#; the phoenix must burn to emerge ; edmund

[coruscato]

@alisgravnil cont. from (x):

Morael glanced over, tilting her head and not seeming too bothered. “The window.”

Edmund stood there, blinking at the intruder. “Just--” he couldn’t believe he had to even say this, “just because the window’s open doesn’t mean you can just fly right in?” 

[xhxhxhx]

Rick Perlstein, Reaganland (Simon & Schuster, 2020):

AT THE SAME TIME, HOWEVER, a separate anti-liberal backlash was taking root. It was spurred by summer after summer of race riots, and its political base was not business but middle-class homeowners, who blamed civil rights and the War on Poverty for a civilization-threatening breakdown in law and order. Business was largely on the liberal side of this issue—like the author of a 1966 article in the Harvard Business Review predicting “riots and arson and spreading slums” if “the businessman does not accept his rightful role as leader in the push for the goals of the ‘Great Society’ (or whatever tag he wants to give it).”

No, business’s backlash, its emergence as a [class for itself], came a little bit later, in response to a new, and different, sort of liberalism—one whose buzzwords were “environmentalism” and “consumerism,” and which, unlike Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, placed corporate power squarely in its sights.

Date its origin to the summer of 1967. Around the same time Congress was responding to middle-class constituent anger over black riots by voting down a modest bill funding rodent control in the slums, a remarkable hearing was held by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, chaired by Senator Warren Magnuson of Washington State. Magnuson had been approached by a Seattle physician who described a “chronic, unrelenting procession of burned and scarred children” in his work at Seattle Children’s Hospital, caused by the sort of flammable fabrics that had supposedly been outlawed by the Flammable Fabrics Act of 1953. That law, however, had been written by industry lobbyists. Back then, Commerce Committee members were classed by what industry they served: “textile senators,” “trucking senators,” “railroad senators,” “tobacco senators” (the leading tobacco senator was the former president of the Tobacco Institute). They sponsored protectionist laws written by their benefactors—like the Wool Products Labeling Act, which banned manufacturers from selling a product as wool if it contained a single strand of recycled or synthetic fiber; or bills fixing prices for legacy companies. The process was so corrupt that when Chairman Magnuson hired a young lawyer in 1964 named Michael Pertschuk to run the committee’s portfolio of consumer products legislation, the fellow he replaced congratulated him on all the price-fixed products, from audio equipment to toasters, that he soon would be getting for free.

This all would soon be a thing of the past.

Magnuson had been a fisheries senator and an aviation senator. After almost losing his seat in 1962, however, he reinvented himself aggressively as a new kind of liberal legislative entrepreneur: a consumerist senator. He put Pertschuk to work toughening up the limp Flammable Fabrics Act. A textile industry lobbyist replied “blood would run in the halls of Congress” before his industry let it pass. But the hearings Pertschuk staged in July of 1967 were a masterpiece of legislative melodrama. The Seattle doctor testified: “In all honesty, I must say I do not consider it a triumph when the life of a severely burned child is saved.… Death may be more merciful.” A beloved CBS News commentator told the story of his eleven-year-old daughter, burned nearly to death when a cotton blouse that met federal safety standards combusted when a match was dropped on it. A representative of the Cotton Textile Council boasted of the “admirable” results produced by its standards committee. The square-jawed and stentorian Magnuson replied:

“How often does your standards committee meet?”

“Regularly, Senator.”

How often, Magnuson followed up, before they’d received his recent letter warning them of impending congressional action?

“Ten years,” the lobbyist admitted.

The amendments passed the committee unanimously, then both houses, virtually unchanged. President Johnson signed the bill with Magnuson by his side. The following day he signed the first update to meat inspection law since the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, with Upton Sinclair, the novelist whose 1905 exposé The Jungle had inspired it, standing next to him. A landmark “truth in lending” bill went to conference six weeks later. The former senator Paul Douglas, a New Deal economist who had lost his seat in 1966 largely because white Chicago factory workers turned their back on him because of his advocacy for a failed bill outlawing housing discrimination, had been pressing for it since the 1950s, but was defeated in the Finance Committee session after session. Now, however, it passed the committee unanimously.

