#Rebel Legion Mexican Base

[thecaffeinebookwarrior]

Monster of the Week: The Undead!

From spooky scary skeletons to the original zombies, let’s have a look at the undead who have risen around the globe! This will not include vampires (which I have already compiled a post on) or ghosts (which I plan to compile a post on.)

Note that many of these can best be understood -- or only understood -- in their original cultural context, and I encourage you to continue your research if the lore interests you.

Skeletons/Skeletal Creatures

I am, for whatever reason, enthusiastic about skeletons. There’s a drama to them. They look like they’re perpetually grinning, or grimacing, which makes them oddly relatable. As an artist, I���m always thinking about them as the framework for poses. 

More importantly, there’s one in all of us -- sorry if that made you uncomfortable -- which makes them a universally recurring being in global folklore. Let’s take a look at just a few.

Gashadokuro

Literally translating to “rattling skull,” the Gashadokuro is also called Odokoru (giant skull) or simply “the hungry skeleton.” That basically tells you all you need to know. 

These big boys (and I mean REALLY big) wander around the countryside at night. Their name derives from the eerie rattling noise produced by their giant skulls. As chill as this may sound, the Gashadokuro is not actually chill at all, and if you come across them they will not hesitate bite your head off. This may seem like a jerk move, since they don’t even have a stomach, but they need the energy of the living in order to sustain themselves.

Like most undead fellas on this list, the Gashadokuro has its origins in the real world. They are thought to originate from the mass-graves, usually of those who died under violent or inhumane circumstances, the supernatural byproduct of countless skeletons. 

The first Gashadokuro was thought to have originated after a specific bloody rebellion, in which the bereaved, sorceress daughter of a samurai summoned a giant skeleton from the mass grave of the rebelling soldiers and used it to attack the city. Queen behavior, if you ask me.

Santa Muerte

Image Source

Let’s conclude this portion with my favorite skeleton (excluding Baron Samedi, who doesn’t count, as he is often depicted as a man, or a man with a skull-like face), the goddess/folk saint Santa Muerte.  

I still have a lot to learn about the rich folklore surrounding Santa Muerte, but to my understanding, she was born of a combination of pre-Columbian Indigenous religions and Mexican-American folk Catholicism. 

Depicted as a skeleton in beautiful, feminine attire and considered to be embodiment of death, Santa Muerte is a healing and protective figure. She is beloved by legions of worshippers, despite condemnations from the Catholic church, and symbolizes a culturally positive relationship with death. 

Despite appearances, she is a life-affirming figure.

Zombies and Reanimated Corpses:

The Draugr

When we hear “zombie,” we don’t traditionally think of “Norse mythology.” And yet, the Nordics had their very own zombie mythos, boasting some truly terrifying undead.

It is said that they first emerge from their graves as little more than wisps of smoke and a stench of decay, before adopting a humanoid form that boasts superhuman strength, the ability to change size at will, and the ability to shape-shift. 

They aren’t mindless -- far from it. They boast an anthropomorphic intelligence, which makes them all the more dangerous.  

As to what drives them from their graves? Jealousy and bitterness towards the living. Relatable, honestly. 

The Jiangshi

(Note: I wish they were all as adorable as the one in this gif.)

This Chinese hopping corpse may have evolved into more of a vampire by Western influences, but it was originally far more zombie-like. And a unique zombie at that. 

Due to rigor mortis, the Jiangshi hops stiffly from place to place, holding its arms straight out. What’s even more singular is their origin. Try to guess. Go ahead, try. You won’t be able to.

The Jiangshi is what occurs when a bereaved family, lacking the proper funds to send their loved one’s body back to their ancestral land for burial, hires a necromancing corpse driver to reanimate the cadaver and guide it as it hops back to its resting place. They’d travel at night to avoid or minimize decay, either prodded by a stick or to the beat of a drum.

Other ways to create a Jiangshi include improper burial, suicide, or possession.

Looking upon a Jiangshi is said to be bad luck, and presumably very unpleasant. However, the real problem is their insatiable appetite. 

