#I just really like seeing how his loneliness and depression and NEED for conversation translates through the tiniest of actions

[knightedwriter]

it’s the little things alderon does that tell u a lot about him in these first few chapters

he snaps a lot at Garrick and makes threats but then Garrick mentions that he likes to read and Alderon is transported to a whole other world

he throws a tantrum about having an “annoying human” around him all the time but then seeks Garrick out when he’s having a bad day

[cosmicjoke]

Ohh, just got through reading chapter 53 of AoT, and boy oh boy, was there some incredible stuff here not included in the anime.

Well, the first scene that really stood out to me was after the hardening experiments with Eren fail, and we get that whole scene with Levi kind of berating Eren for his failure, before assuring Mikasa that he isn’t blaming Eren, and launching into his monologue about how he’d only started noticing the stink inside the walls a few years ago, and how it’s been like this for a hundred years, how they’ve all been prisoners for that whole time.  What I love about this scene is how Hange steps in eventually and helps Levi out, because he’s trying to explain that they need to keep trying, and not give up, even if Eren failed at hardening himself, but he’s doing a bad job of getting what he means across.  We start to really see the relationship between Levi and Hange developing here, and are shown an aspect of it we haven’t really seen before, which is Hange sort of serving as Levi’s translator of sorts, understanding that he isn’t always so good at expressing himself.  The way Levi seems to calm down after she steps in, and then confirms for Hange that she’s right about what he meant, before thanking her, is incredibly poignant in its way.  This is one thing Levi’s not good at.  He’s not good at expressing himself, or making himself clear in words, and you can see his frustration in this scene, trying to impress upon Eren and all of them what he means, but being unable to really do so, coming across more harshly than he intends.  We see that because Mikasa thinks he’s blaming Eren, but he’s not, and he says so, but he can’t get across what he IS trying to say.  So it’s just really sweet, the way Hange swoops in and kind of rescues him here, and explains to everyone what he really means.  You can feel Levi’s gratitude towards her for that.

Of course there’s the big scene in this chapter that I always see everyone lamenting that they didn’t include in the anime, and that’s the scene in Trost with the merchants.  I’ve seen other people point out that Levi doesn’t at all argue with or fight back against the merchants who are verbally accosting him and the SC in general.  He doesn’t try to defend himself, or in any way downplay the merchants complaints or criticisms.  He COULD, because of course what they’re saying about the SC is all wrong, about them being lazy, or doing nothing to help people, etc...  And particularly, Levi could defend himself and be right to do so, because he himself had nothing to do with the higher up’s decisions to evacuate the city, etc...  But he doesn’t.  He just stands there and lets these people vent their frustrations and fears out onto him.  This scene really tells us so much about Levi, who he is as a person, and, I know like I’m sounding like a broken record here, but his deep compassion and understanding for other people and what they’re feeling and going through.  Because of Levi’s own, deprived background, the poverty and starvation he experienced as a child, you can see Levi has deep empathy for these people’s particular plight of being unable to put food on the table, or earn enough money to really live.  Levi’s got this despairing look on his face throughout this whole scene, and then of course, the big, telling moment is when he looks up and sees the woman with her child.  Others have pointed out already how Levi was no doubt thinking of his own mother in this moment, and remembering the hardship and pain of their own lives together in the Underground.  Just seeing Levi’s capacity here for empathy and understanding is really extraordinary.  One moment in particular though really stands out to me, and again is such a perfect demonstration of Levi’s goodness.  When Levi, after taking this verbal abuse, suddenly hears a carriage approaching them, and realizes in a panic that all of these people that have surrounded him are in danger, and he cries for them to watch out, before kicking one of the men directly in the way of the carriage out of its path, and elbowing the other who’d just put his hands on him in a violent, aggressive manner, also out of the way.  He saves the lives of two men who had just been ragging HARD on him and completely dismissing everything he had lost and suffered, had even started to mock him.  He doesn’t even think about it, or hesitate.  He just automatically does all he can to prevent them from being crushed under the carriages wheels.  Again, this is just such a powerful demonstration of the goodness of Levi’s heart.  It doesn’t matter that these men seemed to dislike, even hate him, and had been trying to shame him and humiliate him and drag him just moments before.  All that matters is saving their lives, and that’s what Levi does, despite their unkindness towards him.  This really was an incredible moment.  I mean, damn, Levi is just such a good person, he really is.  It’s just intrinsically who he is.  He doesn’t have to think about saving or helping others, or convince himself that he should.  He just DOES, even when those same people have shown him nothing but scorn or derision.  

Another moments that stood out to me in this chapter too was Erwin’s conversation with Nile, and particularly the last exchange between them before Erwin leaves the carriage, when he tells Niles he was fond of Marie too, and Nile spits back at him that there’s something wrong with him for choosing Titans over her.  Here we really start to see Erwin’s sense of guilt and regret for the first time, his sadness and depression.  His look of resignation after Nile leaves, and just this awful sense of loneliness that clearly weighs down on him, is really heartbreaking.  There’s such a tragic isolation to him in this moment, and I think Nile himself knows he shouldn’t have said what he did to Erwin, shouldn’t have been so unkind.  

Another moment too, though, was how after Levi receives Erwin’s instructions, despite him starting to form his own doubts as to Erwin’s intentions and motivations, he still trusts him to make the right decisions.  What Levi says here to his squad, asking them if they trust Erwin, and if any of them are “dumb enough” to, they should follow him.  This tells us that Levi still DOES trust Erwin, which speaks to the level of faith Levi had in him, even after having that faith shaken in chapter 51.  He’s still willing to follow his plans and believe in him and his vision.  When people say Levi is Erwin’s connection to his own humanity, I think this is a perfect demonstration of that too.  Levi never abandons Erwin, never gives up on him, never leaves him alone.  So as lonely as Erwin seems in that panel, after Nile says such unkind things to him, the truth is, Levi is still in his corner, is still there for Erwin, as a comrade, and as a friend.  It’s that refusal to give up on Erwin, I think, that allows Erwin to hang on to his own sense of humanity.  

[mrsgreenworld]

Sen Çal Kapımı Episode 14 aka The 5 Stages of Grief

This week brought us another SCK episode which was in one word just good. I had a lot of problems with and while watching the previous episode last week. There were so many questions to editing and the overall pace. I am no expert but even to my untrained eye the episode this week was easier and more pleasant to watch. However, for all the things I liked (which I will get to very soon) after rewatching the episode with the subs I am also left a bit disappointed. But let's start on the positive note.

The things I loved / liked:

☑️ Edser: even with this inevitable doom over their heads they're gorgeous, aren't they?

I love the consistency of the way they hold hands - palm to palm, entwining their fingers; not sure if this is the writers' decision or it was Kerem and Hande's acting choice or it's completely unconscious - whatever, it gives me all the feelings;

loved the gifts exchange and the choice of the gifts was so Edser; I know that Serkan's gift wasn't the most original or symbolic but it actually showed how attentive and attuned to Eda he is; he notices what she likes; a small moment when Eda said that there's nowhere she could wear such a dress and Serkan just easily responded with something like "We will find somewhere to go so you can wear this dress" - made me swoon 🥰 ; and then Eda's gift to Serkan - simple, may even seem silly and not functional but it's so Eda; because just like that world lamp it carries a meaning, it makes us and most importantly - Serkan - smile and laugh;

the next very important Edser moment is at the office terrace when Eda was planting flower seeds; I am not sure I got it right (feel free to correct me if you are a Turkish native speaker and I got lost in translation 🙂) but I think Eda said those were rose seeds; even if those were the seeds of some other flowers it's still very symbolic because flowers in general represent natural beauty and something devine; of course each individual flower has its unique meaning which can also differ depending on the colour (take roses for one: ⚪ roses mean purity and holiness, 💛 symbolise wisdom and joy while ❤️ roses are the representation of passion and sacrifice); roses in general symbolise God at work, the scent of these flowers makes us think about powerful sweetness of love, which is the essence of God; I think love is the first thing that comes to mind when we think about or see roses; so if Eda was indeed planting the seeds of roses it's very fitting because, as Eda said it herself, that very place is where everything started, where her and Serkan's love story began; plus these flowers have a very special and personal value - they represent Eda's connection with and love for her mom;

I loved seeing Eda open up to Serkan about her family, tell him her real last name... although it was bittersweet because we know how this conversation only served to cut Serkan more from the inside;

and speaking of Serkan - oh my god, the way he was looking at her in this episode 😭 we have seen a lovesick smitten look on him before but it's different now; it's painful longing; it's almost like he was committing her to his memory, wanted to imprint her looking at him with smiles and love ; because he believes that he doesn't deserve any of it and once she knows the truth she will never look at him the same way ever again;

I loved a bit of light-hearted moment between Edser in Serkan's office when they discussed evening plans and Eda suggested going to the cinema; Serkan's reaction - 👀; our boy is so social phobic 🙈😆; I love how Eda is showing him and teaching him these simple joys of life which he, unfortunately, never experienced;

and the cinema date itself - perfect; Serkan Bolat actually eating popcorn? - the planet must have gone off its axes🤣🤣🤣 Serkan asking Eda to put her head on his shoulder - swoon; his small kiss on her head - double swoon; him noticing her crying and trying to wipe away her tears - triple swoon; and finally - after the film, when he said that he would love to have the kind of machine they had seen in the film, the one that could erase bad memories, and he would love that for her, to relieve Eda from the pain of her past - I officially turned into a puddle on the floor after this;

I absolutely loved that throughout the episode Eda was very much attuned to Serkan; she immediately noticed that something was off about him; however, she wasn't pushy, she gave him space and time, she was waiting for him to talk to her when he was ready; her noticing his injured hand within the first millisecond and not believing him when tried to make up something involving Sirius - her stern "Are you really gonna feed me this crap?" look was priceless and his immediate surrender was even better 😏;

comments about Serkan's magic hands gave me all kinds of dirty thoughts 🙈😆🤣

and finally - Eda kissing Serkan's neck; it may seem a bit bold because, I think, neck kisses are considered a more sensual kind of kisses but Eda made it not about passion and desire, she managed to turn it into a show of her deep love instead and also forgiveness for Serkan's earlier outburst;

☑️ 5 stages of grief:

Call it a coincidence but just this week, on Monday, I posted a fic featuring future Edser where I actually wrote Serkan going through these stages. Fifi mentioned them as well in the episode. And finally - we got to see Serkan at very stage in this episode. Of course in reality it doesn't go like this - in just one or two days. If only that were true. But we all understand that we're dealing with fiction here so the process had to be accelerated.

As Meredith Grey once said: "There are five stages of grief. They look different on all of us. But there are always five".

1 - denial: we witnessed Serkan's denial after seeing the documents that his parents showed him; even Aydan said something like this to Alptekin: "He's just found out about it, of course he's going to try and deny it";

the moment in Serkan's office when he said to Eda that they should run away, disappear, just the two of them - another attempt at denying, it's him trying to ignore this; the cinema date - a small fleeting moment of escape where they could be a normal couple enjoying a movie together, eating popcorn and cuddling;

2 - anger: the very first scene with Serkan and his parents when they came to check on him - he lost his temper and yelled at them demanding that they bring him the damn files because he needed to see everything with his own eyes; in that very scene he almost broke a coffee table but ended up smashing the world lamp that Eda got him; let's talk about symbolism here for a moment - Serkan's whole world is smashed into pieces right now, just like this lamp;

another small depiction of his anger - after his date with Eda he slammed his first into the poor coffee table and did break it cutting his hand in the process;

his passive-aggressive behaviour towards Efe and finally losing it and snapping at Eda;

3 - bargaining: the conversation with Eda at the terrace in the office and asking about letting go of the past and if she had ever considered forgiving her grandmother; him trying to talk to her - he even wanted to do this when they went to the cinema; him trying to make up for his shitty behaviour and coming to her house with flowers and every intention of telling her the truth;

4 - depression: there were small snippets of it - when he broke the coffee table and didn't even flinch; when he was sitting on the counter in the office and telling Engin everything; him walking out of his office after the terrace conversation - you can see the heartbreak written all over his face; him mentioning to Engin that this secret was eating at him and how Eda's kindness and goodness were killing him;

5 - acceptance: the first step I think was made during that fight when Serkan said to Eda that "loneliness is better for someone like him anyway" and then just walked away; in that moment he seemed resigned to this fate - of being forever alone; then of course overhearing Eda and Ceren's talk about Eda's grandmother; and finally - the breakup scene where Serkan was completely resigned, he had realised and accepted that there's no winning for him in this situation and in his mind he had chosen the lesser of two evils;

