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nissakii · 4 years ago

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What do Mystic Messenger characters represent in society? [MysMe]

Mystic Messenger which is a game filled with a lot of action, drama and some sort of romance is still really close to our reality.

Especially the characters represent a lot of us and the many different situations people can be in and suffer from, as every and each of them offers us a route in which we can see more of the character and help them to achieve their ending (or not if you are curious to get the bad endings).

Yet what do those characters represent in our usual lives?

Where do we see each and every one of these characters in our society?

In the following blog post, we will see that every character shows us a certain place and piece of our reality that Cheritz put in their game.

Yoosung Kim

Starting with the youngest member of RFA let’s take the one who hasn't experienced the world of work yet.

As an uni student Yoosung is the very representation of someone who isn’t sure where life could lead him after achieving one big goal: getting into university.

Because despite the fact that standing on one’s own feet starts at that phase in life it is mostly the time where many feel lost as they see themselves stuck in their current life.

And Yoosung is one of those many cases that represent those people in Mystic Messenger.

Living alone for the first time and suddenly feeling the overwhelming force of being responsible for his own mistakes, he sees the sudden challenges of life that come with it.

On top of that with the death of his cousin Rika which he loved so dearly, nobody is very considerate of his feelings, depression and sadness that still lingers inside of him despite that they all claim it is understandable.

His dream job as a vet that was closely tied to the death of Rika’s dog is the more unattainable and painful to think about after the events as he requestions the morals and standards of society.

Being in the age of constantly being expected to give good results and succeed in order to become valuable to society’s standards, he starts to realize how unfair the chances in life are as he compares himself to Jumin Han who was born rich and with his future already set.

We already discussed a lot about Yoosung’s insecurities and general character in another blogpost, but referring to it Yoosung constantly sees no value in whatever he does beside in helping the RFA which as well due to the death of Rika became inactive until MC appeared.

When someone stops to value what he does or sees no merit in it, there are always the questions:

Why did I start this anyway?

What is the whole purpose of this?

Maybe it’s not for me?

And with those questions, with the heavy burden of a private life and social circles that also have a place in one’s life, sometimes there is a need to escape them all.

As a student just running away or taking holidays is not that easy leaving a bunch of responsibilities behind, so the next best way to stop thinking about the life around you is, immersing into another life- gaming.

Gaming may be a good coping mechanism but also a big threat for those who want to constantly flee from their reality slowly developing a game addiction without realizing, just like Yoosung slowly started to lose himself in LOLOL.

Studying, sorrow, wanting to flee but also wanting to become someone standing on stable footing.

They are all parts of finding oneself in the process, going through the harsh times of slowly diving into the world of adults and that is what Yoosung represents - the start of a new phase in life, probably one of the harshest.

Jaehee Kang

Close, but still more experienced would be Jaehee Kang the only female of the RFA next to the MC, a chief secretary at C&R and also the assistant of Jumin Han.

Jaehee is someone seen as a prime example and role-model, being a stable career woman who achieved a lot in her life and has a fairly high income to support herself.

In society’s eyes she is someone who contributes to success and as she is even an early top university graduate for which she got a scholarship in highschool making her extremely diligent and intelligent since her childhood.

Yet Jaehee gave up a lot to be in the position she is right now, she even cut her long hair and wears glasses despite her good vision since it is part of the demands Jumin made for the job as his secretary.

As she said herself her work contains a lot of tasks which some of them she isn’t even supposed to do and go beyond her ordinary secretary job, yet she does them and doesn’t complain since she gets paid for it.

In Zen’s DVD she tried to find a bit of happiness in her daily monotone routine as she works day in and day out, where she even eats out a lot and until late hours, having to take care of her boss’s cat when asked to.

In one of the chats in which Jaehee and Yoosung are talking about how successful and stable Jaehee is unlike Yoosung who is still feeling lost and doesn’t have that stability in life which she wouldn’t understand.

Jaehee on the other hand responds that despite having a job it’s not really that what she wanted to do and that she is still wondering what it is that she actually wants to do as she mentions that she used to go hiking a lot as her hobby, showing that despite being in a good position in society Jaehee still doesn’t feel fulfilled and rather a bit trapped in her monotone working routine which she basically devoted her life to.

Jaehee represents those of who seem like they have achieved a lot and do have a place in society job-wise but are still not sure what it is what they really want to do as they live in and out of their secure routine which they maintain and people expect them to be satisfied with.

Zen

Zen or how he is called by his real name, Hyun Ryu is one of the few characters that actually went through and made his dream his actual job.

Despite his looks he did not become a model but an actor depicting many emotions and roles in which he loses himself in while giving his best to show the audience the true nature of the persona he is currently playing.

We see Zen being a bit more on the easy-going side and encouraging Yoosung for example to follow his heart and dreams like he did, since it worked out for Zen. Yoosung encounters that Zen has the looks to follow the way he wants to which he won’t deny yet it’s not the only quality Zen bears.

He is a very hard-working person, strict on himself when it comes to working out or dieting and also tends to be a workaholic engrossing himself in constant development to fulfill his dream, which is not tied to his looks. Quite contrary Zen despises the fact that some people choose him a role only fitting for his looks and even worse asking him only to model instead of acting, as he mentions that it is acting that he wants to do and not modelling.

In that way his wishes often get disrespected or disregarded due to his looks, also he is being seen as shallow which may lead to people jumping to conclusions.

We see in Zen’s route what a harsh path he had to take in order to pursue his dream, it took him a lot of sacrifice, patience and work to be where he is and it’s only the start for him.

He ran away from home since his parents did not approve of his dreams, he was not the best at school and also dropped out renting an apartment for himself struggling through hard times to survive.

But despite that he never gave up since his dream was his passion and something he did with much eagerness and seriousness, even though many may call it foolish or risky.

Zen is the best representation of the people in our society who choose to derive from the usual path striving for a stable job and take many risks to achieve their dreams.

Because of those dreams life may get a bit harder and the chances are not high, yet Zen is the best example that it takes time, sacrifices and sometimes harsh circumstances to reach that what you want to do.

He is the hard reality of chasing your dreams.

Jumin Han

More or less in our category of society, Jumin Han is a less common case of working hard to achieve a high status and standard in that sense which doesn’t make him lazy or given everything for nothing, but makes his life sure easier from a materialistic perspective.

Cue materialism the first thing that not only RFA mentions when MC enters the chatrooms in the first days but also a misunderstanding from the start is that Jumin only sees numbers and facts, wielding his money to obtain whatever he desires and living an easy life.

Sure enough, money is one of the most fundamental problems that make life much harsher when it's lacking, also it’s the main cause of many stress factors since education, work and status are all basically tied to money.

If the world is not about money in a certain sense why are we struggling that much anyways to get amazing jobs and maybe in some cases like Jaehee give up part of our life and identity?

But Jumin is the perfect example that the rich people who exist out there or at least some of them do not rely solely on their privilege of being born rich, yet still work hard to prove their position in society as Jumin still graduated as a top student, being part of MENSA which requires high IQ to become a member of and has a policy of working as efficiently as possible.

In that sense Jumin is a talented, intelligent young man who doesn’t want to simply rely on his background but also showcase his skills as he always strives to get the best results in the company to make sure he deserves the place as the CEO in line.

Since Yoosung constantly nags and complains about Jumin’s background being a bliss and that he had a comfortable and easy life, Jumin does not tell him he might be wrong but that he simply did not decide to be born that way and still encourages Yoosung that he has good qualities which Jumin finds appealing enough to hire him as an intern, showing him that it’s still important which skills someone hones.

Yoosung is just one example of people viewing him as someone who is just lucky enough to be born rich or the unfairness of status by birth, but they do not see the the dark side of Jumin’s life as he never had any stable relationships beside V that he cherishes so much also that people only put light on his status but not the work that he himself put into, visiting lessons since childhood not growing up like a usual kid playing freely without fearing to be kidnapped.

Therefore the concept of love is quite strange for him and beside in the good ending of his own route where he finally starts to learn about it, the box of emotions Jumin holds is always hidden deep within him projecting his own weaknesses on Elizabeth the 3rd who gives him the secure form of love and loyalty.

In any other situation love is not needed in the world he grew up in since facts and cold logic represented as results of success is what the people need to see from him, mistakes are a sign of weakness and incompetence especially him who everyone is constantly watching.

Jumin represents those in society who may seem to have high status, wealth and cozy life yet struggle due to the things that cannot be merely achieved by money alone, highlighting the importance of interpersonal relationships.

Saeyoung Choi/707/Luciel

That the world is not an easy place that can be seen only as black and white shows us the next character who suffered a lot through the dark and hidden secrets that society often tries to brush under the carpet.

Saeyoung Choi and his twin brother who we will examine later, show us the cruelty hidden in a small apartment living with an abusive mother who used to beat them up, verbally abuse them as a consequence of them being the illegitimate child of the prime minister.

Since Saeyoung was the more skilled one from a young age, he was treated badly but not as worse as his brother Saeran, which left him with no choice than using his talent to save his brother.

In order to that there was only one option and it was to leave his brother behind leaving him in the hands of V and Rika to protect him while Saeyoung would study to make sure when comes back he and Saeran could run away together.

And he took that option instead of fearing to be killed by his father one day or even by his mother.

In the end Saeyoung landed in an agency which stripped him of any identity and made him work like a machine even before he turned legal due to his level of skill and intellect.

With no place to escape anymore and the only light thinking that Saeran is safe and protected from some floppy disks he has with some pictures of him, he gave into corruption but not turning bad since his intentions kept him pure.

The RFA were a little safespace for him yet Seven never had the right as he claims for that since he doesn’t even have an identity anymore being neither Saeyoung nor any other person as his jobs demands for him to constantly change names and places if needed, therefore he doesn’t even have personal data anywhere.

He even forgot who he is at some point if it wasn’t for V and the floppy disks leaving him in an identical crisis and no hope to be understood by anyone as he constantly wears a mask and never is his true self.

In his eyes his is constantly extorted by his agency and even in some routes he claims that RFA puts a heavy load of work on his back which he likes to do but there are some endings in which Seven finds out that Saeran is under bad circumstances and even worse the hacker who infiltrated RFA and wanted to get rid of him, leaving him to lose trust in the last person he had, V.

Saeyoung Choi represents those who are mistreated, used and extorted in society, forced to live a life in which they cannot decide for themselves and were left to make choices that led them to an unfavorable position instead of helping them.

He is the one showing us that the shadows exist and fear of losing existence due to being nuisance and eyesore for people who have a more favorable place in the eyes of the government.

Saeran Choi/Unknown/Ray

Last but not least the other part of the shadows, Saeran Choi also known as either Ray or Unknown.

Unlike his brother he is at first not shown to have any special talent and since childhood he was a very fragile and kind boy who was seen as weak due to his nature.

A trait that made him prone to being attacked and mistreated not only by his mother but many other people.

But starting with his mother as he was less free than Saeyoung and even tied him up to avoid that he would roam around freely, his mother used to call him weak, useless and of no value as his brother is far better than him and skilled, at least making him worth to be kept alive.

She even deprived him of food and water at times, beat him up and made sure he would know his place in the world as she describes people like us comparing him to her.

Yet Saeran always looked up and trusted his brother since he was a good-natured person despite the fact that he started to manifest the idea that he himself is useless and a burden.

Even when Saeyoung left he was sure that he had a good reason and blamed himself for being useless, but due to certain circumstances and manipulation he was told that Saeyoung ran away from him.

It took a lot of torture and brainwashing to make Saeran finally give up the idea that Saeyoung will keep his promise and never ran away from him. which he later fueled his grudge with.

Rika who used him for mint-eyes plans made sure to keep him as Ray, the one who knew that he was of no merit or value to the outside world, and the moment he would leave the place he now belonged to would be the moment people would trample him, the weak down to the ground.

She also made sure to make him believe that there is no other place for him since he is someone unstable, someone who can only bloom if he worked for mint-eye and that his skills are not needed beside in here the place that would never betray him.

As we notice in Ray’s chats, the same exact words are used when he speaks to MC as he tells her if he doesn’t succeed he would be thrown away and that the world outside is an unprotected place full of people who are cruel.

Weirdly enough in one of the chats Ray shows MC a photo of two plants that sprouted in the from the same ground, but one was almost dying while the other one bloomed as he referred to Saeyoung and himself, noticing that the stronger one used the weaker to survive therefore he cut the stronger one and used it as a fertilizer rejecting the idea that in any kind of way the stronger could win over the weaker one even in nature’s way.

MC who can be as nice to Ray/Saeran as she wants to be, he will always bring up the fear of being left behind as he has the stigma of being unstable by himself or unusable if not finishing the job as it’s the only thing he can bring any profit in and that he is no use if he doesn’t fulfill his role as a puppet.

Saeran Choi represents the undermined and discarded people of society who were not give a chance nor an option to show their ability, but were stigmatised or manipulated to act as puppets as they are only of worth when they can fulfill the needed tasks as their weakness is something unsightly and doesn’t have a place in this world.

The weak never survives, it’s the survival of the fittest… which means if there is no merit in what he does there is no need to keep him.

Are there any other characters which you see in society that are also part of the mystic messenger cast?

Do you feel especially tied to one of the characters in one of these aspects?

Until then - I just got a message

Makii

Original Source

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perseusjackson-jasongrace · 4 years ago

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Empires on the Horizon V

Jason is a CEO: Part V

Here’s my masterlist for the next part and my other stuff

But the most beautiful things in life are just not things.

They’re people and places, memories and pictures.

They’re feeling and moments and smiles and laughter.

-unknown

“Charles Beckendorf,” Jason answered the phone with a smile, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Hello Grace, how are you?”

“Absolutely wonderful,” And he was, he hadn’t felt so calm in a long time. “What can I do for you my friend?”

“I need your help with the wedding. I’m planning an outdoor structure with video screenings of all our favourite memories and you have two things that’ll make my dreams come true.”

“Anything for you Charlie.”

“The gorgeous meadow on the far side of town, you own that right?”

“Yep, you want to set up shop there?”

“Yes please,” His eagerness carried through the phone, “And can you send me any pictures or videos you have of us so I can add it to the slideshow.”

“Of course, is that all?”

He could hear the excitement in his friend’s voice, “That’s it, unless you know anyone who’s willing to look after the shop while we’re on honeymoon?”

“I can’t say I do but I can ask Hazel to hire a temp if you want?”

“I’ll suggest it to the ladies and tell them to get back to you.”

“Sounds great, and good-luck with the project. I’m excited for the wedding.”

“Me too man, me too. It’s still surreal to me that I’m getting married to my best friends.”

“You deserve the world Charlie.”

“No way, I am crazy emotional these days.” He sniffled.

Jason laughed, “You’re always emotional Beckendorf.”

“Screw you,” He snorted, “See you soon, and thank you again.”

“Bye man, have a good one.”

He ended the call with a smile. It was unbelievable to think he would be going to his friends’ wedding in a couple months. Just the other day he was sitting in a lecture hall laughing at Beckendorf’s impersonation of their business lecturer. Just the other day he was helping Silena and Drew paint the walls of their boutique. It was strange to face the reality that they were all grown up now– moving on with their lives, living them.

“Ready to go Boss?” Hazel’s head popped around the door.

“Yep, you have the files?”

“All in the room already, anything else we need?”

“Maybe some coffee and a miracle?”

“Unfortunately I can only provide one of those things, and it’s not the helpful one.” She gave him an apologetic look.

“Well I guess wish me luck then,”

“You don’t need it Boss, you’re gonna kill it today.”

“What would I do without you Miss Levesque?” He sighed gratefully, walking to the elevator.

“Forget which day of the week it is, and which shoe goes on which foot,” She grinned.

“Hey, the shoe thing was one time.”

“That only works if you’re a toddler, not a grown man.”

“No excuse for the elderly then?”

She shook her head solemnly, “None I’m afraid.”

The elevator doors slid open.

“Meeting Room A5.”

“Let’s do this.” He took a deep breath and pushed the glass door.

“Hello Jason Grace,”

“Hello Octavian.”

Jason always felt some level of life seep out the room when he me with the head of Titan Industries. The man felt…synthetic; chalk white hair gelled down flat and calculating pale blue eyes that missed nothing. Gods even his skin looked unnatural, pasty and veined.

He reached out a small, bony hand in greeting.

“You look as incredible as ever Miss Levesque,” He lifted her hand to his mouth.

She gave him a tight-lipped smile, “Octavian.”

He didn’t seem to notice, or care for her discomfort and simply turned to Jason.

“So,” They sat down, “Have we come to some agreement?”

“With all due respect Octavian I don’t feel this contract is justified.” He glanced between the man and the folder.

There was silence, as if he were waiting for Jason to continue but two could play at this game. He was not willing to be taken for a fool, fumbling over himself to bow to this man’s whims. So he met those cunning eyes, a smile playing at his lips. The only sound was the scratch of Hazel’s pencil as she set up her notes for the meeting.

Moments passed, frozen in time, and then a sigh, “What can I do to ease your concerns?”

He struggled to reel in a smug expression. “Let’s start with the supply times.”

And they went back and forth, pulling and pushing, cunning and stead-fast, a fox and a wolf. Two hours later the contract had been amended to both their liking and they were once again shaking hands.

“I will ask my assistant to send over the revised contract, once my lawyer has looked over it.”

“I will do the same. Thanks for the meeting.” He guided the door open and waited for his guest to move through it.

“Until then, Grace.”

Without waiting for a reply Octavian snapped at his bodyguard and they disappeared down the passage.

“How do you feel about this?”

“There’s something not quite right Hazel, I just can’t figure out his angle.”

“Fully agree,” She shuddered, “He gives me the creeps.”

“Have you managed to find anyone else that could potentially take over this project?”

“Not yet Boss but you will be the first to know when I do.”

“Thanks Levesque, you truly are my saviour.” He gave her a grateful smile.

“Better put that on my gravestone,” She raised a brow.

“Done,” He laughed, “Any other requests?”

“Let’s get subs for lunch. I could do with some bread.”

He shook his head in amusement, “You drive a hard bargain but I’m willing to sacrifice for you.”

“Oh what was your plan Mr big-shot?” She pushed open the door to their offices.

“Today is burrito-bowl day and you know it.”

“I did forget,” She scrunched her nose, “But I’m extra grateful now.”

He snorted at her, ready to give a snarky remark before he was cut off by the shrill ring of his cell phone.

“Talk to me.”

“What’s up Grace, how’s your lunch hour looking?” Leo Valdez greeted.

“Levesque and I are going to get subs at Garden Girl, want to join?”

“I’ll meet you there.” And then he was gone.

“Ever the efficient caller isn’t he,” Hazel chuckled.

“Most days, which is weird since he’s a rambler face-to-face.”

They got to the contemporary restaurant on eighty-fifth avenue, spotting Leo outside.

“Hello,” His smile was wide as he hugged them.

“Who decided to give you a break? Don’t you have lectures right now?”

“Nah,” He grinned, “Guest lecturer teaching my slot this week, so I got two hours free.”

“The beauty of teaching postgrad, I assume?” Hazel asked.

“You know it Levesque!”

“What are we getting?”

“Don’t know about you but I’m getting the ‘Jazz It Up’ sub, got to stick to my New Orleans heritage.”

“Good afternoon my favourite customers? Where’s the rest of the crew?”

