#*kim kardashian voice* it seems like nobody wants to work these days
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fallenight · 1 year ago
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me refreshing a day of fallen night tag daily in hopes of seeing new fanart
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rockinjoeco · 5 years ago
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The Stigma from the Media
In the wake of the tragic suicide of former Love Island presenter Caroline Flack, the topic of mental health has become more vital and sensitive than ever. It shouldn’t have to take a tragic suicide for people to start thinking about how they impact other people’s mental health, but it seems that’s where we are now. I could preach to people about thinking about mental health, etc, but it appears that in the wake of Brexit, those days where a majority of British people are kind appears to be over. If we are to tackle mental health stigma, then we need to get to quite possibly the key architect behind this stigma and influencing a toxic attitude on society; the media.
The media is a very powerful tool in our society and unfortunately it’s been proven so by influencing a poisonous culture on everyone. Is it any coincidence that dumbed down, exploitive outlets like tabloid newspapers are the most-read newspapers during a time when, as proven with Brexit and the election, that maybe a majority of the British public aren’t as intelligent as we’d like them to be. This isn’t an assessment I’ve made because an election result didn’t go the way I wanted. We all know about the problems caused by the Tory government, like many people being forced into poverty because of austerity and universal credit, how a knife crime epidemic started because of police cuts made by the government and we all know the billions of pounds wasted on Brexit, which I’m still yet to hear any logical reason as to why that’s a good idea, leaving the NHS to be underfunded. Yet the conservatives won the election by an overwhelming majority despite the hardship that they’ve caused for a lot of British people. Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party may not had been the formidable challenger to Boris Johnson as many would had liked, but Corbyn would have been more likely to fund the NHS and help those in poverty than Johnson. The theory is still that the media won Boris Johnson the election with a smear campaign against Corbyn, although the antisemitism allegations weren’t a complete fantasy. The media spouted propaganda to manipulate the public rather than being unbiased like any insightful journalist, and unfortunately too many people were gullible to believe some of the wild speculation they reported.
When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle decided to retire from royal duties, there was outrage amongst the public, but there were still people like myself who knew that the media treatment they had received was a major reason behind this. In the wake of Caroline Flack’s death, it’s a tragic summary of their brutal treatment of public figures and how it can seriously harm their mental health. The media relentlessly report on celebrities’ private lives, usually against their will, but for what reason? The private lives of celebrities isn’t exactly need-to-know information and doesn’t boast any insight into anything. It’s just a money-making scheme to sensationalise the most insignificant of events so the gullible and ignorant people can absorb themselves into. What we know now is the harm it does to the people that the news articles are about. Of course those in the media have branded Prince Harry and Meghan Markle selfish for stepping out of the media spotlight as an effort to excuse their abhorrent pursuit of them. They still make excuses for the car crash that killed Princess Diana in Paris back in 1997 and state that she was killed because the driver was intoxicated, but just before the crash, paparazzi were chasing the car that Diana was in and so it must be argued that the media had a part to play in the horrific car crash. The media are so powerful that they can get away with anything, even murder it seems.
We can debate about whether Love Island is a good tv show, and whether newspapers like The Sun, Daily Mirror and Daily Mail are good newspapers, but what must be talked about is whether or not they’re harmful. Let’s not forget that that two Love Island contestants, Sophie Gordon and Mike Thalassitis, also tragically took their own lives last year. Whether Love Island played any part in Caroline Flack’s suicide is up for debate, but surely the TV show should be under more intense scrutiny than ever, especially as questions about whether it damages someone’s mental health. Also last year, a guest on the Jeremy Kyle Show, Steve Dymond, took his own life and the show was cancelled as a result. For Love Island to not only continue, but add a winter series after two of their previous guests committed suicide raises a lot of questions and shows that ITV put ratings before the well-being of their participants. The media has now become more of a weapon, especially looking at Piers Morgan’s merciless vendetta against Meghan Markle and Jameela Jamil, all because he finds them irritating. Not because they’re criminals or because they’ve done any kind of wrongdoing. The phone hacking scandal by the News of the World demonstrates how certain media outlets have become weaponised to intrude public figures for the means of getting a story. Piers Morgan has frequently dismissed mental health awareness by stating that those who speak out are just ‘wallowing in self-pity’ and are ‘virtue-signalling berks’. If anybody else had tweeted that, they’d probably get in trouble at work, maybe even sacked. The fact that ITV haven’t punished Piers Morgan in any way shows contempt from the network as well as Morgan in regards to mental health and this is why there is still so much stigma around mental health. As someone with anxiety and depression, the media, especially ITV, is why I’ve suffered in silence for so many years.
Social media has also become more harmful than ever too. It has become a tool for users to harass and abuse people, especially celebrities. The cancel culture on social media is so brutal. Taylor Swift spoke out about how social media had impacted her when, following a public falling out with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, the hashtag #taylorswiftisover trended for days on Twitter and it was like being told to kill yourself and Twitter users were likening a human being to a TV show and they could just be killed off if they’re not how the public wants them to be like. Meghan Markle has also been victim of savage abuse on social media, as she admitted on ITV last September, and Lily Allen quit Twitter days after the General Election as she said that Twitter ‘gives a voice to the far-right’ and that it is used to ‘spread disinformation and lies’. When celebrities give their political opinion on twitter or if a news story has that sort of thing, the comments on twitter can contain people saying things like ‘stop talking’ or ‘stick to acting’, which is killing democracy in our country. Are celebrities not entitled to an opinion? Why are they less allowed to have their say than any non-famous person on social media? Nobody has to agree with them, but they have the right to an opinion, just like we are.
ITV has always been a poisonous institution, as any company which keeps Piers Morgan in a job would prove to be. Caroline Flack was forced to resign from Love Island following her assault charge on her boyfriend Lewis Burton, but many have pointed out that Ant McPartlin was allowed to keep his job at ITV when he was convicted of drink-driving, arguably a more serious offense than the one that Caroline was charged with. Because of McPartlin’s popularity, you could say that he is untouchable and can get away with almost anything, even if he did cause death by dangerous driving, ITV will still keep him on because he generates ratings, and that’s what comes first with ITV. The moment when Philip Schofield came out as gay on This Morning was a heartwarming moment and was seen as brave and inspiring to express your sexuality in the way Schofield did. Those inspiring moments are too few on ITV, especially looking at the suicides of their participants. Something at that company is wrong and their mental health campaigns seem redundant now. ITV care so much about ratings that it wouldn’t surprise me if they announced an autumn and spring series in addition to Love Island.
Caroline Flack said back in December; ‘if you’re going to be anything, be kind’. It shouldn’t have to take a tragic suicide for people to start being kind, but Britain has become a less tolerant and more crueller country than ever, especially in the wake of Brexit. People are so quick to pounce whenever a celebrity makes any kind of mistake, like all human beings do, and berate them in the most brutal way possible. While it is important to be kind, we still have to be brutally honest on important matters like mental health and we must get to the source of where it stems from; media corporations like tabloid newspapers and ITV. I, like many other people, hope that action is taken against the media for all the harm that they have caused people, because the media have too much blood on their hands.
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queensofrap · 6 years ago
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Cardi B in the March 2019 issue of Harper’s BAZAAR. QUEEN.
Cardi B Opens Up About Her "Rags to Riches" Cinderella Story
When Cardi B visits her favorite nail salon in the Bronx, she enters through a raggedy hallway covered with a rug emblazoned with the image of a $100 bill. The salon, which overlooks a bustling avenue of pizza shops, sports-gear superstores, and boutiques with weaves in 70 colors, is a temple to money, excess, and sexiness, symbolized in the application of nails that look like diamond-encrusted Buck knives. Portraits of two icons of pulchritude hang on the walls—namely, Marilyn Monroe and the very 2019 version of Marilyn: Cardi. 
With a posse that includes her dad, her half-sister, her half-brother, and two Drogosize bodyguards whose names I don’t catch but imagine to be Bulwark and Spear, Cardi, 26, heads toward a private side room. She surrenders her hands and feet to Jenny Bui, her sharp-tongued nail tech of more than half a decade, even back when she didn’t have the money to move out of this borough.
A tiny, makeup-less sprite in magenta leggings and a playful Moschino sweatshirt, Cardi talks about where she’s at today. On one hand, she says, “I feel like my life is a fairy tale and I’m a princess—rags to riches, people trying to sabotage,” she says. But she also complains fervently about being over the fairy-tale life and wanting peace and quiet. “Before, I cared about everything—relationship, gossip. Now I don’t feel like I have the time to please people,” she explains. “I don’t care about anything anymore—just my career and my kid.” What about money, the thing she raps about caring for quite a bit? “Well, I care about my career because of my money,” Cardi says, giving me a “c’mon, stupid” face.
“Before,” in this context, means before the tectonic shifts that have taken place in Cardi’s life in the past year: that she became a global superstar; relocated from New York to Atlanta to live with the charismatic rapper Offset, her new husband; gave birth to an unplanned but much loved daughter, Kulture Kiari, in July; then, five months later, after the drip-drip-drip of rumors about Offset’s infidelity, announced on Instagram that the marriage was over.
Today Cardi tells me that Offset has been to her apartment, but they haven’t seen each other and are “not really” talking, which is a bit hard to believe after she shows me videos of her gurgling baby on her iPhone and happens to scroll past a photo of Offset with a time stamp reading today. When I ask her if she’s getting back with Offset, I can almost hear her curious entourage, who have arranged themselves on sofas on the perimeter of the room, lean forward to catch the answer. For a moment, the only sound is Bui engaging in some hard-hat-level sanding and scraping of the star’s three-inch nails. Then Cardi says both, “I don’t think so,” and “Who knows? You never know, you can never tell,” neither of which is exactly a definitive answer.
I’ve interviewed dozens of pop stars, and Cardi, despite the massive entourage and the bear-claw-like nails, seems the most normal. She’s not the most down-to-earth or the most perfect, and she’s definitely not the least into social media, but she knows who she is and where she came from, and has somehow managed to keep expressing genuine emotions in the face of blockbuster success. And while her emotions can sometimes seem out of control, who hasn’t been there? We might not have screamed and thrown a shoe at Nicki Minaj at a Harper’s Bazaar event this past September (in retribution, Cardi has said, for various slights from Minaj, including liking a negative comment about her parenting skills), or allegedly ordered an attack on two female bartenders at a strip club visited by Offset (a judge issued orders of protection in December for the accusers), but we’ve all been mad as hell. And the unbearable cuteness and sexiness of Cardi, a raunchy L.O.L. doll, quickly erases those moments, drowning them in adorable high jinks.  
Leaving aside the fake nails and boob implants, with Cardi the artifice is in the artwork. In the space of less than a year, her music, videos, and fashion have made her a star of Lady Gaga proportions. She releases hit after hit; following last summer’s “I Like It,” the first Latin trap song to rise to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, with “Money,” a song, unsurprisingly, about money. In the video, she wears gorgeous clothes (she’s got “10 different looks and my looks all kill,” she raps), including outfits referencing Thierry Mugler, a gold bikini inspired by 1990s Lil’ Kim’s, and a custom Christian Cowan bodysuit fabricated from dozens of actual watches. She’s a post-Kardashian American superstar, a master of selfies, belfies, late-night Instagram videos, and all other manner of self-promotion— and also a creative genius. In 2019, no one needs to pick.  