I believe that we will see a bit more of Serkan's resigned acceptance next week but in this episode I think we walked through all of the stages;

☑️ Engin: love what a great friend he is - he immediately noticed that something was bothering Serkan; he patiently listened to Serkan (also loved that Serkan shared this with Engin instead of keeping all of it to himself), genuinely empathized and said how both Serkan and Eda didn't deserve this shit; I also love that Engin urged Serkan to be honest and tell Eda everything and pointed out that Eda deserved to know the truth;

love how he doesn't let Serkan get away with anything, just like in that scene in Serkan's office - after Serkan's fight with Eda, in the evening Engin finds Serkan in his office and when Serkan says "don't say anything" Engin is like "sorry, bro, but I will" and he did tell him that it was a shitty thing to do - saying all those things to Eda; but he also managed to remain understanding and wasn't pressuring Serkan too much or yelling at him that he had acted as an a*hole;

also loved Engin's silent support to Eda after Serkan's outburst;

while I don't really care about Engin's romantic entanglements with Pırıl the moment during brunch when he basically shut Pırıl up by feeding her something was really funny 😆;

☑️ The Girls: loved the scene where Eda tells the girls that Serkan was going to Italy with her and how he had already bought a house and rented an office there; their genuine happiness for her and their support of each other never seizes to amaze me;

the scene in the evening with all of the girls lying in a circle and telling how their day had gone - another testament to how beautiful this female gang is;

☑️ a series of smaller moments:

Eda hanging a new picture of Serkan on the wall and drawing a ❤️ on it with a red💄- this girl is so in love 😏😁;

Eda / Selin ripping Selin's wedding dress together - a great bonding moment;

Melek showing Selin her support at the brunch;

Aydan tending to and dressing Serkan's hand and telling him her own love story - a nice mother/son moment;

Seyfi spotting Serkan's picture and the star certificate in Eda's room - his genuine happiness for Edser gives me life, he definitely is the captain of this ship 🚢💟🕺🤝💪😎 ;

I love the list of Serkan's friends: Engin (he's numero uno because he's Yoda Diggle 🙈😆), Pırıl and Sirius (btw, where the hell is Sirius??? Mom & Dad are fighting again, you better drag your ass over here so you and Seyfi can help them make up)

The things I didn't like / was annoyed with:

🚩Selin: I am not saying she has no right to be angry with Ferit; what he did wasn't nice but she was ready to dump him any moment and I am sure had Serkan whistled at her while she was at the wedding table, she would have run to him then and there; so I think she should get off her high horse and stop being so freaking selfish; she has to take responsibility for her own actions and instead of demanding something from Ferit (like leaving the holding, not coming to the Art Life office) try apologizing to the man for being a bitch of cosmic proportions;

the cutting of the pictures scene - way to go girl if that's your kind of therapy; but the moment when she stumbled upon some pictures of herself and Serkan and left them untouched - god, give me a break; still being hang up on the man who clearly doesn't love you and probably never loved you, the man who, as you claimed yourself, you were never happy with... I don't know but it wouldn't have hurt if the writers had made her love and respect herself a bit more;

what's with that face after having overheard the conversation between the girls in the restroom? she looked as if she had heard them bad-mouthing her while there had been nothing negative said about her and the focus of the conversation had been on Ceren and Ferit;

🚩Ceren and Ferit: the thing with them has been developing kinda unevenly; while I enjoyed their first meeting and running into each other at the office in the previous episode, in this episode there was too much of them and the tone of their scenes almost gave me a whiplash; Ceren's passive-aggressive behaviour over the phone and near the office was just weird, the brunch interactions - awkward at first and then everything ended with Ceren being all sweet and supportive 👀;

🚩while I liked the scene where Selin and Eda were ripping Selin's wedding dress together and didn't like how they ended the scene: when Eda saw the pictures of Selin and Serkan together; I know it's not pleasant to see the pictures of the man you love with his ex while at the said ex's house after having helped her rip her wedding dress... but it's not a good enough reason to turn hostile and cold; and while Eda was not hostile, the look she gave Selin made me think I had forgotten to close the window in the room 🥶;

🚩 Aydan: I know that her heart-felt story was meant to make her likeable but it actually made me understand her even less; for a woman who was in love, who fell in love with someone who wasn't from a wealthy family - and to give Eda so much crap how she was not the right fit for their family; of course that was something she said at the very beginning, in the first episodes but it still annoys me;

and that unspoken advice that she kinda sorta gave to Serkan - really??? what kind of advice is that??? maybe I got it wrong but did she actually advice her son to just carry this burden on his own? did she mean it was okay to disappear into thin air without so much as a goodbye???👀🙄🤯

🚩 Pırıl and Engin: while their bowling date was kinda cute I didn't like Engin's comment about him wanting to boast in front of his friends that he finally "got the girl" so to speak; and Pırıl's initial reaction to bowling was a bit extra;

🚩Efe: liked his new hairstyle, the man looked smoaking hot🔥but☝️he is becoming more and more shady; it's like he's doing nothing wrong, he's being polite and friendly, learning things about the staff and organising brunch but it seems like he's trying too hard and there's something behind of all this; also - I see what you did there with Ferit and all that shares talk, very subtle 🧐🕵️;

There was nothing I hated but there's something I was disappointed with:

💔 Serkan not telling Eda the truth; I understand the motives and we saw the struggle and how he came to this difficult decision through all those stages of grief; however, I feel disappointed that the writers decided to go down this beaten path; I think I had a tiny sliver of hope that they would surprise us so I was sorry to see this story becoming predictable like many others; this won't, however, stop me from loving these imperfect characters and this imperfect show; sorry not sorry but "Deli gibi aşık oldum" 😊😍

[hyukiee]

Chapter 2: Backseat

Warnings: cussing, drug use, mental illness (future fluff, smut, angst, etc.)

I’m so sorry for not updating, a lot has been going on but be ready for a double update! :)

Taehyung is the type of person that is never fake. He can read people like an open book and when he sees that their intentions are fake, he doesn’t hide his annoyance or frustration. He has been in many of these situations with celebrities while in America. There’s a reason people say to never meet your idols. Chances are, their assholes. It’s unfortunately rare to come across a genuine person in the industry. Taehyung just doesn’t have the energy to be someone he is not, he’s been having this feeling of loneliness a lot more everyday. Not really loneliness but just this incompleteness. He can’t say anything though because that would make him greedy in other people’s eyes. What does he not have, right? He’s in the biggest group in the world, he can get anything he wanted. He’s never understood the whole ‘money can’t buy happiness’ phrase as much as he does now. “Yah, we’re getting your favorite coffee why do you look like someone just stole your favorite toy,” Yoongi chuckled hanging his arm around Taehyung’s shoulder. “Just tired, it’s hot out today,” “Mhm, good ole California,” Hoseok piped in with his iconic smile. The heat consumed Taehyung’s mind until he saw someone sitting in front of his favorite cafe. Not just some homeless person but weirdly the prettiest one he has ever seen. The urge to help her was obviously because she was pretty because they have passed many homeless people here and never gave a second look. He really shouldn’t help her, right? Homeless people are there for a reason, she may use his could of been good spent money on drugs. Little did he know you mentally hit yourself for not taking his money for an extra Xanax. Fuck it.

“Where did Tae go, he needs to order?” Namjoon frantically looked around the shop as if he was looking for his lost child. On que, Taehyung walked in with even more of a depressed look. “Was I the only one that saw him get rejected by the homeless??” Jungkook held onto his stomach from laughter and soon pain from Taehyung’s fist. “What is up with you today? You’re never like this,” Jin spoke for the whole group. Taehyung really is never like this. Everyone knows how insanely honest he is, he wouldn’t just give some crackhead money. No, he would give it to someone that deserved it. Something told him she didn’t deserve the money but she deserved something... he wish he would be able to find out what it was.

“Yahh, i’m much taller than you, i’ll catch up eventually so you might as well stop,” Taehyung had a smile stuck on his face as he sped walked behind you. He expected this to happen, it wasn’t really planned to have you find out that you were talking to someone famous all along by seeing him perform but it was just too good of an opportunity. He didn’t see you in the crowd but he saw you walking away with your head down. He would of never assumed it would be that easy to embarrass you. “What? I thought you wanted to meet celebrities here?” he spoke almost cocky after grabbing your small wrist making you turn to him abruptly. “Is this a joke? What do you want from me? I don’t want to be your charity case if that’s what this all is.” Ouch. Was he that bad at flirting or do you have a million walls holding you back? “I’ve been feeling empty recently. You know, like I have everything but it’s not really what I want. I’m interested in you, this isn’t a common thing for me when i’m in a foreign country. Your not a charity case but...,” Taehyung’s cheeks turned red at his sudden confessions. You kept eye contact with him as he rambled though, it almost felt like you found relief in what he was saying. “I’ll be your charity case if you really are as interesting as i’m assuming.”

Is he asking you for drugs? No... it can’t be that. He doesn’t know you, how does he have such a big assumption of you out of one conversation. You probably can’t run now, he really is much taller than you. What is holding you back? Some ridiculously attractive artist is asking you of all people to show him a life he has been missing. Oh you can do that. It’s practically your second job. “Fuck it, let’s go.” You turned back around and started walking slower to the exit, assuming Taehyung was following. You might be able to scare him out of this before you even get on the road back to L.A. People always swear they want to live this carefree life but that is just what it looks like on the outside. It’s a scam. Give you a good time at first and by the end of it your just a sleep deprived drug addict. That could never be Taehyung. If he can make assumptions about you, you could do the same. He’s a good guy, the type to try and change you into a better person. He’ll stick out like a bug with you. So out of place but so desperate to find whatever is missing in his life.

“So, BTS huh? How’s that?” you and Taehyung sat in the back of Julian’s car waiting for him to find his way back so you can get some sleep at a hotel. “Exhausting, honestly but my members are amazing and so are our fans so that keeps me going,” he played with his fingers, smiling as he thought about the guys and army. He feels terrible for feeling lost when he has such amazing people around him. “Interesting,” you responded back uninterested. Not on purpose, you were just trying to cut up some cocaine on your phone. Taehyung noticed how you spoke and looked at you. “What’s that?” “Do you really wanna know?” You laughed at his innocent expression. “I don’t know why I asked, I know what it is,” why does it feel like your getting judged by your father? He sounded so disappointed, you almost felt guilty. Almost. “Sure you do,” you laughed before snorting your perfectly made line you might say. You released a long sigh as you entered your own world made by your dearest cocaine. Not a single thing in this world could replace the feeling. Taehyung sat almost uncomfortably looking out the window, pretending you weren��t literally abusing drugs right beside him. He’s stubborn, he hasn’t left yet even though you can tell he is reconsidering his decision to come with you. It reminds you of yourself, stubborn as fuck and so desperate to find a new meaning in life.

“Jesus christ y/n, when I said people would kill to meet celebrities here I didn’t mean go off and kidnap one,” Julian loudly made himself noticed in the drivers seat, noticing the perfectly built man before he even opened the door. “Oh fuck off, he asked to come,” Fuck, now you have to playing fucking translator. “Taehyung, this is Julian,” you tapped on him pointing to Julian. “Yeah, right .. what’s up man,” Julian greeted Taehyung like he did everyone else. It isn’t rare for the both of you to bring around random people, it’s apart of the life you live, vibing with complete strangers and quite literally trusting them with your life sometimes. Taehyung greeted him the best he could in his own awkward way. “He doesn’t speak english so just use hand gestures like a dumb ass, I don’t feel like translating right now.” You spoke laying your head back on the headrest. As Julian begin to drive you could feel Taehyung shaking his foot anxiously. You do that all the time but you never really took him for someone with anxiety. You probably give him anxiety. You probably scare him. You know better than anyone that comfort is what you needed when you were that innocent girl getting involved in the dangerous life so you instinctively placed wrapped your small hand ontop of his that layed on the middle seat. You felt him look at you. His leg stopped shaking.