But fear not: if you see an unhealthy looking fellow hopping towards you with pasty, possibly decaying skin, you can protect yourself with mirrors, the hooves of a black donkey, or the wood of a peach tree. They can also be scared off by the sound of a crowing rooster, though that would require a bit of planning, and the cooperation of the rooster in question. Which, knowing roosters, is unlikely. 

Haitian Zombies

All legends of the undead have roots in real tragedies, but this one is particularly upsetting -- and the source of the zombie legend in the Western world today.

The enslaved people of Haiti believed that death would set them free, sending them back to an idyllic version of their homeland unburdened by colonialism. But only if death came naturally. Suicide would turn them into mindless husks, carrying out the drudgery of their captors. A haunting parallel to the practice of slavery itself. 

The concept was introduced to a contemporary audience by the 1932 film White Zombie, which sees a white “voodoo master” (who clearly didn’t know anything about the actual Voodoo religion) using witchcraft to create obedient slaves. He eventually uses this (ahem) “”voodoo”” on a white woman to try and force her to fall in love with him. 

With the term “zombie” in public consciousness, it became an applicable allegory for all of society’s ills, and can now be used to refer to anything from mob mentality to consumerism. But few are as haunting and as disturbing as its origins.

Videos on zombies: 

The Origin of the Zombie, from Haiti to the US

Where Zombies Come From

100 Hundred Years of Zombie Evolution in Pop Culture

Best Contemporary Zombie Movies*

*That I know of. Will update with more.

Night of the Living Dead - Though White Zombie introduced the term, it was arguably this film that popularized zombies as we know them today, particularly as an allegory for herd mentality and consumerism. Its successors, including Day of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead, prove similarly influential. 

The Evil Dead Trilogy - Established that zombies can be fun, while also serving as an allegory for various societal problems. Also features undead that are refreshingly ravenous and evil without necessarily being mindless.

The Re-Animator - These days, the average zombie movie pushes the bounds of creativity is “make ‘em faster!” The Re-Animator’s take on the genre, however, would make Mary Shelley proud. Based loosely on the Lovecraft story, “Herbert West - Reanimator,” the films greatest triumph is its ability to have fun with its grisly premise, and compel the audience to have fun, too. It’s also a cautionary tale about why it’s important to be careful while getting a roommate. 

Shaun of the Dead - I’m not kidding. This film is great, and shows that you don’t need a serious tone to be heartfelt, scary, or provide a thought-provoking social commentary. Way back when I was a sixteen-year-old college freshman, I turned up to class as a zombie cheerleader, and my psychology professor recommended Shaun of the Dead to me. She’s a woman of impeccable taste, and it did not disappoint. 

28 Days Later - Before Cillian Murphy gave us Tommy Shelby, a gangster so pretty he could give Al Capone a sexual identity crisis, he was proving his mettle in the zombie-addled UK. For 2020 reasons, watching him wander the abandoned streets of London with a questionable haircut feels very topical. Add a stellar performance from Naomie Harris, and there’s a reason it sent me into a bisexual panic it’s considered a modern classic of the genre. 

Little Monsters - An egregiously underrated flick, featuring a kindergarten teacher (who happens to be, you know, Lupita Nyong’o) protecting her class during a zombie outbreak. A must watch if you want a zombie movie with a powerhouse lead, a happy ending, and perhaps the most badass kindergarten teacher in cinematic history. 

[kakashibestie]

*joins the mexican base of the rebel legion just for funsies*

[shanahazuki]

A quienes conoceremos en la Unboxing Toy Convention

@UnboxingToyCon del 4 al 6 de agosto en el @wtc_mexico conoce a los invitados. #shanafilms

Anteriormente en ShanaFilms te hablamos de que era la Unboxing Toy Convention que se lleva a cabo del 4 al 6 de agosto en el World Trade Center de la Ciudad de México y hoy te presentamos a los invitados de éste gran evento.