Jason smiled brightly, “Hello Katie.”

“Annabeth is at work, she has some big contract finally closing up,” Leo said by way of greeting.

“Frank is doing the security rounds at the office,” Hazel offered.

“Thalia isn’t even in the country right now.” He shrugged

“There’s still someone missing,” She frowned, scanning their faces, “Piper! Where’s the pretty lady?”

“Oh,” Leo winced, “Yea that is a touchy subject.”

Katie gave them a sympathetic look, “Well what can I help you with today? The usual for you Haze?”

They all rattled off their orders and chatted with the owner of Garden Girl while they waited. Jason had met Katie when he was doing business courses for his urban and regional planning degree. Her forest green eyes and bright smile struck him stupid the first time he saw her in their Entrepreneurship and Business Management lecture. He never had the guts to make a move, but it didn’t matter because she had just entered a relationship with Travis Stoll. Now they’re married and expecting a child, as is the latest update.

“How’s Project Hestia going Grace?” Leo asked, pulling out a chair.

“Ugh I’m having a hard time with the outdoor center. I’m not gelling with the contractor, and I don’t know what to do,” He scrubbed a hand down his face.

“I know I can’t ask what exactly is wrong because of legal reasons but what do you need done?”

He motioned to Hazel to explain as he bit into his sub.

“Basically we want to create an outdoor recreation center for the community which includes a gym area, a kids’ area, movies, a park and picnic area, rock climbing, you know the usual.”

“Right that shouldn’t be too hard to draft up,” Dark eyebrows scrunched, “But this guy is what? Trying to fuck you over?”

“Essentially,” Jason nodded, “The problem is we don’t know how?”

“Okay give me the weekend and let me call up some people. I think I know someone who can help.”

His eyes widened, “You are literally the best friend in the entire world. We’ve been looking for weeks, and we haven’t found anyone else who specialises in this.”

Leo squeezed his hand, “I’m not letting you get screwed over, and my buddy would be more than happy to do it.”

“What’s his name?” Hazel had her phone out, the notes app open.

“Harley, he’s was the youngest kid in our engineering course. I think he graduated with his masters when he was like twenty,”

Jason choked, “What?”

“The kid is incredible. He beat us regularly in our weekly electrotech competitions.”

“Well tell him to give us a call and I’ll set up a meeting with Jason next week. We have until next Friday before we sign contracts with Titan.”

“Sounds good,” Leo plucked a pen he kept behind his ear and scribbled something on his hand, “So Jase,” His grin was trouble.

The blonde narrowed his eyes, preparing himself for trouble.

“What happened with you and Percy? Last I heard you were going on a date on Tuesday and then getting married.”

It was Hazel’s turn to choke, and after she recovered smacked her boss on the shoulder, glaring as if to say what the hell did you not tell me?

He rolled his eyes at his best friend, “I didn’t even get his number because I left so abruptly. And anyway I hear he’s dating Reyna now.”

Leo’s hickory eyes widened, “He’s what?”

“Yea I went by the school about a month ago and Nico told me they were dating.”

“How do they even know each other?”

“They met at the school. She was visiting Nico and he was wanted to become a sponsor cause he used to go there.”

“Yea sounds about right, he’s crazy nice.” Leo nodded

“How have I never met him before the dinner?”

“He moves around a lot,” Leo shrugged, “I’ve only met him a handful of times because whenever he’s here he makes a point to visit Annabeth.”

“Well he sounds like an angel,” His assistant mused.

“Looks like one too,” He muttered, “It’s okay anyway cause I uh–“ He scratched the back of his neck.

“Oh my gods,” Hazel’s earthy eyes glittered, “You met someone!”

Leo clapped his hands, a smile as bright as the sun on his face, “Who are they?”

“We’ve been on one date so no making a big deal about it.” He gave them a pointed look, “But Thalia set us up and she’s… wow.”

“Oh you are real caught up, aren’t you?” They raised twin brows at him.

“She’s just indescribable. She’s gorgeous and that’s the least impressive thing about her.”

“Well tell us everything.” Hazel prodded.

“Okay she’s a vet. She has four sisters, but she doesn’t talk to them much. She believes in order, oh it’s glorious. Everything in its space and a plan for everything.” He looked at Leo then, to which his friend flipped him off and then motioned for him to continue.

“She eventually wants to open her own animal clinic. And most importantly she gets along with Thalia.”

“She sounds like a dream Jase,” Hazel squeezed his shoulder, “I’m really happy for you.”

Leo nodded, eyes bright with love, “You deserve some happiness bud.”

“Thank you guys,” He found it hard to breathe as the overwhelming gratitude he felt for his friends swept through his body.

“Valdez, you’re going to the lake cabins in a couple weeks, right?”

“Oh yep,” Leo wiggled his eyebrows, “And guess what?”

“You are not!” He yelled, and then lowered his voice, “You are lying to me right now.”

“Oh gods,” Hazel caught on, “Are you ready? No wait of course you’re ready! When, how, what?”

“I bought the ring a couple weeks ago. We’ve been talking about it for a few months and this just feels like the right time.”

Jason whistled, “My best friends are finally getting married.”

“Oh gods I hope she says yes,” Leo looked a little sick all of a sudden.

“Of course she’s going to say yes. You guys have been inseparable since that first maths lecture when we all went to the wrong class.”

“There’s no way she turns you down, I’ve seen the way you look at each other.” Hazel agreed.

“The way we look at each other?” Leo frowned at her, confusion evident in his face.

“Like you’re the only ones in the room. Like she is the match and you are the striker.”

Jason nodded, “The moment you two locked eyes at the bonfire it was like the universe threaded two strands through the same needle.”

“Well now I’m emotional and feeling much more confident about it.”

They laughed then, getting up to hug each other. Jason felt the world settle, still, slow. The wind whispered softly, and beams of sun caught between them. If nothing else he had this, and he would hold onto it until his bones were dust and his soul was a star once more.

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So many weddings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tags (if you want to be added to/ taken off the tag list just let me know, all my channels of communication are open): @lesbian-peanuts

@leydiangelo

@queen-of-demons-and-hell

@msdrpreist

@sparkythunderstorm

@nishlicious-01

@lucyisblue

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heir-of-talon · 4 years ago

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So I have commissioned these busts of the characters. I will post a bust of the person whose POV the chapter is written in ❤ Some may be spoilery but hey! It's just fanfiction 😉

HEIR OF TALON 2

Warnings: explicit/underage/violence

Summary:

After slaying Elder Wyrm and becoming CEO of Talon Ember works very hard. Slowly changes are creeping in, that threaten her relationships with Garret and Riley, her sense of self and her sanity.

Life at the top

Ember

I woke up with a yelp. The bed sheets and my shirt were rumpled and soaked through with sweat. I reached for a glass of water on the night stand and drank trying to wash away tightness in my throat tasting salt of my tears mingling with contents of the glass. It was just another nightmare I tried to calm myself, but at this point I had little doubt that these were true. As was ensuing weeks of captivity, when Gerard found more and more horrid ways to torment Ember after he learned, that she could heal quickly from injuries that would have killed anybody else. His lord and his men, formed a group around her, torturing her and slowly learning her secrets... Bloodlettings so they could bathe in her blood and become resistant to harm and disease. She has suffered it all without even feeling tempted to shift, because there inside her... a spire, only remaining reality of her happiness, of their destiny. No, she could still salvage him, she would endure and once he was out of her body she would shift and fly them both away to safety, to another world if need be, there was nothing she would not do for him, her little Dante. Her love though betrayed so cruelly have found new anchor and she would preserve.

And then... birth of their child, ten men with swords and kludges awaiting, hitting her, bleeding her and Gerard... he tossed his son into flames right after he nearly ripped him from her body amid her agonizing cries.

Hatred. All consuming, all destroying all mighty. She shifted and ripped them apart limb for limb, the men, the women, the children, anyone within the vicinity of the estate. She had nothing left for humans, the vile, cruel, mindless creatures...

These dreams always filled me with grief and despair. But I was not her. Or was I? Sometimes I was not sure anymore. I would better get up, it was going to be another long day.

Vipers were resisting my changes to the organisation and demanded to be allowed to form their own organization apart from Talon, my bare ass! I tossed my shirt aside and hurried to bathroom where I laid down in the bathtub and turned the water on. As warm water crept higher and higher covering my body I relaxed and garish details of the nightmare started to fade. My thoughts were sharp and clear again. No way I was going to relinquish control of Vipers, I will sooner get them all killed. But how do you do this exactly? The only way is to get them to kill one another and then maybe set the last one up to a surprise date with the Order? This would require some serious diversion though, to make sure they accept the orders and don't figure out the game too soon... Hmm maybe later, as the last instance, for now I would rather regain their obedience. Hot water have filled the tub to the brim and I ceased to think giving up to the utter delight of being submerged in relaxing warmth.

***

"Autumn and Cobalt are here to see you ma'am" my assistant's Rose voice sounded through intercom. "Let them in" I grunted, not at all happy. After momentary relief in the bath I have developed a nasty headache and painkillers did not really work on dragons. I was not sure if dragons should have headaches, I have not been sick one hour of my entire life before I have become CEO of Talon.

"Hello Firebrand, you look positively awful, what the hell happened to you?" Riley strode to my office and unceremoniously sat on a chair in front of my enormous desk pulling another chair closer and indicating for Autumn to sit next to him. This irritated me, I was the CEO, this was my office and he come without notice and behaved as he owned everything here. "I had a hard night" I said slowly "so this better be important" I gave them a tight smile.

"It's about my egg" Autumn said. "It's in hatchery now, and I don't want my baby to hatch there. I want him to be born free, not to spend his childhood in an isolated facility being drilled by Talon like we did." She talked calmly and was obviously at ease, while her ridiculous request literally made me seething inside. I waited till she was finished and replied. "How do you imagine to hatch a dragon egg and then rear a hatchling, unable to shift for two years and to stay reliably shifted for another ten in the middle of human society?" I asked calmly. "How are you going to feed it until it can shift? How are you going to avoid it being seen?". Autumn stared at me surprised by coldness in my voice.

"Easy Firebrand, this is why we came here. To find alternative solutions for these... challenges" Riley's voice was calm but he was now watching me with slightly narrowed eyes and I could hear him thinking hard. But I could not let Autumn take that egg away. These four eggs was all the organization had left. We've sustained substantial loses when the laboratory exploded, every dragon counted for survival of our race. "We were thinking about it for quite a while actually. There's four eggs that need to be reared. There probably won't be any new for some time now, as Talon's members will no longer be forced to mate and dragons breed extremely rarely on their own volition, being immortal, territorial and such. So we just need to provide these four hatchlings with a place to be in two years. It should not be that difficult..." "Oh you've got it all figured out, don't you!?" I cut him off. I was furious at his shortsighted sentimentality. "And who is going to provide these hatchlings with education and training? Their mothers, who's never set their foot outside of the breeding facility?!" Autumn looked as if I've hit her, but I didn't care. These hatchlings were important for the organization, now that the vessel program was abandoned. If they were raised outside of the organization will any of them wish to serve it? Will they even be suitable for our purposes? "What are you talking about?" Riley was furious now. "They will be instructed and influenced by our entire community. Just because you won't have total control over every moment of their lives, doesn't mean they will not turn out just fine". He took stunned Autumn by her hand and rose to his feet. "Come, we've must have caught ma'am CEO on a bad day." And then to me. "Do not think that you've heard the last of it Firebrand. This is important, this is the freedom we've been fighting for all this time. And I will not relent, just because you get to be the boss now!" He left with scared Autumn in tow leaving me to my headache and grim thoughts.

I pressed intercom button. "Rose? I am taking off the rest of the day. Tell the Archivist to schedule new date for meeting with Vipers" "Yes, ma'am." I dragged myself out of the office and staggered when the heat and sunshine of the day outside hit me. I could not remember being out in a middle of a day. Ruling Talon was consuming all my time and energy and throughout last few months I begun to see the point of the control and discipline within the organization, as dealing with Riley's rouges, Jade and other free spirits was clearly the most annoying part of my new situation. I could not remember the drive home. To a vast top floor apartment furnished by Rose to impress an empress as she has phrased it. I had no time to interfere and only added piles of discarded clothes to the setting. And these were cleared every day by a maid. So I entered my lavish suite kicked off my ballerinas, flopped on white leather sofa and closed my eyes.

***

I woke up with a start that made it clear, that my headache was still there. It was evening and someone was knocking on my door. I insisted on no Gilas in the building I lived in, just as I insisted on living among normal, if wealthy people, rather than in a fancy all Talon apartment complex few blocks from the HQ. Now I was suddenly reluctant to open the doors. "Ember?! Are you in there?" Garret. I sighed and dragged myself to the doors. "Hello commander" I tried to smile. "Come in and fix this shitty day". He did not smile just stepped over the threshold taking in my surely messy hair, crumpled suit and tired face. "What is wrong?" He asked dropping his duffel bag at the doors and pulling me into strong embrace. I closed my eyes breathing him in and feeling my headache and confusion melting away. But after a way too brief moment he pushed himself away to arms length and looked into my eyes. "What is going on Ember? You look so tired. And you missed the meeting today, the Archivist would not tell us anything, but Rose told me you went home feeling unwell so I come to check up on you."He said. "Wait a minute. What meeting?!" I felt an ugly suspicion rising. "Meeting with Vipers." He looked surprised and worried that I would ask. "The Archivist spoke in your name and got them in line, no worries. They are allowed to leave the organization under a long list of conditions, that shortly sums up to not killing, assaulting or terrorizing anyone ever and attending monthly meetings with their rehabilitation supervisors, new units consisting of one Talon employee and one Order's employee. Of course the agreement is only valid after you've approved it. From the looks on their faces no one is leaving for some time." He smiled to his thoughts.

I had plans for Vipers and this was not exactly what I would have gone for. I should be furious about Archivist bypassing me like that. But somehow it did not matter much. No, when Garret was here I was just relieved and thankful that things were taken care of. Suddenly I could breath freely and I thought that if only I could stay in his arms long enough I would heal and become whole again, the way I was before leaving Talon and the violent time that followed. I leaned in to kiss him and he answered crushing me to his chest. Then he lifted his head again and asked "Have you eaten?" Seemingly abandoning the topic of my bad looks. "No, I slept since noon. " Suddenly I could feel how hungry I was but at the same time I did not want to release him. "How about we order some tapas and eat here?" I pointed to the couch. He peered down at me and truly smiled for the first time since he saw me and I had a hard time trying to stay focused. There was my Garret, this intoxicating mixture of desire and disbelief in his gray eyes. "Give me a second to change, make yourself at home commander. Maybe order food, I want wine boiled chorizo, meat balls with tomato sauce and bacon wrapped dates big pile of each."

I winked at him and rushed to my bedroom and beyond to the walk in closet the size of an average apartment on Manhattan, as the real estate agent described it. There I quickly shed my office clothes and changed into oversized multicolor sweatpants and a knitted crop top. I turned and felt sudden apprehension about going back to the living room. My headache was on its way back and I just wanted to run as far away from Garret as possible, I sat on a chaise long in the middle of the closet. The boy was a nuisance putting it mildly, making me reckless and weak. The thoughts popped in and out of my head along with a passing stab of migraine until I heard his voice coming from somewhere close.

"Ember?" I exited the closet and found him standing at the doorstep to my bedroom. He quickly stepped outside, when he saw me, and I rushed to grab his hand. He sent me that worried look again. "Are you all right?" "Yes, was just changing." He looked me over doubtfully. "Food is here." He said. "Wow, that was fast." I chuckled slightly confused.

We ate talking about things we've been doing since we've last seen each other almost a month before. Garret got in touch with Order's Academy and tried to persuade them to provide much needed reinforcements sooner, than they meant it was possible. More and more survivors of Night of Fang and Fire surfaced all around the world and it was difficult to maintain his position as their leader. I sat buried neck-deep in documentation on Talon, that the Archivist deemed best suited to give me insight and understanding of Talon. I was also struggling to establish satisfactory level of authority. In other words both our lives sucked badly and we could not see the end of it. Afterwards I turned on some music and we went to the couch. Garret sat down in one corner and I nestled between his legs leaning sideways against his chest. I wanted to touch him, kiss him talk some more.

***

"Ember, better go to bed it's past eleven." Garret was shaking my arm lightly. Have I fallen asleep? Again!? "Don't leave me!" I blurted. "Stay with me Garret". He shifted under me. "My leg is sleeping. " He said and tried to stretch. "Let's go to bed then." I rose and he followed collecting his bag from the floor by the doors. I pointed him to guest bathroom and hurried to my own to brush my teeth. Then I slipped into the closet to change into shorts and oversized t-shirt with Toothless serving as pajamas. As soon as I slipped them on I rushed out and waited for Garret in the hall. He come out soon wearing only black boxer shorts, he was lean and tan, his hair bleached by the sun.

I felt my stomach twist with longing and dread, at the sight of him. I wanted him so much, yet I did not feel fit for passionate lovemaking. I was tired and haunted, Talon required things of me, that I doubted, he would accept. Going on like this was a torment for both of us, but we could not see any alternatives right now and I would not accept ending the relationship either. Garret was the only ray of sun in my existence, he loved me and I needed him, completely and desperately. Around him I was myself, battered and wan but myself, when he was gone I did not know who I was anymore.

I strode to him and hugged him tightly, which he returned with a purr. Then I caught his eyes and said solemnly "Garret I love you and I want to be close, but I have not been feeling well lately... And I know, that we don't see each other much, but I can't go all the way tonight. Actually I... might not want to do anything tonight" I felt lame, but he brushed hair off my temple, his expression soft. "It's okay. We are not obliged to do anything Ember. Let's get you to bed." He lifted me up and carried me to my bed, that was neatly made with fresh linens. He put me on the floor and lifted the comforter for me to crawl in. I laid down obediently and patted the pillow next to me. Garret slid under the covers beside me and the warmth of his body engulfed me as he put his arm around me and turned the bed lamp off. In the relative darkness of my bedroom with Garret so close all worries and problems seemed insubstantial, only his heartbeat was real, only the scent of his body and the warmth of his skin mattered. For the first time in weeks I fell into deep dreamless sleep.

#ember hill #fanfiction #julie kagawa #talon saga #talon series #garret xavier sebastian

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salexectrian-heir · 6 years ago

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Loki: Chapter 9

Pairing: Solavellan Rating: E* (not every chapter is E, most are rated T. Chapters containing explicit content will be marked with an asterisk*) Summary: Lavellan rescued a mischievious sphynx kitten outside her work who loves her dearly. But his destructive habits start to get out of hand when he steals her attractive neighbor’s underwear… repeatedly. [Previous Chapter] [Read on AO3]

“Honestly, I think you should quit your job and be a chef, or one of those stay at home hipster-food bloggers that instagrams all their meals and gets sponsored by food industry monopolies.”

This earned her one of those rare and coveted chuckle-snorts she had grown attached to. She peered at him from over her shoulder where she stood in front of his kitchen sink, cleaning up the dishes of their--once again brilliant--grilled shrimp taco dinner. It had been over two weeks, since they had their first formal dinner together, since they slept together. A make-up of sorts for missing out on celebrating the new year. Naturally, the E.R. was filled with those who had made not so wise choices, blown off parts of their bodies with fireworks they should not have been setting off...and thus Anise was other was preoccupied. Solas had agreed to feed Loki for her while she was called away. So at least that spoiled brat got a new year’s kiss. Her heart fluttered when he met her gaze, lips pulling into a smirk where he sat lounging on his couch.

