a surprise, since my parents, heretofore, had always presented as rational actors. I frankly never imagined they’d live in any gated community, much less The Villages. 

I have now visited my parents in The Villages on three occasions, and each time, I have found myself somewhere mid-visit wondering if I actually know these people at all. My parents are both tremendously intelligent professionals who are highly regarded in their northeastern community, where I was born and raised. Growing up, my parents emphasized to me and my brother the importance of education and intellectual curiosity, but also hammered home that we were to be kind, generous, empathetic, environmentally conscious, and aware of the greater world. They (particularly my mom) are crunchy as hell. As kids, my mom used to take us for walks in the nature preserve and help us identify different plants, animals and mushrooms with field guides. When we went on vacations, we went to Yellowstone and hiked, or we camped in the rainforest at eco-tourism sites. My parents were early adopters of hybrid cars. They’re passionate about music and art, architecture and history. They bought a home in the tackiest place on earth.

When I think Central Florida, I think thick forests and swampland. There’s a certain romance associated with half-rotted trees covered in Spanish moss, and pools of still water only occasionally disturbed by primordial carnivores:

Figure 2: You know, this kind of thing.

The Villages, on the other hand, look like this:

Figure 3a: For fuck’s sake.

Figure 3b: Christ.

How bad is the aesthetic in The Villages? Let me put it this way: If Tim Burton decided to make a movie about gated Floridian retirement communities, and they shot it in The Villages, when I got around to watching it, I’d be like, jesus, Tim, going back to the well with this one, huh, we get it, it’s a parody of a soulless, conformist, suburbia. Oh, a “Declaration of Restrictions has been created for each individual neighborhood, which regulates design and operational aspects, such as landscaping, repairs and maintenance, placement of satellite dishes, hedges, etc. An Architectural Review Committee controls the composition and consistency of the exterior of the residential properties within The Villages.*” Fuck you, Tim, try something new, I’d say, very smugly because I am very smug.

Oh, but wait, Tim would say, what if I told you there were forty-eight golf courses within The Villages? What if I told you there were three “town centers,” and one is designed to look like it’s an old town from the American Southwest, and one’s designed to look like a coastal tourist town, and one of them is actually designed to look like the fucking Wild West, is that choice enough for you, huh? What if I told you that every place in The Villages is accessible by golf cart? What if I told you that ridiculous old men would trick out their golf carts to look like they’re sports cars?

Figure 4: WE GET IT, TIM.

In short, The Villages is a ridiculous place. It is a theme park without rides, a clear-cut swath of swampland transformed at great expense into a facsimile of a 1950s suburb where the citizens are permitted to live their lives free of  meaningful community responsibilities. It is, at its worst, a dull and soulless celebration of wastefulness and excess, centering around one of the most historically exclusionary, and least environmentally sound, “sports.” It is all camp, and all artifice. You can go to one of three town squares every night and hear one of the rotating live bands perform, generally in front of large crowds of seated people while one or two brave couples sway awkwardly on the dance floor. Sometimes, a handful of line dancers emerge for a song to do an uncomfortable, unsmiling routine that looks more like solemn ritual than joyful performance. You can do this all while housing a three dollar Long Island Iced Tea to the dome. 

Needless to say, it’s also super white here and the politics are off-the-charts awful.

Figure 5: A picture I took last night of a store selling honest-to-god oil paintings of a slimmed down Donald Trump enjoying various leisure activities with historical figures.

Oh, and let’s just address the elephant in the room: Rumor has it this place is horny as hell, with a population that’s just riddled with STDs. I can’t find anything to substantiate the popular story that this is a hotbed for swingers, it’s just a rumor everyone I talk to seems to know about. However, given that management in The Villages certainly knows about this rumor, since everyone else in the continental US does, it seems absolutely fucking bananas bonkers that they let the promotional magazine I found in my parents’ living room go out with the following headline: 

Figure 6: Are we still doing phrasing?

I just don’t get it, man. I straight up can’t figure out what my parents see in this place, much less why they’d want to own property here. It doesn’t comport with the intelligent and engaged people I know them to be? Sometimes, it just feels almost disappointing, like the way I’m sure they’d feel if I’d chosen to go to a party school for college. 

But look, kids, I’m here venting about this insane place to you guys because I’m NOT venting it to my parents, and I’m not telling my parents that this whole gated community can blow me, because this place isn’t for me. As a non-retiree with a decent amount of punk rock sentiment left in me, I Was Not Meant To See This Place, but while I’m horrified (and oh, lord, am I horrified) by a lot of The Villages, I’m choosing kindness towards my parents and leaning into it. For whatever reason, they love it here, and they want their family to love it too, so when they asked hopefully for the hundredth time if me and my brother and sister-in-law would come down to visit, we said yes. When they asked if we’d play golf with them, I swallowed my huge distaste for the Dumbest Game of All Time, and I agreed that the manicured lawns were beautiful in their own way, and the landscaping was impressive, and I spent several hours trying to hit a ball into a hole for some fucking reason.

Here’s a fun fact about The Villages: get up early enough, and you can find alligators ambling across the golf courses, locating the next water trap to spend their day in; the biggest are fifteen feet long. The American alligator has existed in and around Florida for around eight million years, but the family alligatoroidea has existed since the late Cretaceous - 70 million years ago. Alligators have seen the dinosaurs reign and die out, and gone on to survive the rise of birds, mammals, and relatively recently, humans.

When I’m in The Villages, sometime it keeps me sane to think that whenever this garbage place collapses, the gators will swim through the wreckage and hunt in the same place an oil portrait of a slimmed down Donald Trump once hung.

[saraa-lancee]

I just.... wanna talk about how important Elvis having the death totem was. Especially because ive seen some people digging into it.

It really opens up the potential for a very special and meaningful conversation about death.

A lot of people complain that a warrior of some kind should have gotten the totem but... i hate that. (I agree, it could have given us some fun and interesting characters, like maybe Churchill or something idk). Not only because people in general are obsessed with war (they want to see their favorite historical figure. Which don't get me wrong, I don't blame them.) But because of the relationship that a warrior has with death-- a relationship we see with Sara. And Sara didn't even want to hurt people, especially not the people she loved.

But the totem made her. Imagine the power of the totem in the hands of histories greatest warriors and generals-- people who wanted to hurt other people. Sara rejected the power of death, and she hates herself for what happened and for her past. But others... wouldnt have those same feelings. Any other warrior who felt the same would also have rejected the Totem, pushing into the hands of the guiltless. Making them (and their cause) practically unstoppable. And do you think they would give the totem up alive?

They would weapanize the totem, pervert the dead to their own whims, use it to kill even more.

But... that's the easy story. Its obvious. (And a story of a warrior 'seeing the right path and giving up the totem is great and all but also incredibly easy and predictable). Its easy because death is scary and to be avoided at all costs, death is a tragedy no matter the circumstances. The real challenge, the deeper story, is love, and Peace. Not hatred and war.

We've seen that the totem has the power to destroy-- the first Anarchronism was that it destroyed Memphis. And thats often what we see death as-- destruction.

But there's more to the power of death.

Elvis was desperately seeking connection. Not power. Not vengeance. Not destruction.

He wanted Love.

The ghosts he accidentally summoned... they just wanted love and acceptance too. They wanted to be remembered. They weren't really intending to destroy the town and hurt people, but nobody else besides Elvis (with the totems power) saw that. The ghosts were hurting people by accident, because the people were afraid of them and they didn't know how to communicate (that's also just... an incredible metaphor too, I think).

Elvis was using the totem as a crutch-- it was seeing into his soul into his deepest desires and he desired the relationship of a brother. He, in real life, spoke about his dead twin-- he honestly ached for that connection. He was an only kid in a poor family. The prospect of having a twin-- a constant companion and close friend-- would definitely have appealed to him a great deal. He probably felt robbed of that, especially during those roughest times. The ache of everything that could have been. Elvis was just lonely.

And a lot of people are lonely. Especially by death-- singled spouses, children who lose parents/parental figures, parents who lose children, the untimely loss of a close friend. Death feels like loneliness. And nobody wants to be lonely.

Elvis didn't use the totem for power. He never intended to have power over others-- that was an accident. He used it for wisdom. He used it for love. He used it to gain acceptance about the loss of someone so dear. (Just because someone dies as a baby doesn't make them less dear, not even to those who barely knew them-- in many cases, it serves to make them more dear. Its all of the empty potential. All of the what-could-have-been. Elvis might have felt, especially as an identical twin, that a part of him was gone, that he'd lost half of himself.), to gain understanding that just because Jesse was gone doesn't mean he was completely gone-- Elvis could still love and cherish his brother and invision his pride. A lot of times, its the emptiness of death that gets to people-- but just because they're gone doesnt mean you can't remember them, cherish them.

The episode also gifts us with the idea that those who are dead are reciprocating that love-- they didn't want to be forgotten. They also wanted to be loved. That death maybe isn't quite so empty after all. (The idea of someone you love 'looking down on you' or other similar ideas). Its the idea that the dead aren't truly gone, unless we want them to be.

Also, because thentotem was fused to the guitar and yet came off so easily at the end suggests that Jesse didn't want to leave Elvis either. At least, not until Elvis truly understood.

Once Elvis understood, he easily handed the totem over. Because sometimes love is about letting go.

Elvis deserved the death totem because he was able to turn it into a story about family, about love, about loneliness and the human condition.

We don't need a run-of-the-mill story about power. That's literally the entire conversation about Damien Darhk. That's literally the conversation in the next episode with Sara. Thats the easiest conversation to have.

Elvis and the totem brings balance, and thats what the six totems are all about-- Balance. Yes, death can be about power. But death can also be about love. Power is easy. Love is infinitely complicated.

(And I haven't even talked about this episode and music, and I could probably lecture on that. As a musician, it means a lot. But nobody cares lmao. Honestly, nobody will probably even read this far but its cathartic to get these ideas out of my head like this.)

[freewheelen]

Motorcycle Meditations

In January 2019, UCLA published a study (in partnership with Harley-Davidson) cataloging the numerous health benefits of riding a motorcycle.

Research Highlights:

●    Riding a motorcycle decreases stress by 28% 

●    Similar to light exercise, a 20-minute ride increases heart rates by 11% and adrenaline levels by 27%

●    Compared to driving a car, focus enhances while riding a motorcycle (at levels comparable to meditating)

●    Increased alertness in participants’ brain activity while riding

As motorcyclists, we’re already aware of the advantages of opting for two wheels. We throw around phrases like throttle therapy. We stand by the claim that “four wheels move the body — but two wheels move the soul”. We swear that “you never see a motorcycle parked outside of a psychiatrist’s office.” 

But my question is: 

Why?

Why does motorcycling decrease stress?

Why do two wheels increase your focus?

In this day and age, it’s hard to do one thing at a time. We’re often watching Netflix while scrolling through Instagram, reading an email during a meeting, or worse yet, texting while driving. But on a motorcycle, if you’re not focused on doing this one thing, it can cost you everything. 

When I’m on the bike, I don’t worry about my bills or stress over workplace drama. I don’t ruminate over the past or get anxious about the future. I don’t let anything distract me from the now. 

I’m focused.  I’m aware. I’m present. 

Psychologists refer to this state of mind as flow. Flow is when all your energy goes into one activity and everything else falls away. It’s that sensation when you become fully immersed in what you’re doing. If you’re a painter, it’s when you paint. If you’re a writer, it’s when you write. If you’re a motorcyclist, it’s when you ride. It’s those rare moments in life when your thoughts and your actions are one, and that’s the best part of motorcycling — losing yourself in it.

In the saddle, I tend to lose track of time.  For that reason, I refuse to set the clock on my bike’s instrument cluster. As I see it, I don’t want an excuse to take my mind off the road. I don’t want to feel rushed because that’s when mistakes occur. Yes, I could be late to work — and I have been — but it’s better than being injured or dead. After all, worrying about time (or anything else) would take me out of the now and we could all use more now in our lives.

Today, we’re often in two places at one time. We sit at a dinner table with our significant other and scroll through our feeds—separately. Our bodies are physically present, but our minds are elsewhere. It seems that we’re always wanting something other than what is currently in front of us.

German Philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, believed that people go through life with an endless striving for more (I want a new car. I want a promotion. I want a better-looking spouse. etc.). Pessimistic as that sounds, he also felt that humans could find “freedom from suffering” during the moments when they’re captivated by beauty. 

If you’ve ever looked out over a great landscape (Yosemite Valley, Grand Canyon, etc.), you know the feeling. If you’ve ever thoroughly enjoyed a piece of music, you know the feeling. If you’ve ever found yourself completely immersed in a movie, you know the feeling. Well, for me, I find that feeling in motorcycling. 

The dangers of motorcycling indeed deter most people from taking up the sport and I understand that outlook. For instance, mountain climbing seems like a dangerous activity to me. You’re suspended thousands of feet above the ground with your life dangling from ropes and carabiners. However, for climbers, the rewards outweigh the risks. 

By concentrating on finding the next foothold or transferring weight appropriately, mountain climbers immerse themselves in the experience. In those moments, the prospects of death recede because they feel most alive. Similar to mountain climbing, injury and death are imminent threats with motorcycling, but it’s that threat of danger that forces riders to focus on the task at hand.

Yes, UCLA and Harley-Davidson have the percentages and figures to link riding and mental health, but they’re concentrating more on the what and I care more about the why. With Millennials valuing mental health, it’s a creative, forward-thinking approach for a company that’s historically conservative. 

However, I wish there was more emphasis on the subjective experience as well as the objective data. After all, it’s hard to measure beauty with percentages and figures. In the end, this study aims to coax potential new riders into taking the leap but they need more context than just hearing, “motorcycles make you happier.” Hopefully, my explanation helps illustrate the point that Harley and UCLA are trying to make, and as a result, more people take to two wheels.

[flameontheotherside]

Interview with Autumn Wells

Today I reached out to Autumn for a little interview about her experience with her TF in spirit, Jimi Hendrix. 

Me: Thanks for agreeing to this interview. For my readers, I thought it would be nice for them to get to know you a little bit especially if you are planning to contribute by submitting your input here on this very blog. I think we all appreciate you sharing your story and that it’s exciting to meet yet another “spiritual widow”.  You would be the 4th one I’ve met with a TF inspirit who was a musician! 

This experience can be difficult but of course has its rewards as we learn and grow from this. It’s great and comforting to know you’re not alone. This was something Erik stressed to me all last month while I wasn’t feeling my best. So I really don’t feel you reaching out when you did was in any way a coincidence. There’s no doubt also that Jimi Hendrix is a legend who inspired many and had an amazing talent. 

Autumn: Thank you so much for interviewing me. I really appreciate it. I'm glad you enjoy the blog! It's funny, but when many people describe how it is to hear Jimi Hendrix play for the first time, they're blown away, too! :)

Me: Where are you from? Are you American?

Autumn: I come from the USA, and I'm a young African-American woman in my twenties. I like to create art, stories, and other artistic projects. Jimi is African-American, too. We both come from mixed backgrounds, with Native American and European ancestors in our backgrounds, too, but our African roots are the strongest.

Me: Are you spiritual or religious?

Autumn: I consider myself more spiritual rather than religious. I do learn a lot of wisdom from different religions, but I don't follow any one religion in particular. I believe in God, through Jesus Christ, but I'm open to shamanic wisdom and many other cultures as well.

Me: I think most of us have a level of intuitiveness. Do you have intuitive or psychic gifts?

Autumn: Yes, I have intuitive and psychic gifts. I've always sensed people's emotions ever since I was little, and the psychic gifts grew stronger as I grew older. They became stronger because of my experience with Jimi's spirit, too. I can type down Jimi's thoughts when he wants to talk and share something with the world. I can also communicate with deceased relatives and other loved ones. Sometimes I sense the emotions of people who are alive on the earth, too. I've had moments where I can psychically detect knowledge about people without really knowing them.

Me: What is Jimi like?

Autumn: Jimi is a sweetheart, really. His personality is the same as it was when he was on the earth. Although he was really flashy on the stage, off the stage he was quiet and so shy. That surprised me in the beginning, because I didn't realize how quiet he was as a person, but the way he is to me is the way he was to many people on the earth - gentle, shy, and loving. He is very intelligent, and he still thinks and dreams in visions, as he did on the earth. He can be romantic, but most of all, he's unconditionally loving.

Me: How do you both communicate?

Autumn: I communicate with Jimi through telepathy, and I often see him with my eyes, too. He can affect my physical reality at times, but not always. For instance, he may draw me to him without me doing anything to move closer to him.

Me: How would you describe your relationship? For instance Erik can be in spirit guide mode which is serious and sometimes we can be friends and more.

Autumn: Yes, Jimi is like a spirit guide, and recently, well... he asked me to be his wife. I was so shocked! :) I didn't expect him to do that. In the past, we've spent many different periods where we were sometimes friends, and other times he was more like a guardian angel. There were also times when we developed a romantic relationship, and we would feel like husband and wife, but Jimi also sometimes would withdraw from my life if he felt I needed to have new experiences on the earth. So for us, we've experienced many different kinds of love on our journey, but right now, he asked me to marry him, and I said yes, after nearly fainting, haha.

Me: How does Jimi appear to you?

Autumn: Jimi looks the way he did on the earth, and he usually looks very young. He has beautiful brown eyes and a kind smile, and he's about 5.11. He wears colorful clothes and sometimes brings his guitar with him. He still loves to play in the afterlife. Here's a picture of Jimi, I think there's no copyright on it:

Me: Telling someone about this can be hard. Did you have problems explaining to anyone close to you?

Autumn: I did try to tell my mother about Jimi and the experiences I had with him, but it didn't really turn out well. At first, she seemed to believe me, and she even said I was lucky. But then she started to doubt me because she didn't see Jimi the way I did, so she thought maybe I was making it all up because I was just a teenager. My Dad figured it was just my subconscious mind, although it was harder and harder for me to believe it was my subconscious when I started seeing Jimi while I was awake. My mom and dad's disbelief did make this journey very challenging because I had no one I could really turn to. I was not on the internet at the time, so I couldn't reach out to anyone who had a similar experience. The best I could do was keep it to myself, but I trusted in Jimi, and I read all I could about Native American spirituality, and how the Native Americans believed they had guiding spirits to help them in life. That helped me out a bit.

Ironically, though, during the accident incident where I had the near-death vision, my Dad was actually present when he saw me speaking to Jimi in the state I was in. I saw Jimi, and felt him so strongly, even though I was malnourished and in very bad shape. I had no clue I was about to go, because I didn't realize how sick I was, but I knew Jimi, so when I saw him, I had this blissful smile on my face and felt I was in heaven. I saw another deceased relative, too, who had just passed away. When my Dad asked me, "Are you in heaven?" I turned to him and said with tears of joy, "I love you so much, Jimi!" My Dad was shocked, and he said, "Now I know you're in heaven," because he always believed Jimi went to heaven after he passed away at 27 (in 1970). But I think even witnessing that moment I had with Jimi might have been too much for my Dad to comprehend.

