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overwatch-does-stuff · 4 years ago

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Lindholm Family Headcanon Dump!

I know Michael Chu retracted the statement that Torbjorn has a bunch of kids, but Chu just quit so I make the rules now. It’s a LONG post under the cut because I got carried away. Mostly starring Torbjorn, but featuring Ingrid, Reinhardt, and Brigitte (plus a bunch of other kiddos that exist but I don’t have headcanon names for yet oops.) There won’t be any Bastion in this one because that’s an entire other post’s worth of content.

- Torb has a big family. He and Ingrid had a couple children of their own while he had a stable position in Overwatch, but they found out that they loved having little children around the house, so after all of their biological children moved out, they chose to volunteer in the foster system! This lead to them adopting at least four more kids. - Which means they drive a huge van everywhere. - Both Ingrid and Torbjorn are masters at driving as a result. - They’re exactly equivalent in skill with one exception: Ingrid can parallel park the van, a skill he has yet to figure.

- Their house is pretty big (the Overwatch paycheck paid well, that, along with Ingrid’s income,) so there’s plenty of room for all of them. - There’s three levels: upstairs (for the bedrooms and playrooms,) downstairs (for entertaining spaces/the kitchen and stuff,) and finally, the basement, which is Torbjorn’s personal workshop. - Most third world countries would kill to have a workshop as good as his. - It’s all because Ingrid spoils him so much. He gets just as excited for Christmas as his kiddos do. - “The latest arc welder? Aww, honey, you shouldn’t have!” - Ingrid doesn’t work in his field, but she listens to his special interests dumps, and puts in enough research of her own, that she knows just what to get him every year. - Ingrid doesn’t like getting gifts as much as he does, so for Christmas, he always makes sure to spend quality time with her. He jokes that he ‘sucks at planning dates’ but he really doesn’t! For her, it’s nothing but the top restaurants and most exciting experiences. She loves going ice skating in particular, something that he hates but will always do with her. - Torbjorn and Ingrid split the cooking equally. They’re a bit traditionally gendered with what they like to cook, with Torb leaning more towards grilling and Ingrid preferring baking, but it suits them just fine. - Their grill, along with every other cooking contraption in the house, has been upgraded in some way. In fact, Torb’s the one who grills only because Ingrid still can’t figure out how to use the damn thing since he upgraded it. - Their house is covered in contraptions of all sorts. Other than the grill, Ingrid utilizes every single one of them. Meals get served and sent around via chutes. The floors sweep and mop themselves automatically when they’re dirty. The dishwasher loads, washes, and unloads itself in record time. - You know the zany contraptions in the Addam’s family house? Think that, but more brightly colored. - However, Ingrid’s taste in interior decorating is the opposite of gothic or minimalist- she loves quirky, unique features and bright colors. - She loves thrifting. - The huge chair they got for Reinhardt in the living room was a thrift store find that she’s still very proud of. - She also has an old-fashioned “live laugh love” wall with all of the family portraits. She knows it’s cheesy, but it’s nostalgic for her. - She doesn’t just bring furniture home. She also brings home cats. - That’s right. Brigitte got her cat love from Ingrid. - It’s a long-standing tradition, with the first cat she brought home was over thirty years ago when they were a new couple. - Torbjorn swore that it would be her cat and that he wouldn’t take care of it. - He was wrong. - Very wrong. - He now loves his cats and calls them cutesy nicknames in whatever language he feels like in the moment. - He built them automated feeders, automated litter boxes, and even some automated toys. He spoils them rotten. - Every time Ingrid brings home a new cat it’s the same routine. He swears that this will be the last one and that he’s not taking care of this one! But that’s wrong and he knows it. - But, because Ingrid’s always bringing things home, she’s a little more tolerant when Torbjorn brings. . . a specific Omnic. . . home.

- But that’s a whole other fanfic that I would need to write, so instead, back to the parenting! - Ingrid is 100% a feral soccer mom. Torbjorn is just as bad. - They’re the ones screaming their lungs out at sports games. - They have a house rule where their kids have to participate in one extracurricular sport. It can be school teams, club teams, or even just working out on their own, but fitness is something that both Ingrid and Torb consider important. - Torbjorn, of course, built his own gym in the basement. He trained with Brigitte, and now he trains with another one of his daughters who’s taken an interest in weight-lifting. - But this all doesn’t mean that the Lindholms discourage more creative talents! - Torbjorn crafted a giant steel board where any arts and crafts get hung with magnets. One of his little boys is an artist and he couldn’t be more proud. - Brigitte experimented with metal art when she was a teenager, and many of her pieces are now permanent fixtures in the Lindholm home. - She crafted a particularly beautiful string of lights that hangs above the dining room table.

- Now it’s time for Uncle Reinhardt!!! - Okay, so maybe he’s called just ‘Reinhardt’ by the older kiddos, but everyone knows he’s essentially an uncle in all but blood. - He’s been invited to every holiday celebration for about. . . actually, he’s just always been there. - He’s a true multi-generational staple. Brigitte can’t remember a holiday without him, and now the younger kiddos are getting doted on by him every Christmas. - Rein loves telling stories for the children. He spends the entire car ride there planning his multi-hour epics. - Now that she’s older, Brigitte sometimes helps with the storytelling, contributing sound effects and such. - Something which just causes Torbjorn to laugh and shake his head. - Reinhardt also loves nothing more than being a walking jungle gym. As soon as he walks in the door, he’ll grab the nearest kiddo and put them on his shoulders. He’s often seen walking around with a kid in each arm and usually an extra hanging off his back. - Sometimes he gives Ingrid a heart attack when he starts throwing kids around, but hey, she’s known him long enough at this point that she (mostly) trusts him. - Everyone gets sad when Reinhardt has to leave, but he insists that there is justice that needs to be done. He soothes the kiddos by promising an even better story when he gets back.

- Now it’s time to get sad. . . here’s my Brigitte headcanons. . . - Brigitte was REALLY close with her father growing up. She spent so much of her time in his workshop learning from him, as one of the only Lindholm children to take a liking to machinery and engineering. - However, when she moved out. . . she found it difficult to escape his legacy. Everyone, many of the older industry professionals and the like, expected her to be just like her father. They tried to cajole her into finishing old weapons designs that Torbjorn had abandoned. - It was then that she learned the full extent of Torbjorn’s involvement in the Omnic Crisis. - She had a lot of trouble reconciling this news with her love for him. It’s still something she had great difficulty with. - This shock played a big part in her decision to give up on finding a job in the industry and instead accompany Reinhardt on his travels. - It wasn’t a decision that Torbjorn endorsed, which hurt their relationship even further. - But it’s not like he doesn’t try to keep in touch. They call every other weekend or so to catch up, but there’s always a tension between them that neither one is ready to address. - They will talk about it someday. They’ll figure things out. They care about each other too much for either one to give up. - In the meantime, though, Brigitte has gotten a lot closer with her mother. She calls her much more often. - They talk about all of the things that Brigitte wasn’t all that interested in when she was younger. Stuff like fashion, makeup, and more traditional advice, such as how to get a date or what it feels like to fall in love. - Ingrid also makes sure to show her how the cats are doing over the online call.

- To be truthful, Ingrid isn’t too worried about Brigitte’s decision to live the rough-and-tumble lifestyle. It reminds her a lot of her own young adulthood, where she decided to pick up everything and move to the big city to get away from her parents. - She’s quick to remind Torbjorn that her own little rebellion is how they came to meet whenever he gets worried about Brigitte’s decision. - (They met at Ironclad. The only job Ingrid could find after her big move was working secretary. She fell head-over-heels for him immediately, while it took him a while to warm up.) - (Their first date was just walking around the city, with Torbjorn talking almost the entire time about random things he saw. He’d see the newest cars on the street and dive into what he knew about that industry. They’d pass by a construction sight and he’d point out what tool designs were similar to the ones he was working on.) - (When he realized that she was actually listening to him and taking him seriously, he agreed to a second date and never looked back.) - They aren’t a perfect couple- they’ve had their fair share of arguments, especially because they’re both deeply stubborn, but they’re always able to work it out in a way that makes them both happy. That skill is why they’ve lasted so long. - One thing they’ve never argued about, though, is Torbjorn’s commitment to duty. When they started dating he made it clear that his work was very important to him. Ingrid made it clear that she was willing to be patient. - It got hard when he was away for months at a time with Overwatch during the Crisis and its aftermath, but through constant online calls they managed. - The biggest surprise of Ingrid’s life was when he told her he wanted to have kids when the Crisis ended. - Turns out, having a major life crisis about how your career impacted the world makes someone want to find another purpose in life besides their career. - And thus, they dove into parenthood together. - Now they both couldn’t be happier :)

#overwatch #torbjorn lindholm #overwatch torbjorn #ingrid lindholm #reinhardt #overwatch brigitte #brigitte lindholm #I have so many feelings about Torbjorn and his family. . .#I'm not sure this is very articulate but eh #who cares #it's content

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meloncubedradpops · 4 years ago

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Repo! The Corona Opera: Final Countdown

This is the third and final installment of Repo: The Corona Opera. In the first piece, I made the argument that the surreal events we are experiencing in 2020 remind me of the world in the movie Repo! the Genetic Opera. My second essay compared the characteristics of fascism with the same movie. Here we will tie together ideas in both works to highlight a dark path that America is on, based on what we know about Repo!, in the hopes that we can reject the evils of those who are sacrificing our health and safety for their own selfish reasons.

When I began thinking about this movie through the lenses of COVID-19, I saw uncanny patterns that just years ago seemed like an exaggerated storytelling. Millions of people dying from organ failure. Yeah, but how?

Then 2020 happened. Oh, that's how. Sure the disease doesn't affect everyone in the same way, but its wrath and potential to harm are tremendous. The death toll in the United States alone is, as of today, is 231,000. At least, that is the death toll we are know so far. It will take time when the dust settles and we can analyze the excess death data to truly know how many of our fellow Americans have died.

And while our world does not currently emulate those opening comic scenes in Repo, the impact from the sudden loss of life will be felt for a long time. There are a lot of really great themes in Repo: the concept of the family, drug addiction, the impact of corporate monopolies, and let's not forget it's a gothic coming-of-age story too. I am going to highlight three concepts that weave together our current reality with the world of Repo: the parallels of the Trump and Largo family, the Graverobber as the symbolic "other", and organ repossessions is genocide.

As mentioned in my previous entry, I highlighted the ways that Rotti Largo is a fascist. I went into detail supporting the argument that his company GeneCo holds tremendous and unyielding power in the city we see in the movie. And despite his efforts to save humanity from extinction, his assumed heirs and blood-related children are nothing short of entitled mediocrity. I will draw many parallels between President Donald Trump and Rotti Largo throughout the duration of this essay, but let's take a few minutes to talk about their children. Believe it or not, this meme was made by myself and my friend FOUR years ago, almost to the day!

But unlike 2016, I had no idea that I'd find multiple comparisons to draw upon. And frankly, if we all knew how bad this presidency would be, for both America and the rest of the world, we might have made less jokes from our complacency. I ask the the real question though, which Trump and Rotti offspring are most alike?

Now, I've wanted to do this thought exercise since the inception of my essays. The surface level combinations would look something like, Amber and Ivanka (since they're both women, obvs), Donald Trump JR as Luigi (oldest child), and Eric Trump as Pavi ("you're just his useless brother!").

However my boyfriend raised a great point that had me rethink this: Donald Trump Jr is ACTUALLY Amber Sweet. When I took out the gender aspect out of the equation, it made so much more sense. In my next point, I will go into drug addiction in a much more dignified manner. But let's just take a moment here to consider the following.

We know that Amber Sweet is addicted to two things in life: surgery and pain killing drugs to make surgery bearable. Amber Sweet's character provides an incredible insight to the daily life of the people in Repo. If you subtract the Zydrate Anatomy scene, you would hardly even know that zydrate is devastating lives of the people addicted to it. We hear about zydrate in the graveyard as a commercial and the media spends its first opportunity asking Rotti about zydrate's "use and abuses". After Sweet becomes a no-show in the presser, we quickly learn that she runs a support group for fellow addicts, or at least she is supposed to.

How does this relate to Trump Jr? Quite simply, many are speculating that Trump Jr abuses cocaine. The most compelling evidence is his speech during the Republican National Convention. Now, obviously we don't have solid evidence that he is indeed consuming and abusing cocaine, and quite frankly if he is, that would not be incredibly surprising or even a huge deal.

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But the conversation doesn't end here. President Donald Trump did not hesitate to bring up former vice president Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden and his battle with addiction during the first Presidential Debate. It was a low jab, especially considering that the United States is going through a crippling opioid crisis, which he even admits is exacerbated by covid-19 and related lockdowns. Both Donald Trump and Rotti Largo exploit their own children in this manner. I mean, Donald Trump helped fucked up the Trump Foundation where his children were held prominent positions, which was caught stealing from a charity intended to help children with cancer! Every time we see Donald Trump Jr on our doom-screens, we get another glimpse into Jr's downward spiral. And with every additional crime that all of president Trump's children become implicated in, the more and more we can see that this family is rotten to the core.

If Trump Jr is Amber Sweet, then Ivanka is Luigi. In Repo, Luigi can be described as nothing short of a homicidal maniac. I am not saying that Ivanka commits murder, at least not directly, but she does hold a lot of power in the White House. Spend any time learning about the machinations of the White House, particularly in the early days, and you will learn Ivanka competed with Melania for a voice in the administration, and still works for the White House today. Even if you exclude all of the shady business ties, such as the dozens of Chinese patents (including for voting machines!!!) Ivanka has filed, clearly the boundaries of nepotism do not exist for this family. Luigi somehow kills multiple people in the movie and faces no consequences for it. How can this be? Obviously corruption, but that is too simple. If there were multiple checks and balances at one point that would have forced Luigi to face justice for his crimes, they have obviously failed to come to roost in the movie. The obvious common denominator between today and the world of Repo is that those who want power will do anything to obtain and maintain it. Does the public know about every murder committed by Luigi? Does the public know about every crime committed by Ivanka (and also by proxy her husband Jared Kushner, who by the way, failed to pass mandatory security clearances but still has access to the intelligence of our government)? Jared intentionally made it difficult for many of the states hit hardest by covid-19 in the early weeks to acquire the necessary medical supplies because the electorate did not vote for Trump in 2016. That. IS. MURDER. Just as Luigi calls the common citizens in Repo "filthy mice", “Jrvanka” (and the Right at greater) frames the nation as two groups: us and THEM. Luigi is much less calculated, but the comparisons are there. If given the chance, the Trump and Largo family will kill because of their sociopathy, greed, and egos.

Admittedly I don't have as compelling of a comparison for Eric Trump and Pavi. However I will say that both Pavi and Eric do the bidding for their father's empire, and I would also argue that both feel like they have to compete to get a modicum of attention and love from a paternal figure devoid of basic empathy. And at the end of the day, they do not reject their father's tyranny. And honestly that is enough of a comparison for me.

Last but not least, I can't ignore the fact that the official Republican Party platform for the 2020 election is loyalty to Trump in the absence of any other political or philosophical idea. A majority of the speakers at the Republican National Convention were members of his family. Their pitch to Americans is “Just Trust Us”. However, a quarter million Americans aren't here to agree or disagree with that statement. With each passing day, more and more Americans are getting sick, to the tune of tens of thousands of cases a day on average currently. The Largo family and GeneCo are not much different. Remember that scene in 21st Century Cure where Shilo and Graverobber are in a mass grave where we can see truck loads of humans being added to the pile of corpses?

The only real thing separating the corpses from the rest of the city is a poorly constructed brick wall and the years of propaganda that normalizes what I imagine would be a terrible pungent smell of death.

The entire Trump family came into the first presidential debate without masks. The president was literally sick with a virus that statistically speaking, could kill his opponent; and he was on stage shedding this incredibly contagious virus screaming and shouting, spreading his droplets everywhere. The Trump family failed to show up early enough to be tested for covid before the debate.

This was not an accident. Jared Kushner bragged to journalist Bob Woodward back in April that Trump was going to take the country "back from scientists". As of this past weekend, we learned that Trump is floating around the idea of firing our nation's leading disease expert Anthony Fauci in a time where our cases, deaths, and hospitalizations from covid-19 are surging. It is almost grotesquely poetic how similar this is to GeneCo. GeneCo is a company in the healthcare industry, but they exploit the worst parts of society, which I will go into very soon. And in its effort to achieve maximum quarterly profits, the ends always justify the means, even if that results in fascism and excess death/suffering. Rotti's body guards kill the doctor who gives him his grim diagnosis. Trump didn't kill the doctors treating him during his recovery with covid, but information we got from the White House doctors were straight up WEIRD. We witnessed a Gentern being killed by Luigi in the Mark It Up Scene for no other reason besides existing in the proximity of him. Trump has spread misinformation about how there's more money to be made when a doctor declares a death as a covid death. I am finding it hard to see the difference. I think I've made my point regarding the parallels of the Trump and Largo family quite clearly, but you may see additional points I bring up as the rest of my essay unfolds.

Society is complex with more nuance than we give it credit to. The different ways that various groups of people interact with are endlessly interesting, and one of the reasons I love Repo so much is because there's an incredible amount of unpacking that you can do, even in the absence of written dialogue about it.

If you don't know, Repo started out as a story originally penned as "The Necromerchant's Debt", which gave the Graverobber character a more active role in the world crafted by Darren Smith and Terrace Zdunich. When watching the movie Repo! The Genetic Opera, the Graverobber is certainly a character seen in multiple scenes, but in a lot of ways, his importance is left out. An entire scene was cut from the film, see Needle Through a Bug below if you're interested.

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Regardless the parts that we do see are still greatly impactful. Graverobber is essentially the symbolized "other" living in a world that is greatly stratified by social class, and he's doing what he can to survive.

Now if you have been living on this planet we call Earth and have ever paid attention ever, you probably have noticed that there are a lot of power structures that influence the resources and opportunities that aid in our development and maintenance of our needs. The access to being able to elevate ourselves above basic survival are typically contingent upon a few things, one namely our ability to draw a paycheck. As I mentioned in my last essay, so many things went wrong to have what would equivalently be either a drug trafficking felony in today's terms or maybe theft, result in permissible extra-judicial murder. And I am not saying that Trump's bragging of the extra-judicial murder of an ANTIFA activist is at all related, but look at the way Trump compares his dissidents with the way GeneCo treats Graverobbers.

We are experiencing the early stages of economic collapse, millions of people are hungry, soon-to-be evicted, jobless. And yet, the Republicans in power just HAD to rush through a Supreme Court justice. When arguing against lockdowns that would have saved lives, the Right spent countless hours arguing about increase suicide, drug use, poverty, domestic abuse, blah blah blah, you know all the things that were there and as equally as important pre-pandemic? And they did NOTHING to help mitigate this disaster beyond the bill that was passed this spring. The house passed the HEROES Act back in May, and senate majority leader Mitch McConnel declined to take a vote on it.

Never mind the fact that landlords are still expected to pay the banks their mortgages on their investment properties. Never mind the fact that rent wasn't cancelled. Never mind that the Trump administration sought to prevent any oversight into the first bill passed previously to prosecute fraud. So you know, we can make sure the money went to small business owners, and not instead to the many, many crony ties to the administration who were approved for huge amounts of money. Honestly to think about this is kind of sickening, particularly when you relate it back to Repo and my essay I wrote on fascism.

I could probably talk all day about our failure with the "War on Drugs", but I feel like you can probably see based on the efficacy of its policies that drugs still exist and people are still abusing them. I bring this up because the Graverobber's occupation is essentially a drug dealer. However he sells a counterfeit of zydrate derived from the body of a bug who naturally borrow in a corpse's body, which is and also isn't stealing from the corpse / their estate, but is somehow still "bad" enough that you can legally be killed "on site" if a Gene Cop thinks you're harvesting the blue brain goo. I mean this entire concept makes my brain hurt.

The Graverobber, as a concept, is a perfect example of the enemy who is simultaneously the biggest and the least threat, and the only way to stop them is to kill them before they can appeal before the jury of their peers or go to prison to pay for their crimes. And I am sure the propaganda that justifies this is beautifully orchestrated. It literally mimics Russian propaganda, AKA the biggest foreign intelligence threat since, I don’t know, the Cold War? I can picture authoritarian stump speeches now:

"Here the Graverobber who comes in the night, tempting your children. They sell the promise of a good time, but did you know they are raping your daughters for this drug?? They can get your husband hooked on zydrate, and you won't know it's coming until he comes home unrecognizable. These thugs are stealing your grandmother's ring off her corpse, and you will find her half-rotted corpse thrown askew across her tombstone when you go to pay your respects."

And yet Graverobber defends himself:

"Industrialization has crippled the globe (Enjoy GeneCo's day and nighttime formula of Zydrate) Nature failed as technology spread (Ask a gentern if Zydrate is right for you) And from this wake a market erected (Buying Zydrate from an unlicensed source is illegal) An entire city built on top of the dead! And you can finance your bones And your kidneys For every market a submarket grows But best you be punctual With making your payments Lest it be you on the concrete below It's quick! It's clean! It's pure! It could change your life! Rest assured! It's the 21st century cure! And it's my job To steal and rob GRAVES!"

He then goes into detail about how this is just the cost of doing business with his modern world. How many of our current and future stories by those who will not make a single sentence in our history books will be casted as enemies of the state who were ultimately just trying to make end's meet? You can deport the illegal immigrant but neglect to prosecute the American company who hired them to work here? How is that much different? If the people in Repo need this drug to cope with the deaths of their loved ones and their livelihoods, then what does that say about the soul of their nation?

If you are still with me at this point, I want to thank you so much. I am going to conclude on a fairly heavy topic, but it is one worth having. Organ repossessions in Repo are genocide and in America, we are currently also committing genocide.

