#local old man (who is not old at all whatsoever he hasn’t even been born yet) beaten senseless by three ants on the street. 0 survivors

[milimeters-morales]

Miguel: a teenager will find me in every universe to beat my ass six ways to Sunday and disappear mysteriously before i can get my hits in

Miles, Gwen, and Hobie: and it’s our turn

Miguel: i don’t suppose you’d leave me alone for a scooby snack -_-

[famedroleplayarchive]

KANG SUNGHEE is the LEAD RAPPER of UNITY under DIMENSIONS ENTERTAINMENT. He was born on MARCH 5, 1998. He looks a little like HAN JISUNG (HAN) OF STRAY KIDS.

CHARACTER INFORMATION

faceclaim: han jisung (han), member of stray kids

legal name: kang sunghee

stage name: n/a

pronouns: he/him & they/them

birth date: march 5, 1998

hometown: shanghai, china

position: lead rapper and vocal of unity

claims: feature ; feeling - dimensions soloist 2

BIOGRAPHY

triggers: ableism

i.

kang hyejin moves from busan to seoul with the sole intention of attending one of the countries’ best universities. it’s not just anyone who succeeds at getting a spot in the seoul national university, and she does so with praise and honors. her parents are reluctant to let her go, reluctant to allow their youngest daughter to be far from them for such a long time, but they know it’s the best they can do for her, the best future they can offer her. and so hyejin goes, with goals set in mind, with a big hope for what her career is going to become.

things don’t really go as planned.

for the first year, yes, she manages to keep her track record as clean as possible. her grades are high, her academic accomplishments higher, and, in a majorly male field, she manages to succeed. that is, until she meets kim sungki, on her second year at the university. he’s the very stereotype of the men parents warn their daughters against. older but not at all responsible, she falls for his charms, for his looks and for his words, faster than she thought it’d be possible. from there, her studies go downhill. hyejin starts skipping classes, something she had never done, and accepts recklessness into her life without caring for the consequences. she fights with her parents and gets invited to leave university as she stops bothering to attend anything whatsoever. moving in with sungki, hyejin is forced to take odd jobs here and there, but she’s in love – or at least she believes this is love – and that’s all that matters to her.

getting pregnant was not in her plans, but very little things were and they ended up happening anyway. hyejin is scared but excited – sungki seems happy enough for her not to question the glances he’ll throw her way, his reluctance whenever he’s supposed to follow her somewhere. those are all easy to ignore once she falls in love with her baby boy at the first ultrasound consult. she spends months lost in the bubble of happiness she’s created for herself, one that only grows bigger and stronger as soon as sunghee is brought into the world. he’s so small in her arms, even more so in his father’s arms, and hyejin is nothing but content as she lies down on the hospital bed.

the bubble bursts, eventually. at first, it’s when sunghee’s baek-il arrives and he still hasn’t met his grandparents or either of his uncles. alongside that, she notices the way sungki distances himself. she has to ask for him to give their child the time of day, and his fuse gets shorter and shorter. they fight, sunghee’s piercing scream a match for their loud tones as they shout angry words at each other. the frustration only builds and the moments of reprieve are almost non-existent. the bills are, too, much bigger than either of them can pay with their odd jobs, especially with how hyejin can’t work as much because of sunghee. she goes to sleep with tears in her eyes more often than not, exhausted beyond measure, only to be awoken by a fragile child who doesn’t know any better.

it all comes to an end when hyejin wakes up and sungki is nowhere to be found. she thinks to wait until the end of the day to get worried, hoping it’s because he’s found a well paying job, but those thoughts are erased upon she notices the lack of his clothes. every small belong of his is gone, and there’s not a single note left. the father of her child abandons her on a tuesday morning and it takes her until the evening to muster the courage to call her parents.

hyejin’s father as well as one of her brothers drive up to seoul the next morning. there’s not much they can do other than help her pack all the essentials and shove them into the truck of their respective cars. they can’t hide the shock at meeting sunghee, neither of them even being aware of his existence, but much like hyejin, they fall in love immediately with the blabbering child who’s, at the same time, overjoyed and shy, hiding his face on his mother’s neck as she carries him around.

she doesn’t look back as they leave behind all the dreams she’s ever had and the place where she was forced to let them go.

ii.

for the first three years of his life, sunghee spends most of his time with his grandmother.

his uncle owns a bookstore where his mother starts working at once they move to busan. she takes the most shifts out of anyone who works there, her subtle way of trying to compensate for leaving them behind the way she had. it means she has less time with sunghee, but considering they spend their evenings together, the two of them sharing hyejin’s childhood bedroom, she considers the sacrifice worth it.

at first, sunghee is reluctant to let anyone of the family other than his mom to so much as touch him. he’s fussy, which is not something hyejin had expected, since he had always been such a happy and cuddly baby. eventually he takes to his grandmother, who’s filled with so much patience and care for him that it’s inevitable he’d love her as much as she loves him. and happy he is, a small ball of energy that learns how to speak fast and run faster. he babbles, tries to join conversations even when he doesn’t have the words or the understanding for it. sunghee is their sunshine, the most precious aspect of their lives, and hyejin finds that she doesn’t regret her choices as much, not when she has him.

she doesn’t expect to find love again, but she does. this time, it’s by accident. just another client at the bookstore – one that was, admittedly, pretty handsome, in a way that had her and her sister in law whispering as he walks around. when she goes to help him, he has an accent, one that lets her know he’s not from south korea, but he pronounces his words elegantly. hyejin wouldn’t have to be smarter than she is to know he comes from money. she had expected him to treat her flippantly, or at the very least with some form of disdain, but he’s nothing but charming and sweet. he leaves with a promise of coming back.