Raised in the Bronx, Cardi was the naturally rebellious daughter of a Trinidadian-born cashier mother and a Dominican Republic–born cabdriver father. Her mother was strict. Nevertheless she joined the notorious Bloods gang, moved out of her mother’s home and in with a boyfriend and, finding herself broke, took a job as a cashier at a grocery store. To build a nest egg, she became a stripper. To build a bigger nest egg, she became a hot girl on social media. In 2015, she was cast as a lovable loudmouth on the VH1 reality show Love & Hip Hop: New York, then began releasing her own mixtapes. Her debut single, “Bodak Yellow,” went to the top of the charts, and it took her only one album to achieve escape velocity: Invasion of Privacy, arguably the best debut album from a female rapper since Lil’ Kim’s 1996 Hard Core. 
It’s an intense time for Cardi, now one of the biggest rappers—and one of the most famous women in the world—caring for an infant and dealing with a semi-estranged husband. Her answer is to be as real as she can. As much as she may imagine herself as a princess, she talks about admiring Meghan Markle for becoming a real one. “She must just be like, ‘Who am I?’” Cardi says, referring to Markle’s having to live by the royal family’s rules. Not being able to be herself would be the worst punishment for Cardi. 
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Up and down, joy and pain, sunshine and rain—we’ve experienced all her days on her social media channels, where she posts close-up, emotional videos like an Instagram mime. She’s not your typical grasping celebrity, and doesn’t get off on endless adulation. “I work with somebody who gives me compliments all day, and I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh, can you just stop?’” she says.   
Cardi’s fans have been so protective of her that when Offset broke in to her set at a concert, walking onstage with a $15,000 rolling floral display made of 2,000 roses that read TAKE ME BACK CARDI, they exploded on social media with anger over a man who refused to take a woman’s “no” at face value. (A backstage video showing one of Cardi’s reps escorting Offset to the stage did little to dim the outrage.)  
I ask if any family or friends influenced her decision to leave Offset. “No, I decided on my own,” she declares, looking me straight in the eye. “Nobody makes my decisions about my life but me.” Before they broke up, Offset begged Cardi to see a therapist. “I didn’t want to go to marriage counseling,” she says, in a firm tone of voice. “He suggested it, but it’s like, ‘I don’t want to go.’ There’s no counselor or nothing that could make me change my mind.”
Like many women who’ve experienced heartache and alleged infidelity, she seems caught between wanting to stay and leave. As Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in Eat Pray Love, Offset is “[her] lighthouse and [her] albatross in equal measure.” But Cardi also knows that dating new guys might be bizarre. “I have a kid, and I’m also famous,” she says quietly. “So I can’t just sleep with anybody. People talk. You know, if I date somebody in the industry, that’s another person in the industry. If I date somebody who is not in the industry, he might not understand my lifestyle.” Since the breakup, she’s been getting a ton of messages from guys but ignoring them. “It’s like, ‘Bro, why would you want to holler at me right away? You’re weird.’ If you think Imma automatically hop onto you after a marriage, that just means you think I’m a sleaze. And I’m not. I have a kid—I have to show an example.”
Bui, who has been listening intently to our interview while crafting Cardi’s nails, waves a hand and then interjects, “You’re so old-fashioned!”
“Jenny, just because I’m out there and very sexual doesn’t mean that I have to be whorish,” says Cardi. “I like to have sex. That doesn’t mean I have to have it with everybody.” She pauses, then adds, “Not that I judge women who want to have sex with the world.”
Done with her rant, Cardi turns her attention to her nails. “Damn, that’s sharp,” she says to Bui, whistling a little under her breath. “The polish will make them less sharp, right? Because we can’t forget about the baby.” Ignoring her, Bui says only, “Don’t move.”
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Throughout our conversation, Cardi has been jiggling her leg up and down like a schoolkid. I ask her how long she’s had that habit. “Forever, and you know what? People always talk shit about it, but now it’s like, ‘Ha ha,’ because when I do it my daughter likes it,” she says.    
Despite the indelible image of Cardi breast-feeding in the “Money” video, wearing a black gown open at the bodice, she isn’t breast-feeding Kulture, whom she’s nicknamed KK. “It was too hard,” she explains. In fact, she spent most of the time after the baby was born in a haze of postpartum depression. “I thought I was going to avoid it,” Cardi says. “When I gave birth, the doctor told me about postpartum, and I was like, ‘Well, I’m doing good right now, I don’t think that’s going to happen.’ But out of nowhere, the world was heavy on my shoulders.”
Realizing that taking KK with her on the tour bus was unrealistic but unable to bear leaving her at home, Cardi dropped out of a lucrative tour with Bruno Mars. She started feeling better a couple of months after the baby was born, she says, and her mother has been helping out; Cardi hasn’t hired professional help because she isn’t sure she can trust anyone outside her family.
As a new mom, Cardi is still experiencing aches and pains. “For some reason, I still don’t feel like my body’s the same,” she says. “I feel like I don’t have my balance right yet. When it comes to heels, I’m not as good at walking anymore. I feel like I’m holding a weight on me. I don’t know why because I’m skinnier than I’ve ever been. But there’s an energy I haven’t gotten back yet that I had before I was pregnant. It’s just the weirdest thing.”
The baby is starting to help Cardi balance her emotions, though. “Sometimes I’ll see something online and it’ll piss me off, and then my baby will start crying or something, and it’s like, ‘You know what? I’ve got to deal with the milk. Forget this.’” She’s thinking about pulling back a little from social media. “I’ve noticed that every time you respond, you just make things worse, so I’m over it. I’m just over it. I really don’t need it, and sometimes it just brings chaos to my brain.” She adds, “I can stay off social media. I’ve been trying.” For months after KK was born, Cardi didn’t put pictures of her on social media, and certainly didn’t sell any to the tabloids. She says Offset wanted to put a picture up, but she was unsure.  
“As soon as she was born, one month in he was like, ‘She’s so beautiful. Watch how people gonna go crazy.’ ’Cause a lot of people were saying mean stuff, like that we don’t post her because she’s ugly. He was like, ‘I’m about to post my baby right now.’ But then we were very concerned because we were getting a lot of threats, so he said, ‘The world don’t even deserve to see her.’” Eventually Cardi wanted to put a photo up because “it’s really annoying and we don’t have a life. We have to hide her all the time. I can’t go to L.A. or Miami and walk down the beach with my baby. I want to go shopping with my baby. I want to take a stroll with my baby. Sometimes I feel bad for her because all she knows is the house.” But can’t you put on a baseball cap? I ask. Will people still recognize you? “Yeah,” she says. “It’s my nose.” 
Bui applies a final coat of purple paint on Cardi’s nails—a brief discussion ensues about whether the shade is the exact “baby purple” Cardi has requested—and then she talks about needing to get home to go to sleep. “I’ve got a big meeting in the morning in Boston,” Cardi says, nodding slowly. “Lots of money in Boston.” She begins horsing around with her six-year-old half-brother, ribbing him for being rebellious the way she used to be. “He’s a child of the corn!” she wails. “He’s just like me.” (Her half-sister adds, “Like you, sharp but sweet.”) Bui says she thought that when Cardi hit it big, she wouldn’t see her in the salon again. “I told her, ‘You’re going to forget about me,’ ” Bui says. “And she said, ‘Never.’”
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kahlanmars · 5 years ago
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Bad Behaviour
Ok guys! I’m italian so I’m very sorry if I made some mistakes, it’s not my mother-tongue.
Yes, it’s about Morgan’s sister, my OC. I do not own anything about the MCU, RDJ or Gwyneth Paltrow. Sadly.
(Gif not mine)
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1.       BAD BEHAVIOUR
 When I wake up everyday I’m perfectly aware that I’m one of the most lucky person in the world being one of the richest heiress alive. The last daughter of the great Tony Stark.
Everyone thinks that we, me and my sister, are going to be heroines. Wrong. We got everything from our father. The brain, that’s Morgan. I’m the bad behaviour.
Truth by told, Morgan is the perfect daughter. Not only she has a superior intelligence, the kind of intelligence that could build an armour in a cave, but she has our mother’s character. She’s always calm, delicate, careful. The eldest daughter.
When I wake up today, I sense it’s too late to have breakfast. Maybe lunch? …I hope not dinner. I’m used to wake up at midday after a party. Mary Stark, the troublemaker. Mary Stark, the party girl.
«MARY NATASHA STARK.» …Mary Stark, the girl who’s gonna be grounded for the rest of her life. A very furious Pepper Potts comes into my room. She doesn’t mind the AC/DC posters, the mess in bookcase or even my messy hair and make-up, but something tells me she minds the car that I crashed last night.
Ehi, it wasn’t all my fault. I was distracted. By a boy, but I don’t think it’s a good idea that I tell her that.
«Mother, how are you? Do you want a proper cup of coffee in a proper coffee pot?» I’m very proud of my ability to say this tongue-twister without stumbling. According to her face, she’s not.
«We can’t do this anymore, Mary.» Her warning face is something she only has with me, my privilege. Morgan never got that. Well, my beloved sister never disobeyed like that.
Don’t get it wrong, I love her. She is America’s little star and I think it really suits her, and she’s sweet, she is smart, all perfect. I am… I am what Tony Stark was when he was twenty years old. I’m following my father’s footsteps too!
«What? I’m back home! Safe!»
«They saw you last night with Cruz Beckham.» Her voice is so desperate that I almost feel sorry for her but really, how many eighteen years old girls stay at home knitting? I’m just famous. I never asked for my mother. Or father. Or the money, but I have it.
«And so what? He’s great!»
«He’s thirty! And you were drinking! And you were dressed like…» She doesn’t finish the line, but I can imagine.
«Like a slut?»
«I never said that.»
«No I get it. You think I’m a slut. If Cruz Beckham does the same thing that I do in a party he is a great man and if I do that I’m America’s Whore.»
«Language!» I hear it while I slam the door. I’m not in my pajamas, I’m in the same black skirt I was last night, a purple crop top, but of course I took off the heels before going to sleep. And apparently I didn’t wash my make up, because I look like the Winter Soldier, according to the pictures. Not as good looking as uncle Bucky, tho.
Morgan is staring at me, with a sympathetic look on her perfect face. I can see she’s struggling to evoid the judgment.
«You’re home.» I start, walking in the kitchen with a huge smile on my face. Nobody needs a kitchen that big, let’s face it. We have it because we are rich. We are famous, that’s what famous people do, right? It’s stupid that I’m so hated. “Mary Stark in trouble again”, “Mary Stark walking in the streets with no jeans on”, “Mary Stark fails to be the perfect daughter”. Not that he could see it, obviously.
I’m not the first heiress who goes a little crazy. Paris Hilton. Kim Kardashian. Blair Waldorf – I watch Netflix at night, old shows and everything.
«Yes, mama wanted to talk to me.» She answers. Morgan is twenty-three, rising and shining. She had five years with dad. I look at her, she’s majoring in law in college so I never gets to proper see her. Brown hair, like mine (but combed), dark eyes, not so tall but petite, cute.
«She is scared you could be Iron Girl.» I warn her. The thing is that Morgan can be Iron Girl. She has the brain, she has the heart. Mom is just scared and I get it, but Morgan wants to help.
«So having me here, with all dad’s machines… is not a great idea.»
«Completely controlled, Happy behind every door.» We laugh. I bring the milk, even if it’s midday, hoping that Miss Potts doesn’t show up.
«Mary… Happy isn’t doing a wonderful job with you.»
«Happy likes you, cheeseburger’s girl. He loathes me.»
«He doesn’t! He is just concerned.»