Si asistes podrás conocer a Jim Swearingen, diseñador de conceptos de la colección original de juguetes de Star Wars y responsable de la creación de The Six Million Dollar Man

[hexenbomb]

Deadlands Session 9/19/17

HOLY FUCKING SHIT YOU GUYS

THIS SESSION WAS FUCKING CRAZY

Okay to start, this wasn’t an adventure written by our Marshal. This was a legit official Deadlands adventure. Warning: Long AF post cause damn this session was a doozy

This is Part 1 of 2?- Knights Without Armor

Basically the setting was after Romano had lost most of his arm a while ago maybe a few weeks in game. Gretchen was checking in on him in between staying her lab/workshop and going to New Mexico once to check on the Ghost Rock mine (where the Twilight Legion’s deal with the Native Americans there gives her a decent supply of ghost rock).

Lord Benedict, the benefactor of the chapter of the Grand Island Twilight Legion that we stay in and call our headquarters called us in to the main room for a meeting.

He told us of an ad looking for some hired guns. The one who placed the ad wanted to recover some lost property of his and that was all that was said. Our posse agreed to travel to southern Arizona to take up the job and investigate any possible weirdness.

We get to the town and find our way to the ranch.

Some of the men on ranch gives us shit and Gretchen, being a bit on edge due her paranoia and not liking this one particular guy talking shit about her accent as she had said “Guten tag!” as a greeting, just stares him down until he backs off. (I rolled for an intimidation check).

We enter the ranch house, talk to the man who at his request has a Frenchman named Lance come with us. Lance tells us that he believes that a family heirloom of his is in the Mexican town we are heading to. But that he will assist us if needed. We are given the assignment of rescuing a darker skinned woman by the name of Rosalina(?) who had been kidnapped from this estate. It’s a 30 mile ride by horseback to the border town of Mexico and as we ride we start seeing weird mirages and the air feels way to hot for a desert. We realize we are in an area with a Fear Level of 4. It gets dark we stop for the night.

Gretchen doesn’t go to sleep cause of her erratic sleeping schedule and Steve Lux, half-Sioux huckster, stays up with to keep watch while the others sleep. But during the night, things get weird. (Steve and Gretchen are told to roll for Notice). Both Steve and Gretchen both notice the sound of an eerie whinny, spooking all our horses into running away. About 60 feet from the edge of our makeshift campsite, a pitch black demonic looking horse rears up and whinnies again.

(We are told to roll a Guts check at -8, -4 for the Fear Level and -4 for the creature itself. Both Steve and Gretchen fail horribly). Steve faints due his heart nearly stopping and Gretchen is shaken out of fear. She cannot move at all. All she can do is scream to alert the camp. Everyone wakes up and can’t do anything to the horse as it just runs off after we take a few pot shots at the thing. Later on when day breaks, we make our way to the border town after retrieving our horses. We stay for the night and immediately leave in the morning, not wanting to stay any longer than necessary.

We get into Mexico and hang out in the local cantina with Steve outside watching just in case. Gretchen is sitting at the bar, watching her posse but also closely watch this group of French Legionnaires that came into the bar as Doc Johnson talks to them. They all look super tired and mention that their Major has been more “tyrannical” in his operating of the base.

Later on that night we make camp near this barn since there isn’t really a motel or anything like that.

Night goes relatively quiet until we are all woken up by loud commanding French. Lance translates and says that they were told to arrest our group on the suspicion that we are rebels. (There was an unrelated thing going on between rebels and the Legionnaires). Romano steps up and says that we aren’t here to cause trouble. The Frenchman he is talking to just insultingly flicks Romano’s royal crest on his breastplate. That irritates Romano and Gretchen just watches, paranoid, having been rudely woken up. Having only her pistol in her holster as she she doesn’t go to sleep in a new place with something on her while she sleeps.

Romano reaches into his bag and gently unfolds an official letter from the Queen of Spain. (He was a former Spanish count who fought in the Third Carlist War). The man just grabs it and tosses it towards a pile of manure.

