#but like. the reasons they gave was that delirium was a sexualized teen???? that played a part of dreams death????

[mx-paint]

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[resmarted]

come closer, cherub. we are taking a ride into a b movie plot where you are a dashing handsome executive GUY OK fine just lower your voice. you are a hot guy too, let’s say like a tall mark cuban power leo; yes, this is the first and last time you get to be a grown man and have height, ok? i’m already regretting it so pipe down. you are some big shot and you wear fresh tailored suits, your bad habits include smoking cigarettes, reading too much news, drinking too much coffee, and basically you get to be me for a day if i was rich and handsome and wore nice clothes and a real person. okay, you know what? this sucks and i already hate it, scratch all of that. i am an alternate universe version of myself that kept trying and applying to stuff despite x amount of rejection letters, and finally get my dream job writing at nickelodeon. ever since high school i remember being like wow, kids shows suck so hard now. the quality just took a nosedive and everything got real bright and doofy and over the top. i was always like back in my day we had salute your shorts and pete & pete and the quality was much higher and it didn’t depend on how hot the kids were, it was content made for kids and not just commercial bullshit being sold to them. or at least it tried to seem that way. like i don’t know, let’s say i do make it and i go in there like, here i come mainstream media for kids! i’m here to save you and reboot are you afraid of the dark? etc. and i get there and of course it’s nothing like i thought it would be. it’s full of gross men who are unimaginative and think everything they say is hilarious. it’s got me working eighty hour weeks and the machine continues to grind my bones to dust. it isn’t until i have clawed my way higher into my career - this is like a motivated version of me, just use your imagination - that i learn the darker sides of the industry i’ve become so deeply enslaved to. i can’t psychologically separate myself from my work and my loyalty to this company that treats people like shit, uses kids as props to sell whatever it is the sponsors are hawking, and emotionally and sexually abusing them as they please bc hey, this is hollywood, baby. somewhere between amanda bynes’ coked out tantrums and jamie lynn spears’ on set diva antics, i realize they’re all enduring god knows what in the producers’ office with literally the grossest looking dudes alive. jamie lynn gets pregnant by one of them and a boy is paid off to say it’s his, and it’s not but she gets to escape the grime of child stardom just the same. amanda too gets pregnant by him but is forced to abort it, and her body and mind never recover. she is deemed too fat now for a starring role and they dangle emma stone in front of her, just to show her what she is not. i hate my dream job, turns out it’s a fucking nightmare. i’m working late one night and am in the bathroom splashing water on my face. that’s when you come in. in the mirror your signature stare is looking back at me and oh, shit! suddenly i’m the one in an episode of are you afraid of the dark. what the fuck are you doing here? you’re the ghost of my thirteen year old best friend that killed herself in the summer between sixth and seventh grade. you’re of course a dreamy dream dreamgirl goth, duh. we both were; well i was more alternative, army jackets and such. our friendship in middle school could not be matched, we were our own cult. or is it a cult of our own? a cult unto ourselves? now you’re a slightly transparent ghost (translucent?) because this is a late eighties early nineties style visual fx ok it’s all i could afford. you stand there, well sorta floating, and you have the same sarcastic smirk on your face that you always had. i’m a grown adult staring at the ghost of my childhood friend in the office bathroom of my workplace after hours, and suddenly i am in a surreal haze, wondering if maybe this is delirium from not sleeping for days on end. you start to laugh and then go what’s the matter? you look like you’ve seen a ghost. very funny, tortoise, i instinctively respond back to you with the nickname i gave you for always taking too long to look at every little thing everywhere we went, it drove me nuts. then out loud i asked, am i awake? wait, am i alive? you roll your eyes at me like god what a giant dork you still are, and suddenly a person walks in. it’s the janitor coming to clean and suddenly you’ve disappeared. i must be suffering from some sort of hysteria, but wait, doesn’t that involve more of a verbal panic? i’m quiet and calm and collected and nobody knows i just saw my dead best friend from middle school in the bathroom, whatever. i’m fine. i’m fine! who am i trying to convince? there’s no one even in the office. when i twirl around in my chair you’re sitting on the other end of my desk going, you should really consider tidying all this up, you know. i