The whole premise of the film is the justification that those who fail to make payments on their surgeries deserve to have their organs repossessed, because what other reality is there with unrelenting end-stage capitalism? People are losing their whole lives as I type this, through no fault of their own. Most Americans cannot afford a $400 emergency expense pre-covid-19. Millions are unable to pay for basic life expenses, such as rent, healthcare or food. Our president specifically shoved a Supreme Court justice because he wants the American Healthcare Act to be deemed too unconstitutional for public policy. Never mind the 100+ million Americans with pre-existing conditions. Never mind the millions who acquire their healthcare through the ACA marketplace. Never mind the fact that we are in a once-in-a-century PANDEMIC. Never mind that we spend more per capital on healthcare than anywhere else in the world. Never mind that the Right does not have ANY sort of plan to replace something in its place. How could MILLIONS die in an organ failure crises in Repo anyways? We already know that the Trump administration already stopped caring about covid deaths when we learned it was hurting people of color disproportionality than the general population. 1 out of 1000 black Americans have died from covid. Reread that sentence. If you don't believe me, go out and seek those facts for yourself. When we think of genocide we think of Hitler killing thousands of people via gas chambers. But there are SO many other steps that lead to the normalization of that.

Undesirables, aka the "others", are easy to discard. Is it a surprise to anyone that ICE gynecologists are removing the uteruses of detainees? I almost made my whole essay about that one controversy alone. Genocide is insidious like that.

"Oh but if she didn't want that hysterectomy, she shouldn't have tried to come to America for a better life, even if that's what my ancestors did."

Of course not, she's the "other", and you're the law-abiding citizen. You were able to afford the extra $30 a month for the upgraded booby package that gave an otherwise unremarkable kidney transplant a fun twist by including breast implants. The orphan who works the streets because his parents died during the plague who needed a new pancreas because insulin became too expensive is threatening your suburbs. Bonus points if the orphan has a hint of melanin in his skin or if your daughter shows favor towards his antics, completely ignoring the fact that his mommy and daddy were killed by preventable disease. I have no idea if this was intentional or not, but look at the makeup of people who get their organs repossessed in Repo and try not to tell me there's a trend. Yes it could have been the coincidence of casting, but nevertheless it is worth mentioning. We don't see many people of color in this movie, but of the few we see, they get murdered by GeneCo/Wallace. And I don't care how stupid coincidences are because that is exactly what is happening with covid-19. The so-called essential, working class citizens (who are disproportionally POC) are putting their whole life on the line to serve everyone else who works at home.

The ends justifies the means, kill enough elderly and the federal government won't have to pay out on social security. Force everyone to get back to work and fuck you if you think you deserve money for the hours you weren't allowed to work (oh and by the way we want to make it so you can't sue for covid-19 related liabilities). Oh you lost your job, "try something new", as told by Ivanka Trump earlier this summer.

My main point is if you let fascism get control, they will normalize genocide and put you in jail for even making the connections of corruption. "Millions of people dead from organ failure, what's adding a few more to the pile in the name of law and order?" "The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat". Once again, I am failing to see the difference.

Okay I threw a lot at you just now, and the fact you made it to the end is a miracle. If you skip around because you have a squirrel brain like me, I thank you as well. The fact we get out of bed everyday and do anything right now is a miracle and I know attention can be finite.

I am writing this on the eve of the United States General election after having wanting to write this since June of this year. I am tired. We are ALL Shiloh right now. Our lives have been on pause. "I must be brave", "I'll capture it", "Run back inside". Yeah girl, same! I haven't talked about her much throughout any of my essays, but I have to give credit where credit is due.

Humans are a resilient creature. We have millions of years of experience on this Earth, and much of our survival has been based on pure dumb luck. But we have blown so many other species out of the water in one way alone, and that is our ability to communicate.

We don't have to let people who exploit our weaknesses control us. The sociopaths who try and run our society did not historically aid in our survival. They didn't care if we ate the mushroom that killed us or would have protected us when threatened by wildlife, it was our tribe. The Right has successfully hijacked that bond between the self and the tribe so that it can fit the needs of sociopathy and greed. It is not normal for a president to tell a nation that "it is what it is" when over 100k citizens die from a preventable disease. Do not let the sociopaths throw us in that tiny pine box in a mighty small drop in a mighty dark plot, hastening the trip to our epilogue. Because every inch you give, they will take a mile and charge you by the hour. Never forget that.

#repo! the genetic opera #repo #shilo wallace #nathan wallace #terrance zdunich #darren smith #gothic #coronavirus #COVID-19 #election #vote #Fascism #politics #donald trump #ivanka trump #eric trump #donald trump junior #republicans #genocide

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twilightofthe · 5 years ago

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@nerdgatehobbit Hey! Thanks for the question! Ik you asked this to my main but imma respond on my SW blog if that’s okay?

So whew that’s a big question. Do I honestly think that Dave kept Obi Wan and Padmé and then Anakin and Satine from interacting in the TCW show because they didn’t want shipping wars?

(Remember, these are all just my personal opinions. I do me and you do you!)

Short version? Yes and no. Long version? Under the cut because I can never shut up.

Firstly, I don’t wanna say this was all Dave’s decision. He was one of the top guys in charge of TCW, yes, but he was far from the only one, there was an entire creative team working on the project, and during the time of TCW’s original six seasons Lucasfilms was not owned by Disney yet and George Lucas himself had a very large amount of creative control over the entire show. So I don’t really think it’s fair at all to point fingers at any choices the show made and go “yep that’s completely 100% Dave’s fault alone”.

I also don’t quite think they were concerned about shipping wars in the way ATLA had them. Avatar’s shipping wars were so absolutely toxically rancid that they legit drove me right out of that fandom. I’m still hesitant to come back during the current renaissance because of them. Star Wars, prior to the Sequel Trilogy, never had shipping wars close to that calibre of pure nastiness. The fandom was a godawful cesspool that fought to the death on most aspects of the franchise, this has always been true, but shipping, if I’ve read right, was somehow never really one of those hot button issues within fandom. I don’t think Lucasfilms kept the Clone Wars four apart because they were afraid of fans fighting over ships.

That being said, Lucasfilms HAS always been Very Strict on how they want their characters to be seen, romantic-wise, way back to when they would terrorize Original Trilogy slash shippers back in the 80’s and 90’s with threats of legal action. It’s part of why they were Very Firm in their insistence that they had absolutely nothing to do with all the Luke/Mara Jade EU stuff. You either abided by LF’s canonical romances or not at all in their world. So yes, in the case of Obi Wan and Padmé, I absolutely think the writing team’s decision to keep the pair of them apart was almost entirely so fans didn’t ship them together.

Why do I think this? Because there is no other rational reason why Obi Wan and Padmé haven’t had a single second of screentime in TCW that hasn’t had either Anakin or Satine also in the room as a buffer. Not when Revenge of the Sith EXPLICITLY portrays their relationship as relatively close friends who care about each other. So nope, I genuinely think the show just doesn’t want the fans to consider any other relationship for Padmé besides Anakin.

But why would they do this just to her and Obes? Obi Wan and Padmé both have other friends of different genders, why don’t they worry about us shipping THEM? Well for Obi Wan’s case, it can be excused that he flirts with everyone, so we’re conditioned to think that it’s never anything serious, and none of the other characters are married to the main character of the series. This is entirely because of Padmé’s position. Yes, she has other male friends, but either they’re nonhuman and not conventionally attractive so the series doesn’t see them as a threat, they’re Clovis, who they actively show Anakin going into a jealous fit over, or they’re Bail, who can be excused by the fact that he’s already married and also because he’s never actively shown as in competition with Anakin for anything, so he’s not threatening either.

Obi Wan, on the other hand, is a major threat to Anidala in the show’s eyes. They already constantly make a point to compare him and Anakin in almost every opportunity. Which is strange, the show’s decision to force them into the role of narrative foils to each other when in the movies that isn’t the case at all— Obi Wan is much more of a foil to Sidious and Anakin’s foil is Luke —but yeah, the show very often has Obes and Ani going through similar situations with competing viewpoints— ESPECIALLY their canon romances, and I won’t rant about how the show’s attempted Anidala and Obitine parallels fall apart under scrutiny right now but if yinz want the rant sometime let me know.

Obi Wan also has the canonical ability to charm the pants off of literally everyone he meets. Nearly everyone in canon is in love with him, 80% of the fandom at least is in love with him, and I KNOW most of the crew was in love with him too. Anakin, on the other hand, has a very abrasive personality and is much easier to dislike. The show was ALREADY terrified of the fans not liking or wanting to root for Anakin to the point that they reworked his entire personality to make him more palatable to his critics from the movies. Plus, Obidala fans already existed! Since the first and second PT movies, a big group of people already shipped these two because they already thought Obi Wan was a preferable match to Padmé than Anakin. The studio did not want to encourage this.

So yes, I think it was a combination of the show’s tendency to already try and get the fans to compare Obi Wan to Anakin for everything else plus their insecurity in Anakin’s image and likeability as it was, that they did Not want the handsome charming not-future-evil guy around the leading lady and threatening her canon romance by existing as a possibly better option. So Obi Wan and Padmé got no stories together, just kinda throwing the opening ROTS left them in the garbage ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The worst part is, there is so many potential places in TCW where Obi Wan and Padmé could talk to each other, like during her investigation into her friend’s murder, during the Clovis arc, bits during the Malevolence arc, the earlier Naboo crisis arcs, even the one time where she’s just hosting a damn party and wants to invite her friends gahhhhhhhh

Anakin and Satine, I also think yes, but this is also a case of half and half because Satine isn’t nearly as major a character as the other three are, and out of the nine episodes she appears in, she only has more than a singular line in seven of them, and out of those seven, only two of them aren’t revolves entirely around building her relationship with Obi Wan. So really, there is a defence for the writers here in noting that there’s not as much room to explore Satine’s character as it is, let alone trying to shoehorn in a scene with Anakin.

Except no, I’m not gonna give them that defence because in the two episodes where she only has a speaking line or less— Obi Wan’s funeral and the Ahsoka and Lux meet Death Watch ep —I can already easily think of ways she and Anakin could have really meaningful interactions in them both. Y’all have already heard my bit on how they could have a real important conversation at the funeral, but y’all HAVEN’T seen my idea for a rewrite of the Carlac ep where it’s a two-parter, Anakin comes with Ahsoka and Padmé to the negotiations on Mandalore, and it ends up with a subplot of Anidala chasing after Ahsoka and Lux with Satine as the put-upon third wheel and we get foreshadowing to Satine being Bo Katan’s sister, so when the reveal happens the next season it actually means something.

So yeah, it was partially because of timing constraints, but it was also DEFINITELY in part because they didn’t want Satine being shipped with Anakin— which ppffffft, if they were brave enough to actually try writing these two in a conversation in-character, they’d understand how much of a not-worry this would be xD —because the show is set on the fact that despite maybe there being other flings at some point, Obi Wan and Satine are each other’s one true tragic love (Or, at least Obi Wan is Satine’s. He’s always had more freedom and decision than she has in this narrative, and that’s always kinda bugged me). So, that means Satine can’t interact with any men unless they’re gonna betray her trust and try to kill her by the end of the episode, because the show needs Obi Wan to have a loyal, steady, good girlfriend because he is a good man.

(And yes, before anyone says it, I have heard the more unpleasant rumors behind why exactly Obi Wan was given a girlfriend in the show, but as I’ve yet to see any official proof of them besides fandom salt, I’m not gonna spread them because those are hefty accusations to throw around).

So yeah, Satine can’t talk to Anakin partially because time constraints, but also because she isn’t allowed to talk to any other nice men besides Obi Wan and her son (no I don’t particularly like the Korkie Kenobi thing, but it is blatantly obvious that that is what the show was implying and I’m not gonna pretend otherwise), and Obi Wan and Padmé can’t talk to each other entirely because the show saw Obidala as a threat to Anidala.

Again, just my opinions and things I noticed, y’all are more than free to disagree and discuss with me.

#can i EVER answer someone’s question without going on an entire ranting spiel? stay tuned to find out lol #ask #asks #nerdgatehobbit #sw the clone wars #morai musings #our only ho #queen of my heart #peace out #one (1) hot mess

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laytonsartblog · 5 years ago

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The Best of Worst Days

Economic Crisis AU

Ch. 1, Ch. 2

Warning: this content has violence, poverty, guns, starvation, hypothermia, dysfunctional family themes, and dystopian themes. Read when comfortable and in a safe spot. Care for yourself.

Patton has a schedule he dedicates his life to.

First, to get up at five.

Then take a shower, standing in a bucket.

Why a bucket? To catch the dirty water.

After his shower, Patton will put that murky liquid into a filter to drain out all the gunk and make him and his son breakfast while he's waiting. Once he's finished with all of that, he takes the filtered water and pours it into empty water bottles and then throws them into his tiny icebox.

Proceeding is obviously to wake up his adorable little four-year-old Virgil and eat with him until it's time to go at six-thirty, and walk Virgil to his pre-k daycare with the rest of breakfast and the fresh water bottle as lunch.

From that point on it's just to get to his work at the construction site by seven and work until two pm, and pick Virgil up to bring home.

They play and eat and maybe visit the park for two hours, then Patton has to get to his other job down the block at a small crafts store by five, which is where he'll be until midnight, then walk all the way back home and fall flat on his face to sleep on the floor.

Simple, right?

Yes, well, there's this thing called sleep depriviation and insomnia that gets in the way.

When Patton wakes up as he does every day, his tired eyes make their way to the clock before bulging out of his head. It's six am.

He scrambled to get Virgil up and about. "Virgil!" Patton whispered as he gently shook his son's shoulders. "Virgil, Papa's running late for work, you need to make your own sandwich while I get ready, okay?"

Virgil merely whined and curled in closer to his thin blanket.

"Pleeeeeease?" Patton pleaded. "I know it's a bit sudden and I usually let you sleep in more, but Papa can't do everything at once, okay?"

Virgil finally sat up and groaned, wiping his eyes. "S'okay, Papa. I'll help."

Patton smiled softly as Virgil clumsily went about to his little cubby to grab a clean shirt and shorts to change into, before remembering the time and running off to change too.

Patton came out of the bathroom with his expendable construction t shirt and jeans and stared at the time; six-thirty.

"Come on, Virgil," Patton urged gently as he picked his boy up. "We're gonna need to skip breakfast today, but I'll leave you some money to get something at the cafeteria, okay?"

Virgil nodded sleepily against Patton's chest. "Okay, Papa..."

Patton sighed contentedly as he continued to hold Virgil on the rest of the walk to the daycare before placing him gently down in front of the door. He fished in his pockets for change.

"Don't worry, honey, I'll have something here somewhere..." Patton trailed off as he continued to search through his pockets for maybe even a dime, but, no, there was nothing. Patton gave up his search with a sigh. "Well, kiddo, I- I think you'll need to ask for some of your friend's extra snacks, or maybe one of the teachers to get you something because Papa doesn't- Papa doesn't have the money."

Virgil looked like his rubber duck had just been melted and Patton almost teared up at the sight. He hated having to starve his own son because he couldn't get the money.

Virgil ran up and hugged Patton's skinny legs. "Is okay, Papa, 'm okay, Papa go job," he mumbled into the cloth of Patton's jeans. "I go play now." He ran off like a wolf into the night into the daycare, rushing to play with the fun trains. A complete switch.

Patton would have broke down then if it weren't for the fact he was on the clock.

He ran to the site he was supposed to be working on, just two or three miles away. When he got there, however, his manager stood with a tapping shoe and folded arms.

"Look who finally showed up!" she snarked, red luxerious lipstick painted bright to announciate every twisted syllable.

Patton's shoulders went sky high to hide his paler-than-average face. "I-I am so sorry, ma'am," he apologized. "I didn't mean to- my son, I had to drop him off to daycare, and he was being fussy, so-"

Patton didn't like to lie, but it was the only way for him to keep the job. If she found out it was because he woke up late? A big fat 'FIRED' notice would appear in his p.o. box.

The woman sighed. Her foot stopped tapping, but her arms stayed crossed. "Listen..." she started. "You seem to work hard and you've got a kid to take care of. I get it. Times like these in this stupid country can be tough."

Patton felt some hope glimmer in his chest. Perhaps just a warning?

"But that doesn't exclude the fact you've been late four times this month, fainted twice from exhaustion, and spread the cough to my workers last winter."

Patton's heart sank back to where it was before.

"That's why... I need to let you go. It's hard work and I cannot have tardiness and exhaustion running my construction equipment."

And that's when Patton's heart went all the way down to Hell.

"You're... I'm... I'm fired?" Patton gasped out, almost as if he couldn't believe it; or rather, didn't want to.

His manager nodded. "I'm so sorry, Patton, you seem like a fine worker. You're just not cut out for working early hours on tough plaster with a kid to take care of and a whole load of sleep problems."

Patton's hands felt numb but slimy. He was sweating but he couldn't even tell if it was hot. All he felt was cold; cold dread, cold guilt, cold everything.

"I-I'm sorry, maybe I could- maybe you could move me down to textile ordering management?" Patton tried not to let that determined little speck of hope reach too high in his voice; it still strained of heartbreak either way.

Her bright red lips frowned and her mascara-covered eyes closed. "I'm sorry, Patton, but those spots are all full. If you wanted to really work there, you could be the mission boy, but that's significantly lesser pay, and may conflict with the schedule you're on."

Patton sighed, his hope and heart finally settling in a dark chasm in his chest. "Thank you for at least concerning it, ma'am, I'll- I'll be on my way, now."

With a racking breath and wobbly knees, Patton turned away and walked back home. Once through the door, he sat on the small mattress Virgil used and began to sob.

"I can't feed my child, I lost my job, and bills are coming up! What the hell am I to do?" Patton yelled as he bawled into his hands.

Every part of him screamed and ached. He needed sleep, he needed rest, he needed something to eat, he needed his child to hold dear, he just needed; but he can never have what he wants, especially like the sad sack of debt and depression he was.

Patton couldn't exactly tell how long he had cried for, but the next time he looked up at the clock, it was eight am. He figured that the library was open, so he might as well head over there for a free read to calm down.

That, and free wifi and computer access.

Patton tried to make himself not look like the outside rendition of how he was feeling on the inside as he walked along the craggy sidewalks to the nearby city library. His attempts to cover up the way his hair sagged and his eyes pulsed didn't exactly prove fruitful as people walked by in sympathy or disgust. Their reactions only made Patton's heart clench more.

After he finished his three mile walk, he practically ghosted through the library doors; he looked as much, anyway, with his pale face and sunken eyes.

The librarian from across the room lowered his sunglasses, intrigued and a little suspicious.

The depression hit almost everyone, yes, but that didn't mean that hobos possibly addicted to meth were a person Remy was begging to listen to on a Monday morning in a damn library. Remy was not awake enough to tell the raggedy middle aged patron this wasn't the back alley to sneak some crack in before making his way back on the streets to ask for a job, so Remy just adjusted his sunglasses and resumed looking up sugar daddies on his phone.

Patton ignored the stares from the young librarian and instead went to the computer, taking out his library card and typing out the number and sending it in. After waiting for what seemed like hours, the internet finally decided to load the computer up and allow Patton to search for more loan applications and job openings.

However, he came up empty handed.

The jobs either weren't paying enough, required a higher degree than a high school diploma, or were simply too far away. The loans? They would cause more debt; Patton was better off without more false promises.

There was a website Patton was interested in, though, that he found while scrolling through the Google search "friend finding": GetAlong.

GetAlong, apparently, was a free penpal website people could use do the same as texting without having to pay for it. Except, there's a twist; the people you meet are strangers. They could be from across the country, across the planet, your next-door neighbor, anyone who signs up with the site is eligible for you to meet. You could message eachother, send pictures, videos, links, live feeds, and sticker-like emoji; all within the website.

The only consolation is for it to be anonymous. The only information you can put is your first name, your age, your gender, and maybe some things you're interested in. The rest is to fill in for yourself after you meet them.

The reason Patton was so interested is because he needed someone to talk to. Sure, he had Virgil to play with on bad days, and he had his coworker Roman from the crafts store he still worked at, but other than that? No family, no friends, and no help.

Perhaps this website could at least bring him some happiness.

So Patton, with a lot more time on his hands and feeling a lot more distraught than normal, signed up.

Patton Gentile, 32, trans-male. I like knitting, snuggling up in the winter, and taking care of my son. Hope to give you a happy hello soon!

Patton stared back at the words on the screwn with his fingers hovering over the keyboard, motionless.

Was this really all I needed to say? he thought. Did I need to say more, or less?

He decided to get it over with and hit send, leaving his mark on the world.

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Taglist:

@amazable01 @vara-albion

#sanders sides #economical dystopian #Economic Crisis AU #patton sanders #hurt/comfort #angst #sanders sides fanart #roman sanders #ts roman #ts patton #sympathetic patton #virgil sanders #ts virgil #ch.1 #mobile #layton's writing #layton's art

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itcameuponamidnightqueer · 5 years ago

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2019 is over and i have feelings

it’s the end of the year and this is mostly filled with rambling half-thoughts, but that’s what you do at the end of the year—you reflect and ramble until it almost turns into something. this is under a read more only because i don’t like clogging up people’s dashes with really long posts, so you know, skip or read at your own leisure.

i don’t really ever do any kind of reflecting that doesn’t come out in the form of fanfiction. i have some feelings, i write a few thousand words about them, i throw them out into the world, and that’s it. i’ll reread my own stuff but i never really think again about what prompted me to write them because it’s over. the feelings are done but the words are memories and that’s all i need, usually.

but 2019 was a tough year in ways that i can’t express in fic, so i’ll just throw out a few thousand personal words and be done with it.

in september of 2018, my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer and i don’t think i’ve really been happy since. most of it isn’t being sad about the diagnosis—maybe a lot of it is and i just need a whole heap of therapy to unpack that—but rather how much the cancer changed. it was very advanced when they caught it and she’s made almost a complete recovery in just over a year, and given how shitty everything was to start, this is the best way a bad situation could have ended. not that it’s over, but you know.

it shifted our family completely. i don’t think it brought us closer, maybe my sister or my parents feel differently, but i don’t. morgie turned inward for maybe the first time in her life and kept us at arm’s length in the beginning. she told us very clearly that she didn’t want the cancer to take over her whole life—she wanted us to act normal and talk about normal things as if this was just a temporary snag.

i’ve had epilepsy since i was fifteen months old. i know what it feels like to do that same thing, to minimize and downplay the experience of a chronic condition. because my epilepsy has, gratefully, been very manageable. i can count on one hand the number of seizures i remember having. i have an annual checkup with a neurologist, she confirms the dosage of my meds, and i say goodbye. that’s it, no problem, see you next year.

