#like... have you never experienced the haunting sickening day-ruining feeling of having people hate on you and on things you love

[jessicas-pi]

A Thing Happened. I Want To Complain About It. I Don't Want To Talk About It. I Want To Cry. I Don't Want To Cry. I Have Feelings. Actually No I Don't. This Is Not A Huge Bad Thing I'm Just Tired And Emotional BTW

[v-le]

Ktravels / Klife: Three quarters of the way through Thoughts

Foreword: I hate myself for basically posting this a whole half-a-semester later than planned. But i still believe in better late than never. Here is my journey up until midterms of semester two at Yonsei.

-

Who wouldve thought that this day would come…. Jk we all knew it was coming. But it has surely crept up onto me must faster than I would’ve liked… I knew that this semester here in Korea, at Yonsei University, was going to be vastly different than my previous one, but before coming into it, there was no way of gauging exactly HOW different things would be.

And yes, it has ended up being quite different indeed…. Almost every day, even with just the smallest of activities and places, I can’t help but compare to last semester. It’s just habitual at this point. “I went here last semester, I ate there last semester, we did that last semester”. Etc etc. But last semester already feels like it is worlds away. In fact, it really is.

The biggest change that I want to address is the subtle yet undeniable feeling of intensifying alienation as I stay here longer and longer. I know it sounds quite… dark. But I think it is a reality that is really worth exploring for all people that dream of different places around, that wish to create a future in the great unknown. Because once that unknown starts to become more known, how would you react? How do you deal with a society that seems to be unhealthy for your own mental standards? How do you grow in a foreign environment that is becoming less and less foreign to you as the days go by?

There have definitely been several added factors that combine together for me to come to such a conclusion…. Or no. Nothing is necessarily concluded yet. Just…a finding, a discovery thus far. As of today, I have lived in Korea for about 210 days. That’s well over half a year, that’s a pretty good chunk of my life, I would say. And just very blatantly, I want to say that I can feel how unwelcoming the Korean society is to things that it is unfamiliar with. I can feel parts of its hidden heartlessness and prejudice and condescension. The Korean society as a whole has inflicted these feelings onto me throughout the past few months. As briefly as I can, here is why:

Roy

Badminton team

Korean beauty

Sewol

Jeonju

Air pollution

로이

The situation with Roy is one that I can go on and on about, in all honesty… it is something that will haunt me for a long time and will leave a lasting impression on my heart. I’ve put a lot of my feelings onto a separate piece of writing, one that discloses a pain I wish I never had to spill into that text. What is most certain is that Roy’s case of facing public scrutiny was my firsthand experience of witnessing, almost essentially experiencing, how brutal, cruel, and hateful Korean netizens can be. For years, I have been aware of this online community’s relentlessness. But I never imagined in a million years that the poison of these toxic hate comments would actually affect me. I never thought there would be a day I would actually care about what these people were saying, that their words literally ended up hurting me. Even though no one was actually cussing me out, telling me to rot in jail, yelling at me to never lift my head in public again…No, I mean those malicious comments weren’t for me. They were all aimed straight for Roy, straight for his heart, straight for his life. These people were attacking his entire life like there was no tomorrow. These people spit words without even blinking once, without even thinking about the consequences of their actions, without considering how damaging. For weeks now, I have been witnessing this vicious chain of hate grow and grow. I am sick of it. It makes me cry sometimes. I cannot bear to read what so many people are saying to him now. They are sickening, they are heartless, they are pure evil. It is unfair. It is all so unfair. Just 1 picture, but a lack of knowledge, name mix-ups, and a heightened level of ignorance fuels all these terrible people’s fingers to type away behind their screens and literally ruin someone’s life. And right before my eyes, as all of this happens, I cannot do anything. I can try to manage to report some of the especially derogatory comments, I can try to support the supportive comments. But that is the most. All I can really do, what I have no other choice to do, is to just sit and watch. I’ve been watching and waiting, watching and monitoring, waiting for something more to come out, waiting for some form of reassurance. But no, ever since that day, even though today marks a month since then, nothing has changed. My heart remains shattered, I am lost, I don’t know what to do. But the hate comments continue. They will continue to be fueled by spitefulness.

And what I particularly hate about all of this are Korean news reporters’ terrible, despicable way of pulling his name into things he never had an involvement with, adding pictures and names that are irrelevant, and just their entire lack of professionalism from a factual point of view. I can tell that they are playing on people’s emotions and anger to get more publicity, to stir up more baseless hate and unnecessary misunderstandings. It is so extremely frustrating and painful to watch. I don’t understand. I don’t understand why they must be so cruel and inconsiderate. Is it amusing to watch someone’s life fall apart? Does it make you happy? Is your article’s publicity worth the entire wellbeing of an another human? I don’t understand it, I will never understand it.

The official fan organizations have never stated their removal of support for Roy. The fans never asked for his forest to get destroyed. But why does the media report these things as if they’re true? Why are they lying, literally creating false information, when they don’t even know how we actually feel or what we’ve been saying? It is so flabbergasting, and it makes me feel even more hopeless at the end of the day. Mere months ago, I saw him. He was okay. And now the entire nation hates him.