Me: What can you tell us about your past lives? 

Autumn: Anyway, about past lives, that's an interesting question, because recently I asked Jimi if we shared any lifetimes together. He told me he didn't want to overwhelm me with too much information, but he did say that we shared a past life in England in the 19th century. He said we had several other lifetimes together, too, but he wanted to start with one at the time. It's really intriguing because I didn't know much at all about England in the 19th century, and Jimi told me about a very detailed experience about his life as a music teacher back then. It turns out that everything he told me, when I searched for the historical context, matches up with that time. I'll write about it on my blog eventually, but yes, this is the first past life we are working on. I don't exactly know how many past lives we've had, but I'm sure Jimi will share more when the time is right. (Jimi loved England in his last lifetime, too; that's where he felt really at home.)

I was a skeptic about reincarnation for the longest, but the evidence has led me to believe it's a reality. There is so much pointing to the fact that we've come to this earth before, and I've had that feeling myself.

Me: We have a twin flame (or spirit spouse) who isn’t living. Most of us have never gotten to meet or be with our counterparts while they were alive. So, it can be difficult. What is the hardest thing about having this experience?

Autumn: I'd say the hardest thing about having this experience, as beautiful as it is, is that most of the loved ones and people around me don't really understand it. I tried to open up about it in the past, but it didn't go over well, so I just keep it to myself. I hope that one day, I can integrate this experience into my life more fully, but right now, I just keep most of the details to myself in my everyday life, and try to find a balance.

Another hard thing in the beginning was dealing with the fact that Jimi died young, and tragically. That really hurt my heart, especially as a child. I just couldn't believe it. I kept asking my Dad, "Why? Why?" because I just couldn't understand why Jimi had to pass on when he was only 27. It took me a long time to accept that he was in the afterlife, but it really helped me when he came to me and told me he was at peace, and he came to me because he loved me, not because he felt haunted.

Me: What are some important things you’ve learned being Jimi’s TF?

Autumn: There are many important things I've learned from this experience, though, and the main thing is learning to trust in God, myself, and Jimi. I've had trust issues throughout my life, to the point where I didn't know if I could even trust Jimi or not, but he helped me to love myself, and love him, too. He showed me unconditional love which really helped to heal my heart, and he was there to guide me through some really difficult times in my life. He also brought me closer to God, who I love, too.

Me: How often do you communicate with each other?

Autumn: Jimi and I talk quite a bit, depending on the flow of my life. Sometimes I spend a lot of time studying, so we don't talk as much (I really need to set aside more talking time!) but I can always feel him near me. Early on, we spoke nearly all the time, and I'd write down a lot of our conversations. That helped me connect a lot of dots later on.

Me: What are some funny or good moments you’ve had?

Autumn: I think there were a few funny moments between us sometimes, but mostly Jimi's pretty serious. But he's serious in a light way, if you know what I mean. He's often smiling and telling me stories about his life on the earth, and he helps children a lot in the afterlife.

Me: Like physical twins (I have a twin brother btw), twin flames or twin souls aren’t always alike. In what ways are you alike? Different?

Autumn: I agree that twin souls don't have to be exactly alike. With Jimi and me, we do happen to be amazingly similar, although we have some differences. We both look similar, especially in the eyes, although we don't look exactly the same. We share a deep interest in spirituality, God, and the afterlife, and neither of us believe in organized religion. We love music and the creative arts, although I tend to get more addicted to writing, and Jimi's addiction was music.

We both experienced ESP and psychic phenomena during our lives on the earth; Jimi said in the 1960's that he saw the spirit of Handel while he was living in the composer's home (you can look it up on the internet if you like, it's really interesting!) He also believed his mother, who passed on at a young age, was watching over him in spirit.

We both have the tendency to be nervous perfectionists with our creative arts. I used to feel kind of bad about driving the people crazy around me with my "everything must be perfect" tendencies, until I found Jimi was the same way. :)

We have a ton more things in common, but we also have a few differences. I'm deeper into writing, while Jimi is more into music. But a lot of our differences are more like different sides of the same coin. For instance, we both grew up in blended families, but the blended family for Jimi came later in his life, when his father remarried, whereas I grew up in a blended family (although I didn't always spend time with my older half-siblings).

Considering that Jimi and I never met on the earth, and he lived and passed on before I was born, it's amazing how our lives and personalities parallel each other. Many of the parallels I didn't even know about until I got older and could get on the internet to research.

Me: How do you think you’d be together if he were alive or reincarnated now as your significant other?

Autumn: I think my life would be different in some ways if Jimi were incarnated as someone else. I used to wish I'd meet a guy like Jimi one day, but I knew it was hopeless because no one else is Jimi, unless he came to the earth again, of course. I do think it's good that Jimi is in spirit, though, because the way my family life is, we probably wouldn't spend much time together if he were incarnate. I don't get into the outside world that much.

If Jimi were incarnated with me, I do think it might work out, but he would have to be free from many of the things which led to him passing away so young. Drugs, for instance, were a problem Jimi dealt with, as well as ruthless people in the music business who took advantage of him. I do believe that in spirit, he has much less to worry about, and that has really helped both of us. So although it would be wonderful to have Jimi physically here with me, I also know that it's best that we connected in this way, because he's in the peace and love of the afterlife. I also think that having Jimi as a spirit guide and partner is wonderful because he can be with me wherever I go in the world, and we don't have physical distance separating us. Sometimes I do long to be where he is, though, in the afterlife. One day, I'll be with him for all time, God willing.

Well, that's it for now! Thanks for asking the really good questions.

Me: Thank you for answering and thank you especially for reaching out and sharing us your story! 

If you guys who are following me or stumbling on this, want to know more about Autumn Wells and her amazing story about being Jimi Hendrix’s twin soul, you can find her blog at:

https://jimiheaven.gonevis.com/

She will also be guest posting here as well so watch out for her content. You can see all her submissions with the tag: #Autumn Wells <--Click that link for the goods!

[justheretobreakthings]

Flying Solo

Keith Gen-uary may have been going on while I was still working through my Big Bad Writing Slump, but according to the blog, they will still be accepting late entries until basically the end of time, so I can still take the challenge! And what better time to begin a January fic event than in the middle of March?

Anyway, I’m going to try and work my way through all of the Gen-uary days, at my own pace and in whichever order comes to me. Who knows how long it’s gonna take, but I’ll try my best to get to all of them eventually!

Here’s my @keithgenuary fic for Day 14: Curtis/Adam/Veronica

Read on AO3

“How many of those have you had?” came a chuckling voice behind Keith.

He turned around, the drink in his glass sloshing in his hand, to come face-to-face with Curtis, smiling at him with a raised brow. “A few,” Keith said, shrugging before taking a gulp from the glass. “Coran said there’s barely any alcohol in this, so it’s fine.”

“Coran’s a very poor judge of how much alcohol is considered a lot,” Curtis pointed out. “Plus, are you gonna tell me Shiro was lying when he told me those stories about The Adventures of Keith the Lightweight?”

“Shiro exaggerates,” Keith said. “Hardly my fault this stuff tastes good. At least if I’m gonna get sloshed, better to do it at your rehearsal dinner than at the actual reception, right?”

“Mmm,” Curtis said thoughtfully as he grabbed a glass for himself off of the beverage table. “Ask me again after you throw up all over the table in the middle of the speeches and Shiro gives you a piece of his mind.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “This is glass number three, if you must know. I’m not throwing up anytime soon.”

“That’s a relief,” Curtis said. “Don’t know when we’d find the time to do the dry-cleaning.”

Keith smiled as he took another sip from his glasses and waited for Curtis to finish pouring his own drink. “By the way,” he said as the other turned back around to him. “Thanks again for letting Kosmo be the ring bearer. I promise, tomorrow he’ll walk down the aisle instead of teleporting. He just got excited.”

“It’s fine. Long as the rings get to the chancel, that’s the important part. And it’s hard to say no to Kosmo.”

“Yeah, he’s really mastered those puppy eyes, hasn’t he?” Keith said with a little laugh.

“Well, that, and he always looks like he’s gonna eat you if you deny him anything.”

“Oh please, he’d chew off a couple of fingers at the most.”

Curtis laughed. “You’ve raised quite the dangerous beast, haven’t you?”

“I did my best,” Keith answered. “Hey, speaking of Kosmo, you and Shiro said you’d be up for pet-sitting him again sometime, yeah?”

“Mm-hm,” Curtis said with a nod. “You need a sitter coming up?”

“In about three weeks,” Keith said. “Blade’s gonna be helping build greenhouses over on Suvarmak. Planet’s pretty much all underwater, so it’ll be a hassle to bring him around with us.”

“Three weeks you said?” Keith nodded, and Curtis shook his head and continued, “Won’t be able to do it. Shiro and I will still be in Leshiri for another week more at that point.”

Keith frowned, needing a moment to place the familiar planet name before he remembered. Leshiri - that was the tropical-like planet that Coran had suggested to Shiro for his and Curtis’s honeymoon. “You’ll still be there?” he asked. “I thought Shiro said your honeymoon was gonna be two weeks.”

“Originally, yeah,” Curtis said. “But seeing as Shiro’s retired and I’m on sabbatical anyhow, we figured, why not extend it, go a full month like the honeymoons of the olden days?”

“When did you guys change plans?”

“Couple weeks ago.”

“Oh.” Keith furrowed his brow as he looked down into his near-empty glass. “Shiro, um, didn’t mention it.”

“Well, he’s been pretty busy lately, probably slipped his mind.”

“Yeah…” Keith moved to refill the glass, muttering, “Lot’s been slipping his mind lately.”

“Say something?” Curtis asked.

Keith took a gulp of his drink before turning back around with a smile. “Nah, nothing. Just, uh, you know - agreeing that he’s been busy.”

“Ah, yeah.” Curtis smiled with a little shake of his head. “It’s ironic: Shiro retires so he doesn’t have to deal with as much stress. But since he retired, he’s had the free time to throw himself into wedding planning and honeymoon preparations, and he winds up just as stressed as before. You know, I’m looking forward to the wedding and the honeymoon and all, but I think I’m looking forward even more to when we can finally just be peacefully at home afterward and start our lives, just the two of us.” He took a final sip from his glass. “You coming back to the table?”

“You go, don’t keep the others waiting,” Keith said. “I’m gonna have a bit more to drink.”

“Suit yourself,” Curtis said, giving him a friendly pat on the shoulder before taking his leave.

Keith turned back to the beverage table, downing his glass and proceeding to pour himself another. The music playing in the hall and the chatter from the tables were started to get louder, he noticed, and the food spread out across the tables, all courtesy of Hunk’s catering service of course, seemed to be slightly different colors than they were when the rehearsal dinner had started.

Okay, so maybe Curtis had a point when he’d asked if maybe Keith had had too much to drink.

But he couldn’t help himself, not really. He needed something to help get him through the night. What with the crowd and the noise and everyone taking photos and shaking hands and him having to speak in front of everybody. It wasn’t great for his nerves.

In the past, he had relied on Shiro to be his anchor at busy events, whether it was at the Garrison in his school days or at various diplomatic events or coalition parties during their time with Voltron, but now, of course, since Shiro was at the center of attention, he had barely had time to exchange two words with Keith between meeting with all the other guests and spending time with Curtis.

With Curtis…

He didn’t know why it bothered him. There was no logical reason it should. Curtis was nice and fun and made Shiro happy and supported him, so Keith had no problem with Curtis. And Shiro was finally settling down and getting the peaceful and happy future he wanted, and Keith had no problem with that. So he was stumped as to why being at Shiro’s wedding, being his best man, should bother him at all.

He had mentioned this feeling of misgiving a couple of days ago to the others, and Lance had burst out laughing and cried, “Oh my God, Keith, you’re jealous!”

Keith had simply rolled his eyes and flipped him off. That certainly wasn’t the reason. It wasn’t as if Keith had any desire to marry Shiro himself, far from it. He had never seen the appeal in dating and romance. It was always the most boring part of any movie he watched or book he read, and when he tried to imagine himself going on dates or getting married, either with someone he knew or with some faceless stand-in, it all felt forced and artificial and suffocating and, well, wrong.

And that was just dating in general, let alone dating Shiro, which was even harder to imagine, at least without feeling nauseated at the prospect. Shiro was for all intents and purposes his brother. You don’t date your brother. You don’t marry your brother. People don’t plan their life and their future around their brother. Or their friend, or their teammate.

People plan their lives around their husbands, wives, spouses, ‘significant others’. The ones they date and love and…

Oh.

So, maybe there was a chance that Keith was jealous. Just… jealous for a different reason.

He was barely aware of the fact that he had gone to the bathroom, and he had no idea how long he had spent in the stall or how long he had spent in front of the sink and mirror afterward. The alcohol probably had something to do with that. All he knew for sure was that he had been lost in his own head for a while, right up to the point when the men’s room door open and Curtis entered. “There you are!” Curtis said the moment he spotted Keith. “Shiro and I were looking everywhere for you! Can’t start the toasts without you. You about finished in here?” He approached Keith, raising his brow. “Uh, Keith? You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Keith croaked out. “Just - just thinking.”

“Thinking about what?”

“Nothing.”

“Keith…”

“Just… about how… busy Shiro’s been.” Because, God, had he been busy. Busy with the wedding, busy with Curtis. He had barely been in touch with Keith as of late, barely had the time of day for him. And back at the Garrison, before he and Adam had broken off their engagement, the closer they had gotten to their planned wedding day, the busier they had been, the more time they needed together, to themselves…

And last time Keith had decided to pay a surprise visit to Hunk’s restaurant, the center of his food empire where he was the chef himself, because Hunk used to always be happy to get the chance to catch up with him and have Kosmo do his delivery-service act for his patrons, he had discovered that he and Shay had left the day before, off on a romantic getaway together, wouldn’t be back in time to see him and say hello…

And when the Blade had last made a trip back to Earth, he’d made plans with Acxa, to show her some of the landmarks of his time growing up on his home planet and various historical sites and museums, and he still had no idea how he had wound up being stuck spending practically the whole visit with Lance as Veronica occupied Acxa’s every waking moment during the visit with their own special one-on-one time…

It was like they were pairing off, one by one - or, well, two by two - and leaving everything else behind and in the dust. And Keith?

Well, once a lone wolf…

“I’m fine,” he said again, and he was pretty sure that Curtis had been saying something else to him and he’d interrupted, but, whatever. He splashed some water on his face from the sink and sighed. “Think you were right about the drinks.”

“You sure you’re okay to give a toast?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”

Curtis frowned. “You know, uh, Shiro told me once that when you say you’re fine, it means the opposite.”

“I am fine. I’m - I’m happy. This is a happy night. For Shiro. I’m just… gonna miss him.”

“What do you mean, miss him? We’re coming back from our honeymoon eventually, you know.”

“No, it’s not that, it’s - it’s - ” His voice hitched and he wiped at his eyes. “It’s just, it - it was me and Shiro for a long time, and now I’m gonna have to - I mean, it’s you and Shiro now, and - and that’s good, it’s good for Shiro, and you, and you guys are a good couple and, um, and you - and I just need to, um, to get used to - ”

“Hey, hey,” Curtis said softly, and suddenly his hands were on Keith’s shoulders and Keith was choking back sobs, because of the stupid alcohol, of course, that was why. “Keith?” Curtis continued. “Is that what’s bothering you? You’re worried that you’ll be, um…”

Left behind? Forgotten? Unneeded? Curtis didn’t say any of those, but Keith still thought them.

“Keith,” he said again, not bothering to finish his current thought. “You - you do know that Shiro marrying me doesn’t mean he loves you any less, don’t you?”

“I’m not a child, Curtis,” Keith mumbled. “You don’t have to talk to me like one.”

“Sorry, I hadn’t meant to. It’s just… Shiro has been busy lately, we both have, but, don’t think for a moment that Shiro doesn’t still love having you around.”

“Mm-hm.”

Curtis sighed. “I can’t make you believe me but, well… you know, Keith, you’ve never gotten to see the way Shiro’s face absolutely lights up when your name pops up on an incoming video call. But it does. Hell, he gets happier to get calls from you than from anyone else. Including me.”

Keith stared at him. “... He does?”

“And you didn’t see him the last time you’d scheduled a visit with us. He was practically giddy the whole morning because it had been so long since he’d seen you. He wanted so badly to make the visit special that he even tried to cook the whole lunch for us himself.”

Keith frowned quizzically. “I thought Sal delivered lunch to us last time I visited?”

“Well, yes,” Curtis said. “We had to throw away all of Shiro’s attempts at cooking since they ended up all just being crunchy black blobs of tastelessness, but it’s the thought that counts.”

A hiccoughing laugh made its way out of Keith’s throat. “That sounds like his cooking,” he said.

“From how much he talks about you, you’d think he was trying to help me cram for a big test in my Keith Studies class. I think I’ve heard every story about you that exists.” Curtis smiled. “He’s proud of you, you know. And he does love you. I figure he loves me a, uh, a very different way but…” Keith was reminded of Curtis’s hand on his shoulder when he squeezed it. “You know, once our honeymoon’s over, I’ve still got work that I’ll be doing with the Garrison and the Atlas. Shiro’s gonna need someone to be giving him calls and dropping by for surprise visits.”

Keith gave him a trembling smile. “I’ll - I’ll do my best.”

“Attaboy.” Curtis released him and moved to the paper towel dispenser to get Keith a couple of sheets before passing them over. “Here, take a couple minutes. Get your eyes cleaned up. The toasts can wait ‘til you’re ready.”

“Thank you,” Keith said, accepting the towels. He ran one under the stream of cold water in the sink and dabbed it at his eyes. “Oh, uh, Curtis? Just so you know, um… Shiro - Shiro picked a good husband.”

Curtis grinned at him, hand on the door handle. “Thanks, Keith,” he said. “He picked a good best man too.”

[early20thcenturynerd]

Today, 171 years ago, Princess Louise was born.

“The better known bio by Lucinda Hawksley is entertaining, yet hugely based on gossip, falling short because it presents unsubstantiated hunches and rumors as truth. In biographies, all conclusions must be backed up with credible sources and solid evidence. Unfortunately after 100 years, the rumors stick to a historical figure as if they were true facts, which is certainly the case here. In my review, I feel compelled to confront a few of the rumors and misconceptions. 

Princess Louise Caroline Alberta was intelligent, inquisitive and artistically gifted. Like her siblings, she received a strict academic education, becoming fluent in several languages, music, art and theater, as well as, acquiring practical skills like cooking, baking, sewing and gardening. However, her childhood was marred by the early death of her father, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coberg-Gotha and her mother's prolonged period of mourning. It was a traumatic period that engulfed the entire family and country for more years then it should have.