and coming back he does. conveniently, whenever hyejin is working. he introduces himself to her as yao jiongmin, indeed a rich business man from shanghai, who’s spending a year in busan working at their local office. the more he visits her, the more she’s charmed by him. inevitably, jiongmin invites her out on a date and hyejin is only a little bit reluctant to accept. she’s been down this road before, she knows, but she’s still a romantic at heart and it’s hard to tell him no when he looks at her the way he does.

they fall in love. he doesn’t seem to mind she has a son, even when sunghee spends most of their first meeting hidden behind his mother’s legs and refusing to say a word to the man.

they get married less than a year later. hyejin’s parents, even more so than her, are at first scared that it’s going to be a repeat of sungki. that she’s going to leave only to have her heart broken by this older man. however, there’s some reassurance to be found at the fact that not only is jiongmin accomplished and successful in a way sungki never was, he’s offering marriage, not just a unstable relationship.

yet again, hyejin moves away from her childhood home to a place where her future lays. a different one, yeah, but one she looks forward to nonetheless.

iii.

after being taken care of by his family until his current age of four, sunghee, going by shengxi, is put in kindergarten within months of their move. it’s not hyejin’s first option, but since jiongmin works and her husband had insisted she went back to studying, she’d rather have her son learning how to socialize than to keep him at home with people looking after him. it’s expected the sunghee would feel reluctant to speak to others at first, especially since he barely knows the language, but jiongmin had assured her they’d find a place where at least one of the carers spoke korean, to make the language learning easier to him.

still, months pass and sunghee retreats further into himself. hyejin’s told about it but is reassured that it’s normal behavior and he’ll feel more comfortable once communicating becomes easier to him. when sunghee’s fifth birthday comes and goes and his behavior doesn’t seem to change, concerns are raised. not only he refuses to socialize with others around him, he takes to playing with himself completely, quickly getting tired of everything he starts, and seems to have lost some of the skills he had already learned by the time they moved to shanghai. at home, he’s impulsive and prone to random bursts of emotions that leave both hyejin and jiongmin confused. after one too many days of sunghee playing silently with one single toy, to the point of crying whenever it’s taken away from him, the caretakers suggest hyejin takes him to see a specialized doctor. with jiongmin busy as he always is during the day, hyejin has no other option but to take her month old daughter with her.

terrified that there’s something wrong with her child, hyejin watches as the doctor speaks to sunghee quietly, having handed him some crayons and papers that he happily draws on. his answers are short hums, as if he’s only half paying attention to the woman, who’s kind to him. it takes a couple of exams and a few more visits to the doctor for a diagnosis to be offered. jiongmin is with her when they are told sunghee most likely has both adhd and asd. they are reassured of their concerns when it comes to whether those are consequences of how he was raised, as well as the best course of treatment. since he’s young, they are told, sunghee can test out the best course of treatment in order to make life as easy for him to deal with as possible, and that he’ll grow up well, especially if his parents try their best to be supportive of him.

as it’s suggested, sunghee tries out several different types of therapies and therapists until they find one that is just right for him, one that helps with the vast majority of the symptoms. slowly, he goes back to speaking, learning mandarin and shanghainese with as much ease as he had learned korean. he regains the basic skills he had started losing, learns mechanisms to better handle his emotions as well as conversations and social interactions. sunghee had surprisingly taken to his sister well and, when his brother is born, their connection comes even faster. he’s deeply attached to both his siblings, working the role of the older brother like it was meant for him. with other kids and strangers, his reluctance to get close is visible and transparent, and he still struggles with making friends, but he learns way to make it easier.

music helps. it’s a suggestion by one of the therapists, that maybe learning an instrument will be good to him. there’s half the chance that sunghee won’t be interested at all and, thus, it would be a pointless pursuit, but they can try. he’s given a handful of options, paths he can follow, instruments to choose. they are surprised when he picks the guzheng, even more so when he takes to it as if he was born to do it. they were warned of the possibility of hyperfixation to a level of it being unhealthy to him, but sunghee practices it because he loves it and stops when he must. it’s added to his square routine, eventually joined by the liuqin as well as the guitar.

iv.

sunghee grows as he’s supposed to, the mechanisms from therapy indeed making life that bit easier to him, to the point where he’s back to being the joyful child he was as a baby. as much support as he’s given, hyejin doesn’t fail to notice when jiongmin grows distant from sunghee. there are two younger children for him to care about – kids he wasn’t even supposed to have, in the first place, but money hadn’t been an issue and there’s a lot you can get away with when you have as much as he does – so hyejin tries not to mind. she knows sunghee is everything jiongmin does not want for an heir, starting from his average grades. every moment he should spend studying is instead spent practicing, or with his siblings. jiongmin tries to forbid sunghee from playing his instruments until his grades are better but hyejin sets her foot down and reminds him that sunghee needs it more than he needs grades.

it’s a given that sunghee is not in the run to be the future owner of the family’s real estate business. even he notices it, at one point, how the expectations slowly go from him to his younger brother, even when the boy is nothing but a small child. having become fiercely protective of both his siblings, sunghee reaches the point of fighting with his step father about it when he’s only ten, which serves to only push them further away from each other. hyejin watches not knowing what to do, refusing to fight her husband or her child over this and knowing she’d have to eventually suffer the consequences of this choice.