Romano instantly draws his sword, enraged at the blatant insult. Gretchen draws her pistol, pointing it at the man and taking a shot at him. She took Romano drawing his sword as the okay to attack. She barely clips him. After the fight, they tie up all the men, surprisingly not killed any of them.

Gretchen slowly walks over the the letter, gently dusting it off and looking it over. She notices the legitimacy of the letter, the feminine handwriting, a royal seal as she holds it out the Spaniard. He gives a small nod of gratitude, dusting it off a little more then folding it up with care and putting it back into his belongings. The letter and his family crest the only things tying him to his past, his family that was killed in the war, to the Spanish Royal Crown.

We decide to take the men’s uniforms and disguise ourselves to infiltrate the base as we knew some fuckery was happening in there now as we almost got arrested at the orders of the Major for no reason. Gretchen was forced to leave behind her weapons and goggles, only allowed to take her pistol and the rifle of one of the Legionnaires. She tucks her hair as best she can into the hat and her posse tells her not to talk as her German accent could cause problems.

But we had made some noise in the confrontation and a priest of Mexican descent had overheard and came to investigate. Steve noticed an aura of magic around this man and after a few questions learned that the priest was a Blessed (a divine blessed type of character than can perform miracles but only through prayer).

Steve knew what some Blessed were capable of and asked if there was any possibility of Romano getting healed. To which the priest confirmed but only on the condition that Romano came with him alone. This didn’t sit right with either Doc Johnson or Gretchen so they attempted to follow but lost the trail.

About 15 minutes of walking around the small town towards the church, we noticed the priest walking down the road towards our group. But he is not alone.

There is another man, looking so familiar yet different. He appeared as though he had regressed in age to look about 26.

Gretchen stopped and it takes a moment to register.

This was Romano.

Whatever the man did to heal her compatriot had made him whole again. No missing left eye, no limp, no missing left arm. All had been healed.

(And also had gotten rid of all his phobias and hindrances)

Gretchen is so overcome with shock and joy at seeing Romano full healed that she breaks from the group and runs down the street towards him. When she get to him her first action is to grab the Spaniard by the head, looking him over frantically and asking a million questions as to how this was possible. But Romano stays tight lipped about the circumstances of what happened in order for him to be healed.

Using Steve Lux as our “captive”, the posse and Lance, posing at as the Sargent of the company that we tied up in the barn start heading up to the base.

We are let into the base, Lance acting as our Sargent due him being the only one able to speak French. Steve detects evil black magic coming from the Major and when he sees the Major’s back turned, instantly blasts him in the back, killing him. He turns invisible and books it out of the open gates of the base.

Lance takes charge and barks (fake) orders in French telling people to search for whoever did that (as Steve instantly turned invisible and ran). The rest of posse investigates the base during the confusion and finds a room with a five pointed star with candles burning, a darker-skinned woman in a chair looking very stressed.

Gretchen smashes the candles with heel of her boot, Romano scuffing up the symbol on the ground with his sword. Her and Doc Johnson tinker with cuffs that were keeping this woman’s hands chained to the wall and break her free. We ask for her name and she confirms it as Rosalina(?).

In rescuing Rosalina(?), she had told us of the Red Devil. An Apache man who had been using black magic to control the major. And also that she herself was a Hoodooist. She was unsure of why she had been kidnapped so there wasn’t much we had to go on there.

We quickly leave the fort and Lance immediately wants to go to the church, as he believes that the artifact, his ‘family heirloom’ is there. But Romano adamantly disagrees with that idea, saying we should find a safe place to talk to this woman. However Lance is insistent in going to to church and had been very secretive over any information regarding what the artifact he was looking for was. Romano attempted to question him to no avail. Lance angrily accused Romano about knowing what the artifact was and not telling anyone.

However, Gretchen still very on edge and emotional from earlier events, snapped. She was done with this bastard.

The insane German woman shouted in anger, stomped up the man, fury in her eyes. She grabbed him by his jacket, yanking him close to her face, blue eyes wide in anger and demanded answers.