Princess Louise was the first royal offspring to enroll in a public school, the National Art Training School, at the same time as she was required to fill the role as her mother's private secretary (1866-1871). Louise was successful at both endeavors due to dedication and many hours of hard work. The Princess was a talented sketcher, painter and sculptress and accepted commissions for her art in an era when women were only supposed to have hobbies inside the home. Her sculpture of Queen Victoria at the age of her coronation sits outside of Kensington Palace today.

Queen Victoria, who sometimes considered her daughter argumentative, had to admit the statue was a great likeness and Louise was an excellent private secretary, writing to daughter Vicky: ‘She is (and who would have some years ago have thought it?) a clever dear girl with a fine character, unselfish and affectionate.’ Unlike the Queen, Princess Louise (like her elder sister, Vicky, i.e. Crown Princess Victoria of Prussia) supported women's rights. She secretly met with ‘radical' Elizabeth Garrett, the first woman medical doctor in Britain.

Over a lifetime, Princess Louise supported liberal and forward-thinking social causes, spearheading the education of women, lending her name to get programs and institutions up and running. Likewise the Princess initiated public works and opened wings of hospitals. Not content with merely showing up at the end, she contributed her ideas and was involved in all the phases of planning and implementation right up to the openings.

Many at court, as well as, the public thought Princess Louise was the Queen's most attractive daughter. She was the tallest and slender and as an early proponent of exercise, remained shapely and youthful throughout her life. She bicycled and walked habitually.

Princess Louise was also unconventional in choosing a spouse -- an aristocrat, John Campbell, the Marquis of Lorne, heir to the Duke of Argyll and a Liberal Member of Parliament over a foreign prince. Since he was active in politics and wasn't royal, it was controversial. In 1871, she became the 1st daughter of a Sovereign to marry a commoner since the 16th century. Queen Victoria favored the match as a way of keeping her daughter in Great Britain, and too, of introducing new blood into the family. Also, the Queen always let her children marry for love.

Which brings us to Louise and Lorne's relationship. There's little truth to what is often written, namely: the couple was unhappy and childless because Lorne was homosexual. The marriage began happy and lasted for over 40 years. During these years, Lorne was devoted, supportive and protective of his wife, and they were very much together up until the early 1880s. He never stopped thinking she was beautiful; nor weaned in thinking of and mentioning her in conversations and letters to his family, etc.

And although Louise could be temperamental, she too was loving, thoughtful, respectful and devoted. Apparently the couple tried to have children as Louise went to Germany over the years for cures in the effort. Although she lived to be 91 years old, the Princess suffered from ill health throughout her life (including severe headaches, neuralgia, vomiting and insomnia, especially after a serious sledging accident (on February 14, 1880) in Canada that also gave her a concussion and tore her ear lope in two). 

Jehanne Wake's book makes a good case that probably the real reason the couple remained childless was due to illness or infertility (possibly complications from meningitis which Louise contracted at the age of 16). Moreover in Victorian England, no one thought to consider Lorne's fertility. Both spouses hoped to have children and no doubt the disappointment put a strain on their marriage. Louise became depressed. Furthermore, the evidence that the Princess' husband was gay is very weak based mainly on the couple's close association with Lorne's homosexual uncle and friend, Lord Ronnie Gover (his mother's brother), who although innocent, was drawn into a scandal by a gay con artist. [...]

According to the book, Princess Louise cared for Lorne deeply, but needed to take breaks from him in mid-marriage. Queen Victoria was exceedingly understanding of her daughter's frail emotions, ‘while feeling much for Lorne.’ Lorne, too, was patient and understanding of his wife. As the author notes, ‘At the height of Princess Louise's unhappiness,’ husband and wife ‘kept in close contact and wrote daily.’ Divorce was never considered as neither party desired it.

They stayed together and became close again in later years. When Lorne's father died in 1900 making him the 9th Duke of Argyll, Louise accompanied him to Scotland. Together the couple also lived in Kent House on the Isle of Wight and at Kensington Palace in London. Unfortunately, as Lorne aged, he developed dementia and lost the easygoingness of youth, but Louise was very devoted to nursing him until his death from bronchitis that developed into double pneumonia in 1914. Again, Princess Louise was devastated. She felt dreadfully lonely without the Duke still feeling as she did when becoming engaged, there was no one quite like him! And despite the rumors, her biographer thinks it unlikely that Princess Louise ever had sexual relations with anyone other than her husband. No solid evidence suggests otherwise. The author argues Princess Louise could be chatty, friendly and flirty, and like Queen Victoria, she loved beauty in everything, especially in the form of a good looking man. But the the book states, it would have been too risky and highly unlikely that she ever crossed the line as she never forgot Her Royal Highness status, nor her sense of duty. At any rate, says the author, ‘It was the maternal, domesticated hausfrau which predominated in her character.’ In other words, yes, she flirted, but expressed it as glee and by mothering a man. And, I agree with the biographer! In later years Princess Louise continued some public appearances, often visiting hospitals unscheduled. She lived in Scotland and Kensington Palace next to her sister, Princess Beatrice's apartment. Although the sisters had their differences, they were a close family. Louise spent summer vacations with Prince Arthur at his house on the French Riviera and sketched up until age 90. She died on December 3, 1939 and because of the war was cremated with her ashes buried at Frogmore near Windsor. Had she died in Scotland, she would have been buried next to her husband. In Canada, the province of Alberta, Mount Alberta and Lake Louise are all named after Prince Louise.”

- https://thesavvvyshopper.blogspot.com/2018/09/princess-louise-duchess-of-argyll.html

[disappearingground]

The Jenny Lewis Experience

The New York Times July 24, 2014

A version of this article appears in print on July 27, 2014, Page 18 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: The Jenny Lewis Experience.

By Jeff Himmelman

“They’d put the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on,” Jenny Lewis said. We were sitting in a restaurant in Laurel Canyon, not far from her home, and she was describing her early childhood with parents who made their living performing as an itinerant Sonny-and-Cher-style lounge act called Love’s Way. “We lived in hotels,” she said. “My sister and I, they would just keep us in the hotel room, and they’d go down and play.” When Lewis was born in 1976, her parents were doing a stand at the Sands. They split up when she was 3, and her mother — herself the daughter of a dancer and a vaudeville performer — took Jenny and her sister to Van Nuys, in the San Fernando Valley, where she worked as a waitress and struggled to keep her family afloat. “We were on welfare,” Lewis said, before describing the day their fortunes changed, when an agent picked young Jenny out of a crowd at her preschool. “I think mostly because I was a redhead,” she said. “And I was a weird little kid, a weird little tomboy.”

She soon landed her first commercial, for Jell-O, and came under the wing of Iris Burton, an eminent children’s agent who represented River and Joaquin Phoenix and Fred Savage. Lewis started working steadily in commercials, television (“The Golden Girls,” “Growing Pains,” “Mr. Belvedere”) and film (“The Wizard,” “Troop Beverly Hills,” “Pleasantville”), living the surreal and somewhat communal life of a child star in the ‘80s. She spent her days being tutored on set and her evenings at places like Alphy’s Soda Pop Club in Hollywood, which catered exclusively to kids in the industry. At a party there when Lewis was 10, the actor Corey Haim handed her a cassette tape with Run-D.M.C. on one side and the Beastie Boys on the other. “There have been a couple of cassette tapes that have changed my life,” she said, “and that was the first one” — the tape that got her hooked on hip-hop, which eventually led her to songwriting.

I asked Lewis when she first fully realized the role she played in her family, the depth of their dependence on her. “Eight years old,” she said. “I remember the moment. That’s a pretty big thing for a kid to realize. And I remember the power in that.” By the time she was 14 or 15, with nobody to answer to, she could be as wild as she liked as long as she showed up to work and hit her marks. “I was up for it, honestly,” she said. “I loved the work and I loved the people, and it kind of prepped me for what I do now.”

What Lewis does now, the music she makes, is hard to characterize. She is often compared with Joni Mitchell and Emmylou Harris, and there is a kind of timelessness to the way she writes and sings. But the throwback stuff doesn’t quite capture her. Among some music fans — including many other well-known musicians — Lewis is considered a kind of indie goddess, a stylish performer who defies genre and salts her songs with a sly and off-kilter intelligence. Her first band, Rilo Kiley, signed a major-label deal with Warner Bros. Records in 2005; her first side project, the Postal Service, led by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie, sold more than a million copies of its debut; and she has released two well-received solo records since then. Next week, she will release a third, “The Voyager,” her first solo effort in six years. It has been a battle to get it out. Among other things, she has dealt with the death of her father, writer’s block and bouts of insomnia so severe and debilitating that she said they left her almost unable to function for nearly two years.

You’d never guess that from meeting her, though. She talks like a true child of L.A. — the “bro"s and “dude"s flow freely, without affectation — and her go-to traveling costume is a vintage Adidas track suit, Adidas shell-top sneakers and, on the day I first met her, hot-pink lipstick and oversize sunglasses. She lives with her longtime boyfriend and collaborator, the musician Johnathan Rice, up a long canyon road in the hills that separate the San Fernando Valley from downtown Los Angeles. Her house (called “Mint Chip” for its brown-and-light-green exterior) is set into the hillside, looking out over a ravine. There is a rehearsal space with a drum kit, a P.A. and some vintage gear, an old piano in the living room and a vinyl edition of James Taylor’s “Sweet Baby James” propped up beside the fireplace. Beyond the small pool in the back yard there’s a windowed gazebo that Rice uses as his songwriting space. Whatever you are imagining of the California light and the laid-back lifestyle: yes.

Historically, nearby Laurel Canyon has been synonymous with a certain kind of lush ‘60s acoustic-and-multipart-harmony sound, but Lewis’s musical roots spring from the ‘90s and the smart indie rock of Elliott Smith and Pavement. When she was 20 or so, her acting career wasn’t where she wanted it to be, and she saw that she needed to make a change. “I was the best friend,” she said. “I was the friend, forever. I wanted the big, juicy roles, and they didn’t come to me.” (She read for the part of Bunny in the Coen brothers’ film “The Big Lebowski,” for one, but didn’t get it.) She had known Blake Sennett, another former child actor, since she was 17, and they began writing together and eventually formed Rilo Kiley.

She and Sennett dated and broke up and kept playing together. The relationship was always fraught (Gibbard remembers Lewis screaming at Sennett over the phone during the first Postal Service tour), but Lewis said it gave her the confidence she needed to become a real songwriter. “Through my partnership with Blake, I found a voice within myself that I didn’t know I had,” she said. “It sounds kind of cheesy, but I figured out who I was.” From the first lines of the first song on Rilo Kiley’s debut record, a track called “Go Ahead,” you can hear the DNA of the musician Lewis has become nearly 15 years later — a floating, distinct voice, an unpredictable melody, a wryly subverted rhyme.

The link between songwriting and autobiography is a tantalizing but tenuous one, and Lewis prefers to preserve as much mystery as she can. But she affirms that she has never written anything more personal than “Better Son/Daughter,” one of the strongest tracks off Rilo Kiley’s second record, “The Execution of All Things.” The song is about waking up in the morning and being unable to open your eyes or get out of bed: “And your mother’s still calling you, insane and high/Swearing it’s different this time.” Eventually it opens into an anthem of wounded fortitude, the kind you can imagine cars full of young women screaming along to. The actress Anne Hathaway, one of Lewis’s close friends, told me that she still turns to that song whenever she’s struggling. “It’s become almost like a prayer,” she said.

Outside whatever veiled references she makes in her music, Lewis doesn’t talk much about her mother. She acknowledged that it was a “difficult relationship” and that she didn’t have a “traditional upbringing,” but that was about it. At one point, I referred to a report in The Boston Globe in 1992, when Lewis was 16, noting that she owned a house in Sherman Oaks and a townhouse in North Hollywood. “We lost all of that,” she said, with a blankness I hadn’t seen from her before. I asked her why. “We just lost ‘em,” she said. “I achieved a lot as a child, I supported my family, but in the end we lost it all.”

In 2004, Rilo Kiley toured with Coldplay, but Lewis was still scraping by, living in a small apartment in Silver Lake with an Iranian rockabilly musician she found on Craigslist. In her bedroom, when she wasn’t on tour, she wrote the songs that would become “Rabbit Fur Coat,” her first solo record. The idea for it came from Conor Oberst, the songwriter (also known as the frontman of Bright Eyes) who helped form Saddle Creek Records, which had put out “The Execution of All Things.” “I encouraged her,” Oberst told me. “You know, why don’t you step away from this thing that is obviously causing you a lot of distress and make a record on your own?” Sennett had already made a solo record, which upset Lewis. “I was so jealous if someone else got Blake’s musical attention,” she told me. “I was shattered by it.” She made “Rabbit Fur Coat,” she said, in part to prove that “I can do it too on my own — I don’t need you.”

The songs on “Rabbit Fur Coat” are ethereal and haunted, rooted in deep Southern and gospel-inflected melodic traditions. On the record’s title track, Lewis’s lyrics again invite comparison with her family life:

Let’s move ahead 20 years, shall we? She was waitressing on welfare, we were living in the valley A lady says to my ma, “You treat your girl as your spouse You can live in a mansion house.”

And so we did, and I became a hundred-thousand-dollar kid . . . But I’m not bitter about it I’ve packed up my things and let them have at it And the fortune faded, as fortunes often do And so did that mansion house

Where my ma is now, I don’t know She was living in her car, I was living on the road And I hear she’s putting stuff up her nose . . .

After the record was done, Lewis went on tour with Rilo Kiley. When the band played the Showbox in Seattle in 2005, Gibbard picked her up after sound check. They’d become friends during the Postal Service tour a few years earlier. As they drove around in Gibbard’s car, Lewis played the new songs for him. “I just remember, all hyperbole aside, being completely blown away,” Gibbard said. “It was undoubtedly the best thing that she had done.” The press shared Gibbard’s reaction, and Lewis got more attention on her own than Rilo Kiley had ever gotten as a band. “Everything was so easy for the first time,” she said. “It just unfolded so naturally. And then going out on the road and touring was the most fun I’ve ever had on tour. There was no tension for the first time.” Rilo Kiley would put out one more record, but it soon became clear that it would be their last.

“I want to show you something,” Lewis said. We were talking in her kitchen about her second solo release, “Acid Tongue,” which she recorded over three weeks in 2008 at the legendary Sound City Studios in Van Nuys. The record had a bunch of special guests on it — Elvis Costello, Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes — but the most meaningful one was Lewis’s dad, who died in 2010. In the living room, she pointed out a glass vitrine on top of the piano that held one of her father’s chromatic bass harmonicas. Before the “Acid Tongue” sessions, she hadn’t spoken to her father in years, but she felt comfortable enough with the musical family she had created around her — Rilo Kiley’s drummer, Jason Boesel; Johnathan Rice; some other musicians from the Laurel Canyon set — that she thought she could handle having him around. He played on the track “Jack Killed Mom,” and the reunion helped Lewis forgive him for leaving the family all those years ago. “He was playing lounges in Alaska,” Lewis said of when she tracked him down and asked him to play on the album. “That’s why I never saw him. It was not a malicious thing. My dad was a savant. He never drove a car, he never had a bank account,” she said. “I don’t even know if he realized that he wasn’t around, you know? I think he was just playing his gigs, trying to make a living.”

“Acid Tongue” was also a step toward recording everything all at once, live, to an analog tape machine — instead of in pieces to a computer. It’s a process that Lewis has developed a devotion to, and one that the songwriter and producer Ryan Adams would push to an extreme on “The Voyager.” (After “Acid Tongue,” Lewis and Rice released “I’m Having Fun Now” in 2010, an underrated duo record that failed to get the kind of traction they hoped for.) For the last few years, Lewis had been sitting on many of the songs that would make up “The Voyager,” battling insomnia and struggling to get them down. She ran into Adams in Los Angeles and told him she had some songs she was working on, and he invited her to come by his studio, Pax-Am, on the Sunset Strip. She played a few of the tunes for him on her acoustic guitar.

‘My dad was a savant,’ Lewis said. ‘He never drove a car, he never had a bank account. I don’t even know if he realized that he wasn’t around, you know?’

“My initial impression was there were some really minimal but necessary things that had to happen,” Adams told me. “I could tell that she had sat with them a little too long.” (Lewis agrees: “I was like: ‘Dude, go for it. Help me.’ ”) On the first song that they worked on together, “She’s Not Me,” they changed the key to relax Lewis’s voice, and then Adams and his production partner, Mike Viola, strapped on electric guitars and rolled through the full song, three times, with Lewis playing and singing live with a backing band. Adams pronounced the track finished for the time being and said they would move on, without even listening back to what they’d done. “For Jenny, revisionism wouldn’t have worked,” Adams said. “The version she would play on the couch in the control room, we would just stand there, like, ‘Wow, this is classic songwriting.’ Every time. So that was sort of my mission. How do we get an ‘unmind’ vibe here and then go back later and look at these beautiful raw takes and just splash a little bit of watercolor on them.” Lewis ended up recording the bulk of the record with Adams over 10 days. (She worked on the single, “Just One of the Guys,” separately with Beck before she and Adams went into the studio together.)

“The Voyager” is an older and more direct record than her previous two. Her characters are still drinking and doing blow and cheating on each other, but there is a kind of weariness to it all. One line in particular has caught the early attention of some of her many female fans, during the bridge of “Just One of the Guys”: “There’s only one difference between you and me/When I look at myself all I can see/I’m just another lady without a baby.” She has been hesitant to acknowledge what that line specifically means to her. “I wanted to communicate some very basic things,” she told me, without saying what they were. She was already starting to regret having talked about some of her other struggles while making the record, including open discussion of the insomnia that plagued her. “Now everyone’s asking me about insomnia, which I’m terrified is going to happen to me again,” she said. “You can’t think about it too much, and everyone’s asking me about it, and I’m like, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’ But, [expletive], am I not going to get to sleep again?” You could hear the fear in her voice. “It’s my fault for putting it out there,” she said.

The video for “Just One of the Guys,” which got more than a million views in its first 24 hours online, was made with the actresses (and Lewis’s friends) Anne Hathaway, Brie Larson, Kristen Stewart and Tennessee Thomas. It’s an entertaining video, part Robert Palmer, part Beastie Boys, with the women spending half the time playing a sleek female backing band and then switching into male roles, clowning around in Lewis-inspired Adidas track suits and fake mustaches. Lewis, as herself, holds up a positive pregnancy test, to which Lewis-in-drag-and-fake-goatee responds, “It’s not [expletive] mine.” When she gets to the “just another lady without a baby” line, she smiles at the camera and then dances. It’s a house of mirrors, a romp through emotionally treacherous terrain.