The floodgates opened: to laws fighting deceptive practices by door-to-door salesmen and moving companies, outlawing hazardous radiation from electronics equipment, closing gaps in poultry and fish inspection, demanding accuracy in product warranties, regulating cigarettes. “Consumer Interests: Legislative Derby Has Begun,” one Midwestern newspaper reported early in 1968. That headline appeared just as Congress voted to outlaw housing discrimination in a desperate response to the riots following the April 4, 1968, assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The version that passed, however, weaker than one killed in 1966, added near-police-state provisions limiting militant blacks’ freedom to travel. Riots had burned down Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. “Consumerism” sprung forth phoenix-like from the ashes.

Politicians discovered that scourging industry greed was the smart political play. It certainly was for Magnuson, who glided to reelection in 1970 with ads that bragged, “There’s a law that forced Detroit to make cars safer—Senator Magnuson’s law. There’s a law that keeps the gas pipelines under your house from blowing up—Senator Magnuson’s law. There’s a law that makes food labels tell the truth—Senator Magnuson’s law. Keep the big boys honest; let’s keep Maggie in the Senate.”

It heralded a remarkable shift in public opinion. In 1966, 55 percent of Americans had a “great deal of confidence in the leaders of major companies.” Five years later, the percentage was 27 percent. Between 1968 and 1970, the portion believing “business tries to strike a fair balance between profits and the interest of the public” fell from 70 percent to 33 percent. Wrote pollster Lou Harris, “People have come to be skeptical about American ‘know-how,’ worried that it might pollute, contaminate, poison, or even kill them.”

[...]

IDEALISTIC YOUNG LAWYERS FLOCKED TO the organizations [Ralph] Nader began forming [in the late 1960s]. The first product of these “Nader’s Raiders” was a 185-page report on the Federal Trade Commission, a notoriously toothless regulatory body that took, on average, four years to investigate every complaint, punishing the guilty with unenforceable orders to cease and desist. The monograph was couriered to 150 key journalists out of the back of a Raider’s Volkswagen. It called the FTC a “self-parody of bureaucracy, fat with cronyism, torpid through inbreeding unusual even for Washington, manipulated by the agents of commercial predators, impervious to government or citizen monitoring,” ridden with “alcoholism, spectacular lassitude, and office absenteeism.”

By then the president was Richard Nixon, who had to accede to the new anti-corporate mood just to maintain political credibility. He ordered up his own FTC investigation. It arrived at similar conclusions. So Nixon replaced the FTC director with the shrewdest bureaucrat in his administration, Caspar “Cap the Knife” Weinberger, who roared out of the starting gate with actions against dubious advertising claims of such blue-chip products as Hi-C, Listerine, Wonder Bread, and McDonald’s.

Nixon then signed a landmark mine safety law and the National Environmental Policy Act, establishing the first new independent federal regulatory agency since 1938, then added another with a law authorizing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. That project was inherited from the Johnson administration, and at first, Nixon’s version was so mild that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsed it. But the “creature that ultimately stomped out of Congress,” a historian recounted, was a “Frankenstein of Chamber members’ nightmares.” Federal agents had never had the authority to inspect individual businesses for health and safety violations. OSHA gave them the power to do it without warrants, then levy hefty fines with no avenue for appeal. Richard Nixon didn’t dare veto it.

Nor did he veto tough amendments to the Clean Air Act of 1963 that included something nearly unprecedented in previous environmental legislation: specific deadlines for compliance. It also enjoined the new EPA from considering costs in establishing ambient air standards—inspiring Robert Griffin, a Republican automotive senator from Michigan, to snarl that the 1975 deadline for limiting auto exhaust pollutants “holds a gun to the head of the American automobile industry in a very dangerous game of roulette.” The technology to implement the standards, he complained, did not exist. Democrat Edmund Muskie of Maine, the leader of senate environmentalists, responded, “This deadline is based not, I repeat, not, on economic and technological feasibility, but on considerations of public health.… Detroit has told the nation that Americans cannot live without the automobile. This legislation would tell Detroit that if this is the case, then they must make an automobile with which the American people can live.” The version that passed the Senate 73–2 was stronger than what had been debated in any hearing. A cowed GM lobbyist told the National Journal that “the atmosphere was such that offering amendments seemed pointless,” and that “I wouldn’t think of asking anybody to vote against the bill.”