“There is only one problem,” he said, pouring them each another glass of wine from a fresh bottle. They had already killed one during dinner. “I don’t have an instagram.”

She shifted her weight and placed a hand on her hip. “Then how do you post all your mundane life updates?”

“Facebook?” He shrugged as she let out a mocking hiss of disapproval, “I don’t use it that often. Not much occurs in my life that demands a social media update.”

“Well, you should friend request me anyway so I can post random updates on your wall for you.”

Another tipsy chuckle and a smile that reached his eyes. “I’m sure you would.”

Dropping the towel she had been using to dry the counter, she made her way over to settle on the couch beside him. She swiped her glass from his extended hand and tucked her feet beneath her.

“What you don’t want to be connected?” she teased as he glanced down at his wine. “Are you still friends with an ex that would stalk me or something?”

His whole body went still.

“I was joking,” she playfully shoved him with her foot, and it brought a small smile back on his face.

“Joking as it were, you are...not entirely wrong.”

She stared at him expectantly. “Go on.”

“It’s complicated.”

He made to stand but she caught him by the elbow. He send a sideways glance towards her, a hint of apprehension in his eyes behind the mirth.

“Oh no, you don’t get out of that so easily.”

He sighed and brought his fingers to steeple over his flushed face. “My life revolves around my work."

“I know."

“Literally. My social circle, including my previous romantic relationships…” He straightened, his hands knotting together in his lap. “One more reason I was hesitant to get involved with you. I do not want to subject you, or anyone, to the chaos that is my life. My last relationship was a mistake. One I never should have made.”

“As they often are.”

“But because we work together... “ he exhaled sharply, “that’s not accurate. Because I work for her, I am still in frequent contact. It’s a bit a of a mess.”

She choked on her wine. “ You’ve slept with your boss, too ?”

Surprise rippled over his face at her outburst. “What?”

“Oh we’ll delve into my romantic disaster history in a minute. Please continue, you have a lot to unpack here.” She smiled behind her glass of wine, and nudged him again with her foot. “Go on, I want to hear this story.”

“Oh, no I would love to hear anything you have to say this point,” he turned to face her, tucking one leg beneath him, mirroring her position, “because what I’m about to say next will make everything worse.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again. She decided putting wine in it was the best course of action and so she drained her glass. “Nope, you gotta finish embarrassing yourself first. Then I’ll layout my baggage.”

“I warned you,” his mouth split into a chagrined smile as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I got involved with the Chief Operating Officer.”

Anise gasped and immediately clasped a hand over her mouth, “The C.O.O.? Solas!”

“I was young and stupid and it lasted far longer than it should have. And of course, like all things doomed to fail, it got out. Her husband found out--”

“ Her husband!?”

“The CEO.”

“You’re playing with me right now.”

“No, I am being honest.” The humor left his voice. “It’ not even a subject we should be laughing over… but…” He drug a hand over his face, wiping away the fragment of a smile from the moment before. “For once I am able to talk about it without hating myself, so that must count for something.”

Anise said aside her empty wine glass and scooted closer to him on the couch.

“Sorry I pried. I didn’t mean to open up things better left--”

“It’s okay. I should talk about these things.” He allowed her to take his hand in her own. “The point was that we are all connected on social media as well. I would like to just keep this new part of my life, my life with you , private. Something I don’t have to share with the world that demands every second of my existence.”

“Is this why you choose to live here, and commute to Arlathan?”

He nodded. “Obviously there were repercussions for our actions. I was demoted. She was suspended from her position. And that caused a lot of unrest in the company. She was admired by many. I was blamed for her downfall. And in a way, I am directly responsible.”

“What were you before a rep?”

“I worked in the labs. It’s where my true talent lies.” He shrugged. “But my clearances have been revoked and I was repurposed, as was she. Apparently we were still valuable enough to the company to be tethered and leashed for the last five years. Or perhaps it is a punishment.”

“Why don’t you just quit?” When he didn’t say anything she felt the need to add, “I’m being serious, Solas. If they’re treating you this badly, and it makes you this unhappy, walk away .”

“Could you walk away from your job after a major mistake knowing you might be able to fix , or make a difference?

Her heart dropped into her stomach. “No. I couldn’t.”

“Yes, the company itself is corrupt but the medicine they create saves lives. I used to be a part of that process.” He squeezed her hand. “I created this mess. My pride won’t just let me walk away from it.”

He may be a stubborn fool, but now he’s my stubborn fool.

“I want you to know that I’ll support you--no matter what you stubbornly choose to do.”

“You may regret that.”

A brief moment of silence enveloped them, each lost in their own thoughts.

“I also, have made some… less than wise decisions. And that is saying it nicely.” His thumb began idly tracing designs on the back of her hand as she spoke, and it gave her courage.

Here goes nothing.

She took a deep breath. “I was engaged, once.”

He sat up a little straighter, giving her his full attention. “You were?”

“Yeah,” with her free hand she tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear, “clearly didn’t end well.”

“Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”

They shared a quiet laugh. “Hah, exactly.”

“Was it to your boss…?”

“Oh creators, no.” she shook her head vehemently. “A man from my clan. Arranged marriage type thing.” He stared at her sympathetically. “We wanted to start a family... but I…. we had a falling out and he cheated, I didn’t handle it well, I decided to go to med school instead, something that would take a long time and basically give me an excuse to never go home and...”

Face reality. Face the loss of a child, of a family. Too much, too painful. Change the subject, this is one for another time.

“The boss story though, that was more recent.” She changed the subject, adjusting her legs so she was sitting cross legged. “ I got involved with one of the attendings when I was just starting out as an intern. Not my brightest moment. It was messy, and I quickly realized he was entangled with many other people, and not just me. It was a shock but once I figured it out I ended my part in it.”

If he noticed the abrupt topic switch, he made no comment. “Which attending did you sleep with?”

She cocked her head to the side. “Do you think you know him?”

“I might,” he gave a small smile.

“Anders is a remarkable doctor. I swear the entirety of his personal life puts your sleeping with your boss story to shame.”

That made Solas laugh, a real one this time. “I do know him.”

Anise blanched. “Oh, gods.”

Solas’ mouth curved into a teasing smile as one brow arched. “I’m surprised to hear the hospital staff fraternize so… frequently.”

“We’re not supposed to, but when you spend a sixteen hour high stress shift literally inside someone together...well…” she gestured with her free hand. “It happens. It’s a cesspool honestly. Every week I’m trying to figure out who’s sleeping with who so I don’t step on toes or accidentally out a relationship. It’s tiring.”

“I can imagine. No wonder you always look so wiped when you come home, avoiding all those bleeding hearts.” He leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Admirable.”

She shoved him with her shoulder, a blush beginning to color her cheeks. “Stop.”

Leaning his elbow on the back of the couch, he propped his head up with his hand. “I just divulged a secret that would have sent any sensible person running from my apartment. And yet, you’re still here.”

“I pretend to have my life together, but it’s a mess.” A soft smile formed on her lips. “And yet you keep inviting me back.”

He gave a small shake of his head before he reached for her face, cupping her jaw in the palm of his hand as he leaned towards her. “As is mine, and yet you keep staying.”

His lips brushed her own. She unfurled her limbs and slid her arms around his neck, pulling him gently down over her on the couch. He shifted to lay between her legs that wrapped around his hips once he had settled.

Pressing her mouth to his she whispered, “I never claimed to be sensible.” His tongue darted between her lips, coaxing a moan from her. “I don’t plan on starting to be now, either.”

#solavellan #solavellan fanfiction #solas #solavellan modern au #dragon age fanfiction

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englishchinesetranslations · 5 years ago

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This is a piece about me visiting Riyadh, several times, for Formula E.

Formula E is an electric racing series that says OK, boomer to 20th century petrolhead culture.

I am a high-performing, self-absorbed diva who writes about cars for a living.

Riyadh is the capital of Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh. It’s not a place, in the western imagination — which despite my scattershot efforts to broaden my horizons I definitely have — it’s a synonym for the Saudi Arabian state. Which, again, in the western imagination is one millennial and a network of shadowy contract killers.

The name Riyadh inspires fear, like a monster under the bed, something unknowable and threatening that doesn’t say anything about a city nine million people live in. Like most people, I hate admitting I’m afraid of anything real so in my mind it’s never been more than an imaginary metaphor to shield my own delicate ego.

I don’t think about the place much outside headlines. Or well, didn’t used to.

If you asked me if I’d ever imagined going to Riyadh a few years ago, I would’ve had to first work out if I could imagine Riyadh. In my mind — and I have an international relations degree so this is extra embarrassing — it was a mediaeval fortress. Perhaps some heads on spears on the walls. I’d seen some pictures on the Daily Mail or something and for some reason never considered whether this was a bit racist.

This starts in Berlin, 2018. Formula E, a street-racing electric motorsport series, announce the championship is going to Riyadh. Which is a ridiculous concept because Riyadh isn’t even a place with streets, in my mind, because I have not yet managed to stop being racist about this and actually learn anything.

More ridiculous is that I can’t go — I’m one of half a handful of full season journalists in this series that I decided to upend my life for completely a few years ago and I can’t go to the season opening race for the next ten years.

Because of strict Sharia law in the Kingdom, I can’t work in Saudi Arabia without my dad or husband giving me permission. Which at then-31 years old, divorced and resigned to my parents disapproving of everything I do for some time now is extremely laughable. I can’t work in motorsport there at all, classed as a dangerous profession. And how the hell am I going to get in in the first place?

There is some quite emphatic shouting on a street near Tempelhof when a fellow journalist asks me what I think of it and accidentally triggers the nuclear codes on my brain. I can’t do this, are they joking? How can I even continue in the series, I used to work in the humanitarian sector, for crying out loud.

I spend a night stewing in my hostel bed and wondering how all this can be thrown back into my face so hard. And then, trembling with rage and the less hot emotion I don’t like to think I’m capable of, demand answers from then-Formula E CEO Alejandro Agag in a press conference where he’s meant to be passively introducing Nico Rosberg.

The press conference is important because he tells me that there will be women there, that there will be arrangements made, that I can go. Which is the moment Riyadh has to stop being a fictional, mythical fortress to me because if I can, then I can’t not. No matter what else I think right now, I can’t let my male peers go and exclude myself so now even worse than being banned from Riyadh I have to actually go there.

Then my handbag gets stolen on the U-Bahn and I have bigger problems in the immediate, because the British embassy’s closed for a royal wedding.

Why is going somewhere so bad? Especially if you’ve already sucked down the moral serving of working in motorsport, gone the distance and done the deeds to get there.

I don’t want to shy away from the facts, here. Firstly, that motorsport is an intensely conservative world — all sport is. Formula E is by miles and miles the most liberal, even confrontational element of at least the cars bit of it but there are no openly gay drivers at a top level, there are very few women.

It’s bizarre to me, as someone who lives in London’s very leftwing queer scene, to work somewhere where shaving half my head was a bit edgy not just ‘had a breakdown on Tuesday, lads.’ I am more left wing than most normal people and motorsport as a whole is considerably more right.

I love my job. I whine about doing it, constantly but I love motorsport. I am obsessed with it, it’s what makes me feel the most and I am fascinated by the tech and I adore my friends in it, this is a job I have worked insanely hard to get — not something I am being forced to do, disinterestedly. But there is a disconnect between the realities of it and myself as a person.

Even motorsport people, however, were shocked by us announcing we were going to Riyadh. Until this event, the FIA (motorsport’s global governing body) had never sanctioned an event in Saudi Arabia, not because there was no interest from the Kingdom (Saudia, the national airline, have been an F1 sponsor for decades) but because until recently, women were completely banned from driving.

That changes, in the months between the announcement and the race — because it had to, as a condition of the event happening. You can view that as the Eprix clearly directing positive change or not if you want but the fact that it had to is important as part of the situation, as part of understanding why people were shocked we were going there.

Saudi Arabia operates a guardianship law for women, who require their husband or male relative’s permission to do things like open a bank account, get a job or a passport. Women are required to wear an abaya (the usually-dark coverup garment that covers you from foot to neck) as well as modest clothing and muslim women must wear a hijab. All Saudi Arabians must be muslim and a religious police force exists to enforce strict adherence to sharia law.

Kissing in public is absolutely banned, as is alcohol and western music. There are no cinemas and media is restricted. LGBT acts can get you imprisoned, publicly whipped or even executed. Human Rights Watch lists the “dissidents” who are detained on long charges in Saudi Arabian jails — they are women’s rights activists, people who have criticised the government, protestors who in most countries would be considered very mild. Torture is documented by HRW as being widely used as an interrogation tool against detainees.

It’s not fully whataboutism to say “well, other countries have terrible records on human rights, too and sport still happens there.” But Saudi Arabia has been off the table for a long time, not least because events like this — people congregating and especially in mixed gender settings — have been banned for a long time by the government themselves.

So is Formula E so financially or morally bankrupt to take the Saudi Arabian money and go there? It’s not like the country has a longstanding connection to electric technology and green solutions — absolutely the opposite, Saudi Aramco is the world’s largest producer of crude oil.

It’s complicated. WWE were the first big sports brand to announce an event in Saudi — but WWE isn’t really a sport and isn’t governed by a sporting body, wrestling a strictly choreographed entertainment product, despite the athleticism. As a consequence, the event in Riyadh could be bent to meet existing Saudi restrictions — no female wrestlers, no women in attendance, etc.

The FIA couldn’t do that and neither could Formula E. The event was somehow going to have to cater to, well, people like me. And they could have done that by spending the Saudia money on ferrying us around so we never saw anything but for whatever reason, they didn’t. They’ve never told me what to tweet or what to write about it. I don’t work for them, they didn’t sign this off and if anything happens to me as a consequence of writing it it’s not their problem.

They’ve got me access to princes to ask questions and put me in front of an exhaustive list of local TV and newspapers to prove that, yes, there is a woman — I’m aware I’m a bit of the PR to all this. And that that’s why people question whether what I think about it is true and why I’ve spent over a year writing this and why it’s so long.

I am incredibly sick of the persistent accusation Formula E journalists do not ask about this. That the media has not had to think about it, that nothing’s been written. So here you go, I’ve written it all.

There’s a view that these big, international events happening in Saudi Arabia is ‘sportswashing’ — that the intention is for Saudi Arabia’s international reputation to be rehabilitated by being thought of as a sports venue. That brief, highly-controlled environments are giving an unrealistic view of life there.

The events are short, for sure. I have made three brief trips to Riyadh and I am not about to pretend that I know about ‘normal’ life there in any meaningful way. This isn’t intended to be documentary about Saudi Arabia writ large, it’s about what it’s like to go there as a journalist to cover the events and what I’ve seen and the people I’ve spoken to. A lot of it’s just about what goes on in my head during the weekends — it’s part travelogue.

I don’t think about Riyadh very much for the next few months because I don’t know what I’m going to do about it, until Formula E call me a few weeks before testing and ask if I’d like to go on a trip. Would I. My entire method of managing my fragile psychology is dependent on going off somewhere every few weeks and the pent up home time is sending me scratchy, I say yes before I’ve even heard where it is.

It’s Riyadh, obviously. They post me some abaya and I read some not very reassuring travel advice, most of which doesn’t make much sense, while trying to work out a way of covering up my confrontationally queer hairstyle.

At Jaguar’s season launch I scope out who else is going — it’s all men but then again, there are not many things like me in motorsport. I contemplate my own death in a mediaeval fortress a lot, because this, for some reason, seems likely to be something Formula E would be sending me to.

The flight over is blandly sober. My hobbies and interests are pretty much covered off by “getting extraordinarily lit on flights” so the self restraint to ask for coffee instead of wine, before we enter Saudi airspace and they stop serving it, is an immense struggle. I also keep falling over my abaya and still can’t do anything with the headscarf to save my life.

My male peers are not having these problems. One of them has a gin and tonic, for a start.

In my head, Riyadh airport is a jail. The entrance to fortress Riyadh, machinery of a despot. In my mind, this is where it goes wrong — where my hastily-issued travel authorisation is judged invalid, where the men are let in but I’m not, where somehow this turns into The Gang All Go To Saudi Prison. Sitting nervously on plastic chairs, we wait for our visas to be done and I try to be sanguine about my upcoming, certain death and consider if I could actually fancy one of the dudes or if I’m just surprisingly horny about my own mortality.

Spoilers: I am not dead.

When we get through customs, the Saudi fixer shakes my hand. My very limited googling has informed me this is absolutely illegal unless we are married and my heart leaps out of my chest because oh here we go, here’s where I die. It’s so stupid it’s unreal, my tabloid-mythological Saudi overlayed like VR on what’s in front of my face.

I’d say it’s the fact it’s 40 degrees centigrade at 1am but realistically it’s just me being ignorant as all get-out and believing whatever I read, especially the most ghoulishly outrageous bits, instead of being willing to find stuff out. Which is a particularly stupid situation for a journalist.

Riyadh is, through the window of the taxi, very clearly not a mediaeval fortress. It has Starbucks. It has Nando’s. Its late but there are people walking around and when we get to our hotel, it’s easy enough for me to buy a coffee, go for a quick wander around the block and then stare out of my thirteenth-story window at a sprawling city glittering with lights. Not as built up with forbidding glass as Dubai, not quite as antiquarian-ramshackle as my beloved Marrakech and there’s something somewhere to it, a little chaos and disorganisation, a little… rule-breaking tendency that twangs on strings tied to Tbilisi.

Riyadh suddenly isn’t a story to scare naughty children with, it’s a place — where nine million people live. And I realise I have been quite stupid about this. Embarrassingly, shamefully so. I don’t get anything like enough sleep, thinking about it because I hate being wrong and I’m not quite sure how I so bullheadedly was so off the truth.

At the showcase I interview some Saudi princes. In the back of my mind lurks a vociferous argument I had with my ex-husband once, where I called him morally bereft for even considering working with the Saudi state. It is funny when you schadenfreude yourself.

My image of a Saudi Prince at the time is very limited. And by limited I mean I can name one.

I have not thought about HRH Abdulaziz bin Turki AlFaisal Al Saud. At this point, he’s the person personally tasked with making Formula E happen and he is vibrating with anxious tension about making it work. In my steady realisation that Saudis are people, too, I clock that they’re as nervous about screwing this up for us as we are of doing something wrong. Maybe a lot more so.

Abdulaziz is funny. I worry halfway through the interview I’m going to get in trouble for flirting with him because when I listen back to it, we laugh a lot. It’s the slightly anxious giggling of people doing something weird they’re not sure will work, at the start and then just genuine jokes. We “do a bit” about everyone telling Saudi they need to make changes for decades and then telling them they’re going too fast when they do.

I find out most Saudis, in fact almost all Saudis, are aged between 15–30 and think about what that means for the life expectancy in this bakingly hot, dry country. 90% of the population works in agriculture, which must be backbreaking in the extremities of the peninsula’s climate and that quality of life is poor, especially compared to the state’s wealth. It is very obvious he is a devout reformer and wants to urgently improve things for Saudi Arabians, starting with what he knows (he used to race in Blancpain GT in Europe) by bringing motorsport and technology to push the country away from the oil enriching — and endangering — it.