When I visited Lewis in June, she and Rice (she calls him “Rico”) showed me an early cut of the video in the bedroom of their house, with Lewis calling out “bra shot” whenever we caught a glimpse of her cleavage. Driving down the hill toward dinner later, we got to talking, if somewhat obliquely, about the expectations of her female fans and the sexuality that is inseparable from who she is and the music she makes. She didn’t like to talk about feminism, she said, and in particular the trend of women criticizing one another for not being feminist enough: “What does it matter what I think of Lana Del Rey?” In the months before the release of “The Voyager,” Lewis has taken to wearing airbrushed suits for her live shows, rather than the sexier get-ups she used to wear onstage; she has said she feels “androgynous” these days and wants her costume to reflect that. But not always. As we made our way down the ravine, she told a story about the day President Obama came to visit a compound not far from Mint Chip. She wanted to go out for a run, but a Secret Service member stopped her and told her she needed an ID if she wanted to get back through the security cordon. “I was like, ‘Dude, I’m wearing short shorts,’ ” Lewis said. " ‘You’ll remember me.’ ”

After recording and touring mostly with men in the early days, Lewis now consistently seeks out women for her band and even tried to put together an all-female crew for the “Just One of the Guys” video, which she also directed. She said her desire to work largely with women was a response to the dissolution of her relationship with her mom. “The more I surround myself with women, the easier it is to reconcile my past in a way.” It seems to be serving a kind of psychic need, to replace the female relationship that once dominated her life with a kind of surrogate family of her choosing, a family that has stood behind her through the struggles of the last few years.

“I’m happy to see her making records,” Beck told me. “I just feel like music needs her. It needs someone doing what she’s doing. She’s got a special voice, as a writer, and then as a musician. She’s this great combination of so many things.” Conor Oberst shares that view, describing Lewis as one of the most important songwriters and performers in contemporary music. “Go see her play,” Oberst said. “Because we should all feel lucky to be around while she’s doing her magic.”

On a night in early June, at a sold-out show at the 9:30 Club in Washington, Lewis had her magic all lined up and ready to go. Backstage, she was relaxed, joking with her band and casually doing her makeup in the mirror on the wall. Just before show time, one band member disappeared, but Lewis was unperturbed. “It’s O.K.,” she said with a smile when he showed up, apologizing, just as they were about to go on. “You made it!” She took a sip of red wine out of a plastic cup and then walked up the steps to the stage.

‘I just feel like music needs her,’ Beck said. ‘It needs someone doing what she’s doing. She’s got a special voice, as a writer, and then as a musician.’

To watch Lewis perform live is to understand what Beck and Oberst and other musicians admire in her. “She turns into this other person on stage,” Gibbard said, “this unbelievably powerful performer” — and it’s true. Lewis is both a natural and a pro. Throughout the night, she had big middle-aged guys and teenage girls — “teeny little chickens,” as she called them later — singing along to every word. During the encore, Lewis sang the ballad “Acid Tongue” accompanied only by her acoustic guitar and the rest of her band grouped around a microphone behind her. “To be lonely is a habit,” Lewis sang, her voice ringing out in the near-silent room, “like smoking or taking drugs, and I’ve quit them both. . . . " The audience and her band belted along with her as she finished the line: “But man was it rough.”

It was one of those lovely moments you hope for in live music, when everything in the room connects. But it was also a kind of emblem of where Lewis has been and of where she is now. She has overcome all kinds of obstacles to get here, often with great style, but it hasn’t always been pretty. Whatever demons stole her sleep for these last few years, they’ve surely been with her forever, in one form or another. But they are also what gives such depth and soul to what she does. “I’m not looking for a cure,” Lewis sang, and as she stood in the spotlight at the 9:30 Club, nobody there would have thought she needed one.

[talabib]

Leadership Journey: Germany

 When we think of Germany, we often associate it with black-and-white footage from horrific conflicts: Hitler delivering impassioned speeches from behind a podium; bombs raining down on European cities; half-starved people, freshly liberated from concentration camps. But Germany’s history is much richer than this.

Let’s dive into German history and explore some of the facts that lie beyond common knowledge.

Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, the most famous monument in Germany, has a bittersweet history.

On July 13, 2014, a sea of wild soccer fans stood before the Brandenburg Gate in Germany’s capital city, Berlin. It was the day of the FIFA World Cup finals, and, on a screen as tall as the gate itself, Germany went head to head with one of the federation’s most formidable teams, Argentina.

Why did Germany screen this historic game here?

Well, the Brandenburg Gate, according to professor and politician Monika Grütters, is a locus of symbolic power for Germans, a sort of centerpiece to all national celebrations. Indeed, this austere monument, which is considered a masterwork of neoclassical architecture, is the most famous landmark in modern-day Germany.

Commissioned by the Prussian king Frederick William II and intended as a symbol of peace, the Brandenburg Gate was constructed between 1788 and 1791. It was modeled after the gate to the Acropolis in Athens, and it served as a sort of capstone to Frederick II’s project of cultural improvement in Berlin. He’d already had a series of new and fashionable streets built, as well as an opera house and a palatial library.

Though born in triumph and optimism, the gate soon saw darker days. In 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte led the French army past the gate’s Doric columns and into Berlin. The French had prevailed at the battles of Jena and Auerstädt, defeating the Prussian army. Napoleon was now ruler of Prussia’s capital city.

Nor did Napoleon hesitate to demonstrate his dominance. He had the bronze sculpture that crowns the gate removed, carted all the way to Paris and put on display in the Louvre. This was a symbolic slap in the face, for the sculpture in question was the Quadriga of Victory – a horse-drawn chariot driven by the female figure Victory.

The Prussians got the last laugh. Seven years later, with the assistance of the Russians, they defeated Napoleon and marched to Paris, where they reclaimed the stolen Quadriga. In 1814, it was returned to its rightful place atop the Brandenburg Gate.

It’s still there to this day. On that July day in 2014, it overlooked the crowd of joyful soccer fans as Germany scored one goal against Argentina and won the country its fourth World Cup.

The Berlin Wall, constructed in 1961, physically divided an already ideologically divided country.

If you were to walk along the Spree river past the Reichstag building where the German Parliament meets, you wouldn’t think that Berlin was a city with a grim history. In fact, it looks like any other affluent metropolis – except that, along the waterfront stand white crosses commemorating those who died while attempting to scale the Berlin Wall, which divided East and West Germany for almost 30 years.

The Berlin Wall, constructed in 1961, was the result of years of political disunity.

In 1945, directly after World War II, Germany was divided into four zones controlled by the four principal military powers: the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Russia. Berlin was divided along the same lines.

In the eastern, Soviet-controlled zone, the leadership instituted a communist system of government. The other three zones were democratic and promoted more capitalistic values. This led to an economic and ideological imbalance. By 1952, citizens in West Germany were enjoying much more wealth and freedom than their East German counterparts – and, from that year forward, roughly 200,000 East Germans emigrated to the West every year.

By 1961, more than 3.5 million East Germans had defected. And so, on August 12, 1961, the West German border was closed. At 2:00 a.m. on August 13, the East German government began building a wall.

The Berlin Wall created a no-man’s land between East and West Germany. On the eastern side, anyone who approached the wall was shot, no questions asked.

Furthermore, since the wall’s construction was unannounced and took place in the dead of night, many Germans were separated from their families. If you lived in East Germany and your spouse, parent or child was residing in the West on that fateful night – well, you wouldn’t see them again until reunification and the demolition of the wall in 1989.

Though the physical wall came down almost 30 years ago, there is still an ideological wall of sorts; East Germany has palpably communist leanings, while West Germany is as capitalistic as ever.

And the wall is undeniably present in the country’s collective memory. Cobblestones delineate where the wall once stood, and tourists and locals alike walk along it daily and remember.

German influence once extended much further, making the country’s borders difficult to trace.

Like the Seine in France and the Thames in England, the Rhine river in Germany is as much a cultural symbol as a geographical feature.

Indeed, some of Germany’s most famous artists have incorporated it into their work. In his poem Die Lorelei, the nineteenth-century German poet Heinrich Heine situates the siren-like Lorelei on a cliff overlooking the Rhine, where she combs her long, blonde hair and sings bewitching songs that distract sailors on passing ships, causing them to wreck on the rocks. And composer Richard Wagner’s cycle of epic musical dramas, The Ring of the Nibelung, uses the Rhine as a backdrop.

Now, it’s hard to get more German than Wagner and Heine, but, if you were to look at a map, the Rhine might not seem that German; for a good stretch, it runs along and even crosses over the French-German border. So why is it considered so fundamentally German?

Well, current European borders were drawn relatively recently, and Germany once encompassed far more than it does today. So, historically and culturally speaking, the Rhine is decidedly German.

The city of Strasbourg, renowned for its massive cathedral, is a similar case. Though located in a French city, the cathedral’s architecture is patently German. Indeed, in 1770, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany’s most famous poet, said that the cathedral, which was completed in 1439, was a perfect symbol of German identity.

Furthermore, inside the cathedral is a large astronomical clock housed within a fine-wrought, three-tiered construction – an excellent specimen from the German clock-making industry that had its heyday near the tail end of the Renaissance. The clock truly is marvelous. Every hour, as the bells begin to toll, small, carved figurines act out scenes important to Christianity.

So the cathedral and the clock within it, though in France, are examples of German ingenuity. And it’s not hard to find other examples of German technology and architecture beyond the borders of modern-day Germany. Indeed, German culture and influence once extended far and wide into many different kingdoms and principalities.

German identity is constructed around the German language, standardized by Martin Luther.

During World War II, Thomas Mann, the German novelist and Nobel Laureate, went into exile. It would be more than a decade before he returned to his native land. However, when he did return in the summer of 1949, he told journalists that he’d never ceased to feel like a German author. For Mann, his language, in which he’d never stopped writing, was a truer home than his country.

Indeed, German identity is constructed around the German language.

As previously mentioned, modern-day Germany was formed relatively recently. For hundreds of years, the Germanic kingdoms within the Holy Roman Empire – Prussia, Bavaria, Austria and Saxony – were connected by nothing but language.But that’s not to say this connection wasn’t powerful and important.

Back in 1806, when Napoleon invaded Prussia, the Bavarian King Ludwig I sought to strengthen German identity and unify his people against the French threat by building a massive hall. Called the Walhalla, it contained statues of famous individuals who spoke the German language – such as Erasmus of Rotterdam, Albrecht Dürer and Ludwig van Beethoven, among many others.

The language-based identity that King Ludwig I memorialized remains strong today, because, though there are many regional dialects, all Germans are united by a standardized written language – the legacy of a sixteenth-century Augustinian monk named Martin Luther.

Luther, a professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg, was a zealous reformer, and in 1517, he began to take issue with the dogmas and restrictions imposed by the Catholic church. He believed that laymen should have direct contact with God, unmediated by priests, and so he translated the Bible – hitherto only available in Latin – into German.

The printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the previous century made possible the wide dissemination of the Luther Bible, and soon it was being used as a standard reference book for written German, selling more than 500,000 copies before Luther’s death in 1546. Its unifying influence can be felt to this day.

Beer is about as German as it gets, and consuming it is a national pastime with a rich history.

France is the nation of wine, Russia, the nation of vodka. Indeed, some countries are so closely linked to a particular beverage that you can’t talk about one without thinking of the other. And for Germans the national elixir is beer.

In addition to solidifying German national identity, King Ludwig I also transformed the consumption of beer into a cultural institution.

In October 1810, the young king got married in Munich, the Bavarian capital. The matrimonial festivities included a great deal of beer consumption, and the populace enjoyed themselves so much that, in every year since, they’ve repeated the celebration, which was christened Oktoberfest.

Today, this two-week-long beer-drinking bonanza is the most popular festival in the world. It attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors – more than even the Rio Carnival in Brazil – and in Oktoberfest fortnight those attendees consume some 7.5 million liters of beer.

Munich may be the beeriest city in the land, but the beverage is popular throughout Germany and has been for centuries. At the British Museum, one can view an impressive display of drinking vessels – testaments to the fact that Germanic peoples have been taking beer seriously for quite some time.

Indeed, it would seem that Germans have been guzzling the stuff for roughly 2,000 years.

The Roman historian Tacitus, writing in the first century CE, notes that barbarian tribes living along the Rhine and near the Baltic Sea shared an enthusiasm for beer, which they would consume by the barrel, sometimes from sunrise till sunset. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Germanic tribes, who warred against the Roman Empire for centuries, used beer as a sort of performance-enhancing drug.

Beer is a libation of such national importance that, in the nineteenth century, some Germans sought to claim it as a symbol of German identity.

These nationalists cited the German Beer Purity Law written in 1487, which restricts the ingredients admissible in the production of pure beer to water, barley and hops. They claimed that Germany was the only country that brewed beer with pure, untainted water. Thus, it was the land with the best beer.

National pride in beer is still alive and well. Indeed, the German Beer Purity Law is enforced to this day, though some exceptions have been made. Yeast and sugar are now allowed, and recipes for gluten-free beer are considered special cases.

Remnants of Germany’s vast medieval trade network can still be found abroad today.

Today, Germany is famous for its strong economy, but this is nothing new. Indeed, the Germans have been commercially successful for hundreds of years.

Back in the twelfth century, in the northern port cities of Lübeck and Hamburg, a number of merchant guilds came together and formed the Hanseatic League, later called Hansa. This confederation soon attracted new members, and by 1400, 90 German market towns had joined it.

It was a confederation with considerable power. The Hanseatic cities were united but independent; they each adhered to the Hanseatic legal system and funded their own armies, and they all had each other’s back, so they didn’t have to worry about fines or harassment from local lords or nobility.

Most importantly, they controlled the shipping routes throughout the north. They hired guards to protect their merchants against pirates in the North and the Baltic Seas, not to mention along Europe’s major rivers from the Volga to the Thames. These were attractive perks indeed, and the Hansa were very successful.

So Hansa didn’t even need to trade or produce goods; they simply grew wealthy and enriched their region by providing secure trade routes.

One can still see remnants of this vast German trade network today.

For instance, near Cannon Street Station in London, there’s a dark passageway named Steelyard Station. Back in the thirteenth century, the Steelyard – or, to give it its German name, the Stahlhof – was a famous trading spot.

In fact, it was the English headquarters of Hansa – a massive warehouse where merchant ships would offload German wine and beer before being reloaded with wool, a staple of English trade.

Germany maintained its economic presence in England well into the nineteenth century, with affluent German traders as well as artists such as Hans Holbein the Younger playing a central role in English society.

Prussian royalty wore iron jewelry to show that they preferred utility to luxury.

Modern-day Germans aren’t exactly known for their frivolity, and it wasn’t much different two hundred years ago when Germans wore jewelry that was almost as sober as their personalities.

Unlike most European courts, which treasured gemstones and finery, Prussian royalty preferred iron.

In Prussia, jewelry was strikingly sober, particularly in the nineteenth century. It wasn’t uncommon for the pendant of a necklace to consist of nothing more than a black iron cross.

Nor was iron considered a precious metal. In fact, it was quite commonly the material used to make household items such as forks and knives, and military ones such as armor and weapons.

The metal did have symbolic value. In Prussia, iron jewelry showed that the wearer was willing to sacrifice luxury at the altar of utility.

The fad for this sombre and unassuming metal was particularly pronounced in the Prussian capital of Berlin.

Just consider King Frederick William I, who, after beating back an army of invading Swedes in the 1670s, celebrated his victory by commissioning a statuette. It portrayed the vanquishing king mounted on a horse and trampling upon a vile dragon. In any other court, such a sculpture would have been cast in bronze. But in Frederick William I’s, which was based in Berlin, it was made from iron.

During the 1806 Napoleonic Wars, the Prussian predilection for iron experienced a resurgence. In Berlin, Prussian nobles gave their valuable pieces of jewelry to the state to raise money for the war, and, in return, were given jewelry made of iron. Nonetheless, Napoleon was victorious.

In 1813, Prussia’s position improved. Napoleon’s army had been weakened, and King Frederick William III decided to honor the country’s beloved metal by reviewing the system of military decoration. He introduced a new military decoration: the Iron Cross.

Napoleon was defeated by the Prussians near Leipzig in 1813, and every man who’d participated in the war effort received the Iron Cross. Such an egalitarian gesture had never before been made in the armed forces.

One of the darker sides of Germany’s recent history is expressed in the art of Käthe Kollwitz.

In the 1860s, the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck led his country to the apotheosis of its military glory, and, in 1871, he became chancellor of the newly united German Empire. These were the first steps toward a modern German state and they were undeniably auspicious. Unfortunately, they were short-lived – crushed before the next century was even 20 years old.

This dark patch in Germany’s history is well expressed in the art of Käthe Kollwitz.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Kollwitz was living in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg, a working-class neighborhood. Hundreds of thousands of Berliners lived in abject poverty, despite the social-welfare institutions instated by Bismarck.

Indeed, the restless and despairing atmosphere reminded Kollwitz of the conditions that led to the German Peasants’ War of the 1520s, during which hundreds of thousands of peasants revolted against their masters and were brutally massacred. Kollwitz even made a series of paintings depicting these events.

Another of her moving works, Woman and Dead Child, honors the impoverished mothers of Berlin, who could do nothing but watch as their children succumbed to malnutrition and illness.

Käthe Kollwitz’s paintings weren’t mere imaginings of reported events. She’d witnessed the horrors of history firsthand – and, when World War I began in 1914, she was subjected to even more personal hardship.

One of Kollwitz’s sons, Peter, who wasn’t yet of age, asked if he could volunteer to fight. Kollwitz convinced her husband to grant his permission, and Peter was killed in action that same year.

This threw Kollwitz into an awful state of depression. For the next ten years, she worked on a statue dedicated to the memory of her dead son; it’s of two kneeling figures – a woman, stooped and shrouded, and a man, whose arms are crossed over his chest. Its name is The Grieving Parents.

In a chilling echo of Kollwitz’s first loss, her grandson, also named Peter, was killed in World War II, just two years before Kollwitz’s death.

Kollwitz never stopped creating art about the things that had shaped her life: death, grief and war – three elements that were all too common throughout Germany in the first half of the 20th century.

Germany’s history, though somewhat overshadowed by the grim events of recent history, is rich and fascinating. Before fascism and communism, not to mention the disturbing events of World War I, Germany was a federation of countries united by a common language that had been standardized by the great religious reformer Martin Luther. Beer, the favorite national drink, brought Germanic peoples even closer together. Furthermore, Germans controlled one of the largest international-trade networks of medieval times, and their homeland gave birth to both gothic architecture and mechanical clocks.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

24th January >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Mark 1:14-20 for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B: ‘Repent, and believe the Good News’.

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Gospel (Except USA)

Mark 1:14-20

I will make you into fishers of men

After John had been arrested, Jesus went into Galilee. There he proclaimed the Good News from God. ‘The time has come’ he said ‘and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News.’    As he was walking along by the Sea of Galilee he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net in the lake – for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you into fishers of men.’ And at once they left their nets and followed him.    Going on a little further, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John; they too were in their boat, mending their nets. He called them at once and, leaving their father Zebedee in the boat with the men he employed, they went after him.