[lemonadesoda]

Part 2 of the Hide and Seek meta

There’s a bunch I didn’t say in the first meta post because it would have been spoilers, but now the fic is done, so here you go, more random behind-the-scenes that no one asked for but you’re getting it anyway

every writer knows there’s at least one part of writing the story where you hate the story, and for this story, that was chapter 11, which very nearly got away from me. In the first go around, when MJ and Snatcher have their conversation, Snatcher had too explosive of a depressive breakdown and revealed too early that Hat Kid had died in one of the Death Wishes. MJ was pretty furious, considering how big of an asshole Snatcher had been to them like 2 days ago in chapter 9, it led to a big argument and I had to walk away for a few days and figure out whether I was taking the story in the right direction.

on that note, the second half of the story was easily twice as hard to write as the first, my increasingly busy schedule notwithstanding. In the first half, the characters are all pre-turning point, but after chapter 10, I had to work to keep them true to their personalities but this time With Character Development

certain events were planned from the beginning, while other things came up on the fly either as I wrote or in response to reader comments

for example: the lullaby was not in the original plan. A reader commented they wanted Snatcher to sing, and my brain didn’t let it go.

another example: while Snatcher’s anxiety attacks were planned, how it intertwined with his expended magic and lack of souls was spontaneous. I realized when writing his breakdown in ch 9 that as a ghost, his stress couldn’t express itself in almost any of the classic physical symptoms, so he ended up getting phantom pain, dissociative episodes, and extreme fatigue

the legal arguments in ch 17 were mostly planned, but the actual details of the argument, in terms of actual debate points, I came up with largely on the fly, and it is a lot of good fortune that everything worked out so well

part of why I wrote this story in the first place was because I wanted to explore the progression of character change especially in Snatcher, because in other fics I read, he either starts off nicer than I expect or stays meaner than I expect for way longer than I think Hat Kid really deserves to put up with. Moonjumper probably overtly changes the least, mostly because I needed one character who was neither a literal child nor an emotional basket case.

since a lot of people have commented that they like the characterization, I will attempt to elaborate on the methodology

o shit there are sub bullets hell yah

for each of the characters, there was always an underlying feeling that I kept in mind that would act as my compass for how I wrote them

it helps that they all have very strong pre-existing voices in my head, and I play all the dialogue through their vocal lines to make sure it sounds feasible

again, echoing the previous meta, Snatcher’s underlying waypoint feeling is shame. In the first half, he reacts with defensiveness or awkwardness and denial when confronted with that feeling. In the second half after his turning point, he acknowledges that his love for Hat Kid is stronger than the fear of vulnerability he has in expressing it and in fact he becomes kind of clingy and hovery toward her. Instead he channels his bad feelings into repression by hiding his struggles from her instead. It takes him a while to feel like he is allowed to be happy, but eventually love overcomes that too.

HK’s underlying feeling is loneliness. In the same turn, she both craves and distrusts affection. This is discussed in ch 5. Once she decides Snatcher has earned her trust, the loneliness translates into feelings of responsibility. Her choice to go after Vanessa in ch 13 was motivated by the fact that she felt like a burden because Snatcher was caught between her and protecting the forest and she assumed it was her job to go and fix it. It takes a lot of convincing for her to realize she doesn’t have to take charge of a situation, and ch 17 was a culmination of her arc in that she basically played no active role in saving her ship, and that was intentional. It was important for her arc to end in being saved by her parents in a situation where she felt helpless.

MJ’s underlying feeling is basically straight up just love. They’re motivated even early on by the fact that they care about HK and initially it fuels their frustration with Snatcher because they thought he was bound to hurt HK if he kept being such an ass and it allows them to stand up to him to some degree. Even after that though, they would frequently bow out initially to keep the peace, unless HK meddled to convince Snatcher to be nicer to them. However, they also fundamentally still cared about Snatcher too, and realizing he had an opportunity for happiness in front of him, was determined not to let him crush it. Eventually, their sense of love translated to their own existence, which they had always been kind of ambivalent about. MJ wasn’t sure how much ownership they had over their identity, but taking on a role as HK’s parent gave them a good enough sense of self that they were able to better embrace the idea of Themself as a concept. MJ was the hardest to write at all times because I needed to make sure they were getting enough chances to have their own struggles and anxieties as well as their own fulfillment. I put a lot of work into them, but if I were ever to revise this story, I would put even more work into them.

Of the 3 mains, I personally think MJ is actually the funniest. They have a very dry sense of humor.

I see everyone noticed the pet names, so yes, MJ prefers “my dear” and “little one” while Snatcher sticks with “kiddo” most of the time but will occasionally go for the one hit KO with “sweetie” when he’s feeling real mushy

the hardest part of writing ch 17 was balancing how I wanted to portray the Captain. While I very much didn’t want to give the sense that her caretakers were good people, I didn’t want to portray them as cruel evil monsters, to the point that they would have crushed any sense of joy HK could have. A lot of the backstory was excluded from the actual text, simply informing how I wrote her character, but basically her caretakers were largely just a combination of selfish, neglectful, and resentful of having to look after a child when they were more interested in their work. The Captain himself does recognize through the discussion that HK is genuinely really happy and well cared for on Earth, something he’s aware she could never be in his and the others’ care, and so that one bit in the end is a hint that he does genuinely acknowledge on some level that they were shitty caretakers, that he did fail her as a guardian and that she deserves better.

Okay that’s plenty long, so I’ll stop.

[bangtan-et-al]

somnium finis 02.

—word count: 4,557

—prologue:  A plane sinks into the Pacific Ocean, leaving the world mourning the loss of the 118 passengers on board. Seven of those passengers being the members of the famous K-pop band BTS. At least, that’s how it seems.

—genres: Idol AU, Mystery, Psychological

—contains: Themes of fluff, angst, smut, depression, and anxiety. Mentions of divorce and the use of strong language such as name calling and cussing.

—chapter: 01. 02.

—note: Guys, I got so many notes on the last chapter in so little time! For someone starting off, every like, reblog, comment, and follow means so much to me. I rushed to get this next chapter out to keep the momentum going! Enjoy!

…

A long silence hung over everyone. Jeongguk was the first to speak.

“So… we’re dead? Is this like the afterlife?” He stared at his hyungs.

Jimin nervously ran his fingers through his hair. “No, this isn’t right. There’s no way we’re dead. We can still feel pain, these bodies are physical!”

You were scrolling through your phone, looking at all the articles you could find on the crash. You tried commenting or messaging, but nothing would go through. You thought it was odd, seeing as you could use Google just fine.

“Guys, this isn’t the afterlife. Don’t be stupid,” Yoongi piped up. “I think it’s all a cover up story.”

“A cover up for what, kidnapping us? What’s the point? Wouldn’t the main reason for it be to get a ransom? You can’t ransom someone who’s dead.” Hoseok reasoned.

Namjoon had his eyebrows furrowed together, deep in thought. The other boys kept going back and forth, some speaking with panic, others trying to speak reason.

You had visited your mother’s Facebook page and found she had made a post about the plans for your funeral. Friends and family were commenting underneath. There was post after post about you, and the life you lived. Pictures from your childhood and group photos with friends taken only weeks ago. Your heart was breaking. What tipped you over was Appa’s long post he made talking about all the memories from over the years. He translated it to English too, so everyone could read it.

‘Dear daughter, your time was cut too short… My greatest love… In all the years…’ It went on and on. It was all the things he said or didn’t say to you, and all the love he had for you. You mother wouldn’t even bother writing such a post.

You didn’t realize, but tears were falling down your cheeks silently.

Taehyung was the first to notice. “____-ssi?”

This was all too much to process right now. The emotions were overwhelming, and being with BTS was not helping. You stood up and ran back to the bedroom you had woken up in.

“____-ssi!” Namjoon called for you, but none of them chased after you. Why would they? You weren’t their first priority. They didn’t trust you. They had to protect each other and stick together because that’s who they were. BTS had each other and they were inseparable.

That just made you feel even lonelier.

The people who loved you thought you were dead. The seven people you’ve looked up to saw you as a potential threat. You were trapped in an unknown place, for a reason you didn’t know, or how you even got there.

You slammed the door and slowly fell against it, sinking to the floor. Your breathing quickened and your chest felt tight. You started shaking uncontrollably. You’d never had a panic attack before, so you weren’t really sure how to handle it. You just stayed right there, curled into yourself, waiting for your lungs to work again.

‘I’m completely alone.’

…

“I don’t trust her, she could’ve been put in here to observe us, or turn us against each other or something.” The usual optimistic Hoseok was the one being the most pessimistic towards you. Had this been any other situation, he would’ve been the first to stand up for you.

But now his brothers’ lives were on the line, and they came first.

Taehyung shook his head. “She’s just as scared, if not more scared than us. She’s alone, we aren’t. Who knows, what if we’re the reason she’s here? What if she got caught up in something because she was on the same plane?”

“I see where you are both coming from, but it’s unwise to push her away or trust her just yet. We need a game plan.” Namjoon was trying his best to keep everyone at peace, a task proving to be very difficult.

Seokjin was in the kitchen rummaging around to see what all was available. “It’s fully stocked. None of the packaging has been opened on the food either, it’s all sealed. I’d eat this sooner than I’d eat the hamburger.”

Jeongguk paced a small line in the floor. Yoongi and Namjoon were trying to figure out an escape plan. Hoseok sat on the couch chewing a hole in his thumb. Jimin was exploring the space, looking for possible exits or clues.

Taehyung stared back at the hallway you had ran down. The others were probably right, he shouldn’t get too close, he shouldn’t be putting himself in your shoes, he shouldn’t be replaying your crying face in his head, but he couldn’t help it.

He stood and left the others to find you.

“Tae, don’t! We need to stick together!” Jimin called out for him. When he didn’t listen, he followed behind him. He wasn’t going to let his friend make a stupid decision.

At least not without him.

Taehyung tried the door you came out of first. He knocked on it. “…____-ssi? Are you in there?” From just behind door he could hear quiet, short breaths. “I’m coming in.” He tried opening the door, but it only opened a crack before it stopped on something solid.

He realized you were sitting on the floor crying to yourself. Jimin caught up to him and grabbed his arm. “Don’t just storm off like that-”

“Shh, not now.” After Taehyung hushed him, the sounds of your sobs reached him. It pulled at his heart strings, and he felt himself soften up a little.

“We’re here for you. Do you want to talk about it?” Jimin asked. He was beginning to see things from Taehyung’s side.

You moved over a bit so they would be able to open the door. Taehyung slowly opened it and then sat down next to you. Jimin stepped into the room, and sat on the other side of you. You had regained control of your breathing before they came, but you were a crying mess, surely looking horrible in front of two of the most beautiful men you’d seen in your life. Today couldn’t get any worse.

“…how old are you?” Taehyung questioned, trying to get conversation going and maybe get your mind off of what was happening.

You sniffed. “I-in Korean years I’m 23… 1997.”

“So the same age as JK, we’re both 25. I’m not sure how much you know about us, but we’re good people. Everyone is just scared right now, I promise they aren’t as mean as they seem.” Taehyung reassured you.

Jimin was hesitant to talk, but seeing your shivering form opened him up a little. “We’ll figure this out. Whatever is happening, we’ll get through it. Joon-hyung and Yoongi-hyung are really smart. Jin-hyung is resourceful. Hobi-hyung is clever. The rest of us are younger, but we’ll still do our best.” He was comforting you as much as he was himself. He wasn’t sure of much, but if there was one thing he knew he could be sure in, it was the other members.

“Yeah! So don’t worry, we’ll get out of here.” Taehyung hesitantly put his hand on your shoulder. “You’re American right? I don’t know if you take comfort in these things, but you can call me Oppa if you want.”

Your eyes widened but then you offered him a small smile. “Are you comfortable with that? We only just met.”

“Of course it’s okay. You can call Jimin Oppa too.” He nudged Jimin to agree with him.

Jimin was a little reluctant, but gave in easily. “S-sure. Why not? Could we call you ____-ah?”

You nodded. They were going out of their way to comfort and befriend you, even in these circumstances. They really were the people you knew they were. “I’m sorry for running away, I’m just overwhelmed right now. I was looking at my family’s posts about my death, it was just too much. ” You opened up. You were still teary eyed, but not the blubbering mess from earlier.

“You don’t need to apologize. If anyone gets what you’re going through right now, it’s us. We’re in this together.” Taehyung finished and offered you a smile. His big, boxy smile that you had only seen in pictures until this point. It was even more enchanting in person.

Jimin held out his hand to you. “Come, let’s go join the others, okay? We’ll stand up for you in there.” He looked you in your eyes, and tried to show as much sincerity as he could muster.

You blushed a little when you took his hand and stood up with him. You couldn’t help but notice his hands were so tiny that they were about the same size as your’s. Taehyung stood up with the two of you as well, and they walked you back to the main room. Namjoon looked at your tear-stained face apologetically. Yoongi and Hoseok still looked at you apprehensively. Jeongguk was nervous around you, so he couldn’t even bring himself to look you in the eyes.

Seokjin called over to you from the kitchen. “____-ssi, want to help me cook something? I’m sure you’re getting hungry too.” He smiled and waved you over. You were hesitant to go over and squeezed the hand you were holding. Hand you were holding…

You were still holding Jimin’s hand.

You let go quickly. “Sorry!”