(it could be so much worse, they say. you’re very lucky, you hear for twenty nine years.

i am not lucky.)

morgan’s cancer kind of opened the flood gates, i think, and a whole heap of shit came spilling out. you know how you see those posts on here about ADHD or autism and a few captions down the line someone is always like, “wait, you mean not everyone [is like this] or [does that]?” i feel like i’m just coming to realize that about my childhood.

not everyone takes days off of school to go to the children’s hospital—for an EEG, or an MRI, or to get blood drawn, etc. “normal” seven-year-olds probably aren’t managing their own prescriptions. my condition is less severe than many others’ but that doesn’t mean it’s normal. it’s certainly not. i’ve always understood “it’s manageable” to mean “it’s not traumatic”, and only now am i realizing that the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

and all of a sudden, this thing that i’ve been living with for so long, that i thought i had under control, is rearing back with a vengeance. and because i have been taught to be grateful for the “best” of a bad situation, because its mildness has turned it into something we don’t talk about, i draw inward and it festers and rots into shame. i’ve been operating like this since i was a kid and i think maybe i’ve finally hit capacity.

on top of that, i’ve been going through a bit of an identity crisis. i seem to do that every few years—five years ago as ace, four years ago as nonbinary—and i guess it’s time for another one. tbh it’s kind of been scraping at the back of my brain ever since i realized i was nonbinary, because even that didn’t feel like enough, but i didn’t know what would.

i’ve said it in a few posts over the years (probably somewhere in both of the linked ones), but i personally really like labels. i spend so much of my time with myself (physically, sure, but i mean emotionally) and very rarely ever share things out loud, so how can i know who i am if i don’t find the right words? gay was good to start. ace fit in later, and then eventually it was just queer. and it will probably stay queer, but there are different parts of my queerness that i haven’t named yet, and the ambiguity is making me itch.

i’ve had this post sitting in my likes for about a week now—i identify with it too much to ignore, but it scares me too much to reblog it, and also i don’t want to until i can explain my feelings and fears. transness feels like something i’ve been hiding from for a while—not in a repulsive way. more like that “i’m in this photo and i don’t like it” meme. that thread encapsulates a lot of what i’ve been thinking about and struggling with for a few months: that i don’t feel trans ~enough, but i also don’t feel not-trans.

everything i’ve been thinking about feels like i’m quibbling with myself over something really small, like how much of a difference would it really make to think of myself as trans...instead of? along with? being nonbinary; why is this a detail i’ve been obsessing over. everything i said in the nb post is still true, except my concept of gender has changed a little since i wrote it. i don’t feel like a woman and i don’t feel like a man, except i also don’t think gender means anything, even when presented as two binary options, so what do i really know? how do i know i’m not a man if i think “man” means nothing?

and i really am thinking about it in the smallest of terms—headcanon-ing characters as trans, feeling drawn to the trans flag over any others. it’s really dumb, that this is what’s triggering a bit of gay panic. what does it matter, i keep asking myself. i’ve seen posts over the years breaking down the stripes of each flag, pointing out that nb/genderqueer identities are already represented, and i wish that were enough but it’s not. it’s so dumb, i keep thinking, to see myself in the whole of the trans flag when i don’t think i belong to the whole transgender experience. and even that sounds dumb, when i hear it—of course there isn’t one whole transgender experience. i hear it, but i haven’t yet listened.

anyway. all of this and a lot of other things have been broiling and rotting inside of me for my whole life probably. i’ve literally never said any of this out loud, to friends or family or strangers. i’ve worn that like a badge since high school—isn’t it admirable, how i can talk and laugh and live without dumping my problems on anyone else. isn’t it better to be accommodating, to keep your burdens from weighing other people down? only you don’t realize until later how tiresome it is to be heavy.

now that i have all of my fics moved over to AO3, i’ve been thinking about all that i’ve written over the years. it’s just shy of 730k. that’s more than the first five harry potter novels combined, and i’ve never told anyone in my life about it. that’s twelve years and so much of me to keep to myself. but i’ve done it because that’s kind of what i learned to do—my epilepsy was my first and most guarded secret and along the way i guess i learned to do that with everything. it doesn’t help that so many of my interests have been things that are either solitary or a source of “shame”. most of my friends i know through various social media sites. i’ve had this tumblr for nine years and the only people who know about it are other tumblr users. there is so much more of me than a few hundred thousand words hanging around this garbage dump.

i don’t know if there are any conclusions here. 2019 was rough, for even more reasons than i’ve barfed into this post. i’m not sure if i’ve learned anything from it; i don’t feel wiser or anything. i feel tired and mostly sad. i wish i could snap my fingers and resolve everything, but if i could do that, i’d already have done it. on top of everything, these are probably my last few months in chicago for a while, but that’s a whole other mountain of feelings to unpack.

anyway, i’m going into 2020 determined to get over myself, maybe find a therapist and a good masseuse.

happy new year.

#me #my back and my brain: the two things i take the least care of #where's that kristen wiig 'and i'm a huge fucking mess' gif when you need it #this came out more maudlin than i intended but #there you go

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judedeluca · 6 years ago

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Last Friday I Tried To Kill Myself: My Rant On Why Heroes In Crisis Is Destructive Garbage And Why Stories Like This Need To Stop Being Made

TW: Suicide, rape, abuse

I’ve made it no secret I’ve been in therapy since 2012, and I’ve especially been vocal about my dislike for DC Comics’ latest event book, “Heroes in Crisis,” which just released its last issue on May 29th 2019.

I tried to write something the other night but I didn’t like how it sounded so I deleted it. After my session with my therapist earlier in the day, she convinced me to simply write down what I feel regardless. And so I did. I typed and typed. This is pretty long under the cut. I don’t know if I got carried away. I think I did.

I need to be clear I did NOT just try to commit suicide because of how much I hated a comic book. I’d like to believe even I’m not that pathetic. I tried to kill myself because of a number of reasons which sort of snowballed together this previous Friday.

Look this is angry and long and it sounds ridiculous but I just wanted to write and get my feelings out and I’m sorry okay? I’m, just, I’m sorry. For being pathetic and a disappointment to my friends and letting this bother me so much.

But I’m talking about “Heroes in Crisis” because this book has been negatively affecting me since it began publication, and the state that it left me in this past week only served to exacerbate the negative thoughts I had to endure, and I briefly reached a point where I had a knife to my wrist.

I’ve been attending therapy for the past seven years in order to address trauma and abuse I suffered through in my adolescence. In grade school I was bullied, and from 6th to 12th grade I was sexually abused on two separate occasions in two separate schools from four different people. In middle school I was assaulted by three boys who weren’t much older than me on the bus ride home, where they grabbed my head and shoved my face into their crotches as all the other kids laughed. In high school a classmate molested me twice during art class, and spent the rest of that time trying to make me apologize after I smacked him in self defense.

In 2009 my family dissolved when my parents unhappily split apart, which placed me as the unwilling recipient of my father’s, mother’s, and sibling’s emotional baggage while my own problems were ignored. During the loss of my support system I juggled two jobs along with graduating from college, I came out of the closet and have been struggling to figure out both my sexual and gender identities, I made my first suicide attempt in 2013, and my best friend died in 2016 along with four other people I cared about or who saw me as a friend.

Seeking therapy was something I had to do on my own. I tried counseling sessions with the people at my college but despite their best efforts it didn’t do much to help. I never received counseling in middle school for my sexual assault and my parents weren’t of much help either despite it was clear I developed some significant behavior problems. In 10th Grade I did spend some time with a guidance counselor because they feared I was suicidal due to my depression around my bad grades in Chemistry, but again this didn’t really help.

God I realize how analytical and detached this is sounding and I don’t know why. I feel like I’m just listing everything. Ugh.

Aside from my suicidal thoughts I suffer from depression and PTSD. I think I’m a genuinely bad person and I’ve often thought I brought the abuse I suffered as a kid onto myself because I was a weird boy. I’ve wondered if I have a right to feel ashamed of what happened to me because it wasn’t as bad as what other people have gone through. I frequently think of myself as a shameless, greedy, manipulative person who doesn’t deserve to be happy because I use people. I’ve truly said some awful things to people and I know I’ve been blocked by a couple of people online and not without good cause. You need to understand that. My own sibling once said I was a wicked, blackhearted person.

I have trouble not assuming the worst of my parents and sibling because of how often I would find myself stuck in the middle of their arguing, which got me labeled a martyr whenever I tried to play peacemaker which I only wanted because I hate seeing them unhappy. I assume the worst about situations and I’ve spent countless nights lying awake thinking over and over again about past mistakes and how much I wish I was dead, or that I had died instead of one of my friends because they made the world a better place and I don’t. It’s easy for me to believe the world would be a better place if I died.

Often my problems had been ignored by the people I turned to for help. Ignored, looked down upon, or just belittled. It became hard for me to talk to people because it felt like no one really cared about what I was going through or that I wanted help. Or they misunderstood and their attempts to help failed because they didn’t really know what was wrong.

Despite all this I want to believe therapy has helped me deal with problems better than I had before, and helped me to take pride in what I have accomplished. I graduated cum laude with no student debt, I’ve held onto at least one job for over a decade, and I’m currently writing for three websites that have let me change my perspective on things and given me space to grow as a writer. I believe I’m better able to recognize boundaries and to let my feelings be known, and to know when not to engage in stressful situations. I’ve been trying, TRYING, not to let me depression and negative thoughts affect me too badly.

It’s not easy, but it’s better than not doing anything at all.

So, where does “Heroes in Crisis” fit into this.

Well.

Through middle and high school, comics were pretty much the only thing that managed to keep me going without having a complete breakdown. Well I did have other interests and I still do. I could never survive on comic books alone.

I didn’t really have any friends I could rely on or talk to about my problems, not in real life or online. I got lucky in high school since there was a comic store one block away, which meant I was now able to regularly buy comics instead of the odd issue here or there. It was after I graduated high school I finally began to make some friends through online message boards and by meeting people at comic conventions. So comics didn’t just keep me going, they helped me find the people who HAVE been able to help me and see me as an individual worth knowing. My very first best friend in the whole world (NOT the one who died) is a professional comic artist I met through DeviantArt. “Stuck Rubber Baby” helped me realize and be honest about the fact I’m queer, and it was through commissioning comic artists I’ve felt more comfortable about exploring my sexuality.

As cheesy as it sounds the presence of comics in my life has indeed helped me a great deal, and I want to professionally write comics someday as a way to repay some of that back and try to make the world a better place.

I’ve always bought a little bit of everything but I’m mainly focused on DC Comics. My favorite teams are the Titans, the Legion of Super-Heroes, the Doom Patrol, and the Justice Society. Ask me my favorite Flash, I’ll pick Jay Garrick or Wally West. My favorite Green Lantern, I’d pick Alan Scott and Kyle Rayner.

Suffice it to say I really haven’t been happy with most of what DC’s published in the past ten years. I’ve been especially vocal about my dislike for books such as “Rise of Arsenal,” “Titans” by Eric Wallace, and pretty much everything Scott Lobdell’s worked on. Like a lot of people, I thought “DC Rebirth” back in 2016 was a step in the right direction, that they were finally cleaning the mess they made with the New 52 initiative.

“Heroes in Crisis” proved me and a lot of other people wrong.

But as a person struggling with depression and PTSD, this book offended me on a whole different level compared to anything those other books have done.

So you’ve got a place, Sanctuary, where heroes and villains can receive counseling for their respective problems and possibly get help. That sounds like a great idea. And then the first issue opens with the reveal every patient has been gruesomely murdered save for two who believe the other is guilty. And it gets worse from there.

FIRST: It turns out Sanctuary has no actual doctors or therapists. It relies instead on a computer programmed with the supposed best traits of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.

SECOND: The patients are put in virtual reality chambers where they relive their respective traumas over and over again as a way to confront them.

THIRD: There doesn’t seem to be any real security except for a couple of robots, and anyone can just walk in. Which means Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman haven’t been monitoring the place until AFTER the massacre.

What followed was than eight issues of a supposed mystery that wasn’t a mystery at all. Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman do almost nothing to figure who was responsible for this, while Lois Lane is given files of all the Sanctuary interviews which she PUBLISHES, leaking hundreds of secrets that were meant to be private even if she obscures the real names. The investigation falls to Booster Gold and Harley Quinn, who both believe the other is the killer.

It eventually turns out the killer was Wally West, who accidentally unleashed a burst of energy that killed those around him and in a fit of extreme suicidal despair violated the corpses to look like a mystery so he would have enough time to release the Sanctuary files and then kill himself believing it was the only way to make things right. He doesn’t die but turns himself in at the end.

I-I don’t have the energy to give a complete rundown, I really don’t. Suffice to say the book has problems. Racist problems, homophobic problems, and ableist problems. The series IS a problem.

Since the first issue was released I hated, I HATED, this comic with every fiber of my being. I hated the stilted writing and I hated the gross, overly sexualized artwork. I hated it was another event series built around cheap shock value deaths meant to drive up sales and garner controversy to make more sales. And I especially hated the premise, that this Sanctuary was supposed to be a place of healing but was anything BUT. The DC Trinity make no attempt to get real doctors to help them provide help for their comrades and friends, delegating everything to a computer that’s supposed to have their best qualities and assuming THAT is a decent substitute for qualified psychiatrists and therapists.

The very IDEA that Superman and Wonder Woman could be so arrogant and conceited to believe they could substitute for licensed medical professionals is appaling. Even Batman on his worst days would never be so inconsiderate.

And then there are the VR chambers, where the heroes relive their traumas over and over and over again until they can get over them. THIS IS NOT HEALTHY. To experience such pain over and over again. The comic even demonstrated through characters Lagoon Boy and Wally West that going through their trauma again and again clearly wasn’t helping. Lagoon Boy relieved the Titans East massacre HUNDREDS of times. And this seems to be the only real option Sanctuary allows besides the confessionals.

This, this NEGLECT. Sanctuary isn’t a place for healing, it’s a dumping ground! These people are secluded and essentially kept in solitary confinement where they have almost no one but a computer to talk to. A computer that does absolutely nothing to help them.

I spoke to my own doctor about this and she agreed with me none of this was healthy and that the book itself was extremely damaging and poorly thought out.

And I have spoken to her about this a LOT over the last nine months, because with each issue that came out I felt myself getting more and more worn down. I would dread the last Wednesday of the month knowing the next issue would arrive. And let me tell you this wasn’t the only thing I was talking about in my sessions, but it figured a lot into my past discussions and my therapist respected that. I’m glad I have her in my life, she’s a consummate professional.

I’m not talking about simple fan boy hate. This comic DRAINED me and struck more than a number of nerves. The apathy and insensitivity that went into crafting this book reminded me far too much of what I’ve gone through in life and not for the better.

For starters, the way Tom King portrays the problems the characters go through is nothing but a joke. We’re treated to multiple confessional sequences where different characters talk about their issues in a nine-panel grid layout featuring some of the most stilted dialog I’ve ever read. King shows absolutely no research or care in the characters he talks about, ignoring their backstories to make up nonsense and present it as deep when in reality he’s gutted them from the inside out.

The one that bothered me most was Roy Harper from the first issue, in a confessional sequence one page AFTER his corpse is found.

Tom King took nine issues to completely destroy and misunderstand Wally West’s character, even though he only needed one page for Roy Harper.

Of course Scott Lobdell spent eight years destroying the character, so King didn’t need to do much.

Roy and his daughter Lian have been two of my favorite DC characters for years. I’ve been able to relate to Roy’s issues a lot over the years. Not his past drug addiction, but his struggles with depression and abandonment issues and his fight to try and be a better person despite everything he’s gone through. He was raised in a Native American community and probably has a better understand of racism than most white people could dream of. He’s a devoted father who tries to be the best dad he can be for his daughter. But most importantly, he knows he can screw up and he knows he’s not perfect. He just wants to be good. He’s a complex and multifaceted person who is more than his trauma, and I’ve long admired that. I’ve wished I could stop beating myself up over my past mistakes and just focus on doing good instead of hating myself for not being perfect. As someone who never really had much support from my parents growing up and that feeling of being totally alone despite being surrounded by people, I empathized with the neglect he suffered form Green Arrow and the way he was essentially abandoned in “Rise of Arsenal” when he needed help the most.

But is any of that discussed in “Heroes in Crisis?”

No.

Roy’s abandonment and depression are ignored so Tom King can churn out some nonsense about abusing prescription meds given to him by doctors for his superhero injuries before he switched to heroin because it was cheaper and safer. Not because of his depression. He only started taking the meds because of his injuries and he got addicted, which I’ve seen a number of fans who suffer from chronic pain complain that this is ableist for presenting them as drug addicts.

God I hope I’m remembering that right, I’m sorry guys.

“So you go to a needle. To save your kidneys. And some money. But really, isn’t that what superheroes do? Save things?”

Objectively one of the worst things I have ever read in ANYTHING.

But it doesn’t stop there. Pretty much every character given a confessional more or less has the problems they truly did survive ignored for nonsense that never occurred or is completely out of character to the point it feels like these are SUPPOSED to be jokes. Firestorm talks about his head being on fire. Green Lantern Hal Jordan doesn’t know what “Will” is. Raven says her father, an inter dimensional monster who has tried to turn her evil over and over again and whom she hates, loves her. Minor character the Protector is revealed to be addicted to multiple drugs and was only an anti-drug crusader because he thought it was funny. That was just CRUEL.

I... I have spent so long being ashamed of a lot of the abuse I went through and it is still hard for me to talk about. Do you have any idea how disgusted I am with myself whenever I try to tell someone about what happened to me in high school? When I have to figure out a way to say that “He tried to stick his finger in my ass” and not think about how the people reading or hearing this must be laughing at me it’s so pathetic? Or when I think about the crying fit after my first day of high school begging my mom to take me out of this school and she tells me to suck it up?

And so this bothers me, because I frequently fear that my problems are just a joke. And I see the characters whom I resonate with have their problems degraded and treated as poorly thought out jokes.

Why were some of these characters even here in the first place? To deal with their problems? Even though some of them WERE ALREADY TRYING TO GET HELP. Roy in particular had his Titans teammate Lilith Clay as his substance abuse counselor, but none of that is mentioned in the lead-up to “Heroes in Crisis.” The help that Roy was already getting was ignored. His efforts at self improvement were ignored by those around him.

But it’s not as bad as the reason Wally West was in Sanctuary. In “Flash War” Wally regains memories of his twin children Jai and Iris and is told they’re not in the Speed Force but SOMEWHERE. And Wally tries to find them and can’t. So instead of Barry Allen getting the Justice League to help with the search, knowing the disappearance of these children are one example of how the universe has been damaged, Barry and Iris West allow Wally to be taken to Sanctuary to essentially get him to shut up about his missing kids. He is abandoned by the people he viewed as parents. And this is what leads to Wally’s breakdown. Despite knowing his children are out there somewhere, “Heroes in Crisis” tries to demonize Wally for wanting his family back and it’s used to make him into a suicidal mass murderer. Wally’s problems make him into a villain. He’s driven mad with grief when he hacks the Sanctuary computer thinking no one has gone through what he has, and is broken when he experiences all that trauma at once. All this because he wanted something that was perfectly rational for him to want.

Wally’s trauma is used to dehumanize him.

The dehumanization doesn’t stop there, especially in the case of Poison Ivy who is turned into a plot device for Harley Quinn’s sake.

Never forget this was a thing that Clay Mann drew and DC would’ve used before it got leaked.

This was supposed to be the cover for the seventh issue, Ivy’s bloody corpse done like a pin-up.

After being treated as Harley’s motivation for most of the series, Ivy’s revived but in such a way she’s lost most of her humanity. She gets turned into a rip off of Swamp Thing and her body is more plant than human, no longer having nipples or a vagina. She’s been murdered and brought back in a way that will let DC sexualize her as much as they want now that she’s not human anymore. But this is supposed to be treated as GOOD because she’s supposedly more powerful now and she’s alive. Like that doesn’t change the shameful way she was killed, and how she came to Sanctuary hoping to get help for the awful things that haunt her and it got her killed.

Ivy’s long been a very complex character herself and many people have looked at her as a strong, interesting, intelligent queer woman who ultimately only wants to save the Earth and be with the woman she loves. But she’s frequently the villain in her stories and often told she doesn’t understand what real love is. Instead of being recognized for the complex character and inspiration she is, Ivy also has her trauma used against her as an excuse for to be sent to die and LITERALLY be dehumanized. So what does that say to the women who resonate with her? The queer readers? What does that say?

The leaking of the Sanctuary files is also supposed to be seen as good. Wally claims he did it because he thought if people saw someone like him could make a mistake, they’d get help before he did something bad like him. That if they saw their heroes had problems, they’d get help too.

IT’S TRYING TO VALIDATE THIS VIOLATION OF PRIVACY AND HOW ALL THESE PROBLEMS ARE TURNED INTO A MEDIA SIDESHOW THANKS TO LOIS LANE AND SUPERMAN.

And Wally turns himself in he’s left to rot in jail, more alone than ever. Where’s the supposed help now?

But Booster Gold gets to hang with Blue Beetle and Harley’s with Ivy and it’s supposed to be about hope by showing no matter what mistakes you make it’s not too late and blah blah whatever that last issue was. It tries to pretend all this suffering and misery was worth it because now Wally really can represent hope by being an example!

Bros before heroes!

These people went to get help or were sent to get help, and instead they were ignored. They were killed. Their problems turned into jokes. They had their problems used against them after they died when all they wanted was to be better.