Gospel (USA)

Mark 1:14–20

Repent and believe in the Gospel.

After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”    As he passed by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting their nets into the sea; they were fishermen. Jesus said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Then they abandoned their nets and followed him. He walked along a little farther and saw James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They too were in a boat mending their nets. Then he called them. So they left their father Zebedee in the boat along with the hired men and followed him.

Reflections (5)

(i) Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Leonard Bernstein, the famous composer and conductor, was once asked by a reporter, ‘What is the hardest instrument to play?’ To the reporter’s surprise, without hesitation he replied, ‘Second fiddle! I can always get plenty of first violinists, but to find one who plays second violin with as much enthusiasm, or second French horn, or second flute, now that’s a problem. And yet if no one plays second, we have no harmony.’ As he implies, if a musical composition is to come to life in a performance, it will always be necessary for some members of an orchestra to have a more leading role, and, of course, for everyone, even the first violinists, to follow the lead of the conductor. More broadly in life, there are times when we all need to lead and other times when we all need to follow. Sometimes our expertise and experience require us to take a leadership role. At other times, our limitations require us to allow others to take a lead. We need a certain wisdom to judge when we are being called to lead and when we are being called to follow. No one is only a leader, and no one is only a follower. In our day to day living, we need the flexibility to slip in and out of those differing roles, because, as well as having much to give to others, we all have much to receive from them as well.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus speaks as a leader who calls on people to follow him. He was unique among human beings in that he was always a leader of others and never a follower. It is impossible to conceive of someone saying to Jesus, ‘Follow me’, and then Jesus responding, unless, of course, he was physically forced to follow someone, as happened in the hour of his passion, when he was forcibly led by others to his death. Jesus had a unique role as leader among others because of his unique relationship with God. God was powerfully active in the life and ministry of Jesus in a way that was not true of any other human being. He came from God to lead others to the fullness of life that God desired for them. Jesus referred to this fullness of life as the kingdom of God. His opening message, according to today’s gospel reading, was, ‘the time has come and the kingdom of God is close at hand’. He was saying, ‘the time that people have been waiting for has arrived. God is powerfully at work in my life and ministry to transform individual lives and all human relationships for the better’. That is the authoritative good news that God sent him to proclaim in word and deed to which all were called to respond.

Those opening words of Jesus’ ministry are not simply part of a story from the past. They are the living words of the risen Lord today. Jesus is saying to all of us that God continues to work through him today to bring God’s kingdom to earth. The risen Lord is powerfully at work today, just as he was during his historical ministry. He is working to create a community whose members relate to one another in the same loving way that he relates to them, a community whose life reflects the life of God, the life of God’s heavenly kingdom. This was good news when it was first announced in Galilee and it remains good news today. When Jesus first announced that good news two thousand years ago, he was looking for a response to it, which he expressed in two verbs, ‘repent, and believe the good news’. Both of those verbs have to do with turning more fully towards God present in Jesus and surrendering in trust to all that God is saying and doing through him. This remains the call of the risen Lord to us today. He calls on us to keep turning around towards him, believing in the good news he brings, the good news that, in spite of appearances at times, God is working powerfully among us to transform our lives for the better, to create a human community that is alive with the loving life of God. The risen Lord wants us to hear that good news not only with our ears, but with our hearts, so that we are inspired by a new hope.

According to our gospel reading, after Jesus announced that good news and called for a response to it, he immediately began to look for people to work with him, to help him to make that good news a reality for others. He initially called two sets of brothers to follow him so he could empower them to create openings for the coming of God’s kingdom to earth. Again, that call of Jesus to the two sets of brothers isn’t just part of a story that belongs to the past. It is the living call of the risen Lord to all of us today. He is saying to us all, ‘follow me’, ‘join with each other in following me, so that I can work through you all for the coming of God’s kingdom on earth’. If we can first experience the Lord as good news for ourselves, we will then want to follow him every day of our lives, so that he can mould us into the messengers of his good news to others.

And/Or

(ii) Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

 Perhaps some of us could point to a moment in our lives when a meeting we had with someone opened up a new and promising horizon for us. The rest of life was different after that meeting. Married people might think of the moment when they first met their spouse to be. Two people met and something new and life-giving began. Any one of us, married or otherwise, might be able to identify a similar experience. Perhaps it is only in hindsight we can see just how significant that experience was. If someone were to have asked the four men who appear in our gospel reading today, Peter, Andrew, James and John, about an experience or a meeting that shaped the rest of their lives, it is likely that they would have pointed to that day by the sea of Galilee when Jesus called them, and when, in response, they left their profession as fishermen to follow him and to share in his mission. Here indeed was a meeting that carried within it great promise for themselves and others.

 Any meeting between two or more people has the potential to be something worthwhile, something life-giving. Unfortunately, the opposite is also the case. Some meetings between people can be destructive and damaging. In recent days in our own city we only have to think about the number of assaults on people, one very close to us here in Clontarf last Tuesday morning; many of these violent encounters lead to the taking of life. Some meetings between people proclaim bad news rather than good news. We have been reading about such meetings almost daily in our newspapers. The meeting that Peter, Andrew, James and John had with Jesus was an experience of good news. Prior to Jesus’ meeting with these four men, Mark, the evangelist, tells us that Jesus was proclaiming the goods news from God, ‘The time has come and the kingdom of God is close at hand’. The meeting that Simon, Andrew, James and John had with Jesus was experienced as good news by them because the reign of God, the power of God, was present to them in the person of Jesus. That power of God present in Jesus was the power of love, a love that called on people, to turn more fully towards God, a love that promised forgiveness, healing, acceptance, a love that gave people a mission in life, ‘I will make you fishers of people’.

 The kind of meeting that Peter, Andrew, James and John had with Jesus is offered to each of us. Jesus is not just a figure of history, someone who belongs to the past. He is a living Lord who is present in his church and in the world today. He has promised us, ‘where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them’. He has assured us, ‘I will be with you always until the end of time’. On the eve of his death he said, ‘I will not leave you orphans, I will come back to you’. The Lord has come back, and keeps coming back, to each one of us. He knows us by name, and he invites us to know him as he knows us. He calls us to meet with him as Simon, Andrew, James and John met with him. He invites us to a whole series of meetings throughout our lives, and each of these meetings proclaims good news for us. He meets with us and speaks to us through the Sacraments, in particular the Eucharist, through the Scriptures, from deep within our own hearts, through other people, through nature. He seeks us out in a whole variety of ways; he pursues us in his love. His energy to meet with us is not any the less even if we have failed him many times in the past. The story of Jonah, from which we read this morning, makes that point very clearly. God wanted to speak to the people of Nineveh. This city was the capital of an empire that had destroyed the kingdom of Israel. As a city, it was the epitome of evil to the people of Israel. Yet, God wanted to speak a word of love to this city, and Jonah the Jew was to be God’s messenger, a very reluctant messenger indeed.

 Each time the Lord meets with us, that meeting will have all the elements that were present in his meeting with Peter, Andrew, James and John in the gospel reading. We will first hear the gospel, the good news of God’s unconditional love for us. We will hear a call to follow Jesus, to attach ourselves to Jesus as the one who embodies God’s love for us. We will then hear a call to mission, a call to go forth in the strength of the Lord and to become workers in the Lord’s harvest. This is the call to be good news for others, to be the Lord’s body in the world, his feet, his hands, his mouth, his eyes, his ears. What St. Paul said to the Corinthians can be said to us this morning here in this church, ‘Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it’. If we really believed that and lived out of it, that would be good news for all whose we meet in the course of our lives.

And/Or

(iii) Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

 We can all become rather set in our ways. We get into certain ways of doing things and it can be easy to stay with those ways and rather difficult to change from them. We are all creatures of habit to some extent. We develop routines and those routines keep us going. It often takes someone else to broaden our horizons a little, to open us up to areas of life that we would never otherwise have ventured into, new ways of doing things that we would not have hit upon if left to ourselves. We each might be able to identify such people in our own lives, those who introduced us to a set of experiences that proved to be very enriching and that helped us to grow as human beings.

 We have a very striking example of that in today’s gospel reading. Peter, Andrew, James and John lived in a world that was very much defined by the Sea of Galilee. They were fishermen and their lives revolved around that inland sea. The tools of their trade were their boats and their nets; the fruit of their trade was the fish that they caught and the money they received for selling on the fish. They had every reason to believe that this would always be their way of life. Their lives had a very particular rhythm and they would go on living to that rhythm until they were too old or sick to work. Then, someone entered their lives who opened up a whole new horizon for them. The impact this man had on them was such that they left the rhythm of the sea into which they had been born and by which they had always intended to live. They left boats, nets, even family to follow this man and to share in his mission. ‘Follow me and I will make you fishers of people’, he had said to them. Instead of bringing fish to land, they would now share in Jesus’ work of bringing people to God. Instead of shaping fishing nets, they would now help in the shaping of lives. But, first, their own lives had to be shaped. They needed to spend time with Jesus, to learn from him and become like him, before they could share in his mission. It is hard to imagine a greater transformation in human lives than the one which today’s gospel reading puts before us.

 Jesus did not call everyone he met to the same radical change of lifestyle that we read about in today’s gospel reading. Yet, all those who were receptive to him experienced a call to change in some way. If the call ‘follow me and I will make you fishers of people’ was not addressed to everyone, the more fundamental call of Jesus that we hear in today’s gospel reading was addressed to everyone, ‘Repent and believe in the gospel’. This was fundamentally a call to change for the better, a call to turn more fully towards God who was present in a unique way in the person and life of Jesus. This is the call that is addressed to all of us. We are all called to change in that sense. No matter where we find ourselves on life’s journey, whether towards the beginning of life, in the middle of life or at the end of life, the risen Lord continues to address that fundamental call to each of us individually, and to all of us together, ‘Repent and believe the good news’. Because that call is addressed to each of us, it is also unique to each of us, and it will have a unique meaning for each of us. This Sunday is a good day to ask ourselves what this fundamental call of the Lord might mean for me personally.

 It is worth looking at that call a little closer. It is not simply a call to repent. This was the call of John the Baptist. The more basic element of Jesus’ call was ‘believe the good news’. Jesus had first announced this good news before he called on people to believe in it - ‘the time has come, and the kingdom of God is at hand’. Jesus was declaring that through himself God was present to us in a life-giving way; this is the good news we are to believe. If God is at hand, and if God’s presence is good news, then the first step is to joyfully acknowledge God’s presence. This turning towards God present to us in a new way comes first; the turning away from sin, repentance, follows on from that.

 Jesus’ declaration of the good news of God’s life-giving and loving presence and his call in the light of that is what is most fundamental in our religion. Everything else is secondary, and is in some sense a commentary on it and a working out of it. If we loose touch with this basic proclamation and call of Jesus, all the other elements of our faith will not make any sense. If we took Jesus’ proclamation and call fully to heart, it would change us. Christians are asked to believe that at the heart of life is good news not bad news. If we believe that life is essentially bad news, then this conviction will shape how we relate to others, how we behave. The likelihood is that we will not be pleasant people to be around. If, however, we believe that at the heart of life is the life-giving and loving presence of a personal God who calls out to us through his Son, then how we live, how we relate, how we behave will be very different indeed. Today’s gospel brings us back to basics - and if we get the basics right the rest will follow.

And/Or

(iv) Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

 I had the good fortune to visit the Holy Land twice in recent years. On both occasions, one of the highlights was the boat trip onto the Sea of Galilee. A boat took the group out from the shore and after some time the engines were turned off and there in the silence on this wonderful inland lake we prayed. In the silence, it wasn’t difficult to imagine Jesus engaged in his ministry by the shores of this sea. I was reminded of this experience by today’s gospel reading, Mark’s account of Jesus’ call of his first disciples. Jesus was the son of a carpenter, but his first followers were fishermen. It seems that they were very successful fishermen too. According to the gospel reading, the father of James and John had a sufficiently large and successful fishing business to be able to give employment to several people. Peter, Andrew, James and John may not have been rich but they were not desperately poor. They obviously earned a good living from catching the fish that thrived in the fertile Sea of Galilee. When Jesus called these four men to follow him, they had something to leave behind. They turned their back on a successful business to give themselves over to staying in the company of Jesus, learning from all he said and did, and eventually being sent out by him as fishers of people, gathering them into God’s kingdom.

 We have an Ecumenical Bible Study group in Clontarf in the parish. It meets for a four or five week session about three times a year. The sharing that follows the input at these gatherings is always very rich. I was struck by the way that the faith sharing of those who were not Catholics was so obviously shaped by the hymns which they had been used to singing in church. I shared that impression at one of the meetings. One of the people who regularly attends these gatherings is a Methodist who plays the organ in a Church of Ireland parish. He sent me in the post a copy of some of the hymns that clearly meant a great deal to him. This morning’s gospel reading brought to my mind one of those hymns. It is a hymn by a John G. Whittier who lived from 1807 to 1892. One of the verses goes as follows, ‘In simple trust like theirs who heard, beside the Syrian sea, the gracious calling of the Lord, let us like them, without a word, rise up and follow thee’. I was struck by that sentence, ‘let us like them, without a word, rise up and follow thee’. It brings home that the gospel reading this morning is not just about a group of fishermen two thousand years ago. It is very much about each one of us here today. Like them, we too have received the gracious calling of the Lord; like them, we too, without a word, are to rise up and follow Jesus in response to that calling.

 Today’s gospel reading is a text around which we can all gather, regardless of our denominational backgrounds, because it brings us all back to basics. All of us who have been baptized into Christ are striving to follow him in response to his daily call. The more closely we follow the Lord, the closer we will come to each other. Very often, it is by our gathering around the word of the Lord, passages like today’s gospel reading, that we discover how close we are to each other in reality. Presumably, the reason that those first disciples left a thriving business to follow Jesus was because they had earlier experienced his message as good news. The core of that message of good news is to be found at the beginning of today’s gospel reading, ‘The time has come and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent and believe the good news’. Jesus was announcing that God was powerfully at work in his words and in his deeds. People, like the fishermen, recognized God powerfully at work in all Jesus said and did. That is why they left everything to follow him. That is why we follow Jesus today. As baptized Christians, we all recognize that God was powerfully at work in this unique human being and remains powerfully at work in him today as risen Lord. From within our different traditions, we have experienced the Lord as good news and, so, we want to answer his call. In answering that daily call we also recognise that we need to ‘repent and believe’ in the words of the gospel reading.  We need to keep on turning away from all that is not in keeping with the values of God’s kingdom that Jesus proclaims. Yet, that turning away is always in the service of a turning towards, a turning towards the one who said of himself, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’. Turning towards the Lord will always entail turning towards others in mission. Part of our mission is helping others, especially our young people, to discover Jesus to be someone who remains good news for us today, someone who is worth following because he is the way, the truth and the life.

And/Or

(v) Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

 As many of you may be aware, there is a programme on television called the Apprentice. It tends to run in the Autumn, finishing just before Christmas. A large group of potential business partners of Lord Sugar is gradually whittled down to one. Most of the candidates will hear the immortal words, ‘You’re fired’.

 I was put in mind of that programme by today’s gospel reading. It seems that Jesus was much more in the business of saying to people, ‘You’re hired’ than ‘You’re fired’. Following on from his baptism by John the Baptist and his forty days of prayer and fasting in the wilderness of Judea, Jesus begins his world-changing mission with the announcement, ‘The time has come, and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent and believe the good news’. Immediately after embarking on this mission, Jesus calls people to share in his work. The first four people he hires, if I could use that word, are two sets of brothers, Simon and Andrew, and James and John. They already had a good job which gave them a livelihood. They caught fish by the Sea of Galilee and sold it on in Capernaum and in other towns around the Sea of Galilee. It seems that the family of James and John, in particular, had a booming business because the gospel reading refers to the men that Zebedee, their father, employed. In some ways, it is not accurate to say that Jesus hired Simon and Andrew, James and John. He wasn’t offering them another job with a salary comparable to or better than the job they had. Yes, he had work for them to do but there was no mention of payment. He called them to follow him and he promised he would enable them to join him in his work of proclaiming the nearness of God’s reign. As time wore on, they would discover, that far from being paid for this work, it would cost them a great deal. Indeed, it would cost them not less than everything.

 Jesus would go on to call other men and women to follow him and to share in his work. His relationship with his followers was very different to that of employer and employee. When they fell down on the job, Jesus never said to them ‘You’re fired’. Peter the leading member of the Jesus’ followers went on to fail Jesus spectacularly, publicly denying Jesus three times. In most people’s view, that would have constituted sufficient grounds for instant sacking. Yet, just as Peter is the first disciple to be mentioned by name in Mark’s gospel, in today’s gospel reading, he is also the last disciple to be mentioned by name in Mark’s gospel. On the first Easter morning, a young man in Jesus’ empty tomb instructed the women who had come there, ‘Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you’. Peter is singled out by name from among the other disciples. In spite of their failure, and Peter’s public denial in particular, the risen Lord will meet his disciples in Galilee, in the place where he first called them from their work as fishermen. There he will renew their call to them to follow him and share in his work. Their failure would not have the last word. The Lord remained faithful to them and would work powerfully through them, weak as they were. Far from saying ‘You’re fired’, he would again said to them ‘You’re hired’.

 The Lord says as much to each one of us. As in the case of those two sets of brothers, he calls us to follow him so that he can form us into his co-workers. Jesus needs us all, every one of us. He wants to work through us to create openings for the coming of God’s kingdom today. It is significant that the call of Jesus to these fishermen was not, ‘follow this rule book’ or ‘follow this set of teachings’, but rather, ‘follow me’. He was calling them into a personal relationship with himself. They were to get to know him as a person, to attach themselves to him, spending time in his company, listening to what he says, watching what he does, and, then, they were to go out in his name. He calls each one of us into the same personal relationship with himself, ‘Follow me’. It is a very personal call and it needs a very personal response. We need to make our own adult ‘Yes’ to his call, and to keep renewing that response each day of our lives. It is above all the Sunday Eucharist that we renew our personal response to the Lord’s call to be his followers and co-workers. We may not have been a great follower of the Lord in the previous week, but the Lord meets us at the Eucharist as he met those first disciples in Galilee after he rose from the dead, and he renews his call to us and gives us the opportunity to renew our response. If we are striving to be the Lord’s followers, by taking on his mindset, living by his values and attitudes, then the Lord will work through us for the coming of God’s kingdom on earth.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[lia-nikiforov]

Fall 2017 Anime Final Review

The fall season is over and in many parts of the world the red colors of autumn are giving way to the whiteness of winter. Not where I live, mind you, we just get sucky cold and incomprehensible weather. And we’re here for my final rundown of this very prolific anime season. To close with fanfare, the list will go from worst to best.