He’s not a cold despot, or a charismatic liar — there are plenty of both in motorsport let alone other fields I’ve covered — he’s a little bit thousand-miles-an-hour, talks more like Formula E’s bouncy kiwi Mitch Evans than a politician and with slightly more honesty, not offended when I push things and offering more to ask about than he tries to hide.

If the whole trip has wrongfooted me a little by just bringing Riyadh out of the mythical then this does something else. I do some gormless, rapid recalculations, brain as vacant as that meme because despite my almost unshakable sense of western entitlement it has finally got through that there’s a chance the race in Saudi is not actually about me.

In all my righteous, ask-a-manager fury about having to do this myself, I haven’t thought about the Saudi equivalent of me. Who wants to watch motorsport, work in it, has been denied it right up until now unless she was privileged enough to get to other states — and 90% of the population isn’t. Doing the maths in my head, that 70% 15–30 year olds includes about 13.6 million women my age or younger who’ve just got the right to drive as part of the FIA negotiations for the race. And the right to work at it. And here I am pitching a fit because I have to comply with what might as well be a uniform, to a tourist, for a weekend.

Ok, somehow I have got some perspective. But that doesn’t make this all automatically fine, does it.

Aseel Al-Hamad, a Saudi woman who’s just driven an F1 car at the French grand prix, is there. There’s a flamboyantly camp young Saudi YouTuber or something who is flirting with everyone. I still can’t drink coffee without dripping it on my headscarf.

Everyone keeps saying “it’s just a normal place.” Which is true — it has coffee shops and supermarkets and I eat an extremely salty salad with two other journalists after we get back to the hotel and none of us get arrested for not being married to each other. But also that dumbs it down, to just our own flighty concerns about how to exist here.

I can’t stop thinking about those stats. Saudi, which I’d thought of as ruled by old zealots, is so modally young that I am above the average age here.

There are young, excited Saudis at the showcase. Obviously, because that’s what 70% of the population are. 39 million people live here, who I’ve either thought of as generically oppressed or generically oppressive, drawn on some very primitive gender grounds. When I worked in humanitarianism, no one ever mentioned being humanitarian to Saudis and to my genuine horror, against all my ethics, I’ve casually dehumanised an entire population.

Don’t tell me, sitting from the west and spitting blood on social media at the idea of racing series going to Riyadh, you haven’t done something the same. Because I’m pretty good at this and yet somehow I can get my head around going to New York while toddlers sit in ICE detention, can get on with living in the UK despite knowing full well the horrors my own government is committing but I didn’t know any Saudis, you see. So somehow it hadn’t occurred to me they might want things like entertainment and sports and other things I take for granted and don’t assume I should be denied just because the prime minister’s done a racism again.

Formula E wasn’t taking a compromised event — not like WWE’s male-only show for a select few. It was going to be an Eprix like any other, bar the podium champagne. Not only that, there’d be women on track.

Saudi Arabia was about to go 0–60 by never having had women driving to hosting an event where, during a test, the largest number of women, anywhere, ever would be driving current, top flight machinery alongside men. A statement, yes but not intended to me about Saudi but to Saudi women about motorsport. I mention it to the prince, who thinks it’s quite funny as a statistic — he’s raced in Europe, after all, he knows what the numbers are like in our glorious egalitarian societies.

(If you don’t: they’re atrocious. I can name every woman who’s ever got as far as single seater racing, while I can’t remember which men were in F1 5 years ago, there’ve been so many.)

I tell someone on Twitter that if other countries wanted to do it they’ve had the preceding 70 years and well, where is the lie?

The flight to Dubai, en route back, is weird. I rip my hijab off in the airport terminal, no longer able to cope with my own inept wrapping and try to stop the side-shaved bit of my hair standing up. A male journalist asks me why I bothered with it in the first place and I try not to give him too much of a death glare because actually it’s becoming apparent things aren’t what I assumed.

I absentmindedly delude myself into thinking I’ve been invited to hang out with the guys, not just tagged along by proximity, for the rest of the journey and it hurts for about half the subsequent season that I’m incapable of learning not to make assumptions, despite the big ol’ wisening experience I just got lavished with. But those are other places.

Jamal Khashoggi is brutally murdered in an embassy in Turkey shortly after our showcase trip and the number of names of Saudis most people can think of increases to two. One deceased.

I nervously ask Formula E, at testing, if we’re still going. We are. It’s fuel for some very gory nightmares for a few weeks and can I really go there? I feel pretty strongly about dismembering journalists.

As the days tick down to going, mythical Riyadh re-descends on my mind. I forget the place I saw in broad daylight and brood on the fact I’ll be arriving at 1am, totally alone. It’s stupid fear, not the healthy respect I have for the fact travelling so much on my own, anywhere, is generally dangerous.

My usual attitude to being presented with a dangerous opportunity is to immediately take it. My sense of self-preservation isn’t impaired but my survival skills are over-developed, it’s left me with some excellent stories I can never put my name to and which I often only tell softened versions of, to avoid upsetting anyone. I can think or… Well, let’s say manoeuvre or lie or cheat or manipulate myself out of almost anything and the things I can’t, I can chalk up to a big bucket of Things That Are Making Me Weirder And Weirder But I Just Can’t Stop Doing Them.

I don’t think that will work in Saudi Arabia. And I’m so incapable of behaving myself. I’ve already forgotten the manifest demonstrations I saw that Saudis handle strict rules the same way everywhere else with them does, ie by each pretending they must apply to other people and look like you’re doing it when it matters, my own MO for everything.

Meanwhile my own unelected leader in the UK nearly tanks us out of the European Union for the first of what will be several, increasingly grim times and I have this vague feeling of unassailable doom.

All the thinking about going to Saudi has stopped me doing any thinking about actually going to Saudi, which because I booked my flights late and am permanently broke, is via two Ryanair flights, a gruelling overnight layover in Milan Malpensa (0/10, do not do) and 11 discombobulated hours in Jordan that I thought I was going to enjoy but it turns out the fear is kicking in.

The silly thing is, the thing that scares me is a taxi driver in Ammam who I throw some Jordanian dollars at while bruising my thumb forcing the lock down at some traffic lights to escape after he tries to essentially extort me. But if I can’t handle Ammam how am I going to handle Riyadh? A lot of me wants to turn around and go home.

I get to the airport for my final flight much too early and when they tell me I can’t check in yet, it all suddenly hits and I unexpectedly sit down on the terminal floor and cry hysterically for ten minutes.

By the time I get on the plane, I’m delirious with panic. The insane idea I am going to get arrested at the airport dominates my entire thoughts — after all, last time I was with Formula E but I’m not normally in the group, the showcase a one-off excursion.

Also, most pathetically given I’m 32 not five, I have not told my mother I’m going to Saudi Arabia. My mother disapproves of most things I do but I feel like there’s a relatively legitimate case for that here and also that I am a gutless coward for not being able to take that on. Gutless cowards afraid of being told off probably shouldn’t be trying to do this.

I cry so pathetically with fear the Flynas staff, who are spectacularly kind, give me a free coffee and one sits with me, thinking it’s the thermal-buffeted take off that has me hysterical, not the country they live in.

It is, obviously, not Formula E’s responsibility to check I get anywhere. Or where I’m staying or in particular I’d really rather they didn’t attempt to regulate what I’m doing because I reserve my right to get up to all kinds of things without them trying to stop me. But sometimes there are moments when I think anyone would quite like to think there’s someone who’ll know if they don’t make it to their hotel and I’m having one, feeling much too vulnerable to be able to do this. The monster under the bed is scaring me, mooom.

Needless to say, it’s fine. Uber is very well-regulated in Saudi Arabia and the process of transferring to my apartment hotel is extremely straightforward and despite my sudden inability to do maths convincing me it costs three times more than it does, really cheap from a London perspective.

The guy at the check-in desk thanks me for respectfully wearing Saudi-compliant clothes; my hair at this stage is still difficult to not look aggressively asymmetrical and I’ve finally learned how to do a hijab but it sort of unnerves me. Am I either appropriating or colluding with something, here? After all, I’m not muslim. I’d be a terrible muslim, I already miss wine.

I really need to sleep but don’t, which turns out to be basically what I spend most of my time in Riyadh doing because my brain won’t stop turning over and there’s not enough hours before I have to get up and go to the track anyway.

Here is where things get interesting, of course. Because I’m not staying in a hotel full of Formula E people, I’m not staying with anyone else at all, I’m just any old regular person in Riyadh, staying in the kind of place an average-income Saudi might if they were visiting from Jeddah.

Formula E don’t have my address, I didn’t have to put it on my visa application (handled by the championship so I have no idea how difficult it would be to get one as a journalist otherwise) and unless someone very carefully trailed me from the airport then I’m just out here alone. I’m staying in Al-Aqiq, which is a neighbourhood sort of near Diriyah and as decentralised as the whole of Riyadh seems to be.

Riyadh is a weird city, from my perspective — it seems to have no centre and there’s motorways everywhere. In any 500m walk, you can find at least two demolished buildings with the rubble in situ and another one under construction, a petrol station and a kebab shop. Every road feels like a dual carriageway and I don’t understand the shops.

Not for the reason I assumed I wouldn’t understand the shops, which was more specifically cultural issues. I don’t understand the shops because they sell things that make absolutely no sense to me whatsoever — I’m staying in an apartment hotel and there’s a petrol station nearby, a coffee shop on the forecourt.

That’s reasonably sensible to me. I can also get my head round the oddly Roman-themed kebab shop and the phone shop the other side — fine, that’s how modern life works right?

What I do not understand is the stationery warehouse that also sells party gear and interior design trimmings that seems, by all accounts, to be the big shop in the area. It’s sized for a DIY shop and stocked by the crazy crap aisle in Lidl and although it sells me an exceptionally good pencil sharpener that I’ve jealously guarded ever since, I cannot work out what the heck its deal is. It opens at like 7am and has supermarket trolleys available but every time I go in everyone’s buying like one box of paper plates?

There will be no answers. Some elements of Riyadh, I have to accept, I will not fully understand.

But I find myself going in a lot. I buy some weird new stationery that doesn’t really set me up for the season, because Al-Aqiq doesn’t have much else going on. I get really invested in trying every type of latte flavour the petrol station coffee shop does because it sort of gives me a sense of direction in my attempts at exploration that are otherwise coming up short because I can’t find anywhere to poke around, sleepy residential and mosques the main features of the area.

I assumed it was because I was sort of on the outskirts but this continues to puzzle me a year later. I’m used to cities with centres, high streets — I don’t know if it’s the heat or just a different, dispersed way of doing things or because (and I definitely have noticed this) Saudis don’t really have a culture of congregating places, turning up in crowded scenarios or what. But the structure of the town kind of makes no sense to me, and maybe never will.

There’s, seriously, no public transport on the enormous roads and coming from London that confuses the heck out of me. Contrary to the imagined SUVs of gulf state, most of the cars on the road are old and Japanese — Toyota Camrys and Hyundais, clearly proudly cared for but long in the tooth on mileage. There are almost no European or American cars and the ones that exist look weirdly out of place, a Renault Megane looking like an undersized curiosity in a line of Honda estates.

From that, you can probably gather I walked around a bit. I actually walked around a lot more than I initially intended to, especially on the first day I was trying to get to the track.

This is where it gets a bit technical about the business of motorsport, which is that for the first and only time this year, I need to get to the accreditation centre and pick up the pass that will let me into the circuit — and the rest of the season. This is a very minorly stressful process — and only so because I haven’t been to the circuit before so there’ll be a degree of wandering around trying to find the right place.

What happens is that I initially book a taxi to the wrong place, as it turns out there are several bits of Riyadh called Diriyah. Then I rebook a taxi and it goes to a different version of the wrong place, including having to get through several military checkpoints that my taxi driver is increasingly confused why I think I should be going through — and to be fair, so am I. There wasn’t any of this last time.

I bail out when I see some Formula E hoardings on the basis I must be nearby. This is a stupid idea. I’m the wrong side of the track and have to walk through it to get to the thing that will let me get the lanyard that says I am allowed to go through it but there doesn’t seem to be any other sensible way of making it there.

This feels like the sort of thing you could get into a lot of trouble for. It feels more like that when I get to some catch fencing that hems me in so totally I realise the only thing I can do is walk a long way back, to possibly not be able to find a way through or to climb it. Reader, despite the clothing situation and the fact I am carrying a rucksack full of precious scarred Macbook, I climbed it.

Jumping down the other side, I realised one of the reasons was because it was next to what looks really like a military compound and there’s a bored-looking dude with a gun staring at me. To quote Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye: ok, this looks bad.

There’s a sort of weird thing that happens when you are in a genuinely bad situation. Like, this is obviously not what I am supposed to be doing and it’s hard to guess whether the FIA or the Saudi government will get angry at me wandering into places I am clearly not meant to be first — or most severely. Technically I haven’t signed my behaviour waiver with the FIA for the year yet and also they probably have fewer guns.

As you can probably guess by the fact I’m writing this a year later, the next 45 minutes are quite stressful but ultimately end up in the accreditation office with extremely smudged eyeliner but no permanent damage. And for the record, the Saudi soldier I end up speaking to through Google Translate is nothing but helpful.

Which should probably be the end of me getting lost in various places in Riyadh except it’s kind of only the beginning. I very rarely get lost, I’m great at yeeting myself round the world and reading cities from their layout alone — I don’t know if it’s just that Riyadh is so decentralisedly alien to me or if it’s just the same thing that happens where I cannot stop myself trying to read Arabic the wrong way round and it’s just that I’m too stupid to understand it.

Whatever it is, I get lost a lot. Nearly continuously. I have to develop an uncharacteristic level of chill acceptance for not knowing where I am or when I will next be able to work that out. For sometimes wandering at length down motorways, in the rain, trying to hope that there’s a point on the horizon where GPS will work and maybe I won’t run out of road before then. It’s never that horrible, as an experience — Riyadh actually has fairly decent pavements — it’s just slightly bizarre and adds to my sense of being constantly wrong-footed and out of my depth, which is the kind of on-the-edge-of-fear feeling that makes me crotchety and unobservant and the whole problem ten times worse.

Anyway, that’s for later.

Occasionally, people call me inspirational. How inspirational of me, pursuing a career in a male dominated field. How inspirational of me, tootling round the world on my own and with no budget. How inspirational of me to not have ended up dead given all that.

It’s a weird feeling. I am outrageously flattered by it but I don’t feel very inspirational; I’m broke, I have a professional respect level probably best described as ‘tolerated’ (and barely that) and I’m hardly out here getting awards. When I finish a season I mostly feel a crushing sense of disappointment at myself for not having done that better.

Which is the kind of thing, when the drivers say it, you feel moved to say something encouraging. But it’s true — I’m frustrated by the number of times the titanic effort to get to a race limits the ambition of what’s possible there. And I’m kind of breaking myself a bit and in denial about it.

Anyway, should I really be an inspirational figure for dragging myself to Saudi Arabia on budget flights and white-knuckle bracing to hang on for another season? Probably not. After all, the whole reason I can do this sort of thing is because I’m an overpaid London media professional with a devastating sense of entitlement about travel.

It gnaws at me a bit, because all weekend when I’m in the Riyadh paddock young women keep coming up to me. They grab at my media pass, newly-minted and full-season heavy in the folds of my abaya and we stagger through conversations in Arabic via google translate or if they know enough English to talk.

It’s very exciting and inspirational, seeing a woman journalist succeed. I know because a few months previous to this event, I got amazingly drunk and embarrassed myself telling Suzi Perry how much she inspired me. I look up to the broadcasters and the journalists I find digging through old magazines and suddenly realise that’s a woman’s byline, often from a point when I assumed there weren’t any.

To be honest, I think most people just assume there aren’t any of us either way. Women in motorsport are grid girls or PRs — at least, in that same spooky, popular imagination where Riyadh’s barely a map location but you definitely have an opinion about it even so.

As far as the young women grabbing at my pass are concerned, I’m as ludicrously mythical as I can’t seem to stop myself thinking about their city if I let my mind wander for even forty seconds. A female motorsport journalist, travelling around on her own and from their perspective the most extraordinary thing, which is that I’ve apparently come to Saudi Arabia of my own volition. In fact, I’ve had to work really hard to do so, when I could have just… not.

This is kind of incomprehensible, to the Saudi teenagers. They’re excited by the idea I’d do it but when I live in London and can go anywhere, why would I? And on my own? I must obviously be the kind of incredibly celebrated and important person who thinks they can get away with that sort of behaviour and I don’t have the heart to tell them I’m actually panicking a bit about whether I can get anywhere to even take my coverage this season.

Riyadh’s one of the problems, actually. Editors don’t want to be seen to be endorsing it and the ones I can get to take it say they have to include critique of the situation, which is maddening when they won’t let me write about anything I’m actually seeing.

Ok, yes. Here is the situation: the Saudi government has paid for the race. Someone, somewhere, always pays for a race — championships sustain themselves on hosting fees and Formula E doesn’t go for the scalp like F1 but ultimately ‘who is willing to pay’ is a major persuasive factor to an events’ viability. Not to peel back the final veil but this is how big sporting events work, everywhere.

It’s proved controversial in the past. Montreal paid extra to host a season-ending double-header over several seasons, then it turned out the (I’m compelled by journalism standards to write the word ‘allegedly’ here) corrupt mayor had made promises the city wasn’t willing to keep.

It put Formula E in a position where, contractually, they had to sue the city for a settlement — not the most popular thing to do but FE itself can hardly just wave away a contract or they’d look like mugs everywhere else. Also probably, you know, needed the money for something because no one knows more about how much doing all this costs than my Ryanair-seat-shaped arse.

And why? Why wheel and deal to make a global car racing championship happen. Well, I don’t know — there’s no actual point, is there? There’s not a moral at the heart of this, a heartwarming lesson for humanity that’s perfectly illuminated by the chance to watch one millionaire athlete smash another millionaire athlete into a concrete barrier in a shower of carbon fibre.

You’ve got to tell yourself something to sleep at night though, right? There’s got to be some reason you’re doing it. We make it up for any job, the reason you’re logically doing these things. Here’s mine.

The planet is dying. That’s not hyperbole — the seas are emptying of whales drowned by plastic as fast as they fill with Antarctic meltwater. We can’t put either of those things back, there isn’t a fix except prevention.

The sky is choking, we’re shutting off the stars with satellites and smog and after a few hundred years of building a world dependent on massive — and mass — mobility, we’ve realised we can’t use the types we’ve been reliant on. We talk about the screaming, hurtling destruction of the only place we can live in bland, corporate terms, these words like ‘mobility’ and ‘transitive economics’ neatly editorialising the end of the world as the closing remarks of a conference on disaster mitigation.

It’s terrifying. It’s so incomprehensibly, mind-crushingly fearful that even if you can somehow get yourself together enough to think about it, it’s really hard. Scientists say the risk numbers are into the bit where human minds actually don’t understand them because we just can’t really be that scared.

Which is a problem, because the last thing we need right now is numbness. A few years back, I’d slipped a long way into it — not really specifically the planet but more that some very immediate things were going very wrong in my life and the only way I could continue to get up and go to work instead of lying down and screaming was to just not feel anything. Which isn’t very sustainable, you need a cathartic ability to make sense of things even if they’re terrible.