«Of what? I’m safe and sound like Taylor Swift.»
«You are in, like, all the magazines. In lingeries. Playing, or flirting, or… dancing.»
«You brought the magazines?» I ask with a bit of impertinence. She glances at me. Just. Like. Mother
«I’m just worried about you, sis.»
«No reason. I’m a Stark, right? Not the “Winter is coming” ones, that family is unlucky. But we are!»
«Sure.» She mutters back. «It’s just that you are so good when you behave. You have an artistic mind, great sense of colors, if you just-»
«So what are you working on?» I try to avoid another argument. One day at a time. And I know Morgan always works on something.
«Pardon? Nothing. I’m very busy studying.»
«No you are not. You passed your final test studying the night before it while I was chatting with you about Peter Parker.»
«You had a huge crush on the guy.»
«I was thirteen and stupid and he was always around. Morgan! C’mon!»
«Not this time. You will see it when I will finish it. Don’t be the annoying little sister.»
«But I’m the annoying little sister! And I will go to the garden, so mom won’t find me.»
«Dressed like that?» She looks at me and immediately blushes. Sometimes she seems like she is the main character of Downton Abbey. A fiancé, a good job, perfect hair, so boring, no fun. In a lovely way, because I love her.
«Mom is in my room, I can’t change myself.»
«Well wash your face at least.»
I obey, Morgan commands more gracefully than mother. I just think that after the flawless experience she had raising Mor she would never expect me. I don’t blame her.
«Oh, Mary? Don’t go to the garage please.»
------
The next place I go to is the garage. C’mon, it was a hint. She wants me there. Otherwise she would never tell me that, she knows the first thing I want to do is the forbidden one.
I sneak through the garden and I end in front of the garage. I never came here. That’s dad and Morgan’s place, not mine and I respect that. It’s large, in cement, and the door is locked but… my sister is the mastermind of this place. And she would never change something dad created, even a little code.
Five. Two. two thousand nineteen. Her birth date.
Well that’s normal. I feel happy for her, she has memories of the past, father loved her. He would have loved me too, he just never met me.
The inside of the garage is wonderful. I imaginated it as greasy, old and grey, and instead it’s a tech paradise. Not really my kind of paradise, but still… a paradise. Desks, labels, tables, it’s written in greek according to me.
«Wow I’m so stupid.» It’s the first though it comes to my mind. I could never project something like that. The second is “I need some music”. I search until I find a vynil. Wow, so edgy, daddy. Or sis, I don’t know, but I bet on daddy.
The first notes of “Back in Black” fill the room and now that’s my place. I scream, and I sing and I dance like there’s not tomorrow, who said I can’t enjoying myself while I’m hiding from my mother? I find myself dancing in the middle of the room and for a moment, just for a moment, I think that maybe mom and dad did that too when they were young. Dancing in the lab. No, mom would never do something like that.
The song ends and I stay there, getting out of breath. Just a moment after I become aware that there’s something wrong with my thumb. Something on it. A liquid? A fluid? I try to get off me but suddenly everything is very heavy. My eyes want to close themselves. I try with all my strenght not to fall asleep. It would be a terrible idea. Well, if I just fall asleep for a minute Morgan will find me… eventually.
Hey! If you want to be in a list just ask me!
@pies-wands-and-more
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didon · 5 years ago
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My two cents on this whole Taylor Swift drama
I normally only reserve my rants for tv shows, but I’ve seen enough crap in the last day that I kinda want to add a little to it.
First of all, I’m not a swiftie or whatever her die hard fans call themselves. Do I like some of her music sure, but there are other songs that make me cringe the same way there are things that happened with her that made me dislike her and others where I’m now looking back at and thinking that it was just me wanting to fit in and that it was ‘’cool’’ to hate on her. Cause I think that there really is a movement where you have to hate on successful women because they are not perfect until the point where they are no longer human beings but actual mythological creatures that we must revere or die otherwise (Beyonce and the Bee Hive come to mind). Has Taylor always been right? Nope. It’s that simple, she has done some not so great things and instead of trying to understand them, I just went with the motion of hating her because I thought it made me special (it did not).
Secondly, to the people saying that he didn’t bully her, that it was his client, remind me his job again? Dudebro is a manager. His job is literally to MANAGE people, to make sure that the celebrities he has under his care not only receive the best but are also perceived as great. Seems like him allowing Bieber to post a dig at a woman for no reason and then not issue an apology right after was a bad managing decision because the only thing it did is make him and his clients seem like pissy little boys that can’t take people not agreeing with him. Him allowing Kanye (because tell me how he could not have vetoed that whole video that I’ll talk about later) to show someone that he knew Kanye had a troubled relationship with naked WITHOUT that person permission is a bad management decision. Especially since it could have led to more than one lawsuits toward his client. I feel like a manager normally tries to avoid his clients getting sued. So either he allowed her to be bullied by his clients and probably had his own hand in it or he’s shitty as his job and should not be allowed to manage anybody. Because it has to be one or the other, there is no third options where he didn’t advise his clients not to do bad things and had no knowledge of it. If anything, he could have at the very least if that was the case wrote his own appology for being in Bieber instagram. No instead he chose to stay silent, giving his approval toward it and to keep people that were attacking a female celebrity for pissy reasons as clients.
Thirdly, concerning the whole Bieber thing. Dude has to stop talking. He is not someone that can truly speak having grown up being influenced by Dudebro. Didn’t he sign Bieber when he was still a minor and everything? And yet he allowed him to make a fool of himself more than once, to be agressive toward more than one person knowing that it could cost sales. Dudebro was both a bad manager and a bad friend toward Bieber. Bieber who seems to act as if a lot of his fanbase isn’t young influencable girls that he is pushing toward not only bad decisions like bullying someone else because the friend of a friend doesn’t like them and also supporting people that are homophobic. Because let’s remember that for a long time (and I think still now but I’m not 100% sure), Bieber was friend with this pastor who was known for being homophobic. You can’t call someone coming at your friend a bully, but then have one of your close friend be someone telling others that something they have no choice in makes them bad, evil in some cases and that the one person that is supposed to love them (I’m talking about God here for the Catholics) hates them. How many queer people are we going to lose to suicide because they are constantly told by some biggots that God hate them, that they are going against everything that is good, that they shouldn’t be allowed near children, etc.? And no saying that just because you attend his congregation and hang out with him doesn’t mean you don’t agree with him. This isn’t the same as someone prefering strawberry milk over chocolate milk, this is someone spewing hate to who not only are you giving a platform by being near them (because yes it does), but are listening to. How many young teens are going to see that guy and go ‘’hey Bieber follow him so maybe he’s right’’? When you chose to be a celebrity, yes it means that you lose part of your privacy, but it also means that you should be obligated to lend your voice to those who aren’t listened to. Taylor Swift did that with her letter against homophobia, with her video and her support of queer artists. Bieber does that by giving a biggot relevance and then getting mad when his ‘’friends’’ are called out on their bad behaviours.
Fourtly, the whole Kardashian/Kanye thing. I can’t believe it’s 2019 and it has to be addressed but it is NEVER okay to showcase somebody else’s naked body even if it’s for ‘’Art’’ without their permission. His video was not only revenge porn, it’s an attack on her. Revenge porn is mostly defined as sharing private pictures of someone. This isn’t the case. She didn’t send his a naked wax art of her body. As far as I’m concerned, this is straight up violating her privacy and her body. And not only hers but the one of everybody else included in that video. Sure he probably has the signed statement from his wife saying it was okay, but does he has the one from every single other person? Also stating where their wax double would be placed? Because I’m pretty sure that Rihanna wouldn’t have said yes to her body being exploited by a man and placed next to someone who’s biggest relevance is the fact that he ABUSED her. It’d be the same as a celebrity asking fans to stop drawing porn of them and then getting backlash from their fans because they believe that they own that celebrity body. Your body is your own and no egomaniac should be allowed to have a naked wax statue made of it and put it in his video. Speaking of videos, Kim’s one is void. Not only is it clear that the video has been edited, but it was ILLEGAL!! A court would not take it as proof of anything just based on this alone. This is the same as a cop breaking and entering to get proof to arrest someone because a warrant takes too long and he’s sleeping with the other suspect. I don’t care if she actually agreed to one line and not the other or whatever. The whole video is void and should never be mentionned because it’s something illegal that again violated someone’s privacy which a celebrity should really know about. Especially Kim. The whole claim that Kanye made Taylor famous is ridiculous too. Bitch didn’t make her famous, he made an ass of himself. She became famous with her own hard work and good strategy (something her manager might have a hand into). What he did at that award show was just stealing a moment from a woman because he was prissy he didn’t get his way. There’s a reason why Beyonce gave the stage to Taylor and that everybody got mad at him. He took a young woman achievement and try to ruin it because it wasn’t what he wanted. That shows clear immaturity and if anything it made him more famous that it made her. She wasn’t known as Kanye’s victim, she was known as a singer while he was known as the guy that made an ass of himself and ruined a 20 years old big moment. I don’t care who deserved the award more or if he was right, nobody else does it and for a good reason. I may not have always have agreed with award winners, but you haven’t seen anybody stopping Matthew McConaughey speach saying sorry to interrupt but Chiwetel Ejiofor had one of the best performance ever. It’s almost like his manager should have stopped him from making a fool of himself.
Fiftly, just a little mention for Demi Lovato that came to Dudebro defence. Girl is coming out of a very emotional situation, is probably not 100% okay yet so don’t send her hate. Plus, she has known him about two months and he makes money off her so he has probably not been a dick to her. Her entire defence may even have his hand in it since people around her may be employed by his company. I almost killed myself over a year ago and I know that I’m still very emotional and that people can still have a big influence on me depending on how I’m feeling. I can’t imagine being around people that may not have your best interest 24h/7. On her claim that he is not homophobic because he signed her though, I will say that she can’t refute somebody’s experience with the man simply based on her own especially since she’s a famous artist that probably brings him a lot of money. Plus, while she’s a queer woman that consider herself fluid (and good for her tbh), it doesn’t mean that she has the same experience as a gay person. She has (mostly) dated men in the recent years and biphobic people will use it as an excuse to say that while she is ‘’fluid’’ she’s mostly straight (which is bull, but that might be how they see her in her mind). She can’t come at a gay man and say that because she’s also queer, the man cannot be a bigot toward anybody in the queer community. Heck, queer people in the queer community are bigots toward other members. How often do we hear transphobia or biphobia coming from queer people? The answer is too often. Especially black queer people who are often erased from their own history (*cough* stonewall and camp *cough*)! My own father was super friendly toward a trans tennant he had, calling her by her name and the right pronouns like it was nothing, only using her deadname on the official papers since it wasn’t officially changed, but to me he told me that if I came out as trans he would kick me out because I am his daughter not his son. If you asked that woman than yeah my dad is a great ally, but she wouldn’t know how he interacts with other queer people including his own daughter.
Finally, on the whole master thing. Shut up. She wrote the songs so I don’t care who owns the right right now or if they gave her a chance to ‘’buy’’ them back. This is her own work. When Devianart started selling artists art without their consent because they ‘’owned’’ it, how many people did I see on this website calling for a boycott? How many people were pissed and swore that it was horrible and that no artist should ever lose the right to their own art? Well, it’s exactly the same for her. Yes even for those songs of hers I hate. She put her time, her effort in them and so they should be hers. The idea that some white dudebro has right over them is ridiculous. The fact that he will own her feelings, a part of her soul should be upsetting especially since one of his artist already violated her body by showing it naked without her consent. I would be furious if I was raped and a friend of my rapist got the right to some of my writing. Heck, I would probably be a lot more agressive than she was in that post. The fact that she managed to stay polite and calm is a miracle if you ask me. Especially since he will be making money of a video that his friend and client didn’t even deem good enough to win an award!! Cause let’s remember that as cringy as it might be to look back at how we were all obsessed with some of her music video (god knows I was even though I would have never admitted it at the time), a man representing someone who put her down for one of them is going to make money off them. 