The above was valid when I started writing this post, like three weeks ago, but between Hozuki going for a 13th episode that threw my schedule completely off and two weeks of family affairs, I fell behind on everything and could only finish the last few shows today orz. Still going from worst to best and not counting the shows I dropped early in the season (Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryouko and the others I mentioned in my watchlist)

15. King’s Game: This show has the unenviable honor of being The Show that Keeps Ballroom From Hitting the Bottom. I honestly find it hard to talk about shows that are so unequivocally terrible because it seems a waste of time to try to explain all the things it gets wrong. In fact, I don’t think it gets anything right except being accidentally hilarious. I think it peaked with the girl giving exposition whilst literally bursting into flames and the guy who stopped the murder game for five minutes to give MC-kun a haircut, but it’s sorta worth watching if you enjoy irony-watching terrible stuff

14. Welcome to the Ballroom: The big disappointment of the summer continued to limp its way all through the fall until it ran out of manga material. Not that it matters much because it is such a financial flop it’s unlikely anyone will ever want to make more of it. From its failure to showcase much actually animated ballroom dancing, the misguided musical choices, gratuitous bending of the sport’s rules, the hateful characters and its deep-seated mysogyny, the show’s problems just kept mounting, and even the introduction of Chinatsu in the second half didn’t do much to improve it. It managed to have a somewhat strong finale that could’ve been great if any of that character development had been properly earned, but as it is, it just feels like a rushed attempt to tie everything up with  nice bow since they’re never ever making more anime of this.

13. Juuni Taisen:  What started as a fun and stupid action schlock managed to become boring, predictable, uninteresting to watch and a complete waste of time, only so NisiOisin could convince himsel he was writing something profound and meaningful even if the final message is “war is pointless and sucky”. Woohoo, what breakthrough discovery *eyeroll*. It’s also kind of incredible that they had a cast of such colorful personalities, wild outfit designs and a wide range of crazy battle styles and weapons and yet they managed to make most of the fights extremely underwhelming.  I guess the lesson to be learned with this show is: NisiOisin shall always be NisiOisin.

12. Kino no Tabi -The beautiful World-: The only thing keeping this from being below Juuni Taisen is that both shows managed to spite me about equally in their finale but Kino had at least two or three serviceable episodes, with the first one being a particular stand out. It’s a shame,but even the ones that replicated stories from the ‘03 anime were evidence of how thematically and narratively inferior this iteration is, and don’t even get me started on that final episode. What was the thought experiment? What was the point of that idiotic story, which was also aggressively poorly animated? Oh look, Kino is such a baddass she can actually outsmart a bunch of psychotic sheep. Amazing!

11. Sengoku Night Blood: I ain’t gonna lie to y’all, this show isn’t worth watching unless you’re a hardcore Sengoku history fan with immense patience for stupidity and terribleness that isn’t even terrible enough to be funny. Heck, I considered dropping it more than a couple of times during the season -I’m glad I didn’t, but just because their take on Nobunaga turned out to be very fascinating to me, academically-. By the way, the fact that they’re werewolves or vampires hardly had any relevance to the story except to justify everyone wanting to steal the main girl- and we didn’t really get any answers in regards to anything. It’s a bad show my friends, it’s ranking above four whole other shows should only indicate how teeeerrrible those were.

10. Shokoku no Altair: This is a hard show to talk about because I feel the story itself is very strong, but the anime is, as objectively as one can judge a piece of art, a failure. The pacing is irregular and half of the story we barely learn it by exposition. Although the characters are interesting, their personal development is almost null, instead they serve as tools to move the plot along. It almost feels like watching a historical documentary, which isn’t bad per sé, but the way it is told, with the jerky pacing, makes it not super compelling. It also falls for the easy trap of making the not-Germanic Empire inequivocally evil, whilst the not-Otoman empire is inequivocally righteous. Even when Torqye starts their own imperialistic endeavour, it is justified as “necessary”. I think Zaganos is an interesting, morally ambiguous figure, but the fact that Mahmut doesn’t really question his actions makes that ambiguity less clear. Overall I’d say it didn’t live up to its potential.

9. Fate/Apocrypha: I’ll give the show credit for being much better than it had any right to be, even if that only led it to be slightly above mediocre, although undeniably entertaining. It’s an extremely uneven show, with very high moments like Mordred’s arc or the entire episode 22, and then extremely NasuFate garbage like everything surrounding Palurdo-kun and Jeanne and also the whole Jack the Ripper nonsense. It had a good fare of great characters like Mordred or Astolfo and it also had boring of underdeveloped ones like Palurdo-kun, Achilles and Atalante. It was overall an entertaining story, definitely better than UBW and with some of the coolest fight scenes of the year.

8. Classicaloid 2: While weaker than its first season, Classicaloid has had some really good episodes in the last quarter of the season, once again recurring to stories from the composers’ real lives. The “reveal” of Wagner’s identity felt a little too late, but his choice of Super Idol name was gr10. I’d wish they’d introduced more Classicaloids to the cast (where’s Vivaldi, you cowards!) and it doesn’t seem the introduction of Kanae’s mom has served any purpose so far. It’s still a very fun mindless absurd comedy, worth checking out if you enjoyed the first one.

7. GARO: Vanishing Line: In my last Rambling post I mentioned how this show has managed to grow on me over the last four-ish weeks, so I don’t have a lot to add. If you’re able to look past the constant shoving of women into refrigerators and the hurr durr boobs jokes, it’s an entertatining action show, and I’m growing to love the father-daughter-like relationship growing between Sword and Sophie. Let’s just hope the second half won’t disappoint

6. Kujira no Kora wa Sajou ni Utau: This was a very good surprise for this season, and could’ve ranked higher if I had any certainty of a second season coming because as it is, it felt like a prologue more than a complete story. The series has lovely visuals, an interesting world-building and is overall very smart in how it doles out the answers to its many mysteries. It also has a few stand-out characters like Ouni and Suou, although Chakuro is a little too bland to carry the show. I’m certanly curious about where the story is headed, so I hope that “the journey will continue” tag at the end bodes well for the future.

5. Hozuki no Reitetsu 2: It’s always great when a good show comes back for a second season without losing the magic that made it great to begin with and Hozuki is a prime example of this. Almost like there wasn’t a two year gap between seasons, Hozuki managed to retain its strong visuals, brilliant comedic timing and wide range of folkloric and historic jokes mixed with pop culture that never gets old. Hozuki is definitely one of the best anime comedies of the decade so I’m ecstatic to know they’re doing a second part of this season come spring. Can’t wait!

4. Recovery of an MMO Junkie: Easily the best surprise of the season, a show I never intended to check out until I read all the positive responses, and boy am I glad I did. It’s a cute and silly rom-com with a rare woman in her thirties as a main character and an adorable relationship at its core, with very poignant commentary on gaming and how people relate to their gaming experience, as well as gender presentation in online games. It also avoids  the easy and idiotic “gaming is a symptom of a shitty life and you should stop playing games and get out to the real world” but doesn’t go to the “actually game are better than real life” extreme that SAO spouses, instead showing there is a healthy and happy balance to be had. Also, MoriMori is #relatable and the complementary OVA really was a cherry on top of the sweetest cake

3. Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond: Withour Rie Matsumoto on the driver’s seat, this sequel decided to follow closer to the manga storyline, which means no continuing plot and just a series of more-or-less standalone stories. This had its good points in that we got episodes centering on minor characters that had been sidelined by the first season: the Chain and K.K. centric episodes were highlights for me. Of course, it also had some negatives, like the show lacking a cohesive thread and some characters like the doctor from ep 2 getting introduced only to never be seen again. I also missed a Klaus-centric episode, since it feels we don’t really know a lot about him other than he’s the purest soul in the Libra family. The animation remained fantastic even without Matsumoto’s frantic style and the final two-part story was very sweet and exciting. No doubt, the best sequel of the season.

2. Mahoutsukai no Yome: My most anticipated show of the season didn’t fail to deliver. While it had a slow start and the episode pacing has been uneven, the high point that it reaches in episode 12, with Chise���s phoenix transformation was just jaw-dropping, visually and emotionally. Using the Opening song as BG music for the scene was absolutely perfect too. It’s taken a while to get there, but the payoff for Chise’s development has been definitely worth it and I’m very excited for the second half.

1. Hoseki no Kuni: Okay so this is another show that feels more a prologue than a complete story, but damn is it a bloody amazing prologue. A unique setting with lovable characters, mindblowing animation and a lot of heart, it’s fantastic through and through. Unlike KujiKora, HoseKuni didn’t really give us a lot of answers, but it compensated with diverse and extremely compelling character dynamics. The climactic encounter between Phos and Cinnabar summed up the masterful character developments that happened over the course of the season and I’m crossing my fingers so hard for a continuation. Hands down my favorite anime of the season and, depending on which day you ask me, of the whole year.

And that was Fall folks! We’re already halfway through the Winter premieres and I’ve caught up to 3/4 of what’s out, with still a lot to go, hopefully I can catch up before my classes start again :’D May 2018 bring us a better, kinder world and a ton of great anime!

[dailynewswebsite]

BBC presenters share their lockdown entertainment tips

Haprz Kaur, Will Gompertz, Hannah Peel and Mark Radcliffe

With England in lockdown once more, and plenty of others elements of the UK enduring extreme restrictions, folks need to movie, books, music, on-line artwork, podcasts and extra for his or her cultural kicks.

Right here, BBC presenters and journalists share their lockdown picks. It is an eclectic checklist of options for the place to look subsequent when you fancy some inspiration.

Mark Radcliffe

Veteran broadcaster Mark Radcliffe presents BBC Radio 2’s Folks Present and 6 Music’s weekend chat and music present Radcliffe and Maconie .

The Trial Of The Chicago 7 (Netflix)

I like a courtroom drama, I have to say. For individuals who do not know the Chicago 7, they had been college students and hippies and anti-Vietnam protesters who picketed on the 1968 Democratic Occasion Conference and had been arrested for inciting riots.

For those who do not forget that 12 months, it was a extremely highly-charged time. Martin Luther King was assassinated in April, after which Bobby Kennedy in June – so that is a rare snapshot of these instances. It nonetheless has a resonance, significantly in how the one black defendant is handled. Within the time of Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd protests, it reminds you that not the whole lot has modified, by a great distance.

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (Picador books)

That is set within the time of Thatcherism, and it is a tragic story of this younger lad Shuggie Bain, who’s defending and caring for an alcoholic mom, dwelling in excessive poverty. It is moderately Thomas Hardy-esque, in that everyone seems to be doomed to disappointment or dying, but it surely feels very actual. And just like the movie, one suspects life hasn’t modified very a lot for lots of people.

The novel is nominated for the Booker Prize, though I do not typically take that as an enormous advice. I’ve actually introduced Booker-winning novels and thought they had been dreadful.

The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix)

Anya Taylor-Pleasure performs Beth Harman, who’s in an orphanage at first of the movie, and is intrigued by the janitor who performs chess. He step by step agrees to show her and it seems she’s an absolute prodigy. It is based mostly on a novel by somebody referred to as Walter Tevis but it surely feels prefer it should be true. It is in regards to the connections you make as an orphan – friendships and connections and adoption. And there is plenty of chess.

Story continues

The truth is, we began taking part in chess at house, impressed by it, and my spouse is miles higher than me and she will see a number of strikes forward. We do not play anymore. It obtained too annoying.

Harpz Kaur

The Asian Community presenter has hosted its breakfast present since 2017, having joined the station in 2015 from neighborhood radio.

Strictly Come Dancing (BBC One, iPlayer)

Watching my subsequent door neighbour Clara [Amfo] completely bossing it on display is superb. I am an enormous fan of BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing anyway, however seeing Clara shine like a Queen is nice. Rooting for her little doubt. And I often discover something music or dance associated to be therapeutic for me. It is enjoyable, a straightforward watch and it is an effective way to wind down. Seize some munchies and sit on the couch whereas having your individual social gathering. It is excellent.

Made In Heaven (Amazon Prime)

I’ve additionally simply completed watching season certainly one of Made In Heaven. A few colleagues have been that means to get me into it and now I am hooked. It is extra of a drama sequence, but it surely’s so good and retains you on the sting of your seat on the finish of each episode. Cannot wait to begin the second season.

Sister Sister (Netflix)

And thirdly, I am watching Sister Sister, a 1990s US sitcom about twins Tia and Tamera who had been separated at beginning and reunite 14 years later. It is introduced again my youth. And you may by no means get sufficient. For those who grew up watching Tia and Tamera, you already understand how good it’s. For those who fancy a giggle, put them on.”

Bobby Friction

DJ Friction has been on the BBC airwaves since 2002, and is now presenting the Asian Community’s night present.

House movies (YouTube)

It is the largest type of escapism – neglect pandemics, let’s discuss 1,000-year journeys to different galaxies.

He devours YouTube sequence by scientists and futurists John Michael Godier and Isaac Arthur, who use science reality to look at what may truly be doable past Earth.

They will swing between stuff that is taking place in our photo voltaic system to actual mad stuff like, what is going to the universe appear to be a trillion years from now? After which they will break it down utilizing actual physics and actual science.

The Actual Housewives of America (Sky, ITV Be, Amazon Prime Video)

I do not watch a lot TV or actuality exhibits,” says Friction. “However I fell into this gap of watching The Actual Housewives of Atlanta and The Actual Housewives of Potomac. It wasn’t till the summer season that I went, ‘Wait a minute, they’re the one two actuality exhibits from that franchise that function black girls. Each different present options white girls.

I am subconsciously coping with Black Lives Matter, race and the whole lot that is taking place this 12 months through these actuality exhibits. Imagine me, I’ve fallen so deep into them. Anybody who asks a query in regards to the seasons or the episodes, I’ve the reply.

The Beatles

Friction has been rediscovering The Beatles by listening to all their albums back-to-back once more.

“I simply obtained again into it and thought, my God, how did these guys write practically each style of music that we’re nonetheless listening to? And also you’re telling me they launched The White Album and Yellow Submarine and Sgt Pepper inside the area of 18 months? It is ridiculous.”

Will Gompertz

Will Gompertz has been arts editor for BBC Information since 2009 and earlier than that was a director on the Tate Gallery.

What I Love (podcast)

I am loving this podcast, introduced by the award-winning theatre director Ian Rickson. It has a easy format: one visitor with whom Rickson has labored selects three issues she or he loves. Chiwetel Ejiofor included a Michael Kiwanuka tune, Kae Tempest picked a e book by William Blake. Good listening.

Strata: William Smith’s Geological Maps (Thames & Hudson)

Some books are lovely, others are enlightening. Strata is each. Full of beautiful illustrations, it presents the work of William Smith, a 17th Century geologist, who was the primary individual to comprehensively map the earth beneath our toes. It is the most effective non-fiction e book I’ve learn in a very long time.

Name My Agent (Netflix)

French TV would not get that a lot consideration for some purpose – however they produce some nice programmes. Spiral is the most effective police procedural on telly, whereas Name My Agent is the right lockdown escape: uptight actor’s brokers coping with uptight actors in a Paris workplace the place they find yourself both bickering or sleeping with one another. Or each. Tres bon!

Hannah Peel

Musician Hannah Peel presents late-night Radio three present Evening Tracks, which ranges from classical to up to date music. She was Emmy-nominated final 12 months for her soundtrack for HBO’s Video games of Thrones: The Final Watch.

Notes On Blindness (Obtain, Netflix)

This can be a documentary in regards to the author John Hull, who went blind simply earlier than the beginning of his son and began to make a diary of audio cassettes. Within the movie you hear all of the precise recording, and it is simply unimaginable.

You are immersed in a world of sound, as a substitute of being completely bombarded with visible info. It sounds prefer it must be a podcast, but it surely actually works as a movie – delving into the thoughts and the physique and desires and reminiscence. I feel it is a masterpiece.

Bandcamp (Unbiased music retailer)

I am Bandcamp all the best way, for the whole lot. They do an incredible factor as soon as a month referred to as Bandcamp Friday, the place each artist will get 100% of the revenue on their merchandise or downloads or CD gross sales. It is the one place that does that within the music business.

The very last thing I purchased was a compilation by a beautiful little indie label referred to as Salmon Universe, who put out plenty of ambient, digital music. I like compilations since you’re led to artists from all internationally, from Ohio to Japan. It is superb.

Islands (RTÉ podcast)

That is made by the world-renowned sound recordist Chris Watson, who’s teamed up with the author/presenter Luke Clancy to take a journey throughout the atlas of distant islands, from Ross Island to the Galapagos to the probably legendary isle of HyBrasil.

It is filled with tales and sounds, and it is lovely. I similar to the best way you need to use podcasts to specific one thing emotional, moderately than factual. So that you get a way of ethereal escapism inside that.

Mark Savage

Mark has been the BBC’s music reporter since 2015, and introduced 6 Music’s Historical past of Video Sport Music final 12 months.

Ted Lasso (Apple TV)

After Schitt’s Creek ended, I used to be desperately trying to find a TV present that hit the identical candy spot of belly-laughs and heart-warming humour. That is that present.

Starring Jason Sudeikis, it tells the story of an American Soccer coach who involves London to supervise a fictional Premiership workforce, regardless of figuring out nothing about soccer. Unbeknownst to him, the membership’s proprietor (performed with scrumptious relish by Hannah Waddingham) is making an attempt to get the workforce relegated to spite her adulterous husband. I will not spoil the plot, however the present’s relentlessly optimistic tone is simply what I wanted in lockdown.

Pikmin three Deluxe (Nintendo)

Pikmin is not as well-known as Nintendo’s larger franchises, like Mario and Zelda, but it surely’s been made with simply as a lot care and a spotlight to element. You play as a crew of astronauts, stranded on a hostile planet, who need to enlist a crop of plant-like creatures to assist them discover the lacking elements of their spaceship.

You command as much as 100 of the little Pikmin, every of whom have completely different talents (some are fighters, some are swimmers, others are impervious to electrical energy) to resolve a bunch of more and more difficult puzzles towards a time restrict. It is concurrently enjoyable and panic-inducing; however I have been specializing in finishing the much less worrying problem mode with my 10-year-old, who simply likes throwing the Pikmin round and laughing at their cute noises.

Dua Lipa – Future Nostalgia (Warner Music)

Rush-released in the beginning of the primary lockdown, that is nonetheless my favorite document of the 12 months. A sweat-glistened hymn to the dancefloor, it by no means fails to raise my temper.

The album is getting the dwell therapy later this month, with a digital gig that is been dubbed Studio 2054 – with Dua promising (deep breath) “a kaledioscopic, rocket-fuelled, journey by way of time, area, mirrorballs, curler discos, bucket hats, belting beats, throbbing basslines and an absolute slam-dunk of the most effective instances in international membership tradition”. See you there. Hotpants elective.

Elizabeth Alker

The BBC Radio three broadcaster presents late-night present Unclassified, which showcases music by composers who may need a classical background but in addition draw from pop, rock, jazz, and experimental music.

Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami (Pushkin Press)

The Japanese writer’s novella is evocative however breezy, conversational and unsentimental. She’s coping with the difficulties and complexity of human life however in a extremely relatable, heat and humorous method.