There’s lots of crutches people use — alcohol (a generally reliable and disastrous one for me) and other mind-altering distractions, getting overinvested in box sets, obsessively hyperfixating about your OTP, pinning your emotional wellbeing on the success of a sports team.

I went for pinning my entire psychological and professional future on Formula E being the thing to dive into right that moment. In the moments where I couldn’t think of a reason to carry on, there’d be another race on the horizon. In the long nights where I didn’t want to live anymore I could motivate myself with the sheer, stubborn desperation of throwing myself into getting in.

Frivolous, yes. But Formula E does also have a point: on this dying earth, amidst the keynotes on the end of transport, we need to do something. Just stopping flying or transporting or using the massive systems we’ve rigged to plug the earth in won’t work. Same as we can’t put the whales back in the barren sea, we can’t just pull the brakes on a tangled juggernaut we’ve spent decades chaotically assembling because as much as we urgently need to, to save lives, if we do then people will literally die.

It’s complicated. It’s those things too big to think about and we needed solutions before I was born, are living through the dying moments of panic while we scrabble for a fix that makes things least-bad. The trolley dilemma between apocalypse and slightly mitigated endtime.

We’ve got to be brave. We’ve got to do things like say ‘we actually cannot use oil anymore’ — for fuel, for plastic, for millions of things that keep us alive in abstract or direct ways. The 20th century was built on such a proliferation of oil products it’s hard to imagine extracting them from your home, you can’t even extract them from your supermarket trolley without making a very contorted list.

And there’s so little time. There’s so much to do. We’ve got to fix cars and planes and medicine and supply lines and food and it’s really hard to think about it all because there’s nothing you can do, you need some sort of thing to rally around.

Yes, it’s cruder than a barrel to say that Formula E can be that thing. It’s a racing series, it’s a day out, it’s entertaining sport — but it’s also a test of shame for automakers caught out in dieselgate, it’s an on-track annoyance that says actually it is possible to make electric cars populist, you can do this.

If all the absurd, awful things we have to deal with now were built in the panicked competition of the twentieth century, then welcome to the 21st edition of that scrap. There’s no time to tear into the companies and people that have orchestrated it — half of them are dead and none of them care but if you can make a system where to succeed, they have to do what you want then that’s something else.

There’s never been and I hope there never is again a moment where motorsport, as inch-grabbing competitive hot lab for transport, has had such a crucial moment. All the years of F1’s development need to be drowned out in the next half-decade by the wind-up banshee howl of electric technologies making up for decades in absence.

And you can’t politely do that on the streets of Monaco as a nice little spectacle. You have to go where you’re not wanted and explain that, actually, you are what is needed. You can’t disrupt anything without causing a little chaos and you’re gonna have to do some stuff that scares you and other people might not approve of.

So for all that, I’d better be fucking inspirational. If I’m the in, I’d better live up to it. If I’m, somehow, the lens that someone can see something worth getting excited about through then I’d better wipe off the grime and get on with it. If I’m how someone can see themself being part of this, across whatever incomprehensibly vast gulf, then I’d better not be churlish about it.

Yes, I am a colossally privileged westerner. Yes, I am ignorant and disastrously naiive — no one looks at me in a paddock and takes me seriously. Formula One journalists consider my curious electrical proclivities like discovering the intern is into something kinky and I’m never going to get a Pulitzer.

But in a paddock in Riyadh I’m a thing people haven’t seen before because all that colossal western privilege means I get to do things they’re not allowed to. And things people have never seen before are inspiring, whether they’re race series screaming round a UNESCO world heritage site or grandstands where women sit with men or Jason Derulo’s shiny jeans.

And the government paid for it, yeah. It’s a little incomprehensible. Why would the Saudi government pay for an event that’s hardly aligned with an oil state’s economy?

One answer is the propaganda. A greenwash over ARAMCO’s continued production of the majority of the world’s crude oil. But New York has an Eprix and no one looks across the Atlantic and says ‘well, the US is green now’ any more than anyone thinks of Oman as the home of football.

So if you talk about greenwashing, you either think the Saudi government is hopelessly naiive or that the entire world is, stricken by lack of knowledge about the place. Formula E is part of a plan, though — the Vision 2030 programme of reform and transformation, which includes a focus on opening Saudi to visitors.

Saudi Arabia has a lot of visitors per year, to Mecca. But visas for non-Muslims were very hard to come by until recently, with tourist visas not at all and a lot of the country restricted.

The first year, lots of journalists were flown out by the Saudi tourism board and taken on an ultra-luxury, whistlestop tour of the Kingdom. I obviously wasn’t one of them. This doesn’t come from a place of delusion where I think those lovely people from Saudia took me on such a nice trip, I learned so much during the cultural briefings between private jet flights…

The thing about being the unexpected element, that weird thing no one expected to see in a paddock anywhere let alone Saudi Arabia, is that no one notices what I am doing most of the time because they assume I’m just recording a Vine or gazing wistfully at a drivers’ hairline or something. I don’t really get fussed around by teams or pushed out of garages or moved away from conversations because despite it being pretty obvious by this point that I do know what I’m looking at, I am also still the comedic relief.

It has turned into a bit of an act. If I actually am I tremendous dumbass then I can’t get mad when everyone treats me like one.

And no one cares what I do or where I go. As soon as I leave the circuit I’m a black shape as swaddled as any of the others. Which is why I think I can trust what I saw and what I think about Riyadh, why I don’t think anyone there was trying to impress me.

The teenage girls, after all, were there for the Black Eyed Peas concert. It was purely incidental that they discovered nice western ladies women could be motorsport journalists in the process, that my big, heavy permanent pass drew so many eyes because I couldn’t get the lanyard to bend to sitting right yet.

One of the women I speak to wistfully says she’d like to be a journalist herself but she’s been arrested before and couldn’t face it happening again. Which is where the teenage excitement melts away.

The reality is that I’m seeing Saudi Arabians get to do stuff they haven’t been able to previously which I take wholly for granted. I’m not inspirational, I’m just an exotic glimpse of someone who, for all my bleating and crying about going to Riyadh, is in absolutely no danger whatsoever.

And when I blend away into the night the only thing that stood out was I have no cocking idea how to keep an abaya out of the puddles from the unseasonal downpour. But going to Saudi is not about me.

I don’t think you can fake teenage girls. You can fake loads of things but you can’t pretend it’s plausible a restrictive state faked teenage girls’ enthusiasm. (the next year I’d get in a mosh pit with them but that’s later)

I meet a really lovely, wonderfully dedicated Saudi journalist out there. She’s a credit both to her youth and frankly to motorsport and I don’t think she even half realises how great she is at making both internet content and quality traditional journalism.

(I’m not putting her name here because this is a reasonably low-risk piece for me, I think — but I wouldn’t force anyone else’s name to be put to my words, any more than I was willing to let my own be edited)

So there are Saudi women doing this. And you should listen to them about the race far more than me and what they say is obviously the same thing I say about the London Eprix; of course you want the sport you love in your city.

Boris Johnson’s an odious prick and I’m allowed to say that. I don’t have to express gratitude to him for facilitating the event, when it happens next year. He didn’t have anything to do with it and I can be British without having a single miligram of respect for the people running the place.

I can’t tell you what Saudis think about their own leaders because I don’t know — but the attitude is definitely quite different. The situation is different, the structure is different. I don’t want to say that people are lying when they say they’re grateful to the leaders for bringing sporting events there because I don’t know that they are.

The politics of anywhere is complicated. There’s not a requirement to engage, except when there is. When you have to go somewhere the issues loom in massive print or your prime minister keeps straight-up lying about things that will get people killed.

People think we don’t ask about this. But what is there to say? I can tell you what was said in a press conference, I can tell you what I inferred from the total disregard for a lot of the stricter rules that’s obviously running through Riyadh.

Saudi Arabians like being Saudi Arabian. Much more than I think most British people like being British but that’s kind of cultural. It will come as no surprise that a young population finds strict religious law grating and wants reforms, that the handful of cinemas that have opened in the past few years are popular, that people like being able to go on dates and go out for dinner without being strictly separated into male and female and they love to party. Some of them probably wouldn’t say no to a beer.

If I tell you that Saudi Arabians (largely) approve of the race, will you approve of the race now? If I tell you that there’s young Saudis, especially women, getting the chance to do stuff they really want to do because we bring the circus to Riyadh, are you onboard? Not if you weren’t before.

I would say: why do you think you deserve the opportunity to go to things and they don’t? What are you gonna tell my friend, ‘hey, an accident of your birth location means my politics ban sport from your country?’ I don’t know if that sits right with me, personally.

Here’s some tea: the Riyadh paddock, in that first year, is the nicest motorsport paddock I’ve ever worked. As a woman. I mean, I always work in paddocks as a woman but like in terms of me being there, womanly, it was the nicest.

Within the Formula E paddock, people behave pretty much like they do in a lot of the rest of Riyadh, from what I can tell. Western women uncover their hair and some fully do away with the abaya, by year two that ratio increases to pretty much everyone but me shedding it as soon as they’re through the gates.

Women have never been banned from motorsport, in liberal western Europe. We make up 1.5% of race license holders — over the course of 125 years of motorsport events — and it’s conventional for men in racing to be able to say wildly misogynist things without it affecting their careers but we’re not banned and never have been.

Women always have been in motorsport, working and as pure fans. Most people in it start as one, end up as a combination. It’s a passion field, you can’t commit to the schedule otherwise.

But we’re a minority. And people quite often either forget we’re there or forget that any group who are so completely marginalised actually kind of needs some extra catering-for. You get used to it after awhile and kind of forget but you will never be one of the boys.

Riyadh isn’t like that because this is a totally new event. They have to make sure that it caters to a population not used to attending these kind of events at all and also that it specifically advertises to and makes itself welcoming to women, because otherwise they’re at risk of getting in trouble with the FIA. The organisers here 100% have to prove how liberal and reformed they are.

Which means everything includes me. People add “and ladies” every time they say “guys,” everyone asks for my opinion about things, I get brought to the roundtables and possibly actually given more time with people than the men.

It’s so strange and flattering, it gives me not a weird impression of Saudi Arabia, who I completely understand the motivations of about this and yes I know it’s PR and an act. But it’s an act that’s working, I do feel welcomed not specifically to Riyadh but to motorsport in a way I simply never have back home. It makes me a bit genuinely hysterical about having to go back to normal paddocks.

I don’t think Riyadh deserves a medal for it or anything — but it makes me think a lot about the ‘regular’ motorsport events.

Back to that first year; it’s fine. I distract myself by looking after one of my friends, who is finding it all much harder and who I designate myself the food and drink carer for the majority of the season.

By the time we’re leaving the circuit I promise to come back for a week next time, to see more of the city. I’ve already made myself a playlist for the way home and although I’ve been cheerfully, relentlessly convincing myself I am coping fine and the kilometre and a half down a dark motorway I’ve walked every night doesn’t bother me and I feel perfectly safe, there’s a cathartic reason it opens with the Pet Shop Boys’ Home & Dry.

But it’s done. We’ve been to Riyadh and nothing bad happened and I ate some really great falafel. Also had one of the best experiences of my life when I walked up to media pen on the test day and there was a near-equal number of female to male drivers due to a test stunt where teams were allowed to run a second car if a woman drove it.

Yeah, it’s a stunt. But it’s the one that means Saudi Arabia has now had the most women driving in a mixed-gender, top flight motorsport series, simultaneously, of any country ever. If anyone’s mad about that then motorsport has been happening for 125 years and somewhere else could have done it first. I mean, this is just sport. Somewhere could have done that. Somewhere could do it now with a larger number. In the interim, well played HRH Abdulaziz.

I decide maybe I don’t want to drink any wine in Cairo airport on my way back, for roughly the amount of time it takes me to get off my plane, walk to a place that sells wine and immediately order some. It tastes so good, I have a little cry.

Thus ends year one of what’s going to be ten years of me taking myself to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as a lone woman and trying to get around.

Something weird happens the day after that season’s final race in New York, which is that I go to a lunch with a load of other journalists. They’re all F1 and important and cool, I probably shouldn’t have even been invited. Especially given I’ve just got off a heavily delayed overnight flight from JFK and I am not feeling it.

Anyway, I inevitably mention I’m from Formula E and this guy goes off at me about Riyadh. Then when he discovers I actually go, he goes even more in on me and my moral decay. I’m genuinely shocked by the ferocity of it, especially from a group of people who go to Bahrain.

I’ve got used to having to explain myself but this guy just won’t let it lie, says I’m dancing on Khashoggi’s grave and and mocking the idea of journalism, supporting crimes against women. I kind of think, privately, that that’s a bit much coming from the lofty podium of working in, uh, famous humanitarian agency Formula One but then at the time I also do that so perhaps that’s not a great stone to start throwing in a room full of people who do too.

I don’t manage to get my brain together enough to sell it to him. I mean, I don’t know if I want to sell it? Do I actually think it’s good that we go, not just survivable?

You know what, I do. I think it’s difficult and it stresses me out and every year it makes the season opener tough and you know, people shout at me over lunch and things. But look, if you just close the door on Saudi Arabia then how’s there gonna be reform? How is freedom of the press and rights going to improve if you don’t know anything about anything that happens there? Or anything about the country? The people that live there?

It’s 2019; the same way that Saudi Arabia can’t stop the flow of information as a young, internet-savvy population gets extremely online, you can’t stand in the way of things

My most succinct summary of why I think we should go, though, is simpler: Formula E getting paid to race in the home of oil and sit there going ‘that’s bad’ without getting censored is the biggest middle finger move.

Ah, Riyadh alone: round two. Now, surely, I would be armed with enough knowledge to not screw up constantly by disappearing into my own bizarre alternate reality.

Guess what? I absolutely do not. If anything else I’m even worse. I get really, really anxious in the runup — partly because this year my mother knows I am going and oh boy am I getting told off. Which is pathetic, what the hell, what kind of tiny, baby child am I?

I booked my flights really early this time, before testing. They were way better flights and I was excited to be going home via Beirut because apparently I am a lot better at inventing fictional versions of countries that sit in my brain like mirages than I am at reading the news.

Anyway, great life choices aside (it’s not like this is even my worst one) I, in theory, should be really chill about this. Except I miss the FIA email to apply for a visa and end up doing it late and it doesn’t turn up for ages and I get really stressed and then also ill and I start a new job and everything is really full on and I want to throw up.

I don’t do my packing until the last minute, then prepare by drinking too much wine and sleeping through my alarm so I have to book a last minute Uber to Stansted. Which isn’t ideal because I’m not sure if I’ve been paid but better than missing the whole thing.

Anyway, my point-blank refusal to ever check my bank balance is very much a me thing rather than anything directly connected to Saudi Arabia. So, off to Stansted and I have to re-buy everything I need and obviously forgot in the airport but again, this is pretty standard behaviour for anyone who’s as much of a total mess as me.

This doesn’t seem like the way to do it. I can get most places half-cut and sloppy but this is not most places. Nevermind — also it turns out Pegasus serve surprisingly pleasant in-flight wine and by the time I get to Istanbul I’m feeling quite relaxed; I have hours of stopover for it to wear off in, don’t worry.

I don’t want to go. It’s got into my head. I’ve been getting all these weird emails with hate-filled fantasies about me getting killed and I keep thinking about the guy at that lunch and also about the texts from my mum and the way I don’t feel cavalier enough to be doing this.

Why am I going? Because it’s my job to go. Because I have stuff to do. Because I have this endless compulsion to do it and it’s a massive privilege. I don’t know. It’s all weighing on my brain, am I an instrument of state PR now? I wouldn’t put up with that from anywhere and besides, I don’t think I am. I’d probably be on a fancier flight if I was.

But getting onto my late-night flight in Istanbul, I know it’s descended again. The fictional, fearful Riyadh is in my head and every radical thing I’ve tweeted from the past year is haunting me. What the hell am I doing going to Saudi Arabia?

And the thing is, I can’t (at this point) recognise it’s the VR. Yet again, I’m expecting to get arrested at the airport, to get trailed, a million paranoid things that won’t happen. But now they’re incredibly real in the sort of simulated reality everyone’s told me definitely exists and is more important than my own memories.

I’m not normally like this. I haven’t been sleeping enough (I’ve had ten hours sleep over five nights) and it’s really starting to show.

Still, on the plane now so better live with it — obviously I get to Riyadh without incident and am through the airport with a warm bag of falafel and a coffee, into an Uber where I manage to stagger through a mostly-Arabic conversation and send a selection of my wilder and more enthusiastic tweets about politically safe but morally questionable topic: Lando Norris is really hot lately.

I know I said I’m never going to win a Pulitzer but with that kind of bold reporting, I really should.

Finding my hotel takes a bit (it’s another, different dubious apartment hotel) and by the time I’m in and arrived, it’s like 3:30am so I just pass out in the massive bed. By which I mean, look at memes on my phone and rewatch the camping episodes of It’s Alive and wonder at which point I stopped just writing about semi-teenage idiot sportspeople and actually became one.

Nevermind, anyway, soon enough it’s time to revisit ‘finding the accreditation centre.’ This year I am determined not to have to climb any catch fencing so pick my Uber dropoff point VERY carefully. It is to absolutely no avail and I end up lost in the enormous Diriyah Season compound down near where Ruiz and Joshua will be going at it in a few weeks but certainly there are no electric cars currently.

Because I’m still freaking out and only managing to psychologically sustain myself by internally commentating on the situation it gets steadily worse as I wobble across the paddock on a combination of caffeine, adrenaline and inadvisable 4am hotel tap water. Once I actually find the place, collect the thing and get in the media centre things feel less out of control, except that I need to write two season previews before anyone wakes up in the UK still.

At least there’s fruit and coffee.

Thursday is a bit of a mess, for me. I don’t eat enough (I’m vegan and it’s a genuine problem in paddocks) and I’m so sleep deprived I’m really not coping very well and keep having to watch Calming YouTube Content to get a grip on myself and churn out another thousand words. To be fair, all of this is just the business of being me, doing journalism so can’t really be attributed to Riyadh or anyone there.

A team are doing an event later where I’m meant to be interviewing someone who I inevitably don’t get to interview because scheduling is a nightmare and also it’s really obvious that I am about one second from falling asleep on the floor and considerably over my stress limit. Another woman in Formula E asks me why I’m letting the side down by wearing an abaya (most team personnel are taking them off the second they enter the paddock) and I just snap.

It’s because I’m on my own. Because I arrived at 1:30am. Because everyone’s spent the last month telling me how stupid I am by going here and how certain I am to get killed and it turns out even I have a limit to self-determined risk enthusiasm. Because if anything happens to me, no one knows where I am and Formula E don’t look after me -

This comes as a surprise. They don’t? Surely no one lets me run round Saudi Arabia totally on my own?

Oh, they do. And being alone is psychologically testing and I feel so pathetic at how pitiable it all sounds. One of the drivers sympathetically tells me that sounds “really fucked up, to be honest.” It, err, doesn’t help.

By the time I get back to my hotel the absolute most I can manage to do is go to a shop and buy the ingredients for a big night in in Riyadh. Which is to say, some crisps, some mystery thing in a jar that turns out to be definitely not vegan kind of fake cheese with the consistency of mayonnaise that tastes amazing on crisps (food waste is bad) and one of everything from the drinks section.