The Senate Commerce Committee, that former redoubt of trucking senators, railroad senators, textile senators, and tobacco senators, became a regulator’s paradise. At confirmation hearings for a new FTC head, Frank Moss congratulated the agency for having “stretched its powers to provide a credible countervailing public force to the enormous economic and political power of huge corporate conglomerates which today dominate American enterprise. That is as it should be.” Then one of Moss’s conservative colleagues, Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, asked the nominee to “become a real zealot in terms of consumer affairs,” tough enough that “these big businesspeople will complain.”

In 1971, Webster’s added the word consumerism to its Third New International Dictionary. A book called America, Inc.: Who Owns and Operates the United States? coauthored by the Washington Post’s consumer reporter and original Nader champion Morton Mintz rode the bestseller list for months. Children begged at bedtime to hear Dr. Seuss’s new book The Lorax, in which a pitiless capitalist “biggers” his business by harvesting every last Truffula tree, crying triumphantly, “Business is business and business must grow!” and leaving behind a barren hellscape. Gore Vidal published a cover article in Esquire touting Nader for president, and 78 percent of columnist Mike Royko’s readers who sent back a questionnaire he published said they wanted him as the Democrats’ presidential nominee. Another new independent regulatory agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, was born. Congress passed bills requiring childproof packaging for poisonous substances, killing federal subsidies for a supersonic transport plane, restricting lead in house paint, and establishing safety standards for recreational boats. Nixon signed them—not because he was a closet liberal, but because, as his aide Bryce Harlow, a former lobbyist for Procter & Gamble, delicately explained to the American Advertising Federation, though “President Nixon profoundly respects the critical contribution made by industry to the vitality and strength of the American economy, if this respect were to over-influence his actions, I am certain that the fall of 1972 would bring a new and hostile team to the White House.”

Nader had by then established a permanent presence in the capital, based in a decrepit mansion which had been slated for demolition in the down-market Dupont Circle neighborhood, where, amid a shambles of borrowed third-hand furniture and wooden fruit crates stuffed with books and files, staggeringly devoted young Ivy League–trained Nader’s Raiders institutionalized their hero’s agenda. The neighborhood was pocked with similar offices. Common Cause, Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Nader’s own Public Citizen, Environmental Action, the Center for Law and Social Policy, and the Consumer Federation of America were all established in 1969 or 1970. Nader started six new organizations in 1971 alone, including Public Citizen, a membership group that raised more than $1 million from sixty-two thousand donors in its first year.

That was another new pattern. Throughout the seventies, pundits cast their eye on declining election turnout and agonized over voter apathy. But apathy at the polls did not extend to joining consumer and environmental organizations, whose memberships exploded, thanks in part to the same computer-based direct mail technology that Richard Viguerie employed. Nearly one hundred thousand households contributed at least $70 to not one, not two, but three progressive membership groups. Major foundations pitched in, too. Thanks to the shower of cash—and because most new consumer and environmental laws awarded attorneys’ fees to plaintiffs who sued to enforce them—lawsuits against corporations increased exponentially.

George McGovern considered Nader as his running mate. (He replied, “I’m an advocate for justice and that doesn’t mix with the needs of politics.”) Nixon vetoed the 1972 Clean Water Act, for its “staggering, budget-wrecking” $24 billion cost—but his veto was overridden with considerable Republican votes. In October, he signed a law establishing the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the third new regulatory agency in three years.