the strained relationship with his step father has sunghee finding forms of escapism. he’s already prone to those but he ends up searching for more, ones that go beyond the instruments he plays and the anime he watches relentlessly. it’s how sunghee stumbles upon kpop. inevitably being raised tri-lingual, sunghee easily learns what to search for. decipher’s replay is one of the first music videos he watches and from there he looks further and further, until he’s using his mother’s credit card to buy albums from the most various kpop groups and artists. he goes from kpop to korean hip hop artists and from there to western hip hop. sunghee falls in love with all of those, some more than the others, but all of them in their own way.

      v.

up until then, he had been floating, knowing there wasn’t anything in particular he wishes to do with his life eventually other than be around for his siblings and playing his instruments. even though the thought has crossed his mind in the past, auditioning for companies comes as a most definitely impulsive decision.

the summer after sunghee turns fourteen, he sees a few announcements for auditions to the big three companies that would be happening in shanghai. it doesn’t matter that he is perhaps too young for it because he’s already set on going. sunghee can’t walk in without someone responsible and he knows very well that neither of his parents would want to accompany him. instead, sunghee elects the help of an older cousin, someone who understands sunghee’s passion for music better than anyone else. and off he goes, his cousin driving him to and from the auditions, taking the guzheng, the liuqin and the guitar with him because sunghee knows he’d need to have something extra to offer. he tries for bc and gold star first, rapping in both his auditions. even though there is some degree of them being impressed with his skills in all three instruments and his not at all bad rapping, bc doesn’t think his visuals were quite up to their standards and gold star fails at finding any type of star power in him. discouraged, sunghee stills goes to dimensions’ audition. neither of the facts that had stopped him from joining bc and gold star come up, and dimensions seems interested enough in his rapping and his skills with instruments to give him a chance.

sunghee is… surprised, to say the least. as much as he had hoped, he doesn’t expect to actually get in, especially after being easily dismissed by the two companies before dimensions. he’s overjoyed but his happiness simmers when he realizes this mean he’s going to have to tell his parents. it’s inevitable, he had known that, if by some miracle he had gotten in, he’d have to talk to them about it.

hyejin says no, as sunghee knew she would. jiongmin says nothing, as sunghee had also known he would, yet sunghee reckons his step father disapproves of his decision, much like he’d have disapproved of anything that didn’t align exactly with the expectations jiongmin has of him. sunghee cries, sobs, begs, for once letting go of all the restraint he had to learn, and throws the mother of all tempter tantrums. it’s not even purposeful – sunghee is not used to be told no because there’s not much he asks for in the first place, his parents jumping in to give him what he needs before he so much as has to think about it.

there’s only so much of her son crying that hyejin can take and, after an entire day of it, she goes from no to how are we going to do this? if jiongmin disapproves, he doesn’t voice his opinion and sunghee can’t read his expressions or understand the nuances of his tone when he speaks to know the overall idea of what his step father is thinking. hyejin calls sunghee’s doctors – that had since been reduced from a team to only two – and is reassured that, wherever he goes, he can still consult with them through video and phone calls. they also let her know that, if he needs someone in person, there are always people they can recommend who would be happy to treat him.

another concern that arises is who sunghee is going to stay with, as hyejin refuses to let him live in a dorm with people he doesn’t know. it’s already going to be stressful enough as it is, she knows, and if he’s set on doing this, she doesn’t want it to be worse. she calls her brother, the one who had moved to seoul only five years prior, and he’s more than eager to receive sunghee for as long as he needs to stay around.

just like that, the matter is resolved. sunghee cries before he leaves, arms wrapped tightly around his siblings. the love he has for them is not one he understands, and there’s a never ending ache in his heart when he realizes that he’s not going to be able to see them as often as he’d like to. the hug he gets from his step-father doesn’t last long and that on itself manages to break his heart a bit. his mother flies with him to seoul, sticks around for almost two weeks when she originally was only going in order to sign the papers for his contract. sunghee cries the hardest when she leaves as he’s still in the process of getting settled and everything still feels foreign enough that it terrifies him a lot.

vi.

training is… it’s hard. sunghee is thrown completely out of his axis and the only saving grace is that trainee life has a routine even more strict than the one he had in the past. it still takes him a while to adjust to it and, wasn’t for his uncle and aunt, he knows it would’ve been impossible for him to settle properly. within the first month sunghee manages to make three different trainers mad at him, for various reasons, and words are thrown at him that sunghee is glad he doesn’t understand. after the third time, his aunt convinces sunghee to be honest to the company about his diagnosis. the boy is reluctant because he doesn’t want to either be defined by it or have them going easy on him because of it, but she insists that they are going to need to find out eventually.

his aunt goes with him when he tells them and whereas he’s worried they might kick him out because of it, he’s only asked about his treatment. the woman does most of the talking, explaining the details of his diagnosis and insisting that none of them make it impossible for sunghee to be a good trainee, but that there are still things to be taken into consideration with their treatment of him.

notes are taken and given to his trainers. the majority of them change the way they treat him, in subtle ways that sunghee doesn’t even notice beyond his trainee life becoming slightly easier to deal with. whoever doesn’t, at least avoids yelling at him as much as they do everybody else. it helps that sunghee is genuinely dedicated to what he’s doing. on his worst days, he’s not willing to talk much and his attention span is even more out of it than usual, but sunghee still tries. for once he’s allowed himself to have a dream, to hope for something, to want to become better at things he hadn’t even thought about before, and he puts in the necessary effort.

vii.

sunghee doesn’t expect to be offered a spot in unity when he does. he’s barely turned seventeen and he knows there are other trainees who are better than him, especially when it comes to dancing. definitely not one to question a decision that will be beneficial to him, sunghee takes it gladly. he’s even more surprised when they offer for him to contribute with the lyrics for unity’s debut song, the 7th sense. sunghee is thrilled to be able to do something he loves, to be given opportunities when he thought he wouldn’t get them at all.

an introvert at heart, the actual debut is a bigger challenge than what he had expected but one he faces head high. surrounded by members he’s known long enough to feel comfortable, sunghee allows for his excitable personality to shine through whenever unity attends variety shows and he gains a considerable fanbase because of that.

overall, sunghee is content with where unity is. their ever growing fanbase and international appeal terrifies him a bit, as none of them are certain of what can come from it.