This is in no way acceptable and I encourage people to raise their voices against this and to keep those boys (because they are not men let’s be honest) accountable for their actions. Cause when Kesha needed help getting away from her rapist, Taylor Swift gave it to her and no matter how famous you are, you deserve to have people stand up for you. I’m not saying send hate, but keep holding men accountable for their shitty behaviours and for the creepy thing they say about women. We are not their objects, they do not own us in any way and we need to unite to stop them disrespecting us!! No matter your feeling on Taylor Swift and her music or her previous actions, this is something hateful that’s happening to her and women need to stand up and support each other! We own it to each other!!
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wellthatwasaletdown · 5 years ago
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A Rant That Nobody Asked For
I read a comment on here the other day that said that Harry Styles career can’t die unless he does something outrageously heinous or controversial, and unless he’s publicly hated more than he’s liked, I actually disagree with that. I don’t know why it bothered me enough to write this whole thing but here we go.
The entire Kardashian brand is built on feeding off of public outrage. People seem to not understand that they want you to hate them. They know that a large portion of their audience dislike them, but follow and pay attention, just to see what thing they do next that they can hate on. Brands are doing that as well. Where they are intentionally putting out overtly racist clothing, slogans, advertising, obviously offensive products, because really and truly, consumers want to be apart of the outrage, consumers enjoy dragging shit. A European makeup brand made a lipstick color called the n-word, and after the outrage on twitter, the lipstick sold out in less then ten hours. I think there are people who think that they’re being helpful or effective by hating the Kardashians, but in actuality by hating them you’re feeding into their machine, you’re putting money in their pockets.
So people always tweet things like  how is James Charles still getting millions of views despite his gross behaviour, how is Camilla Cabello still able to headline tours after calling Normani the n-word repeatedly, how is Kodak Black still making music even though there’s several rape accusations against him? The last one I’d argue is because the volume on rape allegations drops significantly when the accusation comes from black women, and we don’t listen to them or give black women’s voices the validity we should. But overall the reason these people still have careers is BECAUSE some people hate them. (I don't think Camilla is publicly hated but hear me out) That’s what they want. By calling out people who fuel they’re careers off of outrage, you’re fighting a fruitless battle because you’re appealing to the sympathy of people who actually don’t give a fuck. They know what they’re doing, they don’t care who’s hurt, they don’t care the real world affect of their words, they don’t care about learning or growing from their actions, but they bank on the fact that you care about those things and will take time out of your day to try and break it down for them. They exist to antagonize their audience and then get the label “controversial”. I’m 100% positive that Kylie Jenner knew that people were going to mad about Kylie Skin, but she let them be mad, she let them hate on her loudly, she let that hate act as free promo, and then her skincare line sold out. If Kim Kardashian put her hair in braids, and no one said anything but instead she lost a shit ton of followers, if all the people who disagreed with that unfollowed her, she would’ve never done that shit again. But because the outrage actually gained her followers and traction, she continues to do it. Everyone knows what cultural appropriation is. Everybody does. Maybe not everyone understands why it can be so damaging but everyone knows what it is. So famous women right now who are posting pictures of themselves in cornrows or bindis or in Native headdresses, they know better. They know people are going to be mad, they know people are going to be hurt, they know this. But they profit off of it. They are dependant on your outrage, for a surge in media attention. I’m not saying that these girls are heinous human beings, but I’m saying it’s 100% intentional. It’s intentional. You’re wasting your energy in the comments trying to educate them, trying to get them to see why people are upset, they don’t care. They don’t care why you’re upset, they just want you angry, and then once you’re angry they’ll flip it on you and play the victim and talk about how intense and evil social media has been to them. These girls posting incredibly photoshopped pictures of themselves, and pictures with their ribs jutting out from their bodies, not disclosing all of the surgery they’ve had to impressionable young girls, they are literally profiting off of their viewers insecurity.  It’s business. It’s a game. 
(This is a side note but with all of the PR relationships Harry’s been in, really and truly him having a girlfriend might have a really negative impact on the girls linked to him, but they have positive affects for Harry. Because when he has a girlfriend, his fans feel insecure, they compare themselves to this model girlfriend, they wonder if this is the kind of woman he wants and I don’t look like that, what’s wrong with me? They hurt, they get uncomfortable, and often respond with intense hate, but really that hate comes from a place of insecurity and pain. But see, when they’re hurting, he can turn around and ask you to pay him to tell him that he loves you.)
This is getting longwinded but what I’m getting to is that the opposite of love isn’t hate, it never has been, the opposite of love is INDIFFERENCE. Being publicly hated doesn’t always end careers, in fact public outrage can be manufactured to gain traction and attention for a person or brand. The only answer to truly get rid of those kind of people is to respond with silence and indifference and the removal of your attention. This is why I think that honestly, Harry has every possibility of his career dwindling away. I don’t know that he’ll ever be “unsuccessful” because he has his core audience but I think we’re seeing more and more that we live in a world where everyone is really ready to jump on a hatred bandwagon, that the careers that really die, are not the people who you’re angry at. The careers that die are the people that you are entirely indifferent to.
It’s been proven that Harry Styles is incredibly sensitive to the point where he and his fans cannot even stand constructive criticism. It is greatly important to him to be publicly upheld and adored, and I think that that proved itself with the TV show he produced that was based on him, because he couldn’t even allow the character that was meant to vaguely represent him to be a fully fleshed out character with flaws and negative attributes, instead the character ended up being a lot like what Harry presents to the world, a caricature of a great guy. Harry presents an image that is meant to be interpreted and digested in whatever way you like. If you want him to be a feminist he is, if you don’t want him to be he’s not, if you want him to be a bad boy? Gay? Straight? A sweetheart? A rich sugar daddy aesthetic? A true artist who only cares about the music? He’s a walking fan fiction on purpose, because it is of such high importance to him to be adored and to be accepted that he presents nothing, and allows his fans to do all the work in implanting their own vision on him, and then his fans sustain his fame for him out of personal obligation and emotional ties they have to the idea of him they created, right?
Harry isn’t designed to be someone that can be hated, he intentionally straddles every topic, and stays right in the middle and never says anything controversial, to the point where he really doesn’t share any actual opinions. He spews apolitical sweetness and kindness, and creates a pseudo-political activism aesthetic without actually giving opinions, because he doesn’t have to, he’s dependant on the fact that his fans will project their opinions onto him, and assume he’s on whichever side they’re on. He’s not sustaining a career based off of the music, because the people who listen to his music, listen to him as a byproduct of already loving him. The people who pay attention to his content, do so out of love for who they believe he is as a person. Harry Styles is really not a celebrity who has many casual fans. I think in terms of his looks, he does, casual fans who will comment on his look at the Met Gala, or comment on him being good-looking, but not many casual fans who would sit down and listen to an album of his, you know?
The emptiness fans are feeling now comes from the fact that Harry used to pander to maintaining his audience at an emotional level, and insinuate a relationship between he and his audience, that he no longer cares to feed, and all the Harries, whether they admit or not, are feeling the distance and feeling his withdrawal. I bring this up because, now we're seeing even some Harries are growing not hateful, not resentful, but indifferent towards him. They are getting exhausted of having to maintain their ideal of him, and having to fight themselves into liking something that's really not there. As someone who's still kind of in the Harry Styles bubble, I can't argue this 100% but I do feel that there is a level of indifference towards him from the general public.
(Another side note: One similarity between Harry and the Kardashians is what I call convenient stupidity. They claim smarts and being smart business people, Harry specifically is obsessed with putting out an aesthetic of intellect, but when it’s convenient for them, they want you to assume that they are stupid and/or not responsible for whatever your upset about and/or that they don’t understand what they’ve done. If you think they’re stupid you’ll underestimate them and you’ll never assume that you’re the one being played. By keeping you thinking that you’re mentally above them, they manipulate you, every time.)
Harry couldn’t even commit to the rock music aesthetic fully, because rock music, real rock music, has to come with commitment and controversy, and he’s so obsessed with being adored across the board. I highly doubt he’ll ever get involved in real controversy or that he’d use controversy as a marketing ploy, just because we’ve seen time and time again that he’s prioritized public adoration over the actual quality of his work. But like I said, as he pulls away, the manufactured love between him and his fans is getting harder for them to hold on to, it’s getting hard for them to rearrange information to make him the guy he was to them. I’m telling you, what’s going to kill Harry is not intense hatred, but indifference. As he tries to gear himself to an older audience, he's not going to be able to manufacture the same blind adoration that 1D fans were able to give him in the beginning. We're already beginning to see indifference towards him grow.
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artificialqueens · 7 years ago
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Are You Gonna Stay the Night? (Sashea) || By Meg
What’s up you guys?! I know I haven’t written anything in a while. During season Nine, much like everyone else in the fandom, I became completely addicted to everything about Sasha and Shea. I respect both of them as artists and I respect their personal relationships, but I also love this one. So, please enjoy my little ode to these two beautiful creatures. Mwah!
It felt like Sasha couldn’t stop running.
She didn’t know why.
She wasn’t running from a monster that loomed over her like in nightmare. She wasn’t running from anything physical, she was running away from every thought she had ever had that was just continuing to swirl around in her head. She’d been trying to stop running and take a breath for nineteen freaking years. Every day of her life had been more fast-paced than the last.
She couldn’t stop running.
She didn’t know why.
And she couldn’t stop.
The only thing that had calmed her down was her cello. That beautiful, sleek instrument that she began to play only because of her doting mother. Her mother had always been a source of anxiety in her young life, Sasha always had to be the smartest, the prettiest and the most desired girl on the block. Wesley avenue was most certainly competitive, considering her best friend Alexis Michelle who lived next door graduated early to go off into New York City to attend Juilliard and act on Broadway. Sasha herself was Juilliard bound, it turns out, that massive instrument gave Sasha’s life meaning. Her talent was recognized when she was young, her teacher at the time noticed that she was picking up pieces like they were pieces of candy.
Sure, Sasha was good at Cello. People loved her and her beautiful wooden instrument, as well as the sounds that came out of it. But, Sasha wasn’t sure if she really loved herself.
Once she hit the scene of New York, she knew she had to finally stop and breathe.
There were too many people around for her to worry about crashing into anyway.
The little Starbucks that sat about a block away from Sasha’s dorm room, little did she know, would be the place that everything changed. After making her bed and beginning to personalize her room (with her Andy Warhol posters, for example,) and coming to the conclusion to live out of her suitcase for the first few days, she made her way to buy herself a coffee. It had been a long night. Although it wasn’t a long drive from Brooklyn, she had spent most of the night lying awake, anxious about what was yet to come.
“Grande black coffee for Sasha?”
Sasha snapped out of her sleepy trance before making her way to pick up the plastic cup that would hopefully wake her up. Nothing else seemed to. Not a run, not a Redbull and especially not her alarm clock.
“Damn girl, you look exhausted.”