It is in regards to the relationship between an adolescent and their mom. It is a coming-of-age story and in regards to the anxieties of being a youngster, however you get to see it from either side. You’ll be able to sense what the mom’s feeling as properly. She’s a fortune teller and their grandma’s ailing upstairs. It is a household story about feminine identification in Japan.

Fats Out Fest (YouTube)

The annual music competition from Salford-based underground and different promoters, Fats Out Fest occurred dwell on-line this 12 months, and they’re now placing units on YouTube each Friday over the subsequent month.

They actually do take it to the sting. On 20 November they’re broadcasting Lone Taxidermist – her exhibits are wild. It is efficiency artwork in addition to music. Her new present Marra begins along with her singing alongside to a cattle market. An precise cattle market. Her voice is synced with the auctioneer and Maxine Peake is within the video. It is on the market.

Radiophrenia (Streaming)

Radiophrenia is a Glasgow sound artwork radio station that is streaming 24/7 till 22 November. I used to be listening to an Italian sound artist referred to as Tobia Bandini. He’d interviewed all these folks asking for his or her response to the apocalypse after which he’d combine their tales – they’re all in Italian – with digital soundscapes.

If you wish to tune out of the information then this can be a very nice place to flee to. There’s all types in there, and plenty of it’s simply actually pleasing and fairly hypnotic.

Observe us on Fb, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. When you have a narrative suggestion e mail leisure.information@bbc.co.uk.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/bbc-presenters-share-their-lockdown-entertainment-tips/ via https://growthnews.in

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I was tagged by @my-wanton-self

1. What’s your biggest pet peeve? Willful ignorance and people who are purposefully inconsiderate.  (They’re related, I suppose, but can manifest differently.)

2. What one fear would you like to conquer?  Currently, my biggest that I would like to conquer is openly presenting myself as female to the world. 

3. What’s your favourite song lyric and why? There are quite a few it’s hard to pick just one.  The one I’ll go with is from Sweet Jane from the Velvet Underground: Some people they like to go out dancin’/ and other people they have to work. Just watch me now/ and there's even some evil mothers/ Well there gonna tell you that everthing is just dirt/ you know that women never really faint/ and that villians always blink their eyes/ that children are the only ones who blush/and that life is just to die/ But anyone who ever had a heart/ they wouldn't turn around and break it/ and anyone who ever played a part / They wouldn't turn around and hate it.  Why do I like it?  I think it kind of speaks for itself.

4. If you could shop at one store for free, which would it be?  I would have to flip a coin between Nordstrom or Costco.

5. Which language would you like to speak fluently? Spanish.

6. What secret super power would you like to have, and why? Shapeshifting. You could get into just about anywhere.

7. Would you like to be famous and what would you like to be known for? I have no desire to be famous.

8. What was the worst haircut you ever had? A long time ago, I moved to Northern Virginia and needed a haircut.  I went to a barbershop that apparently specialized in military cuts and while I just asked for a trim, he got out clippers and after the first pass, I knew I was in trouble. I ended up with something pretty close to a high and tight.  It was awful. 

9. What are the most important qualities in friends? Honesty, intelligence, the willingness to share thoughts and opinions, good sense of humor, empathy, and a desire to make things better somehow.  I love having a common understanding and, at the same time, being able to challenge and be challenged.

10. What’s the most significant lesson you’ve learned in life so far?  People’s needs will not always match your own; it’s what they do at that point that is important.  Also, sometimes life is shitty, but it generally improves eventually.  Maybe not in the way you thought, but you’ll find that it’s no longer shitty.  (Yes, I know, that’s technically two. I’m lousy at following the rules.)

11. What makes you laugh the hardest? My daughters. They’re just plain funny.

12. What’s your proudest accomplishment? That’s a hard one because I tend not to look back too much. Plus, much of what I’ve accomplished has also been because other people have played along, so I can’t take full credit.

13. If you could have any view out the window of your room, which would it be?  The ocean. I grew up near the water and am now in the middle of the US.  I would love to be near a large body of water.  

14. If you could eat dinner with one celebrity, who would it be, and why? I can’t say that he’s a celebrity, but Barack Obama is certainly famous and would be an amazing dinner companion.  I’d probably want to have a ranging conversation about policy, his life, and experiences as President.  Plus, for bonus points, I’d try to get him to open up and vent about how he really feels about Trump.

15. If you could do something dangerous just once with no risk, what would you do?  I can’t think of much, I’ve already done a number of things that people consider dangerous.  I think removing the fear of danger would take away the adrenaline and most of the fun.

16. What’s your all-time favourite music video? Undercover of the Night by The Rolling Stones. It’s a great video; almost like a short film.

17. Which three words would you use to describe yourself? Smart, funny, empathetic.

18. What’s the first thing you’d do if you suddenly changed into the opposite sex? As a trans woman, I’m going to write my own rules here.  I am a woman, but if I suddenly had the body of a cis woman, I’d explore my tits and bits, then masturbate like there was no tomorrow. 

19. What’s your favourite website, and why?  I have eclectic tastes and moods, so it varies by the minute and the hour.  I love all of the information and places that I can go with the internet. 

20. If you got a tattoo, what would you get and where would you put it? I cannot think of one thing I would want on my skin forever.  If I had to choose, I might either get “Be Here Now” in a nice font on my wrist OR a butterfly on my shoulder for the symbolism. 

21. When you’re down, what do you do to feel better? I try not to wallow too long and look to do something to change the channel. That usually involves moving my body in some way or another.  I also reach out to dear friends for conversation and engagement.

22. If you could go on tour with a band for a month, who would it be, and why? Not my thing.

23. What’s you favourite dessert? I have a weakness for cannolis. Good ones, though.  The kind where the outside is freshly baked and then filled immediately before serving, so you have the mix of the crunch and the softness.  Divine! 

24. What one thing would you want to do most if you had all the money in the world? Ensure that money was not a barrier to anyone seeking further education.

25. Who’s the least obvious person you’d like to kiss? Least obvious? Maybe Sam Rockwell. There is something about him that I find strangely sexy. 

26. Would you join in at a topless beach? At this point, if I had a nice set of boobs, I would happily share them at a topless beach.

27. Where would you most like to travel?  I have too many choices to list here.  I would travel almost incessantly if I could.  I’ve not yet been to South America, Africa, or Antarctica, so those would be on the top of my list.  

28. What would you eat for your ultimate birthday dinner?  I tend to like food that is good and fresh.  I’d start with a fresh salad, with bleu cheese and bacon.  Grilled filet mignon. Very fresh corn on the cob.  Freshly baked bread with a nice crunchy crust.  Roasted brussel sprouts.  Good cannoli for dessert.

29. What was your most embarrassing moment? Eh, if you really want to know, hit me up in chat. It’s a bit of a story that involves Chinese food and getting sick in a work colleague’s hotel room.  It was mortifying when it happened, but it’s pretty darned funny.

30. What historical sporting event would you like to witness? In person, I’d love to the 1999 Men’s NCAA Basketball Championship.  My alma mater, the University of Connecticut, was the underdog and upset heavily favored Duke for their first national championship.  It was great to watch on TV, but it would be amazing to see in person. 

31. Which song evokes the strongest memories for you? Missing You - John Waite

32. What’s the best birthday celebration you can imagine? I don’t ever want a huge celebration, I’d love to have a bunch of close friends around where we can talk, drink, eat, laugh, and generally just enjoy everyone’s company.

33. What’s your favourite ethnic food? Mexican.

34. Do you have any habits you’d like to give up?  Procrastination.

35. What would you save first if your house caught on fire? Children, spouse, then pets.

36. Who would you trade places with for one month?  I’m not picky, and this might sound shallow, but I’d trade places with an able bodied cis woman who is considered above average in appearance. In other words, I’d love to see what it was like to live as an unequivocally gorgeous woman. 

37. What’s the story behind your first name? I had the joy of being able to select one for myself, which ended up being harder than I thought.  I like what I landed on, though.

38. What’s been the biggest obstacle in your life so far?  I don’t like the word obstacle.  I take it to mean a barrier that blocks things.  While I have had plenty of challenges, I try to not let those things block me.  My hope is to always move forward, even if it is slowly. No question, my biggest challenge is being trans. 

39. Have you ever stolen something? What was it? Why did you steal it? Ugh, yes.  I was traveling in Australia some years ago and I noticed a wallet sitting on some phone books at the post office. I looked inside and there was a couple hundred dollars in it.  I left it sitting there and went to make my call, but kept my eye on it.  Someone else from the hostel I was staying in walked in, saw the wallet, and then we locked eyes.  I indicated that I didn’t know whose it was and he reached in an pulled out the cash.  I figured, if it was going to be stolen, I was going to benefit from it (I was low on cash at the time).  We walked around the corner, he split the money with me and we went our separate ways.  I still regret doing this and wish that I had picked up the wallet when I first saw it and turned it in.

40. To you, what’s the secret to happiness? I believe happiness is really just enjoying life’s simple and pleasurable moments.  We’ve got so much that goes on that has peaks and valleys of emotion and it is important to feel those, for the good and the bad.  It is the small moments that are the glue to our lives, though.  A laugh with a friend.  Warm sunshine on your skin on a cool day.  The smell of salt air.  To me, it’s enjoying those moments that are what make for happiness and joy.

Please do not feel compelled to do this, but I’m going to tag a few people whom I would love to see their responses.  I tag @mymindisdrawinga, @annacaffeina, @perfectlyscrumptious, @perfectlywhelmed, @visionaria, @tumbleweedsinmyvagina, @ptero-bites, @misslondoncallin, @vampysquid, and I started thinking this list was getting long, so I stopped, but please feel free to respond away if you are taken with the idea.

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Courtney Branwen Information

BASIC INFORMATION: Original Blog

Full name: Courtney Branwen

Nickname(s) or Alias:  Agent C, CB, Lexi

Gender: Male

Species: Human

Age:  ??

Birthday: October 7, Libra

Sexuality: Up for debate

Nationality: French

Religion: This

City or town of birth: Nîmes

Currently lives: Unknown

Languages spoken: English, French, Russian, Spanish

Native language: French

Relationship Status: Married

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE:

Height: 5'11

Weight: 132

Figure/build: Athletic/Slender

Hair colour: Black

Hairstyle: Unkempt

Facial Hairstyle: None

Eye colour: Light Blue

Skin/fur/etc colour: Pale White

Tattoos:  Crescent Moons the palms of his hands ( His dominant hand having a star at the top, between ends), between his shoulder blades, A crescent moon on the back of his neck, scarification on the entire right side of his body.

Piercings:  Face Piercings

Scars/distinguishing marks: Scarification on his left side. A scar over one eyebrow and  the side of his neck from ritual fight. Bullet wound scars. Scars from being cut.

Preferred style of clothing: Suits or grungy

Frequently worn jewellery/accessories: Piercings, his wedding jewelry and ring.  Concealed weapons, pens, pencils, phone, laptop.

HEALTH:

Smoker? Yes

Drinker? Yes

Recreational Drug User? Which? Yes,….

Addictions: No

Allergies: Dilantin

Any physical ailments/illnesses/disabilities: Unknown

   Symptoms: seizures, bleeding from nose/mouth, uncontrollable bleeding, diminished senses, oozing sores, burning rashes,    Cause: inhaling toxic fumes    Course: goes away after several weeks if untreated, but some symptoms become permanent    Treatment: Unknown

Any medication regularly taken:

PERSONALITY:

Personality:  ESTJ

Likes: Testing out new gadgets, reading, fiction, movies, technology

Dislikes: Getting over emotional, being told what to do by strangers

Fears/phobias: Thalassophobia, failing, heights,  being held captive

Favourite colour: Dodger blue

Hobbies:

   Puzzles    Flag Football    Computer Programming    Card Collecting    Playing Video Games    Cryptography    DIY ( Do it yourself)    Tai Chi    Yo-Yoing    Collecting Action figures    Swimming    LARPing    Paintball    Skateboarding    Comic Book Collecting    Hiking    Collecting video games

Taste in music: Techno/ Punk / Soca / Old School Rap / Chicano/ Blues / Industrial / J-Rock /   R&B / Soul /  Disney / Outlaw Country / Horrorcore / K-Pop / High Classical / Grunge/ Psychedelic

SKILLS:

Talents/skills: Computer Literacy / Sharpshooting / Trouble Shooter /Physicist / Psychometry /  Making connections / Hot wiring a car / Networking / Lipreading / Calligrapher/ Problem Solving / Basic First Aid / Negotiating Skills / Humor / Knife Throwing

Ability to drive a car? Operate any other vehicles?  Fairly good, all around

EATING HABITS:

Omnivore/Carnivore/Herbivore (Vegetarian): Omnivore

Favourite food(s):  French Fries / Cake / Anything with Chicken / Sausage / Bacon / Peas / Green Beans / Dragon Fruit / Oranges

Favourite drink(s): Tea / Coffee / Flavored Water

Disliked food(s): Oat Meal / Deer Meat

Disliked drink(s): Veggie drinks

HOUSE AND HOME:

Describe the character’s house/home: It is a perfect mess. He knows where everything is exactly. But for outsiders it looks like an unsorted mess.

Do they share their home with anyone? Who? No.

Significant/special belongings: The jewelry he was given the day he was married.

CAREER:

Level of education: College

Qualifications: Unknown

Current job title and description: Spy, he helps out others in his assigned team of spies. Courtney is their techno guy. But he can also provide sharpshooting and combat help if need be.

Name of employer: Unknown ( Works on a team with a Mentor)

COMBAT:

Peaceful or aggressive attitude? A mix of both

Fighting skills/techniques: Tai Chi/ Jiu Jitsu/ Krav Maga

Special skills/magical powers/etc:  Magical Gem ( Born with it), Unknown

Weapon of choice (if any):  Hand gun

Weaknesses in combat: His back, where his gem formed

Strengths in combat: Finding opponents weak points

FAMILY, FRIENDS AND FOES:

Parents names: Clara and Logan Branwen

Are parents alive or dead? Alive

Is the character still in contact with their parents? Not really.

Siblings? Relationship with siblings? 2 siblings. They do not talk.

Other Important Relatives: 2 Uncles ( on on his mothers side and one on his fathers.)  And an aunt ( His fathers side.)

Partner/Spouse:  Unknown, they are not assigned the to same team so he doesn’t keep in contact with them.

Children: None

Best Friend: The Teams Mentor, Agent K

Other Important Friends: The Rest of his Team

Acquaintances: The rest of the Spy Agency

Pets: No

Enemies? Why are they enemies? None so far

Holidays

Gainsus is a solemn historical holiday celebrated on the spring equinox. It commemorates an escape. It is associated with fate and grief. Celebrations last eighteen days from dawn till dusk. Traditions include public and private swearing of oaths, feasting and signing of documents.

Dema is a joyful religious holiday celebrated just before the third new moon of autumn. It is associated with mercy and a loss. It is also associated with storks, the color gold, storms and mules. Celebrations last seventeen days. Traditions include public truces, chanting, expressions of forgiveness and nudity. Almost no families celebrate it differently.

Nilerra is a joyful holiday celebrated just after the first full moon of summer. It is associated with a recovery, a dire deed, a takeover and vanity. It is also associated with sparrows, falcons and elm trees. Celebrations last four days. Most regions celebrate it differently.

Craes is a historical holiday celebrated on the winter solstice. It commemorates a contest. It is associated with fire, nobility, a case of mistaken identity and a thwarted plan. Celebrations last three days from dawn till dawn again. Traditions include public and private airing of grievances, marriage proposals and dancing. Some traditions celebrate it differently.

Enoazuala is a holiday celebrated just before the first crescent moon of summer. It is associated with terror and a change of direction. Celebrations last three days from dusk till dawn. Some traditions celebrate it differently.

Freem is a religious holiday celebrated just after the spring equinox. It commemorates a fall. It is associated with a certain profession and dexterity. It is also associated with sapphires, the color white, horses and porcupines. Celebrations last  from dawn till dawn again. Traditions include public nudity, decorations and acts of daring.

Scondao is a holiday celebrated on the first crescent moon of summer. It commemorates a journey. It is associated with success and joy. A few faiths celebrate it differently.

Juf is a religious holiday celebrated on the summer solstice. It is associated with temperance and justice. Traditions include private arranging of alliances, contests of strength and awarding of honors. No traditions celebrate it differently.

Krudom is a solemn holiday celebrated just before the first new moon of spring. It is associated with freedom, death and strength. It is also associated with agates, turquoises, hawks and spruce trees. Celebrations last fifteen days. Many faiths celebrate it differently.

Niz is a joyful religious holiday celebrated on the third new moon of spring. It is associated with darkness and a dire deed. Some families celebrate it differently.

Raekaver is a holiday celebrated on the third full moon of autumn. It is associated with a loss, ruin and confidence. Celebrations last twenty days. Traditions include private signing of contracts, annuling of contracts and sacrifices. Some faiths celebrate it differently.

Thaivan is a civic holiday celebrated on the second full moon of summer. It is associated with inspiration and grief. Celebrations last  from dusk till dawn. Traditions include public and private theatrical productions and truces. Most sects celebrate it differently.

Froukr is a religious holiday celebrated just before the first crescent moon of winter. It is associated with a misstep, a certain animal and a promise. It is also associated with vultures, goblins, mockingbirds and coyotes. Traditions include public and private duels and signing of documents. A few faiths celebrate it differently.

Toz is a joyful religious holiday celebrated on the summer solstice. It is associated with vanity, a natural disaster, nobility and decay. Celebrations last eleven days. Almost no individuals celebrate it differently.

Drenc is a joyful holiday celebrated on the winter solstice. It commemorates a loss. It is associated with healing, a disappointment and a promise. Celebrations last four days from dawn till dusk. Traditions include private airing of grievances and fasting. Nearly all groups celebrate it differently.

Arassy is a solemn holiday celebrated just after the third new moon of winter. It is associated with a change of direction, destruction and vanity. It is also associated with foxs and quartzes. Celebrations last from dawn till dawn again. Many traditions celebrate it differently.

Alam is a joyful holiday celebrated on the summer solstice. It is associated with wind, despair, a death and memory. Celebrations last nineteen days. Traditions include private intoxication and signing of documents. Some faiths celebrate it differently.

Bal is a joyful religious holiday celebrated on the first full moon of autumn. It is associated with royalty, harmony and violence. Celebrations last two days from dusk till dawn.

Aeraeth is a solemn civic holiday celebrated on the first crescent moon of spring. It commemorates a revelation. It is associated with discord, a contest, eternity and a betrayal. Traditions include public and private dancing, chanting, theatrical productions and singing. Most faiths celebrate it differently.

Poyl is a joyful civic holiday celebrated on the third new moon of winter. It is associated with vice, feminity and a revelation. Celebrations last  from dawn till dawn again. Traditions include private atonement, expressions of forgiveness, telling of stories and fasting.