배드민턴

This semester, I decided to challenge myself and join the badminton team at Yonsei. It may not sound like that much of a big deal, but it is actually quite intimidating simply because my Korean is still far from perfect, and I am already a pretty introverted person to begin with. I wasn’t sure how I could even come close to making friends there. I really just wanted to play because it felt so terrible not playing for 4 months last semester. The first “friend” I made literally only ever talked to me in English (and he still occasionally continues to do so), but he actually talks about the most useless and dumb shit that, if I were to be quite honest, do not really care about. The conversations I had were just… weird… But at one point, I finally met another foreigner who is from Taiwan. And since the day we first met, we became extremely close & we actually only communicate in Korean so it’s been amazing practice for me.

But through lots of talking with her, I have discovered that she is not a newbie to the team as I am: she is a pretty long-term member but with no Korean friends. Because no one has ever once approached her. And to be honestly I was thoroughly shocked by this. She has been on the team long enough to recognize members and even some names. But before I met her, no one ever asked her to play with them, no one ever approached her & talked to her, even though her Korean is literally FLAWLESS. She is studying Korean in grad school right now! So, communication-wise she has absolutely no issues. Yet, she has never received acknowledgement from the team. And that sort of left me scarred, even though these things never personally happened to me? Before meeting her, I had at least had many decent interactions with the other members of the team and the only way I ever played a game in the first place was because someone else asked me. I never asked others first because I am just too shy. But to hear that my friend had been that sort of figure on the team for so long, was just…. Shockingly sad. I could’ve never imagined that prejudice was that real. Granted, I highly doubt the other teammates’ ever acted cold purposefully. I can tell it’s just a problem of ignorance. But that is still very serious and very.. disheartening. I think the entire situation has gotten a lot better now that I have been trying to bridge all of us together, to the best of my ability. But it is definitely not simple. As much as I enjoy playing badminton with Yonsei, I can still feel some pain on her part, too.

케이뷰티

Being extremely skinny, wearing makeup every day, dressing nicely and in a way that is similar to everyone else, is a norm here. People strategically look a certain way in order to fit in. And that’s understandable, it is a homogenous society after all. But for me, I literally feel fat. I feel stressed every day because I feel like I should be losing weight, I should be skinnier, I should be more like everyone else. To be quite frank, it is just hard. All of these social appearance norms take a big toll on my mental health, but at the same time I can never actually bring myself to change drastically because that also would not feel natural. So I tend to stay stuck in this uncomfortable state of not knowing where I belong, not knowing where I can try to fit it in, or if I could ever been accepted in the first place. And honestly, I probably never will.

세월

This year marks 5 years since the Sewol Fairy accident and I had the opportunity to be here in Korea during its anniversary, on 4/16. To be honest, I didn’t know much about the accident for a while. I always just assumed it was a really unfortunate occurrence. But this time, since I was really here in Korea and I could witness the people’s efforts to continue to pay their respects to the victims and their families, I ended up watching a few documentaries and videos on the event. And it was a lot worse, much deeper, and more painful than I could have ever imagined. I know all the political tensions and social questions behind this accident are extremely DEEP, so I won’t explain too much. But it just gave me a very vivid, new perspective on Korean society, in so many interesting, different ways. There is so much to ask and discuss about behind the Sewol tragedy.

Welp, life kinda smacked me right in the face so I had to take a break from this piece for a quite a while.. but here I am again in attempts to finally put it out there.

전주

Nice on the outside, fantastic weather and kind people and an area that is very easy to walk through within a few hours. But, it very quickly dawned on me that this place is just a capitalism hotspot where I couldn’t get even a small glimpse of local traditions or just… normal life. Everything in that town was pretty much centered around tourism that it made me feel quite sad ☹ even the things that seemed like they should house normal life…. They didn’t. they were empty. Im not sure why I originally found this necessary to mention but I guess it really bothered me to a certain extent.

미세먼지

It’s absolute ass. Just know that. Its very very very terrible.

So…. I know im cheating, like cheating really badly by typing out all these feelings during the wrong timing, but I have no choice. A lot has been happening, and I guess I have to save that shitfest of my life for my final wrap-up piece…. Damn I don’t even want to think about that. O well. I think all I really should say for now is that… things have not been as easy as I would have liked them to be. There have been many occurrences that are just unnecessarily exhausting, stressful, and ridiculous. There are people around me that have been making my life really hard, for various reasons and in various ways. None of this even has to do with Korea or my lifestyle or school. It’s just a literal mess.

It’s all a mess and it’s kicking butt. Life is winning well ahead of me at this rate. Im overwhelmed like every day and it sucks ass but it’s okay. I am!!! Trying!! There are still many things left to be done and plans to be fulfilled. I am not giving up. Im just… crawling forward LMAO. Aight. Till next time.

끝까지 가자.

[captainderyn]

What is Briar's relationship like with her family? Was/is she especially close to anyone in particular? How did she handle her father's death?