[peckhampeculiar]

All hands on decks

TENDAI CHAGWEDA ACHIEVED HER DREAM OF BECOMING A DJ – AND NOW SHE’S ALL ABOUT HELPING OTHERS DO THE SAME. 

The inspiring Peckham resident explains why she’s passionate about working with those who might struggle to access the DJ world otherwise

WORDS: EMMA FINAMORE PHOTO: LIMA CHARLIE

Many people consider their career mission over once they reach their dream job. But Tendai Chagweda isn’t like most people. The Peckham-born and raised DJ achieved her goal – being able to play music to other people for a living – and has now turned her hand to helping others achieve their own DJ dreams too.

Her Inspiring DJs school offers a wide range of workshops and classes, to help teach an even wider range of people all sorts of skills related to DJing. Through sessions at Mountview theatre academy and Peckham Levels, as well as classes in and around south London and up in Dalston, Tendai teaches everything from the basics on the decks, to how to operate as a professional DJ. Her students range from six to 50 years old.

It seems apt that Tendai is helping people achieve their musical ambitions in Peckham, having lived here her whole life – on Sumner Road – and beginning her DJ career in south London in 2007, playing sets at places like The Cube in Camberwell, and clubs in Streatham and London Bridge, spinning her beloved South African house music under her moniker, Petite DJ.

Now she’s DJed at places like the Shard, but it was here in Peckham that her love for music began.

“I was always raving; Lazerdrome in Peckham was my first experience of that,” she recalls, of the now-closed nightclub at the top of Rye Lane. Lazerdrome was open from 1988 to 2005, playing host to drum ’n’ bass, house, garage and jungle parties, as well as regular club night Innersense and DJ sets from the likes of Kemistry & Storm – who were huge in the ’90s UK drum ’n’ bass scene.

“I used to grab the mic, basically. Me and my girls who all grew up in Peckham were the ‘Dancehall Massive’,” Tendai laughs, remembering a chant she and her friends would shout. “We’d get the mic from the famous DJs.”

When a good friend who was also from Peckham offered to teach her to man the decks herself – rather than wait for someone to do it for her – Tendai was unsure at first.

“I wanted to be front of stage. Back then it was all about the person on the mic,” she says. “I wanted to be out there.”

She eventually changed her mind though and took some DJ courses, and although she gained the technical abilities required, she says she felt completely on her own as soon as the classes were over, with no guidance on how to use her new skills: “They took my money and then said, ‘Bye’. There was no aftercare whatsoever.”

Even though Tendai went on to establish herself as a DJ for clubs and events, specialising in South African house and even being interviewed on BBC World News about the rise of African house music in London, she never forgot that feeling of being left to fend for herself.

That’s what drove her to establish Inspiring DJs in 2016, bringing on board another impressive teacher – the award-winning DJ Smasherelly, who specialises in scratch and drop classes and is the tour DJ for big names like Stefflon Don and Estelle.

The school held its first classes at the PemPeople shop on Peckham High Street in November 2017 – “Nicholas [Okwulu] was the first person to believe in me,” Tendai smiles – and one of the first enquiries that came through was from the mother of an autistic child.

“He was an absolute pleasure,” says Tendai. “These people are excluded from society, but they have super powers! I refuse to call them ‘disabilities’. I’ve been attracting loads of people with super powers ever since.”

As well as a range of ages, Inspiring DJs is opening up the DJ world to those who might struggle to access it otherwise: people with ADHD, autism and dyslexia, as well as those from pupil referral units and foster care. What many teachers might see as hurdles in their pupils, Tendai embraces as strengths.

“For them, they love the encouragement and they love the autonomy,” she says of students with autism or ADHD. “Once I’ve taught them the basics, I just let them get creative without direction, but with lots of encouragement and motivation. It’s not difficult though because they genuinely have a super power, they get it [DJing] in a completely different way and style to other people. When I try to explain things to people without those super powers, they often overthink it, bring in too much logic.

“For some of the mums it’s a breath of fresh air seeing their children use their creativity in a way that is encouraged. It’s beautiful when you gain the trust of the mums. If they leave to go do their own thing, I record classes so they can see what we’ve done – it’s great when you see the parent looking back on what their child has achieved, and they’re like, ‘That’s my child!’

“I remember one mum [during a class delivered to foster care providers] just came up and hugged me – I guess she’d never seen her child in that capacity, being so enthusiastic.”

Working with young people from pupil referral units has been equally as revelatory. “They said they’ve never seen the kids so engaged ever,” says Tendai. “One of the kids kept on stopping us to ask when we were going to be doing it in schools. To hear they’d never been that engaged before, that touched my soul.”

Tendai describes how quickly pupils can pick up DJ skills. “One of the children, I call him my little David Rodigan [a reference to the iconic reggae and dancehall DJ] – within half an hour he was mixing, he’d never touched decks before,” she says. She also talks about how DJing is becoming more popular within schools: it’s starting to be taken seriously as a career choice.

This is where the other side of Inspiring DJs comes in: offering the “soft skills” required to build a business as a working DJ. Tendai offers coaching sessions for over-16s at offices she has in Vauxhall’s impressive Tintagel House, helping them plan for the future. “I find out what their dreams are, and teach them to dream big,” she says. “I basically do life-coaching with them, asking them, ‘Who are your dream promoters?’ and ‘What’s your idea of a dream salary?’”