“I am fucking tired of zis secret-keeping of yours! Now you tell us vhat the hell zis family heirloom you are looking for is! Vhat does it look like?!”

Her shouting and sudden snapping scared Lance so badly that when Gretchen lets go of him he stumbles a few steps back. He straightened himself up and mumbles something about the artifact being a cup.

Romano’s instantly draws his sword and points it at Lance, refusing to let him get anywhere near the church. In response, Lance also draws his own sword. demanding a duel.

If Romano wins, Lance is going to be kept on a very very short leash. Not allowed to do anything without posse members watching him.

If Lance wins, he gets to go to the church without any problems.

The rest of the posse stood off to the sides, anxious and unsure. Especially Gretchen who had a hand resting on her pistol and staring at Lance in anger.

There was a tense stand off, swords both pointed at each other in dueling positions. But in a quick few swings, despite being evenly matched in skill, Romano had Lance laid out on the ground with some nonlethal but still pretty nasty gashes on his arms and chest.

It was then Romano realized that Vehementi, his sword, was vibrating. The faint sound of Ave Maria buzzing in his ears.

Vehementi only acted this way around undead or Harrowed.

Lance was undead.

During the duel, Steve had gone to the church and now was walking with him to where the posse was.

“I kept my word.” said Romano to the priest as he sheathed his sword.

Romano angrily reiterated that Lance was now under an even tighter leash, considering that he was undead. Gretchen took this metaphor literally and asked Romano if he wanted her to make an actual leash. He shook his head but thought it was amusing.

Keeping a close eye on Lance, everyone met up at the church. After closing the doors, the posse tied up Lance and locked him a nearby room.

Finally having some privacy, the priest took the time to explain what had happened to Romano.

The priest had had an experience a long while ago, about being some ancient catacombs. He was unsure if it was real or just a dream, But in that experience he had found a smooth clay cup. And when he woke up, he had it in his possession.

It was the Holy Grail.

That was the artifact that Lance had been after.

The fact that such a powerful item was here made sense as to how Romano can gotten healed.

It was a true divine miracle.

-TO BE CONTINUED-

[selenatorsphilippines]

Selena Gomez on Instagram Fatigue, Good Mental Health, and Stepping Back From the Limelight

On an unusually wet and windy evening in Los Angeles, Selena Gomez shows up at my door with a heavy bag of groceries. We’ve decided that tonight’s dinner will be a sort of tribute to the after-church Sunday barbecues she remembers from her Texan childhood. I already have chicken simmering in green salsa, poblano peppers blackening on the flames of the stove, and red cabbage wilting in a puddle of lime juice. All we need are Gomez’s famous cheesy potatoes—so bad they’re good, she promises. She sets down her Givenchy purse and brings up, in gaudy succession, a frozen package of Giant Eagle Potatoes O’Brien, a can of Campbell’s Cream of Chicken soup, a bag of shredded “Mexican cheese,” and a squat plastic canister of French’s Crispy Fried Onions.

“I bet you didn’t think we were going to get this real,” she says, and when I tell her that real isn’t the first word that springs to mind when faced with these ingredients, she responds with the booming battle-ax laugh that offers a foretaste of Gomez’s many enchanting incongruities.

But real is precisely what I was expecting from the 24-year-old Selena, just as her 110 million Instagram followers (Selenators, as they’re known) have come to expect it. Of course, celebrity’s old codes are long gone, MGM’s untouchable eggshell glamour having given way to the “They’re Just Like Us!” era of documented trips to the gas station and cellulite captured by telephoto lenses. But Gomez and her ilk have gone further still, using their smartphones to generate a stardom that seems to say not merely “I’m just like you” but “I am you.”