WANTING TO GET BETTER IS NOT A REASON WHY ANYONE SHOULD HAVE TO DIE. NO ONE DESERVES TO BE TREATED LIKE AN AFTERTHOUGHT LIKE THIS.

One of the worst thing out of all this is knowing NONE OF THE CHARACTERS USUALLY ACT LIKE THIS. The reason why Wally accidentally killed everyone is because King makes up a retcon involving the Speed Force that was never, EVER mentioned in any Flash comic before. He makes up things on the fly to justify why any of the characters are there at all. Someone once said how, and I’m paraphrasing, “A story should be made to fit the characters, the characters shouldn’t be made to fit the story.” It’s been clear to a lot of people this book was blatant character assassination and Dan Didio’s latest attempt to finally get rid of Wally West because he hates him and all the other legacy characters so much. A story about PTSD that could’ve been meaningful and helped people got hijacked to destroy a character. To use their trauma as a tool to make them do something horrible. To exploit trauma for shock value and dehumanize not just the characters but the people who read these books and identified with the struggles and I

HATE IT!!!!!!!

It hurts because so many people care about these characters, and Didio would use a story that could’ve been uplifting to carry out his petty hatred.

This has been it, month after month for me. I’d get mad, and I would try to take my mind off it. I’d write fan fiction and commission artwork making fun of “Heroes in Crisis,” I’d try to vent on the internet and explain why I hate this comic. I’d connect with friends and other fans who’re equally unhappy, and I’d just feel myself getting worse and worse. I’ve had trouble sleeping thinking about this comic, stress dreams and laying awake at night before I’d start to think about how I’m a bad person too and wishing over and over again to die and end everything. To stop being a blight on the world and give it to someone who deserves to live. More importantly, that crushing sense of not being able to do anything to make this better. This powerlessness to try and change things for the better. Wishing I could do something to make it better and thinking about all the other ways I’ve failed in life. The loved ones and friends who died and I couldn’t help them. The unhappiness in my family. The state of the world. And then I’d think about how much I hate myself even more because there are more important things to worry about in the world, like what that rapist monster in the White House is doing to this country and to anyone who’s not a straight white man.

The week the final issue came out I knew right off it was going to be a train wreck and I was right. A disappointing ending to a disappointing story. More feelings of anxiety and self loathing and a feeling that my problems are nothing but a joke to mocked and exploited.

While all this was going on I had other things to worry about. In March my grandfather was hospitalized with a number of health problems due to a urinary tract infection. He spent a week gradually becoming confused and losing energy before he was taken to the emergency room when he said he was having trouble breathing. It turned out he also had a cyst, a clot, and bleeding in his brain. As me, my mom and sibling worried about his health we also had to worry about our house because my grandfather pays most of the rent and if his pension had to go towards a nursing home, we would have to move. So while worrying about my 92 year old grandfather’s health I also had to worry about possibly losing my house. And while he was recovering at the rehab hospital he had to go back to the ER again on Easter when we were told he fell during the night. He’s in another nursing home and he’s doing better thankfully, but he’s also the last grandparent I have and I’m not ready to lose him when he’s held onto his mind for so long.

So what exactly happened when the ninth issue came out that pushed me?

This past Thursday while I was at work, I get a call from my mother saying she thinks someone might be in our house because she went downstairs into my grandpa’s apartment and all the doors were open. I don’t know why she didn’t call the police or what she thought I could do since I wasn’t even in the Bronx. *Sigh* I tried to get my dad to come pick me up sooner so I could check out what was wrong and I was trying not to panic even when my mom texts me saying she’s okay but she locked her bedroom door and she’s got a blunt object. Then she says maybe it was nothing after all...

And then I get home and I see the garage door is wide open and it’s a disaster, as if someone trashed the place. I can’t get my dad out of the car and he just says “Call the police” as if he doesn’t care. I run into the house and begin checking the rooms in my grandpa’s apartment before grabbing a kitchen knife and going back to the garage. I then tell my mom what’s happened to the garage and it’s like I’m invisible. I can’t even get her outside to look and she’s more concerned about getting her dinner from around the corner. She tells me “It’s not like no one’s gotten in the garage before.”

AFTER SHE GETS ME WORKED UP THINKING SOMEONE WAS IN OUR HOUSE. AND I COME HOME AND THEY MIGHT’VE TRASHED THE GARAGE.

I literally can’t understand what was going through her head when she gave me this runaround. And I call her on it the next day, telling her how scared she got me and how it felt when she acted like I was making a big deal of nothing. I was frightened she could’ve been alone in the house with an intruder, because obviously she felt the same way if she wanted to lock herself in her bedroom. She STILL acted like it was no big deal and it’s like 2010 all over again and I’m being expected to drop everything to help her and she won’t give me any courtesy or empathy.

And then not even an hour later that Friday I get an email from my boss about a secret shopper thing and I rush to get my phone seeing he’s tried to call me. And he’s saying he’s mad at me because of something I did on Tuesday that might get our distribution license suspended or taken away completely. I’m thinking this is because of me. Because I screwed up. And I’ve had this job since I graduated high school and I might’ve ruined it completely.

And that mixed with how it’s like my mother has played fucking mindgames with me and all the other feelings and the general anger and hopelessness and thinking over and over it’s not going to get better I picked up that knife again and held it to my wrist while my boss was still on the phone.

I had it pressed against my skin and wanted to dig it in deeper.

I kept thinking “I CAN’T DO THIS I CAN’T DO THIS” seeing everything all at once, over and over again and...

I-I don’t know. Maybe just a part of me that said not to do it or something. Maybe because despite all my talk of wanted to die I don’t.

I don’t want to die.

So I put the knife down before I cut myself.

I went to work at my second job and I scheduled an emergency session with my therapist, and I tried to write.

So it’s Monday morning and I’m typing this and wondering now, if anyone actually reads this what kind of shit will I expect if people actually bother to read it.

I’m a loser who needs to get a life

I read the story wrong

I didn’t understand the story

I need to get laid

I’m just mad my favorite character died

I hate it because Tom King’s a good writer

I’m a contrarian who hates it because it’s popular

I don’t know what I’m talking about

I’m a whiny f****t

I’m conceited enough to think Tom King may ever actually read this and have him say “I’m sorry you reacted this way”

This isn’t the story King wanted to tell and he had good intentions

OH SCREW YOUR FUCKING “GOOD INTENTIONS”

My teachers had “Good intentions”

My parents had “Good intentions”

AND I AM STILL FUCKING PAYING FOR IT

I am so sick of hearing about “Good intentions.” Just because a person had good intentions doesn’t absolve them of messing up! King apparently handed in a basic outline and let editorial pick the characters. If King had good intentions, he would’ve bothered to do research on the characters instead of turning them into jokes. If he had good intentions he would’ve done a better job of showing how therapy actually CAN help people. He wouldn’t have given us a story all about death and suffering and say it’s about hope. If he had good intentions he wouldn’t have let Didio use this to get rid of Wally West.

You want to talk about people with ACTUAL good intentions? How about we talk about the people out there who’ve written about abuse and trauma and suicidal thoughts and how to address those things in ways that MATTER. In ways that don’t alienate people and can grant a better understanding of ways to act.

In ways that say “I see you. I understand you and know what you’ve gone through. You’re stronger than you think.”

Let’s talk about Jeremy Whitley writing “The Unstoppable Wasp” where Nadia Pym has a manic episode and attacks her friends, and has to be talked down from killing herself by her friend Priya because her own brother committed suicide.

Let’s talk about how Priya describes the world Nadia would create if she killed herself and convinces her she deserves to live because she makes everyone happy and she is a good person no matter what she is thinking right now.

Let’s talk about Magdalene Visaggio’s “Eternity Girl” where Caroline Sharp is a suicidal immortal superhero who wants to destroy reality because she thinks it’s the only way she can die, and her girlfriend Dani convinces her that she can build a new world for herself instead of destroying this one because Caroline’s stronger than her misery and has the power to choose what she wants.

Let’s talk about Chris Claremont’s disgust at how Carol Danvers had been brainwashed and raped and sent off to live with her rapist while her friends did nothing to help her and thought this was a HAPPY ENDING

Let’s talk about how he had Carol dress down the Avengers for the shameless way they treated her and abandoned her when she needed them

Let’s talk about Jim Salicrup and Louise Simonson working on the “Spider-Man and Power Pack” special which showed the right ways to address child abuse.

How Salicrup was able to make Spider-Man into a sexual abuse survivor without it being a joke and how his story helped a little boy tell his parents what happened to him. And how this helped Spider-Man accept what happened to him was not his fault.

How Simonson wrote about the Power Pack supporting a friend being sexually abused by her father and how they convince her she did nothing to deserve this.

Let’s talk about Rachel Pollack’s Doom Patrol run which showed that trauma is not the end of someone’s existence and that people can be happy despite what’s happened to them

Let’s talk about George and Marion who despite the trauma of having lost their bodies and being used as slaves they still choose to smile and enjoy life and love each other

Let’s talk about Kate Godwin, a transgender woman who changed her body to match the person she was inside despite what people said about her and treated her, and found a community that supported her and loved her and is a strong, good woman with the power and the empathy to help others

A woman who was outraged when a person tried to make her believe she’d been gang raped and needed trauma to make her life more meaningful.

SO TALK ABOUT ALL OF THEM AND TELL ME ABOUT KING’S “GOOD INTENTIONS”

NO ONE NEEDS TRAUMA IN THEIR LIFE TO MAKE IT MEANINGFUL. FINDING HAPPINESS AFTER YOU’VE SURVIVED SOMETHING HORRIBLE DOESN’T MAKE THAT SOMETHING HORRIBLE JUSTIFIED.

You can’t look at stories like “Heroes in Crisis” and say “Oh it’s okay because in the end it was worth it because it taught us something” and NO. IT IS NOT OKAY. HAVING YOUR PROBLEMS LAUGHED AT AND MOCKED AND DEGRADED AND TRIVIALIZED IS NEVER OKAY. NOT FROM THE PEOPLE YOU CARE ABOUT. NOT TOTAL STRANGERS. NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO DO THAT.

So yeah, maybe I am fucking pathetic for ranting about this and I should get a life and talk about more important things but I don’t fucking care! I’m angry about this and I’m gonna be angry for a long time! I’m angry about this story and I’m angry about how it affected me and the people I care about and people I don’t know and I will always be angry with myself that I tried to kill myself because of how this book made me feel and affected what I was going through.

Because stories are important to our lives. They can help us get through every day and they can make our problems not seem so bad. They can give us the strength to look at the bad parts of our life and think maybe they can change. That WE can change. We read about these people and we connect with them. We see things in them we wish to be like or things that are already in us and it can make us feel like we aren’t alone.

And even when stories aren’t enough they can help us find the people who can tell us these things. To help us find people who would care about us, and to care about them so maybe WE can help them. They’re a gateway.

So no, it’s not just a fucking comic book. And no, I don’t care what the intentions were. And I don’t care how pathetic this all sounds.

This, this was a bad story. This was a harmful story. And people deserve better. We don’t deserve to keep living in an age where stories like this, that can make us feel like we’re nothing, keep happening. We deserve stories that show us our lives are not defined by our trauma, we are NOT jokes, we are strong, and we deserve to live. That is not what “Heroes in Crisis” was and you will never convince me otherwise.

I had problems long before this story came out. I do not blame it for things that happened to me before. I do not blame it for my assault and abuse. I blame it for making me feel more like I don’t deserve to live and that what I’ve gone through doesn’t matter. I blame it for making me feel like my hard work and attempts to make my life better are meaningless.

This is not okay.

You wanna fucking blast me for this, go right ahead.

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fandomshatelgbtqpeople · 6 years ago

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On JK Rowling, Dumbledore, lycanthropy, and cultural context

I want to address an idea I’ve been seeing pop up a lot recently, which is that JK Rowling added Dumbledore being gay and lycanthropy being a metaphor for AIDS years later in order to seem progressive, and I’ve put a lot of time into thinking about why these claims bother me (since I’m definitely not mad on Jo’s behalf because she’s been dead to me since 2016), and I think it really comes down to this. These claims are based entirely off of how things are today and show a fundamental disregard for the cultural context at the time that’s concerning and feels dismissive to the people who lived through it. Basically, it goes hand in hand with the lack of knowledge and sometimes intentional rewriting of our community’s history that’s so prominent on this site.

Note that I am not arguing that Dumbledore is good rep or that the lycanthropy-HIV metaphor was well executed (or even a good idea in the first place). I just wish people would stop treating these things like JK Rowling said them yesterday as opposed to 12 years ago.

1. Dumbledore being gay

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out in July 2007 and Jo first publicly said Dumbledore was gay and in love with Grindelwald in October 2007, so the idea that she added it years later is just factually untrue. It came out three months after the release of the final book.

Let’s take a look at public attitude towards queer people in 2007. I’ll preface this by saying that I’m American, so I’ve done my best to find data on the UK, but most of my info is from the US.

In 2007, in the US, Gallup reported that only 59% of adults surveyed believed consensual sex between two people of the same gender should be legal, that 46% of adults believed that same-sex marriage should be legal and come with all the same rights are marriage between a man and a woman, and that 50% of adults favored a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Despite all that, only 22% of surveyed adults answered that they thought gays and lesbians (the language in the poll) should be more accepted in the US and 27% of adults thought gays and lesbians should be less accepted. Jumping back to 2005, 43% of respondents didn’t think gay people should be hired as elementary school teachers and 36% didn’t think we should be hired as high school teachers. I mention these numbers specifically because they’re relevant to Dumbledore.

On the legal side of things, there were enforceable sodomy laws on the books in 13 states until 2003, four years before Deathly Hallows came out and Jo announced that Dumbledore was gay. In 2004, the fact that Kerry was in favor of same-sex marriage was considered a significant liability in his presidential campaign because even a lot of democrats still didn’t support it. In October, 2007 when Jo did that interview, same-sex marriage was legal only in Massachusetts, civil unions were legal in four states, and domestic partnerships were legal in three states. Meanwhile, twenty-five states had constitutional bans on same-sex marriage and twelve of those states also had constitutional bans on other rights, such as civil unions and domestic partnerships or extensions of employment benefits to same-sex partners.

In the UK in 2007, just under 40% of adults believed that same-sex relationships were morally okay, 17% strongly agreed that same-sex marriage should be legal, and just under 45% believed that a same-sex couple could raise a child as well as a man and a woman. A 2005 Gallup poll found that, 38% of Brits believed homosexuality should be more widely accepted, 15% thought it should be less widely accepted, and 44% thought the currently level of acceptance was about right.

On a more personal note, my high school hired its first openly gay teacher in 2008, and the fact that he was gay was considered pretty scandalous among the student body. We had a gay band instructor, but he only ever referred to his partner as his roommate. When we did debates in social studies classes, same-sex marriage was always one of the issues we had to debate over. Of the eleven people I went to high school with whom I now know are queer, only three of them were out in high school. That’s how uncommon it was at the time to come out before you were relatively independent.

So this idea that announcing that a prominent character who was a headmaster at a school and had a close relationship to the teenage boy main character in a wildly popular children’s book series was gay would have been a popular move in 2007 is pretty laughable to anyone old enough to remember what 2007 was actually like. No one was using support for queer people just to bolster their public image unless their product was specifically marketed towards queer people, because the general wisdom at the time was that it would hurt them too badly with straight audiences. In fact, if memory serves, the queer fandom’s reaction to Dumbledore was initially pretty positive because it was more than we ever thought we were going to get. I didn’t start seeing people talk about how it wasn’t enough or about how the entire plot line was homophobic until maybe 2012.

You can’t use today’s context to interpret why someone made a decision in 2007 because it’s difficult to overstate how different things are now. The only reason to want to look pro-gay in 2007 was if you genuinely thought it was the right thing to do.

2. Lycanthropy and HIV

I was genuinely surprised when this caused a stir when JK Rowling tweeted (?) about it in 2016 because I was pretty sure she’d talked about lycanthropy being a metaphor for HIV years ago. It turns out I was right. She discussed it during the copyright trial she was involved in in 2008 (you can find it here, on pages 72-73). So it didn’t come out until nine years after Prisoner of Azkaban and three years after Half-Blood Prince (when Fenrir Greyback was introduced), but it’s not something she first mentioned on twitter in between tweets about how she meant for Nagini to be a Korean woman in 1989. It was before she was shooting off her mouth about ridiculous stuff every other day.

Regardless, I can understand why that would feel like her pulling something out of left field today because HIV doesn’t get talked about as much, but you have to remember that these books were written in the 90s at the height of the AIDS crisis. It’s difficult to imagine how much that permeated our culture if you didn’t experience it, even for someone like me who was in elementary school in a white suburban area and, as far as I’m aware, didn’t know anyone who was HIV+. My school had a how-not-to-get-AIDS assembly every year. They probably showed us every movie in existence about kids with HIV. After-school TV shows did special episodes about how you shouldn’t be “blood brothers” with your friends because of AIDS.

So when my friends and I were reading Prisoner of Azkaban as middle schoolers in the early 2000s, those memories were still fresh in our heads. We didn’t need to be told lycanthropy was supposed to be a metaphor for HIV because it had just been a huge issue five years ago and we knew enough about HIV and how the people who had it were treated to see the parallels. I imagine it was even clearer to the people who read PoA right when it first came out in 1999. It didn’t even occur to me that the metaphor is less obvious to people who are younger until I started seeing claims about this was just something she made up years after the fact and was like, "What do you mean this wasn’t clear to you when you read the book?” It fits perfectly with the general public’s preoccupation with and faulty understanding of AIDS in the late 90s. You just have to acknowledge that things have changed in the past twenty years.

I know that this comparison calls on a lot of stereotypes that are homophobic and otherwise bigoted against people who are HIV+, but those aren’t arguments against the metaphor existing and being intentional, they’re arguments about why that’s not a good thing. Fenrir Greyback is straight out of a 90s detective show. The “person with AIDS who wants to infect other people because they’re bitter about it” was such a common trope that almost every crime drama in the 90s and early 2000s did an episode about it. The “adult man gives a young boy HIV” thing grew out of the “gay men are pedophiles” and “queer people want to recruit your kids” stereotypes. These were prejudices Jo had that misinformed her writing.

I don’t have a whole lot to say on this one other than that given when it was written and how close it fits, including how much it draws on negative 90s-era stereotypes about people who are HIV+, I would honestly have a harder time believing it wasn’t intentional than believing it was.

Anyway, really my point is that it wasn’t always 2019 and if you’re using only today’s culture to inform your opinions about why someone made a certain decision a decade or two ago, not only is your understanding of the situation going to be incomplete, but the fact that it’s incomplete is going to be obvious to anyone who remembers what things were like during the time period you’re trying to talk about.

#modk #harry potter

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gryphons-of-aentha · 5 years ago

Text

The Approximate Plotline of the Gryphonverse (pt. 3)

This is the part where everything gets very weird, jarringly fast. I suspect there must be a way to rework some of this to make it cohesive enough with the first two parts to compile it into one story, but for now I’m afraid we’re stuck with massive, strangely meta genre whiplash.

it also becomes more apparent that the reason all this coincides with Earth dates in real time is that I’ve been making a lot of this up as I go for over ten years now.

So Kyran, and shortly thereafter Iadra, who chased him through the portal, suddenly find themselves on Earth circa 2008. Or rather an alternate timeline Earth that was created when some human teenagers with a basement laboratory, and an interdimensional being badly disguised as a talking dog, accidentally tore a hole in reality, which is what Kyran’s hastily-made portal led through. The humans (and space dog) quickly become entangled in the gryphons’ conflicts as it becomes apparent that the connection between their worlds isn’t going away on its own and none of them know how to close it. A couple years and several shenanigans later (during which Talon and Iadra have reunited and befriended the humans and dog-alien, and Kyran has made enemies of them), Aentha and Earth remain strangely linked and everyone starts to notice signs of something strange at work.

(it’s here that I should mention that the humans, in the original series of short stories I wrote documenting this when I was fifteen, were pretty much self inserts of me and my brother for shits and giggles/stand-ins. Due to conflicts with certain potential subplots that have cropped up that I want to use, this is no longer canon, but it means the Wielder is currently not much more than an empty character slot because I haven’t figured out how I actually want to approach him as a character, aka I am trapped in Jonathan Sims purgatory and don’t know how to get out. So aside from things he definitely does because it’s required to progress the plot, there’s basically a conspicuous void there right now. also the sword was originally called the Ancient Katana™ [the ™ is somehow pronounced but nobody can figure out why or how, and speaking the full name causes the lights to flicker even while outdoors] because I was making fun of all the stupid and sometimes kind of racist tropes that crop up with chosen one narratives, but these days I’m not sure where that falls on the line between “making fun of a dumb racist trope” and “just being racist” so I’m shelving that until I get some second opinions on that one)

Unbeknownst to anyone, larger forces are at play in this pseudo-Earth: an entity similar in nature to the Powers of Darkness, but that feeds on narrative tropes rather than suffering and is substantially more powerful, was drawn by the first Rift created by the humans, and has been manipulating events on Earth in order to trap everyone in a repeating narrative that provides it with a consistent energy source. This comes to a head when one of the humans accidentally becomes some kind of Chosen One known as the Wielder (according to the space dog, who is the only one versed in this stuff) by finding a magic sword that can manipulate both interdimensional energy and narrative tropes (among other things). Kyran, meanwhile, has been looking for this sword, because during some events that tore the Fourth Wall (an actual thing in this story) he realized that he’s been cast as the villain in whatever story they’re all stuck in and therefore can never actually win, which he’s becoming increasingly desperate to do since he’s now back in debt with the Powers of Darkness and needs to resolve this situation and focus his attention back on Aentha and overthrowing Shale. The sword can potentially solve both of these problems, and also make him immensely powerful. With the Entity still manipulating everything, this leads to him inadvertently becoming the Wielder’s arch nemesis but gets him no closer to actually claiming the sword.