He shook his head and smiled. “It’s okay.”

You went over to Seokjin quickly to avoid anymore awkwardness with Jimin. “How can I help, Seokjin-ssi?”

“Are you handy with a kitchen knife? I need some vegetables cut.” He asked simply.

Hoseok’s head snapped over to the two of you. “We are not giving her a knife!”

“Namjoon is more dangerous with a knife than she is.” Seokjin snapped back.

“Hey! That’s true, but you don’t have to bring it up!” Namjoon crossed his arms in defense.

Hoseok scoffed. “I can’t believe you guys.”

Hoseok’s attitude was quite off putting. He was usually such a ray of sunshine. You rarely ever saw him get angry, no matter the reason. Sure, they had every reason not to trust you, but you least expected him to be the most aggressive.

You and Seokjin worked quickly. He had you prepping the vegetables for the stir fry while he cooked rice and prepared the beef. “You know what you are doing. Did your mom teach you?”

“My mom doesn’t like to cook much, but my dad taught me how to make all kinds of Korean dishes. When he would come visit, cooking was one of our favorite things to do.” You smiled at the memory.

“See guys? The kitchen is the best place to bond! But will anyone come help me cook? Nope!” Seokjin addresses the others in his whiny voice.

“We don’t want to bond with you Jin-hyung.” Jeongguk smirked a little as he teased him. As their banter went back and forth you realized Seokjin was trying to lighten the mood. Everyone was so stressed, but now even the nervously pacing Jeongguk was smiling and teasing his Hyung. You also realized that he wanted to break the ice with you, and make you feel more comfortable in a natural way. You never saw him as the oldest, but in the most subtle way, it showed.

You finished up and everyone moved to the table to eat. An awkward silence fell over everyone. It had been hours and hours, and none of you were any closer to figuring out how to get out of there. Taehyung, who was sitting next to you, nudged your arm and whispered. “Doesn’t Gukkie look like a rabbit when he eats?”

“You know I can hear you.” Jeongguk glared up.

Taehyung smirked a shit eating grin. “Good.”

Yoongi straightened in his chair. “Rather than play, we should be working on a plan.”

“Yoongi-yah, they’re just trying to lighten the mood. Maybe you should lighten up too.” Seokjin soothed.

“Fine, let’s all just skip around the prison and play house while the entire world mourns our deaths!” Yoongi threw his napkin on the table. “You can’t expect me to act like everything is fine and normal when it’s not.”

Taehyung’s face darkened. “…you’re right Yoongi-hyung. It’s not normal. Here we are sitting helplessly with no way of contacting to outside world, and no hope of getting out of here anytime soon. We don’t know what they are going to do to us, we could be waiting to die.” Everyone stared at him, shocked by his sudden mood shift. No one spoke as everyone started thinking about the worst outcome in all of this.

“But, I don’t want to waste my last moments in despair about our situation, and I want to hope for a tomorrow.” The sudden maturity he was speaking with was so unlike the happy go lucky Taehyung who was trying to befriend you. Then it made sense. From the beginning he chose to be positive about this. To be positive about you.

Namjoon nodded in agreement. “I couldn’t have said it better. Everyone else with Taehyung?”

“I am.” You agreed.

Jimin smiled and patted Taehyung’s back. “Always.”

Jeongguk and Seokjin nodded with smiles. Then everyone looked to Hoseok and Yoongi. Yoongi sighed and paused. Then he nodded lightly. “You’re right.”

“I can’t disagree with that.” Hoseok smiled for the first time since waking up in there. It was relieving to say the least.

“Good. Okay, so here’s the plan. Let’s find out just how much that request screen can do. How far are its limits? Then, everyone get a regular night’s sleep, and we’ll attack tomorrow when it comes.” Namjoon laid out the plan now that everyone was rallied.

Taehyung had finished eating, so he got up and went over to the screen first. “I know what I’m asking it for!” He typed in 'xbox one x’. After a moment, the voice chimed.

“Request granted.” And then a brand-new Xbox One X came out of the slot, still in it’s packaging. Jeongguk jumped to his feet and ran over.

“No way! Try requesting something really expensive, I wonder if there is a limit.”

Everyone was finishing their food as fast as possible to join them, all in awe of the mysterious screen.

You walked over, an obscure idea in your head. You reached up and typed out 'dance studio’.

Taehyung looked at you confused. “____-ah, I don’t think it works like that-” he was cut off by the sound of machines whirling. The sound was coming from the other side of the wall near the kitchen.

After a few moments, the wall opened up, revealing a new hallway. Everyone ran to see what had changed. The hallway abruptly ended, but had a door on the left side. You opened the door, and were taken aback. There before you was a real dance studio. Mirrors, and even a sound system to play music on.

“How is this possible?” Hoseok marvelled.

You had a thought. “It might have already been here. We just needed to request for it to be opened up.”

Yoongi was already back at the screen. He typed in 'exit’.

“Request denied.”

“Maybe try requesting a weapon or something for self-defense.” Hoseok offered.

“That could be more dangerous than it’s worth. And we wouldn’t have the element of surprise either.” Yoongi pointedly looked at the leader, the oldest, and the maknae line.

“We could just have Yoongi-ssi hold onto it. He’s the best candidate.” You stated. Yoongi stared at you with a look you couldn’t quite decipher.

He nodded. “Everyone agree?” There were no objections, so Yoongi punched in 'gun’.

“Request denied.”

'Taser.’

“Request denied”

'Bat.’

“Request accepted.” A baseball bat rolled out of the slot. Yoongi picked it up and noted it was solid wood.

“Okay, no pissing off Yoongi-hyung.” Jimin half joked as Yoongi swung it a few times to test its weight. He rested it on his shoulder and stepped aside gesturing someone else to request something.

Seokjin walked over and typed in, “Emergency kit.”

“Request accepted.”

A first aid kit with special trauma gear pushing out of the slot. “Just in case. We need to be ready if something happens.”

Everyone continued requesting items. Some useful like food and emergency supplied, but mostly things to fill their rooms like clothes, desks, PCs, and toiletries. Everyone explored the place more and found each of the eight bedroom were exactly the same. They each had a bed, closet, and their own bathroom with a sink, toilet, bathtub, and shower.

Soon, night had fallen, not that you could see it, but it was reflected by the time on everyone’s phone screens. It was still in the last time zone you had been in for LA. You all noted it might be helpful for deciphering your location later, but for now, everyone went to bed.

Instead of everyone going to their own room, most of them opted for sleep with each other. Jimin and Hoseok, Taehyung and Jeongguk, Yoongi and Seokjin, the only one who chose to be alone was Namjoon. He said he had a lot to think about, and needed space. You would’ve preferred not being alone, but sleeping with hot men was a big no. You didn’t need to add sexual tension to your list of things to worry about.

The hours rolled by, but you weren’t able to get any sleep. Your mind was racing and spiraling on useless worries. When 1 am came around, you got sick of just lying in bed, so you put on your leggings, a t-shirt, and left the bedroom. You walked around the fancy living space and found yourself wandering into the practice room. It was so dark, but you didn’t want to turn on the main lights, you might ruin your chances of sleeping completely. Instead, you found the room had mood lighting, and turned it on instead. It kept the room dim, but light enough to see. You figured it was for setting the mood of a dance.

Dancing. That might tire you out enough to sleep. You thought about dancing one of the many BTS choreos you had learned, but seeing as you were trying to hide that fact you were a fan, that might not be wise. Instead you put on Dancing in the Dark by Joji. You needed to vent everything.

When you were younger, your mother had put you in so many different classes. Hoping to keep you time occupied enough as to have another excuse why you couldn’t see your dad. Piano lessons, cello lessons, singing lessons, etiquette lessons, ballroom dancing, contemporary dancing, math tutors, english tutors, the list went on and on. As weighed down as you were back then, one of the things that helped you vent your frustrations was music. Singing it, playing it, writing it, dancing to it. It filled a hallow place in your soul.

The song started to move you. You flowed with it, a mixture of controlled movements and fluid ones. As the words alined with your thoughts and feelings, your face contorted with emotion. You were wrapped up in it, you didn’t even open your eyes, knowing the likely hood of you knocking into something was low in the gigantic practice room.

You didn’t notice there was a pair of eyes on you.

Jimin watched from the door, stayed back as to hide in the shadows. He couldn’t sleep. He needed to get up and clear his head a little.

He saw he wasn’t the only one.

Jimin was entranced by you. You were obviously a trained dancer. You jumped, rolled, and spun around with practiced ease. It reminded him of his highschool days when he practiced contemporary dance. He caught a glimpse of your face. Eyebrows laced together and lips slightly parted as you breathed in sync with your dancing. How could that be faked? You were under the assumption of being alone.

He knew right then and there you were genuine. Admittedly, his kindness had been faked until this moment. To him, the safety of the others came first. His members were his brothers, his chosen family. They meant the world to him. He wouldn’t put anything before then, not even himself. Not even you.

And yet, he found himself thinking he wanted you to be a part of that too.

The song changed. Idontwannabeyouanymore by Billie Eilish started playing.

You embraced the notes with every turn and shape.

'Beautiful.’ He thought. He was torn between leaving you and joining you, but settled on the latter.

“I didn’t know you could dance.” Jimin stated as he walked over.

You stopped immediately and paused the music. How long had he been watching? The Park Jimin, professional dancer just saw you dance. You might die of embarrassment.

“Ah, Jimin-ssi! I didn’t know you were watching.” You blurted out.

He shook his head. “Not 'Jimin-ssi’. Call me Oppa. You can relax around me, you know? I don’t bite.”

With the look he was giving you, you begged to differ. He was wearing skin tight jeans, and a baggy sweater. He didn’t have any shoes on, and his almost jaw length hair was pulled into a ponytail in the back similarly to how you had seen it in the Black Swan dance practice. A playful smirk pulled at his lips, and one hand was resting on his hips. Jimin was looking like sin itself, but in the softest way possible. You expected no less of the idol.

You dodged his correction with your own statement. “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I might try to tire myself out. Please don’t mistake my flailing around for dancing.”

He laughed at that. “Flailing? That was anything but. You’re obviously a trained dancer, give yourself more credit. You’re really good. I was actually wondering if I could join you.”

“I-I don’t know about that… I was just about to go to bed…”

“You look wide awake though. I can’t sleep either. Wouldn’t you keep me company?” He tilted his head and placed a pout on his lips. Surely there was some rule that stated that was cheating.

You gave in. “Alright, but I’m sure I’m no where near your level.”

“Hey, that don’t matter. I’m not the greatest dancer-”

“Lies.” You cut him off before he could finish.

He giggled, or was that angels singing? “It’s true! There’s tons better than me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still enough it. You obviously enjoy it, don’t let me stop you. I’d rather dance with someone who can feel the music like you over a trained robotic dancer any day.”

You blushed at his words and some of your self-consciousness melted away at his kind words.

“I wanna teach you one of my dances. Have you heard Promise? It’s my single.” He pulled out his phone and typed it in.

“No, I haven’t.” You lied.

“I choreographed it for fun, but I won’t ever perform it. It’s not hard, you’ll pick it up really easy.” He played the song, and you held in the urge to sing along. “It starts off with you standing sideways. One leg relaxed behind you, and all you weight on the other. Your arms are outstretched in front of you and crossed at the wrists with palms facing up. Lean back without shifting your weight and look up.” He instructed you with such precision, it was easy to follow along.

As you reached the chorus, there was a quick, fluid motion with your legs you could quite copy. “Almost but you need to lean back. Your body shouldn’t be aligned.”

You shifted. “Like this?”

He walked over and put his hands on your upper arms and pulled you back gently. “Think about leading the motion with your arms, rather than your body.” The shift had you looking up at him while he stood behind you. Everyone always teased his height, but your 5'3 standing next to his 5'8 had him nearly towering over you in this position. You moved through the rest of the motion just to break the stare.

“Perfect! Just like that.” He was impressed with how quick of a learner you were. You had a high attention to detail, just like he did, so within the hour the two of you were already doing run throughs.

By 2:30 am, you were both sitting on the floor panting a little as you took a break.

“I should be tired, but I haven’t danced like this for a little while, it just makes me want to do more.” You admitted.

He nodded. “I get that. It’s not often I dance what I want to dance. Most of the time it’s over practiced choreography that is very taxing to do. Concert after concert, it gets to where it’s not challenging, and you’re ready to move onto the next thing, you know?”

“That’s what dance class was like. Always doing the same thing. Dancing for the next competition. After 10 years of it, I just quit. Not because I didn’t love it, but because I wanted to dance what I loved, what I wanted to do. I was also 14, and starting high school, so I was ready for something new.” You found it was so easy talking to him. Your thoughts came out so easily.