“People so badly wanted me to be authentic,” she says, laying a tortilla in sizzling oil, “and when that happened, finally, it was a huge release. I’m not different from what I put out there. I’ve been very vulnerable with my fans, and sometimes I say things I shouldn’t. But I have to be honest with them. I feel that’s a huge part of why I’m where I am.” Gomez traces her shift toward the unfiltered back to a song she released in 2014 called “The Heart Wants What It Wants,” a ballad about loving a guy she knows is bad news. The title derives from a letter written by Emily Dickinson, though Woody Allen reintroduced the phrase when he used it to describe his relationship with Soon-Yi Previn. We can assume that Gomez is referring here to Justin Bieber, with whom she ended a three-year relationship at around the time the song debuted.

If you are over 30 and find yourself somewhat mystified by Gomez’s fame, unable to attach it to any art object—apart from several inescapable pop songs and a cameo in The Big Short in which, as herself, she explains synthetic collateralized debt obligations—then you might wish to watch the video for “The Heart Wants What It Wants.” (You will be late to the party; it received more than nine million views in the first 24 hours following its release.) Before the music begins, we hear Gomez’s voice as if from a recorded psychotherapy session, ruminating over a betrayal. “Feeling so confident, feeling so great about myself,” she says, her voice breaking, “and then it’d just be completely shattered by one thing. By something so stupid.” Sobs. “But then you make me feel crazy. You make me feel like it’s my fault.” Is this acting? Is it a HIPAA violation? Either way, there is magic in the way it makes you feel as if you’ve just shared in her suffering. Pay dirt for a Selenator.

Gomez queues up a playlist���Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers—and back in the kitchen, there is a chile relleno casserole to assemble, green enchiladas to roll, and her cheesy potatoes to mix together. As I slip an apron over her mane of chocolate-brown hair, for which Pantene has paid her millions, and tie it around her tiny waist, I wonder whether her legions have felt for years the same sharp pang of protectiveness that I’m feeling at present. Even as she projects strength and self-assuredness, Gomez is not stingy with frailty. “I’ve cried onstage more times than I can count, and I’m not a cute crier,” she says. Last summer, after the North American and Asian legs of her “Revival” tour, with more than 30 concerts remaining, she abruptly shut things down and checked into a psychiatric facility in Tennessee. (This was the second time Gomez had canceled a tour to enter into treatment; in January 2014, shortly after being diagnosed with lupus, she spent two weeks at the Meadows, the Arizona center that has welcomed Tiger Woods, Rush Limbaugh, and Kate Moss.) The cause, she says, was not an addiction or an eating disorder or burnout, exactly.

“Tours are a really lonely place for me,” she explains. “My self-esteem was shot. I was depressed, anxious. I started to have panic attacks right before getting onstage, or right after leaving the stage. Basically I felt I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t capable. I felt I wasn’t giving my fans anything, and they could see it—which, I think, was a complete distortion. I was so used to performing for kids. At concerts I used to make the entire crowd raise up their pinkies and make a pinky promise never to allow anybody to make them feel that they weren’t good enough. Suddenly I have kids smoking and drinking at my shows, people in their 20s, 30s, and I’m looking into their eyes, and I don’t know what to say. I couldn’t say, ‘Everybody, let’s pinky-promise that you’re beautiful!’ It doesn’t work that way, and I know it because I’m dealing with the same shit they’re dealing with. What I wanted to say is that life is so stressful, and I get the desire to just escape it. But I wasn’t figuring my own stuff out, so I felt I had no wisdom to share. And so maybe I thought everybody out there was thinking, This is a waste of time.”

On August 15, Gomez uploaded a photo of almost baroque drama: her body collapsed on the stage, bathed in beatific light. Whether this was agony or ecstasy, it drew more than a million comments from fans (who have handles like “selena_is_my_life_forever”). It would be her last Instagram post for more than three months. She flew to Tennessee, surrendered her cell phone, and joined a handful of other young women in a program that included individual therapy, group therapy, even equine therapy. “You have no idea how incredible it felt to just be with six girls,” she says, “real people who couldn’t give two shits about who I was, who were fighting for their lives. It was one of the hardest things I’ve done, but it was the best thing I’ve done.” She stayed for 90 days, making her first post-treatment appearance last November at the American Music Awards, where she collected the trophy for Favorite Pop/Rock Female Artist and gave a tearful speech about her struggles; it quickly went viral.