Sasha didn’t register the other girl’s speech for a few moments before pushing her blonde hair aside and looking over her black-framed glasses. She was blunt in her speech, as she wasn’t really in the mood to deal with human interaction. “Thanks.”
“Sorry, I- I couldn’t help but notice. Are you Juilliard student too?” The brunette seemed rather anxious, and way too damn friendly for seven thirty in the freaking morning. Sasha couldn’t deny that the woman standing in front of her looked absolutely incredible, even in track pants and a sweatshirt with the name of a school on it
Sasha nodded, a weak smile tugging at her lips. “Yeah, actually, I’m a cello player. What about yourself?”
“Ah, a cellist.” Shea nodded, winking playfully. “Thats sexy.”
Sasha blushed a bright pink. “So you find an over exhausted, hurried nineteen year old girl sexy?”
“Oh darling,” Shea purred, resting a hand on her shoulder. “it’s not every day that an over exhausted, hurried nineteen year old girl can actually pull off being over-exhausted and hurried.”
Bestill, her beating heart. “You’re so kind.” She smiled weakly. “I’m Sasha.”
“I’m Shea.”
Shea would soon become Sasha’s new favorite name. That name would roll off of her tongue like a caramel. She would be unable to hear anything else in her head but the repetition of ‘Shea. Shea. Shea.’
Shea often spent time laying on Sasha’s bed, panicking about her vocal performance curriculum. Shea had the voice of an angel, Sasha had learned, but she was so insecure about it due to the competition she had.
After knowing her for four months, this new day wasn’t much different. Shea was flopped on Sasha’s bright blue comforter, practically smothering herself with Sasha’s pillow.
“I don’t know how much longer I can take this.” Shea groaned, trying to make an effort to hide her face that was seemingly flushed with embarrassment. “I’m not good enough for this place at all.”
Sasha shook her head frantically. “No, no, no! That’s not true at all. You’ve worked so hard to get here.. Please don’t stop now.”
“Easy for you to say.” The brunette pouted, peering over the left side of the pillow. “Your professors love you.”
That wasn’t just anxious Shea talking. That was very true. Sasha’s professors had been going completely and utterly gaga for the small blonde. They called her “a talent,” and “a genius.” Shea had always been jealous of her friend, she wanted her professors to feel the same way about her. Instead, they acted like she wasn’t there. In fact, nobody was there for her. Nobody was there for her besides Sasha.
“I-I-” Sasha finally began to speak after the brief pause. “I think you’re incredibly talented, Shea. You really do not give yourself a lot of credit at all, and it hurts to see such a beautiful soul fall down such an incredible pit of insecurity..”
Shea sighed, shutting her eyes for a second to take a deep breath. She loved Sasha. She loved her more than words could possibly say. Sasha had quickly become her best friend, and she had even begun to question if they could be something more.
Something more.
She was terrified, she had to run from this.
All her life, she hadn’t stopped running.
But one look in Sasha’s eyes that were magnified by her glasses, and she could feel her feet stop pounding on the pavement.
Sasha’s eyes made everything okay.
“I’m sorry for snapping, Sash. It’s just.. I don’t know. I feel like I never know anything anymore.” Shea didn’t know how to put her feelings into words normally, but she certainly did know one thing. Shea loved Sasha. She loved the way her frizzy blonde hair grazed her cheeks, the way her smile made her feel like she could do absolutely anything. She found herself tumbling deeper into her infatuation every time she listened to Sasha’s horsehair bow graze the strings of her cello. Those sparks that she had felt the first day had evolved into the brightest and wild of flames.
Sasha could tell that Shea was deep in thought, so she slowly moved down to lay beside her friend with that smile Shea loved so much. “Aw babe.. Just breathe, okay? I know you’re under a lot of stress. I’m going out tonight with a friend, but I bet our RA would be fine if you stayed here.” “Thank you, angel. Thank you.” Shea nodded, kissing Sasha’s forehead. “I would have been a long time ago if it hadn’t been for you.”
Sasha shook her head, adjusting her glasses. “That’s a lie. You would have flourished here. But you decided to hang out with the artsy loner on a daily basis.”
Shea’s lips displayed a weak smile. She certainly wanted to do more with Sasha than just hang out with her. She wanted to love her. She wanted to to make her feel like she was the only woman in the entire world. She wanted to feel a love unlike anything else, with her. Sasha wasn’t just an ordinary blonde. She had more depth to her than any of the girls she knew back at her high school in Chicago.
Please, Sasha. She thought. Don’t give me the material to write yet another sad love song.
Hours later, when Alexis Michelle came to pick up her friend, Shea could feel her heart stop beating.
Shea Coulee was absolutely no match for Alexis Michelle. Where Shea was tall and lean with a Naomi Campbell body, Alexis Michelle had all of the curves to make Kim Kardashian jealous. Alexis Michelle was girly, clothed in a pair of navy pants, a frilly blouse and a jean jacket, while Shea’s wardrobe consisted of flannels and concert t-shirts.
The way that Sasha looked at this girl wasn’t helping Shea’s confidence either.
“Hey..” Sasha smiled, looking absolutely breathless.
“Hey.” Alexis replied, wrapping her arms around the other girl’s waist.
She’s touching my girl, Shea thought.
“I’ll be back later, Shea.” Sasha waved as the pair of them exited the room.
Sure, or she’ll keep you to herself, and you’ll wake up in her bedroom.
As she heard the door click shut, Shea burst into tears. She would never be good enough for Sasha. Not in a million years. She would never deserve the love that she knew Sasha had in her heart, she never had as her friend, and she most certainly wouldn’t as a lover.
Meanwhile, Sasha knew something was wrong, and the entire night, she couldn’t stop wondering if Shea was alright. This infuriated Alexis. As they existed the restaurant, she stopped walking, looking at Sasha with a raised eyebrow.
“Sash, why don’t we go back to my place?” She asked, pulling her close and nuzzling her nose against Sasha’s own. “Just like old times.”
Ah, that phrase again. Just like old times. Old times consisted of closeted Alexis calling Sasha up to fool around during their Sophomore and Junior years of high school. Of course, ever so often she would meet some boy that would fawn all over her gorgeous physique, and she would be gone.
Sasha had always been her safety, her gay best friend.
She used to like being used, she used to enjoy that Alexis always came back to her, but now, a freshman in college, she just felt abused. She just wanted to be loved.
“I-I-” She muttered, her eyes falling to her shoes. Alexis’ face fell. Sasha didn’t want her anymore. She didn’t have the blonde wrapped around her finger the way she used to. Her quick fix now belonged to someone else.
“You find a hookup buddy better than me, huh?” She asked. “Remember what you told me, nobody can rock that body like I do.”
It was true, Sasha had said that, although, she wanted to push that person who felt that way out of her mind. Alexis didn’t care about her mentally, she was just attracted to the fact that she was a girl, who, well, liked girls and would willingly submit to anything she said. So, she stayed silent. Her silence was only met by more disapproval from Alexis.
“It’s that Shea girl, isn’t it?”
Sasha sighed. She was so used to Alexis’ bitching by now, she just didn’t say anything. Nothing would change her mind, it was always Sasha who was in the wrong. Alexis never admitted the fact that Sasha meant absolutely nothing to her romantically. She didn’t want to think that she had been toying with her closest friend’s heart for this long.
“It is. It totally is. I bet you two were sucking face before I got to your dorm room!”
“That’s it!” She growled, looking the taller of the pair dead in the eye. “I’m so done with this concept that you’re allowed to see other people, but when I have another friend who’s a girl, you suddenly feel threatened? I’m just a toy to you, Alexis. Just another goddamn toy you love to play with, just like every other human being with a pulse in New York City. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I won’t be going back to your place, I will be going back to my dorm where Shea is waiting for me.”
Alexis stood there, shocked. Not in her twenty years had anyone mistreated her like this. Okay, it wasn’t mistreatment. Nobody had taken the time to pick her apart. Not until Sasha. “Fine.” She huffed, tugging on the hem of her blouse. Someone saw through her facade. Someone was finally beginning to realize that she wasn’t perfect. “Go. Run off to your little bitch.”
That’s when Sasha stopped in her tracks. Who did this girl think she was? God? Turning around, she found her hand connecting with Alexis’ face in a rough slap. “I have never slapped anyone in my damn life, Alexis, and I never thought i’d ever start. But you, you deserve it. You are a god awful human being. Absolutely horrible. I no longer what to ‘go back to your place.’ That would have excited the me of three years ago, but i’m different now. I’ve outgrown your childish games of seduction.”
And with that, she turned away and walked away from Alexis, forever.
As the cab drove throughout the city that stayed so true to its name, “the city that never sleeps,” Sasha couldn’t help but think about what Alexis had said. She had always thought Shea was beautiful, both inside and out. She had always felt a little bit jealous when other women surrounded her. She was desired, it was very clear, with that chocolate skin and her deep eyes, she was every artistic lesbian’s dream. And unlike Alexis, she actually saw people as- well- people. You don’t play with people. All this time, Sasha had been so blinded by the idea that Alexis could have possibly grown up that she hadn’t seen what was right in front of her.
She was in love with Shea Coulee.
She practically tossed herself out of the cab as it pulled up to her dorm, sprinting past the front desk and up the stairs, praying that Shea would still be there, fast asleep by now. Shea always went to bed early. But, as she opened the door, she found Shea collecting her things she had brought with her.
“Shea? Wha-” she began to ask before she was cut off.
“I can’t do this.” Shea cried, Sasha could tell she had been crying. “I can’t stand to watch you run off with that other girl every night, when I’ve been standing right here since the first day we met with my arms wi-”
Then, Sasha knew what she had to do. Running to the other girl, she practically crashed into her to connect their lips, wrapping her arms around Shea’s waist to close any possible space between them.
Sasha hadn’t seen this many fireworks in her entire life.
As Shea pulled away for a moment, she was grinning like an idiot. “I- Uh…” She giggled weakly, wanting to ask what brought on that sudden burst of confidence, but Sasha beat her to it.
“I-I shouldn’t have done that.” She stammered. “I’m sorry, I bet you have a girlfriend, I bet you don’t even like me- I-”
“Are you deaf?” Shea laughed, pulling her closer to experience yet another one of those electrifying kisses. But this time, there were no other words. Just movement. It was like a waltz, their hearts beating in time with one another.
1, 2, 3…. 1,2, 3..
Shea began to toy with the hem along Sasha’s large white t-shirt.
1, 2, 3… 1, 2, 3….
Sasha turned up the heat by tugging on the collar of Sasha’s flannel, trying her hardest to assert her usual dominance. As she did so, Shea could feel her heart pound faster.
123, 123, 123….
“Shirt off. Now.” Sasha growled, her entire body practically shivering because of the adrenaline. There was nothing like a fiery Coulee woman to drive her wild. It wasn’t long before the fabric was gently fluttering to the floor and Once again, Sasha was breathless.
God, she was beautiful.
123123123123…
Shea didn’t want this to stop. As seconds flew by, she was aching for more. Seconds when her fingertips didn’t brush against Sasha’s skin felt like small pockets of eternity.
She had always wanted to give Sasha the undying love that she deserved. Perhaps this night was just what it was, a single night. But, she wanted it to be forever.
Sasha did too.