Then, however, following his landslide reelection, he proposed a radical right-wing budget that Newsweek described as “one of the most significant American political documents since the dawning of the New Deal,” intended to “pull the government back from the proliferating social concerns of the years from Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson.” Thanks to Watergate, he never got the chance. Senator Sam Ervin’s televised hearings had reverberated with accounts of briefcases full of corporate cash laundered through the Mexican subsidiaries of blue-chip firms like American Airlines, Goodyear, and 3M. In the midst of it came the first energy crisis, which a majority of Americans—and some senators—believed the big energy companies had cooked up to line their pockets. Pollster Daniel Yankelovich found that 70 percent of Americans believed big business controlled government through illegal bribes. And that was before spectacular revelations, following Nixon’s resignation, that the same slush funds companies maintained to bribe Nixon were also used to pay off foreign officials. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s chief of enforcement was gobsmacked. “Until two or three years ago,” he said, “I genuinely thought the conduct of business… was generally rising. But what can you say about the revelations of the last couple or three years?”

Under President Ford, government checks on corporate power expanded yet further. One of the first laws he signed was the Employment Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, which strictly enforced the pension promises companies made to their employees, placing thousands of company’s books under federal scrutiny for the first time. In 1975 he signed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, a landmark law demanding that every American car manufacturer achieve a “Corporate Average Fuel Economy,” or CAFE, of eighteen miles per gallon by the 1978 model year. That meant every manufacturer had to redesign every car on the drawing boards. An automotive think tank estimated that it would cost manufacturers $60 billion to $80 billion, virtually their entire store of capital assets, and made the companies fear for their very survival. A group of automotive lobbyists approached the chief of staff of Edmund Muskie’s environmental subcommittee, Leon Billings, with a memo suggesting some ideas on the bill. Billings fashioned a paper airplane out of the document and sailed it straight over their heads.

This passage made me change my mind about Richard Nixon.

[coruscato]

                                                          .....ashes to ashes....                                                                   ....we all fall down....

@eleven-seas society has progressed past the need for england

[coruscato]

MAKE   A   RENAISSANCE   PORTRAIT   OF   YOUR   MUSE !

tagged by: @cigarettes-in-rain thanks!! ed and rene seemed like good picks tagging: @illustrctio @xfdreamsandvisions ( for whoever either of you would like! ) @lilyintheashes @boekvanontdekking @eleven-seas @damnprussia

[coruscato]

@damnprussia​ || sc. 

“So,” Edmund glanced away, making a face as he nodded his head from side to side. The two sat in silence for a moment more as the steam came off their respective cups of tea. He shook his head once more as his unspoken conversation came to a conclusion.

“It’s lovely to have you here, as always--and Arthur repeats the same sentiment, of course, as I hope you know--though there are some interesting tidbits he mentioned to me the other day, not of anything that might worry your heart, but of a more permanent outlook for the two of you. I hate to pry into business that isn’t my own,” sure, “but I did want to ask you what your future plans are? Just out of curiosity, of course--and it might make things easier in the long run if we’re all on the same page, but that’s secondary to whatever foot the two of you would like to put forward.”

[coruscato]

‘ can you help me? ’ @ ed

Edmund looked up at him, pushing up his reading glasses as he set his papers down in front of him. “Um, sure. What can I help you with, Gilbert?” He put his hands together. Please don’t be Arthur, please don’t be Arthur--

[coruscato]

Mun vs Muse

Tagged by: @oldshipmate Thanks! Tagging: @amorecleverdevil @italitude @ourowncolumbia @lilyintheashes

[coruscato]

@eleven-seas || sc.

“I have to ask,” Edmund sat back in his chair, picking at his lunch with his fork, “did you think I was too heavy handed in my lecture today? I’m afraid with all my years I’ve gone cynical and I feel like,” he moved his lips to the side, “it was just a bit too pessimistic for the crowd today.”

[coruscato]

✧ also ed and the time clones pls ...

send me a ✧ and i’ll bold all that apply to your muse.