Vuzav is a joyful civic holiday celebrated just before the third crescent moon of autumn. It is associated with earth, truth and might. It is also associated with parrots, elm trees, cheetahs and foxs. Celebrations last thirteen days. Traditions include private playing of instruments and annuling of contracts. Some groups celebrate it differently.

Elevanom is a joyful civic holiday celebrated just before the first crescent moon of spring. It is associated with wind, air and earth. It is also associated with foxs and hyenas. Celebrations last fifteen days. Traditions include private arranging of alliances, nudity, contests of cleverness and parties. Very few regions celebrate it differently.

Lollum is a joyful historical holiday celebrated on the summer solstice. It commemorates a relationship beginning. It is associated with physical strength, entropy, suffering and detachment. It is also associated with voles, sapphires and sparrows. Celebrations last twelve days from dusk till dusk again. Traditions include public and private playing of instruments, acts of daring, nudity and airing of grievances. No sects celebrate it differently.

Lafev is a holiday celebrated on the winter solstice. It is associated with vice, psychic healing and virtue. Celebrations last nineteen days. Traditions include public sacrifices and atonement. Many groups celebrate it differently.

Isean is a religious holiday celebrated on the first full moon of autumn. It is associated with empathy, avarice, a relationship ending and intoxication. Many regions celebrate it differently.

Eron is a joyful historical holiday celebrated on the fall equinox. It is associated with patience and a dire deed. Many sects celebrate it differently.

Bouf is a joyful civic holiday celebrated on the third full moon of autumn. It commemorates a reconciliation. It is associated with a malfunction and lust. It is also associated with magpies, the color yellow and pigeons. Celebrations last sixteen days. Traditions include public forgiveness from debt and athletics competitions. Several regions celebrate it differently.

Paer is a solemn cultural holiday celebrated just before the summer solstice. It is associated with warding, detachment, communication and purity. It is also associated with sapphires and wolves.

Fleed is a joyful religious holiday celebrated on the first full moon of summer. It commemorates a bet. It is associated with romance and pessimism. Traditions include public and private truces and dancing. Many groups celebrate it differently.

Jatrol is a joyful religious holiday celebrated just before the second crescent moon of spring. It commemorates a romance. It is associated with preservation and purity. Celebrations last eleven days from dawn till dusk. Traditions include public and private games of chance, contests of cleverness, intoxication and signing of documents. Almost no groups celebrate it differently.

Constellations

These ten bright stars form the shape of a phoenix. The constellation represents a tale about the power of good. It is most significant during spring, when it appears setting towards the Eastern horizon. It is counterbalanced by the constellations representing a mare, a crossbow and an arrow. Those born under it have an affinity for the element of water.

These ten  stars form the shape of a net. The constellation represents a villain foretold in prophecy. It is most significant on the winter solstice, when it appears just over the Southeastern horizon. It is opposed by the constellations representing a winged woman, a fountain and a crown. Those born under it are very mercurial.

These ten dim stars form the shape of a raven. The constellation represents a deity. It is most significant on the winter solstice, when it appears low on the Northeastern horizon. It is close in the sky to the constellations representing a flower, an owl and a scepter. Those born under it are highly independent.

These fourteen dim stars form the shape of a hand. The constellation represents a tale of greed. It is most significant during autumn, when it appears just over the Western horizon. It is usually interpreted together with the constellations representing a weeping man and a dagger. Those born under it have an affinity for the element of water.

These ten dim stars form the shape of a lyre. The constellation represents the power of a certain god. It is most significant on the autumn equinox, when it appears just over the Southern horizon. Its story involves the constellations representing a cat and a deer. Those born under it are known for stability.

These nine  stars form the shape of a spider. The constellation represents an ancient enemy. It is most significant during spring, when it appears low on the Southwestern horizon. It is counterbalanced by the constellations representing a man, a hammer and a throne. Those born under it are said to be hopeless romantics.

These four bright stars form the shape of a dragon. The constellation represents the remnants of a folktale from a lost culture. It is most significant on the winter solstice, when it appears just over the Northeastern horizon. It is counterbalanced by the constellations representing a face and a flute. Those born under it often become teachers.

These fourteen bright stars form the shape of a trumpet. The constellation represents a figure foretold in prophecy. It is most significant on the spring equinox, when it appears halfway towards the Southern horizon. Its meaning is intertwined with the constellations representing a helmet and a boy. Those born under it have fiery tempers.

These seven bright stars form the shape of a candle. The constellation represents a demi-god. It is most significant on the summer solstice, when it appears setting towards the Western horizon. It has a similar meaning to the constellations representing a chair, a shield and a cart. Those born under it tend to be intellectuals.

These fifteen bright stars form the shape of a longbow. The constellation represents a prophesied messiah. It is most significant on the winter solstice, when it appears rising from the Northwestern horizon. Its story involves the constellations representing a crossroads, a dragon and a pair of dice. Those born under it are rumored to be good with money.

These fourteen dim stars form the shape of a howling wolf. The constellation represents a mortal who crossed the gods. It is most significant during spring, when it appears setting towards the Southeastern horizon. It is counterbalanced by the constellations representing a coyote and a tiger. Those born under it are renowned for honesty.

These six dim stars form the shape of a pair of serpents. The constellation represents a tale of betrayal. It is most significant during summer, when it appears halfway towards the Western horizon. Its story involves the constellations representing a sorcerer, a wolf and a boar. Those born under it are known for generosity.

These five dim stars form the shape of a bear. The constellation represents a figure from legend. It is most significant on the autumn equinox, when it appears high in the sky. It is usually interpreted together with the constellations representing a winged man, a river and a snake. Those born under it are highly independent.

These five bright stars form the shape of a cup. The constellation represents a tale of greed. It is most significant during winter, when it appears high in the sky. It appears near the constellations representing a bow and quiver, a flute and an axe. Those born under it often suffer from jealousy.

These eight  stars form the shape of a stream. The constellation represents a past ruler. It is most significant during autumn, when it appears setting towards the Eastern horizon. It is close in the sky to the constellations representing a road, a bat and a spear. Those born under it tend to be pragmatists.

These seven bright stars form the shape of a gate. The constellation represents a mortal who crossed the gods. It is most significant on the spring equinox, when it appears halfway towards the Southern horizon. It is related to the constellations representing an arrow and a hound. Those born under it are highly independent.

These six  stars form the shape of a farmer. The constellation represents a hero foretold in prophecy. It is most significant on the autumn equinox, when it appears just over the Eastern horizon. It is usually interpreted together with the constellations representing a lamb, an apple and a fish. Those born under it have fiery tempers.

These nine bright stars form the shape of a hare. The constellation represents a tale about the power of hope. It is most significant during summer, when it appears rising from the Southeastern horizon. It has special power in combination with the constellations representing a raven, an old man and a gryphon. Those born under it have an affinity for the element of earth.

Civilization

Time Period: Near Future Shaping Force: Magic Population: Fairly even mix of races

Politics Political Structure: oligarchy - family Strong Influence: merchants/corporations Popular Issue: religion Stability: stable

Personal Freedoms: extremely good Scandals: infrequent Foreign Relations: good

Economy Main Export: machine-related Main Import: technology-related Technology Focus: military Trade: major deficit

Strength: stable and improving Wealth: fairly even, but with a wealth gap

Ecology Main Climate: temperate - plains Ocean: on two sides Mountains: a few Frequent Trouble: droughts

Wilderness: 37% Wild Animals: uncommon Natural Resources: good amount

Culture Highly Values: bravery Known For: architecture Popular Entertainment: art shows / museums Respected Profession: scientist

Discrimination: class-based Major Taboo: strong emotions Major Social Ill: drugs

Military Strength: weak Focus: sea Main Unit: large, armored ships

Soldiers: mix of draftees, volunteers Main Use: foreign peacekeeping Rank: purchased

Magic Occurrence: common Source: learned skill, but requires aptitude Major Use: travel

Viewed: with respect Enchanted Items: very rare

Associated Artform: tile murals Prevalence: believed by many Holidays: very few

Population Urban: 78% Rural: 22% Literacy Rate: 75%

Gender Ratio: 0.49 male(s)/female Fertility Rate: 2 children/family Life Expectancy: 72.4 years Religion

Type: monotheism (moderately patriarchal) Direction: outwards Focus: helping others

Deity: The God of Music Titles: Patron of Instruments, The First

Divine Interaction: never occurs

Involves: one major holy site Afterlife: is a peaceful place for all and cannot be reached while alive Supernatural: unrelated to religion

Worship: joyous individual daily prayers at home Holidays: fairly often Holidays Celebrate: prophets, heroes, the equinoxes, new moons Major Holiday(s): include many other ceremonies (marriages, ordinations, etc)

Clergy: males only Function: spiritual advisors, direct connection to divine, soothsayers, maintain temples/shrines Lifestyle: above average Family: rare (chastity encouraged) Chosen: raised from birth to be clergy Distinguished By: symbolic tattoos/scars

Cultural Aspects

Symbol: a crescent moon and a tree Holy Color: blue

Passed Down: via several versions of one holy book Creation Myth Type: order from void/chaos Mortals’ Origin: mud Major Myth/Symbol(s): the rainbow

Deadly Sins: self-injury, cowardice, blasphemy and sloth High Virtues: charity, responsibility, humility and diligence

Associated Artform: instrumental music

Coming of Age: 9 years old Coming of Age Rite: involves a declaration of intended profession, a ritual fight, tattooing, and takes place in a public ceremony, completed by a journey for several years (Which takes place after marriage).

Marriage: happens shortly after coming of age and is for life, no exceptions, is initiated by females Marriage Rites: begin with several days of separation, include an exchange of symbolic jewelry, ritual tattooing/scarification, are performed by clergy

Death Rites: are a private affair

Major Taboo: strong emotions, displays of affection,

Prevalence: a few hundred people Outsiders: are tolerated, barely

Bio(?):

At birth, along with the others in his social circle, he was taken from his parents and moved to  their holy land, where he lived for the first month of his life. During this time rituals are done, to bring health and happiness to the infants in their lives. In the world Courtney was born in there are some who were born with Gems morphed into their bodies. Which so far have not been found to do anything significant for those born with them.  Courtney  happened to be one of those who were born with a gem. This gem was located near his spine on his lower back. After the month-long stay at the sacred site the babies are branded with the sign of the moon on their left hip.

After that nothing else really happened outside of being raised in a very strict home. Courtney spent this time learning things he’d need in adulthood and how to work in a unit.  In the ‘normal’ schools where he lived with others who did not practice the same religion as him and others like him he did  exceptionally well. School seemed to come easily to him. He even seemed to make friends easy and catch onto things from the outsider’s perspective. Things went on like this for the next few years. Courtney had made many connections during this time.

It wasn’t until he was eight years old that things drastically changed. As with many in his religion he was removed from regular schooling. Over the next year of his life he was taken back to the sacred site were he and others in his age group were held for the next year and began learning lessons that would help them later in their lives. Their religion was more than just worship. It was an agency that raised agents to do the bidding of those that would hire them. Courtney was able to learn things in this new setting just as quickly as he had in the normal school.  This year is one of the toughest his people have to go through. They have to be taught how to control their emotions and learn the beginnings of combat. Which despite Courtney’s quickness to learn, he was not the most physically strong in his age group.

This lifestyle was harsh, the was no tolerance if a student should fail to get a satisfactory grade on their performances.  The set of skills that Courtney and his age group were given and graded on where skills not commonly taught with ease to the outside world. At the age of nine after learning the basics of what they needed to learn they were given a few weeks to practice and build up on these basics, and to figure out what they wanted to be for the rest of their lives. Courtney did not waste any time obeying this and spent almost every day practicing till he could barely move any move.  When the age right ceremony began and he was called up to declare what career he’d wished to have outside of the agency Courtney requested something that involved being able to work with computers. Feeling at the time that this would help him and his team later on in life.

He had noticed before that not many others would choose such a career path, because it was not as psychical as others had hoped. They viewed those who had chosen career paths like it as weak and practically useless when things hit the fan. Courtney welcomed the challenge to prove them all otherwise. After everyone chose their careers the group was made to fight each other  in a ritual fight.

Courtney had disliked the idea of having to fight one of his group mates, but understood that there had been no other options. Wanting to continue to make his family proud Courtney went through with his ritual fight with one of the strongest in his age group, a girl who had been almost as equally cruel and vicious the entire time Courtney had known her. When the fight began, Courtney and  his opponent spent the first few minutes circling, trying to read each others movements and find their weak points. When the real fighting began she toyed with him by throwing punches and managed to surprise Courtney with a kick to the head. From that point on Courtney was impaired. The rest of the fight was dizzying for him and his focus blurred in and out throughout.

Being tossed to the ground after more fighting, the girl was about to deliver a finishing blow. Courtney’s instincts had finally managed to kick itself into high gear and kicked her feet out from under her. The fight was dragged out for a few more minutes after this. Unfortunately ending in Courtney’s having to snap the others neck.  The ritual fights were not typically set up to be ones where you fight to the death. But there were no restrictions on doing so. After the fight was over and Courtney was removed and taken to get his injuries checked out. While he was being held,  he was told they would be keeping him in confinement over the following days and have his mentality monitored.

Once he was released from holding he was sent back to his age group to complete the rites left for him. This included being chosen by one of the girls available for him to marry.  When standing in the last line of boys left over from the days before. Courtney was rejected time and time again because of his frail looking appearance.  That wasn’t until a girl from the age group of the tens came in. She had been left over for a year from her groups odd number of males. At first she didn’t show interest in Courtney, but not wanting to be left even farther behind from her group she settled on him, in the end.

After everyone was paired off they were then separated again. Courtney was taken to receive the tattoos for completing the rites. These tattoos were placed on the palms of his hands and the back of his neck. After the separation  Courtney met the girl again and they exchanged the jewelry and have to decide which marriage tattoos they want on the others body. This usually is an oath. After they decide where they would like their tattoos placed on the others body, they are separated again to prepare to be officially married.

Once Courtney was married he was given a few days of rest and to get to know his new wife before having to get his marriage tattoos done. As he had still been healing from the rites tattoos. Courtney learned a few things about his new wife, but had not really felt like he’d gotten to know her well enough. They were only nine years old and he had felt she had a very wicked wide of her that she had obviously been trying to keep him from noticing this. And Courtney wasn’t concerned about this till years later.

The tattooing for marriage did not often involve scaring, but for Courtney’s wife, she insisted. This is where he got the massive scaring on the right side of his body.  After receiving the final scaring and tattooing ( The words on his shoulder blades) Courtney was sent to be assigned to his spy team. This team would become his new family from the time of his choosing onward.

Only one or two from the same groups could be assigned to a team. Courtney and another boy from his group had eventually been chosen by his mentor to join their team. After this assignment had been placed Courtney and the boy were ordered to pack their things and board a train to where their mentor and the rest of the team had been based.  The two nine-year old set out to begin the rest of their training with their mentor a few days later. Upon arriving at their new home and base of operations their mentor. Where they would spend vast majorities of their next few years training within the team structure.

At eleven years old Courtney and the other from his age group had been assigned their spots within their team. Courtney of course was given the position of the assisting the main hacker of the group at the time. After this the main hacker of the team would teach him the guidelines of his position within the team. Nothing outside of this really had been any different for Courtney, as he was allowed to pick up having a normal life after this.  The only thing that changed was that they would often move from place to place to complete missions assigned to them.  Which wouldn’t be anything too important for Courtney due to his young age.

Life went on with this new ‘normal’ for him, for the next several years to come.  He began to become a very stable and useful member of the team as the years went on. His trainer eventually become just another partner instead of a teacher.  But of course, as all things seem to go, not everything remains pleasant for too long. At fifteen years old, the team had been assigned to a dangerous mission.  Of course it wasn’t the first the team had been on since Courtney had been assigned to it. But it was the first one that went wrong.

Things had begun just like normal, with the mission. The field agents had gotten into position inside the building where their ‘mark’ had been. His mentor was set to assassinate the mark, who appeared to be the owner of the building and the man working a shady business that was happening within it.  They were most of the way through the mission when they noticed something out of the ordinary, their mark hadn’t been in the office at the top of the building, like planned. Agent K ordered Courtney and his partner to go ahead and hack into the mark’s computer and steal the data on it.

It hadn’t been until later when The Mark came out of where they had been hiding.  A gas began to fill the room Courtney and Agent R ( Courtney’s Partner) had been left in. By the time the two of them had noticed the gas it had already been working to affect the both of them. Agent R shouted at Courtney to get out, but it had been far too late for either of them to escape.Fortunately Agent K and the rest of the team had, at around this time, noticed what was going on. A secret door within The Marks office opened up and  a man stepped out and fired at Courtney and Agent R. A bullet managed to hit Courtney in the hip, sending him to the ground. Several more men stepped through the secret door inside he office and aimed their weapons at the two agents.

The Mark stepped over to Agent R, and from behind the gas mask  he was wearing (Along with the others)  he shouted at Agent R to get down and then shouted the same to Courtney. Sitting on the ground as orders were shouted at the other men in the room by The Mark, Courtney figured that if the rest of the team didn’t get their in time he and his partner would end up dead. The Mark walked toward Agent R a moment later, placing the gun in their hand to R’s head. Shouting for information then. Courtney watched as the moments ticked by, his partner beginning to crack under the pressure they were under, as well as from the gas that was filling both their lungs.

Or perhaps it could have had more to do with the gas, as Courtney could feel himself also feeling strange after a few minutes of breathing it in. With a laugh, The Mark teased them the two agents, momentarily speaking of the gas and then asking how they both were feeling. Things started to become hazy at this time, Courtney’s mind grew unfocused and he started to black out.  He didn’t know how much longer it took then, but through his haziness he’d seen The Mark shoot Agent R in the head, sending splatter of the other Agents blood speckling onto his face, before the gun was aimed at him.

In the next few moments he dropped back onto the floor, everything seemed to slow down for him for a few moments before hitting the floor and coughing up blood. He could hear voices, shouting all around him as his vision blurred until he could see nothing but darkness. For what seemed like forever after that he could hear himself choking on his own blood and noises that were harder to make out, do to how far away they seemed and because he could not see what was causing them. Then someone grabbed him and lifted him up into their arms and started to whisper to him until finally Courtney could no longer hear anything.

Years after this incident, and many successful missions later, Courtney became a very talented and valuable Agent to his people. He lives with side effects from that day many years ago, but he usually hides this very well from others, especially outsiders. Courtney became the lead coder for his team and has not taken on any one to train after him, from lack of others wanting to become a hacker, and do to the fact that the rest of the teams youth and skill has made them have to reject potential new members.  Lately missions have not been very common, so most of the group have grown accustomed to living their daily lives like most other citizens of the town(s) they live in. Courtney spends most of his days working at a cafe and being the typical dork type.

AU’s

(Work in Progress)