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downtownbrooklyn26 · 7 years ago
Text
Giancarlo Chico
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SILENT HEART Here we go. The beginning. Level 1. Orientation day. The first trimester. I have to tell you right now, I speak in tangents. A lot. And then go off on tangents on those tangents. It’s not because I have ADD (an over diagnosed mental illness that gives parent’s a reason to justify their kid’s idiocy), but because I have learned that some misgivings could be instigated as an art form. That, and I just have a short attention span.      My name is Atom. No last name. Not that I actually don’t have a last name. I just don’t want to give it. I have green eyes, am a Taurus, and I like long walks on the beach, and fried twinkies.      At this very moment, I’m staring at the name Phil written out on my Styrofoam tea cup. When I’m at a café, when I’m at a restaurant, when I comment on a YouTube video, I never give people my real name. Everybody thinks it’s a scam. No matter where I go, no one can quite wrap their finger around the concept of a name like that unless they have an obscure name themselves. After a few years of dealing with that kind of disbelief, you tend to get burned out and stray to typical white names minimum wage employees can understand; John, Dave, Tom, Chuck, Shawn, Bill. At $8 an hour, their minds only function at one syllable per word.      Cafés are a relatively pleasant environment, but I hate coffee. It only tastes good when you put a shit ton of sugar and cream in it (which is why everyone loves tiramisu), and even then it’s like drinking Soylent Green diarrhea with a money shot of vanilla extract. I am dreading my future, not just because I’ll be 25 years old in four days, but because my rent’s going up next month and I have no viable career options. In congruence to what most people say, creative writing pays about as well as a career in storm chasing. My father was right. I should have been a commercial jet pilot, or a trapeze artist, or a clandestine field agent, which is a fancy term for spy. Any of those would have been more plausible than trying to sell words for money.      Summer is coming up soon and I have nothing to do. This is what I consider fun; sitting in a café alone, writing a novel that will be most likely be read by no one. I’m beginning to turn into my father. When I was little, he was constantly bustling about the house, studying, researching, never taking a fucking break. At the time, I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t just sit still and relax, but now that I’m older… I still don’t understand. I like to write a lot, and when you have chosen writing as your career, it never becomes work. Taking a break doesn’t constitute as being lazy, it’s just time used to get over a writer’s block. Contrary to my appearance, I’m not a hipster. Never mind my scruffy facial hair, horn rimmed glasses, and pork pie hat, the only reason I like to write in cafes is because it offers less distraction than my apartment.      “Hey, man. We’re closing right now.” Comes a voice above me. The café is empty and my phone screen says 10:07. There goes another day.
     I can’t look up. I know that 3 inches away, some guy has his crotch lined up with my face. One of the many setbacks of traveling via the subway.  With my mind wandering, I forget my surroundings. My eyes inadvertently become glued to the perverse intersection of this hairy guy’s khakis. Being from out-of-state, I tend to stray from the normal norm of NYC culture. I noticed it the first day I moved here. Every one keeps to themselves. Always. They look at their phones, read their books, sleep. Nobody interacts with one another, or stares at that cute girl with tattoos creeping up her neck. I do. I’ve been a New Yorker for over a year now, and I have a girlfriend, but my eyes continue to scream bachelor and …. out-of-state.      As I’m sure you’ve probably already deduced, my parents were the ones to name me Atom. It’s not a household name but they wanted to be creative, like people who name their daughter Alia, but spell it Ahleeyah, or people who learn how to play the accordion. Ridiculous.      No, I’m just fucking with you. My father was a physicist, teaching theoretical physics at some no-name community college in the middle-of-nowhere town I’m from. Despite the fact that he dedicated his life to science in an effort to explain the unexplained, my father is still a god-fearing Catholic. As a result, I am not allowed to talk about my “atheistic views” inside his house. It’s strange that atheists can have something as ludicrous as a “coming out” story.  You’d think those should be reserved for mouth breathers or people who hate chocolate.      I remember being thirteen years old when I went to my first (and only) confession. While most people find peace and tranquility through this practice, confessing my “sins” to a random stranger in a fancy outhouse didn’t necessarily make me feel the most comfortable. When I entered that strange booth, and saw a man resembling Bill Gates in priest’s robes, I impulsively confessed deviant acts my friends committed while at school. Although I was most likely just being a coward, I’d like to think I was inadvertently trying to save my dear friends from eternal damnation.      “Father forgive me, for I have sinned. I was playing with scissors last week and accidentally cut some girl in the stomach. She’s fine but my teacher told me she’ll probably have a scar there for the rest of her life. I also cheated (somehow) in my woodshop class, and ended up getting a C+.”      The priest simply nodded silently to me, his head bowed. I remember wondering if I bored him to sleep.      “You must make penance for your sins, my son.” The priest suddenly spoke. “Recite ten Hail Mary’s and twenty [blah] [blah] [blahs].”      When I got home, I was unconventionally quiet. My father, his black mustache twitching from behind his newspaper, looked me up and down as I stared blankly at the wall. He obviously sensed something wrong with me.      “The priest didn’t do anything to you, did he?” he asked.      “No.”      “Good.” He responded, as if that closed the matter for good.      I stood rooted in the middle of the kitchen staring at him, as his attention returned back to his newspaper. And like a swift kick to the balls, tears began to pour out of my eyes.      “I don’t believe in God!” I bawled.      As I sobbed loudly in the middle of his kitchen, my father continued to skim the page he was reading, absorbing the words as if they held the answer to his preteen son’s sudden outburst.      Turning the page, my father asked me, “Do you pray when your grandma gets sick? Or when you really want to do well on a test at school?”      His voice seemed bored when he asked, and it calmed me down enough to fully contemplate the situation I just instigated. What possible use was there confessing to my father my soul’s absence of God? Why was I crying? Being an Atheist, you have to come to terms that you, and you alone, are in charge of your own actions, your own “destiny”.      “Yes.” I lied.      “Then you believe in God.” He concluded.      And that was that. He flipped the page of his newspaper and went on reading as if nothing happened, chalking it up to his 13 year-old son going through awkward puberty stuff.      Four years later, though, at 17, when I was going through my rebellious teenage phase, when I was learning how to conceal a constant boner, I decided to be honest and spiteful about his precious lord and savior. If blasphemy didn’t have a definition before, it did now. I think that was the first time I saw honest-to-goodness shame present itself on my father’s face. I could just see his whole world falling apart in his head, wondering, “Where did I go wrong? I raised the spawn of Satan….” And to that, I would have only responded, yes you did, fucker. If I had to pray to some divine being, I would have told it, “Lord, deliver me from yourself.” From that day on, I haven’t been allowed to say the word “atheist” under my father’s roof without getting reprimanded.
     My purple apartment is a second-floor piece-of-shit studio in Astoria. I like to peel the loose paint off the walls as I climb the stairs. The hallway light falters as I grab my keys out of my pocket, and my neighbors scream “Shut up!” at their wailing infant son who hasn’t even spoken his first word yet.      After entering the living room, I have to remember to press the correct light switch, otherwise I’ll be paying up-the-ass for electricity I’m not using. Half the lights in my home have gone out but I’m not tall enough to change the bulbs. No to mention I’m lazy and don’t want to deal with the maintenance man who refuses to do his fucking job. The walls in my room are covered floor-to-ceiling with take-out menus I’ve collected from dozens of restaurants, and one massive poster of my favorite music group, Baha Men.      I have a twin–size bed covered in Star Wars sheets from when I was 8. Regardless of the fact my girlfriend rides my dick on top of the Millennium Falcon, these sheets are still totes collectibles.      Time to get to work. Unlike my own creative writing projects, my job doesn’t require me to go to a happy place of serenity. For my job, I need a constant outlet of distraction, otherwise I’ll end up chain smoking to relieve my stress. And after a year-and-a-half away from American Spirits, I don’t think I would be able to endure wheezing through another porn-filled night of self pleasure.      My job isn’t what most people would call morally positive, but it’s not like I rob convenience stores or prostitute myself to Ricky Martin fanatics. I am a work-for-hire essay writer for a wide variety of clientele. It’s a wonderful little gig I’ve been doing for the past year. It’s amazing what kind of topics people are forced to write about; String Theory, gentrification, Alexander of Macedonia, how the Kardashians affect society. I have become a way station on people’s journey toward success.        Three new emails today from potential clients. One client, 19-year-old Sue Yung Kim, needs a five-page research essay on the progression of cash flow in the 20th century, written by Friday (WITH a works cited page). Who said all Asians were ambitious scholars?      Most essays I write cost around $100, depending on page length. Research and bibliographies cost extra, ultimately pricing this essay at around $175, if I’m feeling generous. I also take dead lines into account, so the shorter amount of time I have to complete a project, the more I charge. You may find my prices obscene, but I also guarantee every one of my customers a B+ or higher when it’s turned in, otherwise they get a full refund. So far, I have not had to return anyone’s money, and nobody’s been stupid enough to try and lie to me about their grade.      Another email, a middle-aged History teacher going for his Doctorate in Psychology, wants me to write a 100-page dissertation by mid June. Two months to obtain a Doctorate education in psychology, only to write about the ‘implications of visual illusions and how they help understand perceptual processes’. I’ll have it done in one month, with a pay off of around $5,500, my biggest check yet.  You may find this line of work to be a bit unorthodox, but the way I began is somewhat of an interesting story.    
     About a year ago, I was dozing off in the conference room of the Journalism Department at some dead-beat University. I was an office assistant working for this old Republican who was half in love with Rush Limbaugh. Aside from the usual tasks of organizing his desk, filing paperwork, and hiding his hemorrhoid medication, I also had to revise Journalism student essays. I have to tell you right now, those little fuckers are some of the worst writers I have ever encountered. How they managed to graduate high school and get accepted into a four-year University is beyond my comprehension, but I digress.      One day, this girl barges into the department office demanding to see Dr. Billsby who, at the time, was in China giving a lecture on the education-economic fall out in America. I assure you, they couldn’t have cared less, not because it’s an insanely tedious topic of debate, but because the Chinese university forgot to book him a translator, so the attendees didn’t understand a word he was saying. All they did was smile and nod as he droned on for an hour. Either way, I was in charge of the office that week.      I remember that day clearly. My cheerios that morning were stale and the broken office heater made me sweat more than a crack addict going through withdrawal. With my shirt clinging to my back, this girl, cheeks flushed, periorbitals swollen from stress asks me how I stand the heat. This is where I tend to run into a bit of a wall with people.      There’s no real way to describe severe glossophobia to anybody. I suppose I could just give the simplest definition of the term, but that would be like a woman reading the definition of abortion to a man.