gasp and cover my mouth immediately, almost afraid of how afraid i’m starting to get. you roll your eyes and lean back like look, i’m not here to help you figure out if i’m real or a figment of your imagination, like who even really knows, yknow? well ok, i mean i do, but you definitely don’t. i’m sitting in awe staring at you, your mannerisms and your vernacular, the way you carried yourself and spoke of things like a bored old man, and it’s all so you. yours wasn’t the average teen suicide, you didn’t do it during the school year and nobody had a clue you were actually depressed. you were so sarcastic and could easily put anyone in their place, like it was just a flick of the wrist for you, and despite your quirky appearance you were well liked amongst classmates. we were weirdos, sure, but not total outcasts. and if we were it was because we were so bored by everyone that we considered them unfit to be in our social lives. you weren’t bullied into it, at least not by us. your stepdad, on the other hand, and having to live with him every day during the summer, is what i had always figured drove you to it. you openly loathed him and one time we made a voodoo doll out of a cabbage patch kid and bid him to eternal damnation. nothing happened from it, and instead you had to live in this constant hell. he found reasons to ground you, to punish you, humiliate you, make you feel weak and unlovable, and when he wasn’t emotionally abusing you he was doing it in other ways. he degraded you repeatedly and by july you were gone, just like that. you escaped your house of horrors and i lost the only person that ever made any sense to me. people tried to be my friend afterward and i hated it, i hated the extra special attention and the extended invitations to join lunch tables by people who would never speak to me before. now i’m a grownup with a big job and you’re still thirteen, sitting here in your favorite jacket and boots that you always wore, giving me shit for my messy desk space. i look at you half annoyed like we’re still in the cafeteria of thomas jefferson elementary and half terrified for my life and general sanity. i need a vacation, that’s what this must be. i’m so stressed i’m having hallucinations, and i just maybe need to book a resort spa in jamaica or whatever it is people rich enough to take vacations do. you show up in different areas of the office, every time i turn around you’re suddenly in a chair spinning around, then i turn around and you’re in another, your boots up on the desk while you roll a pencil between your teeth. you start talking about old memories, and while i’m having a panic attack you’re saying stuff like dude, remember when ava larson got her period and suddenly got huge tits and we secretly called her bazoonga boobs larson? i scream out oh my god i’m having a breakdown and you’re like, look i don’t have a lot of time here, can you just accept what you see before i flicker and fade out forever? i’m freaking out like, what?? i’m on a security camera standing up talking to no one, surrounded by spinning chairs and a floating pencil. the janitor walks by, assumes i am a witch, and leaves. finally, you look at me very seriously and are like, you need to break into dan schneider’s lockbox he keeps behind a stack of papers in his office. what the fuck? i can’t do that, there’s no way. besides, if he sees it missing he can just spot me on security footage. you look at me and suddenly all the lights go out. you don’t break when you say, not if there’s no electricity. hurry. i have an outer body experience where i’m watching myself now, and almost as if i was some kind of cia agent or a stunt double that plays one on tv, i’m in and out like a ninja. you tell me to hide it under my coat and casually walk out as the electricity all flickers back on. you tell me to take the elevator like normal and that i’ll know what to do from there. will i? wait, aren’t you coming? you’re like i can’t, there’s strict rules about these things. i'm walking into the elevator when i turn around and say i miss you, tortoise. you raise an eyebrow and say i don’t miss you at all. i mean i’m around you constantly, do you have any idea how loud you snore, brosephina? the elevator doors close and in my fancy ass pad i open a box that is filled with child porn, personally produced by dan with the help of staffers, the pigs i have had to answer to for years. they’re all in it. ariana, the icarly girls, emma roberts, all of them. i have a breakdown for real now, and i don’t really know what to do from here. honestly even i don’t know how it ends. like, i want it to be satisfying and have the villain taken down, because in this world they likely never will. that fucker is probably never going to get tattled on and neither are most of these gross children’s tv execs. maybe in our world he mysteriously dies in a fire along with all the evidence. maybe we manage to break the pyramid from the bottom and the power structure crumbles completely. whatever happens, i hope you come back to me and stay a while this time.