I love foreign supermarkets. Full of weird stuff. This one is crucially full of men who are understandably surprised to see a western lady wandering around shaking like she’s on a billion drugs and trying to find the hummus (I can’t) or work out which colour of water is fizzy in these parts.

Obviously there’s no beer in Saudi Arabia but there is a wide selection of like beer-adjacent malt drinks that have weird fruity flavours and also cider-adjacent things with frightening coloured labels. I go for a beer-adjacent thing in flavour ‘original’ and a threatening can of Mirinda which poses the question about itself: watermelon or cantaloupe?

(my investigative powers don’t stretch that far, it mostly tastes of heavy-handed corn syrup)

I’m freaking out, though, because when I was in the supermarket the guy packing my bags gave me a present. It was just a chocolate wafer thing and I was concentrating on understanding what number I needed to pay so didn’t really pay any attention until I left and suddenly thought: what if they’re setting me up to be done for stealing it?

There was no evidence for this at all. Every Saudi I’ve met has been genuinely helpful or openly friendly, the worst reaction being a kind of morbid curiosity about why anyone would do what I am doing. But instead of using all 10ft-across of my weirdly gigantic hotel bed to get the sleep I really, really desperately need I obviously just send myself insane googling ‘setup to be arrested Saudi shops’ and variants thereon. It’s so stupid and I am only getting stupider as I waste precious resting hours on doing the opposite of that.

Now fully convinced I will be in jail before the end of the day, it’s time for the Friday race. Either you’re into motorsport and therefore know how race day works or you’re not and so don’t care but basically a lot of things happen all at once and I have to stop writing worryingly thirsty things about drivers in other series and do some work for once.

I’m really in the toilet, brain-wise, by this point and have to cry in the loos three times during the day. Which is difficult when the loos keep being closed because of some kind of water supply issue (Formula E uses temporarily-built paddocks so these things happen) and requires quite a lot of timing effort.

Also people keep interviewing me, which actually now seems to happen more than I interview other people and the whole thing feels completely ridiculous. Why are you interviewing me? I’m an idiot and I can’t remember my own name or feel most of the left side of my body because I last had ‘adequate sleep’ about three weeks ago and for some reason I forgot to bring any socks with me so I have these really aggressive blisters and I’m probably going to go to Saudi jail over a chocolate bar.

A lot of stuff is happening to me and very little of it is conducive to doing anything useful. Which then gets in my head more and this is how every weekend goes, except with an added, imaginary carceral threat.

I relay my woes to one of my friends who advises that maybe it really would be a good idea to eat something that isn’t crisps and get more than three hours’ sleep and like ok, I can believe that.

My Saudi friend notices I am having a meltdown and says she’s worried I hate her city. It finally kicks me into functional gear — I can’t be coming over here, making people feel bad about the fact I have a wholly imaginary version of their country down over my head like a visor.

So that night I first go to the concert after Formula E and purchase ‘potato,’ the most vegan thing I can find to eat. This helps somewhat and gets me into the mindset where when my taxi drops me off, I head off to the malls near where I’m staying (which are not the grander, designer sort you find in some of Riyadh) to complete the incredibly trivial task of buying socks and ordering stir fry.

Socks it turns out are easy, as there’s a shoe shop nearby and I could’ve saved myself a world of pain really easily. Which is pretty much the moral of this entire episode: stop making your life really hard and driving yourself insane and instead of just doing things like a normal, woman.

Dinner is also easy in that I get an absolutely monumental quantity of stir fry vegetables from a mall food court place and eat them in a sort of blissful semi-coma while listening to the sounds of Dr Dre’s seminal album 2001, over the mall tannoy. I seem to be staying in a very Asian district this year and most of the restaurants seem to be authentic Indonesian places.

This helps the sleeping problem enormously. It turns out just ‘not being scared’ is really key to getting six straight hours in bed and so being able to operate normally. And that’s the thing, what am I even scared of? Myself?

(to be fair, I am definitely the biggest danger to me)

It feels better. But I’m still relieved when I leave — it’s all the things: my own stupid ideas, the judgement from other people, the pressure of trying to make sure I’m doing it right.

Before I do though, I go to the last concert with a group of Saudi young people who I’ve tagged along with. Everyone is covered in glitter and dancing suggestively and jumping on each other and starting mosh pits. It feels like being at a gig I am about 15 years too old for in any other country, except that unlike if it was in London no one sloshes a pint of Tuborg down my back at any point.

It definitely does not feel like government collusion when at the end of his set, a Lebanese rapper does a dubstep version of Bryan Adams’ Everything I Do (I Do It For You) and I, an old person, absolutely lose it in front of this surreally gigantic stage, surrounded by excited young people.

For me, I could go to a gig like that every night of the week in London. But this is one of a handful. The first western music concerts were played at the Eprix the year before and there’s something there that feels big. You can claim the sport is a distraction for the rest of the world but you don’t televise concerts, these are for the Saudis.

(The concerts actually caused a really problematic ticketing situation this year where people were buying them, looking like the Formula E numbers were good because it was a combined ticket and then not turning up — when the organisers were asked they admitted they screwed up and would be trying to fix it next year)

This is what it comes down to, about the race. It’s a good track, it’s one of the best ones we have in fact — it’s produced two exciting races this season and despite torrential rain making the first year difficult, it worked then too. And yes, we have done all the bits about turning up to torrential rain in Riyadh; it snowed on the Sahara when we were in Marrakech once, too.

Climate change doesn’t really deal in imaginary metaphors.

So it’s a good track, the drivers like to drive on it, it produces a genuinely good sporting event. It takes electric racing and green principles, confrontationally, to one of the homes of oil. It has forced some small changes — which should not overshadow the achievements and struggles of Saudi Arabians themselves in getting those.

If you think it is just sportswashing then that’s too simple, it isn’t. It depends if you think the Saudi 2030 Vision plan is for you, probably sitting in the west and still thinking of this as some distant horror theme park, or for people there.

There’s an open PR angle, but those stats — the ones from way back at the show case, about how low life expectancy is in Saudi Arabia and how generally Saudis have a poor quality of life — well, a lot of this is not about how you see it. It’s about things like the massive investment into grass roots sport (especially motorsport, a nice upside to the now-head of the Sports Authority being an ex-racer) might improve things for regular Saudis.

You want to know what going to Riyadh is like? It’s a bit boring. People want stuff to do, same as you. And to meet people — each other and weird, jetlagged British women who can barely hold a coffee without tipping it down themselves.

So long as we acknowledge the other stuff (and we should do it everywhere) then I think you’re taking the wrong side, if you believe your opinion trumps their right to access that.

Ok here’s some more tea: Riyadh is covered in rubbish. If you want proof I’m not lying, here it is: the whole place is absolutely bedecked in trash.

This happens a lot in places with poor infrastructure, which Riyadh absolutely has. Because making life easy for people to get around and to meet up and to get places hasn’t been a social or specifically political priority, Saudi quality of life suffers in more ways than one. Who cares if the streets are filled with garbage if you never go out?

But people do now. Young Saudis go out in big groups and nearly all Saudis are young. Stepping around overspilling rubbish becomes the first thing I get the hang of keeping my abaya out of because man, it does not smell ok.

Rubbish in a city is a pollutant and I really hope, for the people living there, that Riyadh sorts this out. It’s all the ‘being a metaphor’ thing, isn’t it? Metaphors for governments don’t have extensive municipal recycling programmes.

I can’t tell you to unconditionally support Formula E racing in Riyadh. I don’t think you should unconditionally support anything, really, apart from maybe Lando Norris but we’re all just having a big one about that at the minute.

But anyway, this wasn’t to tell you what to think. It was slightly just to write about going there because not many people do and slightly because everyone keeps insisting no one in the Formula E media is thinking about this stuff when I have tortured myself for weeks with it. Also some of the anecdotes are funny. I could write a lot more, from my run-ins with ‘rose Lattes’ to the time I bought a lime juice and recklessly refused extra sugar in it only to discover I’d got an actual pint of just undiluted lime.

But this is long enough and it’s already much too much about me, for something that really shouldn’t be. We all have to live in our own heads.

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whole-dip · 4 years ago

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Animal Kingdom Analysis

Walt Disney wanted animals in his theme parks since before construction even began. Following the Disneyland tv show format of each episode tying into a specific land (Fantasyland was a fantasy film, Frontierland featured Davey Crockett, Tomorrowland featured educational material on space travel) Adventureland tied in with the True Life Adventures, nature documentaries about wildlife in exotic locations. The original Jungle Cruise was intended to feature live animals that guests would pass by on their voyage, all seemingly free to roam throughout the environment just as they would in their natural habitats. But as the Disney company learned time and time again, absolutely no living thing can be trusted to be show ready if left to their own free will, especially not the kind that work for free.

And so, the disney company would experiment with live animals from time to time over the years, only really being able to consistently have horses featured for guest interaction. However, in the early 90s Disney was incredibly aggressive with their expansions. Parks were opening around the world and current CEO Michael Eisner was eagerly hearing pitches for the most incredible projects. Still, no one could figure out how to control wild animals in a way that would allow for consistent and safe themed entertainment for large amounts of guests. That all changed though when imagineer Joe Rohde pitched his concept. While presenting slides and art to the executives, the door to the meeting opened and in walked a tiger, on a leash of course. The massive beast grazed past each office chair; Joe didn’t acknowledge it at all. As suddenly as it arrived, it left. The problem Disney faced was trying to bring the wild to the realm of people. Joe Rohde told them what they needed to do was bring people to the Animal Kingdom.

Joe Rohde began his career as a high school history and social studies teacher in California, along with designing sets for the school’s theatre department. Allegedly, a disney imagineer was attending one of the school’s productions and was absolutely blown away by the production design of the show and personally reached out to Rohde for a spot within imagineering. From there, Rohde became part of the informal “second generation” of imagineers. Their most prominent project was EPCOT. This group of imagineers was the first to be led without Walt Disney. While Walt Disney was not a hands on designer within the imagineering department, his sense of storytelling as a producer did provide a very consistent vision when disparate projects and technologies needed to be unified as one cohesive idea. EPCOT, while originally designed as a model government and city with fantastic technologies that never needed to enter the realities beyond the eternal blue sky phase, now had been scaled back into a feasible second gate at the young Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Rohde was responsible for the Mexico Pavilion within EPCOT’s World Showcase area, section of the park devoted showing authentic cultural experiences of countries all over the world.

The Mexico pavilion emerges from the horizon with its massive mesoamerican stepped pyramid. It is lush with trees and brush, and features ancient aztec designs carved into the stones that makes the pyramid. As you venture closer, you find that you may enter the pyramid into a beautiful Mexican town lit by lanterns, stars, and soft moonlight. Yes, the inside of the pyramide simulates an outdoor town square. If you look up you find stars twinkling, across the way are more mesoamerican pyramids, guarded by massive olmec heads. Within the pavilion are shops, a bar, and a restaurant. Many people find that they spend so long inside, they’re shocked to exit and remember it’s still daylight outside. Rohde, like many imagineers, valued authenticity and intricate details when creating the pavilion. He pored over historical books and researched real locations. Rohde sought to develop a pavilion that did not just appear to be Mexico, but rather a space that showed the rich history of many mexican towns, from ancient mesoamerican societies, to colonial regime, to independent and proud land. Here is where the seeds of Animal Kingdom were sown.

The actual Animal Kingdom park is located at the far southwestern corner of the disney property. It’s actually about a fifteen minute drive from the Magic Kingdom park and even most of the hotels. When riding on the free bus services, it can be roughly thirty minutes or more. The park is far away from almost everything else on property and to travel there is truly a journey. This is actually because Animal Kingdom required more land than any of the other three parks. It’s roughly 540 acres in total.

When you arrive at the front gate, one of the first things you’ll notice is that you can’t see anything. Just beyond ticketing is a thick wall of green trees and foliage. Guests wander in through this area but you can’t see where they’re going. If you have a keen eye you may notice the smaller animal exhibits or even DiVine, the stilt walking spirit of the flora itself. Many people can get lost in this small section known as the Oasis. While it’s really a short winding path, its design intentionally keeps you from being able to see more than about twenty feet in front of you because of the curves and turns it takes around the trees. As you walk forward you’ll eventually escape from the brush and find yourself staring at the entirety of the park. The massive Tree of Life emerges from the center, small buildings dot the landscape and birds, both exotic and local, fly across the sky. You’ve arrived.

This small entrance perfectly embodies the way disney parks were built with film language. It utilizes an almost montage style of path design to create a sense of confusion and misdirection to suddenly then switch to a sweeping establishing shot of a landscape. It is surreal to see just how explicitly and unsubtly the park manages to completely control your point of view at all times. The rapid turning in the forested area lets out into an incredibly wide pathway immediately after, but further, you can see the full breadth of the park from this one vantage point. To achieve this, Animal Kingdom is actually built in a bowl like structure that traps in the heat needed for the higher temperature plants that decorate the park. It also keeps more moisture inside and makes the already humid Florida feel even wetter. Beyond just featuring exotic wildlife, the park simulates the experience of exploring and finding wild locales on your own.

From this elevated point, you progress down towards Discovery Island. This is the central hub that ties together the far off lands that encompass the other areas of the park. Here, we see the idealized spirit of nature’s throne room. This is the transcendental idea of nature in harmony as we imagine it in our dreams, where all exists in harmony, one world. This is exemplified by the world music playing, especially the live Viva Gaia band that plays a beautiful mix of music from cultures around the world. The intricate wood carvings on the storefronts suggest that not only is the wood itself old and storied, but these stories, of bears and lizards and butterflies, are so intertwined with the wood that their forms seep out of them, demanding to be seen. At the center of it all is the Tree of Life, a 145 foot tall baobab tree with intricate designs of the wild animals that make up our world’s population. The largest of these portraits are obvious, but as you venture closer you see even more where you once thought there were none. There really is no spot on this tree in which the faces of wildlife cannot be found. At night, the tree awakens and its forms move and roar, they remind you that they are very much alive and hear with you. This nightly show does not explode with pyrotechnic bombast, but rather it subtly nods at you. It acknowledges your life, your story, your being, and in turn you acknowledge it. It’s a far more subtle experience than most guests expect it to be.

The tree of life was achieved by decorating a massive oil rig to appear as if it were a giant baobab tree. Baobab’s are known for their long life and for being sort of pillars within the african savannah. Keep in mind that Animal Kingdom was designed with specificity in mind. Nothing could exist there without great intent (and money) so design had to go beyond just simply a tree at the center. Using the baobab as the model created a very specific statement of intent. Then the intricate hand carvings forming the massive portraits of animals further showcase that. Guests can walk up to and even through the tree itself, experiencing the It’s Tough to Be a Bug show inside, or enjoying the various animal exhibits and walking paths that dip underneath the tree’s roots. These smaller animal exhibits are located throughout the park to provide the constant sense that humans have, and always will, exist in wild spaces. While we may delude ourselves into believing we have full control of our domains, we are still just members of a global population that includes much more than just our own individual, or even purely human, needs.

If you walk north from Discovery Island, you will find yourself in the first of the Animal Kingdom’s continental lands, Africa. This land is themed to the fictional city of Harambe, set in an unspecified East African country (though more than likely located within the Democratic Republic of Congo). Harambe’s home country gained independence in 1961 and this year is displayed in many official buildings. Additionally, Harambe has only just recently established their own power grid and communications infrastructure. Electrical power lines are proudly displayed running from one building to another. Much of the main Harambe village features open air shops and food markets to take advantage of the breeze during the day and the cool air at night. These shops often feature local craftsmen that hand make beautiful gifts for the tourists that pass through. Additionally, the food market features delicious local favorites like sausage, ribs, and the much enjoyed Beebo juice drink. Local band Burudika often will play music in the streets as well.

Close by is the Harambe Wildlife Reserve, an 800 square mile wildlife reserve that is Harambe’s crown jewel. Within the reserve are many different animals including elephants, rhinos, giraffes, cheetahs, lions, okapi, mandrills, hippos, crocodiles, just to name a few. While many people sought to exploit this natural resource in the past, with independence Harambe has worked hard to restore and protect the natural wildlife for future generations. Much of the town’s income is from tourists that visit on the safaris and with that money Harambe has slowly been building itself up as a model for how other locations around the world can protect their own natural resources. Additionally, Harambe also has a beautiful walking trail nearby called Gorilla Falls in which many wild gorillas often come to bathe, play, and raise their young.

The Africa section of Animal Kingdom is a perfect example of the multilayered design work that went into the creation of the park. Harambe depicts a very real inspiration that led to a space with very clear direction, history, and sense of being. Africa’s history of exploitation and colonization is unavoidable and so to create a space designed to replicate Africa is to also create a space designed to replicate Africa’s history. Harambe does not exist within a vacuum, neither within its own fictional setting nor it’s real world context as a purposely designed space. Along the land’s river border is the dutch walls, a cannon turret sits aiming outward to remind you of the dark past that this land once had at the hands of colonizers. The buildings show a clear difference in history of when they were built. It is obvious that some are far older and the difference in materials from a history of exploitation can clearly be seen. At the same time, the space shows a hope for the future as its denizens look ahead. There is a sense of optimism with the Kilimanjaro Safari attraction that shows how young nations can rise up from their colonial past and be models, unique in their own way.

The Kilimanjaro Safari itself is uniquely built to create a sense of uninterrupted savannah. As you drive through it in free ranging vehicles, it appears that all the animals have total freedom to roam as they so choose. In truth, many of the barriers are designed to give the appearance of natural rock work while still having the animals be restricted. The design of the habitats is also created to encourage the animals to operate in certain ways. For example, the rock in the lion area is temperature controlled to always be perfect for lounging upon. Coincidentally, this means the lions will very often want to lounge in a very picturesque manner. Further, the animals do not live within the area they can be seen in on the attraction, but rather they’re free to visit during their day. This way, the animals are able to feel free to naturally graze and play as they normally are compelled to, while also going out in front of guests. They’re putting on just as much of a show as any other performers at Disney. The biggest element that allows the safari attraction to feel massive is simply because it is. In reality, the Kilimanjaro Safari is 110 acres, the largest footprint of any Disney attraction. With this massive amount of space it simulates multiple environments and easily provides ample room for all the animals within it, as well as the multiple trucks that travel through.

It should be noted that the Africa section of the park, while it does feature legitimate cultural ambassadors that introduce their culture to countless amounts of guests, there is very much a sense of lumping an entire continent into one blob that is defined mostly by its wildlife. Further, it does very little to showcase how directly colonialism has directly affected the current state of much of Africa’s nations, instead choosing to chalk up much of the difficulties faced by African people to simple mismanagement of resources and cartoonish poacher villains. These issues are exacerbated by Africa’s lack of inclusion within EPCOT’s World Showcase, a different section of the greater Walt Disney World resort. Despite multiple attempts to include an African nation in World Showcase, there is still a sense of “Disney World features African culture, music, and cuisine right next to the gorillas”

Beyond Africa, is a small train station where guests can board a train to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. There, guests can see environmental conservation in action, and even live medical demonstrations of animal care by on site medical staff. While many write off this area of the park as a small petting zoo and educational photo opportunity, it is still an explicit statement of Animal Kingdom’s ecology focus and man’s relationship to nature.