In the tearoom at the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel, little girls in pinafores and pink high-tops sit on heavily tasseled sofas and drink sparkling apple juice out of champagne flutes. One by one they approach our table, shyness replaced by rapturous giggles as Gomez praises their pretty dresses and invites them to sit with her for a picture. Her seemingly infinite patience with these intrusions is something between a habit and a principle. “Somebody I used to hang out with would always get very frustrated with me,” she says, presumably referring to Bieber, whose name she will not utter. “But I have a hard time saying no to children.”

Donna Gigliotti, who produced The Fundamentals of Caring, a 2016 drama in which Gomez plays the love interest of a boy with muscular dystrophy, recalls the throngs of children ready to engulf her outside the set even in rural Georgia. “They love her because she is so generous and so authentic,” Gigliotti says. “I admit that I didn’t quite understand her huge fan base at first. Now I see her as a sort of third-generation feminist. She’s adorable and flirty and funny, but she’s also kind of kick-ass. I think her young fans go wild for that combination.”

“There’s a vulnerability about Selena,” says Paul Rudd, her costar in The Fundamentals of Caring. “She’s never trying to sell herself or impress anyone. She doesn’t put on airs, and she was a good sport about really long days in sometimes uncomfortable conditions. You’d never know she was so famous by the way she behaved, which, I think, is a huge key to her appeal.”

Doll-like and startled in pictures but almost breathtakingly at ease in person, Gomez was once described by her good friend Taylor Swiftas “both 40 years old and seven years old.” She grew up in Grand Prairie, Texas, raised by a single mother who was sixteen when she was born. Gomez remembers being asked to feel between the cushions in the car for change so that they could buy Styrofoam cups of ramen. But at age seven, after a few years on the pageant circuit, she landed a role on the children’s show Barney & Friends, which shot in Dallas and recruited talent locally. By twelve she was one of Disney’s young players, plucked out of thousands of hopefuls. At thirteen she moved to Los Angeles with her mother and stepfather, and the following year Disney gave her the lead in Wizards of Waverly Place, a sitcom about a family of wizards who own a downtown Manhattan restaurant. The show was a hit, and Disney did what Disney does, fanning Gomez’s talent across music and movies, with her mother, Mandy Teefey, continuing to act as her manager. (Gomez hired a Hollywood management firm in 2014, after her first mental-health crisis, but she continues to develop projects with her mother and prizes her opinion above all others.) “I worked with Disney for four years,” Gomez says. “It’s a very controlled machine. They know what they represent, and there was, 100 percent, a way to go about things.”

No child star enjoys easy passage through the morass of adolescence, and Gomez struggled to shed her blandly perky Wizards persona. “For a guy there’s a way to rebel that can work for you,” she believes. “But for a woman, that can backfire. It’s hard not to be a cliché, the child star gone wrong. I did respect my fans and what I had, but I was also figuring out what I was passionate about and how far I was willing to go.” The first thing she did post-Disney was Harmony Korine’s darkly lurid Spring Breakers, a 2013 film about four college girls on a rampage of sex, drugs, and murder. (Gomez played Faith, the one who can’t quite stomach it all and heads back early.) “My mom wanted me to work with a director who would really push me,” she recalls. “I watched Kids, Trash Humpers, Gummo, and I was like, Mom, are you crazy? But it was fun to imagine how you might behave if you were set free of whatever was holding you captive. I’m a late bloomer. I grew up around adults, but in terms of getting out, having friends—at times I really didn’t know anything but my job.”

In retrospect, Gomez’s childhood successes were always tinged with sadness. “My mom gave up her whole life for me,” she explains. “Where we’re from, you don’t really leave. So when I started gaining all this success, there was a guilt that came with it. I thought, Do I deserve this?” Though she has been in several other films since Spring Breakers, Gomez has enjoyed greater success as a musician. And yet the musician’s life exhausts her. On film sets she is buffered by the ensemble and can retreat into her character, but in a concert, all eyes fix upon her. “It’s weird,” she says, “to get up onstage and have everybody know where you were last night.”