Eventually Kyran manages to break reality enough to force a confrontation with the Wielder on neutral ground where the Entity’s narrative won’t prevent him from winning, but due to some unforeseen external factors fails again, and gets his soul bound to the sword. This essentially traps him in a pocket dimension unless summoned by the Wielder and renders him physically unable to cause any actual harm to the Wielder or his allies. On the plus side, the Powers of Darkness can no longer reach Kyran, so as long as he’s bound to the sword and by extension the Entity, he’s safe from any consequences he’s racked up. Incidentally, it also cuts off the by-then-considerable hold the Powers of Darkness had over his mind. No longer clouded by the influence of a malevolent multiconsciousness and with not much to do while trapped in the void, he engages in some actual self reflection for the first time in his life and isn’t thrilled with the conclusion (this by no means makes him instantly a better person, but it does gradually lessen the degree to which he’s an abject asshole). He also discovers that due to his gryphonic heritage, he has a limited amount of control and mobility in interdimensional space (though the sword prevents him from going to any physical dimension) and he finds his way to a gryphonic ruin that seems to have once been part of either a temple or a library, and discovers more about gryphonic history than any Aenthian gryphon ever has. The Wielder mainly leaves him to his own devices in there, since they’re still enemies but at this point there’s not much either of them can really do to the other, and while the sword’s power to bind some beings is intended as a kind of familiar mechanic, Kyran is really not the kind of bound creature to be anything but a belligerent hindrance if summoned. Also every time they interact it tends to end with someone getting stabbed.

The destruction Kyran caused in his bid for the sword, meanwhile, created a schism that broke all known gateways between Earth and Aentha, trapping Talon and Iadra back in their own world. Not knowing what happened to the humans or Kyran, and with no way to find out, they mainly just go back to their lives, now living almost entirely on the outskirts, since things between Andolia and the neighboring gryphons are still getting worse. After a year or two they have a son, who they name Iadros (gryphonic tradition is to name the firstborn cub after the mother regardless of the cub’s gender) and mainly stay occupied with that until the political situation gets dangerous enough for the gryphons that they start to consider ways to access Earth again, with the idea that maybe the Wielder’s Chosen One status would help them solve the whole mess, but at the very least to get Iadros out of harm’s way while he grows up.

About five years after the schism was created, circa 2017, they finally find a way back, unknowingly thanks again to gryphons being powerful interdimensional beings who created a number of their own pathways and pocket dimensions between worlds. As it turns out, things have been developing on the Earth side as well. Kyran and the Wielder have, if not become friends, at least reached a kind of truce, since it turns out when rendered unable to be an evil warlock Kyran’s default state is “Genealogy Aunt but make it goth,” and he’s trying to track down the lost origin world of gryphons, partly for something to do while he’s been trapped in a pocket dimension for five years and partly out of the newfound desire to do something non-destructive for once. It’s almost less of a redemption arc than a quarter-life crisis that happens to lead in a positive direction. Anyway, he needed the Wielder and the sword in order to travel to other worlds on the trail of this lost dimension, and has at least agreed to not stab anyone with letter openers in exchange. Probably helps that they’ve all gone from a gaggle of cosmically-overpowered teenagers to slightly more emotionally mature cosmically-overpowered twenty-somethings.

After some time of this, during which more monster-of-the-week things happen in the course of this ultimately fruitless search for the lost world, it becomes apparent that Kyran probably isn’t interested in killing them all anymore and the Wielder offers to free him from the sword (this will not reattach his soul to his body; his soul currently resides in a crystal from which it can’t be unbound, but giving the crystal to him will separate his will from the sword and the Wielder and he’ll be able to travel around physical reality on his own again). He refuses, knowing that both the Powers of Darkness are probably looking for him at this point and the Entity has a vested interest in him remaining the villain, and he’s very certain that he doesn’t have the willpower or actual power to fight them off and they’d end up back at square one. Especially since the whole soul-trapped-in-a-crystal thing makes him vulnerable to specifically that kind of danger. As long as he remains bound to the sword, the Powers of Darkness can’t get to him to call in his significant debt, and the Entity can’t do anything because technically he’s still the villain of the story and is being forced by the sword’s power to not fight the Wielder. Technically. This was the point where I awkwardly realized I’d accidentally set up a perfect gay enemies-to-lovers plot and had to completely rethink the Wielder as a character because I love that trope too much to just not use it.

Anyway, Talon and Iadra aren’t thrilled to learn that Kyran and the humans are on more or less amicable terms now, since their last few interactions with Kyran have done nothing to indicate that having him around will be conducive to safely raising a child and Iadra in particular has still not forgiven him for what he did to Talon, and without five years of context, the fact that the three (four counting the talking space dog) of them are kind of working together now feels like a bit of a betrayal.

There’s no time for this to really come to a head, because their attempt at magic-sword-based rules-lawyering has actually not fooled or appeased the Entity at all, and it’s very set on returning equilibrium. It tries a couple tactics to get Kyran to turn on everyone or vice versa, including but not limited to sending a double of him to Earth to cause problems (it doesn’t work because the sword renders that impossible and they all know that) and trying to provoke the talking dog who still doesn’t really like him into acting on it (he doesn’t because he has a moral compass and better things to do), but the arrival of Talon, Iadra, and Iadros provides exactly the opportunity it thinks it needs, and it finds a way to hijack Iadros. And unfortunately there’s going to be yet another part to this.

#long post

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alatismeni-theitsa · 6 years ago

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(part 1) Could go describe the greece thoughts on the war reparations that are asked of germany? I am stuck in a debate with my grandpa because of it. You see my town in germany is broke to the point where they have to cut public transport in order to have the money to repair and build other public transport that is more sustainable ( we have 3 types, only 1 that is cut is working ) and you can see a big hit to our economy coming as the biggest part of our tax payers are older people who want to

(part 2) go into early retirement, meaning cuts in the state retirement fonds and way higher taxes for the rest of us. (that is also why the elder genderation kinda looks down on south europe “they go so early in retirement, they don’t work as long as we do so ofc their economy is bad” ) that with the mentality of saving up for everything and the idea that we worked hard for our economic wonder after the war makes him think that greece is asking out of entitlement ? While in my age group it’s more like we want to help , one of my teachers even phrased it as helping out euopean neighbours helps us too , but at the same time have enough money left over so that the towns still can operate normally ( the city where the grandparents of my bff live didn’t have enough money immediantly to change faulty water pipes in a neighborhood ) and maybe it’s because we’re still in school so the number in the reparation seems really big. //

============================================

Hello! :) To sum my big response up, I believe

reparations must be paid and that this is the most suitable situation for this

to happen. Germany has enough money to support its citizens and Greece. I believe with this is the majority opinion of Greeks on the matter. If any Greek wants to add soemthing, feel free to reblog and comment. For now, let’s analyze that a bit more.

To put a disclaimer here, I am not saying that Greece is the perfect state or that it handled its financial matters in the best way. Not all the blame falls on Germans. Greeks are to blame too, of course. We did some poor choices and we can be scumbugs from time to time. But enough blame falls on Germany (as well), enough to not give them the right to accuse Greece this way. At the same time I don’t support the “all Germans are bad” notion.

Point 1

As I said, reparations must be paid no matter what. And they should be paid especially in this situation because the German Nazi regime harmed Greece A LOT. (I am not implying that all Germans were Nazis, I am not implying that Germany wasn’t hurt by the regime and I am not implying you don’t know your own history. I will do the mention for the reason I just want to lay some numbers.)

The Great Famine was a period of mass forced starvation during the Axis occupation of Greece, during World War II (1941–44). Deaths estimated to 300,000 just from this. People who have survived this are our grandparents and their traumatic experiences bleed into our families. Also, imagine how many more died of sudden mass executions in villages and by opposing the regime. Let’s not mention the Greek Romani, Greek Jewish, Greek people with disabilities and Greek lgbt+ people were led to death camps. At least 80% of the country’s Jewish population, were murdered (that is tens of thousands). Bulgaria had taken the North with German blessings and there was more destruction on their part. So, what sort of “entitlement” is to get money after war crimes being commited onto your country?

Point 2

At the same time I recognize that simple people had to work very hard to bring Germany back to its feet after WW2. I am not denying that your grandfather and his generation are worthy of good pensions and rest. And, with the current economic state of Germany, I am sure they will take that money. See, Germany has become one of the most influential and powerful states in the EU, even the most powerful someone say. So much that countries like France and the UK are overshadowed and worried about “a German hegemony”. So we know that the government, at least, has the money. (I will elaborate more on that on Point 4).

Point 3

Now contrast this to Greece. Germans say Greeks are lazy. I say that Greeks have worked very hard to overcome the poverty their nation had. While Germanic kingdoms were thriving, Greece was under Ottoman occupation (which lasted for 200-500 years depending on the area). After 1825 Greeks slowly started getting freed and they had to gather money from level zero to build their new government and offices. Less than 100 years later the nation also suffered from a refugee crisis, as our Greek brothers in the Pontus region were going through a literal genocide so they run to Greece for safety. WW1 before that had brought nation to its knees. And then came WW1. And not to mention the Greek civil war afterwards. More poverty, more hunger for everyone. All we hear from our grandparents is poverty and hunger (unless you are descended from an old rich family, which, for the most of us its unlikely).

So, Greeks always worked to overcome this. We are not lazy but we had one “lazy” generation. It was in the early days of the Euro in the country when the government had money and chose to spend it immoderately on its citizens. The people who were in their prime in the in 80’s-00’s worked normal hours with an extravagant pay. And since they were paid well and the retirement funds were good, they went into retirement early. Other than that, Greeks never worked less, especially less than Germans. Even today, Greeks work the longest hours in Europe, while Germans clock the least hours, according to data by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reveal. (article from 2018: https://greece.greekreporter.com/2018/01/24/greeks-work-longest-hours-in-europe/)

Greeks still work hard to overcome the crisis. Many households are bleeding and striving to keep the basic goods coming into the house. Most of our elderly don’t have enough to take basic medicine because of the extreme cuts in their pensions. And more cuts are on the way (https://www.politico.eu/pro/greek-mps-pass-further-austerity-measures-amidst-violent-protests/). People will retire after their sixties because if they go on retirement they won’t have enough money to even maintain a household. That is because the EU, with Germany as a leading force, put extreme meters of austerity for us and great taxes which grow every year even ten years after the crisis. To top that, Greece almost doesn’t have an industry at all because the EU has make us dependent on other countries (because of our debt). It’s not that we have a great amount of dept. There are countries with great industry that have a huge dept, see USA with its 20 trillion debt. It must be noted that the European countries were quick to put Greece into their debt since our revolution in the 19th century. Of course, I don’t expect anyone to just give Greece money. The problem is that we were put in debt for very small help. Sometimes it was almost like a scam.

Point 4

Moreover, Germany knows the situation in Greece and it’s profiting from it. For example, Fraport, which is majority-owned by state and local governments in Germany, bought 14 Greek airports in 2017. The European commission asked Greece to sell 40% of our state electrical production units. As you will see in this 2015 article, more sales were done. (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/germans-begin-the-looting-of-greece-2015-08-21). “the country must sequester 50 billion euros worth of public assets to sell off at distressed prices to mostly foreign bidders — with German companies first in line.” and “Other assets to be sold will include the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki and valuable waterfront properties for hotel and casino development. State-owned electricity and train operations are also targeted for privatization.”

Germany made billions from the crisis, as stated in this article. (https://www.thelocal.de/20180621/germany-made-billions-on-greeces-debt-crisis-berlin-confirms) Plus, the German newspaper “Handelsblatt” confirmed that Germany gained 368 billion euros, which is 10% of its Gross Domestic Product - GDP. And how could it not, since it’s buying everything Greece has and on top of it gives us loans with a very high interest rate. It’s obvious that Germany’s government is not here to see us thrive but to gain from our misfortune. If it wanted to see us thrive it would support Greece with investments, not robbery of its state assets. And I say robbery because, due to the crisis, they find the excuse to buy everything very cheap, as we depend on them.

Greeks feel like they are colonized by the Germans, since they just want to milk us and at the same time they treat the country as their vacation resort because our prices have gone down due to the bigger crisis they put us in. I am not ungrateful for tourism but you can see the messy social implications of that. See the 2017 article “Why Greece is Germany’s ‘de facto colony’” (https://www.politico.eu/article/why-greece-is-germanys-de-facto-colony/)

And I should comment on the irony of the situation, since, even with the way Germany treats Greece, Greece’s youth mainly migrates to Germany to work, as there are no jobs here. That means we give the country our knowledge and our labor and we work to advance the country for the benefit of all - while at the same time we are looked down upon because we are supposedly lazy. While having jobs in Germany. There is a chance I go to the country for work, and while with my degree I can help advance the technological companies of Germany, a lot of people will just name me “a lazy Greek” or they will name my parents “lazy Greeks” - my parents who almost pass out of exhaustion working multiple jobs to support the family. Or my grandparents, who opened four different shops (with great debt) because each one was failing and were always struggling to get by.

Seeing all the profit Germany made and will

make, it’s hard for me to believe that the country lacks money. It must be the

government officials that don’t want to give this money to the people. It seems so ridiculous that the state won’t give enough money to your grandparents’ community to do basic things. It’s exactly like the situation in Greece, but our government indeed doesn’t have the money :P In some places our buses are so ancient they barely hold themselves together and you can hear the sounds their metals do as it goes on the road. (And you can feel them, it’s like a Luna Park ride :P) Roads are not fixed, our state buildings (and university buildings among them) are literally collapsing… Like… not such a good situation.

Point 5

For the fake credentials fiasco: I don’t know how true is this but if it is indeed true, our politicians are scumbags. People who were not government officials at the time didn’t know about this and they didn’t support it. It was a previous government that did all this. Moreover, if Greece gave fake credentials, it was the job of EU officials to check them. It seems they didn’t do their job either, since they let us enter the EU. Or maybe they were as corrupt as our government at the time? And now they want to say they have the moral high ground? As I said, I am not well informed in this case but if it happened both parties are to blame, even in an unequal rate.

===================================================

Oook that’s it! If you want to add something, or ask me further my ask box is open! And thank you for supporting the Greek case! I think we should find a middle ground so neither German nor Greek citizens are harmed by political decisions.

#Greek politics #eu #germany #german politics #greece and germany #European Union #greek crisis #economical crisis

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salavante · 6 years ago

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Aesop 29 or the Helmsman

(I’ve drawn his floating head a lot, so here’s him with his hood up, which I draw less) Also formal apology because I think like maybe no more than four people who follow me play Destiny, so a couple things may sound a little esoteric. I’d suggest checking out the Ishtar Collective (links to offsite) if I refer to something unfamiliar.

Full Name: Aesop-29

Gender and Sexuality: Male and Homosexual.

Pronouns: He/Him.

Ethnicity/Species: Exo, from the little crop of Destiny fancharacters that I have.

Birthplace and Birthdate: Unknown factor. But Aesop was found by his Ghost in the middle of nowhere, in a southwestern state that I have not chosen yet. Arizona, Texas, Colorado and Southern California are all candidates. Aesop has just a little bit of a Texan accent.

Guilty Pleasures: Aesop is trying to learn how to play guitar and is really bad at it, making him very shy and nervous about his attempts. Similarly, Aesop enjoys singing, but usually does it when no one else is around - because no one else has really heard him sing before, it is a well kept secret between him and his Ghost that he’s actually pretty good. I personally like to keep the list of music that he likes to the 50’s-60’s bracket to match the kind of retrofuturistic style that the Golden Age tech in Destiny has. We the viewer read it as being ‘old’, even if it’s much, MUCH older than we realize because the setting is far future. That’s really all that matters, that we recognize it as being antiquated. His favorite of the very small pool of albums he has access to are Marty Robbins’ “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs” and Nancy Sinatra’s “Boots” and “Sugar”. Sojourn teases him about it and has thusly introduced him to the feeling of shame. He also likes drinking alcohol even if it doesn’t actually make him drunk. Sometimes he does it out of spite. Someone you don’t like? Pound his drink right in front of him and walk away.

Phobias: Aesop’s kinda agoraphobic - he feels trapped and panicked in enclosed areas with lots of people, can be overstimulated by large groups of people talking/making a lot of noise. This makes him mostly useless in large-scale conflicts. He has managed to curb some of this by being accompanied by Sojourn or Calico to areas or situations that are high risk (whether that means a combat scenario or just going to The City), but this can get squirrely because Calico doesn’t have a ghost anymore and if killed would die permanently, and Sojourn has a tendency to get worked up in a fight and leave him behind on accident. If everything goes well though, Aesop is perfectly functional fighting in the small group that is his fireteam - himself, Sojourn (exo warlock) and King (human titan). His ghost, Chanticleer, can also sometimes talk him down if he’s starting to spin up into a panic attack. It’s something that he wants to fix, but, existing within the confines of your anxiety is a cold comfort that he indulges in. In general, he’s a very anxious person with a lot of existential dread, but he puts on a clownish, brazen act and hopes people don’t notice.

What They Would Be Famous For: Honestly, probably something very mundane, like breaking a dopey Guinness-style record or something like that. The entire point of Aesop is that he is very average in his skills in a world of blisteringly powerful space wizards and the like. I find his challenges are more about what goals he sets for himself and if those goals conflict with the status quo. Does his worth need be defined by how good he is at killing things vs. is the pursuit of personal wellness and happiness selfish in the context of a world fighting for its survival. Can these things coexist. etc.

What They Would Get Arrested For: Probably something relatively benign done for the sake of pulling a dangerous stunt in the name of fun or looking cool. If he was a regular ass human in a normal modern setting, probably taking a nice vintage car for a joyride.

OC You Ship Them With: Aesop will have a love interest in the comic canon, but I’m gonna keep that under my hat for awhile yet. It’s not Cayde though, Cayde is dad. If Amanda Holliday was a man, he’d be utterly and entirely in love, but, alas. He’s still infatuated with her platonically though, and thinks she has pretty much the coolest job in the world. A promise of visiting her is a good way to entice him into going to The City.

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: When death is not a factor, this becomes less of an issue, hah. Aesop and his bff Sojourn have killed each other a number of times in training, to an almost nonchalant degree. Aesop has also been killed much more in training, by his fireteam’s resident titan, King. Aesop will also find a rival in a local Fallen pike gang, the leader of which has the placeholder name of Easy Rider. I also have a Cabal villain I am throwing around and trying to decide if they’ll stick, but I need to do a lot more work and research on that. They’re my least favorite enemy type mechanically, but I think they could make perfectly acceptable antagonists in a narrative.

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Aesop does not read. He can, he just doesn’t. I think maybe, MAYBE, someone could get him to read comic books, but those aren’t very sturdy and I feel like the amount of intact physical copies at this point would be almost nothing. The pool of movies and media that he has available to him are very sparse, but he absolutely drowns himself in spaghetti westerns, and would probably also like trashy action movies if they were available to him. I also think he would like Grease, HAHA. It has cars and guys in leather jackets singing in it. He’d also probably like any kind of rustic, western themed musical. And anything with cars in it would have his immediate interest no matter how bad it is, but he’d zone out in any parts he doesn’t like.

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: To be honest I think most of the time, movies are a little too long for him and lose his interest partway through. He has a really short attention span and anything too long, complicated or artsy will lose him and he’ll start being fidgety and chatty and start making his boredom everyone else’s problem. Even if there’s a movie he likes, if there’s a part that’s boring to him, he zones out. He probably watches the same 2-3 movies over and over again, which is fine because his available library of media is probably really small. I like to think that they probably have movies in some kind of archive that they put up publicly in The City every once in awhile, like they have a projector that puts it on the side of a building and people just bring chairs and shit. Aesop has an aforementioned fear of crowds but he probably does some hunter parkour bullshit and perches somewhere at a healthy distance to watch from afar, as long as it’s something he thinks he would like. If he doesn’t he gets up and leaves.

Talents and/or Powers: Aesop seems to have an interest in vehicles, but due to a bet with his mentor, Calico, he has not actually been taught how to drive a Sparrow and so pines for them from afar. As said, he’s learning how to play an instrument, and if we want to be technical, is a Gunslinger speced Hunter with the Golden Gun super. He is very bad at being stealthy, as he is very impatient and is also a little bigger than the average exo. He’s just kinda tall and wide and tends to clunk around. If his Ghost Chanticleer wasn’t as clever as she was, Aesop would probably be perma-dead by now.

Why Someone Might Love Them: He’s kind of a dumbass and a space cadet but has the potential to be very sweet, and the people he cares about, he latches on to really hard. Similarly, when set to a task he cares about, he does not quit. Unfortunately, many of his goals are unresolved, but it does not mean that he will stop trying. If he were to, say, become romantically interested in someone, he would go to great lengths to connect with him, even if it meant doing things Aesop himself may not like. In specific circumstances, Aesop may find that he has a great capacity for nurturing and bringing out the best in other people, a talent Aesop himself undervalues. Though he’s not all that intelligent, Aesop is very reflective and existentially inquisitive, and thinks about a lot of big picture stuff that other people might push aside in an era of crisis. Though he may not understand science or the way the world works in a mechanical sense, he is awed by it, and is a great appreciator of natural beauty. He’d cry at a particularly beautiful sunrise, if he could cry. I’d say he could be described as having a romantic soul.

Why Someone Might Hate Them: To be honest, Aesop has trouble establishing empathy with people he doesn’t know very well, and so is less invested in Earth’s plight than he probably should be (it would not be hard for Dead Orbit to sway him to their views). This makes some people think that he doesn’t take his charge seriously, and they also usually assume that he’s a slacker because he’s plateaued in his abilities so early. Really, Aesop is acutely socially anxious, can have panic attacks in large crowds, and generally prefers to stay away from The City unless he needs to go there, and so has a big emotional disconnect from it. Calico and Chanticleer have tried to get him more accustomed to groups, but has been thusfar mostly unsuccessful. His insecurity and anxiety also cause him to pull odd, dangerous stunts to prove his worth, making him unreliable and impulsive. He can bungle social interactions rather spectacularly, and is easily goaded into doing really stupid shit. Really, he is a person who may just be “too much” for some.

How They Change: Oooooghhh….I can’t talk about this. I forgot how frustrating it is to not be able to talk about things because you’re going to make a comic out of it. Suffice it to say he’s gonna change a lot.