Sterling --

I would kill you. ✧ I would physically hurt you. ✧ I would attack you unprovoked. ✧ I would manipulate you. ✧ I dislike you. ✧ You annoy me. ✧ You scare me. ✧ You intimidate me. ✧ I hope I intimidate you. ✧ I pity you. ✧ You disgust me. ✧ I hate you. ✧ I’m indifferent toward you. ✧ I’d like to get to know you better. ✧   I’d like to spend more time with you. ✧ I’d like to be friends with you. ✧  I’m unsure what to think of you. ✧ I’m unsure how I feel about you. ✧ You are my friend. ✧ You are my best friend. ✧ You are my mentor. ✧ I look up to you. ✧ I respect you. ✧ You are my hero. ✧ You inspire me. ✧ You are my enemy. ✧ You make me happy. ✧ I want to protect you. ✧ I would fight by your side. ✧ I consider you an equal. ✧ I think you are beneath me. ✧ I think you are above me. ✧ I would lie for you. ✧ I would lie to you. ✧ I would sleep with you. ✧ I would sleep by your side. ✧ I would hug you. ✧ I would kiss you. ✧ You are family to me. ✧ I would die for you. ✧ I would kill for you. ✧ I would trust you with my life. ✧ I would trust you with my most precious belonging. ✧ I would trust you with a secret. ✧ I would trust you with my biggest / darkest secret. ✧ I love you (platonically). ✧ I love you (romantically).

Professor --

I would kill you. ✧ I would physically hurt you. ✧ I would attack you unprovoked. ✧ I would manipulate you. ✧ I dislike you. ✧ You annoy me. ✧ You scare me. ✧ You intimidate me. ✧ I hope I intimidate you. ✧ I pity you. ✧ You disgust me. ✧ I hate you. ✧ I’m indifferent toward you. ✧ I’d like to get to know you better. ✧   I’d like to spend more time with you. ✧ I’d like to be friends with you. ✧  I’m unsure what to think of you. ✧ I’m unsure how I feel about you. ✧ You are my friend. ✧ You are my best friend. ✧ You are my mentor. ✧ I look up to you. ✧ I respect you. ✧ You are my hero. ✧ You inspire me. ✧ You are my enemy. ✧ You make me happy. ✧ I want to protect you. ✧ I would fight by your side. ✧ I consider you an equal. ✧ I think you are beneath me. ✧ I think you are above me. ✧ I would lie for you. ✧ I would lie to you. ✧ I would sleep with you. ✧ I would sleep by your side. ✧ I would hug you. ✧ I would kiss you. ✧ You are family to me. ✧ I would die for you. ✧ I would kill for you. ✧ I would trust you with my life. ✧ I would trust you with my most precious belonging. ✧ I would trust you with a secret. ✧ I would trust you with my biggest / darkest secret. ✧ I love you (platonically). ✧ I love you (romantically).

[coruscato]

✧ ed and mike pls and thank -alisgravnil

send me a ✧ and i’ll bold all that apply to your muse.

I would kill you. ✧ I would physically hurt you. ✧ I would attack you unprovoked. ✧ I would manipulate you. ✧ I dislike you. ✧ You annoy me. ✧ You scare me. ✧ You intimidate me. ✧ I hope I intimidate you. ✧ I pity you. ✧ You disgust me. ✧ I hate you. ✧ I’m indifferent toward you. ✧ I’d like to get to know you better. ✧   I’d like to spend more time with you. ✧ I’d like to be friends with you. ✧  I’m unsure what to think of you. ✧ I’m unsure how I feel about you. ✧ You are my friend. ✧ You are my best friend. ✧ You are my mentor. ✧ I look up to you. ✧ I respect you. ✧ You are my hero. ✧ You inspire me. ✧ You are my enemy. ✧ You make me happy. ✧ I want to protect you. ✧ I would fight by your side. ✧ I consider you an equal. ✧ I think you are beneath me. ✧ I think you are above me. ✧ I would lie for you. ✧ I would lie to you. ✧ I would sleep with you. ✧ I would sleep by your side. ✧ I would hug you. ✧ I would kiss you. ✧ You are family to me. ✧ I would die for you. ✧ I would kill for you. ✧ I would trust you with my life. ✧ I would trust you with my most precious belonging. ✧ I would trust you with a secret. ✧ I would trust you with my biggest / darkest secret. ✧ I love you (platonically). ✧ I love you (romantically).