He looked you in the eyes as you spoke and listened attentively to your every word. “You’re half Korean, did you ever think of becoming a trainee?”

You shook your head. “I was very Americanized. My possessive mother wouldn’t let me go visit my dad, and refused to let him teach me Korean. I only started learning it by the end of my senior year of high school. Though, if things were different, I think I would have. I had everything I needed for it. Singing lessons, dance lessons, and I had a passion for it. Still do.”

“Well, you have the training, it’s not too late. If… When we get of of here, you should pursue it. It’s too late to get into a group probably, but you could make a really good solo artist. You’re a halfie too, that’s really attractive in Korea, you’d do well.”

“You really think so?” You perked up. You didn’t really have a career in mind, since college was about reclaiming a part of yourself rather than the degree. You love music, doing it for a living sounded like a dream.

He smiled at your reaction. “Of course! You even have a foot in the door now. You’re friends with Jimin of BTS.”

A warmth spread in your chest. All the loneliness from earlier that day was gone. Jimin made you feel like you finally had a true ally. “Thank you… That really means so much to me.” You giggled. He laughed lightly at the sound. You both just sat there, stupidly laughing an giggling for no reason. You both needed it.

“Haha! What- what are we doing?” You managed to get out

“I- haha! I don’t know! You started it.” He hit you playfully. “I’ll stop if you stop!”

“I can’t!”

By the end of it you both were lying on your backs, looking up at the ceiling while shoulder to shoulder. The giggles dissolved into the dim practice room as the two of you drifted off to sleep.

[filmista]

Lost In Translation (2003)

“You’re probably just having a midlife crisis. Did you buy a Porsche yet?”

Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola’s second feature film seems to prove that talent does perhaps lie in the genes to some degree, after all, her attempt at acting with her father directing her, proved unsuccessful and earned her a Razzie.

It was just like her father with directing that she would find her way in life, her passion and she probably certainly picked up some elements from her father’s filming style.

I think that’s only normal when you literally grow up in that world, for instance when her father made Apocalypse Now she was taken along with her dad and her mom. So ever since she was a little girl she has seen her father behind the camera, of course, that was going to have an influence on her.

Her first ever film was The Virgin Suicides, which I think is a good adaptation of the book with the same name, and while some consider it her masterpiece, for me up until now and according to many others as well that’s Lost In Translation.

Lost In Translation is one of my all-time favorite films and one of those films that I can keep on revisiting time after time I think I’ve seen it about eight times by now, not sure exactly, definitely many times.

It’s one of those films that makes me calm when I’m watching it, I can watch it when I’m really agitated and I’ll be calm after just a few minutes of watching the film…

I find that there’s something soothing and comforting in the familiarity of the emotions and the feelings of the two main characters. There’s something universal about the things they feel, most of us have felt like at least either one of the characters at least once in our lives.

Visually Coppola is calm, there’s great attention to the aesthetic of the environment and Coppola shows us her two characters and their dynamic naturally so that when we feel like we know them, they really almost have become real people and it really, actually almost hurts to say goodbye to them.

While Coppola takes her time, and while at first sight not really that much seems to happen at all, there’s really many different subjects and the human emotions attached to them explored. While Sofia’s father Francis Ford Coppola, is sometimes poetic in the brutality in his films; he makes violent stuff look extremely beautiful and pleasing to the eyes.

She, on the other hand, is sometimes brutal, in the calmness of which she shows us certain emotional states with such spot on, merciless precision. In a way succeeds in making you feel like her characters, or getting that certain emotion, that you already had in you out of you.

Lost in Translation for me at least, is a film that can make you feel utterly alone even if you may be watching it with an entire classroom. Because it painfully confronts with the fact that few people really truly care about us and know us, and that certain subjects are really truly explored best with strangers, who for a particular moment in time, might connect with us deeply, perhaps better than anyone has before…

So while Lost In Translation seems to be about not all that much at first glance, it treats relationships, difficulties in marriage, or feeling alone next to your partner, your friends even your family. Feeling completely alone in the world even when you are next to people because you can’t really talk about what really matters to you, or fully share the things that occupy your mind the most.

Or being tired of the repetitiveness that may inevitably to some degree come with certain things in your life like your profession, or on the contrary being young, inexperienced when it comes to certain things, and feeling hopeless and scared.

Because you don’t yet know how It’s all going to work, and you fear that it might not even work at all, and being awake and unable to sleep at night because It’s all mulling around in your head, driving you insane…

Now, in this case, all this angst, insomnia and loneliness, are felt by two Americans, (but they could literally be from any country) a middle-aged actor who’s very likely experiencing a middle life crisis, and a young woman.

That doesn’t fully know what she wants to be and how she should live her life, she is somewhat impulsive and has tried her hand at numerous things, and now slowly comes to realize she may have married the wrong man.

That he doesn’t really know her, or even sees or cares about what goes on in her mind, and that he probably won’t ever do so, she has a deep depression; her husband can’t even tell his wife is suffering on the inside…

He has more in common with an airhead starlet (who my intuition suspects he was having an affair with, why else wouldn’t want his wife to come with, if there’s nothing to hide?, according to him It’s because she’ll get bored) who stars in bad films and he seems to love his camera and his own ego more than her.

She’s afraid she’s never going to have a purpose, that she’s never going to find a place, her niche in the world, something that fits her and that fulfills her. She’s afraid she’s never going to amount to anything, and that she’s never going to be fully loved, that no one is ever going to see and hear her.

He’s tired, afraid that It’s all been for nothing, that he’s never been much at all, and that his wife doesn’t really get him, and that he perhaps wasn’t ever fully loved, he doesn’t see the sense and the purpose in it all anymore. These two people find each other, meet and they connect, in each other, they find comfort and support.

They find someone who has tolerance, patience and who wants to listen, someone who perhaps doesn’t necessarily offer that many solutions, but who understands how the other feels completely and who won’t ever judge.

With each other they talk about all that stuff that they can’t talk about with anyone else because those people press for details, they criticize and judge, from the existing perspective that they have on them, not even always with bad intentions.

Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, an actor who parts with ill-concealed reluctance to Tokyo to film a commercial for whiskey. In fact, he would rather be on stage, but as he would later say, “This gave me the chance to escape from my wife, miss the birthday of my child and to pocket two million dollars.”

Let’s say that Bob has become a bit cynical about his profession. But the whiskey does at least what it should do, and Bob retires at the chic hotel bar where he resides, lonely, sad and almost continuously drunk.

There, he meets Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a young woman who has just graduated and now does not know what to do next. She is in Tokyo with her husband, a photographer for whom she is clearly a burden, and while he goes to work, she spends, just like Bob, too much time alone.

In her room in the crazy, chaotic city that Tokyo is apparently,  and in the hotel bar, where she meets Bob. The two differ thirty years in age, but together they finally find some kind of support and understanding. During the next few days, they disappear into the city together, and they talk about their life, marriage, children and all those things which you can apparently only discuss fully with strangers.

Coppola’s personal experiences color the whole film - she travels to Japan, her (notoriously) failed marriage with director Spike Jonze, her background as a photographer … From beginning to end you feel that this is a very personal project, you sense that she was in a way trying to rid herself of some of her demons.

She is not interested in telling a traditional story - she just has these two characters, who she knows through and through like they’re her own children and she wants to present them to us and share them with us. Coppola knows how to lead us into the life of Bob and Charlotte, and by the end of the ride, we know them they are our friends.

How does she do that? First, she gives the two characters time to spend alone in some scenes. We see Charlotte sitting melancholy, lonely in front of her huge, panoramic window or lying on her bed, always in a fetal position.

Hugging herself, as if to protect herself against all that is outside her room, and maybe also as a way to console herself. Because her husband won’t ever do it and won’t give her, the whole measure of affection she needs and craves and in my eyes deserves!

The last time they slept together literally seems ages ago, and they’ve unfortunately only been married two years… she tries, but she only receives a sporadical hug or a sporadical kiss once or twice a day, if he remembers or cares to do it at all.

Her husband might just as well not have been there, and when they come together with friends, we are seeing her almost out of her mind, visibly suffering from the banality of their “hip” actually painfully self-righteous, egotistical conversations. And no one sees it… Fundamentally she is alone, and Coppola gives her, especially at the beginning of the film, the time to be alone.

She needs that, otherwise, her later scenes with Bob wouldn’t have worked as well. Visually Coppola stressed that feeling by always surrounding Charlotte with vertical lines, the space in which she is located, seems to make her smaller, and gives off a claustrophobic, stifling feeling.

Bob gets more of the same, almost psychopathic of the jet-lag and sleep deprivation, he is overwhelmed and exhausted by the relentless, somewhat practiced, friendliness of everyone around him. But no one with whom he can talk. Tokyo as a city is also not very helpful for our hero and our heroine.

From the hotel rooms to the streets, the metropolis comes out here as a kind of hellish amusement park for adults, full of neon lights, where technology has swept away all sense of humanity and personality

Early scenes in the film, in which Bob is woken up at night by a fax machine, and in which he delivers a desperate fight with a shower and a training device are particularly funny - but on another level at the same time yet again very sad.

Bob arises from this as a man who could be funny and hugely charming but who doesn’t feel like it anymore, doesn’t see the sense in it anymore and Bill Murray knows precisely how to play him.

Murray is probably the only Saturday Night Live (I’ve actually never seen an episode, not that it isn’t available in the cave in which I’m living, I just never have for whatever reason, but I know Murray appeared on it ), comedian from the eighties who has prevailed in both comedic and dramatic roles and has retained his credibility. And here he is smart enough not to be overtly funny, that would have been distasteful.

That would not fit his character at all. Lost In Translation is often a  genuinely hilarious film, but the humor comes precisely from the way Murray responds to the very different behavior of the Japanese in a somewhat undercooled way. A people that he does not understand, he does not understand the language and customs.

Scarlett Johansson is just as understatedly, silently powerful, at the time of filming she was only eighteen, nineteen years old, but she plays emotions and thoughts that are older than that, without losing her credibility. As a couple, the opportunity of a sexual relationship is presented right from the beginning, but no.

That obvious trap, is avoided skillfully, elegantly the whole story would have fallen dead if the two had gone to bed with each other since all the tension between the characters would have disappeared. And the tension between the characters there is it crackles between Murray and Johansson from their first to their last scene.

Especially they’re last. The farewell that they share is one of the nicest, most sincere emotional scenes I’ve seen in a film in a long time, Lost In Translation ends with a kiss and Murray’s character that whispers something in Johanson’s ear and her saying okay, then she is teary-eyed and smiling simultaneously.

We never know what he whispered, and you do not need to because we know that it was something positive, otherwise she would not smile at him would she? And they feel so real that they deserve their privacy.

The kiss they share is not intended to turn each other on sexually, no foreplay and sex will follow even though it is right in the mouth. It is a calm, friendly, kind of kiss, there’s no get your shirt and your pants off right now! the urgency to it, it is a sort of kiss between friends which literally says: I love you, thanks for everything, I will never forget you, I will miss you.

There are many people that say that what Bob and Charlotte have is an affair of the mind, an emotional affair. they can’t find emotional understanding and support with their own spouse, they don’t sleep with each other, but they get intimate in a mental way, they share the stuff with each other that’s on their minds that their spouse doesn’t have the time for.

Murray’s character at one point has a one night stand, It’s not with Charlotte, and It’s only sex, nothing more to it for him, it was to fulfill a sexual need, with Charlotte he fulfills an emotional need. Charlotte comes to know about the one night stand, and seems a little annoyed, perhaps even somewhat jealous and hurt, perhaps she in that instant wanted to be that other woman, or it could even be anger at the other woman for taking Bob away from her, even if it was only for a few hours.

To some degree there is the attraction there, otherwise, she would not have reacted the way she did:

- Charlotte: “She’s older. At least you’ll have lots to talk about…” - Bob: “I can’t believe you couldn’t find anyone else to lavish you with attention.”She then after Bob’s answer, brusquely takes the menu, almost buries her face in it, turns away from Bob and refuses to face him for a while. No woman reacts like this with a man she doesn’t give a fuck about, or perhaps she’s silently judging him for having cheated on his wife.

There’s definitely an attraction of the mind, they think and feel alike and probably to some degree physical attraction, but they respect each other too much to ever act on it.

And after a while when they get to know each other fully, the sexual tension that might have been there seemingly has dissipated, they no longer feel any need to sleep with each other, It’s about being intimate on a level that goes beyond pure physical contact.

They find an understanding with each other that they don’t have with their spouse, in a good relationship or good marriage, your partner should be able to satisfy both your bodily and your mental needs, ideally, in a perfect, beautiful utopia.