Why You Love Them: I think Aesop encapsulates a lot of anxieties I have post-college. Aesop is a person in transition who is unsure of his future, knowing only that he can’t quit now, because quitting means failure and failure means death. Because he is in transition, he is anxious about forming relationships with people, worried that either he will be left behind by them, or that they won’t like him when he’s “finished” becoming a person. I think he has a complex relationship with his personhood and sense of self. I dunno, I think that’s an interesting anxiety for a protagonist to have. I am also interested to see what Aesop will end up contributing to his society/organization and his interpersonal relationships, and if he’ll be happy with it. I’ve put a lot of work into him, the ‘original Aesop’ I had in mind might as well be a completely different character now. Aesop was originally a little cameo that I did in our TTRPG game, Godslaughter, because my boyfriend had put a dunmer cameo character into our game and I wanted to return the favor. Then he made a sheet for him. Then I decided to keep him around, then I decided to play Destiny 2, then I decided I loved it, lol. There is still a version of Aesop in the TTRPG but he is so incredibly different, they may as well be different characters. We refer to him as “Bad Aesop” but should probably call him something more dignified (we won’t).

#solrika

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sugarless-suki-writes · 6 years ago

Text

Panic

Rating: T Word Count: 2,998

Read on Ao3

Support me on Ko-Fi!

More vent, yay;;;;

Appearance are based on my sona

CW/TW: Stalking, Identity Crisis

(Left to Right: Suki, Plum & Bug. Art by @bitter-plum-art

As soon as Suki walked through the door, they made direct eye contact with him. They kept their expression stoic, quickly turning into the hallway and walking towards the sever's station. They didn’t know he’d be working tonight. They should’ve. He always worked weekends. Their stomach started to knot, a hard ball forming in the pit of their stomach as their hands began to shake.

The Hanged Man, See No Evil.

Their jaw set as their fangs dug into the skin of their lip. What utter bullshit.... What kind of cryptic bullshit was that? What did he think sending them a weird, cryptic, “poetic” message would do? And to send one to the other two? Suki didn’t care for that, not at all....

With a sigh, they walked up to the front, greeting their friends and coworkers as they set their bag down, then proceeded to head towards the back once more to get dressed.

The uniform was easy to put on, and they did it quickly. They then went into the server’s station to make themselves a drink, a cucumber water; they were trying to get better about drinking water and cut back on their soda/caffeine intake.

Their hands were trembling.

As they plopped the cucumbers in the glass and reached for the ice scoop, they heard the dish bin get slammed down and a chill ran down their spine as they felt eyes on them.

He was there.

They didn’t dare turn around.

Thankfully he didn’t stick around to stare but so long. Once they felt his eyes leave, Suki turned around to fill their glass with water. They almost dropped the glass in the sink.

Their head was pounding, their stomach was doing flips, and they felt like they could puke.

They set the water down on the table in the server’s station and ripped the paper off of a straw, sticking it in and casually tossing the paper to the side, towards the trash can. They took a long sip before reaching for the pill bottle on the counter, pressing down on the cap and unscrewing it. The grabbed two excedrin and then closed the bottle. Taking another sip of water, they popped the pills in their mouth and swallowed. The orthodontist today was rough, they didn’t need creepy stalker man on top of it. At least they could kill their headache.

They took another sip of water, soothing the strange feeling in their throat. It was still new to them to swallow pills; they still had to fight off the innate fear that tried desperately to claw its way to the surface. Why their preschool teachers thought it was a good idea to give four year olds hard candy, they would never understand. But at least now they were working past it.

Suki made their way back up to the front, just in time for their first table to walk in. A 5 top. Great. Seems like this is how their Friday night was going to go.

Once they were seated, Suki greeted them warmly. Two of the five were still on their way, but they all wanted water, and 3 iced coffees. Easy. They went to the back and put in the iced coffee orders and grabbed a tray. They set everything up before making the waters and bringing them out to the table. Once that was done, they went back into the kitchen, walking to the sushi bar and grabbing the three containers that held the coffee grounds.

Eyes.

They made quick work of walking back to the sever’s station. They uncapped the coffee and poured the grounds into the brewer and poured hot water into all three. They then turned around to make three glasses of ice, for the coffee.

Eyes.

Pressure.

Presence.

Stop stop stop stop stop.

Once the glasses were done, Suki turned around and, lo and behold, there he was. He was pretending to look at the coffee they were brewing. Suki slid past him, trying to keep some form of distance from him in the confined space, but he had started to turn around, making the space smaller and almost touching them. They did their best to not grimace, focusing on getting their tray prepped.

They could see him out of the corner of their eyes, taking his time putting ice in his cup, moving so much slower than usual. Standing in front of the soda machine and just staring.

Eyes. Eyes. Eyes.

The Hanged Man, See No Evil.

Suki was quick to walk out of the sever’s station, plastering a warm, welcoming, fake smile on their face.

Their customers were nice. Suki wished they could enjoy them....

It shouldn’t be like this. They shouldn’t have this overwhelming sense of dread coming into their place of work. They felt safer walking the downtown city streets alone at night than in their own workplace.

Every single male/male-presenting person they had interacted with/met lately had just been... awful. Of course, male-presenting people always set off at least one or two red flags, they all did. Every single one of them. That was normal, even though it shouldn’t be. You just have to ignore them before you can properly judge a person. That’s what they did with this guy.

He set off some flags. The three of them thought he might just be weird. Nothing wrong with weird. He barely talked. Could barely make eye contact with them. They talked about DND one night, and so he made a Discord account so he could join in a campaign.

That’s when it started. He friended Suki and Bug, but did absolutely nothing with Plum. He started messaging Suki. Just a sentence a night. Never replied to anything Suki said. One night, he sent them a compliment. Being polite, they thanked him. Then they changed their hair. It was the first time they had ever dyed it. They were so excited.

They came in to do the numbers for the restaurant that night, and as they were leaving, one of the managers walking with them, as he always did. (Previous employees had been attacked at night, so he went out with all the servers to make sure they got to their cars safe). They turned to wish the others a good night. He looked up, said some garbled nonsense, not even really words, something akin to a verbal keysmash, and went back to the dishes. Their manager laughed his fucking ass off. Suki simply raised an eyebrow as they furrowed together and let out a weird chuckle, mostly laughing because their manager was losing his mind and that always made them laugh.

“What was that?” he had asked as they walked out the door, before it had even closed behind them.

“I have no idea.”

That night he sent them a message, saying he was “taken aback”. It had made them slightly uncomfortable but they said thank you anyway. In all honesty, they thought it was kind of funny. Did he have a crush? After only talking to them a grand total of 5 times, each of those times just being one sentence from the both of them? They had to admit, it was a little ridiculous.

Then he had asked them out to lunch, and Suki was just... taken aback. It was unexpected. They... barely knew each other? He couldn’t even look them in the eye. They meant to reply, they really did, but they just kept forgetting, and every way they tried to phrase it in their head just sounded mean so they just.... didn’t.

The bell in the back dinged, drawing Suki out of their thoughts. Their food was ready. They let out a huff and stood up from the server’s table and walked towards the back. One roll combo and four dinner combos, three of which had tempura. This was gonna be fun to bring out...

They grabbed a tray and started to set two of the bento boxes on it, the ones that were ready. They had to finagle with it a bit, trying to find space to put the tempura sauce.

Pressure.

Presence.

Eyes.

He walked up behind them and stood there. They were off to the side, leaving the small walkway clear. He could’ve easily walked by. Out of the corner of their left eyes they could see him flipping the dish bin. Why wasn’t he walking by?

Stop staring stop staring stop staring stop staring stop staring stop staring stop staring stOP STARING STOP STARING STOP STARING!!!!

They finished putting what they could on the tray, picked it up along with another box with their other hand, and walked out of the kitchen.

He followed right behind.

Suki plastered a smile on their face.

It shouldn’t be like this... They shouldn’t feel scared to be in the back, thinking this fucking freak is going to come up and shank them if they weren’t careful. Their chef shouldn’t have to be waiting by the bathroom everytime he goes, holding a knife and waiting for him to come out with a gun. These complete, asinine, awful, insane and downright predatory interactions they’ve been having with men shouldn’t be making them question their sexuality, their gender.

For a while now, a couple months at least, Suki had been questioning their gender. They had never really felt comfortable in their body, and whether that was from all the bullying or the dysphoria.. that was something they figured a therapist could help them with, whenever they had the time to find one. But now.... they weren’t sure.

Maybe I’m not nonbinary.

I don’t want to come across masculine in any way.

I don’t want to be associated with them.

Maybe I’m cis.

Maybe.

Maybe.....

They had talked about it recently, on the ride home from work one night with Plum and Bug. Maybe part of the problem was they still thought along the lines of the binary - viewing being nonbinary as some sort of in between of masculine and feminine, male and female. But could they really be blamed? It’s how they were raised to think. It’s what society wanted. It’s how things were and they weren’t going to change so quickly over night, not here, not now, especially not in the south, where they lived.

Either way, all these interactions were making them question everything about themselves. Sure, Suki had never been the fondest of men in the first place; they’d only been in two relationships, both with men, both abusive, one long term and recent and still a very much open, festering wound.

Men made them uncomfortable.

Men pushed their boundaries.

Men hurt them one too many times.

Men were borderline repulsive at this point.

Maybe I’m a lesbian...

Maybe I should start identifying as that.

Maybe.

The night dragged on. He continued to come to the server’s station. Suki’s trembling never ceased; it slowed, but it never stopped. They came close to dropping glasses and dishes and trays multiple times. They bought food, hoping that would be the solution, but he came back so many times. He checked the dishes more often. He made small, very small trips to return the dishes to their proper places, trips he could’ve easily, and usually would condense, he continued to fill up his drink as slow as possible, and more frequently than normal.

Suki couldn’t eat.

They didn’t feel comfortable.

They didn’t feel safe.

The Hanged Man, See No Evil.

After Suki’s silence, he latched onto Bug. He posted music, raps specifically, in the group chat they had, and he messaged Bug whenever they worked together, just like he had with Suki. It was funny. The raps were terrible; the beats were okay, but his voice and lyrics were just... Let’s just say it sent the trio off to other planes of existence.

As he messaged Bug, he got aspects of the three of them confused, mixing them into one being and projecting them onto Bug. While Bug did take dance classes, they never mentioned them at work, Suki had, multiple times, loudly. Plum plays the cello. Both Plum and Bug draw. He once complimented Bug on how artistic they were, thinking it was crazy that they “dance, play the cello, and draw.” It was hilariously bad. A poor attempt. They laughed about it for days.

Eventually, he asked Bug out as well. Bug, of course, turned them down. They were very polite about it. He sent an odd... poetic message that made no sense. Then, the next day, he posted a new rap in the chat, that had other people in it as well, it was their group’s DnD chat afterall.

It was a diss rap.

He mentioned them by name, twice.

He talked about murder.

It wasn’t so funny anymore.

The red flags grew larger, brighter, blaring.

They laughed nervously and weren’t too eager to go into their next shift after that.

He later sent Bug another song, this time to their DMs. It was their name in all caps. After writing, creating, and posting such an angry, hateful, terrifying track in a public group chat, he made a song about how they were meant to be but there was *~*something*~* between them and keeping them apart. They told him his songs were making them uncomfortable. They weren’t as nice that time. They had to be blunt. They told him to stop.

A couple days later, at 4 a.m., he sent all three of them his final messages and, supposedly, deleted Discord.

They blocked him just to be safe.

They couldn’t take any risks.

They’ve been through this before, multiple times.

They knew what to do.

They knew what needed to be done.

It shouldn’t be like this.

They shouldn’t have to put up with this.

Suki shoved back any feeling of dread, anxiety, panic - they had a job to do. They needed to push through. They couldn’t afford to have a panic attack. They couldn’t show any sign of weakness. Not around him. They’d been through this before. They knew how to deal with stalkers. They’d had three in the past. They just needed to push down the panic. They needed to ignore it. She needed....

The end of the night couldn’t come quickly enough. When it did, Suki was grateful. They sat down with their receipts, doing their readings and chatting idly with Plum, Bug, and Hail. Once all their stuff was done and they were clocked out, they sat at the server’s table. They wanted to speak to their manager, but they needed to wait for him to leave.

They sat there, quietly, on their phones as they waited. It was nice. It was peaceful. It was what they needed after today.

“Alright, hope y’all have a good night.”

His voice made their stomach drop. A pain, sharp like a knife, twisted into Suki’s heart as fear and dread and panic and terror gripped them in an instant. They didn’t look up. They couldn’t. They continued to scroll through Twitter.

When had he walked up?

She didn’t hear him.

She heard him walk away though, his footsteps heavy against the laminate floor. He was probably pissed he got no response.

Drama queen.

He was a big drama queen. He thought he was an important figure in their lives. How could he be though? They only knew him for, cumulatively, 2 days. The only thing he had done was made the three of them nervous around white cars and fill them with dread when they came in to work at night. One could argue that that was an impact, but it was nothing new to the trio. They’d been stalked before, multiple times. They had a restraining order on someone. They knew what needed to be done.

They shouldn’t have to know.

It wasn’t long before their manager was done with his side work and he was joining them at the front of the restaurant. They then proceeded to tell him everything in great detail. He didn’t emote as they talked, voicing their concerns and Suki trying to keep themself calm and in check.

“In his message to me, he told me that he could handle a no, but not silence. Clearly he can’t handle a no, seeing as he wrote a diss track about Bug when they politely, politely, turned him down.”

Once they were all done, he sat there for a moment before shaking his head. “Man, I wish y’all had told me before he left!”

“We wanted to wait until he was gone. This isn’t our first rodeo, we know what we need to do to stay safe.” Plum said.

“Yeah, yeah I know. But man, I wish I had known. I’d’ve went and “talked” to him. You know...” He didn’t use air quotes, but they were implied in his tone. “Y’all... You guys know we’re all like family around here. We’re close. I’m here to look out for ya. I’ll talk with Billiford about it. We’ll take care of this.”

“Yeah, I talked to Billium before he left, but I couldn’t say too much cause he just kept walking by.” Plum said. “He said he was going to talk to you so..”

“Yeah, I’ll remind him. I’ll make sure to remind him. Man... maaan I really wish y’all had told me earlier.”

“We don’t want you killing a man.” Bug said with a laugh.

“I’d bail you out.” Suki said immediately.

“I think we all would.” Timothy replied, taking a pull from his “addiction stick” as he referred to it.

They chatted for a bit longer before they all walked out. The parking lot was desolate and Suki felt themselves breathe a little easier. Their manager walked the three of them to their car and watched as they got in. They then began to make their way home, keeping an eye out for white cars.

The Hanged Man, See No Evil.

#vent #stalking tw #identity crisis tw

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artificialqueens · 7 years ago

Text

Maybe We’re Helping Each Other Escape (Bengela)- Ortega

A/N: it’s crazy how fast i can work on something if the idea niggles away at me for long enough, i do much of my writing on google docs on train journeys, and i have three days off work because of the bastarding snow. welcome to whatever this is- technically it’s set within the Just The Game We’re In universe but i have tried my best to make sure it can be read standalone. i’m no good at summaries, so this was based off the idea i had the other day when i got asked about Game headcanons:

“i don’t think i’ve given Dela a role in Game so far so OF COURSE she’s the new flirty intern at the Daily Mail who gets put under Shangela’s wing and who makes Shangela very nervous because she works for the Daily Mail and she should not be having these feelings towards female colleagues”

((if you’re American and struggling with the whole idea of the Daily Mail as a newspaper, compare it to ummmmmm idk some media outlet that Trump really loves))

Shangela never thought her journalistic career would peak with her writing a 1,000 word article about the Prime Minister’s wife’s cankles, but she supposed the only way was up. Finishing the final sentence and emailing it to her senior editor to get it haphazardly checked for spelling, grammar and rogue left-wing views, Shangela took a sip of her coffee only to find it cold. Damn. She was annoyed that there were no young, terrified work experience girls to get her another. Rising from her desk chair, she grabbed her cup and made her way to the small office kitchen. Many of her friends had asked her why she took the job at the Daily Mail and she’d often reply lightheartedly, laughing something about being broke and having no morals. But as she passed by desk after desk in the small, stifled office she worked in, she found her heart sinking as it did every other day. The part about her being broke, there was truth in that- there wasn’t a whole lot that a third in Communication, Media and Culture from Oxford Brookes could get you in the world of journalism. She’d had her sights set on the BBC, but that had been for the Raja Geminis of this world, and Shangela still bristled when she saw her on the ten o'clock news remembering how the girl had befriended her for her study notes when they were in first year together. She now understood how brutal the industry could be and how easy it was to be backstabbed, but at the time eighteen-year-old Shangela just thought she’d made a friend. That was until the head of her faculty called her into a meeting to discuss plagarism allegations, and revealed that her final essay had been very similar, almost identical in fact, to Raja’s, the very same essay that Shangela had sent to her to look over to help her out. Raja’s had just been “more finessed” as they had put it. In the end, Shangela’s essay was void- 0% for an essay worth 80% of her grade for that module, dragging her down from being on course for a first class degree to having to settle for a third. BBC out the window, Shangela had set her sights on ITV, Channel 4, fuck, even Channel 5 received an application. Hearing nothing back she’d started to lower her expectations and set her sights on print journalism- The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian. Then once she got the rejection emails from them, she begrudgingly scraped the very bottom of the barrel- The Sun, The Star, and The Daily Mail. She got a job offer from the lesser of three evils- as an editor for the section of the website dedicated to women, “Femail”- and before she knew it, she’d been trapped in the same pink offices for two years. But it was better than sitting in a freezing cold Soho flat struggling to pay the rent. Morals, though, that was still a problem. No amount of money could buy those away, and it still stung whenever she had to write an article about whose dress looked the most like a dehydrated camel’s turd at whatever awards ceremony. She’d love to be writing on the situation in Gaza and she’d love even more to be researching the emerging refugee crisis in Syria, but that was Raja’s domain. Shangela’s domain was different entirely. At least she was writing, she reminded herself, as she got to the small kitchen, washed out her mug and spooned in more coffee granules. Flicking the switch on the kettle, she was surprised when her senior editor entered the kitchen, looking as smug as he always did as if he was constantly being reminded of the gender pay gap. In his hand he held what Shangela recognised as her article- same paragraph structure and indents, but with a green highlighter across one sentence. Stiffening, she struggled to hold in her annoyance- that had to be a record for most skim-read proofreading of all time, and it hadn’t even been as much as five minutes since she had emailed the article to him. “So um, Shangie…babe. The article’s brilliant. Just a little problem with your grammar on paragraph two.” Trying to suppress her rolled eyes at the nickname she hated, Shangela examined the highlighted text on the printed sheet in front of her. Narrowing her eyes, she looked up at her editor. “Um. What’s the issue here?” Her boss took the paper from her and read from it in faux-patience. “From beneath the ankle strap, the fat gained from the baby weight four years ago tried to escape from its fleshy prison.” Cringing, Shangela screwed up her face. “And?” “You missed the apostrophe in ‘it’s’.” “No I didn’t,” Shangela explained calmly. “An apostrophe in this case means that two words have been combined to make one. ’It is’ becomes 'it’s’. Its with no apostrophe is possessive. So, “from it is fleshy prison” makes no sense.” The editor gave a sort of choked laugh. “They really taught you a lot at Oxford Brookes, huh?” Shangela found herself casting her eyes to the floor. Her skin prickled as if she’d been stung. Working up her dignity again, she met her boss’ eye. “I do pride myself on knowing basic grammar, Sir.” The senior editor slid the piece of paper slowly out of her hands. “Well I’m your superior and I’m saying that your basic grammar is wrong. So just fix that up and the article should be good to go. Okay?” Shangela simply gave a curt nod, swallowed, and returned to her desk. The Prime Minister’s wife was a lovely woman, too. It was unfair that she had to be eviscerated by the media like this, for something as shallow as her appearance. But it was in Shangela’s job description, and so it would be done.

Settling down at her desk and resentfully changing correct grammar to an error, she felt her eyes flicker above the monitor screen to see some sort of activity in the office. Gia from Fashion was showing around a girl- looking to be around Shangela’s age, or perhaps younger. Her hair was in a neat beehive which fell over her shoulders, long and straight and dark with a sort of gloss to it that Shangela thought only existed in Pantene adverts. Her makeup was simple- a sort of 60’s cat eye with some light blusher and simple pink lipgloss on her lips which were currently set in a smile as she greeted Delta who sat one row in front of her. She wore a pink dress patterned with yellow flowers, and Shangela wondered why she was bothering to notice so much about her. Narrowing her eyes, she swirled her chair around to her left to face Vivienne, the colleague at the desk beside her and possibly the only person Shangela got on with at work.

“Vivienne,” she hissed in a sort of hushed whisper, causing the other girl to turn from whatever she had been working on and flip her hair over her shoulder to listen. “Who is that that Gia’s showing around?”

The other girl rolled her eyes. “Some new intern they got. Journalism graduate apparently. I’m not convinced as to her authenticity. Look at how she’s going round the office. I’ve never seen anyone smile that much.”

“Well it’s the right attitude to have if you want to be a journalist. Be equally fake to everyone,” Shangela considered, shrugging slightly as she watched the girl. Vivienne was right- she hadn’t once broken her smile since Shangela had set eyes on her, which she found intriguing. Watching Gia turn and face her way, Shangela got a shock as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t. Trying to focus on her article, she blocked out her peripheral vision until the two women were right beside her desk.

“Shangela,” Gia’s voice forced Shangela to acknowledge them. “I’d like you to meet Dela, she’s our new intern and she’ll be staying with us for a couple of months.”

Shangela cast her gaze up to meet the perfectly lined pair of blue eyes smiling back at her. Up close, the girl was relatively pretty, but she couldn’t shake the annoyance of having someone just waltz into an internship right after they graduated meanwhile she had to practically beg the Daily Mail to give her a job. Swallowing her slight jealousy, Shangela forced a smile.