To the east of the park lies Asia. This land takes place within the fictional country of Anandapur, an amalgamation of Tibet, Nepal, and India. Anandapur is the final rest stop on many travelers’ journey to the summit of the forbidden mountain, Mount Everest. At lower elevations, travelers and residents alike enjoy the local teas and indian curries as well as the wild monkeys and tigers upon the banks of nearby rivers. The local hostels are adorned with old backpacks that hang from the rafters.

At the base of the mountain is a temple of the yeti, the mountain’s guardian. Prayer flags drift in the wind and through the near silent breeze, prayer bells softly ring. While visitors to the mountain may not believe, locals are certain in their belief of the invisible yeti that protects the mountain. He only appears when absolutely necessary. You venture forth through the Yeti museum, a strange attraction that collects the multitudes of old yeti art as well as photos and prints of the creature. While it doesn’t provide conclusive evidence, it makes a strong case for the legend being much bigger than just the one beast we imagine. Behind the museum lies the train station that will take you and your fellow adventurers to the base camp upon the mountain. As the train slowly ventures forth, things seem to go awry when you pull up to a set of destroyed rail track. The train reverses only to end up within a darkened cave. The shadow of a hulking monster passes over you. Your train accelerates forward through the mountain, weaving in and out of caves, and for one brief moment, seemingly face to face with the yeti himself, only to suddenly be whisked back down from the sacred mountain. Returning to the station you originally departed from, only you can decide for yourself what you really saw.

Like Africa, the Asia section of the park is built from the ground up to have a lasting sense of history. The country of Anandapur similarly features a history of colonialism turned ecotourism. Much of former British colonialism and exploitation of tea resources can be seen within Anandapur’s infrastructure. The train you board as part of the story of Expedition Everest has been repurposed from its original use of transporting tea leaves. All around the surrounding village of Serka Zong are advertisements for hostels and even hiking backpacks strewn about. There is certainly an element of a new form of exploitation of the land by tourists. Much of the fictional economy in Anandapur is based on zen seeking white tourists hoping to climb the world’s tallest mountain. While the story presents itself as one in which the days of exploitation have since passed, if you pay close enough attention there is a point being made comparing white tourism to colonial exploitation.

To the south east of Asia is Dinoland U.S.A. This land features both the Dino Institute, a leading paleontology center, and Chester and Hester’s Dino-Rama. Upon first glance, the land is two competing areas. The Dino Institute, while featuring a thrilling time travel attraction, is themed to a serious paleontology research center in which legitimate academic and natural work is done. Next door, Dino-Rama is a cheap roadside attraction with scam carnival attractions and cartoonish dinosaurs with no actual basis in biology. These seemingly disparate themes make more sense when you consider the backstory of this area.

As the story goes, the Dino Institute, ever in need of research funding, has rented out their parking lot to unscrupulous carnival barons and allowed them to profit off of “dino fever” that many remote areas in the american south west often cash in on. While the true story of this creative decision is that lower cost rides and attractions were added in an effort to lower the overall cost of the park, this clever writing has turned it into a criticism of a legitimate issue. Just like Asia and Africa’s critiques of capitalism being framed as the only way towards progress, Dinoland U.S.A. showcases how some fields must caricaturize themselves in an effort to be appealing enough to profit. Ecology is no stranger to this problem; it’s often lamented how “cute” animals are far easier to raise money with than other species that may not be as huggable but are no less critical to our world’s ecosystems.

Finally, we arrive to the newest section of Animal Kingdom, Pandora: the World of Avatar. You arrive to Pandora at the Valley of Mo’Ara. Long ago, this land was exploited by human interests for the sake of precious metals deep in the earth. Now though, the land is governed by the indiginous Na’vi people. The valley is home to the Omaticaya clan, a group known for their verticality thanks to their rearing of mountain banshees, or ikran as they call them. The small part of the valley you explore on your visit is maintained in conjunction with the Omaticaya by Alpha Centauri Expeditions, an ecotourism company that facilitates educational tours that focus on not only ecological preservation, but also restoration. While much work has been done, it is a continuous effort to maintain the delicate ecosystems here on Pandora after the previous damage by the strip mining operations.

If you walk through to the Flight of Passage, you’ll find yourself deep inside caves adorned with ancient paintings showing the history of the Omaticaya and their ikran. Massive paintings loom over you on the roof of these caves as you see long gone riders and their mounts. Continuing, you find yourself in an old mining facility that’s now overgrown with wildlife. Various plants and leaves and roots have begun to pop out of rusted cracks and crevices of shipping containers. Further inside, you arrive within the main hub of the avatar program. Like many before you, you will be linked with a matching avatar body and be able to ride upon an ikran led by an Omaticaya guide. As you near the link machinery, you see the active laboratories where scientists and researchers are studying native Pandora life, as well as monitoring the ecological efforts currently being implemented.

In the next room you’re placed within the avatar link apparatus where you’ll undergo the process allowing you to link to your avatar. All is still as you sit in the cold blue metal machine until suddenly, you wake up, alive, in the body of your avatar. You’re already mounted and your ikran flies off wildly. Smaller fauna can sense your unease and almost taunt your little experience but just barely missing you as they fly by. Even the branches and vines that surround you within tree tunnels seems to want to hold you back. Still, your ikran presses on. Together, you rush past waterfalls and giant mushrooms and the tidal waves that regularly crash upon Pandora’s massive coast. Your ikran violently dodges all you come across until finally, it enters a darkened cave to rest. You feel the massive heaves between your legs as your ikran takes deep breaths to fill its lungs with the cool air. A single woodsprite, an atokirina’, drifts down before you. Soon, tens, hundreds more glow as they appear. What you thought was a small cave is now illuminated with blue and violet hues of bioluminescent flora and fauna. You are surrounded and fully immersed within Pandora. Your ikran rises up and glides out of the cave back into the daylight. Outside, the other riders greet you with excitement, even the once alien wildlife now flies with you in synch. Together, you all swirl through the air in harmony, perfectly connected. You pass over the direhorse riders herding below you, through the mist of crashing ocean waves, and finally rest on a cliff, high above the world. The last bits of warmth glow on your skin as the sun sets in the distance. And just like a dream that ends far too early, your eyes darken and you awaken back where your journey began.

Back outside, now that the sun has set, the valley glows from the natural bioluminescence of the plants. What was originally dark green and brown foliage is now bluish purple. The distant sounds of large herbivores is now replaced with the quiet sounds of stalking nocturnal predators. You journey towards the nearby rock outcropping where a river lies. There, you board a small woven boat.

Aboard the boat, you journey through the nighttime rainforest. Like outside, the foliage glows bright with life. All around you is the wildlife of Pandora. The nantang with its cubs, syaksyuk climb trees and jump from branch to branch. Nearby na’vi gather, walking with their pa’li towards the same place the river drifts you. You see the small shadow of kenten footprints on the pink leaves above you. You hear singing in the distance as you near the shaman of songs. Her words flow through the forest towards you. Soon, you come face to face with the shaman. Even sitting, she still looms over you. Looking directly into your eyes, she sings. After this moment, you pass and disembark and exit the cave. You stand at the center of the valley, glowing.

Pandora: The World of Avatar was not something the imagineers wanted to pursue for Animal Kingdom. Joe Rohde has made it clear that he was not interested in putting the story of an alien world in the park. Nevertheless, Disney executives insisted that Avatar go forward at Animal Kingdom. For a long time after the announcement, many were confused as to how the story could fit in a park about real life animals. Yet at the same time, the park wasn’t necessarily a stranger to stretching the definition of what animals could be within the park. Dinosaurs, for example, while very real, have never had a relationship with humanity before their extinction. Even the legendary at one of the park’s signature attractions, only exists within cryptozoology. And still, both of those are a very natural fit to the park. The key to fitting Avatar into Animal Kingdom was focusing on the film’s aspects of humanity to the natural world.

Like with much of the other areas in the park, Pandora has a detailed backstory that supports an ecology message. Much of the details in the land show a very specific history. Satu’li Canteen, the main dining area, is a repurposed military barracks. That entire half of the land features many repurposed military structures. One particular light fixture shows rusted rebar and steel almost wilting with age, but a bright green stalk of plant has emerged out from the hollow inside and shows new life sprouting from the cold past.

Still, there is a sense of potential sarcasm to the land. While the exploitation of the land by human colonists is certainly deplorable, there seems to be a sort of sinisterness to framing tourism as the solution to the land. One might question if the Na’vi would rather just bar all humans from ever visiting their land, and with that would come questions of how exactly the Alpha Centauri Expeditions’ agreement came about. Is this not another story of white saviours, just like the film, where the “good” white people have joyfully introduced the native population to how they can capitalize and profit off of their homeland, of which they were peacefully minding their own business? Problematic questions aside, when viewing the park as a whole, the story does seem to be a bit too simplistic, just too easy of a solution for solving the history of colonial exploitation. Whereas Asia and Africa’s stories have made very clear that they are only just beginning to come back from their colonial past, Pandora is presented as an idyllic harmony that instantly passes past any nuance and simply handwaves away all the potential problems. The na’vi are seemingly in on the joke. What to tourists is a life changing experience of finding connection and harmony with nature seems to be a means to an end, a fact of life in a colonial world. Dark thought it may be, there is a sort of humor to this.

Lastly, there is the Animal Kingdom Lodge, the adjacent hotel that continues the experience of the park through the entirety of a guest’s stay. The massive hotel replicates a termite mound with sprawling corridors that open up to massive lobbies. These lobbies are adorned with pan-African artifacts on loan from museums and cultural centers. Additionally, cultural liaisons and wildlife experts are often available to speak with guests and show their heritage or inform on the care of animals on site. While at the park there is a “show” element that keeps interactions short, these cast members have time to truly interact with guests and connect. The artisans and musicians are on regular rotation and showcase their background in ways much deeper than a simple demonstration at the parks can. Further, the food at the resort showcases the diverse cuisine of the African continent. Sanaa focuses on the North African region with their signature bread service, often accompanied by a selection fo African cheeses. Boma offers hearty soups made from the gourds found in Central African cuisine. Jiko, considered one of the best restaurants on the Walt Disney World property, is fine dining throughout all of Africa’s regions, and for a time boasted the largest collection of African wine in North America. The hotel’s location at the north end of the Kilimanjaro Safari attraction allows for animals to freely walk towards guest areas and allows for sweeping views of the wildlife. At midday, the hotel’s viewing areas are lit with bright sunlight that contrasts the cool red rock inside. It is truly a beautiful space to behold.

Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge is nothing short of majestic. While at first glance it is seemingly a glorified zoo, the true breadth of the experience shows that it is much more. The task of creating a space that allows for animals to have full control of their treatment rather than guest satisfaction directed the park into something beyond simply viewing animals. Consistently, the park dives deep into nature and presents us with a deeply human experience, of connection with nature, connection with each other, and connection with ourselves. The park presents guests with various aspects of the animal world on how each species is adapted to its environment and social structure, and presents humans with the unifying ability to show empathy and connect with the life it finds before it.

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anthonybialy · 4 years ago

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Disease With Ease

It's too bad that blaming Republicans for calamities can't keep us safe, as we'd never have to fear death again. To be fair, the Party of Quayle refuses to control the tides. They also have no plan to battle Godzilla. And they maddeningly won't aim the alien death ray at the saucers hovering overhead. It sure looks like that's not a friendship beam our uninvited visitors are charging.

The office's natural limits should hearten Donald Trump's self-appointed enemies. Presuming the president has the ability to protect from illness and cure sadness has always been a strangely delusional desire and is merely more so after seeing who can win this office.

Frustration at not altering reality is why electing a human with superpowers would be the best course. Let's run some otherworldly freaks. Until then, whine that he didn't personally shovel your driveway and find you a prom date. People already let him define the country's personality, so scoffing at constitutional limits on power is nothing by comparison.

Sure, Trump could have done more to combat the pandemic even if he can't conjure six-foot safety bubbles around each citizen. He can't stop making preposterous boasts about besting the virus, which make it like everything else he's ever said. The no-showman’s obsession with wacky cures makes him seem like a conman, which is fitting for the Trump Ice/Vodka/Shuttle/Magazine/Mortgages/Casinos/Generals/University/Steaks guy. And there sure hasn't seemed to be much coordination, especially from the all-time CEO. It's almost like he's the biggest phony our world has ever endured.

But those trying to dodge illness should notice the virus has spread in wanton disregard for borders. True suffering took the form of the virus jumping within particular states, especially when those in position to actually set up barriers turned them into Evel Knievel jump ramps.

The problem with craving power is screwing everything up once you have it. Take how the most dangerous place on Earth is a Blue State nursing home. Improve personal safety by starting a guerrilla war on a volcano. Andrew Cuomo narced on your grandma to the Grim Reaper. She thought he'd never find her behind the rocking chair, but he's adept at hide-and-seek, especially with teammates who enjoy tattling so much.

Critics of natural limits on presidential authority hate to admit states exist. Governors are in far better position to help, what with having the same license plates.

Responsibility is not in the forecast. Hurricane Katrina should have taught people to not wait for government's help if the room is filling either figuratively or literally. At least look locally instead of praying Washington will reach you. Some still resent George W. Bush for not plucking the stranded off roofs. Meanwhile, the Louisiana governor and New Orleans mayor are still arguing if the evacuation is mandatory.

Disease spread is a Republican specialty if you listen to certain very levelheaded critics. The latest virus a president was somehow supposed to halt brings to mind Ronald Reagan infecting people using satellites he claimed were for missile defense. That's before he cruelly refused to sign an executive order ending AIDS.

A disease whose spread ends by not engaging in friction was somehow the president's fault. Looking for the amendment where the federal government ends illness isn't quite personally responsible. One can feel compassionate for those afflicted while noting there was an easy way to avoid contracting it. I'm sorry the risk resulted that way, but it was still a risk. More federal spending surely would have made sex safer.

I would like nothing more than to announce it's Trump's fault. Noting what a competent human would've done differently to keep a virus from spreading is a bit trickier. Sure, the perception is his fault considering his entire shtick revolves around acting like he's the super best at everything. But there's still only so much even the jerkiest president can do.

It's not that Trump has been super, or sufficient, or competent. The rather egocentric president's boasting may be a distraction from regrettable performance; could a psychologist check that? Either way, that doesn't mean Democrats will stop demanding the incumbent in particular and politicians in general end agony. Experience shows they're much better at bitching things are wrong than making them right.

An ideology revolving around proclaiming they can fix any woe that might be making you blue is a frightening symptom. Figuring out just what the nation's capital is supposed to do should have been possible with billions of free hours. Presuming the feds can cast a spell is a rather unhealthy mentality that reflects a baseless and creepy faith that government is capable of competence. Believing the government will save you is going to cause lots of disappointment too late.

The worst part is how many legitimate reasons there are to loathe this particular president. Nothing is easier than criticizing Trump for something he screwed up. The environment is embarrassingly target-rich. There are so many reasonable reasons. Yet his frothing opponents are obsessed with claiming he's a racist doing Russia's bidding. Making foes rant irrationally is a skill, of sorts, although it's not as useful as helping. The presumption that the president can cure the sick is a sickness itself. People will expect him to cure it.

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cynthiadshaw · 5 years ago

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What’s the Most Important Lesson You’ve Learned Along Your Journey?

Every twist in our story, challenge we face, and obstacle we overcome is an important part of our story. These difficulties make us stronger and wiser and prepare us for what’s ahead. As we grow and succeed we may imagine that soon the challenges will fade away, but in our conversations with business owners, artists, creatives, academics, and others we have learned that the most common experience is that challenges never go away – instead they get more complex as we grow and succeed. Our ability to to thrive therefore depends heavily on our ability to learn from our experiences and so we are asking some of the city’s best and brightest: What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?

Alisa Popelka | Founder + Principal Interior Designer of Alisa Cristine Interiors

Premoe Photography

As an entrepreneur I had to learn to define what success meant to me and forget about what success is to everyone else. Being a solo (entrepreneur), I learned that I needed to accept and be okay with the fact that the journey to achieving big goals is going to take me longer than a firm with a team. With the heavy influence of social media it’s so easy to get caught up in the comparison trap, and be hard on yourself for what you aren’t accomplishing when in reality you need to celebrate and honor how far you’ve come. All of those small wins lead to achieving big goals so I’ve learned I have to give myself some grace and keep moving forward everyday to better my business and hit those milestone moments.

alisacristineinteriors.com @alisacristineinteriors @alisacristineinteriors

Alex Mauricio | Dallas and Tampa Realtor®

REAL is a huge piece of the term REAL-tor which makes authenticity so important for a Real Estate Pro. Be honest, ethical, moral…and most importantly be yourself! You still have to have the intellect and real estate chops to back up your credibility as a competent agent, but as far as getting your foot in the door to start a conversation with a home buyer or home seller, being your true self will set you apart. In this day & age, an important part of why a client chooses to hire a professional is based on how they connect with YOU! Your quirky sense of humor, your funky personal style, right down to your adorable regional accent all makes up who you are as an individual. As a newbie, I thought I needed to portray myself in a certain way to be successful. I studied top agents in my area and took note. Luckily, I learned very quickly that we all have something unique to bring to the table. It’s one thing to learn tips and tools of the trade from your peers but you don’t want to become a carbon copy of them. People are savvy enough to see through disingenuous behavior. Do YOU, do what comes naturally and the rest will follow!

ClassyCozyCasa.com @SpecialAgentAlex @AlexMauricioRealtor

Rachel Lisle | Family Nurse Practitioner

Marci Brooks Photography

Throughout my journey as first an Emergency Nurse and transitioning to preventative care, I have learned to never stop asking questions. In order to improve yourself, you must have the desire to learn more, hone your skills, and be up to date on current guidelines and research. Asking questions and wondering “what else” allows you to see outside the box and dig deeper. Everything new begins with a question or a hypothesis. Applying this ideal to patients is a great tool to find the root cause of an issue and therefore better serve them. Continuing to apply this lesson has helped me expand my view of medicine to include traditional, holistic, and functional medicine. I desire to continue to improve and be a life long learner by always asking more questions.

integrativemedical.com @rlisle_integrativemedical @rachel.lisle.92

Rachel Dixon | Biology Teacher & owner of Bossmaid Pickelz “Koolaid Picklez with a Southern Twist”

John Jones

For me, the most important lesson I’ve learned on my journey are the reflections I’ve made on my life and the improvements made from every downfall. As cliché as it sounds you must truly believe in yourself in order to stay focused on your journey. I feel as though we were all put here to be and do great things in this world. And there’s a path for everyone to take. I have learned how to be my biggest fan and go after every burning desire I have with the highest expectation that I can achieve and succeed. Not a care for how many times I’ve failed much confidence that success will come overtime. This is my journey -Rachel Dixon

@Rachels-Bossmaid-Picklez @bossmaid_picklez

Melina Flabiano | Founder and CEO, Keaton

Female Founder Collective

Don’t wait for perfection. I’ve heard this advice many times, but as a lifelong perfectionist I always struggled to adopt it. When I first started Keaton I would spend hours creating content for social media or drafting e-mails to advisors and investors. I became frustrated that I wasn’t progressing fast enough. I’ve shifted my mindset to bring customers and advisors on the (often messy) startup journey with me. I’ll share behind-the-scenes content rather than perfectly edited photos, or ping advisors with a few topical questions when I need help instead of waiting to have the perfect answer ready. At first, this approach made me feel more vulnerable, but overtime I’ve realized that letting people see the imperfect reality can be very helpful, and really enables me to get feedback early and make adjustments accordingly.

wearkeaton.com @wear.keaton @melina_flabiano

Southside Luke | Recording Artist

Julliet Abraham

The most important lesson for me has been learning how to choose to free my mind. I find that with all of the art that I’ve released, whether it be a song, a video, or even a photograph, I would overthink and over analyze myself to the ground. I was held down by my own insecurities and irrational feelings of how it would be perceived, especially by those who knew me or have met me personally. I had a talk with a close friend once about the difficulty of releasing myself as is, unapologetically and without caution. It was a talk that nearly brought me to tears to be honest, and somehow it really stuck with me that I couldn’t keep playing it safe or consider anyone else’s opinions when it comes to the art that I create. I found that one of the biggest ways I was able to break those chains was by starting out with just being brave enough to do something as simple as hitting that “share” button and letting another piece of myself enter the world, and just live… Again, unapologetically and without caution. And once it was released, and living, and breathing, and a real part of this earth, that’s when I started feeling the most growth and the most freedom I had ever felt. Learning to allow myself to live outside of my head as much as I live inside of my head has pushed me to heights I had only fantasized about before. This past year has been the toughest year of my life, mentally, emotionally, and physically; but it’s also been the year I’ve created the pieces of art that I’m most proud of.