To put it like this: Good sex every now and again, a good conversation, a genuine exchange of thoughts or a nice trip to some museum or a good dinner at a restaurant. If the latter is left unsatisfied and you go to another man or woman for that is that cheating? According to some people, it is.

I think It’s the case if It’s really constantly like that… But you can’t think like that all the time, because then any really good friendship, of the kind where the two people share all that’s on their own mind, between a man and a woman can be regarded as a form of cheating.

And that would incredibly limit people in their relationships with each other and even their way of viewing the world, men and women can learn from each other, help and support each other, so if you demonize they’re being friends, only friends literally a whole world of beautiful, enriching possibilities fall away…

Through Bob Charlotte really begins to realize that she married the wrong man because in this man she finds what she’s been missing emotionally, there’s a theory that what Bob whispers to the end to Charlotte is something along the lines of:

Tell that man the truth, or you do the right thing and you tell that man the truth, meaning that she should ask him for a divorce because she feels unloved. I don’t know if he directly said that, and it doesn’t matter because indirectly he has made her realize it, and Charlotte has also made Bob realize certain things.

And maybe if there hadn’t been that 30-year difference between them, both would have divorced and ended up together, but I don’t think so. What they had was just a genuine, deep friendship that lasted for a certain time, and they both helped each other realize certain things.

As I’ve said before they don’t really offer many solutions, because both are lost in their own way, but they reassure each other. Make each other feel better and make the perspective of what’s to come lighter, bearable they have given each other a renewed mental strength because now they both know that is possible to be understood by someone else.

There’s no doubt that they love each other but It’s as friends, there’s initially a few scenes where they seem somewhat physically attracted to each other, but as time progresses, it evolves and moves past that, in a way that feels completely unforced and believable.

It is possible for a man and a woman to love each other, in a non-physical way, for instance the love that a father feels for his daughter, (if there’s certain physical stuff going on there, something’s very seriously wrong) or that a brother feels for his sister, or that a son feels for his mother, it is not the same as a couple’s love, but it is strong and it is love nonetheless….

So I find what Coppola did really interesting, she doesn’t deny the possibility of a physical attraction (because maybe that to a certain extent is always gonna exist between a man a woman, that aren’t related, that’s simple biology) It’s explored a little, subtly but the characters accept the situation as it is and naturally move past that.

They no longer feel any need to consume the love they have for each other physically and they’re perfectly comfortable in each other’s company, they can stare into each other’s face for minutes and not feel the need to move in for the kiss.

Lost in Translation is a beautiful film, in every sense of the word and in all of its aspects. It’s a film with a sensitive yet acid, quite dark humor, a humor that’s based on loneliness and confusion.

It knows how to make busyness look calm and strangely serene in an almost otherworldly way. And how to capture the sometimes overwhelming emotion, the mental busyness of calmness, of utter tranquility. Of being completely on your own, or sitting by yourself and hearing your own thoughts deafeningly loud in your head.

In its cinematography and soundtrack, it adapts to the mood of its characters with ease, reflecting the city and the places that surround the characters according to their emotional perception, often by playing with contrasts. Coppola knows how to capture both pieces of mind and feeling locked in and stuck, just with her camera, while all the way preserving a tranquil, though never tiresome pace.

One of my favorite scenes: an attempt at conversation between Murray and an old Japanese man in a waiting room of a hospital. The Japanese man is incessantly talking, Murray understands zero, but agrees calmly and nicely with everything the man says as if he spoke perfect Japanese.

In the background we see two extras choke with uncontrollable laughter, and immediately we get the impression that at the time it was not planned, that the two Japanese ladies had indeed gotten the giggles and that Coppola simply chose to keep it that scene. And rightly so, because it is a wonderful piece of spontaneous cinema.

Lost In Translation is emotional in a good way, captivating, witty, honest, intelligent, … you can still throw in a few more adjectives if you wish to but it remains without a doubt one of Sofia Coppola’s best and my personal favorite of hers.

“The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.”

[skeletonflowers]

Thoughts about Jonghyun

I became a SHINee fan in 2013. And I’ll admit that it started in a really shallow way. I remember all my friends on twitter talking about various kpop groups and I wanted to be a part of the clique and the conversations so I would look up groups that they mentioned. I can’t recall them ever mentioning SHINee but I stumbled on SHINee’s Ring Ding Dong music video and watched it. It was the first group that I found myself liking how all the members looked and their voices. I became a Minho stan right away and in the beginning I was a bit of a solo stan. I only really cared about him. Then my friends started telling me to watch ‘One Fine Day’ and ‘Hello Baby’ and I started to get a liking for SHINee as a whole and appreciating all of the members as the individuals they were. Minho was definitely my number #1 but I always used to say Jinki – Jonghyun – Kibum – Taemin, are my number #2 because I couldn’t rank them.

I always thought Jonghyun was a funny guy, he provided a lot of comedic relief in Hello Baby. His ‘is this the reality you always wanted’ comments always made me crack up. To me at that point he was still the funny guy, in my head he was the image SM had pushed onto him from debut and so my liking for him didn’t go much further. Then he started Blue Night in 2014. And he gave us an insight into his daily life, his struggles and how kind and compassionate of a person he is. SHINee did not have a comeback in 2014, so I spent most of that year watching old shows, listening to their entire discography and really learning the personalities of the members. I would scroll through Jonghyun’s twitter for hours, laughing at his antics – like when he was learning to ride a bike and it got stolen, or him posting memes of Minho and the other members. He also was vocal about lots of injustices and seemed to be such an intelligent and head strong person. At that point Jonghyun was really cemented as my number #2 in SHINee.

In 2015, he debuted as a solo artist. I can’t explain how happy I was. I had always just had a loving for Jonghyun’s voice and knowing that he wrote the lyrics to all of his songs made me even happier. I remember coming home from school the day the Crazy music video came out and I watched it like 10 times. I was so amazingly proud of him. I watched every variety show he appeared on that era. The 4 things show was my favourite, it felt like he was giving us such a close insight into his life, even more than he usually did on Blue Night. Even though my favourite SHINee album at that point was the Misconceptions of Me, I never felt the urge to purchase it. But Base was an album that I just had to purchase. I remember all the kpop websites I found that sold albums only accepted payment through paypal and I didn’t have an account or really knew how to make one, so I was asking around to everyone I knew if they had a paypal account that I could borrow. I ended up using my Spanish teacher’s account lmao. The first half of 2015 really belonged to Jonghyun and at that point for me it became Minho – Jonghyun, my #1s, Key-Onew-Taemin my #2s.

She Is was my favourite era of his. It was such a bubbly, bright and colourful era. He looked so pretty with his pink hair and so full of life. I remembered just smiling like an idiot when I think Key(?) talked about how Jonghyun was so obsessed with dying his hair pink and about how he was looking at all the different shades and wouldn’t stop talking about it. He was so cute. I was so annoying during that era, I wouldn’t stop talking about him and how proud I was of him. When that album dropped, I felt such immense joy and happiness for him that I felt like crying, constantly. I was always bitter about that album not getting the recognition it truly deserved.

One of my major regrets is not listening to Blue Night a lot, because of the time difference I was always just getting up at the time it was airing or in school. Whenever I did hear his voice, he always sounded so soft and soothing, even though I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I read the translations every morning and I always felt a bit closer to him. It hurt a lot when he left Blue Night, it felt like we wouldn’t be able to know him so personally anymore. That even though he was still here, a part of him was still missing. Him leaving Blue Night worried me a lot. I remember asking my friends if they thought something deeper was going on with him because I didn’t understand why he would stop doing something he loved so much, especially since he’s done Blue Night successfully when he had a much more hectic schedule.

A lot of Shawols rejoiced when Jonghyun returned to black hair but it also unsettled me. His black hair was gorgeous and beautiful but I remember back in about 2014 or so when people would make posts like ‘when is Jjong going back to dark hair he’s been blond for so long’ it always annoyed me because I thought about him saying that he prefers lighter hair and he associates his dark hair with bad memories. When he dyed his hair back to black, I was worried but I wanted to be optimistic and hoped that he was trying to overcome the bad memories from his past. He seemed to be doing a lot of stuff that seemed like coping – getting tattoos, gaining weight. I thought he was doing so much better. Jonghyun was always the emotional one, always crying, always getting choked up. I liked to make the joke that ‘if Jonghyun didn’t cry at a SHINee concert, then did the concert really happen?’ I always thought he was crying because of the immense happiness he was feeling in those moments, but maybe there was pain those cries as well.

It hurts me that people would use lyrics to his songs to make posts about us not noticing until it was too late or why didn’t we pay attention. He was always so so open about his struggles with depression and loneliness. But I’m conflicted because he was also so encouraging, he let us all know that whatever we were going through it would get better one day. I can’t say that I’ve ever felt the same amount of despair and loneliness that he felt, but I have felt down a lot, especially a few months ago and songs like Gloomy Clock and Just Chill, really comforted me. It’s really comforting to know that, despite this person being famous and having so many fans, you can still relate to their struggles and they can relate to yours. I wish people wouldn’t say that we failed him, I wish people wouldn’t blame themselves. Jonghyun was open about everything and was seeking help, it’s just that the help he was receiving wasn’t enough for him.

I always used to say Minho and Jonghyun both have half of my heart. Now it feels like one half is gone and the other half just aches. Everyone who’s spoken to me probably knows how big of a fan I was of Jongho and how much I adored their interactions. If anything could make me happy it is the moments between Jonghyun and Minho because I felt they had a bond that many others either didn’t see or just didn’t appreciate. So knowing that Minho is hurting so much because he loves and adores Jonghyun to pieces, hurts me beyond belief. When the news came out that Jonghyun had passed, I wasn’t able to put my phone down until I read the words ‘Minho fainted at the hospital,’ and then my heart sank to my stomach and I felt like throwing up. After that I wasn’t able to check updates again for hours.

Part of me wants to angry. Why would he do this? Why couldn’t it have been an accident that took him away from us instead? Even though that’s horrible to think about – but it would sting so much less than knowing that he took his own life, that he was hurting and so unhappy that he wanted to leave this world. How much pain was that petite body of his really carrying?

I can’t explain how I feel about everything. I don’t feel sadness per say but yet I sobbed for the first time in a long time when I found out. When people talk to me about it and say ‘I know how much he means to you’ I get choked up all over again. I see his face and listen to his music and think ‘he can’t be gone, it’s all just a bad dream’ but then I accept that he’s gone and it’s okay but then I think about how he left us and it’s not okay. I live in The Bahamas, I sort of accepted the fact that I wouldn’t get to see him in person or attend a SHINee concert one day – but being alive at the same time as him, meant that despite how small, there was still a chance of that happening. Now there isn’t.

I’m sad that he was taken from us so early. I’m sad that there wasn’t much any of us could really do for him. I’m sad that I won’t ever get to experience his radiant beauty in person, to get to watch him on stage doing the thing he loves the most. I’m sad that I won’t experience attending a fansign, to have Jonghyun look at me the way he looks at every fan – like they’re the last person in the world. I’m sad that a while from now we won’t be able to hear his voice anymore or see his beautiful smile, or see his chest mole or the way his nose scrunches up when he laughs. I’m sad that he thought he wasn’t good enough, because to me he was the most talented and one of the most beautiful people in the world. I’m sad that eventually we will move on and Jonghyun will become a memory – I don’t want him to become a memory, because I wish he was still here with us. I wish we could turn back time and someone could save him, someone could give him all the help he needed. I’m sad that anything I say or do will never be enough to explain how much he really meant to me. Despite all the things I feel sad about, I find a sense of happiness in knowing that he isn’t hurting anymore and that he held on for a really really long time. Heaven gained a true angel.

You did exceptionally well Jonghyun. Rest in Paradise.

[mental-health-advice]

Hi! I want to start off by saying I love your blog! Keep it up

Hi darling,

That's so lovely of you to say! We really appreciate your kindness

Before I say anything, I want to stress that we’re in no way professionals. Therefore anything we suggest about what might be going on is just that- a suggestion. It’s in no way a diagnosis. These suggestions can be wrong, some of the suggestions we list might not be possible, or there are more options than what we list. We’d also recommend you not to self-diagnose for the reasons listed here. If you want to know what’s going on, I’d highly recommend you to see a mental health professional. You can visit your GP / local doctor and explain to them briefly what’s been going on. They’ll be able to refer you to a therapist, counsellor, psychiatrist, or other mental health professional. You can read more about getting help here. Once seeing a professional, you’ll most likely get an assessment in which they’ll look with you at what you’re dealing with, and potentially what label would fit to those struggles. Out of such an assessment also comes an advice for treatment to start, which is an advice that I’d recommend you to follow.