“Nice to meet you,” she offered a hand for the other girl to shake, only to be taken aback by her enthusiastically strong grip.

“It’s so good to meet you too! I’ve heard lots about you and read so much of your work. It’s a real honour getting to work beside you!” the girl gushed, the blush on her cheeks going a little pinker as she let go of Shangela’s hand. Shangela felt like blushing herself, taken aback that the girl seemed to have done her research so thoroughly. “Well I’m not exactly sure how much of an honour it is getting to work alongside the author of that show stopping article Floral Shirts to Work- A Yes or a No?, but I’m sure you’ll take something from it.”

Something inside Shangela lit up when Dela responded with a snort and a small giggle concealed under her hand. Gia, however, was not as easy-going and just stared Shangela down with an unimpressed glare. Great. That was a disciplinary on the cards, clearly.

“Well, by the by, since Jackie isn’t coming back from maternity leave anytime soon I said it would be fine if Dela had her desk, meaning she’ll be working beside you and Vivienne. That all okay?”

The resentment tipped over inside Shangela’s stomach again out of nowhere, Dela suddenly feeling like new competition for her. She couldn’t give anything away though, so she simply smiled and nodded.

“Good. I’ll leave you to it- I’ve given Dela a login and email address as well as some articles to proofread, but if she has any questions I trust you’ll handle them?”

Shangela bit her tongue and restrained herself from saying something about having an intern palmed off onto her, but again just nodded. Gia said a polite goodbye to Dela and then flounced off, Shangela’s face immediately setting into a scowl as she left.

“Have fun guarding the gates of Hades,” she muttered, unwittingly loud enough for Dela to hear and laugh.

“You’re a funny one, Angela. I think we’ll get along just fine,” she smiled, Shangela instantly annoyed at the misconception of her name.

“Shangela. We’ll get along even better if you get my name right,” she deadpanned, the other girl just blushing slightly and laughing apologetically.

“My bad. Sorry. Lots to take in, you know?”

Shangela raised an eyebrow and smiled briefly, although she couldn’t help but feel her defences were being worn down by Dela’s constant cheerful demeanor. Looking at her full coffee cup and then at the annoyingly smiley girl, a sly thought took place in her mind- power play. There was no way that Shangela was having this intern see herself on the same plane as herself.

“Hey, Dela? I’ve got a job for you,” she smiled, injecting cheer into her voice and feeling momentarily guilty at the way the other girl whizzed round in her wheely chair, eagerness painted over her face.

“Sure!”

“Would you mind possibly getting me a coffee?”

Dela’s smile faltered slightly as she gestured to the preexisting cup on Shangela’s desk. “Absolutely! But, um…you do already have one?”

Shangela kept her smile level as she gave a throwaway glance at the cup. “Yep, got that. Registered that. I’d just love another- long day, and I need a lot of caffeine to get me through it, you know?”

Still slightly confused, Dela nodded and dutifully made her way towards the kitchen. Turning back to her screen, Shangela smiled. She had one up on her now, and she would now know who was in charge.

Something that felt like guilt seemed to poke at her stomach, but later she’d conclude that it was probably just down to the fact she’d skipped breakfast that morning.

***

As the weeks went by, Shangela couldn’t work out if Dela was slowly growing on her or trying to annoy her to death. It started with the mornings- Shangela would walk into the office to find that yes, Dela was still there and no, unfortunately she hadn’t been taken out by a passing truck on the way into work. The intern would flash her a beaming smile, give her a cheerful good morning, and then, Shangela had noticed, would proceed to give her a different compliment every day. Sometimes it would be her makeup, sometimes her perfume, sometimes her hair or clothes. She couldn’t work out if the girl was a fake bitch or just aggressively nice, but the main thing that stumped her was why she was always so chirpy in the mornings. By about halfway through week two, Shangela snapped and decided to ask her.

“Is there a reason why you’re always so damn bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 8am?” she borderline hissed, glaring at her. Dela sort of shrugged apologetically and then pointed to a bright pink keep cup.

“…coffee?” she guessed, then lifted up the keep cup and gave it a little shake. “In fact I’m almost out. Can I get you any?”

As Shangela shrugged off her coat and made to sit down at her computer, she found herself giving Dela a look. She’d just admittedly been pretty rude to her, and here she was offering her a coffee. Surely the girl had to be a droid or some shit? Holding her gaze and noticing again how blue her eyes were, Shangela simply nodded and held out her cup. Dela smiled back.

“Black, two sugars, right?” she asked, pausing for a second. It had been weird that she’d remembered that as well, but then Shangela supposed she did make her a coffee every day. Then it had occurred to her that the only time she’d ever had to ask Dela for one was that first day, and ever since then the girl had offered. Not really completely sure how to address the information that had just registered with her, she only nodded again. Dela gave a little nod back and made to walk away, before looking at her again and casually saying, “Your eye makeup’s lovely today, by the way. Really brings out your eyes.”

As the intern walked away, Shangela blinked a little self-consciously and began her work.

It continued the next again week. Shangela had been warming to Dela and, though she tried not to speak to her much during the day, sometimes she’d be subjected to a small anecdote about what her turtles had been up to (she, for some unknown reason, had pet turtles), sometimes she’d have to fix some sort of email or Microsoft Word-related problem for her, and sometimes she’d ask Shangela about her life. When she thought about it, Shangela supposed there wasn’t a whole lot to tell- work basically was her life, that and her Mum.

“So, um. No other half then?” Dela had asked without much expression, Shangela bristling in response.

“I hate that term. ‘Other half’. Like I’m me, I’m not incomplete in some way, you know? It’s stupid,” she rolled her eyes, thoroughly unimpressed. For the first time ever, Dela seemed anything other than bright and upbeat.

“I’ll take that as a no,” she raised her eyebrows and continued typing away. Shangela somehow regretted barking at Dela. By way of extending an olive branch, she turned and faced her.

“What about you, there a man in your life?”

Dela gave an inexplicable snort and shook her head tersely. “Nope. And there won’t be one for a very long time. Possibly ever.”

Shit. Shangela regretted asking even more- Dela had clearly been the victim of a messy breakup and her heart was obviously still broken from some dickhead ex. Clearing her throat, Shangela wanted somehow to make things better. Giving the girl a genuine smile, she gave an apologetic shrug.

“What do you say to keeping the subject off-limits for both of us and pretending this conversation never happened?”

Dela’s smile was suddenly back, and Shangela didn’t know why that made her heart light up, but it did. “I’d like that very much.”

Sure enough, the both of them kept to their word and didn’t bring the topic up again. But Shangela did find herself starting to engage in actual conversation with Dela a lot more often. She’d even venture to say she enjoyed hearing her stories and liked being asked her opinion on things, and it actually turned out they had a few things in common. It was the sort of thing that she was maybe missing out on, having never been able to commit to a boyfriend before. Really, she’d always just been too focused on work, and it was nice to just talk to someone else. She started to look forward to seeing Dela at work, just for the conversation.

Shangela turned up to work one day on a chilly day in September, about a month into Dela’s internship. By this point, she no longer really remembered what had ever annoyed her about Dela and genuinely enjoyed her company. Arriving at her desk, she was disappointed to find an empty chair where Dela usually sat. To her intrigue, however, there was a printed sheet of paper on top of her own keyboard- paragraphs of typed black with pink highlighted words and sections and scribbled notes all over it. Stuck on top of it was a pink sticky note, identical to the post-it notes that sat on Dela’s desk. Shangela picked up the paper and read the note.

About three minutes later she finally found Dela in the kitchen after frantic and furious searching. She’d seemed happy to see Shangela initially, but her face fell when she saw her expression- hot anger flushed against Shangela’s cheeks and her face was set in a scowl as she crushed the paper in her hand.

“What is this?!”

Dela blinked a couple of times, looking first at Shangela and then to the paper in her hand. “Well it’s like I said…I just proofread it and tweaked it a little. I just thought I’d be helping…I’m sorry that you don’t like it-”

Frustrated, Shangela crumpled her own article up into a ball and launched it into the bin. She turned to Dela with dark eyes, all warmth she’d ever felt towards the girl completely gone.

“Don’t ever fuck with my work again, or I’ll make it my business to get your internship cut as short as it possibly can. Got it?” she snapped, earning a sheepish nod from Dela. Fuming, she walked out of the kitchen and out of the office, being unable to bear being in the same building as Dela. She was so annoyed, so angry that a girl on an internship thought she could just waltz in and start editing the articles of someone that had worked there for almost three years. It took her all the way back to university, to her plagarism hearing. Just because Raja had changed a few words her essay was “more finessed”, just as Dela thought she was finessing her article. Shangela didn’t get to where she was today without any talent.

Fuck her, she thought, as she reached Starbucks and ordered herself the most poisonous, inky-black-looking coffee available.

As she sat and sipped at it and looked out the window, though, she felt her own words starting to chip away at her. Had she been too harsh? No- Dela had no business interfering where she didn’t have any right. She said she’d been trying to help. Maybe she genuinely wanted to. With the smallest stab to her heart, Shangela thought back to how kind and happy the girl always seemed. Fake? No- there was no way someone could keep up that charade for that length of time. As time ticked on and her cup became drained, Shangela began to feel more and more as if she’d kicked a puppy. Sighing and rising from her seat, she made her way back to the office. Dela still wasn’t at her seat and Shangela wondered if she’d ever returned. Making her way to the kitchen, she looked in the bin and plucked out the ball of paper. Opening it up, she began to read over her article, looking at the things Dela had written in.

Shit. She’d fucked up.

She hurried along the office in her heels, hoping that Dela was back so she could talk to her. She wasn’t. Mind in overdrive, Shangela went to the second most probable place and found herself at the ladies’ toilets a few moments later. To her horror, she could hear a quiet sniffing coming from the only locked cubicle.

She paused before speaking. “Dela?”

The sniffing stopped abruptly, but there was no sign of the door opening. Sighing, Shangela’s heart sank as she looked at the ceiling. “Look, I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that. I was a total asshole.”

She paused. Still nothing. “I read the changes you made. They were really good. It was pretty poorly-written if I’m being honest so, thanks for making it better. And despite what I said, I do appreciate it.”

Another pause with no movement from inside the cubicle. Shangela could almost feel herself getting frustrated again, but she took a deep breath. “Look, can you please just come out of the cubicle so that we can talk, because I’m starting to get nervous that the person in here isn’t actually Dela.”

There was a beat of silence before the lock turned and Dela emerged from the cubicle, her cheeks red and puffy from crying and small specks of mascara dotted around her eyes. Shangela felt like a Grade A shit.

“I’m sorry- I don’t know why I’m crying, I’m such an idiot,” Dela started, her face flushing redder from embarrassment. Shangela shook her head.

“No, don’t be sorry. I’m sorry. For being such a dick.”

Dela smiled sadly. “I guess I just thought I’d made a friend.”

A sudden thud caught in Shangela’s heart. “I mean, I’m not that great at the whole friendship thing on the whole.”

Dela gave a small laugh. “Clearly.”

“But I mean…I guess I could try?” Shangela said hesitantly, earning another smile from Dela. Christ, she was so glad her smile was back.

“We could start with a hug?”

“It’d be a start.”

Returning her smile, Shangela walked forward into Dela’s open arms and wrapped her own arms around her, giving her a little squeeze. She was so glad she’d been forgiven, and felt relieved as she relaxed a little and rested her head on the other girl’s shoulder. She felt inexplicably safe.

The hug was eventually broken. Shangela smiled at Dela and gave her hand a quick squeeze. “Come on, bitch. Tell me more about how shit my writing is.”

As Dela howled with laughed, it occured to Shangela that Dela had been the one to break the hug, and she didn’t know why that bothered her.

***

The next fortnight was filled with what Shangela was overjoyed to find was a real friendship. They messaged outside of work hours, laughed and chatted at work and went for lunch together. Dela just made Shangela happy in ways she couldn’t remember anyone ever doing before. There was a certain element of excitement to it- the butterflies she’d get whenever Dela had sent her a new message, or the anticipation she’d feel walking into work and knowing they’d see each other. It was nice.

Today, though, was a little more nervewracking. Tomorrow she was interviewing a Cabinet Minister, Sharon Needles from the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship, and she wanted to make sure she was completely prepared. It had been a long time since she’d interviewed anybody. As Shangela arrived in the morning, she vented all of her feelings to Dela.

“You’ll be absolutely fine. You’ve got all your questions, right?” she asked her, Shangela rolling her eyes and gesturing to the editor’s office.

“I’ve got all MY questions. I need to get them vetted from HIM. He’ll probably make me ask all sorts of embarrassing, sexist bullshit.”

Dela laughed then blinked, a little shocked. “Wait, really?”

“Dela, come on, girl. We work for the Daily Mail. Offensive shit is their currency.”

The other girl shrugged in acceptance. “Still, I never thought they’d actually ask people blatant stuff like that.”

“It’s bullshit.”

There was a small pause in which Shangela considered the venom behind her words. Dela seemed to be considering the same thing. “So how come you work here?”

Because I’m broke and I have no morals? Shangela sighed. “Because I couldn’t get a job at any other media outlet and I have no integrity.”

Dela gave a half-hearted laugh as Shangela realised how much more serious she sounded than she’d meant to. Giving a suspicious gaze around the office, Dela then moved her chair closer to Shangela.

“I sort of feel the same. Given the choice, I wouldn’t be working in a newspaper like this. It’s all that accepted me, though, so I have to just go along with the narrative of whatever they want me to write and stick it out until my internship is over.”

Shangela ran her tongue over her teeth. “You and me both, girl.”

Feeling as if the conversation had taken a sort of dark left turn, Shangela inched her chair away slightly and tried to think of a different topic. Seemingly getting the same vibe, Dela smiled and spontaneously took Shangela’s hand.

“Whatever they make you ask her at the interview, I know you’ll nail it. It’s impossible not to like you,” she beamed, giving Shangela’s hand a squeeze then returning to her work without waiting on a response.

Shangela didn’t know why, but she felt disappointed.

That was until about 10 at night when she was getting ready to go to sleep and her phone pinged from her bedside table. Turning rapidly over in bed, Shangela read the message.

D: Good luck for tomorrow! You will be amazing. Anything I can do, phone me xx

And Shangela’s heart was soaring again, and she couldn’t really explain why.

***

The day of the interview arrived, and Shangela woke up full of nervous energy. She was so excited at the thought of getting to interview an actual politician, when the pinnacle of the Daily Mail was usually the latest twat off I’m A Celebrity. The speed of her heart thrumming in her chest only increased when, just as she was about to leave her flat, her phone buzzed with a text from Dela.

D: I’m getting us pastries before work because I know you won’t eat. You can thank me with cocktails after work xx

Shangela couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face as her fingers flew across the screen texting back.

S: Alllllllllright!!! xx

As she hopped onto the tube and made her way to Notting Hill, her anticipation grew and grew wondering what her day would bring.

It turned out the first thing it brought was being practically met at the door by her senior editor, who was holding a small poly pocket with paper inside.

“Good morning, Shangie. You’re looking very lovely this morning,” he smiled nauseatingly. Shangela grimaced at him. She didn’t know why, but she felt as if she’d feel a whole lot better if Dela was with her at this moment. Really, she was the only person Shangela cared to receive compliments from nowadays.

“Thanks,” she replied briefly. “Can I help you?”

“Uh, yeah, these questions for Sharon Needles today…not quite cutting it. We want to reach out to women, not completely alienate them by boring them with politics.”

Shangela narrowed her eyes. “But…she’s a politician. So what else should I ask her about?”

“Things that women want to read about. Her love life! Her fashion! Makeup tips! You know?” the editor laughed, handing the unimpressed girl the poly pocket. “Look, I’ve got some new questions for you. They’re much more suitable for the vibe we’re going for here. No need to thank me!”

Shangela’s heart sank with disappointment as she read the first few questions. “Forgive me if I’m sounding a little naive, but you know that women can actually engage with and understand politics, right?”

The editor gave a smirk. “You write for Femail, Shangie. Not the New Statesman. Know your place.”

With that, he walked away, leaving Shangela standing at the office door and looking blankly at the questions in her hand. She was angry, but most of all she was upset. Her editor was right- although she was an editor too, it was only for the crappy, sexist supplement of a total bigoted mess of a publication. What the fuck was she doing here? Looking through the glass, she could see Dela at her desk working away, and two pastries and a coffee sitting on her own desk. In her emotional state, Shangela felt a lump rising in her throat. She swallowed, cleared her throat then blinked a couple of times before pushing open the door.

“Hey!” Dela smiled up at her, before Shangela watched her face fall as Dela saw the anger painted on her face. “Oh shit, are you alright?”

Shangela wordlessly shook her head and sat down, Dela fixing her with a look of sympathy.

“If it helps, you look really good today?” she offered. For some reason, it did help. Sighing, Shangela tossed the poly pocket onto Dela’s desk.

“Have a read of them,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “That’s the questions my senior editor wants me to ask Sharon Needles later on today.”

As she read, Dela’s eyes grew a little wide. Finishing the first page, she snorted with laughter. “I’m sorry. That’s laughably bad.”

“Right?! I can’t believe I actually have to go in there and ask them,” Shangela sighed, throwing her head back against her chair. She was jolted back to reality when she felt a warm hand rest on her arm, and her eyes flew open to find Dela looking at her.

“Hey. This doesn’t mean that you can’t put yourself across as at total sweetheart, because you are a total sweetheart. Now eat your damn croissant and drink your coffee.”

Once again, Dela seemed to know just what to say to put the smile back on Shangela’s face. “You’re the sweetheart for all of this. Thanks.”

Dela simply looked at the ground bashfully. She could have been blushing- Shangela couldn’t really see from the way her dark hair hung over her face- but if she was being honest, Shangela was blushing a little too. Smiling to herself and reaching forward, she took a sip of the coffee that Dela had bought her.

“Fuck, that’s bitter.”

“Ugh, I told them to put more sugar in it. You sit there, I’ll get you more.”

As Shangela smiled after Dela while she walked to the kitchen, she became aware of somebody’s eyes on her. Turning around in her chair, she saw Vivienne.

“Can I help you?”

Vivienne smiled apologetically, then leaned on her desk. “Shangela. Be careful.”

Shangela blinked. “What?”

“Look, I get that you and Dela have this cute gal pal thing going on, but just…if you don’t want people to talk, then tone it down.”

“Talk? What could they-” Shangela began, but trailed off. Was Vivienne trying to imply that people were thinking that she and Dela were together? Self-conscious, Shangela cast an eye over the office. “Oh, no, that’s really not- there’s nothing going on. I don’t feel…like that. Towards other women.”

Giving her a sympathetic look, Vivienne continued. “What you choose to do in your private life is none of my business, girl, but just…be careful. You work for the Daily Mail. That’s all I’m saying.”

As Vivienne turned back to her work, Shangela stared at her blank computer screen, a small feeling of sickness taking root in her stomach. She didn’t feel that way about girls. And sure, she got excited to see Dela and always looked forward to the time they spent together and felt happy and warm whenever she texted her, but that was just what friendship was, right?

It wasn’t exactly as if Shangela had anything to compare it to.

Pushing down the slight nausea she was feeling, Shangela powered up her monitor and tried her best to eat some of the pastries that were in front of her. She had nothing to hide, and therefore she had nothing to worry about.

That was until her interview with Sharon Needles was over, and everything basically went to shit. It was like the Murphy’s Law of interviews- everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong: Sharon hated the questions and therefore hated her, dropped the f-bomb and walked out before the interview was even finished. Shangela felt as if she’d blown the whole thing, although her journalistic brain was a little excited at the thought of getting to write an article on something so scandalous. She’d told Dela all about it, the intern’s eyes lighting up with the drama of it all.

“I mean. It wasn’t quite what you wanted, but it’ll make good reading, right?” she reasoned, Shangela giving a smug smile. As she thought back to the interview, she turned to Dela again. She thought a little bit before opening her mouth, thinking about what Vivienne had said before.

“Hey, um. Did you know that Sharon Needles was gay?”

Dela looked down at her desk then brushed a bit of dust off her skirt. “No. Did she mention it in her interview?”

“Yeah. It sort of came up when I asked her that question about if she was seeing anyone.”

Dela gave a contemplative hum, then continued typing. Shangela still felt a little weird.

“And that doesn’t…bother you, no?”

Instantly, Dela looked at her with a screwed-up face. “No? It’s her life, it doesn’t affect me. Come on, Shangela, you know me well enough to know I wouldn’t judge somebody like that.”

Shangela silently nodded. So Dela was accepting and fine, and wouldn’t judge anybody for that sort of thing. Why was she thinking so much about this?

“Do you think it’s something I should put in the article?”

Dela furrowed her brow. “I wouldn’t.”

“But she mentioned it in front of me. Surely that means it’s fine to put out there?”

“People are different with that sort of thing,” Dela said quietly. “Besides, it would depend what context you use it in.”

Shangela looked at the article that was already half-finished on her screen. “I’ll maybe just mention it in passing.”

One hour went by. Shangela submitted the article to her senior editor and before long she was called into his office. He looked disgustingly gleeful, rubbing his hands together and giving the occasional little clap.

“Shangie, this is gold, baby. Amazing work. I’ve contacted the news outlets about the audio and they’re all willing to buy it too. The article is almost perfect but I just think we could add in a little bit more about the whole lesbian thing.”

The pride she’d felt at being complimented suddenly faded rapidly away. “What do you want me to add in?”

“Oh, just some sensationalist language, maybe call her leadership skills into question. You know what lesbians are like, they’re always pushing their own agenda.”

Shangela bristled. She didn’t know why she felt so defensive. “I’m not putting that in the article.”

The editor smiled smugly. “I think you’ll find that if you want to keep your job, you will.”

Heat pricked at Shangela’s cheeks as she felt herself go red. Turning to make her way out of her office, he stopped her suddenly.

“Oh! And I have a great title. I want you to use it. It’s Plug that Dyke.”

Shangela began to feel sick. “Isn’t that word pretty offensive to lesbians?”

Another smirk. “And how would you know that?”