     I was 20 when the idea came to me. 30 mg of Clonidine, 40 mg of Lexapro, 50 mg of Hydroxyzine, two tabs of LSD, and one packet of cigarettes per day was what it took to suppress my anxiety to a bearable level. I tried nearly everything to snuff it out completely, from public speaking classes to karaoke bars to drinking fucking coffee.      Sitting in the middle of an abandoned beach parking lot with my friend, Bryce, he suggested, “Maybe you should go see one them shrinks. A psychologist.” Psychologists, those small people with their equilateral frameless glasses, their pathetic sweater vests, those ominous clocks that tick a little too loudly in the foreground of their office. My 5’5” black friend from Long Beach then offered me a hit of his cigarette as we listened to Abba in his 1980 Buick.      “And maybe you should wear platform shoes to make yourself taller.” I replied, as I placed his cigarette between my teeth. “Light me, will you? It’s out.” The last words anyone will hear me say.      “My lighter’s almost gone so make it count... dick.” He tells me.      As the flame ignited the cigarette, I sucked hard and accidentally inhaled the butt, lodging it in my throat. I gasped for breath, placing my hands around my throat as the embers seared my larynx. If you’ve ever gone camping and made s’mores, then you most likely have an idea of how my vocal chords looked once I swallowed the damned thing. Looking back now though, that agonizing pain was probably the greatest moment of my life. I was like a dragon finally living up to my fire-breathing potential. All I had to do was rear my head back and scorch the earth.      The hospital was an overall tranquil experience the following week. I had to have a full evaluation done on my throat and my father threatened to cut me off if I didn’t quit smoking, but my anxiety was gone. After 6 years, 3 months, and 17 days, my heart wasn’t thumping in my ears. I was able to breathe and, for once, my mind wasn’t swimming in an ocean of self-doubt and panic. Smiling actually hurt my face, but like people who partake in BDSM or jousting, this was the kind of pain I could thoroughly enjoy. Everyone around me talked and droned on about their lives, but for once, I wasn’t expected to reply. I wasn’t expected to over think a response. I wasn’t expected to participate. My Doctor told me my voice would come back within the next two-to-three weeks, but that’s like reminding cancer survivors they’re still going to die some day.      So how does one best pull off a life altering deception? I suppose it really just comes down to eye contact. You wouldn’t suspect a 20-year-old virgin to look you directly in the eye and spoon-feed you the kind of bullshit only a deranged hypochondriac could invent…but I did. My sad big eyes would get all misty, my lower lip would tremble slightly, and pretty soon my hands would claw at your back as I embraced you in an effort to come to terms with the “loss of my voice”. I cried silently. You mumbled awkwardly. And the world went on spinning. Fuck Meryl Streep and Leonardo DiCaprio. The Oscar for most emotional performance goes to Atom @$%#&. The world can kiss my pale mute ass. Lord, deliver me from dialogue.
     In the Journalism office, the flustered girl continued waiting for me to respond to her. I pointed to my throat, indicating that I couldn’t speak, which only made her all the more frantic. After cursing under her breath, the girl began digging around her purse as I sat calmly analyzing her. She was a peculiar woman, to say the least.  Curly ginger hair that covered the shaved sides of her head, a pale complexion with light freckles sprinkled across her cheeks, and heavily mismatched eye-liner outlining her Hershey brown eyes. As for her apparel, she wore a black-and-white collared dress with wing-tipped bowling shoes, giving her a homeless Wednesday Adams look.      After a while of digging around in her purse, she pulled out a packet and plopped it down on the desk in front of me. “I need to talk to Dr. Billsby!” She over enunciated.      I scribbled on a piece of paper: I’m not deaf.  And handed it to her. I opened the packet she put down and saw the name Kit Conrad typed on the upper right hand corner of the page, the title reading, Extra Terrestrial Influence on Human Evolution, and a large red D written at the top of the paper.      “I need a higher grade than this. I talked to Dr. Sherry, and he told me to come to Dr. Billsby to help rewrite my paper.”      He’s in China. Won’t be back until next Wednesday. I wrote.      “Is there any way you could get in contact with him for me?”      You have to wait until he gets back.      “But I’m not going to be here next week. If I don’t get this grade up to at least a B, I’m fucked! I’m already on academic probation!”      In a sudden outburst of rage, she hurled her bag across the room. A loud crack came from her purse as it collided with the book case, several books tumbling to the floor.      “Shit….” She mumbled, as she hastily stooped down to clean up the mess.      Even with her back turned to me, I could sense wave after wave of regret radiating off her like solar flares. Too many parties, perhaps. Too much alcohol. Regardless of what people say, two positives can sometimes equal a negative. Against my better nature, I decided to sympathize with her.      After placing the books back in their designated spots, she turned around to find another note waiting for her to read.      Leave your essay here. Come back tomorrow. It read.      “Dr. Sherry said I had to work on it myself with Dr. Billsby.”      I pointed to the line I just wrote.      “Are you going to give it to Dr. Billsby?” She asked.      I, once again, pointed to words I wrote.      “Okay.... I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” Cautiously, she backed out of the office, unsure as how to feel about leaving her essay with a mute stranger.      As soon as I was sure she was gone, I began to skim her work. Lord, deliver me from red pens.  Aside from lacking reputable sources that failed to support her thesis, and an uneven flow of writing, her paper was riddled with literary and grammatical errors that made Joel Schumacher seem intelligent. In layman’s terms, George Clooney’s Bat nipples were a more feasible concept than this girl’s essay.
     It’s important for people to understand the importance of owning useless trinkets. Things of sentimental value that serve no purpose in life whatsoever. This concept is what hoarders rely on to keep themselves grounded. It’s important for them to hold on to their dead father’s chipped wooden cane. Own an aquamarine basketball. A broken sphygmomanometer. Their old Beetleborg action figures. Because when the full force of that battering ram called life comes bursting through their front door, they’ll at least have something to distract themselves from the inevitable aftermath of doom and isolation.      I sat and stared at her first page for over three hours. That’s one football game. One Peter Jackson movie. 36 cigarette breaks. That’s time I could have spent playing Dig Dug. Lord, deliver me from Ponchito’s delivery service. After that third hour, when I’ve become too scared to look at the clock, when my head is buzzing obnoxiously, that’s when I indulged in my old useless trinket of nostalgia: my mother’s old sticky Rubik’s cube.  Although loose and faded, like my boss’s wife’s vagina, the Rubik’s cube provides me with an outlet to process all analytical thought. I have never solved it, even though there are tutorials available. Manuals. Youtube videos. Swiveling those sides around, I make sure to complete one side at a time. First red, then white. Green. Yellow. Blue. Orange. With each side completed, I erase five years of my life. With each swivel, I get one step closer to nirvana. Peace. Tranquility. Bliss. Once I finish that last side, I can feel hope and confidence fill my body like a drink. Hope, after all, is the poison our souls thrive upon.      I returned to my desk and spun around in my swivel chair, a 7-year-old boy again. The first sentence in any written work is the most important. It grabs the reader’s attention, sets the tone for the rest of project, represents the passion of the writer. That is why one must never begin an essay, an article, a journal, with a question, because then their passion is under scrutiny. It soils the whole fucking thing.        The next day at the office, as I switched out the inept professor’s pills with Viagra, Kit entered, her low-hung shirt revealing a large Medusa tattoo on her chest. Her way of warding off perverts, I imagined.      “What are you doing?”  She asked.      I held up my finger, indicating for her to wait as I switched out the last of my boss’s medication. From under the desk, I pulled out her newly revised essay and plopped it on the desk in front of her. She grabbed it tentatively as I returned to my mundane office duties, which consisted mainly of me watching Family Matter reruns.  Kit skimmed through her new essay, her new life.      “So that’s it?”      I yawned silently while Urkel on screen exclaimed, “Hiya, big guy!” Dead people laugh and cheer in the background. The magic of 60 year-old laugh tracks. They can break awkward interactions, enabling a pristine environment of relaxation and glee.      Before exiting the office, she paused and turned back to me.      “Give me your number.” She demanded. “In case I have questions.”      If I must be honest, dear reader, while my initial reaction was to ignore her, feign apathy to the highest degree, I couldn’t help but panic. With no excuses to give, the only thing that occurred to me was to squeeze my eyes shut and hold my breath, hoping beyond hope that she would just go away. This always happens when you voluntarily interact with others; they expect more.      “Hello?” She said as I continued to hold my breath. 20 seconds passed and my lungs were already on fire. I never could hold my breath longer than half a minute. As the awkward tension grew, I counted off the last few seconds in my head, all the while keeping my eyes shut.      10 seconds left…9 seconds…8….      “Seriously, dude, are you deaf or mute? Hurry up and give me your number. I gotta go.”      7…6…5…4….      “Are you okay? You’re not breathing.”      3…2….      “Atom?”      My eyes flew open as I inhaled sharply through my nose. Black stars twinkled at me as I turned toward Kit. Her chocolate fountain eyes couldn’t have looked more intense, more alluring, like my father’s home-made paella or Scarlett Johansenn’s cleavage. I hastily scrawled my number on a piece of paper and handed it to her.  After she swiped the paper from my hand, she finally left, leaving me in a frozen state of shock. I never told her my name…. I thought.
     Two weeks passed with relative gusto. Every day at noon I woke up, showered, masturbated, brushed my teeth, got dressed, read a book, and masturbated again before falling into a deep sleep. The bachelor’s paradise. Somewhere in that time I ate, and pissed, and watched TV, but I never had to interact with anybody. My own personal utopia. My Disney World. My ecstasy.      It was a Sunday afternoon when Kit called me on my cell phone. Unlike most people, I like answering unknown numbers, if anything just to listen to telemarketers struggle in their pursuit of potential business. “Hello, sir. I’m Amy, calling on behalf of the [blah] [blah] company. We’re just calling to conduct our annual survey on home improvement services. I was wondering if you had a few minutes to [tra] [la] [la].”      “Hello? Atom?” Kit’s voice rang out loud over the receiver.      Silence.      “Oh, right. You can’t talk. Well, listen I need you to meet up with me in an hour at Aristotle’s Thrift shop on 4th Street. Tap the mouth piece twice if you understand me.”      And just like, after a moment’s hesitation, after eternity ended, I knocked on the speaker. Tap. Tap.      If you’re a Y2K kid, you don’t know what a VCR is. You weren’t born when people took pictures with something other than their phone. You didn’t know a time when people wore large wayfarer glasses un-ironically. And you definitely don’t understand the concept of phat farm shoes. I was 2 minutes late when I entered the store. I tucked my messy hay hair swiftly behind my ears as I searched through the racks for Kit.      “You’re late.” Came her voice behind me. The disgusting, putrid, beautiful smell of tobacco filled my nostrils as I twisted around to look at her. Kit, with her resting bitch face and connect-the-dot freckles, stood there with an electric cigarette between her lips, staring at me.  Around the corner, a smaller version of her entered the scene, texting on her cell phone. Unlike her older sister, this little-er Kit had straight blonde hair and Mick Jagger’s body with B-cup breasts.      “Mikal, this is Atom.”      “’Sup.” Mikal said, not looking up from her phone.      “Excuse me, miss. There’s no smoking in here.” A hipster in a beanie shouted to us from the counter.      “It’s a vape.”      “I don’t care. There’s no smoking in here.”      Kit, thoroughly annoyed, turned to her little sister.      “Meet me outside when you’re done. Talk to him, will you?”      So that’s how she thought of me. I was nothing but a parrot to her, an infant, Stephan Hawking. She didn’t care about leaving her sister alone with an anxiety riddled glossophobic pill popper. After exiting through the front, Mikal put her cell phone away and finally looked up at me. She smiled, encouragingly as if I were at a job interview, on a witness stand, as if I had to choose between two divorcing parents. That smile that says, “It’s okay. Take your time...bitch.”      After giving me a thorough up-and-down inspection, she looked back up at my klingon forehead and asked in a high-pitched voice, “You speak sign language?”    