It sounds like your self image is quite low lately, causing you to feel like none of your friends want you around anymore, that you’re failing at everything you do, and causing loneliness and worthlessness after something you used to love. It’s really tough when we feel so low about ourselves! Something that can really help to boost up your self image is a ‘whitebook’. This is a literal translation of a Dutch word, so sorry if it sounds a bit silly. A whitebook is a notebook (pick a pretty one!) in which you write down positive things about each day. When you start, this will most likely feel very uncomfortable, as it’s completely opposite to how you’re used to think. Therefore it can help to start small and general. So you don’t have to write a lot down, just two or three things, and they can be about anything. The sun was shining, you overheard a nice conversation in the train, you pet a cat, anything! Then once this starts to feel a bit more normal, try to increase the amount of things you write down. Challenge yourself by first going for four things a day, then five, etc. I think ten would be a good number to work towards. What you see is that you can now write down ten things, but these often will be very general (about the weather, etc.). So let’s try to make it more personal. Set yourself the goal to write down two personal things each day. What I mean with personal is that it has to be something positive about you. Something you did, said, thought, felt. This is still quite a broad criterium, but at first this will be difficult too! I got as far as doing this, but the only reason I could do it was by writing down ‘I showered today’ and ‘I tutored today’. I’d only write down the things that I’d done and in a way I was choosing the easy way then, as writing this down didn’t make me feel better about myself. So the next challenge was to write down two personal things about me, that didn’t include things I’d done, unless if it was something I was proud of for doing. So if I’d done something really challenging, then it could be one of those two things, but if it was something I’d do more often and wasn’t so hard, it wouldn’t be one of those two personal things. So I had to write down things more like ‘I was struggling today but I managed to pull myself out of my slump and I feel a bit better now’ or ‘the kid I tutor got a pass mark because of my tutoring’.

Writing down these positive things is already a big step in the right direction, but there’s more! In the back of your whitebook, you keep a list with positive characteristics of yourself. If you can think of some positive characteristics right away you can write them down already! But there’s much and much more that can be added to that list eventually. These other characteristics that you can’t think of yourself right away will come from the positive personal things you write down each day. So to stick to my example of the kid I tutor getting a pass mark, there are a bunch of positive characteristics that fit to this. Patience, the ability to explain something in an understandable way, bonding with the tutoring kid, etc. So there are multiple positive characteristics that come from one positive personal thing! I personally find it really hard to think of these positive characteristics, but what really helps me there is the friend-question; if a friend had done this positive thing, what positive characteristics would I describe them with? I’m much kinder to my friends than I am to myself, so then I can write down the positive characteristics I’d write down for my friends, and then reevaluate about whether those maybe fit to me as well. Eventually you’ll get a long list of positive characteristics. It will be most helpful if you regularly read over this list so that it’s a constant reminder that you as a person are so much more than the negative image you have of yourself!

Like I mentioned before, we aren’t professionals and we can’t tell you what exactly is going on. When you visit your GP or a mental health professional, it can however be good to know what symptoms are worth mentioning. I personally think that anything that bothers you is worth mentioning! But sometimes when we’re struggling, some of our symptoms become so normal that we forget to mention them. If you think this will be the case for you too, then it might help to have a look at the symptoms of depression that I will list below. You’ll see that some of the symptoms that you mention in your ask will be on this list, so those definitely would be good to mention! Any symptoms you mention in this ask really, since those are clearly bothering you! If from the list you recognise any other symptoms, it’s good to manage those too. What I do want you to keep in mind, is that even if you match a lot of the symptoms, this doesn’t mean you have depression. It’s all complex. Anyway, symptoms for depression can include:

Feelings of helplessness and hopelessness;

Loss of interest in daily activities;

Appetite or weight changes;

Sleep changes;

Anger or irritability;

Loss of energy;

Self-loathing;

Reckless behaviour;

Concentration problems;

Unexplained aches and pains.

(Source) 

If it turns out that you are struggling with depression, it can be really good to look into treatment options. Treatment for depression usually includes medication, therapy, or a combination of both. The latter is most often advised, as medication on its own doesn’t really address certain thought patterns you might experience (which is helpful to address when in recovery), and while therapy on its own can make a big difference, being on medication can help a lot to get the energy you need to work hard in therapy. So in a way, medication can make therapy more productive. If a combination isn’t possible for you, then it definitely will be helpful too to choose either. I hope that you can take some steps with the help of this answer lovely, and that you found it at least a little bit helpful! If there’s anything else we can do for you, please let us know!

Sometimes what seems impossible, is just hard.

Keep fighting beautiful Love Pauline

[mujer--solitaria]

On Kanye

Anti-Blackness in the Chicano Community: For Chicanos and Mestizos to Reflect On, Especially Those of Us Who Are White and White-Adjacent 

I’ve been a long time Kanye fan. It’s something I credit one of my brothers for, and I never talk about Kanye’s early career or his legacy at length without referring back to my brother and how much Kanye means to us as a family.

I remember the first album like it was yesterday.

I will never forget that it was released on my brother’s birthday in 2004.

I don’t forget because my dad had just died a few months before.

The College Dropout was with me during that year.

He’d passed Thanksgiving Day week.

He was a cooker, among many things. I feel like I forget my English when I reach this far back.

My father was the chef of the family, a breadth of Mexican recipes and national identity he took with him when he left. I remember this giant Valentine’s day teddy bear he once tried to give me in, what felt like, the darkest part of our house. I knew it then, right then, that he was trying to cover his own sun. The novelty of his warmth, spoiled with the bile of an angry child and my belly hasn’t recovered since.

I wonder if this feeling is mutual. I wonder if the universe or something in it can’t get over me whenever I struggle with things outside of my control. I think this is what I’m always at odds with, this specter of another, different universe.

My life as a writer can largely be summarized as my saying,

Here,

take this from me. It can no longer live inside me.

I feel this way not just about what it means to write and the act of expulsing or forgiving what’s within, but also when it comes to not writing, as an act of forgetting what’s within. I repeat,

Please, take this from me. I can no longer live inside of it.

Take this moment away from my grasp and make me do something else. Anything else. Until I’ve blamed everyone else and all that’s left is me.

It has always been me. This is why writing isn’t easy. This is a euphemism for my work as a visual artist since.

It was actually my mom who did most of the cooking, and she was the only one who got it thrown back at her.

I yell at men all the time. Dark skin men, light skin men. I’ve yelled at them all these men I don’t know at some point or another on the street for some kind of harassment. * The more physical it became, the older I got.

Something happened, and it’s that nothing did. Il y a quelque chose de tres grave qui m’est arrive. It’s that with my privilege comes the power to repeat generational and institutional trauma. It’s an act of memory. This proximity is exact. It turns out men of color on the street are much more afraid of me than I could ever imagine. I have something to lose these days, but so have the men in my community always. Am I really about justice? Sometimes it can only be had in the street. Sometimes, whiteness must lose and it starts with me.

In private spaces with men I’ve dated, it’s a game of endurance.  I can tell when they want to, but they don’t. And then, when I wanted it to end, I’ve brought out my own jugular. I stuck out the corners of my face like this and pointed to clouds like that. Like a statue or a relic. I’m pointing to them right now. The only way to see it coming is to remember where you come from. Hallelujah, Baudelaire. Sas. But sas never comes.

"The Stranger" by Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867)

Tell me, enigmatic man, whom do you love best? Your father, your mother, your sister, or your brother?

- I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.

- Your friends?

- You are using a word whose meaning to this day remains unknown to me.

-Your country?

- I do not know in which latitude it lies.

- Beauty?

- I would love her gladly, goddess and immortal.

- Gold?

- I hate it as you hate God.

- Well then! What do you love, unfathomable stranger?

- I love the clouds… the passing clouds … up there … up there … the marvelous clouds!

—Translated by Sam Taylor, http://poems.com/Poets%27%20Picks%202015/0415_Taylor.html

I wanted there to be no doubt. I was broken, but he tried to break me during him, he tried to make me golden. Hallelujah.

I think this is our role, to also emotionally dive in. Decolonizing includes the utmost compassion and sensitivity. Not a seat on the bleachers.

It took 27 years for my mom and I to love her better.

But that’s not really true. What is true is that every year, it feels like the first time. It is true that love as an adult has taken a large amount of living from me, but it has neither begun nor will it end. Right now, at this moment, I am discovering that its probably supposed to be kind of fluid, right? That the way I love myself has a say in the way we love each other.

Is it crude of me to ask myself which love came first though?

I often take my time with Kanye alone because there are friends and people who say they cannot look past his ego. But as a Black man whose visibility is tied to his wealth, it is not the same thing to parade oneself and to be paraded, and some Chicanxs consider their misunderstanding of this to be neutralizing and progressive.

What we get back in return is what we’ve forgotten. I am currently conversing with Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Conversing is a euphemism for reading, but one I find less troublesome.

How is it that we are supposed to be

humble

practice humility

humidfy ourselves when we must always look within

when we are alone,

when loneliness is a lifelong repulsion?

When solitude is a lifelong partner who we (begrudgingly) accommodate (by covering it up in Black slang), it is a euphemism for writing. The only lifelong partner some of us we have. And it is often we who let ourselves down first. This is how I knew I was an adult. How are we supposed to remain humble when we must strengthen ourselves with the same power we are torn down by? To have any ego about the whole thing means to reject some part of the equation.

How are we supposed to work with a city that insists we work for it instead? Los Angeles is the city of contradiction. How do u humidify its intentions? You call it chaparral.

To be Black in LA is to know Chicanx anti-Blackness. To have a small circle of friends and a larger circle of doubt. A degree in LA is to be well versed in white and brown liberalism, or Chicanismo, for short.

No. For some people, like Kanye, it is to strengthen themselves to price match the same power we have torn them down by. This proximity is exact. This is sense. This is now.

This proximity is exactly like love and horror. To talk about one without the other is grotesque, truly grotesque. Some of us don’t understand this. But the contemporary horror genre is an attempt to do so. To understand how you cannot invoke fear without invoking the space where love was supposed to be. But can you invoke love without pointing to where fear lives? A haunting like love takes years. You cannot tell me that you didn’t see it coming.

Racism isn’t humble. Mediocre white and white adjacent Chicanx men are arrogant for far less.

Last night I found out an ex was engaged and with child, all in a quaint picturesque home on top of a hill. This morning, I reread my own line about mediocre white men, and my world continues to turn against itself. I am convinced that if someone as ordinary as he can find idyllic pleasures, then yeah there is hope for me after all.

At the same time, I remember he dumped me because I was too poor, too depressed, and too willing to tax him for it. At the time, I still referred to myself as a brown woman, but I was struggling with how nonsensical and regional it all was. A true IRL non sequitur. To have a white guy make u feel like you’re at once the only white person in the relationship and the only brown one too. It was all so unromantic and not interracial.

It’s not that we are or are not the same. It’s that we won’t implicate ourselves.

It’s that we won’t let u be anything.

We can’t even be ourselves.

The difficultly of living in contradiction. It’s that there’s nothing there. Staring back. It’s that no matter how hard u try to have some respect for urself, all that matters is that the mirror not show u in it. Some of us would rather identify with that emptiness than show up.

We need to honor the people we begrudgingly are because of the people we are not. That there are parts of our surrounding we will never be at one with. Is that idea really so hard to expand with? And if those visions for something other are released. Do we dare.

I think the most painful thing said about me from someone who hurt me was that I never loved them.

No. To be Chicanx in LA, in South Gate is to live largely segregated from other white people and other people of color. Or to not see oneself as one is because Chicanismo in LA is self-salutatory. Self-referential. Self-referencing. Because Chicanismo needs you not to be otherwise. Because Chicanismo can thrive unchallenged.

Yes. To be Chicanx in LA is to build yourself up using the same thing that’s torn down by u.

To be Mexican in southeast Los Angeles is to look at the growing population of Black residents and call them a loss of property value. Some Chicanos here prefer Wal-mart to Black neighbors. Not unlike rural whites in the news. Someone once made the God-awful mistake of calling LA a suburb and now I can’t look away, I can’t undo it!

It is light and dark skin family members understanding where Trump is coming from and trying to break even. Call it mestizaje. Is this some twisted attempt at trying to take responsibility for oneself through punishment and contradiction. Contractions. Self-effacing. Take your pick. LA is a Libra, too. Is this internalized racism? Or a euphemism for it? I don’t understand.