Tendai tells how one of her students has gone on to work with some of his dream people in different capacities – proof that her holistic approach to DJ training really works.

Arguably, her success as a teacher is also down to the fact that she loves music. When talking about South African house, that passion really shines through: “A dream set for me would be sort of ancestral house – a lot of drums and chanting. A lot of the time the music we’re listening to, we don’t have a clue what they’re saying, but the beat and the rhythm is so entrancing. It’s hard to explain, but it’s when people just become one. No one knows what they’re saying but everyone feels it.”

This passion and emotion comes through in her selections and mixes: a fan got in touch with Tendai just a few days before we meet, enthusing about a mix CD she’d given them years earlier.

It’s an enthusiasm Tendai wants to pass on to everyone: as well as one-to-one classes, Inspiring DJs offers group sessions (for example parent and child, groups of friends) as well as fun sessions for birthdays and team away-days for local businesses.

Brimming with ideas, she talks about recent Netflix series The Umbrella Academy, and how she’s creating a DJ version of this in south London, acting as a platform to help her students get bookings. Southwark Council has already booked Inspiring DJs to play at an event, and instead of Petite DJ, it’ll be her young protégés taking to the decks.

She says real-life jobs like this will help them become better DJs, completing their training in the real world: “They’ll become more engaged, knowing what to play and how to keep their audience engaged.”

All this activity hasn’t gone unnoticed. Last year Tendai was nominated for Female Personality of the Year at the Zimbabwe Achievers Awards, a celebration of talent, art, business, expression and achievement in the Zimbabwean community (Tendai’s roots are in Zimbabwe), and she was even invited to Downing Street to talk to the prime minister’s business adviser about her work in local communities.

“The bread of that conversation was all about university,” she remembers of the Downing Street meeting. “But I said, ‘Sorry I’ve just got to interject here, I’m from the inner city, I personally haven’t gone to uni.’

“It’s about getting them to understand that not everyone wants to go to uni and not everyone can afford to go to uni, but they’ve still got the ability to do whatever they want.”

Tendai is living proof of this. She has achieved her DJ dream without a degree, and also teaches social media at London South Bank University.

“I don’t have a degree or any experience in universities, but I can still do it,” she says, reflecting the can-do, sky’s-the-limit ethos of Inspiring DJs. To all aspiring DJs out there, she says: “Come on down, we’ll show you the way.”

[performingtheartsrp]

We received a fantastic application for Joe Hart, and we’re truly excited to welcome Sil into our family. Please take a moment to go over the New Member Checklist, and send in your account within 24 hours. 

OOC:

NAME: Sil

PREFERRED PRONOUNS: They/them

AGE: 19

TIMEZONE: GMT +2:00

ACTIVITY LEVEL (1-10): 5-7/10, because I work a few days a month and am a full-time university student.

OLD ROLEPLAY ACCOUNTS: RFP

ANYTHING ELSE: RFP

IC:

CHARACTER’S NAME: Joseph Abraham Hart, Jr.

CHARACTER’S BIRTHDAY: 28th of May, 1992

CHARACTER’S SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Bisexual, but gravitates more towards women (is not aware of his attraction towards men yet)

SHIPS: Joe/Quinn, Joe/female, Joe/chemistry

ANTI-SHIPS: Joe/no chemistry

MIDGAME SHIPS: Joe/Quinn, Joe/Mercedes, Joe/Kurt, Joe/Blaine (I have more than two, sorry)

CHARACTER TWEETS:  

@thatjoehart: I still cannot believe the Lord has blessed me to play Jesús Martinez in the new ABC series #PerformingTheArts!

@thatjoehart: I suppose that the crayon lines on my wall made by my little brother could be considered modern art…

@ thatjoehart: “How blessed is he who considers the helpless; the Lord will deliver him in a day of trouble.” Getting this tattooed tomorrow!

BIOGRAPHY:

On the 28th of May, 1992 a little baby boy was born in Sumiton, Alabama. He was baptized Joseph Abraham Hart, Jr. and was the first son of Joseph Hart, Sr. and his wife, Rebecca. His parents were both 21 years old when they had him and had both just completed their missionary training. That is why the young family didn’t stay in Alabama for long. When he was only six months old, his parents up and left for Congo where they lived for two years to preach the gospel. There, his little sister Sarah was born just before they packed up and moved again.

In the beginning of the year 1995, they left Congo to go to Brazil. He and his family lived there for five years and welcomed three new children into the family: in January of 1996 his brother Elijah and in December of that same year, his second brother Solomon was born. In 1999, his mother gave birth to his new sister, Ruth. Joe, as he was called by his parents to avoid confusion, loved Brazil. He loved his friends and soaked up the Portuguese language like a sponge. He became as fluent as his friends and helped his father translate his sermons from the time he was six. He also acted out the Bible stories his father told the people of the villages and that is when the seed for his love for acting was planted. He continued to do this for several years and got increasingly better at it. He is still fluent in Portuguese to this day, but that isn’t the only language he learned throughout his childhood because soon, they’d move again.

He considered Brazil his home until he was seven. Then he was told they had to go again, that his parents were to go to India. He had cried silently when they left their village, the village he had always known as home. His little sister Sarah was upset too, so his father reprimanded him. He was a boy; he wasn’t supposed to cry. He was supposed to be strong and be there for his younger siblings. He had to make them feel safe, so he dried his tears and did what he was told. “Thou shall not disobey your parents” is what the Bible says, so that is what Joe did.