     There are people in life who end up being subconsciously regarded as secondary priorities. They are the people their friends talk over. Their jokes never get a laugh. They’re always forgotten (unless someone needs a shoulder to cry on). They’re always cut in line. Constantly getting stood up. Canceled on. These people are the visible invisibles who help bring up social moral. They are the perfect sidekicks, assistants, shoe shiners. Their sole purpose in life is to be the perfect foot rest. This phenomenon is something I commonly refer to as the Clark Kent Effect. They are crucial instruments in the pursuit of progress. They hide in plain sight for all to see, but are never valued. They are the nickels and dimes you find on the street, the chump change you need to do your laundry. That was the life I led for twenty odd years. That is, until I met Star, the deaf Canadian heart throb with the heart of bronze. I never liked to confess that I lost my virginity to a woman with a stripper’s name but I have to admit the memory of the occasion always brings a small nostalgic grin to my face. I’m always reminded of her at the strangest of times, like when I watch a Jim Carrey movie, or pour maple syrup on French toast, or when I sit in a Brookstone massage chair. Her face swims clearly in the forefront of my mind. On our first night together, with the hospital bandages muffling my gasps and moans, her mouth expelled noises that sounded like a constipated hippo or the tantrum of a down syndrome kid. It was a very instinctual time in my life, instructional, daresay even inspirational. Not only did I learn music theory through vibrations and how to overcome pregnancy scares, but I also became fluent in American Sign Language.
     I nodded at Mikal, and signed,  Do you?      Yes. She replied. She was still looking at my forehead, giving that too-innocent smile some high school girls do at times.      I read the essay you wrote for Kit. Your writing is really organized. She signed, as she finally looked me in the eye. Unlike her sister, her eyes are cold and grey, not matching the rest of her young, vibrant face.      How old are you? I asked.      16.      She looked back down at her phone to send a quick text.      “I’m gonna go try this on. Come on.” Mikal suddenly said aloud, indicating to the sun dress in her arms. Like her sister, she had a natural instinct to command.      Without objection, I followed her.      I took a seat outside the fitting room on one of the rickety chairs as Mikal pulled one of the curtains shut behind her in the fitting room. The sound of a zipper being undone, followed by her jeans falling to the floor. My eyes couldn’t help screaming pervert and out-of-state again as I looked at the smooth pallid skin of her ankles.      “Atom.” Mikal called, as she poked her head out from behind the curtain. “Come here. I need your help.”      I looked around, making sure it was clear to approach the room. This is how people inadvertently become sex offenders. If it’s not a drunken piss in the park, it’s being lulled into dangerous situations by high school girls.      As I reached the curtain, she grabbed me by my shirt and yanked me inside the room, pulling the curtain close. She wasn’t wearing the dress. I had a fleeting view of this 16 year-old girl in her mismatched bra and panties before covering my eyes shut.      “Atom, it’s okay. You don’t need to close your eyes.”      Brain damage begins to occur after five minutes without oxygen. I can only hold my breath for 30 seconds. Lord, deliver me from Vladimir Nabokov.      26…25…24….      “Atom, relax. Nobody’s going to come in.”      20…19…18…17….      “Come on. Give me your hands.” Gently, she grabbed my wrists and pulled them away from my eyes. I kept my eyelids locked, though. Not that keeping my eyes closed would bar me from sex offender status.      13…12…11…10…9….      “It’s okay…It’s okay…” I could feel her getting closer, her thin body and soft skin pressed against my chest. Her warm breath not three inches from my face. She smelled like strawberry lemonade.      5…4…3…2….      And as I opened my mouth to breathe, her lips were on mine. Her soft, cracked lips feeding me the breath of life, her half naked teenage body wrapped around me like a blanket of seduction. Our tongues slithered together, moving from mouth to mouth, hungry for more, always more. And right then, at our most intimate, at our most vulnerable, the curtain swung open to reveal Kit.      “Dammit, Mikal. You couldn’t wait do that somewhere more private?”      “It was pretty private until you yanked opened the fucking curtain.”      Mikal grabbed her clothes and began hastily shoving them back on. My lips now tasted like strawberry lemonade.      “I could see both your feet, dumbass. You were taking forever, so I came back to check on you. Did you talk to him?”      Kit must not be a very good sibling if she wasn’t angry about a creepy 24- year-old man violating her teenage sister. Mikal looked at my reflection through the mirror, my strawberry lemonade colored cheeks and tousled hair projecting through my humility.      Finger-combing her hair, Mikal asks me, “I have an 8-page essay that needs to be written by next week. You think you can write it for me?”      And, just like that, in a thrift store fitting room with a blonde high school girl, my boner slowly receding, my lips gooey with strawberry lemonade chap stick, my career started.
.
Giancarlo Chico completed his MFA (Writing and Producing for Television, 2017) in the LIU Brooklyn TV Writers Studio, where he studied with Norman Steinberg. He also holds a BA in Communication (Radio-TV-Film) from California State University Fullerton, where he minored in Criminal Justice. Chico has worked as an emergency medical technician, a martial arts instructor, and a producer for a live news talk show. He has done script writing for Titan TV, video edited and produced for The Grio, worked as a freelance screen writer, and worked as a production assistant for WheelHouse Creative. In addition, he has been a background actor on multiple television shows and films, including the Netflix series Iron Fist and the feature film Ocean’s 8. 
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viralhottopics · 8 years ago
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Want to Profit Off Your Meme? Good Luck if You Arent White
Gather round, ye olds, and thrill to a tale of yore. Summer 2014, to be exact. The place? Vine (RIP). The hero? AChicago teenager calling herself Peaches Monroee, who uploaded a video in which she described her eyebrows as “on fleek.”
Yea verily, Peaches Monroee’s neologism spread far and wide. Ariana Grandejumped on board, as didKim Kardashian. Brands, not surprisingly, werenext. And lo, wheniHopandTaco Belluse a slang term, aForever 21 crop topcan’t be far behind. Evenrapper/flat-eartherB.o.B goton the act,proclaiming himself Fleekwood Mac onhis song Fleek. But to this day, despite enterprising companies cashingin on the phrase’s “YOLO”-level popularity—“on fleek” hats have adorned multiple celebrity heads—its originator hasn’t seen a cent.
Now, Peaches Monroee, whose real name is Kayla Lewis,hopes to change that. Last week shelauncheda GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign in order to launch a cosmetics and hair-extensionline, asking anyone who uses the phrase to chip in a few bucks. Good for her, right? But also, why didn’t she get college scholarships like Chewbacca Mom, whose claim to fame boils down to laughing while wearing a plastic mask? Lewis’s problem is part intellectual property law, part access to influence, and all systemic racial inequalities. However egalitarian the internet was supposed to be, creatives’ ability to profit off their viral contentseems to depend on their race.
Guys it has been set…everyone has been asking me to start this GoFundMe so I can get some type of money so I can start my own business and get some money… any amount can help the link is below. Hopefully we can get this in the hands of some wealthy people thanks ! #gofundme #gofundmedonations http://bit.ly/2lNCmGF
A post shared by Peachie Peach (@officialpeaches__monroee) on Feb 19, 2017 at 11:04am PST
What’s in a Meme
The internet may have started as a utopian dream, but becoming an engine of capitalism was just about inevitable. And starting around2010—when Hot Topic stuck Rageguy on a T-shirt, much to 4chan’s, well, rage—the meme-to-merch-to-money pipelinehas been humming. Some of it has even benefited thememe creators themselves. “The people behind keyboard catand Nyan Cat did a really good job of capitalizing on their intellectual property,” says Kate Miltner, an internet researcher at the University of Southern California. “Grumpy cat wrote the textbook: There was the book, the movie, they even have grumppuccinos.”
The windfall isn’t confined to cats, either. Besides Chewbacca Mom, financial successes include Daniel Lara of “Damn, Daniel,” who parlayed his Vine fame intoa lifetime supply of Vans and an Ellen appearance. Or Danielle Bregoli, whose threat to a Dr. Phil audience—now meme-mortalized as “cash me outside, howbow dah?“—catapulted her to $30,000 paychecks for meet-and-greets.
Lewis’ immediate barrier compensation is partially the way in which her work became a meme. “A phrase is a difficult thing to protect,” says KJ Greene, a law professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law. “If you’re wealthy and legally savvy, you might be able to trademark your catchphrase, like Paris Hilton did with ‘that’s hot.’” But that’s still tricky to pull off: President Trump failed to trademark “You’re fired.”
But there is another thing that separates Lewis from the Lara’s and Bregoli’s and Hilton’s as well: she’s black. “I cannot name a person of color who has created something viral and capitalized off of it,” says April Reign, managing editor of Broadway Black and originator of the annually-trending#OscarsSoWhite. And considering the amount of incredibly popular memes created by people of color—spanning from Kimberly Wilkin’s(AKA Sweet Brown) “Ain’t nobody got time for that” to Confused Mr. Krabs to the first Arthur-fist memeto “on fleek”—that’s a significant omission.
When Remixing Verges on Whitewashing
Of course, twas ever thus. “Going back to the minstrel period, there is something about African-American culture that drives pop culture trends,” says Greene. “But musicians from places like the South Bronx had no idea they were creating something that would be a phenomenon, and IP law struggles with things created by a community rather than an individual—it was hard to tell who created that blues riff or that beat.”
To some, memes creators face a similar issue as blues musicians or early hip-hop pioneers. “Memes are remixed and often appropriated, so they mutate over time,” says Sanjay Sharma, who teaches courses on new media and internet politics at Brunel University London. “Most folks who share a meme are oblivious to who originated it. People who claim Peaches shouldn’t be compensated can trade on this kind of argument.”
It’s a fair point, but it also falls apartin the face of how white meme creators have capitalized on their proverbial 15 minutes. That points to a stark difference in the way creators of color are viewed. “What Peaches does,what Sweet Brown does, is always viewed as lower class, and an example of what all black people must be doing,” says Andr Brock, who teaches race, ethnicity, and new media at the University of Michigan. “When white people do that online, it’s promoted as their command of the digital space. Black people are never seen as enterprising.”
The problem is especially glaring since many successful memes scoop their punchiness from black culture anyway. “The reason the ‘cash me outside’ girl is ‘funny’ is because she’s a white female using a voice associated with black culture,” says Catherine Knight Steele, who teaches race, gender, and media at the University of Maryland. “Sweet Brown isnt funny in the same waythe humor is different. It’s mockery. ‘Cash me outside’ almost feels like shes in on the joke.”
“It’s very apparent that it’s happening along racial lines,” April Reign says of the meme monetizationgap. “Are the IP lawyers and trademark people reaching out to people of color? Are publicists reaching out and saying, ‘Hey let’s get you on The Ellen Show?’” For now, it’s clear that they are not.
And while somebody can argue that Ellen‘s audience (and booking agent)is way more likely to have seen “Damn, Daniel” or Chewbacca Mom on Facebook than Lewis on Vine, the excuse is getting a little tired. Even digital spaces that black culture fueled—like Vine—seem to forget about their creators of color when its time to go take things IRL and make some money. “There was an entire tour of kids who were popular on Vine, but I dont remember seeing many black kids on that tour,” Miltner says.
There may be hope;Kayla Lewis has managed toraise $11,000 in just 8 days of crowdfunding. (She’s aiming for $100,000.) That’s due not only to hertenacity, but tothe internet at large. “Now you have receipts,” Steele says, referring to the verifiable proof that Lewiscoined the term. “Online content creation creates a way to trace something. And you can push back in the same medium used to steal from you.”
Even better, Lewis isn’t the only one.There’s a growing force of people of color bent on getting their due for their digital creativity. “Im in conversations now about what we can do for black content creators to make sure that theyre monetizing,” Reign says. “The next step is to determine how to ensure people are recognized as the original creator of a work. Nobody envisioned the internet when they were writing intellectual property laws. I think theres an opportunity now for lawyers to do something really important.” Because getting just rewards for your efforts? Definitely on fleek.
Read more: http://bit.ly/2lNrA3i
from Want to Profit Off Your Meme? Good Luck if You Arent White
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