The idea that Kanye is a narcissist is only an illusion about how many accolades we wish to deny him of. It is also an illusion about what we blame him for. In places where Chicanxs do not live in proximity to Black people, we look to Black celebrities and culture figures for clues on how to be less white, more white, Black, not Black. We study borders. We practice how to break them down and fund them back up. We take the barbed wire and make it our own. White supremacy, but make it Mexican.

Someone once made the God-awful mistake of saying South Gate was one of the most racially segregated cities, and now I can’t look away! I can’t undo it.

This essay is a euphemism for self-care and minor exiles. For the way we leave our cities and eachother. It was written in memory of. A memorandum. This essay is not an apology to Chicanos or to Mestizaje. It’s a love poem. Sas.

See also @bad_dominicana (2.0 and 3.0), @rachel.cargle, all Black thought, all Black art, all banality, True Detective season 3, Barbara Tucker – Beautiful People (Underground Network Remix)

 *Sike. I knew some of them, and by their first name. You know their last.

[lindyhunt]

Are Sex Robots Really the Answer to the Incel Problem?

The ranks here at FASHION are not filled with men. Shocking, right? But there are one or two (there are actually, literally, two). Naturally, when a question about male/female dynamics arises it’s only fair that one of them stand in for the members of his gender and provide some insight. Our last topic of conversation was why men tend to get defensive when the #MeToo filter is applied to certain news stories, and today we’re wading into the concept of ‘the redistribution of sex’ as a response to the incel movement. Two of our staffers—from the men’s corner, Greg Hudson, and from the women’s, Pahull Bains—talk it out.

Pahull Bains: Last week, the New York Times published a whopper of an op-ed by a man named Ross Douthat in which he put forth his thoughts on how the “redistribution of sex,” much like an equitable distribution of property or money, could be the key to a future without angry, violent behaviour from men who identify as incels: “involuntary celibates” aka men who find it difficult or impossible to find sexual partners. (The op-ed is in response to the recent killing spree in Toronto at the hands of self-declared incel Alek Minassian, which left ten people dead.)

Aside from the fact that to posit this sort of argument requires one to consider women’s bodies a commodity, much like land or money, and erases entirely their agency in the ‘transaction’ of sex, there’s also the tiny matter of equating incels—men with a demonstrably violent and misogynistic worldview—as a subjugated group worthy of a paradigm shift undertaken on their behalf. To help his argument, Douthat quoted Robin Hanson, an economist who, in his estimation, is a “brilliant weirdo:” “One might plausibly argue that those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income, and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity, to lobby for redistribution along this axis and to at least implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met.” Douthat goes on to suggest that a combination of sex workers, virtual-reality porn and sex robots might be the answer to “address the unhappiness of incels, be they angry and dangerous or simply depressed and despairing.”

These arguments fail to consider several points. 1) Women are as likely as men to suffer from a lack of sex, yet we don’t see women shooting up frat houses or “threatening violence” as a result of it. 2) Since men are the prime “sufferers” here, a ‘right to sex’ largely translates to a ‘right to women.’ 3) If we are to go by the Reddit and 4Chan message boards where incels gather to vent and commiserate, it’s not just a ‘right to women,’ but a ‘right to attractive women.’ So mere access to sex—or in the case of sex robots, access to acquiescent partners—isn’t the solution. Incels demand that the women they fantasize about—the ‘hot, beautiful blonde girls’ that Elliot Rodger, patron saint of incels, purported to hate in the manifesto he left behind after his 2014 massacre—be truly interested in them. It is the absence of unattainable, beautiful women in their lives that they deplore, not necessarily absence of the sexual act itself. So how could something like sex robots possibly appease that burning, and likely insatiable, desire? Tell me Greg. How???

Greg Hudson: It’s like you’ve been reading my Internet history or something.

While the devil likely doesn’t need an advocate (especially now that Ty Cobb is available–HEY-O political humour!), I want to push back on a few of the things you said. Not because I believe that we should live in a world where the sexual needs of misogynistic men are at all a priority, but because I think this is at least an attempt to find some kind of solution to what is obviously a giant problem. It’s easy to feel nihilistic about this, just as it is when discussing terrorism based on other ideologies. You even alluded to that yourself when you call their problem an “insatiable desire.” There’s no hope!

But the problem is, when there aren’t many solutions offered, the few that are can seem smarter than they actually are. Because, while I admit that parts of his thinking is intriguing, it seems he maybe should have spoken to like one woman before publishing this, if only to flesh out the details of what he’s proposing.

Let’s put aside talk of incels for a moment, so that this Redistribution of Sex Idea isn’t a kind of ransom/response to incel terrorism.

You mention that there are women who suffer because they maybe don’t get the sex they wish they could have, but they don’t go out and kill anyone. That seems true! But of all the incels out there, only two have made the news for causing mass violence. Most just feel bitter and mean and make nasty comments on the internet. It’s similar to the argument silly gun fans make about gun control: that the mass shootings skew the picture. The reality is most gun deaths are suicides. (How that really works as an argument against gun control is kind of tortured). Most incels are just sad.

But what if sex was a right for both genders? What if Ross Douthat had included women in his piece? As he mentions in the piece, we often look to programs that help connect disabled people up with sex workers as progressive and important. The differently abled deserve physical affection, too! What if sex was just one aspect of holistic healthcare? Like mental healthcare, sex would be available if you want it (and maybe qualify), but not essential. Does that change the argument at all? Because you’re right, a Right to Women is gross. But, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to distill this argument down to that.

We’ll get back to why this probably wouldn’t help incels.

PB: But incels are not disabled people! (Unless you construe a lack of game as a disability, in which case, I think we’re done here.) And I don’t think we can reasonably conclude that most incels are “just sad.” Yes, only two might have committed mass violence thus far, but they are cited as heroes on these message boards and their acts are glorified. So although we could agree that the majority of the men who identify as incels don’t go out and commit murder, it’s indisputable that they harbour virulent views about women. Even the most cursory glance at some of the misogynistic message boards of the ‘manosphere’ is enough to see that. I mean, a word I saw coming up over and over was ‘femoid,’ which, it turns out, is a combination of female and humanoid, implying that women are subhuman. Another common thread was the opinion that the only thing women are good for is sex.) So I don’t think these men need to commit an act of mass terrorism to be deemed dangerous or potentially violent.

Now, getting to the women. Again, not being charming or beautiful or confident enough to attract men (or women!) does not a disability make. So if we were to talk about sex as a right, regardless of whether or not you’re disabled, we’d have to first address the question: what makes something an inalienable right in the first place? And what makes sex fall into that category?

GH: Ugh. I don’t like that I’m within walking distance of defending incels. Like if incels were a highway McDonalds, and defending them was buying a Big Mac, then I’d be seeing the golden arches looming. And Big Macs always make me super sick.

Assuming sexism leads to violence isn’t really fair. All men who are violent towards women are sexist, but not all sexists are violent. In fact, I think it’s more likely–and we should just state that both of us are making assumptions that may or may not prove to be true according to the data we don’t have–that most incels don’t have the confidence, means, or strength to incite much violence. They see themselves as Good Guys. Until they don’t.

You have a very strange way of defining a right. I can’t think of any inalienable rights that are so defined. Is healthcare a right? I think most Canadians would agree that it is. What about a childhood free of fear, hunger, abuse? What about an adulthood like that? Probably. I mean, it’s a hard right to enforce, but I think we’d all prefer a society that ensures the safety and at least minimal care of its people.

There is a significant push to have employment, or a living wage, be considered a right, even though it would be just as easy to say, “why is laziness a disability?” I don’t know if I agree, but one could make the argument that sex–physical touch, affection, intimacy–affects one’s quality of life in pretty serious ways. And just as there are many reasons a person can’t work, or find a job–some visible, others not so much– there are many reasons why men and women might have trouble finding sex. But if there are people who deeply miss human intimacy, and there is an industry set up to meet those people’s needs–and if that happened to prevent some men’s loneliness from curdling into misogyny, wouldn’t that be kind of cool?

But, to your point: it’s not orgasms that incels want. It’s not dates, either. Not really. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of meeting someone truly eccentric and then meeting their partner and thinking, yup, there’s someone for everybody.

The incels don’t just want sex, they want validation and companionship and love. They want to believe they are okay, and the only evidence they’ll accept is a woman who aligns with society’s definition of beauty, wanting to be with them. That they only see these women as prizes or means to their own gratification is what turns them into monsters. Would having a regular appointment with a sex worker help them see women differently? Part of me thinks it wouldn’t, since they’d always know they were paying for sex (even though in my pretend reality, this sex therapy is subsidized by the government), which would insult their fragile sensibilities and prove that women are objects that can be bought. But, then again, a therapist is a friend you pay for and that doesn’t stop them from helping people.

I think what I didn’t like about the responses to Ross Douthat’s column was that so many of them lacked imagination. They presumed a world where the sex robots and sex workers were essentially enslaved, against their will. It’s as though we all assumed that this redistribution of sex was going to be done with all the grace and nuance of a dictatorship, rewarding only men at the expense of women. That’s partly a result of how it was written–and what it was written in response to. But if we forget that a conservative columnist wrote it, would the principle of accessible sex be dangerous?

But, seeing as how we don’t live in Greg’s Socialist Sexual Utopia, in real life incels, violent or not, don’t just want sex. They want to punish.

What’s the answer then?

PB: Quick note: I don’t believe that sexism leads to violence, nor do I think I implied that. There is a wiiide, Grand Canyon-scale expanse between sexism and violent misogyny, and I think it’s safe to say that incels fall pretty firmly in the latter camp. (Last year, the 40,000-member ‘Incel’ group on Reddit was shut down by the site following policy changes that prohibited content that “encourages, glorifies, incites or calls for violence.”)

Now, back to the sex-as-a-right thing. While I do agree that sex affects the quality of a person’s life, treating sex as a right turns our world into a minefield. What, then, would prevent husbands from arguing that marital rape isn’t rape, it’s a response to their wives denying them their basic right to sex? As Amia Srinivasan noted in her recent London Review of Books essay: “On the now defunct Reddit group, a post titled ‘It should be legal for incels to rape women’ explained that ‘No starving man should have to go to prison for stealing food, and no sexually starved man should have to go to prison for raping a woman.’” So if we did live in a world where sex was considered a universal human right, we’d have lots more ideologies like that floating around, and what’s worse—legally sound ideologies. That seems more dystopian than utopian from where I’m standing.

You ask: ‘would the principle of accessible sex be dangerous?’ No, of course not. But there’s a huge difference between access to sex, and a right to sex. Accessible sex is already a reality. (Let’s face it: the fact that prostitution is illegal isn’t really slowing anyone down.) What we both agree on, I think, is that access to sex isn’t actually going to solve the incel problem because it’s far more deep-rooted than that.

Going back to Douthat’s op-ed, what bothers me the most is that, like with most problems that involve male violence against women, the burden to fix it or to find a solution instantly falls on the women’s shoulders. It’s always ‘how do women adjust or reevaluate what they’re wearing or how much they’re drinking or whom they trust,’ instead of ‘how do men adjust or recalibrate their mindset or outlook or behaviour toward women.’ This is another manifestation of that. Rather than looking at the incel movement as a potentially violent and sadistic ideology, and trying to figure out how to address it, the solution goes immediately to how women (or robots!) can appease and satisfy it. Rather than the policing or probing of this dangerous mentality, women must find a way to live safely around the contours of it.

GH: Nuts. Man, I forget that the world is the worst. Here I am imagining this world where sad, angry, lonely people can talk to a mental health professional and get a prescription for like a date night with a sex professional, who will help them feel less alone. And once people feel less alone, all misogyny, racism, homophobia, and whatever else ails the deplorable set, will melt away and we’ll all bake birthday cakes full of rainbows and speak only in clapping emojis.

And while I don’t really see how sex as a right will lead to marital rape–just because something is a right doesn’t mean violently stealing it is justified, especially since there is already a recourse for spouses who are unhappy with their sex life. It’s called divorce.

But I realize that that is all a little idealistic. In a way, I’m doing the same thing that I said annoyed me about other people’s response to Douthat’s column: I’m judging it based on what I’m wishing it said, and not what it really encouraged.

Thus, to answer your very first question: sex robots can’t fix this. I don’t know how the incel ideology can be fixed. But, I’ll do whatever you think I should!

PB: I think the first step is accepting that incels are not “sad, angry, lonely people,” who might be easily cured with drugs or weekly sex (android or otherwise). As Harper’s Bazaar’s political editor at large noted in her recent piece: “Their existence is not about being lonely. It is about blaming women for their loneliness.” The sooner we all see the deeply violent, unstable and misogynistic ideology driving the incel movement, the better off we’ll be.