@southsideluke @southsideluk3

Maize & Honey | James & Izzie | Content Creators

The quality of building real connections and not worrying about reaching certain metrics is a valuable lesson we have learned. Remembering the reason we started this project, and the passion we both share for food, will always be what keeps us aligned to our mission. We believe that food is a unique device to unite people. We seek to explore and share different dishes from all cuisines, understand the history of meals we eat everyday, and learn how food relates to the story of who we are today.

@maizeandhoney maizeandhoney.com

Kiera Malowitz | Declutter Coach with Real Life Decluttered

When a client comes to me, they are typically stressed and overwhelmed by their clutter. It takes time and energy for us to work through decluttering as well as them developing new habits for the future. My most important lesson so far has been the realization of how good I feel when I see my clients feel so much less stressed and overwhelmed. When we finish a decluttering project, it’s like a weight has been lifted off their shoulders and I can see how much relief they have from when we started. I share their sense of accomplishment and it amazes me how much happiness I feel for them.

@reallifedecluttered

Kerrick Williams | Servicing Director & Personal Coach

I’ve learned that adversity is inevitable, but being defeated by it is optional. We have to condition ourselves to keep pushing, even if you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. That makes the satisfaction of achieving your goal even sweeter.

@kwlifecoaching

Priya Thakur – Research Analyst | Zee Ramani- Strategy Analyst | Parth Badhiwala- Business Analyst | Ankur Patel- Dental Student

The most important lesson we’ve learned in our journey is to always be honest about our ratings. When we started our Instagram page, it was only meant to be shared with a few friends. However, once it started taking off and we realized our followers are depending on us to point them to some of the best food in Dallas, we made it a priority to be completely transparent while putting a creative spin with our captions and Belly Meter to cater to our audience!

@3idiotsea

Mario C. Ramirez | Gastronomic Entrepreneur

1- Demographically speaking you don’t need a Mexican community to open a Mexican Restaurant anymore and be successful (not only in the US but in the World) 2- Tex-Mex food is fading out and it ll go away sooner than later 3- Real, honest and traditional Mexican Food 🥘 its claiming it’s position and place in the Gastronomic and cosmic Universe This are just 3 simple lessons that Mexico de 1,000 Sabores will show to the World in less than 35 days

mexicodemilsabores.com @mxde1000sabores facebook.com/events/345247999705036/

Lyle Scovell | Co-Owner, CYL Sauna Studio | Tory Foster- Co Owner, CYL Sauna Studio

This is a toss up for me. There are two things I find myself saying out loud or just to myself every single day. The first is that “if you have to say you ‘is’, you ‘ain’t.” The second is that EVERY single person is carrying around an invisible backpack of heavy shit. Always error on giving the benefit of the doubt. -Lyle Scovell.

The most important lesson I have learned along the way is that the more we express our gratitude, the more things we will have to be grateful for. -Tory Foster

cylsaunastudio.com @cylsaunastudio_dallas

Priscilla Walker | Entrepreneur & Cosmetologist

Failure is always an option. When I fail I have an option to see the good or the option to see the bad and to do something or do nothing at all, I let those failures keep me going, I let those failures shape my success and see them as opportunities to grow, open new doors, So I pick myself up and try again. Wasn’t always this way, I was tired of it all, gave up on myself, everything and everybody, I felt drained, I planned, researched for days, study everything, had notebooks with pages of notes. never saw a well planned out research idea happen for years. And to be honest I still haven’t. But its all about determination. Last year failure could’ve taken my life, but I chose to commit my life to God. He designed a path for me to be an entrepreneur, and I know with every fiber of my being, I am. This year, I have launched my company website PriscillasPalace.com, Purchased my dream car, and now I am being featured in a magazine, Life is not always about the success but failing and doing better. I have learned to let my light shine, to be a role model, and that this life is full of opportunities designed for failure that make life exciting and worth fighting. I still put in the same amount of work if not more, only this time I use my downfall as my fuel. The most important lesson, I learned is to not give up on my self, put God first remind myself that failure is my choice to make. If I fail I can stay in the mindset of failure or I can take all my knowledge from failing and turn it into a multi billion-dollar company. Which I don’t know about you but only one of those sound good to me, so choose to fight. “let your passion out way your pain” – TD JAKES

@PriscillasNailPalace PriscillasPalace.com youtube.com/channel/UCd1XFtmIUIVNlycvH8H1E-w

The Mom Who Eats | Food Blogger | Aspiring Photographer

@themomwhoeats

Time doesn’t heal all wounds and sometimes life forces you to rediscover yourself. It is uncomfortable, scary, and often a frustrating journey. However, the only one standing in your way is you. You can choose to give up or choose to take your wounds and move forward with them. It requires you to be brave and to learn how to drown out the “excess noise” that’s in your life. The only peace we need to seek is that from the Lord and the peace from being honest with ourselves.

@themomwhoeats

Autumn Black | Podcast Host & Digital Nomad Influencer

I am not meant to be everybody’s cup of tea. I am my own very special unique flavor and it’s not up to me who likes it and who doesn’t get it. It is up to me to show gratitude to those that like my flavor, appreciate my style and pour into me. That’s how you stay determined to keep going.

@queenxpod linktr.ee/queenxpod

DFW Apartment Locator (Licensed Realtor) & Lifestyle Influencer

To never get too attached to a season in my life because it is only temporary. Every season serves its purpose and is only preparing you for your succeeding one. So I now focus on finding the lesson in it, then learn and grow from it! Life is all about growth and change. Once I stopped asking God “Why is this happening to me?” and started asking myself “What is God trying to teach me here?” it changed everything! Things don’t happen TO you, they happen FOR you and in order for your situation to change, you need to change! It’s like one of my favorite speakers says “don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better”. (Jim Rohn) So now I seek opportunity for growth in those tough seasons because I know it’s only preparation for the next one!

@itsjustamandaray @AmandaRay__ youtube.com/user/TheAmandatrevino

Xochitl Paola | Health & Fitness Coach

Most important lesson that I’ve learned is that failure is a part of the journey and we shouldn’t try to avoid it or be afraid of failure. We should expect and embrace that failure will eventually lead us to our end goal, in fact every failure is teaching us how to do better next time. Don’t let the possibility of failure hold you back from chasing your goals and the life of your dreams!

@xo__chill

Joy Turner | Sports Phenom

The most important lesson I’ve learned so far is to really stay grounded in your purpose, and to never compromise who you are for anything or anybody . The main reason I’m doing what I’m doing is to show females that you can reach a high level of recognition and success by simply staying true to who God has created you to be , without compromising your morals or devaluing yourself as a person. I have been tempted the same way, but I always have to remember who God created me to be .

@joydeangela

PerfectionPhotoz | Portrait & Artist Entertainment Photos Since 2013 & Still Going

The Most important lesson I’ve learned in my journey IS Patience & Hardwork Through Wanting Too give up Keep Going Putting Out Content stay Motivated. Every Season is Different Is Different Month Is Different.

@matt.swaggseason @Perfectionesp

Jacquelyn Horn | Health and Wellness Coach( Nutritionist) & Blogger

The most important lesson I’ve learned during this journey is that failure is absolutely necessary. Failure increased my passion and created that extra push to not give up. There are times that I still want to give up, but then I tell myself failure is not a step backwards. Failure is the greatest lesson, and it is imperative that we endure such pain to be able to strive for greatness. With out failure I wouldn’t be able to educate others on how to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

jackiesdiaries.blogspot.com @jackiesdiaries_

Annie Pipkin | Nutritional Therapy Practitioner student and Lyme Survivor

We learn a lot about ourselves when we go through trials of adversity and hardship. Beautiful things can come out of our extremely painful experiences. They can be molded and shaped into purpose, letting us be a light for others still struggling in the trenches. Be that light that the world needs so badly.

@nurtureandheal nurtureandheal.com

Alec Stewart | Graphic Designer & Digital Cowboy

Support your local community, give back to your local scene, and show the same amount of love to your peers and friends and their awesome, creative pursuits as you do to celebrities you don’t know! Ya’ll in this together – work together to prosper together.

@alexander_steward

Dana Bean, Jazmine Forte & Annessa Young | Hosts | Black at Work Podcast

Accepting that everybody’s story is not going to mirror ours and that’s okay. There’s always something to learn. What we love about our show is that all of our guests are organic. We don’t know them, we don’t know their stories and we’re hearing what they have to say for the first time with our listeners. A lot of them truly surprise us. The best part about our show is that these super talented, dynamic, resilient people get to come and share a piece of their lives with the world and the impact—not only for us, but the people that listen ends up being great.

blackatworkpod.com @blackatworkpod Facebook: @blackatworkpod @blackatworkpod youtube.com/results?search_query=blackatworkpod

Erin | Content Creator

10 years ago my advice was always aligned with “never cross oceans for someone or something that wouldn’t cross a puddle for you.” But now, at 30’ish, I first and foremost realize I’m not at all worthy or experienced enough of giving advice via nature illustrations!! Secondly, my mentality has switched. Now if someone asks, my question back to them is always, “why wouldn’t you? Do it. Cross oceans, climb mountains. Without conditions or expectations.” Because when you do things in love, whether it be people, work or your your circumstances without setting a bar of expectations you find contentment. You find the ability to be thankful for the praiseworthy moments when they do happen and you should celebrate. Otherwise you will miss it all. It’s exhausting living your life based on conditions. And honestly when you realize how liberating it is to love yourself and others without perimeters, the second part of your life begins.

But I probably read that from a Wheaties box or an Oprah magazine so don’t quote me on that! ✌🏻

@toddler.frat.house

Kerstan Warner | Fully Developed

@anniedevinetx

When I first thought to create Fully Developed, I was at a point in life that we all have to face: What am I going to do with my life? Starting the podcast in March, the vision I had for where we’d be today is a little off from my reality & honestly that’s the beauty of it. When you decide to create something of your own, you seldom think of the obstacles that you’re going to face. I wasn’t thinking of the times when money would be low, when creating content didn’t flow as well as other days or when plans you have for your vision just isn’t what pans out. Some things aren’t always in our control and the ability to accept that and move forward in the best way that I can is the biggest lesson I’ve learned thus far in this journey. After accepting this truth (which happened very recently) I’m excited to see where Fully Developed will go and the growth in each and every perspective that comes on the show.

linktr.ee/fullydevelopedpod @fullydevelopedpod

Adrian Muñoz | Diyer | woodworker

Be patience and take pride in your work and just keep on building.

@Dallashmww @Dallashmww

MerryMakers | Balloon Artists at The Southern Cross

Choose to start every day with a good mood, and every day can be a good day.

trinitytreetops.com/southern-cross-dallas @SouthernCrossDallas @SouthernCrossDallas

Nadia Fernandez | Visual merchandiser | designer | model

My journey has been tough, as most will agree but it hasn’t ended. So the most important lesson that I have learned and still struggle to embrace today is to not give up. This journey has its ups and downs and what seems like detours or even dead ends but what I’ve started learning and picking up on is that they are nothing that can actually stop me. Often the detours lead me to something new, something I had not previously thought about or even considered and all those new things including the dead ends have shown me that I’m in charge of how far I go. It’s just a matter of whether I am willing to keep going or stop, and stopping is just not an option.

@nadia.fern12 @nadfer12 @multi_media_mind_photography

Michelle of Wild Little Moon | Motherhood & Lifestyle Blogger

Surround yourself with positive, loving, supportive people. Be the light. Love God, love others, love nature. Happiness is a way of life. Appreciate the little things.

@wildlittlemoon

Jade Moon | Gas Monkey Babe Model

David Hardy

To never give up on yourself, no matter what everyone thinks or what they say. No one controls your future but YOU!

@JadeMoon.Kyla

Dawson Lobb | Public Figure

The greatest lesson I’ve learned so far in my journey is persistence. I’m nowhere close to where I want to be, but the only way i’ll grow is persistence. As long as you keep at it nothing can stop your growth, and stop you from achieving your goals. It takes a lot of time effort, but most importantly persistence.

@dawsonlobb snapchat.com/add/dlobbdagoat vm.tiktok.com/88P5FS

Angikay Loth | Health & Wellness Coach

Jessica Loth

The most important lesson I have learned on my journey is it’s never to late to start where you are.

One of the things I teach my clients is mindset. On your journey don’t use age as an obstacle. No matter what your age it’s never to late. Start today!

angikay.com @angikay linkedin.com/in/angi-loth-51056159

Nicole Carouthers | Actress | Writer | Director | Producer

The most important lesson learned, is to never give up pursuing my passion.

@NicoleCarouthers17

Trinity Forest Adventure Park | Courses include multiple obstacles, zip lines, and free falls

Kyle Sharp

Live like your dog: sleep in, share snacks, and celebrate everything.

trinitytreetops.com @TrinityForestAdventurePark @TrinityForestAdventurePark

Danii | Dancer | Choreographer & Singer/Songwriter

I used to be afraid. I used to be afraid of failing and afraid of what others thought of me. I used to be afraid to speak or to even ask\demand for my wants and needs. My fear prevented me from being the best I can be for myself and it put limits on my freedom as an artist. One day I heard someone say that shyness was a fear or expressing yourself. After hearing this my journey changed forever. Finding my voice and learning to dream without fear is the most important lesson I’ve learned in my journey thus far. I know that fear is not a feeling from God so what is the opposite of fear? I know that through God I inherit whatever my heart desires, so why am I not where I desire to be? The only thing that was keeping me from my destiny was fear of the unknown. It’s was not easy to let go of fear, but once I did I was able to dream without restrictions. I now choose to take a leap of faith every time. I am fully committed to the uncomfortable feeling of growth and I have no limits.

@itbedanii Soundcloud.com/itbedanii “Intention” by Danii streaming on all major platforms

Griselle Gonzalez | Personal Trainer

Invest a lot of time in yourself, empower yourself with books and supportive people. Challenge yourself every day, learn, take actions that you are scared about- take risks. Never loose sight of your goals and dreams in life. Be patient because change and growth takes time but it will all be worth it.

@indigrisi

Brenda V. Olivas | Pro. Hairstylist & Makeupartist

To believe in myself wholeheartedly and trust patience is the key to it all. Almost a decade of doing what I love has taught me to always take the risk. For years I held back on fears of not being good enough or being rejected. When I finally let go of all those insecurities I found a new love for the reason I even started my own business. I did it to make others feel beautiful about themselves the way I do when I color my hair or put a little lipstick on. I see beauty in everything and everyone. Sometimes I feel it just takes the right stylist to bring that out in someone. Seeing is believing and when I turn my clients around in my chair and I see those smiles and eyes light up , That’s It’s! That’s the joy, the love, the reason I do it all. It just took coming out of my own comfort zone and believing everything is in god hands to be able to have the success I do now. Patience is a hard lesson to learn for anyone, loving myself and believing I could accomplish anything I set my mind to in my own time is the key to my own success.

@BVArtistry @bv_artistry

Ashley Portals | Mindset & Confidence Coach | owner of Realm Coaching

Many of us have been conditioned to see failure as bad, and as a sign that whatever you’ve failed at “just isn’t for you.” Instead I’ve learned to embrace failure as a teacher, a stepping stone to something greater, or how to do something better the next time around. Pulling out a lesson from our failures and welcoming what we gain from the experience is something I encourage in my coaching practice.

runyourrealm.com @realmcoaching

Maria Cruz | Paper Florista

@kittyboo_

There are many things that I have learned and still learning, in a world we’re everything is “help me and I will help you” you kind of fall into a pattern of let me see how much I can get out of the situation. I have other colleagues that do the same thing and they always advise me pick your prices higher don’t sell yourself short, its never enough it’s always to low! They tell me. I learned that when you start doing something you love and greed gets in the way, it’s stops being something you love it becomes WORK and the reason I started my own small business was precisely because I did not want to work a job that made me feel prisoner of my life. And when greed comes into play that’s exactly what happens you become prisoner of money of greed and everything that involves. Don’t get me wrong of course i want to make money. I am a mother of four and I need to bring the bacon but being honest. Now three years in this business I have learned how to price, how to help my customers and be smart about my business. I can say we never stop learning EVER but with the right mentors around and a little patience I have learned allot.

@katys_flower_wall

Ariel Danise | Entrepreneur and Brand ambassador

hollyjphotography.com

The most important thing I have learned so far is to keep my peace. No matter what comes up or how bad a situation is I have to stay positive and in control of my thoughts and emotions in order to make the best decision moving forward.

youtube.com/channel/UCjrQTEfgwkxDbPxWSHfxV2w @ariel.willis.585 @arieldanise

Sweet Things of Midtown | Dallas Local Cookie Bar

If you envision it, don’t stop until you make it happen. I wanted to make sure this product left an impact on customer’s taste buds and heart, which is why each box includes a unique personalized message. I’ll just say, this vision wasn’t easy to bring to life. The saying “be willing to do what it takes to be successful” is not just a cliche’. I’m still learning that to be a successful entrepreneur truly requires coming out of your comfort zone, thinking outside the box, and willfully making sacrifices to obtain something you cannot yet physically see.

sweetthingsofmidtown.com @sweetthingsmidtown @Sweethingsmidtown

Neha Bhargava | Blogger/ Writer and Digital Marketing Strategist

Finish what you start and start what you believe you can finish. I believe in weighing my options even before I start making decisions. You just can’t bite more than you can chew. There is no redo in life. Whatever decisions you make today, you will be living with them tomorrow.

I have learned to believe that giving up is not an option.

Relationships, marriage, kids, career, business, you jump in with a mission to be successful. Focus all your energy on it. Believe in it. Fight for it. Like there exists no other way. No other way to look at. There is just one thing to do- work hard towards it, finish what you started, and you will be surprised at the contentment you feel with the outcome. I have noticed that when I put everything into achieving my goals, I walk with no regrets. And that is exactly the future I want to live in.

themomhoodtales.com @the.momhood.tales @The-Beautiful-Mama

The post What’s the Most Important Lesson You’ve Learned Along Your Journey? appeared first on Voyage Dallas Magazine | Dallas City Guide.

source http://voyagedallas.com/2019/08/16/whats-important-lesson-youve-learned-along-journey-2/

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