Looking to the ground, Shangela just opened the office door and made her way back to her desk, her hands shaking a little. She quietly sat down at her desk, opened up her word doc, and carried on editing the article. By the time she was finished it was late, and people were packing up to go home, including Dela.

“Are you still up for cocktails? You know you owe me one,” she gave Shangela a cheeky smile which normally would have made her stomach flip over. Today it flipped over for all the wrong reasons- looking up at Dela she had this horrible feeling in her stomach as if she’d betrayed her in a way. She forced a smile on her face and shook her head sadly.

“I’m actually not feeling too good at the moment. Can we reschedule?” she asked. It wasn’t really a lie, and she only felt worse when Dela pouted and leant down to give Shangela a hug. Murmuring a goodbye against her hair, Dela grabbed her bag and left the office, leaving Shangela to rot in her own misery.

She was still feeling miserable hours later, at home curled up on her sofa and watching everything unfold on the news. She felt like a terrible person. She’d put her name to all sorts of things that she didn’t believe, but she’d done it before. Why did she feel so terrible this time? Everything from the day gnawed away at her, especially Vivienne’s words. She felt so lost and confused and not in control of anything, and thinking about Dela, which usually made her feel better, suddenly made her feel worse.

What she didn’t expect was for her buzzer to go off and a furious Dela to be standing on her doorstep. Without waiting for an invite from Shangela, she stormed in, standing in the middle of her living room where they’d both been one or twice before for movie nights or dinners.

“What the fuck did you write?” Dela almost whispered, her eyes cold as they pierced into Shangela’s. She, for her part, couldn’t say anything. She looked meekly at the floor and fiddled with a thread on the sweatpants she’d thrown on when she came in from work. Dela snapped her out of it. “Shangela! Why?”

Shangela raised her head slowly to meet Dela’s again. “My editor was telling me to or I’d have been out of a job. I’m sorry, Dela, I had to-”

“Bullshit, you didn’t have to do anything. You didn’t even have to even mention it! Why did you think it was relevant, why the hell did anyone think it was relevant?” Dela hissed, muttering the last part softly in a confused tone as she rubbed the back of her neck. Shangela felt awful.

“I completely fucked up, I know. But I didn’t mean to offend you- I know you said be careful the context you use it in, but…” she trailed off. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Dela frowned at her.

“You were right when you said you had no integrity, you know that?”

Shangela felt like crying. She couldn’t work out why it felt as if she’d betrayed somebody, but moreover she couldn’t really work out why Dela was so upset.

“Why did you come round if you’re so angry at me?” she asked softly, part of her perhaps seeking the validation and comfort that they were still friends. Dela shook her head and gave a twisted smile.

“I wanted to know why. That was all. I wanted to know why someone I thought I knew, someone I thought was my friend, would write such disgusting things!”

Shangela couldn’t hold it in. Frowning at Dela, she narrowed her eyes. “I get that you’re upset, but I don’t get why you’re this upset? I mean, it’s not as if Sharon Needles is one of your closest friends?”

“Oh my God, Shangela, I’m a lesbian!” Dela raised her voice, tearing her hands through her hair immediately afterwards. She couldn’t look at Shangela. There was only one thing going through Shangela’s mind.

Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit

She’d just ruined their friendship, completely ruined anything she had with Dela because of her own stupid lack of backbone. Instinctively Shangela stepped forward, making to open her arms for a hug, but Dela just drew back, throwing her hands up defensively. Her face was one of heartbreak, and if Shangela had a mirror she could have seen that her face was the exact same. The churning in her stomach was only getting worse, her breathing quickening.

“Anyway. Now that I found out why you’re apparently a raging homophobe, I’ll be going,” Dela said in a sort of choked voice, making for the door. Shangela felt helpless. She couldn’t leave, not now, not while there were so many things she was feeling and thinking, not while her mind was such a mess. She suddenly reached her hand out, grabbing Dela by the wrist and only softening her grip a little once she was sure she was staying.

“Dela, please,” she said softly, her insides churning as she looked at Dela’s eyes, still cold. “Please stay. I’m really sorry, okay? There’s been a lot going on in my head today and…I don’t know how to explain it. I’m really confused and I don’t feel…I don’t feel normal.”

She didn’t know if she imagined it, but Dela’s eyes seemed to soften just a little. Her voice stayed cold. “Go on then. Say whatever it is you’ve got to say.”

“I just-” Shangela cut herself off as she looked at the ceiling. How could she articulate to Dela what she was feeling if she didn’t even know herself? “I don’t know what’s going on with me. Vivienne said something to me earlier and since then…it’s all I’ve been able to think about. Like…we’re friends, right?”

Dela looked away from where she’d previously been looking at Shangela. “Fuck, Shangela, I don’t even know any more-”

“Okay, okay, you’ve got every right to feel that way. But before, we were friends, right?”

Dela gave a non-committal shrug.

“But that’s the thing. Sometimes it didn’t feel like friendship. Sometimes it felt like something…” Shangela felt the heat hit her cheeks as she looked away from Dela, things starting to piece themselves together in her mind. “…more than that. And I’m messed up, and I don’t know what’s going on because I have no idea how the fuck I should feel, and I’m just…all the while I was editing that article to put in all the shitty bits, I felt like I was betraying somebody. Maybe it wasn’t you, maybe it was myself. I might not…be straight.”

Deciding that was probably all she needed to say, she looked back at Dela again. Her expression hadn’t changed, and Shangela felt more embarrassed than ever. She couldn’t quite believe that she’d actually said it out loud, the thing she’d been suspecting but had never wanted to entertain. Holding Shangela’s gaze, Dela finally spoke.

“Well you know there’s a definite way to find out, right?” she said, her tone level as she took a single step towards Shangela, slid both her arms around her waist and pulled her closer.

And suddenly Dela was kissing her, and her mind fell silent for the first time that day. Something seemed to click into place, something that immediately made her feel calm, as if nothing else mattered. As Dela tangled her fingers in Shangela’s hair, Shangela brought her arms up around the other girl’s neck, one hand cupping her jaw as she deepened the kiss, completely in awe of how soft Dela’s lips were and how absolutely fucking perfect her mouth felt, how all of this felt.

It was all just…right.

Shangela was the one to break the kiss, only because she was desperate to see Dela smile at her again. Sure enough, she had a sort of intoxicated grin on her face, her eyes glazed over as if she was high.

“Fuck, I’ve wanted to do that for about a month and a half,” she smiled languidly, not yet removing her arms from around Shangela’s waist.

Shangela bit her lip shyly. “So…this means I’m gay, right?”

Dela shrugged. “Well, you could be. Could be bi. Could be pan. But I’m happy to stay with you to help you find out. Especially if it means we can do that again.”

Then she scrunched up her face in disgust. “Sorry. That was really cringey, I’ll never say that again.”

Shangela always prided herself on being the total opposite of shy and yet here she was, redder than a fire extinguisher and completely smitten. Dela said she’d stay with her. It was way too early to say if they were together or not- girlfriends, she supposed- but the thought of getting to try and figure out who she was with Dela helping her sounded pretty fucking amazing.

“So…does this mean I’m forgiven?” she asked softly, looking at the other girl from under her lashes. Dela snorted.

“Only if you promise to grow a damn backbone,” she gave Shangela a little squeeze. Laughing, Shangela pulled her in closer and kissed her again, purely because she could.

This time it was Dela who broke the kiss, taking Shangela by the hand and leading her over to the sofa. “We’ve had a shitty day so we’re getting takeaway and you’re showing me this Game of Thrones you keep going on about.”

Happy, Shangela threw herself on the couch and wrapped herself around the other girl, head resting against her shoulder. She was almost content until she drew her head back and gave Dela a questioning glare. “Who pays for the food if it’s two girls?”

Dela simply burst out laughing and shook her head. “Oh, Shangie. You are such a princess it’s adorable.”

She wasn’t really satisfied with her answer, or her nickname, but cuddling closer to Dela she supposed she was satisfied with everything else that was happening right now.

***

Shangela awoke on the sofa at 6am. Her alarm hadn’t been set until 7.15, but the light from a streetlamp was streaming through the curtains, nearly blinding against the dark October sky. Although her neck hurt from her night on the sofa, she didn’t really mind- Dela was there behind her, her face nuzzled against Shangela’s neck and her body warm despite the thin blanket they’d pulled over themselves doing nothing to protect from the cold. Ordinarily, Shangela would have gone back to sleep, but there was something running through her mind that was preventing her. Dela had been so kind and so forgiving, and Shangela had hurt her badly. She needed to fix things somehow.

Gently sitting up, she reached under the sofa and retrieved her Macbook. Opening it up and screwing up her eyes at the blinding white light from its screen, she mashed the brightness leveller until she could comfortably see. Opening up a blank document, she began to type. It didn’t take her long to finish the article. She fixed the formatting, skipped emailling it to her senior editor, and instead posted it straight to the website. Her stomach felt fluttery, as if she’d just taken a leap into the great unknown- and Shangela supposed she had- but she had Dela and for now, that was the most important thing.

As Shangela closed the laptop, she felt Dela stir on the couch beside her. Her eyes slowly blinked open as she took in her surroundings, at first confused but then remembering where she was.

“Shangie? What are you doing?” she asked, in a voice thick with sleep.

Shangela just gave a smirk and stroked the other girl’s cheek gently before laying down next to her again. “Oh, you know. Just growing a backbone.”

She didn’t see the confused expression over Dela’s face as other girl pulled her closer to her and wrapped her arms around her. Shangela didn’t mind as long as they were both happy.

***

Later that morning, Cabinet Minister Sharon Needles woke up, made herself a coffee, and began to scroll through the day’s headlines. In one bizarre turn of events, it seemed the insufferable journalist who had interviewed her just yesterday had made waves by quitting her job quite spectacularly. The article had been taken down, but every news outlet was reporting on how Shangela Wadely had written a featurette for Femail entitled 25 Things the LGBT Community Should Just Avoid Doing, with every bullet point being quite simply “Don’t read the Daily Mail”. There had been a short, but to the point sentence at the end of it all basically telling her senior editor in so many words where he could stick his job.

Sharon was confused by it all, but not as confused as when she answered the doorbell to a man from Interflora who was holding a huge bunch of flowers with a note sticking out the top of them. Shutting the door and taking the flowers back to the kitchen, she narrowed her eyes as she began to read the note.

Dear Ms. Needles,

Thank you for being such a great ambassador for the LGBT community. I’m sorry it took that disasterous interview and my shitshow of an article for me to realise that.

Regards,

Shangela

She was just getting her head around things when she heard her girlfriend emerging from another room. Sure enough, Alaska made her way into the kitchen wearing a huge t shirt and yesterday’s makeup.

“Noodles, it’s 10am on a Saturday. What are you doing awake?” she drawled, walking over to the minister and hugging her from behind. Sharon looked once again at the note and smiled.

“I think Shangela Wadely might be gay.”

“Okay, you’re still drunk from last night. Come on. Back to bed.”

#ortega #oneshot #maybe we're helping each other escape #intern/journalist au #bendelacreme #rpdr fanfiction #shangela laquifa wadley #dela x shangela #lesbian au #as3

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sugarplum-blossom · 4 years ago

Text

IU x Ellemen Youth November 2020

Translate: by myself from chinese to english. My own ellemen magazine.. i will add photo later..

Become famous when you are young, take your time.....

In the twelve years of her debut, since the age of 15, IU has been watched enthusiastically by people through her adolescence and slowly matured. She made her debut as a singer, was exposed to performances, and tried to be a producer. She accepted and digested every result. She became more and more brave and gentle after maturity, like gardenias in the wind. In September, we completed IU exclusive interview and the first exclusive cover shooting for her in China. When IU was filmed remotely in South Korea, she was able to quickly get into work, even finishing the work 3 hours earlier than expected. The weather is good, and she has a distant and exciting future.

Qualified Idol (Li Zhien = Lee Jieun)

IU has liked listening to music since kindergarten and often followed her father to sing karaoke. But it wasn't until the first grade of middle school was fined to sing in physical education because of her mischief, that made people around her realize her singing talent, and then she was recommended by the teacher to sing at the sports meeting. After a few years, Li Zhien stood in the mature Korean entertainment At the door of the industrial system, ready to step into it. At that time, she was still a middle school student and participated in 20 selections, including the trainee selection held by JYP Entertainment, but all were rejected. In October 2007, she passed the audition of the current agency LOEN Entertainment. The trainee lasted ten months. Later, when I remembered, Li Zhien felt that that period of time was short, hardworking, and full of "uneasy feeling of nothing."

"I was able to debut earlier because I was too young. Even if I failed a few times, I still have time, so let's try."

"So when she was 15 years old, Li Zhien wore a black costume, stood on a cable music program and sang a song "Mia", and made her official debut. The coveted debut stage did not seem to go as smoothly as she had imagined. She rushed to the TV station excitedly , I saw a lot of fans supporting the boy group, but when she started singing, the people underneath began to scold her,

“After someone scolded me like this, I was scolded in all directions.”

And because she chose a lyrical quiet song, She could hear her voice clearly.

"I feel that the three minutes of singing were really long, and I totally lost the feeling of hope."

IU said in a show, "Probably because of the failure of "Mia", even if the audience hasn't reacted since then, It doesn’t matter. So, if there is a little cheering voice, I will be very excited about it.”

In December 2010, Li Zhien released the album "REAL", and the single "Good Days" from this album finally won her many honors and loves have also reversed people’s previous perceptions of her: She won the Melon Music Awards in 2011 for the best song of the year; won the Mnet Asian Music Festival Best Solo Singing Award in 2011; more and more people recognize her , I heard her singing... During the performance this winter, a fan came to give Li Zhien a support. When Zhien sang, she shouted the slogan of support. Li Zhien once again heard the voice from the audience on the stage, and it was completely different from the day of her debut. She sang "How blue the sky is, and the wind is so perfect today" almost to tears. She was not originally an ambitious singer.

"Although it is good to get the first place (in the competition), it doesn’t matter; it’s great to be the best female singer in our country, but it’s not okay."

After that, she became the first goal after being a singer: at least to become a singer who can take care of my fans.

She worked hard to play a qualified idol and gave herself the stage name IU- I for Li Zhien, and U was for the audience who listened to her songs. Participate in more activities, sing more songs, and start acting. Li Zhien often sleeps only four hours because of too many announcements, and because of this job, she has irregular sleep and insomnia. Even ten years later, she felt that she was too pleased at that time. It seemed that no matter good or bad, she would take it as long as it was an event that could show up, "survive anyway." Popularity also accumulates under such circumstances. The three high notes shown in "Good Days" are praised, the young face is cherished, and the title of "National Sister" is closely related to her.

Young Mental Crisis Until the age of 22

Li Zhien encountered a mental crisis. She is filming the TV series "My Uncle" with director Jin Yuanxi, in which she plays the role of Li Zhian. Zhi'an is a small clerk who is heavily indebted and burdened with crimes and lives with her elderly grandmother. Like the lonely and bleak character, Li Zhien herself is in a downturn. One day, Li Zhien found the director and said,

"I'm very sorry, because the TV has not been broadcast yet, I will stop shooting here (probably the best choice). I will compensate for the content I shot before, no matter what method I use."

She fell into a trap. In the doubt about herself, nothingness and fear searched her. At the same time, her physical condition deteriorated and she even needed hospitalization. This was the first time she had to suspend her trip

In the talk show "The Joy of Dialogue", her mood at the time: "In the eyes of the public, it was a very successful year for me. When "Meaning of You" was popular, the cover album of "Flower Bookmark" was released. , I have achieved good results since "Good Day".

But at that time, from the perspective of my spirit, it was the worst year. The reason is still not clear. From the debut stage, I was on the stage I’ve never been nervous before, but at that time I started to be afraid of the stage. When I was recording a show, I was also scared when I watched the camera. As long as I was watched, my face would turn red and sweat, and I couldn’t sing on the stage... All the things I experienced suddenly disappeared. Can I really do this? How did I do it before? These thoughts surfaced, I was too nervous, and even tried to take a neuroleptic after going on stage When performing. Because I started (being an artist) when I was very young, people always said *younger, good job', but the age will grow slowly, so in the future, if you think of'younger' If this part is removed, can I still get the "good job" evaluation? It's really deep.

Thought about this problem carefully. But the smoother the business, the more I feel uneasy. I feel that bubbles have been created. If all these bubbles burst at a certain moment, when I condensed all these things, I am afraid that I only have this little bit. , In that year, I was really afraid of being like that. For me, I felt "too beautiful to be packaged?" In this case, "How many crimes I will redeem in the future."

Li Zhien of that year performed very well. She covered classic songs such as "Meaning of you", which was included in the album "Flower Bookmarks". Among them, "My Old story" Reached "Perfect All-kill" within days (six real-time charts, six daily charts, ichart real-time charts, and ichart weekly charts). The single "Zhaoge Cave" was released with good results, GENIE The real-time list broke seven times in a row, and the Melon real-time list broke four times in a row. However, popularity and praise turned into pressure, making her almost impossible to move. In 2014, Li Zhien even withdrew from some programs that were originally a regular host, such as "SBS Popular Songs".

Reveal the nature me

In order to overcome these emotions, she made up her mind to make songs by herself.

"Rather than live decently and uneasy, it is better to be pitiful but peaceful."

At the age of 22, she released her first album "Chat- Shire", which she had produced herself. She became Alice, in seven songs composed of seven songs. Shuttle through a story. It’s also because she was misunderstood by others on this album, and she confronted these malice in a restrained and empathetic way:

I don’t want to make the conclusion that “this is right, this is a misunderstanding” on the interpretation of the song, I feel that my freedom is very important. If you want to protect it, you should also protect the freedom of interpretation by others. I still like this song just like before the album came out.

At the age of 24, "Palette" was born. Now, looking back after three years, IU still thinks "Palette" is precious.

"Maybe if I choose a very thankful album in a long time, I will also choose "Palette". This album makes me more like myself and makes me understand myself better. It is a way of realizing the most natural self. The album revealed without any extra decorations and hidden purchases.”

The process of creation and production is not easy, but because I can express what I want to express, I still feel happy without regretting singing,

"It’s like sitting on an amusement ride. same". singer Lee Hyori said, if you want to know IU's true age, just listen to her songs. Li Zhien has the habit of keeping a diary, sometimes in the diary.Some part of it will become lyrics. She values the expression of the lyrics. If it conflicts with the melody, then change the melody. Each capital in "Palette" is like a piece of Li Zhien's body, reflecting a certain part of her.

In the title song "Palette" Li Zhien sang: Now I seem to understand myself a little bit. Compared with long hair, I like neatly cut short hair, but when I say "Good Days", it is really beautiful. Because she often suffers from insomnia, she thinks that the best care for a person is to let the other person have a good sleep time, so there is "Night Letter": I have been in the sea, written on the beach, you It seemed to disappear completely into the distance, making me miss it more and more. Although I can't tell you all the words in my diary, the phrase "I love you". I will show the fireflies of that day to your window this night, hoping it will be a good dream. And "people" has also become the theme of this album, not only the narration of personal stories, but also "surrounding the people around us, as an ordinary person can say". "We will all have a lot of labels. We are women and entertainers, not focusing on a certain aspect, but as a person, not based on my profession or my gender, but just want to tell what I think and experience as a person. ."

IU once said in an interview. In that interview, the host met Li Zhien for the second time. After six years, he said: (the first interview) I didn’t directly tell IU how I felt, but I didn’t think I knew IU at the time. Is it because I didn't sleep well, I felt a sense of liveliness that I wanted to conceal my exhaustion. So what should I say at the time, I felt a little distressed after it was over. But compared to that time, it has really changed a lot now.

The career of an entertainer means the glamour in front of people, and it also means the other side of cruelty. A few years ago, the news of the death of young Korean artists always made people sigh. In 2018, the "32nd Golden Record Awards" was held in Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province. Li Ji-eun won the award in the music department.

She said thanks, luck, and sadness. "In fact, it is still very sad now. Why is it so painful? I seem to understand some. It is not a strange emotion to me. In addition to me, there are many people who are sad for this. But we all have to run for tomorrow and live a month from now. Distressed, we must prepare a plan for a whole year in advance.

Standing on the podium, facing so many artists and fans, Li Zhien continued:

"Laugh when you are happy, cry when you are sad, these are all natural things, so I hope everyone can accept them naturally. Although professionalism is very important, as a person, we must first face ourselves, face our own hearts, and hope that there will be no more painful things because we endure it alone. It would really be nice not to happen again.

"These words are like those of her songs. They convey a clear voice of self in a gentle tone, as well as gentleness and strength. Li Zhien is still moving forward. 2017 is better than the year when "Good Days" was released. In a year that made her even more happy, her self-produced album was loved by everyone. She participated in the variety show "Hyo Lee's Homestay". During the two weeks in Jeju Island, she often wore loose sweaters, stared in a daze, or read a book with chocolate .It was quiet in front of strangers, and always took time when doing things. Lee Hyori joked that she looked gloomy. In fact, those few days were rare times for her to sleep well, relaxed and happy.

In the music part, each song is filled with her unique emotions. Rather than using music as a product, she hopes to return to the music itself.

“Although I’m not sure whether all the works have a high degree of completion, there is one thing. I can confidently say that no piece of music is compromised because of trends. In any case, fans know me better than others, so I feel that kind of sincere words in music, regardless of style (subject), everyone will Accept that this is'IU brand' music.

When she couldn't go out because of the epidemic this year, she wrote songs, deleted songs, watched scripts, and watched TV every day. If you ask Li Zhien what her ideal life is like, she will respond like this:

"Because I am in a profession where people's reactions or comments to my actions are taken for granted, I often look at other people's colors when I was young. But from the age of 25 Realizing that “I’m me” is more important than “I am in the eyes of the public”. Many fans feel that being “I’m me” is more comfortable and more attractive than they think. This makes me very moved and surprised. I think The ideal life is to have a loyal life every day. The homework of this life is "I", I just want to be loyal to this."

#iu #ellemen #iuellemen #iumagazine #iuellemenyouth #iuinterview #ellemensubsenglish

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