Thank you for the ask @@ofmistandrain ! Can’t lie I had to look up what happened to Hawke’s father because I forgot oops.

Briar has a…complicated relationship with her family. Overall she’s very close but as the eldest child there was a lot of pressures put on her, especially leaving Lothering, that pushed them apart.

She was quite close to her mother, all things considered. She was close with her father as well, but I think was always a little upset about the pressure and fear that comes from living with an apostate mage (I say as she then goes and falls in with an apostate mage. Oh how things repeat themselves.) though that never really did more than simmer in the background.

[I am personally not very familiar with her father, he’s not mentioned much in the base game and I haven’t played through the DLC where he might be mentioned further. I’m not sure]

Overall she cared for her father and he was a kind man but they were never very close. When he died it struck a deep blow to her, though it’s definitely when a lot of her bitterness towards him rises. A lot of responsibility fell to her when he died, she was 119 at the time.

She’s closer to Bethany than she is to Carver, she and Carver have much more a habit of disagreeing and arguing, I don’t even know that its so much a difference of beliefs (which that’s probably it, Carver is a little harsher and more black and white in his views than Briar is and she’s a much softer soul.)

[Also key to note, I’ve played DA2 once and that was Briar. Carver died in the first 5 minutes. I know next to nothing about him so I’m working off vague mentions, memory and bullshit lmao]

However, she and Bethany are close, though Bethany has always been closer to Carver, as the age difference has always had Beth and Carver closer to each other than to Briar. It doesn’t help that there is lingering…bitterness I guess that Briar knew their father for longer and that she doesn’t seem (seem is the big word, Briar is extraordinary good at hiding her emotions from her younger siblings) very torn up about it. Especially Beth, who I imagine to be quite close to Malcolm. Also the fact that since that point Briar hasn’t really been a sibling, she took on a lot of responsibility that really distanced herself from her siblings, made her a little unapproachable in the long run.

By the time the game starts, she and Beth are more like friends than siblings, and maybe a bit more distant friends at that. Losing Carver struck Briar hard, rocked her entire world and sent her reeling.

Much of that comes from the fact that her family blames her for letting Carver die. That’s a reoccurring theme by the way–something happens to one of her siblings or family and its Briar’s fault. Remember her fear of in the Fade of losing Anders because she couldn’t protect him? That comes from being told (especially by Gamlen) that she wasn’t good enough to save her siblings or her mother.

Bethany is angry with her after that, her mother is wracked by grief and lashes out at Briar for it. Briar puts on a brave face and pushes through it. At the end of the day it brings her and Bethany closer and at the end of the day, her mother still loves her.

As a small side note, she loathes Gamlen. You can’t find many people that Briar hates, Gamlen is one of them. He’s a piece of garbage, treats her like she’s nothing, lost the family fortune and then has the gall to keep her family in a hovel in Lowtown like its a hindrance to him,

The Deep Roads ruins Bethany and Briar’s teetering relationship until the end of the game. Initially, Bethany is furious with her for sending her to the Grey Wardens without her permission basically, but she didn’t see how tormented Briar was about it. Didn’t see her panic when her sister collapsed or hear the raw fear when she was asking Anders what to do. She loses her sister there in the Deep Roads, even though she’s still alive, and that’s another blow against Briar.

(Guess what happens when she returns? A reminder that she promised to keep her sister safe and that she failed. We wonder why she got so close to Anders in those first few months.)

Want to know what hits her the hardest? When her mother goes missing. Losing her siblings was hard, but she could push through it. Losing her mother slams her to the ground and damn near crushes her. The panic that gripped her in those few hours was worse than anything she’s ever experienced.

Finding her mother…as she was…was sickening and horrible. It’s both the most terrified, sickened, and angry Briar has been in her life. She tried to save her mother, begged Anders to do something. In the end her mother told her that she was proud of her and loved her, and while it should have lessened Briar’s pain it cute like a knife.

(Briar blames herself for her mother’s death fully. It doesn’t help that our good friend Gamlen–in game mind you–tells her that she wasn’t good enough to save her mother, that she should have been faster, stronger, better. Briar agrees wholeheartedly with him. It’s something that haunts her for the rest of her life.)

Wow this turned into me talking about what losing her entire family does to her. And apparently how much her family blames her. Huh. Not where I wanted to go with this.

In summary, I guess: Briar is extremely close with her mother. There’s lingering ill feelings between her and her younger siblings for a multitude of reasons, the major one being that she’s always been distant from them after their father died seeing as she had to take on in part, the welfare of the family. After Lothering she systematically loses her family in increasingly worse ways that steadily piles more and more blame on her because she’s the eldest, she’s supposed to, it’s her job until she believes them and starts to take on all the blame. And when she loses her mother…she stops functioning for days until she’s pulled out of her funk.

And at the end of the day her only blood family is her uncle that treats her like garbage, and they never speak after Leanda’s death. Her family is her merry band of idiots she’s gathered along the way that actually cares about her and remembers that she’s only twenty-two and can’t be responsible for everything.