[coruscato]

@alisgravnil​ || random starter for Michael.

“Dearest, you must know that when my calendar days end, your father will certainly send me down to stay with your brother indefinitely, which would be quite the journey for you--so, I say, we make the most of our time now--and that means I need you to trust me on this, can you please?” Edmund looked up at the man with wild golden hair, fluttering his eyelashes at him before sighing wistfully as his eyes took his glow in; whatever he was pushing for, it could wait just a few more seconds...

[coruscato]

@lucilenbxrhxc​ || sc.

“I hadn’t thought it’d be closed.” Maybe he should’ve checked on this before he invited the other here--though given that he forgot Luca was even coming in the first place due to a scheduling mishap...he wasn’t surprised. 

“Um, well,” Edmund turned back to his guest with a smile, tapping his cane on the ground, “I know plenty of other places that will certainly be up to your taste. Why don’t you follow me?”

[coruscato]

[ She sprays Edmund, once, then twice with the water filled spray bottle. Natallia's expression holds no remorse, but it's a little confused. ] Sean sent me. He said it was for... Brexit of 1779? [ American history is not her forte. ]

[ God had not smiled on him today. ]

[ It was already enough of a hassle talking over the finer points of god knows what with Richard for some inconsequential event neither of them particularly wanted to host, or even be at, in the first place, now Belarus--of all people--decided to stick her nose where it wasn’t wanted--with a spray bottle of all things. Who just--? ] 

[ Edmund took a short breath in through his nose, disdain hanging off his features like a well worn shirt. Turning away from his nation ever so slightly to face whatever-her-name-was, he gave her a tight lipped smile. ]

“Really now? I had no idea you lot knew each other.”

[coruscato]

A COMPLETE INTERVIEW OF MY MUSE [ EDMUND ]

TAGGED:  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ TAGGING: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

NAME?

“Dr. Edmund Whitney.”

ARE YOU SINGLE?

“Currently.”

ARE YOU HAPPY?

He chuckles. “Are any of us?”

ARE YOU ANGRY?

“Right now? I don’t think so.”

NINE FACTS –

BIRTH PLACE?

“You expect me to remember that? Somewhere near the Thames, I suppose.”

HAIR COLOR?

With a squint, he glances up. “Which publication is this for again?”

EYE COLOR?

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware it was this kind of interview.” He looked at his watch. BIRTHDAY?

“Um, December 18th. Are you sure you can’t simply Google these?”

MOOD?

“Disappointed.”

GENDER?

“Now, really, do we need this?”

SUMMER OR WINTER?

With a sigh, he rolls his eyes. “Winter.”

MORNING OR AFTERNOON?

“Morning. Things are quieter.”

EIGHT THINGS ABOUT YOUR LOVE LIFE? –

ARE YOU IN LOVE?

He shrugs, crossing his legs. “Not sure what that feels like anymore.”

DO YOU BELIEVE IN LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT?

“Never have.”

WHO ENDED YOUR LAST RELATIONSHIP?

“Ah--” he looked off to the side, “I can’t quite remember. I don’t think I had much of a last relationship, truth be told. I suppose it ended with the night.”

HAVE YOU EVER BROKEN SOMEONE’S HEART?

“Most likely.”

ARE YOU AFRAID OF COMMITMENTS?

“Ha, these questions have certainly taken a different tone, haven’t they?”

HAVE YOU HUGGED SOMEONE WITHIN THE LAST WEEK?

“I’ve been hugged, does that count?”

HAVE YOU EVER HAD A SECRET ADMIRER?

“I’m sure I have.”

HAVE YOU EVER BROKEN YOUR OWN HEART?

“Um. Well, that’s a bit personal, don’t you think?”

SIX CHOICES –

LOVE OR LUST?

“Love, I suppose, but we can’t always have that in this day and age, now can we?”

LEMONADE OR ICED TEA?

“Lemonade if I had to choose.”

CATS OR DOGS?

“Cats, they’re darling little things, aren’t they?”

A FEW BEST FRIENDS OR MANY REGULAR FRIENDS?