His time in India ended up being quite interesting as well. His family lived there from March of 2000 until May of 2002. Joe learned quite a bit of Hindi in his time there but he didn’t make friends that easily. He knew that any day, they could move again. He knew that the attachment would only lead to heartache. Instead he became more focused on his faith, which honestly was the only constant in his life. He had always just gone along with what his parents said, the words they quoted at him. When he was nine, he started to read the Bible for himself, making notes and writing down his interpretations in a little brown notebook. It took him until he was twelve to finish the Bible and then he started again, rewriting and correcting his notes.

When he was twelve and read the last page of the Bible he was in a completely different place than when he read the first page of said book. He was in Chile now and they were packing up to move back to Alabama. He now had two more brothers, named Isaac and Jeremiah who were twins and about a year old. His parents had gotten weary of the travelling and wanted a quiet life back at home in Alabama. Joe wasn’t sure what to make of it. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to move back. He’d hoped they’d go back to Brazil and this America which his parents spoke so fondly of, he had absolutely no affinity for whatsoever.

His father became a door-to-door Bible salesman and his family could barely make ends meet. His mother was a housewife and cared for Joe and his six siblings, but it weighed heavily on her. Normally, his father was around to help but now, he was on the road six days of the week. That is why Joe stepped up and helped his mother out with the children. He did the preparations for dinner, he changed diapers, potty-trained the boys, disciplined his siblings when necessary and gave them the necessary religious guidance they needed. He also did pretty much all the ‘dad’ stuff. He went fishing with his siblings, taught them how to throw a ball and made his little sisters feel like princesses. He started caring a little less for his siblings when he went to a public high school for the first time, when he was around 16. He was tired of being locked away in his house. He wanted to make some friends, get a taste of what life was like and boy, what a taste he got.

During the first day of his sophomore year, which was his first school day, he walked around with his mouth agape. He couldn’t believe how some boys and girls were openly kissing (read: making out!), how short the skirts of certain girls were and how low cut tops were. He couldn’t believe the curse words he heard and how so many people took the Lord’s name in vain. He almost didn’t want to go back to that place again, that place full of sinners! He talked it over with his father, over the phone, who told him Jesus preferred the company of sinners for a reason. That did change his mind and he decided to go back. He still considers that to be the best decision of his life.

He went back and discovered that those people he had gaped at, that he had prayed for so they would not go to hell were not all that bad. They may not all believe the same things he believed, but they were kind, giving and open to him. His best friend, Alex, taught him how to play the guitar and another classmate, Lisa always saved a seat for him in the classes they shared together. The three of them became inseparable until the end of Senior year. The trio discovered that they had a common interest in acting and joined the afterschool drama club. They put on a few plays and even a self-made musical.

Joe wasn’t aware of it, but he was the best student in the drama club. His teacher approached him though, telling him to take acting classes. When Joe explained his family’s financial situation, the teacher offered to teach him privately for free. He taught him how to sing and act and laid the foundation that would eventually lead Joe to Los Angeles because now, Joe had a very clear goal in life. He wanted to act and perform.

After senior year, Joe started working as a cashier in a local grocery store. He was intelligent but had not gotten a scholarship and there was simply no money for college. He had a plan though. He’d save up enough money to pay for a plane ticket to Los Angeles and to make sure he could live off his savings for a few weeks. He trusted that the Lord would care for him and would lead him to where he was supposed to go.

It broke his heart to leave his family behind and move to Los Angeles but he felt that he had to do it, that there was something great waiting for him. His parents told him to follow his heart and what the Spirit guided him to do. They had once been risk takers and travelers too, and they loved that their eighteen-year-old son was so much like them.

His first months in Los Angeles were tough. There were nights where he had no place to sleep and days that he didn’t eat but he auditioned for everything he could… He prayed three times a day, a practice that kept him going. He was about to give up though, tired of the rejection and the emptiness of his existence… and then it happened. He landed his first role in a Christian movie. He played a son of Noah in a movie aimed at children, to explain to them the story of The Ark. He worked for the same Christian movie company until about two months ago. It allowed him to make a name for himself as a Christian actor and it paid enough so he could rent an apartment with three other Christian guys he knew from church.

It was one of those friends who told him that there was a chance to audition for a part in a mainstream TV series. It was called Performing the Arts and considering they were looking for an actor who could sing as well, Joe would be a perfect fit. Joe decided to just give it a try, not thinking that he’d land anything. He couldn’t believe it when he was cast as Jesús Martinez. He almost cried when he got the call to tell him that he’d gotten the role of Jesús Martinez, but not for the reasons you might think. He was afraid. He would be playing a character who was openly bisexual and the child of a lesbian. He didn’t know how that was going to go over with his fans and family. He wasn’t even sure how he felt about it! He’d always seen homosexuality in all its forms as impure and against God. How was he going to play this character in an honest and true fashion? What would he do if the script told him to do something that he considered immoral, such as kissing a man? He could have declined it; he knew that but the same feeling that he got about going to Los Angeles came over him. He had to do it.

This decision had some consequences though. His father hasn’t spoken to him since he found out and the Christian movie producer he worked for made it very clear that he will never star in another film of theirs again. Everything is riding on this role now. Joe must make sure that this role makes it possible for him to break into the mainstream entertainment business because where he came from has nothing more to offer him…

YOUR CHARACTER’S HEAD CANON FOR THEIR CHARACTER: Joe’s head canon for Jesús is that he is a great dancer, in addition to being a great musician. He has always hidden behind his guitar because it makes him feel safe but also because dancing was something his father disapproved of. He saw it as too feminine and not as something that his son should be doing. When he’d been caught trying to pirouette when he was ten years old, his father had made him feel so embarrassed that he hasn’t danced since that moment. At least not with the door unlocked. He dances every day, before and after school in his room and has gotten very good at it. Joe hopes that one of the other characters in the series will stumble upon Jesús dancing and convince him to take lessons and develop his talent more.