With the tour and treatment behind her, lately Gomez is feeling unusually relaxed. The Netflix miniseries 13 Reasons Why, which she executive-produced, airs this month, and it addresses several issues dear to her, among them teen suicide and the pressures of social media. Eight years ago, Gomez and her mother reached out to Jay Asher, who wrote the novel from which the series has been adapted. Its title refers to the thirteen reasons why its protagonist, Hannah Baker, chose to take her life. “I didn’t know much about Selena back then,” Asher remembers. “I think I watched Princess Protection Program to prepare. She explained to me how deeply she connected to the book, which is really about how there’s no way to know what people deal with. In that very first meeting we talked about Twitter, and I remember her telling me that there’s this idea that celebrities aren’t supposed to notice or care about what’s being said about them. But she can’t help but care.”

Gomez has also been in the recording studio off and on, and in February she released “It Ain’t Me,” a song cut last November, produced by the Norwegian DJ Kygo. It’s both a dance-floor anthem and a polemic against dependency and enmeshment. (“Who’s gonna walk you through the dark side of the morning?” she sings. “It ain’t me.” A few years back, it might well have been Gomez.) She is collaborating with Coach on a line of accessories, out this fall, and Stuart Vevers, the house’s creative director, recently met with her in Los Angeles for a bit of brainstorming. “There’s a very warm and inclusive way that Selena has with her fans,” Vevers says. “That’s the nature of her power. What fashion house wouldn’t want to tap into that?”

There are no movies in the works and no time pressure from her record label. “For a change,” she says, “it feels like I don’t have to be holding my breath and waiting for somebody to judge a piece of work that I’m doing. I’m not eager to chase a moment. I don’t think there’s a moment for me to chase.” Gomez currently lives in an Airbnb in the Valley and honestly doesn’t get out much, except for long drives with her girlfriends: a realtor, a techie, some folks from church. “I think seventeen people have my phone number right now,” she says. “Maybe two are famous.” She is taking Spanish, which she spoke fluently as a little girl but lost, in the hope of recording some Spanish-language music in the future. She sees her shrink five days a week and has become a passionate advocate of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, a technique developed to treat borderline personality disorder that is now used more broadly, with its emphasis on improving communication, regulating emotions, and incorporating mindfulness practices. “DBT has completely changed my life,” she says. “I wish more people would talk about therapy. We girls, we’re taught to be almost too resilient, to be strong and sexy and cool and laid-back, the girl who’s down. We also need to feel allowed to fall apart.”

She has hardly been posting on Instagram. In fact, the app is no longer on her phone, and she doesn’t even have the password to her own account. (It’s now in the possession of her assistant.) She sometimes fantasizes about disappearing from social media altogether. “As soon as I became the most followed person on Instagram, I sort of freaked out,” Gomez says. “It had become so consuming to me. It’s what I woke up to and went to sleep to. I was an addict, and it felt like I was seeing things I didn’t want to see, like it was putting things in my head that I didn’t want to care about. I always end up feeling like shit when I look at Instagram. Which is why I’m kind of under the radar, ghosting it a bit.”

Well, not entirely under the radar. A few days after we met, Gomez flew to Italy with her new beau, The Weeknd, and the paparazzi did not fail to notice. (Neither did The Weeknd’s ex, the model Bella Hadid, who took to social media and promptly unfollowed Gomez.) When I ask Gomez about the romance, she tells me that everything she has said about her relationships in the past has come back to bite her, and that she will never do it again.

“Oh, Mylanta!” she wails, watching her cheesy potatoes travel around the table, a whiff of the simpler joys of home. “Look, I love what I do, and I’m aware of how lucky I am, but—how can I say this without sounding weird? I just really can’t wait for people to forget about me.”

Source: Vogue