“It won’t do you much good if you have no one to confide in.”

A WILD NIGHT OUT OR ROMANTIC NIGHT IN?

“Depends on who it’s with, doesn’t it.”

DAY OR NIGHT?

“Night, I do my best work then.”

FIVE HAVE YOU EVERS –

BEEN CAUGHT SNEAKING OUT?

With a snort, he covers his mouth quickly. “Who hasn’t?”

FALLEN DOWN/UP THE STAIRS?

“My luck does run out occasionally.” He looked up, cocking an eyebrow and pulling out his phone. “You know I actually think Sean saved a video--quite funny after the fact--”

WANTED SOMETHING/SOMEONE SO BADLY IT HURT?

“Uh, I mean, yes? Though I highly doubt we’re thinking about the same thing.”

WANTED TO DISAPPEAR?

“Have you ever worked in politics?”

FOUR PREFERENCES –

SMILE OR EYES?

“Eyes. You know, I know some people with some lovely--” he cleared his throat.

SHORTER OR TALLER?

“Taller.”

INTELLIGENCE OR ATTRACTION?

“Intelligence.”

HOOK-UP OR RELATIONSHIP?

“Mm, hook up, maybe. A relationship would be nice, but I’d have to find someone to tolerate.” He snorted, putting a hand over his lips, “and someone to tolerate me.”

FAMILY –

DO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY GET ALONG?

“I get along with Richard well enough.”

WOULD YOU SAY YOU HAVE A “MESSED UP LIFE”?

“I feel like I should have shot glasses here.”

HAVE YOU EVER RAN AWAY FROM HOME?

“Yes, but not for long. It was dreadfully boring.”

HAVE YOU EVER GOTTEN KICKED OUT?

“Out of what? My home? Who could? Richard? I’d like to see him try.” 

FRIENDS –

DO YOU SECRETLY HATE ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS?

“I don’t think it’s a secret, but there are some idiots who decide to stick around.”

DO YOU CONSIDER ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS TO BE GOOD FRIENDS?

“All of them?” he laughs, “wouldn’t that be nice?”

WHO IS YOUR BEST FRIEND?

“Um.” He looked off to the side, biting the inside of his lip. “I don’t know. Sean or Rene, maybe; I suppose I do talk to them often enough.”

WHO KNOWS EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU?

“Rene, unfortunately.”

[coruscato]

@wietkoning cont. from (x).

‘I’ve never been embarrassed in my whole entire life.’

“Right, never. Alright. And just what was last Thursday about then?”

[coruscato]

Fill in the below categories with 3-5 things that your character can be identified by.

EMOTIONS / FEELINGS :

existential melancholy long-suffering perseverance child like curiosity burning passion

COLORS :

blood red the tan of shaved wood smoky grey a dull pale blue

CLOTHING :

fall colored sweaters over neutral dress shirts and bold ties a tan brown or dark grey overcoat sleek, ornate canes a timeless black umbrella golden pocket watches, chain hanging elegantly from its clip onto a grey vest

OBJECTS :

the grandfather clock ringing soundly through the halls at the hour a stone lion keeping watch at the gates dust-ridden diaries found in an old corner of the attic a car that was meant to be driven fast, hidden away in the garage

VICES / BAD HABITS :

the disconnect between his words and actions building walls where none are needed impulsive words and decisions that bite him in unexpected ways not letting himself rest, physically or mentally

BODY LANGUAGE :

shoulders back, staring straight ahead a hard, guarded expression unsettled energy, fidgeting at inappropriate times a reserved, yet confident stance

AESTHETICS :

loudly buying drinks for the whole bar to celebrate the team’s triumphant win a lone lighthouse diligently shining its light while getting weathered by waves a knife rushing past your ear, hitting the bulls-eye beside you bleeding from the prick of a rose your lover handed you the rain pattering against the windows, drops sticking stubbornly to the glass

SONGS :

Apashe -- Majesty (ft. Wasiu) Fall Out Boy -- Centuries Imagine Dragons -- Whatever It Takes Imagine Dragons -- Natural