[gracewithducks]

“Here I stand. I can do no other.” - Martin Luther (Ephesians 2:1-10)

Friends, I’m going to bend the rules a bit this week. We’ve been spending this season with modern saints, with men and women of faith who’ve lived within the last century… but this week, I’m going to bend that definition just a bit: because this week is the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, and really, how often do we get a chance to mark that occasion? (By my count, only once every 500 years or so…!)

 And so I’d like, today, to take a little time to talk about the man who started it all: Martin Luther.

 Martin Luther reminds me, in a lot of ways, of John Wesley, even though the two men lived two centuries apart. Just like John, who didn’t set out to split the church or to start a new one – Luther never dreamed of splitting apart the church he’d grown up in and served and loved. But Luther, like Wesley later, Luther loved the church too much to leave it as it was; he loved the church, so he wanted to make it better. And just like John Wesley, Martin Luther didn’t always get it right… but both men did the best they could, and both men preached and proclaimed and put their trust in the unfailing grace of God.

 Martin was born into a hardworking German family at the end of the fifteenth century. As he was the oldest son of several children, Martin’s father had high hopes for Martin; he longed for his boy to become a great lawyer, and worked to get him the education to make it possible. Martin followed his father’s plan all the way to law school, but he quickly dropped out. He didn’t like the way that laws could be interpreted and even bent to fit different situations and motives;

instead, he was searching for certainty, for somewhere solid and unshifting where he might stand. So Luther studied theology and philosophy, and increasingly he found himself turning to the scriptures, where God’s true self was most fully revealed.

 Then one evening, during a thunderstorm, Martin narrowly escaped being struck by lightning. He cried out, in that moment, “Help! Saint Anna, I will become a monk!” In that desperate cry, Martin felt he’d made a vow he couldn’t break. So, with the weight of his father’s disappointment and, though he seemed to carry his own sadness as well, Luther nevertheless started his training in the church.

 This was one of his low periods. Grieving the deaths of two close friends, feeling trapped in his calling, Martin spent hours and hours in prayer and fasting and confession. He genuinely feared for his own immortal soul, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t help fearing that it would never be enough. Even when he went on to be a professor of theology, it still didn’t feel like enough. Martin would later say, “I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of him the jailer and hangman of my poor soul.”

 But through his teaching and lectures on the scriptures, Luther started to discover a new kind of good news. He started reading scriptures, like the one we heard this morning: “You were dead through trespasses and sins… but God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us… made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him… For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” This, for Luther, really was good news, and it breathed new life into him: the promise that he wasn’t saved by his own good works, by anything he did or didn’t do; he was saved by God’s gift of new life through Christ. And Luther became convinced that the church had lost sight of this true, central tenet of the faith: that we are made righteous, that we are justified, forgiven, made right with God, by faith in God’s grace alone. There was nothing to be proven, earned, or deserved: simply God’s gift, which we by faith receive. This was completely lifegiving for Martin: instead of an angry God just looking for a reason to damn him to hell, he found a loving God, a forgiving God, extending a hand of forgiveness, freely offered by grace, received by faith and nothing else.

 Luther started teaching this new, old message, that salvation is God’s gift, which we cannot earn but receive by grace. And the more he came to believe it, the more he started to worry that the church itself wasn’t just muddying the message but was actually leading people astray.

 And this is where it gets interesting. Because around this time, a man named Johann Tetzel came to town. Johann Tetzel was a friar and a papal commissioner for indulgences, and he was sent to Germany in order to sell indulgences to raise money to rebuild St. Peter’s Basilica back in Rome.

 So let’s talk about indulgences. Basically, the idea behind an indulgence is –        if you give money to the church, your sins will be forgiven. Or you can also give money to the church, on behalf of your loved ones who’ve died, in order to help them get into heaven. It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the basic idea: you can buy God’s good will, just like you could with any other governor or judge or king.

 And you can imagine, I think, why Martin Luther would have a problem with this idea. He started to question the whole idea of indulgences, because it was contrary to his understanding of God’s grace. And he was concerned that the church was leading people into error, that the church was offering false hope and reassurances of salvation – which was something God alone could give.

 What’s more, Martin said, what’s more is that this whole practice of selling indulgences tended to take advantage of the poorest and most desperate people. It’s not right, he said, for the pope, a man who has incredible wealth and resources at his disposal, it’s not right for the pope to ask for the poor believers to send him money to rebuild his church.

 Luther wrote ninety-five theses, ninety-five arguments talking about salvation through faith and questioning the sale of indulgences, and he sent them to his bishop – but received no reply. He probably wasn’t surprised; he’d written and shared other theses in the past, and created barely a ripple in the theological world. So when, on October 31, 1517, he posted a copy of his 95 theses on the door of the local church – where they could be seen and read by anyone, and where many would pass by the very next day for All Saints’ worship – when he posted his theses on the door, he probably went home expecting nothing much to happen.

 Instead, the entire church was shaken to the core. Copies of Martin’s theses were sent throughout the world; he grew in fame and influence, as more and more people found his words to ring with truth. But Luther was playing with fire here, because he threatened the power of the pope as well as the flow of funding into Rome… and by questioning the right of the pope to sell indulgences, he’s seen as an enemy of the entire Roman Catholic Church.

 Martin Luther was put on trial, where he refused to take back or change what he’d written. As a result, he was excommunicated, turned into a fugitive, a man who was literally wanted, dead or alive. Luther escaped; he survived, and this was the beginning of a rift in the Christian church in the West. It was the beginning of the Reformation, a period when the Roman Catholic Church would be reformed, but for many, it was too little, too late, and a new Protestant kind of Christianity began.

 Martin didn’t set out to split the church. He never imagined the impact his theses would have – and he certainly didn’t dream that today, five hundred years later, Christianity would have fractured and fragmented to the degree that it has. And I think we can’t properly observe this anniversary without pausing to recognize that the legacy of the Reformation hasn’t always been a good one: that religious wars, on small scales and big ones, wars among Christians ourselves, have hurt people, broken families, and cost lives over the years.

 Luther intended none of that. For him, this struggle was a much more personal one: for him, it was a question of the truth of the gospel – one that, as he knew very personally, had the power either to increase a person’s burden or to set them free. And for him, too, this was a question of justice: whether the church existed to offer hope and offer help, or whether it was okay for the church, in the name of Christ, to rob from the poor, to take food out of hungry mouths in order for bigger and more beautiful monuments and cathedrals to be built.

 Church buildings are beautiful… we certainly know that firsthand. But one life is far more precious than any building, any pew or sculpture or stained glass window. If this building were on fire, God forbid, but if this building were on fire, I know that we’d forget about the pews and organ pipes in our rush rushing to help each other out – because while this place is lovely, we don’t forget that when God talks about a church, it has nothing to do with a building. We remember what the good news is about, that God so loves – not buildings, but the world, and more than that, the people in it …Jesus didn’t come to save cathedrals; he came to save souls, to show each person on earth just how highly God values them, how highly God values us, each and every one of us.

 Luther found life-giving good news, and he wanted to share it: the good news of Christ who says my yoke is easy and my burden is light; Christ who says I have come to give you life and give it to you in abundance. He was inspired by the prophets, who accused the false teachers of heaping burdens on broken backs in the name of the Lord; he was inspired by the warning: whatsoever you do for the last and the least of these, you do to me.

 Luther didn’t mean to split the church. But he believed that there are some things more important than false unity or falling in line; there are some things worth standing for: grace is worth standing for; justice is worth standing for; truth and good news and mercy matter. “Here I stand,” he is famously rumored to have said; “Here I stand; I can do no other. May God help me.”

 And maybe he didn’t always get it right. And maybe he started something in motion that he never intended. But he did what he could to be true to his faith, to be true to the good news, no matter the cost. And that kind of courage, that kind of faith, the church and the world can always use more of.

 This, friends, is where I’m supposed to make a very smooth and seamless segue from this week’s message into next week’s theme – because next week, on All Saints’ Sunday, our congregation will also be bringing our pledges and giving commitments for the coming year. And believe me, the irony is not lost on me that, during this week 500 years ago, Martin Luther took a stand because he felt the church was demanding too much and stealing money away from people who needed it more – and here I am, about to ask you to consider how much money you’re able to give.

 But here’s the thing: I don’t want you to give more than you can. I, and this church, would never ask you to starve, to get your power turned off, to let your kids cram their feet in too-small shoes with holes in the soles, so that you can give more to the church. And I would certainly never suggest that your salvation or your membership status or the fate of your eternal soul depends on the amount that you give. That’s not God’s intention, and that’s not mine, not now, not ever.

 But, at the same time, it takes money to do ministry. And friends, this church has been doing a lot of ministry. This is a congregation that has always been committed to being in ministry in this community, by supporting and volunteering in our schools, by walking to raise funds to combat hunger, by supporting our homeless neighbors through Alpha House and IHN, by offering a safe space for those battling addictions, and so much more… and this congregation has also always been very conscious that God’s call to love our neighbors doesn’t end in our neighborhood: we support other United Methodist Churches, we support families and artisans working to make a living, and missions and missionaries around the world, and I am so very aware how, every time a need arises, you all rise to the occasion. This is a generous and faithful congregation; we’ve inherited an amazing heritage of compassion and justice – and we are building on those traditions by doing new things, too: new small group ministries, new fellowship events, new and expanded back-to-school fairs and Advent celebrations and family ministries; new staffing models, new leadership positions, new opportunities to serve. And through it all, we are here, week after week, in this time and in this space, coming back again and again to worship together, to pray and study and be nurtured and challenged as we continue to grow in our faith.

 Your staff, your leaders, keep looking for ways that God is calling us to step up, to do more, to give more, to be faithful in new ways. But we can only step it up if all of us are willing to step it up: to give of our time, our energy, our skills, our gifts, our passions, and yes, our financial resources, so that the work that God does here can, not just continue, but continue to grow.

 Martin Luther dedicated himself, and his life, to his faith – reluctantly at first, perhaps, and at times, he faced incredible challenges and difficulties. But he did all he could to be faithful to God, not just for his own sake, but for the sake of the church and for the transformation of the world.

 My hope, my prayer, is that we will do the same: that we will be faithful; that we will proclaim good news; that we will offer compassion; that we will work for justice; that we will speak with courage; that we will give with generosity; and that we will, always, trust in God’s grace.

 Here we stand; we can do no other. May God help us.

  God, today we thank you for the generations who have gone before us, who have wrestled with their faith, and who have proclaimed and preserved the good news for us to receive still today. We thank you that your grace is enough, for them and for us, and – even though we may not always get everything right, all you ask is that we do our best, to be as faithful as we can. Fill us with courage, with compassion, with yearning for justice and with the peace that comes from your grace today. In Christ’s name we pray; amen.